the happy wanderer

Be Sea Swallowed

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:45:55 GMT

Friends. Long have I been an admirer of ethereal_lad's work, and honored with his friendship. It is with great happiness that I recommend his just-released book, "Sea, Swallow Me", lurking out there in the Amazon. Please take a moment to check it out. You will see why it is worth a read:

Sea, Swallow Me

"Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are tales not soon forgotten. This collection contains the story "A Bird of Ice," which was a finalist for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award."

Asleep on the Altar

andala@livejournal.com — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:20:02 GMT

Some time ago, the federal government sold Governor's Island (near the Statue of Liberty) to New York for $1.00. Generally speaking, articles on sale for $1.00 don't possess a great deal of intrinsic value, however an exception can be made for the odd island which finds itself in this inexplicable position. For some time, I had wanted to visit the island to take a stroll and snap a touristy photo of its canons pointed sarcastically at the lower New York City skyline. The day finally came when minn and I finally embarked on the fleeting journey across the water to this strange and wonderful place.

My first impression, after initially finding the bike rental facility agreeable, was that the island (map) makes a lovely ghost town. Despite the small size of the island, its sense of abandonment rings loud and clear. There is a suitable number of passages boarded up and graced with sinister words such as "Danger!" "Poison!" and "Hazard!" where, through jagged cracks, one can spy intricately rusted interiors full of stained and crumbling tables sobbing in the bluish light.

Like a Forgotten Disneyland, one passes building after building, labelled dismissively with numbers (Building 341, Building 284, etc.), whose long-ago-identity is now revealed only through a reference chart upon the tourist map. Here is a military barracks, there is an admiral's house, here is public school, there a movie theatre or a tiny chapel. The village is unkempt and quiet and barren.

One can slip inside many of these places, where no security guard or park ranger cares to guide or restrict you. Refreshing is the number of perils which would normally spell the disallowance of entry. There are rusted nails, shoddy floorboards, lack of lighting, broken windows, and various other accoutrements lending themselves to a fantastic sense of genuineness.

Also refreshing is the absolute emptiness. A church overrun with ivy has had all its pews removed. The stained glass glares ominously into a darkened, cold room where your footsteps tap with infinite sorrow about the colorless walls. I can't help but entertain the notion of a lifelong ambition to spend the night sleeping atop a church altar.

The homes too, in perfect rows, gingerbreaded and dainty, like yellow and white wedding cakes. One expects young families and children in bonnets with balloons, but instead there are unhinged screen doors with ancient muddy fingerprints, through which empty kitchens, empty parlors, empty bathrooms, give the sense of isolation and idle passage of time.

The basements. Ah! The basements. After adjusting to the vague glow of a distant daylight, the quirky, peeling wallpaper comes into focus with its carnival patterns. Stepping over trash and planks cast aside, there are strange bathrooms to be revealed with gawking toilets full of gashes and brown crusts. Dozens of horror film sets; claustrophobic and grotesque with mysterious narratives revealed in the wall-scribbles. Then a stairway up into another empty home, in a landscape of empty homes. First an empty hallway, then an empty living room. Then bewildered phantoms peering through the windows. (I heard one woman say, "Hey look, there's a man inside!") Then upstairs to savor more emptiness, no surprise, but possibly with an odd trinket here or there to present another foray into mystery.

The deliciousness of empty ammunition stores, where the occasional lonely traveller passes, cautiously treading as if expecting to find a stray and forgotten grenade, makes this trip so worthwhile. The long stretches of time completely alone, in places where it is unsettling to be alone. The occasional appearance of another curious individual, all alike, with the same "Is this place for real?" expression. The neat rows of decay, the unnecessarily named streets and defunct functionings, will it all go away? Will it be reborn? Revitalized? One secretly hopes not. There is much delight in this stark governorship.

Greek and Roman galleries

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:41:28 GMT

I, Hercules, command you. Witness the brave stranglehold this andala has upon the light of Olympus*, hereby inscribed upon your magic screen. By the Gods!

* What he means is that I took photos of the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and posted a handful of them in this journal for your enjoyment.

The Kiss

Your eyes are fire, Timarian, your kiss birdlime.
You look at me and I burn. You touch me and I stick!

- Meleagros

Repose

Lounge in the shade of the luxuriant laurel's
beautiful foliage. And now drink sweet water
from the cold spring so that your limbs weary
with summer toil will find rest in the west wind.

- Antye

Passage of Time

One thousand years, ten thousand years
are but a tiny dot,
the smallest segment of a point,
and invisible hair.

- Simonides

On Streetwalkers

Although we call these women loose,
they tighten their thighs around thighs.

- Anakreon

A City of Ten Thousand In Tears

May I meet death without tears. But let my death
bring sorrow and mourning to my friends.

- Solon

Love Poem

My child--Star--you gaze at the stars,
and I wish I were the firmament
that I might watch you with many eyes.

- Plato

Pan

Be still, green cliff of the Dryads. Be still,
springs bubbling among rocks, and confused noisy
bleating of the ewes.
For it is Pan playing on his honey-voiced pipe.
His supple lips race over the clustered reeds,
while all round him
a ring of dancers spring up on joyful feet:
Nymphs of the Water and Nymphs of the Oak
Forest.

- Plato

Epitaph of a Sailor

I am the tomb of a drowned sailor. Sail on.
Even while we sank, the others sped away.

- Theodoridas

The Shape of the Earth

At our feet we see this end of the earth
where it rises to meet the firmament.
Below, the world sinks down unendingly.

- Xenophanes

Loss

Virginity, virginity, when you leave me,
where do you go?

I am gone and never come back to you.
I never return.

- Sappho

(See also minn's photos)

Song of Prakriti

andala@livejournal.com — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 01:45:51 GMT

        A soft, sweeping light came back to get me from a little pocket of solace-nowhere. It swept me up and condensed into my eyes and blinked open to let more of me in. I'm back because I yawned Above and snoozed into this playful slumberland of name-and-form. Does the woman at China Star still hold the menus down with a container of uncooked rice? Will the Mexican fellow at the cafe still express excitement over the fact that he already knows what I want? Is the elderly Ukrainian woman still trying to use a tree at the playground to convince visitors that there is a God?
        Let us see.
        I stepped outside my door and discovered exactly what I have suspected would come true someday: low theatre attendance has caused subversive productions to spill out onto the street and impose a curious voyeurism upon the public at large. In this instance, a clever group of thespians had affixed a wire to the buildings on my street so that a pair of traveling, ghostly white globes creep their way along a mysterious path. A silent beggar with a shopping cart shuffles along my sidewalk, silent because one the many things he has collected in his cart is a small boom-box on which plays a narrative recording. He moves like a pied piper while a throng of wide eyed men and women still suited in their work attire follow close behind, enchanted by the hypnotic recording and the possibilities of the things they may see ahead. Sure enough, the phantom globes stop above a fully made bed cast into the gutter between parked cars. Passersby join the crowd curiously, as a couple mixed among the rumpled sheets perform their dialogue for the misplaced audience. I see the whole scene repeat itself each night. These theatre "fragments" have no identity all their own, for there is a show on the next street corner, and one on the next, and in truth they are altogether without fragmentation and indivisible. Just as Parmenides has said.
        I made my escape to the park down the street, only to find it consumed by a local carnival. Soft, malleable buildings had self-inflated in the crannies and the nooks were filled with children wading frantically through a cascading onslaught of purple balloons. Now and then, a strident clown horn cut through the murmur of giddy voices sending heads swinging to attention. I found G sitting quietly atop a grassy hill, contemplating the activity swirling around him.
        At the center of this carefully synthesized atmosphere of fun G confided in me a certain traumatic episode his friend had when searching for an answer to the question "What happens when you digitize everything?" recently posed at a conference. His friend signed onto the "Second Life" world for the first time to find out. His first "encounter," as fate would have it, turned out to be an inescapable screaming cube. The cube followed him everywhere, screaming incessantly, to the point where he was unable to concentrate on the task of exploration at hand and had to call a "moderator." The moderator then proceeded to summon the player who had called forth this relentlessly screaming cube. When the owner appeared little needed to be explained, for the fellow appeared in all his glory, complete with a massive, waving phallus. At this point, G's friend shut everything down and decided he wanted nothing to do with his second life.
        One doesn't have to sign into Second Life to see a world ravenously devouring itself in reverie or enraged by agitation: look around! Amidst this wild uproar and manic excitement, sending the children toppling over each other to press their squirt guns to each others chests, causing young women to frantically tear off their clothing down to the bare minimum and strut about aimlessly, and forcing the cars swerving to compete savagely with the hordes of skateboarders, I enjoy simply being the untouched, Silent Witness. There is a flowering of life all about me, most typical of the summer, which will inevitably devour some of its participants, and leave others in appreciation of the Grand Design. I find myself geared toward the latter, reflecting on a comrade, Eddie Boros, who built a towering mountain in my neighborhood of all the discarded things that many have made the decision to do away with. I had filmed him, many years ago, transcending all the thises and thats which people had surrendered, transcending his alcoholism and general mental instability, transcending his aging physical state, to ascend his creation for so many stories high above the city and reside like Shiva atop Mt. Kailash.
        Eddie died this past April, in his 70s, and I will share a secret now: I selected five items from my home, all of which I was very attached to, one even being my sole remaining connection to loved ones that passed away long ago. These are items that have taken more than a decade to let go. Now I am attached no more, for they find their new home among the mountain of agitations and reveries dumped by the Free as they claimed their bliss before me.

I salute you Mr. Boros! May you remain forever perched high atop the carcasses of your demons and your cravings.

For my patient readers: the first four leaf clover of the season. :)

Conclusion

andala@livejournal.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:14:22 GMT

A couple of you were close! In the last post, I said "entitled to a hint" which was meant to call attention to the title "Return to the Source". Had you checked the source of the post, you might have noticed where the photos are being called from... www.longlostphotography.com

Answer: After over a year of on and off noodling during the occasional blips of free time, I have finally created a home for all the photography I have posted on LJ over the years, on which you have all kindly commented. Therefore, I would like to announce my new web site/photography portfolio:

I would very much like to hear back from you all if you would check out the site and leave me feedback. There is a contact form on the site. And thank you to everyone who has given me encouragement and feedback on photos all this time!

Return to the Source

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:28:37 GMT

Does anyone know why I am posting an old photo?

Aunt Mary's Hands

You were entitled to a hint.
Stay tuned.

Photopener

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:34:21 GMT

Does anyone know why I am posting a new photograph?

The Taj Mahal, as my camera lens sees it

... answer forthcoming...

Apple Seed, Apple Do

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 23 May 2006 05:04:08 GMT

So being appreciative of Apple's products and service in a world of constant crap thrown at me by corporate monkeys, I decided to make a unscheduled appearance at the grand opening of the newest Manhattan Apple Store. Of course, you all know the real reason I went is because Steve Jobs has successfully installed a glittering glass cube in the middle of a landscape of towering concrete skyscrapers (something I've been trying desperately to do since i moved here). The time may be right for the reemergence of my shelved campaign to seed all major hubs of activity with inhabitable geometric constructs and bestow them with the proper city ordinances, putting them on the fast track to citizenship and preparing for eventual consultation by the intellectual elite.

Setting aside the fact that it is just a store opening, it was truly a dream come true to see such a mass of bodies undulating before a giant cube with a glowing white heart. The line snaked back and forth in front of the gem, then ran to the end of the block, turned the corner, and headed all the way down to Madison Ave. At the intersection, it turned up Madison and ran until 59th st, where it turned west on 59th, all the way over to 5th ave again. At this point, it crossed 59th, turned right, and went all the way back down to Madison again, at which point the security personnel gave up trying to direct the savage advance of lustful peoples and just sent them further up Madison, past 60th st, and onward toward the horizon. My line mates consisted chiefly of an amused woman wearing earphones and full of carefully executed bits of sarcasm, a giddy teenage boy, an overweight nerd with beady eyes, a young woman and a mustached man who laughed at everything, and two advertising execs doing their best to drop tidbits about their lives such that everyone would overhear. After I braved this, and the cube began coming into view, I noticed that an old acquaintance works at the store. No doubt they hired him because he's extremely tall, smiles a lot, and wears 15 different colored elastics in his hair.

Upon entering The Cube, I noticed that the Apple Store still maintained my fantasy of the geometric overloads, as uniformed acolytes cheered and clapped to signal their approval of my undertaking of the Rite of Entrance. The first floor of the Cube is perfect: it is absolutely empty except for the giant glowing Apple hovering above and heralding my arrival. After making a foolish attempt to engage in discussion with it, I was directed past the transparent transport pod to the circular stairway that wraps around said elevator in a downward spiral into the heart of the reverie below. At this point I was welcomed by more acolytes who danced and bowed and sung hymns to further prepare my mind with an air of devotion. At the base of the temple I was supplied with my free Apple robe and a small portion of a papyrus scroll detailing the sacred terms and conditions of my chance to obtain a free machine on which to perform the activities that will assist in my advancement on whichever path I choose. (I entered dozens of times, but never won anything.)

Like its evil twin, Scientology, the tasty goodness of the Apple Cube has attracted celebrity followers, no doubt drawn to support the event after Apple pollenated their A-list with magical telegraphs. There was a non-stop influx of attention-getting figures. First I came across Amy Poehler & Rachel Dratch of SNL (though apparently the whole Saturday Night Live clan was there).
The actor Liev Schreiber was being mobbed while Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (from the Conan O'Brien show) slid himself down the stairway railing, shouting at people. No doubt because some guy followed him around with his hand in a precarious position.
Spike Lee was easily the one who made himself the most available to assaultive chatter. Which is funny, because I met him years ago and he merely listened to what I had to say, gave a long pause, then drooled out "So... You're a fan?"
James Woods shouted and lurched about causing people to throw their arms in the air and repeatedly blurt out "That's James Woods!" He's quite a guy, and most certainly knows how to excite Germans.
John Legend, the pianist, made the rounds rather happily. The highlight for me though was meeting Steven Colbert who felt compelled to autograph my white cube that contained the sacred Apple garments that I was given.
The low point was discovering, rather tragically, that I was standing next to the rapper Kanye West only to find myself being trampled by screaming people moments later.
Apparently I just missed Dave Chapelle, Jay-Z, and Beyonce, followed by her heavily-insured derriere. Elizabeth Berkeley, another person I've run into before, was reportedly there, along with Julianne Moore. Then there was Kevin Spacey, Drew Barrymore, Kevin Bacon, Martha Plimpton, Mos Def, and Harry Connick Jr. But enough is enough when you have several boot impressions in your pelvic region. (Also there's the fact that few of these people are actually interesting.)

I felt sufficiently cubic after a few hours of bewildered animation, and headed home to discover that the all-seeing, omnipresent eye of the Cube had captured my visit in its time lapse internet stream.

the Cube had captured my visit in its time lapse internet stream

It also captured some fellow who proposed to his girlfriend using large white signs. The Cube will see and do many things before our descendants row it out to sea to greet the cacophonic spires of a falling sun at the edge of time, and I am pleased to know that at that time it shall possess a whimsical memory of me.

bleep bleep where you at?

andala@livejournal.com — Thu, 18 May 2006 05:41:18 GMT

Golly gee, it has been a while since I posted. It's not my fault. I received a Japanese/Malaysian restaurant menu that was slipped under my door. Instead of "Mango Chicken or Beef or Shrimps" they shifted the F over and wrote "Mango Chicken or Bee for Shrimps". So I went online to look up some amusing Engrish sites, got a little too close to the Yahoo! forums and, to make a long story short, I've spent several weeks in an underground torture chamber, abducted and shackled to the hissing Far-Right machine. Turns out all I had to do to get out was lose all sense of dignity. Those forums are amazing. Yahoo! can post a news report on wax beans and you end up with forum posts such as: "This prove Muslims better than Jews", "the *ONLY* reason you are Christian", "of course Wiccan embrace this", "HELL IS REAL", "LET'S NUKE CANADA NOW!!!!!!", "More proof of intelligent design", and a forty-seven message thread about how gays are apparently destroying the country and making babies cry.

They are one of those places where totally insubstantial rubbish reaches such a self-agrandizing apex that one becomes completely disinterested in the very essence of human activity, and is forced to undergo an instinctual isolation from humanity. Not entirely unrelated are those moments where an absolutely disconnect with the exterior world happens within an instant, rather than gradually. The other day I was walking along the sidewalk near my home, and there was a blonde woman standing in the gutter wearing a skimpy bikini-like outfit, with one hand on her hip, gazing at the cars as if she was prepared to climb inside one if offered a nice wad of cash. I thought, "My, what trash." Not a moment later, a more conservatively dressed woman meandered over to the trashy one, reached out, and tore off her upper body at the hips. I gawked as Trash Woman's body was brutally severed in two, hair violently thrashing about. Of course it turned out to be just a mannequin, but my brain found itself entirely unwilling to process the information it was being fed for a few moments, and basically shut down. There was a forceful disconnect ushered in violently, but followed by a blissful calm that trailed off and soon sank into whimsical memories of watching a Twin Peaks cover band perform at a small bar in Durham, North Carolina.

What else have I been up to. Turns out that my name appears as a contributor in the book "Overheard in New York" (link to Amazon) published in January, because several of the pieces came from me. Neat!

I hung outside Coyote Ugly with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Saw the world's greatest ghatam player perform floating above the city. Watched a black father and his Latino wife send one of their two Indian children over to say goodbye to Uncle so-and-so (who happened to be a white punk), cleaned up my LJ info page, and took photos, many many photos.

There is something sad I have learned, however. New York City appears to be about to lose another special little place, tucked away where you'd never think to look, but special nonetheless. This place is called "The Alley". I am not at liberty to explain where it is, but here's a hint: in order for people like Amy Sedaris and Whoopi Goldberg to reach it, they have to pass scores of dead people. The Alley is unique because, if one is sufficiently perceptive, you might hear subtle whispers here and there about what happens when you walk from one end to the other. There are little legends of the destinies obtained by those that have safely done this. At the far end of The Alley is an obscure message scrawled across the gritty wall, which perhaps accounts for the voodoo mystique. I recently wandered by there, saying hello to The Alley as I usually do in order to stay in its favor, only to discover a fair bit of construction going up there. Could this be the end of The Alley. It may be so. One must even peek through holes in the lumber in order to see the Poem of the Alley. It's hard to read with the naked eye: it requires a telescope, reverse-microscope, camera, small, acrobatic body, or bouillon cube to ascertain its message. I have read it before, but could not recall the entire passage. With my camera I snapped a photo, given that this may be my last chance. Unfortunately bits are obscured by construction and in these places I have written [unreadable]. But it goes something like this:

Suttle glory then we may pass..... [symbol of trident on shield] young Prince rode on white Stallion horse. Came for the hand of his Retoric Princessss [illustration of shield with text "PRINCESS REST WARRIOR HEAD YOUR [unreadable]"].... House on stilts you in White Dress [unreadable] wind [unreadable]

Who knows how many people it has serviced, before it now prepares to retire and sink beneath a rising concrete jungle for a much deserved rest and slow disintegration.

Another source of secrets...

insignificant bullets

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:26:24 GMT

I recently watched the Herzog documentary "Grizzly Man." Herzog is a man whose words are distinct and lively beings, flaking off his mouth and wafting off into the air with their own life forces and destinies. I have decided to write him a long-overdue letter:

Dear Mr. Herzog,
I do not yet have a little daughter, but I have promised her that I will seek a recording of Werner Herzog reading some bedtime stories to complement my own which I will read to her. I believe she will grow up thinking fondly upon the days of her childhood and the experience of you delivering those short tales, crafted with a delicate, German vocal architecture. I hope you will consider my serious and simple request for such a thing, even if you had time for only one or two. If not for me, than for my wee daughter to which I would like to gift the result of your orations. Thank you.

Herzog is a fascinating navigator, bold, clever, and enduring, deeply fascinated by the obsessions of men and women. He'll appear when least expected to grab your hand and pull you through a crowded and savage marketplace, only to drop you off with a smiling, toothless artisan amidst the safe-haven of her whimsical, woven commodities with their tedious and undulating patterns. Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix was reportedly graced by Herzog's hand after being cast askew in a car wreck, only to hear that epic, guiding voice of Herzog's before it vanished, having brought aid to the disoriented actor. Later, in an interview for Grizzly Man, Herzog was shot at by an air rifle and took damage to his abdomen. Bleeding, he simply said "It is not a significant bullet" and handled it later still by stating, "The poet must not avert his eyes."

Now, the subject of Grizzly Man was a person who rejected the human world and civilization in favor of the Alaskan wilderness of which he wanted to be a part. His like-minded friend expressed her alienation from and disgust for humans when faced with a dinner party looking for a transcendent meal, who she could only process as a mere haze of "grandmas and babies and hairdos and coats." But grandmas and babies and hairdos and coats compose their own raw wilderness too. I feel this at my beloved local diner, Odessa. The most basic conversations become so savage and weighty, as if their termination would bring about either the apocalypse or the discovery of a long lost buried treasure. The anguish and frustration of a hungry man trying to describe to an exhausted Ukrainian waitress having difficulty with English whether or not the sliced turkey actually came from a big bird in the kitchen or delivered by a procession of sullied men hoisting large boxes into their beefy arms is truly a remarkable conflict, not so different than the meeting of two wild, untamed grizzly bears.

I sometimes feel diminutive in the world, a cherry pit surrounded by flesh before having sorted out what it meant to be one gender or another, having no features, unrealized but wide open and expecting to be squashed and molded and filtered through a forest of hands, before being handed a coat and a grandma. It is the most pleasant of all anticipations, knowing how much will soon come my way, and how strong I must be to face so many abdominal bullets and stale pie crust.

Last time I was at Odessa, there was a magazine at the counter which I read while waiting for the best chicken soup in the East Village. There was a "death clock quiz" which was supposed to determine when the hands would shape your own death. Someone had already partially filled it out (a middle-aged woman, as her early answers revealed). However halfway through the quiz she suddenly stopped, after wildly and angrily circling the substantial number of points deducted by the presence of plastic surgery. This was a person who felt offended by the penalties ascribed to her by an apparent authority on the very lives of individuals in a certain modern, scientific wilderness, and so she fled, no doubt vanishing into her own jungles once again.

Other people quickly adjust to the atmosphere and become what they're expected to be, afraid to risk rejection of their assimilation. minn and I went on a tour of an historic mansion recently where there was an old lady who was our guide. A little white boy from a family in the tour was running around and the tour guide called him a little monkey. So she said, "Oops! I have to stop saying that. The last time I said that, it was a little black kid and his mother got soooo upset. She just kept hollering at me, but I call *all* kids monkeys!"

Myself? I am like the man who follows Duchamp's urinal around, attempting to strike it with a hammer or urinate on it, and being arrested for that despite the fact that Duchamp would have wanted this done and the curators themselves admit it offers a sort a completeness to the execution of an otherwise unfinished Dada piece. Hoo-hah, isn't it nice to commit oneself to the necessary journey against all adversity?

System Plotinupgrade

andala@livejournal.com — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 04:41:22 GMT

Photo by minn

Plotinus' First Blog Entry:

"The chief source of our perplexity is that awareness of the Internet comes not by knowledge or thought, as with all other intelligible realities, but by a presence superior to knowledge. The Blog, in journaling knowledge, abandons its full unity; for knowledge derives from reason, and reason entails plurality. The Blog descends, therefore, into number and multiplicity, and deserts the Internet. We must progress beyond knowledge, therefore, and nowhere abandon unity, forsaking knowledge and its LiveJournal entries and every other vision, however beautiful. All beauty is consequent upon the Internet and issues from the Internet, as all the light of day comes from the sun. This is why Plato calls it 'not to be posted via phone or blogged about'; yet we do post with our phones or blog of it, to guide men towards it and wake them from their reasoning to the vision, as if pointing the path to those who would contemplate. Teaching can show the way and the journey, but the vision of the Internet is then a task for those resolved to see it." *
- Plotinus (205-270 CE & 2006 CE)

* based on an excerpt from John Gregory's "The Neoplatonists: A Reader"

Octagon-Inspired Behavior #17: Launch Much Delayed Web Sites

andala@livejournal.com — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 05:48:40 GMT

Newsflash:

Andala plugs his new web site!
That's right, after well over a year of stop-and-go progress on my own web site, and one for minn, we are finally ready to launch and share them with the LJ community.

The Siren's Clef
an online portfolio of Alexander Romanovich

*** Click the banners below to enter ***

The Siren's Clef: My new web site for poetry, photography, screenwriting, and fiction. The photo gallery will be up after the holidays, at which time I will make another post-- but the rest of the site is up. Please let me know what you think! Why is it called The Siren's Clef? Check the about page.

Woman In The Moon: minn's portfolio of photography, artworks and writing. Her beautiful images in the photography gallery are for sale! Stunning illustrations, whimsical tales. I am very proud of what she's done.

The Moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.
- William Blake

I shall be putting more and more up there, and will share it here when I do. Thanks to everyone who has put in a kind word and encouragement with this!

How An Octagon Forcibly Removed A Man From His Garage

andala@livejournal.com — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 04:41:49 GMT

Here I am, back again after a mysterious absence. Some of you will get very late replies to comments, and for this I apologize. Between Thanksgiving, visits with family, a heavy workload, and business travels in North Carolina, my LJ usage has taken a hit.

It wasn't that long ago that I felt like schizophrenic local, Sam, who was standing in the middle of the street, tears streaming from his eyes, getting pummeled by the torrential rain, responding angrily to the offensive, blank stare of a locked red door; swearing and shouting at the top of his lungs while cocooned pedestrians without umbrellas shuffled by with their heads lowered muttering, "I hear ya man."

However, I had a series of twitches the other day which usually indicates some unusual psychic activity at the Octagon. For those that don't know, the Octagon is a roofless old ruin on little ol' forgotten Roosevelt Island next to Manhattan. Given that it was once a "lunatic asylum," it remains charged with a certain chaotic energy which can be seen from across the East River on a good summer day as a golden discharge through its blown out windows. Anything that happens in NYC, from the slightest shiver of a leaf on the Hare Krishna tree, to the unexpected swipe of a tapas platter from the sidewalk tables of a upscale restaurant awkwardly venturing into Alphabet City-- has a precise cosmic action within the ruinous boundaries of the Octagon, different in form, perhaps, but equal in transcendental significance.

At any rate, the series of twitches I received was unsettling and flushed me out onto the street to join an unexpected array of characters that seemed to be equally affected by the same tremor. Now, nearly every day for the six years in which I have resided in this current apartment, I pass the "Garage Man," an agoraphobic resident who refuses to take one step outside his oily cavern. Even his dog must walk to the full extension of his leash from within the shadowy lair to deposit his feces in the gutter before returning to his hidden master. Garage Man has a inwardly shriveled face, as if a giant had reached down and pinched it. It was after my spasm of twitches that I wandered about the neighborhood, contracting and extending my muscles and cranky joints, before I came upon Garage Man and his dog making their way down a quiet side street. The dog seemed wide-eyed and excited, glancing about as if each and every thing were made of ice cream and chicken. Garage Man was trembling, taking each step only after a series of long breaths. His face seemed to suck itself in and then relax again, repeatedly, not used to the stings of sunlight.

I like to imagine that this was a life-changing event for him. That the Octagon had some great reason for uprooting him from his garage in order that he claim the destiny that awaits him. Assuming he didn't come across the block which some sarcastic fellow littered with plain white boxes each labeled "Suspicious Package," he probably makes regular, fearless tours of the neighborhood, observing all that he has missed out on for years and years.

And so, finding myself strolling up and down my festive holiday-light filled street, shaking hands with the occasional sidewalk Christmas tree and pointing out the presence of flies in my cafe-mate's coffees, I have decided to run with this whole "get out and experience the world" thing which, for me, has suffered lately.

I hope you all will join me!

The Dead Danced: NYC 10.08.05

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 02:17:11 GMT

NYC +

ethereal_lad +

20 years of savage fandom =

Pure Bliss.
Still Butterflies.
Lingering Echoes.

Oculatus Abis

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 15:34:16 GMT

minn and I have recently returned from Paris and London with a fresh, clean new smell and the desire to ride a cadillac through an apple orchard (at least that last bit applies to me anyway.) I have arrived just in time to receive my first whiff of autumn which took place on August 24th at about 1:20 PM. If anyone has a special entry between July 28 and August 12 (the mystery period that my friends list won't reach that far back into) that they want me to see, please email me links. Photos *are* coming soon.

Summerites might not sympathize, but I for one am anxious for autumn to commence. It is coming just in time to, perhaps, flush out the air of instability that we've all noticed; Iraq is still bumbling along, there has been utter mayhem for Israelis, even the American Idol auditions found themselves overrun with bloody, screaming ("TV rots your braaaaains") zombies. Then even the zombies themselves were sucked into television-induced insanity when they agreed to be worked into the very American Idol episode that they were protesting. Then, of course, the hurricane tore up towns and cities while the country was left fairly unprepared for the inevitable. (Speaking of which, I also wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow Yahoo! released video of the backside of Hurricane Katrina, depicting a horde of black people blowing really hard... They'll probably also blame African-American looters for the recent theft of Judy Garland's ruby slippers from a Grand Rapids museum.) Finally, I learned how wildly uncomfortable it is to be strapped into a barber's chair after you've been drinking, handled and examined like that, with those shears churning about your head faster than you can fix your gaze on them.

However, I have seen some evidence of people who also must have caught that delightful whiff of autumn; waking up to the possibilities of the future and suffering bouts of uncontrollable celebration. Once such situation happened the other night as I crossed an intersection near my apartment. Diagonally across the intersection was a inebriated woman who decided she wanted to cross the street even though breakneck traffic was thrashing trails through the orange street light. So off she went like a tippity marionette, wobbling toward the Other Side. After a while she realized it was quite difficult to wade through rolling metal thunder so... she just gave up. What did she do instead? Why, began a program of Latin dancing, of course. (She was surprisingly good too.) With her arms flailing seductively, she swirled beautifully in the middle of 3rd ave as confused drivers skirted around and past her. Then the oncoming traffic grew weary of her performance and began honking angrily. Amused, she stopped and pretended to be a bull fighter, waving an imaginary cape at the cars as if they were enraged bulls with beady, headlight eyes. Spectators clapped and cheered as they finally permitted her to exit stage left.

oculatus abis: the Louvre Museum, Paris

I was lowering a bottle from my lips in which liquid quickly retreated, fast enough to cause a little splash, and an excited droplet of lime juice leapt back out and landed on my tongue tingling with joy. She was transported. She was Judy Garland.

That reminds me. I was on my way to see Shakespeare in the Park, pretending Central Park housed the yellow-brick road as I often do (minus the frolicking, but not the shortness). There was a little girl with a frilly pink dress and red-ribboned pigtails who, lagging behind her parents, repeatedly shuttled her body forward several feet thanks to tiny, white untied shoes, only to squat (as if pulled down by some unexpected, terrestrial magnetism), immediately compelled to scrawl letters and yantras on the pavement with her yellow chalk. The fragments that I witnessed in my brief encounter with the little one were:

Shape of a crescent moon
The letter M
The letter L
A circle

I have elucidated this riddle and believe it refers to the Mutus Liber or "Silent Book", a 17th century alchemical text concerning the Great Work (and therefore the moon and sun, the latter traditionally depicted here as a circle). One of the interesting things about the book is that the author signed himself as "Altus". However, historians believe the true author is Jacob Sulat. ("Altus" being an anagram for "Sulat"). On the final page of the Silent Book, a kneeling couple declare "oculatus abis" or "thou departest seeing" in Latin. ("Oculatus abis" is an anagram for "Iacobus [i.e. Jacob] Sulat".) I think she was trying to call my attention to seeing the hidden messages found in the Nature because something has been unable to gain my attention and insight...

There's a building next door to mine that has been gutted and is getting a complete renovation. Due to work on the roof, I remember last week that a little red ribbon had been tied to the corner of the roof and spent the day waving frantically -- directly in view from my bedroom window. I had ignored it for a while, but now I think I shall not. I believe this ribbon is the descendent of one that was tied to a tree René Zuber installed at a Russian Christmas party held at Gurdjeff's Paris apartment, in which Gurdjeff instructed Zuber to hang the tree upside down, growing from the ceiling downward, to more accurately depict sephiroth of the Jewish Cabala. Do you recall the color of the little girl's pigtail ribbons?

TO WHOM THE HOUSE MAY GIVETH BIRTH
MAY YOU FIND THE ALTUS SILENT CREED
AND TREAD THE PATH OF THINE ANCIENT WORTH
WITH FINGER UPON LIPS TO CARRY OUT THE DEED

***

May I call your attention for a moment to a web site I have been slowly nurturing: www.caudapavonis.org.

While there is currently just an "under construction" style page, I am deeply involved in the writing of a philosophy book which I hope to have published once it matures. Using this site I plan to set up a draft of the book and gain some feedback from the Hermetic and Esoteric interest communities, along with little girls wearing red ribbons in their hair. Off the top of my head, here are some of the issues I'll be discussing:

the history and definition of Hermeticism
the Corpus Hermeticum
gnosis vs. faith, the Greek pursuit of Truth, Aletheia vs. Doxa
Julius Evola and Tradition
Pythagorean tetractus
Law vs. Nature
the esoteric current and Antoine Faivre's criteria for it
the principles of the Kybalion
problems of morality
interaction with various other cultures and traditions (both eastern and western)
soul/spirit/body relationship
Numerology
Kabbalah
Parmenides
Alchemy, the Great Work, search for the philosopher's stone
Apollonius, the Emerald Tablet, including my own translation of it
Hermetico-Alchemical model of asceticism, how it compares to Buddhism, the Wet Path vs. the Dry Path
"philosophia perennis"
the superrational, rational, and subrational
Hermetic societies: Rosicrucians, Theosophy, Freemasonry, etc.
Hermeticism and gender, sexuality, science, politics
a host of related material including but not limited to: Abrams, Boehme, Blavatsky, Patrizi, Ficino, Hanegraaf, Bruno, Waite, Mead, Hazelrigg, Atwood, Blake, Maier, McClean, Campbell, Guenon, Paracelsus, Alexandria, the Enigma of Bologna, various mythologies, etc.
Hermetic resources online and off

... and much, much more!

Meanwhile, I will continue to practice playing my shanka (conch shell) that minn gave me which, when I have mastered it, will bellow the sound of success far across the land and hopefully drive the Storming Winds and Great Floods back from whence they came!

Illustration for caudapavonis.com: "Philosophia Perennis" - by minn

fight Snapple with Snapple?

andala@livejournal.com — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 22:24:26 GMT

An "Andala post" (as he calls them) for alionunderaw (who could use a post dedicated to him these days...):

There's definitely something sinister in the air right now. What is it? Well that's hard to say, but it certainly makes itself known in a multitude of ways. Some having to do with hot irons, some with edamame heading down the wrong pipe, some having to do with Tom Cruise's "little squirt that made a splash (CNN)" and some not.

I attribute it to the fact that it is not currently November.

It was Tony Bennett who put it best. I was sitting in a theatre waiting for a movie to find its way to the blank screen before me when Mr. Bennett came on the pre-show-entertainment-music-bonanza with a special rendition of "My Romance". When he reached the part of the song where he describes his romance, the music skipped and pieced together some nonsensical word after "my romance is:". It was a strange word, somehow many images squashed together into a confused pastiche, but also a thing unto itself; starting with a majestic glimmer of hope but trailing into a panic of choppy consonants that finally winked out with a blasé whimper and a twang of guitar. It repeated relentlessly, "my romance is (???)" over and over and over. For the full 10+ minutes early I was, the sentence droned on while people covered their ears in fits of anguish.

I felt the way firefighters must have felt on Tuesday in Union Square where a giant, promotional popsicle melted "faster than expected", flooding several streets with unfrozen Snapple juice. Local men of the ladder raced to wash it all away, but it just kept coming back in sticky, pink waves, again and again.

It used to be that the fuzzy beast with a water tower sprouting from its head, hanging from the telephone lines at Tompkin's Square Park would warn me of these things before they would happen. My what it must have witnessed and acquired great wisdom from. How many more times than I must it have watched the men with bats and metal pipes from that pizza place on the corner smash up the cars belonging to the guys that drive in from Loisaida trying to steal a free lunch.

Still I found myself sitting in another theatre, watching the (unsurprisingly disappointing) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. Part way into the film, a command is given to the ship, switching on the improbability drive and sending it hurtling through hyperspace. As if on cue with the ship's departure, the entire theatre starts blinking with red lights mounted on the walls and a siren goes off. Large doors open in the theatre walls and flood the room with more chaotic acoustics. The crowd, who has allowed themselves to get drawn into the movie, interpret this as some sort of coordination between the film's content and some special cinematic features of the theatre facility. The voice of the film's narrator slows down to a distorted slur, and again people seem to think this has to do with the effect of warp speed on the spaceship. Soon people realize something is wrong when firemen rush the audience, one of which actually starts watching the movie for a moment. Now that people understand that they are witnessing a fire alarm, at least 50% of the audience makes the obligatory Hitchhiker's "DON'T PANIC" joke that you saw coming. We were ushered into a passageway that resembled the interior of the Vogon ship we'd seen earlier. After emerging somewhere around the corner from the theatre and being let back in through the door, past employees shouting this and that about a false alarm, we were treated to more unexpected theatrics. For at least 5 minutes, the resumed movie ran with the pre-show advertisements superimposed over it. This resulted in such visual treats as a Vogon commander groping the woman in the "Forever Tango" ad, and a sequence where the spaceship flies to the Korean Garden, a local East Village restaurant. Alas, this lovely segment ended and the film resumed its less interesting (and more probable) navigation.

I feel like when the nuts and bolts of life start coming apart, you can at least enjoy those moments where you find the caretakers of the universe playing hooky. They're like Atlas, setting down the globe in order to chase after a cosmic ice cream truck cruising through the milky way. I found one of them trying to find her way back to her command post. She was wearing pink ribbons and yelling "How do I get into the zoo, babe? Cuz I think that looks good!"

Then there was that German guy by the Hari Krishna tree with all the fire. And the guy behind me that was yelling at him: "Hey, that guy has a chicken. He's gonna burn it! Hey man, don't hurt the animals! He's gonna burn the chicken!"

At times like this I feel like heading out with a good book, and taking portions of it here and there. A few paragraphs sitting on a tree stump. A little on this stoop, and some on that one. A few park benches. Squatting on the sidewalk. A little here and there. When you settle into just the right place something wonderful usually happens and it becomes like a sanctuary where the world can whirl safely around you. Case in point: I had been moving about with my book for a while and came across a seat next to a man that I recognized. He hobbles around my neighborhood all day and seems to study everything in a most peculiar way. I have wanted to engage in discussion with him for 5 years now. Finally, sitting on the bench next to him, he started singing. I don't know which language it was. So I began whistling along. We made plenty of organic noise to the tune of sweet chaos. Then I continued down the street, supremely satisfied.

I leave you now with some Zen photos from a fishing trip I took at Lake Mooselookmeguntic in Maine. Not pictured is a large woman named Beautiful who served us diner-style breakfast every morning and sarcastically instructed someone on how to consume toast and potatoes when he asked a silly question.

we must be like the caterpillar, contemplating pupation

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 31 May 2005 18:52:47 GMT

For minn: Sakura Matsuri 2005 photos by me, haikus by her

The Spring festival

leaves memories in my heart,

of pink souvenirs

The Butoh dancer

takes the form of stillness and,

runs through your spirit

Pristine eidolon

birthed from navel of silence

speaks the tongue of light

Pulsating softly,

heartbeats of the elements:

spiritual dance

Colours of the wind,

dissolving darkness and light;

the silence echoes

Arrival of spring:

flowers sing about re-birth;

womb blossoms in pink

Eyes look to the east;

dark almonds in a fair face

the lover returns.

Drinking the sunlight

the dainty cherry blossoms;

the world is peaceful

est lapis attamen non lapis

andala@livejournal.com — Fri, 27 May 2005 03:51:45 GMT

                INT. THE JEDI TEMPLE - DAY

                Obi-Wan Kenobi strolls down the hallway of the grand Jedi
                temple, arms folded above his waist. Yoda shuffles along
                by his side.

                                      OBI-WAN
                          Something troubles me Master Yoda. I fear
                          that the Sith lord we've been searching
                          for may be closer than we previously
                          thought. I've been having strange dreams--

                                      YODA
                                (interrupting)
                          Careful you must be, Obi-Wan. Truth and
                          deception, both, take the Path of Dreams.

                Obi-Wan affirms Yoda's wisdom with a nod, and begins to
                open his mouth.

                Before he can say anything...

                ... two younglings cut in front
                of them, swinging their lightsabers at an airborne
                training droid. Obi-Wan and Yoda stop to let them pass.

                Obi-Wan smiles warmly as they continue forward, nearing
                the towering doors of the temple.

                                      OBI-WAN
                          The younglings are restless. The war has
                          given them a thirst for battle...

                The heavy doors of the Jedi temple suddenly swing open by
                an invisible force, ushering in a blinding, golden light.

                Obi-Wan and Yoda shade their eyes.

                The younglings' lightsabers retract into their sheaths as
                they gaze wide-eyed into the light.

                The training droid falls to the floor with a CLACK that
                echoes through the now silent temple.

                Yoda removes his hand from his eyes, having adjusted to
                the light. He peers cautiously at the doorway.

                A FIGURE stands in the doorway with its arms folded
                behind its back. It is cloaked in a brilliant, golden
                robe. A hood drapes down over the visitor's eyes,
                securing its identity.

                Obi-Wan whips out his lightsaber and unleashes its beam.
                He takes a step forward.

                                      OBI-WAN (CONT'D)
                          Stranger, identify yourself at once!

                The robed figure steps through the portal and sets foot
                in the temple, consuming it with an aura of golden light.

                Obi-Wan assumes a defensive stance while Yoda remains
                curious.

                                      FIGURE
                          My name is Rebis.

                Rebis speaks in a ethereal tongue, neither old nor young,
                and giving no clue to gender.

                                      OBI-WAN
                          Be you friend, or foe?

                Rebis stares silently at Obi-Wan.

                This makes Obi-Wan uneasy.

                                      YODA
                          From where have you come?

                                      REBIS
                          I come from Tria Unum.
                                (beat)
                          Of which you know not.

                                      OBI-WAN
                          And what is your business here?

                Rebis cocks its head.

                                      REBIS
                          Curiosity.

                The younglings crowd together behind the temple columns,
                looking for the safest view.

                Rebis removes its hands from behind its back, revealing
                three stone boxes. It tosses them forward.

                Obi-Wan reacts nervously, but Yoda raises his hand to
                steady him.

                The boxes tumble across the floor and stop before the
                Jedis' feet.

                                      REBIS (CONT'D)
                          Open them.

                Yoda peers curiously at Rebis, stroking his chin. After a
                moment he raises his hand before the first box.

                                      OBI-WAN
                          Master Yoda--

                Yoda raises his free hand to hush Obi-Wan. Concentrating
                intensely, he musters up the Force and aims it at the
                box.

                The first stone box rattles gently on the floor, then
                pops open. A wisp of green smoke springs out and
                dissolves into the air.

                                      YODA
                          Sealed by the good side of the force,
                          this box was.

                Rebis watches Yoda with great interest.

                Obi-Wan watches Rebis closely, still heavily guarded.

                                      REBIS
                          Open the second.

                Yoda turns his attention to the second box. Summoning the
                power of the Force, he channels it at the second box, but
                with more difficulty.

                It too pops open but emits a puff of red smoke.

                Yoda grimaces and shakes his head.

                                      YODA
                          Sealed by the dark side, that box was.

                Rebis tilts its head up slightly.

                                      REBIS
                          I ask you now, Jedi.
                                (beat)
                          Open the third box.

                Yoda strokes his chin while Obi-Wan looks on with
                suspicion.

                The younglings compete with each other for a closer view
                of their master's task.

                Yoda slowly raises his hand before the third box and
                exerts the full power of the Force upon it.

                It rattles and spins on the floor.

                Yoda runs out of breath, takes a DEEP BREATH, and tries
                again.

                The box spins wildly and tumbles over itself, then comes
                to a stop, refusing to open.

                Yoda EXHALES in exhaustion.

                Rebis CHUCKLES.

                                      REBIS (CONT'D)
                          Just as I thought.

                Obi-Wan looks at Yoda with concern.

                Yoda glances up at him in frustration, HUFFING and
                PUFFING.

                Rebis raises two fingers and flicks them upward.

                The box springs into the air and flies into Rebis' hand.

                Rebis walks slowly toward Obi-Wan.

                Again, Obi-Wan reacts with suspicion.

                Rebis raises the third box, concentrates a moment, and
                causes it to pop open.

                A wisp of colorful smoke rises from the stone box,
                shimmering and branching into strands resembling peacock
                feathers.

                Yoda and Obi-Wan watch in wonder.

                The smoke dissipates into the air before the box crumbles
                to ash.

                Rebis abruptly turns and heads for the door. Before
                exiting, he turns back toward the Jedis.

                                      REBIS (CONT'D)
                          Open the third box ...
                                (beat)
                          ... and I shall return.

                Rebis tosses a new, sealed stone box toward the Jedis.

                Obi-Wan catches it in the air, speechless.

                Rebis turns toward the temple doors, which burst open. It
                steps outside and dissolves mysteriously into the wind.

                The golden light vanishes from the twinkling eyes of the
                younglings.

                It vanishes from Yoda's face, as he strokes his chin and
                narrows his eyes toward the doorway, lost deeply in
                thought.

Whimsied and Jacksoned

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:57:44 GMT

I had a fantastic day recently. Actually, every day is fantastic when you put "amused" as your mood on every post. But this day was more than just amusing. First, I went to The Met for the Max Ernst retrospective. (I will return soon for the larger, more complete version of the Diane Arbus show that I saw last year, downtown.) First of all, the Ernst retrospective was one of the most delightfully diverse exhibitions I've seen. Quite a startling and exciting contrast to the ho-hum Damien Hirst show and the beautiful and pacifying Ashes and Snow. It included works in wood, metal, illustration, and of course painting, and a wonderful progression of cubist and surrealist accomplishments. Many of the paintings there are ones that I have loved for a long time but hadn't yet seen in person. The crowd was also remarkably high energy. Little old Jewish ladies recited descriptive phrases such as "copulating insects" from the painting descriptions as if they were aphrodisiacal mantras. Some artists sat on the floor with their drawing pads riffing on images displayed on the walls. College students gathered in half-circles to joyously discuss the more whimsical accents of the show. I, along with many others, pressed my face against the long-admired illustrations of works such as the famous "Une Semaine De Bonte," while laughing maniacally. As if the show was taking personal requests, it incorporated works of the poets Paul Éluard and Benjamin Péret, as well as the writer/author and Queen of All Things Queenable, Leonora Carrington. I was in heaven!

After composing myself and placing my brain and its fireworks back inside my head, I headed down to the small Unica Zürn (notable suicide performer, surrealist, and partner of Hans Bellmer) show, passing what looked like an interesting "Masters of Indian Cinema" event. I went to the gallery out of sheer curiousity, because Zürn was such an unusual woman, but had no familiarity with her art. I must say it was exactly as I imagined: the obsessive, repetitive, painful expressions of a severely disturbed mind. It reminded me of fascinating artwork I saw from patients when I worked in mental health years back. One drawing in particularly is, I think, permanently etched in my mind. I have no idea how long I stared at it for.

From there I went straight down to SoHo with time to kill before meeting up with Mario Martinez, the Yaqui abstract painter with a show at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York. I perused the wonderful Housing Works bookstore and had some coffee before finding Mario wandering around Chinatown where we both enjoyed looking at glazed window ducks. I introduced him to Lombardi's Pizza in SoHo where he'd never been before (!!) and where some of the best pizza in the city is made. After some Italian coffee and pastries, and picking up a nice bottle of wine in Little Italy, I headed home a bit blissful and ready to look at my new Ernst book from the exhibition.

What did I find waiting for me on the sidewalk right outside my apartment? Why, a wad of Jacksons totaling $100 of course!

Besides the Ernst book, I also picked up a postcard called "Two Women Riding Across The Sky" for arianadii and scrawled some whimsical on-the-spot poetry in French on the back. Indeed, I feel indebted to Sariane for making me the gorgeous Ardhanarishvara painting I will share with you now. Ardhanarishvara (the half-man, half-woman diety, representing the union of Shiva/masculine and Shakti/feminine forces) is especially significant to minn and I, because it represents an integration of my Hermetic beliefs (in which figures like the Ardhanarishvara are a core symbol) with her roots in the Indian culture. Thank you Sariane for this most beautiful and touching gift which will join my other beautiful work of hers, "Undersea Dreaming."

"Ardhanarishvara"
by arianadii

Now I shall prepare for another fantastic day, as April 19th is my birthday and Minn and I (despite being a half-world apart) will partake in joyousness and hysterical frenzies!

Gnomebody Here But Us LJers

andala@livejournal.com — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:06:02 GMT

For our next vacation, I have decided to take minn to the five-star Gnome Hotel in Mt. Kailash.

Every room is a triple-suite, complete with furnishings custom to each visitor's subtlest of tastes. For Minn, there will be frisky puppies, mountains of chocolates, seventy-four libraries, and a potato butler. For myself, there will be a tiger swimming in the bathtub, lamps which are giant, luminescent rhombitruncated icosidodecahedrons, stairways to nowhere, and a laundry-chute which occasionally hiccups and spouts forth other guests' clothing. The beds also serve as a variety of vehicles, such as a sailboat, hot-air balloon, miniature helicopter, and, to the utter mystification of guests, a mobile rubix cube.

The maids wear giant hair nets bursting with a variety of delicious fruits which hop into your lap and beg to be savored. At precisely 2:00 PM and again at 5:00 PM, a man with a wooden leg hobbles through every floor, handing out haunted peanuts and speaking in riddles. To those who know the secret commands to give him, this man will offer maps to the most exquisite, fantastical, and hidden rooms of the hotel which even I know nothing about (yet).

In any given hallway, you are likely to run into a blindfolded child, wandering around with a tail to pin on a donkey. At one time or another, these children have inevitably meandered off from a traveling birthday party and finally collect en masse in the hotel's ventilation system, having to be lured out with ice cream regularly by the amused staff.

At noon each day, a giant, closed Ajna eye floats through the cavernous hotel interior and deposits itself in the main foyer. Guests gather to watch it open, an event which fills the room with intense, white light that illuminates the many naturally formed rock crystals that cover the walls and ceiling. The entire room becomes like a chandelier, and it is in this state that tea is served.

All this is explained in the Gnome Hotel Mt. Kailash handbook, which can be requested at the front desk but will not be given to you. This is because the Grand Architect absentmindedly misplaced the original handbook when the hotel was first built. As it turns out, he accidently dropped it inside a vase that was placed in the main foyer, but the table that held the vase ran off the moment the Grand Carpenter fastened table legs on it. No one has seen the table in person since it escaped, but occasionally the hotel surveillance system picks up an image of it running about mischievously. This is all for the best, for security reasons, because the handbook is also the hotel's keystone and the whole place would come crumbling down if it was ever stolen or destroyed.

In the caverns behind the hotel, guests will find the Star Pool; a 30 mile by 30 mile natural underground lake completely illuminated by the many phosphorescent fish, each about the size of a marble, swimming inside. One gets the sensation of swimming through stars in space. To prevent any mishaps from occurring, the black hole at the bottom is stuffed with a cosmic drain plug.

During the evening, Minn and I will hire a gnome boatman, for a romantic ride, who will steer a crystal boat through a labyrinth of stalagmites in order to witness the tribal dance of Nandi bulls. At the end of their performance, giant boulders will become superheated, alternating between fierce red, yellow, and white hot colors, before melting away and revealing twisted iron stairways. These lead to meditation temples atop the hotel where Garuda will land at dawn to blow a conch shell while Ganesh plays the flute.

After a full evening of witnessing such activities, we will join the other guests in full Venetian Mardi Gras costumes for a sumptuous brunch prepared "accidently" by monkeys let loose in the kitchen. The most successful of the foods will be selected by a super-intelligent porpoise named Lord Humphreys and carried into the room upon the backs of a matrix of acrobatic snowy owls.

In fact, the first floor of the hotel contains many restaurants, but not just men and women are served. Diners at the Crusty Barnacle are fish, and enjoy their meals beside a floor-to-ceiling human-tank, where human beings swim about and smoosh their lips at each other. Try the mealworm paté ($22) served atop a chunk of surfboard and drizzled with various pungent sea-sauces-- it's scintillatingly saline.

The second through tenth floors of the hotel house its guests, while the eleventh floor is entirely devoted to the fact that the tenth floor precedes it. Most of the time, this involves the eleventh floor shamelessly trying to copy everything that occurs downstairs. If a chair on the tenth floor is knocked over, the eleventh floor knocks its chairs over. If a couple has an argument on ten, then the eleventh floor turns its faucets on and off angrily, the best mimicry it can do. Most people find this creepy, and refuse to stay on the eleventh floor, and so it is pretty much left to do whatever it wants to do.

Amazingly, the operation of the entire hotel can be traced back to a single old man in the basement who spends his nights and days turning a rusted hand-crank. Once interviewed for The Daily Blerb (the hotel's newspaper) the old man was quoted as saying, "Naw, I'm not God er anything. I just turn de crank. Dis crank and me is good friends."

You might think that the cost of such a remarkable hotel would be outlandish, dubious, and outright rude, but you'd be pleasantly surprised to hear that the price of staying at the Gnome Hotel Mt. Kailash is... FREE! Of course there is a catch. Every room comes equipped with a strange device that renders the wearer "Completely Incomprehensible and Inexplicable Sometimes, Part of the Time, and All the Time." All guests are required to wear this gadget with pride, and contribute to what the staff has been known to describe as "Mythical Verisimilitude," which in fact is the very currency that the gnomes who run the hotel are paid in and owe their very existence to.

Having been there myself just next week, I can honestly say that I remember it was a nostalgic future experience for both of us. I hope to have seen you all there soon!

Myth of the Eternal Return

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:29:17 GMT

Prologue: "Psst. Who's that guy over there? I haven't seen him here in a while." - "Where?" - "Over there, flapping his arms about." - "Oh, that's Andala." - "You know him?" - "No, I just met him once. He's weird." - "How so?" - "I dunno. He talks to things and stuff. Anyway, check out my new cell! Every time my thousands of friends call, it boosts my ego."

At the moment of the inception of the time of the very instant that I had this thought, I began writing this sentence. It was flawed: destined to collapse into itself as a self-referential chunk of data lodged in a hard drive somewhere on the Far Side of the Internet. However, I shall now steer it around to where it should have aimed to pass: after a month long travel hiatus, I am now back into the LJ groove. I guess you could even say that Stella is not the only one who got their groove back.

Now that I've completed my obligatory two paragraphs about absolutely nothing, I shall present the sole outburst of this post: India was friggin' AWESOME! In an impending post I will share photos and stories from the trip.
After returning from India, I attended a very exciting event at the New School:
French Poetry: 1900-Present
which was delivered through the voices and actions of a small assortment of notables, including Mary Ann Caws whom I am very much an admirer of. She presented some of my favorite poems, taken from her new "The Yale Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry." Paul Auster also did something fantastic: after reading a Paul Éluard (three cheers!) poem, he proceeded into one of my all time favorite poems, which hath sprung from the bounteous mouth of Robert Desnos, and then introduced his 17 year old daughter with her musical interpretation of said poem.
The most exciting moment was meeting Mary Ann Caws in person, and discovering that she would like to discuss the work that I am doing over email correspondence!

Speaking of which, minn and I have begun putting our book collection online at The Neverending Library. I still have hundreds of books to add, but this is a start. Click the link to browse/search if you so desire.

Epilogue: I recorded the exact moment at which I decided to end my LJ hiatus and here I shall present it to you in the unabridged form. It was 5:12. The ancient clock on the wall of Cosmos' Laundromat had mysteriously leapt from its rusty nail, smashing onto the ground and launching its AA battery through the air where it came to rest exactly four washers away. The plastic hands of the clock froze in their place, yet people did not obey the stoppage of time (stubborn as we New Yorkers are) and continued shoveling clothes into and out of vaguely indifferent machines. At this point I was feeling guilty for having knocked the clock down. (I was convinced it was my fault because for the previous ten minutes I was trying to come to terms with the shocking realization that I was somehow opening and closing the laundromat door for people without leaving my seat-- a condition I have since explained with the theory that my Will has grown too powerful to be contained within the inadequate confines of my corporeal form and therefore has taken to lashing out in increasingly frequent intervals like that of a serpent's tongue darting curiously toward a potential meal.) Before I had the opportunity to apologize to the clock, a woman entered in a huff and kicked it across the floor, placing it in a precarious position, and thereby bringing to attention for everyone in the establishment the fact that the situation should be dealt with promptly, lest we all slip and fall and succumb to a similar fate as that of the clock. A few minutes later, a man brought a ladder over and repaired the clock, not adjusting the time so as to make up for the several minutes that transpired while this whole drama had unfolded.
If you've ever looked at the hands of a clock at 5:12, as I had a second chance to, you might notice that it looks like an L or (backwards) J that has fallen down. So I've decided to pick L/J up again.

I know that the turnips are dancing (part II)

andala@livejournal.com — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 04:52:53 GMT

Over the years, I have traveled many times to Vermont and throughout the rest of New England. To others, it may just appear to be a wild compulsion to endlessly follow stone walls, but I, dear reader, know that it is that very thing but *more*. I first sensed minn's excitement about New England when she was thunderstruck by Andy Goldsworthy's "Wall", but I think her appreciation has grown after seeing more and more of it in person.

When I was young, I stayed at the Topnotch Resort and Spa in Vermont for the first time. I remember liking it a great deal, and so I decided to take Minn there for a return visit. There's something unusual about revisiting a lost place of one's childhood. You can almost see your child-self all around you. A colorful smudge in a foggy windowpane, the quiet ripples meandering on the surface of the pool, the icicles bobbing on the trees in subtle waves. Yes, I was still there, wandering around with a sense of wonder. Minn has a certain sensibility that proves to me she doesn't take for granted any of the hidden layers of wonder that lie just beneath the surface of most things.

But there were many things that this trip was about, and Vermont came later. First, we visited one of my favorite places in the world: the 6&B Garden. A place which I have photographed and presented several times on this journal, the garden is a special point in the Universe where merriment, harsh reality, innocence, humor, and enchantment all cross paths, only to uproot a multi-storey monolith blooming with discarded toys that have refused to stop playing. This was built by a locally worshipped, psychically Janus-faced, alcoholic, homeless man. The strangest sights creep in slow orbit around this monolith, the East Village "Thing" or "Christmas Tree", mingling with the cyclical rise and fall of beautiful flowers. "Look there," I said to Minn, pointing out my friends, two ceramic children hiding in the shadows. They are the Nameless One and The One Without A Name. Once they lived as a single being, inside the Thing, but escaped. In the outside world they appear as twins, unable to be addressed until one day they again become one, reclaim their true identity, and will hold a brief but exciting conversation which will have much to do with the Fate of the World.

More 6&B Garden Photos:

One of the few inhabitants of New York City who have any idea about the true nature of such things are the animals at the Bronx Zoo, which had long ago been instructed never to say anything, anyway. As my loins are girdled with the Fires of the Big Cats, I know something about all this. Minn and I acknowledged this fact with a trip to visit our furry companions.

More Zoo Photos:

Of course, it was playing at the back of Minn's mind: something awkward, nail-bitingly worrisome, frustrating yet exciting. She was to meet my family at her very first Thanksgiving. I casually explained that everything was okay, that my family was as whimsical as I am, but this did not seem to settle her mind. I assured her that at any given moment her mouth was liable to be stuffed full of small delicacies of one sort or another, and that she'd not be able to say anything embarrassing. This caused her to stir slightly. I was making progress.

Minn's first impression of my father was that he was much like her own, which satisfied her a great deal. My father deliberately drove us for miles along stone walls, because this is the best thing to do when one is in the presence of Minn. She appreciated this gesture. Indeed, when she met my mother and sister, she was soon stuffed so full of food that she could not say anything embarrassing and was forced to watch my family's wacky antics until she relaxed and it was my turn to be horrified by home movies. Humph.

Thanksgiving was exciting. It is my favorite holiday, mainly because of the food. Also, we always have a new assortment of people, slightly different each year. This year included, my mother, father, sister, myself, my one remaining set of grandparents, my friend Chris, my sister's gf Amanda, an Indian fellow from Germany, an Indian couple who rent an apartment from my parents, a friend of my mother, and... Minn! We consumed nearly 30lbs of turkey, along with an unending series of delicious Italian and non-Italian dishes, following by coffee and a mammoth dessert spread.

More Thanksgiving Photos:

All her nervousness behind her, Minn enjoyed a few more days with my family, exploring such gorgeous seaside locations as Beavertail and Newport. In Newport, we quickly toured a couple of the city's famous mansions, including one of my own favorites, The Elms. I have not promised to buy Minn The Elms one day, though I would like to.

More Beavertail/Newport Photos:

Finally, it was now time for our romantic getaway, which began with a beautiful train ride through several small New England towns. A cafe car served us all the coffee we needed. We brought a DVD player, some books, and our beloved crossword puzzles which created a comfortable, warm environment for the germination of our vacation excitement.

There were few casualties as a result of our vacation. In fact, just one: a rude coffee machine that refused to do what it was told-- which is funny because it failed to do the one operation it was especially trained to do.

Each and every morning at Topnotch, we received a glorious free breakfast as part of our package. I was in heaven, as they consistently served me copious amounts of fresh fruit, including heaping portions of blackberries-- typically an expensive item at my local deli. After each breakfast we embarked on a new journey in the Stowe area, and returned for spa treatments and an elaborate dinner. Due to renovations, the spa was obliged to offer all their guests a special 2-for-1 deal, which we took advantage of in order to double our enjoyment of controlled and relaxing bodily contortions.

More Hotel/Spa Photos:

The spa was especially useful after one day, which featured a light snowstorm and the ascent by foot of a small mountain. I cannot accurately express here the enjoyment I got out of conquering a snowy mountain and its steep climbs with the woman I love. While she would prefer to do this again under less difficult weather conditions, we plan on doing it again and again, both physically and metaphysically. I am infinitely proud of her.

More Hiking Photos:

Also charming were our trips into the main town, Stowe. We visited local landmarks, shops, restaurants. On one particular occasion, we played an amusing trick on our complementary chauffeur. We had asked at the hotel desk for a recommendation for dinner in town. We decided upon a restaurant that was walkable from the hotel. On our way out, the driver, whom we had earlier that day, greeted us and offered to give us a lift. As it was beautiful and snowy out, we declined but thanked him, and set off down the hill. A short while later, the driver was summoned by the front desk to take a couple into town for dinner. When we walked out of the hotel and he saw that it was us, he did a double-take, for he had just seen us head down the hill earlier. In truth, we had done that, but then returned without him seeing. Next, he took us to the restaurant we requested, and suggested that I go inside to make sure they were still serving. I did this, received confirmation that they were serving, and we said goodbye to him. Later that night, he was asked to pick up a couple in town from another restaurant, not the one he took us to. He was confused the whole way into town (he later admitted) because we were the only couple he had taken to dinner at that point. So, bewildered, he picked us up at a different restaurant than the one he dropped us off at. We snickered, and I said, "I assure you we're only doing this to confuse you." Minn had become bewildered by this point too because I got her a chocolate mint martini which, when ingested, later caused her to accidently tip the waiter 100% instead of 20%, which we promptly had to remedy. We impressed our driver with feats of magic so much that when we reached the hotel, he shared with us various photos and stories about all the woodworking projects he has been working on. I have a tendency to like people who like woodworking, and chocolate mint for that matter.

More Stowe Photos:

Needless to say, the Vermont trip was filled with many things, all wonderful, great, or fantastic. We went home, satisfied, and glued to the train windows, absorbed in even more beautiful scenery.

Back in NYC, we didn't slow down. More adventures, more shopping, more fun. I took Minn through various lovely sections of Central Park. Upon arriving at the Bow Bridge, we discovered a couple sitting by the pond in a small wooden hut. At first, I thought this was our reflection on the pond, altered slightly by the various elements around us. It turned out to be a Jewish couple. I know this because the man turned to me and said, "Excuse me. Are you Jewish?" I said, "No, I'm not" to which he replied, "Oh okay, thank you." I have decided to go back to the Bow Bridge someday while being Jewish, in order to be privy to whatever was going on in his head when he asked me that, since I am now greatly intrigued.

More Central Park Photos:

After Central Park, I was sure to take Minn to the newly renovated FAO Schwarz where we inevitably ended up spending a great deal of money on stuffed animals, which I've found to be a necessary and recurring expense throughout my life. We bought Vlad, a 4+ ft. long white tiger. He sleeps on my bed now, meanwhile I'm not quite sure where I am but I manage to fall asleep anyway so it doesn't really matter.

More FAO Photos:

Sadly, some of the animals we purchased on this trip, Vlad, Bailey, Anastasia, and Zephyr, could not come to the airport with us when it was time for Minn to go, but Titus could because he's a tiny pup with a powerful name. He can go where and do whatever he pleases. For this I am glad, because as usual, Minn and I get rather sad when it is time for her to leave. I reminded her that I'll be in India very soon, and finally we smiled.

Thinking back, I believe one of the most important things that happened during this vacation was at one of the many glassblowing studios we visited. Two little girls were watching the creation of a dragon figure from behind a glass wall. The mysterious beast was not yet recognizable in its early form, and so one of the girls explained with some confidence, "It must be a turtle with a leaf necklace." While the girl's own parents did not seem to be sold on this idea, Minn and I discovered we were absolutely and happily in agreement that this was the most sensible thing we'd heard in a very long time.

F2P2: Four Senses

andala@livejournal.com — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:33:48 GMT

It's that time again! minn's bi-monthly photo project, F2P2, is upon us:

"Every alternate Friday, I shall post four questions; you have to submit your answers with photos. You can either post your answers in here, or comment with a link to the gallery or your journal/blog where [they] have been displayed. There is no deadline, really, but it'd be nice if you can submit your answers within the span of two weeks -- before I post the next set of questions. The only condition is, the photos have to be taken by you. Also, a link to my original post would be appreciated."

Here is the most recent theme (sight was excluded):

"The human body has five main senses: Smell, Taste, Sound, Touch and Sight. Each of these senses detects a feature of the environment and produces nerve signals to carry this information to the brain. Each of these senses is not only important but also quite indispensible, and each adds to our enjoyment of the world around us."

Smell

Taste

Sound

Touch

F2P2: The Five Elements

andala@livejournal.com — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 22:52:44 GMT

Here are my responses to minn's wonderful bi-monthly "Friday Four Photo Project". The last set of questions were to depict Chinese Astrology's five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth:

"Everything in our Universe, including humans, must have a relationship with these five elements. So, the five elements are applied not only to every physical attribute in the world, but also to the colours, directions, seasons and sounds, years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds of the Chinese calendar. These elements, calculated from the date of birth and time, give valuable insights in addition to [their] animal signs into the psyche of the person concerned, their inherent tendencies and their personalities in general."

Metal
~ Ring of chainmail on aluminum. ~

Wood
~ Bamboo pan pipes. ~ Large, wooden leg. ~

Water
~ Water droplets reflecting a blue ocean photograph. ~

Fire
~ Halloween jack-o-lantern. ~

~ This is of special significance to minn and I, as she has never celebrated Halloween let alone carved a jack-o-lantern before. The image of a sun and moon combination is spiritually significant to a person such as myself, and has a perfect application here-- a testament to our devotion to one another and proof that the power of love can achieve such things as elaborate, flaming fruit spheres. (Yes, a pumpkin is a fruit.) ~

Earth
~ Door to another realm. ~

My responses to the previous F2P2 are here.

Today On My Mind II

andala@livejournal.com — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:34:49 GMT

For minn, Today On My Mind II:
Minn's last TOMM: click!
My last TOMM: click!

Memories On My Mind

• Sam festered amongst a pile of bulging trash bags, peering at the colorful plastic buttons on his tape recorder. Punching them angrily he began shouting, "I don't give a damn about emotion" repeatedly.

• With a screech and a hiss, the rickety N-train pulled into the Times Square station. A long row of commuters gazed through the window at a lone potted orchid sitting in its own seat, which rolled past their eyes before the train stopped. I didn't know where it was headed, who its owner was, or what prompted its escape. But no one seemed to bother it. The train jerked and the orchid resumed its strange journey.

• I followed a little cat that slipped by in the corner of my eye. I followed it past the 7B bar, past the Earth School, past the Zips II deli where the clown shops, past the "East Village Thing". A few blocks later I was astonished to find it resting against the side of a building. Alas, it was not a cat, but a witch's broom.

• The satisfaction of saying one of my favorite words, "Ariadne," over and over again. Whispering it into my coffee, and stirring. Whispering it into the water swirling down the drain. Whispering it into secret places where sounds normally don't penetrate as offerings for an intimate darkness...

• I sat at a cafe, trying to concentrate on my work, while my neighbor shifted in his seat, quietly expelling gas. Suddenly I was overcome with a sting originating from my nose but spreading to my whole body. It was like walking through the fish markets in Chinatown on a hot summer day when the rotting, dried fish have been sitting out in the sweltering heat. The salty tang of rotting fish, moldy, crusted shark, the baths of squid parts gunked with beady, vengeful eyeballs.

• I walked out onto the street after having my hair cut. I decided to try out my newly manicured hairdo on the first person I passed to see if a good haircut gives a person an edge in life. I spoke to an old Jewish man selling hand-painted country signs on the street. He told me his history as an artist, introduced me to his friends, told jokes for quite a long time, and offered me a job whereby he would pay me with my own custom hand-painted country signs.

• I stepped out onto a deck with my early morning coffee to find a swirling romance emerging from the woods. Tendrils of light-splashed fog wound through the trees like delicate ribbons of veils, caressing the mighty trunks of silent oaks that sparkled from the perspiration of apparent arousal.

• Block after block of warmly glowing tents served up Italian food and pastries at the St. Gennaro festival as a slow-moving flow of wide-eyed and salivating visitors waddled up and down attempted rows. They bumped shoulders and squeezed through gaps to gawk at the mammoth, stuffed bears, grinning maniacally. Everywhere, people threw baseballs at targets, gnawed at colossal sandwiches, inhaled the sausage breeze, and danced a dance infused with garlic around saintly candles with wick-tipped crowns and crimson robes.

• A neighborhood circus set up their stage in the park down the street. I settled down with my lunch, as I prefer to take my sandwich while amusing characters twirl about, flaunting their kaleidoscope costumes. Small children were spread about the pavement, on their trembling hands and feet, gazing at the empty stage with greedy eyes. A sole announcer mounted the platform, shouting whimsied gibberish from a megaphone. The children spotted performers with large foam heads leaking from behind the stage, but they held back, adhering to an unspoken Law delaying the moment of impact until after the performers emerge properly from the flap at the back of the stage. Finally, in a moment of astonishing magnetism, the flap spewed forth jugglers, tricyclists, dancers, fire breathers, puppeteers, clowns, musicians, as the children rushed the stage in titanic merriment.

• At the end of my leg, nervously propped up most of the day while I sit back and work endlessly, I discovered a small example of revolt, significant nonetheless. My left big toe had constructed a small window in my sock, just big enough for my nail to peer through with an acute, anthropomorphic expression of disappointment aimed at me.

• A group of young students gathered at the cafe, joking about their day and sharing school gossip. Eventually, a haggard fellow wandered over and sat down in a comfy chair next to them. "Can you spare some change?" he said, "I'm homeless." The once jovial students went silent. One of them finally pulled out some change which turned through the hands of each student before landing hesitantly in the palm of the homeless man. The students nervously attempted to restart their conversation, but failed. Finally, the cashier noticed and came by. "You can't stay here," he said to the homeless man, "you've got to go." The students' ears perked up. Suddenly this was an ugly language they understood. Suddenly the homeless man was on their side. They bought him a muffin so he could stay. Immediately he was initiated into a world of high school gossip and reverie.

• I skinned some potatoes, chopped them into small cubes, then boiled them until semi-soft. I lightly dusted the potatoes with cinnamon, then sauteed them briefly in chocolate syrup, letting the sweetness become absorbed. This is how I practice making a culinary aphrodisiac for a certain potato and chocolate lover of mine.

• The fiery leaves, swollen pumpkins, speckled gourds, curious animals, hay rides, fudge, apples, pies, flowers, jams, Indian corn...

Please, if you have the time, respond to any one of these memories...