I have just discovered there is no such word as musculature and I have just discovered there is such a word as musculature. Do you trust your dictionary? If at first you dictionary to no one home, always re-dictionary.
musculature
The system or arrangement of muscles in a body, a part of the body, or an organ.
Athleta was a Belgian Strong Woman, who was able to lift half a dozen men and an uncomfortable looking barbell up, ensemble.
She also had three daughters who she raised to be Strong Women. They never, however, achieved the same high level of strength as their maman. (Source: Venus With Biceps, David L Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky Arsenal Pulp Press)
Waseem
Beautifully articulated. Very moving indeed. Especially the final poem.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hBV0ApIh_4&w=480&h=390]
Insomnia fog
One of the good things about insomnia is, occasionally, during a bout, a weather event is glimpse-able
I am able to report at 2.14am there is a significant fog event underway in Vancouver.
It has already settled in around the lamp posts and coddled its way over the light, lessening the orange from it significantly.
Would I rather be asleep than making these observations? Perhaps and yet no. I’d rather be asleep with these observations.
Our hearts are in Cairo…
“The regime, with the collusion of multinationals, has disabled Internet services in Cairo and other cities to disrupt mobilization and disable the revolution. An electronic siege.” (from Jaddaliyya, click to read Sinan Antoon’s piece)
In my current scribbling endeavour I am trying to make clarinet music come out of a flute. It’s a humbling experience, I have to say. No time for deciphering unusual key signatures.
Akin to being a hefty bellied bunny inside a sack, in a race, where a sprint is required.
Did a mention a peculiar lavender coloured sky? Alas it was two weeks ago, but I am only remembering it now.
This evening at gymnastics I completely thrased (typo, but nice medley of thrashed and erased) myself and am sure the muscular protest will be a 7.1. However I came home and examined photographs of what is taking place in Cairo and it wiped all physical reticence from my mind.
The commitment of these people. The images of a single person surrounded by a dome shaped mass of black sticks, truncheons raining on them. One image, in particular, a young man standing solo in front or behind a water cannon, defiant. There was almost a silence he created in his positioning. Something of it hushed all that was taking place beyond, which included a swell of people. The scale of him against that moving machine. It’s an image we’ve seen before in different incarnations and yet each time it reaches me again it produces some kind of instant hush for a few moments. Until again the roar rises.
My partner co-incidentally later read aloud a quote from an art catalogue he was reading that I must seek and note here.
Have been viewing and reading on Performance Activism including the work of Reverend Billy and Suzanne Lacy.
In the case of the Reverend, his tool of public oration interests me and where it’s directed. Generally at crowds of people, he exports the template of Church to the Mall. But in one sequence he addresses the atmosphere in a kind of confessional while first standing, then kneeling at a petrol pump.
I am looking for examples where people, whether in a performative state or otherwise, address only the geographic place they are or live and instruct it on something.
There were a few characters in Dublin the woman who danced for years alongside the Floozie in the Jacuzzi on O’Connell Street comes to mind.
Often people in a psychotic, delusional or agitated state will vocalize randomly at the space they are moving through. I’ve observed this. Technically it’s one of the times when the city is read the riot act by a person.
I’ve often observed orators who are not dependent on listeners in order to orate, thus they orate into or at the space around where they stand. Or the general atmosphere.
Another thing that I’ve observed is the passing of repartee across the pavement can sometimes in Vancouver become an unintentional public oration, since if repartee is not nabbed and remarked back upon, you have succeeded in talking to the general atmosphere. This occurred to me most noticeably when I remarked and marvelled on a massive gathering of pigeons a few years ago.
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A Riot Act in crumbs
Whereas of late many rebellious riots and tumults have been in divers parts of this kingdom,