The Late, Great, Allen Ginsberg

Icon of Holy Wisdom

Woody Guthrie

What a great photo. I love the insouciant defiance in Guthrie's demeanor!

The Columns of Karnak

Another picturesque exhibit from the museum of lost images.

Montsegur

The fabulous site, in Southern France, of the Cathars' last stand against the savage and shameful Albigensian Crusade.

Rembrandt's "The Blinding of Samson".

What can one add to this masterful production of Rembrandt's genius? Listening to Bly's poem while contemplating this great painting is an interesting experience. I think there is some validity in Bly's insight that Samson is a solar figure, especially if one considers that the sun is a symbol of full, Divine, consciousness. In that context - thinking of Bly's marvelous poem - the men who are coming to blind Samson represent those persons and forces which have an interest in destroying, obscuring and veiling consciousness in our world, because the accomplishment of their desire requires that destruction.

In Rembrandt's picture, Samson is wrestled to the floor of a tent which looks, for all the world, like a cave. There is a blaze of intense light at samson's feet, outside the cave, while inside all is increasing darkness. Is the tent Plato's cave bereft of light? Is Samson the judge - the philosopher, the lover of wisdom - who has been seduced into believing that the ephemeral world of the senses is the real world, and has thus been blinded to the realm of divine ideas?

Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy Man

Groovy, man! How I miss this sweet, benevolent vibe! Also, see previous post for more hurdy-gurdy.

An Atmospheric Passage from CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

I'm working my way slowly through Dostoyevsky's novel, Crime and Punishment, and I came today across this striking passage:

Following his old habit, and taking the customary route of his previous walks, he set off straight for the Haymarket. Some distance before he got there, in the roadway in front of a chandler's shop, he encountered a young man with black hair who was playing the hurdy-gurdy, churning out a thoroughly poignant romance. He was accompanying a girl of about fifteen who stood before him on the pavement, dressed like a young lady of the aristocracy in a crinoline, mantilla, gloves and a straw hat with a bright orange feather in it; all of these were old and shabby. In a nasal street voice that was none the less strong and appealing she was singing the romance to it's end in the expectation of receiving a two-copeck piece from the shop. Raskolnikov stopped, side by side with two or three other members of the audience, listened for a while, took out a five-copeck coin and placed it in the girl's hand. Quite suddenly she interrupted her singing on the very highest and most poignant note, as though she had cut it with a knife, called sharply to the hurdy-gurdy player: "That's enough!", and they both dragged themselves off to the next little shop.

"Do you like street-singing?" Raskolnikov suddenly inquired, addressing himself to the elderly passer-by who had been standing next to him listening to the hurdy-gurdy and who had the appearance of a flaneur. The man looked at him in timid astonishment. "I do," Raskolnikov went on, but with an air that suggested he was talking about some subject quite removed from that of street-singing. "I like to hear street-singing to the accompaniment of a hurdy-gurdy on a cold, dark and damp autumn evening, it must be a damp one, when the faces of all the passers-by are pale green and sickly looking; or even better, when wet snow is falling, quite vertically, with no wind, do you know? And through it the gas-lamps gleaming..."

"No, sir, I don't know...Excuse me..." the gentleman muttered, frightened both by Raskolnikov's question and by his strange appearance, and crossed over to the other side of the street. -translation by David McDuff

A picturesque exhibit from the museum of lost images.