space in the sky

a spell of frazzle

2006-07-16T14:02:29Z

we are in a cell of civilized magic
stravinsky roars at breakfast
our milk is powdered

So much to catch up on!

2006-03-14T22:02:42Z

Okay, I'm going to pretend I've posted a lot or something ^_^

Hi dudes. There's much to debate, APIA!

Donations for earthquake victims

2005-10-09T13:52:04Z

If you are living in Pakistan, or directly want to donate to an organization at the site of the earthquake:

AMAL is trying to link up with two NGOs, Islamic Relief and Sungi working in Azad Jammu Kashmir and Abbottabad. The drop-off point for donations is the AMAL office located at #7, St. 62, G-6/4, Islamabad. In case of questions you can contact Nighat Rizvi on (+92) 0300 5003175, Imran Rizvi on (+92) 0300 8551208 and Mehrunnisa Yusuf on (+92) 0300 5002657.

Please donate the following items

Clothes, shoes
Dry food items such as lentils, sugar, powdered milk etc.
Basic medicenes and medical supplies
Blankets and pillows
Tents

NO PERISHABLE ITEMS and NO MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS

- contributed by Bina Shah (www.pakpositive.com)

Vedda's of Sri Lanka

2005-09-09T21:38:03Z

I was born in the forest. My ancestors come from here. We are the forest beings, and I want to live and die here. And even if I were reborn only as a fly or an ant, I would still be happy so long as I knew I would come back to live here in the forest. - Uru Warige Tissahamy

Sri Lanka's indigenous inhabitants, the Veddas -- or Wanniya-laeto ('forest-dwellers') -- preserve a direct line of descent from the island's original Neolithic community dating from at least 16,000 BC and probably far earlier according to current scientific opinion.1

Even today, the surviving Wanniya-laeto community retains much of its own distinctive cyclic worldview, prehistoric cultural memory, and time-tested knowledge of their semi-evergreen dry monsoon forest habitat that has enabled their ancestor-revering culture to meet the diverse challenges to their collective identity and survival.

With the impending extinction of Wanniya-laeto culture, however, Sri Lanka and the world stand to lose a rich body of indigenous lore and living ecological wisdom that is urgently needed for the sustainable future of the rest of mankind.

Historically, for the past twenty-five centuries or more Sri Lanka's indigenous community has been buffeted by successive waves of immigration and colonization that began with the arrival of the Sinhalese from North India in the 5th century BC. Consequently, the Wanniyalaeto have repeatedly been forced to choose between two alternative survival strategies: either to be assimilated into other cultures or to retreat ever further into a shrinking forest habitat.

In the course of history, uncounted thousands of these original inhabitants of the wanni (dry monsoon forest) have been more or less absorbed into mainstream Sinhala society (as in the North Central and Uva provinces) or Tamil society (as on the East Coast). Today only a few remaining Wanniya-laeto still manage to preserve their cultural identity and traditional lifestyle despite relentless pressure from the surrounding dominant communities.

(sri lanka's vedda's)

Underground

2005-09-09T21:30:17Z

A mirror image is always darker and distorted. Convex and concave swap places, falsehood wins out over reality, light and shadow play tricks. But take away these dark flaws and two images are uncannily similar; some details almost seem to conspire together. Which is why we avoid looking directly at the image, why, consciously or not, we keep eliminating these dark elements from the face we want to see. These subconscious shadows are an "underground" that we carry around with us, and the bitter aftertaste that continues to plague us long after the Tokyo gas attack comes seeping out from below.

- Haruki Murakami, Underground

Underground's cover adorned a photograph - in black and white, not very distinct to the initial glancer.

But it left a lasting impression.

Two figures hovered above a body, and even behind its still image, one could almost see… that the body was not breathing, it had enclosed itself within that still image, the photograph that had been taken.

Haruki Murakami's book based on the event of the Tokyo gas attack brings us back 10 years ago, to Eiji Wada's widow, the trial of Tomomitsu Niimi and the Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that perpetratored the attack on 20th March, 1995.

Murakami writes on Aum, before the chapter that includes the testimonies of members and ex-members of the cult,

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.

A little while after the events, a thought occured to me. In order to understand the reality of the Tokyo gas attack, no study of the rationale and workings of "them", the people who insigated it, would be enough. Necessary and beneficial though such efforts may be, wasn't there a need for a parallel analysis of "us"? Wasn't the real key (or part of the key) to the mystery thrust upon Japan by "them" more likely to be found under "our" territory?