Return To The Center

(this really happened) one second before 4:30pm...

..when the sun was sinking behind the buildings around South Station, I noticed an opening.  Looking around and seeing no one else, I looked through it.  I poked my head through.  I saw a world aglow, alive with shimmering, swaying brush strokes constantly rearranging themselves.  Awestruck, I made the opening a bit bigger and stepped through.  I glowed.  Pieces of me fell away and recombined in the torrent of change.  Fingers flowed red rivulets down my legs.  Feet melted into violet-blue pavement and then lightened and became sky.  Soon there was no 'me.'  Only shimmer.  Only color.  Only light.  Only change.  Only this..

2009:11:29 16:36:03

 
 

Scribefire and Zemanta Win!! Prestigious RTTC Sneaky Bastids Award!

Hey kids, here's some exciting news from the world of Ubuntu blogging!

This morning I was inserting some blockquote tags into yesterday's post by hand in Scribefire because SF doesn't have that feature. I noticed the following at the bottom of the post I had done last night.  (I had to remove the LT/GT chars from the HTML to show you here.. Scribefire does not distinguish between HTML typed into the HTML view window and the rich text editor window - niiiiice!)

div class="zemanta-pixie" img class="zemanta-pixie-img" alt="" src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=31f6976b-00ba-8d08-9b5f-b47a0a4fc0dd" / /div

Evidently Scribefire and Zamanta think it's a swell idea to implant tracking elements in blogposts by default with no notification whatsoever.  There is a switch in the Publishing settings dialog to turn this off, but still....

Blogjet didn't do this...

Neither did Qumana, the other blogging tool I had a brief relationship with on Windows..

So - my hat is off to Scribefire and Zemanta, the winner of this week's RTTC Sneaky Bastids Award!  Congratulations to you both.  I won't be using your tool much longer. Good luck in your quest to 'monetize.'


 

note to myself - remember this

"Buddha said: ‘I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of, magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one’s eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons."
101 Zen Stories - Paul Reps

when you're a stranger...

"People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone." - People Are Strange Jim Morrison

I've learned quite a bit since moving the laptop to Ubuntu 9.10.  It's been a fun and intense several days.  It's like I've stepped onto another planet that is mostly like my home planet but not, in some unsettling ways.

Things mostly work. I mean - given the state of the machine last week (dead), I shouldn't complain.  I have a functioning laptop that I can browse the web, send email, manipulate images, and play (some) music on, but it doesn't feel like home yet.  Not by a long shot. Here are some of the things that are jarring about this new world and make me long for a better solution.

I'm still screwing around with this Scribefire thing.  It's pretty primitive compared to Blogjet. It won't save content locally and if I select blog categories when I post, the post will not show up in the main view of the blog (!?!?!?).

Wireless connectivity mostly works - I say mostly because I had to change my router to broadcast the SSID so that Ubuntu would remember my settings and connect to the network when it came up. The "join hidden networks" setting is not a sticky setting.  I didn't feel like typing in my security phrase every blessed time I turned the machine on - so I had the router start broadcasting the SSID.  Works ok now.

The keyboard function is not natural.  It was easy to have a key stick and get a whole lineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee of charrrrrrrrrracters where I didn't wanttttttttttt them. I was able to remedy this through the Preferences Keyboard dialog..

The mouse pointer will get the shakes at times.  It will vibrate onscreen in the general area that it is pointing to.  The effect is intermittent.  Although I shouldn't have expected it I suppose, the mouse buttons (exspecially the "magnify")on my Microsoft laser mouse don't work. 

Printing photo quality images has been disappointing to date.  There is considerable banding evident where the was no noticeable banding in Windows.  An example:

I tried printing both with Gimp and the Photo Viewer.  Both banded the resulting printout in slightly different ways. Printing through Photoshop Elements and the HP Image Center Software on Windows yielded much higher quality results.

iTunes files.  Ubuntu no se habla iTunes.  Apparently I have to pay additional money to Apple to remove the DRM crap from all the tracks I bought from them prior to them going to DRM-Free files.  Thirty cents a file adds up.  Also there's the principle of the thing.  I already payed for these frakkin files..  I should be able to do what I want with them on my own machine.

Lastly - there's GIMP, the most foreign feature on planet Ubuntu.  Because I've been using Adobe PSE for years, I'm really comfortable with it.  While it's probably possible to do everything in GIMP that I do in PSE, it takes me a whole lot longer.  Additionally - I'm not happy with the results of some of the GIMP filters - Unsharp Mask being of most concern right now.  I just don't like the results it gives.  I have the feeling that it is not as sophisticated as the Adobe version.  The results are cruder, resulting in more messing around.

Talking with my Brother J about some of these concerns, he thought that it would be a good idea to run WinXP in a VMWare virtual machine.  That way I could have access to things like Blogjet and PSE.  I recently found the WinXP disk that came with the laptop, so I'll give it a try.

Here's the thing though... I don't want to be a computer technician.  I don't even want to be a computer hobbyist.  I want an appliance.  I want a great tool (like my car, or my camera, or my iPod) that just works and gets me from "here to there" with the minimum amount of drama.  The computer is not the point.  The software is not the point.  Nice images are the point.  Beautiful printouts are the point.  Music is the point. 

For now - I'm going to hang out on Ubuntu and see if I can get around some of these issues.  I don't have a lot of patience for using crappy tools.  If I can't get my concerns fixed quick - it'll be buh-bye Ubuntu and hello Apple. Yes - it'll mean more dough, but I'd rather pay for something that does the job, then use a free thingamabob that almost, but not quite, gets the job done.

Ubuntu test post from Scribefire plugin...

A quick trip to Best Buy netted a new Hard drive.  Using the Ubuntu Live CD that I made yesterday, I installed 9.10 on the new drive.  Voila!  Ubuntu machine up and running.  The install went really smoothly (unless I missed something).  Everything just basically worked when the system came up.  I've completed the task of copying over all my image/music etc files.   There is still the matter of what to use to play iTunes files and sync the iPod... No doubt I'll find one.

Scribefire won't be long in use I don't think.  Unless I'm mistaken, there's no way to save files locally, a deal-breaker for me.

Mad Mission

Love this.. Been rediscovering Patty Griffin of late.  A Mainer, she writes sometimes like Springsteen (but clearly doesn't sing like him..).  Found this on Y'tube.

Sign me up.

Compulsory Happiness

"The admonition to be happy, voiced in concert by the... sanatorium director and the... propaganda chiefs of the entertainment industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his child for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from his office.  It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces, and there is a direct line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our own countrymen can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain." 

- Theodor Adorno, German Philosopher - 1951

Fill up the Accord at the Blue Canoe in Wakefield and it's "Little Drummer Boy" on busted tinny outdoor speakers.  Christmas lights are springing up everywhere.  Fake snowflakes abound. The sound of sleigh bells infects seasonal commercials.  I hear sleigh bells in my sleep.  Women with snowman sweaters slam down aisles at Costco.  Toddlers are being dressed in red outfits.  Almost every business establishment I go to, I am advised (admonished?) to "Have a happy holiday!" 

What evs.

I've always resented the compulsory nature of "holiday" happiness.  Smile or else. Be cheerful or else. Laugh or else.  It was such a breath of fresh air to run into Mr Adorno's quote in the Sun Magazine this month (one can find it all over the web as well).  He puts his finger right on the button.   Culturally mandated happiness helps to paper over not only the suffering all around us, but life itself in all its monstrous beauty. 

This year as our president gets ready to send 34,000 more of our children into the meat grinder to "Finish the job" (apt choice of words that - one wonders what job will be finished), the marketing of cheerfulness, and snowmen, and reindeer, and tinsel, and drummer boys, and all the products you just have to have if you're going to be happy during "the holidays" strikes a deeply discordant note.  

Hard Drive Failure

Upon rebooting my machine this morning, the Hard Drive made a subtle clicking sound it never ever ever made before.  Boot time was loooong.  Finally, the machine put up the "c:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG file missing or corrupted"  message.

My eyesight got blurry.  All my files are backed up (Thank G-d), but I just was not up to handling a machine restore/rebuild now...  I do what I always do when panicked by technological failures, I send a note to my Brother J. 

Calmness prevailed.  He gave me some great advice.  He suggested that I build an Ubuntu Live CD and boot from that.  J thought that if the main disk in my laptop was not completely screwed, that I should be able to mount the drive and inspect the files. 

I was able to do all that with great success.  Tomorrow, I'm going to try to move the files off my main disk onto an external drive that I'll be purchasing.

The next thing is the rebuild.  Since I don't particularly want to shell out dough for an OS, I'm considering making my HP Laptop into an Ubuntu box.  I found a How-to and it doesn't seem impossible, unless I am reading the instructions with the eyes of the incredibly naive...

In any case - I'll have my files back without having to do a remote restore of multiple gigs of files, and I'll have a bit of an adventure.

Thanks to my Brother J for (as he always does in these cases) talking me down off the ledge. 

We'll see what happens.. off to shop for an internal 2.5" SATA drive for my machine and an external USB drive...

rain ran down the window..

…trying to focus, he couldn’t remember..

a little balance to the 'holiday' treacle

 

The Price of Experience

What is the price of experience? do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? no, it’s bought with the price
Of all that man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither’d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the wagon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a God on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies’ house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field
And the sickness that cuts off his children

While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door
And our children bring fruits and flowers

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten
And the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison

And the soldier in the field
When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me

The Price of Experience (1797) – William Blake

 

2009:11:21 15:20:38

 

 

you can shove the poem..

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
and in the long light,
Breathing.
- Gwendolyn MacEwen Afterworlds

Via Whiskey River

 

these go out to..

There’s three poems in this clip, “Direct Orders”, “Here am I” (2:59), and “Shake the Dust” (6:25).  In the old days of WMEX 1510 AM, you could call up the station and dedicate rock ‘n roll songs to people. 

In that spirit, I dedicate these three poems to the ones I love.

“Rock out like Jimi has returned carrying brand new guitar strings..” – Direct Orders

“…and we forgot what we wanted and became what we’ve become…” – Here am I

“… this is for the two-year-olds who can’t be understood because they speak half English and half God..” - Shake the Dust

 

some image 4 lonelyness

some image 4 lonelyness

i wish someone had told me
limbs don’t grow by birth.
the loneliness returns -
long nights of loneliness.
return lost love book.

parents blog + kids dying in war.

by – Anonymous Collection of Visitors to RTTC

It has been said that nobody lies to the Google search box.  Some have likened it to a confessional box. 

Each of the lines above including the title are Google search strings that led people to this blog.  Picking them out of the statcounter log reminded me of reading those Books of Intentions some churches have.  Raw, unguarded, vulnerable, truthful lines.  Human.  Poignant.

 

the beauty i miss

Martin was hanging out just under the light on the granite front of my house.  Mike, Matthew, Mairead, and Madeline were with him.  Usually I rush right by them on the way in.  After seeing this other handsome guy, I thought it would be interesting to see what these folks looked like close up. 

From wingtip to wingtip, Martin is maybe 1/2” wide – maybe less.  I was struck by the beautiful bargello-like patterning on his wings, the delicate fringe on the edges of his wings, and the shy way he tucked his antennae under himself.  The other amazing thing about Martin and friends is how sparkly they are when viewed at the right angle.  You can see just a tiny bit of the sparkle above up near his shoulder.

2009:11:18 17:55:40

 

 

fade into blue

 

like a sigh

 

Mystic Life

lifetime’s solitary thread
      for CHARLES WRIGHT

It’s like fishing in the dark,
If you ask me:
Our thoughts are the hooks,
Our hearts the raw bait.

We cast the line over our heads,
Past all believing,
Into the starless midnight sky,
Until it’s lost to sight.

The line’s long unravelling
Rising in our throats like a sigh
Of a long-day’s weariness
Soul-searching and revery…….

Taken from “Mystic Life” by Charles Simic
In the book “Jackstraws”

 

 

the rest are fakes

Newshour Interview with Leonard Cohen

 

omission

 

 

Omission

“Happiness is yours..”
Kindly unsaid caveat:
“..One spring day, not now..”

 

 

at last..

 

 

 

“You’ve lost your mind!”

“at last…” I thought “..what a relief.”

 

 

remembrance

 

enough...

Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough."
- Jeanette Winterson 
Whiskey River

When I read the quote from novelist Jeanette Winterson I heard a sympathetic echo of the poem “at least”  I posted recently. The thing that “pulls the pin” for me is a craving for dissolution into the world around me. 

It’s that craving, the source of all suffering, that gets me out of the house and staring at things.  While I might well not be doing much for any next rebirth I may (or may not) have, when I stand and look deeply at the world it feels like the hard edges of the ego-driven self soften and sometimes disappear. For a moment perhaps, there is no-roy.  In those moments of looking I am relieved of physical pain and the daily laundry list of emotional injuries – real and imagined.  Whatever images are captured are a distant second to the act of looking itself and are more often than not disappointing doppelgangers.

So – why not just put down the camera and go out and stare?  The short answer is that after these sessions of no-roy, I snap back to being the ego clinging lump with a need for people’s reaction : “Oh that’s a nice shot” or “I like those colors.”  Maybe somewhere down the road, I’ll be able to put it all down and be like the laughing tattered hermit in his cave on Cold Mountain:

verse 264

I sit on top of a boulder
the stream is icy cold
quiet joys hold a special charm
bare cliffs in the fog enchant
this is such a restful place
the sun goes down and tree shadows sprawl
I watch the ground of my mind
and a lotus comes out of the mud

For now,  I make do with occasional fleeting encounters with the mute-making beauty of the world and the peace and rest found in laying down my endless loop of woes.

 

the young ones

 
While the mature ones can be allowed out by themselves…
 

 

…the young ones must be penned up so they don’t wander off..

..and to protect them from predation.

 

farmhouse route 113 west newbury, ma

 

 

Fall Studio Show

 

 

 

  

 

Barberry Hill Pottery
102 Main Street
West Newbury, MA
978 363 2245



Fall Studio Show
of
Ceramics, Paintings, Weaving
November 14 through 22, 11am-5pm

Reception November 21, 11-3pm

Barbara Haack,  Diana Philip,  Jim Selman

 

 

 

 

 

instructions

instructions

these verses of mine
read much better if you squint
and use just one eye

 

this can go on for years

this can go on for years

weavers,
speeders,
stoners,
texters,
tail———gaters,
crashers,
drinkers,
screamers,
racers,
day———dreamers,
spent and sent out,
tired corpuscles bashing along blackened veins.
oxygen pink, sleep, a taste of oblivion,
drawn back in, 
used up all over———again.

this can go on for years.

 

Scenes from a day - cutting room floor

 

this happened...

Entranced by clouds breaking blue,
I lost track of time. 
Evening came.

Scrubby runt trees blackened.
Leaning close, branches clacking, rasping,
“Don’t you know where you are?”
Sweat down my back.
“N-No.”

“Pay them no mind” came a reedy voice over my shoulder.
Glowing golden heads lit a winding path.
“Stay close.  We will show you the way home.”

 

at least

 

at least 

just a few seconds
of looking
can get me through
the next
many hours
of boredom

imagine what a whole day
of looking
could get me through.
a year?
two
at least

 

they must hear a clanking sound when they sit down...

What does it take to sell instant coffee for a dollar a cup?

Give up?

Here’s what it takes brothers and sisters. 

 

our animal friends are all around us

 

Advent

Christmas carols on November 1.
Snowflake cups at Starbucks.
People saying “Happy holidays!”
Advent.

 

South Station Amtrak

Waiting for someone is tough sometimes. 

It’s good to have a friend by your side who shares your intensity, and who grasps the importance of the moment as deeply as you do.

It’s also good if they remembered to bring along Milk Bones.

 

the bench is yours

the bench is yours

Thus have I heard:

Aren’t you a Buddhist? 

Well if you’re a Buddhist then:

Should you really be saying the things you do?
Should you really be doing the things you do?
Should you really be thinking the things you do?
Should you really be drinking the things you do?
Should you really be eating the things you do?
       (and so much of them..)
Should you really be watching the things you do?
Should you really be hanging out with *those* people?

Shouldn’t you be kinder?
Shouldn’t you be more patient?
Shouldn’t you be happier?
Shouldn’t you be thinner?
Shouldn’t you be more successful?
Shouldn’t you be smarter?
Shouldn’t you be able to sit in half-lotus? (at least)
Shouldn’t you be able to do prostrations?

It’s been one boring failure after another.
Tent pegs are being pulled and gear is being stowed.
Time for moving on down the line. 
In fact – this poser was never really here
     To begin with.

The bench is yours.

 

sometimes lunch is shot through with holiness

 

Nothing says school and playground ornament like a m60 main battle tank..

I suppose it’s good to get children used to war paraphernalia as soon as possible..

Hoo – Ahh!!

It looks like Mr Obama is on the verge of sending 34,000 more kids to Stanley “let’s fast-track the fraudulent account of Pat Tillman” McChrystal’s shining moment in Afghanistan limelight.  Such a tragedy, and one brought on merely for the purposes of reelections in 2010 and beyond, because it will matter not a whit in deflecting the arc of the war..  Democrats have to look manly..have to look ToughOnTerror, have to FightThemOverThereSoWeDon’tHaveToFightThemOverHere...

Iraq War:

American Dead 5,359
Coalition Dead 325
Contractor Employee Dead 1,395
Journalists Dead 335
Academics Dead 431
Iraq Dead 1,339,771

Afghanistan War:

American Dead 916
Coalition Dead 597

$929,557,360,985

 

i wish someone told me this when i was a young man...

(Wonderful image – courtesy of my Brother M)

"Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step."
- Agnes Martin

Taken from that spring from which I am constantly renewed – Whiskey River

 

soon they will be with us

 

so i just stay away

The mountains pull hard on me, so hard that I can never visit them. It hurts too much to leave them.  It hurts more to know I’ll never live among them, so I just stay away.

 

forgive them

 

 

jack

Earlier tonight I watched the DVD “What Happened to Kerouac?”  It’s a 90 minute documentary that focuses mostly on the end of Jack Kerouac’s life, when he was going under for the last time in his struggle with alchoholism. Overall a sad movie – but with some beautiful interludes – like when Kerouac reads from “On the Road” while Steve Allen plays the piano, or watching Gregory Corso speak of the genius of Kerouc.

After the movie I went in to my office and checked up on a blog I visit a lot recently called “Crashingly Beautiful” and found (right at tht top mind you) the following:

“believe in the holy contour of life” – Jack Kerouac

Turns out that the post on Crashingly was reposted from http://fuckyeahthebeatgeneration.tumblr.com/ which contained a whole slew of not only Jack Kerouac, but Beat writings and photographs in general.  Sweet.

In honor of this tiny bit of synchronicity and for Jack, I’m posting an image of the Sacred Heart that I took when I visited the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lowell MA in June of 2007.  The original image was a dirty little beat up holy card that was sitting down in the dirt.  Jack’s mother used to take him to the grotto for the Rosary and Novenas and to watch the penitents climb the stairs on their knees.    He wrote about the experience in his book Dr Sax.

Jack – wherever you are… be well my Catholic/Buddhist madman brother.

ghosty

 

Democrats.org emails - worse than deer ticks..

Right after Barack got elected, I got an email asking for more donations.  Huh?  Weren’t they already elected?  Didn’t they already extract hundreds of millions of dollars from people? 

Looking back on the last year, I wonder what they would have used the additional dough for anyway.. Gardening tools?  Dog obedience classes?  More dinners and coffee socials with the Republican leadership?  Support groups for Banking Execs stung by the public reaction to their bungling and mendacity? Certainly they would not have used it for moving the country forward…

Over the weeks and months since the election, I was able to unsubscribe from that mailing list as well as others that were asking for money for the President and his party of sandbags, doorstops, and paperweights.

The Democrats.org mailings however have been a more virulent and hardy strain of annoyance.  Today when I got their chirpy little note about “Health Care Reform”, you know – the bill currently referred to as “a long and loving blowjob to the insurance industry”, I’d had enough.  I clicked on the unsubscribe link which brought me to a web site that asked me for my email address and the reason I was unsubscribing. I entered both.  Pressed submit. 

I got another screen.

This one – claiming to be about protecting my account (please), said that Democrats.org had mailed me an email with a 4 character code in it and I had to enter the code into a little box on the webpage and then click submit again.

I waited and then refreshed my inbox.

There it was.. an email that promised to hold the 4–character key to my never seeing another email from the party of Big Industry and Big War.  With fingers trembling from excitement, I opened the note to find:

It was empty.

Blank.

Devoid of 4 character codes.

Unhelpful as the Democrats have been since sweeping into power.

I tried this again with the same results.

I’ll handle this on my end with a mail rule..

 

brother j homage

passing lane – 495 North

gwine home

gwine de speed limit

 

2009:11:02 15:42:00

(more free spirits here and here)

 

it's that mutt i still miss

“Millions were out to kill me.  They fired cannons, dropped bombs, set villages on fire and shot my dog in the street.  It’s that mutt I still miss.

From “The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks” – Charles Simic

 

dukkha

Most of the household items displaced by the floor project have patiently stayed put.  Lamp, speaking of an overwhelming sense of dislocation, decided to take matters into her own hands make a break for it. 

“Where’s my end table?  I just want my end table.  Why am I down here?  My plug is cold.”

Explaining the Second Noble Truth to Lamp did no good whatsoever.  The kitchen sink drain overheard our conversation and sighed in appreciation.