Bar Card wanderings...

Several times in my life I've given thought to just getting in the *whatever I'm driving* and taking off... leaving town and not looking back.  Of course, anyone who's ever spent any time on the road knows about how long the romance in that lasts, and it isn't very long.  But still, sometimes the fantasy of a carefree life of travel presents itself, and sometimes I indulge it even knowing full well that "carefree" and "travel" really don't do well locked in the same suitcase for any great length of time.  Common sense usually edges into the picture after a bit, but when common sense is feeling benign and gentle it usually takes the form of "hey, you could go around and sell something really neat to the folks you meet..." and the fantasy migrates away from just running away into running for, and eventually to some justification for staying on the move.  Tonight's version?  Business cards, produced on a totally uber cool designed and built by yours truly mobile production facility (that just happens to fit beautifully under the back lid of me old '74 VW bus ;-) featuring quickie impressionistic portraits of the folks I'd meet, so they'd have a really cool card to hand out to the oh-so-hot stranger they might meet in a bar, or better still the grocery store, and maybe the major hot other would turn out to be a true lady or gentleman and they'd fall in love and have themselves a family and grandkids and all that stuff and then when Katie finally says goodbye and goes home some child would be looking at the book of memories and see the card and go "wow... whoawaywow... that was Grandma?"  Yea, sometimes I entertain the fantasy, but only when I really need to.

When you can answer your own question...

[a Hearts of Space free write, an unedited ramble through the backside of me brain... read if you wish, or don't read, I don't care one way or the other, I'm just posting it more or less to take the place of going to confession in a church I don't belong to.]

Sha Haisat: Perchance to dream...

I'm returning to the story of Sha Haisat and Keyanna, interplanetary colonists... a work in progress, the story of Sha, who becomes an accidental  God to his world, no longer truly a man but still of human origin and very much a living God to the humans on his planet, and the long, long, long line of the Keyannas, the high preistess' of the religion that grows up around him, all of whom are true genetic replicas of his original ship born woman Keyanna Tryon, each woman mother to her own replacement concieved to Sha during the wilderness retreat of her trial.

This next set of panels will deal with the months Keyanna hides from the other colonists in the wilderness waiting for Sha to mature enough, as a fixed node, for her to simply talk to him directly.  She brought two months worth of rations, but needs at least three, but Keyanna being Keyanna this is not really a problem.  She has two full Ranger field kits, weapons and tools, the planet is fertile, benign, totally human compatible and she is a savvy strong young woman, she makes do as a hunter and a gatherer in the wild.  But her days living almost feral are not really the point of this next set, for she is also in daily conversation with First, and Second, they who are Sha's southern and eastern adjoining edges in the strange matrix of life that lives below the sands of the equitorial desert, and for a human to speak for prolonged periods with a fixed node entity is most definitely a mind expanding experience... hallucinations and dreams and an almost omniscient portal onto the experiences of the other humans... by the time Keyanna returns to her own kind she is indeed the caliber of woman to be a global high priestess to an emerging society.

Standing woman, standing wave...

I don't make a habit of reposting other people's work, but I'm going to make an exception today.  I'm going to ask the beautiful women whose images grace the beginning of this post to help me make a point.  What I'd like to talk about is actually one of life's deeper questions, a question that has been dodged and ducked, covered up and ignored, proscribed and prohibited for a very long time now that really needs answered.  It's a rather pointy question actually, for as delightfully curved as the subject is, and it goes like this:  What in the name of Noah's pet whales is so intimidating about these beautiful creatures that one way or another society as a whole considers them such a threat???

Please understand, I'm not talking about the women themselves of course.  For them I would hope (me being me and all, hetero monogamous hopefully hopeless romantic that I am) a good and loving man strong enough not to base his ego on her beauty, several healthy children who will become a wholesome family extending many generations from she who was half the foundation of that family.  You know, my version of a happy life.  But that's just me.  No, what I'm talking about is what they portrayed for the photographer's lens when they took on the challenge of portraying not they themselves but an archetype of the idealized woman.  Why would society have a problem with that?

Spelunking...

Originally published March 12, 2012

This post is an attempt to answer the question posed by my friend CJ on the previous post.  She asks “If this kind of image depicts universal psychic pain, why is it always women who suffer it? In traditional oil painting and sculpture, both genders expressed pathos. In bondage art, where are the bound and tormented naked men?”   It is a very good question, and in my opinion it reaches out a great deal deeper into society than simply art.  Regardless of what is claimed by those who produce such images the fact there is such a defined gender imbalance removes such images from the realms of art and into the realm of pornography.

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The males are there CJ, they are.  But the bias against the male in those works is even more pronounced than the bias against the male in “conventional” nude art.  If anything the bias is even more pronounced.  You have to go looking to find such works, and believe me, you want a layer of rubber between your skin and what you’ll be wading in while you search.  It’s a sewer, and no mistake.  I’ve been down that hole a couple of times (wearing full class-A HAZMAT complete with SCBA, so to speak) and what I saw there was both heartbreaking  sad, and informative concerning cePornography’s net effect on the human critter.

Let me preface what I say next by saying this:  the various forms and fashions of sexuality can only reflect the inner state of a life in actions, the actions in and of themselves cannot change the state of a life, at most all they can do is reinforce what someone brought with them.  A great deal of the effort and angst of alternate sexualities is spent to ignore this fact. 

Of equal impact is the fact that cePornography is a consummately social creature, absolutely conventional in its’ essence, totally dependent on cultural biases and limitations to empower the perversions offered.  From that fact it is easily seen that all social conventions will be reinforced in such realms.  So of course in the perversions of pain the conventional establishment Anglo tradition allowing a female the right to display her pain,  emotional or otherwise, will be fully supported while a male (to be a MAN in the eyes of ceEstablishment) is not to show his.  I’d say this accounts for a great deal of the gender disparity seen (or not) in the raw number of offerings put before the public.

The above might account for the raw numbers, but it doesn’t address the underlying why of such works being created in the first place, it doesn’t really offer an emotional understanding of the why of the matter.  It is hard approaching impossible to put an intellectual understanding to what is in fact an irrational emotional construct.  So  it’s time to discard literality, and engage symbolic translation protocols to approximate those used by the collective entities actually responsible.  What follows will be in a format approximating a conversations, a stage script, those speaking identified at the start of each comment.

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You Ride Alone...

Originally Published March 9, 2012

I've been in a totally bummed out mood all freakin' afternoon.  Not even Mel Brooks and Maker's Mark could break it over.  That's what usually happens when that little light bulb above your head turns on, and what the light shows you is something contradictory and sad, yet another set of loops in the Gordian knot of misery that is the human condition.  It's an occupational hazard of being a philosopher, it's what happens when you're chasing some particular "why" and it leads you over a cliff you didn't see coming.  Lord knows I should have seen it coming, it evolved from one of several standing quagmires under consideration.  But I didn't, and now I'm paying the price.  Oh, well. 

It began with the previous post that began as a comment on CJ's blog trying to blow open the reasons behind her very legitimate concern and complaint for debate, trying to move away from indignation and outrage into some mode of thought to actually do something about the problem rather than just vent and repent having noticed it in the first place.  What tripped the whole circumstance was CJ's outrage at a fetish image posted on DevArt, a graphic and frankly rather gross image of a girls tummy deformed and defaced with quite a number of large gauge needles piercing her skin, pulling her skin into knots up her belly and between her breasts to look like the spine of some emaciated creature.  It was worse than disgusting, it was truly pitiful. 

But still, being objective, I had to defend it as being art.  Most certainly art capturing a totally deformed, degraded and degrading frame of mind, but still art. As I told CJ, art makes no promise concerning comfort.  Art is quite capable of communicating a scream of emotional pain, a scream of social agony the artist really has little understanding of.  But a scream of pain can be a traumatic thing in its' own right, inflicting pain on all who perceive it, and CJ was holding forth that art should self censure such screams rather than inflict them on those who have no knowledge of pain at such intensity. 

I tried to point out that image was not unique, that I'd seen many other images of a similar nature, some calling themselves fetish work, others from the deviant side of hard core porn, but all of them sharing the same sense of a scream ripped from the lives of those portrayed by some force beyond their control.  I wanted to point out that the ever growing number of such images, the never changing similarity in the symbolisms they present almost demands the assumption of some common pathogen impacting on the culture.  I was hoping to spark some dialog as to what that common pathogen might be, where it might be possible to intervene with a deliberate intent.  I tried, but I failed.  What I got back were stock out of the box stereotypes of the sort used to dismiss an unhappy thought into the limbo of the socially ignored.

That bothered the fuck out of me, it did and it does.  I was stewing, thinking hard thoughts about my friend, wondering why.  Yea, I was just that deep.  I know better than to wonder why about a why, that gets you going in circles that can be hard to break out of.  Well, in one sense I was lucky I suppose, I broke out of the circle soon enough, but what broke me out of that spiral wasn't so very nice.  I realized something much, much larger than anything involved with art, art was just the catalyst of perception, and it is that realization that is kicking my ass  tonight.

Our culture is dying, there's no denying it.  Every single indicator on the board is deep in the red, every critical system failing if not failed.  The United States of America is on its' last legs as a viable culture.  This fact is becoming known, and of course the associated despair is having its' way with the attitudes of the population.  What I realized is the nature of how the culture is dealing with that despair, where that scream of social agony represented by that gross photograph actually originates.

Of course, of course the culture has to put forth some token effort at saving itself, of course it must.  For the most part those token efforts revolve around the children, children who are the hope of the future.  The battle cry of the day is Protect The Children!  All well and good, but what must the children be protected from?  What the children need protecting from are the same things that have damaged the culture of course, the children are part of the culture.  So what have the dumb fuck hypocrites of America done?  They've focused all their efforts on protecting the children from the least likely of hazards, the one that in absolute statistical fact is the most minor of threats. 

They are focusing a landslide of attention on the evil of children abused in the production of sexual pornography, and what I realized was the overwhelming popularity of that focus is that it allows this totally fucked up suicidal culture to absolutely and completely ignore every other form of pornography attacking the children, the very forms of pornographic thought that are in the process of destroying it!  They can't defend the children against those forms of pornography, those are what the adults are addicted to!  Pistol porn, money porn, power porn, the list just goes on and on, every one of which impacts on the children's lives, every one of which does deep damage, every one of which is socially invisible.  Our society is committing suicide by refusing to admit pornography doesn't have to be sexual in nature.

That's where that scream of pain seen in that photo originates, that is the scream of those who can sense, who can feel the impact of all the other pornographies ripping at their lives, lives that have been betrayed into being totally dependent on the very society that has betrayed them!  The self destructive life styles are just their way of trying to attract attention to what their society has already agreed to ignore.  The poor fools.  They could commit slow suicide on the six o'clock news with a full manifesto as to why and no one is going to really give a damn.  They can't, not without admitting it should be they, not the kids, who deserve to die. 

Shit.  Well, at least it is an answer.  And it fits the observed facts, the observed behaviors.  I was a total fucking fool to ever think art might be stout enough to challenge in against that. No way.  Art will probably do a good job of recording the convulsions generated by the death agony of this land for history to examine at some later date, but the very nature of the people involved with art precludes it doing much more than that. 

Oh, well.  Idiot, get on your horse and ride, you knew when you signed up most often you'd end up riding alone. 

The Sadder Fate...

In the back lore of The Lord of the Rings it tells how the race of Orcs were created from the Elves, unfortunates captured and tormented generation after generation until their nobility and innocence degraded away into ultimate bitterness and despair, how Morgoth the great enemy unable to create true life on his own mocked the creation of life with the corruption of life.  Morgoth was eventually cast out, denied any access to the living lands, in time his great captain Souron met the same fate. 

But the fate of the Orcs lingered on, it is said Aragorn gave them a land to be their own, that they have a place to live what life might remain to them after the fall of their masters.  The King was as generous as fate would allow, even though he must have understood the fate he sent them to.  No tale tells of them after the fall of Souron, their ultimate end is not known.  I doubt they endured long, deprived of the will of their masters I doubt they would have reproduced in great numbers, such despair as would have been theirs does not do good things for fertility.

In my darker moments I sometimes wonder what became of them as the ages unrolled from then till today.  I visit their fate when the fate of my land and times weighs heavy on my thoughts, for surely our world, troubled and evil as it might be, cannot compare to the world known by those last  generations of the Orc.  Free from the will of their masters the comparison between their fate and that of the other speaking peoples would surely have been a crushing burden to bear.  At times I listen to my world, listen to the whispers below the whispers, at times I think I can still hear the echo of their last despair in the first winds of winter.  I hear their laments in so many places, to many places. 

The Orcs of Morgoth are fictional, but there are those whose despair is coming to reprise them into modern reality.  Compassion is the only true antidote, and the resolve that they should be the last such creatures to ever endure mortality burdened to such an existence.  It is the least of things, really, to endure such an understanding, and it is the greatest of things to dedicate all effort to translating that resolve from a passing thought into the facts of history.  It is actually a great deal of what powers my life, when you get right down to it.

Domestic warfare...

I... am a kipple bigot.  I hate kipple, loathe it, despise it.  There is very little I like less than finding the remnants of day before yesterday, or five weeks ago yesterday, dug in and occupying some odd crevice or corner.   It galls me, how it builds ramparts from straw wrappers and a hot sauce packet, half a banana peel and a crust of bread.  It infuriates me how it mans those battlements and mocks the broom, waiting until everyone is asleep to ride out and colonize another corner.  I hate kipple.

Of course it's all part of a plot you see, there's no way it's happening without help.  Me?  I blame the dustbunnies.  They are obviously descended from the Nazi's, just look at their swastika shaped ears.  It is an alliance made in housekeeper's hell it is.  Where kipple likes to dig in the dustbunnies are mobile, mounted, the cavalry of chaos.  Once they formed their alliance everything just became that much harder: the kipple travels with a dustbunny escort, and the dustbunnies take shelter in the kipple's fortresses.  Not a good situation, not at all.

But there is hope on the horizon, soon the poor broom will have something the kipple and the dustbunnies won't be able to defend against.  For all their tenacious aggression they still can't turn the air black with flack, and their doom will arrive from above.  Yes, airpower is on the way.  Death will fall upon them from the skies and there will be nothing they will be able to do about it.  The broom is getting some serious reinforcements... (heavy drum roll followed by the battle theme from "Patton" on a screaming lead guitar ala Hendrix)... the air hose and shop vac are coming in the house tomorrow.  Deal and done, take that suckers!

Can you tell I've gone back to keeping house at my house after a prolonged absence leaving the defense of domestic hygiene in the hands of those who think kipple is first cousin to civil engineering and dustbunnies make cute pets?  Oh yea... it's gonna happen.

*nos walks off whistling... dum de dum dum dum diddly yum dum, dum dee-aa a dum... grin*

The Secret Smithy

Shackles gold there she wore,
Abiding mark from fetters torn
As freedom won for passion's core
Compels a dream of loves reborn
To misted moon by hunting horn
Soft sound the cry all sisters form
Balms willing pain of virgins torn
By thrust of lover quick and warm.
Beguile she now dreamt hunter's heart
His hunger fanned from coals to flames
Full lights the forge of carnal art
Love's secret smith eternal claims
That pride melt down to mold the part
Of lover's shackled heart to heart.

Yet another mindless doodle...



Rebuking Chaos



Sometimes I wonder just what these doodles mean.  They really aren't planned, they just sort of fall off onto the tablet.  I've gotten to where I treat them a lot like gauges, instruments that indicate something about the inside of my head, I'm just not quite sure how to interpret them.  Sometimes one will turn out quite different from the others, and those tend to mark the beginning of a change in deep attitudes.  Not that this one is one such, no, it's quite in the groove with the last few images added to the portfolio... feminine heroic worked in a palette removed from life, the mythic, the legendary, the symbolic.  Now if this was someone elses painting and I'd read from them what I just wrote I'd be wondering if perchance they were getting a bit discouraged, a bit disallusioned, a bit resigned to disappointment.  Nah, that can't be me, pretty sure I've been all of those things for quite some time now.  Nothing new about that, not for me, I've been living besieged by doomsayers of one form or another for a long time now, like most of my life.  There's no way I'm shoring up the battlements of hope and optimism with art, no way.  There's no way I've become so pessimistic about the state and fate of my land and culture, no way.  Yea, right.  And Fidel Castro didn't like cigars, either. 



...

Advice from the Ancients...

Beware and be wary, not all succubi exist only in spirit form: the corrosion of the modern world has allowed many to escape into mortality and they walk among us on a daily basis.  Sadly, the same holds true for incubi, their brothers in corruption.  The older I get the more I realize how much solid psychology got incorporated into the legends of antiquity and is still ignored to this very day.  Ok, yes, I was in a bar recently where the meat market was up and in full swing.  A disgusting place, really, don't think I'll go back there.  I'd rather pass my time someplace where it doesn't feel like I need a condom for my soul.