The Magic of the Cities.

Zen promotes the rediscovery of the obvious, which is so often lost in its familiarity and simplicity. It sees the miraculous in the common and magic in our everyday surroundings. When we are not rushed, and our minds are unclouded by conceptualizations, a veil will sometimes drop, introducing the viewer to a world unseen since childhood. ~ John Greer

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

For Your Eyes Only


Street Love Scene


About The Other Dream

I put a wide street in the end of your dream
in case you escape don’t lose the route

I put a lamp, a sign in the woods
I put a clear moon without clouds over the trees

I put my beating heart in your hand
and I wait for your return with the wind in the afternoon.

Mario Bojórquez


music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Sunday Cycling


Every Sunday morning, some of the biggest streets in car-flooded Mexico City are handed over to bicyclists, who roll in by the tens of thousands. Joining them are skateboarders, Rollerbladers, toddlers on push toys and parents behind strollers in what has become a weekly festival on (small) wheels.

The leftist government of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard launched the program in 2007, barring cars, trucks and buses from the regal Paseo de la Reforma and other streets around historic downtown.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Lucid Dreams



Lucid Dream.

A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress, also known as a conscious dream. When the dreamer is lucid, they can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can be extremely real and vivid depending on a person's level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.

A lucid dream can begin in one of two ways. A dream-initiated lucid dream starts as a normal dream, and the dreamer eventually concludes that they are dreaming, while a wake-initiated lucid dream occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state with no apparent lapse in consciousness. Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established. Scientists such as Allan Hobson, with his neurophysiological approach to dream research, have helped to push the understanding of lucid dreaming into a less speculative realm.
[ Wiki ]
See Carlos Castaneda, Books.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Pulse for Life


… and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing: and my garden will stay, with its green tree, with its water well. Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid, and the bells in the belfry will chime, as they are chiming this very afternoon. The people who have loved me will pass away, and the town will burst anew every year. But my spirit will always wander nostalgic in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

Y yo me iré. Y se quedarán los pájaros cantando;
y se quedará mi huerto con su verde árbol,
y con su pozo blanco.

Todas las tardes el cielo será azul y plácido;
y tocarán, como esta tarde están tocando,
las campanas del campanario.

Se morirán aquellos que me amaron;
y el pueblo se hará nuevo cada año;
y en el rincon de aquel mi huerto florido y encalado,
mi espiritu errará, nostalgico.

From “El Viaje Definitivo”
( The Definitive Journey )
by Juan Ramon Jimenez.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Monday, March 23, 2009

The Golden Branch


The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
Henry Miller

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Benito Juarez


Back View


Zocalo / Main Square at evening.


Natalicio de Benito Juarez / Natalicious of Benito Juarez

Benito Juárez García (March 21, 1806 – July 18, 1872) was a Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico[1]: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872. For resisting the French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, as well as for his efforts to modernize the country, Juárez is often regarded as Mexico's greatest and most beloved leader. Juárez was recognized by the United States as a ruler in exile during the French-controlled Second Mexican Empire, and got their support in reclaiming Mexico under the Monroe Doctrine after the United States Civil War ended. Benito Juárez was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background, and also the first full-blooded indigenous national to serve as President of Mexico and to lead a country in the Western Hemisphere in over 300 years.

Juárez's famous quotation continues to be well-remembered in Mexico:
“Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz”, meaning "Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace." It is inscribed on the coat of arms of Oaxaca. [ Wiki ]

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Magician


El Mago

Moment For My Friends.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Entrance


Lateral entrance of Cuernavaca Cathedral.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Tone Poem



Felicitaciones hermanos latino americanos de El Salvador, por un mejor futuro. Congratulations latin american brothers of El Saldador, for a better future.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Sketches of NYC


Dedicated to Sofia with Love in her Birthday.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Saturday, March 7, 2009

The Corner


Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Carl Sagan

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

La Talacha / Free Market


"Taken a few hours ago in Cuernavaca, it looks from the Mexico of 1940, not change that all"

“The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I”
Karl Liebknecht.


The New York Times
March 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Revenge of the Glut
By Paul Krugman

Remember the good old days, when we used to talk about the “subprime crisis” — and some even thought that this crisis could be “contained”? Oh, the nostalgia!

Today we know that subprime lending was only a small fraction of the problem. Even bad home loans in general were only part of what went wrong. We’re living in a world of troubled borrowers, ranging from shopping mall developers to European “miracle” economies. And new kinds of debt trouble just keep emerging.

How did this global debt crisis happen? Why is it so widespread? The answer, I’d suggest, can be found in a speech Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave four years ago. At the time, Mr. Bernanke was trying to be reassuring. But what he said then nonetheless foreshadowed the bust to come.

The speech, titled “The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit,” offered a novel explanation for the rapid rise of the U.S. trade deficit in the early 21st century. The causes, argued Mr. Bernanke, lay not in America but in Asia.

In the mid-1990s, he pointed out, the emerging economies of Asia had been major importers of capital, borrowing abroad to finance their development. But after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (which seemed like a big deal at the time but looks trivial compared with what’s happening now), these countries began protecting themselves by amassing huge war chests of foreign assets, in effect exporting capital to the rest of the world.

The result was a world awash in cheap money, looking for somewhere to go.

Most of that money went to the United States — hence our giant trade deficit, because a trade deficit is the flip side of capital inflows. But as Mr. Bernanke correctly pointed out, money surged into other nations as well. In particular, a number of smaller European economies experienced capital inflows that, while much smaller in dollar terms than the flows into the United States, were much larger compared with the size of their economies.

Still, much of the global saving glut did end up in America. Why?

Mr. Bernanke cited “the depth and sophistication of the country’s financial markets (which, among other things, have allowed households easy access to housing wealth).” Depth, yes. But sophistication? Well, you could say that American bankers, empowered by a quarter-century of deregulatory zeal, led the world in finding sophisticated ways to enrich themselves by hiding risk and fooling investors.

And wide-open, loosely regulated financial systems characterized many of the other recipients of large capital inflows. This may explain the almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today. “Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now.

For a while, the inrush of capital created the illusion of wealth in these countries, just as it did for American homeowners: asset prices were rising, currencies were strong, and everything looked fine. But bubbles always burst sooner or later, and yesterday’s miracle economies have become today’s basket cases, nations whose assets have evaporated but whose debts remain all too real. And these debts are an especially heavy burden because most of the loans were denominated in other countries’ currencies.

Nor is the damage confined to the original borrowers. In America, the housing bubble mainly took place along the coasts, but when the bubble burst, demand for manufactured goods, especially cars, collapsed — and that has taken a terrible toll on the industrial heartland. Similarly, Europe’s bubbles were mainly around the continent’s periphery, yet industrial production in Germany — which never had a financial bubble but is Europe’s manufacturing core — is falling rapidly, thanks to a plunge in exports.

If you want to know where the global crisis came from, then, think of it this way: we’re looking at the revenge of the glut.

And the saving glut is still out there. In fact, it’s bigger than ever, now that suddenly impoverished consumers have rediscovered the virtues of thrift and the worldwide property boom, which provided an outlet for all those excess savings, has turned into a worldwide bust.

One way to look at the international situation right now is that we’re suffering from a global paradox of thrift: around the world, desired saving exceeds the amount businesses are willing to invest. And the result is a global slump that leaves everyone worse off.

So that’s how we got into this mess. And we’re still looking for the way out.

NYT

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Pruning


Pruning is the process of removing certain above-ground elements from a plant; in landscaping this process usually involves removal of diseased, non-productive, or otherwise unwanted portions from a plant. In nature, certain meteorological conditions such as wind, snow or seawater mist can conduct a natural pruning process. The purpose of anthropomorphic pruning is to shape the plant by controlling or directing plant growth, to maintain the health of the plant, or to increase the yield or quality of flowers and fruits.

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Theme Day: Glass


Click Here To View Thumbnails For All Participants.


The Torre Latinoamericana (literally, "Latin American Tower") is a building in downtown Mexico City. Its central location, height (183 m or 597 ft; 45 stories), and history make it one of Mexico City's most important landmarks. It was also the city's tallest building from 1956, when it was built, until the 1984 completion of the Torre Ejecutiva Pemex, which is 22 m higher (although, if one subtracts the height of the TV antenna atop the Torre Latinoamericana, it was surpassed in 1972 by the 207m high Hotel de México, which was subsequently remodelled and turned into the World Trade Center Mexico).

music+image

Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.