whatever. pic taken from hospital roomette window where fiend is temporarily lodged. talked to nicole yesterday who is coming up for brief visit to old collage reunion friends. is it next weekend?

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found a thing out. festina lente, a saying i am fond of, and a possible cure for many of today's dilemmas, was used by manutius, as the "colophon" for the first book publishing house.

Festina lente (said Aldus Manutius)

did i find this out by industrially combing the web for information?

no, i found it out by eating breakfast. one of my many habits is to browse (not read) a book while i eat and i grabbed a copy of the discoverers by boorstein.

browsing and puttering are my modes.

seems like i'm out of everything daily maintenance-wise: stamps, glasses, furry hat for cold, gas cap, prefrontal cortex, you know, the usual. then again i know they are not lost, i just can't put my hands on them.

picture above: one treatment of granddaughter lily whirling like a dervish. probably will skip source of these psychodoodles in the future because thery are just words that interfere with just image. still the early morning image i pull out of a hat each morning is the only healthy addiction i have at present so it's a present.

yet another travelogue pic, this one from eli & melissa's yard in chatham county.

no or very little sleep last night which is not that unusual. what is unusual is i was up and active until 3 AM. fooling with routers and organizing paints. started a watercolor which is going to be my main preoccupation for awhile.

i'm not planning, just doing.

but what i really want to talk about is billie holiday and bob dylan. they both have something in common besides being discovered by john hammond sr.

there is a piece of vintage film i have seen several times. filmed in late 30's? black and white footage of lady day singing with a small group, believe ben webster is on sax.

billie's face is the center of interest. flickers of dreams light up her face as with eyes closed she "plays" with the group. the slightest subtle changes illuminate what she is doing, all in all ultracommunication with the players and the music. the subtlety and restraint makes her contribution that much more intense.



this might not be the footage i remember - or think i remember - but it is the same session, i recall gerry mulligan and webster, but not the flash you see of lester young. if i can find the footage i have in mind i'll put it up, but this ain't bad.

dylan's last cd modern times deluxe features a bonus dvd (first one i ever owned). the last of 4 cuts is a video of him and band playing cold irons bound. the intensity, grace, focus and total collaboration with the music and band is unmistakable even though offhand and possibly too microscopic to observe, altho i think it hits me in the face as billie's footage does.

both of these recorded moments are in another league from "music videos". they are as close to manifesting the soul or spirit as any footage i have ever witnessed, and i use the term advisedly.

photo taken in the middle of the sonoran desert. honest.

idiogrammatically it reads duck not in a row.

i am really slopping around now, bouncing from one task to another and accomplishing not much.

so today must be, has to be, there is no other option: kleenup day.

during which i hope to find: missing library book; steel slide for dobro; many pages scattered here and there of notes about something or another; strips and lancet device for glucose meter; laundry - coming (clean) and going (wash) - and small bag of false teeth accoutrements.

yet another photo from phoenix. along a canal, water.

doctor's appt at 12 today. lots of loose ends to do, bills, banks, library.

i came back with notion to spend no more than 30 minutes a day recording and mixing audio and painting the rest of the day. so far, mostly because i totally took apart audio recodring software and hardware, it's been the reverse. but i am

getting it together.

ran across this just a moment ago from t's blog. i am assuming rod brezney wrote it. whoever did, amen.

"
PRAYER FOR YOU

by Rob Brezsney

This is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment because I have been
inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I've been roused to unleash a divinely
greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of you—
even those of you who don't believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods … the God
beyond all Gods … the Girlfriend of God … the Teacher of God … the
Goddess who invented God.


DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to
shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads this benediction.

I pray that you will give them what they don't even know they need—not
just the boons they think they want but everything they've always been
afraid to even imagine or ask for.


DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of the divine chameleons out there don't even know that their souls
will live forever.

So please use your brash magic to help them see that they are all wildly
creative geniuses too big for their own personalities.

Guide them to realize that they are all completely different from what
they've been led to believe about themselves, and more exciting than
they can possibly imagine.

Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for
them to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for them.


O GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that
our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb
ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed the
wise and sexy virtuosos out there.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung
to them, no matter how long they've suffered from it, and even if they
have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Please conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive
an early warning if they are ever about to act in such a way as to bring
another hex or plague into their lives in the future.


DEAR GODDESS, sweet Goddess, you sly universal virus with no freaking
opinion:

Please help all the personal growth addicts out there to become
disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach them the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating
self-control.

Awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible
to do the totally right thing.

Arouse the Wild Woman within them—even if they're men.


DEAR GODDESS, you pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:

I pray that you will inspire all the compassionate rascals communing with
this prayer to kick their own asses and wash their own brains.

Provoke them to throw away or give away all the things they own that
encourage them to believe that they are better than anyone else.

Show them how much fun it is to brag about what they cannot do and do
not have.

Give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more
interesting problems.

Most of all, Goddess, brainwash them with your freedom so that they
never love their own pain more than anyone else's pain.


O GODDESS, you wildly disciplined, radically curious, shockingly friendly,
fanatically balanced, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically
logical master of rowdy bliss:

Cultivate in yourself a fervent yearning for the intimate companionship of
these budding messiahs. Play with them every day. Answer their
questions. Listen to their stories. Inspire them to love you so much they
lose all their hatred forever.


DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our
brains:

Bless the insanely poised creators out there with lucid dreams while they
are wide awake. Provide them with their own spin doctors, and vacuum
cleaners for their magic carpets, and solar-powered sex toys that work
even in the dark.

Give them a knack for avoiding other people's hells, and a thousand masks
that all represent their true feelings, and secret admirers who are not
psychotic stalkers.

Arrange for a racehorse to be named after them, or an underground river,
or a thousand-year-old storm on Saturn.

Teach them to be their own prophets and pray to themselves and right
their own wrongs and sing their own songs and be their own wives and
save their own lives.


DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically
sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm
animal bodies:

I pray that you provide all the original sinners out there with a license to
bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that keep them apart
from the things they love.

Show them how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract them from
their daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach them that they can have anything they want if they'll only ask
for it in an unselfish way.


And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God,
Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close,
trusting that in these mysterious moments you have begun to change
everyone out there in the exact way they've needed to change in order to
become the gorgeous geniuses they were born to be. Amen. Awomen.


P.S. Goddess: And please also give them each an emerald green
parachute, ruby slippers, a canoe covered with jewels, a black-market
orchid and a bouquet of organic broccoli, a donkey clown piñata full of
crickets, a protective gargoyle lifted from the Chartres Cathedral, a guitar
string actually played by Jimi Hendrix, a strawberry chocolate cake baked
in the shape of a question mark, a human DNA map drawn up by the
Human Genome Project, fistfuls of sparklers, a bottle of holy water from
the River Jordan, photos of lightning on a giant poster, a refrigerator
magnet cast in the likeness of the Dalai Lama, and the key of life
accidentally placed insid e a box of Cracker Jack."
cross-posted from http://eyesinthepine.zaadz.com/blog".

the night journey. taken sat while driving home. enhanced by pshop.

dark, huh?

been installing and organizing apps and files on computers. and clearing the decks of domestic logjam. have much to do today, beginning significantly enough with putting out the garbage which i have to do right now before the weekly roar of the truck approaches.

the next few weeks will take a lot of balance on my part. not my strong suit.

yet another image from my last voyage out west. met him at a cowboy bar in barstow ca. he stole my boots.

back. from. long. trip.

i'll write about it in a few days.

because i'm just not into verbal discrirtion nowdays.

but it was a good trip, renewel of ancient friendships, the slow tilt of the kosmos showing on every face, and the invisible luminosity of grace peeking thru.

meanwhile a picture i took on the last leg back, sat twilight of hwy 40.

dad is on his way to prescott, fred is helping neice anne find a cat, i'm struggling with windoze. going to try a kwik watercolor to give to kendra, nephew jon's new wife, for her birthday tommorow.

everyone but me went to see borat yesterday. universal thumbs down. i stayed here and took fotos in the dark.

plan: fly to nc monday and take a deep breathe.

yesterday was pleasant holiday for me, stuck close to sister jane's, traditional holiday fare, struggled all day with elevated blood sugar, finally changed out everything on pump and got straight about bed time (9 pm for this old soul i mean man).

for the first time in my life i am maybe appreciatting the weather in phoenix. beautiful skies. before, when i would be here in the cool months it always felt tepid, i missed the snap of cold weather.

funny thing: since i have been here i have begun dreaming again. i have not experienced any dreams for fifteen years or so, don't know why, maybe meds, but i kind of miss them. i was a great dreamer in my youth and still remember some of the big dreams i had.

in prescott last week i slowly realized i was dreaming - at night - again. last night i dreamed my daughter nicole had become a rock and roll diva and i was in and out of strange subcultural crowds looking for her.

how nice to have a surprise cruise thru the kosmos each night.

going for hike in an hour, lasts an hour and a half, never sure how i'll do on these outings, but one thing for sure: i'll keep walking until i stop.

it's thxgiving day in arizona and i'm pecking away on my sister's pc. spent a week or so with my dad in prescott which is a mile high in the mountains and enjoyed it. for some reason i found it much easier to take daily 30 - 60 minute walk there than aville which is a great town to stroll in but one in which for some strange reason i feel hemmed in by the houses. maybe a little of the desert rat in me emerging.

i read the arizona weekly tabloid last night, equivaent to mountain xpress in aville. but very different. new times. i had a friend once long ago when i was exiled to phoenix who was the art editor. anyway reading it from my present perspective as curmudgeon hick, it was so trashy i couldn't stand it. every page either woman with few clothes or scads of electronic gee-gaws for sale or both.

it got me to thinking: during my so called adult life i've lived a lot of places, and only two were cities that i appreciatted: athens greece (but not in the summer) and denver colorado (but not today). maybe throw in boulder in the 60's.

now that there are so few places left that are not cities of one sort or another, what to do?

when i figure it out i won't let you know. but don't worry: i won't figure it or anything else out.

got one watercolor done last week and a bunch of photos. finally read the manual and discovered some capabilities that i was unaware of.

so iv'e got 4 days left in phoenix before i fly home monday. might paint, like to take some hikes i never took when i lived here, maybe upload a picture or two. thinking about my annual xmas card which i will not have long to do when i get back. there is a piano here so i'll squeeze in some playing, i've been pretty good about 30 - 60 minutes practice the last year.

what a relief to blog again. i guess i'm addicted.

more later.

i guess my post of a couple of days ago took. it's friday, i'm getting a few things organized, painting a picture and taking lots of digital photos. i brought along some manuals i have never had the time or energy to read, one for camera, one for insulin pump, and one for emergency cell fone i bought after truck stranded me outside of aville a couple of months ago. going to wonder down to whisky row in a few minutes to look at a gallery eric and i missed the other day. otherwise just sort of... slowing up - or down - which is a good thing. a rock for t is looking for me but it hasn't found me yet. i'll be leaving for phoenix wednesday, turkey day at mi hermosa, maybe a trip to tuscon to see aunt rosemary, maybe a trip to imax theatre. oh, and i'm reading absolute friends by john la carre, published in 2005. not his best work, in fact it's pretty weird. course i'm only halfway through it. later.

in prescott az at the library. the rehersal dinner for wedding was friday evening at a place called hermosa inn - or something similar - an adobe ranch in paradise vally which really felt very far away from the megalopolis called phoenix. paradise valley is an up up upscale area and known for very few lights, so it has the dark night air i appreciate so much.

the wedding of my nephew jon and kendra was sat. at the phoenix country club, another old institution, exclusive etc. outdoor ceremony. the reception followed, maybe 200 folks, very pleasant and fun, talked to a lot of folks some i knew, some knew me, and all were painless. old and young.

i especially was surprised and pleased to find so many of the folks were differant, diverse, many different points of view but no ideologues; underneath ran a strong currant of tolerence for the "other".

daughter nicole flew out early sunday morning. her twin brother eric, myself and my dad then drove to prescott. eric's old friend - and mine - john ate lunch with us and we hung out in general. eric drove to the airport tuesday, my dad rode with him - he had an appt with the VA for hearing aid tweak, rode shuttle back.

i had a very fatiguing day yesterday, doing nothing much, travel etc caught up w/ me.

came to library to check email but can't remember login for webmail so i'll try again tomorrow.

meanwhile taking photos and think i'll begin a watercolor today.;

in phx, will leave in an hour for rehersal dinner. haven't even begun to figure out election results but jd hayworth - ex asheville sportscaster and blowhard - is hanging on for recount or some difficult mathematical activity.

i remain convinced that the real struggle for a political governance that includes human/soul value begins now. pay attention.

i'll post when i can while away. i'll start trip on election day, highway 40 here i come and there i go.

i've got until 2 tomorrow to get "it" together for an extended trip west. the miraculous will occur and i'll be ready to go by then. or not. whatever, i will go.

mose allison has an open rehearsal today at 4, i'm going to make a point to drift down to the diana wortham theatre, lean back, and take a time out. i guess mose is mostly unknown in the millenial world. i first saw him somewhere in washington dc during late 50's early 60's. i think he was playing grand piano solo at that time.

flash forward 40 years. he played in some small semi-upscale restaurant in tempe az. a co-worker of mine, older than myself, took learning how to play the electric bass seriously, and was taking lessons from a local musician. at this time mose was trucking around some portable digital keyboard and, like chuck berry, played with a local pickup group where ever he went, and the local bass player was always his pick when he came to town. it was great. mose played up a storm and played a lot of his new stuff, which was very ironic in tone, the words sung were very wry. the bass player said he was really difficult to follow, no set list, arrows and scribbles on a napkin was all he had to go by. mose himself looked and played great. he had quit all bad habits and was down to one glass of wine a day, no smoking, and took a mile run on the beach every day.

old and in the way? no way. i hope to see him at the rehearsal. good karma.

last night. shot of the moon taken from t's deck. i was fooling around w/ "nightframing - night shot" feature of sony dscv3. calls for long exposure and i didn't use tripod. weird stuff.

i'm hanging in there tho have had better days.

i looked at this site the other day on someone's pc and saw slippage in tbales, misalignment and other signs of amatuer coding. i may simlplify and re group when and if i get time in december. another thing that has been bugging me is that the imagr archive is full of pictures that i used in past posts. so they are small in size. i'll have to rescan, relive, and otherwise refool around with them so when you click on the thumbnail you get a decent sized image.

anything else i'd like to say? go democrats, throw the rascals out, get involved with the political process as it strands itself on a very small island, transend and include the process. the solution to the problem of the broken institution of politics lies outside that domain, but attention must be paid to play, as well as it's source, the dream of reality.

(to be continued.)

water lilies it ain't. my compulsory fooling around this morning, even tho i am very pushed to do too many things and get on may way west. this is from failed experiment yesterday for wedding gift, i figured out a whole new way of looking and that activity is done.

last night i checked in with asheville drinking liberally and then went to a grass root's progressive organization which took place in year old indian restraint here in aville, mela's, great stuff, good food, 3 local candidates on the bill, nice folks. it's enough to make you feel good about the bad. grass roots is the only way i see that the terrible will not happen, because it is essentially outside political hopeless domain. not an institution but people.

of course any affinity group, where personal knowledge is the key, is pulled towards the institutional by societal forces today - not to mention the necessity of dealing with institutions - but these folks (us) must somehow keep the inner core personal if anything is to change for the better.

Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
"The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter's FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh 'interrogation techniques.' "

the thing about this photo is that i took it on a twilight walk up sunset mountain. the light had faded into a low glow and i played around with sony "nightframing" and "nightshot". i'm amazed i got anything. a little artifact-y and i probably unsharp masked a bit more than was necessary.

so what else is new? everything, of course. otherwise it would still be yesterday. of course, if it were, everything would still be new.

woke up at 5 and realized the wedding gift i had been working on for my nephew and fiance wasn't working. so i spent until 1:30 working on another, interrupted by doctor appointment. i'll know tomorrow if new present is presentable.

meanwhile i'm in the middle of packing for a long trip and the old attention condition has got me dithering in a thousand directions it's quite amazing that it will all come together in time if i don't get in the way of the process.

got truck back if i didn't already mention it, $175 worth, runs like a top.

i had some art supplies due and finally phoned them, glad i did, they had somehow dropped a stitch. so thy are being sent to my dad's house. i had no choice.

gotta go, clean and pack for the rest of the day, check in with communists at drinking liberally at 7.

as they say around these parts, "baaa..." (bye for now).

photo i took last evening in front of domicile.

very busy next few days preparing for departure. got my truck back from jason yesterday, runs 100% better. i am a little skeptical about burning off the carbon topside which he did with some sort of additive, cleaned valves, valve cover etc. i've always avoided additives. so i have a little more time to investigate purchasing new wheels. i've decided on a hummer. i know the gas mileage is low, but it might come in handy when the roads disappear.

thinking seriously of installing OS X on my g3 running 500 megahertz g4 zif chip. if you are my friend please stop me.

packing for weeks away is tricky for me, i really resist the whole thing. i take lots of meds, whole back up for insulin pump, and now stuff for false teeth. check and double check all this stuff because without it i can run into real unpleasantness. kit includes manuals, replacement parts. i just got replacement for blood glucose meter yesterday, working fine, have to send old meter back today, along with pictures i owe folks.

i'm assembling small portable watercolor bundle also because 3 weeks is a long time to go without splashing around pigments.

after i dropped off truck i walked 2 miles back to home, very pleasant, no problem. Instituting daily 30 minute walk right now. i walk and talk better when the weather is cool, cold, or frozen.

when the election occurs i'll be in arizona, a very different neck of the woods. i already voted, straight democratic ticket. not because they will save the country, the past 6 years they have blown it for the same reasons bush has blown it: too isolated, too rich, too greedy. members of the oligarchy which wouldn't be so bad if the oligarchy was allowed to wonder around in the world most of us inhabit, but they are not allowed to do this. somehow it contaminates them and their fellow oligarchics can smell it.

i voted the way i did because it might serve as a small bump on the road the corporate owners of our world are traveling. a small delay. which can then with luck be used to derail the whole anachronistic bubble. so if the dems win - and there are no republikan tricks - take a deep breath and get ready to engage, be involved, transcend and include, put yourself on the line, you have been robbed of your birthright, your time, and most likely your soul is in hiding, hunkering down. and as adverse to confrontation as i am, living on an earth owned by greedheads is non-optional for me and you too i bet whether you know it or not.