Another Ash Wednesday Valentines!

 We just had an Lenten Valentines in 2018!  What gives?

Memento Mori -Remember you must die

A still life vanita by Philippe de Champaigne

Mardi Gras March!

 

Get shriven!

Black History Month theme is Art

 

Kara Walker, a contemporary, however the art depicts history

I am enjoying finding Black artists in a historical context.
I especially love seeing new visual arts to envy.

Emma Amos, 1937-2020

Groundhog day is every day

This comment sums it up--

PJLJJ

New developments all the time. Trickled in details that change constantly. It's sad they died, but they all did drugs; obviously. That's how they met their demise. Three men in their 30's... come on. I miss the old days when the news was not so sensationalized, not every story had to be told, not every little thing reported on with little or no details. We are dying a slow death daily with social media. It's horrible. We can't get away from it. I fear for our future and for my two beautiful daughters who are so innocent in a far from innocent world. Can't get on the internet this past week without a search engine posting someone else died (a third removed cousin from a soap opera from 1980) just to get you to click it. Yep, I did too...

It was feast or famine That day plus a life of the same So we made a pact, we're moving back And moving back in time

Twiggy-a-go-go-me!

She comes in colours everywhere
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colours in the air
Oh, everywhere

She comes in colours 

Great idea

 After I die, wherever my spirit goes, I'm going to try to get back and visit my skeleton at least once a year, because, "Hey, old buddy, how's it going?"  -Jack Handy

I think I might be a clown.

But which one?

From the Clown Wikipedia entry:

The most prevalent character clown in the American circus is the hobo, tramp or bum clown. There are subtle differences in the American character clown types. The primary differences among these clown types is attitude. According to American circus expert Hovey Burgess,^[where?] they are:

• The Hobo: Migratory and finds work where he travels. Down on his luck but maintains a positive attitude.
• The Tramp: Migratory and does not work where he travels. Down on his luck and depressed about his situation.
• The Bum: Non-migratory and non-working.

Harpo

James Ensor

Hello 2024!

Good luck?

 

Happy eve of the New Year!

Time Machine

Cheers to our Christmas hours

Oh wee Oh, Oh-Oh

 

Santa's little helpers

lucies in the sky with diamonds

 

Who's your Scrooge?

Alastair Sim!

Who?

i'm dreaming of a white christmas

Gerhard Richter

 

it’s only in my dreams…thanks climate change 

Candles for the darkest night of the year!

nuts

anise

pretzel 

smooch

 

Christmas visitation

 

Joyous

 

Jolly

 

Oh Christmas tree

the wonderous shock

 

How did it get there?
Why is it American?
Is that a sentient doll hiding in the covers?!

Idea comet

Government people are hired to do governance, not witch hunt.

White House BJ, Bengazi!, Hunter Biden laptop dad

I wonder if resources spent on stuff like this is a good use of taxpayers' money.
Should we give witch hunt a platform, though?
Do we like witch hunt?

Let's put it up for a vote.
Witch hunt or Witch hut?

Witch hut!

If government must do witch hunt, then it also MUST do governance.  
It's not an either/or.
For every witch hunt, there must be, at minimum, 50 acts of governance.
If witch hunt takes longer than 2 months, government officials conducting said witch hunt must cut their pay by 10% and 5% for every month afterward.

Do witch hunt shit on your own time.

Oh come all ye comet, joyful and triumphant

That's last year's Christmas comet, Leonard--he won't be back for another 6.5 years.
There is suppose to be a new Christmas comet coming on Christmas day!

You can either see it by looking towards the Leo constellation if you live in the Northern Hemisphere or not at all.
Quick research gave mixed results...

Yesterday, hours before dawn, I caught a glimpse of two shooting stars from the Geminid meteor shower!  
Just a lucky cosmic gift that I was up that early. ;)

Happiness and cheer

Thursdaytime is here

 

Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year

Christmas shopping on the square

The word that would best describe this feeling
Would be haunted

I touch the clothes you left behind
That still retain your shape and lines
Still haunted

I trace the outline of your eyes
We're in the mirror hypnotized
I'm haunted

I find a solitary hair
Gone and still I reminisce
I'm haunted

Haunted by your soul
Haunted by your hair
Haunted by your clothes

Potsdamer Platz, Kirchner

And this is for the tears that won't dry

And this is for a bright blue sky
And this is for when you feel
Lucky

(Love and Rockets)

Christmas timeout

 

Just read some news...

What are your war goals?

War goals

War goals

Goooooaaaaal

War War War

War on Christmas

War on "Hamas"
War on "Ukraine"

War on Drugs

War on You

War on Me

War on Babies

War on Mamas
War on Papas
War on Sisters
War on Brothers

Must achieve war goals

Then will stop war

Made a list

Checked it twice

Gonna tick off each item

or die

Must be some person

to have some war goals

in your back pocket

licking the pencil

yes

used this weapon of destruction

greedily scratch off each element of ruin

yes

What is on a list of war goals?
Peace on earth?

red and green

 

This morning spell

bowl of mist

pastel dawn

smiling moon

squawk of goose

tiny pinecone

skitter of squirrel

Optional chant:

I am born from fog 3x

Healing tools

Healing tools include the deft use of suggestion, confession, memory, ritual and medicines. Healers find ways to provide consolation and hope, enabling their wounded charges to engage with meaningful work and find purpose in life.

-From a July 7, 2023, Bruce Bower, Science News book review of Fires in the Dark by Kay Redfield Jamison

And also Happy December! 

From a December 13, 2017, Melissa Chan, Time article:

A member of the Haiminger Krampusgruppe dressed as the Krampus creature, an Austrian winter solstice ritual, lets himself be touched by onlookers prior to the annual Krampus night in Tyrol on Dec. 1, 2013.

 

Sean Gallup—Getty Images

LOL

 

10 easy ways to grow your spirit

Exercise that spirit!

1. Release demons by tickling them and forgive yourself from harboring them
   
   
2. Find your spirit huddled somewhere in your body by imagination and meditation 
   
   
3. Coax your spirit with kind words to come out of hiding and not being afraid with imaginative bread crumbs or star sprinkles
   
   
4. Play with your spirit daily and feed with happy food for thought
   
   
5. Talk to your spirit daily and show it that it can explore different parts of your body, starting with the feet to ground it
   
   
6. Slowly move up toward the head and show kindness at every level
   
   
7. Once at the head, imagine sparkling happiness and love in your aura
   
   
8. Now imagine a rainbow in your aura
   
   
9. Usher out any bad feelings or thoughts that remain
   
   
10. Tell your spirit it will be okay and that you will do your best not to let it get too small from fear of living again 

Touched out

It's Show time!

Current observations

Handle on Jupiter

Is Jupiter always like this?!

ushering the moon

Can’t I just wonder anymore?

I will try to not look it up

just look up!

and wonder

it feels so damn good to have a handle on the planets

seems like I'm always reorienting 

Astronomers might hate this poem

or shake their heads

I don’t understand ellipticals

or when the moon rises at different angles 

I guess I don’t understand rotating spheres either. 

Thank goodness there’s a lot not to understand!

Dr Seuss fall 

The fall leaf display this year is colorful and lasting 

We were in drought and then had a record rainfall for a week 

Even our normally brown leafed autumn oak is an illuminous mottled yellow underneath the canopy 

We are used to colors of fall in this region,
but if a complete stranger to seasons
or the planet visited
they would think they landed in a Dr Seuss storybook
There could be an extraterrestrial version of Seuss..

Daylight Savings Time God Damn (I don't like it)

Today it feels like spring, in November
This morning is dewy, temperature perfect
perfectly cool
It smells of new earth, well rested
Instead of getting ready to rest
I'm instantly no longer waking and driving in the stale darkness
It already feels like 10 o'clock by the time I hit the road
Don't even get me started about the evening
Who has the time?
Now I have to start all over again in the morning
But the dark in the evening waits for no one
Abruptly, it is night
As if dusk is skipped

Stupor Mundi

translates to: marvel of the world

The origin of stupid: from Latin stupere, to be amazed or stunned.

This, in relation to my "realization" that our species is now stupid.

Maybe we are too amazed and stunned to do anything rational to preserve the human race.

Also, this occurred to me-

The spirit is of the mind, of the environment, nurture

The soul is of the heart, of the innate, nature

If spirit and soul are real, do they merge after a body dies?
Do they split?
Or is it sometimes both?

What happens after decades, eras of recycled souls? 
An assumption that the soul is more static than a spirit.

It's probably both and other things.
Everything and nothing are so intricate.

All Saints feat. St. Wilgefortis