today was kind of .... inert. solid state. nothing moved.

i'm thinking down is as good as up when it comes to time. really. one calls and needs the other.

and i'm asking why the links on this site appear in different colors on different systems.

woke up confused at five. listened to this very interesting interview by studs terkel of b. dylan in
1963.

those of us who spent time in the world of jazz may remember the term "moldy figs" applied in the 40's and 50's to the audiences that liked the older, pre-bop kind of music. i suppose the same could be thought to characterize the listeners today who think of bob embalmed in the 60's.

disregarding for the moment his recent work, as good or better than his classic days, take a listen to the above interview. despite the less than stellar audio quality, the hair on the back of my neck rose listening to "bob dyan's dream". he was probably 22-23. there are tens or hundreds of thousands of folks who can relate to this dream.

roaring back tp thye world of factoids, check what is in thye pharmaceutical pipeling today:
surprise.

yesterday was a gold star day: i finished oil i have been puttering with which you see above. i started this a few weeks ago. rushed outside and took a foto of it which worked out well. usually i wait 6 months for an oil to dry and scan it. anyway i had fun with this one. i looked at an early painting by kandinsky to start and then never looked at it again. as is my habit i'll start another today, a large watercolor representing i have no idea what. i will maybe when i finish.

spent the rest of the day moving, sorting stuff and got a good deal done. by tonight i should be finished. following the nail's dictum that to find misplaced stuff clean up i found a bunch of missing objects, in fact all of them except jaegermeister hat. they are in a large box and amount to a lot of objects. all necessary to my manner of surviving,

began loading truck with camping gear. by end of day my intention is to have house cleaned vacuumed dusted and windows cleaned. truck loaded with goodwill objects.

now what about my inner life, the important domain, development of psyche? not much to say but it's ok, maybe even excellent. maybe there is nothing to say about it.

listening to tom hartman on air america in the other room i heard some good stuff. one was that edwards wanted to go after the contested election and i presume and hope some of the earlier republican twisted nonsense that has proven to work wonders over the past 30 years. i imagine that the campaign manager had something to do with it to. one of the enigmas of that election was the demogratis silence in response to so many tricks of the trade. edwards could have squashed then in a couple of sound bytes.

so i went to tom's site and discovered he is also an educater interested in ADHD who is a proponent of a genetic theory of the disorder, something along the lines that it helped one to survive in the hunter-gatherer culture.

ever feel like an aboriginee in the etomological sense of the word? originated outside this place and time? me too and the above explains why.

this morning's gizmo is kind of special. i believe it was taken on the blue ridge parkway. anyway as you can see something had just happened, not sure but i think it was the trail of a fallen angel. i tramped towards the landing spot but all i found was a bunch of old and empty blue ribbon cans.

of course that convinced me that it absolutely was the crash landing spot of a fallen angel. no doubt in my mind.

today's gestalt-o-gram seems allright to me. i'll accept it.

i'm listening to today's buzz in the other room, macneil-leher report or whatever it is called today. talking about diabetes. one factoid: 15,000 new cases of type I a year, more than expected. i assume and hope that this is per capita or it is meaningless.

another: average diabetic costs medicare $30k. in a year? no, i think they meant lifetime. but here is where it gets tricky. talking about blindness, amputations. yes, it costs more to lose your eyesight today than it used to.

but this statistic would have more meaning by an order of magnatude if it were split into cost and number of type I diabetes and ditto for type II.

so excuse me while i write them my standard plea to rename these 2 diseases. this would help clarify the confusion everyone i know not personally involved with one of these two calamities suffers from.

quickie this morning. slept like a baby. this morning i send some framed pictures to eric and nicole, my two oldest (twins), go grocery shopping, pick up laundry, scott camper top foward about 1/4 inch, and maybe hit the road for a short brath of air.

kyle lined the bits and bytes in a row for router etc. yesterday. last night i could not get wireless to wire, but i'm not going to get into it. i am adopting kyle's approach, which is to stare blankly at hardware for a moment, then a click or 2 and it's back working.

working on a color print that i hope will look as good as i have in mind. also - i can't help it - finishing up an oil, mainly so i can start a watercolor.

jim j. if you happen upon this i don't have yr telephone number.

today's whiz-bang. did a lot to it but it doesn't show. not the spectacular shot i had in mind.

badthing is on his way over here. i hope he can straighten out the cyber-spighetti i've got wrapping me up.

later -

man it's good to watch someone who knows what he is doing. kyle came over and breezed through all kinds of screens and i think all computers can talk to each other and the web.

i'll get out in the country tomorrw insh'allah.

amazing. after a morning of slapdash running around mostly to beat post office, i took a break and did this, reworked an old photo. it was easy and no effort required, kind of like going fishing, meditative.

mmm... found this taped to my wall. thank you lily.
otherwise a few changes. after an all too common and typical week of wrestling with cables, router, related stuff, lots of it, i'm retiring from the fray. i hate the smell of smoldering synapse, so a step back is in order.

besides, i need to wash the dishes.

photo from yancey county. i worked on it a couple of hours and got a beautiful print.

on a weeklong marathon it appears, dodging and weaving between hookin up os 9, os X, and windoze XP. sorting thru the usual dottle, (pk dick's term), papers, obscure notes on napkins, bills, maps, prints, technical documentation, room by room, or maybe i will say pile by pile. right now it's one big pile of [shudder] stuff. adjusting and readjusting camper so it fits truck, and is rain tight.

lovely evening out and i thought i'd make an infrequent appearance at DL downtown. instead i'll go to library in the morning to return a mystery (that word again), leicester for laundry, pay bills and get up on the parkway heading south.

working on a little surprise movie for small circle of friends. new software, every move raises questions, but this i don't mind because i'm strolling up a learning curve. but routers, browsers, tcp/ip i have a different feeling about. i've already been up this road many times and i still don't get it.

my shrink told me yesterday that the bout i went thru last week was a profound trauma leaving me with even less brain cells.

so i'm cruising in the moment, everything is new, inexplicable, indeed inexpressible. strictly up to me and my partners, the daemons of yore, spirits of the low places, guardians of fools. they are big on curve balls and the old shell game. when i think i know what i'm doing they love to present me with chaos and inexplicable conundrums. for my own good mind you. or at least for something's good.

i've transited from liberal democrat to post-political, post-institutional being. the mechanisms of the manifest world are broke, lucky us and in our lifetime too. so while the last waltz takes place i'll be ginning up new world-views - or maybe ancient world-views - in which personal experience is lived and not displaced by teetering metaphysical branded structures. does this make me an outlaw?

or an alien prescence in the world of ghosts?

chances are that chance is all. is meta-confusion the abscence of order, or the absence of fiction? is the writing on the wall comprehensible, or is it divne graffetti designed to push us past understanding?

these questions are about all i have left, and i don't expect answers.

sure enough things just got better. tonight i heard on pbs two phrases:
"post-ideologic politics" and
"post-partison politics".

way better than "post-modern shambles".

one of the few pictures you'll ever see on this site not mine. this was taken by my sister or maybe neice last week. can you believe it, they were there and now they're here - more specifically phoenix az.

myself, i'm totally surrounded by breakdowns. computers, toasters, vacuum cleaners - all systems scattering, stuttering, hiccouphing.

but it will get better. one sign is that i broke out the oils just now.

oh boy a hack job. couldn't help it. had to do it.

now i can wash the dishes.

does doing a picture a day really keep the doctor away?

saw a pbs show on van gogh last nite. IMHO it was pretty lite, filled as so many pbs shows are with dramatic recreated footage and special effects to denote fear and trembling. nonetheless interesting chronology of his life and struggle against the "attacks" of insanity he kept at bay by work, ie painting like a madman. this worked less and less as his life unfolded.

there was one stricking dramatic recreation showing him stuffing a tube of oil paint into his mouth, gobbling up what appeared to be cadium yellow.

maybe jogging is a better prophylactic against madness.

old pix with a touch of ancient magic dust.

i've been wondering what dyslexia does to those who read vertically, ie chinese and japanese folks. of course they do not read phonetically.

this question bubbled up in my mind after richard and i took camper top off truck and applied insulating tape between camper and truck.

because i did not plan it out well. in first place it was more than a 2 man job. secondly, as i was drifting off to sleep last night i realized that we should have applied it to camper by turning it upside down, not the rim of the bed (although that was how directions read).

if you can't visulize this, take my word for it. this lapse may be a case of vertical dyslexia. or plain old clumsiness.

or both.

still don't have email working.

you can't step over the same river twice as heraclitus said not long after folks realized they were saying something. you can't even drown in the same river twice. (i said that).

in fact there is no river twice.

but there is a river.

it's a jungle in there.

because of the solar flare epidemic my system or process is totally screwed up. anything electrical, well almost anything, is on the blink. good thing i don't use an electric shaver much.

so i will be using a lot of spit and duct tape to keep this site afloat until i can realign the stray quarks.

spent all day yesterday driving from postponed task to task. mostly i got everything done i set out to do, with a few surprises thrown in. swung by richard and debbies in time for spectacular summer thunderstorm with hailstones as big as garbonzo beans. a vivid reminder that i must carry camera with me at all times, it was spectacular. driving home i ran across a downed tree that blocked the road. it dragged electrical lines down with it, my common sense dictated i back up a narrow winding mountain road for some distence and turn around which i did flawlessly. i was encouraged by how well i managed, some physical dexterity remains part of my world.

before the storm - or maybe it was after - we watched the PBS news. the friday wrapup. i have to report that the presentation and logic of the news escaped me, i'm losing my fluency in mediaspeak.

did the whole world evolve a new language while i wasn't looking, or did i?

i did the big switch to charter from at&t. of course now i have to reconstruct whatever it was i was doing before i switched. in particular email is in cyberlimbo. so if you want to email me send to

wyly.chris@gmail.com

i imagine i can reconstruct address book etc but i don't have the time, or more accurately the inclination, to deal with it right now. i'm growing weary of sitting in front of monitor dealing with so many keys, codes, scripts, passwords, applications, programs, workarounds.

it's cyber-spighetti.

i guess that's why i want to hit the woods, camp out for a week, rest my head.

think about it. there have only been a few days in the last 20-30 years that i have not spent some or all of the day in front of some computer busy busy busy tap tap tapping keyboard.

at times it has been a relief. hyperfocus, the el dorado of the those of us - and there are many - living the dysfunctional attention life style.

the mind is mangled. solution: leave it behind.

mmmm... don't know if i like this one. it's not easy making a doodle a day. as bushoid says "it's hard work".

today i'm switching from AT&T to charter cable so things will be even more screwed up than usual for awhile. all i can say is "stay tuned".

meanwhile my domestic scene looks like a bomb hit it. i hope to have everything back in it's box by the end of the day.

but the weather: it's like the aville of old the last 2 or 3 days. open windows most of the day, misty, fog, afternoon thunder bumpers. what a treat.

drove to jackson county to look at used camper shell for sale and bought it. then visited john and cookie, old friends from the area who i've only seen one time since i decamped in the early 80s. it rained, temperature dropped, and it was like a dream of that time when mountain summers featured thunderstorms. i spent the night in their beautiful house. above shot taken from covered deck. how would you like to see this when you looked out at the front yard?

linville gorge last saturday. eli and granddaughter lily are scrambling down the backside looking for reishi mushrooms.

just kidding.

i guess i will drive to dillsboro today to check out used camper shell. the location is on the road i used to take to work in mid 70's, 45 minutes over pass to franklin nc.

feathered friend at liville falls. this was an epic journay, the heroic quest, and we made it there and back nicely. lily was a great help, part of the deal, member of the advanced feet on the ground. a lot of nice camping spots, we hop to meet up at one in the future, camp out, and who knows climb hawksbill, something that has become for me personally a task demanded by imagination.

where we wuz saturday.

eli and lily arrived late friday. we had a positively magic mountain evening with richard and debbie, early to bed, got up saturday and drove up to linville falls, wiseman's view etc. succesful mission, back late, up this morning for a very good breakfast at tupelo honey and strolled thu sunday morning aville. they left an hour or so ago and i hope they return.

i've been thru another excursion to hospital, this time in aville. taken by EMT who did a super job, or i guess i wouldn't be typing this. discharged the following day and i'm fine but will be finer - to mangle a phrase used by tom hardman. it's about ten friday morning and the bunker is sealed as tight as i can seal it, two ACs humming. like one of jg ballard's early novels. netscape on ancient mac no longer functions, so i am posting via firefox on laptop. way behind on life and its imperatives.

plan to meet up with eli and granddaughter lily at linville gorge today not happening, it would be pushing things a tad too far while i monitor myself and calibrate blood sugars. they may show up here tonight.

type I diabetes, AKA IDDM, is a heavy thing. i tend not to write about it here for many reasons, not the least of which is brilliantly covered in susan sontag's book illness as metaphor. but i think i may change this, because there is a lot to say about it not being said. so give me some slack, i'm not complaining, just notes from another pilgrim wondering in the woods.

my backyard buddy.
here is the latest update on the puttering agenda i have been using for awhile now. nobody said it would be easy.

all too often i begin the day with moving meditation (="puttering") and before too long lose it, my mind, body and soul all rushing in to make things right, do this, do that, ie get busy.

you've heard of circular breathing? (if not maybe you should make the aquaintence of roland kirk or n. diginous digeridoo.) anyway i fall into circular doing, kind of like a dog chasing his own tail.

or maybe it's more like the tail chasing the dog.

anyway this my mac stopped running netscape. i should explain that all of my scans, photos, and flash are done the mac. so here i am attempting to post from pc laptop which is the home of my musical efforts and movies. and not much else besides a plethora of cyberhooks reaching out to redmond WA and beyond.

worst of all i have to type words instead of throwing images at the net.

other factoids of note. while this site displays pretty correctly on mac netscape, the background color of the sidebars disappears on xp laptop running firefox. and the top graphic on left sidebar displays fine on mac but appears as broken icon on windows xp.

oh well who cares? maybe me, maybe not. depends on something beyond my mind.

besides, if you see a wabbit, you'll know i figured a workaround.

many things to do today to get ready for friday when i meet eli, macon, and granddaughter lily at linville falls and proceed up to hawks bill mnt, camp out. between the four of us we will no doubt experience many surprises.

looking glass falls? near celo, i may have the name confused.

getting ready to camp out on hawksbill mnt friday, i hope my partners in climb make it from chatham county. that would be son eli and his friend macon, son of mr. richardson who i knew in that special way we know those who have been thru the eame wars as ourselves.

one of eli's eccentricities is that he turns off the ringer on phone as well as the message machine. so coordination is dicey.

a story i have told before is when i was a kid i was watching the groucho marx quiz show, the one with the duck. name has escaped.

one of the contestants was a man who lived rough in a camp that could only be reached by crossing a branch (= stream to those of you unaquainted with mountain speech).

anyway the subject of isolation came up, and the fact that this 50's mountain man had no phone. after much oohing and awing he stated that a phone to him was nothing but a bell in his domocile that anyone in the world could ring.

there is surely an atavistic urge in us all that can relate to this.

measure a bunch and do it once. my motto when it comes to blogger templates. anyone who has fooled around with them knows what a slow pain it is, and i have put off updating this site so long because of that fact that i don't remember why i was going to do it.

but i'm doing it right now.

if i can just get it to show pictures again i'll be satisfied. briefly.

this is the king of the roost at moriah's mountain top. i forget his name.

uh-oh. woke up this morning, first gift of the day. balanced check book (!) and did the above.

i'll tone it down.

drove to etowah to a local campertop dealer, more research. then drove to cousin moriah's place, great visit, played a little music, she blew me away with song she just finished.

tomorrow among other things i'm cleaning the kitchen, mopping, and cleaning glass windows, the insides, dave t. the new ramrod is installing screens and storm windows outside.

almost finished w/ 13 minute audio piece for movie of last memorial sunday.

and maybe i'll finally print a bumper sticker:
"had enough?"

i wish i could remember one suggested by one of erin's friends, something about a ribbon and a bra.

made this picture today from funky pencil drawing in a notebook.

woof.

went downtown, or uptown, or the strip, or tunnel road, or the mall yesterday and bought a tent at dick's big box sports store. walked out with wrong tent. exchanged it today for another one. i'd never been inside before and found it worse than the big box stores i have been to: nobody to help, too much stuff to distinguish, all of it breaks before it's payed for, and worst of all there is a sports station blasting noise everywhere.

talked to cousin moriah this morning. tomorrow morning i'm driving to a truck camper shop between hville and brevard and see what's happening there. then i'll stop at moriah and charlie's mountain between hville and bat cave on the way back.

played around a little with redesign of this site w/ dreamweaver and flash. getting close.

oh yeah i got a haircut also.

and they say i am not living fully in the world of 10,000 things. hell, i just made it into 10,001 things.

i have paid my dues.