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