Exchange of Values

Exchange of Values
acrylic on board 48'X96'

"Structure of Color Perception"

"Structure of Color Perception"
48'X96' acrylic on board

Saturday, May 30, 2015


24'X48"  Acrylic on canvass.  c. 1984.

***  Klediments:

So here is a collection of quotes and aphorisms that I found meaningful in some way.  I saved most from my friends facebook posts.  Some I saved/remember who the author is.  Some I don't.  A few are even my own.  There is a narrative one might assign to the order, or not.   Obliged.    

"What unites God and us people is that He does not will to be God without us."  Karl Barth

"Science has discovered Original Sin, which it calls the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis.”

"Strangely enough I don't regard actualistic ontology as all that proctological."  Darren Sumner 

'Just like cross-cultural contextualization through language accessibility, which in practice turned out to be more like just mono-cultural transference of a pre-processed product via marketing.'

"God shouldn't be put in charge of everything until we get to know Him a little better." Kurt Vonnegut

"Van Gogh could see twenty-seven variety of black in capitalism."  Lorine Niedecker:  

"After all it doesn't really matter since all we're doing is indulging Craig's Gnostic and deranged theological proclivities." (someone wrote this in a comment to Craig Keen but they were joking…I think).

“If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”  Žižek

"For many conservatives Its a bit disorienting to have a Pope who is actually a Christian."  Read this by Gary Wills in, "The Future of the Catholic Church."

"But I don't necessarily define my faith by going to church every Sunday."  Miley Cyrus

 “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?"  Lacan.

“In all of human history no country or no people have suffered such terrible slavery, conquest and foreign oppression and no country and no people have struggled so strenuously for their emancipation than Sicily and the Sicilians.”  Karl Marx, NY Tribune, May 1860.  (or as they say in the North: Sicilia, dove si annida satana. =  Sicily, where Satan lurks.  Btw, I am a Siciliano).

"We are nothing but a view of the world."  Merleau-Ponty.

"It comes as a great shock, around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance along with everybody else has not pledged allegiance to you."  James Baldwin.

'The problem with christian fairy tales is that there's no fairies.  There's angels, but when those angels aren't committing mass murder, torturing Job, or watching over usamerican blonde-haired white children on there way to capitalist bible camp, then they are destroying our delusions!' 

This fine poem, "Danse Russe." By William Carlos Williams.

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

 "The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God."  Bonhoeffer.

"To become an expert is to learn what one may not say."

'Really, what is "Blank Space" but the cry of YHWH to inscribe one's soul in the Book of Life?'

"Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers."  Black Elk.

“The humble Cumulus humilis - never hurt a soul.”

And finally this nice paragraph from Tolkien:

"Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon lost in the West."

Blessings and much obliged, Daniel. 

Tuesday, May 5, 2015





Beatrice

"Yesterday, two wagons full of Polish ashes were taken away. Outside my office, the robinias are blooming beautifully, just as in Leipzig."  Gotz Aly, "Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene" 132.

I have been concerned that almost no hummingbirds visited our feeders this week.  I'v been making my own organic hummingbird nectar but they don't seem to like it as much as the commercially manufactured kind; like me, they seem to prefer the artificial syrup with the chemicals and the red dye added to it.  Something that always reminds me of angels is when hummingbirds hover around me and I can feel the hushed beating of their wings.  But hummingbirds can be so quick and aloof that they seem invisible, perhaps that's why I feel so blessed whenever they appear in my presence like *Spirits,* as Chardin said of Matter, "moving slow enough to be seen."  I miss the hummingbirds, but not as much as I miss the angels.

We feel blessed that a hummingbird has built a nest right next to our front door again, but we are so worried about how vulnerable those tiny blue eggs are.  Then the mother flew into our house and she couldn't escape.  We ran around like mad trying to save her.  She got caught up in spider webs and just missed the paddle fan blades.  tragically, she fell from the air and collapsed onto the floor in shock and exhaustion.  If there was a 911 for this sort of thing I would have called an ambulance.  I did not want one more thing to die.  We prayed and cried for her.

like many others I am looking fwd to the new Star Wars movie.  I think one reason that we like these kinds of movies is that against strong evidence to the contrary, it pretends that humans may have a future.  I know that many friends have given up on any sort of God and instead have become humanists.  Others have given up on humans as well and look to animals and nature to find meaning in their lives.  But animals too break our hearts and Nature may be even more indifferent to our death as god is thought to be.  Some even choose to turn their eyes to the worshipful wonder of stars and the study of clouds.  Sometimes I wonder if people, animals, and gods, have just spent too much time together on this tiny world and our relationship needs a little distance, light-years of distance.  But then no sooner do I exchange my crucifix, golden Buddha, (or golden Labrador), for a slide-rule and telescope, when I may discover that a planet killing asteroid is heading my way!  


Lynda cradled the wounded hummingbird in her caring hands while I tried to drip nectar onto her tiny beak.  We loosed her from the webs that bound her wings and talked to her about how her babies will need her.  Afraid that our god-like presence was disturbing her we set her down by some flowers with some nectar.  She lay still on her side for awhile but as we sat vigil and prayed she begn to lick at the nectar.  I was fussing with my camera phone hoping to finally catch a miracle, when she just leaped up and rocketed away!  We checked this morning and she is back on her nest.  The Force is strong with this one!  "Either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird."  Henry Miller, "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird."   Blessings and obliged.