Archive for vision

Local Artists

Posted in Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, World Myths with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2012 by javedbabar

Sophie was given a month off after fainting in the old quarry. Why this had happened, she couldn’t say. She fainted maybe once a year, usually following a trauma such as a blood test, tooth extraction, or session of heavy drinking. Never just like that though, and her heart stopping was scary to think about.

Maybe the old quarry’s manager, Albert, had overreacted. Maybe her heart’s beating and her breathing were fine, and his old miner’s ears just couldn’t hear. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to make a drama out of a crisis. It must really have happened.

Her dreams of every kind of art continued. Blue and gold paintings, violin solos, white-masked dancers, poetry, stories, dramas, sculptures, celebrations, parties, holy rituals.

Were these inspirations or delusions? She yearned to visit the old quarry, but was scared to. What if she fainted again?

During her month off, an answer came to her. The quarry was a place of pain, where Mother Earth had been butchered. Her body had, piece by piece, been ripped out and removed, and once the demand for rock was exhausted, the quarry was abandoned like an old crone.

Her vision had been one of endless life, pouring forth, unstoppable. What if this place of pain could become a place of healing? She continued working on her status report for the old quarry.

“Sophie, what a nice surprise,” said her CEO, seeing her back in the office.

“I have the report.”

“But you’ve only just got back. Don’t you need more time?”

Sophie said it was complete. She shared her vision of using the vast, bare walls, floors, ceilings, and pillars of the quarry as a projection area. Bringing the stone to life, like a miracle, and using it to show every kind of art.

“That sounds very interesting. Leave it with me. I will take a look.”

Sophie imagined that would be the last she would hear of the project, but a week later her CEO called her in again. “Good news, Sophie. Your plan has been approved, at least on a test basis. I had to put my name on it for the project to acquire traction, but we both know it’s yours really. As recognition of that you can manage the project.”

The quarry project was approved for community use only. Sophie contacted Eric Yahoo, Director of the Lucerne Arts Council, who asked for a week to fathom a plan. He responded with a fund-raising proposal including carefully costed lighting, logistics, security, production charges and vendors’ fees. The concept revolved around ten reconditioned slide projectors showing sixty images each per hour, filling the quarry with pictures.

Local artists offered their works freely, which were loosely fitted together into the It’s Mine! Festival, a humorous critique of materialistic existence. Their paintings, music, dance, poetry, stories, drama, sculpture, celebrations, parties and rituals were combined, creating an overwhelming spectacle.

A critic from the New City Sun christened these artists the Lucerne Set. He loved their clay figurines, urban tapestries, unmade beds, pickled watermelons, moose dung, monkey graffiti, blood heads, and twinned personae.

It was a diluted version of Sophie’s vision, and seeing it manifested made her cry. From this old quarry she had mined rich treasure.

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Old Quarry Conversion

Posted in Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, World Myths with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2012 by javedbabar

Her CEO yelled, “Come!”

Why does she always do that? thought Sophie. Is it too much effort to say the word in? Or even to add a please at the end? I guess busy people need to use fewer words. Superiors must save their time and energy – for what though, so inferiors can expend theirs instead?

“Good morning,” said Sophie. “I haven’t seen you for a while. You look well.” Why shouldn’t she look well, she thought, she has a full time servant at home. That’s what she calls him – servant. How can she afford him? Lucerne Village Hall doesn’t pay that well.

“Thank you, Sophie. I feel that you are underworked. Would you agree? You would? Good. Obviously, Crisis Manager is a vital role, but we don’t have a crisis every day – unless you count my management style.”

This was a joke and Sophie was meant to laugh, wasn’t she? She wasn’t sure though. The CEO practiced GBH: Guidance By Hysterics. She was a terrible person to work for.

“We need a status report on the old quarry. I am allocating a month to do it. Can you have it complete by then?”

The bauxite quarry had been in operation for almost a century, providing material for civic buildings and fine homes. It had a history of accidents, pollution, corruption, industrial action and financial trouble. The Authority had kept the quarry open to maintain local jobs, but admitted eventually that it was cheaper and easier to import finished rock, and shut it four years ago.

Sophie went with Albert, the old quarry’s last manager, to take a look. She had only been in the village a year, and never seen the quarry open. Once the rusty locks were oiled, Albert pulled the overgrown iron gates open.

They walked past mounds of broken white rock and rusting machinery, before seeing a tall, rectangular gash in the hillside. As Sophie drew closer, she realized that the gash was a hundred feet high.

Sophie was drawn to this void; her feet led themselves; it was like walking towards the church when she was a child, to her grandma’s for lunch, and to a friend’s birthday party. It was like walking everywhere at once.

The gash had not been cut cleanly. Around it were probings and narrowings, where blasters, pickaxes and drills had worked, homing in on the centre, the cave, the bony canal extending deep into Mother Earth. It seemed a source of hidden power.

Albert gave her a hard hat and said, “Watch your step and your head. I come here once a year to take a look, but otherwise it is empty and falling apart. So just you…”

Sophie smelled figs and apples. She had a vision of the gash filled with everything in the world. It was overflowing with people pouring out. Life was being celebrated here by every kind of art. There were huge abstract paintings dripping blue and gold. Violin solos soaring. Scores of white-masked dancers. Poets on rock niches lauding the dark. Stories told of dragons and hidden treasures. Dramas of tortured hearts. Giant sculpted women. Bar Mitzvahs. Birthday parties. Holy mass.

The touch of God.

The breath of God.

The kiss of God.

Sacred vibrations.

Albert stared into her eyes. “Are you okay?” he said, looking crazed. Sophie had fainted and her heart stopped. Thank God he was trained in first aid; his skills were rusty but he had administered the Kiss of Life and CPR.

Sophie was used to managing other peoples’ crises. Now she must make sense of her own.

Cosmic Pillar

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Mystical Experience, Unknown, World Myths with tags , , , , , , , on April 4, 2012 by javedbabar

I awoke at 6am on January the first with my mind filled by the vision of a cosmic pillar. It was more a shape than an object, with dimensions that were incomprehensible. It was both see-through and substantial, though how that could be I can’t say. It arose from somewhere beneath me to somewhere high above, the space around it filled with fireworks exploding with brilliance of every kind. There were crimson flowers, old gold whirls, and neon green stars, set with bright blue puffs and lilac trails, plus tangerine flashes and clouds of silver sparkles. The darkness was forgotten, overwhelmed by teeming lights.

The pillar seemed a luminous tree trunk, rising out of some unknown earth, and into a boundless sky; the fireworks great bunches of bright foliage, filling the heavens. This tree of light shone in the night, with my soul set as a lamp upon it. It was the Tree of Life in the midst of all three worlds – memory, presence, and fantasy – making communication between them possible. It was nourishing and sheltering, inexhaustibly fertilizing, representing both evergreen, everlasting life, and deciduous regeneration. All roots fused and rose through the trunk, their journey ending as fat fruits with a mystical seeds of potential.

This ethereal vision also had a physical manifestation. My huge erection wouldn’t go down. It was a sign of a potent year to come. Full of potential.

I may as well make use of what I’ve got, so called my occasional girlfriend Kitty, who was always in the mood for some action. Afterwards she said, “Wow, what’s come over you babe? I won’t be able to sit down for a week. Everyone will think I’ve been herding cattle. Have you been eating Superfoods? Or taking Superpills? Does it ever go down?”

I told her I didn’t know, but wanted to make good use of my blessing. “Well I’m out for the rest of this week, babe. You better find yourself another willing volunteer.” This was easier said than done. Who do you call on such an occasion? Then came divine inspiration. I called “Hot Rod” Escort Agency, who asked me what I’d be willing to do, and I said, “Everything”. I quickly became their most popular escort – always available, and never disappointing.

One of the ladies I serviced took me on as her gardener. She claimed it was a way of keeping me busy between our sessions, and had nothing to do with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I grew to like my second profession involving fertility and planting seed. She had a “big job” for me, she said: planting a white oak tree in her rear garden. Using a buddy’s excavator I dug a hole and placed the tree in the ground carefully. At night it held a ghostly glow, with a million stars shining through its yet-bare branches, as if related to the heavenly tree of my vision.

My employer recommended my services to her friends. One was a very adventurous lady, especially in the area of landscaping. She wanted her garden to have the feel of an English village, so I suggested installing a maypole in the centre of her lawn. We celebrated Mayday with twenty handsome youths and twenty fair maidens drinking country cider, and clutching bright ribbons, weaved in between each other, losing our grips and our inhibitions, right there and then, not even making it to the woods.

My English village design was noticed by a City firm. They called me in for a meeting. “We love the thrusting nature of your work,” said the lead architect, licking her lips. “Its raw energy. We would like you to help us design a skyscraper.”

“But I don’t know anything about designing buildings,” I said.

“You’re a versatile guy, I’ve heard,” she said, winking. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You start Saturday at my home office.”

I told her that a building should really mean something. Imagine it as the Centre of the World. Show everything whirling around it. When Thrust Tower was completed, its metallic swirling design of caused a sensation. “This represents our new nation,” said the President on his visit. “Something to which we can all aspire.” He was photographed with me so many times that people began to associate my name with the highest public office. I thought why not aspire to that? A photograph of my pointing skyward became iconic. I used it on my campaign poster, and won the election.

One of my main achievements in office was doubling funding for scientific research, much of which went to our under-resourced military. It was a proud day indeed watching the Thrust One missile shoot out of its silo into the sky, blazing fire behind.

What should be my next achievement? To boldly go? Yes of course! I doubled funding for the space program. Within three months we had developed the world’s most powerful rocket, ready for launch. My announcement on launch day stunned the nation – that I would lead by example. I would head the mission, and be the only one in the shuttle entering the Black Hole. The first man ever to do so.

Via the external monitors I saw my slim silver pillar arise into the sky, surrounded by clouds of glowing fire. And some days after, I left the main craft and went beyond the Event Horizon, and as predicted by Dr. Einstein, entered the realm of curved time-space. In the Dreamtime I entered, each day lived is the First Day, a world of pure imagination. I awoke at 6am on January the first with my mind filled by the vision of a cosmic pillar.