Time Stopped

The warmth of my skin fades to cold,

Just like my father's did moments ago.

The sweet sound of his smooth-beating heart,

Was replaced with the tic and toc of his wristwatch.

The sound echoed through my mind and seemed to stop,

Along with the colorful thoughts that turned to rock.

My vision turned black and the last thing I saw was the purple and blue skin

Of my daddy's left and right arm.

I could not stop shaking and my lungs didn't work,

My eyes were filled with tears and my heart with hurt.

~Ashley Angsten

Male/Female - the Eternal Facts

Camille Paglia

"I have found the words masculine and feminine indispensable for my notations of appearance and behavior, but I apply them freely to both sexes, according to mood and situation. Here are my conclusions, after a lifetime of observation and reflection. Maleness at its hormonal extreme is an angry, ruthless density of self, motivated by a principle of ‘attack.’ Femaleness at its hormonal extreme is first an acute sensitivity of response, literally thin-skinned (a hormonal effect in women), and secondly a stability, composure, and self-containment, a slowness approaching the sultry. Biologically, the male is impelled toward restless movement; his moral danger is brutishness. Biologically, the female is impelled toward waiting, expectancy; her moral danger is stasis. Androgen agitates; estrogen tranquilizes—hence the drowsiness and ‘glow’ of pregnancy. Most of us inhabit not polar extremes but a constantly shifting great middle. However, a preponderance of gray does not disprove the existence of black and white. Sexual geography, our body image, alters our perception of the world. Man is contoured for invasion, while woman remains the hidden, a cave of archaic darkness. No legislation or grievance committee can change these eternal facts."

Black Narcissus (1947)

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

One of the most striking movie images ever. I just love it.

Silence Disturbed

Uncertainty

“Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.”   ~Winston Churchill

How to Properly Hold a Belief

I told my friend Tom Payne that this quote from Jeffrey D. Long seemed to encapsulate the spirit of the BE HERE NOW  blog:

"The problem, it seems, is not so much with the content of a belief as the attitude with which it is held. All of our beliefs need to be held in a way that allows us–indeed, that encourages us–to interact lovingly with our fellow beings, not in a way that creates hatred and lingering ill will. It is not our beliefs that are the problem, so much as inappropriate attachment to them."

Tom said this reminded him of 1 Corinthians 13. This magnificent verse seems to cut through all the accouterments of belief--the authority, righteousness and vanity--to express the one essential element: 

"13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

The Originalist

"The Field Has Eyes, the Wood Has Ears"
Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)

Next to nothing is known about the life or the thinking of the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. He left behind no diaries or letters. This drawing is the illustration of a proverb meaning "keep quiet about your business." At the top is an inscription--the only statement we have that was written by the artist. It reads: 

"Poor is the mind that always uses the inventions of others and invents nothing itself."

Here is his four-panel painting of two places no living man has ever seen. Click to enlarge: 

"Visions of the Hereafter" (1490)

Art, like History, repeats itself

Film Meets Art from Vugar Efendi on Vimeo.