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This is a digital alteration of a polaroid picture I took when I was 6. The original was purposely out of focus.
Peering into the past
lenses initiate selective focus
a fantastication brought about
through a child’s eyes
prismatic sensibility only possible then
encased in the vault of unextinguishable incunabulum
developing the picture as it emerges
revealing the essence of a life
showing one moment, one side of perception
in its inability to capture without speciousness
(the exposure length is too short)
belying motion, upheaval and change
in the niveous nature of memory
my meandering dreams recast
glimpses of truth like halations appear
ocular glitches hinting at tathata
of what can be distinguished, claimed
flashbulbs of burning visions
encoding through elaborative rehearsal
all known and unkenned phenomena
to create a picture story, a meaning,
yet these converging lenses are limited
by one focal length expanding as
depth of field grows, patulous schemas incubate
my evolving mind forms eidetic imagery
uniting as episodic memory stitches an identity
holographic retrieval reveals
clarity amidst the circle of confusion
a positive memory distortion prevails
polaroid process makes positive images
without negatives (they were never created)
artmaking acts as my nepenthe
coalescing strands of experience
collaging each image of striving
into a concatenation of aspects of a self
lighting recesses in this house of mirth
Notes: Method of Loci: A mnemonic device that relies on memorized spatial relationships to establish order and recollect memorial content. Selective Focus: Is a technique in photography that allows one part of the image to be sharp while the rest of the image is out of focus. It works to great effect in macro shots where the foreground should stand out intensely from the background. Fantastication: Action of framing in fancy. Incunabulum: Early stages of development. Speciousness: An appearance of truth that is false or deceptive; seeming plausibility. Halation: Spreading of light beyond its proper boundaries to form a fog round the edges of a bright image in a photograph. Tathata: Ultimate nature of all things, as expressed in phenomena but inexpressible in words. Encoding: The process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory. Elaborative Rehearsal: A memory strategy that involves relating new information to something that is already known Unkenned: Unknown, strange, unperceived, unexplored. Converging Lens: Lens such that a beam of light passing through it is brought to a point or focus. The lens of your eye and that of a camera are converging lenses. Focal Length: The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light. In most photography where the subject is essentially infinitely far away, longer focal length (lower optical power) leads to higher magnification and a narrower angle of view; conversely, shorter focal length or higher optical power is associated with a wider angle of view. Depth of Field: In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance. Patulous: Open, expanding, gaping Schemas: The integrated frameworks of knowledge and assumptions a person has about people, objects, and events which affects how the person encodes and recalls information. Eidetic Imagery: The ability to retain the image of a visual stimulus for several minutes after it has been removed from view. Episodic Memory: The type of declarative memory that records events as they have been subjectively experienced. Circle of Confusion: In optics, a circle of confusion is an optical spot caused by a cone of light rays from a lens not coming to a perfect focus when imaging a point source. In photography, the circle of confusion is used to determine the depth of field, the part of an image that is acceptably sharp. Positive Bias (Memory Distortion): States that pleasant events are better remembered than unpleasant ones and memories of unpleasant events become more pleasant over time. Nepenthe: Something capable of causing obliteration or reduction of grief or suffering. Concatenation: A series of interconnected or interdependent things or events.
‘My gloom will not be illuminated.’
-from a Baroness Cherubina de Gabriak poem
in this house under a pear tree
I lay to rest the overheated verses of my youth
dying in exile for anthroposophical views
my threat distilled to these lines upon the page
wondering what unspoken secret carried me here
to the foothills of the West Tian Shan Mountains
Tashkent’s walls overwhelmed by the Lion Chernyayev
and a Russian Orthodox priest clutching his cross
to echo the destruction rained by Gengis Khan
I now know Voloshin’s prison of discovered places
Apollo, you ignited my star
gentle Voloshin brought the offering
playing the trickster to show the world its folly
crafting my identity to fan their imaginations
conflagration as readers melted with love
Gumilyov became obsessed with my creation
wrote intimate letters to my Silver Age image:
more suitable for consumption, mirroring male need
my crippled body hobbled the aspirations of my mind
paeans and poetry, a lyre created for Apollon’s honor
Baroness Cherubina birthed and slain
Voloshin defeated in his impish protection
our ruse exposed through crude sexual aggression
Gumilyov’s love burnished to hate
insisting the duel be fought where Pushkin fell
you will not understand that Cherubina
has never been a game for me
Cherubina was my birth, but, alas, it was a stillbirth –
brine blood of my creative endeavor
I buried her in a child’s coffin at Delphi
mysterious and mystical woman
rich, cloistered, fictitious
within her lay the temptations of sin and my voice,
now cloaked as Li Xiang Zi through another’s invention –
to escape the duality, I must always be fluid
Tell me before the last, will my lands be ever conquered, all my treasures plundered?
Notes: This poem (a repost from September 2012) is based in the historical duel between Nikolay Gumilyov and Maximilian Voloshin over the imaginary poet Baroness Cherubina de Gabriak (pen name of Elisaveta Dmitrieva). It is reposted for Meeting the Bar at dVerse where I am hosting today on the subject of Keats’ Negative Capability. The real author of Gabriak’s poetry, Elisaveta Dmitrieva, was born on March 31, 1887. Between 1890 and 1903 she suffered from tuberculosis of the bones and was left lame and barely able to walk. She studied French and Spanish literature at Saint Petersburg State University, and published some verses both before and after her Gabriak period but without much success. In 1911 she married Vasiliev, an engineer, and took his last name. Starting from 1921, she was searched and interrogated by the State Political Directorate along with other members of the Anthroposophic Society. Finally in 1927 she was exiled to Tashkent where she died in 1928 of liver cancer. Shortly before her death, she was visited in Tashkent by her friend Sinologist Yulian Shchutsky and wrote, influenced by him, 21 poems attributed to Li Xiang Zi, a fictional Chinese poet exiled for his “belief in immortality of human spirit”. The name of Li Xiang, invented by Shchutsky, means “a house under a pear tree”, where Dmitrieva indeed lived in Tashkent.
Dave Yust Chromaxiologic Inclusion 27-6 1/1 2006
difficult unity of inclusion
contrasts the easy unity
of exclusion, a priori
philosophical stance
equiluminous color
makes visible the unseen,
unobservable phenomena
between something & nothing
broken catenary curves,
inextensible cable
suspended from two points,
a disbelief, a distraction
interplay of geometric
& biomorphic imagery:
complexity & contradiction
spontaneity & continuity
a process of inclusion
chromaxiologic exploration
quick shift in spacetime
to truncate thought
printmaking exemplification
fruitful liberation gained in
finding purpose through chromaphilia,
establishing relationships
Thought Experiment: begin with a cryptographic key life cycle where you function as the key
Key Life Cycle (in developmental phases)
Generation
give birth, bring forth ideas illuminated
in liquidity’s nourishing infrastructure
embody the symbols, imprint the genetic code
Distribution
produce without possession
envision freedom from rationality
educe a contradistinction
Storage
gather the cipher and the subtext
data amassed for encoding
integrate a secret sharing scheme
Usage
excel but do not lead your thoughts
breathe, decrypt the psychological schemas
act without premeditated expectation
Change
assimilate the workings of the universe
puzzle out an esemplastic solution
to unlock strategies of liberation
Destruction
allow entropy to overpower existence
witness the denaturing of mysterious virtue,
for all states are possible in the end
* This poem was influenced by the 10th Chapter (Pacifying the agitated, material soul) of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and is a companion piece to Feasting on Shadows. Chromatopia, LLC has just released its first two books of poetry: These Little Episodes and Signal from Static available in e-book and paperback.
‘Only poets and schizophrenics communicate in a language that defies rational analysis . . .’ Robert Anton Wilson
Here Hypatia approaches the door
the door is an irrelevant detail
unknowable in its true nature
she glimpses her blind spot
(a function usually serviced by love)
or some part of it, partially obscured
to drive home the meaning of paradox
mensurate the distance traversed between
the embodied and ideal
a parsing machine cuts the semantic noise
from intellection’s graceful veil,
stitching the poetic to quantum psychology
is the reality a sinister game or mystic bliss?
opaque liquidity implies motion without clarity
she moves in mysterious ways
pop culture clashes with nuclear glory
amidst the alleluias, seraphic cries
arriving fiery in the ear
perception tilts while memory is reinvented
neurochemicals bind to receptors along new pathways
meaningless speech collides with calcified ‘facts’
in transactional, irrefutable phenomena
spooks that inhibit the limning shadow
recondite specters that haunt her in the night
think wrongly but never not at all
within qubits any state is possible
even that of non-fictitious disinformation
the thoughts of a lobotomized squirrel are more challenging
than the most advanced artificial intelligence
these creatures the post-modern bestiary embody
hidden truths within a cryptographic field
plucked by the talons of eagles
in a shifting, holographic sky
rewiring the flight path in her brain
her mind continues its activity
oblivious to whether it is an immortal soul
traveling through lifetimes or a conduit
of collective unconsciousness
illusions creating a force field
a surrounding state of flow,
a myth her thoughts dreamt,
meta-programming in a biometric system
Anna Montgomery
salience exists at the edge of chaos
where order, complexity and entropy collide
perhaps the random latticework
underlying your strategic contingency
is complex dynamic phenomena
an equivocating nontrivial correlation
apophenia propagates elegant proofs
at the percolation threshold
niches and differentiation
enigmas of probabilistic epigenesis
amidst our cognitive architecture
meta-cognition, 1/f noise, signs of life
coherence and self-organization
leading to philosophical inquiry
on the shores of an island of trickery
limited rationality in domains of disorder
fractals creating a quandary of scale
in this space of perturbation,
phase transitions and energetic states
neuronal diversity the dynamic key
Duomo’s counterclockwise
cathedral clock, Uccello’s unique
ecological contribution
Note: I’m hosting Meeting the Bar: Creativity today at dVerse Poets Pub. Please join us!
Nirvikalpa (work in progress) – oil, acrylic and pigment stick on board by Anna Montgomery
Wandering in the cold choking darkness
blistered fragile feet on eggshells
loneliness is a prison
torn knuckles rapping on bars of isolation
People don’t listen
they just wait for their turn to talk
turn inside and disconnect,
waiting out the storm
Love is a flower unnourished
in this Eden of the heart
weary veins pump a love story untold
searching the hopeless dawn
for a brighter day
Scrying the skies for a star of rebirth
constellate a new form
Dionysus seeks the Gemma of his crown
praying for the piece/peace he’s not yet found
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Ariadne meanders along a path
repeating permutations
of sublimated desires
wound around in concentric circles
on a dancing ground
of intellectual games
The Mistress of the Labyrinth
spins her golden thread,
sutra, to escape the restrictions,
rise above encapsulating
the supreme artistry,
the manifesting order
connecting this world to the eternal –
human to divine
Prophesizing the paradoxes:
multiplicity and unity
imprisonment and liberation
separation and intimacy
Her sussurating heart
beats a transcendent pattern
resounding his true name
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Her heavenly form
celestial symmetry of solace
sanctum of the surrendering heart
eternal peace within her labyrinth
guided by crystal tears
shining beacons
and whispering the luring
language of love
His fertile mind
anacrusis in the symphony
of devouring time
irreplaceable beats of exuberant strength
he initiates a sacred marriage
of Heaven and Earth
eternal taijitu
Swirling whispers in the aether
found two ears
one in the lowlands
one in the mountains
symphony of symbiosis
floating like leaves in the wind
the Sun and Moon
elliptical eclipse
upon the earth dwellers
Raining sensuous energy,
an initiation into sound,
each string taut with potential
striking bell awakening
along the constellated lines
of the subtle body
Eternal vibration of this sacred thunder
resonates between the lovers,
nirvikalpa samadhi unveiled
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Notes: This is a collaborative poem written with David Chamberlain, Jr. for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt on peace. “In Hinduism, when used as a technical term in Raja Yoga, the phrase nirvikalpa samādhi refers to a particular type of samādhi that Heinrich Zimmer distinguishes from other states as follows: Nirvikalpa samādhi, on the other hand, absorption without self-consciousness, is a mergence of the mental activity (cittavṛtti) in the Self, to such a degree, or in such a way, that the distinction (vikalpa) of knower, act of knowing, and object known becomes dissolved — as waves vanish in water, and as foam vanishes into the sea.[3] The difference to the other samadhis is that there is no return from this samadhi into lower states of consciousness. Therefore this is the only true final Enlightenment.”
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- Supa Luva (acrylic, handmade Japanese paper, stickers on vinyl art toy) by Anna Montgomery
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- Supa Luva detail 1
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- Supa Luva detail 2
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- Supa Luva detail 3
for Yumiko Kayukawa
Sacrosanct superflat allusions
meticulously drafted shamans
pop art girls snog anime animals
postmodern bestiary of familiars
floral fantasia collides with
kawaii panda bears
Kid Robot toy spins
her subculture hothouse
of mystic supa luvas
I have the privilege of hosting Meeting the Bar today where we will explore Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments and hopefully have some fun doing it. I chose to write in 3D. You are welcome to pick any one of the suggestions that appeal to you for today’s prompt. See you at dVerse Poets Pub!
We were wild gods long forsaken
our bed of passion birthed
thunder dragons in a blooded sky
We were sea monsters ruling
the muted oceanic world
scrying in the dark depths
We were bundled soul sticks
so that we could not be broken
straining against the pressure
We were travelers in the spirit boat
our shamanistic selves couldn’t tame
tempest remnants of our humanity slain
Our deep psychic work mirrored
sexual arousal, oh how those sustained
plateaus shuddered through me
So I grew afraid, apart
ate specious tales of hearth fires
believing I could be safe
For a long while I was invisible
wanderlust overtook me and I forgot
my unrelenting intensity and we
Until I awoke, bathed in the potential
of my ferocity, regained my form
and headed to the mountains
Upon a forest path I encountered you
my wild, blackest wolf, blue eyes piercing,
your chaos magic revealing my true name
You howled it to the heavens, claiming me
as your equal, creating our language anew
outer being/inner creature regained
Your soulful tenacity and endurance
prevailed, reuniting us; at night I cry out:
cover me with your wildness!
Chromapoetica 