It's been the main activity of this afternoon and evening, except for a brief break for a walk in the park and to get groceries. I've been assembling a new gallery that shows my favorites in every type of art. I've got the small versions arranged and the links to each picture from the index, but the linkage does not work between the pictures, still having the format from their original galleries. Also, I will give the pages holding the pictures a uniform look in style. Perhaps changing color backgrounds to match each picture, but the same basic format and directional arrows. However that is work for another day.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

"Favorites All in Place"
11:23pm

The gallery is DONE!!! There might still be some tweaking to do, but she's ready to roll!

Monday, May 1, 2006

"Solving a Thorny Problem"
10:07pm

I'd finished my 52 Figment piece last week, but still had not created the 'just under 500 pixel' size required for the upload to the community gallery. I'd gotten frustrated. The big 2197 x 1716 sketch did not translate well to 499 x 400 size. All I got was dotted lines when I tried to reduce it. So I left the finishing of this project for another day. Which was today. I noticed the Opera browser did well to render that 2197 x 1716 bigness into a 659 x 515. So I made a screen capture of the page, cropped, and from that result I was able to make the finished 16th 52 Figment:

"If you could spend an afternoon with any three people (living or deceased) who would they be?"

Gurdjieff, Ayn Rand, Alain de Benoist"
discussing the heroic possibilities of humanity's evolution of consciousness

I am going to have an imaginative time with the next question: "Imagine your meals consisted only of flowers. What would be for dinner?" [Taken from "Make Beliefs" by Bill Zimmerman]

Julia made a funny this morning that made me think of it:

"This 'Wild Irish Rose' sure doesn't taste very much like roses!"

I'm thinking maybe lotus petals might be interesting. There's all sorts of symbolic significance given to lotuses relating "to creation, regeneration, and the state of the initiate and higher beings...". Plus, they don't have nasty thorns to contend with. That's always a plus.

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

"Not Just For Inhaling"
10:58pm

My lotus eater is done!

You can see where I got the inspiration:

On the large, vertical block of relief, Niankhwadjet inhales the scent of a lotus.
Elements from the False Door in the Chapel of Mery's Mastaba
First half of Dynasty 4 (2575-2520 B.C.)
From Saqqara, Limestone, now at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The information accompanying the relief says the scent of a lotus is associated with rebirth because the flower opens each morning for the sun. Bridget McDermott in Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs informs us further:

"The lotus had an important symbolic role in religious life. The blue lotus, which opens with the first rays of the sun, and the white lotus, which opens only at night, were associated with the sun and moon, and the opposing forces of light and dark...The lotus became a symbol of rebirth after death" and is "also linked to fertility and was a sexual symbol."

I especially like this picture as being a metaphor for inhaling deeply of life. To expand this into the realm of eating the lotus would be to symbolically (I'm not REALLY going to eat the lotus!) enhance this that much further. However, this isn't an exaggeration of Egyptian thought, for 'swallowing' did figure in Egyptian magical practice. In the chapter titled "Spitting, Licking and Swallowing," Robert K. Ritner tells of this. It may be to "ingest divine force" and there was also "an increasingly common idiom expressly linking consumption with acquired familiarity, in which the terms "to taste/taste" (dp/dp.t) assume the nuance "to experience/experience": "It goes well with every god of whom I have experience (literally "whom I have tasted")". "The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice", pages 102-104)

Thursday, May 4, 2006

"Strange Brew"
6:58am

Odd references to coffee in my reading this morning may have inspired this:

Here's the reference: The singer K.T. Tunstill is said to be "a pleasing mediation between the traditional demands of brooding egocentricity (espresso) and frothy commerciality (cappuccino). Not a bad thing to be, actually. But to be the fishy brew the poor man in this morning's picture has, that might well be something NOT so desirable. I hope things aren't THAT odd here.

Alas they could be. For instance, my strange 'tree horo' results may suggest just that:

Oct 24 to Nov 11 - Walnut Tree Walnut Tree (Passion) -- unrelenting, strange and full of contrasts, often egotistic, aggressive, noble, broad horizon, unexpected reactions, spontaneous, unlimited ambition, no flexibility, difficult and uncommon partner, not always liked but often admired, ingenious strategist, very jealous and passionate, no compromise.

It's not that far off. But I think I'm fairly flexible, and I hope Julia doesn't find me 'difficult'. Also, I think I do okay on the compromising thing. But 'strange and full of contrasts', yes that is me. I am often spontaneous and have the most fun when I do. I can be 'ambitious' when I've got something I want to do, in this single minded to the point of maybe being 'aggressive', or maybe just cranky if things don't go my way. But I'd like to think of it as, um, PASSIONATE. You just have to translate these things right. Grin!

Friday, May 5, 2006 A

"Recipes for Happiness"
6:31am

The afternoon disc jockey teased us with the words "FISH can make you happy." He said he would explain later. I thought it was one of those things where they take each letter of the word and form an ingredient list for happiness. So my imagination got to work and assembled my own:

"F" - Friendship: If we have friends, we are apt to be happier. "I" - Independence: If we are independent, we will use our own judgement and resources to decide things. "S" - Self Love: If we do not have this, we are lacking the very basics, for without this, very little is possible. "H" - Honesty: To be trapped by a web of one's own lies is a sure path to misery.

I thought whatever he would tell us probably wouldn't be much different than that. However, I was surprised to find it was. This is from the copy and paste of the email he sent out to listeners on his mailing list:

"FISHING FOR HAPPINESS - 12p Can eating fish make you a nicer person? A seafood-rich diet has long been shown to ward off depression. Now research shows that people who dine on fish are not only happier, but they tend to have more pleasant personalities than people who don't eat seafood, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. People who don't eat much fish are more likely to report symptoms of depression and a negative outlook on life. Source: Psychology Today, 6/06

Of course there are things to be concerned about, to not eat the mercury tainted albacore, or to eat the more endangered varieties. (Farm caught is better than wild caught.) But, yes, a certain amount of fish is a good source of protein and other nutrients. Vegans may disagree, and have real challenges to get enough protein from just beans, nuts and other vegetable sources. Meanwhile, fish is definitely on my menu.

With great amusement, I read this morning of another recipe for happiness, from 4500 BC, by Ptahotep, via the High Hopes Gardeners:

Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek, your hand will be soft. You are the one who sits grandly in your house; your servants answer speedily; beer is poured copiously; all who see you rejoice in good cheer. Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day.

I could do worse than to be a fish eating writer who values Friendship, Independence, Self Love and Honesty!

Friday, May 5, 2006 B

"For All the Lost Pages"
8:34pm

I was exploring different website format options, and became rapidly confused. I think I'll stick with what works and is simple. I did learn, however, that I can create my own '404' page. So for whatever faulty URL that happens, this page comes up.