Flex Mentallo

I don't think I've properly managed to convey that to me, somehow, the love of comics, stories, adventure, imagination, is all bound up with real experience. And there are people, heroes, heroines of mine, like the film maker Werner Herzog, who inspire me because of the way in which their lives become their art. And not all of my heroes and heroines, healers and spirit guides are famous - Nirmal, for instance...

The Layers by Stanley Kunitz [font:Century Gothic]I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?[/font]

And we haven't even opened Pandora's box, or survived the wasteland and the flood. We haven't found the grail, or discovered it's true meaning - though I promise we will, and more besides.. It's a reawakening of sorts - ideas I haven't really done much with for a long long time. But for me all these tales are still living. However, those of you, however few, who've been with this thread from the start will know that the real foundation of it isn't comics, pictures or stories at all, but experiences I've had - or perhaps more accurately - witnessed in other parts of the world.

Interlude Well, I dont know how many of you guys and gals are continuing to read this thread, though judging by the count it seems enough to warrant continuing with it. Every time I post, my own research takes me into so many unexpected areas of knowledge that like the hydra, another five ideas pop into my head for further posts. So I'm having a whale of a time - but don't let me fool you into thinking I have more than the vaguest idea where it's taking me. I can say that the emphasis will continue to be on finding interesting images to illustrate the narrative, and mostly, economy of words - this post notwithstanding. It has occurred to me that in a way I'm sort of writing a comic book - or at least a heavily illustrated narrative - with an emphasis on the connections between apparently unrelated times, images, events and places. I put some links in the first post, but in the process seem to have locked it. Here is an update. 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 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

You really stuck your neck out on that purchase! Stick Billy in a pair of those cool shades and who does he resemble? Without the neck of course.

Next: Apocalypse.

For at some very early point in our development, sometime in the eons of wandering as hunter gatherers, we began to have intimations of mortality, and sought to impose our own sense of order upon the chaos of the world. And in after times, when we recounted tales of our ancestors around the camp fires, it was always heroes both male and female who brought us fire, fought our battles, and sacrificed their lives.

Or it may be that, looking back, we read too much into scant evidence. But if Shanidar is not what some argue it is, then the true Shanidar - that first moment of revelation about what it is to be human and aware, to know awe and experience a sense of wonder in the face of nature, and ask, where do we come from? who are we? where are we going? - remains as yet undiscovered.

Yet Shanidar may so far be the earliest evidence we have of proto-humans recognising an afterlife, thus seeking to order the world according to a system of belief.

... were all represented in the pollen samples, and all have long-known curative powers as diuretics, stimulants, astringents as well as anti-inflammatory properties.This led to the - still controversial - idea that the man could possibly have had shamanic powers, perhaps acting as medicine man to the Shanidar Neanderthals. There are varying theories about what happened to the Neanderthals. Hollywood has it's own ideas.

...and Hollyhock...

Joint Pine or Woody Horsetail...

Grape Hyacinth...

Ragwort or Groundsel...

St. Barnaby's Thistle...

Cornflower...

Yarrow...

Among the nine graves found is Shanidar 5, the so-called flower burial. Found with the bones were pollen grains from numerous herbal flowers in some cases still used for medicinal purposes today.

The Shanidar cave In the Zagros Mountains of Kurdistan contains archaeological evidence of neanderthal burials dating back perhaps 80,000 years.

The beginning may predate our species, and possibly raises questions about what it is to be human.

But even this is not the beginning.

Among these images there is strong evidence of a shamanistic tradition that connects the caves to the present.

Nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times, some thought to date back over 40,000 years.

But within a generation it was universally accepted that he had been right.

He did not live to witness his vindication.