heard bernie saunders on the radio driving back from grocery shopping.
i can't understand why the uberkriminals have'nt put him away. no not like that, like they've done with just about everyone in what used to be the federal government: blackmail, loot, threat of loss of livelihood, the usual gimmicks.
i'm in a hurry right now or i'd rant a bit. marx diagnosed capitalism correctly, even if his solution was not very workable - not in a nation state anyway, works with a tribe or on a kibbutz.
his diagnosis: big fish eats little fish until there is nothing left but big fish, or maybe one huge fish.
from reagon to dubya, less than one generation, USA has been savaged. the most prisoners of any nation in the world, i believe both in absolute and per capita terms, piss poor health and health care, mickey mouse elections on all levels, biggest national debt in history, people living on the streets, an ignorant despot above the (so called) law, a financial system based on theft, the bigger the better.
throw out your tv, your magazines, your newspapers. take a walk. a dozen cameras will keep track of you.
and the fools that voted for the horde of fools, looters and colossal killers, take a good look at your life today.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
didn't take any photos on trip, or more accurately not many. grandchildren all fine, natalie who just turned three is talking up a storm, delightful little girl who seems to be retaining the magic of childhood and may, like all of my grandchildren, grow up to be very special. can't wait to visit grace, my 4th, in denver a month from now.
by that time maybe i will be riding a bicycle. and eating greens. and getting out of the front door in the cool of the morning.
if there was a running motif for my visit it was how does the integrated human, or the not totally conditioned, relate to the narrow circumscribed ubiquitous monoculture of today. is there an urge, a pull, in the human, probably that he or she might not even be aware of, towards the unmanifest source of the manifest? and are the two mutually exclusive? is the choice between being a conditioned zombie or a "seeker" on top of a mountain isolated from "the world"?
my take is you cannot step out of "the world" successfully. to try results in a form of avoidance and denial. in this sense a "spiritual" soul is doing what the workaholic or addict does. keep the lid on.
live in the mental ward i mean world but not of it. distance yourself from identification with thought and personal experience. give it some space. the mental buzz will not go away and should you need to use the thought process it will be available. but that buzz is no more "I" than your feet.
each now is new. and the ego construct wants to endure. thought takes the place of the new. forget about the 60's idea of ego death. feel your thinking, but don't feel proud or ashamed of it.
practice awareness of what is. and what is is.
Monday, July 14, 2008
monday. yet another monday. more mondays.
still, another day is a gift, albeit one with a catch. suppose it didn't have a name. suppose it wasn't even yet another day, or even another day. or even "day".
just now.
post post:
9:00 in the evening, i just unpacked and i am back. nice drive heading west into beautiful evening clouds.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
successful exit from the vortex capital. nice drive, no excitement. got to the flatland center around noon. visited, hobnobbed, made mistake of laying down around 3 and slept. grilled ribs last night at eli and melissa's, took corbin. latest video was rendering all the while. will burn to DVD this morning. had trouble getting clean audio but think it's done.
up at 6 doing this - and that. more later.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report - Green on The Huffington Post:
"The plan would shatter America's long-standing legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence, and enable the FBI to operate 'by assuming that everyone's a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent,' said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union."

photo i took high up on parkway 2 days ago. this gentleman is headed north, anticipating the way a lot of us will be traveling before we know it.
up at 6. been hacking away on 2nd video and it is now 9:30. everything in and out of life as we know it is a mixed bag. working on non-linear video (or flash or complex photoshop print) requires hyper-focus, neuromuscular "thinking" (can't expect my head to keep track of how to do this stuff), and on the possible down side, obsession.
the latter of course can become a problem.
but without it i would walk away from it. which might happen some day.
my dad won in some raffle a 2 cd set of bill monroe. one of those boxed sets full of alternate takes and a booklet like an encyclopedia. he sent it to me and i got it yesterday. skimming the notes i ran across an interesting observation of new art genres which, if one develops into a familiar genre, takes time.
but until then, the artist is working in the dark, no recognition by the culture. why woul anyone do this?
IMHO because he or she is obsessed by the creative "new".
in a nutshell that's where i'm at.
leave today for chapel hill. for too many reasons to go into here my self-imposed rule is not to do this during the heat. but i can't ignore the signs and portents that i've been receiving that tell me to do it so off i go.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
been going to bed earlier and earlier, getting up in morning earlier and earlier. a good trend. volunteering for hospice i think. got a guided tour of discount organic foods this morning, bought groceries for $27, the least expensive shopping trip i've made in a long time. yesterday tried to find the big slide on the parkway, too much rain to do any good but a good trip nonetheless. headed for chapel hill tomorrow.
Sunday, July 6, 2008

i have 2 rabbit friends that hang around. took this early this morning.
got a good night's sleep. what a relief. i can't figure it out but about every 10 days i can't sleep which is not all that bad but the following day is a nightmare.
been fooling around a little with the layout of this waste of bandwidth this morning. got a few more things i want to do to it.
tomorrow.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
The abstract affirmation of 'change' is conservative, not progressive. It privileges all change, apparent or real, stylistic or substantive, reactionary or revolutionary. The more things change -- the more things that change -- the more they stay the same. Faster, faster, Speed Racer! -- (but keep going in circles)."
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Authoritarian and Democratic Technics--Lewis Mumford
Authoritarian and Democratic Technics--Lewis Mumford:
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

detail from last watercolor i did. on canvas.
just got back from renapothist visit. i got four gold stars out of five.
lots of folks looking for a short pithy statement from mr. obama that might insulate him from the cascade of noise and misdirection we are about to experience. personally i feel each step he takes towards an "official" gravatas, the "look and feel" of corporate approved mediated heavy weight in the "real" world of 24/7 image, brand, and yes, thought manipulation
the less chance he has of winning.
Monday, June 30, 2008
short movie demonstrates washing truck on a dark and stormy day.
meanwhile the kriminal king and his horde continue looting and pillaging.
elections as public circus continues.
contractors on the ground in iran preparing the next grab. like the iraqui debacle, any personal knowledge of the area or it's people actively discouraged. worth noting that iranians are probably the most pro-western folks of the islamic world.
the little people continue to be squeezed. from reagon to bush II, the specter of livelihood as economic slavery continues unabated.
the primary domestic result of 9/11 continues to be progressive training of population (wage-slaves) to accept life in a police state.
corporate rulers continue to buy up all the untainted water they can.
the domain of law has already morphed into arbitrary application, reminiscent of chinese mandarin era or hellenic sophists.
as in the mauve decade, robber barons monopolize distribution, only this time the choke point is information delivery. antitrust laws recede into myth.
the commons, ie public space, shrinks: "there's not enough room to be anywhere."
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Randi Rhodes Show - Message Board
The Randi Rhodes Show - Message Board: "And you ask me why I don't trust the corporate media? You ask me why I am increasingly turning toward alternative sources of news? I saw the Addington and Yoo performances on Cspan myself, but most people I know did not and they still don't know about it. That makes me crazy! How can we hope to choose a new leader wisely and reclaim our country, when so many of us don't even know what is going on?
Thanks to Randi for covering this story so well. Because of her, many people now know and have no excuse for turning a blind eye toward the commission of war crimes by our leaders. Shine a light."
Friday, June 27, 2008
"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."
George Carlin -
yesterday a very down day. after a classic night of sleepless worlds made it to courthouse by nine. jury duty. this was to see if everyone's excuse not to participate met state requirements. papers and forms cascading down in ancient patterns.
came back home and been in bed mostly every since. today i'll reset and get back in saddle. maybe with a horse underneath. i dunno. many hours of the low murmur of air america,
randi rhodes. i am getting into her. on the radio from 3-6 around here. she is smart, serious, and neat. today she was obsessing about how at the exact same time hillery and obama were doing their thing in united NH or wherever it was, ceremony of "brand-merger", cspan was showing congressional hearing featuring cheyney's personal lawyer and jon yu, state dept (?) writer of "torture memo". it will either be on you tube or expect a lot of black helicopters to be around, roadblocks on highways. questions like "does the president have the power to order the torture of children in front of parent" were answered by lawyerspeak, incredible word groupings went on for minutes, no answer.
impression of obama fading slightly - " the march to the middle" - current take on mcain: sacrificial, republicans don't particularly want him to win, they'll work the back alleys and be ready when obama presidency fails.
another interesting motif on the socialist AM radio waves: blockades, check points, "papers please..." mention made of populice being trained for police state.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
for the last couple of weeks i have experienced a variety of small ailments, assorted aches and pains and minor maladies. i am happy to announce that they are all over except for a little "pain in the neck" not a metaphor. i am fit as a riddle.
finished "cities of the plain" by macartney a week or so ago. i can't remember a book that lingered so long in my mind after i finished it. altho w/ my memory this signifies perhaps nothing, it is unusual for me these days. it is the 3rd book of a trilogy. i read the 2nd earlier (an even better work IMHO). looking forward to running into the first and reading it.
trying to describe the books effect on me i used the word "physical" in a conversation this week. what did i mean? there are places in both these books that were like a blow to the solar plexus is all i can say. like smashing into samsara. too real to be unpleasan or pleasantt. the actual feel and grit of life, death on the ancient earth. arizona, old mexico, turn of the century pre-statehood earth. a run from youth to old age. dilemmas of fate. vast chunks of a lifetime lived and later dimly recalled. like geologic subterranean movements beneath the landscape of "now".
i'm going to find a sentence in the book that may illustrate what i am trying to say.
[5 minutes of dead air.]
random sentence:
"when he awoke it was not from this dream but another and the pathway from dream to dream was lost to him."
Monday, June 23, 2008

buying a ticket to colorado this week to visit eric, angela and grace. sign up for obama campaign altho i have to admit i'd rather do what i do best to help which would be to assist richard in creating a site aimed at nc blue collar workers, you know, the good ol' boys who won't vote for him.
i listened to some right wing radio call-in show last night and was impressed by the host and callers consistent contention that he is a marxist, socialist, muslim, and his wife wrote some dissertation at princeton that is more of the same. so the need is there and i think it already has "traction".
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008

spent yesterday wondering around in craggy gardens thanks to richard and debbie. rhodo heaven. perfect weather. back home to bed early slept like a... contented human.
reading cities of the plain by macartney. this man is an artist of the top rank. if memory serves me correctly - and that is an open question - the last volume of proust's in search of lost time has the same title.
i plan to stay home today and clean house. it may take me all weekend.
if i ever get around to it i will add a bunch of political commentary to this blog, altho or because i agree with a stranger i met on the mountain yesterday who opines the government may slowly sink below the event horizon. depends on where folks put their attention. mundane day to day survival or the sorry spectacle of cartoon drama.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
spent the last few days almost finishing first of 2 12 minute videos and regrouping after last weekends foray. the soundtrack to the video kind of stopped me: it was complete but did not render nicely. so i learned a lot about setting audio levels and fades in a video editor.
my two oldest children's birthday is next week so i turned out a picture for eac which i'll mail in an hour or so. then off to craggy gardens off the parkway with richard and debbie to spend a good long time wondering thru whatever is there; i'm going along with their program of taking a book, sketchbook, pencils etc and let the time and place be.
tomorrow i will purchase a roundtrip ticket to denver to visit oldest son eric and angela and meet grace, newest grandchild who must be maybe 9 months old now.
i had thought to get to arizona this trip but instead am going to keep it real simple.
truck engine light went on suddenly day before yesterday. i found an air hose split ner it's end, cut it and reattached. engine light remained on. and learned something: once the light goes on it stays on even if you have corrected the cause, it has to be reset by the same gadget that gives the service people the code for the cause.
i plan to buy a bicycle soon, or scatter or moped, used of course and if it is a bicycle three gears max. were i younger i'd bite the bullet and get a motorcycle. but not this time around.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

another shot from the top of max patch sunday. there were a few groups of picnikers scattered ohere and there and at least 3 kites in the air at times. what a great idea.
the kurrent zeitgeist being a little dim to me, i'm not sure what flavor these kites were. did they include GPS? play dvds? don't know. but they brought back a memory of flying boxkites as a kid in little rock AK which is about as far back as any memory flashes i get go.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
went to barbque in emma last night w/ al, met a lot of new people and some old friends, as always i was blown away by the creativity of the crowd, everyone into something. got lost on the way back and took the grand tour in the dark, maybe an hour of confusion but i knew truck would find the way. in the meantime enjoyed the back roads, something i used to dream about during my arizona exile.
just in case my mailto:s don't work, my email is:''wyly(dot)chris(at)gmail(dot)com"
so susan drop me a line and put me in touch w. zen etc.
burned a 12 minute dvd video last night, a quick look this morning tells me it will be finished shortly, a few fixes, details, and a couple of larger problems altered and it's done i hope.
next step is a second 12 minutes which is going to be different but quicker to produce. already have soundtrack blocked out, and a vague idea of visuals.
i sent my dad a father's day card which he seemed to like. he asked me how i went about it. i am favorably disposed with starting off with a blank piece of paper, blank mind, blank plan. i let the thing assemble before my eyes and realize what i've produced only when i'm done. aleatory intuitive manifestation produced by puttering. for better or worse that's been my mode for sometime now.
i'm not coupled with this mode forever. i think it has to do w/ the tibetan vajrayana categories of form and formless. a ittle form will most likely creep into my work. it's not my intention or plan, it's just time for this. what fun!
i was once told by v. buddhist surrogate that i should not spend too much time in the formless.
leaving for hot springs in a minute, back tomorrow around noon?
Friday, June 13, 2008
when i was young i was a member of a small circle of friends in chapel hill NC. this was the post-beat 60's era, now a cultural cartoon.
which is too bad but that's how it goes. a lot of buried stories, lives, intentions, mistakes, epiphanies and wreckage. ben jones, one of the cast of characters of that now discredited time is coming out w/ a book. i hope it does some justice to the long series of changes a lot of us went thru.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
this video says it all for me, especially today. (read next paragraph).
(video will be cut off on right side but i'm not about to layout page to accommodate it at the moment.)
been down and out for 2 days, must have pulled muscle or sprained back, very painful. 36 hours flat on back and it seems to be improving. have no idea of how this happened. a couple of days more and i hope to be back to my normal 75% functioning.
Sunday, June 8, 2008

took this yesterday at cousin moriah's. next time i go i'm going to play music, this was a BBQ very relaxed.
wish i had something to say. . . but it's all been said already. now on top of the words spoken thru the distant ages we humans are heaping blips and bleeps on top of the words, faster and faster, burying them under a layer of iconic discourse that does not require a second human personality to perform. a long slow apocalypse displacing the soul.
i remember telling one of my children that if a person stood on a street corner and actually spoke in the personal mode of "i-thou" he or she would quickly become "disappeared", marginalized, categorized, hypnotized, devitalized.
but that was back when humans conversed.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Who Will Rule The New Internet? - TIME
Who Will Rule The New Internet? - TIME: "Every major player in Techland wants to create the next great platform, of course. What's new here is that it's possible for any number of them to succeed. 'Among the things that are different from the old status quo is the idea that one will win,' says Marc Andreessen, who helped write the first widely adopted browser, Mosaic, which popularized the Web. The Internet is a much larger playing field than PC operating systems. 'Trying to decide which will win,' Andreessen adds, 'is kind of like debating whether beef, chicken or lobster is going to win the market for food.'"
amen to that. goodbye monoculture. let a thousand hours bloom.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008

arabic. a word that means something like "things are as they should be". did this for friend i thought i was meeting this saturday for Bluff Mountain Festival. realized a minute ago that it is the following weekend.
which is too bad in a way because that is the same weekend URTV, the public access station in asheville, is throwing open house to drum up support.
also just realized this is my 2003rd post to this pointless blog. pointless in the best sense of the word of course.
Monday, June 2, 2008

i was fooling around with a tesla coil i rigged up from a spaghetti strainer and blown hair dryer. it was a dim gray afternoon and when the sun came out this plasmoid image manifested. after a couple of days research i determined it's origin was an ancient tintype of mae west singing to the troops somewhere in the Dardanelles during the first world war.
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson - Books - Review - New York Times
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson - Books - Review - New York Times: "Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and “Tree of Smoke” is a tremendous book, a strange entertainment, very long but very fast, a great whirly ride that starts out sad and gets sadder and sadder, loops unpredictably out and around, and then lurches down so suddenly at the very end that it will make your stomach flop."
monday. survived the weekend. no i don't mean partying which i vaguely remember surviving, i mean the mundane confusion of getting by. for awhile i felt like the head man of a job i used to work described, not hanging by my fingernails but by fingers in the dike.
reading tree of smoke by denis johnson. recommended by chall, the son of one of my oldest friends no longer with us. johnson wrote jesus son which is the only other book of his that i have read and which blew me away. tree of smoke is a big book about the vietnam war - i think, i've only read a couple of hundred pages. like the earlier book it jumps around from story to story. the atmosphere is the orient circa 60's. this he captures well, almost in a retro way, not the mythical orient of today, but the touch and feel of a generation earlier, hot, sweaty, muddy, incomprehensible, overlain w/ the american machine of that era, rednecks and foreign service aristocrats more lost than they know.
still archiving material from very full hard drives. because of the mixture of operating systems it's slow going.
one of the more entertaining tasks this week i plan to do is hosing down large watercolor on watercolor canvas. maybe i'll film it.
started a new muzakal piece last night, haven't messed much in a couple of months w/ this application. i guess i will institute rss feed from this blog since it is highly doubtful i will be posting daily this summer.
but i'm ok and it's all good.
Friday, May 30, 2008
yesterday i felt very weird. all day. what can i say? the inner world affected by the outer maybe?
how many worlds are there anyway?
sri auribindo wrote that the mental world we inhabit is external, imposed.
but if i am totally conditioned to "think" that it is the entire kosmos - and if all of us are - then life as we know it is a dream. a notion that pops up from time to time in human history. Plotinus, the vedas, the "Cloud of Unknowing", Ramana Maharshi, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, Hafez, not to mention oprah and Eckhart Tolle.
so what about this "dream"? to big to think about, much less to describe.
but currently it has the smell of a world ruled by the ignorant (from the verb "to ignore". specifically frat boys born with some sort of spoons in mouth, shriveled souls bent on endless owning, beyond the pale of justice.
elections to make things right? maybe, maybe not. but as long as we are stuck here might as well push the boulder uphill one more time.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

another foto sprinkled with magic dust.
i promised myself that i would post these snappy lines from a song i heard on the AM radio while nosing my truck around the mountains. i don't think i did yet, so here it is. don't know the song's name or the band:
"i am what i am
cause i ain't what i used to be."
lot of existential, metaphysical, and yes "spiritual" implications to muse over.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008

watercolor from last febuary.
returned from the first memorial-say road trip i can remember taking. there may have been a few others long ago when the road was an adventure instead of a war zone. met a few survivors of my cohort, musicians of all skill leverls including mighty fine, had a great time.
now comes the hundred days of summer. i'll install 2 window air conditioners today. since i don't go out much in the heat i'll invent a couple of long term projects to putter with thru the dog days. video and a series of paintings most likely.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
realized yesterday that this coming weekend was labor day. i had it fixed in my head that it was the last day of may. i'll be camping out somewhere near dobson in surry county. a yearly gathering, may have crossed paths w/ some of the folks there, maybe not. tonight i will attend orientation to video editing at urtv. today finish cleaning and emptying living module. grocery shopping. library. change oil in truck. find something that i can't remember at the moment. i'm posting this from new browser "flock" that seems peachy keen so far.
i'm working in spurts on 12 minute video using material that i have for one reason or another created and has been hanging around since. presumably will for "wallpaper project" which i don't know much about except they have been doing half hour video for awhile - 3 yrs? - always a good sign.
Monday, May 19, 2008
reading spook city by William Gibson. i've read and enjoyed most of his work over the years. even when i feel like i'm reading the same book over and over, "cyber-punk", the intersection of the street and the mind tyranny of the overworld. anyway ran accross this in the wee hours of the morning:
"She remembered Inchmale describing Stockholm syndrome, the fondness and loyalty one could supposedly come to feel for even the most brutal captor. . . Inchmale thought that America had developed Stockholm syndrome toward its own government, post 9/11."
this is a throwaway line in the book, but one worth pondering.
the best prison is the one you don't know you are in.
Sunday, May 18, 2008

wedding last evening was a good one. location the best of western NC. in the rush to get there - of course i was rushed, one of my bad habits or maybe karmic left-over - i forgot camera but i'm not going to spend any time reminiscing about the shots i didn't take. i'm halfway convinced that the sun set over the great smokey park range but halfway dubious. whatever it was they had a shape that resembled and reminded me of the smokeys visible from places on big ridge, another in a long string of worlds i once lived in.
ceremony and folks present were a delight. suzanne and issac got married real good.
today is my day to re-lax. that means clean the fort from top to bottom. and maybe slip over to t.'s or the parkway.
Friday, May 16, 2008
framing a picture while pbs news hour was burbling in the background i heard a little of this and that. here is what i make of it:
the republicans: i used to think the party had been kidnapped, blackmailed, bought, whatever by the bush cabel. so you had the bush mafia and the rest, reagon republicans. nether friends of mine. but now i think it is a spectrum of criminality, from the big man - who is not bush - to the soldiers, ie republican congress and corporations.
today's dustup: talking to the enemy or potential enemy is appeasement.
part of the oligarch's tired strategy during this era of brand wars. don't talk to nation states or groups who threaten us. dialogue, conversation, communication is taboo. in fact even knowing anything about the enemy is in bad taste and slightly suspicious. the language, culture, and complexity of anypeople is a domain the ober-kriminals don't even know they don't know. hubristic bandit warlords who are totally embalmed as far as their consciousness of here and now are concerned and we are concerned.
if obama simply responds to this pseudo-referential move in a straight forward manner, forgets about looking tough behind a lapel pin, and contextualizes ithe whole sorry sound-byte baloon as a stale move in a shabby game and a move premised on the belief that most americans are stupid
he wins. we win.
so obama needs to respond on the basis of all of us knowing what's up.
i don't know a whole lot about youtube. it is such a huge sprawling site and i have not spent much time there. except for some of the keyboard tutorials where i have picked up a clue or two.
so since i have slid into video dvd creation this year (reason: since i keep pumping out electronic gizmo muzak and short animated do-hickeys out of habit i thought why not put them on dvd: halfway successfully) i put one of them up a week or so ago just to see if i could do it.
so today i found a "channel" with the following description of the video:
"like nothing i've ever heard. or played.
visual artist and friends who play unknow instruments for mental prophylaxis and help create the new which will be now but not for long."
now what is weird about this is i didn't write it. and i don't know where it came from but is exactly like something i would write. especially that last part. so what's up? as always, i don't have a clue but apparently i don't need one.
Thursday, May 15, 2008

still whittling away at removing files from 5 disk drives. space is slowly manifesting.
the weather lately has been that moody, overcast, shadowless, silent weather i enjoy so much. stillness. the mind ceases burbling almost and yet in the slow steady "now" i find more is accomplished than in the heroic adrenaline driven hyperactivity that passes for normal these days. i like it.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
video i uploaded to youtube last week can be viewed here.
why? because it's there.
last night i listened again to "zeke and the wheel" by r.b. morris and was again very impressed by this production. musicians, poet singer, and quality of audio is quite amazing. as a songwriter/performer i have to put this guy up there with dylan. a lot of resonances and references to my experience of life. but subtle. bears repeated listening. don't confuse with the band with the same name as the album.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
cleaning up, a new broom. it takes a lifetime to do. i found the following in a small 2 inch square notepad i vaguely remember always being underfoot. it must have gotten soaked at some point, ink blurred.
i don't know if it's more fun finding or creating. or the difference between them.
if it is a song it might have a name. maybe-->
Someone is Dreaming Right Now
Out along the highway
There’s work that’s being done.
Heavy dancing gases
Playing with the sun.
Another ageless darkness
In the parking lot.
Shadows shouting chrome:
Another evening shot.
Down along the river bend
It’s always Friday night.
When the south wind blows real good
You know there’ll be a fight.
Underneath the boardwalk
Lost lovers contemplate
The missing moon and stars
They thought that they could make.
“Which world?” asked the ticket master
Behind his missing throne
“Any world but this one”
Replied the message on the phone.
The glitter in the window said
“It’s all one way you know.
I guess that you forgot
The one who told you so”
Discourse in hybrid harmony
No longer takes the chance
The open door stands asleep
Dreaming words that dance
The far plateau lies
well placed in all this mess
Must have been the misplaced map
Or just a lucky guess
The clouds they are outrageous
No laughs at all tonight
Relatively pointless
The moon shines it’s delight
As we tiptoed through the forest
Peculiar plants were glowing
Like someone’s smile we know
And couldn’t help enjoying
Every night I end a day
Trapped in amber glow
If I wasn’t in a hurry
I’d be just as slow
Avoid the void they said
Standing tall and straight
When the elevator stopped
They didn’t hesitate
The beast meanwhile was loose
Events were overflowing
Annoying nonreflection
Kept anyone from knowing
“So long” yelled the hobo
Sliding down a trance.
"Without a detached head
You never had a chance".
Saturday, May 10, 2008
saw junior brown at the orange peel last nite. he has a pretty formulaic set he delivers but he is so good at it that it doesn't matter. very relaxing to watch him in action, he doesn't seem to sweat it but delivers texas honkey tonk and blues riffs with aplomb.
at last finished "warlock" by Oakley Hall . an excellent read, and a hard book to describe. such a transparent and clear narrative, no flourishes, straight ahead prose, and yet it resonates with all sorts of implications about human nature, life, death, politics etc.
speaking of oakly hall i stumbled onto the author after i found out that racheal cox, a sweet little girl my children grew up with is in a band of the same name, working hard and doing good:
Oakley Hall – Listen free at Last.fm
Friday, May 9, 2008

i took this image when i was loose on the back roads.
but as they used to say content is king so:
politics:
one of obama's strengths is the timbre of his voice.
he must strengthen his innate ability to communicate thru the noise bubble by talking straight, from the context of transcending but including politicalspeak. ie say what he says as if he was talking to me or you, assuming we all are only too familiar with the constricted media cliches.
culture:
i happened to see on the local access channel a local minister speaking on evolution and creationism, i guess they call it "intelligent design". he was good. what struck me was what he was saying, basically that the manifest world had a point to it rather than being a random result, is not unreasonable. in fact the "non-dual" approach is similar in that existence has a point, a path, and the present population of humans are lost in the middle of that path. or better said, the point where the path can turn back towards the invisible unknowable source of the manifest.
Nondualism - "The term can refer to a belief, condition, theory, practice, or quality.":
life:
was a bowl of cherries, now is cherries rolling around in space along with the shards of a broken bowl.
art:
going to see jr. brown tonight.
respite from the worldly:
see above.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
i was thinking today how thinking is not the same as consciousness. like most of us, i am conscious of my thoughts. i think...
feelings to some extent but i accept there are feelings that affect my persona that i am not conscious of. i mean, that's how i feel.
then i got in the truck. 4 stops. only got lost once.
when i got back here did the above image.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

'nother doodle. yesterday i voted. did you?
still tweaking format of this thing.
last night attended field gear class at URTV, first of two. the digital video cameras are something else, nothing like the ancient analog equipment i used to schlep around before the earth was cool.
finally managed to produce dvd, but had to drop the menu idea, this one plays 5 separate short pieces one after another. today if the stars are right i will upload one to youtube. because it's there.
rest of the day i have the luxury of no pressing tasks. will shop for small camping stove and maybe head out for a day or two after end of week (rain coming).
small observation: the roman empire devolved when the periphery eg Dalmatian coast, england, syria etc became so remote that the roman "citizens" there had nothing in common with their fellow citizens in rome. function of geography, culture, and distance. the current electoral politics in USA is highlighting a similar phenomenon. groups of citizens with no commonality except for the commercial world of brands.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
it's voting day in carolina. i haven't participated in the runup (neologism) but of course will vote. i passed on early voting, mainly to experience the action at the polls. the primary is a possible turning point for the democrats and yes i'll be voting for mr. obama. why?
because he carries less of the stigmata of the ruling class, the movers and shakers who don't have a clue about how you and i live, think, feel. the 2% of citizens who own our world. the democrats have proved themselves to be an integral part of this bunch, not able to stand up and talk like a man or women, exactly like their counterparts the republicans.
it is worth noting that if the obama buzz continues and he is elected president, the bad guys who have screwed our world up will not go away. one point of view is that the republican party, as lame as their specious machinations have been since reagon, was hijacked by plain old white collar criminals. they could walk away with their loot because they are criminals first and republicans second.
so my vote is my attempt to restore something that has been lost, and that goal is always shaky. i am voting for edwards to become attorney general and bring to justice the neo-mafia who have infiltrated the country's institutions and helped turn them into bad jokes. if the law is not used after the new president is in office, then all bets are off and the rat-hole will continue to devour our lives.
Monday, May 5, 2008

foto: last week's walk down the parkway.
today's email, got this link:
A Tribute To Albert Hofmann
good to see this taboo subject discussed in an open, matter of fact manner. be sure to read the comments.
Sunday, May 4, 2008

i'm such a tecno-primitive. i do all this stuff without knowing much. i just started playing with depth of field or foocus on camera. what fun. above from a few days ago.
sunday. beautiful weather. yesterday was cool, moist and overcast. as was pointed out to me many years ago quite aggressively, the celt in me loves this kind of day. i get resonances and flashes of other places and times. some of them are: playing the shakuhachi by the river in bluff utah, listening to the loons. sitting in a rocking chair in the dark on the front porch at big ridge. talking to the night.
Friday, May 2, 2008

about 3 yesterday i finally said the hell with it and rove up to the parkway. the parkway heading north is barricaded at - i think - mile 254.3 0r 4 cars parked there, i did the same, crossed the barricade on foot and had a most pleasant walk for about a mile or so, strolling down the centerline of the road with occaisional climbs up the west side. lots of pictures of which the above is one.
driving to the barricade and walking beyond it i encountered a lot of bicycles, very few cars. nice to stroll a stretch like that and no traffic.
on another note i did the mall day before yesterday to pick up a badly needed new pair of glasses. in stopped in the bookstore to buy a clip on light for reading (part of my camping out supplies) and noticed a small display of books labled "summer school reading". i was surprised and delighted to find a brief history of everything by ken wilber among the books. amazing.
Ken Wilber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"One of Wilber's main interests is in mapping what he calls the 'neo-perennial philosophy', an integration of some of the views of mysticism typified by Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy with an account of cosmic evolution akin to that of the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo. He rejects most of the tenets of 'Perennialism' and the associated anti-evolutionary view of history as a regression from past ages or yugas.[9]. Instead, he embraces a more traditionally Western notion of the great chain of being. As in the work of Jean Gebser, this great chain (or 'nest') is ever-present while 'relatively' unfolding throughout this material manifestation, although to Wilber '...the 'Great Nest' is actually just a vast morphogenetic field of potentials'...'."
mrs. obama is speaking tonight at unca. i guess i'll go.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Plastic: Burn, Denver, Burn — Rush Reaches Out To Rioters
"and riots in Denver, at the Democratic Convention will see to it we don't elect Democrats. And that's the best damn thing that can happen to this country, as far as I can think."
true statement. as far as he can think.
pretty day. above was a test - video. i must have done this one about ten years ago using infinity-d on mac system 8 (?). if it works expect bigger and better things to come.
or even if it doesn't.
[it appears to work. golly. but i guess it needs a poster frame.]
[the black square was not pleasant as it came up. so i removed it.]
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Ken Nordine's Word Jazz Web Site and Podcast - "Wow of Now" Podcast
Ken Nordine's Word Jazz Web Site and Podcast - has found a new drug
tasty reminder from our old friend ken nordeen. shamen, our own william blake. shades of kenneth patchen and a marvel of circuitry in the basement, a distant drone...

another sleepless night. happening a lot just lately. only correlation with anything: taking antibiotics. pretty weird, huh?
plus while i wasn't sleeping got this:
"time set silence into bone." only there was another word after "time".
today i will find my billfold which i lost - here at home - yesterday.
------> found it.
did picture above from drawing c. '66. finally maybe figured out the dvd authoring video and burning miasma, ended up using ,rdf file amongst the processes and it seems to work. lot's of ides of how to use this interactive medium. but the rendering time, what a sink. i vaccuum, do dishes, learn the locrian pentatonic sale on keyboards, forget it, match frames and pictures.
reading auribindo. what a guy.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
China must stop cursing the Dalai Lama and talk: U.S.
a good idea.
maybe the usa could do the same with hamas, iran, and many others.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
politics. yes it is enough to drive us all nuts, and the remedy for it is not to be found in that domain. but anybody that votes for republican criminal cabal because of the messiness of the dems is worse than nuts. if they vote for mccain because they think lapel pins mean anything worth meaning even if they are made in china that is bad enough.
but because the dems haven't mastered the charade? much worse.
do you have a lapel? among the many that don't the manufactured brouhaha is from another planet.
Monday, April 21, 2008
good morning. spent a very quiet weekend too quite.
fpr the first time in a very long time my creative side is in the doldrums. can't summon up the interest to do anything in the once satisfying realm of puttering in the land of making "art". i am accepting this as a probably needed change and look foward to it going away. meanwhile this old blog limps along.
but moments continue during which i continue to streamline my existence by throwing gtuff overboard in my domacile. i am hungry for interior space both in the realm of household and my head.
what does this mean for blog? content is king, the king is dead, long live the king. when the fog blows away something new will be revealed.
a surprise for you and me,
Friday, April 18, 2008
too many words, too many numbers. 21st c. blues. i've noticed many of my peers remarking the proper names go first. anything capitalized. and then there is the thought that the indigo children, a touch of asperger's and raised with desktop computers, cellphone, etc. are the wave of the future because they can deal with it.
watched oprah's book lass lesson 7 - the new book by e. tolle - with some friends. i'm not as sure as some that this phenomenon signifies much except the hunger of the world's modern citizenry for meaning and sense. which is vast.
i am part of "day in the life of asheville", a project starting at 12 noon today and running thru midnight sat. picture taking. haven't come up with any plan for it.
watched a minute or two of debate on abc. that was enough. constricted, cliche ridden game show stuff. democracy has been hijacked by criminals. corporate entities trump justice. do you know who owns you? or what owns you?
myself i'm entranced by images. not bragging, nothing to brag about. just the facts ma'am, and the facts are image-inary. there might be one above.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

got back in the santa fe to be of the south yesterday. very glad i was talked out of leaving late the day before, it made for an easy, almost dreamy drive. as happens on getting back to one's own bed if you have one, i opened the door and the living module looked great.
i just scooted in on this trip the last of the time i can travel to myrtle beach and the triangle (where some of my children and grand children left. the temperature and tick situation make it nearly impossible for me to visit. sunday i found a small tick on my person, could not have been there long. removed it cleanly (meaning i extracted the whole critter including head). late yesterday when i got back it and about 5 other spots had deteriorated to open gaping wounds and like many other visits east and south out of the mountains, had to make doctors appointment on my return.
it is a curious thing and something the CDC is way out of line on. i misspent part of my youth in the woods every summer around the research triangle and other places, deep in the woods and ticks did not bother me. sounds kind of tacky, but i set a jar of water on the mantle where they would go when i got back from walking or whatever. these were the "dog ticks" so familiar to the area.
but that was in another country so to speak. since then two things have changed. migration of "foreign" ticks to area - deer ticks from the northeast, starri ticks from texas. the second change i suspect is my metabolic and immune system, due to being beat up on a daily basis by type I diabetes.
so doxycycline here i come.
returned with book i worked on years ago which has been printed in india. heavy hardback, 700 pages plus: the new life by bhau kalchuri. even though or maybe because i was working for - i think - close to a year or two using quark xpress to put the manuscript into publishable form i never read it. but i started it this morning and it's pretty good. a lot of work by a lot of people volunteering their efforts is evident and i especially liked the prose which flows naturally into a good read.
i'll post a photo of my trip above when after i hook up hardware etc.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
well the post below w/ a video snippet obviously did not work. right now i'm sitting in a wi-fi coffee shop in myrtle beach so unless impulse grabs me i'm not going to try to fix it. when i get home i'll jump into it and a bunch of other technical clap-trap involving video, quicktime, flash, dvds etc.
maybe. maybe i'll take up duck carving for a change. oops i meant duck decoy carving.
when i arrived at the Baba Center and found my room, there was a copy of new life hardback on the bed signed by bhau. it knocked me out. what a beautiful surprise. it seems like a hundred years ago that i slogged thru a lot of heavy lifting typesetting a very fluid manuscript. it is a big book and the job of pilgrims bringing back copies from india is going to be rough. for those that don't know, shipping thru indian customs is apparently not very workable. [note: expense is the primary culprit i have since found out.]
other news: i think my dobro died. the tricone resonator has developed a nasty buzz. i thought i had it fixed a few weeks ago. but it's back.
could not ost this from coffee shop so posting now.
Monday, April 7, 2008
test video, uploaded on the road, don't know what it is or how it will play.
monday, not quite noon. another sleepy day. leaving soon for myrtle beach. made it to raleigh to see stone's movie with jim. concert footage, glad to see sax player - can't remember name - still standing. keith richards well on his way to becoming elderly english eccentric. jagger certainly skinny and probably should be in olympics, in really good physical shape. didn't see a lot of children and grandchildren this visit, will see what happens next weekend when i will be back. quick shower and on to center. i'm operating on wireless pc, sure is a house of cards, hopeful that i can get online a time or two over the next five days. if not, i'll be back.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
sunday morning. lost yesterday. layed down for short nap and slept thru grandson corbin and friend upstairs making hell of a racket. visited jim and didn't make it to doug and marcia's for unc final four game which i saw a good bit of with nicole.
today jim and i are going to see stones in 3d imax.
i feel better this morning than the last few days.
who is at the top of the power hierarchy?
who is at the bottom?
you me and everyone we know.
Friday, April 4, 2008
this week has been an exercise in patience.
and i flunked.
i recall being asked a few years back if i were starting blog anew whether i would still use the same domain name, "modern peasant". implicit was the feeling that it was sort of framing myself as a peasant with all of the negative attributes that characterization implies.
my answer was "yes i would".
i have to admit that very few got it. the name appealed to me because, with all of the hubris and arrogance built into the modern idea of how we live, the vast majority of the world's population retain some similarity to the "peasant" stereotype we carry with us.
professional. successful or not, educated, decisive, more knowledgeable than our ancestors etc perhaps, but we are and have been living under threat of of hidden violence if we step out of line. this was all illustrated on the macneil news pbs piece yesterday on the FAA organization. grown men testifying before congress how the world works in their corner. and to my mind not just the FAA but all organizations and institutes. of particular note was the story of one worker bee who described how his boss invaded his cubicle and, fondling the photos of his wife and family he was allowed in his workspace remarked what a shame it would be for him to lose his livelihood if he persisted in trying to do his job for real and not as highly formalized ritual charade.
today as the "system" unravels faster and faster the results of humans being forced to live as cogs is a little more visible.
we live under the domination of crooks, warlords, dictators and bandits. babylon after the mongolian hordes have plundered and retreated but whose presence is not far off. the present cabal in this country has pillaged and looted, not on horseback but in offices and mahogany board rooms. in a nation of law they would be arrested and tried. 10,000 ways they have exploited and robbed.
and this iron grid has descended world wide today. complete with the illusion that gee gaws and toys make it all ok, "the good life".
surrounded by the glossy panoply of greed and instant cliches.
i am really sick of it. there is nothing to do but stand up and and get "out" of line no matter what the consequence. firing squad? internment? fugitive life on the streets? ostracism? mental institution?
sure, why not. it is one thing to have an inkling that all is not right. it is another to collaborate with the overlords and hope we escape their attention.
ok thanks for allowing me to rant.
leaving town today for awhile.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

picture above another find in eternal spring cleaning. gum bichromate print. i did a series in this medium in early 80's.
from an email i got this morning from old friend m. that i can't resist sharing:
Q: What did you gain by complete and total enlightenment?
A: Nothing.
Cool! That is the Buddhist take on it. Still. . .still, I'm more sympathetic to the Taoist version of that question:
Q: What did you gain by complete and total enlightenment?
A: Huh?
Monday, March 31, 2008
got up at the crack of dawn, took meds, getting ready to test BG when i discovered it was 3AM.
all in a day's work. or play.
stayed cooped up over the last weekend. worked on a 4th "movie" for DVD which at present contains three. movie is fine, or can be made fine, down to a few fixes. but the soundtrack crackles. i used, among other things, "ixquarks" on mac to make it which may be the culprit. i had no idea of how to use it but liked the results. but when transferred to pc and brought into vegas i got some strange crackles.
i heard some hip-hop artist somewhere talking about why he was changing from sampling to playing instruments. he said arraigning the samples into intricate patterns was way too labor intensive. you must be very obsessive to persevere when writing code, or finishing a painting that is not going well, or generated animation or music on a computer. luckily i am that. before bed last night i looked at an oil that i have been working on for too long, grabbed a tube of color and brush and finished it. looks great this morning.
now on to a new soundtrack.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008

picture i received yesterday of granddaughter grace. beautiful print, the jpg hardly does it justice. it was taken when she was 3 months old. what presence.
finally have cobbled together a method to create video DVDs. i caught on tv last night while i was roaming from room to room a short interview with a lady who is producing or has produced on a low budget some sort of animated version of, i think, peter and the wolf. she is five years into it and stated that it was all she did. it was as she put it, an obsession.
without being obsessed i would never have beat my way thru the jungle of creating first dvd. i guess for some of us obsession is necessary. i'm obsessed. every day i paint, record music, work on soundtracks, animation, video. why? obsessed with the creative.
downside: everything else pales into insignificance. a price i will gladly continue to pay. it keeps meaningless at bay.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

i was going to post a detailed and clear exposition of where the world culture is at, why, and why cultural evolution can result in (and has at present) a retrogressive situation peopled by warlords, pathological power addicts, cheaters and six pound users. the shrinking owner class spinning downwards into insanity.
and the other 99%: us modern peasants.
instead i posted the above picture. done with repidograph technical pen which i used for years. dates from @ 1966-67. found the other day in the endless cleanup.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
i finally got a dvd out with menu, three places to go. two short video pieces, one computer generated a long time ago using, if i remember right, infini-d on a mac quadra os9. the third is 6 minutes long plus. it has been a nightmare piecing together some sort of production protocal (take a, conver to be, convert to d, script here and there in languages unknown, burn, learn.
actually it's been great fun.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
i slowed way down this week and it was not pleasant. some sort of internal reorganization.
got up to parkway yesterday where i ran into an old friend.
but i probably will not be posting daily for a bit. however maybe the feel and look and content of this blog will continue to blossom too much white space can be creepy. i know i know it's an integral component of a lot of beautiful work. maybe it's just my urge to make a mark. play dough. handprint. quicksand.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
gloomy doomy weather. indoors after the ides. i have been engaged for a few days - in this order - recovering (recreating really) source files for dvd i am making; painting 2 oils; recording various instruments on mac, transferring to pc and making soundtrack for flash project, have started finding visuals for it; reinforcing waterproofing on camper; and last but not least cleaning up kitchen. i've also been hauling out various boxes full of cassette tapes, cds of material i backed up at some point, and lots of dust and cobwebs.
but today is a new day so i'll finish these activities one way or another. probably another.
Monday, March 17, 2008
and i blew away source files for a little movie i have been working on since last memorial day. seven minutes of of high quality video and audio all from my still camera. typical project. began with little audio eventually six minutes plus sound track. then i decided it needed to be a movie with visuals and jumped into various editing packages. then this and that. then deleted whole package by mistake, cleaning up disks.
maybe i can rustle up an older version and if i do, you'll see it here.
Friday, March 14, 2008
pretty much farted the day away yesterday. that's how i get things done - or not. added this to twinkies animation. this morning i go to DMV to figure out if i renewed my license plate and then a sort drive on the parkway. later i'll figure out something to put up in the right sidebar.
like "arrest the criminal overworld".
Thursday, March 13, 2008
really strange. the last few days have been beautiful. i am experiencing this as an order to get out, drive the parkway, walk through the jungle.
but i haven't done that. a scattering of errends is about it. i don't think i'm agoraphobic, just anagoroaphilic. wow, what an ugly word.
i did set up spot in backyard with easel etc and painted for awhile.
i've been up at 6 the last two days which is a good trend. i feel better when i get up early.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
beautiful weather. very busy yesterday, onward with digital animations headed for dvd land. puttered w/ painting. ditto with look of this blog, drove out to leicester for pleasant visit with tom. later at house t dropped by. we played a little music and i learned a little. two signs i got: read the "heart sutra" which i did the morning, and zazen practice is a good way to do nothing, which i think is a current need of mine, picture above is a water color, not new, which i fooled w/ a little last night. leaving now to buy a used vacuum cleaner and groceries.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
i find the damnest things on computer. i have no idea of when or how i created this image, but i know why.
a post a day keeps the street away. got rid of last whatchamacallit icon. burning a data dvd right now, the begining of clearing an external hard drive on quadra. i want to use it as a voice to text gadget in case i am supposed to write the great post american novelty.
meanwhile jim (happy birthday) points out that this page still has little edit pencils showing. they gotta go.
Friday, March 7, 2008
got rid of little tool icon that was hanging all over the page.
next: colored backgrounds, some anyway, fix font sizes, work some things of interest in right sidebar.
so what if i lost a day getting rid of that line of bloggercode in modified template? it's the same as doing nothing. which seems to be.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
hmmm... not sure what blogger will do with this, a late night image i just finished. jane emailed that nate is visiting in az. i've been in a solid hypomania space, worked on camper, a painting, saw dvd on richard's flat screen HD monitor and was pleased. right now i'm burning another, this one i added menu and 3 choices, one an old 3d animation i did with infini-d, one straight footage from camera, and the good one, the one i've been working on forever.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
what is it about the human that drives him or her to stay busy? yesterday the electricity went out from 1:30 to 8:30 on a dark and stormy afternoon. so i relocated a canvas near a window and a couple of tubes of paint near a window and puttered. my landlord stopped by for the rent and remarked that i did my best painting in the dark.
it's true.
then today opened up wide, dry and beautiful so i did about 10 things simultaneously, still am for that matter.
think this will be a prize vacation someday on wheel of eff?
electricity off yesterday from about 1:30 t0 8:30. very stormy lots of rain. first chance i've had since summer to check out truck camper for leaks, there were a few small ones. first sunny day a little fixin' to do.
i drove up to richard and debbie's to try out some video DVDs i've made. electricity went out as i was driving up driveway.
so as always back to drawing board.