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From a 50s memory to the Millennium ...,
Thoughts and a Site ...,
KidCast for Peace...,
Poems: 'Sensei' & 'The Mind' ...,
More from Argentina ...,
'Fin de Siecle' started this Christmas ...
Miss Ethel Holman was my piano teacher when I was a little girl in the late 1940s to early 1950s. I called her Miss Holman though she lived in a cozy little bungalow with her husband Jack and her Mother, Mrs. Wiehe. The Grand piano half filled the front living room which was carpeted with oriental type fringed rugs. When the lesson was over, and on other odd days, my sister and I would procede to the sunroom in the rear where Mrs. Wiehe, who had no grandchildren, would tell us wonderful stories that I have never heard anywhere since. So, aside from the fact that I was usually unprepared for my lesson, to be in that house was a comfortable sometimes magical experience. Except for one brief moment that I had forgotten until a few years ago when the new Millenium began to draw close.
She loved operetta, Sigmond Romberg and Victor Herbert were two favourites. I don't remember any conversations about generalities, not even "How are you doing in school?" or "Isn't it a beautiful day?" So how did the topic of the year 2000 come up? What would generations-ahead Miss Holman have had to say to her young pupil about the year 2000? All I remember is that she mentioned it and I was impelled to say, "Will I be alive in the year 2000?"
Miss Holman paused a l o n g time before she replied, hesitating, "Yes, I think it's possible.", and in that interval all my mortality and the certainty of my future nonexistence came upon me and blotted out that comfortable room and the small incandescent lamp shining on the keyboard.
Miss Holman, you are gone, Jack too, and Miss Wiehe, surely. And so, here I am, here we are, arrived at the year 2000. I never counted on it.
Marie
As Ed Varney says in a poem: "I can't get used to dying. My time is too valuable to waste in eternity." Winter solstice is upon us. Hence my metaphysical bent. The darkest, coldest, most dreaded time of the year. And the most hopeful. As Shakespeare said: "Darkness has its uses." For all peoples, in all recorded history (especially in northern climes) it's been a time of great transition, a celebration of the returning light. All the more poignant as we h(url) into the new millennium and potential pall of Y2K.
Heard a rumour that this year it falls a little earlier. However, a web search (where else?) produced two very scientific looking sites still pegging it at December 22, 1:44 (CST).
This month marks my 4th year in web publishing. And for two of those years, I've been sending these 404 missives to a list that's grown to about 70 people spread across Canada, the U.S, South America, Europe and Australia. A curious mix of artists, writers, poets, programmers, students and what not, ranging from a 15 year old to a septuagenarian. All of you had the tenacity to keep clicking a little arrow that eventually led to an image of a mysterious, primordial looking balanced rock.
http://www.islandnet.com/404/
"T.S. Thomas"
tst@islandnet.com
"KidCast For Peace; Solutions For a Better World" is a telecommunications
activity in which kids (OF ALL AGES) can meet in videoconferences several times a year
(Earth Day, April 22, 2000 is next) to share their heart and ideas for
making the world a happier, healthier, and more peaceful/safer place. Kids
(of all ages) create analog and digital art, animation, web sites, etc.
that demonstrate suggestions for improving the planet and its peoples. The
actual KidCast For Peace is a CU-SeeMe viceoconference in which they share
their work interactively with their peers globally in schools, cybercafes
and from home. Activity Center is in KidCast Central:
http://creativity.net/kidcast2.html.
Deadline is April 22, 2000.
Sensei
Father of humanity, true human being
You cherish the Family of Myo Ho *
Through our deluded lives
You have awakened "the promise"
that the 21st Century
will be the century of life
Within the Mind
the expansive Universe
Thoughts dancing
among the stars and galaxies
Within the Lotus seed
the heart pulsates
Compassion
fills the vastness
Faith passes
Beautiful eight winds
Within the eternal cycle
Life Force
cradle and protect our Being.
Reginald Kimura
WILLIAM: I wish you were able to enjoy mate.
Let me tell you that I am ashamed of my country as today the government left their charges and tomorrow the Radical Government is going to take control of this (impossible) country. But the worst of all is that when the journalists were joking in the Interior Minister's house, Carlos Corach, a refugee dictator from Paraguay (Lino Oviedo) was escaping from our country so as to avoid the extradition that the new government might (carry out). As he would be sent back to Paraguay (and put in jail there as he is the suspected of having killed the Vice President of Paraguay) he escaped from the police custody. I am rather ashamed and I do think that pressure groups will not let the Radicals make a good government as De la Rua is trying not to be corrupt and that is not to the liking of these groups. For example he sold the Presidential Ship as he said he did not deserve that luxury.
All here smells! See you.
Let me tell you that Diego Maradona was given the prize of the Best Sportsmen of the Century, by the Clarín newspaper (www.clarín.com.ar) (one of the most popular with La Nación) and he burst into tears, the same as me and my father. I send you a pic of Charly García, the musician I told you earlier.
Send info about political subjects of all times. Do you know Ernesto Sábato? I would recommend About Heroes and tumbs (sobre heroes y tumbas), that illustrate the Peron period scene and tells a fascinating story of a couple and a mad man. I like Sabato more than Borges (Borges did not care about people, he wrote only for geniuses like him). Another interesting author is Adolfo Bioy Casares (he died this year).
....
Here in Argentina Menem's Government has passed and although our dependence with world powerful nations as USA wont change I hope there will be less corruption.
Christmas is coming and Carlos "La Mona" Jimenez is going to help homeless kids again. In Argentina there are two kinds of social classes. The rich, who are richer as time passes; and poor, who are poorer every second pass. Medium class is going to disappear (we are in that class) due to the Argentine economy. That is why poor people from Cordoba treat La Mona as if we was God. (He is our King, they say) Although he is ugly singing, he is loved as he sings people's trouble. Here I send you a song, in which a man begs for his freedom as he had to steal (2x1 is an Argentine law which allows to reduce your punishment to the half (you spend one day in prison, but it is counted as if it were 2 days) as he had no chances in the society) Besides he sings about drugs, violence in families, unfaithful women, and so on.
2x1
Mr. Judge, I accept that I was wrong, I stole.
As I was sacked from my job,
I was desperate, and with the newspaper under my arm
thousands of doors I knocked.
Mr. Judge, I accept that I was wrong, I stole.
There was neither choice, nor a job, nor a help,
nor a solitary hand I found.
And my children were freezing, and my wife cried in a corner,
and my children were hungry,
and in my hands there was nothing.
2x1 Mr. Judge, please have mercy,
2x1 Mr. Judge, that I want freedom.
2x1 Mr. Judge, please have mercy,
that my children are dying of hunger and loneliness.
Mr. Judge, I accept that I was wrong, I stole.
I am paying the punishment
as I am bleeding
as I know that they are suffering
and I am here in jail.
Changing the subject, last week while I was talking with friends we started thinking about drugs. And I said that in Argentine we are stupid as we treat the dealer as if he were the worst criminal, and we do not care about alcohol or cigarettes, which kill more people here than drugs. Only 2 agreed with me. I do not want to say that I am in favour of drugs, they are a shit, but I mean that people tend to see other things OK just because they are legal. And I do think that the corrupt governor who steals money from the people is more criminal than a drug dealer that does that to afford all his necessities and due to the lack of work. And I don't want to compare how much money they get, it is obvious that the governor steals more.
I would like to know your opinion about this.
thank you for everything.
NACHO.
Ignacio Markievich
Ignacio's email address withheld on my own initiative. WM
I have been preoccupied with the question: "What is the general direction of modern art (culture)?"
In the Toronto Star (12/20/99, D3) I found an article about a French survey which named Picasso the century's best painter. Forty percent of 1,016 people surveyed by LeParisien daily chose Picasso. Vincent Van Gogh was cited as the second most influential artist of the century with 35 per cent of the vote. But because Van Gogh died in 1890, Picasso was chosen as the very top artist in the 20th century. A friend of mine found this choice rather stupid.
After the opening of the Jubilee Exhibition of Ukrainian artists (*) I found arguments which supported a negative view of the opinion poll:
The end of the XX century is focused on establishment of contacts and overcoming of efforts in development of the theory of complex systems and geometry of space, genesis of the form. As I.E. Tamm has noted, " ...It is more perspective to search not initial Matter, but initial Structures. Such reformulation of a problem of Unity of the World seems to us incomparably more correct in logical and in natural scientific relation."
2.0 Among several basic forms a SPIRAL FORM reveals certain fundamental isomorphism to an internal code of the structural organization of matter. As is known, the spiral is the morphological standard of structures of various systems -- both organic and inorganic.
2.1 In various kinds of creativity the display of biorhythms in its resonant mode provides objective value to the art and design products, and the maximum approach to optimal structural organization. Traditions of oldest pre-slavic (ukrainian) culture of Trypil - Kukuten (Dnieper - Karpaty area), named as culture of spiral forms (25,000 - 30,000 years B.C.) are investigated in the work of author (Bondarenko (1999)). A mechanism of the transfer of collective undermind of Slavic population, - spiral archetype - from the eneolitic period to our times is discussed as a result of the exposition of Ukrainian artists.
2.2 As the cited article shows, the compositional schemes of the works of greatest painters, such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Delacroix, Repin, Van Gogh and others contained the spiral form as a structural basis.
2.3 It is very interesting to comment that almost all the greatest masterpieces of world art, architecture, and design contain the resonant code in structural basis.
My friend was right. Picasso's works don't contain the morphological standards in their structural basis.
Next time I will continue the discussion with analysis of the Ukrainian exhibition and collection of classic works.
Reference
Bondarenko, V.G. (1999) About fundamentality of the form a spiral, slavic archetype, and new aspects of perspective. - Rodyna, Toronto N 3-4 pp 11-13
(*)The Ukrainian Canadian Art foundation and The Ukrainian Association of Visual Artists of Canada
Cordially invite you to an exhibit of
Canadian Ukrainian artists 2 0 0 0
in the KUMF Gallery
2118 A Bloor Street West, Toronto
Exhibition continues to January 15, 2000 ...
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William Markiewicz