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KUBLA KHAN

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-
dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were
girdled round:
And there were gardens bright
with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an
incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient
as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic
chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick
pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted
like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

i offer you something more entertaining than sensible. just curious, though-- am i the only one around here that has a passion for print and pattern? not that i'd stop those posts, but y'all can be so quiet for so long!

it was the best of times....

it certainly isn't news that new technologies make the world smaller; songs celebrate that like it's a good thing. what are the actual dynamics of a "smaller world"? we become aware of ways of being: thinking, dressing, eating, talking, believing, that we'd never imagined. and some are thrilled, and some are made afraid, leading to fear's eternal partner -- hatred.

i'm sure no generation since the beginning of generations has escaped this duality. thing is, somehow i figured that some day, like now, my lifetime, "we" would "wise up." we haven't. we have the greatest power humans have ever had to be a literal part of lives anywhere on the globe; why fear invasions from space? we've got your mosque burners right here.

but let's dig even deeper, because, as you know, some of those unwanted mosques weren't mosques at all. this brings us to another feature of a smaller world, the tremendous ease of fear-mongering. when an "other" becomes apparent, someone will also appear who can gain something from demonizing them.

the catalysts for these thoughts are several. watching adults convince other adults that health care would include death panels. watching adults convince other adults that mexicans, or muslims, are here to hurt you. they came for the mexicans and i said nothing....

watching jon stewart equate truth-tellers and lie- tellers since they both raise their voices, then watching keith olbermann and rachel maddow try discussing/debating that with him. (though "can't i see you (and you me) as you (or me) and not as truth-teller or lie-teller, not as blue or red, but just as us?" is a valid question.)

then ted koppel piles on, lamenting a newstime past that never existed, even in his own newstime past. then olbermann responds, with great insight. and then the rest of the world piles on. and i have to tell you that i'm watching the truth being thrown out with the bathwater.

part of the facilitation of this roil are... (drumroll) ... the new technologies. and while i am saying that the new tech- nologies have allowed a fuller blossoming of propaganda than humans on earth have ever seen, [propaganda by definition being the convincing of the many by the few things that are not, when un-spun, true], they have opened my door too.

there have always been liars, and there has always been a moneyed class. and since the moneyed have always controlled the media, the moneyed have always had the ability to spread whatever it wants, wherever it wants. and if you disagree, well, we have ways....

remember when pocket calculators cost more than iphone4s do now? one no longer needs to be of any certain class to get one. at our fingertips we have: all of history, much, from the most recent century or so, with actual tape, film, and video. there no longer has to be any debate as to who said what to who. koppel is wrong: until now there has been no uncorrupt news. but there is now.

what we have now, with msnbc, with progressive radio, and with "the record," is the ability for the unmoneyed to reach the entire planet with the truth. and with the proof to back it up. with twitter and youtube and blogs, we can keep up with each other in an instant.

who is telling the truth and who is lying is no longer up to the observer; when anyone says, 'i was never there,' within an instant the video proving the lie is up online.

so no. the equivalencies have it completely backwards. fox is proven to be lying night after night after night.

if they're the same, it's like the teacher saying to the bully who was beating up the skinny kid (captured on iphone), "now i don't know who started it, but you both go to your desks and i don't want to hear from you again."


simple: that teacher is ignorant. even simpler: i am not.

wear some flowers in your hair

okay, yes. it's california. i tried to find like literature on florida but it wasn't much there. my guess is because the push for population and tourists was earlier, so you're still getting a bit of the "victorian" look in the illustrations. and also, possibly, because the florida population tends latin as california tends asian. in any case, here we are again, drenched in beauty.

the more i look into this stuff the more i realize there's this other effect to the japonisme exposure that i haven't discussed enough, and that may be among the most important effects of all.

that is that the line between "artist" and "illustrator" has all but disappeared. toulouse- lautrec: which is he? steinlen? bonnard? names far less

familiar to us now, men who became "california impressionists": maurice logan, harold von schmidt (both pictured here), pedro de lemos, and so many more; these men (the ones i mention here) and others did magazine covers, and ads, and travel brochures, and fine oils and woodblock prints. they were the generation of students of the first wave of california impressionists (wendt, braun), who were the students of the first impres- sionists; and they were the teachers of the next generation, the artists painting and teaching today.

and the same is true, the line was gone, in the works, those tremendously influential works, of the japanese.