love and fear

Some people tattoo messages on their bodies that they feel must be indelible to be remembered

Mine would surely be:

"The hardest part of love is fear.
Have courage, dear heart!"

This is the amygdala twisting itself into a barrier.

You must survive before you can attach.

And what if you fear what you are supposed to attach to?

In that vein- here are a few photographs that Saiga Yuji took on

Gunkanjima when the island was alive and vital.

So we can remember that the basis of abandonment is not always fear.

Photographer SAIGA yuji's Gunkanjima Photos and Info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunkanjima

http://www.videosift.com/video/Abandoned-Japanese-Island

perdido street station and gunkanjima

Seven years ago, in Stockholm, I went to an art gallery.

A video was playing- a silent black and white documentary piece about an

abandoned man- made city off the coast of Japan. The beauty in the abandonment

and decay was palpable. I've been trying to find out more about the city ever since- but had no name, no information at all.Yesterday, dawdling through websites and google earth, with no particular place to go, I typed in "abandoned city" into the search box.

And my city of decay rises up.

The site belongs to the photographer Saiga Yuji.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/index.html

He is really the first to document this extraordinary place and its transformation.

Gunkanjima was an island created for industry (coal) as well as housing its workers and thier families. There were temples and schools. Children rode their bicycles in industrial

back streets and played with dolls on the stairs of the workers housing. And then in 1973, it was closed down. Saiga Yugi was there when it happened, and he stayed until it was over.

Since then he has spent countless hours on the island. At night it is very strange.

Here are a few of his remarkable photographs.

Remember- this city was vital and living and real. People lived and quarreled and suffered and read books and stole things and dreamed and cooked and prayed and made love.

China Mieville is one of my favorite authors.

King Rat (1998)
Perdido Street Station (2000)
The Scar (2002)
The Tain (novella, 2002)
Iron Council (2004)
Un Lun Dun (February 2007)

The island of Gunkanjima exists quite comfortably (or uncomfortably) in Mieveille's world.

resentment is drinking a cup of poison and hoping your enemy will die

Sue Lloyd

http://www.fineart.utoronto.ca/mvs/faculty/lloydCV.html

In her recent series photographer Sue Lloyd has captured the eerie sense

of being in danger, with no one around aware of your situation.

_______________________

I am angry tonight.

But if you are angry, you are feeling something.

Anger is deceptive.

There's a highway that it rides, through the amygdala, that primitive machine in your brain.

Somewhere else in the brain, that is supposed to be tamed, taken in, analyzed, understood.

Supposed to.

Not many of us can get past

the initial surge-

the corporeal bonds-

the steel trap door-

WHY are we angry.

Are we lonely?

Abandoned?

Singled out?

Left out?

"Anger is repressed creativity."

I appreciate that perspective.

It works pretty well for me.

the transformation of waste

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

http://www.artphotogallery.org/02/artphotogallery/photographers/parkeharrison_01.html

http://www.orbit.zkm.de/?q=node/226

http://www.parkeharrison.com/

http://www.edelmangallery.com/parke.htm

Perhaps these characters would be at home in Emmet Gowin's industrial landscapes?

They surely are living in the wasteland. And it appears they are gathering material towards their transformations.

No artists could better present the visceral pain of the alienation and isolation.

Occasionally that state of mind has moments of beauty, of clarity.

If we are artists or writers or people who live in our imagination, we try to

duplicate those high sensation moments in ways that are very harmful to us.

Be forwarned: any act that selfharms or destroys you,

is only the dark disease muttering in your ear.

You will get through. It is only your mind that is tricking you.

There are others of us who who are in the life you are in.

You are not alone.

Get up.

Get out of bed.

Drink some water.

Open the window.

making it through the wasteland

Emmet Gowin

ariel photography

http://www.eastman.org/

Emmett Gowin is in transition.

I envy his chances to be above the wasteland, the refineries, the junk iron and pig metal.

We need to get distance between us and the thing that makes us suffer.

So we can see it, for the smaller thing it is.

We cannot make gold until we have gone through the wasteland.

The secret is- we MAKE the gold from the things we find in the wasteland.

If in the web of depression- today look down and bring home one found thing

- a nail, a coin, a piece of paper with some writing on it.

Begin to assemble the things you will need to make gold.

Do not dispair, do not give up.

the terrible beauty of odd nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum

cantankerous, brilliant, tempestuous, controversial

paints like the bastard son of an old master

what is in his head we will never know and he could care less about enlightening us

http://www.nerdrum.com/

ten thousand dreams interpreted

Gustavus Hindman Miller · 1901
http://nickm.com/dreams/index.html
A beautiful publications design project out of University of Baltimore.
There is hope for the ghost of old letter set presswork!