I am making a book of Black-Birds
I hope that this photo and poem may be included.

Jackdaw Fool -- Daniel Imburgia.

“There is a world elsewhere.” Coriolanus, William Shakespeare.

It began the day I was born
When the drugs wore off and
I first opened my eyes to the
Light which would come to
cause me such
pain.

I was addicted to amniotic fluid plus
nicotine, alcohol, and barbiturates
and a biting satire that would
cost me friends among
the snugglers.

In the darkness god
was everywhere and
we had no secrets until
my parents circumcised me
after that I began hiding when
people spoke of
fathers.

During catechism they tried to
blame me for god's murder
so I confessed weekly to
being the cause of paradise lost
and I would punish myself
accordingly.

Doctors invent new medicines for
my condition but still no cure so
pain-management specialists
administer the bread and wine
at sunday communion
until the market objects.

The Jackdaw reminds me
that he is god and
I should have no other
the sun is also a jealous deity
and she makes dire threats
flooding rivers charge the banks
demanding my worship
a newborn fawn dwells
at the center of her universe, but
the willow I planted now shades the
old Japanese pear tree and so
it no longer bears fruit
or speaks to me.

I come to miss that darkness
I fear less abiding in mystery
attending to the voices of silence
speak not of unforgivable sins
or the promise unkept
why wait for someone to
come get us from
somewhere else

Obliged.

Snoot and Tehya

The Eucharist is not a chew-toy: Why My Dogs Are Roman Catholic.
(#Hegelianmaster-slavedialectics).

I should have more respect than to eavesdrop on my dog Snoot when he is praying but from what I overhear he may entertain some questionable forms of Eckhartian creation spirituality with universalist overtones but I long ago gave up attempting to challenge Snoot's or anybody else's divergent theological suppositions--Yet when we leave Snoot home alone I put "Nature" shows on the TV for him to watch but perhaps I shouldn't presume that he would enjoy watching wild packs of free roaming timber wolves chasing down fleeing caribou while he lays on soft carpet gnawing a green toothbrush shaped kale and chia-seed stick (and I choke down my vegan bean and sawdust burger) when what we both crave is to tear the throats from of our prey drink their blood howl at the moon and dance naked around a fire swinging fists full of entrails into the air while ripping bites from the raw bloody hearts of the vanquished--

"Civilization" is the most violent word imaginable especially after it's horrifying apocalyptic phase is accomplished and it has begun to somulate its victims with "Adventure Cruises," "reality TV," and populist mega-churches leading to the false worship of an imaginary Snow White Xmas-card religion celebrating a Disney-Christos born painlessly in a spotless manger surrounded by Bambi, Thumper, and Mrs. Possum, when the actual Bambi was Jewish (written by Felix Salten) and he and the rest of the forest animals were refugees running for their lives from anti-semitic falangist maniacs intent on genetic/religious purity and destroying the forest for their own profit--

Perhaps that other infant messiah, the brown Palestinian Jesus can help me resist these "civilizing" projects and maybe its this outsider Jesus who barely escaped with his own life once as a baby when CEO's concerned about commodities markets and the bottom-line figured it was more economically efficient to just kill every newborn in the ghetto rather than take a chance on a future hostile corporate take-over--maybe its this alien survivor Jesus that is the one being discussed by the other soon to be slaughtered sheep in their own secret language and who are wondering whether this peculiar 'Messiah' will oppose and confront the slaughter of ALL of the innocents or will he just gorge himself on beers and God-father's pizza while cheering his brain-damaged home-team to another Superbowl victory or if instead he will he become a wild desert coyote prophet messiah who burns like volcanic magma against the empire's principalities and powers while hanging about with tax-collectors, whores, and lepers, exchanging barbs with the daemons he extracts and transplants into the herds of tiny piglets who clog our minds and arteries and who will at the last trump be cast into the lake of Lipitor--

Our dogs Snoot and Tehya love it when company comes over because they get more attention and food is always getting dropped on the floor so the other day some folks came over and we were  exchanging japes and jibes and watching the romantic comedy "bringing up baby" and peacefully bantering in a cozy little house chuckling at this movie couple's antics who are so obviously in love with each other but are having such a hard time consummating the relationship because of an endless series of mishaps and hijinks--*oh how will they ever get together?*-- there is wine and moldy european cheeses we pretend to enjoy within the parameters of socially administered Jouuisance and all the rules of acceptable interaction are unconsciously being interpolated and obeyed--imagine us as an Althusserian community of yellow-labs who have learned to carry our leashes in our own mouths as our sashaying flaneurs amble about the town without exercising any apparent means of external control over their thralls as exactly on cue we grinning golden-hearted dog/angels wag our bottoms and choke back our repressed rage--

Kathryn Hepburn reads: "…'he's three years old, gentle as a kitten, and likes dogs.'" She puzzles, "I wonder whether Mark means that he eats dogs or is fond of them?" But our stomachs are full and we're all a bit tipsy/drowsy and our two dogs Snoot and Tehya are laying on their sides like two bloated heifers snoozing oblivious to the dramas---until Snoot lifts his head and begins licking his testicles right there in front of everybody so we'alll just sort of ignore him and swirl and snuffle our shardonay but then Tehya takes an interest in Snoot's private parts as well and gives them a quick sniff but decides that a dropped prosciutto wrapped canapé is more interesting so she lunges for it when this transgressive act of wolf code-breaking expropriation incites some dormant instinct deep inside Snoot's limbic cortex where some tiny amt. of wildness I haven't lobotomized yet with 'atta-boys' or 'bac-o-bites' survives and it awakens in him with such violent fury that he pounces on Tehya like a velociraptor to claim his right of possession and restore the household pack to the established dog-order while we humans are all too shocked to move when this terrific dog-fight breaks out--

Now Tehya is a Siberian Husky with fine sharp teeth and she is much closer to her Canis lupus ancestors than the Malamute mongrel Snoot is and so she battles tooth and dew-claw for the right to the canapé and in an instant my 9 X 12 carpet is transformed into a battle-field stained with blood, fur, and cured meats as two ferocious beasts attack growl howl and snap at each other--its not a fair fight though, it seldom is, but Snoot is a boy and he's got 20 pounds on Tehya and he eventually bites her so hard that she yelps in pain and surrenders by rolling onto her back and offering her throat and soft belly to her masculine overlord--Snoot cowers over her scanning the room defiantly as if to ask if any of the rest of us wine-swilling domesticated E.D. plagued males wants to question his authority--but the entire incident only lasts maybe 10 seconds and we are all still too shocked by this breach into barbarism to even move but just as I start to rise from my chair to defend my sweet baby girl, Snoot on his own accepts Tehya's surrender allowing her too rise to her feet and then they begin to nuzzle and lick at each other playfully a bit when the next thing you know his ears go half-back and his tail stiffens and now Snoot starts sniffing Tehya's private parts and then just like that he is humping away at her backside even though his testicles are in a dumpster behind the veterinarians office because although he has been "fixed" sometimes phantom urges compel him to just keep going through the motions in a humiliating sacramental parody--

So when people ask me why I assume that my dog is Roman Catholic I tell them that its because its the church where they hang a half-naked life-like statue of an executed terrorist up on the wall for everyone to witness--its a church where Jesus' wounds and blood haven't all been sanitized and tidied up and the whole filthy mess tossed into the dumpster behind the chapel because in the Catholic church they worship blood and they make more and more of it each time they gather turning water into wine--wine into blood--and then that blood mingles with our blood and other bodily fluids through a miracle of redemptive miscegenation and for just a few moments each week it overflows the gilded grails we keep constructing for it in the blasphemous hope of containing and controlling the power that inheres to sacrificed hemoglobin and as we sing elegiac sagas ministers scurry about attempting to mop-up any of the blood that escapes onto the floor contaminating our shoes so we won't track it out into the parking lot or streets, shops, or homes, but still sometimes you can see those bloody trails drying and fading in the early sunday morning sun or being washed away by rain and tears, after the music changes into a silent whistle and we beasts who have been broken and bred to civilization take our leashes back into our own mouths as we lead ourselves out into the life-like machine world of blood-less grace.

God bless and obliged.

p.s. I started writing this at morning Mass recently the day after Tehya died as a sort of a farewell obituary.  We miss and love her.

This painting was my attempt to make a copy of Vincent's "Wheat field With Crows," for a "Forgery Art Show" here on the Island a few years ago.  The accompanying poem references Wallace Steven's "13 Ways of Looking at a Black bird."

13 Other Ways Of Looking At a Black Bird.  Daniel Imburgia  (Way one:  Through Vincent's Wheat Field with Crows)

I.
The crow as knowing
Growing in the sky-scape
Racing the storm among
Double moon swarms

II.
Only these crows can testify
To why Vincent was murdered
In a wheat-field where miraculously
Un-healed he survived

III.
Wounded by lead-gray grieving
Bleeding Cochineal lake
Vermillion contrasted against
Vandyck brown and smalt viridian

IV
Invisible to all but he
Three advents direct his fall
Cawed by the 57 black birds
Inscribed in his final canvas

V.
Experts accuse the Jesuit crows
Rose in fear and fled from
Vincent as he erected his
Easel and gauged perspective

VI.
But hearing the shot and cry
Why would darkness flee
He whose deprivation and lack
Exposed only more mystery

VII.
Field, sky, birds, roads,
Chose this pilgrim pigment
Instead of chrome stars Umber
Gashes in murderous constellations

VIII.
Rising ochred tears of grain
Strain to fly among the swirl of
Blue rosettes without a why
Bend, break, fall, and die

IX.
The sower scattering his seed
Heeds the internal coming to be
Shakes each kernel from its husk
Un-forsaken by eternity

X.
The work of being world and making
Breaking earth in old peasant's shoes
The slow bleeding-out day to day
Unconcealing our mortal clay

XI.
Come we have upon the altar
Slaughter, bread, psalter
Cowled priests and bells
Spells, water, wine, blood

XII.
Conjured winged tricksters rise
Disguised from his unrepentant palette
Spectres snatching tatters and dregs
God's self-portrait hued by saudade

XIII.
The artist seeks with naked heart
Not apart but inhabiting the wheat-field
A scare-crow clothed with scraps
Of grace and ragged love

Blessings and obliged.

Before Pope Francis there was another and I wrote this poem for him…and Bella.  Benedetto XVI once wrote, "In the end, even the "yes" of Love is a source of suffering--love always requires that I allow myself to be wounded otherwise it ceases to be love."  Those are hard words for me to embrace right now, except for grace.

Sedia Vacante
Papa Vecchio
E Bella

#1. The Agony in the Garden

Benedetto tallies his rosary alone as
Fall shadows the single window
Where light escapes over the Leonine walls
Shoe-less Sisters have left tea and schnapps
Beside a phone that no longer rings

#2. The Scourging at the Pillar

Flushed Cardinals once bobbed their beaks
In and out of feeders near his cell
But the old man no longer chases away
The black crows who rob their seed and
Steal their chicks

#3. The Crowning with Thorns

Once there was a young woman in Schulstraße
Who tormented him with night-sweats and doubt
But she did not survive the war and his
Cloistered loins never burned for another though
Her body was never found

#4. The Carrying of the Cross

Mozart has finished his quintet but
the old priest is so deep in prayer with
The Virgin Mother
Just a single eye cracks when
Purring Bella claws into his lap

#5. The Crucifixion and Death

Only the boisterous cheers and applause
Carried by the wind from
The far side of Vatican hill
Cause his fingers to forget their place
Among the five sorrowful mysteries

Outside my  studio/shed

Klediments:

"The world is divided between capitalism and fundamentalism – in other words, between those who believe too little and those who believe too much." (Zizek).

“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in." (Toni Morrison)

* I am making a list of all my beliefs that I would be willing to spend 5 days in jail for as my staunch sister Kim Davis in Kentucky did.  So far its a very short list.

* Not that anybody in the debates asked for his birth certificate, but I believe that #2 Presidential candidate Ben Carson was born in Detroit to Seventh-Day Adventist parents. (wiki)

*I'm so over self-validating, closed-circuit systems of mutually reinforcing assumptions and their apologetics that ever more deeply beg the question, and the mental/emotional knots they tie folks up in."  (David Fetcho)

* Roman Catholic politicians of all kinds may disagree, but I'm not sure that Pope Francis is entirely on board with the historical religious project of converting or killing all heretics, infidels, and unbelievers.  Interestingly, it seem that others are willing to take up the challenge?  Well, God never closes a door without opening……

* ''Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.'' (J)

*  “Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation. It makes history possible.” (Jacques Ellul )

*Sometimes, no matter how often or loudly or how much apparent love, grace, and forgiveness, I proclaim, my own prayers still seem boil down to, "Lord, smite my enemies."  Fortunately, I am my own worst enemy.

*  “When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.”  (Raymond Carver)

*  “Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.” (Marilynne Robinson)

*We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This did not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."  (Walter Benjamin)

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” (Wendell Berry)

* "And that work of liberation is not *glorification* of the self, but rather a kind of social freedom for the continual and persistent resistance against other lords." (prof. Ry Siggelkow)

**  “What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”  (George R.R. Martin)

*  Forgiveness loves the past with hope—rather than with desire—that it will not in the end have been simply what it was." (prof. Craig Keen)

I have seen enough death to know that dying isn’t just dying. There are a million ways to die and live.   Jesus has the one. We have our million."  (prof. Anne Michelle Carpenter).

*  "So awestruck were we, by the falling stars, that we never noticed that the world was burning.  And as the smoke filled our throats, our final words — we spoke without knowing we would forever after be silent — were ‘thank you’.   Then we too were burning.  With the plants, with the oceans, with the animals,we were all of us burning.  Our lungs blossoming into flowers; the fire in our bones at last released to join the fire in the earth, in the air, on the water."  (Dan MzacKenzie)

"Light has come into the world, and the darkness will never overcome it." (J)

Blessings, and very much obliged.    

                                                   "Momma they shot me."

99 days ago Tywanza Sanders died in his Mother's arms in the Charleston church massacre.  I witnessed his mother Felicia Sanders on video this morning praying God's Grace and mercy for all her son's killers. I had already forgotten about her with so much else going on in the news. I don't really believe in Jesus, not like Felicia does, not yet. But I stifled the rage and hate that inhabits my inconsistent heart and I prayed with her--that is to say, I silently mouthed the words; 'forgive them.' Sometimes I wonder how God mourns. So like many others before me have done, I brought my wounds and prayers to Jerusalem and wept upon the marble Stone of Unction where Jesus mangled body was prepared for burial. The ancient marble slab at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is now half worn away by all the tears and kisses of the centuries of mourners. Some believe that when our sorrow and grief have melted that stone completely away, then Jesus will return and gather all those redeemed tears into a New World. I pray it may be so. I pray that we don't just replace the stone.

Mother; Felicia, forgive me.

Late Gothic Pieta from Lubiąż in Lower Silesia, Poland.

Over Whidbey Island towards Mt. Tahoma.

Got to do some cloud watching.  I thought I saw Pak-Man gobbling the sun, some others saw an elephant or polar bear upper right; but someone else saw that rock monster from The Hobbit decomposing below the sun.  A bit of an argument broke out….I'm not sure how to tell who won or lost?  Maybe its like Grace?

Czeslaw Milosz wrote that, "When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever say he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.’  (An old Jew of Galicia, from "The Captive Mind").  Obliged, Grace, and Blessings.

*** Klediments:

*** https://youtu.be/CkPo6_EwSZ0

*** Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe): "Horse killers! Killers! Murderers! You're liars! All of you, liars! You're only happy when you can see something die! Why don't you kill yourself to be happy? You and your God's country! Freedom! I pity you! You're three dear, sweet, dead men!"

*** In "The Misfits," (Marilyn's and Clark Gable's last movies) three broken-back old cowboys hunt wild mustang horses for scratch and dog food while believing that their lust for Roslyn (MM) will save them from death.  But in this scene Marilyn is outraged by their violence and barbarity and she attempts to stop the slaughter.  The screenplay was written by playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn's husband, and its based, I think, on an earlier actual experience.  I am reading Miller's autobiography and he recounts that when he and Marilyn were living at Amagansett long island she encountered the surf-net fishers early one morning.  The fishers drug their nets onto the beach then marketed the "money fish" but left all the writhing "trash fish" to slowly suffocate and die on the beach.  Marilyn was horrified and began to get up early and follow these fishers and gather up all the dying fish and return them to the water.  She became obsessed with stopping this daily slaughter ignored by everyone else and began rescuing the condemned fish every morning.  Marilyn it seems (like Pope Francis?) rejected the economic ideology that classifies life as either 'marketable,' or 'trash,' but her life-saving work took a painful, physical and spiritual toll on her.  A soaked-through Marilyn could often be witnessed shivering, stumbling, along the beach weeping and trying to get the dying fish back into the ocean, until one day she completely collapsed.  Marilyn never fully recovered from that "break-down," and subsequent suicide attempt even though she was hospitalized for "treatment."  She eventually recovered just enough to finish "The Misfits," but perhaps at the cost of her life.  Other than academic/σαρκικός I have never really had much of an interest in Marilyn until recently, but it was this story and movie that have caused me to engage her again with more seriousness, sorrow, and maybe even reverence.  I agree with what Clifford Odets said: “If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

*** Not so different than most of us, Marilyn is/was too often made a prisoner of the discourses that attended her.  But she was also, it seems to me, very aware of the web of narratives that attempted to define and ensnare her, and she often tried to resist, challenge, play with, and profit from those narratives.  However, the Overlords of culture and administration are more clever and powerful than Marilyn and many others suppose and often those who set out to confront the 'death-dealing' masters of the 'precession of simulacrum' suffer mightily from the encounter.  So of course I trust nothing that is written about Marilyn, and nothing that was written by her; i don't trust words--and neither did Marilyn.  She adored all poets though and wanted to be one, and so she was.  Not that being a poet instead of an actor would have saved her.  Here's a favorite of mine by Marilyn written in 1958.

That silent river which stirs
And swells itself with whatever passes over it
Wind, rain, great ships
I love the river – never unmoored
By anything

It’s quiet now
And the silence is alone
Except for the rumbling of things unknown
Distant drums very present
But for the piercing of screams
And the whispers of things
Sharp sounds and then suddenly hushed
To moans beyond sadness – terror beyond
Fear
The cry of things dim and too young to be known yet
The sobs of life itself

And bear the pain & the joy
Of newness on your limbs

Loneliness – be still

***  How could that poem not break open your heart and heal it again?  The Marilyn who wrote that poem is the same one who saved the dying trash-fish on the beach and saved the wild horses and the same one that escaped "The Black Dahlia" serial killer (or one of them).  Perhaps we could call her *Saint Marilyn of Amagansatt*  Patron saint of those who are suffocating, and those who were raped at age 6, and those left to die as un-marketable, and whores and those who must live life as only marketable, and the patron saint of horses (if horses have saints) and especially the patron saint of the beautiful who never got their own saint until Marilyn died.  

***  Marilyn's last words on screen were, "Which way is home…How do you find your way home in the dark."  But I don't think that Arthur Miller's answer is true, he wrote, "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was.  She was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."  But Miller was also one of those desperate clawing men pulling at her clothes.  What Marilyn needed was not more cynicism or fantasy but the kind of love that finding her broken, floundering, and suffocating would return her to life-giving water.

Much Obliged.

Madre dei Dolori
(Mother of Sorrows)

 “Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t mold.) (So the voices won’t scream.) (So I don’t reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won’t rattle.) (So I don’t weep on the bus.) (So I don’t wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don’t jump at car horns.) (So I don’t jump at cat-calls.) (So I don’t jump a bridge.) (So I don’t twitch.) (So I don’t riot.) (So I don’t slit a strange man’s throat.)”  ― Jeanann Verlee

Obliged.

Somebody said/quoted (maybe Ben Myers or B Hart ?) that "Christianity doesn't provide a theoretical answer to the problem of evil, but particular responses to the experience of suffering."

This 'painting' is one of my particular responses.  

Dan M/O shared this quote today:  "The great challenge is *living* your wounds through instead of *thinking* them through. It is better to cry than to worry... You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds."  Its from Nouwen's, "The Inner Wound of Love." 

I am hoping that its true, that my heart is bigger than my wounds.   

This is only the second time that I used Ajax tar as a medium, its is a small study (36" X 24") for a possible "life" size that I am thinking about making.  The figure (barbed wire and tar) is perhaps refusing/resisting the encompassing whiteness?  Or perhaps becoming subsumed into whiteness?  Or emerging from…who the heck knows, its art?…or is it?  

"Some days, all I know is that the God-man has a fissure in his heart too…I have seen enough death to know that dying isn’t just dying. There are a million ways to die and live.   Jesus has the one.  We have our million."  Theologian Anne Michele Carpenter 

The Lynching, by Claude McKay

His Spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven. 

His father, by the cruelest way of pain, 

Had bidden him to his bosom once again; 

The awful sin remained still unforgiven. 

All night a bright and solitary star 

(Perchance the one that ever guided him, 

Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) 

Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. 

Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view 

The ghastly body swaying in the sun 

The women thronged to look, but never a one 

Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; 

And little lads, lynchers that were to be, 

Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

Blessings and obliged.   

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. 

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. 

Whodunnit.  96'X 36' Acrylic/painting/collage

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”  Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.   

I decided to create a painting/diagram/collage, illustrating the most impressive in my annual round up of conspiracy theories gleaned from my wonderful Facebook friends pages this year.  It all began with a Jesuit Sasquatch who ran a rat-line to help Nazi child molesters escape to Argentina through secret Roman tunnels under the Castel Sant'Angelo.  However that was merely the tip of this diabolical conspiracy!  While in hiding the Sasquatch uncovered evidence in the secret Vatican archives revealing his botched circumcision reversal, and that he had been the acting Platzhirsch of the Amerikadeutscher Bund!  The shock of this revelation so transmogrified him he felt compelled to destroy of all Western civilization, but in a clever way that would lay the blame off on hippies, Muslims, and the Teamsters Union.  So conspiring together with a cabal of expatriate White Russians, the 8 year old Barrack Obama, a cadre of Cubano ex-falangists, and Luca Brasi, who was not only Godfather Corleone's enforcer but also John Foster Dulles' polyvinyl-chloride lover, the disguised Sasquatch sniper waited on the grassy knoll in Dallas for the Archduke Ferdinand to drive by.  His plot was foiled, however, by an alien race of human impersonators whose patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, assassinated president Kennedy by mistake in an attempt to destroy SKYNET before it obtained a conscious state of singularity and thus could dominate the multiverse.  Inexorably, the self-hating Wookiee, would seek his revenge by attempting to demolish the headquarters of the National Football League whose members were responsible for imposing the use of "astro-turf"™ on football fields (it is common knowledge that Jews have never liked natural grass, h/t to Seinfeld).  SKYNET fought back by infiltrating Wikipedia and insinuating factual errors into Wiki articles.  The tragically circumcised Wookiee became the Gollum of the Bush/Clinton--Weyland/Yutani corporations and acting on falsified information he mistakenly destroyed the Twin Towers in New York thinking that that was where the NFL headquarters were located.  But In fact, it was all those liberal, dirt-worshipping, blue-skinned, *Na-vi* from the planet Pandora who hacked the NSA main frame in order to seek revenge for the obliteration of their Sacred Home-Tree!  The Marxish Na-vi had hoped that while the country was distracted by the collapsing twin towers that through the imposition of gay marriage and legalized marijuana, they could conquer Earth through population attrition.  The vigilant Pope Benedict XVI, head of "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn," uncovered this insidious and contraceptive plot and was on the verge of exposing the entire conspiracy when he was abducted and replaced by a Cyberdine Systems™ artificial life form.  This Teutonic android Pope Benedict XVI was then "retired" to reputedly "fast and pray," but in fact he was eliminated altogether to make room for the more "progressive" Pope Francis™ a Jesuit plotter, 9-11 Truther, and stooge of the socialistic gay-Sasquatch agenda, who seeks only to destroy Amerika--god's third and final choice of peoples!  "Why?" you may rightly ask, "have you not heard of this massive conspiracy before?"  Well, it should be obvious that the *Powers That Be* have purposely kept it off of the History Channel! 

(Or maybe its more like my old Rebbe used to say after smacking me on the back of the head, "Daniel, don't over complicate things, its as simple as this.  The strongest cave-man (sic) with the biggest club takes the plushest cave and the most bulbous Kardashian").

This video is a close up for those wanting a closer look.   Much obliged again y'all and see you next year.    

***  Klediment:

***  “Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?”  Orson Scott Card, "Children of the Mind."

***  I was at 3 different Easter…get-togethers(?) Easter weekend but I never saw an actual chicken egg at any of them.  It seems that plastic "eggs" filled with small toys, candy, and fast-food gift-certificates are more popular and have mostly replaced hunting for "real" eggs.  I also didn't hear as often this year that old charge that Easter is merely a 'myth' and that Christianity shamefully mis-appropriated various Spring/fertility gods and 'pagan' rituals into the church tradition and transformed them into what we use to call Easter.  For those of us lucky/oppressed enough to have been raised in the Italian/Catholic tradition I can recall growing up with Easter celebrations at Saint Angelus Merci, similar to those in New York, Sicily, Mexico, Spain, and that still occur in much of the Latin world.  One of my favorites that I always wanted to attend is the 24 hour "Mysteries of Trapani" procession close to my family's home town of Bagheria.  There are 20 religious groups each representing moments in Jesus life and death reenacting 20 mysteries.  The guild of butchers constructs and raises the cross, the bakers guild crowns Christ with thorns, the fishers wash Jesus feet, and so on.  In Palermo where many other of my people hail from, they add two pilgrims masked like devils in the yellow and red of death wander the streets during their procession and hassle passers-by and try to prevent the 2 statues of Jesus and Mary from meeting each other.  Eventually the devils are foiled though and the Virgin and Jesus meet and "vasa vasa," (kiss kiss).  I reckon I will leave it the theological experts to determine how much of these celebrations are the result/fault of 'Pagan' influences.

Many usamericans however, have understandably jettisoned most of these out-dated and perhaps even idolatrous traditions and replaced them with something called an "Egg Scramble."  Petroleum-based Plastic ovals from China are hidden all over a local park or football field.  Kids are lined up.  A starter pistol is fired.  The parents all yell "GO!"  And the kids scramble to get the most eggs/prizes that they possibly can.  Of course there are only so many eggs to go around so the fastest and most assertive kids get more eggs than the slower, smaller, less agile, less whatever kids.  No coddling the losers though and parents must keep their distance, so this contest also offers the kids a kind of life-lesson about how the real world works.  The pre-literate kids always seem a little disappointed though when they finally open their plastic shell and there is just a pice of paper in it.  But they do get the chance to learn something about delay of gratification and the complexities of non-fungilble currency trading.  Compared to the "egg scramble," tie-dyed chicken eggs and glo in the dark peeps seem like fading orthodox traditions!  Blessings and Obliged.

King crab legs 

Klediments:

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”  Wendell Berry

I saw these crab legs at the store for 22 bucks a pound.  By my reckoning that makes a single King crab worth over a hundred dollars.  I haven't eaten one leg since my crab fishing days ended.

Its 4 in the morning and our wonderful dog Tehya just died and so we aren't sleeping but grieving, praying, and thinking, about our common lives together with all life on this Earth. 

Langley Dock

I took this photo today.  Below at the dock the crabber "Alsea" is ready for sea trials and then will be heading North to the Bering sea.  Above the Cumulus clouds are beginning to bunch up against the Cascades and create some impressive combinations in the convergent zone.  

Years ago I heard a sermon I think from Father Berbatov in Dutch Harbor AK about a story he was told by an Alaskan crabber who once caught a massive sea-turtle that had wandered far from her habitat in tropical waters.  The crew dumped the turtle out onto the deck and they all marveled at how amazing and exotic the turtle looked writhing among the red crabs.  The fisher said that he would never forget the discussion they had about what to do with the turtle, whether it was edible or not or if they could sell it.  Finally it was decided to kill it.  The fisherman told him that he had never regretted anything more in his life, that he knew in his heart that something had failed and been lost in all of them in that moment.

I can not say that anything ever failed in Tehya's heart.

Tehya and Carlee Rae

I have also walked this heart-breaking road with others many times.  It may be that the loss of a dog or other pet may be one of the most common and universal forms of grief and sorrow that we (usamericans) can share.  In some ways its surprising that churches and other religious/spiritual expressions don't imagine and create some/more liturgies that we can share together when we experience the loss of our 'Anam Caras' or animal Soul Friends.  John O'Donohue said that, "When my faithful dog rests his head upon my knee, I feel God's heartbeat."  I am going to miss her head on my knee, and I pray that I can learn to hear God's heartbeat everywhere.  Blessings and much obliged  brothers and sisters. 

Untitled.  By Peter Kline

Klediments:  The Cloud-Reader.

“To make myself understood and to diminish the distance between us, I called out: “I am an evening cloud too.” They stopped still, evidently taking a good look at me. Then they stretched towards me their fine, transparent, rosy fingers. That is how evening clouds greet each other and they had recognized me.”  Rainer Maria Rilke, "Stories of God."

My Facebook friend Peter Kline made these 'clouds.'

But who are these clouds?  Where did they come from and what are they doing?  At first I thought bleeding, other times crying.  Sometimes they look like seeping wounds other times like Christmas ornaments or apocalyptic fruit caught in festering conflagrations.  But as the poet said, “sixty one years of my life had passed before I understood that clouds were not my enemy; that they were beautiful, and that I needed them. I suppose this, for me, marked the beginning of wisdom.”

I have been studying the science of clouds for months now but Peter's 'clouds' are…off the charts.  I have never actually seen clouds like them in any text book, schematic, photograph, or sky, although I may have spotted them in a dream once but they were upside down and black and white; more like dark comets streaking away from our desperate wishes.  But over time I am getting to know Peter's clouds and I am trying to let them teach me how to read them.  But it will not be for me to say who they are.  Even now this rage for order, classification, control, remains too strong in my heart and if not overcome it will eventually blind and kill me--unless what is written is true, that although my wings have been lost and forgotten someday I will surrender all my sorrows in a sky full of grace.

So let me share this inspiring poem by my neighbor David Whyte, an internationally recognized and respected poet and writer.  And although I have read his poems for decades and he lives close by, I have never met Mr. Whyte, but I did once have the privilege to make repairs to his house while he was speaking abroad.   

THE OPENING OF EYES

That day I saw beneath dark clouds,

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before,

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing,

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

Perhaps some poetry, like some paintings, needs a drop-cloth to collect the runoff, drips, and spatter. Notice how Peter's clouds rest on a drip catcher, as if there was such surplus of meaning or intention that one canvas couldn't contain or control it.  The same happens with writing sometimes, the pigments in the saturated language gets drawn by gravity or flung by force and whatever is not masked-off gets splattered.  These splatters though can act like the seeding of frigid clouds, and their self-emptying can bring rain to parched souls, but of course sometimes they cause flash-floods and devastation too.  There is an interesting word though for that familiar scent that rain makes when it falls on drought stricken soil, it is called "Petrichor," from the Greek, 'petra' meaning ‘stone’ + 'ichor,' which is the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.  I once cleverly thought to call Peter's painting "Petrichor," but only until a more fitting word fell from a different cloud, one of Philip Levine's poems titled "Gospel."  The word he used was "Soughing." Soughing as I choose to define it is the sound wind makes passing through trees or sea-surge as it floods up a sandy beach, but also the thrush of a wing-beat, the breath between a mother's sighs, or the call of angels gathering the heavens just before the last trumpet sounds.   

Gospel

The pines make 

a music like no other, rising and 

falling like a distant surf at night 

that calms the darkness before 

first light. "Soughing" we call it, from 

Old English, no less. How weightless 

words are when nothing will do.

Soughing clouds aren't weightless though, any more than soughing words are.  I read in "The Cloud-spotters Guide," that the average cumulus cloud weighs the same as 80 elephants!  Some Hindus believe that clouds are the spiritual cousins of flying albino elephants who brought rain and life and so they worshipped them.  Apparently elephants, as well as words, may have lost these magical powers, nevertheless I persist in praying and the rain keeps falling, or not.  Much obliged.         

"Trinity"  Acrylic on board.  42" X 96"

 I have for now suspended my theological investigations and I have taken upon myself the structured and disciplined study of clouds.    

“The law of computers is the same as the law of the marketplace. The earth's atmosphere was divided up into a network of cubes, each reducible to a collection of points, and each point the product of a set of calculations. As far as science was concerned, this was the end of clouds, which were but a series of coordinates simulated in a space of greater than three dimensions.”  Stéphane Audeguy, "The Theory of Clouds."

Sometimes I wonder if we haven't done that same thing to God?  Anyway, so far my favorite standard cloud is called a Cumulonimbus, you can find a picture on page 32 in the "Cloud Collectors Handbook," (or, depending on where you live you could maybe just look up?).  Of course you have to get the language correct to really know what you are looking at (it's the same with birdwatching). Right now I'm focusing on what's called a "fallstreak hole," also known as a "hole punch cloud."

Hole Punch Clouds

Hole punch clouds are sometimes mistaken for UFO's or prophetic sighns, just like a lot of clouds. Perhaps you will notice that that particular cloud's name is not Latin like most cloud names are. Indeed, until Luke Howard assigned labels to clouds no one, not even the Greeks, had thought to give all the different cloud-shapes names.

Although I have watched clouds my whole life I'm still a beginner and I often have a difficult time identifying all the cloud-forms, altitudes, and properties.  The transitional borderlines among evolving nimbostratus, stratus cumulous, cumulous, becoming cumulonimbus, are not easy for a novice to delineate and there is a lot of debate among the various cloud reading authorities just where these taxonomical borders are.  It turns out Nephologists (one who studies clouds, nepho is the Greek word for a vigilant watcher, like when Jesus says, "watch and pray") can be a fractious bunch!  And I thought *bird watchers* were a snooty bunch of tweed-vested Episcopalians!  Anyway, above is one of my cloud paintings and I hope to post some photos from my practicum as my inquiries continue.  Much obliged.

***  Klediments:  'The Darkness Is Enough'

Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough."

Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941.

I very much admire this poem/prayer by T.M..   However I was watching TM's last presentation before his death in Thailand on youtube and I am less impressed with his last recorded words which were: "…So I will disappear from view and we can all have a coke™ or something."  I also question his assertion that the gospel, at least as it engages with economics, can only be lived in a monastery. Of course I could be wrong on this too, as T.M. says.  Still, as an electrician, I can't help but feel that if Merton would have had a little basic knowledge about electrons he might have lived another 25 years.   Here is a link to the short video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WXo4ktQrg8

***  There is always an abiding interest in who "The Richest Person In the World" is.  I don't know if there has been as much (or any) research about who is the "Poorest Person In the World."  Perhaps that is because their can be only one richest person but many, many, poorest people?  If you think about it, its possible to have whole populations of absolute poor with only one rich person on top (surprisingly, this is not that hard to imagine).

***  Photo of the week:  "Dominion"

Puget Sound

"It took dominion everywhere."  Poem of the week is "Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens.  I shot this photo while working on a high bluff in Skachett Head.  That's Seattle and the space needle to the right.  Below in the sound, that tiny long dark shape is a nuclear submarine with enough weaponry to destroy all life on earth.

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,  
And round it was, upon a hill.  
It made the slovenly wilderness  
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.  
The jar was round upon the ground  
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.  
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,  
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

***

 

**** Miro: “Painting is a sandbox for the subconscious mind,  I intend to destroy, destroy everything that exists in painting. I have utter contempt for painting.”

On top is my grand daughter Emily looking at my painted copy of a Miro for the yearly 'Forgery Art Show' here on the island.  On the bottom is the original by Miro.  Miro offered an explanation of this painting, something that I resist doing for my own art, and this is an example why. 

"At first glance this painting may look abstract, but it is a landscape filled with rich iconography and suggestions of political strife. The large beige circle is a cross-section of the trunk of a carob tree that sprouts a leaf and a giant, all-seeing eye bisected by the horizon line. The stick-figured hunter, with a lit pipe protruding from his mouth, holds a freshly killed rabbit in one hand and a smoking rifle in the other."

Miro had an affinity for Catalonian culture, language and independence, and painted this work as an expression of his patriotic fervor. Nevertheless, despite Miro's painting the Catalonian people remain mostly enthralled to their Spanish overlords.  Perhaps the power of art to influence the life-world needs to be re-evaluated?

Anyway, Emily thought that the abstract shapes looked like bumble bees and she would make buzzing noises, touch the painting and then quickly pull her hand away giggling and then pretend to run away. 

Btw, there is a nice copy of Van Gogh's "The Sower" on the other side of the Miro.  Most of my paintings are painted on both sides so a customer really gets 2 paintings for the price of one.  I sometimes wonder how much 2 forgeries like these might be worth to someone?

The Sower  VanGogh/Imburgia  20X40 acrylic on board

****  This weeks fun facts:  These were the most cited social science book authors in 2007.  Not surprised by Foucault @#1, but a bit by Bourdieu at #2.  However I am mostly surprised that Nietzsche and Benjamin, who are so quotable, are so low on the list. 

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Philosophy, criticism 2,521

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Sociology 2,465

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Philosophy 1,874

Albert Bandura (1925- ) Psychology 1,536

Anthony Giddens (1938- ) Sociology 1,303

Erving Goffman (1922-1982) Sociology 1,066

Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) Philosophy, sociology 1,049

Max Weber (1864-1920) Sociology 971

Judith Butler (1956- ) Philosophy 960

Bruno Latour (1947- ) Sociology, anthropology 944

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Psychoanalysis 903

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) Philosophy 897

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Philosophy 882

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Philosophy 874

Noam Chomsky (1928- ) Linguistics, philosophy 812

Ulrich Beck (1944- ) Sociology 733

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Philosophy 725

David Harvey (1935- ) Geography 723

John Rawls (1921-2002) Philosophy 708

Geert Hofstede (1928- ) Cultural studies 700

Edward W. Said (1935-2003) Criticism 694

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Sociology 662

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Criticism, philosophy 631

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) Anthropology 596

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Political theory 593

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Criticism, philosophy 583

Henri Tajfel (1919-1982) Social psychology 583

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Philosophy 583

Barney G. Glaser (1930- ) Sociology 577

George Lakoff (1941- ) Linguistics 577

John Dewey (1859-1952) Philosophy, education 575

Benedict Anderson (1936- ) International studies 573

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) Philosophy 566

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) philosophy, criticism 526

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) philosophy of science 519

Karl Marx (1818-1883) Political theory, economics, 501

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Philosophy 501

Blessings and obliged.