Tailspin May 09

may 09

hejtejp - vila

featuring work from members of tailcast.com

Introduction Blogs on Tailcast Jessica Janes I Saw Collins... Rosie Short Try Everything, Be Everyone, Go Everywhere!!! Art on Tailcast Scott Reflections At Night Ashley The War Becca Thorne Red Riding Hood Jared Knight Descending Writing on Tailcast ManDartin You Are The Miracle Dolores Labour Of Love Marshman Been Here And Gone Jodamme The Seduction Luke Rowett Starting With ‘And’ Christian Thunderbird - The Symbol For Rain Falling Floorpuddle The Apple Crispy Beware Pseudo Zombie Comic Part 1 Juniperlillie More Than A Thousand Words In A Portrait Of Self ZenBen No Faith In Doubt Sam Best Friend Edro Not Art - Electricity



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Florence - Slide

1.

Personally, I see tailcast as providing an oasis for people who want a proper community that has art without artiface. A real forum for sharing of ideas and (1) Why Do You Love Tailcast? (2) What Does Tailcast opinions without resorting to “isms” or pre-determined positions on complex matters. Trawling around the Mean to You? (3) Describe Tailcast in One Word. blogosphere I see so many sites where the discusHope you don’t mind if I break the rules a bit Rosie and sion between people on issues like the Gaza war, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. could never be considered an attempt answer it in my usual long winded way! at dialogue. It is just people shouting from behind their pre-conceived battle lines. No one should be that Oh what a world, a world we live in confident in their opinions that they can’t talk about them to test their validity! Looking at the state of the world what makes me proudest of tailcast is that we attract members of all Also, tailcast for me is a promise to my younger ages and from all places and they get what we are all brother who died a few years ago. A chance to show about quickly. The world continues being destroyed him that with effort and goodwill good can be acheived by greed, fear, ignorance and lust for power but there and bridges can be built between people. are many of us who just don’t see the point of all that. Money may not be the root of all evil but it certainly oils Initial efforts to attract some tech volunteers is starting evils’ wheels! to pay off and hopefully we will have a few involved over the next few months. The idea is that tailcast becomes an example (wikipedia style) of what good will, collaboration and excellence can achieve. Dear Rosie asked people to collaborate to answer the following questions:

I will finish with the last lines of one of my favoruite poems “Desiderata”: “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy”. Best wishes all Pete Ps: tough to describe it one word but I guess I would have to say “earnest”

Tom - Buzzzz

dNaCI - Spotlight on...

Jonny - Suspension

Jessica Janes I Saw Collins Through The Back Window Of A Cop Car It is odd how things seem from the back of a cop car. When theres a cage in front of you and your buckle requires a key to be opened. Just yesterday I sat, staring out the side window, watching all the things that passed by. Everything looked so joyfully different. When we drove past my school a warm feeling built up inside me. Even stronger it became when I saw Collins Park. The place where I have skateboarded with so many friends. I began to wish that maybe Garret or Tyler would be looking out and see me and rumors would be started of all the cool things I must have done to have ended up in that cop car. Allthough none of them would have been true. The reason I was there was because my step father had hit my mom and I stood up for her. The buckle and cage gave me a feeling of security. And so in this new prospective, I had never felt before, I watched my city fly by. It was when I heard the crash and the scream. Then the gasp of my brothers when I knew it had finally happened. I ran down the stairs and around my mom. Then past my step father who was saying in the sweetest voice, “Are you okay honey? You okay?”. I flung the back door open and into the night. I couldn’t stop gasping. I kept hearing my brothers yell, “There’s blood! Theres blood!” Then I heard my mothers tears. Fast as I could in my old gym shorts and nightshirt I ran down the street to the one neighbor I briefly knew and rang his door bell frantically. The elderly man opened the door. I gasped as I tried to explain, “My step dad... he pushed my mom... and, and I need a phone...” He stared at me a long moment then helped me in and handed me a house phone. His wife walked in and when she saw me her face wrote a shocked expression. “oh my,” was all she said. Then I remembered the eyeliner I hadn’t bothered to wipe away and left smeared deep and black around my eyes. My pitch black hair was loose around my shoulders. I knew I looked like a demon child standing in the middle of her living room but she showed me to a small chair and I dialed 911 for the first time. “Harris County Sheriffs Department, you have reached 911, what is your emergency?” “Uhm... my step dad and my mom were fighting... and he pushed her. Her head hit the table and she’s bleeding... he took the phone so I ran here... uh, to my neighbors house to call.”

“Okay, so he pushed her?”

6.

“Yes and she fell!” “Don’t worry, what is your address?” I stammered out my adress and I listened to her keyboard. “So is anyone drinking tonight?” “Yes, they both are...” I sighed “And your brothers who are inside, are they young?” “Ten and eleven” “Okay, and is anyone there dealing with any mental issues?” “No..” “Okay, well I’m sending out two deputies and an ambulance to stand by.” “Thank you!” I sobbed. “And what’s your name?” she said, she sounded happy. “Jessica.” “Jessica, you are very brave for running to your neighbors like that.” “Thank you...” I said. “Bye.” And with that I hung up and handed the phone back to the old lady then ran back home. My mom was sitting on the front porch crying. I looked at her head. Her hair was matted with blood and her face, hands, arms, and chest were covered. My step dad, Lance, had already fled. When the cops and the ambulance came my mom denied everything. She said she slipped and fell. But I knew the cops didn’t believe her. Her lip was busted and she had bruises around her neck and nail marks on her arms. She stayed on the porch and tried to light a cigarrette while I led the officers inside. My brothers and I scrambled to show the officer the puddle of blood on the tile. He shined a flashlight on it and cringed then spoke into the speaker on his shoulder. Soon two more cop cars came and they were all standing in my drive way. Just casually talking. There should have been a high speed chase to catch Lance but nothing was happening. My mom was in the ambulance and when It

pulled away I asked one of them where she was going and he told me that she was headed to the hospital. I ran upstairs and changed into some skinny jeans quickly and when I came back down three of the officers were inside. One of them handed me and Alan a piece of paper and asked us if we wanted to fill out a claim of what had happened that night. We cleared a space in the rubble of the kitchen and began to write exactly what had happed. Then the officer made me initial a statement that said I shouldn’t lie or it would be purgery. Then I signed my claim and I watched as Alan did the same. I looked at his claim paper and saw it was one long sentence. The only part I could make out was the last bit that said “and then my sister called the cops!” With an exclamation point and everything. As if it was a narrative written at school. The cop told me I was doing “the adult thing”. Then we took the cop car to the hospital. I listed silently to the radio. “Young black male, described as wearing a hoodie and orange shorts”, the speaker droned. I was filled with the hope that maybe things would change. Once at the hospital a nurse came in and wiped the blood form my moms head and body. Then they took her back for a CAT scan. She had her neck sprung and she required staples. I watched as the nurse pressed four staples into my mothers head without any pain medication. She screamed and sobbed. I hated Lance for everything he had done. The nurse gave my mom a packet on Domestic Violence. We watched Disney channel on the TV in my mom’s room untill they had finished getting her paperwork and finally “our ride” arrived. My mom’s ex fiancee / ex boss, Ray , came and picked us up. When we left the hospital I saw a boy in a black hoodie and orange shorts sitting in a hospital room. He looked at me and I stared back and there was a long connection. I wanted, more than anything, to sit by him and talk. I wasn’t sure why but it was an urge. I wanted to hear his story and I wanted him to hear mine. But my mother, brothers, Ray, and I left without a word. I walked out into the humid Houston air and stared at the city. When I got home I couldnt shake the feeling of the cop car. I couldn’t forget the expression of the kid in the orange shorts. The drama, it was all I wanted, it filled me up. And I knew that boy needed it too. I finally got a small taste of what I longed for. For the drama of the city. And I couldn’t help but wonder how San Francisco would look from the back of a cop car.

Jessica - In The Car

Klarabella - Armar

10.

Rosie Try Everything, Be Everyone, Go Everywhere!!! I am just one of those people, I’m afraid.

Never be forgotten.

I suppose, my mother would call it ‘never satisfied’ and my father would call it ‘ungrateful’. You might call it over ambitious or just plain ridiculous. But it’s the truth, so I’m going to write it anyway.

I understood that after you died people mourned you for a bit. Remembered the good parts about you and tried to blot out the bad. Yet it didn’t last forever. Eventually people moved on, continued living, stopped talking about you, until they themselves died. The memory of you died with them, and that was that. Gone. Forgotten.

I want to do everything, be everyone and go everywhere. Yeah, I know, never going to happen. But then, there’s no harm in having the ideal, is there?! I guess, from an early age, I was always one of those children who changed their ideal job every day of the week. One day it was archaeologist, the next it was actress, the next it was author, the next it was soldier... and so on and so forth. I wanted to try everything.

I almost felt as though I could cope with anything, heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, or just eternal darkness...whatever the afterlife had to throw at me, I could cope with. As long as I wasn’t forgotten.

Of course, now, I think very differently. Just after I turned seven I found religion, and the heaven and hell thing became a certainty for me. The fact that I wouldn’t be alone when I died was a great comfort to me. It’s strange to say it now, but from the age of six I knew However, in the back of my mind, I still had this deep that I was not immortal. Yeah, that does sound strange, set fear of being forgotten. so let me explain. Most children never think about death. They never consider their own morality, or the Today, I rarely think about death. It’s like life, inevitable, fact that the end might be just round the corner. I did. and overthinking it will rarely change the outcome. Yet, that fear of being forgotten gave me this little gnawing It was constantly on my mind. feeling, deep inside. The feeling that I shouldn’t let life pass me by, that I shouldn’t find excuses to stop me Yeah, morbid, but again, true. I was constantly concerned about the fact that I might not achieve living life to the full. everything I wanted to achieve, be everything I wanted Of course, I can’t be everyone. But I can do everything I to be, go everywhere I wanted to go. And, of course, want to do, if I just put my mind to it. the most important thing to my six year old mind.

11.

Scott - Reflections At Night

13.

Scott Not much to say really... I grew up in Warrington, a Northern industrial town that is basically the council estate that links Manchester to Liverpool and have a hybrid of the two cities accents. The only culture is Rugby and drinking. The town has recently jumped on the indie scene band wagon. I moved down to Southsea at 18 to study Criminology degree and International Police Science Masters. That basically means that if I had the nut’s I could pretty much say I am a qualified trafficker of all markets, drugs, weapons, people you name it I probably studied the market, routes and policing of it :) I’ve been in Portsmouth pretty much ever since with a 18 month stint in Basingstoke Amazingstoke or Basingjoke. I work for a Charity working with the Youth Offending Team. Working with Victims and Offenders. Pretty interesting but I’ve got a little bored of it now as I have been doing it for nearly 4 years. Time for a change. Art wise... I don’t really see myself as an Artist and I even get a little embarrassed (might not be the right word) when I get called a photographer. I’m still learning and have a long way to go until I will feel comfortable calling myself a photographer. I have always shown an interest in all types of art and music, playing guitar in bands when I was a teen and doing sketches every now then but nothing very serious or regular enough to progress the skill. I bought a digital SLR about two years ago now. Canon 400D. Loved it but spent the first 8 months with it on auto mode. I would read about exposure and shutter speeds and what not but it would just go over my head. Last year I did a BTEC in Photography at night college. I loved it and learning how to use a camera on manual hooked me. I don’t think there will be any going back and that course was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I got a distinction I was well made up with that. In the future when I am a little more confident I would like to try to fuse my photography with subjects that I wrote about during my uni. Just like an essay but more fun and creative than all those uni rules on text size and references :( Anyway... thats enough about me. What about you? Come here often ;)

Scott - Waiting In The Shadows

Ashley - The War

Ashley - We’re not a band...We just look like this.

18.

Ashley

A photograph or any piece of art no matter the medium says a lot. It speaks in waves. I have never been a great writer so instead of having a journal I express myself through photography and other art forms. I love the challenge of putting what I feel into an image and making it speak. I love photography, image manipulation to be exact. My thoughts through the day mainly contain my wheels turning trying to churn out another idea for a shot. Something unique, something people haven’t seen yet. That’s tough, but possible. As far as what type of person I am...I have a hard time describing. I am a zodiac nerd....I love it though, I mean don’t get me wrong daily horoscopes are phoney, but as far as personality goes I am 100% an aquarious woman. Here are some traits ...and I have them all :) • Intelligent • Eccentric • Random • Intellectual • Stubborn • Open minded • Unique • Rebellious • Independent • Emotionally Detatched • Aloof “Her dreams are very different from that of a normal female and she hums a different tune, which most of us have not even heard of.” That statement is so true, you have no idea.

Becca Thorne - Red Riding Hood

Jared Knight - Descending

Jared Knight - Tropical Autumn

Danangib - Waiting

24.

25.

Mandartin You Are The Miracle If we were made of dirt Did God destine us for failure? We are such fragile stuff Life breathed in Only to breathe back out Given tar-stained hearts built to burn We dare to call this mercy Yet, for all that, there is you. The miracle of what dirt can be You are the unsung song of glory That never had the chance Locked away a place so dark you never noticed The crown of all creation placed upon your head I did As for me, I’m nothing special Filth with a divine spark Same as everybody else Nothing special, but offering out my hand And if you take it we’ll walk these streets together Find some safe, secret place to hide While they curse the heavens down Then when Armageddon comes With it’s mighty, end-times roar We’ll face it with a whisper ... “I love you” ManDartin - Checkmate

26.

Dolores Labour Of Love He tends her garden faithfully, weeding at the first sign of spring; wearing the frayed straw hat: the one he found years ago in the attic, remembering how she laughed when he wore it; how she danced on chubby legs clapping small hands in delight; sunshine radiating from her. Meticulously he prunes the rosebush he planted the day she was born. His back aches with each movement, but the pain is lessened as he relives her joy in life, and in the flowers. Laughter haunts his memory; tinkling in the breeze delicate as wind chimes. Resuming his work, half expecting to see her racing arms outstretched. He will not neglect her garden through the growing twilight of his years. Maria Carolina Kalyla - Bug

Reid Sumner - Moss

28.

Marshman Been Here And Gone “Anybody ask you who made up this song, Tell ‘em Jack the Rabbit, he’s been here and gone.” ~ Woody Guthrie Been Here and Gone It starts with a man on the porch playing his guitar-The sun a whisper behind the witness trees, The day, August’s cotton waiting to be ginned. The hill country speaks to the man The way the river speaks to the logjam. Down in the bottom, the field hands Make the long trek up the hill To hear the truth straight from the jug. It comes on the wind and across the hogback. Somehow it is found, a mite in the meal And is harvested upon its sultry merits. Often it stays within the man’s soul And pulled from the hollow’s jar When life is bared and barren. Heard tell of a man travelled a hundred miles To hear the Pine’s song. It came off a porch in the shadow of a hill: A man and his guitar, And the sound of the blues.

Sophie Eggleton - Alice Fashion 11

30.

Jodamme The Seduction You treat me like a princess darling. The golden room reflects so many thing, the polish - forgive me, I’m mumbling - I should talk clearer and slower - like this - near to your face - ... like this ... - I should break eye contact sometimes, but I can’t - I should stop smiling, I know it looks silly-... but I don’t care. Am I speaking slow enough for you? It feels so strange, you know, feeling my tongue reside for so long in one place, before springing to the next, and with it carrying another hopeless syllable... It’s comfortable, but not too much - and I know how much that is. I couldn’t fall asleep on this bed - I doubt ‘sleep’ was part of the design, really. I should also apologise, there are half a dozen apples I left on your table - each with one bite, visible from the brushes of lipstick, but each imperfect and therefore neglected, the lips not finding anything quite forbidden enough to wake the teeth. Should I work on my posture... should I stand, and walk, and show exactly how mannered I am for you? My hips feel like they’re covered in honey - or maybe that’s simply my imagination talking, who knows. They’re smooth though, smooth against the silk. The light feels so penetrating, but so soft. It’s as if my skin is screaming out for air, and each golden drop enriches it - tightens it - explores it with me as a guide, wondering into the abyss of my touch. I lose myself within myself and withon myself, each touch less memory of my own and more fleeting, girlish desires for yours. You’ve made my body remind myself of yours, I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you for that one. And my breath - my air, my lungs, and a thousand other richly human things I can’t name. I wish every breath was like I had just arisen from an ocean, gasping - feeling cured by my senses. I feel like that with other things - things where no such dramatic comparative as to drowning even exists, understand, but I feel it all the same. I feel it when I touch you here, when I touch you there, and when my hand rests just before moving once more, using your eyes as an illicit guide.

31.

Luke Rowett Starting With ‘And’

I have always been drawn to starting a poem with “And”. I think it might be worth, largely for my own benefit, discussing for a short while how I view poetry, with the hopes of explaining this tendency. We can, and must, admit that people like different things. It is a question of taste, and there is no absolute good in poetry to which we may be striving. It is perhaps a common misconception to think that poetry ‘evolves’ towards perfection. Simply one poet inspires another, who adapts to their taste- their society, their ideas, and gets a little inventive themselves. Its not better, just different. Similarly though, if we are prepared to accept that differences between people cause them to like or dislike certain things, we also have to admit that their interpretations will be different. Again, it is not that one interpretation is ‘more right’ than another, as once a poem is free from the poets pen, it is its own thing - to be liked, disliked, and mean a thousand things. My poem “My Legacy” has had numerous different interpretations from all the different people who have been kind enough to read it. Not one of them bears any resemblance to the meaning I had on mind when I wrote it. They aren’t even close. Likewise, they differ from each other vastly. None of them could ever be wrong though, as meaning comes from the reader, as much as like and dislike does. A poem is barely written at all until someone reads it, and with their creativity, their passions, memories, beliefs and feelings, they do the real work. As a consequence of this, I find it hard to think of a poem as a distinct, fixed object. It is a product not only of all I am, but all you are as well (and more of you than me). It does not start free from everything you know before it, and does not end with the full stop. My compulsion to start with “And” is the same as my compulsion to finish mid sentence, because there is something before it, and something after it - a poem is naturally incomplete. By not denying this, I suppose I hope the reader has even less obstruction as they sit down to read(write) my poems - to finish what I can’t, an infinite

Gromit - The Palm Of Night

Jamfree - Stig Of The Dump Book Illustrations

Steff - A Lovely Despair

36.

Christian Thunderbird The Symbol For Rain Falling... I pray to you just this once, let her fall, fall for me. Let her wash away these tears, when the thunder roars and its too dark to see, let me feel her. When the wind stings and the sun burns, let her sooth me.When she’s tired let me catch her. When im dying let her drowned me. I pray just this once... let her fall. Ive been waiting six long months to feel her beat down on me... I pray let her fall!

37.

Floorpuddle The Apple The apple is perfect. Every detail of it, perfect, I could tell you about the way apples date back to the Garden of Eden, or the way they are immortalized in American folklore… but I won’t. If a dog is man’s best friend, I would argue that an apple tree is an equally loyal companion to the human race. An apple tree isn’t often thought of as loyal, but a look through agricultural history reveals a lasting and happy relationship. Ask yourself: is it a coincidence that an apple fits perfectly in your palm? Bright red and green ornaments hang from the gnarled branches begging you to jump up and feast. Is that a mere twist of fate? An apple is a giving tree. The relationship between man and fruit has only strengthened through time. Apples are grown all year now, but little of the orchard novelty remains. In an attempt to utilize the apple, distributors wax the apples. They pretend it was their creation by branding the pocket sized fruit with cheap fingernail stickers. The orchard connection is gone, in your hand at the grocery store remains the detached result of a giving tree. Aesthetically, the apples continue to do their job, entice you. Each apple is a waiting advertisement, competing with other apples in their slanted store shelves. A shiny apple is magnetic, it must be plucked. It is light, but juicy. Toss it from hand to hand. The apple makes a dense “phtat” noise against your palm, and rattles against your fingers. All this talk of apples and I haven’t even mentioned the taste which satisfies the senses as much as the resounding crunch of a toothy bite. Enjoy your apples…

Fernella Dragonfly - Shell

Susan Sorrell - My Aching Head

Susan Sorrell - Let’s Make A Deal

41.

Crispy Beware Beware of dark and lingering thoughts, They rot the wholesome mind, Beware of anger, fire rage, The burning red that blinds. Beware of idle, stagnant hands, For the devil’s work they do Beware of cruel and callous voice The word it speaks, untrue. Beware of pride and ego, The chains of self they be, Beware of all these dangers, Only then, will you be free.

Vincent - Waterloo

Sushiko - Creepy Love Androids

45.

Pseudo Zombie Comic Part 1 the perception of the universe is consensual. by attention, we fix coherencies. memory, in the end, is the only muse. dimensional travel is not travel so much as drift. You cannot go somewhere you aren’t already. People move through alternate dimensions all the time. Do you think the universe, always one for efficiencies, would let multiple cables of history lie side by side, with all the elements wrapped in isolated lines of causality or consequence, when it could just as easily move particles of individual consciousness freely among lines, so only the triggered consequentialities intersect? say a memory occurs to you, based off of a name, a smell. That is a particular past, shared by all of the elements of your consciousness standing in direct relation to it, but the moment you cease remembering, the selves that shared the memory are engulfed by the vast number that are identical only in the present. all of which, i suppose, is based on the fairly tenuous philosophical position that if there is no difference in mental states in various alternate selves, then those selves inhabit the same dimension, and any subsequent “memories” will not be a result of a consciousness acting on an individualized store of knowledge, but rather individual memories passing through a shared store of conscious moments...

player had a bandana around his neck, and kept calling for “another beer, stage left.” that was him. Down stage was the drummer, mouth gaping like a fish. such simple sounds, simple combinatorial logic, the brainwork of wrists and fingers. here’s the first episode from the animated zombie comic book I’d like to make: first page, HAYDEN, a middle-aged businessman, driving his car, drinking coffee. RADIO VOICE: ...which causes them to attack those closest to them. it’s being described as a zombie-like state of irrational violence. second page, first panel: ZOMBIE smashing into car. second panel: CU HAYDEN stunned. RADIO: If you yourself are bitten, isolate yourself... third page: Bird’s eye view, scene of carnage. they covered sidewalks going up from street corners to the first floor of the department stores on the opposite side. There’s a restaurant that serves coffee, one of the few, and on the menu are about twenty different kinds, including “rose.” this is before I started graduate school, and was teaching english overseas. I was in the restaurant one time before my class, reading Hayden White. metahistory. the idea is that historians prefigure their presentation of facts with the kind of stories they want to tell. various historigraphical conventions are informed by narrative structures of satire, comedy, trajedy, etc.

I stop at the gas-station by the highway. Windows broken, no lights or working pumps, of course, but no blood anywhere.In the bathroom, muddy water comes out of the sink. I’ve propped the door open with a cement block. I notice greenish-purple on my arm, feel a stab of panic, then remember how I got the bruise. In the mirror, !hctib ih is scrawled in ball-point. In my pocket, I feel the figure of the monk from the board game. I try to fix details, to keep the world from sliding further.

then, quickly, they become good. improbably good. Catching my eye, you nod. The bassist. The blurring around his fingers. the drift starts to work its way into the music, pulling it apart. i check the mirror over the bar and see the shadows flickering in and out. the confluence is deeper than i expected. then it stops, the music returning into the realm of possibiltiy, short of dimensional borrowings. “We should check the juke box,” i say. if we’ve shifted, then the names won’t be any we recognize.

I walk past the bar to our table. There’s maybe eight other people there, six of which you identify as the parents of the band members, judging by age, wedding rings, and wililngnes to stand motionless with a video-camera, beaming proudly. We’d already paid the five dollar cover, so we stay through the set, through a pitcher. Niether of us had heard of the band before, just were following the drift, a poster we’d seen, the the upstairs of the club. At first you think I’m wrong, that there’s no way they’re shifting; their only kids. With their parents cheering in front of the stage. the guitarist had blond hair, managing, with the help of a beard, to cover most of his face. Marijuana was written in yellow on a red T-shirt, under the gloden arches logo. The bass

page four: HAYDEN at his OFFICE. in the first and second panel, talking on phone: Honey, you need to go somewhere, out of the city. one of them, at Glenwood, smashed into my car, I’m turning, I’m turning into one. they said i’ll try to find you. Anyone I know. don’t tell me where you’re going. the said i might try to find you. third panel: door, pounding, shadows behind the glass. page five: full page, zombie, broken door. She’s holding a cell phone, blood on her mouth. From the cell-phone: Honey? what if the consensual universe isn’t determined by consciousness, but merely by perception? Every spark of animal or plant intelligence, chemical transfers,

exchange of cues at cellular and micro-cellular levels, all this binding the dimnensional drift together. A symbiotic web keeping one world, by a continual witnessing, from sliding into other possibilities when no one is watching. this could be an unforseen consequence of species loss, reduction of the living bio-sphere: more and more elements from dispirate realities will intrude, flotsam from the verge finds its way into music, comic books. why did only some of us wake up? When we first met the captain he was staging gladatorial combats with the zombies he could control, making them tear each other apart. “Practice” he said. Now he practices by trying to control three zombies at once, get them to play music together. he has them on drums, bass, and electric guitar. There’s a kind of mad genius to it. That’s the ironic thing about what happened to the captain: he himself is even less able to control his body than we are. he shuffles and drools with the rest of us. But when he’s controlling the horde, through telekinesis...it’s almost as if they were alive. The human soldier is tied up in the room with the zombie musicians. I wonder what he is thinking. Zombie instincts? Sometimes, I can read his thoughts. Still, despite everything, he doubts we are alive.

Rui Ribeiro - p 1

Joseph - High Contrast

Lapislazuline - Treeline

50.

Juniperlillie More Than A Thousand Words In A Portrait Of Self

I thought I must have gone completely mad, stark raving naked and insane. I panicked at the sound of a gunshot in the distance and began the search for my scattered clothing.

My esteem was gone, I’d lost everything I’d ever known. My undergarments and I stumbled over the uneven My marriage was over, and the hopes and dreams I’d terrain to my scarf, the rest of my clothes were just once held for my life were dead. over the hill in front of me. I took note of a tree stump I took myself out into the cold, winter wilderness in hope sitting a few feet from where I struggled to snap my bra with the numbness in my fingers. I sat my camera that I might capture a photograph or two, a distraction down there while I continued with the task at hand. amidst long moments of quiet contemplation and self observation. Standing back a moment I thought to myself... This is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life... Pondering the inevitable, the probable, and the past I questioned myself, my core, my thoughts. There was I should not just capture the life around me, but myself nothing but pure chaos stewing in my mind. I fumbled right now, here, in the rawness of the moment. I threw over broken branches of weather beaten trees until I the scarf around my neck, hit the self timer and walked found myself in a part of the woods once burnt by away, turning just in time for what was to be a photo summers heat. New life springing sporadically up I’d never share with anyone, but one I would treasure around old and broken life, I found myself equating my privately for the rest of my life. life to that of the earth where I stood. . With the notion that my life had been entirely controlled I thought like everything else that a computer virus ate this photo like everything else on my hard drive that I by others, that I’d never taken the time to find myself, that I’d never so much as even tried to be who I was but didn’t have the sense to back up. I assumed that my rather spent every moment trying to conform to what the sentimental photo was gone forever. Yesterday I found it saved in my email, along with world around me wanted me to be, I knew that it was several poems I’d sent to myself. It seems I wasn’t as time to become the master of my own fate, the captain careless as I thought. I threw it into photoshop and of my soul. cropped it, mottled it, and made it look as old as it feels to me now. I have no shame in posting it, I’m wearing I thought about evolution, adaptation, and natural as much, if not more, than I would on a beach. I have selection and the ways that my life reflected that. In the dead of winter I was a sapling, sprouting from the no fear of being judged for posting it, for in the taking of the photo I was releasing myself to any obligation to earth a new life, a life I could finally call “my own.” the thoughts of others concerning myself. A sensation of being one with the wilderness Looking back at this photograph, I see the ways that I overpowered the freezing wind and numbness in my am still bound to life’s obligations and society’s extremities.. I removed my overcoat to better feel the standards but I also see the spirit that was set free on freedom I’d begun to taste. I threw it to the ground that January afternoon in the woods. A spirit that will with my camera still in grasp and began to walk more briskly toward the sound of a nearby stream. I snapped never again be confined to living for another’s desires a couple of photos here and there, but with every photo at the expense of losing herself. In this portrait of self I see so much more than a half nude woman in the came a new thought, and with every thought a need to snowy wilderness and I see far more than a thousand shed my body of it’s protection, it’s binding, it’s words could ever say. imprisonment.

51.

Zenben No Faith In Doubt There’s a seed within A desert flower

So ancient and strange That only a fire’s

Impossible heart Will make it blossom.

Luca Grandi - Cespuglio

Hyla Levy - Light And Shadow

54.

Sam Best Friend You’re not my best friend because you are the best influence in my life, Or because you are always on time, Or because you always get things right. Because in reality you are none of that. You are my best friend because you hold me in the pouring rain, You tell me to go after my dreams, and help me reach for the stars. You’re my best friend because you’re the one teaching me how to truly live.



Wirrow - Tgther In The Sea

55.

Edro Not Art - Electricity Notwithstanding my mind-bliss was tested by a bovine tryst intersected thoughts of aunt and unc usually called Gin and Reg though I mispoke just yesterday Reg and Gin, sending another flash my way What of Reg’s self-universe where he might indeed be first? See, Gin is Mom’s sis, so for me absolute But I am one that questions truth while some see certainty and concrete sleeps ‘neath their roof Just then another bolt crept into my mind ‘twas the marsh man’s ability to define with words those feelings usually left to the mist whispering no real need for expression instead wordlessly content with being Being, standing naked with no symbol-thought Brought yet another flash, a word: art Perhaps the greatest is that which means only to me No need to be organized nor voted true What gleams for me may not for you In my truest realness, my judge calls no jury.

Sushiko - Working Alone

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Desiderius Erasmus

Rachel - Springs Gift...

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There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

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