Archive for the ‘Exisitentialism’ Category
Magnolia Blossoms — Image by kenne
I Keep On Running
I awake in time for
an early morning run,
magnolia blossoms opening in
the muggy East Texas air
pushed by squall lines
moving in from the Gulf,
moisture dropping occasionally
from the trees as I run
the sidewalk streets lined with
excessively large homes
and yards carved carefully
out of the woods,
having created a tragedy
of what was home
for what was meant to be
before society forgot
what it means to
embrace existence
without creating
self-imposed angst
in an irrational universe –
I keep on running
and running
and running
and running.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Sunrise On Wildhorse Trail — Image by kenne
No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have
no capacity for living now.
— Alan Watts
Like this:
Like Loading...
“Self-Portrait” — Image by kenne
This week’s Presidential election has reminded me of Marshall McLuhan’s trademark, “The Medium In the Message.” From it, I recall his belief that we go through life looking through the rear-view mirror, and becoming aware of our environment only after we have left it and that what is communicated doesn’t count as much as how it is delivered.
Of course, the medium that exists today is much different than that of the sixties, they still alter our sensory life, therefore what we know. As a result, our society is like the driver who sees neither ahead to the future nor outside the side window to the present but looks only to the past in the rear-view mirror — “Make America great again.”
McLuhan believed that education must serve as a defense to the media fallout. He likened our society to the mariner in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “A Descent Into the Maelstrom.” The mariner is caught in a whirlpool, but he figures out the relative velocities of currents and saves himself. The question remains whether, as a society, we are educated enough to save ourselves.
“TIME FOR MORE ACTION”
January 17, 2003, Peace Demonstration In Houston, Texas — Photo by Joy
In some ways, I feel as if I may have been in a trance these past eight years, kind of a passive free feeling. It’s now time to stand. Social justice, like art, requires an effort. It’s time for those who have half a heart for poetry, half for life to stand for truth. Those who have continued learning and have been sharpening our weapons by night to clear their throats and stand, becoming the voices of truth.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Two-Tailed Swallow On Mexican Bird of Paradise: the Last Signs of Summer — Computer Art by kenne
As far nature,
it is not what it is
that interests me,
but what it becomes.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Joy and Kenne (Houston, Texas, June 2001)
There are times
I’m not a female,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t male
I’m not a black,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t a white
I’m not immortal,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t mortal
I’m not a doubter,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t a believer
I’m not a conservative,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t a liberal
I’m not a saint,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t sinful
I’m not ignorant,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t learned
I’m not implicit
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t explicit
I’m not an Islamic,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t a Christian
I’m not an animal,
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t a human
I’m not in
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t out
I’m not lonely
But there are times
I wish there was an opposite
I’m not you
But there are times
I wish I wasn’t me —
But there are times
You are the opposite
Of the opposite of you
kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Morning Rainbow In The Desert (Tucson, Arizona, September 29, 2016) — Image by kenne
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Like this:
Like Loading...
Sacred Datura — Computer Art by kenne
“Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?… Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
— from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tom Turner — Image by kenne
The poem “Invisible Man” by Pablo Neruda gets inside me, stirring my very being, mixing the past, present, and images of the future. The poem has short lines making it seem longer than it is. Even so, I’m sharing some of Neruda’s powerful lines, which I have read, reread contemplating thoughts of my brother, Tom, and existential invisibility.
“they fire against the people,
which is to say,
against poetry,
but my brother
the poet
was in love,
or was suffering
because all his emotion
is for the sea,
he loves remote ports
for their names,
and he writes about oceans
he doesn’t know,
when life is as full
as an ear of corn with grain
he passes by, never knowing
how to harvest it,
he rides the waves
without ever touching land,
and, occasionally,
he is profoundly moved
and melancholy,
he is too big
to fit inside his skin,
he gets tangled and untangles himself,
he declares he is maudit,
with great difficulty, he carries the cross
of darkness,
he believes that he is different from
anyone else in the world,
he eats bread every day
but he’s never seen a
baker
or gone to a meeting
of a baker’s union,
and so my poor brother
is deliberately dark,
he twists and writhes
and finds himself
interesting,
interesting,
that’s the word,
I am no better
than my brother,
but I smile,
because when I walk through the streets
the only one who does not exist
life flows around me
like rivers,
I am the only one
who is invisible,
no mysterious shadows,
no gloom and darkness,
everyone speaks to me,
everyone wants to tell me things,
to talk about their relatives,
their misery and
their joy,
everyone passes by, and everyone
tells me something,
look at all the things they do!”
— from Invisible Man by Pablo Neruda
(Click here to read the complete poem.)
“Where do you go when you’ve already gone?”
— from Tom Turner’s notes
Like this:
Like Loading...
“Life Forms” — Image by kenne
I hear the gentle overnight rain
falling on the skylight, feeling
it as if falling on my face.
Thoughts turn to my sacred place
where I search for new ideas, bringing
me closer to dream realization.
Life forms the images for my thoughts
each a magic moment, providing
a window into my inner soul
Where I continue to seek answers
to my ultimate purpose, accepting
I may not be who I think I am.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
New Age Technology (Women in Sedona Using a Drone to Take Selfies.)– Computer Art by kenne
At nature’s vortex
three women capture selfies —
irrational state?
The spiritual
and technology transcend —
tragicomedy.
In creative acts,
essence of being human,
we are what we are.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tom Turner in an Existential Moment — Image by kenne
“If thought corrupts language,
language can also corrupt thought.”
— George Orwell
He gazes through the
rained soaked window
into his confused mind.
Lonely in the moment
turning his head away
from my open hand.
He was not prepared
to be rejected and
broken up by life.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Cooper’s Hawk — Images by kenne
My many walks with nature
have made me more aware
of the world around me.
I have learn to look and
listen, improving my
ability to connect,
to connect to my existence
with and through nature.
— kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Photo-Artistry by kenne
Existence
color
shapes in color
shades
shapes in shades
shapes
form in shapes
form
image in form
image
meaning in image
meaning
gratitude in meaning
gratitude
life in gratitude.
Today I read about someone who keeps a “gratitude journal” and thought, “What a great idea?”
Continuing the thought, I concluded that I already keep a gratitude journal, this blog.
Life is a gift. Each day is filled with blessings — just by posting daily, I’m able to express gratitude.
–kenne
Like this:
Like Loading...
“Universal Flight” — Computer art by kenne
“When a person really desires something,
all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.”
“. . .when we strive to become better than we are,
everything around us becomes better, too.”
“The closer one gets to realizing his destiny,
the more that destiny becomes his true reason for being.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Like this:
Like Loading...
Joy and Friends — Grunge Art by kenne
Dasein
For the moment
a tolerable relationship
is established
by being there — Dasein.
It is the moment
the camera captures
and actualized in art
through thought and expression.
The form of the image
is empty without
the spirit that lives in it —
art projects the spirit.
Seeking suitable form never ends
with and achievement —
each moment formulates new meaning,
a process not lost in each formation.
What appears in the moment
only asks the questions,
the process provides the answers
by the free spirit seeking form.
The real image
is receptive to reality,
the actualized image
seeks a more suitable form.
— kenne
#####
The very essence of the creative is its novelty,
and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
— Carl Rogers
Like this:
Like Loading...
