see the video that has been floating around made by defense contractors in iraq. shot out the rear window while machine gunning cars on the highway. it's OK, but they really needed a telephoto lens so you could see the blood and gore. the sound track is "mystery train" by elvis, one of my all time favorites. called the "trophy video" because it was posted on corporations site under "awards" section i think.


The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio: "VIDEO: The "trophy video" made by the mercenaries"

more on contractors: Mercenarieses, Corporatete soldiers of fortune. (and let's not forget that they work for the same people that own our govt., you and me. neo-fascist corporate oligarchy cowboys having fun.)

The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio: "On Feb. 7, security contractors for the U.S. Embassy branch office in the northern city of Kirkuk shot and killed two men in a taxi. The embassy said at the time that it was initiating an investigation into the incident. In response to queries about the investigation in March, the embassy said the results would not be released.

'It is correct that the State Dept. conducted an investigation--as it does with all such events involving State contractors,' embassy spokesman Dennis Culkin said at the time, in a written statement. 'However, as is also standard, the results of such federal investigations are not made public. So we're not able to share any investigation results.'"

sunday featured my favorite weather, overcast, moody, thunder rumbling and finally the rains came. i pretty much spent most of the day continuing on organizing domicile. even found pair of scissors. began doing something with CDs, a good bit of which are data CD-ROMs. now they are all neatly stacked in the middle of the living room floor.

talked to my daughter nicole. she sounded in good spirits. went to bed early and got up at 5. this is my preferred daily rhythm, so maybe i am rotating back to it. hope so.

but enough about me.

bush's war

Online Etymology Dictionary: "late O.E. (c.1050), wyrre, werre, from O.N.Fr. werre 'war' (Fr. guerre), from Frank. *werra, from P.Gmc. *werso (cf. O.S. werran, O.H.G. werran, Ger. verwirren 'to confuse, perplex'). Cognates suggest the original sense was 'to bring into confusion.' There was no common Gmc. word for 'war' at the dawn of historical times."

since the establishment of "nation-states" war acquired it's modern characteristics: declaration of war, both sides in uniform, winner decided by captured territory, ending in surrender by national government, treaties signed by diplomats.

in our lifetimes "war" has slowly developed into metaphor indicating struggle against social problems; war against poverty, hunger, drugs, obesity.

when the bushies in response to attack against our country declared war against "terror" rather than a nation, a monumental confusion began. such as

no identifiable enemy = keep tabs on the intentions of everyone.

war ends when bush says it is over.

no POWs, just disappeared folks, some of whom might be the enemy, some of whom might be you or me in the wrong place at the wrong time.

winner determined by body count.

geographical center of enemy might be anywhere. therefore locus of war is the world.

these points might seem nit-picking, but everyday there are bits and pieces on the "news" illustrating the results of this ambiguity. this past weekend the prime demonstration was the 3 suicides of "enemy combatants", and the subsequent definition of this event by the military as "an act of asymmetrical warfare".

when mcvie and friends blew up the govt building in oklahoma the president did not declare war against a noun. it fell into the domain of criminal justice, whose job and expertise is the pursuit and capture of suspects in order that they be tried for the crime.

the recasting of "war" as anything goes against an unknown gang should never have been allowed to happen and would not have happened if we had a functioning government.

this was a picture captured in RAW format but i couldn't do much with it. another thing to learn by osmosis.

i'm going to watch the sunday talking heads now.

i've been on the computer all day - it is now 3PM. making a father's day card and it's turning into one of those too familiar marathons. makes me grumpy. of course my origional is a low res copy of old photo which doesn't help. if i was younger i'd say it was wasted youth. but i already been there, done that.

heading for library, grocery store. got a water color drying in next room.

people seem to be out & about this weekend, and it is a good one to take a break. think i'll try river district art walk sunday. i don't think they've initiated an art crawl yet, but i'm ready.

on the off chance that the cyber-gods will let me post after 7 days of not letting me post i'm going to try again. check this out (thanks tucker):
The Blog | Jesse Kornbluth: You Can Handle the Truth. So See the Movie. | The Huffington Post

what a pleasant surprise: blogger posting worked, i can post again, and don't have to learn wordpress at least right away. if you see an image above, it's because as a creature of habit(s) i just ginned it up to post.

still reading? anyone? cause if you are thn all is humming along nicely in the millenial closet.

the image is my front door, it kind of looked like the picture when i got home last night.

let's see if i can recall any happenings during the last week... nope, can't do it. i did get into working with RAW image format, but until i upgrade it's not easy. might go to movie tonight, showing of felleni's 8 1/2 somewhere in town. not my favorite felleni flick (that would be Nights of Cabiria(?) but then i haven't seen it since last century.

ok the blogger clock whirlled for over an hour i'm sure, i forgot about it and was outside... now it's working again.

(glad that's over if it is).

bliipo blotter, blogger blammo.

haven't been able to post for a week.

damn-o.

today has been a strange one. yesterday i finally realized my insulin pump was functioning ok but the meter was not. phone calls and i was informed i probably needed a new battery, a tiny one, which i had forgotten about or else i never knew it. looked for old meter, couldn't find it. this morning behind no sleep i was unable to see this site on the web. the computer couldn't read my camera.

i have learned not to get too deep into fixing things when i haven't slept. but i did find meter.

faded during the afternoon, got a nap in and fixed or solved all of the above.

good morning. look what popped out of the oceanic unconscious today.

finally got to Drinking Liberally Asheville last night. nice crowd and syntax, screwy and myself spent a little downtime at hookah joes which was a new one on me.

finally totally screwed up recent watercolor. so it's scrubdown time for it, toss it in the pile i may finish some day.

i'm working towards a new watercolor palette from the book color theory made easy by ames. along with a couple of other painters he advocates using cyan, magenta and yellow as primaries. shades of cmyk. i think it will do me fine for awhile until i fall into another obsession.

while in town i talked to quite a few people, not about liberal political dilemmas but some of the online dating services around, many success stories. so i got home around 12, couldn't sleep until 4:30, and explored some of these. last month at felicities i met a few ladies all complaining that there are no single men around aville. news to me.

but after a long long stretch of living alone, i mean really alone, days with no human contact, (which served me well, prolific output during this time), it has come to me that i need to resocialize, get out and mix with the crowd. Why? in breath and out breath i guess. and should a man go the online route there are certainly a lot of women out there. one guy mentioned that he made a list of 100 desirable characteristics in a companion, then shortened it to 5 non-negotionable deserata.

hard for me to do. i operate on the creative surprise. i don't care what color your eyes are as long as they are open. and as for describing myself, ummm... don't like eating out or motorcycle riding. the rest is indescribable to me, don't have the words for it.

think i'm going to take the day off - ie turn computer off - do a few watercolor tests, and head up to the parkway. want to try a 360 degree panorama

today's karmaglyph seems to indicate a choice.

i posted a long finish to kerouac in chapel hill but the post vanished.

the talking point of the day (and don't you dare deviate from it) is "besmirch" as in "(whoever) is besmirching the military by dwelling on rape, murder, and pillage".

there is some justice to this, overstated as it is. caught in 16 double-binds, the military in iraq has my sympathy. but someone has to be a scapegoat for the war deaths. so it's the marines in hadith 6 months ago. not that they should be invulnerable, i just hope the chain of command is looked into.

this is a doodad created in flash. i have some of these scattered thru book i am revising, smaller of course. i'm cut loose from most of the other obscure activities i was involved in so hope to have revision up and available to the world in a week or less.

otherwise want to finish brief recollection of kerouac's visit to chapel hill back when the earth was cool.

going to shut computer off and run badly postponed errands now.

my aunt patricia died last week. i got to know her a little better in the last few years, earlier the extended family diaspora we all (almost) live today didn't allow it. she was a fine lady and one that i could talk to as "me".

so i worked at the mac all day taking some ancient black and white snapshots and converted them to 8X10 prints which will be fed-exed to funeral gathering. above is one, taken at my dad's collage graduation. from left to right: aunt patricia, uncle pete, grandmother mary, aunt rosy, grandpa wyly, and my dad wyly. around 1940 i think.

meanwhile i discovered i am the future of the internet. bunch of commentary today talks - again - about the change from consumer to producer that is happening today on the net some folks put up more than they take in. hope it's true. what else can a poor boy do when the nation-state withers away? see
Social Networks are the New Media

photo of a friend i took on yesterday's walk.

had a pleasant interlude at laurel's salon last evening. the conversation circled around healing (bob dylan: "everything is broken") and politics. there seems to be today a slight guilt involving tending one's garden while the world is going to hell. especially as regards the children who live in the world we leave them.

my feeling is that the guilt is well placed, and my hat is off to those who struggle to fix what is broken.

but i have come to see that any repairs that are attempted in the political, legal, academic, technological, medical or any other of the domains of the "real" world are misplaced. we are in a time and place jung calls kairos. there is no fix within the domain of the problem. it's like asking the wrong question and getting no answer.

the right stance IMHO lies in domains that are not part of the picture today. domains that are not part of the "official" reality. personal development into realms that are ambiguous, ineffable and invisible.

so the action must take place on a personal level, a leap into the mystery (or kierkegaard: "leap into faith"). no guaranteed outcome.
but to keep shuffling the pieces of today's worldview is a guarantee of failure.

note that this does not involve dismissing the game. one must play the hand that one is dealt, but not just play the game. a leap into the invisible includes dealing with the manifest, so i vote, discuss and scratch my head like we all do or should do, but, having done that, keep my eyes open - most of the time - for what the spirit is up too, and what part i play in that. what part we all play in it.

this is an unfinished watercolor. i'm currently finishing it. had nothing else to sling up here, so i photoshopped it.

talked to cousin bob, my dad, and sister jane yesterday. Conversation with dad drifted into not so much politics but the larger context, the world today which includes not only politics but all institutionalized memes (look it up). academics, medical, legal, styles, survival. in other words the evolving world. he agreed with my description of the mess we're in, thought everybody would recognize the validity of the description, but there was no solution to it. i stuck to my present obsession, that there is no solution within the domains of the institution, ie political, etc. so if there is a solution it lies outside these domains, probably is in the domain of the subjective and personal (both of which are vaporizing, crowded out by the institutions).

so it's the same old thing: the only thing to "do" is increase and be aware of the subjective, each of us, and see if the eventually recognized domain of feelings, consciousness, and inner development might allow a global change.

so what else is new?

my deal for this week. no wonder i've been hungry for pickles & ice-cream lately.

i'm not into astrology (neither am i a vegetarian, a gun-nut, an evangelical, a cyber-cowboy, or any of the other novel categories that have become the lingua franca of today). but i like this guy.

i just looked him up on the web so i could attribute the above. fabulous site. good place to check out what may be happening. totally way more informative than the rancid stylistics of the "newz".
Free Will Astrology

my set of shakuhachis. each one has a story. a shakuhachi is a japenese end blown flute, made from bamboo for the last thousand years or so. 4 holes on top, thumbhole underneath. i think they have only been used for secular music for around 300 years, before that they were relegated to court ceremonies, then for awhile were the exclusive perogative of the wondering fuke buddhist monks.

i bought my first one around 1990, never having heard one played. it took me two months (honest) just too get a sound, ie before that i thought it was "broke"; i could only produce silence. but i got into it, and could "blow" shakuhachi pretty good. improvisation. started teaching myself how to read their notation, but never got very far.

time passed (still passing) and years later i realized that i had lost my chops and could no longer play this insterment. the consensus opinion is because i have a beard now and did not then, but i'm not sure i buy that.

so now there is a new question. what about playing with a beard and false teeth? i'm not optimistic about the answer, but as a contribution to the scientific community will find out.

straight photo of the steps outside my apt.

yesterday was a busy one. i was up, down and all around with credit card paypal fiasco which i guess really was a case of identity theft. i hope it is over. i sent in an affidavit to card people, but more importantly at last have a human contact there.

got a very complimentary email from new zealand about blog which i appreciated. it started me thinking on the difference between writing about the creative process and doing it.

when i started this blog - "just to see what happens" - my goal was to post every day and while i remain a point and click typist, i did develop the ability to sit down and wing it each morning with no idea of what i would write.

but in the last year or three i've found myself doing the same thing, but sitting down first thing in the morning and constructing an image instead of message and posting it. finding little to say and no way to say it. so you will soon see a change here, major emphasis on image, maybe daily post tucked away in side bar.

the noise machine was all agog yesterday about be careful what you post. school somewhere has new rule, law, concerning students who post something someone somewhere considers inappropriate.

i am glad that this became buzz of the day because it merely makes clear how much we are owned in the land of the free. a year or so i hooked up with group of bloggers here in aville, and was surprised that two out of the initial ten felt they had to keep their names secret out of concern for their jobs. a job today means hopefully survival, and the threat of losing it, or a scholarship, because of what one expresses, is a stark reminder of what the world that corporations and branding have created: you are a "brand" and your package design better fit the style guide or else.

so to hang by your fingernails as a commodity and hope for job security, maybe a pension, has become the de facto mode of the day.

the right attitude towards this situation requires, in my estimation, the determination to forge ahead irregardless. play games with the surveillance, a lateral step here, the occasional side step. we all have to tap dance. so raise hell. remeber that mcluhin pointed out so long ago that the word "respectable" in it's present day configuration comes from 18th 19th c., when it meant "the ability to successfully withstand inspection". about the same time uniforms became manditory for the military.

and if you are blackballed because of what you write, remember that you are way better off having filtered out the ostracizers because if you are like most people, participating in this charade is the biggest loser of all.

icon of my head this morning. most mornings. this is an animated gif, detested by all, but i'm lucky: it doesn't animate for some reason and i guess that's just as well. oops, now it works. just as well.

there is a compulsion to know what is going on and do something about it that comes with human existence, it is a given. we have no choice except to experience it. the advaita thread that one finds in some vedantic and buddhist points of view looks at these compulsions as a problem that creates more problems. the solution i guess is not to lose these compulsions - probably impossible - but not to identify with them either. they can be thought of more like the weather. it may be sunny or snowing outside, and that will affect one's moods, actions, plans, but the weather is not you. if you look at it like an external unending part of life then the you that is aware becomes a different you that is unaware and acts and feels like the weather (or the compulsion to know and do).

so everyday when i run across the technical glitches that life in the cyberlane brings i can't ignore them. i want to figure them out and fix. i am acting out what i am unaware of. making a problem out of a problem.

or i pay more attention to the witness, the observer and let it fix itself.

i am dealing with paypal and my credit card. it just seems to have zapped me from nowhere and keeps on going. i've made quite a few phone calls, three were with humans, the rest were cul de sacs of button pushing.

this morning i make the rounds in my truck which is running fine. with a little luck i'll make the laundry, the dept of motor vehicles, and the art supply store. there is a glitzy one right down town but i like to deal with another, off the beaten track. all to replace a pencil set i somehow lost.

been proofing, revising book. i'll be done soon, and can start working on the next one which is slowly percolating in the woodshed back of my mind.

yesterday's walk. i met these flowers on kimberly ave.

can you remember a time when people were not scared? the millinial world has begun as a sci-fi nightmare. a collision - collusion - between govt and corporate. you are being watched (really).

i heard cokie roberts on sunday talking heads extravaganza noting that until iraq gets straightened out bush has a problem no matter what he says or doesn't. what she didn't do is take it up one notch and say that until bush gets straightened out we all have problems. the connection between iraq and all of the other varied twists (perversions) we are being locked up with is they are products of the same oligarchy, same greed, same stunted development. the iron castle (philip k. dick) the world is becoming is no accident.

picture i started last night and it's done.

yesterday's makes a beautiful - to me - 8 by 10 print.

this is from yesterday's walk. got truck back she runs fine.

so:

i'm going south on the parkway early morning, like to get some digital vistas. mon-tuz i do my trip countdown thing which takes two days. be in CH wed. come back after labor day.

drove truck to jason's this morning. walked back beautiful day, took a bunch of pictures.

the image is from faded b&w c. 1968. manitou springs, which at the time was a GI & hippie run down spa town that had seen greater days on the outskirts of that terminally right wing city of colorado springs. i think the house was where we were visited by van and lynn with a very young mike broadly. they arrived from new mexico which at the time was hosting a lot of back to the land types. new mexico is a unique environment and was too much for a lot of them. lynn stayed on our couch for 3 weeks with hepatitis {bad water).

watercolor - new - should appear above when i get a few technical details worked out. (they're now worked out).

soon i am going to put this blog on hold. devote myself to reworking the three links at top, they are all sadly out of date.

watched frontline last night, hedrick smith on something like "disappearing pensions" only the title was something like "retirement - going going gone." i couldn't finish watching it. it was really about the criminal overclass (about 5% of the population) and more of the barefaced robbery of you and me by these folks.

one statement i remember: "lifelong pension replaced by lifelong work."

my friend sam who sadly is no longer with us used to talk about this 30 years ago. we were both convinced that the postwar world where one worked and then retired was an historical blip.

but not in our wildest ruminations did we ever consider the possibility that this loss would be such a blatant heist by the powerful.

piece of a watercolor i painted at marshall and mimi's years ago.

today is catchup day. after 2 days of total lethargy i think i'm back to "normal", so my day will be normal - i hope. that means kleening the house, not trivial as it has reverted to ADD nightmare. groceries. library. bank. epson.

and i unframed a 16x20 watercolor/oil pastel that has been hanging on the wall because i figured out what it needs to be finished.

i'm listening to a book on tape in the evenings, tom horn, which i guess you would call a western which i don't read. the exception was a unique time in the past when i read louis lamour for awhile. this is the first book on tape i have had any success with. in the past i would fall asleep before the first side of the first tape ended. so i'd start it over the next night, and the night after until i gave up. this book is full of history of santa fe and prescott so it keeps me interested.

a doodle is a doodle is a doodle.

yesterday was a big fat zero.

after a very long night's sleep i feel 100% better.

what is 100% of zero?

nevermind, i'm getting it together.

what is "it"?

3 pix from yancey cvounty. just finished this one. also a watercolor in the living room. then there's the data bank jumper in the basement and i've got all the windows outfitted with slow glass.

i spent the day in recovery mode from camping out at doug's. just let what is be. i'm a creature of habit.


took this picture yesterday at doug's place. the thing is, is that it was nearly dark. that last crepuscular glow. i used the night "framing" on the sony dsc-v3 which i haven't fooled with much.

i kind of got more into shooting images than i would have thought. like everything it goes thru cycles, hadn't really been using it much for a few months.

i have nothing interesting to say so i'll stick up a few more pix as the day slithers along.


mmmm... probably should have left this one alone.

4th CD package, ready to go. click on pic to see larger.

went to dentist yesterday, more measurments for lower plate, lower teeth, which i'm starting to miss.

spent the rest of the day cranking color prints out and doing some watercolors. above is one of the print. from an ancient faded snapshot. this is where i lived with my family at big ridge in jackson county. at the top you can just see a bald that was about 45 minute walk. 360 degree view, into geogia and the great smokey park. the structue by the road is the garage, usually full of firewood and kindling and maybe a few gallons of homemade beer brewing. across the road shaded by the tress is our house, not visible. small structure to left is spring house. had to install pump and run line under the stae dirt road. you can just make out a car, 49 chrysler.

cd cover for third cd "noize toy" by, of course, modern peasant. available soon. click on it to see larger image (if i figured this so handy command out right)... oops. need to size the window. you can see the text on the back (left) i went a little too far.

i spent yesterday at the computer. from 8 in the morning until midnight. this is not normal for me nowadays, and i kept checking to see if i should stop and do something useful. however i was having fun and all work no play you know about. so i finished four CD covers and completely reformatted book, finished a watercolor and began another. one whole day of play.

doctor's appointment this morning, and i stopped on the way back to pick up a few cheap frames. right now i'm struggling to turn the computer off so i can go shopping.

from a walk i took a couple of days ago.

big news here is i went to church last night. merle haggard and bob dylan. it was fun. i went by myself, and was lucky enough to snag a parking place at prichard park. this was the first time in a long time for me to be downtown aville on a saturday night. walking around the festive streets and carnival ambiance i was struck once again how different it is.

the last time i heard dylan at the civic center really unprofessional sound and acoustics. i got seated right before merle h. and the strangers opened up and i was immediately relieved that the sound was fine. they played a comfortable, in a way world-weary sort of way, set. when they played runaway woman(?) i was knocked out.

never heard it or some of the other songs before. there is something so "natural" about merle and his music. they've been where you've been, unlike the mediated world of images.

dylan was fun. his voice was a little too loud in the mix, but not by much. the weird keyboard he played, the alternate arrangements, the vocal quality, the phrasing, the surprises, all were on a light hearted note, even the screamer's like all around the watchtower. thanks again bob.

there was a nice looking small frame on the wall, looks like a color photo i may have taken years ago in mexico. a long time ago i had a lady friend who looked at it and shrugged "so?" anyway this morning i decided i wanted to change it and above is what it changed to. printed on arch's, really works well.

my sister jane on the phone was wondering why comedians - like whoever the one who was with bush last week - seem to be taking the place of the news, or as we say today "mainstream press".

then there is neil young who may be wondering why we - the hoi polloi, or maybe the young, have not yet voiced outrage at the Powerful.

maybe the answer to these questions is fear.

i mean a fear that goes back for more than my lifetime. survival for the common man has always meant keeping clear of the power pushers. but after WWII the PR and marketing domain became ultra-skilled at directing and adjusting core values. this resulted in a certain comfort level, the creation of a large middle-class and a form of denial that marked that world, the pollyannish dumb consumer happy as a lark but nonetheless way back in his or her mind, repressed, unconscious, a bad feeling about it.
3AM stuff.

today it seems marks the conversion of unconscious fear (which because it is real and yet denied the human acts out) into conscious fear. we need to lean into that fear, acknowledge it, talk about it openly.

i think the next 12 months are going to be very dangerous.

this morning's pictogram.

what it means in today's context i am sure i don't know.

perhaps that i will see neil young film before the day is over.


or it could be that i will finally straighten out insulin pump and other medical doo-dads that have become strangely scattered.


or maybe that i will continue to work on setup on sony notebook that materialized on my doorstep.


i might even set up AC for days ahead.


and for sure i'll wash dishes - all 3 of them.

i found this on my computer desk. it was in a stack of loose papers full of to-do lists.

Clean air
Lean smoke
First you talk
And then you don't

now i have something weighty to consider: do i work this doggeral into book or wait?

hey wait a minute i'm already waiting.

latest oil. still drying so i shot it with digicamera instead of scan. this image seems a little cold, think i'll warm her up.

famous last words.

[later] ok, warmer.

now i have to write about... something.

on tap: couple watercolor landscapes, finish re-laying out book whistling in the dark, finish CD cover for third CD, making sure i have no alternate takes. take a hike. smell the coffee.

listen to ten minutes of millinial minimalist massive tone poem i did yesterday in a fit of creative excess.

i saw the doc yesterday, routine, and stopped on the way back to visit george. we talked about all the "oldsters" we know who, once having dropped off the wage-slave truck, engage in some creative activity. no golf.

in some obscure way i take this to be an analog to the vedantic practice of living the last 7th of a life disengaged in the woods. only it is in the noosphere as well as biosphere today. and it may be that this is what Meher Baba was pointing to when he allowed that in the west creativity may serve the same function as the spiritual has in the east.

another total sleep for 14 hours last night. deep sleep. why? the day ended for me around 6 or 7. today began at 8. got up maybe once or twice briefly.

and dream; i'm still waking up maybe i can remember it.

i was somewhere in the orient. taiwan? my children were small. some kind of evacuation was in process. we ended up on a c-47 with about a thousand people crowded onto it. i did my best to keep track of children because the plane extended into all kinds of temporary rooms, built-ons, a rear platform kind of like a caboose, open to the air. there were places much too close to exposed propellors. we were on the ground, and preparations for take off went on and on while the crowd wondered around, in and out. my wife sally was somewhere. the pilots were phillipinos or malaysian and could not speak english. there was some kind of problem, they kept coming and going, much radio chatter. the folks were mostly women and children and military men. confusion. i kept pushing thru throng to find a child, mine or someone else's, standing in a place not good for take off, clicking seat belts, asking if they knew where other children were. it got to the point where i was somehow feeling that my responsibility was for the safety of way too many adults and children but i kept at it.

i was in the cockpit (no door, people crowded around) when finally we could take off. taxied thru an underground place, up thru a ramp, and emerged onto surface when the pilots hit full throttle. the overloaded plane thundered towards the end of the runway towards trees and forest. we lifted off too late and crashed thru the top of the continually taller trees and brush for a long time, finally breaking thru to open sky.

activity continued at a feverish pace within the airplane, accounting for children, pulling people from precarious positions. my wife kept popping up full of complaints. a general i somehow knew and i would talk from time to time. he was well spoken and calm, not your stereotypical cartoon of military type. at some point he received disturbing information and called a meeting of the officers on board and i went with him. information had been radioed to the plane that it had just been discovered that a phone somewhere had been tapped putting the aircraft in danger.

but we finally landed. people everywhere inside the plane scurried around looking for people. i did the same, rounding up children and looking for the small unpacked personal effects we had managed to load. by the time i had everything i could find rounded up the interior which was like a train station, vast, was almost empty.
disembarking i ran into my father who was part of the military contingent and followed him into a separate exit, into a room with the military contingent. they threaded into a room and i was left outside the room. so i opened the door and looked inside. they were preparing for exit and mr. bush was among them. for some reason most everybody, including myself, was holding small signs on the ends of sticks. mine was about 4 inches square and had a large caret (upside down "V") with small print below. i hurriedly turned it upside down so the thing pointed down instead of up and scrawled something below it. my idea was to follow bush off the aircraft so TV coverage would include my sign over his head, pointing downwards. by the time i got the sign done he was way ahead of me and i couldn't catch up. the general i had been talking to was in a wheelchair. he could not find his daughter.

back in the interior of the craft i found her. she was in a wheel chair. we discussed her situation and she pulled out of her chest some kind of tube full of medication that kept her going. i picked her up and acrobatically exited with her down a ramp at the tail end of the aircraft. the general was pleased, and we parted on good terms.

there was some kind of kiosk i ran across. the general and several medical personnel were putting everything up. there was a small crowd there and some kind of meds was being distributed in a hurry for stress. the general had a problem giving me any, so i dropped down and crawled under the surface of the kiosk where a young woman who was handing the stuff out was, and she grabbed a handful of pills and gave them to me. there was discussion of what the meds were called, i wish i could remember the latin names slung about.

i entered a room full of men and a small temporary bar where drinks were being distributed. my dad was there. by hook or crook i pushed my way to the front and got two irish whiskeys. like back in my drinking days i edged back out of the crowd with two doubles, both of which i intended to drink. but i gave on to my father and we both downed the potion in a celebratory flourish: mission accomplished.

today's limbic moodogram turns out to be from a very ancient photo i took and developed, being a darkroom person at the time, of my oldest son eric when he was about 3 years old. we were living in basalt colorado.

yesterday... yesterday... yesterday... spent most of the day avoiding household tasks. instead spent a lot of time totally screwing up a watercolor. you've heard of overworking this medium? i went way past that stage. friday nite thanks to felicity at the bloggerama i picked up my oils pastels, rubbed,scrubbed, scratched, and layed it on.

i have a dim memory of seeing someone's work on the net who - i think - went into oil pastels with a technical pen. how this could be done i don't know, because oils pastels never completely dry. maybe it needs uv coating first.

anyway that is next for this particular graffiti like image. then with a little luck i can put it away and hide it for awhile. meanwhile i've been waiting for a week for a thin glaze on an oil to dry. want to finish it today also.

sunday has become the day i clean the house. sort of happened by itself, but i'll continue the habit, not a bad way to function for a man with my inclinations.

next week is alumni day at christ school, where i graduated so long ago. after looking at the registration form and the activities i decided to finesse it. plus that saturday evening the dylan show, the merle haggard show and an afternoon nap seems like a good idea.

another thing i've been putting off is redoing book. i got proof copy, saw a whole bunch i had to rework. maybe putting off is not quite the right word: in a situation like this i like to give the thing - and me - a rest before i wade back in.

when 3:30 rolls around i'll be at unca to hear carl ernst speak. looking forward to seeing some of my old Baba friends i've not seen in awhile.

guess i did this a couple of months ago. watercolor & gouache?

nice day yesterday. spent it standard mode, a little of this that and the other.

a most pleasant bloggerama in the evening at feliciti's in w. asheville. it was like asheville of old, sort of.

i finished reading hillman's peaks and vales for maybe the 3rd time. it just keeps appearing. tomorrow carl ernst is speaking on sufism - i think - at unc. he has written a very clear overview of the historical sufis that i liked because it was so down to earth.

dentist sent my lower plate back to lab. just from trying it a few times i feel like i've been hit pretty hard in the jaw.

i've been reading wave by walter mosely. his easy rawlins mystery series is a good one, well worth reading, covers a lot of lives and times, going back to depression texas and forward to zoot suit los angeles ghetto. he also has a series (2 books?) about homeless ex-con named "plato" which is innovative structurally. and working on the chain gang, non-fiction, is one of the most cogent exposition of contemporary limbic control i've read.

like all of the artists i have a special respect for, he is continually on the edge of new forms. i think his latest is a kid's book.

beautiful day, think i'll try a walk. soon as i find my walker.

will attend blogasheville bar-be-que tonight. that line by dylan, "feel like talking to someone, but i don't know who". speaking of which i bought last minute ticket to dylan-merle haggart next sat. worst seat in the house. thought i'd try it anyway. i'd been waffling, richard's missive that he is now playing the organ tipped me towards going. bet he's not as good as augie myers - who played on time out of mind i believe and goes back to the sir doug quintet.

otherwise up against time crunch today and i'm moving very slowly. i bet i drop a stitch or two before sunrise tomorrow.

i removed pic that was here yesterday. didn't like it, couldn't make it work. so i spent hours doing this one. from same watercolor.

gotta go to dentist in an hour.

for those of you who wonder about asheville today, the center of some vortex or another and new age theme park, check this out:

fellowsfog's latest photos slideshow on Flickr

from a watercolor i started last night.

chernoble 20th anniversary. at the time i was driving by myself thru moab utah along the colorado. heading back to arizona and intel cubeland.

yesterday i was grocery shopping at my usual place, a hop skip and jump away. it is an off-brand store, old, like the 50's, wide uncrowded aisles, no gourmet organic mi-mash. i've been shopping there for years. i noticed a plain looking blonde on the other side of the store pushing a cart and jabbering into her cell phone.

a bit later i was leaving one aisle, turning to get to the next aisle. it was a tight turn and there was a cart unattended blocking my way. i was pushing my cart to ease the other one back when the blonde suddenly appeared still with cell phone and started to berate me for crashing into her cart. i was stunned, couldn't believe what was happening, thought i was misunderstanding her, but she kept on and i totally lost my temper, got down in the hole she was in, and replied in kind. i haven't been blind-sided like that in awhile.

now the interesting thing was how quick the injustice rose to the top and triggered in my mind a host of replies, possible actions i could take, etc. that continued to reverberate afterwards. using some of the meditative space i've been working on i dampened the anger, let it drift away. but it gave me a new appreciation of road rage and the other ridiculous anomalies that have become part of life in the new millennium.

how close we all are to the edge.

imaginary icon.

this morning the weather is perfect for me. i am attached to cool shadowy mornings, when the air feels like a cool stream, and there is no sound but the distant birds.

got proof copy of book yesterday, what can i say, i am impressed by the technology of one-off color printing of a book. much different than when i was in that line of work. something must have changed... oh yeah, the technology... i think they use xerox docuprint and the color matches monitor proof very well.

i never printed out a local copy so i only proofed onscreen, a dubious approach in my experience. so i'll be proofing it soon i wish, want to get the thing on it's way out of here.

spring has sprung. took this picture out of my front door yesterday.

when i was in collage, the classical hellenistic age was always contrasted with the hellenic. the short story went something like this:

the hellenic circa 800 - 330 bce was the flowering of the classical. Apollonian, the beginning of philosophy, perhaps a mystical side we didn't hear much about (Dionysus, eleusis, delphi).

the hellenic followed (circa 300 - 85 bce) and was regarded as a step backwards culturally speaking. Superstitious, oriental, no longer concerned with the invisible ideal.

today the distinguishing between the two eras is still maintained, but the hellenistic is being looked at much closer.

a lot happened during the hellenistic: the invention of the broad avenues with sweeping monumental facades on both sides. the vista or panarama.

the metamopheus of sculpture from the depicting the hellenic ideal, the idea, the platonic into the hellenistic modeling of actual people (the beginning of portraiture), the rise of the monumental, huge statues of the despot.

the dropping of the eternal human spirit from drama and replacement with stylized character types, ie the old miser, the business man. the beginning of soap opera.

in painting the hellenistic went for illusion and was impressed with the techniques used even if there was no content, ie the story of the painter who painted a picture of a wooden wall with grapes hanging from it and fooled the birds.

why am i writing this? today's image deluge is PR. the monumental statues of 20th c. tyrants is a familiar image, the gestalt of identifying people by their occupation > lifestyle, (think bizness man and iski instructor. as for admiration of illusion, think special effects.

so what you ask at the same time i do.

if you see the picture above (blogger being just a little strange lately), it is today's sign or maybe the beginning of one. i took the photo when i was 10 or 11 i guess, with a little "spy camera", 8mm b&w. i recently recovered some small snapshots i took with this thing and think i'll make them into 8X10 color prints. part of my thinking on this is the resolution will be so poor at that size that it will allow me to slop around a bit, which is about all i feel like doing lately.

yesterday was cool and rainy, my favorite kind of day. i got out in the morning to lester road to pick up laundry, i was totally out of clothes. got by the library to turn in the parts of a CD i could find - jewel cases not up to people checking CD in and out - and visited friend Steve.

in the afternoon i paced, brooded, fixed, rearranged oil paint set up. i'm in the middle of a portrait - not my strong suit - and, having painted myself into a corner, have to save it somehow. always a lesson in humility.

this morning i'll drive to the - ugh - new walmart megastore. i'm looking for a fan for the truck. also noticed new big leak in the camper interior, so more fixit.

i've got 5 or 6 CDs i've done; i'm remastering some, figuring out where i may have alternate takes or even repeats of various pieces on them. not the kind of work an ADD addled head is good at. perseverence furthers. also have found a number of photos from harry's reunion circa '85 i want to put up on Harry's site i have been nudging forward. right now it's going nowhere fast, but then that's the way it has been, i suspect, for most of the folks who were there, if not the entire demographic of educated baby boomers.

i don't know, got a few things done this morning but since then have been avoiding the hell with it take a nap.

book is in the mail from lulu.com. they're fast.

take a nap

it's thursday and i'm trying to post one more time. i did get a boilerplate reply from blogger support so maybe can get online again at some point.

-------> finally can post again. offline since saturday. problem seems to be that blogger needed some work on their servers and did this saturday. this seems to have messed with people's settings. site feed, archiving and post pages settings had been changed. i had to post happy flower in recognition of being able to babble online again.

last of two new CDs i'm about done with.

no sleep last night. there has to be a better way.

got another load of trash ready to go tuesday.

started an oil painting. doing it fast with big brushes. i'll do anything for kicks.

front cover, more or less, of one of two new CDs i'm getting together.

yesterday i ran into puzzle of using CSS - cascading style sheets - along with blogger settings trying to insert picture into a blog. zow! picture still not up, and site still not quite back to what it should look like. an afternoon frittered away.

BTW check this out: it's a pretty squared away collection of son eli's very interesting music. he goes by the moniker of omegenon.

man in my lucid moments lately i have been wondering about suffering and the human condition. i've been more or less out of it (for sure it's more - for a day or two. i've got top teeth in now, but still can't go near the bottom set.

finally got to grocery store today, i'm set to hole up until my lower gum heals.

dealing with CSS2 for another blog. never used it before, and it's not new.

and for those of you interested in this type of thing, a parody of charles taylor's web page (WNC congressman) surfaced last week. a lot of work went into this.

long ago and far away... about as faraway as my face. photo of son nathan, halloween in jackson county.

up most of the night, the AM radio burbling and drifting. the word of the night was "messianic".

institutions wear out. history and pre-history is among other things the story of some utilitarian idea of how to organize human effort to solve some problem. the solution becomes an institution it works so well, and then, much later, slippage occurs and the institution no longer works so well. wilber defines this as "inner contradictions" rising to the surface. i characterize the process as the solution changing the problem, or the world,, so the once robust institution that worked so well loses it's effectiveness.

examples abound: hunter-gatherer bands, theocracies, commercial empires, all flourished then flopped.

now today's institutions are fading: think schools, health, hospitals, communism, democracy, electoral politics, adam smith's capitalism where one man's greed could benefit the many, academics, the nation-state, war, and a big etc.

why are they failing now? one reason is sheer numbers. in my lifetime the world population has doubled - i think. languages have disappeared. animal populations never in contact with one another are being thrown willy-nilly together.

so the idea of nations at war is obsolete. the idea of small groups using the pollution of the mercantile system (oil, guns, bombs, toxic chemicals) to harm the enemy is taking it's place.

and the confusion between these two worldviews is rampant. after the USA wins the war against terror, who signs the surrender papers? where are the POWs? the declaration of war? how do the participants of the war surrender?

the answers to these questions are not clear because the "official" institution of war on our side is not relevant. bush's war is a war in the world of brands and pseudo-events. read the image by daniel boorstein and the land of desire by william leach to glimpse the present day context. reality tv. infomercials. repositioning product (the war is being fought for what purpose?). the speeded up voiceover in ads that is not understandable, verbal equivalent of "small print".

the real world, as usual, is not that real.

==========> Later

it's so improbable that words broadcast to the world or your neighbor mean what you think they might mean, so much so that i had to get a picture up. and the strange thing is that to me the words and the image have about the same amount of meaning: not enough. enough.

spent yesterday moving slow, jaw and gums really swollen. i'll move slow today also. sometime this week i may be able to slip in lower dental plate. or not. don't you love these medical updates?

as the state of the union unravels i have been reluctant to write anything about it. it's hard to do justice to the hallucinatory newz cycle with words.

but i'll try.

the two most confusing concepts boggling everyone's consciousness today are "nation" and "war". whenever the worldview changes bigtime confusion reigns. and it is changing. the old world evaporates and something else takes it's place. the european enlightment was the last time we had to go thru this.

"nation" still has a dictionary meaning, and plays a huge part in the human experience. next to gender, it is probably how most of us identify ourselves today.

it was a useful concept that is playing itself out right in the middle of our lives. as ridiculous as it may seem, there is a trend towards identification with what i call "affinity groups". more and more people respond when asked what they are with something that they are involved with, which is not their nationality. it might be "poet", "musician", "artist", "bank-robber", "homeless", "insurgent", "lawyer" and so on. vocations and avocations.

"war" is closely connected to this metamorphose of meaning. when i was young it was pretty clear: we lived in a worldview in which one nation might declare war on another. uniforms identified which army was which, and conventions of the last 300 years held: if a soldier was captured by the enemy he was incarcerated in a stalag. the redcross knew his or her name and where he was imprisoned. he might receive a box of candy from home.

those that fought the war were defined differently than those that didn't. for example during the battle of waterloo, the nearby fields were being worked by the peasants just as they did every year.

technology and the moving hand of change put a stop to this distinction. the historical trend of war has always been to involve more and more civilians, for example the siege of tyre by alexander.

but during the last 200 years the change became complete. i don't want to go into the story here, but think WWI when the front stretched from the baltic to the Mediterranean. as it slowly moved back and forth any village or town in the way was erased. WWII air marshall tedder was quite explicit in targeting civilian populations and not factories of war. hilter did the same.

recently enemies are blowing up selected and random groups of civilians. if you think back about 150 years, the sterotypical european anarchist ran around with a beard and a bomb.

but he alsways threw it at somebody, a target, and not into a crowd of humans.

so "nations" at "war" is a whole differant thing now: you might say because profit on weapons of "minimum-to-maximum mass destruction" have been so high that the world is now flooded with everything from saturday night specials to atomic bombs. at the same time the non-military humans of the world are now on the front lines.

i'll be in recoup mode for a few days for sure. feel like i did when a sledge hammer connected with my face.

oh, wait a minute, i don't think that happened. but that's how i feel. finished the high window by chandler, all the time trying to spot what he does that makes his books so great.

no, i did not figure it out. attitude and metaphors i guess.

had lower teeth extracted this morning, ain't science wonderful. problem is upper and lowers don't mesh so go back tomorrow.

"missing" refers to my presence, not teeth. i'm swollen, distorted, in pain, drugged so i'll probably be hiding under the bed for a few days.
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saw dentist at 4:00, and now i can at least use both upper and lower teef at the same time. but put them together --- ie chew > zow instant pain. about a week with some return visits and i'll have a feel for them. both negative and positive of course.

picture from sunday walk.

35mm slides, photos, and computer hardware gone. a real hassle sorting thru these things but perseverance furthers.

tomorrow morning i get lower teeth extracted etc etc. i may be scarce for awhile.

today's icon from watercolor i just completed.

spring cleaning is what i've been doing. at first i couldn't give it a name. but i am lightening up. finished with photographs today, all slides will have been sorted by dark. i'll have quite a few pieces of hardware sitting on the street before tuesday.

picture is from a scanned gum bichromate i did early 80s.

this morning's before breakfast offering.