woke up this morning

got out of my head

wiggled my toes

and got out of bed


stumbled to the coffee pot

circled for a bit

mixed up the medicine

the light bulb was lit


remembered a dream

which i promptly forgot

later i'll eat

or maybe not


right now i'm sitting

looking at my talk

words here & there

key in the lock


the door might be open

to one more day

i think i'll walk out

and check out the play

in 1955 i was living with my parents and younger sister in alexandria va. we had moved from 2 years in tainan taiwan. i got a clock radio for christmas. i used it at night turned low to fall asleep by. i tried different stations. i don't even remember if there was FM.



one station really grabbed me. i often think about it because there was no platform in my culture to expose me to WOOK in washington dc.



what was it in the air that threw me right into this music at the age of 13 - 14 years old.



bb king, big joe turner, muddy waters, harpo slim. that blues thing that was a giant magnetic force in the culture. it took over the world.



there was a disk jockey on in the evening named lord flauntleroy bandy. he was from jamaca. he only spoke in rhyme.



so that's what i'm going to try awhile on this ongoing "thing"

like crossin the street with your hat in the ring.

expected return most any hour

rpms without any power.

pleasant sunday, well paced. walk in the morning thru the mist and fog. talked later in the day to an acquaintance who said she was not going out all day for a number of reasons, one being the cold nasty weather. it's that time of the year when i wonder around in shorts and t shirts surrounded by coats and sweaters. my addled metabolism does better in the cold.


skipped friends meeting to clean and organize for trip later in week. pretty much finished first run of miniature water color mountain landscapes, i'll live with them for awhile, see what i've got, and start putting them on note cards for the gods of commerce.


was headed for Baba meeting at 4 but got a call from old friend doug who is in town so spent some time visiting him and a few friends. nice time out.


haven't been to see the Baba folks in awhile and will touch bases with them one of these sunday afternoons coming up.


doc appt at ten this morning. will change oil and radiator fluid after to prepare for trip to chapel hill. now for the important stuff:



alone at nite i pace the walls

the silence of the crickets loud

the first full moon of autumn

drifts in and out of clouds.


my dreams are distant, far away

or maybe they're right here.

cold air streams thru the windows

my mind is empty, clear


somewhere limbic rivers dance

in shaded groves of thought

wounded warriors sit around

only glad they fought.



the images are never done

there is no end to flow

i feel the mystery's edge,

the place where thoughts won't go.



soon enough

slow mornings glow

will open up the crowded space

where light's surprise will show.

i've been working with a set of 4 x 6 watercolors, that is reducing and otherwise prepping them into 4 x 6 200 dpi files. object is to turn out sets of notecards with envelopes etc. to place in local shops. above is the last one, now i can move onto penultimate step. (there is no ultimate step, y'know.)



what to say about today?

a surprise or two along the way.

took a walk up thru the mist;

realized i missed the kiss

the wind blew so far away.

but the mountaintop says that's OK,

the perfect moment must contain

muddy boot tracks along the lane,

otherwise why be here,

so far away and way too near.

i replaced the picture that was above with the one that is above. the former was my try at comment on the debate and it didn't work. the present pix is straight out of my head 4:30 this morning. i'm going to stay away from visual editorials in the future.


watched the debate w/ a few cutaways and thought maybe kerry had a slight edge. rewatched it on a split screen and it was kerry by a landslide. the reaction shots of both participants made all the difference, the sound could just as well have been off, so the split screen version was far more devestating for bush. if i had it to do over i would have listened to mr. dylan for the audio portion.


then stuck around for the instant spin and was relieved that kerry was declared the winner. took about one hour.


last nite spent a classic evening in asheville, one hour with the ladies in black, dinner, drumming circle till ten.


i could feel the special quality of aville here and now. heard 6 different people say they'd moved here in the last 2 weeks. it's happening folks. wonder what it will be like as time does it's thing.

misty foggy morning, the way i like it. started reading dylan's visions of sin by ricks who is heavy-duty english academic. from the first 20 pages or so it comes across as trippy word play a la dylan.

don't know what i'll do during the superbowl tonight. from 7 to 9 the author of why bush must go is speaking downtown. he is an episcopal priest, maybe bishop, i don't know, who has retired from atlanta and come to the center of the universe, aville nc.



i do want to watch the superbowl, as an observer of the cultural, memetic mish mash we live in, and it starts at 9. maybe i'll go to a redneck bar (there are a few left here from the pre-green days).



today, among other things, i am going to finish oil painting i have been fooling with for months. i screwed it up again yesterday. it is apparently a portrait of my anima, the muse who keeps me amused - and confused. i am going to finish it even if i have to paint it black. have not acquired the knack of handling oils.



phoned the garbage dept. - i forget the official name - and found out they will pick up 2 spare computers i have laying around that are too old to sell or give away. it was a relief to find this out.

another recycle job, in honor of mr. d. who i understand will be answering questions tomorrow at newsweek site. what question would you ask?



meeting last night at the ken wilber group. very enjoyable, what a great group of humans.



spent yesterday, in addition to being chained to computer, vacuuming house, cleaning etc. i consider this a major success. it took me two weeks just to find bag for vacuum cleaner unit.



reading from beirut to jerusalem by freidman. five stars. here's an excerpt:



"indeed, instead of entering lebanon with a real knowledge and understanding of the society and its actors, israel simply burst in with tanks, artillery, and planes on one hand and a fistful of myths in the other - myths about the nature of lebanon as a country, about the character of israel's lebanese maronite christian allies, about the palastinians, and about israel's own power to reshape the middle east. it would take three months, but eventually these myths would undermine all that the israeli military hardware achieved."



at least it only took them three months...

i was pretty tired last evening, sitting blankly in front of TV, not really watching ABC news which was winding down. but i swear i thought i heard someone say - it could have been hourly news on radio - something like the following:

"the FBI did not have enough evidence to arrest him, which is why they deported him."

latest out of my head.


the weekend. saturday i took 2 walks, total time about 3 1/2 hours. both were more or less unplanned. afternoon way too hot. went to peace rally downtown. my impression: not very impressive. in terms of any effect. didn't stay long. attended meeting of small group of men who are interested in starting men's group.. all Baba lovers. may go, may not, but saw some old friends and met some new ones.


strange that after all these years i attended 2 of these things in one week. still don't know what they are for, going on instinct.


leaving i backed into drop off in the dark, got stuck, phoned for tow truck, it was saturday night etc. maybe i already wrote about this. had a pleasant time waiting for tow in the dark, feeling light breeze and listening to the night sounds.


sunday i packed 2 computers into truck and went to friends meeting. i was going to give them to george for garage sell they have once a year but forgot he was on retreat with a lot of group.


invited to salon by janice, very pleasant interlude on back porch, great potluck, good people, excellent break for me.


expecting big rains today and tomorrow, i'll just take it easy and hide under bed.


things more important than my daily meanderings: incipient fascism, semiotic dilemma of communicating to "us" that the junta has stolen the republican party, bush's war helps the terrorists bigtime, and the difficulty of talking to the "crowd".


if you talk to a human face to face that's one thing, if you talk to the entire population of the USA that's another: sound bites and icons is about all the tools you can use. in this context the meaning of meaning is changed, which accounts for the folks who think bush is the more capable leader. my question: if you were in the jungle, surrounded in the dark by snakes and alligators, and people who had survived this environment for 5000 years and who were bent on killing you, would you want to be led by bush or kerry?

early morning errand this morning. hauling boxes of books to book sale around the corner at UU church. sale starts in a couple of hours so i gotta roll.



of course last nite i was tossing books every which way into floor piles. made a number of interesting discoveries. one was a translation of the tao teh king by archie j. baum. i first ran across this book in psychedelic days, and still think it is the best translation i have encountered. what is weird is that he was a philosophy professor at u. of new mexico, not a poet. a few lines:

------------------

"if Nature is inexpressible, he who desires to know Nature as it is in itself will not try to express it in words



"to try to express the inexpressible leads one to make distinctions which are unreal."

------------------

"nature is the formless source of all forms, and yet it remains unaffected by its forms.



"thus it appears to us as mysterious.



"no matter how closely we scrutinize its coming toward us, we cannot discover a beginning.



"no matter how long we pursue it, we will never find its end."

-----------------

"intelligence consists in acting according to nature.



"nature is something that cannot be seen or touched."

-------------------



as i remember from 40 years ago you need to read this translation from beginning to end because it builds on itself, rather than being a series of enigmatic verses.



also found a piece of paper dating back to 2002 with a short verse i had scribbled:



a wink of the eye

a flash in the pan

there i was

here i am

god's odd moments in between

breath going south

if you know what i mean



might look good on a gravestone.

a funny day, saturday. put out about the last of 8x10 color prints. next i reduce them all to 4x6 postcard thingys. made 3 trips to UU church to dump books for them to sell. while there i bought a few, of course. still space is blooming here and there in the bunker. ran errands all afternoon, driving truck here and there.

[by the way, after a good night's sleep, i realized i posted this on friday. damn, it sure seemed like saturday.]

listened to air america most of the day. fascinating.

air america was also the name of CIA secret airline in the orient after WWII.

tomorrow i go to peace rally downtown. these days there is no chance of blowing a 50 amp fuse at these affairs. maybe i can wind surf.

got a call from steve t. who wants to start a men's group tomorrow. i told him i'd go, even tho i went to one tuesday.

watched a TV thing about freud and c. s. lewis the other night, part of it anyway, before i nodded out. one thing that struck me was lewis saying that agape was a question of volition, not feeling. in other words, whereas erotic love "happens" to us from time to time - the greeks called it madness - agape is a choice and you might not feel blissed out when you make it. just do it.

yesterday was a total loss. after 2 hour morning walk up - and down - sunset mnt in the morning i was way more wasted than i would have liked. BG - that's blood glucose for the non-type 1 diabetes among you - way too low for the rest of the day which i mostly spent wondering around apartment trying to accomplish this and that not too succesfully.



this should be a new paragaph by the time you see it. now that i can post to this weblog there are a few formatting glitches.



had air america on the radio on most of the day. it shares with the right-wing radio talk shows way too many advertising spots and a sort of hysterical manic tone. but you do learn a lot.



case in point: talk with clark who was anti-terrerist czar under seven presidents. (doesn't sound right but i think that's what they said.) some of what was said was truly astounding, and you won't know a damn thing about it unless you read his book which i intend to.

i think i'm back anyway. won't go into the intricacies of what has kept this weblog off line for over a week, but i think and hope it is fixed. one thing i realized while fooling with this thing was that my technical expertise is not what it once was.

i am definitely puttering around at this point with using software & hardware. by the seat of my pants. Intuitively.

just messing around in other words. it has it's good side, creative novelty, surprises. bad side is when i have to remember how to do something. if my fingers don't remember it i have a problem. just the way i work it.

discovered the left's answer to rightwing talk shows yesterday. it's been on AM radio in these parts for 2 weeks. it's much better than i thought it would be when there was talk of this move last summer.

and it's a clear channel station.

mmm... ok i sprinkled all the magic dust i have on this rig and will try one more time to post.

[microseconds later] that didn't work. maybe this will...

[microseconds later] ok i vacuumed all of the magic dust out of the bits and bytes. i'll try again.

[many many microseconds later] hmmmm....

last nite i dreamed i was young again. unusual because i don't remember many dreams these days. i dreamed about donna, an old love of mine: we were both young, engaged with the world, everything was possible. we were in love in that mysterious hard to talk about way, both mysteries to each other, both not caring that we were a mystery.

was the world ever this way? for real?

------------------

i'm still trying to post this stuff. it's not working

------------------

ditto.

what with floods and all, no water last week and no electricity quite often, i have not been able to fix whatever is keeping these posts to my site.

used the forced downtime when utilities were out, put it to good use. restrung chinese fiddle - er hu - tuned a bunch of things. cleaned things, added to throw away pile. started very casual watercolor, pouring washes. rearrainged furniture. looked at sky the color of copper. that is just a hint, a glow, of strange color.

"What we need to search for and find, and what we need to hone and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of accountability. The politics of slowing things down. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. In the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent."
- Arundhati Roy

check this out:
New Scam Tactic Hits Online

how the democrats are losing the election

the republicans have leaped over the dems during the past 40 years in learning how to communicate to the crowd. they have done this by early on pumping millions into the verious neo-con foundations. these foundations, among other things, have made an ongoing study of public relations, brand-name advertising. they began this after goldwater and were pretty good at it by the time reagon was elected. they have excelled at the quick pitch and defining the language of political discourse during most of my lifetime.

today the republicans are using this modality better than ever. the party has also been hijacked. last nite i heard toni morrisn refer to this bunch as "almost a junta" on BBC. they are using the succesful techniques of the past but pushing past the limits into outrageous territory. one hope is that they will continue this trend to the point where the "silenced majority" will have had enough and revolt in the polling booth, but it hasn�t happened yet.

hitler used the "big lie". the present rulers of our nation have developed this into the repeated little lie. that is, understanding the nature of the sound bite, every day they will repeat one line, over and over, until they begin to do the same with a new line. note that these lines do not necessarily follow a logical order, or even agree with each other.

i guess the best example of this today is the "flip-flop" line. i believe it is about 6 weeks old. had it not grabbed hold, the junta would have gone on to another. but it did grab hold, and the dems are still holding focus groups, strategy sessions, and circulating memos about it.

in other words, the junta is using the tried and true semiotic media-based closure of discourse they have perfected over the years, and the dems are stuck to a bunch of tar-babies, kicking, twitching and trying to get loose.

the feeling today is that the election is the democrats to lose, and they are losing. what can they do to change this situation?

new policies, tax plans, well thought out solutions to the medical problems we have, even plans for the future of iraq will not change anything.

but a single well placed sound bite, bumper sticker, or phrase might.

for instance:

flip-flop-->

from the vietnam war to today i have continued to learn, and sometimes changed my mind. haven't you?

critique war strategy = no support for troops -->

the troops have been put in a thankless position by a stratigic plan that needs an overhaul

we are safer as a nation without a saddam -->

that might be true if we had used a more subtle combination of pressures to ease him out, but as it is a by-product of the way we did it is to insure more and more enemies.

homeland defense --> attacking iraq because of 9-11

is like attacking mexico after pearl harbor. it gives the real enemy time to regroup and carry on while our military is pinned down.

these responses could have been made in heartbeat. a war room of media savvy folks could handle it (clinton did this).

conclusion: let edwards loose. he has the experience of fielding a surprise semiotic attack, and can turn it back on itself very quickly. the only thing he will have to adjust is to be brief which is necessary for an effective sound bite.

there is a highly styalized type of public discourse which is dominating the discourse. it has more to do with selling soap than politics. everyone on the "darkside", from the top down, needs to immediately step outside the box of politicalspeak and talk straight and simple.

details, details. it all really gets down to this question: how do you talk, ie have personal relationship with, a crowd?

yes, those of us who see guaranteed disaster if the bush junta continues in it's naive, xenophobic, "know-nothing" efforts to fool around in geographies they are basically ignorant about are pretty glum today.

now the thing about this picture is that it has passed thru 6 hands over about 40 years. history is sort of scrambled (ain't it always?)

i would go into more detail but i am really suffering through these times. like germany in the late thirties on steroids and digitally enhanced. a lot of my acquaintances seem to be very glum. one thing is that the prospect of 4 more years has so many shadows.
but i think what is even more frustrating is the apparent inability of discourse that includes both worlds.

new record. i did picture above in 7.5 minutes.

i've been working on jeff's new life book pretty nonstop for awhile. i didn't know it was flooding outside. they're turning water off.

also know of 3 different gatherings plus innumerable conversations over the last week or so about:

how does one approach the election (outside) without crippling consciousness, awareness (inside)?

from a photo taken on my father's front deck. in arizona.

later today i am going to try and put up the outline of what would once have been called a "manifesto", detailing what is happening with this election. hint: it's never happened before.

drew this while in the audience waiting for amy goodman to speak friday nite. i had not even heard of her. it was a surprise to me hearing her outline and describe the political and social events we are living thru but not fully conscious of.

she inspired me to step forward and be counted: we are living under a regime that is radically different than any before, and one whose agenda is more profit for the profitable, putting "us" into the category of wage-slaves, deluded and hypnotized by the brand name world.

stop worrying about not talking because of the new taboo against critiquing the state.
disregard the supposed identity of critiquing the war and disrepecting the troops (an old canard dating from the vietnam war).

the bush regime, the new oligarchs, has put a new twist into "the big lie" that hitler used to such great advantage. the regime uses instead public relations, marketing, and small lies repeated endlessly.

we are basically living now in a kremlin-like world, where the "news" is an arm of the rulers (corporate branded world) and must be deciphered like tea leaves. here's two more sources for "the rest of the story":

MoveOn.org: Democracy in Action

Welcome to ZNet

flip flop.

have you heard about flip-flop?

of course you have.

bread and circuses. group-think. multiple reflective amnesia from moment to moment.

does the moon still prowl at night?

the air is turning into jello, and there's no place left to go. pixelated backdrops, can a stage be circular or a state belong?

so you can't read it, who cares. my mornings metaphorical meta-doodle effort.

in my life these days there has been a flurry of questions of how to handle the anger at the republicans, in the context of a spiritual practice. me, i think it's a hard job but someone has to do it. krishna to rama, in it not of it.

drew it last nite, sprinkled magic dust on it this morning.

it's about 11 PM right now, and i wish i could doze off. Interesting gathering at laura's house last evening, not enough time to get to the bottom - or top - of anything, but interesting conversation.

it's of concern for me that in this world conversation and dialog is going the way of analogue, so you have to meet at a certain time and place, kind of like the early christians.

the temenmos, the greek idea of a border, inside of which the day to day world has a different quality.

bertold brecht, or somebody else, said "the worst has already happened." the worst has always already happened. of course in the world of duality so has the best.

don't worry, be happy. roll up your sleeves. accept death not just for you but the entire kosmos.don't do things to accomplish any goal. for that matter don't do things to create the new. just watch them pile up and smile. or get a shotgun. it really doesn't matter.

back in work marathon mode. i think i will get pdf file of book out tomorrow or next day.

it's funny but when i go on these hypermanic jags i get a lot of additional artwork done too. like the above which is latest in postcards from nowhere series.

but what about (shudder) politics?

are you interested in it? do you have an idea of how the outcome might affect your life?

or is it just too much, too many sliding contexts, meaning everywhere and nowhere, the monkey mind on speed, orwell on steroids and sporting a wireless digicam, blogs hogging bandwidth, there's nothing left to say.

maybe it's time for instinct to take over. do what you do. anything else is something else's dream.

did this one in a heartbeat, just now. i got up at 4 this morning to take bobby, my neighbor, to the airport.

except the alarm went off at three.

worked on layout for book, about the third day i've been at it.

was to go to shambala dinner tonight, but blood sugar was not cooperating.

working on an oil portrait.

as real as it gets.

i finally got a handle on how the popular language of political discourse has been, and is, controlled by the neo-conservative bunch. right now we are seeing it in action once again, as weeks roll by and the public discourse of the election continues to take place in small semantic boxes put in place by the neo-conservatives. these boxes are tiny, and any "discussion" that takes place within them are losers for the democrats, no matter what tack they take.

the grand daddy of this strange phenomena is the word "liberal", which became a vehicle for negative feelings some years back. today we have kerry reporting for duty at the democrat convention and several weeks later wasting his time defending his tour of duty in vietnam.

i used to think there was some svengali at work for the neo-conservatives who was morphing language to a state in which discourse was impossible, and public relations, marketing, and branding was all that was left.

yesterday a friend emailed me an article by UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff who shows how conservatives use language to dominate politics. he tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics and sheds some light on the contraction of political discourse. guess what: turns out that money is at the bottom of this development. here's a few quotes:

"Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says Lakoff.

"The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national debate, conservatives have put progressives firmly on the defensive.

"Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says Lakoff.

"...Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined
relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt,"
that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is
being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which
would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.

"If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" - something that most people read and never
notice.

"Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?

"Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy
coservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from
the 1940s.]

"And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

"The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on
the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as
if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for
"relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an
afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which
you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody
who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction
going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is
an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain."

the only way for the dems to break out of this box and escape the tarbaby of republican framed discourse is to jump up a level, stop replying to the innuendos and begin talking about about the framed discourse. and do it in small sound bites.

for instance: if kerry were to say "i did what i felt i had to do during the vietnam years, including serving in the war and later critiquing the policies that created it, not the soldiers fighting it. end of story", it might shut the whole thing down.

there is some hope. i've noticed a feeling floating around that indicates the public is tired of this type of controlled discourse - at last.

I still say let edwards loose. let him, without upstaging kerry, deflate this pseudo language by short quick comments that frame this framing process as an object of discussion, and pointing out the negative effects it creates.

just spent a classic american sunday, didn't do anything but relax and putter. picture above i started last night during my first visit to the "gray eagle" to hear burrito deluxe.

what it is is a band made up of garth hudson, who looks like a hobbit fresh from the dewy forest, "sneaky pete", who last time i saw him had a cowboy hat on and was playing pedal steel with jerry garcia. he had the air of someone tentively crewling out of rehab. opening act was matt somebody who is from western north carolina and whose songs were dark, hillbilly, funny, but, as he sang "not bitter".

worked a little on the same two paintings i've been tiptoeing around for weeks. vastly improved both, now maybe i can finish them.

i guess kerry is still fumbling around with "flip flop", "sensitive", "war hero, huh?" and various other republican tar babies. why the dems have not learned how to not let the right wing dictate terms of discourse is beyond me.

lost & found: this a goauche painting i did for a dust jacket - about '79 or '80.

curmudgeon stuff: have you noticed that since the different parts of the world have become aware of each other, how alike the cultural institutions have become? i'm thinking of, say picking up a package at the post office in athens 40 years ago and going into mcdonalds today. endless to and froing, everyone stultified to death.

just about a perfect day. missed walking this morning but spent the rest of the day catching up on things, health, painting, printing, house-cleaning. i feel like i'm starting to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

[a slight time out.] just turned down going to hear someone play music, can't remember his name. also found out that sneaky pete (think "new riders of the purple sage" and "flying burritto bros.") and garth hudson (the band) are playing at the gray eagle sat so i will go for that. never been to the gray eagle. yet.

curmudgeon mode: one problem in today's life is that first institutions crowded out all human affinity groups, well almost, there are still the street people, the junkies, what the chinese called "the floating life", but mostly by my own middle age the institution was all.

now young and ambitious people want to be an institution, a brand, a commodity. leaves someone like me sidetracked, oblivion express, bring it on.

been an exciting few days. walk in the morning going nicely, replacing medications - stolen last week - going. finished a roll of film don't know when the first pictures would have been taken. hope it's the last one i take i'm going digital.

i've always wanted to say that.

saw collateral with j. this afternoon. i didn't know it was directed by michael mann, but guessed it right away. it's a strangely beautiful film, luminescent, gleams, LA all night long. much better than miami vice, highly overated in my opinion. the new film has enigmatic meanings swirling through. that's a pretty good action movie.

things definitely out of hand. i should have emailed that thing i got on fri. the 13th to ten people because things, life, experience, are trending downward and outward, all with no concious effort on my part.

drew the above last night during a visit with a couple of friends.

i need more grace than i thought.

this week's celestial clue for yours truly. makes sense to me.
(from www.freewillastrology.com.

pretty much slept all day yesterday. not sure why.

my plan for today: continue to lose objects cluttering space. an ancient mac ci and a treadmill are going to go. Somewhere. and i'd feel really good if i could get rid of mountain of papers i have been moving into the living room.

i've been reading James Hillman again. here are a couple of sentences that have caught my eye.

"what is unreflected tends to become compulsive, or greedy."

"psychology usually gives to ambivalence a major perjoritive judgement. it is associated with schizophrenia. as the term 'twilight state,' 'ambivalence' tends to be reserved for a faulty ego. but ambivalence is natural, as the necessary concomitant to the ambiguity of psychic wholeness whose light is in a twilight state."

"and one feels through such experiences that there is meaning, that one is in meaning, that one is personally, individually meant."

nice moody dark misty rainy day. now maybe i can think. or at least brood.

this weblog has transmongrified over the years from commentary to visual stuff. so i'm going to redo it into art first, any gems - or pearls - of wisdom i might have second.

when i have time.

why?

"we are living in what the greeks called kairos - the right moment - for a 'metamorphosis of the gods' of the fundamental principles and symbols. this peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing..."

there's a lot more, too much to type. this quote is from c. g. jung, 1956, pointed out in puer papers by hillman.

the thing is that this change has affected language to the point where an endless chain of reflexive commentary just adds more weight to a sinking ship: western civilization. we have to come up with a new way to convey meaning, especially to the crowd which now includes the entire world.

i'm working on it.

i've got 15 minutes to post this thing this morning, doctor's appointment i'm on the way to. yesterday was exhausting for me, insulin pump clogged while i was engaged in long drawn out task, unpleasant but necessary. when i got home my blood glucose reading was in the 500's and what that means to those of you that don't know is lot's of insulin, lot's of water, and lots of rest. back to normal by seven in the evening, but as i emailed a friend, it takes the wind out of your cells and i was left with overwhelming fatigue, nothing left to do but stumble around or go to bed. i chose the latter. picture above is straight scan of something i did god knows when but i'm doing it again.

monday a little before one o'clock and i'm ready to post whatever i got to post. you might think i'm lazy, you might think i'm crazy, but don't forget i was up at 6, walked for an hour up sunset mountain, took a few pictures, then walked to uptown bakery, coffee and a scone, walked back, realized i forgot camera, drove back to pick it up, discovered truck wouldn't start, rolled it, got camera, visited a little with janice and a friend who were there by then, managed to start truck and drove home.

ain't life grand?

the picture above i drew at the iris dement concert before she began. ran it thru special photoshop apparatus this morning.

now i'm going to clean bedroom and throw out stuff until three when i drive my truck to mechanic who is getting to know it pretty well. i guess i'll begin looking for another one.

yesterday and today we are still in the beautiful weather zone, what a pleasure to be able to open the windows again. and last two night's down to 50 degrees, cool air flowing like a mountain river thru the windows. maybe i can start to sleep again.

spent most of yesterday fooling with needless complications that a strong person struggling with a stronger soul can leave behind them. went to see iris dement last night.

her show ran from about 8 - 10:30, and there were seats for the geezers like me to sit in. she played solo, alternating piano and guitar. the entire performance was shot through with a bittersweet quality. i shed a few tears during some of the songs and don't mind admitting it. the melancholy was real, an accepted part of life, but not a life-stopper. bemusement tinged with the golden light of a late afternoon. what a voice, and what a woman.

it's somebody"s birthday give or take a day or two. and also my grandson corbin's.

i remember 40 years or so ago standing at the sundial near morehead planetarium in chapel hill and reading:

"it's always morning somewhere".

along the same lines i guess it's always someone's birthday somewhere.

last night i went to my first artwalk. i guess what they are is a night the galleries stay open late. aville was in it'd heyday, music all over the place, drum circles etc. i enjoyed it.

this is the first watercolor i ever did, back in arizona around the mid 80's. i like it, a perfect example of beginner's mind. i did maybe 20 the following year, then dropped it. don't remember any being this good. i had a conscious reason for trying the medium, mainly to get as far away as i could from digital artwork which i was up to my ears with working for intel.

lately i am back to bed at 8 or 9 and up at 5. this is the diurnal rhythm i like best these days, as opposed to 45 years ago when i saw the sun rise every morning because i'd been up all night.

tonight, however, prof. sam may drop by, in which case we'll do the aville gallery crawl. if this works out, it will be the culmination of 20 years trying to make one of these events.

and to top things off, there has been a change in the weather: more than a hint of fall. thank god for cold fronts.

my grandson corbin whose birthday is this coming saturday. i made this morning and am about to go out and mail it. his father doug lost his mother this week i am sorry to say. she was a lady of good humor and a fighter.

today will be a catch-up day i hope. the usual round of daily maintenance with a few fun things like finishing a watercolor on clayboard which i found myself etching with a razor and sanding down last night. clayboard is very different than watercolor paper.

listened to rush limbaugh yesterday while on the road. he's scary but the callers are more scary by an order of magnitude. if the democrats don't quickly learn how to use public language they are going down. already the public is talking about

1) flip-flop
2) results count - and kerry spent 20 or so years in congress without "doing anything"
3) tax and spend liberal.

there are an almost endless supply of these language morphs in the republican arsenal, and they will be used. i still think edwards is the man to field these attacks by sound bytes that are sensible and short. talk straight. for instance redefine "liberal" as an honorable tradition which accomplished etc etc, but whose effectiveness, like all methods or techniques, is no longer what it was, take the best from it and up date the rest.

this picture i was glad to find during great kleenup extravaganza. i drew it in india ink while living with my wife and 4 children at big ridge, jackson county, western NC mountains, around 1975.

at that point i had not picked up a pencil for probably ten years. no drawing or painting, i had completely forgotten there was such a thing. one winter night i got the urge to try it, rounded up what materials i could - if memory serves, i drew it on a shirt cardboard. while monkeying around i noticed a newspaper on the floor. the page i saw had an advertisement for a rug company, and pictured a rug with a design similar to the picture i drew. i stayed up nearly all night doing it, and the next day drew another one. this was the beginning of a long period which has lasted the rest of my life discovering and rediscovering how important it is for me to create "art" with a lower case "a".

seven in the morning. got up at 5 and created the above, i don't know what it is or means.

missed friends meeting yesterday, took a long morning walk and didn't get back until a quarter to ten, when the meeting starts. stayed home until 1:30, doing this and that, tweaking computer and reconstructing the address book i carry around and lost a few weeks ago.

drove out to the reitzle's where bev helped to clean batik i found a few weeks ago. it now looks really great. it's a depiction of buddha that had not been very well treated over the last 39 years since i got it.

this week should be a light one, i plan to stay here most of the week and close out a lot of loose end projects. and rearrange domicile once more, since the big cleanup and throwaway of a few weeks ago, plus the small $66 air conditioner i stuck in small computer room - where it makes the room usable all day, a great improvement - required dismantling shelf full of CD-ROMs, disks, zip disks, and tech manuals.

more and more i am running into folks of my ilk - or maybe i should say cohort - who are engaging in penultimate clean up so as to be ready to leave the scene and not burden their children with the reminants of a messy life. life is messy, right?

been taking time off of reading heavy stuff, now on 2nd mystery book from library. this seems to happen about 3 or 4 times a year.

yesterday... one of those good days when i didn't leave the house except for quick walk in the morning. half-heartedly fooled with a watercolor i screwed up, in general puttered around fixing things. around noon i got into installing walmart $66 air-conditioner in computer room which has gotten so unpleasant to be in this summer during the late afternoon. which meant dismantling rickety wall shelf of tech manuals, disks, CDs and bits and pieces of electronics.

actually it's all coming back to me now, i drove to [shutter] tunnel road mall to buy a cartridge for B&W printer. that was enough.

found a bunch of new silverware in kitchen. either the tooth fairy or ninian must have left it last week. much thanks.

we must be in dog day season now, but for me it has seemed like dog days for at least a month. i remember them from living in the country days where you can't miss them. they always affected me in an odd way and have been doing so lately.

something or another i read lately has me thinking about the presidential campaign. it was to the effect that democracy and politics are two different things, and they are becoming fused together in the minds of the public/citizens/consumers/audience/users we have all become.

anyway moving stuff around to get AC in reinforced feeling that my job at this point in life is to cleanup and throw away. lighten up. streamline.

it happens when you wake up and find yourself surrounded by the flotsom and jetsom of modern life lived in a trance. i have this compulsion to slim it all down to a notebook and pencil. but then i'd need a pocket knife to sharpen pencil, and then a whetstone to sharpen knife and... you get the picture.

then there is the question of enlightment vs realization. the american tradition of self-improvement has, with the help of a clutch of contemporary eastern thought and depth psychology memes, morphed into the ultimate self-improvement, getting off the wheel. i admit i am a pessimist in this regard. i believe that enlightment, god-realization, transcendence, or what have you (what do you have) does not dispense with dukkha but includes it. jesus suffered. meher baba suffered. the buddha suffered. all sentient beings suffer.

at this point in my life i am not looking for something better to change this situation. a spiritual practice to move on from this situation is necessary, but i believe it is necessary not for the improvement of life experience, but for the sake of something else. and that something else is a mystery, unknowable.

one way to think about it is to consider the experience of conscious living as a dream, but not my dream. nor anyone else's dream. the supreme dream, lila, the play of the divine. the cloud of unknowing by the pseudo-areapogite, 5th c., or the modern update, the cloud of knowing.

meister eckhart: "the eye i see god with is the same eye god sees me with". and my eyes, along with the rest of me, are beat up, worse for the wear, stuck in the conditioned world. our suffering is useful to the kosmos for reasons we'll never know.

any of this intelligible? i hope not.

scan of a batik i got in Thailand a couple of epochs ago. it lay on a basement floor in denver where some huge dog was housed for a long time. since then has been god knows where or why. i recently recovered it and will clean it and maybe reback it out of respect. probably hang it on a wall.

today i only have one quick trip in the truck, the rest of the day i am looking forward to cleaning the house, studio, maybe recreate my lost address book. put in a newish air conditioning unit. finish a water color. sleep. take a walk. the last few weeks have been so turbulent i am looking forward to sitting awhile.

ran across this in a mystery i am reading - break from jung - the narrows by michael collins:

"everybody counts or nobody counts."

here's today's metaDoodle. it looks like i'm feeling a little better.

i seem to be tiptoeing up into a new relationship with these things. not only creating them, or to put it more accurately, letting them thru, but living them in an obscure way i can not explain. creativity is the royal road for me, but it is necessary but not sufficient.

saw edwards last nite, thought he did great. what i've seen has been on PBS and i have to say i think the commentary has really missed the point. carter, boxer, the new black guy whose name has not settled into my brain, kerrys wife whose name ditto, and edwards all sailed right over the commentator's heads. as a friend remarked to me, there was some speaking from the heart and they didn't get it. i think all modern peasants might. hope so.

"politics and democracy are entirely different things."
from This Modern World

thanks to jim for pointing this link out. i guess it's the most cogent of all the convention blogs, but then what else would you expect from mr. tomorrow.

well this picture popped out of my head recently, sometimes ugliness is helpful. apparently my unconcious is busy with some unpleasant but helpful tasks. hope it knows what it's doing. i don't.

another new meta-doodle, fresh from the fevered mind of mine. this was done with water soluble colored pencils and probably some other stuff i don't quite recall.

so now that that is done i can start my "real" day which will be a lot of shopping. i'll grit my teeth and sail into the commercial zones. this is one activity where my non-contemporary slowness really disappears, i'm in and out of the stores real fast. holding my nose and breath as long as i can.

saw jimmy carters speech last night and loved it. i think he gave the dems all the memes they need to win. to fight a war you need to fight the enemy, not the object of a personal vendetta or a with a theoretical plan made years before the enemy attacked.

it appears my 12 year old 17" monitor is beginning its slide towards heat death. getting pronounced waver the first 20 minutes or so i turn it on.

on another subject entirely, the more i find out about the woman i was entangled with awhile back the more the itch for revenge rears its ugly head. i absolutely will not scratch it, but it's a new feeling for me so i am experiencing what a lack of compassion and empathy can do to a person. just a personal blip. i am blessed with no desire to spend any time with it since i am at least half a holy fool who can be fooled some but not all of the time.

umm...the above paragraph shows a little spiritual hubris. to better express what i mean maybe i should simply say it ain't my way.

an exhausting day and week. too many distorted paradigms and ripples in the psychic atmosphere. the scenery is being dismantled. words are up for grabs, and the Word - note that i'm not talking exclusively christian here folks - is feeling dizzy. vertigo of the verbal and transuded deluge sweeping past our front door. sleepy civilians rioting at the oceans edge. seashell currencies disappearing like bad examples.

the hidden cost of life: Life.

sunday morning, missed Friends Meeting. friend ninian dropped by around 9, we stayed up talking. tossed turned, and listened to AM talk show all night. couldn't tell you what it was about.

today is the last day of bele chere, asheville's summer street extravaganza. usually too hot, too crowded, and too much pavement for me. may drift down late afternoon.

the picture above is watercolor i did in ashe county. started a second on clayboard which will be fun to finish.

it feels like august will be a retreat for me, i'll stay put and indoors, really need to tie up some loose ends - almost said entities - and maybe modify my ongoing attempt to re-socialize. back to the bunker, my back to the wall. but i will maintain contact with some of the good folks i have met over the last year.

well i'm back. my friend jim c. opined in an email that maybe on the bed and under the covers might work better, but it never has for me.

ashe county was cool, altho around 4 it could turn into that steamy charlston weather the whole south seems to be reverting to. b and a were doing their retreat in the morning, i painted, as the day progressed a's meds would catch up with her and she was asleep by 7. so i didn't see much of her. anyway 2 women who go back many years were too much for a simpleton like me, i don't catch the nuances and frankly don't care.

back here at the ranch a number of voice-mails. apparently my old projection mona is loose and on the street. lotta talk i won't go into, but my opinion is she is hanging out in the 7th nether ring and devising a new and improved method to live a few rungs lower in hell. i suppose she thinks it's all a tragedy - caused by someone else. but it's not, it fits like a glove. i've seen other people go down, but they maintained the grace to accept their destiny and not shotgun blame all over anyone in their life. but hey, i don't know anything about it, or much else. last week i went to a salon of conversation 'bout this and that. my friend janice told me driving back that i had fit in nicely, joining in to the flow of discourse. i told her it was easy because i didn't know anything about anything.

i'll say it one more time: being crazy does not justify or explain criminal hurtful behavior. neither does being abused as a child. neither does being a junky. i've know folks in all of these categories who were beneficent, meant no harm, and by grace and courage had the guts to turn themselves around.

meanwhile none of it is part of my life. what is part of it is the crazed dark insane feminine within, without whose acquaintance i would never have been attracted or recognized the beautiful departed soul that left nothing but trash behind her.

redemption, salvation, enlightenment, the cloud of unknowing, an innermost turning of the heart: none of it will happen. what an education i'm getting.

yipee.

meanwhile check this out - the clearest description of the present state of mediated discoure available. thanks jim:
This Modern World

i admit it, i have a small addiction problem: every day i have to do a picture and put it up before i can start the rest of the day. it may be a little like a psychic journal, you know, when words fail. a few too many loose entities bouncing around in my head lately. i guess i can live with it. mr. rorshach.

meanwhile i'll be doing my least favorite thing, organizing "stuff". objects. gear. lost my address book, anyone out there that was in it give me a call.

ok: get ready day here i come.

this mornings inarticulate doodle. fifteen minutes of unmitigated fun.

got a call last night around 2 am. the news is that the spainish harlem mona lisa is loose again and going down fast. slow motion suicide. maybe not so slow at this point. it is truly a living nightmare to encounter that much self-hatred. you can't read about it and appreciate what it means. you have to experience it to realize it even exists.

i'm about finished packing for trip to ashe county. going tonight with friend janice to the gray eagle to hear freeplanetradio. don't know much about them except middle eastern percussion, world music, 3 members in the band. oh yeah, it's a CD release gathering.

was going to leave in the morning, but i'm going at 5 to a "salon" with janice, chance to meet some folks, wet my finger and put it in the air, always interested in what people are doing, feeling and thinking of in this very convoluted cage we have transformed the culture into.

this mornings postcard from nowhere. i do'em from scratch, y'know, or at least i did this morning.

got up at 5, got a lot of color print research, walked up the mountain at 7.

yesterday on the radio i heard twice mention of postponing the coming election should something unusual happen, like taking out las angeles or perhaps some "chatter" overheard indicating a possible problem.

remember you heard it here first. i raised this hypothetical some months back.

so what else is new? what isn't? it's no surprise that each instant is a surprise.

reading jung again i am realizing how difficult it is to be an INFP, that's Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perception type, but those words mean nothing without studying jung, and maybe even then they don't. anyway the difficulty is not intuition, it works fine, it is the jungian compliment of intuition, sensation. in his typology i think i function in the sensation world as an unconscious, childish manner. and since the only way one can "see" the unconscious is projection, that's what i am dealing with. glad to get that figured out.

today's found doodle worked over a little. i did this back when i first started drawing - again - after maybe ten years layoff. living at big ridge, hard times, beautiful times.

going to get to see a lot of political ads because i guess north carolina is politically now "in play".

last night on leher news, i saw speech by bush, and then by kerry.

bush looked good, in control. both his speech and his ad pounded kerry for voting for war and then against supporting the troops. the ad ended with clip of kerry saying "i did vote for the war before i voted against it."

kerry's speech was from the day before where he spoke of the things the prez was responding too, namely that by the second vote it was clear the war was out of control and his vote "against" supporting the troops was part of a larger effort to stop the madness and reevaluate.

now this is where edwards comes in: his daily soundbite should make mincemeat out of this sophistry.

testing, testing... i think bellsouth has changed something...if you don't see this they have & i don't have the tiiiiime to fix it.

ok they haven't. but i can't seem to put up today's picture. one more time - here goes:

ok it worked. doing this stuff on a computer gets real old sometimes...but i don't think it is too unique in that respect.

it's just that the waste of time that "staying busy" entails is sometimes more obvious working a pc than, say, building a sand castle before the waves rush in.

the poem dylan reads for woody on bootleg series vols 1-3 is the best description of what it was like to grow up in the 50's, for me anyway, that i have ever heard.
Bob Dylan: Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

above from a doodle i found. i think i must have done it at interminal meeting when i worked at intel.

another drawing of cabin in chatham county.

talked to steve late friday while slaving over a hot computer. he told me doug had been in town on was en route to yancy county spread, and was meeting sam there. 20 minutes later i was on my way. hadn't realized how much i needed to get out of town.

spent the night in the cool, camped out in my truck yurt. pleasant evening, pleasant morning.

when i got back yestyerday i had a few phone messages, one of which mentioned that yesterday was silence day for the Baba lovers. so i shut everything down and shut up. watched my favorite TV show later, cops.

fridays quote from psychological types was pretty ho-hum. here's another one (as always picked at random):

"...the world of inner images is never a moral problem for the intuitive. for [extraverted and introverted intuitives] it is an aesthetic problem, a matter of perception, a "sensation". because of this the introverted intuitive has little conciousness of his own bodily existence or its effects on others....the perception of the images of the unconcious, produced in such inexhaustible abundance by the creative energy of life, is of course fruitless from the standpoint of immediate utility. but since these images represent possible views of the world which may give life a new potential, this function, which to the outside world is strangest of all, is as indispensable to the total psychic economy as is the corresponding type to the psychic life of a people. had this type not existed, there would have been no prophets in israel."