This mouse is acting up a bit...don't know if it's the cold or what (well, I'm in the Chicago area, so that does indicate a certain degree of climatological extremities...). Anyhow, that previous was not a whole post, and will be deleted at once.
Probably not inclined to post the whole train of thought now anyhow, as I actually should be working on something else, namely my latest portrait commission...rather like a joke fallen flat, not sure if anyone wants to delve into the subject of cinematic accents as culturally analogical. Save it for a rainy day, maybe, after the pressing subjects of holidays and the state of humanity have receded slightly back into the everyday.
Will be posting more here after Christmas and the hectic flurry of making sure all the presents are properly wrapped and presented--the indoor decoration is mostly done now save for the 4.5' prelit artificial tree my siblings and I are in agreement on purchasing...the 3' fiber-optic one is fun to watch, but there's no way of hanging the ornaments on it, and that does tend to make the decking of halls quite a bit less communal. The smell of a pine tree is fine and much-desired, but not so the needles. When you're three grown people living together without a designed housekeeper (i.e., "your mama ain't here", at least not on a live-in basis), it helps to keep the holiday complications as manageable as possible.
Shall be sending out cards to all those for whom I have "earth-addys"...this is a yearly project, to address myself to the actual work of "keeping in touch" and maintaining professional contacts. I have sent out just one so far--but that's a long story and it went to Minnesota. First north, then south, another paper airplane shot out into the sky of the world. Sometimes I think I wonder whether it's ever guaranteed that the mail will get where I want it to go, but then again, I just realize now that I may still be suffering from the aftereffects of a couple of unanswered (one returned) 'fan letters' from my sophomore year of highschool...long story. Two long stories, and I have not the slightest intention of going into that right now, not at this time of this year and with all the memories it's bringing up.
Not misty watercoloured ones, just in case anyone at all had the reference in mind. Geez, and I already had that damn song stuck in my head today--with an interesting conglomerated plot idea to boot, but what does that have to do with knocking the stadium lights out with a home run? Guess the answer's in the parking garage...
Sorry--I'm trying to cut down on the cryptic references but it just ain't working. "Semper obfuscare" is my motto by default--or at least, if not to confuse the shiznit out of people, to make them exert a little more than the average deductive reasoning in figuring out the exact location of my thoughts. Unfortunately, most people my own age do not have that accumulation of artistic and historical exposure to be able to put all the links together...and if you have not the faintest idea at all where I might be hovering with these things, I'm sure it grows fairly tiresome. At least, so my former girfriends have implied.
But I'll just leave that as a semi-apologetic (it's just the way my mind works, after all), and go off to get that painting under control. My back is killing me due to my wrestling a large metal bookcase in close quarters last night, and I think I really ought to aim for going to bed before dawn...
"Aorta (fiery version)" - digital painting, copyright K. Aurencz Zethmayr
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Testing the opened channels....and railing at Murphy's Law
Alright, I certainly hope this works....last night either my computer connection or this server lost one of the most brilliant and insightful posts I'd ever written in my life, and the only logical reason I can see for it is that the rest of the world was never meant to read it...had too much in it.
Anyhow, this is just a test post, and so I will just flesh it out somewhat by stating that my freelance work is picking up for the holidays--portraits from photographs, for which purpose I've rigged up a homemade lightbox in my studio so that I can trace from the enlargements off my computer. It's installed in a desk with a lowered-out middle section--lined with aluminum foil and clear plastic bubble wrap for reflection and diffusion, with a pane of glass in an old wooden picture frame, and the light supplied by a three-light cream plastic faux candelabra I'd taken out to decorate for Christmas, just laid inside the hollow and shifted as needed.
I'm rather proud of my ingenuity there...always very satisfying to rig up something that works in a pinch. I'd been rather stymied over the difficulties of transferring accurate proportions onto the page--2D to 2D is a rather error-prone translation--so this is a breakthrough, and a very useful one for my present little line of business.
Signing off to go work on the present commission, just as soon as I'm assured this thing comes through as I rigged it up to....
Aurey
Anyhow, this is just a test post, and so I will just flesh it out somewhat by stating that my freelance work is picking up for the holidays--portraits from photographs, for which purpose I've rigged up a homemade lightbox in my studio so that I can trace from the enlargements off my computer. It's installed in a desk with a lowered-out middle section--lined with aluminum foil and clear plastic bubble wrap for reflection and diffusion, with a pane of glass in an old wooden picture frame, and the light supplied by a three-light cream plastic faux candelabra I'd taken out to decorate for Christmas, just laid inside the hollow and shifted as needed.
I'm rather proud of my ingenuity there...always very satisfying to rig up something that works in a pinch. I'd been rather stymied over the difficulties of transferring accurate proportions onto the page--2D to 2D is a rather error-prone translation--so this is a breakthrough, and a very useful one for my present little line of business.
Signing off to go work on the present commission, just as soon as I'm assured this thing comes through as I rigged it up to....
Aurey
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Initiating contact....
My other blog, Aureantes Talks, is now mainly designated as the place where I go off on obnoxious in-jokes and add quizzes and make snarky references with semi-incriminating personal information. Not that there isn't anything serious there (it is my first blog, after all), but the whole system there and the rather incestuous nature of my friends list and our mutual interests makes it a bit unlikely that anything of a scholarly or professional nature is going to get noticed on that network. And I am definitely scholarly and trying to keep somewhat professional about it.
Hence, this newest blogsite of yours truly, which I really must remember to add-link to the portal page of my main site, Aureantes' Realm. The more I can keep things organized the better, as I certainly did not come online in the first place to sit in a corner and surf without sound. I make a fair amount of noise as I pass, though only where it seems needful. And of course I like to get some noise in response.
Pundit?--sure, you can call me that, though being a Libra I am unlikely to espouse any real extremity of position. Definitely a universal critic as well, but vehemently opposed to dryness and miniscule dissections of signification. I follow the way of Camus, not so much that of Sartre. Camus regarded philosophy as needfully concrete and connected to the reality of one's situation, not so far abstract that it only seems to truly exist within the pages of academic dissertations, no matter how much popular culture it chews up and spits back in reference.
I was raised to be an academic myself--I can speak that language fluently if the occasion demands--but frankly, I find it rather boring. And empty. Someone said that music degenerates when it moves too far away from the dance (I'd say from natural singing and its rhythms, myself)--and modern philosophy, it seems, has moved so far away from any real estimation of necessary human concerns that it is now propagating itself more or less in vitro--via college computer monitors, camera lenses and overhead projectors, rather than by reiterating its contact with the physical and sensual world, the only interface through which it can achieve real and enduring value to anyone, anywhere.
Mysticism, on the other hand, is immanent. One does not need a special rarefied terminology to pin it down with, nor a degree, nor even the reading of a single thesis. It can be translated without any proprietary intellectual structure, so long as one has the key of insight. Of course, it can be--and sometimes tragically is--misunderstood. But that's the nature of wisdom itself--it cannot be forced but has to grow. Trying to turn it into an object, though, a science in the modern sense...well, who can say whether that's a vain or an honourable pursuit? All I know is, it seems a lot of people are going about that business all wrong, and that the study which is supposedly the "love of wisdom" seems to have its head simultaneously off in the clouds and up its own arse. I watched "Waking Life" and thought it was both poignantly beautiful and almost too erudite for its own good, a dreamscape so abstracted into verbal concept that one might as well float off into the clouds.
While we're in this thing some call reality, I think it best to engage it with all our senses, on every level. And I think the academic pursuit of wisdom itself (to which philosophy is apparently nothing more than a string of cages) should if anything be as non-formalized as possible, a matter of exposure and absorption rather than the drive to win a grade or impress with one's citings.
If anything one learns is to be of value, then the impulse to express it in discourse and inquiry must be sincere and spontaneous--not something that one is forced to produce but that on the contrary cannot be held back once the forum is opened. That is the true desire of wisdom, when no other persuasion than the sheer thrill of insight and connection is needed to spur one's searchings and all that follows from them. If one does not love wisdom and learning for their own virtue, then of what use is it to formalize and dry things out into easy bitesize pieces to try and feed everyone at similar pace? Far more useful that those who have the desire recieve the whole fruit wherever it can be given or found in their own gleanings, while those who are not ready or fit for such things should not be forcefed that which they cannot digest.
More on this to come...my own academic history is an interesting one, and my views are (as one can see) not necessarily those of the mainstream. I do tend to ramble a lot, though, when left to my own devices and not the framework of a plot or formal thesis. But of course...what else is this place for?
Hence, this newest blogsite of yours truly, which I really must remember to add-link to the portal page of my main site, Aureantes' Realm. The more I can keep things organized the better, as I certainly did not come online in the first place to sit in a corner and surf without sound. I make a fair amount of noise as I pass, though only where it seems needful. And of course I like to get some noise in response.
Pundit?--sure, you can call me that, though being a Libra I am unlikely to espouse any real extremity of position. Definitely a universal critic as well, but vehemently opposed to dryness and miniscule dissections of signification. I follow the way of Camus, not so much that of Sartre. Camus regarded philosophy as needfully concrete and connected to the reality of one's situation, not so far abstract that it only seems to truly exist within the pages of academic dissertations, no matter how much popular culture it chews up and spits back in reference.
I was raised to be an academic myself--I can speak that language fluently if the occasion demands--but frankly, I find it rather boring. And empty. Someone said that music degenerates when it moves too far away from the dance (I'd say from natural singing and its rhythms, myself)--and modern philosophy, it seems, has moved so far away from any real estimation of necessary human concerns that it is now propagating itself more or less in vitro--via college computer monitors, camera lenses and overhead projectors, rather than by reiterating its contact with the physical and sensual world, the only interface through which it can achieve real and enduring value to anyone, anywhere.
Mysticism, on the other hand, is immanent. One does not need a special rarefied terminology to pin it down with, nor a degree, nor even the reading of a single thesis. It can be translated without any proprietary intellectual structure, so long as one has the key of insight. Of course, it can be--and sometimes tragically is--misunderstood. But that's the nature of wisdom itself--it cannot be forced but has to grow. Trying to turn it into an object, though, a science in the modern sense...well, who can say whether that's a vain or an honourable pursuit? All I know is, it seems a lot of people are going about that business all wrong, and that the study which is supposedly the "love of wisdom" seems to have its head simultaneously off in the clouds and up its own arse. I watched "Waking Life" and thought it was both poignantly beautiful and almost too erudite for its own good, a dreamscape so abstracted into verbal concept that one might as well float off into the clouds.
While we're in this thing some call reality, I think it best to engage it with all our senses, on every level. And I think the academic pursuit of wisdom itself (to which philosophy is apparently nothing more than a string of cages) should if anything be as non-formalized as possible, a matter of exposure and absorption rather than the drive to win a grade or impress with one's citings.
If anything one learns is to be of value, then the impulse to express it in discourse and inquiry must be sincere and spontaneous--not something that one is forced to produce but that on the contrary cannot be held back once the forum is opened. That is the true desire of wisdom, when no other persuasion than the sheer thrill of insight and connection is needed to spur one's searchings and all that follows from them. If one does not love wisdom and learning for their own virtue, then of what use is it to formalize and dry things out into easy bitesize pieces to try and feed everyone at similar pace? Far more useful that those who have the desire recieve the whole fruit wherever it can be given or found in their own gleanings, while those who are not ready or fit for such things should not be forcefed that which they cannot digest.
More on this to come...my own academic history is an interesting one, and my views are (as one can see) not necessarily those of the mainstream. I do tend to ramble a lot, though, when left to my own devices and not the framework of a plot or formal thesis. But of course...what else is this place for?
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