Returning

Returning in September.
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Featured Poem

"If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?"
-Pablo Neruda

Featured Painting

In the Car
Roy Lichtenstein

America

"America is the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else."
-Gore Vidal

Peace Without Freedom

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
-Malcolm X

Governments

The most important crime for any political system to avoid is hypocrisy.

Life

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue."

-Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Koons

I featured Koons without one of his works.



Stacked

The Importance of Art

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."
-Leonardo

Luxury Degradation

"The advertising industry uses abstraction and luxury to, eventually bring in degradation to whoever they're targeting in this life; you take their economical and political power from them."
-Jeff Koons

May

It's May. Live what you say.
-AMBITUDO A MORTIS-

Decadence

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent."
- Jacque Barzun

Featured Painting

The Second of May 1808
by Francisco de Goya

Fanon

"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization."

- Frantz Fanon

Teaism

"Teaism is a cult founded on the

adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday

existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual

charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a

worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish

something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."

-The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura

Sun Tzu

All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near. Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him... Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Foco

"The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare, also known as focalism (Spanish language: foquismo), was inspired by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, based upon his experiences surrounding the rebel army's victory in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and formalized as such by Régis Debray. Its central principle is that vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus (in Spanish, foco) for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection. Although the original approach was to mobilize and launch attacks from rural areas, many foco ideas were adapted into urban guerrilla warfare movements by the late 1960s."

Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a 19th Century German Philosopher and one of the creators of German Idealism. Hegel was also known for his interest in History and was key in the development of the philosophy of history. Hegel viewed history as driven by negatives, as one large, long clash of thesis opposing antithesis.
"History is the study of the successive follies of mankind."

Attitude

There are many different Attitudes. The creative attitude, the logical attitude, the calm attitude, the introspective attitude, the compassionate attitude, the reckless attitude. Do not allow one Attitude to become dominant over another.

Design

Design, usually considered in the context of applied arts, engineering, architecture, and other creative endeavors, is used both as a noun and a verb. As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component. As a noun, "a design" is used for either the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan (e.g. object produced, result of the process). More recently, processes (in general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new meaning to the term "process design".

Revolutionary Words

"Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and endeavor to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do just the opposite: It must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic "authorities" and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art, and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system."
-GPCR 1966

The Good Republic

"No well ordered republic allows the demerits of its citizens to be canceled out by their merits; but, having prescribed rewards for a good deed and punishments for a bad one, and having rewarded someone for doing well, if that same person afterwards does wrong, it punishes him, regardless of any of the good deeds he has done. And, when such ordinances are duly observed, the city long enjoys freedom, but otherwise will always be ruined. Because if a citizen who has rendered some signal service to the state, acquire thereby not merely the repute which the affair has brought him, but is emboldened to expect that he can do wrong with impunity, he will soon become so insolent that civic life in such a state will disappear."
-Machiavelli, The Discourses

Perception

Men in general are as much affected by what a thing appears to be as by what it is, indeed they are frequently influenced more by appearances than by reality.

Vegetius

Few men are born brave. Many become so through training and force of discipline.
Vegetius

Featured Painting

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha
by: Vermeer

Musashi

The Book of Five Rings
Miyamoto Musashi wrote Go Rin No Sho in 1645 before his death at the age of 61 from natural causes. In it are his views on war, swordsmanship, philosophy, and life. He never lost a duel and refused the leisurely lifestyle under the Tokugawan Shogunate. Musashi died a hermit in his cave, writing. Here is one of his most important writings, The Book of the Void.

"The Ni To Ichi Way of strategy is recorded in this the Book of the Void.

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

In the Way of strategy, also, those who study as warriors think that whatever they cannot understand in their craft is the void. This is not the true void.

To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.

Until you realise the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly.

Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void.

In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.


Twelfth day of the fifth month, second year of Shoho (1645)

Teruo Magonojo for SHINMEN MUSASHI"

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and general in the 19th century. He is well known for personally leading military campaigns that brought about the unification of Italy. He also assisted in military campaigns in South America and was offered a commission by Abraham Lincoln personally. In 1833, Garibaldi joined the Carbonari revolutionary organization in its attempted insurrection in Piedmont, Italy. After the failed attempt he was captured, sentenced to death, and fled to Marseilles, France. Garibaldi then headed to Brazil, and assisted the southern gauchos against Imperial Forces in the War of the Tatters. The Republican Revolution failed and the Italian went on to Uruguay where he founded the Italian Legion. Garibaldi fought on behalf of the Colorados (red-skins) against the Blancos (whites) in the Uruguayan Civil War. There, Garibaldi mastered guerrilla war tactics and won substantial victories in Cerro and San Antonio del Santo.
In 1848 Garibaldi returned to Italy and participated in the unsuccessful First Italian War of Independence and attained some minor military victories. In 1849, Garibaldi was sent to Rome in order to defend the new Republic just begun there. The Papal States, however, urged Napoleon III of France to intervene. In April, 1849, Garibaldi took command of the defense of Rome and defeated a substantially numerically superior French army. In 1860, Garibaldi, with an army of 8000, crossed into and conquered the whole of Sicily, defeating many of Napoleon's strongest garrisons on the island. In September of the same year, he went on to Naples and took the city. Despite his military successes, Garibaldi had not yet faced and withstood the whole of the French Army. On September 30th, with a volunteer army of 24,000, Garibaldi personally led his forces to victory over the French Army in the Battle of Volturno.
On March 17th, 1861 Italy was officially unified.
Giuseppe Garibaldi died on June 2nd, 1882.

Ethics

"What cannot be said must be passed over in Silence."
-Wittgenstein

Featured Poem

If I walk the noisy streets,
Or enter a many thronged church,
Or sit among the wild young generation,
I give way to my thoughts.

I say to myself: the years are fleeting,
And however many there seem to be,
We must all go under the eternal vault,
And someone's hour is already at hand.

When I look at a solitary oak
I think: the patriarch of the woods.
It will outlive my forgotten age
As it outlived that of my grandfathers'.

If I caress a young child,
Immediately I think: farewell!
I will yield my place to you,
For I must fade while your flower blooms.


Each day, every hour
I habitually follow in my thoughts,
Trying to guess from their number
The year which brings my death.


And where will fate send death to me?
In battle, in my travels, or on the seas?
Or will the neighbouring valley
Receive my chilled ashes?

And although to the senseless body
It is indifferent wherever it rots,
Yet close to my beloved countryside
I still would prefer to rest.


And let it be, beside the grave's vault
That young life forever will be playing,
And impartial, indifferent nature
Eternally be shining in beauty.

-Alexander Pushkin, 1829

Featured Painting

This featured painting entry is not a painting at all, but a statue by artist Ron Mueck.