Tempus Fugit

Tags

collage, handmaid, humanity, memento mori, skull, Tempus Fugit

Last -for now- in my collage series.

Candia Dixon-Stuart

Collage 3

Tags

collage, dream, globe, Liberty, love, motivation, skull

by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Lengthened Shadows

Tags

Emerson, lengthened shadows, Sweeney Agonistes, T S Eliot

Reference to Emerson and T S Eliot

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

The lengthened shadow of a man is History, said Emerson,

Who had not seen the silhouette

of Sweeney straddled in the sun…

The Flute Player

Tags

acrylics, flute, gerbera, Krishna, Shiva, still life

Acrylics by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Poem from a Time of Trial

Tags

atheist, blame game, Kipling, natural consequences, Natural Theology, plague, theology

Natural Theology

by Rudyard Kipling

Primitive
I ate my fill of a whale that died
 And stranded after a month at sea.
 .
 .
 .
There is a pain in my inside.
 Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
 Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith :
 Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


 Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
 Anything more than a harmless flea?.
 .
 .
The burning plague has taken my household.
 Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
 Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
 Because my Gods have afflicted me!


Medi/Eval

My privy and well drain into each other
 After the custom of Christendie.
 .
 .
 .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
 So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
 Because the Lord has afflicted me.


 Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre
 They die by dozens mysteriously.
 .
 .
 .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
 Not to mention the L.
 S.
 D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
 Because this God has afflicted me!


Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
 Is homicidal lunacy.
 .
 .
 .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
 Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
 And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
 Because my God has afflicted me.


 Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
 Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week.
 .
 .
 The bottom is out of the Universe!

Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
 For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
 And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
 Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
 Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

Blenheim Broadcast

Tags

Blenheim, Divine intervention, existence of God, God, installation art, Michelangelo Pistoletto, theology

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Whirling Dervish, Turkey

Tags

Cappadocia, Sufi, Turkey, whirling dervish

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Montaigne’s Tower

Tags

Essays, folk wisdom, Montaigne, Montaigne's Tower, Philosophy

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart  All Rights Reserved

He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears: Michel de

Montaigne

or, as my granny used to admonish:  If ye fear a fear, it’ll come

upon you.

I doubt she had read Montaigne, but folk wisdom is

watered-down philosophy and not always diluted!

Collage

Tags

archetypes, collage, myths, Poetry, prayer, self, transitional state

Taking A Liberty

Tags

anarchy, Andromeda, Animal Farm, Burne-Jones, Cassiopeia, casuistry, censorship, Diaz, Dr Atl, etymology, free expression, guerilla warfare, hacendados, Heaven, Hell, Liberty, liberty/licence, Pre-Raphaelites, Prometheus, revolution, volcanoes

Another poem inspired by Prometheus Unbound

by P B Shelley:

Andromeda by Burne-Jones: Wikipedia

 

A wheel will come full circle, you will find.

The outcome’s in the etymology

of ‘revolution.’  Think ‘Animal Farm.’

 

‘You seize the flower; the bloom is shed,’ Rab said.

Heaven and Hell are one’s inner landscapes.

Give a man an inch; he’ll take a mile.

 

Liberty/ licence – where to draw the line?

Free expression/ censorship : who can judge?

Anarchy is based on casuistry.

 

Prometheus played with fire and was burnt.

Imagination versus tyranny.

He who is king over himself is free.

 

Cassiopeia took the liberty

of a frank assessment of others’ looks.

Say nowt if you can’t say anything nice.

 

Why did the Pre-Raphaelites feel free

to create soft porn from mythology?

Liberty bodices off; shackles on.

 

‘When tigers are unleashed, who controls them?’

said Diaz, while Dr Atl opposed

slaves’ exploitation by hacendados,

 

exploding guerilla warfare into print,

like lava from his beloved volcanoes –

but he still became a neo-Nazi.

 

So, I’m suspicious of all these Titans,

larger than life, whose words stream in the wind.

They’re the self-acknowledged legislators,

 

crying, ‘Liberty, equality… (Blah!)

prior to being overthrown – not by a coup –

yet everywhere men are free, but in chains.