Neil Gaiman - Waking Spirals

The Artistic Glimpse

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”
― Neil Gaiman

My inner world cannot be perceived by others not the way that I can perceive it. Of course this tends to be true of everyone. Artists tho show glimpses into their interior world. The ability to do this despite the medium may serve as a definition or description for what makes an artist. The medium doesn’t matter much. If you can look at the product or work of another and catch a glimpse into their process and perhaps a greater understanding of your own, then you very likely stand in the presence of an artist.
Blessings, G

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Not My Standard Reality by G A Rosenberg

Fire Monkey Finds His Year by G A Rosenberg

Cernunnos in Repose by G A Rosenberg

Paradoxed and Paradoctored

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

To embrace paradox is to further understanding. Light is a particle and a wave. God is one and many. The truth is silent and rather loud and can be understood but never fully. It is possible to love fully and dissolve into a greater whole while maintaining individuality. It is possible to know it all but understand nothing. Eventually if you follow any question far enough back you reach paradox. It is ok to contain both, to contain all.
Blessings, G

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Abstract Dreamscape by G A Rosenberg

Love and Wisdom by G A Rosenberg

Armageddon Tired of It

“Everything had been going so well, he’d had it really under his thumb
these few centuries. That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring
Armageddon on you.”
― Neil Gaiman

There is a preacher who says that an asteroid will hit the earth and demolish the eastern seaboard leading to the end of the world in about three weeks. Many people believe him and there are several Youtube videos about it. Others believe the earth may end Oct 7. Of course this is old news. At this point in my life, it seems like the end of the world keeps getting scheduled and people keep talking about ways to either survive it or praying to God or aliens to save us all. Funny thing is the world didn’t end in December 2012, the Mayans simply started a new calendar. The world didn’t end Jan 1 2000, the computers were fixed. Yet still people await the end of everything and Armageddon pretty tired of it.
Why are so many in such a hurry to see things end? I mean this world has its problems. The infrastructure of most countries is badly damaged and society has to make changes. It seems that a few people believe that they can have all the marbles and enjoy a high standard of living at the expense of the rest of humanity and the planet responds accordingly. Yet by and large there are a lot of good things to be said about humanity. The awareness and compassion that most of us have towards the suffering of others is higher than its been in several thousand years as is the idea of basic human rights. Culturally there is much beauty to be found in every form of art that one can perceive. There are few of us who don’t have some form of recreation or pleasure in their lives. Yet so many seem excited and ready for it all to end.
For some it is a matter of faith. They believe that the deity that they believe in will take care of them and give them privileged treatment in the next life just by dint of their beliefs and irregardless how they may have treated others. Others are so disgusted by life on this world that they want to see it all go up in flames. Oddly enough this group includes very few of those who have it hardest through poverty or geographical location. They most often are those who’s main exposure to just how bad the world is is Youtube and social media where they interact with a number of others equally convinced that there is little worth saving. Many of them believe that life here on earth just doesn’t work for them and rather than find ways to make it work they want to believe that it will all end soon. Then they will be vindicated. Then everyone will see how little everything mattered and how they were prophets. They talk about wanting change yet for most of them that is all they do, talk. As each prophesied doomsday goes by, they find another day. I guess preparing for the end of the world beats learning how to live in it.
If only each person started utilizing their compassion for others and working towards a common good this world could be fixed. If only we were more concerned about being the kind of people we want to be able to interact with in our lives, clearing up our own faulty perceptions rather than focusing on that of others imagine the strides we could take forward (and yes I do realize that that is somewhat hypocritical given the rest of this posting, yet I am more concerned with this focus so many have on things ending rather than people’s reasons for it. One of my goals in this life is to be the kind of person who people will think its a shame when I die. I would love nothing more than for everyone to have that desire for this planet. Imagine if the focus off the majority of humanity was involved with building a world and a society that it would be a shame for it to disappear?
Blessings, G

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Panther Mask by G A Rosenberg

Chromandala by G A Rosenberg

Searching For Inspiration

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
–Neil Gaiman

May the Empress inspire
words that may light a fire
in my cold creative heart
that i may find my way to art
that will radiate in turn
its viewers emotional churn
a chain of creativity
that will pass to them from me
and onward to others flow
their expression of self to show.
Goddess the spark in me ignite
originality, delight
— G A Rosenberg

Somewhat Sleepy in Seattle. I have taken a few days to travel both to de-stress myself after a rough few weeks and to find something that will inspire new art, writing and creative input. What shape this inspiration may take I have no idea yet somwhere in the crossroads it will come.
Blessings,G

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Filling the Empty Places

“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”
— Neil Gaiman

I toss not coins but concepts into the well of my being. Sometimes I hear a click as they connect with pieces that came before. Other times I hear an echo as memories are stirred tho some are distant. Sometimes tho there is neither click nor echo but a silence. The tossed concept has reached an empty place and a lack has been revealed. Is it a lack in my being or a lack in my knowledge. The latter is easily remedies but the former itches at my very soul. I must feel around the spaces like a tongue exploring a loose tooth. The best way for me to do this is often to explore it in my art and my writing. Sometimes this leads unexpected dividends either in the knowledge it brings or in the exposure of my own ignorance. Other times tho it means that I have found a space where dragons dwell and I must explore it carefully.
Blessings, G

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She Stands Between Realms by G A Rosenberg

Sense of Being by G A Rosenberg

Beseeching by G A Rosenberg

An Oft-Told Tale but Changed

“Do stories grow? Pretty obviously — anybody who has ever heard a joke being passed on from one person to another knows that they can grow, they can change. Can stories reproduce? Well, yes. Not spontaneously, obviously — they tend to need people as vectors. We are the media in which they reproduce; we are their petri dishes… Stories grow, sometimes they shrink. And they reproduce — they inspire other stories. And, of course, if they do not change, stories die.”
–Neil Gaiman

Did you hear the one about the man who tried?
He failed so many times that he thought he’d die
still reached and found the courage somewhere inside
to go on and attempt it again?

Did you hear the one of the heart that cared?
It was so tempting to give into their fear
yet still they had enough will to dare
and so met the man halfway

What about the one about the two who loved?
Buried so deep but they reached above
Their passion flared up when push came to shove
but they kept on going?

We’ll close on the tale of the love that would last
The story of two who pushed past their past
to burn so brightly and yet way too fast
so they learned to reignite

— G A Rosenberg

Blessings, G

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Leonine by G A Rosenberg

The Downward Spiral by G A Rosenberg

Artistic Doggerel

“All we have to believe with is our senses: the tools we use to perceive the world, our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
— Neil Gaiman

Colours flashing lights fading
creatures of the night invading
Daemons soar on angel wings
Real are my imaginings

My senses in and out of control
what I can see may take its toll
madness, inspired lunacy
may inspire or undo me.

Animals with human heads
mermaid, gryphons, the undead
greater knowledge do they bring
my inspired reckonings

Used to wish that they would stop.
constantly my brow would mop
then with my visions, made my peace
now my panic has surceased.

On my screen I bring to life
all my visions, I midwife
Unreality tunnels shared
my art leaves my soul unbarred

Colours, symbols still recurring
archetypes my soul are stirring
Through me tho not by me come
From my art I’ll never run
— G A Rosenberg

Blessings, G

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Blue Web by G A Rosenberg

Lizard’s Vision by G A Rosenberg

A Tale of a Thousand Dreamers

“We can have any kind of world we choose we just have to take our power back”
— Ron Adams

“If enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.”
–Neil Gaiman

In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman story “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, a legend is told of how cats were once giant beings whom humans served until a thousand humans dreamed the world as it is and caused it to change. In the story, a visionary cat travels the world meeting with other cats to try to get a thousand of them together to dream the world anew. One cat scoffed and suggested how difficult it would be to get a thousand cats to do anything together much less dream.
I believe that a thousand dreamers can remake the world. We don’t have to take our power back, it is ours inherently. The problem is that each of us have a different idea of what the world they want to live in looks like. In some cases there is a strong resemblance, in others it is vastly different. Some of us want peace, others want power and still others can only feel secure if they can control what people in other countries do. Social justice is another area that people disagree about. Everybody wants their idea of social justice and the ideas of what that is differ greatly.
I believe if we can get enough people to agree upon the dream, we can make it a reality. Getting people to agree tho can be as difficult as herding cats.
Blessings, G

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Ophidian Awakening by G A Rosenberg

Shaken by Outside Influences by G A Rosenberg

Conscious Management

“It was a Friday afternoon. Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn’t occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.”
— Neil Gaiman

Life erupting at breakneck speeds. Sometimes it seems that we go from event to event crisis to crisis putting out one fire only to find out that two more have taken their place. We definitely live in a world faster than the one I remember growing up. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing. We are all learning new time and stress management skills all the time yet sometimes I wish things would slow down and just stop. I used to say routinely that I would like to know what a routine day was like because each one feels widely different than the last.
Yet i realize that it is not necessarily life that has to slow down but me. I have to take the time to enjoy each moment. I need to meditate for awhile each day and not do anything. Yes, there are always things that are calling for my attention and time yet it is not always necessary to heed the call. I am not saying that there is a need for strict rules. I tend to rebel against those anyway. More that I need a way to give body, soul, family, friends and work enough attention each according to need. In other words I have to make conscious decisions. The unconscious ones tend not to work anyway.
Blessings, G

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Floating Inward by G A Rosenberg

Bune (#26 in Goetia Series) by G A Rosenberg

Emerge by G A Rosenberg

This is a New Year

Neil Gaiman’s New Year Message for 2015:
“”Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.”
–Neil Gaiman

It’s here. Well, for most of the world as of this typing anyway. Another chance, another moment, a brand spanking New Year. In it I will try to accomplish a bit more, be a bit happier and a bit kinder. I will learn that much more from mistakes I will make and at the end of it perhaps understand a bit more. I wish you all the same.
Blessings, G

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Turning Her Back on Death And Life by G A Rosenberg

Wistful Dreams of a New Year by G A Rosenberg