Fear: Are you being followed by a moon shadow?sappiamo tutto capiamo poco

drawing collage by marguerita

Scientists generally define fear as a negative emotional state triggered by the presence of a stimulus (the snake) that has the potential to cause harm, and anxiety as a negative emotional state in which the threat is not present but anticipated. We sometimes confuse the two: When someone says he is afraid he will fail an exam or get caught stealing or cheating, he should, by the definitions above, be saying he is anxious instead.
But the truth is, the line between fear and anxiety can get pretty thin and fuzzy.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/anatomy-of-fear/?ref=global-home

Of Tempus,Temporis......

presentum	barcala	appropinquatio
De nihilo nihil	undique	decumana

drawing by marguerita

So time has passed?
You are getting older?
It just means that a certain number of homogenous moments (seconds, minutes, hours, and so on) have succeeded one another in a linear fashion: tick, tack, tick, tack…
Now look in the mirror!
At least since the introduction of the pocket watch in the 16th century brought exact time measurement into everyday life, modern agents have found themselves increasingly encased in a calculable and measurable temporal environment.
We measure and organize time as never before, and we worry about not “losing” or “wasting” time, as though time was a finite substance or a container into which we should try to stuff as many good experiences as possible.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/on-modern-time/

)f Soul,Brains, Neuroscience,Consciousness....You (are your brain).

drawing /collage by marguerita

The idea that a person is a functioning assembly of brain cells and associated molecules is not something neuroscience has discovered. It is, rather, something it takes for granted.
You are your brain.
Francis Crick once called this “the astonishing hypothesis,”
because, as he claimed, it is so remote from the way most people alive today think about themselves.
But what is really astonishing about this
supposedly astonishing hypothesis is how astonishing it is not!
The idea that there is a thing inside us that thinks and feels.
What we do know is that a healthy brain is necessary for normal mental life, and indeed, for any life at all. But of course much else is necessary for mental life.
We need roughly normal bodies and a roughly normal environment.
We also need the presence and availability of other people
if we are to have anything like the sorts of lives that we know and value. So we really ought to say that it is the normally embodied, environmentally- and socially-situated human animal that thinks, feels, decides and is conscious.
But once we say this, it would be simpler, and more accurate, to allow that it is people, not their brains, who think and feel and decide.
It is people, not their brains, that make and enjoy art. You are not your brain, you are a living human being.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/art-and-the-limits-of-neuroscience/

Of Sonnets, E.B.Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese

photo by marguerita

From a little book of sonnets by E.B.Browning.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

This book belonged to my mother.She got it in Paris,in 1948.

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ---
'Guess now who holds thee?' --- 'Death,' I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang, --- 'Not Death, but Love.'

Federico Garcia Lorca: El Lagarto Viejo

En la agostada senda
he visto al buen lagarto
(gota de cocodrilo)
meditando.
Con su verde levita
de abate del diablo,
su talante correcto
y su cuello planchado,
tiene un aire muy triste
de viejo catedrático.
¡Esos ojos marchitos
de artista fracasado,
cómo miran la tarde
desmayada!

¿Es éste su paseo
crepuscular, amigo?
Usad bastón, ya estáis
muy viejo. Don Lagarto,

drawing by marguerita

copyrights by marguerita 20xxxxx

y los niños del pueblo
pueden daros un susto.
¿Qué buscáis en la senda,
filósofo cegato,
si el fantasma indeciso
de la tarde agosteña
ha roto el horizonte?

¿Buscáis el azul limosna
del cielo moribundo?
¿Un céntimo de estrella?
¿O acaso
estudiasteis un libro
de Lamartine, y os gustan
los trinos platerescos
de los pájaros?

(Miras al sol poniente,
y tus ojos relucen,
¡oh dragón de las ranas!
con un fulgor humano.
Las góndolas sin remos
de las ideas, cruzan
el agua tenebrosa
de tus iris quemados.)

¿Venís quizá en la busca
de la bella lagarta,
verde como los trigos
de mayo,
como las cabelleras
de las fuentes dormidas,
que os despreciaba, y luego
se fue de vuestro campo?
¡Oh dulce idilio roto
sobre la fresca juncia!
¡Pero vivir!, ¡qué diantre!
me habéis sido simpático.
El lema de "me opongo
a la serpiente" triunfa
en esa gran papada
de arzobispo cristiano.

Ya se ha disuelto el sol
en la copa del monte,
y enturbian el camino
los rebaños.
Es hora de marcharse,
dejad la angosta senda
y no continuéis
meditando.
Que lugar tendréis luego
de mirar las estrellas
cuando os coman sin prisa
los gusanos.

¡Volved a vuestra casa
bajo el pueblo de grillos!
¡Buenas noches, amigo
Don Lagarto!

Ya está el campo sin gente,
los montes apagados
y el camino desierto;
sólo de cuando en cuando
canta un cuco en la umbría
de los álamos.

The Old Lizard

by Federico García Lorca

translated by Lysander Kemp

In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one drop of crocodile)
meditating.
With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.
Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!

Is this, my friend,
your twilight constitutional?
Please use your cane,
you are very old, Mr. Lizard,
and the children of the village
may startle you.
What are you seeking in the path,
my near-sighted philosopher,
if the wavering phantasm
of the parched afternoon
has broken the horizon?

Are you seeking the blue alms
of the moribund heaven?
A penny of a star?
Or perhaps
you've been reading a volume
of Lamartine, and you relish
the plateresque trills
of the birds?

(You watch the setting sun,
and your eyes shine,
oh, dragon of the frogs,
with a human radiance.
Ideas, gondolas without oars,
cross the shadowy
waters of your
burnt-out eyes.)

Have you come looking
for that lovely lady lizard,
green as the wheatfields
of May,
as the long locks
of sleeping pools,
who scorned you, and then
left you in your field?
Oh, sweet idyll, broken
among the sweet sedges!
But, live! What the devil!
I like you.
The motto "I oppose
the serpent" triumphs
in that grand double chin
of a Christian archbishop.

Now the sun has dissolved
in the cup of the mountains,
and the flocks
cloud the roadway.
It is the hour to depart:
leave the dry path
and your meditations.
You will have time
to look at the stars
when the worms are eating you
at their leisure.


Go home to your house
by the village, of the crickets!
Good night, my friend
Mr. Lizard!

Now the field is empty,
the mountains dim,
the roadway deserted.
Only, now and again,
a cuckoo sings in the darkness
of the poplar trees.

Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca is possibly the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the twentieth century. García Lorca was born June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a few miles from Granada. His father owned a farm in the fertile vega surrounding Granada and a comfortable mansion in the heart of the city. His mother, whom Lorca idolized, was a gifted pianist. After graduating from secondary school García Lorca attended Sacred Heart University where he took up law along with regular coursework. His first book, Impresiones y Viajes (1919) was inspired by a trip to Castile with his art class in 1917.

In 1919, García Lorca traveled to Madrid, where he remained for the next fifteen years. Giving up university, he devoted himself entirely to his art. He organized theatrical performances, read his poems in public, and collected old folksongs. During this period García Lorca wrote El Maleficio de la mariposa (1920), a play which caused a great scandal when it was produced. He also wrote Libro de poemas (1921), a compilation of poems based on Spanish folklore. Much of García Lorca's work was infused with popular themes such as Flamenco and Gypsy culture. In 1922, García Lorca organized the first "Cante Jondo" festival in which Spain's most famous "deep song" singers and guitarists participated. The deep song form permeated his poems of the early 1920s. During this period, García Lorca became part of a group of artists known as Generación del 27, which included Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, who exposed the young poet to surrealism. In 1928, his book of verse, Romancero Gitano ("The Gypsy Ballads"), brought García Lorca far-reaching fame; it was reprinted seven times during his lifetime.

In 1929, García Lorca came to New York. The poet's favorite neighborhood was Harlem; he loved African-American spirituals, which reminded him of Spain's "deep songs." In 1930, García Lorca returned to Spain after the proclamation of the Spanish republic and participated in the Second Ordinary Congress of the Federal Union of Hispanic Students in November of 1931. The congress decided to build a "Barraca" in central Madrid in which to produce important plays for the public. "La Barraca," the traveling theater company that resulted, toured many Spanish towns, villages, and cities performing Spanish classics on public squares. Some of García Lorca's own plays, including his three great tragedies Bodas de sangre (1933), Yerma (1934), and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (1936), were also produced by the company.

In 1936, García Lorca was staying at Callejones de García, his country home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist soldiers, and on the 17th or 18th of August, after a few days in jail, soldiers took García Lorca to "visit" his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced García Lorca from the car. They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body with bullets. His books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one knows where the body of Federico García Lorca rests.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/163

---

Christopher Buckley ,The US and the Laws of Gravity

photo by marguerita


A insensatez
Que você fez
coração mais sem cuidado
Fez chorar de dor
o seu amor um amor
tão delicado
Ah porque você
foi fraco assim
assim tão desalmado
Ah, meu coração
quem nunca amou
não merece ser amado
Vai meu coração
ouve a razão
usa só sinceridade
Quem semeia vento,
diz a razão,
colhe sempre tempestade
Vai meu coração
pede perdão
perdão apaixonado
Vai porque quem não
pede perdão
não é nunca perdoado

Christopher Buckley No idea what it says, but I hope it means a start to understanding the laws that are being made on our behalf supposedly for our benefit in Washington.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newtongrav.html

lyrics by Tom Jobim

Rupert Murdoch,Freud,I Did it My Way and The Jimmy&Roops WE KNEWS

drawing by marguerita

In a voluntary outburst on Tuesday, Rupert told the parliamentary committee
that he "was brought up by a father who was not rich, but who was a great journalist"
and who left him a small newspaper
"saying that he was giving me
the chance to do good".

Little Red Riding Hood

by brothers Grimm

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called 'Little Red Riding Hood.'

One day her mother said to her: 'Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don't forget to say, "Good morning", and don't peep into every corner before you do it.'

'I will take great care,' said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.

The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

'Good day, Little Red Riding Hood,' said he.

'Thank you kindly, wolf.'

'Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?'

'To my grandmother's.'

'What have you got in your apron?'

'Cake and wine; yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger.'

'Where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?'

'A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood; her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below; you surely must know it,' replied Little Red Riding Hood.

The wolf thought to himself: 'What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful - she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both.'

And a parallel:

Lucian Freud

He was interested in presence, and not only human presence: a lightbulb's glare, a dog's leg, a horse's arse, a frayed bit of carpet. The language with which he described people and things, animals and lovers, atmosphere and futility, was a frightening construction. I believe he shared more with his psychoanalyst grandfather than he liked to admit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jul/22/lucian-freud-adrian-searle

In the Pursuit of Incongruity or in Praise of the Absurd

photos by marguerita

The incongruity theory is the reigning theory of humor, since it seems to account for most cases of perceived funniness, which is partly because “incongruity” is something of an umbrella term. Most developments of the incongruity theory only try to list a necessary condition for humor—the perception of an incongruity—and they stop short of offering the sufficient conditions.

In the Rhetoric (III, 2), Aristotle presents the earliest glimmer of an incongruity theory of humor, finding that the best way to get an audience to laugh is to setup an expectation and deliver something “that gives a twist.”

After discussing the power of metaphors to produce a surprise in the hearer, Aristotle says that “[t]he effect is produced even by jokes depending upon changes of the letters of a word; this too is a surprise. You find this in verse as well as in prose. The word which comes is not what the hearer imagined.”

These remarks sound like a surprise theory of humor, similar to that later offered by René Descartes, but Aristotle continues to explain how the surprise must somehow “fit the facts,” or as we might put it today, the incongruity must be capable of a resolution.

In the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant gives a clearer statement of the role of incongruity in humor:

“In everything that is to excite a lively laugh there must be something absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction).

Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing” (I, I, 54).

Arthur Schopenhauer offers a more specific version of the incongruity theory, arguing that humor arising from a failure of a concept to account for an object of thought. When the particular outstrips the general, we are faced with an incongruity. Schopenhauer also emphasizes the element of surprise, saying that “the greater and more unexpected [. . .] this incongruity is, the more violent will be his laughter” (1818, I, Sec. 13).

As stated by Kant and Schopenhauer, the incongruity theory of humor specifies a necessary condition of the object of humor.
Focusing on the humorous object, leaves something out of the analysis of humor, since there are many kinds of things that are incongruous which do not produce amusement.
A more robust statement of the incongruity theory would need to include the pleasurable response one has to humorous objects.

HEY Mr.Gagosian: The NIPPLE by Marguerita, created ,hand painted, mreal by the artist versus Murakami mass produced Erected Penis

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topics: art

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http://www.observer.com/2011/07/takashi-murakami-says-his-art-is-too-expensive/

Of PASSION and an Imaginary Dialogue avec Hamlet

drawing by marguerita

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu,'Can a man really become passionless? Chuang Tzu said, ,' He can.' Hui Tzu said,' A man without passions cannot be called a man."
Chuang Tzu said,'Tao gave him substance,Heaven gave him form", how is it possible not to call him a man?'
Hui Tzu said,'I would rather say,Granted that he is still a man, how is it possible for him to be passionless?'
Chuang Tzu said,'You do not understand what I mean when I say " passionless".
When I say " passionless" I mean that a man does not let love or hate do damage within, that he falls in with the way in which things happen of themselves, and does not exploit life'.
Hui Tzu said,' If he does not exploit life, what is the use of his having a body?

And Hamlet says:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Thought and action seem to pull against each other, the former annulling the possibility of the latter.


Excerpt from Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China by Arthur Wiley

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/let-be-an-answer-to-hamlets-question/?hp