This new tumblr site is devoted to spa culture, where ‘spa’ refers to: healing waters, therapeutic treatments, hot springs, mineral springs, health spas, etc. Thought it might be nice to gather ‘spa’ things, with like-minded individuals.
Something to share?
Feel free to submit things on this topic. Could be photos, quotes, links, videos, poetry, fiction, news, art, research, etc. If accepted, please be patient.
It could take a few days to appear.
This one is all about blog-hopping. Funny how it goes…
It began with threephotos I’d posted over at my image gallery VisuaLiving. I later decided to feature them together in a blog post here at Living ?s. I snapped the photos on a walk I’d taken while preoccupied with planning a trip and escaping. At some point, I returned to the present and realized the beauty I was missing while daydreaming.
Meantime, Dorothee Lang was in the midst of editing a BluePrintReview issue on the topic of ‘challenge’. She’d stumbled across my post containing my images and musings. Apparently, the post fit well with her theme, so she published it as an issue preview in the literary and visual art journal’s blogzine. The feature highlights my post at Living ?s, and links to the photos at VisuaLiving. From blog to blog to blog. Dizzying.
12th c: monastery baths existed in this area
1880′s: first spa hotel built
1937: drinking cure hall added
1979: daytime hospital established
end of 20th c: spa thoroughly renovated and modernized
now: a popular meeting place for artists and writers
Treatments:
healing drinking cure
physiotherapy
mud packs
Finnish sauna
dry and steam sauna chambers
foot massage
underwater massage with water beam
refreshing massage
medical healing massage
carbonic acid tub bath
weight bath
A larger version of the asemic images appear in life as a journey > the direct link is here.
~
The term ‘asemic’ is variously described as “post-literate”, “nonsensical”, “non-symbolic”. Like abstract art, asemic work promises viewers the opportunity to generate personal meanings from their own cultural and linguistic standpoints rather than having meanings imposed by writers and artists.
In keeping with the spirit of asemics, I won’t tell you the origin of the images. I certainly won’t reveal that the images began as photographs I took inside the bathing complex that sits at atop the mineral-rich Hungarian Lake Hévíz–the largest thermal lake for swimming in Europe; the second largest in the world.
Something else I won’t reveal is the video below; that water in motion–a MicroMoment I captured on camera while standing inside the Hévíz Complex after a long afternoon of soaking:
Other things I promise to keep secret are the symbolic meanings in the title of the project. I won’t tell you the nonsensical three-part name carries the following interpretive content:
~
oenisplx = the letters of the word ‘explosion’
[explosion of energy that leads to the elements]
igrnimeeg = the letters of the word ‘emerging’
[life emerging, colors spilling into one another]
spnimirt = the letters of the word ‘imprints’
[dried out world, only imprints remaining]
I’m pleased to report that my videopoem ‘the lake’ made the rounds…
It first appeared in ‘Referential’–a magazine that publishes referential literary and visual art. I submitted the piece, referring to the words ‘the lake’ that appear in a poem by Teresa Stores:
After the initial publication I discovered–by accident–that ‘the lake’ was featured in the media section of ‘The #poems Daily’. I’d mentioned the initial publication on Twitter and ‘The #poems Daily’ picked it up:
It wasn’t long before I stumbled across another republication of ‘the lake’. This time, in ‘Moving Poems’–a video poetry anthology that features “the best video poetry on the web”. Needless to say, it’s a thrill to have my work featured alongside the likes of Cecilia Chapman and Alastair Cook:
Well, not exactly. A vowel is only a vowel when it’s recognized as one,
and a vowel in the word ‘gyógyfürdő’, I’ve discovered, isn’t recognized as one in all places.
Below, the back-story, told backwards:
A steamy experience in Hungary is featured as ‘Monday’s Poem’ at Leaf Press:
The photo that appears with my words is the only one I took at the spa–the only snapshot the attendant permitted.
This bath is my favorite in Budapest–a city touted as ‘spa capital of the world’.
~
The process that accompanied publication included a linguistic snag:
The original submission was called ‘rudas gyógyfürdő, budapest’. The Hungarian word ‘gyógyfürdő’ translates into English as ‘medicinal bath’. This word–gyógyfürdő–is the one that caused the glitch.
Late Sunday evening, the night before publication, I opened an email from Leaf Press publisher Ursula Vaira:
I am working on the poem now, and am stuck on the last o in gyógyfürdő … my software (Dreamweaver) simply has no character for that. Even when I go to a website and copy the word and paste it directly in, it still turns up as a question mark.
It’s interesting that Dreamweaver understands the vowels ó and ü, but not ő.
Makes me wonder what other languages feature the first two vowels, but not the last…
This blog post is included in Edition #4 of the BluePrint blog carnival >Language>Place.
It is hosted by UK-based editor, translator, and university administrator Jean Morris.
The direct link to the carnival is here.
Grab onto the railing…underwater massage
with jets in all directions. Thermal bubbles like this are
commonplace in Hungary. Hot springs in Canada don’t feature these contraptions.
Drawn to the light in the sky, to the Rockies,
to the sulphates & bicarbonates, calcium & magnesium
that fill the hot springs on Banff’s Sulphur Mountain.
Two photos of Hévíz, Hungary are featured in the September issue of elimae. I took the photos of the lake in broad daylight back in May–the water was warm; centigrade, about 33 degrees.
In case you’re wondering, the correct pronunciation ofelimae is el–ee-may. It stands for ‘electronic literary magazine’. It’s been around since 1996, features creative writing and occasional images, boasts an elegant minimalist design, and is currently published under the joint editorship of Cooper Renner and Kim Chinquee in the U.S.
Mountainside, yes. There’s a blue lake, too, on the other side of the windows and loungers and mineral-rich thermal spring pool.
There’s no question about it: I’m a ‘spa culture’ aficionado. I lovemassages and mud packs and anything else that might fall under the banner of ‘leisurely wellness’. A critical part of the equation for me is spending time soaking in thermal baths–commonly referred to as ‘healing waters’. Many stunning examples are found in Budapest–the (un)official ‘spa capital of the world’. The city’s thermal baths are featured in a video I posted recently here.
Having spent a full month in the hot springs of Hungary, I found myself missing my daily soaks. To remedy my mourning I took a look around to see what kinds of thermal waters flow through cracks in the earth’s crust closer to home. The photo above is one example of a B.C. public mineral pool. It’s located in the village of Harrison Hot Springs–just a 90-minute drive from the heart of Vancouver. I hopped in the car, made the trek the other day, claimed a lounge chair by the window, then soaked and relaxed the hours away.
Water temperature at source: a scorching 62.8°C / 145°F.
Water temperature in pool, cooled: a soothing 38ºC / 100°F.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the goodness in the H2O:
While soaking, I met some Vancouver regulars who make the pilgrimage every week. A woman I spoke with told me her weekly visits have been part of her schedule for the past three years; a man I talked to said these waters have been a weekly habit for the past fifteen.
And a question:
In your part of the world, are there hot springs where you like to soak?
The images, but a morsel of the sights and experiences I am missing …
I am dreaming:
My luggage, still brimming, I hop in a taxicab, go back to the airport, and in less than a day, arrive back in Hungary, float in thermal waters, breathe the sweet air,
and stay, this time, forever …
Words: Father of the Suicide [David Jordan, USA]
+ Image: Reflect/Absorb [Karyn Eisler, Canada]
+ Matchmaker: Editor of BluePrintReview [Dorothee Lang, Germany]
= THIS
How does the editor, Dorothee Lang, explain this particular coupling?
“the essay is about a painful subject: teenage suicide … and your water image has just the right mood: sadness, depth, a closing focus, things and thoughts underneath the surface”
I took this photo on the same day, from the same bridge, at the same time, save a moment or two, as the The Bow — an image that also appears in Issue 23, paired with Jennifer Jackson Whitley’s words on (addict)ion.
These word/image couplings provide a study in contrasts:
(addict)ion and suicide → two tales of discomfort;
and,
two photographs taken in Banff, Alberta, on a day when the mood was so different. It was such a happy day for my family and I; my mother’s birthday, my father and brother in attendance; all of us together, laughing, reminiscing, making moments of joy, memories of comfort …
The Bow River, a view from the bridge, a blue afternoon in Banff, Alberta. Moss topped rocks promise rapid descent into the depths of the milky water. Inviting. Dangerous. Delicious. Repellent. These are the impressions I remember.
My photo of The Bow appears in BluePrintReview, where founding editor Dorothee Lang seeks “unexpected connections between texts and images from unrelated places.”
In Issue 23: (dis)comfort zones, she couples the photo with a Georgian author’s words on (addict)ion — Jennifer Jackson Whitley’s tale of desire and cautionary, yet reckless, compulsion.
NewPages.com describes BluePrintReview as “an online journal constructed to ease the complex and beautiful convergence of language and art and all the possibilities this entails.”
