Saturday, March 31, 2007

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what it might look like if you were just back from kiev.

talked to daughter nicole this morning, her brothers eli and nathan will be helping her finish her move this morning. this weekend.

just finished a painting. interesting because it was definitely one of those cases of a watercolor gone wrong. i have been developing habit of finishing these anyway. often learn a lot. this one i added guach. a lot on one section. now i'm curious about a watercolor i saw reproduced in a book where the artist had used a varnish or shellac over guache - on paper i guess - and do the same.

also hope to finish birthday present for my nephew jon. of course his birthday was a few months ago.

otherwise my day is aimed towards

kleening up my area.

Friday, March 30, 2007

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out my front door. plant is forsythia, night comes dark.

delightful conversation with son eli this morning.

today is gray, that's what they say, i'm going out any old way.

old errends never end, they just begin again.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

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yesterday was blur, bouncing here and there, all fell into place. thanks to everyone that helped me. i am now mobile, which means i can buy a new belt that fits me. and shoes, groceries. return library books. activities that have been on hold for awhile. road trip coming up.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

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wheel problem solved. karma, manners and spirit win every time. i will be shopping for some kind of camper unit, lightweight, simple. the wild is definetly calling me. maybe a field trip, the golden strand, san juan rockies, n. arizona.

west asheville?

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

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twilight in leicester yesterday. shot RAW format, still don't know what to do with it.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

ok ok i know i'm on vacation in the canadian rockies talking to a marmoset at 6,000 feet above sea level and am breaking my rule about a week off. but i had a dream last night - this morning really - and am compelled to comment on it.

short story even shorter, the godess asked me in a light hearted way as i sat myself before the play began, "can i help you?" twinkle in the eye, hint of hostess. i replied "i'd like to like you to help me."

Thursday, March 22, 2007

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out of curiousity i looked at this blog's posts from 4 years ago, the begining of the Bush War. below is some of what i found:

"today the noise is talking about maybe we will preemptively strike iraq before they premptively strike us before the war starts. public discourse will never recover from this kind of jumbled language.

the main thing about the start of the war is that at that point i will be rooting for our side - once the ballon goeas up a lot of us, as the buzz word at my former employer intel goes, will "disagree and commit".

but i still think the war is a bad idea. why?

well not because war, any war, needs to relagated to past cultural eras (altho it does). sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

but not this time. because:

1) we are uninformed about the worldview in that part of the world. how things are settled. often a problem is solved without even talking openly about it, just a word here, a realignment there. as vietnam proved it is a bad idea to fight a war against a people you can't talk with because you don't comprehend the local worldview.

2) if we win in one day and saddam's body is displayed on tv (don't be surprised if this happens) we will just have begun a long, draining, frustrating, dangerous, and expensive series of blunders that will cost us and the world dearly. remember yugoslavia, another arbitrary country made up of disparate peoples?

3) one of the justifications of the war we hear repeatedly from the vox populi is that the president knows things we don't. this is true. and some of the things he knows are no doubt blood-curdling threats to our susvival.

however it is good to remind ourselves that we know things he doesn't. the corporate oligarchy running this war is by definition out of touch with the way you and i live. remember bush sr.'s problem with checking out in a grocery line? i would feel much better if the prez and his cabinent each spent a couple of months on the street with few resources, learned about our world, returned to government and then made their decision about war.

....

5) the deal as of now is that if iraq disarms before the 17th no war. iraq is considered disarmed when england and the u.s. say so. that is the sole criteria today.

6) the scripted press conference last week, and the governor's yearly meeting the week before with the president; each governor got to ask the prez 2 questions submitted in advance. in the past these events were loose and people TALKED to each other. the secrecy, the disnformation to the american people, the extreme twisting of logic and rhetoric make the hitlarian "big lie" look like a very primitive way to manipulate the public. if there is any public left.

.....

the war wobbles on. people like myself, and there are a lot, find themselves in the interesting position of how to comment on the decision's of the government as the language of public discourse continues to shrink into a small puddle of pre-canned cliches.

on the one hand i do not wish disaster to our troops. i want them to survive and win.

on the other hand the ineptness, the hubris, the linguistic distortions of our government, the newly institutionalized secrecy, the corporate connection, can only be ignored by a self-imposed denial.

some of the recent postings on this site do not so much represent, in my view, absolute truth as much as they represent perspectives absent from the "main stream media". (tip of the hat to the neo-conservitives am radio rabble rousers for that last phrase.)

we are not losing the war. we are seeing, sort of, what happens when a lot of powerful, culturally isolated people born and bred to money and power, sit in closed, sealed rooms, incapable of understanding worldviews other than thier own, or of even realizing that there are other worldviews, and plan the future.

one of the things i have been hearing over and over from am radioland is "the president knows more than we do." i disagree. he knows different things than most of us. but because of class and socio-economic distinctions, he and his cohorts are surprisingly naive about the world of other people. including the islamic world.

repeating myself: saddam's hold on a piece of the world is a problem. the hundred's maybe thousands of those like him will continue to be a problem as time goes by. the proliferation of WMD, like saturday night specials, will continue to be a growing problem.

the war, win lose or draw, will not solve any of these problems but only add to them. only rubes, marks, aristocratic provencials, or corporate oligarchs incapable of transcending thier point of view can think otherwise."

if i, the archtypical or maybe typical man on and of the street, reacted to the initiation of the Bush War as the above indicated, how come?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

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spent yesterday hoofing it, signed title to defunct truck over to mechanic, UPSd biz papers, stocked up on groceries, took taxi home.

visited by succubus last nite.

Monday, March 19, 2007

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beyond synchronicity. or maybe meta-synchronicity.

what happens when everything is so synchronistic that "i" don't notice it? one hand clapping?

Saturday, March 17, 2007

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i can't seem to wake up today. but if i do i'll write something cogent about responsibility being the ability to respond and the qustion "respond to what?"

Thursday, March 15, 2007

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

lovely day outside yesterday. didn't see much of it.

but i did see this - well actually a bit of it - that strangely lifted my spirits: buddy guy and jerry lee lewis singing and playing "hadacol boogie". not sure of the production, but it was on PBS fund raiser. a tribute to jerry lee, all kinds of young, middle-age, and old musicians, very loose. buddy had never played w/ jerry lee before, and probably no running thru the song prior to performance. in fact i don't think any of it was setup beforehand, just drop in and play awhile along with whatever the last man standing came up with. i didn't watch much of it but the short piece with buddy and jerry playing "hadacol boogie" was a knockout and a real piece of real americana before it evaporated in the face of money and technology: mississipi delta, southside chicago, hillbilly, shades of jimmy rogers and hank williams. american music from the back porch before it became another monument to corporate grandiousity and greed. below is short trailor but alas, no mr. guy.



and if you are unfamiliar with "hadacol" you're not as old as i am. it connects the patent medicine snake-oil potions of 19th century with today's deluge of pharmaceutical modd enhancers.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

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picture i got in mail from sister jane. taken last nov-dec.

i've been thinking about the word "home". obviously one of the basic signifiers for us humans. during my lifetime there were plenty of novels published dealing with this concept. i think kurt vonnegut's son first - and only? - book circled around the word. this was one of the best coming of age in the 60's accounts that i have read, but it was awhile back and i may be misremembering the "home" subtext. (can't remember the title either).

when i lived in prescott az in the 80's there was a very quiet group, cult, religion, or group outside of town called "home". they ran the best small bookstore i have ever visited, every book a keeper.

so many novels about finding home. a sign of the times, then and now, although i don't know if recent lit. follows this theme or typos.

i have heard of an effort to recast the "homeless" as the "houseless". this seems to me to not be a good thing. a house is not a home. (this is the title of a book by polly adler (?), but the subject is altogether different). if the homeless are merely houseless then we are all homeless, but some have houses which are, in this scenario, commodities to flip, buy and sell for profit.

the concept of home runs deep, back to the last ice-age. various linguistic artifacts point to this. "home is where they have to take you in". "home is where the heart is".

in a time where home is considered a temporary investment, a financial instrument affected by your neighbors facades, where many have second homes and many have none, it is no wonder so many books have been written with the subtext of finding one's home. a modern concern, but one that does not find a voice in the official mediated discourse which has degenerated into meaningless postures anyway.

"show me the way to go home
i'm tired and i want to go to bed."

Saturday, March 10, 2007

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picture is from marathon walk yesterday, can't remember exactly where i took it.

Friday, March 9, 2007

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posting late afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. the centerpiece of the day was a walk to the bank where i had a few things to do. i would guess it is about 2 miles there and ditto back. this is a walk i have taken over the years when necessary. but lately i have been avoiding it.

so i ran into this character on kimberly ave. looks a little photoshopped, no? well it is. it may be a clear case of not leaving well enough alone. anyway walked on and had a tough time making it. sure enough BG was low and that was why. got home 3 hours later.

at home i have begun kitchen, clearing, cleaning, scrubbing, mopping etc.

tonight i might take the plunge and phone technical support for a teensy computer conundrum i am dealing with. i tried last night, talking with a connection/voice i could hardly understand or hear. my gaurdian whatchamascallit must have been around, because i had sense enough to politely end the conversation and test BG - blood glucose - which was down into the grouchy stupid level so i adjusted and went to bed.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

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this mornings cyberdoodle. taken last summer.

the summer nights can be, of course, spooky around here. so can i, for that matter.

i am dealing with what i call "false pride". deep down in my soul i feel proud that i had no idea who annette something something is or was. you know, the lady logo who had so much fun that she died and the legal infrastructure had to be the instrument of deciding who "gets" her body.

false pride because who cares.

then there was the right wing radio noise i heard the other day talking about how in china a visitor's time to be a tourist often coincides with the execution of a prisoner with a good kidney.

it might even be true. it might become true. it might be forgotten. it might become material for a seinfeldt revival.

heros and victims, saints and sinners, winners and losers, the quick and the slow.

the age of meltdown. swords into plowshares not, but suicide vests into flowing vestments maybe.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

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yep. another doodle. graffiti? fine art? no.

seemd like the thing to do at the time.

and i'm sure it was.

visited my landlady in hospice yesterday thanks to b.j. who lives across the street. she was also kind enough to run me by grocery store and car insurance, both better late than never.

faded around 6 in the evening, up at 6 this morning. pretty solid sleep.

so what can i contribute to cybersphere this cycle? not much.

circle the wagons. button up. hunker down.

play some music. play around.

Monday, March 5, 2007

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another riverside foto. i had a friend who was incarcerated at the old highlands nuthouse for awhile. she did ink drawings which often featured this creature, or something close to it. so i learned something, but don't exactly think it means much.

many roads traveled later i worked in these same buildings.

today there is too much to do. i'll let you know about it after the day is done.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

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another shot from riverside cemetery.

thanks to wolfe scholar jim for this link about t. wolfe's father's angels.

nothing much to report today: snow on the ground and my own perplexity about how life unfolds. i feel overwhelming need to change my way of living. as penultimate phase it serves it's purpose - whatever that may be - but leaves a little undone as ultimate faze.

too late for cry for help. and what might that be anyway?

i guess the most interesting to me development in my life is a new inability to express myself in words. spoken words, and i suppose the written as well. the language under words seems to intersect with the spoken and i end up either babbling or silent. and very very few people seem to pick up on the meta meaning, including myself. the other day friend t alluded to the manner in which i had just expressed something or another. not in an unkind way, but very observant. here is one of the few poems from 40 years ago i still have left that might be a foreshadowing of this situation:


Frozen at the Moment

The words come and
The the words go,
Leaving something
Just below.

Like icebergs sailing
Through the sky,
Chilly absence
Meets the eye.

An icy ripple
Without a name
That wakes me up:
I dream the same.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

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riverside cemetary in montford. i think i visited this place a long time ago, but not sure. t dropped by late afternoon and we drove there, most pleasant respite from the dithering i was engaged in all day.

Friday, March 2, 2007

yesterday was kind of... a disaster. helping bobby and rae move was more or less SOP, and i was glad to help. but when i got back things rearranged themselves so fast i'm still trying to catch up. first i lost the use of the car i have been using. this belongs to my landlady of ten years, c. she is in hospice where she has been for a couple of weeks. d., who is helping her manage the place, picked up the car which needs scheduled maintenance and inspection. she had told me to drive it because she never would again. i guess i won't either.

when i talked w/ d., who seems like a pleasant and reasonable human being, i realized that the hubbub surrounding the new situation involves some kind of lawsuit with one of the renters, and talking to the folks upstairs the night before who have moved out and want their deposit back that there probably will be something similar happening there.

there is apparently some sort of mold problem in both buildings which i was unaware of.

and d. drove off with a load of library books which i was taking back to library and i lost his phone number.

all signs that i need to move on to the next station on way to destination but i'm pretty overwhelmed. not quite paralyzed - deer in the headlights - but i was naive enough to think that things would unfold in some non=apocalyptic form. and they have, i guess, but i'm stuck bigtime.

my hope was buy vehicle and that would last longer than i will. and move one last time to somewhere i can settle into and get some work done.

but as we all know whatever is is, and whatever that is changes.

so i guess everything in this strange life story of mine is ok, but the specter of doom is right outside the door, lurking.

i suppose my next step is to invite it in out of the rain.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

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henderson county walk. treatment is a little on the gaudy side??

------------------------------->

that was this morning. i drove over to bobby and rae's around 12 i thought to help them load one particularly heavy object into truck. they are moving out of the city.

turned out i was needed on the other end so got back at 5:30. very rainy day, big uhaul got stuck on muddy uphill slope, tower called etc. but it was an ok outing, i enjoyed it.

now i'm trying to figure out how to turn cellphone off. i just got a text message - my first ever - from eddie murphy, followed by another telling me how many units i was charged.

now it beeps periodically. hope it means the battery is running down.