ho-hum. day evaporates.

another day, another dollar.

as my friend mr. smith used to reply as i slipped out the door after a workday, "you mean you get a whole dollar?"

back yard. last night. or twilight. things were very quiet.

too quiet.

---

while he thought he was mulling this over, the lights went out and the starry sky rolled into position overhead. there were too many moons, so he left his perch on the park bench and wondered north in the night despite not registering the cracks in the sidewalk.

---

went to see doc w/ what i thought was a spider bite, he seems to think it is some sort of trauma to the ankle, gravity pooling blood etc.

i had a flash last night and decided to unify this bloggerama, taking the direction my friend chall gray seems to be taking. (he is the youngest son of one of my oldest friends, sam gray, no longer with us on this train.)

just sentences. reading farewell my lovely (again? don't know yet) kind of reinforces this mode. so here goes:

---

glanced down at the road. mistake. it had vanished, followed by a row of red glowing dots snaking behind in the dark.

it's tuzday pm and i just had to do a fix on the image below. so i did.

watercolor i fooled endlessly with while marooned w/out a car. it didn't work so as is my habit i tried to rescue it. learned a few things. it will go in failure pile.

this morning i will visit richard and debbie to see if wireless works on their network. into town to buy pair of badly needed shoes. stop at insurance store to make sure truck coverage is what i need. order memory stick from amazon, thanks to oldest son eric's birthday gift. send mp3 i did to nephew jonathon for his birthday. finish cleaning up "studio". stop by hospice to visit carolyn. maybe make an appointment with doc for a very swollen ankle - bug bite i think. get ready to drive to chatham county.

upgraded to new blogger, now have to do tricks to post. i guess a g3 running os 9 is going to have to be relegated to spare parts pile.

i'm posting this to see if work-around works around.
----------------------------------------------------
well it kind of works.

the above image is a piece of wood i found yesterday.

talked to miss nancy on fone yesterday, looking out back window, when much to my susprise new management walked past w/ 2 well dressed folks and into basement. new owners? buyers?

when i pay this months rent i'll rattle cage a little, find out what is happening. saw carolyn in hospice friday, she wants to go home.

what it might look like if you were just back from kiev.

talked to daughter nicole this morning, her brothers eli and nathan will be helping her finish her move this morning. this weekend.

just finished a painting. interesting because it was definitely one of those cases of a watercolor gone wrong. i have been developing habit of finishing these anyway. often learn a lot. this one i added guach. a lot on one section. now i'm curious about a watercolor i saw reproduced in a book where the artist had used a varnish or shellac over guache - on paper i guess - and do the same.

also hope to finish birthday present for my nephew jon. of course his birthday was a few months ago.

otherwise my day is aimed towards

kleening up my area.

out my front door. plant is forsythia, night comes dark.

delightful conversation with son eli this morning.

today is gray, that's what they say, i'm going out any old way.

old errends never end, they just begin again.

yesterday was blur, bouncing here and there, all fell into place. thanks to everyone that helped me. i am now mobile, which means i can buy a new belt that fits me. and shoes, groceries. return library books. activities that have been on hold for awhile. road trip coming up.

wheel problem solved. karma, manners and spirit win every time. i will be shopping for some kind of camper unit, lightweight, simple. the wild is definetly calling me. maybe a field trip, the golden strand, san juan rockies, n. arizona.

west asheville?

twilight in leicester yesterday. shot RAW format, still don't know what to do with it.

ok ok i know i'm on vacation in the canadian rockies talking to a marmoset at 6,000 feet above sea level and am breaking my rule about a week off. but i had a dream last night - this morning really - and am compelled to comment on it.

short story even shorter, the godess asked me in a light hearted way as i sat myself before the play began, "can i help you?" twinkle in the eye, hint of hostess. i replied "i'd like to like you to help me."

out of curiousity i looked at this blog's posts from 4 years ago, the begining of the Bush War. below is some of what i found:

"today the noise is talking about maybe we will preemptively strike iraq before they premptively strike us before the war starts. public discourse will never recover from this kind of jumbled language.

the main thing about the start of the war is that at that point i will be rooting for our side - once the ballon goeas up a lot of us, as the buzz word at my former employer intel goes, will "disagree and commit".

but i still think the war is a bad idea. why?

well not because war, any war, needs to relagated to past cultural eras (altho it does). sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

but not this time. because:

1) we are uninformed about the worldview in that part of the world. how things are settled. often a problem is solved without even talking openly about it, just a word here, a realignment there. as vietnam proved it is a bad idea to fight a war against a people you can't talk with because you don't comprehend the local worldview.

2) if we win in one day and saddam's body is displayed on tv (don't be surprised if this happens) we will just have begun a long, draining, frustrating, dangerous, and expensive series of blunders that will cost us and the world dearly. remember yugoslavia, another arbitrary country made up of disparate peoples?

3) one of the justifications of the war we hear repeatedly from the vox populi is that the president knows things we don't. this is true. and some of the things he knows are no doubt blood-curdling threats to our susvival.

however it is good to remind ourselves that we know things he doesn't. the corporate oligarchy running this war is by definition out of touch with the way you and i live. remember bush sr.'s problem with checking out in a grocery line? i would feel much better if the prez and his cabinent each spent a couple of months on the street with few resources, learned about our world, returned to government and then made their decision about war.

....

5) the deal as of now is that if iraq disarms before the 17th no war. iraq is considered disarmed when england and the u.s. say so. that is the sole criteria today.

6) the scripted press conference last week, and the governor's yearly meeting the week before with the president; each governor got to ask the prez 2 questions submitted in advance. in the past these events were loose and people TALKED to each other. the secrecy, the disnformation to the american people, the extreme twisting of logic and rhetoric make the hitlarian "big lie" look like a very primitive way to manipulate the public. if there is any public left.

.....

the war wobbles on. people like myself, and there are a lot, find themselves in the interesting position of how to comment on the decision's of the government as the language of public discourse continues to shrink into a small puddle of pre-canned cliches.

on the one hand i do not wish disaster to our troops. i want them to survive and win.

on the other hand the ineptness, the hubris, the linguistic distortions of our government, the newly institutionalized secrecy, the corporate connection, can only be ignored by a self-imposed denial.

some of the recent postings on this site do not so much represent, in my view, absolute truth as much as they represent perspectives absent from the "main stream media". (tip of the hat to the neo-conservitives am radio rabble rousers for that last phrase.)

we are not losing the war. we are seeing, sort of, what happens when a lot of powerful, culturally isolated people born and bred to money and power, sit in closed, sealed rooms, incapable of understanding worldviews other than thier own, or of even realizing that there are other worldviews, and plan the future.

one of the things i have been hearing over and over from am radioland is "the president knows more than we do." i disagree. he knows different things than most of us. but because of class and socio-economic distinctions, he and his cohorts are surprisingly naive about the world of other people. including the islamic world.

repeating myself: saddam's hold on a piece of the world is a problem. the hundred's maybe thousands of those like him will continue to be a problem as time goes by. the proliferation of WMD, like saturday night specials, will continue to be a growing problem.

the war, win lose or draw, will not solve any of these problems but only add to them. only rubes, marks, aristocratic provencials, or corporate oligarchs incapable of transcending thier point of view can think otherwise."

if i, the archtypical or maybe typical man on and of the street, reacted to the initiation of the Bush War as the above indicated, how come?

spent yesterday hoofing it, signed title to defunct truck over to mechanic, UPSd biz papers, stocked up on groceries, took taxi home.

visited by succubus last nite.

beyond synchronicity. or maybe meta-synchronicity.

what happens when everything is so synchronistic that "i" don't notice it? one hand clapping?

i can't seem to wake up today. but if i do i'll write something cogent about responsibility being the ability to respond and the qustion "respond to what?"

lovely day outside yesterday. didn't see much of it.

but i did see this - well actually a bit of it - that strangely lifted my spirits: buddy guy and jerry lee lewis singing and playing "hadacol boogie". not sure of the production, but it was on PBS fund raiser. a tribute to jerry lee, all kinds of young, middle-age, and old musicians, very loose. buddy had never played w/ jerry lee before, and probably no running thru the song prior to performance. in fact i don't think any of it was setup beforehand, just drop in and play awhile along with whatever the last man standing came up with. i didn't watch much of it but the short piece with buddy and jerry playing "hadacol boogie" was a knockout and a real piece of real americana before it evaporated in the face of money and technology: mississipi delta, southside chicago, hillbilly, shades of jimmy rogers and hank williams. american music from the back porch before it became another monument to corporate grandiousity and greed. below is short trailor but alas, no mr. guy.

and if you are unfamiliar with "hadacol" you're not as old as i am. it connects the patent medicine snake-oil potions of 19th century with today's deluge of pharmaceutical modd enhancers.

picture i got in mail from sister jane. taken last nov-dec.

i've been thinking about the word "home". obviously one of the basic signifiers for us humans. during my lifetime there were plenty of novels published dealing with this concept. i think kurt vonnegut's son first - and only? - book circled around the word. this was one of the best coming of age in the 60's accounts that i have read, but it was awhile back and i may be misremembering the "home" subtext. (can't remember the title either).

when i lived in prescott az in the 80's there was a very quiet group, cult, religion, or group outside of town called "home". they ran the best small bookstore i have ever visited, every book a keeper.

so many novels about finding home. a sign of the times, then and now, although i don't know if recent lit. follows this theme or typos.

i have heard of an effort to recast the "homeless" as the "houseless". this seems to me to not be a good thing. a house is not a home. (this is the title of a book by polly adler (?), but the subject is altogether different). if the homeless are merely houseless then we are all homeless, but some have houses which are, in this scenario, commodities to flip, buy and sell for profit.

the concept of home runs deep, back to the last ice-age. various linguistic artifacts point to this. "home is where they have to take you in". "home is where the heart is".

in a time where home is considered a temporary investment, a financial instrument affected by your neighbors facades, where many have second homes and many have none, it is no wonder so many books have been written with the subtext of finding one's home. a modern concern, but one that does not find a voice in the official mediated discourse which has degenerated into meaningless postures anyway.

"show me the way to go home
i'm tired and i want to go to bed."

picture is from marathon walk yesterday, can't remember exactly where i took it.

posting late afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. the centerpiece of the day was a walk to the bank where i had a few things to do. i would guess it is about 2 miles there and ditto back. this is a walk i have taken over the years when necessary. but lately i have been avoiding it.

so i ran into this character on kimberly ave. looks a little photoshopped, no? well it is. it may be a clear case of not leaving well enough alone. anyway walked on and had a tough time making it. sure enough BG was low and that was why. got home 3 hours later.

at home i have begun kitchen, clearing, cleaning, scrubbing, mopping etc.

tonight i might take the plunge and phone technical support for a teensy computer conundrum i am dealing with. i tried last night, talking with a connection/voice i could hardly understand or hear. my gaurdian whatchamascallit must have been around, because i had sense enough to politely end the conversation and test BG - blood glucose - which was down into the grouchy stupid level so i adjusted and went to bed.

this mornings cyberdoodle. taken last summer.

the summer nights can be, of course, spooky around here. so can i, for that matter.

i am dealing with what i call "false pride". deep down in my soul i feel proud that i had no idea who annette something something is or was. you know, the lady logo who had so much fun that she died and the legal infrastructure had to be the instrument of deciding who "gets" her body.

false pride because who cares.

then there was the right wing radio noise i heard the other day talking about how in china a visitor's time to be a tourist often coincides with the execution of a prisoner with a good kidney.

it might even be true. it might become true. it might be forgotten. it might become material for a seinfeldt revival.

heros and victims, saints and sinners, winners and losers, the quick and the slow.

the age of meltdown. swords into plowshares not, but suicide vests into flowing vestments maybe.

yep. another doodle. graffiti? fine art? no.

seemd like the thing to do at the time.

and i'm sure it was.

visited my landlady in hospice yesterday thanks to b.j. who lives across the street. she was also kind enough to run me by grocery store and car insurance, both better late than never.

faded around 6 in the evening, up at 6 this morning. pretty solid sleep.

so what can i contribute to cybersphere this cycle? not much.

circle the wagons. button up. hunker down.

play some music. play around.

another riverside foto. i had a friend who was incarcerated at the old highlands nuthouse for awhile. she did ink drawings which often featured this creature, or something close to it. so i learned something, but don't exactly think it means much.

many roads traveled later i worked in these same buildings.

today there is too much to do. i'll let you know about it after the day is done.

another shot from riverside cemetery.

thanks to wolfe scholar jim for this link about t. wolfe's father's angels.

nothing much to report today: snow on the ground and my own perplexity about how life unfolds. i feel overwhelming need to change my way of living. as penultimate phase it serves it's purpose - whatever that may be - but leaves a little undone as ultimate faze.

too late for cry for help. and what might that be anyway?

i guess the most interesting to me development in my life is a new inability to express myself in words. spoken words, and i suppose the written as well. the language under words seems to intersect with the spoken and i end up either babbling or silent. and very very few people seem to pick up on the meta meaning, including myself. the other day friend t alluded to the manner in which i had just expressed something or another. not in an unkind way, but very observant. here is one of the few poems from 40 years ago i still have left that might be a foreshadowing of this situation:


Frozen at the Moment

The words come and
The the words go,
Leaving something
Just below.

Like icebergs sailing
Through the sky,
Chilly absence
Meets the eye.

An icy ripple
Without a name
That wakes me up:
I dream the same.

riverside cemetary in montford. i think i visited this place a long time ago, but not sure. t dropped by late afternoon and we drove there, most pleasant respite from the dithering i was engaged in all day.

yesterday was kind of... a disaster. helping bobby and rae move was more or less SOP, and i was glad to help. but when i got back things rearranged themselves so fast i'm still trying to catch up. first i lost the use of the car i have been using. this belongs to my landlady of ten years, c. she is in hospice where she has been for a couple of weeks. d., who is helping her manage the place, picked up the car which needs scheduled maintenance and inspection. she had told me to drive it because she never would again. i guess i won't either.

when i talked w/ d., who seems like a pleasant and reasonable human being, i realized that the hubbub surrounding the new situation involves some kind of lawsuit with one of the renters, and talking to the folks upstairs the night before who have moved out and want their deposit back that there probably will be something similar happening there.

there is apparently some sort of mold problem in both buildings which i was unaware of.

and d. drove off with a load of library books which i was taking back to library and i lost his phone number.

all signs that i need to move on to the next station on way to destination but i'm pretty overwhelmed. not quite paralyzed - deer in the headlights - but i was naive enough to think that things would unfold in some non=apocalyptic form. and they have, i guess, but i'm stuck bigtime.

my hope was buy vehicle and that would last longer than i will. and move one last time to somewhere i can settle into and get some work done.

but as we all know whatever is is, and whatever that is changes.

so i guess everything in this strange life story of mine is ok, but the specter of doom is right outside the door, lurking.

i suppose my next step is to invite it in out of the rain.

henderson county walk. treatment is a little on the gaudy side??

------------------------------->

that was this morning. i drove over to bobby and rae's around 12 i thought to help them load one particularly heavy object into truck. they are moving out of the city.

turned out i was needed on the other end so got back at 5:30. very rainy day, big uhaul got stuck on muddy uphill slope, tower called etc. but it was an ok outing, i enjoyed it.

now i'm trying to figure out how to turn cellphone off. i just got a text message - my first ever - from eddie murphy, followed by another telling me how many units i was charged.

now it beeps periodically. hope it means the battery is running down.

stone rocking in the free world.

coast2coast was especially interesting last night altho i hardly heard it i was sleeping through it. something about the stock market and the planets.

astrological investing.

numerological de-vesting.

psychological devastation.

metaphysical investigation.

metaphorical navigation.

obstinate hesitation.

no relation.

from foto i took yesterday at cousin myria's hideaway. i had a most pleasant visit with about 6 young folks from here and there, nice walk. there is a haybale structure and several others scattered here and there and it looks like a great place to sidestep the daily punding that we get by living. a work in progress, winter could be tough as is if we ever have another one.

today i spent totally confused, paperwork. network. homework. was mildly successful with some of it. i even found out what my 911 cellphone's number is.



i don't have much to say today. you knopw that old saw that says middle-age is when everybody you meet reminds you of someone you've met? i'm feeling that way about anything i have to say. or anyone else says.

this is not an absolute thank god but it happens way too much. yesterday on the mountain was an exception.

a quickie.

took a drive yesterday, aiming for mountain top to which i had good directions. 2 1/2 later i was back at the bunker, as usual got lost. i had forgotten cellphone so couldn't fone for clarification. i had missed a turn and when i got back and foned found out that the sign for the turnoff had blown down, so there was more going on than my sense of direction playing the games it does so often.

it was a beautiful drive, east on 64 out of hendersonville until i hit 9 and swung north to aville. i stopped once and clambered up a short climb to consult with the god of twigs, took the above foto.

the colors were something else, front moving in and the distant play of light and moisture moving the sky was a blessing. i guess i could have grabbed a shot or two whizzing around mountain curves but think it was better to do pay the proper attention to the actual physical world whirling by than an image.

i am becoming fatigued with being an unknown. not by the world, but by my friends. there is something about this time and place that feels alien, in the sense that - this is my best guess and probably wrong - has folks regarding me as someone i myself do not know. as my friend the nail has remarked, in a place of movement and change folks tend to take a snapshot and regard it as real. but it ain't me, babe. i'm a crowd of personalities that continues to inhabit many worlds. maybe i'll run into you in one of them.

this morning i picked the oldest digital foto i had handy and played. you're looking at the results above. a pale representation of my part time abode in the subtle realm.

had a surprise visit from moria - probably spelled wrong - who is my 3rd cousin once removed or something like that. you figure it out: my grandfather's sister is her grandmother. but i am 3 times her age. i remember her from the yampa valley colorado when she was maybe 6 or 7 and a pistol. a musician with a good attitude and talent: she doesn't want to be famous and rich. had a great walk up sunset mountain with her boyfriend charly and two dogs.

just finished talking with my daughter, news of her brothers, i think she is doing well, stronger and stronger everyday, low key and resilient showing all of the signs of continual steady psychic development.

more later.

(this might be a good marker on the spot where i evaporate someday).

remember macpaint? actually i sort of do. the above i did god knows when but i'm doing it again.

good old mac se30.

i did an absolutely unconscious watercolor the other day, in fact i think i put it up a couple of days ago. found a nice small wooden frame, played with cropping and positioning and it's now a miniature still life. looks good, i like it.

here's the links i did not finish putting up a few days ago.

Ron Morecraft Studio.
friend i met in piano class awhile back. beautiful work and he's on a roll.

nosepilot.com
friend alex's creation.

bibliomanacy? i can't remember how word is spelled, but it is the practice of flipping a book open to a page and putting finger somewhere on it. then read the sentence. signs and portents, waves of periperal intuition, small quick glances of memos from the boss, divinations, bird omens. as those of us who have lived with IQ numbers sliding away from the positive end of the bell curve will attest(?), when you have reached the mental badlands, across the border, signs are just about all that signifies. which is cool cause that is what they are meant to do.

leap of faith? no, more like stumble in the dark, or mugged by maya, when you end up squinting "through a keyhole down on your knees."

anyway something that is creeping up on me - nowadays most things creep, slither, tiptoe when they approach - is selling my books. thru amazon if i can handle the electronic paperwork, numbers, years, codes, all that stuff on the copywrite page - and there are a lot of sentences that make up the collection.

maybe i could sell the sentences.

maybe better yet i could trade, swap sentences.

with a human.

i'll work on this.

anyway i just returned from the living room clutter of books, frames, pictures, paintings, this and that. with a book. here is the sentence that found me:

"no universe can be merely a form of being which has sprung up and outlined itself against a nullity and void and remains standing out against a non-existent emptiness."

in other words (mine) nothing is not.

or something like the the unheard music the wind played in the forest. better yet, is playing right now.

and you can dance to it, got a good beat.

watercolor i worked to death the last few days. infused it with kryptonite and turtle wax.

had lunch w/ ron, interesting beautiful work he does.

played music w/ alex the other nite, he is the vector king of the western world.

haven't been working w/ trouble-free system. loose bits and bites i'm continually chasing. i can presently access the net about 25% of the time. currently some kind of DNS anomoly.

finger paints and sand castles are where it's at.

things are happening all around me. but my living room is quiet (see above). no truck, no desire to deal with it. missing land lady, she's in the hospital (?) but no one can find her. one of her friends' sons is taking over management which no matter how you cut it most likely means a raise in rent sooner, later, whenever.

and my yurt located in the wilds of iceland is unfinished. i haven't got the solar panels ready, and the 1200 sq. ft. library remains unfinished.

last nite a visit from alex and we played a little music, amazing how finished it sounded.

this week i will devote myself to finding a car, finding a place to live, a way to live, a friend indeed.

or maybe see a movie and take a walk.

this is great. i can access the net. and maybe i have a router that works. yippee.

from da notebook.

well half the day is shot and i've spent it all on the fone with technical support, doing this and that, don't want tyo talk about it.

listened to some new music by my son eli the other day. i had not heard the first four or five. good stuff: SignalBoss

still shuffling through past images, cornering 20-50 for upcoming gallery exhibit. this is about the last i think i'll find. when did i do it?

seven years ago. no wonder i don't remember it. seven years ago, last century.

where will the pictures be displayed? i have no idea, just that they will be.

made the photographic day in the life of asheville meeting. civilized time to meet. did not make blogerama fest at joli rouge. i'm finding once i get home and there is no light outside all signs and portents are stop signs: don't go out the door. snow flurries don't help.

i am uneasy with my present stance of not knowing any women well. such a hermit. so what will happen?

a surprise of course.

sex seems to be the driving social force today, not just sex but transformational, earth-shaking, big "o". the culture pushes it like byzantine bread & circuses. if it doesn't transfigure you, it beats watching nascar. so the mode that is or has descended on us the little people is not my bag. i want to know a woman and want her to know me. i feel strange in a stranger land.

i have heard it said that noone really knows anyone else. won't argue the point. doesn't matter. i don't even know half of the voices in my head. but i have something to offer, the good, the bad and the ugly. the true, the beautiful and i can't drag up the 3rd. these go back as far as the alphabet.

anybody home?

among other things i've been preparing for my first gallery exhibit. to do this in my perpetual mind-fog, i first have to find pictures. and i've found a lot, many of which i've never printed. so in the living room i have a stack of unearthed visual pointers to i don't know what. this is the last i printed before i ran out of matte stock.

today will be busy, meeting with mark who is cobbling together an event in may having to do with Meher Baba's chapel hill darshan. has all of the attributes of Baba production, let's just say whatever it turns out to be it will be a surprise. at 4 meeting with a group of photographers to pin down a day in april i think for a project something like "a day in the life in asheville". this may be connected with the local newspaper, not sure.

at seven - or 8 - the asheville blog contingent will be meeting for fun. i like fun.

been offline for what seems like a very long time. tcp/ip & modem glitches. fixed now? maybe.

today's logograph is from a very small pencil sketch i did awhile back. if memory serves me well (big if) i drew it in a doctors waiting room.

i finished all oil paintings i had hanging around yesterday. a couple do not look too bad. rearrainging studio cubby hole for watercolors.


it's funny: i think of myself as independent, but when access to the net evaporates i get twitchy. not so much because i can't browse all of the world's knowledge, but because i can't post to this blog.

so yesterday i went to dentist early and handed in my new false teeth, spent all day on phone to bellsouth tech support, returned to dentist for final teeth. the chrome inlay looks good, almost like mirrors. and the small diamond in left incisor is a hoot.

at the end of the day i still couldn't reach net, got up this morning and scurried around, got it going in 15 minutes.

so what's new? talked to ms nancy in arkinsas about yet another "harry's reunion" midmay. this one may happen now that ralph of harry's fame is in on the deal. go ralph!

present plan is fri may 11 around 2 meet at carolina coffee shop, saturday a gathering at a nice place as yet unknown.

a second parallel possibility several folks are working on is celebration of 40th annerversary of Meher Baba's chapel hill darshan. this will be a concert at durham civic center or whatever it is called nowdays. 40 years ago it was the location of a concert featuring the godz, rick chapman, and light show all over the place. monday is set for a meeting at wesley foundation (?) (may have the name wrong) where many many folks spent hours with rick and henry kashouty coming to the realization that drugs were no way to enlightment, self-realization, or anything else.

stay tuned this thing could go in any direction.

gum backgrounds print. I did this about 25 years ago. Per usual, I drifted into it, working at the time in a media lab where we produced every media. Gum bichromate is an early silverless photographic process. I got interested in it and played with it for about 2 years. done at home, which at that time was a house in the hills and a family of 6. very crowded and active. I carved myself a small space out of the chaos - I have nothing against background chaos which I believe is a sort of constant companion to life on earth if you are human - and puttered.

I broke out color and b&w photos into lith negs and devised a makeready pin registered. applied a layer of color sometimes with an airbrush.

the fun is timing the exposure which I did in my head after some calibration with a sunlamp. as you build up transparent layers of color less and less light bounces off the substrate and longer exposures are needed. plus the different colors hold back varying amounts of light so it's all guesswork. then the real fun starts, develop in water - bathtub - and go into it with a soft brush where you can push and modify development. somewhere I have prints with 20 layers. it's like a handmade creation, impossible to make 2 identical prints.

the last time I did a gum-backgrounds print was az.

why am I writing about it?

it was fun, and with the rube goldberg set-up I think it was one of the series of pulls I have had in my life towards making pretty colors.

it just me a long time to realize that in my life creativity is not optional.

my father's father from a photo taken in NM 1893. he was 9 months old.

it is a b&w mounted on a bord that has cracked and split, darkened, and otherwise it shows the ravages of a century. i scanned a small portion and cleaned it up and tinted it.

offline for a few days, messin' with modem. the net is incredibly slow these days, some tweak needed but i'm out of tweaks.

heard piece on npr about murder of young boy in rio, brazil. brazilian commentator made point that the event was not a "singularity" but - my words - part of the cultural decor of russia, middle east, brazil, USA.

"no need to get excited
the thief he kindly spoke
there are many here among us
who think that life is but a joke."

2% of murders in rio are solved. i think we do better. highest per-capita incarcination in the world.

i have confeesion to make: i have no idea who the person is who was blonde, son died, baby in bahamas etc. you don't either, but may know her name and public persona.

finished 2 oils yesterday and started another. fun!

and discovered i have a enough monkey biz music i've done since xmas for a cd. yay!

quickie from sunset mnt. walk last evening. tried for sunset, couldn't quite swing it.

it has become apparent to me that the problem i have getting out the front door to walk in such a beautiful yet close setting may be one of diurnal timing. i have been leaving the house around 5 in the evening and it works out fine. something to do with metabolic rhythm maybe.

i hope you saw what i saw on the way back down the mnt.: incredable western horizon, twilight gold graded thru lavender to darker lavender about 50 degrees above skyline, where venus hung like a bright jewel. prettiest thing i've seen all year.

lots of noise about iran. it is obvious to me that plans are firm, logistics has started, manipulation of opinion in full swing.

reason given for attacking iran: weapon carcasses found in iraq bearing id markings that show iranian manufacture.

reasonable?

i may be wrong but i think if you ID'ed all of the weaponry used in the middle east last month, by far the most would show "made in USA". we flooded the middle east with death machines as far back as the iraq-iranian war. weapons and cash, continuing thru the russian assult on afghanistan. the weaponry left in a dump unguarded after we invaded iraq was mostly a gift from usa to saddam, our once-ally. weaponry from everywhere, but mostly USA is all over the middle east, almost replacing currency. swapped, traded, distributed by folks we don't even know about.

our govt is still trying to buy back @ 2-3000 shoulder fired missiles capable of bringing down an airliner. these were last known to be floating around afghanistan and their whereabouts unknown.

not to mention 3 tons of $100 bills.

iranians are not arabs. a very different cuture and history. personally i think of all the peoples in that part of the world, they are most amenable to merging with the "first world". i'm talking about the people, not the government. the iranians i have known are totally modern and sophisticated. they like americans. they know americans. secular culture is not anathama to them.

after we overthrew their elected government in the early 50's they had a problem.

read the letter from their present leader to bush. he didn't.

photo taken somewhere in the wilds of elk mountain.

cogent, significant observations on our life and times , penetrating analysis of the cultural matrix, iconic perspectives of the lost and found: none.

once upon a time in the world of our ancestors there was a division between
saints and sinners

later
winners and losers

lately
religious and spiritual

latest
quick and the dead

of course all of these splits were and are

real or unreal
both of which are imaginary

like you and me

i dunno. what can i say?
today's limbo just came out that way.

i began this logograf last night when i saw Greg Brown and bo ramsey at the gray eagle. go to his site, there is good stuff there. i won't go into what they do and do so well. it occurred to me that in some way they are a classic duo, analogous to sonny mcgee and [cannot remember at the momment], or buddy guy and jr. wells. bo opened, and the songs he sang were great, texas roadhouse noir, if vocals were not his thing they are now.

truely a gift and a blessing.

ran into a guy from kinston that i talked to last time greg played here, 2 years ago i think. this time we had time to... putter i guess you might say. turns out he lives a mile from and knows quite well one of my daughters-in-law's father, who is conceded by many to be the best dobro and pedel-steel in the state. think supergrit.

all i could scrabble up this morning. foto from moving car of one of those round mirror thingys you see to help folks backing out of their driveways.

as usual little new to say. well, come to think of it there are a few apocalyptic buzz words that bear repeating:

homeless, coming plagues, money monopoly, hallucination of hope, autism, attention fragmented into a broken mirror, invisible dictators, primetime caricatures taking over humans, the end of history, maybe only one climatic change left?

jobs as frou-frou, employment as wage slavery, crack-up, breakdown, the revenge of the oppressed, cruise ships, recreational sex, named animals disappearing, language disappearing, unnamed manifesting, consciousness raising, consciousness disappearing, your money or your life (or both), smoke and mirrors, the loss of meaning (roll your own), the machine that runs on madness, the terminal disconnect from infinite source, the terrible has already happened, but it ain't over yet.

hmmm...,test test test. the piucture above is not the picture i did this morning. what happened?

something.

and who cares?

i got a few calls on my bday yesterday. one was a little disturbing, an old friend and lover. she read me a letter she had found from me to her written probably in the last few years. there was a mighty fine poem in the letter, which i would like to have. but she was loaded and primed for declaration that it was by far better than anything in book i published last year. maybe she was right. but she went into all kinds of details of the past, none of which i remembered or had thought about.

i am satisfied with my story so far, and have left it to tell itself. i don't ruminate much any more. (i think that is what she has been doing for awhile).

she was pointing out things on this page and that, and i did not have a copy handy, plus i don't much want to open it. it's done. gone. so i had no idea of what she was talking about.

the creative act subsumes memory. includes it like the day includes the wind. no effort involved.
when i finish a print or painting or sand castle, i immediately am in a new space working on a new moment. rarely look at what i've done in the past. friend "t" was over this week and he was looking at some ancient work of mine. i truly do not remember doing a lot of it, sometimes the shape or a line might have a vague resonance with a time and place, but mostly not.

anyway this started me on my latest "project", taking a look at and organizing a lot of images in a lot of flavors, goal being to mat frame finish 20 for the exhibit i know is coming up.

wonder if the picture above is still stuck?

nope, i recognize it: finished an hour ago, began as a design for a postal stamp i think.

well it's that time again. my birthday.

i've never cared for the yearly milestone, not because of aging but as a reformed introvert i don't like the attention.

and maybe the many wrong right turns taken during this lifetime.

all quite natural and for me reasonable responses.

anyway i'm doing the same thing as i did last year: organizing and finding work. thanks to my friend t. i am being pushed to find art, pick 20, frame, and i'll be ready to exhibit. seems right so i'm doing it.

also an mp3 a day so i can get rid of the many audio and midi clips that go into the making of these things. during january i turned out about 30 mixed down audio files using new software. so the mp3s represent 30 day learning curve for what that's worth.

you'll be the first to know when i get them up. long range goal is hybrid dvd, twinkling lights, celestial sounds, another "first" for yours truly.

i've never developed a "style", visually of musically. as soon as i come near one i veer off to some other angle. so i think animated dvd is the proper presentation for my stuff. plus i've never made an interactive dvd and as you my know, i can get real focused - for me anyway - doing something i don't know how to do.

fortunately there is a lot of stuff that fits that catagory.

this picture really came out of nowhere - they all do - but fast. mostly the first oil portrait i'm presently trying to finish and the usual etc.

nice walk last nite, brisk and dark.

on the rube toob: saw

public service notice about how healthy contented employeez were worth a lot.

then a really chilling pbs hour on biological warfare going back to WWI and how the biological weapon was to quickly kill a "city", civilians.

but i got a good night's sleep.

an oldie. done i believe with oil pastel on some kind of slick surface. maybe a couple of years ago.

successfully avoided anything having to do with superbowl.

the rest of today i am following my friend doug's advice, "when you can't find something, don't look for it: clean up". not sure what it is that i can't find, but i probably need it for something i can't quite put my finger on.

this week i'd really like to reformat this blog into something that is not exactly a blog. i'm making it a priority. honest.

i think writers have something they call a "chapbook". not sure what it is, but my impression has always been that it is a hit and run instrument to record this that and the other. what this has turned into is similar, bit a collection of images instead of words. wittness the above picture.

so i'll formalize it. make it into something that does not yet exist. another in a long line of surprises. to me.

meanwhile looking for a "ride", "wheels",. my landlady caroline who is not doing so well at the moment has let me drive her car and i have to admit it is a whole different experience than pushing my defunct truck around. some kind of newish ford taurus, a lot easier than the ancient 86 mazda i have been driving for... let's see, i would guess maybe 15 years. maybe not quite that many. bought it in arizona, drove it across country, slept in it many times (camper shell), sometimes in deep winter, snow and ice.

it is always time to move on. but than there might not be time to move on. fortunately i don't think about such things.

i can't help it if i'm lucky.

elk mnt. aftermath.

watched "cops" last nite. again.

fascinating to see grown men on the ground looking for small pieces of this and that in the dark for "evidence". crumbs of notorious illegal substance.

all 4 episodes began in darkness with the policeman driving and explaining that the turf they were driving into was a "known narcotics area" and then pulling over some white dude in a car for being there. different cities, same area.

like shooting fish in a barrel.

an interesting gloss on this activity is the fact that the USA has by far the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world.

i used to think that many of the folks in the police and judicial business would rather do something useful, like busting criminals.

still do, but habits have settled in, and after a generation of living this cultural anomaly, which now has the side benefit of entertainment, it seems a permanent feature of the cultural landscape.

but nothing is permanent.

it's eight thirty in the morning and i just finished my idiotgram for the day. looks like smooth sailing for me for the rest of saturday. thank god.

elk mountain inhabitant.

i am enjoying not having a car. what a surprise. of course it's only temporary, but what isn't?

it's an age thing i think. or at least it's an age thing for me. how many miles have i driven during my life? where did i go? why? none of it seems very important right now.

don't misunderstand, i'm glad i went where i went, which - so far - is here and now.

i've been thinking of the cult of positive thinking. or more accurately, positive attitude. this is a very american trait - think norman vincent peale, affirmations, the little train that could, going to the moon in 10 years etc.

of course if you happen to have a little jungian tinge, or a touch of the non-dual subterranean tradition, living in such a one sided culture can be a problem. hey it can be a problem even if you don't.

because negative AND positive exist. you and i are living proof. to exclude negativity from awareness may just be an exercise of putting it "out there" where it will run rampant. bring it back home where it belongs. live with the personal knowledge that it is part of you and vice-versa. as well as it's partner in time, the positive.

pursue happiness and find what you find.

got out of the module yesterday and took a drive with t. to elk mountain which developed into a pretty nice walk. got some nice photos, there was that spaciness that a cold winter day has when the light is all over the place, deep crisp shadows. above is t. working on a moto, with his motomaker, calibrating life force, capturing streams of the invisible. to see more of these his subliminal collaborations with the nameless go here, there's lots of them under "photos" i think..

deep snow not here yet, but i'm staying put. took care of a few errends this am. seven-eleven store down the street owner has a 98 plymouth van for sale, the price is right, have to go back and take a serious look.

as you might know, type I diabetics have the occasional nocturnal excursion into somewhere you don't want to go, and i had a whopper last night, probably why i can barely stay awake at the moment. the chair i'm sitting on is splitting as i type, lots of breakdowns so far this year.