The Nahmias Cipher Report

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Abandonment is the worst sort of betrayal to recover from because as with the death of a suicide or murderer, the perpetrators are permanently absent from the healing process. Thus, the victims are forced into the unenviable position of trying to answer the unanswerable and suffer through the litany of unvoiced recriminations that can take root and blossom into bitterness.

Like many people, I have suffered great and small tragedies throughout my life, but have come to place in my journey as a writer where I can share my experiences openly without shame. When my husband abandoned me when I was eight months pregnant with our son, it took several years of mourning, spiritual awakening and cognitive therapy, but I finally realized that the power to change my existence lay firmly in my grasp.

As an equestrian, who practices the discipline of dressage, and as an avid horse lover; the imagery evoked by the phrase ‘back in the saddle’ is rich and picturesque. Literally, it can imply one who has been thrown by a horse, and who must immediately get back up on the horse or risk becoming paralyzed by fear and thus unable to ride again; or one who has encountered some great personal tragedy in life, but must find away to move beyond this event and re-engage with life.

These Algerian Desert Flowers were featured in a 1917 National Geographic story that documented the exotic beauty of North African people and their religious customs. Unlike the anthropological approach to other cultures, people and countries that primarily exists today, the captions that reference many of the photos in this series ‘Scenes of Orient’ are ethnocentric, paternalistic and colonialist at best, and downright racists at worst. Thankfully, the beauty of these captured moments surpass the limitations of the recorder.

My Dirty Little Heaven is an ambitious exhibit by Kenyan-born, New York based artist Wangechi Mutu. Chosen as the 2010 Artist of the Year, Mutu’s installation is the first show in the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin Museum selected on the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council.

Mutu’s portfolio of work explores the objectification of women in the entertainment and advertisement industries. In a recent interview, Mutu recounted how the impetus for creating My Dirty Little Heaven resulted from as a dearth of realistic portrayals of women in the media. This was particularly evidenced by the images that adorned the covers of magazines, movies, commercials, etc. in which rarely if ever could she find herself or any other women. Within the African-American spectrum the issue was even more skewed and pervasively misogynistic. Women are portrayed as prostitutes, mannequins or props to make male entertainers appear more virile, thus diminishing them both.