48 Hours - Richard Schlesinger Interviewed Cunanan’s First Victim Jeff Trail on CBS’s 48 Hours

“Sean siempre capaces de sentir en lo más hondo cualquier injusticia cometida contra cualquiera y en cualquier lugar. Es la cualidad más linda de un revolucionario”

— Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Yumikrum, Travelling without Moving, collage, 2019

De mi teatro tragedia.

Yo soy escritor, todo el mundo lo sabe.

Aunque algunos me confunden y me tildan de hipócrita, presuntuoso y violento.

Incluso de soñador me han calificado pero la verdad es que las personas me visitan por curiosidad, por intriga, por desconcierto.

Entran – casi siempre de noche – al recinto y, al verme sentado en el escenario , se ríen, se dan cuenta de que existo.

Incluso creo que me comprenden, como si ese par de miradas creara un lazo entre nosotros; una especie de relación depredador-presa.

La pálida luz del teatro, los ventanales que reflejan todo, la mucha mucha gente y yo ahí, iluminado por mi lamparita… no sé, es tierno, singular, casi romántico.

En mi escritorio de plástico, con mi cuaderno y mi lápiz plásticos, muestro mi rostro de plástico –con sus pestañas plásticas –a mis seguidores y detractores (que al final son los mismo con diferencia de que a unos les falta valentía).

A veces hasta siento pena de no poder hablarles, de no poder decirles cuánto me importan. Pero bueno, ellos saben que soy escritor, y excéntrico, sumamente difuso, y encima solo, así que me comprenden.

De hecho, por eso me compran… aunque poco, bastante poco.

Bueno… cada cierto tiempo alguien se apiada y compra un poema. Al menos eso me piden, un libro, un ensayo o un poema. Sin embargo, yo les vendo mariposas de papel , o gorriones de origami, los cuales ellos rechazan amargamente.

Contando esas, son pocas las ocasiones en las que se acercan, pero normalmente miran de lejos. Saben lo que soy pero les intereso a la distancia, sólo a través del ventanal de la vitrina, del portón y de las plateas doradas.

Sí, es triste, y más lo es conformarse con eso: asumir que puedo vivir de exponerme y de uno o dos versos al día.

Y es que la vida del artista es dura, tan dura. Sólo soy feliz cuando alguien nota mi angustia, cuando me encuentro bajo su reflector, entonces mi corazón se inunda de emoción, traigo mi bastón de tinta y comienzo a escribirles enérgicamente, mas después se van, y entonces lloro hasta que alguien aparece otra vez y me ve llorando de nuevo. Ahí levanto la mirada, al notar que observan mis lágrimas lloro un poco más para sentirme bien, luego paro: se marchan, y así sucesivamente…pero siempre iluminado por mi lamparita.

Soy tan escritor que a veces ni yo me reconozco; un hombre de tristeza , o una tristeza de hombre. Aunque – y lo que es aún más fatal – pocos me reconocen como soy. Omiten con recelo que soy escritor sólo cuando escribo, el resto del tiempo soy un humano, con pasiones peculiares, malos hábitos como el de extrañar y alegrías que de vez en cuando se derraman de mis venas.

No saben que detrás del telón, cuando incluso los sin rumbo y los bohemios han abandonado el teatro, este escritor se baja de la tarima, se quita la armadura de papel, exhausto. Limpia sus pestañas de esos relámpagos acumulados durante el día y suspira.

Entonces enciende el tornamesa y se recuesta en los tablones, y sueña sumido en esa oscuridad total.

Así hasta el día siguiente, donde el sujeto madruga para subir al tejado a esperar con ansias el despertar de la gris ciudad.

Después toma exactamente tres vasos de esperanza en la mañana, limpia algunas sobras de sarcasmo que dejó el público anoche y abre el teatro de nuevo.

Tristes los que se venden por tan poco.

– ¿Alguien desea boletos para la función de esta noche? –

Common Spell Items

Here’s a collection of items you can easily find outside and their correspondences/associations

Grass:  Psychic powers, protection, growth, nature, learning, healing, new beginnings, recovery from loss Pine needles:  Cleansing, healing and strengthening. It also acts as a natural insect repellent Pine cones: Masculinity, fertility Maple Leaves: Feminine, moon magic, travel, learning, dealing with change, decision making, spiritual healing Pennies: Luck, wealth Dandelions: Divination, wishes, calling spirits Dandelion leaves:  Summoning spirits, healing, purification, defeating negativity Red/purple wild clover:  Fidelity, love, money, protection, the blessing of domestic animals White wild clover: Breaking curses Two leaf clover: Love, luck Three leaf clover: protection, luck Four leaf clover: Protection, psychic powers, spirit work, luck, success Oak leaf:  Truth, steadfast knowledge, protection Acorn:  Good luck, protection, wisdom, and personal power Walnut: Healing and protection

Feel free to add any more! 

“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Galaxies: Cities of Stars

Galaxies are like cities made of oodles of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. These beautiful cosmic structures come in many shapes and sizes. Though there are a slew of galaxies in the universe, there are only a few we can see with the unaided eye or backyard telescope.

How many types are out there, how’d so many of them wind up with weird names, and how many stars live inside them? Hold tight while we explore these cosmic metropolises.

Galaxies come in lots of different shapes, sizes, and colors. But astronomers have noticed that there are mainly three types: spiral, elliptical, and irregular.

Spiral galaxies, like our very own Milky Way, look similar to pinwheels! These galaxies tend to have a bulging center heavily populated by stars, with elongated, sparser arms of dust and stars that wrap around it. Usually, there’s a huge black hole hiding at the center, like the Milky Way’s Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star). Our galactic neighbor, Andromeda (also known as Messier 31 or M31), is also a spiral galaxy!

Elliptical galaxies tend to be smooth spheres of gas, dust, and stars. Like spiral galaxies, their centers are typically bulges surrounded by a halo of stars (but minus the epic spiral arms). The stars in these galaxies tend to be spread out neatly throughout the galaxies and are some of the oldest stars in the universe! Messier 87 (M87) is one example of an elliptical galaxy. The supermassive black hole at its center was recently imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Irregular galaxies are, well … a bit strange. They have one-of-a-kind shapes, and many just look like messy blobs. Astronomers think that irregular galaxies’ uniqueness is a result of interactions with other galaxies, like collisions! Galaxies are so big, with so much distance between their stars, that even when they collide, their stars usually do not. Galaxy collisions have been important to the formation of our Milky Way and others. When two galaxies collide, clouds of gas, dust, and stars are violently thrown around, forming an entirely new, larger one! This could be the cause of some irregular galaxies seen today.

Now that we know the different types of galaxies, what about how many stars they contain? Galaxies can come in lots of different sizes, even among each type. Dwarf galaxies, the smallest version of spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies, are usually made up of 1,000 to billions of stars. Compared to our Milky Way’s 200 to 400 billion stars, the dwarf galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud is tiny, with just a few hundred million stars! IC 1101, on the other hand, is one of the largest elliptical galaxies found so far, containing almost 100 trillion stars.

Ever wondered how galaxies get their names? Astronomers have a number of ways to name galaxies, like the constellations we see them in or what we think they resemble. Some even have multiple names!

A more formal way astronomers name galaxies is with two-part designations based on astronomical catalogs, published collections of astronomical objects observed by specific astronomers, observatories, or spacecraft. These give us cryptic names like M51 or Swift J0241.3-0816. Catalog names usually have two parts:

A letter, word, or short acronym that identifies a specific astronomical catalog.

A sequence of numbers and/or letters that uniquely identify the galaxy within that catalog.

For M51, the “M” comes from the Messier catalog, which Charles Messier started compiling in 1771, and the “51” is because it’s the 51st entry in that catalog. Swift J0241.3-0816 is a galaxy observed by the Swift satellite, and the numbers refer to its location in the sky, similar to latitude and longitude on Earth.

There’s your quick intro to galaxies, but there’s much more to learn about them. Keep up with NASA Universe on Facebook and Twitter where we post regularly about galaxies.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Rev. 12: 1-4), William Blake, ca. 1803-1805, Brooklyn Museum: European Art

Size: Image: 17 3/16 x 13 11/16 in. (43.7 x 34.8 cm) Sheet (with inlay): 21 11/16 x 17 1/16 in. (55.1 x 43.3 cm) Medium: Black ink and watercolor over traces of graphite and incised lines on wove paper

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4368

Crow Bone Hex

Crow Bone Hex

“A pentagram of nightshade berries, deadly as the vipers sting. ~The Visions they will conjure bring the spirits from the dark,

A saucer full of milk as pure as the moon, an unseelie offering. ~That tempts the greed of kindly ones so that they soon embark.

A dish of black ink, the abyss in night’s mournful eye, ~That seers call to wonder in the depths of wight’s fateful cry,

A length of twine to describe a circle for spirits to reside. ~That sigil traced to seal the pact of malefic alibi.

Six corvus bones set like a compass, to the four quarters called . ~The victim named, the spirit bound, the offering received at large,

Three black steel pins to bind it, ‘do your bidding after all. ~The spirit departs to deliver it’s venēficia to the stated charge.”

A raven’s feather to sign it, a pact of harm as sure as night. The witches blood to seal the deed that burns as pure as light.

¿En donde está nuestra rosa

Amigos míos?

Se marchitó la rosa

El bebé de la Aurora.

No digas:

¡Ahí se seca la juventud!

No digas:

¡Esta es la alegría de la vida!

Dile a la flor:

¡Perdona, lo lamento!

y condúcenos 

Hacia el lirio blanco.

-Alexander Pushkin    Rosa            (poesía rusa)

Rosicrucian symbol for the deity. Rosicrucian symbology. 1916.

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