Zombanawi

Zombanawi, a photo by rjbeeswax on Flickr.

Discovery Project, VFS

For my third term "discovery project" at VFS I chose to learn how to create vignette's in photoshop (manually / not pre-sets), I also wanted to learn how to recreate a sort of stylized cross-prossesing look using "curves" in photoshop, again, no pre-sets.

The third component, and by far the most difficult, was to put my theoretical knowledge of Parajanov's stylistic mannerisms and try to apply some of those techniques in my own work. With special thanks to Professor James M. Steffen of Emory University in Atlanta, for answering my questions and being able to so clearly explain Parajanov's tricks, those mannerisms are:
1. Frontally staged tableaux
2. Empty picture frame as compositional device and decorative motif
3. Still life compositions
4.Tripartitie compositions within individual shots
5.Pantomime and other experiments with the actors movements
-- to a lesser degree, the self-contained nature of many shots, the use of central vanishing point and rhyming shots.

I wouldn't for a moment suggest I succeeded in recreating anything more than a mostly thoughtless homage to Parajanov's style but I do appreciate his style very much and would like to further explore his compositional techniques in the future. The pomegranates in the shots are supposed to be a lighthearted nod to one of my favorite directors and also an acknowledgement of the beauty of the vital particulars, (whether pomegranates, apples, shoes, hair, knives, or mountains...), that are necessary components in creating Beauty on the whole.

Out of my many shots I posted here in this set I think 2, or being generous, perhaps delusional, 3 of my compositions succeed. The rest are here mostly for posterity.

while walking home

while walking home: he was engaged in something-- it required that he move backwards. he was holding his arms out in front of him, he was chewing and smiling grinning. his name was glen and in his #1 hand he had a sandwich. he bought it from Mac's convenience store at 1:00am. I am not sure, I cannot be certain, but I am suggesting here it was a tuna salad sandwich. The Girl, whose name shall remain a mystery was drunk. The girl, whose fluctuating capitalization remains the constant was going to piss in an alley that was, in fact, entirely too well lit. She fell a little bit but caught herself before any damage was done. still, she swayed and thought in the brief ambience about honey coating her brain-stem, the sound of throat bubbles and reflections of form. girl, she stayed down upon the orange, the littering light. Girl was grounded and felt her head lower until it touched the pavement. she created crescent waves with the back of her neck and wanted to laugh but nothing was happening. she stood up quickly, uprighted, and became a wobble. she shouted out to Glen, "Glen" she said, she said, she said. "Glen!" she said, she said, He was pointing back at her walking backwards smiling, his cheeks were dirty and wanting kisses, he wanted to laugh at her. he was holding a tuna salad sandwich and the illumination was less immediate on the portion of sidewalk that surrounded him. the cloud i couldn't see separated all of us.

pleased

 In the mirror, I seemed a little pink, a little yellow. My eyebrows were really weedy, yellowish green and growing again. I love them. The thickeees. I love feeling manly, old, aged. In this context anyway. Oh, I imagined trimming my chest hair. It's probably time for a trim. I like my chest hair but it's might be just one of those things that needs to be scheduled/ given into. Norms.

What else. Is this a “Dear Diary” entry? Why now? Why not? Ok. Ok. On. On. On. On.

I've been revisiting my teachers again (that happens often when I'm inspired and discouraged as often as I have been recently), the Dalia Lama my favorite zealot so far. Ha. Honestly, I'm constantly inspired and improved by each lesson. The H.H.D.L. has a gift for expressing incredibly dense ideas. It's not that he makes them easier to understand so much as it becomes apparent when you read his work that his sincere desire to communicate and to not hold back, his motivation to share, if you will, is beautiful and touching. It's the wisdom that needs to be expressed. HHDL is gifting it to us, telling us that it's not easy to absorb, perhaps not even fully absorbable but that we need to dedicate ourselves to wisdom when it whispers in our ear, or face a lifetime of negligence and cowardice. You cannot remove truth from your mind even if the truth bounces between the false borders of contrary views and paradoxes.

I don't make sense as I understand. I am pleased.

Young friends worth charming.

Young friends worth charming.

Beyond the unwild paths,
you haunt away an hour, discovering days and insects,
a jar of earth with no bottom.

The ferns bellowing new fall brown,
the grown crow's sunlit, golden crowns,
past the Buddhists on the banks,
in the triangles of slow water.

It's Saturday shaking the sun,
hiccuping past each jutting rock and glinting rapid,
you
only show the universe.

The roots, avoid,
the branches, dodge,
that leaves a gap of unconscious air
and velocity to fall
from the cliffs
to the flexing rapids of Lynn Canyon
so many seconds below.

Joy in the plundering bubbles born,
my new, uncovered braveness
swims to the cliffs,
still under the sea,
it sits, it squeezes off
and the black tea of the trees
stuck on my neck, discovering me,
weighing more
I casually leave on.

I balance
upon the rocks that act as floors,
harnessing trees,
we are setting scenes
of awareness.

The Field: Is This Power

Latest from The Field: Looping State of Mind. opening track, Is This Power. Wonderful stuff.

Going to the Store

normal guy normal walk. Directed by David Lewandowski

Celebration of Light 2011

yeah, pictures of fireworks are boring but...

ka
boom

kshshshshhhhhh

Bach - Harpsichord Concerto No.5 in F Minor BWV 1056 - 2/3

Listened to this very, very loudly. Enjoyed it very, very muchly. Jast now. Dif version, but... here's to Bach and all things beautiful.

Day-end, Buddhist Inventory

I'm trying to keep an inventory at the end of each day as recommended by Buddhist teachers-- an inventory of both the good and the bad; keeping tabs, I guess you could call it. Doing so, according to this wisdom, makes determination to improve less difficult / more likely. It's all about being mindful. Being mindful requires great effort.

I inadvertently went to the beach today.
At first glance, today's bike ride was promising nothing but cool spring, four days into Summer.
Half-way through my ride around the Seawall the sun skipped past the grey with incredible warmth and nearness. I dismounted. (I didn't lock up my helmet, people don't steal helmets)(I did, however, slide my white M.E.C. L.E.D. A.K.A. 'Turtle Light' forward so that the black elastic band was most visible and the LED/plasticy portion was less conspicuous)("crimes of opportunity", you know)
At Third Beach I took my spot on the sand.
Touching, slowly, drawing circles and curves and alleys and birthmarks.
The top layer was dry and inviting,
any deeper, the sand was much darker and wet,
smelling strongly of the sea,
hinting at decay and the brittleness of sea-shells.
I poured the hot, dry sand on my hands, from one hand to the other.
I briefly thought of each body my fingers have ever known and that the sand's superficial heat means so much.
I imagined doing continuous somersaults along the border of sea and sand, well, along the front of Third beach. Actually, it was forward-somersault twist into backward-somersault to log-roll to forward somersault...(forever and forever)(or until I hit the wall)(they would think I was crazy)(am I?)(somersaults aren't crazy)(34 year old somersaults along the sea to sand lapping broder, maybe. maybe crazyish)(well, you didn't do it, so.)(can I even do a somersault anymore?)(do a somersault anymore)
I drew more circles in the sand. I stood up.
I hooked the sand out of my shoe with crooked finger.
I looked at the ten or so other people on the beach and thought, "we're the fortunate one's today" and  "hey, an empty beach on a Saturday"
I walked back to my bike and put on my helmet.
The padding was still cold and wet with my sweat.

Tree of Life: Movie Review

I feel total awe when a filmmaker sets out with the ambition to make a metaphysical movie and succeeds. Malick does this in Tree of Life, all the important stuff is there: being, existence, time, purpose, suffering, love, indifference, etc. But he reaches even further than I've seen before, balancing between material creations and the immaterial conceptions of his characters. In the process his film creates strong emotional reactions/connections with/from his audience. He alternates between idealized scenes of nostalgia and childhood wonder / contrarily showing the blindness and the beauty of the Universe.  The paradox of the ideal and the meaningless and how they both exist and rely upon each other  There is so much wisdom in the movie. The dialogue's often prayer. Literally. I remember reading Ebert's review and he said that the movie was a prayer, and well, initially I thought he meant metaphorically(in it's beauty and desire, hope and desperation),-- and while it certainly is that, I'm fairly convinced that a lot of the dialogue is literally prayer-- the sacred thoughts spoken by the various characters; poignant wishes of love and strength, the courage to choose between good and bad, truth and lies.  Anyway, Malick has proven beyond any doubt in my mind that he's an artist of the highest caliber. 

10/10. Thought it was perfect. Wisdom and poetry from a modern, popular movie-- a rarity worth celebrating and sharing.

See it.

--
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_tree_of_life_2011/

pareidolia stream

thought bananas skins, thought them interesting-- purposive digression goes: full of brown, clustery freckles in (distraught or smiling) bruisey(eyes, nose, mouth), emotional faces. Distinctly British Face of Banana Bruises. Their suggestive, oxy-aberrations need to sit in my mind's eye a lil' while longer while I think of all the instant-and-created faces I've ever known; found in the repetitive, wood veneers, all indented, hard-gum, topologies-- found in the connect-the-dots, mosquito-pasted, wallpaper of earlier still-light-at-bed-time summers, and the starry gaze of each trampoline-and-I'm-cold-but-TRAMPOLINE!-sleep-overI can live in this yard and see the stars because I'm not in my bedI'm outside and thestars make faces and each face has so many more faces if that's the eye this time and the bright one is the mouth do you see it and my best friend is beside me oh a shooting star where do you see it there and my dogs are so happy I'm outside with them and they think I'm good being out here with them they're under our bed tonight we can jump on them and I'll probably go in if it gets too cold always around dawn and I won't consider how that makes you feel my friend because I'm a little bit afraid of being outside and I'm young and a feeling sortascared that someone will stab us from under the trampoline.remind me again about pareidolia, remind me again, because it thrills me.

preterquilt

preterquilt, a photo by rjbeeswax on Flickr.

"Phenomena are not analytically contained in their conditions; rather, a synthesis is required out of which a phenomenon not antecedently existent comes to be." (after Nagarjuna), Buddhist scholar: Jay L. Garfield

Post 301: something something nondualism

(unknown photo by Cindy Sherman)

The worst depravities are committed when we fully understand that to sin against the other is to sin against the self, yet still we follow through, for the false reward of momentary distinctions; the intoxicating demarcations which speciously hold our pains apart. 

May.7.11 precip

scrambled too quickly get this HDR shot of the precip. not well composed on account of haste. fip-fip-fip

Two truths, sort of.

Culvert, a photo by rjbeeswax on Flickr.

---
poem by Tung-shan:

The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud.
The white cloud is the son of the blue mountain.
All day long they depend on each other, without being dependent on each other.
The white cloud is always the white cloud.
The blue mountain is always the blue mountain.

--
According to the Dalai Lama there are two types of reality, neither of them exist independent of each other and are in fact, at base, one in the same. The first type of reality is Conventional Reality, this is the reality we see all around us everyday, the rock, the branch, the beer can, the friend, the mood, the thought.

In the world of conventional reality we see objects and things as existing independently from one another, we see our self as well as independently existing, not as an aggregate but as a independent entity, emerging from it's own source. To see that this is the way we see conventional reality is important insofar as being able to see this egocentric perspective so clearly means that we can see, at a more fundamental level, how mistaken it actually is. Don't get me wrong, it works fine in the conventional world, but in the bigger sphere, the ability to know everything exists dependently upon innumerable factors is essential if you want to grasp the concept of Ultimate Reality.

Understanding that there are two realities, the Conventional and the Ultimate lends itself quite well to two different aspects to understanding the path. One aspect is the Practice or methodological aspect, and the other is the Wisdom aspect.
--
more on the Two Truths doctrine

quicker than I thought

“Isn't that something? I wonder how he got up there”, he pointed at the ground with his cane, “they come from there-- not the trees.”

Status Anxiety

I read de Botton's book Status Anxiety and thought it was a little bit too superficial. This interview however is better, if only because it's less of a time commitment and serves the same purpose with the same level of simplification for the purpose of highlighting his assertions. It's a subject matter I'm greatly interested in--a vested interest you might say--or indoctrinated into, more likely.

On a side-note, anyone who starts each response like de Botoon does with, "Look," loses some major points. Can't say why exactly.

Grace (the neighbourhood cat)

 

Grace is the ever-roaming, neighbourhood cat. Often she stares at me through my bedroom window. Incidentally, I think her name is pretty good-- I once knew a cat named "Honesty". I think I'll name my next cat "Sportsmanship" to keep the virtue theme going.

---

Grace was enjoying the hot ledge on the back deck today. And peeping.

---

 View of Grace as seen from my room-- sometimes nebulous, almost always blindingly bright when the sunshine falls upon her.

I like her.