a week into August already. more than two weeks in Oz, a number to go. haven’t made any images at all except the occasional telephone lo-rez abstraction. so that goes. this may be the way the travelog goes in the next months. as there are so many other things to get done now. teaching heavily underway, research cranking up, and networking. as well. essential life starts to make its way forward.

plenty of sound recording though. on aporee maps. and a few photos from around the house.

decided not to acquire any new digital traces of movement and seeing until the new path opens fully. lunch with Norie yesterday begins a mapping of the process. meeting with a variety of Others. most completely unknown. stimulating but exhausting. housing still not 100% settled, at all. but a bed for the sleeping in the small studio space with the palm tree and the Cooks River out the window.

not far as-the-raven-flies from the Baldwin cabin, over Ohio pass and to the east, here on the west side of the West Elk Wilderness. mild mountains. none within eye-shot breaking 12,000 feet. sedimentary, overlain by thick deposits of welded tuff, ash, and other volcanic ejecta, andesites, unstable, friable: the West Elk Breccia, 34 million years old.

and in the interests of not moving too far and getting as high as locally possible, Moseley Ridge, made up of those breccias, looks do-able, sort of. at least the view east from the top should be decent — the back of the Maroon Bells. bush-whacking. the first obstacle is an aspen grove with more downed timber than standing. the only progress possible is by balancing on the downed logs and moving along those. off the logs, it’s impossible. steep, turns out the whole western slope is slumping with fissures and extremely steep inclines. it is a real bush-whack. two hours of slow movement through the vegetation only to end up on talus that looked a whole lot smoother from the valley floor. very unstable. each step, leaping from rock to rock, never knowing which one might start to roll down the steep incline. the incline gradually steepens towards the base of the final (unattainable spires). giving up 100 meters from the saddle when rain starts making the rocks slick. low risk threshold. slow and wet retreat.

a short overnight visit with Linda and Kevin (forgot to get a photo of the delicious burgers that Kevin grilled).

a couple days of essentially hanging out and talking in the open airs of the Collegiate Peaks area not far from Buena Vista and Buffalo Peaks with Rick, Sally, Karen, Montse, Dave, Vera, Gigi, and Lulu. Dave and Gigi start things off on a delicious note with some fresh Dolly Varden trout from nearby and aptly named Trout Creek. Rick brings the motocross gear. and the wind blows. springtime in the central Rockies. the Collegiates are a cold range. St. Elmo got 18 feet – that’s almost 6 meters – of snow last winter. sure it’s Colorado champagne-powder, but it’s a tough range of peaks. so in the lee of the turbulence of the Collegiates now, corn snow, rain, deep and expansive wind, sunshine and cloud. springtime in the Rockies. full moon dis-sleeping under a huge Douglas Fir, gaping at the Aspen stand nearby in the Light of pale whiteness and complete dark. one of those weekends.

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.

after a breakfast burrito and a couple hours going through the GHS 1976 images at Todd’s to stir our memories, I head south from Fort Lupton to Manitou Springs slowly. pick up that roll of Tri-X film at Reed — the one that sat, undeveloped, for almost a decade. the last roll of black-and-white film shot before shifting to the Sony DCR-PC100 video camera. it turns out to be a full roll of images, and thankfully without fogging despite sub-optimal storage. will scan the mystery shots when I get back to Prescott shortly. I’ve no idea what they are of.

taking in the way on the way. road trip images and sounds. these days, I usually stop for scenes that I perhaps previously would have driven by while noting in head shoulda stopped. I figure these days that I should be making images to somehow — at least conceptually — counter-balance my use of hydrocarbons. that and simply extending the practice of image-making which is so habitual now it risks becoming a stale rather than a vivifying practice. documenting the West as I see it and as I transit the spaces. the faux-windmill-water-station in Ft. Lupton, a darkly amusing iceberg-tip of impending global water issues; the green space appropriately called Greenland; the B-52 bomber at the Air Force Academy looms in the midst of a gathering storm; and sounds that augment a feel for the place.

the weather is strange.

I chill in a cafe in Manitou, catching up on work. it closes, so I head across the street to The Keg Lounge, definitely a local bar and grill (with wifi!). normally I’m not too chatty in such a place, but started to talk to the bartender, and then a young (obviously military) guy comes up ordering some beers for his friends playing pool. turns out he and the friends are deploying to Afghanistan in three days, to some obscure valley in one of the hottest Taliban-contested areas. I believe, without any empirical evidence, that only those who serve at that boots-on-the-ground level in the military have any clue what war really is like. I certainly don’t. war is a black box that I can only assume is full of terrors that only the young are able to flexibly absorb and at least partially master. I buy them a round of drinks and talk with them for awhile. one fellow, an ancient 26-years-old, is on his fifth deployment. he was scheduled to have reconstructive knee surgery in June, but the Army canceled that in order to deploy him. he figures he’ll be crippled by the time his deployment is over. they routinely carry 130-pounds of gear under extremely harsh conditions. a couple of them are first-timers. they harbor a certain bravado, innocence, and apprehension. embodied. I can’t say the encounter made my day, but it felt right in the pit of the belly and in the heart. the War(s) are so invisible to all but those directly involved — War is the legacy of illegitimacy and the fanatic regime that started them.

Greg gets back in from Boulder later so we hang out with his girlfriend, catching up on the pathways taken in the last years gone. hang out in his funky flat on the top floor of the (national historic register) Nolon House including the distinctive round tower. then they are away until tomorrow…

day starts in a noisy campground, packing up, rolling out, the ritual stop at the Center of the Universe where there are further changes — someone has brought in a larger iron tank for the artesian well and an even larger one sits next to it. they have changed the flow of water such that the artesian flow is saturating the ground, making a significant area that is salinating the surface soil. the weeds are cut close to the ground. the two large wooden posts that I used to sight through the windows are lying on the ground. change. I expect that someday soon the Center will be destroyed. what then? as with all documentation, that which is documented passes away. on to the Sand Dunes Swimming Pool (aka, the Hooper Pool) to get cleaned up before returning to civilization. it’s way too hot to do any laps, that and along with a couple school buses full of elementary school kids. end up having a long conversation with an elderly Latina woman baby-sitting her grand kids, a local to The Valley. I catch a group photo of a group of students from La Jara Elementary School.

on down to the low-lands, Golden. the big event, the main reason I schedule the trip for this time-period, Holly’s high school graduation (and Party!) approaches. I arrive at the house late in the afternoon to find Natalie and Cassie making brownies for the party. they promptly head off to a sleep-over, leaving me to watch the oven. Holly gets home, and then Sally, and Rick. Montse comes by as well. much work to be done prepping food. another trip to Costco accentuates the challenge. then the task of making two large salads. it’s a team effort late into the night, and I’ve never quartered or halved so many cherry tomatoes before.

a much longer ramble with a heavy wind at my back until it’s time to turn around. the dunes are located here for a reason and that reason is the frequency of very intense winds being funneled across the valley into Medano Pass where the sand generated by the Rio Grande out-wash in the (west side of the) valley is dropped in large quantities against the Sangre de Christo mountains. it’s a marvelous phenomena. today, I follow the base of the dunes along Medano Creek which is flowing with copious quantities of chilly snow-melt. the intersection of the dunes with the creek and the mountain terrain is rich with variable riparian regimes and provides shelter from the wind which is carrying plenty of grit up to about 3 feet off the dune surface. the air is charged with particles, it is charged.

He wha tills the fairies’ green
Nae luck again shall hae:
And he wha spills the fairies’ ring
Betide him want and wae.
For weirdless days and weary nights
Are his till his deein’ day.
But he wha gaes by the fairy ring,
Nae dule nor pine shall see,
And he wha cleans the fairy ring
An easy death shall dee.
– Scottish, traditional

solo hiking in the park is discouraged because of the risk of mountain lion attack on lone (prey) animals. this puts a certain edge on movement into more isolated areas. most visitors stick to the dunes themselves and the beach-like intersection of the dunes and Medano Creek that is car-accessible. I didn’t see anyone on the whole hike except on the way back a couple groups of party-ers hanging by the creek in the dunes. a hunting knife on the hip is probably no real protection, nor is a hiking staff. imagining an encounter is difficult and doesn’t simulate the effect of the full-body adrenaline jolt that would surely ensue. recalling the speed of a mature house cat and mapping that onto a 150-pound body evo-tuned for carnivorous ambush-predation survival is, well, uff! the presence of deer is both reassuring and threatening — are they there because there are no lions around, or is their presence an attractant? whatever, eyes stay open, and occasional backward checks, standing silent, scanning with binocs, not much else to be done. how effectively would a lion stalk a single human? they are ambush predators and will wait, hiding, aong known game trails for a quick launch and a specialized deep bite into the cervical vertebra to quickly render the prey helpless. yikes! make it all the way up to the Medano Creek / Little Medano Creek intersection and beyond a mile or two. have to cross the fast-running and deep creek on a large beaver-downed aspen log to continue. the wind keeps me in the trees until the walk back where I cut across a large open park at the base of Medano Pass / Big South Canyon. camera gets stowed because of the grit in the air and the need to hold the hat on. pretty tired by the time I get back to camp, and pushing through the last tree, end up getting smacked right on the bridge of my nose by a branch, getting a nice cut and looking a bit foolish to anybody in the campground who happened to be watching. the Lone Outdoorsman.

today, after that small amount of moisture in the night, the entire place is vibrating. when standing still, there is a loud and continuous background buzzing that is non-specific in source direction. standing near a particular blossoming plant, there is the sensation of particular bees and other insects doing their thing, but otherwise, there is this background humming that has no point source but rather simply is — like the hissing of blood in ear.

on the way in to Sycamore Spring both times, I note the existence of a lone Cottonwood tree growing up in the middle of a lightly sloping alluvial fan below a sizable un-named mesa. the only possibility for a Cottonwood to be there is water, and plenty of it. a good objective for a bushwhack. after the numerous encounters with slithering and rattling things yesterday, attention to movement and especially foot placement becomes aligned with breathing. of course any movement has to be calculated when in such an environment. miscalculated movement will be punished with some pointed intersecting and likely penetrating the body wall. I escape these four days with only two of those painful encounters, both arising in the thin slice of time between a visual scan of upcoming terrain and a glance at some specific object within the field of view. then aiiii-shit! as the pain jolts upwards from compromised shin.

this bushwhack takes me to the cottonwood. it looks to be around a hundred years old, there are a few other water-seeking plants, a tamarisk, rooted in a whitish rock ledge. apparently some near-surface water is available. paradise in the shade under the tree. except for the stench of death which I trace to the desiccating corpse of a cow 20 meters away in the scrub. the shifting wind brings eye-watering wafts on occasion, but otherwise I spend an hour or two soaking up the energy of being under the lush green canopy surrounded by hard-core Sonoran desert. it is a singularity like Sycamore Spring on a smaller scale and with no running surface water.

minuscule F/A-18 fighters are frequently dog-fighting in the airspace above. in the day and night. moving in and out of unaided vision, tightly circling each other, dropping flares, and, with afterburners, roaring in such volume that all ambient sound is swallowed. for our nation’s security. so it goes.

otherwise, commercial flight contrails gradually fill the sky with high-level cirrus clouds that soften the terrain and its re-radiative impact, but this effect distorts its being what it is, along with distorting the things living here. they did not evolve with spent jet fuel clouds hanging overhead to shade them from the burnishing sun. this is a problem. just another problem that the human species have applied through their amplification system — this is the waste product, waste energy, which alters the environment.

the rest of the day is a slow and rambling return to base. run across some small mining digs, one trenched into a pegmatite dike that includes some coarsely crystallized black tourmaline with its classic trigonal (rhombohedral hemimorphic) cross-sections. someone has tramped this land, and in the hunt for extractive wealth, has, literally, left no stone unturned. the West is everywhere scarred by these digs from small two-meter test pits to the massive kilometer-wide open-pit gashes. that mineral bonanza, that natural ‘surplus’ regime drove and still drives the development of the West. straight north of here about 15 kilometers, is the Phelps-Dodge copper/molybdenum open-pit monstrosity. without which, as the old Colorado School of Mines bumper sticker proclaimed Ban Mining, Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark the developed world could not exist.

Do the rest of the drive, feeling on edge — that the conditions at Flagstaff are deteriorating by the minute. No leisurely road-trip photos, only images from the road, social mind floating on radio scanning instead of ipodding. Doing I-40 west from Albuquerque as fast as possible, unfortunately, as the Light is always stimulating across this corner of Arizona and New Mexico. There are serious winter road condition issues in Flag, as expected, and it’s always hairy to be rocketing down the road at speed on ice, not pavement. It’s been worse, but when it’s worse, the interstate is then closed. Very marginal. Very stressful. A relief to finally drop down the Mogollon Rim 3000 feet where the snow turns to rain.

The verdict is that the truck handles very well in winter conditions — with some weight in the back and marginally decent tires.

in deep cold, and emptiness. trees aching. even the Lightest breeze cuts through all layers. a long wander, trekking some mule deer and finding some big cat scat. until feet are too cold to get around. didn’t have a chance to get any firewood on the way through the National Forest, and a fire would hardly help unless large.

it’s so cold in the evening that the electric wires running to the water pump house are buzzing and cracking, even the wooden telephone pole is vibrating and humming. snow underfoot gets that high-pitched crunching whine when walked through. while mind-thoughts drift, reflected off the wide and formative landscape. what to make of all these crossings of path with Others. as time slips. platitudes slip also.

last night it was so cold that almost all my water including the 5 gallon tank froze solid, so, I ended up having to boil a little, pour that into one of the frozen bottles, let it defrost some, boil that, and continue. tonight I boil a liter and pour it into a bottle and put the bottle in the sleeping bag. eventually pushing it down to my feet to stay the night. good idea. much warmer feet. despite some heavy wind and snow. and a fresh liter of warmish water for breakfast.

Long day after another long day after another long day. Seeing faces materializing out of time and time and times again This is what the road brings, a movement into memory. Blizzard happening across most of the western mountains and plains. Driven by Pacific storms rolling in and intersecting with Arctic air masses. Colorado is no exception. Waking at Steve and Gaan’s place, a quick peek out the window shows flurrying snow piling up. And cold temps. Around 15 F. We hang for the morning, chatting about other friends, and life pathways. And politics and nations and economies and on.

Their place is perched on a small mesa, surrounded by juniper and piñon. Gaan had photographed a bobcat in the garden recently. The view was unbroken north to Pikes Peak and west to the Wet Mountains. Mmmm. They had to leave on short notice to meet the guys coming through the blizzard from Denver to clean the grease trap at the restaurant, so I packed up the truck and headed out as well, over to Bill’s place. It was snowing heavy, and Rt. 50 Was already bad, but I made it over where I dropped off the black walnut lumber (missing three pieces that were buried in the bed of the truck). It’s the remaining slabs of wood from the tree that I helped Dad topple and send out to a lumber mill in Frederick. Bill’s going to make a coffee table for me from the wood. We hung out for a couple hours — I gave him a couple 16×20 prints and we talked about plans for the coffee table. Around 1430 I figured I had better head out so I would at least have a chance to make it into the San Luis before sunset.

I-25 south to Walsenburg was nasty, and just out of Pueblo, a couple cars went ripping by me, three minutes later, one of them had launched across the deep median ditch and head on into opposing traffic, three other cars were involved. Two of them completely destroyed. All the windows were gone in the one that passed me and no sign of anyone in the car. Six or seven cars had already stopped, and I felt sick to my stomach, why am I throwing myself down this iced-over road at 55 mph? Why? I slowed and started to double-flash the on-coming traffic who could not yet see the accident, hoping to slow them down before they came on the site. I doubt some of them could stop. Another life done gone. Ambulances passed about 15 minutes later. A bit further down towards Walsenburg the road dried out, the flurries stopped and the clouds allowed some weak sunshine through. The sick stomach feeling persisted for awhile. Made phone calls, it’s Sunday, free minutes. Turned off onto Rt. 160 West to La Veta pass and the Valley. Temps, never high, dropping continuously. Made the far side of the pass right before sunset with some electric views. Stopped repeatedly to shoot with my substandard SLR. Through Fort Garland, following the circular roots of Blanca, the Valley clear, dry, and cold. The Crestones showing chill gray ahead approaching the Dunes. Then darkness. Empty campground. A ranger cruises through in his truck and we chat a bit. He promises to check on me around 10 am tomorrow.

The Milky Way slashed across the sky. A few Geminids, Jupiter and Venus setting a couple hours after sunset. Cold. Heat up a pot of chili that Bill gave me last night, mmm. Just the thing to be eating under these conditions. Arrange things in the back so I can make tea with cream in the morning without getting out of the bag. It will be brutal in the morning with a clear night at 9000 feet up and wedged between two sets of 14,000 footers. No sun before late morning at the earliest. Hanging in the cab writing this text. So far behind on the log. So many things gone down, so many people crossed paths with. So many stories told and heard.

leave Karen and Ron’s place mid-morning after finishing off the networked book proposal, needed to get that uploaded before Monday, and no likely internet connections before that. head south. big accident on I-25 south of C-Spgs. western gusts rock the truck. huge streamers of snow coming off Pikes Peak. get to Steve and Gaan’s place around 1230 and dump some stuff there. we hang for awhile, catching up, and then the three of us head back to Pueblo West to their restaurant (Puukaow Thai) for a Light and very tasty lunch.

then I head over to Ava’s place for Bill and her’s Christmas dinner party where Chris, Rick and Sally, John, Jimmy and Wendy, Emi, Rob, and some others show up in the very exotic Kona Kai apartment complex. the building, a rectangular complex with a large courtyard in the center was built in the 1970′s. the courtyard was covered completely and landscaped with tropical plants which seem to be thriving mightily thirty years later. a complete surprise when entering the doors, especially given the weather about to happen outside.

always nice to catch some face-time with folks not seen so often.

head back to Steve and Gaan’s place where we hang on the deck and get a spectacular display of Geminid fireballs despite the radiation point in Gemini have a fifteen-year-maximum full moon plunked down in the middle of it. hard to imagine the show without the moon, it was intense.

up at 0600, toss the last items in the truck, 0640 departure. head north-by-northeast. one of the five or six route options for traveling between Prescott and Boulder. gas relatively cheap. clear, dry roads. modest traffic. migraine ensues. why? still no answers. face frozen by the icy landscape shape-shifting outside glass cocoon. travel-day migraine.

Navajo voices in my head. a roadblock for a funeral cortege winding in to a ragged and desolate cemetery near Naschitti. a couple Navajo guys hit me up for change at the gas station in Farmington. tens of F350 Ford pickups streaming back in towards Farmington from the gas fields that have raped the region in the last six years since the Bush regime opened up the area to uncontrolled drilling.

migraine persists all day from noon. hard will staved off a gut explosion until going up the gunbarrel (Route 17) from Alamosa, in the dark, an 18-wheeler in front of me going way too slow, and another behind me going way too fast. suddenly, with head simulating internal combustion with Pallas Athena to be birthed out the forehead or so, I have to vomit. no place to pull off without wrecking, fortunately I have a camping wash-tub in the passenger seat that I had some munchies for the trip in. I dump out the food, swing it between me and the steering wheel and immediately heave my guts into it whilst cruising down the road at 50 mph. three times, gah dam. finally a turn-off. so eff-ing fortunate to have the tub, otherwise, it would have covered the entire interior of the cab, likely. get the car stopped on a side-road, without spilling the tub, open the door and dump it, get some water to rinse acid from mouth. nothing has spilled or splattered. gah. another 20 miles to the Dunes. where it is closing on zero degrees Fahrenheit. zombie-driving past the Center of the Universe and on into the empty campground, and then death-by-sleeping in the back of the truck at an empty camp ground at Great Sand Dunes. -20 C/ 0 F cold outside, but toasty warm in fleece and down. 680 miles. 12 hours. some stops. and all that land, passed by the eyes that are set stereoscopically in a head that wants to implode into the single dimension of a deep sleep.

more than a month away from any content here, thinking that this is the longest gap. and it only means that life was more abundant outside the screen than within it. many reflections, some images made, some sounds recorded, but no time to get them through the laborious process of appending to this space. it’ll be a retrospective effort to add things later: this blogged beast a complicated armature for expression.

water moving, water being moved requires energy. lifting it, as with any other substance, requires energy. falling, it releases that energy; having it flow through pipes requires that there be stored a substantial amount at a higher level or pressure at one end of the pipe than at the other end of the pipe. water flowing is a release of energy. still water is potential energy.

and crickets keep the night alive especially when sleeping on the porch.

back with the Kiel crew. Fritz as bright-eyed as ever. talking a lot. calling my name with a very cute accent. dear child.

Christian’s mum is there as well. we chat about student exchanges which were so formative in their family.

but NO photos, how can this be? slacking yet again on the portrait side of things. constructions sounds from Düppelstrasse are the only fragments gathered up.

on to the market with Steffi and Oma.

picking up brüchen for neighbors and the homies.

slid through half of 2008 already. dates, times, places, people, beds, meals, things. which ordered set drives it all? here in Ice Land, as I write on this (which?) trip. despite relatively warm weather 10+C / 55+F or so. several trips to the pool already. borrowing Loki’s bike. staying at Sigrun’s place that she generously offered while she and Stefan are away in the east on holiday for the next week. it’s a block from the pool, so I can wander down there at leisure.

Haukur’s attic room is the perfect spot — nice Light, an external monitor for working, and, if there was only time, lots of music, dvds, and books to check out.

on to the pool again. 50 meters, sunshine, and not too many tourists. other places could learn some lessons about pool management — shoes off before you enter the locker room, everybody showers without suits or is not allowed to go to the pool.

geesh, Junkers JU-52′s flying over the city. two weeks ago it was the Douglas C-47′s, now it’s the Junkers. does this have any geopolitical significance? I was feeling a bit funny the first time I saw one of those planes flying over Germany some years back. so that’s what it was like — to see low-level paratroopers pouring out of those things (not sure how often the Wehrmacht did that, but). or just a slew of those plowing across the country skies, bringing troops to the battle.

just back into town, now I recognize when I hear one of these machines. accustomed, but aware.

headed down (south-east) into Brandenburg to Zeesen to visit with Ulrike at the family dacha (well, actually a large and nicely designed home of her parents — the dacha is in the back yard.) she’s up from Zürich for the weekend. the lake is a few meters away. it is delicious. nothing like skinny-dipping in a summertime lake in the German countryside.

she tells about her uncle who lives next door in his beautiful rammed-earth house. I am fascinated to run across this technology existing here in Germany. and there is Sunny, the happy bulldog. conversation drifts along wide paths through language. Saturn setting in alignment with the first-quarter moon, Mars high, Venus rising only in the early morning. nice to sit in the top-floor deck and watch stars, though the sky does not get completely dark any more as the Solstice approaches.

flying in: back in Lithuania. immediately the impression of the system not having changed much. not like the transformations happening in Berlin. aside from the few tourist drags, the town is like it was four years ago. and the system still resonates a deep conservative polarity with an inertia still flowing in resistance to … anything new.

lunch with Mindaugas with the first of several very mediocre meals. and meet Viktorija and Agle, the enthusiastic and hard-working student union officers who are organizing the whole workshop. I am impressed immediately with their determination to make a difference. sadly it is exactly these kinds of spirits who are the ones who leave Lithuania because a realization that things are not changing.

got to tour the Academy, with all it’s meter-thick walls and pre-Gothic arched ceilings. no wonder the wi-fi (communications) network doesn’t work so well. the place is naturally shielded from anything, it is part of some older church construction. a convent chapel or so. along with a 1970′s-era structure which is quite intense. in the center of the complex are two major churches, St. Francis’ and the Bernardine. there were the big changes from the East-West polarization collapsing, but since then there are few if any shifts in the faculty, and worse, the mentality. departments are rigidly defined by materialist agendas and territories of control. students are given only cursory freedom to innovate. huh? how do they survive. stoic, a little like Icelanders, but dreaming of more, with Europe at the doorstep. thank god for the Erasmus exchange program which allows the most adventurous to escape to better things.

Alvydas, head of the Media Department, the most open situation in the Academy, mentions again the idea of inviting me back as guest faculty, but I have reservations. on one hand any place is tolerable for a year, but it would be a serious challenge to cope with the conservative vectors in the social system.

we stay in rooms reserved at the academy hostel, in the guest’s wing, with windows opening on a small street that is so loud, it’s hard to carry on a conversation with the window even cracked open. the garbage truck rattles the windows and so does each car blasting up the street. stone walls, narrow streets, no speed limits, bad roads — equals intense noise levels.

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes.
– Fritjof Capra

take the bus from Maastricht, Rod sees me off at the bus stop just 100 meters east of the border. arrival in Hasselt, waiting for the free bus to the Grote Markt seems a waste of time, and indeed it is only a 5-minute walk to the hotel. (after being in Berlin, when consulting a map, the scalar sizes of cities is suspect). another bed, another random coagulation of humans – a workshop, seminar, conference, happening. begin to meet folks. chili dinner with early arrivers. negotiating some flexibility in the pre-formed structures. more notes on this later.

make it over to Rod & Lizbet’s place in Maastricht just on time at 1900 for a fine fish dinner. another visit. Magnús is there already. nice to be back. audio forthcoming from the weekend — what more to expect with a bunch of sound artists hanging out! I’ll be helping Tom work on the VEC site which is a platform he constructed to showcase Rod’s work. more on that later as well. always too many things to get done.

in transit. first trip in two months. to Amsterdam. it takes about 6 hours door-to-door from my place to Raul & Truis’s place on Overtoom. May Day. turns out that May Day really isn’t celebrated so seriously in Netherlands, so I’m told. unlike the heavy things that go on in Berlin. nice to catch up with them. I help Raul deal with fridge magnets for an exhibition in Bogota.

no time to catch up with this stuff. in to the City to meet Josephine… we catch a show Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by the performance group 1927 at the PS122 theater/performance space. funky animations, gingerbread men, glittery eyes on stage, piano, singing, the Lodger, and the orange Imagine backpack with peace sign, while the show goes on …

chilling out, some waiting, planning the spring which seems to be falling in place (nicely). a second teaching gig comes up, et al. as well, some other future teaching possibilities. falling into some order and potential, although the bigger questions remain unanswered. the discipline and focus to create in textual realms remains the greatest challenge.

the rumored severe winter storm becomes only a Light sleet. despite all the globe-girdling technological network of weather sensors, they are wrong. it is a modest fall. mostly rain and a bit of sleet. windy.

The Meteorological Society … has been formed not for a city, nor for a kingdom, but for the world. It wishes to be the central point, the moving power, of a vast machine. … It desires to have at its command, at stated periods, perfect systems of methodical and simultaneous observations; it wishes its influence and its power to be omnipresent over the globe … to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere on every point on its surface. — John Ruskin

feeling pretty lousy with this hanging-on cold, but a chilly and wet trip by bus in to reboot is rewarded with some very nice crossings-of-paths — Keiko (talking share tokyo plans), Elsa (talking Lisboa and roguewaves plans), Anton, Dan; from share.montreal, Jim (is a polar/solar bear, surprise, surprise, yes, indeed, very nice to discover this!) and Marie-Hélène; as was Katherine (another polar bear! great!). head home somewhat early with Dan and Emily to their place in Brooklyn for the night, then back to Jersey the next afternoon.

Emily’s got a nice collection of conscious education books from her studies at Columbia’s Teacher’s College, I take some time to dig into a few of them for some good jolts. she fills me in on her work developing kids’ social networking platforms for the non-profit takingitglobal.org.

see at a distance an undesirable person;
see close at hand a desirable person;
come closer to the undesirable person;
move away from the desirable person;
coming closer and moving apart,
how interesting life is.
– Gensho Ogura

back to bed. where are the manacles? ;-) after a nice party for Barbara & Klause’s combined birthdays. some interesting discussions with friends and neighbors. development policies of the Landes government. as well as on the politic of the current US regime. ach!

love those German skyLight-windows. the best engineered window around, and sleeping under one, under the stars and rain, bundled in down, is very fine.

now about them bingo-wings …

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
If you see a waterfall
Don’t forget to scream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the river
If you see a polar bear
Don’t forget to shiver

Row, row, row your boat
Gently to the shore
If you see a lion
Don’t forget to roar

Row, row, row your boat
Gently in the bath
If you see a spider
Don’t forget to laugh

Row, row, row your boat
Gently as can be
‘Cause if you’re not careful
You’ll fall into the sea!

Rock, rock, rock your boat
Gently to and fro
If you do it hard enough
Into the water you go

uff, just when displacement seemed banished from thinking and imagination, here in Kiel to help strip all things from one apartment and install them in a house down the street. all in about 24 hours. not counting the packing up process which I missed while in Bremen. the actual move from the fourth-floor walk-up to the 1920′s mansion down the street in the affluent Düsternbrook neighborhood takes four hours. a crew of seven or eight college students and their boss, Leander (a multi-talented guy!), making the transition relatively painless.

for Steffi & Zorak, maybe a different story. beautiful new house, but much finishing work to be done, a flat on the second floor to be vacated in mid-November, a kitchen to be installed at the beginning of the next month, a cellar undergoing major repairs. and boxes. and boxes. and boxes. not to mention a sumptuous garden-intensive yard, garden house, garage, and all the accoutrements that a house brings. Fritz is the first to settle in. when all the world is new at one-year-old, a new house is merely another new-ness in days full of impressive living at the fore-front of be-ing.

lunch of goulash at Thomas’ place across the street. the street lined with early 20th century mansions. it has the vibe of the Glen Ridge neighborhood where Stefan and Ellen live. strange to get this similarity across this wide geo-social distance. although the BauMarkt and the Home Depot are also identical. the latter the same-ness of globalization. the former, the same-ness of local community.

okay, how does this guy in Bremen manage to sell these things so cheap? Martin says that the wursts are made locally, too. as we make a short tour of downtown on share-bremen night. Jürgen is sick. but we see some interesting art work.

The truth is that there is not enough of the right kind of freedom, the fundamental freedom to choose to be free or not to be free, according to one’s preference …. Thus I demand, for each and every member of human society, freedom of association according to inclination and of activity according to aptitude. In other words, the absolute right to choose the political surroundings in which to live, and to ask for nothing else. — Paul Emile de Puydt

perambulate with snoozing Fritz through the Düsternbrooke Schutzgebiet nearby while Christian & Steffi get ready to go to Zurich for the weekend. acorns (tall oaks from tiny acorns grow!) and chestnuts crunch and pop underfoot. wander past a moldy granite marker with the word Königsbuche (Royal Beech Tree) engraved on it. often when in Germany in larger towns, and in the parks on those towns, I look for the inevitable craters that are sprinkled through the underbrush and between trees. sometimes when the forest floor is clear of brush, it is possible to see rows of craters. filled with water and rotting branches. other places, hills in city parks are merely the wooded remains of debris piles made from clearing destroyed buildings from city streets.

whump whump whump. high-explosives falling in sandy soil. splintering trees into smoking piles of largish toothpicks, sending plumes of shattered glass, brick, ornamental plaster work, and wooden beams into the air and down on the neighbors.

past the tennis club, girls with dogs smiling brightly at me. is it the pram that throws them off? or the combination of my black leather jacket and bright red hoodie sticking out. black and red is not a forgettable color constellation in this country.

back with laughing friends. good deal. and some serious ‘death from above’ action. hard to imagine that I’ll be taking care of two of those beasts in December…