travel well

passing through sleep's gaze,
passing through

"The heat of the Sun warmed my skin and sank into my muscles and bones. As the fiery pulsations of light radiated from the star, I harmonized my breath, my entire existence, with its rhythm, which drew me into its furnace of cosmic comprehension. When there was no differentiation between the limits of my body-mind and the radiant matrices of solar light, I entered its labyrinth of lens-like crystalline chambers and returned to that from which I came. Quenched in this reunion, I moved beyond the Sun and found the container of my consciousness floating above it in a silence that was absolute. I drifted in a sea of potentiality. There was neither the passage of time nor the absence of its passage.

A starry display before me, I beheld the courtship of creation between the Sun and Earth. Liquid gold fractals of geometric energy formed an unremitting arid endless transmission of light-code Intelligence pulsing in orgasmic spherical waves from the Sun, generating the photonic matrix of creation, cascades of primal data rippling out to Earth's bio-spheric aura. A responsive shiver of energy emanated from Earth, an egg-like receptive embrace which integrated the electric seed impulse of the Sun's attentions, a womb from which all cosmological solar transmissions were birthed into time and space. 

This sacred communion formed interference patterns of geometries that nested seamlessly, morphing, birthing ever more dense fields of manifestation. The life mandate, entering the bio-spheric membrane of Earth, descended into the crystallization of matter, translating light's subtle impulse as life forms that walk, fly and swim, clothed in fur, feather and skin... trees, flowers and shimmering wings; Earth interpreting the love from her Sun as the living poetry of form and feeling, color and sound. Into the ratio of this symbiotic relationship was the peripheral but essential influence of other planets through whose presence within this solar system the symbiosis of evolution was coded.

It was then that I felt the discordance.

It reminded me of every negative response, thought or feeling that I had ever experienced within the scope of my life as a Human. I felt from behind me in the shadows of space, a transmission; a contorted mutant influence. Its invasive presence permeated the sacred communion I had witnessed, downgrading the resonant tantric harmonic created by the two potencies of creation transmitted and received by Earth and Sun to that of a lesser frequency, disrupting the sacred order of evolutionary embryogenesis, and instead, birthing a deformed fetal paradigm, creating a field of diffracted frequency around the planet in which all living units of circuitry collectively transmitted the electromagnetic consensus of a mortal realm, a cocoon of belief in which the dormant immortality of Humanity never finds its wings, but dies over and over again.

I understood that this imposter within our solar system has brought death to Earth, showing only one face, keeping its dark side in the shadows. Its ultra-magnetic field instigates the dualistic infrastructure of conflict that has, in the living memory of Humanity, torn the world apart. It stabilizes the genetic mutation of the divine blueprint of all life forms on Earth, perpetiiating the disconnection of core circuitry that would allow for the reciprocal communion of life with the Source of its Creation.

This congenital disconnection has spawned a devastating spiritual chasm to be filled with innumerable erroneous concepts of God, creating a deeply rooted mycelium of deception in the Human psyche. The transmission of this synthetic and heartless presence never misses a beat, but transmits its mutant message relentlessly and remorselessly in the disease, suffering and death it has catalyzed since it was placed within Earth's orbit. It is the grand deceiver in the sky. It is our moon."

Juliet J. Carter, Worldbridger

Gulls on Copper Coast, County Waterford, Ireland
by E ©2016

angels and icons

Florence in its role as the traditional birthplace of the Renaissance is much like an open air museum with galleries dedicated to the worship of art, beauty and enlightenment. Today, Los Angeles takes centre stage in promoting and worshipping these ideals, showing the rest of the world how the gods and goddesses of the 21st Century are packaged and revered.

Los Angeles fuels the imagination. You can be a porn star and a physicist. You can decide to study Zen Buddhism until the next lifestyle trend seduces you. There are no rules. It has to be one of the most ridiculously wonderful cities in the world.

While Florence's piazzas attest to its rich history of art and architecture, Los Angeles is a landscape of concrete with no sense of self justification. It is architecturally and linguistically free. No one thinks that L.A. "works," or that it's well-designed or even that it makes sense to have put it there in the first place; they just think it's interesting, a place to indulge your latest addictions and be your creative untamed self.

Los Angeles is a place where you can confront the objective fact that you mean nothing. Everything precedes you and is bigger than you and more abstract than you. Everything is indifferent to you. You don't matter. You're free. It is a post post-modern landscape of indifference.

Just as Florence with its legendary paintings of prophets and saints paved the way for the visits of future gods, the billboards on Sunset Boulevard do the same thing. The legendary images are everywhere. They’re fresh and formidable. A pantheon of prophets and icons, ripe with merchants selling their dreams, Hollywood peddles 21st century renewal and rebirth

© 2016
E/R


                                                                       ***

* During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand. Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia and Europe.

Merchants brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the Levant. Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a producer of fine glass, while Florence was a capital of textiles. The wealth such business brought to Italy meant large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for study * Wikipedia~Renaissance

Lost In Thought

Take Me To Church

via Victoria LaPage @ Arctic Origin of Civilization - 2

image from Arkaim (Wikipedia) via camonica-club.blogspot.com

Low Altitude

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

————————————— — Rumi

I fly at a delicately-low altitude
You feel it viscerally in your soul
——and your wingspan lifts me
———–like earth’s breath
I empty myself of sadness
——–such is the power of storms
Some things are too sacred
——–to be uttered
Time slips away
I open doors
———–time stands still
Flying at a delicately low altitude
—–stalking music in a house of mirrors
———-I search for instructions
The key hides in the patterns
—— my magical thinking refuses to acknowledge
I can disappear
—— the way mountains turn bluer on the horizon
or a slow virga sublimes
————You listen to the silence
drawn on the ashes of ancient sacrifices
——-know the redeeming power
————-of beauty and goodness
and that to live is to persist in pain

From Life in Suspension, Salmon Poetry, 2016

---

Hélène Cardona is a poet and actor, the recipient of numerous awards and honours including a Hemingway Grant and the USA Best Book Award. Her books include three poetry collections, most recently Life in Suspension and Dreaming My Animal Selves(Salmon Poetry); and three translations:Beyond Elsewhere (White Pine Press), Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux, Éditions du Cygne), and Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb. She co-edits Plume andFulcrum: An Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics, and is co-producer of Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling. She holds a Master’s in American Literature from the Sorbonne, taught at Hamilton College & Loyola Marymount University, and received fellowships from the Goethe-Institut & Universidad Internacional de Andalucía. Publications include Washington Square, The Warwick Review, Poetry International, World Literature Today, Irish Literary Times, & elsewhere

Our short film is now on RTE Player

http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/shortscreen-1295/10604900/

Through an admittedly soft imperial narcissism, one might say there is no greater love than being perfectly understood (captured) by another  even though this is always your own projected sense of understanding as reflected towards you and as perceived within impressions). One might then release the need to control and monitor self-awareness/focus, allowing the other to render and breathe [our] existence into conscience/consciousness, seeing ideas of yourself dance and pause in the awareness and reflexivity of the other, forming a shared game of imagination. †7

(Seven Nova)

And then he said: ‘let no one steal the birth and flow of poetry from your soul’. 

I place beauty in its own category, beyond words and realize how far we’ve travelled to let go of eternity in all its playfulness, its patterns and stories, its endless ending, its nameless wonder.

.Indoctrination discourages us from thinking creatively,

prompting instead pre-prepared answers,

constraining our possible futures,

limiting our heartfelt responses.

As we disentangle ourselves from the indoctrinated,

from rationality, obedience and conformity,

we must often maintain our silence,

proceed with compassion 

remove ourselves from reason
by way of the reasonable. 

photo credit: Andrew Moore

Arvo Part - "Spiegel im Spiegel'

I am aware of your sensitivities as they embrace me. Even though I know this is a dream, I am drawn to you. I drift off to nowhere, wandering, of no body, falling into an endless inner world that goes beyond me. If I can breathe, I will paint you into music, to love you forever as the sound of my illusion. 
(Seven Nova)

...I'm what is called a sensibilist,
Or otherwise an environmentalist.
I refuse to adapt myself a mite
To any change from hot to cold, from wet
To dry, from poor to rich, or back again.
I make a virtue of my suffering
From nearly everything that goes on round me.
In other words, I know wherever I am,
Being the creature of literature I am,
I shall not lack for pain to keep me awake...

(Robert Frost : New Hampshire)

One day we will stop naming people according to national and religious categories. The Messiah is an evolution in consciousness. Everywhere across the globe, every single day, people make decisions that affect each other....Power is transferable - it's about choices. The adolescence of collective human behaviour leads towards violence because people in power make the wrong choices, because the species has become inorganic, cutoff from its true nature... (Seven Nova)

I became aware of how the way one speaks, and does not speak, creates a certain type of space.. further, to intuit the energies of others can allow one to render new hybrid spaces, secretly colored by unknown forces, this underlying hope/sense that each person has something unique to share, to deepen [our] experience.. further, to move beyond the stories, constraints, to tease out the negative freedoms engendered by collective social facts. I seek an oasis of nonverbal communication, I disappear in the mass amorphous soul of overlapping histories, I forget all words and names.. only love remains ... (Seven Nova)

The Story of Easter is the Story of Divine Surprise (C. Knudsen)

Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle Now: How do you deal with unconscious people?

How do you deal with unconscious people?

"Creativity is a life force. An opening. 

It's birthed out of a natural desire to collect separate pieces of detail from our own observation and then string them together. It's about connecting the dots. This is also the work of self-growth.

Creativity is, therefore, one of the greatest catalysts for us to become better versions of ourselves."

Victoria Erickson

artist: Maria Drugge Nilsson

 I have always found, I've been running on a story which I believe to be true and is at times believed in, so much so, that the story never ends, meaning the now can be taken up with the story from the past sometimes charged with more thoughts. 

I wonder is your idea of recording it a way of putting it to bed, so to speak . Or even seeing it from a 

different perspective?

Yes, I do believe our stories are continuous. We also have much control over how they continue to play out, which is why I like to keep the book open - so that we can add to the chapters/scenes as we journey through life and watch how different ones may intersect. This doesn't mean that the book is always an active part of our lives but it is there and we can pick it up or put it down as we wish.

Sometimes we remember at a later time, seemingly very significant aspects of a story, and these we can then weave into that narrative, oftentimes changing perspectives. The lifestory book can be a continuous commentary of our lives, one we can review and expand upon as we see fit. We are taking control of the story, seeing that it is not inflexible, moulding and shaping it according to our developing self awareness and, in the process, watching how certain patterns and sub texts may re-emerge.

With regard to 'putting it to bed', remember, that we have the power to arrange the chapters as we wish. Nothing is fixed except the awareness that we are creating our stories. If we find ourselves replaying a particular story in our minds, we can break it down into smaller scenes and address these individually with a therapist. Perhaps there are particular scenes that we are fixed on, and in seeking answers, we are replaying an entire chapter in our minds, looking for solutions/understanding. My suggestion is to explore these scenes in particular, using the tools arts based therapy provides, and remember, we have the ability to create art from our stories. Art and writing can be the way in and also the way out.

~~~~~

People often say that this or that person has not yet found themselves. But the self if not something one finds. It is something one creates. (Thomas Saasz)

The Great Changeover

One wonders and imagines, and sometimes, it seems to be exactly so!

there is no higher form of spirit than love, the white light of the sky matte, diffuse, everything is other yet whole, within, erasing all distinction, surrender... 7

via 7 - merci

Étienne Balibar

lone man fighting the blizzard 

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, January 23rd 2016

pic by Eabha

reflections

The city has been buried under two feet of snow, the landscape is transformed, the white reflective light has a therapeutic effect, gently uplifting. Lack of definition and sharp boundaries blur emotional affect. We may still have thoughts but they may also become blurred, less defined with words. We are very much lost...perhaps we cannot explain.. The snow also affords a visual and bioemotional externalization of interiority. These inner states which somehow cover all pasts, presents and futures, timeless emotional sovereignty, are now visually represented everywhere the eye can see, and the sound absorbent texture of snow muffles reflections, generating the gentle immediacy we so desire. Being is colonized, but without force; nature speaks without speaking.  (Seven Nova)

.....one loses both interest and patience with individuals who cannot cleave to any grounded sense of identity, who cannot genuinely convey any sense of comfort within themselves that transcends the pleasure/pain principle, that transcends reactive nature/contrast, who constantly require emotional noise and attention to know who they are/might be, as if identity required the constant drama of narrative flow, tension and counteractive forces. Sanctuary, one dreams of, an ocean of souls who have forfeited identity to the degree that being is optional. Instead, one is at liberty to disappear into the spatial awareness of invisibility. 

(Seven Nova)

Sometimes people move to a particular place because it provides the necessary probable futures that catalyze personal evolution. But once those catalysts are exhausted, the realm boundary gaps formerly inviting those experiences become filled in and cause dissonance. This dissonance automatically evokes from the hologram varied catalysts for separation. In other words, when it is time for someone to move to a more fruitful area, improbable events manifest to force relocation. 
(Tom Montalk)

a beautiful piece of wisdom

“To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. Economic revolution without this inward revolution is meaningless, for hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states; greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness.

To put an end to this sorrow, to hunger, to war, there must be psychological revolution and few of us are willing to face that. We will discuss peace, plan legislation, create new leagues, the United Nations and so on; but we will not win peace because we will not give up our position, our authority, our money, our properties, our lives.

To rely on others is utterly futile; others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to give us peace, no government, no army, no country. What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is.

To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need; food, clothing and shelter, is destroyed.

Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree”, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be only stopped when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself.”

Krishnamurti (spoken over half a century ago)

via : Veil of Reality

5th Sadho Poetry Film Festival, India

by Shrikaant Saxena 

Nice to witness this beautiful attempt to bring the best poetic films to cine lovers.These short films from across the globe evoke subtle imagery. There is a noticeable difference between home made films and some of the foreign films e.g. The Elephant is Contagious and some others, I believe, in this very special category, where emphasis is more on imagery, where thought is largely abstract and where sound matters more.

HT Syndication - Sadho Poetry Film Festival

Net Indian News

NDTV

Sadho Poetry Film Festival

Benoit Courti

Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman

William Seward Burroughs is not a talkative man. Once at a dinner he gazed down into a pair of stereo microphones trained to pick up his every munch and said, "I don't like talk and I don't like talkers. Like Ma Barker. You remember Ma Barker? Well, that's what she always said, 'Ma Barker doesn't like talk and she doesn't like talkers.' She just sat there with her gun."

Writing is seeing how close you can come to make it happen, that's the object of all art. What else do they think man really wants, a whiskey priest on a mission he doesn't believe in? I think the most important thing in the world is that the artists should take over this planet because they're the only ones who can make anything happen. Why should we let these fucking newspaper politicians take over from us?

Rolling Stone Interview (in full)

it is here!

Hans Zimmer - Chevalier de Sangreal

Dustin O'Halloran-We Move Lightly

written by Silva Zanoyan Merjanian
performed by Eabha Rose

Heavy metal band, Disturbed’s powerful cover version of Simon & Garfunkel’s
The Sound of Silence

poems, stories, images, mirages, universes ~ It's almost time!

'We think not in words but in shadows of words.'  Vladimir Nabokov 

String of Lights : Teri Lee

approach - illumination - aspects of poetry creation - interpretation - words in a poem - past usages and intentions - hybridization - poetic license - loss of ...worlds - loss of reference - fusion of polyphonic narratives and social contexts into one horizon - autonomy of the poem - artistic unity - risk of genre/formulaic adaption and (authoritative/privileged) fossilized language usage - art mediums hijacked as modes of social control.

via Seven Nova - adapted from C. John Holcombe on Bakhtin

"I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell." 

Walt Whitman

Johann Pachelbel - Canon in D Major

• BY KYLE KHANDIKIAN 
• 
  
• In her new book, Rumor, poet Silva Merjanian unpacks and explores the many layers of the human experience with poetry that one reviewer describes as

"shocking, tender and to the point."

Kyle Khandikian interviews Silva Zanoyan Merjanian 

Rumor is available now on Silva Merjanian’s official website, www.silvamerjanian.com

Modern Poetry and Style vis-à-vis Armenian poetry

As a guest of the ARPA Institute, poet Silva Zanoyan Merjanian discusses 'modern poetry and style vis-à-vis Armenian poetry' at Merdinian School, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Saints in my Rain

Interview for Armenian newspaper, Azbarez

Poet Silva Zanoyan Merjanian's poems 'Beirut', 'Saints in my Rain' and 'Home' from her Cold River Press release, RUMOR, have been nominated for the 2014 Pushcart. 

Home

Doves of Beirut

Dismaland

When a poet creates a true image, he is bringing into consciousness a connection that has been forgotten, perhaps for centuries.

It is possible there is another sort of image, which the ancients knew about. It is less like a container and more like an arm. It reaches out of human consciousness to touch something else.

We do feel a gap between ourselves and nature. We can remain in the gap, and let the two worlds fall apart farther and remain separate. Or a human being can reach out with his left hand to the world of human intelligence and with the right hand to the natural world, and touch both at the same time…The power that makes us able to touch both is called ‘imagination’.

Robert Bly

ELLIS strarring Robert De Niro directed by JR written by Eric ...Must-see new short film directed by JR Artist and written by Eric Roth stars Robert De Niro as an immigrant on Ellis Island.
Posted by Tribeca on Monday, September 28, 2015

Our short film's been selected for screening at this year's Waterford Film Festival at Garter Lane Theatre.