Saturday, July 30, 2011

[195] Green Fables Calendar

Churn Mode...Something from the archives.  I'd really love to have this calendar.
http://www.drawger.com/buzelli/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11859

Green Energy Fables
posted:
A few months ago, I was contacted by the ad agency DDB Berlin to illustrate a calendar for Entega, a German ecological energy company.  Zwölf Märchen aus der Welt der Energie (Twelve Tales from the Wolrd of Energy) includes twelve unique fables based on green energy for each month.

Sorry for the length of this post but this job was really intense. The deadline was short and I dedicated about a month and a half to this project. I really feel like this is a very important subject and I wanted to do it justice. As I sit in my overheated NYC apartment (gas powered steam boiler), it seems like Germany really has a head start on the world when it comes to using green energy.
Check out his page for the rest of them . . .

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

[194] Theoretical Movie Review - Wings of Desire

Let's call this a theoretical movie review.  Instead of telling you to watch a movie, I'll see the reviews made of a movie that I found out by chance and that strikes my fancy as something worth seeing.  I usually do this sort of thing on a more shallow level.  I don't just go to any movie on the theater, unless it is a guilty pleasure.  Foreign cinema.  It is not only Almodovar, it is not only sex, it is not only 'Alternative Movoes' for gays, there is a whole array of genres that we just miss out on.  There is not really a market for this type of cinema in Puerto Rico (unless you buy them at Specs or Borders). 

Going back to the exercise.  I choose a movie and research it.  It then becomes a welcome surprise when I discover that my choice was correct.  The premise is that I have a hunch and it turns out to be correct and it is possible to fall in love with something that you have not even seen yet.  I can think on some recent analogies, but I rather ignore them at this time.  Let's just say it is possible to fall in love with the idea of falling in love. 

Well....Wings of Desire is one of those cases.  It is a german film of angels on Earth.

The search.  It always is the chase, isn't it?  I fell in love with two songs from U2 and Nick Cave.  I was not aware that they were correlated.  The videos are presented below:

faraway so close
first the videos
U2 and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:
U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close)
http://youtu.be/o2EW9RM2LGA
(sorry, the video is not embeddable.  shame!  it is so good.)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Faraway, So Close


Empty out your pockets,
toss the lot upon the floor.
All those treasures, my friend,
you don't need them anymore.
Your days are all through dying,
they gave all their ghosts away,
so kiss close all your wounds and call living life a day.
For the planets gravitate around you,
and the stars shower down around you,
and the angels in heaven adore you,
and the saints all stand and applaud you.

so faraway,
so faraway and yet so close.

Say farewell to the passing of the years,
though all your sweet goodbyes will fall upon deaf ears.
Kiss so softly the mouths of the ones you love,
beneath the September moon and the heavens above.
And the world will turn without you,
and history will soon forget about you,
but the heavens they will reward you,
and the saints will be there to escort you.

So faraway,
so faraway and yet so close.

Do not grieve at the passing of mortality,
for life's but a thing of terrible gravity.
And the planets gravitate around you,
and the stars shall dance about you,
and the angels in heaven adore you,
and the saints all stand and applaud you.

So faraway,
so faraway and yet so close.

The movie is a criterion collection.  This means it must be visually stunning.  It is well presented by the critics.  It is the movie that influenced City of Angels. 
That movie with Nick (http://niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com/) Cage.


Then the movies as described by wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Desire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraway,_So_Close!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Angels_(film)

Then the comparative essay
http://sbahns.com/2005/12/wings-of-desire-and-far-away-so-close-a-comparative-essay/

the subject of dualism is predominant in the film...
http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1023772/content_133470654084
The Premise: On the most basic level, the plot consists of no more than “angel meets girl; angel gets girl.” The angels in Wings of Desire are ethereal beings that resemble humans in appearance -- other than sometimes sporting visible wings. These earthbound angels have existed from primordial times. Hovering overhead, perched atop tall buildings, or walking among us, they commingle with human society unnoticed except occasionally by a child. The capacity of some children to see the angels apparently relates to their incomplete development of consciousness of self:

When the child was a child,
It didn’t know it was a child.
Everything was full of life,
And all life was one.


The job of these vicarious viewers is to observe, collect, testify, and preserve. They hear excerpts from the interior monologues in the minds of humans – the contemplative or spiritual parts of their thought strands but not the mundane segments. They see, in black-and-white, and hear but have no tactile, olfactory, or gustatory sensations. They cannot intervene in the physical universe of humans, but can exert subtle psychological influences such as consoling or stirring feelings of hope or optimism. They dress in gray flannel trench coats and scarves, and wear their hair back in ponytails. Two angels in particular are central to the story: Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander).

Damiel feels a restive dissatisfaction with his lot. “It’s great to live only by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity only to the spiritual side of people. But sometimes I get fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above, I’d like to feel there’s some weight on me, to end my eternity and bind me to earth. At each step, each gust of wind, I’d like to be able to say, ‘Now, now and now’, and no longer say, ‘since always’ and ‘forever.’ To sit in the empty seat at the card table and be greeted, if only by a nod.”

Bit by bit, Damiel moves closer to a monumental decision to choose human existence. Two main influences propel him from yearning to action. First, he meets and falls in love with Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a trapeze artist, who soars under the big top with wings of her own and joie de vie. Second, he encounters an American actor, Peter Falk, playing himself (more or less), who relishes every little sensual experience of life, from the fit of a hat to a hot cup of coffee. Ultimately, Damiel chooses to fall literally from grace and to meet Marion face to face as a fellow human being.

The Themes: Wings of Desire manages the extraordinary feat of integrating primal issues pertaining to metaphysics, mental process, history, politics, and cinema. The thread that binds all together is the concept of duality. Wings of Desire is an exploration of opposites. At the metaphysical level, the duality examined is essentially the dualism of Descartes. Descartes postulated two distinct though interactive planes of reality: a spiritual domain, including subjective mental experience, and the physical universe, including the human body. Damiel and Cassiel exist in Descartes’ spiritual universe, which intersects with only the spiritual side of human existence – with the profound thoughts of people. On the other hand, the angels lack most of the modalities of perception – touch, taste, smell, and color vision (there is an inconsistency in the angels even possessing the senses of black-and-white vision and hearing, but without this inconsistency there could be no film!) and they cannot impact the physical world. Humans, by contrast have the full range of sensory and motor interaction with the physical universe but are oblivious to the spiritual universe, except for that one isolated chunk of it which is each person’s consciousness. Each person’s own subjective mind, in this dualism, is an island of the spiritual universe that has been ripped into existential isolation by the gift of sensory perception. Damiel can choose one side of the wall of existence or the other, but not both. If he falls to earth, he can gain individual identity, the full range of sensuality, and a sense of “now”, but will lose his awareness of the spiritual domain in its fullness, access to the spiritual thoughts of other people, and his existence in eternity. He can choose to observe as an angel or to be as a human being.

The delicacy of insight in Wings of Desire is at its very finest when exploring the duality of mental process. The mind is designed to create an abstract representation of the physical universe. The human mind functions as an observer of the world in which it exists (in largely that same sense that a movie watcher is an observer of the world that was created in film). By the experience of consciousness, we become spectators of the universe. A duality is created in the process, which we recognize as self and not-self -- in the words of Martin Buber. The only thing of which any person has direct experience is their own internal, subjective mental experience. All else is known only by reflection. Unlike the angels, we can never have direct access to the thoughts of another person (except in literature or film by the agency of a narrator, which is part of the beauty of such works of art). We can observe the behavior of others and, from that, try to surmise their feelings or thoughts, but we can never directly touch their internal mental life. This impenetrable wall of separation is what is sometimes referred to as existential isolation (or existential loneliness). I am always amazed when I read a review of Wings of Desire in which a reviewer complains that the scenes in which the angels listen to human thoughts are boring or move too slowly. After living a lifetime never enjoying direct knowledge of another person’s thoughts, how could one tire of the experience so quickly?

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980412/REVIEWS08/401010374/1023
The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation. It doesn't rush headlong into plot, but has the patience of its angels. It suggests what it would be like to see everything but not participate in it. We follow two angels: Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander). They listen to the thoughts of an old Holocaust victim, and of parents worried about their son, and of the passengers on trams and the people in the streets; it's like turning the dial and hearing snatches of many radio programs. They make notes about the hooker who hopes to earn enough money to go south, and the circus aerialist who fears that she will fall, because it is the night of the full moon.
You're seduced into the spell of this movie, made in 1987 by Wenders, who collaborated on the screenplay with the German playwright Peter Handke. It moves slowly, but you don't grow impatient, because there is no plot to speak of, and so you don't fret that it should move to its next predictable stage. It is about being, not doing. And then it falls into the world of doing, when the angel Damiel decides that he must become human.
He falls in love with the trapeze artist. He goes night after night to the shabby little circus where she performs above the center ring. He is touched by her doubts and vulnerability. He talks with Cassiel, the other angel, about how it would feel to feel: to be able to feed a cat, or get ink from a newspaper on your fingers. He senses a certain sympathy from one of the humans he watches, an American movie actor (Peter Falk, playing himself). "I can't see you, but I know you're here," Falk tells him. How can Falk sense him? Sometimes children can see angels, but adults are supposed to have lost the facility.
The answers to these questions are all made explicitly clear, in the new Hollywood movie "City of Angels," which is a remake of "Wings of Desire" and spells out what the original film only implies. After seeing the new film, which stars Nicolas Cage as the angel and Meg Ryan as the woman (now a heart surgeon rather than an aerialist), I went back to "Wings of Desire" again. It reminded me of the different notes that movies can strike.
"City of Angels" is a skillful romantic comedy and I enjoyed it, but it all stayed there on the screen, content to be what it was. "Wings of Desire" doesn't release its tension in a smooth plot payoff. It creates a mood of sadness and isolation, of yearning, of the transience of earthly things. If the human being is the only animal that knows it lives in time, the movie is about that knowledge.
It is a beautiful film, photographed by the legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan, who made the characters float weightlessly in Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" (the circus in the movie is named after him). When he shows the point of view of the angels, he shoots in a kind of blue-tinted monochrome. When he sees through human eyes, he shoots in color. His camera seems liberated from gravity; it floats over the city, or glides down the aisle of an airplane. It does not intrude; it observes. When the angel follows the trapeze artist into a rock club, it doesn't fall into faster cutting rhythms; it remains detached. The critic Bryant Frazer observes that Cassiel, the other angel, "leans against the wall and closes his eyes, and the stage lights cast three different shadows off his body, alternating and shifting position and color as though we're watching Cassiel's very essence fragmenting before our eyes."

Stills here:
http://losinghours.blogspot.com/2010/05/wings-of-desire.html

Now the happy hunting!  Either start looking at old video clubs or see if borders might have the criterion collection version of wings of desire.  I guess I'll carry on.  Later days all of you.  See if I find the movie and watch and then reflect on the longing I guess...

Bonus if you reached this point: Sufjan Steven - In The Mouth of Gabriel
The lyrics are God talking to how estranged he has become of Lucifer.  Bonus for citing Jorge Luis Borges The Aleph in the lyrics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story)
http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html


Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP - From the Mouth of Gabriel

Desperate measures lead to death
From the mouth of Gabriel
Who died in his sleep when the world was a very big mess
A very big mess; he saw too much
From now on I will look away from every accident
That may or may not come my way

Saw you were talking up above the Aleph room
Masquerading as a loom
Both of us saw things
No one else would see as well
From the mouth of Gabriel
No one else would hear as well
From the mouth of Gabriel, etc.

Don't be so sure of what you feel (it might as well be trouble)
From now on just let the universe be your shelter from the enemy

Your face has changed
I hardly know who you are this time
And what a mess I've made of you
You probably would but I won't let you run away
You probably should but I won't let you run away this time

Don't be afraid of loneliness some refugee beside itself
Instead of what you've got
You probably would but I won't let you go away
You probably should but I won't let you go away this time

Your face has changed
I hardly know who you are this time
And when I came into your room
You tried to jump

Now I know this is strange to hear from the mouth of God
It was something like a scene from mars
In a struggle between loves and lies
The angle kept his face covered for to keep his word
And while I spoke something left from my life
Forget about the past
Be at rest I'll make things right
And while I held you at best you nearly died
Forget about the past
And I'll try to make things right

Monday, July 18, 2011

[193] It's My Birthday and I'll Draw If I Want To




Este es un post ilustrado.  Quise presentar dibujos que he hecho entre reuniones y en mis gestiones de cumplea/nos.  El primero es continuacion de los que postee en dos articulos previos.  Aqui el Ingeniero Zinn presenta su charla de inspecciones de bomberos.  Definitivamente uno de los highlights del seminario de Profesional Autorizado donde yours truly revalidara como Inspector de Bomberos y de Salud Ambiental para la nueva division creada de la Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos (antiguo ARPE).

Disculpen el orden.  Por alguna razon el blogger esta fastidiado y hoy tengo urgencia en acabar el post.  Entre mis paradas...Ver el juego entre Argentina y Uruguay en el Cafe del Tren, la barra que colinda con mi apartment y que abre cuando esta de ganas.  Queria que ganara Argentina, pero gano Uruguay.  Que importa, si no sigo la serie...pero el juego estuvo bueno.  Pisado con cervezas...

Previo a la consabida peregrinacion a San Patricio Plaza a ver HP 7.2 comimos unos ricos helados de Lemonade Swirl (o algo asi) de Ben and Jerrys.  Bonus points for playing most of Gorillaz Demon Days while we had our ice cream.  Yo hubiese ido byrds o rolling stones, but who's complaining.  Me levanto la moral.



Entonces este dibujito viejito es de una de las visitas a la seccion de libros infantiles de Borders.  Siempre voy y compro demasiados libros discos y libros.  En este caso dos cds de los B52.
Si a eso le sumamos dos novelas graficas y la comida fuera...que ce chave, era mi cumplea/nos.
y dije que iba a ser breve.
hasta luego...

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

[192] La Toxicidad de los Noticieros

El tema de hoy raya en lo obvio.  Instintivamente lo sabemos, la noticia es toxica.  Es como el azucar, buena en pocas cantidades, shock glucemico en exceso.  Estar 24 / 7 oyendo noticias nos hace da/no, nos embrutece, nos llena las neuronas de basura e irrelevancia, lo que tiene valor se diluye o se da incompleto.  Debemos cambiar nuestro modo de consumir la noticia.  Necesitamos verdadero periodismo investigativo.  Sin agendas.  Ironicamente he averiguado esto a la mala estando sin television las pasadas par de semanas.  Lo que inicio como algo terrible: que queeeee, no podre ver Los Simuladores hoy?, y que nueva aberracion para buscar rating haran en el Grey's Anatomy de esta semana se ha convertido en sesiones de arte en nuevos estilos y redescubrir clasicos musicales del fondo del disco duro de mi compu.  Realmente no me ha hecho falta tener a la comay gritando todas las tardes o diciendome que hay tapon en la Baldorioty cada 3 minutos.

Interesante discusion inciada con este paper:
http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
April 23, 2011
"We are not rational enough to be exposed to the news-mongering press. It is a very dangerous thing, because the probabilistic mapping we get from consuming news is entirely different from the actual risks that we face. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk regardless of its real probability, no matter your intellectual sophistication. If you think you can compensate for this bias with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists who have powerful incentives to compensate for news- borne hazards have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely."


Gracias a M. Migurski por el link:
http://mike.teczno.com/snippets.html

Para el que no lea el articulo los headers:
01 - News misleads us systematically
02 - News is irrelevant
03 - News limits understanding
04 - News is toxic to your body
05 - News massively increases cognitive errors
06 - News inhibits thinking
07 - News changes the structure of your brain
08 - News is costly
09 - News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement
10 - News is produced by journalists
11 - Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always
12 - News is manipulative
13 - News makes us passive
14 - News gives us the illusion of caring
15 - News kills creativity

Food for thought.  Later days.

La caricatura sale de aqui:
http://current.com/groups/gaza/89796062_the-new-media-manipulation-how-propoganda-was-skillfully-used-in-gaza.htm

Gracias a la sugerencia enviada por una amiga via email, expandiendo en el tema de Israel.  Amerita lectura adicional.
http://www.mandeldavid.com/
http://www.blogger.com/profile/13332769678153961839

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

[191] Los Demonios de la Creatividad

Finalmente un poco de calma relativa.  Finalice el curso del Colegio de Ingenieros.  Tengo un horario relativamente normal.  Las negociaciones han mejorado un poco.  Da boss is back!  Everything is just peachy!

Fin de semana relativamente calmado.  Caminando de cuando en vez por Nueva Quisqueya.  Comiendo como todo un foodie por Viejo San Juan.  Eso es terapia.

Por aquello de cortar un poco el churning de los articulos previos decidi poner un tema esoterico.  Un escape a la realidad.  Tenua esta discusion vieja en mis anaqueles, pero nunca la presente.  De repente toma relevancia.  Quizas este influenciado en que Mildred finalmente accedio a ver Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 y quedo gratamente impresionada por el giro que le dieron a la historia.  Por si acaso no han notado ambos somos grandes fanaticos de la serie, los mangas, los mechas y el esoterismo de botica y cabalismo implicado en la historia.  Pero ese, queridos amigos, no es el tema. 

Antes de que piensen que se ha fumado la paz, no can do.  Por si acaso, las cosas siguen igual, es irreversible, simplemente que el ambiente es mucho mas llevadero.  La calma antes de la tormenta?  Solo el tiempo lo dira.

El tema tenia que ver con la creatividad y el manejo de los demonios internos.  Escribia a una amiga los otros dias y especulaba.  Le decia que para mi dibujar y escribir es una especie de escape.  Canalizo mis sentimientos, los transmuto y los expreso en un papel.  O sea.  No es plasmar la furia en un dibujo.  No es dibujar la frustracion.  Es hacer algo completamente no relacionado a mi sentimiento que me borra mis sentimientos negativos.  Es una terapia.

Entonces tropece con este artista, que descarga sus frustraciones al sistema y sus fracaso como artista de renombre en su blog.  Escribio un interesante articulo sobre como Governor's Island se ha convertido en el refugio de artistas rezagados que no logran el exito esperado.

Los links
http://www.artisticfailure.com/2009/06/17/cafa-qod-the-art-of-failure/
http://www.artisticfailure.com/

http://www.artisticfailure.com/2010/08/13/the-island-of-forgotten-artists/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/arts/13governors.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Me recordo un poco la historia de Van Gogh.  Un artista tan genial y prolifico que ironicamente murio en la pobreza, mentalmente destruido.  Les dejo recuerdos de una exhibicion de sus obras, y links hacia una coleccion de sus cartas.
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/vangogh/
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/vangogh/exhibition/
http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/files/van-gogh-final-press-release-498.pdf

Siguiendo la tradicion, siempre me gusto el estilo artistico de Van Gogh. Y Akira Kurosawa. Asi que en honor a ambos una escena de Dreams.  Una excelente pelicula que no puedo dejar de recomendar.



http://vangoghletters.org/vg/
http://vangoghletters.org/vg/with_sketches.html

Mi historia, mas que acumular links enfocaba en como los demonios (la acepcion 'daimons' griego es muy distinta de la version demoniaca negativa que se presenta en tiempos modernos).  El daimon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimonic) presentaba esa esencia creativa y fuente de inspiracion y transmutacion.  Asi que les dejo algo de la psicologia del tema y las diferencias debajo.  Aparenta ser que mi corazonada tiene un fundamento espiritual.  Les dejo la siguiente discusion:

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/90/angels_and_daimons.html
From Angels to Daimons
The idea that angels mediated between God and mankind was actually a much older one that the pseudo-Dionysius derived from the great Neoplatonists who flourished in the Hellenistic culture surrounding Alexandria in the first to fourth centuries AD. His whole system of theology in fact was cribbed wholesale from Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus and then Christianised. But in the original 'theology' the mediating beings were not called angels but daimones, daimons (or, after the Latin, if you prefer, dæmons). The idea of guardian angels comes from the Greek notion of the personal daimon.
Genius and genes
Another paradox in the nature of the personal daimon is that it can also be impersonal. Our clergyman's widow encountered a being that was clearly and intimately connected with her - yet also almost part of the landscape, like a fairy. I suggest that, while the personal daimon is exactly that - personal - it is also always grounded in the impersonal and unknowable depths of the psyche. It is also, in other words, a manifestation of the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World - as the case of Plotinus, the first and greatest of the Neoplatonic philosophers, makes clear.


Creative Daimons
In The Soul's Code (1996), James Hillman - the best of the post-Jungian analytical psychologists - develops a whole child psychology based on the idea of the personal daimon. He calls it the acorn theory, according to which "each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling… The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper and especially when it is neglected or opposed."

Since it represents the fate of the individual - since our adult 'oak' life is latent in our acorn state - the personal daimon is prescient. It knows the future - not in detail, perhaps, because it can't manipulate events, but the general pattern. It is that within us which is forever restless and unsatisfied, yearning and homesick, even when we are at home. (But we should note that it is not our conscience: the daimon is not a moralist, and so it is possible to ask our daimon to fulfil our own desires, even evil or selfish ones; we can appropriate the daimon's power for our own egotistical ends.) In short, our behaviour is not just formed by the past, as psychology tends to suppose; it can be formed retroactively by the future, by the intuition of where our calling will take us, and what we are destined to become. Hillman cites the example of many famous people's biographies where the child either knows what he might become - like Yehudi Menuhin insisting as a tiny child on having a violin, yet smashing the toy violin he was given: his daimon was already grown up and disdained to play a child's toy - or fears to know what he must become - Manolete, bravest and best of bullfighters, clung to his mother's apron strings as if he already knew the dangers he would have to encounter as an adult. Winston Churchill was a poor scholar, consigned to what we'd now call a remedial reading class, as if putting off the moment when he would have to labour for his Nobel Prize for Literature.

Thus, when we see bright children going off the rails, we should hesitate to blame their parents and their past. Their daimons are, after all, parentless and have plans for them other than the plans of parents or the conformist demands of school. (It's notable that our passion for attributing aberrant behaviour in children to dodgy parenting is highly eccentric: in traditional societies, whatever's wrong always comes from elsewhere, whether witchcraft, taboo-breaking, neglected rituals, contact with unfavourable places, a remote enemy, an angry god, a hungry ghost, an offended ancestor and so on - but never to what your mum and dad did to you, or didn't do, years ago.)

Those exceptional souls who become aware of their daimon, as Jung did, have the satisfaction of fulfilling its purpose and hence of fulfilling their true selves. But this does not make them immune to suffering; for who knows what Badlands the daimon would have us cross before we reach the Isles of the Blessed? Who knows what wrestling, what injury, we are in for - like Jacob - at the hands of our angel? What our daimon teaches us, therefore, is not to always be seeking a cure for our suffering but rather to seek a supernatural use for it. "I have had much trouble in living with my ideas," wrote Jung at the end of his long and fruitful life. "There was a daimon in me… It overpowered me, and if I was at times ruthless it was because I was in the grip of a daimon… A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon... The daimon of creativity has ruthlessly had its way with me."

For the poet, the daimon is his or her Muse, who is at the very least a mixed blessing. Keats painted portraits of his Muse in Lamia and The Belle Dame sans Merci: white-skinned, cold, irresistibly alluring figures who seduce the poet, drain him like a vampire for their own purposes, and leave him "alone and palely loitering". For, once she is awakened, the Muse will drive relentlessly to become the centre of the personality, casting aside whatever we think of as ourselves. The rewards in terms of achievement can be enormous, but they are also dangerous; and everyday life, with its little comforts and satisfactions, can be a casualty. As the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, writes feelingly in Winter Pollen (1994), the Muse "from earliest times came to the poet as a god, took possession of him, delivered the poem, then left him." It was axiomatic, he says, that she lived her own life separate from the poet's everyday personality; that she was entirely outside his control; and that she was, above all, supernatural.

The last word on personal daimons goes to the great Irish poet, WB Yeats, who wrote in his book, Mythologies (1959): "I think it was Heraclitus who said: the Daimon is our destiny. When I think of life as a struggle with the Daimon who would ever set us to the hardest work among those not impossible, I understand why there is a deep enmity between a man and his destiny, and why a man loves nothing but his destiny… I am persuaded that the Daimon delivers and deceives us, and that he wove the netting from the stars and threw the net from his shoulder…" Here is a portrait of the personal daimon which is both daunting and beautiful and, like Jung's, tinged with a poignant melancholy. For the daimon is our taskmaster, driving us to perform the most difficult work possible for us, no matter what the human cost. No wonder our feelings for it are as ambiguous as it shows itself to be. Anyone who invokes their guardian angel, therefore, should beware. It may not be as fluffy and cuddly as you'd have it. It will protect you, yes - but only the 'you' who serves its plan for your self. It will guide you, certainly - but who knows what sojourn in the wilderness this might entail? And, because the personal daimon is, finally, grounded in the impersonal Ground of Being itself, you will inevitably be led way, way out of your depth.


No es ironico?  Lei The Soul Code cuando salio en el 1996.  Fue un regalo de uno de mis cu/nados para ambos.  La teoria era que uno escogia las circunstancias que le toco vivir.  Que podias pasar la eternidad en psicoterapia quejandote de como fue culpa de mis padres, que fue culpa del alcoholismo o de la pobreza.  Que era cuando te dabas cuenta que tu tienes el control de las circunstancias que comienzas a ver la vida de otra manera.

Alguien me decia una vez que uno no cambia el mundo, sino que uno cambia la vision del mundo.  Entonces todo se transforma.  Si x me odia, puedo responder con odio, engendrando mas odio.  O puedo responder con empatia, sin responder al odio y entonces el odio se transmuta a algo menos letal.

Mas aqui:
http://intraspec.ca/daimon.php

Until [192]...

wait...wait...wait
Julio 7.  Esta interesante animacion argentina, Angel Vitamina.  Se ve bien, cortometraje aqui:


ANGELVITAMINA - TRAILER 2 / PILOTO from Diego De Rose / Wujoco on Vimeo.

http://www.angelvitamina.blogspot.com/
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/angel-vitamina-by-diego-de-rose.html

Saturday, July 2, 2011

[190] Nestorianismo, Historia Relegada al Olvido

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianismo
http://www.almargen.com.ar/sitio/seccion/cultura/hereje/index(1).html
Varias herejias cristianas descritas en el articulo arriba.  Me llamo particularmente la atencion el Nestorianismo y como de la imagen de Jesus sale Zoroastro y eventualmente versiones del Krishna.  Quien fundo que?  Los catolicos no aceptan esta doctrina, ni se menciona mucho mas alla de ser una herejia.  Sin embargo fue una escuela importante en difundir el cristianismo en el medio oriente y asia.  Algo del articulo anterior aqui:

Sin embargo, las similitudes que existen entre la figura de Zoroastro y la de Jesús son curiosísimas. Así lo testifica el escritor español F. Sánchez Dragó, refiriéndose a Zaratustra (Zoroastro): "... nació tras 15 años de gestación y la naturaleza saludó su navidad con una jubilosa danza de animales, plantas y elementos. El príncipe turanio Karpanturamo Durasrobo desencadenó la consabida degollación de criaturas intentando eliminar al Mesías, que los oráculos anunciaban. Al llegar a su mayoría de edad, y tras enfrentarse a los sacerdotes idólatras, Karpanes y Kavis, el héroe se echó al camino para ayudar a las bestias, dar alimento a los pobres, atizar el fuego y disolver en agua el mirífico jugo de haoma. Pasó luego 7 años de meditación y silencio en el fondo de una caverna y desde allí fue conducido por un arcángel al empíreo de Ahura Mazda, que lo inició en sus misterios. También recibió la visita del Maligno y resistió a sus tentaciones. Así templado volvió al mundo para dedicarse a los milagros y a la exposición de la Doctrina. Zaratustra vivió en las postrimerías del segundo milenio antes de Cristo y narró personalmente estos hechos en los cinco primeros gatha del Zendavesta. Su religión histórica y geográficamente aprisionada entre Jesús y Krishina era tan parecida a las de éstos que terminó por confundirse con ellas".

pie forzao
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2011/01/lost-history-of-christianity-by-philip.html
Sera agnosticos, pero me encantan leer las columnas religiosas que escriben en estos articulos.  Ahora si tan solo se consiguieran los libros en Puerto Rico...  Armarium Magnus rese/no este excelente libro sobre la historia escondida del Nestorianismo.  Gran lectura de sintesis de culturas:

The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins


Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, (HarperOne, 2008) 336 pages. Verdict?: 4/5 A fascinating overview of a neglected area of history.

On January 7th, AD 781, around the time Charlemagne was in the process of converting the Saxons to Christianity by the sword and Islam first reached what is now Pakistan and Kashmir, a Chinese monk called Jinging oversaw the raising of a three metre tall stele of dark stone in the northern Chinese imperial city of Chang'an (now Xi'an).  The inscription on the monument, carved in elegant Tang Dynasty calligraphy by one Lü Xiuyan, was entitled "Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin" and it celebrated 150 years of the spread of this religion in northern China.

"Daqin" or "Da Qin" was the Chinese word for the Roman Empire, though here it probably refers to Syria.  And the religion of Daqin was Christianity.  The monk Jingjing's alternate name was Adam and the stele is a testament to a largely forgotten era in Christian history - one where Nestorian and Jacobite Christianity was practised across Asia, where place names known to us from the evening news about Iraq - Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk, Tikrit - were thriving Christian centres, where the monks of Nisibis (now in Turkey) and Jundishapur (now in Iran) made translations of Aristotle that were to find their way to Europe via Muslim Spain and where Chinese Christian priests ministered to Mongol khans.  Philip Jenkins' fascinating book brings this forgotten world to life, jolts us out of a Eurocentric perspective on the rise and propagation of Christianity and poses some interesting questions about how and why religions die.
En un articulo previo habia discutido del selective pruning de las religiones.  Sobre todo indique que el catolicismo lograba su unidad forzando un dogma comun y quemando o declarando herejia cualquier cosa que se saliese de su dogma inicial.  Por ende su alto valor por la tradicion.  O sea, logro la union a golpe y porrazo.

Por el otro lado desde los dias de Lutero se hablaba de la libre interpretacion de la biblia, por lo que explica la tendencia natural de formar nuevas sectas cada vez que hay una peque/na diferencia de doctrina.

Como siempre mi nota positiva.  Uno es el reflejo de sus valores y cristiandad.  Uno es el que actua.  La religion realmente es lo de menos.  Les cierro el articulo con varios articulos sobre herejias.  El anglicanismo, fundado sobre un divorcio.  Y la Santa Inquisicion, que con una vara severa nos queria llevar a un Dios de amor.  Dios te ama, por eso te maltrata contra las acechanzas del enemigo.
comencemos con los anglicanos
http://anglicanhistory.org/socialism/fhsmyth/environment.html
las herejias
http://galeon.com/lideres2016/docs/v108.htm

http://bibliaytradicion.wordpress.com/inquisicion/las-grandes-herejias/

http://www.laeditorialvirtual.com.ar/Pages/Belloc_Hilaire/LasGrandesHerejias_01.htm
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