pretty sleepless nite. repacking and heading out tomorrow.

made it to the triangle, not burmuda. regrouping this morning. lot of old friends in last night's dreams.

ready set go. i'm out of here.

leaving in the morning for denver. probably post from time to time.

part of me feels like an anachronism; the other part is an anachronism.

the olympics - fascist spectacle, forget about communism.

the american presidential election: process turned cartoon.

profit. the only justification for anything, including life.

USA today story about how we could learn a thing or two from the discipline chinese cuture exhibits, ie sweatshops, labor camps, secret police. (but note: we still lead in number of citizens incarcerated.)

the republicans: government for the sake of theft.

law - watch cops some saturday night.

disneyland for the many, a nightmare for the few.

if you don't see RSS feeds on the left reload page. i may have overloaded something. just finished talking w/ old friend minor in denver, we'll spend some time together next week. it's been awhile.

Earnest Harris: Obama Is A Joke

Earnest Harris: Obama Is A Joke:
"It was heard being used by Republican surrogates on several news shows in the last few days, from Joe Lieberman to Pat Buchanan. The message has been the same: Obama is a joke and if he and his supporters don't get the joke, it is further proof that he is taken way too seriously."

i got nothin to say except asheville's favorite son has a pretty good album out:

high and mighty - gov't mule

reminescent of early sly and robbie.

god's country


my country
Topless Women, Kid Rock, Bikers, And John McCain:
"Following McCain's speech, country stars Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock will be taking the very same stage for their own live performances. Then at 12:30 a.m., there will be the semi-finals of the 'Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant,' this time featuring Hawaiian Tropic Models."

today's pictograph. indicates that, as a friend of mine said in his email, that my dancing shoes still have legs in them.

spooky day. my training in the metaphysical ghettos of yore sure comes in handy. the outdoor temp with the solar wind factored in is about 145 degrees. indoors it feels like Bangkok in august.

The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET News.com:

"As suggested above, the report finds that attacks are shifting from the operating system to Web applications...but not necessarily Web browsers, which are becoming more secure. Instead, attackers increasingly rely on 'automated toolkits, obfuscation, and the prevalence of unpatched browsers and plug-ins' to attack users' systems. Indeed, plug-ins represent 78 percent of public security exploits affecting browsers."

Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period :
"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border."

New worm targets Facebook, MySpace:
"When clicked on they prompt the recipient to download an executable file that purports to be the latest version of Flash Player. Instead, it is the worm itself, infecting yet another victim."

had an appt. for overdue oil change at 10:30 this morning. missed it because i had written down in my extensive and well oranized organizer no it is not a blackberry but a piece of paper 11:30. this is not an unusual occurence.

went to mad tea party yesterday afternoon. this is a daily happening at URTV asheville public acess tv. i handed over 2 DVDs to larry for inclusion in wallpaper project and hung around for awhile. excellent conversation context, reminds me in a way of those long extended conversations at harry's or the tempo room before the earth was cool.

when i left i glanced up at the monitor in the entrence which displays what is playing and was knocked out by what i saw. lot's of blue screening, effects galore, pretty neat.

intend to check out a prosumer video camera tomorrow just to see how it works. will begin first project for URTV and as usual let it take form as it will. i have in mind a semi animated 30 minutes of traffic.

so today is catch-up day, all of the maintenance chores that i have ignored during another production marathon. i think i am probably addicted to hyperfocus.

BTW i started this blog long ago to be a means of communicating w/ friends and family. never meant to be a world wide billboard of my thoughts or work. so i have no idea of number of hits etc. once in awhile i google modernpeasant and found a bunch of my pictures scattered here and there. but you gotta dig deep.

busy busy busy.

finished all video. have every picture frame i could find stacked in living room. will use for paintings and prints, choosing each carefully or use whatever fits, anticipating a show somewhere some time.

next few days will also include sorting thru three immense piles of paper into trash, excluding that which needs shredding. i will use poor man's shredder, making a paper mache sculpture, sanded and painted. a nice touch would be to document it's creation with video, but we'll see.

camping trip to hawksbill w/ eli and lily is off. i may take a day trip to table rock instead.

following week will pack and drive to chatham county saturday. fly to Denver tuesday for a week long visit.

so i am alive and well.

picture from short but pleasant walk yesterday.

about (really) to finish 2nd video. soundtrack still glitchy but maybe i can get away with it.

figured out poor man's shredder. after i sort thru the biomass of paper i have gathered from every nook, cranny and file cabinet into throw away and guard with my life cause someone might steal what's left of my identity, i'll make a paper mache sculpture with it. cool.

also have in the living room all frames mats to fill and hang.

probably ought to grocery shop too.

A Reporter at Large: Dr. Kush: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker:
"Blue’s cell phone rang several times in succession, rousing him. His phone rings, on average, once every two and a half minutes between noon and 2 A.M., and I soon developed a Pavlovian aversion to his ringtone, a swirling, Middle Eastern-inflected electronica tune called “Lebanese Blonde.”"

looking for something to post ran across this short slide show:
A Glimpse Into the Life of Old Crete

there are a few slides of a beach called vai. i spent a month there in 1964. hitchhicked and walked from ierapetra on southeast coast w/ a young - we were all young then - woman from toronto, janet. the deal was speaking my primitive greek i had been told over and over that it was the only place in greece where something called "phoenixades" or similar could be found. they came from lebenon. no idea of what they were.

it was at least a two day journey, the last part on foot up a very windy gap to a monistery which we reached after dark and where we spent the night.

when we reached the village of vai we found it was one old structure divided into four living spaces for four families. about half a mile from that was the beach, whitest sand i've ever seen and totally deserted. the "phoenixades" turned out to be palm trees. we stayed about a week or two, never saw anybody else. a hike to vie provided food, usually potatoes and eggs.

i had one book with me which i read from cover to cover: "Ulysses" by joyce.

but that was in another country, another world.

i just realized that bele chere will be this weekend. a good time to drive to the mountains and hang out for three days. altho if the weather remains anywhere near what it has been lately it won't matter because i will remain sealed up in living module.

second video finished. i'm left with the not unfamiliar feeling of wha-a-a-t? i have no idea but i'm glad it is out of my hands.

i am currently reading 2 books, 3 if you count the mystery i'm pretty sure i've already read.

the 2 both shed a lot of light on the cultural conundrum the world in general and USA in particular are going through.

i'm about halfway thru both so i can't tell you how it will all unfold. (attempt at humor).

the myth of the machine by lewis mumford was written in 1966. it concerns both human and cultural development and attempts to show how building pyramids, the bigger, more costly the better, and coercion and slavery, and war are the attributes of civilization. sounds flaky but he is no lightweight the bush error is not unique.

Amazon.com: Myth of the Machine : Technics and Human Development: Lewis Mumford:
"Lewis Mumford was one of the 20th century's most important philosophers, and the two-volume set Myth of the Machine (Volume 1 is Technics and Human Development; and Volume 2 is The Pentagon of Power) are probably his most important books: the summation of his life's work. In writing as elegant as it is clear, Mumford makes plain the death urge that has always underlain civilization, which Mumford calls 'the machine,' and later 'the megamachine.' This is a social structure organized not around any organic human needs, but around the 'needs' of the machines that have come to characterize and control our lives. These are crucial, incisive, devastating books. I cannot praise them highly enough."

the second book is brasyl by ian mcdonald. sci-fi along the lines of william gibson and john brunner. excellent dip into future mediated memes. not to mention the european take over of the new world.

read some of it here: Brasyl

if you read them both you will have some notion of what the airwaves, print, film etc are doing saturating us with noise.

i've been looking for this picture for at least a year. found it cleaning up hard drives because i have no space left.

the rest of the day i hope to sort thru paper. cartons of old and not so old papers, bills, documents of varied sorts. after that it's my archaic shredder: scissors. there was a time i would have dumped them into a 50 gallon drum and burned them.

finished i hope w/ part two of video. haven't seen it yet on tv monitor. audio redone many times.

speaking of audio, i can't hear very well out of either ear. ear wax no doubt i hope. been using drops i got at drugstore. and it's worse than when i started. so it's a trip to the doctor, tomorrow i hope.

richard and i went to asheville after 5 on lexington avenue friday night. we got separated in the crowd, ie i wondered off but we connected at the end.

the crowd was monolithic. very few folks over 30. to me they appeared totally homoginous.

it must be 90 plus degrees outside. yesterday i continued insulation, down to duct tape and foam.

plan to drive up to table rock this week. daytrip. can't find pretty good map i used the first time i tried to get there.

Greenspan's Fraud -- Thom Hartmann's "Independent Thinker" Book of the Month

Greenspan's Fraud -- Thom Hartmann's "Independent Thinker" Book of the Month: "The result is that all that money - trillions of dollars - that has been taxed out of working Boomers (the ceiling has risen from the tax being on your first $30,000 of income to the first $90,000 today) has been borrowed and spent. What are left behind are a special form of IOUs - an unique form of Treasury debt instruments similar (but not identical) to those the government issues to borrow money from China today to fund George W. Bush's most recent tax cuts for billionaires (George Junior is still also 'borrowing' from the Social Security Trust Fund)."

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.

granddaughter natalie taken during short visit. she just turned 3 and talks up a storm. she is a beauty. very special.

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. 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.

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.

ok it is sat. morning and i'm leaving right now for chapel hill,

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.

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.

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.

amazing. no sleep at all last night. good thing it's all good or it wouldn't be.

in the sidebar to the right the first link is to the abolition of work by bob black. i first read this years ago in a tempe arizona bookstore. it was included in an issue of a computer (unix)  magazine. lately i have run into other writings by whomever "bob black" is. here is a sample:

Technophilia, An Infantile Disorder--Bob Black: 

"If patriotism is, as Samuel Johnson said, the last refuge of a scoundrel, scientism is by now the first. It's the only ideology which, restated in cyberbabble, projects the look-and-feel of futurity even as it conserves attitudes and values essential to keeping things just as they are. Keep on zapping!

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)."

Authoritarian and Democratic Technics--Lewis Mumford

Authoritarian and Democratic Technics--Lewis Mumford: 

"In this new systems-centered collective, this Pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike job's God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated."

got this link in email this morning:

Modern World Has Robbed Us of the Simple Joys in Life
Do we really have no choice but to become prisoners of a culture that robs us of the simple joys of life?:

the answer to the question today is yes. we are being held hostage by bad dreams. let's change this: wake up.

there was a question about watercolor on canvas included. i used fredrix watercolor canvas. used it twice so far. very different from paper.

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.

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."

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."

"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.

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."

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".

another idiotgram signifying not only a wasted youth but busy old age.

i guess i'll type in a song a wrote - or started - while wondering thru craggy gardens the other day:

so it looks like i have something to say.

but i have to find it first.

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.

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.

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.

top of max patch yesterday.

wordz later.

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?

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.

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.

nightshot taken at surry county memorial day. no tripod, used hood of truck.

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.

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.

i used GIMP, linux port to windows, to make the above. monkeyed around a little. very photoshop like but . . . different.

lot to do today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

in a hurry. the above is to let you know that despite lack of posts
it's all good.

later====> later====> later====> back monday.

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.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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.

another beautiful morning. another image. another photoshop meditation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

man what nerve to put a picture like this up. dyspeptic. tomorrow it will be better. but really the picture is not an anagrammatic view of chris's day. or not.

finger painting can be a mess.

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".

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

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

photo i took last week for day in the life of asheville project before i ran out of steam.

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.]

yep it's old. i maybe did it on system 9.
quietly busy today, loved the weather, cool and overcast.

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.

by some weird cyclic event last night i worked on a dozen projects i may never finish and was very surprised when i noticed it was early morning outside. the last time this happened i don't even remember. but it did.

anyway the above image i found with in a bunch of digital clutter this morning.

one step too many is a dance. i posted the image above which appeared pretty quickly. and the way i should have been doing for awhile. anyway if you click on the image you will see the image full size. i'll fool with centering it some other time. there are so many of them ("other times" i mean).

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.

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.

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,

energy at an all time low. mine, not the world's.

words simply fail me. hope my feets don't.

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.

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.

about to head up the road. fooled around trying to get short quiktime up, but it will be later. really. meanwhile an image: i know a beach where it never ends.

ok something useful. useless. how to post dvd video to... blogger... youtube...

begin:

strqaight uplinnk via blogger post:

spring at the center.

back in chapel hill. visit to center was long overdue and a delight. i'll be here over weekend.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?