Tornado in downtown Atlanta for the first time on record, March 14th 2008 at 9:45pm

The Dalai Lama has an office in Atlanta, at Emory University since being offered a position there last Spring. March 14 of course, was the same day rioting broke out in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

"A Color of the Sky" by Tony Hoagland

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.


from What Narcissism Means to Me © 2003

Artist behind Beijing's 'bird's nest' stadium boycotts Olympics

The Chinese artist behind the stunning Olympic stadium in Beijing, nicknamed The Bird's Nest, has lambasted the 2008 Games and says he wants no part in promoting it.

"I would rather be disconnected or forgotten," Ai Weiwei told The Guardian newspaper.

The Chinese National Olympic Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, holds 91,000 people.The Chinese National Olympic Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, holds 91,000 people.



Ai, a prominent artist and designer living in Beijing, was hired by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron to help create a design for the 91,000-seat stadium. The $400-million building has been hailed as an architectural wonder, with its ribbons of intersecting steel resembling a bird's nest.

The artist is incensed by the positive show the Chinese government is putting forth ahead of the games, set to open Aug. 8, 2008, ignoring its human rights record.



"I hate the kind of feeling stirred up by promotion or propaganda … It's the kind of sentiment when you don't stick to the facts, but try to make up something, to mislead people away from a true discussion."

Ai says he hates that the stadium has become a shining symbol of China's march towards modernism. He calls it a "pretend smile."

"I would feel ashamed if I just designed something for glamour or to show some kind of fake image."

Ai also had choice words for other artistic types participating in the hoopla — filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Zhang Yimou, a former classmate from their days at the Beijing Film Academy.

"It's disgusting. I don't like anyone who shamelessly abuses their profession, who makes no moral judgment."

Organizers announced last April that Spielberg and Yimou had been hired as artistic consultants for the opening and closing ceremonies.

Spielberg has indicated he would pull out if China opposed a measure to increase UN peacekeepers in Darfur. That proposition recently passed.

'I did it because I love design...'—Ai WeiWei



The director said he would like the ceremonies to "give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding."

While Ai castigates the Chinese government and those involved in the Olympics, the artist says he has no regrets designing the stadium.

"I did it because I love design and the idea of how it would be looked at by others."

The 50-year-old comes by his anti-authoritarianism honestly. He spent much of his childhood in a remote province where his father, Ai Qin, one of China's most respected modern poets, was exiled during the Communist era for being an enemy of the state.

"I spent five years with him at a labour camp where he cleaned toilets," he told the website Gamesbid.com

Five years ago, police shut down a show curated by Ai. It included self-mutilation, human corpses and body parts.

--------

Saturday, August 11, 2007 | CBC Arts

Beijing Olympics Mascots

The Fuwa (Chinese: 福娃; pinyin: Fúwá; literally "good-luck dolls" and can be known as "Friendlies"), are the mascots of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The designs were created by Han Meilin, a famous Chinese artist. The designs were publicly announced by the National Society of Chinese Classic Literature Studies on November 11, 2005 at an event marking the 1000th day before the opening of the games.

Herman Melville

Misgivings

When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country's ills--
The tempest burning from the waste of Time
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.

Nature's dark side is heeded now--
(Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)--
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storms we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.



Excerpts from The Lightning-Rod Man

What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearthstone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag irradiations, and swift slants of sharp rain, which audibly rang, like a charge of spear-points, on my low shingled roof. I suppose, though, that the mountains hereabouts break and churn up the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark! -- some one at the door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And why don't he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker's clatter with his fist against the hollow panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. "Good day, sir:" an entire stranger. "Pray be seated." What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: "A fine thunder-storm, sir."

"Fine? -- Awful!"

"You are wet. Stand here on the hearth before the fire."

"Not for worlds."

The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange-walking stick vertically resting at his side.

It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff, by insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper bands. The metal rod terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt. He held the thing by the wooden part alone.

"Sir," said I, bowing politely, "have I the honor of a visit from that illustrious God, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have to thank you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains. Listen: that was a glorious peal. Ah, to a lover of the majestic, it is a good thing to have the Thunderer himself in one's cottage. The thunder grows finer for that. But pray be seated. This old rush- bottomed arm-chair, I grant, is a poor substitute for your evergreen throne on Olympus; but, condescend to be seated."

While I thus pleasantly spoke, the stranger eyed me, half in wonder, and half in a strange sort of horror; but did not move a foot.

* * * * *

"My special business is to travel the country for orders for lightning-rods. This is my specimen rod;" tapping his staff; "I have the best of references" -- fumbling in his pockets. "In Criggan last month, I put up three-and-twenty rods on only five buildings."

"Let me see. Was it not at Criggan last week, about midnight on Saturday, that the steeple, the big elm, and the assembly-room cupola were struck? Any of your rods there?"

"Not on the tree and cupola, but on the steeple."

"Of what use is your rod, then?"

"Of life-and-death use. But my workman was heedless. In fitting the rod at top to the steeple, he allowed a part of the metal to graze the tin sheeting. Hence the accident. Not my fault, but his. Hark!"

"Never mind. That clap burst quite loud enough to be heard without finger-pointing. Did you hear of the event at Montreal last year? A servant-girl struck at her bedside with a rosary in her hand; the beads being metal. Does your beat extend into the Canadas?"

"No. And I hear that there, iron rods only are in use. They should have mine, which are copper. Iron is easily fused.

* * * * *

"You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and from Jupiter Tonans," laughed I; "you mere man who come here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, that you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man's earth."

"Impious wretch!" foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the rainbow beamed. "I will publish your infidel notions."

"Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm."

The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes as the storm rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me; his tri-forked thing at my heart.

I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.

But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbors, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.

Taoism - Growth of a Religion by Isabelle Robinet

The "Chuci", the Wu, and the Fangshi, pages 35-41.