the earlier conversation on the wooden cross symbolism
has been contemplated lately, with Howard's reference to
Opus Dei (not sure exactly what this is-- or if it is a secret)
and the mention of an 'open cross' (an unoccupied symbol,
for Christian people's), then the grisly reality of beheadings,
which today VP Cheney's comments on in a way only such
a way as to use such horror for his own aims for more power,
even to say the challenger lacks 'convictions' (yeah, right---
just like VP Cheney lacks 'convictions' for Halliburton, Enron,
Plame, Energy Task Force, Iraq --- in the federal penitentiary.)
This tragic aspect of beheading could be considered part of
architecture of the human body/mind, where this severing of
the connection may be like decapitating the 'capital' from the
column (spinal column, even). People in the .US refer to this
in terms of a historical 'middle ages', possibly this is when a
beheading was normal and church-state relations ruled all.
The column-capital and human body-head is documented,
at least for its symbolism though there are carytatids which
have a head and body for the column- and also 'headless'
columns, (doric?) which are a smooth column up and down.
The symbolism of a beheading may not relate directly to
architecture, but to symbolism in the infrastructure, it does.
It is always interesting to me how, in such an uptight mental
community such as the .US with regard to having different
ideas, conformity of ideas is paramount to get anything done.
Yet, with something like religion, while there is tolerance, it
seems to lack something of the greater understanding that
can be found, heard, acted upon in the Middle-East when
the failure of the .US policies -to date- under the watchful
all-encompassing eyeball of a paranoid Cheney Complex,
are reverberating with something other than a pure fear of
the ideas of religion being in kind, in some way, with each-
other and not antagonists for cheap, easy political ends.
Although not religious myself, there is a great symbolism
in terms of Roman Catholic (at least, from my upbringing)
perspective, of the barbarity of humans against humans,
to such a degree that a beheading is considered a victory
in some way (even for God, no less, which the holy of all
places have spoke loudly in condemning this evilness---
who are these people doing such acts, and do you really
want them as your neighbor or a public representative?).
It seems this is stuff of a Saddam-era cruel vision of power,
dosed out the same way when Rumsfeld & Cheney were
selling the chemical and biological weapons to their friend
Saddam and cannot now stop beating the drum about his
having them-- they know-- they've got the receipts still, and
handwriting on the checks with photos in their scrapbooks!
The empty crosses are, if religious tolerance for a value in
part of a common symbol may be contemplated, to me is
a way to see partly what was mentioned of the publicness
of roman law and the brutality (not to be confused with that
of modern day landscapes or mindscapes, in the same way)
of punishment and order and what crosses represented (a
speculation, now follows) in that there was this method of
crucifixion and if empty crosses or fields of death and some
kind of punishment, maybe people knew what they meant.
The interesting thing about this symbol, in my opinion, is
that with Christians that they seemed to have taken what
was a sacrificial lamb, their public representative of ideas,
and saw a symbol of oppression transformed into one of
a type of liberation from the process of cruelty it embodied.
IT would seem that in occupying this symbol, it transformed
it into another meaning, for a certain kind of belief. What is
wondered, and has been contemplated by myself, is if the
symbol may be extra-christian in the way the Middle-East
and more long-term long-view long-understanding and
long-relations between cultures may cultivate, a shared
sense of things, as belonging in some way, together.
In this way, it is curious if the Saddam-fedeyeen (sp?) or
others who regularly went around beheading people to
terrorize the populace into obedience, is not what is also
part of what is going on, and that this is an internal type
of relation, also, holding the hearts of people internally
to the oppressions that were found in the Middle-Ages
in terms of oppressions relating faith to shared reason,
and the torturous torment of getting through such times.
What is being seen, and is it internal to a cultural order
which may have yet to transform, in some way, to one
that is more transparent, and this is not an exception to
the law but is how the law is carried out, in its extreme,
where light does not fall upon the corruption of power?
That is why these empty electrical distribution crosses,
ubiquitous, all over the world, may have some meaning
in the way of people dying for people, not necessarily in
a specific religious sense, though thoroughly symbolic
and very meaningful in the way it resonates on a level
which is often masked by commercials for hand soap,
deodorant, and other products in the .US and elsewhere.
It is wondered if the fear and oppression is that like the
brutality of a total ideology that reinforces its rules by a
type of conquering, not only of the body, which can be
made disappeared, but also all minds, to infect with a
fear that never leaves the potential for the loss of mind
in the most inhumane and degrading of actions, by an
action only describable as a type of glorification of this
power of one person over another, as a type of victory-
for that oppression, for that limiting of human potential,
for the methods by which action is taken-- again, this is
roundly condemned by all, excepted MOCKED by the
Vice President of the .US as a victory of terrorists over
the .US and not an event more complex than his war re-
enactments in this own head -- oh Great Terror Leader.
the empty crosses seem to be filling up, invisibly, with
the terrors brought by war and avenging and revenging
and brutality of Iraqis by everyone else, and their own
people who oppressed them, brought back into power
by the selfish greed brought about by the .US policies.
There is a way to transform the situation, public ways,
and a 'global war on terror' is not a win-lose issue on
the question of beheadings, it is seeing what is unseen
and it is tragic and it is horrible and it is partly all of the
world that is responsible, yet this becomes .US political
fodder, really -- PLAY-- by the .US administration today,
to get to other ends through these means-- such as an
even greater exploitation of others for personal gains.
the empty crosses- forgetting the Christianity as some
definition of what one way of seeing it is, could also be
a common structure (the pole itself, cross or no cross),
in which, as a symbol is finding its tragedies all around
it, as this less-than-human torments and terrorizes its
own citizenry. It may happen as part of internal law, yet
it has been publicly denounced, the sacrifices - who are
human beings, still, no matter what country of origin they
are human beings, still, and demand respect as a matter
of dignity for the value of life-- is spoken of as some type
of revenge of God by person's hacksawing a head off.
The head gone, no one needs to be able to think, just
be in the body, another column to fall into line in the
grand march towards the despot of power who control
with iron fist the minds of all, who must obey, who must
even pray to a certain God, opposite to what is said to
be a religious tolerance to diverse religious views in
the Middle-East. Even Osama bin Ladin, it is believed,
would have some opinion on such a barbaric act even
if it is outside his specific network of operations-- that
this is not a holy act delivered upon people as a way
to fight the .US and others' ideologies which may be
seen to infect the worst aspects that afflict all cultures,
though which are also shared beyond this by all too.
That is, it would seem more an internal action that is
itself a tragedy of such proportion that it is hard to in
any way comprehend living in such an environment,
and considering something like freedom as in any
way equivalent to democracy-- it isn't. freedom to
behead is not in the .US constitution as far as I know,
yet President Bush and others act as if freedom in
itself is an end-all to pandemics of complex social
and cultural differences that, are themselves, in dire
need of transformation. Of letting the brutal rule be
able to be transformed by these acts into something
more ideal to all peoples, to free them from the horror
and torment brought upon the minds of all by such a
rule which oppresses the mind, and that may be an
internal issue-- but it is represented world-wide and
is on par with the worst serial-killer psychopaths in
the .US, and certainly cannot be construed as a type
of freedom fighting for anything but the worst of the
very worst in human nature and at the heart of evil.
The empty cross, not christian, but as a symbol, it
may be that internally or externally, for all who are
suffering and have suffered, a cross may exist that
is already occupied, invisibly already by someone,
or waiting for the small sacrifices and subsequently
larger sacrifices, to gain freedoms over a common
self-definition, and that cannot be annointed upon,
or appointed upon another-- from the crucible of
pain and experience and will and dreams-- and it
is this Iraq, this Middle-East, that will rise, regardless
of what the .US administration postulates from afar.
The streets are full of people who have dreams, who
have had centuries of lives and knowledge, and this
is what is being held back by such a brutality, and it
is held in common with all, and all wish for a release
from such a burden, more than anything, for freedom
for Iraqi's to find what it is they need for themselves,
to exist, reclaim their identity, and demolish what is
this infrastructure of internal repression from days
of Saddam that the .US political establishment can
only benefit from seeing the Iraqi's as helpless in
doing anything to change the situation-- this is not
true-- and it serves VP Cheney who believe Iraq
and the Middle-East cannot take care of its own
business-- which is not true. Everyone needs a
good and solid friendship, yet to win, Iraq wins
itself. VP Cheney does not believe this, scorns
and mocks this, and loves the empty crosses in
which the oppression is both to be bound, and
if the fantastic rises to meet its match, transcends
the limits of men, to win a peace and a future, to
find a shared path which others exploit through
reigns of terror, as Saddam, as VP......, to their
own benefit. true human, shared freedom costs.
and there have been enough sacrifices to leave
the Iraqi's free of torment for centuries. And it is
of greatest wishes that what is held in the hearts,
beyond the grasp of those who rule all powerful,
know that everyone roots for them, for their hearts,
for their dreams, to learn, from this strength, and to
free all of us our demonizing ways of state, in body,
in mind, in the infrastructures connecting us as one,
to transcend this horror for another world, a better
world, and to fight those who lost heart, until free.
That is that anonymous wooden cross, a symbol of
oppression and possibly a way to get beyond it too,
in mind and body, in redistributing the realm of ideas
from a despot to citizens, to share the world of Iraqis
with the world, and to forge a long-term relationship
with our larger extended family, for an era of peace.
It may never be achieved in a lifetime, but in many
it may be possible, and right now some hope would
not hurt this wish, this need, at least from this realm
where it is so very sad and despicable how it is used
by the despots in control here, how they remain out-
side of being convicted for their open crimes, and
move about freely to continue their torment. the .US
is not VP Cheney, alone, and very few are as he is,
and reason, not power, will also prevail here, soon.
bc
brian thomas carroll: architecture, education, electromagnetism
http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=13102
http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
has been contemplated lately, with Howard's reference to
Opus Dei (not sure exactly what this is-- or if it is a secret)
and the mention of an 'open cross' (an unoccupied symbol,
for Christian people's), then the grisly reality of beheadings,
which today VP Cheney's comments on in a way only such
a way as to use such horror for his own aims for more power,
even to say the challenger lacks 'convictions' (yeah, right---
just like VP Cheney lacks 'convictions' for Halliburton, Enron,
Plame, Energy Task Force, Iraq --- in the federal penitentiary.)
This tragic aspect of beheading could be considered part of
architecture of the human body/mind, where this severing of
the connection may be like decapitating the 'capital' from the
column (spinal column, even). People in the .US refer to this
in terms of a historical 'middle ages', possibly this is when a
beheading was normal and church-state relations ruled all.
The column-capital and human body-head is documented,
at least for its symbolism though there are carytatids which
have a head and body for the column- and also 'headless'
columns, (doric?) which are a smooth column up and down.
The symbolism of a beheading may not relate directly to
architecture, but to symbolism in the infrastructure, it does.
It is always interesting to me how, in such an uptight mental
community such as the .US with regard to having different
ideas, conformity of ideas is paramount to get anything done.
Yet, with something like religion, while there is tolerance, it
seems to lack something of the greater understanding that
can be found, heard, acted upon in the Middle-East when
the failure of the .US policies -to date- under the watchful
all-encompassing eyeball of a paranoid Cheney Complex,
are reverberating with something other than a pure fear of
the ideas of religion being in kind, in some way, with each-
other and not antagonists for cheap, easy political ends.
Although not religious myself, there is a great symbolism
in terms of Roman Catholic (at least, from my upbringing)
perspective, of the barbarity of humans against humans,
to such a degree that a beheading is considered a victory
in some way (even for God, no less, which the holy of all
places have spoke loudly in condemning this evilness---
who are these people doing such acts, and do you really
want them as your neighbor or a public representative?).
It seems this is stuff of a Saddam-era cruel vision of power,
dosed out the same way when Rumsfeld & Cheney were
selling the chemical and biological weapons to their friend
Saddam and cannot now stop beating the drum about his
having them-- they know-- they've got the receipts still, and
handwriting on the checks with photos in their scrapbooks!
The empty crosses are, if religious tolerance for a value in
part of a common symbol may be contemplated, to me is
a way to see partly what was mentioned of the publicness
of roman law and the brutality (not to be confused with that
of modern day landscapes or mindscapes, in the same way)
of punishment and order and what crosses represented (a
speculation, now follows) in that there was this method of
crucifixion and if empty crosses or fields of death and some
kind of punishment, maybe people knew what they meant.
The interesting thing about this symbol, in my opinion, is
that with Christians that they seemed to have taken what
was a sacrificial lamb, their public representative of ideas,
and saw a symbol of oppression transformed into one of
a type of liberation from the process of cruelty it embodied.
IT would seem that in occupying this symbol, it transformed
it into another meaning, for a certain kind of belief. What is
wondered, and has been contemplated by myself, is if the
symbol may be extra-christian in the way the Middle-East
and more long-term long-view long-understanding and
long-relations between cultures may cultivate, a shared
sense of things, as belonging in some way, together.
In this way, it is curious if the Saddam-fedeyeen (sp?) or
others who regularly went around beheading people to
terrorize the populace into obedience, is not what is also
part of what is going on, and that this is an internal type
of relation, also, holding the hearts of people internally
to the oppressions that were found in the Middle-Ages
in terms of oppressions relating faith to shared reason,
and the torturous torment of getting through such times.
What is being seen, and is it internal to a cultural order
which may have yet to transform, in some way, to one
that is more transparent, and this is not an exception to
the law but is how the law is carried out, in its extreme,
where light does not fall upon the corruption of power?
That is why these empty electrical distribution crosses,
ubiquitous, all over the world, may have some meaning
in the way of people dying for people, not necessarily in
a specific religious sense, though thoroughly symbolic
and very meaningful in the way it resonates on a level
which is often masked by commercials for hand soap,
deodorant, and other products in the .US and elsewhere.
It is wondered if the fear and oppression is that like the
brutality of a total ideology that reinforces its rules by a
type of conquering, not only of the body, which can be
made disappeared, but also all minds, to infect with a
fear that never leaves the potential for the loss of mind
in the most inhumane and degrading of actions, by an
action only describable as a type of glorification of this
power of one person over another, as a type of victory-
for that oppression, for that limiting of human potential,
for the methods by which action is taken-- again, this is
roundly condemned by all, excepted MOCKED by the
Vice President of the .US as a victory of terrorists over
the .US and not an event more complex than his war re-
enactments in this own head -- oh Great Terror Leader.
the empty crosses seem to be filling up, invisibly, with
the terrors brought by war and avenging and revenging
and brutality of Iraqis by everyone else, and their own
people who oppressed them, brought back into power
by the selfish greed brought about by the .US policies.
There is a way to transform the situation, public ways,
and a 'global war on terror' is not a win-lose issue on
the question of beheadings, it is seeing what is unseen
and it is tragic and it is horrible and it is partly all of the
world that is responsible, yet this becomes .US political
fodder, really -- PLAY-- by the .US administration today,
to get to other ends through these means-- such as an
even greater exploitation of others for personal gains.
the empty crosses- forgetting the Christianity as some
definition of what one way of seeing it is, could also be
a common structure (the pole itself, cross or no cross),
in which, as a symbol is finding its tragedies all around
it, as this less-than-human torments and terrorizes its
own citizenry. It may happen as part of internal law, yet
it has been publicly denounced, the sacrifices - who are
human beings, still, no matter what country of origin they
are human beings, still, and demand respect as a matter
of dignity for the value of life-- is spoken of as some type
of revenge of God by person's hacksawing a head off.
The head gone, no one needs to be able to think, just
be in the body, another column to fall into line in the
grand march towards the despot of power who control
with iron fist the minds of all, who must obey, who must
even pray to a certain God, opposite to what is said to
be a religious tolerance to diverse religious views in
the Middle-East. Even Osama bin Ladin, it is believed,
would have some opinion on such a barbaric act even
if it is outside his specific network of operations-- that
this is not a holy act delivered upon people as a way
to fight the .US and others' ideologies which may be
seen to infect the worst aspects that afflict all cultures,
though which are also shared beyond this by all too.
That is, it would seem more an internal action that is
itself a tragedy of such proportion that it is hard to in
any way comprehend living in such an environment,
and considering something like freedom as in any
way equivalent to democracy-- it isn't. freedom to
behead is not in the .US constitution as far as I know,
yet President Bush and others act as if freedom in
itself is an end-all to pandemics of complex social
and cultural differences that, are themselves, in dire
need of transformation. Of letting the brutal rule be
able to be transformed by these acts into something
more ideal to all peoples, to free them from the horror
and torment brought upon the minds of all by such a
rule which oppresses the mind, and that may be an
internal issue-- but it is represented world-wide and
is on par with the worst serial-killer psychopaths in
the .US, and certainly cannot be construed as a type
of freedom fighting for anything but the worst of the
very worst in human nature and at the heart of evil.
The empty cross, not christian, but as a symbol, it
may be that internally or externally, for all who are
suffering and have suffered, a cross may exist that
is already occupied, invisibly already by someone,
or waiting for the small sacrifices and subsequently
larger sacrifices, to gain freedoms over a common
self-definition, and that cannot be annointed upon,
or appointed upon another-- from the crucible of
pain and experience and will and dreams-- and it
is this Iraq, this Middle-East, that will rise, regardless
of what the .US administration postulates from afar.
The streets are full of people who have dreams, who
have had centuries of lives and knowledge, and this
is what is being held back by such a brutality, and it
is held in common with all, and all wish for a release
from such a burden, more than anything, for freedom
for Iraqi's to find what it is they need for themselves,
to exist, reclaim their identity, and demolish what is
this infrastructure of internal repression from days
of Saddam that the .US political establishment can
only benefit from seeing the Iraqi's as helpless in
doing anything to change the situation-- this is not
true-- and it serves VP Cheney who believe Iraq
and the Middle-East cannot take care of its own
business-- which is not true. Everyone needs a
good and solid friendship, yet to win, Iraq wins
itself. VP Cheney does not believe this, scorns
and mocks this, and loves the empty crosses in
which the oppression is both to be bound, and
if the fantastic rises to meet its match, transcends
the limits of men, to win a peace and a future, to
find a shared path which others exploit through
reigns of terror, as Saddam, as VP......, to their
own benefit. true human, shared freedom costs.
and there have been enough sacrifices to leave
the Iraqi's free of torment for centuries. And it is
of greatest wishes that what is held in the hearts,
beyond the grasp of those who rule all powerful,
know that everyone roots for them, for their hearts,
for their dreams, to learn, from this strength, and to
free all of us our demonizing ways of state, in body,
in mind, in the infrastructures connecting us as one,
to transcend this horror for another world, a better
world, and to fight those who lost heart, until free.
That is that anonymous wooden cross, a symbol of
oppression and possibly a way to get beyond it too,
in mind and body, in redistributing the realm of ideas
from a despot to citizens, to share the world of Iraqis
with the world, and to forge a long-term relationship
with our larger extended family, for an era of peace.
It may never be achieved in a lifetime, but in many
it may be possible, and right now some hope would
not hurt this wish, this need, at least from this realm
where it is so very sad and despicable how it is used
by the despots in control here, how they remain out-
side of being convicted for their open crimes, and
move about freely to continue their torment. the .US
is not VP Cheney, alone, and very few are as he is,
and reason, not power, will also prevail here, soon.
bc
brian thomas carroll: architecture, education, electromagnetism
http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=13102
http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html