A beautiful Song Thrush from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
The matters of our psyche and our dreams, in particular, permeate the work of Nicolas Bruno not only as a phenomenon but moreover as the articulation of personal experience. The allusive, surreal and haunting works he creates are embodiments of the state in between waking and sleeping. They are an effect of the artist’s torment; the situation in which he is constrained to embrace the subconscious and its perils while being paralyzed in bed. Although the works of Nicolas Bruno are quite personal and might seem hush, bizarre and even violent, they are explicitly suggestive and are calling the observer to participate in the sense of enrolling their own associations or perhaps dealing with their own anxieties and fears.
Photography As Therapy.
Nicolas Bruno was born in 1993 in Northport, New York, a small harbor community located on Long Island. He studied at Purchase College and received his BFA in Photography in 2015. His studio is located in Northport, so practically all of the preparations for the shoots are taking place there, as well as postproduction. Since all of his practice is very much devoted to the symbolic of dreams, the artist keeps the dream journal and starts each new series by analyzing previous experiences. As a matter of fact, his creative process begins with in-depth planning, but the very shoot is far more spontaneous and open to experimentation.
The Sleep Paralysis of Nicolas Bruno.
The foundation of his photographic experimentation lays in Bruno’s struggle with the sleep paralysis, from which he has been suffering for almost ten years. It is a common phenomenon occurring in between wakefulness and sleep, in which the body becomes immobile and it often causes severe hallucinations. This state of inescapability forced Nicolas Bruno of finding some sort of solution and with the advice of a therapist he found it through creative expression. Therefore, he started working on surreal self-portraiture as a therapeutic translation of night tremors in order to cope with these fears and simultaneously share these familiar emotions of anxiety, suspense, uncertainty, and danger.
Nicolas Bruno’s works are haunting, evocative, and terribly poignant. They not only express the explicit fears brought to Mr. Bruno in his paralyzing sleep, they also express implicit fears and anxiety of people in general. Each photograph is a masterpiece of unspoken fear, and when viewing, you simply cannot help but to feel, in a very small way, what the night and sleep is like for Mr. Bruno. Sleep Paralysis is not common, and unfortunately, not well understood either. Many people do have an isolated incident of sleep paralysis. I had a period in my teens into my early twenties of sleep paralysis, and it’s terrifying, to say the very least. Nicolas Bruno has come up with a unique way of dealing with it, and I think he deserves a much wider audience for this amazing work.
You can read and see more of Mr. Bruno’s bio here, and his portfolio here. There’s also this all too brief video:
Yachting.
This sailing boat was on the sea in May 2016. I took he photo on an evening sightseeing cruise to the Helsinki Archipelago.
The bonus picture is about the long off-season for yachting. These boats must have been sitting in the dry from late autumn. The sea ice could have broken them so they had to be lifted from the sea. The photo was taken in late March 2018.
Click for full size!
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
A Perfect Circle – So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish. Lyrics below the fold.
From Giliell, so much adorable! Click for full size.

Who Will Be Our First Founding Member? The new Indian Country Today is launching a membership drive and an auction. Top bid will be forever known as Indian Country Today’s: “First Founding Member.”
Indian Country Today is back! The NCAI has taken over, and this is grand news.
From September through February I have heard about the importance of saving Indian Country Today. So many people across Indian Country had the same idea:
What if … What if we all contribute?
What if I step up to make certain Indian Country has solid, accurate, fair reporting?
Is it worth it to save this voice? A national media platform for Indian concerns? And how much will it take?
Yes. Yes. And the answer is a lot — or perhaps a few tax-deductible dollars if we all contribute together.
We are building a new Indian Country Today on a public media model. We will have some advertising, but most of our resources will come from members, tribes, enterprises, and non-profits.
We need you.
We are launching a membership drive and an auction.
The membership drive will solicit help from our “members” as $100 Founding Members, $500 Sustaining Members, and $1,000 for Premier Members.
Unlike public media we don’t have nifty gifts as a thank you. No t-shirts. No coffee mugs. Just a better news report. We want to use the money to build our news operation, a multimedia reporting platform about what’s going on across Indian Country. We’ll stretch your dollars by partnering with other organizations, and amplify our reporting by letting others repurpose our editorial content.
We will serve.
This is great news, but to work, ICT needs help from people. If you can drop a few dollars into the fund, please do, and if you can’t do that, please, please, spread the word, get it out everywhere! You can read more by Mark Trahant at Indian Country today, or go straight to the membership drive. This is so very important, it’s vital for Indigenous peoples to have a voice. Also, be sure to check out the new edition, there’s all manner of interesting reading!
ETA: I should point out that it’s possible to donate $5.00 to the membership drive, which is all I can manage right now, but I’ll be dropping more fives each week.
Xylem.
Xylem is a scientific term for vascular plant tissue that transports water and nutritients from the roots to other parts of the plant. Wood is xylem and the term comes from the Greek word for wood, xylon. The pictures are close-ups of the wood, pine, birch and oak glulam boards, used in the pieces of crude furniture I’ve made for myself. I’ve applied a mixture of linseed oil and polyurethane lacquer on them as finish.
The pine board with the Phillips head screw is the top of of my windowsill extender. With the extender I can get a second level on my window sill, so that I can grow more herbs. The extender stands on the windowsill and consists of an oak bottom board, legs and support structure of the top made of pine slats and the top itself.
The oak board with the holes is the top of a short-legged table for my laptop computer. The holes are there to help supply air for the cooling of the computer. The table is usually on top of my table/desk and I keep my music keyboard, WiFi router and miscellaneous other stuff under it.
The birch board is the top of a cabinet used for housing my plant watering equipment, Raspberry Pi stuff and paper to be recycled.
Click for full size!
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Fit For An Autopsy – Black Mammoth.
BLACK MAMMOTH:
Fools gold, siphoned and sold, merchants of death. Dead in spirit, now dead in flesh.
Born of violent flames, landscapes of ashes. The roots soak up the rain, burning in acid.
The wounds are cauterized, and left un-bandaged. Wilting beneath a sun, withered and damaged.
Tragedy reigns forever.
Rejoice in masses. The tribe collapses. The mother weeps in her dying breath.
Rise from the ashes, oh foul Black Mammoth. Dead in spirit, now dead in flesh.
Tread on sacred terrain, envenomed and ravaged. The peace upon the plains, seized by the savage.
Primitive practices, uproot and vanish. Modern barbarians, new rite of passage.
Rejoice in masses. The tribe collapses. The mother weeps in her dying breath.
Rise from the ashes, oh foul Black Mammoth. Dead in spirit, now dead in flesh.
Tragedy reigns forever.
I’ve written about Ralph Drollinger before. He’s one scary lunatic christian, and he wields way too much influence in the current regime. He’s crowing again, over all the “progress” he’s making. It’s as well to remember that Drollinger’s idea of progress is to bring back the inquisition or something like.
Ralph Drollinger, who runs fundamentalist Bible studies for dozens of members of Congress and
PresidentTrump’s Cabinet every week, said in a fundraising letter this month that his group “has been blessed by God with extraordinary growth beyond our wildest imaginings in foreign nations across the globe and most notably in former Soviet Bloc countries.”[…]
We noted last fall that Drollinger is aggressively expanding his operations both at the local government level in the U.S. and in national capitals around the world. His April 4 letter includes some details about the latter:
In the last few months discipleship Bible studies have been established to Parliamentarians in Romania; Ukraine; Fiji; Papua New Guinea; and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. A ministry is about to begin in Guatemala, and before fall, we expect work to be completed for ministries in the Central and South American nations of Peru; Ecuador; Brazil; Mexico; Uruguay; and Paraguay, as well as in the European city Riga, Latvia.
Work is current an ongoing with partners to establish discipleship Bible studies in Berlin and Bonne [sic]. We are enthusiastically pursuing an opportunity to plant a ministry in the European Union Parliament, a body of 600 Parliamentarians from 26 Western and Eastern European nations who meet two weeks every month in Brussels, Belgium and one week every month in Strasbourg, France.
We thought the Lord did not want us in the Middle East, but to our great surprise discussions are currently underway to establish a ministry in a Muslim majority nation in the Middle East.
[…]
Although Drollinger is quick to complain about news coverage he believes is unfair, his letter says a story published in a German newspaper helped attract new friends. And Capitol Ministries has been gushing about a recent BBC story that the group says “reached more than 1 million readers world-wide.”
I have no idea why people might find Drollinger favourable in any light, but even if you are one of the lucky people who lives in a happily secular nation, this should be worrying. Drollinger is naturally courting regressive governments, but there are always regressive asses in any government, and they are likely to listen to Drollinger. I fail to see the charm, and it’s beyond disturbing that Drollinger is not simply being dismissed. Just to give you an idea of what Drollinger wants to institute, as far as government is concerned:
Drollinger’s April 13 Bible study says it is a “disservice to the country” for public servants to “craft policy that is not somehow rooted in Scripture.” Here are some of the other theological and political positions Drollinger teaches public officials:
- the government’s job is to “quell evil”
- governments and leaders “must send a constant message that sin will be punished”
- entitlement programs have no “biblical authority”
- liberal Christians aren’t really Christians, they’re “simpletons”
- Catholicism is “one of the primary false religions in the world”
- “Radical environmentalism” is a “false religion”
- “God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ”
- “God is a capitalist” and because of excessive environmental regulations in the U.S. “the economic benefits God intends from private property ownership have been greatly diminished”
- “righteous” people with government positions should not “compromise Biblical absolutes” and should hire only other “righteous” people
Drollinger likes to tell reporters that he doesn’t instruct public officials how to vote, but he makes it clear in his written Bible studies that, for example, Christian public servants are required to support the death penalty and oppose marriage equality.
Drollinger also has very specific views on the role of women: “there is a prohibition of female leadership in marriage, and female leadership in the church.” One of his Bible studies explains what he calls the “unambiguous” difference in responsibilities the Bible gives men and women, saying women’s “primary functions” include homemaking, home management, mothering, teaching younger women, displaying hospitality and dressing modestly.
There’s much more, RWW has the full story.
CrotchetNoun.
1: obsolete a: a small hook or hooked instrument b: Brooch.
2a: a highly individual and usually eccentric opinion or preference b: a peculiar trick or device.
3: quarter note syn, see caprice.
[Origin: Middle English crochet, from Anglo-French crochet, croket.]
{14th Century).
“It had occurred to Jakob that he’d left his beloved tobacco back at the house. A few puffs would perhaps have helped his mood a bit, but then he remembered, Johann Lechner, despised tobacco. If Schongau had not been a Catholic town through and through, the secretary could have been viewed as a crotchety, pleasure-hating Protestant.” – The Play of Death, Oliver Pötzsch.
