if confusion, contexts slipping & sliding all over the place and curve balls are a sign of life, my morning has been real lively and probably real as well..

the afternoon went as well... A little ambiguous huh?? but got to piano class where i am so confused because i can't figure out what to during the week.

practice.

got to the doctor's appt. right after class, a lot of yearly bloodwork, i think my chemistry is a little... addled?

visited george and ed on the way back, the windows are open and the air is fresh.

ok ok no picture today. got to get back to writing short, pithy, thought provoking observations if i'm going to enter novel writing contest. maybe even if i'm not. plus i want to crank out color prints for awhile, so i'll be vacating 72DPI land for awhile.

yesterday was school day. tai-chi in the morning taught by don pedi. he's very good, manages to impart a lot of unspoken context along with technique.

color theory with gloria gaffney in the afternoon. i very much like her approach, down to earth, basic, extremely useful.

came home, hassled via phone with supply order for insulin pump, happy to say i think all of the kinks in the supply chain are ironed out. then a long talk with my sister in phoenix, clarified a few points concerning trip out west and what to do about teeth.

woke up at 6 and of course instead of a walk sat in front of computer for a couple of hours catching up on "stuff". went through huge box of photos yesterday looking for a picture sam gray's son chall would like. of course it was at the bottom of the pile, but the excercise was a good one, found a bunch of older photos i want to resuscitate. the above mentioned couple of hours in front of computer i spent working on a 35 year old black and white snapshot which it seems to me i reworked years ago but that was then and now is now and i can't find whatever i did with it, so i started it again.

i've put up on "muzak" page some pseudo-streaming music. the files stream good, now i need to up the sound quality. they are samples i snatched at random, will replace with some recent finished work.

got a beauty in spam email this morning:

"endothermic or richardson some it harriet it's on russ not
in drastic a see directrices be a therapeutic may try
bemoan andit's solid and.
Update on site
teetotal try swarthout and the phoenix and and driven ,
see ruination may it's metallic it try call try in
trigonometry !not franco it."

now that's what i call meta-spam.

ran across this item: if you use a digital camera you might want to read it - and weep?
NEWS! - CCD failures: the bigger picture

another day with not much to say except the above picture which i just finished. so why am i blogging?

to get the words out of my head. to get a clue about what my mind is doing besides if anything pacing around and round in ever tightening circles. to keep me off the street.

i'm switching to making color prints for a week or two, have a great backlog. portfolio is starting to look real good.

i just realized that this weekend when i go to chapel hill is not the following weekend when ninian has colloquium on "where did the time go and why." so i guess i will stare at the calendar for awhile.

this morning's hieroglyph indicates a busy day. maybe.

now about this bush thing: i think everyone, our fellow citizens of all flavors, is now implicitly or explicitly in a waiting mode. the stage has been set, the characters have gone too far into their "fate", character, destiny, whatever you want to call it. the dynamics of the dramatic threads are developed so far that any attempt to modify them is all but useless.

result: acceptance of the drama. waiting for the denouement. any day now.

today's hieroglyph. a good day.

i'm due at doc's in 35 minutes. gotta run.

chose photo above at random, worked in photoshop about 2 hours.

went on line to upload it and was i surprised to see current posting august of some other year. then i remembered i've been tweaking the whole blogger setup and must have walked away from it last night.

the 30 day novel extravaganza is about to start. if i could type fast i'd add it to the list of projects i'll never finish.

personal computing in many of it's manifestations sure is a time-sucker. lately i'm attempting to place mp3s that stream. lot of time spent in digital limbo, doing this and signing that. it's noon. i'll be back.

ok i'm back. screwed up blog template big time last night, it's almost back together.

Welcome to the Hackocracy: "In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president 'would be both ashamed and afraid' to nominate cronies--or, as Hamilton called them, 'obsequious instruments of his pleasure.' Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush--he took the shame and fear out of cronyism. "

good piece from gore, and a possible solution for the dismal noise machine:
"It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse ."
Text of Gore Speech at Media Conference | MediaChannel.org

above another 60 minute wonder. think i'll do it over tomorrow.

the raaaains came... woke up to pitter-patter of rain. pretty much wiped out walk on parkway i was going to do with bobby but i'm fine with that, free day, nowhere to go, i can catch up on living maintenance.

my son eli has some mp3s up here.iSOUND.COM
you have to sign up (free) as a listener etc. but the streaming and sound quality are pretty good. navigation at this site is a little frustrating but perserverance furthers. eli's artist accounts are 2, kithira and omigammon.

got this in email, very stylish spam:

"
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plus many other
Have a good day"

drew this last night listening to tibetan monk. a little pixie dust this morning.

i had one of those weird energy swings yesterday, worked on this & that until after midnight. this morning high blood sugar keeps me out of tai chi, but i will devote myself instead to cleaning the house.

during the day the noise machine pip[ed up periodically: i heard tell of martial law when the avian flu hits, i heard we are the only country in the developed world that is not stockpiling vaccine, i heard of some prescription medicine that will prevent it if you take it right away, i heard about stephnopolis's statement that one of the many corruption deals floating around involves bush & chaney. bush appointing his mouthpiece to the supreme court, emerging evidence that the government has been working covertly to control the weather and made a few slip ups in the gulf.

that's why it's called "noise".

this morning's graphic talisman. not sure what it bodes. i did make one discovery making it. my friend jim was telling me that he didn't like the way photoshop 7 would not let you see the size of the brush or other tool he was using in 7 so dropped back to an earlier version. i didn't know what he was talking about. i ran into the same problem this morning. working fast like i do i did not have the time to look into it. but i think maybe caps lock engaged is the culprit.

yesterday was a down day, i was not worth a damn. better today i got a lot to do. one thing is to fix leak in ancient toilet. my landladies pathology surfaces on matters of this sort. she wants me to fix it rather than pay $80 to a plumber. then she wants a letter from me to the water people so she can get maybe $20 knocked off her last bill. well $100 is a $100, so that's understandable. but working this way since the 50's she now has such a maintenance nightmare on her hands it's scary even to think about.

darwin shaw, an elderly Meher Baba lover who spent the 30's on with Baba and, in his 90's was the sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet, passed away sunday in the asheville hospice. he had been here a very short while with his daughter and her family. services will be in myrtle beach.

i've expanded the image archive, it now contains twice as many pictures. take a look if you're so inclined.

been listening to the new CD i cobbled together, probably make a few edits before the virtual release party.

dr. jr is back with bev from road trip out west, i'm sure there are some stories about it i'd like to hear.

rest of the day: cleanhousegroceryshopgotopharmacy... can't delay it any longer, but it will be fine, mind over matter, agoraphobia is on the wane.

yesterday was yet another strange day. out of curiosity i began rummaging around audio recordings i had made or half made during the last 12 months and shazam, at 6 in the evening i have a CD of sonic "stuff". now i have to listen to it.

today i got up and the morning quickly dissolved into tangents, blind alleys, and show stoppers. so i hung it up and took a long nap which i don't often do.

probably will push chapel hill visit back a bit.

so now blogger is playing ping-pong with me trying to make this post.

something is in the air.

natalie & lily from a shot their mother sent. i hope to see them next week, sort of gearing up for a visit to see my children & grandchildren.

above, photo from sketchbook. i've decided that these quickies are analogs to "cartoons" in the venacular of 15th-16th c. classical art. ie, wait for the print.

last nite attended the blogger cotillion, for a full account of the evening visit blogasheville. more ideas, anecdotes, and skewed observations per capita - per head - than any table in aville last nite.

what is the link between iraq & katrina? i've heard a lot of justifiable negative commentary on both, but what's the common thread?

bush and the hostage republican party, of course, but i'd like to hear more about why the criminal oligarchy botched both.

my take: the junta and fellow travelers are unaware of the personal experience of living on the planet today. they are isolated. crouched inside their mental fortresses, they are literally - well maybe virtually - cut off from the street. they've never been there. kind of like a marooned population, too much inbreeding.

this would be sad but not critical if they lived far up some isolated cove.

but they are (trying to) run the world.

so they really didn't know that the iraqi man on the street so to speak has a personal history and his or her own way of looking at things. and they really didn't know that there were real people in new orleans. notice that in both examples i use the word "know" as personal experience, not a powerpoint presentation.

if you were to sit down and talk to any of this ilk, it would not be like the conversation some of us enjoy from time to time, when the conundrums of personal life are acknowledged and the difficulties and possibilities of personhood taken for granted.

"...helpless like a rich man's child."

Bird flu 'could kill 150 million' - Top stories - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au: "current bird flu pandemic"

just in time for lunch i finished today's ideogram. it's going to be a good day, what's left of it.

for those of you with broad mind & broadband, you might want to download mp3 of peter fenner talking about this and that. good stuff.:
Radiant Mind | Buddhi

slept thru the night. what an unusual delight.

haven't gone into it here, but in the recent past, sleepless, i have been turning on bedside radio and listened to the night people. am and shortwave have the damnedest things floating along the radio waves. the other night for a couple of hours i happened onto a long show from the church of the sub-genius. this whatever-it-is has popped up in my life several times in different places. the black and white graphics they - it? - turned out and are probably still turning out were great, complicated charts, clip art looking, real dada. they are doing the same with audio. i'll see if i can't run the audio down for yr listening enjoyment. [later: i couldn't even find the "old" graphics. but i think audio streams are out there somewhere.]

wednesday is the day i have a morning and afternoon course with the center for creative retirement at unca. tai chi in morning and color theory in the afternoon. so it's been a busy day, during which i squeezed in some work on the picture above. but my mouse died. so i've been driving back and forth, rushing into the house and trying different combinations of mice, which is why the picture is unfinished. i just now got things settled on the mouse front and it's 6 in the evening. maybe i'll finish it, if not: it's finished.

watched part 2 of no direction home last night. lot of good stuff but i guess i liked part 1 better. it had a very clear line of bob trying out and developing various timing, breathing, singing, words and was fascinating to watch. and the black and white footage illustrating this was beautiful, the close ups of bob's face were beautiful.

part 2 on the other hand i think leaned too heavily on the electric band performing in the teeth of open hostility. altho it was fascinating to watch. the interviews with al kooper were great, as is his story, going back to "blonde on blond". bob nieuwirth had some very heavy statements about "it". by the way i got a daedulus music catalog in the maik and noticed a release of nieuwirth playing with a cuban that sounds very interesting.

the concert footage was often over the tipping point, and was totally synchrnious out of control. and it was sure good to hear a young mike bloomfield, one of the very best.

on the other hand i wasn't much interested in the hotel footage from the english tour done pennebaker. it blew me away when it first came out but now seems more like watching a bunch of very stoned and drunk 25 year olds trapped in a room. i guess you have to be there. now.

by far the best thing i've seen over the air in many years, and timely too. in the present context of the criminal overworld there was a lot said in this film.

watercolor barely dry. resorted to gouach out of desperation.

yesterday was "D" day, the first half of scorcese's no direction home. i don't know what the buzz is about it but i enjoyed it. straight talk from the old man. he's deconstructing the cultural icon he is perceived as, and doing it right out in front of the world.

of course his efforts resulted in a new construction, face, motif, meme, whatever you want to call it.

i liked the context of the film, the happenings in the culture when we were young. what a way to live.

something he said about "a language he hadn't heard" appealed to me. and concert footage taken from the stage with mr. d. on the keyboards during the move into electricity was brief but. . . well, electric i guess.
Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | Last night's TV:
"it's a mesmerising performance, electric. Electric in every way of course, and that's the problem for the die-hard folkies. They boo and shout 'Switch it off'. The fools."

it's 11:40 and this is all i've come up with. beautiful soft rainy morning, subdued light.

i put latest page from ongoing poetry-riff-picture book up here. (.pdf)

this mornings cyberdoodle. i felt like i had to make up for yesterday's.

the Baba folks are heading out for sandy mush this afternoon and i believe i'll go too. part of madison county i've always wondered about.

it's another image day around here. got nothing much to say about nothing much.

a lot of housework to do. still trying to update music and image collections found somewhere around here.

did you know a new meme is lurking around on the nocturnal AM radio waves? has to do with top-secret military project to control the weather.

Flecktones Message Forums - Chemtrails Anyone?:
"Well I think we can step out from under the realm of conspiricy theories on this now. Our own congress has had bills introduced which openly claim that there are operational weather modification programs out there right now."

i'm a skeptic, i'll stick with mark twain.

not a pretty picture. let's call it a character study?

it's hard for me to believe how long it took to do the above painting. it was like the tarbaby: i couldn't get loose from the thing, returning over and over again to gaze, wonder, and then screw it up all over again.

of course one of the open secrets of creation is knowing when to stop. but another is the occasional frustrating marathon. i still recall one saturday in tempe arizona trying to something with an early DOS system involving vi, a unix text editor. all day lost in the labyrinth of a constellation of glitches. my take is that from time to time these frustrating all consuming times pay off later, but i wasn't prepared for this kind of activity yesterday.

so today i'll do what i was going to do yesterday, as soon as i find my list. when i do, i'll cross off the first item, finding the list. then, with that small success, i'll lose it again.

another early morning image. after using photoshop since version one, i'm still finding vast worlds of things to do with it. each one opens to more worlds. if all software was built so well and deep it would be a better world.

took first tai chi class with don pedi. i really like his approach. also first color theory class which promises much.

going to see the penguin parade (or some such title) with bobby at 1. daylight matinee, what depravity.

i am on some medical lists that i get via email. here is a bit of one i found amusing about some drug trial:
"A surprising effect was linear weight loss in the exenatide-treated group, possibly as a result of nausea."

photo of back yard. i think it may be the only "straight" photo i've ever put up. that is not twinked, twinkled and slightly warped with photoshop. i'm going to enlarge it in grayscale and transfer it to canvas.

why is it so difficult for most of us to have fun?

especially the growing hordes of anhedonists?

is it

a - we're unenlightened.

b - we are of the conditioned mind, or at least feel that way.

c - we're developmentally stunted, a la maslow, piaget, winnicott, freud.

d - we're not individuated.

e - we're borederline personalities

f - there are too many free radicals running amok in the bodymind.

g - cudgled into submissiveness by societies pliers.

h - don't get it.

i - do get it.

j - kali yuga express.

k - doesn't matter.
?

too many of us only laugh when the tv is on.

(not me, i'm right where i'm standing and i get a good laugh out of that at least once a week.)

today i have 2 classes, 9:30-11:30, 2:30-4:30. if i manage to make both for 8 weeks it'll be a new personal best for me.

what does a blogger do when he or she has nothing to say? blog away anyway.

why? i don't know. after a few years it becomes a habit. me, i start my day with this "thaing" and don't really get going until it's out of the way. often i default to the language of images which in some cases means a couple of photoshop hours. more often i let my fingers do the talking.

official take a morning walk starts this morning, it's 7AM, still cool and overdue.

i've been listening to bob dylan for the last week. it amazes me that he is still such a polerizing figure. such a long public productive life is bound to get stuck at some stage in the mind of many. there was a snide piece in mountain xpress a couple of weeks ago comparing him unfavorably to a younger volk singer who was still at the barricades from time to time. i'm glad the new guy is good, but the comparison is meaningless. bob the protest singer went up in smoke decades ago. today's bob has a lot of bobs behind him, most of whom have an eerie grasp on what life on the planet is or was.

he seems to be taking care of the endgame now, scorsese film, the book chronicle. a neat freak, herding his "legacy" into final landing place just like a lame duck president but with dylan i feel that it is important for the evolution of the kosmos that he not be forgotten.

yet another flower photo. these are all taken near my domicile and i guess i should be thankful they are my neighbors.

one of the reasons this blog looks so "antiquated" is because it is antiquated. check this new site out by uptown ruler
Free Radio America to see slick.

my friend Ray Kassray kass has what sounds like a big retrospective show opening in NYC soon.

today's agenda: put garbage out, take a walk whether i feel like it or not, vacuum truck, change oil, buy cd-rom disks and covers, drop by art supply house to get a few things for color theory class that starts tomorrow finish new template for blog, more changeable sidebars and rollovers for links at top, put up about 300 pictures and scrub down watercolor i overworked in a few places.

wash the dishes.

worked most of the weekend on new template for this page. dreamweaver is a dream, but it does have it's quirks. took the above photo on one of my morning walks which i'm trying hard to resuscitate now that the weather is just starting to cool down a little.

beefing up the image archive and animation page, not up yet but i'm in too deep to stop now - the story of my life - so maybe by the end of the week i'll have all of the new goodies uploaded.

start 3 new classes this week, tai-chi, jung and color theory.. hope they hold my interest. one of the things i like about these classes (center for creative retirement, unca) is that if there is too little happening in them, i can just stop going. kind of like school should be.

today i'm going to install an older OCR app and send several dental treatment plans to friends katie and pat (hello katie and pat). change oil in truck. and work on a watercolor that i'm more or less doing just to see if i can. it's been awhile.

i'm still a million miles away from the political, just can't engage. i feel the near future will turn into the personal and mundane while the institutional slowly disappears like the chesire cat. it's that grin that i fret about.

if absolute power corrupts absolutely, and i guess it does, not only humans but institutions are affected, and there is not one today that is not so corrupt in one way or another that it can be helpful to the world's inhabitants. the only thing i see to do is live a life that somehow increases consciousness, or, to put it another way, live a conscious life. and that is more than enough to keep a body busy.

not an unusual day. vacuumed, made the above image from a jpg my son eric sent me, lake tahoe? naaaa. . . sierra navadas maybe.

talked with bobby who was fresh back from a workshop experience with dr. allen combs at southerdharma. b. said it was great.

been fooling around w/ leftover music fragments and think i have enough for 2 CDs. what a surprise.

started a watercolor this morning, a simple one. what a surprise.

i'm moving the tv into the bed/studio room. bad fung-suey in front room. i can watch it at night when i'm not sleeping. sound off of course. maybe a fan. shortwave drifting in and out.

i'd really rather read a good book.

'Gatemouth' Brown dies - Sep 11, 2005

neighbor's giant plant. i don't know what it is but it is big. a sign of things to come in the sub-tropical smokey mountains?

in an hour i take first begining piano lesson. hope my right wrist can take it. hope i can take it. [note: i made the class and it wore me out. as the psuedo-prez says, "it was hard work."]

i was talking to friend geoff the other day and stumbled onto an ancient riff i used to think about, but couldn't quite remember it. i think it went like this:

"all men are created equal." it seems to me that there has been an incremental creep in the meaning of this statement. there is a tendancy today to interpret this as "all men are identical". the women's movement, civil rights, and other issues seem to fall into this semantic double cross from time to time. today, with society's emphasis on defining the human as the ego and nothing more, there seems to be a strong pull towards this mis-interpretation, making the statistical average the norm.

the statistical average height of the human race is a number. but if you lined up all humans living today and measured them, you might find that not one is of average height. each of us is unique. there is no norm, except for abstract thought where it has some use.

the human has always had the task of experiencing his or her's real self, whatever that may be. not including the eccentric, the unique, the far ends of the bell curve, is in my opinion resposible for a mess of problems that plague society today.

2+2=4. but 2+2 is not identical with 4.

another possibly related topic: during my lifetime there has always been a pull away from the megalopolis on the part of myself and many friends. even though worldwide more and more people are moving to the urban beehives and away from the rural. now some folks in silicone valley are wondering about it.

"...the economic opportunities in Silicon Valley still outweigh the social costs.
But for how long?
That is the question raised by a report being issued next week by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. When it comes to quality-of-life issues like housing costs, transportation and education, the report concludes that Silicon Valley ranks dead last compared with the other seven largest high-tech regions."
MercuryNews.com | 09/16/2005 | Industry report ranks region last among eight high-tech areas in quality of life:

today is the birthday of my youngest son nathan. i hope you have a good day nathan, a good year, and a good life. you deserve it.

cyber-graffiti floating around the web. thanks bill.

is it in bad taste? yeah i suppose so. like the bind technology has created when grabbed and used by the powerheads.

why is it amusing? the people of america have not - yet - lost the ability to see the absurd we are surrounded by. "the other gulf war" is another example.

remember: the world is owned. you may own a piece. or you and the bank.

but the whole globe is possessed... by what? the illuminati? the carlton group? the bohemian club?

or is it the pathological spirit of possession, domination and control?

the answer, of course, is blowing in the wind.

for the detail-oriented check this very interesting interview out (thanks tharpa):
911Truth.org ::::: The 9/11 Truth Movement:
"...all those stories drawn from mainstream sources that contradicted the official account, I decided I needed to look into it more carefully, and the more I looked, the worse it got."

two hours at dentist this morning, came home and lay down. slept. still sleeping. there is not going to be a hell of a lot happening at this site until i feel like mice elf (thanks sly), or any elf for that matter, again.

photo i took at tom and cathy's friday night potluck for the muhlig's who were up from hillsboro looking to move here. their house burned to the ground a few weeks ago. photo was taken in low light, no tripod, and of course i had to tweak it.

what it is really is an ongoing thing i've fallen into: take pictures while i learn digital camera. load onto computer anything i might be able to work with. and see what is possible and what is not. the above photo for instance was almost totally dark, black, very little information, and i got the above out of it which is not entirely successful but the process was enlightening, so to speak.

sending files for book this morning, and then jump into all of the things i have been putting off while i was in deadline fever.

i feel good this morning, wide awake and fresh. i think a good night's sleep did it and am thankful because i was sinking lower and lower this weekend.

talked to old friend geoff in santa fe yesterday, putting together trip to chaco canyon while i am in arizona late november. i very much look forward to this for too many reasons to list here.

have an appointment with dentist tuesday. i may be headed towards false teeth city.

i'll finish off today's post with another aphorism picked at random from a collection i've been reading. a commentary on my intellectual stamina that it's about all i can read for pleasure these days. anyway here it is:

"machinery is aggressive. the weaver becomes a web,, the machinist a machine. if you do not use the tools, they use you."
emerson, 'works and days', society and solitude, 1870

my morning's icon. i'm not totally happy with the results but i have no shame so you see it above.

got this included in an email from friend jerry:

"It is good that the desire for enlightenment seems far away, because
the desire for enlightenment is the greatest barrier in attaining it.

It is one of the eternal questions for the seekers of truth. On the one hand the masters go on saying, "Attain enlightenment," and on the other hand they go on saying, "Don't desire it." And it has been a great puzzle for the poor disciple. The master is saying both things: desire it, and don't desire it. Desire it because it is the only thing desirable; don't desire it because desire becomes a barrier.

Not to create that puzzle for you, my way of working has been
different. Just being with you, talking or not talking, just giving my whole heart to you and creating a situation in which you can taste something of enlightenment... even that small taste of enlightenment will be enough for you to stop here and now in this moment. You will forget all desires, enlightenment included.

If a situation can be created in which you are so blissful, so
contented, that just for a moment there is no desire in your mind, you have learned a great lesson – that if this state of no-desire can continue every moment, you need not bother about enlightenment: it will come to you. You have not to go to it. It is not an object sitting somewhere that you have to desire and find and work hard and go to it. It is simply your own state when there is no desire.

This desirelessness is the most blissful state possible, and
enlightenment is another name for it. Knowing it even for one moment is enough, because you are never given by life two moments together; it is always one moment. And if you know the secret, the alchemy of
transforming this moment, you know the whole secret of transforming
life, because the next moment will also be the same. You can do to it what you have done before; you can continue in desirelessness.
Being in my presence... I am using it as a device to avoid any confusion and puzzle in your mind.

I can give you the taste, and then the taste will take care of you.
First, the desire for enlightenment will look so far away, and by and by you will forget all about it because you will be in it; it will be within you. And certainly in the beginning it looks like a beautiful dream, because we are accustomed to reality and its ugliness. We know beauty only in dreams.

So whenever something like this happens to you even while you are fully awake, it feels as if it is a dream. Reality cannot be so nourishing, so tremendously beautiful, so magnificent: reality cannot have this magic. But I tell you, reality is more magical than any dream. It is more beautiful than any dream; it is more poetic than the greatest poetries of the world.

Te reality that we know is not the true reality; it is the reality
seen through an ugly mind which projects itself on reality. We don't
see the real; we always see it colored with our own prejudices, ideas, our whole mind. And even that we see only while running. We never relax. We are always constantly on the run, knowing not where we are going. It is just that something seems to be missing, and we are trying to find it everywhere, in all directions. And we will not find it anywhere, because this mind will always be between you and the real, distorting the real.

If you are receptive in my presence, if you are loving, your mind
leaves you for a moment – it has to leave you. Something more important than your mind is happening. That's what love means. You can even sacrifice yourself – in trust you sacrifice the mind, and the moment the mind is put aside and you see eye to eye with reality, it is so beautiful, indescribably beautiful. And certainly in those moments you will feel that you don't even want to be enlightened. If this rality can go on and on forever, then what more can enlightenment give you?

And you are right, because this is the beginning of enlightenment. You have got just a glimpse, and even the glimpse makes you drop the desire for enlightenment – and dropping the desire makes enlightenment easily possible. It simply happens. One day suddenly you wake up in the morning and you are not the same person, and with your change the whole existence has changed. And then it is not a question of doing something to keep it; it remains with you.

In fact, even if you want to drop it, you cannot drop it. You cannot go back; you can only go forward.

And one day, that day also comes in your life when enlightenment
becomes so natural to you – just like breathing, just like the
heartbeat, just like the blood running through your veins – that you
don't even feel it. And the blood is going really fast, round and round from feet to head, but we don't feel it; we are born with it, we are accustomed to it.

When enlightenment becomes just a natural phenomenon, then the last
mystery opens its door: one goes even beyond enlightenment. Going
beyond enlightenment means one becomes just ordinary, part of this vast universe – without any claim, without any superiority, without any ego. One simply dissolves in the ocean of reality, just like a dewdrop in the morning sun slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean. That is the last... Then there is nothing else left to happen; you have become the ocean.

Enlightenment still keeps something of you... very fragile, but there is still some idea of "I." And because of enlightenment, not knowingly, you are superior and you feel superior. That's why the last step, when even that smallest part of "I" also dissolves... now you are neither superior nor inferior: you are not.

Existence is.

Buddha calls it nirvana. He has chosen the best word for it."

Osho, taken from The Path of the Mystic, Chapter #2, © Osho.com

another pic i rescued from the "lost archives". this one dates back a few years to when i first started combining watercolor with anything electronic or otherwise i could get my hands on.

worked all day yesterday on cleaning up and collecting new life files to send to myrtle beach. i was aiming for 12 today, the last UPS pick up time. i'm not going to make it, so they will leave monday morning.

i've been missing the wonderful weather and think i'll get up to the parkway next week.

first class at unca center for creative retirement begins friday, i'm taking 4 classes: beginning piano, color theory, tai chi, and jung.

my attention span seems to have been used up - temporarily i hope - and i got totally lost driving to tom & cathy's night before last. it was an eerie sensation. but a beautiful aliatory cruise. luckily a get a retry tonight.

caught the leher news on pbs last night and was interested in what dave brooks had to say. i rarely agree with him on anything, but he talked about across the board institutional failure re katrina. this is my current meta theory about the hurricane reaction debacle. the institution as a method of organizing people to get things done has, like everything else in our lifetime, evolved and now IMHO become a cartoon. the organizing principle of institutions is self aggrandizement. another way to say it is survival, profit, based on not pretending to be, but actually becoming ignorant of the human domain. which includes doing something meaningful for reasons other than profit.

since i don't have much else to say today, a random sample of latest book i'm reading, the oxford book of aphorisms chosen by john gross:

"heaven knows what would become of our sociality if we never visited people we speak ill of: we should live, like egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude."
george eliot, scenes of clerical life, 1858

among other things i have been going thru past posts and collecting images that were posted. i plan to enlarge image archives to include some of these, many of which i'd forgotten about. above is a good example. there are a lot of them and they're not on image archive page yet. i'll let you know when they are up.

working on new life book again, this time to deliver workable files jeff and susan can continue to work in myrtle beach and india. afraid it will be mon or tuesday before i can ship disks but we'll see how today goes.

vox populi: everyone is upset finally with bush. and his far flung cohorts: the ownership class. by that i do not mean people that own something, but folks who own the media, business, all institutions, and most of all, you.

it will be interesting to see how the noise machine deals with this. personally i do not think if bush physically disappeared today it would make much difference. he has his own owners, and they would just replace him with the junta's latest model. the problem is systemic, historical and not personal. it is the loss of a common language for the both the oligarchy and the rest of us.

one possible solution, not the best but a distinct dark horse, is for the republican base (not the politicians) to feel more like humans than numbers and cut him loose and take back their party.

or, if the trend continues, the power machine, well-oiled of course, might just decide to hell with it and spring a surprise that i'm sure is well-planned out and hidden somewhere: dispense with the elections. maybe have a fixed game show instead.

far out, huh?

katrina - i may have the hurricane's name spelled wrong - has understandably kicked up a firestorm about bush's invisible coup d'etat and the manner it which it functions. the airwaves are full of the consequent buzz-words from all direction: "blame-game" goes a long way to invalidating any criticism of response to the catastrophe.

reasonable people are upset, but in the face of bush's noise machine may find that it is impossible to discuss the post-catastrophic response catastrophe.

points to ponder:

1 - the response was not an aberration caused by mother nature. it was and is perfectly congruent with everything else "bushy". cronyism, deafness to the outside world which includes the entire globe with the exception of the "yes men" who huddle in the white house. it is another example of the unamerican take over of the republican party by the criminal overworld, and the real world chaos that results.

2 - the response by "the people", some of whom are well-trained and well-experienced disaster relief teams, has been stopped cold. last night on the radio i heard story after story of fully loaded expeditions headed south who were turned back by the guv'mnt. while it is understandable that a modicum of control is desirable in all efforts to help, the exclusion of "we the people" is worse than unfortunate, it is situation normal for the oligarchs. remember during the last election if you were not a credentialed and well behaved and rehearsed republican, you could not attend an election speech by the bush team.

3 - "the race card" is another troubling development. middle america got a peek into the invisible - in bush's world - 3rd world that has become deligitimized but exists in this country. there are thugs, bandits, and politicians and police on the take in N.O., always have been. but the "looting" is small potatoes compared to the corporate looting that is taking place all over the world, ie iraq.

4 - the bedrock discrepancy between the populace and all of the institutions including government is highlighted by this fiasco and has much to reveal about the core problem of our present gum'nt.

it is my belief that institutions, all of them, have devolved into sitcom land. the current mode of meetings, memos, power-point presentations and the like are regarded by the members of any institution as the right way to go about things. but the sitcom attributes of this mode are well known among the just plain folks. turf battles, sycophants, cover your ass and all of the bureaucratic spaghetti we know so well. these folks are scared of ordinary people because they don't know any. the resulting isolation from the human domain can only cause bad uninformed decisions.

9/11, the attack, was carried out by small flexible groups. the response was yet another institutional reorganization into homeland defense. anyone who has survived in this closed world knows that a vast reorganization of formerly separate institutions doesn't work. while we have meetings, the enemy sits back and patiently lets us fall on our face.

the fact that for the first time in our history we have declared war against a noun, not a nation-state, comes from the same hubris and ignorance of the owners of our nation-state. the fully conditioned institutionalized - CEOs, presidents, the super-enabled rich - are ignorant in the most basic sense of the word of the domain of just-plain folks, whether here or in iraq. we are in the middle of that ignorance's result.

folks who inhabit the day to day mundane world know how to navigate within it. folks who have walled themselves off from it don't have a clue.

my point is that as long as this absolute split between the ownership world and the folks on the ground persists, naive misjudgements and consequent critical mistakes will continue.

the solution, it seems to me, is for the republican establishment, the "base", many of whom are scared to death of the bush machine, stand up and retake their party. all power-mongers should be dropped by parachute into the darkness of the great american night. more or less like normal people have been. the reality of suffering and displacement would no longer be excluded from that class, nothing but waking up would result. and the junta would be history.

totally sleepless night. and i feel it. some kind of astrological malaise. i must be in retrograde again. picked a digital photo at random and you see it above. something wierd was going on in front yard.

reading an interesting book:the eden project: a jungian perspective on relationship by James Hollis . it's for a class i'll be taking soon at unca. nothing i would have chosen to read.

but it's very good, and not so much man-woman "relationship" but more like object relations, the manifest world of duality. especially good on organizations, a timely subject, and the difference between society and community.

tried something a little too wierd on this photo. oh well. one of the oddities of this site is that i post works in progress, and don't forget it's only a 17k file.

nature shot. took awhile before he would let me pet him.

i've been working on a photoshop piece for 3 days. all day today. it brings up that delicate subject of balance. i'm way too involved with it.

but it's familiar territory. i've been tied to this whippin post before. i'll stumble into a way to make it happen. it must be a case of the compulsive becoming obsessive. it's not the best way to play, but i guess that's part of the game.

but it does, as they say, keep me off the streets.

pix from a walk i took this week.



yesterday i kept noodling at what is the problem?

looking at it from the particular to the beyond manifest.

i think it is something like this: conciousness, or the experience of being human, changes.

we can affect what it changes to as well as it affects what we experience.

right now now is particularly critical.

there is a split between the domain of power and the domain of human experience.

the domain of power is untouchable (but humans need to try to affect anyway).

the domain of consciousness, that is, living a human life, is touchable. if enough folks look the Other, the Stranger, in the eye and can hear what the stranger is saying, the present phony civil authority might morph into something that awknowledges human experience.

therefore no war in iraq.

for a nano=second.

visited steve and rachael today and watched a little CNN. from time to time it's a treat for me to watch the memes fly out, circle, and transform themselves to other memes. lotta meme action.

seems as if out here today is:

the 12 N.O. cops who resigned yesterday did so maybe because their payoff arrangements vanished.

the folks who were sent to the whatever you call it stadium where there was no food, water, medicine or authority were sent there to die. it could be looked at as an instant concentration camp. but not by me, i'm with you.

this nation has more homeless every year (i made that up. bet it's true). they are essentially invisible, pariahs, and are not given the same assumption of humanity we pay lip service to with familiar looking creatures. the new third world we saw on television were as good as homless already.

as ed schultz said yesterday, the job is to take the people to the resources, not vice-versa. moveon.org is pushing some sort of arrangement where these folks stay as guests of households. you know, a house with people, perhaps a family, like we used to think everyone lived in. do you have a spare couch for a total stranger?

the resonance of the pictures from N.O. and iraq: ???

the sluggishness of the institution, any institution, compared with the human soul, no matter how battle-weary.

the old, old, maybe ancient but never as extreme as now separate domains of private property and human being.

so what can a poor boy do? make a bumper sticker.

to me it is apparent that the oligarchy, the ruling class, the ownership class as george carlin calls them, are out to lunch. george bush the first did not know how to buy a gallon of milk at a grocery store cash register. they don't physically pick up the phone when it rings. they don't drive vehicles, just ride. they don't wait in lines.

but they are "helpless like a rich man's child..."

the real world is a flow chart to these psuedo-humans. and what flows is filthy lucre, not the force that through the green fuse drives. not energy, prana, or even a little feeling.

unfortunately, with the speed-up of time (don't tell me you haven't noticed), the development of thug into idiot has become accelerated.

all of this to say: WE HAVE NO LEADER. or leaders. as terrifying as katerna was, the incompetence of the feds or anyone else used to looking at the world from behind a podium is even more scary.

up against the wall, humanoids. go away. leave us alone.

maybe there is one alternative; drop every one of the oligarchs into a strange, big sprawling city at 3 in the morning with 50 cents in his - or her - pocket. for a year. with no access to power. those that survive can join the human rabble, the mob, where there is more true human feeling, empathy and compassion then in all of the mansions of the world.

i'm adding to this post after watching the evening news. no cable so i didn't stay glued to the tube all day.

dismal. disaster. and it's getting worse by the hour.

they talk about the infrastructure. the infrastructure is a mirage if you consider the people that own it. and that is not you and me. bush works for exxon. the ownership class got a raise with the tax cut. and that cost the required maintenance of the new orleans levees. halliburton is building levees in iraq. since bush and his fellow criminals stole the government the folks in N.O. have been crying out for maintaining and improving the infrastructure holding back the water.

the criminal overworld that you depend on for survival does not care about "you the people". the corporations now have their own armies. mercenary killing is a growth industry. bechtel etc. owns you. the tower of babel is bigger than ever. looting? that is going on in the middle east, and at the gas station.

think about the insurance megaliths: will they perform any useful function at all after the devestation? they will make a profit out of the misery. pay attention and see.

fuck capitalism. it may have been useful for humans for a couple of lifetimes but it has developed into nothing but banditry, well-dressed thugs, torture, assassination, moloch, and wage slavery. your money or your life.

humanity is being bled dry, twisted, disappearing. only profit remains. screwballs abound. loose cannons, saturday night specials (a high profit product), monsters of money, rhetorical wreckage, demeaning of meaning. there are one million more homeless in the homeland today. how many were there before? phony government, terrified people, eternal corporate entities that lord it over "you the people".

time to stand up, wake up, and understand that your life is worth nothing to your owners. you have absolutely nothing to lose by adamantly remaining human no matter what.

but it will cost you.

photo my sun eric emailed me yesterday, taken, i believe, at puerto vallerta (sp?) mexico. of course i had to sprinkle it with a good dose of photoshop dust.

i made a lot of progress in corralling past images from daily postings yesterday. soon you'll be able to spend hours mezmerized by imagery and wondering why anyone would continue to pump out these visuals. i know i do.

maybe i already posted this picture. it was a watercolor that would not work. so i finished it in photoshop.

for some reason, despite that cross, this to me is an image of "dog days". maybe because that's when i did it.

the last time i lived in the boonies (southern jackson county) dog days was a time that was very noticeable. all of the notions of western appalachia seemed right on. milk spoiled. the woods filled with iredescent webs and the colors became a bit darker, lots of fluorescent spiders around. most importantly, water slowed down. if you had a spring for your water source, it might slow down to a trickle.

now that i live in the paris of the south these things are not so noticeable. but humans, dragging 100s of thousands of years living on earth behind them, are affected too. the brain slows down. sleepwalking is the mode of the day. cobwebs and clutter in the head and the world of 10,000 things.

as the earth's trip around the sun speeds up (you have noticed, right?), dog days begins to take on a startling similarity to the later harvest season. the difference between the pulchritude of harvest, with the flora hanging fruit, and dog days with it's feel of suffication, becomes easy to miss. flowering just a bit overdone becomes decadence in the true sense of the word whatever that may be.

happy birthday jane
it's my sister janes birthday. here's her picture. she's 35.

don't have much to say today. except driving to sam's memorial saturday i passed a guy walking down hwy 40 carrying a large white cross. it looked like the base was on a roller skate. if he'd been on a skateboard i might have been more interested.

i put third sample page(s) from poetry picture book i'd like to stop working on here.

living room after great kleenup
spent yesterday afternoon at memorial for sam. toby, chrissy, and chall, his children put it together and it it was done well. thanks for the chance to say so long.

i saw many folks there that i knew but didn't recognize. at first. john m.,newt, lydia, henry, lynn, ginny. hadn't seen chrissy since the 80's i guess. dr. john r. and doug and marcia i recognized. i especially appreciated the words of john m. who i last saw in collage i guess. from the perspective of straight american consensus reality he made the point that we as a culture need more folks like sam, eccentric, what we used to call "inner directed", at home - and not at home - in many socio-economic contexts. it's a hard job, but somebody has to do it. and those that are in this role are in my opinion a disappearing breed. maybe that's myopia on my part and i hope i'm wrong.

by the way, john, the name i was trying to think of was james adams who died of pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago.

got this email this morning from tharpa:

"ONE VERSION OF INFINITY

You run so fast, round and round and round, that finally the fastest way to run is to stay still. You run so fast that you begin to see your own back, and you begin to become still. At that point, the whole thing begins to become infinite. When you hold still, you supercede any kind of speed at all. You become the ultimate and utmost winner of that particular race. From that point of view, being back to square one is one version of infinity....In this case, back to square one is the infiniteness of immense immeasurable space and expansion that you experience. Therefore, it is absolutely absurd to try to search further -- and the only way not to search further is to be, to stay, to stand or sit still."

From "Cosmic Disaster," in GLIMPSES OF REALIZATION: THE THREE BODIES OF
ENLIGHTENMENT page 14. Edited by Judith Lief. Published by Vajradhatu
Publications.

Happy birthday Eli
my son eli whose birthday it is today. he, his wife melissa, and 2 daughters are all old souls. quite a family. the very best, whatever that may be, to all of you.

it's just now dawn, the sky is that pearly luminosity that precedes the day. an early morning walk is just the ticket.

yesterday was another marathon during which i turned out a couple of pictures, a couple of prints, and a sample page from forthcoming poetry book. i PDFed the wrong page, but put it up anyway here. fooling with these pages is helping more than i would have thought to bring layout to some concluding stage.

upgraded pro-vision 4.5, an antiquated sequencing app that i've been using for a number of years, and started two new music pieces. archived off a bunch of files to create a little more working space on overloaded disks. almost finished kitchen re-do. i'll have quite a bunch of "stuff" to put out tuesday for garbage pickup: lamps, old chairs, defunct computer. bought a new tire to replace spare i've been running on.

driving to old fort after lunch to join a lot of sam's friends to celebrate his life on earth which is now in the past.

next week i'm on retreat (in retreat?). i'm staying home and working with soul, spirit, and body-mind to make a few mid-course life changes. or maybe i'll just sleep.probably redo whole site so i can update sidebars without so many workarounds i can't remember them all.

sam gray
another day riding the comet of creativity. spent quite a few time-units making an 8 by 10 print of the image above, my old friend sam gray who died last week. we'll gather at the old fort museum at 2 this coming saturday to say so long.

at this point in my life, sam was the friend i knew for the longest duration, since 1959 or 60 i think. we fought, we laughed, we saw each other through a maze of changes, fell into the past, were strangers, were friends, and in the end knew all about each other's strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, and none of it mattered. didn't even come close.

the last time i saw sam was in thom's rehab, where i more or less bullied my way. crowded room, a lot happening, lots of tubes and wires. he didn't recognize me but as i was leaving, hand on the door knob, he looked me right in the eyes and raised his left hand, index finger extended ti his brow. so long.

i'll miss you brother.

other news: changed my flat tire and made it to the grocery store. vacuumed. tomorrow i want to unload all the kitchen cupboard and throw away - i mean give away - anything i don't recognize. no computer no paint. maybe a nap.

easing into walking again now that the blazing heat is waning. walked to a dental appt, tuesday, to the store wednesday.

mingling with asheville bloggers has inevitably pushed me towards spiffing up this site. guess i'll tackle the template today which will let me easily to update link lists and add all kinds of cyber-goodies. i've been trying to stream mp3s i have made over the years but so far no go. and put some recent pictures in the image archive. nothing is easy.

2 days ago driving back from non-dual practice i lost a tire on 240. no blowout, no 360 degree spinout, just flap flap flap. so i nursed it home on the rim. too much to do yesterday so i'll fix today i hope.

meanwhile here is sample page of poetry book i've been puttering with. double click to see pdf.

i was reading edgy mama's blog yesterday and happened on her memories of hunter thompson and distaste for the woody creek extravaganza of last week.
Edgy Mama
"'I don't think Hunter would have wanted it this way.'"

so in the interest of full disclosure i'll tell my story about hunter.

i think it was fall '68 when i started work as editorial assistant for the long-gone aspen illustrated news, a weekly that competed with the well established and right-leaning weekly aspen times, whose name i may be misremembering. we worked in the basement of the hotel jerome, and often finished the day at the bar upstairs, watching the tourists pour in on the only open road from glenwood springs.

the idea behind the paper was to use the local talent for photos and articles. and there was a lot of local talent.

i moved to basalt colorado and began working about 4 months after hunter's unsuccesful run for sheriff of pitkin county. he would bring a 30-40 page article in from time to time and that is how i made his acquaintance. part of my job was to immediately take his mss to a young lawyer - no, i don't think he was samoan - who would flip thru it with a red pencil striking out word like "greedhead".

hunter at that time had the "hell's angels" book behind him, and had bought the woody creek compound with the money he made off of the book.

i always thought of his demeanor at that time as calm, cool and collected, with traces of the southern aristocrat peeping through. Very smart, very polite, only ranted about the nazi's of the aspen ski corporation on paper.

when the paper folded about a year later he was the first to come up with an alternative which involved a seriographic artist with a prosperous gallery in town. his idea: limited edition seriographs with news printed on the back. i think this was actually done for a short time altho i left town and am not sure.

one day i realized my driver's license was out of date and wondered over to the pitkin county courthouse for a renewal. the court house was a medieval looking gray fortress, and empty. i finally ended up in the dungeon, i mean basement, where i found an officer and hunter in a small room. the three of us chit chatted while paper work was shuffled around. the conversation was on about 20 different levels, the type of public discussion you don't much run across in the present day to day.

about a year ago i stumbled on the driver's license i was issued in that basement. below is the photo taken that day. we were young and in fine spirits.

cannot get it in gear today. flitting from idea to idea. the heat has circled the wagons for me, and i don't want to go anywhere.

today's sign. digital shot from last week, photoshop magic dust liberally sprinkled.

just heard it was going to be 90 degrees today. if that's the case i'll stay hermetically sealed inside - again - and tackle blog template upgrade. i dread it.

spent yesterday afternoon at blogasheville gathering in the country. most enjoyable to meet a few more folks and get to know everyone a little better. screwy hoolie and uptown ruler's instincts were sound when they envisioned getting this variegated group together. i haven't felt so comfortable in a social setting in a long time. everything takes time, and i hope to maintain contact and let a thousand flowers bloom.

when the sun set and the cool mountain air wafted through it was a real treat. i found myself taking little walks to the road, and the cool darkness, no lights, made me realize how much i missed that world. i spent a lot of time in the passed past roaming through the woods at night, and was reminded of why. no harsh electric illumination, no noise machine, just the sweet chorus on chorus of the critters that i used to dream about when i was stranded in phoenix.

the run back home was beautiful, cruising thru woodfin, admiring the full moon and the distant lights here and there. tasted a bit of simple bare attention, the for me rare joy of that inner clearing where the space allows the manifest to come and go as it will. i'm going to stop gushing now and see if i can take a walk up the mountain, depends on the heat index outside. i'll let you know.

some sad news yesterday. sam gray died at his home thursday. tubucular meningitis, which i think was developing slowly late last fall, and a series of devastating strokes. i don't think he ever came back after being in the ICU after christmas. my most sincere sympathy to his wife catherine and his children and his many friends among whom sam had a special place in all our hearts.

he was my friend, and the friend who had known me longest. since 59 or 60. over such a long period we shared a number of different eras, times, places and worlds. he knew every wrong turn i have taken, my weaknesses and strengths. and vice-versa. and it didn't matter. good times, bad times, we shared a lot of laughs.

he has been released.

after another day stranded by the heat - and rain - during which i came close to finishing spring housecleaning and working on poetry book. i gave myself the rare treat of heading out to the gray eagle. tyler ramsey opened for john hammond.

tyler played in a bunch of open tunings. i'm not a musician but have been trying to figure out open d and open g for awhile - 20 years or more - and was fascinated by how he went about it. played a lot like the guy whose name i can't remember but will in a minute.

mr. hammond had a good night, i'd say it was the best performance i've heard him play. i had a chance to talk to him briefly and mentioned that the first time i heard him was back in the 60's at some small place in raleigh after which we adjourned to someone's place out in the country. he surprised me by immediately remembering the name, which i could not dredge up and have re-forgotten at the moment. "the sidetrack?"? anyway that's what the autograph above refers to, a long way from there and then.

whatever, and he went on to talk about the klan surrounding the place and shooting out a few windows. "nobody believes me when i talk about it" he said. this must have been 65 or 66, and my own muddled memory places the klan outside in the dark and the gathering inside, half afraid and half past caring, at another farmhouse on another occasion during those same strange times. i think i remember hugh wilson (thanks to doug b. for the name correction), an old raw boned radical dairy farmer - about my age now - charging out into the darkness yelling at the klan members, calling them by name and telling them to go home to their families.

driving home i thought about the mystery of time and the worlds it manifests. that was a different time and a different world. "mama mama many worlds i've known since i first left home" (grateful dead). they're all different and all the same. but as a child of "my time", i guess that world marked me for life as much as anything has. and those of us left are in my opinion a demographic anomaly, not boomers, not yuppies, not hippies, just... true to ourselves and our story as it twists and turns through an increasingly distant landscape.

today's icon. somehow appropriate.

finished 2 prints today, they go out next monday. fooled around too long trying to figure out how to stream MP3.

most importantly, though, i began the great kitchen clean-up.

the kriminal overworld is in a death spiral. it won't be pretty.

war against terrorism

not much has been said about how this war is a kairos, a jungian term for change in the collective unconcious and therefor what we call "reality".

the reason: it is half war as we knew it, declared, conducted and ended (?) in the domain of the nation-states. this has been the way of war for a few hundred years.

but the other half of the war is a noun, not a nation state. "terrorism". it is as if we declared war against "bombing" or "aircraft carriers". terrorism is a tactic of war.

so when the nation-state, any nation-state, is in a war with a noun, what follows? traditionally the losing side officially surrenders, think WWII and the battleship missouri. papers are signed, treaties are made, and it's history.

driving to the 7-11 this morning i heard the enemy called "franchised terrorism". there is no command and control. there is no nation-state that can surrender.

part of the reason that the USA put itself in this position is the power of metaphor. think "war against drugs", "war against obesity", etc. we have become habituated to think of any organized effort to correct societal ills as a "war".

bush's war has some of these attributes, and some of the attributes of former wars, such as command structure, meetings, powerpoint presentations and white papers. a critical mismatch.

if today somebody robbed a bank, shot some people, blew up the safe, he or she would become defined as a "criminal", not "terrorist", and the institutional law enforcement would handle it. war would not be declared.

what are the implications of this situation?

the war ends when washington dc says it is over.

the enemy is anyone who the government suspects is a terrorist. this is different from the criminal domain, where the case is solved and the judiciary decides guilt or innocence, and metes out the appropriate penalty.

so we have a rigged up trumped up mixture of metaphors for bush's war. criminals commit a massive crime and the result is a war against a nation state which will end when we have transformed it into our idea of a nation state. remember that spreading democracy throughout the world is more like the soviets spreading communism than any thing else.

i do not believe this is the result of those evil geniuses the republicans. on the contrary, they are so stuck in their mind-set that they fell into this situation through ignorance. which leads to another subject:

the powers that be have no idea of the arab, persian world. they can locate it geographically, but have no idea of how things are done, how people live, or what they are saying in that part of the world. what means what there is a mystery to our government.

if this were not the case, and saddam had to be removed to stabilize that part of the world, we could have accomplished his removal by paying attention to how things are done there: indirection, subtle unspoken alliances, influence, a phrase dropped here and there, face to face meetings. it was not bad intelligence that caused this nightmare to develop, it was bad judgment based on the premise that the entire world population is just like us. if they’re not, they should be.

today's mountain xpress has cover story on asheville bloggers and my site is mentioned.

this blog has been on automatic for awhile. i've been more involved with painting, printmaking, digital photography. now it's a habit, but one that never stops being it's moment. it seems to shift it's shape all the time.

yeah it's four years old or so, and now i guess i have to update image archive, i think i have 2 years of pictures posted i haven't put on the image archive page. multimedia page never took off, it'll soon be streaming mp3s of modern peasant the band.

my motto:
the best things in life aren't things