40 Winks

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These are some pages of a Journal Art project I have done in Summer 2012,

as a practice of therapy to find peace over some life experience.

I made one work per day for 40 days in a row, expressing my thoughts and feelings as form, writing, quotes, objects or

performances, in order to fight the temptation for making any decision or real action.

After 40 days, I found myself emotionally letting go of bad thoughts. I was relieved...

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40 is a special number
 -In Iranian culture, there is a belief that we need 40 days for any transformation, to adopt a new life,

leaving something behind, passing grief or get used to something new,

for example, We mourn 40 days for our dead, in old Persia, they didn't show their newborn babies

to people until they became 40 days old so they knew the baby will live.

Our mystics (Sufis) have 40 days of praying or fasting or being away alone in a row as a spiritual practice,

believing that after that they may be able to have superpowers like seeing angles and metaphysic world,

flying, separating the soul from the body and...

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-God create Adam in 40 days, and each day gave him one quality.

-Adam cried for 40 days after he was kicked out of the garden of Eden.

-When Noah finished his Ark, it began to rain for 40 days and nights and the flood covered all the mountains.

-Ahuramazda created the sky in 40 days.

-Muses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai where he received the 10 commandments

-God's punishment for Bani Israel was to be homeless for 40 years.

-After being baptized, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the desert, and during these days Satan tried to tempt him;

Jesus refused every temptation and Satan failed.

-Also, in the end Jesus went to Heaven 40 days after Easter.

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-An Arabic proverb says "To understand a people, you must live among them for 40 days."

-In the Hindu system, some of the popular fasting periods consist of 40 days. (Mandala Kalam)

-Some Christians believe that the soul remains on the earthly plane for 40 days before entering the afterlife

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-"To take forty winks" is to take a short sleep as long as 40 winks take, saying it's the perfect time to sleep during the day.

-The period that ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death, was 40 days.

Quarantine, derives from a Venetian dialect of the Italian 'Quaranta Giorni' meaning 'forty days',

.-40 is also the number of weeks for an average term of pregnancy.