7.31.2005

lucha retablo


lucha
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
A Retablo is a religious folk painting on tin. This photo is of a retablo I saw here in Oaxaca (artist unknown).

This is a 500-year-old tradition of placing small narrative paintings (usually recording a miracle) on sheet metal.

I just picked up the book called:
"Infinitas Gracias-Contemporary Mexican Votive Painting"
which is a collection of retablo paintings by Mexican artist Alfredo Vilchis Rogue and his sons. CHeck it out if you have a chance: Infinitas Gracias Book

7.25.2005

Milarepas story


IMG_4330
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
"He didnt know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, "Just eat me up if you want to." Then that demon left too. The moral of the story is, when the resistence is gone, so are the demons." Milarepas story as recounted by Pema Chodron.

7.23.2005

toro de fuego


torro
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
"What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At the moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade of light and there is eternity......" Camus

7.20.2005

votives


velas
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Pic of candles in the cathedral by the Zocalo (town square).

"What I think is so extraordinary about the photograph is that we have a piece of paper with this image adhered to it, etched on it, which interposes itself into the plane of time that we are actually in at that moment. Even if it comes from as far back as 150 years ago, or as recently as yesterday, or a minute before as a Polaroid color photograph, suddenly you bring it into your experience. You look at it, and all around the real world is humming, buzzing and moving, and yet in this little frame there is stillness that looks like the world. That connection, that collision, that interfacing, is one of the most astonishing things we can experience."
Joel Meyerowitz

Tejate


tejate2
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Our friends Liz and Mike are visiting.
This photo is of the Tejate drink which is made of corn, ash, mamey seed, and cacao flower (seen floating on top) - it is traditionally served in these painted gourds.

7.19.2005

pochote


pochote
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
The amazing pochote tree!
One of Mixtec legend.

7.14.2005

jefe

I just got the album – Jefe de Jefes by the group Los Tigres del Norte. It’s a double CD full of narcocorridos which features the ubiquitous & beloved accordian, and has beats that have you grabbin for a cold cervesa. It’s fun music and is one of the backdrops to my experience here in Mexico.

Here's an article on the group:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/
metro/12.31.97/los-tigres-9753.html

Today – I think I’ll experiment with paper mache. All ya need is flour, water and newspaper - so its cheap entertainment.

Oh and point your mouse in this direction-
http://staff.washington.edu/muffley/oaxaca3.mov

It a home movie of ours which includes misc. celebratory scenes here in Oaxaca-
set to a LosTigres song.

politic


redred copy
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Holy Jehosa – but I just am floored by the ignorance and diabolical ways of this administration. (No big news there.) We try and stay abreast of the news through ‘alternative’ (read :non-embedded) media sources – such as Democracy Now and Free Speech Radio news. Sometimes we tune into the BBC. (All via the wonders of the internet.) The Daily Show is also damn funny and thank goodness we can also see John Stewarts shows on our computer. Here’s the latest show on the Rove CIA leak. http://movies.crooksandliars.com/The%20Daily_Show_Rove_Leak.mov



7.12.2005

Aguas negras


coke
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Went on a walk up to Cerro Fortin today. Great to get a view over the whole city. On my way back took this photo of Sto Domingo with a coke placard in the foreground. Cocacola is referred to as "Aguas negras del imperialismo yankee" or "Black waters of Yankee imperialism". Yep.

7.07.2005

Teotitlan


FeatherDance1
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Yesterday we went to Teotitlan Del Valle to see the Danza De la Pluma - or traditional Feather Dance.

7.04.2005

BabelCar


carlanguage
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Languages, ciphers, towers of babel and cars decorated with prayers.

BTW, here are a couple of links you might enjoy!

http://www.jesusdressup.com/number2.html
http://www.jesusdressup.com/hollywood.html

Porfirio Diaz


fridastreet
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Photo i took, just around the corner from our house. I manipulated it in Pshop- combining it with an image of Frida Kahlo.

OaxacaPics


oaxpanel2
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Just wanted to include more 'people' shots on my plog/blog. Here's another photopanel i put together of Oaxacan scenes.

kg


kg
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Another photomontage - combining pics i took at the Market on Friday.

artificial languages


marbles2
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Conlangs are pretty fascinating.
Did you know that Klingon is the fastest-growing artificial language?


Here's an except from the Wired article i read years ago-
"...when a few lines of Klingon dialog were needed for the first Star Trek movie, in 1979, James Doohan (who plays engineer Scott) leapt at the chance. He spat a few lines of aggressive nonsense into a tape recorder and told an actor playing a Klingon to go memorize it. Five years later, on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the producers wanted to be able to have large chunks of Klingon dialog. So they recruited Marc Okrand, a linguist working at the National Captioning Institute, who had come up with a few lines of Vulcan as a favor to friends working on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He remembers of that experience, "I drove away from the studio thinking, 'My God, I just taught Mr. Spock how to speak Vulcan.'"

Extrapolating from Doohan's sounds, Okrand invented a vocabulary and grammar and translated every line of dialog spoken by a Klingon in Star Trek III. He then stayed on the set to correct mistakes - and to incorporate new coinages. Okrand reasoned that since the Klingons were warriors rather than philosophers, their language would emphasize action, and therefore verbs. Klingon has three official parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and everything else. Adjectives don't exist per se: there is no word meaning simply "greedy," although there is a verb "to be greedy" (qur). And most adverbs are agglutinative; that is, limitless strings of suffixes can be attached to a verb to modify its meaning.

Okrand made the language as alien as possible. Sentence structure is object-verb-subject, a virtually nonexistent combination in human linguistics
"
The full article can be found at-
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.08/es.languages.html

7.03.2005

VHFUHW FRGH


codexsketch
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
I'm really fascinated with the Mixtec Codex, and have been making some cartoon sketches based on that style. (Here's one i drew the yesterday afternoon).

Speaking of a 'codex', I've been reading The Code Book by Simon Singh. Its all about cryptography. Did you know about the Caesar cipher? Its "also known as a Caesar shift cipher or shift cipher, and is one of the simplest and most widely-known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions further down the alphabet. For example, with a shift of 3, A would be replaced by D, B would become E, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it to communicate with his generals." (wikipedia quote)

7.01.2005

lirio del agua


h20lily
Originally uploaded by mufflevski.
Saw this beautiful water lily at the Pochote market today.