The choppers take off in formation at 09:00 to the west, towards the Toano Range. No decent audio of that as the H4-Zoom is completely worthless recording anything in the wind, a constant feature of life here in Wendover (Wind-over). Really a drag, so that no decent outdoor recordings can be made, period. I just can’t justify the USD 75.00 wind sock, although if the effort is being made to do all this recording to begin with, what’s the point having lousy equipment? Of course, there’s always a higher-end regarding tools. And access to various steps on that sliding scale of quality is largely determined by affiliation to various levels of participation in the techno-social system. Consumer, pro-sumer, employee of a national broadcasting service. And the level of use of archive material depends strongly on the relative quality of the equipment used in the recording process. ach. It comes back to the issue of controlling natural energy flows through technology. The more energy I can exert (read: deploying more expensive systems), the more order I can apply to the system. More signal, less noise.

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

what’s a sharp knife for? I like toasted bread, toast, with a variety of toppings including butter. definitely not margarine. butter comes either frozen, chilled, or at room temperature. frozen or chilled it’s hard as heck to cut a slice of and especially to spread around most toasts, depending on the bread that is being used. the spreading process can dent, squash, or even shred the toast, seriously degrading the aesthetic experience. I prefer to have chilled butter and an extremely sharp thin-bladed carbon steel knife. (my Opinel serves the role well). this allows the butter to be sliced so thin that spreading is not necessary: multiple thin slices may simply be laid across the surface of the toast. the thin slices will melt quickly, prepping the toast for the next layer of topping and avoiding the problem of un-melted butter chunks getting moved around by, say, the cold tangerine marmalade or thick Nutella which comes next. thin slices of butter have the advantage of getting the butter flavor evenly distributed around the surface of the toast without having to use excessive amounts of the stuff or seriously affecting the structural integrity of the bread. the worst possible scenario is frozen butter, fluffy white bread, and a dull knife — the bread gets completely crushed, but not after large quantities of butter are smashed into the air cavities. the result is something of a distinctly English culinary experience. I prefer dense German multi-grain breads which can withstand pretty much anything you can throw on them, and provide a robust snack.

a caveat on the sharp knife is that one should not use a ceramic butter dish as that rapidly dulls the knife. it is common, when first attempting to cut thin slices from fridge-hardened butter that the knife slips and smacks the plate rather hard. this will render the knife useless for smooth tomato and vegetable slicing later. a plastic dish it is — and one that is disposable as in the end, the plastic will be destroyed through the repeated slipping of this trusty blade. a lid from a yogurt container functions well for this purpose.

who designed the butter knife, anyway? the one which was around my parents home was a fat stainless steel affair from the 1960′s with not just a dull blade — actually it was so dull as to defer the designation of blade — it was about as good for slicing butter as a chopstick. certainly nothing to pass onto for the grand-kids! non-functional. I’ve seen some older ones, carbon-steel-and-silver affairs which are thin-bladed like regular table knives of the same era — say, late 1800′s.

floating through a high country day. mountain bike ride after breakfast. up to the trail head into the West Elk Wilderness. back out, Sage keeping pace even on the downhills. pack up and make the circle around the north rim of the Black Canyon, and down through Delta. saw a gal parked having a picnic. single bike on the rear rack, like me. wondered about how one crosses paths. make a stop at the Ute Indian Museum.

it’s far from present Ute lands, and most of Colorado was once populated by one or another bands of Utes who are now reduced to three small reservations in Colorado and Utah. another dreadful history of crimes against humanity. are we really better than that now?

seek wisdom, not knowledge. knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

to go on a vision quest is to go into the presence of the Great Mystery.

the soul will have no rainbow if the eye has no tear.

another stop at the Gunnison National Forest main office to check out any information they might have, as well as inquiring about jobs. looks like everything is through the JobsUSA website. one path to travel. have to look into that again when online next. Ridgeway seems interesting again, with some commercial buildings for sale. question is, what to do in these small towns to survive? could computer consulting work? construction is no longer an option with the L5 disk acting up, could be major trouble in the near future. website construction? teaching high school? vocational tech? uff. re-forming trajectories seems at the same time daunting and full of possibility. how can it be problematic when so many others are employed? and so many have managed to gather so much capital in this country. but the path between scraping poor-ness and abundant wealth seems so … arbitrary. there is no clear specifications except for self-confidence.

end the day almost at tree line, up Bailey Creek, off Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan National Forest. the luxury of dispersed camping (finding places up 4×4 roads that are not developed, but make excellent camp sites) is appreciated. no cost, only fuel to get there, and that expense suggested that instead of an immediate return to Prescott, that I take several days and enjoy being back in Colorado and check out several new places. in Curecanti Creek, I saw only one car in two days, and up this rugged route, doubt I’ll see anyone until I head out and down and south west tomorrow. feeling a little guilty being out of phone range, but have no messages except one from Gary, so, figure all is well in the greater telecom world. make a short video of sunset on a nearby peak. and in the process of reviewing the tape after finishing it, I discover that all the footage that I shot of Kevin’s memorial in NYC in March had that effing bad audio. really disgusting — Bill, Stefan, Martha, Rosemary, and others talking about their memories of Kevin. the glitch seems due to bad mike contacts, or a dirty record head. it pops up randomly, and has affected some other critical footage previously. and the pondering on the idea of getting a 3-ccd hd prosumer cam comes back up and/or a Nikon prosumer digital still camera. what else to do with capital? shopping is a dumb way to make a cash flow (negatively). better to keep the investments growing and multiplying. and purchase only items that can definitely be positive cash generators.

whatever the end result, work is the next necessary step to confront. that and the June 18th Month of Sundays performance. finishing up with the house, packing things in a way that maintains some viability to several pathways of action. but meanwhile, watch the sky and the land.

many miles, kilometers gone now. through the center of the universe, and more. movements, with different tools, different minds. trying to relax, but always the pressure of production. and realizing that I AM producing things, energies, situations, but it seems never enough in the proper form. the closest angel, an image made last month, in the last moments of Lappish Light. yeah, okay, this is a big gap, huge gap, like some recent others that have crept into this narrative. but I have no excuses, just that time moves.