a piece of something i did when i got back from hotsprings sunday nite. yesterday caught up on online flash course which incidentally seems to be shaping up as very useful; like the dreamweaver course i finished a few weeks ago, it gives you enough of the little conventions and methodologies to let you figure out the rest. paid billz and otherwise caught up on daily maintenance.

but tuesdays real adventure began when i took blood glucose reading prior to meeting jerry at drum gathering in the evening. somehow i'd been on reduced basil rate for awhile and blood sugar was 388 so i cancelled and bolused a lot of insulin to correct. then fried some bacon, maybe for the first time in a year. somehow managed to dump hot grease on right hand. stuck it in cold water and drove immediately to ER.

during the maybe 2 hours i was there i told the people that i was probably getting very hypoglycemic because dinner had been interupted, and as very often is the case in these situations it was not until i reached the end of the process that the nurse doing the actual dressing listened to me and took my blood glucose reading: 35. she was amazed that i could still talk and make sense and treated me to lots of orange juice and assorted goodies.

anyway right hand is out of commission for awhile, don't think i'll be doing any drumming soon.

this picture was taken fri nite sat morning. i guess 900 tickets were sold for an intimate gathering of fanatics at the orange peel, asheville and i got one thanks to the above. i was in meditation hall at southern dharma center at the time. couldn't pass up the chance to experience our poet lauriate one more time. and it takes a lot to get me out after dark.

just returned from 4 day retreat at Enter Southern Dharma Retreat Center. i'm not sure what i thought it was going to be, but turned out to be a lot of sitting in beautiful meditation hall. drew the above there. colors wrong, but hey i gotta be me.

of course when i got back i was quickly sucked into same old backwash. so tired of thinking and not seeing, much less being. on a brighter note, changes happen.

from a group of pictures i did in 1990 i think. for postcards i was making called "things to look at".

find myself working on how to lose my temper. it'll be some kind of change.

had to fix that thing below. it was the ugliest thing i've ever put up - i hope.

but then i'm feeling ugly these days. i think it goes something like this:

"...for it is human nature, as we popularly define it, to react to insult with insult, to fear with fear, and take an eye for an eye. this is the crucial point in the whole matter. to refrain from taking revenge may be merely an escape. in my own case this has often been true. but this is not the work we have in mind, even though it may seem saintly. there is nothing to be gained in 'taking things laying down' or false martyrdom, except some spurious credit from others. no, the point is that we must really know and feel all our inner devils, and at the same time not let them possess us. and perhaps before we can know them we may have had to act them out, really see ourselves possessed by them, and really see their effects in the world. the wrong way has to precede the right way."
david hart, from vol. 3, psychological perspectives.

i guess that's what i saw in myself last night. the internalized undeveloped bitch. didn't know i had it in me.

man it is hard to believe that 5 out of 10 days a waste a couple of hours doing things like the above. i noticed a mention of the word discrimination mentioned at the friends meeting. i guess living - and being a part of - the 10,000 thing world, discriminate we must. might as well do it well.

i had a great nite last night. comfortable with the mystery. lucid dreaming, it's mutual.

very elegant flash site here:

yannarthusbertrand.org

gotta go, stuff to do.

picture above began life as ad from an old "life" magizine, so to speak. a treasure trove of visual material. now i won't have to think any more for awhile.

site was inexplicably down today until a few minutes ago. i think it's the equinox.

went to aville peace demonstration yesterday, walked downtown and milled around for 5 or 6 hours. observations? polerization as in late 60's has nowhere near set in, police and civilians were all cool. for some reason the three speakers that seemed to be really saying something were all woman. one was a poet named i think melinda. her piece was so powerful and right on plus about way more than the war, that it floored me. had to seek her out and shake her hand. a very emotional talk by woman ex-marine. and then the spokeswoman for the "women in black" read a really powerful indictment.

made it to friend's meeting this am and stayed around for 2 hour practice, kind of like meditation, contemplation. after this week, it was a welcome relief.

Another bit of nothing much: this one i found penciled in a book i don't remember buying, much less reading.

an ocean full of itches
a sky full of scratch
i believe it is an elliptical reference to the neo-hellenistic pseudo-alexandrian description of the kosmic situation immediately following the biblical creation of up and down.

today i'm going to go to the global peace demonstration. i am not going to blow a 50 amp fuse.

very rainy, dark day. the kind i love. stay home and brood, pace, sit, paint and have fun.

woke up at 5, planning to take truck in for minor fix at 8, got totally sidetracked, now i'll take it in tomorrow & maybe not have to walk home 2 miles in the rain.

heard a little bit of news last nite on shortwave. chaney the man of steel - or is it oil? - stated that if kerry had been in charge, saddam would still be in power.

this is an example - many more to follow - of why the democrats need edwards as point man. instead of noodling around for an adequate response, it would take him about a new york minute to point out that that was probably true, but osama and friends would have been hunted down, and the proliferation of small mobile islamic terrorist groups could be waning. in other words we could have been dealing with the enemy, not some boogy man.

this is from a pencil drawing my friend bev in canada sent me. as usual, i played with it before i put it up.

big news here is forsythia is out in full bloom, making it official: spring has sprung. (altho it is very possible in the smokey mountains for it to snow a time or two later on.)

2nd tai chi class this morning. i like it very much so far and think my instincts were right on that drove me to it.

finished first pass at mimi's website and put it up early this morning.

got a temporary crown yesterday. first time in the dental world in some time.

and like that, y'know?

i like this drawing. close up from notebook i did 2 nights ago.

this whatever-it-is site is getting more difficult for me to keep up. i think content is a puzzle for me these days. anything having to do with politics, technology, even the continuing and sometimes amusing meme parade is way too far away. i can't see it anymore.

this phenomena is not unique to me; for instance is related to low voter turnout.

it's a problem because political, cultural, technological, and artistic action are all needed to avoid the mega greek tragady we inhabit.

my own relationship to the world of 10,000 things feels very different to me now then it did long ago, and even not so long ago.

so what i am getting at is the lack of trenchent cultural commentary leaves me with only pictures to post.
unless i want use this site in a more "personal" way and air out my inner life. and i don't, not because i am too inhibited to try putting that realm into words, but because i don't think it belongs there. it lives face-to-face with another human - or tree i guess - in personal, honest, two-handed coversation.

last couple of days very intense, little sleep, i am reminded of that great line of burning spear's "...when i was regaining my energy...". took first tai-chi class, had first theraopeutic message, saw dickie betts and friends - i think they played 4 hors - and i can't stand still when he is on and he was on. up early next morning and spent day with sam driving around table rock- hawk's bill area. gorgeous day. it is so entirely positive to spend some time with old friends.

if you have any interest in the future of the web you might want to check this out:

Search upstarts storm Google's gates | CNET News.com

one of the interesting search engines in the pipeline is group oriented. that is, for a group with a common interest, the collective searches would somehow (can you say "synergisticalay? can you spell it?) increase search results of the context you have in mind.

ok so i am not making sense.

found a new old notebook the other day. here's a sample from it:

woven wonder
delightful heart
simple enough
to only start.
complex beauty
accelerates pain.
the sky jewel
accepts the rain.
wet with wonder,
without care,
mind drawing images
written in air"

another day. they just keep coming. so far.

interesting day yesterday. had oilpaint lesson in the morning from new friend (i hope) dan. excellant teacher for me because i am just interested in the nature of oil paint, how it mixes, how it flows, how brush is loaded. etc. i have no interest in composition, perspective etc. becuase i am blessed with a zillion images, endless, in my head.

the images i've been posting the last week or so are a game: i sit down and see how quick i can come up with something for the day. a cyber-doodle or maybe rorshach event.

in the afternoon i visited karen and very much enjoyed the conversation. she leant me the episcopal hymnal in which i will try to locate a song elizabeth mentioned a few weeks ago. don't remember the words, but they resonated with me, in fact almost knocked me out of my chair.

today i start tai-chi, looking to develop flow and balance.

got a PC richard gave me spread all over the living room, trying to fix it and get it up and running. why? i don't know, just to "see what happens", my mantra lately.

tomorrow nite going to see dicky betts play. nite on the town. past my bedtime. i have seen him on a good nite play as well as anyone on the planet. friday going to try real hard to get to table rock a good ways north and east of here. for reasons entirely unknow to me this has become holy grail for me. everyone needs a holy grail.

no image today. ninian arrived from tennessee a day early, , so we walked downtown, wondered around, feet on the ground. it was another gorgeous day to stumble forward. worked on mimi's website, hoping to have version 1 up this week. wrote a letter to someone who may be a figment of my overwrought imagination.. checked lunar colander. busy 3 days ahead for me, beginning with dentist's appointment this am (toothache).

began reading attitudes and latitudes by thomas friedman. he's a funny one. his grasp of the Palestinian dilemma seems accurate and helpful, but his insistence on inevitable globism seems a little Darwinian - peoples that can't keep up go under. at least that's what i got from his last book.

watched a bit of the sunday news shows instead of going to friend's meeting. the sound was off. i think the bushies (they are not real republicans) have got the democratic candidate they want to run against. kerry just doesn't come across on the tube. my advice for what it is worth: he needs to play up a lincolnesque persona, not grow a beard but evolve from craggy to just a touch of haggard, thoughtful, deep. edwards as VP is crucial, he's the only guy who can respond tit for tat to the deluge of public innuendo the bushies have lined up for kerry. and he can unravel the mimetic tangle they are going to tie kerry in knots with. in a heartbeat.

the spread of pseudo-democracies across the globe has highlighted an unnoticed trend: fake elections. remember the soviet union? all of the 3rd world countries with their various ways to have an "election" that one way or another is a setup? they are just beginning the process, do not have the infrastructure or cultural history to use the electoral process in an ideal manner.

we, on the other hand, are evolving past the electoral way. public relations - a bland description of a well worn manipulative path - and big money has pulled the plug on our own elections. witness the last presidential election. it was an invisible coup-d'etat.

as far as the republican ads featuring bush puffed up in front of 9/11, let him wrap himself up in that image. then ask why it happened, why planes weren't scrambled per SOP, and why we responded by declaring war on a nation state when the enemy is a group of "super-empowered individuals" (friedman).

above: today's picture, done in a flash. below: something i found in one of my notebooks:

"wingin' down the highway
in a '64 ford.
i can do it my way
or fall on my own sword.
the feeling is too dangerous
the sun has sunk too low.
the Friend must be hiding out
lost in a taillight glow."

3.6.4

totally depressed yesterday, couldn't make a move. today i awoke feeling amazingly well. took care of a little houskeeping business and finally, after a loooong time, determined that i can walk downtown from here in 30 minutes.

checked out a few books from branch library yesterday (so i guess i could make some kind of move after all) and while i was there scanned a few magazines. was reminded there is no way i can use them as a source of information.

item: the first newspaper published in the usa said in the first issue that it would be published whenever there was anything important to report.

item: 40 years ago k. vonnegut maintained that "visceral knowledge" was all that you needed to know the news.

item: title of one of robert bly's books:news that stays news

i call it "snooze".

Daily Devotional: "In his essay, �Peaks and Vales,� Jungian analyst James Hillman writes of cultivating the vales of our low-lying moods. Compared to the glittering peaks of spiritual aloofness-the Mount Siniai of the spirit- the bottomlands of our despair are fertile with imagination and insight.

The brooding desolation of such depressed emotional landscapes, Hillman writes, was described by the poet John Keats as "the vale of soulmaking." To Keats "the use of the world"-the defeats and dejection�s of everyday life-was that it forged the individual soul.

But the plunge from the heights of spiritual joy into the depths of spiritual darkness often feels like the loss of faith. In the grip of such darkness, life seems meaningless, a landscape drained of color.

"I felt that the ground on which I stood was crumbling,� wrote the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy of his own crisis of faith, "...that I had no reason for living..."

In the Words of James Hillman, Psyche's Hermetic Highwayman: "Neglect of beauty neglects the Goddess, who then has to steal back into the departments as sexual harassment, into the laboratories as 'research' experiments with sex and gender, and into the consulting rooms as seductive assignations."

Country song i started writing last nite; actually, it started writing me:

"i'm feeling like an empty sky
when the clouds they blow away.
the woman just walked out
she had nothing more to say.
i knew her but i didn't
that was just her way.
i bought it all, the good and bad,
the nightime and the day.
love demands a price.
it must have a say:
the silence of indifference
can blow away the play."

twangy, huh?

picture is another quickie. sort of. skipped trip to table-rock, too ragged. pleasant walk around the paris of the south with friend ninian this morning who was visiting from out of town and is now on his way to... nasheville? somewhere like that.

me, i'm going to hide under the bed for 4 days or so.

[later]

just caught a little of the newz. apparently trench coats are the hot new fashion item, so the economy is going to be all right.

this blog has never been one of a confessional nature. st. augustine started the genre, words describing the personal, interior life as it occurs and is remembered. today the interior life is well established, and most would agree that words do not do it justice.

but i'm going to have to get into it because my head and heart are mourning for the loss of a beautiful person in my life, someone far smarter than me, far more observant, and much quicker than i. (all of the women in my life were and are much quicker.)

things i learned:

suffering is highly overrated. i heard it last week, it finally sank home this week.

my point at the time was that it exists in a relationship and can be tolerated and worked with because the relationship is worth it - to both of us and also to whatever the kosmos is.

her point seemed to be that that might not be the case. wreckage ensued.

this week i looked at a handout on the key distinctions of nondual therapy by david fenner. common deserata if you will:

broading the river of the mind: not making a problem out of problems.
letting things be: the practice of noninterference.
doing nothing and knowing nothing.
being intimate yet detached
doing nothing until it is obvious.

i blew every one of these precepts last week. and i'm paying for it. and i'm surprised, i thought i was capable of feeling and acting along these lines. what a lesson in humility.

for what it's worth, fenner lists some of the personal attributes that might keep me or you from access to the above wonderful and oh so necessary qualities:

attachement to suffering
the habitual need to be doing something
the need to know - what is happening and where we are
the need to create meaning

yeah, i still got them all. do you?

i really don't know what i'm doing. i am maybe experiencing a time when thoughts only get in my way, especially repetitive obsessive thoughts about loss of connection to value and meaning. but these and other thoughts are becoming more and more like background muzak. i am happy to say the thought-stream is more and more distant. it's not like you lose your mind; it's still there, and if a moment contains a surprise, like for example you have to go shopping, you just do it. mind kicks in. nothing is lost. mind based actions seem to be on-demand. there when you need them.

the mind buzz when on idle is obtrusive but for me is less and less so - may it always be so. but truthfully it's still there, the monkey mind.

in a recorded conversation i heard between k. wilber and rabbi Salman Schachter, the rabbi - who seemed like a real kick to talk with - remarked that he thought buddhism needed to look again at the eight-fold path:
1. Right Knowledge
2. Right Thinking
* Decide to set a life on the correct path
3. Right Speech
4. Right Conduct
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

he thought because the human world has changed that

Right Relationship

should be added. relationship with you, with the world.

whatever a right relationship might look or feel like i do not know, but thinking, the mind, the future, secrets, fear of harming others because of personal worthlessness, helplessness, or hoplessness, fear of doing the wrong thing, none of these serve as the basis of right relationship. they might be part of it as we are after all humanoid. but acceptance of the luminous gift with all that entails is what matters.