communication. after 3 hours of sleep - no i was not having fun, just tossing and turning in bed - or twisting in the wind - came across this stuff. it all relates in some way or another to a mega-graphic i'm constructing to explain 800 pages of ken wilber.

the first is about a parrot.

"The fact that these experiments statistically prove that N'kisi's use of speech is not random also gives evidence of his sentience and intentional use of language. Though our work is just beginning, N'kisi has already shown aspects of intelligence that animals were thought to be incapable of, particularly a species that shares so little genetic similarity with humans."
from
Nkisi Project

then this:

"You can trust your audience to infer your full meaning from their knowledge of the situation, taken together with what you actually said."

(if they trust you.)

from
HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE?

and then i wondered into this which i think i will blowup and print and hang on the wall where i can spend hours staring at it. by far the best one of these i've seen, maybe because it relates to human conciousness and not who won a war:

imhoFAQ timeline of knowledge-representation, part 1

ended the evening at a very pleasant gathering of Baba folk, i really needed it.

bill o. from the old days dropped by. he had a tape we recorded here in town maybe '82. real artifact and i realized that once i could play the guitar, at least one evening.

this just in: (thanks tharpa)

"Zoloft is most commonly prescribed for the
treatment of depression and anxiety disorders,
but it would be ridiculous to limit such a
multi-functional drug to these few uses," Pfizer
spokesman Jon Pugh said. "We feel doctors need
to stop asking their patients if anything is wrong
and start asking if anything could be more right."
from
The Onion | Pfizer Launches 'Zoloft For Everything' Ad Campaign

busy day. nice day. restless night. started oil portrait which should be a hoot because it's pretty unknown territory for me. worked a lot on wilber chart. more about this later. i'll put up a link to poetry art ebook later. right now it is 2MB and i want to get size down. visited dave Mc, my old high school teacher. made phone calls trying to straighten out tax problem...yuck.

oh yeah. big breakthrough: discovered tgat the low string on chinese fiddle was tuned down an octive. sometimes life in the manifest world assembles such small delights. conciousness disconnected from the real, we putter till we don't. distracted by hallucination and tone-deaf to boot.

ran across this: i'm afraid it is not parody but true:

"The growing popularity of the World Wide Web is slowly but surely transforming the lives of human beings who are beginning to make the sad transition from being thinkers to becoming "clickers.""
from
From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web and the Transformation of the Essence of Being Human

finished this one yesterday. started it at the Baba Center and kind of blew it, but feel like i pulled it back from the rejects pile.

saw bobby dylan last nite with richard, debbie, and lots of young people. the concert was just about right for me: no epiphanies, just a nice leisurely performance, comfortable seat, great view, sound very good except bob's voice a little loud and his keyboard mixed way down. the sound and playing of the band was superb. so was bob's singing, i like the way he is using his new old voice. couple of songs i'd not heard before, one i really liked, "things are changing(?)", i think from a movie. his grammy stood on an amp near him. "like a rolling stone" filled me with emotion and memories, the lights sweeping the crowd and making it clear who was being asked "how does it feel?" "blind willie mctell(?)" was really played nicely, a little dark, nostalgic. great evening.

fuzzy mountain
finally finished this watercolor, started it at the center. should finish the 2nd i started there today.

about ready to upload e-book of poems and illustrations. it's been a learning experience.

i've been trying to fix a vacuum cleaner for a week now, throwing in the towel and taking it to professional today. today is drive around town and do errand day. tonight is go to dylan concert and hope for small epiphany (any size will do).

mmmm... so much is happening. or is it?

went to ira's be-day party fri nite, first time out late and downtown in ages. aville continues to evolve and the ambience is certainly there.

if i was in my 20's i would be too.

yesterday i took an unexpected cruise with john r. it was a pleasant sunday to float thru some of the lesser-known (to me) neighborhoods kind of like chapel hill 40 years ago.

and i finally got one of thoses scam emails form africa. it's pretty long but starts like this:

"FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST
CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRETE. YOU WERE INTRODUCED TO ME
FROM SIERRA-LEONE CHANBER OF COMMERCE (FOREIGN
TRADE DIVISION)."

and on and on with the story. but it ends like this:

"PLEASE, FEEL FREE TO REACH ME ON MY
E-MAIL ADDRESS .I MUST APOLOGIZE FOR ANY
INCONVINIENCES THIS MAY CURSE YOU."

this could be the beginning of something new.

up at 6 this morning, took a long early morning walk. trying to establish this as routine because, due to reasons i do not understand, i have over the years developed a real aversion to heat. summer sun. it physically does me in and, maybe even worse, makes me crazy.

still working on poetry e-book. like any set of production hoops you jump thru, the first time is always touch and go, fumbling around, scratching head, occasional outbursts.

reinstalled viavoice which i hope now works. reason behind this is about 100 pages of notes i need to convert to flash, an interactive visual guide to ken wilber's lines, levels, and quadrents. and i can't type (meta-dyslexica).

today's hypothetical activities: finish a failed watercolor, finish another one that might work, and start on an oil portrait - this last is totally foreign territory. also looking for a native chinese speaker who can translate er-hu info i need to understand. angela from new york who i met at the Baba center and is american-chinese was most amused at my pronunciation of this word. i pronounced it as "air-who", which of course is the post-modern hillbilly manner of speaking. but most important of all i have restarted project i let drop a year or so ago: the yo-yo. my goal is to keep two going at once, left and right hand.

just found out that my old friend jim in oak ridge has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. i'm going to take a long walk.

slept 13 hours last night. AM radio left on, low volume, lots of UFO babble. worked on poetry book all day. paid $35 for library audio book that vaporized awhile back.

considering the time and place, this is an interesting piece:
Tripping De-Light Fantastic - Are psychedelic drugs good for you?

i'm back in the saddle again, but ridng very slowly. currently working on 3 books, one my own, one an extended family photo book. i enjoy working with these small b&w very scratched and faded snaphots and bringing them to life. unfortunately very little info on history, anecdotes and history of my dad's generation which was my initial goal.

it's been mostly gloomy and rainy in the wnc mountains, flooding here and there and scattered mudslides. this is my favorite kind of weather, cool, calm, contemplative. once i heard from someone who was suppossed to know - don't remember who exactly - that rainy weather was "spiritual". but i never heard this on the weather channel. for sure it is wet.

my friend tucker fowarded to me a very amusing letter to the govt. from the Appalachian Coalition for Just and Sustainable Communities. it proposed that the govt. attack appalachia because the area needs the same kind of help post-war iraq does. it included the following tag line:

"Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized
control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set
out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each
case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit."


George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

got back. in a couple of pieces. normal nowadays.

my visit to the center was very intense. i felt things that i have not felt in a long time.

my children and grandchildren in chapel hill all seemed solidly themselves.

i'll be on earth in a few days.

meanwhile here is an updated link to jay kinney's site. gotta fix the one in the left hand column of this page. always a good read.

Jay Kinney's JayKinney.com
"Personally, we are convinced that 9/11/01 marked the entry of
consensual reality into a paranoid abyss curiously resembling a
Philip K. Dick novel."

and what looks like a very interesting site belonging to one of tucker's friends. a topic that our generation seems seems to find both disturbing and fascinating.
THE NEWS DISSECTOR
"MediaChannel.org Site"

if you believe a little tax-break is good for the economy, why wouldn't you want a bigger tax-break? it would be even better for the economy.

the logic of the talking point. no taxes at all would be the best for the economy. right?

weaved a lot of baskets today. put up 4 MP3s, small files. cleaned and reassembled watercolor materials into small mobile unit. cut poly to act as emergency vent water stopper in case of very hard rain. cleaned truck. packed medications. got jeff's manuscript together.

tomorrow i hope i have po'try book done, pdf file, and post it. why not? change oil in truck. buy new shoes or shoelaces, whichever is easier.

so now this has turned into a list of things to do and and that are done. i really feel like this is a good timely time to visit the center. get out of my mind.

like i said, a lot of baskets.

i'm starting to feel like some soul-zombie, going through the motions. but going through the motions is better than not going through the motions.

i put 4 MP3s up, they are from 429k to 1035k for us bandwidth-challanged. get to them at upper right box. they'll give you an idea of what i do with my spare time.

watercolor i finished yesterday
i'm in my pre-leaving town and taking a trip phase. for about the last 20 years, or the amount of time i have been dealing with type I diabetes, i've gotten in the habit of spring house-cleaning before i leave.

maybe it its because i live like a single male post graduate student even at my advanced age. every room is like a studio, projects everywhere, and of cousre i always have a list of things i cannot find. so squaring things away before a trip makes it a whole lot easier to get back in the saddle on my return

finished watercolor, i'll put it up today now cleaning up paints and assembling plein-aire mobile paint supplies. so i can paint a little while i'm gone.

so before today is over i'll post paintings and the four shortest and worthy MP3s i could find yesterday.

i'll also post a link to pdf file of version 1 of "whistling in the dark" in book format. this is a collection of obscure verse. if i channelled it i'd like to know from whom. later.

Fox executives Monday unveiled their latest reality-TV venture, Appointed By America, a new series in which contestants vie for the top spot in Iraq's post-war government.
see
The Onion | New Fox Reality Show To Determine Ruler Of Iraq

Just Biddiness

lately i've realized i have nothing much to say. or maybe it would be more accurate to say i have urges to say something but am not sure what it is. i won't know till i say whatever it is.

but the language is unavailable. language being an environment of mutual understanding. it is available one on one, talking with an old friend, and this is the sort of context i deeply appreciate.

but this public cyberspace place...one of the things that fascinated me about blogs was that the reason for their existence was obscure. what are they for?

after a year and a half i still don't know. and i have yet to find the voice to communicate via blog.

i could get much more personal, paying attention to the moods, happenings, changes, of my daily life.

but i can't - won't - attempt it here because this is not a personal space. the confessional genre is not my genre. at least not here.

so i guess it's an ongoing record of stray, loose, marginal, "off the top of my head" stuff. that's why i throw in picures i've done. and i'd love to have more audio available which i'm playing - oops i mean working - on.

easter. went to friend's meeting at 11. saw ira briefly. and easter eggs.

tomorrow i start mini-retreat. i find that it helps to throttle back on medication, rest, and back off from projects once in awhile.

especially before long trip (7 days starting the 28th).

but before i fade away i will put on site mp3 that is 1) short and maybe worth listening to; and 2) small file-size for us broadband challanged.

meanwhile i need to back out of commitment to have ken wilber quadrant chart done. i'm out of time on that one.

a little over the top, but i hear this guy at night on shortwave, and from that perspective (horizontal, very dark), he sounds like a stark-raving lunitic conspiricy freak who picks and documents plausible conspiricies. could this guy be even half right? i think maybe so.

"The new enemy, the new threat is, in reality, the lone individual simply trying to live his or her life who wishes to control their own destiny. Make no mistake, you are slated for dehumanization."

Infowars.com -- Talk Radio's Alex Jones v. the New World Order

friday was sort of flat. got my "creative" stuff done in the morning, visited mr. steve, then the afternoon turned into a tired blur. redeveloping i'm afraid the "chaotic metabolism" problem i've been mostly free from the last few years.

however i hope today goes better, anxious to try an oil portrait which of course i don't know how to do.

today i'm going to locate a small MP3 file and put it up and leave it there. it will serve i hope as a sample of what i am doing noise-wise, but as for as distributing this stuff you're going to have to wait for CD around christmas.