Horses, Decay, Romantics

I like horses in artwork.   

_____(Q) For example, it takes you from a place of turmoil and conflict to your own hearth.  

_____(R) So, symbolically, the horse often represents what gets you from one (rotten) place to another (better) place.   

_____(S) One reason is that, to me, the horse is a symbol of transition. 

_____(T) Or, it leads you into and out of battle; it helps you escape, engage in some adventure or find new ways.  

_____(U) By transition, I mean transition within our inner reality as well as transition in our external reality. 

  Copyright – Daniel Gauss

‘Decay’ might be a somewhat misleading term as it is used in regard to subatomic particles.  

_____(Q) This then gives you a more stable Nitrogen atom (the difference between types of atoms depends on the number of protons in the nucleus – gain a proton and you become something else). 

_____(R) Atoms experience this type of change due to their ‘instability’ and become more ‘stable’ afterwards.   

_____(S) For instance, C₁₄ has 6 protons and 8 neutrons and this is an unstable state for Carbon.  

_____(T) So, poof, a neutron spontaneously can change to a proton and now you get 7 neutrons and 7 protons.  

_____(U) If we are talking about beta decay, for instance, this simply describes a process in which an atom with an overabundance of neutrons experiences the spontaneous change of a neutron into a proton, creating another element completely while also discharging a fast moving electron (a beta particle). 

 Copyright – Daniel Gauss

The artists of the Romantic Movement could see science coming, and it wasn’t pretty.  

_____(Q) There was the outer world (stuff to be perceived, measured and used) and the inner world (perception, thought and emotional responses).   

_____(R) Science seemed to bring an ideology along with it (a technological justification of the worst forms of capitalism) and, schematically, it divided the world into two.  

_____(S) The Romantics, however, believed the mind and body to be a part of nature and connected to nature.  

_____(T) Science, therefore, meant our minds were separate from nature and were to be used to control nature, as if we were secular wizards.  

_____(U) Friedrich Schelling went so far as to say that nature was visible spirit and spirit was invisible nature.

Copyright – Daniel Gauss

Answers are below:

Horses ----à 4,3,1,5,2     Q=4, R=3, S=1, T=5, U=2

Decay --à 5,2,3,4,1

Romantics -à 2,1,4,3,5

Minhwa, The Potato Famine

Minhwa is a traditional Korean art form. 

_____(Q) These are insights that would never have been publicly promulgated through the media of the dominant culture. 

_____(R) Minhwa is basically, therefore, the raw, insightful and passionate ‘real’ people (magpies)attacking the established and respected hacks (tigers) in power who control things through connections, quid pro quo arrangements and whatever other forms of shadiness they can think of to try to seem relevant and important. 

_____ (S) Minhwa has represented the experiences and desires of the common people, revealing insights only the people could know about life and society. 

_____ (T) Therefore the tigers aren’t really tigers in Minhwa, they are buffoons just as the aristocracy and power-brokers were, or have been, overwhelmingly, buffoons. 

_____(U) Because it is from the relatively powerless common people, there is often sarcasm and humor in Minhwa, and perhaps some secret social symbolism and criticism, as with magpies mocking vicious and powerful tigers who suddenly look stupid and ridiculous.

copyright: Daniel Gauss  2015




While over one million people starved to death in Ireland from 1845 – 1850, boatloads of grain regularly arrived from Ireland, through the port of Liverpool, to feed the citizens of England.  

_____ (Q) The Irish people had been colonized by the English and most Irish worked for various wealthy (mostly English) landlords.  

_____ (R) Thus, the tenant farmers who were dependent on the potato starved while the wealthy landowners reaped tremendous profits from the Irish grain they exported.  

_____ (S) These landlords never even considered stopping the transport of food from Ireland to England so that the Irish themselves might be saved while the potato crop was decimated by a fungus.  

_____ (T) Yet, a famine is when there is no food – there was an overabundance of food…the Irish just weren’t allowed to eat it. 

_____ (U) This was free market capitalism at its most transparently inhumane, but it has come down to us through history whitewashed as the potato ‘famine’.

Copyright: Daniel Gauss 2015


Answers are below:











Minhwa: 2,4,1,5,3 ----> Q=2, R=4, S=1, T=5, U=3
Potato Famine: 1,3,2,5,4