Prospect Park, Dec. 20

Rededication

Among the strange things I noticed today, the menorah at Key Food frozen in time, still marking the 7th day of Hanukkah, and while I waited to cross 15th St a car topped with a menorah made of pvc tubing drove by, and this menorah marked the 7th day of Hanukkah as well. So back to the 7th day then. I'm glad, because Hanukkah ended too fast. I know, its not an "important" Jewish holiday, I know, this miracle has been debunked, the stunning event was not the miracle of self-multiplying oil but the fact that the Maccabees were able to rehabilitate their temple so quickly after it had been sacked. The celebration consecrates the act of rededication, an act of will, an act that can happen anywhere at any moment inside anyone's skull when one makes it a temple, when one dedicates being to the unseeable and unsayable, to the infinite mystery occurring symbolically in the nothingness of the void that hangs between the tips of angel's wings. But we can spice it up with fire.

One night we watched the candles burn for a long time to try to hear any stories they might tell. One flame burned astonishingly tall, twice as high as the others, and seemed to split its tip into three sections so that it resembled a little spirit dancing as it reached its arms up to heaven. It did that dance for a very long time, surprising us with its growing height again and again, with this brave display of the will for transcendence. The little flame danced a remarkable performance, I have to give it its due.

double mary

full tilt

The light that entered the camera left the exploding strata of the hydrogen giant only 8 and a half minutes before the shutter opened to recieve it.

porkmanteau

There's plenty of practical things I need to do now but I'm caught pondering the graphic that accompanies the discussion of the 2009 buzzword 'aporkalypse.' Is that really a Sri Yantra on that plate beneath the pig? Is someone going to get offended? Where did that image come from? Will this aggregate's appearance at the top of the Week in Review augment or detriment the mandala's reputed ability to rake in cash, allaying the Grey Lady's financial troubles?

To accompany the pigmanteau, a tiger-pig I was compelled to make yesterday posing in front of the Eye of Providence. To lead me to think about the transmutation of material desire into works of imagination, I guess. Dream guiding dream. Pigs fly!

Gratuitous pancake bearing crescent moon burner branding. To keep the piglets warm.

brooklyn alluvion

Soft Loves Spikey

8th Ave Hawk

I noticed the hawk because of the loud cry that sounded like a squeaky door being opened one way only, the same sound being made by the door to the armory that it was perched in front of. Perhaps the door had called it there. My friend and cohort K believes that to humans, angels might look like flocks of birds, an idea that happily escaped the suppression of my literal mind and sunk deep to the core, every flock's passing, a laying on of hands. And as wild and brutal as this raptor is, its proximity created the sense of having witnessed and been blessed by the perigee of a heavenly body. The mercy of the beauty doesn't come without the wildness, and in its presence it already feels as if those claws have instantly seized my sense of the banality and decrepitude of life and savagely shredded until all I can see is the latticed luminosity of the hills and the stones and trees and all the slow and fast work of nature.

calligraphy and blow torch

Spectral tangine; several people report sightings of the ghost dog in the house lately. I haven't seen it for over 8 years. Woof, Boo! If I've been stepping in ectoplasmic dog crap all these years, it certainly hasn't befouled my boots.

Around Carroll

My lens has been scratched for a while now, a piece of beach sand got in the closing mechanism I think and scratched it repeatedly. So now I always get a little extra something when I shoot into the light. Too bad it's nothing supernatural.

The trees at top are either Pagoda (Chinese Scholar's Tree) or Eve's Necklace. I still haven't managed to discover the difference between them. Excellent names, either way.

On Hapless Humanity

Daniel Meeter lights a fire of love in this post. Burn it again, while self-righteous people rip each other to shreds about how to save the world. We're going down with this ship, even while we're obliged to try to save it, the question is, will we go down with contempt of affection and generosity? We cannot escape the insecurity and vulnerability that are our best and worst aspects even as people butcher each other emotionally or physically for impossible resolutions to suffering and unattainable epistemological certitude. I would love to see the pastor's fire of acceptance for miserable, disastrous humanity spread and engulf even the anger that so many of us feel towards each other and ourselves for being a part of sinking this ship. I've only seen a similar fire in the writings of Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron.

Maybe it has something to do with ideas that surface in the following passage from Walter Otto's Dionysus.

He who begets something which is alive must dive down into the primeval depths in which the forces of life dwell. And when he rises to the surface, there is a gleam of madness in his eyes because in those depths death lives cheek by jowl with life. The primal mystery is itself mad–the matrix of the duality, the unity of the disunity, ..The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment when something new is created–when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy. The rapture and terror of life are so profound because they are intoxicated with death. As often as life engenders itself anew the wall which separates it from death is momentarily destroyed...Life which has become sterile totters to meet its end, but love and death have welcomed and clung to one another passionately from the beginning.

Did you Ear?

Just when I was really starting to dread the onslaught of the same old tedious Christmas carols I realized I'd been sitting on the answer for about a month, In the form of Do you Ear What I Ear, a Christmas compilation from Ear Farm and Let 'em In Studios. So far my favorites are "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," a cover by Goes Cube that completely grants the pathos of Edmund H. Sears moving lyrics a proportional treatment; "Welcome Christmas" by Mancino, still a steroidal prescription for any Grinch's heart. Fah who foraze, baby! My tenderness for the sweet stateliness of the Tom Tom Clubs "Il Est Né" encourages me to find the best in another round of creed sanctioned resource and soul exploiting fulfill-my-every-desire consumerism. Best of all is the fact that Ear Farms is donating 100% of the proceeds from the recording to a very promising charity, The Association to Benefit Children. HELL YEAH! Rock on Mike and Matt, these tidings of joy are welcome indeed.

If you are interested in further details, here's the press release:

It's here! After a slight delay, EAR FARM and Let 'Em In Studios are thrilled to announce the release of Do you EAR what I EAR?, a holiday album for the Association to Benefit Children, available NOW as a digital download exclusively on EAR FARM's Store Page for a suggested minimum donation of $5.00.

Do you EAR what I EAR? features original and classic holiday songs from Tom Tom Club, Asobi Seksu, Sean Bones, Sharon Van Etten, and many more, and all of the proceeds will go directly to the Association to Benefit Children, an outstanding New York-based service dedicated to permanently break the cycles of abuse, neglect, sickness and homelessness among disadvantaged children and their families. Awarded a four-star rating by Charity Navigator, ABC carries out this mission through a series of compassionate, sustainable, comprehensive and integrated services. They are a charity near and dear to our heart, and we’re grateful to have rounded up such a vast array of exceptional people to help them out in a season that’s all about giving back.

The album has already received advance praise from Pitchfork, The L Magazine, Consequence of Sound, and more, and we're delighted to finally share the result of nearly four months of inspired collaboration and efforts with everyone.

response to recent events

Coppers

A harvest of pennies awaiting pickup in the school office, an anxious canine awaiting her master's return. I place myself among these on the basis that a boy in my daughter's class has taken to calling me "Ginger" whenever he seems me. His parents seemed concerned about his transgression, but I could find no offense in it.

Wheat Field with Cypress Trees

I found a Van Gogh poster in front of The Montauk yesterday and laid claim to it, which meant having to climb over the old iron fence while choreographed by the building's super. The poster was one of those things I felt I saw before actually seeing it, maybe because Van Gogh quotes kept turning up all day. For instance, I must have read somewhere that for the artist there were 8 kinds of white, but I felt like I dreamed it.

Before now I never considered that Van Gogh painted sound, silent sound, his landscapes ring like gong hits. Perhaps when he cut off his ear the silent sound had gotten too loud, or perhaps he meant to loan his ear to someone who badly needed to hear the ecstatic tremoring of all things.

Because of an innocent oversight on my part my son was upset while we walked home from school, carrying the Wheat Field with Cypress Trees. Somehow the idea of silent sound inflating all things managed to keep my internal organs, and perhaps my brain, from being overly flattened by resentment and hopelessness, as is often the case, and his sorrow and anger, once dispersed, was totally and completely gone and replaced by an unusual calm and sweetness. Perhaps we'll hang the Wheat Field in his room, and hang Van Gogh's eye on my ear.

Exiled Thoughts

Yesterday I learned a new song, "Die Gedanken Zindt Frei," (Our Thoughts Are Free) at a temple Chanukah gathering. It grew on me, and I always feel super cool whenever I learn any Yiddish. The woman who taught the children the song demonstrated the freedom of thought by highlighting the enclosure of the skull, going around to children, pretending to unzip their skulls and read their thoughts, then condemn what she found in there. I enjoyed her presentation, she proved once again that when someone's creative or discursive impulse veers towards bodily imagery depth and discovering are greatly enhanced. Discursive references to the body reunite mind and body, which far too easily wander apart. The rediscovery of the body is a rather hilarious thing, I've often felt surprised and relieved to find it still there, to rediscover the vestibular intimacy of the body itself and consciously appreciate its role in shielding, to some degree, one's autonomy from the various kinds of bloody power games people have played throughout history.

I was quietly free to think to myself that in fact our thoughts are not free, completely. There are thoughts which many dare not think, thoughts exiled beyond the edges of the domain of tolerable ideas. There are thoughts imprisoned in the realm of the unthinkable. Can you believe, there are thoughts a blogger might not even write on her blog! But unlike the heretics killed throughout history, these thoughts and ideas cannot and will not go away. They must be reckoned with.

beached

A little reverie inspired by this leaf curling towards the sun in Prospect Park Saturday morning; it makes me wonder what kind of excitement the beaching of a whale must have caused in a community when times were hard and fuel scarce. What a miracle beyond all expectations the carcass must have been, what an incredible gift from the sea for the hungry and desperate living along a coast in winter. Warmth, fuel, food, tools, incandescence in flesh, all the more astonishing for having been given, not taken.

Recurring Dreams

My awareness of this motif, a slender needle with an object tethered to it, first emerged from my desire to take a photo of an antenna on 9th st while an airplane flew past, then appeared again in the paintings in an office in Park Slope, images that portrayed some kind of installation in a tundra, polar poles with small white objects tethered to them, then culminated in a mention of the soul tethered to the body in the paper Nicola read last Saturday. Another image that keeps turning up lately, a woman with a gun in her hand. I prefer not to think about this recurrence very much, it alarms me, but I'm beginning to read her as the sign of an important and significant ending, an ending that grants freedom from a dance that was lovely and welcoming but involved certain constraints.

From another perspective one might say that the angel of death, gun in hand turning to airplane, is the avenue of the soul's freedom from bodily bindings, but what I'm interested in is the sun-like gravity of the central, and the way the tethered object, while flying in its orbit, might actually have some experience of freedom not at odds with the gravity that constrains its orbit. For me, the body is not a hindrance, a corrupting pestilence as it was for the anti-material early gnostics and many others, but a temple, along the lines of what Milarepa called a tutelary Deity. The pole our dreams are tethered to. What is much more dangerously corruptible is the zombie-like reacting seen when a dreamer is unaware of her dreaming. If I could ask the angel of death to take anything from me, it would be whatever contorted externality or hyperfocus obscures the dreaming in the first place.

Another recurrence, the word sovereign. I admit I haven't thought about its definition much, but I read it defined as "living law" in one place. From a Taoist perspective it could be said that what is truly sovereign is pushed to the margins by the will to power fueled by insecurity. I'm rereading Arnold Mindell's Dreaming While Awake these days, and enjoying his observations about "not doing." I don't think anyone could better explain to me the way of engaging the Tao, the constantly emerging dream, and not only that, he is SO NICE. Canadian?

Also there's the motif of the focus shifted to the peripheral as most beautifully symbolized by an eclipse, a will to turn to what glows in the margins of consciousness, to see what's actually there, that subtle pulse that so easily recedes to the boundary of awareness in these days when reason, rationality and performance are worshiped above all things, obscuring lucidity regarding the sentient ground of being. Living a false life distracted by illusions of power it's possible to feel too much responsibility, and for the wrong things. I too easily forget that I don't create this dream I'm having or the objects within it, it just happens, and if I don't obscure it, I follow it. There's no choice about it, there's no work to do, life can become effortless commentary in The Book of the World, a book that is both subjective and true.

This is probably a mish-mash no one should read, an experiment in dreaming aloud that allowed me some clarification but some would no doubt view as self-indulgent. But it's my observation that those who go around claiming others are self-indulgent might need to indulge themselves far more than they do.

Gravesend

The gothic romance implicit in the name Gravesend and that of its founder, Lady Moody, seems to beckon exploitation. A little about the Lady forced to Brooklyn because of her taste for religious freedom follows via the Park's Department Website. I didn't see the triangle that memorializes her last night, instead I saw too many of the so-called Christmas decorations that get stupider every year and bring out the tyrant in me. Those super-sized inflatable Santas, snowmen and snowglobes people buy these days, do they really add anything?

Lady Deborah Moody (ca.1583-1659), a wealthy, Protestant widow, left England for America in 1639, and in 1645, settled in Brooklyn. She founded the town of Gravesend, naming it after her hometown in the Old World. Lady Moody became the first woman in the New World to receive a land patent, to write the first town charter in English in New Netherland, and to established one of the first towns with a square block plan in the New World. Furthermore, Gravesend’s policy of religious freedom set it apart from most colonial settlements.

Happy Dia de Guadalupe

morning prospects

view from the y

Drilling for Gas in the NYC Watershed?

How about no? NRDC has the following information on their website regarding this plan to drill for Natural Gas in the watershed that provides NYC with one of its most valuable treasures. The NYT has had many articles of late concerning the number of communities in the country where citizens are drinking toxic water. As one states "More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data." We can still avoid this here, but it's amazing how quickly greasy palms could sell out our most valuable resource. Learn more and take action here.

New Yorkers enjoy some of the cleanest drinking water in the country, but proposed industrial gas drilling could threaten the state's natural resources and the health of its citizens. In October, the Department of Environmental Conservation released a draft report intended to evaluate the potential risks associated with extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, which lies under much of New York's southern tier and the Catskills, including most of the New York City watershed.

The state's draft report, however, contains many critical flaws. Some of the most egregious omissions in the report include the failure to properly consider the potential cumulative harm to water quality, air quality and other natural resources, the failure to consider alternative plans that would pose fewer risks to New Yorkers' health and environment, and the failure to provide any meaningful plan for treating and disposing of millions of gallons of wastewater contaminated with chemicals, heavy metals and even high levels of radioactivity. In addition, the draft plan would not prohibit drilling in fragile ecological areas, including the watersheds that collectively provide clean, unfiltered water to more than 15 million New Yorkers and millions more downstream.

Although the Department of Environmental Conservation is currently accepting comments on the draft report, this version should be abandoned in favor of a completely new one that would ensure a sustainable future for our state's water bodies and other ecological resources.

Comment from LoveCanal2020...
If anyone would like to sign the petition to withdraw the DEC SGEIS report on gas drilling they can find a petition and letter to send to Governor Paterson here:
http://www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale/coalition_letter/sign

Happy Chanukah!

Chilly 9th and 5th

hell divers

Last week my friend told me the first spooky Brooklyn story I've heard in a long time. A student of his who'd been watching a rehearsal of the play he is currently working on made a point of speaking to him before class because he was concerned that the playwright's attitude towards some supernatural themes he included his script lacked gravitas. "You know, all that stuff is real and not to be messed with." The student went on to tell of an experience he'd had; upon entering a Catholic church in Brooklyn he'd accidentally become a witness to a young woman's exorcism. As the man watched, a group of alarmed priest and family surrounded her as she had some kind of seizure. Eventually the overwhelmed priests and horrified crowd heard the flailing girl begin speaking in a demonic voice. The man in the back watched as one priest became exhausted and wandered away. Praying quietly in the back of the church, this man made a silent pledge to the demon, leave her alone right now and you can have me when I die. At that moment, the girl stood up, looked at the man sitting in back, said OK in the demon voice, and passed out.

While I listened to my friend tell the story my heart seemed to grow three sizes like the Grinch's...who would be brave enough to sacrifice his soul for the redemption of a child? What will happen to him? Is it at all possible that certain brave individuals can actually sweeten hell with the scale of their compassion alone? Could they turn hell into heaven?

Perhaps this explains the Delok phenomenon in Tibet, in which various yoginis lay as if dead for a number of days and return to consciousness telling tales of various hells and the world of the dead, sometimes returning with messages from the departed. Jesus too descended to hell after his crucifixion, it is said. I assume this was no exotic vacation. What business did he conduct there, I wonder? When he ascended to heaven on the third day, did he bring souls with him? Did he lessen the devil's load? I can't help but think of the reportedly high burnout rates among social workers for whom the Sisyphus myth must get really personal.

On a related theme, the Black Metal Symposium, Hideous Gnosis, takes place in Williamsburg this Saturday. Herein a sampling of titles: The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling’s Underground • The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances • BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum • Transcendental Black Metal • Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya • Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration. More darkness here. I'm wondering if you dive deep enough into hell, do you wind up in heaven?

Terrified Freud

"This is the common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear–on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. These fears are found not only among persons who are frightened by the picture Freud painted of the unconscious; they also troubled the originator of psychoanalysis himself, who confessed to me that is was necessary to make a dogma of his sexual theory because this was the sole bulwark of reason against a possible 'outburst of the black flood of occultism.' In these words Freud was expressing his conviction that the unconscious still harbored many tings that might lend themselves to "occult" interpretations, as is in fact the case. These "archaic vestiges" or archetypal forms grounded on the instincts and giving expression to them, have a numinous quality that sometimes arouses fear. They are ineradicable, for they represent the ultimate foundations of the psyche itself. They cannot be grasped intellectually, and when one has destroyed one manifestation of them, they reappear in altered form."

~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self. My bold.

a sabella

Married with Children must be on a loop at Sabella these days, every time we go in, and that's often since I've accepted that my homemade pizza is lame, Peggy Bundy's giant smile and lofty quaff spice the otherwise barren restaurant up. It's of the old Windsor Terrace, back when the expensive sounding Prospect Park West was called 9th Avenue. There's no hint of the over-design or precious faux retro styling seen in newer enterprises. It's pretty much anti-design, spare, spartan, bare bones, bleak.

One of the few focal points in the shop is a small photo of Jesus that hangs directly in the back. A strange doubling happens when the man who's always there stands under it at work in the assembly of yet another wheel of dough, this profile so much resembles that of Jesus, wan and simple staring towards heaven, that the scene starts to take on a bit of a halo enhanced by the practically ascetic trappings of the place where people can still get something substantial to eat for 2 bucks. (Maker of pizza declined to be photographed, but it was worth asking to watch the blush bring new life to his face.)

There's also the curious placement of a small Pieta next to the soda fountain, so between that and the pie assembled under the Jesus looking skyward by the chef that he looks like, this is one of those places that suggests that the only thing limiting the Eucharist to the church is the long-standing negation of the mundane.

Windsor Terrace Window

I stopped to investigate this eccentric window display, how often do people face their personal artifacts to the street? How curious is that little green chair perched there on the ledge, who sits in it? From the look of the outgoing mail, the presentation seemed to have something to do with Jehovah's Witnesses and the intense faith of the residents, but I had trouble figuring in the exclamation I heard coming from within, an elderly person's loud proclamation "She bathed me so beautifully! She shampooed me!" Although "shampoo" is not biblical language, nevertheless I felt I was listening to an exuberant witness indeed. From what I hear and see, it does seem to be time for intense purifications, which is another way of saying "wisdom enhanced intelligence," but how does it happen?

6,000 children

“There are over 6,000 homeless children in Brooklyn and thousands more city-wide. While our efforts will not “solve” all of the issues related to homelessness, we believe that helping raise the spirits of families undergoing extreme stress can make a big difference,” said Marilyn Gelber, president of the Brooklyn Community Foundation. “Particularly in the holiday season, we want to bring some joy, hope, and help to homeless children who have been uprooted. We also hope to encourage people to Do Good Right Here, in Brooklyn,”

Read more about The Brooklyn Community Foundation and their efforts to boost the spirits of homeless children and families this season here. Partners in the Caring Neighbors campaign include CAMBA, Enchanted Lion Books, Heart of Brooklyn, Heights Kids, The JAR Group, and PowerHouse Books.