Thursday, October 31, 2002

10.32.2

email fowarded by tucker:

----------------------------------------->

"October 30, 2002

To: Charlton Heston, President, NRA
From: Michael Moore, Winner, NRA Marksman Award
Subject: Your Visit to Tucson Today in the Wake of Another School Shooting

Dear Mr. Heston:

When you showed up in Denver to hold your pro-gun rally just days after the
massacre at nearby Columbine High School, the nation was shocked at your
incredible insensitivity to those who had just lost loved ones.

When you came to Flint to hold another rally in the months after a 6-year
old boy shot a 6-year old girl at a nearby elementary school, the community
was stunned by your desire to rub its face in its grief.

But your announcement that you are on your way to Tucson today, just 48
hours after a student at the University of Arizona shot and killed three
professors and then himself, to hold ANOTHER big pro-gun celebration --
this time to get out the vote for the NRA-backed Republican running for
Congress -- well, sir, I have to ask you: Have you no shame?

I am asking that you not go to Tucson today. Do not cause any more grief,
any more pain. Let the relatives and friends of the deceased mourn. Why
show up to play the role of the bully, kicking these good people when they
are down, just so you can prove that you have a right to your big, bad
guns? These are not the actions of a once brave and decent man. They are
the acts of a coward, as no man of courage would think of picking on his
fellow citizens when they are so consumed with tragedy.

Obviously, you couldn't care less. Because to you, The Gun is supreme --
and wherever it is used to kill multiple people (preferably at a school),
there shall we find you gloating about some misbegotten right you think you
have to own a device that is designed to eliminate human life.

Well, Mr. Heston, this time I think you have crossed the line. I hope that
your efforts as a gun supremacist -- you are now, I understand, in the
middle of a 12-state tour to help elect Republicans -- backfire on you in
the surest way that it can: total rejection of you, the NRA, and the
candidates you back come next Tuesday. The American people have had enough.


To the people of Tucson and the students at the University of Arizona, I am
so sorry for the tragedy you have suffered, and I feel terribly sad that
you will have to endure the sight of Charlton Heston and his gun nuts
today. Take some solace in knowing that your fellow Americans by an
overwhelming margin want tough gun laws -- and that the day of obtaining
them is not far away. There is one small way to make sure Heston and the
NRA are stopped in their tracks -- just check out the website of the man
(http://www.grijalva2002.com/) they have come to Tucson to defeat. Let them
pack their guns -- we will pack the polls!

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mike@michaelmoore.com"

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

10.30.2

found this in a water color magazine:

"the 20th century is, among other things, the Age of Noise...spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has one purpose - to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illuminatiiion. the condiition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and it's divine ground."

aldous huxley in 1946.

oops gotta go the telephone is ringing.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

10.27.2

the sun also sets

last watercolor i finished. couple of days ago. begun in prescott az. and no, it doesn't look like the locale.

and now sunday's sermon from brother ken wilber:

"Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quite, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to
pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. "

-- Integral Psychology , p. 106.

Saturday, October 26, 2002

10.26.2

one more saturday night.

the last time i heard the greatful dead, they played the song of the same name. and it was one more sat. nite. at the whatever it's called outdoor pavilion in phoenix, that stale hot sweltering summer night air, the band seemed small, miniature and cramped on the far away stage, and all kinds of young people holding bags of shake and enthusing how good the band was playing.

dunno if you ever saw "mad dogs & englishman" concert film with leon russell and joe cocker but the ambience was the same: trash scattered all over, sleaze running rampant, pressure, crowds, dismal lights winking in the distance: the dream was over, long since cancelled and shredded.

so why write about this now? well, it is one more saturday nite and i have that depleted, enervated and hopeless feeling that i must have made a few wrong turns somewhere. and not just me. all of us.

paul wellstone is dead. the only memeber of congress who seemed to live in the same world as i do. hopefully ben jones might be another one. and not to speculate, but why did that kingair crash on vfr landing? no smoke, no fire, just headed in the wrong direction.

the sniper extravaganza re-introduced me to late-nite AM radio. unbelievable. the o'reilly factor ("no-spin") was bad enough but his schtick seems to be curdled indignance with the media, so he scores some points. course his idea of discourse is yelling at the caller and then cutting him or her off.

but somebody named savage takes the booby prize. this guy went on for hours about how chief moose had an accent (like black accent?) and therefore should not be in a position of authority. "speak the king's english" he ranted and raved over and over. what he was speaking, stylistically speaking, doesn't have a name yet - that i am aware of - but rush limbaugh is the origion of this smug, intolerant, vituprative dialect, subtext violence, that seems to be spreading.

i got a chinese er-hu, 2 string chinese fiddle from friend barbara who spent time in china and has just returned. when i was 10-11 yrs old i lived in the southern part of tainan taiwan and these things were all over. i used to play them just for the hell of it, probably because the us govt couldn't get a school together for american dependants so i wondered around the city and countryside day after day, drinking tea and smoking cigerettes in the red light district which was full of elegant mahogany wood columns, spent a lot of time in huge temple comlex a few miles outside of town, giant statues of wrathful dieties pulling swords, pogodas full of ceramic vases holding cremation ashes, and the occaisional catacomb loaded with guns and ammo, still packed in grease.

and you wonder why i'm crazy? for the same reason you are. for some mysterious reason - to us - the spirit beyond the beyond has put us here to experience this craziness and suffering for the purpose of involution, or as plato put it "remembering" who we really is.

only i don't remember. i don't even remember 4th grade.

the push seems to be towards the state where our thoughts and emotional life are looked on like we look at the sky and trees. effortless attention. naked awareness.

only it is not easy to do this. personally - oops, probably wrong word - i think my thoughts etc are looked on with the same effortless attention with which i might gaze on a river at dusk.

but not by me. i vaguely remeber a japenese story where a monk announces it is like a distant momentary flash of concious light shining on him for a microsecond.

as an old fart chronologically preceeding the boomer bulge, i can feel the pressure of so many who have put in their time in the secular insanity wanting to spend what time they have left dealing with the real, or hyper-real, or supra real if you prefer. this will open up the culture to a last phase of life which is not reading the stock reports and playing golf, but practice practice practice.

i have been suprised by the role that creativity and expression seems to be taking in this regard. who was it, erikson? who posited the last phase of life as choice between creation and dissolution.

ok it's past my bedtime so i'm heading for sleep, but probably will listen to shortwave radio all night, chinese seguing into christian fundimentalism into arabic, little cubano rhythm on the side.

tommorrow i want to make a quaker service whre i understand quitness can leave room for the spirit - which may or may not make an appearance as is it's habit.

meanwhile i got a painting to finish and an electronic instrumental to finish. why? i don't know, i talked to an artist in prescott az last month and mentioned the reason i paint was mental health maintenance. he said "yea we all do."

Thursday, October 24, 2002

10.24.2

for those of us still learning this and that, MIT has an interesting idea: free courseware. they hope and so do i that this idea catches on.
MIT OpenCourseWare | Home

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

10.23.2

back online after several days of server problems. during this time i emailed an old friend who lives outside of richmond va and asked him what was going on. ensuing correspondance is below:

---------------------------------------------->

me:

just got back from marathon trip west, spent time with father who is
doing well and attended wedding of oldest son in las vegas which is
worse this century than last. can you give me the scoop on snipper
action in your parts? whassup?

chris
---------------------------------------------->

him:

whassup??

heads are down. walk in zig zag pattern. schools closed. crouch when you
pump gas. Have to go to Home Depot? send the wife.
Other advice. dont drive a white box truck or white van. if you're an
illegal mex dont stop at a suburban exxon to call home. dont get shot in
stomach for at least an hour after having eaten at steak house.
ignore cnn.
sniper is a lone gunman, is tandem duo freaked out on video games, an AArab
terrorist, an annie oakley wannabe, audie murphy in drag, the ghost of sgt.
york.
montgomery county police chief charlie moose is a UNC grad

if the bushies invade iraq and nuke north korea before the sniper is caught
or killed, no one in virgnia, maryland or dc will notice.

the cops are very close to catching the sniper or dont have a clue.

they should look for a crazy person with a gun; that's what i'd do. Doesn't
narrow the field much does it?

---------------------------------------------->


me:

hey man i've gotta post yr answer on my infamous web boondoggle. do you
mind? no names or ID, just another pilgrim's observations.

and it might help clear people's heads, or maybe they'll just shake them
sadly. "another bright idealistic young man who could have been a lawyer
ranting out in the boonies". well you got a lot of company.

me, i spent a night last week in the luxor pyramid in las vegas, all darth vader
and cheap tin replicas of hieroglyphic fragments. i found that you could
pound the latter and get some pretty spooky polyrhythms going.

we is having coup d'etat but no one knows cause it's secret. corporate
oligharchy had this in place before clinton bumbled along and setem back
8 years.

i saw tv coverage out yr way today. lady lamenting that her schedule was
upset said "i'd rather be shot than stay home".

make a nice epitaph.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

post away. with our very own sniper and with crazy arabs flying planes into
tall and five-sided buildings the corporate coup is not really very scary.
so many of the wall street and main street universe masters were clueless
enough to get caught and will go to jail, that i dont worry about them. in
fact i feel quite comfortable knowing that incompetents run the world; they
are so much less dangerous that west nile bearing birds, killer wood ticks,
mutating AIDS virsues and suicidal deer hell bent on crashing through your
windshield. and dont forget last summer's sharks, eating russian imigrants
at hatteras. life threatening danger is all very random, whether its sadam
gassing kurds (nobody likes kurds anyway including other kurds) or the
"small animal" (state police didnt say what kind of small animal) that, the
other night, caused two 18-year-old falls church girls to swerve and lose
control of their car on i-95 south of here and get whacked by a tractor
trailer. the truck also got the critter. the two girls could have just as
well stayed at home in falls church and gone shopping at home depot.

---------------------------------------------->

me:

maybe i am obsessive - probably am in addition to other mental maladies
- but i can't help thinking that some of these random always with us
problems - like colliding animal populations are another unintended
consequence of the present set of deal makers, power groupies, and
megarich celebratory personae.

life is bad enough - these guys are making it worse for no reason except
to distract themselves.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

well, thank god. our sniper has returned to montgomery county to communicate
with local authorities by killing a bus driver. take that charlie moose.
moose, of course, does not acknowlege that people are being capped on his
watch. he will concede that someone or someones are causing situations.
situations make charlie uncomfortable.

saturday we leave for hatteras for a week. chances are the our sniper wont
follow. as for sharks, i dont plan on going in the water. last saturday we
went to uva/unc football game in charlottesville with friends. the heels
rise to ever higher heights of mediocrity. leaves here are turning; ice the
other day in the dogs' water bowl. soon deer season will be upon us, the
season when i wear a blaze orange cap to walk about my woods and carry a
pistol in my pocket when i go chase off tresspassing hunters.

i hope someone has bagged the sniper by the time i return, tho i suspect we
will miss him when he's gone.

---------------------------------------------->#end of correspondance

Sunday, October 20, 2002

10.20.2

marsh

painted this at my father's house in arizona. no, the local landscape did not look like this.

i guess i've recovered from trip, bounced back to same old erratic hypomaniacal state. i remain fascinated by the immense distance between we the pipple and the corporate oligarchy.

got email from old friend geoff who opines that what is going on now was planned during first bush's reign, interupted by 8 years of clinton, and is now happening again. maybe this accounts for the hurry. what it does not explain is the numb response to economy, terror, and ragged edge so many of us now live.

Saturday, October 19, 2002

10.19.2

took a look at random blogs today - so many people with something to say. everythings been said. but not everyone has got to say it yet.

altho i love words, they seem increasingly...irrevelent. public discourse has more to do with alliteration and proximity of various words (like "political candidate" and "child molester", no kidding, ads in arizona are doing this; not saying one is the other, just making sure that the words appear close together).

personal discourse - ie the spoken word - seems to go like this:

"how is your mother?"

"fine".

"mine is in a wheelchair".

the question is a setup to talk about one's own world, not an inquiry into another's world.

can monads discuss liebnitz? or oprah for that matter?

and maybe blogs are a way to siphen off the human instinct to question and discuss, you know thw way the beatniks did last century instead of working, siphen off the wooly words into the iredescent white blast of beyond the beyond. like a prayer? naaah, more like a spell to keep away the electronic demons.

talk about sliding signifiers: what does rock star, social butterfly, coach potato, village idiot, and mainstream media mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

Friday, October 18, 2002

10.18.2

Back Online

Got back from wild west and other stops a few days ago. been hiding under bed, knawing on fingernails, wondering why.

while i was away the sniper saga started. the war didn't. saw lot of political ads in arizona saying the other guy was soft on child molesters. eric & angela's wedding in las vegas was a once in a lifetime event, met lots of nice people, a few from one of my former lives.

don't have enough energy to talk about las vegas except to say i have seen the future and it winks and blinks and you have to stand in line for everything.

later: more.