Strange Observations's topics - tribe.net

a glimpse into the future via sinister-looking energy-efficient bulbs

2007-10-12T18:51:15Z

i hate fluorescent lightbulbs, though i know it's wise to use energy-efficient bulbs. i put one of them on the front door of my brownstone building in NYC (it goes on automatically at night). but when i come home at night, every house looks warm and inviting (with regular bulbs) except mine, which looks cold and sinister like a bomb shelter.

the bulbs lacks the warmth of regular light bulbs. sometimes when i look at them, i feel like i'm getting a glimpse into the desolate future were facing with disastrous global warming changes, extreme storms, fights over land use, water, war, etc. panic and despair.

posted in Strange Observations - 1 reply

dreams

2007-05-01T00:30:46Z

i woke up to my alarm clock but could not focus on reality. my dream, still so vivid in my mind, was more potent and real than the waking world. lots of things, maybe most things in the daily protocol ofwhat's called reality feel like artifice, like acting. like going to work for instance and dealing with a corrupt bureaucracy. all the lying and grandstanding and bullshit of the bureaucratic or corporate world of power/profit which supercedes and denies human needs. the bubble of deceit that is the U.S. today led by liars and war criminals for presidents. the sinking titanic of global warming excesses we're all victim/contributor to. the censored deaths and disfigurements of thousands in the name of a fictional war 'against terror.'

but really i mean something much more basic and immediate. the way we don't say or can't say what we mean.

posted in Strange Observations - 14 replies

has anyone ever noticed...

2007-04-08T14:42:35Z

...that in new york city... wherever you see a stand that sells hot nuts... there is another nearby selling sausages and hot dogs?

posted in Strange Observations - 1 reply

Autumn :by Xavier Mellery

2007-04-08T03:12:32Z

Here below is a hyperlink thatif clicked on can help one to see a photo of the strangely beautiful painting titled: Autumn by the Belgian Symbolist painter Xavier Mellery .

Here goes : http://grail80.cafe24.com/bbs/data/diary/XavierMellery_Autumn.jpg

posted in Strange Observations - 8 replies

A BORGESIAN SLEEP ?

2007-04-07T06:18:46Z

The Argentine storyteller, essayist, and apparent historian of philosophy : Jorge Luis Borges apparently wrote of an experience of falling asleep : the penultimate stage to the approach of a deep sleep that a sage ---a seeker of wisdom might one bleesed afternoon or evening eventually find .

Here below is the apparent text ,

' I watch the delectable World first disfigure then extinguish itself ,

in a pallor of ashes,

until all that is gone

seems one with sleep

and one with oblivion . '

posted in Strange Observations - 4 replies

Coyote found in Chicago resturaunt

2007-04-06T04:04:51Z

According to a news broadcast a coyote recently walked into a Chicago resturaunt : a Quiznos resturaunt to be exact . It went and lingered by the cold drinks section .

Later after much photographs by lookers-on , it was escorted out by city animal services apparently .

I didn't know there were coyotes in Illinois--let alone the big city of Chicago . When I think of coyotes I think of states like Utah, Texas , South Dakota ect .

posted in Strange Observations - 4 replies

Instead of with a pitchfork

2007-04-05T22:55:27Z

Here below is a fascinating quote by French writer and man of letters , Paul Valery ,

' Instead of expelling the devil with a pitchfork you can offer him a chair, ask him to
describe in detail the kingdoms he affects to offer, haggle with him, pester him with questions and (while he goes on droning blandishments in your ears ) dissect the desires you feel welling up within you ' .

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

beauty

2007-04-05T07:16:39Z

what is it? can anyone make one unifying statement on what beauty is?

posted in Strange Observations - 23 replies

DAYS OF CLEARVIEW AVENUE

2007-04-05T00:31:54Z

DAYS OF CLEARVIEW AVENUE

(Text recopied and edited from an earlier message board entry) .

PREFACE : To say that I miss the stucco house on Clearview Avenue and its surroundings in Lakeland , Florida --is a cosmic understatement . I wish that Granfather and I had found an alternative to selling it that could have handled the mortgage problem ...The funny deal of it is that for years I had intermittently complaiined about it . Notably --I said it was too small though it was not quite as small and stark looking as this present residence on Kissingen Avenue, in a rather nowhere- like town called Bartow, Florida . Granted the house on Clearview Avenue would have seemed somewhat more roomy without a relative's collection of stuffed animal collection --which, mercifully, was largely donated away during the weeks before the sale .

During the last three years on Clearview before the move which took place arond July 20 , 2006 --the house and the neighborhood started to look strangely better . There were more breezy afternoons there ---where the light and the breezes often looked more dreamlike ...where there were more afternoons that in the words of the Argentine storyteller : Jorge Luis Borges , were, ' intimate, infinite ' .

There were more shafts of dreamy spring and summer light on the walls that would stream through the windows . Sometimes they would stream through the cut glass windows in the living room and fall on the stucco walls of the dining room and corridor --sometimes with fragments of rainbow spectra . To attempt to describe those shafts of light --some of which were small elements of rainbow spectra---others were shafts and swaths of pale melon colored light---with words on a computer screen or on paper --would fall so short of the immediacy and vividiness of the experience as to be threadbare ...so the prospect of doing so tires me at the very start---knowing that I would not go nearly far enough with such a description .

Before leaving the one story house on Clearview, I managed to take some photos with my aunt's instant camera . Aside from how the snapshots were (though they were not as total a disappointment as I feared) both:

(1). Not as many as should have been and (2). not always having quite the exact illumination that would have been best to capture the image and (3) . not always as the angle as would have been best .

There is not the sense of the flow of the rooms and the greater sense of extended space in the snapshots as one might have with, say, a 16 millimeter or other moving camera .

The hope is that one day , I will have someone who has much more computer saavy than a borderline computer illiterate like myself will be able to ---what's the word ?
" upload" the photos I have taken onto the internet in order to give observers a little more than an inkling of what the house, yard and surrounding vistas seen from the front and sides or back of the house on Clearview , looked like .

I hope and pray that the couple that the house on Clearview was sold to , do NOT change it to much. I'm saddened to see that the azalea hedge at the side of the house --where, in the spring of 2004, I read the Psalms, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes ,as well as art magazines , wrote the story of Caswell and part of another novel , and talked with the little Spanish speaking boy : Joseph son of Jose and Gloria ..who was quite fascinated with the flowers, and the twigs that were on the yard----is now cut down . (I hope that there will be some roots or rhizomes to help it come back one day. I will always miss that azalea bush with its enormous, fat , shimmering bumblebees that droned amid the riot of hot purple petals and the lattice like leaves of yellow-green ) . It was there that I looked at a photo in one of my grandparents art and antique magazines of a painting titled ' Feeding The Sheep' by the 19th century painter S.S . Carr, and in another similar magazine a painting of a girl with short hair feeding a bird titled 'the Macaw' by McGregor Paxton --who looked just like my long lost girlfriend from September and October 2001 : Amy-- who was from near Asheville, North Carolina. .

The skyscapes during the past 3 years on Clearview seemed different in the past 3 years . The clouds the sky seemed often to take on the dreamy lights and tints you mind find in Igmar Bergman films .... It is all too easy to say, "Oh yeah, well it usually happens like that the place looks better when you are about to leave it , or after .." and be lazy- fast to chock it up to some sort of nostalgia, or just some everday sense of a place looking better before one leaves it-- of a NON-specific sort , and thus gloss over how very specific the look and the feel of the place was in the past 3 years was...the presentation of sights, sounds, and smells that had not been like that in quite the same form before .

Recently this month of May just past (May 2006) --there seemed to be such a generous pour of afternoons with a sort of sunlight that was creamy pale gold (that description too doesn't quite do it as well as it could be described) which tended to light up the front porch of the house on Clearview, with its jalousie windows and the yard with its swath of sky between the houses and trees, on the opposite side of the red brick residential street . There was an afternoon of course with its dragonfly with its arc of long returns that I wrote of earlier in another post in this present message board .

And there was the morning that was some 2 to 4 weeks or so beyond that day in May, when I saw that dragonfly , that I saw and smelled some rather exotic, almost unearthly experience of the landscape, that would be what William Blake might have called 'cleansing the doors of perception ' .

That morning had been one where for some time now i had been listening to a rather extraodinary musical tape by a musician in St.Petersburg, Florida, who was named Andrew Delaney . That tape had been given to me as a free gift by his wife Melissa, (who had, the same afternoon I had seen the dragonfly, come by with her toddler son :a bright eyed inquisitive young lad, after hearing that the house might be for sale and came inside and had a look around) , was quite unusual .

(We later sold the house to a different couple who had called about the house sometime earlier , but it was good to make the acquaintance of Melissa and her son, and ,later, her husband Andrew ) .

I have been wondering for sometime whether or not the music and lyrics of the tape-- by musician Andrew Delaney --which had been recorded quite a number of years prior might have induced the experience of the landscape that I had on that morning in mid to late May--a morning I wished I had dated on a calender. The music produced by Andrew Delaney on the tape titled 'Dreamscape' was quite dreamy, oceanic, breezy , echoing...one might even say orphic (I think of Orpheus the musican from Greek folklore with his musical harp) and the lyrics with their inflexions quite amazing . (The music and lyrics call to mind a phrase by writer Thomas Wolfe (as I seem to recollect of a bell heard through ocean water ) . One of the songs on the musical tape was titled 'Concave Blue' !

I had been listening to that musical tape by Andrew Delaney for some time, during those weeks in May and also into June , weeks when I had gone out that one May morning near the exterior front door of the porch, of the stucco house on 1030 Clearview Avenue, and stood right near the white plaster urns on their thin side platforms and the mailbox unter the lintel of the doorspace --. (The front porch was set out a bit in a rectangular space with its jalousie windows ) . I may have gone out to walk my medium sized dog :Willow . If I remember rightly, that's why I had gone out that early . Then again, I may have gone out to move the garbage cans either out of, or to, the front yard .

There was a generous steady breeze blowing in a generous, flowing pour of wind --like a stream of wind pouring from the west . It was more like a continuous breeze---it was not what you would call a flapping wind . There seemed to be a washed sort of chalky white color in the cast of the light coming in from the western swath of sky over the houses and trees on the opposite side of the brick street and yet there was a strangely pellucid blue to the sky from the light ---although the sky did have a hint of a pale orange -yellow that just tinged the blue in such a way that reminds me of the sort of cast of sky in Superman cartoons, or in Maxfield Parrish posters , and or the tint of sky one might see in a painting by Scheeler and the Precisionist school of painters ---in those paintings that show long thin skyscrapers of some cityscape bathed in some soft dreamy light . Before I return to describing the visual experience of the landscape , it is worthwhile to note the interesting smell that the landscape took on . There was in the breeze I noticed a strange scent that smelled (unlikely enough) like the ocean . Lakeland, Florida is some 60 to 70 miles inland from the ocean in terms of the Gulf Of Mexico on its west coast and some 80 or more miles removed from the ocean on the Atlantic coast on its east ...and yet there was a chalky, calcite smell like unto small seashells encased in chalky rock, which made me think of the smell of the ocean .

I could hardly hazard a guess as to what exotic atmospheric factor could possibly enable smells from the gulf coast to be transmitted by the wind so far inland , though it is even from a inductive standpoint remotely possible , I rather doubt that these were smells being sent by the wind from the ocean . I do not know what materials in the nearby surroundings of my street or the surrounding streets and yards would have occasioned that smell ...the experience was quite anomalous .

The visual experience seemed to go with the scent inasmuch as the images of the swath of sky over the houses, and yards, and its horizon behind them/ over them, took on some visual quality that made one almost visually intuit an *apperceptive image* the sort of alternate possible landscape and/or skyscape as one might imagine in some other epoch of time . Earlier, I had mentioned the dreamy , fantastical posters of the late 19th early 20th century artist Maxfield Parrish . Well that is somewhat like the sort of look the landscape on that morning seemed to approach . The horizon seemed more prominent as a sharp line of an arcing sort of panorama of space in the west as seen in the skyscape just barely above the line of trees and rooftops on the western side of my street .

There was a bird :that looked like it could have been an osprey or a hawk- like bird that was a glaucous , or creamy off-white (which had if I remember rightly some small speckles on its torso and/or wings) that kept sounding a large echoing squawk that made one think of the sound a large seabird might make . The bird ,which resembled some other birds I had been seeing for some months prior which had been making nests further down the street, kept flying out close to the horizon line and arcing around and returning in midair . The bird too looked unusual in that unusual light of the western sky . First of all, it looked somewhat a little bit oversised in terms of the length of its frame---oversized even for a bird of prey of its type . Mind you , it was not a giant bird of Pterodactyl or Roc bird type proportions , but it seemed a little bit too big for usual birds of prey ---and that little bit seemed to give it a just on the verge of being preternatural look .

Furthermore, the birds wings at times *almost* (I'm not going to take poetic license and exaggerate here so I'll use the word 'almost' ) resembled in minature the sort of flippers one might see in illustrations of those long ago ocean dinosaurs like the Pleiosaur ! At times I looked at the bird as it made its arc in the sky with the sort of curiosity, as if I were looking at what I wondered might be some exotic unknown species of bird ! The area around the horizon, which had come to resemble the rim of some panoramic semi-circle , seemed to be somewhat elongated by a few degrees beyond the sense of length or girth that that patch of sky usually has . The cast of light, the breeze, the scent like of the ocean , the squawking slighly oversized bird that had wings that looked the flippers on an ocean dinosaur , the seemingly elongated horizon and area of sky just immediately above it, all called to mind the hint in the mind of an imaginal landscape like one found in some of those fantasy art genre posters and illustrations from the 1970's and early 1980's which would often depict an arcing panorama of oceanscape or beachscape depicting some imagery like from the epoch of the dinosaurs (when much of what is now Florida was under the ocean) or from some alternate earth that features some similar features .

The experience did seem miraculous in a quiet non-dramatic way . There was a sense of strange awe ---a sense of finding what some might call 'a postcard from the Infinite .'

During many of the nights in May, and possibly early June, around the week in which that morning took place, there was another somewhat exotic experience of many nights where I went out late walking on my street and there were a lot of exotic smells of flowing plants that I do not recall having smelled before or since . During one night when I walked out and smelled those plants I smelled also a telephone pole on my street Clearview and the scent of the wood and/or perhaps the resin or varnish they put on the wood of that telephone pole seemed magnified ---far more vivid .

Of course, such sights, sounds, and smells as on those particular May afternoons and nights are not an affair that happens everyday . Go there on the wrong day, and you may not find them at all (though if you wait around long enough and look through enough umbrella trees and walk around looking you may find something quite memorable given enough time ).

Go to Clearview Avenue on an overcast day and it might very look quite dull and prosaic ---as afternoons in years past on the street could often be . (Though even an overcast day on Clearview Avenue is still like the outskirts of the Garden of Eden compared to an overcast day on the even far more dreary and banal Kissingen Avenue in Bartow, Florida !)

For years, it is worth mentioning for the sake of accuracy , that Clearview Avenue did not always look good and for years I complained about the way it looked . And please , Dear Reader, do NOT come away from reading this present memoir essay with some trite, mendacious, glib notion like "be thankful for where you are" or "it's not so bad where you are after all" or any mendacious baloney platitude like that---for that is certainly NOT what I wish to convey at all !

Yet Clearview Avenue had those rare window moments of time ---those afternnons and evenings where the landscape took on new glints ...where the landscape both within the house and out became like a wine that took on new nuances over time---days in which the sky opened up . I wish I could freeze all those moments of time in their exactness ---exact down to the last details out of a love ; a cherishment that is exact, precise and will NEVER settle for fuzzy generalities--- and share those moments of time and landscape with everyone here .

The interlude in the Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald comes back to mind where Gatsby tells his friend on Long Island how the summer is going by too fast and how he wishes he could reach out his hand and hold it back ---make it stay . There is indeed a beatitude in clinging to the right moments from the past. There is a beauty and virtue in the very act of clinging itself ---provided one wishes to share what one clings to with someone else---even if that someone is the Universe itself which you hope is "listening" somehow . Clinging is a form of savoring . Such savoring can be amost like unto the mood you find in a Psalm .

I'm also reminded of the apparent quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, where the writer makes reference to places that were not loved enough in the fleeting hour and how Rilke apparently wrote ,

'How I long to make good from afar ,
the forgotten gesture, the additional act '

(Rilke apparently longed to continue those moments in time that were not savored *as much* though they were savored some even then) as they should have been and apparently longs to savor them in all their specificity in the same place they originally happened . So do I !)

Much of the time I spent on Clearview Avenue , I was often pining in turn for other places I had lived in before I moved there . To some extent I longed for an earlier residence on Honeytree Lane--which I remember had fireflies that my Grandma and I watched from the front poorch on nights in late 1984 or early 1985 . Honeytree Lane was the house in which my pet bird: the yellow cockatiel Vincent, was able to fly about outside his cage and walk about, before we moved to Clearview walong with Vincent in the summer of 1985 . Even more often than that, I longed for the landscape that surrounded my former house not far from Lake Walk-In-Water several miles to the southeast of Lake Wales , Florida . The beauty of the surrounding sand hills with their scrub forest , the beauty of the ponds with their lilly pads and wild weeds , the beauty of that enormous breezy lake Walk In Water is ineffable . ( I 've revisted that neighborhood by Lake Walk in Water several times while my residence was on Clearview ) .

Yet now I find that i'm longing and rightly so for Clearview Avenue ---a place where the sky seemed to open up ---a place which had glints of beauty that you longed all the more to grab and hold and tie to the wall --because they were often so flittering . Thank the Creator I did begin to cherish those moments and attempted to some degree to savor them--but not quite with the degree of ardor which should have been even more. I am thankful to the Creator and Jesus in particular, as well as to Zack , and Grandpa ,and Grandma , and aunt Amanda, and Joanie , Melissa and her husband Andrew Delaney: the musician , Yahoo , Garrett & Siri, and others ---that I was able to savor it during those last 3 years. In the last couple of weeks before the sale of the house, the author of this present memoir was running around like an earwig moth (which Clearview Avenue had lots of , incidentally) trying to get more glances and savor it with doubled intensity !

The place at times had those various and sundry features that detracted from its beauty, such as stuffed teddy bears that one of my relatives collected , a tube of cat hairball removing cream, and here and there little plastic McDonalds resturaunt minature figurines that stood on the bookshelf next to books like the 'Timaeus' by Plato, and 'Labryinths' by Jorge Luis Borges ...Such kitch as the relative's McDonalds figurines somewhat detracted from the secret blessings of a stucco house that had a craftsman window, with a trailing thin philodendren, in the kitchen, a stucco made curved breakfast alcove , also in the kitchen , art nouveau electric lamps with interesting lampshades, an interesting wood cabinet in the dining room, an old "highboy" wood cabinet on the front poorch, and other curiosities .

The house was one which we shared with two consecutive dogs : Sam: the long lost black and white Shih-Tzu who we unfortunely lost around January of 1995 , and Willow : my half bassett hound, half German Shepherd-- who now lives in some dreary backyard kennel, due to the fact that the cats in the house, in which Grandfather have now moved, are wary of dogs .

It was the house in which my Grandmother and I discussed UFO's at length and the amazing sorts of civilizations that might be on other planets . It was the house in which I played the music of the English folk band 'Pentangle' from the autumn of 2004, and intermittently again until early in this present year of 2006 --which I played on my stereo in the dining room on Clearview (with one speaker working ,notwithstanding) for Grandfather , along with the beautiful song 'Morning Glory' as sung by the Canadian musical band 'Blood, Sweat, and Tears ' --a song earlier sung by singer/ songwriter: Tim Buckley . (Though the music did inspire curiosity and a ponderous look on my Grandfather's face, I think he still prefers Cole Porter to some extent) .

Clearview Avenue was a house where my father and I had fascinating discussions via telephone on whether there might be unknown colors , synesthesia, photons and what light might be, art, alien life , where I discussed with him of the majesty of Shaker farmhouses and Shaker art in general , plants and exotic animals, the deserts of the American Southwest ect .

Clearview Avenue was where I found via telephone information service my long lost friend Travis ( fellow tree hugger and anti-nuclear protester ) who I had known in the very early 1990's and who had since moved back to the Titusville , Florida area .

It was at 1030 Clearview Avenue that Grandpa and I had the Barn: a barn- shaped toolshed where Grandpa kept his saws , hammers, nails , washers ...much of which I put in boxes that are now in the garage at this present residence in Bartow .

(I have but one photo of the toolshed, and I 'm hoping that computer photo imagery enhancing technology can make a larger image of the barn exactly as it was in its best light --because if I attempt to describe it I fear that it will not reveal to the reader even a passable glimpse of what it was like to be in that toolshed . The toolshed had two somewhat small thin windows that let in some sunlight . i'm hoping that the new couple will preserve that toolshed as it was . How I long to be there hammering nails into wood with a hammer again while my Grandfather stands with his own hammer in hand ) .

There are so many moments --so many gems of time--so many afternoons filled with promise and insight, so many particular breezes with particular shafts of light on particular walls , so many postcards from the Infinite-- that took place at and around the house on Clearview Avenue , that I fear I will leave out . If I get a chance to include more in other memoirs and posts , I fear there will still be other anecdotes that i will leave out--- that I will remember after i have written or posted of other moments --where I will remember after the fact and I will say (or think ) ' I should have included that!', 'I should have mentioned that one !'

On Clearview was the poor, fortune- blighted travelling magazine subscription salesman (his name might have been 'Andre' but I am not sure of that) who if I recall rightly was wanting to help his infant son (or so he said) who (if I recall righly) his wife or girlfriend had custody of , who I invited onto my front poorch and entreated to listen to seashells, which I kept on a glass table on that front poorch, one evening, a little after dusk Decembe,r of last year (2005) . This man who was about in his thirties put several of the seashells to his ear and smiled with apparently earnest joy and awe when he heard the "sound of the ocean" in these seashells . For that moment he apparently had the earnest curiousity and awe and innocence a young boy might have. It was a blessing to share such joy with a travelling stranger .

I fear that I will one night or day have a dream and will see myself back on Clearview with Grandpa and it will seem that I had never left / or that I had certainly returned and then I will wake to find it was only a dream, and tears will run down my face till I am soaked .

I hope (and will always hope) that those afternoons on Clearview can be recaptured exactly as they were experienced--the better afternoons and evenings that is --and will be able to savor more fully, and extend them in some epoch or realm of time to come . With God all good, consistent things are possible ....

Then (or perhaps before then by some exotic means) I hope to share those moments in their vividness exactly the way they looked , and sound, and smelled with others ... . I also hope that others all with their special houses and the amazing moments of the past will be able to do the same

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

c'mon, let's get STRANGE!

2007-04-04T18:31:12Z

you know you got them. strange, bizarre, thrilling thoughts and stories. let them spill here.

look, don't feel any pressure. even small things are odd. kernels of oddness waiting to awaken.

here's a story:

i moved to a new apartment in NYC last month. i had already signed the lease for a different place, i'd fallen in love with because of it's five large windows looking out on sky and trees, they were like large shining eyes in a sky room. but after i signed the lease, i stopped by the empty apartment. i lay down on the carpeted floor of the bedroom, listening. there was drumming going on outside, about 35 people drumming in the park and the sound reverberated through my window eyes like terrible heartbeats. my treasured windows became points of vulnerable exposure to the world.

i realized that no place is truly private if there's noise. it becomes a public domain. you can't read a book, you can't choose your own activity. you're just at the mercy of the public.

so i called up the owner and begged for the first place, the one that was quiet but faced an institutional looking public school yard. i ended up getting that place. i became obsessed with silence/quiet. i put my old simon and garfunkel album to the front of my records - "the sounds of silence."

it was quiet. i heard only birds in the morning. except for a few things. a neighbor blowing his nose in the vent through the bathroom in the mornings... the sounds of children in the school yard... and the refridgerator. the intolerably noisy refridgerator. when the compressor is on, it's terrible, like an external migraine.

this weekend, it will finally go away, if all goes well. i will get a new refridgerator.

one thing that is hard for me to get used to - i have nothing blinking or beeping to receive me when i come home each day. i have no TV and no landline phone/answering machine. it's like i'm back to the past. i want people to come by for visits with "calling cards." better yet, i want "gentlemen callers." i want to live in the old days with horse-drawn carriages.

posted in Strange Observations - 8 replies

Can You See The Fountain

2007-04-04T18:22:13Z

Can you find the fountain in the image of the painting thaty appears when you click on the following hyperlink ?

http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/image.asp?id=11877

posted in Strange Observations - 2 replies

Glorious Strangeness

2007-04-01T08:26:24Z

Please click on the following hyperlink to see a photo of a gloriously strange painting by Arthur Dove :

http://www.ocma.net/img/large_current615_large_current503_DOVE--Moon---Sea-II.jpg

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

Number 5:Charles Demuth

2007-04-01T07:58:05Z

Want to see an amazing painting ?

Please click on the following hyperlink and gaze entranced at 'Number 5 in Gold' by early 20th century precisionist painter Charles Demuth .

http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOnezoom.asp?dep=21&zoomFlag=0&viewmode=1&item=49%2E59%2E1

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

freestylin'!

2006-12-02T15:35:03Z

okay... I hope this isn't too literal of a strange observation for this tribe... but on my recent trip to Costa Rica... I noticed that out of the bicycles I saw people riding... a disproportionate amount of them were 80's style freestyle bikes... with pegs on the wheels(for doing tricks and "riding" people) and rotors (device that allows you to spin your handlebars in a circle indefinitely without tangling up your brake cables).

do the old kids bikes from the US get jacked and sent to other countries? these were expensive bikes at the time... easily 300-500 bucks! maybe there are simply crafty businessmen who know a good market with the stuff that we would consider outdated junk...

I would be okay with that... except that freestylin' really went out with the explosion of skateboarding... so these kids are riding around like they're hot shit... but that whole style has gone the way of breakdancing and neon checkered sunglasses...

one time...

when I was 12... I did exactly like they said in the freestylin' magazine article "how to throw your own underground skate and freestyle contest!" problem is... that it wasn't until after I dropped off 50 flyers at hot topic (which I thought only had one location in the world) did I realize that I fucked up the date and put sunday the 30th... when in fact... sunday was the 31st...

I showed up on sunday... ready to totally rock a contest with hundreds of kids... but there were only 3 of them. they said that the previous day... hundreds of kids had shown up... and that they didn't know what to do... and no one knew how to get ahold of me... so someone took charge and they held the contest without me...

my life may have been different if I had been there that day... but instead I joined the chess team... and helped to bring two trophies to our school... which no one gave a quack about.

anyways... I'm finished now...

thanks for listening!

posted in Strange Observations - 5 replies

getting old and becoming an absurd character

2006-12-02T15:29:28Z

when you are young, being eccentric, volatile, angular, having blue hair is cool. american society applauds you.

when you are old, being eccentric, volatile and angular (and having blue hair) just makes you an absurd and pitiful character. it's not like you're in a becoming state anymore. that's it. you are a funny-looking absurd character and you are going to stay that way until you die.

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

vulnerability as vital sustenance

2006-12-02T15:19:46Z

I really got to thinking about Beauty, and how it seems to have an energy separate from any my notice of it can give. And I noticed that, especially in people, the state of being vulnerable seems to unlock that. Whether it is because in that place we seem to be out of control (and thus more able to access finer realms), or that our filters are less relevant, standing in a place of vulnerablity (not crouching, hiding, or running) is very largely overlooked as an inadvertant means of empowerment. Inadvertant, because if you're trying to become empowered by being vulnerable, you're still controlling the situation.

I'm curious how this sensitive issue, this notion of vulnerablity, plays out for you. How is your life open to it? Have you collected any negative memories as a result of finding yourself in a vulnerable place? Have you discovered the empowering quality I've spoken of? Is it an anathema to even consider?

posted in Strange Observations - 6 replies

turning 40

2006-12-02T15:02:31Z

is like that awful moment when cinderella realizes that the clock has struck midnight and runs down the ballroom steps madly, losing a glass slipper, finding her ballroom gown has turned to tatters and her carriage to a pumpkin!

on a sidenote:

that part about the slipper was never rationalized. why would everything turn back to tatters but one slipper? perhaps it's the idea of the in-between state, left as they were on the steps. they didn't have to turn back... or was it that the clock hadn't yet struck 12 when it fell off?

i think it's also the idea that the slipper stood for the truth, the 'wealth' of cinderella's true nature, etc.

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

cyber egos

2006-09-08T04:47:59Z

we're all a bunch of little cyber-ego electrons circling around in a kind of auto-erotic falsehood of plastic desire. tribe is our fake universe for asserting these little ego selves represented by silly little photo "avators." we're bored, we're lonely, we're disconnected. or maybe writing here is like eating endless potato chips, not that satisfying but addictive anyway. all together, we may a big blog amoeba collective floating around in space serving no imaginable purpose whatsoever. all of tribe is a thought, a distracting thought that interferes with the meditaion of a focused life. label it as a thought and then delete. go out into the world. travel if you can. forget all about this wasteful time drain, this keyboard spasm that is tribe and for god's sake, do something!

posted in Strange Observations - 2 replies

microcasm person, machrochasm world

2006-08-05T08:33:50Z

Whatever the wars of the world are about at thier very root cause are the same wars people fight internally, every day, within themselves. We need to relax and reflect, stop trying to avoid imaginary danger so that we can contemplate real danger, and stop that, way before it happens - all by the full knowing of our own minds and hearts and the realization our singular mind and heart is on the world stage, acting as the machrocosm of all the world's people. The gashes dug in by missles in Lebabanon are the same gashes you inflict when you punish yourself unrimttingly for some past wrong. These two are part of each other. Both need to heal and I think will. Just depends on who gets to it first - what moves first, the mind or the body?

posted in Strange Observations - 10 replies

acid trips?

2006-06-13T02:46:35Z

this is a good place to regale us with your acid trip stories. let it fly.

posted in Strange Observations - 2 replies

Seeking submissions

2005-11-14T20:36:29Z

Penwomanship, women's creative writing, art and photography magazine, seeks submissions. Complete Submissions Guidelines on website, www.penwomanship.com.

posted in Strange Observations - 0 replies

The homeless hate Handel...

2005-04-29T17:06:20Z

...and Bach, and Beethoven too apparently. Below is a weird little news story from my local paper. According to the article, this aural aversion technique was first tried in 1985 at a 7-11 in Canada and has since been used throughout the world. As a classical music lover, it makes me rather sad :-(

Merchants might turn to Bach for help in deterring transients

By Lola Sherman
STAFF WRITER

January 5, 2005

OCEANSIDE – Bach and Beethoven might help clear transients from the downtown area.

Police Cpl. Scott Wright told a meeting of MainStreet Oceanside yesterday that classical music has deterred loitering elsewhere and could be tried in the courtyard of the Regal Cinemas movie theater complex on Mission Avenue.

Property manager Gordon Henry said later that police suggested he try playing such music over loudspeakers.

"It's being considered," he said.

Classical music has been used to deter loitering in places around the world, from fast-food restaurants to railroad stations, since 1985, when it was first tried at a 7-Eleven store in Canada.

In Trent, England, an Australian newspaper reported, four days of Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9 in D Minor" drove squatters from a local park but prompted protests that city officials were being unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless.

Closer to home, Vallejo police officials have reported that playing Mozart and Puccini on loudspeakers cut nuisance crimes and loitering on city streets in half.

Mike Testa, public relations director for the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, said loud music has cleared loiterers from a tunnel near the Old Sacramento tourist area.

It's not disturbing to pedestrians walking through the tunnel, he contended, but annoys anyone who lingers too long.

Drew Cady, general manager of the San Diego Symphony, said, "From my perspective, there's nothing wrong with classical music."

At the same time, he acknowledged yesterday, such music does send some people scurrying.

Cady said playing classical music to discourage loiterers "clearly works," although he was at a loss to explain why.

"It's just antithetical" to modern youths raised on rock, rap and hip-hop, he said.

The music that seems to do the best job of driving people away, Cady said, is baroque – music characteristic of Bach, Haydn and Handel.

Additionally, a Denver businessman told one newspaper reporter, "The arias by Luciano Pavarotti really drove them (loiterers) crazy."

Property manager Henry, based in Pasadena, declined to say how serious the transient problem is in front of the Oceanside theater complex.

The theater's general manager referred questions to Regal's Knoxville, Tenn., headquarters, which did not return calls seeking comment.

MainStreet members said they call police at least three times a week to complain about transients in the area.

Rick Wright, longtime downtown business leader, said the problem appears worse in the winter because the transients are no longer outnumbered by beach-goers, as they are during the summer.

Officer Wright reminded members of MainStreet, a nonprofit downtown booster organization, that unless transients do something illegal, they have the same right as anyone to be on public streets.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050105/news_1mi5music.html

posted in Strange Observations - 1 reply

Dalai Lama "Good Karma" forward

2005-03-27T21:26:49Z

Has anyone else received this ubiquitous mass-email forward with the numbered Dalai Lama mantra titled "Good Karma"? It's been going around cyberspace for years now. I've even read a satirical version of it.

Aside from the fact that it's always annoying to receive a forward of any kind, I find this one particularly disturbing because of the chain letter instructions at the end.

Of course, the words are very wise (there's no question) and I only hope to aspire to a fraction of the message contained... making it all the more jarring that the mantra ends with needling chain letter instructions. Not to mention the alarming directive that "this mantra must leave your hands within 96 hours"! (I feel like emailing the person who sent it to me, saying "thanks a lot for sending me a bomb!")

I can't help wondering, did the Dalai Lama really wish to originate a chain letter and explicitly urge the inclusion of the instructions at the end? At heart it IS superstition. Why would sending the message to 15 people or more be better luck for the sender than sending it to just one person or none? Whatever the intention is, it triggers in me a kind of manic-panic for good luck - a medieval superstitious anxiety. A fear that if I don't do what is instructed and to the MAX, I'll somehow be shortchanging myself in good fortune. In short, I feel manipulated, like the basest instincts of my personality are being justled. Quite the antithesis of what seems to be the strength of the actual message, if you think about it.

And why would the Dalai Lama or any Buddhist for that matter be encouraging the false, westernized notion of 'karma' as something that one can store up and lay away for oneself like a commodity?

posted in Strange Observations - 2 replies

Stampeding Hindu Festivals

2005-02-04T05:32:35Z

You will have to cut and paste this, but it's a must-see (though macabre):

http://212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=15093702&p=y5x93783&n=15093829

Apparently these stampedes happen all the time at the Hindu festivals in India. I can't believe the whole thing began with people slipping on coconut oil!

When I saw the photo of all the dead in the paper, I have to admit, I actually thought to myself "People are fucking idiots." There's just an undeniable lemming-quality to the whole scenario.

posted in Strange Observations - 4 replies

funny

2005-01-31T04:04:05Z

What is it? What makes something funny? We all have a natural reaction to funny stuff... laughing... but two people can have wildly different ideas about what is funny... and two people can have a totally different idea about whether or not a specific situation is funny.

Is there a unifying statement about what makes something funny?

posted in Strange Observations - 4 replies