Seems being home sick during the week makes for a productive weekend.
Also, I have discovered that anything done to this music is beautiful. I could happily watch paint dry for hours, as long as this was the soundtrack. Do yourself a favor and go download it.
Sorry I’ve been incommunicado the past few days (what’s that you say, a whole week?) Yeah, I came down with what I can only assume is the flu. Tuesday was spent entirely asleep, and then nothing but movie watching in bed for the rest of the week. Made it through the entire Cowboy Bebop series and movie. Fun times. Oh, and my internet was out until yesterday. 4 whole days of completely passive vegetation mode. Not something I’d recommend as a lifestyle option, but good for an occasional reminder that tension is not a necessary state of affairs.
But as you can see all is now well and good. My cough is subsiding and I feel like my system’s rebooted itself, which gives the whole thing a sort of rosy glow. Not sure when I’ll get to posting again, but keep you RSS readers tuned in!
And I see I’ve got some comments to read through as well…
Just a little aside today. I don’t really like talking about the day job on here, but I got an email from one of my colleges in China. I’d asked about his trip back home during last week’s Chinese New Year holiday, and he mentioned that the trains were absolutely packed. Imagine 1.3 billion people all taking the train back to their hometown (some of them taking 36 hours to get home). LA road rage ain’t got nothing on that. Here’s a business tip for you MBA types out there: intra-China air flights for cheap. Find a way to make it happen and you’ve got money in the bank…
Anyway, this colleague of mine used the phrase “Oh my Lady Gaga!” as a stand-in for “Oh my God”. Certainly worth a laugh and a bit strange as well. I then found out from another co-worker that this came from a Chinese pop-starlet using the phrase on television. I googled it out of curiosity and found out that it actually came from an episode of Ugly Betty.
This was the first I’d heard of it, but seriously, to have this small bit of American pop-culture reference coming to me via China, well, it sent me for a loop. So I thought I’d post a little run-down of the story, along with an image of a globe with a face on it exploding. Something to imply both the global aspect and the head-exploding aspect. Something kind of like this:
mixed with this:
Not the most original idea, I know, but that’s why this category’s called “ramblings“. Anyway, the funny thing was, I couldn’t find any image like that. Plenty of each option, but nothing with them combined. However, a few pages deep into google image search for explode head globe, I can across this image:
And I decided I had best stop there. More evidence of that endlessly echoing rabbit hole that is the internet…
“The problem is not enjoyment; the problem is attachment.”
“Logical. You’re just giving me a regular, intelligent answer,” Teddy said. “I was trying to help you. You asked me how I get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don’t use logic when I do it. Logic’s the first thing you have to get rid of.”
“You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?” he asked. “You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So—this is my point—what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are.”
“The trouble is,” Teddy said, “most people don’t want to see things the way they are. They don’t even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it’s really nice.” He reflected, “I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters,” he said. He shook his head.
“Anything you do for the sake of enlightenment takes you nearer. Anything you do without remembering enlightenment puts you off. But why complicate? Just know that you are above and beyond all things and thoughts. What you want to be, you are it already. Just keep it in mind.”
Go here to watch the whole thing.
(You’ve got a few hours, right?)
I saved this one for today, because though photography is an art, it’s not the kind of art is was posting last week. However, I do have another set of pictures of lights together, so I’m posting it today as a kind of bonus round/easter egg for art week. Enjoy!
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So we’ve pretty much reached the end of Art Week here at Reclusland, but I wanted to end it with something a little different. So here you are.
This is something I started doing after reading a book called The Artists Way (which works, let me tell you). It just kind of popped into my head one day to start using tape to make geometric patterns around my room. I started out with duct tape, but that wasn’t too kind to the paint, so I decided to switch over to black masking tape. There’s something about these that I really like, but then, my mind always has been drawn to patterns…
It is the race, the species that must go staggering on. Mordeen, our ugly little species, weak and ugly, torn with insanities, violent and quarrelsome, sensing evil—the only species that knows evil and practices it—the only one that senses cleanness and is dirty, that knows about cruelty and is unbearably cruel.
Look down. Here he lies sleeping, to teach me. Our dear race, born without courage but very brave, born with a flickering intelligence and yet with beauty in its hands. What animal has made beauty, created it, save only we? With all our horrors and our faults, somewhere in us there is a shining. That is the most important of all facts. There is a shining.
Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it, and just DO!
Here’s the last of the abstract pieces. All of ‘em started with a blank screen. No variations this time either, just single pieces. Although, seeing them together like this, this are certain commonalities.
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Sorry for the slow posts today. I was away from the computer most of the day. Tomorrow though, I’ve got something a bit different, a sort of surprise to round out arts week here at Reclusland.
Stay tuned.
As promised, I’m also posting some of the other art projects I’ve taken up recently. My girlfriend does a lot of oil pastels and one day she asked if I’d be interested in doing some with her. I figured it was a good chance to try taking my abstract tendencies off the computer screen, so I’ve since sat down and worked out a few pieces. The results are as follows:
I am happy with how these turned out, though I don’t think they’re necessarily finished art pieces. The last three were oil pastel over copper-colored acrylic, hence the shine in the backgrounds (I’m hoping my girlfriend will post some of her pieces from that series, I’ll keep you posted).
However, I did play around with a photograph of the last one and came up with a couple pieces that I am really happy with:
(looks awesome on a white background)
The Christian idea of the kingdom of God, of the new Jerusalem, of a Heaven on Earth that’s not available until after the Rapture (and yet is spread across the earth and men do not see it) is the same religious meme, unleashes the same program on the nervous system, as the Buddhist idea that we are already fully enlightened beings, that we fully posses Buddha-nature here and now, and that awakening is our true original nature…
Just the cultural responses to this program are different. This is a fault of the culture, not the meme-program itself, simply different stage dressing to an otherwise identical script.
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Post number two in my little cavalcade of the arts. A little simpler than I’m used to, but as with the last post, it’s the variations that I find interesting.
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And for those interested in fluctuations, I’ve made a (huge) animated gif for this one. It’s about 4MBs, so either “right-click-save-as”, or give it a little while to load and run all the way through, so that it loops smoothly.
Art week’s starting here at Reclusland. A bit late perhaps (for which I can only blame the dead presidents of yesterday), and covered in snow (at least if you’re in New England), but it’s starting nonetheless.
First up, four variations on a theme:
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I’ve tried to get out of the habit of stating in advance what’s going to be posted here, since my expectations usually end up diverging pretty widely from reality (in a way that almost seems intentional…). Best laid plans and all that. But I have to admit, it’s been quiet lately in Reclusland, and, seeing as it’s a holiday weekend, this is a good chance to get some stuff together to put up.
I also recently realized that my latest art post was, sadly, in last June, and that’s something that needs to be remedied as well.. I haven’t stopped making it, I’ve just been lazy about posting it. So my plan for the weekend was to get those up as scheduled posts throughout the week.
However, as part of a large parcel of (for) Valentine’s Day gifts, I helped my girlfriend setup a blog for her artwork (check it out, it’s awesome). Doing so inspired me to not only post the abstract art and photography I usually post, but also a few of the other artistic type projects I’ve documented over the years. Some involve black masking tape, some are oil pastels, and some are ink-pen-bored-at-the-office type affairs. But they’re all awesome, and you’ll enjoy them.
It’s an “It’s art week here at Reclusland!” kind of thing.
Stay tuned…
Man has received from heaven a nature innately good, to guide him in all his movements. By devotion to this divine spirit within himself, he attains an unsullied innocence that leads him to do right with instinctive sureness and without any ulterior thought of reward and personal advantage. This instinctive certainty brings about supreme success and “furthers through perseverance”. However, not everything instinctive is nature in this higher sense of the word, but only that which is right and in accord with the will of heaven. Without this quality of rightness, an unreflecting, instinctive way of acting brings only misfortune. Confucius says about this: “He who departs from innocence, what does he come to? Heaven’s will and blessing do not go with his deeds.”
- Wu Wang / Remaining Blameless
Man, Gurdjieff taught, is an undeveloped creation. He is not really man, considered as a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. On the contrary, man as we encounter him is an automaton. His thoughts, feelings, and deeds are little more than mechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. He cannot do anything. In and around him, everything happens without the participation of his own authentic consciousness. But human beings are ignorant of this state of affairs because of the pervasive influence of culture and education, which engrave in them the illusion of autonomous conscious selves. In short, man is asleep. There is no authentic I am in his presence, but only an egoism which masquerades as the authentic self, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human functions of thought, feeling, and will.
from here
(emphasis mine, such a beautiful way of phrasing it)
It’s a cold and it’s a broken: “Hallelujah”
But its a “Hallelujah” none the less.
Don’t forget that.
Found via a link (again on tumblr) to one of my old posts…
No word uttered by a god could be less than the universe, or briefer than the sum of time.
“…the words were unexpected drops of blood tainting this lovely scenery underneath so brilliant a November sky.”
(from “Spring Snow“)
