PostSecret

Thought for the day

"What formerly had cheered me
Now seems
Insignificant
Insignificant" 

 

Surfacers

So, last night I went to the closing of the “I AM NOT YOU” exhibition curated by Satellite Spaces /// The Untitled Gallery. The space for this exhibition was The Mills situated at 66 Carr Street, Newtown. The exhibitions feature numerous established and emerging artists from different artistic backgrounds. Mediums vary from digital media to print, to photography to paint, to lithographs.

I had my reservations about going only because I’m flat broke and I knew this would prove an irresistible opportunity to buy a quality piece of art. As is to be expected, the opportunity arose and the impulse was irresistible. Enter Frederick Clarke and his “Surfacers”- love, and overall disquiet, at first sight. It reminds me so much of Penny Siopis’ “Pinky Pinky” series she did a few years back. Despite the two figures’ creepiness, there is a softness in their eyes and a vulnerability in their demeanour. I don’t know what they are, human or animal or a combination, but I feel protective of the figures- they force me to confront "otherness" and push me out of my comfort zone. Unsurprisingly, I continued to have a visceral reaction to the work as I strolled by it again and again.

I’ve wanted to start collecting (serious) art for a long time now but perpetually make up excuses for not buying a piece (read: forking out the cash-although I guess that the R120 000 for the Gerard Sekoto painting and the R70 000 for the Diane Victor sketch, was a bit unfeasible at this stage). Anyway, in consultation with and in partnership with Ric (read: his forking out 50% towards the price as a Christmas present) I took the plunge and purchased my first authentic (read: credible upcoming artist, non-copy, only one in existence) piece of art.

I was speaking to a friend of mine this morning and she said that when her dad was about my age he bought his first piece of art from a young and upcoming artist called William Kentridge (read: wtf?!) So, although I bought this piece out of love, striking gold on an investment opportunity would be a pretty sweet off-shoot. 

I'm so happy I finally took the plunge (read: pics to follow...)               

Chanson du jour

“I walk you home to see
Where you're living around
And I know this place
Pour yourself on me
And you know I'm the one
That you won't forget

And in your denim eyes
I see something's awry
And I see you're weak
When he comes around
I see you're fixing to shine
And my face won't speak”

World Vegan Day

I've been a Vegetarian since 2003 and towards the end of 2009 I started phasing out dairy, egg and fish. It's been a tough process and I've regressed many times. It's not easy being Vegan- products you would never imagine to contain dairy or egg seem to have them included just for sake's "sake", which just goes to prove the point that their inclusion is gratuitous and entirely redundant. I've slowly become aware that being Vegetarian, while a noble effort, isn't the end but merely the means. The conditions in which dairy cows/goats and poultry are kept (yes, even so-called "free range")(unless you are talking about the one and only Jimmy's Farm) is deplorable. The greatest lesson I've learnt over these past few years is that complacency is complicity. And the fact that I'm aware of what's going on means that I cannot trigger that selective acknowledgment that we humans are so good at. 

In honour of World Vegan Day I'm going to read "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran-Foer. While he will be preaching to the converted, it will be an educational read which will probably help me to engage in more eloquent debate with those who look at me either as if I have a disability or react with outright hostility when they find out I'm a vegan. On the same note, my hope is that I'll be able to handle such reactionists without looking at them as if they are disabled (mentally,spiritually and developmentally) or with blood-chilling hostility. So any way you look at it, it will be a good read. 

What I love about the title of this book is that it calls a spade or spade. The question which keeps turning around in my mind (with increasing intensity) is what is "meat". I'm perpetually hearing people talk about "meat". They're eating butchered animal. Not meat. I'm hoping this book will showcase the irrational disjuncture between reality and the bullshit we are fed (literally). Its insane the extent to which simple "Semantics" facilitates and enables denial.   

Food for thought:
http://www.eatinganimals.com/

http://www.weanimals.org/about.htm

floral fusion (pink) green velvet

 

sweet sunday rocket mother

This has to be one of my favourite Sunday meals.

Quick and easy to make. Subtle and unassuming.

Serendipitously my lovely mother's clothing matched the salad which, naturally, led to an impromptu photo op.

Rocket, sweet potato and quinoa salad 

Set oven to appoximately 180 degrees celcius. Chop up sweet potatoes and drizzle with with olive oil, rosemary and garlic. Bake in oven until soft. While sweet potatoes are baking, bring to boil two cups of quinoa with four cups water. Once boiling, turn heat down and simmer for 15 minutes. Combine sweet potatoes, quinoa and rocket. For the dressing mix honey, vinegar and garlic. Season to taste.

nom nom nom...



Article: Voix Vegan

It’s heartening to see that the Occupy Wall Street protesters have included widespread industrial animal abuse in their list of atrocities perpetrated by the corporations that have taken over our governments:

• “They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• “They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.” (www.nationofchange.org)

As we are awakening to the widespread corruption and inequity that are devastating our economic, governmental, environmental, and cultural well-being, I’ve found it to be highly illuminating to look deeply into our food system and its enormous repercussions that radiate into every aspect of our lives. As I discuss in The World Peace Diet, our unwillingness individually and collectively to recognize and take responsibility for the massive violence required by our food choices is our defining blind spot as a society. Sowing seeds of enslavement, cruelty, and terror in millions of animals who are confined and killed daily for food, we also sow the seeds, unfortunately, of our own oppression and demise. I believe that awakening from the socially imposed practice of eating meat and dairy products is the essential requirement for creating a new cultural foundation where equality, harmony, justice, and freedom are possible.

Paying for and eating animal-sourced foods is behavior that is profoundly antithetical to our interests on every level, and increasing numbers of us are realizing that besides damaging our physical health, eating meat and dairy is devastating our environmental, psychological, spiritual, and cultural health as well. However, as the Occupy Wall Street statement implies, animal agriculture serves well to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of elite corporate interests controlling the military-industrial-meat-medical-media complex that profit immensely from disease, environmental devastation, and war.

In this, our cultural situation parallels that of a typical dairy farm or beef feed-lot, and this is where the poignant riddle comes in: are cows really herbivores or omnivores? They sure seem to be herbivores! We all know that cows have a digestive system designed for eating grass. They evolved eating this way for millions of years in the grasslands of central Asia. Now, however, their diet is quite different! Their owners “enrich” their diet with corn, soy, wheat, and other grains in order to spur weight-gain, boost milk output, and increase profits. This diet is unnatural and causes the bovines to experience digestive distress, including the unnatural intestinal harboring of toxic E. Coli pathogens that sicken and kill hundreds of human consumers every year.

However, the riddle goes much farther than this! In addition to grain, agribusiness scientists long ago discovered that feeding cows animal protein, saturated fat, and cholesterol dramatically amplifies milk production, weight-gain, and consequent profits. The result is that for decades now, cows have been routinely fed diets not of grass, but of grain that is “enriched” with the rendered flesh and organs of fish, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals, such as the millions of dogs and cats who are euthanized every year, and the road-kill and other carcasses collected by governmental agencies. Besides feeding the cows and steers all this meat from other species, they have been typically fed the ground-up slaughterhouse by-products of other cows (internal organs, nerves, brains, eyes, etc.), effectively turning them not just into carnivores, but into cannibals as well. This standard industry practice was supposedly stopped back in the 90s when it was discovered that it caused devastating mad-cow disease in human consumers of cow flesh. Nevertheless, we know that today, cows (as well as sheep, goats, pigs, and other obviously herbivorous animals) are eating huge amounts of meat because it boosts profits for the industry owners and operators, as well as the banks and financial institutions investing in the system.

Cows dutifully eat what they’re fed, even when it causes them digestive distress, cancerous tumors, and many other problems. Their owners feed bovines fishmeal, slaughterhouse waste, and other animal-sourced foods not because it is in the cows’ interests to do so, but because they exploit the cows and use them for their own purposes. They also force many types of drugs, chemicals, and antibiotics on the cows, again, not because doing so is in the interests of the cows themselves, but because it is in their interests as owners and investors to increase productivity and profits. Ironically, bovines all die very young: beef steers at about 18-24 months, and dairy cow slaves at about 4-5 years. Though they would naturally live at least 25 years, they die hanging upside down by one leg in slaughterhouses, stabbed in the neck and bleeding to death, killed for profit by their owners, and for their flesh and skins by obedient consumers.

Do cows ever suspect they’re being ruthlessly exploited, or that their meat diet is toxic and part of that exploitation? Do they suspect they’re fed meat only because doing so benefits their exploiters? After so many generations of being conditioned to eat meat, cows may think it’s their natural food. How would they know differently?

Now try re-reading the above paragraph, replacing the word “cows” with the word “people.”

The pharmaceutical-medical complex rakes in billions of dollars in profits from people eating diets high in meat, dairy products, and eggs, who suffer from and buy drugs to treat the diseases caused by eating these foods: heart disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, strokes, obesity, osteoporosis, kidney disease, liver disease, autoimmune diseases, and so forth. This same industry brings in even more profits from people who eat foods sourced from animals who suffer terribly from the terror, frustration, and agony of modern animal confinement operations. Eating food products embodying this depression, anxiety, and insomnia, people ironically spend billions for psychiatric drugs to combat the same illnesses forced on the animals they eat. Drugging animals and humans, the pharmaceutical complex gorges on suffering to amass huge profits that enable it to control governmental bodies, the media, and public awareness. The military-industrial complex similarly profits from wars and policies that feed on disconnected, frustrated people, and powerful financial corporations steal people’s homes and wealth like dairy operations steal babies and milk.

We can free ourselves when we awaken from the cultural food trance and its official story line—that meat and dairy are natural for us to eat—and switch to a plant-based way of eating that frees the animals, ecosystems, and people enslaved by this official story. Like cows, being fed meat and cheese is not in our interest, but is only in the interest of exploitive forces. By freeing others, we will attain freedom. By questioning the official food story and going vegetarian and then vegan, we open the door to discovering our purpose on this beautiful Earth, and to being able to create a new world of equality, freedom, and harmony.

May we contemplate deeply the riddle of the cows we dominate for food! Are they really the omnivores they’ve been forced into being? Are we?

Article by Dr. Will Tuttle, educator, author, pianist, and composer, presents 150 lectures, workshops, and concerts yearly throughout North America and Europe. Author of the acclaimed best-seller, The World Peace Diet, he is a recipient of the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, and is the co-founder of Circle of Compassion ministry. A vegan since 1980, he is a Dharma Master in the Zen tradition, and has created eight CD albums of uplifting original piano music.



Je le veux!

Courtesy of: http://www.barbiecollector.com/shop/doll/wizard-oz-wicked-witch-west-doll-t2152

God is the artist, I just find the Ninja Turtle in his work...

I don't know why this site excites me and fills me with as much joy as it does. But it does. Small things right?

Courtesy of: http://teenagemutantninjanoses.tumblr.com