http://www.learning-org.com/02.05/0112.html
"TO MAKE YOU HEAR, TO MAKE YOU FEEL, TO MAKE YOU SEE."
Conrad
Dear LO,
"-It is the image that has lost the war..." (BBC Radio4 : morning
news commentary.)
Over the last few years i have sent images, just a few, from Don
McCullin's archives of photographs from the theatres of war and of
hunger and of human madness. I have attached another here. I was going
to post it before now (-maybe i have and forgotten) . I post it now,
-hoping it will pass muster. It is an image imprinted into my very
psyche, in this image i see more than i can say. (''When thy kingdom
come.'' PPt)
[Host's Note: Andrew's PPt is at
http://www.learning-org.com/docs/LO31090_When_thy_Kingdom_come.ppt
..Rick]
I have been asked to provide materials, imagery, commentary for a
group of authors, who are trying to heal (make whole) what is broken.
In one of the articles there is a picture of a person whose hand
supports someone who is desparately ill. Look at the left hand of the
nurse in Biafra (PPt). Rick, does that hand remind you of another
hand, that supports another? (It will have been in Rome.) If it does,
perhaps you would grace this contribution with your thoughts about
that hand, and the context of what took you to that place?
[Host's Note: I think you refer to the Pieta sculpture we discussed in
your living room. ..Rick]
This next week i will have the pleasure of meeting a man for the first
time who explores the matrices of our (social) dreams, to see what he
finds there. I will want to ask this man what he thinks, knows,
intuits from the visages of recent days, real and fabricated.
Another distinguished commentator noted this morning in the UK
national media that, within the context of millions of fleeting images
from video and filmic media, from millions of words from reporters and
essayists of one kind or another, it is the(se) static, photographic
(pornographic) image(s) that still and chill the imagination. Likening
it, inevitably, to those from Vietnam, and especially that little,
naked girl running down the dirt road, burning alive with napalm.
Wor(l)ds : "The main objective was presumed to be the Palestinian
camps. The aim - to destroy Arafat's power base, and if possible the
man himself. From the nature of the shelling though it seemed as if
they were intent on reducing the whole of West Beirut, if not to
complete ruin, then to the maximum of tears. There were strange
rumours of a new type of bomb being used, that could suck up the air
and collapse concrete buildings at one blast. There was no mystery
about what phospherous shells could do. They could reduce people to
shrivelled burnt husks." ( McCullin c. 1983)
Civitas : [ within this section of the city was a mental institution.]
" One of the sisters took me to the most helpless and uncomprehending
of their children. They had put them in the safest place in the
hospital, a windowless small internal room. The sight was appalling,
as of two or three litters of new born rats on the floor. They were
children with severe congenital defects. They were blind, incontinent,
deformed, sometimes mongoloid, writhing in their own secretions."
(McCullin c 1983)
- Pigeon Warriors: [ from pages in Destructive Emotions, Goleman and
the Dalai Lama et al. 2003] " -Matthieu Ricard spoke, We have been
speaking a lot about the possibility of change -- We know that
emotions last for seconds, that moods last for say, a day, and that
temperament is something that is forged, over years. So if we want to
change, - we need to work on the emotions, this will help change the
moods and this will stabilize as a modified temperament. In other
words, if we take care of the minutes, the days will take care of
themselves." ...i thought that this was very subtle and interesting.
Then there is a story that may help - " ...about a former warrior
chief in eastern Tibet, who had forsaken all his martial and worldy
activities and gone to a cave to meditate. He stayed there for a few
years. One day a lot of pigeons alighted on front of his cave and he
gave them some grain. But as he was watching, the host of pigeons
reminded him of the legions of warriors he had had under his command,
and that thought made him remember his expeditions - and he grew angry
thinking about his former enemies. These recollections soon invaded
his mind, and he went down into the valley, found his former
companions and went to war again!"
I will share that with my new friend, who is coming next week- there
are plenty of pigeons in the bell tower.
Now!
When i saw that image, of the man, spreadeagled in crucifixion, set
upon a box, i saw another Angel (Angel) of History.
I can think of no better way to remove my soul from this contribution
here and now than to look up, i see above my desk a page of paper
hanging in a clip on which is written, " Reality is Complex" (AM de
Lange)
Love,
Andrew
PS At! Did you (knot) once write here that only love (agape) is
sufficiently high enough, as an emergent order of complexity, to deal
with reality, no matter what?
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