The Comet - April 2012

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

JAIME’S TATTOO GARDEN

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

everything will be fine

editor: Ron Evans publishing assistant: Sarah Sims contributors: Cory Calhoun, Sarah Sims, Kristen Acesta, Lonnie Broadvalley, Loni McKenzie Nick Carlo, Dan McConnell

COMET HEADQUARTERS

You know what? Forget washing your hands - at this point just focus on keeping those fingers crossed. But also wash those hands.

Phase 3, eh? Pretty exciting and anxiety-inducing all at once. Will I still know how to function in the world at large when it goes back to normal? Will I fit any of my nonelastic banded trousers? Will we have yet another flare up of the virus pushing us back into Phase 1? Is this facial twitch noticeable?? So many questions! All in all though the hope train seems to be growing and we appear to be heading in the right direction, so fingers crossed AND washed.

Welcome to the 30th issue of The Comet! It’s good to be back in print and we have some new contributors that I’m excited about in this issue including Loni McKenzie. She kicks things off on a high note with a little piece on boobie health that should appeal to boobie owners and boobie lovers alike. Another first time Comet contributor is Nick Carlo who shares a philosophical essay on the impacts of life in the age of the internet, a write-up that coincidentally pairs nicely with my How Bizarre column on the dark web. And of course we are spoiled with another exclusive crossword puzzle from the deviant mind of Cory “Damn You” Calhoun, always the first thing I like to do when I get my hands on a print copy - cuss, shake my fist and immediately regret going with a pen and not a pencil.

Still too early to reintroduce the events and First Friday calendar but maybe in a couple of issues will we see those return. That said, if you are planning an event either online

or in the real world - reach out to us at thecometmagazine@gmail.com and we can try to get a blurb in to promote it. Same email if you’d like to advertise with us. Imagine how swell your business or event would look in newsprint.

I see more and more people going without their masks in public places lately. Stop that. I don’t care if you have been vaccinated. I don’t know that. And the poor folks working in retail and the service industry that have had to become bouncers of maskrebels certainly don’t know that. And we all know at least some of these mask-rebels would lie about being vaccinated to gain entry to any given establishment without the burden of that half-ounce piece of cotton over their face that apparently is the single most tyrannical thing a person has ever had to endure in history. So keep them on, at least until the stores no longer have to require it. Let’s not add to the already stressful year these workers have lived while many of us were home watching Tiger King in our aforementioned stretchy-trousers.

We have almost made it. The light at the end of the tunnel is finally coming into focus.

Damn that’s bright. Pull the shades will ya?

Happy Trails,

Ron Evans Editor of The Comet

Comet and I are excited about Spring, in spite of these faces.

Crosswords & more made exclusively for The Comet

THEMELESS CROSSWORD #7

1."The Raven" verb 6.Rashness 11. ___ chi

14.Certain arm bones

15.Positions with bargaining power

17.Video game pioneer 18.Vibrationalternatives

19.Bro or sis

20.Part of A.A.R.P.: Abbr.

22."The Communist Manifesto" author Marx

23.Part of A.A.R.P.: Abbr.

25.Fungal spore sacs

27.Kemper of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”

31.Very salty or steamy, perhaps

33.Time off for 29-Down, slangily 35.Itches

36.NFL's annual player-selection event

39.2021 Disney+ seriesabout a witch and herrobot husband

40. Equation-solving process of earning Bitcoins and other virtual currency

42.Shut down

43.It

DOUBLE ANAGRAM CHALLENGE

>>> Solving instructions at tinyurl.com/coryanagrams

ASKS CORKY

wordanagrammedfromremovedletters:

50.One of the noble gases

52.Apple variety

53."The Scarlet Letter"'s letter, literally

55.Egyptian cobra

57.Second degree?

58.They often end with Xs and Os

62.Cabinet post

64.What "Return of the Jedi" is also referred to as 65.Parentheticalcomment

66.Dogma

16.Alarming sight at sea

21.Certain rank ofBritish nobility

24.Snags again

26. Cliff cleft

28.Economical

29. Mil. branch

30.Superlative suffix

32."Knock that off right now!"

34.Steps away

37. Like backstage passes or Denny’s menus

38.What some may do before they dash?

39.Noah of "The Librarians"

40.Half a dance?

41."Dope!"

1.Natural source ofradio waves

2.Final syllable, linguistically

3.How some dares are accepted

4.Road or roof material

5.Successor

6.Smarts

7.Singer DiFranco

8.Slowly registering

9.Senate attire, once

10.___ nous (French for "between us")

11.Slew

12.Homer's dad on"The Simpsons"

13.Orbiting lab, for short

45.1994 hit protestsong by The Cranberries 46.Personify 47.Brought up 49.One of the noble gases 51.Watering hole 54. Extinct bird 56.Surveyor's map 58.Island chain?

59.Word after "photo" or "special" 60.Spirit

61.One-named rapper andformer "The Talk" co-host 63.Bat wood

META CROSSWORD PRIZE CONTEST

answer is Look for a 7-letter common pet breed.) So, 5 clues ere in boldface type, and 4 of their grid answers (in blue, at right and below) did not make sense:

17A. Likewarmwinterunderwear: but should be 66A. Lowerompletelyintoliquid: but should be

11D. […]Ra,Sol,andHelios,forthree: but should be 45D. Livingoomfurniturepieces: but should be

Huh? Well, the grid answer to the 5th bold clue (40A. Convertedviacipher...or whattheanswerstotheboldfacecluesare) is ENCODED Since answers to boldface clues are encoded, you must make akey to decode them—by matching up their grid answersto their real answers:

Grid answers PADLOCKNOODLEDESQUIREMISMADE

Real answers THERMALIMMERSESUNGODSCOUCHES

That’s the makings ofa good ol’ fashioned substitution cipher key! Here’s how the letters line up:

Grid answers’ letters(in ABC order)

Matched-up letters from real answers

Now, aboutthat petbreed? Well, 40As’s clue andanswerexplainallboldface clues’answers are encoded—and 40A itself has a boldface clue Thus, its grid answer, ENCODED, is encoded too, and must be decoded Apply the codekey to ENCODED to get SIAMESE, a 7letter commonpetbreedthatsatisfies thepuzzle’shint. Congrats to Cynthia Peterson for submitting the winning entry!

SOLUTIONS TO LAST EDITION'S DOUBLE ANAGRAM CHALLENGE

Themeofnewwords: Periodic elements. CRANNIES - N = ARSENIC; INTO - O = TIN; LADEN - N = LEAD; REVILES - E = SILVER. Leftover letters anagram into NEON. (Note: The leftover letters in the last edition were mistakenly not in ABC order. Mea culpa!)

I CRAVE FEEDBACK! Thoughts? Suggestions? Lemme have it. CSCXWORDS@GMAIL.COM

withinder:dating bios for the self-aware

Real locals sharing their real dating bio. We think it will be...illuminating.

Annie, 32

Hi. Here’s what I’m not. Your mother. I do cook and clean but not out of duty or allegiance. If I feel you are slacking because you know I will pick up that slack I will murder you in my fantasies. A lot. I will also stand on a principle longer than you could ever guess. I once watched half a pizza rot on the floor because my boyfriend didn’t dispose of it after eating the bulk of it and it became a standoff of who will dispose of it. It was there for 9 days. 9. Finally my boyfriend’s mom came to visit and he threw it out like it was no big deal. So...I win? Don’t fucking answer that. I ask things sometimes. Don’t answer them. Even if I ask you to. Do I sound fun?

ANSWER ME!

Here’s what I am. Very attentive. WHATCHA DOIN? HOW BOUT NOW? OK SEE YOU IN 5. But I’m cute and cuddly and give good head so it won’t bug you. Until it does, and then nothing will save the relationship and we must duel for who gets the cat. Or whatever we picked

up at the Humane Society together when we were drunk that one night. I’ll also wait up for you. ALL NIGHT. Doesn’t that sound healthy? Just me and the cat I barely know constantly checking the clock wondering if it will ever stop being a quarter past pathetic.

Here’s what I want. Lots of cuddles, lies about my weight, lies about my cooking and painful truths about WHERE YOU WERE UNTIL HALF PAST PATHETIC LAST NIGHT!!!

I will rock your world in the bedroom until I stop. Then it’s gone forever. It’s not a game, I just...get tired of wieners? I dunno. So if good sex is something you’re looking for then you are in luck, for a few months. I’m funny. I am that. And I use humor to distract and confuse while I run away. I also use humor to test you. OH YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY? Anyway. So...who wants in?

Rose, 35

I’m looking for a sugar daddy to take care of my financial needs and spoil me and my beautiful children. I have no interest in being a badass boss bitch or support-

ing myself/my family financially. I would love to be a stay at home mom/artist. I will cook, clean and create art that helps me process my big emotions and childhood trauma while you bring home the bacon. Sexual attraction is a must. No creeps or weirdos. No uglies. Thick dick preferred, length is negotiable. I go for the outdoorsy type. Need to look good in a flannel and shirtless while chopping wood for our rustic cabin home and wood burning stove (that you buy for us). Looking for someone fun, empathetic, kind, nurturing, adventurous, patient and witty with healthy boundaries and a banging bod. Slide into my DM’s and let’s get this thing started.

Beth, 25

Hey there! Are you a young man filled with confidence, drive, a good heart and a good family? Then come let me drain you of those burdens! I’m totally great at slowly taking over someone else’s lifeat least all the good parts, I have my own bad parts so...we good there.

Now don’t be turned off by the fact that I’m only 25 and have owned as many vehicles. I’m not rich, just real good at finding people who have a 12 year old car

about to die that I can have for a year at best. And with all the money I save on car payments I can afford to buy the finest Ramen-based microwavable goods to cook for us baby. And with not caring about the environment at all, we don’t have dishes to worry about so I can spend more time feeling bad about not putting away my clean laundry and instead letting it fall on the floor where it soon melds with the dirty clothes. Vicious, vicious cycle.

I watch a lot of British TV so know that you’ll be constantly judged about your lack of Britishness. While I scrape the bottom of the styrofoam cup for those tiny onion slices that think they can outsmart a bitch. Because classy.

Ok, write back! I love you already and I can tell I’m really gonna get along with your mom. Can’t wait to gossip with her about you! XO

Stepping up for the pac

LOCAL actor hits the pavement to raise funds

by ron evans

Matthew Pippin is a well known figure of the local theatre community with too many roles and crew credits to list here. In between plays and musicals he can be found dazzling audiences as Mr. Pip - and sometimes the enchanting Melba Jean - with The Radar Dames burlesque troupe. To Pippin, the stage is life and as we hopefully draw toward the reopening of theatres and performance venues he has taken to the streets to raise funds for one of his favorite stages, The Numerica Performing Arts Center. I caught up (it took a lot of stepping) with Pippin to hear about this fund raiser/awarenessraiser and why the PAC is so important to him and to this community.

“My love and the loss of theatre for the last year has been devastating to

me. I’ve been really lost. Depression and bread were getting the better of me, so I put my FitBit back on a few minutes before midnight on December 31st, 2020. Low numbers made me move and I got myself walking again. The first full week I had it on, I was 12K steps short of 200,000. I posted about it (on social media) asking if anybody wanted to bet that I could make 200K in the few remaining hours of the week. A pal of mine commented that she would give me $100 if I could hit 275K. That wasn’t going to happen in those few hours, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the idea of getting some cash for walking 275,000 steps in 7 days. That’s about 40,000 steps a day. If I could get that cash and possibly make a little more, why not donate it to a place I’ve missed so much? So, I chose the week of March 21st - 27th (the 27th being World Theatre Day). A good performer knows all about timing.

The Numerica Performing Arts Center is a delightful place and I’ve had some wonderful memories there and put in hard work on a number of theatrical productions there (both on and backstage). I’ve been lucky enough to be in all the Hot August Night productions since they began in 2013, and my depression really kicked in when 2020’s production of Pippin was cancelled. Those shows are real work. Rehearse for two and a half to three weeks, perform for a month, then get paid. It’s a rush, it’s hard work, and it is worth it with every fiber of my being. For anyone who thinks it’s easy to be in a show, that’s a compliment to the performer.

At the time of this writing, I am happy to report that I not only hit the 275,000 step goal, I reached 300,000 steps (29 hours and 1 minute before the end of the week) which also inspired a few more donations. Also, at

the time of this writing, my journey has raised over $3,000 (through Facebook, Venmo, CashApp, and people going straight to KeyBank... remember just walking door to door with an envelope?), which totally surpassed the few hundred I thought I might be able to pull off (I unfortunately won’t have a final tally until after this publishes, but I will have that posted along with my step count from each day to show my work and what I have done on my Facebook and Instagram pages). Donations can still be made by sending a check straight to the PAC. It doesn’t even have to be about my walk, it could just be done to support a nonprofit organization that has been dark for over a year. If the PAC isn’t your thing, donations could also be made to Music Theatre of Wenatchee. Supporting the performing arts and shedding light on that was my goal throughout all of this. The Grand Dame of the theatre may be resting, but she will be back in all her former glory (she has survived worse). Plays, Musicals, Burlesque, Drag, Crew... it’s my life. Performing is my life. I miss the audience so much. Our job as performers and crew is to help people forget their troubles. In a year filled with them, and not being able to help... it’s been a difficult year to be “living”. If it all opened up tomorrow, I’d be working on something to entertain and hit the boards as fast as possible. I do apologize if I moan the first time when I am back onstage... it’s been a while.”

Ain’t he just golden? Matthew Pippin out hoofing it for the Numerica PAC. Photos provided.

boobees...

What kind of bees make milk? BOOBEES!!

Teach a 3-year-old that joke and watch the joy it brings every time they tell it. Kids know the difference between a pity laugh and a real laugh, and this joke gets the real ones. Especially from old guys standing in line at the grocery store (ask me how I know).

Anyway, boobies. Boobs. Breasts. Gazongas. Whatever you like to call them, let’s talk about them. Not in a sexualized way, a food-for-babies way, or a cancer/ avoid cancer way, but in a breasts-cansay-a-lot-about-your-health way. We live in a culture where weird things going on in your body are considered totally normal until they become bad enough to be treated with medication or surgery. BUT THERE’S

ANOTHER WAY!!!

The wisdom of old medicine, prescientific medicine (that is now VERY heavily backed by ALL THE SCIENCE) used indicators to catch issues before they become big problems. Like breast health, fibroids, cysts, lumps, bumps and irregularities of all sorts are not necessarily cause for concern but are early indicators of imbalance in the body.

All ancient forms of medicine use constitutional models. This means they look at the constitution of each individual person and develop a treatment plan based on their unique expression of life. Ayurveda uses the three doshas (vata, pitta, kapha), Toaist and Traditional Chinese Medicine use the 5 Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), Alchemist traditions use 4 Elements (Earth, Water, Air and Fire) and Western traditions use the 4 humors (melancholic, choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic). This means that if a teeny, tiny,

dry skinned, pale woman came in for medical help, she’d have a completely different treatment approach than a big, loud, oily skinned woman with the same problem.

If you have abnormalities in breast health, the girls are trying to tell you something and alert you to something going on that needs to be balanced. Going to a healthcare provider whose practice is rooted in a constitutional model (Acupuncturist, Herbalist, Naturopath, among others), will help you learn what YOU need. Maybe your lymphatic system is sluggish and you need to stop wearing a bra with under wires or too tight of a band (seriously, it’s terrible for you). Maybe your liver is having a hard time metabolizing hormones and you have more estrogen than you need. Maybe your yin/ yang balance needs a reset, or your shoulders are too tight, or you have a hard time saying ‘no’…. the body is mysterious, and it takes commitment to learn its language.

The good news: it’s easy to support your own safe plants that are great for boobies, growing wild in our yards like violet leaf, dandelion, chickweed and cleavers. Harvest some (properly ID them first, let’s not find out the hard way something’s actually poison oak…), mash them up and rub the goo on your breasts. Maybe mix it with some honey. It really is that easy.

De-colonize your healthcare and recolonize it with wild, radical, empowered health.

Loni McKenzie, LMP - Licensed massage therapist, structural integration specialist, and flower essence practitioner at Mission Health & Wellness

by Loni McKenzie

Artbeat: Self Glare

By Lonnie Broadvalley

Human beings rely so much on the face to communicate, having to relate to each other with half our face covered has been interesting at best. The mask makes it even more challenging to connect and raises questions about how obscuring our features changes how others might read us. Because this is an art curious paper, and I am a painter, I can’t help but approach this collective experience in a way that relates to the creative process. Maybe we can find some beautiful, heart warming lesson...or maybe hard knocks just doubles down on our education? Either way, I realize we could spend years analyzing this subject only to end up right where we started - looking at ourselves.

I asked local portrait photographer extraordinaire, Siri Rose of Sunday Brunch

Photography about working closely with her models and what influence this has on her creative approach. The identities of

her models and the characters they embody tell a story. Each photo is the result of human chemistry and countless decisions about what to leave in & what to leave out. She says, “Being able to interact with your model and create a relationship relieves the tension that usually comes with the first quarter of the shoot. Nearly every model, whether you’re a newbie or seasoned professional, the first bit is always a learning experience. You’re learning about yourself, each other, and the atmosphere surrounding.”

Certainly some of the best works are influenced by the interaction between artist, model, and environment even when the interaction is happening subconsciously. Much of the art we call portraiture includes the figure and how the whole body is communicating.

It is at this point I’d like to pan out in order to take in our collective masking experience. While a portrait communicates a very deliberate version of someone’s identity, it is still frozen in time and silent,

unable to dispel whatever misconceptions you might have about them. A picture may be worth a thousand words but it still can’t defend itself. Over the last year, our most familiar forms of communication - facial expression and speech have had to take a backseat (at least out in public) to our body language, and accept that the world is going to see what it wants to see. I find it a lot easier to control my voice than my body! How incredible would it be if everyone was quietly reflecting on their own reactions while we’re masked up and anonymous?

I’m sure we’ve all heard stories about seeing a nude model for the first time or hanging around the locker room after lap swim.

I love this memory Siri shares about pushing aside the shame that tends to accompany one raised in a sexually repressed culture, and recognizing it for what it is. She recalls, “I actually remember being about fifteen or sixteen years old and I had just made a new friend, like

same day new friend, and we were putting makeup on in the bathroom. Just being girly teenagers, giggling about boys or something I’m sure, and she said she wanted to shower. I had started gathering up my things and getting ready to leave, and before I even noticed she was just butt nakey. No shame whatsoever. I remember being shocked, and then immediately asking myself why I was shocked. Ever since then I’ve strived to cancel the stigma behind the human form. We’ve all got one after all.”

This is awesome! Even at sixteen, this kid has the humility to ask herself WHY she was shocked. Any artist that is pushing boundaries hopes a viewer is doing the same within themselves - even after passing judgement about whether or not they ‘like’ it. I’ll try to remember to check in with my teenage self next time I need guidance.

Follow Sunday Brunch Photography at IG: @sunday.brunch.photo

“Small Tub” by Lindsay Breidenthal

Eidolons

I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning, Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable, Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering, Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you, Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown, We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent, The substance of an artist’s mood or savan’s studies long, Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life, (The units gather’d, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,) The whole or large or small summ’d, added up, In its eidolon.

The old, old urge, Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles, From science and the modern still impell’d, The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here, America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl, Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing, To-day’s eidolons.

These with the past, Of vanish’d lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea, Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages, Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades, Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidolons everlasting.

THREE POEMS

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic, The visible but their womb of birth, Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape, The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time, (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn’d professor, Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics, Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix’d yet fix’d, Ever shall be, ever have been and are, Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard, Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet, Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them, God and eidolons.

And thee my soul, Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations, Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent, The body lurking there within thy body, The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself, An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs, No special strains to sing, none for itself, But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round full-orb’d eidolon.

One Hour to Madness and Joy

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not! (What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

BY WALT WHITMAN

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!

O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children, I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world!

O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!

O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all untied and illumin’d!

O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and you from yours!

To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!

To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!

To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!

To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!

To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!

To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!

To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!

To rise thither with my inebriate soul!

To be lost if it must be so!

To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom! With one brief hour of madness and joy.

To You

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true soul and body appear before me. They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear. I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,

beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all, From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light, But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light, From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life, Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, What you have done returns already in mockeries, (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you, Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, I pursue you where none else has pursued you, Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me, The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you, There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you, No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you, I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency, Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself, Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted, Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

Selected works from Leaves Of Grass by Walt Whitman 1819–1892

Waxing moon: Artisan candle maker karmen ohme

BY RON EVANS

Candle making may be a bit of an under appreciated art form. Anyone can buy a kit at the hobby store and try their hand at it and maybe they will have success. Maybe they will cry and throw hot wax at the wall in frustration. But true artisan candle making is a delicate craft from start to finish, requiring patience and often the fine measurements and careful hand to eye coordination of someone conducting a science experiment. After trying candle making yourself you may just want to stick with buying them from one of these dedicated wax scientists instead.

Locally grown Karmen Ohme is one such scientist. Her Moon candle line has been flying off shelves of local boutiques and making homes cozier for a few years now. Moon followers are always thrilled when a new scent is announced, like hearing your favorite band has a new album coming out. I wanted to chat with Ohme about her business, her craft and her philosophy of the somewhat mysterious culture of candle making.

Tell us about your background and how you found yourself as a maker of finely scented burnable art?

I have been pretty active in experiencing the world through my sense of smell since I was small. I’m literally the person picking different parts of plants like pine needles, bark, flowers, grass, and giving them a deep expansive sniff! I apprenticed under a wise woman to study the artistry of perfuming and soap making and the alchemy came extremely natural to me, like a flow state. After a few years I noticed my mind beginning to layer memory, visual imagery, and scent together. And candles seemed to be the way I felt most called to go; candles change the aesthetic for the better, always in my opinion, haha! They can be ritualistic, celebratory, calming, igniting, and sensual.

Tell us how you arrived at Moon as the brand moniker - its meaning to you, and talk a little about the logo. Who designed it?

Well actually, long before I thought of candles, I doodled a lot. I bet you can guess what I drew! The moon has always been comforting, magical and mysterious to me. It is a balance of dark and light and it is fascinating to me that every part of our planet is connected by it. It’s astounding if you sit down and think about how every pair of eyeballs has looked into the moon. Nature lives by the moon. It makes me feel so human, and so connected. And I designed the logo!

Do you have a specific philosophy ingrained into the work?

Or are you just happy to create a good quality candle?

A lot of companies make low quality candles that burn for short periods of time and also charge you quite a hefty amount. I wanted to create a high quality, long burning, uniquely scented candle that would be used to enhance people’s experiences. Scent helps hold memories. Memories and stories help us exist.

Tell us about the process you have developed from start to finish. Does inspiration tend to start with wanting to convey a mood, a particular scent or naming scheme?

Well, I was super fascinated with the folklore behind the moon in general, but let me tell you, that is a lot of stories. I decided to focus on full moon lore. Each of my candles gains inspiration from the different full moons in a year. Just as the changing season and celebrations marked on our calendar, the lunar cycle offers a plethora of agricultural, energetic, ritualistic, historic, symbolic and natural cycles to draw from. An image comes to my mind and the colors and shapes are easily

Photo by Austyn Heinlein

translated into the language of aroma, and I speak that.

When you have nailed a recipe (is that what you would even call it?) and are ready to put it into production do you have test sniffer/burners to provide feedback, or do you just put them out and let the market decide?

Mostly I just listen to my intuition. I have a few friends who have ASTOUNDING sniffers, so they help guide me. As someone who has “dabbled” in making -attempting to make- candles I can attest that the YouTube videos make it look WAY easier than it is. Especially in terms of consistent high level quality, which your candles certainly have. How was the learning process in the beginning and how often (these days) do you attempt a new candle that ends in colossal failure?

Haha! No candle, a colossal failure! How dare you?! Just kidding. Even if a candle has giant sinkholes, wet spots, crystallization or is goopy and something went terribly wrong, it’s not a failure because I am gaining information on what works, and what didn’t work in the way I expected it to.

Were there any candle makers that have inspired you (or continue to inspire you) along the way?

Well, actually my big sister. She wouldn’t call herself a chandler as I do, but she used to make candles as gifts when she was in college. I am 10 years younger than her and she allowed me to help her.

Do you create them in a designated studio space or is this more of an in the

kitchen operation?

I have my own studio where all the magic creations happen!

Your candles can be found in boutiques all over the valley, tell us about your distribution process and reach? And do you have your own boutique/storefront - or are there any plans for that?

I don’t want to over saturate the market with my goods. I pick and choose the boutiques I think best align with my inner compass, my values - boutiques that are derived from passion, care and curiosity. Lets see... in the Valley I can be found at The Plant Ally, The Bubblery, and The Cactus Room on most days. I have been in Tumbleweed and Salt Creek Apothecary too. Bear Foods in Chelan and Evolve clothing in Ellensburg carry me as well. These shops speak to me; I like the hearts and minds of the people behind the business, and I am inspired by those individuals in so many different ways!

My studio is dual function; store front and creation all in one. It will be available to the public soon, just aligning with the surrounding shops for a summer opening. (Along with the long awaited perfume line, shhh, don’t tell!)

What have been your most popular candles?

Oh dear! That is really hard! Most of my candles are pretty even on popularity...I think because my scent palette is broad. But looking at numbers from last year, Hunter, Wolf, Dark, and Dragon were most loved!

Where can people purchase online?

Well, for right now, you can follow me on @moon__made (double underscore) because I am a procrastinator when it comes to web design. Anyone can directly message me for orders or questions! It is fairly simple, I send an invoice via email and either ship, drop off, or arrange a pick up. C

Photo by Sean Frank

the internet

BY NICK CARLO

The Internet is still a rather recent invention, whose effects on the psyche of our society, and the individual, we are still only beginning to understand. The network of servers connected by various forms of optic cables, while under development by various government and military organizations throughout the later half of the 20th century, really only had its debut on the stage of mass public consciousness in the late 1990’s. Prior to that time, while home computers were becoming increasingly more common, communication within a network was not. The late 90’s, with the Dot Com Boom and Bust, saw the internet and its possibilities first projected into the public spotlight. Since that time, hardware has only become more powerful, compact, and efficient, and computer languages and programs have become increasingly nuanced and developed. As we rushed off into the great unknown of progress and potentiality we perhaps neglected to consider how our adventure would change us.

Marshall McLuhan, popularized in the 1960’s, among many other things, a concept that is still referenced today: “The medium is the message.” In short, this assertion proclaims that the effect on the psyche produced by a medium, or method, of communication vastly overwhelms the effect of the content, or information, received from that particular medium. Additionally, he proclaimed this messaging that the medium performs on us is almost entirely imperceptible to the user. He spoke and wrote prolifically about the social and individual effects of interacting with various forms of media, whether TV, movies, music, books, or advertisements. If it really is messaging us, it may be instructive to consider the vein of effects produced by the very experience of the Internet on our social and individual psyche, regardless of what websites we use.

It then comes down to determining what exactly characterizes the internet experience, apart from the experiences conduited by other media. In these early days of this Age of the Transistor, most of our interaction with the internet has itself been experienced through the me-

dium of the Screen. (Though even this connection is being broken as the internet moves into the world of screenless things like smart speakers). What effects does the screen have on the individual? It is becoming increasingly common knowledge the frequencies of light produced by modern screens have the ability to interrupt the rhythms of our natural Circadian Cycle. Additionally, the Screen is different from, say, the Book, in that its contents now have no physicality or weight, from the perspective of the user (clearly, servers do exist and have weight, though the user does not interact tangibly with them). What effects does this incorpore-

Protective Mother or Father in the mass psyche.) It is a place one may go, whenever one chooses, for information, answers, community, or entertainment.

The Internet Experience, then turns out to be incredibly stimulating, so much so that we can experience a decent amount of stimulus without very much energy inserted. This forms a decent contrast to the Stimulation Paradigm of the previous era. In a time when the worlds’ catalogue of all media was more than a thumb swipe away, stimulating entertainment was harder to come by. This often demanded a higher energy insertion of the individual into an experience for it to be

more of a correlation with world view. However, as the very nature of the Internet Experience is alocational, and now one may cultivate a world view completely independently of everyone else. This seems to have had an effect of creating a community intellectually isolated from their physical neighbors while making intellectual neighbors out of people never met or seen across the world. This in turn does have a Shrinking Effect on our notion of physical distance. When pictures of distant lands may be experienced and travel there acquired from a few clicks, how far is far, really? We’ve seen it, the world is on a microscope slide.

ality of content have on the psyche? Who knows? Maybe, it influences our brain to expect a certain mutability or control over other phenomena. However, we can say that this aspect is an essential characteristic of the Screen experience that informs the subconscious experience we have with the Internet and perhaps even the expectations we have on other aspects of life.

However, the Internet Experience is not completely defined by the Screen Experience. The Internet carries with it an entire set of mental assumptions that color our Internet Experience. We assume a few things about the Internet almost tacitly: it is “always on,” always accessible, independent of location or time; it is a “place” where one may share and experience the ideas and thoughts of others; it is a place of perpetually untapped potential, a world of wonder where no one knows what may be discovered next. These characteristics make it particularly enticing, with a fairly low energy requirement to use. Its omnipresence is comforting, we can feel less alone, as there is a whole world of voices in our pocket. (One wonders if it is fulfilling an archetypal role of

satisfying. For instance, take the disco of the 1970’s and 80s: a comparatively energy expensive entertainment, by today’s standards. Dressing up in a classy, zany, or unique way, leaving the house, dancing and singing all night, is much more of an investment compared to a night in front of a screen. Thus one may imagine, through habitual Internet Experience, due to brain plasticity, we begin to expect a certain level of stimulation at a cost of a certain amount of energy expenditure. This may lead us to abandon certain habits and activities, that while at one time, engaging, now “not worth the effort.”

This is not to say that the Internet only stifles creativity; on the contrary, it can inspire, however this inspiration is generally a product of Internet content, rather than the medium itself, which is inherently enervating. For the most part, the internet is a consumer’s world, allowing vastly more opportunities to consume, than produce. And thus consume we do.

Everybody consumes their own niche of the internet, their own specific set of web domains, their online fingerprint. This forms a decent contrast to a pre-internet world, where physical location had

And yet, it is just all imagined. The world is still just as big as it ever was, just the feeling of closeness has increased. Everyone we meet online is even more an aspect of our own psyche, even more so than the people we meet in the waking world. We provide the voices to texts and comments. We fit our conception of popular figures into a particular archetypal location, regardless of that human’s true nature or personality. The image is cultivated. We cultivate an image of ourselves as well. Our online persona is more of an idealized projection than a reflection of the self. Why do we do this?

The internet is a perfect place for comparing oneself with another. This inevitably leads to judgement of the self, or of the other. Observation and Critique from and towards so many perspectives, is, for the individual, at such unprecedented levels, that our genetic and physiological memory has little data on how to deal with it healthily.

So where does this leave us with our creation? All in all, at the very least, it seems that the Internet Experience is a bit of a metaphysical (or mental) home world that we curate for ourselves. The creation of which carries with it deepseated, emotional, physiological, and social effects, always flowing just beneath the surface of conscious awareness. The internet seems to show no signs of slowing its growth and encroachment into even more areas of public and private life. We will not know all of the effects of such integration until the dust has settled and we can see what has changed, if we can remember. C

America Online sign on screen from 1997

comet tales: Surrealist poetry by

From the author -

Below are three pieces of writing completed for a surrealism course I am currently taking. Surrealists valued freedom of thought, creativity without boundaries and a certain degree of impulsivity. The poems and excerpt below were written largely in short periods of time without any real direction or goal in mind.

Waving at the moon

There’s nothing out in space but if you really squint

You can see the faint outlines of the past and if you cross your eyes they look like everyone you’ve ever met.

The only things out in space are dead if rocks can be dead and if dust can be dead. But we’re shouting into space anyway, if you can count satellite beams and prayers as shouting.

Moon dust is still swirling from our last steps up there. If you listen closely you can hear it: A faint whoosh of a bygone decade, if decades can whoosh and if time can be bygone.

Time is a circle and space is a loop de loop. If you time it just right you can wave at your past self when you are hanging upside down.

Do you think about tomorrow and how it might be yesterday with face paint? If it is, what will you do?

I wave up at the moon sometimes. If there’s something up there to wave at, it’s seen me, I’m sure. I sit up at night and wonder if it is waving back.

A message to be broadcast into space

Hello. It’s afternoon here but maybe it’s not where you are. Maybe there’s no such thing as afternoon where you are. Douglas Adams said that time is an illusion, lunch time even more so.

We come in peace. Well, more in pieces. You see, we’ve drawn a bunch of imaginary lines all over our planet and occasionally we kill each other over them. But those of us who are left come in peace. Well, most of us. Some of us may try to bomb you or shoot you. Do they have guns where you are? They’re loud and often deadly. A lot of us carry them around - just in case. In case we need them. In case someone else is also carrying one around and wants to shoot us with it.

I digress.

We are the people of earth. We call ourselves humans. We pseudo-hairless bipeds that can speak and write and are able to build complex things. It turns out a lot of things on our planet can also do those things, but we’re pretty sure we do it best. We’re omnivores - well. Some of us. That’s a long story. And we’re mammals - that one I’m pretty sure is true of all of us. That means we can have live babies and we are warm blooded so we thermo regulate. But we can still get too cold or too hot. And some parts of the

holly thorpe

planet are so cold and so hot we can’t survive there. It turns out those parts are getting bigger. But that’s another long story.

We’ve been trying to reach space for a long time. We’ve been trying to visit other planets but it’s very difficult and it costs a lot of money and it can be dangerous. We’re kind of easy to kill, the more I think about it. But I digress once more. We’ve been trying to see whether someone else is out there, that might want to chat with us. They say it’s because we’re curious and want to learn more about the universe, but I think it’s because we’re just lonely. There are an awful lot of us, but most of us will never meet. And even if we did, we don’t have a common language. We all look different too. It’s very complicated down here.

I won’t keep you any longer. Perhaps this message should have been more succinct. Something along the lines of, “Hello? Is anyone out there? We’re doing our best.” It’s more complicated than that, and that’s not really the truth, but we’d like to make a good first impression. Well. I would anyway.

Have a good rest of your afternoon, or whatever it may be for you. If you are out there, I hope to talk to you soon. I don’t know about the rest, but I’m lonely down here. And sometimes looking up at all that space, it makes me a little less lonely, I guess.

About automatic writing: Below is an automatic writing excerpt written for a surrealism course I am taking. Automatic writing was a popular writing exercise among surrealist poets and writers. They would write in a stream of consciousness, not selfediting or pausing. The goal is to write as quickly and as freely as possible. If you care to try it, start by setting a timer for a few minutes and then writing without pausing, editing or erasing until the timer is done.

Dreams of an Argentine Tegu

Argentine tegus can dream. But what do they dream of? Sunshine, blue skies? I think not. The must of frog’s legs and the stickiness of wet feathers and the blood and bones of small things. I think they dream of eggs too, with orange yolks and murky whites. They dream of bananas and of hawks and of shadows of hawks. What do I dream of? Argentine tegus, of course. I am only partially joking. It amazes me what I can think of when I’m sitting here. My dreams are boring except for when they are not. Sometimes people die and fly and fight. Sometimes dogs get hit by cars and chickens get killed by hawks. Sometimes the neighbor is hauled away in ambulance or the other neighbor has a snowball fight with their children. Some of this is real, and some of it isn’t and I’ve found it doesn’t really matter which is which anymore. The only thing normal are dreams. So, the argentine tegus dream and dream and dream. For six months out of the year, they lay in a comatose state, not losing body fat or heat. And I wonder if they dream then. I wonder if we dream for a little bit after we die. The Interpretation of Dreams was overrated. They don’t need to mean anything, they can just be. What do you dream of when it’s dark and you’re alone? What silver tipped images sit inside your head. What rose dipped stories do you tell yourself. Answer me this: Do you ever dream you’ve died and can’t wake up? Last week I dreamt I woke up three times, but every time it was still a dream. I wonder every day if I am still in that dream – still waking up. I am beginning to dread knowing what waits for me when I wake. Is everything as it was? I hope not. I could sleep through this pandemic and I could sleep through this whole year and not miss it. Oh, to be a dreaming tegu, sleeping through the cold, dreaming of hawk shadows and golden eggs. Oh, to be a human girl, wide awake, never dreaming, except when it is bad enough to sleep and bad enough to dream too.

new works by wenatchee poet cg dahlin

Impressed

collect the air in your wind bags course it through flaps and tubes conjure vibrations that bellow out to fibonacci ears and see that order done, made real in existence are you not impressed?

witness the luminaries, emanating endlessly shedding light, ineffable light, boundless reach their forms perfectly circular, emitting orbs dancing their rays through the ether’s vibrato are you not impressed?

travel years throughout life say everything’s the same yet nothing’s the same many still carry their same names, the old get heavy chests and hunker way over and the young scream and thrash arched upward from wild to tamed, from nameless to named, all the works that’ve been done by our inexplicable ganglion nubs, through our undulating throats are you not impressed?

I might wonder about the end though, I suppose I can focus on my wardrobe instead and what threads have been weaved, countless threads to conjure a simple cloth, and it’s mundane I suppose, the people make it clear this is what I must wear yet each carries this mandala of intricacy, each speaking Quipu I think about the threads of fate, the strings of quanta, and to all this I can only think to ask are you not impressed?

and to take my mind off such boundless matters I impede through space to a place where pleasant pastries are presented the flour milled from grain grown tall, minded by a man named named Stan Stan acquired the land through years as a farmhand, he holds it being that the growth of the fields have always inspired uncharacteristic wonder in his weary eyes, that all that sprawls is tied to his entrails and somehow he was forced to sell it underprice, big wigs rule because… well, you know why,

they mulled it down, procured apricots from the Prescott’s, and sugar that was to be used for sodas stopped in its tracks and was reoriented from Minnesota and Seresota to crawl across the badlands to pinch away a parcel of it’s mass to procure a glaze applied by a baker in a floured haze, it was a Sunday and his last straw, the last bear claws, the last croissants, the last danishes, and apple fritter, enough!

Simon Gruff dished it up and threw down his apron, and lastly a lady, Malory, laid them out minutely,

arranged with such perfection she allowed herself a sigh of relief, and here comes me, dirty, eyes disproportionated red and groggily fluttering, rubbing my crusty, oily face, reeking of yesterday’s pain, say, “Ey! Da apricot one fuh meh.”

I shove it in my mindless face hole and groan “pleh! garbage! Tastes like a gas stations floor” unimpressed.

Sometimes

sometimes I feel the excess dried drips of paint on my northern bedroom wall

sometimes I test how close to candle flame I can get before the pain seers too deep

sometimes I flip open books to an undecided page read two or three of them, and don’t leave a mark

sometimes I think my car is going to blow I have no reason to think this

sometimes I like green other times is comes across as soupy and almost cliche

sometimes my thighs feel like there’s helium inside as if I’d get sent skyward leg first like a breach birth out of the ozone

sometimes I miss my childhood dog, he comes to mind in waves, I think about how he’d run up trees but never caught his prize

sometimes I like being boring, I like having nothing to add, I think about how too much of such spunk turn old men drunk

sometimes I hear words in the wind it makes me think of my grandmother

sometimes, I drag my fingernails across my skin, watching how far I scratch, tracing the white marks across

sometimes my arms feel like there’s too much blood in them I have no reason to think this

sometimes I feel confused, even though I’m not trying to figure anything out

sometimes I don’t remember my name.

John Martin and the Theatre of Subversion

By Max Adams

John Martin, born in the week that the Bastille was stormed in July 1789, was an instinctive revolutionary. His generation may have suffered from a misty-eyed envy of new-found liberties in America and France, but they understood what practical revolution might mean at home and they strove to achieve liberation from repression and tyranny without bloodshed; very largely they succeeded.

Martin has often, and wrongly, been seen as a religious fanatic by a comprehensive misunderstanding of his paintings and by false association with his schizophrenic arsonist brother. He has also been portrayed as a Luddite (by critics who should have known better) and by Ruskin, a late contemporary, as a mere artisan in lamp-black. Poor Martin. Despite his very evident technical deficiencies as a painter – he inevitably suffers by comparison with his friends and contemporaries Turner and Constable – he was equally adept at creating a theatrical sense of a world undergoing irrevers-

ible change, and more fervent than either in his desire to be an engine of that change. If there were dramatists better placed to portray the dilemmas of the human condition, and one immediately thinks of Shelley and Byron, of Delacroix and Dickens, no-one came closer than Martin to designing the perfect sets on which to act out the drama: he was the supreme architect and engineer of the sublime.

To start at the curtain’s uncertain opening, we see Martin, a Geordie ingénue with a chip on his shoulder, arrive in London to find that its streets are not paved with gold but with beggars. He makes his debut in the greatest city on earth in 1806, the year in which Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox die and in which Nelson’s pickled body is carried up the Thames in mawkish pomp. Martin struggles against more proficient competition: has insufficient imagination in his mental palette other than to paint the misty blue hills of his native Northumbria and dream of maidens in skimpy veils straight out of Ovid. By 1812 his mood has darkened: his radical friends the

Hunts have been jailed for seditious libel (the Prince Regent was a fat, useless libertine, a drain on the treasury and a traitor to his Whig friends but saying so in the pages of the Examiner in such terms was asking for trouble); the first global war showed no sign of ending, nor did the horrors of wage-labour poverty. Caricaturists had a field day: they could not be imprisoned. Martin’s response was weightier, loftier. His Sadak of 1812 is a dark, portrait-format theatre flat of abysmal fire in which the struggling righteous loner (his friends the Hunts, the beggar, or Martin himself: take your pick) faces alpine odds in seeking the Waters of Oblivion.

From here on in Martin was on a mission to bring down the unjust from their lofty perches to the level of the populace. For him scale was everything: his deployment of trompe l’oeil devices, three-dimensional column-and-tunnel special effects and epic scales has often, and rightly, been seen as a forerunner of the Hollywood movie set of the 1920s and beyond. By 1821, when he produced his Old Testament masterpiece

Belshazzar’s Feast (a thinly disguised libel on the self-same Prince Regent made more potent by his coronation as George IV and the grotesque accompanying feast) Martin was exploiting his audience’s familiarity with the Bible to recreate for them the immensity of its drama, its injustices and the majesty of the retribution which God (not Martin’s God – he was a sceptic) could and would visit on those who committed the sin of hubris.

The Tate Gallery, which recently hosted the largest Martin exhibition for over a hundred years, hung his paintings wrong: that is to say, too low, with the viewer’s eye line directed into the centre of the picture when Martin’s intention, I am certain, was to force the viewer to look up, up at the crenellated towers of the tyrant, to be left in no doubt of the task required in bringing its monuments down. Martin liked to open his play right in the middle of the drama, just like a modern movie director: he drops us into the action so that we are part of it, believe we can be part of it. Martin is inciting us to tear down the house; but we are

The Great Day of His Wrath (ca. 1851) by John Martin

certain, as participants, that we start at the bottom, as Martin had.

Shelley, whose sympathies were in tune with Martin and with Prometheus, the liberator of humanity, chose to set Ozymandias (1818), his own cameo drama of fallen tyranny, after the action had long finished, in the shapeless desert where two vast and trunkless legs of stone stood as a quiet, if profoundly eloquent, epilogue to Martin’s revolutions. Shelley was interested in what the world would be like after the revolution and, in describing his idealistic new world in Prometheus Unbound (also 1821) he offered a later Romantic poet and activist, Karl Marx, the blueprint for the real thing: a revolution every bit as fantastic as Martin’s.

The mid-1820s witnessed a reformist lull in Britain and abroad: opposition emasculated by internal rivalry and suicide, the lassitude of once-fervent ideologues like Wordsworth and William Godwin (a friend of Martin’s); the announcement by critics like William Hazlitt of the passing of an age of action. Martin set himself to make money to support the realities of a large family and generous domestic establishment, and he was not the only one (he lost his first fortune to a dodgy banker). But the appearance of somnolence is an illusion, just like Martin’s various engravings of

Paradise Lost during that decade. Britain’s creative revolutionaries were not done. The French have a phrase for it: reculer pour mieux sauter – draw back to take a running jump. In France itself dissatisfaction with the post-Napoleonic world would lead to revolution in 1830 and its diarist-in-oils, Eugène Delacroix, heavily influenced by Martin but more interested in the actors than the stage sets, has left us the supreme finale of the drama in Liberty Leading the People (1830), with its bare-breasted Amazonian heroine and her pistol-toting lieutenants climbing on piles of bodies to wave the Tricolore. It is virtually a curtain call. Not to be outdone, John Martin’s own brother Jonathan had been tried for his life after setting fire to York Minster in a suitably Promethean gesture and by 1830 was confined for life in Bedlam. Martin himself began to plan for a new world before the old had been brought down: he designed a new sewage system for London and evolved a curious idea for a circular underground railway to run beneath the streets of the capital: Babylonon-Thames, as it was known in a public nod to his prescience.

More subtle revolutionaries – Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatsone making sparks in the laboratory, the Brunels with their tunnels, the Stephensons with their

belching locomotives and railways – were busy forging a completely new symbolic lexicon of steam, electricity and subterranean sublimity for artists to work up on their canvases. Turner, as so often, was first on the scene. He was there, when the old Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834, to record the irony of a Reform Bill, passed the year before, which left Parliament more or less unreformed. He was there when the old warship Temeraire, a symbol of the patriotic Heart of Oak Royal Navy, was towed up the Thames by a steam tug to be scrapped. He was there, in spirit at least, to record the impression which the onrushing steam railway age left on a generation which had previously only known the pedestrian power of the horse and millwheel (Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844). In doing so he leaves us still physically reeling, as if the action is now so hot that we cannot, literally, focus on it. The stage has become a roundabout and we are dizzy, clinging on for dear life.

A look at Martin’s later works, from 1838 (when he and his son Leopold visited Turner in Chelsea to watch progress on the Fighting Temeraire) and his overtly populist and tediously static Coronation of Queen Victoria, to the ethereal beauties of Solitude (1843) and Arthur and Aigle in the Happy Valley (1849) might give the

impression that Martin, like Wordsworth, had become an old fogey, too comfortable or cynical or tired to light the touch paper for any further apocalypse. The impression is understandable; but it is quite wrong. One of the things I most admire about Martin is that, almost with his last breath, he had the guts to once more put on the costume of the grand ringmaster, crack his whip and serve up the greatest show on earth. Until The Great Day of His Wrath (1853) the victims of Martin’s retributive fury had always been tyrants or hubristic fools: Pharaoh; Lot; Belshazzar; Edward I, even. Now, as if to say ‘That’s all, folks!’ (and meaning just that) Martin took the set, the whole set, and burned it down, stage, proscenium arch, auditorium, theatre and all: the entire world is folded in upon itself in an unimaginable (by anyone but Martin) volcanic conflagration. Everything, everyone is terminally punished for every sin ever conceived. This is the Day of Judgement. The world ends. The End (and no curtain call).

This article was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it please see: publicdomainreview.org/legal/ C

Belshazzar’s Feast (1820) by John Martin

The Bard (ca. 1817) by John Martin

How Bizarre: Tales from the mysterious dark Web

by ron evans

Did you know that the internet as we know it makes up about 5% of the entire web? Netflix, Facebook, Pornhub, iCarly.com (oh what?) and anything that comes up in a Google search are all part of this tiny slice of internet pie known as the surface web. So what’s the other 95%? That is what’s known as the deep web. And as intriguing as that sounds, most of what makes up the deep web is simply the unindexed parts of the internet. Banking information and systems, databases, email servers, password protected accounts and connective information along with gazillions of random files and images. Many of which were uploaded by you - still being stored somewhere in the ether, long after you lost steam for your cat poetry Blogger page.

However, there is a small, shadowy area of the deep web used for...other purposes. This area is known as the dark web. And as the name implies, shit gets dark here. Well, kinda.

The stories most of us hear about the dark web are that it’s where bad people go to do bad things. Human trafficking, illegal gun commerce, child porn rings and

drug sales. And yes, all of those things have certainly been a part of the doings in the dark web but at nowhere near the level as what goes on at the surface web. So why is the dark web supposedly so scary? In short, because the powers that be (police, governments, corporations) have no power there. Or at least not nearly the flex they’ve become accustomed to up on the surface. This is, of course, what drew the denizens of the dark web to it in the first place.

In the age of being tracked by every website we visit, every email we send, every Google search -insert panic-face emoji here- and even everywhere we go throughout our day, the notion of privacy is almost an abstract novelty of nostalgic thinking. And it’s been several slippery slopes that led us here. 20 years ago, we would have thrown a shit fit at the idea of allowing anybody free access to all of those things but now...it’s a daily occurrence. You know those app Terms of Agreement you have agreed to 174 times without reading? Most of those contain some variation of “you allow us to access your camera, images, videos, social media accounts and microphone at our leisure. Dummy. But do enjoy using our app to

find out what you will look like as a 100 year old walrus. Dummy.”

AGREE. SUBMIT.

Moments later…

“Haha, yo I look hilarious as an old-ass walrus!”

SHARE TO FACEBOOK.

A growing number of individuals around the globe have gravitated toward hiding all of their information from these info voyeurs who are more likely to sell your data (including HD scans of your face) to corporations than watch you while you poop. But some of them could if they wanted to, because you told them they could. For privacy activists/enthusiasts it’s more about the principle of privacy than the particulars of where the data is going and how it’s being used. There’s often a knee jerk reaction to hearing someone ‘protesting too much’ about not wanting their privacy invaded. “What do they have to hide? I’m not breaking the law so what do I care if the government or corporate America wants to snoop on me?”

The problems with that kind of thinking are many, but suffice to say - some folks are adamant about simply living in a more private manner than our modern society is getting used to. Many of these people have found safe-ish harbor in the murky waters of the dark web.

Now, since every story, essay and documentary I have seen about the deep/dark web gives this disclaimer I suppose I will as well. Don’t go looking around there. You may see things you don’t wanna see (always more encouraging than anything else - I know) and you may end up on a list or two that you would likely prefer to be left off. That said, since you can’t get to the deep web with your normal browser searches you may be wondering how you do access it. Through what’s called The Onion Router or TOR.

Per Wikipedia: “In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of network nodes called onion routers, each of which “peels” away a single layer, uncovering the data’s next destination.” In other words a different kind of browser made for accessing the unindexed internet. And of course, the dark web.

So what goes on there? Well, all the seedy things mentioned above to some degree but there’s also a bustling anti-Big Brother movement growing like a mold in the darkness of anonymity in forums and newsgroups. A collective of like-minded people from all corners of the globe networking with an aim to spread awareness of privacy violations, pushing political changes and essentially building their own version of the internet away from the prying eyes and regulations of the Man, including the idea of a truly free and anonymous commerce system.

In 2011, a mysterious marketplace appeared from the shadows of the dark web offering every kind of drug imaginable. Free shipping! It was called The Silk Road. Heroin, crack, LSD, molly and coke right alongside prescription narcotics of every sort. Some guns and other miscellaneous goods like fake ID’s to be had as well. Forbidden in the market were any stolen items, making kidnapping arrangements or hired-to-kill tomfoolery. More on that in a bit…

Of course the trick is staying hidden whilst shopping this Amazon of the underworld. Enter: Bitcoin. It really took the development of cryptocurrency to make something like The Silk Road feasible. And while bitcoin transactions aren’t inherently anonymous, with a little tech wizardry here and there - they can be incredibly hard to trace. And so the market grew exponentially in a few short months. Shoppers could browse the products and read through the feedback left by fellow customers in a completely peer-based review system. No advertised or sponsored corporate reviews like many surface level stores are clogged with.

The FBI was aware of The Silk Road from the get go and various law enforcement agencies all over the world began attempting to infiltrate the community in all the usual cop-style ways. While they initially struggled to find deeper access to the site’s servers, they managed to set up several fake accounts as buyers and sellers. They also discovered that the operation was run by someone using the moniker Dread Pirate Roberts. The name represented more than just a fondness for The Princess Bride. Again, more on that in a bit. And trust me, to say this is the

truncated version of the story is a laughable understatement. But the bastard that runs this newspaper keeps my word count down. Fight the system! Get back to work you! Who said that?

After Gawker posted a now-famous exposé on The Silk Road in June 2011, the underground site became flooded with curious...gawkers and serious customers alike. It also got the attention of US Senator Charles Shumer who went straight to work assembling a task force of top cops, if you will, to shut the whole thing down. One of the top cops assigned to (obsessed with?) cracking the Silk Road code was FBI Cybercrimes Agent, Christopher Tarbell. At some point Tarbell managed his way into some super dark secrety places of the site servers and after a couple years of trying - the Silk Road was shut down and the Dread Pirate Roberts was captured. Who was he? Nobody most folks had really expected, at least in the law enforcement world.

But first (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. There’s a lot to sum up here and I never said I was a journalist!) the way this takedown happened is in and of itself a complex and confusing story. The feds used one of these accounts to message the Dread Pirate Roberts complaining that the order limits of the site were too small for his liking as he wanted to make bigger deals. This led to Roberts reaching out to a trusted Silk Road associate - username “chronicpain” - to work out an agreeable deal with this seller/supplier. Chronicpain ended up giving the agent-in-disguise his actual home address for shipping and you can guess what happens next. Curtis Green AKA chronicpain was a middleaged family man living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also happened to be one of the original administrators of The Silk Road. IE a cop’s wet dream catch.

As to how the agents managed their way into the actual servers of the Silk Road... agent Tarbell claimed he was at one of the many CAPTCHA gateways on the site -you know those things where you have to try to decipher what your dear grandad’s final words were that he scratched into the wall as he was having a stroke to prove you aren’t a robot- and he says the CAPTCHA script glitched out providing him server access. Soon after, visitors to The

Silk Road were greeted with a graphic that said “THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED” along with various badges and emblems.

Upon hearing of the arrest of Green, the agent pretending to be a Silk Road supplier reached out to Dread Pirate Roberts with concerns and eventually the conversation became Roberts asking the agent to help facilitate Green sleeping with the Salt Lake fishes before he could spill the beans about the site. This is a key...wait, are there fish in the Salt Lake? Are they salt water fish? I’d look it up but I’m already on too many fish-related searches watch lists. Anyway, in summary - there was “evidence” now that the Dread Pirate Roberts put out a hit order on chronicpain and those charges were added to the growing list stacking up against the site admin. Around this time an IRS agent, of all people, had found an old email that tied the earliest incarnation of The SIlk Road to a man living in San Francisco. The police had intercepted a package en route to this person of interest - the package filled with fake ID’s all bearing the suspects image. Police began watching this man closely and soon enough, it paid off. Still with me? It gets wackier. Take a break if you need. Grab a drink. Question authority. Delete the Aging Walrus app from your iPhone. Ready? Ok.

So the feds were closely watching activity on the site and correlating with what this suspect was up to. In October 2013, the man walked into a library in San Francisco, fired up his laptop and administrative activity immediately started pinging The Silk Road servers. The 5-0 moved in and arrested the suspect, still logged into the site granting authorities a whole boatload of names and evidence to help build their headline-making case.

As it turned out, the famous Dread Pirate Roberts was also 29 year old Ross Ulbricht, a completely unassuming young man who grew up in Austin, Texas. Raised in a loving and close knit family, Ulbricht was an Eagle Scout as a bright youngster showing promise for leadership. After graduating high school in 2003 he moved on to studying science and physics at the University of Texas at Dallas on a full academic scholarship. More schooling followed but Roberts...er, Ulbricht soon

began to lose interest in sciency stuff as he delved more into Liberetarian ideals. After a few small biz ventures that never took, Ulbricht soon took his political views to the next level by wanting to, in his own words: “create an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.” The Silk Road was born.

By the time a trial was underway, the official charges against Ulbricht were money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics at such a level that a “kingpin” charge was added to the mix which is key, as this tack-on prevented the accused from accessing the media before, during and even after the trial. Noticeably absent from the charges was the attempted hit on chronicpain. This was puzzling since the prosecution and politicians alike had explicitly pointed to this element as one of the reasons the feds moved in on Ulbricht in the first place. Still, he was found guilty on all the aforementioned charges and sentenced to an unheard of two life sentences plus an additional 40 years without the possibility of parole. Something to think about when you consider the average child rapist does about 9-12 years.

It was more than clear that those powers that be, the ones that were so threatened by this sector of the web that made their powers less...powerful, were making the mother of all examples out of this case. The defense claims were an amalgam of police corruption or an overstepping of legal procedures along with the provable fact that there were indeed several Dread Pirate Robertses associated with the site. Remember in the book/film The Princess Bride, how Westley had become (SPOILERS I GUESS?) The Dread Pirate Roberts but was merely one of many Dread Pirate Robertses that came before him? Allegedly that was the real reason for choosing that handle. Maybe it was one of these other Dreads who ordered the hit (which ultimately never happened). Maybe the feds created that whole part of the plot to gain access to Ulbricht along with skewing public opinion of him only to later dismiss those charges altogether before going to trial. Or maybe Ulbricht was just a clever criminal whose ego had been in-

flated along with the sales of the Silk Road itself, causing him to lose sight of his original supposed intentions.

Interestingly, at the trial Ulbricht admitted to being in charge of The Silk Road but claimed the original Dread Pirate Roberts had set him up to be the fall guy as it became clear the feds were moving in on the site. A weak defense, maybe. But there were certainly many messages of some unknown administrator of the site essentially telling Ulbricht what to do, including taking on the Dread Pirate Roberts name. I know, it’s convoluted.

Much has also been said about the seemingly weak story that Agent Tarbell told about the glitchy CAPTCHA that magically showed him into the inner workings of the site. First, it just didn’t make much tech sense. Secondly, there was no trail of investigation that proved that that was

even what had happened. And to this day the feds have never truly explained in detail how they managed to get into the servers of the site at any major hearings. Hacking into it would require specific warrants.

Warrants that were never issued, leaving many to wonder if Ulbricht’s Fourth Amendment rights had been violated making his arrest and incarceration illegal. But ultimately the powers that be have sided against Ulbricht. In every possible way.

The debate goes on as to whether our current war on drugs is really a better option than the notion of a cohesive, organized market for obtaining the things that people are going to obtain one way or the other. From one entity or another. It also goes on as to whether we should be allowed to gather and trade or sell goods of all types, free from interference and restrictive regulation. And it certainly goes

on as to whether or not we as a society give two single shits about the sanctity of privacy anymore. These debates go on. So too does the dark web. A few months after The Silk Road shut down clones started popping up. Some with the same philosophy. Some not. News of Ulbricht’s bizarre case has captured the attention of law-minded activists and pop-culture fanatics alike. It has become a case that many attorneys, journalists and celebrities have publicly weighed in on, often siding with Ulbricht and the idea of a market for illicit drug sales as a safer and smarter way of handling our planet’s drug use.

Many people side with the government, seeing the Silk Road and the dark web itself as a place in dire need of policing - to the point of seeking new legislation that would allow some major bending of that Fourth Amendment mentioned earlier.

There will always be an underlying culture of people fighting for a free society, and a counter to that culture that doesn’t believe humans behave well under that kind of freedom.

I suppose there’s no real moral to the story, and I should probably stop talking about it before we get shut down. Ha. Imagine. The feds caring about a silly little rag printed in Wenatc -

I give the site 3 1/2 stars. Could use more Hardware options...

The Dread Pirate Ulbricht. Photo: WikiCommons

We made it you guys. I, for one, did not think I would survive that eternal winter. So happy to invite Spring and sunshine back into my life. A fresh start. Now then, let’s get to it.

Aries - It’s your season (Happy Birthday!) and it’s all coming up sunshine and rainbows for you. Don’t you go blowing it by being all self-righteous and reckless.

Taurus - You stubborn idiot. Word of advice: when you sit around begging the Universe for guidance, support and help…. You have to actually accept the guidance, support and help that it sends. I know it’s confusing but that’s how it works. When it’s offered, you have to allow yourself to take it, otherwise you’re just pissing in the wind.

Gemini - Focus this month on discernment. Some relationships and friendships will fill your cup, others will drain you. Take note and then take action. Walk away from the soul-sucking bullshit. Byeee!

Cancer - You can have a tendency to feel like an imposter, what with the whole ‘hard on the outside, soft on the inside’ cliche. But two things can be true at the same time. Embrace all aspects of yourself (even the shitty ones) and share more of your soft, hidden insides. That’s the good, relatable stuff.

Leo - Time to let go of control. You’re a natural born leader, a trail blazer, and that’s cool and whatever. But sometimes the best way to find the path is to stop trying. Release your death grip on plans and just enjoy the ride.

Virgo - This month, boundaries will be your best friend. That is, unless you enjoy people pleasing and putting everyone else first only to resent them later for stealing all of your energy joy. The choice is yours.

Libra - Aries is all about that “me” energy and you, dear Libra, are all about that “we” energy. This month, allow a little more “me” time. Even go so far as to be selfish. Soak it up. You’ve spent enough of your life catering to others.

Scorpio - This Aries energy is helping you to power through your procrastination with boat loads of motivation. But, don’t let it bulldoze you into giving more than you have. No one likes a burnt out, bitchy scorpio.

Sagittarius - Yaaaas Sag, you’re doing it just perfectly. All that creativity you’ve been pouring your heart into is reaching the masses and we want more. Keep following your curiosity, keep creating and keep sharing it with the world.

Capricorn - A much welcomed reprieve from winter is here and you’re lapping it up. Use this time to get dirty - dig in the Earth, plant a garden. Tap into your earthy nature and ignore your overbearing need for productivity.

Aquarius - It’s manifestation time! Write down a list of goals and start working toward them. If you stay true to your vision, you will successfully manifest that shit. If you get distracted by every little shiny thing along the way… well, just accept it.

Pisces - Tender little fish, it’s time to start acknowledging and owning your wounds. Don’t hide them with humor, false confidence or really great style. Sensitive is sexy, own that shit. Or let your wounds weep until they consume you. Your call.

brain dump: my dog loves me

by KRISTEN ACESTA

We think of the ego as both a coverer and an entity.

The paradox comes as you cannot have a thing whose one purpose is to cover up something, and also have it be an independent entity from the covered.

Thus the only resolution is to recognize the ego as having a purpose besides shielding/ protecting/comforting/etc the inner self.

The western world looks at the ego as a negative, overbearing thing that develops within us typically when we are either arrogant or bad. Or both.

The ego is taught to be subsided.

In a way these teachings create the story that the ego needs to be peeled back in order to reveal ourselves. Once again, reaffirming in the positive, that our ego is something to be destroyed.

Now this is true. You can peel away the ego layers as a way of revealing the self, but it is not the only way.

Ego dissolving is not necessary. What is necessary is learning the balance, and when to

listen to who and what. The first step in this process is differentiation of the ego and whatever is behind it. ←- this is a super difficult practice, by the way.

So where do we hash it out? Well, I firmly believe we should all have an arena in life that allows one to be fully present and without judgement. A safe space for the ego to do it’s thing.

We need this space not to stretch out the ego’s arms, but to provide a container in which we can watch it. Witnessing the ego, in all its glory. You may actually find that it’s rather boring, monotone, predictable, and robotic. This makes sense since it’s made up of a bunch of programs and patterns conducted by the psyche.

If you allow the ego to do what it wants, you’ll find that the majority (if not the entire) time it is running on autopilot.

The ego is the software system of our body. Which makes the collective consciousness the cloud. And what does that make you? You know, the soul part of you.

Well, you are the spaces in between. You are all that, baby.

But back to the safe ego space. The point

of all of this is to allow it to do it’s song and dance, as we sit back and enjoy the party. But there is a time limit. Try 30 minutes to start. We don’t want this thing running free all night.

You see, the ego needs to be watched. It has been developed in order for the person it services to be seen as whole. And in order to shift and change the patterns that have given birth to the ego, we certainly must first watch how it behaves in order to better understand it.

Here is a perfect working example: I project the shit on to my dog.

Anyone who has been around the shop and knows my dog, would agree that she is probably one of the cutest dogs ever. And she is super in love with me. At least that’s the story I tell myself.

It actually goes something like, “she loves me even more because I saved her from the pound” and she super loves that dumb little sweater I got her. The positive affirmations I give myself thereafter include cooing and repeating out loud, exactly what my dog just did that everyone was already watching, and proclaiming how cute she is when she does xyz.

So there is the original story, and with each

retelling the ego comes out in his fancy swag and tells it one better. Constantly reaffirming. And sometimes even reformulating if it produces positive results. Hell, my dog is so cute she has been snuggling this entire time I’ve been writing this. Because she loves me.

She also really loves the peanut butter apple mess I’ve made for myself here. And the sausages cooked almost every morning that I inevitably get on the front side of my shirt.

If I was actually to look at the ego, maybe I would see the patterned reactions my dog has to the patterning of my eating habits. But then I might fall into the conclusion that she super loves food, and I am a mere worthwhile contender.

Either way, the point isn’t necessarily to change the ego’s behavior, but to witness what it likes to do.

Dr. Kristen Acesta, ND, RH Naturopathic physician and registered herbalist at Mission Health & Wellness, co-owner and formulator at Salt Creek Apothecary becomeyourmission.org saltcreekapothecary.com

THE FUNNY PAGES

COMICS AND NOVELTIES

Comics by Dan McConnell

PRODUCTS THAT DISAPPOINTED

by ron evans

The mother of all comic ad disappointments. Harold von Braunhut, was an American mail-order marketer and inventor who had the big idea to sell brine shrimp eggs as pets. He was inspired by the success of the Ant Farm. Mad Magazine cartoonist Joe Orlando gave us all visions of tiny humanoids that would probably worship us like a god. What we got looked...different. But hey, Sea Monkeys were so popular they even went to space!

One of my favorite childhood memories is when my older brother ordered this “Footlocker” packed with 100 Army Men for the crazy steal of $1.98. When the decidedly small foot locker made of card stock arrived we all gathered ‘round as my brother opened it. The laughter my mom and I let out upon seeing these tiny and FLAT army men was only matched by the glare of disappointment radiating off my brother’s face. Actual thin-ness above.

Men’s mags going all the way back to the 1940s had back page ads offering vinyl partners - air sold separately. None of these ads ever showed the blow-up horror show that would actually be arriving at your door for obvious reasons. The earliest ‘sex dolls’ seem to have come from France (duh) around 1908. Apparently Hitler approved purchasing dozens of them for his troops to help combat the syphilis outbreak. What a world.

Inspired by a previously existing gizmo toy, the Wondertube, X-Ray Specs promised (ok, hinted at) the ability to see your own skeleton. Or maybe even to peek through your teacher’s clothes (actual ad from a 70’s Boy’s Life Magazine). The effect was little more than a migraine-inducing blurry fractal outline as pictured above. Interestingly these were created by the same genius who brought us the Sea Monkeys. The Disappointment King.