"There are enormous pressures in our world that seek to induce mankind to bear the loss of faith and moral certainties by being drugged into oblivion--by mass entertainments, shallow material satisfactions, pseudo-explanations of reality, and cheap ideologies. At the end of that road lies Huxley's Brave New World of senseless euphoric automata. Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphamisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions--and to laugh at it."

-Martin Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd

If you are seeking, seek us with joy

For we live in the kingdom of joy.

Do not give your heart to anything else

But to the love of those who are clear joy,

Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.

For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –

Do not go in the direction of darkness –

I tell you: suns exist.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

"Search for your place of greatest service, keep the initiative despite headwinds, find ways of expressing yourself more effectively, get behind inhibitions, and be practical in seeing what works and what doesn't. Follow the yearning for extended experience in "distant lands," be skillful in displaying your enthusiasm while taking nothing for granted, and allow a new perspective or rhythm of expression to adjust old habits in action, thought, and feeling."
-Robert Wilkinson

I watched this interview of French grafitti artist Mr. Brainwash at the music blog I LISTEN TO EVERYTHING, which I came across thanks to a link posted at Susan Miller's Astrology Zone.
Ah, the chain of linkage!

It's a great interview and inspiring tag-along into the studio and creative process of MBW.

Part I

Carson Daly interview Mr. Brainwash on his show The Last Call [PART 1] from bentzi19 on Vimeo.

Part II

Carson Daly interview Mr. Brainwash on his show The Last Call [PART 2] from bentzi19 on Vimeo.

I've been on a "pump yourself up" kick lately. Getting into gear to break past whatever may or may not hold me back, depending on the day...
While in a trance of totally-fulfilling-the-moment, I took quick rest stops up exit ramps, themselves mini highways; carrying the flow of the main artery into a write-bite.
Reflecting on the creation, the process, the sensation while fully immersed in it makes for some pretty good not-from-concentrate concentration.

"You can't be scared making art, doing you. No mistake is too bad. All mistakes are perfect mistakes. All flaws are only so in the imagined mind.
Once you make the move, action sees no imperfection -- it only sees possibility."

Former : Square business cards

Top : Creative Design Agency 23 Suite Studio

Bottom : Bar Breton (highly recommended)

_____________________

For as much as I love words, images have a quality incomprable in their verbage.
For some eye candy on this Friday the 14th, some static dynamic...

Just got this awesome book from the library:

Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern

The title page presents a gorgeous ambigram, good start.


I've yet to properly crack it open, as it were, but did get a chance to read the inner flap. Which led me to "strange attractors" or, mathematically derived shapes that provide for quite beautiful alternatives to, elaborations upon, the resounding infinity symbol within them.
As M. Hofstadter wrote, "My eye could not help but be strangely attracted by this odd term..."
Take a gander





The artist Nathan Selikoff is responsible for many of these images; drawing from mathematical algorithms into this ephemeral sort of digital abstraction.

Some of them have an inky, smokey osmosis feel.

"...the basic idea hinges on looking at what might be called "mathematical feedback loops"; expressions whose output can be fed back into them as new input, the way a loudspeaker's sounds can cycle back into a microphone and come out again."

Happy discoveries.......

"...You're grounded. No video games, no Tweetering - nothing electronic. It's desensitizing. Puts you out of touch with your humanity. You can't afford that."

-- Nancy Botwin, Weeds

...of words, especially

I saved you in my digital pocket, image of a yellow brick road
knowing time would show your right mind'd
idea, in words to curl round, unfurl
grow up from out
and now...
golden vines,
towards emerald ends are paved your lines
foundations down versus walls around
roads they're bridges,
between walled edges
within where wizards doctor answers
awaiting wayward footpad travelers



...Threads feeling worn more by today
an invisible tug of heart strings refusing decay
pulls testing resistance to life's little big questions
shots aiming at meanings made therein by weaving
bow looms add achieving derived from believing,
minus grieving over unknowing exactly
what is under.standing for what you're sewing,
that purpose in the fabric of our lives
each day its maintaining,
expanding in surface, structure-enabled non-framing
we upon it blanket leaves of grass déjà en root
for our picnics off the dark they feast.on stars, to them were offered up nursery rhyme dreams
of light, bright, first one I see tonight
North guiding, shifting good tidings from immortal black daughters
pass then through to dots of white sons
as needles in haystacks knit time's golden strings to thread,
each system dependent on the other over.turn does the wheel,
this rock's sun perpetual dial'd up
revolving motion forever once more

“You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping;

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together;

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

3 Yes
3 Maybe
3 No
16 Questions, thought up on the spot, progressively.
Give a roll, the die responds

Interesting results...

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

1.) Will these questions turn into something more? Yes
2.) Do the answers stem from chance? Maybe
3.) Is random not random? Maybe
4.) Are you always right? Yes
5.) Is this all numerical chance? Maybe
6.) Does 'No' not come up? Maybe
7.) Is 'No' a figment of the imagination? No
8.) Do you like being compared to a Ouija Board? Yes [hahaha]
9.) Am I wasting time right now? The die rolled off the table and landed on its side, with Maybe and Yes facing up.
10.) Is life not a waste of time? No
11.) Are we indeed building nothing? No
12.) Is this a bigger force speaking via the die? No
13.) Is anything possible? No
14.) Is everything possible? Yes
15.) Will we all get what we want? No
16.) Will we all get what we deserve? Yes

but I wrote this on a whim a few days ago and...

"worn carpets signify well-tread routes.
weave a new one if you love the truth."

I kinda really like it.

Say hello to Maru.
This little Japanese ball of wondurfur is outrageously talented. And no, that's not an overstatement.
Just watch his acrobatic marvels, and giggle your arse off.

I love a box ! !

Many thanks to Wired magazine!

The MTA has taken to posting inspiring quotes amongst the adspace of their buses and trains. "Train of Thought" they call it. Ok, cool.

One of their latest is by the French mathematician and theoretical physicist, Jules Henri Poincaré. The name was familiar to me because I'd lived just off the rue Raymond Poincaré in Paris' 16eme...so I made a mental note to dig a little deeper.

This just in: thanks Wiki, I am now learning M. Raymond Poincaré was a statesman, not to be confused with JH.

Sidenote: every street name, metro station, bus stop, restaurant location/name means something, has a deep and distinct history there (and in other cities too, obviously) - usually tied to a historical event or notable person. I like that. Cuz as cool as "Evergreen Ave." is, there's just something a liiiiitle cooler about a 'secret' history behind your present-day stomping grounds.

So anyways... The "Train of Thought" quote was published as:
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of thought."

After a quick search I came to discover that the last word was changed from "reflection" - as it was originally formulated - to "thought" as it appeared on that 5th avenue bus on that fateful Sunday eve.

Is this an honest mistake? Or perhaps a meta-commentary on behalf of the MTA staffer? Because to me, "thought" and "reflection" provide two pretty distinct readings, endings to that train of words.

Someone should inform the MTA: your caboose is too loose. And I'm not talkin about the quote! (Badummchhh)

So basically, what difference does a thought make when reflection is not engaged?

I'd say not much of a difference. Either that or too much of a difference...

;)

Mind Over Matter

Observing
Expecting
Resulting
Reacting
Reinterpreting
Retrograding
Restoring
Constructing
Concluding
Continuing
Commencing
Collecting
Unfolding
Understanding
Underestimating
Integrating
Controlling
Commanding
Conferring
Creating
Deploying
Destroying
Deciding
Colliding
Crossing
Connecting
Expanding
Convexly
Fluxing
Forgetting
Yet
Never Escaping
Unbroken
Unmolded
But Always
Reshaping
Renewing
Remaining
Wide Open
These Systems
A Token
The Matrix:
Bespoken

"You know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is, however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth... they just get better at lying."

Art is not about making the best, most perfect and magical thing, image, creation, motion. It's about connecting with yourself: good & bad, impulses, desires, imagination, and the influences you've internalized; and engaging it in any & every way you can dream of. And persisting. And staying focused and inspired, true. Working continuously.
And in that way, magic happens.
The best part of you happens.
By way of impassioned love.

One year, 3 months and 4 days ago, upon my return to the United States known as America, I began a new chapter in my life. I also began reading a fantastic book by the name of Eat, Pray, Love. Like all things that motivate the best in people- emotion (mountainous and valley-like), inspiration, new sights and new horizons, empathy and relation; the word on the greatness of her work spread fast. It's a quaint thing. I'd wanted to do an entry on the book after I'd read it, while the imprint it left was still fresh, the ink of her words gleaming on my dead-of-winter Caribbean tan. But I didn't. I just never took the time or allowed that inner seed of desire and will toward expression to plant itself into this blog's box. Ah how it works. All in due time, my dear. Methinks the seed was itself still developing.

So sitting here, 456 days later (I'll give a buffer of 3 days for the time it took from landing to me actually obtaining the book in question), surfing these boundless and tangled interwebs, I ran into author Elizabeth Gilbert's February 2009 talk at the TED conference.

Timely.

Now.

Three months later, and not a moment too soon. Not a minute later than it should.

'surprisingly moving', indeed. The point of her thoughts in talk barreled over me in the same way she recounts her encounter with poet Ruth Stone's "thunderous train of air". The air of creation, of inspiration. That 'other', that genius, that 'buffer' between us - creative souls - and the eventual alchemical outcome of its passing through.

Like the holy trilogy, trinity.

The number three and its effectivity in tying together the ends of then, now, there.

It, Me, This.

Genius, Man, Creation.

"One manifests as two.

Two is transformed into three.

And three generates all the myriad entities of the universe."

He is the middle man to us as middle men that does not ask permission and will not be told 'no'.

Tom Waits asked him to wait, for a more practical time at which to create.

But if you've opened that portal, have stepped once through that door, you will know that forever more, the mirror you see in that room cannot but bounce you back to it.

The Room Full of Mirrors has eaten many souls alive. Those tortured artists Gilbert mentions, the ones who fall into the River of their image, not to rise up like a Phoenix, but drown in their thesis...

& I wonder, drawing out the mirror parallel farther...

Have you ever noticed the infinity produced by two mirrors reflecting the space in between? Curving to the side of an ever-shrinking bending of your line of sight.

That space, is it the buffer? Is it the genius fairy-like creature "living in our walls", two mirrored walls perhaps, with the second mirror as the manifestation of our creative efforts, with our being standing as the other mirror?

Or are we the space between? One side delivering through us what is to bounce back on the other, exactly the same but shaped by our standing there, filtered through our abilities, sensibilities, sensitivities...

Going with option number two -- when that second mirror ceases to back us up in our reflections, and we're left facing ourselves, the work perhaps a little more void of the fullness of bending holograms, is it any less valuable?

Any less of a study and capture of that momentary self-fulfilled truth?

This moment after the allah, the olé: she admits the inevitable difficulty, of dealing with just 'me', sans a fairy genie. And so full is this portion (I admit, I teared) that it deserves its own quote:

"Maybe it doesn’t have to be quite so full of anguish

if you never happened to believe in the first place

that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you

but maybe if you just believed that they were on loan to you

from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life

to be passed along when you're finished, to somebody else.
If we think about it this way it starts to change everything...
Don't be afraid, don't be daunted, just do your job.

Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be...

If the divine cock-eyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts, then olé.

And if not, do your dance anyhow.

Olé to you nonetheless just for having

the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up."

"What the eyes represent for most painters, the mouth was for Bacon, the locus of human identity. The mouth is what bites, suckles, and howls at the moon. By contrast, the eyes are likely to be missing entirely or smeared shut or obscured by a milky scrim, as in his portrait of the writer Michel Leiris. With Bacon, the windows of the soul--not that he believed in the soul--always have the curtains drawn."

- Richard Lacayo on Francis Bacon

A moving passage I read on this morning's passage:

"I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. Their talk painted the walls of the dismal prison in which these men had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny.

Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built you peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty borgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time [!]. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

The squall has ceased to be a cause of my complaint. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars."

- Antoine de Saint Exupéry from Wind, Sand and Stars

Held in Montreal, Expo 67 (The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, a sort of "Worlds Fair") was nicknamed "Man and his World", taken from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's memoir Terre des hommes, (literally "Land of Men"), translated as Wind, Sand and Stars. Housing was one of the main themes of Expo 67. Habitat 67 (above) then became a thematic pavilion visited by thousands of visitors who came from around the world. During Expo 67 it was also the temporary residence of the many dignitaries coming to Montreal.

Nice old-school poster for the Expo 67 :

"It is considered to be the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century, with over 50 million visitors and 62 nations participating. It also set the single-day attendance record for a world's fair with 569,000 visitors on its third day. Expo 67 was Canada's main celebration during its centennial year. The fair was originally intended to be held in Moscow, to help the Soviet Union celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution but, for various reasons, the Soviets decided to cancel, and Canada was awarded it in the fall of 1962."

Knick-knack misc things of the day...

A while back I made an analogy in the typical fashion of me;
all at once, a mini epiphany.

But here it is, encore, walk with me as I stretch it out a little further. Diluting nectar with some water to make juicy juice.

People: we're like shoelaces.
It seems like we're separate. Each end existing independently of the other, hanging out, doing its thing, flopping around. But then you start to trace your way back to, wait, why am I flopping around like this? And you see that you are not, in fact, alone, maybe, even, part of another end. And that you are holding a bigger entity together.
You are not just a cool string with a plastic cap for a head.
You are part of the shoe. An integral factor in the equation of kickin kicks. And so essential, too! And so you keep moving. Weaving in and out you discover the rest of your essence is doing so much more than you'd thought, you, over there flopping around. You, plastic shoelace end.
There are parts which are in constant contact, friction, tension and motion. And so you weave. And bob. And make it to another end. It's like, hitting the shores of the new world (aka the Dominican Republic).
All over again.
But, you know, this plastic end, though it looks just like me, well, it's not, it's flopping on the other side of this shoe and, well, that's a whole different world.
And then someone spills ketchup on you.
Oh, heavens what a nuisance. So you get pulled out, to get ready for a good cleaning (or replacement even) cuz you know they'd be damned if they're not rocking some fresh crispy joints.

And then you realize, stripped of your shoe-home that yea, there are two ends to this shoelace story.

But there is only ever one shoelace.

In the hidden annex of winding, short but uplifting, engulfingly protective streets, cobblestoned neighborhoods, stood a perfectly nondescript batiment. Beyond the dark-papered facade, a hushed room, lighted low. Burgundy velvet banquettes line the periphery, nouveau-baroque tables, glinting at the edges and centered with reflective black Plexiglas stand between the benches and various upholstered chairs. Thin, delicate white plates are neatly lined for tonight's dinner. Glasses of wine sit emptied, catching flickers in crystal, twinkles of tea lights. Table setting. The air, it's lent a light fragrance from the lush vegitation, plants and flowers selected specifically for sensuous qualities, for the muffled huddles offered to separate eventual rolling conversations. Of groups of six, to eight, to twelve. Parties. Have filled this space. A space often rent of emptiness in spirit.

And corners of the room are made to bend, as mirrors are placed to reflect the smiles of unknowns facing angles of soon-to-be acquaintances. That is, when the champagne starts to flow, members' brains allow an engaging show. A drum kit sits. Piano perpendicular to it. Mic stand, awaiting perhaps a jazz band. The manager makes it a point to adjust the volume of style parallel to mood. Of the food. Menu dreamed up of ingredients complementing a most personal touch. Those invited are well aware, tonight's mantra is 'get ready to share.'

To be continued...

Oftentimes it is said "It is the journey, not the destination" that counts. But I wonder, does a journey not have an almost all-decisive impact upon a destination? And what about the starting point? In a way similar to first impressions and automatic intuitions that shape and determine the course of relationships or events, the 'starting point' seems to me to entirely dictate the initial direction of a journey, which, effectively, determines the potential paths available further down the road...How much of it is under our control and what is merely (I say 'merely' but, in using the word, do not intend to lessen the importance of...) a fortuitous coming-together of the right place, the right time, the right conditions? This question's answer ultimately depends upon perspective, something to be understood after the fact...

Whereupon one may pause along a long enough stretch of road to consider that, this and the next.

Turn left, go ahead, pass jail, collect.

Pick up, drop off, car wash, trade-in.

Map blown out the window, lost yet loving it, pulled over- too fast.

Slow down, can't back track- one-way highway

Missed exit, re-route

Driving yourself crazy

Pancakes at dawn to ride out the storm

...

Just a little mind bite for March. 23rd, Two Thousand and Nine.

proclaimed the subject of
junk e-mail
sitting, face facing the window on a little street's world
to my right
window on a
binary
black white code of IT
in the driveway stands a postman
not yet ready to deposit today's not-so-holy grail
his life interrupts
what would digitally dictate sans hesitation
because a computer doesn't
get off on
the latest
Victoria's Secret
catalog.
So there Mr. Postman stands,
with a dozen well-shaped girls in his hand
and some great new cotton, silk, satin
Very Sexy, demi-cup, Our New Tech Patent
for firmer
looking
hardware
he can't help but stare...
flips to
pages of warm, hot sands
tropical waters lapping at the shore
of
models baring the best
of
this season
next season
swimsuit season
almost at the border of sunny days
yet still standing in a filmy, rainy haze
that's ok
his government job keeps him warm
and then:
"Don't forget to order
before upgraded shipping is over!"
"Naw, that's alright by me,
I just got my kicks for free,"
he moves on to his daily
trail
sticks in the day's letters,
delivers my mail.

"Furthermore, the highest attainment is the event of one of many individual selves discovering itself"

Hi. My name is I.

I am so clever. And that is not an astute observation. Instead, it is a fact. The proof is that I tricked. My I into an escape.

Out of I, I came into I. I am the great outdoors. I write from indoors don't think I am that special. I do not yet operate remotely . close to what I know as normal.

I should stop addressing I as such. But as an eye rolls on moving out, to, like I said, escape, I use language, words, copy, paste, carbon past present future date to shape the column; as a glass blower uses once tiny grains of sand to produce a fish tank.

I know, that was not lost on I either.

Now, I doesn't intend this to get as hairy as Who's on First. Nay. I want to get to the point.

The point is:

I is the point. The point of departure and eventually, the board room.

I like to be silly and, in speech, I infer that I have implied bored room. That's was just a clue as to how I could sound. I doesn't mind, and I quite enjoys, when words describe potential re-al I tie it all together, now.

So the point was:

The day now and I met does not constitute as a day.

Infact, I says 24 hours do not exist, even though I know they do.

So the word 'day', in actuality, is just a reference to a point on a line that is still running in time. Yes, both the point and the line.

Here is now now.

I got to go,

I just got here.

If I could speak Wingdings, it would say that life, and the tri-angles of my, that, language are

pointed, but nonsensical.

nostalgic for puzzles of brain-teasers,

but ripe with the knowledge of the answer-key in the back of the book,

that mind

that

can't help but want to

cheat for the ease, cuz homework is no fun.

as easy as an idea of playtime instead

and as difficult to make it =

something

not entirely useless in its

wing-d 3ss3nc3.

beautiful for the sake of

thinking that beauty can be easy to create

access and address as

such. by-the-by,

meaningful symbols stripped of their anchors- those perforated last pages,

set and refilled with answers

anew,

don't know what they're doing without moving

floating

sailing

in each and every direction.

at once free

and a tied-up trailing dingy,

casting side-long glances

in2 Mrs.' grade-book.

hoping for the teacher's red marker

of validity,

conforming comfort to fit in the top ranks of

A

plus a little arrow, cross

extra-credit brings you up

to 1hundred and 3

top of your soule class.

Yes you can succeed,

little wingding.

the deeper into the darkness you dig,
the more space carved out for light to shine.

Knowledge and Half-Knowledge

Four frogs sat upon a log that lay floating on the edge of a river.

Suddenly the log was caught by the current and swept slowly down the stream.

The frogs were delighted and absorbed, for never before had they sailed.

At length the first frog spoke, and said, "This is indeed a most marvellous log. It moves as if alive. No such log was ever known before."

Then the second frog spoke, and said, "Nay, my friend, the log is like other logs, and does not move. It is the river that is walking to the sea, and carries us and the log with it."

And the third frog spoke, and said, "It is neither the log nor the river that moves. The moving is in our thinking. For without thought nothing moves."

And the three frogs began to wrangle about what was really moving. The quarrel grew hotter and louder, but they could not agree.

Then they turned to the fourth frog, who up to this time had been listening attentively but holding his peace, and they asked his opinion.

And the fourth frog said, "Each of you is right, and none of you is wrong. The moving is in the log and the water and our thinking also."

And the three frogs became very angry, for none of them was willing to admit that his was not the whole truth, and that the other two were not wholly wrong.

Then a strange thing happened. The three frogs got together and pushed the fourth frog off the log into the river.

Poets

Four poets were sitting around a bowl of punch that stood on a table.

Said the first poet, "Methinks I see with my third eye the fragrance of this wine hovering in space like a cloud of birds in an enchanted forest."

The second poet raised his head and said, "With my inner ear I can hear those mist-birds singing. And the melody holds my heart as the white rose imprisons the bee within her petals."

The third poet closed his eyes and stretched his arm upwards, and said, "I touch them with my hand. I feel their wings, like the breath of a sleeping fairy, brushing against my fingers."

Then the fourth poet rose and lifted up the bowl, and he said, "Alas, friends! I am too dull of sight and of hearing and of touch. I cannot see the fragrance of this wine, nor hear its song, nor feel the beating of its wings. I perceive but the wine itself. Now therefore must I drink it, that it may sharpen my senses and raise me to your blissful heights."

And putting the bowl to his lips, he drank the punch to the very last drop.

The three poets, with their mouths open, looked at him aghast, and there was a thirsty yet unlyrical hatred in their eyes.

My father-in-law, Christiano Oiticica

by

Paulo Coelho

Shortly before he died, my father-in-law gathered the family together and announced:
“I know that death is just a passage, and I want to be able to make this passage without any sadness. To put your minds at rest, I shall send you a sign that it was worthwhile helping others in this life.” He asked to be cremated and for his ashes to be thrown into the ocean at Arpoador beach in Ipanema while a tape played his favorite pieces of music.
He died two days later. A friend arranged for his cremation in São Paulo and when we returned to Rio we all went to Arpoador beach with the radio, the tapes and the package with the little urn containing his ashes. Standing facing the sea, we discovered that the lid of the urn was closed with screw-nails. We tried to open it, but to no avail.
There was nobody around, just a beggar, who came up to us and asked: “What do you want?”
My brother-in-law answered: “A screwdriver, because my father’s ashes are inside this box.”
“He must have been a very good man, because I just found this lying over there,” said the beggar, holding out a screwdriver.

?

The question. Mark-ed. How often it is employed. How easily it can be overlooked.

When certain, it springs up to unsteady perhaps to ultimately re-steady.

When uncertain, it is inherently present in all things, out of nowhere, it rears its curvy back, its period . , perhaps to reassure that there is, somewhere, an end and. with it, a new beginning.


Ends. Means. Meanings.
To question can be deeply 'dangerous'.
To ask the right questions only to be fearfully face-d by empty pages. Knowing that the answers must be filled in by none other than he who posed the problem of...I can't stay silent, salient without wondering...

Why? When? What? The hell?

Where am, are, does this, that, and the other...

To stop the senseless circles of huh?
That one puts oneself through.
If ever. One were to stop and listen to...speak to...encourage the discourse of
honesty with the 2-sided, one minded
Source.

seemingly vague. simply plain enough to - no, you cannot touch . it .

Which makes me hope that if ever, whenever one has chosen a path, a direction, a stable and steady notion, they can ask themselves...Is this...it? Right?

There are two worlds we may simultaneously lead. I'm pretty sure that's what someone once or twice told me. The world of 'must' for the need of physical - cannot-go-bust.
The other of this-is-my-happy-place-other. At night we all give in.
Dreamscapes painted by a need to remind the left mind of its inner right to escape, while remaining rooted in, the 3-d place of...

Danger. Dangerous minds conjuring up plans of schemes to eventually free what does not exist.

To be or not to be.

IS THAT THE QUESTION?

Danaë,

to you, the pressure mounts in that curled up place . i already know . that some-thing exists but as the time ticks and i start to maybe think, not sure i believe that you're really crazy for wanting, somehow almost needing, to lose yourself in me or someone else, or something like smoke, thought, depth, darkness of eyes that, for once, are not hers, owned by the mind behind their gaze outward need to bring it to where God knows . that it keeps winding back to .this. and . thanks . for the outlet do we create it to be able to create something else from its . destruction through fulfillment, influenced by us to begin with . it and change the mold, effect as by the grindstone running around the edge of a clock circling in to . stir it up . include outside elements of mixed messages, fleshes, breaths and emphasis. the weather the mail the wash the next best thing to today tomorrow to dos the glorious sensation of . other . , the others got-to stay moving among, and through it forget the loneliness until its time to want to be muffled, shhh want to hear my voice speaking back to she . baffled by the relationship with self. sometimes projected onto others. what's so wrong with working from inside a cocoon wrapped to bring some warm sense of there's a way out of this if i wanted it, CHOOSE . up l i f t ed by the simple word. float butterfly float . move . thoughts into action. action bringing feelings to supplant and eventually inch them forward, no matter if heavy feels like holding you back controlling her back to prove how not-always-too-good is the tension of one holding their life back through trying demanding a coercion and command could not should not forget that previous feeling of let it slide so i may again remember that she once thought it necessary to make something from 'i have to' without having to -- touch speak see smile engage, set something beyond me in this world into motion. because it is so clear when one really realizes the progressive way is retrograde . and nothing is what it seems, not especially the labels of pointed structure glitches in our matrices of matriculation, being place-d . it . is only what . it . is . not . when it finally actualizes being what it can . on the loop around meetings, crossings . closing a new opening on third time's the charm

6th century BC.
Lao Tzu.
A sage and the legendary father of Taoism.
5,000 characters.
Bits from his piece, the Tao Te Ching, began to break into my 'mosphere in '05, at least to a degree where I was actually aware of it.
Very gradually, it came.
Here and there verses would drop as quotes held close to the chest by friends, others.
Only recently did I take the initiative to go to the source; get the low-down straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

The version of this ancient Chinese text that made its way to me is one of many, many translations. Enjoyably, there is a paragraph or two of commentary after each verse; a sort-of sieve for the present-day pupil that nicely unpacks and re-stacks the souvenirs left after the trip of reading.

... ... ...


Verse 2

Relativity

We know beauty because there is ugly.
We know good because there is evil.
Being and not being,
having and not having,
create each other.

Difficult and easy,
long and short,
high and low,
define each other,
just as before and after follow each other.

The dialectic of sound
gives voice to music,
always transforming "is" from "was"
as the ancestors of "to be".

The wise teach without telling,
allow without commanding,
have without possessing,
care without claiming.

In this way we harvest eternal importance
because we never announce it.

Verse 2 Commentary

"This verse celebrates the relativity of reality, thereby aligning itself with modern science, especially Einstein's theory of relativity. The corollary is a rejection of fundamentalism and absolutism. Verse 2 is a poetic reminder that one of our 21st century requisites is to transcend all superstitions. To believe that our world today is just as God created it and has never ever changed, nor will ever change, shuts the door to transformation. Such a premise locks us into the inequalities of the past that were predicated on a condition of scarcity and a division between a minority who can fulfill their needs and a majority who cannot. 21st century technology makes have and have-not inequities, as well as their rationales, anachronistic.

Lao Tzu’s theory of relativity suggests new paradigms of consciousness. He implies that when there will be no gluttony, there will be no starvation, when there will be no rich, there will be no poor. That is self-evident. However, what does it mean to say that when there will be no ugly, there will be no beauty, and that when there will be no evil, there will be no good?

It means that beauty and good will no longer be expressed as compensatory for the ugly and the evil in our life experience. It means that we will not any longer have to express beauty separated from life as art, nor good separated from life as a spiritual expression. It is possible that 21st century life will rediscover the harmony between our environment and us, and the harmony among each other, and within us.

It is this harmony that will be good and beautiful only as seen from our current perspective. But from a future perspective, good and beautiful as alienated compensations will not exist because evil and ugly will not exist. What we today call good and beautiful will simply permeate the character of life.

If beauty will no longer be separable from life, then we may expect that, eventually, there will no longer be concert halls and museums, since the music and art of life will be inherent in all the sounds, movements and patterns of ordinary life, and will be expressed by every one of us, not just a specialist who creates beauty for us such as the professional musician and artist. We can imagine that some day every mode of communication might be spontaneously musical and poetic, every movement might be a dance, every object we create – a visual delight, all expressing the integral and actualizing character of life.

Similarly, in the distant future, we may not have need for churches, temples and mosques since life itself may become spiritual in all its forms, activities and expressions.

In such a world of the future, the teacher and the student might be so in tune with each other that they will be able to teach without telling. Each of us may become so in tune with every other person that we may spontaneously allow without commanding. To the extent that out lives issue from material and spiritual abundance, we will be free to have without possessing and care without claiming, and because in this new condition, we can expect to give and receive love freely, our egos will no longer be starved. In this way we [will] harvest eternal importance because we [will] never [need to] announce it."


Verse 40

All Is Paradox

The movement of the Great Integrity
is infinite,
yet its character is passive.
Being defines every form of life,
yet all originate in,
and return to, non-being.


Verse 41

Observing and Nourishing Paradox

When most people
hear about the Great Integrity,
they waiver between belief and disbelief.
When wise people
hear about the Great Integrity,
they diligently follow its path.
When ignorant people hear about it,
they laugh out loud!
By this very laughter,
we know its authenticity.

It is said that -
enlightenment appears dark,
the progressive way appears retrograde,
the smooth way appears jagged,
the highest peak of revelation
appears empty like a valley,
the cleanest appears to be soiled,
the greatest abundance
appears insufficient,
the most enduring inner strength
appears like weakness,
and creativity appears imitative.

Great talents mature slowly.
Great sounds are silent.
Great forms look shapeless.
Transcendent squareness has no corners.

The Great Integrity hides behind all forms,
stubbornly nourishing the paradoxes
that can enlighten us.

Verse 41 Commentary

"One of the important differentiations between the thought structures of Lao Tzu and of conventional science is the metaphoric-paradoxic character of the former and the objective and logical character of the latter. To Lao Tzu, contradictions often reveal a deep truth. To modern science, contradiction indicate an error. This verse is saturated with the paradoxes that surface when one experiences life through the Great Integrity, that is through our intuitive holistic consciousness.

It is the left cerebral hemisphere that formulates logical alienated thinking, which requires the modern conventional scientist to seperate himself from that which he is investigating.

In contrast, the Great Integrity is a holistic consciousness, which predominantly activated the right cerebral hemisphere and is both phylogenetically and ontogenetically an earler mode of perception. Right-brain dominance was characteristic of the first few million years that hominids wandered through our planet. It is also the only form of perception of every one of us during our infancy and the dominant from during our prelogical early childhood years.

According to Lao Tzu and to many of us who are exploring a more appropriate consciousness for the twenty-first century, a new Great Integrity will transcend out present objective consciousness. My view of evolutionary transformation proposes that this new Great Integrity will not be a return to right hemispheric dominance, but to a new left-right hemispheric merger in which both our thoughts and feelings, our objective apperceptions and subjective perceptions, will function as a higher level of integral human exchange. Such a development assumes a new mode of communication that will be objective and scientific (like language) as well as subjective and feelingful (like music), but without the duality that now characterizes their relationship. The new music-language might also permit the communication of simultaneous multiplicities, especially involving the processes of transformation. Until now, the limitations inherent in the linearity of our thinking and of our languages have required us to communicate the complexities of our experiences by analyzing and presenting them in sequential fragments like the frame-by-frame photographs in a cinema."


Verse 42

The Principles of Transformation

The Great Integrity expresses one.
One manifests as two.
Two is transformed into three.
And three generates all the myriad entities of the universe.

Every entity always returns to yin
after engaging yang.
The fusion of these two opposites
births the Vital Energy
that sustains the harmony of life.

But for most people,
this harmony is decimated
by inheriting a condition
of, misery and victimization.

Politicians cleverly pretend
that they too originate
from the toxic soil of this misery,
even while designing the very laws
that legitimate victimization.

But watch out -
those who hoard oversufficiency
will be diminished!
And those who are diminished
will become bountiful!

These commonly known truths
that common people
teach each other,
are also my truths.

As you sow,
so shall you reap.
Such is the heart of my teaching
in a world forced to live heartlessly.


Verse 64

Timing

It is easy to hold what is still stable.
It is easy to mold what is not yet formed.
It is easy to shatter what is still fragile.
It is easy to scatter
what is yet light and small.
Therefore, act now rather than wait.
Get things done before it's too late.

A huge tree
that you can't get your arms around
grows from a tiny seedling birth.
A tower of nine stories high
rises from a small heap of earth.

A thousand mile journey
begins with one step.
This is an ancient tale.
Those who procrastinate,
or act prematurely, fail.

Those who interfere in processes
disrupt them.
Those who hold tightly to possessions
lose everything.
Wise people succeed
because they never force an outcome.
They never suffer a loss
because they are not attached to anything.

Some succeed in gathering assets.
But when the stakes begin to sail,
and greed crashes
through all cautionary boundaries,
failures unmercifully prevail.

Wise people don't accumulate possessions,
or teach anyone to amass things.
They devote themselves
to the natural rhythms
that the Great Integrity brings.


Verse 78

Appearance and Reality

Nothing in the world
is softer and weaker than water.
Yet there is nothing better
for subduing all that is harder and stronger.

Everyone observes
how weak overcomes strong,
how gentleness overcomes rigidity.
Yet, this principle is seldom
put into conscious practice.

Though some may say it is useless
to accept responsibility
for the calamities and toxicities
of the world,
taking such responsiblity
might put us on the road
to the Great Integrity.

Just remember that truth
often masquerades as falsity,
and falsity as truth.


Verse 19

The Paradoxes of Returning to the Great Integrity

Banish the intellectual!
Discard knowledge!
We will all benefit a hundredfold!

Eliminate all institutions
of charity and justice!
We can then return
to our natural love for each other.

Let everyone be released
from our addictions
to shrewdness and profit!
Then, thievery will disappear!

These three negate the Great Integrity.
But to negate these negations
is insufficient.
Three affirmations are also necessary.

The first is to embrace
simplicity and integrity.
The second is to consume
only the needs of our body and soul.
The third is to allow our love and concern
for others to define our essentiality.