New Things

I started another Deviant Art account last week. I really like the site, it is a very good thing if you want to begin a career in art, writing, or just want somewhere to place your doodles. I have had one under my English name for quite a few years, but given the direction that my life has taken (for the better) I decided that it was time to get back into the mix with a brand new vision and way of thinking of things.

On a semi-related subject, you know how they always say, “Don’t quit your day job…” What if you don’t really want to? What if you actually like your day job?

Back to Deviant. I now have my wife on there, too. She has had an interest in photography, and it seems to me that now is as good a time as any to indulge that desire. Besides, life is too short. If you don’t do things when you think of them, especially as one gets older, it becomes much harder to remember them all, then a certainly quality of life is lost, not just by yourself, but also by those who would have benefited in some small way.

Right now, I have been doing several wallpapers, and I guess I’m starting in the desktop customization vein.  Not really sure why, but most likely because the idea was just there, and I needed to get my GIMP functionality back. I use Chromium and Chrome primarily, as I had a bunch of 32 vs. 64-bit nonsense with the Mozilla Xulrunner component going from 1.8 to 1.9. Not very pleased with the mess they’ve made of it, and Google has really suited my needs. It’s cleaner and faster. Soon we’ll see how easy it is to skin. I would really prefer to be able to place out an entire set of things with the wallpaper. An entire theme, thought, visual interpretation. So that if you grab the whole set, you have a good overall artistic vision, rather than just making things match.

I started by making an ID and avatar for DA, which are good, I like them. Then I went to my first wallpaper, which was supposed to be dual screen, but once I finished and tried it (after I had uploaded on DA) it wouldn’t go across both screens properly. But here it is:

Not entirely sure how I came up with the original idea, at first I had the background, and I was going to do something entirely different with it, but then I began thinking about how everything in life is constructed based not only on the original creation, but by every decision that we make in life. It really is a work in progress, if you will.

The title of the piece is Envision The Creator, and that is what the Hebrew in the graphic says, as well.

We construct things every day. Especially those of us in the information technology sector. We are always working with technologies that will shape how functions are done in the future, and the paradigm will continuously shift to meet those new technologies and viewpoints. It’s almost as if we have to look at how things used to be, how they are now, and what they will become in order to get a new point to work from.

Something very refreshing in that thought, because it means that all things can in some way be either corrected or otherwise dealt with. The idea that hope is never lost really works for me.

Deviant Art has always been a way for me to transmit a piece of myself in an artistic fashion, and I believe it is the same for most artists there.

More of the little things that I learn, as they help me in life, and I begin to understand just how they fit into everything, inspire me to make art of a sort out of them so I am not the only one to get use from them. Rabbi Lazer Brody has helped quite a deal with this. As I have said before, I was somewhere in the Chabad quadrant, then I now find myself where I understand many Israelis find themselves, right in the middle of Breslov and Chabad. I don’t remember where exactly I read this little factoid, but it put me at great ease and I suddenly didn’t feel so alone in my philosophy. But as I thought of the idea of social justice, and what it means, especially here in America where by and large it is a bunch of rhetoric, not something to actually be put into practice, I found a quote by Rabbi Nachman that I thought spelled things out quite well.

That led to The Truth and the Apple.

Of course, he has the nice logo that leads to his site at http://www.lazerbrody.net, so I put that in there as a free plug for his site.

The actual quote on the wallpaper is the following:

There is truth, the truth of the truth, and there is peace.

The truth is “the boy stole an apple”,

the truth of the truth is “the boy was hungry”

and peace is “nobody stole anything, now give the boy an apple!”

Of course, I wrote out what I understand to be tzedek chevruti, loosely translated as “social justice” on the bottom. There is also another message in this picture not readily available to the casual eye. There are 34 complete six-sided figures in this graphic. 6 has quite a few meanings in Gematria besides simply being the number of man.

First, it took Hashem six days to create what we call the world. Yehudah HaNasi broke the laws down to six orders in the Mishnah, to further help us understand how to conduct ourselves and share peace and love through the world. As I write this, we are counting the Omer towards Shavuot, which always occurs on the 6th of Sivan. 33 is the number attributed to Lag B’Omer, the “midpoint” of sorts, the 33rd day of the Omer. Then that big figure in front… 1 is the number for Hashem. This is also showing that by man taking what he learns from the Mishnah, and not just reading it, but applying it, attempting to get closer to Hashem, and help his fellow man, they all ascend, hence the arrow pointed upwards. Underlying this is a much larger segment of 3 parts, which in Gematria, defines kedusha, or holiness.

We have a hard time finding this holiness, learning how to apply it, and even get to a part where we feel like Hashem is approachable. On a practical level, we want what the band Hadag Nachash sings of in their rendition of Ratziti SheTida (Elohim Sheli).

And of course, where would I be without my wife? So I had to make her something related to the animal that is near and dear to her heart, the Tiger.

She has been madly in love with tigers for as long as I have known her and longer. One of the first stuffed animals I got her when we first met was a giant stuffed tiger about four feet long. He watches us sleep now. I remember on the way home from the grocery store she was driving, and I had this giant cat on my lap, aiming it out the window and stroking it as if it were a real animal.

Since it was already after dark, I believe three people swerved in shock, and one at least scrubbed the median when I pretended it was trying to get out of the car window and attack the other driver.

She made me stop before someone got seriously injured. I could feel the universal deflation of pride and self-worth as they realized they had been scared half to death by a stuffed animal.

I promise not to do it again.

Today, anyway.

Seriously, with the state of the tiger in the wild, this year being the Chinese Year of the Tiger is a frightening joke. We have to do something to save these animals. That is why this wallpaper was made, both to showcase another DA artist, as well as help people take notice of what the facts are and at least try to do something to help the situation.

Did you know that there are more tigers kept as pets in Texas as there are remaining in the wild? That’s 4,000 vs the 3,200 remaining. Oh, wait. We didn’t count the other 8,000 pet tigers across the USA. What the hell, do these guys have pet tiger conventions or something? What do you really need a tiger in your house for?

And you wonder why I get increasingly disgusted with the mindset over here…

But that’s the goods for this week. I’ll recap the work I do next week in a segment like this.

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