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[ by Charles Cameron — perception and plutonium ]
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The sureralist master and master surrealist Salvador Dali here invokes optical illusion to illuminate the fickle nature of our perceptions of (non-surreal) reality:

The secret behind Salvador Dali's illusion is helping to decode our brains https://t.co/P27NqvHVNR pic.twitter.com/khgjIKbrLP

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) April 22, 2016

As for reality itself, it has its own form of surreality — in this case, the dismal facts of plutonium stockpiles and their disposal, and their implications for politics (not to mention its conceivable / inconceivable continuation by other means).

All of which is unpleasant to conteplate, seldom discussed, and thus itself a form of perceptual illusion:

I'm quoted here.https://t.co/0PdvsKGBZI

— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) April 24, 2016

FWIW, I see a visual connection between these two images, although that may ba a personal quirk not shared by others. Again, a quirk of perception?

**

Readings:

RFE / RL, As Putin Swipes At U.S. Over Plutonium Disposal, Nuclear Cooperation Takes A Hit

Cheryl Rofer at Nuclear Diner, Plutonium Disposal Difficulties

[ by Charles Cameron — Art & Philospphy, Latin, Greek & Arabic, Porphyry & Proclus ]
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I discovered Elaine Van Dalen‘s twitterstream today, and was enchanted. Trawling backwards a little from her tweet about the Sultan al-Kamil, I ran across this one:

The Arabic philosopher Averroes (d. 1198) conversing in Latin with the Greek philosopher Porphyry (d. 305) pic.twitter.com/nGtcdTXVy5

— Elaine van Dalen (@linaadali) April 19, 2016

which fairly begged to be DoubleTweeted with this hastily assembled tweet of my own, quoting from Hermann Melville‘s Mardi:

Offered in counterpoint to a post by @linaadali — this, from Melville's Mardi: pic.twitter.com/oohhXL2SOF

— hipbonegamer (@hipbonegamer) April 24, 2016

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Both are instances of the game Hermann Hesse described himself playing while raking and burning leaves, in his poem Hours in the Garden:

Within me, my thoughts begin to play
A game, an exercise I have practiced for many years.
It is called the Glass Bead Game, a charming invention
Whose framework is music, whose basis is meditation.

[ … ]

I hear music and see men of the past and the future.
Wise men and poets and scholars and artists, all of one mind,
Building the hundred-gated cathedral of the spirit…

That’s Hesse’s private manner of playing the Glass Bead Game: the game as played in the novel is more abstract, shorn of persons, a virtual music of ideas indeed.

I’ve quoted this over and over, I know, but for those who are new to the Game, here’s Hesse’s definitive description from the novel:

The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colors on his palette. All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has attained an almost unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stops are almost beyond number. Theoretically this instrument is capable of reproducing in the Game the entire intellectual content of the universe.

[ by Charles Cameron — Lucille Ball and Groucho Harpo Marx, what more need I say? ]
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A Comedy of Mirrors..

[ by Charles Cameron — refugees in art & photography ]
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Zen — meaning our host, Mark Safranski — just posted a fine visual DoubleQuote on Twitter. First came this retweet:

This extraordinary photo of refugees arriving in Lesbos, Greece just won the Pulitzer. https://t.co/NrO763CNBr pic.twitter.com/iFsGhf7LtZ

— Andrew Zolli (@andrew_zolli) April 23, 2016

Then, in short order, his own tweet:

https://t.co/8LsSNU6Ad1

— mark safranski (@zenpundit) April 24, 2016

— which, if you follow the link, leads to this:

The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault

**

See also:

Kaitlin Hanger, Boat Refugees in Art: Inspired by the anniversary of the sinking of Cuba’s “13 De Marzo” tugboat victims on this day in 1994

[ by Charles Cameron — a scary thought for a poet, given that “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / are of imagination all compact” ]
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Considering the matter of altered states of consciousness as they relate to terrorism, I’m reminded of one of Shankara’s aphorisms:

Who is the greatest hero? He who is not terror-stricken by the arrows which shoot from the eyes of a beautiful girl.

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I was just reading The American Women of ISIS: Who they are, why they’re joining, and what life is like once they get there:

Shannon Conley met a guy online. She was 19, a normal Colorado teen with glasses and a big, toothy smile. He was 32.

One day in early 2014, Conley nervously told her father that she had a new boyfriend. She wanted her dad to meet him, so she set up a Skype call on her laptop. During the chat, the couple asked for his blessing to marry. They also told him that Conley would be moving to Syria, where they would wed and start their lives together.

Their lives, they told him, would be dedicated to ISIS.

Conley had recently converted to Islam after researching the religion online, and felt strongly about righting the global wrongs against Muslims. Then, adopting an extremist stance, she decided she wanted to lend her skills as a certified nurse’s aid to ISIS—also called the Islamic State, and known the world over as the vicious terrorist group responsible for brutally murdering countless victims and inciting new levels of global fear. They, she thought, were the way to do it.

It was then that my question struck me: is anyone studying romance, specifically, as a gateway drug for violent extremism?

**

And the converse? How about romance as a cure?

Bruce Hoffman told us more than a decade ago in All you need is love: How the terrorists stopped terrorism, romance can be the cure…

Black September was, suddenly, not a deniable asset but a potential liability. Thus, according to my host, Arafat ordered Abu Iyad “to turn Black September off.” My host, who was one of Abu Iyad’s most trusted deputies, was charged with devising a solution. For months both men thought of various ways to solve the Black September problem, discussing and debating what they could possibly do, short of killing all these young men, to stop them from committing further acts of terror.

Finally they hit upon an idea. Why not simply marry them off? In other words, why not find a way to give these men—the most dedicated, competent, and implacable fighters in the entire PLO—a reason to live rather than to die? Having failed to come up with any viable alternatives, the two men put their plan in motion.

They traveled to Palestinian refugee camps, to PLO offices and associated organizations, and to the capitals of all Middle Eastern countries with large Palestinian communities. Systematically identifying the most attractive young Palestinian women they could find, they put before these women what they hoped would be an irresistible proposition: Your fatherland needs you. Will you accept a critical mission of the utmost importance to the Palestinian people? Will you come to Beirut, for a reason to be disclosed upon your arrival, but one decreed by no higher authority than Chairman Arafat himself? How could a true patriot refuse?

So approximately a hundred of these beautiful young women were brought to Beirut. There, in a sort of PLO version of a college mixer, boy met girl, boy fell in love with girl, boy would, it was hoped, marry girl. There was an additional incentive, designed to facilitate not just amorous connections but long-lasting relationships. The hundred or so Black Septemberists were told that if they married these women, they would be paid $3,000; given an apartment in Beirut with a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a television; and employed by the PLO in some nonviolent capacity. Any of these couples that had a baby within a year would be rewarded with an additional $5,000.

Both Abu Iyad and the future general worried that their scheme would never work. But, as the general recounted, without exception the Black Septemberists fell in love, got married, settled down, and in most cases started a family.

If so, would that be a sort of variant on the homeopathic formula Similia similibus curantur?

**

Shakespeare — who coined the phrase “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / are of imagination all compact” which I used in my subtitle — died 400 years ago today.