another postcard from nowhere. i actually got lost in this sucker for 4 hours yesterday. close to finishing 2 oils.

pleasant surprise visit from lowell yesterday. always interested in sharing notes with folks who navigated thru the same worlds i did to arrive here & now, bemused, disgusted, puzzled, thankful, and looking foward with mixed feelings about what might lie ahead down the road.

reading an old (96 special 5th anniversary issue) issue of tricycle richard lent me. about the relationship between the psychdelic era and the buddhist explosion that has occured since then.

item:
"there are probably 25 million americans who have taken LSD and who would, if pressed in private, also tell you that it profoundly changed their lives, and not neccessarily fot the worst.

i will readily grant that some of these are hopeless crystal worshipers or psychedelic derelicts creeping around oregon woods. but far more of them are successful members of society, CEOs, politicians, teachers, ministers, and community leaders."

john perry Barlow
from the above mentioned tricycle issue.

i would make 2 comments:
one:
this is an observation that many live with, but one that is not reflected in mediated concensus
reality. taboo meme?

and two: so what?

art folks - if you happen to land here, note that this site is for friends, family, admirers, my sanity, and various concentric spheres. in other words an excercise in mental health.

picture a day keeps the doctor away. keeps mine away anyway. that's all i'm going to post for awhile, new picture done on the day i post it.

but i think that at this juncture it is maybe more important than ever to act politically, even though i also think what is happening is past politics. there is a part of me that says just let it go. another part that feels it is time to speak up, out, and over. talk past the noise. it's just that i'm so much into silence these days. then again maybe that makes for clearer conversation.

the weather has been so incredibly beautiful this week. clear, translucent, snappy. finally got out to see some of it yesterday. visited steve and friends yesterday AM for awhile and had the kim-chee omelet special for breakfast. in the afternoon took a drive with richard to big ivy, davis falls, nice walk through the mountains.

have a new plan for today. richard mentioned how he would like to take a day off and just catch up on reading. i think this is a good idea and that's what i'm going to do today. turn off the computer and try and finish "non-zero sumness and human destiny" for book club tomorrow. and putter. need to find 2 missing pieces of paperwork i stashed somewhere long ago and paperwork, as we all know, keeps the world spinning round. i'll let you know how this worked tomorrow.

this picture started out as pencil sketch in the woods this afternoon. now it's your's to enjoy. me, i gotta keep moving - slowly.

what a treat to read something about today that scans. makes sense. far larger context than is embedded in what for most of us passes for life:
from
Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East:
"German and British universities once produced spies who could speak half a dozen Arab dialects and recite the Koran from memory. Today's only superpower cannot recruit enough Arabic translators to handle routine intercepts."

tonight's delerium
what i think is that a bunch of corporate oligarchs had a coup, but kept it quiet. now that the discomfort level for everybody else is so high, even the easily led are wondering about, if not the sanity, then the common sense of this bunch.

dean seems capable of elevating the media language back to the personal. if he can talk straight long enough he might win it all. straight talk could pull in the working southener, and just about everyone else, maybe even some republicans.

if this starts to happen, the reaction of the republicans will be very interesting. peculiar events could occur.

still working on my orientation to now. got groceries and laundry today, met with counselor, bill o from hville paid a visit, got a prescription phoned in, and discovered what happens when you put guache on top of sumi on top of oil pastel on top of watercolor. the quotidean, so nice when the weather is cool, breezy and moist, rain somewhere nearby, restless cloudy day.

the difference between thinking and conciousness is finally dawning on me. anyway i think about it a lot.

got back home from a long, intense, pleasant and exhausting trip. arrived in several pieces, but not so many that i can't function. above is about the only picture i came back with.

but i did visit with all my children and their families and some old friends. all is good. the Meher Baba Center remains tangled inextricably with my present sojourn on the planet. i don't understand why, but then i don't expect to.

long drive back, only got lost once and then only briefly. still arrived back in town 2 hours after sunset, plunging down the highway through a world of blooming lights and fuzzy fast luminosity. climbing back in the saddle as we speak. lots of projects to peck away on. a lot of old and new friends phoned while i was away.

is today the first day of the rest of my life? i hope so.

back nov.17.

today had that odd off balnce feeling, not unpleasant but just a little off. beutiful weather, the trees have turned, the breeze is cool, and voices can be heard, lef-lookers gathering on the front poarches and rinking burboun.

leaving tomorrow for trip to visit old stomping grounds (chapel hill). was i doing the stomping or being stompe?

all four of my children and two grandchildren will be there and it will be a pleasure to visit with them. there is something inherently satisfactory about seeing them grow into the world while i recede from it.

then on to the Meher Baba Center in SC for a touch of the Real, a clue or two about how to live in the world.

i haven't written much lately about the world. the news. current events. i feel like i've retreated to the lobby while the scenery is being rearranged for the next act. only when the scenery is reconfigured so are we. the experience of being a person-in-the-world (or -play if you prefer) is changing.

the limitations of all institutions as the carrier of human effort and organization has reached the end of the line, and some new way to organize humans is in the wings. fear-based effort (the job, career) is evaporating. facets of human conciousness we all have but that have been successfully ignored during the past 300 years or so (the age of the descended grid - wilber) are slowly resurfacing.

a year or so ago i told my son-in-law doug, who is ultra-conventional in his outlook, that if we won the iraqi war in one day and saddam's head was delivered to the white house via fed-ex that huge monumental troubles of long duration, the likes of what we have not yet seen, would just be beginning. i haven't seen lately anything to change my mind. the question is if i and other bottom-feeders could see this, why couldn't the folks in charge of our government?

one possible answer is the nature of institutions as they now exist. to perform effectively in say the federal government or a hospital or a bank or a large corporation or university, an individual has to repress any knowledge of the outside world, has to smell and talk right, has to speak a constricted highly styalized language, has to occupy him or herself with turf battles to the exclusion of any other parts of life. to be successful in this setup is to be ill informed about other worlds. the temporal and geographical provencialism of the modern allows ignorant people (ignorence, from the verb "to ignore") to blunder into untenable situations and not have a clue that they don't have a clue. the rube oligharchy.

99% of the babble during the "run-up" to the war was inbred. imaginary constructs, straw men, empty rhetoric. false issues like, if you are "against" the war you are helping the enemy and harming our troops.

a clear straight voice from the heart speaking in the public domain could shred this kind of fantasy colloquy in a minute. if we could hear it.

life is strictly a doodle.

i'm packing, getting ready to travel, a little at a loss, a little way ahead of myself. transitions are tougher than they used to be for me. i handle it by starting way ahead of time (just as i used to try and do when i was in graphic arts). avoid the void.

on the other hand i'm using oil pastels to make a quick birthday card in the midst of this madness. of course, what other madness is there? as many as the minds of senscient beings. and they're all the same.

edwin schrodinger: "conciousness is the singular of which there is no plural."

i've said it before & i'll say it again: "a picture a day keeps the doctor away".