Mosaic Portraits

I love these incredible mosaic portaits created by S.A. Schimmel Gold, who composes the Worholesque pics with hundreds of tiny, hand-planced scraps of postcards, menus, and junk mail.  An avid recycler, she even mixes the water-based, non-toxic glue by hand. 

Her portraits of some famous people are fascinating (I find myself wishing I could read the works in the tiles she has pains-takingly cut and glued together to shade and enhance).   She also does personalized portraits of people using photographs as references.  Being an artist who is fascinated with faces, I just love these works.  I’m not sure I’d be patient enought to attempt this, but these faces are inspiring me to work my own art.

Check out more at:  www.schimmelart.com/

The Wit Continuum Remembers Jeremy Blake

We may never know exactly what Jeremy Blake was thinking as he walked into the sea on this day two years ago, taking his life away from the world.   What we know for sure is that he’d found life impossible without his love, Theresa Duncan, who had one week previous committed suicide.  Her death was out of the blue, without a signal that something was wrong.  A shock to Jeremy.  With the courage of any tragic Greek mythological or literary hero, our own punk-drunk hero decided to join her. 

An up and coming digital artist, Jeremy was making quite a name for himself when he decided to take his life.  He created colorful hypnotic digital videos sequences that were shown in major museums throughout the world, including the MMOA and the Whitney Museum in New York and had one coming up in D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery.  In October of that year, they presented his work.  It happened without him. 

Today we remember this cool artist, the possibilities of what his career and life could have been, and the never-ending controversy he created with his untimely death. 

Peace Jeremy…wherever you are…

What Could Have Been…

I imagine what could have been…had John Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn BessetteKennedy had not died ten years ago today.  Ten years has passed…I remember this day, like my mother and father who remember the day John’s father died before I was born.  And last year, with all the political landscape in turmoil, with Hillary, Obama, and McCain, I had often wondered what it would have been like had this man decided to join the foray… I think we would have been pleasantly surprised.  This possibly would have been his time, or perhaps, 2012, which would make more sense.   A friend of John’s on GMA this morning said that John had been privately preparing for the presidency his entire life.  He never stated that he would run, but somehow we all knew…

Today I remember and honor John Kennedy Jr. and his lovely stylish wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.  They would have been smashing in our White House…but only after, I might add, our current incredible pres and first lady had made their exit. 

These were two lives cut way too short.  He was only 39. 

That day, that glorious-weathered Saturday, when the news channels continually ran clips and interviews of John, one stands out for me.  Among all the numerous film clips of John walking down the streets of New York this one is timely:  John is walking and approaches some steps, obviously talking to the too numerous photographers that hounded him daily wherever he went, and from what I’ve read he was always polite to them.  Here we see John suddenly lean down, out of the camera shot.  I’m thinking, what is he doing?  Tying his shoe?  Did he drop something?  The camera finally pulls back and down at John, who is kneeling on a step, petting a cat that was sleeping there. 

Got to love this man.

Peace John and Carolyn…wherever you are…

Sad Day – Remembering Theresa

Today marks the second anniversaryof the death of Theresa Duncan, the inspiration of The Wit Continuum.  She was a great story writer, a film maker, and a creator of video games.  Theresa became an icon in the blogging world.  Her blog, The Wit of the Staircase, lives on in cyber-space, a reminder of what the truest wit can achieve in thought and writing (and interesting photo finds).  It became Theresa’s  final call in an esoteric, yet strangely sad, life.  It was too short, Theresa.  We would have liked to see more.  Why you gave up, we will never know, but in some infinitesimal way, I understand.  You left a haunting story behind…it will not die for a long time, if ever. Which is part of why I write here;  keeping  the candle burning, keeping the links alive.

What drew me first to her story was an article called Folie A Deux written for California Style shortly after Theresa’s death.  (Full article is in my Pages).   I’ve always been drawn stories that have me think:  one could not write a fiction better than this.  An inexplicable suicide of a glamorous, intelligent artist who was so young (only 40) and seemed to have a beautiful bohemian life, certainly had a beautiful love.  What made this story even more haunting was that seven days after her suicide by overdose of sleeping medication and alcohol, Theresa’s lover of 12 years, digital artist Jeremy Blake, took his own life by drowning himself in the Atlantic Ocean.  The deep probing question of why has been prevalent for two years now.

Theresa was an intelligent, exceptional writer, who made connections that none can fathom.  Her blog shows this clearly.  I enjoyed purveying it so much, she inspired me to start The Wit Continuum last September.  Some of her blogging style I have adopted, as you can see, but I notice it a lot of the blogs I’ve touched upon in the past year who have also loved and written about Theresa as well.  Spiraling my own thoughts and interesting stories, books, or ideas that I find, as well as writing about the fair Ms. Duncan, has been a source of joy for me, a challenge. 

Paranoid delusions and scientology conspiracies aside, Her story will never die.   One of my goals is to keep the speculation alive.  With a film about Theresa and Jeremy in the works right now, I think we’ll have more to blog about for years to come. 

Peace Theresa…wherever you are.

Moment of Surrender

At the moment of surrender /  Of vision over visibility / I did not notice the passers-by /  And they did not notice me / I was speeding on the subway / Through the stations of the cross / Every eye looking every other way / Counting down ’til the pain would stop / At the moment of surrender / Of vision of over visibility / I did not notice the passers-by / And they did not notice me

Lyrics by Bono

Feeling the cool summer groove today…peace…

Nasty Comment follow-up…

oooohhhh…I must say… that unprovoked attack …I LIKED IT!!  Especially the word “gross”.   Never heard that one before.  “Unrespectful” (which isn’t even a word) was the last nasty back in January.  (Guess I should expect one every six months or so).  Mr. Williams actually wrote “This blog is gross.  Get your own ideas instead of riding the coattails of someone who left us too soon.”    Can’t thank Mr. Williams for his opinion–like assholes, everyone has one. 

But, if this is what anyone thinks I’m doing,  I will proudly continue to ride the coattails of the immensely missed and deeply respected Theresa Duncan.  

Wonder if this guy plans on stopping by on the 10th?  Not to worry…still wearing my armor.

Peace…

Ah…I’ve provoked yet another nasty comment…

Checked in today to see if all was well in my community here at wordpress, and found that my own home base was invaded.  Another nasty comment has exposed itself to my About page, from a dear Mr. Williams who does not blog himself, but thinks mine is, ah, what a word, “gross”.   Yeah, I don’t think I’ve use this word since 1983, well, maybe once or twice, but certainly not on the occasion of describing someone’s work.  He goes on to say that I am “riding on the coattails of someone who left us too soon.”  If you’re new here and haven’t read my blog, the coattails I’m supposedly riding are that of the late Theresa Duncan, an iconic blogger who passed away two years ago this week.  If you look at my sidebar you’ll see her.  If it’s her coattails I ride, so be it.  It’s been an honor, an enjoyment, an obssession, I’ve learned a lot about writing and blogging,  and I’ve met many interesting people from across this country, and some out of it, that have stopped by.  And if so many people have stopped by, I must be doing something right.  I regret nothing. 

And when the infamous non-blogger Mr. Williams says I should get my own ideas, well, quite frankly he hasn’t read much of my blog.  My most popular post has been hit on nearly 1000 times and it’s about my distaste for clean coal as it relates to my life personally.  It’s a brief story, to the point, and I don’t think it was Theresa’s idea.  If this is what my comment enthused Mr. Williams thinks. 

Like I asked some time ago:  Why do people bother with the nasty words?  What does it do for them?  Is it some need to boost their own ego, or just a love to derail someone else, thus making themselves somehow better?  I can’t figure it out.  He should visit that strange dude wearing the freaky masks blog.  I wonder if he’d call this gross also?  I wonder if it would be as gross as mine?

My first nasty comment shook me up–and Sarcastic Bastard was a sweet Georgia peach (my favorite) and told me to keep my chin up.  And I took those words to heart and have grown.  So SB, should I keep that nasty on my About Page, will that toughen me up, or should I deleted the eloquent user of the word “gross”??  Should I par with a witty response (I do have one) or let it hang?   Input needed here.  Lisa, pipe in if you get a chance.  Need an opinion.  Should I keep the reminder that someone hates me or not?

And if anyone has nasty comment experience, let me  know, especially if you were visited my Mr. Williams and called gross.

Peace…

July 4th – The fireworks of my uncle…

Another 4th of July already!  The Wit and family will be spending it with uncle who hosts a big shin-dig in the coal banked reaches of northeast pa.  Around 9 pm or so, after we have all heavily drunk of the wild cisterns of glee that are often called coolers, we will sit back and watch uncle don his viking helmut, hike up his pants, toss another cold one and present us with a show, something much like this.  (well, actually not quite this big, but close, mainly because it is so close!).  Not settling for sparklers, uncles asks the tent guy earlier this week “Have anything else?” to which he is discretly escorted to the back of the gentleman’s truck where cases of United We Stand and other such phenominally named boxes can be found, all perfectly legal, of course.  There is a competition in this neighborhood…fireworks can be seen lighting the sky from all directions, leaving us dizzy and aching in the neck by the time we are on our journey home, exhausted, stuffed, and slightly drunk (except for the driver of course!)  Believe me, you haven’t experienced fireworks until some sparks have fallen on you and you at least have a hair or two singed, or as one year, when Mr. Continuum was struck in the chest by a flaming falling firework shell).  

All hazards aside…Hope everyone has a wonderful Independence Day!  Happy Shin-digs! Let freedom ring!  God bless you all!

Peace…

Only at night, when the vodka flowed even more freely…

An excerpt from Seducing The Demonby Erica Jong.  (Love this book: if you’re a woman and a writer you must read it).                              

The wonderful Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks and I shared a double-decker sleeping compartment from Moscow to Kiev, but we didn’t sleep.  We stayed up all night talking about poetry or reciting it to each other.  Robert Bly wandered from compartment to compartment, playing his balalaika. 

   When we arrived in Kiev, we were paired up with our translators, who were clearly also reporting to some lowly apparatichik at the KBG about everything we said and did.  That was also the standard in 1983.

    Matrons in black guarded each floor of the hotel and impounded our keys and passports. 

    For most of the day we sat in meetings wearing headphones in which we could listen to endless droning speeches in Russian or English.  Every hour or so we were summoned into the hallway for frozen shots of vodka, which I guzzled (not abstaining then), and gray greasy beluga in buds of butter, which we perched on toasted pumpernickel crescents or ate with spoons of abalone shell.  What beluga it was!  Could Marx have known that the best beluga would be reserved for Party members and their guests?

    At lunchtime, there was another three-hour food orgy with more beluga caviar, borscht, mystery meat and icy vodka.  For dessert, there were pastries and sweet Georgian champagne.

    Susan Sontag, who was nothing if not pragmatic about her career, toasted “the kitchen staff that prepared the meal.”  Clearly she had been here before and understood the full spectrum of appropriate Communist behavior. 

   Only at night, when the vodka flowed even more freely, did my sloe-eyed translator break down and weep.

   “Soviet Union no good place for momens,”  she whispered.   “Men drink too much wodka, become why-o-lent.”

   Studs Turkel would roam the city with his tape recorder trying to collect impressions of life under Communism, but an overenthusiastic comrade confiscated his machine. 

    During a performance of the opera The Bartered Bride, my translator lushly whispered to me, “Dat is fate of all Russian womens!”

Curious/Strange/I Can’t Stop Looking At It…Art

The curiously strange oil paintings created by uber-creepy-story-and-movie-writer Clive Barker has got this Wit mezmerized.  Bought this book a few years ago and enjoyed the jouney into another world…not so far from our own…could be at the end of that empty field at the edge of town…know what I mean.  In any case, the teen Continuum members have picked up the second book, which got me thinking, and re-looking at the artworks of Mr. Barker.  There is a dark place in the Wit Continuum’s brain that loves pics like these; worthy of second, third, even ten glances.

 

In an interview Clive said that he actually started the paintings first, then sat back and his mind soared into a story surrounding them.  Clever, and quite obscure way to illustrate a book.  Fascinating  more so because of that I should say.  There was supposed to be a movie with Disney, I think, maybe in the working stage 5 years ago or so, but nothing has hit the screen yet.  Still waiting…(perhaps it was dropped–too creepily creative maybe??)

Avant-Garde Djuna Barnes

We still need to know more about Djuna Barnes to grasp her unique style, her radical fusion, her ideology.  Djuna was born in New York State in 1892 to an artistic, eccentric, strong-willed family.  Barnes became a stylish, self-created, self-supporting New Woman.  She lived in New York from 1913 to 1919, creating a bohemian bi-sexual life-style.  Red-haired, she was a vital presence and a vivid wit, sometimes using the psuedonym, “Lydia Steptoe”.  And she stepped on toes earning her own living and helping to support her family as a journalist and illustrator.  She also wrote stories and plays. 

 Au Cafe, Photo by Maurice Brange of Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris, 1922.

During the 20s and 30s Djuna moved to Europe, finding a home in Paris, Berlin, and England.  Once again, her free-lance writing and her avant-garde lifestyle brought her into the artists groups and the lesbian circles.  She became friends with the celebrated lesbian leader of Paris Natalie Barney.  Her best known novel, Nightwood (1936) is a profound study of women relationships and encompasses her long affair with Thelma Wood, a sculptor. 

Others she associated with respected her work and her vision.  Some of these names included: James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Mina Loy, Samuel Beckett. 

Later, after WWII, returned to the United States, moving to Greenwich Village.  Here, she had such friends and admirers as Marianne Moore and Dag Hammarskjold {just love that name!} who was the Secretary General of the United Nations at the time.  She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Once a heavy drinker, she eventually gave up alcohol, but her famous red hair whitened with age and her brave wit seemed to turn vicious  and prejudiced nearing the end of her life.  She wrote, but rarely published, and died in 1982, sick of being old and alone.  (which is what this Wit sometimes worries about for some people that she knows.) 

Source:  The Heath Anthology of American Literature

Yogic Warrior of Love, Life and Destiny

Working out some new yoga this week via the incredible Duncan Wong and his Yogic Arts practice.  He combines yoga with martial arts moves that tone muscles, open joints, and totally liberate your range of motion.  I found myself in positions I only dreamed within the first practice.  I love the insight on breathing technique, and the abdominal and gluteal sections have me a bit sore (all in a good way).  Duncan is incredibly agile, effortless in his moves, and perfectly sculpted, which gives this yogi some eye-candy inspiration.  Here’s a piece of an interview:

            “I was born to a Chinese beatnik father and a Scottish hippiee mother in San Francisco in 1968, a product of the famous “Summer of Love”.  Born into a street life of budo and punk rock communities, I vacillated between urban motorcycle youth culture and remote mountain native nature survival training lifestyles.

              I was a street fighter turned proffesional kick-boxer, in the Korean styles, and came upon yoga as a teen.  It was like a healing balm for my body and soul.”

What’s your yoga philosophy? 

                “Live, love, give.”

Link:  Chris Betras via Japan Today

Michael’s Off The Wall

In memory of Michael Jackson – One of my favorite albums, my dear offspring.  Even after (and I can’t believe this) 30 years.

Memories of roller skating every Friday night…waiting for one of these songs!!

Hey Michael,  Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough!  Where ever you are…

Femme de Lettres

 

She was the original femme de lettres qui a mal tourne–the woman of letters who turned out badly. 

In The Vagabond she describes missing writing so much when she had to earn her living on the stage:

      To write!  To be able to write!  It means the rapt hypnotized gaze, caught by the reflected window of the silver inkstand.  It means the burning of the divine fever on cheek and brow while a delightful death chills the hand that traces words upon the paper.   It means also oblivion of time, the idle nestling in a corner of the couch while yielding free rein to a very riot of invention.  It means emerging from the debauch tired and stupefied but already richly rewarded and the bearer of great wealth to be poured out upon the virgin page in the circlet of light sheltering under the lamp…

     Oh, to write!  That joy and torment of the idle!  To write!  Time and again I feel the need come upon me, urgent as thrist in summertime, to take notes, to depict.  And I seize my pen again and begin the dangerous, deceptive game anew, seeking to capture with my flexible, double-pointed nib the sparkling, fugitive, passionate words!   It is merely a brief crisis,  the itching of a scar.

Ah, Colette!  One of my favorite cat worshipers.  What a great description of the urge to write.  The Wit here is finally “itching her scar” with regularity this week, and finding some time to blog as well.  Here’s to hoping for the ever-lasting “oblivion of time” to get it down on all my virgin white paper, and to emerge tired and stupefied.  Feeling very “femme de lettres.”

Peace…

Edie and Andy

Just love this one.  Thought about how they set this one up.

U2 on the Horizon

My favorite dudes of rock for, dare I say, over 25 years still do not fail to amaze me and transport me with their lyrical music.  Like fine wine (oh, what the hell, I know it’s a cliche) they have aged to perfection, and the music has evolved into it’s own classic standard.  Each album they put out has that one song that will live on and on.  For this album, the “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo” is a song called “Magnificent” and it’s number one on my current play list.  Drive on a long winding road listening to this one, with the windows down and the sun flashing through the treetops onto the road splattering with color…you get the picture.  I can’t really pan anything on this album, except for Get On Your Boots, which is still a bit of a rocker, but lacks luster for me.  The opening three tracks (Magnificent is 2nd) leave me breathless. 

The best band in the world continues to feed this soul’s continuum…

Saturday

Below is my last Kate post for this week.  Loved these black leather driving gloves with her skivvies.  The shot I think is amazing and the staircase…yea,  the staircase.   Anyway, hope you sort of enjoyed my scheduled ahead pre-posted Kate week because I was in a slump with all this fucking rain and gloom and doom along with a birthday I should have ignored (after 30 we should all stop counting).   Not to mention all the writing I didn’t do this week. 

Better days ahead.

Peace to all…

Kate on the Staircase

Iconic Kate

 

I’d put her right up there with Edie in iconic value here.  I would love that bag for my birthday…which is today by the way.  Peace to all…enjoying my day…

Black Dress IX

Kate Moss - Black Dress IX

Liberte Writes

The Wit Continuum is purveying global cultural events, ideas and esoteric stimulations along with its devotion to the life of the creator of The Wit of the Staircase.

Fallen Star

Why do we write? As Glenn O’Brien wrote in his tribute to Theresa Duncan, “all writers know that feeling of esprit d’escalier” which is in essence that witty response you think of long after the conversation has ended. Happens to me all the time. We write because we know the stories we think of, those angelic bits of poetry we receive while driving, that line of dialog that pops up or something we feel strongly about will be forgotten in a heartbeat if we don’t get it down. The things we see, too, as we explore our world, our internet, our political landscape, our spiritual sides–all request a permanent place in the world. Along with the people we meet who shine, if ever so tragically.

      I came across Theresa’s story last October in California Magazine. Her story still haunts me, almost one year later. Her The Wit of the Staircase blogsite continues to be a source of inspiration and prolific adventure, filling me with thoughts I hope to write down. O’Brien goes on to say “…and you can never second guess what it is to be haunted by ideas, by angels or demons or history or visions, be reality or imagination.”

      I’ll leave you with a quote from one of Theresa’s articles:

      “That’s what an artist is supposed to do. An artist is supposed to be a land-based astronaut. You’re supposed to be walking out in front of people, avant garde, reporting back, if you make it.”

We may never truly know why she never made it back. There are many stories to explore about her, there are many questions left unanswered. It is said she was at peace with her decision to end her life and I believe this. But we wonder still why she chose to take that wonderful eclectic voice from us, from those she inspired, and those she still inspires today.

Say Something

by Jrock1919

Say Something

If, as one says, one says

something to another,

does it go on and on then

without apparent end?

 

Or does it only become talk,

balked by occasion, stopped

because it never got started,

was said to no one?

                   -Robert Creeley

      If our thoughts are energy, which they are, what are our words when spoken?  If spoken words are energy, what are our written words?

Twilight Falling

      Under my staircase I’ve been reading Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight teen book series. Vampire’s, werewolves, oh my.  We here at the Continuum are looking forward to the movie release in November-it officially took over the new Harry Potter movie release date (which was pushed up to summer 2009 which we are not happy about).  I hope the Twight movie will live up to the writer’s vision.                    

       As for the books, however, I’m trying to overcome my disappointment with the main character, Bella, and her lack of personal empowerment.  She falls so desperately in love with a beautiful yet tomented vampire, who’s been alive for so long I can’t figure out why he isn’t mature enough to see what an idiot this girl actually is. She at one point looses months of her life-shown in chapters with month titles and blank pages, portraying the emptiness of her entire life do to the rejection of the vampire for the “how-many-ith?” time. 

      It’s a stuggle for me that this character is so weak over some guy and that he alone seems to be her heart’s only focus that I wonder what impression this leaves on the many young readers who love these books and may perceive Bella as the “it” girl of current literature. I so get tired of the vampire (or the were-wolf friend, male of course) rescuing her from the many self-absorbed perils she places herself in. Yet, still, I read on and on.  Would have like to see this girl kick some ass. Instead we see her literally held up by the vampire dude because she’s too weak to stand (as at the end of the third book). I haven’t read the final book yet.  Perhaps there all my character flaw questions will be answered.

The Italics Were Hers

While scanning my bookcase last week I came across one of my favorite books.  Published in 1996 and written by Kennedy Fraser. Ornament and Silence is a collection of essays on women who were artists, writers, poets, or were married to one. Great read for those of us needing inspiration in artistic life.  My absolute favorite chapter is titled “Going On” and it is about the iconic Russian writer Nina Berberova, who Fraser met several times and interviewed.  Berberova is the author of The Tattered Cloak, The Accompanist, and her prolific, and extremely pagey autobiographical memoir called THe Italics are Mine.  Nina had a modern vitality in an age where freedoms were compromised, women had a certain place which was not equal with men, and in coming to America after suffering and  fleeing the Russian revolution, Nina went on to find “the horizon she was promised.” “Like everyone else in America in the 1960s, she hit the road, setting off in her car to drive across the continent, exploring her world without walls, the new state of consciousness that she now called home.” 

Her philosophy of life I love especially.  Her checklist, taken from Ornament goes like this:  “Did you survive morally and mentally as well as physically? Did you try to look inside yourself, or did you play the victim and look for others to blame?  The great Russian question: Did you speak out and tell the truth? Were you bold in your work?  Were you modern-pushing yourself away from the nineteenth century with sufficient vigor?  Did you fulfill your promise, develop the talent you were born with?  And this question, over-arching all:  Were you cooperating with the life force, or were you willfully moving in the direction of suicide?”

       Nina wrote a list of her freedoms:

       From what, exactly?

• From intellectual anarchy
• From the opinions subject to the caprices of mood
• From dualism (everything has been synthesized)
• From a sense of guilt (now gone)
• From anxiety
• From fear of the opinion of others
• From neurotic restlessness and disorders in the body
• From the pedantry of early years
• From formless overflowing with contradictory emotions
• From the fear of death
• From the temptation to escape
• From pretense

Check out anything by Nina or Kennedy when you get a chance.  Promises of exquisite style and extraodinary writing-inspiring for any of us women writers who need it.

The Spiral Staircase

The symbolism of a spiral staircase is that of a spiritual journey or spiritual progress.  It symbolizes the process of illumination, when one sees things more clearly, from a space within that was uncharted, unclaimed.  Each step on the stairs turns slightly, turns upon itself, bringing a new experience, set up by the prior, a breakthrough.  Eventually you climb to the new level where there is…you name it. 

Suddenly everything seems possible.

       There were times when I felt that I was stuck on the staircase landing, moving forward still, or working to move forward, but never getting to the next step to take me higher.  I felt that I was on a sort of treadmill-the treadmill landing-walking on and on and on…

      When you open up to things uncommon, more enlightening things open up to you.  The treadmill stops and you step forward…then you step up.

The Secret Life of Plants

Along with the ethical treatment of animals–including the ones we kill to eat–should we mandate a code of ethics for the humane treatment of plants that are havested for food?

      If we are to take seriously the notion that plants have emotions, like humans and animals, as suggested by German professor Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner, then we would surely have to rethink that potted flower sitting on our desks or on the porch.  According to the doctor, if one showers a plant with talk, attention, and affection the plant will grow healthier. We’ve all heard this. Talk to your plants and they grow fuller and look better.  But have we really, really thought about what this means.

     Can the energy we extend to a plant, showing fondness with touch and words actually be understood by the plant and if so does that blast of rock music we play effect it, or the Mozart?  Can the flower actually feel our touch?

         Which leads me curiously to Cleve Backster, and American scientist who believed plants can communicate with other life forms.  This pseudoscience became known as the Backster Effect. In his expertiments, Backster attached a polygragh, better known as a lie detector, to one of a test plant’s leaves.  He claims to have measured an electrical energy response coming from the plant as it was being watered.  Was this an actual response, possibly to the plant’s pleasure of being fed?  Backster tried for other reactions as well. He decided to burn one of its leaves. Apparently the polygram needle did dramatic sweeps, showing fear, even though Backster had not even touched the plant.  He came to the resolution that plants not only could feel things, but that they could also perceive intent as it relates to the plant itself.

What about the flowers we cut for our vases?

Vegetarians beware.

Now I’m reluctant to snip the sage and parsley from my patio garden for tonight’s dinner.  Chopping lettuce scares me too.

Link: Plant Perception (Paranormal)

The Most Brave and Radical Ideas

In January 2007 Theresa Duncan attended a war protest rally in Washington, D.C.  She said she carried a truth about 911 sign.

               “Why not question every single thing you believe?  Why not consider things that you’re embarrassed to believe?  Maybe 911 is an inside job.  Maybe love and forgiveness are the most brave and radical ideas….”

Notes

Some days there is more than enough time–to write, to explore, to design, to feel the world through different eyes.  And then there are those short days. They wiz by leaving you feeling like: What did I do?

The need to accomplish, to finish, to get it out there overwhelms us all.  I dig through all my material, tons of stuff, some in files, some sketched swiftly at one time into a notebook, some of it neatly tucked  into its own file in the computer.  Sometimes I go through it all and nothing hits me.  I sit and think.  I call these days composting days, when all the stories, ideas, newsheadlines settle into the mulch and ferment, becoming the fodder for the future.  We writers know this is necessary.

Even without the time we use our minds in the search-sometimes without knowing it, as we go through the busy day finishing off the necessities of life, assured in our knowledge of the the quest; we will get there, it will come.

Suicide and the Secret Holy Supposedly Paranoid-Conspiracy Society

 

No one ever really knows why someone takes their own life.  Suicide is a mystery, a declaration, a way of no longer having to decide.  It always, inevitably leaves questions.  Especially when the lost person writes that she loves everyone and is at piece with her decision.  Just as Theresa Duncan had.

        I am certainly no expert, nor do I have any background or study in the psychology of suicides, but when someone as talented and gifted and beautiful as Theresa Duncan and her lover of twelve years, Jeremy Blake, take their own lives to the suprise of everyone around them I tend to have my own theories–such as what were the drugs-in-use policies for them?  What were they taking? Prescriptives? Recreational? Liquor intake?  How much, and at what regularity.?  It can add up.

       I don’t know what Theresa and Jeremy partied with.  There were hints on her blog of a L.A. Lunar Society, whose existence is questionable (although she did give an address on the blog spot), which may in theory have been their own drugs-in-use meeting.  She does mention in the meeting “minutes” what she did in the library: “a couple bowls of California chronic” and “polished off half a bottle of XO cognac. Or so.”

        If you check her out you find enough paranoia stories to set your brain a-mush.  You wonder at just how messed up she really could have been.  But at the same time some of the stories she tells have factual basis, and the “theories” she hinted at on her site aren’t exactly fiction (Monarch Project and Garden Plot for example).  The writing of these beliefs, along with her attacks of the Scientology Church, could have undoubtedly gotten her red-flagged by the government. Whether or not they were being harrassed as they claimed, we may never know.  Whether or not her influence or that of Blake’s could have affected anyone we’ll never know either.

        There is so much out there on this internet.  We are free to explore, discover and watch, like fly- on-the-wall voyeurs with no accountability what-so-ever.  But are we truly free to write whatever we want?  Don’t kid yourself my fellow bloggers.  Maybe you too have been “red-flagged.”  We at the Continuum seek to start The Secret Holy Supposedly Paranoid-Conspiracy Society.  We hope to get to the bottom of this and so much more. It is a drug-free society, however.

A Forced Vacation

Been absent from the blogosphere because of a breach in our security system created by a viral download that inbedded into everything, destoying the software and even shattering the harddrive.  Picture an imblodded building crashing down upon itself leaving nothing but a gagging cloud of dust and an insipid pile of smoldering debri.  The Continuum’s computer guru, Agent JF, confiscated my machine and salvaged what was left.  We can re-built it, we have the technology. (Six Million Dollar Man flash back…)

This Macro or Micro Security, according to Agent JF, that blazed up on my screeen when the virus, hit may have been the source–flashing Buy Now! Buy Now! and save your computer.  Get out your Visa or Mastercard.  Give us a few minutes and we’ll have all your identification and your credit card numbers. Thank you very much for you lack of security.

Anyway, I didn’t just get a free download of porn that I didn’t want–I got “quality porn.”

Don’t fly naked.  Get some security.

In Morbid Yet Poetic Fashion

 

Morbid yet poetic, Skelanimals are the latest craze by our teen members of The Wit Continuum, who first saw this clothing line while shopping at Hot Topic.  With the subtitle to the Skelanimal name: Dead Animals Need Love Too, my deeply held dark side gets curious, especially with the approaching Halloween season. The Continuum places these scary yet hauntingly sad and lovable characters in the file with the Dark Fairies of Neopets.  Each pet comes with a profile and cause of death poem.

Diego The Bat:

Diego’s favorite scary movie is “Birds.”

You can usually find him in the dark upper corner of your closet sleeping during the day. At night he flies around pestering the other Skelanimals to play…  While you’re asleep, Diego will watch over you to make sure the bugs don’t bother you.

How Diego Died:

Diego would glide and fly through the night

His sense of vision was perfect and bright.

He would wake the birds as they tried to sleep

Screeching and flapping with screams so deep.

Tired they were, these birds so weary,

Each day became longer and uncomfortably dreary.

A lesson had to be taught to this bat of the dark.

‘Let us sleep near the wire fence!’ squeaked the small, quiet lark.

Diego flew screeching, and speeding passed the fence

And through the rows of barbed wire so many and dense.

He weaved and dodged through the spiral blades

Only to be chunks of hues and shades.

You Are The Star

 

Hope, Expectation, Bright Promises

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing.  This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight.  And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, the water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future.  They might say you’re a dreamer, but you’re not the only one.

We love the John Lennon lyric at the end.  Being cat people ourselves, the Continuum chose this set of cards.

Choose yours at What Tarot Card Are You? 

War on Computer Viruses

Thank you Dan Reilly for your article, 12 Sneakiest Computer Viruses, on Switched.com. My computer guru was right.  If you check my Forced Vacation blog from October 8th, you’ll know what happened to The Wit Continuum’s computer.  I was quite boggled about what had happened, even though all is well and I’m safe and secure, but one of the Continuum’s alumni brought this fantastic article to my attention. 

Here’s the virus that got me:

“Last month, a family of Malware called Rogue Security applications comprised over 60% of computer threats. Much like the fake Norton Link, the variations of this Trojan convince users to download security programs that intend to control your computer and rip you off.  Most often, they’re download from those popup ads that say your computer is infected, leading you to download the file even if you try to close the window.  There are many versions of this Trojan, some of which resist anti-virus programs, so be very careful, but for starters, make sure your browser’s pop-up blocker is enabled.”

More: 12 Sneakiest Computer Viruses

And we were right about this scam wanting credit card numbers and identification.  A comment posted to Reilly’s article stated that the person had purchased the “fake security” for $29.95 and gave his debit card number, subsequently his entire bank account was cleaned out.

Universal Spirals

On this day, October 13th, in 1773, French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy, an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light years in the constellation Canes Venatici.

The Whirlpool Galaxy became the first galaxy to be recognized as a spiral.  A black hole, surrounded by a ring of dust, is thought to exist at the heart of the spiral.  It is one of the most famous spiral galaxies in the sky and can be easily observed by amateur astonomers, and may even be seen with binoculars. 

This is just a little reminder of how small we really are.

Source: Widipedia Free Encyclopedia

Little Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood

          Little Red Riding Hood is the fairy-tale heroine based on the aspect of the red-clothed goddess Diana.  In the tale, the usual trinity of maiden, mother, and grandmother are present.  The Hunter was orginally le Chasseur Maudit, or pagan Lord of the Hunt; while the man-eating She-Wolf or grandmother was a western form of the goddess Kalika.

Red Riding Hood is a story traceable to wolf-clan traditions.  The giveaway details are the red garment, the offering of food to a “grandmother” in the deep woods–a  grandmother who wore a wolf skin–and the cannibalistic motif of devouring and resurrection.  The story’s original victim would not have been the red-clad virgin but the hunter, as Lord of the Hunt.  Like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood was part of a Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity, wearing the same red garment that Virgin Kali wore; as the red moon of a lunar eclipse she prophesied catastrophe and inspiried much fear.  In Britian, “a red woven hood” was the distinguishing mark of a prophetess or a priestess. 

Source: The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Artwork: Mermay 19’s Photostream

The Continuum Tackles Stephen King Once Again

           October is always the time to crawl under the Continuum’s spiral staircase and read something scary and this year I am tackling the extemely sizable Duma Key by Stephen King.  At 600 plus pages I’m thinking Mr. King does no editing what-so-ever.  I’m about half-way through and I’m not quite creeped out in the “I’ve got goosebumps traveling up the back of my head” way that I usually get (example: reading Bag of Bones-always love a good ghost story) but I am completely intrigued just the same. 

           Warning:  Story content is given away in the rest of this blog so if you don’t care read on.

           The main character of Duma Key is the lovable yet damaged Edgar Freemantle (great name!) who has been squashed half to death by a crane that backed over his pick-up truck at a construction site.  His right arm is gone, part of his brain destroyed, and suffering with a serious hip injury (handicap license applies here).  We meet him while he is recovering and although the situation is bleak, Mr. King’s dry humor which I love kicks in to make me laugh by page five. (Edgar calls two of the older nurses who attend him “Dry Fuck One and Dry Fuck Two, as if they were characters in a dirty Dr. Seuss story.”)  Edgar’s somewhat recovery (he has memory problems and rage issues), divorce (he tries to kill his wife twice because he can’t remember a word), and move to Florida’s west coast for a year ensue.  Welcome to Duma Key, a fictional island, secluded (no Star Bucks or Walgreens) where Edgar rents a huge pink beach house on stilts.

          When Edgar takes up drawing, then painting, the supernatural artistry begins.  To ease the itching in his phantom limb, Edgar begins to undertake an old hobby that he liked to do.  His pictures seem to emerge by themselves, or from another plane of existence, and begin to tell the future of the one he is thinking of when painting, or of a present moment that is miles away.  I’m at the point right now in the story, Edgar’s Dali-like paintings become actual precipients to cause certain events to happen.  He has met a kindred spirit who lives down the beach, Wireman, care-taker to an old lady with alzheimers, a lady whose creepy link to the island is starting to emerge (she evidently was brain-damaged as a child and did unique art also).  Where I’m at now, Edgar is trying to fix Wireman, a man with a bullet lodged in his brain that is slowly killing him, by painting the x-ray of Wireman’s brain without the said bullet.  The idea of this is not so strange to me.  Intention, especially in a supernatural vein, can be extremely powerful, if the desire and the belief that it will happen is strong enough.  Could Edgar actually remove the bullet from its existence in his friend’s brain?  If he did, where would said bullet go?

             Prognosis forthcoming.  I must read on.  Will blog about Duma Key’s conclusion at a later date (Halloween week perhaps–I have mucho spooky stuff planned already).  If you are a fellow Constant Reader, reading Duma Key or have read it, let me know–sans the ending please.

20 Things

The following is a list of just some of the things that I am thankful for.  This list can go on and on and on… Thankfully, I’ve kept my WITS and hope a few things inspire you to make your own list.  Other than the top three this is a random list not expressing order of importance.  However, I feel the first three should be on everyone’s list of things to be thankful for.  Enjoy.

 1. Alive and living in the USA.

 2. The Right to Vote.

 3. New President coming soon.

 4. Gas prices below 3 bucks.

 5. Halloween right around the corner.

 6. The full moon

 7. The state of Florida.

 8. Shopping

 9. Writing a blog.

10. Reading – anything good.

11. Yoga

12. Laduree Chocolate Macarons

13. Scary stories

14. Scary movies

15. Skelanimals

16. Black clothes

17. Coffee – non-black

18. Madonna on Tour

19. Driving my black Mercedes at night-moon roof open

20. Cool, crisp October air to breath.

Cosmic Love: The “Punk” Hero & The Girl Who Decided to Become Conspicuous

duncan_blake

The untimely deaths of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake saddened many and caused the launch of a thousand blogs late summer, 2007.  Over one year later, intrigue is undisposed.  They shared “one of those cosmic kinds of love” that would ultimately lead them down the same highway. 

“They were remarkable people,” said David Ross, former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  “I can’t think of one without the other.  It was flattering to be in their presence.  You felt good that they liked you.”

           Sometimes she would take out her compact and apply lipstick when someone was boring her.  She was one of the first creators of video games geared exclusively for girls.  When asked in a interview in February 2006 with LAist Magazine, “What remains the same and what has changed in the world of girls?” Theresa replied, “Having a vagina remains the same, but power shifts.”

           Jeremy became quite conspicuous himself as an artist.  Some people thought he was a snob, drinking his Manhattans and smoking his Nat Sherman cigarettes, until they realized he was just an artist, and funny and shy.  “I liked reading about heroic behavior and the constant ethical dilemmas of Marvel characters spoke to me directly,” he said in an interview.  About Theresa he said she was “a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window” quoting Raymond Chandler.

Purveyed from: The Golden Suicides: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

Photo of Theresa by Joshua Jordan

Photo of Jeremy by Donald Graham

In The Woods

in-the-woods

 

                    Red Riding Hood’s Continuum………

            Purveying the woods (and busy cleaning some staircases) in search of wickedly tasty goodies to put in my basket.  Not an easy tasks for Red.  There’s so many leaves about…and gender-confused wolves to watch out for.

            Will be sharing more later.

Black Dress 1

We at the Continuum love black dresses.  Here Kate Moss in black and Karen Kilimnik’s art.

The Wit Continuum Remembers Theresa Duncan

Theresa Lee Duncan

The Wit of the Staircase

Born on October 26, 1966

Video game designer, blogger, filmmaker, critic.

Happy Birthday where-ever you are.

PS: Coincidentally, the Continuum has two family members who share Theresa’s birthday, one born on the same day in 1966.  Happy B-Day to all.

Spooky Street Names

Would you live on Shades of Death Road?  It is an actual street name in Warren County, New Jersey. “Several explanations have been given for the road’s macabre name, none of which has ever been conclusively established.  It has given rise to many local legends about ghosts and other paranormal activity along the road.”   (ooohhh…this drive may induce goose-flesh…)

The Wit Continuum came across taskingly scary stuff of late, part of our celebration of Halloween week.  We purveyed the USA for the more frightening of streets to live-by name anyway.  You be the judge:

Where O Where Drive – Nantucket, Mass.

Skunks Misery Road – Oyster Bay, NY  (Road Kill Heaven?  Skelanimals should maybe launch a lovable dead skunk from this location-just an idea)

Oh My God Road – Center City, Colorado  (Love this one–one blogger described this road as having “blind corners and lack of guard rails…not much wider than a car…and a sheer drop” on one side.  Hail Mary’s apply.)

Triple XXX Road – Choctaw, Okla. (Let’s not go there)

Purgatory Road – which connects to Heaven Street and Hell Street – in New Braunfels, Texas (Hard to believe this one’s real…)

Life Road – Peru, Ind.

Horneytown Road – High Point, NC

Psycho Path – Traverse City, Michigan.  (Has anyone seen Hitchcock screen actor’s ghosts?)

Sleepy Hollow Road – Drums, PA (No crazy headless horseman ghosts – or so they say…)

Chemical Road – King of Prussia, PA (Smoke stacks are bountiful here-wonder if anyone glows in the dark?)

Wit’s End Road – Andover, NJ  (Say it isn’t so…Definitely not the address of The Wit Continuum…)

Link: Unique Steet Names in America

A Presidential Halloween?

          If the selling of Halloween masks has any weight in who will win the election next week consider this:  In the past, whichever presidential canidate’s mask sold the most during an election year has been winner of the election.

 

         Obama masks have outsold McCain masks 2 to 1 so far.

Ultimate Pet: The Black Cat

Of course, we at The Wit Continuum love, love, love cats…and especially this time of year our hearts are unrested by pure, perfect black ones.  Contrary to one’s fear or suspicions of cats, I feel an affinity with the creatures, the elegant grace, and the attitudes they pose on their terms only.

History of the black cat is both bleak and kingly.  Witchcraft, sorcery, and evil follow le chat noir, yet in Egypt the cat was worshipped and harming one was punishable by death.  In witchcraft, the black cat is considered to be a shape shifter, or an animagus, to which the cat’s human form is the witch herself.  Some believed the Devil himself took the form of a black cat.

In Scotland, a black cat on your porch is a sign of prosperity. In Italy hundreds of years ago, it was thought that if a black cat sat on the bed of a sick person, that person would die.  Meanwhile, a black cat on a ship was considered good luck by fishermen.  Today, cats retain a status of good luck in Britain and Ireland.  The Celts thought black cats were reincarnated beings able to divine the future.

We in America have the on-going superstition of a black cat crossng one’s path as predictive of bad events to come–especially if a full moon is present at the time.  There are still myths and legends about black cats-one we found particularly strange.  The bones of a black cat are believed by some to hold magical powers.  There is a black market for the sale of black cat bones with the belief that they will “bring luck or power to the bearer of the bones.”

Here’s a bit of folklore in celebration of Halloween:  If a black cat jumps over a dead body, or the grave of someone recently dead, the corpse will become a vampire.

                  OOOhhh…Here’s to Halloween…and cat’s of the dark everywhere.

Source: Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia

Montparnasse Cemetery: Beyond The Language of the Living

  

If, as Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, “Hell is other people,” the famous existentialist is no doubt rolling in his grave at this cemetery, which he shares with some 3,400 others.  In death, as at the cafe table, he rests next his lifelong love, Simone de Beauvoir.

“The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”  – T.S. Eliot

Source: Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West.

Above: Grave markers of Sachery, Charles Pigeon, Unknown by this author, and Sartre/Beauvoir.  The Montparnasse Cemetery is a popular tourist destination located in Paris’ bohemian Montparnasse quarter.

Photo source: Cool and Spooky website called The Adams Residence

The Sweater: A Halloween Ghost Story

This is a new version of an old story.  Hope you like it. Happy Halloween from The Wit Continuum.

The Sweater

       I was driving along one rainy night, Halloween Eve.  It was starting to get dark, the leaves blowing in the October winded rain stuck to my windshield.  I extricated myself from the comfortable warmth of my car at a stop sign to remove a very large leaf from the wiper when I noticed a boy walking ahead, being battered by the rain.  I was sure it was the boy who lived next door to me, a bit far from home.  I drove up to the curb next to him and lowered the passenger window, calling out to the boy–only I’d forgotten his name.  “Son, would you like a ride?  You live near my house I believe.”  The boy approached, pale in the darkening day as I unlock the door.  He got in, soaked as he was.  I hadn’t thought of that on the leather seats, but the boy needed this ride more than anything.  He was shaking profusely, and he barely could mutter an audible “thanks” through his chattering teeth.     

“You poor thing.  You’re completely soaked.  Here, throw this sweater on.  I’ll boost the heat.”  I reached back and gave him my large North Face red sweatshirt.  I call it a sweater, old fashioned as I am, even though it is nothing but.  The boy took it and disappeared beneath the huge red fleece material; then peered out at me from under the hood.  He smiled faintly.  His eyes were dark circled, lips purple-black.  His teeth still chattered.  I realized then that he was not at all the boy I knew from next door, but a complete stranger.  He must, no doubt, have been desperate with cold to get in my car.  Aren’t kids still taught not to talk to strangers?  Never to get in a stranger’s car?  Never the less, here was the boy.  And, of course, he was safe with me.

          As we drove on I asked him where he lived and he told me it was Arthur Street, a few blocks away.  I asked his name and he told me it was Timmy.  I put out my hand and introduced myself as Mr. Roberts.  Timmy’s pale hand disappeared in my palm.  I felt I was grasping a popcycle.  We rode on silently.  I could see the boy’s shivers subsiding.  On Arthur Street he pointed out his house to me, a red brick colonial, not too big, white shutters. The porch light was on.  I pulled into the drive and Timmy started to take off the red North Face.  “No son,” I said.  “Wear it in so you stay warm.  I”ll pick it up tomorrow at this time, okay?”  “Sure,” he said, then, “erh…thanks for the ride, Mr. Roberts.”  I nodded a you’re welcome as he got out.  At the door, under the porch lamp he turned back to me and waved.  I took that as my signal that he was fine so I left.

         The next day was Halloween.  I hadn’t thought much about Timmy or my sweater until it was time for me to leave work.  Many kids were walking along in the early evening dressed in their finest Halloween get-ups.  Along with ghosts and witches and skeletons, I noticed a Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a pumpkin, a set of dice, and a slice of bread, all with their parents in tow.  On Arthur Street I found Timmy’s house without trouble.  A woman stood at the door giving out treats to some children.  I didn’t catch Timmy’s last name the night before, and feeling a bit foolish I approached the woman.  She looked doubtfully at me, so I smiled.  I introduced my self and asked if she was Timmy’s mother.   “What’s this about?” she said.  She looked frightened and began to back into the door.  I quickly explained how I’d given Timmy a ride the night before in the pouring rain, sure that he had told her, and had lent him my red sweater.  I said that I was simply here to pick it up.  She stood quite still, staring at me, her eyes watery with tears.

           “I’m sorry Mr. Roberts,” she said.  “My son Timmy is dead.”

Of course I was taken aback, confused, and quite frightened by her words.  I did not press Timmy’s mother. That would have been heartless.  But I left with so many questions spinning in my head.  Who had I given a ride to?  Where was this little boy?  And was he still wearing my sweater?  I investigated and I found Timmy’s last name was Van Pelt (thanks to the Internet) and that he had indeed died the summer before.  He had drowned. That night I dreamed of Timmy walking and talking with me, still pale but alive.  Sometimes I was wearing the red sweater.

         The next day to ease my haunted mind, I visited the local cemetery.  As I walked along the yellow leaves that surrounded me on the path I checked the tombstones and markers, sure in some strange supernatural way that I’d find Timmy’s resting place.  But it was not a tombstone I’d noticed first. In the distance, by the cemetery wall, was a shadow of color, contrasting with the golden leaves.  I rushed to the spot, and there, my breath caught in my chest.  Below me a small marker read Timothy Van Pelt, July18, 1997–July 5, 2007.   And lying on the yellow leaves over Timmy’s grave was my red North Face sweater.

 

      

           

 

Rock The Vote – 2008

            Have no doubt, The Wit Continuum has been out expressing the right to vote.  The polls have been busier than ever, as predicted, which we think is a good sign.  Continuing to purvey for more thoughts, ideas and images to blog in the future.  Without mounting the podium I have one more thought to express:  If you’ve not been out there to vote yet stop playing with the computer and go.  Remember, if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain, not that you would want to…. Peace

Now, Finally…Hope For America

Congradulations to our friends and everyone out there who “Rocked the Vote” yesterday.  Be proud of taking part in an outstanding moment of history.  It wasn’t difficult, was it?

“Out of many we are one.”

-Barack Obama

King Once Again

      

The reading of Stephen King’s Duma Key has done what the Continuum wanted it to do during the Halloween season:  Give us a good scare.  How the main character’s supernatural and powerfully chaotic art work cures his friend still astounds me–more by the fact that I believe that something similar to this is possible.  Spontaneous healing and the powers of intention are the goodies of the spiritual world…King’s world is more spooky, of course.

Favorite line:  “Be prepared to see it all. If you want to create-God help you if you do, God help you if you can-don’t you dare commit the immorality of stopping on the surface. Go deep and take your fair salvage. Do it no matter how much it hurts.”  As writers, we relate.

My Duma Key “fair salvage”:  Can’t forget that old psychotic lady in the wheelchair wearing Chuck Tailors and that vintage Mercedes that takes the characters on their final voyage to the creepy remains of a dilapidated mansion.  Unique death devices: silver harpoons, salt water, murderous paintings (which can heal too).  Red-hooded death spirited away in a china doll. Blood–”It was red!” (The red theme had me trying on a red coat at the mall-don’t ask me why?).  Persphone, the ship of the dead, anchored in the bay, waiting (all are welcome).  I was mystified by the upside-down flying birds (not too scary) and the 80 year old bones in the underground cistern.  The walking dead ghosts “wif teef” made me turn on lights in the kitchen before entering and that possessed doll that tells an old story, well, you know…(talking, moving dolls, next to clowns, are the scariest things on this earth.

In the end, we are drawn to a satisfying conclusion.  Losses are suffered but everything is tied up quite neatly.  No catches at the end (like in Pet Cemetery-wigged out at that one). 

What I can’t give back in my fair salvage is the shells.  The ocean tide sweeping in those shells under the big pink house the main character lives in on the key.  The shells clicking together as they roll in and out with the waves…whispering those haunting words…I can still hear them and probably always will.

That, my friends, is the power of words.  Really, really good ones.

Black Dress II

 

Madonna in Dior.  Iconic always.

The Real Snow White

The poignant tale about a beautiful young woman whose life was cut mysteriously short may have been the inspiration for the folktale Snow White, written by The Brothers Grimm.  Scholars have uncovered parallels between the legendary Snow White and Margarete Von Waldeck (1533-1554).  Countess Margarete was the daughter of Philip IV, Count von Waldeck-Wildungen.  Like Snow White, Margarete had tempered relationship with her stepmother. 

Margarete grew up in the town of Bad Wildungen where small children worked in copper mines owned by her brother.  The children became known as dwarfs.  They were bent and crippled from malnourishment and the terrible working conditions of the mines.  Most died before reaching the age of 20.  Another parallel is that of the man in Bad Wildungen who was caught poisoning apples in order to get even with children who were stealing from his property.  This poison apple story made it into the fairy tale.

At the age of 16, Margarete was sent to live at court in Brussels.  There she attracted the attention of a young prince, Phillip II of Spain.  It is said that Margarete had intense beauty and that she had blond hair.  The tale of Snow White, of course, expounds on her black hair, but the earlier version of Grimms book (in 1808) states that Snow White’s hair was “yellow.”  The young Spanish nobleman and Margarete fell in love, much to the anger and fears of her stepmother who hated her and the King of Spain, Phillip’s father.  A plot was made to end the relationship.   It is believed the Spanish secret police were ordered to poison Margarete, making it look as if she had fallen ill, in order to put an end to the political inconvenience the marriage would have created.

Margarete died at the age of 21.  The handwriting of her will, written shortly before her death, show evidence of tremor, no doubt caused by the poisoning.  The perpetrator was never exposed, but it could not have been her “evil” stepmother, who was already dead at the time.

The tale of Snow White has always inspired me – the Disney version, which I do not like, is plumped with fun and happiness, but the real tale is sad and poignant, riddled with mystery, and I believe probably shouldn’t end with the happy ending that fairy tales demand. It is more a tragic myth, a girl who can’t escape the immence ambitions of a powerful and psychotic woman.  Elements of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy may apply here also. 

Artwork: by illustrator Angela Barrett for the beautifully designed book, Snow White, by Josephine Poole.

Sources: Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia and Hartforth.com/Snow White

Le Chat Noir

Le Chat Noir is the 19th Century cabaret in the bohemian Montemartre district of Paris.  It was opened on November 18, 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rouchechourart by the artist Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 much to the disappointment of Picasso when he visited in 1900.

In its hey-day, Le Chat Noir was a bustling nightclub – part artist salon, part rowdy music hall, partially due to an illegal piano.  The cabaret published its own journal Le Chat Noir.  It was here that Salon of Incoherent Arts, the “shadow plays” and the comic monologues got their start.

Above is the famous Theophile Steinlen poster, Tournee du Chat Noir (1896)

Source: Wikipedia

Plath Still Haunts Ted Hughes

This past Sunday I came across the article Love, Your Ted, a review in the New York Times by David Orr.  “When gossip grows old,” the Polish writer Stanislaw Lec said, “it becomes myth.” In the case of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, the myth made by gossip has long obscured the art made by a couple of poets.”

Orr talks about the new Letters of Ted Hughes as “illuminating aesthetic record” or, of course, the second way to view it as about the “swirling, decades-long hoo-ha brought about by his relationship with Sylvia Plath: their brief, difficult marriage; their separation due to Hughes’s affair with Assia Wevill; and Plath’s suicide shortly thereafter.  “It” ultimately involved a series of bitter clashes over Plath’s legacy, the occasional illicit removal of the surname “Hughes” from her tombstone (by aggrieved “Bell Jar” fans), a series of disputed biographies and “at least one lawsuit”…

It is unfortunate that the art of late Ted Hughes will continuously be haunted by his dead wife, but then in my “hell hath no fury over a woman scorned” way it seems justly so.  Hughes was no saint of a man.  Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same house that Sylvia Plath lived with Hughes, in the same kitchen, in the same gas-induced way Plath had used to end her life (sadly Assia took her and Hughes’s child with her) after finding out Hughes was also cheating on her.  The fragility of these women was paramount.  Ted knew what to look for and he sucked them dry.  It is only appropriate that we see their names along with his.

Pottermania Rocks On – We Are Wizards

Amongst all the hype of the Twilight movie release this weekend I came across an interesting flick for those who don’t want to wait in line for the vampire romance.  If you like documentaries and you like Harry Potter this may just get you an hour or two of entertainment.  The filmmaker Josh Koury has produced an enlightening look at the “extreme fans” of the Harry Potter world in the film “We Are Wizards”.  And they are cashing in on their fan-o-mania.

       The film features two “geeky guys and two adorable tykes who, performing in so-called wizard rock bands like Harry and the Potters, the Hungarian Horntails and (my favorite) Draco and the Malfoys (”My dad is rich and your dad is dead”), thrash and warble noisily and sometimes pretty comically about all thing Harry Potter.  (”You messed up in potions yesterday, but everyone still thinks you’re really great, except Snape,” the Malfoys taunt Harry elsewhere.  “Cause we see you for what you really are…And it’s O.K. It’s really great.  Because I hate you.  And so does Snape.”)”

Sounds like lyrics that Pink would write if witchy-ness would strike her.  Can’t wait to catch this strangely packed portrait of obsessive subculture created inadverdently by J.K. Rowling.  Fans are fascinating, especially obsessed ones.  We wonder, too, about the followers of these bands based on Potter. 

We Are Wizards open Friday in Manhattan.

Quotes are from Even After the Books, Pottermania Rocks On by Manohla Dargis. Check out trailer and full review here.

To Blog or Not to Blog

I’ve opened a second blog at WordPress and at first was quite excited.  Now I’m at my …ah…wit’s end (since I’m The Wit Continuum I hate to say it) as to whether I should keep this new blog site or delete it.  I can’t find the time to keep it up and have changed its format so many times the site managers are probably laughing hysterically (if anyone monitors this stuff).  In any case I’m curious if anyone out there felt the need to “second blog” and then found themselves in a similar “I just don’t know” situation. 

What should I do?

Peace, from the wit continuum.

Twilight Falls

So we finally saw Twilight this past weekend.  I was happy that my experience was without the screaming of teen girls that so many other reviews claimed.  As a matter of fact, there were quite a few guys (along with girlfriends or wives) in attendance, and a peculiar row of tween Asian boys sat in front of us.  I expected hissing or snickering from them during those long, long, long romantic parts but they were quite polite.  I perhaps did more snickering.

The movie starts out intriguing enough – and the music, I must say was great throughout the flick.  Our teen and tween Continuum members reviewed it as this:  12 year old says it was “really, really good”.  She has read books one and two and is now into Eclipse.  Our 14 year old member, who hasn’t read the books, just all the hype prior to the movie release, said it was a bit slow for a while, but got interesting as it went along.  She found wide-eyed Jasper funny to look at.  She wondered where the werewolves were that so many people have been talking about.  Next (oh no) movie dear.

The first hour and a half of Twilight full of trite, half-believable dialog left me flat.  Perhaps I was deflated by the very sad performance by Kristen Stewart who plays Bella, the main character.  Many times in the scenes between Edward and Bella I felt as if I were watching a junior high play (no Academy Awards here, and I wonder what the casting director was thinking with this girl…)  After the long, long, long beginning I began to whisper, “When are the bad guys getting here” with more and more eagerness.  In fact the only piece of believable acting came from the James vampire, who threatens Bella at the end and inflicts some pretty bad damage to her and some mirrors. (By the way, in this movie vampires have reflections – and they can walk in sunlight – go figure.)  The bad guy is taken out much too easily and too swiftly – the climax of this movie takes all but five minutes – might be a movie history record.

I blogged before about reading the Twilight series and my disappointment in the weakness of the main character, her constant damsel-in-distress-rescue-me-ness that I found quite annoying, causing me to skip chapters (I was curious about the end anyway) and the sappiness of all those “forevers” and “only want to be with you” etc.  Same story in the movie.  Bella has little self-respect and not a fraction of self-reliance in the books and well as the movie.  She is so willing to give her entire life, which hasn’t even begun, to this vampire with issues it breaks my heart (or just caused me to sigh heavily during those sappy moments.  Perhaps theaters should supply sickness bags for anyone over 20, just in case.)

In any case, here’s what was good.  The trio of rogue vampires were cool, had too small a part, and were extremely nice eye candy.  A moment in the cafeteria when Bella spills her fruit platter and Edward catches the falling apple with his foot and pops it up into his hands, displaying the Twilight book cover was done well and may have been missed by some fans.  Another great moment is the climb up that 150 or so foot tree and the breathtaking view and great music in the background.  I liked the cameo of the author Stephanie Meyer in one of the diner scenes later in the movie (Stephen King does this too). 

The soundtrack, like I said, was phenomenal.  Reminds me of the so-so movie The Beach, whose soundtrack was fantastic, much better than the movie.  I will probably pick up Twilight’s also.

Oh, and, one last thing – Saw the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer in the previews beforehand.  It possibly was better than the whole  two hours of Twilight.

Fringe – the X-Files of The Deep

Our favorite new show this fall, Fringe, aired the last episode last night until January.  It left us with a cliff-hanger cliche, but we still love the show. 

The show involves FBI agents investigating the not to so normal cases that arise in the field (almost X-files-ish) and includes words like pseudoscience, secret science weapons, neuropathic connections, cloning, teleportation (which was featured on last night’s show), bringing the dead to life, LSD induced dream states where one person meets another in dreams and transfers memories, the Pattern, ghost networks, and our favorite, of course, the space-time continuum.

This show makes me wonder: Were they reading my mind?

The relatively new Australian actress, Anna Torv, plays Olivia Dunham, FBI investigator who is beautiful, vulnerable, yet tough.  Leaps off a building in the first episode without thinking twice – love it!!  Joshua Jackson plays a very sensible genius with no Fed background but his jack-of-all-trades smarts make him valuable.  We remember Joshua from the Dawson’s Creek days – like him all grown up and leading.  His character’s crazy Alzheimer-ridden scientist father is played by John Noble who we previously saw (and again this past weekend) as the psychotic Denethor in Lord of the Rings-Return of the King.  Psycho then – and now in Fringe, only more lovable and fragile.  Blair Brown plays the mysterious head of a powerful conglomerate which is secretly delving into the reanimation of the dead (ala Frankenstein?) and just to make her a bit more scary she has a mechanical arm like Anakin Skywalker.  CoooooLLLLL.

Best show since the X-files in this genre – but it lacks the mystery, the who’s who, the “Are their aliens among us?” question, and “Is the truth really out there?”  And who is the Smoking man?  Oh, let’s face it, nothing will ever beat the X-files, but Fringe is still holding its own as one of the best on television.  Catch the reruns they’ve promised through December if you can.

Rowling Returns

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard” by British author J.K. Rowling is touted as her unofficial farewell to her wizard world of Harry Potter.  We cannot wait to see this collection of fairy tales (which was mentioned in the last Potter book) enter the real world. 

Only one of the five tales – “The Tale of the Three Brothers” – was recounted in The Deathly Hallows, containing clues that help Harry and company in their quest to destroy Lord Voldemort.

All proceeds of sales generated will go to charities.  It will be distributed by Scholastic Books in the U.S.

A quote from J.K. Rowling:  “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say good-bye to a world I loved and lived in for 17 years.”

“Beedle the Bard” may not be the final final word however.  Rowling has plans for an encyclopedia on the Potter series and will also donate the proceeds to charity.      Go JoAnn!

Source: PopEater.com

Ciccone Whines, But We Still Sit and Read

“Life with My Sister Madonna” by Christopher Ciccone is what I’ve been tackling for the past week.  At first, this book is a fascinating romp into the pop-star rise of Madonna as told by someone on a highly personal level.  We also get Ciccone’s sense of loss as he is pulled towards and pushed away from Madonna as her needs insist.

Though the bio is written with Wendy Leigh, we still hear Ciccone’s voice shine through the page, his childhood angst growing up poor in Michigan, the longed for memories of his mother who died when he was young, the realization of his sexuality, and coming of age in the shadow of Madonna.

The book opens with a back stage tour de force of his role as Madonna’s designer for the Girlie Show Tour in 1993, with the step by step accounts of getting Madonna ready, sound checks, and hearing the first roar of the crowd as the first strains of circus music boom through Wembly Stadium.  (Interesting trivia note here: Dancing With The Stars judge, Carrie Ann Inaba, is mentioned as the first dancer to appear on Madonna’s concert stage, “slithering down a forty-foot pole, naked, except for a red G-string”.)

The book proceeds to absorb you into the self-centered, yet fascinating world of Madonna.  It was a great read, probably better suited for the so-so Madonna fan.  Madonna is shone to be a self-serving queen, surrounded by sycophants and “yes” men as her only company.  A bit fluffy at times and whiny at others, but the pace is fast enough to keep the reader involved.  Ciccone’s fixation on the money his sister makes and his subsequent lack of it becomes tiring, as well as his baby-ish complaining that Madonna never paid him enough for all the decorating he did for her. She is constantly portrayed as being greedy and egotistical with total disregard to her brother’s and her family’s needs.  I can’t imagine that Madonna is happy with this book about her, and I began wondering what kind of e-mails (They do a lot of fighting through e-mails) she must have sent her brother regarding it, if she has even read it. 

All and all through the fights, in which Ciccone continually capitulates and goes back to serving his sister (why I don’t know, except for his constant need to connect with his sister, and of course, because he’s broke and his car was repossessed), the hate-filled wedding to Guy Richie (he seems to be an insensitive bastard), the complaining about Madonna’s lack of acknowledging the gay community which got her started way back when – when? the 80s (perhaps she has paid her debt to them by now?), the Kabbalah, and even the work Madonna does in Malawi is questioned (validly, I might add), I couldn’t wait to finish the book – I mean I couldn’t wait to get through to the end of it.  What was fascinating at first, turns sour by the end, and not because Madonna seems to be a money spending, controlling bitch, but because the story simply becomes tiring.  Madonna fans be wary.

Anna Torv

Anna Torv, Australian actress from Fox’s latest hit show, Fringe.

We at The Wit Continuum love her for her sublime, elegant glam.

Saint Faith

As one of the personifications of the three Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, Saint Faith really originated as one the oldest pagan Goddesses.  Her Roman name was Bona Fides, which means “Good Faith.”  She was invoked in all legal contracts.  Plutarch said her temple was built by the first king of Latium.  Virgil said that Faith was one of Rome’s oldest lawgiving Goddesses.  Bona Fides did have one of Rome’s oldest temples, served by three senior Flamines, the core of the ancient Roman clergy.

In her Christianized form, Faith received a crypt in St. Paul’s cathedral in London.  Letting their imaginations soar, martyrologists raved over her famous physical beauty.  Perhaps because of this, she became a popular patroness of romance.   English girls used to pray for a vision of their future husbands, addressing St. Faith after passing a piece of bread three times through a wedding ring. 

Source: The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

The Graveyard Spiral: Two Stars Fall

                In aviation, a graveyard spiral is  a dangerous spiral dive entered accidentally by a pilot and of which the pilot is initially unaware.

(Theresa Duncan, writer, blogger, creator of video games, and Jeremy Blake, digital artist, had been together for 12 years before entering their own graveyard spiral.)

                 Graveyard spirals typically occure in instrument meteorological conditions, when the pilot loses awareness of the aircraft’s altitude and allows the aircraft to enter a gentle banking turn.

(It is to be guessed that the “gentle banking turn” in Duncan and Blake’s life began with the move to Los Angeles where the film careers they sought were to take off.)

                 A pilot who allows their plane to bank into a turn while under the impression that it is still flying parallel may do so at first because they are not able to see the horizon or land underneath them.  Barriers to vision might  be clouds, fog, darkness, or unfeatured terrain such as the ocean.

(Theresa’s vision of her life became blocked by a fog in the form of wild insites and connections of things not normally connected, a great talent when you write or make movies for a living, as she did, but her fog also included paranoid delusions, misconceptions, and beliefs in conspiracies with increasing number.   When events did not go as she planned, she blamed others.)

                 Such a pilot might not realize their position even though indicators in the panel clearly show the actual position.

(Duncan was sure that Scientologists had something against her and Blake and were secretly sabotaging their careers.  If anyone indicated to her that this was simply not true, that Duncan was clearly not “flying straight” in this vein of thought, Duncan would dismiss them, even going as far as to disregard their friendships, the “instruments” right in front of her eyes.  How does one become so obsessed with beliefs?)

                 An inexperienced and incompetent pilot may be scared by the situation, might not check the instruments, or assume them to be malfunctioning because the senses of the pilot indicate straight and level flight strongly.  The pilot may feel level but descending flight.  This impression leads to the pilot “pulling up” or attempting to climb by pulling up on the controls.

(Duncan’s life was wrapped in the assuredness that she was correct in her thinking, that everyone else was wrong.  She pushed forward, did her work, only to find when confronted to take on the assumption that others are out to get her.  There was a plagiarizing of a review article that she had written, an attempt  to “pull up” on the control of her life.  When confronted, she denied it, saying Scientologists had changed the date of the article in question, that the original was copied from hers.)

                    Pulling back on controls on a plane in a banking turn, which is in effect creating a large circle in the sky, creates and even smaller circle and causes the plane to descend as part of the lift being generated by the wings which is directed sideways.

(Duncan and Blake compose a report on the FBI, the government, and the church of Scientology, to present in a lawsuit to prove the conspiracy to ruin their careers.  Articles indicate they may have used drugs, which could have inhibited the clearer thinking their lives required.)

                    Only when the turning circle gets very small will the passengers notice unusual sensations.  At that point the aircraft is in a descending circle or spiral.

(In her mind, Duncan was sure that her L.A. neighbors were in on the plot against them.  Erratic behavior gets her and Blake evicted from their house in Venice Beach.  Plans, projects fall through for both, do to their estrangement from all around them – a descending circle.  They pick up and head back to New York.)

                   Conflicting sensory mis-impressions and a temporary case of vertigo cause the mind and body of the pilot incapable of judging their position.  In such cases the vertigo may cause airsickness.

(Establishing themselves back in New York worked for a few months.  Blake resumed his former job with a video game company, a step back for him.  Theresa continues her blog site, her only form of work, which becomes increasingly paranoid and strange.)

                   The pilot who needs at that point, more than ever, to reach for the controls and orient their aircraft but may be too sick and appear to even be intoxicated in their struggle to regain control.

(Just weeks before their deaths, both Duncan and Blake refuse to leave their apartment to attend a fund-raising party which they had planned that was taking place in the garden downstairs.  Guests of the party ask for them throughout the evening.  Finally, Theresa and Jeremy send word that they will not be attending the party because they had both shared a vision of the grill outside blowing up and harming Theresa.)

                    In any case the ever tightening, descending spiral eventually leads to the ground.

(Theresa committs suicide by ingesting a bottle of Tylenol PM with bourbon.  One week later, on the eve of her memorial service, Jeremy walks into the Atlantic Ocean.  He had found Theresa’s body with a note that she was at peace with her decision, as he seemed to be with his.  His body was found five days later.) 

                   That is what is referred to by pilots as a graveyard spiral.

 

 

(In life, one can be on one’s own graveyard spiral….It always ends the same.)

 

 

Source: Wikipedia: The graveyard Spiral – aviation

Picture: Theresa Memorial on the Chelsea Hotel.

What Was All the “Eau de” About?

                I have recently found the article Theresa Duncan penned for Slate Magazine in March, 2006.  This was the perfume article posted by Theresa called “Eau de Us Weekly: Secretly Wonderful Celebrity Perfumes”  for which she was scrutinized for her plagiarism.  The opening of the article is where the “copying” occurs and is compared to that of Victoria Frolova’s blog along with Slate’s apology to Frolova.  Here’s the opening paragraph in its entirety.

 

              “When did we start wanting to smell like celebrities?  Browsing the perfume aisles at Sephora these days is like flipping through an issue of Hello!  (Editor’s note:  This sentence was unacceptable close to the following sentence from a posting on Bois de Jasmin, Victoria Frolova’s blog about perfume:  “Walking through the fragrance aisles of Sephora makes me feel as if I am browsing through a Hello magazine with the names like Britney Spears, J.Lo, Paris Hilton, and Kimora Lee Simmons popping before my eyes.”  Slate apologizes to Ms. Frolova.)  Tasteful displays devoted to classics like Chanel No. 5 have give away to brasen pink stands touting Britney Spears’ or Paris Hilton’s latest fragrance.  From J. Lo to Celine Dion to Maria Sharapova to Kimora Lee Simmons to Alan Cumming, anyone ever boldfaced by Page Six seems to have a signature scent.”

 

               So I ask, what was all the stink about?  The rest of the article is so catchy and sharp with wit, as only the “Wit” herself could have written that I do wonder why she even bothered to paraphrase Ms. Frolova’s one sentence in the first place.  One sentence.  Perhaps Theresa had jotted it down as something catchy to remember and had simply forgotten to “source” it.  I jot things others say or write all the time- with notation however.  Theresa’s denial is questionable.  In the California Magazine (October 2007) article Folie a Deux written by Laurie Winer it is stated that Duncan blamed Scientologists for the mishap by changing the date of Frolova’s article to make herself and her boyfriend Jeremy Blake look bad.   In any case, we love her work anyway.  I was elated to find her article.  Catch the entire “Eau de” here if you wish.

  [ I am also looking for Theresa Duncan's short story "Topographers" which was published in Bald Ego, but cannot get linked to the mag or the story.  If any one knows where or how, I'd appreciate it.   Peace.]

Jen and Kate Bare All

Our take on the December covers of GQ and Vanity Fair magazines. 

            We aren’t sure why Jennifer Aniston found it necessary to literally expose herself to GQ this month.  The cover shot (which we’ve chosen not to show here) features her wearing only a men’s tie and should possibly be age rated.  Yes, in the photo spread she looks fabulous (her smooth, smooth, 40 year old thighs are of photo re-touch heaven…?) but why she chose to so blatantly objectify herself for a men’s magazine is beyond us.  Un-provocative and unnecessary.  (Anison sports a nasty “come get me” grin in a majority of the photos which saddens us.  I guess most people would think she was having fun.)  In any case, we find no artistic value here.  Sorry Jen.  We like you, but…

               Of all the pics we sort of like this one:

                 Kate Winslet however stopped our hearts.  For Vanity Fair cover this month we salute Kate’s classic-always style and in the these pics, and the ones in the issue, she evokes the screen goddess that she is along with an uncanny look of Catherine Deneuve. 

Outer Space Cinema? Where Do We Buy the Popcorn?

 

             Last Friday the remake of the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still”  not only opened here on Earth but was launched into space.  Apparently a broadcast of the movie was beamed out by the three-year-old Florida company called Deep Space Communications Network which has beamed, among other things, whale songs into space.  According to its website, for $299 anyone can beam a five minute signal into space. 

              Mmmmm…….makes me wonder………….

It was suggested in NY Times article I read that recordings of Bach be sent out (why not the best?) which, of course, we agree.  But Bach’s concertos have seen the sites of all the planets and beyond already – being one of the recordings on the Voyager space craft which was launched in 1976.  (If I’m not mistaken, we have lost contact with the Voyager which has left our galaxy and is well on its way into the universe beyond). 

             In any case, if aliens do get to view our movies it staggers the imagination as to what they’ll think. 

             “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is on our “Must See” List for December (would love it at I-Max) and we do hope we get to see it before the ETs do.        Oh, not to worry, Deep Space’s broadcast won’t reach its Alpha Centauri destination in four light years.  

              Pass the popcorn, please…..

The World’s Oldest Cat

With our love for black cats, even the mostly black cat, The Wit Continuum could not resist this story. 

An English cat named Mischief recently celebrated his 27th birthday (which insidently in cat years makes him 125 or so) in Cornwall.  The Guiness Book of World Records puts this kitty as the current world’s oldest living cat.

The owners say he is going strong and “still manages to jump over the stair gate.”  Born in 1981, Mischief is as old as MTV, Beyonce, and Pac-Man.  And older than the oldest Jonas Brother by six years. 

Still, the record for the longest living cat in recorded history was Cream Puff, a Texas feline who died three years ago at the rip old age of 38.

Source: The World’s Oldest Cat Turns 125  by Julianne Smolinski for Lemondrop

Black Dress III

             Kate Winslet at the opening of “The Reader.”

The Heights of Macchu Picchu

“The disputes over who discovered or rediscovered the sacred site have become so contentious they have been living up to the phrase “the fights of Maccho Picchu,” coined by the American writer Daniel Buck in an allusion to a Pablo Neruda Ode,  “Heights of Macchu Picchu.”

Look at me from the depth of the earth,

laborer, weaver, silent shepherd:

tamer of wild llamas like spirit images:

construction worker on a daring scaffold:

waterer of the tears of the Andes:

jeweler with broken fingers:

farmer trembling as you sow:

potter, poured out into your clay:

bring to the cup of this new life

your old buried sorrows. 

                                                                    – Pablo Neruda, from the Heights of Maccho Picchu

This is a place on The Wit Continuum’s must visit list.

Photo: Moises Samen for The New York Times

Article exerpt: NYTimes, The Lost City of the Incas

Ho, Ho, Ho…Merry Christmas and …

With the season swiftly bearing down on us I have found under the Continuum’s spiral staircase another story with a strangeness that confounds us.  Written by one of my favorites, Neil Gaiman, “Nicholas was…” was published in his demented collection of short stories called Smoke and Mirrors.  It is one hundred words long, 102 counting the title, and Gaiman had it elegantly calligraphed one year to send out to everyone he could think of as a Christmas card.  Mmmmm……..(”Mmmmm…….” means we wonder at this with strange admiration.) 

 

Nicholas Was…

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter.  He wanted to die.

            The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

            Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night.  During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside.  The children slept, frozen into time. 

           He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas.  His punishment was harsher.

          Ho.

          Ho.

          Ho.

Frankly Scarlett…

 

Love this album cover…

Much prettier than the content within…took me three days to figure out who she sounded like… (recalling some voice from long ago…)   Then it came to me – Sinead O’Conner.  Just a bit, or so.  

Peace.

Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline”

              The animated movie “Coraline” will be hitting theaters in February 2009.  We saw the behind-the-scenes trailer during the Mummy III previews the other night and the movie looks fantastic.  (I dare say the Coraline trailer may have been better than the whole  Mummy movie…).  Coraline’s cast will include Terry Hatcher as the voice of both the mothers and Dakota Fanning as that of Coraline. 

              The book, which we recently found under the spiral staircase, is a mysterious romp of the young girl Coraline into a new, exciting, fun and yet shivering-ly evil parallel world where she meets a new “mother” and is showered with delicacies she always wished for.  But things, of course, are not quite what they appear to be at first.  The characters of the story are lively and built beautifully, especially the two ladies from downstairs, former actress/dancers of the London stage who are possibly the reason Coraline doesn’t loose her way forever in the other sinister world.   And, of course, the mysterious talking black cat we find especially intriguing.

            All in all, Coraline is a nice tale, though we find some parts may be too scary for some younger readers.  It is an adventure in which the main character learns how to use her own wits and intelligent investigations to outsmart a clever, creeepy villianess while finding a way to rescue others in need and placing them before herself.  An enlightening, if disturbing, masterpiece from Mr. Gaiman. 

             We cannot wait for the movie from director Henry Selick, the guy behind The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Coraline is filmed in stop-motion animation instead of computer generated characters.  Extra, extra thumbs up.

2009: A New Venture – A New Journey

According to the novelist John Gardner, there are just two kinds of stories in literature:  you go on a journey, or a stranger arrives in your world.

The Wit Continuum’s destiny in 2009 is to reap rich rewards by including both of these plotlines in my life story.  So let the brainstorming begin!

What’s the best journey you could choose for yourself – - a journey that will educate, challenge, and delight you?

And what can you do to attract the best kinds of strangers into your world — strangers who will educate, challenge, and delight you?

                 Blogging in this fine WordPress community should do the trick in part. 

                Peace. …….and Happy New Year to all…..

 

Source: Free Will Astrology

“My Carefully Prepared Opening Line…”

On this first day of 2009 I find Katherine Anne Porter inspiring and challenging. 

“If you came here hoping for a miracle, there can be none.  If you believe that you have paid to receive here a magic formula, a secret you may use at will, you have done no such thing.  Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught.  It can only be learned, and learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself.  That is, if your intention is to try yourself out, to find whether or not you have the makings of an artist. … In the present fevered rush to publish just anything and anybody, and all the critics hailing all wrting on his own level of understanding as great, with books and poets of the year, of the month, of the hour, of the minute, we can get a little confused.  Be calm.  The real poet, the real novelist, will emerge out of the uproar.  He will be here, he is even now on his way.”

From: “Writing Cannot Be Taught…” (1954 )  in Porter: Collected Stories and Other Writings

Photo: 1933

Which Way

Which one are you

and who would.

Which way

would you have come this way.

 

And what’s behind,

beside, before,

If there are more,

why are there more.

 

–Robert Creeley

The “Fear-est” Phobia

Phobia, phobia in my head,

Who’s the “fear-est” I should dread?….

                  Do any of you have novercophobia?  This is the intense fear of your stepmother (or what you might call the Snow White-Cinderella syndrome.)

                 The word “phobia” comes from Phobos, the son of Ares (the god of war).  Phobos’s brother was Deimos (god of terror) and his aunt was Eris (goddess of discord).  Phobos no doubt suffered from syngenescophobia, or the intense fear of your relatives.  Just imagine one of his family reunions.

                Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” which is phobophobia – yes, fear of fear.

                Phobias surround the animal kingdom.  Who doesn’t know someone who is an arachnophobe, one that fears spiders.  Harry Potter’s pal Ron Weasley suffered this one.  Or do you perhaps fear mice?  Then you have musophobia, which has a nice ring to it.  Cynophobia is the fear of dogs and aelurophobiais the fear of cats.  I think I can safely say that I don’t know anyone who with one of these fears – wait, never mind, I know an aelurophobe (pathetic-yes?).  Then there’s herpetophobia, the fear of snakes (think Indiana Jones).   Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds has given you ornithophobia, or the movie Jaws helped you develop ichthyophobia, the fear of fish (no more aquarium visits?)

                The Wit Continuum’s favorite cartoon which we spy each year at Christmas contains our favorite “phobic” scene.  In A Charlie Brown Christmas we find Lucy, in her psychology booth, seeking to help the bumbed-out Charlie Brown get over his holiday blues.  She goes through a list of phobias, including the fear of cats.  Here’s how it ends up.

Lucy:   Maybe you have pantophobia.  Do you think youhave pantophobia?

Charlie Brown:  What’s pantophobia?

Lucy:  The fear of everything.

Charlie Brown:  (thinks for a beat then yells)  That’s it!

              Han Christian Anderson suffered from a strange phobia I honestly have never heard of.  Taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive.   He went as far as to carry notes with him to remind people that if he was unconscious not to assume he was dead and he kept a note at his bedside stating that he may “seem dead” but was merely asleep.  (We wonder at this great writer…)

                Here’s one for the books.  The deathly fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth – arachibutyrophobia.  The fear of the number 13?  No kidding – triskaidekaphobia, which breaks down to three-and-ten-fear.

Phobia, phobia, in my head…here is the “fearest” I should dread…

The fear of words – no books, no blogging – count me out

Verbaphobia is not what we’re about.

The End in 2012?

More doom and gloom appears on the History Channel this week which they call Armageddon week, or some bullshit of the sort, and the programs range from the “impending” ice age to Nostradamus’s end of the world predictions as well as the Mayan Calendar stories.  In case you haven’t heard, the Mesoamerican Mayan long count calendar ends on December 21 in the year 2012, just four years from now.  So called experts believe this means that the end of the world will happen then, thus we have been inundated with these stories for years now: end of the world – or not, maybe, possibly, there’s a chance, global warming a sign, or maybe not, new ice age? we’re all going to starve to death? – or not, maybe….there’s a chance……..CUT ME A BREAK.

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I’m getting bored with it all.  The streak of paranoid delusion has yet struck again, and there are people who are worried, praying, and banking their decisions of the future on this “possible end” the Mayan calendar is so sure of. 

The “experts” agree something is about to happen.  More harbingers of the coming end time include UFO sightings, crop circle formations, disappearing honey bees, disappearing bat populations, and flocks of migratory birds falling from the sky.  The belief in the world coming to an end is rooted in ancient history – long before biblical history, in ancient Hindu texts and Asiatic acts of astronomic observations as well as the calendar calculations of the ancient Maya.  Why does the calendar end on that date? Maybe the Mayan dude (or dudette) who was the calendar keeper developed a case of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13 (see my phobia blog from yesterday) and decided this 2012 was a good date as any to quit, or maybe he or she died before appointing a new calendar writer to take over, or perhaps, no one wanted the job.  (I know, I know…but  really, is this any more corny than some of the crap people believe?????????)

Here are some other dooms-day beliefs that have gone around:

The Shakes believed the world would end in 1792.  

Great disappointment among the followers of William Miller, who fixed the date of doom on March 21, 1843.  Miller’s followers were afire with enthusiasm, but still failed to see Christ descending from the clouds as expected.  Miller decided he had miscalculated and set a new date on October 21 of the same year.  “On the appointed day  of doom frenzied believers donned their robes, tucked an ultimate lunch in the folds, and took their places on housetops, facing east.  On the 22nd they ate their lunch and climbed down.  Miller confesses his disappointment, but insisted ‘the day of the Lord is at the door.’”  The Millerites never gave up hope, and offshoot sects still exist today. 

Oriental sages said a Day of Brahma lasted a thousand years.  On the basis of that scripture it was decided that the world would end in the year 1000 A.D.  With the approach of that year, Europe was seized by an apocalyptic mania.  Towns and farms were abandoned.  Fanatics ran about announcing the Last Days.  In some places, commerce came virtually to a standstill.  The year passed uneventfully enough, but human society suffered greatly from famines and civil disorders caused by the doomsday belief. 

It may be in our genetic code, our human natures, to always be thinking that the world will end.  Perhaps we need to feel that all could just stop, with or without us dying in the process, and perhaps some of us do not need to feel this at all.  One thing always rings for me with these prophecies, that the world as we know it will end.  The key words are “as we know it”.   Instead of a literal change on the earth, perhaps a shift in consciousness will be the change, and the result will be make the world quite new, different, and free.  Maybe, just maybe, the end will be a good thing.

sources: Wikipedia and The Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

drawings Link:  printouts of today’s date from the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar

Viewing “Twilight” Yet Again

Yes, yes…we did it.  Saw Twilight again.  The teen members of The Wit Continuum had one last friend who actually hadn’t seen it yet, so we took her.  (We went to a strange historic cinema in town that’s been refurbished and only shows movies that are just about to hit video for $4 on weekends.)  In any case, seeing it again has not helped the Continuum’s opinion of the film, sorry to say, but we did enjoy getting to see the bad vampires again.  The girls, of course, enjoyed it just as much, but found it funnier for some reason they said.  With the simmering emotions of “dear me, what will happen to helpless Bella” not running through their veins I guess the real soul of the movies comes through.  Too bad there isn’t one.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

On another note….

Last night at The Golden Globe Awards Heath Ledger, yet again receives best supporting actor award for his role in The Dark Night.  We sympathize with his loss (loved Knight’s Tale and 10 Things I Hate About You from a few years back) and know that he will be missed.  But seriously, does anyone really think, talented though he was, that he would have received these awards if he hadn’t died?  My guess is that he wouldn’t have, which is not a criticism of Mr. Ledger, but of these political award show “academies” as it were. 

News from 2008 We Can’t Forget

Einstein’s Dream and the Big Bang Machine.

Back in August and September I was fascinated with this Big Bang Machine (or technically the Large Hadron Collider) created by those Swiss geeks and built on the Swiss/French border.  By slamming atoms together they’ll try to create (on a very small scale) the effects of, and possibly prove, the theory of the Big Bang and the core creation of the universe.

What has been popping into my head since reading about this is the movie, Men in Black, in which a tiny galaxy is carried around in a bobble attached to the neck of a cat.   I say this because one of the results of this test with this 7 mile, $10 billion machine could be the creation of a microscopic star system…or, as many are worried about and have even issued a law suit over, they might create a black-hole that will suck us all into doom? 

But what if they create one of those nano-bit universes?  What if there are tiny life forms in it?  Are we then to become Gods? 

As of September 20th 2007, a glitch is some power switch postponed the tests.  And a few days later, they had to shut it down the BBM completely….until spring of 2009. 

Well, we can all breathe a sigh of relief for now.  No end of the planet by being sucked into a black hole, no “globe-gobbling catastrophe, and no mini-galaxies to worry about being gods of.  Fwehh! (I symbolically wipe my brow).

but then I think……..spring is just around the corner………..

or, What if these geniuses get this Big Bang Machine working by 2012?!!!!!!?   Oh, my……………

Free Will Astrology – Gemini

How I so love a coincidence, if there is such a thing, for perhaps its The Wit Continuum’s pro-noia in action.  In any case, I find it peculiar that I blogged about phobias a few days back and Free Will Astrology has more to add this week……..

“Its a favorable time for you to phase out at least 60% of your old stale fears.  The cosmos is poised to assist you in this noble cause if you’ll exert a modicum of effort……

Well, here’s an idea that might work:  Simply replace your old fears with a slew of silly and outlandish ones.  They’ll allow you to feel the friction you rely on to feel alive, but they won’t bog you down with heavy stagnancy.

For example, you could contract automatonophobia, the fear of ventriloquist’s dummies” (I have a phobophobia that I already have this one!) “and apeirophobia, the fear of infinity.  Other good choices might be kyphophobia, the fear of stooping, and lutraphobia, the fear of otters.”

Its a wonder that having certain fears serves some people, who are dependent of their set limitations to get through life and potentially the attentions of others who they fear may seem more important than themselves.  Don’t get me wrong, if you seriously have a phobia I respect this and don’t necessarily think you’re making it up or anything, but I know a hypochondriac (you know, those who love to have something wrong with them at every given moment, “My back is out”  My knee is bad” “I get sick from that” “I’m allergic to everything”) who, when all else fails, pulls aelurophobia, the fear of cats, out of his hat.

Source: Free Will Astrology – Gemini-week of January 14 

 (Just a note: We were guessing the pic featuring the tarot card ”adventure” symbolizes the adventure of letting go those old fears and starting new — but we just love the white tiger within.   Peace.)

Obama Rocks the Day

Of course, The Wit Continuum is watching the continuum-ous coverage of the inauguration, thus no work is getting done.  Hope those of you out there doing the same enjoy this day as much as I do. 

Barack – on!

Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

 

Would you hang this mirror in your living-room?

Writing for Environmental Graffiti, Thomas Davie shows the work of interactive artist Danny Rozen who created a mirror out of 830 wood blocks.  The clever concept:  a tiny camera gathers image info, sends it through a computer which then shifts the hundreds of tiny blocks into the image in front of the device. 

“The result is a sort of ghostly image, imprinted upon the wooden pixels like a haunted trace and just like a real mirror the image moves in real time – although the effect is more like some kind of spirit mimicking its subject than your average mirror.”

Sounds spooky…and looks a bit spooky too.  Imagining the sounds the tiny haunted blocks make when when you move past it……..    

Link: Thomas Davie for Environmental Graffiti

Shocking Indifference To Drowned Victims

More news from 2008 that The Wit Continuum cannot forget.  Article found in July on CNN.com/europe: 

“Italians wereexpressing outrage over published photos that show beach-goers near Naples going about their day as the bodies of two Roma girls lay on the shore.  The girls had drowned earlier in the day, but the tragedy draws attention to what one group calls Italy’s atmosphere of “racism” toward Gypsies.

“While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few meters away,” Italian newspaper La Repubblica said.  The young girls reportedly had come to the beach with two others to sell trinkets.  They then went swimming but were overpowered by the strong currents.  Lifeguards were able to save only two of them. 

Their bodies were eventually laid out on the sand under beach towels to await collection by authorities who arrived hours later to carry them away in coffins.  The incident also drew condemnation from the Archbishop of Naples.  “Indifference is not an emotion for human beings,” he wrote in his parish blog.”

Three photos show the sunbathers (as above) near the bodies, another shows the coffins being carried past those lounging in their beach chairs, and another, which we find so appallingly disrespectful, a guy talking on a cell phone  not two feet from girls’ bodies, as if they were piles of sea weed washed ashore.  I wonder if the people in these photos admit it to anyone they know.  I could only hope not.

The Creative Comeback of Rugs

“Seyed Alavi’s Flying Carpet – which you can see at Sacramento Airport – foregoes suggestion in favor of reality.  Walk the length of it, and you “fly” the length of the Sacramento River in aerial photography.”

In “Creative Modern Rugs- Mat Designs” we’ve found a myriad of urban-comical rugs to stimulate the imagination – and the conversations in your home.  Would you perhaps incorporate either of these precious finds?

Uh…Yes, it is Road Kill Carpet, “a luxurious square of rich carpet adorned at one corner with a messy depiction of an ex-fox.”

Sunny Side Up Rug?

Link: Weburbanist.com    via: Leesa Leva

Theresa Duncan Memorial Film

To all of us who are Duncan-ologists, that esoteric group who have become obsessive fans of Theresa Duncan’s life and her blog The Wit of the Staircase, and to the other children of the staircase, Mary Duncan, Theresa’s mother has posted on the blog site a memorial film that was played at Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake’s memorial.  With much excitement, we’ve been hopelessly trying to view the film, only to get a black emptiness in the window that opens. 

In any case, it is supposed to feature some footage of a film called “Charlotte Goes Swimming” of which Theresa starred in the lead role. 

We are sincerely hoping the problem with the broadcast of this film finds a solution.  Longing to see the enigmatic personality that her mother, Mary, has promised to show in her honor.

Typing With Tuesday

Since I’ve still had no luck viewing the Theresa Duncan memorial film I’m posting one of my favorite pics of Theresa with her dog, Tuesday, on Tuesday.

Peace….

Theresa Duncan Memorial Film 2

The Wit Continuum has finally viewed the Theresa Duncan Memorial Film, with much thanks to Debbi for all her help and info.  The Film shows excerpts of the Wilbur King film I believe is titled “Charlotte Goes Swimming” and features a musical background that creates a haunting, yet lovely, tribute.  Theresa is maybe 25 in the memorial film.  We Duncanologist would have liked to see her visually later in her life, but it was a nice film posted by her mother, a nice dedication.  Theresa looks very sweet in the end, innocent and free, as any mother would like to see her own daughter.

A soft voice in the beginning, which I can only assume is Theresa’s, says: “May it come, may it come, the time we fall in love with.”    

Peace…

Link: Theresa Duncan 1966-2007 Memorial Film

Great Authors That Left Us Too Soon

Sad to hear this week about the death of the great John Updike.  The Witches of Eastwick, and the 2008 follow-up The Widows of Eastwick have been on the reading list.  Updike was 76 and died from lung cancer.

Another writer we love died back in November of 2008.  Michael Crichton, the creator of ER, died at the age of 66 from cancer.  We’ve read Time Line, Prey, Jurassic Park, and The Lost World.   In Jurassic Park, we love the brilliant Butterfly Effect/Chaos Theory dialogue by the character Ian Malcolm.  You only get a taste of it in the movie.  It’s worth the read. 

Both of these writers will be greatly missed….

Peace….

Nasty Comments Make Me Wonder

Today I received a nasty, and poorly written, comment on my About page and I can’t help but rant about it.  Unfortunately I deleted the cancerous message but I believe I was called “unrespectful” (which isn’t a word at all) and basically culturally inept.  You know, we all like to blog because we have something to say, something to share, a need to express ourselves, and undoubtedly like to write, whether its good shit or bad shit (and we know there is plenty of it out there).  But, to take the time to charter out a paragraph of plain insult, even asking someone to “just stop” is pretty lame.  Maybe I don’t appreciate some of the blogs I hit, find them strange or whatever (I hit one with a guy wearing strange scary masks which I found quite disgusting) yet I didn’t  tell them to quit their expression simply because I found it unappealing. 

I’ve had  numerous comments made to my blog site, some out there, and some private.  And I have given my expression with  friends and new followers who like to keep tabs on the discoveries and interests contained here.  I write what I love, or find peculiar, or just admire…and if that makes me “culturally” inept – so be it.   This comment maker no doubt needs to check on the importance of their own thoughts and how they express them.

I have on my armor, as we all do.

Now, on to better things…

Peace…

Yet Another Phobia: The Fear Of Buttons

The fear of buttons, also known as koumpounophobia, has been brought to my attention by the author of Coraline, Neil Gaiman.  (Previously I blogged about phobias, and have thus been in this little synchronicity of finding more and more phobic artifacts).  Check out Neil Gaiman’s Button Trailer for the film Coraline, based on his book.  The trailer appears on his Thursday, Jan.29, 2009 blog.  By the way, the trailer was shot in his house, and he does an incredibly fine job pronouncing the above phobia with his British accent, making it sound quite eloquent.

Buttons of Love to all.

Link: Neil Gaiman Journal

Tuesday with Theresa: A Quote

 

“My cologne is called Santa Ana after the powerful winds that bring desert heat and faraway smell into the city.

It smells like: Celluloid and sand, coyote fur and car exhaust, contrail cloud and chlorine, bitter orange and stage blood and one bushel of ghostly, shivery night blooming jasmine flowers like blown kisses from the phantoms of the ten thousand screen beauties who still haunt our hills every full moon because they think it’s a stage light.”

 

Quote by Theresa Duncan for LAist Magazine.

Black Dress IV

 

Perfect Black Dress

Poster by artist Kimmy Han

All Posters.com

What Tarot Card Are You?

Time for a new tarot card.  This is the one I was delt after taking the test. 

You are The Magician.

Skill, wisdom, adaptation.  Craft, cunning, depending on dignity, eleoquent and charasmatic both verbally and in writing, you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

         The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire.  In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud.  Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury.  He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman.  Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man – either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil. 

Link:  What Tarot Card Are You?

Haunted by Blue Dogs

With the Westminister Dog Show starting we’d like to mention one of our favorite dogs of the art world.  It would have to be Tiffany, the muse behind Louisianna artist George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog series.

              “It was one of these myths, the loup-garou, which inspiried Rodrigue’s most famous series, The Blue Dog.  Painted for a book of Cajun ghost stories, this were-wolf-type dog was an already familiar legend for Rodrigue, who heard the story often as a boy.

               With no image for the loup-garou, the artist searched his files for a suitable shape.  He found it in photos of his studio dog Tiffany who had died several years before.”

More of Rodrigue Bio:  George Rodrigue.com

Theresa and Jeremy on the Big Screen?

Okay!  So I’ve been busy writing my novel for the past week, but all the while in the back of my mind, to blog or not to blog, I’ve been ruminating about the probability of a film being made about the lives of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.  We here at the Wit Continuum (along with some fellow misfits of Duncanology) are not so pleased with this idea.  Brought to my attention again last week, I remember hearing about this film a few months ago.  Evidently Bret Easton Ellis is writing a screenplay which will be produced through Ithaka films and Lionsgate films.  I was told when I responded to this article that I found a few months ago that “Its a damn good screenplay” which drove me to respond with wonder if this person got to read it. 

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of a few other books which have gotten screen attention like American Psycho, and to my surprise, Less than Zero, the 1987 movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and some other brat-packers.  I like this film, so maybe….dare I say…we have hope?  Ellis says of his new screenplay about Theresa and Jeremy: “The story is remarkable and explores profound loss and the tragic dimensions of love.” 

A year or so before this Gilding the Lily blogged about yet another film in the works as of September 2007 by some JR Chase.  She gives a nice synopsis and frank opinion of what she thinks about it on Children of the Staircase.  Nothing, thankfully, has come of this Chase person’s script as far as I know. 

I hate to say it, but what may bother me most about seeing this film is who will play Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake?  Any thoughts? 

My fear (Ahh, duncanfilmaphobia?) is that films rarely get to the entire truth of a story, for who does know the true story but the people who lived it and who are no longer with us.  We sort of like this mystery; it is the key.   This film  just may zap some  ingrained blogging enthusiasm in this Duncan fan.  

Peace…

Don’t You Just ‘Luv’ this Clean Coal?

First and foremost, The Wit Continuum would just like to state clearly that she believes there is no such thing as “clean coal”.  THEY may try to sell you this bullshit, but let’s be clear, there are emmissions no matter what they say they can do with it.  From someone who lived in a coal region for some time, I can testify to this.  (Plus, had a sweet grandfather who died from black lung.  He was a coal miner for 26 years.  It was not a nice way to go.)

So after that rant, I move on to some interesting finds thanks to Weburbanist.com once again I have found two curious places, and one is quite a bit spooky.  Here are some abandoned cities of our world–due to the coal mining industry.  Think of these places if you are a  supporter…

The abandoned town of Centralia, Pennsylvania…

“No list of abandoned cities and deserted town can be complete without some discussion of one of the strangest and most infamous example: Centralia.  This once-thriving town had a mine fire decades ago…but it never went out.   Warning signs that something was still wrong included: smoking highways, heated underwater gas tanks and person-swallowing sink holes.  Over time most of the town’s residents have moved on though a few insist on staying despite the slowly-speading and still-burning fire that creeps below.”

“Another coal-related abandonment is Hashima, one of Japans deserted island.  It was once a thriving coal-mining city with workers crammed into high rises on narrow streets, but a drop in coal production shut it down.  The structures stand, hazardous though they look, and talk of making it a tourist attraction is in the works.  Presently, only boat views are allowed.”

Count this Weburbanist fan out.

Source: Weburbanist.com

The Wit Continuum Remembers George Harrison

We remember our favorite Beatle today, George Harrison.  Born on February 25, 1943, he would have been 66 today.  Namaste, George where ever you are out there, soaring across the universe. 

Couldn’t resist this pic, my favorite of George and the beautiful Patty Boyd.

Peace to all Beatles fans young and old…

Photo of George Harrison: Carolyn Jones Photo

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?…

 

Haunted, and happy, is how I describe the feelings surrounding my November 12. 2008 blog about The Real Snow White.  It is one of the most popular articles I’ve written about a real life young woman named Margarete von Waldeck, who’s life was cut short mysteriously from an apparent poisoning back in 1554.  She was 21.

When Googling her name my blog site, The Wit Continuum, appears twice on the first page, which is pretty cool, but I wonder how many people are really interested in this infamous person of history.  Was she really the inspiration for the Grimms fairy tale Snow White?  The parallels are interesting to say the least. 

It seems there may be serge in historic discovery going on here by factions unknown.  Continuing the search for more info…and seriously thinking about starting my own Margarete Von Waldeck blog club.  But what do you do with a dead girl?

L’Espirit d’Escalier

Back again with this Thomas Demand monograph.  “The title actually refers to so-called “staircase wit”, that concise French expression for the chagrin of missed retorts – those hapless comebacks one only ever thinks up belatedly (i.e. when already descending the stairs):  “I should’ve said (fill in the blank)!”

On my desk today: favorite black cats…

Found this on my desk top today, no doubt left by one of the teen members of the Wit Continuum.  (They know I love black cats).  As to the meaning…one can only guess.  Take it as you will.

(Perhaps its a hint to change my avatar from Kit to Chocolat??) 

You can’t ever take life too seriously.

Peace…

What We Lost…

“Lost for 1600 years, the fables city of Alexandria was lost – until just 16 years ago.  The famed stage of historic interactions between Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Octavius was lost under the water.  The royal residences, as archeologists discovered, were slowly sent to the bottom of the sea after a series of earthquakes and tsunamis.  The ancient Alexandria had over 500,000 residents and was known for its library with over 700,000 scrolls.”

Eerie, and unforgetable images…to think we have these museum pieces deep below us in the depths of this planet….

Source: Weburbanist.com

The Wondering Continues…

The wondering continues about Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.  Hope its all right with you Deb, but I’d like to call you my new guest contributor.  Via your insightful links you have me thinking once again.

First, Big Happy Accident’s blog:  I was pretty sure that I read somewhere about Jeremy Blake leaving a note in his wallet with his clothes on Rockaway Beach, but I couldn’t remember where.  Looking back I found, and almost hate to reference this, Nancy Jo Sales article which says that Jeremy “had written on the back of a business card, which he left on the beach along with his clothes, “I am going to join the lovely Theresa.”  Perhaps the writer of Big Happy had some other insight, or I’m thinking that he may have been expressing his own artistic thoughts; the blog is an art blog (quite nice actually).  Still would love to know more about the note – if any of this from Sales article is really true.  Sales, I believe, is linked to that priest the two knew and confided in.  Does this make her claims more substantial?

Incidentally, according to Sales, Theresa’s note said “I love all of you.”  Makes me wonder why she didn’t address this to Jeremy.  I’ve also read somewhere that she said something about being at peace with her decision.  Was any of this made clear anywhere?

Next, Kade’s Korner, please if you go there come back!  Okay–can’t wrap my braincells around Kade’s art or poem.  Is it just me?  Insight please…..

Lisa Chapman has an interesting Detroit based blogspot.  She has a link to Zoetrope All-story, a favorite mag of mine.  The Kate Moss pic I don’t particularly like.  She looks maybe 14 or so, or sometime early in her career.  I don’t know, something about young girls posing in such a way…never mind – I’m ranting. (Teens share the Wit Continuum’s house, you understand.) 

In any case, I wondered “Why Kate Moss?” myself.  Her questionable relationship with that rock-dude (dirt bag?) seemed to fascinate Theresa.  Some artistic, “out-there” vein to it maybe.  I don’t think Theresa would have given two shits to blog about “octo-mom”. 

I find its quite common to be similarly intrigued with one certain conspicuous female figure.  Gee, can you guess who mine is?

Peace…

Love the links Deb; keep in touch

Trick or Treat: the Neurophone

This bugger sells for $529.oo over at Amazon and is evidently a kind of super-learning device popular with some uber-spirituals I’ve read about.  It’s uses include: relaxation, increased learning potential, increased concentration and focus, and increased audio sensation.  The whole premise of how it works is the disturbing thing. 

Dr. Patrick Flanagen was a child prodigy in electronics, chemistry and physics.  He discovered an entirely new way to transmit sound into the human brain with his invention, the neurophone.

As a teenager Dr. Flanagen “was listed as one of the top scientists in the 1960s.  Among his many inventions was this device called the Neurophone – an electronic instrument that can successfully program suggestions directly through contact with the skin.  When he attempted to patent the device, the government demanded that he prove it worked.  When he did, the National Security Agency confiscated the neurophone.  It took Dr. Flanagen two years of legal battles to get his invention back. 

In using the device, you don’t hear or see a thing: it is applied to the skin, which the doctor claims is the source of special senses.  The skin contains more sensors for heat, touch, pain, vibration, and electrical fields than any other part of the human anatomy.

In one of his tests, Dr. Flanagen conducted two identical seminars for a military audience – one seminar one night and one the next…When the first group proved to be very cool and unwilling to respond, Patrick spent the next day making a special tape to play at the second seminar.  The tape instructed the audience to be extremely warm and responsive and for their hands to become “tingly”.  The tape was played through the neurophone, which was connected to a wire he placed along the ceiling of the room.  There were no speakers, so no sound could be heard, yet the message was successfully transmitted from that wire directly into the brains  of the audience.  They were warm and receptive, their hands tingled and they responded, according to the programming.”  (other responses could not be mentioned in this article.)

It boggles the mind in considering the many manipulative uses this devise could have on unsuspecting people.  How can one be sure it is programmed for what it was purchased for?

Source: The Battle For Your Mind by Dick Sutphen via The Future is Yours

Cat Secrets

The great French essayist Montaigne believed strongly that cats led secret lives and once asserted that “cats undoubtedly talk and reason among themselves.”

From: The Indispensible Cat

Cats in the Sun

I’ve chose to continue a tribute to cats and all who love them. 

My absolute favorite cat photography book is Cats in the Sun by Hans Silvester.  This great photographer showed infitessimal patience in photographing the beautiful domesticated cats of the Greek isles.  Because cats are forbidden to cross into Greek households (they allow no pets in their homes except canaries) these wonderful pusses live outdoors year around, but the islanders love them and care for them and, most importantly, totally accept them as inseparable from daily life. 

“…like the wind, the sun, the sea, day, and night”  the cats have always been there and always will.

  Here is an excerpt from in intro of Cats in the sun:

           “My first stay on Mykonos was in 1982.  I was instantly enchanted by the light and the architecture.  I photographed some cats without really registering the force of their personalities.

            A later trip took me to the Cyclades to photograph the dovecotes.  This time I developed a passion for the cats, and we became friends.  Subsequently, over three years, I observed them at all hours of the day and night, and through every season, with all the patience needed to disturb them as little as possible.  To the Greeks, I quickly became the fool who runs after the cats.  I made them smile, but it was with the greatest kindness that they brought me coffee and cakes and told me stories about their favorite cats during the long hours that I waited for the best moment to take my photographs.”

Boy, would I love this job!!!

Peace to all cat lovers out there…

New Look

This is actually my original look when I created this site in September.  (like the links and all visible on the side instead of the bottom).  Hope you all approve!

Peace…

One Blue Pussy

Andy Warhol (1923-1987) loved cats, creating numerous paintings of them until he began his Pop Art series.  As a cat owner, he published a book of 25 cat portraits in which all but one of the felines were named Sam.

More Theremy Thoughts…

Just feel the need to share some of this article written by Laurie Winer for California Style magazine in October of 2o07.  Winer did some research of her own, and may be a bit more objective than some others who have written on the couple.

(Curious note here for SB – the beauty to adorn the C cover is none other than Naomi Watts!  Love synchronicity like this.)

  See what you think. This is a portion of the latter half of the article, a more scientific viewpoint, if you will.   

        “Ronald K. Siegal, UCLA-affiliated psychologist and author of Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia, was struck both by the elegance of Duncan’s writing and the commonness of what he calls her paranoia.  “I’ve seen scores [of writing] just like this,” he says.  “Paranoia is so common it is difficult to consider a mental disorder.  Many people are totally functional with it.”

        Siegal doubts Duncan was driven to suicide by the terror of her perceived persecutors.  Had it gone another was, she could have turned her fantasies into art, as do many writers of science fiction, he says.  “She’s not as fearful as she is in love with her own writing about her fears,” he says.  “She’s a very good writer, and you can see antenna out there, reaching and grasping for these conspiratorial elements in the way screenwriters and novelists do.  Paranoia really only means looking below the surface for details.”

     USC-affiliated professor of social work John Brekke, who has long worked with the mentally ill, offers a slightly more acute diagnosis (though, of course, one based solely on Duncan’s writings.)  “These were not benign delusions,” he posits.  “This is an undiagnosed mental illness characterized by non-bizarre paranoid delusions.  It’s a serious  psychosis–a disease in which being bright and creative can actually hurt you.”  Brekke suspects Duncan’s paranoid delusions merged with her real-life disappointments in a way that was unbearable.  Who know if she had a moment of clarity in which she said, ‘Oh god, I destroyed myself and this man.’”

      Siegal, the paranoia expert tends to agree: “She probably suffered from a tremendous amount of guilt and humiliation.  She was caught plagiarizing and made up a story.  She tells people she’s working on a movie that doesn’t exist.  She hasn’t learned how to deal with setbacks, and her excuse is always to blame other people.  Part of her recognized she was destroying herself.”

       A close friend of Duncan views her unraveling in a similar fashion.  “She had burned so many bridges for herself and for Jeremy that he was forced to take his old job back at Rockstar,” she says.  “I knew Jeremy when he first worked there; he was thrilled to leave that job.  It had to be really hard for them to go back to New York, to the scene of their former glory.  I think Theresa must have felt badly about what she had done to Jeremy’s career and didn’t see anywhere for herself to go.”

Well, there it is.  Sums some thoughts up in a not so glamorous way.  Let me know what you think…

Peace…

The Theremy Article

As I said I’d try do—I did!  Took a couple hours only and I’m pleased.

For us Duncanology/Theremy addicts who wait with bated breath for word on the movie to come about, I have written out the C magazine article that is not online.  It is called Folie a Deux, and can be found in my Pages column in the sidebar.  I thought it deserved a permanent place on the site to reference. 

“L.A. based writer Laurie Winer, who researched and authored “Folie a Deux” says, “The most moving moment for me was when I realized it was most likely not [writer Theresa Duncan's] madness but rather a brief moment of clarity that led her to take her own life.”

Please post all comments here. 

Just a personal note:  Typing out the Reynolds Price words moved my tremendously in many ways aside from what they may have meant to Theresa in her last blog.  As a writer, I would recommend other writers  and bloggers to write out these words just once,  just to bring the power and brilliance of them home…

The pic above is a still from the Winchester Redux artwork  by Jeremy Blake.  Love this haunting image. Presently it sits on my computer screen  with a nice deep teal green background.  (the actual moving sequence loop would be most awesome but I’ll take what I can get.)

Peace….

Something to Brighten One’s Day

Just a quick post – this beautiful kitten named Johnnie submitted by photographer ArZs at Deviant Art.com.

Couldn’t resist…

Peace…

Factory Girl Fascination

Although she only knew Andy Warhol for a short time, just under a year in the mid 60s, one cannot hear the name of the artist without thinking of his prized “Factory Girl”, Edie Sedgwick.  Suffering from mental illness and drug addiction, the well-to-do society girl found a little niche for herself in 1960s Manhattan artist scene, modeling and starring in some of Warhol’s underground film works. 

Before meeting Warhol, by only one month, Edie found herself next to music sensation Bob Dylan.  Their sorted affair which ended with Dylan marrying someone else, much to the surprise of Edie, who probably never got over the devastation.  Dylan’s Blond on Blond is supposedly about Edie. 

The fascination with Edie Sedgwick rocks on.

                                                   

“Edie was born to die young,” says one article.

“She arrived in NY in 1964 with a trust fund, spending it quickly going though $80,000 in 6 months.  She was a society girl, a trustafarian drawn to the margins of Bohemia.  In January 1965, she met Warhol at a party.  Few socialites graced The Factory, [Warhol's Manhattan hide-out where he produced films among other things].  Once he met Edie, the two were practically inseparable.  Edie became like an accessory Andy Warhol wore everywhere he went.

Edie transformed herself in the process, cutting her hair and dying it silver blond.  She often wore tights from her dance classes everywhere, creating a signature 60s look:  Black tights, long t-shirts, her chandelier earings, dark eye-makeup and pale lips. 

Drugs were her downfall.  She says she was first introduced to really hard drugs at the Factory, where she became an underground film star, featured in Warhol’s voyeuristic films. 

She died at age 28, five years after leaving the Factory. 

Being in and out of institutions to treat her mental illness, a trait that ran through her family and tragically took the lives of two of her brothers, Edie finally had given up drug use and was married.  However, she was prescribed medication for a physical injury and after a night at a party, at which she drank heavily, her husband gave her the prescribed amount of her prescription and the two went to bed. 

In the morning, Edie Sedgwick was dead.  Her death was recorded as overdose/suicide.  (Wonder about the “suicide” – it sounded more like an accidental overdose.  Makes me wonder how drunk her husband was, and if it was worded this way to protect his involvement.)

Her story in tragic, yet glamourous, and, of course, sad as well.  She was a great beauty that few got to know, and too few of the world got to see.  She may have had an outstanding career hadn’t her addictions taken over her life.

Naturally that is why we are so intrigued.

Source:  Style Over Substance  by Linda Grant

P.S.  The Wit Continuum’s favorite pic of Edie is the one at the top of page–perfect 60s icon.

Black Dress V

Time for Black Dress number five.  Here photographer Believe – Hope shows the only fur to wear.

We agree. 

The History of Glamour

It is not my intention in any way to reproduce Theresa Duncan’s entire blog, but we loved viewing The History of Glamour and in our search found one of the most enlightening entries of The Wit of the Staircase.  Theresa blogged this on Wednesday, Aug.2, 2006:

titled:  Wit Editor Makes Pedantic History

“Our film The History of Glamour is included in Prentice Hall high school art history text books.  Shout excerpt below:

“Collaborating with animator Jeremy Blake, Duncan created a hybrid ‘pseudo-rockumentary’ that explores the nature of American celebrity…Its heroine, teen singer-songwriter Charles Valentine, from the fictional backwater of Antler, Ohio, storms Manhattan intent on achieving fame and fortune.  But the lyrics of her songs increasingly reflect the emptiness of the cult of celebrity:  ‘I got a call from a magazine yesterday, I think it was called Interview, I said Thursday’s out, but how about never?  Is never good for you?’  In the end, she becomes a reclusive writer, chucking ‘glamour for grammar’.”

“This is required reading in tens of thousands of our nation’s high schools, mon ami.  Who needs children, brothers and sisters of the staircase, when so many are already yours?”

Theresa posted this in Art and Film category.  Her little quote after speaks volumes to me, and her excitement can be felt.  Who wouldn’t want their story or film to be cultural or literary knowledge for our next generation.  This one thing she did made an impact. 

And it is a really great film.  Love the catch at the end.  Tell me if you would like to join me for a glass of Channel No. 5 while we watch the funeral fashion show…

Catch The History of Glamour if you have 30 to 40 minutes to spare.  (Wondering:  Is there a DVD?)

I Am A Woman

“It’s all right for a woman to be, above all, human.

I am a woman first of of all.”    -   Anais Nin

 

Photo source: Cherie Sugar at Deviant Art.com

Symbols: The Flower of Life

The Flower of Life symbol is considered to be sacred among many cultures around the world, both ancient and modern.  Within this symbol can be found all the building blocks of the universe.  The symbol can be used as a metaphor to illustrate the connectedness  of all life and spirit within the universe.

The Flower of Life has powerful energy and challenges us to unify out hearts, minds, and spirits.  It can strengthen our awareness of God and enhance our feeling of connection to all that it. 

It also gives The Wit Continuum that needed burst of energy and artisic inspiration.  Having one of these symbols around give the person better focus and positive energy. 

Source: TruthMovementAustralia.com.au

What is it With Women and Their Shoes?

“What is it with women and their shoes?”  We’ve heard many of the male of the species utter these words at times.  My answer to this question is:  “Its nothing.  Its perfectly normal.”  And to prove my point I’ve found the coolest shoe site called A Woman And Her Shoes ; but be warned you could get lost for a long time in shoe heaven. 

Found these incredible sandals by new fashion designer Atalanta Weller.  (just love her name–was actually researching the Amazonian Huntress Atalanta when I found these zippy heels!).

“Weller is a graduate of Cordwainers college in London and is the designer behind Henry Holland (House of Holland) Shoe Collection, which has yeilded this sporty slip back with a sci-fi feel.”

Beam me up, Scotty!

Spring Fever and Bi-Polar Weather

It was a brilliant spring weekend!!! 

And then we woke up this morning…………..

The Shaguar was not happy.

Black Dress VI

Guerlain perfume: La Petite Robe Noire.  At $150 for 1.7 oz.

Couldn’t resist this little black dress find,  in Teen Vogue, as left on my desk by

a certain teen Continuum member….

Who Says Words With My Mouth?

This is my 100th post…an infinitesimal mile marker in the infinite blogging world…

What better to celebrate it with, than with a poem by Rumi that means a lot to me.

 

WHO SAYS WORDS WITH MY MOUTH?

All day I think it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.

 

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I’ll be completely sober.  Meanwhile,

I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

 

Who looks out with my eyes?  What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

 

This poetry.  I never know what I’m going to say.

I don’t plan it.

When I’m outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all. 

 

From: The Essential Rumi     Photo: my name is  by ArZs at Deviant Art.com

Out of the Ashes: The Symbolic Story of Cinderella

We again find our fairy tales are so much more than kids stories.  “The fairy tale fo the cinder-maid originated as an anti-ecclesiastical allegory repeated by real ‘fairies’ –that is, pagans.”  Ella was the daughter of Mother Earth and her ugly stepsisters were considered the church’s darlings, the military aristocracy and the clergy. 

“An early German version of the story said Cinderella’s real mother, the Earth, though dead, sent from her grave a fairy tree in answer to her daughter’s prayer.  This tree produced golden apples, fine clothes, and other gifts.”  Thus the “fairy godmother” of the tale may have been the ghost of the mother. 

Beautified with her new riches, Cinderella won the “prince” who represents mankind, and their union was symbolized by fitting her foot into a shoe, which was a common sexual allegory.  The Eleusinian Mysteries signified sacred marriage by placing a phallic object in a woman’s shoe.  The glass slipper perhaps stood for the Crystal Cave by which pagan heroes entered. 

Like other secret medieval prophecies of the overthrow of the rich, powerful theocracy, the downfall of Cinderella’s ugly stepmother and stepsisters may have been intended as a prophecy.”

Source: The Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Photo: Cinderella by Citron Rouge at Deviant Art

Theresa and Jeremy in Digital Art

This is a fascinating digital painting done by J.M. Kearns at Idyllopus Press.  With permission from the original photographer, she digitally enhanced the photograph, giving it a distinctive David Hockney-like feel.  I’m not sure of the title, but the link suggests it may be One of a Thousand Maybes, which gives this artwork the hauntingly wonderous feel we share about Theresa and Jeremy’s lives. 

Maybe they were….maybe they thought….maybe they felt….maybe they had been…maybe it was because…..

 

 

Later I find this:  A friend of the couple who blogged on My Space about his saddness at their loss (it had been at the time before Jeremy was found and was still only missing).  There are some nice pictures posted-especially the one of the author-friend with Theresa.  (I can’t find his name but the blog may be FuseAction).  We wonder, too, how this person remained a friend with the couple for so long.  He says in his poetic narrative that he knew them when they first met, that they were like a brother and a sister to him.   Mmmmmm….

The Water

Found this fantastic short film last night at Pitchfork.com called The Water, a 15 minute sequence that leaves one  a bit wigged out.  Filmed by Revolver Film Company, it is described as “a haunting fairy tale that’s as miraculous as it is unsettling.” 

The film features Leslie Feist, who sings the title track, and actor Cillian Murphy.  It is really a long music video for Feist’s song, which isn’t featured until the last 6 minutes or so.  I’m still trying to figure out this chilling tale that is free of dialog except for maybe two lines; no names are given, no relationships explained, but yet you know through the actor’s expressions, in their eyes, what the strange story is.  It is so quiet at the beginning I was playing with the volume; don’t bother.  Just sit and listen.  The title song, when it comes in, is eloquent and lyrical and captures the soul.

Found a new link for this film:  http://www.ifc.com/videos/premiere-the-water.php 

Let me know what you think…

White Dress I

With Spring officially sprung, believe it or not it is one-third of the way through already, I’ve decided to glance into the summer and start a white dress series (not that we’ve given up on the black dresses!).  Love this bohemian summer look.   

Pic:  by xxchange at deviant art

Laboratory of the Soul

 

 

          “Enter this laboratory of the soul where every feeling will be X-rayed…to expose the blocks, the twists, the deformations, the scars which interfere with the flow of life.  Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin, even….[he] who believes himself so free, blithe, and unscarred.  Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not need to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities.  One need not be branded by the first pattern.  Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness; there is a possibility of joy.”

From: The Diary of Anais Nin, entry [May 25, 1932]

The Water, a new link, I hope…

Found two sources for the film/video of The Water, which I blogged about last week.  (You can guess that I like this film a lot).  In any case, if interested, try these:  The Water   or   http://www.ifc.com/videos/premiere-the-water.php

PS…the first link the screen is much larger for viewing the film.

Peace…

All Those Braided Tresses

“Weaving the Destinies of Man and singing her spells of becoming.” — Circe, the Fate Spinner who sat at her loom.  Homer called her Circe of the Braided Tresses, hinting that she manipulated forces of creation and destruction by the knots and braids in her hair.  She ruled the stars that determined men’s fates.

“Circe of the Braided Tresses, an awful goddess of mortal speech.”  Her braids symbolized her power over metempsychosis;  she stood for the cosmic Cirque, or karmic wheel.

Mother Goddesses like Isis, Cybele, and Kali were said to command the weather by braiding or releasing their hair.  By as late as the 17th century, churchmen said that witches could raise storms, summon demons, and produce all kinds of destruction by binding their hair.  In the Tyrol, it was believed that every thunderstorm was caused by a woman combing and knotting her hair. 

Today, braiding has become as popular as ever, never leaving the sixties hip movement far behind.  Maybe its a fashion statement for some.  Or maybe a matter of convience, to lock away the escaping hair.  Or maybe, we seek to create or destroy the fates of men with our locked tresses.  If I could, I’d braid my hair and make the weather stay beautiful always.  Of course I’d comb it out for the occasional thunderstorm. 

Can’t let this blog go without mentioning Theresa, who made the braiding of her hair a trademark, like Circe, manipulating the forces of creation. 

Source:  Women’s Myths and Secrets

Black Cat Art Favorites

Just a few more black cat artworks that I love.  It is feeling like a black kitty Wednesday.

The Secrets of the Age of Thirteen

Portrait of Girl with Comic Book  by Phyllis McGinley

Thirteen’s no age at all.  Thirteen is nothing.

It is not wit, or powder on the face.

Or Wednesday matinees, or misses’ clothing,

Or intellect, or grace.

Twelve has its tribal customs.  But thirteen

Is neither boys in battered cars nor dolls,

Not Sara Crewe, or movie magazine,

Or pennants on the walls.

 

Thirteen keeps diaries and tropical fish

(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;

Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;

Wants nothing, everything;

Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;

Admits none to the terrors that it feels;

Owns half a hundred masks but no disguises;

And walks upon its heels.

 

Thirteen’s anomalous–not that, not this:

Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,

Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.

Is the one age defeats the metaphor.

Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled

But easily surrounded; is no city.

Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled–

Not even with pity. 

 

From: The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley (1954) 

David Hockney’s iPhone Art

I was astounded this weekend to see this incredible use of new technology, by none other than 71 year old artist, David Hockney who turned his four month old iPhone into tech-culture art.  Amazingly he even sits his high tech canvas on its own easel.  Using input commands on a color screen, Hochney has painted flowers and landscapes.

“I lie in bed and send illustrated art lectures to friends and also my own iPhone paintings,” said Hockney.  “I like to draw flowers by hand on the iPhone and send then out to friends so they get fresh flowers.  And my flowers last!”

Hockney had previously created computer screen art with a stylus and electronic tablet from what I’ve read, so this wasn’t too hard for this incredible talent.  I’m still amazed.  The Wit Continuum is rough when it comes to technology, learning slowly through the years and still ages behind.  This app would probably take me a year to figure out. 

Still….intrigued and impressed.

Peace…

Black Dress VII and VIII

Found this when reading of Fashionista on-line:  “Kate Moss’s black long-sleeved dress for Topshop was named Dress of the Year by the Bath Fashion Museum.”  

This UK museum has the world’s largest collection of historical fashion.  We are left wondering who does the Dress of the Year judging. 

This dress, designed by Kate herself, outdid top designers such as Calvin Klein, Versace, and Alexander McQueen.  All from the model who stated that she is “not a proper designer.”  If this is an example of un-proper design, we see why.

Though we usually love “all things Kate,”  this dress is far from the fashion “WOW” factor.  I think I threw out a dress like this in 1986.  It may have been purple. 

We just cannot see the big “win” here.  Not when we found this Nina Ricci black runway dress for Fall 2009. Ready-to-Wear on Uliana Tikhova.       WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moonstruck…or Are We Just Crazy?

Ahhh…the moon…on Saturday night was exceptional…Took this shot with my new Sony Cyber-shot 12.1 mega pixel.  It was a warm, breezy night…

“The root word for both “moon” and “mind” was the Indo-European manas, or men, representing the ‘wise blood’ in women, governed by the moon.  Other extentions of this root include: words of mentality, menstrual, menology, mensuration, mentor, menage (a matrilineal household), omen (a revelation from the moon), and amen (the moon of rebirth).  

Its derivative mania used to mean ecstatic revelation, just as lunacy used to mean possession by the spirit of Luna, the moon.    To be “moon-touched” or “moon-struck” meant to be chosen by the Goddess;  a “moon-calf” was one carried away by love of her.  When patriarchal thinkers belittled the Goddess, these words came to mean mere craziness.  The moonstruck person was described as “silly,” a word that formerly meant “blessed,” possibly derived from Selene, the Moon.”

So we’re not crazy, are we?  Perhaps we are wisdom filled, blessed Lunatics.  I like that…and I love, love, love the moon. 

Source: Women Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Fractal Images

Fractal generated images are computer generated and crafted out of mathmatical formulae. 

Fascinated with these mind-bending designs that seem to define infinity. 

Dainis Graveris has collected 60 prime examples on a blog, all generated using a freeware fractal program called Apophysis (for Windows only). 

Check out these . . .

 

This last one really gives me the feeling of traveling. . .focus on the center, you’ll see what I mean. But come back soon.

Peace…

Friday Feature Cartoon

David Hockney Favorite

This is my absolute David Hockney painting favorite,  Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy. 

“Contemporary British artist David Hockney conbined a number of individual reference photographs and studies of different aspects of this scene to create this very large composition depicting his friends Mr. and Mrs. Clark at home with their cat, Percy.”

Tate Gallery, London, England. 

Source: The Indispensable Cat

Iconic – Illustration by The Wit Continuum

Iconic - 4/09

My own illustration inspired by Edie Sedgwick (this is not a portrait of her, mind you).  I take a photo I like and work with it a bit.  This was done in charcoal, pencil, and outline black pen.

Yoga Poses and Yoga Mats

Yoga-phobe I am not. In fact you could call me quite the opposite.   I love yoga and have been practicing on and off (mostly on) for nearly15 years.  My pal Dharma, from Dijital Dharma, is on a 30-day Bikram yoga challenge and has inspired me even more.   This pose, urdhva mukha svanasana, or up-ward facing dog, is a favorite of mine…and I can actually do this one.  Here the lovely Lisa Matkin demonstrates–wish I could say it was me…

Here are some poses that I love…but can’t do, demonstrated by yoga rocking Sean Corn, and the hippy Jivamukti Yoga founder Sharon Gannon:

 

 

 

 

 

What I’m challenged with today is a ripping yoga mat.  I’ve had this cool orange sherbert colored mat, made by Gaim, for some years now, more than 8 I would guess, and through the years have bought others and given them away to budding yogites like myself, and simply because the new mats weren’t good for me.   Last year I went on a quest for a new mat in my area, because, well, my mat was starting to seriously shred.  When I wear my black yoga pants, I’m spotted with tiny flakes of orange.  But it still is the greatest sticky mat.  Last year I figured — it was time.   I purchased a new Gaim mat…safe to get the same kind again, right?  Evidently Gaim, famous for all its holistic yogic living, has decided to start making its yoga mats in China, have dropped the price to around 20 bucks instead of 30, which my original cost, resulting in the very basic yoga mat that sucks.  When I opened it the smell of the dye or the plastic or whatever burned the nostrils, and of course, did not induce a very pleasant yoga practice.  It was extremely shiny and slippery–Down dog was impossible since my hands continually slid right from under me.  Took it back.  Disgusted with Gaim company.

Next came a natural fiber mat…yada, yada, yada.   Didn’t smell, but I slipped on this one also.  Lastly, I tried a Nike mat which we spotted at Olympia Sport, where my daughter was eyeing some expensive sneakers.  Cool, I thought.  Which color should I take: the pink and gray, or the blue and tan.  “Pink and gray, pink and gray.”  So I unrolled this one at home.  No smell, nice line down the middle for alignments.  But, it is not a sticky mat.  I slid again, and sweated on my palms almost instantly.  My daughter took this one-since she picked it. 

Today, my mat lost a serious chunk, right where foot placement occurs regularly.  Shredded it out during plank pose.  Only a short matter of time before I chatturunga right through.  (That’s a yoga push-up for the non-yogites out there). 

So, does anyone have a yoga mat recommendation for a 40-ish chick who sweats like a normal person, but slips on most mats?  I would order on-line, but I don’t have any idea which ones really work.  They all make promises. 

I am still at peace however…faithful that enlightenment will come…

Namaste peace…

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

When Saint Teresa was a young woman of the age of 20 she secretly ran off, without telling her family, to become a nun at the convent of the Incarnation of the Carmelites outside Avila, Spain. 

So powerful was her faith, the bond to God, and her rapturous need to truly know her God, that she claims to have risen from the lowest stage, “recollection”, to the “devotions of ecstasy,” which was one of perfect union with God. 

On reading St. Teresa’s angelic vision,  called the  “Transverberation” , one is left with a feeling of sensual wonder.  Or an erotic one, which ever suits you.  She recalls of her vision of being pierced through the heart by the love of God.  She is direct in her description of the angel who visited her;  in describing him she says that he was not tall, but short and very beautiful, his face fiery like one of the highest types of angels who seem all burning.   He holds a long golden spear  and at the iron tip a point of fire.   With it, he seemed to pierce her heart several times,  penetrating to her innards.  When he drew out he left her burning with the great love of God.  So sharp was her pain that she released moans several times.  It was an intense pain, she recalls, that one would never want to lose, not a bodily pain, but a spiritual one.

              “It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the sould and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.”

St. Teresa had been quite ill when she first went into the convent, which could make someone wonder at the legitamacy of her claims.  Perhaps whe was feverish and had hallucinated.  Or perhaps she was delusional, or pschotic in some way.  Could she have had sex and not known it, was actually seeing something else entirely?  It is just a question,  one I’m not too quick to believe.

One can learn from Teresa’s faith and visions however.  There was a grace surrounding this lovely woman, a woman who truly had a calling.  And there are witnesses to her faith.  A few have claimed that during some of the masses, on occassion St. Teresa levitated while she prayed.   She was canonized a saint in 1622, forty years after her death.

On Gambling by Rumi

 

ON GAMBLING

To a frog that’s never left his pond the ocean seems like a gamble.    Look what he’s giving up:  security, mastery of his world, recognition!    The ocean frog just shakes his head.   “I can’t really explain what it’s like where I live, but someday I’ll take you there.”

##

If you want what visible reality

can give, you’re an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you’re not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love’s confusing joy.

##

Gamble everything for love,

if you’re a true human being.

If not, leave

this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn’t reach

into majesty.   You set out

to find God, but then you keep

stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses.

##

In a boat down a fast-running creek,

it feels like trees on the bank

are rushing by.  What seems

to be changing around us

is rather the speed of our craft

leaving this world.

 

From: The Three Fish        by Rumi

Those Ripe Visions…

This is my Gemini Free Will Astrology for this week:

“Seventeen-year-old Jay Greenberg is a music prodidy who has written numerous sonatas and symphonies.  His first CD, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Julliard String Quartet, came out in 2006.   It’s not exactly a struggle for him to create his compositions.  He often completes them in less than a day.

“The music comes fully written,” he says, “playing like an orchestra in my head.”

I believe you now have something in common with him, Gemini.  According to my reading of the omens, there will soon be ripe visions of future accomplishments floating around in your imagination.  You should write them down or describe them in detail to an ally or do whatever else it takes to launch the process of getting them born. “

I had a feeling something was in my head…getting my writing routine back on track is a start.

Source:  Free Will Astrology

Changing the World, One Country at a Time

My friend and fellow blogger Sarcastic Bastard wrote on June 4, The Reason I Voted for Him, a blog with excerpts of Barack Obama’s beautiful speech at an Egypt university, which myself and Mr. Continuum had listened to with much pride and faith.  SB states poignantly exactly my feelings since the election:  “I am indebted to him for what he is trying to accomplish.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had any pride in the person who leads our country.  I am genuinely hopeful.”

My favorite part of the speech:

“I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight.  No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point.  But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often said only behind closed doors.  There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.  As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.”  That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

Peace…

One of the Finest Films: Slumdog Millionaire

Finally…yes, finally, I watched Slumdog Millionaire.  I know I am profoundly late on the band-wagon of best picture watchers, and I had heard that it was simply fantastic, without much description of it otherwise.  So I was taken aback and quite petrified by the parts with the lead characters as children and the events which happened to them.  Why it was publicized as the “feel-good movie of the year”, I cannot figure out…basically I cried through most of it.

That aside, I’m glad, so incredibly glad, that I saw this film.  Heart-wrenching aside, I loved it.  An incredible unknown cast, an incredible environment, and the screenwriter should be applauded.  I see why it won for best picture.  I tend to think the Academy get political in its selections of who the winner will be, but I can’t see how that happened here. 

I was happy at the end, which I suppose is why this film is supposed to make you feel good.  The good guy get the money, and he gets the girl, the bad guys lose or die.  As it all should be.  (oh,  and a Bollywood dance routine at the end makes everyone smile!)

Peace…        (and See This Movie if You haven’t)

New Girl On the Block

Yes, we love Freida Pinto…whose Slumdog Millionaire debut as an actress has made her the most googled girl of the year….

Private Lives

“…we are the custodians of the world’s best-kept secret:

Merely the private lives of one-half of humanity.”

                                           -Carolyn Kiser

{Thought I’d post my favorite pic of Kate Moss.   If you can’t make it out, the title of the book she’s reading is  Help Your Husband Get Ahead. }

Pro Femina

I will speak about women of letters, for I’m in the racket.

Our biggest successes to date?  Old maids to a woman.

And our saddest conspicuous failures?  The married spinsters

On loan to the husbands they treated like surrogate fathers…

Or the sad sonneteers, toast-and teasdales we loved at thirteen;

Middle-ages virgins seducing the puerile anthologists

Through lust-of-the-mind; barbiturate-drenched Camilles

With continuous periods, murmuring softly on sofas

When peotry wasn’t a craft but a sickly effuvium,

The air thick with incense, musk, and emotional blackmail. 

                                               – Pro Femina, by Carolyn Kizer

Kate Moss Continuum

Hope my Continuum offspring don’t think me too lame or get bored–well if you do then just visit Just Under the Surface or Sarcastic Bastard – but I’m on a Kate Moss kick it seems.  Couldn’t resist posting this one, Kate wearing only  David Yurman.  I’d never seen this ad.

More later…

Contorted Moss

British artist Marc Quinn’s yoga contorted sculptures of Kate Moss fascinate me.  Less yogic, and more like a Cirque de Soleil inversion.  What made him think of doing this, we wonder?