I will bring fire to thee.

Euripides.—’Androm’.

‘Eiros’.

Why do you call me Eiros?

‘Charmion’.

So henceforward will you always be called. You must forget,
too, my earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.

‘Eiros’.

This is indeed no dream!

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are with us no more;—but of these mysteries
anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.
The film of the shadow has already passed from off your
eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of
stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you
into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.

‘Eiros’.

True—I feel no stupor—none at all. The wild
sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and I hear
no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the “voice
of many waters.” Yet my senses are bewildered, Charmion,
with the keenness of their perception of the new.

‘Charmion’.

A few days will remove all this;—but I fully
understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten earthly
years since I underwent what you undergo—yet the
remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have now suffered
all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

In Aidenn?

‘Charmion’.

In Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

O God!—pity me, Charmion!—I am overburthened
with the majesty of all things—of the unknown now
known—of the speculative Future merged in the august
and certain Present.

‘Charmion’.

Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak
of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find
relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around,
nor forward—but back. I am burning with anxiety to
hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you
among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things,
in the old familiar language of the world which has so
fearfully perished.

‘Eiros’.

Most fearfully, fearfully!—this is indeed no dream.

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are no more. Was I much mourned, my Eiros?

‘Eiros’.

Mourned, Charmion?—oh, deeply. To that last hour of
all there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow
over your household.

‘Charmion’.

And that last hour—speak of it. Remember that, beyond
the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing.
When, coming out from among mankind, I passed into Night
through the Grave—at that period, if I remember
aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly
unanticipated. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative
philosophy of the day.

‘Eiros’.

The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely
unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a
subject of discussion with astronomers. I need scarce tell
you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed
to understand those passages in the most holy writings which
speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as
having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in
regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had
been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in
which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. The
very moderate density of these bodies had been well
established. They had been observed to pass among the
satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible
alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these
secondary planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as
vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether
incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in
the event of contact. But contact was not in any degree
dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately
known. That among them we should look for the agency
of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years
considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild
fancies had been of late days strangely rife among mankind;
and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that
actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by
astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was
generally received with I know not what of agitation and
mistrust.

The elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated,
and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path,
at perihelion would bring it into very close proximity with
the earth. There were two or three astronomers of secondary
note who resolutely maintained that a contact was
inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the effect of
this intelligence upon the people. For a few short days they
would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so
long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any
manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact soon
makes its way into the understanding of even the most
stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge
lies not, and they awaited the comet. Its approach was not
at first seemingly rapid, nor was its appearance of very
unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little
perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no
material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a
partial alteration in its color. Meantime, the ordinary
affairs of men were discarded, and all interest absorbed in
a growing discussion instituted by the philosophic in
respect to the cometary nature. Even the grossly ignorant
aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations.
The learned now gave their intellect—their
soul—to no such points as the allaying of fear, or to
the sustenance of loved theory. They sought—they
panted for right views. They groaned for perfected
knowledge. Truth arose in the purity of her strength
and exceeding majesty, and the wise bowed down and adored.

That material injury to our globe or to its inhabitants
would result from the apprehended contact was an opinion
which hourly lost ground among the wise; and the wise were
now freely permitted to rule the reason and the fancy of the
crowd. It was demonstrated that the density of the comet’s
nucleus was far less than that of our rarest gas; and
the harmless passage of a similar visitor among the
satellites of Jupiter was a point strongly insisted upon,
and which served greatly to allay terror. Theologists, with
an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical
prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a
directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had
been known. That the final destruction of the earth must be
brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit
that enforced everywhere conviction; and that the comets
were of no fiery nature (as all men now knew) was a truth
which relieved all, in a great measure, from the
apprehension of the great calamity foretold. It is
noticeable that the popular prejudices and ****** errors in
regard to pestilences and wars—errors which were wont
to prevail upon every appearance of a comet—were now
altogether unknown, as if by some sudden convulsive exertion
reason had at once hurled superstition from her throne. The
feeblest intellect had derived vigor from excessive
interest.

What minor evils might arise from the contact were points of
elaborate question. The learned spoke of slight geological
disturbances, of probable alterations in climate, and
consequently in vegetation; of possible magnetic and
electric influences. Many held that no visible or
perceptible effect would in any manner be produced. While
such discussions were going on, their subject gradually
approached, growing larger in apparent diameter, and of a
more brilliant lustre. Mankind grew paler as it came. All
human operations were suspended.

There was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment
when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing
that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now,
dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were
wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical
aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest
of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few
days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in
sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the
strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its
historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us
with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as
an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus
upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken,
with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic
mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.

Yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. It was
clear that we were already within the influence of the
comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of
frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the
object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects
were plainly visible through it. Meantime, our vegetation
had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this
predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. A wild
luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown before, burst out
upon every vegetable thing.

Yet another day—and the evil was not altogether upon
us. It was now evident that its nucleus would first reach
us. A wild change had come over all men; and the first sense
of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation
and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous
construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable
dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our
atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this
atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might
be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result
of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest
terror through the universal heart of man.

It had been long known that the air which encircled us was a
compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of
twenty-one measures of oxygen and seventy-nine of nitrogen
in every one hundred of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was
the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was
absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was
the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen,
on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal
life or flame. An unnatural excess of oxygen would result,
it had been ascertained, in just such an elevation of the
animal spirits as we had latterly experienced. It was the
pursuit, the extension of the idea, which had engendered
awe. What would be the result of a total extraction of
the nitrogen? A combustion irresistible, all-devouring,
omni-prevalent, immediate;—the entire fulfilment, in
all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery and
horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies of the Holy
Book.

Why need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained frenzy of
mankind? That tenuity in the comet which had previously
inspired us with hope, was now the source of the bitterness
of despair. In its impalpable gaseous character we clearly
perceived the consummation of Fate. Meantime a day again
passed—bearing away with it the last shadow of Hope.
We gasped in the rapid modification of the air. The red
blood bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. A
furious delirium possessed all men; and with arms rigidly
outstretched towards the threatening heavens, they trembled
and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of the destroyer was now
upon us;—even here in Aidenn I shudder while I speak.
Let me be brief—brief as the ruin that overwhelmed.
For a moment there was a wild lurid light alone, visiting
and penetrating all things. Then—let us bow down,
Charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great
God!—then, there came a shouting and pervading sound,
as if from the mouth itself of HIM; while the whole
incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once
into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing
brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the high
Heaven of pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all.

Dear Poet Friends, being fond of Art, I wanted to compose on
this topic for a long time in a simplified form! Egyptian Art and
Architecture influenced the Early Greeks, who in turn influenced the Romans and other civilizations! Initially Art and architecture, religion and culture, were all closely inter-related! Real distinction emerged with the Italian Renaissance. Here I have used only a portion of my personal notes. Hope you find this interesting to read! Sorry for the length! Kindly give Comments after you have managed to read the entire portion in your spare time. Thanks, -Raj

INTRODUCTION TO THE STORY
OF WESTERN ART IN VERSE:
          PART ONE
    * BY RAJ NANDY

INTRODUCTION
Art over the centuries has been variously defined,
But an all embracing definition is rather hard to find!
Ayn Rand defined Art as a recreation of reality according to
artist’s values, his view of existence, and choice;
Who recreates by a selective rearrangement of the elements
of reality, and not simply out of a void!
Study of Art History is a study of man’s creative evolution;
A progress of his wakened consciousness, and a restless
striving towards perfection!
The progress of his mind, taste and skill, which has gradually
evolved through past traditions;
Finding ultimate expression in his multi-faceted creations!
I commence this story from its earliest days, and mention those
Ancient Civilizations which influenced Art in many ways.
Art has been greatly influenced by religion, culture and history;
Therefore, knowing these aspects becomes necessary to
fully appreciate this Art Story!

PREHISTORIC STONE AGE ART:
Let us take a ride on the magic carpet of History, down
past millenniums to begin our Art Story;
Right into the ancient Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic
Eras of the Stone Age,
When early humans left their creative imprints on rock
surfaces and on walls of caves!
Long before the evolution of any proper coherent speech
or communication,
In some 350 caves of France and Spain are seen paintings
of large wild animals like horses, antelopes and bison;
Bearing witness to the story of gradual human evolution!
The cave paintings of Chauvet, Cosquer, and Lascaux, date
between 8000 and 1700 BC,
Drawn by nameless and faceless people who emerged from
an inhospitable Ice Age;
Those nomadic tribes who were hunter-gatherers living in
pre-historic caves!
The Story of Art therefore begins before recorded History,
Pieced together by scholars with the help of science and
archeology!
During the Neolithic Period beginning around 8,000BC,
Ancient man became gradually sedentary, engaging in
agriculture and animal husbandry!
With these nomads settling down in small communities,
Art became mystical and monumental in range;
As seen in the megalithic (large stone) structures of the
famous Stonehenge!
This type of post and lintel structure is also found in ancient
Egyptian architecture, and later in Greece as its special
feature!
Art History spans the entire history of mankind,
Right from the pre-historic days, up to our modern times!
Man’s everlasting quest for immortality lies etched on
rocks and raised stone edifices, defying marauding Time!

MESOPOTAMIAN ART (3500-300BC) :
Let us now travel fast forward on our magic carpet to reach
the Fertile Crescent,
Where the Tigress and the Euphrates Rivers flow, to the
Ancient Civilization of the Sumerians! (3500-2300BC)
The birth of civilization has been traced to Southern
Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians built their first cities,
As the earliest River Valley Civilization around 3500 BC!
It was a period when writing got invented in its earliest
Cuneiform form;  (around 3400 BC)
When Patriarch Abraham established the worship of a Single
God, in a revolutionary religious reform! (Judaism)
Mesopotamian Civilization as the source of our earliest
surviving Art dates back to 3500BC;
When major civilizations like the Sumerian, Akkadian,
Babylonian, Hitties, Assyrian, and the Persians, in this
chronological sequence, contributed to Art History!
Mesopotamian Art in general glorified their powerful rulers
and their connection with divinity;
Reflected on their city gates, palace complexes and ziggurats,
are scenes of both victorious wars and their prosperity!
Art was then highly functional and repetitive; depicting
love of beauty, a sense of order, and power of hierarchy,
- in their sculptures and motifs.
However, no signatures were ever found bearing the name
of the Artist!
It is interesting to note that both the potter’s wheel and the
cart wheel, made their first appearance around 3500 BC
and 3200 BC respectively;
With the Sumerians contributing to art and culture, and the
progress of Human Civilization immensely!
(Ziggurats are semi-pyramid like structures with steps, a temple complex located in the center of all ancient Sumerian cities-states! Saragon the Great of Akkad from the North, defeated the Sumerians in the South, & united entire Mesopotamia around 2300 BC, for the first time in Mesopotamian History, & they ruled for 200 years.)

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART :(3000 BC -500BC)
Next we travel to an isolated area of north-east Africa,
Where the White Nile flows down from Lake Victoria.
The Nile enters Upper Egypt traveling through Sudan,
Is joined by the Blue Nile at Khartoum to become one!
Continues its flow north through Egypt Lower, flowing
into the Mediterranean as the World’s longest river!
Historian Herodotus had called Egypt ‘the gift of the Nile’;
Ancient Egypt became a rich treasure trove of art and
architecture for all times!
The Nile valley area was protected by the desert on its
east and the west;
In the north by the Mediterranean, and towards the
south by a rugged mountainous terrain!
Annual flooding of the Nile along with an effective
irrigational network,
Ensured Egypt’s prosperous stability, congenial for her
many innovative architectures and art works!
Egyptian Art got shaped by her geography, mythology
and her polytheistic religion;
Also by their preoccupation with after-life and belief in  
the immortal soul’s continuation;
Thus elaborate funeral rites were performed by priests for  
the body’s preservation by mummification! *
(’KA’= was a real astral twin or stellar double of an Individual, which continued to exist even after death, requiring the same sustenance as the humans, so food offerings were made in the coffins! ‘BA’= shaped like a human-headed bird, composed of non-physical attributes of an Individual. ‘BA’ collected the deceased’s personality after death from the mummified remains & united it with the ‘KA’, making a person complete; thereby making it possible for the person to be reborn as ‘AKH’ (Star), - in its ultimate unchanging form, to join Osiris in the ‘Happy Fields’! Since this journey to the next world was fraught with danger, magical funerary spells & rites were performed by the priests, with incantations from the ‘Book of the Dead’, inside the funeral chamber of the Pyramid!)

Art During Old, Middle, and New Kingdom Period:
Egyptian Art was concerned with ensuring continuity of the
universe, their Gods, the King and the people;
A projection into eternity a version of reality pure and free
from all earthly evil!
Therefore in ancient Egyptian society, conformity over
individuality was always encouraged;
Artists worked in groups with conservative adherence to
rules, order and form,
And all individual artistic initiatives strictly discouraged !
Their earliest pyramids the Mastaba, the Step, and the Bent
Pyramids were all prototypes;
While the Great Pyramid of Giza built for Pharaoh Kufu,
- was the first true pyramid which still survives!
Art comes down to us as ‘funerary art’ designed for the tombs,
Which was to accompany the royalty in their journey to an
afterlife, with its symbolic forms!
This symbolism is seen in their paintings, statues and architecture;
In vibrant color codes of their paintings as a special feature!
Where White was the symbol of purity, Black for death and night;
Green for vegetation or new life, Blue for water and the sky;
Red for life and victory, and Yellow like Gold as the flesh of the
Gods and also the Sun God ruling the sky!
Thanks to Jean-Francois Champollion’s translation of the Rosetta
Stone, (1822)
We are able to decipher many mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian
with the cracking of the Hieroglyphic Code!
Larger than life statues with poise and austere harmony at the
Luxor Temple complex survive;
Symbolic of the individual’s status, while creating zones of
strangeness for imagination to thrive!
(’Matsaba’= Egyptian for ‘bench’, referred to bench shaped pyramids;
“Step Pyramids” = were like benches placed one on top of the other in
a tapering form going up vertically!)

The Old Kingdom Period covers a five hundred years span
of Ancient Egyptian History, (2686-2181BC)
Known as the ‘Age of Pyramids’, with Pharaohs from the
Third to the Sixth Dynasty!
“The World fear Time, but Time fears only the Pyramids”,
- is an Ancient Egyptian Proverb;
Whose ‘heterogeneous structure’ made it earthquake
proof, making Time to reluctantly serve! #
Here we find formalized figures with long slender bodies,
idealized proportions and large staring eyes;
Where Kufu’s Great Pyramid of Giza raises its mighty head
as the highest, on the west bank of the Nile;
And the mighty Sphinx guard the entrance to those ancient
royal tombs, though defaced, still survive!
These pyramids were like Pharaoh’s getaways to eternity,
An insurance to an afterlife of peace and prosperity!
(# Pyramids with stone blocks of different sizes & shapes made them
Earthquake resistant; & use of pink granite in the inner chambers
made them erosion resistant against Time!)

The Middle Kingdom Period (2040-1650 BC) :
Following 150 years of civil disorder Theban ruler Mentuhotep
the Second, reunified Egypt and ruled up to Nubia, (Sudan)
And began the Classical Era when Block Statues appear,
indicating political stability;
When artisans worked with bronze and copper alloys, designing
exquisite jewelry!
Kings now preferred to be buried in secret tombs, Pyramids
having lost their appeal,
And work began on the west bank of the Nile, in the Valley of
Kings!
(Inside those rock cut ‘funerary temples’ on the East bank of the
Nile, opposite Ancient Kingdom of Thebes ; Pharaohs from the
Early and Late New Kingdom Periods were buried, including
Tutemkhamen.)

Early New Kingdom Period (1550 -1295 BC):
Between the Middle Kingdom and this Era, Art remained
static for almost a hundred years,
When the Hyksos from the Near East fought the weak Theban
Rulers!
In 1550 BC Theban Prince Ahmose reunited Egypt, and was
succeeded by able rulers, who ushered in the Golden Age!
Art works continued to maintain its basic traditional style,
With successive Kings from the 18th Dynasty consolidating
their kingdom’s wealth and power all the while!
But Egypt witnessed a change with an innovative style in Art,
When Amenhotep IV in 1353 BC became King, initiating a
fresh start!
This king changed his name to ‘Akhenaten’, the spirit of Aten,
-- ‘The disk of the Sun’;
Abandoned the pantheons of Gods with Aten as the ‘sole God’,
and a religious revolution had begun!
His new capital city of Amarna, 200 miles north of Thebes,
Got decorated with a new kind of art work to make it complete!
The statues now appear more realistic displaying emotions,
With fluidity of movement, unlike those rigid earlier creations!
The artistic talent of this Amarna Period gets best exemplified,
In the exquisite bust of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s Great Royal Wife!
Regarded as ‘icon of international beauty’, a great archeological
find ! **
(Discovered by a German team of Archeologists in 1912 at Amarna! This 19 inch long limestone Nefertiti statue weighs around 20 kg, now housed in Berlin Museum; comparable only to the artistic Golden Mask of Tutankhamen!)

King Tutankhamen (1336-1327 BC):
Akhenaten’s unpopular rule was short-lived, with those humiliated
Theban priests calling him the ‘Heretic King’!
A nine year old boy Tutankhamen (‘The living image of Amun’),
was next to succeed him!
King Tut restored the worship of Amun, in a back-lash against
Akhenaten;
Shifted the royal palace back to Thebes, with the religious center
at Karnak once again!
King Tut’s short ten year’s rule remained buried in 3000 year’s
of Egyptian History,
Till Howard Carter found his richly laden intact tomb, in the
Valley of the Kings! (1922)
King Tut’s priceless and exquisitely carved golden face mask,
reflected the exalted standard of art work;
Weighing ten kilos, inlaid with semi-precious stones, and eyes
made of obsidian and quarts!
With the King’s early death, the 18th Dynasty of Pharaohs came
to an abrupt end,
And the 19th and 20th Dynasties of the Late Kingdom Period
commenced!
The famous rock temple of Abu Simbel now got built, under the
warrior and builder Ramses II, one of Egypt’s greatest Kings!


Pharaoh Ramses-II of the Late Kingdom Period :
Here I sweep across centuries of Egyptian History, to mention
King Ramses-II’s contribution to our Art Story!
In Shelly’s famous poem titled “Ozymandias of Egypt” he is
immortalized; (Greeks called Ramses-II “Ozymandias”!)
And as the Pharaoh associated with Moses in the movie “The
Ten Commandments”, he is popularized!
Egyptian Art is intrinsically bound with its religion, pyramids,
hieroglyphs, and architecture;
With a concentrated focus on ‘afterlife’ as its special feature!
In 1270 BC young Ramses took over from Seti the First,
And his rule for a period of 66 long years did last!
As the third Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, he had ruled with a
firm hand;
Recovered lost territories from the Hittites and the Nubians,
- earlier captured Egyptian lands!
He enlarged the territories of Egypt ensuring prosperity and
stability;
Became renowned as the famous Warrior and Builder King
of Ancient Egyptian History!
Ramses-II had expanded most of the temples, as recorded in
the artistic motifs and hieroglyphic symbols;
Here a special mention must be made of the Temples of Luxor,
Karnak, and Abu Simbel !

Temples of Luxor and Karnak in Ancient Thebes:
Ancient Thebes was located on the eastern bank of the Nile,
where the modern City of Luxor stands;
Thebes was once the capital of the 11th and 18th Dynasties,
And the power and religious center of all Egyptian land!
Gets mentioned in the 9th Book of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ where “heaps
of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes”!
Excavation work began in Thebes during the late 19th century;
And the gradual unearthing of the Temples of Luxor and
Karnak, added a new dimension to Egypt’s Art Story!
It must be remembered always, that the Ancient Egyptians in
those early days,
Structured their temple architecture to the point of ‘Sacred Art’!
With their knowledge of astronomy and geometry, they
aligned their temples so perfectly,
That the light of the rising sun fell on the temple’s innermost
sanctuary! (Temple of Abu Simbel is a great example,)
Where the Egyptian priests, who were also the artists, healers,
mathematicians, astronomers and scribes;
In dimly lit incense-filled sanctuaries performed the sacred rites!
The temples symbolized the cross roads of the cosmos, where
the divine and the mortal met in perpetual harmony!
These divine scenes were integrated into the very fabric of the
Egyptian society through chants and rituals;
With cosmological symbols of magical hieroglyphs, which
priests alone could transcribe in those days!
(Thebes began to decline rapidly after Alexander the Great
established the port-city of Alexandria as Egypt’s new Capital
around 332 BC !)

Luxor Temple built by Amenhotep-III, was dedicated to God
Amun, his wife Mut and son Khonsu, - the Theban Triad;
Tutankhamen and Ramses-II expanding the temple during the
New Kingdom Period!
Creator God Amun became assimilated with the Sun God Re;
Was worshipped in Thebes, and in the cult centers of Luxor and
Karnak, - as Amun-Re!
The walls and columns of these cult temples were decorated
with carved and painted relief,
Depicting the interaction with Gods, and military exploits of
Egyptian Pharaohs and Kings!
The sun temple of Amenhotep-III at Luxor has many columns
resembling papyrus bundles,
Symbolic of the primeval marsh from where Creation was
believed to have unfolded !
A Sphinx Alley excavated between Luxor an

making love
suspends gravity
   and time
seconds expand
   into eternity
we are
   on top of the universe

floating
   in the fourth dimension
feeling  
   the birth of a new solar system
      amidst convulsive explosions
   whose brilliance
      light years into the future
   may be observed
   by keen astronomers

we do not mind

our system
radiates and shines
in its time

nothing else matters

The courtesan and poet Zuo Fen had two cats Xe Ming and Xi Ming. Living in her distant court with only her maid Hu Yin, her cats were often her closest companions and, like herself, of a crepuscular nature.
      It was the very depths of winter and the first moon of the Solstice had risen. The old year had nearly passed.
      The day itself was almost over. Most of the inner courts retired before the new day began (at about 11.0pm), but not Zuo Fen. She summoned her maid to dress her in her winter furs, gathered her cats on a long chain leash, and walked out into the Haulin Gardens.
      These large and semi-wild gardens were adjacent to the walls of her personal court. The father of the present Emperor had created there a forest once stocked with game, a lake to the brim with carp and rich in waterfowl, and a series of tall structures surrounded by a moat from which astronomers were able to observe the firmament.
      Emperor Wu liked to think of Zuo Fen walking at night in his father’s park, though he rarely saw her there. He knew that she valued that time alone to prepare herself for his visits, visits that rarely occurred until the Tiger hours between 3.0am and 6.0am when his goat-drawn carriage would find its way to her court unbidden. She herself would welcome him with steaming chai and sometimes a new rhapsody. They would recline on her bed and discuss the content and significance of certain writings they knew and loved. Discussion sometimes became an elaborate game when a favoured Classical text would be taken as the starting point for an exchange of quotation. Gradually quotation would be displaced by subtle invention and Zuo Fen would find the Emperor manoeuvring her into making declarations of a passionate or ****** nature.
       It seemed her very voice captivated him and despite herself and her inclinations they would join as lovers with an intensity of purpose, a great tenderness, and deep joy. He would rest his head inside her cloak and allow her lips to caress his ears with tales of river and mountain, descriptions of the flights of birds and the opening of flowers. He spoke to her ******* of the rising moon, its myriad reflections on the waters of Ling Lake, and of its trees whose winter branches caressed the cold surface.

Whilst Zuo Fen walked in the midnight park with her cats she reflected on an afternoon of frustration. She had attempted to assemble a new poem for her Lord.  Despite being himself an accomplished poet and having an extraordinary memory for Classical verse, the Emperor retained a penchant for stories about Mei-Lim, a young Suchan girl dragged from her family to serve as a courtesan at his court.
      Zuo Fen had invented this girl to articulate some of her own expressions of homesickness, despair, periods of constant tearfulness, and abject loneliness. Such things seemed to touch something in the Emperor. It was as though he enjoyed wallowing in these descriptions and his favourite A Rhapsody on Being far from Home he loved to hear from the poet’s own lips, again and again. Zuo Fen felt she was tempting providence not to compose something new, before being ordered to do so.
      As she struggled through the afternoon to inject some fresh and meaningful content into a story already milked dry Zuo Fen became aware of her cats. Xi Ming lay languorously across her folded feet. Xe Ming perched like an immutable porcelain figure on a stool beside her low writing table.
Zuo Fen often consulted her cats. ‘Xi Ming, will my Lord like this stanza?’

“The stones that ring out from your pony’s hooves
announce your path through the cloud forest”

She would always wait patiently for Xi Ming’s reply, playing a game with her imagination to extract an answer from the cinnamon scented air of her winter chamber.
      ‘He will think his pony’s hooves will flash with sparks kindling the fire of his passion as he prepares to meet his beloved’.
      ‘Oh such a wise cat, Xi Ming’, and she would press his warm body further into her lap. But today, as she imagined this dialogue, a second voice appeared in her thoughts.
      ‘Gracious Lady, your Xe Ming knows his under-standing is poor, his education weak, but surely this image, taken as it is from the poet Lu Ji, suggests how unlikely it would be for the spark of love and passion to take hold without nurture and care, impossible on a hard journey’.
       This was unprecedented. What had brought such a response from her imagination? And before she could elicit an answer it was as though Xe Ming spoke with these words of Confucius.

“Do not be concerned about others not appreciating you, be concerned about you not appreciating others”

Being the very sensible woman she was, Zuo Fen dismissed such admonition (from a cat) and called for tea.

Later as she walked her beauties by the frozen lake, the golden carp nosing around just beneath the ice, she recalled the moment and wondered. A thought came to her  . . .
       She would petition Xe Ming’s help to write a new rhapsody, perhaps titled Rhapsody on the Thought of Separation.

Both Zuo Fen’s cats came from her parental home in Lingzhi. They were large, big-***** mountain cats; strong animals with bear-like paws, short whiskered and big eared. Their coats were a glassy grey, the hairs tipped with a sprinkling of white giving the fur an impression of being wet with dew or caught by a brief shower.
       When she thought of her esteemed father, the Imperial Archivist, there was always a cat somewhere; in his study at home, in the official archives where he worked. There was always a cat close at hand, listening?
       What texts did her father know by heart that she did not know? What about the Lu Yu – the Confucian text book of advice and etiquette for court officials. She had never bothered to learn it, even read it seemed unnecessary, but through her brother Zuo Si she knew something of its contents and purpose.

Confucius was once asked what were the qualifications of public office. ‘Revere the five forms of goodness and abandon the four vices and you can qualify for public office’.
       For the life of her Zuo Fen could not remember these five forms of goodness (although she could make a stab at guessing them). As for those vices? No, she was without an idea. If she had ever known, their detail had totally passed from her memory.
       Settled once again in her chamber she called Hu Yin and asked her to remove Xi Ming for the night. She had three hours or so before the Emperor might appear. There was time.
        Xe Ming was by nature a distant cat, aloof, never seeking affection. He would look the other way if regarded, pace to the corner of a room if spoken to. In summer he would hide himself in the deep undergrowth of Zuo Fen’s garden.
       Tonight Zuo Fen picked him up and placed him on her left shoulder. She walked around her room stroking him gently with her small strong fingers, so different from the manicured talons of her colleagues in the Purple Palace. Embroidery, of which she was an accomplished exponent, was impossible with long nails.
       From her scroll cupboard she selected her brother’s annotated copy of the Lun Yu, placing it unrolled on her desk. It would be those questions from the disciple Tzu Chang, she thought, so the final chapters perhaps. She sat down carefully on the thick fleece and Mongolian rug in front of her desk letting Xe Ming spill over her arms into a space beside her.
       This was strange indeed. As she sat beside Xe Ming in the light of the butter lamps holding his flickering gaze it was as though a veil began to lift between them.
       ‘At last you understand’, a voice appeared to whisper,’ after all this time you have realised . . .’
      Zuo Fen lost track of time. The cat was completely motionless. She could hear Hu Yin snoring lightly next door, no doubt glad to have Xi Ming beside her on her mat.
      ‘Xe Ming’, she said softly, ‘today I heard you quote from Confucius’.
      The cat remained inscrutable, completely still.
      ‘I think you may be able to help me write a new poem for my Lord. Heaven knows I need something or he will tire of me and this court will cease to enjoy his favour’.
      ‘Xe Ming, I have to test you. I think you can ‘speak’ to me, but I need to learn to talk to you’.
      ‘Tzu Chang once asked Confucius what were the qualifications needed for public office? Confucius said, I believe, that there were five forms of goodness to revere, and four vices to abandon’.
       ‘Can you tell me what they are?’
      Xe Ming turned his back on Zuo Fen and stepped gently away from the table and into a dark and distant corner of the chamber.
      ‘The gentle man is generous but not extravagant, works without complaint, has desires without being greedy, is at peace, but not arrogant, and commands respect but not fear’.
      Zuo Fen felt her breathing come short and fast. This voice inside her; richly-texture, male, so close it could be from a lover at the epicentre of a passionate entanglement; it caressed her.
      She heard herself say aloud, ‘and the four vices’.
      ‘To cause a death or imprisonment without teaching can be called cruelty; to judge results without prerequisites can be called tyranny; to impose deadlines on improper orders can be thievery; and when giving in the procedure of receipt and disbursement, to stint can be called officious’.
       Xe Ming then appeared out of the darkness and came and sat in the folds of her night cloak, between her legs. She stroked his glistening fur.
       Zuo Fen didn’t need to consult the Lu Yu on her desk. She knew this was unnecessary. She got to her feet and stepped through the curtains into an antechamber to relieve herself.
       When she returned Xe Ming had assumed his porcelain figure pose. So she gathered a fresh scroll, her writing brushes, her inks, her wax stamps, and wrote:

‘I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
and was never well versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
nor had I heard of the classics of earlier sages.
I am dimwitted, humble and ignorant . . ‘

As she stopped to consider the next chain of characters she saw in her mind’s eye the Purple Palace, the palace of the concubines of the Emperor. Sitting next to the Purple Chamber there was a large grey cat, its fur sprinkled with tiny flecks of white looking as though the animal had been caught in a shower of rain.
       Zuo Fen turned from her script to see where Xe Ming had got to, but he had gone. She knew however that he would always be there. Wherever her imagination took her, she could seek out this cat and the words would flow.

Before returning to her new text Zuo Fen thought she might remind herself of Liu Xie’s words on the form of the Rhapsody. If Emperor Wu appeared later she would quote it (to his astonishment) from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

*The rhapsody derives from poetry,
A fork in the road, a different line of development;
It describes objects, pictures and their appearance,
With a brilliance akin to sculpture and painting.
What is clogged and confined it invariably opens up;
It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm;
But the goal of the form is of beauty well ordered,
Words retained for their loveliness when weeds have been cut away.

How I feel for you is like trying to remember your dreams or recollecting where you left your phone,
Because I don't know where it started from,
Just like how I don't remember the exact moment when my head hits my pillow for the first time,
Or when I took my first phone call or replied to the first text that came through.
I can't retrace my steps to where it all began.
Because it was so slow,
And I don't ever intend to recognise the position I am in at 2:36am while trying to get some beauty sleep or the angle of my phone on the coffee table next to a tea stained coaster,
Just like how I didn't intend to realise the beauty of your face, the outline of your jaw or the mannerism of your voice as you say my name for the first time,
And how I feel for you is like a tonne of ******* bricks,
Because I can't even breathe when you're around,
And one by one each brick of insecurities that I have collapses onto me because I can't hold myself up to push away the bricks,
And say how I feel and it's concrete, set in stone that I am not for you.
I don't think that by finding my phone I can figure you out
Or buy myself some time to remove the aspect of sleeping from my life
So I never have to dream again just to live in the only constant of reality
In order to realise that I am naive and young and free minded but I am the world if I want to be.
Tell me, if I remember my dreams like I remember the solar system or the quadratic formula does that make me unworthy?
Because only astronomers can recall the solar system in a flash and only mathematicians use the quadratic formula day by day,
But we are not all astronomers or mathematicians but I know that one plus one equals two, me and you
And I know that as long as there are stars in the sky that you are important to me.
So believe me,
That when I say I need you I need you to need me too,
To need me in the sense that I probably can live without you but the fact of the matter is I don't want to
Because that wouldn't be as far as interesting as the two of us being crazy at 3am by throwing cookie dough at the wall.
Not to need me in the sense that I need you to be next to me every minute of every single ******* day
Because you don't.
You just need someone,
Someone to care or not to care but someone, anyone because then you won't feel even as half as alone as you did the night before
And I know you did as we all did but I want you to want me as in you want me to ride Saw with you at Thorpe Park
And I want you to want to walk me to the bus stop not because it's on your route home.
I can't remember where I've been
Or the dream that I had last night
Or where I left my phone,
But I know that I've been to the moon and back thinking about you
I know that last night's dream was about you stomping on a spider
I know that I put my phone on the breakfast bar of the kitchen.
I know fractions.
I will never know the full story to anything besides from my own stories and histories
Just like dreams and places I've been and where my phone has gone
I know fractions of you like how one third of the time you are sleeping
Three times out of eight you are at the bookies
Half the time you are on my mind.
The next time you remember your dream back to back and recite it like a subtitled drama,
Or the next time you find your phone once you realise you left it on the table on your morning train,
I hope that you recognise that nobody loves like that or lives like that in a constant perfection
I hope you realise how some people don't want to remember their dreams when they wake up because not all of them are good ones,
That sometimes it's best to leave our phones where they are to disconnect from a world of social media for a couple of hours
That maybe it's okay to not remember wherever we wish because bad things might have happened at those points in our pasts
And that's how I fell for you, in little bits.

You and I are a starry match.
Astronomers throughout the ages have known why.
According to them, you are quite the catch
You are my darling Gemini.

We are both always on the move,
We both have multiple personalities,
We two are like a bump and a groove.
We both hate being brought down to a fake reality.

A great match, deep down at heart.
You and me, Gemini and Sagittarius,
It’s a fantastic start.
The only thing better is a ****** Aquarius.

Oh, why did the angels cry?
We are meant to be, you and I.
From the heavens, we hear the exasperated sigh.
We are meant to be, my loving sweet Gemini.

Astronomers tell
there are no satellite moons
circling Venus,
but I am proof that they are wrong,
though my path leaves no trace that can be seen,
but you, my dear, know well,
that when I pass the dew does settle.

Chapter XXI
Hegira to Patmos

They dropped their moorings from Cala Cogone early, when the tide seemed to be separated from the waters like a head distanced from its body. On a lavish and romantic day they went to Genoa, to continue the logistics of the trip to Piacenza. During the trip Etréstles was stretched out in the bow under a Sun that seemed to be fearsome as it was a digestive task that would make him ingest his own dream, which perhaps he aspired to be more than a journey. While he slept, at the helm Etréstles dressed in a black robe and the comrades also sleeping with dreams that they painted with sign gestures on their faces.

Dream of Etréstles: "With the memory off-center ..., I was still in Izzana, dancing by the clouds on gray tulles of the layers of the sky that tried to stop being a Kingdom without a Crown and Sword". They glimpsed the stones melting and turning into gauze juxtaposed to the aerosolites that unfolded from the Sorcery, landing on the hands and heads of Vernarth and Himself. As he continued his dreamy journey, he dialogued with the auxiliary legate of his own dream. “He tells her that he sees them beyond where their liturgies collide. They cross eroding the vanished and itinerant reason”. He gets up and takes the moorings of the ship and ties them to his neck. Then everyone cooperates to walk along the edge of the ship, which all moved barefoot. This is how I would wake up!

Vernarth tries to wake him up, shakes him, but doesn't wake up. And when he tried to avoid him from sleep, he saw that he had the moorings around his neck, along with two Unicorns who were escorting him and were looking towards infinity, auspicious that Genoa was already coming in front of their horns. The others began to wake up and ate reclining, almost as if without any desire to get up from the deck full of self-sliding linen, which allowed everyone to pass their own meals, including those that were semi-consumed rolling on the deck. Etréstles,  transferred the dream to Vernarth, once he went to his bedroom to rest before they touched the roadstead at the foot of the homonymous promontory, 36 km from Genoa.  Portofino, close to the hydro form of the Portofino Regional Natural Park.  Being able to find different entrance doors through S. Rocco, Portofino Vetta and Nozaregoino  that led you to paths with different levels of accessibility and landscape. On the route of the path that traveled from Northwest to Southwest on the same promontory, he received the full beauty of the Mediterranean vegetation, with its beautiful pines, bluish and clean waters of the Mediterranean, which filled his lungs and especially his stem, which silenced of peace to those who accompany you through this interesting and beautiful Natural Park with deep blue eyes.
Vernarth is wrapped with two layers of linen and stands in between eclipsing each of the Unicorns. They pass her horn through her pectoral, as if wanting to insinuate affection. But her propitiated gesture was to crown her with the Power of her phalanx, the impetus in Gaugamela, an Onyx Crown, to lighten the burden of sleep and wake up before reaching the shores of Genoa.
Calling in Genoa, they all descend in a separate part and say goodbye from afar, gesturing with their hands. Their ramblings revealed multi-level radiographs of the resolved aura that invited them to an enclave hostel, to re-enter the world of their daily chores. The Unicorns who would return back to Sardinia stayed on the ship that was in the blue bay. They positioned themselves at the bow one and at the stern the other, to lighten the sails and return to Izzana.

Vernarth and Etréstles walked with their bags, letting go of their feet towards La Via ** Settembre, they travel in an east-west direction, next to Corso Italia, the promenade that runs along the promenade, which is one of the favorite places to reform the destination of Piacenza. From this road they moved near the adjacent carriage station to the Caruggio neighborhood in Sottoripa. Here they entered an inn to eat and drink liqueurs made from natural herbal recipes and sweet citrus, some fish with bread, sauce and Genovés sourdough. to satisfy their hunger.
They had dinner and opened the exit to the terminal. Before, they went to the Ponte Monumentale where the church dedicated to Santa Rita is, called Iglesia de la Consolación, whose entrance, at the level of the old streets, is slightly lower than the current street. They pass a porch and enter. "Almost like a grand cloister sensation they perceived during their stay, as if centuries had passed, but which never ended in the wanderings of any secular period. It was the impression once entered and soaked on this road, which still remains active. From this original cloister, the invocation of images on the sides placed towards the church towards Via ** Settembre, as well as the closed portal in the market access plaza on Via Galata, recur, while the other two sides are they completed attractions to admire when the eastern market in Genoa appeared before them ”.

When they entered, the masks were passed over the bones of their faces, indulgent towards both faces of the visitors, under a freshness of gravitational atmospheric fragrance, perhaps from the connected baptismal font or the lateral nave or the three naves separated by square pillars illuminating them. This is where Vernarth places his right hand on his forehead and his mouth, as a sign of catechesis detached from The Vault, the central nave and the counter-facade that were painted in fresco in 1874 by Giuseppe Isola, after reading about the intertextual verifying thus Vernarth. (Visioni dell'Apocalisse, Gloria di Nostra Signora della Consolazione and Giuditta rientra trionfante in Betulia), while Etréstles frenziedly admitted the frescoes through the side aisles that are the work of Giovanni Quinzio at an angle close to him. Observing everything, he was already indoctrinating to reprint new vigor to enter Piacenza triumphantly and head to the Region of Patmos. Giuseppe Isola's fresco was the great motive that struck his reason for being where he was to continue the threads upon threads of his lineage as the great Commander of the troops of Gaugamela and his Phalanges. Here is the church in its first tune with the duty of limitlessness before its steps to dominions that will make it recover their powers, from where they were first seen dressing in the clothes of an innocent child.


In the apse, there was the choir singing baroque pieces, and followed by elaborate wooden stalls from the 17th century. In the Altars on the left, on the Fifth Altar, Etréstles, captures a simultaneous vision. From that moment when it was the disappearance of this Santa Maria della Pace church, which could have been one structure on top of the other, perhaps in ruins but if the columns could go further from where their originals are born. Until then both had separated from each other, and they would meet again here in the apse, where they never lose sight of each other again, to turn towards the exit that required them to leave the sacred precinct. In the terminal, a grayish float awaited them, with silver trim on the edges of the structure, at the top of the front roof it said "Where you must never go and be". It was just the transport of an allegorical float. They were theatrical traveling artists, who had places available for travelers to Piacenza. The one that they just approached to move to the home, where they had to register at their own will and rejoin this excellent session "Parapsychological Regression".The Trebbia valley, a few kilometers from Piacenza. Vernarth noted that a shaft of the chariot made a strange sound. To which he notified the driver, telling him what he caught on the rear axle of the carriage. They go down to inspect all; not being able to detect anything that it would suppose would be an anomaly of filming of the instrumental east. Etréstles sees that some steeds were grazing on some meadows and he tells them all. Vernarth warns him and immediately heads to them. It reaches only a sorrel that was running its tongue over its hoof. The others flee. Vernarth approaches, and notices that he had a wound in his left hoof, noticing that in the center there was a strip of Green color, He takes his leg, and examines it. He takes out his dagger and begins to remove the stake that was inserted into his damaged leg. The others were gone, restarting the trip to Piacenza. Etréstles managed to climb a steed, and followed him - The float remained without them supposedly to arrive safely at Piacenza. But at 5 km, before reaching the city they are struck by a lightning bolt from a sudden storm. What misdirects his route - the passengers were left intact, only fatally suffered the loss of the driver. (It was verified by Vernarth when he arrived at his home in Piacenza).   As  Vernarth rode fast in the storm, trying to catch up with the carriage. Stress them towards the same to reach their brother. They rode propagating the pastures that passed near the forests of Val Trebbia. When the storm intensified instantly, it was wise to take refuge and wait for the flood to decrease. They were always close to each other. Etréstles about 18 km from Vernarth, they did not know it, but the horses sensed each other. They already distinguished, that they were close to each other, but it was necessary to take care of the horse, and have to check its hoof again. He checks it and notices that it had a green stripe in the four parts, like a pigment already placed concentrically in the middle of each hoof.


Ellipses Gaugamela - Final War
Vernarth bids farewells farewell. Once the Achaemenides are surrendered, he prepares to review them. Walk with Alikanto across the ****** plain. Reviewing his five hundred dead and three thousand wounded, he goes to recirculate in the footsteps of the attack, manages to see lead as a sentinel gathered wounded horses, but not serious. He approaches him and says Khaire; asking what unit they came from. He tells them of the Hosts of the command of Hefestion. The sentinel tells him, that he was enraptured by the fact before his eyes to see that all the horses of the line of Hefestion, Alexander the Great and Vernarth, to fascinate him that they had a green stripe on his left hoof. Wedge riders are formed, lining up the stable, towards the court of the guards and Macedonian monarchs. She dismounts from Alikanto and checks the chestnut trees, managing to insinuate that it could be Medea's ploy of the smiling charm towards her Hetairoi dancers, whose elite had bracelets on each leg on each chestnut. Also with the offensive weapon, they acted as the Macedonian's personal guard. Vernarth recalled that, before starting the offensive, with his blessed Xifos he inflicted light wounds on the left foot of his Phalanges in the act of "overtaking them before being stained by the enemy"

Vernarth says: Here is the cavalry that has received so much praise for «hammer» in the strategies, because it crushed the enemy units retained by the «anvil» or the «phalanx» that I had to command and lead the charge, intoning the riders. And even more the circumcisions that he gave them before entering combat. With the Hetairoi I was organizing squadrons of 200 to 300 soldiers, while they were checking the chestnut trees. In the campaign, they would ride the best horses, ******* or on the blanket, they were awarded the best weapons available. Each carried his long throwing spear Xyston, accompanied by a Kopis sword, for hand-to-hand combat, which in the interlude would defend his flax and bronze breastplate, with respective protective armbands and helmet, before lightly tackling his aggression . The horses were also partially protected, but not their hooves! I gave them the final instruction by decree to take them to the altarpieces and attend to them, so that they check their left hoof.Thus giving signs of great concern about the green stripe on each of its left hooves. Sentinel Hetairoi, with some of his servants, gather the animals and transport them where they have been ordered to tend and examine them. As the designs collapse over the night in gloomy litanies, Medea bursts into a great green outfit saying:

Medea: Vernarth, rancid are on my memory the potions and designs of those who want to talk about me or offer me in their lust.Where the zeal of anxiety deceives the wishful arms that welcome the victorious pleasure. Hooves are my skeptics and famous decisions, because I am weak in will but not in character. Green is the pouring of my converted powers into the veins of the horses. They were carriers in their eloquent ferocity. Instead of blood, I had sap from the magic vessels that I transferred to them so as not to doubt the doubts. Their object is that a green band was encased in their hooves as a sign of the Hipnos promontory through their Son Clovis, to plunge all the forests of the raging underworld, towards the heart of each "Valiant Hetairoi".


Outside ellipsis / near Piacenza
Vernarth and Etréstles in a post-storm clearing, a soft breeze greets them and they meet again, they greet Khaire! And together they reroute to the empty pastures, which would gradually begin to venture them through the farthest forests of the Val Trebbia. On some brown plains with poor colors that visited him falling as they faded on his mirage. From this unusual crossroads they will supremely perceive the closeness of Piacenza in their breathing.
Now they are in the vicinity of the Cimitero de Piaceza. Then they will have to go home on the Via Giovanni Codagnello, on the calendar of January 2020. The Parapsychological Regression continues.


Piacenza Cemetery, January 20, 2020
Vernarth and Etréstles entered the necropolis long before sunset. They were carrying a cake to celebrate Vernarth's birthday. Night Patrol joined the visit. In particular, they followed a night watch service that was active, trusting their guide Piacenza or the surrounding area, with 3 internal night patrol passages 365 days a year, for the rest of lives beyond all material life, perhaps turned into marble statues.
They hired a special service dedicated to the approved service for 2 people .; They were active during the caretaker's office opening hours (the same opening hours as the cemetery). With this service they overcame difficulties to walk after so much traveling. They leave the green-hoofed horses, now turned into statues. They request authorization from the entrance cemetery offices, to honor their belonging and to please those who visit them on their behalf. In Genoa, after having passed through the exterior without entering, they were ecstatic with the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa (the most monumental in Italy).But if they enter the Piacenza, where the sanitary monumentality passed through the real function of such an enclosure in the contingency. It was commented by the neighboring offices that the migration of corpses from Bergamos were moved to Modena, Acqui Terme, Domodossola, Parma, Piacenza to carry out the respective ceremonies. Due to the great Viral Pandemic that decimated a great majority of Italian citizens in these areas. Vernarth became aware of the current reality, saw how a gravedigger conversed with the crowds, there was a nurse, a doctor and a prodigal man who concentrated on uploading moods to those who were there, almost like a caster, to relieve them of this transitory despite humanity.
They continue past the pyramidal pines, to the central pavilion. They sit on the edge of some flagstones, and take the cake to celebrate their birthday. They sing a hymn and they both enjoy it lovingly. Etréstles saw that he had a little cream left on his nose and cheekbone, running his hand to remove it. In the instant, the guard calls them; it was time to go because it was time to close the compound. They say goodbye with a monumental hug paying tribute to their brother!


Etréstles says: Honors Vernarth, for your immeasurable Valor! It is a great contribution that we divide our work and commitments. From here I go to the Messolonghi Cemetery. I will only wait for the crescent moon to meet the Charioteer, then leave with him and my beloved Drestnia. My Xifos Sword in my right hand and the head that I cut off in my left hand, in Gaugamela before that rugged fate! Khaire, My honors Commander Etréstles!. It remains in the shadow of some pyramidal pine trees of this sublime night, and then they distance themselves. Vernarth leaves the compound heading towards his house relatively close to the cemetery, on the Via Giovanni Codagnello.


Final session in Vía Codagnello, Piacenza:
Vernarth enters opens the door and everyone is waiting for him. Huge groups of friends, work colleagues, family, their pets, and especially the Parapsychologist, who had commanded this whole great session. They all approach her and in the instant, Vernarth awakes abruptly from the parapsychological session. They stabilize it and check your vital signs. There were many days of this odyssey. His awakening was mediatic, since they were attentive to him to question him and confess everything, but he was clear that his purpose would lead him to the confines of Patmos along with Raeder and Petrobus. It remained only to wait for the tenuity of a simple immortal warrior to assist in the services of John the Evangelist. The parapsychologist says you have to wake up, you can no longer be AND stay here in this temporary tube!
Once he has refused to wake up, he takes the itinerary to return to Macedonia. The visibly worn and stunned parapsychologist demands that he give up and obey his command. The effort was unproductive, only letting himself be carried by the grip of his right hand, taking his other with great vigor to remove it from shamelessness, from whom he does not suppress his pride to who still remains wounded by the swords that bleed his soul in Gaugamela. "Everyone is amazed and resigned !, pointing out that he must have always been in the surroundings of his beloved Macedonia, cutting the bursts of succulent insolence on the same temperate cliffs, where some variation of the sounds of the wind would make him saddle his Alikanto to acclaim the gods who came looking for him ”

Vernarth is engulfed in ambivalence, almost celebrating his birthday and waking up from his parapsychological journey. Both will take place, but the session will continue irrevocably. After a few days close to the first day of the crescent moon, he greeted him from a privileged place on his house Etréstles de Kalavrita who was with the Charioteer in his car and Drestnia, they went in that masterful car to join the chores of the Koumetrium Messolonghi (Editorial Palibrio - USA) .So returning to Messolonghi, to meet his disciples and essences of the foundation of his naturalness.


Hegira to Patmos
On a gray day in July 1820. Piacenza slept under the ambush of the revolution, in Italy there was a situation similar to that of another European nation. Vernarth was preparing his last details with the parapsychologist, to undertake his Hegira to Patmos, since he was a revolutionary and this was of great motivation to emigrate from this constant stage of Wars and sociopolitical processes. Manage to be a participant in this revolt in the Piedmont area. Its ideological axes were liberalism and nationalism. Given that the most affected countries were those of southern Europe (episodes from other areas, such as Germany or France, were much less important), with Spain as epicenter of a movement that extended to Italy and Portugal, and on the other hand Greece; It has been called the Mediterranean cycle as opposed to the Atlantic cycle that had preceded it in the previous generation (the first liberal revolutions or bourgeois revolutions, produced on both sides of the ocean: the Independence of the United States -1776- and the French Revolution -1789- ). As compromised great principalities of much of Europe were banned, it participates in great dissolution of collisions and invasions that involved it. In this way he would liberate his Homeland, especially his province of Piacenza.

Although the "Kingdom of Italy" as such did not exist, there were two great kingdoms that participated in the Revolutions of 1820: the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Piedmont. However, most of the revolutionary movements were driven by secret societies, such as coal. The Kingdom of Piedmont was also one of the most affected, since it was at the epicenter of Italian nationalism. It was controlled by Víctor Manuel I, member of the House of Savoy and defender of the Old Regime. The monarch had only been on the throne for 6 years, since he returned to Turin in 1814 due to the defeat of Napoleon. Since his return, various factions within the country advocated for a unification of all the Italian kingdoms. The unstable situation of its neighbor, the Kingdom of Naples, caused the carbonarians within Piedmont to revolt in March 1821.

Conclusive Hegira ellipsis to Patmos:
After this great conflict, he orders his parapsychologist to resume his final session in Patmos; he begins the procedure for the era that he had to trespass anachronistically, returning to the era of the Macedonian Empire. The parapsychologist asks him time, place, dates, clothing, customs, and manages to meet his request. He enters the portal, and in the backwaters of Messolonghi he meets Raeder and Petrobus. They were close to this heroic land, Messolonghi in the Gulf of Patras, the capital of Aetolia-Acarnania. Nothing less than in the land of his Brother Etréstles "Koumeterium Messolonghi".


"They all approach the vicinity, pray three times to heaven, and manage to be abducted to the underworld of Messolonghi. When they were snooping through the catacombs, they make out the surroundings of a luminous vault, thus distinguishing a woman passing by with others. It was the beautiful nymph Eurydice inaugurating The Constitution of a new Government”.
Eurydice and the gravediggers worked for the new government to be instituted. They were reviewing the last ground plans that converged on the tenth cemetery.
Eurydice ...: with the absence of Etréstles and Drestnia we will make her awakening continue, whose awakening phase closely relates to her wife.
Grave ...: Where do we start?
Eurydice ...: by the southwestern statue of Ashurbanipal, to pay tribute to Botsaris. Then, we will go up to receive the cordoned off tomb of Bramante and Ghiberti, so that the latter can advise us regarding the work to be erected.
They climb the northeast pavilion to the foundations of a mausoleum. They approach the slab of Ghiberti, who was loosening his fingers, sitting on the shore of a Pyramid-shaped cypress. Bramante vanished into the gray beams of light...

Ghiberti ...: I already know your mission. I am summoned to the Council on the day of the sailors' return. To start, they went to the mines to look for precious stones, stones to build Markos Botsaris.
Eurydice ...: Good! Well, in nine moons and nine suns they will return from the coasts of Morocco, the last docking point, so that they can then return. At the moment they are already warned.
Just back, there was a Lover with her right hand holding her chin.

Inamorada In Love ...: Five centuries ago I awaited my awakening, my lover promised to return ... with these verses...:
"I want to be different,
I want to take you my love...
and tell you that by missing you
there is no greater sadness than not seeing you ...
Forgive me for not coming back...
before my absence caused your death,
Wait for me ... I'm going to tell you ... how I miss you
Along with my immortality of feeling...!  How I miss you...!!

... He still tells me this, but from here, under the embankment of the cemetery I feel that he is far away and I can do nothing. Also, I have it in my memory and one day we will meet here. The Enamorada continues to sit and watch armies of soldiers being thrown into graves, their bodies severed. As she continues; ... there is more life here than on the surface, and the trenches replace the concave wombs, as vessels! As everything here lives, even the flowing and hallucinatory invocations are perceived from the Poets, Alchemists and Astronomers. They make the invisible go in a formidable adventure to the site of their magical hallucinations.
Eurydice ...: Stay on your stone, with your chiffon dress; here you will see the arrival of Etréstles. He will bring news from other lands to answer you. Now dispense if we delay, sadness will fall on the other beings who are being buried and transhumated. The Enamorada remained on the stone with her knees resting on her chest. Eurydice and her assistants went to their rooms. "
All this they manage to witness, and then go in search of Etréstles on the same tenth cemetery floor. Raeder and Petrobus were laughing and at the same time they were impressed, as if wanting to remember him when they have to leave directly from Messolonghi to Patmos, towards the Dodecanese region. In the meantime Vernarth was searching for his brother in all the nearby areas of the catacombs flashing penetrating light, unable to find him. He arrives at the ninth cemetery and is fascinated by a feminine image that would seem like a phantasmagorical chimera ..., it was Drestnia moistening some ferns on some crypts making gestures to see them already grown, even if they had just been planted...!

They approach her intimacy and ask her greetings, Drestnia answers them abstractedly that Etréstles traveled to Patmos to applaud the maiden ceremonies that would be wed in the spring in the nearby meadows. Being able to settle in The Monastery of Zoodochos Pigi, and who later went to the hills of Castelli, as it has been known that everything has been celebrated on a hill that many hundreds of years ago has sheltered our historical fragrances in the unity of the ethereal until the present. Such ruins among some works as well as the Temple of Apollo that will continue to survive with its prevailing mystery not revealed.
Etréstles gives them their congratulations and wraps his arms around Drestnia. They evacuate the cemetery, remaining abstracted in the internal darkness of the catacombs with fewer lights than a feasible twilight of darkness, as if immediately leaving Etréstles to be with him in the spring, shedding light on herself taking them to the Castelli hills, which they would figure in the sweetened exaltation of the pollinations of the nymphs on the maternal and ****** maidens.

They go out and spread their impulses over the promontory of the Koumeterium of Messolonghi with Raeder and Petrobus on Raeder's shoulders. Vernarth invoked the north with her staff where Alikanto would appear with her hooves with greenish stripes.

Raeder says:  Let's go. On those warm currents to follow we will not unite you Vernarth. Smiling, the fantastic boy danced, forming figures that enlivened him to hold on to the legs of Petrobus. They both stared at Vernarth and raised high above the warm clouds. Beneath the Messolonghi miniature, she had Vernarth's sights on them; she was putting reins and her Hoplite tunic, to mount Alikanto. He looks around and makes a big sign to Raeder to follow him to where he was, they suspend themselves and manage to go back to the highest mass of misty airs that would take them against the clock towards Patmos to meet Saint John and Etréstles.

astronomers
being astronomers

look through lenses
)warpedandtrembling(

to see
the u n  s   e     e      a        b        l        e         :

raw new light
still swaddled

in mists of ice
and dust

must we
                  make such attempts to measure the heavens?
we must

She stunned me when I first saw her looks
Never seen like her even in books

An angel who dropped from the sky
To say to me "Sam! Hi!"

She instantly got my full attention
And I at once shown no pretention

She lives now in the corridors of my mind
You won't find a lady so gentle and kind

Now I miss her as I miss the air when I stop breathing
She lives in me, so God help me her seeing

Sam Burton (C)


Today is Friday, Oct. 10, the 289th day of 2014 with 82 to follow.

The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Saturn.



Quotes for the day:



"Correction does much, but encouragement does more."



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



"The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary."



Thomas A. Edison



POETRY

Israfel





Edgar Allan Poe



In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings -
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty -
Where Love's a grown-up God -
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit -
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.



BEAUTY AND HEALTH TIP

Strengthen your nails



Before you go to bed every night, use a nail-strengthening cream on your nails (and under, if they're long). This also keeps them hydrated, which is essential for healthy nails.



Trivia

Where did the name “Revlon: come from?



Nail polish distributors Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with nail polish supplier Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name, gave birth to the Revlon cosmetics company in 1932. Starting with just one nail product a nail enamel unlike any before it the three men pooled their paltry resources and developed a unique manufacturing process. Using pigments instead of dyes, Revlon was able to offer to women rich-looking, opaque nail enamel in a wide variety of shades never before available. In only six years, the company became a multimillion dollar organization, launching one of the most recognized cosmetics names in the world.



How many atoms are there in the universe?



Astronomers believe that the universe contains one atom for every 88 gallons of space.



How do animals influence the weather?



Living creatures create tiny weather systems called microclimates in their nests and burrows. For instance, bees fan their wings at the hive entrance during hot weather. This makes a cooling draft blow through the hive.

VOCABULARY



Splenetic

adjective



:


marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite



Examples:



I know David was in a bad mood all day, but the splenetic tone of his reply to Brenda’s question was not necessary.



"If he were 10 or 15 years younger (or at least looked like he was), [Charlie] Sheen would be perfect as the splenetic, screed-spouting anti-hero of John Osborne’s 'Look Back in Anger.'" — From an article by Ben Brantley on the New York Times Arts Beat blog, May 26, 2011



Did you know?



In early Western physiology, a person's physical qualities and mental disposition were believed to be determined by the proportion of four ****** humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The last of these was believed to be secreted by the spleen, causing feelings of disposition ranging from intense sadness (melancholia) to irascibility. This now-discredited association explains how the use of "splenetic" (deriving from the Late Latin "spleneticus" and the Latin "splen," meaning "spleen") came to mean both "bad-tempered" and "given to melancholy" as well as "of or relating to the spleen." In later years, the "melancholy" sense fell out of use, but the sense pertaining to ill humor or malevolence remains with us today.





Courtesy of Merriam-Webster, Inc.



JOKES



Female Comebacks



Man: Haven't I seen you someplace before?
Woman: Yes, that's why I don't go there anymore.

Man: Is this seat empty?
Woman: Yes, and this one will be if you sit down.

Man: Your place or mine?
Woman: Both. You go to yours, and I'll go to mine.

Man: So, what do you do for a living?
Woman: I'm a female impersonator.

Man: Hey baby, what's your sign?
Woman: Do not enter.

Man: How do you like your eggs in the morning?
Woman: Unfertilized.

Man: If I could see you naked, I'd die happy.
Woman: If I saw you naked, I'd probably die laughing.

Man: Your body is like a temple.
Woman: Sorry, there are no services today.

Man: I would go to the end of the world for you.
Woman: But would you stay there?





Seminars for MEN




(Prepared and Presented by Females)

1. Combatting stupidity

2. You too can do housework

3. ***: Learn when to keep your mouth shut

4. How to fill an ice tray

5. We do not want ****** underthings for Christmas: give us money

6. Understanding the female response to your coming in drunk at 4am

7. Wonderful laundry techniques (formerly titled, "Don't wash my silks")

8. Parenting: It doesn't end with conception

9. Get a life; learn to cook

10. How not to act like a ******* when you're obviously wrong

11. Spelling: Even you can get it right

12. Understanding your financial incompetence

13. You: The weaker ***

14. Reasons to give flowers

15. How to stay awake in public

16. Why it is unacceptable to relieve yourself anywhere but the bathroom

17. Garbage: Getting it to the curb

! 18. You can fall asleep without it if you really try

19. The morning dilemma if IT is awake: Take a shower

20. I'll wear it if I **** well please

21. How to put the toilet lid down (formerly titled "No, it's not a bidet")

22. "The weekend" and "sports" are not synonyms

23. Give me a break: Why we know your excuses are bull

24. How to go shopping with your mate and not get lost

25. The remote control: Overcoming your dependency

26. Romanticism: Ideas other than ***

27. Helpful postural hints for couch potatoes

28. Mothers-in-law: They are people too

29. Male bonding: Leaving your friends at home

30. You too can be a designated driver

31. Seeing the true you (formerly titled, "You don't look like Mel Gibson when naked")

32. Changing your underwear: It really works

33. The attainable goal: removing "****" from your! vocabulary

34. Fluffing the blankets after flatula! ting is not necessary

35. Techniques for calling home before you leave work





The Bacon Tree



There are two guys who have been lost in the desert for weeks, and they're at death's door. As they stumble on, hoping for salvation in the form of an oasis or something similar, they suddenly spy, through the heat haze, a tree off in the distance.

As they get closer, they can see that the tree is draped with rasher upon rasher of bacon. There's smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life-giving juicy nearly-raw bacon, all sorts. "Oh my, Pepe" says the first bloke. "It's a bacon tree!!! We're saved!!!" "You're right!" says Pepe.

So Pepe goes on ahead and runs up to the tree salivating at the prospect of food. But as he gets to within five feet of the tree, there's the sound of machine gun fire, and he is shot down in a hail of bullets. His friend quickly drops down on the sand, and calls across to the dying Pepe.

"Pepe! Pepe! What on earth happened?"...

With his dying breath Pepe calls out...

"Ugh, run, run!... it's not a Bacon Tre! e...

Scroll Down...













...it's a Ham Bush"





HAVE A SUPER NICE FRIDAY and a GORGEOUS WEEKEND!

I forgot to pay my muthafucking mobile phone bill.

I tell ya, this week until payday is going to be some thrill.

The only luxury I have in my life is the information super highway on that phone.

I click on a land faraway, once the weirdos at my work start to ***** and moan.

I click on the browser and let my mind roam.

I get to type all over the world,

The co-workers complain about all the races they hate

while I don't say a word and go to wikipedia straight away.

I can spend hours reading about nazis, astronomers, and plants

I might just invest in ear plugs to stop listening to co-workers rant.

I catch up on gossip about celebrities I have never heard of,

and read about the **** they are doing to ruin their lives.

I go to Facebook, where a few people think my words are clever.

Lets me sever the pains of everyday annoyances.

Read about dreamy recipes I could make, and all the delicious pies I will bake.

Chat with someone who slept all day and is now awake in Egypt.

But like I said, I am without a phone this week.

Seven days to let my insanity peak.

We write because there is an unexplainable magical phenomenon surrounding us called conscious.

It is what expanded in the very beginning, it's will evolved everything living.
It invented these elements, that binded to create compounds.
With the help of gravity and expansion, these natural chemical compounds slowly started structures.
Other elements were produced, binded, and reproduced, exponentially manifesting other life.

Thankfully, consciousness is beautiful.
And it has an exquisite pattern that boggles the mind. Astronomers, mathematicians, scientists, artists, and other mortal men are astounded by it (even if they don't know 'it' yet). Because of this pattern, known as The Fibonacci Sequence, also relates to geometry, dimensions, and space, creates "The Flower of Life".

Look up into the stars and you will see them all pointing out, all moving still as one, there will be one brighter star that seems to serve as the center point for the flower. But focus on another and you will see the flower there too. Howl at the stars and you will see a dimension of movement as they shine a tail reacting to your vibrations. (I wonder if that's what wolves always see).

It is because of this pattern that the compounds "fell" into place. They happened upon a dimensional line and shaped nicely into spheres that includes all their elements they were attracted too. They followed the Sun and other stars for the light and a leading center point. Our rock (this planet) just so happened to be perfectly away yet close enough to the Sun, and had the right kinda elements, that it was able to form a livable habitat for something..

It was the first four main elements that came alive with activity on the surface of this land. Earth, Water, Fire, and Air started oozing, spilling, swimming, forming, into a place that gave way for the compounds that make up the cells of plants to sprout. Bacteria grew also out of cells and atoms and ****. Bugs and other simple creatures where the first to be bestowed upon this mass. This consciousness just wanted to grow, however way it can or does, it did. Even as reptiles, as dinosaurs, as birds, as sea creatures. The consciousness that started the craziness was snot stopping any time soon. It was going through trial and error, how we, everyday, always do. The consciousness just wanted to grow, to do, to be, it needed to replenish it's energy through eating whatever else it had created, it needed to reproduce so as to continue, and it needed to die to make room for the new and improved. But this consciousness is always there, always around, flying everywhere.

Other habitants of this universal consciousness has seen our Planet, and they were pleased. Good and Evil wanted to help or destroy.

The weather, and geology, are also still a part of this consciousness, and with their elements and the expanding evolution of the atmosphere and core of the Earth, were able to evolve as well. Other animals came about as a reaction and adapted to the ever changing environment.

Finally, the consciousness that exists in every thing that tells it to move, to change, to do, to be, to create: started having emotions.. Thus, humans were created. We still have that older consciousness of wanting to do, to be, to create, to reproduce. We have viral qualities of latching on to a host and slowly destroying here (Mother Earth), we have plant like and animalistic qualities becuase we have a male and a female that reproduce, we feed, we grow, we protect, we crave the Sun, we crave acceptance. But now we also crave Love. We encompass compassion. We have consciousness, and we KNOW we have consciousness, we not only think and make decision, but we know that we are. Isn't that crazy!? I believe many animals are starting to think this way too..

We embody emotions, the greatest being love. Fear was an emotion for the first creatures on this Earth, it is slowly evolving to Love. Fear made us make more. As bacteria and viruses, we fear deceasing to nonexistence, so we become stronger to keep up with the cures. As plants we feared being over powered by others, so we reached out our limbs and branches to touch closer to the Sun. As animals we fear other animals. As humans, we know what it is to love and be loved.

Some Earthlings know the powers we carry, and of the Mother and Father.
Some give praise to these every day, because we are the children.
Some don't, some have lost what it means to be.

Some have evolved in the opposite intended direction. Which is silly to say because as consciousness' only meaning is to grow, be and do, with this statement, consciousness is going in the 'right' direction. I do not know yet why there is good and evil sides of consciousness. did one come as a result of the other? were they nth part of consciousness at the same time? Can we all agree we need both? (cannot feel pleasure without pain, etc) or can we see what it is like with just good surrounding.. then in that case, who is to say what is good: The child dancing in the rain, watching her garden grow, catching droplet on her tongue, would say the weather is 'good'. The lovers' getting washed away in the flood trying to save each other, would not. But all this is 'the way things are'. Anyways..

to be continued

The slant-eyed
giant hunter
people of Tsul Kalu
came in peace

To become
the central universe
Cherokee white elders
hereditary priests
teaching peace

Winged rattlesnake
constellation
of time untime

Singing the death song

Sacred spirits
animal, plant, herb and tree

The wheel
what is, will be

(The ancient Chinese were
the greatest astronomers.

Later in the 1400's their
massive treasure fleets
mapped the World

The Yuki, Navajo, Apache,
Yuchis, Ming **, Melungeons,
Shawnee (Oceanye **), Sioux,
Cree Ojibuwa and Moskoke
have Chinese ancestors
some claimed to be Chinese

European explorers told of
elders speaking Chinese
ancient Chinese artefacts
and wrecked junks seen

History as taught might
be but a fairytale)

A Comet passed too near the sun,
and was filmed  disintegrating..
Perhaps its G.P.S. was off
or just recalculating.
The solar skimming comet
surely melted in the heat.
Old King Sol, our yellow dwarf
Enjoyed his slurpee treat.
Astronomers were quite tight lipped
When asked to speak upon it
All I got from one stargazer
Was a terse” No Comet!”

I.

You can always tell the
Virgins from the way they
Glide—cerebral giddy with nectarfilled
Hearts and earlobes full of
Wax/
Wane moonshine turf if you’re not
Dying for astronomers’ loves and what makes
Ptolemy different from Claude is
Given prove:
Equal and opposite reaction.

II.

Shove knife down pork
Wasn’t so hard, was it.

III.

TWO SOLIDS INTERSECT

In a plane. In the bathroom, to be exact.
What follows is not
Essential to the proposition;
Calculate the spatial
(surface area, volume of cubicle,
conclude insufficient is <
where escape
velocity is )
useless to
resistance factor 7 [prepare
for lift-off landing
taxi

To the Bronx of course where else would I
Be on a night like this it’s raining in the parlour
Wont you step outside?

III.

anemic & half-
starved half-
sandwich
go on,
have a bite.

IV.

in arm will undulate bloodcellspouroutcantstoptoowide
are you just imagining this?
What would they tell you in school blood is
thicker than water
i’m not sure they eat
carnivores here.

CARNIVAL
festival of meat.

Flesh
LIVE
trembling
quiver SWIFT shoot through air DUCK dead swandive nosedive outplug
BOOM go the couple in the cabin
lavatory
laboratory? Rats go bang in the night

crash & burn debris over Detroit is our
favorite way to die
colorful isn’t it rainbow—
brushfire—
bruises and fire storms out and around the
populace to decimate seems like mating by a factor of ten

V; or. X^2+i(70x7)=

aftermath:

my ex squared
with me seventy times
seven
equals in
fortitude (labor-intensive)
tea costs sixpence in dallas what about
you so
integral to my
being that sometimes I wonder if you’re just
imaginary or if
what it takes to be transcendental is
beyond what’s rational or even what’s
real to me:

eight is
enough for the eggs.

The stars are out tonight
I gaze at them from my yard
My hair spread out on the grass
My mind races
Focused on how far away these glittering lights are
An entire universe is out there
But it was not made for me
I am small
But can a light still burn inside me?
Especially if I feel so dark?
I like to think we are all stars
And astronomers at the same time
Searching for our place in the galaxy
Will you be a star with me?
With you I no longer feel dimmed
Can you let me illuminate your world?
I’ve been pulled in by your gravity
There’s no way to leave your orbit now
Even if I wanted to

We both traced the constellations
those that were unknown
the stars danced to a different tune last night
Those we called our own
The astronomers stencilled each complicated line
With our bare hands we scratched each curve
We may have not  heard yet
We've built a universe of our own

Spaceman with galaxies tied to fingertips

Like a puppet you make the universe dance

You are their creator with strings of umbilical cords

Freckles scattered on your nose were the original constellations

Pensive eyes, the first stars and each blink causes galactic explosions

Astronomers were unable to properly trace origins but I did the moment you entered my orbit

I grew up knowing we are a broken race,
A race that changes smiles to frowns on everyone's face,
A race of pity, a race of self destruction,
A race of slaves, a race of savages.
I grew up knowing that we are the poison to the sea,
Acid to the earth
And pollution to the air.
I grew up embarassed of my colour,
Embarassed of my Nation,
Embarassed of my Continent...

I guess I didn't know better
That one day I will discover of our Greatness.
I discovered that our forefathers walked all four corners of the Earth.

Let me rephrase that...

Our forefathers were acknowledged in all corners of the Earth.
I discovered we were once tutors of the world,
We were once Astronomers of the stars,
Travellers of Mother Earth,
Doctors to the sick
And Founders of great kingdoms like Cambodia, parts of Egypt, America etc...
We were founders of some of the world's oldest civilisations,
The olmec vivilization.

African child, how far have you fallen?

I get so much joy and pride when I look back,
Back beyond the slave's era,
Further before the missionaries,
The beauty I see.
I am overwhelmed by the greatness of our Africanism.

Where did it all go wrong?

We have such great history
But it all sounds like a myth or a mystery
Especially when I say that we once walked tall and high in the foreign lands of America,
Not as slaves but as residents and rulers.
Our history shouts of our greatness,
It tells us that the first man to be saluted as Emperor of China
Was the son of the soil, the son of Africa.
Our history tells a story of our existence in India,
Our great kingdoms in Cambodia and Scotland.
Our history even goes back further to the ancient times of the Bible.
It speaks of ******, a great man in the eyes of the Lord,
The father of Cush, the founder of Cushite, a black nation.

It saddens me to see us disrespect our elders like this
For they hold our rich history.
They hold the bridges we have forgotten,
They hold the secrets of our Nation.
They were there when mama Africa gave birth to us
And we will weep when mama Africa swallows them up.
We will not cry for they have gone
But we will cry for the knowledge we have buried.

If you don't believe me ask the sage Ntate Credo Mutwa.

Wake up Africa. Wake up and Rise...
Rise African Child!

You ever have those days when you'd rather take the long way home?
With headphones on
Ignoring your heart beat
Trying not to crack like promises and iphone screens...
Well honestly,
You ripped the spine off of my notebook paper skeleton and crumpled it into the shape of your fists until it was nothing but a broken haiku:

What is love without
Lighting matches in the dark
Drenched in gasoline

You wear the whites of your eyes like flags when we touch
Like giving up is an option
And I'm trying to rewind the cassette tape memories to the beginning when smiles decorated our faces and I didn't know your full name or that you love orange juice and comic books
We're just kids in love with following fault lines to their breaking points and drawing assumptions on sidewalks while it rains. Raised on etch a sketch commitments that fade when shaken
We have no connection to the word 'stay'
**** the Christmas lights in your eyes, they don't stay up all year like I had hoped and I wore red lipstick to stop myself from kissing you and you stopped gelling your hair back like permission for me to massage your aching head, knead out any leftover thoughts of 'slow down'
But that was centuries ago and by centuries I mean lifetimes ago and maybe our souls have agreed to meet in some silent studio where you paint me abstract on subservient canvases and you'd feel like Salvador Dali as you melt clocks on my wrist to leave our moments up for interpretation...
We will not touch again, we had our last hug and the bass of our pulse has weakened so the memories don't keep us up at night
They have become elevator music in the back of our minds because we don't want to forget the sound of 'I love you'
Like astronomers falling in love with a blank sky, darling, it's in our nature to chase after the stars that chase after the moon that chases after the sun that chases after the world that chases after this idea of love.
Lets fold our empty spaces into intricate origami haikus like...

We ran out of glue
Stationary paper cranes
We burn down in flames

I have forgotten what day it is
I have forgotten what day it is
my purpose is to wait-
and long for you to
Address me, dress me, hold
me.
promise me; the blue sky I grow lustful
and drunk over.
tide me over with
the hidden knowledge of
soothe-sayers
astronomers, those
who have a hand
inside of them
and His fire, blinding
and
bright and
alluring
in their eyes.

in a cathedral of my own making
i am dust basked in sun light
with hands stretched out
to love the pillars
that have held me up
when the stained glass windows
were celebrated for the
light they let in
and the most divine part of me
the cracks of my temple at
the bottom of my spine were
left to widen like horizons
begging to be spread farther
were left like myths untold
but all the stories are true
and the smallest parts of me
are not fables and myths
left to keep your imagination
alive and you afloat
the smallest parts of me
are particles that have
held me up longer
than you have
and i may be alone
just as many of us are
but who has time to
count a star
when astronomers count
galaxies on the tips of their fingers
and i am but an atom of the universe
just as we all are

I met someone like you
In a sense that he possessed the same
Spirit as you,
With old passion that boils for the written word
See, he had the fire you had
The kind that enflames the heart,
Engulfs every part of the body,
The bright yellow that means destruction for those who dare to
Envision what lies behind the concrete walls

But he, better.
With a soul that lusted for the truth in things, only to find the truth couldn't be found in things we saw but in what we felt
But you wanted to see what could only be felt

I did meet someone like you,
Only he had a tenderness your hands couldn't have ever known,
Your heart wouldn't have bothered to attempt to give, or attempt to accept
Your mind wouldn't have fathomed-it goes against your illogical logic
(Narcissists aren't emotional when it doesn't concern them)
And your eyes couldn't see though wide open, because your heart is closed

He looked at me like the astronomers had conspired with the stars for me to find him,
For him to find me
And they aligned perfectly
As if the ancestors had boiled our blood in a clay *** to forge an unbreakable bond,
And like the 10 rules of life, written on stone and sealed with the love of Him

I guess what I'm saying is,
I met someone better than you

they say men are from Mars
and women are from Venus
but i wonder what takes so long
for us to cross paths
perhaps
it's what the astronomers tried to declare
that Mars and Venus never does
and will never intersect orbits
with millions of miles in between them
or what the astrologers tried to foretell
that a love unknown as a nameless star
can never really shine in the first place
because of the thousands of miles between us
but even if it takes an infinity of time or space
for us to reach one another
i would still stay and wait
by your side, i will hover
what matters for now is
i found you
amidst many others
i saw you
even in the dark
and i love you so

(I seldom publish anyone else's poetry, but this one is so exceptional on so many levels, I had to reproduce it here. Hillary Clinton reposted it, so why not me?)

“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin,
Is a great equalizer of the conditions of men.” – Horace Mann, 1848.
At the time of his remarks I couldn’t read — couldn’t write.
Any attempt to do so, punishable by death.
For generations we have known of knowledge’s infinite power.
Yet somehow, we’ve never questioned the keeper of the keys —
The guardians of information.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen more dividing and conquering
In this order of operations — a heinous miscalculation of reality.
For some, the only difference between a classroom and a plantation is time.
How many times must we be made to feel like quotas —
Like tokens in coined phrases? —
“Diversity. Inclusion”
There are days I feel like one, like only —
A lonely blossom in a briar patch of broken promises.
But I’ve always been a thorn in the side of injustice.

Disruptive. Talkative. A distraction.
With a passion that transcends the confines of my consciousness —
Beyond your curriculum, beyond your standards.
I stand here, a manifestation of love and pain,
With veins pumping revolution.
I am the strange fruit that grew too ripe for the poplar tree.
I am a DREAM Act, Dream Deferred incarnate.
I am a movement – an amalgam of memories America would care to forget
My past, alone won’t allow me to sit still.
So my body, like the mind
Cannot be contained.

As educators, rather than raising your voices
Over the rustling of our chains,
Take them off. Un-cuff us.
Unencumbered by the lumbering weight
Of poverty and privilege,
Policy and ignorance.

I was in the 7th grade, when Ms. Parker told me,
“Donovan, we can put your excess energy to good use!”
And she introduced me to the sound of my own voice.
She gave me a stage. A platform.
She told me that our stories are ladders
That make it easier for us to touch the stars.
So climb and grab them.
Keep climbing. Grab them.
Spill your emotions in the big dipper and pour out your soul.
Light up the world with your luminous allure.

To educate requires Galileo-like patience.
Today, when I look my students in the eyes, all I see are constellations.
If you take the time to connect the dots,
You can plot the true shape of their genius —
Shining in their darkest hour.

I look each of my students in the eyes,
And see the same light that aligned Orion’s Belt
And the pyramids of Giza.
I see the same twinkle
That guided Harriet to freedom.
I see them. Beneath their masks and mischief,
Exists an authentic frustration;
An enslavement to your standardized assessments.

At the core, none of us were meant to be common.
We were born to be comets,
Darting across space and time —
Leaving our mark as we crash into everything.
A crater is a reminder that something amazing happened here —
An indelible impact that shook up the world.
Are we not astronomers — looking for the next shooting star?
I teach in hopes of turning content, into rocket ships —
Tribulations into telescopes,
So a child can see their potential from right where they stand.
An injustice is telling them they are stars
Without acknowledging night that surrounds them.
Injustice is telling them education is the key
While you continue to change the locks.

Education is no equalizer —
Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream.
So wake up — wake up! Lift your voices
Until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky.
Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential.
I’ve been a Black hole in the classroom for far too long;
Absorbing everything, without allowing my light escape.
But those days are done. I belong among the stars.
And so do you. And so do they.
Together, we can inspire galaxies of greatness
For generations to come.
No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning.
Lift off.

Donovan Livingston
Harvard Commencement 2016

Diastolic memory fills mind with blood
Heart purges other unforgettable serum
Gushing in and out; valediction, invasion
Scent left on bed sheets binomial theorem

Calculus, physics computing mnemonics us
Trust not sum of it, exponents baying flux
Participles and components abject humbling
Stumbling bio discourse create sedentary crux

Stupefying brain surgeons, those of heart too
Call in mathematicians, astronomers as well
No making sense of it, linguistic doctorates few
To tell of this push-pull sensory denoting hell

Not much time to live after lungs dispensed
Entrenched questions remain to be adoring
Extravagantly historians exploring
Unanswerable examining of this imploring

Must breathe the linens till all dissipation
Your essence in the ether of our resting
Place turned into mad languid laboratory
Conjuring back moments I am requesting

how sensible it all seems, how crew-cut and with enough
anaesthetic to k.o. an elephant - outside the laboratories
the populists in whatever guise march on - as with any
congregation, atheists also muster up enough social muscle:
they too have their bouncers and other
gob-smackers with knuckle dusters -
as long as science is popularised it pushes
the boundaries of insensible chasms elsewhere -
                             but with so futile popularisation:
shortages in respective sectors: mandatory,
or as suggested: no longer rich bachelors and
         private laboratories - a science of regurgitation -
once they burned heretics, now the subtle
        championing of mingy sedatives - and since
Joan of Arc's heart no longer aspires to passion
and its all consuming fire, it turns into a wet
piece of coal - reining in the crowds of pop culture
zombies - said before, said again - but how
dislodged the feelings not ranging into absurdity
or at least nibbling on the zest of Dionysus;
but how things changed from that year, 2006,
everyone is asking, the poncy pope with glamorous
attire, the stiff-necked scientists - the pendulum
of guilt swinging in both directions - half of
the 20th century prescribed a fear magnanimously:
oddly enough - as implying: we forgive your
puny religious swooning and answering with
the easiest answers possible... here's a bomb -
so who are the sacred ones? they too are human -
the magazine dissected into:
a. what is reality? (can we be sure that the world
  we experience is not just a figment of our
    imagination) by roger penrose
     b. do we have free will? (the more we find
out about the brain works, the less room there
  seems to be for personal choice or responsibility)
     by patricia churchland
c. what is life? (if we encounter alien life,
chances are we wouldn't recognise it - not even
if it was here on earth) by robert hazen
d. is the universe deterministic?
   (however you look at it, the answer seems to be "maybe")
       by vlatko vedral
   e. what is consciousness? ("my soul is a hidden
    orchestra... all i hear is the music" - fernando pessoa)
            by paul brooks
f. will we ever have a theory of everything?
    (2000 years of rational inquiry may be approaching
  their crowning glory. just one more push could
   be enough...)
                            by michio kaku
   g. what happens after you die? (we have all
  wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave -
or foolish - enough to try and find out)
                                by mary roach
  h. what comes after **** sapiens?
  (all species are fated either to die out or to evolve
  into something else. all except humans, that is)
                   by james hughes -
so there we have it - the respective pillars of science,
whereby science replaces core beliefs into
core questions - to not hold firm, but to constantly
sway - the 8 founding questions - no more,
  no less - but how many people can perpetually sway?
   the supposed 8 universals, i.e. that every human
  being might, might not, will or will not ask -
     and for these 8 universals, exponential functions
of particulars: because that's how it's supposed
to be: chaotically democratic -
thus everyone knows the objectivity standard:
at its core is awe, outside the core pathology and
apathy - or let us say: passions and indifference -
then subdivisions of (+) and (-), and in general:
   however it is you feel: compensated or left starving.
in 2006, they congregated at a round table and
spoke god-this, god-that - no minority report,
  cold evidence never went down with women (or
so i'm told), three questions, question 1:
                 should science do away with religion?
oddly enough R. Dawkins said:
               "no doubt there are many people who do need
religion, and far be it from me to pull the rug from
under their feet." - we know that the bestseller
              the god delusion came out shortly after.
a physicist (S. Weinberg) similarly (c me la ri lee):
   "science can't provide a sense of magic about the world,
or a community of fellow-believers. there's a
religious mentality that yearns for that."
  L. Krauss: the success of science does not encompass
the entirety of human intellectual experience.
on and on this goes - i guess they have to debate for
the sake of debate - as i am sure everyone is aware:
   a debate can overpower the point of prayer -
confessions? i treat it more like poetry - but in saying
that... where is the medical profession in all of this?
we have astronomers, ecologists, biologists,
physicists, astrophysicists, planetary scientists,
cosmologists, philosophers... what's the odd one out?
it's a bit suspicious that this magazine does not
cite any chemists... and that's ****** obvious...
they're the ones making pacts with the devil -
whether Goethe's or Marlowe's Faust -
then at least to the more obscure rendition
of Pan Twardowski (Herr Tvardovsky) -
         but how odd it already is that chemists haven't
joined ranks with other scientists in their little
Friday night debating club meetings - seriously?
are those boffins serious about all of this?
            or as one said it:
i came from learning to write CO for carbon monoxide,
   and FeO for ferric oxide - or drawing electron migration
  diagrams when two compounds interact (a nice
playground of symbols) and went my way into
   some form of linguistics - primarily working on
          the tetragrammaton - i have no major interest
beyond this definition: would i debate the most
difficult metaphysical assumption of the omni-variations
in terms of ascribing the variations to a being?
i'd stumble in the metaphysical world on omnipresence,
meaning i would be a pantheist - meaning god
    would be anything and everything from the moon,
a mouse, an ant colony, my **** and what not -
            the all-in-one: for one thing, that's already much
too hellish to comprehend, let alone make comedy from.
but they haven't told you about the painkilling
saliva that beats morphine - catherine rougeo:
proceedings of the national academy of sciences,
vol. 103, p. 17979) - the compound's name? opiorphin,
or the scourge of Afghanistan. they also didn't
tell you about Saracen sabres - their scimitars contained
carbon nanotubes - forged from Indian steel
called wootz - 17th century examples studied by
P. Paufler (Dresden) found the carbon nanotubes
and even nanowires (nature, vol. 444, p. 286) -
or is this becoming to look very much like traffic
on London's M25 during rush-hour? it certainly is,
as was intended -
                   1950s: age of optimism -
influenza wave from the east, the indestructible transistor,
   television without wires, baby computer the size of
  a piano, rubber windshields, genetic chemistry,
atomic aircraft, the neutrino, sputnik 1, strontium-90
(radioactive ash)  used by manufacturers of woven
and knitted fabrics to overcome fog markings,
the coleopter, polypropylene (the remnants of German
word-compounding revealed in chemistry, and
only in chemistry, elsewhere compounding is
replaced by hyphenation, i.e. hyphenating),
                  and so on and so forth until present day -
passing through Sir, Julian, Huxley, who reinvented
****** with "positive" eugenics - oh sure, it was still
alive and kicking - quark hunters draw a blank -
             i could reference all else that was involved
in making the last 60 years - beyond that people are
call it ancient history - or are Virgil and as Horace,
and as Ovid did - turned their back to the world,
         into their poplar groves and jasmine filled gardens,
and said: ta'oh!           ta'oh!                 Tao!
  but not until then, before embarking i'm already
dreading to embark with something to add, to even
voice this -                                     but i guess i might:
  as ever, the freedom of speech is never as grand a
                                      luxury as the freedom to think.

And when I opened my eyes, the whole
of the night sky was white-washed—even one hundred
and five miles wasn’t enough to keep the lights
of metropolitan Columbus from blocking out
the stars. In my drunkenness, there lying
by the lakeside, I perceived the three-dimensionality
of space, and at first, I was awestruck by that vision,
but then one of the stars started shooting, as the astronomers
had predicted, and with my mouth still wide open, I realized
that the shooting star was just a moth, and not
the dust of a comet. The three-dimensional vision I’d perceived
an illusion, the picture dissolved, and there I was
again basking in the two-dimensional darkness
that even one hundred and five miles couldn’t make black.