COLLABORATIVE CREATIVITY PERSONIFIED

In reference to the previous post about what's wrong with public education, these guys are probably drop outs, just to find room for this fascinatingly beautiful invention of theirs. I don't care if it does have a genre name.

I FINALLY FIND A REASON FOR THE ACCORDION

After spending my lifetime considering the accordion somewhere between the bagpipe (officially declared an instrument of war) and the banjo (officially played in Defiance) for the title of least amusing musical instruments, I am delighted to have witnessed its use in this most amusing way. The downside is that all the other uses of the accordion, with the exception of cahunto music, seem that much less than before.

IN PRAISE OF "AVATAR"

While the status quotients take pot shots from specialized perches, an entire generation of still absorbent intellects “get” the big picture being painted in glorious praise of symbiosis with that without which we cannot live. In making his latest, greatest attempt to effect the paradigm of man’s meaning in the scheme of things, John Cameron has synthesized so many disparate fields into this movie, Avatar, that it represents the epitome of the term gestalt: the total that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Like the beautifully depicted symbiosis of the Na'vi with the other beings native to Pandora by the twining of opened nerve endings in a gesture of surrendering individuality for the benefit of both, the fields of technical expertise brought together for this production and the very real problems caused by civilization’s attitude toward the body from which it arises encompassed by the story is an entwining resulting in the benefit of all.

The grumblers remind me of the railroad fireman’s lament, diesel putting their stoking shovel out of work, as each of their fields are being drug kicking and screaming into the next generation. Another reenactment of Robert Persig’s Metaphysics of Quality explaining the mechanistic ratcheting effect civilization’s artificial establishmentarianism puts on the otherwise natural evolution of man’s understanding of the living universe in which we are a dependent part.

My love for movies is of a piece with my love of all expressions intended to be of benefit. I am interested in expressions of what I perceive to be intended harm as an opportunity to examine my desire to protect the oxen I’ve made so sacred I fear their goring in the alternative light of as yet considered viewpoints. Movies are a way to put a subject on the table.

When asked his take on Avatar, an author whose book I praised for his insight into the ecstasy of symbiosis with nature replied, exemplifying the blindness of pride in his initialed authority, “I have no answer, because I do not watch movies of this ilk.”

I called him on it with, “Wow, Kultur, you really are a snob aren't you? Or do all of your ilk go around calling out others' ilk just to fit in? How do you maintain ecstasy so far removed from its source — the oneness of us all? “

Confirming his condescending hubris he answered, “BTW. Ilk means type, sort, kind. Sorry about your hypersensitivity.”

An acquaintance asked with whom I’d gone to the movie I mentioned just having seen. When I said I’d gone alone, he replied. “That’s the saddest thing I ever heard.” Hyperbole aside, was this guy implying friendlessness being the only reason for solitude? Or perhaps movies were, for him, just part and parcel of the more tedious dining, dancing, drinking ploy for which rohypnol is the latest keystroke shortcut means to an end? Who knows? In this day when dating means fucking and fucking means something being destroyed, who knows?

Well, I certainly got off on a tangent there, but it may emphasize how deeply I feel the movie, Avatar, can and may effect our possibilities of becoming symbiotic with the body upon which we now act like cancer cells. As all cures for rigid resistance to change in the aged, the natural regeneration of new know-nothing cells keep the possibilities for such a return perpetually open.

CLARITY THROUGH CINNAMON MIST

Click picture to enlarge

This post is the second thing to pop into my mind upon reading Jeff's theme for the next session for 10th Daughter of Memory, Clarity Through a Cinnamon Mist. Since he posted twice last time I said why not? This graphic is the background artwork I did for a band called the Esquires ten years ago, with the clarity that has come through the cinnamon mist of this meditator's mountain retreat over that period.

OUR GLASS

A
single
grain
breaks
loose of
the crowd
at a kissing
of the spheres
emptying past proof
of multicounted moments
fully filling futures always to come
in the present so often wasted waiting
killing time 'til the promised revolution
brings the "bottom to the top" solution
for the one's who think they're done
nothing left new under the sun
life's not in the glass
time's not in a jar
we're all in a body
vastly bigger than we are

OH

ohohohoh,

ititiit

is

so vast —

we see it all

words blow away

like leaves in the fall

mouldering in our memory

experience unexpressed feeds

seeds of metabolic metaphors

magnets align forgotten files

connecting all the labels

drawing all the tables

adding up to one

inexpressible

vastness

only

seennees

tootototo

beebebebebeb

beebebebebebeb

lived,devildevil

oh hohoho

SIR DAVID SINGS OF LIFE

IMAGING

Ally

Arouse

Arena

Adventure

Absolution

Ablution

Being

Burgeon

Beat

Belly

Borne

Born

Curl

Comatose

Comfy

Cramp

Conscious

Curious

Density

Different

Dabble

Defend

Depend

Delicious

Easy

Edgy

Eager

Earthling

Evolving

Eternal

Essence

Forms

Frames

Future

Flames

Find

Favorite

Games

Goings

Gettings

It is not our task to have the right answer before we die,

It is our gratitude to find more profound questions

throughout our naturally curious lives

however long that gift

may survive our

impatience for

conclusions.

Grockings

Groupings

Graphings

Happy

Hum

Handle

Hit

Hurt

Hesitate

Ideas

Ideals

Imagination

Iconoclast

Isolation

Individual

Journey

Justice

Jury

Jail

Journal

Joy

Karma:

Knots

Keep

Keen

Knowledge

Kosher

Lecture

Learn

Love

Lure

Leap

Loose

Mother

Meaning

Micro

Macro

Memory

Momentum

Naïve

Note

New.

Nurse,

“Not

Now.”

Open

Opiate

Obviate

Oblivious

Organism

Operation

Poem

Ponder

Pleasure

Pressure

Palpate

Penetrate

Quaint

Qualms

Quantify

Quisling’s

Quality

Quest

Ribosomes

Remember,

Romantic

Roaming

Riddles

“Reality”

Scenario

Setting

Story

Saga

Spontaneity

Silenced

Civilization is a stragedy of erroneous eras

we’re all too willing to ignore

because it’s all we know

how to be

told to

do

.

Tradition

Test

Trait

Talley

Truth

Tell

Unique

Umbrage

Until

Understand

Universal

Unity

Variety

Verify

Very

Vaporous

Vortex

Veil

Wander

Wonder

Wisdom

Wax

Wizard

Wane

Xanthippe’s

Xeric

Xenobiotic

Xenia,

Xenopus

X'ed

Youth

Yawn

Yin

Yang

Yearn

Yoga

Zazen

Zero

Zocalo

Zeal

Zoetrope

Zoo

IT ALL A.D.D.S UP

Marcel Duchamp - Nude Descending a Staircase

She awoke at day break

Fast of frying eggs and bacon strips

Off her PJs and jumps into the shower’s steaming stream

Lined by subjecting a block of sand to a wind tunnel

Vision kept George from taking the trouble

From her face when she thought he was lying

South of the equator, just East of the Glapagos

Ninja Turtles kept the kids out of her hair

Brush 97, brush 98, brush 99, brush 100

Times, if she’d told him once

Upon a time stories to tuck

And Little John were merry men

Can’t jump or tell the truth

Her kids found in stories she used to make up

On her face and sheath on her torso

By Rodin being born from the rock

Music coming from the kitchen

Reeking of delicious and so nutritious

From hens not stuffed in a box

Lunch for other women’s appitites

For adventurous exploits on the ocean

Of motel bedsheets

Of water washing away

Dreams of doubt in a blink of an

iPhone call from Timmy still in bed

Of roses when seen from the outside

The sun cleared the tree line

Of excuses from here to

“Hello, lazy bones. Come down to breakfast…

At …”

People said she looked like Audry Hepburn

The toast if she hadn’t ejected it.

“Good morning, dear.”

CREATIVITY: THE COSMIC WHODUNIT

The one thing common to all forms of creativity is the assumption of intention aforethought. From world creating gods to tide creating gravity, a purpose to manifestation of artifacts and effects is assigned as a tag with which to most expediently catalogue our ongoing experience of the present framed in concern for the cumulative sense of comfort about coming events. Believing that everything has a purpose is rarely tested beyond its ability to find a niche within one’s faith in a world and life as something being done by some super geek accomplishing a goal with us as the means.

The most rational among western civilization’s more curious minds are just lately beginning to question the demythologized, essential requirement of the concept of creativity: cause and effect — and how the admission of any form of simultaneity belies the necessity for assigning a direction to causality for change to occur. We impose restrictions on our possibilities of realization by our inability to describe our experience to ourselves in terms that can do no other than imprison our minds. Part of thinking outside the box is our willingness to understand our fluid, preverbal thoughts, unhampered by concern for whether or how they may be manifested, arising from the nowhere sea of the invisibly, infinitesimally small, instantaneous, spontaneous eternity of the present as they do.

The requirements of cause and effect take effect when preverbal inspiration sparks a desire to manifest itself in relation to a consensus reality, even if it is only an ironic smile crossing one’s face at realizing the twist such an admission may put on one’s own ongoing reality tunnel. Like those atomic physicists’ probes into the enigma of where, when and how who did what to whom in the otherworldly world of quarks, I have come to suspect there is an entire, underlying behavior pattern to my life which never consults consensus reality or my own reality tunnel as my body bops along relaying to me the world as it is and whether it cares to respond to any assumption of purpose that may evoke in me. This could mean that all I manifest, from language to action, is essentially a happening; an event my body was only too happy to be part of being. This way, the only doing involved would be to modify the synchronistic spontaneity of being in the moment to plan to serve some expectation, some purpose for mañana; just not now. It is very interesting that the finer science is able to slice time the less obvious the assumption of causality becomes.

It’s been a long, strange trip to get wherever it is I am, but now that I’m here I’m beginning to think nothing I could have done would have prevented arriving, no alternate reality tunnel could avoid including this empirical realization of the difference between being and doing. One of my dad’s aphorisms about the creativity of painting was to, “leave in the happy mistakes.” I’m beginning to wonder if my entire life isn’t just one big happy off-color daub of paint left on a world canvass painted by a soulless civilization with unlimited assumptions about correctness of its purpose.

All I know is that I can stand up from my seat in the shed with no purpose in mind, gaze around the garden, chicken coop, pond, compost pile, state of fall leaves in the yard and feel either an attraction to action or the consideration of procrastination in response to my avowed primary directive to maintain some sense of symbiotic benefit with my environment. I either go with it or sit back down. Most of the pleasure my life is to me is the realization that, while this environment of “my place” may not appear to be what it is if I hadn’t moved here, I have never actually “done” any of the changes; I just agreed with a good idea amidst whatever now simultaneously happened to be.

Without having been bombarded everyday of my life with culture’s idea that the world was created and is still controlled for the unquestionably holy purpose of having we humans to love and/or punish by the great transformer in the sky, I doubt it would ever have occurred to me. Without having to deal with a culture whose assumption of ownership and superior righteousness of purpose granted by their creator, my dedication to understanding it in a more profound way than can be expressed, and through such inadequate expressions as I may manifest perhaps resonate within still muddled minds, might not have needed to become an avowed a purpose for my life.

Maybe.

PATENTLY COPYWRONG

I just left a site with a giant copyright symbol and statement at the top of his side bar to return here with a clear explanation of why I see assuming the authority to control the interpretation of a voluntarily overt act second only to the usury such assumptions enable that riddles western civilization with the constant sense of oppression it exudes. Competition is beneficial only when it encourages everyone to expand their perspective and skills beyond the current edge with no energy devoted to retarding fellow vier’s possibilies; otherwise, such events are competitions in the most spiteful vanity.

When I first decided to sacrifice my graphic skills on the fires of the open market, I matted up the pages from several pads of watercolors, pastels and pen and sat on a blanket on the sidewalk along the “drag” with other art and craft vendors. Among the many things I learned by watching the faces of the people leafing through my work was how fraught with attachment to their reactions I was — to the point that the whenever I sat with pen, brush, chalk in hand after that venture, my mind leaped beyond any inspiration to faces in reaction to whatever it might have been. For me it was severe artist block. It was a full ten years before I was able to live by mypenchant and passion for art.

The one thing that has changed in the thirty odd years since that experience is my attitude toward the future of anything I might create once I offer it for public access. While it remains an inspiration or its incarnation in a drawing pad, note pad, voice recorder or computer program the work is mine; how could it be otherwise? But when I receive my commission from a client, sell my art to a customer or publish rants and ponders here, they are out of my hands and are free to be used for anything. To litigiously trace works into their future to ensure my desired interpretation is not only frustratingly futile, for an artist or author it is self-defeating.

My friend, Amber, began her own stained glass business making hanging creations she called Suncatchers. They are so beautiful that within a couple of years she began seeing “suncatchers” at trade shows underselling items so brazenly copied as to have the same names for the pieces. After much contemplation on the situation she realized the negativity and expense associated with legal action was much greater than any loss she might recover.

More importantly, she realized the value of any of her creations was in the quality she devoted to her own inspirations, a field in which she relished creating new pieces yet to be imitated by flatterers who not only demonstrated her ideas, but exposed the superior quality of her work as surely as an ad campaign.

In the case of the blogger who warns away plagiarists with a stay puff sized ©, I must assume he either wants to keep his ownership, income or integrity in tact although others’ misuse of his work can have no effect on the value of his intended meaning, while gratuitously drawing attention to the expressions he wanted out there in the first place.

Methinks © protests too much.

MOON … OON … ON … N

The full Moon dawns on the break of night

Solar reflection, Brian’s selection

The theme for All Hallows Eve.

Her full moon dawns on my line of sight

Solar reflection’s reflection’s detection

From my pond she doth retrieve.

I see it in the water of my eyes

In the mirror on the wall

Out the window to it all

In her rippled rings of water

In the pond

On her moon

On the Moon

In rings of water drops

In the sky

Sol still

Reverberating

His gong

Long gone

Not yet.

•

This is my submission to this installment of 10^th Daughter of Memory, though the post just before this is the result of getting so reflective about the Moon’s dawning I followed curiosity way off the theme. Boy oh boy, without reflection detection we’d need television.

DAY AT THE BEACH

They finally had a whole day together. She’d been planning it for what seemed like a month. Now it was happening. She’d emptied and defrosted the refrigerator last night so that it could air out all day today while they were gone. She’d made an entry on her iPhone list of “things to do on the way back” in the order each place would be passed driving home along the coast road tonight. The list was stored under “lists” for Saturday, August 9^th on her iCal. Life had never rewarded her for her ability to organize it so well as it had since she got her iPhone.

The loud rip of a zipper tore through his dreamless kitten fur slumber brought back the sound of her voice describing what today would be like as he drifted off into the soma afterglow of their love making last night. After slipping his legs into shorts, his feet into sandals and his torso into a tee and sipping some ganjava into himself on his way to the car he picked up his surfboard, sketch pad and easel. He was toking a pinner as she emerged from the house with enough travel gear and beach equipment for a week on the Cote D’Azure.

An hour later, after frustrating logistical debates with the logic of a hybrid car too small to carry anything more than two people no matter how small its carbon foot print may be, they were on the road headed south with the rising sun hitting him twice behind his shades as it separated from its mirror. His surfboard, rather than being the first item to be left behind, saved the day, so to speak. They’d strapped her several travel bags to it making containment splints of her beach umbrella and his easel, all of which they’d tied to the top via rope through the open windows. They’d have to climb through the window if they went so far they’d have to stop before they got to whatever place it was she’d promised would spontaneously catch her fancy on the way.

As wonderfully romantic as her plan to find the perfect, secluded beach from a car traveling on a heavily trafficked road seemed, they settled for the place she couldn’t hold it any longer. When she returned from the bushes all the gear was gone and a furrow led away from the car and over the dunes toward the beach. She grabbed her giant woven beach hat and matching bag from the car and topped the dune to see their stretcher still loaded with the body of baggage but Tim was nowhere in sight. Making her way to the gear in her matching beach shoes in sand that would be tough going even in bare feet, she heard his whoop from a hundred yards out to sea as he surfaced at the same time as a dolphin beside him.

She loved him so much more than she ever could have loved, wanted to love Job. As great as Job was at whatever he was doing or how much alike they were, both qualities made their relationship impossible. They never saw each other; being so dedicated to their careers that her birth control pills were almost superfluous. They both had offices at home, for pity’s sake. It seemed like Tim was always there for her when she needed him.

As he looked up from a gingerly examination of the carcass of a Portugueses Man of War he’d found washed up to the line of sea weed left by the last high tide on his stroll back to Priscilla and the bundle he spied her busy unwrapping and reconstructing into their awning, barbecue pit, entertainment center with boom box and TV.

It was so much easier to love her than it had been loving Ursula. They’d loved each other so completely they became one person, never apart. It was wonderful at first. They couldn’t believe how lucky they were among all the dysfunctional couples they knew. They knew each other so well one could remind the other of intentions postponed or call bullshit on a recollection of a shared experience. No matter how spontaneous they both were about their approach to life, they found their tendency to treat each other’s work on themselves as if it were their own psyche which aroused twinges of resentment that, over time, built a wall behind which they hid thoughts from each other. Although the thoughts were suppressed, they recognized the hiding. They lost their sense of humor and it devastated them both. It seemed like Priscilla was open and eager to share her enthusiasm about her multi varied life to his complete delight during their rare times open in her schedule.

While Tim made several gesture drawings of the beach scenes, Priscilla busied herself preparing tasty tid-bits, which she popped into his mouth upon their reaching perfection. When she got to tossing caviar to the sea gulls halfway though the second bottle of wine, he got out his pastels to catch the feel of the rare scene of her spontaneity in wasting a hundred dollars worth of sturgeon eggs just for fun and the frantic, raucous excitement of the screeching gulls. His gift of groking auras enabled him to lightly brush the heavy, rough paper with lavender chalk around her outstretched body conveying the inebriated elevation of her perceptions and green in the air around the gulls that spoke of the loud cacophony of their cries. It was alive and was to hang in their living room for many years.

In the shade of the awning they made love, the strength of his contentment was a steady stage upon which she danced to her heart’s content. After sharing a few puffs on his post coital doobie she twittered all her friends and he slept the sleep of the gods for an hour or so. He woke with sand stinging his skin and before averting his eyes to open them he knew they’d see surf.

As puny as the surf is on the eastern shore there are occasions of a sea breeze steady enough strong enough to stack up water high enough that he could climb on for a ride long enough to satisfy his longing for Hawaii. He was ecstatic to find that the southerly winds were running the waves about forty-five degrees to the shore line so if he kept sliding out to sea on one he could ride it almost a quarter of a mile while Priscilla ran through the glass thin edge of the same wave as it washed ashore video taping his delirious antics upon the rock steady board.

After three such magic carpet rides she begged him to stop because the light was getting too dim. Her list remained stored on her iPhone while Tim drove past all her scheduled stops on their way home to the tune of her exhausted snoring. He was used to it, she was always exhausted by the time she gave it up to Morpheus. He loved it. It reminded him of what a live wire he’d gotten hold of. She dreamt of an endless summer of him on the board and her running the whole way beside him. She really enjoyed her work, but she cherished these times with Tim in between yesterday and tomorrow. He was always there, seemingly waiting for her, though he’d never call her late.

FAIR WITNESS

Our matching (mirror image) tattoos of the pond, porch and pets

I have a special friend. If Robert Heinlein were to ask her what color was my porch, she would answer, “It’s covered in creepy vines; on this side.” Her return to residence at the Dawgranch has rekindled a conversation that began around the pond over morning ganjava five years ago and continues each of these days around the everchanging wonder of baby chicks growing to maturity. This blog was begun as an outlet for the momentum the vigor of our discussions had generated when she upped anchor for NYC three years ago.

Unlike blogging to an unresponsive, unknown readership with rare excellent exception, our conversations deal with immediate feedback from the smoke detectors we serve each other as by calling out fuzzy language and logic in genuine efforts to share and understand new and alien ideas. The energy of our exchanges serves to drive my meditation during the times alone. It seems the ultimate value of language is that through the natural diversification of labels and meanings due to early nurturing among local customs, we each bring a naturally different picture of the world to a shared process of revealing the pre-existing theme from which all the varieties arise.

She makes me dig harder to help her get her head around my use of terms like void, infinity, gestalt and the mobius loop. I rail at her use of awesome to describe the commonest of phenomenon, only to be brought up short by my jaded, unwilling-to-be-awed attitude that permits me such condescending snobbery and blinds me to how awesome the mere quantity of the commonest critters truly is. Nature is awesome.

MUSIC FROM THE GARDEN

Somewhere between the wind in the trees and the drumming of the earth …
this tune dangles just out of reach
but I string along anyway.

INFINITY STICK

Now is the well from which no two sips taste the same. Our life takes on the flavor of our recollected suppings diluted by past repasts of old retold. As I scan the accumulation of 70 years of drinking in now, I remember most vividly those perceptions I’ve never told anyone. Some are from before I could use language so I never have; never will. Some are from experiencing the hostility of xenophobia, religiosity, lawfulness and political correctness to know better than to try. At the same time there are events at which I must have been but the clarity of my memory only goes as far as the last of the umpteen versions I’ve heard retold, as old as family stories of my childhood to as recent Obama’s election all opaquely insulated by the 24/7 dilution machine our news media is. I rarely speak of my parents because I don’t want to forget them.

What of these untouched memories would bring benefit in retelling? It is a fine distinction of principle I trod once before; the difficulty in learning to sell my art because, once I had, it tainted my brush with the desire to have future customers react the way they had to my work done for no one but my own love of the process. Perhaps that is the beauty of fiction. With my art I compromised by doing only business related illustration projects for money and the rest for the love of it and gifts for friends. Writing fiction deflects the dilution retelling is on the treasure trove in one’s wine cellar of nostalgia by only passing the cork and letting the readers remember their own vino vivo from the aroma.

So, here is a fiction I offer. It is a book with fewer words than pictures, and fewer pages than that. When I was in the service there was a tradition that if a man desired to get out after his enlistment term expired he was to cut off a length of broomstick long enough to paint 30 stripes of alternating red and white prior to his last month and then whittle off one stripe of his “short timer’s stick” every day until he left because no one wanted anyone leaving to touch anything, so suspicious of civilian minded folks those lifers were. So I herewith present to you my Infinity Stick, because I’m gonna be here forever.

It's all fiction
and that's the truth

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR
FULL RESOLUTION READING

CINEMA—COLLABORATIVE LITERATURE PART II

Happy Solstice everyone.

This second installment of my favorite cinematic literature should in no way be taken as second choice as each one I list is the best of its kind. Surely there is no other movie like the one I lead off with this time.

Being There — Peter Sellers' last and best of a long string of outstanding performances since I first saw him playing ping-pong with James Mason in the original Lolita. I have mentioned that his character, Chance, entering civilization late in a lifetime of tending a garden is the exact reverse of my trajectory. With his single-minded care for symbiosis with nature he advises the nation’s top bean counters to grow healthy stalks/ stocks and large pods/portfolios. The closing scene of him strolling out on the surface of a lake is the only solid evidence for the surrealism of where he is throughout the story. A masterpiece of multiple entente, among all the genres of movies, this is the one I prefer watching with the uninitiated. It evokes the most interesting discussions about how we paint our reality with our attitude.

Ruling Class — The rehabilitation of Jesus to make him fit to be British aristocracy. As I mentioned to Leslie in a comment on her favorite movies post (she gave me the idea to do these two posts) about this movie being the turning point in realizing that I was an agnostic, non-card-carrying atheist when Peter O’Toole replies to the question of why he believes he must be god with, “Because, when I pray, I find I am talking to myself.” Nothing ever made better sense out of the quandary I was in at the time – only made more profound by studying Buddhism. The primary difference between Buddha and Jesus seems to be that Buddha realized that his enlightenment sprung from the same place within him that is within everyone and taught how to access it by going inward through meditation whereas Jesus is reputed to have allegedly claimed to be the only, exclusive access to some exterior creator god. Yeah, this movie was nearly as profound a turning point in my reality tunnel as Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, with his simple statement, “Agriculture is not the solution to famine, it is the cause.”

Lion in Winter — Never has such a horrible story been so well acted as King Henry II (Peter O’Toole Again) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) celebrate Christmas by slicing and dicing each other with acting chops honed over many years of excellent performances preparing for just these roles. Calling Eleanor out of her tower prison, their sons, Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey and clumsy John and Phillip, King of France (Timothy Dalton) Henry schemes to settle his affairs before his death leading to treachery and recrimination that plays like a combination of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf and House of Games and superior to both. Best scene: After a particularly scathing exchange that leaves Eleanor groveling at the door of her bedroom as Henry storms down the stairs, with uncanny timing she realizes herself and looks straight at the camera and says, “Every family has their ups and downs.” If it weren’t for the acting I mightn’t have included such an emotionally violent movie for it has no other redeeming quality.

Once Were Warriors — One might say this is the same story as Lion in Winter being enacted at the other end of the British Empire’s caste system in the persons of the displaced indigenous Maori population caught between the new zeal of New Zealand's colonials and the pride of the traditional island culture. It certainly would not be recommended without the light of a beautiful redemption at the end of a very dark tunnel through social hell. It makes me think about the possibility of my friends’ opportunity to gain land in Hawaii if the indigenous restoration legislation goes through.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — a launching pad for almost the entire ensemble into memorable careers, this hot house of socially unfit characters may be one of the few movies to live up to, and for me surpass, the original, wonderful book by Ken Kesey. Jack Nicholson is the only actor I knew to look for, from his breakthrough role as George Hanson in Easy Rider, but I wasn’t quite ready for this. Best scene: McMurphy hijacks the prison bus and takes his ward buddies out deep sea fishing by conning the owner of the boat into believing that these are all research scientists who, to a man, shape shift into a believable facsimile thereof as magically and subtly as the last supper scene appears amongst the cast at a funeral in M.A.S.H.

Bedazzled (1967)– Written by and starring British comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, this satirical mock of Christianity and the futility of planning the perfect mate is a masterful twist on Faust as nebbish Moore attempts to plot the perfect conditions for getting into his fast order waitress’ knickers, always to be thwarted by Cook, the Devil, who granted him seven tries to get it right. Best scene: in his fifth attempt to get Margaret for sure the Devil sets him up with stage, lights, girls and rock n’ roll stardom only to be upstaged by the Devil’s song declaring his haughty ennui with the line, “You fill me with inertia.” The code for escaping a wish gone wrong was a Bronx cheer, or “raspberry,” which I have found myself doing when real life situations get too crazy. Damn a bunch of pacts with the Devil, anyway

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Quit Worrying And Love The Bomb — If Jonathan Swift can write satire about the British dining on Irish babies Kubrick can make satirical movies about nuclear holocaust and boy did he. Peter Sellers plays three roles against actors like Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn and George C. Scott to portray the failed strategy of having a doomsday machine if no one knows about it. I have always viewed it as a twisted example of how almost all of civilization’s strategies are doomsday machines that people are just coming to suspect have already been detonated but would still rather debate.

Catch-22 — Joseph Heller wrote this blistering condemnation of the entire absurdity of war and those who would profit from it in a vein so absurd one might mistake it for comedy. Army quartermaster Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) is a neocon prototype dealing chocolate covered candy on the black market … and stock in the black market itself. Best scene: Yosarian (Alan Arkin) wakes up in the hospital after being stabbed to witness two nurses exchange a patient’s empty IV drip solution bag with his full colostomy bag and move on down to the next bed.

Dark City — As Mahakal mentioned in comments to the first half of this post, this movie's style is gorgeous — in the most sinister way. It takes the notion of waking up feeling like a new person to a new extreme as the city folk struggle to realize they haven’t seen the sun or gone to the beach in … how long has it been now? … how did we used to get there? The manipulating villains float off the ground wearing black leather dusters a couple of feet longer than normal legs would be and gather every midnight to change the architecture of the city by combining their ability to “tune” materiality. I’m still not sure why I like it so much because I find no parallels of, or metaphors for, any life experience — maybe it’s prescient.

K-PAX — This sweet indictment of establishment’s walls of permissible reality personified by psychiatrist, Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) in his examination of the perfectly harmless alien, Prot (Kevin Spacey) who appeared from a mote in a beam of light unnoticed among the throngs in Grand Central Station. His benevolent innocence gets him arrested when he is the only person who tries to stop a purse-snatcher in the crowd of inured me-my-mine New Yawkers and his candor gets him into the shrink’s office when he explains that he has no proper ID because he has just arrived by light from K-PAX. Even after his brother-in-law verifies that Prot knows more than any earth astronomers about the just discovered neighbor hood of his planet, Doctor Mark remains convinced he can “cure” Prot’s problem. Quintessential dialogue:
Mark: “if you have no laws on K-PAX, how do you determine right and wrong?”
Prot: “Every being in the universe knows the difference between right and wrong, Mark.” I have never seen such a simple validation of genetic memory and the stifling of it with preemptive directives from clueless authority.

Well, I gotta quit now before I synopsize every movie I’ve ever liked. Terry Gilliam deserves a post all by himself. I could never be a movie critic because I wouldn’t want to waste any notoriety on something I felt was better off not existing, not even the chance to be as perfectly curt as the reviewer who wrote, “The Deep wasn’t.”

I still want more feedback on these and/or any others these bring to mind.

BRUNO'S ART & SCULPTURE GARDEN

My favorite sculptor so far is Rodin, whose figures emerging from the stuff of which all of nature is made evokes a kinship deeper than art appreciation, something closer to the truth of existence than its skillful artificiality. My favorite painter 'til now is Van Gogh, whose faith in and passionate dedication to expressing his unique perceptions is an ultimate inspiration for my own.

Well, the Thinker might need to scootch over and Kiss my favor goodbye because I passed through the Gates of Hell and stumbled upon a sculptor named Bruno Torfs who lives on the edge of an Australian rain forest and has carved out a garden in which live magic creatures of his imagination growing out of tree stumps and waterfalls…

… evoking the same kinship to nature as Rodin's work, combined with the play of Brian Frood and Alan Lee in their book Fairies. These few pictures give an inkling of the over two hundred figures being constantly increased. Do nature's magic beings overpopulate?


The coolest part of my grand introduction to this fellow was upon visiting his web site, Bruno's Art and Sculpture Garden, to learn that he is a painter who, judging from his self portrait and the too few others shown, that he paints very much like Van Gogh.

If I hadn't been by the time I came across him, this fellow convinced me of our preexisting identity by being made of the same stuff, housing the same observer, viewing the same truth, through unique windows.

Artist: JAMES JEAN

Yamono

This video matched the mood of my morning after a long missed friend got back in touch.