if . . .

Overlaid patches of the past filtered through the white slats of a venetian blind stop the light enter the tunnel a young girl, Anna picks nettles in the Vienna woods without gloves her hands soon redden and swell hundreds of tiny bites tatoo marks from the sting of the furies protect yourself Is the will just a movement repeated, an addiction? ______________________________________________________________________ In time present the snow drifts a truck spins out of control crashes towards the ditch piles of white explode a motionless avalanche faces of shock disappear two children can't forget the horror yet the thrill becomes a survival legend it is that way with the edge of near death or playing in the ditch. ______________________________________________________________________ Tunnels. Corridors breathing with no writing on the walls sometimes all the people pass by into unseen realms the crowds around me blankly stare into the beyond "How was your holiday?" the fait...

During the attacks I feel a coward before the pain and suffering . . . and it may be this vey cowardice which, whereas I had no desire to get better before, makes me eat like two now, work hard, limit my relations with the other patients for fear of a relapse - I am now trying to recover like a man who meant to commit sucide and, finding the water too cold, tries to regain the bank. . . . I reproach myself with my cowardice, I should have defended my studio, even if I had had to fight with the police and the neighbours. Others in my place would have used a revolver, and certainly if as an artist one had killed such rollers, one would have been acquitted. - St. Remy , July 1889

The historian stumbles out puking and crying storms into the raging night & sinisterly growls "You," stabbing the air with a pointed finger - "You get our of here." Then moves cautiously back to her drink breathing deliberately Better than honesty. END OF VIOLENCE GLARE ... Is the will just a movement repeated, an addiction? Here, in the black box no audience but a silent witness an angel in white and gold the cloud of unknowing hanging a see through cocoon to crawl into Dare to touch or kiss the gossamer cloth Yeats speaks: "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." ______________________________________________________________________ I've now named the historian Rhiannon ______________________________________________________________________ ..... Don't, don't blame. But don't , don't surrender. ______________________________________________________________________ Each moment quivers a...

In the fourth and fifth centuries the three days following Christmas Day were established as festivals of martyrs: December 26, St. Stephen, martyr both in will and in deed, December 27, St. John, martyr in will but not in deed, December 28, The Holy Innocents, martyrs in deed but not in will. (via Dan's Page ) "Happy Boxing Day but, more to the point, St Stephen's Day : "St. Stephen was a Christian martyr who was stoned to death for his belief in Jesus. He is the patron of stoneworkers and also is associated with horses. This day 'drew in' other more ancient traditions. In Ireland, boys go from door to door gathering money for a 'dead wren' they carry, supposedly stoned to death, but really a remnant of ancient Druidic wren sacrifices for the winter solstice. In Poland, people throw oats at the priests and walnuts at each other - things supposedly symbolic of the stoning, but in reality these things were done long before as fertility rituals." ...

Downstairs in the temple kitchen the water is turned off. A pipe burst. Little other than a cold storage now. An unknown attempted a break-in, twice gave up as the iron bars held fast. The lonely roomer left unwelcomed over a year ago a row of tea candles mark his departure. The rotary dial phone became a theater prop. No calls to record the comings and goings. The sleeping historian shuts the door. Take down the decorations. Give them away a pile of gold You journey to the east sitting among old women watching them sleep or gossip waiting time out till breath to us depart everlasting life amen. Mounds of crushed powder ground by teeth pressed tight till jaws shatter. Forgive not the pain. Forget not the wound. The historian declares the voices of the unspoken rise up in the early morn. Take to the streets - smart mobs texturing, urinating on the face of authority. ______________________________________________________________________ Define will: a sort of violence. Look to the graves...

Stupor All around the earth opens to endless tunnels a man digs collapsed on the kitchen table a drunk, arms reddening she's a weary historian from afar barks commands into an empty room the round table an altar you leave out scraps of food for the hungry ghosts & drink. She is the will. ______________________________________________________ A vase of dried flowers point to the deep, dark paneled ceiling a varathened shelter the birch chairs passed on from generations older than the historian (measured in lunar years) I must go to sleep leaving you unconscious. Look up through the floor. A white horse crashes through the ice flailing swims underneath blue ice, is it a death?

Second sound A cough/choke shatters the skull pitch black night sky no moon cloudless. A child at church runs away from his guardian. I wish I were him. hide and seek, peek-a-boo, tag illusion of liberation by night The games not yet imagined. The running away patterned so sleep in the bedroom of your youth the white walls, crosses and icon borders not even a hint of the past turmoil shut the door underneath the stairway shut out the breathing above into no visible light wounded escape to nowhere, dripping blood. ________________________________________________________________ Loves lost in darkness. ________________________________________________________________ It over I mean, empty It had to the universe leaving traces exist There is nothing to request at the time of parting lighter than unknown wrongs carrying weight. Fall from grace on the land of black snow shivering death chatters to echo life that thou must accept me, exactly.

THRENODY REPRISE moved out for no reason. didn't change any place It's no better. & the dreams uprooted the ancient tree rotten no strength required What you must accept, fully A man with the black wool high up the neck for protecting the throat. (E)motional ______________________________________________________________________ I had left the temple waterless and frozen fatigued and peeling. On the edge of no return at least that's the case this winter solstice thousand two. how many years later? ______________________________________________________________________ It's cold outside ______________________________________________________________________ Golden light shadows the face On wall (through blinds, glass window, everywhere) "Schwarze Milch der Frühe" crisis doesn't lie lost daylight (anger doesn't see the many deaths) uprising into her burial zone No . . . ten footsteps . . . to the left future nights collapse (I had created more loss) Bea...

"The dancing Shivas, lent by museums in Dallas and Amsterdam and an unnamed private collector, lead off a succession of works, many of which are well known and widely reproduced, that are rarely, if ever, seen in one another's company. A collaboration between the Sackler and the American Federation of Arts, this exhibition has been organized by Vidya Dehejia, a professor of art history at Columbia University and formerly the chief curator and deputy director of the Sackler. It is the first in the United States to concentrate solely on the bronze temple sculptures created during the nearly four-century reign of the devout, munificent and innovative Chola emperors." nytimes:arts /Displaying Hindu Ritual With Reverence and Graciousness

'a poem or song of mourning or lamentation.' The wind, one brilliant day The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead." "Well then, I'll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain." The wind left. And I wept. And I said "What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you ?" Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly Elenor Rigby (Lennon/McCartney) Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for? All the lonely people Where do they all come from ? All the lonely people Where do they all belong ? Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermo...

With triumphal agitation, sensing that he had found the necessary, one-and-only key, that he would write something exquisite, depict as no one had before the collision of two classes, of two worlds, he commenced writing. He wrote about the opulent tree in the shamelessly illuminated window and about the hungry worker, victim of a lockout, peering at that tree with a severe and somber gaze. "The insolent Christmas tree," wrote Novodvortsev, "was afire with every hue of the rainbow. [ The New York Review of Books ]

Eric Drooker Graphics "The genesis of a graphic novel is strikingly similar in conception and construction to any conventional novel. Even a novel told solely in pictures must feature characters who live, breathe, and evolve as they are touched by their environment" Graphic Novels Speak Louder Than Words. The graphic novel is so young no one is sure what it really can do. Six new books show some possibilities. By Nick Hornby. [ New York Times: Books ]

. . . a long time ago now . . . it was in a mild winter much like this year . . . remember driving home as a passenger . . . dad driving & me staring out the window into the twilight sky . . . the saskatchewan skies live so close they beg to be touched . . . when we hooked up we would drive home together . . . he in his early years as a university administrator . . . i a first year arts student . . . we barely talked . . . what was there to talk about? . . . he turned down a wide, quiet road and spoke . . . spoke in a way which said: 'what i'm about to say is important' . . . "Don't ever compromise yourself" . . . What? . . . "Don't ever compromise yourself!" . . . didn't know what to say . . . so said nothing . . . . . . thirty years later can still hear him making that statement . . . at the time wondered if he believed he had compromised himself at some point . . . maybe even just recently in his decision to be bumped out of research i...

"The Atlantic nominee among this year's finalists, Colleen Wolstenholme, is from Hantsport, N.S., and the runner-up, David Hoffos, lives in Lethbridge, Alta."

. . . a while back, among the community of bloggers i visit, was an emotional discussion which occupied a lot of screen & transformed into an on-going thought thread in my mindspace . . . i don't participate in most of these hot discussions . . . simply read and check my responses . . . came across Sue Ellen Cases's Towards a New Poetic which further stimulated but shed no new light . . . there was a call: "The feminist in theatre can create the laboratory in which the single most effective mode of repression - gender - can be exposed, dismantled and removed; the same laboratory may produce the representation of a subject who is liberated from the repressions of the past and capable of signalling a new age for both men and women." . . . what i discovered was that a simple gender switch, that is switching male characters into female & vice versa, wonderfully exposed the bias of western theater & allowed for new signs . . . it was such a simple action and i...

" Wouldn't You Like To Be A Philosopher Too? Not so difficult. Here are 12 easy tips to get you started ... Anyone who feels chest pain, constriction in the throat, reddening of the face, or clenching of the fists upon reading these techniques should be treated immediately for anautoscopsis (an inability to laugh at oneself), a potentially lethal condition." Zebrafish Mend Broken Hearts

"Just as parents are hard-wired to protect, children are driven to take risks and many will find a way to do so, as either rebels or adventurers or both." ... more

"But I was taken by the assertion that the Japanese have a multiplicity of words for fire, so I checked my dictionaries. Sure enough, there were a hundred or more. (The Chinese character for fire is pronounced ka, hi, ho, bi or bo, depending on the context.) Some fire-related words: kachū in the fire hisaki direction in which the flames are spreading hosaki flame tips kataku house on fire kasai conflagration kaji mimai sympathy visit after a fire kajidoro thief at a fire kajiba scene of a fire hiyo(ke) protection against fire hibashira pillar of flames hidaruma mass of flames hiashi spreading of a fire hiusturi catching fire kasei force of the flames kaen fire and smoke kanan'yoke charm against fire shōka, boya small fire yamakaji forest fire . . ." . . . more :: comment :: . . . though never blinked before have read Jonathon Delacour regularly & it is an honour to finally have the opportunity to thank him for his fine discourses . . .

"Inhuman acts are also human in their origin. In the first Grimm version of "Hansel" the witch is simply a "woman as old as the hills - an extreme example of the human, a withered image of who we already are. That story's creepiest element is not the witch's magic but the more mundane spell the father casts in the woods when abandoning his children: attaching a branch to a dead tree so the hollow sound made when it is swung by the wind fools the children into thinking he is still nearby." [ nytimes: arts ]

"We should care because languages are interesting in themselves. As Adult Education and Universities of the Third Age are increasing in constituency, there has been a considerable demand for language courses. I have been fascinated by words and languages all my life and have lately undertaken the study of Coptic through the University of the Third Age in Canberra. I have also been engaged in teaching languages and linguistics over several decades and am constantly surprised by the number of people who share my own fascination for language studies. Ultimately we should care, because language is the most valuable single possession of the human race. (p.66) Why do languages die? In most cases, languages die as people die, especially people in a small community. Languages can also be murdered as the result of a deliberate political stratagem. David Crystal quotes part of a play, Mountain Language, by Harold Pinter which very clearly illustrates the dictatorial process: 'Your langu...

"But the audience became hushed and sat very still as Ms. Seldes read "Rockaby," Beckett's play about a woman rocking herself to death. "Close of a long day," Ms. Seldes read, sitting onstage in a rocker, her face almost gaunt, and wrapped in a mauve shawl, "went down/ down the steep stair/ let down the blind and down/ right down." Finally, "stop her eyes/ rock her off/ rock her off," she read. And then her head dropped. " [ nytimes:books ]

Edward Byrne (educating the imagination) ". . . Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems , where Wright has determined: The unexamined life's no different from the examined life - Unanswerable questions, small talk, Unprovable theorems, long abandoned arguments - You've got to write it all down. Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar Of evening, you've got to write it down. ["Black Zodiac"] " . . . more

Audio Vault "Antonin Artaud, From Texte d'ouverture An excerpt from Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu (To Have Done with the Judgment of God) Written and performed by Antonin Artaud. From the 1947 radiodiffusion franÁaise recording, available through sub rosa records. Used by permission." "Italo Calvino, First Excerpt From Invisible Cities (4:36) William Weaver reads from his English translation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. "Cities, Memory, 1" and "Cities of the Dead, 2"."

"This much we know: the photograph is not a true representation of its subject. Yass's art is not a literal representation of James's science and this article is not a true representation of her work. Each of our endeavours become phrases in a cultural dialogue. The artist considers the scientists who in turn observe the artist and you in turn witness the products of their collaboration. The story grows, passed from person to person by word of mouth, on printed page, in mounted photographs. We all become storytellers and each time the story is told it becomes something new yet transient, rich in questions and partial answers, coloured with decepxion and encrypxed with elusive truths."

Aspen no. 4, item 3: "Kiva! Shiva/shakti! Bucky Fuller! Brook Farm! USCO! McLuhan! Back-to-the-tribe! Dig those terms? If so, you've a grasp on Solux, slated to be the newest pueblo in the Southwest, and certainly the hoppingest since the heyday of the Hopi. The construction of Solux, a "spiritual retreat away from the intense psychic vibrations of large energy centers," is planned by USCO, a tribe of McLuhan-oriented poets, artists, engineers and filmmakers, whose current headquarters is an old church building at Garnerville, N.Y. USCO earns its bread by way of "media mixes" "

tripped over a bowl of roses in the dark of the night knowledge of the bowl which was placed in the middle of the room to bring solace & comfort to a turbulent time did not prevent the tripping haste caused the fall the water dried the leaves left a silent pattern marking the moment staining the heart soon forgotten remains forever

. . . the open lesson . . . acting students open their 'work' to an interested public . . . the question "what is the lesson?" hung in the air as the students bravely, though for the most part, presented ill-prepared material around the theme Hospitals . . . what is the actor's research? . . . the actor's processes? . . . what is theater? . . . questions which circulated as the action began . . . two hours later very little remained but shallow wallowing in pools of dissipated energy . . . . . . most of the material hinted at the compellingly humane which unfortunately resolved into the hopelessly mundane . . . there was movement but no developed study of the movement . . . no attempt to test limits or boundaries of space&time whether physical, imaginary or theatrically . . . . . . the students exercised a presentational stance - posturing and playing for an audience who might catch much of their 'in-joke' humour and pathos . . . the overlong impro...

"Mr. Weideman's approach was a reaction to necessity. Arriving in New York in 1980 with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts, he confronted the young artist's perennial problem: how to pay the rent and still have time and energy to make art. Mr. Weideman took care of the money question by becoming a cabdriver, a job he holds to this day. For the art-making problem, he came up with an ingeniously economical solution: he turned the cab itself into a studio and took for his subject matter the unending flow of human cargo that he transported." Ryan Weideman's portrait of himself with Allen Ginsberg as passenger. nytimes:arts

"The mask alters the revelation in a fascinating way, both buffering and intensifying its dreadfulness, creating the conflicting desire to hang on every word while also pulling back to decipher the visual power and artifice of the scene. The mask is delicately tactful, yet deadening. It respects the speaker's need for privacy, yet it executes a weird, surreal transformation, turning the speaker into a kind of freak." ...more

"HALIFAX - Vancouver artist Brian Jungen is the first recipient of the $50,000 Sobey Art Award, one of the richest awards in the Canadian art world."

"December 4, 2002, 11:12 AM EST BERLIN -- Ivan Illich, a renowned sociologist who protested against the institutionalization of learning and religion, has died, a former university colleague said Wednesday. He was 76. "

"For the Swedish Academy, which will present Mr. Kertesz with the Nobel Prize in Stockholm on Dec. 10, this view is also what distinguishes his writing from that of some other Holocaust survivors. "For him, Auschwitz is not an exceptional occurrence that, like an alien body, subsists outside the normal history of Western Europe," it said in its citation. "It is the ultimate truth about human degradation in modern existence."" more . . .

. . Enemy of the People . . . overheard an audience member leaving the theater . . . "What an important work. Every student of history, in fact, all of us should be here watching!" . . . the ideas came at us with breath-taking speed . . . each scene moved relentlessly as the actors shaped the characters around the face of political intrigue . . . . . . the student actor created a Mayor revealing a depth of understanding the multifaceted aspects of the deceptive, deceitful & misguided leader in a performance well beyond her years . . . Dr. Stockman transformed from a determined visionary full of hope and conviction to a beaten victim wrestling with his own futile belief in truth & ended somewhat bravely though certainly not a heroic figure . . . . . . the supporting cast delighted with clear, articulate portrayals . . . varying the shades of response to the 'truth' as the 'truth'/whose truth shifted beneath them like the sands of time . . . . . . the st...

"Look deep,deep into nature and then you will understand everything." - Albert Einstein [via Voice of the Shuttle -> Culture Kiosque ]

"Close your eyes and picture your community. Whom do you see? Your family, surely. Work colleagues? Everyone who shares your area code? Your religion? All Americans? Folks in Afghanistan? Unless we start answering yes to all of the above, we're in for big trouble. That's the message of Peter Singer's timely and thoughtful book, '' One World: The Ethics of Globalization .'' A professor of bioethics at Princeton University and one of the most provocative philosophers of our time, Singer writes, ''How well we come through the era of globalization (perhaps whether we come through it at all) will depend on how we respond ethically to the idea that we live in one world.''"

Led by the University of Maryland and the Internet Archive, a partnership of government, non-profit, industry and academic organizations launched the world's largest international digital library for children.... more in *context weblog* [ context weblog ]

... if you missed the day choose any day & buy nothing with complete consciousness/awareness ...