I wanted to write about the Chinese ant, but I feel uncomfortably restricted, this morning. I feel like my anima just slipped through the cracks of this platform along with the ant.
Possibly, it has been brought to my attention by 
The advice given by
Still, I tossed and turned all night and ran the following phrase through my sleepless head on a loop:
“To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new.” (Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#1._Purpose_and_character_of_the_use)
Who am I to say I am doing that? What am I doing that is “fair”? My content may be original, but how original is any one still? How virginal? How pristine and immaculate? Yep, I got a touch of brain-fever in the middle of the night.
I woke up with the typical black to follow the white: well, that’s all folks. End of the line for me.
This was a muddle of odds and ends that snorted at the insane world with its me, my, mine and deplored the critical eye on format over content, and the frustration of how to ever get it “right”! That’s a bad night’s rest for you.
The advantages of a lightning, crash, bolt and thunder kind of mind are few, but tropical storms don’t last very long (let’s not talk about the monsoon). So, I quickly flipped the coin onto its other side. The end of one road may be the start of a better journey.
Let’s stay positive, let’s even exploit that idea! But first, let’s go to the mat and let it sink in.
Let’s then strip the issue of fear. Last thing anybody needs, of course, is a lawsuit from the Tate, MoMa, or the Daily Mail. Can’t change the world into a free for all (how long did I cope on Linux and Ubuntu, after all?); it’s just the way it is: ownership is big business. So be it.
Let’s underline the personal pride I take in my work. Yes, there are free images, in the public domain, or open source, galore. But hardly original finds, now, are they? It is not my idea to pretty up my blog, but to give the community a proper tour of a world worthy of their attention. There has to be personal relevance, too (a USP?!): I need to know if not love my pictures. They supplement and even sometimes serve as surrogates for my text.
Pah! Let’s break that apart very rapidly: what work? What worth? Have I turned into an attention-lady-of-the-night now? Love, yes, can change the world (keep up the great work 
I ask myself, what’s wrong with me. Don’t you love to teach? Little I pulls sour face. Whines: I want to be an artist. Mopes. Perks up with a better label: a tour-operator! Show the people the beautiful world! Big I raises eyebrow: inside their screens? Little I huffs and gets off her mat: it’s always going to be a screenworld on the Net. Simply, will have to make do. Gets back to work.
“At work” (picture of nerves) Free to download from pixabay.com
How to be -even more- original?
Since, I myself am nobody special (or the special bits are for me exlusively) I can’t take that many snaps of my own life, it might not seem apparent, but I don’t really want to talk about me (but us). However, my world extends beyond my home and garden thanks to the internet (and my books, books, books).
My adventures do not take place in kajaks and hanging off pargliders (like the enviable 
I think in the beginning, I was also acutely aware of the incentive behind coming on to Steemit is to be authentic and original. It was why I was pushed this way by my son. Since I seem to be too much of that (yes, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing) and don’t fit into any other niche. I decided to take a chance and see what this could add to my “work” (my son scoffs at this notion and I can’t blame him).
I didn’t understand Steemit as a community at all, then, and still mainly feel it to be just another ether-network carriageway; and quite a spaghetti junction at that. Precisely to remain more firmly planted on my own solid ground, I chose to put up nearly only my own photos. But I am not even sure if that’s always okay! And maybe I don’t even mean this in the stictly copyright law sense.
Suppose I capture Bonnard who happens to be on a bookstand, on display, on my table? Double infringement! In a catalogue (from one museum exhibition) and belonging to a museum. That’s the publisher upset (if not also the photographer, but let’s keep the fine down by presuming he sold his rights) and added to this the museum where the painting originally hangs. Often not one and the same place as the museum where the exhibition was held, but I am not sure the hosting museum can lay claim to an infringement, too (although often it is the publisher of the catalogue). Then, what’s not to say I stole the picture from a website - a holiday snapshot or a museum gallery?
I would like to think the author of the catalogue should be happy, for I could have created interest in their great book (if only I were a bit more influential); but I think they’re pretty much out of the picture, once the writing has been done and dusted with a publishing deal. So nobody is happy and everybody potentially looking for my cash, which I don’t have, so I could end up in a cardboard box or in prison? Is it worth it, kid? For a blog?
See, how I ended up, this morning, thinking that blogs were utter nonsense! A waste of time! A self-indulgent hell-hole!
My son tells me to stop wingeing. I can’t go wrong with pictures of my books or my bathroom with the brand of my toothpastevisible in the background. Apparently, YouTube already sorted out a copyright deal for us simple plebs that doesn’t turn accidental references in to product placement or illegal endorsement.
“Doing More work” (picture of nerves) Free to download from pixabay.com
We could get nervous about Big Brother, but I already decided a long time ago that there is no point. God is always watching anyway (your own conscience should be clear). We tend to die vulnerable, decrepit and generally get stripped naked by strangers (physically but also in the clearing up after us). People will always hurt and damage you, whether they are out to do so or not. People are clouts and crude. Or if not that, you are over-sensitive! Besides, once you’ve been betrayed and abandoned or lost your bottom line, there is little “the government” or the CIA can do to hurt you. Sure, it’s more than inconvenient when you get harrassed, robbed, slandered, threatened even, but how many times can that kill you? Life can be a bit of a mucky hole. So be it.
All you do on the web gets tracked. If you browse for a new tv in the shop around the corner (virtually), the following morning every YouTube video you watch on your phone will interrupt your viewing with adds on precisely that tv you thought you might like best when you closed off your search. It all gets tailored to what you think you like. The vibrantly warm-hearted Robin
The amount of control that is exerted over your free choice seems stifling. However, free choice is something altogether different. It has more to do with letting go than turning anarchist. It is not exactly a total detatchment either, but it is to balance very carefully in between sympathy and antipathy. And then try not to go (god-awful) Neutral! Or “Safe”.
Still, anarchism can be tempting, sometimes! I am not going to be asking permission from third (fourth, fifth…) parties about whether I can post up Bonnard’s mimosa tree!
I don’t care about the several hundred thousands the painting is worth (what would a Bonnard be going for nowadays, impressionism seems back in fashion?) I want to know whether the very tree is still standing there. Would it make the record of it in the painting all the more significant if it were or if it were not? What tree, anyway? In the painting (which we are on about) it is only a collection of cadmium paint flecks arranged to fool the eye. Or is it “A Bonnard”? Every fleck? The Tree? Bonnard’s mimosa tree. The significance lies in the expression of the impression on the man behind the tree… What tree? …
Ok: I chickened out. MY daffodils, instead. ©
I feel better now. So what about that ant?
I was studying the marvelous Haiku put up by 
Screenshot of a kanji character, ari (ant) taken from wiktionary.org - Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%9F%BB) -
How does Kanji work? I studied linguistics for a while (till the MLA referencing in the papers I had to submit got on my nerves) and know as little as that there are many opposing theories about what language does to meaning or vice-versa. Clearly different people, at different locations, (with different languages, but even dialects) express different aspects of life. In esoteric science, there is great significance for the entire expansion of Consciousness in this.
It’s what I adore about languages and lament about dying languages and hate about emojis and telegram style communications (which dumb down our understanding of eachother’s complexities, ultimately). And it makes me no fan of autism (I can’t do pictograms, it would be like pissing on the Buddha, then again, maybe that’s why I should - see Seung Sahn!). But so much for the spoken, expressive word, what about the written one? As a visual artist and spiritual researcher (lover of Tao) this interests me about Chinese characters. Where does the crossover of hearing/seeing lie in some greater all-knowing (of the ur-language)?
Ari, the character above, had something ant-like to it for me, last night. I can’t explain why. I tried to “pull it apart” (bad choice considering the ant inside) but found the wiktionary article confusing. I ended up wondering (and asking David La Spina) how deep the levels of resonance could go because of the compound characters that are Kanji. After all, this type of script harps back to a much more visual-minded age, when a symbolic-imagination lead the intelligence out into the world (and back in again). I don’t know how much this still matters in modern day Japan, but a poetry buff might still be able to tap into such imagination-faculties.
I am probably seeing things where there is nothing to hear and reading things where nothing was ever written but Haiku is for me always a spiffing day-trip to a memorable sight. It carves a tremendous light-channel to sources of uncontaminated (and refreshing) wisdom. I would love to illustrate that with a few wild beasts drinking from an ancient well or put up the album cover by Abdullah Ibrahim, but I have been bitten and know better than to try. I need to sit this one out as a Philoctetes for a bit.
Ok, a little peek, then, from Abdullah Ibrahim’s album “Water From An Ancient Well”. I own the CD from which I took a photo and cropped a part (adding a new perspective to the artwork?) Oh, cripes, maybe it’s better to show the full cover rather than mangle somebody else’s artwork!?....
