MungBeing Magazine: Intuition Some say that it can be sensed. Some just know. http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html Copyright © 2005-2007, Pencil Tenet, Inc. in association with Eschaton Media. Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:08:58 -0800 Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:39:01 -0800 Forward "Talking about intuition is like dancing about architecture."

The idea that people might have some sense of the pattern-recognition capabilities of their own brains, some sense of their surroundings, some insight into the probable actions - and results of those actions - of their fellow humans, strikes a lot of people sideways. There's a mysticism attached to rudimentary behaviors and observable and predictable actions. That's not to dismiss intuition out of hand, no. Rather it's a way to look at the way our minds work, how our bodies react to our thoughts, how our perceptions make us feel and think.

This is broadly the realm of philosophy in general and narrowly the basis of lots of art.

When this kind of idea is floated by the contributors of MungBeing, we are sure to get a wide variety of visual descriptions, aural explorations, impressions, interpretations, and most of all creative manifestations of the noumena of intuition.

To the 001 Collective (our newest podcasting partner), the idea of intuition can broadly be defined as "things people should know." Kim Richardson describes it as "a way of living, breathing, being."

Jim Bumgardner, in his article about puzzle building, says that solving a puzzle depends in large part on the intuition and ability of the solver. I think that's true for puzzle creation as well, and as he further describes in beautiful detail the components of that creation, no magic is lost and no mystical borders are breached. In fact on the contrary, it becomes a more interesting process and a more interesting subject the closer you look. I think that's true for most of our sacred beliefs, from quantum mechanics to religion. Or at least it should be.

Research and inquiry should never diminish the fundamental magic of anything. If an idea can withstand the scrutiny of a million prying eyes, the idea is probably pretty sound. If, however, the basic premise falls apart upon closer inspection, you've probably got a lot of noise and bluster. Pay no attention to the man behind the screen; he's dancing a crazy distraction dance and singing a frantic hoopla song.

We can follow our hearts, know in our gut, trust ourselves, and use our learned experience but what we really have here is a beautiful dance about architecture.

I hope you enjoy it.

Mark Givens,
Editor-in-Chief
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1274rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Mark Givens) Announcements -- The Coalition for Daring Behaviour
The Coalition for Daring Behaviour (CFDB) is currently in search of artists interested in establishing an ongoing exchange of dares, double dares, and possibly triple-dog dares.

For more information about the project or to submit a dare, please visit darecoalition.com.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1275&subID=1009rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Chloe Lewis) Announcements -- MungBeing Galleries MungBeing Galleries are still available to MungBeing contributors. Check them out and, if you're interested in opening one of your own, drop me a line at the link below.]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1275&subID=1037rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Mark Givens) Announcements -- Extra Golden update NPR including an interview with the band's American members and one of the Kenyan members in Nairobi, Onyango Jagwasi.




]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1275&subID=1038 Letter to the Editor You did not answer my last letter.
The reason i am writing is to ask what my rating is on the outside.I have been working very hard here and keeping my nose clean.I have been attending my anger management course and the firestarter one too.I have also been cooperating with the medical staff so i was hoping i am only medium risk now? I should be released in May this year or February 2009.
I have started work making shoe boxes for the children who don't have anything for Christmas in Romania.I also like gardening and i am looking after the vegetables.One day i hope to have my own vegetable patch and i would also like to grow cactus and different types of poisonous plants,i have been reading all about them.
At night i think about my life and where it's going.When i am released i won't get a girlfriend,i am not ready for a relationship again.I am thinking about writing a book,i have a good idea how it goes.I might get rich like that Potter lady.My idea is to write a book called "Going to the Moon". My character will be called Christopher and he will make a spaceship from cardboard (the real stuff) and decorate it with painted hand-prints and red glitter.It will include the three special red marks that nobody understands and he will paint hieroglyphics on the fins with his toes (He is an accomplished toe painter).
The basics of the story is he will invite his friends to the moon for a drink.I might add some aliens or a dog.It will be a great epic adventure,the lady in the library said i must use my intuition and it will sell itself.I really like the Librarian.I would like to marry her but i am too scared to ask for her hand.
The story will end with a good party on the moon.Everyone will be drinking blackberry flavoured vodka mixed with Pernod and eating cornflake sandwiches.There will be a dance with the latest new monkey sounds.
You might be asking how my space rocket will get to the moon? It will be powered By NEW-CLEAR ENERGY!!!! (That's good thought energy). You see, i have this story well worked out in my head.
I hope you answer me this time and i wish you well with that Mung thing.
RIK ALBATROS.]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1519rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Rik Albatros) The Phenomenon called "Intuition" link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1470rss_feed@mungbeing.com (J. Edgar Hoover) Quarter Life Reds on the Tiger Shores With a piece of driftwood
On the sand. The cartography
Of my crisis, a diagram that

Begins with a coquina,
And zigzags into 25 Cardinal
Directions with conch shell
Question marks. Squatting

Over this aimless Baedeker,
The Atlantic laps at my ankles;
Washes my feet. A locker-room
Teammate of phenomenology,

It splashes my pratt before crashing
Back into itself. My stylo drifts
Over each engraved path like
A broken divining rod,

Or a Ouija board guided by one hand.
Is it chance or choice? Beyond the
Dunes and mangrove leaves, is
A newspaper

That cast a line 400
Miles north, catching me
With the bait of following Capote,
Stoppard, Twain, and Wolfe.

But when I resurfaced
I found a slick-haired
Newsman from Ohio, who's only
Damn was to out-drink Hemingway.

Unlike the marlin, I broke the line,
Beaching myself on Tiger Shores.
Where will the next worm lure me?
Towards the lion's paw, the sand dollar?

Before I can solve the numinous
equation, the ocean
Ripples over my navigations,
Erasing each

Longitude and latitude
Landmark off the shore.
The seashells blink like traffic lights
In a bombed-out town,

Flashing red like the florid flesh
Of virgin dreams beneath the
Seaweed and brine. ]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1468rss_feed@mungbeing.com (SJ Chambers) Natural Progression http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1488rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Callie Danae Hirsch) Biomechanical http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1498rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Krzysztof Wlodarski) What's Cool Right Now? http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1502rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Luke Ramsey) Hard Kiss In C Minor Kim Richardson is one of my favorite living (full of life!) visual artists, an enchantress with a brush. Her paintings are powerfully evocative works that tap the collective unconscious, minimalist yet rich in symbolism: solitary females wrapped in shells or serpents, dark bird-creatures, shamans, trees and water gently laid over rough surfaces. Fragments of vague, forgotten dreams. She speaks to, and from, the heart.
link
jody: What materials do you use most in your art?

kim: i use oil paint on found surfaces, discarded objects. mostly wood. i moved into an old building a year ago and found a goldmine of unwanted and weathered wood i happily and lovingly saved from the dumpster. or a few years ago i was visiting an amazing artist who lives on a farm in hermann, missouri, from which i brought home beautiful pieces of old barn wood. these surfaces hold history and feel enchanted to me. to paint on pristine canvas feels sterile and cold to me.

jody: What do you think about when you're painting?

kim: i don't. this is when my mind is quiet. maybe i'll think about my kids or my lover or the dog or something i forgot to do, but those thoughts leave quickly. i'm engaged, entranced, taken.

jody: Why do you paint?

link
kim: why do you shit? initially, this is what it is - a sort of purging, a relief. but when a viewer is introduced everything changes. it becomes larger than self and deeply gratifying to affect another soul in positive ways. often it's through the viewer that i can see.

jody: Your painting has been described as intuitive art. What exactly does that mean?

kim: a dream state without sleep. pushing paint until imagery emerges without conscious thought.

jody: Who first applied the term "intuitive" to your work?

kim: i did, years ago, instinctively before i knew anything about the art world's labels and trends like visionary and outsider and intuitive and art of the insane. i'm secretly uncomfortable with calling it anything anymore.

jody: What does the word intuition mean to you?

kim: a way of living, breathing, being.

link
jody: Is intuition a "woman thing?"

kim: it's a human thing. the idea that it would be strictly female seems absurd to me, obscene even. i've never fallen in love with a man who wasn't deeply intuitive. it's a sexy attribute, honing one's intuition.

jody: Is the best art intuitive?

kim: for me, yes. i don't feel arrogant enough to answer that question for anyone else.

jody: A lot of your imagery might be described as archetypal. Is this intentional?

kim: i enjoy fishing the subconscious. though the result always feels accidental, there's intent in my fishing. i often learn about myth through painting. dipping into the collective unconscious and pulling out these languages of symbolism i ultimately learn to speak (though it may take some years.) for example, painting women essentially decapitating themselves is how i came to know chinnamasta the hindu goddess who severed her own head and nourished two yoginis and herself with her own blood. or the repetitive snake imagery and spiral shells in my paintings, which led me to understand kundalini energy.

link
jody: Hard Kiss In C Minor is an anagram for Kim S. Richardson. Do you find
significance in anagrams?

kim: intuitively, yes.

jody: Does the recurring feminine figure in your work represent you specifically?

kim: yes and no. it's a question that bothers me actually, a question i often ask myself. a question for which i don't have a good answer yet. i had an imaginary bird when i was a child. i paint birds obsessively today. does this represent my childhood imaginary bird or something larger like the soul? i dunno. probably both. it's personal and universal.

jody: Do dreams influence your art?

kim: indirectly. i don't paint my dreams, but dreams are important to me. they speak the same language as my paintings.

jody: What is astrology? Why should we pay attention to it?

kim: a healing art. a tool. a map. planetary synchronicity. a rich symbolism. humans search for meaning in the cosmos. not fortune telling. more complex than reading your sun sign horoscope in the daily paper. we should pay attention to it if it speaks to us, i suppose. whether it appeals to a person or not depends partly on how shapeless and expansive you can make your mind and how deep you want to dig. for me, it's been a therapeutic and empowering means to understanding myself and the world around me.

link
jody: What role does the Moon play in your life?

kim: astrologically, i'm cancerian. cancer is ruled by the moon. the moon represents emotion. the moon was in scorpio the day i was born and i identify very much with the scorpionic expressions of sex, death and transformation. i'm obsessed with and possessed by the moon. i used to moon bathe as a girl. i'm a lunatic.

jody: What is madness?

kim: misunderstood.

jody: What is love?

kim: lately i've come to think of love as the work of internal alchemy. gathering gold from the dunghill. fleshing out the parts of the psyche that are emaciated or deflating the bloated and overfed pieces until there's balance. a kind of union of opposites within. from this work, so much flows. i think that flow is the truest love.

jody: As an artist, do you feel exposed, naked in front of the world?

link
kim: only in front of folks that are in tune to my work, but they're usually the ones i don't mind getting naked with.

jody: How do people react to your art?

kim: usually with intensity or not at all.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1518rss_feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Annunciation http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1508rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Nelly Sanchez) Pantomime into the living room with his
invisible plunger, drenched
in dirty oxygen and triumph.

His thumb and forefingers
rub together, hoping to spark
a conversation about payment
for services rendered.

The lonely housewife shrugs,
pulls out her pockets to free
the ghosts of moths, shows
the holes, the oxidized pennies.

Her eyebrows negotiate
a compromise: his ears
listening to her ankles,
the length of his taint

measured by her tongue,
their face paint haunting
each other's clothes. Shoes
and socks must stay on.

Cue the silence.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1527rss_feed@mungbeing.com (J. Bradley) Drawings http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1513rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Liz Parkinson) Claudio Parentela's eXTra finGer Claudio Parentela: Well, first of all please tell us a little about yourself.

Jayson Musson: Let's see here, my name is Jayson and I make stuff. That's a good start right? I live in the United States of America in the city of Philadelphia. That's where I make stuff. I write and draw, make rap music and sing.

CP: How would you describe your work?

JM: My work is illustrations that are based in humor. Some of my characters are based on people that I see in real life and some are just from my head.

CP: Did somebody encourage you to become an artist?

JM: Hmmm... my father is a graphic designer and when I was young my older brother was an avid comic book reader. As I got older I started to collect them as well, and I also began to draw them. Pretty much everything I do came out of my love of the comic book medium. It's fantastic then and it's even more awesome now with the existence of so many self published artists and writers.

CP: What is your favorite medium?

link
JM: Definitely drawing with black ink. It's simple, reproducible and the satisfaction it offers is immediate. I've never done anything that instantly makes me happy like drawing has.

CP: Can you describe your process, from the seed of an idea to a complete work?

JM: A lot of time I think in terms of a narrative, or rather a scenario I can put characters in. Like my character 'Josam', who is this semi-autobiographical version of myself. With him, images he's in often reflect my life. Other times it's just a matter of seeing someone that is like a special angel from the factory of city living and I want to replicate this interesting person.

CP: Generally speaking, where do your ideas come from?

JM: Life. From the crappy parts to the good parts. Existence is a trip.

CP: How long does it take to complete a piece?

link
JM: If I do it with a pen, a few hours, because I often make pen drawings look like brush drawings. If it's a brush drawing I can finish it pretty quickly, because the craft isn't so tight and I'm much more loose about the whole process. I'm more willing to except inaccuracies.

CP: Who are your favorite artists, and who are some artists you are currently looking/listening to?

JM: I really like the band Oh No! Oh My from Austin, Texas, also Mum from Iceland is amazing. I also enjoy Lil' Wayne, a rapper from New Orleans, he's like a rapping god. Visual art-wise I'm greatly influenced by the film maker Tim Burton, the late painter Margaret Kilgalen from San Francisco, Tim Biskup, I'm a fan of Henri Matisse, the writer and filmmaker Miranda July, the painter Jim Houser from Philadelphia, Ben Woodward from Philly, also another philly artist Roy Miranda is excellent.

CP: Are you represented by a gallery? Do you have any upcoming exhibits?

JM: I don't have a gallery. Well, I sorta did, but I got fed up with the lady who ran it before we ever started our professional relationship, so I ended it. I am a quasi member of Philadelphia's Space 1026 Gallery, which is a collective of some great artists, but all in all I don't have a gallery to rep me at the big art fairs. I just had an exhibit of drawings about a month ago called the Phantom Limb, which hopefully will be up on my website soon (I'm lazy sometimes) But I have no exhibits planned yet. I want to do another drawing show, but I don't know what I want to work on, so I haven't set a date for it yet.

link
CP: Do you have any 'studio rituals'? As in, do you listen to certain types of music while working? What helps to get you in the mood for working?

JM: Music is a big part of making art for me. Often, I associate many pieces I do with what I was listening to when I made it. As in terms of what I listen to when I'm making something, It's normally more on the slower, more drony side of rock music. Shoegaze stuff. Or like classic pop love ballads. I'm a sucker for a good pop song about love lost.

CP: What is your favorite a) taste, b) sound, c) sight, d) smell, and e) tactile sensation?

JM: Taste: Whiskey and gingerale. Sound: ambient city noise at night. Sight: a wad of money. Smell: pizzeria. Touchytouch: a wad of money.

CP: Do you have goals that you are trying to reach as an artist; what is your drive? What would you like to accomplish in your profession?

JM: My drive with being an illustrator is tied up in my writing. I'm in the tentative stages of writing a fantasy story, which is a lot of work, but the completion of this book is something quite important to me.

link
CP: When did you start using the internet and what role does this form of communication play for you, personally, for your art, and for your business?

JM: I've had my website for a few years, and it's cool because it puts me into instant contact with folks who like my stuff, allowing them to purchase work directly from me, as well as putting me into contact with the artists that I admire and respect. It's been said a million times before, but the internet is an amazing resource.

CP: What do you obsess over?

JM: Love, money, and Star Wars.

CP: Do you have preferred working hours? Do you pay attention to the time of the day or maybe specific lighting?

JM: Night time baby! I primarily work between the hours of 11-6am. That's when my brain has achieved the clarity it needs to get things out. I've tried working in the mornings, but my head just doesn't work then, it's pathetic. I am not a morning person at all. Not at all. I'm a vampire.

CP: Do you do commissioned works?

link
JM: Yes. If someone wants something specific from, I'll do it.

CP: Any tips for emerging artists?

JM: Work hard. No one else is going to do it for you. And you must nurture your work and give it the time it needs to develop and grow. Growth will simply not occur by itself.


Claudio Parentela is a prolific and productive artist who conducts interviews with other artists from around the world. Consequently, he has two sites containing his interviews. MungBeing is proud to work in cooperation with Claudio to present extended interviews with some of those artists. Please read more great Claudio Parentela interviews at The eXTra finGer, Foggy Grizzly, and LADy LaMbandPopsy.

For more information about Jayson Musson, please visit the Space 1026 site, the Megawords Magazine site, and www.jaysonmusson.com.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1472rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Claudio Parentela) Puzzle Building and the Creative Mind Jim Bumgardner is a master puzzle builder. His creations are elegant, well-designed examples of thoughtful construction and skillful programming. Jim has an artisan's eye and a craftsman's touch which he employs with aplomb. In addition to his position as the "resident puzzle constructor" for MungBeing, Jim is the force behind such beautiful projects as CoverPop, ColrPickr, and some wonderful Mosaics. His code writing abilities are constantly put through the paces by his brilliantly fertile and creative mind. He has written several books of puzzles, the book Flickr Hacks for O'Reilly, and contributed to numerous magazines, including "Games" magazine. We are thrilled to have him with us and proud to present these thoughts about his craft.
What is this?

It's an article about puzzles. I thought I would organize it as a series of questions, like a FAQ, because questions and puzzles are both manifestations of the same thing. They both have answers, and when they are left unanswered, or unsolved, we lack closure. This article, then, is a series of closures.

Why puzzles, specifically?

Among other things, I am a constructor of logic puzzles -- Sudoku, Kakuro, Slitherlink, and a few others. My website, Krazydad.com, is full of them; mostly in the form of PDF files, so people can print out small batches of them to solve with a pencil. Like a drug dealer, I produce them in small batches so you'll get addicted and come back for more.

Why do you make puzzles?

I started making them for myself, and my wife. Most nights, before going to sleep, we solve a few puzzles with paper and pencil. It's an addictive bedtime ritual. I make them for my friends, and for visitors to my website. When visitors to the website click the ads, or send me donations, I make a little money. Puzzles aren't making me rich though - I'm keeping my day job, as a programmer for Yahoo! And even if puzzles made me no money at all, I'd still probably make them, because I'm addicted to solving them. I'm still my own best customer.

Why aren't puzzles making you rich?

There are very few people in the world who have figured out a way to make a living from puzzle construction. One of these is Will Shortz, Crossword Editor for the New York Times, who is more of a puzzle editor than puzzle constructor. The folks who design crosswords for the New York Times (probably the highest paying publication) get paid $200 for the daily puzzle, and $1000 if they are lucky enough to land a Sunday puzzle. There are a whole slew of people working on crosswords, so it would be an enormous achievement for any one puzzle constructor to average more than a few hundred dollars a week. In my experience, book and magazine publishers pay very little for puzzles, and the kind of computer-generated puzzles I specialize in are a ubiquitous commodity.

Why do people like puzzle solving as a recreation?

My theory is that the brain is a natural pattern-matching machine. One of the brain's main purposes is to solve puzzles - originally these would be caveman puzzles like "How do I open a clam?" and "What should I do when charged by a woolly mammoth?". In solving puzzles, we are fooling the brain - the brain solves whatever puzzle it is is presented with, having no simple way of measuring how useful the particular puzzle being solved is. If I ask you, "What is 12 + 17 ?" it is very hard for you to simply ignore the question, without ferreting out the answer.

Recreational Puzzles are a luxury, of course. A high standard of living has removed many of the more useful puzzles from our day-to-day lives, yet we still have a need to solve them, whether they are useful or not. Have you ever noticed that some people always seem to be embroiled in some kind of soap-opera intrigue -- no matter how many real stressors they have going on in their lives at the moment? The would be miserable sipping a Pina Colada on the beach in Kauai. I think this is a manifestation of the same thing - these people have a need to solve puzzles, whether real puzzles exist or not. If you know any of these people, you should introduce them to Sudoku.

In my life, recreational puzzles also serve as a form of escape, as do books and movies, and as a way to occupy the brain in situations where you can't accomplish much else, such as riding the train, or sitting in a doctor's office. When I recently reported for Jury Duty, I brought a stack of blank puzzles and left it in the Juror waiting room. I hope they weren't thrown out!

What make a good puzzle?

A good puzzle is addictive. After you finish it, you reach for the next one. I think this addictive property is most affected by carefully controlling the difficulty of the puzzle. That difficulty level needs to be be just right for you (and it very much depends on the experience and intuition of the solver). A good puzzle is like an Al Dente noodle. It has some firmness to it, but it is still pliable. The difficulty is right at the edge of what you're capable of.

Much of this character comes from the variety of puzzle, rather than puzzle itself.

What makes a good puzzle variety?

Here I am talking about puzzle variety - Sudoku versus Crosswords, as opposed to a specific puzzle. The criteria for good puzzles is similar to that for strategy games like Go and Chess (which are a kind of multi-player puzzle). The ideal form of these games is "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master" and so it goes with puzzles.

Good puzzles are easy to explain. In my printable puzzles, I include a paragraph at the bottom that explains how to solve the puzzle. Ideally, this paragraph must serve to introduce someone to the puzzle who has never solved this type of puzzle before. If I can't explain it in a short paragraph, than the number of new solvers I am going to attract is going to be very small. One of my personal favorites of the new crop of Japanese logic puzzles is called Nurikabe, but I find it difficult to explain the rules succinctly enough for that little paragraph, so I have hesitated to put Nurikabe on my website.

Ideal puzzles have a broad range of solving strategems. I personally find Sudoku puzzles slightly more satisfying than Kakuros, because I have reduced Kakuro to a smaller set of solving strategems, so solving them is a little bit more tedious. This experience may depend on the solver though. My wife finds Kakuro more appealing, for similar reasons - she has reduced Sudoku to a small set of strategems and finds Kakuro more interesting. One of the reasons I have been experimenting with alternate tiling systems for my Slitherlink puzzles is that these tiling systems (such as Penrose tiles) increase the catalog of strategems available to the solver.

When a puzzle has a wide variety of solving strategems, it can be generated in a wide range of difficulties, to appeal to a greater number of solvers with diverse skills.

I should also mention that while there are some puzzle varieties that are wonderful, they are not necessarily wonderful for my website. I love crosswords, but I don't offer them.

What additional criteria must the puzzles at Krazydad meet?

Because I don't have a lot of free time, and perhaps because I'm a huge nerd, I produce my puzzles with computer software (which I write and run). As you'll find out later, in order to teach a computer to construct a puzzle, I first have to teach it to solve the puzzle. This means that the puzzles on my website must be solvable by a computer. This rules out crosswords, which demand that the clues be written by a clever human. For me, much of the appeal of a good crossword puzzle is puzzling out the meaning from a deviously written clue. Good crossword clue writing is one of those things the brain does well but that computers will not achieve in my lifetime.

Producing puzzles with computers generally means my puzzles usually involve either numbers, or simple abstract graphics. This restriction has the side benefit that my puzzles don't require knowledge of the english language nor western pop culture. Unlike the TV Guide Crossword, the puzzles are culture-independent, appealing to a diverse international audience.

I personally don't much like solving sudoku and similar puzzles on a computer screen. I prefer to solve them in a chair, or better yet, in bed (with a pen, in my case), and the puzzles on my website are intended for a similar audience of slothful Luddites. For the most part, most of the puzzles on my site are in the form of PDF files, intended to be printed, and solved on paper.

As the proud owner of a cheap-ass printer, I don't like spending fifty dollars on printer cartridges, so I prefer it if my printable puzzles don't generate a lot of solid black squares which eat through ink and toner. Similarly, I prefer it if the solving process doesn't require me to shade in squares or polygons, using up a lot of ink or lead, and making excessive motions which might burn calories.

Because I deal puzzles like crack, I want people to return to my website, I hope my puzzles have that aforementioned addictive quality. But in addition, there are a few qualities I am attracted to personally: I like a puzzle that is pretty, and well balanced. Many (but not all) of my puzzles employ symmetrical layouts. I tend to gravitate to round layouts, rotational symmetry or 180 degree symmetry.

Finally, the puzzles I offer must cater to the specific community that visits my site, which, when I think about it, is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People visit my site because they like what they find there, but also, if I find they like a particular thing a lot, I make more of that thing.

Who visits your puzzle site?

My guess is that there are two principal kinds of puzzle solvers (although in reality, I suppose real people tend to combine these two types).

The majority are what I would call "comfort solvers". These folks like one kind of puzzle only, probably Sudoku, and they don't like them too difficult. They are not solving the puzzles so much for the challenge, as for something to do to keep their brain engaged. I know from the occasional email that some of these folks are retired, or otherwise idle, or printing the puzzles out for their parents and patients.

The minority are people more like me, who I call the "challenge solvers". These people like a really tough puzzle that might take all evening or even two or three days to tease out. Not only do these folks like the tougher puzzles, but they also are more likely to try new varieties of puzzles.

How do I know that the "comfort solvers" are in the majority? The statistics I get from my webserver shows me that. Here is yesterday's breakdown showing the six most popular puzzle varieties on my website:



The full diagram looks like a typical "long tail" diagram with all the more obscure puzzle varieties meriting one or two stars.

The majority, the "comfort solvers" are not particularly interested in constantly trying new varieties - they tend to prefer old favorites (Sudokus in my case...). If you look at the rack of puzzle magazines at your local drugstore or supermarket, you'll find that the publishing industry is well aware of this distribution. Most of the magazines are full of easy-level puzzles in a well known format. Variety magazines featuring difficult puzzles are harder to find.

While most visitors to my website are comfort solvers, I am definitely not. I like tough puzzles, and I like to change puzzle varieties fairly frequently.

Perhaps that is why I like making puzzles in addition to solving them. Learning how to make a new puzzle is one of the hardest puzzles of all! Unfortunately, the audience for new puzzle varieties is definitely way out on the long tail, so designing new puzzles is also not likely to make me rich.

The preponderance of "comfort solvers" saddens me a little, because it can be more fun for me to figure out how to make interesting new puzzles. It's also more fun to figure out how to make tough puzzles, because it involves teaching the computer how to *solve* tough puzzles - more on that below.

How do you come up with a new puzzle variety?

The short answer: take a shower. That's pretty much where all my good ideas come from.

I've spent little time attempting to create new puzzles varieties out of thin air. I would imagine it to be very hard to do. Much of my creative process involves modifying existing things, or mashing up two things, rather than inventing entirely new things (and I am not even sure such a thing is really possible - it seems like everything, both physical and intellectual, is made of stuff that already exists).

Nonetheless, there are some talented puzzle constructors out there who have produced remarkably fruitful and diverse works. I'll talk about them more below. But I'm definitely no Sam Loyd.

But occasionally, a good idea will pop into my head, unbidden, usually in the shower. The two most interesting new puzzle varieties I have created are Krypto Kakuro and the Variety Slitherlink, both of which are varieties of established puzzle varieties popularized by the Nikoli company in Japan. In both cases, I came up with the variant during a period when I was working on creating software to generate the original. So the new puzzle was a natural extension (it seemed to me at the time) of the original puzzle, and the original puzzle was much in my thoughts.

Prior experience with things that are near-puzzles helps as well. I had a lot of experience with amateur cryptography and cryptogram puzzles, which lead me try encrypting Kakuro puzzles to create Krypto Kakuro. My exposure to tiling systems (Penrose tiles in particular), and my experience using a variety of tiling systems to build mazes, led me to the idea of trying them out for Slitherlink puzzles. The more algorithmic ideas I am exposed to, the richer the palette of ideas I can bring to puzzle creation, and the more connections I can draw between diverse idea spaces.

What mathematical / physical properties do puzzles have?

Most of the puzzles I work with consist of a set of constraints, which are expressed in the rules of the puzzle. There is usually a very large number of possible puzzles meeting those constraints. For example, when you take various symmetries into account, there are about 5.5 billion different sudoku puzzles.

Many of the logic puzzles from Nikoli, such as Slitherlink share some other common features. I've noticed that a lot of them feature networks which resemble mazes. This structures of connected walls is called a Nurikabe in the Japanese puzzle books. A maze, of course, is a kind of puzzle, and the connections between mazes and logic puzzles seems close.

It has been demonstrated that a lot of logic puzzles, including Sudoku and Slitherlink are NP-Complete, which is a measure of their algorithmic complexity. One ramification of this is that there is no known algorithm for efficiently solving these puzzles in a fixed amount of time. The hard puzzles may take much longer to solve than the easy ones. This makes it difficult to generate hard puzzles - for example, it was extremely time consuming to generate the hundreds of large Kakaro puzzles that appear on my website. It might take my computer 15 minutes to produce a single such puzzle.

Who are you influences in making puzzles?

Three of my heroes in this area are Martin Gardner, A.K. Dewdney, and Sam Loyd. Gardner (now 92 years old, and recently interviewed in Make magazine) wrote the Mathematical Recreations article for Scientific American for many years, and was a great compiler of mathematical puzzles, many of which are collected now in various Dover editions. It was Gardner who popularized Penrose's Tiles, Conway's game of "Life" and Mandelbrot's Fractals, all of which are grist for the puzzle mill.

A.K. Dewdney, who took over Gardner's role at the magazine with his "Computer Recreations" column, was a huge influence on me. I was learning my craft as a programmer when Dewdney was active at the magazine. His articles on computer wallpaper, fractals, and artificial life were all seeds that spurred me to write software and algorithms, some of which I still use and cherish. Dewdney's columns were collected in the book "Armchair Universe", now sadly out of print (is a book ever "happily out of print" I wonder?).

It's hard for me to mention Gardner and Dewdney, without also mentioning Douglas Hofstadter and Clifford Pickover, but I will attempt to do so.

Sam Loyd, an inspiration for the likes of Martin Gardner and Donald Knuth, is a more recent discovery for me. His 1914 "Cyclopedia of Puzzles" is an amazing collection, and available in full online. Unfortunately, the work is full of much of the racist caricatures which was prevalent then, and his prose style hasn't withstood the test of time either. You have to get past that stuff to get to the puzzles. Then you can admire the mind that came up with this nifty lip reading novelty.

The thing that impresses me when I see monstrosities like Loyd's "Out of the Klondike," is that this puzzle was generated without a computer!

"Wow!" I think, "That guy must have had a lot of time on his hands!" Amusingly, this is the exact same comment my computer-generated mosaics tend to elicit from the ill informed...

Although Gardner, Dewdney and others serve as inspiration, my biggest influence, puzzle-wise, is not an individual, but a company in Japan: Nikoli.

Sudoku? Kakuro? What's with all the Japanese-sounding names?

In recent years, all good puzzles seem to come from Japan. The most popular publisher of puzzles in Japan is a company called Nikoli, which prints a number of magazines for the Japanese market. Although Sududu and Kakuro are both older puzzles that were originally published in the west by Dell, it is Japan's Nikoli that is responsible for their enormous popularity in recent years.

Nikoli specializes in the kinds of culture-independent numeric and logic puzzles that I feature on my website. In addition to Sudoku and Kakuro, they have originated a bewildering variety of new logic puzzles, some of which you can read about on Wikipedia.

Nikoli has managed this without having a resident puzzle genius. Instead they really on a carefully cultivated society of readers. Nikoli publishes a quarterly magazine, "Puzzle Communication Nikoli," which presents new puzzle varieties submitted by readers. This magazine is a crucible for generating new puzzle varieties. When a puzzle proves to be popular, Nikoli spins it off and publishes it in a separate magazine. The combination of this system (combined with an ever-increasing corps of amateur puzzle constructors armed with computers) has worked wonders. It's the right system, at the right time.

The closest thing we have in this country is Games magazine, which I've contributed to a few times, but Games, a shadow of its former self, when it was edited by Will Shortz, is no "Puzzle Communication Nikoli".

A good way to sample some of Nikoli's offerings, aside from Nikoli's website, is with Simon Tatham's portable puzzle collection, which features a number of Nikoli puzzles (and Nikoli-like puzzles).

How are puzzles constructed?

When I start writing the program to construct some kind of puzzle, I usually have a pretty good idea how to solve the puzzle, and I already have a sample or two, but I don't have much of an idea of how to create the puzzle. I start with what I know I can do - by writing a program that can solve the puzzle, using text as input. To my program that solves Sudoku puzzles, a sudoku puzzle looks like this:

{"title of puzzle", 9, 3, 3, "..52.13....786..9129...78...8.1.2.3.92.....76.7.6.9.8...89...2363..584....94.36.."}

The periods indicate the squares that are unknown, and the numbers are the clues. It is the solver's job to replace those periods with numbers.

I've written two main kinds of solvers: "logic" solvers and "backtracking" solvers. The "logic" solver works somewhat similarly to the way I work myself when I solve a puzzle. It tries out a series of strategems on the puzzle, one after another, from easiest to hardest. For example, when I solve a Slitherlink, I might do the following:
  1. Look for two cells that both contain a 3 and are adjacent. For those squares, there are three lines that can always be filled in, and some lines that can be eliminated.
  2. Look for a 3 which is next to a zero. If so, there are three lines that can be filled in.
  3. Look for two 3s which are diagonally adjacent, for those squares there are four lines that can be filled in. and so on...


Whenever a particular strategem results in some minor success - filling in a line, or ruling out a line, I start over again from step 1 (the easiest strategy). If, after running through all my strategies, the puzzle is not yet solved, then I can't solve the puzzle.

The second type of solver I've written is the "brute force" solver with backtracking. This kind of solver will make a series of guesses until it either solves the puzzle or runs into a mistake. If it runs into a mistake, it backtracks and guesses again. A human could do this, but it would be tedious and very easy to make mistakes. One of the solvers I use for Sudoku uses a special kind of backtracking algorithm developed by the master Donald Knuth called "Dancing Links". This is the fastest sudoku solver I have encountered.

Backtracking solvers can be significantly faster than the logic-strategy, and they can solve puzzles that humans would find impossible to solve by logic, so you can use them to create insanely hard puzzles, if you want to.

For the purposes of puzzle construction, it can be useful to have a fast backtracking solver so you can solve a lot of puzzles quickly. This leads to the "sieve" method of puzzle construction. The basic idea is this.

  1. Generate a random puzzle which may or may not be solvable.
  2. Attempt to solve it. If there is a problem, go back to step 1.
  3. Voila, you have a puzzle. Save it and make another.


A variation of the sieve method that I use a lot is the "clue reduction" method, which I've used for Sudoku, Slitherlink and many other puzzles:

  1. Generate a random puzzle with the solution all filled in.
  2. Attempt to solve it, if there is a problem go back to step 1.
  3. Remove one of the clues.
  4. Attempt to solve the puzzle, if it is still solvable, go back to step 3 (while there are still untested clues). If if is not solvable, put the clue back.


The order that clues are removed is important and affects how many clues are removed in total. In general, I prefer to remove as many clues as possible, so I may repeat this process a hundred times, randomizing the order each time, trying to find the smallest set of clues I can provide.

For the sieve method to work, the solver needs to be able to quickly solve the puzzle, and determine that there is one, and only one solution. If there is more than one solution, the solver shouldn't waste time finding them all - it should just abort, so the sieve algorithm can get on with the business of a generating a new puzzle to solve (or removing a different clue).

I still haven't explained how to do step 1 "Generate a random puzzle with the solution filled in...". For something like a sudoku, this might be as simple as filling a grid with random numbers. The problem with that technique is that the vast majority of the time, you are going to end up with an invalid puzzle that has repeating numbers where it shouldn't. So you have to check the grid as you generate each number, to make sure that the result is apparently valid.

What you really need is a fast algorithm that uses a few heuristics to insure that you have a pretty good chance of producing a valid puzzle. If the heuristics aren't very good, then you will waste a lot of time trying to solve invalid puzzles and you'll only spit out a valid puzzle once in a blue moon.

A technique used for generating a solved slitherlink puzzle (before clue removal) is a little bit like growing a crystal. You start with a seed square which is filled in, and then gradually connect squares to that, maintaining free clearance around each filament. This produces a network of filaments, which corresponds to the looping path in the answer, when it is finished. The algorithm is very similar to one I used back in the 80s for generating drawings that resemble ice crystals on a windshield.

Interestingly, I've noticed that as a human puzzle solver, there is one strategy available to me that is not available to the computer. Since I know the puzzle has already been found to have one, and only one solution, I know that if making a particular decision (such as marking a particular edge in Slitherlink) will result in two equally valid solutions that don't affect the rest of the puzzle, I can assume that candidate decision is invalid. When the computer is testing puzzles for validity, it can't use this "meta" technique.

What language do you write this software in?

I've used a number of computer languages to create puzzles. It's fairly common for me to start with Processing (p5) which a superset of the Java programming language with some programmer-friendly graphics routines. Processing enables me to prototype puzzles and see them graphical as the solver attempts to solve the puzzle, so it makes debugging the solving algorithm easier.

Another language I use frequently is Perl, which isn't very fast, but is a very expressive language which enables me to accomplish a lot with a very little code.

Once I have a puzzle construction algorithm working, in one of those languages, I will often port it to C++, so I can get it to run faster. With a C++ program, I can generate hundreds or even thousands of puzzles very quickly, saving them to a text file.

After the C++ program generates the text file, I use a Perl script to read the text file and render the graphics into the PDF files I put on my website. I use a Perl library called PDF::Rewrite for this purpose.

How is difficulty graded?

To generate puzzles quickly, you need a fast solver. But once you know a puzzle is solvable, you can run a slower "logic" solver on it so that you can gauge it's difficulty. As I described earlier, the solver tries a series of strategems, from easy to hard. By keeping track of which strategies are used, and how many steps it takes to solve a puzzle, I can grade the puzzle. The are a number of things which I know contribute to the difficulty of a puzzle.

  1. The degree of difficulty of the strategems required to solve the puzzle. I can force the generation of easier puzzles by disallowing the more advanced strategems.
  2. The variety of strategems required to solve the puzzle (a puzzle that requires 6 different strategems is harder than one that requires 2).
  3. How early in the solving process a difficult strategem is required. If a difficult strategem is required earlier on, the puzzle is more difficult. I've noticed that the Sudoku puzzles featured in the Los Angeles times and other newspapers don't take this into account. A sudoku puzzle that requires a guess when the puzzle is nearly all filled up is much easier than one that requires a guess when the puzzle has barely been started.
  4. The number of logical steps needed to solve the puzzle.

With so much being done with computers, where is this all going?

One thing that is certainly clear is that the value of individual puzzles is approaching zero. Puzzles have become a commodity. While a good crossword constructor can make a few hundred bucks selling a puzzle to the New York times, the same is certainly not true of Sudoku. This is one of the reasons why I do not sell the puzzles I produce, but instead choose to give them away (and run ads on the pages). If you attempt to sell puzzles that can be easily mass produced, there will always be someone else waiting in the wings willing to produce them more cheaply.

I do believe that computers could take a bigger role in puzzle design (just as I believe they can take a bigger role in other making creative decisions in other art forms). Looking at the rich variety of Nikoli puzzles that are available, you will begin to notice that similar constraints tend to reappear in different puzzle varieties. Constraints such as

"The number does not repeat"
"The line does not cross itself"
"The wall is connected"

...and so on. I think it may be possible to make an automated puzzle designer that pulls handfuls of these constraints and tries combining them to make a new kind of puzzle. Just as writing a program to produce puzzles is much harder than solving the puzzle it produces, writing this program to design a multitude of puzzles would be significantly harder than writing a program to make any one puzzle.

It would be the ultimate puzzle. Perhaps some day I'll give it a go.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1471rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Jim Bumgardner) Recipes
Fortunately for you, the MungBeing readers, a copy of the infamous Drink Menu was discovered deep down in the murky depths of the Cache Cow Archives. The original copy was salvaged by a peculiar sailor named Kenny and his boyfriend Paul in the last few months of The Barber's Closet's life and has been stored, seal unbroken, for eleven years. It is with a mixture of profound sadness and nervous excitement that we are offering to you the last remaining vestige of this long-lost and much loved watering hole, available in the coming months, one piece at a time.

With only one further ado, MungBeing Magazine proudly presents the Barber's Closet Drink Menu!

Here is a detailed description of Glass Classifications and Garnish Specifications.

Previous Chapters
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1280 Recipes -- House Specialties In The Mood
  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 1/4 oz. Creme de Noya
  • 1/2 oz. Kamora
  • 1/4 oz. Brandy
  • 1/2 oz. Amaretto
  • O.J. to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Butterfly

Midori Sour

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 1.0 oz. Midori
  • Bar Sour, P.J., and Seltzer to 1/4" below rim
  • of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Cherry and 1/4 Lime

Friendly Persuasion

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Cherry Brandy
  • 3/4 oz. Myer's Dark
  • P.J. to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: 1/2 Orange wheel

Yellowbird

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 1/2 oz. Galliano
  • 1/2 oz. Creme de Banana
  • 1/2 oz. Malibu
  • O.J. and P.J. to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Butterfly

Lenny Bruce

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Tequila
  • 3/4 oz. Southern Comfort
  • O.J. to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • 1/2 oz. Grenadine
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: 1/2 Orange wheel

Blue Angel

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Blue Curacao
  • 3/4 oz. Triple Sec
  • Bar Sour to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Cherry and 1/4 Lemon

Sweet Tart

  • 12 oz. Tub
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Absolute Citron
  • 3/4 oz. Sloe Gin
  • Bar Sour to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • Splash or 7-up
  • Garnish: Lemon squeeze

Scarlet O'Hara

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Triple Sec
  • 3/4 oz. Southern Comfort
  • Cranberry juice to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • 7-up to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Squeeze 1/4 Lime


Cupid's Arrow

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Vodka
  • 3/4 oz. Blackberry Brandy
  • Cranberry juice to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • Grapefruit juice to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: 2 Cherries

Gypsy

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 1/2 oz. Gin
  • 1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
  • 1/2 oz. Courvosier V.S.
  • 1/2 oz. Cherry Brandy
  • 7-up and Tonic to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Butterfly

Sangria

  • 22 oz. Oscar Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 6 oz. Chablis
  • 3/4 oz. Rum
  • 1 tsp. Sugar
  • O.J. and P.J. to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • 2 long straws
  • Garnish: All fruit

Zombie

  • 12 oz. Collins Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Rum
  • 3/4 oz. Myer's Dark
  • 1/2 oz. Rose's Lime
  • 1/2 oz. Grenadine
  • P.J. to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • Garnish: 1/2 Orange wheel

Love Potion #9

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Captain Morgan's
  • 3/4 oz. Blackberry Brandy
  • Cranberry juice to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: 2 Cherries

Magnolia

  • 12 oz. Ice Cream Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Malibu
  • 3/4 oz. White Creme de Cacao
  • P.J. to 1/4" below rim of glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Butterfly

Mai Tai

  • 12 oz. Collins
  • Fill with ice
  • 1.5 oz. Rum
  • 1/2 oz. Creme de Noya
  • 1/2 oz. Triple Sec
  • 1/2 oz. Rose's Lime
  • 1/2 oz. Grenadine
  • Bar Sour, O.J., P.J. to 1/4" below rim of
  • glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: Butterfly

South Pacific

  • 12 oz. Collins Glass
  • Fill with ice
  • 3/4 oz. Blue Curacao
  • 3/4 oz. Midori
  • Pineapple juice to 1/2" below rim of glass
  • Gun sour and seltzer to 1/4" below rim of
  • glass
  • 1 long straw
  • Garnish: 1/2 Orange wheel


]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1280&subID=979 Surrealism http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1506rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Muayad Muhsin) MungBeat! -- Intuition
This month has been an extremely busy one for the family; mostly because it's the first month we've been around. Yet, in our first month, we've "released" over a hundred albums from some rather fantastic artists, and we're well on our way to bumping major record labels out of the fray (not really). Who knows, maybe in a year from now the spirit of the Collective will conquer America (and then the world)? At the rate it's growing, it could very may be possible! Or, it's also possible that it could kill me with stress (i'm already turning gray at the ripe old age of eighteen).

The theme of this month is Intuition, yet, even with this to narrow down my choices, it was still quite hard to pick out only ten songs. I bit my nails and gnashed my teeth, and these are the songs that I chose. Hopefully, you'll enjoy them as much as I do (if you don't, you're probably a monster). All of these songs have to do with realizing things that everyone needs to realize.
  1. link
    He sings that life is easy, but this song makes you feel like it's anything but. It's intuitive because the song realizes that you won't live forever. Life is hard, if you let it be. Let go of everything, and you'll find that the simpler things are easier. Don't question fate, settle down, and stop being reckless. Feel sad, because either way, you'll never feel at home, and you'll never learn everything. You're here for good. Try to feel as if for the first time.
  2. link
    I feel this song. It makes me want to live life randomly and meet as many people as I can, but once that's over and I've grown old, what have I got left? Intuition is realizing that nothing is what it seems.
  3. link
    This is my song, and of course I had to include it because it's the only song I can really speak for personally. It's a song about realizing that the world is always changing, and that the youth can't be held responsible for the mistakes of the older generation. It's about realizing that, someday, we will make the same mistakes. That, someday, we will die.
  4. link
    Everyone needs love! Everyone needs to realize that they need love; that nobody can be alone all the time. Love can't be generalized or explained; there are no mathematical equations to our emotions. So just go with it; shout and sing!
  5. link
    Sometimes, you need to let go. Explore the world and yourself and other people, but don't get lost. You can look on other people who are completely free, but you have to know that their life isn't what you really imagine it to be.
  6. link
    Every happens for a reason, whether it feels like it does or not. Sometimes that reason is that there is no reason at all. The wilderness, and nature, is part of us, whether we want it to be or not. We are animals too, and our homes and our cities are just larger extensions of birds nests and beaver dams. Just sit back and watch things happen.
  7. link
    Nobody is the same, and people aren't born equal. We can never really empathise with another person, we can come close. Part of us will always hate, and that part grows more and more with age and experience.
  8. link
    You need to get out and do things! Or, do you? Is life anything more than simply being happy and enjoying it? You can make things to fill your time, or you can waste your life with meaningless trivialities. Does it really matter, though? If you're happy, that all that matters. Once we die, everything we've made means nothing.
  9. link
    Some days we just want to do nothing, to stay all day underneath the sheets with someone special. Work hard, but don't forget to play.
  10. link
    Don't try to make sense of your life. Nothing is certain, and everything is confusing! Don't try to make sense out of it, and don't fall into a routine. Confuse yourself.

That's all for this edition, gentlemen and gentlewomen! I hope you had fun trying to make sense out of my nonsensical ramblings, and I hope you visit the Collective to download some of these releases if you enjoyed them. Don't be shy, step on up, everyone's a winner!

http://001collective.com]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1281&subID=1019rss_feed@mungbeing.com (The 001 Collective) -- heart over my heart
Download: link

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1469&subID=1004rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Frances Mai-Ling) -- Melancholia I'm a musician, artist and darkly comic poet from the North of England. The three songs are from a forthcoming CD 'Melancholia' which incorporates my interests in spoken word, post-punk, dub, abstraction, Indian music, winter depressions and nursery rhymes amongst other influences. I suffer from/am blessed with a mood disorder which orders me to create and give voice to my wildly fluctuating moods. These songs express a particularly familiar feeling to me, one of loss, melancholy, emptiness, rage, hope and beauty and a strong desire to return to the womb, or at least the innocence of childhood.

Download: link

Download: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1522&subID=1005rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Ashley Reaks) Self Portraits http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1503rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Matt Bray) pop-psychology.com
I carry someone with me. He is heavy. He complains of the things that I leave in his room: a lamp, a tapestry, blouses and slips that are silky and tease, things that are left when I go out to travel, inspiring soft light that emanates from the center of that bland pastel city, his room where I would go to warm and to melt. He is mellow but becomes tyrannous when I explain that the leaving of city or the suicide-gobbling was something that happened to me, something that I had to do. To look at death. To touch it and fondle it. Demons only die at the bottom of nowheres: travel via the purchasing of pills or ketamine or Priceline tickets.

Where do you go? Who is with you? What do you detect in the ink? Do you see two figures? Do you see male genitals? Passion or war or an incoming craft? I can heal you. I can cure you. I will put my hands on you and will make you better again and there will be exactly ten seconds of pure stillness as you stare into the stream before reaching in to wash your face with your hands. Step quietly into the open spaces of grass and dirt all around you, moonlight, stars, fireflies made vital with the waking, blinking juice of glowsticks. You have become bigger than your body, divorced from it and grown beyond it. You will drink and drink and drink.

To see the answers to your Premium PhD-Certified Psychological Profile, please send a check for $29.95 in a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Dr. Josie Cobbles MD at 69 Rainbow Hill, Bagdad, Kentucky, 40003.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1524rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Jenna Humphrey) Stuckist Paintings http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1474rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Elsa Dax) Upon Seeing Your Profile On MySpace... of a fat camp
on fire.

Your idea of a diet
is holding a digital camera
at a 45 degrees angle.

Your fingers
are spokesmodels
for illiteracy.

May spelling bees
nest in your throat
and sting your eyes.

May thesauruses
bust down your door
and trample your spine.

May your syllables
use your breath
to commit suicide.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1526rss_feed@mungbeing.com (J. Bradley) Revolting Literature There is a spectre haunting the publishing industry: the spectre of the underground, the small press, the zine, the DIY ethos, the internet. Throughout history some of the most experimental, subversive and original works of literature have been produced outside the canon. Revolting Literature is an ongoing inquiry into books, authors and publishers rousing, transgressive and independent; creators who inflame emotion and intellect; bold iconoclasts, eccentrics and radicals re-visioning and reshaping the face of the literary world. ]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1458 Revolting Literature -- The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo
by Dwight L. MacPherson and Thomas Boatwright
Image Comics, 96 pages

As the title suggests, this Web comic turned graphic novel isn't wholly about Edgar Allan Poe. It is about his feces offspring, Edgar Allan Poo, who was flushed down the toilet in an outhouse. This little Poo, who fortunately looks nothing like a turd, is a cute, miniaturized version of his "father." Rescued by a Nimh-like rat named Irving, he is guided through Terra Somnum, a fantastic and dangerous land where Poo encounters Gorgons, Amazonian Nymphs, Fiddling Crabs, Neptune, Hydras, and even a Raven King. What's the fuel for all this adventure? Poo is apparently a wanted "figment" in Terra Somnum by the King of Nightmares.

Meanwhile, above ground, Poe is having problems writing. He lacks inspiration and mojo. It takes a visit from his dead wife, Virginia, to realize that he has lost his ability to dream. She warns him that he has lost his "dreamer," endangering his imagination. Poe does not heed her; he is too freaked out by her paranormal condition. So freaked out, that it doesn't take much convincing from a seraphim that she is a demon sent to torment him. Addled Poe turns against his wife's ghost and lets the seraphim (actually Nightmare's demons) take her away. Once Poe realizes what has happened, he goes on his own quest to rescue her and the thing she keeps calling his "dreamer."

So, how are the two plot-lines connected? Poo is Poe's imagination. Together they purloined the Dark Lord's terrors and made them accessible to the real world, making the King of Nightmare's life hell. Nightmare wants things back to normal. To do that, he must sever and squash Poe and Poo.

I have been in love with Edgar Allan Poe and his world since childhood, and have never outgrown him. I am not alone: the plethora of fiction and adaptations of Poe's work and life shows that he still has a strong hold over the imagination. However, most of these works deal solely with speculative biography or expounding his work. The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo is unique in this ever-expanding Poepathy genre by concerning itself with neither.

There are surprisingly few allusions to Poe's work and even fewer biographical depictions. However, MacPherson utilizes what material he has to its full potential. Example: the casting of Rufus Griswold as Nightmare's human form. Poe had a love/hate relationship with Griswold, another New York poet and critic. Upon his death, Griswold became Poe's literary executor (cum executioner) putting him in possession of Poe's letters and manuscripts. Committing the most passive aggressive act in literary history, Griswold altered and published these letters, and wrote a slanderous biography promoting the drunken sod hyperbole most people associate with the poet today. Were anyone to be possessed with a demon that had a vendetta for Poe, it would be Griswold.

The rest of the story is mostly fantasy and a tease. It ends suddenly and incomprehensively, practically at the apex of its climax. With little denouement, I wanted to see more, not only from the storyline, but also from the whimsical but flat characters. Poe is a device for Poo's adventures, and Poo is a device to showcase the collaborative and vast imagination of MacPherson and Boatwright. Terra Somnum is like a miniature Middle Earth, with diverse settings and characters that prove Boatwright's illustrative versatility. His watercolor images are effective in setting an ephemeral, somnambulant atmosphere, making the dreamland substantial and realistic on the page. If there was anything one could get out of Poo that could not be found elsewhere, it would be these illustrations.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1458&subID=1026rss_feed@mungbeing.com (SJ Chambers) -- Further Adventures In Neo-Tribalism: My Ishmael Story of B and Beyond Civilization. I was struck by the similarities between tribalism and Burning Man culture. The parallels between tribalism and Burning Man culture fascinated me! My Ishmael continued to reveal these similarities while offering a better sketch of solutions than Story of B.

My Ishmael is a sequel of sorts to Quinn's most famous book, Ishmael. Yet the sequel is easily read on its own and effectively conveys Quinn's central ideas. For those unfamiliar with Quinn's books, his thesis is that our civilization is based on infinitely increasing the human food supply and people supply on a finite planet. Regardless of your environmental politics or sentiments for "tribal peoples," the math makes our survival strategy an utter failure.

When Quinn examines "population growth," he looks at the growth of human population as a whole species, rather than individual countries' or regions' populations. Not only is human population growth unsustainable, this open-ended growth is also causing a mass extinction of species (according to some estimates the extinction rate could be as high as two hundred species A DAY). Long before we run out of room to grow food, we'll have perpetrated ecological collapse, which will eliminate our food supply. We will die. Our civilization's evolutionary failure was not immediately evident because it has taken 10,000 years for our civilization's people to cover the planet and finally begin to run up against our limits.

As Quinn writes about "our civilization," he isn't referring to Western civilization or American civilization. He's talking about a way of life that depends on "totalitarian agriculture" that began in earnest in ancient Mesopotamia and breaks from tribal lifestyles. "Totalitarian agriculture" means using all of the available resources to plant your favorite foods and destroying anything (other plants, insects, other animals, other peoples) that stands in your way.

According to Quinn, this strategy results in a surplus of food, which prompts a population increase, which prompts the need for more food, which prompts a population increase, and so on. The food surplus also needs to be protected (locked up) so managers and guards (non-farmers) become necessary and hierarchical society is born. People have to work jobs in exchange for food rather than just taking it from the land (hunting and gathering) and doing some low-key part-time gardening (horticulture) as in tribal societies.

The expansion of population and food production causes war for land and other resources. Quinn explains that tribal societies can definitely be violent and fight with one another. But they don't try to wipe out other tribes, take over their territory, or subjugate them to their way of life. Only totalitarian agriculturists go to war, not because we are evil, but because our system of life depends on expansion.

Our civilization can also be identified by several unconscious assumptions, unique to us, that justify our survival strategy. One is that THIS civilization is what humans were meant to be. Our cultural narrative states that before us, there were ignorant half-evolved hunter-gatherer cavemen who evolved into modern farmers. Another way of saying it is that there is only one right way for humans to live, namely our way.

An additional underpinning belief of our civilization is that the Earth exists as a vast resource here solely for HUMANS to use for human purposes. As a short-term strategy, this works pretty well. Quinn points out that, as a long-term strategy, it is like constructing a high-rise building with bricks we've knocked out at random from the bottom floors. Humans depend on non-human systems of life. When we disregard these systems and destroy them, we die too.

This critique of our civilization is a common theme throughout Quinn's books. In My Ishmael, Quinn develops this theme to make some other fascinating points unique to this book. For instance, Quinn believes that our civilization's schools are primarily a way to keep children out of the work force in an "educational concentration camp." I had already encountered the same idea through a college professor and I don't completely agree. School may unintentionally serve that purpose but I don't believe it is a conspiracy set up by the business community or anyone else. Quinn did not explicitly claim a conspiracy but his discussion of the issue seemed to insinuate it.

In theory, our modern education system seems practical. Modern life is so complex and specialized that a broad education in the many disciplines seems prudent to prepare people for future work/living. Yet, it is extremely uninspiring for young people to study information that may or may not be useful in the distant future. Quinn contrasts our school systems with a tribal style of learning where all of the child's experiences within the tribe are personally relevant learning experiences. Learning and living are not artificially separated.

These ideas about authentic relevant learning resonated with me because I came to a similar conclusion while in college. I chafed under curricula of required subjects. I was trying to work out my own spirituality and also became interested in non-profit grassroots work. So, I concentrated on the college subjects relevant to my personal quests, while studying the minimum amount in order to achieve good grades in the other classes. I noticed that many of my peers and even the teachers themselves also focused more on tests and grades than subject matter. I often found myself putting off my required school work to pursue personal studies in philosophy, theology and non-profit organizing techniques.

Reflecting on these experiences at the time, it struck me that people will easily and enthusiastically learn what they are interested in. What people are most interested in seems to be knowledge that is necessary and RELEVANT to their immediate situation. Even with computer games I have had no interest reading the manual until I encountered a problem and required the knowledge to solve it. In fact, unless this book review strikes you as relevant to your personal experiences, you've probably already tuned it out.

I was also very happy to see Quinn include home schooling in his education discussion, since I was home schooled most of my life. His take on home schooling was correct. There are different styles of home schooling that sit on a continuum from mirroring a modern classroom to being close to the free-ranging tribal learning that Quinn describes in My Ishmael. Yet, home schooling is still far from being full-blown tribal learning, as it is constrained by government testing requirements. As a result, I knew kids who hated home school and actively resisted it as much as they resisted public school.

My absolutely favorite part of My Ishmael was Quinn's succinct comparison of "Taker methods" and "Leaver methods." Quinn calls the people of our civilization "Takers" and tribal peoples "Leavers." In Taker culture one makes products to get products. In Leaver culture one gives support/energy to get support/energy. Once again, I couldn't help but think of Burning Man culture.

A cornerstone of Burner culture is the idea that "the default culture" is completely pre-occupied with 24/7 commerce and thus very imbalanced. Quinn stresses this point too in My Ishmael and argues that we are devouring the limited world through our imbalance. Burners recognize that there are other kinds of value to which commerce does not and cannot apply. For instance, you cannot buy authentic friendship. Quinn also recognizes these non-commercial values and the fact that they relegated to minor positions behind commercial value in Taker culture. The neglect and deterioration of these other kinds of value is why Taker culture is actually destitute despite a wealth of products.

Burner culture is an attempt to rediscover these other categories of value. One of the ways we refocus on non-commercial value is by banning commerce at our gatherings and replacing it with a gift economy. This temporary ban gives us breathing room to explore new ways to rediscover, create and support non-commercial values.

A gift economy is exactly what Quinn describes as "Leaver economy": Give support (energy) to get support (energy). A gift economy is not a barter economy though. We don't "trade" support the same way one would barter with products. Support and energy cannot be accurately quantified and commodified like when we sell eight hours of our lives each day at a job. Even if one attempted to negotiate an exchange of one hour of support for another hour of support, the negotiations would fail to capture and guarantee the quality of support, which is far more important. Thus, in a gift economy, gifts are "freely given without expectation of return." However, there always seems to be a return on any energy investment in the community. A participatory gift economy, where gifts and energy are freely and spontaneously given, results in an amazing energy abundance that exceeds any managed and commodified ventures.

One of the things Quinn stresses is that when "walking away from this civilization," we shouldn't focus on giving up things but rather focus on the additional benefits we're getting. He states that people will only discard this civilization in exchange for something better. Many people will ignore talk about sacrifice and retreating to primitivism, so a positive alternative is key.

In my experience, this "something better than our civilization" must include FUN! At Burning Man, the potent mix of tribal Leaver economy and crazy fun motivates 50,000 people to spend a week camping in howling desert dust storms instead of vacationing at Disneyland or working their jobs. At our local Burn, InterFuse, 600+ people come camp in torrential spring thunderstorms for the same reasons. These gatherings lack many of the comforts that we've grown accustomed to, yet Burner culture and events are springing up locally around the world.

As I read more of Quinn's writing, I become increasingly excited about the importance of the Burner community. We're "changing minds," as Quinn would say, by actually demonstrating the benefits of neo-tribalism in a fresh, fun, and thoroughly modern way. And as we have fun, we get better at living tribally and can start to develop more tribal innovations and incarnations.

As I've written before, my hope is that some of these incarnations will make "jobs" obsolete and we can completely walk away from this civilization. I'm not sure what such a new culture might look like as a whole or how we would continue to make advanced technology without our present industrialized society. But I believe it is crucial to try to build such a society. With Burner culture we already have a good experimental beginning.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1529&subID=1027rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Zay Thompson) -- The Terror Of Loch Ness The Terror Of Loch Ness
by Che Elias with illustrations by Michael Hafftka
Six Gallery Press 2007
link
The Terror Of Loch Ness has been inhabiting my home for months. I approached this scary beast of a book about a dozen times before I finally sat and read the whole thing in one sitting. I had to mentally prepare myself before plunging in fully: every time I tried to read it, I fled in terror from its shockingly torturous nightmare of a world.

Elias gets into the head of his protagonist, a powerless young man menaced and destroyed by a monster who repeatedly sexually assaults him, his girlfriend (the abuser's daughter) and other youth. His world is small, claustrophobic, finite: his vision is limited: there is little hope of freedom or escape: there exists only survival and reaction. We know nothing of the world beyond his anxious, meandering inner monologue: he feels, he hurts: his entire being is consumed by the cancerous plague of dominance and violence inflicted upon him and his girlfriend by his rapist.

The Terror Of Loch Ness is a surreal yet visceral literary experience: you live and feel the pain of the victim while trying desperately to dissociate from the corrosive reality of his poisoned soul. The voice of the narrator is frighteningly authentic: in laying bare the psychic landscape of a sexual abuse victim, we perhaps understand better the constant shock and trauma: the sheer terror: of having one's life controlled by a noxious, sadistic troglodyte.
link
Elias' prose is accessible yet difficult, lucid yet elliptical, savage yet beautiful. He utilizes fragmented language, run-on sentences, unorthodox capitalization and punctuation: experimental stylistic quirks: in an effective marriage with raw emotion to craft a wholly singular work of extraordinary literary fiction. The text is broken up by distorted imagery of torment and suffering by illustrator Michael Hafftka, whose subtle yet jarring contributions complement the prose by sporadically shattering the hyperreality of the abuse, transforming it into pure nightmare.

Loch Ness is a dark, murky water: and drowning is your only option.

link
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1528&subID=1008rss_feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Ceramics http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1479rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Albert Schweitzer) Predicting 9/11
The background was decided first, an ancient stone bridge over a stream in a snow-shrouded landscape. Next, various characters demanded to people the scene as I rummaged through the possibilities. I cut them out and tried them, finally allowing only the chosen few to be stuck down.

I liked the result, and named it 'View from a Bridge'. Did it seem to be trying to tell a story or was it just a hotchpotch? I took it round to show a friend, John, who lived nearby. He said he thought it was very nice. Anyway, I'd enjoyed making it, the sort of trance it had put me in, and decided I'd make more in future.

That afternoon, back in my flat, I turned on the TV as I was getting my books together to go out to teach an evening class. On the screen was a shot of the World Trade twin towers in New York, one with smoke pouring from the upper stories. The commentator said a plane had crashed into it. I sat down and phoned John, who hadn't got a TV.

"You remember that film 'Towering Inferno'?" I asked. He did. "Well, it's happening now!"

I described what I was watching and as much as I knew. The commentator had suggested that it was an accident. Then suddenly, live in front of my eyes, the second plane appeared and shot into the second tower with a massive explosion. I told John. It was hard for me to believe, watching. It must have been harder for him, just listening to a shocked commentary.

I couldn't stay to watch more as I had to get a taxi to be at my lesson at a ceramics factory outside Istanbul on time. The students, who had been working before I arrived, hadn't heard the news. I was telling them about it when my cell-phone rang. It was John, saying that he was at a friend's watching TV, and the twin towers had just both collapsed! I told my amazed students the news.

On the way back home in the taxi that night I noticed long queues of cars lining up at the petrol stations.

'The price will go up because of this," said my driver, pointing to the radio, where all channels were devoted to giving news about the incident in New York.

"Nostradamus should have had something to say about it," said a Turkish friend next day, while we were talking about the attack. I took a book from the shelf - a secondhand Corgi paperback I'd bought a few years before but hardly looked at - 'The Prophesies of Nostradamus', translated, edited and interpreted by Erika Cheetham, published in 1973.

I was amazed at what I found:

Century 1 v87:
Ennosigee feu du centre de terre.
Fera tremblerau tour de cite neufeu:
Deux grand rochiers long temps feront la guerre,
Puis Arethuse rougira nouveau fleuve.

Ms Cheetham's translation read:
"Earthshaking fire from the centre of the earth will cause tremors around the New City. Two great rocks will war for a long time, then Arethusa will redden a new river."


But it was her interpretation of the quatrain, written thirty years ago, with its talk of exploding towers in the heart of New York, which made my jaw drop in the circumstances:

ATTACK ON NEW YORK?
"An explosion in the centre of the city of New York making the land tremble, or could tour here mean towers or skyscrapers? The two great rocks are the immutable great powers who will eventually open war. Ingenious commentators interpret Arethusa as coming from Ares, God of War, and U.S.A. The new river is presumably blood."

Seven years on and looking back on that day that changed the world, I'm still amazed by Erika Cheetham's accuracy. Her '70's interpretation of the two great rocks as 'the immutable great powers' might today be interpreted instead as the established religions of Christianity and Islam.

A footnote adds that Arethusa is a Greek nymph who in one legend changed into a stream, and as I look again at that collage picture I made on the morning of the eleventh of September 2001, just a few hours before the planes hit the towers and sent America to war, I wonder if 'View from a Bridge' could not equally be interpreted as an intuitive premonition of what was about to happen?

The little girl sitting on the edge of the bridge looking calmly down might represent America before the attack. She's unaware of the strange vicious-looking bird-creature swooping down on her, neck outstretched and claws ready.

The raving ravished nude on the other side of the bridge could be America after the outrage, again menaced by another attacking grotesque bird of prey - the second plane?
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Having crossed the bridge, two choirboys in surplices walk on in procession, each carrying a tall lit candle - signifying the two towers, now no more?

A dog at the streamside looks up and watches a naked woman tumbling down from the bridge. Many leapt from the twin towers to their deaths on that fateful day.

On one snowy side of the stream running under the bridge two stern-faced archers stand with bows drawn. They might represent the hijackers who took control of the planes.

On the other bank side Artemis (?) lies in the snow plucking arrows from a quiver, teasing a winged baby cupid. Behind, under the bridge, a hunting Native American has spotted something. He slowly puts arrow to bow. The theme of bow and arrow and flying missile strongly dominates the picture.

In the distance further downstream we see the long neck of the Loch Ness Monster emerging from the icy water. Bin Ladin? The conspiracy theories?

Does the smirking tiger at the front left of the picture represent the Tiger Economy?

And the bare breasted woman up to her hips in the stream in the center, feeding a white dove (symbol of peace) - is she the Arethusa of Nostradamus' prophesy, the Greek nymph who became a stream?

The stern-faced bowmen on the bank seem to be aiming at her. If they let fly, Arethusa will certainly "redden a new river".

But, hey, after all, it's only a picture, isn't it..?
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1509rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Michael Dickinson) Color Collages



]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1492rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Claudio Parentela) Puzzles Thanks to Craig Kaplan for assistance!

Need some solving help, or more puzzles like this? Visit krazydad.com/slitherlink.

Download: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1489rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Jim Bumgardner) Sickening Remains http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1525rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Jennifer Chesler) The Loa are Immanent
I was at work the other evening. I heard music. Nothing unusual about that. One almost always hears music sitting in Jackson Square. But this music was very halting. Very insecure. Very timid. A clarinet. I looked up.

There was this little white girl. I would guess about 10. She looked very middle class from the suburbs. She was standing in the doorway of the Pontalba apartments. She was very haltingly playing the clarinet while an older man (her father?) looked nervously around, holding her sheet music. Dad looked very uncomfortable. I could tell he was embarrassed to be there. He was humoring his daughter. And she knew she was being humored, and that Dad was uncomfortable. And that made it even harder for her to play well. He glanced at his watch, as if to try to find some excuse that his daughter needed to stop because they had to go someplace else. He was, as my mother would say, a stuffle.

She started to haltingly pick thru the notes of Ode to Joy by Beethoven. Now I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Ode to Joy, but it is one of those tunes which absolutely cannot be played badly, so long as one's heart is in one's playing. She was insecure. She was frightened. But her heart was definitely in her playing.

Despite the utter cacophony of Jackson Square, and this little girl's very hesitant playing, I was in rapture.

Then I heard an accompaniment. Out of nowhere. An older black man materialized. A highly skilled musician, whom I had never seen or heard before. Also playing a clarinet. He walked toward her, while playing the same notes as she was playing. Where she hesitated, he paused. He was a strong player, but he never over-shadowed or took center stage from her. Then when he got up close, he laid an empty cardboard box at the little girl's feet. Dad looked nervous. She smiled at her new accompanist, then pointed to the sheet music to show where she was in the piece, so he could play along. He smiled back and said. "You play what you know. I'll weave around you."

 She was more relaxed. She was more limbered up. He started playing along with her, matching her pace, then speeding it up slightly to help her adjust her timing. Then when she was sounding pretty good, he just took off and the music soared! He weaved in and around her notes. He played 5 or 6 notes for ever note she blew. I suspect Beethoven would be scribbling furiously, had he heard this guy play! Ode to Joy is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. I have heard it played a zillion times by many talented musicians, on a myriad number of instruments. But never have I heard it played anything like this before!

The little girl's Dad's jaw kinda hung loose, flapping in the breeze. Passersby put money in the box before the girl. They played other songs. Always she led, painfully picking notes from the sheet music. He listened to a bar, then joined in, weaving around her solo.

They paused. The girl inquired "Where can I get sheet music with the way you play!"

He laughed. He smiled a little shyly. "Not sure they make sheet music like that."

She frowned in consternation. "Then how did you learn how to play like that, if you had no sheet music?"

He kinda shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "I can't read or write. Not letters, not sheet music. I just listen a bit, then weave around what others play. I don't really know any tunes. I just play around what others play."

Shortly after, he moved on. He never asked for a cut of the money which had accumulated in the box. Neither the girl nor her Dad thought to offer him a cut. She kept playing. A lot more spirited than before. People passing by kept tossing money into the box at her feet. I saw at least one $20 bill. Dad's eyes got bigger and bigger. The little girl must have collected enough in an hour to pay for their hotel room for the night. Dad stopped looking embarrassed. He stood straighter. He stopped looking at his watch. He was proud of his daughter. And she stopped looking at the sheet music. Her fingers danced on the clarinet keys. She looked amazed. She watched her fingers like they were not hers, but belonged to someone else she was understudying. She started doing riffs not in Beethoven's original. beads of sweat formed on her face. She kept playing. The tempo was almost maniacal. She never missed a beat.

The old black man, he kinda just disappeared. I never saw where he went. I have not seen him since. None of the other musicians who work the Square ever saw him before.

I never said this to the little girl, or her Dad. I was afraid it might spook them. But that was the clearest case of a partial mounting I have seen in years. That girl did not have the skill, or the control, or even the concept of playing like that before she did her duet with that mysterious illiterate black man. Then he goes away, and suddenly she is playing in the same style as he was playing, at a skill level she could not previously approach.

The loa, when they like you, they come out and play.


Originally appeared in the LiveJournal Alobar March 3rd, 2005.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1530rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Alobar Greywalker) Egostructures http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_18.html?articleID=1500rss_feed@mungbeing.com (Krzysztof Wlodarski) Declining and Falling VALENTINIAN I, VALENS, VALENTINIAN II, GRATIAN and THEODOSIUS

Jovian's death again left the Roman world without a clear master. For above a week, although the functions of government, the dance of styli upon papyrus and wax, ministers in council ensured the public order, the throne was empty. The city of Nice in Asia Minor, not far from Dadastana was assigned the place of Imperial election. The civil and military power assembled there in due haste and in full glittering panoply. Once more the aged Sallust was bade to don the purple, and for a second time he refused, protesting the weight of years, his eloquence a tomb of rosy marble in which the notion of his accession was permanently lodged. Another conclave assembled at a table laden in helmet and scroll above which a procession of names was proposed and rejected, until that of one Valentinian was mentioned. His name caused little discord, and Sallust's recommendation ensured the destination of the purple. Valentinian was the latest species of the rough-hewn man of the countryside, the son of a rope-maker, tall, majestic and imposing, and he had flourished in military service, the arts of Mars his only expertise. Valentinian's rise in the ranks was rapid, and only temporarily checked when he had defied Julian and been exiled to Egypt for his bellow of contempt over Julian's espousal of paganism. The Persian campaign compelled Julian to recall Valentinian and this ensured his attendance in the gathering that ordained a sudden rise in his fortunes.

Valentinian accepted the purple, and at once, disdaining sole power, nominated his younger brother Valens to the Co-Emperorship. This news prompted a fearsome roar from the troops of utter disapproval over the Imperial choice, a meek figment unschooled in the bow and the blade. Valentinian quit the conclave, dashing out into the midst of the soldiers, employing his mighty lungs to silence their massed reproach, his authority certain and causing swords to suddenly double in weight, dropping again to the sides of the soldiers. Messengers were dispatched to inform Valens of his brother's elevation and of his own. Valens' eyes grew laden in a mist; he worshipped his older sibling and Valens tearfully declared that he would never forget his benefactor's generosity that overlooked his destitution of military skill and at once cheerfully acknowledged Valentinian his superior in genius and position.

In July of 364, Valentinian and Valens met near the city of Naissus in the Balkans, there to divide permanently, except for the brief reunion under the future Emperor Theodosius, the Roman realm into the Empires of the West and East. The two were indelibly severed and drew apart, becoming strangers and undoing and confounding the work and the conquests of Pompey and Crassus and their legions who had first brought the East into the Roman keeping above 400 years earlier. Aware of the grave dangers, a new eruption of barbarians encouraged by the demise of Julian that beset the western half of the realm and the relative tranquility of the eastern, Valentinian assumed the rule of the West while Valens inherited all from the Balkans to the confines of Persia and Nubia. At the private assembly, the two brothers embraced for the last time, Valens, his retiring melancholy glance blurring the form of Valentinian, all but overwhelmed by emotion and the vastness of his position. Valens then returned to Constantinople and Valentinian hastened to Milan to prepare his military campaign. It was unfortunate that Valentinian was appointed with great measures of majesty to the utter exclusion of prescience, as in September of 365, Procopius, who had left Julian to his doom in Mesopotamia, and, it was whispered, been secretly nominated by Julian as his successor and had retired into private life to calm the anxiety of Jovian was suddenly proclaimed Emperor of the East. Procopius had intended to remain in his quiet obscurity when the fears of Valens, ratified by Valentinian, seized Procopius out of the calm seclusion of his home and into the clamour of a public execution. He begged off the agents by a plea to embrace his weeping family, and, whilst his would-be captors were distracted by a passing amusement, Procopius artfully managed an escape and fled to a village past the Bosphorus where he then attempted to hide his person and submerge his name for some months until it became clear to him that his penury-smote hosts might be tempted by reward to betray his sanctuary. Procopius departed, not deeper into the wilderness of Thrace, but boldly into Constantinople, attended and encouraged by two friends who informed him of the ever-growing contempt for Valens, his own ministers disgusted by a charlatan of royalty, a stranger to governance and given to trembling and shrieked laments over his incapacity, prepared to advance the claim of a rival. Procopius considered the coarse iron of execution against the gold of a prince and resolved to assume the latter. Valens was at that time engaged in a martial operation on the Persian frontier, ineptly wooing the Army's amity, as Procopius, arranging for the defection of a Frankish cohort in the palace, making laden their purses, dressed himself in a thespian's purple robe and achieved the cheers of the populace, eager to see the overthrow of the pitiable Valens. Procopius quickly established his authority and extended its sway to the legions on the Danube, and attained the alliance of the Gothic chiefs beyond. The westward reaches of his new dominon secured; Procopius mustered his eager and animated soldiers and departed Constantinople on an eastward march, and all the legions sent to cast the usurper and his standard into the dust instead hefted both yet higher.

Valens received this intelligence with the basest of despair, casting away the scroll and sinking before his prefects, entwining their limbs in his arms and bathing their feet in a fresh explosion of tears. A sudden consideration convulsed his body and Valens at once arose, and dashed over to the window, casting about hysterical glances as though expecting the arrival of Procopius and his legions at any moment. Valens' underlings, with the greatest of difficulty, swallowed their scorn in the name of maintaining their own lives and positions and beseeched their Emperor to govern his passions. When Valens screams and shrieks had at last subsided to whimpers, they suggested that old Sallust, who had been dismissed, be returned to his position of authority as he could restore esteem to the purple. A general, one Lupicinus, quickly marched his Syrian legion westward in defense of Valens, and one Arintheus who had served under Julian on the Persian campaign and commanded the devotion of his troops, many of whom now marched on behalf of Procopius' claim, brazenly confronted Procopius with a force miniscule in numbers but vast in intrepidness. The road was suddenly blocked to Procopius' advance, a line of soldiers and shield spanning it. These parted to admit Arintheus, who calmly walked into the midst of Procopius' legion and ordered the arrest of their leader. The attachment to Arintheus was in full vigour and his directive was instantly obeyed. Procopius had been alerted by a few loyal centurions and again attempted flight, but the hopelessness of his situation inspired betrayal, and struck from off his horse, he was bound and handed over to Arintheus who at once brought down the axe upon the neck of Procopius.

Both Valentinian and Valens were deeply shaken by Procopius' revolt; the vehemence of Valentinian's temper vastly increased and the mildness of Valens was succeeded by a sudden fierce attention to his self-preservation at all costs, and these strode forth across the Empire swept upon a tide of scarlet. A prophecy in Rome of the Emperor's deaths by a pagan priest who had courted visions through herb-suffused wine was the occasion of an Inquisition, and the of the wealthy and the noble bound in irons, dragged through the streets to face the stern justice of the Inquisitor Maximin. Guilt was expunged in blood, torture, confiscation and the exile of any pagans who did not adopt a servile manner. Valentinian indulged his frightful rages to the full; minute transgressions to small to attract the attention of the Law were corrected by such bellowed instructions as "Burn him alive!" or "Beat him with clubs until he expires!" Maximin was applauded for his devotion to slaughter and awarded a governorship in Gaul, and yet further gratified Valentinian by sending him two savage bears direct from the Gaulish woods, which, suitably installed in cages, were kept by the Imperial bedside where they entertained Valentinian every time a felon or miscreant was abandoned to their teeth and claws.

Despite these excesses, in between his rages Valentinian could rule justly, even mercifully. Although a Christian, he maintained the general toleration of Julian and did not resume the zealotry of Constantius. Valentinian outlawed the practice of exposing infants at birth for such grave offenses as possessing a displeasing shape of skull, and despite the Inquisition set up at Rome, he considered that the earth was the compass of his rule and authority and happily abdicated the administration of higher realms to powers he regarded superior to himself. Julian had restored, and Valentinian had permitted to remain, the Statue of Goddess Victory, that focus of devotion in the Senate House that the ivory beards would present with oblations of wine and incense, which had been removed by Constantius. The temples were renovated and repaired for the last time and the Vestals continued to tend the eternal fire in security.

In the East, his brother Valens was far less inclined to co-existence. He punished the votaries of the old religion and, as an Arian, persecuted the Catholics, easily and unquestioningly inheriting the spiritual predilections of his baptizer who had confirmed him on the eve of his Persian enterprise. At length the Inquisitor was set upon the deluded and the impious in Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria and ultimately, led by a relentless Arian priest, a detachment of centurions went from monastery to monastery in Anatolia, butchering all Catholic monks to be found there, doing a true credit to the injunctions of their Lord.

This interior turmoil was matched by yet more invasions of the Frank, the Goth and others who again breached the frontiers only recently restored by Julian. Valentinian was obliged to spend the remaining years of his reign on a perpetual campaign against them and forestall their inroads and malevolence. Revolts and usurpations in North Africa and Britain were suppressed, Valentinian momentarily gratified, then again his face was the possession and plaything of fury as in 375, he faced eruptions of the Quadi tribes as they endeavoured to revenge a Roman treachery, the murder of their king, Gabinus. They crossed the Danube, overwhelming the weary and haggard forces there, and emulated the deeds of the old Gothic King Kniva, visiting desolation upon the Balkans. Ilyria was ravaged and the Danubian province of Moesia seemed all but lost. Valentinian flushed white, arose from his throne, and vowed to rectify the situation. A fresh levy of Gaulish peasants was raised who embraced an enthusiasm for the venture, impelled by a threat of the destruction of their villages if they refused the Imperial summons. They made a rapid march to the Danube and the Moesian capital of Sirmium, securing it. Valentinian was ignorant of the complaint of the Quadi, dismissed their emissaries at Sirmium, and sought to sate his outrage over the recent calamities in the Balkans. Valentinian passed the Danube and brought devastation to the Quadi's land, the vain lives of future warriors burned up in the ruins of their hovels. Embassies were sent to Valentinian's camp in order to prevent the execution of his planned second campaign that presumed to seek the extinction of the Quadi race. They were admitted into Valentinian's tent, and there, upon their knees, meekly attempted to plead the innocence of the greater part of their nation. They assured the Emperor that the invasion was the deed of rogue elements that had earned only censure and punishment and that his invasion was pointless and ultimately harmful to the aims of Rome. Valentinian was roused to a fresh display of wrath over their impertinence and this begat a interminable series of roars that elucidated the baseness and worthlessness and insolence of the Quadi before it turned its attentions to Valentinian's body, gifting it with an ashen pallour and uncontrollable convulsions. A blood vessel, intended to conduct a placid flow was submitted to a seething torrent and burst, Valentinian falling into the arms of his attendants. They attempted to disguise the situation with protestations of exhaustion, and quickly conducted Valentinian to his bed where he soon expired, incoherently exclaiming to generals and inquisitors to smite the Quadi and herb-swigging magicians of Rome.

The sudden death of Valentinian wrought the accession of his son, Gratian, to the Emperorship, and it was expected that a certain and uncontested elevation would be his, as his adolescent shoulders were attired in the purple to soldierly cheers. He had wed a grand daughter of Constantine and this also would have been expected to present him with a pedigree of limitless value, inducing the allegiance of any potential rival. However, Gratian dwelt in a palace at Treves, hundreds of miles distant from Valentinian's camp where there was a sudden release of the subjected and inert ambition of two army commanders, one Mellobaudes and one Equitius, who led legions from Italy and Ilyria. They proclaimed their intention to rule the West on behalf of a young boy, scarcely four years old. Determined to confound their enemies, they had invited the widowed Empress Justina to journey to the camp with her younger son, Valentinian II, and she duly arrived, displaying the wide-eyed and frightened boy to the clamour and the approbation of the troops who, with an affected tender air, dressed him in a bolt of miniature purple and adorned him with the Imperial ornaments.

These developments were speedily communicated to Gratian who was a stranger to affront, fearing the costs and dangers of exposing himself to a civil war and happily confirmed Valentinian II in his title. He bade the messengers to return to the camp with a suggestion that Justina and the boy retire behind the Alps to a comfortable and safe residence in Italy while he remain to face the rigours of Gaul alone. Valentinian's age prevented him from any exercise of power, and Gratian soothed his vanity by quaffing several goblets and promising himself that one day he would be revenged, Mellobaudes and Equitius would be chastised and that the young Valentinian II would be slowly relieved of the purple, one silken strand at a time.

In the East, Valens still ruled, a pathetic prince who still sought military glory and the regard of the legions. He engaged in a series of campaigns with an ever-increasing amount of Goths who were flooding to the Danube, their former valour blanched by terror. Valens was most quizzical over the sudden influx and was thereafter informed that the Goths were in flight from a furious tempest that was bounding out of the vast wilderness to the east, seemingly exhaled by Doom itself-THE HUNS.

This was a truly brutish race of savages who were born and lived on horseback, subsisted on raw horsemeat or the blood of their captives as was indicated in the deserts of their domain, as utterly destitute of the ability to yield crop to the hoe as they were of the very notion of such an implement. The Huns had originally smote China with their raids and deeds of violence, but a succession of mandarins had eventually introduced them to the strange concept of defeat and the riches of China lost to them, turned to the west. Over the centuries they migrated across the frozen steppe and trackless expanses of the desert, drawn onward by the hope of pasturage for their horses, their chariot and larder. These excursions brought them across the great rivers of Asia, passing the Ob, the Volga and across the Don, this last bringing them into the midst of the Goths, on whom these strange, dwarfish creatures fell as a tidal wave. Here, in the future Ukraine, the Goths had established had established a rudimentary kingdom, had even begun to exploit the natural plenty of the land, trading furs, honey, and wax for the wine and wares of the Empire. They had even taken to the plow and bade grain to rise from the land, showing every sign of great advancement since the primitive days of King Kniva.

This was shattered in an instant in 375 as the rapid advance of the Huns raced