Thursday, April 26, 2007

Camping, Sumo, and a little book review





Well, It’s finally here. Now millions of tiny green flickering faces adorn all the trees, flapping like flags, the branches dance butoh naked, slowly swaying like seaweed. The flowers are out, the perfumed air and ladybugs on backpacks and dandelions, birds, bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs are back and black and blue and green. A green gecko lives in my stairwell; brown turtles line the creeks, sitting in the sun like old men waiting for the bus.


The delicate, rubbery white cherry blossoms fell like flakes, turned brown, and then dissolved away.

Speaking of all these new, sparkling, light-emitting leaves, I just read that trees produce more leaves than necessary for their survival. Abundance really does seem to be the way of Nature. Birds continue to sing when the mating and nest-building season is long gone. Supposedly humpback whales (who have a neo-cortex like us) sing long, intricate songs that can last over forty minutes. These songs seem to be an outpour of the richness of life, going far beyond the announcement of a position in the ocean.


I read that in a book called The Radiance of Being by Allan Combs. The title might turn you off (or turn you on) but far from being an airy fairy book about new age spirituality, this book is a highly respected integral look at chaos theory and the brain, as well as a tour of the major evolutionary theories past and present. It is the Winner of Best Book of the Year of the Scientific and Medical Network of the U.K.! Yeah, and it fuckn rocks and is a necessary book for anyone that likes science, evolution, and spirit.
















I’m also working on “The Super Sensual Life” by Jacob Boehme, a mystical classic. Boehme was a German philosopher priest and artists alive in the late 15, early 1600s. He was actually censored for heresy and silenced for seven years by his own town council, but nonetheless, he produced some twenty-nine books on philosophical theology, and was quite a teacher in the alchemical and mystical sects of the day.



Now I'll explain the pics at the top. One morning the entire school picked up their chairs and went down the street to the local shine to Sumo wrestle. All the boys had to do it. And none of the girls got to. Sumo is a mans-only sport here. "But what if a girl wants to do it?" I asked the female PE teacher. “No Girls want to. Too dangerous.” And indeed, there was blood spilled that bright, beautiful day. Cherry blossoms fell on us too.

Also are pics of a camping trip some friends and I took to the ocean. I liked how the surfers all took their shoes off before entering the beach.

At the ocean we found caves and rocks with holes in them, shells and jellyfish and pinecones, all radial designs. Circles, symmetry, order, structure. These tiny jewels scattered across the beach (the subjects of paintings) complemented perfectly the book I’m reading now about symmetry and chaos found in nature called Crystal and Dragon. It’s awesome. All artists should definitely check it out immediacy. Crystal and Dragon by David Wade. It's a picture book. Also, Art Forms in Nature by Biologist/artist Ernst Haeckel is like the Magic Mirror of MC Escher: a fuckn crazy deep and delicate study of divine form and a necessity for any artist (Mark, Charlie, Mike, Sam, I hope you are searching amazon right now. and dont forget the David Wade book.)

I’m also currently reading Suicide Dictionary by Paul Lonely. He sent me a pdf of the book so that I could help him create an illuminated version one day. The book comes out in November. This…masterpiece is by far one of the most pleasurable literary discoveries I have made in my life. Its kind of like when you meet a professor who seems to know everything you do and more, and everything they say you drink in madly, and every moment is pleasure even to the highest of intellectual ecstasy. (God I want to go back to school!) Lights are Lit, and holding the lantern the professor leads you deeper into the caves of your interests, illuminating secret rooms and puzzles along the intricate passages, and then they suddenly take you out of the cave, and you get to see the mountains, and whole valleys and villages you did not expect to find stand naked for you to investigate. And then the professor’s lights become a fountain of stars illuminating entirely new planets and galaxies. As for the book... direct experiences of integral conciousness and concepts (floating fully felt in the darkness of languageless mind) are shaped into poems. This magician weaves together the wisdom of the integrated mind into a beautiful quilt to sit and meditate upon.

Highly recommended.

(If you are interested, please read Michael's review below.)






You know what, why don’t I just do this. It’s long overdue.


David’s Book Review

Actually, no. ill do it later.

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