No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream — alone. — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

my entry for the exhibition womanifesto Procreation/Postcreation in Bangkok that Varsha asked me to join — turns out that she uses the simple entry as a main element of the exhibition poster, invites, and publication (it’s the spiral line of text)!

____________________________________________

procreation:

creativity is energy-in-motion

the essence of motion, movement, is energy

the quickening of the spirit

a look around to apprehend the Other

a dialogue begins

small flows of energy between two

fundamental creation, life

one plus one equals three

primal phenomenon

__________________________________________________

and then WAR starts, so much hype. madness. and the situation here. seeing hospitals again. and mortality. why do people want to kill? to add to the misery of living that already smothers so much life on this planet.

whole seasons peel away, onion skin, how many left. Black Elk speaks, through his transcribed words. loudly, clearly, and with no fear for his own idiosyncrasy. and full of knowing relevance and wisdom.

long since I have had time and concentration to write anything here — the flip-side of travel — immobility, and parenting. realizing that the daily chore list with about 20 items, from taking out the garbage to watering the little cactus plant he has, needs not to be rewarded with cash: the almighty allowance needs a total rebuild as a concept. the rewards need to be time with Loki. focused time playing with him — and not homework time, either. putting the full attention of love on him. he’s in need of that. I see the diffidence that he is learning, and it’s not good. and when doing activities, focus on his situation, rather than a focus on the activity (frisbee as a good example) … while the focused sessions have made him a very good frisbee player, he doesn’t enjoy it as much as he could … he often tries to make it more fun, but I’m just too serious. Lighten up! what can I say, initiating lectures at the university about Light, life, energy, and creativity. bring it on home!

considering that 12 December came and went, not note-worthy. one year since I’ve been on a plane, following the previous year where I was on around 100 separate plane flights. strange immobility, yet with a T1 line running into the living room, I am more active internationally than ever. projecting presence at variety of people. scattered across the globe.

At least 15 people have been injured in a bomb blast at a hotel in the Colombian capital, Bogota. The blast occurred in a restaurant on the 30th floor of Hotel Tequendama, which is owned by the Colombian military, officials said. — BBC World Service

brings to deep mind the inscrutable events that were wrapped around me in that very hotel, 18 years ago. less inscrutable with this brief news report. makes total sense. working for UnoCal, of course we would have to stay in a hotel run by the Colombian military. strange things happened to me in that place. not to mention out in the Llanos, the plains to the east of the Sierra uplift. Fuera Yanquis!!

I awoke I answered we keep on living I began to think of endless transformation
and in gesture like a secret afterward I began to think of these phrases
they really were flying closer and they turned into words
dawn was the summit and night was speaking
for reasons that were flying closer
suddenly the sounds poured endlessly into my life because I didn’t use words
taken from the world both created and enforced
I began to think of whiteness
this shining road back to the surface of the final sound
– John Cayley

going by an estate sale. owner of a house has died in a biking wreck the day before embarking with his son on a tour of Italy, family took what they wanted, then contracted with an estate agent to sell the rest (overheard in the garage). basically the detailed contents of the guys life. people rummaging through each room, price tags on many items, others just piled in boxes. clothing, toiletries, books, videos, Christmas ornaments, everything. that’s it. you can’t take it with you becomes a flashing neon motto in my brain. and dreams of the night circulate around a house filled with THINGS. going back the next day, half rifled through, prices dropping, stuff and more stuff. books, especially.

helping Dona move into her new apartment. a ride up the river. mid-day. record high temps — 105 Fahrenheit. on the bike path, each piece of pavement in the sun, re-radiating a shimmering solid exhalation of unlimited infra-red expanse. no limit to heat. sun. the essence of infinity radiations. of all. (which is life).

score. life goes the right direction, so it seems. university faculty housing comes through, a relatively inexpensive apartment for the academic year. car is now registered in Colorado, drivers license is next. maybe even re-registering to vote, after the long hiatus of cynical attitude and expatriate status. but voting only to stick it to the folks who engineered the coup d’etat in the previous presidential election. the results don’t really matter anyway, as the core of the empire, the ranks and ranks surrounding the centers of power “inside the Beltway” are rotten and corrupt.

I penetrate the earth and sustain creatures by my strength; becoming Soma, the liquid of moonLight, I nurture all healing herbs.

I am the universal fire within the body of living beings; I work with the flow of vital breath to digest the foods that men consume.

I dwell deep in the heart of everyone; memory, knowledge, and reasoning come from me I am the object to be known through all sacred lore; and I am its knower, the creator of its final truth.
– Lord Krishna

at Chris and Scharmin’s place, they are still in the mountains. I feel like I have landed on another planet, familiar, but the looming challenge of a stable and relatively static year of teaching and single-parenting. Loki arrives in 2.5 weeks. Antsy to unload the car of stuff, disgorge at the storage unit with the other stuff that I left five weeks ago. and start hunting for a place. asap.

the stresses of finance I try to face up. money spent. a year of rent would buy two acres in Crestone. or so. but this is not the time to think about that. this is the time to begin settling, not to have it completed. and it is a time to live things fully.

endings and and endings. beginning understandings, but understandings not able to materialize. because materialization simply stood in the way. presence not consummated. in the spiritual plane. because the spiritual takes no place big enough in life. that old disconnection which I experienced in a broad scale working for institution. (not regardful whether “corporate Amurikan” or “euro-cultural”). like same as another.

and imagine saying to my son,

watching clouds is an important thing in life. maybe the most important thing.

but knowing that those words will be more than canceled out by the noise in the relationship. noise carried from father to son, perhaps in debt, but neither conscious enough to see the pay and the receipt.

donate my old Nashbar mountain bike to Goodwill. at fifteen years, it’s about time, it was a second-generation mountain bike, so, was pretty primitive but I liked the frame geometry and size. it survived five years in Iceland as well. I snagged a new one at a phenomenal price, thanks to a student who lets me know that Schwinn was going out of the business of high-end bikes and the shop he worked at was having a big sale. I get the last one in my frame-size. and save USD500. cool.

dinner with Chris and Sandy and the kids.

school, students, and teaching weighs heavy on mind, not to mention the situation with Loki.

mind draws a blank in the midst of the dramas of life. weariness from the pattern of channeling mis-directed bridging energies between Others. nothing left over to work with once it has passed and the impulse is gone.

convivial dinner with Chris and Scharmin and the kids this evening, don’t know where I’d be without them around, an anchor to real life. and then, despite Scharmin’s insisting on Chris giving me a ride, a cycle home in the beginnings of a big snowstorm, a slog up Baseline. feeling good to be tussling with the elemental beings. even at this simple level.

but otherwise, the month ends. in the hearts of space. nothing profound, but Venus begins to hang as the evening star; vague memories of a time earlier in these wanderings when Venus guided many steps.

Aunt Edie passes away this morning at 1005. she has been suffering a lot in the last months, bed-ridden, since she fell and broke her hip in late last summer. she has entered the Kingdom that she so faithfully kept her eyes upon during her life. she was an inspiration to many in my extended family, especially the kids. she took great pains to give each and every one maximum attention while at the same time she whipped up incredible and delicious meals. the contents of the toy closet was known to all of us. she will be laid to rest on Antelope Hill near Prescott Valley. she has passed through the hall of brightness and entered into the realm of Light. give thanks, Jah, Rastafari. there is a small lake with flowers, water lilys, brilliant white and pink. clouds drift in reflection in the sky, dissipate slowly, melting into the blue-white. there is no sun, but only Light suffused everywhere, coming from all. she is restored.

crescent moon, passed by Saturn, leaping ahead, waxing.

seeing mind in things.

seeing things, you see the mind; without things, mind does not appear. in the ten directions, open or blocked, the true mind is omnipresent. if you conceive intellectual interpretation, it turns into a false view. if you can see objects without minding, then you will see the face of enLightenment. –Chang Po-Tuan

got a phone today. back to mobile living. way-points. stadia. and organizing life. measuring all things. and along comes a small hypertext work, notes on networks. I call it the silke text — it was composed a couple years ago for a magazine published by a grad student at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel (one of the most obnoxious students I have had the displeasure to work with). I made it into another one of those hypertext strings that connects with the travelog. wormholes.

many dinners and convocations, keeping me charged. keeping me going. inspiring, humbling, the imperative of being here now. and doing, living as much as possible. telling stories, and listening as others seek to place themselves in the midst in their own lives; being aligned with the flight of birds. or speaking their mind, speaking their spirits. so it goes.

video conference with Loki. and I meet Wally the plumber, and Dancer, the hair stylist. local Colorado folks. the fabric of Amurika is never what it seems from the distance of the other continents…

what I hope will be the last visit to Iceland for a long time. bone-tired of the movement to get here. feel like being grounded. allowing the electricity of life pass through the body and on into the earth. grounded. in all its suggested meanings. flighty. with the wind blowing outside. and non-sense of the isolation of the interior. the protected sensual field of action. band-limited, spectrally-defined cut and pass. and all that. filtration. that the process of being tends in the direction of shutting down than opening up. but that is my own perception. realizing that possibly some others tend to open-ness as a base condition. open to life and living. what a concept. I have to fight to achieve that state of being. but maybe it is the fight that stands in the way.

another hop. psychically have finished in Finland. a quiet departure, dinner with Mathias and Sylvia, emotions are mixed. frustrated on the part of the doctoral work. on to Iceland for a week, then back through Helsinki (cheap flights) to Frankfurt and then Phoenix. to another maelstrom of life.

meanwhile. Finland recedes in a rear-view mirror that I don’t have. no driving away, just the hermetic transfer by air. snowy chill and frozen streets. bank accounts, currencies, and all that lies behind. after losing 9% of my bank account because of a plunging euro — all in ten days. often seems I get screwed by currency exchanges. the little people always do. but now that Caesar is the EU in Brussels. well, I leave that newly unified place. on the eve of expression of their unified aim — monetary policy. money. to be able to face up to the US. monetarily. and I return to Amurika. in its confusion and ignorance.

back and forth, running from the end of the seminar to the taxi to the train. would have been better to allow more time. but, as is usual for opening situations, the follow-up is the sustaining move. cleaning house. ordering life, waiting for the next cataclysm. the next disaster, the next infrastructure failure and slip into chaos. or transcendence.

such a tired way to go. and this text is so poor in the actuality of living, the stresses, (where is my sense of humor, no clown alive no more). Scandic living cooled all that right out of mind and soul. here in the heat. seeing everything new and clear. nothing to be spared. heat waves: vibrashuns. repainting the bathroom. work is meticulous with what is there. what is available. that’s also the result of living in a conservative environment too much. but it is a solid lesson — to create with what is there. nothing more or less clear than that. okay, because of the ultraviolet shift in Light at high latitudes, the wavelength of the cumulative radiation adsorbed is short, intense, and accurate. in the equatorial latitudes, the red, IR shift is long, wide, and soft, casting everything seen in voluptuous shimmers of distance between the wind devils racing across the dirt parking lot of the Yavapai horse racing track. between that and the moto-cross track where a race is laconically kicking up clouds of Light-tan dust that later traces the advance of the wind devil. all things are clear, whatever the wavelength, and where ever they fall on the ground, scattered by monsoon weather coming. desert monsoon.

but really, the things that could be added here, as I scan images from my Aunt Mary’s collection of mostly Kodachrome images from the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s of her life, as she saw it. creating an archive in digital form from analogue boxes of things. turning the color tracings and reducing that to patterns of magnetic polarity. that is energy. period. driving life and everything else forward.

microscopic living. nothing happening, but time flowing. inexorable. with no possibility of slowing or stopping. damnation. loving and leaving / life. not just using language as a way of saying, but as a tool to mark the space as been there, gone now.

no place here to write anything of consequence. only reduced drivel again. thinking about the different stages of linguistic expression that are available. a diary, private, revelatory; dream journal, internalized and open to interpretation; personal letters, intimate, exploring the shared terrain; email, snatches of conversation, surfaces; the blog, stilted, pseudo; talking at a conference, formal; in a dialogue without interruption, depth; social conversation, again, surfaces, meta-subjects, sports, weather; sermons, monologues.

I have lied about dialogues. somehow have positioned them as a savior of the world, as the crux, the core of being. but it is not so, as I cannot explain why it is so. no demonstration, no confirmation, no experimental results, nothing left over, only the act itself, naked, stripped down, no wallowing in the rich linguistic mud that bring surficial healthy glows and Lights. there is absolutely no thing, no word, only the act. and nothing is really important, no thing, but only the way, the pathway of the Tao.

again, one of those instances where too much life is wrapped up in the package of dark-to-dark, or Light-to-Light to make any notations. some notebook scratchings do construct a meta-system of understandings, ink on paper, India Ink, like the old times of wandering around Europe, with only a notebook and a box of postcard photographs to sketch on and send outward. This time, there are so many dialogues that recording anything except 5 hours of video tape and fragments of thoughts during the meetings is impossible. so mostly an extracted visual record remains. rich, but not even a distillation, more like just a thin line tracing, a ray-trace, a vector, redline laser aiming somewhere in the middle of the forehead, ready to obliterate the mass of neural networks that together bundle to be brain.

moving along. with a short stop/lunch with folks at the Computer Science / Media Department of the University of Lübeck who will be involved in the establishment of the International School of New Media that Hubertus has been working on in the last couple years. they will move into a nice new location, the Media Docks, immediately adjacent from the old town. more of the old Hanseatic traditions. so it goes.

heading for Copenhagen via the boat at Puttgarten.

there is no voice that can speak life. but to get into a dance with the Void. I have not changed. at all. no evolution, no learning. only going. parsing input data, but it is routed to the same boxes. as ever. no cross-over networks, re-routed neurons. learning systems. knee-jerking. hard-wired. why no escape?

smoke rising from farm fires in the Danish countryside. and in my gaze there is a reach into the terrain’s history. looking for mounds, barrows, and the “holm gards”: reading the “Heimskringla” epic of the Age of Vikings on my PalmPilot. simulation.

have to write to Marcel to see if he remembers what I said about networks in Zurich — at some point I made a short statement, and in the moment, thought it was very apropos, especially when I observed that everyone in the entire room paused to write it down. but I have since forgotten what it was! “a network is…” or “a network isn’t…” gees.

back to Kiel via Hamburg, on the train once again. having also once again not done much there at all except meet intensively with a small group of other humans and speaking, exchanging energies with them. ideas like forms of deep-praxis, life-changing practices, and ways of communicating my ideas in more visceral ways come up. and logistics, and that flow, analog and continuous, of life, forward, and the sensual information that feeds into that.

the music that I encoded at Wolfgang’s is quite electric/eclectic. like listening to KCRW radio. in Santa Monica. where eyes opened to other forms of thinking and being. about as experimental as you can get.

like having the students choose an energy source, and give weekly reports on it to the others. or, as arose in Kiel as well, that image of the two cans with a string between them. communications-at-a-distance.

hearing last night the depth of living under the weight of manifest fears in Bogota. how that goes deeply into re-arranging the body’s energy state. we may stand, consciously apart from the body, but eventually it comes back to connect with that removed consciousness. with a vengeance if it has been ignored too long. saying, DOn’t IGNORE THE LIMITATIONS OF SENSUAL PRESENCE, yep.

passing a massive antenna installation a bit the the north of the rail line. military, and probably extreme long wavelength array for submarine or global communications. a relic of the past? like the landstrasse lined with the Linden trees. and the fallow, wild fields. a higher level of wildness and disorder. than in the former West, still. nice.

stepping over the barriers. to thought, through thought. and back into the body, bodies. Saturday nite in Helsinki. getting only small doses of life, but enough to … stay alive. Sanna’s warm offer of a Bulgarian film on video and a bottle of wine is too good to turn down, especially with the rain and too-long a line at Saunabari. we catch the 14 bus to Töölö … dozing on the couch, crawl to the bed in the alcove, rumpled sheets, in the comfortable position of intertwined-ness out of habit, bodies calling, re-calling each other. since, what, a week ago, nah, more.

most of the texts that I have been absorbing in the last weeks deal with creativity as a discontinuous (non-cyclic) and anomalous event rising above the normal “level” of daily life. this view is an obvious artifact of materialist thinking that treats life as a linear (singular) trajectory and that the expressions of that living can be wholly reduced linguistically to various statements and formulations. accepting that this view IS true within its own limited framework (the history of rational thinking), a critique would have to deconstruct the whole facade of Western philosophy in order to make a substantive attack on the position. this writer is neither qualified nor interested in making such a frontal attack which would simply be tossed aside in the dumpster of academic discourse. instead, understanding that to even name a philosophy or a philosopher that stands supporting that edifice would only give power to a system that I believe is fundamentally flawed, I have chosen to proceed intuitively, and perhaps poetically, making enormous and possibly scandalous generalizations, leaving the normative conventions of the English language behind, and simply dive into thoughts that are reflecting through waters muddied by 42 years of thrashing around in a world that seems more intense and striking everyday. by this methodology, combined with a desire that these texts be only the opening for a dialogue with the Other who might come on it, here in the sea of hyperspace, I will begin.

not being a practicing Buddhist, it is dangerous to rely on the familiar and frequently mis-understood and mis-interpreted dialectic of East – West. however, buried in the residual mudflats of surrounding language, there are things that stick between the toes as one wanders between the tides.

tides return to smooth all things into harmonic ripples, the size and orientation of which are determined by the velocity, depth, and laminar deviation of the liquid flow and alignment of the planar particles of complex alumino-silicates.

there appears to be a fundamental difference in these flows.

there is lacking the recognition that with creativity (creation) there must come loss or destruction (decay). the suddenness of the creative impulse is mirrored (in time or not) by a natural tendency (of the Second Law of Thermodynamics).

suddenness, speed, quickening, all relate to special conditions being met in the movement of energies. humans are specialists in the dangerous play of resistance to universal flows. at the same time their energy-sensing systems are highly tuned to the movements of energy around them, their internal ego systems distort and filter. this dichotomy might be explained by the intervention of ego-forces which distort the reading or interpretation of the raw sensual mechanisms with often dire results. observing children moving through their lives, one sees a more or less direct line between sensual experience and reaction. age gradually moderates this.

results of this resistance are so manifold and compound that, well, what’s the point in exploring the obvious.

at any rate, this resistance to flows is also illustrated obliquely in natural systems where all processes are in fundamental movement, and there is simply scalar differences between different events. earthquake vs fertilization of an egg. while an earthquake is considered a precipitous event of violence, it is a result of continuous forces cycling on scales that are beyond human capacity to imagine. fertilization could be seen as an ultimate violence. or ultimate expression of the cyclic nature of energy movement. but there is never a resistance, only the expression of the true nature of the material configuration of energies.

Buddhist thought provides a more accurate model to follow. at least it makes sense as translated across the gap of language and culture. ego is the source of resistance. or there is something that causes us to resist. and construct complex mechanisms for justifying the resistance.

stretch and bend. images for nowhere. not finding. and so on. notes. undirected speaking at self instead of with Other. cleaning glasses. pick up sticks. associative words. not carving much of. and else-wise. activity. suggesting things. actions. or others. words the world of words. the other world. is it possible to bring what is expressed in words into practice? what is alluded to. what is suggested, instructed, what is dreamed. what of the world without images or words?

everything is potential energy.

surrounded by an enthusiastic bunch of cafe9.net hosts, well, anything can happen! good!

and at the other end of being, sadly, they bury Ingvi today.

birthday party with ten of Loki’s classmates. rambunctious would be the word to search out to describe the atmosphere. boy-energy is beginning to come into full-swing. every other request these days is to “come wrestle with me, Pabby! pleeeeeze!”

dinner two nights ago shifts into another kind of event. friend Winni from Germany comes by with his teenage son Ingvi for a dinner of fish (caught by Jón in Eyjafjördur this summer, near Hrísey) and new potatoes. I had happened to run into Winni at an art opening at the Living Art Museum the day before that. last time we crossed pathways was back in Germany in 1991 when Ingvi was just 6 or 7 years old. tonight we learn that there has been an automobile accident somewhere in the West Fjörds and Ingvi has been taken away from this present being. this is a terrible event. such a youngster. Winni is in the hospital. tomorrow we go see him.

all week submerged in digital things. recoding to mp3. adding to this massive archive. each year, resolutions and accuracies and the ability to fool the mind and the eye into believing that what we create digitally has some indelible relationship with the Truth. the possible negativity of this illusory de-evolution is further obscured by linguistic shifts happening with a frequency and amplitude spectrum of a jet-fuel A turbo formula nitro Pratt&Whitney revving in the starting line up. who cares? juggle-not! using old language and new language bits keep the self stuck, cut free and use only new things. instead of “cut free” (when was the last time you were tied with rope to a point?) the New Self says “I have now three SUV’s.” this translates to complete freedom to those who buy into that worldview. but maybe it is itself only an illusion that this is a prevailing worldview. public opinion is a synthesized meme, knowledge-bit. not arising from the real life of anecdotal information, the real life of birth, death and just about everything else that happens in between to each of us.

what happens when language is no longer understandable? can it be any longer the tool that it once was? or does it wedge like a piece of corned beef between the teeth, only gotten out with wet-nailed picking that leaves politeness behind, or by jamming a lucky stiff toothpick right in there to pry it loose. otherwise it sticks only to disappear gradually through the the digestive action of salivary juices.

I finally meet Kenneth, from Haparanda, across on the Swedish side. he’s the editor of a culture ‘zine called N66. we came into contact last fall when he was trying to find some support and information to support a Millennium project he was doing linking the cities of Tornio/Haparanda and Arkangelsk in Russia. he interviews me with the mind to juxtapose my view of creativity and technology and that of a Russian artist that he knows. in our conversation, I restate many of my views concerning the dangers of technology versus the real possibilities of using technology as just another mediative tool that stands between the self and the Other. life rolls on and then doesn’t.

this entry is added in retrospect, in a strange retrospect of distance, surprise, and chagrin. that notice of the passing of two close relatives was communicated only weeks after the fact. that the moment of death was forgotten and by the time it reached my ears, the fact was cool and detached. and more sad. My Aunt Winifred passed this month (6 April 2000). My Uncle Howard, two months into the short future (June 24, 2000). I suppose no surprise in the synchronized passing, as they lived close as far as I ever knew. and now, gone. recollections, remembrances are the best way to prolong the energies that they spent in this incarnation. and I shall construct a few in the next weeks to fulfill this need.

encroaching. departures AGAIN. pictures of what I want to have and to be and how I want to live are converging, but in a ass-backwards way. looking out this eighth-floor window for one of the last mornings, becoming homeless, encore. a yellow tinge floating low over the chilled city, frosted nitrogen-laden air. the Ferris-wheel of the Tivoli has been lit for the season (of darkness). and I can’t stop thinking about her. sham, chamois morning meeting with Timo, covering some interesting possibilities about the graduate program. actually specifics of co-constructing a set of possibilities leading to the idea of the concept of publication of hypertext mappings of the intersection of logical/Western and fluxus/Eastern pathways. yowzah! I’m into it! while he waits for a phone call from his wife who is imminently expecting their child. whew. nothing like phone calls with that reality jolt. but I greatly enjoy these mappings, and see that I am in need of mental exercises that go beyond teaching young potential artists. need to sharpen and challenge my faculties. like at the ~/Connected meeting two weeks ago, I realized I was slacking. although it was not difficult to rise to the challenge of consequent intellectuality, it was a stretch to project those kinds of energies which contain an entire different set of constraints. (for example, my penchant for exaggeration — a good dramatic tool in the classroom, where I can project it and draw it back, and in the process, draw students along into the details of an argument — in a more challenging setting, it can be a serious handicap that drains creditability from an argument. my only excuse is passion. I am a passionate person. or a person of passions. for others, in all manifestations. hmmmm.

well, the pretty/evil dentist, Riita, didn’t need to pull my wisdom teeth, they weren’t really infected, but rather (it appeared) that it was just a cavity in another tooth that has been irritating me. I was so worried about going to the dentist this morning that I forgot the PIN number to my bank account, fortunately I had my Visa card with me. Riita wasn’t really evil, actually a bit timid as her English wasn’t so good. and I think she was new at the job. hmmmm. but I just have to head home. spending too much time with this machine. Sanna is in Portugal for a week, so life is different yet again.

morning. about the start teaching. it is Fall. there are those teaching feelings and Fall feelings. something about to happen. potential energies, stored from the summer Sun. to carry into the Winter. (oh, don’t use that word yet, wait until it is in-your-face, blasting the face, eyes to tears) later that same day. later. later. dinner in the flat with a crowd of folks. I escape to get some work done, but there is no real space or time for concentration. before, earlier in the evening, I wander around Trondheim, soaking up the energy of the Cathedral, in its silent presence. and try to figure out what course of action to take. stuck at a totally diverging point. with the progress of life so far. for the first time seeing the reverberations of past mistakes big and small coming back to shake in my ears and inject a plethora of negative and positive options that only confuses me. clear small voices are not so much heard. and there is no end to this.

another seeming end for this site. only fragments. and so on. a lost summer that never began. and life, well, remembering Chris Burden’s teevee performance on SoCal teevee, crawling across a field of broken glass on his chest, hands tied behind his back. an art splash from the 70′s. where its happening. and strangely, that’s how life feels now. watching out the window of the one-room rented flat, rented from a chain-smoking National Broadcasting (YLE) reporter, almost retired, on the 8th floor opposite from the InterContinental Hotel where EU officials have parties in the top floor restaurant.

some ways, lost the fight this week, and won the battle? workshops, each has an internal and external dynamic. this one began concentrated and gradually dissipated. students scheduling seemed to be the primary problem, there was always something else to be busy with. after a few days, I feel like being an entertainer, when the jokes run out, the audience splits. competing for attention, okay, a childish notion to begin with, but when it applies to an educational situation where I am calling on the students to be participants rather than volumes of empty space passively waiting to be filled with knowledge — this seems to be the less desirable option for them. far easier to be passive in education than active. change is a brutal force that, in the end, ushers in death to the table of the living. but stasis is a death-in-life that denies the sensual realities of daily living. this dichotomy, death following life (following death following life) and death-in-life seems core to the process of revolution. facing the bardo of becoming. each and every day, letting the movement, the falling towards falling towards the mass of the world, acceleration. if the speed doesn’t change, time compresses. or Light strikes more directly into the soul.

In a painted corner, words fail me, in the class — this space that I have voluntarily entered with these other humans, who also entered voluntarily also — adjusting our collective visions and expectations so that they are in an eternal alignment, or internal alignment, or infernal inferno. In that painted corner the suggestions range from rescue to BREAK THROUGH THE WALL behind the back, to a basic “Let’s get outta here!” And so we do. A stroll through town to the bus station to get ice cream soaking up the brilliant sunshine that is here now. Fragment: approaching the bus station, an old man sits on a bench in the sun. At the corner of his mouth, as we approach, I see a sparkling diamond (this is a sign, but I do not know it, it penetrates my head like the summer sun Light on North Atlantic water. (more …)

days have flashed by. at night on the kai (waterfront of the harbor), pause to look at the seal tank at the aquarium. the seal looks at me with bloated brown eyes, moving its head to the right and to the left on a sinuous neck with no shoulders below. public lecture last night, technical problems, an afternoon field trip to the Facist Death Memorial at Labou, class seems to be intense, Volker stops in for three days, conversations between he, Hubertus, and myself are of singular intensity, the school seems in a state of dis-awareness of itself, life is precious, I think of the David Bowie song Young American, all the way from Washington… and it all goes ’round. content, being, vessel, and void. a dance with music constructed from vibrating particles of self-and-Other. head north yet in two days, 36 hours, a stop in Copenhagen.

what is it that we need in life? what is it that we are constantly grinding after in a state of calm and casual disinterest? what do we care about? heading to Vienna now. another stop. various plans have been detoured, so it appears that the entire month of March will be something of a vacation, so I need to make it that. and not stress so much about it. back to work at the end of the month in Kiel after some relaxation and conversation and pleasant diversion. nothing terribly productive, or labor-intensive. besides, who cares anyway? planting future seeds, but these seeds need the regular tending that it makes me something of an idiot to endure. I think I will really try to concentrate on, huh….? doing my own thing? finding that my abilities with the machines are really much more limited creatively than I would tend to suggest to others, although I freely admit that I am no expert on many software platforms, and really am not so good at producing work myself. really the only strange work I have done digitally, are the video works produced on the AVID system I had access last summer to at Polar Circuit in Tornio. other attempts, well especially with audio, which I aesthetically am quite tuned into, seem to stumble on software issues. and an inability to concentrate on production versus organization of information to begin with. true to other times, there is snow flurries here between Nürnberg and Austria, this bit of higher country. I recall two years ago, passing this way, in April, as documented in this very travelog, snow and slow going for the track construction that is still going on now. they are in the middle of constructing a new high-speed line between Wurzburg and Wien.

Turning times. Solstice passed. No time to meditate on the significance of it, a five-year-old doesn’t allow for meditation. Time begins to press into the impending departure from the country. I realized that our new passports have not yet arrived by express mail. Eight days until hitting the road in earnest. Never a moment that is not filled with the confusing rush of ego-centricity. To be free of this would alter life immensely. That pressure of comparative living, looking at others through a filter so distorted as to preclude apprehension with a fat dose of in-your-face.

Driving across Colorado yesterday, a very short visit to the Center of the Universe, car full of possessions. Burden-bearer. Arriving at Lenny and Mel’s place in late afternoon. The drive threatened to be under winter-storm conditions but ended up being accompanied by blue sky, dry roads, and sunshine. So much for the Weather Channel on cable teevee. Eye-in-sky-sees-all mentality just fails to bring anything more than another illusion of control to life. There is no such thing as control, control is an oppressing concept of those who wish to oppress. First they teach that oppression is part of life, then they oppress, then they teach the impressionable to oppress.

Blue Spotted Horse said that we all walk two roads in our life. One is the Red Road of spirit that begins in the place where the sun lives. It runs across the world to the place where the Great White Giant lives. The other road is the Black Road of life, the hard road of difficulty, that begins in the place where the sun rises and all the days of people begin, and runs across the world to the place where the Black Thunder Beings live and all the days of people end. Blue Spotted Horse said that the Tree of Life grows in the place where the roads cross. That is the tree we must find and water, so that it will bloom and fill with singing birds. — Eagle Walking Turtle

Life walks many strange passages. Here in Durango. Moving into new worlds, old worlds. Always straddling two roads. Spirit and Life. Loki being a trooper, dealing with changing beds, changing altitudes, changing weather, changing houses, bathrooms, kitchens, people. Names, toys, rules. The constants are a small bag of toys that he accumulates through gifts from people he visits… Mary Ellen offered to do an acupuncture treatment late in the afternoon of the 20th. Lenny and Loki and I with some of their friends with kids spent awhile at the Trimble Hot Springs soaking in the hot waters there.

House-sitting. for Rick and Sally. They are in Costa Rica for awhile with the kids. Loki is with me now. Sleeping upstairs as I try to stay awake in pain, but needing to write and feel some progress with things that I need to work on. Snow comes down tonight. Hot-tub pump whines away. Hard-drive spins. Meet with Gene for lunch a couple days ago. MB is come and gone, on to my family’s place in Arizona, sorta. Life has taken such a hectic dimension that I catch myself anticipating free time on the road that is looming up ahead in January. Needing to work with Mark, Rebecca, Jim, and others, things to be done, people to be visited. Well, at least, when I am not teaching. But that is minimal worry. The worry is about the solidity of the spine (spine-less, broken back, lame) to endure the intensity of things. Construction of word-lines that sustain. I find life-line mixed into threads. the thoughts that I am completely wasting my life, compared to much of what I have been taught (conflict), so-called knowledge, the thoughts that I am blessed with friends, a beautiful boy, job offers, the thoughts that the world might very well continue on the way it has to the moment, or it might end at any moment, the thoughts that there is not a day to be wasted, it must always be full, full of life, and that life must grow, thoughts of divine internals that might operate outside the skin wall and bring energy to others, thoughts of transcen-dances, thoughts of quietness and being, thoughts of nothing.

fated day. weather? exhaustion is formulated as an extension of the psyche. already two days from when I began this entry. The acceleration of living does is not because of technology, but because the lack of internal concentration to bring time into a line of soulful relations. that duration and intent of focus transforms time into only another material relation that… fragments again. shimmering stories of belief and wonder. passing time. I have many to tell in this long life, and consider that here I could tell one per day (perdido!).

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

Just got back from Phoenix where I stayed overnight with Tom and Dawn after dropping Aunt Mary at the airport and visiting with Jason and Angelique for a couple hours and running some errands around town. It approached 115F yesterday, the heat making everything vibrate and shimmer. Getting in and out of the car, into and out of air-conditioned spaces has always bothered me, and this day was no exception. Yet another example of how we mediate what the world begs to impress us with — the weather. I find life in air-conditioning is hermetic, and leads to short-sightedness and isolation. Combined with all the other amenities like the new 300-channel-plus digital teevee systems, automated coffee-maker and lawn sprinkler system, and the separation from the environment is nearing completion. It seems the only time that real life impinges is in the form of a natural disaster or through the random acts of violence that are inflicted by other humans or even by some level of technological intervention like the automobile. This idea of mediation is beginning to make me more than a little crazy. I would seek to live an authentic life on this planet, at this time, for myself and those around me, yet each day I encounter more and more ways of being cut off, isolated, and separated from the milieu of existence. How is it possible to begin stripping these filters away without becoming socially isolated from those other humans around? It just dawned on me that something in what I say hearkens back quite some time to the laments of St. Augustine. His solution was to simply pull out of the race, the rat-race, the gaming, the spectacles — whatever separated him from authentic life…

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee. — St Augustine

The past few days have been spent around Köln and in Rösrath with Volker, an old friend from Avantière days in Aachen in 1990. I had just made a rather long entry here, but inadvertently erased it. Hmmm. Talking about the fragments of dreams, and the paradox of travel. I shall try to reconstruct it for the moment… Chris sent email from Colorado, following his return from a mountaineering trip in the Alps. He suggested that travel is a catharsis.

Yes, so it goes. I spend today and most of yesterday dealing with correspondance — email, snail-mail and so on. I got a package of post forwarded to Volker’s NetArt box here by my sister, Janet, who checks my post box in Prescott, Arizona. Good to see things like job application rejects and the like, eh? And my bank statement which reads a shrinking balance each month … Being on the road like this keeps me on edge for better or worse.

They shall not tame him. — The Lion of Flanders, Hendrick Conscience

The dream of building a house in Crestone, Colorado is no closer to reality than last year, although I do collect fragments of ideas and things to think about in the design. Of course, one of the primary things is simply to have a place with enough rooms that it will comfortably house a good number of folks who will surely visit me there in that beautiful place. Any suggestions?