Likenscapes: The Elf Child

 

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ITTLE Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,

An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,

An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,

An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;

An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun

A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,

An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you

Ef you

Don't

Watch

Out!

                     

 

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Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--

An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,

His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,

An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!

An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,

An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;

But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--

An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you

Ef you

Don't

Watch

Out!

                     

 

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An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,

An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;

An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,

She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!

An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,

They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,

An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!

An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you

Ef you

Don't

Watch

Out!

                     

 

Gertrude Baniszewski confers with her attorney William Erbecker during her trial
for the torture slaying of Sylvia Likens. May 11, 1966.
(Randy Singer/The News)

 

                     

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,

An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!

An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,

An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--

You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,

An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,

An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,

Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you

Ef you

Don't

Watch

Out!

 

 

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alohamisterhand.wordpress.com

 

                   

"Little Orphant Annie" is reprinted from Complete Works. James Whitcomb Riley. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1916.

Likenscapes

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Your sibling is your most severe judge, and your fiercest defender. You must always rescue them. They always abandon you. They abandoned you only once, and you will never forget it. They are a pain the arse. They save you. They will not be conquered. They never leave you alone.

You can never forgive them, and you will die wanting their forgiveness.

Source 

All the Leaves are Brown...............

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Scapegoating is an archaic ritual - in the tribes of Israel, there was a ceremonial day each year where the whole group would bring their troubles in the form of articles of clothing, dolls, rocks and various symbolic representatives to the edge of the village. They would have a purging ceremony to cleanse their families, themselves and their village of any evil influences that had caused their troubles to manifest. These troubles might be infertility, madness, loss of crops or animals, financial distress, lack of marriage partner for an elder daughter - anything that might beset any family or person in any time, culture or circumstance.

 

 

 

 

 

.....I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my Heaven doing good upon earth.

 

   

 

They would then pile all their 'troubles' into a basket and place it on the back of a goat and drive it out into the desert. The goat then became the carrier of the evil, the figure of burden and the one who bore the troubles of the collective. Even as late as the sixth century, it was an Ionian practice to use scapegoat-magic to read their villages of such burdens.

 

 

 

OK guys....quit messing about.  Put me down now!

 

 

 

The ancient Athenians had a formal ceremony each year in which the citizens would inscribe upon an ostracon - a broken piece of pottery - the name of someone particularly odious to them or the community.  It was largely a political ritual, but occasionally an ordinary citizen's name was found upon an ostracon.  When the ostraca were all placed in a great vessel, they would be separated and counted. The person whose name was most frequently found upon an ostracon would be sent out of the city into exile for the year. Thus ostracized from his community, the citizen would have purged the city of its 'evil' person.

 

 

 

 

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Lemon, Time & Bitter

Pilgrims of Zion Lutheran Church

Bookpurnong, SA

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The Lutheran Church was established in South Australia in 1838 by German emigrants from Prussia. The first ones came because of the religious persecution they had suffered in Prussia. Although this persecution ceased in the mid-1840s, many more Germans followed, seeking the better life that the first migrants reported to them. Settlements were established at Klemzig, Hahndorf, Lobethal and in the Barossa Valley. Some 20,000 German Lutherans migrated to South Australia between 1838 and 1860. [Source]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flowering buds emerging on the citrus trees at Ingerson's Orchard near Bookpurnong

on the Murray River in South Australia. Image taken during drought in October 2007.

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Bookpurnong itself is a named locality that has its roots in the Aboriginal meaning derived from two indigenous words (believed to be related to the endemic tribe of the region, the Erawirung) being “Bookani”, meaning swimming place and “Purnong” wide open space. [read more]

 

 

 

 

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Mid-20th century architect Robin Boyd designed both for the broader public and for exclusive clients.

Through The Age Small Homes Service which he set up in 1947, Boyd sought to raise the standard of

low-end housing by designing ‘good’ ‘modern’ and ‘simple’ house plans that were then published in

the newspaper, with the full construction drawings made available at an affordable price.

 

              

Boyd wrote about the way a pioneer mindset bred "arborophobia", a hatred of trees, which was part of this country's suspicion of "introspective questioning, and our impatience with conservation".
He wrote about the overwhelming love of "featurism" within Australian design, a copy-cat mentality that replaces hard-won quality with easy-on-the-eye decoration.


Working through all the ways Australia has been defaced with bad design, Boyd drew himself up, in the final pages of his book, to a final exhortation, both sad and defiant, for Australians to wake up from their indolence.

"The Australian ugliness begins with fear of reality, denial of the need for the everyday environment to reflect the heart of the human problem, satisfaction with veneer and cosmetic effects," Boyd wrote. "It ends in betrayal of the element of love and a chill near the root of national self-respect."

Boyd died in 1971 and one of his guiding principles, as we are told in the re-edition of The Australian Ugliness, is that good design fosters quality of life.

Text extract source: Rusty Ray of Hope in the Ugliness, Rosemary Sorensen

Pomona

Roman Goddess of Abundance,

fruits and orchards

The Pulitzer Fountain, NYC

Artist-Architect: Karl Bitter

image credit

The Architecture of Robin Boyd on Flickr

click here

Aries 30

Ducks in Sculpture Garden Pond, 1975

 

Visitors to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in June not only saw Aristide Maillol's Nymph but also this wild mallard duck, proudly swimming with her young. A pair of mallards surprisingly had made the garden their home

.
image & text source

 

Perhaps a slightly different perspective from that which most are used
to looking at regarding Kundalini.

If one puts aside the Literal doctrine surrounding many of the stories
that surround Kundalini on both the web and in text books and looks
beyond the words at the essence of what is written ...

If one has a close look at the Taoist Healing Philosophies;

If one looks closely at the Ancient Chinese Acupuncture meridian
system ...

If one looks into the Japanese Healing arts

If one looks very closely at a Western Medical Encylopaedia

If one looks at some of the latest advancements in Medical Research
... including microbiology and Neorology

AND

If one finds a common Essence and lays this over all of these
modalities one would find that there is a very simple explanation for
the whole mythology surrounding Kundalini, its cause, its rising, the
timing of its awakening and ALL of the physical, mental, psychological
and psychic symptoms that people experience .. and which are commonly
attributed to Kundalini.

Having perused some of the comments on this list and gone back through
the archives, there is not one single experience that cannot be
directly explained in relatively plain English.

AND .. its all so simple ... when one understands the real essence of
what is stored in Muladhara and the significance of this Chakra.

Even the "Chakra System" finds a rational plain English explanation in
terms of both the Central Nervous System and certain significant
Acupuncture points ...

Kundalini (so called) will awaken .. it must, the moment the mind
loses control of the body and it must also awaken from the base chakra
...

It will flow through the body - up a central channel .. it must - if
you understand what the Central Channel really means ..

You will experience all sorts of physical, mental and emotional
symptoms you must, and you will understand how and why if you
understand the relationships between the organs of the body, their
personality, and the meridians that connect them.

You will also experience "psychic" symptoms as the energy from the
Muladhara links with the Ajna ... you must, and you will understand if
you can understand the nature of the Pineal Gland and its role in the
Physiology of the body in Harmony.

You may go mad - or get very sick if you start to look on this as some
"Spiritual" Awakening for the simple reason ...

Kunda - the energy of the pot in the earth .. is the feminine
principle of life in its physical existence .. and the life-force of
every cell in your body and, it has a life of its own ...

Kunda, Cunti, Kunti .. in all her variations of nomenclature is Home
.. your centeredness ... in your physicality. Without that
physicality, mind can not exist (except through resonance with a
sympathetic DNA in a living relative)

and when the whole body is in balance .. only when all of the
Meridians have balanced themselves

will there be a link between Muladhara, Ajna and the Sino Atrial Node
... which is the mysterious 8th Chakra.

"the duck's nuts"
Landscape between Gilgandra and Warren NSW
May 2011
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Now - the funny thing is ...

the energy of the mind is (masculine) centripetal or densifying and
compacting the energy of your life-force (feminine) is centrifugal or
expanding and dedensifying ..

and the centre of the base chakra contains the memory of the moment
that the sperm entered the egg and this resulted in your conception
....

So, Kundalini is about the expansion of possibilities, about life's
conception of itself - and your conception of your own self ...

in spite of what your mother and father were thinking at the time ...

and this memory is stored in the very tips of the bones that make up
your pelvic floor - joined by your Perineum.

BTW ...

it takes 10 milliseconds for a signal from the body to reach the brain
and, for the average person, it takes 500 milliseconds for the
conscious mind to get an intellectual grasp of what is happening and
750 millisecond of thought re-imprints the opposite of what you are
consciously thinking back into your body

So .. the only "therapy" for a so-called "Kundalini" awakening is
understanding and accepting ... that what you are experiencing is your
own inner self trying to live in harmony with its self ... and your
mind is the last to know.

Oh ... and a cell will mutate as far as necessary in order to survive
in its environment ... and your mind provides part of that
environment.

the Kundalini Sutras were a medical document, not a Spiritual Teaching
and Buddhist Teachings provide a plain, old fashioned Psychology Text
which, when understood in their wholeness, are very accurate according
to the most recent studies and findings.


Simplicity cannot be overwhelmed. Mind can be




Christopher Wynter
    Copyright and all rights acknowledged & ignored

because this is too good to remain deep-sixed in a restricted forum
     Transpersonal Lifestreams

The Curious Face of the Little Dog in the Basement

The Handless Maiden (by Lucy Campbell)

 

 

 

 

I wish you could stop being dead
so I could talk to you about the light… and you

could tell me   again      how the light of late
afternoon is so different from the light
of morning

from “Oma”

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Aries 30: Ivanhoe, New South Wales, Australia

The Gypsum Palace Inn

Ivanhoe, New South Wales

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The Thoroughbred Rehabilitation Program is one of several animal programs which have vocational and training components for inmates in NSW correctional centres. At the core of all of these programs is the engagement of Corrective Services NSW with community organisations to bring tangible benefits to the public of NSW.

All inmates selected for participation in any of these programs are under the supervision of correctional officers who also have access to training and development opportunities related to animal studies.

 

 

The Man in Black

Folsom Prison, 11 February 1968

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The Ivanhoe (Warakirri) Correctional Centre, an Australian minimum security prison for males, is located in Ivanhoe, New South Wales. The centre is operated by Corrective Services NSW an agency of the Department of Attorney General and Justice of the Government of New South Wales. The centre detains sentenced and unsentenced felons under New South Wales and/or Commonwealth legislation.

 

 

The majority of inmates are Aboriginal. The centre detains up to 55 prisoners who perform cleaning and maintenance tasks, as well as participating in community projects and the mobile outreach program. Inmates may also undertake education programs, including numeracy and literacy, and self-awareness and alcohol- and substance-abuse management programs.

 

 

 

 

Brown Planet a Collaboration quiltmakers: Norma Schlager & Kathy Loomis

of Danbury, Connecticutimage credit

 

 

Following extracts from "Being and Belonging" by Lynn Miller, January 2006

 

According to Aboriginal cosmogenic storylines, sometime in the distant and indeterminable past Beings traversed the earth along certain routes, tracks or 'strings' instituting the landscape and the flora and fauna related to it. 

 

These Beings, while generally conceived as human in shape, were not bound by the substantial constraints of the life forms which they generated. By their interaction with the Earth and each other, the shape of the physical world was defined and the enduring features of the landscape created.

 

Dreaming Beings can be conceptualised as 'stimulators and instigators', designing and defining enduring cosmic shapes, places and connections. As Maddock states, the Aboriginal theory of coming into being is one concerning the 'definition of space and time, not of creation out of nothing'.

 

 

 

Sunrise on the Scrub

Road between Wilcannia and Ivanhoe NSW, 2009.

Photographer: Arthur Mostead

image sourced

 

 

 

Landscape is central to Aboriginal identity and belonging. The process of shaping landscape is integral to the becoming of Aboriginal reality. The Aboriginal metaphysical system holds that all things are shaped or instituted by the Beings of the creative epoch using the process of self-objectification. The methods of self-objectification employed by the Dreaming Beings ensure that landscape, once shaped, remains a vital force in determining Aboriginal being. Munn describes this process in terms of ‘subject object transformation’, maintaining that three types of transformations are prominent:

 

1) Metamorphosis (the body of the ancestor is changed into some material object);

2) Imprinting (the ancestor leaves the impression of its body or of some tool it uses); and

3) Externalisation (the ancestor takes some object out of his body.)

 

Of the three the first two are the most common modes.

 

Jim & Prue Graham, 

"Karinya" near Ivanhoe,  2008

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At the end of the creative epoch, when the infrastructural work had been done and the Aboriginal world embodied, the Dreaming Beings did not die or disembody, but instead, for the last time, metamorphosed or ‘went into’ the landscape which they had previously shaped. Some became what western thought conceptualises as inanimate objects, such as rocks, mountains or streambeds, waterholes or celestial bodies.

 

Some transformed directly into plants or animals. In this way the object becomes eternally

bonded to the subject and permanently identified with it. These objects, places or species

are henceforth bestowed with sacred significance. The places at which the Dreaming Beings ‘went in’ and stayed hold the key to Aboriginal understandings and experience of the nature of reality.

 

 

 

 

Santa in the Desert, NSW

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Aries 30

Mouth of the Murray River, Goolwa, South Australia

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Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry,
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River.
Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die.

 

lyrics Big River, Johnny Cash

 

Strathalbyn, South Australia

Rocklea Road off Mercy Street

The Fallen

artist: H. Blakey

 

 

 

i do not want to go out as
frenzied molecules trapped by
tough air
as if all moments are this, of this
& more or less, this.

 we dance with jack
through thinning air
our desires a questionnaire.

Shelton Lea

1946-2005
 April 2005

 

 

 

 

Aspiring Australian fashion designers were tasked with creating a glamorous red carpet dress,

inspired by Darrell Lea confectionary

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Jason Durard Lea (1942-2005) was born a candy-man. He inherited his love of chocolate from his grandparents, Harry and Esther Lea. They opened their first confectionary shop - Darrell Lea -  in Sydney’s Haymarket in 1927 and raised their four sons with a consuming commitment to the business. Jason’s father Monty was the second of their four sons

Born in 1943, Jason was Monty and Val’s eldest son – and the first of seven children to grow up in what seemed a children’s paradise. With chocolate factories as playgrounds, Val’s brood was recorded beautifully with her 16mm film camera. But belying the halcyon imagery was an unconventional family where allegiance to business was to rival their love for each other.

Three of Jason’s siblings were adopted. While all were encouraged to work in the factories as youngsters, only biological Leas eventually inherited Lea wealth. As the adopted children - one of whom was Shelton Lea - gradually lost touch with the Leas, Jason and his younger brother Lael were fed into the business. [read more] 

 

Shelton-Lea B&B

Katoomba, Blue Mountains

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