Don’t fuck with me, "Bleak Epiphanies"

[jackofnightmares]

I once worked in a summer camp in Virginia. The camp was for inner city children from Washington D.C. I would tell the new kids not to tell anyone they were afraid of snakes. Because if they did someone would probably put a snake in their bumk just for laughs.

It is probably not a good idea to ask someone not to fuck with you either.

That pretty well guarentees it. Oh well.

I been reminded of Aztec art as I sit here and stare at the eviscerated corpse of my favorite computer.

[mousey1]

*chuckles*

[mtmynd]

how long can an epiphany last before it loses itself in the torrent of thoughts that end up in the ocean of tragedy?

[stilltrucking]

Beats me Cecil I just thought it was a catchy phrase. Kind of off the wall.

I found it in an article in The Nation magazine. I like that magazine I read it cover to cover.

To put the phrase in the context I foun it in

Minimalism he acknowledges as "the dominant idea in art of the past forty years." He respects it and regrets it, and if he hasn't warmed to it by now he's never going to--not to its works, which "succeed by occasioning, rather than communicating, bleak epiphanies," and not to the milieu that formed in its wake, "waves of academically trained artists, curators, and critics" who could see the point of an art that would be "boring, on purpose."

Seeing Past The Gorgons

This bit about Aztec Art is from the same ariticle

Contemplating the art of the Aztecs, Schjeldahl thinks, shows that "a civilization based on slaughter steadied and inspired human genius." It's a sobering thought, but the very concreteness with which he imagines Aztec brutality ("Sights and smells of gore attended normal life in Tenochtitlan--children must have grown up liking them") testifies to the depth of his need to check his own aestheticism. The lesson is clear: art is good--Schjeldahl has no doubt of that--but not necessarily good for you. A persistent warning note is sounded: "beauty isn't nice." That's not too hard to disagree with, but how about "beauty can be a kind of murder"--this, apropos not of the Aztecs but of, again, Chardin? For Thomas Eakins, less dramatically, "the dignity of art may have stood in an inverse relation to the nobility of its motive." An Inquisitor painted by El Greco seems "repellently cruel," but the painter "regards severity as part of the man's important job and a good thing for everybody." In short, art is always capable of going against the grain of socially sanctioned good or of supporting socially sanctioned cruelty.

[mtmynd]

Nicely done... the assembly of thoughts all derived from a single magazine article in a single issue (scored for 10 cents at your local library is a nice addition).

We take ideas and words and build upon them as cities have been built upon the remnants of other cities ... and so civilization goes, never towering over it's past but rather built on it's own remains, never straying far from those that preceded us... our stories are but a reflection of this.

[stilltrucking]

Thanks Cecil.

We got a little rain yesterday. My tomato plant not doing very good. Don't look like I will harvest any this year.

I wish I had your green thumb. Edible Art The Garden Maybe I will have better luck next year. I have only had one good crop of tomatoes out of three attempts. That was the year I bought the little plants from a nursery. The last two years I bought them from Walmart.

Or maybe it was the tomato plant liguid growth food I put on them that one good year.

What is your secrete?

[sooZen]

Some years are good in the garden, some not so good. This year we had a problem with nemetodes which we will have to deal with before we plant next year. We had beautiful squash plants that never produced a durn squash.

Find out what grows well in your area, especially with tomatoes. Some that we plant are just experiments and those tend to be our biggest failures but Celebrity is an old reliable for us.

Cec planted two types of eggplants this year, one a purple japanese type which pooped out early and the other a pale green japanese type which is huge and still producing bunches.

So you never know... Composting is key and soil renewal is very important in a good garden but even then, plants will have their way.

Sorry mt, I am sure you can add to this as you are the real gardener in the family... (his toil and work, I just supervise. )

[stilltrucking]

Thanks SooZen. I appreciate the info.

I have killed more plants than agent orange.

[stilltrucking]

There was a race car driver named Ascari. Formula One Grand Prix. I think NASCAR is cool but I found to be more interesting than Nascar. All those twisting turns and hairpins, and two hundred mile and hour straight aways. And manual transmissions. 1400 shifts in a race.

Well Ascari would be so afraid before each race he would vomit. Then he would get in his car and drive his ass off.

All these boards
and no place to hide.

Thinking about a kid I used to trip with back in the seventies.
Playing macho games about who could do more acid.
and he would say things like
"I did six hits, I am tripping more than you"

It is all a competition
I am more paranoid than you

Hobbes the guy who wrote Leviathan said his twin brother was fear. Refering to his mother's fears about the Spanish Armada when she was pregnant with him.

I was born on December 7th 1940.

I noticed the other day that I no longer cast a shadow.

And Nietzsche talked about making your life a garden, a refuge for your fellow man. Cecil has a greener thumb than me.