tree
branches
sky

got truck to hospital this am, a few books back to library, with ninian's help. he's leaving for west va right now (banjo heaven). i'll be stuck here for awhile, and really don't mind the prospect. it will be too hot for me to survive outdoors. of course were the electricity to go off - and someday it will - i guess i would become "just another accident statistic".

[for those of you not in the know, that's a quote from mr dylan, the last LP i listened to by him before long hiatus. from slow train coming, his first christian album. around '79 i think, he was right then and he is right now.]

early morning , nicole's back yard in chatham county.

spent a few hours yesterday morning with ninian who was kind enough to help me run a bunch of errands, including scheduling truck for doc appt tomorrow. took a nap in the afternoon which more or less lasted until 6 this morning.

little "at sea" this morning, i always appreciated that phrase which could mean a lot of things but denotes for me that loose slipping and sliding the sense of reality undergoes from time to time.

i'll spend the day cleaning and unpacking material, mental and emotional baggage, maybe make it down to bele chere - i'm close enough to walk downtown - if the sun lays low.

ninian showed up late last night and we made grocery pharmacy run this morning which was a great help. talked to mechanic, will fix monday. the photosquiggle above is, i don't know, too much squiggle.

i'm going to check out news and weather and maybe walk down to bele chere, the largest mostest festival anywhere, cast of millions, the frenzy of the crowd, the polite onlookers, the who knows what or why. on the other hand why not.

heading up the mountain this morning. have had a pleasant visit. baby natalie is certainly worth getting to know, very placid and what a smile. lily and corbin continue to grow, very rapidly. my youngest son nathan is unavailable for visit - with anyone i guess. i wish him well and hope he comes out on the other side of whatever miasma he is in (this means: a difficult path is still a path, or can be). nicole is struggling, way too busy, i think she will soon adapt a strategy of giving herself more time. eli and melissa are doing well, healthy and navigating the family life well. never made it into chapel hill, wait i take that back did go to wellspring.

i've had a lot of fun with camera, tried some new things. also maybe am starting to get the hang of cadence changes on 5 string guitar in open "g".

ok i'm off catch you on the phlip side.
[but wait, there's more...]
now i'm there, you know, where i was going a paragraph ago. stopped at old fort and visited with louise at the museum. also filled tank up with new personal best, $40 plus. made it past the oteen turnoff and truck died. i think it was getting gas, but no spark. all wires present and accounted for. i think the whatchamacallit, charger, can't remember the name but the thing that goes to distributor. so i arrives via tow truck.

sure seems funny here with no miss kitty.

h i folks. i'm at jim's. reporting in. another day at the beach. dylan dvds missing. it's all good.

everything slow and hot in the piedmont. still haven't seen my son nathan which is too bad. doing laundry at eli's right now. i think nap time is soon.

i've decided travel takes more organization than i give it.

sitting at eli's on an overcast, almost gloomy morning. i fell out yesterday around 3 and napped until 6, never really woke up.

so i feel great this morning.

ran into raymond yesterday at wellspring, it was good to see him.

natalie is the smiliest little girl. she is happy.

to sum up: everything is summed up.

friday i was up and at'em, ready to drive to the piedmont. but miss kitty was not doing well at all. so saturday we went to the vet and miss kitty who was suffering more than a creature deserves, left the planet. the vet was very simpatico and i "held her in the light" as the quakers say. i drove her poor body to chapel hill and eli and i buried her sunday morning.

she was 17, and spent all but her first four years with me. a gentle spirit, her presence in the world of 10,000 things was beneficent and helpful to us all, whether we knew it or not.

tossed and turned all night, got up at 6. and constructed lookin point of the day above. my latest plan is to drive to the peidmont early tomorrow morning, say about 5. the rest of my day will be devoted to packing, puttering, and otherwise reconfiguring domicile to my traveling yurt. this is a consequence of no AC in truck and my own willingness to acknowledge personal limitations, such as the steamy weather makes me crazy so i will do my best to avoid it.

at last i am hearing on some of Big Media that a war between a nation state and an unknown group of people is a mismatch. the USA doesn't much like saddam, so as much as declares war against his victims. isreal has reason to defend itself against hezzbullah - i know, sp?, so devastates the nation of lebonon.

i think france will be next. our leaders - and much of the little people that serve it - doesn't much like france. there used to be an apophrical sign at calais saying "the wogs start here". besides, they talk funny.

this morning's gray room wall paper has little to endear itself so the less said the better.

going to go to bank and library in a minute and that's it for travel today. chatham county here i come. later.

before friday i hope.

mmmm... This morning's cyber-jumble got a little out of hand.

spent the last 3 days indoors, chained to G3 and an easel. i'm having way too much fun.

there is a shadow of guilt lurking around: should i be having so much fun when the world is having a breakdown?

when we are all dying?

just a shadow. it blurs things when i think of mental, dare i say "spiritual" health; the inner world (see picture above) and the outer world both must be included in being someone, i don't know why, i don't even care. so at long last i am finding a valid use for "discipline": it is useful when i go out and have fun, as opposed to when i stay in and have way too much fun.

hey, as the kids say, 'it's all good".

maybe this morning's cyberdoodle is the beginning of a set of new age greeting cards for the aville theme park. probably not.

i continue to be fascinated with the contortions language is going through when the talking heads describe the current "reality". yesterday i heard the air waves say quite destinctly "de-escaltion". i wonder if it means anything like "de-excavation" or "de-levitation".

i don't think i want to de-levitate, it sounds painful. of course i'm not much into levitation either, it could be - surprise - just as painful.

it seems like i am well on my way to becoming very slow. all i can say about it is on the imaginary bumper sticker i will sport some day:

DeFog the Brain Fog

a quickie. i've been getting into some of the less accessible regions of photoshop with varying amounts of surprise. it is, of course, endless.

is it a war yet? war has for a couple of centuries been strictly, or almost strictly, the domain of the nation state. as that institution slowly morphs to god knows what, war becomes something we do not have a clear idea of. are there uniformed armies? are there treaties and alliances? or are there gangs, thugs and criminals? some folks who live in the middle east are afraid to go out at night. ditto with some folks in nicaragua, detroit.

maybe the closest thing to what is happening that we have experienced in the past is times of the warlords. gang leaders.

maybe the closest thing to the perpetual war orwell wrote about is not a result of declarations and control by the nation state, but the result of an armed populace not included within the domain of "citizen" of this or that country.

it's bandits all the way down and all the way up.

digging around i found 3 new poems just now. heres one:


woke up this morning
got out of my head
wiggled my toes
and got out of bed

stumbled to the coffee pot
circled for a bit
mixed up the medicine
the light bulb was lit

remembered a dream
which i promptly forgot
later i'll eat
or maybe not.

right now i'm sitting
looking at my talk.
words here & there
key in the lock.

the door might be open
to one more day.
i think i'll walk out
and check out the play.

today's peculiargram tells me i'd better start looking for my walking shoes.

dropped in on "drinking liberally" last night and ran into old acquaitence don who was playing with his son and some of the "real" asheville folks. his son has taken up the mandolin and plays pretty darn good.

spent a good 9 hours yesterday working with flash, i now am accomplished enough to be dangerous. worked on oil painting at the same time. got book to publisher.

just talked to doug who is in marion on the road headed for yancey county. depending on something or another - don't know what that might be at present - i may head up to yancey county tomorrow and camp out at his spot. counting on driving to chatham county wednesday to see old friends and children, grandchildren who i haven't seen in too long.

looks like today's gizmo is ariadne's thread. found in a rat's nest of consequence, delivered to the black helicopters of the iron castle so they can scuttle the dream anchors of routine in time for the cookout.

on another note entirely, i just put up 3rd or 4th flash muzak doo-dad. give them a try, they are on muzak page.

this morning's jumble.

yesterday was a strange day. but then aren't they all?

no. but a lot are.

got a lot of this and that done in the morning. around three i lay down and read for a minute. when i got up it was 8:30 in the evening. i couldn't believe it.

phone was out all day yesterday. a young man with all kind of apparatus hanging from his belt knocked on the door this morning, came in and found problem in phone jack. this is the second time i have been perplexed by situation where i get DSL but no dial tone. both times i have felt sort of stupid for not snugging up cables - which i have many of on the floor going here and there - before calling for help.

more later ...

a few technical difficulties: life.

phone is out, it must have rained. picture above doesn't show, must be cut and run electrons around.

found out who is more or less responsible for the concept of memes: richard dawkins.

just got back from oil change and kat food run. miss kitty can only eat what appears to be kitty pudding.

put another flash mp3 up. it can be found on muzak page.

art brute, otherwise known as mess around before breakfast.

i got an automated call this morning telling me that UPS has a package that will be delivered today. no idea what it is, but it gives me an uneasy feeling.

finished i hope whistling in the dark, will upload file after this post. book should be available this week, i'll let you know the particulars when i know them.

today's list:

mop kitchen floor.

sunday painter.

focus on thoughts to see if there are any.

taken yesterday swannanoa river - i think - pleasant with tharpa and kim.

now what do i have to say this pleasantly slow sunday morning? gotta get a move on talking heads are about to appear. and i can pick up the big soccer game at one o'clock.

photo taken at steve's last night. dougie the nail was up for a visit. maybe still is.

almost finished with domicile organization. really cleared out this room where i am sitting, you could call it the "computer room" but i prefer "the rumpus room".

still digging into flash, it is so left-handed so to speak (so an i) that the gotchas seem endless.

the midi files on music animation page no longer play under NS7. they are fine in IE. i'm not going to spend much time on figuring out why.

heard some astronomer on coast2coast last night, an expert cosmologist with this and that to say, for instance that hubble has allowed us to peer almost to the edge of the universe. once we get past that, according to this gentleman, and map out the border, we can use that map to calculate the center of the universe.

besides being inclined towards the statements of some classical greek, can't remember the name, who said the center of the kosmos was nowhere - or everywhere - so i disagreed with that prediction there was another interesting bit. he was asked if he believes in intelligent design or god. very lucid answer, something to the effect that past the blackness of space is the unknowable, the invisible. and that is the locus of what gives the world of 10,000 things meaning.

i would restate it and say that existence has meaning, but the meaning is a mystery. experience of a human life always seem to indicate that you can move towards it, but not reach it. you can accept it or not. and IMHO it is best to respect and acknowledge the formless.

straight photo i took yesterday outside front door. i hope it makes a nice 8x10 print.

so what's happening? had last doc appt today, hope to get to chatham county late next week. want to visit tom. want to visit tharpa and play some music. friend doug is arriving from fort whose name i always forget this evening.

i'm working on something i've had in mind for a long time: adding visuals to music i've recorded. i'm using flash and starting to get the hang of it. the idea is that you get an mp3 to listen to or a flash .swf file with some kind of twinkle that appears with it.

think i'll go up to the parkway today.

forget when and where i took the above, messed with it this morning.

====> late flash: just put up 2nd flash thingamabob up. you can find it here. still don't know what i'm doing but i'm doing. this one is not finished but it will be.

just used a wonderful media catalogger - spelling, i know - and discovered all sorts of digital shots. above is one. will send book off for printing today come hell or high water.

then i'll have to write another.

my days have fallen into a rhythm. few hours at computer in the am, usually have a picture i am working on, always a piece of music to putter with, always a painting in the backroom, and lately always a flash molecule - i mean module - to slowly develop. and of course book to finish. then organize a small bit of my domain, today it's going to be printing materials.

i've been corresponding with kathy f., she is definite and clear about her worldview. which in many ways is reminiscent of wilber, but probably in other ways not. i think she is trying to conserve the logical, human reasoning, in this circus of disappearing personality.

i've said it before, because the culture is evolving, dragging us within it along, is no guarantee of success. any change of the order we are experiencing today can be navigated either successfully or pathologically. the question for me then becomes are the values i live with which seem to be vaporizing, worth the struggle to preserve (and so part of the next phase), or just plain anachronistic, ie the inhabitants of the next world won't need them.

you can guess which answer i live. and the only way i have to preserve is to live them.

couple of nights ago.

interesting conversation with pete the other night. sometime back he was talking to a friend, a polymath, who said the word "intellectual" comes from the greek and meant the process of 2 people conversing and interpreting and learning. i'm going to check this out. if so, it reminds me of ken wilber's distinction between what he call the right side and the left side, right being objective, measurable, repeatable; the left being interior, subjective. which is unknowable without conversation and interpretation. he (and i) are of the opinion that since the enlightenment the latter has been slowly displaced by the former. conversation is out; presentation is in.

not only do my 7 reader's get the icon of the day today, meaning unclear, but this is i hope the last illustration for book. started and finished this morning. lost a little in translation to jpg.

i can't tell if i'm depressed or hypomaniac anymore. they both feel the same. know what i mean?

another find from recent pile everything on living room floor and look at it a long time before sorting and tossing. this is a from a photo i took and printed (remember darkrooms) of my daughter nicole in aspen co. around 1969. this beautiful little girl is still around.

i've decided to hole up this week, let the 4th slide by, and attend to my own business which is get book finished and uploaded and finish an oil landscape i started featuring everything i haven't figured out yet.

i've been thinking about words. i agree with lewis mumford that rhythm, movement, dance, and music all proceeded language and developed into the spoken word. then the written word. then the printed word. then what i call the graphic word, the electronic word that surrounds us today.

fliss's brother mentioned a well known book i have never heard of called the word as object.

dylan's line "and there's less and less to say". i think we all have less and less to say because the words needed to actually say something are not yet in existence. the context for them exists, but in that translucent periphery where contexts always exist (until they become objects) and are not immediately visible.

the artist brings these words out of the distant almost knowable periphery into the visible. the words needed today will be created/invented/found and used as soon as we back off and become aware of their frame which is the New World that is a fantasy so far.