Category: At The Seams
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Journey to the Other World
In Polynesian parable, to lift the sky meant to expand the known world. Each discovery enlarged the habitable world, raising the height of the sky. Polynesians envisioned the Sky or the Heavens as a huge cupola covering their sea and islands. The sky cupola housed all the stars and heavenly bodies. When the Europeans appeared,…
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The Fish Hook of Maui
The story of the Polynesian Demi-God Maui fishing up islands explains the creation of the Hawaiian islands. In Polynesian lores, “fishing up islands” means to discover different islands, or to fish islands out from the sea. The story of Maui wishing to catch a big fish as an analogy for uniting the Hawaiian islands goes…
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Kawa Ora
Tattoos have been practiced for millennia across the world as a form of cultural and historical record. In ancient Egypt and Nubia, women tattooed on their thighs the image of Bes, a deity associated with fertility and childbirth. For the Ainu people of Japan, the tattoo was a symbol of beauty, a talisman, and an…
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The Peacock Bride
While the white color has become mainstream for wedding dresses across the modern world, it was not the only color considered historically. In fact, in numerous cultures, white has been the color reserved for funerals. Yet today, even societies using white traditionally to pay respect to the dead have embraced this color for their wedding…
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The Rainbow Bride
In the history of civilizations, there is but one record of fusion of two separate cultures: the Indo-Greek Kingdom, covering modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India. During the two centuries of their rule, the Indo-Greek kings combined the Greek and Indian languages and symbols and blended Greek and Indian ideas. The diffusion of the Indo-Greek…
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The Black Gold Bride
“Who can find a good woman? She is precious beyond all things.” Prov. 31:10 A masterpiece of the world’s heritage, the Taj Mahal is considered the greatest achievement of Indo-Islamic architecture. Its rhythmic architectural combination of solids and voids, concave and complex, light and shadow is perfectly symmetrical and harmonious. Its elements of lush green…
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The Gold Leaf Bride
Tying the knot for love appears to be common sense today, but it has only been a mainstream concept within the last century. In the history of marriage, the focus is about collaboration – to join forces in order to improve one’s lot in life. In patriarchal societies where men largely inherit power and wealth,…
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The Tail of Spring
When April showers, the air smells warm, damp, and earthy. This particular wet earth scent is called geosmin, or petricor. It is excreted by soil bacteria to advertise food to springtail, an insect-like organism, who spreads the spores by carrying them along. But it’s not only attractive to the springtail, humans are extremely sensitive to…
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Portrait of A Lady
Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady’s slipper. Your knees are a southern breeze — or a gust of snow. Agh! what sort of man was Fragonard? — As if that answered anything. — Ah, yes. Below the knees, since the tune drops that…
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The Tulip Folly
Of the abundance of financial crises around the world, most boil down to mismanaging money, such as debt and currency. More than enough come in bubbles, such as the 2008 U.S. housing bubble that burst into the Great Recession and then spread into a global financial crisis, the 1973 oil embargo during the Yom Kippur…
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