Dionisio D. Martinez

[Image: “The Kiss,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.

(Tom Robbins [source (in part)])

…and (last six lines):

Rest before you sleep

Requiem after Fauré, for my father

Rest before you sleepYou’ll be walking for hours
thenas usualaway from homeyour shoes
in your handyour feet not yet used to the road
Perhaps they need to feel the gravel
to know where they’re headed

A woman I knewwho lived mostly in the woods
mentioned the danger in presuming to know
what an animal thinksThe foxfor example
stopping by her open tent and looking in

I suppose she would’ve felt this way about your feet
She would’ve said how could anyone know
what a pair of tired feet need along the way

I would’ve asked her how she knew the feet
were tiredSuch discourse produces nothing
but anything less would be silence
and that would be intolerable
I wish I knew why I was telling you this

It’s easier to read the mind of a fox than to guess
what a man’s about to say when he returns
from the woodshead full of rootsveins
more like branchesshoes in one handfeet
blisteredand none of this necessarily
an indication of how the feet feelwhat miles
uphill and back have done to the soles
and to the small bones that propel a man

It’s safe nowI thinkto speak for the fox
who is only as cunning as we say it is
We’re the only creatures that claim to be anything
then build a house of facts around the claim

I’ve come for vindicationNo point in trying
to disguise it as a lesser wishWake upstop
while you still know where you arePut away
your elusive countryGive your sleep a rest

(Dionisio D. Martínez [source])

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[Video: surrealist photographer and “photo-composite artist” Erik Johannson introduces a TED audience to his work. In this brief talk, he doesn’t address so much how his images come about, as why they do. But he’s not shy about revealing his secrets, either; he may take several, dozens of, even hundreds of carefully planned and lighted photographs, and then spend hours or even months snipping away at and reassembling them — their edges veeeery subtly removed or obscured — into landscapes which could never exist, but surely look as though they could. Coverage of his work and interviews with him are scattered here and there around the Web (e.g.), and he’s got his own YouTube channel of “behind the scenes” videos. Very clever and exhaustively but lovingly detailed work.]

From whiskey river:

The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself…

There may be a broken trail of stone and bone faintly suggesting the development of the human body. There is nothing even faintly suggesting such a development of this human mind. It was not and it was; we know not in what instant or in what infinity of years. Something happened; and it has all the appearance of a transaction outside of time.

(G. K. Chesterton [source])

…and:

Although at first glance there may appear to be a fairly thin line between them, there are significant differences between the attempt to somehow magically exert one’s will on tangible reality for one’s own benefit (manifestation), and the inspiration to imagine entirely new realities (sometimes to add color and bounce to the drab waltz of existence, sometimes to facilitate the recognition of wonder, sometimes just for the hell of it); between an attempt to mentally force fortune to alter its course for one’s personal gain (to manifest, say, a winning lottery ticket), and possessing the lightness of spirit and the freedom of mind to live as if such developments would pale in comparison to those one regularly experiences at the piano, the easel, the writing pad, or upon viewing a pattern of fallen leaves in the gutter; to live — against all evidence — as if advances in fortune were already here.

(Tom Robbins [source])

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The Only Creatures That Claim to Be Anything

Evolution Tango