Black Horoscope

Cancer

The big beloved Mummy’s baby! This is something you have probably heard very often when people would refer to you. Your hyper-sensitivity is very irritating because people can never tell you what they really think of you without having you sobbing your heart out. Indeed, you have no control over your emotions, and your entourage, as well as yourself, find it very difficult to put up with your moods. Your mental age is eight years and you still live in a stage of childhood. Actually, you live more in your head than in the real life. You cannot confront the world and you vegetate in your snug and warm little universe. Your memory is far too good, and you are unable to get rid of your depressing nostalgia. In brief, you are a faint-hearted, passive, psychotic and selfish little thing.

Source: http://www.astrotheme.com/files/black-zodiac.php

Only afterward, when the sobering influence of maturity returns, does Capricorn feel a vague sense of remorse and melancholy for having succumbed to the temptation of forbidden passions.

The Capricorn Love Mystery

Now the chilling blasts of winter grow more insistent, forcing the experience-weary soul to symbolically retreat back into the haven of the family circle, to submit once again to the meditative, negative-feminine Night Forces.  On the Capricorn level of consciousness, for the fourth and final time, the soul feels the powerful vibrations of Cardinal leadership.  But this time it leads through the stable Earth Element, from a position of strength inside the home, beside the hearth.  Why should the Goat expose himself (or herself) to the icy temperatures outside, just to be seen and heard – applauded and praised?

Capricorn souls, now sure of both their ability and their right to take command, no longer feel the need to display or aggressively flaunt their power – either for public adulation, or for inner security.  By this stage, the soul has learned that true peace comes from within.  Being appointed Leader is a responsibility to be handled as carefully as possible, with no special recognition due for doing what is obviously one’ duty.  The Capricon’s relatives (especially parents) now assume marked importance for either good or ill, because the symbolic “old age” of the soul has arrived – and along with it, a sense of  the priorities of life, the most important being the security of belonging.  The excitement of romance and the freedoms of youth are not nearly as enticing to the Goat as comfort and contentment with those he can depend on to care for him (or her).

Capricorn is both prepared and willing to impart the hard-earned Saturnine wisdom, but only when invited to do so.  Because the Goats know the folly of forcing people to mature before their time, they smile with the benevolent indulgence of a fond grandparent (whatever his or her chronological age) upon the playful antics of the still young at heart.  Secretly, the Capricorn soul longs to abandon duty but is by now resigned to the knowledge that sheer idealism is impractical – and spontaneous enthusiasm can never replace experience.  Acutely aware of the dangers of impulsive action, the soul has become more conservative – and the Goat’s refusal to either scatter efforts or to indulge in sentimentality brings on accusations of emotional coldness from those born into the Fire and Air Elements.  Capricorns respect authority because they see the law as necessity for the protection of human rights and safety.  They shyly worship the famous and successful because Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, teaches them to revere achievement, knowing full well its price.

Although Capricorn may appear to be serious and unyielding to more liberal souls, Life has also taught the Goats its humourous side, and their subtle jokes are tinged with the irony of existence.  Because the new Saturnine duties as counselor to the foolish weigh heavily on their shoulders, they sometimes try to drink the last full measure of Life’s rare pleasures, calmly accepting them without false modesty or undue inhibition.  Only afterward, when the sobering influence of maturity returns, does Capricorn feel a vague sense of remorse and melancholy for having succumbed to the temptation of forbidden passions.  In this soul vibration there is a compulsion to acknowledge the necessity for being practical, as Capricorn admits, “I USE”.  But a gentleness of spirit softens the severity of the surface sternness commanded by Saturn, for the Capricorn consciousness brings with it a sympathy for human mistakes, born from understanding gained through ten stages of Life’s – and Love’s – mysteries.

Capricorn’s positive qualities are determination, stability, wisdom, dependability, sureness and tranquility.  Expressed in their negative form they become selfishness, narrowness, ruthless ambition, rigidity, snobbery, depression and loneliness.

To Capricorn, love is a quiet and undemanding exchange of personal gratification.  The Goats have fully learned the valuable lesson that love is not measured by excessive emotion.  But because they equate it only with the necessities of mutual need and desire, they have not yet experienced the release of its inner longings.

the actual adolescents’ changing moods puzzle them as much as they puzzle their families

The Cancer Love Mystery

The child is now an Adolescent, the soul having evolved to the stage of Cancer, hovering between childhood and maturity, longing to be grown-up, yet hesitating to cross over to the other side.  Cancer brings back awareness of the negative feminine and reflective Night Forces.  But this second experience of night is blended with a new, richer and even more sensual feeling (which was only a poetic inspiration, not yet a true reality, on the earlier Taurean level), for a change of seasons has occurred.   The spring awakening has deepened into a mid-summer night’s dream in all its full-blown and fragrant beauty for these Cancerian Oberon and Titania men and women.

Now the moody, sensitive, “Adolescent” soul vacillates between childish dependence and the maddeningly enticing, beckoning world of adulthood (what is like to be a man or a woman?).  This is beautifully expressed by the experiments between the human and faerie worlds in Taurean Shakespeare’s famed classic.  Is it sad or happy…funny or tragic?  The symbolic “Puckish” Cancerian Adolescent observes the adults (humans) in the environment, uncannily perceptive of everything seen and heard.  But this grown-up, material world so intensely watched hints of frequent disillusion.

And so the dreams of Cancer are troubled, causing the Crab to cry out in the night, sometimes dragging the old symbolic Taurus Teddy Bear out of the closet, and hugging it closely when no one can see.  As with Cancerian men and women, the actual adolescents’ changing moods puzzle them as much as they puzzle their families.  But those terrors are very real to Cancerians, who fear that maturity will mean the loss of security known with the parents, especially the mother.  Will future strangers ever fuss over the Crabs and love them as unconditionally as mother?  Cancer is beginning to suspect that they won’t.

Unable to explain their apprehensions, the Crabs turn secretive, dreaming alone – or hide and pout, imagining that no one understands.  On the Cancer level, the possible loss of parental protection haunts the subconscious.  Cancer has already learned what loss is.  Perhaps childhood friends have moved away, the family has changed residences, the old familiar neighbourhood is gone.  The world is no longer so exciting as the Crabs sense its hidden pitfalls.  The “Adolescent” Cancerian men and women know that growing up will surely bring unexpected hurt, so they cling to what they know can be trusted – yesterday.

Because the new perceptions are so acute, Cancer sees a combination of tragedy and comedy in Life as it expands in his awareness through his first excursion into the sensitive Water Element.  Still, despite an innate shyness, the Cancerian soul will not be pushed into the background, for this is the second experience as a Cardinal leader, which can turn illogical fear into sensible caution.  The Crabs wish on both the Full Moon and the New, only half-conscious of what it is they wish for……reluctant t find out.  What does tomorrow hold?  Sentiment moves the Cancerian Adolescent soul to tears.  Motivated by the need to hide true emotions, the Crabs say: “I FEEL” – then, so no one will suspect they feel so deeply, they make jokes, believing they fool people.  If not handled tenderly at this crucial stage of soul evolvement, the Cancerian man or woman develops a permanent, hard, protective shell against the cruel world.

Cancer’s positive qualities are imagination, tenacity, tenderness, sensitivity, care and caution.  Expressed in their negative form they become stinginess, irritability, melancholy, clinging and cowardice, possessiveness and moodiness.

To Cancer, as to the actual uncertain and sentimental adolescent, love has become important again, above all else.  But it is now synonymous with home, representing emotional security – and the need for love is so great it must be disguised behind moody tears and Lunar laughter.

Quote for January.

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

I am better with songs (You Tube!) and Pictures (vi.sualize.com!), poems, well, no, I am an avid reader, but I read mostly prose, and as for “speaking a few reasonable words” – maybe? Just maybe, I am there…”Hi, how are you?”  does it seem reasonable enough?  Then let’s say I am on track.

Writing comes alive

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/e1d44128a6ea9bd8f85354cfbe7bc979/

Let’s fix some of my shortcomings, LOL.

Poems from the calendar:

January: (the page has gone missing)

February (Theme: Symbols of Love):

Love wants love

Sweet kisses and

Smiling hearts

An ocean of chocolate

A paradise of togetherness

March (Theme: New Thinking):

Fashion meaning

From black and white symbols

Smears of grace

Chiseled into balance

April (Theme: April Fools):

Ferocious caramel universe

You speak like a candy animal

In your corduroy yesterday

Flying through clouds of baby growls

May (Theme: Garden of Possibility):

A moment of delirious skin

Showing up in the garden

Delicate essential languid

Shine for me

June (Theme: A Muse of Fire):

Fortune seek no friend or villain

And forswears naught

Bestowing melancholy and grace

Like a maiden drunk with love

July (Theme: Bottle Rockets):

Summer produces a thousand dreams

Of lazy sleep

And rusting feet

And purple fingers full of delirious juice

I will live for these delicate moments

August (Theme: Beach Ball Game Theory of Relativity):

The fat cats hat

Grows slowly

In the clean green ground

September (Theme: Your Song):

Short story or poetry

What plot illustrates my world

A strange in the library

Creates a novel of me

October (Theme: Shadow History):

Delicate whisper of a garden

Incubate a thousands dreams

A shadow of spring in the fall

November (Theme: Food for Thought):

The memory of a chicken

And a pickle as sour as lime

Make me think of people

And our tremendous emotions

December (Theme: Everyday Celebrations):

Remember the rhythm of the ocean

The animal breathing

Of a delicious universe

Source: http://media.photobucket.com/image/impossible%20is%20nothing/pedro925/impossible.jpg?o=11

A person knows nothing…

But a person does believe, think, imagine, make up, recall and guess a lot.

Source: http://al.turtlecounseling.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/11/418514.html

Emotional Competency

Well, well, well…  I did not have time to write anything.  Not that I really wanted.  But there is good news – after all this time, after all my efforts, I suddenly came to realize who I am, the good, the bad and the ugly.  It is a revelation, you could laugh at it all you want, but I was blind.  Now I am upset, but hopeful.  I am back to square one.  The April Fool Joke is all on me.  Well I am Fool and a grandiose Fool at that, but at least now I realize it.  What a relief!!!

“Don’t ignore the past.  It is the place where we keep who we were and who we’ve grown from.”

“What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.”

“The way you see it is never the way it is.”

“Your truth is never the Truth.”

Source: http://al.turtlecounseling.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/11/418514.html

I am glad that I had the courage to look at the things they are now and regret that it took me so long.  But it is what it is and it is imperative to press forward.

Since there is no time to waste, I am not quite sure whether to continue updating my site or abandon it altogether.  Until I make a decision to quit, I will try and make short posts.

There is one site I found, which I intend to explore –

http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/

you can do it too – that is my suggestion for the day.

There are a few lines that drew me in

Passion + Reason = Constructive Action. This is the essence of emotional competency.

And a few quotes

“Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.” ~ St. Augustine

“First-person viewpoint is the fundamental asymmetry of humanity.” ~ Leland R. Beaumont

Source:  http://www.hectorcasanova.net/art/pain.jpg

Excruciating pain, yet I haven’t reached that emotional threshold…

It is my umpteenth attempt to get to grips with my life.  I do procrastinate.  I do associate more pain with looking for a job than abstaining from it.  Well, starting tomorrow… Right!

“Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute.”

The Force That Shapes Your Life

Anthony Robbins “Awaken the Giant Within”, Chapter 3, page 52

“Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humour and passion.” (Sir Thomas Browne)

What creates a hero, a heel, a criminal, a contributor?  What determines the difference in human actions?  Throughout my life, I have passionately sought the answer to these questions.  One thing is clear to me: human beings are not random creatures; everything we do, we do for a reason.  We may not be aware of the reason consciously, but there is undoubtedly a single driving force behind all human behaviour.  This force impacts every facet of our lives, from our relationships and finances to our bodies and brains.  What is this force that is controlling you even now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life?  PAIN and PLEASURE!  Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

So often I hear people talk about changes they want to make in their lives.  But they can’t get themselves to follow through.  They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and even angry with themselves because they know they need to take action, but they can’t get themselves to do it.  There is one elementary reason: they keep trying to change their behaviour, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it.

Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about.  Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine.  Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it.  Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?

Source: http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/demotivators-depressing-anti-motivational-posters/

After all, what is procrastination?  It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it.  Why not?  The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off.  Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done?  What happened?  You changed what you liked pain and pleasure to.  Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.

[that is, of course, just a story of my life]

“A man who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than necessary.” (Seneca)

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.  If you do that, you’re in control of your life.  If you don’t, life controls you.”  (Anthony Robbins)

[I love when the author quotes himself!  Well, I am being sarcastic]

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Marcus Aurelius)

“Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.”  (Lord Chesterfield)

Though we’d like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behaviour is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation.  Intellectually, we may believe that eating chocolate is bad for us, but we’ll still reach for it.  Why?  Because we’re not driven so much by what we intellectually know, but rather by what we’ve learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems.  It’s our neuro-associations – the associations we’ve established in our nervous systems – that determine what we’ll do.  Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions – the sensations that we link to our thoughts – are what truly drive us.

Many times we try to override the system.  For a while we stick to a diet; we’ve finally pushed ourselves over the edge because we have so much pain.  We will have solved the problem for the moment – but if we haven’t eliminated the cause of the problem, it will resurface.  Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behaviour and pleasure to our new behaviour, and condition it until it’s consistent.  Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.

“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”  (Michel De Montaigne)

 

Source: http://image.healthhaven.com/Pain.htm

Remember, too, that it’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain.  And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief – our sense of certainty – that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure.  We’re not driven by reality, but by our perception of reality.

“Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure… they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.”  (Jeremy Bentham)

Source: http://www.joyonthejob.info/transformingpainintopower/

Let’s make some changes right now

[I consider it my homework]

First, write down four actions that you need to take that you’ve been putting off.

Second, under each of these actions, write down the answer to the following questions:

-         Why haven’t I taken action?

-         In the past, what pain have I linked to taking this action?

Third, write down all the pleasure you’ve had in the past by indulging in this negative pattern?

Fourth, write down what it will cost you if you don’t change now.  What will happen if you don’t stop eating so much sugar and fat?  If you don’t stop smoking?  If you don’t make that phone call that you know you need to make?  If you don’t start consistently working out each day?  Be honest with yourself.  What’s it going to cost you over the next two, three, four, five years?  What’s it going to cost you emotionally?  What’s it going to cost you in terms of your self-image?  What will it cost you in your physical energy level?  What will it cost you in your feelings of self-esteem?  What will it cost you financially?  What will it cost you in your relationships with the people you care about most?  How does that make you feel?  Don’t just say, “It will cost me money: or “I will be fat.”  That’s not enough.  You’ve got to remember that what drives us is our emotions.  So get associated and use pain as your friend, one that can drive you to a new level success.

The final step is to write down all the pleasure you’ll receive by taking each of these actions right now.

Make a huge list that will drive you emotionally, that will really get you excited:

-         I’ll gain the feeling of really being in control of my life, of knowing that I’m in charge.

-         I’ll gain a new level of self-confidence.

-         I’ll gain physical vitality and health.  I’ll be able to strengthen all my relationships.

-         I’ll develop more willpower, which I can use in every other area of my life.

-         My life will better in all these ways now.

-         Over the next two, three, four, five years.

-         By taking this action, I will live my dream.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/technowannabe/562918256/

From Robert Greene “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Law 48 – Assume Formlessness

Page 419

Judgment

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack.  Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move.  Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed.  The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order.  Everything changes.

Source: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/eduoff/vt-2004//mt-2003/mt-mercury-map6-normal.jpg

In martial arts, it is important that strategy be unfathomable, that form be concealed, and that movements be unexpected, so that preparedness against them be impossible.  What enables a good general to win without fail is always having unfathomable wisdom and a modus operandi that leaves no tracks.  Only the formless cannot be affected.  Sages hide in unfathomability, so their feelings cannot be observed; they operate in formlessness, so their lines cannot be crossed.

The Book of the Huainan Masters, China, Second Century B.C.

Character Armor

To carry out the instinctual inhibition demanded by the modern world and to be able to cope with the energy stasis which results from this inhibition, the ego has to undergo a change.  The ego, i.e., that part of the person that is exposed to danger, becomes rigid, as we say, when it is continually subjected to the same or similar conflicts between need and a fear-inducing outer world.  It acquires in this process a chronic, automatically functioning mode of reaction, i.e., its “character”.  It is as if the affective personality armored itself, as the hard shell it develops were intended to deflect and weaken the blows of the outer world as well as the clamoring of the inner needs.  This armoring makes the person less sensitive to unpleasure, but also restricts his libidinal and aggressive motility and thus reduces his capacity for achievement and pleasure.  We say the ego has become less flexible and more rigid, and that the ability to regulate the energy economy depends on the extent of the armoring.

Wilhelm Reich, 1897 – 1957

Observance of the law

When you want to fight us, we don’t let you and you can’t find us.  But when we want t fight you, we make sure that you can’t get away and we hit you squarely…and wipe you out… The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

Mao Tse-Tung, 1893 – 1976

Keys to Power

The human animal is distinguished by its constant creation of forms.  Rarely expressing its emotions directly, it gives them form through language, or through socially acceptable rituals.  We cannot communicate our emotions without a form.

The forms that we create, however, change constantly – in fashion, in style, in all those human phenomena representing the mood of the moment.  We are constantly altering the forms we have inherited from previous generations, and these changes are signs of life and vitality.  Indeed, the things that don’t change, the forms that rigidify, come to look to us like death, and we destroy them.  The young show this most clearly: Uncomfortable with the forms that society imposes upon them, having no set identity, they play with their own characters, trying on a variety of masks and poses to express themselves.  This is the vitality that drives the motor of form, creating constant changes in style.

The powerful are often people who in their youth have shown immense creativity in expressing something new through a new form.  Society grants them power because it hungers for and rewards this sort of newness.  The problem comes later, when they often grow conservative and possessive.  They no longer dream of creating new forms; their habits congeal, and their rigidity makes them easy targets.  Everyone knows their next move.  Instead of demanding respect they elicit boredom: Get off the stage! We say, let someone else, someone younger, entertain us.  When locked in the past, the powerful look comical – they are overripe fruit, waiting to fall from the tree.

Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.  To be formless is not to be amorphous; everything has a form – it is impossible to avoid.  The formlessness of power is more like that of water, or mercury, taking the form of whatever is around it.  Changing constantly, it is never predictable.  The powerful are constantly creating form, and their power comes from the rapidity with which they can change.  Their formlessness is in the eye of the enemy who cannot see what they are up to and so has nothing solid to attack.  This is the premier pose of power: ungraspable, as elusive and swift as the god Mercury, who could take any form he pleased and this ability to wreak havoc on Mount Olympus.

Human creations evolve toward abstraction, toward being more mental and less material.  This evolution is clear in art, which, in this century, made the great discovery of abstraction and conceptualism; it can also be seen in politics, which over time have become less overtly violent, more complicated, indirect and cerebral.  Warfare and strategy too have followed this pattern.  Strategy began in the manipulation of armies on land, positioning them in ordered formations; on land, strategy is relatively two dimensional, and controlled by topography.  But all the great powers have eventually taken to sea, for commerce and colonization.  And to protect their trading lanes they have had to learn how to fight at sea.  Maritime warfare requires tremendous creativity and abstract thinking, since the lines are constantly shifting.  Naval captains distinguish themselves by their ability to adapt to the literal fluidity of the terrain and to confuse the enemy with an abstract, hard-to-anticipate form.  They are operating in a third dimension: the mind.

Image:

Mercury.  The winged messenger, god of commerce, patron saint of thieves, gamblers, and all those who deceive through swiftness.  The day Mercury was born he invented the lyre; by that evening he had stolen the cattle of Apollo.  He would scour the world, assuming whatever form he desired.  Like the liquid metal named after him, he embodies the elusive, the ungraspable – the power of formlessness.

Authority:

Therefore the consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Vitory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly… A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.

(Sun-tzu, fourth century B.C.)

From Robert Greene “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Preface, page xvii

The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us – when we feel helpless we feel miserable.  No one wants less power; everyone wants more.  In the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power moves.  We have to seem fair and decent.  So we need to be subtle – congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.

This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court.

[…]

The successful courtier learned over time to make all of his moves indirect; if he stabbed an opponent in the back, it was with a velvet glove on his hand and the sweetest of smiles on his face.  Instead of using coercion or outright treachery, the perfect courtier got his way though seduction, charm, deception, and subtle strategy, always planning several moves ahead.  Life in the court was a never-ending game that required constant vigilance and tactical thinking.  It was civilized war.

Today we face a peculiarly similar paradox to that of the courtier: Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair.  But if we play by those rules too strictly, if we take them too literally, we are crushed by those around us who are not so foolish.  As the great Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”  The court imagined itself the pinnacle of refinement, but underneath its glittering surface a cauldron of dark emotions – greed, envy, lust, hatred – boiled and simmered.  Our world similarly imagines itself the pinnacle of fairness, yet the same ugly emotions still stir within us, as they have forever.  The game is the same.  Outwardly, you must seem to respect the niceties, but inwardly, unless you are a fool, you learn quickly to be prudent, and to do as Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove.  If, like the courtier of times gone by, you can master the arts o indirection, learning to seduce, charm, deceive, and subtly outmaneuver your opponents, you will attain the heights of power.  You will be able to make people bend to your will without their realizing what you have done.  And if they do not realize what you have done, they will never resent nor resist you.

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Have you seen the hit of the last Venice Biennale – the haystack in which the first Belarusian postmodernist, Mikolai Klimaksovich, hid from his local police inspector for four years?  Alexander called this work plagiaristic and told Brian about the similar haystack famously used before the revolution by Vladimir Lenin.  Brian observed that repetition is not necessarily plagiarism, it is the very essence of the postmodern, or – to put it in broader terms – the foundation of the modern cultural gestalt, which is manifested in everything, from the cloning of sheep to remakes of old movies, for what else can you do after the end of history?  Brian said it was precisely Klimaksovich’s use of quotation that made him a postmodernist, not a plagiarizer.  But Alexander objected that no quotations would ever have saved this Klimaksovich from the Russian police, and history might have come to an end in Belarus, but there was not sign of it breaking down yet in Russia.

Then Brian showed Alexander a work by Asuro Keshami, one which he regards with especial affection, not least owing to the serious investment required for its production and installation.  Keshami’s work, inspired by the oeuvre of Camille Paglia, of whom you must have heard, consists of an immense tube of red plastic with projections on the inside in the form of white fangs.  It is proposed to install in the open air in one of London’s sports stadiums.

And now I am getting to the point.  One of the most serious problems in the world of modern art is the invention of original and fresh verbal interpretations of a work.  Literally just a few phrases are required, which can be reprinted in the catalogues and reviews.  This apparently trivial detail can often decide the fate of a piece of art.  It is very important here to be able to perceive things from an unexpected, shocking angle, and your friend, with his barbarically fresh view of the world, does this remarkably well.  Therefore, Brian would like permission to use the ideas expressed by Alexander yesterday for the conceptual support of the installation.  The accompanying text which I include below is by way of being a fusion of Brian’s and Alexander’s ideas:

Asuro Keshami’s work ‘VD-42 CC’ combines the languages of different areas – engineering, technology and science.  At the base level the subject-matter is the overcoming  of space: physical space, the space of taboo and the space of our subconscious fears.  The languages of engineering and technology deal with the material from which the object is constructed, but the artist addresses the viewer in the language of emotions.  When the viewer learns that certain people have given this little queer fifteen million pounds to stretch out a huge imitation-leather cunt above an abandoned soccer pitch, he remembers what he does in his own life and how much he is paid for it, then he looks at the photo of this little queer in his horn-rimmed spectacles and funny jacket, and experiences confusion and bewilderment bordering on the feeling that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘abandonment’ (Geworfenheit).  The viewer is invited to concentrate on these feelings, which constitute the precise aesthetic effect that the installation attempts to achieve.

Calendar Wisdom.

Well, coming back to my calendar.  Now it is February and there is a new Chapter.  Apparently, the new theme is LOVE.

Symbols of Love.

Love is perhaps the most difficult of emotions to put into words, but that certainly hasn’t stopped anyone from trying.  When it comes to love, we come up with all sorts of ways to communicate it – gifts, surprises, good deeds, and, yes, loving words.  Consider your love for someone and look over the poetry magnets.  Which ones jump out?   Try it with different people in mind – a partner or a friend or a child – and compose a few lines with these symbols of love.

Quote of the month:

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”  Henry David Thoreau

So, if it is the theme of the month, I will be writing about love and marriage.

Many years ago, my ex-husband and I were about to get married and the first date suggested at the Registration Office was February 13^th , Saturday.  I am not superstitious, but I refused categorically.  The next day was obviously February 14^th, the Valentine’s day (how romantic is that?), but we did not know it then.  We lived in Russia, and were totally oblivious to the dates like Valentine’s Day, Halloween (on which I was born), Thanksgiving and the rest of them.

So, not to be married on the February 13^th, we chose February 6^th instead.  Was our marriage meant to be?  Who knows?  We had a car accident on the way to the Registration Office and not all of our guests arrived to participate in the ceremony.  It is generally considered to be a bad sign, but again who knows?  And now, I can say only that we were married for 16 years and we are not married any longer.

My ex has found another love and I guess he will remarry soon.  And I struggle to remember all of those who had the folly and courage to propose marriage to me.  The question somehow resurfaced and it did not always had to do with love.  Maybe it is time to write a little story about men in my life.