Saturday, December 31, 2005

suneye2

the last day of the year. i get flashes of ancestors huddled in caves dreaming while the icepack outside decides to fade away. hibernation heebie-jeebies.

i don't think I've posted the image above before, but it is a rubbing taken from les oiseux qui rit neanderthal cave complex high in the mountains between france and spain.

but that's another story.

here is another one. lately it has been running in and out of my mind from time to time so i read it this morning:

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyskrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

W.H. Auden

Friday, December 30, 2005

dkitchen

what am i going to do on the last day of a demented year? first figure out when that might be... ok i just did and now have a day to figure out the answer.

up at 6 this morning fooling with social security part D which, while maybe not as confusing as i thought, is like throwing a bottle stuffed with message into the sea. someday something might splash back.

--------> look for more here later today. new! improved!

Thursday, December 29, 2005

whitetrees

today's glyph: sketchy.

today i frame and send last 2 pictures spilling over from the shopping season. work out part D of social security plan D. for those of you unfamiliar with this mess, i think that even with life and death involved a lot of folks are just going to let it be whatever it may be.

and this may be a good thing.

because lack of interest may cause governments, corporations, institutions to fade away. it might be the only answer.

of course this would be balanced by an increase of attention paid to other things like living as if it matters.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

stlvs

spent the night in utah in a fever in the hills.

or somewhere like that. locked in a dream that wouldn't end. some winter-bound small town with a large 7 story building in the middle. back and forth all night long getting something ready. small infants helping, me keeping them on task, which meant rounding up, running after, handing out needed implements. like buttons. each time we had to re-enter building it was by stealth, sneaking thru drainpipes. clock tickin all the time. i'm not sure we finished. i'm not even sure i'm awake.

------> later:
i'm still not sure. but i am leaning towards taking a walk, even if it's just around the house.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

sawedoff

today's ideogram. spent a few hours on it but also got the garbage in it's pickup place as the truck came roaring up. it's about the only thing i hear in here.

meaning of ideogram?

it don't mean a thing
if it ain't got that swing.


now about that list i started yesterday: as is my habit i don't read what i've posted so all i really know is that there are five more somethings to complete top-ten of the year, so here they are:

6. language quirk became dominant: this is the "proximity" quirk. heard often on the media. put any two words close to each other in a sentence and no matter if the word that relates them makes sense or not, the relationship is understood. much of the time the understood relationship is a prefab construct from outside.

8. this is number eight because no. 6 (see above) is worth two numbers.

9.

10.

Monday, December 26, 2005

kard

i pretty much skipped christmas. stayed up til 1:30 last night recording and mixing, spent this morning trying to figure out what i'd done and where i put it.

i've been thinking - or someone like me has - about how to characterize the year. a human habit, the need to know where one is at.

i don't pretend to believe for a minute that any attribute any one can come up with would be "absolute" or literal.

but you can characterize the weather, iron chains bound.

ok i guess i painted myself into a corner here so here is my top ten perspectives on the year that nearly is past.

1. there is no stopping place. now is not a stopping place.

2. degredation of biosphere coexists with degradation of interior subjective experience.

3. language, spoken, unspoken, digital is changing, and so finding a "voice" becomes all the more difficult. then there is always "silence".

4. our nation-state has been kidnapped. maybe because the inner contradictions within any perspective will always, over time, no longer work well.

5. people are disengaging, or being disengaged, from the "political". another more meaningful perspective blooms, one in which the constructed reality we scurry within, head down, becomes an object, like a memory.

that's it maybe i can drum up the missing five topographical reality probability curves at he office.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

xmas5


father christmas seems overcome by the busyness of the season. stuff piling up in circular cascades of personal history. outside it's dark, drizzled rain all night long.

i'm in my moon-module where i've stayed during the xmas ramp up. don't know whether this is a healthy or unhealthy thing. been pacing the floor and doing my best to ignore the babble of the outside world.

probably not so healthy, but for me now, necessary.

i can see father christmas fading away into the starry night.

maybe we'll get together there in a while.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

d0111bowk

i made a good looking print of this photo yesterday. the mountain you see in the distance is indian peaks. photo taken at dry creek bed near my dad's.

old g3 maxed to g4 flaked out last night. i had a little file i could not upload. locked up each time i tried, same thing this morning. i got it worked around but it was a nasty surprise (some are).

christmas eve. i remember more or less quite a few: athens greece, erwin road durham NC, old country house in efland NC (spending the night assembling kid's stuff "ready to assemble"), big ridge in the smokies, and NYC.

two must-do activities today: buy A4 envelopes and 2 8x10 frames.

i'm beginning to "get" open G tuning without the 6th string. keith richards trick. it's interesting how i seem to progress faster when learning more than one instrument. been following daily piano practice and it seems to spill over to strings somehow.

i guess i'll bite the bullet and begin working on community blog, this for the souls still around who were active in the very lively community of 60's chapel hill. the idea is to elicit commentary from that demographic - bet you never thought you'd see those words from me - and see how we've made it through.

i've found more than enough sound assemblies for a new CD. some pieces go back over a year.

tonight after i put out cookies and milk i'll head over to the asheville pub. christmas eve for the dispossessed. for those of you in Aville the details can be found at BlogAsheville
"Christmas Eve at Westville Pub"

----->later:
naaaah... i'll curl up with a book.

Friday, December 23, 2005

chacowc

i began this watercolor before i traveled west. still dinking around with it but i think i'll put it on the back burner for awhile.

i skipped social life last night and went to bed early. was it the longest night of the year? felt kind of like it.

come to think about it, in some ways it seemed like the longest year to me. of course in "reality" it was the shortest. a blink of the "I".

Thursday, December 22, 2005

wordy
from the notebook of important but fleeting thoughts.


tonight is a double header. first up is drinking liberally at jack in the woods. i think i'll try it. it is a national effort for liberals, and asheville probably has more than ten (average number of liberals left in towns of over 600,000 population).

after that, around 10 is the blogger bowlathon which i'll probably skip. i haven't been bowling since i worked for intel. each quarter we would get the afternoon off and head for the local bowling alley. i'd rather sit in front of computer and ponder what the hell i am doing, but that's my problem.

[later] well i did it again. while posting the above got in trouble and screwed the archives up.

i think it's going to be one of those days whn the less i do the less will go wrong. maybe it's pluto retrograding some symbolic black hole. i experience this kind of day every now and then, always a surprise these days i let it happen, no harm done. probably a nudge from the kosmos: "time to do nothing, you're moving a bit too fast".

a likely story. but then all stories are likely. we're in this one, right?

----->4pm, just got blogger half back in it's box. so i should be able to continue noodling on.
now i think i'm going to take the next three days off. R&(mostly)R.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

branches

strike the following sentence, i replaced the picture mentioned with a new one. little more christmasy, huh?

obsolete: ["well i did it again. an hour or so fooling with the photo above which i took at eli and melissa's home. it is a bush tree i often talk to. couldn't do much with it today."]

i got my christmas objects in the mail yesterday. get a cleanup, that's haircut to you, in 45 minutes so i better take care of business. at 2 this afternoon i go to dentist and begin false teeth drama.

more important, ponderous but to the point observations later today. for instance the obligatory top ten list. of what?

------>8:47pm

a what you might call "busy", or "relentless" or"non-stop" day. basically got a haircut and impressions made at dentist, but in between i've made one flash object, a bunch of scans and jpgs, worked on a movie, and mixed down three songs. plus almost finished the biggest watercolor i've ever tried.

is mars bouncing off virgo triad? am i like a bear and dreaming all this activity and "stuff"? are the enneagrammatical global memes spiraling up another level?

what i like about a little hypomania is the effortless focus. but it's hyperfocus, one thing at a time. easy to get lost in the forest, never see a tree again.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

window

i'm a creature of habits. i got up this morning with no plans or thoughts of creating the above, much less posting it. i mean i'm a busy man with lots of tasks to get done today.

one of which was putting the garbage out. while puttering with the picture above i heard the roar of the garbage truck, ran out in my stocking feet holding plastic bags and barely made it.

next up: sending holiday cards which i finished late last night.

now might be a good time to list the books i am currently reading at:

why? why not.

ghost wars
by steve coll
good long read, the adventures of private and govt. institutions way back while we the public were concerned about monica's dress. (well, someone was). unbelievable floods of cash splashing this way and that thru afghanistan and pakistan. nobody has a clue.

the essential aurobindo
ed byrobert mcdermott
i read at this one little by little.

the last gift of time
life beyond sixty
carolyn g. heilbrun
sister gave it to me, i've just dipped into it. not sure of any generalizations that could be drawn from this lady's musings, but she does have a voice of ther own, always a good sign.

work furies
richard k. morgan
just started last night. turns out i already read his first, "altered carbon" and enjoyed it. a little like gibson, in fact the only writer i know who can compare with him, but without that inexplicable deep-noir quality.

click here. excellant short piece by aville blogger about govt. institutions putting mikes in the wall:
"Of course it's hard to imagine today, but Hoover had even set up a 'secret detention program' which was completely unauthorized."
BlogAsheville


big deal. i'll feel better about this nonsense when i can run OS X.
Internet Explorer 5 for Mac:
"Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari."

Monday, December 19, 2005

riverleft

watercolor i rescued from the "what am i going to do with it?" bin.

today's imaginary priorities: get xmas cards in mail (finally). clean up the kitchen. make appt w/ dentist. do laundry.

yesterday while waking up from short nap i heard a radio program "infinite mind" during which obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) was discussed. i don't have it. but as it is a continuum or a spectrum, one can have a touch of it or a full-blown case.

so i now have a name for something that has always plagued me. that is a tendency towards visual memory, and theoretically might be a reason i tend to keep all kitchen cabinet doors open, as well as drawers. i've often said to myself that if i were designing a kitchen i would have no doors on cabinets. many is the time i have, while washing dishes, bumped my head on the open cabinent doors.

and it may explain why in the real world i could never successfully use file cabinents: i can't see what is inside.

then again it might explain, shed light on, give a glimpse into nothing.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

c

another cloud, taken at my dad's house in prescott az.

should have christmas - that's what i call it - cards in mail tomorrow. i've been operating without the materials i need so what you get is what you got.

and if i go to the first - uh - solstice celebration of the season i will have to make a cryptic object to hang on a tree before 5.

i've been keeping the thermostat at sixty degrees most of the time. not bad at all. just a costume change.

yesterday at steve's don and i had a slight but courteous disagreement over who wrote "hey joe". i think it is tim rose, an acquaitence of mine during freshman high school. one night we drove to fort royal va. maybe 1955 to see flatt & scruggs inside the martha white big tent. don thought it was someone else.

[time out for google search]

Hey Joe Page
"The origins of Hey Joe are unclear." fascinating short history, talk about a strong meme. and tim rose is in there somewhere. lotta folks are.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

0079sky

photo taken i think in eli & melissa's front yard.

it's still dark outside this morning, my favorite time to brood and work.

about 15 years ago i began to only give christmas presents that i had made. that personal touch.

this year i'm running behind on account of getting back to town dec. 12th.

so expect a late package.

i've been back now about 5 days and have yet to see another person face to face with the exception of my landlady.

winterizing hovel, finding lost objects, and various creative boondoggles have taken all my time. i did make one quick trip to the mall which was less frustrating than i had anticipated.

maybe the season to be jolly developed as an antidote to winter social isolation. not a bad thing, but like most of the habits of modern america a little bit goes a long way.

last nite while more or less asleep i heard on the radio some republican saying something about "it hasn't been made illegal so it is permissible". i don't know what government pecidillo he was talking about, but the way i hear such a statement is literal. maybe the neo-cons are wiggling towards the traditional conservative stance of "you can't legislate morality". or personal life. the problem, of course, is that our culture has settled on the law to be the basic guide to everything. and the domain of law was never meant to do this.

so, for instance the ongoing debate over legalizing pot goes back and forth and has for most of my life. in my opinion it should not be legalized, or illegalized. take it out of the legal, jurisprudence and political realm and let it return to the personal domain. make up your own mind on how to live.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

natalieD

grandchild natalie taken by me while "heading west".

it's raining, sleeting and a number of other cold things outside today. perfect for staying put and puttering. i am, as some of you know, a metaputterer. who knows what will be added to imagebank by the end of the day.

or maybe it is more accurate to say taken from the imagebank. manifested right in front of me. since the world of images is inexhaustible i don't say "subtracted from".

putting together odds and ends for a christmas CD, probably won't finish it in time.

question:

how does one "say" something in the public - read nonpersonal - domain without adding to the noise machine?

create an image. why? because it's not there yet.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

1668

photo from the far west. don't remember where i took it.

it's noon. my plan was to get up and out early to run some living maintenance tasks before approaching bad weather hits, but i've been regrouping on computer all morning.

so i'll do it now.

i've been wondering why these daily posts are so microfocused on daily activities. i could be writing about life, death, and the great in-between.

which i deal with every day, but have so little to say about. or maybe what i have to say is unsayable.

no piece of art is ever finished. imagination is inexhaustible. change is now.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

santafe

drawing i did in saskatchewan last week. i'll post more after i put the garbage out.

this represents a change in priorities for me. i want to take care of bizzness like elvis instead of sitting glued to the computer all day.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Later:
went thru gobs of paper and paid billz, continue to rearrange piles of paper, catalogues, CDs and debris. mailed billz. wondered off and cleaned watercolor palette, spent time refreshing colors, hope the colors work, i've been creeping up on them for ages. quick run for cat food, bread and guitar strings.

worked on an xmas card. you'll see.

Monday, December 12, 2005

The online credibility gap / Wikipedia article's false claim on JFK killing stirs debate: "The communally produced compendium has become an accepted source of information for millions of Web surfers. With 2.5 billion page views a month, it is the second-most visited reference site on the Web (after Dictionary.com), according to Hitwise.

But critics say Wikipedia leaves the door open for anyone who wants to rewrite history, whether it's your neighbor with a grudge, a nut job floating a conspiracy theory or someone repeating an urban legend. As with other Web sources such as blogs, its accuracy can be hard to judge."

1340

pic taken on the road in NM thru the windshield. the mountain has a name which is similar to cabeza and probably has a story too, both of which i can't remember.

time is such a hoot. i'm using a monitor which my friend jim got at the chapel hill thrift shop. it cost $10, nice apple display, and is an order of magnitude better than the NEC 17 inch which i've used over 10 years and cost about a thousand.

few flakes of snow falling outside. i took a short road trip awhile back, left during summer and came back to fall. then i left for out west and came back to winter. dwelling is winter ready except for front door thermopane which i'll install today.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

nmroad

road to albequerque from santa fe - i think.

weather outside just raw enough to make it nice to stay at home. catching up on email, scraching my head figuring out how to make holiday cards in time for manditory reception. start practicing piano and walking in aftenoon. make my statement. buy light bulbs. find source of very quiet electronic beeps somewhere near where i sit now that happen every morning at 11:00.

more hanky-panky about what "vote" means.

AP Wire | 12/08/2005 | Election group challenges certification of 3 vote machine vendors
:
"RALEIGH, N.C. - A civil liberties group sued two state agencies Thursday, asking a judge to prevent three firms from selling voting equipment because it contends officials failed to properly review and assemble software code from their machines."

Saturday, December 10, 2005

mnsky

picture of NM sky, taken maybe around jemez. i'll put up slide show of whole trip as soon as i figure out how, or why.

despres
i woke up and i was home. tapping on my own antiquated keyboard. miss kitty on my lap, she's fine. much thanks to all who helped me on what turned out to be an arduous trip. above is pencil drawing i did after a walk in desert preserve with jane, fred, and eric.

i arrived yesterday to find some kind of bug problem in kitchen. that and a bunch of other things to do will keep me busy while i am in recovery mode.

head is full of new ideas, projects, pictures. thank you notes and holidaze greetings will be in mail as soon as they are.

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

marker
moving slow today. at sister jane's in phoenix, work crew on top of the house doing shingles and 2 giant AC units. fred flew to east coast this morning to attend his uncle's funeral. this time tomorrow should be in the air descending towards raleigh. have no idea what the weather is like there.

i feel like i've been on the road forever. it's good to feel that way now and then.

enjoyed brief visit with ted and donna in jemez springs. check his site out:
here.

Monday, December 5, 2005

sham

just got back from breakfast at a local place, great mixture of people. it's easy to see santa fe is a place to be. class seems not to be a in your face everpresent wild card.

the streets, at least in this part of the town, are human scale, and not much traffic.

went to museums yesterday, the town is so full of imagery that it does not assault the mind-body as much as other locals.

a few glimpses of clarity: afterexmass i'll stop blogging, sort of, print up cards and postcards to sell, print book i've been doodling with in b&w at lulu.com, and start some sort of oral history community blog where those of my - our - ilk might record memories, takes, statements of anything we might still remember, or remember that we remember.

and of course a new set of teeth.

now that i have a plan i feel so much better.

back to phx this pm.

Sunday, December 4, 2005




back from a walk in santa fe. cold. jeff's daughter in accident in phoenix but she is all right. put picture up to see if i could do it remotely. i don't think aville will be "the next santa fe".

Friday, December 2, 2005

sitting here in geoff's studio using OS X to post. maybe a slow day today but that's great because it's a good place to be slow.

new mexico has a tactile quality and a space - transparent - quality that is very refreshing. textured air? invisible touch?

and a sort of ancient topography that you are inside of. very reassuring and relaxing.



Thursday, December 1, 2005

finally december. it has been a long year that will get longer. just returnrd to santanfe from 2 day trip to chaco canyon. really gave camera a workout, discovered all sorts of tricks and whizbang conundrums.

new mexico is one of a kind. tomorrow do santa fe, the galleries and such. got in touch with ted and donna, hope to visit.
batteries are charging.

-testing.blogger is crazed, it's up to me to correct it.

Monday, November 28, 2005

hiked the desert preserve near scottsdale yesterday with fred jane and eric. nice day to do it, got a tad hot after noon. temp dropped around 10 degrees last night. eric got off on airplane this morning around six. i need to repack today and leave tomorrow for new mexico. finished taking antibiotics this morning. now i know a toothach is an infection, never had one before. maybe do some art galleries today.

still puzzling over the color on some of the pictures displayed on this site. i saved most of the jpgs in adobe 98 colorspace and am starting to think i should have used sRGB for windows people. how embarassing.

rather than fix them i think i'll just start a new blog next year after the smoke clears from xmas cacaphony. presently i am looking foward to locking myself up when i get home and painting.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

day after day after thanksgiving. hanging in there. looking foward to getting lost in new mexico.

it's fun to see the folks bundle up in fleecy winter wear while i'm wondering around in t-shirt.

finish with antibiotics today. maybe i'm fixed.

i'm using jane's dell pc with flat panel monitor. it looks and reads fine but my pictures are kind of ghastly. need to check this out when i get back to wherever i came from and i hope i don't need to change gamma settings on 10,000 pictures. below is one that doesn't look so bad.



what have i learned? a lot about dcs-v3 camera. goal: to be able to use it in the dark, kind of like field stripping a weapon. not there yet.

eric flys back tomorrow. i leave for NM the next day.

the longest i've been out of aville in sometime. anxious to get back to own bed. the good part is that i have built up quite a head of steam so to speak to paint. right now i plan on locking myself indoors for the resr of the winter and painting a picture every day. and a little piano practice of course.

what a calm and sane life.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

xgiving. pleasant day in phx. my dad is reading over my shoulder. expect to see oldest son eric in an hour or so. hope miss kitty is doing well in aville.

realize now that i was close to being very ill when i got to az with infected tooth. still on antibiotics.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

after a good night's sleep i remembered password to get webmail; i must say that there is a lot happening in the paris of the south, aville, my hometown so far.

been taking a photo or two, trying this and that with pencils. i left the book on anasazi chaco canyon at home, so i think i will spend a lot of time reading two manuals i brought, one for insulin pump, one for camera. i've fooled around with both long enough to need a mental upgrade.

tooth seems to be doing ok altho jaw feels like somebody clobbered me.

beautiful weather and dad seems to be doing super.

Friday, November 18, 2005

i' at a spiffy mall in prescott az. can't get webmail because i screwed up the password too many times. mandatory 24 hour wit before i can try again.

the big story so far is my teeth. when i was in chapel hill at doug's and nicole's i woke up about 3 in the morning with a bad pain, took aspirin and single malt scotch. next morning was better. pleasant visit with the edwards and the eli parsons, never did find nathan. natalie, all of 4 months old is a delight, very neat old soul. she seems to be having a good time getting used to this planet.

flight to phoenix was excellent, no problems. but while staying at fred and jane's toothache in the middle of the night convinced me to go to emergency room. got some codeine type pain pills - they helped a little - and took shuttle to prescott next day where dentist was waiting for me thanks to katy, dad's next door neighbor who works at dental office.

by this time i had no feeling in lower lip, and pain in jaw and neck.

dentist had a hell of a time getting tooth out, and i'm on vicodan and penicillin for ten days. when i got to my father's place i was having chills and hot flashes and some confusion as to exactly what was going on.

seem to be on the mend, will access email tomorrow if i've got password figured out.

remember: life is just a bowl of cherries, but you got to dig for them.

Monday, November 14, 2005

testing testing trying to post remotely. woke up yesterday unsure of leaving town or gettingh toothach fixed and juggling schedule. sat i was pole-axed by sudden tooth dysfunction. i awoke sunday feeling it was possible to be possible so here i am in chapel hill, all is well and i'm heading tinto town for last minute errandsd.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

aztrip

Saturday, November 12, 2005

tompart

mmmm...sketchbook kipple.

today's departure delayed until tomorrow. all the loose ends i attempted to tie off yesterday became a giant knot.

developing a tooth ache. not a good sign for a trip to alien corn.

when i restart this blog on my return i think i'm going to skip visuals for awhile. i should be printing these things, not reducing to 72 dpi, tossing them up to the net and forgetting about them. plus the written word is stirring somewhere in my mind and i'm going to write again.

about what? doesn't matter much does it.

today's thought: thoughts without a thinker. view without a viewer.

i am picking up (as the psychics on AM radio say) a movement in the culture towards the non-dual mode, the pointless point of view, the non-attachment to results, the faith that even so the doing is worth doing for it's own sake and happens with or without "me".

but mostly with 10,000 "me"s, even though thought requires consciousness but consciousness does not require thought: it just includes it.

Friday, November 11, 2005

in a flurry and a hurry i'm trying to leave town tomorrow. for three weeks. have a lingering cold and an inevitable lot of last minute loose ends to tie up.

for some unknown reason i always - well lately always - have a difficult time getting ready to leave the ranch. it's probably not accurate to say that when i was younger i'd go anywhere at the drop of a hat, but that's how i dimly remember that time of my life.

now the world of 10,000 things is like a giant tarbaby i can't seem to extricted myself from.

anyway i'll be out west for 3 weeks, one of which should place me wondering about northern new mexico. the rest of the time i'll spend at various upscale spas, mud baths, sceances, and a seminar on "you can't have your question & answer it too". oh, and i'll be christmas shopping in scottsdale and santa fe for the most useless and beautiful gee-gaws i can find. probably write a novel or two while i'm at it.

so while this is not the last post before i hit the door it's close to it.

now if i could just find my fuzzy jammies with feet. i can't leave without that survival gear.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

nbface

first picture from new - latest - sketchbook. not too sure what this one means if any thing. probably worth a redo.

the election: things like this give it a worrysome aspect:

Schwarzenegger Hits Snag at Polling Place - Los Angeles Times
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up to his Brentwood neighborhood polling station today to cast his ballot in the special election — and was told he had already voted.

"Elections officials said a Los Angeles County poll worker had entered Schwarzenegger's name into an electronic voting touch screen station in Pasadena on Oct. 25. The worker, who was not identified, was testing the voting machine in preparation for early voting that began the next day."

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

djackson

jackson building. my photoshop practice for this morning. on the monitor the graded sky bands which is the only downside of using jpg pro instead of photoshop to produce jpg. on the other hand it's a 35k file. now on to piano practice.

think i've got a friendly neighbor to take care of miss kitty while i'm gone. a real relief, i had visions of taking her with me on a long trip in a paper bag.

should be able to leave saturday morning if i don't drop a stitch between now and then. at "deconstructing the seeker" meeting monday evening the subject of deadlines came up. i have many deadlines to meet before saturday and it's funny how i resent them.

here are a few sentences from book i am reading, doing nothing: coming to the end of the spiritual search by steven harrison:

"the concerned man brings a chicken to the psychiatrist, saying, 'doctor, it is my brother, he thinks he is a chicken.'"

"...the mind is a self-created web of neuroses with the appearance of conflict, not unlike the brother's delusion that he is a chicken.

"the brother's delusion does not exist, because the brother does not exist. our conflict does not exist, because we do not exist."
-----
"the seeker, after a long and difficult journey and many hardships, reaches the moutaintop where resides the guru in solitude. 'what, master, is the meaning of life?' the supplicant asks.

"'life, my son, is a bowl of cherries.' replies the guru.

"the seeker is outraged after all he has been through to reach the guru and lets the guru know what he thinks of his answer.

"the guru considers for a moment, and says, 'you mean it's not?'"

i like these anecdotes, though i admit that posting them here out of context makes the appear "far out" especially the "we do not exist" part. what exists is, and is now. humans have the habit, or predisposition, or something, that makes us experience a multitude of things, noe of which is now.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

lately i seem to be thinking superfast or wondering off in a dream. it's getting hard to tell the differance.

Monday, November 7, 2005

craggy

craggy gardens saturday.
i have 5 days left to learn how to play the piano and get ready for trip west. maybe i should turn off the computer.

thanks to the syntax of things two CDs of mine are streaming from here. check it out.

Sunday, November 6, 2005

jim

picture of jim walking either in or out of the mountains. he's on his way back to the compound, left early this morning. i'm on my way to a nap.

which i didn't take. visited mr. b., and then got really sidetracked with re-linking missing pictures from the archive. every now and then blogger gets very wierd... i'm doing some useful things while i try to re-plant archives.

...forget about the archives, i'm up against disappearing templates, arcane tags, and manifold brain fog.

Saturday, November 5, 2005

bird

took this pic yesterday at dr. r's place, the pigeon hangs out at pritchard park. most pleasant visit. jim and i are headed for parkway.

later - made it up to the parkway. walked to craggy gardens. beautiful weather. i seem to be coming down with a bug, but enjoyed the air and friendliness of the folks who we met strolling here and there. grabbed a bunch of shots most of which seem usable.

during yesterday's walk thru the paris of the south picked up a book at the library about chaco canyon that i look forward to reading before i visit the place which i'll do hopefully with geoff s. in december. also got new blank notebook for pencil and ink, i finished two of them last week. looking at the floor right now i'd guess i've got maybe 12 or so done over the last couple of years.

coming week: stay in bed, drink chicken soup, get well for trip mid-november. pack. figure out some way to take care of kat while i'm gone. fix front storm window in case it ever gets cold again. try to make it to last piano class. get a little more memory for camera. loop the loop. forget stuff. watch a cloud or two. walk everyday and get nowhere. learn how to play guitar in open "g". get lost. get saved. remember the good old days and forget them.

more chicken soup please.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

star

what does this picture mean? nothing except it happened.

i have a dental appt this morning. my friend jim is due in the afternoon, taking one of his rare foray's out of his compound. my 10 year old 17 inch color monitor has started winking and blinking again. i spent most of yesterday organizing pictures, frames, paints, and way too many papers.

spent an hour or two in the evening trying to figure out what musical productions i have made or almost made. such chaos. did get rid of about one gig of pieces of tunes.

i wish i had something to say about the world, or maybe i don't wish that, in fact now that i've said it i'm sure i don't. did find a whole stash of more scribbles i'll have to deal with. for instance:

"strangers approach
&call out my name
the wind is howling
& nothings the same
the soul is in hiding
& God is asleep
i'm lost in the world
i keep trying to keep."

so i am living with a thousand unfinished images, tunes, songs, and poems. the eternal dilettante.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

here are 3 poems from a book i've been working on.

This Wheel is Real

Driving down 40
Clutch going fast
Empty traffic silence
Better get some gas.

Overcast highway
My hands on the wheel
Rest area ready
Just how I feel.

Late afternoon light
Dark water’s in the air
Forget about my map
Its pouring rain somewhere.

Insides bounce around
Front seat full of dust
Past the still horizon
Minutes filled with rust.

No reason to hurry
No place left to go
Highway keeps on humming
"Told you so, told you so".

Roaring static of the road
Seat belts locked and loaded
Remind me of the looks I got
When my head exploded.

Invisible worlds
Pushed by the hood,
I follow the highway
Destination understood.


Come Again?

Your eyes notice value
The thing you are worth
Qualified madman
Get down to earth.

Payment is rendered
You now own the skies
Enjoy it for minutes
Time really flies.

When nobody’s business
Began my demise
I struggled with flowers
And unusual eyes.

While you were gone
I just couldn’t wait
The world moved on
Took me and my fate.


Ready Already?

Seven in the morning
People going to work
I’ve been up all night
Going berserk.

Animals ready
Let’s load up the zoo
You call me
And I’ll call you.


Made for a Wait

Crossing the street
In some dark town
The asphalt hums,
The eyes look down.

Indolent corners
Made for a wait,
Moments stuffed in boxes,
Telegrams too late.

Streets like dramas
Are full of some plot.
A flash of the jungle
And I’m glued to the spot.

He Got Old Quick

Hands of exhaustion,
Glimpses of Hell,
Don’t worry about me,
I’ll never tell!

Harvest injunction,
Demanding defeat
From others about you
Fast on their feet.

Years in the yard,
Feet wet in the snow,
I tried too hard
And couldn’t let go.

What became of us
Now is what we are
A minute too soon
An hour too far.

Coming back home
I stumble and lurch:
A mad man passing
In front of the church.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005


oh-oh. today's idiotgram seems to indicate travel to a destination. or maybe not. because in my heart of hearts i don't think there is a destination.

but there is a road.

my writer friends are slowly dragging me back to the written word. here's a cryptogram i wrote last evening sitting on the porch in west asheville waiting for some seekers to arrive to deconstruct seeking:

some words are heard both far and wide
same words sung on the other side
twilight syllables gleam like teeth
darkness opens and i fall asleep

in these woods there's only air
empty winds flow everywhere
abandoned footsteps left behind
invent a path: make up a mind.

someone leaves without a thought
cerebral flickers that are bought
and sold by travelers over there
somewhere where there is no where.

transparent shadows pace the night
there is no sleep but that's all right
day and night are both the same
but they both give me different names.

Monday, October 31, 2005

ruby

i've been using a new cataloguer to organize picture and audio files. and finding tons of old pictures. above is one. if it was about the size of a small wall i think it might add something to the decor of some bank.

took a tour of some of the blogs my associates in ashevilleboggers.com last night and was amazed at the creative pulse of the writing. kind of tugs me back to the written word which i've been neglecting here. mostly because i don't have much to say or express except thru the image and then i don't know what it means. if anything.

but here's the idea of the hour: i'll put up pages from book i've been fooling around with for awhile. this will serve two purposes: won't have to write anything, and might help me finalize the damn book so i can print it.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

dyeller

all i could come up with this morning. from a photo i took maybe a month ago.

yesterday, yesterday. . . so far away. what did i do? i think i spent the day trying to bring some order to various unfinished muzak files. if i ever complete them there will be more. played with a new way to alter midi voices which is kind of cool.

took a look at poetry book i'm cobbling together. it's got a way to go.

in other words i sat in front of computer all day.

this afternoon ninian the banjo man should drop by on his way back to the piedmont. among my friends he holds the record for trips to the mountains and back.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

stlouis

today's moodogram is from a snapshot taken in st. louis about 1970. yours truly and my oldest son eric. let's call it a work in progress. i seem to recall a pretty neat treatment of this photo i did at some point, but it's gone now.

went to the blogfest last night. the energy level was pretty low, but then blogging is not an easy exercise. a perfect bound paperback was passed around that was a gift, created via lulu.com. i was impressed both by the quality and the price. definitely worth investigating by those of us who have a book or two languishing in our heads.

the other evening i was treated to a meal and conversation by a new friend who brought up an old interest of mine: the iconoclastic controversy of the byzantine empire which i'm not going to bother dating, but i believe was the 8th and 9th century. icons were destroyed and regarded as a mistake, the written word considered more worthy of attention. the neologism "biblioclast" came up. surrounded and bombarded as we are today by images, this is a word that may come into play as folks realize the power of the image, which is driving more and more of the 21st c. worldview.

"the young don't read", etc. my friend sam gray and i used to talk about this. i think he was conflicted by the art of self-expression via the written (published) word. there are too many words bouncing around already and one part of his head felt that by writing he would just be adding to the endless verbiage, which becomes meaningless after a certain point has been reached. ditto with "A"rt.

i guess i feel that self-expression is not optional but a necessary act. the trick is to determine which "self" must express itself. if it is the wholly conditioned secular self we get branding which pretty much is the discourse of the day.

on the other hand i heard on NPR this morning 2 short stories read out loud on whatever the program is called that does this every sat. morning at 7 AM. they were both knockouts.

and i can't read short stories. haven't for longer than i can remember. for some reason i need to hear the words spoken. but i don't get the chance often, the mediated spoken word, ie "news", is gibberish to me. so stylized, like an endless ornate mandarin dance. so what's up?

Friday, October 28, 2005

sleepy

what a surprise. scanned a pencil drawing from last notebook - still has a few blank pages - and ended up with this picture this morning. moved on to reconstructing 2 CDs i made awhile back to give to mr. syntax this evening at the blogfest, i no longer have the masters, or if i do i can't find them. then off to piano class. oh yes, i also finally sent a pasell of bills off. some bad guy was indicted today, more fodder for the ship of fools, gives the mandarins something to do, you can count on the fact that if anyone does time it won't be "the bosses", whoever they are.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

cliff

drawing i must have done somewhere on trip to pulpit hill.

i have a giant list of must-do to do today.

unexpected surprise after the last color theory class: i left my survival poke - small bag containing insulin, test strips, pencils, notebook, checkbook and something else i need but don't remember at the moment - and the instructor phoned me to tell me she had it before i knew i didn't. this is the third or fourth time i have done this, not bad over 20 years. turns out she lives near me and i retrieved the gear and was kindly treated to a pleasant meal and conversation.

i've noticed a monolithic turn against the noise machine (about time) even among the most conditioned people. the increasingly hysterical pulse of existence is being ignored as much as possible by everybody. the multiplicity of facts have rendered them all of the same meaningless order. things are toppling off shelves, glitter into dust, the construct we called reality has finally become hightly problematic, and the most recent ancien regime is further in the distance every day.

what does this mean for tomorrow? a big surprise.

yay.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

natoct
Baby Natalie, 4 months on the Planet


a quick 3 day trip to the tropics - chapel hill. right before i left i was looking for a fan for the trip down. hot, sweaty, same as the entire summer has been. the weather in the triangle area was the coolest i've experienced since last winter. very nice, overcast, cool breezes.

visited my son eli, his wife melissa - who i did not yet get a photo of - and their 2 beautiful children lily and natalie. my daughter nicole and husband doug and their beautiful son corbin. the cannon compound, mr haynes the song and dance man, and doug and marsha.

when i got back coats and sweaters were out and it snowed last night closing 441 thru the great smokies park. so today is winterize the house.

i missed my computer while i was gone. not a good sign. in the past it has always been a good break to get away from this thing.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

bbyy

made it back home. in the few days i was gone summer turned to... fall but it seems like winter.

picture i did while in orbit, finished another (small) sketchbook. maybe the 15th or so.

i'll get tomorrow's tomorrow.

Friday, October 21, 2005

newedge2

absolutely no sleep last night but i did get to hear heather payton at 4AM on BBC. she has the most attractive female radio voice of all time.

i'll be in orbit for the next few days. but even tho i will be high atop the holy mountain in the lotus position i'll have my mega-blueberry cell phone HDTV nanopod with me for the infrequent post to let you know how the levitation clear light is going.

i wonder what the opposite of "levitate' is?

[later] i found out: "to sink", as in "ran into a huge sinker".

Thursday, October 20, 2005

octwc6

had a pleasant visit last evening with ron who is in a couple of my classes at unce old folk's home. he has some beautiful work hanging on his walls. something gurdieff said came up, or maybe somebody else said it. "if you're not having fun you're not learning". i didn't have too much fun doing the above. i'm going to throttle down on the creative bit and be lazy for awhile. take a vacation from it all and wonder around in the forest, let some of the creatures (root word from "create") in my head loose. carry my mind wrapped up in a bag hanging on a stick, carry it over my shoulder, see if there are any hobo glyphs marked on the tree bark.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

greenhills

this blog is turning into a photo album i guess. i'm not sure when or where i took photo, but i learned a new photoshop trick playing with it.

yesterday morning i got sidetracked working with audio. the results are found here, temporarily, until i get a CD or two up on a new site you can see here. you might want to poke around this massive archive host site, it's fascinating. finished prints of sam for his son chall. got a chromatic tuner/metronome for piano class. then took off for the parkway and drove to devil's courthouse. saw a little color, not much. the leaf lookers are in for a surprise.

it was dark when i got back. watched frontline piece on usa torture policy. ghastly. the invisible coup d'etat of 5 years ago at it's worst. the criminal oligarchy at it's ignorant worst. third world peasants being disappeared in the search for "actionable intelligence". there is no "war against terror". there are terrorists out there to be sure, but a nation cannot fight an abstract noun by declaring war against it.

stayed up late tuning instruments and finished an overworked watercolor. the chromatic tuner really helped me figure out scale on chinese fretless er-hu.

i regretfully will skip tai chi class this morning and take care of bizzness: groceries are highest priority.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

thaiman

today's ideogram is a puzzle to me. maybe it means i need to put my dancing shoes on.

reading room full of mirrors, a new - to me - biography of jimi hendrix. the first half of the book is about his childhood in seattle. the picture painted is one of west coast WWII "main stem", i guess you call it the ghetto. zoot suits, sharp dressed man, but not jimi who was much poorer than i realized, errant mom who was a party girl, foster caretakers, cheap hotel rooms. he had no musical background, no lessons, no guitar. the book is pretty matter of fact, minimum of embellishments. he was exposed to the music of that time and place, r&b revues; one of the adults who moved in and out of his life, maybe an aunt who raised him for awhile, maybe someone else i forget, had a collection of 78rpm blues. when he finally did get a guitar it had one string for a long time, he could not afford to buy any. when he did get strings his dad, who was a mean drunk insisted that he play right-handed but he was a leftie. he must have been a natural because he would play left-handed until his dad entered the room when he would flip it over and continue to play. it is a mystery where that kind of gift comes from. altho he scuffled for years he never lost that non-optional magnetic drive to play the guitar. he practiced non-stop, all day every day, even between sets when he played behind some of the "chitlin-circuit" folks, little richard, curtus knight etc., all of whom repeatedly fired and fined him for not staying inside the rigid revue format. he was in NYC for almost 2 years before he left harlem to explore Greenwich village where the 60s was morphing bohemia to the hippie era. naive amongst the sophisticated. an interesting book, a look at young genius, and a life that demonstrates what ken wilber describes as uneven developmental lines.

Monday, October 17, 2005

bigridge

the only picture i have of the place we lived on big ridge, jackson county during the 70s. my wife and four children. it was dirt hard and probably the happiest i have ever been. when i dream, i often dream of this place. from the bald at the upper right you could see 360 degrees, into georgia, south carolina, and the great smokey national park.

oh man what a weekend. dealing with $ issues, health issues, bigtime (& costly) dental issues and the creative daemon that i've got to give attention to.

the latter is non-optional. for better or worse i've thrown my lot in with what we call "art" - notice the lower-case "a" - and it is not a question of inspiration but activity every day that makes something where nothing previously existed. there is no reasonable explanation for this.

soon i hope to have a bunch of mp3s up. print portfolio is growing like topsy.

as for the "world", i deeply believe humans land in it to deal with it for reasons not immediately obvious. but i can't get a handle on it. it seems to me that today the backdrop, curtain and set are sagging, floodlights growing dim, roof sagging. the drama of the criminal overworld goes on, but the players i know are silently creeping out of the theater, no role to play.

similar to the byzantine empire, when the hoi polloi was seemingly kept busy keeping score in a world of bread and circuses, but less obviously dealing with the invisible world of the unmanifest. there was a traveler around 1000 AD who visited constantinople and wrote that you could not walk down the street without the hearing the constant murmur of theological and existential debate, but nothing about the empire. the political is no longer personal - if it ever really was - and it seems that even the personal is fast becoming impersonal.

the experience of personhood is today a maze made up of dead ends. as bobby d. said, "there's not enough room to be anywhere".

we are in this world but not of it. i suppose we are from "the homeland we've never seen" (neil young). but we exist within the descended grid (ken wilber). the iron castle (philip k. dick). the kali yuga (everybody).

i heard on NPR this morning a commentary on the use of the military within our own borders which the concept of posse comitatus forbids. but that will change for national emergencies.

we are today experiencing "the long emergency" and it would be perfectly reasonable to use the military and other resources to deal with it.

except for the fact that the criminal oligarchy can not be trusted. not because they have a conspiratorial agenda, but because they are ignorant of the street where we live. it's not on their map.

and to top it off i noticed on television this weekend a lot of ads for plastic toys; it's october, get ready for xmas.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

city

photo i took from ed and barb's deck. it was a pleasant break to visit them, otherwise a pretty flat day.

i stumbled on a yard sell around the corner in the morning and bought 3 large picture frames which i can put to good use.

as some of you may know, i dink around with audio as well as visuals to pass the time. but i have yet to figure out a way to put them on the net without severe quality compromise.

so i was delighted when my son eli turned me on to a site where this sort of 22nd c. folk music can be accessed. check here to hear what he's doing to satisfy his creative daemon: his nom de musique is Omeganon.

as i understand it signed artists cannot use this site, so it is a treasure trove of art with a lower case "a", which as far as i am concerned is the only thing that can save the world. hyperbolic perhaps, but IMHO that is why the kosmos is, and we are of the kosmos.

which is why this blog has morphed over the years from political and cultural observation to sheer play.

anyway i'll be parking some mp3s at the site soon.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

samfall

while looking for snapshots of my old friend sam to print for his family i found this. he died not long ago. i think this photo could be nobody else but sam.