posted
  • place: Preston, VIC, Australia

easy out

this page intentionally left blank …

To write something compelling, in a sustained long form or even a short note, requires the writer to step outside normative social existence. Writing, as with any archival process, makes exception of lived-life, at the very same moment that the writer steps out of that lived moment. It is the same process as with photography except that the photographic stepping-out is typically of shorter, more fragmentary duration. Long term archiving of life — text, images — is a debilitating condition which, while projecting fragments of a life forward into other lives, at the same time, spends more quickly the life that is immediately available. The writer and image-maker begin to live a conditioned life, as actively passive consumers of staged tableau — or so they imagine. They condition themselves to see life as only a sequence of these discrete tableau, while the constancy of life in between, in its fullness, is ignored.

A low pressure system east of Tasmania brings rain squalls that flood the street out front this morning, and a deep bend in the gutter on the back roof is shooting water right down the side of the house onto the electric water heater. hmmm. doesn’t look good.

posted

Migrating: Art: Academies: done

MigAA book cover (pdf download)

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers! more “Migrating: Art: Academies: done”

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assessments

And so, encroaching on the last major procedural hurdle before the doctorate goes to the external examiners (next year sometime). The panel assessment seems to be routine and bureaucratic. Public speaking in compressed time frames is no fun. When there’s always too much to get across in the extremely limited time frame, and the highly institutionalized context allows for negligible true dialogue. In some ways, the process is a deeply laughable (chortle?) imitation of what it claims to be, or what it once perhaps was. That is, learning as a process of open and sustained dialogue between two or more humans. Facing the unknown that each other presents, or both facing the unknown of what is, or what is out there. Contemporary ‘education’ is a thin and watery drool coming from somewhere up above — meager remains of what’s left of a blasting monsoon of shared life that brings one to a deeply profound awareness of that-which-is. Instead we squelch around in evaporating puddles of shared encounter, wishing for more rain, and complaining about the weather.

Tomorrow, it happens. We shall see. No brolly, no Wellies…

So, over this hurdle, and maybe the final work commences, perhaps finishing earlier than scheduled, or at least that inspiring outcome is a concept on the radar.

Meanwhile, surviving week-to-week, in part through the acupuncture and massage treatments from Heiji Cho and some of the Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) students here at UTS. The gall bladder channel is the one being worked — to release rising yang from the liver. hmmm. The treatments work, they seems to diffuse the migraines that do show up and eventually, as is common, with any lock, the migraines will vanish. I am confident of this, and only wish I had come to this conclusion last year, or even earlier as these episodes interrupted life from time to time. The stress of movement came on such a regular basis, but there was no thought to find a source, find a working solution, a cure. It was only the process of gritting the teeth until a dark and quiet room could be found for the duration. Western meds never really worked, they only covered the symptoms at best, and in some cases a single pill cost as much as a full 90-minute acupuncture treatment session.

But choosing to undertake a treatment of what is known as ‘alternative’ medicine was always a difficult stretch. Despite input from trusted others who had benefited. There was the hardship of paying cash from the pocket to the practitioner when cash was never so abundant.

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CLUI: Day One

Matt pushes off towards Salt Lake City for a flight back to LAX. I roll up sleeves, literally, and begin the task of altering yet another environment to conform to my needs and to optimize my time here. Cleaning is very necessary as I’m the first resident of the year — the center is normally closed from the end of November to the beginning of April. So, raising the level of order with the input of human life-energy and life-time. Scrubbing floors, wiping down shelves, polishing windows, moving furniture, vacuuming and wiping down everything (ceiling vents, floor, blinds, window sills, chairs, tables — everything has a coating of fine dust on it such that touching it leaves the hands dirty — opening all storage areas and inventorying everything, wiping down all devices, drawers, walls, surfaces). This will take days of sporadic effort, but today is completely used up, late into the night. Bringing things in from the truck, looking at the damage to the bike rim and roof rack, figuring out the food situation. Rearranging the kitchen and living spaces. Looking through the library to see what should be looked at more closely. And so on. Settling in for the duration.

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …

that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!
more “(in) no time”

posted
  • place: Bedford, New York

on the verge

passing through lives and lives and lives. rowing a small boat across endlessly ending time. with days that finalize in the hands of the clock still hanging on every wall, somewhere. days stop when lidded eye shuts: as with child, seen, becomes imagined invisible to others when the eyes close on the self. but days do not end, even as life does not end. yet. life that runs a long and flowing line, continuous, almost everlasting in duration. each creature giving rise to the next in a long flow of be-ing, the continuous expression of life on this planet.

to be the last of of your kind is nothing when held to be the last living thing. but since we have no expansive image of what is life — we cannot measure where it began, nor where, when, it might end — we stumble onward, every day, into every night. later waking in darkness, seeing points of Light shimmering among human-spilled energies, falling back asleep reassured that something else is still there.

morning brings the same difference. and what is it that we have begun?

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

metrics

responding to Roger Malina on metrics on the New-Media-Curating list:

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases its degrees of freedom and complexity, and increases internal control-ability for the duration of that the system maintains and applies the standards (which corresponds to how long the system has had access the a surplus energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards).

If we seek for a ‘global’ standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation. As standards are applied more and more widely across systems (thinking of the development of global standards (i.e., telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases: (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that’s cool — to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). one positive aspect, however, occurs when (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ’s) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps within/between larger standardized systems. more “metrics”

posted
  • place: en route Prescott, Arizona - Glen Ridge, New Jersey

habitudes

On the road. It’s been nine months exactly since arriving in Prescott. And aside from the short tour with Christian, been stuck there the whole time. I have to go back a couple decades, maybe more since the last time I was in locare habilus for such duration without boarding a plane. Imbibing of this life in the middle class. Planes instead of buses or trains. Flying cattle. This time of rehabilitation has worn me down at the same time as charging me up. Time to look at projects done over the last decade, documentation, rooting trough the mail-art archive. That busyness of postal creativity and networking. Thinking it woulda’ (coulda’, shoulda’) been nice to have made good documentation of the many events and projects that went down in that process: too late. Gone. Digital archive will not survive the EMP of nuclear war, but that seems so foreign a concept, that the world will witness an instant catastrophe. More like a gradual poisoning of the environment.

Was reflecting on the dis-connectedness of this blog (ugh!) from the blogosphere. How the blogosphere is extremely self-referent and only occasionally populated by strong individual voices.

Ahhh, making a cross-connection between nodes in my personal network. Very satisfying, when there are inspiring results. Or simply good energy flowing. What more could a networker ask for? But to initiate pathways where the chances of flow are much higher than random. yes-sir-ee.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

become republican

JC sends this to da40 — become republican

I respond,

sotto voce:

only too true, though personally I’m not so rabidly anti-Jesus. it’s the zealots who, as the cartoon points out, hide behind His words and are fundamentally hate-full and intolerant. not what I would expect from the pursuit of a Christ-like behavior emulation…

seems there are glimmers of hope that the society has woken up from a bad dream that was imposed by the 2000 pseudo-election. I frankly don’t have much hope though, that the systemic corruption in the political system is going to go away at all, demos or repubs are the same animal from that perspective.

in the Republic system of Rome, there were various contingencies (balances of power) to cover during different times of need (war being the primary one, though it was misused as a power-manipulation tool — nothing new about that! It is interesting that the concept (and specific form of civil rule) dictatorship was held for a temporary crisis.
more “become republican”

posted
  • place: The Mission, San Francisco, California

places, sounds, words

portrait, Sirpa, Mission 17 Gallery, San Francisco, California, June 2005

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drive down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.
more “places, sounds, words”

posted
  • place: Vilnius, Lithuania

ram6.1

ram6 starts. Breakfast brings many familiar folks out from closed hotel doors. Nomeda said that we are the only people checked into the hotel for the duration—it gives the feeling of a large house. Soaked on the walk up the hill to the Contemporary Arts Center. Find Kim working so we go have lunch until the opening session where the workshop presenters introduce our respective plans to let attendees know what they can choose from. As usual my speaking is a bit cryptic, but there is a line of people afterward asking good sharp questions and it ends up I have an overflow. A bit wishing to be an attendee only, though, to catch Kim’s, or Sara and Derek’s workshop, for my own selfish reasons. And with thoughts to tomorrow, making the core decision to follow praxis by theory, rather than the other way around, at the beginning of the workshop tomorrow morning. Simple risk, though taking risks in a teaching situation is something that is more than less difficult, relatively: already the deep risks inherent in many previous workshops prove the worth of each step in the direction a distributed and autonomous learning. Facilitator, not teacher, or so.

Also was thinking I have to improve the content of the travelog photos. They seem stale. I don’t do many portraits because the medium of digital snapshots seems so … unstable. And unsatisfactory—primarily because of the delay, the ponderous e-lapse from the time the shutter release is depressed and when the electronic shutter activates. Impossible, so I stick with architecture and static life.

posted
  • place: Soumenlinna, Finland

the Elder

We use narratives to impose order on our circumstances, and that will to impose order on reality (instead of discovering order in experience and attempting to conform oneself to that order) is characteristic of modernity. — Bruce Elder

narrative as a form (well, form itself has the explicit ‘meaning’ as an ‘outcome of a human re-configuration of energies,’ an intervention). so, although there are a plethora of po-mo critiques of narrative, and a certain level of critical art-making around/against narrative. even e-narrative and the hyper-text — that free and utopian post-narrative writing environment is fundamentally mired in the same ‘problem’ of having this applied form. it’s the same! Elder’s name comes up, synonymous in my pantheon with Brakhage, partly through formal connections, but also in the energized lived experience of his film work. only frustrating that nothing substantial of his writings are online. so, not available to me here. found a paper copy for sale of a short monograph that he wrote for the epic 42-hour “The Book of All The Dead” film on the occasion of it’s screening at the Anthology Archive in 1988 (a show that I was at and subsequently had coffee with Bruce later at his hotel). would not have missed that, as it was the last installment of the work, the first 19 hours of which he premiered at Boulder one weekend back in 1987. reel after reel, sitting in a small classroom with about 8 other people. transformative experience. a primal inspiration for subsequent duration-related works undertaken. pushing mind and body through many limits. buried in my archive is a copy of that document, it was required reading in one class in 1997 at CU, and I would like to make it available online if Bruce agrees. but that’s another time issue, when there are more pressing things to deal with. like logistics, as usual. most plane tickets are purchased to get me through the summer, but there is still the extant question about teaching in Tallinn before I leave this region; sending out emails about scheduling gigs for the next academic year; participating in an online conference at V2, and in several online events as well; presenting at RAM5 in Riga in a week, and so on.

massaging the database. updating all contact information. what else for the archivist to do? something that has been wanting for years. re-contacting folks, mostly making open distribution channels for current energy.

sun up early. real early, comes in exactly to strike the eyes as it rises over the roof of the quarters opposite ours on the courtyard. that Lightening buzz begins to stir somewhere in the troposphere.

posted
  • place: online & en route Helsinki, Finland - Oslo, Norway

moving from anyware to randomsystem

anyware went down last night, IRC and all, but it was not a very satisfactory event from my impaired vantage despite the high level of network activity. I should not have joined in without a better understanding of the arrangements: I didn’t have access to enough of the program information until very late. and when I started delving around, I couldn’t figure out how I could jump in. still learning how to be a participant: another one of those things where I will not appear in the program credits, the paper propaganda, or banner headlines: despite ‘being there’. perfect deployment of tactical media in networks: avoid PR whenever possible. made it as far as to edit the wiki pages, though it ended up that my time-frame, being the most easterly of participants, except for someone in Tokyo, and having an early flight to Oslo and Kim’s randomsystem workshop in the morning, I couldn’t reasonably be online streaming when NYC prime-time hit. bummer. the shareNY crew was having fun, though, would have been nice to be there. a solo node in the network is often compromised unless network connections are strong.

was thinking this morning on the way into town on the early ferry that I function best when there is a clear understanding of the particular social framework within which a particular event will be operating. not that there is a need to actually operate inside that framework or even respect it, it just gives a more comfortable starting point. a bit like what happens when one has not been yet introduced to a stranger, and the specific opportunity for a self-made introduction passes, there are those awkward moments of disconnected collective dynamic. an unbalanced flywheel, hlaup, hlaup, hlaup. this principle inserts itself into many diverse situations. object making: knowing the film and developer (paper developer, paper, and enlarger); knowing the duration for a time-based medium; knowing the network architecture, connection speeds, firewall configurations, and available bandwidth. I tend to set those most base parameters, then leap into the project, feeling free to proceed intuitively and creatively.

these thoughts deserve more exploration, but I now have to read the article Open Content and Value Creation that was suggested in preparation for Kim’s workshop. seems like he is not ‘just a musician,’ but is into some good hard-core social criticism AND mapping out alternative ways of going.

Bjarne meets me at the hotel and we go to the new Atelier Nord offices to meet Atle. good to catch up with him. been a long time since being in Norway, and now he’s the Atelier Nord director.

evening performances at Blå alog and Next Life, around the corner from NOTAM, finally find Alexander, the festival-meister.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

laundry

laundry. bright day, for the duration. snow Lightens things up considerably. winter. it followed me from Lapland where it was seriously setting in, not to release its hold until May when the river breaks.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

confrontation

Bob Marley, Confrontation

Flows of energy cannot be categorized, only experienced. this is clear, though when you see them, feel them running the wrong way, like some minuscule route becomes a high-voltage river that rearranges all physical forms in its way, the energy sparking and running last night, my hand aching far into the night, gripping Sanna’s tightly for the duration of one of the most heart-clenching-peeling conversations I have ever had, suomen/englanti kielellä.

On the verge, and it is killing me. if I do not slay the dragon that is running me into the nothingness of insensibility, St. George’s dragon, like Loki’s favorite CD cover — “Confrontation” with a stylized and dreads-akimbo-barefoot Bob Marley astride a white horse (that’s Night-Shining-White, I tell him, the name of an obscure Chinese minister’s horse in an electric drawing at the Met, my favorite). there Bob sits, astride Night-Shining-White rearing, and the Dragon already impaled on the spear that the Rasta Mon wields. killing the dragon. brings my spirit up!

Night Shining White, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

I temporarily stopped this travelog somehow partly because the manic energy which has driven my erratic and hectic movement during the last 5 or 20 years is dying. but not dying graciously or painlessly. it dies like a snake, no smart dog to whip it from the tail to zero being. just slow removal, slow in time, but time is moving fast, an inverse relativity. it has shed its skin a hundred times, and shape-shifted a million times, once for every moment that it was to be handled, grabbed, or even examined from a distance. another million times as it entered each other place, each of them, each millisecond, each micrometer of difference in viewpoint recreated it again. but it HAS to die, I HAVE to kill it, quickly. retrospect comes (with age?) or just with point of view? and retrospect says that I have made mistakes that now dog me. sinner paying. nah, like, it just has to be re-routed. re-formed, redistributed. (fat half-moon rising over the city horizon). eighth floor, on Mannerheimintie, with a view over Ruskeasuo, the “Brown Swamp,” a rather wild chunk of land that stretches north out of the city center to meet something of real Finnish forest — if there is such a thing in a place where all revel in endless rows of copy machines making copies of all things copyable and even some of those holy things that are not. endless trees turning into sheaves of toilet paper and laser copy feed-stock to take the words of one million and turn them into the collated and stapled tomes of twenty, a hundred million. nah.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

nso one

neoscene occupation project one into the 13th hour so far. more than half done. here for the duration or more. cut. warm bed, lying down, only six more days here in Lapland. and now what? 14.5 hours and counting. tiger skins and prepping the dreams of another age, my son is in Manhattan, missing his two front teeth. 18 hours and crawling. Toni comes by with a couple net-compatriots from Oulu. tuned in. the Amurikans don’t make it. they are fattened and shopping, unconcerned by international events microscopic and macroscopic. whether they are linked to being. or they just limp along with. whatever happens to mirror the face of the beast. catch its eye. and bring some sense to the senselessness. Babylon, huh? what’s that? heading to new states or not. being and not being. chanting. being chanted upon. shaman calls, body recalls. body count, banding together. suit up and bring it all down. good morning, are you there? childish dreams, expectations. cut. a new person to face. another body to quit. form from. fanning flames, army-gettin-on, zat what it’s called? end o’time? beginning of other dreams in the bardo of becoming. I greet these dreams like I greet the morning. some days it is with the flat recovery of self forming nothing of the clay of body that lies dormant on the bed. other times it slides, slides, slides, a sharp-edged wedge of chromium thin at the apex, so thin that there is no perception of being pried from the rock of sleep, a barnacle in the tidal zone of being, being washed by the returning ether of wakefulness and the encroaching sea of dreams, body-in-repose.

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany - New York City, New York

sayonara diorama

screenshot from the collaborative online Sayonara Diorama performance with Adrianne Wortzel, New York City, New York - Kiel, Germany, April 1998

early this morning Adrianne ran the Sayonara Diorama performance in New York; with a few students here, I connect up via CUSeeMe and we participate for the duration, maintaining a conversation with Tapio, Steve, Susanna, Ariel, and others connecting up from other locations around Europe and the US. until 0530 here when the performance finishes in NYC in the early evening there.

posted
  • place: en route Köln - Kiel, Germany

northward again

Moving again. North, away from spring. Fragments of the world do not add up to anything that is expressible. Tractors in the fields. Greening. The greening of the world is not fragmentary, but is pure (I want new words and ways of moving them to the page). Tired of the same places, I guess, but the same friends bring a special closure to all movements, the small circles that can be memorized, closed, and stored away for next retrieval. Kiel is not so large, and it is easy to find the Muthesius Hochschule where I meet Hubertus in the late afternoon. The flat where I will stay for the duration of the workshop is in a special building of the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel. It overlooks the harbor. Here I am , another seafaring situation, on the main harbor, and not far away, the Nordsee-Ostsee Kanal. Here is another history of the War, the U-boat, untersee boot. A large cruise ship moves by the window, heading for Gotebourg. A few people are clustered on the top decks while Irish farmers protest cuts in beef production and silent pictures from a tornado in Minnesota play on the feed line into the room. Suspended dis-animation, curious. Palestinians chant and throw stones on the West Bank. Israeli soldiers shoot them. When does this end? Is this only ignorance to think that these things can be overcome? Teevee.

We go to dinner, all the while discussing the critical issues of being. Hubertus started here two years ago as Director of the FORUM, an interdisciplinary program of lectures and workshops that runs parallel to the regular study program in Design, Fine Arts and so on. Something of a unique program where he is given almost complete autonomy to bring people in — the students don’t realize the luxury and possibility, especially given Hubertus’ massive personal and professional network and his own significant professional output. Paying for dinner, his credit card is rejected apparently because of a problem with the dates on the local dial-up machine and the central computer — it seems the central computer had not yet had its clock adjusted for DayLight Savings which went into effect last Sunday at 0200. Is this a foreshadowing of the Millineum Bug? It is easy to be pessimistic about all this. Technophobia aside, human nature fore-fronted; it is fallible, grotesquely so, not much thought needed to figure that. Has the world ever been in mass chaos? Perhaps in the Plague times, although that was very much a process with a discrete temporal vector pre-determined by a combination of transport speeds of the time and the latency period of the Plague itself. Now, given the immediacy of computing, and despite the fact that computer networks are not everywhere on the globe, they do control aspects of life that touch almost every human being through an instantaneous Butterfly Effect. If, for example, anything in the chain of production of wealth is disrupted, the entire chain reels from the effect … What is the minimum percentage needed to affect the whole chain? How sensitive is modernity? (Can we look at Yugoslavia as an example, or Somalia, Japan, elsewhere?) Is it a card house?

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

soulful relation

Fated day. Weather? exhaustion is formulated as an extension of the psyche. already two days from when I began this entry. The acceleration of living is not because of technology, but because the lack of internal concentration to bring time into a line of soulful relations. That duration and intent of focus transforms time into only another material relation that…fragments again. Shimmering stories of belief and wonder. Passing time. I have many to tell in this long life, and consider that here I could tell one per day (perdido!).

posted
  • place: Stamford, Connecticut

Trane

Here for one more day. A picnic in the afternoon. Still no time to retrospect on the full events of the last few weeks. So it goes. But always this preoccupation with the theme of mediation. It seems rooted in the basic tendency of humans to use the material world as a cover, a carapace against the eventual confrontation with the spiritual — that which is not material, that which is energy (which is all!). There is a rebalancing that must come. An acceptance of the material, acceptance of the hypostasis — the coming-into-the-material-world — existing as a being-in-the-world. (As John Coltrane jams from the CD-player). Always astonishing music comes from him. Long after his death, his spirit rings around the world. Mediated or simply impregnating, quickening, the material essence of life with spirit motions … The studio recording of 26 September 1962 of In a Sentimental Mood with Trane teamed up with Duke Ellington on piano, Aaron Bell on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums is a piece that has resonated in my heart for years. The poignant emotion brimming through the sounds from the opening to the uncertain ending holds an entire life in its brief 4 minutes 15 second duration. Always a pleasure listening to Miles, Trane, and other jazz with Randy — he is an accomplished jazz pianist himself, and even was playing with a band back when he lived in Chicago … Speaking of which I discovered that I share the birthday of the late jazz great Lester Young.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

tarantula

Okay, a late evening following a long day of mixed activities. Another huge storm circled the area this afternoon. Driving back to JAH’s place in Chino Valley (I’m dog-sitting for a week: Tigger and Tadley), there were drifts of half-inch (1+ cm) hailstones on the sides of the road. I was glad I wasn’t around for that. And that was about two hours after the storm passed through the area. It is, in local lingo, the Monsoon season, and although these storms don’t have the temporal duration of a tropical monsoon, they definitely make up for it in momentary fury … The Lightning was striking within a few hundred meters repeatedly as I drove through an edge of the storm on the way into Prescott earlier in the day. Fascinating! And the land needs the rain. Looks like the forest fire on Granite Mountain is dying out from a combination of rain and natural firebreaks. They left for a weeks vacation in Utah and Colorado. Fishing and camping and one day for competing with two of their Australian Sheepdogs in a regional dog show. They just started training and showing the Aussies earlier this year. I was telling Joy this story in an email letter: JAH picked me up at lunch so I could get her car and start dog-sitting at her place. We went by another (Aussie) trainers house to pick up a travel kennel for one of her dogs. I picked up the kennel to take it to the car and both the women kinda moved away saying something. I didn’t pay attention to their reaction until I saw from the corner of my eye on the garage floor a modest-sized tarantula. The other trainer said something and then stepped on it. Faugh. I felt a ripple of karma, kind of a shaking of space-time equilibrium, but said nothing. Looking at the destroyed creature for a split second before getting out of the place with the kennel. I thought, there’s a person who has no sense of the value of life, what a gross thing to do so off hand … Not that I am innocent of karmic crimes, but at this stage of life, I would not step on or otherwise kill a tarantula. I mean, what for? Why kill them? Lordy. Anyway.

posted
  • place: Reykjavik, Iceland

Letter to Dan (RIP)

Well. Dan

“Lethargy is simply frozen violence”

What else? I sit in the middle of the Arctic Night (The middle always remains the same, no matter how long the night is). Waiting for sleep to fill my head, looking at a CRT screen. Eyes are getting crippled by the stress of focusing. Goodnight.

The next day late morning. All is gray. When I develop film here I notice the lack of contrast, especially after Colorado. The Light is different. I have taken to capitalizing the first letter of Light, and I have also quit using the Lord’s name in vain you know? Two changes from my previous life. You can look forward to wonderful things like this happening when you finish graduate school.

The work you sent arrived a bit worse for wear, and surely to the perplexity of the customs/postal people. They keep a close monitor on my post here, almost all packages are checked… A bit disturbing, but also amusing…
more “Letter to Dan (RIP)”