life is strictly a doodle.

i'm packing, getting ready to travel, a little at a loss, a little way ahead of myself. transitions are tougher than they used to be for me. i handle it by starting way ahead of time (just as i used to try and do when i was in graphic arts). avoid the void.

on the other hand i'm using oil pastels to make a quick birthday card in the midst of this madness. of course, what other madness is there? as many as the minds of senscient beings. and they're all the same.

edwin schrodinger: "conciousness is the singular of which there is no plural."

i've said it before & i'll say it again: "a picture a day keeps the doctor away".

"la esperanza muere Ultima"
studs terkel on what news has become. not that you didn't "know" it already.
from
t r u t h o u t - Studs Terkel | No Brass Check Journalists

very social day today - went to a book club meeting this morning for the first time and mister wilber meeting tonight. worked on layout of jeff's book. kind of dozed off around four.

so what did we talk about today? the usual, i think. what's real and what's not, memes, trends, metaphors, looking at the boundry between self and other, how to live.

it was remarked on by travelers to constantinople in the tenth century that everywhere you went in that time and place there was a continual conversation, theological and philosophic at the same time. almost everyone, from the emperor down to the baker, had much to contribute to these questions of that day.

one thing about growing older for me is that i am beginning to realize that i live in a similar situation. i am not the only one looking up in wonder, or sitting watching my big toe.

we're all asleep in the same boat.

i've changed my travel plans. driving straight to chapel hill nov.5. time with all my children and grandchildren. this will be a real treat. then i'll drive to the Baba Center and stay a few days. i am long overdue.

meanwhile this just in:

"Now, however, it seems to have been automated: some clever programmer working for one of these iniquitous outfits has written a tool that goes around a list of weblogs and collects information on the various posts made to it.

It then creates the right HTML to fool the blogging software into thinking that a comment has been entered, and the resulting advert is posted to the blog as if it was legitimate."
from
BBC NEWS | Technology | How spammers are targeting blogs:

sunday morning, nice gentle rainy morning. rose too late for friend's sunday meeting.

yesterday was a beautiful fall day, perfect. i went to a quaker-sponsered meeting on "death and dying", interesting hour and a half. then a rare foray downtown for outdoor art extravaganza and lunch with winnie.

i enjoyed talking to the artists' most of whom had really interesting work hanging. two subjects were constant: one was what is a "print" and what is an origional, this question stemming from the giclee process. the other was framing, and i may have gotten a lead about a florida company that sells plain-jane frames cheap. i also observed that texture is a big deal, especially in some of the larger paintings.

mimi hay was exhibiting, and her japanese-based fabric wearable art, kimonos and such, was quite impressive. i'll meet with her tomorrow morning to see if i can help her with a web-site. i've cancelled all plans today, realizing how behind i am with several projects that i would like to complete before i leave on trip. in fact i just now decided to leave fri the 31st instead of thursday the 30th. now on to finish typesetting jeff's book.

[much later] marathon day. i got that grayed out feeling. but i got a lot done. so now i need to watch some tv with the sound turned off.

i bought the first CD in about 10 years last week thru daedalus books. 4 CD set, the complete lester young. someting like $18. i played around with the picture above which is from a very well made booklet included. i've been chasing a recording of "dickie's dream" for 30 - 40 years now, and it's included. doesn't sound at all like i remembered. the boxed set is put out by an english company proper records.

the weekend has exploded. mimi hay will be showing her creations downtown at some giant (170 artists) outdoor festival. i'll certainly go at least one day, and maybe two. i'm very interested in how maniacs like me might move some stuff.

plus sat. morning is the first meeting of a friend's-sponsered 4 week deal on death and dying. curious about it so i'll be there sat. morning. and attend Baba meeting sunday afternoon.

as far as the kosmic situation goes, i am more and more convinced that everybody is right - there's a big change coming.

surprise!

here is an email i tried to send early this morning:

"what a nite. listened to mp3 of ken wilber and rabbi somebody, phone conversation, you sent, late last nite. an eye-opener, so to speak.

then i did my bedtime thing, which these days consists of a little reading, very little. �non-zero-sumness and human destiny�. the kind of book i would have really enjoyed a few years back, and one that is chock-full of entertaining anecdotes concerning cultural evolution. i could nit-pick it to death, but won�t. suffice to say that �parable of the nine tribes� and �guns, germs, and steel� should probably be read also for balance.

then i turn off the lights and start book on tape, story of iris murdoch by her husband. starts off very oxbridge, in the 30�s i would guess. it puts me out pretty fast. so far for 3 nites i have fallen asleep in middle of first side of first tape.

but this morning... woke up from a dream, the first i can remember having in a long time. went something like this:

airplane lands at narita airport outside tokyo. i�m dressed in coat and tie and have several hours wait for next flight, so i decide to take a walk. quickly i am in small japanese neighborhood when i see someone who looks like rob, an Australian vw mechanic i used to know. it�s not him but he invites me in where i discover that lynn, old time dealer from the past is living there.

she talks about the owner of the place, who is a secret presence responsible for vast shipments of cannabis in and out of the place. i ask who this person is and whispered conversation takes place. turns out that it is somebody that remembers me from the ancient past, but her identity is withheld.

meanwhile cooking, chopping is going on in kitchen. the guys who live upstairs, foreigners like everyone else in the dream, move pounds of coke every day. or so i am told. all of this biz bothers me a little, and i have visions of japanese storm troopers raiding the place.

so some of us begin the stroll back to the airport. i take a rest on a bed in a room that is open to the street. there are many beds there. housewife comes out and busily sweeps the outdoor bedroom and i realize that i am being unmannered, hop off the bed, and hands in front, palms together, bow to her and turn to catch up with group walking to airport. she says something in japanese, sounds irate but not too extreme. i get the idea that foreigners like myself are known to be a little crass.

catching up with friends we end up in another large room where two men live. the place is full of tatamis, tapestries, and blade runner like holograms floating here and there. the two are american, and one of their business cards reads �i find things�. they are both young entepenuers, fairly successful. one of them mentions �this isn�t woodstock anymore�.

now we start to try and remember what time plane is leaving and do we have time to catch it. wholly confusing, i can�t figure out what time zone it is or where the airport is. one of the group mentions a sore throat he is dealing with. the two who live there mutter that this guy is having entirely too much trouble with his throat. a thought occurs to me, and at the exact same time i am thinking �things are breaking up down there�, one of the two says it. i tell him what just happened, and he nods his head. one of us says �dylan�.

we decide we might make the airport in time for departure, and start long journey up and down escalators, hallways, public underground spaces, total confusion. i am realizing that we are completely lost and wake up shaky, low blood sugar, fluorescent balloons blooming in front of my face.

--
chris
http://modernpeasant.com
We seem to believe it is possible
to ward off death by
following rules of good grooming.
Don Delillo "

"The answer is obvious, Seehusen said: 'America's drug warriors are
shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for
ordinary Americans and another for themselves, their families and their
political allies."
from Pravda forum:
Forums - America owes Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude

here's todays almost straight foto. i also put up visual and textual extrvaganza, whistling in the dark, it's available in upper right column.

speaking of stuff, have you noticed how much of it there is lately?

OK. today's clouds are looking more like it.

interesting and odd day. got up around 9 and worked all day on a few projects i can let go of soon. threw in a trip to the post office, walmart, and best buy. took my 45 minute walk. and the picture above. looked up at the clock in total amazement: 11:00 PM.

i still say one thing at a time is the way to go, but how fast is a" time"?

then there's this flavor. i seem to be in a cloud phase as far as this weblog goes.

other news from hypomania heights: worked all day at burning my first CD of various sonic items i've done over the last year and a half. a little time spent exploring the complexities of graphics heavy internet pdf and how best to display it. (i think it's goint to be a download). and worked an an oil pastel. what a fun day! hyperfocus or bust!

but i still can't reliably email.

pretty cool, huh? this comes from a photo that i took on the parkway a few days ago. ain't technology wonderful.

well i did it again. spent all day noodling. the usual gang of suspects.

another long beautiful day. got my hour walk in this evening, took camera and finished off 2nd roll of film. lots of fancy wide-angle shots with sun blaring thru tree branches. now have 2 rolls to develop, the first reaches back to this summer in arizona i think.

the question of the day seems to circle around the delimma of living singly or as part of a dyad, ie couple.

this came up a few weeks ago in a conversation with dr. r., who opined that in our circle of old friends, those who never married seem not to be doing so well. oversweeping generalization i think, but backed up by the mental health industry, acturarial tables, and anecdotal evidence.

i think each of us has to balance - and experience - both solitude and community. the balance is different for all of us. i spend days without talking - or seeing - another human. like my friend lucius s. said to me the last time i talked to him, alone, brooding over some half finished creative project. it takes a little of that to push a painting, poem, or song thru to completion.

in my so called personal life i have found it increasingly difficult to pay enough attention to a women in my life. so there has not been one for many years. my listening skills still survive, but are of short duration.

or as my friend sam said the other day, women get bored after the love rush. i remember a lady i lived with for four years who was fascinated that i was an "artist". a couple of years later she resented the time and attention it took for me to to be an "artist".

and yet for mental health's sake if nothing more, humans - among who i count myself - seem to need friends, community if for nothing more than to widen the horizon, and stretch the psyche. the sangha is a case in point, a community of like-minded (tho not identical) humans where mutual respect can develop.

myself i've been solitary - without a woman - for, let's see, maybe 10 years or more, with one small interuption. is this selfish? i guess it depends on what world you are living in at the time.

i needed a time-out. didn't realize it would last this long. but most of my days are feeled - freudian slip i guess - filled with starting and finishing highly challanging creative endevors. i wake up thinking about them. i feel the fresh breezes from somewhere when i am dealing with the imagination manifesting itself through my addled pate and beat-up heart.

so what is it? a choice between artist and lover? no i don't think you have the choice. and i disagree with allan combs statement the other night that socrates' dictum, "know thyself", meant only to know your social strengths and fit within the community, nothing deeper. he was making the point that the modern persona had not yet developed. but check out sappho's fragments, a modern reflexive personality, not defined soley by her role in her world.

parenthetically i also disagree with his description of the individual developing in the roman era, sculpture suddenly representing real named individuals - scars and all - rather than the greek sculpture representing the ideal. that is, i agree that it developed this way, but i don't think it totally was wiped out in the middle ages, but continued to slowly and secretly develop, albeit in a culture centered on power and instutional religion, a mythic culture where the introspective was not allowed in public.

so today's personhood, with it's rich inner life - sometimes - and aperspectival mode, make for a situation where solitude can exist, the life of the mind and heart can be lived, and not always in conjunction with a partner. it depends on so many particulars, like what you do in the solitude state, what purpose it is serving.

still it would be nice to grow old with another human who has some idea how this might work. in my case we are still very much hypothetical. cf "no expectations" by the rolling stones.

oops... what happened - skipped a few days posts. life in the 21st century. and i really can't remember too much about the last few days. have poetry/art extravaganza about ready to go online. sequencing what i hope becomes a CD in the near future. making brave attempt to finish 2 oils that are still hanging around (my neck). the situation is not so much obsessive perfectionism, not even close. just want to put them away and move on.

attended lecture on "art and the development of human conciousness" by allen combs of UNCA yesterday evening. very pleasant and interesting couple of hours. i discovered that the desks they use today in higher education are soft, and mine, when i leaned back, went into a recline position. progress.

after lecture a few of us headed out to hear the mahavishnu orchestra downtown. but i chickened out. medications and insuline seemed to be off, and i had visions of getting drunk in some nightclub. which i wouldn't have done, i guess it was a twitch from the past. in the daylight i can handle crowds and traffic, but when it gets dark i get a little sketchy sometimes.

yesterday ... can't really remember much about it. i guess i hung around puttering, cleaning, finally jumped into an oil painting that has been languishing for some attention. it was a case of leave as is, pretty ok picture, or rip into it, do or die, either destroying or improving it in some inscrutable way. messed about trying to zip a pdf for PC users. tuned instruments. readjusted basil rates on insulin pump. worked on converting MP3s into aiffs in order to burn a CD of my crazy jive music. took a long twilight walk. ninian arrived during the night. went to friend's meeting 10 this morning, glad i did.

one of my big discoveries this week was local "pirate" FM radio station. understand that my reception here picks up one NPR station heavy on what i would call top 40 classical, and an AM station of neo-con talk shows, and that's it (altho have to admit that i have come to enjoy dr....joy brothers? not sure of her name. there are other stations but they are even less interesting. so these guys are a real kick even if they do play a bit too much rap:

Free Radio Asheville - 107.5

what is it? the begining of a whole new thing, an image at the very inception on a cocktail napkin. actually it was a paper towel.

i've had more friends drop by this past week than ever before. it's been fun. the weather has been - to my taste - perfect, open windows, lots of bird noise, dampness in the air, overcast, breezes. really want to get up to parkway next week with camera.

last night - i think it was - i watched "threatmatrix" premier on the tube. due to a long fun day my hold on official reality was shakey at best and then to be bombarded with an ebola outbreak in amirrillo. the strange thing was that every commercial break seguewayed right out of the show, hard to tell the difference. i flipped to other channels and they were in on it too, so i went to sleep.

this one is better than the one below, but i think it is still unfinished.

got a book, "non-zero sum games and human destiny" (or something like that) for book club i hope to join soon. book does not look life changing but maybe a good read. we'll see.

bill o. from hendersonville visited today. played a little music. it's a dark dreary day but we took a walk anyway. really haven't accomplished much else altho almost finished wilber's appendix C of the new stuff he is presenting online.

even more of a milestone is discovery of some kind of pirate radio i can pick up. they play everything, including homemade music and too much rap. 107.5 on FM for those of you in asheville.

i'm not sure about this picture. i did it, as is my habit from time to time, very quickly, really just so i could put up a picture tonight. probably do it better sometime.

as you might gather - or not - i've been on a roll today, working on my panoply of projects the entire day. i'm starting to get a glimmer of how i can put it all together on a CD-ROM, movment, sound and maybe text. interactivity. whoopie. trance material.

but my email is still erratic. so mike e. and miss n., i got your emails much appreciated and you will hear from me when i fix my bits and bytes.

man i feel wierdness today. not "i feel wierd", altho of course that too. pretty constant, looking back and understanding that i felt that way even when i didn't.

but i feel wierdness. in the air, in the square, rambling waves everywhere. some kind of change or transformation trembling on the brink of blankness.

no i don't mean the slow swell and surge of anti-republicanism surfacing. i mean looking thru the window after dinner and seeing - or not seeing - darkness. realizing for the first time that my deceased ex-wife sally's birthday was the first day of autumn, oct 22, right after the equinox, right? or maybe the 22nd is the equinox itself, i don't at the moment know.

wierdness like getting bit by a spider earlier this week and watching it carrode a patch of my arm. getting a flu shot yestyerday, totally unable to paint, sing, or dance. nicotine withdrawel which i've been working on hard for a year, every since the habit took me up again. endless pharmaceutical ads bombarding my psyche. people dying left and right. probably other places too.

ten days of on and off hard and software upgradeing, and me too dizzy to care to RTFM... that's nerd for read directions. listening to alex gray fade in and out on shortwave in bed at night. the only guy i know who can rant and be reasonable at the same time.

tuesday i vote and i don't even know who is running for what. but i'll find out. i have contacts in high places.

feeling that tug towards hibernation, low light-level, scattered thoughts and memories, or what seem like memories, bob and weave in and out of somewhere called my mind. clothes rippling on a clothesline, brilliant spring light. hearing on the radio that we don't "have" children, they are lent to us. immense background sadness and longing for days disappeared. living in the now is living nowhere, in the endless space that waits behind of what is in front of and behind face. faces falling thru the fog, weak french deux-chevaux headlights splattering the wet cobblestones, all night conversations in the cafe or deep in the woods and not a stitch dropped, boots burning in campfires, cascades of pointers towards nothing.

i mean i got the oldtime blues, beneath the banter and blare of the noise life, a dying campfire barely glows in the early morning phospherescence, all blues.

maybe i should take my blood pressure. or maybe it should take me. too many tokes, too many strokes.

and behind it all the first person looks out thru my eyes. i'm here to be me and then not be me. right on track.

Rush Limbaugh May Teach Conservatives A Lesson: "The reaction to the drug problem - and drug felonies - recently alleged against Rush Limbaugh highlight sharply the differences between conservative morality and liberal/progressive morality."

caught a second - maybe third - wind last nite and stayed up late - for me - and watched PBS blues series. marshall chess and chicago blues featured, great stuff. lot of old and new footage.

the reoccuring motif was a record put out about 35 years ago by chess records, "electric mud". this was an attempt to put muddy waters in a psychedelic context, and was universally panned. had a double album cover, which when opened displayed a very sheepish-looking muddy wearing a white robe and not looking too angelic. it was a blip in the chronicle of the times and quickly sunk without a trace.

except that chuck d., later to become part of rap group whose name i cannot at the moment remember heard it, loved it, and it gradually pulled him into the chess catalogue of chicago blues. so the film was intercut with reassembling the "mud" band and doing it again, sans muddy who has passed on.

marshall chess insisted the origional intent was to use the psychedelic hook to introduce the hippies to electric chicago-based blues. altho i don't think it worked that way, it did for chuckie d. he made the comment that "the kids of today" are not much aware of the music of 5 years ago, not to mention robert johnson, sonnyboy williamson II, magic slim etc.

i had that album and played it on and off for years, kind of liked it in an off-center way, even tho by then i was very familiar with the blues - the first 45 (remember them?) i ever bought was "mannish boy" by muddy. i'm still a nut for otis spann, the keyboard player for muddy for many years. he and horace silver are the keyboard artisits i wish i could play like.

anyway it brought back memories of living in boulder colorado with wife and two twin children - they had thier first christmas there - during the tail end of the 60's, almost said tailspin. nice house tucked away on canyon blvd., in a neighborhood i later came to understand astounding amounts of all kinds of dope moved in and out of on a daily basis.

another time, another place, another me, another space.

here is a site sent to me by a member of ken wilber discussion group. too much for me to poke around in at the moment, let me know what you find if you do:

GURUS- SPIRITUAL MASTERS AND GUIDES; SATSANG AND SPIRITUAL TRAINING CENTERS

this picture was an old watercolor i fixed with oil pastel. got truck heater back together, sort of, hope the defroster works, hope the whole thing doesn't quit in the middle - or beginning - of winter.

it's funny not having much to say lately. working on poetry book, music CD, but words escape me. or maybe i escape them.

task for tonight: see if i can stay awake long enough to find out about enneagrams. if i do, i'll be right back.

...
ok here it is:

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Test

i'm sooo tired. remember john lennons song? sleepless 7-10 days plus medication change. i'll be in bed by 8 tonight.

last nite went to bed at 1 AM, this morning i got up at 5, tested blood sugar (low) ate breakfast and had a cup of coffee, got back into bed and read a little of ken wilber's appendix C of new manuscript (found on shambala.com's site). put me to sleep until 10.

when i got up and still had low blood glucose. nonetheless twinkled new computer set-up, put truck heater blower back in truck. i don't think it'll last the winter, only runs on high. plus i have to do the yearly reconfiguration of under the dash adjustments which i dislike intensly. objective is to get heat into cab and window defrosters, has to be done with paper clips and chewing gum, on account of broken plastic connectors.

last nite had good wilber meeting. met a lady who moved down from cashiers nc, jackson county, my old stomping grounds.

i lived for five years with wife and children way up in the southern part of the county. it was an important part of my life, one i still dream about. one of the things that i miss about that lost world was the weather. cool liquid breezes, like mountain streams flowed thru the open windows at nite. it was a time and place, like some others in my life, that marked me.

come to find out from the lady, karen, that that has changed: the summers and winters are about like here in asheville. i was astounded by this information, but it makes sense. it's happening everywhere else. it never occured to me that that scene was over, vamoosed, nothing but a memory. those cool, moist breezes have moved on.

for those of us who think the internet is an exception to the capitalist choke hold on information, check this out:

Project Censored: "Such degree of market control spells trouble for freedom of information on the Internet. Cable and phone monopolies would become clearinghouses for information. Corporations and government agencies will hold tremendous power to filter and censor content. ISPs already have the capability to privilege, or block out, content traveling through their web servers. With the demise of open access regulations, Internet content will likely resemble the 'monotonous diet of corporate content' that viewers now receive with cable television."

haven't slept well for about a week now. my computer and i have been in upgrade hell, but i think my 266MZ G3 is now a 500MZ G4. email sending still a little questionable but i'll tweak it tomorrow.

haven't kept up with what is happening in the so called real world, but the predictable seems to be playing out with our leaders. lost in the jungle without a clue, dragging the whole country along with them. there seems to be a feeling out there that arrogence and ignorence in the leadership doesn't pay off too well, a smattering of jubilation that it is starting to show, seams fraying. but these folks have spent a lifetime not seeing you and me, do not expect them to learn from experience.

Watercolor I found. My guess Is that i did it a year ago.

Haven't said much lately about the war, elections, or politics. So here goes:

The oligarchs are too insulated, isolated, they have no feel for how ordinary madmen - and women - live. like you and me. they actually think what they are doing is preserving what is an obsolete world view, i.e. world.

Joe Sixpack and I might go along with the charade of it not being a charade, but as the world of institutions, making a living, and rampant egoism tilts, shakes and trembles, we are all feeling understandably uneasy. More so every day.

And that uneasiness is a necessary step towards some kind sanity. Hope it happens soon.

Meanwhile it is a nice rainy fall evening and I'm stuck trying to open my g3 to put a zif chip in. I've opened it before but (gulp) can't remember how. Maybe I'll go sling some paint around and crash.

backing up all the pictures i have floating around i found this. i don't know who did it.

taking a morning walk this morning, i saw a truck pass by with a bumper-sticker that read "trees please". small letters, but at least i think that was what it said.

not like the one i saw the other day: "honk if you don't exist."

but the best was what somebody said on pbs show last night:

religion is for people afraid of going to hell
spirituality is for people who have been there

found out today that warren zevon died. he had terminal (of course) cancer.

i don't think his was a household name, but surely we all remember "werewolves of london". he was brilliant, erratic, and put out a long string of obscure, ironic music. recovered drunk, wildman, gun nut, dangerous, smart in the best sense of the word. put out one last CD shortly before his demise.

my personal favorite (which i've been looking for for years) is "transverse city" (1989). the second cut, "run straight down", is, like the rest of the CD, like nothing i've heard before or since.

it expresses the dark side of the new world we are sliding into better than any music i know of.

http://warrenzevon.com
http://members.tripod.com/~Zevonaticism

oil pastel.

woke up this morning with very elevated blood-sugar, insulin pump ran dry during the night. one more piece of evidence that i need to do one thing at a time. too many computer conundrums, monitor fever.

so i went on sick-day routine, lots of extra insulin and water, dazed in bed until about noon. usually in my experience takes about a day to get right.

i did mess with the ongoing email problem. you don't want to know the details and i don't remember them. but i've got most of my address book back, along with all my settings, profiles, and mail.

only thing is i can receive email but can't send. about where i was 4 days ago.

the world situation brings to mind 2 lyrics from the world of rock and roll:

"there's less and less to say" -late dylan.
"i'm not talkin; thaaaat's what i got to say" -early yardbirds

well, the hell with it. I steadied what's left of my mind and focused on this email boondoggle today for about 11 hours. At one time I could send and receive mail, but no bookmarks. Since then things have degraded and presently I have lost address book, ability to send or receive emails, and all my bookmarks. Now I have to spend hours dampening the adrenalin, fade out as gracefully as I can, and work on some other stuff tomorrow, drive up to the parkway, paint a picture in the dark, and practice the yo-yo a bit.

talked to daughter-in-law Melissa today. Hurricane was high wind, rain, a few branches rattled. No electrical outage. I also talked to old friend George. They both said the same thing that I said, too busy to enjoy the fall. Beautiful day outside and I spent it in this cybercave.

George's problem is a little different: when he is in his cabin in Yadkin county, it ceases to be a problem.

He told me to vote for Dean, which was a useful tip since that world has really vaporized for me. But I think dean has a big problem: it's the way he looks on TV. Bob Dole, who by all accounts is a warm and decent man, had the same problem. My prediction: if they don't fix his video persona he'll lose. By fix I don't mean Hollywood, let his character be a part of the picture. If he has to resort to plain old harsh, emotional outbursts, that can win for him - as long as he is comfortable with himself and talks straight. A really optimistic outcome would be if this required straight talk. Whoever can do that from that world to this one wins. People are more than ready for it.

You may notice that I am using Bogger's new spell checker. It makes me capitalize things.

honey i shrank the picture (below). the one that was up yesterday was too big.

still wrestling with sending email. i can receive i can't send. this has to be the simplest problem that has ever turned me into a cyber-zombie. i break off fixing it to do a few fun things but i must persevere. very severe. i hooked up cd burner, and want to pop new zif in but not until i can send you an email.

did this this morning, kind of borrowed from an older watercolor.

i'm still unable to email from netscape 7 and i've lost 2 days fooling with it. starting to think G3 266MZ is not enough to run it. will make quick workaround. getting away to do some errands now.

the picture is a redo of a pencil drawing by my son eric he dis as a kid. found it on arizona trip.

i bit the bullet this morning and seriously tried to fix my email problem. all day until dinner, then i took a walk. beautiful twilight.

a phone call in the morning may end this (particular) ordeal.

meanwhile check this out: alex jones is the king of conspiricy perspective, so automatically suspect. but check him out. here is a good place to start:

"PROTECTING THE TERRORISTS / ALLOWING THEM TO ATTACK "
from
Government Prior Knowledge and Involvement in the September 11th Attacks Archive

well i tried to modulate down today, a slight drift down from hypomania, i don't care how much i get done (or don't). took a walk at 4pm and wonder of wonders a clear, crisp cool sunny day. still can't send email from ns7. today new zif chip and cd-burner should arrive.

remember:"do one thing at a time". if this rule-of-thumb is contrary to the prevailing ethos, so be it. we're talking personal survival here.

click here to hear the remarkable good sense of mr soros in last sunday's interview:

"'You know, you pass the USA Patriot Act without proper discussion. And anybody who opposed it was accused of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. So I think we've gone off the rail in this country...."
from
NOW: Politics & Economy - The World According to George Soros | PBS

i have been moving with long sustained hypo-maniac productive periods for more than a few days now. guess i should be thankful. i'm hanging on for dear life to the local prime injunction "do one thing at a time", but paintings, quicktime movies, primitive flash, and mp3s are falling like rain. look out! oh yeah i think i finished rework of poetry book. i'll put it up tomorrow.

as far as the 10,000 things, i'm getting the distinct impression that rumsfield will go. the universal unease is about to become capable of being talked about, which it has not been.

i saw mr. soros the gizzillionaire sunday on PBS and he talked like a human for a long time, very clear, i'll find a link to the interview and put it here.

then maybe i'll fix it so i can send email again.

this might seem reasonable. it might not.

"That gave agents reason to enter the property without a search warrant, Lasater said. The agents stepped in to stop underage drinkers from getting intoxicated and making bad decisions later on in the evening, such as driving while impaired, he said.

'If you took the time to get a search warrant, the party would be over,' he said."
from
heraldsun.com: Alcohol police bring parties to an end:

today's brand new pic. off the top of my head what is happening:

cannot easily reply to or send email. trying to fix but just in fits and starts. so i'll be replying to recent mails soon.

beautiful morning, attended friend's meeting but didn't stick around to mingle.

worked on poem book most of the day. multiplexed and cleaned the domestic space.

pretty much gave up on watercolor i've been overworking. spend a little time each day finishing two oils. they seem to like this routine.

myself, i definitely feel things sliding. the uneasynease of our culture is about to be addressed. i feel we each have to be as clear as we can on what the meaning of the words are.

i got more response on the "monad-dyad" thing than i have in a long time. it makes me think (ouch) that my cohort, our peers, are maybe more of a philosophical post-metaphysical bent than i had realized. or i guess i knew this, it was just a reminder.

thanks to radio and tv i remembered that yesterday was september 11. floated a prayer. worked on 3 pictures, 1 watercolor and 2 oils. when to stop? initiated walking regime yesterday evening, 45 minutes, and guess what? it really helped me sleep. so i'm going to slip out right now and do it again.

todays twaddle. got up early, saw doc, got scrips, drove downtown and bought a new pair of shoes. no, not dancin' shoes. came home and twaddled all day. tomorrow i start daily walk routine in the early morning.

still puttering. time has slowed down. endless emergents. creative burst, lots to do, doing lots.

just got back from seeing premier of "Meher Baba: God in Human Form" at UNCA. excellant excellent production.

in the first place there is a structure that is crystal clear, which i know is one of the hardest things to do. hats off to peter nordeen who i think had a lot to do with that.

secondly, the production values were tip-top, lot of ken burns transtitions (lotta great old b & w photos to work with). nice clear soundtrack thanks john gunn. and everybody else who played a part in this movie. it presents the arc of Baba's life in a clear manner, with just enough mystery left in. not pushy. loved it.

picture says it all. or some of it. i got very little to say today, so i did the picture.

this morning was beautiful, more than a hint of fall. what a relief. but i stayed in front of the computer nearly all day, working on my poetry book. it's taking shape. know what i mean?

took time out to take bed apart and clean it, but i sure hurt my ribs doing it.

working on an oil, a watercolor, and a musical piece featuring guitar in open d, hawaaiin guitar in open d, and er hu chinese fiddle in key of d. course this was the culmination of a lot of tuning but i think i got it.

falling into old bad habits, so i'm going to leave computer off tomorrow, go to friend's meeting at 10 and film of Baba's life peter nordeen and (lots of) friends just finished at 4 i think. so i'm

Back in the Saddle Again

maybe summer will end. while i was waiting, happened upon something called something like "NFL Kickoff". (on tv of course).

and now i know what the "Brittany Spears" product/brand looks like in action. on the national mall, capital dome in the background, very high tech glossy translucent stage attractively hung with a billions of dollars worth of space-age electronics. where martin luther king was a hunred years ago.

the congruencies between the state, bizness, commercial sports, commercial son et lumiere, choreographed audience, and so forth was easy to see. but hard to figure out.

Brittany and a cast of hundreds of dancers, musicians, sound techs, computer people, maybe thousands, basically does a state-of-art micheal jackson world with a feminine persona. replete sexual references, but all within a closely-knit highly stylized pseudo-titillation mode, ie grabbing her crotch, jerking her legs open etc.

it's a new age with new worlds and new owners.

soon you will be seeing small crisp colorful logos on our currency.

the only watercolor i did while in az last month.

dig this: another leading edge crack:

"a stark fact is being emphasized: 80 years after the discovery of insulin, a significant number of people around the world with diabetes die because they don't have access to the life-saving drug."
from
medscape

quick oil pastel. not my usual style(s). i trust it is not a sign of impending religiousity.



slow oil pastel. done in arizona.

for a change this morning i thought i would post recent email correspondance. it is a good example of why pointy headed intellectuals like myself cannot park their bicycles straight.

reply to email---------------------------------
>
> The word monad comes from the greek word monos (from the word mono,
> which means "one", "single", "unique") and has had many meanings in
> different contexts:
>
> 1. Among the Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras) the monad was
> the first thing that came into existence.

hmmm. i thought it was eternal, unchanging, the One. so it exists beyond time and location always.

> The monad begat the
> dyad, which begat the numbers, the numbers begat points, which
> begat lines, which begat two-dimensional entities, which begat
> three-dimensional entities, which begat bodies, which begat the
> four elements earth, water, fire and air, from which the rest of
> our world is built up. The monad was thus a central concept in
> the cosmology of the Pythagoreans, who held the belief that the
> world was - literally - built up by numbers. (The source of this
> claim is Diogenes Laertius book Lives of Eminent Philosophers.)

i thought the dyad was the source of the manifest world (via chain of being). the monad somehow eminates it.

in vedic thought and other wisdom traditions there is the One (Brahma) and there is maya, sort of a consort of the One which somehow playfully produces it, and maya begins the cascade of manifest creation down to human conciousness, at which point the manifest begins the long climb back to the one. this process necessarily involves concious evolution - the personal and transpersonal conciousness. when the seer and the seen disappear bingo God realization.

the brahma-prana split is repeated by many traditions, eg parusha-prakti, nirvana-samsara, theos-logos, father son/logos, the One-Nous (plotinus), shiva-shakti, brahman-kali (ramakrishna).

> 2. Within certain variations of Gnosticism, especially those
> inspiered by Monoimus, the monad was the higher being which
> created lesser gods, or elements (similar to aeons). This view
> was according to Hippolytus inspired by the Pythagoreans.

philip k dick has a lot to say about this one, albeit in terms of sci-fi. the gnostics believed, similar to paul, that matter was evil and imperfect because it was an imperfect production of imperfect or evil maker - a false god. the real maker was far away (11 emanations or levels i think) and only infrequently broke thru into the manifest, ie like avatar.

> 3. In the writings of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, the monads
> appear as spiritual entities which make up the essence of our
> world. They do not interact with our world (are "windowless"),
> and do not have volume (do not take up space) and are thus
> impossible to detect by scientific methods. The arrangements of
> the monads make up the faith and structure of this world, which
> to Leibniz was "the best of all possible worlds".

very different monads. because they are plural. but still beyond time and location.

i'm reading wilber's online but still unpublished stuff which will i think become volume 2 of everything trilogy. he is saying there are no intermediate preexistants (as in platonic forms, jungian archtypes). instead, as conciousness evolves they become a pattern, albeit invisible. yeterday's a postori become todays a priori.

sure is fun to write about this stuff and not have a clue about it.

chris

myself in jim's imaginary front yard after recent travel marathon. i felt worse than i looked.

watched that wills fellow on the sunday news parade. he pointed out that the "liberals" were engaged in a performative contridiction concerning the money that dean is raising, since they are against mixing money and politics.

this is so goofy i have to comment. people's money is different from corporation money when it comes to what is left of politics. just as an individual's right to free speech was not meant to include a corporation's right to pay the media to spread it's messages. advertising is not "free speech". my contribution to a political candidate is not the same as an institution's.

constitutional law has degraded to the point where an institution or corporation has all the rights guaranteed to a human by the counstitution. only they have massive amounts of cash and outlive us.

found this photo at my dad's house (along with a lot of other visual odds and ends). i took it at tilley creek early 80's, where i lived with my wife and children. tricked it up and printed it on cibachrome. darkroom stuff. ancient past.

i am slowly resetting. right now am looking for camera case, coffee maker, and about 300 pages i printed of ken wilber's latest online stuff.

as far as current events go, they are going going gone. politics is now beside the point. stumbling into iraq totally ignorant of who or what is there has unraveled more or less predictably. the arrogence of our republican leaders who i actually think believe thier pie charts, and the fear of the democrats of going out on a limb and actually saying something about it is self evident. the shennanigans of israel could be stopped cold by the cessation of denial that they are living on land that belongs to someone else, even if god did say it was thiers. assassinations by self-immolation and missles. i recently saw a kid's lunchbox with super ninjas on it. they looked exactly like everyone's idea of terrorists. last night on dateline the story of four middle class american families who were struggling with the loss of everything, homes, jobs, health insurance.

the common denominator in all this is in my humble opinion the fact that institutions as a way of organizing people, profit and fear of no profit as a motivator, no longer work. things change. compassion and altruism have to come into play, i don't care what ayn rand, o'reilly, rush and friends say.

i think i painted this before i left for travel extravaganza.

i've got so many things to say that i've got nothing much to say here.

but here is a taste: have you seen or heard of the woman who wrote "treason" something or another? as i understand it, she is rehabilitating mcarthy and declaring those against the iraq war traitors. the democrats - what's left of them (no pun intended) - are "against america".

talk radio is full of this stuff. to disagree is to be an outlaw.

good to be back home after 25 or so days on the road. i'm exhausted of course.

the picture above is first try at oil-based pastels. don't quite know what to do with them but they sure are portble, easy to schlepp around. i did it at my dad's house in prescott az. his AC was out, but with the judicious use of attic fan and the timely closing and unclosing of windows it was pretty comfortable.

unlike phoenix where i didn't stay too long with sister jane and fred. dropping in on phoenix is a shock, and i really can see no good reason for it's existence. hard to imagine that i was exiled there for ten years.

i'm aiming to move very slow for a week or two - "one thing at a time" - review options, priorities (what options?) and relax.

Vacation Ending
testing, testing.

i"m visiting with Jim c. tonite. last nite at doug & nicole's. NC is another hot place. seems like a summer full, talked a little about Lucius shephard with jim. the nation.

hope to see damien with ninian tomorrow. looking foward to own bed own head.

stick around, fool around, poke around.

i'll be back.

meanwhile a few vacation posts will be found below:

visited sister jane and husband fred a few days ago. took shuttle to phoenix with dad who had an appoinment with VA docs for tuning ear aids or whatever you call them. fred and jane had just returned from cape cod visit with fred's parents.

took shuttle back to prescott next day: air conditioning on shuttle went out, not good, but made it back.

then got call from jane, fred's father ralph who was in hospital unexpectedly passed away. he was a pleasant and good natured soul, may he rest in peace.

they managed to fly back to cape cod yesterday despite east coast blackout.

monday. enjoying stay with dad in prescott altho hotter than hell. semi-rescued one watercolor and am now trying oil pastels which i really like, very portable, just the thing for the road.

blood sugars have really been wacky, maybe from antibiotic i'm taking. split my head open leaving aville, 7 stitches. most ungraceful exit ever. will see fred and sister jane tommorow in phx. they fly in from cape cod. fred's father ralph is in the hospital having a tough time.

words of wisdom? don't have any except "the spirit is received in silence". oh, i experimented with cable tv last nite, spent a few minutes with each channel. (don't have or want this at home). it's all true, "57 channels and nothin's on" as mr. springsteen said awhile back. unbelievable circus of commerce, cliches, warmed over one-liners and fake jewels.

and i think - tho not sure - you are still regarded as an "egghead" in todays world if you don't watch this stuff. over and out.

sitting in the library in prescott az once again. been here (in town, not the library) for a week, seems like either a year or a day. across the street is the house my son eric and i lived in 100 years ago.

nothing much to report except the world is nuts and so am i. it has taken me a week to start very unsatisfactory watercolor - but the next one will be better of course. found some great photos of my grandparents, one of grandpa wyly 9 months old. i'll add these to some kind of cyber album when i get back to the smokies.

i keep remembering gb shaws quote, "growing old is like a shipwreck."

but heard old friend ben jones on the radio this morning which was kind of fun. he sounds well and is still quick on the draw with a quip. gotta go now, trying to research air conditioning for dad whose system flaked out.

expect to see son eric next sunday for a few days, he's driving from sunnyvale ca to flagstaff straight through, spending the night with friends and then on to here.

prescott has changed just like anywhere, tibetan bookstore down the street, new age all the rage.

terrible day. started off great, nice long walk in cool air. when i got back i lost all my zip and it became a lost day, no energy, no focus, no foolin. one of those days when anything you try to do quickly goes haywire. did find the watercolor posted above floating around in a small notebook in my truck.

but a little weather news, tip of the hat to tharpa.

j.g. ballard in the 60's i believe wrote a number of novels about abrupt weather changes, the one i remember best is the wind from nowhere. good read, bad news.

email i got this morning. thanks russel and tucker;
--------------------

as we say in Woolof--"Danka Danka Japa Gaola"--Softly softly catch the monkey" --I didnt see
this weird visit to one of my favorite countries-just everyone saying how compassionate the
speech was!!
Go figure
T


A letter from a Senegalese following Bush's visit that was forwarded to me.

Russell Banks


> >
> > Dearest friends,
> >
> > As you probably know, this week George Bush is
> > visiting Africa.
> > Starting with Senegal, he arrived this morning at 7.20
> > PM and left at 1.30 PM. This visit has been such an
> > ordeal that a petition is being circulated for this
> > Tuesday July 8th be named Dependence Day.
> >
> > Let me share with you what we have been trough since
> > last week.
> >
> > 1- Arrestations: more than 1,500 persons have been
> > arrested and put in jail between Thursday and
> > Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that the
> > Big Man is gone
> > 2- The US Army's planes flying day and nigh over
> > Dakar. The noise they make is so loud that one hardly
> > sleeps at night
> > 3- About 700 security people from the US for Bush's
> > security in Senegal, with their dogs, and their cars.
> > Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come
> > near the US president
> > 4- All trees in places where Bush will pass have been
> > cut. Some of them have more than 100 years
> > 5- All roads going down town (were hospitals,
> > businesses, schools are located) were closed from
> > Monday night to Tuesday at 3 PM. This means that we
> > could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people
> > were also obliged to stay at home.
> > 6- National exams for high schools that started on
> > Monday are post-poned until Wednesday.
> > Bush's visit to the Goree Island is another story. As
> > you may know Goree is a small Island facing Dakar
> > where from the 15th to the 19th century, the African
> > slaves to be shipped to America were parked in special
> > houses called slave houses. One of these houses has
> > become a Museum to remind humanity about this dark
> > period and has been visited by kings, queens,
> > presidents. Bill,
> > Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson
> > Mandela, the Pope, and many other distinguished guests
> > or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the
> > islanders. But for "security reasons" this time, the
> > local population was chased out of their houses from 5
> > to 12 AM. They were forced by the American security to
> > leave their houses and leave everything open,
> > including their wardrobes to be searched by special
> > dogs brought from the US. The ferry that links the
> > island to Dakar was stopped and offices and businesses
> > closed for the day.According to an economist who was
> > interviewed by a private radio, Senegal that is a very
> > poor country has lost huge amount of money in this
> > visit, because workers have been prevented from
> > walking out of their homes.In addition to us being
> > prevented to go out, other humiliating things happened
> > also. Not only Bush
> > brought did not want to be with Senegalese but he did
> > not want to use our things. He brought his own
> > arm-chairs, and of course his own cars, and meals and
> > drinks. He came with his own journalists and ours were
> > forbidden inside the airport and in place he was
> > visiting. Our president was not allowed to make a
> > speech. Only Bush spoke when he was in Goree. He
> > spoke about slavery. It seems that he needs the vote
> > of the African American to be elected in the next
> > elections, and wanted to please them. That's why he
> > visited Goree Several protest marches against American
> > politics have been organized yesterday and even when
> > Bush was here, but we think he does not care.
> >
> > We have the feeling that everything has been done to
> > convince us that we are nothing, and that America can
> > behave the way it wants, everywhere, even in our
> > country.
> > Believe me friends, it is a terrible feeling. But
> > according to a Ugandan friend of mine, I should not
> > complain because in Uganda one of the country he is
> > going to visit, Bush does not intend to go out of the
> > airport. He will receive the Ugandan President in the
> > airport lounge.
> > Nevertheless, I think I am lucky, because I have such
> > wonderful American friends. But there are now
> > thousands of Senegalese who believe that for all
> > Americans the world is their territory.
> >
> > ��������������������� Love to you all
> >
> > ��������������������� Codou
> >
> > ______________________________________________________
> > ___________
> > Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.�
> > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
> >
> >
> > ------- End of forwarded message -------
> >
> >
> >
> Chase Twichell
> Editor, Ausable Press
> www.ausablepress.com

slowed down day. ninian spent the night last night. he played some pleasant hillbilly trance (that's "old timey") music on the banjo. doing watercolor on clayboard, very interesting possibilities. went to mark and sharri's for baba gathering, really interesting talk by sherri on sufi kawalli music. she got her doctorate in ethnomusicolgy. wish i had.

good news! check out my astro-gnostic probability-wave for this week:

yesterday was a little strange; worked all day on various things. i think i finished one oil and almost a second. if i'm right i will have finished 3 in this lifetime. decided to wait until end of august to continue upgrade on g3, mostly zif cpu upgrade and cd burner. also got pretty good electronic-trance mix done, now to add vocals (sigh).

also caught the last half of something on pbs about music and musicians in pakistan today. Peshawar, the northwest "wild west" of that country, has outlawed music. playing, listening etc. a la taliban. an articulate member of eclectic pakastani rock group traveled there to check out the feelings of the folks who live there and the students of a moderate madras.

Peshawar and the territories in the northwest are historically an aberration. after WW1 a line was drawn by some general in london or paris - or versailles - dividing afghanistan and pakistan and split this region down the middle. there was actually a short-lived movement to establish the area as a nation-state with a name something like "peshwaristan". i say something like because i can't remember what it was actually meant to be named.

pakistani law does not prohibit music, but the influence of the mullahs and madrasi means that it cannot be performed (or even hummed) in that part of the world.

anyway the conversations were most interesting. if you accept even in a tiny way the position of the fundamentalist muslims who wield power there that the modern mediated culture is exploding with destructive images and sound you can see the problem they are dealing with.

on the other hand, looking at islamic history and especially the sufi thread, one can argue that music has always been an integral part of that tradition - kawali, rumi, etc.

so it is (to fall into ken wilber's world) a clash of the modern market driven world-centric world view and an ethnocentric regressive world view.

the answer of course is to transcend but include the ethnic values. that is acknowledge the downside of the current cultural juggernaut and play good music that reflects the higher states of mind and culture and dismisses the cheap thrill. or to put it another way, the answer is blowin in the wind.

an interesting comparison is with the iconaclastic controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries, when both the islamic and byzantine cultures decleared man made images to be a distraction from the true, the good, and the beautiful. which they can be, if the observer worships the image and not the reality behind it.

so it's all in the eye - or ear - of the beholder.

but which beholder? here again i go along with wilber: the same beholder who is beholding us.

i changed the picture above and below. they were just not right. something off about both of them. hope they are a little more...interesting now.

i'm in countdown mode for trip to raleigh and on to arizona. the older i get the earlier i have to start organizing and packing. if this trend continues, there will come a time when i don't have the time left to pack and go anywhere.

i'm racing to finish 2 projects before the long hiatus. (no, not that), i mean the coming trip. want to complete a pdf file that will contain old parsons family photos so my scattered extended family can take a look and tell me who is in the photos, where they were taken and so forth.

second is another pdf file, the new life, a book i am typesetting for mr. jeff in south carolina. incorporate changes i have got, insert many picture frames and captions.

the first will be done by today, the second by tomorrow.

yesterday i was planning to drive up to mr. b.'s camping spot in yancey county, but the hot weather stopped me cold so to speak. instead i totally screwed up a water color but came close to finishing 2nd oil painting. ninian arrives sat. for an overnight stay. now i'm going to take a walk.

2 links to good newspaper series on voting machine, procedures story (hugely under reported).

story

more

not a whole lot to say this AM. ran out of insulin in pump woke up with blood sugar reading of 530. this essentially blows my day and means taking it easy while i bring it down.

interesting discussion last nite at ken wilber group. one of the many things i like about wilber is that he dismisses the solitary holy man up on the mountain as not the way to go today, or not the way to spend one's life. or better yet, not the way to go exclusively.

when i was younger i pondered this question; i usually felt more than a twinge of guilt at any glimpses of the spirit i might have from time to time, because i couldn't relate them to the world. i believe martin luther dealt with this knotty problem when talking about the "quietists".

if i have any "faith" it is that beyond the visible world there is something attributeless without which the visible and manifest would not be. but this is the result of experiences i have had and what memory has left me, not "faith".

any faith i have is faith that for reasons far beyond my understanding i am in the world. like all of us my life seems to necessary, as it unfolds, to capital-R Reality. my existence and experience matter.

now that i've got that settled, what do i do with it?

just to be on the safe-side i checked out the white-house list of suspicious reading. so should you. thanks, tuck.

A PICTURE

A DAY

KEEPS

THE DOCTOR

AWAY



had a brain scan the other day. above is the result. doc said don't worry, it's going around.

i put it up because i don't have much to say today. except that the current interest in whether bush and company lie or not i think is entirely misplaced.

in my humble opinion nobody believed him in the first place. did you? so any revelations about what he knew when he said whatever doesn't matter and is beside the point.

here's an interesting thought: gen. wesley clark for democratic presidential nominee.

don't know if the google WMD thing below still works. maybe it was a temporary hack done for the "hacking" contest of a few days ago. hope it is still there.

it's dark and cool - but humid - outside this morning so i'll head out for a walk in a minute. this is easier said than done for me, since i have to check blood sugar when i wake up and if it is too high correct it with insulin pump and wait for it to come down while the sun comes up, which quite often means no walk until it's too hot. speaking of type I diabetes today is the day for my yearly retnothopy - sp? - check with eye doc. used to dread it, as blindness is such a bugaboo. nowdays i just go, thankful that somehow they will deal with me, even tho i don't fit into any socio-economic pigeon hole. in a culture that defines identity by role, marginalized pioneers sometimes pay a heavy price.

which reminds me of a sci-fi book by harry harrison i read a lifetime ago, bill the galactic hero, in which there were people called the "de-planned", who had lost thier way in the cutural matrix. can you say "marginalized"?

ken wilber, along with a lot of other folks, think that the outer edges of culture is where the action is, where the values and worldview of the future emerge. in a discussion i had with friends the other day it was observed that maybe some of us, because of this, might consider this group the true "elite". i don't. i think the "dispossesed" might be more accurate. i don't think any mature person would voluntarily put himself or herself in this catagory. but i think more and more folks will find themselves there. has to do with values, experience, intuition, and perspective, none of which are wholey self selected.

speaking of wilber, i am just about finished with sex, ecology, and spirituality, reading the footnotes at the end of the book, where i found this:

"for a particular chilling account of this retribalization and it's growing influence in the immediate future, see robert kaplin's 'the coming anarchy' in the february 1994 issue of the atlantic. kaplan also sees the world heading towards globalization, but with an extended period of retribalization: 'whereas the distant future will probably see the emergence of a racially hybrid, globalized man, the coming decades will see us more aware of our differences than our similarities.'

"kaplan ties his thesis to the work of van creveld's transformation of war, homer-dixon's environmental studies, and huntington's thoughts on culture clash: under various intense environmental and demographic stresses, numerous state mechanisms of governance will fragment into ethnic tribal bands. and, kaplan points out (quoting van creveld), future 'armed conflicts will have more in common with the struggles of primitive tribes than with large-scale conventional war' (i.e., regression to tribal warfare prior to state warfare about which van clausewitz theorized).

"...and thus, kaplan points out... 'in places where the western enlightment has not penetrated and where there has always been mass poverty, people find liberation in violence.'

"...as tribalized warfare increases: 'because the radius of trust within tribal societies is narrowed to one's immediate family and guerilla comrades [largely preconventioal and egocentric] , then truces arranged with one commander may be broken immediately by another.' likewise, 'when cultures [ethnicities], rather than states, fight, then cultural and religious monuments are weapons of war, making them fair game.' "

do this:

go to google and in search field type in "weapons of mass destruction", probably need to include quotes. then click "i'm feeling lucky". thanks, richard, for this gem.

sunday morning. for some reason having to do with with when i grew up, i am always reminded of the lines from an old charly musselwhite song:

"sunday morning
everybody's in bed
i'm on the street
talking out of my head"
course i'm not.

i talked to son eli yesterday. he visited damien friday. damien is now in rehab at wake med, was ambulanced there thursday. the good news: nurses told him that in the short time he has been there, he has gone up two levels on some scale they use. get well damien, we all love you.

i'm struggling with how personal i can get with these posts. the "confessional" mode does not appeal to me. plus the personal mode is one i seem to be able to fall into face to face, but the written word does not seem able to carry my story. the words just are'nt there.

so here is an update on the gulf war, strictly my own opinion. the political machine that got us into this for whatever reason has no idea of where they are. the class of corporate oligarchs that spearheaded the effort is incapable, seemingly, of appreciating world views other than thier own severly constricted outlook. "helpless like a rich man's child" (dylan). they should all be forced to spend a month on the street with a few bucks in their pocket. whether the changing storylines that led the public were lies or ignorance does not matter. in real world terms it was and is nonsense. what is happening around the world, esp. iraq, is entirely predictable from the point of view of the man on the street. which is why i argued during the ramp-up to the war that if we won on the first day and saddam's head was fed-exed to bush, our troubles would be just beginning. any number of saner methods could have produced the demise of saddam's power.

i believe the sequence of moves leading to the war were based on the same "logic" that the tv commercials for "total" cereal use. that product touts that it contains 100% of the daily vitamins needed to sustain life, so buy it. but common sense (remember it?) tells us the only way this could be an advantage is if this were all you were going to eat during the whole day. and then you would die from lack of calories. this line has been used for at least 20 years, so the people respond to it. just as they (we) are buying into the daily sound bites justifying the coup d'etat that has happened in washington dc. enough.

didn't sleep thru the fireworks like i usually do, my daily rhythms are in such a metabolic flux i more or less came to about 9 pm and painted for a few hours. two days before i woke up at 4:45 am, fresh, full of energy and enthusiasm and got a lot done - by a lot i mean work on my nebulous creative projects. lately i have to catch each wave of energy and ride it, but i never know when one will come.

yesterday i got a lot of phone calls from my daughter, cousin linda in idaho who i haven't seen since we were children, sister jane on her cell-phone while out walking in the summer heat of phoenix. tuned up G3 which seems to have settled down, i was experiencing a little of the inevitable system wackiness which manifests from time to time. i always attribute these things to stray muons blasting thru the electronics. not sure what they are doing to my head.

got an email from these folks who stumbled onto my site:

commonwheel journal

extremely pertinant site, great links, one of which jumped out at me:

ivan illych on what we need and what we don't.

last nite i finally managed to hook up good mike to G3, records well with no noise. i used to do this routinely about a year ago, but couldn't remember how i did it. played around for a week, and then stumbled on the answer which had been staring me in the face.

so i immediately recorded a short piece, 3 guitars, hammond b3 and percussion, and went to bed.

when i got up this morning computer would not boot up. i went thru the usual drill, and then gave up.

which was good, because it fixed itself.

happy fourth.

thurday evening. sam dropped by. i think he's right: next step for me is periodic, routine, but very minor hubbub. reflection is a funny word. but, like my sister always tells me, i probably could use a little more structure in my life.

so i'm going to walk each morning before it's daylight.

rainy tuesday morning. bad night last night, couldn't sleep. listened to alex gray on shortwave for a long time. this guy's operation fascinates me. (info-wars.com) if 1% of what he is talking about is anywhere near true, we're in philip. k. dick land bigtime.

i haven't studied his documentation, but am thinking i 'll take a look at it. as i understand what he is saying:

9-11 was a setup. the FAA or defese dept was conducting an in the air test of crashing airplanes into buildings that very day.

the "mainstream" media has stated that troops were in afghanistan up to 6 months before 9-11.

iran invaision plans already in place.

prison labor ("slave-camps") already a profitable operation, the bush's own stock in one of the companies spearheading this.

terrorist threat is generated by us govt. to produce docile public. this operation goes back a long way.

pretty strong stuff, huh?