3.31.5

today's icon. another pencil, no it was ink, drawing.

i'm talked out. i guess i'll have to reach out for some interesting words.

like this email (thanks T)
---------------------------
subject: Just a Minute

"Rudolph Steiner (the great German mystic) describes a hierarchy of consciousness, from the lowest pebble to the highest spiritual being. On earth, a person who achieved truly rational consciousness (of course, for Steiner, rationality would include spiritual awareness) would be at the highest level of thought that we can imagine...............According to Steiner, along with the self that we perceive in daily life, the intractable "I," there is another self, a hidden spiritual being, which is the individual's guide and guardian."

Just for a minute, even if a skeptic: Stop, listen: . Do you get just a flash of a Presence? Can you feel it? Even if, through bias or speed, you can't- it's still here. If so, do you think it's your imagination? With practice, you can learn to tell the difference.

T"
-------------------------
or this.

Evolutionist Theories and Whitehead: "'Emergent' evolutionism (a term first popularized by C. Lloyd Morgan) is a special case of the former, in which it is asserted that evolutionary progress is, on occasion, discontinuous -- exhibiting entirely novel features whose appearance on Nature"

what this means to me. the theory about how life evolves - or ideas, societies, cultures, individuals - touts a principle that explains past development but can not predict, based on the same principle - what the next development will be. thus the "creative emergence" of whitehead.

it is always "now". but now is always new, a surprise, unpredictable. humans are not put together to deal with this very well. how to include "thinking" but not be "thinking"?

see what i mean? i just don't have the language to talk about consciousness. so i'll shut up and go for a walk.

3.30.5

"content is king" was the buzzword for the web community awhile back. still may be. but the language of public discourse has deserted me. i can't keep up with the nonsense i hear and see in the noosphere.

the creative emergent is what i'm interested in, and it by definition doesn't exist (yet). (see whitehead and wilber).

so what does a poor boy do? me, i'm going shopping instead.

3.29.5

late in the day i found myself with pencil and paper and started cannodling. two hours later you see the result above. that's moving pretty fast for me, or maybe not. maybe that's just how it goes.

went to brain 101 today. very dense lecture by nurochemist (i think). in one ear and out some other.

i've been glued to the computer for a few days.

i've got to change my way of living.
(old blues refrain)

3.28.5

stayed glued to computer just about all of the rainy day yesterday.

finished layout of poetry book. now to add hi-rez color illustrations. spent awhile updating archive links. this last is a tedious procedure, but when it's finished all archives will be accessible - along with any pictures they contain.

is it worth it to update the archives? probably not, personally for me it is worth it because i run across so many forgotten days and thoughts.

played with a color foto, results above.

paid bills, made another dental appointment. hope it is the last.

ready to drop about 30 new photos into newlife book.

managed a trip to pharmacy for insulin. i went with cards, paperwork, and it went quite well. and stopped at car insurance place to pay them.

so why do i list all this stuff? i guess it is because i wanted to see what yesterday was about.

unplanned: 5 minute recording of guitar, chinese erhu, and keyboards. sounds surprisingly good.

here is something worth reading. it is not overblown,but it will curl your hair. reminiscent of lewis mumford, hillman, and chomsky.
RollingStone.com: The Long Emergency : Politics:
"Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny."

and here is a review of dylan's chronicle v.1. i don't agree with all of it, but it raises some interesting points. one is the same thought i had after finishing it, a great picture of the textures of a world that has disappeared, the america i was born into.
Bob Dylan's "Chronicles" Reviewed by James Howard Kunstler
"The note about Booth is indicative of a keen interest in history that recurs throughout Chronicles."

3.27.5

just finished reducing image of this watercolor to fit notecard. this gives me 13 and i was only aiming for 12.

today was like a celtic easter, damp and raw, gray, just the day to not go outside.



this is the second oil i ever finished, done awhile back. it is dry enough so i could scan it. the story is that i worked and reworked it for months, there are a lot of paintings underneath the surface.This what surfaced. a tad creepy i guess.

as usual i worked with no idea in mind and this is how it ended. it is not a portrait of anyone. i call it the muse who is not amused.

rainy easter here. i attended memorial for liatrice yesterday. she was a most remarkable person. even from a distance and fighting cancer she brought an unmistakable beatific glow into the room with her.

tried to catch up with folks who went later to chinese restaurant, but i must have gone to the wrong one. so i did something i've wanted to do since i have lived in aville, got a hot dog at "the Hot dog king".

got a mystery at north branch library i've been sporadically dipping into, madusa by michael dibdin. i'm going to crank up OCR software and try to grab a few paragraphs from it. you'll see them here soon.

3.26.5

Good day yesterday, finally finding things and organizing. got color printer going, printed a couple of pieces, they look great. worked on an ancient picture for dr. r. i promised it to him awhile back. almost done. wrestled with new photo files for the new life book.

here is the poem i found and lost and found again recently. i may place this at the end of book of poetry i am putting together, "whistling in the dark".

The End Never Ends

End of the Book,
End of the Trail,
Confusion vanished
That I knew so well.

I don't remember
Where it came from.
The songs i forget
But some I can hum.

Autunm slides in
The air settles down.
My thoughts remain lost
I hear winter's sound.

Energies ebbing
It blows me away.
Morning Light dims,
The children they play.

Under slow light
The Garden's a riot,
The Lake is a laugh.
I walk real quiet.

Who said I come
Who said let go
Who said I thought
Who thought they know?

The beach is silent
Dark like the light.
Waves wash my mind
With the blackness of sight.

Time hunkers down
It's all the same day.
Same people same person
With nothing to say.

Some world
Surrounds me,
The scenes that I know
And the scene I don't see.

The difference is nothing
The nothing you know:
Ten thousand things
All in a row.

Who's seeing what
Is what i want to know
But I know nothing.
It might be time to go.

Peace to this morning
And the three AM burlesque.
Twitching shadows dance
The Dharma of the Blessed.

3.25.5

today's signpost. i think it might mean i get to stay home today and putter.

already been out and got 2 new tires for truck front end.

beautiful morning, sunny but still fresh from the night airs. going to walk up the mountain a little.

my place is really trashed. can't find anything. i really do plan on puttering, ie wondering around and rearranging items. all day affair.

found another poem last night completely unexpected. not sure when i wrote it but it sure wasn't now.

... ok i just looked for it, can't find it.

so i"m off to find things..

[later] like knowing what you don't know, finding what is lost when you don't know what is lost goes very slowly.

meanwhile this article made me wonder whether i and my ilk will somday look back on now as the german jews looked back on life in the 20s from treblinka:
The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay(you have to register but it's free.)
"The religio-hucksterism surrounding the Schiavo case makes DeMille's Hollywood crusades look like amateur night. This circus is the latest and most egregious in a series of cultural shocks that have followed Election Day 2004, when a fateful exit poll question on 'moral values' ignited a take-no-prisoners political grab by moral zealots. During the commercial interruptions on 'The Ten Commandments' last weekend, viewers could surf over to the cable news networks and find a Bible-thumping show as only Washington could conceive it. Congress was floating such scenarios as staging a meeting in Ms. Schiavo's hospital room or, alternatively, subpoenaing her, her husband and her doctors to a hearing in Washington. All in the name of faith."

3.24.5

today's psycho-gem. a little on the somber side, don't know why.

yesterday i went to my first outdoor landscape oil painting class. took place in botanical gardens, about 5 minutes from here. the deal was to wonder around and sketch, coming up with something that we would paint on location in the next seven weekly meetings.

with a pencil i usually work fast and loose. this time at the end of two hours i was still only half finished.

i spoke to fellow student on the way out and said "wasn't that the fastest two hours...blah blah blah".

he said "it was too quiet. scared me".

3.23.5

today's picture. nothing special, just another dream. i used some guach which is something new for me.

the word for the day is "feeding tube".

i've been dipping into alfred north whitehead. i thought he was a matemetician, which he was. but after he moved to the usa he wrote some very cogent books about change. couldn't find the quote i was looking for, and no way am i going to type it. found some interesting quotes though:

Unconstrained Quotes:
"The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see." - Huang Po

3.22.5

just went for first class of "exploring consciousness". roughly an overview of last ten years work, research in the world of science, what wilber calls "the descended grid" or upper right hand quadrant. 70 people in class, i'm betting at least 25% will bring up the difference between brain and consciousness. i know i will.

i'm cleaning up old unused links. this i think i thought was a good source of news not snooze:

Global Vision News Network:
"News Not In The News"

i forget why i thought this might be of interest:
Barron's Online - Fighting the Tape
"'Like most cliche's,' I wrote, 'the term 'liberal bias' has a grain of truth, and was probably more valid 20 years ago when conservatives still could plausibly view themselves as a beleaguered minority.

'[But] the idea of an all-powerful liberal media (or establishment media, as the left would call it) that can manipulate public opinion at will is a fantasy.'"

now i remember:
substitute "right" for "liberal" in last para and it is not a fantasy.

something to ponder:
ZNet |Activism | A FAQ: What do you think about suicide bombers?: "why ask about suicide bombers rather than about bombers simpliciter? Is the questioner interested in our view about suicide bombers as distinct from non-suicide ones? Surely, whether a perpetrator of a bombing commits suicide in the act is -- morally speaking -- not the principal issue: what matters most is the bombing."

3.21.5

3.20.5

back from SEG no problem. left new telephone unplugged so any messages not recieved, sorry.

very special time and place.

3.17,5

i will be incommunicado - more than usual - for the next 4 days. why?

well because pluto in retrograde has dislodged my triune scorpio and confused it with the 7th house. the resulting sunspot furor has my bluberry - or is it blackberry - fritzing and i can only pick up boulder colorado. i';; be back when the muons settle down.

3.17.5

offline till sunday.

3.16.5

big storm coming. got oil changed this morning (and bought a coffee brewer), then drove to winnie's and packed up stuff. now that have put up a picture i feel the day can begin. it was a watercolor i finished this morning with oil pastels.

anyway i'll be on hiatus for a few days and have nothing to say about context all the way up and all the way down.

3.15.5

3.14.5

i seem to be putting almost everything in order not to go out and do anything. that must be why they call it "march madness". agoraphobia to the max.

the above illustration is an example. it is one more iteration of a pen and ink i drew in the 70's. i should have been "takin care of bizzness" as they say.

no harm. got most everything rolling. and the picture, she is nice, eh?

3.13.5

took a chance when i woke up this morning and played with this pen and ink. not real pleased with the result but it is what it is. [i changed it later -?]

the picture has a history, it was drawn in the 70's during a long night living in jackson county on big ridge. it was the first i'd drawn in maybe 10 years and i enjoyed it so much it led to a pseudo career as graphic designer.

beautiful day today, i'll walk up the tallest mountain i can find.

if i have the time. scurrying around getting ready for trip to toccoa.

3.12.5

there's nothing less interesting than listening to somebody relate the dream(s) they had the night before. but since i lost the ability to remember my dreams some time ago, and had a humdinger last night, i'll tell you about it anyway:

i was in a work situation which was a large, in fact huge, corporation - intel. i was dressed in coat and tie etc. for some reason. but i was lost in a vast series of rooms, staircases, elevators, cul-de-sacs. there had been many changes, reconstruction was in progress, and i couldn't figure out how to get where i was going.

every room, hallway, office, auditorium or whatever i passed through was packed with people, all going somewhere. like an airport. i was getting roughed up just wiggling through the crowds, shirttail flapping, coat not fitting. every place was ornate, baroque. i kept struggling. the crowds got thicker. cameras and attache cases were stacked everywhere, as if other people were also lost, and lightening their load. every now and then i would tag along with a moving group, but we always ended up nowhere.

at one point i somehow exited past a security point, was outside in some urban nightmare, and could see the complex i had been floundering in miles away, towering over the city like a nuclear plant.

later, back inside, i made a startling discovery: a narrow diagonal hall took me to a vast park-like space as big as many football fields. it was walled and had an impossibly high ceiling. it was then that i realized that it each of the four walls were the structures i had been struggling through. i had to cross the space - which had a few people milling around in the distance - to get to the opposite corner and enter through another narrow diagonal narrow passageway.

somehow i ended up at a VA hospital in washington dc and woke up, feeling like i'd just been through WWIII. or IV.

now for something completly different. this is something i have noticed lately in my own life: many folks eschewing any relationship that might include sex. i think there are 2 reasons for this, one, we're getting older and two, so many people have been burned. after-effects of the sexual revolution?
"'Asexuality: It's not just for amoebas anymore.'"
Asexual Healing (Promo) Laine Bergeson

and here is another tasty little item:

"[T]he dramatic rise in suicides in Andhra Pradesh, which have become a huge scandal....are particularly striking because they are so close to the jewels of the Indian economy, the high tech IT centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad, which evoke paroxysms of awe from the worshippers of neoliberalism."
India on the Edge of Survival (ZNet Blog)"

and finally this which seems to be a meme, we're hearing more and more about this, in fact it came up in a conversation i had this week:
"Bhutan is pioneering a holistic national agenda based on a tenet of Buddhism called jimba. In the west, jimba is most closely related to public service. Instead of capitalizing on 'production' as in Gross National Product (GNP), Bhutan is introducing the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) that capitalizes on the happiness that public service, or jimba, yields."

3.11.5

found this this morning. it's a medal for conduct unbecoming for a human. seven years. i think that is the length of time a shaman in siberia spends gravely ill. pre-shaman time.

rearrainged some appointments next week. i'll start getting house, truck and myself ready for the Southeast Gathering soon.

pleasant day, getting cold, i'll walk up suset mountain after doing this because it's going to get cold later.

wondering what the weather will be like a week from now because i'll be camping out in toccoa ga. for 3 nights next week.

visited george and bruce this morning. gave george back one of his books and lent him a ken wilber. he looked dubious about the latter.

3.10.5

picture i drew at tom's last monday.

moving slow this morning. little snow on the ground.

march in the smokey mountains is the most problematical month. (i didn't want to say "hard").

when i lived at big ridge eons ago with my family, after one particularly brutal winter, in march, one of the 3 old brothers who lived at the base of the ridge - all in their 70's - shot himself. one of the neighbors about half a mile away drank wood alcohol and had to be hauled away, and the mail delivery person's husband chased her around the kitchen with a knife, was sent to mental institution for two weeks.

a little something to wonder about. as if we needed more than we already got:

"'I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced,' Abou Rabeh said."
13WHAM-TV ROCHESTER || NEWS

3.9.5

this is an old one, found this morning.

yesterday was just about a total blank. couldn't get much going until dark. my theory is that sunspot activity is affecting my metabolism in an erratic way so that i've been way too much up and down these last few weeks.

today is an out of the house day, full of doctor's appointments, errands to run and so forth. i'll let you know

test

test

3.8.5

yesterday i spent the morning coming up with 2 medications i was out of. i am a member in good standing of "medicare" as it slowly drifts into "medicare inc."

so far nothing happens. i fillout forms, send them in, and that's it. no reply, no card, no nothin'. what a surprise. anyway all worked and i'm in good shape now. but then i went outside the empty box.

spent the afternoon at tom's out in the country. really pleasant visit & i needed it. he & erin live in a small older home, well maintained, and the atmosphere reminds me of so many places that have been important in my life.

i was a young man in the 60's paying by any measure of today what was an astoudingly low rent for homes from another time, or what was rapidly becoming another time.

i got in one quick sketch, came home and played music.

woke up this morning with no electricity, blowing snow outside. got in the truck and took care of some quick business - including a cup of coffee - came home and got in bed with the Kat and read for three minutes. woke up at noon when the juice came back on.

i have a pretty coherent list of things to do - "i do things therefore i exist" - so here goes.

3.7.5

survived yesterday, a beautiful day but i didn't go out of the house. got blindsided i guess by too much activity of late, i don't think i fully woke up the entire day.

but today was up at 6:30 which is more to my liking. so yesterday was i think what we in the pseudo-medical arena call a "blip". sure hope so.

[and i grabbed old photo to play with later in the day. it's up there.]

friend sam is back home and doing well, going to marion everyday for physical and speech therapy.

heard from richard in the ukraine. i was a little concerned when email no longer seemed to be reaching him.

have to sign off now and do some "real" things in the "real" world. back soon.

3/6/5

carolina and duke are playing right now, i can only pick it up on AM radio where it serves as background noise.

this sunday has been so far a most peculiar day for me. i can't seem to wake up. it's like i imagine a petite mal moment must be but it's been all day: dozing in the park.

realizing that it happening - or might say nothing was happening - i wrote off the day early. today is a blank.

yesterday, on the other hand, i worked steady until 5, doing this, than that, then a little more of this. at 5 i escaped and walked up sunset mountain. very windy, nice sunset. dark when i got back, had 15 minutes to leave for the gray eagle where i had the privilege of hearing greg brown playing to a sold-out house.

his daughter opened. she and her dad were both accompanied by bo ramsey playing an electric guitar who manages to fade into the background with sounds that at time resemble a thermion played on qualuudes, very quiet eerie b spare bottleneck.

greg was everything i expected. a big down to earth prescience with a deep country voice. his songs were impressive. they are rough, redneck, authentic, nostalgic (for the homeland we never knew (neil young - and have a noir sensibility that is never far away. that mix of nostalgia and noir is a killer, i don't know of anyone performing today who conjures up this mixture quite so well.

here is part of a sung he wrote and sang:

"One wrong turn is all it takes
and there ain't many signs - you only get a few breaks.
Some get more. Some get less.
One wrong turn leads to the next.

The days go slow and the years go fast.
The future you look for is soon the past.
You seldom end up where you thought you would.
One wrong turn can change it all for good.

Love ain't a hug. Love ain't a kiss.
Love is every day doing this, that, this.
We put in our time and we put in our heart.
One wrong turn can tear it all apart."

i met the sister of an old friend of mine and talk turned to cullowhee. i had just started a sketch while waiting for the show to start. in the dim light it was hard for me to tell what i was doing, but eventually i realized that it was whiteside cove in jackson county. the whole evening was pulling me back to another time and place, big ridge, cullowhee, jackson county.

leaving the show i talked to a couple, my age or more, who had heard greg at the cat's cradle in carrboro the night before. they were from kinston and knew the maddox family one of whom is my daughter in law melissa. they had nothing but praise for her father clyde's dobro playing.

i came home and spent hours in bed, legs kicking and twitching, waiting for sleep.

woke

woke up at 7, thought about getting ready for hike.

i think i was still thinking about it when i lay down and woke back up at 10. so no sycamore cove trek for me today. the place i inhabit is an ADD disaster so i'll clean and organize. who knows what i'll find.

this is what i found, an old & forgotten doodle.

tried to email richard and debbie in the ukraine last night, it bounced back this morning. richard and debbie, if you're out there, email home.

loaded up on CD's and mysteries from the library yesterday. got an 87th precinct book by Ed McBain. that's good because i'm experiencing difficulty getting into any book these days, and this series i've always been able to read no matter what the state of my psyche.

greg brown tonight. i worked with a friend years ago who tried to get me to give a listen to him, but was stopped cold at the time by some sort of preconception that he was a member of the lake wobegone crew, which even back then i couldn't tolerate.

but recently i have heard a few CDs and get the idea that he is a rough and tumble redneck with a definite streak of noir, right up my alley. so we'll see.

[...later] the usual obscure run-arounds to get this posted.

now that (some) of archives are (sort of) accesable, i've been browsing through them. found a number of poems i think i will add to the book i'm working on. here's one:

someday maybe i'll feel new
but these days those days are mighty few
the sky leaves clouds like a clue
hangs question marks in the blue

atmospheric ice-crystals are cold
artificial memories i've been told
pathways lost in wars so old
storms of life bought and sold

3.4.5

blip.

currently to post i have to start out with a short first line. should be easy(?)

the neo-kons my be right, somebodies in control want to slip drrogs into the straight culture via the medical back door. personally i think it's about time:

"In the past couple of years their efforts have begun to pay off. Doblin is optimistic that psychedelic research is back for good, and this time it will do things right. 'This gives us the chance to show that we have learned our lessons,' he says. Halpern, too, is anxious to lay to rest the ghost of Leary. 'That man screwed it up for so many people,' he says."
New Scientist Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving - Features:

3.4b.5

flip.

for a change of pace i did the above before i was awake. the challange was that green keeps cutting out on my monitor. maybe if i sprinkle a little magic dust on it i can see what you see. or maybe i need to buy (gulp) a new one.

i think i'm over the hump with recovering archives. i spent a little while last night browsing thru some of them. to me it was fascinating looking at pages and weeks i have long since forgot. they display with no paragraph breaks, which is very bloggish looking. and the archive page doesn't do much as far as telling you what week they are from. i'll smooth it out as i go. go where?

forward.

the amount of copy i churned out is astounding to me. at present text is receding, visuals taking more of my time.

just heard another old thought of mine leaking out of NPR: terror is an emotion, not a country. might as well declare war against ennui.

seems to me i tried that and it didn't work.

today i go grocery shopping, the library, and - aargh - the mall matrix for vitamins and a paper cutter that - i hope - will score as well as cut various printer substrates. this for the fabulous note card project. so far i've sized and printed 4 out of 12. and the rest are about ready too.

did a preliminary edit of whistling in the dark, my entreeinto the world of self publishing.

tomorrow i'll go on hike to sycamore branch, probably get rained on. and right now i'm walking the mile to charlotte street bakery for some provisions.

now

still thrashing thru getting post archives up. whether the world needs this or not is not a question. whether i need to complete this one-off code change so it works is. ne of those things that by dfinition once you start you can't stop.

i'm squeezing in a simple water color during this troublesome activity.

...[evenings empire has returned] i'm calling it a day.

blog archive is working, sort of. very ugly, but 4 years of posts are accessible.

i have no idea why.

something to do with permalinks and page titles, settings, <$kode$>. all kinds of gremlins appearing and disappearing. (check the browser window title, at he top of the window.)

today has been kind of fun. wondering thru philip k. dick territory, form becoming formless. this is a familiar place.

so kindly forgive the twitchs, technical and other wise while i change things and things change.

3.25

just can't seem to get my mind together today. everything is start and stop.

frustrating not being able to fix archives. too many things half started. but i did get the picture below up - i think. depends on if you can see it or not.

got email from mr kass the scrim king. he has gallery opening in blacksberg va. put link here.

it's almost 2. the only way to rescue the day is go out and play. back after.

3.1.5

ummmm.... modernpeasant is down right now. something to do with bits and pieces - i mean bytes - and i'll fix it.

this day is a little on the wobbly side. i've learned to fall as gracefully as i can.

recent pencil drawing. someone i must have met in a dream.

i guess i'll spend the rest of the day fixing - arrgh - this site so the archives work.

how an intuitive like me ever ended up tweaking any kind of code, much less than making it up, just goes to show me that life is a funny deal.

[later] i disassembled the code and got to the point where nothing worked, then did my best to get all the toothpaste back in the tube.

if you can read this, i did.

archives still lost in cyberspace, i'll fool with it tomorrow.