4th CD package, ready to go. click on pic to see larger.

went to dentist yesterday, more measurments for lower plate, lower teeth, which i'm starting to miss.

spent the rest of the day cranking color prints out and doing some watercolors. above is one of the print. from an ancient faded snapshot. this is where i lived with my family at big ridge in jackson county. at the top you can just see a bald that was about 45 minute walk. 360 degree view, into geogia and the great smokey park. the structue by the road is the garage, usually full of firewood and kindling and maybe a few gallons of homemade beer brewing. across the road shaded by the tress is our house, not visible. small structure to left is spring house. had to install pump and run line under the stae dirt road. you can just make out a car, 49 chrysler.

cd cover for third cd "noize toy" by, of course, modern peasant. available soon. click on it to see larger image (if i figured this so handy command out right)... oops. need to size the window. you can see the text on the back (left) i went a little too far.

i spent yesterday at the computer. from 8 in the morning until midnight. this is not normal for me nowadays, and i kept checking to see if i should stop and do something useful. however i was having fun and all work no play you know about. so i finished four CD covers and completely reformatted book, finished a watercolor and began another. one whole day of play.

doctor's appointment this morning, and i stopped on the way back to pick up a few cheap frames. right now i'm struggling to turn the computer off so i can go shopping.

from a walk i took a couple of days ago.

big news here is i went to church last night. merle haggard and bob dylan. it was fun. i went by myself, and was lucky enough to snag a parking place at prichard park. this was the first time in a long time for me to be downtown aville on a saturday night. walking around the festive streets and carnival ambiance i was struck once again how different it is.

the last time i heard dylan at the civic center really unprofessional sound and acoustics. i got seated right before merle h. and the strangers opened up and i was immediately relieved that the sound was fine. they played a comfortable, in a way world-weary sort of way, set. when they played runaway woman(?) i was knocked out.

never heard it or some of the other songs before. there is something so "natural" about merle and his music. they've been where you've been, unlike the mediated world of images.

dylan was fun. his voice was a little too loud in the mix, but not by much. the weird keyboard he played, the alternate arrangements, the vocal quality, the phrasing, the surprises, all were on a light hearted note, even the screamer's like all around the watchtower. thanks again bob.

there was a nice looking small frame on the wall, looks like a color photo i may have taken years ago in mexico. a long time ago i had a lady friend who looked at it and shrugged "so?" anyway this morning i decided i wanted to change it and above is what it changed to. printed on arch's, really works well.

my sister jane on the phone was wondering why comedians - like whoever the one who was with bush last week - seem to be taking the place of the news, or as we say today "mainstream press".

then there is neil young who may be wondering why we - the hoi polloi, or maybe the young, have not yet voiced outrage at the Powerful.

maybe the answer to these questions is fear.

i mean a fear that goes back for more than my lifetime. survival for the common man has always meant keeping clear of the power pushers. but after WWII the PR and marketing domain became ultra-skilled at directing and adjusting core values. this resulted in a certain comfort level, the creation of a large middle-class and a form of denial that marked that world, the pollyannish dumb consumer happy as a lark but nonetheless way back in his or her mind, repressed, unconscious, a bad feeling about it.
3AM stuff.

today it seems marks the conversion of unconscious fear (which because it is real and yet denied the human acts out) into conscious fear. we need to lean into that fear, acknowledge it, talk about it openly.

i think the next 12 months are going to be very dangerous.

this morning's pictogram.

what it means in today's context i am sure i don't know.

perhaps that i will see neil young film before the day is over.


or it could be that i will finally straighten out insulin pump and other medical doo-dads that have become strangely scattered.


or maybe that i will continue to work on setup on sony notebook that materialized on my doorstep.


i might even set up AC for days ahead.


and for sure i'll wash dishes - all 3 of them.

i found this on my computer desk. it was in a stack of loose papers full of to-do lists.

Clean air
Lean smoke
First you talk
And then you don't

now i have something weighty to consider: do i work this doggeral into book or wait?

hey wait a minute i'm already waiting.

latest oil. still drying so i shot it with digicamera instead of scan. this image seems a little cold, think i'll warm her up.

famous last words.

[later] ok, warmer.

now i have to write about... something.

on tap: couple watercolor landscapes, finish re-laying out book whistling in the dark, finish CD cover for third CD, making sure i have no alternate takes. take a hike. smell the coffee.

listen to ten minutes of millinial minimalist massive tone poem i did yesterday in a fit of creative excess.

i saw the doc yesterday, routine, and stopped on the way back to visit george. we talked about all the "oldsters" we know who, once having dropped off the wage-slave truck, engage in some creative activity. no golf.

in some obscure way i take this to be an analog to the vedantic practice of living the last 7th of a life disengaged in the woods. only it is in the noosphere as well as biosphere today. and it may be that this is what Meher Baba was pointing to when he allowed that in the west creativity may serve the same function as the spiritual has in the east.

another total sleep for 14 hours last night. deep sleep. why? the day ended for me around 6 or 7. today began at 8. got up maybe once or twice briefly.

and dream; i'm still waking up maybe i can remember it.

i was somewhere in the orient. taiwan? my children were small. some kind of evacuation was in process. we ended up on a c-47 with about a thousand people crowded onto it. i did my best to keep track of children because the plane extended into all kinds of temporary rooms, built-ons, a rear platform kind of like a caboose, open to the air. there were places much too close to exposed propellors. we were on the ground, and preparations for take off went on and on while the crowd wondered around, in and out. my wife sally was somewhere. the pilots were phillipinos or malaysian and could not speak english. there was some kind of problem, they kept coming and going, much radio chatter. the folks were mostly women and children and military men. confusion. i kept pushing thru throng to find a child, mine or someone else's, standing in a place not good for take off, clicking seat belts, asking if they knew where other children were. it got to the point where i was somehow feeling that my responsibility was for the safety of way too many adults and children but i kept at it.

i was in the cockpit (no door, people crowded around) when finally we could take off. taxied thru an underground place, up thru a ramp, and emerged onto surface when the pilots hit full throttle. the overloaded plane thundered towards the end of the runway towards trees and forest. we lifted off too late and crashed thru the top of the continually taller trees and brush for a long time, finally breaking thru to open sky.

activity continued at a feverish pace within the airplane, accounting for children, pulling people from precarious positions. my wife kept popping up full of complaints. a general i somehow knew and i would talk from time to time. he was well spoken and calm, not your stereotypical cartoon of military type. at some point he received disturbing information and called a meeting of the officers on board and i went with him. information had been radioed to the plane that it had just been discovered that a phone somewhere had been tapped putting the aircraft in danger.

but we finally landed. people everywhere inside the plane scurried around looking for people. i did the same, rounding up children and looking for the small unpacked personal effects we had managed to load. by the time i had everything i could find rounded up the interior which was like a train station, vast, was almost empty.
disembarking i ran into my father who was part of the military contingent and followed him into a separate exit, into a room with the military contingent. they threaded into a room and i was left outside the room. so i opened the door and looked inside. they were preparing for exit and mr. bush was among them. for some reason most everybody, including myself, was holding small signs on the ends of sticks. mine was about 4 inches square and had a large caret (upside down "V") with small print below. i hurriedly turned it upside down so the thing pointed down instead of up and scrawled something below it. my idea was to follow bush off the aircraft so TV coverage would include my sign over his head, pointing downwards. by the time i got the sign done he was way ahead of me and i couldn't catch up. the general i had been talking to was in a wheelchair. he could not find his daughter.

back in the interior of the craft i found her. she was in a wheel chair. we discussed her situation and she pulled out of her chest some kind of tube full of medication that kept her going. i picked her up and acrobatically exited with her down a ramp at the tail end of the aircraft. the general was pleased, and we parted on good terms.

there was some kind of kiosk i ran across. the general and several medical personnel were putting everything up. there was a small crowd there and some kind of meds was being distributed in a hurry for stress. the general had a problem giving me any, so i dropped down and crawled under the surface of the kiosk where a young woman who was handing the stuff out was, and she grabbed a handful of pills and gave them to me. there was discussion of what the meds were called, i wish i could remember the latin names slung about.

i entered a room full of men and a small temporary bar where drinks were being distributed. my dad was there. by hook or crook i pushed my way to the front and got two irish whiskeys. like back in my drinking days i edged back out of the crowd with two doubles, both of which i intended to drink. but i gave on to my father and we both downed the potion in a celebratory flourish: mission accomplished.

today's limbic moodogram turns out to be from a very ancient photo i took and developed, being a darkroom person at the time, of my oldest son eric when he was about 3 years old. we were living in basalt colorado.

yesterday... yesterday... yesterday... spent most of the day avoiding household tasks. instead spent a lot of time totally screwing up a watercolor. you've heard of overworking this medium? i went way past that stage. friday nite thanks to felicity at the bloggerama i picked up my oils pastels, rubbed,scrubbed, scratched, and layed it on.

i have a dim memory of seeing someone's work on the net who - i think - went into oil pastels with a technical pen. how this could be done i don't know, because oils pastels never completely dry. maybe it needs uv coating first.

anyway that is next for this particular graffiti like image. then with a little luck i can put it away and hide it for awhile. meanwhile i've been waiting for a week for a thin glaze on an oil to dry. want to finish it today also.

sunday has become the day i clean the house. sort of happened by itself, but i'll continue the habit, not a bad way to function for a man with my inclinations.

next week is alumni day at christ school, where i graduated so long ago. after looking at the registration form and the activities i decided to finesse it. plus that saturday evening the dylan show, the merle haggard show and an afternoon nap seems like a good idea.

another thing i've been putting off is redoing book. i got proof copy, saw a whole bunch i had to rework. maybe putting off is not quite the right word: in a situation like this i like to give the thing - and me - a rest before i wade back in.

when 3:30 rolls around i'll be at unca to hear carl ernst speak. looking forward to seeing some of my old Baba friends i've not seen in awhile.

guess i did this a couple of months ago. watercolor & gouache?

nice day yesterday. spent it standard mode, a little of this that and the other.

a most pleasant bloggerama in the evening at feliciti's in w. asheville. it was like asheville of old, sort of.

i finished reading hillman's peaks and vales for maybe the 3rd time. it just keeps appearing. tomorrow carl ernst is speaking on sufism - i think - at unc. he has written a very clear overview of the historical sufis that i liked because it was so down to earth.

dentist sent my lower plate back to lab. just from trying it a few times i feel like i've been hit pretty hard in the jaw.

i've been reading wave by walter mosely. his easy rawlins mystery series is a good one, well worth reading, covers a lot of lives and times, going back to depression texas and forward to zoot suit los angeles ghetto. he also has a series (2 books?) about homeless ex-con named "plato" which is innovative structurally. and working on the chain gang, non-fiction, is one of the most cogent exposition of contemporary limbic control i've read.

like all of the artists i have a special respect for, he is continually on the edge of new forms. i think his latest is a kid's book.

beautiful day, think i'll try a walk. soon as i find my walker.

will attend blogasheville bar-be-que tonight. that line by dylan, "feel like talking to someone, but i don't know who". speaking of which i bought last minute ticket to dylan-merle haggart next sat. worst seat in the house. thought i'd try it anyway. i'd been waffling, richard's missive that he is now playing the organ tipped me towards going. bet he's not as good as augie myers - who played on time out of mind i believe and goes back to the sir doug quintet.

otherwise up against time crunch today and i'm moving very slowly. i bet i drop a stitch or two before sunrise tomorrow.

i removed pic that was here yesterday. didn't like it, couldn't make it work. so i spent hours doing this one. from same watercolor.

gotta go to dentist in an hour.

for those of you who wonder about asheville today, the center of some vortex or another and new age theme park, check this out:

fellowsfog's latest photos slideshow on Flickr

from a watercolor i started last night.

chernoble 20th anniversary. at the time i was driving by myself thru moab utah along the colorado. heading back to arizona and intel cubeland.

yesterday i was grocery shopping at my usual place, a hop skip and jump away. it is an off-brand store, old, like the 50's, wide uncrowded aisles, no gourmet organic mi-mash. i've been shopping there for years. i noticed a plain looking blonde on the other side of the store pushing a cart and jabbering into her cell phone.

a bit later i was leaving one aisle, turning to get to the next aisle. it was a tight turn and there was a cart unattended blocking my way. i was pushing my cart to ease the other one back when the blonde suddenly appeared still with cell phone and started to berate me for crashing into her cart. i was stunned, couldn't believe what was happening, thought i was misunderstanding her, but she kept on and i totally lost my temper, got down in the hole she was in, and replied in kind. i haven't been blind-sided like that in awhile.

now the interesting thing was how quick the injustice rose to the top and triggered in my mind a host of replies, possible actions i could take, etc. that continued to reverberate afterwards. using some of the meditative space i've been working on i dampened the anger, let it drift away. but it gave me a new appreciation of road rage and the other ridiculous anomalies that have become part of life in the new millennium.

how close we all are to the edge.

imaginary icon.

this morning the weather is perfect for me. i am attached to cool shadowy mornings, when the air feels like a cool stream, and there is no sound but the distant birds.

got proof copy of book yesterday, what can i say, i am impressed by the technology of one-off color printing of a book. much different than when i was in that line of work. something must have changed... oh yeah, the technology... i think they use xerox docuprint and the color matches monitor proof very well.

i never printed out a local copy so i only proofed onscreen, a dubious approach in my experience. so i'll be proofing it soon i wish, want to get the thing on it's way out of here.

spring has sprung. took this picture out of my front door yesterday.

when i was in collage, the classical hellenistic age was always contrasted with the hellenic. the short story went something like this:

the hellenic circa 800 - 330 bce was the flowering of the classical. Apollonian, the beginning of philosophy, perhaps a mystical side we didn't hear much about (Dionysus, eleusis, delphi).

the hellenic followed (circa 300 - 85 bce) and was regarded as a step backwards culturally speaking. Superstitious, oriental, no longer concerned with the invisible ideal.

today the distinguishing between the two eras is still maintained, but the hellenistic is being looked at much closer.

a lot happened during the hellenistic: the invention of the broad avenues with sweeping monumental facades on both sides. the vista or panarama.

the metamopheus of sculpture from the depicting the hellenic ideal, the idea, the platonic into the hellenistic modeling of actual people (the beginning of portraiture), the rise of the monumental, huge statues of the despot.

the dropping of the eternal human spirit from drama and replacement with stylized character types, ie the old miser, the business man. the beginning of soap opera.

in painting the hellenistic went for illusion and was impressed with the techniques used even if there was no content, ie the story of the painter who painted a picture of a wooden wall with grapes hanging from it and fooled the birds.

why am i writing this? today's image deluge is PR. the monumental statues of 20th c. tyrants is a familiar image, the gestalt of identifying people by their occupation > lifestyle, (think bizness man and iski instructor. as for admiration of illusion, think special effects.

so what you ask at the same time i do.

if you see the picture above (blogger being just a little strange lately), it is today's sign or maybe the beginning of one. i took the photo when i was 10 or 11 i guess, with a little "spy camera", 8mm b&w. i recently recovered some small snapshots i took with this thing and think i'll make them into 8X10 color prints. part of my thinking on this is the resolution will be so poor at that size that it will allow me to slop around a bit, which is about all i feel like doing lately.

yesterday was cool and rainy, my favorite kind of day. i got out in the morning to lester road to pick up laundry, i was totally out of clothes. got by the library to turn in the parts of a CD i could find - jewel cases not up to people checking CD in and out - and visited friend Steve.

in the afternoon i paced, brooded, fixed, rearranged oil paint set up. i'm in the middle of a portrait - not my strong suit - and, having painted myself into a corner, have to save it somehow. always a lesson in humility.

this morning i'll drive to the - ugh - new walmart megastore. i'm looking for a fan for the truck. also noticed new big leak in the camper interior, so more fixit.

i've got 5 or 6 CDs i've done; i'm remastering some, figuring out where i may have alternate takes or even repeats of various pieces on them. not the kind of work an ADD addled head is good at. perseverence furthers. also have found a number of photos from harry's reunion circa '85 i want to put up on Harry's site i have been nudging forward. right now it's going nowhere fast, but then that's the way it has been, i suspect, for most of the folks who were there, if not the entire demographic of educated baby boomers.

i don't know, got a few things done this morning but since then have been avoiding the hell with it take a nap.

book is in the mail from lulu.com. they're fast.

take a nap

it's thursday and i'm trying to post one more time. i did get a boilerplate reply from blogger support so maybe can get online again at some point.

-------> finally can post again. offline since saturday. problem seems to be that blogger needed some work on their servers and did this saturday. this seems to have messed with people's settings. site feed, archiving and post pages settings had been changed. i had to post happy flower in recognition of being able to babble online again.

last of two new CDs i'm about done with.

no sleep last night. there has to be a better way.

got another load of trash ready to go tuesday.

started an oil painting. doing it fast with big brushes. i'll do anything for kicks.

front cover, more or less, of one of two new CDs i'm getting together.

yesterday i ran into puzzle of using CSS - cascading style sheets - along with blogger settings trying to insert picture into a blog. zow! picture still not up, and site still not quite back to what it should look like. an afternoon frittered away.

BTW check this out: it's a pretty squared away collection of son eli's very interesting music. he goes by the moniker of omegenon.

man in my lucid moments lately i have been wondering about suffering and the human condition. i've been more or less out of it (for sure it's more - for a day or two. i've got top teeth in now, but still can't go near the bottom set.

finally got to grocery store today, i'm set to hole up until my lower gum heals.

dealing with CSS2 for another blog. never used it before, and it's not new.

and for those of you interested in this type of thing, a parody of charles taylor's web page (WNC congressman) surfaced last week. a lot of work went into this.

long ago and far away... about as faraway as my face. photo of son nathan, halloween in jackson county.

up most of the night, the AM radio burbling and drifting. the word of the night was "messianic".

institutions wear out. history and pre-history is among other things the story of some utilitarian idea of how to organize human effort to solve some problem. the solution becomes an institution it works so well, and then, much later, slippage occurs and the institution no longer works so well. wilber defines this as "inner contradictions" rising to the surface. i characterize the process as the solution changing the problem, or the world,, so the once robust institution that worked so well loses it's effectiveness.

examples abound: hunter-gatherer bands, theocracies, commercial empires, all flourished then flopped.

now today's institutions are fading: think schools, health, hospitals, communism, democracy, electoral politics, adam smith's capitalism where one man's greed could benefit the many, academics, the nation-state, war, and a big etc.

why are they failing now? one reason is sheer numbers. in my lifetime the world population has doubled - i think. languages have disappeared. animal populations never in contact with one another are being thrown willy-nilly together.

so the idea of nations at war is obsolete. the idea of small groups using the pollution of the mercantile system (oil, guns, bombs, toxic chemicals) to harm the enemy is taking it's place.

and the confusion between these two worldviews is rampant. after the USA wins the war against terror, who signs the surrender papers? where are the POWs? the declaration of war? how do the participants of the war surrender?

the answers to these questions are not clear because the "official" institution of war on our side is not relevant. bush's war is a war in the world of brands and pseudo-events. read the image by daniel boorstein and the land of desire by william leach to glimpse the present day context. reality tv. infomercials. repositioning product (the war is being fought for what purpose?). the speeded up voiceover in ads that is not understandable, verbal equivalent of "small print".

the real world, as usual, is not that real.

==========> Later

it's so improbable that words broadcast to the world or your neighbor mean what you think they might mean, so much so that i had to get a picture up. and the strange thing is that to me the words and the image have about the same amount of meaning: not enough. enough.

spent yesterday moving slow, jaw and gums really swollen. i'll move slow today also. sometime this week i may be able to slip in lower dental plate. or not. don't you love these medical updates?

as the state of the union unravels i have been reluctant to write anything about it. it's hard to do justice to the hallucinatory newz cycle with words.

but i'll try.

the two most confusing concepts boggling everyone's consciousness today are "nation" and "war". whenever the worldview changes bigtime confusion reigns. and it is changing. the old world evaporates and something else takes it's place. the european enlightment was the last time we had to go thru this.

"nation" still has a dictionary meaning, and plays a huge part in the human experience. next to gender, it is probably how most of us identify ourselves today.

it was a useful concept that is playing itself out right in the middle of our lives. as ridiculous as it may seem, there is a trend towards identification with what i call "affinity groups". more and more people respond when asked what they are with something that they are involved with, which is not their nationality. it might be "poet", "musician", "artist", "bank-robber", "homeless", "insurgent", "lawyer" and so on. vocations and avocations.

"war" is closely connected to this metamorphose of meaning. when i was young it was pretty clear: we lived in a worldview in which one nation might declare war on another. uniforms identified which army was which, and conventions of the last 300 years held: if a soldier was captured by the enemy he was incarcerated in a stalag. the redcross knew his or her name and where he was imprisoned. he might receive a box of candy from home.

those that fought the war were defined differently than those that didn't. for example during the battle of waterloo, the nearby fields were being worked by the peasants just as they did every year.

technology and the moving hand of change put a stop to this distinction. the historical trend of war has always been to involve more and more civilians, for example the siege of tyre by alexander.

but during the last 200 years the change became complete. i don't want to go into the story here, but think WWI when the front stretched from the baltic to the Mediterranean. as it slowly moved back and forth any village or town in the way was erased. WWII air marshall tedder was quite explicit in targeting civilian populations and not factories of war. hilter did the same.

recently enemies are blowing up selected and random groups of civilians. if you think back about 150 years, the sterotypical european anarchist ran around with a beard and a bomb.

but he alsways threw it at somebody, a target, and not into a crowd of humans.

so "nations" at "war" is a whole differant thing now: you might say because profit on weapons of "minimum-to-maximum mass destruction" have been so high that the world is now flooded with everything from saturday night specials to atomic bombs. at the same time the non-military humans of the world are now on the front lines.

i'll be in recoup mode for a few days for sure. feel like i did when a sledge hammer connected with my face.

oh, wait a minute, i don't think that happened. but that's how i feel. finished the high window by chandler, all the time trying to spot what he does that makes his books so great.

no, i did not figure it out. attitude and metaphors i guess.

had lower teeth extracted this morning, ain't science wonderful. problem is upper and lowers don't mesh so go back tomorrow.

"missing" refers to my presence, not teeth. i'm swollen, distorted, in pain, drugged so i'll probably be hiding under the bed for a few days.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

saw dentist at 4:00, and now i can at least use both upper and lower teef at the same time. but put them together --- ie chew > zow instant pain. about a week with some return visits and i'll have a feel for them. both negative and positive of course.

picture from sunday walk.

35mm slides, photos, and computer hardware gone. a real hassle sorting thru these things but perseverance furthers.

tomorrow morning i get lower teeth extracted etc etc. i may be scarce for awhile.

today's icon from watercolor i just completed.

spring cleaning is what i've been doing. at first i couldn't give it a name. but i am lightening up. finished with photographs today, all slides will have been sorted by dark. i'll have quite a few pieces of hardware sitting on the street before tuesday.

picture is from a scanned gum bichromate i did early 80s.

this morning's before breakfast offering.

spent most of yesterday creating huge piles of paper, pictures, old mats, too many different categories to list here. stuff headed for the landfill. i'm clearing the decks, streamlining, hoping that by losing "stuff" i'll gain a little time.

i'm tired of doing this stuff. you'll find me for awhile with stuff you can handle like paint & brush.

7 AM & i'm headed for the grocery store. this week i have no appointments, meetings, or other reasons to leave the house. next week i get lower dentures which will be a one or two week space-out so it's all got to happen this week.

what i'm doing is throwing stuff out. went thru papers, paintings yesterday. 35mm slides? i got 'em, you want 'em? quick sort planned for today.

big pile of photos and negs are next. that'll probably take all week. next in line is kitchen cupboards, any thing over a year old is going to soup kitchen. not to mention doo-dads.

it's nice to have a mission in life: "live stuff-free"

might make a nice bumper sticker. i think i'll print several thousand and stack them in the garage.

this is the first watercolor i ever painted. i was living in phoenix arizona and working for intel corporation, electronic pre-press 'n' stuff. whatever it is that pushes m to paint started in, quietly nagging. so i went to the tempe library and studied every book i could find on watercolor. made charts and lists. bought the materials and one fine day painted the above.

beginner's mind. i kept at it for maybe a year and a half, painted maybe 20 pieces. then put everything away. about 3 years ago it all came out for another run and i been runnin ever since.

this is not a good habit. i can't seem to get the day going until i post one of these... images. they are quick and dirty, but once done the day falls into place.

on the plus side, maybe, they are all added to library of textures, surfaces, winking lights in the night that i can use later - if there is such a thing.

perfect march day in the mountains. gray, the occasional snowflake, the visceral reluntance to leave the home.

however i'm heading out for 2 quick stops.

watercolor. did it the last 2 days after such a long haul with oil with angel oil painting which is now finished i'll try to snag an image of it.

listening to lester young.

cover design for book i'm doing.

process has been classic: initially wondering around and picking up pieces of paper with marks on them, to an 81 page 6x9 paperback.

i'm at the classic penultimate phase: still lot's of things that could be done, but i'm so sick of it i just want it out of here. i'll upload book soon.

for me this feeling is a necessary part of any creative endeavor and i've learned to pay attention to it.

let's see what else? oh yes visited dentist yesterday. scheduled lower teeth extraction april 5th. could have pushed it out but now that i'm in the prosthetic jungle might as well proceed. much pain is involved in all this.

pain, like joy, bliss, suffering, fades away.

found this in a recent notebook:

"Much too loose
Bad for the Goose
All around town
Planes are the ground.

Pronouns last stand
Whereever we am
Outlast the dawn
Heaven's last song

As long as we're here
Have another beer
Distance in the night
Another oversight

Spirit of the Air
Breeze's everywhere
Do what you want
It's just another jaunt
Not enough to lose
Accept it or refuse."

raw day outside. seems like the last of winter is the only winter we've had this year.

i could be wrong. i've noticed that talking to people about the weather, this year's, last year's, i seem to be out of context and really cannot relate to what i'm hearing. expecting some snow tonight. but compared to some of the white-out zones i've driven thru, the black ice, i think it's fair to say the winters are diminishing here.

i'm pretty down lately, physically beat. house is a disaster, can't face cleaning it up. so i'm doing mechanical no-thought things, like sorting my socks. just kidding.

that's something i'll do when i return to a semblance of health.

man i feel bad. do not like plastic teeth. doesn't fit, too tight, hurts like hell. haven't eaten anything but yoghurt and ice cream since wednesday. now i read that having no teeth increases chance of cardiac mishap, and my chances are sky high already.

so i'm going to buy some kind of juicer or food processor (smasher) today. see the dentist tomorrow.

the week has been slow, and so have i. about the only thing i did was come close to finishing 80 plus page PDF for lulu.com.

it's early in the morning, i've been up for a long time. nearly finished zelda by nancy mitford. this is a very strange book. nobody in it looks too good, especially f. scott who comes across as some kind of elegant idiot savant.

while i'm on the subject, also reading the future of ice by gretel ehrlich. nice oblique sentences, no narrative in sight. a subject you can't quite pinpoint. my kind of book.

meetings with remarkable men by gurdieff. reading this like a national geographic, in no particular order.

a mind apart by antonetta. about the necessity for what she calls neurodiversity. eccentric unpredictable paragraphs. i like it.

parallel worlds by kaku. newton, einstein, quantum, string theory and m-theory. pretty lucid, lots of history.

timeline by chrichton. read about half, probably won't finish. like reading a movie, everything is cued ahead of time so you know what to expect.

off to the pharmacy.

mmm... sunday about noon. yesterday was too weird. i finished oil painting of angel person, immediately began watercolor. busy around the house, coolish weather so i decided to walk downtown, buy a small sketchbook that fits in my pack, walk back.

about halfway to town my new uppers began to pulsate pain. hurt. not too bad but noticeable. so i got some kind of drugstore creamy made for this kind of problem, walked home, took the damn things out and applied medication. then horizontal for a long time. mr syntax dropped by. we had interesting chat. and i gave him rough mix and probably last mix of muxak i've been so involved with lately. it is both interesting and curious that the source of creativity that produced the CD was cleaning house and throwing things away.

in some ways not recognized very much anymore, life can be considered a time during which, if you are of the blessed, you lose everything before you die. in a deep ecological and respecter of life way.

anyway i'm back in invalid mode because i cannot wear this half-set of dentures.

pic above today's special, you're not supposed to be able to read it.

ok ok i didn't walk to town yesterday. after lunch i took a dive and a long nap, then went to bed early. and to think years earlier i would have been out riding the waves, getting the word on where what was, and making the circuits. circus?

new book cobra I about the "run up" to bush's war. it interests me because i have felt during this slow motion debacle that the U.S. military has the best handle on what is happening and have been totally shut out by the troika that owns us, bush-chaney-rumsfield.

ever worked for a company where meetings to make decisions are charades at best? i have, more than one. in fact this situation has become a stereotype of our day, and in it you quickly learn to shut up, stay half-awake and agree to whatever the big man's hallucination of the hour is. you do not point out false assumptions, logical cul-de-sacs, or unmentioned show-stoppers.

the nation is being run this way. there was plenty of disagreement to the war before the war, and i don't just mean me. (my caveat was messing with an unknown culture, people that we have never known, and not knowing that this was the case pretty much guaranteed failure.

but the nay-sayers - note how in the context of our culture that attribute sounds so negative - were fired, dismissed, or otherwise ignored.

the concern is not that the nation screwed up a war, but that their mode of operation means anything the junta touches, deaf dumb and blind to the world we live in, will be at the least ineffective and more likely just plain destructive.

why were the democrats, the artists, the musicians, the small businesses, the little people so silent during "run up"? same reason those at a business meeting run by an autocrat are silent, they fear for their daily bread.

let's do better now that we are engaged in the "run-down" of of the war. and all institutions run by fear.

for a year or two i have been posting a picture a day here, usually done on the spot. it's been a great exercise.

now i feel like it is time to return to the written word. why? to see if i have anything to say. besides i'm redoing the art archive, dividing it into genres like watercolor, oil, pencil, photo, computer generated and so on.

then - and i dread this - enlarge the picture that you see when you click on the thumbnail.

it's early in the day and i'm about to walk downtown to get a portable - small - sketchbook i can tote around.

now as far as the written word goes, let's take a look at the word "war". since the enlightenment to vietnam, "war" has usually meant hostilities between nation-states.

the military of the nations involved do the fighting.

bush's war is a redefinition. the enemy is "terror".

it is worth noting that about 150 years ago in the west there were bearded bombers running around blowing things up. they were called "anarchists".

no war was declared against them. instead they were considered criminals.

personally, if i were a millenial politician i would declare war against nightmares, boom-boxes, and TV.

this is a time that institutions are fading away: schools, local govt., church, medical and nation-states don't seem to work like they once did.

institutions have evolved throughout history, and evolution means change now. to something new. new affinity groups. new tribes, bands. new families. and most of all, new ways of organizing collective human effort not based on fear, jobs or money.

i like this one better.

[10 seconds later] no i don't.

close up of an oil painting i have been screwing around with. it's a (sort-of) vague copy of a painting by thayer, english, around a hundred years ago. it's not finished.

every time i start an oil painting i can count on learning a lot of things because i'm always involved with something i've never done before. on this one it's painting with very small brushes.

got all my upper teeth removed yesterday and a denture slapped in. something else i've never done before. the dentist absolutely refused to have them made from stainless steel so i was a little disappointed. now i'm just in pain. later.

to the dentist at 10:30 this morning. all of my upper teeth will be extracted and - the picture in my mind says - a dental plate will be shoved in my mouth and i'm out of there. the visceral unease i feel is both very strong and a surprise to me. i imagine there will be a lot of surprises. postings to this conglomeration will most likely be minimal for a few days. wish me luck.

stepped outdoors and took this picture last night
here's my plan: today i have an appt w/ doc at 9:30. then a stop at the old fashioned pharmacy to fill a prescription. then if, as they say, time allows, an oil change for truck. back home pay bills.

tomorrow morning i'm getting all my upper teeth pulled and replaced with, not sure what you call it, an upper denture. (lower denture comes a little later).

finish a little movie i have been working on in flash. work on an oil that i have totally screwed up but learned a lot working on. i seem to be at a point where loading brush and brush strokes are coming into play.

have finished rough mix of latest CD, not a total success. it's much quieter than past work, maybe even a little "new age", but there are enough - i hope - weird sonic convolutions to keep it interesting.

i took this foto yesterday. it reminds me of goya.

on a ramble in the woods i ran across this character. someday we'll all live this way. if we all live. turns out he played tenor with basie and then hit the dream forest.

dang. can't remember a thing about yesterday, except it was normal day, ie stayed inside painted, mastered another CD, freed up disk space.

am i in creative rut?

who cares. i don't. trying to start a group blog of cohorts from chapel hill in the 60's. never counted on so many unable to traverse the maze of establishing an account on blogger.com. (it is pretty straight forward).

just dropped truck off to have new distributer "o" ring replaced.

beautiful day so i walked back, maybe 2 1/2 miles. first long walk this year. and it's already too hot for my system. (i run hot).

today's idiotgram comes from book that i am putting together. it is a mega wing-ding done in flash.

change oil, groceries, see what is leaking under my truck, really try and make drinking liberally downtown tonight, it starts around 7, a little late for me, but i have to start leaving the house. it's a mental health maintenance thing. i think i'll path thermal mattress i keep in truck for the delightful camping opportunities that are right around the corner.

plus in my living room right now are huge piles of fotos i want to sort thru, ditto 4 track cassettes i need to pitch, and a fat pile of papers i have made notes on over the years on subjects like how to play the guitar in open g - Spanish - tuning with the bottom string removed. this task is dictated by the lighten up prime directive.

and billz, balance checkbook.

another day in the floating life.

one of those. . . days. didn't, couldn't sleep last night, a periodic happening. got up and continued to pound out sounds out of bigger sounds and free up disk space. painted a little on current oil, i'm getting into it. at 2 i went to cardiologist for stress test and blew it away, tech said i was in the active 33 year old numbers. swung by dr. lane's to pick up button cover for pump.

it's 5:30 in the evening. think i'll rearrange all the furniture.

today's icon from a photo i took downtown day before yesterday i believe.

got this email this morning from armor folks:

"...He also has a campaign site at www.armorforcongress.com.

A lot of his writings are there as well.

Did I read what you said correctly?

I don't believe for a minute that he didn't know what the Eighth
Amendment was-- he's a attorney who specializes in constitutional
issues, for crying out loud!"

perhaps i neglected to fill in the context. the question was sort of a stunt, and the lack of instant response on the part of all in the room (at least myself), including mr. armor, means absolutely nothing. the least political of us could have refreshed our memory in a second with all the laptops present.

in my book no one is expected to drag around all details in his or her head 24/7. knowing where to find them, how to use them, yes. i work with dozens of computer apps every day but away from the computer would be hard-pressed to rattle of keyboard commands.

i suppose such a small incident could be blown up by the noise excuse me i meant news in say a presidential election.

mr armor seemed to get a kick out of it as did we all, which says more about a busy muti-tasking man than what he has memorized and when.

of course he knows what the eighth amendment is.

this reflects on one of the many problems institutional democracies face today: communication. i sympathize with, let's say a human being of good intention running for office today. i imagine a situation where as one converses there may be faint anticipatory echoes from the public domain: practicalities of the process keep the discourse constrained, so "handlers" keep a man from speaking his mind, which, lord knows, is difficult enough with everybody living on his own planet.

the meeting last night with John Armor, republican challenger to charles taylor, the entrenched congressman from western north carolina, was the result of efforts of BlogAsheville and Scrutiny Hooligans. turnout was light, presumably on account of the politically enlightened's relunctance to talk to the bad guys. Brainshrub.com was present and pushed hard for answers.

his question of the day was pretty neat: he asked gordon to pick a number. he picked "8". he then asked mr. armor what the 8th amendment was. (backgound: he said he had always wanted to ask a candidate this question). if it had been "jeopardy", nobody in the room including mr. armor would have rung in.

i had been pushing oil paint around all day and was late. i was set for conversation but quickly reset as it was more like a question and answer interview. he came across as a free market no government messing around with biz deals (like charlie), but one with integrity. in other words it appears as if he will run in the primaries against taylor as "i am of the right but not a crook". i have to say i admire his willingness to mingle with the hoi polloi, a quality missing from almost every politician in high office.

watercolor, 2 weeks ago.

happy birthday to mr. c who is taking it easy at his spread in chatham county.

watched the unc dook game last night, the first basketball game i've seen all year. i picked a good one, a classic that will be remembered a long time.

lost a rubber seal off my insulin pump. if i can't find it i'll be on the phone messing with fed ex and lord knows what, an exercise i shy away from. on the other hand the duct tape seems to work fine.

LATER<==== worked on a sound and a painting all day. time slipped away and i realized i was due for a meeting with the gentleman who wants to beat chainsaw charlie in the republican primaries, john armor.

yep, it's true. came home and finished sound, gained about a 1 1/2 GB disk space.

photo taken looking in back window of doug's place near toe river yesterday.

had a good evening painting and off loading music files.

most of yesterday spent riding with doug up to toe river and spending a few hours at camp. great break, all in order up there, the air and the wind were enough all by themselves to go.

photo my son eric sent me from st. george utah. he and angela live in sunnyvale and took a trip to utah to visit her mother and new husband. it sounds as if it has been "discovered" and well off californians are pouring in. there may be some small high-tech industries that are migrating there also.

last 24 hours have been a real hassel. i don't even want to write about it. the sudden low i had at the doc's office yesterday morning seemed to linger on all day: felt like i "was not myself". lay down in the after noon.

doug stopped by around 5 and we spent an hour or so catching up. i was still feeling a little shakey so i skipped carolina virginia game at steve's, went to bed early.

after going to the head about 5 times during the night, and not sleeping much, i finally figured out infusion set had detached so at 5 this morning changed sets and gave myself correction bolus for 500 BG.

it's almost 9 and i'm down to 353 (and up and out of bed). another correction, i guess by 10 i'll be able to eat. meanwhile getting battery alarm from insulin pump i have to take care of.

if i can get past all this biomedical frou-frou this morning i hope to drive with Doug up to toe river territory for the day which is another beautiful one, they're talking snow maybe by the week end.

since i wrote the above doug called, he's out eating breakfast and i'm getting myself together to hit the road.

scan of picture that i found in house we moved into in efland about 1970. it is some kind of die and fold paper similar to tie-dye. i don't know who did it. i refound it at sally's house when she died.

doc appt this morning. i did a correction bolus before i left the house, was fine when i got there, BG was 100 plus, and before i left i was acting goofy, remeasusred at 27 which was not pleasant. but it dropped that much in 20 minutes. now, about 5:00 i think is the first time all day sugar has been normal.

got a call from doug, he's headed up from old fort. talked to april who sent me some beautiful flowers. i couldn't figure out why. cause she thought it was my birthday. it used to be.