Hello Again...is it You I'm looking for???(smile)
I am new to Rosh Hashanah (by a couple of years), and I am also a student of religious studies. This year is perhaps my last as an undergraduate and it is packed to the brim with stories...myths, belief systems. The full spectrum of questions about who we are and why and how. Through all of this there are times when I question my own beliefs, where I want to cry out and scream at the top of my lungs...where beliefs themselves seem a muddled puddle of words dodging around the absence of solidity.
But I press forward, saying my prayers in the morning and feeling something there without words, the moments that I cannot figure out why I carry on in this same manner, when all is in front of my face but so painfully out of my grasp, everything holding on by some thread I may never see.
Through all of this there is a soft whispering, a gift of an invite...Rosh Hashanah is special, go toward this. Follow the thoughts which you cannot hear and let your heart out pulse the rhythms of your defences. And I do. And I will. And we shall see for what has been inscribed into this
~Book Of Life.
and yes, this is a mosque.
The Artist is a Holy Man of sorts...revered, respected, bringing out the humanness in humanity.
thing and, disregarding its outer form, gaze into its innerness and perceive its essence, and
to be able to convey this in his painting.This is how an artist can serve his Creator."
— The Rebbe
Jay Z and Justin Timberlake's new song 'Holy Grail' caught my attention for a moment...a love ballad to Fame, an ode to the addictive ride of people's adulation, and I started to think about personality, a person's personality, a group's personality, an entire nation's personality...
This is a song about all of our pain in this, planet. Each of us experience it on our own level...but how many people do you know who truly are autonomous beings motivated by a healthy love for themselves?
The feast was there, but it is consumed in a ravishment equal to that of a black hole, and we sit at these cold tables seeking the next...
"Знаю, не сможешь меня разлюбить"
I know Right?????
"If only fame had an I.V., baby could I bear
Being away from you, I found the vein, put it in here
Being away from you, I found the vein, put it in here
I live for the applause, applause, applause
Live for the way that you cheer and scream for me"
-Gaga lyric, Song: 'Applause'
Capitalism creates gods out of consumers, (if only briefly) allowing them to feel as all powerful, and all knowing...they can go to a holy space, a flourescently luminescent place, where they are always right and others must act to serve them all which they have come to desire.
And amidst the waves of average classes the people must, each in their own turn (or hourly shift) bear this yoke of slavery and submissiveness in serving out this dished up fantasy to any type of half breed that wanders through those glossy revolving gates.
to that place where we're in a dream state, where we're thinking about imaginary ways of
existing and experiencing and fantasizing what we may want to do with our lives.....we need
things that are going to uplift, that are going to bring positive influences. We're not getting it
from the news, so guess who has to do it? Us artists."
Story excerpt from The New Yorker:
For the past ten years or so, propelled by an epiphany he once had at the loading dock of a Winn Dixie, the artist Brendan O’Connell has been painting Walmarts: people shopping, and products on shelves, and people removing products from shelves and paying for them.
At first, Walmart threw him out of its stores, but now they regard the work as revealing something essential and meaningful in the Walmart Universe. He is, as one company executive said, capturing “the art in the Wonderbread; the art in the Jif.”
Five trading myths... Busted
by Julian Close
By the end of 2013, I will have begun my 20th year as a daily market watcher, sometimes advisor, buy-and-hold investor and occasional prognosticator. I have learned a thing or two in that time, but still, this is no easy game. Pitfalls abound, even for the cagey, the wary and the jaded. For the uninitiated, the perils are doubled, as a presumably different cadre of kooks and well-intentioned nitwits constantly flood the channels of information with gobbledygook while impeccably dressed sociopaths often spout outright lies for a quick pay day.
A snake is a snake is a snake, is a snake.
National Geographic Photos...
Lions in the Rain
Lions Drying Off
Echo and Narcissus (1903)
John William Waterhouse
Echo and Narcissus is in the genre of classical mythology. In Ovid's version of the myth, Narcissus was the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. His parents were told that he would live to an old age if he did not look at himself. He rejected all the nymphs and women who fell in love with him. One of these was the nymph Echo, who was so upset by her rejection that she withdrew from life and wasted away until all that was left was a whisper. Her prayers were heard by the goddess Nemesis who caused Narcissus to fall in love with his own reflection. He continued to look at his reflection until he died. A narcissus flower grew on the spot where he died.
Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)
The painting shows Narcissus sitting in a pool, gazing down. Not far away there is a decaying stone figure which corresponds closely to him but is perceived quite differently; as a hand holding up a bulb or egg from which a Narcissus is growing.
"I was admired by the media - now I am constantly ignored!
At first, an object of derision and morbid fascination, the novelty wore off and the media moved on to other Narcissists."
The World of Power has the Dynamics of the Jungle.
Speaking of the jungle, Apocalypse Now was filmed in the Philippines in the late 1970's.
Francis Coppola with two priests on set
The book Dr. Suess never wrote...
A sweet morsel of pie,
an eye for an eye,
the whims of a suitor
eat you up, and you cry
cry out for death
or rise up to forget...
if he will not go away,
if he is intent to stay,
to cloud your sunshine
every day
than by all means my friend
learn to take a stand,
should freedom and justice
a personal definition demand,
do you follow my little story?
do you fancy this tiny myth?
sharpen the mind above all else
they won't expect the final hit.
'Enough'
(2002) Jennifer Lopez:
Director Michael Apted
Fun With Perspectives:
According to the Gnostic world view, there were many Angels involved in building or putting together the parts of the Human Being Body, beginning with the first one Raphao who created the head, down to the toes, by Abrana. 365 Angels to be exact, including those we have to thank for perception, imagination, desire, and grief. Each Angel (or Demon) had it's own body part or psychic component to be responsible for.
Of course this is intriguing...
I just couldn't help but thinking about the automobile assembly line, perhaps some of us are Chryslers, LeBarons...Moi, well most certainly I would be a...well, I don't want to 'toot my own horn' here. (smiles)
Rob Dougan
Rob Dougan, is an Australian composer, known for his genre-blending music. Mixing elements of orchestral music, trip hop, and bluesy vocals, his work is tangentially relatable to electronic music.He is known primarily for his breakthrough 1995 single "Clubbed to Death (Kurayamino Variation)", further popularised by 1999's The Matrix soundtrack.
Born: 1969, Sydney, Australia
Here are some of my favorite songs by RD:
Furious Angels
I'm Not Driving Anymore
Will You Follow Me
Nothing At All
Speed Me Toward Death
Plato on Time: Time is an Eternal image moving according to Number.
Gravity is Infinite
Time Stops
Space Makes No Sense
In The Middle of a Black Hole.
Just sayin.
Controlling the highway simply requires specifications on the vehicle.
I will end today with this not insignificant insight from Plutarch:
"Someone who loves goodness and wisdom, who is intimate and involved with virtue because of his actions, will be quietly self assured within himself, and will have no need of an admiring audience.
...this means that Reason is being nourished within and is taking root inside him, and that he is getting used to being his own source of pleasure."
I bid you all Good Tidings.
May you find the courage to be yourself.
