Oxytocin trial is over

Glad I participated, was surprised the hypothesis, outlandish in my view at first, within a certain degree of predictability- and the P value was so large- was proven!

Mirror neurons? Yes sir, and once the plug is pulled, the value of attraction plummets. Apologies to the subjects chosen without consent, although I worry about the perceived  security of my digital footprints.

I am kind of sad that science, while shining light on  the underpinnings of our love wiring, it also renders love predictable, controlled, manipulated and so disappointingly un-magical. Love can be cultivated and cultured in the laboratory, how unromantic is that..

Off to new experiments, " synaptic mark of memory", and the evil of of the tree of knowledge/memory, the prions and CPEB.

Happy Crazy March!

Ιθακη Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι, τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις, αν μέν’ η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις, αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου, αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου. Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος. Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωιά να είναι που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους· να σταματήσεις σ’ εμπορεία Φοινικικά, και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν’ αποκτήσεις, σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ’ έβενους, και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής, όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά· σε πόλεις Aιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας, να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ’ τους σπουδασμένους. Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη. Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν’ ο προορισμός σου. Aλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου. Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει· και γέρος πια ν’ αράξεις στο νησί, πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο, μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη. Η Ιθάκη σ’ έδωσε τ’ ωραίο ταξείδι. Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο. Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια. Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε. Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα, ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.

(Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984)  ITHAKA As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that one on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfumes of every kind - as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean K.Π. Καβαφης K.P. Cavafy

Masserman's neurotic cats,
Nader's forgetful rats



If our life is vagabond
our memory is sedentary

It is the plain truth I am seeking
not in the experience but in myself

We are our own loom,
our time mutates memory

My bourgeois meditation

Rapture recalled

There were five days in the summer of my thirtieth year that are kept in a treasure box, tucked under a rock wall of guilt, brought out for viewing only when the light and task of keep on keeping on wanes.
 The unrelenting August heat, on a scrub-oak cloaked California hillside was coursing through my veins, affirming youth's naive notion  that it will always be as such. Days of  endless languor, where playing, loving were transposed and quilted over rational reasoning,  like been kept in a hell/heaven lock box.

  I can open that lid and find myself on the same emotional flood plain  decades later.

In the waning days of my fifties, reminiscing of that madness, I wonder if a same passion that colors barren, ordinary life's landscapes for decades afterwards will ever spill over the banks of my heart.


Pathos, penance, the luxuries of Eros and sin. Unrequited desire, false memories the steep prize.

 Forbidden Eden, fallen Eve, outcast.

Some quotes for today..


The human definition of the natural world is always going to be too small, because the world is more diverse and complex than we can ever know. We are not going to comprehend it, it comprehends us

Wendell Berry


As we grow, we put away our laughter, our silliness and our childish noises, the great sensory hilariousness of our young lives. We pick up a few notions about proper behavior, like what books to read, how to go about getting married and buying a home and being polite and having cocktail parties.. and the next thing you know, the little child- who was also an enormously alive sensory apparatus- is just another boring adult going to work in a sheer-sucker suit with a briefcase






John Rosenthal

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/7-cultural-concepts-we-dont-have-in-the-

Liquid gaze

You turn your head slightly and bend, so available to listen with intention.You fix your eyes on mine without averting them once and walk dance-like steps of easy conversation.
Legs open, back  reposed to the club chair's embrace, I can't help but imagine what it would  feel like to inhabit a body of a stud, without the burden of shame or inadequacy.

I can't - or even care to - decide whether this intimacy tango is premeditated or the connection is borne out of oxytocine's flow in the room: by proximity, and not of our own making, by relative re- consolidation of their combustible attraction. I think the latter. The most disarming quality of yours has been  this honesty and effortlessness that was there from the start. If not for the faint film of grief, at the corners of the lips, the intonation of speech, the side cast glance, the restraint of emotional timbre, this availability could  have been translated quickly as a turn-off, as cheap arrogance.  Loss is the catalyst and shared dialect.

Your broad strokes cover entire subjects, against  my Phaedrus preoccupation for detail.
The diving naked into tropical waters versus scaling edges of an arid canyon. The certainty and comfort of faith, opposing the angst of Sisyphean control. The dynamism of power, to my ploy of pity. The living life versus a theatrical approximation of it.

I am erecting skeletons of future stories, tinker-toying with fantasies, willing them to come alive and grateful I am that I can once again feel out my soul.

There is grace in planning a garden for one more spring, in seeking redemption, in staking a bold claim on hope.
For now, I will just plunge into that watery gaze.


nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/love-is-like-cocaine

Discourse

The yeast of emotions
the  milled grain of ample suffering
the wetness of one February
and the warmth of first love,
life's  manna
they offer

Philosophy's first lesson
both of yesterday and today
is that of virtue and happiness:
argue the tension, merit the dance
exhaust the present, seize and fill
the void of the absolute

Katalin Zsubrits plays Liszt - Liebestraum No. 3 Love Dream (live)

Roméo et Juliette trailer 2016 (Pacific Northwest Ballet)

SCENE V

Juliette's room.

Enter ROMEO and JULIET.

JULIETTE.-Wilt thou leave me already? the day is not yet ready to appear: the nightingale, and not the lark, whose voice penetrated your worries ear; he sings all night there on this pomegranate. Believe me, dear love, it was the nightingale.

ROMÉO.-It is the lark that proclaims the morning, not the nightingale. See, my beloved, these traits of a jealous light through clouds gaping eastward: all the torches of the night are consumed; and the tops of mountains covered in mist rises on tiptoe joyful morning. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIETTE.-This light is not daylight, I know that, me that's a meteor the sun exhales to serve you torch that night, and enlighten you in your road to Mantua. Remains, it is not necessary for you to go.

ROMÉO.-That surprises me here, they put me to death, I'm glad if you like as well. I will say that this graying is not the eye of the morning, but a pale reflection of the front of Cynthia, and that is not the lark whose accents will hit the vault of heaven, so high above our heads. I'm more inclined to stay than will to partir.-Come, Death, and be welcome; Juliet wants ainsi.-What say you, my love? let us talk, this is not the day.

JULIETTE.-This is the day, this is the day: make haste to leave, go away. It is the lark that sings so fake, rolling sounds so painfully discordant, and a bitterness so unpleasant. It is said that the lark can observe in his song graceful separations; this is not true, since it separates us⁶⁰ . Some say the lark changed eyes with disgusting toad Oh! I wish they had also changed voice because that voice we tear the arms of each other, and drive you out of here by the sounds that call the day. Oh! Now, go away; the sky cleared more.

Amour Sans Fin

Tα μεταξωτα βρακια θελουν επιδεξιους κωλους



Γιαγια Πολυτιμη Σγουβεακου

ψηλα την κτιζεις τη φωλια
και θα σου σπασει ο κλωνος


In young life, we scout branches, burled crooks in verdant arms,
in holes of sappy flesh, in  ephemeral jungles of spring, and  leftover sagging castles of
far away relatives, busily fashioning a nest to house love

Some, we settle content, in low-lying  Craftsmans,  in dense trunks and sturdy wood,

some in willowy slender aeries, like romantic Tudors sprouting turrets and arches and coves,

some in square, plain-sighted cradles of moss of moderne casualness, and then some, in folds of  ample twigs, a comfortable lap, simplicity's farmhouses

And few, carelessly drunk from the panorama of a penthouse life,
in  heights alone and the blue and  the wind, with no fire escape



The eggs scattered, the promise broken and the dreams,  the fading memory of a union
un blessed

Valentine


who that roses  loves,  patient must be
for when the thorns are pricking
he mustn't cry it hurts


γιαγια του Μανθου Σκαργιωτη

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point

C.S. Lewis