Love Peace and Creativity

"Nagasaki and the atomic bomb"

2009-08-09T04:46:00.008+02:00

“Junku Nishimura"

Dies ist ein bekanntest Foto, deshalb beantwortet es die Frage vielleicht nicht richtig, aber ich hoffe, dass es OK ist. Joe O’Donnell war ein amerikanischer Armeefotograf, und er hat dieses Foto in Nagasaki aufgenommen, kurz nachdem die Atombombe abgeworfen wurde. Sein Sohn veröffentlichte es auf Flickr. Vor Kurzem habe ich es zum ersten Mal entdeckt.
Der Junge trug seinen toten kleinen Bruder auf dem Rücken, und nachdem das Foto aufgenommen wurde, äscherte er seinen Bruder ein. Er schaffte es, seine Tränen zurückzuhalten, während sein kleiner Bruder verbrannte, und als es vorbei war verschwand er. Da er Zeuge dieses Ereignisses wurde, hat Mr. O’Donnell bis zu seinem eigenen Tod versucht, den tapferen Schuljungen zu finden. Dieses Foto und seine Geschichte bringt mich dazu, zu reflektieren und zu prüfen was es heißt, ein Fotograf zu sein und wie ich diesem Handwerk nachgehen sollte.

"Remembering Hiroshima Day"

2009-08-08T01:40:00.005+02:00

On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, American B-29 bomber the Enola Gay dropped the world's first atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima...

Lanterns of Memory

Featuring Hiroshima survivor, Kae Goh Ogura

With text by Martin Luther King Jr.

Directed and photographed by Velcrow Ripper

Filmed in Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 2001

Here's a short film I did called "Lanterns of Memory" about this day, August 6, sixty-four years ago, when we dropped the Atomic bomb on HIroshima.

This film became part of my feature documentary about my journey to the ground zero's of the world, Scared Sacred.

Today is the 64th anniversary of the day we dropped the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 6th, 2000, I visited Hiroshima, and shot this short film, Lanterns of Memory, which later became part of the Genie winning feature doc, Scared Sacred, a search for stories of transformation in the face of crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny9Qbsde5N4

On the eve of the millennium I set out on a long journey to the Ground Zero's of the world, places like Auschwitz, Bhopal, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee, Afghanistan, and New York City, a Ground Zero newly created as I was nearing the end of my travels.

One of the most poignant of the Ground Zero’s I visited was Hiroshima, the place where the term was first used. The dropping of the atomic bomb brought in a new experience in human history. For the first time, the future of the entire planet was at risk. Until that point, despite wars, and plagues, famine and natural disasters, there was always as sense that eventually things would return to ‘normal.’ But from that horrible day forward, an underlying sense of unease entered the human pysche. This undercurrent of fear has only intensified in recent years, with the equally powerful understanding that we could be destroying the life support systems of the planet through our wanton greed and over consumption.

In the face of these overwhelming realities, there is a deep desire to numb ourselves, to go into hiding, to bury our head in the sand. Or we can take the opposite approach, allowing these frightening realities to wake us up and shake us up. Painful as this may be, it also brings with it a deep relief, for try as we might, we can never truly hide from the shadow. Instead, it bubbles away inside us, insidously, wreaking much more harm than when it is brought out into the light.

Scared Sacred, for me, was a journey of confrontation. Contrary to what you might imagine, by the end of five years of travelling to the darkest places of human history, I found myself left with a vast sense of possibility, and hope. I discovered in these places some of the most remarkable invididuals I have ever met.

HIROSHIMA ~ August, 2000

The sun will soon be rising, and I'm late. I hurry down the silent Hiroshima streets, past an ancient graveyard, stupas leaning, into the Peace Park, a forested sanctuary bisected by the slow flowing waters of the Ota-gawa river. The burnt out skeleton of the ‘A-bomb Dome’ dominates the landscape, supported by shattered brick walls, etched darkly against the brightening sky. The ruins are maintained as a reminder of the damage wrought by the bomb, which exploded directly above. Most of the surrounding buildings, trees, and people were destroyed in a flash. Those closest to the hypocenter were instantly vaporized, turned to shadows on stone. This sudden death was a gift, when compared to the long, slow deaths suffered by those who survived.

I pause at a water fountain, built in memory of the thirst the survivors felt, a cruel thirst that killed when quenched. In a stone plaque set into the earth I discover a Haiku written by the Hiroshima survivor, Tamka Hari:

Engraved in stone long ago,

Lost in the shifting sand,

In the midst of a crumbling world,

The vision of one flower.

My journey’s quest-the search for that single flower, peeking from the ashes. I stand in contemplation for a good ten breathes. Breathing in, breathing out.

~ ~ ~

Clouds of smoke and flame rise from metal braziers laden with flowers and burning incense. The morning sun pours through the trees, drenching the sad, reflective faces with a soft golden light. Many of them are Hibakusha, the survivors. They arrive early, before the crowds grow too thick, memories flooding back as they stand in silent prayer. Two old women and an old man sit silently on the ground, each holding a framed photo of a loved one on their laps, lost to the bomb.

The mourners come and go, Buddhist rosaries dangling from clasped hands, the crowd swelling as the sun rises. There are children to whom the event is only a story passed on by their grandparents. There are visitors from far away, trying to comprehend the vastness of what happened here. The number of victims from the bomb the Americans called 'Little Boy' was over two hundred thousand. Human beings. Engraved on the stone coffin are the words, "Let all the souls here rest in peace. For we shall not repeat the evil."

Rising from the long, still pond in front of the monument is a flame that is not eternal. It is to be extinguished the day nuclear weapons are abolished.

~ ~ ~

The sound of drumming and chanting rising from the quiet murmurs of the mourners. A group of orange robed monks and nuns approach the altar in formation, heads shaved, each holding a flower, beating their flat hand drums with wooden sticks. One by one the monks and nuns approach the altar and lay their flowers down, bowing deeply. A radiant old nun in her nineties swirls her hands over the smoke, drawing it into her heart. Breathe in suffering.

8.10 a.m. The crowd has grown to some 40,000 people. A deep bell tones. A child slowly shuts her eyes. An old woman lowers her parasol. The pedestrians in the crowded malls stand still. The boats in the harbour turn off their engines and drift. On the streets the traffic has stopped. The city is silent, save for the cicadas, which take the space, building intensely. In the Peace Museum at the end of the park, near the melted face of a stone Buddha, the twisted hands of a pocket watch from Ground Zero eternally mark the exact moment of the blast: 8.13 a.m. The bell tolls again. Breathe out compassion.

~ ~ ~

"A bright light filled the plane," wrote Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming." Silence. For a moment. Then everyone began shouting. "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!" cried the co-pilot, Robert Lewis, hammering on Tibbet's shoulder. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. It tasted like lead. Then he turned away to write in his journal. "My God," he wondered, "What have we done?"

~ ~ ~

Humans have a hard time admitting we’re going to die. We used to be able to find a measure of comfort, a sense of immortality, in the marks we might leave in the world, through our works, or our children. At 8:13 a.m. on August 6 in 1945, humanity lost this illusion of immortality.

~ ~ ~

“Look at any person you encounter (stranger or friend). Let the realization arise in you that this person lives on an endangered planet. He or she may die in a nuclear war; or from the poisons spreading through our world. Observe that face, unique, vulnerable...Those eyes still can see; they are not empty sockets...the skin is still intact...Become aware of your desire that this person be spared such suffering and horror, feel the strength of that desire...keep breathing...Also let the possibility arise in your consciousness that this may be the person you happen to be with when you die...that face the last you see...that hand the last you touch...it might reach out to help you then, to comfort, to give water...Open to the feelings for this person that surface in you with the awareness of this possibility... Open to the levels of caring and connection it reveals in you.” - Joanna Macy.

~ ~ ~

a boy chases a dragonfly

looks up

a girl plays in the street alone

looks up

a woman dressed in her going to get rice ration clothes

looks up

~ ~ ~

Kae Goh Ogura was just a little girl playing in the streets of Hiroshima, when she heard an ominous sound coming from the sky. She looked up to see a tiny airplane, an American B-29. She watched as a small black spot dropped out of the airplane. All of a sudden, the black spot exploded in the air.

“I saw, almost felt, a magnesium bluish flash. I couldn’t see anything because all of a sudden it became dark. Hiroshima City was under the mushroom cloud. Trees were burning. The wind was so strong, even to breathe was difficult. I could hear my younger brother shouting, crying, and soon after he appeared from the dark part. His head was bleeding and he had burns on his hand and half of his face and his clothes were torn. There was no voice, just quiet. People were so much astonished. They couldn’t find a word to say. Then they tried to find out where to hide. But there was no place to hide.

“I was eight years old. I wanted to see the whole city, and behind my house there was a shrine on the hill with stone steps. On each step, people were dying. I was so scared. Those dying people squeezed my leg, caught my ankle. Everybody was shouting, ‘Help, help,’ and I was so scared. People were asking, ‘Water, give me water.’ I wanted to give those dying people some water, but as soon as they drank water, they died. In front of me.”

For a decade after the blast, the Hibakusha were denied the right to tell their story, shamed into silence. It was a second act of violence. Kae Goh Ogura was also told to be quiet.

“You shouldn’t complain. ‘Many people had the same experience as you. You are not special,' they said. Then we tried to forget, not to tell our story. Ten years later, when we had the Bikini atoll nuclear test, we were so much surprised. We became so desperate. Japan was the end of nuclear war, yet they're still producing nuclear weapons! Do they know what dreadful days we had? We need to tell our story.”

For survivors, of any tragedy, it is a terrible re-victimization for their pain to be forgotten. Or worse, denied. This willful silencing becomes yet another source of suffering. While I was in Colombia shooting the documentary, ‘In the Company of Fear,’ I found that silencing was used as a form of psychological warfare. When the death squads carry out a massacre, the villagers are prevented from identifying the bodies of their own loved ones, or talking about what has happened, for fear of meeting the same fate. This creates what is called a ‘Neblina,’ a foggy quality, a shadow world of half-whispers and confused fear.

It’s all too easy to fall into a form of this silencing ourselves; it can emerge in the way we relate to the people we might meet who have experiences of trauma, such as rape, domestic abuse, cancer or AIDs. We even do it to ourselves, to avoid confronting our own pain. Leah Georgia said, “As a person living with terminal cancer, living with dying everyday since October14 when my life was set on fire with my prognosis, I do not want to feel that you or anyone working with me is protecting themselves from me. My life, my experiences, my dying, are not something you need protecting from. I do, however, need protection from lack of Presence and Listening. You see I am running out of earthly time and what I need, deserve and expect from each and every one of you is the quality of Presence and Listening. . . I ask you to pay attention.”

People need to tell their stories. They need to be heard. It’s a critical phase of the healing process. For the Hibakusha, like so many survivors I have met, their greatest hope is that what has happened to them, not happen to anyone else. They told me, "We know the pain we have been through, and we would not even want our enemies to suffer that way." The act of speaking out is a way to transform tragedy, into a force of change. Today, Kae Goh Ogura travels constantly, telling her story around the world. She has made an inspiring leap, allowing the pain she has experienced to open her heart.

“We need to know each other. I'm one of the A-bomb nuke survivors. I experienced this, so I can understand other people's sorrow and agony. We need to help each other, and to re-make the world, use all our power, and energy. This is the goal: we should have solidarity, who have suffered such sorrow.”

~ ~ ~

As night falls a crowd gathers on the banks of the Ota-gawa river, building paper lanterns, dipping paint brushes into black ink, inscribing names of the dead, calls for peace, words of remembrance on the thin crepe paper. Hiroshima no longer tries to forget. It is now called the ‘city of peace,’ and has found dignity and meaning by telling and retelling it’s story, which is also our story, to the millions of people that visit each year.

The first stars appear and the lanterns of memory are released onto the dark river. They drift towards the sea on a surface of glass, glowing yellow, red, green, and white, painted with Japanese inscriptions, memorials to a person, a family, a community. A floating constellation of lost souls.

I open myself to their suffering, allowing a sense of compassion and concern to develop spontaneously. Then I imagine drawing in their suffering, in the form of a dark cloud, drawing it into my heart, where it dissolves into openess. As I breathe out, I send them compassion, riding on a current of fresh, cool white light. Breathe in suffering. Breathe out compassion.

This is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen - receiving and giving meditation. Tong means receiving, and Len means giving. In this practice, the direct understanding of Inter-Being emerges through the power of allowing suffering to open ones heart and awaken compassion. It is a practice that can be applied to any situation, anywhere. It's kind of like ‘air-conditioning suffering.’ Instead of contracting, tightening around suffering, you create space around it.

One version of the practice instructs you to choose a person you already care for, a person you feel neutral about, and someone to whom you feel aversion. Practice taking in and transforming their suffering, extending to them all of your happiness, clarity, understanding, forgiveness and love. During the day, you can continue this practice. As you move through life, imagine you are saying, “I take from you suffering, and I give to you light.”

Tonglen is not magic. It is not a shamanic or faith healing technique. You are not literally drawing the persons suffering out of them. You are training your heart, and your mind. The result is the same, however: you are healing the world of suffering, by becoming a compassionate, enlightened being.

I sit quietly breathing in suffering, feeling it dissolve into openness, sending out compassion. This is the heart of my journey: the art of transforming the scared, into the sacred. I bow my forehead.

“I dedicate the merit of this practice to all beings, who are as limitless as space. May all beings be happy.”

Indian Hindu & Muslim kids remembering Hiroshima August 6th 2008

~Velcrow Ripper, August 2000, Hiroshima

http://www.scaredsacred.org

Two days with the Dalai Lama in Lausanne, Switzerland!

2009-08-07T22:53:00.015+02:00

SA SAINTETÉ LE DALAÏ-LAMA

Chaque être humain souhaite connaître le bonheur et éviter la souffrance. Pourtant, que nous regardions notre propre vie ou celle du monde qui nous entoure, on constate que la souffrance est présente partout et que le bonheur auquel nous aspirons si profondément semble souvent rester inaccessible ou éphémère. Le bouddhisme explique de façon claire et complète comment l'esprit peut à la fois être source de souffrance et comment il est possible de l'entraîner pour en éradiquer la souffrance et ses causes.

"Only when the last tree has died
And the last river been poisoned
And the last fish been caught,
We will realise,
We can not eat money"

We feel money and power can bring happiness and solve problems, but they are not definite causes of those desired states. If that were so, it would follow that those who have wealth would necessarily have happiness, and those who do not have wealth would always experience suffering. Money and power facilitate, but it is clear that they are not the primary causes of, happiness and solving our problems. It is justified for us to make material and financial development for building our nation and providing shelter, etc. for ourselves; we need to do that. But we also need to seek inner development. As we can see, there are many people who have wealth and power who remain unhappy, due to which their health declines, and they are always taking medicines. On the other hand, we find people who live like beggars but who always remain peaceful and happy.

Therefore, in our daily life a certain way of thinking makes us happy, and a certain way of thinking makes us unhappy. In other words, there are certain states of mind which bring us problems, and they can be removed; we need to make an effort in that direction. Likewise, there are certain states of mind that bring us peace and

happiness, and we need to cultivate and enhance them.

What does "DALAI LAMA" mean...Dalai, means “Ocean of Wisdom" in Mongolian title and Lama, means “Guru” in Sanskrit script which is The Great Teacher of Wisdom ! These Holy Souls are the symbols of Bodisattva of Compassion….Chenrezig. All “Bodisattvas” are the Enlightened Souls who have postponed their own Enlightenment ( NIRVANA) and chosen the path of rebirth or re-incarnation to serve human souls !

HIS HOLINESS ARRIVES AT LAUSANNE

Welcome

His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks during the public talk on World peace through inner peace

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Kalon Tripa Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche offering Mendrel (auspicious offerings) to

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Namkha Rinpoche the organizer of the one day teaching in Lausanne presents

Mendrel

His Holiness the Dalai Lama prays before giving the initiation of Medicine

Buddha to the audience

His Holiness the Dalai Lama with ex-political prisoners Phuntsok Nyidron

and Takna Jigme Sangpo

‘Never give up’: A poem by the Dalai Lama”

No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up. »

"Flora Langlois"

2009-07-30T18:57:00.000+02:00

Flora Langlois
Flora Langlois is first and foremost a nature enthusiast. Her paintings are exuberant celebrations of the natural world, often filled with mystical characters and playful animals. Her work seeks to highlight the beauty of nature, while leaving ample room for flights of fancy and human creativity. The artist infuses her paintings with a joyous energy and a distinct vision that echoes her love for her native land of Costa Rica. In her latest body of works, Langlois' concern for the state of the environment has never been so evident, reminding us all that nature matters.

NYMPHAEA

THE FLORA GUARDIAN

LADY OF THE BIRDS

LOVE SEED PODS

HOME, AT LAST!

Creative Connections

“Since I was a little girl, about 3 or 4, I was always drawing pictures and hanging them on the walls [of our home],” says artist Flora Langlois, 80, in a recent phone interview. “Then I’d charge a quarter for the neighbors to come and look at them.” So began the artistic career of Langlois, whose exhibit, “One from Wisconsin: Flora Langlois,” opens at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MWA) on June 4.
Langlois’ childhood talent flourished in Costa Rica under the encouragement of her mother, Louisa Gonzalez de Saenz, a well-known surrealistic painter in Latin America. Upon completing high school, Langlois traveled to California’s ImmaculateHeartCollege to study art. Her style first developed through silverpoint drawings, but Langlois later discovered an interest in large-scale pen and ink pictures.
Her distinctive paintings, often described as “magic realism,” feature bright acrylics on linen and board. These highly detailed landscapes depict nature and figures in a brilliant garden paradise of color, the paint layered and glazed to perfection. Langlois, who paints directly on the surface, uses very few preliminary drawings because she derives her images strictly from memories and visual musings about the natural world.
“I love nature,” she says. “Each painting comes from my imagination or remembering a certain bug or flower. They evolve on the board, spontaneous; things just emerge. It’s more fun!”

You're the world to me

2009-07-26T03:16:00.000+02:00

You're the world to me--
there's no one quite like you.
You're the one I love,
the one I want to touch.
I give you my heart,
and I need you so much.
Offer me your sweet caresses;
fill me with your wonderful light;
soothe my aching heart;
and hold me through the night.
The mere sound of your voice
summons deep emotion within
Like an old familiar song
like the comfort of a friend.
When you're near,
I'm lost to thoughts of love
as you touch me with a magic
that's as grand as stars above.
I want to hold your hand.
I hunger for your kiss.
Offer me sweet tidings
of true love's tender bliss.
I promise our love shall soar,
carried on the wings of a dove.
So give me your heart,
and bless me with your love.

2009-07-18T03:29:00.009+02:00

Som de Lune Brief

Uncomplicatedly i'm an artist, art teacher, the owner of Smoodtai School of Art in Bangkok, i'm book and magazine article writer about art education, alternative education in Thailand, holistic health, Eastern wisdom, and poetry. I teach Yoga, Taichi-Qigong occasionally.

som's recent works

"..drooping down for all unpreparedness.."

summer oil colored days , April 2009

70 x 90 cm.

"Unsunderable serendipity"

winter oil 2008

"Finvariant"

a part of recent oil-pondering .. nov 08

"Altramoonrine"

(Oil on 80x60cm can.vast)

"Fly them to the Soon"

(see the wandering procedure on my blog above)

17 Feb: A commemorational power-wow

18 Feb: Two reticent articulators

19 Feb: Downside up rendering

14 Feb: Chin-Chin

15 Feb: Moon-eater fishbirds

16 Feb: Unanti-centripetal resistors.

10feb,Oilfire on canvassing..poll en snif fers..

11feb..i was still there by my ease-l

12feb..transponderists

My wings are growing and so my roots are deepening,

how could i fly and still my stance

if i'm both winged and rooted ?

(i asked)

Stand and then fly,

near both the earth and the heavens,

not in one or the other and not in between either.

said Thunderbird)

Unright-handed announcer

My left hand deftly told heart stream,

but right hand rarely gave her an auspice.

Just was oiling grinding

stroking few minutes ago. i

lost my awareness while

looking deep into the orange

mirror in front of me.

Supposed to call it "self

portrait" at the moment.

The "i" who drew this line

was wandering around,

the space where she has been roaming in,

no a sensation allowed to invade through.

* * *

Sometimes i say to a poem

"Not now, can't you see i am bathing !"

but the poem usually doesn't care and quips,

Sometimes i say to a poem

"i don't have the strength to writing out

And the poem will often respond

by climbing onto a barroom table,

then lifts its skirt, winks,

Causing the whole sky to fall.

- Hafiz, Persian Sufi Poet

Some of my inner linguistic etchings

My Grandmama's 100 ys-o Singer