Flex Mentallo

Why ? We all need to have our hand slapped from time to time.... it keeps us grounded. GOD BLESS.... -jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u The last time the ground slapped my arm it broke in three places.

I'm just loving these.

Me too Steve. Such a relief from all the horror! I'd love to relieve you of your horror "The horror! The horror!"

Nice blues

Yep. (thumbs u Do you have the #15 as well Richard, for a trifecta?

Me too Steve. Such a relief from all the horror!

Here is a curiosity - a black and white squarebound reprint of Planet Comics #18 published in the UK by R&J Locker circa 1950. This is the first copy I've seen in twenty years. Here is the real #18 for comparison

Tremendous. I have never seen "The Whipping" before.

That's a wonderful example of Heade's Hank Janson covers.

Don't forget Justin Timberlake in the middle I wont go there

Now you can play "find the soap". You owe me big time.

I like chicken wings, dipped in spicy sauce I don't like comic books ...dipped in spicy sauce! I like chicken wings, dipped in spicy sauce not as good as bubbles ... He should be reading a Church copy. and I'm pretty sure that tub is filled with Coke Zero... or soon will be! I think I threw up a little in my mouth.... not everyone can handle coke zero What are you wearing - apart from the bath? Shudder

I like chicken wings, dipped in spicy sauce not as good as bubbles

Nah - why change the habits of a lunchtime? i think it's only fair folks get a chance to acclamate first I've been mentally preparing myself for this challenge for a number of years. On Everest they call it the 'death zone.'

Nah - why change the habits of a lunchtime?

Thanks for the good wishes, guys, and from others who pm'd. Of course in narrative terms, I'm using my little accident as a vehicle to make another point. I could not have timed it more perfectly. How's that for serendipity?

Tales from the Island of Serendip updated thread navigation Serendipity Serendipity - Paddyfield School - The Story of Mohan - Sometimes Sting School bully! El Puente Muralist Joe Matunis - El Puente de Williamsburg - Return to Paddyfield School - Lucina Bells From the Deep Werner Herzog - Juliane Koepcke - The lost city of Kitezh - Sadko - St Clemente DavidMerryweather Virgil Finlay - Reed Crandall - Graham Ingles - Berni Wrightson - Al Williamson Small Works Flex studies for larger paintings pcalhoun & jimjum Clark Ashton Smith - Pat's poems - Jimbo's excellent paintings Father Hess The Life of Father Hess - Kasauli Art Camp - The Death of Mohan Ghosh - Rabindranath Tagore - DavidMerryweather art collection Black Marigolds In Search of Lost Time - Georges Seurat - Roger Fry - The Trojan Horse - Ananda Coomaraswamy - The Great Stupa at Sanchi - Ajanta caves - Black Marigolds Detective Stories Johannes Vermeer 1632–1675: A Detective Story - camera obscura - Han Van Meegeren - The Theft of the Mona Lisa - Donato's Captain America and other works - Rainer Maria Rilke - Cornell Woolrich - Cat's space themed paintings - Netsuke - Hart Crane - Cat's 'Creation' - Boba's illustrations - Caravaggio's Nativity Velasquez Las Meninas - John Singer Sargent - Flex large painting - Thomas Nashe - Tom O' Bedlam - Georges de La Tour - Flex exhibition - Joseph Wright of Derby - John Martin The Bosnian Conflict Andrei Tarkovsky - Welcome to Sarajevo - Margaret Moth - Yasna's cat - Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo - Miss Sarajevo - the Serious Road Trip - War Child - the Help album - The Ruin pcalhoun Writer and Book Collector Autobiographical notes - Jade tiki - Ubbo-Sathla by Clark Ashton Smith - Robert Q Sale - Tekkai Sennin - Bakemono - Zuni fetish - Yooshi's ghosts - Kuniyoshi Steven Assael Paintings - drawings Photos of Nirmal's village When Shabana was 11 - Mohammed Yunus - Grameen bank - mosaics of Ravenna, Venice & Florence - Duccio's Maesta - when Tuku was a child - We cry to Thee, O Conqueror of love Steven Assael Bride paintings with details - Spirits of the dead keep watch Calcutta Flex photo essay - Lucina's gold medal The Hero's Journey The Courts of Chaos - 'The Heroes' by Charles Kingsley - Medusa - Archetypes - Chris Vogler - Galaxy Quest - the Trickster - Prometheus In the Beginning Altamira - Shanidar - flower burial Interlude Mir para - Lija and her baby - Lullaby - Her name is Zoa Emergent themes My relationship with Bonhooghly Before They Pass Threnody - Jimmy Nelson - The Lost Steps - Witness - Jean Baptiste Debret - Johann Moritz Rugendas - Sebastião Salgado - Serra Pelada Sting & The Rainforest Foundation Sting in the tail - Raoni’s message - Rolling Stone - World in Action - 30 Most Generous Celebrities list The Last Free People Before they pass away - Yanomami - Christina Haverkamp - The Haximu Massacre - pcalhoun on rip-off charities - Love Story - Darkness in El Dorado - Kenneth Good & Yarima - The Good Project - Mridula & I Lost Cities Bitter fruit - El Dorado - The Lost City of Z - Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett - Garden Cities of the Xingu - Caral Interlude I want she don't go back to that hell Heaven's River Nazca - Maria Reiche “the lady of the desert” - Secrets of the Inca - Wari tomb - the end of all things - Machu Picchu - the Sacred Valley - The condor at Pisac - Ollantaytambo - the "eye of the llama" - The Viracochan image - the pyramid of dawn - Momia Juanita Alternative Histories Jericho - Çatalhöyük - The Great Mother - Tierra del Fuego - Lilith Flood Cataclysm - Epic of Gilgamesh - Genesis - mythological diffusion - "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan" by John L. Stephens The Universality of Myth Hamlet's Mill - the Sampo - the Phoenicians - the Paraiba Stone - Fusang - Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies - Zheng He - The Bosnian Pyramids - Maya - Xibalba Sunk Atlantis - Guanahacabibes - Mysterious grid - Bimini Road - Yonaguni - Mu - James Churchward - Out of the Aeons - Lemuria - Kumari Kandam - Ice Age Civilization - Graham Hancock - Lost Continents - Zealandia The Human Condition E. J. Michael Witzel - Laurasian mythology - humanity's emergence Arnold Bocklin The Isle of the Dead - What Dreams May Come Was God an Astronaut? Eric Von Daniken - Chariots of the Gods - The Morning of the Magicians - At the Mountains of Madness - Carl Sagan Steven Assael Druso U.F.O Kenneth Arnold - flying saucers - Roswell Incident - Maury Island - "men in black" - Project Sign - Project Blue Book - "foo-fighters" Dark Matter Alien abduction - the size of the universe - Multiple universes - Stephen Hawking - Fermi's paradox - the Drake equation - The Silence - N-rays - innate releasing mechanism - Carl Jung - The Roper Report - The abduction - The Dark Side of the Moon - gamma-ray bursts - Ordovician extinction - Invader - Budd Hopkins - the abduction of Linda Cortile - John Mack - Aliens in America The Search My red book - Carl Jung's Red Book - Charles Steffen - Ernst Haeckel - Jeffrey J. Kripal Lost Horizons The Snow Leopard - Lost Horizon - Shambala - Hollow Earth - the Thule Society - The Way of the White Clouds - António Andrade - Tsaparang - Mount Kailash - Bhagavad Gita - The Upanishads - Navratri Interlude Update from Lucina Festival Durga Puja - Ramlila - the hijras - City of Light Interlude Further update from Lucina - Calcutta Botanical Gardens - Indian ComicCon Pilgrimage Puri beach - Juggernaut - Temple of the Sun - Kajuraho - Reprise Interlude pcalhoun 'Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus' - Lucina's Conference - Market Day Photographing Wildlife More Photo of Village Life - Ongoing Correspondence - Ganges 'Beauty Spot' -Eid A Christmas Carol The sheer exuberance of Bengali village life in a hundred photographs Labyrinths Pan's Labyrinth - Symbolic Pilgrimages - Chartres - The Mystic Rose - A Pilgrim's Progress - The Labyrinth of Buda Castle Goddess of the Labyrinth King Minos - 'Da-pu-ri-to-jo Po-ti-ni-ja' - the first European civilization - the palace at Knossos - bull dance Atlantis Thera - Tsunami - Akrotiri Theseus and the Minotaur Mycenaean ascendancy - Pasiphaë - the Minotaur - Theseus and Ariadne - the integration of the shadow - Betrayal - Right of Passage The Holy Grail The Da Vinci Code - the Ark of the Covenant - Knights Templar - the grail in literature and television - Perceval, le Conte du Graal - Joseph of Arimathea - King Arthur - the grail in movies - Excalibur The Albigensian Crusade Imitatio Christi - Heresy - King of the World - Crusade - "God will know His own" - Simon de Montfort - The Inquisition - "Not a bird sang for a generation" - the Wasteland Parsifal Sin, redemption, pain, and healing - Bayreuth - Hans-Jürgen Syberberg - Healing the Wound - Wings Cloudlets Bright Career Amid the Ruins The Angel's Tear For the Children Tectonic Plates Family Without Geography My Village Elegy

Tales from the Island of Serendip Life is a constant inquiry into the whys and wherefores of existence. Look not upon the ephemeral as real; Barter not the substance for the shadow. Neitsche - Also Sprach Zarathustra When Parsifal slew a swan in the forest perhaps he foolishly thought he was being heroic. Through long journeys and many sufferings, he achieved enlightenment, eventually realizing that true heroism is sacrifice; and that it is only through compassion that we can ultimately be transformed, and so transform the world. As for me, I am still slaying swans. But there is a wisdom of sorts in serendipity - the percipience to connect seemingly disconnected events. Tales from the Island of Serendip has been an unpredictable journey through a labyrinth where I discovered minotaurs and aliens lurk. Yet to the remnants of nomadic civilizations that still survive on the margins of our conquest, it is we who are the aliens. And in what we think of as extraterrestrial biological entities, more than likely we encounter our own abiding alienation. For our 'reality' - even our physics - is an artificial construct. We see the first iterations of our struggle to find meaning in our lives and deaths in the flower burials of the neanderthals. We see our ephemeral nature reflected in the deaths of uncounted civilizations. We tell ourselves that our fate is different, that we have a destiny - the very essence of solipsism! But we only see as it were through a glass, darkly. Yarima of the Yanomami tribe married an anthropologist named Kenneth Good, who brought her to America. They had children, but she could not bear to stay there. She could not understand why we choose to isolate ourselves from each other behind locked doors. It was as if to her, she had become trapped in a land of the living dead. We, to her abiding confusion, measure wealth by fame and fortune, but to her, wealth and community are inseparable, and immeasurably greater than our material 'wealth', which she unhesitatingly forsook; returning to her own reality, she once again lives naked in the forest of her birth. Like the other rain forest Indian tribes, the Yanomami are under dire threat of extermination as loggers and miners penetrate their territory with the hypocritical sanction of governments. Meanwhile, the glaciers are melting, and the rivers that have their sources in the great Tibetan plateau are drying up, threatening half the world's population with thirst and starvation. Archaeologists have found that the main reason civilizations in South America vanished was because of drought - but not before they went to war with each other for the last drops. So we face the threat of "water wars" somewhere in our children's' future. And global warming is responsible. We are the cause. In Sarajevo I learned first hand how war turns our sense of reality inside out. I learned that there are people who are willing to exploit others in wartime to make money. But I also learned that in the end, when we search for meaning, love is all we have, all we are. When Juliane Koepcke miraculously survived being blown out of an exploding plane Werner Herzog made a documentary about her because he had been booked on that flight but missed the connection. We remake reality to make sense of random events where none is to be found. When I was a teenager, I saw a movie about Apu, a boy growing up in a Bengali village, little knowing that it would eventually lead me to the very village in which his story was filmed. And because of this I met Nirmal, and Mridula, Tuku and Lucina; and I have a family in India. As a 7 year old child I was first transported to the planet Rann by the adventures of Adam Strange and his zeta beam, little knowing that it would strike me too, one day. In the past few months, since Mridula died, I have discovered renewed purpose and commitment to my Bengali family after a 5 year hiatus. At the beginning of this year, I was managing three credit cards, two loans and an overdraft. Now I am virtually free of debt, and my disposable income will in future serve a different purpose. Perhaps one more fulfilling than collecting. I will help Lucina attend a world conference on bamboo technology where she has been invited to present a paper. Then she is planning to spend 6 months completing her PhD here in England, if possible in Manchester, where I live. Just the other day I went cycling, and had an accident. I sent this message to Lucina I was greatly enjoying my day off and cycling in warm sunshine. I cycled along the canal towards Etihad Stadium, before turning off to return home along a quiet path. At about 16 miles on, and 4 miles from home, I hit an entirely unexpected obstacle in a place with which I am quite familiar. As luck would have it, I had to duck beneath a branch at the exact moment my front wheel hit something I didn't even see. I was coming down a short curving slope, and it all happened so fast I could do nothing. I came flying over the top of the handlebars, and my right arm automatically stretched out to take the blow as I hit the ground. But the shoulder joint over extended as it took my weight at a very awkward angle and I could almost feel it begin to dislocate, but just avoided it. My knee, elbow and side hit the ground which was unfortunately full of sharp little stones. For a few minute I just lay there, unable to move, not knowing even if something might be broken. And I thought sure my head hit the gravel also, but I think just lucky in a place where the ground was smooth, so no injury. I realized that where I was no-one might come along, so I forced myself to stand up. My right arm was just hanging down and useless. When I came to the bike, I saw that the handlebars and wheel were turned right around through 180 degrees. So entirely backwards, and brake had snapped also with the force. But still working so somehow I managed to get on it one handed and very slowly got towards home. Then I realized I could not carry the bike up to my apartment, and I had no first aid there either. But a cycle repair shop and chemist were not too far so I left the bike with that man and bought Dettol and bandages. But I desperately needed a sling to stabilize the shoulder and they had none. I also realized I would have difficulty self administering first aid, and with my training knew I needed a second opinion on my condition. So managed to walk to work half a mile further and my dear colleague Jacqui - you will meet her - cleaned out my numerous wounds - there were small stones inside and some bleeding because skin totally burned away in some places. We had a funny time figuring out from our first aid training how to design the sling and got it completely wrong. Then one of my volunteers drove me home. But I could not figure out how to get out of the car one handed without moving my injured shoulder! Lucina's response was to immediately telephone and scream at me furiously for being a stubborn fool. Why was I cycling so recklessly? Why had I not gone straight to hospital? Why was I typing a long message to her with an injured arm? Why do I never listen to her? She did not stop shouting for a good while. I went to the hospital and they found that I had broken the humerus. But I feel no pain. My guardian angel watches over me. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless hand, Or whether there cast when Ocean swept the Land, Ere the Eternal had ordained the Day? Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep, One song it sang, Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide, Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide, Ever with echoes of the ocean rang. And as the shell upon the mountain height Sings of the sea, So do I ever, leagues and leagues away, So do I ever, wandering where I may, Sing, O my home! sing, O my home! of thee. Eugene Field 1883