Jade Cat ヒスイ 子猫

Disclaimer:

This blog contains photoshop montages using bits of illustrations made by other people as well as my own scans from nature. Wherever possible the original artist has been accredited. In no way do I intend copyright infringement. There is a tradition within Japanese print  whereby multiple artists may work on a piece and add to it their mark, sometimes a generation after the original artist had set it aside. All art is progressive.

As a forest is worth more than the sum of all its trees, so the whole contains greater than its component parts. Refer to issue of Monsanto Corporation statement on public record; “in future if you want to eat you will have to buy our products”; patenting genes as major contemporary ethical debate. Monsanto products are banned throughout Europe because they contaminate organic food crops with their patented genetically modified genome that kills rats in independent lab tests and probably does the same to you if you eat it too.

There are several elements to this blog. They interrelate.

The first element is a batch of photos selected from an afternoons walk on one of the few sunny days we get in Wales.

A Taoist medicine journey, following the Way; instinct, which took me to and through a patch of common land overgrown by a mixture of indigenous and invasive plant species.

 

虎杖, イタドリ                itadori

The second element is a particular invasive plant species, its pro’s and cons. The plant is Fallopia Japonica, Japanese Knotweed. 

"The kanji expression is from the Chinese Hǔzhàng 虎杖  meaning "tiger staff", but as to the Japanese appellation, one straightforward interpretation is that it comes from "remove pain" (alluding to its painkilling use)."

First introduced into the UK in the early 19th century for the Royal Botanical Gardens exhibition, it has since spread all over the country.

"It is listed by the World Conservation Union as one of the world's 100 worst invasive species. The invasive root system and strong growth can damage concrete foundations, buildings, flood defences, roads, paving, retaining walls and architectural sites. It can also reduce the capacity of channels in flood defences to carry water."

"In the UK, it is an offence under section 14(2) of the  Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to "plant or otherwise cause to grow in the wild" any plant listed in Schedule nine, Part II to the Act, which includes Japanese knotweed. By 2010 over £150m was spent annually on Japanese knotweed control, and a decision was taken on 9 March 2010 in the UK to release into the wild a Japanese psyllid insect, Aphalara itadori."

block quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_knotweed

Several years ago I began my own study with japanese knotweed.

The plant has a strong spirit, a powerful presence that is easy to attune to.

Sitting amidst a patch of it meditating is one of the most chilled out experiences available in UK. There is a quality in the green, vitality.

Reading it shamanically, symbolically; arrow-heart shaped leafs suggest it to be tonic for the blood system. I removed non-propogating elements from the plant (leaf and stem) and boiled them like rhubarb before ingesting. It tastes mildly bitter and had no apparent effect on me.

My internet research revealed that 'tiger staff' soaks up radiation. I assume this to mean both electronic radiation and nuclear contamination. I don't know if eating it makes you immune or increases the amount of radiation in your system. A year after Fukishima, the worlds worst nuclear accident so far, this is all beginning to connect up and make sense; nature is holistic and there is a reason this plant is here. For several decades Wales has the worlds highest number of cancer incidents, presumably due to fallout from American nuclear testing crossing the Atlantic on the top-winds.

The third element of this blog is information from Nexus magazine Vol20 no4 June-July 2013, which arrived the very same day, and relates.   

I had been working hard for several days without a break.I needed to get out of the house and detach my brain from computer and associated electromagnetic smog.

Feeling fried from too much disruption by unwanted attention of neighbours and radiation from machines, I desperately needed to recharge.

A lesson to be applied as the fourth element of this blog, the project at hand, namely art and music for forthcoming storyteller game entitled tRust for Ordo Octopia Ltd, see their website for more information at www.globalcreole.co.uk


I assembled the following experimental montage illustrations as focus-prep for what the jungle ravines amidst fragmented urban layers of tEra, the world of tRust, might look like. On tEra there is a phrase intended to work on several levels of meaning;

“life in the cracks”

The landscape of tEra is a giant orgonite honeycomb hive where miles high of expanding-foam sprayon orgonite; resin walls containing crystalline particles that operate as a computer matrix, a web of light-refractive touch-op holocom, operates as solar panel and global communications database; has fractured due to the unexpected event of the world swelling up in a series of earthquakes lasting several weeks.

Organic plant life exists in the jungle canyons formed by the fragmentation of the hive. Long slender green columns amidst a cyber darkness of the urban wilderness reminds me of a sword called Jade Dragon in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It requires a master to wield this blade. In today's modern world it hangs in a museum.

manga from: A Dream In Garden by Xia Da   www.summerzoo.com

print from: charity shop, lucky find, signature illegible.
lettering from: googletranslate ("dream now garden butterfly change").

upper manga comic strip (extract) from: Cat's Paw by Damian Slater

http://www.thekatsudon.deviantart.com

manga sword from: CrouchingTiger HiddenDragon 4 by Wang Du Lu and Andy Seto

http://www.d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1029847.jpg

lower manga comic strip (extract) from: Last Shadows Cast by Casper Wijngaard

http://www.animeimports.co.uk/casper-wijngaard-10-c.asp

sword colour adapted screenshot from: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie

http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon.html

art for tRust: chalk graffiti glyphs on weathered cytex walls

introducing Selene

While contemplating an appropriate name for this blog I made an interesting discovery thanks to google translate;  

ヒスイ

Japanese spelling for Jade looks like  English spelling for CAT !

25 Generations On...

Gaia is holistic. Humans are tools of Gaia working to her agenda. Life will continue with or without humanity, we are doing this to improve human life and at the same time to remove toxins from the skin of Gaia that she doesn't want there any more. In 1000 years from now it will be irrelevant how polluted we are today. It might seem far away but people are still banging on about the message of christ twice as long ago as that. We are a blip, we are like ants incapable of comprehending the greater scheme or even that it is the will of the queen ant motivating our actions, because we see only trade, action, retail and increasingly, environmental consequence. Only once we have filtered the toxin and it has become energy in the soil for the plants that do thrive in it, once the slime on the ocean floors have soaked up the contaminant so the right sort of bacteria can convert it, will this planet be cleaner than ever before. We have a messy dirty job to do but it is necessary. Twenty-five generations from now - that is who we are working for. Our great-> descendants. Our children. Our Hope. Our future. And they will be tree herders and animal rearers. They will have technology that you and I cannot imagine nor believe in. They will have psychic abilities that we are only beginning to get a concept of. The future will be better, because of the dark age we are in, to create that world. As soon as one volcano erupts through an oil field, you will understand why we extract oil as fast as we can. Trust in Gaia, she has a better plan than we are aware of. And we are a part of it. Nothing of our world will remain by 25 generations from now except for some art and some species preserved by ourselves. We will all be forgotten, facebook, internet will be obsolete by then. So; study transmigration and past life memory awakening. It is more worthwhile than arguing against progress. first published on facebook 14.10.2012

THE PLAN make viral if you care

If we do not take the initiative: then we are dead, globally. I know in my heart that I am a good person. Therefore I grant myself empowerment and authority to take the initiative. We have to sort this planet out or we are fucked. There are 2 stages to this plan. 1) AGREE ON END GOAL. Without unified consent it is *working plan (in development)* that "end goal" is 'maintain self-sufficient lifestyle for the 3rd generation' - that is as far as we can dare to dream right now given the situation of planet earth, being owned by corporate mistakes. Removal of corporation from the equation will take some doing, so we bypass that and work on step 2. 2) FIGURE OUT A STEP-BY-STEP PLAN OF HOW TO ACHIEVE 1 And that is all we have to do!!!! WHY IS IT SO GODDAMN DIFFICULT THEN TO ACHIEVE IT? stop moaning, stay positive, stay focused: a) Identify the ENEMY of (1) is "corporate mistake" & the lifestyle it requires. b) ensure 3rd generation have clean air, water, food, by planting trees and creating 'eden on earth' and by teaching our kids to do the same. c) repeat (b) - thats ALL we have to do. The rest of it is cultural distinction, word-of-mouth, storytelling the histories that become the myths that teach our great-grandkids. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE recap: plant, and teach the kids to plant, to develop a sustainable culture. We will not have supermarkets, petrol, etc in the future. The survivors are those who get self-reliant, AS WE WERE IN UK IN THE 1950s!!! self-responsibility is the key-phrase for cultural transition. Ironically this CAN ONLY happen in community projects. The only way out of todays cruel, limiting, prison-system, of corporate greed and consumer slavery, is COMMUNITY and ECOLOGY. recap: PLANT - COMMUNITY - ECOLOGY = sustainability. and: "Self-Responsibility within Community!" Our planetary wisdom keepers taught us to "live for the 7th generation": WE are the crisis generation. The best we can hope to achieve is to prepare the 3rd generation. DO IT OR DOOM. It doesn't matter who you were, what you did; from NOW onward, this philosophy is all that matters. Anything else is doom, and survivors have no time for doom. And that's it. Be aware that nettles, dandelions etc provide more energy than cultivated crops, and they survive slugs, what this means is the future generations will have stone-age diets, and they will be healthier than us, and they will not require so much effort gardening to do so. What we can loving ly gift them with, is fruit crops, beautiful environments, etc. OK right my next step is to create grafitti stencils that say "tree here" and go to town on the pavements with some green spray-paint. It might be criminal damage but the deforestation of the rainforests are depleting the atmosphere of oxygen so fast that it really doesn't matter if a few people get the hint.and: make our own hand-collected seed-banks because 5 years from now, organic seed will be rare and monster monsanto GM bad-for-you seeds will be everywhere. Collect and plant and cultivate our own seed banks. This is SURVIVAL NECESSITY at this time in history. first published on facebook 11.6.2012

Project Green Torq

the alternate system is self-sufficiency, permaculture. It requires community centered living instead of individual (ego) centered living. There are 2 stages to permaculture; living it, and making the transition toward living it. Most of us are not even making the transition. Because we cannot see how. Because we cannot see the end result and imagine living it. We desperately need 2 blueprints. ... 1 for the end result and 1 for the transition. A central community location physically designed as a roundhouse instead of a square cell, that is energy efficient using solar and wind, made from ecological building materials, big enough for a community to live in. A giant tipi with a hearth in the center and cushions at the edges, surrounded by a food forest. If everybody on my friends list dedicated 1 dollar to make 1 of these, to buy the wasteland and build the straw bale roundhouse and etc... we could do it. If everyone on my friends list dedicated 1 dollar a month to this project, we could build a load of these in towns all over the world. If these sites became food production and food retail venues with kids creche, we would have a multinational business enterprise that would make enough money to build even more of these sites in other towns all over the world. I need help to get this project off the ground. the alternate system is self-sufficiency, permaculture. It requires community centered living instead of individual (ego) centered living. There are 2 stages to permaculture; living it, and making the transition toward living it. Most of us are not even making the transition. Because we cannot see how. Because we cannot see the end result and imagine living it. We desperately need 2 blueprints. 1 for the end result and 1 for the transition. A central community location physically designed as a roundhouse instead of a square cell, that is energy efficient using solar and wind, made from ecological building materials, big enough for a community to live in. A giant tipi with a hearth in the center and cushions at the edges, surrounded by a food forest. If everybody on my friends list dedicated 1 dollar to make 1 of these, to buy the wasteland and build the straw bale roundhouse and etc... we could do it. If everyone on my friends list dedicated 1 dollar a month to this project, we could build a load of these in towns all over the world. If these sites became food production and food retail venues with kids creche, we would have a multinational business enterprise that would make enough money to build even more of these sites in other towns all over the world. I need help to get this project off the ground. first published on facebook 7.8.12