a melody: Most sensory information travels through the brain via primary sensory pathways that converge in the thalamus, which is a sort of "central relay station." Here it is sorted out, then sent on to "relatively specific and localized receiving areas in the higher (cortical) levels of the brain. On their way from the sensory receptors to the thalamus, the signals pass an area of the brain stem and midbrain to which the sensory pathways have lateral connections." Encylopedia Britannica

common shape: The main function of the hypothalamus is homeostasis, or maintaining the body's status quo of blood pressure, temperature, fluids and electrolytes, and body weight. All are held to a are held to "set-point." The set-point can change over time, but normally remains remarkably steady. To achieve this, the hypothalamus receives information from all over the body,  and initiates "compensatory changes if anything drifts out of whack."

the vague: O. Paz, Marcel Duchamp--Appearance Stripped Bare. New York, 1978. p.36

the Bride: At the upper end of the brain stem "are the thalamus and hypothalamus, once poetically compared to the inner or bridal chamber of the house, and the room immediately beneath it." R.M. Restak, Brainscapes. New York, 1995. p.17.

 

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even is a double glass, 109¼" high by 69¼" long, divided horizontally into two halves by double lead wire. It was "finally unfinished" in 1923. In 1926, it had its first public exhibition, at the Brooklyn Museum. Broken in transit, Duchamp said, "I see in (the cracks) a strange purpose for which I'm not responsible, a design ready-made in a way that I respect and love." 

Even: "In French, the title ends with 'méme', which is always translated as the adverb 'even'. Of course, as has often been noticed, phonetically it could also mean 'm'aime', that the bride 'loves me'. (This interpretation has supported an incest theory coupling Duchamp with his sister Suzanne.) It appears Duchamp added the 'méme' to the title after his arrival in the United States in 1915, when he was experiencing the disjointedness of the French language from the point of view of someone trying to teach it to Americans. If 'méme' were understood as an adjective (Duchamp himself said it was an adverb), it could mean 'the same', such as 'Vest la méme chose' (that's the same thing), 'Vest moi-mémé' (it's me), or 'quand plusieurs verbes ont un méme sujet' (when several verbs have the same subject). In any case, it does seem possible that Duchamp hints the bride and the bachelors could be diverging facets of the single person who invented them." J. Mink, Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968: Art as Anti-Art.  Benedikt Taschen, 1995.

 

Mother: "According to (Paul) MacLean, the thalamus is the first evolution of life from reptile to mammal associated with mother-child communication as well as maternal instinct. E. de Beauport, The Three Faces of Mind. Wheaton, IL., 1996. p.79.

rising again: "In the complex vertical composition, Duchamp's bride remains forever isolated on the top, his bachelors ever celibate on the bottom....what connections exist between the two sexes has the function of alternations." C.A. Jones, "The Sex of the Machine: Mechanomorphic Art, New Women, and Francis Picabra's Neuraesthenic Cure." In, C.A. Jones and P. Galison, Editors, Picturing Science Producing Art. New York, 1998. p.171.

One doesn't: For an opposite view: "For the most part, we do not subject scientists to literary criticism, and the fact that we don't tends, I think, to dehumanize them. I think it tends, for example, to perpetuate the sense that the scientific profession consists of interchangeable parts. Nobody would think of the literary community that way. Nobody would think that if a poet were to die, somebody else would automatically step into his shoes and continue his work." E. Manier, "At The Intersection of Knowledge and Values: Fragments of a Dialogue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, August 1990. In, A. Harrington, Editor, So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences. Boston, MA., 1992. p.286.

Maxwell's devil: James Clerk Maxwell. (1831-1879)  During his early days at the Edinburgh Academy “he was given ‘devil - on - two – sticks’, a toy which he always had with him from that time on when he was on holiday at Glenlair, on holiday in Glasgow, and he even took it with him when he went to study at Cambridge University. James quickly became an expert at making the devil do wonderful tricks, which almost seemed to defy the laws of physics. This toy, and others he was given as a child, must have had a profound effect on Maxwell. Later he was to apply his mathematical skills to a study of the dynamical top, doubtless still trying to understand the behaviour that had filled him with so much wonder as a child.” J. J. O'Connor and E F Robertson, “A Visit to James Clerk Maxwell’s House.” http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Maxwell_House.html

the intralaminar: S. Blakeslee, "How the Brain Might Work: A New Theory of Consciousness." In, N. Gade, Editor, The Science Times Book Of The Brain. New York, 1998. p.235.

roundheaded people: "Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Indians of the northern part of the Willamette Valley as well as along the lower Columbia River was their head shape. These people bound their children as infants in cradleboards. They fastened a moss or cedar bark binding against the child's skull and tightened the pressure to mold it. All high born Indians of good social standing in the northern Willamette Valley as well as the Chinook along the Columbia had these distinctive flattened heads. Only poor people or perhaps slaves had ugly round heads!" S.D. Beckham, The Indians of Western Oregon: This Land Was Theirs. Coos Bay, OR., 1977. p.48

it is a very: M-L Von Franz, Alchemy. Toronto, Canada, 1980. p.174.

the names: "these names make themselves available to the diverse meanings given them by passers-by; they detach themselves from the places they were supposed to define and serve as imaginary meeting-points on itineraries which, as metaphors, they determine for reasons that are foreign to their original value but may be recognized or not by passers-by." M. de Certeau, "Walking in the City." In, The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA., 1984.pp.104.

these streets: "Imagine that you are standing at a busy intersection watching car drive by. Your eyes send information to two peanut-size clusters deep in the brain known as the lateral geniculate bodies of the thalamus. This structure is segregated into parvocellular (parvo) and magnocellular (mago) divisions. The parvo, or slow-processing system, appears to process information about color, while the magno, or fast-processing system, appears to process information about movement, location, and spatial organization. The parvo system 'sees' what color a fast-moving car is, and the magno system 'sees' how fast a car is moving. It is then the responsibility of the cortex, working with the cerebellum, to piece this information together and give us the seamless perception of a red car whizzing past us." J.J. Ratey, A User's Guide To The Brain. New York, 2001. p.63.

remained strange: "Scientists and philosophers seek to make (the brain) into an orderly citizen of the new suburbs of knowledge, but at some point it invariably darts back into the maze of ancient city streets where maps prove almost useless and where you know your way around if at all, by feel." D.B. Morris, The Culture of Pain. Berkeley, CA., 1999. P.15.

about to cross: "Last week, in downtown Portland on a warm November morning, I stopped at the corner of 10th and Burnside, one of the busiest crossings in the city, carefully checked the traffic light (red) and the traffic lanes (bus coming), and started to walk into the street. A muttering transient standing beside me on his way to Powell's Books, where he was going to trade in his overnight haul of tomes for cash, grabbed my shoulder just in time." F. Skloot, "Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain." In, A. Lightman, Editor., The Best American Essays 2000. Boston, MA., 2000. p.151.

the bride: J. Mink, Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968: Art as Anti-Art. Benedikt Taschen, 1995.

wasp: "The Bride's names are Motor-Desire, Wasp, and Hanger Female...For H.P. Roché the Bride is a mixture of dragonfly and praying manis." O. Paz, Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare. New York, 1978. p.33.

insatiable greed: Limbic structures such as the amygdala, and the hippocampus  project to the hypothalamus, and probably  have a function in regulating limbic behaviors, such as anger, violence, eating, and reproduction.

threat: The thalamo-amygdala pathway is a "quick and dirty" system. Because it doesn't involve the cortex at all, it allows us to act first and think later. Or, rather, it lets evolution do the thinking for us, at least in the beginning, buying us time....Thus we can have have emotional reactions to something without knowing what we're responding to--even we start responding to it. In other words, we're dealing with the unconscious processing of emotion."  J. Le Doux, "The Power of Emotions." In, R. Conlan, Editor. States of Mind. New York, 1999. p.135.

"A man shot on his front porch by Rio Rancho (NM) police late Thursday was brandishing a wooden cross officer's thought was a gun. (David Allen) James had threatened suicide to officers at least four times previously and had a history of asking police to shoot him, (Capt.) Force said." R. McClannahan, Albuquerque Journal, 7 February 1998.

one tone: Khoomii is the local term meaning 'thread.' Mongolian for the singers of Tuva who are able to produce two distinct tones simultaneously. T. C. Levin and M.E. Edgerton, "The Throat Singers of Tuva." Scientific American. September 1999. p.80.

economically rational: "We're much more complex critters than those portrayed in the model of 'economic man.' But we're accepted that vision of ourselves at the expense of a full, mature, human identity. We are capable of courage, virtue, and altruism, and we can die for each other. None of these, however, are economically rational." D.Orr. In, D. Jensen, Editor, Listening to the Land: Conversations About Nature, Culture, and Eros. San Francisco, CA., 1995. p.30.

the Owl: "the owl which terrifies folk by gazing at them with its two great eyes or by wailing or shrieking like a soul in torment may be enlisted against the many powers of evil with which it is associated. The visible object of fear may be employed to inspire fear in the invisible powers which are feared. Thus the evil can be transformed into an ally by enlisting it against evil." E.A. Armstrong, The Folklore of Birds. New York, 1970. p.124

flies over: "Birds fly upwards and defecate downwards. There is no better way of confusing the world than by turning it--or us--upside down. Head and heart belong above, where one thinks and loves, whereas in the lower regions of the body our darker lusts nestle and steaming waste is discharged." M. Dekkers, The Way Of All Flesh. New York, 2000. p.1.

these eyes: Fibers from the optic nerve go directly to a small nucleus within the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which regulates and couples circadian rhythms to the light/dark cycles.

Even before: The tree is a Douglas Fir.

they could: R. Lawlor, "Dreaming the Beginning: An Interview with Robert Lawlor." Parabola (Summer 1993) p.12.

to retrieve: D. Bohm. R. Weber, The Enfolding-Unfolding Universe: A Conversation with David Bohn. In, K. Wilber, Editor, The Holographic Paradigm. Boulder, CO., 1982. P.45.

In a glass box: "The ultimate beauty of psyche is that which even Aphrodite (Venus) does not have and which must come from Persephone, who is queen over the dead souls and whose name means 'bringer of destruction.'  The Box of Beauty which Psyche must fetch as her last task refers to an underworld beauty that can never be seen by the senses. It is a beauty of the knowledge of death and the effects of death upon all other beauty that does not contain this knowledge. Psyche must 'die' herself in order to experience the reality of this beauty, a death different from her suicidal attempts." J. Hillman, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology. New York, 1978.

love: "The alchemist's endeavors to unite the opposites culminate in the 'chymical marriage', the supreme act of union in which the work reaches its consummation. After the hostility of the four elements has been overcomes, there still remains the last and most formidable opposition, which the alchemist expressed aptly as the relationship between male and female. We are inclined to think of this primarily as the power of love, or passion, which drives the two opposite poles together, forgetting that such a vehement attraction is needed only when an equally strong resistance keeps them apart." C.G. Jung, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Vol. 14, Mysterium Coniuctionis. Princeton, NJ., 1970. p.104. 

reticular: The reticular nucleus is "a gauze meshwork of long dendrites draped all over the outer surface of the thalamus.The network is designed to sample the signals which pass to and fro between thalamus and cortex." J.H. Austin. Zen and the Brain. Cambridge, MA., 1998. p.267.

Persephone's: "'through the figure of Persephone, the stately Queen of Hades, we glimpse the Gorgon,' Kerényi asserts. The Gorgon represents the most horrific aspect of death: the aspect of nonbeing that is also the essence of Persephone as Queen of the Dead. 'It is not, of course, pure nonbeing,' he elaborates, 'rather (it is) the sort of nonbeing from which the living shrunk as from something with a negative sign; a monstrosity that has usurped the place of the unimaginably beautiful, the nocturnal aspect of what by day is the most desirable of all things.'" K. Carlson, Life's Daughter/Death's Bride. Boston, MA., 1997. p.100; E. Kerényi and C.G. Jung, Essays on a Science of Mythology. New York, 1963. p.127.

a steady state: D. Hickey, "Frivolity and Unction." In, D. Chasman and E. Chiang, Editors, Drawing Us In: How We Experience Visual Art. Boston, MA., 2000. p.116.

Through the process of allostatis (stasis means 'stability,' and allo means 'variability), the hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland, which, in turn, stimulates the adrenal glands to produce cortisol, a hormone that not only increases glucose, to make more energy available, and stimulates the immune system, but also creates a feedback loop to the hypothalamus, insuring that overreaction to stress won't result in damaging the body, and thus maintains a relatively stable state, called homeostatus.

Transformation Mask: Made by Kwakwaka'wakn artist Bean Dick. "The mask is shown in the open position, revealing the face of the first human being being nestled between the split image of a bird. Painted on the inside panels, above the face, are two supernatural Wolves. When the mask is closed it turns into a Raven." - www.civilization.ca/cmc/cmceng/gh13eng.html

delay: Cabanne:   You called "The Bribe" a "delay in glass."
           Duchamp:  Yes. It was the poetic sense of the words that I liked. I wanted to give 'delay' a poetic sense that I couldn't even  explain.
           (P. Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. New York, 1971. p.40.)

relay: "The thalamus has another important connection with the cortex, which is that all the body's sensory systems send their inputs to replay stations of nerve cells and then to their own regions of the cortex. These relay stations are located within the thalamus, which is able to influence their firing patterns. S. Blakeslee, "How the Brain Might Work: A New Theory of Consciousness." In, N. Gade, Editor, The Science Times Book Of The Brain. New York, 1998. p.235.

barren: "Demeter is, after all, primarily a depressive Goddess. At one point, it is true, she leaps in Maeadic delight at the return of her daughter, but that is short-lived. Her basic, underlying method is heavily earthy and under-earthly. Not for long is she an enthusiast, nor I believe is she one who searches for 'meaning' and 'truth'...She searches merely for her daughter---that underworld component which belongs by birth to her. And with this kinship tie comes her significance, and the significance of everything she does." P. Berry, "Demeter/Persephone and Neurosis." Spring (1975).

networked communications:  Derrick de Kerckhove, "Network Art and Virtual Communities." Parallel (1995).

shield: "the shield was believed to impart immunity from harm or to provide supernatural assistance to the carrier. The latter attribute is the most consistently held belief, and because of this supernatural potency, the shields were kept covered lest this power leak away. Both Navajo and the Apache followed the tradition of the Southern Plains Indians by having a shaman make their shields, imbue them with his supernatural protection and then cover them with buckskin." B. Wright, Pueblo Shields. Flagstaff, AZ., 1976.

nonsensical field: "For Duchamp's work, strange as it is, is art, albeit of a very special kind; an art of living as well as an art of mechanisms and a nonsense of machines. By mechanisms and a nonsense the contingent into a field of nonsense, Duchamp devalues its depreciative power on his essential self-esteem; by the conversion of psychic pressure into tautology, he transfigured it into absurdity, an absurdity he could deride. In this way Duchamp could be both master of his destiny and never out of touch with what 'really mattered' to him, as long as what mattered was filtered through his nonsense and his pride." L.B. Steelfel, Jr., "Marcel Duchamp and the Machine." In, A. D'Harnoncourt and K. McShine, Editors, Marcel Duchamp. New York, 1989. p.77.

hormonic: The hypothalamus sends axons to the pituitary gland, inducing the secretion of at least six hormones."Ultimately the hypothalamus can control every endocrine gland in the body."

mysterious wind: "The deeply mysterious powers and entities with whom the shaman enters into a rapport are ultimately the same forces--the same planets, animals, forests, and winds, that to literate, 'civilized' Europeans are just so much scenery, the pleasant backdrop of our more pressing human concerns." David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous. New York, 1996.

as if: L Downer, On the Narrow Road: Journey into a Lost Japan. New York, 1989. p.72.

to consider: M. Berenguer, Prehistoric Man and His Art. London, 1973.

the gas is drawn: M. Sanouillet and E. Peterson, Editors, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. NY 1973. p.53.

uroborosian: The uroboros is the serpent that's biting it's own tail, "the 'Great Round,' in which positive and negative, male and female, elements of consciousness, elements hostile to consciousness, and unconsciousness elements are intermingled. In this sense, the uroboros is also a symbol of a state in which chaos, the unconsciousness, and the psyche as a whole were undifferentiated--and which is experienced by the ego as a borderline state." E. Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Princeton, NJ., 1963. p.18.

stereo's vibrations: "Some information about smell passes directly from the olfactory organs to a part of the cortex, but information from all the other sense organs (and also information from other parts of the brain) reaches the cortex almost exclusively via one or other thalamus." I. Glynn, An Anatomy of Thought. Oxford, England. p.166.

a former time: "'I love a wide margin to my life,' Thoreau remarked, quaintly, referring to the space--the silence--requisite for contemplation, or, more quaintly, the forming of a self. A century and a half later, aural text covers the psychic page, spills over; the margin is gone. Walking to work, we pass over rumbling pipes and humming cables, beneath airplane flight corridors and satellite broadcasts, through radio and television transmissions whose sounds, reconstituted from binary code, mix and mingle, overlap and clash, and everywhere drifts the aural refuse of our age." M. Slouka, "Listening for Silence." Harper's Magazine. April 1999.

pre-Cagean: "As he got older he preferred quiet spaces and time at home as opposed to being out in the noisy crowds. He said that was partly why he started making visual art and drawings--because art was personal whereas music was social--the solitude and quiet of objects as opposed to the social requirements of processes." C. Shultis. Personal correspondence. Christopher Shultis is the author of  Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition. Boston, MA., 1998.

screamed: "The body, we are learning, contains multiple pain pathways. It's resources include not only the central nervous system but the sympathetic and parasympathetic system as well, which influence the limbic system governing our emotions and thus make chronic pain always a psychological state. We still do not understand fully what happens to the nociceptive impulse at the level of the cerebral cortex, but it is certain that the thalamus relays the signal it receives to the higher cerebral centers of consciousness. Pain, in effect, is no mere physiological event. It is simultaneously emotional, cognitive, and social." D.B. Morris, The Culture of Pain. Berkeley, 1991. p.269.

gazed: "When (the) ascending reticular activating system is operating, the individual is alert, aroused, and attentive. Reduction of its activity results in somnolence or inattentiveness; extreme reduction (for example, by anesthesia or concussion) may lead to confusion or unconsciousness, even though the senses still pass messages to the brain over the direct pathways. The reticular system seems to account physiologically for the sustained, tonic shifts in an individual's level of involvement with the environment, including the control of sleep-wakefulness. One nonspecific route to the cerebral cortex via the thalamus, the diffuse thalamic projection system, appears concerned with moment-to-moment fluctuations in the focus of attention. Collectively the primary sensory pathways, associated areas of the cerebral cortex, and these more diffuse projection systems cooperate in the process of registering the incoming sensory signal, evaluating its contents, and mobilizing brain resources in response to the demands made." Encyclopedia Britannica

middle-aged: "All too often, anatomical structures are viewed as static, frozen things. However, if we start to think of structure as a continuously dynamic process in its own right, then we are no longer asking the question how far anatomy must constrain speculations in psychology. Instead we are looking directly into anatomical or psysiological process for insights about the way in which new patterns of cognitive process may be formed. I assume there has to be a link between the cognitive realm and the neurophysiological process mediating cognition." J. Brown, "At the Intersection of Knowledge and Values: Fragments of a Dialogue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. August 1990." In, A. Harrington, Editor, So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences. Boston, MA., 1992. p.253.

controlling: I. Glynn, An Anatomy of Thought. Oxford, England. p.166.

haggard face: "As late as the Middle Ages, the witch was still the hazazussa, a being that sat on the Hag, the fence, which passed behind the gardens and separated the village from the wilderness. She was a being who participated in both worlds. As one might say today, she was semi-demonic. In time, however, she lost her double features and evolved more and more into a representation of what was being expelled from culture..." H.P. Dueer, Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization. Oxford, England, 1985. p.46.

youthful face: "The demons who had been chased into the wilderness, far away from people, then proceeded to return in a changed shape and in a much more threatening form. They were not content to squat on the fence anymore, they sneaked up the cellar steps at night and knocked on the doors. The witch no longer threatened from the outside, she awoke inside." Ibid.

turn around place: Naturalist Loren Eiseley recalls how, when he was a boy, he saw Halley's Comet from his father's shoulders, who said to him: "If you live to be an old man you will see it again...I'll be gone, but you will see it. All that time it will traveling in the dark, but somewhere, far out there...it will turn back." Eiseley died a short time before the comet returned. L. Eiseley, "The Star Dragon." In, The Invisible Pyramid. New York, 1970.

the Large Glass: D. Joselit, Infinite Regress--Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941. p.112.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Born in 1933 in Zuma Junction, Siberia, Yevtushenko published his first book of poems in 1952. He was expelled from the Young Communist League for "individualism," and has been a torn in the side of Soviet, then Russian, governments ever since, protesting their wars, and defending the civil rights of the Russian People. From 1988 to 1991 he served in the first freely elected Parliment of the USSR, using his position to fight against censorship. Yevtushenko is presently the Poet Laureate of Russia.

Babii Yar:

Eleanor Wachtell: [Babii Yar] may be the single work by which you’re remembered. Can you tell me about that poem, how you came to write it?

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: I met [--------] 1960, first I met one young prose writer, Anatoly Kuznetsov [writer of book "Babii Yar"]. And he was witness of this massacres when Nazis killed. Many thousand soldiers, nobody knows exact number. Probably between sixty and seventy thousand. I know when he told me this story, I was so moved, that I wrote poem same day. Very quick. I wrote it very quickly. And the next day, I already had poetry reading and I recited this poem. It was shock. Because Ukrainian authorities, they were trying to keep this fact hidden. Why? Because some Ukrainian politzei, politzeis, people who collaborated with Germans, and police, special police. They participated in this massacre too. That’s probably why. They try not to talk about it openly. So after this...

EW: So it wasn’t just a critique of the Nazis, it was...

YY: ...No, it was a poem against antisemitism in general, you know...So I was summing up many different facts from many different areas...Babii Yar itself, Dreyfus, pogrom, Jewish pogroms in Russia, everything. It was not my protest against only the cruelty of the Nazis. Against general: against chauvinism, against nationalism. So, and I was...afterwards, I was not permitted during more than twenty years to read my poetry in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, despite that I had many admirers, and supporters amongst the Ukrainian readers.
So when I came back to Ukraine for what is anniversary of Babii Yar, in nineteen-ninety first, jogging that morning, I discovered some nasty slogans on the fences, on the monuments, dedicated to Ukrainian-Russian friendship..."Yids
and Russians, get out from Ukraine"

(Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program, Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtell. Taped in 1995, transcript by J.P.Niven. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3096/writersco.html)

tremors: "Abnormal thalmo-cortical signals have been found in a variety of brain diseases, all of which share a strange connection. They have in common several unexplained symptoms such as hand wronging., deep sadness, ringing in the ears, unrelenting tremors..." T.B. Czerner, What Makes You Tick? New York, 2001. p.162.

the thalamus: Ibid.

two snakes: "the initiate approaches Demeter....The goddess sits on a pleated basket, about which a snake may be seen winding. Demeter looks back in the direction of a young woman hurrying toward her with a torch: this is Persephone (Kore) coming back from the underworld. The divine myth is presented here in connection with a ritual instrument, the kiste, and a very general symbol, the snake. These hints for those with knowledge betray nothing to the uninitiated. The basket remains covered. The snake arouses both a fear of death and a secret sexual fascination. For the initiate, however, the snake is no longer dangerous. He can touch it without fear. Approaching Demeter, experiencing Kore's return, transforming the fear of death into quite confidence--these are the themes of the night of the mysteries at Eleusis."  W. Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Berkeley, CA., 1983. p.269.

thalamic neurons: T.B. Czerner, What Makes You Tick? New York, 2001. p.162.

can mean to him: "Why must we exchange the living image for an interpretative concept? Are interpretations really psychological defenses against the presence of a God? Remember: most of the Greek Gods, Goddesses, and heroes had a snake form--Zeus, Dionyses, Demeter, Athene, Hercules, Hermes, Hades, even Apollo. Is our terror of the snake the appropriate response of a mortal to an immortal? J. Hillman, "A Snake Is Not A Symbol." Dream Animals. San Francisco, CA., 1997. p.26.

remain silent: "In evolution, the forebrain of human beings and other advanced mammals has expanded as a triune structure consisting of three neural assemblies that anatomically and chemically reflect an ancestral relationship to reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals. What this amounts to is an inheritance of three mentalities, two of which lack the capacity for verbal communication." P.D. MacLean, "Obtaining Knowledge of the Subjective Brain (Epistemics)" In, A. Harrington, Editor, So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences. Boston, MA., 1992. p.58. (Note: Most of the scientists and philosophers at this conference spoke out strongly against this view, except as a possible, or impossible, metaphor.)

tattoo: "The Micronesians have a saying: 'When you're tattooed, your bones are tattooed.' Maybe someday that's all that will remain of the human race' all the dreams, myths, and buildings will have vanished, leaving only bones, a few bearing tattoo marks to show that the people who lived on this planet also once did art." D. Thome. In, Re/Search #12. San Francisco, CA., 1989.

Art Deco: Art Deco "is often considered as an interpretation of the future based on the use of straight angles and clean lines without superfluous decoration. This opinion is contradicted by observers who point out that early Art Deco did not fit that description. It was neither all lines and angles nor were all

examples plain and austere. These writers believe that Art Deco grew out of Art Nouveau or was a refinement of that earlier style....Another view is that Art Deco borrowed from cultures such as the Egyptian, African, and American Indian." M.F. Gaston, Collector's Guide To Art Deco. Paducah, KY., 1997. p.9.

the temple: C. Downing. In, C. Downing, Editor, The Long Journey Home: Re-visioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone For Our Time. Boston, MA., 1994. p.50.

it's a woman: "Duchamp's female alter ego emerged in 1920. Wanting to change identity, he first thought of taking a Jewish name. 'I was a Catholic,' he told (Pierre) Cabanne, 'and it was a change to go from one religion to another!' Then the idea came, as he put it, to 'change sex:. It was much simpler.'" D. Ades, n. Cox and D. Hopkins. Marcel Duchamp. London, 1999. p.134. "In fact, Duchamp's cross-dressing (as Rrose Sélavy)...is atypical of homosexual drag in general, which tends to take on the signifiers of a particularly lower-class type of femininity in its description of mainstream, bourgeois masculinity." A. Jones, Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp. Cambridge, England, 1994. p.171.

morphing: "The character of morphing is genetic, not surgical, more like genetic cross-breeding than transplanting. Where collage emphasized differences by recontextualizing the familiar, the morphing operation blends the unfamiliar in ways that illuminate unsuspected similarities and becomings." M. Novak, "Transmitting Architecture: The Transphysical City." CTHEORY, Vol 19, No.1-2, 1995.

abstract sculpture: "John Chamberland, known for his crushed auto-body sculptures, describes a wall piece he was working on that just wouldn't come together. 'I tried this and tried that. Nothing worked.' One night he came home drunk and hurled a sledgehammer at it. 'It just fell into place,' he says. 'But the next problem was to get the sledgehammer out." C. Lovelace, "Oh No! Mistakes into Masterpieces." ARTnews, January 1996.

with several: Encyclopedia Britannica. "However, in general terms, the hypothalamus has more to do with the expression (symptomatic manifestations) of emotions than with the genesis of the affective states. When the physical symptoms of emotion appear, the threat they pose returns, via hypothalamus, to the limbic centers and, thence, to the pre-frontal nuclei, increasing anxiety. This negative feed-back mechanism can be so strong as to generate a situation of panic. (Ibid.)

Great Pan: "A cry went through late antiquity: 'Great Pan is dead!" Plutarch reported it in his 'On the Failure of the Oracles,'  yet the saying has itself become oracular, meaning many things to many people in many ages. One thing was announced: nature had become deprived of its creative voice. It was no longer an independent living force of generativity. What had had soul, lost it: or lost was the psychic connection with nature." J. Hillman, "An Essay on Pan." In Pan and the Nightmare. New York and Zurich, 1972.

"Plutarch tells a yarn of a boat whose captain was named Thamous. As they were sailing close to the island of Paxi he heard a voice calling, 'Thamous'. The voice told them to announce at a late stage in their journey, 'Great Pan is dead'. They did, and the announcement was greeted with sorrow and anguish. This lamentation was typical of the annual mourning for Tammuz, and it seems that what they heard was not 'Thamous' but Tammuz'--''Tammuz the All-great is dead.'" (Tammuz is a vegetation-spirit, the escort is the Assyrian goddess Ishar.) J. Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire. Ithaca, NY., 1970. p.15.

Wailing Wall: “Hebrew HA-KOTEL HA-MA'ARAVI, also called, Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, a place of prayer and pilgrimage sacred to the Jewish people. It is the only remains of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, held to be uniquely holy by the ancient Jews and destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. The authenticity of the Western Wall has been confirmed by tradition, history, and archaeological research; the wall dates from about the 2nd century BC, though its upper sections were added at a later date…As it is seen today, the Western Wall measures about 160 feet (50 m) long and about 60 feet (20 m) high; the wall, however, extends much deeper into the earth. Jewish devotions there date from the early Byzantine period and reaffirm the rabbinic belief that "the divine Presence never departs from the Western Wall." Jews lament the destruction of the Temple and pray for its restoration. Such terms as Wailing Wall were coined by European travelers who witnessed the mournful vigils of pious Jews before the relic of the sacred Temple.” -Encyclopedia Britannica.

Another example a wailing wall is the "Klagemauser," located in the Nazi Death Camp at Mauthausen, Austria. Newly arrived prisoners were subjected to an initiation ritual: standing at attention facing this wall while chained to iron rings, sometimes days, while being interrogated and brutally beaten. The Nazis established Mauthausen in 1938, to imprison their ideological opponents. It was the only camp classified as a "Level III Camp," which meant that for the prisoners, there should be no return. More than 190,000 people of different nationalities became imprisoned there, the Gusen Branch Camp and the subcamps, which numbered over 40. Systematic terror, deliberate killings, exploitation of labor, deficient feeding, inadequate clothing and lack of medical care led to the deaths of about 100,000 prisoners.

Photo: 1943-1944. New Arrivals at Mauthausen, standing in front of the Klagemauser. National Archives, USHMM Photo Archives

cups of tiny caves: "It is as if the human psyche were continually feeling along the surface of a great rock face, in search of the slightest fissure, a discontinuity that might afford entry beyond the rock to a numinal reality which both underlay and transcend the stone." B.C. Lane, Landscape of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. New York, 1988. p.16.

hummingbird: "The several intralaminar nuclei nestle like hummingbird eggs within the bands of white matter that split the thalamus. These nuclei are part of the nonspecific system. This means that they exert a more general influence, broadcasting diffusely both up to the cortex and forward to the striatum."  J.H. Austin. Zen and the Brain. Cambridge, MA., 1998. p.266.

mirrored glass: "I think the mirror played an important role in the conceptual development of virtual space. How many Parisian cafés can only exist because of that false, fractional dimension of the space reflected on the mirrored walls of the café's interior. One can even go back to the Roman's. Celebrating their parties during the night, they would cover the walls with glass (less reflective, obviously, than our glass today) to multiply the light flicker's in the reflections on the walls. The reflected light illuminated the night as an artificial setting for the orgies. Thus there were two societies: one living at day time (i.e., the poor), under the sun, without virtuality and within a concrete corporality--and another society living at night time (i.e., the rich), in the excess and the virtuality of an artificial light that was very expensive at that time." P. Virilio, "Architecture in the Age of its Virtual Disappearance." In, J. Beckmann, Editor. The Virtual Dimension. New York, 1998. p.185.

the details: S.T. Champion@soton.ac.uk

protrudes: "The higher one ascends on the mammalian tree, the larger becomes the back of the thalamus. Finally it puffs out so much that anatomists gave it the Latin name of pulvinar, meaning 'cushion." In present-day humans, a massive pulvinar now occupies one quarter of the thalamus....Stimulating the left pulvinar impairs speech (also the) subject's finding the words to name objects. The disturbance erases even the names of objects which had been earlier identified just before the stimulation began. Such findings may be relevant to the inexpressibility of brief mystical states." J.H. Austin. Zen and the Brain. Cambridge, MA., 1998. pp. 271,72.

the verge: "The demons who had been chased into the wilderness, far away from people, then proceeded to return in a changed shape and in a much more threatening form. They were not content to squat on the fence anymore, they sneaked up the cellar steps at night and knocked in the doors. The witch no longer threatened from the outside, she awoke inside." H.P. Dueer, Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization. Oxford, England, 1985. p.49.

not only: R. Bernoulli, "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines." In, Joseph Campbell, Editor, Spiritual Disciplines. Princeton, NJ., 1985. p.317.

cocooned: "This brings us to Thoreau on Ktaadn's Ridge. As he went up the ridge, he went across the boundary into what Hans Peter Dueer calls dreamtime. Thoreau saw the contingency of what he had been, the Harvard student, the man who made pencils, the American scholar--as Emerson liked to think of him--and he became an entirely different Thoreau....So he went to Walden, and also to Ktaadn, to cross over---to find a place where he could just maybe glimpse the cultural cocoon in which he lived." M. Oelschlaeger. In, D. Jensaen, Editor, Listening to the Land: Conversations About Nature, Culture, and Eros. San Francisco, CA., 1995. pp.214-15.