not reconciled

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

"jubiliation, she love me again..."

just summertime fun.

enjoy.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

MARC CHAGALL b. JULY 7th 1887

"When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is."

chagall was the other painter that captured my imagination in mr manning's art class at workman jr high. like klee, his colors are hypnotic & the pictures seem to capture a kind of dream-like quality that i didn't get in klee. w/klee, there was the child-like; w chagall, there's the dreamwork of an adult. he was a belarusian jew, which may explain why so many of his canvases are filled w/various images: several significant identities working in a single subject. furthermore, the influences of cubism, surrealism, & fauvism all seem at work too, a mixed bag of singular vision. "By the time he died in France in 1985 - the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years - he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War."

i had no idea he worked in stained glass but again his colors win out.

Monday, July 6, 2009

DAN'S IDEA OF STEAK & EGGS DINNER

TWO SLICES FLATIRON & TWO SLICES FLAP STEAK W/CHIMICHURRI SAUCE; EGG BAKED IN A GRILLED PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM, GRILLED BUTTERNUT SQUASH W/CUMIN & CORIANDER, & GRILLED HALLOUMI CHEESE W/MINT & LIME.

robert mcnamara d. july 6th 2009

anyone who watched errol morris' fog of war knows we should never expect cheney or ashcroft or rumsfeld to own up to the tragedy of their involvement in the bush administration. seeing mcnamara rationalize & obfuscate & simply avoid his singular contribution to one of america's worst moments in foreign affairs was depressing &, at the same time, nearly exhilarating. it was depressing seeing this intelligent man try to avoid the judgment of history & exhilarating in seeing that judgment at work.

i don't have 50,000+ us deaths & over 300,000 wounded on my conscience but i can still sometimes squirm at night thinking about some of my own bad behavior. i can't imagine mcnamara ever had a good night's sleep. if he did, god help us all.

FRIDA KAHLO b. JULY 6th 1907

"I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."

of course, there's her beauty & the bisexuality & the tragedy of her various afflictions & her persistence in the face of them & the sheer stupid bias of men about women artists & her persistence in the face of those fools. there's the catalytic connection w/the great diego rivera & then... there's the work itself. despite the odd cult that's sprung up around her, i think the work holds up in its lush colors & nightmarish figures & its insistence on the act & art of "looking." the spectator is always challenged & is never allowed to forget that challenge.

LHAMO DONDRUB b JULY 6th 1935

"The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticise others. Rather, we must criticise ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life."

better known in the west as the dalai lama, he is, in fact, the 14th incarnation of that being. he is the leader of the tibetan diaspora. he is the leader of the geluk-pa school of tibetan buddhism. he is not the leader of the other schools(nyingma, sakya, & kagyu). in other words & in context of tibetan buddhism, he is as he's always claimed, "a simple monk." this is NOT to say that he isn't deeply important as the leading figure of the tibetan refugees AND the bearer of important news(ie, liberation from suffering)to westerners. outside of the political arena, i think his most important contribution has been his contact w/western scientists & the various projects that have spun out from that interaction. inside the political arena, his flexibility & tenacity has proven to be an equal match to
the inflexibility & racism of the chinese. to wish him many many more birthdays at this point is tautological. as my lama used to say on his b'day, "this just means there's less time to do what's got to be done."