Trash Can Tikis

Discovery channel tonight has neat story of mankind, cavemen and such.

Living things are older than the granite hereabouts.

When I read about the Gundestrup Cauldron one site had it that some think it is the Holy Grail. And I was trying then, this a few posts back, to fill out Honi the Circle Drawer, and magic circles. One site noted the many circular things that have magic, or mystical qualities, and mentioned bird nests.

They, I think, might be the Holy Grail--bird nests. A circle with eggs.

Circles are completion too...circle the bases in baseball.

Here's a site with Honi, the Seven Sleepers, and a lot of circles...

http://www2.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/honithe.htm

Well, I've got too many threads going at the same time!! For the moment here I'm trying to recall that the cauldron, or grail, wait, that was it!! brb..well foo, couldn't find it...thought was that the grail is the milky way...where did I see that!?

Didn't buy the car.

Hiker's bus begins tomorrow...Monday I can go to the meadows, and Teusday to the dentist...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 31, 2007

Trash Can Formation

I've lost my train of thought....

Dynamics make things, and I like to study something not for what it looks like, but what dynamic makes it look that way.

The dynamics of flight make bird's wings and butterflies'. Back by the creek today I found a great place for butterflies. I must have seen a half dozen different ones in just a few minutes. And back there too were these trash cans being stored.

Their unusual topnots was determined by the dynamic of bears breaking into trash cans.

I'm not sure what dynamic compelled the workmen to set them in two ordered rows!! Nearby there are others too lying about like tiki idols. They have a "temple" which I'll get a photo of tomorrow!!

The book, A Soldiers Heart, came and I've read some, but that image I thought could be a euphamism for comets or modern weapons is a modern image by the author. So I cross it off my collection of anceint literary and art references to cataclysims!

It's a slim book, a poem about Suibhne, with a crib. T.S. Eliot's footnotes are a crib. And the Soldier's Heart has some web sites to hook up to, mostly those that are concerned with opposing the war in Iraq.

I dont want to promote that view. But it's about Suibhne, as supposedly is Eliot's Sweeney poems, and Seamus Heaney, I think that's spelled right, has a translation.

My interest in Suibhne goes back to reading Robert Graves, and if I recall right, Graves says Suibhne was cursed with the "flying sickness" for interfering in the prebattle negotiations of the two sides respective Druids. They were on a hill, and Suibhne tossed his spear at them, he didn't trust the negotiations, and missed, and one whirled around and threw straw at Suibhne and as a consequence Suibhne caught the "flying sickness", grew feathers, and took to the woods as a wild man who flys about the tree tops.

Even the 1910 text doesn't have that, so my memory could be at fault, and when I find again, by reacquiring my books in storage!, the passage in Graves, I'll figure this out.

Oh, David Letterman has Hanna on with an Eurasian Owl and a baby. (earlier a Komodo dragon eating a steak on his desk)...

Suffice to say the "flying sickness" is not "soldier's heart" i.e. mental injury from experiencing war.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

May 30, 2007

Contemplation

I thought to acquire the tail of this unfortunate Grey Squirrel, yet another Memorial Day auto victim, and something of an ominous omen insomuch as I've plunked down six hundred dollars for a used car after almost four years of not driving-I regard the automobile as an alien invasion. With the tail I thought to make a paintbrush. But all natural things in the park are protected, and I passed by, after disturbing another Grey Squirrel that was snacking on its fellow. Life does that. This was yesterday in the morning as I peddled past on my way to Happy Isles, and a hike to Half Dome.



DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 29, 2007

No Post Today

I'm too tired from hiking to post today, until tomorrow.

DavidDavid

Tube Worms

Tube Worms

(Illustration: Dante and Virgil entering Hell, by William Blake)

Home from work I flip through the channels,
War movies about Vietnam and World War Two (John Wayne),
And Tsunamis and Tornados on National Geographic…
I settle on the Tsunamis and Tornados.

I could probably now never again see a shootemup movie and I wouldn’t miss them,
I’m just at that age I guess, unlike when young and a kid when shootemups seem the things to see. Now they just seem kindof off. Maybe it’s something like hunting, some people like to hunt, others never pursue it. I don’t hunt, and hunting for sport seems kindof off.

I like sports though, I don’t think there’s a game with a ball that I haven’t played. And I have a little bit above average knack for them, anymore and I probably been able to play professional sports.

Kill Bill was on this morning, and Tarantinos movies are disturbing. In a way they are art movies about the stock scenes in movies…an Ekphrasis too.

There’s this movie, Young Guns, which I never had any compulsion to see, but I watched it one night, yet another story of Billy the Kid , and thought, it’s a bit exaggerated! But I wikipediaied Billy the Kid and found that nearly every shootemup scene was based substantially on what really happened. Now, it’s Hollywood hyped with the sountrack, goodlooking actors, and pistols that never run out of bullets, but it was historical.

I have that sense with Kill Bill, again I watched it with grim curiosity, having heard so much about it, and not long ago seen Pulp Fiction, which has the same sense to it, and the sense is that it is based on actual sense—things really do happen like the scenes in the movie, however hyped they are by the soundtrack, goodlooking actors, and pistols that never run out of bullets!! “Like a Nicaraguan massacre…”

But I’m not going do a Tarantino like Ekphrasis with this blog. It is an art blog on the scenes in the media, but I’m going to have some limits, follow the guidelines set forth by Horace in his Ars Poetica. LetmeseeifIcanget the pertinent bits….

Quote

The business of the drama must appearIn action or description.

What we hear,

With weaker passion will affect the heart,

Than when the faithful eye beholds the part.

But yet let nothing on the stage be brought

Which better should behind the scenes be wrought;

Nor force th' unwilling audience to behold

What may with grace and eloquence be told.

Let not Medea, with unnatural rage,

Slaughter her mangled infants on the stage;

Nor Atreus his nefarious feast prepare,

Nor Cadmus roll a snake, nor Progne wing the air;

For while upon such monstrous scenes we gaze,

They shock our faith, our indignation raise.

Horace

End quote

No one seems to get indignant 'bought much anymore!!

So, the day to day frightful things in the news, will be in this blog “off stage”.

Credit Tarantino with his exaggeration at getting at a depiction of things as they are. Picasso's “ekphrasis”, Guernica, of the 1937 bombings in Spain, did the same, and a replica hangs in the UN foyer.

(This goes here: from wiki

quote

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. Commissioned and donated by Nelson Rockefeller, it is not quite as monochromatic as the original, using several shades of brown. On February 5, 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq. [9]

end quote)

The painting has lore...

It’s a strange time, but they all seem to have had their own strangeness.

A poem…

The Televised Tale
…Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" These words in sombre colour I beheld Written upon the summit of a gate; Whence I: "Their sense is, Master, hard to me!"
Dante translated by Longfellow

Well, if I too had Virgil to listen to on my hikes, that would be fine,
But Dante, while the scenery hereabouts has been called hellish,
It is for the most part divine.

Oh, I could tell you and Virgil another long narration,
The comedic televised tale of my time,
An innovation to make pale Old Hell’s population.

DolphinWords
DavidDavid
Yosemite
Feb. 17, 2007


Now, the strange creatures under the sea growing near a fumarole is on the tube…
Tube Worms….”the longest living animals on the earth”.

I’m not sure if they meant agewise, or just length! Age it is…200 years and more.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 27, 2007

Wheel Within a Wheel

Well, I was going to do a post on "Evil Mountain: Repository of All Our Fears".

The Russians have been building a secret redoubt in a mountain called Yamantau, which of course has corresponding redoubts in the US, and every other nation involved in the Cold War, which is the atom bomb threat war. It’s really a terrible and daunting subject. Everyone is, or has built, these Doomesday Mountains. One is a feature in the ending of Terminator Three.

And I got to thinking about mysterious caves and tunnels of the same ilk, some made during modern wars, others I recall from ancient history.

It could make a book!!

But the caves searches landed me on a site about the interior of the earth, which is here:
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/08.15/PuttingaNewSpin.html

The core of the earth, which may be a gigantic moon sized hexagonal iron crystal surrounded by a mars sized liquid iron “sky”, is spinning, and spinning just a little faster than the earth’s crust, or a little slower. In fact, and I find this intriguing, in 120 years, or 360 years, it laps the crust, or the crust laps it, I think. So the Earth is like two planets, one inside the other.

I have this notion that the earth is set like a clock at 365 days, but it's off by five days, and here the core is at the right "time" 360 days, I think! Foo, I'll have to study this out. How many days in the core's year?? *

A wheel within a wheel.

That’s what a Throne is, an Angel Throne I mean. Thrones are depicted as a wheel within a wheel with rows of eyes.



How odd…

Illustration from an old edition of Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

from wiki:

quote

Mars has a relatively pronounced orbital eccentricity of about 9%; of the other planets in the solar system, only Mercury shows greater eccentricity. Mars’ average distance from the Sun is roughly 230 million km (1.5 AU) and its orbital period is 687 (Earth) days. The solar day (or sol) on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. A Martian year is equal to 1.8809 Earth years, or 1 year, 320 days, and 18.2 hours.
Mars' axial tilt is 25.19 degrees, which is similar to the axial tilt of the Earth. As a result, Mars has seasons like the Earth, though on Mars they are about twice as long given its longer year. Mars passed its aphelion in June 2006 and is now heading for its perihelion in June 2007.

unquote

Venus hasn't been set...yet.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 26, 2007

Orrey

Orrey

When I came home from work, and turned the TV on (first thing I do…news tonight had it watching TV raises blood sugar, and this found studying diabetic kids!) and the movie Tomb Raider was on towards the very end. It has a time travel scene, and Laura Croft goes back in time to see her Dad….shades of Dr. Who Episode 8 last night!

Well, I wanted to study the plot, so I google that up and a site explains that the contraption spinning around in the final scenes is an orrey.

Didn’t know what that was, and googled that! It’s a mechainical solar system model, and that got me to reading again about that ancient Greek astrolab, who's story is here:



http://www.viewzone.com/firstcomputer.html

Which then leads to a bit on the Mayan Doomesday, December 21, 2012. Which is here:

http://www.viewzone.com/endtime.html

Whole problem seems to be the solar system is passing through the plane of the Milky Way galaxy!

Illustration is by old artist James Wright, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrey.

Horry stole the series from the Suns…

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 25, 2007