11.13.1

Modern Peasant on vacation till the end of the month

�we were sitting over a beer at Shorty�s one evening in the time of the year when the end of the workday and the start of the evening push in on each other, when everything feels like it�s already too late.�

No Colder Place by s.j. rozan. page 1. very noire. i'll tell you more when I finish the book, but i think it lists another reason I don�t do the season, malls lit like airports notwithstanding.

this passage sheds a little light on why I dislike the holiday season so much. in addition to the fact that I don�t like being used abused & confused by the economic juggernaut dangling Christmas bells. yeah, I admit it, I don�t like it. the holidays are like a game show where nobody wins and half the contestants have minor breakdowns.

the best ad I�ve seen so far this season (already??) is the one where you can get a cliff notes version of the "night before xmas" along with a coca-cola Santa Claus.

anyway i'll be away for awhile, I�m plunging into the holiday maelstrom, driving to chapel hill NC and visit son eli, his wife melissa, their daughter my granddaughter lily, son Nathan, daughter Nicole and her son my grandson Corbin, and my former wife Sally, whoa, last minute flash, also a. woolf who is delayed getting back to NYC and wants to say hello to b.crane and hopes to visit soon.

sally is currently battling lung cancer. this disease is a killer and real underfunded. kind of interesting that the repugnance against tobacco has spilled over into a stigma against those suffering from this disease. more women are killed yearly by lung cancer by far than any thing else including breast cancer, yet lung cancer is way underfunded compared to breast cancer. just shows you the power of words: "she smoked, she did it to herself", and other nonsense while we are all like a slowly sinking ship, the captain running amuck on deck protesting innocence.

anyway next i fly to phoenix on the 19th, the land where everything is new, clean, and shiny, recreational shopping is a must, the cathedral ceiling homes are two feet from each other, and it�s a dry heat, like the moon is a dry cold.

there i'll see sister Jane, Jane�s husband Fred who wouldn�t be caught dead in a crazed web site like this, their children Jonathan and Anne, my mom and dad, and my oldest son Eric.

I�ll be back in business pointing out the delights and paradoxes of semi-conscious life in the 21rst c. western hemisphere late November, when i plan to collect the pictures scattered throught these pages in one place.

and remember, don�t believe everything you think.

i'm not the forest
i'm a tree;
i'm not a you
and you're not a me

11.11.1

"A basic law of psychological understanding is the mercurial one of keeping images in motion, letting them generate each other. This leads to a depth of vision, not in a logical, linear kind of reasoning but in the richness of texture that a emerges from such a process.

...Its is important to keep changing the subject. The subject changes before our very eyes. It is important to keep changing our mind -

The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its resemblance find.

The mind, or the imagination, the original shape-shifter : Thrice Greatest Hermes."

The Planets Within: the Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino
by
Thomas Moore

Change Your Mind. It's About Time

11.10.2

woke up from a nap today that i had been putting off for several days - the radio was on low and playing "it's all over now baby blue" by bobby d. if he'd never made another record...er, CD... his dent in my life and yours would remain. then the same radio speaks of "the former writer ken kesey".

i came back from greece in 64 or 65 and was visiting my mom and dad and noticed a paperback laying around, "cuckoo's nest", and read it. i could not believe it, much less that it was in my parents home. i guess i remember thinking everything was going to be better now. i know i did later.

anyway to hell with cultural histories and milestones to nowhere, unelevate the artists everywhere, free art from the capital "A", and a little respect for those who did. who am we? we are a creature of our time, and our time is a creature of the beyond.

11.7.1

a nod towards the world of islam:

"And here, no doubt, is one of the the characteristic implications of Gnostic anthropology. By arousing the human being to the vocation of a potential angel , it causes him to move in this world as a Stranger, a "Prince of the other world" on his way back to his native home. Hence this extreme gentleness, this appreciation of the derisory character of any exercise of the will to power, of any appetite for kingship, or for conversion tending to bring about a monolithic Unity. The Gnostic lessons of the apocryphal Gospel texts which recur in the writings of our Ismailians have given us this teaching: the form of your vision and of your worship bear witness to what you are, you answer for the vision you have of your God. And what God becomes is revealed in the mode of relation attested in man's mode of understanding Him."

Henri Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis

that was fun. now this:

inside my cave

11.6.1

you can�t have your question and answer it too. i knew i went too far when i knew it was you. three am madness weathers the storm. already gladness is finding a form. i walk without magic without a care. because if i�m here you must be there.

diamond graffiti

3.7.5

it�s hard to know what to do. while the last strands of personality dissolves into celebrations of the predictable. how can we live like we used to? we can�t. who gets to remain in the newly minted mode? the guy who looks like a carny tele-evangalist and has a penchant for jolt-cola? the womwan who lost her pearls in a south of the border gas station and would rather not talk about it? how about the young kid who walks the pier every morning when the sun rises and never says hello? the old man with the rock who doesn�t own a tv? the young woman with the delicate touch who slowly waves her hands in mind-stopping mudras while time stutters around her?

the old dies and the new is born: we know that. changes without end. if the personality we walk and talk is eroding because it has outlasted its usefullness and reason for existing, what comes next? the bothersome thing is that from this tiny point in space and time it appears that a diminuation is coming, not just a subtraction, or a destruction - we always knew it would involve some of that; but a wholesale substitution of the old and ragged by the vacuum. the artiface and manners arriving any day now seem backward, an idiot wind,, signifying bits of this and bytes of that, all simulcra of a world we have forgotten, but has it forgotten us? maybe it has, and if so we wink out like dying stars staring into space, golden days gone and nights trembling with moonlight twisting in the dust.

but wait, there�s more...

only the wrong survive

11.4.1

have you noticed it's getting harder to express the inexpressable? or maybe it's getting easier to notice it's getting harder. in the last 10,000 years the human being has managed to lose the invisible. almost.

the invisible still creates some of the turns the visible takes, like "why would somebody paint his hand on the wall of a cave? in the dark?"

some of the turns: maybe less and less. maybe evolution is moving "us" along to the point where bright light, ductile texture, calm lobotomized semi-thought and smooth talk will be the measure of all things. clouds and shadows will be a dim memory. human beings will no longer wonder in the small hours of the morning, "why did i do that?". they won't even wonder "now who just thought that thought?"

there won't be any inexpressible left to inexpress. everything will be clear as they say water used to be. the only thing left to do will be, like they already say on tee-vee, "wealth-creation".

there goes the neighborhood

11.2.1

the personality (which may be obsolete in the near future) & History
from �Senex and Puer: An Aspect of the Historical and Psychological Present�
1967
James Hillmen

"...As we individuals are fastened to the facts of our personal case histories by what we remember of our personal lives, so is our history addicted to the history of profane time. An addiction demands more and more, faster and faster,. Much of our inventiveness serves merely making, gathering, and reproducing events."

[profane time; current events; factoid of the day; disneyland; the new york times]

11.1.1

interesting piece on anthrax scare, but more about previous climate of under-the-table fear embedded in our culture for the last, oh say, 30 years.

"I have sometimes felt that living in America now must be a little like what it was to live in a medieval village on the edge of the Black Forest in the 12th century. Daily life flourished with belief in hobgoblins and other unseen threats--all brought to life by word of mouth and rumor."

-OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

10.30.1

Happy Birthday
to My Granddaughter Lily

i watched the news tonight - oooooooh boy.

rumsfield was saying that al-queada was lobbing explosive projectiles thru the air in afghanistan along with us and the taliban.

is this really true?

a military type on PBS was saying we are doing well militarily, getting our high tech death traps finely tuned in a new situation.

does this sound like germany in spain 1939 testing toys for the big one on one of the poorest countries in europe?

a military type last week allowed as how the taliban were tougher than he thought.

tougher than he thought maybe but the rest of us recognize that one of the poorest peoples in the world with one of the shortest lifespans in one of the most hostile topographies on the planet who defeated the english empire, the soviet empire, have never lost a war to the outside, including against genghis khan and the mongols, probably have the edge in how to win militarily on their home ground.

a nation-state like ours needs to retaliate aginst an attack such as sept.11. but adding one more layer of devestation to the afghan people is not retaliation. it is fantasy, although i'm sure it plays well in the boardrooms of the powerful. the source of the attack is various rivers of big oil money. if we want to bomb the source we should bomb saudi arabia and pakistan. see America Strikes Back - The Dumb War: It's time to bomb Pakistan.

another interesting statement by rumsfield was to the effect that terrists living in this country will be expelled if their visa is even one day out of date.

isn't that like announcing that any murderers living here better watch out, we'll throw them in the jug for jaywalking?

the ossified, hierarchical bureaucracy that our government has evolved into, run by the best and the brightest (= richest) cannot see beyond their world. they are provencials in an international setting. they don't speak the language. i say again put them all on the street with no resources for a week and we'd have a better chance of dealing with a very dangerous and nasty situation. the people running the war don't (usually) lie, they just don't know any better.

tomorrow i think i'll skip the news.

#

the other day in a frenzy of misdirection i went through all of the books in the house: i found lots of surprises. one was "the city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects" by lewis mumford. so now i have to do what i set out to do when i put up the list of books you see on the right: review them, comment on them, say something about them. a self imposed bit of "fun". i couldn't do it without the book because i can't remember what it says.

here is something i picked out at random from the book, in an early chapter on the agricultural revolution:

"...the specialized worker, a magnified hand, or arm, or eye, achieved excellence and efficiency in the part, to a degree impossible to reach except by such specialization; but he lost his grip on life as a whole. this sacrifice was one of the chronic miscarriages of civilization: so universal that it has become 'second nature' to urban man."

pretty cool, huh?

todays pic

heard an articulate young pakistani man on the radio today. member of a band, forget the name, sufi rock. he spoke of a poem by 15th c. poet. a striking line goes something like this:

"when you come to the place of five rivers, choose one. then live it."

the penultimate word is probably the key. altho "choose" is necessary to live i guess.

we all have our bad days...some of us have worse

what a beautiful fall day. spent most of the morning with book cover project, realbasic project, archiving information about this new to me programming language, then drove to pick up laundry. in between all this i was trying to finish one so-so watercolor and rescue another in deep trouble. after lunch i took a walk and it was great. the weather of the year, brisk, windy, leaves blowing all over the place, deep blue sky absolutely transparent air and dark dappled shadows flitting about. and the whole time that deep high lonesome sound above and all around my head, like i'm suddenly home in 3 diminsional deep space after too long in two. i love fall.

it's 10:45 in the evening, i'm still archiving. ready for bed. and the funny thing about the day is i never spoke to a soul except mavis at the laundramat and she didn't have a lot to say.

email from friend barbara:

"Having checked your blog recently, I feel I should say, don't worry about the war - the future will unroll as you walk and you can only affect the parts you step on as you go."

i guess my concern about the war is not about the war. it is about what the war is a symptom of, what the consensual reality is, and what it portends for the future. and what i might be stepping in tomorrow. if i don't trip over my self first.

Thought for the Day

nice essay on weblogs and why they might be a way to balance overwhelming incoming corporate data. includes some nice touches about what it does for the doers. weblogs: a history and perspective: by rebecca blood. "We are being pummeled by a deluge of data and unless we create time and spaces in which to reflect, we will be left with only our reactions. I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from "audience" to "public" and from "consumer" to "creator." Weblogs are no panacea for the crippling effects of a media-saturated culture, but I believe they are one antidote."

Not Much Left at the End of the Day

just when i was running out of things to write i found this tucked away on my hard drive. can you spell "doggeral"?

In the tower of hunger the mice buy. the cats dream of fur. tails twitch with each foreign heartbeat. nothing is lost. eyes like lightning hand over the cheese. as twilight lands, a large cloud shaped like my brother pauses at the gate. the cadillacs are dead, the motherboards conspire. mornings are a vague notion in the land of mice. cats just say no. i leave the rest to you, whoever you may be on top of the hidden mountain, fiddling with the remote control of life and zoning out when it rains.

i was awakened last night around 4am, about an hour before i fall out of bed anyway, by my old friend curly who seemed to be lost in oak creek colorado. these type of inibriated calls are rare in my present life, but i woke up, coffee was happening, my head was hummin, the birds were asleep, so we sat (at least i did) and talked.

curly was disturbed by a number of things, but the main message he delivered was "it's time to say the unsayable." (since the sayable seems a little used and abused at this point). so here is his list of the unsayable which if said (and heard) might give us a little breathing space. (have you ever tried breathing in a little breathing space?)

1) shooting missles into children's bedrooms is a no-no. likewise workplaces, playgrounds, and bluegrass festivals.

2) taking land from a people because God said it was yours is to be discouraged. north americans got away with it from the indians, and the israilis got away with it from the palestinians. each transgressor needs to apologize. curly said give it all back but as a rwealist of sorts, he amended this to give them a lnd, aroof over their heads, aviable way to eat, sleep, and dream.

3) the nation-state is not the only viable organization of a people, even though it is the current style. a people that have not evolved a nation state from, say, an obscure ottoman back-water province like palastine have a right to their homes and farms which their ancestors lived in and which their children would like to continue continue living in. a home.

4) islam is made up of about a billion people, or, if you're like me, a billion souls. it is more than a religion it is a non-monolithic culture with it's own values (which incidentally are more about peace than ramming airplanes into cities). the atlantic pennensula that extends from asia contains technologically advanced peoples who do not have a clue about this culture. muslims do have a clue about our culture. they speak our languages, attend our schools, live in our cities. we do not return the favor.

5) this results in a perochial, provencial view of islam by the west that does little justice to that culture, it�s history, it�s advances, and it�s values.

6) the few experts we have in islam, those who have lived there and speak the language and know a jihad is not a holy war but an individual struggle of the human being to find and foster his higher self (a "struggle) have been decimated and driven from positions where their experience could help our culture. the reasons for htis are manifold but all settle nicely around the fact they are not great admirers of john wayne. the same thing happened pre-viet nam when those familiar with that turf were driven from the state department by McCarthy and the �who lost china� hysteria of the 50�s.

7) in the bumper sticker mentality we have grown used to (McDonalds and the repupublicans (oh what the heck, democrats too) are all hugely proud of them selves when they can "stay on message.") doesn't matter what the message is as long as it's short, snappy, and repeated ad nausium for at least one news cycle.

8) our allies in the middle east include some of the most degenerate and corrupt money grubbing powers the world has ever seen. the suadis. the pakistanis. the sultan of brunei. the united arab emerites. we backed the taliban. we back anyone who will allow us to not be completely cuttoff from oil and mony.

9) the people who have to scuffle in those places do not like it, nor do they like the american government backing and supporting these powers. (kinda like we do isreal).

10) Dissent does not equal anti americnaism. dissent does not equal �i don�t like their methods but thier goals are legitimate. dissent = we�re walking into another debacle becuase we don�t know the territory.

Curly hung upright before his cell phone staticed out. he was heading for the canadian rockies to stay he said.

i'm tired and grumpy and going to draw on my imagination and create an image: here it is: i call it "dazed and confused one more time".

then i got anemail from old friend geoff commenting on "A British View of the US/Bin Laden affair" by Andrew Sullivan in the London Times, a piece that more or less said the rage of america has been awakened and is gonna KICK ASS: no more mr.nice guy. and that this justifies our existence. letter follows:

"The notion we must die for our beliefs has two (at least) aspects: One, offensively committing suicide to inflict damage to the other side, and two, defensively submitting to murder to first, end the cycles and second, if there is no relief from principled example, to escape this horrible world. Religion teaches we are wrong to kill. I am unaware of any spiritual systems that condemn a person for being killed. Our west point friend and the British view (which I must say, was not anything I
feel in retrospect that I had to read, as pitched in the forwarding message) astonish me without ringing any tone of truth. Are we not all in agreement that we are embarked on the wrong path? Will we not lose a great deal and gain really nothing even if our government (first court appointed in history) entirely succeeds in its plans? Is it not much more likely that embittered, lunatic terrorism will end if we pursue some other, more promising road?"

i might add that the monoculture this age has been veering towards is now in full flower, and that any questions regarding what we can and are doing to prevent explosives going off in peoples homes and workplaces quickly are shoved into the catagories of "liberal", "pacifist", not to mention "traitor". one thing all the peoples of the world seem agreed on: "they" are evil and we're not.

i'm tired of this shit: we don't need to bomb one of the poorest peoples in the world who have never lost a war, including against the mongols. our high tech fantasies probably work better in watts. our weapon of choice against the 3rd world should be our strength: money. let's buy'em and turn the country into a theme park.

for all the deluge of mediased news (if that's not redundant), there's a whole lot going on today that the public is unaware of. read this interview: AlterNet -- Susan Sontag, "The Traitor," Fires Back for a refreshing view on how difficult it is to think today. from a woman i have greatly admired every since i read "illness as metaphor". one of the great observers of out time.

back to politics i can't help it, the fuse is lit. check out semour hersh in this week's New Yorker:"a slow degradation of the system due to political correctness". the system he's talking about is the system we are using to keep the saudis our allies. they are more corrupt than batista, marcos, and allende's killers. and the arab on the street knows it.