Kahlil Crawford reviews Charlene Spretnak’s The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art

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Charlene Spretnak's The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art

Charlene Spretnak, a stellar literary artist in her own right, has recently unleashed her revisionist tour de force, The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the present.

This, Charlene’s seventeen-year labour of love, leaves few stones unturned; as she provides us a narrative of modern art history via her personal spiritual prism.

I particularly enjoyed her treatment of acclaimed earth-body artist/a, Ana Mendieta (pp. 165-6); whose pioneering contributions, though highly profound, were greatly limited by a shortened life.

The Spiritual Dynamic is about modern art as much as it is about modern people. Nowhere is that more evident than in the afterword, where Charlene’s true passion is on full display:

“We moderns have long been slipping into a detached solipsism that shrinks us further into ourselves….but the great works of modern art have never surrendered to it.” (p. 204)

Great writers author great books because they feel burdened to do so, and Charlene Spretnak is no exception; for The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art is more than a mere exposé of our collective creative burden..it is an invitation for everyone to join in the lifting. Count me in.

Interview

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Bruce Roberts reviews Immanual Joseph’s Brahma’s Maze

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Brahma’s Maze, A Review

 

–by Bruce Roberts

In the Hindu religion, the god Brahma is the creator, the god Shiva the destroyer. One must know this to begin to understand Brahma’s Maze, a novel by Immanual Joseph. The main character, Tarun, begins the story as a creator, having seemingly found a cure for cancer while earning his PhD in the USA. Unspeakable horrors, however, on a return visit to India, weigh on his mind until he begins calling himself Shiva, and launching a mission to destroy those who have harmed himself and his family.

This is a book of strong black and white emotions. Gray areas do not exist.

When things are bad, they’re very bad. His family is not just annoyed by bullies. They are raped, slaughtered, annihilated. Tarun, acting as Shiva, does the same to the bullies, only in incredibly worse ways. As a cancer researcher, his knowledge of drugs and medicines becomes a vengeful force, as those who destroyed his family are themselves destroyed by exotic chemicals that cause insane acts, splitting headaches, and their body parts literally falling off. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

The extreme measures of Tarun’s revenge show the depth of his love for his family. He does nothing halfway, whether loving or hating. Similarly, Sangeetha, a young researcher at his university falls head over heels in love with him. But his love for his slain family is just as strong, and can’t be tempted by a beautiful young lady who loves him just as much. Again, love or hate, there is no in between.

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Solar wind and planetary atmosphere: review of Dr. Matt Fillingim’s talk on Martian weather

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Dr. Matt Fillingim

Dr. Matt Fillingim

Solar Wind and the Potential Dissolution of Mars’ Atmosphere and Habitability
— by Cristina Deptula
Gusts of solar wind regularly flow out of the sun at nearly a million miles per hour and permeate the solar system. Earth’s magnetic field protects us from most of this radiation, but other planets with less internal magnetism, such as Mars, are much more exposed.
In Chabot’s October enrichment talk, Dr. Matt Fillingim of UC Berkeley’s Space Science Lab discussed the interrelationships among magnetism, solar wind and the evolution of planetary climate over time. Convection within Earth’s inner molten core generates our internal magnetic field, which shields us from the solar wind and generates the aurora borealis near the north and south poles. Without this protection, solar radiation would likely prove destructive to our radio and television communications, GPS systems, power grids, satellites and aircraft, as well as our atmosphere.
Earth’s atmosphere generates enough pressure for water to remain liquid on our surface, which enables life as we know it to exist. Mars currently has an atmosphere only about one percent as dense as Earth’s, but the composition of some of the planet’s rocks suggests that liquid water once flowed there. So scientists speculate that Mars once had a thicker, more insulating atmosphere. In addition, while Mars does not have a planet-wide, global magnetic field the way Earth does, researchers sometimes observe small magnetic fields in the rock near the Martian south pole. This suggests the planet used to have a stronger field and likely a hotter core.

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Poetry from Halima bint Ayuba

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Streets

after the poems “These Streets” and “39,000 Feet” by Jose Angel Araguz

I sit by the window reading your map of those streets —
seems strange our paths did not overlap on those streets.

Remember the wind, how it harried the trees
panicked leaves, made twigs snap on those streets?

I recall the slick smack of tires through puddles,
refused to look up at cars rolling past on those streets.

I watched my old tennis shoes, counted their steps —
echoes of heart-beats, their flat flapping slaps on those streets.

I tacked between sidewalks, keeping to shadows,
dodged lit entries like traps on those streets.

Moving cars, lighted buildings — no, I was not alone —
I did not hide sorrow, but sorrow hid me on those streets.

By the window, Halima reads, tracing the lines
between nowhere and back on those streets.

–Laura M Kaminski, (Halima bint Ayuba)

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Poetry from Harmony Wicker

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Twilight

I will not apologize. My sorries and I didn’t-mean-tos have no place in your mind. I hope you will forget me. The tabloids and online press claim you have. I hope it’s true. Many say I am sad. Bitter, towards your new girl. But, the thing they have placed in the back of their minds, is that it was me, I, who kissed him. I took the risk. And sure, we were in love. Or maybe that was just an illusion. A mask we put on without even knowing. A way to get the tickets to sell faster. So that when all the teenage girls and their moms watched the movie, they would all think, “It’s not just a fantasy. They’re really dating.” And soon, fans believed that just like the movie, our love was eternal. But we are not immortal. And our love was never real. It was just an illusion, just a movie ticket, just something to occupy my thoughts. So I hope you have forgotten about me. Because I have forgotten about you.

Poetry from Anna Geiger

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Early Morning Treasures

There with the criss­cross veins
from thighs to daddy’s
too ­big jagged-edged
socks tucked into shoes
used to be white but smudged with
dry ­mud dry­ blood
caked into gum­-splattered cement
kicked up in your run for treasures
hidden in early morning trash bins
by the left side of the road
your nails coated with food scraps
found beneath the newspapers
last week digging
too late too late today
they’ve all been cleared out
other boys kicking up city dust
their once white shoes
pounding down on gum­-splattered cement
with early­ morning trash­bin treasures

 

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Essay from Ayokunle Adeleye

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Lessons from Ife

Elsewhere, “the price of freedom is watchfulness”; back home, the price we pay to still be on this side of the here and now is fear. Legendarily, it is the fear of the future, the fear of the unknown; but in more recent times, there is likewise the fear of the law… For we are aware of the laws protecting us, our being, our freedoms, the respect others give to us; as we are also aware of the (not so) subtle ways that these laws have been undermined, sidelined, and crushed- and all in one breath- by the very ones we allowed to be in the position to safeguard our sovereignty, and who do not…

We’re back, or so it seems, to when it was said, and understandably so, that to (admit one that one did) witness an event (or crime) is to risk imprisonment, and for six months: Ó s’ojú mi, èwòn òsù méfà ni! That is how much our apathy has cost us and brought us. That is what we get for hiding in our rooms while the votes are cast; for looking away while the votes are counted; for not being involved in the process that represents us, and in the way our representatives are suggested, fielded, and appointed. And that is why they have gone rabid…

So that what currently obtains is the (illegal) detention of opposers, their liberal labeling as enemies of progress, and the graphic instillment of fear: fear of the lawkeepers, fear of the lawmakers, and, summarily, fear of the law itself. So that my people have learnt to watch with a straight face the petrifying putrefaction by and of the putrescent pigs we passively preferred, by not voting for the man of the people, as they glut glibly on our Commonwealth. So that we have learnt to turn to God in all things, even the mundane ones.

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