Antigravity Dreams in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

 
Humanity's communal dream life is haunted by a sense of flying. Yes, you must be able to remember those nightly visions in which your body has floated free of gravity, letting you soar through the sky with a magical power that's both thrilling and taken for granted.

As has been pointed out by any number of observers, experiencing films shares a good deal in common with dreaming dreams, so it should come as no surprise that floating and flying feature largely in contemporary cinema. For reasons related to their long obsession with mystical martial arts, the Chinese are particularly likely to portray the human body as an Antigravitarian object.

I'll allow stills taken from one recent Chinese martial arts movie to represent and dramatize this trend. The movie is Zhang Yimou's Hero, which was released in 2002 and stars a perfect cast that includes Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Jet Li, and Zhang Ziyi.

Here in Hero, the special effects suggest that you can slough off gravity at will, as you might dead skin, which always makes for a very satisfying fantasy experience:







Unfortunately, fascism appears to triumph at the end of Hero, which mars the movie badly. For fascism is not an Antigravitarian form of government. In fact, it's got the worst kind of gravity written all over it.
 

A Little Light Doggerel

 

If you act like St. Jerome,
beating heart with nasty stone,
you will never be happy,
wretched child of gravity.

Rise up, then, and greet the day,
throwing nasty stone away.
Let your heart and lips both smile.
Play with Antigravity a while!

 

An Infernal Problem

 
If death is the most potent manifestation of gravity on earth, then the general resurrection at the end of time is the most potent manifestation of Antigravity. Here is one portrayal of that resurrection by Hieronymus Bosch, as painted in the year 1485:


Of course, the story of the last judgment continues to develop from the moment captured by Bosch, for the reanimated bodies that are here seen rising from their graves have yet to be assigned to their eternal dwelling places in either heaven or hell.

Heaven, as we know, represents the great goal and ultimate reward of all spiritual striving. But what about hell? Isn't it enough that we have to age and die? Do some of us really have to face the prospect of ceaseless damnation?

Alas, in the cruel vision of almost all world religions, some of us do. Yes, hell waits for unrepentant sinners, and for them gravity will carry a force far more malignant than any ever experienced on earth. Down, down, down (it is said) they will go, and from hell there is no exit or return. Thus Hans Memling's painting of the year 1472:


The social psychology behind hell is pretty obvious. Once certain kinds of organized religion gets their hooks into you, they count on your fear of hell to keep you where you are -- in a weak, fearful, and submissive faith. And that's why you should never trust anyone who aims to gain control over your life by exploiting your fear of eternal punishment.

The fact is, our great concern in this lifetime should be to ameliorate earthly hells, not to become obsessed with visions of postmortem infernos.

But doesn't the very existence of earthly hells suggest that visions of Satan's realm represent something very real? I would answer that question by echoing a bit of medieval Christian mystical wisdom: "Nothing burns in hell but the ego."

And when the illusory nature of the ego is finally and universally realized, hell will just have to close up shop. It and all its horrors will -- poof! -- be gone forever.

Now that, by my lights, is the real true faith.
 

Antigravity Mania

 

THIS JUST IN!

Antigravity Mania Sweeps
Judeo-Christian Tradition!

Feast for the Eyes
With Guaranteed Full-Color
Semi-Exclusive Illustrations!

Wide Variety of Pious
Antigravitational Poses!

See Floating Figures
(No Strings Attached) in
Cosmic Drama Stretching From
Creation of World to End of Time!

Key Points in Salvation History
of Planet Earth Represented
in Chronological Order!

No Commercial Interruptions
or Requests for Donations!

(For Best Viewing, Kindly Click on These
Smaller Images to Reveal Larger Images.)


Michelangelo's "Third Day of Creation"
(detail, Sistine Chapel)
Genesis 1: 11-13


Giordano's "Dream of Solomon"
I Kings 3: 5-13


Angeli's "Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire"
II Kings 2: 11


Giordano's "Fall of the Rebel Angels"
Isaiah 14: 12-15, Revelation 12: 7-8


Lorenzo Lotto's "Anunciation" (detail)
Luke 1: 35 (& elsewhere)


Raphael's "Transfiguration"
Matthew 17: 1-3 (& elsewhere)


Chagall's "White Crucifixion"
(detail, with extra-canonical
figures floating above cross)
Matthew 27 (& elsewhere)


Gruenewald's "Resurrection"
Matthew 28 (& elsewhere)


"Ascension" from Saint Honore
de Thuison Monastery, Abbeville, France
Acts of the Apostles 1:9 (& elsewhere)


Michelangelo's "Conversion of St. Paul" (detail)
Acts of the Apostles 9: 3-8


Charonton's "Coronation of the Virgin"
(unattested in Scripture)


Memling's "St. John the Evangelist
on the Isle of Patmos"
Revelation 1: 9-11 (& throughout)


Bosch's "Last Judgment"
Book of Revelation 20: 11-13
(with a lot of extra nuts & bolts
thrown in for good measure)

That's all for today, folks!

 

The Sweet Lightness of Valentine's Day

 
When covering the Antigravity beat, you're bound to encounter messiahs, angels, gods, and saints, and this being St. Valentine's Day, I thought it wise to trot out the appropriate figure, with Antigravitational angels in attendance.

This image then, painted by Jacobo Bassano in or around 1575, shows St. Valentine baptizing St. Lucilla:


Admittedly, this is not everyone's idea of a romantic interlude, but let it be noticed that the angels hovering over this scene are extremely cupid-like (see my post of 12/25/08 by clicking here), and though Valentine did not, as near as we can tell, lead a sexually indulgent life before embarking on his career as a model of Christian virtue, his feast day, which the world has adopted as a celebration of earthly love, is said to mark the beginning of mating season for birds.


The latter claim holds some local interest for me, since I heard the mourning doves in my lady love's garden start cooing just two days ago--for the first time this year. Such song would suggest that some billing and other intimate behavior have begun to happen here in the borough of Brooklyn, as they may well have done in your neighborhood as well. At least in the northern hemisphere, the days lengthen, and the building of nests and the flowering of crocuses cannot be far away. So thanks again, St. Valentine: You do make a happy marker on our calendars.

As for St. Lucilla, she seems to have been a fairly run-of-the-mill martyr, which doesn't necessarily mean that her soul ascended to heaven in a run-of-the-mill sort of way. Martyrdom, let us remember, was considered a great blessing during Christianity's early centuries, for it guaranteed eternal life in celestial realms. (Does any of this sound familiar?) To reach back a bit to the mourning doves and the lyrics to a sentimental 19th-century song, Lucilla must have been happy to feel her spirit "pluming for flight."

Farewell gravity, hello heaven. What more could you ask for?

P.S. Sweet greetings to lovers everywhere. Please remember that true love is forever kind and courteous, speaking no word in callousness or wrath.
 

Has Antigravity Been Writ Large in the Sky?

 
The year 2001 saw the publication of British journalist Nick Cook's bestselling book The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology.

"Inside" was a bit of an overstatement, since antigravity technology is one of the most classified areas of U.S. government defense-related research, and it is questionable whether anyone is entirely "inside" it, given that its hypothetical advances are shielded in so many ways from so many eyes. Probably not even the president, if he cared to take an interest, would be capable of accessing every corner of whatever super-sensitive developments are taking place in this field.

Nick Cook claims, and it is a hard claim to refute, that the power of antigravity, if harnessed to serve human purposes, would completely revolutionize every area of technological progress, not just our military capabilities.

Altered sources of clean energy would abound. Our methods of constructing tall buildings would utterly change as our present hoisting cranes disappeared from the skyline, to be replaced by antigravitational devices that would float the most massive materials from ground level to upper floors with ridiculous ease.

The shape of our aircraft would be transformed from modified bird forms to perfect disks, and unidentified flying objects would become a thing of the past as our own identifiable saucers filled the sky. Such vehicles would whisk us across our great oceans in minutes and, possibly, open nearby galaxies to our astronauts as antigravitational force was used to propel our spacecraft to the speed of light.

Is there any actual evidence that real breakthroughs have been made in this field? Well, perhaps. Over the years Nick Cook has pursued a number of leads in this almost impenetrable subject area, and if you read his book you'll discover some interesting hypotheses about what might be forthcoming in the field of antigravity. But you must prepare yourself to be more mystified than enlightened.

The state of antigravity studies is revealed by the questions surrounding the photograph above (not from Cook's book), which was apparently taken of the skies over southern England and shows what may or may not be the contrail of a hypersonic vehicle that may or may not employ antigravity technology to push its speed far beyond that of any officially recognized aircraft. What's certain is that the pictured contrail is unlike any that most of us have ever seen, since the engine or engines creating it seem to be pulsing out energy in a way that's entirely different from what we're accustomed to.

This entire area remains highly problematical (you might say Area 51-ish), and our understanding of it is further complicated by the fact that many effects (like magnetic levitation) which mimic antigravitational states be can actually be explained by conventional technology. Still, speculation about scientific concepts of antigravity can be fascinating, and there is nothing in the world that will ever stop it or even slow it down.
 

When Gravity Dreams

 

 

A Message of Hope for the Ages

 

Arjuna and the Lord Krishna

In the world-renowned Sanskrit scripture known as the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord Krishna, who is Hinduism's supreme manifestation of the deity, extends a message of great hope to his close friend, the warrior Arjuna.

Whenever life on earth grows bleak because ignorant men have filled the nations with violence and greed, Krishna teaches, God is once again incarnated among us as the savior of humanity. Since this is so, darkness can never achieve a decisive victory over the light, and gravity can never overcome the power of Antigravity.

Whether this business about the incarnation of divinity is literally true or not, the symbolic significance of Krishna's words is so sublime that they should never be forgotten.

Yes, the counsel is clear: When things look bleakest, and you are tempted to despair, help is on the way. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," as Alexander Pope put it. So may it spring in yours!
 

To Fly or to Die

Yes, sometimes it's actually that stark,
the choice between maintaining the power of
flight or perishing with the weight of gravity
pressing down on your useless wings,
as we can learn from the story of
the feathered but flightless dodo bird.

The dodo evolved from a normal flying pigeon
and settled into flightlessness because
it encountered no natural predators
after it had flown across the Indian Ocean and
taken up residence on the island of Mauritius,
which is found off the east coast of Africa.

Dodos tended to become overweight,
with adult birds eventually tipping
the scales at around 50 pounds.


In spite of that, dodos were doing pretty
well until some unnatural predators in
the form of dogs, pigs, and cats eventually
arrived in the company of the Portuguese
and Dutch sailors who reached Mauritius
for the first time in the 16th and 17th centuries.

No chance then to fly away to live another day!
Instead, with its limited locomotion and its
offspring vulnerable in nests on the ground,
the dodo's eventual doom was sealed.


Not even its inclusion in Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
could bring the dodo back to life,
but the bones of the birds are still
being discovered and studied,
so that, although the dodo is extinct,
we know more about it today than
at any other time in history.

Unfortunately, that's not much of a
consolation prize when you've lost
the battle to survive. If I'd been
a dodo, I'd rather that my lineage
remain alive, and my choice would
have been not to die but to embrace
the Antigravitational solution,
which is to fly, yes, to fly.

The First & Second Births

Giotto's vision of St. Francis
ascending into heaven:

The first birth is into gravity.

The second birth is out of gravity, into Antigravity.

For gravity is of the flesh,

but Antigravity is of the spirit.

Make More Room on Your Plateau

You gain spiritual power

by understanding and accepting
the tenets of Antigravity,
but gaining spiritual power
entails grave responsibilities,
and you must work harder
than ever before to maintain
your center and help others
to rise to the same plateau,
to enjoy the same new vistas,
that you have yourself reached.

This is the very reason why
religious teachers have always
stressed the importance of
a disciplined approach
to spiritual striving.

These teachers tell us that
feeling a new lightness in your life,
a sense that you've risen
above your habitual problems,
is not enough, for your sense
of transcendence may be more
the result of the inflation of your ego
than your soul's connection to
the great truths of the spirit,
and inflated egos exist mainly
to become deflated egos.

We all know about adolescent-
type personalities who float away
into their own private worlds because
they have little or no regard for others.


But Antigravity is about
the kind of transcendence
that never fails to keep
the interests of
other people
in mind.

To put it in a more graphic way:


If you're floating because
you've got a big head, a big ego,
then you shouldn't be floating.

If you're up, up and away
because your hard work
has raised you high
above the others, then
by all means float on!

The Lazarus Effect

It's very fine to speak
triumphantly of Antigravity,
yet the question of death,
(you may want to point out)
still looms like an open grave
at our feet, emitting dank vapors
and muffled shrieks of terror.
No darkness could possibly
be more mystifying, or
more vexatious.

Still, there is consolation
in ten thousand images
that show the power of death,
great as it is, being overcome
by the greater power of life.

So don't be afraid.
Rest in the good hope
that you will escape
the gravity of whatever
confronts you as you lie
on your deathbed.
If my hunch
(which echoes a huge
majority of human opinion)
is correct, then death is the
greatest Antigravitational
phenomenon of all.

"The Death of the Good Old Man" by William Blake

The Return of the Repressed

 

Antigravity is
the return of the repressed
in an age of materialism:
"It will flame out," will flame out.

In spite of the heavy spirit
of the age in which we find ourselves,
Antigravity isn't particularly
shy about manifesting itself.
Strike a match,
you will see the heat rise.

Remember:
The power of Antigravity dwells
in your heart and mind like
fire dwells in a match.
All you must do
is strike it,
and the dark
chill of an impersonal
world will be driven far away.

Remember also:
Once you have kindled
this fire, you must be quick
to share it with others,
lest the flame die while
still being born.

What's Wrong with Gravity?

Do you think it's strange to diss gravity,
to make it the villain of a universal melodrama?
Do you wonder what could be wrong with the
gravitational glue that holds the universe together?
If so, you haven't considered black holes.

Blacks holes are the perfect symbols of everything that denies us life and freedom because their gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from their overwhelmingly massive interiors. All things that approach them, even entire galaxies, are sucked into oblivion, into an extinction beyond the darkness of death. They provide the best example of why we are and ought to be Antigravitarians.

Black holes are far and away the most formidable and frightening things in the universe. They are the ultimate in death imagery, and they represent the unfathomable disaster that occurs when gravity goes unchecked by Antigravity, which is the force that holds the universe in balance and allows us to live and not die.

Closer to home (which is to say, our home planet), gravity erodes and eventually destroys entire civilizations. While the 19th-century painting of the destruction of Sodom (below) by the English artist John Martin makes the end of an ancient city look like the work of a nuclear holocaust, the actual historic process that reduces entire civilizations to stark stones and dust and ashes is gradual yet still phantasmagorical, and the ultimate result of decadence and defeat is dramatized around the world by the presence of splendid but desolate ruins where there were once thriving metropolises.

Jerash, Jordan (Photo by Robert Teague)

These are the ruins of a Roman city
that once flaunted its high roofs at the sky.
Thus the power of gravity,
of which we need to be aware,
of which we need to beware.
:

Antigravity Live

Premise One:

There is an illness
that runs riot around the world,
breaking hearts & ravishing lives
as it goes, & that illness is
what we call depression.

Premise Two:

Depression is caused by
what we may term "emotional
gravity," which is the kind
of gravity that this blog
chiefly sets out to disperse
& dispel, so that we may
once again live & breathe
without the weight of the world
sitting crushingly on our shoulders,
so that we may once again
breathe as freely as we were
meant to breathe.

Premise Three:

Darkness is dispelled as
the lights come up & a voice says:

Whatever it is that you deeply believe in,
here is something new to energize your faith,
something new to lift you up above the dread
of your days and unite you with your true self.
Announcing the slow, sweet and continuing
revelation of the mystery that dwells
in the name and reality of Antigravity.

A mystery, then. And that is good,
because mysteries intrigue.
But how do you get the hang of this mystery?

Just one thing, really, is required:
You have to keep coming back,
back here, back to this blog.