beautiful day, windows open, and i've farted around with this picture long enough.

yesterday i planned to go to charley oldham's memorial service in hendersonville at 2pm but bottomed out after lunch and spent awhile in metabolic limbo. around 5 i poked my head outside, the blazing inferno of the past few weeks had cooled down so i walked to town and checked out bele cher. haven't been in a few years. it was good to stick my big toe in the turbulent waters, what a zoo, still daylight, wondered through the crowds. talked to most of the artists who were displaying their wares. one painter from franklin showed me some prints made on the epson r300 using fredrix canvas as a substrate, they looked great. so i think third party watercolor paper and canvas deserves a little exploration on my part.

drifted over to see driveby truckers concert. found an old folks perch leaning over a wall, there were no rocking chairs. i hadn't heard this band before, altho a few years ago i came close to going to a concert with richard and tharpa before i chickened out.

southern rock. i could see the crowd and the band and stayed until the end. the spirit of too many times and places gone played with my mind. i was aware of friends no longer on the planet who seemed to hover nearby. the gestalt of the crowd, the collective maniac joy. instead of smoking dope the audience held up telephones beaming the scene to god knows where. a good many were looking at the screens of digital cameras at any given moment.

the band was good, three guitars sending overtones of anguish and strangely bucolic nostalgia to the stars. when they slowed down a bit to do "decoration day" it brought tears to my eyes. i remembered my grandfather's grave out in the arizona desert, the folks decorating graves up on big ridge when i had a family and we lived on that beautiful and harsh mountain, robert johnson singing "please see that my grave is swept clean".

that line from delillo: "the future belongs to the crowd". and leonard cohen: "i've seen the future, and it is murder."

pleasant walk back two miles in the dark, thoughts rolling and tumbling while the invisible bubble of grace floated above me.

today's iconic vizual is a drawing i made while waiting for greg brown to open at the gray eagle awhile back. i finished it in the dark. as is my habit i had no idea of where the image was heading and was pleasantly surprised the next day when i recognized my old stomping grounds circa 1970, whiteside cove in jackson county.

pleasant interlude last night w/ asheville bloggers. very variegated group so to speak. let a thousand flowers bloom. the push to express one's self, or maybe the self behind the self, is non-optional for some of us citizens of the millennium. always a pleasure to share some time and space with those so afflicted.

found this watercolor while digging thru my "studio", ie bedroom. unloaded everything into front room and thinning it out.

i probably painted it 2 years ago. it reminds me of the early 60's. not much else does.

pleasant rainy morning. cleared a couple of GB off audio hard drive. there was some weird stuff there.

a random sentence from current book, sri auribindo, or the adventure of consciousness by some frenchman named satprem, first published 1970. i'm really enjoying it.

"again, let us emphasize that this is not a matter of intellectual speculation, a philosophical dilemma to be resolved, but a cosmic fact, an organic reality like the needles on the porcupine's back."

Gomez, the neighborhood Kat
weather broke last night, but not much. did manage to make a long delayed run to target at the (ugh) mall this morning. shut out the weather when i got back.

not much to say today, but i did read one of the best letters to the editor i've ever read in this week's Mountain Xpress. i don't know why it jumped out at me, but it did.

"Moving across psychic tundras

Thoughts while waiting for a job interview in the lobby of a mental health agency: I believe in neither tradition nor the future. I used to believe he who does not adapt, does not survive. But what if the things you need to do to adapt deaden your soul? What if the repressive nature of forgetting, so essential to letting go and adaptation, murders the essence of delicate human nature?

We are moving too fast, and the evidence is everywhere in human affairs: the slumped shoulders, the wringing hands, the drugged shuffle, the vacant stare of exhausted faith, the whispered timidity of battered nerves. We demand too much of one another: too much concentrated time, too many money payments and too high a price for slow compliance, too much obsessive carnality, too many cinematic myths celebrating strangeness and violence, too many journeys across psychic tundras without horizons. Too much work for too little pay. Jobs, like schizophrenic voices, that demand we deny ourselves a life in order to survive.

We assault the brain and body with toxins and stimulants and call it pleasure. Being stimulated and poisoned has become the standard of normality, and those who suffer chronically debilitating side effects are corralled with stigma and drugs.

Tradition will not return us to some old, romanticized world. The future rests its limp, heavy hand on our collective shoulder. We must slough it off. Its promise is tyranny; there are too many lost souls waiting for an afterlife. The sick and the caregiver live in the moment with only one thing on their minds: the quality of mercy.

– Adrian Murillo
West Asheville"
from
Letters to the editor / Mountain Xpress / Asheville, NC

and then this, another one from the heart, and from an unlikely place. go ahead, read it and see what you think.
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

i'm in meltdown mode. i made physical therapy appt at 1 yesterday, but scratched all other activities and rushed back to air conditioning, totally useless for rest of day.

this morning got up at 5:30, did get out for awhile (and took above picture; got a good one of a cat also).

then i just slept in front of a fan until lunch, and did the same after lunch, reading random paragraphs which i don't remember from a pile of books.

nobody here but us chickens, and not a hell of a lot going on.

took this foto last week on parkway. very hot and hazy up there, altho better than aville. better than most of the nation i guess.

altho i've been holed up waiting out the heat did get downtown friday, saturday and sunday night. no, i got out those nights. friday was reems creek get together of the elders, and was pleasantly cool. saturday was a quick trip to Shindig on the Green. and Sunday to jazz society.

Yesterday i went grocery shopping around 4 and it wiped me out.

I'm hiding from the heat. so to speak.

cross posted picture to BlogAsheville. you might want to check it out, it is fascinating presentation of some very talented folks.

i think i'll crank out a bunch of bumper stickers this week, altho words still fail me. maybe this one:
Outlaw the Criminal Overworld

still playing w/ digital camera, this is photo of old friend ninian who has been up from butner for yearly swannanoa gathering, a week of old timey music at warren wilson.

continued yesterday on operation clean sweep, got back to last room which i'm about to start on. this is small bedroom where i paint and it will take a few days. stacks of drawings, prints, photos to ruthlessly go thru, brushes, palettes, paints.

went downtown with ninian last evening. we ate at laughing seed cafe, excellent meal. the place has upscaled since i was last there, i guess the whole town has. strolled down to shindig on the green, a summer saturday night affair, old timey appalachian and bluegrass music. musicians everywhere in small groups jamming. the heat was almost gone, a pleasant evening.

this evening friend karen and i are going to hear asheville jazz society's presentation of jazz, gospel with a new orleans twist. as usual i have no idea of what to expect and will keep it that way.

so this will make 3 outing in a row. a personal best.

this week i will try and roll out bumper sticker scheme. the idea is to print up a whole bunch of bumper stickers and scatter them thru town at all the free newspaper outlets. what has held me back is content. so instead of a timely meme or trope i will fall back to default: the best things in life aren't things.

yesterday... yesterday... what did i do?

i can't remember... now i can: housecleaning on another hard drive, archived onto cd-rom a lot of files. i only have left audio partition which is way too full. hope to do that today.

went to the happy hour for the tribal elders at john and bev's, the first coolish weather i've spent all summer. beautiful evening. played around with digital camera and got the above. not bad considering i still am in hacking mode with it.

very sleepless night. i should have just given up and gone outside, see if i could get a night shoot of full moon.

should see ninian before the day is over. might walk downtown this evening weather permitting and experience shindig on the green

foto taken at winnie's house. she made this guy.

happy hour at dr. johns this evening. excellent timing.



what i wonder about all the terrible terrorist activity: if you inventoried all of the explosives on earth and divided that by the number of humans alive today, how many pounds per person would it equal. a lot i think.

and why were - are - these materials manufactured? to what purpose?

my answer to that question is not adam smith's. i think it is because a profit is made. and in our world no other explanation is needed, or even allowed. so the profiteers just keep cranking the stuff out, and anyone that thinks the use is restricted is dreaming. like saturday night specials, heroin, and other socially undesirable products, profit ensures that an endless supply is available to any wigged out freak that needs the stuff. an unexpected side effect of capitalism.

finally finished the above. lots of gauche and a little india ink. i plan to varnish it some day. i worked on it i don't know how many days, but a lot of them.

spent the first half of the day doing early morning trip to west asheville pharmacy and then feeling very ill until after lunch. then i paid bills and otherwise tried to catch up with my life.

i need to clean up two hard drives. transfer a whole lot of files to zip disks. so i've been looking at them (the zip disks) and am finding a lot of pretty good pictures going back maybe 5 years. printed an 8 by 10 of one of them this morning and it's beautiful.

don't exactly know why this fascinates me, but it is one more sign that: 1) things just keep on changing, or 2) something is very off:
Indo-Asian News Service -> Germany-Wildlife/Tech-Birds -> Birds imitate mobile phone ring tones
they have learnt to imitate the ring tones of the omnipresent mobile phones, say German ornithologists.

yesterday i took care of bizness, among which was laundry. could not face the laundromat, so i went to old friend winnies palace - and it is a palace - and while clothes were rolling and tumbling took a few photos. above is one.

today started off well, continued sorting "stuff", getting rid of "stuff" and moving "stuff". took a load , big load, of cardboard containers to recycling center.

before lunch i tested "sugar", as they call it around here. 498. infusion set for insulin pump had apparently clogged. the routine for this situation is a hefty syringe of insulin, change out the set, and drink lots of water, all of which i did. and don't eat. had a dentist appointment at 2, layed down, conked out, and awoke at 1:45. made it to appt and explained i wasn't hitting on all cylinders and why. this was a consult to lay out alternative to dentures. of course my blood glucose was steadily dropping back to normal and i didn't understand much of what she said.

when i left i drove to doctors to pick up a prescription. still - let's be honest here - dazed and confused i stopped at huddle house, probably about 3:30. ordered toast, scrambled eggs, grits and tested again. 39. ate and drove home, drank some juice and layed down again. came to around six o'clock.

a day in the life of a type I diabetic. not complaining, just the facts. the difficult thing to convey is the inner experience. it takes about a day to recover and feel "normal". sometimes, in spite of my advanced spiritual state and non-dual space i really hate this disease.

they say tomorrow is another day. i'll do what survivors have always done, begin again.

no sleep last night. i found myself walking around the apartment time after time. sleepwalking? no, i was awake. watched TV for awhile, infomercials about money.

still spring cleaning, have a truckload of stuff to take to landfill. did kitchen yesterday, will finish today by going thru drawers and cabinents to unload any unusable pots, pans, gadgets, and all of the stuff that typically gets left in drawers.

did do a nice photoprint which i'll send off today. it's a gift.

my youngest son nathan is leaving tomorrow to visit my oldest son eric in northern california. should be a welcome break for both.

i've been having some anomolies posting to this blog. probably has to do w/ ancient code in templates, guess i'll fix.

this morning was cool enough for a walk up the old mountain. got back around 10 and it was already way too hot. plenty of folks out earlier though.

i have to admit that it is kind of neat to meet a flower, take it's picture, and post all in a small space of time. i haven't been into taking pictures in many many years.

i've decided it will take all week to get my living module in order. today it's the kitchens turn.

been reading a book jeff w. leant me at least a year ago about Sri Auribindo. came across the following:
"...it appears that the world moves according to a wiser evolutionary law, whereby nothing can be saved unless everything is saved."
from Sri Auribindo, or the adventure of consciousness by satprem

weird looking picture. pencil plus pixie dust.

i finally got out yesterday around 12. took my old walk up the mountain for about an hour. and that put me out for the rest of the day. not the exercise, the tropical heat and humidity.

i am beginning to think i need to find higher ground for real.

still spring house cleaning. got one room almost done.

my habit is to get up in the morning. so far so good.

the rest, as they say, is a collection of small surprises, curve balls, diversionary smoke and mirrors, and holding my breath until i surface.

now that all that is done for another day it's off to the grocery store.

sometimes my compulsion to create and slide daily images out into the world pays off. i've sort of been plodding along in this domain lately, and the above is a good example. a painting that never worked from the start, i improved it about 1000% after scanning. cool. and it should make a nice 8 x 10 print.

in a moment i'm going to try and walk up sunset mountain like i used to do. if i can beat the heat.

otherwise the entire weekend until tomorrow at 5 is spring cleaning. (yeah, late again).

another imaginary landscape. this one started out 2 days ago as pencil drawing done in doctor's waiting room.

the link below says it well: it's about medical studies:
CNN.com - Research: Third of study results don't hold up - Jul 13, 2005:
"What was good for you yesterday frequently will turn out to be not so great tomorrow."

but it is a fascinating and frustrating fact about life also.

as soon as you've "got it", the solution, the answer to the meaning of life, you've lost it. but don't know you've lost it until the toll of living in an unconscious dream again creates enough desperation and confusion for the universal drive for meaning to start prowling again, pushing us in new and unexpected directions.

if you understand the preceding sentence let me know. i don't.

speaking of imaginary landscapes, i saw "howl's moving castle" yesterday. had no idea of what it was except a japanese cartoon. "anime" i guess altho i've never been sure of what that means.

visually it is gorgeous. stunning. light and reflection, shadows, mist, glints and gleams we mostly don't register in day to day life.

but more importantly it has the meaning a collective "big dream" might have. not literal, just a look at life here on earth, youth, old age, death, love, beauty, the good and the true. best movie i've seen in maybe a quarter of a century. this is millinial art of the highest order.

Hauru no ugoku shiro (2004)

Howl's Moving Castle:
"A wise and wonderful parable of the passing moments of life, and dealing with both the advantages and burdens that make us individuals."

a busy week, sliding towards this and that. for those of you keeping track, i got a great night's sleep. it's about 8 in the morning and i'm about to drive south on the parkway to take some pictures, moody cloudy foggy mountain landscapes. or whatever the morning offers.

yesterday i went for yearly diabetic retnopathy check and got a gold star, no complications, so you can call me hawk eye.

tonight i hope to see japanese cartoon, howls's moving castle, i think that's the name, i'll repost if it isn't.
Movie Review: Howl's Moving Castle / Mountain Xpress / Asheville, NC

printed a bumper sticker last night, the print quality is great. it reads "crazy old men barely make history" and is a little too esoteric - or dumb - to fool around with any more. reworked out of control watercolor with guoach to see what happens. long ago in a watercolor book i saw an italian landscape which knocked me out. it was done with gouach and then varnished, gave it an almost photorealistc sheen and brightness, so that's what i'm after.

made it up the parkway and back down. here is what i brought back:

mmmm.... not much is it? bet you'd think different if you put your head down and ran towards it at full speed.

this item about appropriate punishment for german hacker who created sasser virus last year (you'll need to register, free, for ny times):
Worse Than Death - New York Times: "Make the hacker spend 16 hours a day fielding help-desk inquiries in an AOL chat room for computer novices. Force him to do this with a user name at least as uncool as KoolDude and to work on a vintage IBM PC with a 2400-baud dial-up connection. Most painful of all for any geek, make him use Windows 95 for the rest of his life."

from card i made for my niece anne.

this is the 3rd time i've tried to post today, the first 2 times i blew away all the typing i'd done. too bad because i'm sure it was topical, interesting and thoughtful meditation on the human condition.

saturday i went to memorial for mike may at the reitzle's. large crowd, the preacher was great, a respectful and nostalgic send off. mike appreciated it. it had a western north carolina touch to it: nobody there that just arrived in town to check out the vortices.

driving home i heard on the radio the author - at least i think that was who she was - of nickel and dimed to death - say "there is a whole class of people who don't have a clue about how people live today, and most sit behind large desks in washington dc." (very loose quote). it occurred to me that the gathering i had just been to was made up of these "officially" marginalized and invisible folks.

the above came from playing with camera. don't take it too literally.

i've been thinking bumper stickers for awhile and might simplify the picture, embolden the letters, and paste it on my bumper; i want to see how long the material will last.

speaking of bumper stickers i saw one in town i liked. but couldn't remember what it said. late last night it came to me and i scribbled it down:

The Only Bush i Trust is My Own

yesterday i observed silence day.

sure was quiet.

ran across 2 quotes from odd sources that might be useful to us all:

"war effort will be justified or stand condemned not by the results it produces, but by the ends by which it was inspired."
Meher Baba during WWII.

"i think the american regime, the current american regime, seems to reflect a sort of gangsterism. and when i look at hip-hop in particular, it reflects the same. i see a sort of Republican agenda in commercial hip-hop. it's like,"i don't want to talk to you if your money ain't right". and i see the same mind set in the upper exhalants [sic?] of the republican regime which now reigns."
saul williams, quoted in asheville disclaimer.

"Of those who say nothing, few are silent."
Thomas Neill

"He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak."
Ausonius

ok here is the real first digital snapshot taken this morning. what a relief.

still stuck for RAW image format transfer to mac os 9.1. i guess i don't care that much about it at the moment.

today: yesterday's chores, including runs to grocery store and pharmacy, bank, drugstore. at 2:00 memorial service for mike out at reems creek.

thoughts: not yet, it's still early.

just got back from 2 doctor's appointments and it's high noon. so now, for the rest of the day, it's playtime. by that i mean photos, paintings, letters, postings, software enigmas and finding a few lost objects that are more lost than normal.

in one doctor's office i found this in some reading material:

when darkness falls, men see stars
ralph waldo emerson.

reminds me of dylan:

it's not dark yet
but it's getting there

speaking of whom i read in another waiting room periodical that dylan has given his cachet to some wine label. $70 a bottle.

also that author ed mcbain died. see edmcbain.com. his 87th precinct series can be read over and over, i've got one from the library now that i know i must have read in the past.

stumbled across a form that give's me a blogger code: mine is

the blogger code:
"B9 d t k s-- u- f i- o x-- e l c "

[more later]

this is the first picture i got from fortuitous sony dcs-v3. still plugin along with antiquated system, next i want to figure out RAW format and in the meanwhile what is is.

got 2 beautiful postcards printed today. i finally found my glasses around 6 o'clock, what a relief. then heard about london attack. as soon as it was mentioned i remembered hearing while i was waking up. but got totally side tracked by all of the above and below that i forgot about it.

New York Daily News - Home - Astrologer sues NASA for 300M for comet blast
"Claiming NASA messed with the balance of the universe by intentionally smashing a probe into a comet, a Russian astrologer has filed a $300 million lawsuit against the U.S. space agency."

"
says it better than i could myself.

remember otis?: "don't know much about astrology". . .

but rob brezny is pretty good.

its almost 4 in the afternoon and i'm still looking for my glasses.

picture below sure is big.

another one of those wordless days. words fail me. so i drew the above last night on a scrap of paper.

headlines of the asheville citizen-times this morning:

Kind man dies in shocking slaying

it was good they got that first word right.

i think i am at the point now where i can update blog template and pull pictures into the image archive. expect changes.

i seem to be in a summer slump lately, keep pecking away on random projects, but it's like i'm sleepwalking.

last night mike may of reems creek was bludgeoned to death by some creep he was trying to help. those of us who knew mike knew that he was a little rough around the edges but truly had a heart of gold. a generous and free spirit. another hole in the life of his many friends. see CITIZEN-TIMES.com: Suspect charged with murder of Reems Creek man

attended potluck sunday evening. Baba folks, very pleasant, a breath of sanity, cool breeze of meaning in what is turning out to be a hard summer.

one of those days when i just don't feel right. unsynched. unbalanced. assymetric. anhedonic. probably should immediately go back to bed.

well despite the humidity & the heat i guess i'll go on hiking club jaunt to the parkway this morning. "it'll be some kind of change."

i got a brass magnifying lamp from my sister yesterday. she gave it to my dad and he didn't like it, so she sent it to me. Beautifully made, but not very useful. reminds me of those expensive tripod mounted telescopes you see in homes from time to time, that serve an ornamental not functional purpose. however i can use it in my visual painting/photo/greeting card production system which is, after all, composed of all sorts of oddball equipment. thanks jane <=== who should be in europe somewhere by now (she left yesterday).

third night of chaotic dreams. i think it may be because of the antibiotics i'm taking.

wanna peek into the future of the dubious branding meme? go here:
deseretnews.com | Mom sells face space for tattoo advertisement"
'Will it go numb?' she asked.
'It'll go as numb as your brain,' Brouse replied."

the long flat weekend begins. i have no fond memories of the 4th.

and as for driving somewhere that is the same as where i drove from, no thanks. especially since the highway became horsepower hysteria, revved up adrenalin-charged insanity.

kind of analogous to society in general these days. back in the bad good old days i remember wavy gravy urging humans to emerge from their urban caves into the daylight.

it was a good idea then, and might be now. but no thanks, i just flat can't take it any more. too much of nothing, and most of it collective insanity that is difficult if not impossible to be in and not of.

now on to a more important topic: the last two nights i've been dreaming up a storm, so to speak. this is not usual for me these days due to cerebral wear and tear.

night before last was not bad, a pleasant jaunt to paris with my old old friend Kathy f. she guided me through crowded but not threatening streets full of folks she seemed to know well.

but last night. i was stuck in some sort of philip k. dick nightmare. it started in a sort of dorm place where i ordered a movie. turned out that in order to see it i had to step into a sort of large hall which began to fill up with other folks who were on viewer list. the "movie" or whatever the hell it was began, only this one swapped all our identities. and realities. there was occasional drop-out where the technicians running this thing could be heard or seen dealing with problems. whoever i was could vaguely remember a bag or kit i had brought, and ended up crawling through a crowd of shifting personality fragments looking for it. this totally screwed up the behind the walls equipment responsible for maintaining this particular world, and a long series of point-of-view flip flops and shifts began, personalities flickering in and out of existence, new ego every "now", walls and worlds dissolving and reforming for ever.

after an eternity i woke up. at least i think i did. not so sure after a dream like this.