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.