Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (ZFC)

Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, commonly abbreviated ZFC, is the standard form of axiomatic set theory and as such is the most common foundation of mathematics. It has a single primitive ontological notion, that of a hereditary well-founded set, and a single ontological assumption, namely that all individuals in the universe of discourse are such sets.
ZFC is a one-sorted theory in first-order logic. The signature has equality and a single primitive binary relation, set membership, which is usually denoted ∈. The formula a ∈ b means that the set a is a member of the set b (which is also read, "a is an element of b" or "a is in b").
Most of the ZFC axioms state that particular sets exist. For example, the axiom of pairing says that given any two sets a and b there is a new set {a, b} containing exactly a and b. Other axioms describe properties of set membership. A goal of the ZFC axioms is that each axiom should be true if interpreted as a statement about the collection of all sets in the von Neumann universe (also known as the cumulative hierarchy).
The metamathematics of ZFC has been extensively studied. Landmark results in this area established the independence of the continuum hypothesis from ZFC, and of the axiom of choice from the remaining ZFC axioms.

continuum hypothesis, Cantor

In mathematics, the continuum hypothesis (abbreviated CH) is a hypothesis, advanced by Georg Cantor in 1877, about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states:
There is no set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and that of the real numbers.

socrates, glaucon, polemarchus

I - Socrates - Glaucon
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I WENT down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.
I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.
Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon's brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.
SOCRATES - POLEMARCHUS - GLAUCON - ADEIMANTUS
Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and our companion are already on your way to the city.
You are not far wrong, I said.
But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?
Of course.
And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are.
May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go?
But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.
Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?
With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one to another during the race?
Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will he celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.
Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
Very good, I replied.

late picasso exhibit

Going All Out, Right to the End
By ROBERTA SMITH
In the main, Picasso only got better. That’s the take-away from the staggering exhibition of Picasso’s late paintings and prints at the Gagosian Gallery.
One of the best shows to be seen in New York since the turn of the century, it proves that contrary to decades of received opinion, Picasso didn’t skitter irretrievably into an abyss of kitsch, incoherence or irrelevance after this or that high-water mark. For some, his decline began as early as 1914, when he and Braque went their separate ways after inventing Cubism. Others deferred until the arrival of the bourgeois Olga Khokhlova in 1917, or the pliant Marie-Thérèse Walter in 1927, or the end of World War II. But the mid-1950s have been generally accepted as the point of no return.
That stance has steadily eroded over the last 25 years, and should finally bite the dust here. The 50 paintings and 49 prints on view demonstrate that in the decade preceding his death in 1973 at 91, Picasso painted, as usual, for his life. But his life was drawing to a close, and pressure was mounting. He diverted it into paintings whose emotional rawness, physical immediacy and often wicked pictorial joyfulness were not quite like anything he had made before. They may not have changed the course of art, but give them time. First they deserve their due.
This is not the first big exhibition of late Picasso. But it may come at an unusually receptive time, when art is wide open, and the understanding of what it takes to be an artist has gotten a bit fuzzy around the edges. Or perhaps this show represents an unusually rigorous sampling of the last decade, having been chosen by John Richardson, Picasso’s formidable biographer, and superbly installed by him in the elegant, austere, sky-lighted galleries in Gagosian’s West 21st Street space in Chelsea.
Like the retrospective of Piero Manzoni that recently filled Gagosian’s West 24th Street emporium, “Picasso: Mosqueteros” should make any museum glow green with envy. And it looks better than just about any museum could manage. Free of wall texts and free of charge, it assumes that the public knows how to look at art and keeps distractions to a minimum.
As befits its title, the selection abounds with paintings of big-headed musketeers and matadors. Extravagantly clothed and mustachioed, they present an opportunity for excoriating self-portraiture disguised as caricature, while also dueling with past masters like Velázquez, Manet and Rembrandt.
There are thick-limbed figures of several kinds: entangled lovers whose mouths sometimes merge in desperate kisses; female nudes folded this way and that, with boxy feet and pebble-round toes; and a few male nudes that recall Cézanne’s bather in the Museum of Modern Art or the kouroi statues of archaic Greece, here seen in a golden Arcadian light heated to a brash egg-yolk yellow.
In this show the late paintings often have a fierce, antic urgency that recalls “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Their scale and surfaces can be jarring, too close for comfort from any range. The figures have prominent black eyes that resemble those of the demoiselles, as well as of Picasso himself (as Mr. Richardson pointed out in a recent newspaper article). But this late style is softer and more fluid, a combination of painting, drawing and calligraphy that verges on automatism.
It makes as much sense to call it deconstructionist as Expressionist. The images disintegrate and recombine as you look, keeping every particle of paint and every scintilla of gesture in view while often cracking wise. In one of the show’s most haunting images, the terrified, seemingly flayed face of a matador is rendered in offhand smearings of lavender. The bullfighter may be looking at death; the surface laughs in its face.
In his catalog essay Mr. Richardson writes that Picasso said that technique was important, “on condition that one has so much ... that it completely ceases to exist.” But according to a short film playing in a small side gallery, Picasso also said that “unless your picture goes wrong, it will be no good.”
Some of the paintings are thickly built in caroming wet-on-wet strokes and stabs, as if aping the deft flourishes of the old masters. A prime example is the lavish “Portrait of a Man With Sword and Flower,” which reinterprets one of Velázquez’s dwarfs. His comic legs are so splayed that the soles of his nailed boots point in opposite directions; his undulant grisaille face, taut and knowing, has fish-skeleton eyebrows.
Other works are so sketchy as to be more bare canvas than paint. The light-to-heavy range is spelled out across four relatively pale gray and blue paintings on one wall; they offer female nudes, alone or not, and a bust of a beruffled court painter in profile. They culminate in an image of a nude accompanied by a musketeer and, behind them, a large phallic finger that may make you rub your eyes once or twice.
The gallery of etchings makes a perfect foil for the paintings. They show Picasso shaking this alchemical medium to its foundations, often by introducing a lithography crayon, while ransacking history even more actively. The frequently ribald costume dramas or studio scenes (or both) that result are rendered in a manner that can be as dainty and refined as the paintings are not.
Especially telling are two states of an etching at the end of a long wall. They depict an artist gussied up like Rembrandt working from the model; but the main effect is a dense squall of scribbles, spirals and scratches that nearly obliterates them. It is as if the pressure of Picasso’s final years generated its own weather system.
In “The Celestina,” a storyboard mosaic of 66 small impressions on a single, large sheet, Picasso offers a seemingly encyclopedic survey of mark making and printing techniques. Don’t miss the short man — naked, bald and quite Picassoesque — staring out at us from the crowded scene at the center of the bottom row.
Picasso worked in relative isolation during his last decade, but it is hard to believe that a competitive lifer like himself didn’t keep up to some degree. He must have known Dubuffet’s big-headed figures, vigorously scratched in paint, from the late 1940s; the CoBrA group’s colorful figurative shenanigans of the 1950s; or even Jackson Pollock’s last quasi-figurative works.
Closer to home, Picasso’s active involvement with ceramics in the 1950s could have contributed to the shorthand speed of these paintings. Until 1953 he also had direct contact with the art made by Claude and Paloma, his children with Françoise Gilot. And his paintings of them, like those from the ’30s of Maya, his daughter with Marie-Thérèse Walter, tend to have open, seemingly unfinished surfaces and a monstrous scale that points toward the musketeers.
This show should relieve doubts about the essential role of commercial galleries in a vital art scene. Anything this charged and unforgettable is bound to nourish anyone who sees it, but especially artists, regardless of affiliations of style or medium. It reveals one of their greatest going all out, providing a breathtaking reminder that art can be anything an artist wants it to be, as long as it is driven by inner necessity, ruthless self-scrutiny and a determination to make every attempt not to repeat the past.
In the end, such inoculations are the only real protection against the vicissitudes of opinion. Art that successfully internalizes them will in all likelihood come to be seen as part of its own time and retain a vigor that is capable of inspiring the art of the future. That is the feat of Picasso’s extraordinary final offerings.
“Picasso: Mosqueteros” remains on view through June 6 at the Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, Chelsea; (212) 741-1717, gagosian.com.

Hegel's Aesthetics

The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to decorate our surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-aesthetics/

Let there be by Jimmy Chen

There is an overpass above the highway. There is a barbed-wire fence that prevents pedestrians from jumping off the overpass. There are electrical wires above the overpass, conducting electricity from one side of the freeway to the other.
There is a bird that flies into a wire and falls onto the barbed-wire fence and dies. It stays there for days, dead. It rains, it pours. The sun, it shines. The bird is still there. The cars rush ahead below, driven by nervous people with unclear goals.
There is a large building on one side of the overpass. There is a two bedroom condominium inside. There is a man lying down on a futon after work, eating a tangerine and listening to this ceiling. There is an obese woman walking around loudly in her condominium. Her floor is the man's ceiling. There is no humor in this world.
There is saxophone in a studio. A man with excessively curly hair is playing the saxophone while being recorded. The notes that come out of the saxophone, and their relationships to each other, can be described by the word ‘horrible.’ He is famous. His music is horrible. His name is Kenny G.
There is a woman at work. There are two speakers. There is a CD drive. There is a play button. The woman at work has pushed the play button and Kenny G—or at least the digital semblance of his once manifest presence—plays horrible music. There is a stop button. It will not be pushed.
There is a man at work. He sits next to the woman who plays Kenny G all day. He is irritated because his job ‘sucks’, a word used to describe an abstract yet distinctly relevant negative feeling one has about the existence of an object, including persons, and the object’s relation to other objects.
There is a God. He creates light and sound. Everyone concentrates on the light and forgets about the sound, though there are sounds everywhere; the cars under the overpass, the obese footsteps above the ceiling, and the horrible music inside the speakers.
There is a man at work. There is a man at home. There is a man who can’t sleep in his bed. There is a man who can’t stay awake at work. There are dichotomies. There is the global economy. There is the falling American dollar. There is a mortgage. There is unemployment. There is welfare. There is homelessness. There is death. There is a man at work.
There is an overpass above the highway. There is a barbed-wire fence that prevents a man from jumping off the overpass on his way home from work. There is a dead bird hanging upside down from the barbed-wire fence. There is a man who stops to look at the bird. There is a sky happening behind all of this. It makes no sound.

once upon a time that is an alternate now. from the diary of an old friend

I found it particularly hard to examine young girls my age, who rarely recognized me as a peer although I easily saw them in the light of girlfriends. By what cruel twist of luck had I been born as me, and they as them? I could just as easily have been born in Sub-Saharan Africa, and then it would have been me, undressing on that cold table, infected with a virus that would slowly strip me of my dignity and humanity. And maybe, in an alternate universe, it would have been her, awkwardly fiddling with her stethoscope, staring at me through eyes that brimmed with clumsy pity.

coraline

Its look and mood may remind adult viewers at various times of the dreamscapes of Tim Burton (with whom Mr. Selick worked on “Nightmare”), Guillermo del Toro and David Lynch. Like those filmmakers Mr. Selick is interested in childhood not as a condition of sentimentalized, passive innocence but rather as an active, seething state of receptivity in which consciousness itself is a site of wondrous, at times unbearable drama.

barack obama's inaugural address

Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address
Published: January 20, 2009
Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:
Skip to next paragraphPRESIDENT BARACK Thank you. Thank you.
CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation...
(APPLAUSE)
... as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.
(APPLAUSE)
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
(APPLAUSE)
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
(APPLAUSE)
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...
(APPLAUSE)
... and lower its costs.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.
MR. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
(APPLAUSE)
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
(APPLAUSE)
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
(APPLAUSE)
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those...
(APPLAUSE)
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
(APPLAUSE)
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.
It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.
It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
(APPLAUSE)
So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river.
The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you.
(APPLAUSE)
And God bless the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)

me and the tag car

car on tagiyev beach on the way to school 6

back to the words: melting

pods

green

the bus from gobustan

my artist statement from bklyn show

What is real and what is simulated?

Often, when people think of representational and figurative art, people think of art depicting the real, i.e. a recognizable object and scene. Representational art is usually juxtaposed to its supposed opposite, abstract art, and held up as retaining the strongest reference to the actual world. However, hidden behind this surface understanding of the term representational is its etymology: to represent. To represent something, by definition, is not to be the thing itself.
Most of the paintings within this show incorporate naturally occurring patterns including watermarks, thumbprints, and wood veins. Although each painting is abstract, each incorporates a form of natural reality and not its representation.

What does it mean for something to be natural?

Many philosophers, including Descartes and Plato, separated our perceived physical world from the abstract ideals of the mind. For Plato, geometry is an ideal form because logical tautologies are always true, despite what the physical world presents. In the case of Descartes, the mind is all we can know, because physical externality is always distanced from us by our filtering of perceived sensations. This conceptual separation of the ideal form from the natural still exists today and one such example is the duality of science versus art. Science, it is thought, objectively explains our natural world via empirically observed facts. Art, on the other hand, is thought to be subjective expressionism. But, don’t personal expressions factually occur? Once they are created, are they not empirical? Also, aren’t subjects necessary, at all times, for the contemplation of any ideal form? In other words, what are ideal forms if they are not contemplated by a subject?

My paintings work to defy conceptual dualities regularly accepted by Western culture. Geometric patterns, ideal forms, pictures of physics problems, and math are regularly featured within my work next to poetry, natural patterns, intuitive marks, and happenstance. These supposedly diametric aspects of life weave into one another until the extremes wear away.

Thought about it
Thought about it
Thought about it
Until the thought itself
Died its own
Private death
From utter exhaustion
The wheels burst open
They lost their grip
The road dead ended
At an unused field
Two inches under rain water
Pencil tip reached
The eraser
Reached the pencil tip

A friendship born
And done
For the grip of dust
And under the raining brush
Split yellow with shards of green
Dripping down
Unlike the glass
It learned to cut from
Independent of previous talk
The chatter gone and done
A friendship born
To die
If not attended slowly gently
Like a fussy
Delicate plant
Or
A hyper tasty dish
That deserves
Or requires
Attentiveness at all times
Before
Ultimately getting consumed
Quickly, innocently
In the mouth of animal powers
And turned
To shit

Its dawning on me
A nice conversation
That lingers
Like a good dinner
You deserved
After a long week of listening
And never speaking
After a long week of waiting
And never getting your turn

Its coming slowly
Over the gray hills
Over the brown hills
Its goo falling down
And collecting the branches with it
It’s a half speed wind storm
With all the force
But slow
Painfully slow
Like watching a child
Untie an impossible knot
With no fingernail tips
For help
Like watching an old man
With a cane
Cross a busy intersection

Its here
Right in front of me
And it is
Not me
And I can hear it speaking
Under my skin
Between my lungs
It’s a collective burning
That climbs up
Rung by rung
To my throat
And soon
Maybe
I can tell it to you too
If you care
To know

11.5.08

hey punches to the pouch
straight to the face
covered by jolly fat
hahahahaaa
we laugh and we eat it up
it’s a cherry in my drink
it’s the many cherries in my very many drinks
and its readjusting my blood
its turning cherry red
and you can taste it on my lips
I see you looking, looking right at them
But you won’t
You can’t
You wouldn’t dare
So go ahead and stare and remember the taste of cherry
On your own lips
And hey
You can always go ahead and throw a punch
To the back of some guy’s head
Look, he isn’t looking
Go for it
All yours
And when he turns around I’ll say the other guy did it
And when he stays mad
I’ll make him taste my cherry lips
But he won’t forget
So get the fuck out of there

goodbye

Funeral
For an old idea
Funeral
For a dying box

May the dirt
Remain on top
May the fire
Burn down
the fear, the expectation, the confusion
of the same
mistakes

time to pay respects
for how
these feet function
somehow
on ground
and how
this back can bend
without pain
here is my respect
to my sick ideas
newly departed

there is no heaven
there is no hell
it’s cloudy sky
with sun behind
that’s not a secret
its not mine

Don’t trust
The killing instinct
As she wakes up
And pulls the chain
Towards the center

Revolt from the ground
Look up
Be blinded
I heard rumors that we develop eyes
If we try
And so I allow
Sun stabs
To swallow my head
In hopes
Of losing vanity

Don’t trust the thing in the ground
That growls
At you
When you begin to run
When you pick up speed
That seems to be beneath your heels
As you refuse
The temptation
To turn around and look back
Run

traveling in the belly

traveling in the belly, originally uploaded by alexistentialism.

union street, my home

boat sway

sky is moving up

from a tilting boat

The gods prefer

The sad soul

So as

To have someone

To sing for

It’s all

The self

Coming in

On

It’s self

The million to one

Forget-ability ratio

What a bet

It’s already gone

And I’m the millionaire

To one

Who reconsidered

And remembered

Today the sheet signed itself

A proclamation

With no author

No voice but it’s own

A sheet of rain, a sheet of voice

Drowning out the ink of words and letting them float back into the throat

By the process

Of reincarnated everything

The Long Countdown

it’s too late in the year

for a remedy

to dispel the facts as they surround us like barracudas

looking for a snack

it’s far too late

and the sun is nothing shorter than dead

nothing blacker than

her hair

staring at me

instead of her eyes

no one could say a thing

and I know this

‘cause no one did

And that’s all I needed to hear

For me to know

It’s time for me to turn my ticket in

And to

Give up the show

My witness is no longer needed

It’s time for hibernation

I can see the bear eyes closing

Slowly drifting in and out of here

Going back and forth

Between the living and the dead

Warm covenant of winter

Underneath and in the middle

A pile of consciousness snuggling

Rubbing noses against one another

Keeping the fur down

For my head

Loving sleep

Another answer for the quiet

Indispensable moon

That lets me dream in his bed

And curl between many downy sheets

Made from wheat, feathers, and foam

Until my eyes give

Up

All together

Attempt 3: why what you have is never good enough

Partly it’s the education

I know things exist

They are all pictured, exquisitely, on the internet

On poster walls

Partly it’s the feeling

An ache

That says

That something else is better

Something else is correct

Partly it’s the knowledge

That I didn’t want it in the first place

Partly it’s the knowledge

That I have exactly what I wanted all along

There is nothing in a couplet

that exposes meaning

it’s only in the word

alone

or in the middle of so many other words that it’s drowning and waiting for something to stand out from the bunch and just say something anything really that would have the potential to get at the heart of any matter that matters to you

but all

the talking

but all

the words

don’t amount

to that thing that very dream you wonder about.

Nothing answers the question

Especially when

Asking is unpermitted

Attempt 2: why what you have is never good enough

There was a thought

Rolling across my face

You saw it

I saw it

I can deny it

But the thought

It rolled

Slowly, creaking, stopped right smack

In the middle of my face

Undeniable

Tangible

Destructive

Space between what I know and what I don’t

Fills up with dreams

Tangible dreams

Asking me, slowly, what I think

Asking me, slowly, what I feel

(it’s the same thing)

Fickle animal, fleeing for the woods, on a whim

Following after rabbits, red and white

Behind cracked doors

Recreating the math

Why what you have is never good enough

Craggy river bottom

Pursues the top

Pushes her sea glass emeralds in all directions

Forces them to lose their edge

Before

Undressing them in front of the sun

But the effort

Is a loss

A thing changed

A pain

From a lost limb, a lost edginess

The sharp point

The collaboration of events

Urging each other together

Before splitting up again

Constant hum of a good song

One you’ve heard a million times before

The phrase that unarms you

Rhythmically

Needs compensation for the pleasure

Needs to take a break

While another newer thing is found

To take its place

Another attempt: Why what you have is never good enough

Work work working hard working

For the dream

Gold goal, pinnacle of gods

Little voices

Becoming the rabble of billionaires

Stallions running backwards

Back into their caves of coal and glass

They all know

They all work work and work and keep running

Because glory

Beauty and the love

is bathing

naked

in front of wolves

we run and run and run

the sword is clanking

guns are shooting

to save it all

to save it all now

because we know without looking

we all share it without speaking

we all know

exactly

what

we

want

pride

Objectivism, it would seem, is among the few philosophies and/or religions that list pride as a virtue. According to Ayn Rand, pride is one of the seven main virtues. In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand wrote

The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection—which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational—by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected—by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s character—by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.^[3]

Pride is thus seen as a positive, correct life-affirming attitude to have, as it celebrates one's achievements and promoted selfworth. It is achieved by consistently practicing productiveness, rationality, independence, honesty, integrity, justice and all of the other virtues, and the end result is one of the three cardinal Objectivist values: self-esteem.

Reflections of a Dying May

When the owl blinks

I’ll give the signal

No one will be watching

It’s a blind flash

The whole forest

Of alpine

Will fall asleep

Together and think of nothing

While we wake up

While we let our eyes readjust

To black

You probably weren’t there

You were gazing with the ground

Seeking out a thought

That ended up all wrong

But I saw the whole thing

Unravel from my bed

I wish I had caught it in a jar

Before it was dead

Great white silence

Yelling back in hollow waves

Shattering against the hooves

Of things running far away

It’s not useless, of course

The corpse has a key inside

Its throat

waiting to sing out

But won’t

Until you give the word again

jonny greenwood

fitter happier--by radiohead

more productive
comfortable
not drinking too much
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
a patient better driver
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
sleeping well (no bad dreams)
no paranoia
careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)
keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)
favours for favours
fond but not in love
charity standing orders
on sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)
car wash (also on sundays)
no longer afraid of the dark
or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
nothing so childish
at a better pace
slower and more calculated
no chance of escape
now self-employed
concerned (but powerless)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat
tied to a stick
that's driven into
frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)
calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics

1. http://http://z.about.com/d/psychology/1/0/I/dendrites.jpg

wonder

I wonder

And no one can take that away

No one can steal the wonder

The thought

I imagine

I can see it

I can feel it beneath my hands, behind my chest

I know it

And no one can take that away

Except you

You could steal my thoughts

turn them from magic into the real

help me feel it in my hands, on my chest

And no one could take that away

Except me

I wonder

triumph

Triumph

In the form of stillness

Disquiet

Corrupting itself

The colors shake and leafs fall while birthing

References to the sun

Winning while the competition is dead

Players take off

Their coats

And walk naked, pink, brown, and red

Eyes closed

And groping for a safe landing midst the fall

Here again

Spreading out

Away from the

Seed

Breaking at the tips

Crushed by the impact

Of directly careless fleet

Running

In triumph

2 moons

Sacred posturing

Laying down earth incense

Lighting it in praise of the hidden second moon

The moon’s lover

Constant within the sun’s shadow

Keeps the shining ardor of his lover

On the path

Of godliness

In front the tide, ruling birthing cycles,

Insisting on paradox

Between chaos and order

In her cyclical way

The other side

The dark side

So often unnoticed, so often written off

Feels the fire

On his back and stays warm

By consistent contact

With his dualism

Everywhere

still waiting...

Wait, don’t tell me

I’ll find out anyways

Tomorrow

The day after next

At some point within the spread outside

I’ll enter that point

And never return