"Humans are always having mental conversations with people who aren't present, often trying out new plans by describing them to the absent one... and death doesn't necessarily put an end to this." even on the three day secular trademarked labor day travelthon to nowhere (i.e. somewhere else.)

i'm past the withdrawal pain of no movement. however i probably think too much.

pictures are images, images come from the imagination, imagination comes from the Imagination (Magnanimous Mind) imagining us. imagine that.

two things today. one is phrase i stumbled across:all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. betch don't know who said it or why. but it describes what was in the back of what was left of mr. jones mind when he got all creeped out with the rest of us, circa 68.

And then there is this article OJR J.D.'s Web Watch: Blogging as a Form of Journalism which talks about the relation between weblogs and journalism and the glorious future when every mental hiccough will be documented somewhere. half the battle i think is that we're such a constricted culture when it comes to expressing something new that just the act of articulation of the less than defined is a necessary practice; the downside is that if by some genetic, cosmic, or stray muon streaking through the atmosphere you were given the gift of expostulating, even hinting, at the totally hitherto unknown you'd end up if you were lucky babbling on street corners.

"chronological conciousness"... i like that phrase. it's something we aren't born with and don't die with. maybe time is like the water in a fishbowl for humans. then maybe again we're wired, tired, mired, and fired and THAT'S why we're not concious of time. in the same way that a syberetic wealthy profligate is not a sensualist, because if he was he could feel leaves and wind. anyway here's a 'timely' article on time.

got back home from stay in chapel hill nc where i visited my former wife sally who is battling lung cancer. she just finished 1rst round of chemo and so far real good. also saw 3 of my children all scattered in their own ways, and two grandchildren.

took the old highway back missing the megalopolis strip city of burlington-greensboro-winston-salem, trip was much more pleasant and only 1/2 hour longer.

someone knows; someone cares; who am we?
now as to this weblog. it's supposed to reflect more that the micro-events of a dull life. it's supposed to blow the lid off of the quotidean error of "it's supposed to be this way." like marxist determinism historical laws are at work like "if it can be technologically done it will be done" which effectively leaves us all behind in the confusion dust while the evolutionary bandwagon rolls on to somewhere else. so question is am i obsolete because i don't work out and wear brightly colored hitek garb? or am i maintaining what is left of the western personality, soul, and conciousness and a good guy for doing it? or both?

8.23.1

why am i uncomfortable with the ascendancy of the corporate mode in today's world? why do i feel more at ease in a (now hypothetical) world where the kids wanted to be rock and roll stars (before there were rock and roll stars) instead of CEOs who smoke expensive cigars thru capped teeth? well part of the reason is i come from another world, the world of 30 years ago. and part of it is that i see our most precious jewel, the human personality, being squeezed into just another commodity to be used.

this all started the first week i went to work for Intel, the mega-thing. that morning driving down a huge phoenix boulevard, i noticed at this large intersection these young kids holding up signs and jumping up and down. something about a carwash. it seemed an odd way to communicate to me, who was fresh down out of the backwoods mountains. what was the mode of discourse? movement, color, flash, enthusiam. what was being said? "buy me".

that afternoon, there was a marketing meeting at work. i honestly could not believe it when these three young kids (i later got to know them: they were smart) began to enthusiastically and with great animation tell us how "pumped" they were about the new product, whatever it was. not much was said about it. but a lot of loud positive energy was put forth. it was a high school pep rally.

the product disappeared a few months later like so many do. it never made it to market. but those kids selling carwashes on the corner and those marketeers out-enthusing their peers (how do you think they got to be leaders?) have morphed today into the dominant mode of the culture. or monoculture, there's not much room left to be anybody else.

now on to something that makes more sense, here's a watercolor i finished this morning:

8.22.1

busy busy day, it always is before i go to chapel hill. unlike years past when i traveled reasonably light, i have to very carefully prepare for any extended day anywhere. plus i wrapped up a lot of maintainence errends. tommorrow i xerox 3 copies of lung cancer missive and pack for friday.

so since i have nothing to say today (but when has that ever stopped me? (you wouldn't believe how many times it has)) here's a poem i picked at random. i'm collecting them, finding them all over the house, mostly from a couple of years ago:

there is no more magic
it's just like it was
if it wasn't so tragic
it would be just because

stuck in the briarpatch
and only can say
that where there's a briar
there's always a way

today i spent tied to the whippin post, 12 hours in front of G3. it started out as an accident and transformed into one of those things like when you�ve been on the road 30 hours and can�t quite stop breezing through the great american night. not that i do that anymore, you understand, i hung up my travelin and dancin shoes awhile back.

sally my former wife has recently been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, not a good thing, and i�ll be visiting her and 3 of 4 children this coming week. i started thinking how tough it is to glean and weigh information in short period of time when you�re not feeling tip top. (maybe a metaphor for the modern peasants of the 21st century). anyway i started sorting through and organizing scads of research i�ve done on the subject and came up with 300 plus page document which i edited down to @ 100 pages. twelve hours. i used to like the adrenaline and truth to tell got a little kick from today�s exercise but once in a long while is enough. also finished 2 watercolors i am sort of proud of, landscapes done quickly for sister�s and son Eli�s bday next week.

sometimes concentration, as great a relief as it can be, is just another way to let the time slip by.

another long day. aren't they all? getting longer and going faster so i gues it evens out. started day off returning equipment to doc's office, then went to kinko's and tried to snake my way thru all that confused jumble that everyone before you has screwed up. got two good color proofs of cover, will send one to barbara tommorrow, maybe it's finished.only glitch was 1/8 bleed disappeared which i can fake i guess. bought a light-weight hat. i hope it's cool in the sun. the heat is killing me. nearly finished two watercolors, bday presents for son and sister next week. spent many hours tonight assembling from web sources information on small cell lung cancer. tommorrow i'll structure the information, print it and send it by email to children so next week in chapel hill we can come up with process to help sally who i think is at a standstill and totally overwhelmed by her situation. maybe not, i won't really know until i see her.

i found another picture from the past. in fact i've been stumbling on a whole bunch of them, personal artifacts of some kind. this one is from a couple of years ago i think.

email and reply from this am. food for thought (and i don't know what to think):

"I must tell you I find your weblog rather scarey - it reminds me of me and
my own diary and seems too intimate for the infinite unprivacy of the net.
Turn back before it's too late!
It's like you see a fellow traveler on the high rocky path looking out at
the space of sky with an expression of happy anticipation and you don't want
him to jump, because if he does, what does it say about your continuing on
the path."

reply:

"interesting comment. i've never kept a journal or diary. and i don't
really intend for the weblog to be such. i'm just trying to see where it
goes. the excercise of writing a paragraph a day lends some little
structure to my life. in the back of my mind i feel like it will become
a sort of commentary on what it's like to live in these times with
particular reference to phenomena that are right on the edge of becoming
noticed. "artists are the antenna of the race" - ezra pound.

of course the wall between private and public is one of the giant issues
of our times. i'm not talking about being monitored by the cia but the
persona declaring itself a public brand - tell-all biographies, the
celebrety phenomena as brand name, etc.

i honestly believe that we all live in a hypnotised state and that the
consensual reality is a mass hallucination. maybe it is supposed to be
that way and serves some higher function. but it creates nagging vague
problems for some. it is this situation that i would like to document
for reasons i do not fully understand.

i will take your thoughts seriously, but so far i just feel like it's
another way to talk to the moon."

went to the pharmacy and grocery store today; $150 for 3 meds; $65 for food. that's about how it's breaking down for me lately. i think my kat has run away: she's been gone all day. i bought her a flea collar at the grocery store, you'd think she'd be happy. kats: you can't live withem and you can't live withoutem. spent the heat of the day inside reading a thriller and glancing from time to time at unfinished watercolor: i now know how to complete it. making order out of chaos i found this picture on computer. probably did it a year or 2 ago when i was hyperdepressed.

but then he could have said "old age is like a 747 crash: lots of luggage spread over the landscape and nobody comes back alive."

"baby baby baby you're out of tiiiime..." the most final words in the english language. george benard shaw (i believe) said "old age is a shipwreck". as i drift closer and closer to the iceberg (or maybe infinite waterfall), it strikes me that his words were pretty accurate. why? well, in a shipwreck everything changes and implodes instantly but it seems to take forever, and if you survive you find yourself very alone, either in the dark ocean under a cold black sky treading water, or maybe on a very small island with one palm tree and way too much empty horizon. it is this sudden aloness that strikes me: you're old, your peers and your time and your age have slipped away and the vital world of the past is an hallucination. and you are a funny little man who doesn't watch TV. me, i'm doing dandy, screwed up a watercolor today and then partway brought it back (i'll know tommorrow). screwed around way too long with realbasic trying to program 2 lines. i may not do not have the time for this. think my cat may have fleas.

a very plain vanilla day. which is good because the continuous blood glucose monitor will record what my blood sugars are on VPVD.

i stayed up late last night past 12 sucked into the undertow of the net - actually got a few applications and utilities running that should have already proven useful.

got back from walk around 9 with low BG again, what a wipeout. just nod off for an hour waiting to catch up with myself.

"reality shows": say what?

wednesday one more time. how long can i keep saying that? today i had a 9 AM appt. at endocronologist's office to be outfitted with continous blood glucose monitor (CBGM). it will download 3 days of blood sugar readings taken every 5 minutes. i wear it for 72 hours. each time i measure my blood sugar (4-6 times a day) i have to calibrate it by plugging in the number i get. so around 2 PM prior to eating lunch i test and get 346 which is WAY out of bounds; i discover insulin pump infusion set which i installed early this morning had come undone, so another change of infusion set, plugging in numbers, writing in log book, and not eating anything. for all you non-type 1 diabetics out there, this is not an unusal day for me. i know what disease(s) i have, what do you have? anyway much later started a serious landscape and exchanged books at library. so all's right with the world, it just doesn't look that way much.

Tuesday, take out the garbage day. rolls around once a week, and there's always some to take out! we live in an amazing world.

took a morning walk, trying to do it for health reasons each day before it gets hot. kind of been slacking off lately, so off i go this morning. ran low on glusose before i got back, had lifesavers in poket natch but just a little ways to go, up this long endless sidewalk plain, step by step. got back and tested, BG was 39.

dumped a bunch of stuff off of hard drives to free up space, including MOPS the object oriented langauge i've been ramping up. took a look at it last night and realized no way, no reason.

blocking out next watercolor landscape. i'm going to try and do it real...well. good feedback on earlier watercolor i put up last week.

monday, a zero day today. gloomy, overcast, humid. did a little grocery shopping, got bug potion for kat, and came home. sent sally a book on lung cancer; it was not as broad and deep as i had hoped but very structured: it should be handed out to all newly diagnosed patients.

finished a watercolor; more trees. still haven't hit on color shorthand for them. finished "jounal of albion moonlight" by k. patchin. let's see if i can grab a couple of quotes from the book:

"when two things hit each other it is always the fastest moving which flies backwards farthest: it is no disgrace to fail in this world; it is, in fact, impossible to conceive of success in any other way."
(shades of bobby d.)

"i am tired of writing in the air. i want to say something that will help you. we are animals together. i have no money. but i have made speeches in the mountains."

"what crisis do you speak of? the gesture of fruit is not timid."

and so on and on, he's got a million of 'em.

i tried to post this yesterday but had a little browser problem. now it�s next am and i am poised for a day of catch up, slow up, and show up.

"sunday morning everybodys in bed:
i'm on the street talkin out of my head"

from a song by Charlie Musselwhite that i hear in my head every now and then. he is a very good blues singer and excellent but eccentric guitar player as well as one of the premier blues harpists still kicking. but don't misunderstand, it's just a work of art, not a personal reflection: i can honestly say that i am NEVER on the street, much less talkin out of my head.

i'm trying to learn how to paint trees in watercolor. started yesterday. after i get something going there, i plan to learn foliage: grass, bushes, weeds, flowers, rock and dirt. that's gonna be a biggie. then on to water, clouds, and distant mountains, all of which i've already started doing.

going to kinko's this morning to print 2 copies of cover for barbara's book. this is not my favorite thing to do, i hope these proofs are the last.

isn't it strange that "reality television" is called "reality television"? forgeting for the moment that there's no such thing, why would these vapid, strained highly stylized and predictable extravaganzas be called "reality television"? i guess it is because unreality television features actors playing people and laugh tracks or talking heads and setup news footage. while "REALity Television" stars real people. but they aren't real people, they're modern peasants playing "star for a day". (remember "queen for a day" on early TV in the 50's? no? well i do.) the entertainment industry becomes more manneristic (an art history term meaning "self-referential" (read this), a phase usually taking place after a great creative surge in the culture. e.g. manneristic painting followed the rennaisance painters in italy and, in our own speeded up times, the beatles white album was manneristic, following the explosion of modern sensibility that unhinged so many of us. the only thing close to reality television i know of i see over the shoulder of the clerk in the 7-11. and it's pretty grim, dull, slow, fractured, and way too dull.

it's going to be a slow day. i decided early this morning to skip the day. time out. here's another watercolor i recently did. i only used 3 colors (something that i hope speeds up the learning curve):

a reply to an email i sent yesterday. the email concerned bush/stem cells, and was on a listserv for diabetics who use an insulin pump:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
kathy wrote:
>
> Hi all:
> Well, the vote is out and I'm a little disappointed but also encouraged...
>
> However, you can't blame the man as he had to make a decision which would
> make everyone happy and I guess he had to come in the middle.
>

he did not have to make a decision that would make everybody happy. as a
matter of fact that would be impossible. so he might as well have made
the right decision, ignoring politics, ignoring 2nd term, pointing out
that the abortion question and stem cell question are two separate
issues, and moved on.

chris parsons
T1 84 HTRON Plus 99
who is pretty darn apolitical these days

surrounded by mediated blather, i sometimes remember that when i was young i had a map of the culture in my head and seemed to "feel" anything going on out there. "visceral knowledge" kurt vonnegut called it. but my mother and father, who lived in the same world (?), seemed woefully out of touch. i thought it was because they were old and somehow incapable of "getting it". now that i am old and in the way i am no longer conversant with the world of today with it's brand names, it's logos, it's styles, it's stars, the details of the gestalt. like bob dylan says, "i wouldn't know a real blonde from a fake". so i'm in the same relative position vis-a-vis the culture that my mom and dad were (still are). but now i no longer think that this is because the old are somehow deficient. i think it's because they (we, i) don't care. it is not important. distant babble. tale told by an idiot. i don't know as much about the culture as i once did because in the lengthening twilight, i don't care.

this weblog phenomena is really interesting. i've spent the early morning hours checking some out. the feeling among the young and technically comfortable is that blogs are a healthy antidote to the corporate institutional stranglehold on "news" (or i might say "thought"). a bottom-up grass roots thing, kind of a second chance for the web with the demise of the flash in the pan get rich quick dotcoms. on the other hand the blogs could be just adding to the already overpopulation of words (often out of context) floating around. there is no doubt that if you were to try and keep up with these things it would be a full time enterprise. there are more words per capita than any time in human history (my opinion) and the blogs are evolving to accomodate this fact. here is a good example.

technical glitch day, lots of software hiccoughs, getting mozilla to settle down, set up a bunch of newsgroups in anticipation of learning Forth (which will chaoticize system for awhile; i know it will). then changed out insulin pump and ran into every alarm possible, including succesive bad batteries, each of which has to be replaced, memory is lost, and pump has to be programmed again. then kat walked all over watercolor table, footprints in landscape and hair everywhere. erratic biorhythms i guess, although i'm beginning to feel this is normal life, what we're here for. a little business in the morning and i beleive i'll drive up to bent creek and visit with doug in his hideout in the mountains. do me good to see trees and feel cool breeze.

up at 5 this am. downloaded mozilla 9.0.3 last night and installed it this morning. mainly because i read it was small, fast, and more stable than netscape 4.x. so far so good. netscape became very unstable and i couldn't fix it. tried many things. the strange thing is that it worked fine for a long time. well i'm going to send an email to my old history teacher who i had an enjoyable visit with recently, sign off, eat breakfast, and take a walk before it gets hot.

here's a link to kenneth patchin, author of "the journal of albion moonlight", really marked me in my twenties. i mentioned earlier that i was re-reading the book. it is dark, lyrical, pulp, antiwar (published in 41), serious in intent, accesible beyond words, slightly uneven, and highly under-rated. i'm halfway through it. Grand Inspiritors: Kenneth Patchen

i have been tied to the whippin post today, won't even go into it, software, hardware, nowhere. if you go to "pix" and choose the 3rd icon down, you will see new and improved picture that had me pulling out my hair to get up. but it's over. friend doug from down the mountain knocked on my door and paid a visit. he brought with him a small shakuhachi (Shakuhachi-Traditional Japanese Bamboo Flute-Main Menu) i had purchased on the street in tempe arizona ages ago and rolled over with a rocking chair many years later. he fixed it, from splinters to the bright sounding instrument it was. thanks doug. we ate at the greek place at five points, the west side working man's oasis where i haven't been in a year or so. i'm tired and i wanna watch seinfeld. guessing of course at the spelling.

what a wasted day. up early, took a walk before it got hot. it is now 2:13 and i've been in front of the computer every since. this is the sort of sustained goofy activity that i thought was behind me. however i got involved with learning Forth, finding some pictures for the gallery, and scanning in a watercolor. i counted the watercolors, there are 15. i guess i started them in april so let's see... that's about one a week. anyway here's a sample:

oh-oh. i really got sidetracked today. the first programming language i learned was GraForth which ran on an apple IIe with 48k of memory. maybe i already knew some basic. anyway i made moving color patterns and sound and had fun. GraForth was a version of the computer language Forth. it was created by paul lutus (see Careware explained by Paul Lutus) who supposedly lived on top of a mountain in Oregon with a very long extension cord. for some reason i nosed around on the net all day and now have a PPC version of forth to play with. i want to make mandalas that move. it was too hot to go outside anyway. stay tuned.

maybe i don't have how to link this weblog figured out. formatting is a problem, and multiple links require weird work-around. it's daylight out and time for me to take a walk.

8.7.1

i finally (i think, i hope finally) figured out how to link this weblog. i've been investigating the connection between diabetes and depression and here's some of what i've found:

savvyHEALTH.com: Blood Sugar Blues: The Link Between Diabetes and Depression In other words, depression may cause diabetes.

Diabetes, Depression and Stress

01.06.12 - Exploring the diabetes-depression link.

USA - Scientist examine link between diabetes, depression (19/06/2000) They found that when compared with nondiabetics, those with diabetes were more likely to have been treated for depression within six
months before their diabetes diagnosis, said Gregory Nichols, a Kaiser researcher who conducted the study.

well i had a visit to my endocrinologist this afternoon. i've been working really hard since april, when depression began to fragment, to control blood sugars. i've been on an insulin pump for 2 years and was doing pretty well, but not well enough. anyway my A1c was 6.7. that's probably the lowest it's been in 10 years. so all of the excercises, oatmeal, testing, keeping logs helped. it's never too late.

meanwhile re-reading "the journal of albion moonlight" by kenneth patchin. i last read it in the 60's. it's harder-edged, less dreamy than i remember. gets down to the nitty-gritty of existence, outside of language, what a guy.

back on standard medical regime, feel a whole lot better, can think a little bit. worked a little bit on watercolor landscape i've been piddling with for a week or more. i'll eventually put some watercolors up here. i'm just learning how the paint handles and mixes. the manual quality of the work is very pleasant. which reminds me, if i say "digital", why doesn't it mean done with the fingers? it used to. here's an email to a friend i wrote 5:30 this morning:

hi barbara -

i was talking to someone yesterday and the subject of the 6th patriarch
came up. he apparently thought the deal was not so much a moment or 2
with no sentences in head but rather a different relation to the
thought-stream: a moment or two of time out & just gaze at it from some
corner of the mind like gazing at the clouds or waves or (i would add)
the aspen leaves quaking in the fall wind.

chris
"don't believe everything you think."

quiet sunday. haven't been out of the house. cleaned up a number of niggling little things that have been piling up, like trimming my beard. spent about an hour downloading blood glucose monitor's numbers and going over them for tomorrows appointment with endocronologist. i forget all of the stuff that i had planned to write about here, but around 4 this morning listening half asleep to BBC they began a series on "evolutionary ecology", or maybe it was "evolutionary evolution". mostly about how for the last 10,000 years mankind has lived in villages. since agriculture began. this year one half of the worlds population lives in cities. in the near future the largest mass migration in human history will occur as more and more people move to the 24/7 city. big changes afoot, maybe the biggest in 10,000 years. no wonder i feel obsolete. course i was asleep when i heard all this.

i figured out why i was up all night. i mixed up my medications. big time. put up new archive template. next i'll put up some new pictures and i'm thru with this thing except of course the daily dribble.

slept for three days, now it's 3 in the morning and i can't sleep. i know i'm not alone in this puzzling affliction. what happened to the good old diurnal mono-rhythem? we're a sleep deprived bunch of people. most of us. dr. x (i'll look his name up later) claims on good authority that sleeplessness kills more people in auto accidents than alcohol does. i call this situation metabolic chaos and i don't like it. as the culture and i part ways, i'm either on the side of the angels or obsolete. or both.

climbing out of the soporific soup. drove to dark hill and met old friend sam who had a lot in hand, including blown motherboard he was mulling over, fixing to make it into a planter or art object i guess altho i still think he should gussy it up with magic crystals and plug it in. plowed thru email and faxed stem cell letters to edwards and taylor (already emailed dubya). so now i'm off to library to exchange bunch of mysteries/potboilers for same. actually enjoyed one, "the babel effect" by daniel hecht - and no it wasn't "babel-22" by the guy whose name i can't remember who wrote "triton", bunch of sci-fi goodies during the 70s. you don't hear much about him anymore, at least i don't, but then i don't read science fiction much either. except lucius "the neil young of horror writing" shephard.

i've been asleep for 3 days - medical adjustment - hope i'm awake now.

cool rainy days lately at least for the first part of the day. heatwave in the midwest. taking this week off, no doctors appointments or other obligations. gives me the chance to go off some of the medications i'm on ("drug vacation" in medical vernacular). still unsure of how the personal and public work with this project. guess i need to mingle the two, just like life does.