Insipid: this posting over @ the New Yorker is just too friggin kind to the whole concept. Retro is so … empty …

Susan Sontag is not empty and to use her full words to do anything but obliterate the whole inane concept of instagram is a travesty.

An ultimately readable and thought-provoking book by one Kenneth Farnish available online for free (at the Internet Archive) that examines where we are, how we got here, and what may lie ahead.

In so many words, a chunk of my dissertation makes the same point — the embeddedness of our be-ing here, now. Farnish just makes it all extremely readable as a journalist should. I happened to make it darker, and definitely more dense. oh well.

Howard’s new book is finally out, looks pretty interesting and pertinent, will have to order it at the library…

Code of Federal Regulations

571.203 Standard No. 203; Impact protection for the driver from the steering control system

S1. Purpose and scope. This standard specifies requirements for steering control systems that will minimize chest, neck, and facial injuries to the driver as a result of impact.

S2. Application. This standard applies to passenger cars and to multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks and buses with a GVWR of 10,000 pounds or less. However, it does not apply to vehicles that conform to the frontal barrier crash requirements (S5.1) of Standard No. 208 (49 CFR 571.208) by means of other than seat belt assemblies. It also does not apply to walk-in vans.
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The first short narrative illustrates a single dimension of Patel’s multi-faceted and very readable treatise that covers the connection between politics, economics, human rights, and democracy. He maps out a set of powerful view points on the blighted and complex landscape of the contemporary social milieu. Somewhat harsh, especially in juxtaposition with conventional ‘wisdom,’ Patel makes a strong argument for a more humane pathway to an egalitarian society.

It’s hard to brightly imagine that when we decide to retreat to the desert or to the mountains to walk, it is a process deeply colored and, literally, in-formed by relatively recent cultural contingency.

The retreat is steeped in a socially constructed reality that began to emerge around William Wordsworth and J. J. Rousseau’s time and was sparked, in part, by their actual perambulations and especially the writings that welled-up whilst they were on the road (The Excursion, by Wordsworth, for example, and Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker).

But in a completely different sense, walking (and be-ing while walking) is ahistorical. Because the present moment is never to be repeated, nor is a life-time to happen twice, the momentary events of that particular movement are unique, and uniquely inspiring. Embodied movement is a passage through the flux of difference, regardless of the pathway. And although I cannot anymore go to the delicious extremes of span and height and endurance that so many others have done and will do, it is not extremity that brings the timeless essence of movement. When all is change, the senses can be taught to more sense the minute difference of the everyday. In this, the near becomes just as exotic and inspiring as the far and less reachable places.

Freedom in the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing

Absolutely brilliant talk by Eben Moglen — Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, and founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center — at an Internet Society – New York Chapter event back in February of this year.

In these two videos he presents an image of what exactly happened in terms of the internet infrastructure, completely outside the purview of political or wide social awareness which presents extreme danger to the fundamentals of our civil society. Explicit, clear, concise insights into the situation presented by corporate ‘log aggregators’ like Google and Facebook as well as the issues underlying how they threaten YOUR freedom.

Researching more of Wilhelm’s powerful translation work that continues to widen an opening door into an ultimately livable space. The dorsal/ventral (toku – nin or Circulation of Light) breathing technique elucidated here — even when practiced with flawed concentration — has an immediate and profound affect on the state of the system. I am even surprised with the intensity of change which ensues. The body is straighter, uplifted, and the balance of body heat has shifted drastically — the chronically over-heated head is cooler, the feet and hands warmer. This shift has not yet directly impacted rising gall (yang) in surprise (reactive) situations, but when the breathing becomes first nature, it appears to have the potential to do that. The base-line of calm has shifted for the better. Will have to consult Heiji about these affects. A daily practice of some minutes, with as many reminders shot through the many unconscious moments of non-breathing, seems to be an auspicious start. There is no going back on this discovered knowledge.

It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don't people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]

The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:

1. Sit on the forward third of a chair or cushion.

2. Arrange your legs in a position you can maintain comfortably. In the half-lotus position, place your left leg on your right thigh (or vice versa). In the full-lotus position , put your feet on opposite thighs. You may also sit simply with your legs tucked in close to your body, but be sure that your weight is distributed evenly on three points: Both of your knees on the ground and your buttocks on the round cushion. On a chair, keep your knees apart about the width of your shoulders, feet firmly planted on the floor.

3. Straighten and extend your spine, keeping it naturally upright, centering your balance in the lower abdomen. Push your lower back a little forward, open your chest, and tuck your chin in slightly, keeping the head upright, not leaning forward, or backward, or to the side. Sway your body gently from left to right, until you naturally come to a point of stillness on your cushion.

4. Keep your eyes cast on the floor about 3 to 4 feet in front of your body, eyes neither fully opened nor closed. If the eyes are closed, you might start to daydream or visualize things.

5. Keep your lips and teeth together with your tongue resting against the roof of your mouth.

6. Place your hands on your lap with the right palm up and your left hand (pal up) resting on your right hand, thumb-tips lightly touching, forming a horizontal oval. This is the mudra of zazen, in which all things are unified. Place the sides of the little fingers against your abdomen, a few inches below the navel, harmonizing your center of gravity with the mudra.

7. Take a few breaths, exhaling fully. Let your breath settle into its natural rhythm. With proper physical posture, your breathing will flow naturally into your lower abdomen.

8. Sit still and keep your attention on your breath. When your attention wanders, bring it back to the breath again and again — as many times as necessary!

9. Be fully, vitally present. Simply do your very best. At the end of your sitting period, gently sway your body from right to left. Stretch out your legs; be sure they have feeling before standing.

10. Practice every day for ten to fifteen minutes (or more) and you will discover the treasures of your life.

Moore knows rivers, wet places, how to feel, how to transliterate feelings, and how to see, but I’m not in consonance with her characterization of the desert. drawing emotion onto that landscapes seems to place the human over that which is not known as though it was known. something like the common personification of animals and the position of pets in the social system. the desert is a transform mapping of the Void. why personify that? seems corrupt to add human stuff(ing) onto it.

month’s ending. All Hallows. images accruing in a form to share — 1996 (of this travelog) will be augmented first. complications with Berlin logistics, may throw off the November trip. and force a cancellation of Transmediale collaboration, hmmm. recalls the cafe9.net debacle in 1999.

end of the month, Friday.

finished with the DFW immersion. Oblivion is a brilliant set of stories, each one containing numerous positions, layers, points-of-view, (what to call the vantage of his voice/eye?). maybe the term channels applies. he has a multi-tasking eye, picking up information not just at the focal point of optics, but instead, immaculate macular generation. he has the recall, along with synthesis. imagination? springing from impression and spreading out through spaces which have not been mapped in that exact way. an example of voice-declaiming-self’s-model-of-cosmos. with a pivotal crux for the entire collection coming on page 326:

‘Who?’ She had ten weeks to live.

the deeply buried oblivion of our situation, now. everywhere. whenever. a weepy sad sketch of the human conditions. here, now. whenever. and a stiff finger punched into the chest of gloating cultural superiority. it all falls down.

how to push shaped impulse charges out, through the gate of psyche. and while pushing out, receive direct all the more.

finally got around to reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, an overview of the New Physics. it’s somewhat dated, but still carries a nice historical narrative with observations on the uncertainty of the whole thing that is being dealt with. watching a video (produced in Japan), on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. speaking with the Dalai Lama and others. all of whom were dying. phone call from Nick. catching up. possible travel plans to Missouri; also talked to Greg, possible travel to Seattle and BC or Moab. proposals off to NIFCA for a curators position. and waiting on the doctoral proposal. reading more than I have in the last years, on average. wider, and deeper. note-taking. resonating with stylistic text forms across academia, science, philosophy, technology, engineering, and esoterica. but unemployed at the same time. dog-sitting, using the riding-mower to cut some of the lawn, joined the YMCA since the college pool is closed now. getting used to a different regimen. lifting in the cybex room. sore today. getting my sunglasses replaced finally, ebay for a pair of artcraft round gold frames since they no longer make them. gotta call Kate at IBM to see about her open source connection. what else? weeding. and many emails to Europe for a fall tour. and the need to get back out to the desert on the moonless nights.

paint-by-number. reminds me of summers at Aunt Mary’s house, she loved doing paint-by-number kits. now she is an excellent painter, starting to free-style after retiring to Florida.

“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 man without a name is nobody. A man’s name can become more important that 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. — Edward Abbey

plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, after years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” seems dated, depressing, even dark. so much of the landscape that he passed through is 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 face of 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 dotting the land with 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 on atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, hydrologic systems are being irretrievably altered. what of the domination of a species which will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live shortly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to 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 feldspars in the granite. there were four of them literally stuck to 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, s/he was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. the other three were literally 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 beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

parallel to everything else, a close read of “Book of the Hopi” by Frank Waters, along with Truth of a Hopi prepares me for the return to Arizona. springtime and rioting wild flowers. need to get to some petroglyphs to read some located media. with a sonic environment generated from nasa tv, Alan Watts, and raudio @ park.nl, along with helicopters flying over.

what to be said. reading Science (main publication from the AAAS), and The Lucifer Principle, by Howard Bloom. thinking, but not writing.

no thing has changed. all conditions change. tired of language. stopping to consume from the archive. the database that, if I did not have, in its massively material form, it would free me to live in the moment. digitizing is no answer because that process does not remove the weight of that past. only complete transformation (by fire) would accomplish that. burnt offering to the present, to presence. if a practice was subsequently developed.

actually approaching the limb of the eighth year of this journal. meanwhile reading, or rather adsorbing, David Abram’s book “The Spell of the Sensuous,” (recommended by a mutual friend, Eric Fisher) which confirms obliquely several crucial practices that I had not yet been able to firmly frame in my worldview. pleasing and stimulating. but reasons for characterizing drift into stretches where only poetics are meaningless for navigation of the now. discrete, concrete, miscreant. mechanical words, stripped of any life leave traces that mar what is left behind the wave of hand, brush of hair, shadow of hand on the back of the head. what is the be-ing-ness of Light?