this is a doodad created in flash. i have some of these scattered thru book i am revising, smaller of course. i'm cut loose from most of the other obscure activities i was involved in so hope to have revision up and available to the world in a week or less.

otherwise want to finish brief recollection of kerouac's visit to chapel hill back when the earth was cool.

going to shut computer off and run badly postponed errands now.

my aunt patricia died last week. i got to know her a little better in the last few years, earlier the extended family diaspora we all (almost) live today didn't allow it. she was a fine lady and one that i could talk to as "me".

so i worked at the mac all day taking some ancient black and white snapshots and converted them to 8X10 prints which will be fed-exed to funeral gathering. above is one, taken at my dad's collage graduation. from left to right: aunt patricia, uncle pete, grandmother mary, aunt rosy, grandpa wyly, and my dad wyly. around 1940 i think.

meanwhile i discovered i am the future of the internet. bunch of commentary today talks - again - about the change from consumer to producer that is happening today on the net some folks put up more than they take in. hope it's true. what else can a poor boy do when the nation-state withers away? see
Social Networks are the New Media

photo of a friend i took on yesterday's walk.

had a pleasant interlude at laurel's salon last evening. the conversation circled around healing (bob dylan: "everything is broken") and politics. there seems to be today a slight guilt involving tending one's garden while the world is going to hell. especially as regards the children who live in the world we leave them.

my feeling is that the guilt is well placed, and my hat is off to those who struggle to fix what is broken.

but i have come to see that any repairs that are attempted in the political, legal, academic, technological, medical or any other of the domains of the "real" world are misplaced. we are in a time and place jung calls kairos. there is no fix within the domain of the problem. it's like asking the wrong question and getting no answer.

the right stance IMHO lies in domains that are not part of the picture today. domains that are not part of the "official" reality. personal development into realms that are ambiguous, ineffable and invisible.

so the action must take place on a personal level, a leap into the mystery (or kierkegaard: "leap into faith"). no guaranteed outcome.
but to keep shuffling the pieces of today's worldview is a guarantee of failure.

note that this does not involve dismissing the game. one must play the hand that one is dealt, but not just play the game. a leap into the invisible includes dealing with the manifest, so i vote, discuss and scratch my head like we all do or should do, but, having done that, keep my eyes open - most of the time - for what the spirit is up too, and what part i play in that. what part we all play in it.

this is an unfinished watercolor. i'm currently finishing it. had nothing else to sling up here, so i photoshopped it.

talked to cousin bob, my dad, and sister jane yesterday. Conversation with dad drifted into not so much politics but the larger context, the world today which includes not only politics but all institutionalized memes (look it up). academics, medical, legal, styles, survival. in other words the evolving world. he agreed with my description of the mess we're in, thought everybody would recognize the validity of the description, but there was no solution to it. i stuck to my present obsession, that there is no solution within the domains of the institution, ie political, etc. so if there is a solution it lies outside these domains, probably is in the domain of the subjective and personal (both of which are vaporizing, crowded out by the institutions).

so it's the same old thing: the only thing to "do" is increase and be aware of the subjective, each of us, and see if the eventually recognized domain of feelings, consciousness, and inner development might allow a global change.

so what else is new?

my deal for this week. no wonder i've been hungry for pickles & ice-cream lately.

i'm not into astrology (neither am i a vegetarian, a gun-nut, an evangelical, a cyber-cowboy, or any of the other novel categories that have become the lingua franca of today). but i like this guy.

i just looked him up on the web so i could attribute the above. fabulous site. good place to check out what may be happening. totally way more informative than the rancid stylistics of the "newz".
Free Will Astrology

my set of shakuhachis. each one has a story. a shakuhachi is a japenese end blown flute, made from bamboo for the last thousand years or so. 4 holes on top, thumbhole underneath. i think they have only been used for secular music for around 300 years, before that they were relegated to court ceremonies, then for awhile were the exclusive perogative of the wondering fuke buddhist monks.

i bought my first one around 1990, never having heard one played. it took me two months (honest) just too get a sound, ie before that i thought it was "broke"; i could only produce silence. but i got into it, and could "blow" shakuhachi pretty good. improvisation. started teaching myself how to read their notation, but never got very far.

time passed (still passing) and years later i realized that i had lost my chops and could no longer play this insterment. the consensus opinion is because i have a beard now and did not then, but i'm not sure i buy that.

so now there is a new question. what about playing with a beard and false teeth? i'm not optimistic about the answer, but as a contribution to the scientific community will find out.

straight photo of the steps outside my apt.

yesterday was a busy one. i was up, down and all around with credit card paypal fiasco which i guess really was a case of identity theft. i hope it is over. i sent in an affidavit to card people, but more importantly at last have a human contact there.

got a very complimentary email from new zealand about blog which i appreciated. it started me thinking on the difference between writing about the creative process and doing it.

when i started this blog - "just to see what happens" - my goal was to post every day and while i remain a point and click typist, i did develop the ability to sit down and wing it each morning with no idea of what i would write.

but in the last year or three i've found myself doing the same thing, but sitting down first thing in the morning and constructing an image instead of message and posting it. finding little to say and no way to say it. so you will soon see a change here, major emphasis on image, maybe daily post tucked away in side bar.

the noise machine was all agog yesterday about be careful what you post. school somewhere has new rule, law, concerning students who post something someone somewhere considers inappropriate.

i am glad that this became buzz of the day because it merely makes clear how much we are owned in the land of the free. a year or so i hooked up with group of bloggers here in aville, and was surprised that two out of the initial ten felt they had to keep their names secret out of concern for their jobs. a job today means hopefully survival, and the threat of losing it, or a scholarship, because of what one expresses, is a stark reminder of what the world that corporations and branding have created: you are a "brand" and your package design better fit the style guide or else.

so to hang by your fingernails as a commodity and hope for job security, maybe a pension, has become the de facto mode of the day.

the right attitude towards this situation requires, in my estimation, the determination to forge ahead irregardless. play games with the surveillance, a lateral step here, the occasional side step. we all have to tap dance. so raise hell. remeber that mcluhin pointed out so long ago that the word "respectable" in it's present day configuration comes from 18th 19th c., when it meant "the ability to successfully withstand inspection". about the same time uniforms became manditory for the military.

and if you are blackballed because of what you write, remember that you are way better off having filtered out the ostracizers because if you are like most people, participating in this charade is the biggest loser of all.

icon of my head this morning. most mornings. this is an animated gif, detested by all, but i'm lucky: it doesn't animate for some reason and i guess that's just as well. oops, now it works. just as well.

there is a compulsion to know what is going on and do something about it that comes with human existence, it is a given. we have no choice except to experience it. the advaita thread that one finds in some vedantic and buddhist points of view looks at these compulsions as a problem that creates more problems. the solution i guess is not to lose these compulsions - probably impossible - but not to identify with them either. they can be thought of more like the weather. it may be sunny or snowing outside, and that will affect one's moods, actions, plans, but the weather is not you. if you look at it like an external unending part of life then the you that is aware becomes a different you that is unaware and acts and feels like the weather (or the compulsion to know and do).

so everyday when i run across the technical glitches that life in the cyberlane brings i can't ignore them. i want to figure them out and fix. i am acting out what i am unaware of. making a problem out of a problem.

or i pay more attention to the witness, the observer and let it fix itself.

i am dealing with paypal and my credit card. it just seems to have zapped me from nowhere and keeps on going. i've made quite a few phone calls, three were with humans, the rest were cul de sacs of button pushing.

this morning i make the rounds in my truck which is running fine. with a little luck i'll make the laundry, the dept of motor vehicles, and the art supply store. there is a glitzy one right down town but i like to deal with another, off the beaten track. all to replace a pencil set i somehow lost.

been proofing, revising book. i'll be done soon, and can start working on the next one which is slowly percolating in the woodshed back of my mind.

yesterday's walk. i met these flowers on kimberly ave.

can you remember a time when people were not scared? the millinial world has begun as a sci-fi nightmare. a collision - collusion - between govt and corporate. you are being watched (really).

i heard cokie roberts on sunday talking heads extravaganza noting that until iraq gets straightened out bush has a problem no matter what he says or doesn't. what she didn't do is take it up one notch and say that until bush gets straightened out we all have problems. the connection between iraq and all of the other varied twists (perversions) we are being locked up with is they are products of the same oligarchy, same greed, same stunted development. the iron castle (philip k. dick) the world is becoming is no accident.

picture i started last night and it's done.

yesterday's makes a beautiful - to me - 8 by 10 print.

this is from yesterday's walk. got truck back she runs fine.

so:

i'm going south on the parkway early morning, like to get some digital vistas. mon-tuz i do my trip countdown thing which takes two days. be in CH wed. come back after labor day.

drove truck to jason's this morning. walked back beautiful day, took a bunch of pictures.

the image is from faded b&w c. 1968. manitou springs, which at the time was a GI & hippie run down spa town that had seen greater days on the outskirts of that terminally right wing city of colorado springs. i think the house was where we were visited by van and lynn with a very young mike broadly. they arrived from new mexico which at the time was hosting a lot of back to the land types. new mexico is a unique environment and was too much for a lot of them. lynn stayed on our couch for 3 weeks with hepatitis {bad water).

watercolor - new - should appear above when i get a few technical details worked out. (they're now worked out).

soon i am going to put this blog on hold. devote myself to reworking the three links at top, they are all sadly out of date.

watched frontline last night, hedrick smith on something like "disappearing pensions" only the title was something like "retirement - going going gone." i couldn't finish watching it. it was really about the criminal overclass (about 5% of the population) and more of the barefaced robbery of you and me by these folks.

one statement i remember: "lifelong pension replaced by lifelong work."

my friend sam who sadly is no longer with us used to talk about this 30 years ago. we were both convinced that the postwar world where one worked and then retired was an historical blip.

but not in our wildest ruminations did we ever consider the possibility that this loss would be such a blatant heist by the powerful.

piece of a watercolor i painted at marshall and mimi's years ago.

today is catchup day. after 2 days of total lethargy i think i'm back to "normal", so my day will be normal - i hope. that means kleening the house, not trivial as it has reverted to ADD nightmare. groceries. library. bank. epson.

and i unframed a 16x20 watercolor/oil pastel that has been hanging on the wall because i figured out what it needs to be finished.

i'm listening to a book on tape in the evenings, tom horn, which i guess you would call a western which i don't read. the exception was a unique time in the past when i read louis lamour for awhile. this is the first book on tape i have had any success with. in the past i would fall asleep before the first side of the first tape ended. so i'd start it over the next night, and the night after until i gave up. this book is full of history of santa fe and prescott so it keeps me interested.

a doodle is a doodle is a doodle.

yesterday was a big fat zero.

after a very long night's sleep i feel 100% better.

what is 100% of zero?

nevermind, i'm getting it together.

what is "it"?

3 pix from yancey cvounty. just finished this one. also a watercolor in the living room. then there's the data bank jumper in the basement and i've got all the windows outfitted with slow glass.

i spent the day in recovery mode from camping out at doug's. just let what is be. i'm a creature of habit.


took this picture yesterday at doug's place. the thing is, is that it was nearly dark. that last crepuscular glow. i used the night "framing" on the sony dsc-v3 which i haven't fooled with much.

i kind of got more into shooting images than i would have thought. like everything it goes thru cycles, hadn't really been using it much for a few months.

i have nothing interesting to say so i'll stick up a few more pix as the day slithers along.


mmmm... probably should have left this one alone.

4th CD package, ready to go. click on pic to see larger.

went to dentist yesterday, more measurments for lower plate, lower teeth, which i'm starting to miss.

spent the rest of the day cranking color prints out and doing some watercolors. above is one of the print. from an ancient faded snapshot. this is where i lived with my family at big ridge in jackson county. at the top you can just see a bald that was about 45 minute walk. 360 degree view, into geogia and the great smokey park. the structue by the road is the garage, usually full of firewood and kindling and maybe a few gallons of homemade beer brewing. across the road shaded by the tress is our house, not visible. small structure to left is spring house. had to install pump and run line under the stae dirt road. you can just make out a car, 49 chrysler.

cd cover for third cd "noize toy" by, of course, modern peasant. available soon. click on it to see larger image (if i figured this so handy command out right)... oops. need to size the window. you can see the text on the back (left) i went a little too far.

i spent yesterday at the computer. from 8 in the morning until midnight. this is not normal for me nowadays, and i kept checking to see if i should stop and do something useful. however i was having fun and all work no play you know about. so i finished four CD covers and completely reformatted book, finished a watercolor and began another. one whole day of play.

doctor's appointment this morning, and i stopped on the way back to pick up a few cheap frames. right now i'm struggling to turn the computer off so i can go shopping.

from a walk i took a couple of days ago.

big news here is i went to church last night. merle haggard and bob dylan. it was fun. i went by myself, and was lucky enough to snag a parking place at prichard park. this was the first time in a long time for me to be downtown aville on a saturday night. walking around the festive streets and carnival ambiance i was struck once again how different it is.

the last time i heard dylan at the civic center really unprofessional sound and acoustics. i got seated right before merle h. and the strangers opened up and i was immediately relieved that the sound was fine. they played a comfortable, in a way world-weary sort of way, set. when they played runaway woman(?) i was knocked out.

never heard it or some of the other songs before. there is something so "natural" about merle and his music. they've been where you've been, unlike the mediated world of images.

dylan was fun. his voice was a little too loud in the mix, but not by much. the weird keyboard he played, the alternate arrangements, the vocal quality, the phrasing, the surprises, all were on a light hearted note, even the screamer's like all around the watchtower. thanks again bob.

there was a nice looking small frame on the wall, looks like a color photo i may have taken years ago in mexico. a long time ago i had a lady friend who looked at it and shrugged "so?" anyway this morning i decided i wanted to change it and above is what it changed to. printed on arch's, really works well.

my sister jane on the phone was wondering why comedians - like whoever the one who was with bush last week - seem to be taking the place of the news, or as we say today "mainstream press".

then there is neil young who may be wondering why we - the hoi polloi, or maybe the young, have not yet voiced outrage at the Powerful.

maybe the answer to these questions is fear.

i mean a fear that goes back for more than my lifetime. survival for the common man has always meant keeping clear of the power pushers. but after WWII the PR and marketing domain became ultra-skilled at directing and adjusting core values. this resulted in a certain comfort level, the creation of a large middle-class and a form of denial that marked that world, the pollyannish dumb consumer happy as a lark but nonetheless way back in his or her mind, repressed, unconscious, a bad feeling about it.
3AM stuff.

today it seems marks the conversion of unconscious fear (which because it is real and yet denied the human acts out) into conscious fear. we need to lean into that fear, acknowledge it, talk about it openly.

i think the next 12 months are going to be very dangerous.

this morning's pictogram.

what it means in today's context i am sure i don't know.

perhaps that i will see neil young film before the day is over.


or it could be that i will finally straighten out insulin pump and other medical doo-dads that have become strangely scattered.


or maybe that i will continue to work on setup on sony notebook that materialized on my doorstep.


i might even set up AC for days ahead.


and for sure i'll wash dishes - all 3 of them.

i found this on my computer desk. it was in a stack of loose papers full of to-do lists.

Clean air
Lean smoke
First you talk
And then you don't

now i have something weighty to consider: do i work this doggeral into book or wait?

hey wait a minute i'm already waiting.

latest oil. still drying so i shot it with digicamera instead of scan. this image seems a little cold, think i'll warm her up.

famous last words.

[later] ok, warmer.

now i have to write about... something.

on tap: couple watercolor landscapes, finish re-laying out book whistling in the dark, finish CD cover for third CD, making sure i have no alternate takes. take a hike. smell the coffee.

listen to ten minutes of millinial minimalist massive tone poem i did yesterday in a fit of creative excess.

i saw the doc yesterday, routine, and stopped on the way back to visit george. we talked about all the "oldsters" we know who, once having dropped off the wage-slave truck, engage in some creative activity. no golf.

in some obscure way i take this to be an analog to the vedantic practice of living the last 7th of a life disengaged in the woods. only it is in the noosphere as well as biosphere today. and it may be that this is what Meher Baba was pointing to when he allowed that in the west creativity may serve the same function as the spiritual has in the east.

another total sleep for 14 hours last night. deep sleep. why? the day ended for me around 6 or 7. today began at 8. got up maybe once or twice briefly.

and dream; i'm still waking up maybe i can remember it.

i was somewhere in the orient. taiwan? my children were small. some kind of evacuation was in process. we ended up on a c-47 with about a thousand people crowded onto it. i did my best to keep track of children because the plane extended into all kinds of temporary rooms, built-ons, a rear platform kind of like a caboose, open to the air. there were places much too close to exposed propellors. we were on the ground, and preparations for take off went on and on while the crowd wondered around, in and out. my wife sally was somewhere. the pilots were phillipinos or malaysian and could not speak english. there was some kind of problem, they kept coming and going, much radio chatter. the folks were mostly women and children and military men. confusion. i kept pushing thru throng to find a child, mine or someone else's, standing in a place not good for take off, clicking seat belts, asking if they knew where other children were. it got to the point where i was somehow feeling that my responsibility was for the safety of way too many adults and children but i kept at it.

i was in the cockpit (no door, people crowded around) when finally we could take off. taxied thru an underground place, up thru a ramp, and emerged onto surface when the pilots hit full throttle. the overloaded plane thundered towards the end of the runway towards trees and forest. we lifted off too late and crashed thru the top of the continually taller trees and brush for a long time, finally breaking thru to open sky.

activity continued at a feverish pace within the airplane, accounting for children, pulling people from precarious positions. my wife kept popping up full of complaints. a general i somehow knew and i would talk from time to time. he was well spoken and calm, not your stereotypical cartoon of military type. at some point he received disturbing information and called a meeting of the officers on board and i went with him. information had been radioed to the plane that it had just been discovered that a phone somewhere had been tapped putting the aircraft in danger.

but we finally landed. people everywhere inside the plane scurried around looking for people. i did the same, rounding up children and looking for the small unpacked personal effects we had managed to load. by the time i had everything i could find rounded up the interior which was like a train station, vast, was almost empty.
disembarking i ran into my father who was part of the military contingent and followed him into a separate exit, into a room with the military contingent. they threaded into a room and i was left outside the room. so i opened the door and looked inside. they were preparing for exit and mr. bush was among them. for some reason most everybody, including myself, was holding small signs on the ends of sticks. mine was about 4 inches square and had a large caret (upside down "V") with small print below. i hurriedly turned it upside down so the thing pointed down instead of up and scrawled something below it. my idea was to follow bush off the aircraft so TV coverage would include my sign over his head, pointing downwards. by the time i got the sign done he was way ahead of me and i couldn't catch up. the general i had been talking to was in a wheelchair. he could not find his daughter.

back in the interior of the craft i found her. she was in a wheel chair. we discussed her situation and she pulled out of her chest some kind of tube full of medication that kept her going. i picked her up and acrobatically exited with her down a ramp at the tail end of the aircraft. the general was pleased, and we parted on good terms.

there was some kind of kiosk i ran across. the general and several medical personnel were putting everything up. there was a small crowd there and some kind of meds was being distributed in a hurry for stress. the general had a problem giving me any, so i dropped down and crawled under the surface of the kiosk where a young woman who was handing the stuff out was, and she grabbed a handful of pills and gave them to me. there was discussion of what the meds were called, i wish i could remember the latin names slung about.

i entered a room full of men and a small temporary bar where drinks were being distributed. my dad was there. by hook or crook i pushed my way to the front and got two irish whiskeys. like back in my drinking days i edged back out of the crowd with two doubles, both of which i intended to drink. but i gave on to my father and we both downed the potion in a celebratory flourish: mission accomplished.