Tuesday, September 30, 2003

haven't slept well for about a week now. my computer and i have been in upgrade hell, but i think my 266MZ G3 is now a 500MZ G4. email sending still a little questionable but i'll tweak it tomorrow.

haven't kept up with what is happening in the so called real world, but the predictable seems to be playing out with our leaders. lost in the jungle without a clue, dragging the whole country along with them. there seems to be a feeling out there that arrogence and ignorence in the leadership doesn't pay off too well, a smattering of jubilation that it is starting to show, seams fraying. but these folks have spent a lifetime not seeing you and me, do not expect them to learn from experience.

Saturday, September 27, 2003

whichsept

Watercolor I found. My guess Is that i did it a year ago.

Haven't said much lately about the war, elections, or politics. So here goes:

The oligarchs are too insulated, isolated, they have no feel for how ordinary madmen - and women - live. like you and me. they actually think what they are doing is preserving what is an obsolete world view, i.e. world.

Joe Sixpack and I might go along with the charade of it not being a charade, but as the world of institutions, making a living, and rampant egoism tilts, shakes and trembles, we are all feeling understandably uneasy. More so every day.

And that uneasiness is a necessary step towards some kind sanity. Hope it happens soon.

Meanwhile it is a nice rainy fall evening and I'm stuck trying to open my g3 to put a zif chip in. I've opened it before but (gulp) can't remember how. Maybe I'll go sling some paint around and crash.

Friday, September 26, 2003

jeez

backing up all the pictures i have floating around i found this. i don't know who did it.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

taking a morning walk this morning, i saw a truck pass by with a bumper-sticker that read "trees please". small letters, but at least i think that was what it said.

not like the one i saw the other day: "honk if you don't exist."

but the best was what somebody said on pbs show last night:

religion is for people afraid of going to hell
spirituality is for people who have been there

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

found out today that warren zevon died. he had terminal (of course) cancer.

i don't think his was a household name, but surely we all remember "werewolves of london". he was brilliant, erratic, and put out a long string of obscure, ironic music. recovered drunk, wildman, gun nut, dangerous, smart in the best sense of the word. put out one last CD shortly before his demise.

my personal favorite (which i've been looking for for years) is "transverse city" (1989). the second cut, "run straight down", is, like the rest of the CD, like nothing i've heard before or since.

transverse


it expresses the dark side of the new world we are sliding into better than any music i know of.

http://warrenzevon.com
http://members.tripod.com/~Zevonaticism

Monday, September 22, 2003

crayon

oil pastel.


woke up this morning with very elevated blood-sugar, insulin pump ran dry during the night. one more piece of evidence that i need to do one thing at a time. too many computer conundrums, monitor fever.

so i went on sick-day routine, lots of extra insulin and water, dazed in bed until about noon. usually in my experience takes about a day to get right.

i did mess with the ongoing email problem. you don't want to know the details and i don't remember them. but i've got most of my address book back, along with all my settings, profiles, and mail.

only thing is i can receive email but can't send. about where i was 4 days ago.

the world situation brings to mind 2 lyrics from the world of rock and roll:

"there's less and less to say" -late dylan.
"i'm not talkin; thaaaat's what i got to say" -early yardbirds

Sunday, September 21, 2003

lilmat

well, the hell with it. I steadied what's left of my mind and focused on this email boondoggle today for about 11 hours. At one time I could send and receive mail, but no bookmarks. Since then things have degraded and presently I have lost address book, ability to send or receive emails, and all my bookmarks. Now I have to spend hours dampening the adrenalin, fade out as gracefully as I can, and work on some other stuff tomorrow, drive up to the parkway, paint a picture in the dark, and practice the yo-yo a bit.

talked to daughter-in-law Melissa today. Hurricane was high wind, rain, a few branches rattled. No electrical outage. I also talked to old friend George. They both said the same thing that I said, too busy to enjoy the fall. Beautiful day outside and I spent it in this cybercave.

George's problem is a little different: when he is in his cabin in Yadkin county, it ceases to be a problem.

He told me to vote for Dean, which was a useful tip since that world has really vaporized for me. But I think dean has a big problem: it's the way he looks on TV. Bob Dole, who by all accounts is a warm and decent man, had the same problem. My prediction: if they don't fix his video persona he'll lose. By fix I don't mean Hollywood, let his character be a part of the picture. If he has to resort to plain old harsh, emotional outbursts, that can win for him - as long as he is comfortable with himself and talks straight. A really optimistic outcome would be if this required straight talk. Whoever can do that from that world to this one wins. People are more than ready for it.

You may notice that I am using Bogger's new spell checker. It makes me capitalize things.

Saturday, September 20, 2003

honey i shrank the picture (below). the one that was up yesterday was too big.

still wrestling with sending email. i can receive i can't send. this has to be the simplest problem that has ever turned me into a cyber-zombie. i break off fixing it to do a few fun things but i must persevere. very severe. i hooked up cd burner, and want to pop new zif in but not until i can send you an email.

Friday, September 19, 2003

clearing

did this this morning, kind of borrowed from an older watercolor.

i'm still unable to email from netscape 7 and i've lost 2 days fooling with it. starting to think G3 266MZ is not enough to run it. will make quick workaround. getting away to do some errands now.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

car

the picture is a redo of a pencil drawing by my son eric he dis as a kid. found it on arizona trip.

i bit the bullet this morning and seriously tried to fix my email problem. all day until dinner, then i took a walk. beautiful twilight.

a phone call in the morning may end this (particular) ordeal.

meanwhile check this out: alex jones is the king of conspiricy perspective, so automatically suspect. but check him out. here is a good place to start:

"PROTECTING THE TERRORISTS / ALLOWING THEM TO ATTACK "
from
Government Prior Knowledge and Involvement in the September 11th Attacks Archive

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

green

well i tried to modulate down today, a slight drift down from hypomania, i don't care how much i get done (or don't). took a walk at 4pm and wonder of wonders a clear, crisp cool sunny day. still can't send email from ns7. today new zif chip and cd-burner should arrive.

remember:"do one thing at a time". if this rule-of-thumb is contrary to the prevailing ethos, so be it. we're talking personal survival here.

click here to hear the remarkable good sense of mr soros in last sunday's interview:

"'You know, you pass the USA Patriot Act without proper discussion. And anybody who opposed it was accused of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. So I think we've gone off the rail in this country...."
from
NOW: Politics & Economy - The World According to George Soros | PBS

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

ranch

i have been moving with long sustained hypo-maniac productive periods for more than a few days now. guess i should be thankful. i'm hanging on for dear life to the local prime injunction "do one thing at a time", but paintings, quicktime movies, primitive flash, and mp3s are falling like rain. look out! oh yeah i think i finished rework of poetry book. i'll put it up tomorrow.

as far as the 10,000 things, i'm getting the distinct impression that rumsfield will go. the universal unease is about to become capable of being talked about, which it has not been.

i saw mr. soros the gizzillionaire sunday on PBS and he talked like a human for a long time, very clear, i'll find a link to the interview and put it here.

then maybe i'll fix it so i can send email again.

Monday, September 15, 2003

toast


this might seem reasonable. it might not.

"That gave agents reason to enter the property without a search warrant, Lasater said. The agents stepped in to stop underage drinkers from getting intoxicated and making bad decisions later on in the evening, such as driving while impaired, he said.

'If you took the time to get a search warrant, the party would be over,' he said."
from
heraldsun.com: Alcohol police bring parties to an end:

Sunday, September 14, 2003

daily

today's brand new pic. off the top of my head what is happening:

cannot easily reply to or send email. trying to fix but just in fits and starts. so i'll be replying to recent mails soon.

beautiful morning, attended friend's meeting but didn't stick around to mingle.

worked on poem book most of the day. multiplexed and cleaned the domestic space.

pretty much gave up on watercolor i've been overworking. spend a little time each day finishing two oils. they seem to like this routine.

myself, i definitely feel things sliding. the uneasynease of our culture is about to be addressed. i feel we each have to be as clear as we can on what the meaning of the words are.

Friday, September 12, 2003

newrocks

i got more response on the "monad-dyad" thing than i have in a long time. it makes me think (ouch) that my cohort, our peers, are maybe more of a philosophical post-metaphysical bent than i had realized. or i guess i knew this, it was just a reminder.

thanks to radio and tv i remembered that yesterday was september 11. floated a prayer. worked on 3 pictures, 1 watercolor and 2 oils. when to stop? initiated walking regime yesterday evening, 45 minutes, and guess what? it really helped me sleep. so i'm going to slip out right now and do it again.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

wha..

todays twaddle. got up early, saw doc, got scrips, drove downtown and bought a new pair of shoes. no, not dancin' shoes. came home and twaddled all day. tomorrow i start daily walk routine in the early morning.

Tuesday, September 9, 2003

bb


still puttering. time has slowed down. endless emergents. creative burst, lots to do, doing lots.

Sunday, September 7, 2003

just got back from seeing premier of "Meher Baba: God in Human Form" at UNCA. excellant excellent production.

in the first place there is a structure that is crystal clear, which i know is one of the hardest things to do. hats off to peter nordeen who i think had a lot to do with that.

secondly, the production values were tip-top, lot of ken burns transtitions (lotta great old b & w photos to work with). nice clear soundtrack thanks john gunn. and everybody else who played a part in this movie. it presents the arc of Baba's life in a clear manner, with just enough mystery left in. not pushy. loved it.

Saturday, September 6, 2003

crankin along


picture says it all. or some of it. i got very little to say today, so i did the picture.

this morning was beautiful, more than a hint of fall. what a relief. but i stayed in front of the computer nearly all day, working on my poetry book. it's taking shape. know what i mean?

took time out to take bed apart and clean it, but i sure hurt my ribs doing it.

working on an oil, a watercolor, and a musical piece featuring guitar in open d, hawaaiin guitar in open d, and er hu chinese fiddle in key of d. course this was the culmination of a lot of tuning but i think i got it.

falling into old bad habits, so i'm going to leave computer off tomorrow, go to friend's meeting at 10 and film of Baba's life peter nordeen and (lots of) friends just finished at 4 i think. so i'm

Back in the Saddle Again

Friday, September 5, 2003

maybe summer will end. while i was waiting, happened upon something called something like "NFL Kickoff". (on tv of course).

and now i know what the "Brittany Spears" product/brand looks like in action. on the national mall, capital dome in the background, very high tech glossy translucent stage attractively hung with a billions of dollars worth of space-age electronics. where martin luther king was a hunred years ago.

the congruencies between the state, bizness, commercial sports, commercial son et lumiere, choreographed audience, and so forth was easy to see. but hard to figure out.

Brittany and a cast of hundreds of dancers, musicians, sound techs, computer people, maybe thousands, basically does a state-of-art micheal jackson world with a feminine persona. replete sexual references, but all within a closely-knit highly stylized pseudo-titillation mode, ie grabbing her crotch, jerking her legs open etc.

it's a new age with new worlds and new owners.

soon you will be seeing small crisp colorful logos on our currency.

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

azwc2
the only watercolor i did while in az last month.


dig this: another leading edge crack:

"a stark fact is being emphasized: 80 years after the discovery of insulin, a significant number of people around the world with diabetes die because they don't have access to the life-saving drug."
from
medscape

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

king of the winter



quick oil pastel. not my usual style(s). i trust it is not a sign of impending religiousity.


aint it?

slow oil pastel. done in arizona.


for a change this morning i thought i would post recent email correspondance. it is a good example of why pointy headed intellectuals like myself cannot park their bicycles straight.

reply to email---------------------------------
>
> The word monad comes from the greek word monos (from the word mono,
> which means "one", "single", "unique") and has had many meanings in
> different contexts:
>
> 1. Among the Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras) the monad was
> the first thing that came into existence.

hmmm. i thought it was eternal, unchanging, the One. so it exists beyond time and location always.

> The monad begat the
> dyad, which begat the numbers, the numbers begat points, which
> begat lines, which begat two-dimensional entities, which begat
> three-dimensional entities, which begat bodies, which begat the
> four elements earth, water, fire and air, from which the rest of
> our world is built up. The monad was thus a central concept in
> the cosmology of the Pythagoreans, who held the belief that the
> world was - literally - built up by numbers. (The source of this
> claim is Diogenes Laertius book Lives of Eminent Philosophers.)

i thought the dyad was the source of the manifest world (via chain of being). the monad somehow eminates it.

in vedic thought and other wisdom traditions there is the One (Brahma) and there is maya, sort of a consort of the One which somehow playfully produces it, and maya begins the cascade of manifest creation down to human conciousness, at which point the manifest begins the long climb back to the one. this process necessarily involves concious evolution - the personal and transpersonal conciousness. when the seer and the seen disappear bingo God realization.

the brahma-prana split is repeated by many traditions, eg parusha-prakti, nirvana-samsara, theos-logos, father son/logos, the One-Nous (plotinus), shiva-shakti, brahman-kali (ramakrishna).

> 2. Within certain variations of Gnosticism, especially those
> inspiered by Monoimus, the monad was the higher being which
> created lesser gods, or elements (similar to aeons). This view
> was according to Hippolytus inspired by the Pythagoreans.

philip k dick has a lot to say about this one, albeit in terms of sci-fi. the gnostics believed, similar to paul, that matter was evil and imperfect because it was an imperfect production of imperfect or evil maker - a false god. the real maker was far away (11 emanations or levels i think) and only infrequently broke thru into the manifest, ie like avatar.

> 3. In the writings of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, the monads
> appear as spiritual entities which make up the essence of our
> world. They do not interact with our world (are "windowless"),
> and do not have volume (do not take up space) and are thus
> impossible to detect by scientific methods. The arrangements of
> the monads make up the faith and structure of this world, which
> to Leibniz was "the best of all possible worlds".

very different monads. because they are plural. but still beyond time and location.

i'm reading wilber's online but still unpublished stuff which will i think become volume 2 of everything trilogy. he is saying there are no intermediate preexistants (as in platonic forms, jungian archtypes). instead, as conciousness evolves they become a pattern, albeit invisible. yeterday's a postori become todays a priori.

sure is fun to write about this stuff and not have a clue about it.

chris