http://www.macri.com.my/

Giant Rabbits

sexybeast, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids:

We will add a few words about mandragores and androids, which several writers on magic confound with the waxen image; serving the purposes of bewitchment. The natural mandragore is a filamentous root which, more or less, presents as a whole either the figure of a man, or that of the virile members. It is slightly narcotic, and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin ? We dare not seriously affirm it, but all the same it is certain that man came out of the slime of the earth, and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of nature make this notion necessarily admissible, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth ; this assumption not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, positively supposes, creative will and the providential co-operation of a first cause, which we have reason to call God.

Some alchemists, impressed by this idea, speculated on the culture of the mandragore, and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanise the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female. (See: Homunculus) Others, who regarded humanity as the synthesis of animals, despaired about vitalising the mandragore, but they crossed monstrous pairs and projected human seed into animal earth, only for the production of shameful crimes and barren deformities. The third method of making the android was by galvanic machinery. One of these almost intelligent automata was attributed to Albertus Magnus, and it is said that St Thomas (Thomas Aquinas) destroyed it with one blow from a stick because he was perplexed by its answers. This story is an allegory; the android was primitive scholasticism, which was broken by the Summa of St Thomas, the daring innovator who first substituted the absolute law of reason for arbitrary divinity, by formulating that axiom which we cannot repeat too often, since it comes from such a master: " A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just.

The real and serious android of the ancients was a secret which they kept hidden from all eyes, and Mesmer was the first who dared to divulge it; it was the extension of the will of the magus into another body, organised and served by an elementary spirit; in more modern and intelligible terms, it was a magnetic subject.

It was Franz Mesmer who postulated the existence of a magnetic fluid or ethereal medium as a therapeutic agent.

The fifth Classical Element is known by various names: Aether

Plato's Timaeus posits the existence of a fifth element (corresponding to the fifth remaining Platonic solid, the dodecahedron) called quintessence, of which the cosmos itself is made.

Robert Fludd stated that the aether was of the character that it was "subtler than light". (In 1630, Fludd proposed many perpetual motion machines. Also, In 1618, Fludd wrote De Musica Mundana (Mundane Music) which described his theories of music, including his mundane (also known as "divine" or "celestial") monochord.

modern interpretation that algorithms, software, or other similar "cyberspace" processes be categorized as belonging to the fifth element.

Thus, for example, musical instruments that produce sound in cyberspace (whether by digital or analog electric circuits, and/or computation, whether mechanical computers, optical computing, or electrical) are said to be quintephones

Triple Diamond CLeanser

P3060007, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells, but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

As explained on an episode of Cheers by Cliff Clavin to his drinking buddy, Norm Peterson

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
William Shakespeare, Othello

"Acid is not for every brain... Only the healthy, happy, wholesome, handsome, hopeful, humorous, high-velocity should seek these experiences. This elitism is totally self-determined. Unless you are self-confident, self-directed, self-selected, please abstain." -Timothy Leary

"Herb like fruit. Keep you healthy, mind clear." -Bob Marley

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." -Tom Waits

All know the Way, but few actually walk it.
Bodhidharma

These teachings are like a raft, to be abandoned once you have crossed the flood. Since you should abandon even good states of mind generated by these teachings, how much more so should you abandon bad states of mind!

Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?

Kitty

P3070024, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

here's a kitty I saw

Carlos the Conqueror

P3130043, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Whoa, saw this crazy dude in Toronto.

Gypsy Punks

P3140050, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Whoa, saw this show in Toronto. Crazy Gypsy styles.

I'm Free!

Fire Apparitions

Cat Chronicles, Montreal styles (Kontray in a carton)

My work environment(s)

Cats and Sunny Corridor (and sunny Christ)

Maisonneuve, looking west

Walton Ford. A Self-Portrait

Filmed at Walton Ford's Studio in The Berkshires. TASCHEN 2007 (http://www.taschen.com/)



http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/01067/facts.walton_ford_pancha_tantra_art_edition_intaglio_print.htm

Change, etc.

"We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention, which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."


--from The Cocktail Party, by T.S. Eliot

New Work by David Hockney

He paints these large canvas panels outside on custom made eisles. Interesting...especially if you're familiar with his older work.

Morning Glory

morning_glory, originally uploaded by babajiwotan.

Move over Nutmeg and meet the new psychoactive plant ally in town: Morning Glory. The seeds of many species of morning glory contain ergot alkaloids such as the hallucinogenic ergonovine and ergine. Yesterday we had a big blizzard so I popped down to the local hardware store and picked up some seeds. Emptied the seeds into a blender.

Sure enough...

Gidyup!

Tremendous increase in physical and spiritual production. I ripped myself open a few new muscles unloading on the punching bag, cleansed the lodge and temple, intensified focus work on two new large scale painting works, washed all my laundry, made some new freinds through enlightened debate, improved my space combat ability playing x-box, laboured on the still in progress new Prince Astral album, played with the dog, etc.

side effects were: unwillingness to stop production, inability to slowdown activity, loss of apetite for unhealthy food.

In other news, everyone should download a movie from the internet called zeitgeist. It's free. I highly reccomend that everyone watch it. I would like your opinions about it.

Wide open

Wild eyes on the road
this is my bread, my butter,
the wide open spaces; jam

deep in the ice caves
the new gods are astir
"release me" rumbles the lake

Ask the wind where
we are all going, ask Orion,
who marches west

See the tracks in the pure white snow
No one has been here before

The Phantom

You guys are maybe a lil' too young for this. But this guy made me sleep with the lights on for 3 years.

The Death of General Wolfe(boy)

Yes, that's right folks, M. Wolfe(boy) is now working a real, office-type job, teaching ESL to French-speaking employees of SunLife, the National Bank, and a few other big ugly corps.

Don't let the half-smile fool you--his spirit has truly been broken by all these clothes, and walls, and schedules. :)

In the top pic, the shorter building on the left is one of the buildings I work in. In the bottom pic (taken right across the street), the old building in the foreground, with the big pillars, is another. The green domes behind it are part of Marie, Reine du Monde where I am now a semi-regular church-goer.

Excellent Carving

"That Glass is Half Full", portrait of Daniel Saidman done today before lunch at the Red Top

Ice Climb @ The Festival de Voyageur

Pack of Wolves, 1999

Odysseus in Montreal

I could tell you
things but I don't have
to anymore it's too
late or something,

i don't imagine you're
far away,
endlessly knitting and
unknitting a shawl to
keep away the suitors until I
return for you,

no,
it's too late now,
too long at sea,

to think of
rain like grey-yellow sound
on a bedroom window
blue-golden mornings of
coffee and toast and things
we had thought of during
the night to talk about
it was too
much for either of us so

i don't think of these
things anymore
i cleaned all the rooms
every square inch
the day after you left and it was
almost
like you'd never
been there,
no eyes like
a child's crayon drawing,
no sparrow's voice,
no soft shoulders or
dangerous curves--

i'm at sea now,
i'm tied to the mast
as I'd requested,
your siren's song is
lost on me

or it may drive me
mad
for a minute or two
but there's no
choice except to
keep sailing and you
can stop knitting your shawl
(if you'd ever started)
because I'm not coming back.

Ode to a Lunar Eclipse

Staring up at the portent moon
as it turns into a crimson orb
shadowed by the earth.
Separate heavenly bodies
have aligned like two lovers
creating a whole new possibility.
So strange and powerful
the forces we think we understand
until we encounter them like this.
Eons ago dinosaurs looked up to see
this very same thing
cosmic time coming into line.

Bye, Toronto (and thanks for the socks-- I still wear them sometimes)

Toronto
why do you
look to me now
like a city designed
under a bad Communist government?

Where are your memories,
Toronto--
where are your ghosts?

Did you forget it all
at the corner of King and Bay,
the centre of your Moloch heart?


There is no throb of life
in your skyscrapers and
wires, Toronto,
there never was,
there are
only those who
breathe within you
briefly. (They pushed me
out the door and
onto an early train today,
Toronto, all red-eyed
with morning.)

There is no imagination
in your long souless suburbs your
endless BMW lots,

nor in your scrub hills of Don Valley,
your forgotten moxie,
your hollow dark-eyed beauty
that you pulled me in with
so long ago,
your vaginal wall-art, Toronto,
is all just a front--

I see that now.

I left something of me
inside you, Toronto and
I may never
get it back (and, no,
I'm not just talking about my ipod),

but you forgot yourself, too,
chased nothing for so long that you
finally overtook it.

But still, even now,
when I walk through your
great grey streets
dragging memory behind me
like a suitcase full of concrete,
I talk to you, explain the
nuances of things as if
you're listening still, as if
you ever were.

Anyway, I'm sorry, Toronto,
but I've fallen in
love with someone else,
she's dangerous and aloof
and speaks a dozen languages
(most of which are strange to me),
she's already been making plans to leave,
and yet she
lets me feel at home
in the meantime.


You're so empty to me now, Toronto,
a glittering hollow shell,
and maybe someday I'll remember
that first golden rush of
when (and why) I loved you,

but for now
I can only wonder
if most of your soul,

lies somewhere else,
in those
who dreamed beside you,
briefly.

maudit hiver

(re)blog

I reformatted my blog, click

here

to check it out

Unfinished Business

what should the hand be holding?

That Way

La boussole de Gaboury

Babes in the Wood by Randolph Caledecott

This book was one of my favourites as a kid. It is pretty macabre though, so I wouldn't suggest it for the very young.

"But Is It Art"?

The eternal question again...

This image was created by Michael Field:

"All of my art work is based on ideas rooted in dynamical systems, chaotic dynamics and invariant measures (part of my field of research). I developed all the software, algorithms and coloring used for these images. I also built the computers used to generate the images and printed these inages myself. My interest primarily lies in the ways in which one can achieve certain desired artistic effects using a "mathematical palette" (as opposed to using images toilluminate the mathematics)."

More art here from the Joint Mathematics Meeting held in San Diego last month...

Toronto, Land of Decomposing Animal Corpses in the Windows of restuarants. OR: Armless beggars at the Gates

Whoa. Huge. Place. Me. It. The. Gha. Carlos, Dave, Meat, Burlesque, Girls, Boys. More when it all settles.

Home at Night

You Cannot Deny The Majesty

OK you all should check out the site belonging to Kathryn Beaton, she has quite the collection of historical (and largely Canadian) comics going!

Dadadadadadown!

l' AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

okay.

i feel better now.

just needed to get that off my chest.

:)

You guys should hop on!

Sour Grapes?

The lead letter in today's WFP criticizes the current exhibit at the WAG, Subconscious City, calling it "yet another round of pretentious soul searching." The letter is by Winnipeg photographer Maurice Jay Bruneau who opposes the idea that his pictures of Winnipeg be viewed as historical or self-examining. He says art should be pure aesthetic and should not demure to a concept of "communal esteem-building," going on to say that these sorts of themes are myopic and better suited for totalitarian states.

I think Mr. Bruneau has got a case of sour grapes. A theme like this one undoubtedly panders to the patrons of the WAG (who doesn't enjoy a bit of navel gazing from time to time), but this does not necessarily mean the work in question is bereft of universality and "greatness" as he contends. Although I have not seen the exhibit it strikes me as a perfectly valid topic, and furthermore, any artist who believes his work can be completely divorced from the time and place s/he created it is either an absolute abstractionist or a fool. Anyway, I'm not an artist, and some of you are, so I'm posting this and inviting any comments (non-artists too!) about what you think.

I chose to paraphrase the letter because I don't want to infringe on the Free Press' intellectual property in any way, however you can read it online by going to their editorial section, it's entitled: Too Much Soul Searching.

In Mice, We Trust

Little did the magic care
That the flames were tired and cold
But I will turn away from you
When you have no knives to share
And something to say

Burn into the end of my dreams
Watching the witch burn down
Here come all the imps again
Watching the thief hang wound

Majesties of the loyal
Hunted the dust and the lost
And the angels were high and all alone
And we all just walked away

But the celebrities
Of the remedial cults
Will forgive what’s hung and gone
Yet we still all have symptoms
We still wonder why
The dog bites the child
Holding it’s tail like a rubber band

But the mice hold no truth
They just scurry past our feet,
They tear us under our own heads
For we need to follow them back in the cupboards
Where our dishes are chewed and leeched
In mice, we trust



-----> Perhaps there is nothing else to what has been said, perhaps there is nothing but more.

Simulacra of a Canadian Flag in the Wind

Last night in Peg-town

My sister Tracey, my neice Maya, nephew Donovan, moi, and nephew Justin.

I got fired from Wonerland!! (On my last day)

I went to the pension office before work (supposed to be my last day) and the person helping me called my boss asking about the oversized deductions. Coco (my boss) was immediately enraged and said I was fired for skipping work (which I didn't do) . Next she said she would revoke my severance pay since I was fired and deduct it from the tax and pension she owed, evict me from my apartment, as well as cancel my flight!. I spent 7 hours at the human rights department where they told me I didn't have enough time left on my Visa to file a case, but were kind enough to call and try to negotiate with my boss. After a bit of the officers coaxing, she said that she would put the money owed in my account tomorrow (which was 2 million Won {$21oocan} after I realized how much she had deducted for taxes) and said that she hasn't canceled the flight ...yet (but still wants to). I will meet with her tomorrow and find out exactly where I stand. If she deposits my money and doesn't cancel my flight I will be very relieved and excited to return to the great white north, no matter how cold it is. If not, my much anticipated (anticipated by me at least) visit to Toronto may be delayed. More on this ridiculousness as it unfolds. =P

Let's open a store

Screen printing Tees

Maisonneuve

My street is called Maisonneuve-- "new house". Rather appropriate, yeah?

1--looking northwest from my back balcony. Crazy clouds.

2--a view facing east down Maisonneuve towards downtown. The first sun in many, many days.

3--chez moi-- third floor, top two windows on the right in the middle building.

La Basilique du Marie, Reine du Monde