Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts

Monday, June 6, 2016

The Dead Can Speak


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws

For most European Americans, the idea that the dead can speak from beyond their actual time on Earth—in other time-frames than our own—is a story told to them solely though pop culture, in cheesy Hollywood movies about evil Ouija boards or haunted houses rife with demonic possession. But, if you delve just a little deeper into better content than the kind offered on generic prime-time t.v., you'll find a lot more varied factual accounts of our relationships with our ancestors, as told in our very blood and bones.

Forensic science, in the duel branches of forensic pathology and forensic archaeology, can uncover the brutally violent truths behind the deaths and oppression writ upon our ancestors bodies (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/), ones that that were denied life in the history books and textbooks of our mutual pasts, as white America sought to exploit their often weaker economic poverty through a cultural dominance that's extremely one-sided, because cultural assimilation often goes hand-in-hand with bloody wars for land and other precious resources, which means your kind of reminiscently Asiatic eyes are a most inconvenient feature to be dealt with evenhandedly. You are that which they wanted to destroy.

And so, with the now-modern inconvenience of genetic testing and cultural databases, it doesn't really matter what an opportunistic liar or an immoral cheat says or does, because the truth will come out in your blood work, whether you like it or not (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3122205/White-NAACP-leader-pretended-black-pictured-time-scandal-broke-responds-atatcks-saying-don-t-two-sh-ts-gusy-think.html). There's no hairstyle or skin tone that a wack-job looking to exploit white America's guilt about race can play, because science has made gaming the system obsolete. If you are just 25% Native American, you can get money from the state for college, just like a person of partial African-American descent can score pricey contacts and seed money for businesses from the NAACP, making your genuine ethnicity a very lucrative thing of the past. 


With your latest genetic test in hand, your reality changes, or, as the case with me, it becomes the history of your name (as my name) as it is written on the features of most modern Americans, now as your factually-verified claim laid to rest. It simply is so. But, it's way more than ancestral land rights or fishing claims, important as those are to indigenous people. Enter into the scene every carnival barker of yore who proclaimed their psychic ability to contact the dead, looking to take advantage of that ever-grieving parent who lost a teenager too early to a drunk driver, or a car accident of any type, or perhaps a grisly murder/suicide. So many questions to ask them...are they happy? What actually happened?

Then, the mystical arts of speaking to the dead become the fodder of anyone with an open question or hard emotional case that needs solving, especially if it involves child rape and/or murder, in our bids to relieve the extreme pain of a parent lost to grief. It's hard not to imagine what avenues we would not explore for them as a culture, in an attempt to alleviate such anguish. So what if she's a crazy housewife from "Lawguyland" (that's "Long Island" for the uninitiated) with a harsh accent and a phonily exaggerated appearance who "reads" people in an audience really well through their "tells"? We want to believe. I was no stranger to the allures of a good ghost story as a kid, buying book after book about poltergeists, only to be disappointed by a complete lack of supernaturally spooky life experiences. So, where the heck are they anyway?

And then the people I loved the most in this world died, my beloved grandparents, and with them, my tether to their pasts, as our ethnic stories and personalities that we had so lovingly clung to in each other, now together again in this new land of hope, faith, and promise. I started visiting my grandfather's grave alone, just to see what I would feel. At first, it was small but beautiful experiences, like a young stag grazing alone in the cemetery's grass with new moss on his antlers, looking up at me at the exact same time I reached my grandfather's grave stone, or hearing his distinctive old New York voice so clearly that I knew I had connected with him in my mind's eye with a searingly accurate recollection.

After that, it was game on. It was no longer a process driven internally by me and my strong memories, however great they were at alleviating my profound sense of loss. No, I could hear my grandmother laughingly explain to my maiden aunt living with her that now I was splashing around like a little girl in my bathtub, and then she would say the date and time in a future that held a middle-aged me alone in an old Hudson Valley home without her actual physical presence. It was so cheerfully normal, that I knew our sound waves were actually reaching each other in a way other people could hear, too, which is a discovery that's not without a rather extensive scientific past. 

Lots of audiophiles have sworn that they connected with their loved ones through a radio tuned to a particular frequency, like a son hearing his father (now deceased) talking to his grown son in the future using the same old device, ham radio aficionados both. Lucille Ball famously told the story of her dental work transmitting radio broadcasts through her mouth on live television back in the day (http://altereddimensions.net/2014/lucille-ball-picks-up-morse-code-radio-through-dental-work-fillings)! Hollywood made a sensationalist version of it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_%28film%29) by skirting around the real physics behind radio frequencies and audio signals that bounce around the earth's atmosphere, coming back around again and again after the earth's rotation is complete. 

What was once wacky science fiction becomes our reality with time, backed by real hard science (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Hearing_Voices_From_Space.html). Your grandparents and mine would no more have believed that you could hear voices from space anymore than my grandmother thought she would live to see the day we bought water from plastic bottles, free as it was for her in the city, the source of some of the best water on earth. It would have been unthinkable that such a vast resource as readily available clean water would be sold back to us through superficial hacks like "beverage companies", but such is the case as it is now. Why would anyone drink from harmful plastic bottles when the minerals of city water have amazing health benefits that come straight outta the tap? And my grandparents were right.

The same goes with our digital imaging advances and microscopic investigations. What was completely unbelievable a few short years ago is now our day-to-day reality. Computers and the Internet? When was the last time you went a full day without your smartphone or tablet? When was the last time you didn't have Internet access? Contemplate that, and you're already more than halfway there. The far-out astrophysicist who launched the best photographic lens we developed at the time weren't just looking for space dust out there. They were looking for the Eye of G-d and His Creation of the Universe we live in, beyond time and space, in this here-and-now for all times, because our real natural phenomenons come from the source of all life itself. Welcome to the space age, kids. It's a groovy place where we're one, even you there, that curmudgeonly old guy afraid of average machines like the common PC. This galloping mechanized horse engine now as wings to fly. See you out there! Now I can hear it.





Monday, June 1, 2015

The Handprint

The Handprint  (Pearl River, May 2015).


In certain lights, a mysterious handprint is clearly visible on the door that opens from the studio's kitchen to the living area. From my futon, I can see that it's the size of a man's hand. It's strangely comforting, like a "good" ghost turning on the lights for you before you enter a room (if you believe in that sort of thing), or a benevolent, helpful robot (like Rosie from "The Jetson's") that has fresh coffee and homemade donuts ready for you every morning. 


http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/hands/images_a/_IGP8259.jpg
http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/rockart.html


I've had this feeling before, and it is a deeply spiritual experience, not unlike looking at a picture of an ancient cave dweller's hand through the sands of time. There's a link between he and I that transcends time and space. We connect through this old house as humans who were (and are) here. 

We will always have this space to enter into, as people who have shared and bonded through a particular set of circumstances that ties us to this place forever more. Do you know what I mean? It's way metaphysical. Enjoy the cooler weather today, New York.


Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Roman Bath


In the bath (March 2015).

Being multi-ethnic (and -racial as well as -lingual, but those are stories for another day) has its' distinct advantages. When in Rome, I was mistaken for a homegrown paisana taking her new "Americano" boyfriend for a ride in a pricey tourist joint by the Romano waiter, when in actuality I was on vacation with my soon-to-be annulled husband who was really just an old friend of mine from college. More on that some other time, too. True story! See it here! Click on link below! (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/10/boneyard.html)


Roman bath (March, 2015).
 
So when I see myself in pictures, I see different aspects of my ancient histories co-mingling in sometimes the most delightful ways. Angles, lighting, seasons: they all change the way I see myself and it what comes through in the photos.

On one particular morning this week, I caught sight of myself in some large mirrors mounted opposite to me on the bathroom wall while I dried off. I didn't know what I had yet, but afterwards I saw on this day in March that the "Italiana" in me came shining through, perfectly intact throughout the ages, as if I was still cloaked in a toga that was a la moda way back when. 


"Ala Mercadante", still intact (March 2015).

What do you see when you look in the mirror? 
Be honest with yourself, and you may be surprised (like I was) with what you see, particularly about what has come down through the ages intact within your genetic material that's still very much a part of who you are today. I can't think of a more solid case for genetics than the art I see around me that's also a part of who I am, too.


http://www.compassrose.com/static/PompeiiFresco.jpg
http://www.compassrose.com/static/PompeiiFresco.jpg



Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Homecoming


Two doorways.
As I knew I would, I came home after many years away. They were good hard years of some fun, some heartache, some adventure, and some travel, with much added experience. I loved it, but it was time to go home, and I knew it. So one day, on the cusp of financial ruin, I gave in to what I knew to be true, cashed my last paycheck, packed what few bags I had left in the bare sublet room I slept in because the rest of my stuff was in storage, and moved to a spare room in my moms' apartment to weather the storm. It was rough seas all the way, but that's like any real passage of time: to stick with you it has to hurt a little bit and sometimes a lot, and so it did.

Lamplight at night.

But I'm here now, and very glad of it. I know this place like a seedling knows how to grow in soil ripe for the planting. I took to it and it has, in it's own turn, taken back to me. This is my territory and my kind of land, that of my ancestors, which stretches all the way up to Canada, and I plan to savor every bit of it, like the food here that feeds my soul, because I've been cooking and serving up versions of it with home ingredients all of my life, in preparation for this time period.


Blue light, yellow light.

Stay tuned for next week's feature that I alluded to last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/02/stay-tuned.html). I referred to it as obliquely and discreetly as I could, obliged as I was under certain legal circumstances with stringent conditions that had to be followed, lest I suffer the consequences that come from jumping the gun. I do not play a young man's game, my friends, and I am happy to report that particular storm has now passed, though I'm sure others will certainly follow suit, because our very human ups-and-downs are the stuff of life itself.

Curtain and window in mid-morning light.



"Bienvenue" to you, new to this here and now.
Welcome to the light that's always been.

Monday, November 17, 2014

The Rust Bus

Wow! That is one brown truck, from head to toe.

The owner of a certain big old yellow house (where a certain artist, writer, and publisher also lives), also owns and operates a very successful, busy garage next door. They work on old junkers, classic American sports cars, and every other type of vehicle on the planet. 
I often look out the windows in the kitchen of my studio apartment to see the trucks go by, while I drink coffee in the morning. It's like a grownup version of Tonka trucks, except this game has tight deadlines that run on lots of grease and manpower.

Wait a sec...that's wood grain! He painted faux wood grain! Why?!

The other day, this little school bus was parked in the lot next to the garage that's reserved for longer jobs, and it immediately drew my attention. When I opened the curtain all the way for a better look, I knew I was going to snoop around for a closer eyeballing on my way to the market one afternoon, and so I did, but not without speculating on the type of character who would drive such a stand out vehicle. My first guess was immediately "Woodstock Hippie", because the thing looks like it's being held together by rust, but up close it revealed an entire different (and surprising) story.

Wow! I mean, it's nuts, but it is painted really well. Weird...

Someone actually took the time to paint the entire bus a brown color that's supposed to simulate wood grain, because the whole bus is delicately painted with a second darker brown color that mimics the grain running through wood. What the eff?! Why do that?! Why do all that painstaking custom work on a mini bus that looks rusty from afar? It's so weird.

But, closer inspection revealed a few more clues, like the "Wounded Warrior" sticker prominently posted in the interior (the hinged door of the bus was open for the day). Ah. Say no more: it's a restoration project as therapy for PTSD. Yep, this would definitely qualify as that. It's crazy, and it makes no sense, but it does take a lot of time and effort that's task-oriented. I have a family member through marriage who is similarly constructed. Whenever someone brings up a hobby, like say, gardening, she immediately spits out, "Oh yeah! Great therapy!". Uh, actually, I really like gardening, and I have a good green thumb, but if plants help keep you together, for the love of G-d, please go for it. She always comes off like she's gonna explode in this tense, over-caffeinated, jacked up way.

Jeez, even the headlights are done up. Whatever. Enjoy, my brother!

Same principle here. I wouldn't want to actually meet the individual who painted this entire thing badly with great skill and a type of devotion that makes absolutely no sense, but I am glad that whoever he or she may be, they are back on U.S. soil safely. It may be insane, it may not even register as a paint job to most onlookers, but if your special magic bus brings you some degree of calm and peace, go for it brother. You earned it as the price you paid for our freedoms.  
Long may your freak flag fly.





Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Dark Shadows


Shadow cast across pavement.

The time has come for our annual trip around the sun, happening by increments each and every day. Shadows stretch, grow, and lengthen to longer heights; the sun sets earlier and faster. We wake up to gradually lowering temps, and we rotate our closet by exchanging space for summer clothes to winter ones. 

Why fight the laws of nature and its' choral of universal music? Time to get out your sweaters, play in the fallen leaves, and drink some hot chocolate with deliciously melting marshmallows. Just go with the flow. You really don't have much of a choice.


Shadowy outline on driveway.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Spring Snow

Overnight accumulation in the morning. Surprise!
Nature runs a bit wild on the coasts: there's hurricanes, blizzards, and sometimes extremes between warm and cold on the exact same day. We had snow at night recently, which means we woke up to it glinting off cars and sparkling in the sunlight atop freshly budding flowers, like the daffodils and forsythia; a rare but beautiful sight. 

Walking to work one April morning....in the snow.
The noonday sun burns it away quickly in the Springtime, but it leaves you with the uneasy feeling that anything can happen to you at any time, and that's the truth about reality. It's a good reminder for us about what it means to be human, and that means we are still (and always), subject to the laws of nature (despite our progress), laws that operate on a time frame that often comes in conflict with ours. There's a lesson here to be learned somewhere, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

No? OK. For you "slower students" out there, it's this: 
you can't win in a war against Mother Nature. 
 

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Nature: The Hornet's Nest


Paper nest in snow.

I saw this beautiful paper wasp's nest on top of a frozen layer of snow, crossing a field one afternoon, and upon closer inspection, miraculous. After all, it's state has changed dramatically with the seasons. What was once a fearsome home in the summertime for fighter bees that stung ferociously upon invasion has become, in wintertime, yet another piece of flotsam and jetsam that can succumb to the elements at any time, long abandoned by those creatures who lived an entire lifetime in the mere speck of a few months to us as humans.

It looked so fragile and temporal, seemingly floating on the surface of ice that had hardened after a recent snowfall, and yet so firmly fixed in its' position. I touched it after taking a picture, and it revealed to me those dual natures under my hand as well: flimsy, light, papery, given to crumbling around the edges, but as a whole nest, it was also surprisingly hard and immovable, locked in it's winter home. I was moved by this, as I made my way to meet my own fates for the day in that sunny freezing weather, a day that was both cold and warm, hard and soft, beautiful and difficult.

Me, the hornet's nest, and a dog's tracks, at different times.