Beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else.  Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view.  Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace. Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi (1994)

Beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else.  Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view.  Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi (1994)

Know yourself and you will know the universe.
Inscription at the entrance of the Temple of Delphi
The Silent King - Louis XVILouis XVI is a king mostly remembered as a coward.  As weak.  Slow.  The tyrant that rolled over.  His execution helped abolish absolute monarchy and usher in a new republic of France.  It was instrumental in the path towards representational government in the West.  In a sense, he’s a martyr for peace.  He is not celebrated as such.  This purportedly pious king said upon arriving at the gallows for his execution: “I wish that my blood may be able to cement the happiness of the French.”  In a written letter to his son, he him to forgive everyone who caused harm to the family.  If true, this is a remarkable sentiment of forgiveness - mostly interpreted as a weakness.Maybe it is this way because it is not his action but rather his inaction that sealed his fate.  Yet he is an essential cog in the machine of human history.  Not because of his birthright but due to his character.  In reality, anybody we may judge as a poor character is still essential to something.  Even those whom embody laziness or ineptitude.  They are part of the composite of who we are today as a species.  They are also a reflection of what we are not happy with within ourselves.  This is why I make films about ordinary people and ordinary things.  They are fascinating.  Paradoxically, the most remarkable aspect of Louis XVI’s reign is how ordinary he was.  He was no leader, not fit to be king.  He was a simple man born into the wrong place at the wrong time.  ~ Schmüdde

The Silent King - Louis XVI

Louis XVI is a king mostly remembered as a coward.  As weak.  Slow.  The tyrant that rolled over.  His execution helped abolish absolute monarchy and usher in a new republic of France.  It was instrumental in the path towards representational government in the West.  In a sense, he’s a martyr for peace.  He is not celebrated as such. 

This purportedly pious king said upon arriving at the gallows for his execution: “I wish that my blood may be able to cement the happiness of the French.”  In a written letter to his son, he him to forgive everyone who caused harm to the family.  If true, this is a remarkable sentiment of forgiveness - mostly interpreted as a weakness.

Maybe it is this way because it is not his action but rather his inaction that sealed his fate.  Yet he is an essential cog in the machine of human history.  Not because of his birthright but due to his character.  In reality, anybody we may judge as a poor character is still essential to something.  Even those whom embody laziness or ineptitude.  They are part of the composite of who we are today as a species.  They are also a reflection of what we are not happy with within ourselves. 

This is why I make films about ordinary people and ordinary things.  They are fascinating.  Paradoxically, the most remarkable aspect of Louis XVI’s reign is how ordinary he was.  He was no leader, not fit to be king.  He was a simple man born into the wrong place at the wrong time. 

~ Schmüdde

Midwest Revolution In a previous post I quoted an author who thought that there are quintessentially Midwestern tropes of “growth, decay and rebirth through cyclical nature.”  Midwesterners, more than other United States citizens, live in cyclical, not linear time.  This is mostly due to our unrelenting seasons.  Cyclical living might seem redundant, but it actually leaves more opportunity for revolution.  The very word revolution alludes to the necessity of repetition to lay the ground work for true change.  Revolution quite literally means to both repeat (the a wheel’s revolutions per minute) and change (the French Revolution).  In the midwest, we are getting close to another revolution.  Fall. ~Schmüdde [Image: Nikolinerlr]

Midwest Revolution

In a previous post I quoted an author who thought that there are quintessentially Midwestern tropes of “growth, decay and rebirth through cyclical nature.”  Midwesterners, more than other United States citizens, live in cyclical, not linear time.  This is mostly due to our unrelenting seasons. 

Cyclical living might seem redundant, but it actually leaves more opportunity for revolution.  The very word revolution alludes to the necessity of repetition to lay the ground work for true change.  Revolution quite literally means to both repeat (the a wheel’s revolutions per minute) and change (the French Revolution). 

In the midwest, we are getting close to another revolution.  Fall.

~Schmüdde

[Image: Nikolinerlr]

Why are you so afraid of silence,
silence is the root of everything.
If you spiral into its void,
a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear.
Rumi

Women have a greater ability to detect smells than men, and this may be linked to estrogen hormones. The structure of the nose is the same in women as men, and they don’t have any more receptors in the nose, but studies have shown smells activate a greater region in the brain in women than men. In one study, they were able to do better than men in differentiating between odors and picking up faint and slight odors. The study was repeated with younger participants with similar results.

In another unrelated study, men were given clean cotton t-shirts to sleep in for two nights. The t-shirts were subsequently sealed in plastic bags and then sent to women to smell and rate how attractive they thought the t-shirt wearer was. The most striking find of the study was that the women often picked the men who had the strongest immune systems.

Nic Swaner
The perception of odors is conjured up in a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb.  The olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system - a set of structures that also form emotions, behaviors and long term memories.  Smell is comprised of fleeting transience.  In its very manifestation is mimics memory.  Invisible.  Powerful.  But a subtle wind can carry it away.  Schmüdde

The perception of odors is conjured up in a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb.  The olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system - a set of structures that also form emotions, behaviors and long term memories. 

Smell is comprised of fleeting transience.  In its very manifestation is mimics memory.  Invisible.  Powerful.  But a subtle wind can carry it away. 

Schmüdde

During this brief transit we possess two gifts - consciousness of the gift of life and consciousness of its short loan from party or parties unknown.  We owe two gifts in return - a life fully lived, and a life surrendered at the end. - James Hollis, “Permutations of Desire”, Parabola Magazine  (Fall 2010) [Image: Andreas Levers Path, 2010]

During this brief transit we possess two gifts - consciousness of the gift of life and consciousness of its short loan from party or parties unknown.  We owe two gifts in return - a life fully lived, and a life surrendered at the end.

- James Hollis, “Permutations of Desire”, Parabola Magazine  (Fall 2010)

[Image: Andreas Levers Path, 2010]

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging… He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter… For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand - like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery - in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding. Walter Benjamin, “Berlin Chronicle,” in Reflections, 26via Svetlana Boym [Image: Remedios Varo, “The Encounter” (1962)]

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging… He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter… For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand - like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery - in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.

Walter Benjamin, “Berlin Chronicle,” in Reflections, 26
via Svetlana Boym

[Image: Remedios Varo, “The Encounter” (1962)]

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
P. L. Travers