1.30.2

ok now they've gone too far. tonight i was relaxing after a long and confusing day, staring at the wall. the TV was off, shut down, not happening, blank. all of a sudden i began to hear as if from another room, the low murmer of peter jennings*.he was quoting trent lott and 2 other members of congress on what a dynamite speech bush delivered last night. then he added that all three released thier comments on the speech before it was delivered. later, on the same eerie "broadcast", one of the reporters said "maybe style and fashion are getting mixed up with medicine(!)". then there was kenneth lay, ex-CEO of ENDRUN, taped giving a speech cum peptalk to the employees last october. what was fascinating was not what he said, but the audience, young, smart, happy to a part of whatever they were a part of, positivily bubbly and giggly at being in such a great time and place. reminded me for some reason of the phrase james joyce used to characterize the pariisians during his miserable stay in paris: "the pleased pleasers". finally the invisible airwaves sagged and i put on mr dylan's latest, high water everywhere.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* not to be confused with the low murmer of high heeled boys, traffic, circa mid70s.

1.29.2

mr. bush is giving his state of the union speech in the other room. i can barely hear a quiet electronic murmer and the static of regimented applause. his people may do some good in the current hostilities, but like all of his class (i prefer the word "ilk"), his logic is almost impeccable, but the facts he begins with are balderdash. he (and his ilk) could walk down any street in the country today and not have a clue. remember when his father could'nt figure out how to buy a quart of milk in the grocery store? but either one could buy a baseball team in a heartbeat, with no cash involved. the country either needs this special monied class to keep the trains (planes, film production, software schedules) running on time or maybe not. nice people, our financial aristocracy, they can't help it, they literally cannot see the world you and i inhabit. at least the olympian gods of yesteryear, many of whom were creeps, could operate in this sphere, answer telephones, drive cars, and go shopping.

past my bedtime i'm outa here.

in the land of the blind the cross-eyed is king

1.28.2

On a whole nother topic, heard a great bluegrass song on slow sunny sunday afternoon which included this line:

"the first step to heaven
is knowin that you're gone"

1.26.2

nice nap today.

now that yasser arafat is within the telescopic sights of isreal, don't you think the mind-world we live in could begin to recognize that, for better or worse, one people unilaterally taking and using another people's land because God told them to is not
acceptable.

the ENRON show will become more central to the inhabitants of the mind-world because it demonstrates in bloody detail how neo-capitalism, or techno-capitalism, or po-mo-capitalism really works. wholly snake oil.

1.25.2

might get some sleep tonight

thought i'd try something new: well, old really. this picture is a scan of a gum-bichromate print i did a very long time ago, or as they say, in another life in another country. mainly wanted to see how something big looks and behaves.

as far as "words of wisdom" for today: isn't that an oxymoron?

1.23.2

today is a dream
about this ENRON thing: for someone like me it represents the reality behind the smoke and mirrors. in the near future we'll probably be seeing similar snippits of the so-called "real world" that will make adam smith spin in his grave. nothing happening in the world of economics today has anything to do with the classic idea of capitalism, which i admit once was useful.

but what to do with ENRON? i have an idea: turn it into a theme park. i'm talking about the mother ship, the tall glossy skyscraper that is the center of houston. nice fountains, plants beautifully displayed, indirect lighting, don't know how many stories but enough, expensive tables in conference rooms, lots of whiteboards.

the themepark could be called "bizland" or something similar. once you're in you will be given a badge, a daytimer, and an attache case. you could then spend 80 hours a week rushing to meetings, doodling on yellow legal pads, filling out forms, and furiously keyboarding email. once in awhile you might meet somebody in the narrow space between cubicles and plot in low voices about something that doesn't really matter.

there are plenty of unemployed high-tech worker bees who could spend time in the theme park to keep their skills intact. (it is surprising how soon after being "downsized" all of this fades into a bad dream.) young people could wonder around with clipboards to get in the swing of things. and once a day, say at 4:30, there could be a company wide meeting in the state of the art auditorium, with lots of dazzling color pie charts and video conferencing, when the fearless leader could give a pep talk and announce the latest numbers, always better than the last set of numbers, and just as bogus.

"bizland" could keep the new economy's smoke and mirrors intact during these unfortunate spells of "the emperor has no clothes!".

12.21.2

precomputer picture; did it in darkroom
(remember them?)
back to recent sketchbooks tommorrow.

1.20.2

sunday night. day of rest. 19 hours of it. dreadful dreams i can't remember.

things are coming together. aspects of myself no longer ignore other aspects, and it's geeting pretty comfortable in here if not cozy. course we don't get out very much. sit around and moon at the wallpaper is more like it.

i walk down the streets in my shabby sheets, usin all my feets and wonder into the arcade of the forgotten glitzes. they always stopped me cold with their frozen metal points.

soon after i ended up camping out one summer near the high west wall, with it's cloudy mornings and wet misty evenings. i stayed there several years through no fault of my own. at night i used to hear the death whistles from the next vally. maybe i was nineteen.

it wasn't long before i settled down with a book, tapping my feet furiously.

1.19.2

Hong Kong Wrong

in the dim stone interior
light leaking from above
the first birds shiver
their morning song of love
it was good to see old friends last night and the food was great too. thanks.

1.18.2

look here gaze there

holy spirits in the room

they come too early

go too soon

puzzled angels

on the moon

1.17.2

i'm talking to whom?
since thanksgiving i've probably been out of the house and on the road more than i have for many years. this series of pictures comes from notebooks i kept with me. sometimes i would only take media that i had never used or not used in a long time. a drawing pencil for example.

but words? if i write a word who reads it? it all gets back to my favorite rubric:"imagination is real; reality is imaginary". so it doesn't matter if audiences confuse me.

1.16.2

"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me"
song of a man who has come through - d. h. lawrence

1.15.2

life goes on. something goes on. i'm kinda out of words so for awhile i'm just going to post pictures i mostly did over the last 4-6 weeks.

1.14b.2

after an extended jaunt to other places, other times, other events, i am back "home" and wondering what will fall into the future.

since i'm speechless, have a real bone to pick with god (excuse figure of speech) and am moving slow, i find i have little to say about anything. loud excited accelerated speech seems to be the only way i communicate anymore and it doesn't work very well because it scares people. it can keep me occupied for short periods of time but i find it and a lot of other things ultimately doesn't work.

making stuff is what it's what i'm all about: music, pictures, magic tricks, yoyo stunts, impractical jokes, creating "stuff to look at" is my only real link with the great transformer, the oh so elegant presidigitastor of the arsnic hour, the winds that wonder and don't matter.

however i drew a lot of pictures over the last month, most unfinished like myself, but right now i'm gonna cheat and go to bed. bibliomanacy points out to me that you should read this poem and also go to bed:

"to suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;
to forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
to defy power, which seems omnipotent;
to love, and bear, to hope till Hope creates
from it's own wreck the thing it contemplates;
this like thy glory titan, is to be
good, great and joyous, beautiful and free..."

shelly

1.14.2

i'm back in asheville. my former wife sally died tuesday jan. 8th. she died at home, she was cared for by her 4 children, she was comfortable and remarkably at peace.

incredible pieces of the past are reanimated during a process like this, and the intensity of family dynamics was in full force. plus the corners we paint ourselves into. the latter i take as part of the human condition and not a unique personal trajectory.

i am very proud of my children eric, nicole, eli, and nathan. they all demonstrated strengths i had not seen before.

and the hospice movement in our time is much more important than i realized; a real live model of what the medical-industrial complex could become: consultants (but you're the doctor). they need volunteers.

today regrouping for an attractive, productive, active, clean year. wonder what it'll really be like?

1.8.2

God Bless Your Child
Sally K. Parsons
1944-2002
Comfort Her
Guide Her
Allow Her to Know She is Loved

1.2.2

ok finish line finished, slept thru it like always. new starting point already gone. my problem keeping up with "modern peasant" is that words are less and less interesting. the world of 10,000 whatchamacallits is less and less interesting.

but there are interesting things happening nonetheless. it's just that they seem to be in the realm of the unspeakable (unsayable, unwritable). however they still have one foot in the world of the imagination (imagine that).

so it seems like the image will take over this project. imagination sinking slowly solely behind the western horizon sends out one last ray of dazzling insignificance. and it does so day in (at times) and day out (always).

"the soul and it's images, having been alienated so long from our concious culture, [can] be recognized only by the alienist. (or by the artist, for whom imagination and madness have always been kissin' cousins in our culture's anthropology.)...'every psychic process is an image and an imagining.' [jung]"
james hillman, peaks and vales

i wish everyone a new new year and for myself a spell checker included in this webblog process. leaving town tomorrow, back next week.