MemeTome

The God Wall March 31, 2007

Katrina: God’s Judgment on America — Beliefnet.com

“The hurricane [Katrina] was an act of God upon a sin-loving and rebellious nation. It’s a warning–and a call to repent.”

This article, although written by one man, strikes me as wholly representative of the giant, faceless opposition that thinking, rational, knowledge-hungry humans are consistently up against. This is The Wall our generation must tackle, and tear down for good.

It is important to be continuously aware of the kinds of pocketed communities of humans that choose to dwell in such states of mental delusion; their collective hollow voices still chime of repention, aversion, regression, into a state of stagnation.

The rest of us are here, passionately existing, striving, moving, creating, thinking, marching, along side the god wall that should not exist. What does it take to free millions of minds?

One mind choosing to be free.

(Then another… and another…)

*B

Portrait of a City February 28, 2007

Portrait of a City

Originally uploaded by brittanygardner.

Trying something new, I drew the city, then inverted the colors in Photoshop.

Interesting effect!

Brain Fodder October 25, 2006

I throw around the word ‘perhaps’ a lot.
It adds a nice ring to an otherwise drowsy sentence brimming with implications and possible clauses.

“Perhaps I shall persue psychology”

If I were to leave the sentence bare of that intitial wish-washer, I would be left with something I would have to seriously adhere to, or discard entirely. It is far easier to dilute meaning and save myself the trouble.
So one thinks. (more…)

Litter of Questions October 17, 2006

Typing this from mother’s laptop.

I must get myself a laptop… it’s settled.
Portability feels grand.

?So now my day was nice and slow. Bed myself late, and woke late in turn.
?I really have to go to the bathroom right now, but ?I am in a strange room in a strange house, and there is a broken key on this laptop which makes the ?question mark pop up quite often., and ?I do not feel like treking down the hall to find a bathroom. Do not want to be greeted by strangers.

??We stopped here because my mom wants to touch up before we hit a movie. We got dinner already which was okay, and we talked alot. We talked about talking…. conversations… engagement… not the marraige kind, but the kind that makes people connected in a conversation. ?So our conversation itself was kind of good for a bit. Authentic, and that. ?For a bit anyways. ?What is it with mothers… sometimes it is wierd to think that I have a mother at all; that I popped out of someone. Bizarre.

So anyways she should be finished her makeup soon, so I must quickly finish this and then ask where a washroom is located! I am positively squirming here and it is making me careless with my text phrasing and paragraph stylization!!

?Oh yes, ?I also went shopping today. (?Oh ?I figured out why that question mark keeps popping up, it is because the ?Shift key hits the question mark next to it when ?I click it. So I must be more careful) I bought a shirt and some hats. I like the idea of hats and ?I think that they are highly practical in cooler weather.

You know, this laptop has a better suited keyboard for me than my own computer. Size-wise I mean.

Chow

On Works of Art October 13, 2006

Painting up a storm.
Did a Bob Dylan portrait yesterday and started Greta Garbo today.

I’ll upload snapshots … once I find the digital camera!

The first painting since kindergarten was David Bowie a few months back after I splurged on a set of oil paints. Unfortunately I went of track and gave up because I ended up making him look awful. Second attempt was this wierd face with no reference… which I quite like, but my sister does not. Third painting was about a month ago when I found a lovely photo of Sharon Tate and attempted to recreate it. I stopped halfway through because I got bored, but it still looks okay. The last two (Dylan and Garbo) are looking alright and it is quite gratifying to see improvement in my technique!
Oil paints are quite lovely, but I would like to try acrylic soon.

I work the nightshift this evening which is always interesting. Last time I was treated to a set of bare bums pressed against the windows of the restaurant at 2:30am. Ah, art in its many forms.

Self and Self-Reflection October 5, 2006

Sometimes I think I am fine.
On some level, I know I must be.

I would like to have somebody to speak with. Real words, a real conversation. Not this crap that people fill and empty their mouths of.

“Oh did you see Nikki’s new dress? lyke OMG”

I have always been starved for true discussion. I thought that things would be easier as I got older. I thought I would meet other minds full of beauty and perspective. I longed to see other faces of people who knew, people who wanted to know. Yet as I sit here in a moment of reflection I am confronted with the realisation that in fact what I seek has become even more scarce and far-spread as I grow.

Not even intellect, this is not what I desire. I am starving for engagement. Smart ideas and well read words can be fine, but I want something else entirely. My ears perk up at even a hint of the kind of truth I am looking to share and discover and explore. It could be anything, anything at all, so long as it comes from the kind of depth of perception and cognition that houses truth and meaning. The kind of conversation that makes your mind dance and your blood flow. The kind of life-affirming exchange of ideas that makes my body tremble with energy and excitement.

Instead, Self-Deception. Everywhere.
People standing, people talking, people looking around, holding their bags and wallets and cards and food. “I said EXTRA mustard!” “Don’t TOUCH that, Annie!” “Get out of the left lane, asshole!”
I don’t care. But I wish it was different. I wish people had ideas. I want to stop biding my time. I don’t want to rest my mind. Everyone is rushing around, I used to envy the air of purpose. I want to be busy. I want to be tired. I want to feel motion. They have deadlines, speed limits, no time for work, no time for play, no time to live, no time to talk. “Hurry up! I have a plane to catch!” Slowly I discover that they don’t have a destination.

And so what could be my greatest joy is also the greatest sadness. I wish this world was ours. OURS, not theirs. I long to take it. I want to be touched by real hands. I want my ears to hear real words. I don’t want excuses and apologies. I want to create meaning! To witness it! To give birth to it.

To you who agrees, I love you. I wish this was your world.
In school I was told of Kinetic and Potential engery.
You sit idle, your beauty only in your potential. You have gained your meaning from this capacity.
“And we Fear and Hail the day he sets FIRE! Pheonix Rising.”
I want to hear your music. What would it sound like? Oh god, it would be outstanding.
“How did you find yourself here, of all places? In this tangled corner of the universe, suspended, motionless above it all, like a flame, paralyzed.”
I weep for what I will never see. Perhaps one day I shall free you. My payment will be our freedom.
I want to build the bridge. I can do what you can not. You, in your infinite beauty, are trapped. But I am not. I am here, choking, but only in image.
I am free, I am not a part of it. I will sing your songs, the ones that should have been yours. This should have been your world.
I am not you.
I love you.

Camp September 9, 2006

Source: Imperial War museum

Camp
I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and childen collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945. 

The Unfurrowed Brow May 23, 2006

Silence!
(and I calmed mine)

~ Can it be?
Spoken words from a quite sea
dew comeforth; set unto me
Vision, be free! ~

On Judgement March 15, 2006

Why do people fear the judgement of other people?

“Don’t judge me!” is something that I have heard a lot lately, mostly from teenagers.

Judgement (assessment and categorization of knowledge gathered) is an essential cognitive tool. As conscious, intelligent beings, we take in knowledge gathered from our sensory perceptions (touch, taste, sight, etc) and organize it in our brain in such a way that we are able to make sense of the universe around us.

 ‘People of truth’ (people who act in accordance with their values, derived from the laws and nature of existence) would have nothing to fear from the judgement of other people. Judgement in itself does not change objective truth.

Example: It can be assessed that trees grow on earth. If I were of the opinion that they do not, my opinion would not change objective reality. Even if I were able to convince a great number of people of my opinion, reality is against them. Reality is persistent. All of the evidence points to trees existing. My opinion does not affect reality, and has no power to refute it. Opinions and judgements have no power to change what is true, so there is not reason to fear them.

Based on this realization, I think that what people must fear is judgement that reflects negatively on their character, and is contrary to how they try to present themselves to the world.

The only people who would fear this sort of judgement would be the people who do not have objectivity on their side. People must fear judgement because of knowledge that they are not, in reality, what they want to appear to be. If you have integrity of character, you do not fear incorrect judgements made against you. You have reality on your side. The enemy only has his opinion.

Warning bells go off in my mind when someone claims to fear judgement. The only reason someone could fear knowledge and reality is if they were attempting to evade or counterfeit it.