The Tears of Things

A Midnight Waltz With Spirits

A midnight waltz in Chornobyl, now that's kicking death in the teeth.
--Martin Cruz Smith, Wolves Eat Dogs

by Jerome du Bois

It's been beyond disappointing, this past week, to witness the complete lack of response to Catherine's stunning post on her spirit photography. Her evocative illustrated narrative, for one thing, takes the reader on a journey through fear and into wonder, with side trips into making artworks out of what she has digitally captured as she tries to make sense of what has entered, and lingered in, our lives. And then the photographs themselves, fraught with mysterious beauty, beggar explanation, since they are simply point-and-click digital images made with a perfectly functional Canon EOS Rebel. No tricks, no manipulation, no mistakes, and yet they could stand right next to, and blow away, all the overwrought work by Jeremy Blake or Wolfgang Tillmanns or Gerhard Richter, not to mention all the "spirit photographers" out there with their corny websites. She considers it her masterpiece, which she worked on incessantly for most of the summer.

I can understand how most of the locals would ignore her piece. We've burned our ticket and our bridges in this toxic town --a place as poisonous as Chornobyl (yes, that's how they spell it in Ukraine)-- because we've pointed to both their lack of high artistic standards and their elevation of mediocrity and stupidity as worthy of exhibition. We're surrounded by small minds with degenerate appetites. So we're reduced to waltzing at midnight, all alone on this small bright screen, when I know that a show of these photographs, blown up on gallery walls, and accompanied by interactive audio of her story, would be compelling beyond words.

But it's those other visitors out there, in other states and countries, who really puzzle me.

From Michigan to Illinois to Maryland, from England to the Phillipines to Spain --nothing. They drop in, look briefly, and leave. It makes me wonder what happened to wonder. And the appreciation of haunted beauty. Hundreds of creepy websites will show you pictures of the dead, and dozens claim to exhibit ectoplasmic entities, but only this one displays the longing from the beyond, as these spirits, bereft of their beloved bodies, keep kicking death in the teeth --to no avail. It's life on earth they miss. Believe me, I've listened to lots of channelers in my time, and whoever or whatever was speaking through them, these entities never had anything to say about the landscape of the undiscovered country. Which leads me to believe it's no place to envy.

Please take more than a moment --take your time-- to study, really study, the photograph below.

Little House In The Big Graveyard, 2006. By Catherine King. All rights reserved.

Spirits, in their desperate desire for connection, reach out to touch the streaming light, and manage to bend it slightly, like lifting a woman's hair from the back of her neck. But they darken the sky with their presence as well. Many days they have lingered around our cabin door, in these hard times.

Perhaps, as Catherine has written, we two are cursed. Cursed by a door that opened and let in a flood of sadness and mystery, and the knowledge of our fragile contingency. A knowledge that others run from. But whether they look back or not, it's gaining on them anyway. So we stay and face the darkness and dance, invisible as the spirits that surround us.

Spirit Photography by King and du Bois: Haunting Evidence

Do not reproduce in any form

by Catherine King

A few months ago, I started getting back into paranormal photography. I told you about it in Speaking for Myself:

I've entered the world of Spirit Photography again.

Also in What Would They Say if I Blew (Myself) Away?:

Spirits, by way of my ghost camera, have tipped me off that I'm entering another phase in my life-- an OTHER phase.

For the first time in a long while, I'm capturing more than orbs. It's swirling tendrils of energy,

electric serpents,

spirit fire,

surging light beings,

and dimensions that are not on our earthly plane.

I've tried to put these (sometimes cropped, but otherwise unaltered) images in some kind of context, in presentations such as the ongoing and unfinished Updated Spook Tree, and Housefull Of Phantoms. There's also DEPART!; my plea for deliverence, as well as the digital net art --

Windows Are The Eyes Of The Soul, and

What Is It About Doorways?

The range of visual phenomena I've been capturing lately is exceeded only by those Jerome captured at The Reunion, two and a half years ago. On that most terrifying of nights, he recorded glimpses of many ghostly orbs, phantom people, apparent demons and even UFO's. I'll share with you what's left of that night later on in the post.

Never before have I really searched for explanations for the haunting imagery. Once I was able to accept our photographs as evidence of the paranormal, I didn't speculate much further. I explained my stance in Photography by Catherine King: Meet My Collaborators:

They really are there, okay? And they feel like the dead. That's all I can say with assurance; anything else would be speculation. I suppose that's what they do on the orb site chat rooms -- speculate to their heart's content. What Jerome and I do is make art from our ghost photos -- presented with all the mystery, and the sensitivity to their message, intact.

Things Bright and Beautifull

Roomfull Of Phantoms

Crowd of Witnesses

I had come to feel that . . . other people's metaphysics were, and are, of no use to me . . . I have to wrestle with my own findings, according to my personal tradition . . . Questions and issues of our mortality and immortality must be worked out mano a mano . . .

But more than just the camera is different in this new phase and era. I've changed. It's the time of the season to examine the core of all the problems in my life. I'm beginning to allow myself to reflect that

I'm not just haunted -- I'm cursed . . . Why us with all the paranormal photography? Are spirits really crowding around everything all the time? Or do Jerome and I attract entities, malevolent as well as harmless ones?

Listening to my inner voice, I can hear the word "Spiritualism" resonating like a ringing bell. I feel I'm being directed to do more than snap the shutter and assemble photomontages. It seems I should embark on a posting about these light anomalies.

The following text is part of my first piece of Ghost Photo Art -- Crowd of Witnesses.

The text, inked through drafting templates onto acetate, encircles a digital photocollage and describes in honest and heartfelt terms the beginning of my adventure with Spirit Photography:

When we finally got online around the middle of last summer, I was thrilled. Soon I discovered those paranormal sites that post uploaded photographs of supposed ghosts and spirits. Fascinated, I decided to try some DIGITAL SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.

I began when a super powerful monsoon swept through the valley and knocked out the electricity. For hours that night we sat in the dark and questioned the finality of death. Every so often, I pointed the camera to the blackness around us and clicked the shutter.

Four days later the electricity was restored and we downloaded the pictures from that stormy night. The universe was about to start reeling. Some of the photos showed DISTINCT LUMINOUS ORBS, as large as a yard in diameter, hovering in midair in our living room! They looked just like a lot of the images on the internet sites, only bigger.

As we examined our captured images I felt strangely frightened. I wasn’t really prepared to find ghosts or spirits in our own home. And they were so easy to capture. Six out of seven photos showed the baffling images. What did that imply?

Did it mean our apartment was haunted? Neither of us sensed anything supernatural at home- no cold spots, no disembodied voices. But the pictures were graphic evidence that something otherworldly was right in our living room!

I believed that some of the photos on the internet were bound to be fakes. Others were certainly flukes. I could also believe that some were genuine. But one thing I knew for sure; there was no question but that our photographs were genuine.

I put down the camera. For the next few weeks I examined my beliefs about what is possible. I needed a broader concept of reality before I could continue with spirit photography. The orbs must have always been existing with humanity, I told myself. We just couldn’t see them before we had digital technology.

Suddenly I was confronting a profound terror inside myself. I felt an alienating fear of my most familiar and intimate surroundings. I scared myself when I was alone at home, picturing spectral spheres all around me. I didn’t want to walk through a spot where an orb had been, even though I’d captured them pretty much all over our apartment. I couldn’t function if I was afraid to move about my own home. I had to come to terms with this new reality.

Truly, the unknown is all around us, all the time. This is reality. For days I struggled with my new realization. I looked back at myself, before I knew about the orbs, almost as if I had been another person. Pragmatically and reverently, I came to accept that we the living are surrounded by those who are not. Again I picked up the camera, empowered by having overcome my fears and accepting the mystery that has always been. Now I was ready to document this cosmic phenomenon.

It is my observation that the orbs have personality-like behavior. I often capture them floating in front of our wall art. They always hover above our projects as they lay spread out on tables. Over and over I find orbs resting on our computer keyboard. Wherever we do creative work, it seems they are lingering. The orbs in our apartment seem to linger in groups. It appears we are living elbow to elbow with spherical spirits. By extension then, could it be that THE ENTIRE PLANET IS COVERED WITH A CLOUD OF SOULS?

It was the summer of 2002 when Jerome and I bought a new computer and the Apple people included a digital camera with the package. So it's been four years now since the Other World has been offering me undeniable evidence of its existence. I probably wouldn't have believed all these wonders without the pictures to prove them.

As I noted in Crowd of Witnesses, it's amazing how much "We just couldn’t see . . . before we had digital technology." This technology has the capacity to extend our perception far beyond what we have come to accept as The Here and Now. Perhaps your camera, like mine, will lead you to expanded realms of personal growth. You might be able to say, as I did, "I looked back at myself, before I knew about the orbs, almost as if I had been another person."

Casting my mind back to the profound revelation that was our first batch of orb photographs, I'd have to say I hadn't actually expected to capture anything paranormal. It started as a lark in the dark -- something entertaining to get through a stormy night in a creepy old apartment without electricity. It's been quite a soulfull adventure since then --a spiritual voyage undertaken in a digital vessel. It's mysterious, frightening, humbling and extremely interesting.

In an earlier post, I reviewed How to Photograph the Paranormal, by Leonore Sweet, Ph. D. She quotes Dr. Alan Meyer-- The orbs movements are lifelike as they demonstrate they have emotions, intelligence, and attitude.

I noticed orbs displaying the same personality-like behavior, as I've documented with many photographs. Orbs and other spirits attach themselves to fashion, flowers, flags, crucifixes, doors, windows, lamps, TVs, and tools.

Sweet is wrong when she advocates detachment from the world:

Attachment to the things of this world keeps us bound to it and incapable of experiencing spiritual enlightenment.

My interpretation from the body of original paranormal photography that Jerome and I have accumulated, is that detachment is against our human, and spiritual, nature. A host of photographs, along with the psychological effects of haunting, have led me to conclude that Life and the Afterlife are all about attachment and lingering longing. I'm going to use the Spirit Photography of King and du Bois to try to convince you of that. We'll also have a fascinating time just looking at a Very Large Array of different paranormal phenomena.

Let's begin with this poignant picture of an orb following Jerome and me as we strolled through our historic neighborhood on Christmas night, 2004. The delicate darkness is so deep and so beautifull, with its tiny shiny jewels on black velvet. I bet the deceased is remembering Christmases past, wishing they were still alive to share more. If your monitor is good enough, you can see the subtle tonal variations in the large tree.

This charming subdivision is old enough to have many huge, mature trees-- fairly rare in Phoenix. Jerome and I feel that orbs, and other spirits, love trees. You'll see many more examples of that love throughout this post. Anyway, isn't that a mysterious-looking illumination in the tree behind the orb? It doesn't really look like Christmas lights to me.

Jerome captured this moving orb right in front of the big, old house across the street. He was standing no more than six feet from the orb, which would make it about as big as a beachball, we figure.

Though their world may be one of eternal night, it feels like the orbs yearn to return to the world of the living. They long to come home. It's as if this orb, like countless people throughout time, is saying "Leave the light on . . . Don't forget me . . . "

Our big, old, backyard is full of paranormal phenomena. The orbs out back seem to be lingering on the outside, looking in. I find this observation more sad than creepy. I captured this curious orb right after we moved into our Little House in the Big Graveyard. Very soon afterwards I made and hung the heavy curtains over the French doors.

Once I would have been unnerved about having them out there, like supernatural Peeping Toms , but by now I know that some invisible body is always watching everything.

Sweet: Many orb photographers report having . . ."personal" orbs . . .

I must be one of those photographers. My personal orb is named the Beautifull Stranger.

Here's the Beautifull Stranger moving around during the day.

The Beautifull Stranger appears and reappears over and over in the same spots in the backyard. That's another quality I've noticed about orbs and other spirits-- their obsessive persistence (kind of like me).

Enlarged crop:

A detail view:

Here's a closeup:

The Beautifull Stranger seems to love the little mango tree as much as Jerome and I do.

I lay off the spirit photography from time to time, for various reasons. After one of these breaks I captured this lovely portrait, which has been very popular on the internet. I call it Return of the Beautifull Stranger:

Some skeptics will tell you that orb photos are flying bugs. Not our photos. Here I captured some orbs and a moving bug in the same photo, and you can clearly see the difference.

Here's a closeup of the bug. How fast do you think digital cameras must be in order to freeze a bug in midflight like that? Then consider how fast the orbs must be moving when they leave those blurry trails behind them. Faster than a speeding bug . . .

Jerome and I didn't photograph "in the field" until we were a year into the spirit photography. That's when we moved from the Haunted Apartment to the Little House in the Big Graveyard. The apartment was our haunted photo studio for the first twelve scary months.

There's no telling what traumatic and tragic events transpired in those fifty-year-old rooms. I captured hundreds of eerie moods there. A long time ago I showed you a variety of them in slideshows that I posted on my defunct electronic grimoire, Tin Flame. The slideshows, especially Dark Mood Descending, artfully captured the oppressive atmosphere in The Haunted Apartment. The place lives in my mind even now. When I close my eyes I can-- I don't want to go there!

There used to be a great second-hand store on the south side of Camelback Road, just west of Central Avenue --Pink Flamingo. It was the mother of all second-hand stores. It's been torn down now to make room for the light rail system. But a few years ago, Jerome and I went there to look for a lamp for The Haunted Apartment, in an effort to disperse its engulfing darkness.

We found one alright. It's one of those midcentury freeform tree-like things. It was a lot less expensive than similar ones I'd seen in antique shops-- only $25. It's truly vintage though as can be seen from the cord and old-fashioned plug. Both prongs on the plug are identical and you don't see appliances with that feature anymore.

We had no idea the lamp was paranormal when we brought it back to our dismal digs. The orbs were the first supernatural beings we discovered in our haunted home. Those initial interior shots in the old apartment nearly drove me over the edge. After that, in order to convince myself that it all was real, and I wasn't crazy, I madly rushed from room to room taking digital photographs.

It was then that we discovered the most definitive of all the spirits who shared our home with us. It seemed this individual had attached itself to the second-hand lamp from Pink Flamingo. There it was, in the background of some of the orb photos, emitting its sci-fi mystery beam.

You can clearly see that the bulb itself is emitting the beam, which is comprised of some sort of digitized matter.

Living in a haunted home does bizarre things to one's psychology. Some of you reading this will know that it's true. After a while, I came to think of this creepy appliance as a new addition to our little family. It posed quite compliantly for many portraits.

From Roomfull Of Phantoms:

Crouching in the corner of the bedroom, the view that I saw between several open door frames was spellbinding. There was the Haunting Lamp, just sitting up on the dining room table, perfectly framing itself in the crack between the worlds -- that’s what it looked like. Seen through the length of the dark bedroom, past the shadowy alcove that was the little vanity room, through another doorway and there it was -- shining with its eerie glow from two gloomy rooms away.

I became riveted by that slice of pink light that beamed to me from some other dimension, just the other side of the furthest doorway. How impressive of the Haunting Lamp to present this unforgettable imagery, I thought. Once again, this so-called inanimate object had expressed itself with powerful poignancy.

Sometimes the Haunting Lamp projected its beam, sometimes it chose not to do so.

Sometimes the base of the lamp seemed to shrink and vanish, so that the eerily glowing bulb was all that remained.

It had the ability to affect the surrounding atmosphere, making it appear as though our apartment was submerged in a bottomless sea of loneliness . . .

The Haunting Lamp revealed itself as a very depressed existential human, longingly looking in vain for a like-minded soul. Here it is with another, inanimate lamp. If the beam phenomenon from the Haunting Lamp is actually only a malfunction of the camera's light sensor, then why isn't the ordinary lamp beaming as well?

The Haunting Lamp could move at times. I couldn't see the movement, even though, obviously, I was looking at the lamp through the viewfinder as I photographed it. I think that kind of motion is too fast for our eyes to register. We'll take a closer look at supernatural speed later on in the post.

Notice the stem of the bulb appears unnaturally wide in the photos above and below. The camera captured its movement through space as a single thickened image.

See how the lamp moves, though its pedestal remains stationary, in the image below.

The Haunting Lamp defied the physical laws of our known universe in other otherworldly ways as well. Notice its beam in the image below.

Here the Haunting Lamp sits on a work table in front of the bookcases which are against the far wall of the living room. The work table is approximately 10' beyond the double doorway between the living room and the haunted den, in which I was sitting as I photographed this phenomenon. And yet, the very solid beam of the Haunting Lamp passes uninterrupted past the upper frame of the folding doors and rises to the ceiling. According to our present understanding of physics, the top of the door frame should block the beam and we would only see it in front of the door frame if the Haunting Lamp were sitting directly under the door frame, between both rooms, or else sitting in front of it, in the haunted den. In other words, light from a 40-watt household bulb does not normally bend.

Sweet: I believe orbs, vortexes, ectoplasms, and apparitions are all made of the same stuff, and most authorities say that is some sort of low-energy plasma. Plasma, called the fourth state of matter, is a collection of ionized particles that produce light from the movement of its atoms' electrons. The light forms are capable of taking different forms depending upon the energy available to them, just as water, ice and steam are all water but their forms are dependent upon temperature.

The photo above, and the twenty embeds that follow, were all taken from the same vantage point, as I sat in the exact same spot in the tiny haunted den. As you will see, several light forms manifested themselves there. My observations bear out Sweet's contention that light forms are capable of taking different forms, as it seems these five different manifestations -- the electronic burst, the orbs, the ectoplasm, the Bright Things, and the TV spirits, all had the same source.

The first to show itself was the intense burst of electronic energy.

Very early in my paranormal studies (it was four years ago, so I don't remember where), I read that the first appearance of a spirit in a highly charged atmosphere will often be a dramatic light display, such as the above image. Sort of an excited hello. Indeed this was the very first picture I took from inside the haunted den looking beyond to the living room. The air crackled quite audibly as I clicked the shutter, and the viewfinder lit up like a light show. I also captured one of these displays the first time I pointed the camera into our bedroom at the Haunted Apartment, as I wrote in the text accompanying Roomfull Of Phantoms.

This overwhelming display used the whole picture frame, because it spread across the entire viewfinder. Yet not a trace of the scene directly in front of me, the one you'll see in the next nineteen shots, was visable. Just this compelling electronic greeting.

Here we go with a living room orb. The living room was actually our art studio -- many artists can relate to that -- and the orbs seemed fascinated in whatever Jerome and I were putting together. We had a sense that they were always there, looking over our shoulders.

This apparition is the closest thing to ectoplasm that we've captured, though it doesn't have that dispersed irregularity so typical of other people's ectoplasm photos. It looks something like a surging light being. Interestingly though, it's not using any light source, but is self-illuminated.

It was in the same space, by the double folding doors between the den and the living room, where the Bright Things made their visitation. Night after night, week after week, I would be wakened in the haunting hours. As quickly as possible, I fumbled my way through the scary vanity alcove and into the miniscule kitchen. Then turned the light on and started some coffee, though my actions did little either to dispel the darkness or warm the place. I knew they were waiting for me . . .

I went to take my place in the den. Huddled in a comforter on the floor, I reached over and turned on the international news for mute companionship. Then picking up my camera and turning it on, I looked through the viewfinder. The Bright Thing was still there, glowing on the door frame before me.

This was one phenomenon that was visable before the photograph was downloaded, before the picture was even taken, as a matter of fact. That was one of its aspects that made it feel so alive. Or maybe not alive so much as intelligent. It was some kind of being alright -- a Blue Light Being.

Also adding to the impression that the Blue Light Being was intelligent, with intent, was the fact that it moved through space,

from the wall to the folded door.

It could willfully change its appearance, as well. Sometimes the Blue Light Being was a soft-edged spot, but it could also asume a harder, digitized form.

As it became more familiar with our earthly terrain, the Blue Light Being moved off the folded door to hover in midair. This small step was actually a giant leap forward, as it clearly indicated that the Bright Thing was unattached to any surface; reflective or otherwise.

Mostly it felt like an impersonal, professional explorer. But when the apartment was really dark, the Blue Light Being looked menacing, like one malevolent eye, peering through the shadows at me.

I became so frightened that dark, haunting hour when the second Bright Thing joined the scout. Now there were two aliens observing me!

Together they maneuvered like miniature craft from some other world, there in the deep space between our haunted den and living room.

Here's the original Blue Light Being, looking so crisp you could count its pixels, even as it's submerged in supernaturalism. And the second Blue Light Being has transformed itself into an orb . . .

The Blue Light Beings traveled on after a month or so. I guess they had other realms to explore. Because they felt so alien and distant, Jerome and I chose to represent them as a double spiral galaxy in our Ghost Photo Art. We printed out hundreds of photos of the Bright Things, cut them out around their contours, arranged them in this swirling motif and glued them down on deep indigo velvet to make Things Bright and Beautifull.

Did you notice that the Bright Things look like thermal images of pressure points? That's very much what they felt like, too. As though some extraterrestrial spirits were poking their phantom fingers into the mouth of our earthly cave, touching the veil that separates us and saying "See, we're here! and here! and here!"

I feel like them with my art-making and my writing -- invisibly persisting.

Electricity- compare light display, beam and bright things

I guess I'd have to call myself a sensitive, because I feel things. The atmosphere in the tiny haunted den would become almost unbearably frightening when the TV spirits were manifesting themselves. Jerome may have been right in front of me, in the living room, working on some art project. Yet it felt as though a million miles of black space separated us. When that very scary charge filled the den, I knew the TV spirits were ready to be captured.

Now, I have already confessed in several postings, that I watch a lot of TV news -- especially since 9/11. I feel that the spirit world is very concerned about current events. After all, the news comprises the very substance of our lives and times. Maybe the TV spirits were using my feelings, and fears, about this dark era and amplifying them.

I've seen some other people's TV spirits on internet sites. As I recall, their TVs are usually turned off when the ghosts appear on the screen. The phenomena I captured were different. It seemed the spirits were manipulating the look of the active screen as well as the feeling evoked in our spooky little den. This next image is a beautifull example of the dark atmosphere that would overcome the apartment, the Haunting Lamp, the TV and me as I became one with my environment and slipped away, untethered, into some profoundly desolate space . .

Some readers will be familiar with The Tears of Thing's pink series -- It's Not a Rose-Colored World, and Wearing Pink Won't Make It So(link). For just about one full year, Jerome and I have taken hundreds of photographs of pink-clad newscasters, and never captured anything even remotely spooky-looking, like I did with my screenshots from the Haunted Apartment.

The image below could be the spirit of a man choosing to make himself visible on our TV. Who knows for sure? I can tell you that the screen is displaying more than what was being broadcast.

Here's a closeup. Is it a portrait of a dead man? Because it's not Jerome's reflection. He was behind the TV, in the living room, working on some art.

There's the Haunting Lamp in the background of every one, looking like the cat who ate the canary. Coincidence?

It seemed to be affecting the atmosphere, maybe even directing the scene. Sometimes the Haunting Lamp set up that submerged look . . .

at other times it focused supernatural spotlights on eerie omens of hard times yet to unfold.

Yes, the Haunted Apartment definitely had a spooky feeling about it. When we moved into this little house the atmosphere at home seemed so much lighter and brighter. Well, you can imagine it would, with windows all around us, on all four sides. It's a completely different feeling from being pressed in on the right and left by the dark walls of some strangers' cubicle, like it is when one lives in an apartment.

If I took hundreds of photographs in the Haunted Apartment over those twelve scary months, since we moved here I must have taken a thousand photographs out in the big backyard. It's been such an inspirational studio, whether I set up my subjects outside -- the flowers, the fashion -- or use those that wait out there for me -- the orbs and the other anomalies.

What with the wealth of material outside, I've been reluctant to open Pandora's Box with more inside photography. True, there were some early flower photographs taken just inside the living room window, and all those tight screenshots for the Pink series. But I resisted interiors until a few months ago, and when I finally took some you saw the results with DEPART! and Housefull of Phantoms.

Leonore Sweet says You cannot take double exposures with a digital camera to get a ghostly effect on your picture, either fraudulently or accidentally. This jumbling up of space, the juxtaposing one plane with another that you see in these photographs, really disoriented me. It wasn't like, "Oh, here's our bedroom wall and there's an orb floating in front of it." Or "There's the crucifix with a Blue Light Being beside it." In front of and beside were now amorphous constructs.

Once again I allowed myself to consider I'm not just haunted -- I'm cursed . . . Why us with all the paranormal photography? Are spirits really crowding around everything all the time? Or do Jerome and I attract entities, malevolent as well as harmless ones? I listened to my inner voice, burned sage, and made up my mind to write this post. Thus I helped myself by intensifying my focus.

What is it about doorways? I started pondering this question way back in the Haunted Apartment. My findings thus far indicate that doorways attract spirits and will forever retain their aura of mystery.

A new phase of experimentation had begun. I picked up the camera and backed out of the vestibule through the French doors, so that I was just on the outside, looking in. One of their favorite vantage points. Then I took this shot:

It's almost unrecognizable. But as you look through the vestibule and living room, you can just make out the little chair that sits by the front door and the mirror that hangs above the chair. And there are the chair and mirror again, for good measure.

There are physical doorways and then there are portals . . .

In the next photograph, I have backed further out into the backyard, still focusing on the French doors, which are now closed. There's a dim light inside the house; the house presents a dark silhouette against the twilight of the sky. The sun has set. Therefore, the red arcs in the upper right and the parallel gray bands through the middle of the photograph cannot be lens flare.

Look closely at the parallel gray bands. I have seen similar diagonal flutters in several other portal photographs. These fluttering motifs do not seem to be derived from any objects in the pictures. Sometimes the stuttering haze comes out of nowhere and flies across the vine-covered, and thus light-absorbing, roof.

Or the feathered luminosity soars over the heavy foliage on the stoop.

These backyard portal pictures take on a variety of appearances. Space and gravity ignore all rhyme and reason -- see the red rakes levitating in the photo above?

The doors and windows channel ghostly fire.

We never know what to expect. Conditions could call for a fog of cotton to fall. Then again, sometimes the backyard seems to sink to the bottom of a supernatural sea.

But just once in all the legions of photographs -- it must have been a Blue Moon -- I captured this moody shade:

The next two photographs were taken from the same vantage point as those portals above -- standing before the mango tree looking at the back of the house. But powerfull entities intervened and inserted some alternate universe into that slice of space.

That may be a white lightning spirit snake above, but what is the very substantial jolting bolt of yellow below?

The same spooky trees appear in the upper left of both photos.

Turning away from the house, one can see that the yard is surrounded on three sides by twenty foot high oleanders. Here are a couple of photographs of the flowering oleanders in daytime.

I call these Oleander Heaven and Oleander Paradise.

The old backyard is about a quarter of an acre. No wonder it's a portal because nothing's ever been built back there -- not a patio, ramada, swimming pool, basketball court, tennis court, guest house, play house, or dog house.

The little mango tree and the spirits have the big backyard all to themselves.

One of the things I find intriguing about this portrait of the mango tree is the way the spirits have taken the red of the rake in the background and trailed it across the image. I mean, the red is just pigment, not a source of illumination, but here we see RED distinguishing itself from the other colors by virtue of its behavior.

Spirits love trees. And being an animist, I also believe that trees have spirits. I went out at dawn one morning and captured this image of the spirit of the little mango tree as it was trembling with the joy of life. Together we gratefully celebrated the beginning of another day in the Land of the Free.

To be continued

The Grinning Devil (Updated)

by Jerome du Bois

Alex Ginsburg, a religious studies senior at Arizona State University, is an evil man. He is not misinformed, he is not a fool, and he is not an idiot. He knows exactly what he's doing and what he's saying. From the freedom and security of his home here in the United States, where nobody will break down his door and haul him off to a hellhole jail for what he writes, he extols fidel castro and laughs at the suffering of ordinary Cubans while he stuffs his face with organic food from Gentle Strength Co-op.

It is evil to know the tragic truth and yet print vicious lies. It is just as evil to do so in a smarmy tone of voice.

What's a little suppression of political dissent when people can get treatment for diabetes? What are a few innocent human rights violations when people have access to locally grown produce without toxins? What's a little communism when Cuba is contributing less to global climate change than the rest of us?

I think it's high time we lure Fidel away from Cuba and help him paint the White House red. Health and vegetables will more than make up for his $900 million compensation.

The truth about Cuba's health care system is just one mouse click away. Take a look at these pictures from The Real Cuba website, and while your stomach is churning, remember that Alex Ginsburg, that human toxin, is enjoying your discomfort and these people's pain.

No doubt the Religious Studies program at ASU, which awarded him a Jewish Studies Scholarship last year, is quite proud of him --the little grinning devil.

(Hat tip: Val Prieto, Babalu Blog. Also, here's a link to our Cuban Art Series.)

Update 8/22/06: I received a response from Mr. Ginsburg, which I have reproduced in full, with fisking, after the jump. In it, he shows that he has completely adopted the heartlessness of what I call the zombie dispositions.

In contrast to your blog post on my article, I will not resort to petty personal attacks. I neither know you, nor am I interested in knowing you.

Right back at ya, man. Your heart is a grave.

Also, being called 'evil' or a 'human toxin' does not really bother me as I am a radical relativist and I am generally in favor of anything that will lessen the human population impact on the global ecosystem (and being a 'human toxin' would do that, yes?).

Reality isn't relative, though, and doesn't care about his philosophical position. And he is saying here that he considers the highest species on this planet a kind of plague, and apparently wouldn't mind if he himself were taken out of the equation.

I looked at the Real Cuba website (which other readers also alerted me to) and, while noting some of the charges, cannot accept this website as a reputable source of information. My information on the healthcare situation in Cuba comes from the World Health Organization, which is a reputable international NGO. If my information is wrong, it is because this non-partisan group has compiled inaccurate information which has subsequently passed a peer review process.

I referred him to photographs, not "charges." Photographs of reality, not third-hand "information." Partisanship has nothing to do with it. Oliver Stone could have taken the pictures, and that wouldn't change the misery that cries out from them.

As for the information on sustainable agriculture my information comes from: Environment: The Science behind the Stories. S.R. Brennan & J.H Withgott. Benjamin Cummings, 2005.

This is a hundred-dollar textbook. I suggest he exchange it for Ben Corbett's "This is Cuba," where the case studies are much more down to earth. Corbett is a socialist, as far as I can tell, highly critical of the United States; but that doesn't stop him from looking straight at the dolorous Cuban reality.

Furthermore, I believe you misundertood the point of my article. My aim was not to deify Castro - certainly, he has supressed political dissent and injured a significant part of the population. My article was an attempt to demonstrate that we (as Americans) should not pretend to live in a perfect system and that even those political systems that we despise have created great successes (and I consciously extend this beyond Cuba). Rather than villify other regimes, we should attempt to improve our own.

But he made light of the dissent and the injury; the ongoing domestic political debates prove that nobody is pretending that we live in a perfect system; and Castro's Cuba has not created great successes. There's never enough rice, or beans, or tomatoes, or sugar, or flour, or coffee. No ordinary Cuban can live from the libreta. Nothing is sustained but hunger. And it's not a matter of "despising," it's a matter of human dignity, freedom, and justice, all of which are victims of this regime.

Finally, you note that I received a Jewish Studies scholarship last year. You have no idea under what conditions I was awarded that scholarship. At my University scholarships are awarded on the merit of scholarship, not the political opinions (published or otherwise) that a person may have.

Yet another great tradition, which includes Talmud and Kabbalah, slides down into disrepute, if they reward a man like this. Ari the Lion is roaring in his grave.

The Children of Ishmael

by Jerome du Bois

While we in the Western world recoiled in horror at the British baby bombers, the Islamic jihadists were sneering at our sensitivity. The Wahhabist/Salafist Sunnis and the Khomeinist Shias chuckle up their sleeves when we show our shock at the cruel manipulations of the Green Helmet Man. They think we're weak. But we know they are evil. How did they get that way?

They have been carefully taught by their male imams to hate women, themselves, this earth, and human life itself. And how are they taught? By widespread, culturally-sanctioned child sexual abuse. Whether in the Middle East, Afghanistan, or their self-created European ghettos, male and (some) female Muslims turn their humiliation into hatred. (By way of contrast, to my knowledge, not one of the many thousands of victims of child-molesting Catholic priests has blown himself or herself up in a crowd of people.)

We are still waiting for the publication of The Sheik's New Clothes, by Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Yoram Schweitzer, which I first heard about two years ago. This book details the dynamics of the shame/honor culture of Islam. Phyllis Chesler, who writes the introduction to the book, offers a glimpse of its contents in The Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Terrorism, which I will link to but won't quote. It's too disgusting.

It makes me so angry to even have to discuss this kind of thing, but this hellhole is where Islam leads. It is no accident that Sayyed Qtuf, horrified by the freedom of American women in the Fifties, spawned modern Wahhabism. It is no accident that Mohammed Atta was terrified at the prospect of a pregnant woman approaching his dead body or his grave. It is no accident that Seattle jihadist Naveed Haq shot women.

And this kind of perversity may have ancient roots, with evidence in what Christians call the Old Testament.

In 1997, Jonathan Kirsch wrote The Harlot By The Side Of The Road: Forbidden Tales Of The Bible. Though some critics called it sensationalistic, it is hard to argue with his scholarship and philology. On pages 49 to 52, he retells the story of the banishment of Ishmael, whom many Arab tribes consider their ancestor. In the section called "What Did Sarah See?" he writes:

The disappearance of four words in an early version of the biblical text raises the intriguing if troubling prospect that the Bible also records an incident of incestuous child molestation, a notion so shocking that it may have been literally written out of the Bible by the rabbinical censors. Did Ishmael, the firstborn son of the patriarch Abraham, molest his five-year-old brother, Isaac?

Recall that Ishmael is the child of Sarah's handmaiden, the Egyptian Hagar, and Isaac is Sarah's own child, conceived when she was ninety years old. In fact, when she overheard God's promise to Abraham that she would get pregnant, "she laughs, almost literally, in God's face." The name Isaac means "I laughed."

And now the Bible shows us a deeply enigmatic scene [Gen. 21:8-10] in which we find the fifteen-year-old Ishmael at play with his five-year-old step-brother at a feast in celebration of the fact that Isaac has been weaned (at last!) from the breast. But the festivities are ruined for Sarah because she happens to see Ishmael doing something to Isaac, something so disturbing that Sarah promptly demands that Ishmael and his mother be "cast out" in the wilderness a second and final time.

Exactly what does Sarah see, exactly what does Ishmael do, that prompts such anger and outrage in Sarah? All we are told in conventional English translations of the Bible is that Sarah sees Ishmael "mocking" young Isaac --and we are asked to believe that, thanks to a single adolescent taunt by one sibling toward another, Sarah drives mother and son into the desert to die.

Unless, that is, she saw something much worse than mere mockery.

The Hebrew word translated as "mocking" is t'sahak. Kirsch goes on:

One of the meanings of t'sahak is "laugh" --a play on Isaac's name-- and that's the one on which the translators, old and new, have relied in suggesting that Ishmael merely "mocked" or "laughed at" Isaac. What the translators are reluctant to let us know is that another meaning of t'sahak is "fondle," and the original Hebrew text of the Bible may suggest that what Sarah actually saw was some kind of sex play between Ishmael and his little brother.

Indeed, the very same Hebrew word that is used to describe what Ishmael does to Isaac appears only a few lines later in Genesis to describe Isaac fondling Rebekah outside the window of Abimilech, King of the Philistines . . . "Behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife" (Gen. 26:8).

My Ryrie Study Bible (King James Version) translates "sporting" as "caressing." Also, interestingly, Ryrie's notes on t'sahak for the Ishmael incident (Gen 21:9) include references to 19:14 --when Lot's sons-in-law laugh at his warnings to get out of Sodom-- and 39:14-17 --when Potiphar's wife, humiliated by Joseph's rejection of her advances, accuses him of attempted rape. But Ryrie's etymological note at 21:9 skips right over 26:8. Kirsch again:

The mystery of what Sarah saw deepens when we notice that an entire phrase has been dropped from the passage in some versions of the Bible itself. The authoritative version of the Bible in its complete Hebrew text --the so-called Masoretic Text-- includes only a truncated description of what Ishmael is doing when Sarah sees him. "Sarah noticed that [Ishmael] was playing." But the early Greek version of the Bible called the Septuagint and the Latin version called the Vulgate, which may have been translated from Hebrew manuscripts even more ancient than the Masoretic Text, give the same verse as "Sarah noticed that [Ishmael] was playing with her son Isaac."

These are the four words Kirsch is referring to at the beginning of the section.

Well, so what? the reader may ask. How could this ancient incident, if it even happened, and which predated Islam by centuries, have any connection with contemporary jihadists?

I'm not saying it does. But it's interesting to me that this bad seed was hidden in the Bible. Mohammed and his literate followers drew heavily on both Jewish and Christian sources for the Koran; the Arabs --the self-acknowledged descendants of Ishmael-- have exercised a tight monopoly over Muslim language, history, and geography; and Islam has had no therapeutic or dissoluble effect on pre-Islamic barbaric tribal practices; in fact, it has adopted and absorbed them. Muslim men will kill their wives, sisters and daughters if they demonstrate any hint of independence. Muslims will kill people in front of a crowd in a public square with no recourse to civilized law beforehand, and then stomp on the poor victim's face. Muslims will dress their children up as suicide bombers. Muslims will train their children to be suicide bombers. Muslims will turn foreign children into camel jockeys. Muslim mothers will say of their shaheed, "Thank God--my son is dead." Muslims will bloody their children's heads with swords. Muslims will take Jewish body parts out of a bag and wave them around and step on them. Muslims in the United States will enslave non-Muslim women with not a second thought. And they'll open fire on innocents in the name of Allah. Ishmael tried to rob Isaac of his innocence and self-respect, and these are the children of Ishmael.

May we never get over our horror at what they do.

How to Photograph the Paranormal, and What is the Meaning of Life?

By Catherine King

[You can see some of King and du Bois' Spirit Photography archive on the sidebar.]

[And be sure to come back in a day or two for Spirit Photography by King and du Bois, a posting with over 140 of our images.]

I lay off the spirit photography from time to time, for various reasons --sometimes the weight of this world alone is almost too much to bear. Sometimes the images I upload disturb my sense of reality to the extent that I just have to put them on a shelf temporarily if I am to function in a normal manner. Sometimes my hands and heart are all wrapped up in the here and now.

But a few months ago, something urged me to pick up the camera again and follow it into the Great Unknown. Listening to my inner voice, I could hear the word "Spiritualism" resonating like a ringing bell. So I started getting back into paranormal photography.

From my recent captures, I put together Updated Spook Tree, and Housefull Of Phantoms. There's also DEPART! --my plea for deliverance-- as well as the digital net art -- Windows Are the Eyes of the Soul and What Is It About Doorways?

Never before have I really searched for explanations for the haunting imagery. Once I was able to accept our photographs as evidence of the paranormal, I didn't speculate much further. I had come to feel that, as I stated in Photography by Catherine King: Meet My Collaborators,

. . . other people's metaphysics were, and are, of no use to me . . . I have to wrestle with my own findings, according to my personal tradition . . . Questions and issues of our mortality and immortality must be worked out mano a mano . . .

I come from a long tradition of free-thinkers and solitaires. And I have trust issues. Also, I know firsthand what imposters a lot of academics are. And "wise people," and "spiritual masters." So when it came to the paranormal, I never asked questions of other people. I just did my own work and drew my own conclusions from direct observation.

But now I felt as though I was being directed to do more than snap the shutter and assemble photo montages. It seemed I should embark on a posting about these light anomalies. And so, in the spirit of research, for the first time in a very long while, I started to visit paranormal sites on the Internet.

I reasoned with myself: A few sites have some interesting scientific theories about the energy sources of orbs and their electromagnetic qualities. After all, the orbs were really there in actuality, so they had to have some physical qualities, now and then, as they visited from other dimensions.

I began by looking up "paranormal lights." Almost immediately I found this wonderfull passage:

The death of a stray dog named Libby Lou changed the course of my life. My sister Ellen had found Libby wandering about, deserted and hungry, in 1987. Ellen adopted the waif and they spent thirteen years adoring each other. Libby's only goal was to please, and she never caused an ounce of trouble. She seemed to understand every word and obeyed any command.

It was the first paragraph on page one from How to Photograph the Paranormal(2005) by Leonore Sweet, Ph.D. Dr. Sweet's words reached out and wrenched my animal-loving heartstrings.

The author echoed some of my innermost feelings and personal experiences on her website:

[There are] unknown forces at work on this planet . . . there is much we cannot see . . . My glimpses to the mysterious have been mostly through the lens of a camera -- a visual bridge created by technology. The camera enables us to see what only psychics could see before, but no one could prove.

I had to get this book!

So I sent away for the hard-to-find volume and eagerly awaited its arrival for a couple of weeks. As soon as it got here I dove into it like a Phoenician into a swimming pool in August. What a shock! The water might as well have been electrified. Instead of being hyper-sensitive, I discovered that Dr. Sweet was actually insultingly callous. I never would have guessed that those tender sentiments and touching observations were written by a barbaric phony.

You see, Dr. Sweet exemplifes what Jerome and I, and contemporary academics, call "the dispositions." The dispositions are a mindset and a philosophical framework that delights in the deconstruction of meaning. Jerome especially has written extensively about the dispositions. He describes the terrible neutrality of this barbaric philosophy, which dismisses the concepts of evolution and progress --morally and ethically as well as technologically.

In Rebarbarization in the Academy, Part 1, he writes about "a disturbing heartlessless now becoming obvious in the faculties and student bodies of many American universities." He found they had a lot in common with sociopaths, and quoted from Roger Depue's book on society's most violent predators, about

their common operating principles, something that I call the Anti-Commandments, [one of which is]

That which you love is what I most seek to destroy.

Which would include, Jerome wrote,

Inalienable Individual Rights. The United States. Private Property. Mutual Respect. Capitalism. The Military. Political & Economic Equality for Women. Secure Borders. The US Constitution. The Declaration of Independence. Freedom of Religion. The Rule of Law. Education. Academic Freedom. Technology. Freedom. Liberty. Happiness. Life.

True to her type, Sweet is trying to overlay the postmodern philosophical framework onto the Spirit World. I'm going to comment about this fallacious ploy, because she has revelled in it in her spiritual photography book. Keep in mind that she wrote How to Photograph the Paranormal as her doctoral dissertation.

I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert on the Spirit World. But there are ways of relating to the Other World which I intuit with certainty. One of my problems with Sweet and her postmodern stance is the lack of feeling. I lose my cool about the dispositions. I get my feelings hurt --badly.

These people start out by stabbing you in the back; then it's "There! Now how do you feel?"

When you respond "I feel like I'm dying!" they reply, "That's funny, I don't feel a thing."

But, you know, as painfull as it is, I'm just going to keep baring my feelings and wearing my Humanity like a badge of honor. How different I am from those who buy into the dispositions! I'm proud that I'm not one of them. Dr. Sweet, though, is a perfect illustration of the perverseness that results when one refuses to stand for what's right, condemn that which is wrong, or make hard choices.

In my world the prime directives are caring, effort, and meaning. Everyday life on Earth and its substance are what ghosts and spirits are all about. Feeling, meaning, and caring are powerfull forces in the Spirit World. Ghosts get attached. They get hung up. They have a yearning that even Death itself cannot quench.

But Sweet has filled her book with enraging minimizations of these powerfull forces. Read what she has written and remember that these are not the words of a Fifteenth Century Buddhist monk, but rather the regurgitations of a clueless and very spoiled Twentifirst Century American woman:

Paradoxically, only when our surroundings no longer matter to us, it is then that we gain the power to change them by purely mental means . . . As long as one believes this world is real and not just a figment of the collective imagination, one cannot consciously change anything merely through the power of thought. Attachment to the things of this world keeps us bound to it and incapable of experiencing spiritual enlightenment.

When I read Sweet's gloating declaration:

To discriminate against anyone in any way is against my nature.

it reminded me of something a local yoga teacher asserted:

I disdain nothing.

which in turn echoes what another local yoga teacher, Andrea Griego, advised way back in January 2004, in the now-defunct shade magazine:

Whenever you place a judgment on anything, you have blocked your creative flow.

The reason these statements match like bookends is because their authors are both members of the New Barbarian tribe. I was compelled to respond in a now off-line post, "The Importance of Making Judgements:"

As I read those words, it was like salt being rubbed into my psychological wounds. It resonated with the painfull issues I’m currently struggling to work out in my Writing Life, and even my stance with culture and society.

I went on to ask: Is the cultivation of critical judgment such a bad thing? . . . Has anyone besides me wondered how so many college graduates can conveniently forget Bloom’s Taxonomy . . . ? Synthesis is the highest order of thinking, which requires judgment, which people right and left today are trying to eradicate, as though Judgment were a plague, and not one of the very qualities that distinguishes us as homo sapiens sapiens. And what about what we college graduates learned in science courses about the marvel of the human brain, and all the wonderful, intriguing glimpses into its psychology? So many willingly turn away from all that Knowlege, and its implications, so that they can close their eyes and regress into an amniotic state of judgmentlessness . . .

Being well-educated today does not mean having an examined life. Having done college from 1990-1995 (the last two years in graduate school), I have first-hand experience with "the dispositions." I know how these people think. Or rather, I have seen how exerting the least amount of mental effort fills them with a glowing sense of self-satisfaction.

All alone on the academic sidelines, I would seethe with very politically-incorrect rage while the others, especially the psychology students, would smugly assert with absolute assurance that "Everybody's just doing the best they can." It was as if I were the only one living in a world of random violence, sadism, passive aggression and intentional cruelty!

Sweet began her graduate program in Esoteric Studies in 2000 at American Pacific University. She was looking to

find answers to questions such as why we are here, what comes after death, and what at any given point is the "right" thing to do.

Apparently, advanced degree notwithstanding, she is unable to see the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty in finding the "right" thing to be totally relative.

The world is as you think it is! Reality is relative to the observer. . . . Truth can be defined as a function of belief.

This is a perfect and pathetic example of the finely-honed thinking apparatus that a college degree will get you nowadays, courtesy of Leonore Sweet, Ph.D.:

It appears to me that whatever we believe becomes our truth . . . Only if we consider the (paranormal) lights as products of thought can existence of so many beliefs be justified and acceptable, and only then will we realize there is no need to persuade others that their beliefs are wrong, for everything is right in the world that they have constructed for themselves. Instead of hating them for differences in belief we could perhaps learn to love them unconditionally . . . If you think I am wrong, I agree. In your world I am wrong. In mine I am right. Do you see the beauty of this? It's taking the high road and never needing to become angry or controlling or judgmental. It gives us the freedom to allow others to be as they are and believe anything they desire.

Read with great skepticism the gibberish of a Ph.D. with the conviction of her beliefs, and be concerned, very concerned about the state of higher education in our wonderfull land of the free-thinkers:

My newfound belief that one creates one's own reality works for me. It's an easy explanation for practically everything. You certainly don't have to agree with me. I may change my mind tomorrow, anyway.

More "wisdom" from Dr. Know-It-All:

It's not hard to think of examples where belief creates truth. If a person truly believes their prayers will be answered (consciously or unconsciously-- I'm not sure which), their prayers will be answered.

Here is one of her Laws of Personal Universes:

Anything you believe you can do is possible in your personal universe. . . . If you honestly believe you can move a mountain, then it will move.

We have all known the frustration of scientists declaring that such and such is so, based upon the results of this or that experiment, only to have other experiments, carried out by different scientists, completely contradict those results. No one knows for certain what is good to eat anymore, with study after study nullifying previous studies [referring to double-blind studies] . . . In my mind, these influences make the majority of scientific experimental results totally meaningless. I feel that if I honestly believe a food is good for me, it will be good for me. (Fudge for dinner, anyone?) When this theory does not seem to work, I blame the discrepancy on what my higher self, unconscious, and conscious mind truly believe.

She had to go to grad school to learn that "wishing will make it so," and "it's all good." But, just "good," and not superior to anything else.

I like to think of myself as one vital cell of the universe, and I cannot judge any of the other cells because their role is not my role . . .

. . . As I reviewed my photographs, I realized that the idea of thought-forms created by our unconscious minds and the collective unconscious is the one explanation that makes everyone right.

Why does everyone have to be right? Even the Evil Islamists. Even the Evil Islamists who circumcise females and take multiple wives by force and then do anything they want to the females under the cover of their stinking Sharia. The Evil Islamists who just want to practice Taqiyya and commit Jihad, seek the Caliphate and make the Umma real. Who hate life and believe that they alone are pure and should take over the world by a releasing a flood of blood.

Attachment to the things of this world keeps us bound to it and incapable of experiencing spiritual enlightenment.

I cannot count the times I cried out to the powers that be for answers, for the truth, for enlightenment, and especially for a sign.

Hey, I had a blinding moment of enlightenment myself, and I can tell you exactly when it happened down to the minute. It was at 9:59 a.m. EST, September 11, 2001. When the first tower fell. I wrote not long after:

And all multi-culti moral relativity came crashing down to Ground Zero as next I saw in a blinding flash that America is truly the greatest nation in the history of the planet and the only hyper-power because so many smart and brave Americans have earned US that status.

Some readers who witnessed the 9/11 Islamist terrorist attacks as they happened will also remember the sudden, sickening realization when the second plane hit that this was no accident but the first attack of an orchestrated, but undeclared war. It had been the most stunningly beautiful blue morning and we had believed we were all living together in a relatively peaceful, tolerant, multi-culti world!

Sweet talks all around 9/11, but never acknowledges it. At The Tears of Things, however, That Day lives on. As we witnessed in Three Flags: Introducing the House of Not For Sale:

Jerome and I vowed that we never would forget. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

Democracy was being threatened by the dark shadow of the Islamist Umma. And Sweet would put these sons of bitches on equal footing with us. Lord, how we don't need the likes of her on our side! But our best and brightest are shedding their blood to defend her right to be a clueless and very spoiled Twentifirst Century American woman, because that's the American Way. A Way she never acknowledges or appreciates, though she goes on and on about the glorious primitive cultures of the past which were and are apparently far above criticism. Such naiviete! But it's inexcusable and certainly not charming five years into The War on Terror.

In the beginning of her book --the epigraph, in fact-- she quotes a famous postmodern guru, Deepak Chopra, M.D.:

Many things 'out there' don't exist for us, not because they are unreal, but because we have not shaped the brain to perceive them."

Another thing I can never forget is where Deepak Chopra was standing when the shit hit the fan -- in the defining moment of Western Civilization, when most of us realized for the first time that our very existence, way of life and everything precious was in deadly peril.

On 9/12, as I recall, Chopra emerged -- to plug his latest book. His self-promoting words embedded into my traumatic memories -- telling us and selling us how, in our time of anguish, we were going to need his book more than ever.

Sweet continues:

In my mind, the gist of the Mysteries is that intent, emotion, and especially love create everything. Each person creates his own personal universe with his directed thoughts. If this is true, then untold damage is being done though unchecked negative thoughts because nearly everyone is unaware of their power.

I wish the nineteen Saudis had checked their negative thoughts before they brought us down with box cutters. And yes, I would say that most of us Americans were blissfully unaware that nineteen Saudi losers could be so powerfull. Some of us are much sadder but wiser now.

Everything here, it seems, is created in the same way --by individual and collective thoughts of the universe, fueled by intent and emotion.

I learned more than how wrong it is to love everyone on September 11, 2001. I saw how stupid kumbaya is and what intent can and cannot do. Again from Three Flags: Introducing the House of Not For Sale:

As I sat beside Jerome, listening, watching, crying, cutting, and pinning, I tried to set the world in order again with every stitch. But the accumulation of all my intent amounted to nothing before the determined violence of the Islamist terrorist devils. The bullets could not be unshot. The planes could not be unflown.

Sweet and I are definitely not on the same page. Here's what she learned at one of her precious New Age seminars the very next month:

[Seminar leader] Braden explains that all the forces in the web of creation can be spoken to through human emotions. Compassion, gratitude, and love can affect the world around us and transcend the suffering of humankind. Emotions access all the vibrations of the universe through harmonics. In other words, we are all connected through our intentions and emotions. Amazingly, thoughts with intent and emotion are the creative forces of the universe.

Most heartless of all the new barbarians' behavior is their refusal to defend the victimized:

Victimhood has finally overstayed its welcome in today's world . . . You can only change your universe if you understand you are in complete control of it and are not a victim of your circumstances. Your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions are the cause of everything that "happens to" you in your universe.

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold . . . Sweet again:

Before and during the hunt [for paranormal orbs], send positive, loving thoughts and good feelings towards the Orbs and Company. I honestly love them, whoever or whatever they may be.

Give me a break. What is Love to this New Barbarian who wants to deconstruct victimization? That's the same as Blaming the Victim. The same as Denying the Holocaust. Love the orbs? She has more compassion for the dead than for the living. But that's not much. For Death is as meaningless as Life to Sweet.

Photographing the dog Libby Lou's death, was just the beginning for Sweet. It encouraged her to go for the fait accompli of capturing a human spirit at the moment of death. When her own father became terminally ill, she saw the opportunity to score the big one and brought her camera to his deathbed in order to document his passing -- like it was the cherry on top of her dissertation.

Other people's pain provides the substance for her particular hobby. The more trauma and suffering, the better, for her purposes. She recommends visiting funerals and funeral parlors to others like herself (yes, "ghost-hunting" is a group activity for these ghouls). "Look for evidence of. . . homicides, suicides . . ."

The people I know who can photograph light anomalies are either very young or they are those who are at least somewhat aware of the lack of substance in everyday life on Earth.

Aarrgghh! Don't believe her! She sure doesn't know me, and I can photograph light anomalies all the livelong day! She's so thick, blind and mean! Everyday life on Earth is all about substance, not the lack of it. The mysterious, intrinsic suffering in life is real, and it's not for naught. It's all so urgently important.

We need clarity of principles, as Tony Blair, our faithfull ally in the War on Terror, says. These New Barbarians have made a religion out of being noncommital. But there is much that is worth dying for. The ongoing battle between Good and Evil is not some quaint archaic notion. We've all heard the truth before, though we may have thought ourselves above and beyond it:

The Devil's oldest trick is convincing you that he doesn't exist.

Believing In People

by Jerome du Bois

[What follows is not an expository essay, but a series of aphorisms, observations, quotations, and musings, a string of beads of varying sizes, held together by the thread of the first sentence.]

It may not be easy to believe in God, but just try believing in people.

Maybe that's why people believe in God.

* * *

As Catherine says, "People are hard to love, and impossible to trust."

* * *

We have attacked a lot of people and ideas on this blog, but if you read carefully, or even superficially, it's because we are outraged by the persistent and gleeful efforts to denigrate and destroy human dignity, decency, individualism, beauty, restraint, and just plain manners. The upward glance. The best within us. Values we want to defend and promote. You need not look far to find the Rebarb. This week's New Times, for example, runs a cover story about an infantile, talentless fool who is taking "I hate you, Dad!" to new depths; then features an "artist" who makes beaded versions of disease pustules and wears an octopus hat; thus advancing and celebrating stupidity, degradation and humiliation. These are the kind of people they put front and center. Why? Because the people at that newspaper want others to be as ugly as they are.

* * *

Apparently Bernard Schoset and his livejournal friends took issue with my piece on the Basiji. So the sitemeter says, anyway. We haven't, and won't, be reading anything they write. Though they come here, we don't go there. Why not? Because they wish us ill. In other words, their very first impulse is ad hominem, to take us down, not to address the subject. And speaking of which, what could they possibly find to defend in present-day Islam? Even in its mildest form, it is a collectivist faith, in which the individual (unless you're an imam, of course) is next to nothing.

* * *

From Amin Maalouf, In The Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong:

Traditions deserve to be respected only insofar as they are respectable --that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women.

* * *

From Daniel Dennett, Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon:

Most Muslims, I would guess, are sincere in their insistence that the hadith injunction that apostates are to be killed is to be disregarded, but it's disconcerting, to say the least, that fear of being regarded as an apostate is apparently a major motivation in the Islamic world . . . So it is not just we outsiders who are left guessing. Even Muslims "on the inside" really don't know what Muslims think about apostasy --they mostly aren't prepared to bet their lives on it, which is the surest sign of belief . . . (p.289)

In Islam, the individual, inalienable right to doubt can mean a death sentence.

* * *

Right now, I can assure you, there are readers out there snickering and having fun with our anger and heartbreak, and our need to behold the goodness glowing in our fellow human beings. I wonder what they see when they look inside their own hearts?

* * *

All across this great nation, antisemitism is dropping its mask and stepping up to center stage, from New York to Washington DC to California (Daily Kos). Remember that Israel is a secular democracy, which respects individual rights, and that most of its enemies are theocracies, who respect no individuals whatsoever. And, as I write, right now, Hezbollah has just fired big new rockets into Haifa, into both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, killing 3 (so far), and injuring 100+ (so far).

* * *

In the last few days I've been rereading Robert Stone's 1992 masterpiece novel, Damascus Gate. In it, American expatriate journalist Christopher Lucas, born Jewish, raised Catholic, now a doubter, gets overwhelmed by the claustrophobic overlapping traditions which jam Jerusalem from end to end. One cannot just be, in the Old City, one must belong. (This doesn't obviate what I said about Israel above. Israel is a lot more than the Old City.)

There's a Messianic cult in the novel, a syncretic amalgamation of Kaballah, Christianity, Judaism, tantric Buddhism, kundalini yoga, and what-all. What struck me about the group was their need for the One Big Answer to it all; the final trump that ties everything together. But what's holy, for Catherine and I, is everyday life --the little things, the idiosyncratic shapes of the lived experience of those who pay their dues as they go along. As Dennett has written elsewhere, "This world is sacred."

* * *

Yesterday, as I was driving to the pharmacy on an errand for my mother, I got into a car accident, and ended up in the hospital getting my head stitched back together.

Some guy ran the red light, just sailing along ("I thought it was green"), and I slammed into his front fender, rolled across the street, bounced over the curb, and rammed into the brick wall of an apartment building. I was the only one hurt. Several minutes later, as I was lying on the paramedics' board, I found myself crying in gratitude. To God? Of course not. God's nowhere around. I was grateful for this country, this state, and this city; for the whole wonderful infrastructure which encourages and trains those of good heart to become paramedics, doctors, and nurses. (The first person to tend to me at the scene was an off-duty nurse.) Everyone was efficient, competent, calm, and polite. The four men leaning over me, taping me down, asking quiet questions, were better than any angels.

Today I feel as though a mountain had fallen on me --it hurts to type, even-- but damn! it's great to be alive! And to be here, in the USA. Sad to say, though, those strangers were the best people I've personally met in several long years.

* * *

Recently, some Code Pink people arrogantly thought it was right for them to interfere in the private lives of some of their fellow citizens. They decided to "take over" a gas station in Kansas City and prevent people from pumping gas. It wasn't long before they got their asses handed to them. But what makes me mad is their contempt for other people, as if these clueless bastards knew better than regular folks what was really important. What they know, though, but won't admit, is that regular people wouldn't and shouldn't give them the time of day, so they narcisisstically interfere with others' lives. They don't care if the motorist has to gas up quick to pick up their kid from day care; or get home for a quick dinner before the wife or husband has to leave for second shift; or pick up some medicine from the pharmacy. Other people's rights mean nothing to them. They care for nothing but their own stunted, selfish view of the world. And they were dealt with accordingly.

* * *

Who shall be saved? In 2003, The New Yorker interviewed Mel Gibson, and the interviewer asked him if Protestants are denied eternal salvation.

"There is no salvation for those outside the Church," Gibson replied. "I believe it." He explained: "Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair [of Peter]. I go with it."

So while the woman who stayed faithful to him and bore him umpteen children writhes in the torments of Hell, he can occasionally peek down from Heaven and give her a little wave. She, as a person, doesn't matter; the Church matters. (This quote is also from Dennett, above, who points out that many Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe it about their own One True Ways, but won't say it.)

* * *

From Dennett, page 97: "Among Hindus, there is disagreement over whether Shiva or Vishnu is the higher Lord, and many have been killed for their belief in this matter."

In Iraq, our soldiers are being killed so that two religious sects, the Sunni and the Shia, can continue to kill them and each other over an event that happened over a thousand years ago, when the Imam Hussein was betrayed by his own crew during the Battle of Karbala. We brought these people the greatest gift of civilization --individual freedom-- and they're spitting on it, while taking our money and laughing up their sleeves at us. I was all for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but now I say we leave them to kill each other. And if they ever come over here for us, take them out with the rest of the trash that doesn't honor the sovereign individual person.

* * *

It is very difficult to believe in people --in their basic goodness-- but I do. And I say this while living in the Valley where the two Serial Shooters indulged in murder for sport for over a year. G. K. Chesterton said that the man who believes in nothing ends up believing in everything. Which I take to mean that nihilism leads to fanaticism. But there is a middle way, a belief in something --that ordinary, educated people, left to their own devices, recognize that without the law, it's all darkness. The law that is embodied in our Constitution --leave people alone, protect their freedom, shield them from tyrants-- is our best weapon against evil.

Pinkorcism

by The Tears of Things

It's been a year and the pink plague continues with a vengeance no longer so wimpy. But the banner above will be our last in the Pink Series. It's gotten to us-- you can see how we've lost our equilibrium toward the end there. We can rest now, though, knowing that we've done our part. We tried to warn you --look below-- but you wouldn't listen. Wouldn't listen --or didn't care.

Enough With The Pink Already

What's Good For The Goose . . .

It's Not A Rose-Colored World / And Wearing Pink Won't Make It So

What Part Of 'Enough' Don't You Understand?

Pink Triptych Update!

Not A Rose-Colored World: The Life-Sized Version

Don't Be Pinkin' With Us; Or, Them's Fightin' Duds

The Pink Brigades

How Do You Say "Stop It" In Pink? Or, Who Stole The Pepto-Bismol?

Someone else will have to pick up the torch now. We're going to find another color to pick on . . .

Okay, one more.

Curse of the Basiji

by Jerome du Bois

The natural world is . . . the scum of creation.
--Ayatollah Khomeini, 1980

Like many ordinary Americans who follow both the blogs and the news media, I am witnessing the unraveling of Qana, Hezbollah's latest heartless, soulless attempt to manipulate Western compassion by using the dead as mere props. For several days before Qana I had been thinking about writing a semi-satirical post on the Sunni-Shia schism of Islam, using as my starting point the worst-ever episode of the original "Star Trek." It was called "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," and starred Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio as mortal enemies. Each was half-white and half-black, divided down the middle. But there was a "crucial" difference between the two, which anyone could see.

To me, because I had done little research on the history of the Sunni-Shia split, their enmity seemed as superficial as that photo. But I was wrong. Though I still believe that Islam itself is anti-human because of its essential misogyny --because, for its continued existence as a religion, women must be subjugated-- the modern Shia expression of Islam, as developed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, is anti-life. And it just took about two clicks of the mouse to travel from the silliness of "Star Trek" to the worst people on earth.

I'm referring to the Basiji, who we don't hear much about in the news, but who dominate it: who invented suicide bombing in 1982; who shaped Hezbollah and inspired Sunni Hamas and the 9/11 murderers; who elected Ahmadinejad (a Basiji); who formed a million-man army (some busloads of them heading to Lebanon as I write); who monitor and repress Westernization in Iran (Taliban-style); and who are now being trained in Iranian nuclear laboratories. They would not hesitate to invite the vaporization of millions of Iranians (and anyone else) if it meant the destruction of Israel. In fact, they would welcome such "martyrdom," even their own. Especially their own. They learned this thinking from the examples of the children of the minefields.

From Matthias Küntzel's stunning and comprehensive article, "Ahmadinejad's World," first published in April in the New Republic, and which should be read in its entirety:

In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the