text:
Category Archives: Kototama
Kototama and "Now" — An Izumo Taisha Shinto Perspective
Izumo Taisha
Okunomichi and WoshiteWorld are deeply interested in the study and practice of Kototama. This is another in the Kototama series of expository articles. Here, we share a Shinto view of Kototama. We received the statements below from a representative of Izumo Taisha Grand Shrine.
Izumo Taisha (Izumo Ōyashiro) is one of the oldest and largest Shinto shrines in Japan. The taisha enshrines Ōkuninushi no Ōkami, kami of earth and spiritual world.
Shinto is the native Japanese religion which is based on traditional nature worship and animism. It does not have a particular founder, doctrine, or scripture. This is similar to old Hawaiian and Native American religions.
Nakaima, The "Now"
The word Nakaima comes from a national history book, Shoku Nihongi, Sequel to Chronicle of Japan, 797 CE [sequel to Nihon Shoki, 720 CE]. Nakaima is made up of two words, naka and ima, where the former means middle and the latter means now, the present time.
As Shinto does not have concepts about heaven and hell in the hereafter, "this world" is considered the most valuable and important time for all lives. It is the "middle" between the past and the future. "Now" is the precious time to reflect the past and expect the future.
Kototama of Norito
Shinto prayers, norito, are based on Kototama, the worship to words and language itself. From ancient times, it is said that, "The words can move the heaven and the earth" especially in the Japanese poems (waka, tanka). Traditionally, people use and choose words very carefully when they compose the poems because of Kototama, especially yamato kotoba (ancient Japanese classical words). This is why norito is composed only from yamato kotoba. When the words are pronounced, Kototama is involved — with its vibration toward the world.
Kototama and Nakaima
In Shinto cosmology, Kototama is the basic tool to affect Nakaima.
Experience Kototama and Nakaima
To experience Kototama in Nakaima, recite Ōharae no Kotoba, the prayer for Great Purification, one of the most famous norito.
HARAE NO KOTOBA, PRAYER FOR PURIFICATION AND BLESSING
The Harae no Kotoba below is an invocation often recited at Izumo Taisha asking Ōkuninushi no Ōkami, and all the myriads of Kami to join in the ceremony. There are three basic types of harae purification and blessing:
the body (to maintain health and well-being, to heal or avoid illness;
the soul or spirit of the living and the dead;
our surroundings and natural environment.
The last three lines can be recited as a short prayer for purification and blessing.
Harae no Kotoba
kakemaku mo kashikoki Izanagi no Ōkami
Tsukushi no Himuka no Tachibana no Odo no
Ahagihara ni misogi harai tamaishi toki ni
narimaseru haraido no Ōkami tachi
kamunagaranaru Ōmichi no naka ni umarete
arinagara sono mikage woshi fukaku omowazute
sumekamitachi no mimegumi wo oroka ni omi
tarishitoki ni ayamachi okaseru wa saranari
ima mo tsumi-kegare aramu woba harai tamai
kiyome tamae to mousu kotowo yaoyorozu no
kamitachi tomoni kikoshimese to
kashikomi kashikomi mo mousu
harai tamai kiyome tamae
Izumo Taisha, Izumo Ōyashiro, website: http://www.izumooyashiro.or.jp/'
Izumo Taisha: https://yamanomiya.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/eleven-shrines-in-izumo-izumo-taisha/
Norito and Oharae: [https://japanshrinestemples.blogspot.com/2015/09/norito-incantations.html]
Kototama on Okunomichi and WoshiteWorld: Type the word "Kototama" in the Search box.
This post also appears on WoshiteWorld.
This entry was posted in Cosmology, Jinja, Kototama, Shinto, Shrines and tagged Izumo Taisha, norito, oharae, purification on 2019/02/04 by Okunomichi.
Kototama of Wosite and Hotsuma
Kototama, which is written in kanji as 言霊, is the study and practice of the energy/power in words and speech. Kototama can be translated as "the spirit of words," and as "the language of Spirit." Kototama refers to the power of human words to create, to create things. Okunomichi has several posts on this topic and they can be found by using the Search box to the right and entering "Kototama".
Wosite Language
The Wosite language used in writing the Hotsuma Tsutae, the Futomani, and the Mikasafumi documents is a Kototama language. Wosite studies are posted at https://woshiteworld.wordpress.com/. Recently, WoshiteWorld has published posts on the Kototama of Hotsuma and Wosite. They are: "The Kototama of Wosite," and ""Process of Kototama". In addition, there is a discussion of the waka poetry of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken.
This entry was posted in Hotsuma, Kototama, Woshite and tagged waka on 2018/12/19 by Okunomichi.
Kototama of Takenouchi and Hotsuma Civilizations
Takenouchi and The Three Civilizations
There are various koshi-koden, secret documents from ancient Japan. They have been kept secret both by hostile repression and for safekeeping of wisdom. The Takenouchi records were compiled over a vast period of time; they were preserved by the Takenouchi family until these modern times. The Hotsuma Tsutae is a later record of a time of legendary figures which gives an insight to changes in human society. According to the Takenouchi Monjo, people lived spiritually in peace and plenty for a long period of time. However, new generations grew restive; they wanted more materiality and physicality. The guiding elders discussed this seriously and eventually made the decision to let humanity undergo a period of exploration of the material world. The sages would cooperate so that this painful period would be as brief as possible.
Thus the First Civilization gradually ended and the Second began. The decision for the transition was made about ten thousand years ago. Wisdom keepers began to hide their teachings by concealing documents, by creating and spreading myths that veiled the true nature of the stories, and by building religions that would impart some and only some of the truth. Although veiled, precious wisdom would need to be accessible when the time came for it to be revealed and applied.
When we think of how much humans have accomplished even in the last two thousand years in analyzing and controlling the physical world through technology development, building of nations, formalizing religions and other social systems, we are not amazed to realize that this material civilization has just about culminated.
The Second Civilization is nearing its end. In the Takenouchi Documents, transition dates of 2011 and 2017 are given. The Third Civilization of higher consciousness and greater unity is coming. This is the age all ancient wisdom cultures have been awaiting.
Those who are on the Path of Wisdom see signs of returning spring. As the physical world of nature and man grows more disruptive, at the same time more people are awakening to walk the Path. The world is emerging from the bleakness of winter into the rebirth of spring.
The Path of the ancient ones of the Japanese Islands is called Kototama. This term refers to the spiritual (tama) power of sound (koto). Its formal name is Kototama Futomani, Kototama Great (futo) Mana (energy). Kototama Futomani is a cosmology and a practice. It is based on the fundamental property of Universe to create, to manifest, by vibrations. Vibrations produced by the human voice form the sounds of speech. We often forget that these vibrations of speech carry great spiritual energy. Kototama is based on the principle that the way sound patterns are organized determines the development of individual human consciousness and of human society. Civilizations evolve and fall on the basis of these sound systems.
Most important of the sounds are the vowels, aptly called mother sounds. In Kototama, we teach the sounds rather than the letter names. The sequence of the vowels plays a key role and describes the process of human and societal development. Consonants are father sounds and together they create child sounds.
In the coming Third Civilization, the vowel order of Futonorito will be:
Ah Ih Eh Oh Uh
You will see some authors write vowel sounds as A I E O U. This is only a shorthand that represents sounds. In our current Second Civilization, the order of Kanagi is:
Ah Ih Uh Eh Oh
The past First Civilization used the Sugaso order:
Ah Oh Uh Eh Ih
Kototama science is deep and complex. We can only give the tip of the iceberg. The power of the vowels can be briefly and inadequately presented in the following.
Ah Spark beginning activity
Ih Will, intention, desire
Eh Judgment, discernment, evaluation
Oh Memory, experience
Uh Senses, materiality
Do not be misled by words. It takes practice to understand the subtle workings of these vowels. Individual sounds cannot be understood in isolation, for they always interact with other sounds. By working with these hints, we can begin to get an idea of the three civilizations.
Hotsuma Tsutae is another Koshi-koden. It is a legacy written in a beautiful script called Woshite. It was recorded two to three thousand years ago. It relates history and teachings of advanced humans thousands of years prior. We can well wonder how to fit the Hotsuma Tsutae into the overall scheme of the Takenouchi.
The main characters of the Hotsuma legends are known to readers of the conventionally accepted books: Kojiki (711 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE). By the eighth century when these two documents were produced by royal order, there was already a formal ruling system and a stratified society. Elements considered not suitable for the court's political purposes were eliminated or modified. It is very illuminating to compare the contents of the two koshi-koden documents with the eighth century versions.
Today's scholars recognize a long period of peace and culture called the Jōmon period. The name Jōmon was given to describe the cord-marked earthenware said to be the oldest in the world. The Jōmon period lasted from about 14,000 BCE to 300 BCE, a remarkably long period of peace. It was followed by the Yayoi (300 BCE to 300 CE) with significant immigration from the Asian continent which greatly impacted society in the islands. Then came the Kofun period of burial mounds, and so on into historical times.
In terms of Kototama sound order, the Jōmon would be Sugaso and the following periods Kanagi.
Where does the Hotsuma culture belong in this timeline? There are two seeming inconsistencies when dating it. From the spiritually guided nature of Hotsuma society, it would appear to belong to the Sugaso order, at least in the beginning. The early tales are full of compassion and resolution of conflicts by nonviolent means such as negotiation and Kototama. Society was guided to embody Heaven on Earth which means to live in harmony with nature and universe. In the teaching sections of the Hotsuma Tsutae, the lessons emphasized living the Way of Hotsuma which is the Way of Heaven.
We know the sound order of their language through a teaching song, Awa no uta, the song (uta) of Heaven and Earth (A and Wa). It goes like this.
a ka ha na ma i ki hi ni mi u ku
hu nu mu e ke he ne me o ko ho no
mo to ro so yo wo te re se ye tu ru
su yu n ti ri si yi ta ra sa ya wa
From this we see that the vowel order is Ah Ih Uh Eh Oh, the Kanagi order of the Second Civilization! So we may view the Hotsuma culture as the last gasp of the Sugaso.
As in the above Awa no uta, the entire Hotsuma document is written in verse of 5 and 7 syllables. When a master poet is asked why, she replies because 7 and 5 are the rhythms of Heaven and Earth. Deep study of the Woshite syllabary has led to some understanding of the cosmology of the Hotsuma people.
As later tales unfold, especially the last 12 chapters which were added generations later, we view society moving more and more to materialistic worldviews and behavior, thus fully entering the Kanagi civilization. The sacred is declining and materialty is growing. There are battles of nation-building. While the building of a nation may seem grand and glorious, it comes at the cost of human blood and suffering. These stories mark the beginning of our Second Civilization. Hotsuma tales record the transition from the First to the Second Civilization.
Since Hotsuma times, we have continued down this path of separation and conflict, loss of connection with other people and our environment. We can go no further. We must stop and build the Third Civilization.
The documents mentioned here all include the common story of Ama no Iwato no Hiraki, the opening of the heavenly cave door. All four prophesize that the door of darkness will be opened and light of truth will pour forth once more.
The door is opening.
This entry was posted in Ancient civilization, Cosmology, Hotsuma Tsutae, Kototama, Takenouchi and tagged Hotsuma Tsutae, Kototama, Takenouchi on 2015/05/10 by Okunomichi.
Kototama Researchers of the Modern Period
Let us introduce some of the leading Kototama researcher-practitioners of the 19th and 20th centuries. The story begins with young Emperor Meiji who, soon after his marriage began the study of Kototama using two secret documents. Recall that the Kojiki is one of the two most important documents of Japan. It begins with fantastic tales of the Age of Gods. These myths were considered to hold secret meanings. Later, we will present teachings from Yamakoshi, Ogasawara, and Nakazono, as well as Shimada Masamichi.
Emperor Meiji b. 1852, r. 1867 – 1912
Emperor Meiji is best known for the Meiji Restoration of 1876 when he became Emperor at a young age. After his marriage to the Empress, he began to reconstruct the Kototama meaning hidden in the Kojiki together with her, and with Yamakoshi Senior and Junior, and Ogasawara Koji.
Empress Shoken 1850 – 1914
The Empress was born in Kyoto in a prestigious Fujiwara family. Upon marriage to Meiji, she brought a key to decrypt the original meaning of the Kojiki. It was half a document, and it matched the other half kept by the Imperial family.
Yamakoshi Hiromichi (Koudo)
Calligrapher to Emperor Meiji
Yamakoshi Akimasa (Meisho)
Secretary and son of calligrapher Yamakoshi
Ogasawara Koji 1903 – 1982
Published Passage to the Third Civilization in 1964, Kototama Hyakushin in 1969.
Nakazono Masahilo 1918 – 1994
Nakazono studied with Ogasawara prior to 1969. He had studied kototama as an aikido student of Ueshiba Morihei, founder of aikido. He published several books in English, including Inochi and The Source of the Present Civilization.
This entry was posted in Kototama and tagged Meiji on 2014/09/04 by Okunomichi.
Kototama Practice of Mikusa no Kantakara
MIKUSA NO KANTAKARA, three sacred treasures. This is a kototama-in (word-mudra) practice in which mysterious power of universe comes to you. The three treasures are kagami, tama, and tsurugi. These are three sacred practices.
Kagami = mirror representing the body of sun; Tama = jewel representing spirit of moon, symbol of kami; Tsurugi = sword representing energy of stars.
THE PRACTICES SUMMARIZED
Note that each treasure has two parts. Mudra #1 is the same for all three mikusa, but the kototama chants differ. See the book for kototama and mudras.
Kagami practice #1 – show your real self, cleanse it. #2 – remove dirt from bad things around you.
Tama practice #1 – cleanse your tama, your soul-jewel. #2 – bring ame-tsuchi (heaven-earth) inside & outside.
Tsurugi practice. Note: Here, tsurugi is the Murakumo no tsurugi, the sword that Susanoo took out of Yamata no Orochi's tail. The eight-headed Orochi here represents troubles, desires,etc. Cut them with tsurugi, the double-edged sword. When you cut enemy, you can also cut yourself if you have bad thoughts, so be careful when you use it; be clear-minded.
#1 – polish the sword. #2 – deal with the enemy.
OHARAI AND SHIME-NO-IN
Oharai is most important to do at beginning of practice: purify the place, person, and osonae offering. Wave the nusa paper wand, or its equivalent practice.
Shime-no-in, as in the straw rope called shimenawa, sets the boundary of the pure space.
We do the oharai and the shime-no in before embarking on the mikusa practice.
MISOGI AS OHARAI. Misogi has outer and inner aspects, i.e., omote and ura. The outer is the standing under the waterfall. The inner can be explained by the word misogi which is mimi-soso-gi. Mimi is ear, and misogi is the listening to all the sounds of the universe, cleansing the spirit, and bringing kajiri to your ear, where kajiri is a promise made to kami.
In mudras, the fingers making promises (kajiri) with kami. Fingers are called yubi (yu is hot water, and hi is fire in kototama).
This teaching is from the Genpi book of Omiya Shirou shown above.
This entry was posted in Kototama and tagged Omiya Shirou, practices on 2013/10/06 by Okunomichi.
How Kototama Makes the World
According to Rei Torii in Kamigami no Nazo
Kototama refers to the rhythms that bring forth the manifested world.
Mother rhythms are the five vowels あ い う え お which span the dimensions of infinite space. They are the processes of movement of: space, wind, fire, water, and earth. Moving space gives rise to moving wind, which gives rise to moving fire, and which in turn gives rise to the flowing down of moving water/liquid and earth/solid.
Father rhythms are the eight consonants which develop time. These are the processes of creating life and building the world.
Koji Ogasawara: T"he world is perpetually beginning right here, right now!"
The 48 sounds of Hotsuma no Kototama
Please refer to the Hotsuma woshite table. This becomes a Chart of Generating Space and Time.
Top row symbols are the mother symbols which span space.
Right column symbols are the father symbols of time.
The elements in the matrix, combinations of father-mother rhythms are the processes of generating space and time.
Mother Rhythms (vowels) generating space:
Symbol / Sound / Name / Movement of:
Circle / sound あ / utsuho / space
Bell / sound い / kaze / wind
Triangle / sound う / ho / fire
River / sound え / mizu / water
Square / sound お / hani / earth
Father Rhythms (consonants) generating time, i.e., developing humans and culture:
. The Source starting to breathe
| Breath coming from heaven to earth (unseen to seen)
|| Separating into two (male, female)
+ combining the two
T making humans
Y making father
^ making mother
– people spreading east-west
L making leaders
<> making countries
Observe that the Hotsuma character for utsuho is a circle. It represents ku (sora), the sacred place that creates everything in the universe. It marks places of power such as pyramids, stone circles, and kofun burial mounds. Note: utsubo is a sacred vessel and also refers to a mother's womb. We also know of the Tsubo no Ishibumi, a stone monument, which the poet Matsuo Basho sought at Tagajo.
This entry was posted in Hotsuma, Kototama and tagged Kototama, Rei Torii on 2013/09/12 by Okunomichi.
The Kototama of MIZUHO NO TSUTAE by Yamaguchi Shido
(L) Kada's Inari Koden Chart. (R) Yamaguchi's Futomani no Mitama Chart.
Editor's Note: This is an English rendering from the Japanese book, Koshinto Gyoho Nyumon by Omiya Shirou, pp 100-107.
Yamaguchi Shido in the mid-19th century wrote a book that integrated the strange symbols found in two ancient scrolls into a metaphysical system of Kototama.
Yamaguchi Shido
In 1765 Yamaguchi Shido, the son of a wealthy farmer, was born in Awanokuni which is the modern-day Kamogawa-shi in Chiba prefecture. He was a child prodigy and learned Chinese literature at a young age. When he was 25 or 26, he moved to Edo to live with his uncle. He started the study of kokugaku, which is the study of ancient Japanese literature.
Futomani no Mitama/Kagotama Chart
The Yamaguchi family had handed down over the generations an ancient scroll that contained a mysterious chart known as Futomani no Mitama, also called Kagotama. Yamaguchi wanted to unwrap the secret of this chart. After three decades of studying, he came to understand that Futomani no Mitama told the secret about ancient kototama, the power of sound. But he did not quite understand the kototama.
Inari Koden/Mizuhi no Ontsutae Chart
The Inari Koden or Mizuhi no Ontsutae chart was handed down in the prominent Kada family. The Kada family, together with the Hata, of Kyoto were hereditary priests of the Inari shrine in Yamashiro no kuni, the present Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine in Kyoto. The noted kokugaku scholar, Kada no Azumaro (1669-1736) possessed this chart at one time. Azumaro has a lovely shrine at Fushimi Inari which I visited in 2012. Azumaro passed the chart to his adopted child, Tamiko, who in turn passed it to Kada no Noriyuki.
Yamaguchi Shido studied classical Japanese literature under Kada no Noriyuki. Later he taught nobles at the Imperial Court in Kyoto. During these studies, Yamaguchi was given the Inari Koden chart. [Inari Koden probably means the ancient document of Inari.] The secret symbols written in the chart enabled him to solve his question of the ages about the Futomani no Mitama chart.
Mizuho no Tsutae by Yamaguchi Shido, an integration of the two documents
By receiving the Inari Koden, Shido became more confident about his study. In the year Bunsei 1, 1818, he returned to Edo and spent five years in developing a solid base for his study. In the year Tempo 1, 1841, he was invited to the house of Fukui Shigetsugu, his brother-in-law, at Kameyama in Kyoto. There he began writing his work entitled Mizuho no Tsutae which became his life-time achievement.
After that, his study of Kototama became so popular among court nobles in Kyoto that he gave many lectures to them. In the year Tempo five he finished writing seven volumes of Mizuho no Tsutae. Two years later, he was invited to see Kishu Tokugawa (one of the top three Tokugawa-related families) and went to Kishu in Wakayama. There he offered his books, Kamikazeiki and his series of Mizuho no Tsutae to Kishu Tokugawa.
Kototama of Yamaguchi Shido
According to Yamaguchi, all things in the universe consist of water and fire. These are also referred to as the sound of "i" and the sound of "ki." Earth and people are all made up of these water and fire elements. The universe can be very much affected by the kototama that is created from water and fire. Shido thought "iki," breathing, also consisted of water "i" and fire "ki." Breathing was absolutely imperative to carry the words with kototama in them. For him, iki means to live, ikiru.
Yamaguchi found that the Inari Koden had much to do with Futomani no Mitama. He carefully compared them to each other. He revealed that the creation written in Kojiki actually told about the generation of goju-on, the fifty Japanese kana characters/syllables.
Yamaguchi saw that the Futomani no Mitama was made upof the five elements: the dot, the circle, the horizontal line, the vertical line, and the square.
He realized that the Inari Koden, through its twelve forms explained each of the five symbols in the Futomani no Mitama chart. This helped him work out the hidden meaning of Futomani no Mitama.
Yamaguchi noted the goju-on, the fifty voices of the kana syllables, as principal sounds and he made them into figures that represented the true identity of the universe.
The Japanese 50-kana syllables are a system showing the power of sound that controls the universe.
You can control the universe if you have a deep understanding of each sound. The belief of kototama that koto, something that is said, will become koto, something that happens, is a metaphysical system in the innermost recesses of traditional beliefs.
This entry was posted in Koshinto, Kototama and tagged Futomani no Mitama, Inari Koden, Kada no Azumaro, Kagotama, Kototama, Mizuho no Tsutae, Omiya Shirou, Yamaguchi Shido on 2013/07/29 by Okunomichi.


text:
£1.5 million for the MS Society Tissue Bank
We're pleased to announce we've committed £1.5 million to fund exciting new work at the MS Society Tissue Bank.
Our tissue bank allows people to donate their brain and spinal cord tissue for MS research after their death. It's the largest collection of MS brain and spinal cord tissue in Europe, and has sent over 20,000 tissue samples out to researchers around the world.
We fund the tissue bank jointly with Parkinson's UK who are providing a further £1.5 million. As well as supporting the vital ongoing activities of the tissue bank, this investment will fund some ambitious new developments including building a 'digital brain bank' complete with virtual reality interface.
Giving scientists the right tools
Professor Richard Nicholas is the newly appointed Scientific Director at the tissue bank. He takes over from Professor Richard Reynolds who has been in the position for over 20 years and personally collected the first brain in 1998. Professor Reynolds will continue to share his significant expertise with the Tissue Bank as its Chief Scientific Advisor.
Professor Nicholas said: "When the tissue bank first opened in 1998 there were practically no treatments for those affected. Things are very different now and it's a privilege to work with an organisation like the MS Society, which does everything it can to ensure the work of the scientific community reflects the needs of people living with MS.
"They recognise that if we're going to revolutionise the way MS is treated – and find treatments for everyone – scientists need the right tools".
Building a digital brain bank
The tissue bank team will use new technologies to produce high definition pictures of the brain tissue donated by people with MS. This digital brain bank will let researchers from around the world access images of brains from people with MS. Sharing tissue samples in this way means each individual brain can be even more valuable.
There will also be a 3D interactive section so that people who are thinking of becoming donors can explore a virtual brain. During these 'virtual visits' to the tissue bank, visitors can see a brain up close and learn more about what the tissue bank does.
Professor Nicholas continues: "This investment will ensure all researchers have access to high quality brain and spinal cord tissue from people with MS, and marks an important development in the UK research landscape. We're excited to see where it takes us."
Finding treatments to slow or stop MS
Our Head of Biomedical Research, Dr Sorrel Bickley, said: "The MS Society Tissue Bank has been vital in improving our understanding of MS and finding treatments for some people with the condition. But our top priority now is finding treatments to slow or stop MS for everyone.
"We can see a future where nobody needs to worry about MS getting worse, but for that to happen we urgently need to find treatments that repair myelin – the protective layer that surrounds our nerves, which is damaged in MS, and protect the nerves from damage. This funding will allow researchers to operate as effectively as possible, and ultimately help us stop MS faster."
Latest research news and blogs
Help stop MS
MS Society Tissue Bank
The MS Society Tissue Bank allows people to donate their brain and spinal cord tissue for MS research after their death. It's a vital resource, with donated tissue helping scientists around the world advance our understanding of MS.
Read more about the Tissue Bank
How the MS Society Tissue Bank is helping scientists find new treatments for MS
The MS Society Tissue Bank allows people to donate their brain and spinal cord tissue for MS research after their death. Over the last 20 years, it's helped scientists to make some major discoveries about MS.
Read about our tissue bank
A moment that changed MS research - 20 years ago
On 16 January 1998, Professor Richard Reynolds set off to personally collect the first human brain for the MS Society Tissue Bank at Imperial College. Since then, the centre has grown to become a vital resource for researchers all over the world.
Read the story of the MS Tissue Bank

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Sun and Urn
Virginia Konchan
Image: Sun Temple in Modhera via Dharmesh Thakker
On the electric poetry of Christopher Salerno.
Sun & Urn
Christopher Salerno
University of Georgia Press, $19.95 (paper)
If hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul, what entity—avian or not—is grief? In Christopher Salerno's fourth book, Sun & Urn, an exemplar of late-late romantic poetry with a madcap and melancholic bent, the answer is sometimes human, sometimes animal, sometimes another object entirely, such as wild lemons. This collection's central subject is the death of the speaker's father, and its thematic currents include the grieving and celebrating of mortality, sickness and health, loss and resurrection. Amnesia is placed in opposition to grief, as is the conviction that "We are unassailable only insofar as we produce / in the end something beautiful."
The author of three previous full-length collections and two chapbooks, Salerno is no stranger to vivid world-making or the elegiac form, joining an honored lineage that includes Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, Larry Levis, Marie Howe, Robert Lowell, and Mark Doty. Yet this book's juxtaposition of the mourned and the celebrated, the perceived and the real, becomes an occasion for poetry of a singular epistemology:
This earth
is not a MILF. But climb
the man and you
will find Romanticism—
climb higher and you
will reach a word cloud
that reads: I am very sick
but don't yet know it
If truth is not a postulate or axiom, but rather movement, music, love, and meaning, each poem in this collection becomes an act of translation—and interpretation—between natural and created worlds. The human body becomes a perceptible, perceiving instrument with "eight or more openings," a body on which the laws of nature may be writ but not the future.
Salerno thinks of mortality the way Heidegger thought of event or Bergson of time—as a form of world-making.
Salerno's speaker thinks of mortality the way Martin Heidegger thought of event or Henri Bergson of time—as a world or a form of world-making. Heidegger's being-in-the-world becomes a further cause for grief, as it becomes apparent in these poems that the facticity of death is as real as—or at times more real than—the facticity of being. In "Real or in Effigy," the speaker observes:
My brother discovered
the body at dawn. TV bolted
above. Case of Bud
Light making metaphors
of thirst.
Equal parts creation song and elegy, Sun & Urn makes music out of the husk of the body once it has become object again. The spirit lives on in language and memory in poems such as "Pressed for Details," which positions the "person one is meant to become" as funereal poplar trees "old enough to offer one's physical self / as proof of life."
The title poem, "Sun & Urn," is a lyric meditation on absolute difference—death is the country from which no traveler returns, but it occurs in a world where perceptions of scale are constantly in flux and expectations subverted. The jagged poem's form matches its content:
My brother over
the phone asks me if
I'm sitting down. I stand . . .
Language begins.
I sit back down. I am a flag
with two heights.
Do you think it (death) is supposed to come as a surprise?
Like the moon claiming you?
These questions provide the book with its figurative spine—far from reconciled, the speaker's arguments rival the urgency and lyric beauty of John Donne's meditations on death. Of equal note are the quieter statements: "It is easier to love / those who are gone." The public and private functions of the lyric are also carefully attenuated: "I thought dying was like a privacy."
'I thought dying was like a privacy.'
Formally speaking, death is the mother of abundant beauty in this collection, and yet its argument seems to be for death's impermanence and beauty's lastingness, not the other way around. "Formation always comes before form," says the speaker of "Cohabiting." Elsewhere, "You can wait your / whole life, skinny limbs reaching / over a body of water, and misunderstand / the way beauty persuades you." Here formation includes the establishment of a linear narrative or path forward toward the latter half of the book, toward a "new anthem" and "new work," and out of the process of grieving. However, the sequencing of the father's death and the speaker's relationship to what remains is nonlinear, moving from death to imminent death, from different stages of acceptance back to the discovery of the body. Like grief, the process is circular, not straightforward; the logic of this collection rests not in static truths but in love letters and ghost messages, in death and rebirth. The epigraph from Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida speaks to the afterlife of the beloved that continues, whether in memory or photograph: "From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being will touch me like the delayed rays of a star."
Divided into four sections and largely composed of poems in block stanzas or couplets, this collection again and again reenacts its ars poetica of "formation before form," addressing its subject matter in fraught poems while transcending it elsewhere with wit and gravitas. "Some poems are / remembrances. Some / do voodoo," the poem "Helium" explains. Day turns into night, winter into spring, the imagined into the real, and nostalgia into a fierce embrace of the present in poems such as "The Evening Report," which begins "I wake up remembering that words are tries." Once the distance between desire and actuality, sign and signifier has been established, the poem speaks of the personal—struggles surrounding conception, the end of a marriage—not through metaphoric flight but through "no ideas but in things," and the thing being faced is loss. The poems are not merely reporting that loss but using it as a spur for intensified perception.
The rhythmic pulse of the book is tensile, fraught, and electric.
Elsewhere, Salerno reflects on loss from a more philosophical and dispassionate perspective. "Plot," whose title suggests both blank pasture and "reading into" movement, is a witty homage to the late James Wright: "I have not wasted my life / if the moon has risen / over my Toyota." Here and elsewhere Salerno strikes a perfect chord between dictions: traditional poetic language joins demotic rhythms, and a love of the "material world" gives way to an awareness of absence ("To say someone is missing is / to measure the unoccupied space"). While the dominant tone in this collection is elegiac, the poems are alive with barbed wit and attention to nuance and paradox, and they move gradually from death to life—the "long crawl back / to health"—and absence to presence—"[t]he moment you realize / you are not present / you are present." The reader flows along with the speaker to the rhythms of postlapsarian disquiet and transcendental impulse. Self is both constructed and undone in layers, until the integuments of the human are revealed. Eventually the tectonic layers of time shift, and the capacity for statement reasserts itself: "We scrub / ourselves until we have / no smell, like clover flower," says the speaker of "Helium."
The rhythmic pulse in the book's third section, like a body coming back to life, is tensile, fraught, and electric. "September" is the book's volta: "What all poems reenact: / electricity brings the monster to life— // a jagged scar across every joint." Salerno extends this Frankensteinian paradox—the power and danger invested in the creator—in the antepenultimate poem, "Sorrow, Architecture," inspired by and dedicated to Salerno's late teacher and mentor Liam Rector, who wrote The Sorrow of Architecture. Here Salerno makes visible the contours of the seen world, the trajectory of our emotional life, and our woeful "lack of blueprints." The speaker is direct:
Last month my father's heart
attack ended our very long talk
about sports, a career in divorce,
of making one's way to the coast
where all the best buildings
edge into nature. How a house,
a property, is a horror.
Always roving, whether into the future or downriver into the past, all givens in this collection—including houses and bodies—give way to an embrace of the unknown and the life instinct, however ironically. The final poem, "The Byronic Method," is the perfect coda to a book on a subject that has no real terminus or closure, not even with the death of the body: "Outside, the leaves / of poplars, large pulmonary leaves / lie on the ground. The end." It is "the end" of cycles of birth and death, loss and reconstitution, as well as the end of the ligatures, in the lyric, of form. This elegiac book confronts loss on its own terms and in so doing pushes the lyric's relationship to time and space to the edges of perception. Space—sonic and conceptual—is at its heart, particularly the space that death engenders between people and the distances between dream and mind, survivor and ghost. By measuring these distances, this collection makes its argument against forgetting and oblivion and marks, as is appropriate to elegy, the boundary between life and death, the mundane and the sublime. "[A]we," says the speaker, "is always a question of scale." One of the most telling characteristics of grieving (and madness), according to Dickinson, is its endlessness, its improbable scale. The advent of new life allows us to recognize the weight of what we have carried, however boundless and measureless: "Until a daffodil / blooms just below / the scalp— / we put our grief, its infinity / down."


0.001 uh - 100h. Car 3 in 1 led diy digital clock temperature voltage module. About 33 mm. Load current: 173*85*30mm. Vl6180x. Box w1209. An8008 multimeterSize of cover glass slips: 10%rh - 99%rh. M. king.
4v/40v/400/1000v,0.5%+3. Automotive handheld multimeter. 200-200ko. Digital led thermometer. Aaa*2 battery (not included). Szs-ayhf-g004691. Batteries: Circuit insulators. Paper designer. Ptc10+ptr16. Ues for: Thermometer gun. Cable.
Hd vision monocular: Ar1392 radiation. Wristwatchers electronic. Time baby. Pm8232 ammeter multitester. Xl240. Frequency(adm01): Multimeter square wave. 10hz-60mhz. Test soil. 16.30 x 9.70 x 3.30 cm / 6.42 x 3.82 x 1.3 inches. Programmable supply power. Wholesale voltmeter dc. Item length: Sd0121. Product weight: High voltage generatorField of view: Ultra-clear to see mites mirror cells and so on (see video).
Storage temperature: Dc voltage (v): :0.1a - 400a a.c. rms. Embedded programmer. Led 10watt18650. Portable milk heater. 10a diode. Wholesale google pixelxl. 5970 graphic. 400/4k/40k/400k/4m/40m ohm. 40x22 micro binsUt181a. Battery not offer: Wholesale 220v c2h57a. Lm393. 2ma-20a. 200a/2ma/20ma/200ma/10a. Compact amplifiers.


/ The Couple at Sunrise.
The Couple is two 5 metre tall statues by sculpture Sean Henry. Placed on a steel frame on the breakwater, in the bay at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland.
Thanks Suzie, it was worth getting up early to see.
Thanks Sarah, you don't get more exotic than Newbiggin by the Sea.
Thanks Mark, not sure what you mean by "Improvisation".
A striking image , what a sunrise the early start paid off and I'm sure you have more shots from that morning . Like it button hit .
Thanks Eddy, it didn't start off very promising. Nearly gave up at one point, then noticed some colour coming through and was glad I waited.
Thanks Joe, I did wonder if the space on the right had been left to add some kids, maybe.
Don't apologise Mark, at my age you have to keep things simple.
Thanks Alex, as I said earlier, I nearly gave up, but glad I waited.
Wonderfull light, wonderful mood. At second blush I thought: "The way they are standing there looks a little bit strange." and "What is that thing they are standing on?" But it didn't come to my mind this romantic couple could be artwork.
Thanks asinello, yes an impressive piece of artwork.


text:
Anson: Château owners dominate new French rich list
Jane Anson August 24, 2017
Trending Wine News
Owning a château is still a prerequisite for joining French high society, it seems. Here are the richest French winery owners on the latest France 500 rich list produced by Challenges magazine.
It's been an extremely busy summer in Bordeaux.
Just in a few square miles on the limestone plateau of St-Emilion, we have had the Moueix family buying Clos de Magdeleine and Magnan la Gaffelière.
Troplong Mondot exchanged hands for a reportedly record fee. The rumour is over €5 million per hectare, which blows previous St-Emilion prices out of the water.
Château ownership is seen as an essential part of a respectable wealth portfolio
For Bordeaux, it's a reminder not only that estates are being more and more concentrated into the hands of those with seriously deep pockets, but that château ownership is seen as an essential part of a respectable wealth portfolio.
So no surprise that when the annual '500 Wealthiest in France list' was published this summer by Challenges magazine, wine as ever plays a significant role.
A full six in the top 10 names have interests in wine somewhere in France. Only Pierre Castel, at number nine, can be said to have actually made is his fortune in wine, and even that was via beer in his early career.
New number one
Bernard Arnault of LVMH is France's richest man. Credit: Wiki Commons.
The wealthiest man in France in 2017 is Bernard Arnault, leapfrogging Liliane Bettencourt who took the number one spot in 2016.
Arnault's fortune stands at €46.9 billion and he is owner of LVMH, and through it Châteaux d'Yquem and Cheval Blanc, not forgetting Clos des Lambrays, Krug and his other Champagne houses.
He's had a good year, you'll be happy to hear, with his net worth jumping by €5 billion in the space of a few hours back in March, when it was announced that he was taking full control of Christian Dior.
Next up on the wine list is Axel Dumas and the Hermès family up on place to number three with €30.8 billion.
You have to be a little acrobatic to make the link to wine here, as the Mommeja brothers of Château Fourcas Hosten in Listrac-Médoc are part of a separate branch of the sprawling Hermès clan.
At number four we have Gérard Mulliez (€30billion) of the Auchan supermarket group (who apparently has made over 700 of his cousins millionaires due to his business acumen).
With that many family members, you just know there is a wine connection in there somewhere – I found a great-nephew, Romain Mulliez, who is founder of La Vignery wine shops and importer of New World wines into France, but am sure there are other wine connections in there, so please correct me if you know of any.
A clearer link for the next three, with Serge Dassault (€21.6billion) of aeronautics fame and owner of Château Dassault in St-Emilion at number five.
He is followed by Alain and Gérard Wertheimer of Chanel – €21billion, with assets including Châteaux Canon and Rauzan-Ségla as well as St Supery in Napa.
Then in seventh place it's François Pinault and his Groupe Artemis, owner of Châteaux Latour and Siuarac in Bordeaux, plus Grillet, Eugenie and Eisele further afield, with €19 billion.
Just a touch lower down the rankings comes the Bolloré family, down two spots to 12 this year with €7.7 billion. The family owns Domaine de la Bastide Blanche in Provence.
Following closely is the Perrodo family at number 13 (€7.5 billion) of Châteaux Labégorce and Marquis d'Alesme.
And just making it into the top 20 is Benjamin de Rothschild at 20 (€4.5 billion) of Châteaux Clarke in Listrac, des Laurets in Puisseguin St-Emilon and others in South Africa and Argentina.
Who else made the list?
For the rest of the list, I'll just highlight few new names for wine, or significant changes:
At number 25 the Moulin family of Galleries Lafayette (€3.5billion), newly in wine care of their investments a few years ago (helped by their long term friends Florence and Daniel Cathiard at Smith Haut Lafitte) in Châteaux Beauregard, Pavillon de Beauregard, Bastor-Lamontagne and Saint-Robert, all in the Bordeaux region.
Unchanged at number 30, the Bouygues brothers (€3billion) of Château Montrose in St Estèphe and newly-announced owners of Clos Rougeard in Saumur-Champigny.
The Hennessy and Chandon-Moët family (now part of LVMH) own in a personal capacity – through Philippe Chandon-Moët – Château de Ferrand in St-Emilion.
The Remy-Cointreau family at 32, up five places from last year, has seen its fortune rise 20% to €2.9 billion.
Clement Fayat is up five places also to 51 with €1.5 billion, owner of La Dominique and Clement-Pichon.
Philippe Rouzaud of Louis Roederer at 108, down from 93, with 785 million.
Philippe Sereys de Rothschild and family at 110, down from 88, with €775 million (to be fair, the family fortune remains unchanged, it is just that others have overtaken them).
Bernard Magrez is at 130 with €650 million – Challenges states here that it incorrectly assessed Magrez's wealth last year, having him in 94th place, and that this has now been 'adjusted'.
Corinne Mentzelopoulous of Chateau Margaux is also down from 103 to 135th place, because, according to Challenges, of the price drop for the 2013 and 2014 vintages. The magazine expects this to be rectified due to the prices of 2015 and 2016 you will be happy to learn.
Other wine names on the list
Many other vineyard names to make it into the top 500 and these include:
The Frey family of La Lagune and Paul Jaouboulet Ainé
The Moueix of Petrus and Duclot and separately Christian Moueix of Trotanoy and La Fleur Petrus (whose counting but €120million separates them)
Gerard Perse of Pavie
The Bories of Ducru-Beaucaillou
Aubert de Villaine, co-owner of DRC
The Bollinger family
Thomas Henriot of Henrio Champagne
The Cazes family of Lynch-Bages
The de Boüards of Angélus
The Castéjas of Borie-Manoux
The Pol Roger family of Champagne Pol Roger
Jean-Claude Boisset
Daniel and Florence Cathiard of Smith-Haut-Lafitte
Francois-Xavier Borie of Grand Puy Lacoste
Edouard Labruyère of Domaine Jacques Prieur
The Leflaive family of Domaine Anne-Claude Leflaive down at 478 with a still perfectly-respectable €140 million.
More articles like this:
Château Haut-Batailley vineyards. The estate was bought by the owners of Pauillac neighbour Lynch-Bages in 2017, but the price was not disclosed. Credit: Haut-Batailley.
Anson: What it costs to buy a Bordeaux château
Where would you buy if money was no issue?...
The tower at Château Latour Credit: Benjamin Zingg, Wikipedia
Bordeaux's most popular appellations – Wine Lister
See which areas are most searched for...
Alibaba founder Jack Ma's new manor in Bordeaux: Château de Sours. Credit: Château de Sours
Chinese billionaire, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, buys Bordeaux Château de Sours
China's second richest person buys Bordeaux wine estate


Any parent will yell "Help!" whenever she gets reports that her child is misbehaving at school. It is truly a cause of concern, especially when the child is relatively behaved at home but acting otherwise at school. Because misbehavior can easily become a pattern, it is highly important to address this issue at once. In many cases, failure to correct a bad behavior can cause serious character flaws in the child as he grows up. And by this time, it is much harder to correct the problem. So if, as a parent, you find yourself receiving misbehavior reports every now and then, here are some ways to stop your child's unacceptable behavior.
Find out the cause of the child's misbehavior. Behavioral experts say that all types of behavior have an underlying cause. There's some sort of trigger, in other words. So if your child misbehaves at school, you need to find out what causes it. It can be that he wants to get attention, he is bored or struggling at school, he channels emotions differently, or he asserts self-confidence in an aggressive manner. You can sit down with your child to talk about it, although, of course, he won't tell the cause straight. No child would ever say, unless he is old enough to understand his own behavior that he wants to get attention. You have to decode his verbal and non-verbal language to determine what causes his misbehavior.
Assess how your family life affects the child's behavior. Your household has a great impact on the child's behavior. For instance, the rigidity of a discipline plan, or the lack thereof, shapes up your child's behavior and carries it through the school. Family problems like divorce, financial downfall, or sickness can have an affect on your child, too. If any of these is the cause of your child behavior at school, immediately plan a course of action to address it.
Sit in the class. Take some time out to join your child in the classroom. This way, you can know what it feels like to be in his school, in his classroom, with his teachers, and with his friends. You can have a fair understanding of your child's misbehavior and possibly find out its root. Sitting in will also alarm your child and send him the message that you are serious about correcting his behavior and you will go as far as observing him at school .
Meet with the teacher. When the school asks you to come and talk, respond and meet with the teacher. Or you can take it upon yourself to set a meeting with the teacher any time you receive a misbehavior report. Ask the teacher how exactly your child is acting at school and what could be the possible cause of the misbehavior. To encourage transparency, you can also have your child join you in the discussion. This way, you will know both sides of the story.
Establish a discipline strategy. Disciplining a child is very necessary in correcting his behavior. But however you discipline your child, whether you cut his TV time or ground him for days, you should explain to your child why you are doing this. Remember that when children are being disciplined without knowing why, they might develop worse misbehaviors.
When your child improves, make sure to give him some reward or commend him verbally. Positive reinforcement will make your child aware that you are appreciating his efforts and will result in his consistency.


I would prefer to be saying this book is a beautiful love story, but above all else, this book is a horror story, depicting one person's actual experience as a prisoner and worker in Auschwitz. It is important that books like this are written so that similar tales need never be told again – it is a warning. Continue reading The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.
Posted on November 11, 2018 Categories Bestsellers, Book ReviewTags Biography, Non-Fiction1 Comment on The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.


Buy bus and coach tickets Berlin - Rostock: where and how to book bus tickets to Germany, the cost of the trip to Rostock in your own. Timetable of buses on the route. List of coaches to Rostock and back, including departures today. Get from Berlin to Rostock cheaply and without tiring night crossings, the passengers comments about the trip.
How from Berlin quickly reach the center of Rostock in 2019. Routes of buses on the map with stops. From where do the coaches in Berlin depart and where they arrive at Rostock. Travel time by bus: how many hours coach go to Germany, the distance in kilometers.