Persian Jewry and the Art of Peace: A Sound Vision of Coexistence

A Time for Peace from yuvalron on Vimeo.

Why think thus O men of piety

I have returned to sobriety

I am neither a Moslem nor a Hindu

I am not Christian, Zoroastrian, nor Jew

I am neither of the West nor the East

Not of the ocean, nor an earthly beast

I am neither a natural wonder

Nor from the stars yonder

...

My place is the no-place

My image is without face

Neither of body nor the soul

I am of the Divine Whole.

I eliminated duality with joyous laughter

Saw the unity of here and the hereafter

Unity is what I sing, unity is what I speak

Unity is what I know, unity is what I seek

...

Beloved Master, Shams-e Tabrizi

In this world with Love I’m so drunk

The path of Love isn’t easy

I am shipwrecked and must be sunk.

Rumi, translated by Shahriar Shahriari

Judeo-Persian Literature: HERE and HERE and HERE

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CALGARY - This year, the Persian New Year (Nowruz) on March 20, marked another day of global significance: the ten-year anniversary since the American invasion of Iraq. The hotbed issue, still on the map, is WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), the bane of nuclear energy. The decade of remembrance also reflects European Union sanctions imposed on the Iranian economy. While Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which implies non-proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology, the potential use of nuclear weapons by the Iranian government is crux of the diplomatic standstill.

In a visiting lecture to the University of Calgary, Dr. Alan Dowty, Professor Emeritus and expert on Israeli politics from the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that Iran-Israel nuclear aggression in the Middle East has the potential to end the Non-Proliferation Treaty. “Canada has foregone the right to use nuclear weapons, so they have an interest in non-proliferation. Israel would join [the NPT] if the Arab-Israel conflict were resolved.” Dr. Dowty told The Media Co-op. “There is actually no way to conduct polls in Iran, so there is no recent social science research and no way to know what percentage of support base the Iranian government has.” In today’s world of globalized democracy and worldwide communications, public support, or lack thereof, is among the most consequential paths toward conflict resolution, and therefore, the greatest threat to government hegemony.

In 2006, 67% of Israelis believed in an attack from Iran was certain. In 2009, the poll fluctuated dramatically, where 79% did not think Iran would attack Israel. A poll published in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that now only 27% of Jewish Israelis support an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. “In 2009 the poll shifted dramatically but the polls themselves are hardly reliable for consistency. A different wording in the question could change answers by 20%. At the time, in the top positions of military defense represented in the Israeli government, the opinion was that an attack on Iran is implausible,” Dr. Dowty said in an interview with The Media Co-op after his recent March 18 lecture at UofC.

Diplomatic negotiations taper out as talks enter into a “full fuel cycle” right to enrich uranium. The line between nuclear facilities for energy purposes and military purposes is based on a thin margin of uranium enrichment. The Iranian government has converted 40% of the uranium enriched to the 20% level (the most threatening part of the existing stockpile) to an oxide for medical use, limiting their weapon capacity. “They blinked, they are aware they're being watched closely,” Dr. Dowty closed his lecture. “Are they serious? We'll know in the next few weeks. We'll see though, I said this last year.”

Originally published by Al-Monitor, Jerusalem Post seconds the investigation on Iran’s diverted nuclear energy resources. The article closes remarking, “With inflation and unemployment soaring and the value of the Iranian currency halved since a year ago, the vast majority of Iranians have tightened their belts to celebrate Iran's new year - or Nowruz, the nation's most important holiday.”

The Jewish Holocaust underlies much of the political negotiations on the topic of nuclear war between Israel and Iran. The Holocaust is part of Israeli policy. Netanyahu once compared the Allied failure to bomb the train lines to Auschwitz in WWII to the current standstill with Iran. Israeli politicians often compare Ahmedinjad to Hitler, an infamous Holocaust-denier. “The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat of the State of Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said during his 2012 Holocaust Remembrance Day speech on April 18.

Last month, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird made his way through an unprecedented tour into the countries to speak with political allies regarding “extremists” and “radicals” in the Middle East, specifically Jordan, which is receiving nearly half a million refugees from Syria, Iran’s ally in the Middle East. “I’m fascinated by the Arab world,” Baird is quoted in The Globe and Mail, before boarding a plane to become the first Canadian foreign minister to visit Iraq in 37 years. Yet, in Canada, the Iranian community continues to pursue a pluralistic vision of the Middle East and its emigrants both in the public and private sphere.

Recent Canadian immigrant and former history professor and senior researcher at the University of Tehran, Calgary resident Manijeh Rabieie shared with The Media Co-opabout her work. “Beginning from 2000-2003, I began to conduct research in Jewish communities, looking into their civil centers, their synagogues, their schools. I have prepared 70 articles and a book on the Jews in Iran. The government in Iran denied publication of all my work related to Jews.” The story of the Jews in Iran reflects a widely misinterpreted theme in Middle East affairs regarding religious identity, ethnicity and political rhetoric. “Jews and Christians are traditionally protected in Islamic law. Though the Jewish community has to lay low,” Dr. Alan Dowty confirmed with The Media Co-op. Dr. Dowty had once tried to attain a visa to Iran to conduct social science research as a visiting scholar. He was barred due to his extended residence in Israel.

“The Jewish community in Iran has lived in Iran for over 2500 years. Judaism is at the root of ancient culture and religion in Iranian history. Every culture in Iranian history was influenced by Jewish history. In a sense, we are all Jews,” Manijeh Rabieie told The Media Co-op. “Their schools and hospitals are segregated. Under the current Muslim government they are subject to many forms of abuse. Although there is currently a Jewish MP in Iran, the Jewish community can not take part in politics.” The presence of Jews in Iran precedes Muslim and Arab culture. Political rhetoric naming the Israel-Iran crisis as a religious conflict undermines the underlying social fabric of the Middle East.

Manijeh Rabieie plans to publish a paper to educate the public regarding the historic relationship between Persians and Jews as one people, and how this is related to peace. Rabieie said to The Media Co-op, “The conflict in Iran between the Jewish community and the government is not based on foreign policy with Israel, it's an internal problem within the society based on living under the oppressive government. The government sees all Jews as Zionists. This is not true. Iranian Jews are as Iranian as anyone else in the country, it is their culture, it's there home, that's why they remain.”

A deeper understanding of the Iranian society as a whole reveals more about the current Western paradigm and how the West views Iranians and Muslims of the Middle East, than it does about Iran itself. Recent winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, Calgary-based author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio spoke withThe Media Co-op on Iran, Nowruz and how the West continues to demonize Muslim culture. “Rhetoric on Iran has gone way up around the world. The nuclear program and Israel's fear promotes scary talk not backed up by facts,” Marcello Di Cintio said. “I think when we shut down embassies in Iran, it's more to do with standing in solidarity with Israel position. My biggest problem is this a symbolic action. ‘Now you can't get a visa to visit your family?’ That's ridiculous. Closing the embassy, is that our way of bringing down the regime? It's a symbolic action that has consequences on people that have done nothing wrong, that's what bothers me. I don't think people understand Iranians in Iran.”

Last month, Marcello Di Cintio wrote a short post on his website, Elsewhere, regarding his reflection with a local book club after revisiting his 2006 book, Poets and Pahelvans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran for Nowruz. Much of the content echoed what Marcello Di Cintio remarked for The Media Co-op. “There's a vast canyon between government policy and actual life. When we make decisions what does that actually mean for people who do not live in suits?” said Di Cintio. “Sanctions are not going to change things. To me, those are symbolic. You think the West hates Ahmedinijad? Iranians hate him more. It's the job of the journalists to report on government policy, and to report what the politicians are saying. They don't have time on the ground. I'm attempting to fill the void.” The Persian New Year, Nowruz, the biggest holiday in Iran, is still a non-Islamic celebration. Nowruz predates Islam.

"It’s a public holiday in parts of the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. Thanks to global migration it’s now celebrated worldwide…It’s a non-denominational holiday…It predates modern politics, modern states and the squabbling that comes with them. This is a secular holiday…You might hear a lot about Iran in the next twelve months, its leaders, its politics, its policies, its threats, how the world reacts to them. Hey you may watch a popular film like Argo and decide that all Persians are barbaric and archaic and evil enemies of the West. Well, if you really want to get to know the culture of Iran, Persian culture that is, the literature, the family values, the poetry, the positivity, the progressive sides, and the romance, then get to know Nowruz…Here’s hoping for a peaceful and positive period for all.” Jian Ghomeshi broadcasted on CBC on March 20.

As Persian New Year also celebrates the vernal equinox, coincidentally the Jewish spring holiday of Purim commemorates the story of Esther, a Jewish woman who married King Ahasuerus of Persia. Canadian politics, throughout most of the 20th century, reveals a history as anomalous from the present as a Jewish marriage to the Persian head of state is to the world of today.

In 2003, more people took to the streets in Calgary to protest the American invasion of Iraq than any public demonstration since World War Two. A fully community-funded organization at the University of Calgary known as the Consortium for Peace Studies was founded based on popular opposition to the war in Iraq. “If the Iranian people want to change the Iranian government or their situation, that's their prerogative, but if they want to change it simply because foreign powers are making their life miserable, then I don't think that's legitimate. That's just war by another means,” said George Melnyk, director of the Consortium for Peace Studies to The Media Co-op. “I would like to see Canada develop a balance where we have more neutrality, where we're not always looking at military solutions, not always taking a strong stand to support the Untied States or Britain in whatever kind of military actions they want to take. I'd like us to have another aspect to our lives which has been completely lost.”

Professor Melnyk recently published a paper entitled, Canada and Afghanistan - Peacemaking as Counterinsurgency Warfare, a Conflict in Terms. In this paper, Professor Melnyk outlines the paradoxical rhetoric of militarism together with propaganda related to national self-image in Canada. "Because Canada refused to participate in that war [in Iraq], it has been argued that it felt compelled to offer its services in Afghanistan," writes Melnyk. As Canada adopts new policies that effectively change the image of the country, the political leadership in the West (of both the world and of Canada) overrides traditional democracy. “The Canadian government, by being involved militarily in Afghanistan, of which I am critical, see Iran as the enemy. That's what happens in war, you define an enemy,” Melnyk told The Media Co-op.

Canadians are faced with new decisions and choices as government becomes increasingly self-serving and exclusive in both its military partisanship abroad and political representation domestically. “What we have is a Federal Government based in Calgary, and very powerful in Alberta. And it is pro-military, and anti-environmental. These guys are now reflecting more of the West, between Saskatchewan, B.C. and Alberta are totally energy related,” said Melnyk to The Media Co-op. “The more anti-environmental it is, the more pro-military it becomes, they are part of the same package.”

The Consortium for Peace Studies awarded the 2013 Dr. Arthur Clark Research Fellowship in Global Citizenship to sustainable housing expert Jorg Ostrowski, for a project that focuses on development in Iran called A New Silk Road of Peace. “We have a completely different approach than the Harper government. Our approach is not to get involved in this debate, this political debate between Israel and Iran. Our position is to support those people who are building people-to-people relationships,” Professor Melnyk told The Media Co-op.

Recognition for the great wealth of intercultural heritage is an increasingly important area for growth and discussion as civil society moves forward in organizational solidarity. “It is so critical to counter western threats of war with Iran. Together, as a human family with a team of visionary professionals, we can build unity and demonstrate collaboration, explore other lands and respect their traditions, seek education and understand other perspectives, work for common security and build a lasting peace, for all species and our common environment and world heritage,” Ostrowski shared with The Media Co-op via email.

Still, with all of the activism in Canada to facilitate social stability in Iran, for democratic diplomacy in the Middle East, and lasting peace, there are countless who continue to suffer unjustly in Iran. As residents of Canada, active in working towards greater democracy and justice, the focus remains ever on the plight of innocent civilians. While the Canadian government works towards the proposed resolution of the greater evil, i.e. nuclear conflict, the gap between civil society and government widens due to the growing pertinence of foreign policy. It is becoming more and more clear to Canadian residents that with every government measure to protect Canada and other Western nations, including Israel, from a nuclear conflict, the costs of war by another means begin to show its ugly face.

"Persian Jews and the Iran-Israel Crisis: Canadian Civil Society Works Toward A New Year of Peace and Understanding" previously appeared on The Media Co-op

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ruins of ruins by RK

the entrance is the exit by RK

dan tien sky by RK

old world taste by RK

belly of the ultra modern beast by RK

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"turning over the ashes of the Unnamed" is a piece commemorating the Indigenous struggles of Latin America. Initially, the writing process is based on experiences in Yucatec Maya communities. Recently,  the sounding was recorded while following the tragic cycle of intermittent, and ultimately, futile justice in Guatemala to reconcile its genocidal history. The track is featured on the Sound-Art EP "Evocations: Exotic Settlers"

In nearly every traveller's experience, the settlements of (un)civilization often provide an impermanent, temporal space even for the most autonomous of vagabonds. Especially in my experience, the piano has been a portal through which my sojourning meets the firm legs of tradition. In this union, both the ephemeral and everlasting are bonded under a greater mystery of the always passing, transient truth, elevating us to a higher sense of travel as mutually relative to the foundational ground of human tradition. Memory and history seed the pangs of movement with the brilliant emanations of creative ingenuity and inspired reflection.

So, in this track, imagine the traveller, or "exotic settler" chancing upon a piano under the weary heel of an empty horizon ahead, and the spiralling beauty of tradition below. "turning over the ashes of the Unnamed" is featured in the new self-published chapbook, "The Deceived Plane"

"The Deceived Plane" is a six poem chapbook on themes of social failure, the unsustainable psyche of Western Man, devolving at an insuperable pace through the mire of good intentions.

Beginning with personal irreconcilable defeatism in the breakdown of the Western family, towards a psyche of madness and the unwilling expansion of selfish ego into greater realities of the imagination, spirit and creativity.

Yet, each of the six poems reveals and awakes the deleterious mind of foul vanity with a brushstroke of unitive spirituality. The wake of greed pulls back in a tidal rush of release, and so these poems offer the ingredients of a raft on which to traverse the open oceanic beyond.

The Deceived Plane

The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross

Eusebius of Caesarea 

"...when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS."

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILUS OF CAESAREA: THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED EMPEROR CONSTANTINE. CHAPTER XXVIII. The Bagster translation, revised by Ernest Cushing Richardson, Ph.D.

For a magnificent compendium on Medieval and also Ancient and Modern Literature, visit Internet History Sourcebooks

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A medieval townscape; similarly forged in the imaginative filmmaking of Kurosawa, yet in the guise of European history. I see lowered clay-roofed structures, and dirt roads amassing with each step into the muddy ground. There is an instinctual defensive glare from the executioner’s hat and the stymying bureaucrat’s shallow presence as I enter the gates of the stead. 

Meeting at the Golden Gate by Jean Hey (Master of Moulins)

At my first meeting, I am greeted by a youth, an apprentice to a knight, with radiant innocence so bright I am shocked to the core. And in that moment I lash out. In a single slash of my sword, an instantaneous move, I split the defenseless youth in half. 

Bors and Lionel

Blood sprays from his center and the gore filters through my footprints in stone and mud. I am taken aback by my own actions, yet as the clouds roll on, the silence is ever penetrating, unfulfilled by redolent justice, coursing on as voiceless blood, loyal only to the alive.

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Witnessing the continuance of an apocalyptic crusade on these modern shores

Breaking open the earth-less ocean unto the final turning of Europe’s last romantic page,

Closure to the novel convulsions of a people well-practiced in ethnic cleansing and rife with general ethno-cultural frights

- excerpt from "Feel Old, Death?"

At the Romantic Edge, Before the First Impression

The Golden Bough by J.M.W. Turner

"WHO does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi— “Diana’s Mirror,” as it was called by the ancients." Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 1

Lake Nemi by J.M.W. Turner

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Reclined on plush couches in a generic condo lobby, my friend and I watch a political debate. Angered by a statement by the Prime Minister, he becomes extremely deviant in his manner. “No one should be living in Canada.” The argument goes on to delineate the environmental truths of socio-historical degradation in the wake of our 21^st century fate. Mindless, he unzips the entire leather covering and filches it for a sell. I follow in cheeky amazement.

Blasted knocks deliver crushing blows to the weak door, the hinges creak and splinter. A mass of Jewish men greedily express their intense fury. I unlock the door ever so slightly, leaving the chain lock in place. “Your friend’s killed our boy. A little man is dead.” Their mouths sputter with chainsaw smoke as they charge ultimatums and death threats in the name of my absent friend. “He’s skipped town,” I excuse. Unwilling to confront their standing guard, whose immovable post at the front of my residence is an unwelcoming barrier to my normal life, I flee with no plan to return.

Petworth House, Interior by J.M.W. Turner

After a filthy cheap bus ride, I clamber out upon the beach sand, and peering into the bright daze of lake horizon, I see my friend in a drunken rage at the water’s edge, swinging a heavy sack. As I approach, I see madness in his eyes. He is another person altogether, I sense a body in the leather couch covering. “Why didn’t you sell it?” I yell over crashing waves and turbulent wind. He simply eyes me with confounding disinterest and without a moment’s passing, he flings me headlong into the water, where we are all to drown with the corpse-filled leather covering. I swim, and as he plummets to the lake floor, suicidal and lost to the world, I grab through the heavy seaweed and rocky outcroppings with salt and stone eviscerating my every bit of skin of its human moisture. A whale’s fume stings my side and I feel I am being helped along, a fellow mammal and helper in my midst. And the undertow sucks me ever deeper beyond the shore’s shallow depths out to the plain sea.

Fishermen at Sea by J.M.W. Turner

Marooned on an island, miraculously alive, I am cast over a rocky shoal, where the sea moss hangs in a color scheme of subdued purples and deep greens. A man, of unknown origin, aids me in crossing a hillock, emptied of its cavernous rock, a mere sparsely covered hollow of mossy, volcanic emergence. As we reach out over the pockmarked swill, the entire island’s mass becomes visible, a wonderwork of natural phenomena, indescribable in its wonder: a truly new land.     

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in the shamanic din of civilized inclinations
to become the oldest persona of grace, emergent
of land intoxicated by the avian lords
who roam tearfully in landless bush
above the streaming Pacific's current
fanning to seed
atop island exotics
and breach the blind exploration
from nothing

to an essence of discovery
in the learned,
seated life

- excerpt from "Drugged Love, Seated Life"

India's First Poet Sees Rama's Dream Journey

Ramayana by Prashanthprao

"Now a dream which is terrible, causing the hairs to stand erect for the destruction of ogres and for the welfare of Her husband, has been seen by me."

"Of what kind is this dream seen by you. Tell us". Listening to this utterance that came forth from the mouths of those ogresses, Trijata spoke at that time this word relating to the dream.

"Now it has been seen by me in the dream that Seetha also wearing white clothes was sitting on a white mountain surrounded by the ocean."

"Thereafter it has been seen by me that Seetha with eyes like lotuses has risen up from the lap of Her husband and gently touched the Moon and the Sun with Her hand."

"Rama with strength equalling that of Lord Vishnu, born in Raghu's dynasty together with brother Lakshmana and with Seetha has been seen by me thus in the dream."

"In that dream the ogre Kumbhakarna has been seen thus by me. All Ravana's sons have been seen to be sprinkled with oil."

"An assembly also of ogres drinking oil and wearing red garlands, with red clothes, with the sound of songs and musical instruments has been seen by me."

"Which woman while being sorrowful, such type of dream has been seen, that woman being released from various sorrows, will get unsurpassed pleasure."

"I am seeing Seetha coming near accomplishment of motive. I also see the destruction of Ravana also and victory of Rama coming near."

- excerpts from Valmiki Ramayana, Book V: Sundara Kanda [Book of Beauty], Sarga [Chapter] 27

"The main book of reference for dream – interpretation is Charaka-samhita by Charaka, part of which is supposed to be based on Valmiki Ramayana" writes Jayasree

Read this fascinating article on Hinduism and Dreaming

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Private museum screening: Amazon Tobacco Memories. A fellow artist, a sculptor of all things spirit, places his Kali – Uma papier-mâché work on a cabinet in a whitewashed room. The black fire spits with discerning ash, impeded by the radiance of the all-mother’s gaze. I am impressed by the artist’s visionary innocence, conveying a child-like eye for the Hindu cosmology, expressed as a Faustian drama of Dadaist cultural syntax. And the screening begins. 

The dark howling jungle cackled and hooted in the avian-simian craze, a sonic insanity swept through my over-civilized musical palate as the humid tension raised sky high in the Amazonian night. The river vessel, motionless across from an isolated village of thirty native inhabitants, I smoked a Peruvian cigarette with a quiet, philosophic friend. In a moment of uninvited silence, a hand perked up from the lower level through a handrail, offering us a leftover packet of smokes. We grabbed them, thoughtless and looked at one another. Returning the steaming laughter of the sleepless rainforest, we stained the lungs of the earth with anxious conversation and latent abandon. 

Later that night the clear skies illuminated my mind with obsolescent memory, the archaic wisdom of unpolluted climactic earth-born advancement reflected in the translucent universe, wherein my eyes sank as a body of thunder into the dank rainforest moat, encircling the mother of the universe, freeing the reptilian scale from the mammalian chord, giving voice to the source sprung with Martian light. 

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Sculpture

"If your dream featured sculptures, it is a warning to pay more attention to your own personal affairs and less to those of others." (iDream)

Movie Theatre

"If you dream of being in a movie theatre, you are attempting to protect yourself from your emotions or actions." (iDream)

Tobacco

"To smoke tobacco, denotes amiable friendships." (iDream)

________

the always unborn

Kuan Yin companion

breathless nerve

lying, sweat dream,

figure of local poverty,

the sleeping wretch,

half-haggard with princely sexdom

wilderness of mindplay

needing rough deranged feeling,

entranced idiocy

blank eyes

pouring into belief,

experience for greater hilarity,

and necessity bred from popular hysteria

or psychic discomfort

in the open field

laughing out

the distressed boredom

to desire comic failure

in the moment's strength

aware

for newfound rich seeing

that once led animals into the evolutionary mold

senseless through plant networks

supporting with the medicinal love of creation

softly growing inside the mammalian egg

with lonesome prowess

over the angry female

war drama untold

over millennia

of gross mourning

in the struggle for simple pride

or earnest life,

never acknowledging the ageless

being of each seed

that lives.

Writing Theory: Creative Dream Fiction

Dream Vision by Albrecht Durer
(Click for TRANSLATION of Text)

As with all of my short fiction thus far, my source of inspiration is from the rough sketches of dreams which I interweave with creative interpretation from cultural references and my own repertoire of creative literature on my weblog "SoJournal: Private Dreams to Public Art"

My theorem for this prose fiction writing practice consists in self-psycho-analysis through lifting the burden of creative psychological confrontation with mental productivity. Such weightlessness is experienced in the imaginative, unconscious narratives found in the space of dreaming.

My writing practice overall runs along similar lines. I see the practice of writing to encompass a non-interventionist exploration into the raw activity of mind, or the nature of mind. Editing is merely another term for the extended reflection on the initial source of inspiration. Ultimately, this reaches towards a quickened perception and re-conception of the epigenetic functioning of the human being and thus an essential facet of the conscious universe.

Spontaneous writing complements my improvisational approach to world fusion music. Improvisation provides a way to emphasize ecological context through unconscious aspects of our surroundings, thereby hinting at an insight of awareness through sound.

With regard to the post re-titled, "The Lake between Egypt and Iran" this dream vision chronicles subconscious metaphors which I create both unconsciously and consciously through lived experience and mythical-emotional projections which breathe with visceral life in the realm of dream.

Based on Wikipedia, a theorem is "...a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements..." Although, I must add, that the wellspring of individual creativity, as unbridled by the throes of formality, may indeed take place in all form, and more accurately from the seeds of emptiness from which form issues. Whether in number or letter, the truth is undefined and the spontaneous instant is where the magic of all life mysteriously prevails and finds its equilibrium of continuity. While this may read as contradictory to the definition of a theorem, indeed it supports the notion of a theorem by positing the basis of proof as the ground of being or the present moment, and previously established statements, as the substance which lies before us, bound by the interwoven presence of time, memory, dream, imagination, or succinctly, fiction.

(Read my first publication of Short Fiction inspired by Dream @ Haggard & Halloo)

The Achuar Remind Us Not All Dreams Are Visions

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak directly with a Oscar Gutierrez and Jiyukama Irar Milk (the actual narrator of the video linked, not the name incorrectly attributed in the film) about dream interpretation in the Amazon. They told me that all the indigenous people of the Amazon interpret dreams regularly, however, there are two different kinds of dream. The first is the common dream, the second is the vision. Dream are important as they may carry a vision. The dream vision is prophetic and speaks of what will occur. Such a dream is a message from without, while the common dream is simply an internal component of one's personality. 

We also spoke on many other subjects including the use of Ayahuasca, which is a fundamental tradition in Achuar territory. In the old days, the use of Ayahuasca was preceded by three months of fasting (restricted diet), no sexual relations or any negative thoughts, and followed by the same. Nowadays, it is often a simple drink. This is another facet of disrespect for the Achuar and Amazonian culture. We are quickly drinking the sacred fluid of our Mother without thought to vision. 

Oscar, who quickly spoke to me as a good friend, told me that in life we have different food, we have the food we take as an infant, as an adolescent as an adult and as an elder. Just as in life, our spiritual food changes throughout life. I think this is mirrored in society. We need to move on from the food of fossil fuels to a new source of sustenance. 

Hear the Achuar speaking to Calgary in a full presentation VISIT MEDIA CO-OP

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With my stepsister and cousins, we traverse a riverine flood. The rich jungle environment encases us in a dense canopy. The sky is revealed through a slim corridor directly above. The river craft glides easily through a welcoming glade. As the river opens up, a mass of white fog blows with violent extremes into our unprotected bow. We careen at the edge of the river, where spindly trees and submerged bushes angle us awkwardly over the final brink of this newfound overflowing mass of storm-drowned winds. The impenetrable beyond, throws us sideways, with escalating velocity as we hold on to a mass of ant-festered branches. Others wildly match our weight on the other side in a chaos of organized adrenaline, concentrated at the core of our one human-bound vessel against the raw throat of nature, howling with supernatural emotion. The sight of the open river, where three massive tributaries open into the glory of the Amazon is a wicked sight to behold on this late morning of disastrous weather, an impasse into the lone being of nature, an uninvited resting place for her untamable heart, calling for the incendiary flood of the world to cry with her. We finally reach out beyond the swamplands. My sister exits from the boat first, muddy and soaked, yet unscathed. We find rest in the scintillating folds of a day passed under the thumb of her gorgeous rage. 

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Step-sister

"To dream of a step-sister, denotes you will have unavoidable care and annoyance upon you."

__________

This night, this life,
I have too many things.

In this society, that brings the free to seek
again
the wizardry of greed and foul upbringings of nameless increase.

Our lands, that strove for a scintillating hate
against the enemies of needless suffering.

Believing the want and designed haunts
of spells
of advertised gore.

Shaven religion
perfectly watching

Into the embittered ear
the strange gods of money.

Bastards from wars of holy judgment,
burning at the feet of a character flaw,
bleeding profusely from a nail

Shot, bridges hollow in the tooth of a filthy savior
trapped with anger and speed.

The rats of knives speak in the trunks of battered forests
flee into the naked feeding,
avenues of the poor
treating the flies to an ambush of praise
in the flat, rusted movie of dead order

Morbidity, for a war that drew earth into a mild farce
for the wicked and insane

- excerpt from "Of Sex and Intellect"

Blakean Spires Rise Toward Prehistoric Absolution

Elohim Creating Adam by William Blake

"We are shimmering scales on a snake which flies

 Which flies to the skies

 With a sacred surprise.

 We are feathers in wings

 We are the song which sings

 Of our common dream

 Sacred and sublime

 My breath is your breath

 I Share it with you

 Oh feathered snake

 Awake, awake

 We are ready to BE

 Aware of our divinity"

- excerpt from the feature “Meeting the feathered snake in the Cathedral of Nature” @ Lila.info a fantastic repository of Visionary Art, Contemporary Sacred Art and Outsider Art (permission granted for use)

_________

I read signs, undeniable and in my immediate vision before me. The signs foretell an oncoming fate of humankind with regard to energy resources. The future is a grim façade of a past latching on through the thinly laid dreams of a survivalist upon a bed of bloody nails, a failed magic trick. 

My vision clarifies with the acuity of a fish-eye optic nerve straightening over the bluff of a wide forest hill. The forest seems damaged, almost burnt, with an intense inbound potency of fear and isolation in every direction. 

I am as in the middle of another world, drowned in the trauma of unbridled change, a natural force looms, ever pervading, with another history, another worldview. I seem to move under the low hovering gray of sky when the tantalizing drip of adrenaline stirs in me. 

I feel a wolf near. This wolf seems more ferocious and starved than any I’ve imagined in the world before, this wolf eats human flesh. I move into a patch of dark grove, and with time edge my way off beyond the absolute wilderness of my strange, quiet surroundings. 

Human song echoes across the abandoned suburban neighborhoods. The sounds are of the nature of prayer, chanted and primal. I begin to see smoke rising from a hut made from animal hide and forest wood. 

As I approach, the scene quickly turns into an entirely new mode of experience outside the pale of a direct relationship with the bald face of nature, alone. Human interaction stirs a Medieval predilection. 

As I near the inhabitants of the small family camp, two of my friends soon appear behind me. With swords in hand, we face off with the camp’s inhabitants. My friends are quick to be aggressive and violent, however I seem to be the most nimble with a sword and quickly disarm them so as not to harm the innocent people of the camp. 

There is an air of blind unconcern for any solace in humanity, there is only bare personal need and pack mentality. I saunter off with my friends, who wonder about leaving me behind based on my insubordination, then to their ultimate liking accept me as one of the most skilled in the group. We walk through a completely emptied, silent suburban neighborhood. Once affluent, the residents have long since abandoned this obsolete way of life.    

_______

An outside view 

abundant hovels of eastern North America

"speak!

of a history that cowers with tragic hesitation

in a sick thirst for music

to transform the silent yawning of a near-frozen despair."

On the brink of waterless hours,

the people will their fasting into the deep, 

alone night of elderly decay.

Before the horizon, 

hill dwellers form their beliefs

by the norms of a faraway country.

Inside their habitations,

a strong light pulls warped wooden walls

and shrill metallic roofs

into sporadic gusts

Winds brew utter derangement

before the awe of a clear restitution.

- beginning excerpt from "A Fix in the Mourning"

When IT'S AHHH-LIVE, IT'S AHHH-SCRIBED to our Dreams

"Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts yycARTS CoLAB is a free program that provides an opportunity for the public and artists of different disciplines to collaborate in real-time and be inspired to interact and explore in a welcoming and inclusive environment, embarking on a journey of artistic discovery."


Source

As Vi An Diep artist facilitator of the event, writes:

"the action, the movement, the expression, the animation of thoughts and feelings, the conversation, the interaction, sharing, common need to continue thriving and dreaming!!!"

More Media: Calgary Herald & Avenue Magazine & Lonesome Cosmonaut

________

In the starkly lit, opaque backdrop of darkness behind the closed curtains at Jack Singer Concert Hall, I sit at a piano bench with a local classical percussionist in Calgary named Malcolm Lim. He offers me tickets for free for my wife and me to see an upcoming show. When I return home, my wife tells me she can’t make it that day, so I leave the tickets with my parents. Curiously, I am in my mother’s house, where, with my stepfather, they endeavor to take the tickets and see the show. That night, at my childhood home alone, I am visited by Allen Ginsberg. I am exceedingly enthusiastic to receive him in my presence. He tells me that he is in some kind of rush, though we speak about my writing only in passing and continues on about his needs, he seems as a spiritual vagabond of wandering ghosts. He sits at a computer, where he tells me to fish out some of my writings. Excited as ever, I return back down, where he is in the exact same position. I give him my writings and proceed to tell him that William Burroughs appeared to me in a dream not too long ago. Ginsberg emits a refreshing glow as he announces quietly that he must leave. With flighty humor, he asks me for twenty dollars. I am so distracted by the fact that he is reading my work that I can't seem to get his joke, referring to a recent Egyptian official I had to deal with in New York for my immigration to Canada. Without a word more, he saunters off into the edgeless yonder. A few moments later, my parents return. I let them know the true origin of the tickets, at which time they seem exhausted, and apologetic.   

_______

Community Arts Manifesto

écrit par anonyMO’us

All People of the One, and Only Earth:

Clear your names in the sky!

Listen to others. Hear dreams in the subtle nuance of each letter voiced by our fellow artists, visionaries and seers of creation. Come to know the role of the artist. They hold many keys to our creational origin and our final undoing. In brotherhood and sisterhood, through respectful listening to our fellow artists, we may understand the cyclical flow of sacred continuity and the mysteries of Life.

- Opening Paragraph of "Community Arts Manifesto", the first contribution to "IT'S AHHH-SCRIBED" an Impromptu Weekly Community Arts Literary Journal (to later appear on online in full)

King Solomon and the Drug of the Dreamer

“King Solomon in the Book of Kings goes to a high place and has a dream there where God gives him wisdom and advice and information and riches, now although we don’t have any evidence of this in the bible, we think it was probably very difficult for non-professionals to enter this trance-dreaming state. So, the speculation is that the priests who attended those dream sanctuaries, probably passed out little drinks that would help ease you into a nice sleep that was filled with visions.”

- from History Channel Documentary, "Ancient Drugs" 

________

Novitiate Dreamer

What is the overlapping effect of passionate, searching intent to experience and remember one’s dreams with regularity? What happens when one suddenly replaces the time spent specifically to practice dreaming, as a “writing” process of mental recording, with waking life experience? How does one’s life experience change based on that spiritual momentum and waking transition?

Seasoned Dreamer

You begin to see the Dreamers among the crowd, those who are a bit more aware about the fickle nature of reality, and are fearless to dream in their daily lives, to create worlds out of the creative mediums emanating from their own minds like veins of a pulsing heart, emboldened with the glory of Love’s unmistakable vibration, and they are so clearly seen among crowds of people isolated from the dream connecting us all, because the rest are too afraid to realize that their clothes, hair, attainments, and on are the mere substance of their dreaming and nothing more, and nothing less. 

________

Charged into the luring night

Carved into the alluring heights

Nuanced into tribal delights

Singing with the ancients in tones of space 

Delayed, silent prophecies spell dismay 

and the pandemic smites the land

Wired, fortuitous 

growling, harbored animals’ grow to fame

Sparkling wizard beards of vision 

drunken, smoldering, breathless 

- excerpt from "An Artist's Line"

Four Leaf Clover Medicine Wheel

Lifandi Lif Undir Hamri by Jeroen van Valkenburg

I was doing a solo out in the Ghost River Wilderness area. I was inside a sweat-lodge with the door closed for the majority of the time, so it was like night-time all the time for me on the solo. When I went out I had a mixture of pretty strong emotions - I was excited, anxious, fearful, glad, bold for a new challenge and I also felt a sense of following in the footsteps of my dad and granddad who'd both spent a lot of time alone out in the bush. I've always had a lot of admiration for my dad and grandfather and I'd jump at any chance to be more like them and to make them proud; so I had a strong sense of that going with me as I went out, but I don't know if there's a particular adjective that would describe that particular emotion.

When I was out there I spent the first while getting used to my surroundings, and partly avoiding the difficult and foreign task of deep self-reflection and examination. Finally I got down to it and went into the sweat-lodge and closed the door. It went well for a while until I heard lots of noise outside the lodge - I was filled with gut wrenching fear not knowing what was going on outside. I was so afraid I couldn't move despite my best efforts to unwind my clenching stomach. I was imagining all the worst kind of possibilities that would explain the ruckus all around me - in hind-sight, there were also the most unlikely; bears tusslin over who would eat me first, and how they were gonna get into where I was hiding and the like! 

I couldn't do anything else, so I lay there in fear and starting to feel real sick and I prayed with the little bit of sense that was left in my head - I asked for pity and mercy and I called on my Grandfather to come to me and lend me his strength, courage and sense to make it through whatever was waiting for me. I just lay there and prayed over and over - gradually I started to relax and the noise outside subsided and then disappeared all together. I was still pretty shaky, but I managed to get some sleep - probably out of exhaustion more than a sense of calm and relaxation! When I was asleep I heard my Grandfather's voice and I could almost see him right in the corner of my eye, but when I tried to see him, he slipped to edge of my vision again. He told me that was real proud of me and reassured me that I would be ok in whatever was coming my way - he said it might be tough, but that I would be quite alright. He spoke to me a while more and he told me about things in our family that I had never been told about as a child but had always wondered about - the usual types of hardships that are unspoken in many families like why this and that person don't speak and the cause of what had come between them. Then Granddad said goodbye and wished me well and he walked away. 

I woke up cryin my eyes out. I was so happy to have seen my Granddad again but I felt a really deep and aching sadness that I felt as the loss of him in my life again - my Granddad had passed away when I was 16 and standing beside his coffin I was filled with the deepest sense of loss and regret I've honestly ever felt - because of the things that had come between my Dad and his family, we hardly ever got to see Grandad as kids and being left alone in the house he had built and raised a family in; a family who had all flown far from the nest I think really crushed him and he used to drink a lot, which is probably why we didn't see as much as I would have liked to when I was growing up. I know seeing us made Granddad really happy though, because my only memories of him are him smiling and chatting with us in the shade underneath his house - the stories of his sadness were secondhand to me. 

So when Granddad left me again I was filled with all those same kind of feelings and memories and longing for him in my life again - I don't know if you have ever had a similar feeling, but I felt it physically and emotionally and spiritually through my whole body; and I still feel something of that when I think back to that moment again. 

After I lay there for a while longer I fell asleep again and then I saw very clearly a man walking towards me - he was draped in a long cloth and he had an enormous dark beard that looked like he'd swallowed a bear and left the arse hanging out (to use a Billy Connelly Expression!). When he got near to me he told me that we had the same spirit, that we were in a way the same person - but he was an older me, but I also felt that we were still different, even though we were the same - I can't explain it, it wasn't a reasoned thought, but was a feeling that I just knew that was the case. He explained to me that what I had been learning about from the Blackfoot about the medicine wheel and the four aspects to the universe and our human lives (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual aspects; the four seasons; four stages of life etc) was also part of my old Irish/Gaelic culture and that's what the four leaf clover represents. People say it's "lucky" to find a four leaf clover, but the understanding I took away from that is that I guess in a very essentialised, "dumbed down" way it is lucky - but really, it represents the perfect balance and harmony of the universe and all parts of it - it's a representation of the code or laws by which all things live if they are to exist in their proper way, if they are to exist in that harmony and perpetuate the balance of all existence. Then he showed me how that is drawn in a traditional Gaelic style - it's a knot that has four segements and they all wind into each other with a small segment in the middle. He told me to make my home there, in the middle of the four segments - which I took to me I should live in balance and practice the values of each of the four sections in balance. 

I don't remember the end to that dream, it just sort of faded into me waking up. There was much more to my time on the solo, but that's probably enough for one go! :) 

When I got back I did a lot of follow up research with my family about what Granddad had spoken to me about - without mentioning my dream, as I wasn't sure what people would make of me and my sanity if I told them about that! - and also about what the older me had taught me about that knot. It most certainly is the four leaf-clover representation of harmony and the universal laws of balance and not long after that I ran into a book in the Metaphysical Books and Crystals bookshop in Calgary about the Celtic Spirit Wheel which recounts a Gaelic story from Ireland and how the laws of fours and balance we re-taught to the people of Ireland after they had forgotten them. I could write for pages and pages more about the heightened and deepened awareness I got from reading that book, but it would be purely academic I think. 

The dream I had last night which led me to typing out these words to you no came about after a day feeling pretty lonesome. A good friend the other night had kinda lost her cool with me and let loose all the criticisms she had of my short-comings. She apologised afterwards for having been so unfair, but I still took it to heart and thought about what she said - all I think to a degree, fair criticisms in a sense; but I also felt as though much of what she took me to task over was me acting with the best of all intentions, and in some ways things I have not much control over. So I was feelin pretty sad and a bit lonely out of the whole thing and I went to sleep last night asking for guidance and pity and mercy. In my dream I read a verse from the Bible (which I haven't ever read an awful lot of, just bits and pieces at different times) which brought me a lot of comfort and I woke up this morning feeling much relieved and recovered from my bout of lonesomeness and sadness - the verse that I saw in my dream was 1 Timothy 4:12 "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity".

Dream of Phra Khru Bah Neua Chai Kositto

Buddhist art in Cambodia by Pwordissony

"I only remember the times I lost...I lost only four times. Most of the time I won with a knock out. I must have had many hundreds of opponents. But I became tired of fighting...for many different reasons. Tired of the whole scene.

And then one of my closest friends was killed in a car accident...and I started to wonder when it is my time to die...would I have achieved peace of mind?

The last time I boxed...was on December 20th, 1990. A month later...after having a vivid dream...I became a monk.

The moment I became a monk, my heart and mind changed...I felt a great calm that I just couldn't explain...I ended up sitting on a rock for 15 days and 15 nights.

I felt such a peace...and then a swarm of bees...built a nest around me and I couldn't move.

It was like a dream in which...the forest was filled with wise men...who taught me their Buddhist ways...When I finally awoke after the 15 days...the sun was bright and the bees were gone.

So I walked further into the hills and saw the villages there. I saw how poor the hill tribe people were.. and I saw their drug addiction. And I asked myself why were their lives so difficult?...why did they have such sorrow?"

from the documentary film "Buddha's Lost Children"