King Soopers #645, 12350 West 64th Avenue
10.683 gallons
$2.969/gallon
$31.72

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. — Matthew 10:8-14

1st Stop #6015, 11185 Ralston Road
10.635 gallons
$3.119/gallon
$33.17

1st Stop #6015, 11185 Ralston Road
7.309 gallons
$3.219/gallon
$23.53

Shell, 12401 West 64th Avenue
8.564 gallons
$3.349/gallon
$28.68

Golden Sinclair, 601 12th Street
10.167 gallons
$3.479/gallon
$35.37

King Soopers #645, 12350 West 64th Avenue
9.545 gallons
$3.299/gallon
$31.49

Shell, 12401 West 64th Avenue
10.299 gallons
$3.439/gallon
$35.42

Framing (of) the Flow: re-distribution and the occupation of Wall Street.

A closer look at protocol and flow: the guiding of energies that is applied by protocol, how protocol affects flow, and, finally, how flow affects the distribution of energy and power in a system.

Re-distribution arrives: a media blurb in the face of the ruling class, framing their stupid public squabbles that now merely parrot vacuous resonances of “Let them eat cake.”

Any techno-social system (TSS) is fundamentally comprised of a set of pathways along which ‘naturally’ occurring energy (re)sources are directed ostensibly for the overall good of that system. (note: not necessarily for the good of each individual participant in that system!) The imposition of these directed pathways suggests that the resulting distribution of the energies flowing from those sources is not uniform: there are concentrations of energy (power!) and consequently there are regions of energy (order!) deficit. (note: the flows are not merely defined by spatial and temporal frames of reference!) These inequities are present from the moment that ‘naturally’ occurring flows are re-directed in service of the techno-social system. It is largely because of the specific nature of the imposed protocols which (re)direct the flows that the distributions of energy are consequently imbalanced. (At the same time it is important to remember that energy/power is not distributed evenly at any scale!)
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In speaking about the US military, I’ve often used the simplified example that it has only six weeks of strategic petroleum reserves (of sweet and sour crude) that it can reliably deploy in the short-term. When that oil runs out the military machine largely grinds to a halt. I decided I needed to fill out the nuances of the situation by tapping into some CSIS briefings on Operational Energy Strategy looking at optimization, reduction of consumption, and implementation of systems that make the logistical problems of fuel access and dependence mission-neutral. There is a government site documenting some of the issues. And there is the DOD Energy Blog. These sources provide a number of in-depth explorations which illustrate the vulnerability of the overall techno-social system to energy deprivation and the current rising crisis which dominoes behind greater world energy demand.
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. — R.M. Rilke

1st Stop #6015, 11185 Ralston Road
9.908 gallons
$3.499/gallon
$34.67

Conoco, 3201 Wadsworth Blvd.
8.719 gallons
$3.459/gallon
$30.16

The World is a Sacred Vessel …
As for those who would take the whole world
To tinker as they see fit,
I observe that they never succeed:
For the world is a sacred vessel
Not made to be altered by man.
The tinker will spoil it;
Usurpers will lose it.

For indeed there are things
That must move ahead,
While others must lag;
And some that feel hot,
While others feel cold;
And some that are strong,
While others are weak;
And vigorous ones,
While others worn out.

So the Wise Man discards
Extreme inclinations
To make sweeping judgments,
Or to a life of excess.
– Lao Tzo, Tao te Ching, Chapter 26

Shell, 7970 Wadsworth Blvd.
8.415 gallons
$3.449/gallon
$29.02

What am I supposed to do in a group of militants who expect me to leave in the cloakroom, I won’t say a few ideas — for my ideas would have led me to join the group — but the dreams and desires which never leave me, the wish to live authentically and without restraint? What’s the use of exchanging one isolation, one monotony, one lie for another? When the illusion of real change has been exposed, a mere change of illusion becomes intolerable. But present conditions are precisely these: the economy cannot stop making us consume more and more, and to consume without respite is to change illusions at an accelerating pace which gradually dissolves the illusion of change. We find ourselves alone, unchanged, frozen in the empty space behind the waterfall of gadgets, family cars and paperbacks.

People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure but of the use to which they are put, which is precisely what stops us enjoying them. — Raoul Vaneigem (The Revolution of Everyday Life)

the day after the ascent of a 14,000+ footer (Grays Peak, near Silverplume), no sore-ness. remarkable, considering the intensity of the cardio work that such an effort entails. heart-throb rising from chest to throat to head as altitude is gained.

heading back into deep work on the thesis after a string of field research expeditions and dislocations. the gathering of material is continuous, as is the (plodding) process of getting archive material up (see new (old) stuff)

then, back to work.

So human social organizations constantly reconstitute themselves through a flow of members and other adjunct materials, information, and energy. Many of these are selectively favored through a continuing expansion or effort to expand above their original size. Such organizations may reach a point at which further expansion is blocked, and budding off is the only alternative to continue. The blockage may be due to internal structural problems, such as a Marxian internal contradiction, or the appearance of revolutions, and so on; or, to external constraints–such as furious neighboring states, or a strongly competitive market enterprise. — Richard Adams

I would suggest that the enumerated items — members, materials, information, and energy — may be re-categorized into energy, and the embodied and surrounding protocols (flow pathways accumulated through shared (social) information). Materials should be ignored in the sense that they are ultimately manifestations of energy: traditionalists are be encouraged to consider that the concept of ‘things’ and of static ‘materials’ are merely convenient constructs to be transcended or shed in the stead of energy and flow…

Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Ta… impossible, when writing, to accede, to yield tradition to this, eh?

badly developed negative fourteen years before the demise of these monuments.

on a day spent at altitude (zenith at 14,270 feet (4350 m.) up Grays Peak); with hypersonic overflights of military aircraft, some close enough to distinguish under-wing weapon arrays. are they joy-flying on regular deployments, or is this some memorial act?

a couple hours online between bouts of wild(er)ness solo and with old friends. have a long conversation with a solo hiker up in Mill Creek this morning. Steve lives out of his modest Toyota RV, a retired engineer, spends 5 months a year hiking in the Colorado high country.

Loves # 007, 108 South 12th Street
4.942 gallons
$3.629/gallon
$17.93

Loaf N Jug, 448 Highway 50 East
7.372 gallons
$3.539/gallon
$26.09

King Soopers #612, 3050 West Northern Avenue
6.821 gallons
$3.529/gallon
$24.07

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis

verily on the road. but many complexities to solve or let spin away. walking in the High Country clears head, but raises certain questions. as does convocation time with good friends. influence comes from all directions with the flows of ambient energy. some are more powerful than others. subtlety is a factor.

First Stop #5504, 805 Grand Avenue
2.589 gallons
$3.599/gallon
$9.32

Everyday #5715, 300 East Pagosa
9.045 gallons
$3.599/gallon
$32.55

Kayeenta Chevron, Junction 160 and 163
4.824 gallons
$3.739/gallon
$18.04

the madness of the road transforms into … peace …

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Circle K #5922, 5650 North Highway 89
6.376 gallons
$3.349/gallon
$21.35

Safeway, 1031 North Highway 89
10.249 gallons
$3.339/gallon
$34.22

usual or unusual translocations arising and coming-to-be, a different state of be-ing is the chief outcome. no base except the network. as usual, complicated questions, multi-plex answers. yee-haw!

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. — Robert Kennedy

From his University of Cape Town, South Africa N.U.S.A.S. “Day of Affirmation” speech. Looks to be an interesting film.

Woody’s #133, 1253 Iron Springs Road
11.125 gallons
$3.329/gallon
$37.04

if creativity cannot be taught, cannot be ‘made’ to happen, how best to approach the assumption that it can be fostered or stimulated within situations?

one answer to this is a consideration of the meta-structure of flows that characterize a particular situation. I have talked about meta-structures elsewhere. to begin with, each instance itself is only ‘separated’ from everything else through a process of abstracted defining. separation is an abstraction, a reduction of the actuality of holistic, immersed, and connected being and presence. so, best not to consider separation, distinction, and particularities. rather, retain a sensibility to all possible flows, or flow in general. easy to say, despite the (English) language being wholly insufficient to deal with such concepts. (Csikszentmihalyi is pretty good at making a natural language argument for flow, though he comes from a completely different direction than me, the conclusions are similar, will explore that when I shuffle through some of the references…)

so, back to the meta-structures. okay, suspending my suggestion of a holistic approach, a specific example of a meta-structural condition is Lighting. the Light which suffuses a situation presents a crucial ground on which the situation unfolds. deep into a dialogue on education, I recall Wolfgang mentioning to me that he had a class (possibly more) meet in a space that could be completely blacked-out. brilliant! later, during an advanced digital media class that I taught at Boulder, I had the students curate one day of class a week, so we would meet in different places. once we met at a horse stable and had class on horseback. another time, it was in a fully blacked-out room in the belly of the CU library complex. it altered the nature of the ‘classroom’ encounter. how did it alter it? I don’t recall the de-briefing that we followed it up with, but it was clear that, obviously, the qualitative aspects of encounter were shifted. one of the reasons I did this kind of shifting of venue was to instill a sensibility of how encounter is shifted when immersed in different regimes of flow. it provides a starting point to any discussion about, for example, online presence (versus presence in a dark room, or presence on a horse, or presence in a living room, etc) it seems obvious to state that varying the Lighting in a typical sterile classroom can go a long way to repairing the alienating damage inflicted by an architecture of oppression which typifies many place of learning. of course, Light is a much more profound force that can cause all sorts of nuanced environmental effects. Light is the essence of flow (as one ‘form’ of flow which is distinguishable to our evolutionarily-determined embodiment). it is essentially infinite in its range of affects.

if creativity is a condition of (open) flow, then a consideration of (all!) the conditions of flow impinging on a situation is imperative. intuition itself is a good indicator of this. most people will immediately acknowledge that a typical classroom situation is not conducive to learning. they may not be able to nail down a reason, but they instinctively know that there is something wrong with the flows or something antithetical to true learning that are present in those kinds of spaces. I have used the example, when teaching at Uni Bremen, where we have a room with a particular vibe to it. it faces a busy autobahn not far away, but at the same time is very ‘stuffy.’ windows open for ‘fresh air’ (what’s that exactly?); windows closed for the noise from the autobahn (what’s that exactly?)

the open window presents us with a chaotic flow of energy. (it’s cold! (it threatens organismic viability)) (it’s noisy (it threatens social cohesion and social/academic viability)) the closed window is safe, flows are restricted, controlled by buffers, circumscribed by protocols (ANSI rating of windows, sound-proofing in ceiling/walls) — no more threat, no more noise; but wait, we can’t breath! (organismic viability threatened again!). there was a rough consensus that the room had a negative vibe ‘because’ of these issues and more, so, we took over other spaces, and sought out other situations where we could encounter each other in the course of the workshops — in restaurants, in cafes, by a lake, in the woods, in a beer garden, in museums — and this clearly gave a solid grounding on a range of qualitative potentialities of affect. when flow existed, everyone forgot about where they were, they were immersed as though in air. we are not consciously (much) aware of the particularities when flow occurs, but rather when flows are constricted. which makes sense in that viability depends on discovering novel sources of energy and extant known sources.

this kind of intuitive, overt, covert struggle goes on constantly as we try to balance the imposed social protocols along which flow has been directed versus the desire to optimize our own (idiosyncratic) viability by seeking out a combination of known/unknown and controlled/chaotic flows for ourselves to immerse within…

in another instance, where I was to do an evening seminar at the University of Art and Design in Zurich which is housed in a magnificent example of Bauhaus architecture. I was brought to the space where I was to meet with the students. the room was horrible — bad acoustics, bad ventilation, bad furniture — so, before the talk started, I had about 30 minutes to hang out, so I took all the furniture and made chaotic piles of it around the space. a bit in protest, but also just to see what would happen. the immediate thing that I observed when people started to arrive was that, after a fraction of a second trying to apprehend what was going on, people zoomed in to seats as though they were being guided by wire. it was a good example of how intuitively people will operate to idiosyncratically hone in on the situation that appears to most augment their viability as they understand it… some people added to this a sensibility that they would decrease the overall level of disorder by re-placing the tables and chairs in some kind of order for others. I recall that the discussion after the seminar that evening was very intense and power-full. I suspect that any learning situation that combines a strong intellectual component with some kind of physical, embodied element will have a far more powerful affect than either of those in isolation.

and so on. enough for today.

Hitler’s worldview included copious referencing of Nordic creation mythologies (thus his love of Wagner!), and as a consequence of this there developed strong pro-Nazi movements leading up to, through, and most disturbingly, after WWII in all the Nordic/Scandic countries (Scandinavian countries as a group are all the Nordic countries, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, plus Finland). Iceland was no exception to these Nazi sympathies — documented by black-and-white images of uniformed goose-stepping rubes on parade in downtown Reykjavík before the 1940 British occupation, and the refusal of Icelandic authorities to allow African-American soldiers into the country during the later US occupation. These warped sympathies have persisted right up to the present time: a fact that was brought to my attention by a sequence of articles published in Iceland’s main national newspaper, Morgunbladid, back in the early 1990′s when I had recently immigrated to Reykjavík to take up residence with my future ex-wife, an Icelandic psychologist who I had met in Germany a few years previous. The current events in Norway bring all this back to mind, again… (more …)

sorry Amy, damn, “Amy Amy Amy,” “Fuck-me Pumps,” “Me and Mr. Jones,” “Help Yourself.” You left too soon, darlin’! Maybe you and Janice are doing the dozens in a temperate place, both of you all of 27 years on, damn…

Woody’s #133, 1253 Iron Springs Road
10.798 gallons
$3.349/gallon
$36.16

ignoble subservient drudgery or honorable exploitation?

As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments. Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy, honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary to say something of its derivation and meaning. — Torsten Veblen

In this moment of history, the values of dignity, honor, worth should be examined closely by all members of the political/economic elite (though they would have small care over such things), for it is clear that the situation of the commoner in Amurikan society is one where these attributes are being more or less quickly stripped from their lives of servitude to financial institutions. There are still choices one might make which are liberating to a limited degree, but the pressures to conform to the demands of that fiscal/market system are overwhelming to most.

Is another pathway possible?