friday afternoon, on the way back from an appointment, i decided to stop and spend some time downtown in the paris of the south, aville. it was a gorgeous day and i strolled around, stopping here and there. so many new shops, street life up and running. i paid a visit to the old tried and true newstand, where a large format book of plates of the cezanne collection at the hermitage jumped out into my hands which i bought for $10. the plates are amazing, well printed and including closeups. I have always admired cezanne, but the closeups of some of his earlier work astounded me.
i looked unsuccessfully for CD by dave olney, wheel (LoudHouse Records: David Olney/The Wheel). dave is another of the old chapel hill bunch who lives in nasheville and works as a fulltime songwriter and performer. i've heard one cut from this cd, "god-shaped hole", which blew me away. as real as it gets.
i decided then and there to spend more time out of the house from now until the weather gets too hot. i've spent enough time underground, time for a little daylight.
yesterday a visit to dr. r's world, very pleasant interlude. driving back, i noticed a storefront and sign i hadn't noticed before. i may be mistaken, but the sign read "deja-vu dialysis". catchy but mysterious.
according to the conventional thinking - or maybe feeling - bush and the corporate oligarchy that have hijacked the government are in trouble. the spreading bubble of unease felt by just about everyone has been transforming into the thought that the 5 or 6 people running the government by fiat, PR, and outright lies have to go.
my own opinion is what it was several months ago.
one, the cabel will not go gracefully. the shakier thier hold on the public becomes, the more backup shenannigans they are putting in place. the most obvious is the trick being talked about lately, capture osama right before the election.
two, i don't think kerry is the man to snake through the barrage of dirty tricks that lay in wait. i thought, and still think, that any democrat can win the election, provided they have one ability: to talk straight in such a way that it penetrates the wall of media and gets through to you and me. i don't think kerry can do this - his mediated persona too stiff, his words too reminescent of rehearsed and learned thoughts from advisors. i think he is a good man, but the skull and bones wealthy and priviliged background he comes from seems could be a vast negitive.
edwards, on the other hand, can talk straight in such a manner that he gets through. he is the man who can navigate through the semantic traps of the public discourse without losing a beat. slick lawyer though he is, or maybe because he is, he could twist the oligarchy into pretzels, and tell it like it is.
it's late, but i'm behind edwards. or maybe i'm just behind.
below are two reviews of a book and a movie forwarded to me by my friend tharpa d. they are worth posting here because they both seem to clearly articulate the rising inchoate feelings of humans everywhere. my comments are colored red.
-----------
CORPORATION AS PSYCHOPATH By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman February 17, 2004
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000174.html
People ask -- Rob, Russell, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What can we do about it?
We say -- read one book, see one movie.
Unfortunately, the movie and the book are available now only in Canada.
But wait -- before you head north of the border -- they will be available here in a month or so.
And believe us, it is worth the wait. (Full disclosure -- our work -- the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s -- is featured in the movie.)
The book is titled: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. It is by Joel Bakan (Free Press, 2004).
The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.
We've seen an advance copy of the movie.
We're read an advance copy of the book.
And here's our review:
Scrap the civics curricula in your schools, if they exist.
Cancel your cable TV subscriptions.
Call your friends, your enemies and your family.
Get your hands on a copy of this movie and a copy of this book.
Read the book. Discuss it. Dissect it. Rip it apart.
Watch the movie. Show it to your children. Show it to your right-wing relatives. Show it to everyone. Organize a party around it. Then organize another.
For years, we've been reporting on critics of corporate power -- Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.
[i saw noam chomsky talk about his new book last week on c-span. i hadn�t followed him through the years and now regret it. he is lucid and right on about so many things that are virtually �unspeakable� in our world today. he was cited for always speaking (and writing) in a calm manner, no rants, no shouts, no banging on the table. his new book:Amazon.com: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) see also Chomsky Archive]
For years, we've reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.
But Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.
The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here -- which in our view is still a long shot -- the U.S. after all is not Canada -- it could have a profound impact on politics.
The filmmakers juxtapose well-shot interviews of defenders and critics with the reality on the ground -- Charles Kernaghan in Central America showing how, for example, big apparel manufacturers pay workers pennies for products that sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States -- with defenders of the regime -- Milton Friedman looking frumpy as he says with as straight a face as he can -- the only moral imperative for a corporate executive is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.
[i disagree: the only legal imperative is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.]
Others agree with Friedman. Management guru Peter Drucker tells Bakan: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast." And William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.
Of course, state corporation laws actually impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make money for shareholders. Engage in social responsibility -- pay more money to workers, stop legal pollution, lower the price to customers -- and you'll likely be sued by your shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, puts it this way: "The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine (shark seeking young woman swimming on the screen). There isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed."
Business insiders like Monks and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, lend needed balance to a movie that otherwise would have been dominated by outside critics like Chomsky, Moore, Grossman and Rifkin. Anderson calls the corporation a "present day instrument of destruction" because of its compulsion to "externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it externalize."
"The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction," Anderson says, as pictures of biological and chemical wastes pouring into the atmosphere roll across the screen.
Like Republican Kevin Phillips is doing as he criss-crosses the nation, pummeling Bush from the right, Anderson and Monks are opening a new front against corporate power from inside the belly of the beast. They are stars of this movie and book.
The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point -- the corporation is a psychopath.
[years ago i worked at a major corporation with a programmer who said �any group or institution of over 25,000 people is psychopathic, despite the fact that all 25,000 people are fundamentally not�. that was awhile back, and i�m not sure the latter part of that statement holds true today...]
Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.
The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.
Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.
Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that "we're number one, we're the best."
Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.
And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast.
No better place to start than right here.
Read the book.
Watch the movie
Organize for resistance.
............
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
------------
CORPORATIONS NEED TREATMENT, DOCUMENTARY ARGUES By Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service / Common Dreams January 20, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-03.htm
TORONTO - Corporations are not only the most powerful institutions in the world, they are also psychopathic, a new Canadian documentary on globalization elegantly argues.
While the corporation has the rights and responsibilities of "a legal person", its owners and shareholders are not liable for its actions. Moreover, the film explains, a corporation's directors are legally required to do what is best for the company, regardless of the harm created.
[corporations legally are people but there are some differences: they can live forever, and get away with murder.]
What kind of person would a corporation be? A clinical psychopath, answers the documentary, which is now playing in four Canadian theatres.
"Everything we do in the world is touched by corporations in some way," says 'The Corporation' writer Joel Bakan.
Six years ago he was researching a book on the subject and teamed up with documentary makers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and then set out to drum up enough money to make the film and to do more than 40 interviews.
"Corporations are the most dominant institutions on the planet today. We thought it was worth taking a close look at what that means," Bakan told IPS.
[throughout the last millennium perhaps the dominant institution has been in some ways invisible, the same way water is invisible to a fish. for instance in medieval europe the catholic church was regarded not so much as an institution as reality. ditto today with the free market, profit, and acquisition. they have been regarded as �the way the world works�.]
In law, today's corporations are treated like a person: they can buy and sell property, have the right to free expression and most other rights that individuals have.
This legal creativity came as a result of U.S. businesses using the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- designed to protect blacks in the U.S. South after the Civil War -- to proclaim that corporations should be treated as "persons".
The filmmakers show four examples of corporations at work -- including garment sweatshops in Honduras and Indonesia -- to demonstrate that this "legal person" is inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.
The corporation, the film points out, ignores any social and legal standards to get its way, and does not suffer from guilt while mimicking the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.
A person with those character traits would be categorized as a psychopath, based on diagnostic criteria from the World Health Organization (WHO), points out the film.
Unlike 'Bowling for Columbine' -- to which it has been compared -- 'The Corporation' does not follow a shambling yet crusading interviewer (Michael Moore) into corporate head offices to ask tough questions.
Instead the filmmakers use simple but beautifully lit head and shoulder shots of its subjects against a black background. The interviewer is never seen or heard; the corporate chiefs, professors and activists speak directly to the viewer.
The technique is so compelling that not listening or turning away would seem impolite.
The interviews are interspersed with archival footage from many sources, including scenes from sweatshops and news conferences. It also includes some ironic and darkly humorous excerpts from corporate ad campaigns and training films from the 1940s and '50s.
But the film is not a rant. It gives ample time to corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) and representatives of right-wing organizations, like Canada's Fraser Institute.
Fraser's Michael Walker tells viewers that hungry people in the developing world are better off when a sweatshop pays them 10 cents an hour to make brand name goods that sell for hundreds of dollars.
And it is just good business sense that a corporation moves to seek out more hungry people when its workers demand higher wages and better working conditions, Walker argues.
Many others are less ruthless. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, is honestly concerned about protecting the environment. Under his guidance, Shell adopted many green initiatives and a commitment to developing renewable energy.
At the same time, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists were hung in Nigeria for protesting Shell Oil's pollution of the Niger Delta.
Social critic and linguist Noam Chomsky -- the subject of Achbar's 1992 award-winning 'Manufacturing Consent' -- carefully points out that people who work for corporations, and even those who run them, are often very nice people.
The same could have been said about many slave owners, he observes. The institution -- not the people -- is the problem, Chomsky argues.
Eminent economist Milton Friedman sums up the role of the corporation succinctly: it creates jobs and wealth but is inherently incapable of dealing with the social consequences of its actions.
'The Corporation' documents a bewildering array of these consequences -- including the deaths of citizens who protest corporate ownership of their water in Cochabamba, Bolivia -- that demonstrate the extent and power of today's corporations.
It looks at the often-cozy relationships between corporations and fascist regimes, such as that of IBM and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.
It demonstrates the power of advertising to create desires for luxury items, as well as how corporations can suppress information.
The documentary shows agribusiness corporation Monsanto successfully preventing the news media from airing a story about the potential health hazards of a genetically engineered drug given to many U.S. diary cows.
'The Corporation' also tells a number of success stories, including activists' successful fight to overturn corporate patents on the neem tree and basmati rice.
Bolivia's Oscar Olivera describes how citizens of Cochabamba city re-took control of their water. The lesson, he explains, is the people's capacity for "reflection, rage and rebellion" as an effective counter to corporate globalization
That is one of the film's messages, says Bakan. "We want people to understand that they can change things."
"Everyone keeps thanking us for making the film," says Mark Achbar, from the Sundance festival of independent films in Utah state.
"People are fed up with being talked down to and enjoy being intellectually engaged," he adds, trying to explain the documentary's popularity and several international festival awards.
Despite its current limited distribution in Canada, 'The Corporation' has been sold as a three-part, one-hour TV series to international markets, and Achbar is hoping it will be translated into Spanish.
Of course, there will not be a multi-million marketing campaign. The number of people who will see it will depend on those who have, spreading the word.
That is just one way to take back the power that corporations have usurped.
http://www.thecorporation.tv
the winter bluz have really set in. lotta long faces around, twitchy. i have for some time thought that this phase did not start until march. but that was based on another time and another place. the winter bluz are here now.
yesterday was one of the longer days of my life.
my friend john r asked me today about all this "heart" business. come to find out he associated it with the western picture of "heart", all sappy and goofy and satin red. i was thinking of "heart" in the eastern manner, something to act from and on, a connection to beauty. beauty is reality, reality is beauty. a doorway.
then there is rilke:
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying."
then there's the laundry.
woke up. got out of bed. pulled the covers over my head.
finished three more long chapters in book i am typesetting, caught up on online course. washed the dishes and vacuumed. work as distraction.
then this jumped into my head:
"...that the thought of the heart is the thought of images, that the heart is the seat of the imagination, that imagination is the authentic voice of the heart, so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively."
james hillman
the thought of the heart
long 24 hours. i think i am beginning to see with new eyes. the illumined world presents itself through the heart. head bobs along behind. it is a good day to be now.
the soul is messy, earthbound, fluid, moist, lives in the damp valleys, near water. spirit enfolds souls. the pull of a beautiful woman's soul illuminates the dark spaces of the heart and illuminates the world in a suprising novel new manner. continually.
got this from tharpa d. "onelist" just now. don't know what book it is from. but hillman seems to be suffering an eclipse right now, and it's good to remember what his subject matter was (is):
"We cannot go further . . . because we are bereft in our culture of an adequate psychology and philosophy of the heart, and therefore also of the imagination. Our hearts cannot apprehend that they are imaginatively thinking hearts, because we have so long been told that the mind thinks and the heart feels and that imagination leads us astray from both. Even when the heart is allowed its reasons, they are those of faith or of feeling, for we have forgotten that philosophy itself --the most complex and profound demonstration of thought-- is not 'wisdom' or 'truth' in an abstract sense of 'sophic'. Rather, philosophy begins in philos arising in the heart of our blood, together with the lion, the wound, and the rose. If we would recover the imaginal we must first recover its organ, the heart, and its kind of philosophy."
-James Hillman
nice birthday. i used to go to great lengths to deny them, but i just let this one slide by.
a little dionysian revelry last night, good for the soul.
my first experience with DSL outage - yesterday around noon i couldn't log on, tried a few things and phoned bellsouth support. after the usual beeps and clicks i didn't hear what i expected - "outage in your area" - but got into trouble shooting lines and modem. really did not want to do this so left it dysfunctional. phoned about 8 tonight, recorded message "your area has just recovered from an outage, you may have to reboot etc."
now why didn't they tell me that to begin with?
doug b. phoned this after noon, over at steve and racheal's, reitzals, doug, pleasant afternnon of conversation.
ok it's 9:41 pm est. i'm going to sign off and see how quickly i can get the image of the day done. ready, set, go...
spent yesterday at the computer and the easel. cold gray day but by 4 it was sunny but still cool. took an hour downtime walk 5-6, beautiful warm light glowing from the treetops. recorded a long guitar piece i think i can work with.
been working on dreamweaver online course since 6 this morning. now it's up and out to run errands before freezing rain hits around noon.
BTW it is my birthday this coming saturday. be sure to ship titanium g5 notebook computer to get here on time, as well as digital camcorder and camera.
on the radio years ago i heard an interview of an indian who was involved in wounded knee years before - i forget his name - who lived by himself in a trailer on the reservation. the interviewer asked him how he spent his time. he replied that he spent much of the time sitting and staring at the wall. there was a pause, and then he added something to the effect that he was comfortable doing this and it could be much worse.
well i'm back in the saddle again. it takes me much longer to regroup after a trip than it used to. if i can kleen the house and get to the grocery store i'll feel like a citizen.
i'm taking online course which should prove interesting if i can keep up with it. (i can, question is will i?)
highly recommend you check this out. personally i think it would do well as zuperbowl ad:
Thanks for the Memories
made it to george aka ray o'hanlon's sendoff at karma's. travis, ludie, ray aka rock, mike, demian and others of a bygone era present, good to see everyone.
a lot of ray's family were present, fun to see how much they respected him, probably for the same reasons that gave them problems years ago.
met harry, who went to grade school with ray. harry, email me, i'd like to chat.
and i hope mike and i might begin a harmless easy excercise to "see what happens".
snowing outside, ice and sleet on the way. slept in my rolling yurt the last two nights, very comfortable, no problem. i'm ready, already all ready, ready for to fade, maybe spend time in camper under snow reading radience of being by dr. allen combs, highly recommended.
thursday AM, good nite's sleep last night. i have decided to go to george's memorial service in raleigh sat, so i will be driving to chapel hill friday afternoon and be back here monday afternoon. i am on DSL now, so far so good, today i will fool with outlook xpress (on a mac) to send/receive email without hassel.
my dad's 85th bday was yesterday, happy bday dad. i sent him retouched ancient photos, one of which i'll post here if i get the time. [later: i got the time.] this is photo of my dad, me, and a ghost dog, probably taken in san antonio, i would say 42 or 43.
tuzday evening. seems like i got a little done this morning --- now i remember: book club discussion. very nice to be accepted as myself into a small group of thoughtful and curious folks.
then i lost it, rushing to couseling for nonexisting appoinment, then coming back to a strange egg experience.
which was this: i have been adding a little egg yolk to watercolors to see what happens. but i have trouble separating the yolk. so i went into hyperfocus (i thought) and many eggs later had perfect yolk in container. i immediately grabbed jar of clorox bleach and filled the container up with it.
when what i set out to do was add a drop of vinegar.
this initiated a long series of thoughts and images on my part, the upshot of which is that i need to pay more attention to my friends. how i got there i do not know, but i did get there.
dreary sunday morning. spent yesterday alone, puttering, brooding, but lots of friendly phone calls. very sleepless night.
but oh boy, i'm ready to do it again today. already all ready.
finished a "failed" painting. i'll put it up later today. (see below). i aim to finish an oil today. then 3 more that have been laying around. after that i'll have a clean slate and start again, stumbling beyond the beginner's stage.
installed DSL, quite an improvement, but a lot of tweaking left.
or maybe i'll just stay in bed.
yesterday i got the news of two deaths.
brenner mehl, a longtime Baba lover and lately a member of the community in asheville died. there were many of us here in town who looked forward to getting to know him a little better.
george o'hanlon died recently in an altercation with a moving vehicle in fayeteville. george was brilliant, mecurial, and could be a handful. he was a member of a small circle of friends that went through many changes in our youth.
a prayer for both: rest in the peace that passes understanding.
on a lighter note, another of that small circle above has a new book out: go to Art Lester
way to go art, there is a few twitches left in those of us who are left.
more stuff & nonsense.::
Salon.com News | AP: Gov't to overhaul employee drug tests
meanwhile i think i'm hooked up to DSL, but it may not be quite ... right yet.
yesterday was a beautiful sunny winter day, altho my diasynchronic meta-rhythms were a little off. had pleasant break for lunch with richard, the delimma of political activity on the part of us american humans came up (see below).
in the afternoon i was in the sway of magnetic fatigue, nap was right around the corner, when everything flipped and jill and i drove to old fort to visit sam. most pleasant interlude. by nine or ten i was wide awake. felt like a delayed full moon jerking me around, finally got some sleep around four.
the question of acting politically for me and i assume not a few others seems to go like this: i want to contribute to the effort of reversing the invisible coup-d'etat that we are living through, but am strangely resistant to engaging with it. why?
i think it is a varient of the mood that i was encoutering even before 9.11: it's too big, massive, and untouchable to be effected by those of us in the machine.
example: the hoo-ha over WMD. in my opinion it does not matter if they are found or not. because the common censensus has been all along that of course it was a set up. ditto with the new book by ex-treasury dept head revealing planning for the war begun way before 9.11. we all figured as much. (see Plastic: O'Neill Claims Bush Disengaged, Administration Planned Iraq Invasion Early.)
so as far as the culpability of bush and friends kidnapping our government, i do not think any fact exposed in the future concerning, for example, no-bid contracts, the corporate tax structure, various mistruths used along the way, etc. will matter.
the public already knows.
so the trick will be for somebody, anybody, to articulate thru the closed circuit of the media, not what this bunch is doing, but why it matters that they be stopped. how to do this with the media is under lock and key is the task.
remember that slow, languishing song by john lennon, i'm so tired? i do and am.
found this gem wrapped up in a daedalus catalog that arrived today:
ok ok in an attempt to keep up with this thing i will post more often. otherwise this blog seems to be heading south, i mean going stale. it fact it probably will anyway.
so it�s time to revamp modern peasant. not so much to keep up with the movement of things, as to be comfortable with keeping up with nothing.
today i heard someone interviewed on �fresh air�, a tax expert. he was talking about how the system works today. and it explained why we all should vote against bush.
as far as the question below, some possibilities have occurred to me:
day after xmas. posting so vast throngs of modernpeasants out there - or here - know i'm all right and it's all good.
beautiful drive down the mountains yesterday, saw everything with new eyes so to speak.
spent yesterday and last night at eli & melissa's, good company, everything moves slow and clear enough to be just what it is, and it is a blessing. good times.
new philipk. dick link by his children, a few passages from the exigisis. looks like it will access a lot of new materials.
from
Philip K. Dick - Science Fiction Author - Official Site
my friend jill is watching me post this. what fun!
and here is picture i found yesterday, maybe 25 years old:
man oh man. i got a relaxed day coming up this very day. no deadlines. no post offices. no highways. of course i do have a truck that insists on turning on it's parking lights in the middle of the night & running the battery down, but that's pretty run of the mill these days.
i'm sure many of you have been receiving these scam spam emails involving bank transfers. i got one this morning that i find intriguing because the scammer has a whole new way to find me; check out the last sentence:
Good day,
It is my humble pleasure to write this letter irrespective of the fact
that you do not know me. However, I came to know of you in my private
search for a reliable and trustworthy person that can handle a
confidential transaction of this nature in respect of this, I got your
contact through an uprooted search on the internet.
a couple of notes:
the photo i mentioned yesterday:
"Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get.
America used to like Saddam. We loved Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops."
from
AlterNet: We Finally Got Our Frankenstein
the big enchilada. question is, now that that is that, has anything changed?
well yes, kind of like when a biz deal goes sour. the picture from the 80's of rumsfield shaking hands w/ saddam is a wonderful artifact. how quickly we forget. in fact quicklier and quicklier.
bush's folks don't lie, they just keep changing the storyline. but it doesn't create a problem because we like it that way. novelty wins, and anyway we forget what it was the punchline was last week.
what does it mean for the democrats? nothing because their problem remains the same: breaking thru the captive lingo to communicate straight-on with millions of people at the same time while shaking the burden of a thousand layers of commentary that deaden the meaning in a matter of seconds (literally) in the 24 hour news cycle.
another tip of the hat to tucker for this dubious email. i guess it is floating around the net. personally, sitting here at the keyboard, i'll bet 5 to 1 that this is not accurate. i'll let you know.
----------------------------
> >THE EAGLE SOARS
> >
> >This is something to think about!! Since America is typically represented
> >by an eagle.... Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The
> >following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)
> >
> >Koran Verse 9 : 11
> >For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The
> >wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo,
> >while some of the people trembled in despair, still more rejoiced; for
the
> >wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.
> >
> >Note the verse number!
>
got this email today. thanks tucker.
wed. afternoon about 2. gloomy, steady drizzle to downpour. left the house at 10 and just got back, 2 doctor appointments and a number of errands in between.
i think i've got a bad case of the xmas blues. maybe it peaked yesterday, a day i really should have stayed in bed.
noticed an article in the nation, American Apocalypse, that i'd like to check out. brought home fixed ideas: america since 9.11 by joan didion. if either of these 2 reads (or any other) can even semi-lucidly describe today real congratulations are in order.
i think for this is that language has split into 2 modes, one "official" and the the other what is left of the personal.
the domain of the "official" - printed word, books, tv, magazines, sweatshirts - cannot describe what is outside of it's domain.
and the landscape of today inhabited by most of us, i believe, is a very strained and uncomfortable place because it includes less and less of the "personal".
PROJECT GUTENBERG OFFICIAL HOME SITE - INDEX -- Free Books On-Line -: "About Project Gutenberg
Thank you for your interest in Project Gutenberg!
Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of FREE electronic books (eBooks or eTexts)"
read it -
The New York Review of Books: The Awful Truth:
"September 11, Krugman writes, actually helped the President execute 'the largest bait-and-switch operation in history"
then go look at the clouds. notice that funny one in the corner of the sky, sort of looks like a smug elephant?
the weather has been so incredibly beautiful this week. clear, translucent, snappy. finally got out to see some of it yesterday. visited steve and friends yesterday AM for awhile and had the kim-chee omelet special for breakfast. in the afternoon took a drive with richard to big ivy, davis falls, nice walk through the mountains.
have a new plan for today. richard mentioned how he would like to take a day off and just catch up on reading. i think this is a good idea and that's what i'm going to do today. turn off the computer and try and finish "non-zero sumness and human destiny" for book club tomorrow. and putter. need to find 2 missing pieces of paperwork i stashed somewhere long ago and paperwork, as we all know, keeps the world spinning round. i'll let you know how this worked tomorrow.
still working on my orientation to now. got groceries and laundry today, met with counselor, bill o from hville paid a visit, got a prescription phoned in, and discovered what happens when you put guache on top of sumi on top of oil pastel on top of watercolor. the quotidean, so nice when the weather is cool, breezy and moist, rain somewhere nearby, restless cloudy day.
the difference between thinking and conciousness is finally dawning on me. anyway i think about it a lot.
today had that odd off balnce feeling, not unpleasant but just a little off. beutiful weather, the trees have turned, the breeze is cool, and voices can be heard, lef-lookers gathering on the front poarches and rinking burboun.
leaving tomorrow for trip to visit old stomping grounds (chapel hill). was i doing the stomping or being stompe?
all four of my children and two grandchildren will be there and it will be a pleasure to visit with them. there is something inherently satisfactory about seeing them grow into the world while i recede from it.
then on to the Meher Baba Center in SC for a touch of the Real, a clue or two about how to live in the world.
i haven't written much lately about the world. the news. current events. i feel like i've retreated to the lobby while the scenery is being rearranged for the next act. only when the scenery is reconfigured so are we. the experience of being a person-in-the-world (or -play if you prefer) is changing.
the limitations of all institutions as the carrier of human effort and organization has reached the end of the line, and some new way to organize humans is in the wings. fear-based effort (the job, career) is evaporating. facets of human conciousness we all have but that have been successfully ignored during the past 300 years or so (the age of the descended grid - wilber) are slowly resurfacing.
a year or so ago i told my son-in-law doug, who is ultra-conventional in his outlook, that if we won the iraqi war in one day and saddam's head was delivered to the white house via fed-ex that huge monumental troubles of long duration, the likes of what we have not yet seen, would just be beginning. i haven't seen lately anything to change my mind. the question is if i and other bottom-feeders could see this, why couldn't the folks in charge of our government?
one possible answer is the nature of institutions as they now exist. to perform effectively in say the federal government or a hospital or a bank or a large corporation or university, an individual has to repress any knowledge of the outside world, has to smell and talk right, has to speak a constricted highly styalized language, has to occupy him or herself with turf battles to the exclusion of any other parts of life. to be successful in this setup is to be ill informed about other worlds. the temporal and geographical provencialism of the modern allows ignorant people (ignorence, from the verb "to ignore") to blunder into untenable situations and not have a clue that they don't have a clue. the rube oligharchy.
99% of the babble during the "run-up" to the war was inbred. imaginary constructs, straw men, empty rhetoric. false issues like, if you are "against" the war you are helping the enemy and harming our troops.
a clear straight voice from the heart speaking in the public domain could shred this kind of fantasy colloquy in a minute. if we could hear it.
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.
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
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
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
Conscious self | Overall self |
 |  |
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."
