Sunday, February 29, 2004

ww

"forgiveness is the engine of survival". leonard cohen, the future.
today i'm feeling particularly stupid. so now maybe i can relax.

Saturday, February 28, 2004

2.28.4

i had a strange reverie yesterday. i was back in the tempo room in chapel hill during my youth. it was as usual your standard underground sleazy collage bar, dank with the smell of beer, dark, and crowded. i was standing behind the crowd at the bar talking with ben jones, who later became "cooter" on the dukes of hazzard and subsequently congressman from georgia.

we were talking about the human attribute "crazy". two of our friends at the bar were the exemplars of the discussion. can't exactly remember who they were. in those days there were many choices.

i seem to remember making the point quite clearly that one was crazy but beneficent. the other crazy but malevolent. in other words, "crazy" had nothing to do with character or disposition. "crazy/sane" had no bearing on the inner predisposition. the former does not have the significance and meaning the latter has.

course with all the little people running around in our head (hey, i didn't say it, jung did) we get to sample all of the above. live and burn.

Friday, February 27, 2004

"... and if I shed a tear I won't cage it.
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it.
I won't fear love."
-- Sarah McLaughlin, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

shows you how much i know; i figured Sarah McLaughlin was a literary figure, maybe a poet, when i ran across the above....maybe she is.

i don't much care for the quicky pics i've been posting this week. somethings take the time they take.

rereading hillman's the thought of the heart. let me flip it open to a page and maybe i can find something that illuminates why:

"a second fundamental trait of this cardiac conciousness has been described by d.h. lawrence in his symbolic physiology:

'at the cardiac plexus...there in the center of the breast, we have a great new sun of knowledge and being...how i only know the delightful revelation that you are. the wonder is no longer within me, my own dark, centrifical exultant self. the wonder is without me. the wonder is outside me... i look with wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is outside me, beyond me...'

"...thus we can affirm the heart's illusions as necessary for the sophistication of its imaginings. it will be aware that its realities are not real and its irrealities are real, that its feelings are its truth and yet these feelings are fantasies of its desire and auras of its images, that as it loves it lies to further invent its love, and that the sensate sulphuric world with which it burns is so compelling because of our heart-hunger for forms, for beauty, which that sensate world embodies. the heart would be touched, asks that the world touch it with tastes and sounds and smells; aisthesus; touched by the image."

hmmm... maybe this isn't exactly what i was looking for but it's what i found.

Thursday, February 26, 2004

snowday

this picture is kind of crude - about he last thing (so far) i wrote in my notebook. i'm doing a picture every day this week and putting it up the same day. you know, just to see what happens. (that seems to be the story of my life: and i still don't know what happens).

snowed all day. i was out in it maybe 5 minutes.

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

6
happy birthday Meher Baba and
many happy returns


question of the day: can you live in the now and your head at the same time?

i've got nothing to say about it. my thoughts are so close and yet so far away. they wax and wane like the moon. beauty, truth, and the good never change. (thank you plato and keats). the mind never stops changing. mine roared through here about an hour ago, destination unknown. because it doesn't have one, the track is a circle. dizzy from the endless trek through meaningless tunnels, mighty mountains, lush green valleys, and stone deserts, the mind chugs on: "i think i can, i think i can, i think i am, i think i am."

i've heard it said more than once that "mind must go". do i have to go with it?

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

c

Monday, February 23, 2004

2.23.4

Sunday, February 22, 2004

friday afternoon, on the way back from an appointment, i decided to stop and spend some time downtown in the paris of the south, aville. it was a gorgeous day and i strolled around, stopping here and there. so many new shops, street life up and running. i paid a visit to the old tried and true newstand, where a large format book of plates of the cezanne collection at the hermitage jumped out into my hands which i bought for $10. the plates are amazing, well printed and including closeups. I have always admired cezanne, but the closeups of some of his earlier work astounded me.

i looked unsuccessfully for CD by dave olney, wheel (LoudHouse Records: David Olney/The Wheel). dave is another of the old chapel hill bunch who lives in nasheville and works as a fulltime songwriter and performer. i've heard one cut from this cd, "god-shaped hole", which blew me away. as real as it gets.

i decided then and there to spend more time out of the house from now until the weather gets too hot. i've spent enough time underground, time for a little daylight.

yesterday a visit to dr. r's world, very pleasant interlude. driving back, i noticed a storefront and sign i hadn't noticed before. i may be mistaken, but the sign read "deja-vu dialysis". catchy but mysterious.

Friday, February 20, 2004

according to the conventional thinking - or maybe feeling - bush and the corporate oligarchy that have hijacked the government are in trouble. the spreading bubble of unease felt by just about everyone has been transforming into the thought that the 5 or 6 people running the government by fiat, PR, and outright lies have to go.

my own opinion is what it was several months ago.

one, the cabel will not go gracefully. the shakier thier hold on the public becomes, the more backup shenannigans they are putting in place. the most obvious is the trick being talked about lately, capture osama right before the election.

two, i don't think kerry is the man to snake through the barrage of dirty tricks that lay in wait. i thought, and still think, that any democrat can win the election, provided they have one ability: to talk straight in such a way that it penetrates the wall of media and gets through to you and me. i don't think kerry can do this - his mediated persona too stiff, his words too reminescent of rehearsed and learned thoughts from advisors. i think he is a good man, but the skull and bones wealthy and priviliged background he comes from seems could be a vast negitive.

edwards, on the other hand, can talk straight in such a manner that he gets through. he is the man who can navigate through the semantic traps of the public discourse without losing a beat. slick lawyer though he is, or maybe because he is, he could twist the oligarchy into pretzels, and tell it like it is.

it's late, but i'm behind edwards. or maybe i'm just behind.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

below are two reviews of a book and a movie forwarded to me by my friend tharpa d. they are worth posting here because they both seem to clearly articulate the rising inchoate feelings of humans everywhere. my comments are colored red.

-----------

CORPORATION AS PSYCHOPATH By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman February 17, 2004

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000174.html

People ask -- Rob, Russell, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What can we do about it?

We say -- read one book, see one movie.

Unfortunately, the movie and the book are available now only in Canada.

But wait -- before you head north of the border -- they will be available here in a month or so.

And believe us, it is worth the wait. (Full disclosure -- our work -- the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s -- is featured in the movie.)

The book is titled: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. It is by Joel Bakan (Free Press, 2004).

The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.

We've seen an advance copy of the movie.

We're read an advance copy of the book.

And here's our review:

Scrap the civics curricula in your schools, if they exist.

Cancel your cable TV subscriptions.

Call your friends, your enemies and your family.

Get your hands on a copy of this movie and a copy of this book.

Read the book. Discuss it. Dissect it. Rip it apart.

Watch the movie. Show it to your children. Show it to your right-wing relatives. Show it to everyone. Organize a party around it. Then organize another.

For years, we've been reporting on critics of corporate power -- Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.

[i saw noam chomsky talk about his new book last week on c-span. i hadn�t followed him through the years and now regret it. he is lucid and right on about so many things that are virtually �unspeakable� in our world today. he was cited for always speaking (and writing) in a calm manner, no rants, no shouts, no banging on the table. his new book:Amazon.com: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) see also Chomsky Archive]

For years, we've reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.

But Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.

The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here -- which in our view is still a long shot -- the U.S. after all is not Canada -- it could have a profound impact on politics.

The filmmakers juxtapose well-shot interviews of defenders and critics with the reality on the ground -- Charles Kernaghan in Central America showing how, for example, big apparel manufacturers pay workers pennies for products that sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States -- with defenders of the regime -- Milton Friedman looking frumpy as he says with as straight a face as he can -- the only moral imperative for a corporate executive is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.

[i disagree: the only legal imperative is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.]

Others agree with Friedman. Management guru Peter Drucker tells Bakan: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast." And William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.

Of course, state corporation laws actually impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make money for shareholders. Engage in social responsibility -- pay more money to workers, stop legal pollution, lower the price to customers -- and you'll likely be sued by your shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, puts it this way: "The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine (shark seeking young woman swimming on the screen). There isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed."

Business insiders like Monks and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, lend needed balance to a movie that otherwise would have been dominated by outside critics like Chomsky, Moore, Grossman and Rifkin. Anderson calls the corporation a "present day instrument of destruction" because of its compulsion to "externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it externalize."

"The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction," Anderson says, as pictures of biological and chemical wastes pouring into the atmosphere roll across the screen.

Like Republican Kevin Phillips is doing as he criss-crosses the nation, pummeling Bush from the right, Anderson and Monks are opening a new front against corporate power from inside the belly of the beast. They are stars of this movie and book.

The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point -- the corporation is a psychopath.

[years ago i worked at a major corporation with a programmer who said �any group or institution of over 25,000 people is psychopathic, despite the fact that all 25,000 people are fundamentally not�. that was awhile back, and i�m not sure the latter part of that statement holds true today...]

Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.

The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.

Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.

Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that "we're number one, we're the best."

Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.

And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast.

No better place to start than right here.

Read the book.

Watch the movie

Organize for resistance.

............

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

------------

CORPORATIONS NEED TREATMENT, DOCUMENTARY ARGUES By Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service / Common Dreams January 20, 2004

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-03.htm

TORONTO - Corporations are not only the most powerful institutions in the world, they are also psychopathic, a new Canadian documentary on globalization elegantly argues.

While the corporation has the rights and responsibilities of "a legal person", its owners and shareholders are not liable for its actions. Moreover, the film explains, a corporation's directors are legally required to do what is best for the company, regardless of the harm created.

[corporations legally are people but there are some differences: they can live forever, and get away with murder.]

What kind of person would a corporation be? A clinical psychopath, answers the documentary, which is now playing in four Canadian theatres.

"Everything we do in the world is touched by corporations in some way," says 'The Corporation' writer Joel Bakan.

Six years ago he was researching a book on the subject and teamed up with documentary makers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and then set out to drum up enough money to make the film and to do more than 40 interviews.

"Corporations are the most dominant institutions on the planet today. We thought it was worth taking a close look at what that means," Bakan told IPS.

[throughout the last millennium perhaps the dominant institution has been in some ways invisible, the same way water is invisible to a fish. for instance in medieval europe the catholic church was regarded not so much as an institution as reality. ditto today with the free market, profit, and acquisition. they have been regarded as �the way the world works�.]

In law, today's corporations are treated like a person: they can buy and sell property, have the right to free expression and most other rights that individuals have.

This legal creativity came as a result of U.S. businesses using the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- designed to protect blacks in the U.S. South after the Civil War -- to proclaim that corporations should be treated as "persons".

The filmmakers show four examples of corporations at work -- including garment sweatshops in Honduras and Indonesia -- to demonstrate that this "legal person" is inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.

The corporation, the film points out, ignores any social and legal standards to get its way, and does not suffer from guilt while mimicking the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.

A person with those character traits would be categorized as a psychopath, based on diagnostic criteria from the World Health Organization (WHO), points out the film.

Unlike 'Bowling for Columbine' -- to which it has been compared -- 'The Corporation' does not follow a shambling yet crusading interviewer (Michael Moore) into corporate head offices to ask tough questions.

Instead the filmmakers use simple but beautifully lit head and shoulder shots of its subjects against a black background. The interviewer is never seen or heard; the corporate chiefs, professors and activists speak directly to the viewer.

The technique is so compelling that not listening or turning away would seem impolite.

The interviews are interspersed with archival footage from many sources, including scenes from sweatshops and news conferences. It also includes some ironic and darkly humorous excerpts from corporate ad campaigns and training films from the 1940s and '50s.

But the film is not a rant. It gives ample time to corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) and representatives of right-wing organizations, like Canada's Fraser Institute.

Fraser's Michael Walker tells viewers that hungry people in the developing world are better off when a sweatshop pays them 10 cents an hour to make brand name goods that sell for hundreds of dollars.

And it is just good business sense that a corporation moves to seek out more hungry people when its workers demand higher wages and better working conditions, Walker argues.

Many others are less ruthless. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, is honestly concerned about protecting the environment. Under his guidance, Shell adopted many green initiatives and a commitment to developing renewable energy.

At the same time, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists were hung in Nigeria for protesting Shell Oil's pollution of the Niger Delta.

Social critic and linguist Noam Chomsky -- the subject of Achbar's 1992 award-winning 'Manufacturing Consent' -- carefully points out that people who work for corporations, and even those who run them, are often very nice people.

The same could have been said about many slave owners, he observes. The institution -- not the people -- is the problem, Chomsky argues.

Eminent economist Milton Friedman sums up the role of the corporation succinctly: it creates jobs and wealth but is inherently incapable of dealing with the social consequences of its actions.

'The Corporation' documents a bewildering array of these consequences -- including the deaths of citizens who protest corporate ownership of their water in Cochabamba, Bolivia -- that demonstrate the extent and power of today's corporations.

It looks at the often-cozy relationships between corporations and fascist regimes, such as that of IBM and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.

It demonstrates the power of advertising to create desires for luxury items, as well as how corporations can suppress information.

The documentary shows agribusiness corporation Monsanto successfully preventing the news media from airing a story about the potential health hazards of a genetically engineered drug given to many U.S. diary cows.

'The Corporation' also tells a number of success stories, including activists' successful fight to overturn corporate patents on the neem tree and basmati rice.

Bolivia's Oscar Olivera describes how citizens of Cochabamba city re-took control of their water. The lesson, he explains, is the people's capacity for "reflection, rage and rebellion" as an effective counter to corporate globalization

That is one of the film's messages, says Bakan. "We want people to understand that they can change things."

"Everyone keeps thanking us for making the film," says Mark Achbar, from the Sundance festival of independent films in Utah state.

"People are fed up with being talked down to and enjoy being intellectually engaged," he adds, trying to explain the documentary's popularity and several international festival awards.

Despite its current limited distribution in Canada, 'The Corporation' has been sold as a three-part, one-hour TV series to international markets, and Achbar is hoping it will be translated into Spanish.

Of course, there will not be a multi-million marketing campaign. The number of people who will see it will depend on those who have, spreading the word.

That is just one way to take back the power that corporations have usurped.

http://www.thecorporation.tv

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

hart


finished this watercolor this morning, although i had to resort to secret sauce to do so.

this week will be devoted to R&R, rest and recovery. hope i can do both.

here's an interesting site by somebody who articulates well the things we all feel and know in our ... oops, almost said heart. shall we go with gut?

from
After the Future: Jack Whelan: "What's the program? It has to start with curbing the influence of big money. I see this as the single most important issue and without having dealt with it effectively, nothing substantive is possible in the political sphere."

Monday, February 16, 2004

the winter bluz have really set in. lotta long faces around, twitchy. i have for some time thought that this phase did not start until march. but that was based on another time and another place. the winter bluz are here now.

yesterday was one of the longer days of my life.

my friend john r asked me today about all this "heart" business. come to find out he associated it with the western picture of "heart", all sappy and goofy and satin red. i was thinking of "heart" in the eastern manner, something to act from and on, a connection to beauty. beauty is reality, reality is beauty. a doorway.

then there is rilke:

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying."

then there's the laundry.

Saturday, February 14, 2004

hart

Friday, February 13, 2004

woke up. got out of bed. pulled the covers over my head.

finished three more long chapters in book i am typesetting, caught up on online course. washed the dishes and vacuumed. work as distraction.

then this jumped into my head:

"...that the thought of the heart is the thought of images, that the heart is the seat of the imagination, that imagination is the authentic voice of the heart, so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively."
james hillman
the thought of the heart

Thursday, February 12, 2004

long 24 hours. i think i am beginning to see with new eyes. the illumined world presents itself through the heart. head bobs along behind. it is a good day to be now.

the soul is messy, earthbound, fluid, moist, lives in the damp valleys, near water. spirit enfolds souls. the pull of a beautiful woman's soul illuminates the dark spaces of the heart and illuminates the world in a suprising novel new manner. continually.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

still here. wilber meeting last night a bit much for me. made it to doc by 7:45am this morning. another at ten am tomorrow, but big snow might derail appointment.

on another subject entirely, what do you do after your heart has been opened? me, i'm depressed.

Monday, February 9, 2004

got this from tharpa d. "onelist" just now. don't know what book it is from. but hillman seems to be suffering an eclipse right now, and it's good to remember what his subject matter was (is):

"We cannot go further . . . because we are bereft in our culture of an adequate psychology and philosophy of the heart, and therefore also of the imagination. Our hearts cannot apprehend that they are imaginatively thinking hearts, because we have so long been told that the mind thinks and the heart feels and that imagination leads us astray from both. Even when the heart is allowed its reasons, they are those of faith or of feeling, for we have forgotten that philosophy itself --the most complex and profound demonstration of thought-- is not 'wisdom' or 'truth' in an abstract sense of 'sophic'. Rather, philosophy begins in philos arising in the heart of our blood, together with the lion, the wound, and the rose. If we would recover the imaginal we must first recover its organ, the heart, and its kind of philosophy."

-James Hillman

Sunday, February 8, 2004

sunscl

why is this picture a cyber-doodle? 'cause i did it to substitute for the text that i can't write. i am in one of those limbic modes where words seem to take care of themselves. you know, like:

"it's all good."

and it is.

Saturday, February 7, 2004

nice birthday. i used to go to great lengths to deny them, but i just let this one slide by.

a little dionysian revelry last night, good for the soul.

my first experience with DSL outage - yesterday around noon i couldn't log on, tried a few things and phoned bellsouth support. after the usual beeps and clicks i didn't hear what i expected - "outage in your area" - but got into trouble shooting lines and modem. really did not want to do this so left it dysfunctional. phoned about 8 tonight, recorded message "your area has just recovered from an outage, you may have to reboot etc."

now why didn't they tell me that to begin with?

doug b. phoned this after noon, over at steve and racheal's, reitzals, doug, pleasant afternnon of conversation.

ok it's 9:41 pm est. i'm going to sign off and see how quickly i can get the image of the day done. ready, set, go...

sunscrawl

Friday, February 6, 2004

sq

heard from old friend of mine, chris m. this morning. since it is my bday tomorrow and i am, as they say, "older than i was then now", i can't resist including a snippet of his email:

"Sorry to be so long in getting back to you- computer and other defunctnesses. I�m very glad to hear from you- I have such a vivid memory of you from Chapel Hill, particularly one of you pacing back and forth and saying "I feel like a lion in an invisable cage," which I thought was the coolest thing."

time do slip away, don't it?

Thursday, February 5, 2004

spent yesterday at the computer and the easel. cold gray day but by 4 it was sunny but still cool. took an hour downtime walk 5-6, beautiful warm light glowing from the treetops. recorded a long guitar piece i think i can work with.

been working on dreamweaver online course since 6 this morning. now it's up and out to run errands before freezing rain hits around noon.

BTW it is my birthday this coming saturday. be sure to ship titanium g5 notebook computer to get here on time, as well as digital camcorder and camera.

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

everything is fine, it's all good. i'm having a slow day, worked on book ms., a painting, and caught up online class assignments. 2 hour horizontal daze while i sort of listened to some news. now it's off to Ken Wilber group. damn i live an exciting life.

Monday, February 2, 2004

mmg

a doodle a day keeps the doctor away. actually i'm half-way normal. we won't talk about the other half.

i just finished library book by Richard Morgan: altered carbon by richard k. morgan. this is a first novel and even though i don't much read science-fiction anymore, i really enjoyed it. first novel of any kind that i've enjoyed in a long time.

if you like william gibson you'll love it.

Sunday, February 1, 2004

comfusion

oh boy. got blindsided yesterday. closed out. omitted. rejected.

& of course this brings trailing behind it the feverish musings of the mind: did i do it? is it someone else's problem? is it mine?

the empty echos of knocking on a door where nobody's home?

or, as Sri Ramana Maharshi said, "who's knocking?"