pretty mellow day. this afternoon's idiotgram seems to reflect this.

i spent yesterday doing what i do, digging myself out of a hole i can't see. rounded up every frame and canvas in the house and had the added bonus of finding a few forgotten works. squaring away piles of stuff, now i have piles of piles. today kitchen and rumpus room and i'll be ready to hide under bed for the holidays.

richard and i went to see dave olney last night. dave is an old aquaintance from before the earth was cool. he played with a guy whose name i wish i could remember. just the two of them. some of the best music i have heard in aville. dave with rock solid rhythm guitar and beautiful vocal delivery, the guy on the telecaster complimenting him perfectly with impossible low moans, quiet feedback, transparant fluid lines of startling vertuosity. basic stripped down r&r and a hell of a lot of understated but clear passion.

and the songs: olney is indeed a master song writer, playing off the great american songbook with lyrics that seemed to beam themselves into the center of my head. seemless. all with a subtext of a lifetime on the planet, a wide awake observer of and participant in modern times, a member of the lost tribe of poets with roots going back to the now transfigured heavy duty era we were once lost in.

"if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger."

in our lifetimes it has done both.

i'm in a rut with RAW. here is third image from same file. what fun.

still playing with RAW format. this image is from same file as the image below. whoopie.

this post is a test. i guess i will have to put blogger out to pasture. i've way exceeded the number of posts allowed, cannot access or modify the archive index page, or posts since april 07. want to see if i can post which i can if you are reading this.

there is a little more to it: above image was taken as RAW file. the format is used for print but i fooled around with it and and got this 36k jpg yay also made it to doc appt without insulin pump will try again tomorrow and i wonder what would happen if you googled "wwIII" and i'm going outside to remove A/c cause it's way past time to button up the bunker.

i am back. had a pleasant time visiting, altho as always it was a hurry up and wait situation. children and grandchildren doing great as far as i could tell, colliding with the world of one million things 9updated verbal description of maya; things have changed in the last few millenia,

my departure from aville was a classic, between rounding up stuff and stowing it in camper for first time and a slight swereve in medication which delayed and confused me, the one night i slept in camper i discovered, after dark, that i had forgotten sleeping bag and lantern. did without and spent a confortable night anyway. drive back, like drive down, was a new experience in 2001 dodge ram, great highway ride. when i got back after daer i realized sleeping bag rtc had not been forgotten but lifted from truck during the days here i was figuring out where to put things. no lock on camper which didn't seem very important. i only hope whoever got my stuff needs it and is using it, andwas not some kid acting out the outlaw.

so i decided to unload truck on arrival here and did so. couldn't find medicine and spent some time locating it. the last touch was to lose my keys so i went to bed and found then in the morning.

then yesterday my landlord pointed out that the camper door handle was covered by a plastic cover, under which was a ... keyhole. so it's off to the locksmith today, a few months late.

drove to outfitters discount w/ richard to replace missing stuff. we got totally turned around and did a grand tour of highway system, missed outfitters altho we must have passed right by it.

i mention all this as an example of the difficulty of keeping up with the world of "stuff". we are surounded, and can't circle the wagons because the wagons are what is surrounding us.

got back in town last nite. pleasant trip to visit children and grandchildren. at some point during sojourn, or maybe before, a lantern and sleeping bag and a day pack containing small cook stove and a bunch of batteries were lifted from the camper. of course with my scattered wits i figured i had left them home.

bent creek
from last week's outing.
reminds me of a joke i heard no it was a bluegrass song that wafted thru the media winds the other day. chorus went:
"i may not be broke
but i'm badly bent"
didn't make trip. mid case of something or another for two days.

i'm out of here back before end of week.

sat around noon packiong etc slowly ninian spent the night n the way to brevard. i'm running l al a la a tt ee.

[later]
pretty kryptic huh?
i was just getting ready to go when i started feeling not so good delayed trip until tommorrow. to make it even more confusing this is yesterday's post.
it's all good.

yesterday's excursion to deep dank overcast forest. i loved it. the celt in me i suppose.

played a lot of dobro while camped. i am more and more intrigued by this instrument,

<
took foto this morning yancey county. i think i'm going into retreat mode and drive to chapel mon.

from saturday's trip to the parkway. i'm leaving in an hour to camp out in yancy county and maybe talk to a waterfall. back wednesday.

photo from douglas falls walk. today is dedicated to trip to big box for plywood and finishing camper. tomorrow i leave for camping in yancey county, fortress of solitude. later in week head for chapel hill and maybe points beyond.

i'm tired. very active 3-4 days, son eli dropped in, and friend t. headed west.

i'm closing down a blog that has been hanging around for awhile and never really took off, for "harry's 1960's" and while i was doing the image above i was thinking - or at least a thought was bouncing around - of what to put in it's place, like "gone fission".

so
ou sont les nuages d'hier
came to mind (floated to the top).

and traveling right behind it, the answer, an ah-ha moment:
"blowin in the wind".

well i've done my image a day so now i can get onto the nonoptional sublunary endless action reaction tasks, today concentrating on going thru the motions asleep and not caring. it makes it so much more productive.

nothing worse then going thru the motions and fighting it, trying to fix it.

nice photo. no idea when or where. found it in a folder named "oct5.07" so i thought i took i last week. but the id # is way earlier. think it came from a folder misplaced that i dropped into the right place.

one of the very few images you will ever see here not produced by myself. this one is courtesy of ashevegas by way of A girl who wears glasses.

pritchard park, local hangout of the dispossessed. if i existed as a worker bee in an office, i would start an office pool: what date will this space be occupied by a high rise?

meanwhile i am once again reminded of the observation by an european visitor to constantinople around 1000 ad who remarked that the inhabitants of that town all carried on a nonstop conversation about the higher questions, theology, eschatology, fate, karma and other inexplicables we have put into boxes. in the same manner as we today might talk about football or the latest official talking point.

for some reason i am not clear about this links up directly with my recent decision to vote for and work for the election of kusinovich. not because he is an is an eccentric wierdo, but because he is electable! i truly feel he can walk and talk like a human, and at this point that qualifies him.

tossed off this morning. now i'm paying billz.

pretty much finished w/ new & improved image archive. i'll be adding images to it as i find them. the good ones.

rained last nite, a drizzle. i have a little more waterproofing to do on camper shell. don't ever buy one that is 1/2" shorter than truck bed.

first oil painting i ever did. maybe 3 years ago.

as far as cogent incisive quirky cultural commentary, i'm fresh out.

besides having a good time at the 2nd annual blogerama awards, i learned a lot. folks i knew and some i didn't are blogging up a storm. a lot of talent and effort. the video and photo domains are strong and being used with a lot of taste and discrimination.
check out these: while i have been cruising on automatic these folks have been pushing the envelope:

zenography
Stoplight Haiku
Moonmeadow Farm
The Hangover Journals
Flickr: Photos from susanlee828
photos of event
Et in Arcadia ego

for a look at the festivities:
BlogAsheville

an unusual week and week end. music, the breeze before the word, the same eye that sees is seen. and then that pastel dream last night.

perhaps later i can make sense.

visited my 3rd cousin m. & friends yesterday and spent the nite in a spaceship. very comfortable. her mother was visiting who i last saw maybe... quarter century ago? probably not quite that long. a pleasure to sit around the fire and play music. first time i'd played the dobro with others. nice folks whom i hope to see again.

photo taken yesterday on ride to maxpatch. what a relief to get out.

i hear thru the grapevine that iran is setup, all is in place and moving forward, and we better start thinking of martial law, pre-election terrorist extravaganza, no election.

really. if you don't sound like a nut today you are living in dreamland.

a fundimental misunderstanding rampant today is that the junta has made mistake after mmistake over the last 6 years and the populice is pissed about it. the latter part is true, but things are going well for the criminal overworld. not that they planned it out, they are not that smart. just lucky i guess.

another lost and found watercolor. no idea of when i did it.

as most of you understand i have lost, temporarily maybe, my capacity to comment on the culture. some have not:

The Case That the President's Reach Exceeds His Grasp - New York Times:
"After Sept. 11 these efforts would accelerate with astonishing speed, often in secret from Congress and the American public. A Sept. 25, 2001, memo written by Mr. Yoo asserted that "the president's powers include inherent executive powers that are unenumerated in the Constitution, including a right to use military force as he sees fit, regardless of the views of Congress."

"The Big Con" - New York Times:
"Government is no smaller-it is simply more debt-ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites."

oil on gessoed watercolor paper. i've been on slow kleenup the last few weeks and am finding some amazing to me stuff.

i have been wrapped up tight in the coils of cyber-spighetti. far outside my window the idiots in DC circle the inevitable: iran, nukes, if you disagree with someone or thing, don't communicate with them, the criminal overworld wheeling and dealing, the prime directive willfully ignored and so on. you know this, you saw it on the news. columbia university has shot up in my estimation many levels.

so i don't have much to say. others have:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Plato

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
Plato

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.
Heraclitus,

The road up and the road down is one and the same.
Heraclitus,

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.
Saint Jerome

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche

When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

long day, thoughts arising and sinking fast, eternal puttering.

friends driving to clemson tonight to see bob dylan. if it even close to his last performance at the ryman auditorium in nasheville it will be more than worth it.

Seeing multiple Bobs -- dailypress.com:
"'The thing I just kept hearing from every account of Dylan was about this life of serial change, in a way far more profound to a culture than David Bowie's different chameleonlike changes or Madonna's that would come decades later. These changes had deep intellectual, cultural, almost physical effects on Dylan's audience,' Haynes said. 'He undermines the things you count on, your touchstones. He shakes up the things that people used to build their own selves on. Every time you grab on to him, he's somewhere else"

i chickened out.

i guess i'm too sensitive, or else i'm getting soft.

i keep thinking it's saturday.

i'm working with a book by peter fenner, radient mind.

did some shopping, hardware store etc.

i like the song "i'm not talkin... tha-a-a-t's what i've got to say." pretty sure it was on first yardbird's lp.

saw movie "life of allen ginsburg" or similar title with tom, richard and debbie. very intense, much better than the cartoon - ie current cultural iconic brand.

"...but things... have changed".

during my lifetime the population of the world has doubled. hey, i didn't do it.

not only that, but everyone's name is known. either by god or NSA.

the effort to know the new before it is the old is rarely successful.

the crown of creation is a baseball cap.

we experience personal and collective life. but do we experience "experience"?

late summer. the dog days are fading. i don't know how many more summers i can take, but i'll takem all.

so i was writing about the coming "big thing", the branded spectacular, iran.

it is apparent to me that bush's war is going exactly according to plan. a long war. nebulous enemy. corporate prescence in the middle east.

except for the grumbling and mumbling of the growing dispossessed, and that seems to be a minor detail taken care of by endless wordplay.

just as bush's war was on the table way before he stole the election (not bush really it was the whole kit and cabel stole it, from the supreme court on down thru the oligarchy), so the iranian phase is not only in place but happening right now. when some spectacular move manifests it might even keep the dems from winning the presidency. not that it matters a whole lot, they seem to have done nothing since bush stole the election, nothing before they captured congress, not much since. topic for another day, but can you say economic pressure, personal blackmail, threats and dirty tricks?

anyway iran will be a whole different thing. probably the most pro-american populice in the middle east. they don't speak arabic but farsi. if the CIA hadn't replaced their government with the shah in the early 50s they would not have dealt with reagon, agreeing to release the hostiges on the day of his inaugeration, but then again they got weapons for this.

today is my youngest son's birthday. nathan: it seems like yesterday when i was barreling down the mountain in a dodge longbed headed for the hospital where he was born about 15 minutes after we got there. i am very proud of him, he has been thru a lot, and i emphasize the past tense: thru, not stuck in some in some zone he could remain in for life.

more political rants later today.

talking points (use only in case of emergency)

1. the world is becoming more uniform. local flavors everywhere of bandit rule, pirates, mercenarys, death camps, the disappeared, the economic wage slavery, the dispossesed wondering around humming "gimmeee shelter".

2.since reagon, maybe much further back, the "guv'ment", behind many closed doors, has morphed from govt "for the people by the people" to govt for and by profit and corporations. 500 families run most of the board of director's of the fortune 500.

3. the consumer culture, and the continuous transfer of wealth it entails, has become by constantly one upping itself, a sort of cartoon, a meme, a joke. most humans now look a little perplexed at govt instead of as in the past considering themseves enclosed within it, part of it and protected.

4. specifically, us americans find ourselves separated and fragmented, communities gone, implicit threat of excommunication by the state for speaking out and consequent loss of economic viability. surrvaillance, data mining, the cell phone acting as a microphone piped to god knows what, road rage, justice a set of choreographed moves, a highly stylized domain with no room for the human being, hanging by your fingernails paycheck to paycheck, all in the glitter of false gold at twlight.

5 about iraq and the 2008 political election con...

taken on a walk along the swannanoa river, part of warren wilson collage which is a much underated institution.

last friday evening at r&d's. i was so exhausted that instead of going to town as we had talked about, i was for sitting in rocking chair and mumbling about this and that.

about to go outside this morning and finish caulking cammper. raintight. i think i've got a raised platform for sleeping in mind that will work. requires trip to big box building supplies and maybe target's.

other events that may occur today: trip to greenlife for carrots and vegetables and first attempt to "juice" vegetables.

finish fooling w/ images. this project has forced me to organize and find the good ones. and the software that processes them, while slick, is not real user-friendly.

was about to go to t's yesterday afternoon when i was hit with the perfect storm of fatigue. perfect 2 hour nap followed, i was wide awake when i awoke - not a commmon occurence - and continued to work on past dark. zowee.

ornimental doodad done early this morning. hyperfocused nearly the whole day yesterday. the present image archive is coming along but a lot of the images are placeholders, and i am dropping back to the print files which are larger and sharper. they should all be in place by the end of the weekend.

after about a year trying to come up with a bumper sticker that says it all i came up with a bumper sticker that says not all but as close to it as i can come. as an extreme intuitive i'm satisfied.

after this post i'm going to take a walk. my resistance to this is not easy to overcome, don't know why but it is.

i'll spend the day cleaning up image archive, making it super spiffy or whatever. slept like a log last nite, probably because after a sleepless night the night before i worked solid thru yesterday, sealing camper against rain and bringing 2 current projects to penultimate stage. i'm laying off piano and dobro practice for a few days, tendonitus (no spell checker) has kicked in.

one of those nights when sleep was scarce. i'm a little punchy at the moment. a couple more non-optional maintenance tasks and i may go back to bed.

i have taken the first jump into process of site transformation into gallery of sight and sound. click on "image archive" above - the circle upper left - and let me know if it works.

you'll need flash which i hope you have. the flash player on mac OS 9 doesn't play, but who uses it nowdays but me?

beautiful morning. maybe the endless summer is really over. i hope to have image gallery updated and a whole lot spiffier by the end of the day.

petrified kat. found during quasi-stroll.

looks like i'm stranded during labor day break. so i will back up and redo this site once and for all. or retreat into catatonia.

so this might be my last daily post i hope. if it were, what would i say?

the kulture is past the tipping point. all institutions world wide, the western model having spread everywhere, are corrupt and in place to serve greed, power, and blind control. we are all in great danger because of this. the ax could fall any day.

a good idea, human creation of workable forms of organizing effort, has degenerated into the criminal overworld, sleek, glossy and untouchable. this is a new development not encountered by the human denizen before.

it is also natural in that things, all things, change and develop into the novel and new. the unanticipated, the unexpected.

the reaction to this varies. denial, hypocrasy, head in the sand, rightous and helpless indignation, nihilism, hedonism, depression, running amuck.

toxic life, complete with bar-b-ques and powerball gizmos.

some retreat; some plunge over the tipping point. the rule of law morphs into elaborate rituals of nonsense. some attempt to use the instruments of the past to wake up. fear, felt or unfelt, rules.

digression: i wonder how much force and blackmail, the threat of death, is up and running in the small circles of power that assume they rule events. ie, are there any left in power in govt., corporate rulers who are in reality slaves to fear, who would like to break out but afraid of the consequences to thier lkife and livlihood? the takeover by the oligarchs must bother some who hang on by a thread to personal integraty but fear for thier existence and the existence of their families should they "rock the boat."

i am serious as a heart attack. rock the boat and you are kicked off. don't and the boat sinks.

remain in your cave quietly while giants roam the countryside pillaging. go out of the door and drive by power extinguishes another human.

the other day i ran across the statement that all tyrants seem to have the knack for manipulating symbols. i think "signs" is the more accurate word, but maybe not.

anyway to hell with it, let's get on with it. this too will morph.

good day yesterday got a lot of sadly neglected living maintainence chores halfway done. working on putting up pix that have appeared on these pages but are in no archive. too many twists and turns to the process to go into here. i think i have most of it working except for a "return to modern peasant" back button. i have chosen, natch, not the simplest way to do this. plan to add flas and mp3s. for now, see if it works.

happy birthday sister jane.

i'm revamping this site so you may see or not see anything here for the next week or so.

first order of business: the daily images i create to post to this thing have not been viewable in any archive since april. now they are, go here to see or re-see them. this is just one of many steps.

one thing about modern times is that those of us who fool around with making things that run on computers or the web are faced with no endpoint: we have to just keep rolling. they say no piece of art is ever finished, and neither is any piece of code, process, image etc meant to be seen on a computer monitor. after awhile it either becomes second nature to keep on keeping on or in frustration say to hell with the whole thing. neither position is satisfactory, but a whole lot about the nature of personal life, experience and time can be gleaned from this situation.

since i can't seem to upload pictures anymore, don't have the energy to figure out why, and have very little to say, it seems like a good time to pull the plug on this blog. it will be turned into a display for images, music and animation, but give me a little time. i'm going to take a nap first.

photo taken yesterday in the shady cool gloom of douglas waterfall. it may have been the hottest day of the year (again) but the air was clear, streams of cool flowing all about. what a relief.

got tired of that so i did this. i am going to stick w/ flash for awhile. had a great day in the woods, waterfall, maybe 30 minute drive, ditto walk. cool and shady. lots of pictures i haven't looked at yet.

comment of the day:
need feet on the street

piece of a watercolor that has been hanging on my wall for a long time. something called for me to "finish" it, you're looking at a close up of the result.

up early, a little of thisnthat. posting the above because you should hear it. recorded i think at carnagie hall when bob was around,,, 23 years old?

the good, the true, the beautiful (plato).

yow. i drew a small pencil drawing yesterday and it turned into german expessionist springtime while i wasn't looking.

foto taken last sunday.


since i am moving so slow, i'll find something to post here.

foto of great feast that took place at nicole's.

i'm back at the bunker. i only lost 2 things during trip, thermorest mattress and stainless steel thermos, both important and essential accoutrements of the homeless lifestyle. they are both at nicole's so i'll recover.

spent several days with children and grand children, glad to say all becoming their various selves nicely. but i tell you what, it is a crowd of individuals, a big crowd, real individuals, and i was definitely outnumbered, couldn't get a word in edgewise. which is ok because at this point i have little to say. except i lovem all.

i'm out here, back in a week.

photo taken somewhere in the last week.

what do you do if you live in a nation-state that has experienced a military coup? become a freedom fighter.

what do you do if you live in a nation-state that has experienced an invisible coup?
become an invisible freedom fighter.

memory of trip back from cousin moriah's. but i think she spells it "myria".

ponders to point at:

will there be an "election" in 2008?

will any of the present contenders be on either ticket?

or will a man on a white horse come galloping in from the brandname world?

have we invaded iran yet? (the most pro western population in the near east)

if you followed the money involved in the iraqi war, what would you find?

if someone said that "our" federal and state governments had been hijacked by criminals, would that be hyperbole or understatement?

what would you do if such a hypothetical were the case RIGHT NOW?

my blogger set up is falling apart. no spell checker.

woke up in the cool of early morning and feel great. no fighting through the confusion of crazed metabolism. finished oil above yesterday and immediately began reworking watercolor that has been hanging on wall for a long time. it is on watercolor canvas and i don't think i sealed it with sparay fixitive so re-work should work.

i'm the only person left living in carolyn's 2 apt quadplexes. very quiet. just me and rabbit friend who i see each evening. even when i drive truck in back of brick structures he stays put. i think he may consider himsel invisible by not moving, but on the other hand when i talk to him he loosens up and nibbles like rabbits do.

i've been chipping away at excess foam i used to seal water leaks on camper. a long slow tasks whic suits me fine in the evening hours when the heat slips away.

the coming week will be busy. my oldest children, eric and nicole (twins) will be passing thru friday on their way to cullowhee for high school reunion. the plan is for them to stop over sunday on their way back to chapel hill. i'll drive down early monday. it will be good, no even better than good, to visit all four of children at the same time for a few days. at my age and situation i can't help but note the subliminal song in the back of my head. "this may be the last time, i don't know..."
i take note but do not take it - or anything else - literally.

living in this minicomplex by myself is pleasant. i am reminded of the part in "bladerunner" where the action takes place at the toymaker's, a vast dark empty reminent of the past that he occupies. absolutely no resemblence except fo the emptiness. when i get the inrention i'll troll the net to find out who owns the place and what is going on, but i really am not all that interested. i'm as ready as i'll ever be for the next phase which will be, of course, a total surprise unlike any mental picture i could summon up of "the future".

pleasant visit w/ tom d. this afternoon.

things slipping in & out of my head like "personal experience", "identity", the real as what lasts, its locus between two dreams - subject and object.

me, i'm tired.

heading out tomorrow for cosin myria's.

nice long walk in the woods yesterday w/ richard. i think it was the hottest day of the year so far, but a short drive up the mountain and walking a trail off the parkway it wasn't hot at all. i think richard is onto something. he uses this sort of getaway for a short visit, maybe read a book, sit. more like the walks i used to take at big ridge, hit the door, go outside, and stroll.

picture above i took while "up there". this is the first picture i loaded, worked on, and uploaded from imac. i'll have to work on process to make smaller jpg's which i pretty much have down on os 9.

finished foaming the seal on camper shell last night. it better work. now for cleanup which is going to be tricky, working on very narrow space between truck cab and camper.

took this in the madness of bele chere crowd.

remember - i do - when the citizens of the USA were depicted as john q. milquetoast? a little meek guy with the world for a head, a mustach and a cap. usually with a question mark over his head and a slightly confused expression.

this has something, though not everything, to do with the notion of "personal identity".

then came, let's see, "consumer". then came "audience". then came "perfomer".

each change hammering away at the idea of who i am. part of the personality reacts to these changes even if the thinking mind is unaware of them. right now "personhood" is being deconstructed, and all of us identify, easy or not, with some smaller group then the nation-state. and yet the world of the nation-state rolls on, with caracatures out of sitcoms driving.

foto from last weekend. one of so many i've taken walking up sunset mountain.

big changes here. about to finish (?) upgrading camper so it doesn't leak. took a load of trash to landfill. gave away all 100Mb zip disks plus SCSI drive to young man from w. asheville who wants to use disks in keyboard sampler, a good use for them.

now have password on imac, have not yet succeeded in sharing files. working on gigantic flash/quicktime light show. have no idea what i'm doing. still searching for slide show app so i can regroup images, add all since april which presently you cannot find.

then, with all processes intact, i will produce cartoon visionary sound and light coda on dvd, my statement. i first thought of calling it on the road, but instead it will be named off the road. a dyslexic look at the cultural conundrum of living with dreams in a dream.

then i'm going to pull blog on blog. turn the sight into "stuff".