it may carry no name

That we are dancing around the perimeter of a Void is an allusive image invoked simply by being alive and considering—even incidentally—the fundamental questions of be-ing. The Void itself forms not a black hole but rather a shimmering, blinding nothingness whose edge is as well defined as our own sense of that be-ing. It is and it is not, and it takes no name.

All the while, all are dancing around it, pointing at it, exclaiming in adoration or apprehension, naming it in the varied languages of their own realities. Those names are Legion, at least one for every individual, though there is a deep suspicion among most that the naming can never be complete, can never adequately address the limitless impact that this no-thing imposes on our brief living. The act of naming is a salve to the implicit terror of falling in, as we watch others do just that. It takes no name.

The primary questions? How close might you get without falling in? What dances are appropriate? How settled does one feel with one’s personally-crafted name applied to it: the Void? Is it a name that is shared with others; a comfortable, comforting name that others recognize when one calls it out in the extremities of Life? Or is it a profane deviation, garbled, confused to those Others, at once looking on, then turning their backs to that demonstrated ignorance. It takes no name.

It would seem that some spend their entire—and perhaps brief—lifetimes on the brink, shaking in ecstatic union, breath resonant with the shimmering, balance is all, retreat sometimes necessary, unless capitulation and fall is part of the act. It certainly is the closing one. It takes no name.

The very inability to articulate a name drives some to accept what others invoke. This seems to keep it far away, a glow on one horizon, inserting presence on rare occasions, until it fills to an infinite half-space, and zenith shrinks to an event horizon of solitude, silence, and no-thing. It takes no name, and is gone.

16 : November : 201931 : December : 2023

place: Golden, Colorado

Too many, too much, not enough

A conclusion that is, as sometimes said, a long stretch in coming: a mental model, compiled over this writer’s lifetime, long in developing: it arrives to confront my understanding of the nature of reality. That is, to emphasize, *my* understanding, of whatever I have done whilst on the planet, there will be no trace in one hundred years. With resource capacities stretched by too many bodies on the planet, many using too much, there simply isn’t enough to maintain any of what we have here, now.

Mangled language cannot substitute for the actions necessary to cause change. Change in human behavior will not happen, except when forced by changes in resource scarcity (or abundance), or environmental extremity.

Ça suffit! It’s all too much. But still, to speak, to write, to express. The mad tension between the two: to relinquish, to give up (að gefast upp), to capitulate, surrender :: to continue, to strive, to push forward, upward, exert, to fight. To use life-limited energy or not. To be alive is to use energy, to use energy is to re-express life.

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? — Audre Lorde

The silences — the un-expressed dark energies of living, the inversions of life — they re-arrive now, replete and unheard.

22 : April : 201824 : September : 2018

place: on the slopes of Mt. Zion, Colorado

mein Gott

What a vortex it is: the overt seduction of the body. When facing dissolution, it is all that cradles any life, all that may be apprehended. All that holds the eye. All that is carried through neurons, filling mind with bright sparks: spinning carborundum on steel. The vortex draws the attention on.

The way out, the exit, is over there, beyond the risk of failure, beyond the passing satisfaction of bringing some thing to Life. Slipped into simplified be-ing. With a silence that only breaks for critique, eh? Critique? What’s that? Art, merely a display of excess energy, yet to be sublimated, annihilated by time.

Speaking to that potential child, gone; speaking among voices in the head; speaking to power and to glory; speaking of the juncture where life turned from the foreseen, and then seemed irretrievable, that life itself was almost gone. So, to encourage the lioness in her heart, reminding of the potential of any turn to the unknown. That her expressing to the world, in any form, is a path to healing. That she is no failure. Despite constant demeaning words applied to forming Self. Years of oppression calcified some facets of brightness. But the sheer intensity of her Light-full spirit prevails.

18 : August : 20152 : February : 2016

silent existence?

Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.

Freire, P., 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum

14 : November : 201410 : January : 2025

place: Mint Wash, Prescott, Arizona

naming

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A person without a name is nobody. A human’s name can become more important than his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless.” —

Abbey, Edward. Abbey’s Road. New York, NY: Plume, 1991.

Plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” his writing seems dated, depressing, even dark. So much of the landscape that he passed through is (de)evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the land. The forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). Bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions to dot the landscape along with scaled-up vehicular afterbirth: Hummers in every five-car garage. Although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale—meaning the easily visible—local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. But with any consideration of scientific data—atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, and hydrological systems are being irretrievably altered. What of the domination of a species that will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live on briefly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to a viral celebration in the host of hosts. Definitely, catch it while you can. Take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. And the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.

At any rate, this is a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). But note the incredible coloration. The green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. The pinkish blush of the oxidized feldspar in the granite. There were four of them literally stuck to the side of a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. This particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, it was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. The other three were glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. So, this one had to do. The beautiful beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

4 : October : 201311 : October : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

en-ess-ay

Eavesdropping, censorship, recording, and surveillance are weapons of power. The technology of listening in on, ordering, transmitting, and recording noise is at the heart of this apparatus. The symbolism of the Frozen Words*, of the Tables of the Law, of recorded noise and eavesdropping — these are the dreams of political scientists and the fantasies of men in power: to listen, to memorize — this is the ability to interpret and control history, to manipulate the culture of a people, to channel its violence and hopes. Who among us is free of the feeling that this process, taken to an extreme, is turning the modern State into a gigantic, monopolizing noise emitter, and at the same time, a generalized eavesdropping device. Eavesdropping on what? In order to silence whom?

Attali, J., 1985. Noise: the political economy of music, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

* “As the cold of certain cities is so intense that it freezes the very words we utter, which remain congealed till the heat of summer thaws them, so the mind of youth is so thoughtless that the wisdom of Plato lies there frozen, as it were, till it is thawed by the ripened judgment of mature age.”Antiphanes in Plutarch’s “Morals.”

24 : December : 201011 : October : 2024

place: KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California

change

The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.

The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam. more “change”

2 : December : 201012 : June : 2024

place: en route Sydney, Australia - Auckland - Whanganui, New Zealand

landed – Day 1 – eNZed

Up at 0400 to make the hugely early flight to eNZed. Had to be totally packed for the US as well, as I’ll have only another 20 hours back in Sydney, in transit between Auckland – Sydney – San Francisco.

A new country, a new place to visit. The national memorial service is happening when we land, so I manage to record a minute’s silence in the baggage claim. Some people were oblivious. People are watching the ubiquitous flat-screen teevees rather intently. The cost of extractives, but only the most obvious one.

The jump flight from Auckland down to Whanganui reveals both sides of possible landscapes. Massive clear-cut forestry in the highlands, and intensive farming in the more level areas — both with the attendant geomorphology of erosion features marring the terrain. Much has changed since colonization, surely. Then there are the remaining highland forests which are not yet decodable, having not met them on the ground.

Finally get into Whanganui, Julian picks me up at the airport in their 1988(?) Honda named Buzzy Bee (?) — a vehicle with a history, too bad I’m writing this in far distant retrospect, or elsewise I could relate the story. It was funny. Great to finally meet Julian, and we immediately start up a substantial dialogue as I am dropped into the whirlwind of family life surrounding the community effort aimed at the Greenbench (Gallery space) and the ADA Symposium. I tell him that I am at his service, and that, officially, my workshop starts now. It’s all about energy, presence, be-ing, and raising these topics in whatever contexts that arise in the next ten days.

The evening starts with a rousing performance of Aladdin by the children of the Brunswick School located in the countryside near Whanganui. Julian and Sophie’s three daughters recently started attending the school. This was followed by some photo-ops — meeting more of Julian’s family and other folks in the community — in the playground, as the soft, mild summer twiLight closed in.

2 : December : 20107 : November : 2012

place: Auckland International Airport, Auckland, New Zealand

minute silence in baggage claim for miners

13 : October : 201027 : July : 2020

place: in the mediasphere

From the Dark Known to the Light and Unknown Madness

From the Dark Known to the Light and Unknown Madness

(stereo audio, 27.9 mb)

The incessant chatter of media voices fills all the space above ground, and it reverberates underground as well. Silence that reveals only the voices of those who will survive or die with you is necessary but hardly available when the flickering media Light falls on your face.

7 : April : 201011 : October : 2024

Clui: Day Five — tangential contact

In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.

Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.

So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.

28 : December : 200914 : December : 2019

Les Chronophages

The need for criticism to include the framework for a new, alternate pathway to travel upon shows up when I find myself focusing too much on circumscribing the problems. This is the same as opposition politics that gets too mired in opposition (doh!) and forgetting that an alternative vision is necessary as well. How to find autonomous spaces when on the road, moving along the lines of power drawn by the dominant social system? How to find or facilitate interstitial spaces that are not under the control of that system. Do these spaces have a set of characteristics that makes them immediately identifiable? Or are they only identified by the precise instances of (uncontrolled) energy flow that occur within them? (chicken-and-egg situation!) For every unit of human-controlled flow of energy, there are countless flows of energy of many orders greater magnitude that are not controlled. Humans are capable of controlling a certain, very limited range of flows. This range has increased in time from those expressions of embodied reach to those far beyond the direct impact of that body. By collecting the energy of many bodies, humans are able to express and project the reach of their control over vast regions. Ultimately, this reach is limited by the number of bodies at the disposal of the regime and the efficiency with which that granular energy is harnessed (through those controlled pathways).

Ran across a couple (excerpted) essays by Ivan Illich, a radical critic of techno-social consumerist systems.

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. — Ivan Illich, Silence is a Commons

The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in over-all production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through military, police, and insurance measures reflects the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. — Ivan illich, Tools for Conviviality

14 : December : 200931 : December : 2023

movement and encounter

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”

8 : December : 200911 : October : 2024

devoir: a re-naming

Further, deeper, wider, (more iconoclastic), what is research? Merely to search again? The broadening of a socially-sanctioned knowledge-base? A connecting-of-threads to historic tradition? A discovery of what’s been before? A following of a pre-existing trajectory (but with more fuel for a higher, further flight)? What about re-sensing instead of re-searching? Immersing senses in a situation again (related to German entgegen ‘opposite’). Sensually immersive: sensing difference again (from another situation), and reflecting on that. Or, better yet, riding the gradient of that difference, and using that potential, that power, that source, to express from.

Re-search — to circle again, more intensively — but to remain detached. Neither academic detachment nor technological objectivity are the way that is needed now. We need immersive, connected, aware, and sensual be-ing. In order to apprehend what the world needs of us. An empathetic engagement with all expressions of life-energy. more “devoir: a re-naming”

14 : October : 200912 : October : 2024

trauma

Yes, there was an event; yes, an event began, barely, when she began to say something. But this event did not come to fruition, for nothing, nothing really, happened — except a sudden defamiliarization of my world, an unforeseen estrangement brought about by the least violent of all acts — the mere emitting of sounds — that topple the sense-structure of my world. After she breached my silent existence, silence returned, devouring both of us again by expropriating my ability to respond. So nothing, nothing really, happened. But this nothing, compared to “idle chatter” and the “forgetfulness” of an ordinary conversation, was much more dramatic. It produced in me an effect like no other. Considering what happened, or rather, what failed to take place, I must confess that I was profoundly affected by it. In fact, I am still living that event through the unique nothingness brought home to me by the incident, suffering from it, agonizing over it as an event that keeps returning as a non-event. In any case, the undeniable fact is that there was an event, there took place a situation that, although nothing, nothing really happened in it, is still happening now. It was like a traumatic “primal scene,” forever gone but constantly coming back. — Briankle Chang, (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p 224)

Reflecting on the abstracted essence of the gap between the self and the other: it suggests the reality that we cannot share the same point of view. There exists an infinitely deep irruption, separation, or gap, between the Self and the Other. This is defined partly by the presence of the energized matter that makes up our bodies and by the fact that this particular embodied form of matter cannot be collocated or commingled with another body. There is the warm and wet topology of sensual engagement, but this is not collocation, though some would like to believe that it is. The Self will never share the same point-of-view as the Other. My eyes cannot be collocated with yours. I may exchange places with you, but when all is change along the arrow of time, what you experienced there and then, I cannot experience there and now. The interstitial chasm exists within constant change and flow and it exists as long as life is embodied. Some models of transcendence suggest a unification, an omniscient one-ness, after embodiment ends, but here and now we all face the challenge of hypostasis, that puzzling duality of existing in a transitory body now and yet connected with an apparently detachable spirit before and after.

Communication cannot not take place. — ibid, p. 227

18 : August : 200931 : December : 2023

place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

silent selection

Buber’s story illustrating that Silence is communication opens a certain mediatory path. Especially that of listening, a critical reciprocal of expression: the act of open impression. A kind of inversion, equivalent with Simon Weil’s framing of human obligations versus the traditional (and often violent) struggle for human rights. This inversion also maps into the qualities of presence and absence implicit in the mediated technological space. Where scripted and centered Silence is necessary for balanced expression. (Both the silence of meditation and the silence of listening).

Kittler, in Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter: plowing through his expansive, eclectic interwoven threads examining the development of technology and the ensuing affectations on social systems, on people. I perhaps haven’t given him credit previously that he deserves, although I always found his presentations to be too dense to follow (simultaneous translation probably didn’t help — native speakers surely had to focus to follow his thinking). And this book didn’t come out in English until 1999, so wasn’t available when I was crossing his path. He makes clear points on the connection between technological development and war, the contingencies of warfare which don’t merely draw technological systems into a problem-solving process, but actually arise purely out of the need to more effectively, efficiently kill the Other. Optimization of defense, primacy of offense, protection of home-lands, via reducing the potential for the Other to accomplish the same. Natural selection. Is this what drives the techno-social system?

Kittler holds a fascination for these mechanisms, a boyish focus on the tool and on the technological ground of war without once making any moral approbation or moral critique of the way it goes. Has he given up? Does he care? Is he a techno-determinist? Does the intellectual fascination not accept moral argument? Or is the disinterested contemporary academic not allowed to take a moral stance?

31 : May : 200922 : November : 2024

place: Florissant, Colorado

behind Cripple Creek

so, what about now? the then, constructed from fragments of fleshy and amorphous silica memory remains. it stands in each accretionary flow of now as a splinter of … glass … that distracts with an acute and heart-shimmering intrusion deep into souls that only somewhere wish to be there, then. speaking to a screen, there is a deep form of silence that no intensity of dialogue might remove. it is not a meditative silence but rather a reverberatory one … in a glass house.

Karen is back home after her first trip to China, so she and Ron pick me up at Greg’s for an over-night at the cabin south of Florissant. beautiful place! a great dinner that Ron concocts. and fine company, neighbors. and the wet weather continues in one form or another. Pikes Peak gets plenty more snow above tree line.

27 : May : 200826 : February : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

dkfrf review

Rinus makes some nice notes on the Amurikan evening at das kleine field recording festival last week in Kreuzberg.

Rinus is one of those intelligent and grounded souls who facilitate events that are the polar opposite of pretentious. informal, humane, and best, they include a collection of found artists. artists who are connected by their desire to connect with others in an open way. my impression of the evening of performances was largely the comfort with which it proceeded. for example, I had not intended doing a visual set, thinking conservatively it was about field recording. but when Brandon got the video-projector set up, I thought, yeah, why not. so I started the evening with a slowly-building barrage. guilty, sure, of a phat mix. Rinus noted that it divided the crowd — it’s that polarizing influence that I seem to have. hmmm. it’s partly the software, got to explore how to slow it down for a more meditative mix. density. (going back to the thoughts about levity and density a few weeks ago). Brandon’s set was a perfect counterpoint to mine with the levity and Light of his life.
more “dkfrf review”

7 : November : 200629 : December : 2023

place: Hobe Chobe, California

another Park

City of Angeles approaches. First announcing raw presence in air quality, flushing through the pass, spreading out through the desert air’s invisibility, making air visible. Then the Light at night. Not able to compete directly, from east rising lunar fullness to western post-solar glow. But it’s there in the whining of high-performance vehicles wrapped out to extremity of rpm. And the Marine base, long across the high valley. Night flare drops, leisurely falling stars, choppers circulating around, thundering low-frequency rumbles that speak of war and preparations for war.

Back in, around Joshua Tree. Choosing two places to try and see some raw landscape, the first pull-out and hike ends in a maintenance yard out in the middle of nowhere. The second, simply ends up next to a big parking lot. Landscape littered with detritus of this tourism — multi-liter Big Gulp cups, cigarette butts, and bleached aluminum cans — it’s a wonder how we impact the world. The maxim in wilderness-designated areas of “take only pictures, leave only footprints” seems so … quaint. When the foot-stomping impact now includes the air breathed so regularly by the body. Maybe there’s no answer to this. Life impacts the space-time and energy continuum of the locality (with locality being relative).

French tourists loudly remarking, “écoute la silence!” Repeatedly. Making it clear that in order to find the same, one would have to leave the park entirely.

26 : September : 200622 : November : 2024

place: en route Steamboat Springs - Echo Park, Colorado

craning neck

as Anthony stated once: re-arriving simultaneity. back in Echo Park. brew some black tea, and wander down to the water’s edge. after craning neck for a long look at Steamship Rock. the river seems high but not near flood stage.

frogs texture the air with the only sounds except for birds. a few people in the small camp ground. maybe a total of 5 people in the whole place. and one just left. hoping that there will be only silence and nature this evening. as my small stove roars while heating water. taking glasses off when NOT looking at this screen. what is it that the glass shields us from? full-tilt apprehension of the world. blurry.

different amphibians make sounds now, others stopping, the texture becomes more varied as I listen more closely, something I can do only when I stop typing and sleep the hard drive. so, I do that now. the battery is low anyway. more “craning neck”

27 : August : 200616 : August : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

#48

Self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. In a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius

8 : March : 200622 : November : 2024

place: en route - Prescott, Arizona -- Granite Mountains, Mojave Desert, California

incursions

shoving into the month. already moving again. house emptied more-or-less. now out in the Mojave. near Kelso. on the usual overnight stop between Prescott and San Francisco — in the Granite Mountains southeast of Kelso Dunes — perfect temperature, negligible humidity. so, star gazing bare-chested. Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, Antares near the waxing moon. Jupiter ahead. took the back way to I-40 at Seligman — essentially continuing out Williamson Valley Road for 65 miles. deep through isolated ranching territory on the fringe of the Prescott National Forest and something of a soft terrain of limestone, basalt, some red-rock, and green vegetation cover from the recent two weeks of monsoon. even caught a small storm that cleaned the windshield. making virtuality more transparent.

the Mojave as it always is. despite encroaching red-yellow air at sunset from eLAy and other less tangible impacts from humans, bats are winging about, some animals and birds out there — jack rabbits, nothing else seen, but likely there — and the plants, rocks, contributing to the raw being of place. and the ever-consequent silence laying heavy behind any sound. even starting up the computer for a bit of writing is a noisy industrial incursion. and with battery running down very fast. so that words either have to form now or simply dissipate into the real ether! setting the alarm early to have a slow breakfast, tea, before the sun breaks the boulder ridge immediately to the east. want to get on the road in this black car so that at least all the hours of the heavy mid-day sun are not spent inside it. coffin.

back to look at stars as battery dies.

18 : January : 200614 : November : 2015

place: Chino Valley, Arizona

silence is betrayal

John forwards this extract from Martin Luther King’s opinion on the war in Vietnam:

A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.

To save the soul of America.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

Unquote.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation?

it is the annihilation that is easy. it is slow, imperceptible, and complex to unravel — the feelings of powerlessness in the face of the invisible macro-scaled inevitable. shopping marks the first instance of micro-annihilation.

26 : June : 200527 : September : 2017

place: Prescott, Arizona

Ramson Lomatewama

After a short visit to the Courthouse Square Bluegrass Festival, we wander over to the Smoki Museum to hear a presentation by Ramson Lomatewama, a traditionalist Hopi artist and poet from the Eagle Clan. He referenced Martin Buber’s I and Thou philosophy which pleasantly surprised me, commenting that the Hopi language did not allow for the it of English, making all relation an I/Thou state. With an audience of mostly greyheads, white retirees, he commented on several misconceptions about the Hopi, including a strong critique of Water’s Book of the Hopi, and a short history of Navajo encroachment. He works in a variety of traditional and non-traditional media including stained glass, glass-blowing, cottonwood-root Katsina tithu carving, intaglio printing, and poetry, the following called:

After the Rains

Sandstone cliffs
reflect the red
of the setting sun.

My hoe is caked
with evidence
of my labor.

I see clouds
going to the east.
Dark clouds.

I look to the sky.
There!
A rainbow
is arched above me.

As I walk down
the dusty road
I look up.

Again!
The rainbow
dressed in beauty
walks with me.

There is no need
for us to speak.

Silence
will speak
for us.

It’s a bit of a question, the whole concept of the Smoki Museum — founded in the 1930’s by a passel of white business (fraudster-)men who wanted to dress up like Indians and do fake ‘traditional’ dances: there is a strong streak of paternal exoticism in the premise (even the name Smoki is made-up). God what fuck-wits. Maybe it’s because what the bahannas (whites) have created for themselves isn’t so great, and that the ways of the indian are somehow more romantically sustainable. Add a dose of good old fashioned guilt at the unacknowledged centuries of genocide and lies, and an obsession with Southwest Art, and there you have it. Faugh.

20 : May : 200429 : August : 2014

place: Suomenlinna, Finland

no stars

drawing the window shade at 0030 last night. no stars. the annealed blue of a shotgun barrel reflecting moonLight. no stars. they won’t come back until late July, early August. the whining drone of summer has arrived. only a week more here, time fills up completely with last minute meetings and time spent arranging the ensuing logistics of travel. many will not be seen. until the next passage through this region.

an other day. the birch tree outside the window begins to leave, fully. leaven, lather, laughter of the children playing on the swings and in the sandbox. in the courtyard, under the tree. staying home. saying Bohm in mind and finding more support for dialogue. which takes place in silence and sufferation.

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a person’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience. — Martin Buber

12 : May : 200417 : February : 2014

place: Tallinn, Estonia

glacial till

staying in Mare’s flat in the Old Town. the building dates from the 13th century. bedroom window wells are a meter deep, lined with the gray Paleozoic limestone/dolomite which seems to be the sole natural building material available here. turns out, it overlies extensive deposits of oil and alum shales as well, the Ordovician Dictyonema oil shales (polevkivi) used to supply the country with a domestic energy source along with peat production. but mining has decreased steadily since the 1980’s because of a lowering in cost of competing energy sources.

Dictyonema oil shale (DOS) is a formation of the Tremadoc stage (Pakerord and Varangu regional stages) of the Early Ordovician. It is often called Dictyonema shale, Dictyonema argillite, alum shale, etc. The name “dictyonema” was given after the benthonic root-bearing [i]Dictyonema flabelliforme[/i], which turns afterward to a planktonic nema-bearing [i]Rhabdinopora flabelliformis[/i]. DOS is not a methamorphosed formation like a common argillite, so the fragments of name “dictyonema” or “argillite” do not carry the true scientific meaning. In our works we stressed the quality of Dictyonema shale to be a low-grade oil shale, but DOS was mostly known as a source rock for uranium and some other heavy metals. — R. Veski, V. Palu

the limestone has a completely different architectural energy from Helsinki’s dense black-red granite, not least because of the age of the buildings it was used in. not sure if this region was at the edge of the Weichselian (Holocene) glacial coverage of the Scandinavian region, but suspect so. how else would the small berg of limestone that the old town rose on have survived? any serious glaciation would have plowed it flat. all the soft sand of the coastline, not to mention the south Baltic basin coast itself suggests that this was the fringe, like the Great Lakes were.

can’t figure out how to turn the sauna on, but, oh well, enjoying the very quiet evenings. noticing my predilection to snap on any media source for a fill of anti-silence. so it goes. and missing the news fix.

30 : April : 200423 : May : 2014

place: Soumenlinna, Finland

hyvää vappua and live-fire

streets will fill with people starting in early afternoon, tens of thousands ready to party, partying. students with their graduation hats which will not be white by morning. when May Day arrives. while naval and military exercises take place within sight and earshot. large rounds, heavy machine guns, Light weapons, naval vessels painted with dull, jagged edged black-greenish-brown camo park in the harbor, come and go at any time and in any direction. one is the newest addition to the small Finnish Navy, the fast-attack “Hamina-class” aluminum-and-composite hulled vessel equipped with South African guided-missiles. fetish culture of technology. another drags a set of large floating targets in from the open sea south of the island. rumbling, grumbling, rattling concussions. all day.

preparations for a war that will not come in the near future. does assumption of future war come from historical precedence, or does it come from a desiring well-spring inside certain beings?

through the only open window, raucous party voices begin to drift, along with the rumbling noise of the city beneath, propping up the fun. if there was only pure silence as a backdrop for the party, things would fall into the void, lack reflection, and draw all energy into itself. making the party fail to become the relief that it is.

18 : July : 200211 : June : 2023

place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

self-portrait: unspoken im-press-ions

so much stimulation. skunks, 8-point bucks, fish, minnows, crayfish, bats, Mormon Locusts, lizards, snakes, sage grouse, sagebrush, the Yampa, the Green, Steamship Rock, the sandstone, the sky, storms, swimming in place in the river, hiking Sand Canyon, waiting for rain. two days in Echo Park is a lifetime of regeneration. will definitely bring Loki here. 14 years ago I was here last. it has changed. the broad park with 20 or so huge cottonwood trees is half gone, consumed by the river, the trees lying like skeletons of monstrous beasts in the low water. that whole area is now closed for camping, and a ‘regular’ campground established at the point where the road exits the canyon on the way down. nicer that way, gives the wildlife a better chance in that area. strange how much the topography has changed, though, I had not expected it. not to mention the colonization by tamarisk. that has changed the shoreline. watching the stars last night, sleeping in the back of the truck, head on the tailgate, waking at regular intervals, seeing the sheer wall above and behind me, changing color, shade, as morning approached. and the rotation of stars silhouetted by the massive cliffs in every direction. no bugs to speak of, but tonight there seems to be many. more “self-portrait: unspoken im-press-ions”

7 : December : 200118 : June : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

here

twists and turns. waking before the early dawn to see the cloudless sky painted in many colors. silence broken by the furnace, and the cat who, once she realizes anybody is awake, begins to yowl for food until she is fed. Sage, on the other hand, waits patiently in her kennel until liberated for a morning potty. go potty, Sage! and she races out into the back yard, bounding over the catclaw and prickly pear to find that right spot in the morning chill. dawn. getting up before dawn is special. it’s easier when dawn is at 1100, but here in the south lands, it means getting up at 0630. in the quiet.

chapter has changed. this text probably has to end in the form of a travelog. as I will not be traveling much in the next months. 12 years of European holiday behind me. now back to the reality of life in Amurika as I have often quipped. the media portrayals in Europe of the US situation are extreme and narrow. just like the views of the rest of the world here. the only difference is that re-presentative imaginations dominate people’s lives far more here — giving a distinctly shifted absence to every thing and every event. and every facing of the Other.

shopping defines much of being. I shop, therefore I am. walking by the bell ringing Salvation Army guy. I am already digging into my pocket before I get near. 27 cents. I catch his eye, smile, and as I turn away, he says, bless you. I go shopping. I missed yet another chance. the substitution of money for less mediated (and less socially structured) exchange is a loss.

4 : December : 200112 : June : 2024

place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Frankfurt, Germany - Phoenix, Arizona

re-arriving

another brutal day of early arising, bus to plane to plane. and a migraine. faugh. but about to arrive in Phoenix, well, sort of. still 2.5 hours off, but after nine hours of flying, that seems like a short hop. no idea what will greet me there, with the recent events. was contemplating a relaxing holiday preparing for the re-location to Boulder in January.

reflections. Finland for the last time in a while. the silence of the pre-pre-dawn moments. waiting for the airport bus in the cold darkness. the blur of the movement. fighting a migraine the whole way. and again being a silent seat-partner to a young French woman. happy that the aircrew is offering water every hour or so. here on the trans-Atlantic plane. crossing Ice Land, Green Land, Arctic Canada, Hudsons Bay, Winnipeg, then south-west to elsewhere, and finally landing in Amurika. with the associated blast of that Amurikan-ness. how to deal with? green teen-age soldiers try to act with authority and disdain. in the face of the unknown of terror. while the echo of the Cold Warriors are everywhere, fearing every Other.

26 : October : 200114 : November : 2015

place: en route Joensuu - Helsinki, Finland - Copenhagen, Denmark - Oslo - Trondheim, Norway

no keys

no keys in the pocket. open road. starts a period of movement that will be as intense as ever. seminars all over the place. on and on. with winter at the window. end the workshop here on a kahvio ja pulla session. a very pleasant group of students.

words are spun and spun. how to re-present the dialogue.

a wind has blown the rain away and blown
the sky away and all the leaves away.
and the trees stand. I think I have known
autumn too long
— e.e. Cummings

suddenly, on the flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen, an intense conversation began. the woman sitting next to me. middle-aged. I noticed she was served a vegetarian lunch. she spoke to me first. (I say a bit ashamedly, knowing that I have the tendency, when in the travel mode to wrap myself tightly with a cloak of silence, or isolation. in a way, not being anti-social, but just focused on arriving rather than allowing too much extra awareness of the movement.) a silent seat-partner. but anyway, she made a small leap. and we begin to cover extraordinary territory. she is headed to a small town near Stuttgart to take a refresher course in Rudolf-Steiner-based massage. she is a massage therapist at a Steiner clinic for traumatized/handicapped children in Helsinki.

16 : January : 200025 : January : 2025

place: Akureyri, Iceland

Varsha’s dreams

again, heavy weather causes changes in plans — one that keeps me around Loki longer than I expect. despite the slight stress that change makes, I am happy that this happens. no planes taking off yesterday or today, so Loki is stranded with me for at least an extra day. across at the pizza place, a man is vomiting loudly in the bathroom in the early evening while I call the airlines about the flight situation. swimming for a short time. the wind. like yesterday, is intense. this jewel arrives from Varsha by email from half-way around the globe, Bangkok:

A long drive into the hills beyond Kanchanaburi and we unexpectedly arrive as evening falls to a destination on the river Kwai, from where we complete the rest of our journey by long-tail boat deep into the jungle. We are to stay in a raft-house on the river surrounded by sounds of lush nature unbroken by electricity and all the noise created by it. As the sun drops behind the hills, darkness descends quickly and the few boats go silent, unable to ply dark waters in safety. By now the temperature has dropped considerably with an unusual cold spell that we are experiencing.
more “Varsha’s dreams”

11 : January : 200025 : January : 2025

place: en route Reykjavík - Akureyri, Iceland

floating silence

in the north, a mellow plane flight over a white-on-white landscape. sun rising. always conscious that clock-time is off from sun-time here. humans delegated that GMT rules, when, by global position, high noon comes at 1330. makes the mornings dark and thick in the winter, no doubt. arriving, Helgi meets me at the airport, and straight to school with a cup of coffee, and jump into the delayed workshop. rolling through several topics and introductions. working online afterward, then happen by dinner with Helgi and his family. on to the guest flat which is quite nice, like the one in Tornio. getting significant email done — critical business things crowd in. related to the movement that is about to break on me in 11 days or so. logistics. and in several conversations during the last couple weeks, I understand that I have reached a critical point in creativity. it’s not there! the ability to reflect, meditate, ponder, let the mind float in silence has crept away. not noticed, as I was busy doing other things.

14 : October : 199922 : November : 2024

place: Imatra, Finland

decisions

decisions, decisions, decisions. floating in the grand scale of living. letting pathways open before me, rather than seeking to walk a certain way. remember when, at the opening of a photography exhibition I had in Aachen, back in December 1988, when Hans Werner was introducing me to the opening-night schwartz-lederhosen crowd, he said I was a pacifist (in German), and I immediately countered, saying I was an Activist! but, in retrospect, he was right. another fragment of evidence lies deep in writings I make — where I constantly use the passive voice in constructing sentences. passivity can be a strong position if it is grounded in flexible action (not rigid re-action). can’t say I am so flexible under most circumstances, despite the outward impression of being a resourceful and observant traveler. who cares? the teaching this time falls flat — for what reason? well only flat by measuring reactions. still have not gotten comfortable with silence. when putting ideas out on the table. understanding what it is, but being unable to expect less as an interactive component of a classroom dialectic — did Socrates conduct his sessions among Arabs? joke. but can the Socratic method function in a second-language situation? who cares. not even a theoretical issue. (funny, I am not even interested in what I am writing, it seems so far away from … me). dialectic energy exchange presupposes a same-language situation. unless both students and teacher are in a highly tuned state of sensitivity — something I have not attained (and may never). my comfort lies in language. and to rise above that would be … leaving school after dark, Polaris straight overhead, Venus setting, Jupiter rising, Mars rising, too, maybe? plenty of stars. cycling the 3 kilometers from school, stop to take some photos of the rapids that run through the middle of the town, or, perhaps it is the town that is built around the rapids. most likely. they are dry, a dry rocky chasm a few tens of meters wide, and perhaps 300 meters long. upstream is a dam, downstream, on the east bank in the old hotel, built for the Czar, evidently. the entire scene is brightly lit in the dark. right after making those images, I am cycling to the grocery store, crossing the street, I have to accelerate to get across ahead of some cars, but the bike is old, and the chain slips, dropping my foot, almost sending my flying, somehow, computer on my back, and Nikon around one shoulder, nothing happens except I hit my upper left ribcage, hurts like hell, and I wonder if I cracked a rib like back in judo class in Golden. taking a deep breath is uncomfortable, stretching is not.

25 : March : 199924 : March : 2024

place: Kiel, Germany

silence

nature is silent. a massive complete silence broken only by the human incarnation. not the silence of manufactured meditation, but the great yawning nothing that swallows all the things we can make with our hands and even create in our dreams. Janet writes that Jazzie has just had puppies.

13 : March : 199922 : November : 2024

place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

next five minutes 3 – tactical education

into the NextFiveMinutes conference. I have been burned out for much of the time for some reason, almost catching a cold yesterday evening, then this morning, spraining my back with the most minimal movement zipping up my suitcase, I wasn’t even bending over. scared the shit outta me. my panel presence (Tactical Education/Media Competence) was shortly after, and that went quite well, but by mid-afternoon I hobble back the the hotel, barely able to walk because of the sciatic pain. missed an appointment with Nan which I was quite looking forward to, not to mention several dialogues with new contacts. really don’t believe it, that I have done something serious. been stretching all afternoon and evening between bouts resting in bed. nothing else to do! Faugh! miss a dinner with an interesting artist. following are notes for the Tactical Education presentation (on the neoscenes occupation project):

sotto voce: introduction: start by restating my conviction that:

venues like this can, by their nature, only mirror or document what is happening “out there” — and although this precise venue here — me speaking to you is probably not anyone’s first choice of interaction — but I was eager to participate in this part of nextfiveminutes as an opportunity to open some dialogues on methodologies and experiences. I would wish that the expressions here will represent ideas so vital that there will be nothing to do after our brief time together but to ACT. but I suppose that the most one can hope for is that some of these thoughts would be on a level fundamental enough that some of you might share these dialogues at future times. or at least be entertained by my ignorant display of polarized generalizations.

put neoscenes occupation within a larger context of praxis, personal philosophy, and reality. more “next five minutes 3 – tactical education”

17 : January : 199924 : October : 2013

place: Trondheim, Norway

milk coronet

Sunday. St. Olavs cathedral is over there. as I look out the sixth-floor windows of the Academy office. sunLight coming over the hills to the south illuminates the row of buildings along the fjord. the far side of the fjord is bright, too. mind is flat. with all the activities that churn and churn the mind. silence is broken by whining hard drives and other high-frequency beings. outside is behind glass. inside too.

AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science) is undertaking its last meeting of the 20th Century. I recall going to one of those meetings in Boston when I was just 14, accompanying my father. photographing the Vice-President, Rockefeller, giving the opening keynote speech. later going to see Arthur Fiedler perform with the Boston Pops (he was sick, so had a replacement, could it have been Seiji Ozawa?). we ended up sitting next to Dr. Harold Edgerton, the famous physicist from MIT who developed the electronic stroboscope for making ultra-high-speed photographs. My father knew Edgerton from when he was working at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT. Harold gave me a signed copy of a postcard reproduction of his famous image of the milk drop frozen like a royal crown. Edgerton was one of the founders of EG&G, a major military-industrial corporation.

18 : December : 199828 : December : 2023

place: Akureyri, Iceland

hip, cool, and ripped-off

logging into the past. first I drop Loki off at school for a greatly shortened day that seems to be only a special pageant for the entire student body. 90 minutes. I go back home to read several weeks of nettime email. which gets me to this stage of needing to write here. photometry. grammetics. and new media is nothing more than more of the same. networked things – smeckworked things. learning in cyberspace, doing in cyberspace, personal technology begins/continues the inexorable involuted backfire on itself. but only personal technology. something to shoot back with. Corpo-tech, or mili-tech won’t cease. because selling and killing will have a greater field of action in the future. the mistake of all the applied technology hype is that it forgets the original interface — soul/body. where the ether jacks into the meat. all mediated things root in and then fly from this electro-colloidal fertilization-zone. all reason and form and metaphor and absolute can be searched, can be hunted in this zone. can then be copied, pasted into relevant organic categories. that’s it, the Confucian Analects that sends us through a process of searching the perimeter of the soul/body interface.

The men of old, wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that Light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts (the tones given off by the heart) ; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost.

This completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories
— Confucius, from The Great Digest or The Unwobbling Pivot, translated by Ezra Pound

it is possible to consider all things to be simple. complexity is a result of over-thought. over-processing of even the most simple data-set creates sampling artifacts, noise, and confusion. borders fabricate, delta-functions shoot to zero or infinity (the paralysis of alienated polarization), surfaces distort. convolution with questionable concepts creates complete areas of synthetic fabrication replete with discontinuities and false event horizons. forget metaphors, jam poetry, and all cultural production machinery paradigms, swallow language, stop writing. stop beating flesh against time and space barriers that make it hurt. no sex for entertainment: no time-slot filler, no wet commerce. body looks soft for a reason. that reason is coddling. ways of going that treat body/soul interface as a bother, not the crux (what is crux — old ancient forgotten word — is there a new word to fill the spot where this was forgotten and once lodged? maybe the word that fills it is catalytic converter or simm or talk-show). there are so many substitution fonts that language can be forgotten anyway. because people are knowing less and less exactly or even generally what each other is saying. no hearing, no talking. only dumb silence while fingernails grow to stab palms. while genetic receptors are mapped (where’s life?). and while questions are asked that raise a cryogenic boiling fog that dissipates to nothing after awhile. hip. cool. and ripped-off.

27 : August : 199811 : June : 2023

place: Unari, Finland

40th

40th year comes on slow through the thin white curtains with blue Light skin and Lightening dreams. and the heating musk of bodies intertwined and motionless or so. the placid river running under two bridges and over one dam. not frozen, with the tannin color of a bitter root drink. horizontal clouds differentiated into cool and flat warm tones. above the Arctic Circle. and the day ends, blue as the beginning in a silent place on a lake, a sauna sweat, two or more fires. burning. white birch with crackling oily skin flares dry and makes fast yellow flames. silence, within another cosmic movement. a bright red toadstool grows in the yard all the white night — I look at it once, through the kitchen window, in the dimming Light, inside I stand naked and skincool, drinking a glass of water. I look again and eyes blur into standing sleep with warm arms wrapped around me and moist breath on my back.

29 : July : 199817 : April : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

Vanguard

From Jordan on nettime: Maybe we need to EXTEND the market as a network, rather than resist it, developing ways of speaking through it.

Ted wonders what it would be like to assume that the intellectual vanguard “is in fact a reactionary force trying to protect its political patrimony by imposing traditional interpretations and ideals.” We have to be brave enough to realize to what extent this may be the case.

sotto voce: The vanguard is (should be!) that which is not engaged in criticism alone. The vanguard alights where action and word intersect. I was thinking that one measure of the efficacy of a critical point of view would be to see if that point of view could be translated into a way of living to be taught to a child! As an educator, I am seeing the glaring gap between the academic mind-set and the reality outside that students have to deal with and indeed is their milieu. I am not surprised when the answer to the question “what did you learn in the last 12 years of education that you use in your life?” is an uncomfortable silence from a roomful of young adults. They KNOW what they need, in many instances, the skills for humane survival, but they also need something to live for. They don’t get it through the system that built criticism.

Jordan’s observations about the futility and hubris in the thought of re-constructing a new way from parts of the old are quite accurate. That argument seems to be a repeat of those which vainly (in retrospect) dealt with deconstructing the Master’s House with the Master’s Tools. Naming and confronting the enemy simply strengthens it (whatever it is). Best to turn and walk away on a new path.

I hope the critics live for more than the sound of their own and others’ words in their ears and eyes. The network is alive. The vanguard needs to walk the walk at the same time as talking the talk: the walk and the talk must fly in synchronous orbit around a life that is engaged with those around it both in cyber extension and in physical extension. There are people doing this, and have been doing this (quietly) for years as Brad rightly points out.

To quote Saarinen and Taylor (from imagologies: media philosophy):

1. in the praxis-dominated world of ultra-tech, the politics of critique must take a new form.

2. the strength of theory is relative to strategies for action. action must lead, theory must follow. in opposition to mainstream modern western philosophy, theoretical and conceptual reason must serve only an instrumental role and thus give up its previously unchallenged position of supreme value in itself.

3. critique that is restricted to the realm of the literate and remains a literary project is no longer feasible as an effective strategy for action. Argument and objective analysis, pure content, abstract thinking, logic, and evidence, these forces of the word-centered world have lost their creative potential. Literate reason and the literary critic have become relics of the past.

When can we shake this reliance on the weakness of abstract reason and instead forge interactions of dynamic presence and being?

1 : June : 199817 : April : 2024

place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Hamburg - Kiel, Germany

languages

alien nation. night train really isn’t. leaving the flat at 1745 by taxi. leaving Tornio by bus at 1810. leaving Kemi at 2000, trudging in Light to the South, but noticeable dimming within the roaring grinding cabin, high whine of air movers, both the two bunks too slim for two, but two forced to be in one because of need. needs of fate, needs of whatever. I do not know, needs of time, beautiful in sleep, beautiful upon waking, stretching away, and the shyness that for me is an inscrutable hidden in language and culture difference and herself. her silence given to searching for words, and that thing I know well of Babylon — the excretory hubris to attain God after the language leaves. maybe this can never become anything other than what it is. and for that I am thankful, for it to be what it is in the moment of when it is enough. the word romantic surfaces, but this is only a poor shake of letters not touching on the actuality. romantic movements are gritty-eyed, skin-burnishing events. hallucinogenic Light flashing through the trees when the shades are opened in the morning, well, at the 0500 hour because sleep is not possible for me. last car in the train. yeah, the language difference, something I am too familiar with, and the limits of expression. can we substitute one form of expression purely for another? the example being the susseration of skin-to-skin, a touch-language (this has been thought of for years: and acted upon more than once), instead of this ancient way of going that would never be now — constructs of letters making sound, making sense and dissonance. the shaping and imprinting, wanting to remember the feeling (do we ever have memories of feeling?) hand moves back and forth, pressing the body-wall of Other, never knowing what it is to be. the conflict of sensory feeding and sensory survival and sensory overload and sensory subjugation and sensory purpose. goodbye is goodbye when the first meeting is only days in the past. saying goodbye is unspeakable. the way one looks at the Other. the eye as receptor (not transmitter like history gazing on itself) nor ear as receptor, only a transmitter of attention. The body and the voice as transmitter (touch, the receiver and transmitter.) Light emissions. (voices move) through the containing ether. shaping the words to trace an outline of being on the vacated space of that body once known or thought to be known or thought to be anticipated (memory of loss. and loss of memory.) anticipating that I would. or just anticipating what it was. shoulder, arm, wrist, finger. ring.

22 : April : 199814 : November : 2015

place: Tornio, Finland

middle class

You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied. … And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning’s will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees. — Douglas Coupland

Passing the way that much contemporary writing goes. I find Life far more interesting, and irresistible.

15 : April : 19988 : October : 2014

place: en route Turku - Kemi - Tornio, Finland

sleep…

bad night of semi-sleep, sleep in rooms without windows is always problematic. back in engineering school there were a couple weeks in-between apartments or before the fall semester began where I lived in the college darkroom, sleeping in fear of the night-watchman or janitor coming in. talk about total darkness, it is disorienting to wake up with an alarm clock in complete blackness. three more hours on this train into Lapland. it would be my hope that I never take this train again. it is numbing, and not to mention bloody hot inside with the windows bolted shut. sun is out, low, away, and pale. snow. not too happy about this north movement. need a good night’s sleep. more food, stillness, and silence.

1 : March : 199811 : October : 2024

place: en route Lahti - Suomenlinna, Finland

Loki’s dreams

Leaving the flat in Lahti, after a relatively long stay of four weeks, I immediately experience the stress of movement-insecurity. And again, it plunges me into a state of ineffectiveness. Crisis point. Questions of how to proceed with this style of living. The vacillations I experience emphasize the fragility of building a presence of being on the ego. That is the source of the oscillations. These become the most uncomfortable and stressful times of life. Other times are filled with the in-your-face of teaching, where time flies by as I make the pronouncements of a teacher — or at least speak with the students. At the same moment, it seems that speaking introduces its own complex web of deception. That having to speak to the Other is a way of escape from the Self, as a rattling noise that supplants any need to look into the frightening swirl of internal energies. A diversion from the essential. Really looking for the way of Zen detachment from this. A stiff back is not the right way to be going. keep on keepin’ on is one way that the truculent San Franciscan flower child would put it, moving targets are safer. but stillness and silence are so difficult to bear. Although at times the floating body simply desires to come to a rest. Disturbances in mental functionality seems to no are different than of other ways can to forget filters of movements into the base of binary openings. Enough said? Who cares? Not me! Plow, Plow through Oxen! Little things. Undisclosed. Partial, fragmentary, immediate, extraordinary. transition. movement. for the moment, lost again. far from a home that is not mine, surrounded by homes and houses. cut loose. partners around, in various stages of being. Sun breaks through the high arched window over the tall buildings across the street. breaks through a multitude of meditations to give me Light. (Jah Rastafari!) but what tools are there in life and in the mind? move through this Light, no, remain stationary, Immobile. for a grasping thousand seconds. body locked in a known curl, legs crossed, and only the pen-hand in motion, mind following. But following at a distance, in low visibility where musings break few borders, and run aground often on size and placement. and time. following myself. sun heats up. and I am left feeling warm. sleepless. under lids that never close. with the storm of the ego, (it will pass) and I will go on. without remembering the real sensation of it all. only repetition will bring recall. lost in a storm. swimming pool, immersion, submersion, a small ache where cold water penetrates to the eardrum. decide not to flip-turn, but to stop for a moment. he is standing in the water. his nose is crooked and flattened. a fighter. long stringy hair. he turns to me and says something. (this dialogue to be finished)… I find a scrap of paper where I have scribbled, sometime last fall in Colorado when Loki was with me, a fragment of one of his dreams. In a previous life, before being born, he was a wolf with two names, one was Strong Jumper or Sterk Hoppur, the other Hungry Jumper or Svangur Hoppur. I make it through the day, not really very confident of anything, especially what I am doing. Incredulous that I can be so fragile. Wondering at what others do in this life. Each Other is focused on the way of going through the material jungle, looking for survival.

25 : February : 199829 : August : 2014

place: Lahti, Finland

breaking the glass

I send a proposal to Christa for the Ars work coming up:
word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action: breaking the glass

The history of mediation is also the history of humans seeking to lessen the impact of raw nature and human aggression on their physical being. Language may be thought of as a primal mediating technology, and in that sense, the further mediations imposed on communications between humans — those mediations that are more commonly referred to as technology, are merely additional obstructions to understanding that overlie language. None-the-less, in this moment, it is still possible to speak, and to listen. At the very same moment that mediation stresses our attempts of attentive presence with the Other, it becomes more imperative to engage in Dialogue and in the creation of spaces in which Dialogue might flourish. Dialogue stimulates genesis, transformation, and revelation in life — it is a revolutionary art itself when in critical juxtaposition to silence. Dialogue, as pure expression of heart and soul, is the core of all meaningful activism.

This talk will explore the be-ing of Dialogue, the stresses of mediation, and our presence in the noumenal world.

11 : February : 199811 : May : 2014

place: Lahti, Finland

naked meaning

there are some social circles where leaving hairs stuck to the bar of soap in the shower is a serious infraction against the prevailing system of decorum. I have lost sight of my dreams for the moment. can’t remember how long it has been since there were real ones that guided both internal and external events. head down to concentrate on the slick sidewalk which turns out not to be so treacherous as it appears what with sharp pea-sized fragments of shattered granite scattered almost everywhere. a first sign of spring comes to sight — small melted rivulets cut into the ice that covers the walkways — where the drains from the roofs lead — the sun is heating the roof and that slightly-warmed water is making its way down to street-level where, wrapped in shadow, it retains enough energy to cut canyons through the ice before spreading out and forming frozen deltas of ice with no gravel. these are the most dangerous areas to avoid or at least walk with that stiff-legged demeanor meant to stave off the possibility of complete imbalance and potential disaster. all on a walk out to the lake, and it IS frozen, somehow this is surprising, is it safe to walk on? there are ski tracks and footprints, though not too many of them. aiming towards the harbor breakwater (why a breakwater in a small inland lake?) I walk through the stretched-out moon-shadow of a factory smokestack cast far into the white darkness by the almost full moon. past the breakwater. to some center which is defined only by an absence of Lights. it is too bright for celestial mystery, only a fraction of terrestrial silence, but with the brightness there is sound or at least the impression of sound. noise, culture-noise. what about going to a cabin in the woods? deep in snow-covered trees and the muffling shapes of inverted nothing. no sauna even yet. no hot water bath. shopping at the Euromarket barely 50 meters from the front door of the College. having to scrutinize each package, all except the ones that I already know from these previous lives here in this land, anything new requires self-conscious label-reading, hoping for a bit of Swedish that I can decode, the Finnish still largely a mystery — vocabulary expanding though, to say, 200 words. like a catalog to draw from. nothing like what language is, at least mother-tongue. a poor substitute that carries little if anything but bare naked meaning. who cares about that except for those cases where that is the only role — a priest reading the last rites, hail Mary mother of god, our father who art, in the beginning, I am the Alpha and the Omega. so sick of the teevee in the foyer of the two-bedroom guest suite, downstairs there is a decent tape deck in the lecture hall, Miles/Coltrane, yes, something to hear and to live by. I struggle to face the fact that once again, this locus for my text-based musings has no direction, no energy, and, worst of all, no spirit. Given my activities for the past five months (can it be only that short a time that I have been into this newest wave of teaching/employment?), perhaps I should not be expecting a flood of creative impulses and action to be sustained, energies have been aimed elsewhere.

15 : January : 199825 : January : 2025

place: Akureyri, Iceland

interventions

No idle moments to be spent dabbling in web-site improvement. I dream about making some significant art projects this year, but it looks to be a year spent in teaching others, working for others … The snow gets into my cuffs as I step down to the school this morning to take advantage of a decent Internet/ethernet connection. I am able to spend a couple hours getting some items updated. I think constantly about re-doing the entire web site from scratch. Starting from zero. What that would change. Ego is the primary intervening force against clarity of vision. The long string of self-portraits that I have done over the last two decades suddenly come into my face as interventions — either cease the making of them or make them to use them as a tool to knock the ego from its intervening position. Make them so transparent that they show nothing but vision! In the end, it would not be for the Other, these exercises, but purely to loosen the self from the constant grip of the ego. raking leaves was. shoveling snow now. snow transpiring negatively to hard ice under the pressure of daily life. blue ether air twiLight seen between the slats of the dirty beige plastic venetian blinds fluoresces and vibrates. You Vee. like the ozone hole lets in leaks of deep space that, after a singeing from solar radiation, bleeds high frequency blue-ness into our realm. the snow consumes it, the cold consumes it, and it is gone eventually after a slow lingering of one hand of hours. it all makes me lie. it is really subsumed by gravity. I putter through digital letters written only year-ages ago. The archive that I have with me goes back seven digital years.

People will speak, They will not speak in order to convince, or to drown the noise of silence. They will speak because it will be easy to do so, and because life will surge from their mouths together with the words. Everything will be filled with life. There will no longer be room for anything dead or unintelligible. — J.-M.G. LeClezio

But do words truly bring us to a higher state of awareness — aren’t they just tools of a technology so old that its origins are inseparable from the origins of human thought? That is, language is merely another one of humankind’s shields from the terror of life on this earth. We are occasionally brilliant enough to realize our own physical weaknesses and subsequently to create prostheses that magnify the energies of our puny bodies, but we are not brilliant enough to recognize that our spiritual strength does not lie in our clever forays against the world, but in the limitless possibilities of the interface of mind-body-spirit, and the choices we make, and the Others we face in spiritual dialogue.

10 : October : 199722 : August : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

static chill

measured sentences today marked the passing of time, I quit writing real sentences because. now frequently I see reflections of other frames of reference (deja vu — such a weak word, unable to pull itself into English, and yet these instances dog me daily now). meta-verse, meta-contact. always mediation always the insurgency (no rapt attention) injecting. only little hopes (we shall overcome). shouting at cloud riots straddling a bicycle seat talking to the wind and wishing I had watched the sunrise without sound background of house news noise. silence would have been the direction to flow into. words built up the day, words scattering across the way, words and looking at what there could have been behind them. in a position of leading life and following life, there is always the element of confusion that greets each successive moment. to be able to have possibility and nothing more than the fullness of it. Dar-es-Saalam comes up in conversation today, so does John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk (his birthday), and Guattari, the Thousand Plateaus, more “static chill”

7 : October : 199723 : June : 2014

place: Arvada, Colorado

inversion

The air has an inversion smell about it. Like early morning driving along the Pacific Coast Highway before the Santa Ana winds begin to blow. Still and full of mobile vapors of steel-and-plastic in motion. Last night there was an exchange of energies. Actually much of yesterday there were energies moving and moving and moving between hearts and voices, ears and minds. Spinning lives into a fall that comes in the night, chill nights where the sounds of the earth reach only slightly above the treetops, and above is the silence of the mountains washing the air clean of warmth and sound. Wakefulness is complete in every moment. Sleep is a detail of each day, almost lost in the fullness of being. The sun at this moment carries the hinted whiteness of winter, but still holds the yellow of summer. There is no threat of Arctic wild darkness anywhere. Maybe this is too far south for the sun to allow that extremity of being. How touch and all forms of human contact remains core, key, a crux, a necessity for transfer, recharging, sharing energy. Without this function, there can be no growth. I continue construction of the student web site. Sitting at the computer almost all the day. This late Indian Summer day, snow threatening above 9000 feet. and I find myself unable to write as freely as in the past for the simple reason of being part of a closed system here in this State of place-being-mind. For to explore the actuality of what is happening would be to reveal far too much than should be revealed in such a public forum as this.

16 : December : 199631 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

to be grokked

Well. I did make a foray into the high desert wilderness near Sycamore Canyon a couple days ago. Not far, however. Too much virtuality has left me stunned. Too much driving especially, that oh-so-virtual reality where, like with digital media, we are insulated by the silicon dioxide / amorphous silica, that of windows rather than IC chips … I figured once, some years ago, that I have spent about 500 24-hour days in a car, traveling about 50 mph, since I arrived in this in-car-nation, so to speak (ohhh, now there’s a pun for you…). But as it is ingrained in my existence, I must say that I do enjoy cruising across/through the western landscape in a vehicle. The unrolling vistas, the feelings of Power, more “to be grokked”