The Temple of the Divine Madman
Bhutan
Druk Yul - Land of the Thunder Dragon
Keep it raw
Human flourishing
Eudaimonia
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Under this mask, another mask.
I will never be finished removing all these faces.
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Wandering river mystic wind
Rhythm of world
Dances
No fear
Expanding joy
Contentment
Laughter therapy
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Jump out of your skin
Backwards
Dream
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Mind-stream transmission
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
Captain Tremendous Tremor here again with an update from the dead zone of grieving Chinese parents and crushed kiddies. One reality shows to go ya where Big Brother wraps barbwire around collapsed schools preventing parents from rescuing 10,000 kids. Educational corruption and fear thrives in a Brave New World.
If you want to play you must pay. We know so much and understand so little.
“I don’t understand a thing. Let’s take the day off and be creative,” sang Zeynep, “grab our cameras and tale a walk.”
Lucky and Zeynep passed through ephemeral effervescent worlds healing strangers. Free non-transferable luck was distributed to the needy.
Air simmered grilled meat aromas in a tomato culture as swirling silver musical spoons tickled tea glasses. Seven tonal notes create cosmic spectrums.
Inside Ulus alleys laughing blacksmiths with calloused hands burnished musical metallic containers. Friends forged balconies, grates, bars and enclosures on anvils with Thor’s hammer. Gateless gates.
A coal man loaded bags of black on his back. A cornered Russian mistress wearing diamonds on the sole of her shoes waited for rich monkeys. A weaver loomed geometric silk ikat threads. A father taught his son the art of carpet repair. Needle led thread. Dusty stories coagulated and copulated on teakettles rusting atop Roman burial slabs covered in binary codes.
Expanding universal maps and NSA spy satellites collected data.
Total information awareness. TIA.
A peasant woman rolled dough to make ravioli-like manta pasta. A brown snail carrying its spiral galaxy home scaled green and white stones as waving antenna received signals from orbiting space-time Dream Sweepers.
Head scarfed women inside stone path shadows near crumbling straw packed homes with broken wooden slat shutters sat in a sacred circle talking and rolling spicy grated seeds into grape leaves. Thick meaty fingers toiled. Heavy 24-caret golden bracelets reflecting scattered light led to undiscovered archaeological sites for sore eyes and a doctoral thesis on amalgamated dust.
“It’s true to report that everyone in Turkey is psychologically well adjusted, employed and content with their free life,” said Zeynep.
“You’re dreaming, delusional or telling real lies,” said Curious.
“Made in the shade, cool baby,” Lucky said. “This is to say with precise specific clarity they have the courage to speak, are never tired or afraid of falling in love and marrying someone outside their rigid social and/or economic class. They take amazing risks and suffer greatly with gratitude. Photographing the universe they rent time-share apartments in black holes sucking matter into a void. Some scribble or doodle unintelligible non-linear calligraphic ideograms. The majority disappears into phosphorescent television monitors where they absorb political blather and fake reality shows. Media buys them. They give up their consciousness and miss the show.”
In Bursa a father + two son trash collection team pushed a rolling cart loaded with discarded plastic computers past crumbling Ottoman buildings secured behind barbwire and rusty locks. Faded orange and blue pigments peeled a long lost hollow bell.
One freezing morning a grandmother staring at Ottoman history lifted her child’s child to an iron-grated window. Zeynep, an invisible street photographer present with empathy squeezed a soft shutter release. A whirling dervish painting with light in continuous mode murdered time.
“Freedom is essential in my life. I control the result with spontaneity. I develop real relationships and embrace extreme situations. I’m a photographer who needs to travel. If I stay in one place I go blind.”
“Our images communicate light, story, form, emotion, information and raw aesthetics,” said L.
“Emotional impact. Photography is more art and intuition than process and procedure,” said Z.
In a warm art studio overlooking a fast icy river flowing from Uludag a female flute player fingering emptiness explained melancholic notes. Her chattering laughing friend created marbled flower art using pinpoint dabs of color in a tray filled with hot wax.
A white seagull’s calibrated internal navigation system negotiated air currents with Winter Hawk, Lone Wolf, 101 Screaming Eagles and Labrys of raging violin string theories. Piano melodies and hard bop jazz improvisation reinforced Bamboo resilience.
A 19% waxing crescent moon danced with clouds. Moon remembered moons in Augustine Fujian. Eat moon cakes, said Curious. Feed dead ancestors with filial duty. A cruel heartless forgotten forgiving month heard sky welcome moon. Clouds explored atmospheric conditions.
HELP screamed in a literary agent’s slush pile. Help was a bulldozer leveling forests to harvest trees outside Phonsavan, Laos. Vietnam bought them all. One tree = $10,000.
Chopsticks chairs tables toothpicks. Wood you believe it?
Lighter than Winter Hawk’s feathers, HELP made fun of people. Invisible howling soft wing energy manifested Beauty. Letters. Signs. Symbols. Metaphors. Observations. Unpleasant facts.
Help expressed brevity. How are you? I'm short, said Brevity.
Help played with variable truth-value meaning.
Help, a landmine in Cambodia below the surface of appearances in a luminous landscape reaching infinity weighted for sensation.
Whew, what a first week it was for my little existence, my little humanoid welcoming. I began a new strange scary awkward weird and transforming experience in a couple of human’s lives.
I begin at the beginning.
I fell out of my mom, a female production company last week. Talk about letting go. She was big and fat and she dropped me out, pushing and pushing and exhaled an infantile projection of freedom feeling her pain and my pleasure and I came slathering, slipping through some universal ectoplasm fluid, like a gusher, whoosh, into millions of bright shining suns. A crescendo of angels, luminous spirits, formless forms and shapes swirled like whirling Sufi dervishes along light waves and particles. Such splendor. My last nine months did little to prepare me or allow me to know anything.
I was born dead and slowly came to life.
It’s all sensation.
My tiny black eyes welcomed light energy into my being. I was a galaxy. It was awesome and mesmerizing. I was an Eagle nebula, a gathering of space dust melding, morphing into a solid state, a unified field theory. I was beside myself with wonder and delight. I joined seven billion others. I am another in the stream of life.
Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen? The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence. The rest of the pyramid is garbage.
Existence precedes essence.
Most people merrily exist.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Greetings,
These images are from a mural at an Indonesian school where I had 100 ten-year old teachers a year ago. They graduated to Grade 5 and I graduated back to Vietnam and the University of the Street. The kids said, "there's book learning and there's street learning."
Metta.
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