Mariana alzamora/

Victoria took me to see don Marcelo the 'soplador', because my mother said i was out of sorts She took me without her knowing as my mother didn't believe in sourcerers, but i loved Victoria so we went to the countryside past the cattle fields to a 'caserio' we took the road with a broken down car and under a tree Don Marcelo stopped sawing wood and looked at us with blackhard eyes but he was wearing a small striped brown and purple sweater that was a woman’s. We followed him into a low ceiling cement barn, warm from the breath of the cows and the smell of dung At the other end was a weak light bulb over a dark wood table with a skull, a round stone an equilateral and equilongitud cross, a glass bowl and a ball of clay. He placed on the table the candles, cigarettes, rosewater, aguardiente and the wild flowers he asked us to bring and emptied the rosewater into the glass bowl and put in the flowers the candles he stood in pieces of soft clay and lit them then he asked me to undress and i said no so he said i could keep my slip on and gave me his back and prayed to his strange altar while i undressed and then i stood in front of him with hair that didn't want to lay flat and black eyes looking somewhere past me. He began reciting words in quechua in a lulling way and took the flowers from the bowl and touched me on the head, my face my hair my neck my body in front and in back he made me lift my foot and passed the flowers underneath one foot then the other reciting all the time his litany he then took a cigarette from the table and lit it with the candle; he inhaled and exhaled a cloud of smoke in my face and between words he inhaled and exhaled the smoke to the back oand over my head, my body in front and my body in back all the way down the front of me inhaling and blowing out he made me lift my foot one then the other inhaling and exhaling reciting his litany and then he paused looked nowhere past me and then again he began reciting in a lower pitch as he took the stone and passed it over my head and my face my ears my neck my back my front underneath one foot and then the other he paused and the silence was very loud inside me with him looking at me but nowhere then he went to the table and took the bowl with the rose water and dipped the flowers and sprinkled me all around the front and the back of my body and over my head and under each foot and his sing song was softer then he paused and went to the table and got the bottle of aguardiente and took a sip and blew it out pulverizing it holding the candle in front so that it would light an inmense flame on me this he did standing back and with a louder chant again and again all around me and over me and undeneath my feet and i was wondering if this dramatic moment was to scare me rather than what was troubling me and then the silence and then he took my hands and sucked from the palms and blowed out what he had sucked then turned to the table took the flowers and he showered me with them at that point i felt something dark leave me and i began to laugh then he said it was finished
Victoria gave him some money and three cans of bonito We were silent walking down the lane and i was surprised it was still daylight she asked me what i felt and i said nothing, that i felt nothing she said he had prayed to the elements and to beauty so that they be in harmony within me Who knows maybe he was responsible for the change that came over me once i could see i should leave Huacraruco

mariana alzamora/ interspecies comunication

I was walking down the beach upset at how dependent i had become on you, when i bent to pick a perfect, completely white spiraling shell with a cluster of perfect white barnacles on its back, ‘like our relationship’ i thought. I relaxed,
it was very beautiful
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i was walking on the white sand along the turquoise green waters asking the Sea if it loved me, if You, Earth, loved me, if you heard me, if you knew of my existence and of my love.... when i saw a moth, dead, on the hard sand; it was a subdued brown with markings in lighter or darker color. I picked it up, and i opened its wings, and to my delight a brilliant red ocre pair of wings spread open beneath the subtle wings. I kept walking thinking of the way it hid its brilliance except in flight. It took a while before i realized that this was the way the Earth answered me, the red wings had formed a perfect heart.
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Once we were driving fast along a hot empty road on which the vegetation was encroaching. We were nearing the border to Guatemala, Jean wanted to go to Guatemala. we were in Mexico and already they had told us we had to keep to the main roads as to go on secondary roads was dangerous; we could be assaulted, and i had heard on the news that people once again were being kidnapped in Guatemala and we were driving an old but elegant and very comfortable American car Jean had traded for the moon vehicle i had not wanted, and i didn't like this one either. Everything Jean did was big, open, good and daring, and he believed he was protected by his angels completely different from me who stayed at the back and never liked to be showy. So here we were flying down this road, and i saw on the telephone wires ahead, a bird and how as we came by, it decided to fly down right in front of the car, and, we hit it
Jean stop! i said. He stopped and i ran back to it and saw
it had died and flies were around him. Already? I picked him up. It weighed nothing. It was so thin i could feel its tiniest bones, so i took one feather and we buried him and i was thinking, had it committed suicide? Was he sick? why were the flies with him He had wanted to terminate his life.
Jean turned back, and we went to Guatemala by bus.
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Once i was sitting on the circular bench under the shadow of the casuarinas and looking out at the sea i saw three dolphin fins come up in the same place one after the other “They are making a circle” i thought, and decided to make out of clay the dolphin ring of joy and playfulness and one day while working in this piece i saw a dolphin swimming along the shore very close to me. and said to him “If you know i am thinking of you do something that is different to let me know“ he began to make strange motions downwards 'as if looking for fish underneath the rocks', i thought and my heart started to pump fast and i told him “If you feel me, come nearer” and as he came very close to me my heart pumped harder; I thought he would feel it through the water. I was so afraid even though i so wanted to have close contact like my friend who had jumped from his sailboat naked, with only a mask to see and swim with a pod of dolphins. At first only young curious ones would come to him, then the mother’s came and then a big male came and stayed for the longest time, looking at him eye to eye ,,,but i, i couldn't __________________________________________________________
Once upon a time my son brought home a baybe parrot, It had big rosy beak and a rosy skin so thin one could almost see the food through it. It felt too fragile to handle to be fed every four hours but he grew bigger and stronger and soon tiny spears broke through its skin, got longer and longer and soon sheaths fell out and feathers fanned out glowing green. and turquoise, yellow and milky green with lightgreen around his shiny like an apple red beak. At first they were somewhat roughly placed but in time they grew longer unified, with no end or beginning to them, so smooth and even to seem more like the iridescent butterfly’s scales “ You must be a God” i said to his black pupils with yellow and orange around. Two years later a coral colored and black ring appeared on his neck and i had to change her name from “Mimima” to “Mimimo” but his everyday name was “Baybe” He learned to say “i love you”, “what are you doing” “you are so beautiful” which he shortened to “you are so beauty” and sometimes to “you’re so beu”; we’d sing opera, a duet, he’d look for my mouth to kiss this he did especially when he sensed me tense. Because i began to leave more often and i wanted him to not miss me, on a full moon eve, i brought ”Moon” she was a fully grown Indian ring neck who grew up with other birds wild in a cage It was not love at first sight he looked at her with disgust at her terrible manners and one day he had enough and left “Baybe!” i’d call when i’d see him on the trees on the way to the beach “I got her for YOU not for me! “ He’d look at me and then fly further away. this went on for many days and one day my friend called to say he was on the tree in front of her house i went to get him but he would not come. Baybe found Cecilia’s house 2 miles down the island as Cecilia’s son Josh liked him very much and they would play together when he came to visit There was nothing i could do so i left When Cecilia called “ hes come into the house” i again went but he would not come to me and flew from curtain to curtain rod i sat down with her to talk about life as we often did. When i began to cry as my life at that time was difficult, baybe flew to me and told me he loved me that i was so beauty and looked for my mouth to kiss and we went home together

from mariana alzamora imagination/desireunbound

The river was no longer The Flow, no longer mirisa, and her feet sinking into the sparkling sands no longer the universe, made the going heavy and the giant creaking eucaliptus on the long avenue were no longer ancestors and home, crowded with furniture, weighed the past --
“What is the matter Cordelia,”
“ Nada mama”
She didn't want to tell her Narcis had come again
“Don’t come to the pool at my time Narcis, she had told him i need to be alone, wash myself of everything” but he had come regardless
“You need to go away, travel, go to school, find your life, find a girlfriend”
“Cordelia, all i love is here, we have everything, you are the one for me you once told me Narcissus was in love with his reflection, you are my pool, you are my reflection” she had pulled her hand away almost violently
“ Narcis, we are no longer children” she saw the sparkling bits of mica from her hand on his lips She so disliked him saying that she was his reflection taking for himself what she was. She didnt want him to be like her; could he absorb her till there was nothing left of her but an echo ? It made her look at herself and question herself; was she living an ilusion? twinkling droplets, prisms on his hair ? Trapped in a reality of her own making ? She liked to think herself as the pool, water, love, filling every countour that shaped her giving it life, and when still, calm, she mirrored the sky, trees and all that was even Narcis and she was clay, earth and water, she moulded clay or clay moulded her sometimes when she was aspiring if something was not right she would righten it with the clay, but ultimately it was the earth who would allow her to do something which was beautiful it would tell her what was wrong what she could do and couldnt do Now she was roughwinded water roughrippled and winded water Maybe it all was an ilusion Maybe i am Narcissus loving only myself in a world as i want it, people as i want them, and not as they are, not the world as it is She watched the small gentle ripples fan out into the pool They had placed stones perfetly to regulate the inflow and outflow from and into the river when there were no rains, that is
“..Narcis, you are like a brother, don't forget, you could be my brother” Narcis with the big black eyes the same as my own green so i was the pool and he was the night as he was mysterious Mother wasn't very expressive and much less about Leandra and Narcis who arrived the day of my 13th birthday he was two years old and such a beautiful baybe he was a present on a sunny gold day amidst the grey grey grey
Who are they i had asked of Leandra with her Ashaninka features and very long black hair
mother simply said “ She needed work and a place to live and we needed the help ” and went on painting with tones of greens and lavender blues and tan with a great bright orange stroke, strike. I told her it seemed off balance and she said that it was important to question fears and desires. I didn't understand the connection
Once i told Narcis that Leandra probably named him after an egoistic father who abandoned her with a baybe “NO! he almost yelled “My father was killed by the same people who killed your father!” He idealized his father like i did she said Leandra had named him after her own father who was named after Narciso Yepes a harpist, but she left out the o because she wanted an unending sound in the wind name. like harp music i had said harp music was more like water Sweet my flower Narcis My sweet and gentle like a flower Narcis Born for beauty for love for joy Narcis i would hear Leandra sing in her high voice , in her sad, monotous, strange jungle insectlike lullabye
Maybe he was my mirror and not i his mirror would i fade away not accepting love for each other?
“you dont know yourself yet Narcis, you have not been in different and testing circumstances” you need to go into the world grow up, become real”
“And you?”
He would always echo “And you? as if he were like me with the same destiny
She was saying to him what Rosalba, had always said to her: That she should finish her education abroad but she loved Huacraruco, the farm of her mother’s family. She loved the house built around the patio turned into a garden where the twisted trunk of the white rose protected from the winds could flower up and along the banisters and around the second floor terrace; its perfume would come in through her window with the first rays of the sun over the mineral world where the river began. Once they had gone to find its source to the cave they had heard about it was so large and spacious inside a dim light from another aperture shone on redish and greenish rounded shapes made by millions of years of lime from the water rounding organlike shapes as if in the inside of a greatbody there was the lake fed by an underground spring they had not been able to continue because it became too dark, dangerous, you could hear the sound of a water fall they said if in the dry season you followed the under ground river you would arrive to a highland lake blue as the sky It all was so far away from the world of people, from that which caused pain she thought looking at the moving dappled sunlit and shadowed magnification of the rose leaves Her father had become all he loved river, trees, leaves, the mountains, the sky,,, she could be with him every day, more so, she could live in him Cordelia never wanted the city she felt its values have the false flor which had caused the death of his father or rather what her father had given his life for; she was changing the way she saw it but still, it had caused her mother great pain which made her retreat thats how she saw it; she felt protective and responsible for Rosalba who did little else besides paint her abstract paintings; once in a while she would take them to Lima for an exhibition
“ So much needs to be said but she avoids it and paints nothing real ”
“Cordelia, colors and shapes are the language of feelings, and emotions, like music“ Genaro had defended Rosalba
“But how will she define, discover, inscribe, her thoughts and feelings and leave them behind? She doesn’t want to face what she needs to face, she wants to remain in her world ”
“Cordelia you should study art”
“Mother, you and father were my teachers. I want to do what is real to me, not what is real to teachers or culture or history ”
When she was little they had gone up river a to a clay deposit her father had showed Cordelia how to make figures and she had spent the whole vacation doing them. When they moved to the farm, clay became her passion , making bas relief scenes of everyday life, important events, thoughts, wishes, prayers, her fears, their resolution, talismanes. Now Narcis’ eyes which were like hers appeared in many panels, as he would follow her with his eyes, black deep holes one’s soul would get lost in Soon her walks along the river began to feel like she was pacing back and forth like a tiger inside a cage.

The Edge by Kerstin Unger-Salén

The edge.

Can 10.000 lemmings be wrong?

Are we like the lemmings, all walking towards the edge unaware of the precipitation awaiting us or just not knowing how to stop? In nature life is balanced, the pendulums movement in search of balance, is what brings evolution forward. This movement of energy spirals us into life whilst stagnation, or lack of vitality and energetic power, is death. Mother Nature is highly capable just as the cosmos to deal with equilibrium; Breathing in and breathing out, in a continuum of readjustments and new creations.

However, the human specie, increasingly devoid from nature’s wisdom, walks blindfolded on the edge. Drawn by the surge of adrenalin as it makes us feel a live, we fail to recognize the danger it involves. Besides, man thinks he is guided by rationality, one thing at a time kind of stuff, but in fact, he/she acts and reacts out of the unconscious most of the time. Like lemmings running erratically from one edge to another, we endlessly try to keep in control. Never the less, now that we have controlled our environment to a great extent, fear is more than ever penetrating our awareness, having lurked in the basement of subconscious it’s now making its way to the surface of our existence. Fear is creating havoc in the world, we’re looking for solutions underground or up in the air, unaware that the most obvious is just in front of us. It just might be so that through our makings and the irreversibility of all that , we are not only making plants and animals extinct ,but also actively planning for are our own extinction.

“Don’t worry! This was just a very sinister thought swiftly passing by in my darkest moment of the night.”

Here’s the real news.

We never asked the question; “On the edge of what? Didn’t you know? We’re on the edge of a new era, with an enormous paradigm-shift in its making, where nothing looks like it used to do. Quantum-physics is telling us it’s all in the dark holes, there is no such thing as separation, we’re all in this soup together, Newton is dead, and consciousness causes reality and brings about form and matter.

Cosmos is an ancient living being with a consciousness that is looking at us trying to wake us up from the dream we are dreaming. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and “those who have eyes shall see.” If we don’t peep through the keyhole, there’s nothing to perceive, nothing is there. Or, might I say, put on your night-torch because it’s the direction and focus of the torch-beam that makes us aware of what is. The more unfocused our beam is the less we perceive. Actually there might be nothing if the torch isn’t functioning. Oh dear, this is getting very complicated.

Here’s another one: Imagination, our inner vision and capacity to see what isn’t there in front of us, drives us forward, attracts manifestation, heals us and is the connection with reality. Lack of it must be very dangerous as it prevents us from for-seeing. Imagine if we were incapable of imagination, the consequence would be horrendous.

Some say we are dreaming up this world and the real thing is in next life. And yet, this is where we are, and we probably need to wake up right now.

In this wolf-hour of dawn I realize the profundity of the global shift we are in. It’s the life-line and as I’ m awake I can see our relationship with Mother Earth is changing for the better, more nurturing yin/feminine values are on their way, chaos is bringing about a new order, the sacredness of life will be revered and we will be able to stay here just a little longer. The soul of the night is rising, we can hear the beats of its wings and it will take us just where we need to be. All is one and all is fine. Kerstin Unger-Salén

Limitation and Freedom

NOTE: This is probably the beginning of a larger project. Should be read as notes.

At the beginning, the book of Genesis says, God created the world, drawing a line down the middle of twilight and designating one half as night and the other half as day. And one thing became two. And, as He continued to draw, the two became the many. Then the many became the world.

And, in the end, some believe, the many shall become one again, that borders will disappear between lands and differences shall disappear between peoples, that people will unite and that we shall live not as a multitude but as a totality, not as many separate parts but as a singular whole.

In the meantime, however, limits are the way in which people comprehend the world around them and organize social life.

But what is a limit? Is it, like a unicorn, merely a product of the human imagination, something that has no existence outside of our own understandings?

Limits are employed to define words as well as countries. For everything that a unicorn is, there is also what a unicorn is not. Even words have borders.

Language, law, custom, meaning, all exist by virtue of limits, as do countries, properties, cities, seasons, years - in short, limits as they are applied to space, time, action, behavior and ability.

Freedom, or liberty, is non-limitation, non-impediment, non-restriction. To be limited is to be unfree, or bound, in one respect or another. This is the notion of limitation as it applies to action or behavior. No surprise, maybe, that there is a strong relationship between limitation and duty.

What happens when no limits are imposed upon behavior? Then anything is permissable. But if something is not permissable, then there is a limit, at least one. If this is the case, can there be any such thing as a free society? If anything is permissable, then there as no such thing as disrespect or violation, whether than be verbal abuse, rape or murder. If a society is free, then there are no limits on action or behavior. If there are, in society, always limitations on action or behavior, whether these be rules of politeness, customs, and so forth, then this implies that there is not, nor has there ever been, any such thing as a free society. Anything would go in a free society. Bosses, employees, landlords, tennants, guests, hosts, would not be able to cause offence, would not be able to break any rule, law or custom, no matter what.

Free speech means there are no official restrictions on what somebody is permitted or not permitted to say. Yet, there is cursing, people do become offended, and we are, on the whole, very restricted in what we can say if we wish to remain within the bounds of what is considered acceptable or polite behavior.

What does it mean if I say, "It is wrong for you to limit my freedom"? If this statement arises from the belief that to limit human freedom is wrong, then the argument contradicts itself. In limiting another person's ability to limit my freedom, I establish a limit and convey, in essence, a double standard, delimiting my own power while restricting someone else from protecting him or herself against it.

What happens when limits are violated, or not respected? Take borders as an example. When one country violates the borders of another country, the unlimited freedom of the invading party means the violation of the party that is invaded. Does this suggest that freedom and restriction is a zero-sum game?

The Marquis de Sade attempted to demonstrate in his literature the consequences of unlimited freedom and unbounded human appetite. Ironically, this leads to absolute submission to impulse.

In times of war, limitations are also dissolved and might be conceived as an example of unbounded human impulse. In times of peace, there are many limitations. The idea of crime depends upon limitations imposed upon behavior. If anything is permitted, then there can be no crime. Therefore we are not free.

Possible that freedom is founded upon limitation, that there are limits to limitations and that within, but not beyond, this restricted area, our actions or behavior is unbounded and free.

Relation of limits to the perception of value. When something is conceived of as being limitless, that thing is not valued. People do not value an unlimited supply of something, but would be more prone to wasting it, such as resources. Once resources are recognized as finite, these resources are more likely to be valued, as the idea of running out of the resource, which is similar to the idea of death, arouses anxiety. Scarce items sell for items of unlimited store are difficult to give away. Early Christians were prone to wasting their lives because they believed that life was infinite, or that life would have no end. This suggests that the realization that life is finite, and that death is not, may be the key in learning how to value life.

Infinity is conceived of as limitlessness.

Technology as the means by which humans overcome physical limitations. Also, technology as an agent which dissolves limitations in time and space.

The way in which people tend to bind the concept of nature does not define nature but the attitude of people towards nature.

The freedom in the United States founded upon limitations to governmental power.

Limits to free enquiry. DNA, genetic engineering.

LINKS

Here are the links to check out the latest works of the following creators:

Marianna Alzamora: http://marianaalzamora.blogspot.com/

Geoff MacEwan: http://geoffmacewan.blogspot.com/

Serafine Klarwein: http://srfna.blogspot.com/

Daniel Alzamora Dickin: www.azarai.blogspot.com