The Rubber Wall

Of Darkly Darning, Darling

2011-12-21T09:30:00.008-07:00

Look fire breathing twins of darkly darning, darling
They are seeming seamstresses, sewing, soing, speaking
Words flick from their needles’ display, drinking, dunking, shuttling
They say, good day, good night, say good bye, and pray

Strange patterns form where the twins fold
The colors change to match the hue of the eyes beholding
One stricken stripe for you will not be the same line for me
These are strange ladies, indeed

I think of them oft, in that the girls don’t exist
But that, in that, so that, they do now, you believe
Loving the texturous twine, of twinning the spine
Clone this moment, a fountain under the sea

Spells are laid thus at the doorway of your dreams
Mystics wheel about in lonely deserts, the sand finding form underfoot
I met such shaman in a twilight, the light failing us all
The relief began with a silhouette and grew to additional dimension

Four chambers there be to the heart of man
Four lines I can give you only a moment here
Four days until the birth of another Christmas copy
Four months until the plug is pulled, like a candlestick startled into wisps of smoke

I did not say, I spoke
I find this begun, and broke

We'll Necessarily, Make Time

2011-11-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

And Then

2011-11-02T11:15:00.001-06:00

There are such surges of strength,

And then,

I recall I'm dying.

(The Garden Before Sin)

2011-10-09T18:11:00.001-06:00

Tuck Point

2011-10-07T11:09:00.003-06:00

I hear rats moving about in my basement
In the backyard, beggars claw at the mortar bricked foundation
I sense below audible snuffing, just outside my night blackened bedroom window.

There is an approaching
Something stalks less and less quietly
Something gaining confidence
Sloughing off a need to hide

It’s beetles in my belly
Subtle spiders under the skin
They mix and cajole behind my skull
Toasting the ending begin.

I hear the clicking and clacking of human fingers
Translating goopy organic notions into digitally
transmitted text.
So many clickings an clackings, like a world remade
in bees’ dance.

From one cell to the next, virus spread.
From laughing absurdities to street fighting men.
Protests have emerged, lacking definition or zen.
The stomach of the world is beginning to twist
it seems
rejecting the brackish black water of our common dreams.

I find myself a little man, with a larger plan.
Some definite desire without strategy.
But smaller have made more on less,
so I shall begin treating with the twitches,
with the strange shapes in the corners that only
suddenly emerge as common items, and not the witnessing
demons projected from within.

I’ll have to make shelves for all the elves I know.
All the wrinkled toes dipping bravely into this pond.
I’ll fashion the unmagic will of a wand,
and wave… and wave….and wave.

Final Fragment

2011-10-06T13:43:00.002-06:00

Burned Brashly For A Moment

2011-10-06T12:33:00.002-06:00

And so the door remains open as I remain closed. Speak with me now another mumbled riddle of self. Wash the hands of low stomachs and wasting minutes. I despair not, do not fear. This is merely the span between a light switch’s travel from OFF to ON. As everything else, the single thought is the triumph of eons. Or the revered library of millennia is burned brashly for a moment’s brutal message. Let us begin with the breaking balls. Turning towers fall swiftly past the faces of buried hearts. Silly metaphors flung together emoting nothing of consequence. A bigger mistake can be made, criminalized, left behind, forgotten. We are each our own enemy. We each can only grope for that which is beyond us, which is greater than ourselves, more pure than ourselves, more human than ourselves, more godlike than ourselves, more relevant than ourselves, more beautiful than ourselves, more wanted than ourselves, more regal, more valid, more lively, more stoic, more wise, more in all facets than ourselves, a greater decision, a higher vantage, a more knowing perspective. We reach, and just in attempting the contact, attain a greater context than our self pity. We stride, and I struggle. I know as you know, we are not alone in our loneliness. But it makes little difference to the small, toothy voices that grind in our hearts, as they are held quiet and muffled by our stronger reserves. We take comfort in our composure, in our nobility, dignity.

We make the attempt, and so enjoy the triumph of eons.

We live with luxuries we have forgotten to appreciate. Even the simple basics of Health, Sanity, Love, Courage.

We must remember where we have been, what we were not, what daring steps we had to take across the desert of our past trials. We must give credit for making it to this point, for creating this face we carry, for the face we put on things.

Do not fear.

Do not worry the shame of crying into the invisible shoulder.

Jesus, this sounds like some self help book, cradled in the window of a Barnes and Noble.

Blah. Burn it all. I care not for eternity. But I must be responsible to those that love me, and so cannot indulge haphazardly in wanton self destruction. I did that for too long. I feared it was beginning to affect my health.

Nobody is Richards, but Keith himself.

That’s it. Not cute sum up, no bow tied on top.
This is not the present. This is, as of this moment, the past.

The Hedge

2011-08-29T11:40:00.002-06:00

It comes time to face fear again.
To look into the void of your life,
and question this hole.
Do I have the courage to fill it.

Are you clipper or creator.

What arc of the cycle glides between my feet.
Either destroyer, or breather.
Either mourning veil, or sun burnt smile.

The answer is all of these, of course.
We never left.
Even if we never spoke.

I still hold the faith for hours, for this.
For the life left on pages to be paged through.
I mourn mortality, not frailty.

The intention is act beyond measure.
But I hope more.

DIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The White Stripes Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine

2011-07-21T14:47:00.000-06:00

Flavorful Fork

2011-07-15T11:57:00.004-06:00

Sugar tine, laughing rind, not so sour anymore.
Finger wine, summertime, hell has no more hounds to sell.
Insolent islands fight the sky, thinking we need no bees.
The flowers dispute, but are in disrepute, and in any case, can’t afford the fees.
Wrinkle with my wrist’s watch, counting silence near the clocks.
There are secrets beneath the trees.
Too much falls on the brain, when the weather’s full of knives.
Cutting finds empty seals, broken for long forgotten decrees.
License is permission to commit atomic fission, and blow away the sighs.

Listen to the crazy talk, and raise up a string of kites to the invisible flows above.

Rip My Binder

2011-07-06T12:57:00.001-06:00

Need a rugged binder. For the garden/shed poetry book.
Rugged, ripped, studded, badass trapper keeper.

Blood In My Shoes

2011-03-03T16:15:00.005-07:00

Blood in my shoes.
Not wholly my blood.
It is the detrital detriment of others.

The slaying of a Nemesis is satisfying
from the start,
but as the undercutting of a damp hillside,
it is ultimately undermining.

I live in metaphor,
and attempt as I may to keep reality at bay.

It reminds, it bothers, it persuades with the power of chaos.
The cold past the window.

This is not unexpected.
The skill is to anticipate,
to know the unknown,
to name nothingness.

So is the daily shaman work.

For are we all not shamans by now,
by this late date on calendars secret and internal,
striking the bells in our bellies.

Do we not divine, not forecast.
Are we born convicted as a Forecaste,
with invisible marks upon our brows.

Do we not twist in ourselves hourly,
testing our own viscera in muffled augury.

I can hear the city screams.
My eyes seem to dim and enliven
with the pen’s varying pressure as it tilts the page.

This is who we are.

It is language which has changed humans from the start,
from the fireside before our age of glory,
to the schizophrenia hiding behind our steel walls.

The words are time travel.

I think I will hide my words in image,
in the darkroom, inside sounds that bend
round corners from the front porch,
from the drainage of the street.

It is nice to sit outside above freezing tempatures.
It is nice to have an hour’s worth of moments.
I design and so decree,
I die and so breathe.

There is little measure of now without
a known beginning and a known end.
Origin and Terminus.

And so God makes us.
And so we make God.

The respective perspective must be universal.
Good night spoon, hello spork.

What are we to become.
When does what we were, return.

Print, preserve, realize now and now.

Darkness and light,
we are but candles defining the distance.

I wish well, but for When I do not.

Eye see until closed me.

A Time To Speak To Matters Unintelligible

2010-11-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

A time to speak to matters unintelligible

The calendar of my hours spins
like a maddened dartboard.
I throw my missiles of choice
and can no more detect where they land
than where I find their resupply.

Is this life becoming waste

I do not bid to place blame nor fault.
I do not think myself unusually cursed or maligned
by forces unseen.
I just wonder,
is this life of mine to be the average of mediocrity

What record of worth will I leave behind.
What presence of achievement do I carry with me
but these dry, dirt stained hands,
but the fruits of a garden long decayed,
but words left to settle like dust in the road,
but midnight laughter forgotten with the morning meal.

Is my triumph the delay of mortal tragedy

Can inspiration survive,
persist, lie, lay flat, and reemerge
with the next season of rain.

Is my love amphibious.
Do I croak needlessly
in bogs without depth
in deserts without sun.

Did Nathan know the bottom of the world
was waiting for him.

Is there a method to this madness,
or is this method beyond mad,
insane before onset psychosis,
lost before any thought of origin.

I know pain and love and weariness
and lust and hunger and boredom
and whiles and smiles and forever feeling
of her skin.

I know nothing of what belongs to this destiny.

I am in danger of losing grip on the divination of my divinity.

I speak this warning, and alert my soul.

Fuck You

2010-11-17T11:22:00.001-07:00

Chameleon Without Colors

2010-11-01T11:09:00.001-06:00

Chameleon without colors
I’m twisting upon a rope,
I know not the tree, nor the reason,
I hang high and choke lower than in my throat.

My guts like a wet coil of reeds,
twisting and piling upon my belly.

I know not who I am nor where I be.
I feel a foot, without a knee.

Darn this sock,
Dream this daring death.
I am absent of purpose,
at a loss with chaos.

Whence delivery?

I know not, and the Knot.

I wish Alexander and his sword.

My Mind Feels Far

2010-10-13T13:36:00.001-06:00

Pay Day, Same Day.

2010-09-16T16:24:00.001-06:00

Pay day, same day.
Waiting for the ball to drop.
Sounds cascade like a too well ordered waterfall.
the City sounds.
Cars and monkeys driving wheels.
We turn.
All wheel with daily rotating of the sky.
Rushing into the East, over another 24 hours of Earth.

It’s nice.

One shouldn’t complain.
We are not scratching in the dirt for our sustenance.
At least not too much,
Only at the gardener’s choice of pain and derision.

The cats actually sit quietly;
even though the little snakes are known to be lurking
beneath leaf and bramble.
A moment alone, away and with the gracious bleed of ink.
Burning off the mind’s chiding through finger tips,
through the familiar twitching upon this papier.

It’s about now.

It’s about then, when the ball drops.
Yet another move in this kinetic opera,
this furious fairy called Time.

As the light pours its last upon fading eyes,
the meat is neat and unaware.

Who could ask more of eternity.

I know the secret, and forget it often.

Meatness makes it that way.
And yet it is difficult to remember
all these faces around that abound are
real worlds in themselves, alone and questing
their singular quests, as we each do.
Too many minds unconnected, needing silly books of smiles
to touch and compare compassions.

Do you like it.

And I’m glad for wife and glad for growth.
Glad for death and give a happy nod to Winter.
Stasis is death.
To know death Rushes is to know life perserves.

Organic, carbon-based life has struggled
for so long;
solving the puzzles of the universe.
We are the livers, the processors of the inantimate,
the insentient,
into a questing, zealing, revealing, concealing,
into a Question, held and wondered upon,
held to the light of a deep woods fire,
held and shared for desperation,
across miles and generations.

We live to live,
to give a name too simple for all this Chaos,
and so name ourselves.

So dig it, you get it,
by just not accepting what is.

This is the final and first secret.

Shadow In Situ

2010-08-31T13:04:00.001-06:00

what upright shadow in the forest speaks to me now in fogging whispers
what small smothering animal shivers beneath the tree’s icy bole
what terrible words does it tell itself of memory, of grudge, of recovery, and revenge

what time is it in the forest
when all creatures wait for the other to give way to sound
to reveal their hearts, first by beat, then by steaming sheen of blood on snow

who watches for us, in this coloring colorless noonday dim of Winter’s lingering perch
who will strike and show our skin to the world and declare
“All See! Know the Bareness of your Fallen master!”

There’s nothing to do but wait, hold still, breathe not at all, dream not too deep
and craft the warm words of next season,
a final never found reason
to continue bleeding inside, in circles, in situ

In The Waiting Room

2010-08-11T09:29:00.001-06:00

We Are Shadows Cast

2010-05-06T08:22:00.003-06:00

We are shadows cast
By our souls’ interruption
Of a light unseen,
Of a radiance born inside
The small, tight corners of dimension.

As the wavering dimness
Of my commuter bus’ exhausted vapor
Upon the road in morning sun.

Does the world only reflect
For our eyes to catch.

Can experience be separated
From Being.

Is this why basketball hoops and navels
Are round.

Life is a continuity of Identity.

A careful juggling of what
Has gone before
As evidenced in what is
Seen now and balanced
Against what is expected
To Be.

This is the essence of Human consciousness;
and is the inherent tension of our race.

Identity is found in the lines of your hand,
In your gaze to the horizon.

These are not at all new thoughts,
Only philosophical preambles,
A shuffling of cards in the parlor.

It is only the concentrated shield of our
Ever re-etched pattern of ego,
Highly held against chaos
That keeps us from the Madness of
Unassumed reality.

Also, ice cream.

A Thing Of Dream

2010-04-21T09:40:00.002-06:00

A thing of dream
Ripples beneath the waves
A thing maker of what is never to be,
of what must be
Tension of creation
Alchemy in the void
The life from death
The end of a wheel
The flat spot on a perfect globe
Dreams of God,
Unknown to His creator
The darkness in full sunlight,
the beckoning shade in desert
Death as but a thin film perspective,
blurred by surface tension

Tomorrow is past
“Enter on the B side”
That’s why you dream of it tonight
There are no riddles that do not rhyme
Blank in the Fills
Truth is lie
Lies are never knowing
And am not I
Spelling words,
but with images from the back of your skull that
Cannot be woken from
End each moment in life
with preposition I beg you,
of

Simply Separate The Coffee Grounds

2010-03-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

And so I again simply separate the coffee grounds from coffee maker.
Days round square meals of insight, inspiration, and beer.
I know the knowledge is less than luck.
I lunch with fate sitting behind me, back to back, our eyes watchful.

The dreams unsettle themselves, and we whisper in the predawn glow.
Stories from the brainstem, from the heart passing blood messages above and below.
The darkness is a drink swallowed and left buried within us.
The day lays flowers before us as stones, marked and self marking.

And what does it mean?

It means you ask such questions.

It means you answer in attempts and flights of folly.

It means we laugh when all else fails.

It means pain and lessons and moresons and fine ways of defining inside and out,
The included and excluded, the food and the excrement,
You, me, other, elsewand.

Let’s mellow with Mars returning direct, and we’ll see if Chuck Woolery can get his mouth fixed.

Straps Follow

2010-02-24T19:20:00.004-07:00

So say sin in the thin of things.

Some say sally forth when the rains fall easy.

I heard a man whisper his own name as incantation against the threat of death.

All this has happened before. And I'll tell you this again. Know that we are pillars of our own life, living as the base born and standing through tall to the top end, which is death.

Is that heavy? Shit, gravity's heavy bro.

I'm talking the fourth dimension. I'm talking concerns for you and yours. Yours being anything you lay hands on.

I'm talking to your ears as they've lived through generations of ancestors from single cell to the stars befell. I'm talking a change. Like we've read about, and more like those we haven't. I'm talking graduation from kindergarten. Painful as it is.

And that means what, you ask? Well, figure it out Holmes. Deduce where the fuck your life and the life of this here populace is going. And you'll know. You'll guess. Fuck, you'll even conjecture.

I'm talking the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Might as well follow suit and have that martini and cigar as breakfast, for D-Day is a coming and you'll know when you're tripping when you see things you haven't seen. When things demand attention by seeing you. When things see.

Believe me, the last thing I want is to sound ,is, redundant. Heck, I confuse too many faces by twisting things they expect to hear from my mouth into things that bend just a little.

I guess I'm saying nothing. Yet (and we should all acknowledge this), it is the saying which is the penultimate expression of our species.

And with that, I bid you a good taco. See you soon, as we descend our accession.

Control The Water, Control The Ways Of Life

2010-02-12T08:34:00.001-07:00

Ok, this is just cool.

Once, Four Times

2010-01-12T08:50:00.002-07:00

Once, four times
Twice, eight times

The color of the woman’s hair on the bus this morning was the same as the fur collar of her coat.
It made me think of what we are, and what we carry.
What color of light we reflect, and what glow is our own.

I place my bookmark and silence my headphones two blocks before work.
I like to have some moments of transition, from one state to another.
It makes it easier to let go of the dream.

The air of this world has only gotten stranger since I first began breathing it.
The atmosphere, the gaseous continuum, the medium of emotions defined by our island chain of human souls.
This place we find ourselves.
It has changed. It has been a steady change.
Who could expect anything less?

But does it not feel yet closer?
The air closer as in a cave, as in a small room when the door closes.

There is a change in pressure.
The bare moment when the door is pushing the air from around the last inch of frame.
A slight push before equalization.

Where are we.
Does anyone think these things.
Is this soul crazy.

I am abandoning question marks.

The questions are themselves.
They don’t need a tail flicking about like a cat’s.

There is a pull upon the ropes of heaven.
A tensioning of metaphoric orbital tether.
As above, so below.
Where are we going.
Do we know.

What story to be sold, bright, fangled and gold.
What lives to behold.
Her eyes, betty boop in the mornings.

There isn’t a definite way.
This isn’t a tv standing serving tray.
This is just today, again.
Another chance to turn at the bend.

And we’ve all changed, have we not.
More chunks chipped and flicked away
from our perfect corpse,
stated and statuesque, for death’s first day.

So ride and smile, it’ll be a while, or too soon to know.
I’ll pull that rope and you the other,
and we’ll sail without wind or bother.

Jacketeering jackets, layers, sneers, and Bill.
They jokey and jostle, pushing and pairing.
They thrum and ferry, passing the gated fray.

More terrible than the zombie scourge,
They’re smart, thumbed and hungry.
They’re in there dizzy, spinning with your laundry.

They’re staring through the frosted windows of the grocer’s frozen section,
Cooking dinner with foggy breath.
Would you like cold peas or cold ham, with a threat of rack of lamb.

They’re in suits and they deny
They’re just as worried as you and I.
They wonder how they’ll this time steal,
your life, liberty, and last meal.

I’m not saying nothing untoward,
nothing seditious, confederate, or forward.
Nothing knows us by name.
Nothing is the single rule of this single game.

We’re in the mob, but ain’t Italian.
We’re capable, too quick, and fearing sick.
We are the parts played as the script’s yet laid.

Action!
Qua Est Deus.

Give me your hands dear.
Lay your tears upon my wrist.
Beat upon this, my pulse’s thinnest skin.

Let's Walk A While

2009-12-09T11:01:00.004-07:00

Let’s walk a while

How are you doing?
Things at home ok?
What is your opinion of current events?
Do you get the newspaper anymore?

Do you see shadows in the lighted halls?
See strangers standing in the hats?
Have we thought too litte? too much?
Can you taste the spike in the punch?

Look about and see,
There’s a strange breathing sound outside.
Something is huffing and puffing,
and I think it’s great.

What we’ve been waiting for is in flight.
Hiding by day, traveling by night.

Long ago I speculated that wicked things
Always fly straight.
But what’s flying toward us now I think is more like light,
Both particle and wave, both solid and serene.

Do you know what I mean?
Have you guessed such odd questions
In the private corners of your brain?

Have you caught unknown eyes on the train?

Which stop do we get off on today?

The usual?
Or the one where tomorrow is today.

Shade Of A Tree

2009-10-21T09:30:00.003-06:00

See sideways settle down
See holes find purchase in your eyes
See happenstance decide

Perforated lines crisscross the planet
Bent to and fro
Moments from letting go

It will finally come

And though too many hear but the sound of the Drum
Remember those of us with ears for a Flute
Don’t pull back but twice shoot

Definitions tired and falsified will breakaway
Fewer tomorrows lost to today
There will be wholesome smiles, uplifted again

We all could stand to lose the weight
Sitting has danced its last with fate
Evil shall no longer pinch us twist chalk and slate

So continue your harvest as always
What will, will be
We know why, the shade of a tree

Always Forward

2009-10-15T08:15:00.002-06:00

If the days measure fitful, you need first master the chaos inside.

If the days prove the depth of challenge, useful is that cool core within, as the marbled pillar of the temple.

It is your eyes that dance the line between the world’s pain and your own, as sacred stained glass buffeted by winds from far away lands and from the torments churning deep in your soul’s cave.

Your pain is your beauty.

It is not a cause of despair, but of delight.

Your triumph takes the breath from crowds, makes people fear their own paler skin, this I have seen.

There is nothing wrong with what has fallen.

Fruit of the Garden, stars from Heaven, leaves from the olive Tree.

The is no faith to be lost in the future.

Turns of the prayer Wheel, followers of the Hundred, sanity finding Sense.

Be not bedazzled by the flashing ripples of the water’s surface.

Know Blind,

but know the flowing flower form of the swirling fluidic expanse touching everything, as your oars work and push this row boat of your life Forward, though we are fated to only face behind us, to stare but at the past.

We are Always forward. We are the Shore.

Is The Ticking Getting Louder?

2009-10-15T08:09:00.000-06:00

Hey Look, Post!

2009-10-06T12:45:00.001-06:00

...ok, I feel better now.

Security Clearance

2009-08-12T12:56:00.004-06:00

Another event had cast another person under some suspicion of berserker sympathies--this time not directed at a computer program. One of the more timid souls in strategic headquarters on Earth--in fact one of the premier's personal advisers--had recently put forward a suggestion that the space atoll called Fifty Fifty be evacuated. It was a small, exposed outpost, hard to defend against a superior force. According to this point of view, all Solarian forces should be pulled back much nearer Earth, preferably entirely within Sol System, where they could concentrate on playing a purely defensive role. A logical extension of this strategy--if one can call it a strategy--is that Port Diamond might as well be written off too.

The timid soul who came up with this proposal was promptly transferred Earthward, to a different and less important job. At least he had not advocated abandoning Earth herself. No one above him in the chain of command gave his ideas any serious consideration--except as basis for review of his security clearance.

-Berserker Fury, Fred Saberhagen

Eyelids' Blessing

2009-07-30T09:09:00.001-06:00

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

-lovecraft?

Got Your Handbasket Ready?

2009-07-14T11:27:00.001-06:00

This Is How Crazy It's Becoming

2009-06-18T09:04:00.001-06:00

Suitcase With $134 Billion Puts Dollar on Edge: William Pesek

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- It’s a plot better suited for a John Le Carre novel.

Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear.

Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea’s cash in a Swiss vault? Bagmen for Nigerian Internet scammers? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit?

And Thus...

2009-05-12T15:33:00.002-06:00

*Tending The Dirt Babies

2009-05-08T09:05:00.000-06:00

OLD SPACE BLOB!

2009-04-23T08:21:00.002-06:00

"A strange giant space “blob” spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled. . . . But what’s most remarkable about this blob is its size: It's 55,000 light-years long, which is comparable to the radius of the disk-shaped Milky Way. According to many theories of the universe, nothing was supposed to be that big at that time in the universe. The other objects from that period are far smaller, Ouchi said."

-story

(you mean we're not 100% sure of our scientific theories??? damn it, I'm going back into the zombie shelter... er, blob shelter)

And Good Riddance

2009-04-17T08:25:00.002-06:00

...the future, or the future as a lot of people are hoping it will be: pared down, more natural, more stable, less full of enervating overstimulation, of what Walker Percy called the "trivial magic" of modern times.

Some Common Yet "New" Sense For US Foreign Policy

2009-04-07T15:55:00.001-06:00

In this volatile setting, direct American military involvement in conflicts where the U.S. itself is not attacked and its national prosperity is not at risk should be avoided. Otherwise, American military involvement could cause 21st century conflicts to spin out of control and confront Americans with regional alliances designed to contain American military power; alliances that but for American military intervention would not exist. It is vital the U.S. not repeat the mistakes of the British Empire in 1914: overestimate its national power by involving itself in a self-defeating regional war it does not need to fight and precipitate its own economic and military decline.

link

Another Light At The End Of The Test Tube

2009-03-25T10:51:00.001-06:00

PORTLAND, Ore. — U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.

"We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring" at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions," she added.

Link

Reminds Me Of Someone

2009-03-24T12:00:00.003-06:00

"For more than a year McCoy had kept the secret of the still. Only a Scot could have done it, one gifted with all the caution and canny reserve of his race. Little by little he had exhausted the principal supplies of ti, and for many months now he had been able to obtain no more than enough to operate his still twice or, rarely, three times each week. A small stock of bottles, accumulated one by one, were hidden where he concealed the still when not in use; by stinting himself resolutely, he managed to keep a few quarts of his liquor set aside to age. In this manner, which had required for some time a truly heroic abstinence, McCoy was enabled to enjoy daily a seaman’s ration of half a pint of grog.

"His temperament was an unusual one, even among alcoholics. When deprived of spirits, he became gloomy, morose, and irritable, but a glass or two of rum was sufficient to make him the most genial of men. Mary had been astonished and delighted at the change in him. He conversed with her for an hour or more each evening, laughing and joking in the manner the Polynesians love. He romped with the two-year-old Sarah and took delight in holding on his knees the baby, Dan. With his grog ration assured, there was no better father and husband on the island than McCoy."

-Pitcairns's Island,
Part Three of The Bounty Trilogy,
Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall

Powered Panel

2009-03-10T11:17:00.005-06:00

The overwhelming pain is less than I can bear.

The smallest fears threaten only my larger parts.

I’m too late to care if the appointment was missed.

She’ll never love who I am not.

The future creaks like a well-oiled doorway in a horror movie.

Tonight I will load my pistol and unload it.

The thoughtless harsh words I spoke to him never left my mouth.

My regrets of a lifetime have yet to be defined by my death.

Blindness seeks me, but I save vision insurance.

Murderers find me well prepared to defend.

Cataclysmic tremors of the earth belie not my adaptive foundation.

I will not, not.

I am what I am not, when resting in hell.

Salvation is a daily medicine
for what follows life as what traces the sound of a bell.

Noble Fear

2009-03-10T10:47:00.003-06:00

Nub Of The Mountain

2009-02-19T09:29:00.003-07:00

Writing so much seems a choice:

Advice or Confession.

Outside Inside

2009-02-19T09:23:00.002-07:00

Outside Inside

The cat cries and I
Leave the room.

Tonight is all.
As ever any moment we see,
Is all there ever Is.

Again, as always,
I hate to sound fatalistic.
But for the mere fact,
I am mortal.

Pain is Beauty.

It is an unfortunate factor
(and probably some mathematical integer,
widely used in the metaphysical disciplines of the future);
That we conscious,
Find the simplest path to a Beauty Focus
Only when surviving the Pain of the moment.

Perhaps it is a burden of too much seeing,
Too much scope.

This burden denies us true panoramic vision
As it seeks to prevent our minds from madness.

To see all is to not have an eye.

Most of our moment of memories must
Rely upon individual givens.

The eye is truly I.

So darkness begets light begets darkness,
In a Camphoric code of unintelligible morse,
As we blink the days by.

There is no plateau.

We exist as simple beings,
Blind to our eyes,
To our inherent complexity.

Rate Of Change

2009-02-05T10:52:00.001-07:00

Increasing, are border principles of faith and forgiveness.
Time, in relative degrees, dictates
Actions of speed and speed of action.
Can we speak in clear terms?

We are in a period of retraction,
The teardown before reconstruction.
This is the sound when paradigms die.
It is a moment where we see for seemingly the first time
The height of Bullyshyt gripping our knees.

Turn off the Telecasted mono-mind Vision.

Who are you;
What are you prepared to do
If the system that sustains civilization
Hiccups, slows, or stops?

How do you fight the emerging combination
Of Industry and Government?
(i.e., the base definition of Fascism)

I can’t resist letting the poetry slide into diatribe.
The measure of our hours is growing ever more critical.

Estimate your truth, now.

Aside, this damned mixing of the right brain, left brain!
It’s as if half of our heads was invaded
In the deep past by some parasite seeking symbiosis.
It lives in your head as:
I have a gun, I have a flower;
I see a flower, I see a gun;
I am a gun, I am a flower.

No body is building anything any more.
Only money is being created.

It affects prices.
But not in the neighbor/neighbor barter situation.

God speaks to us in whispers between
The top of the hour and the first minute.

Poetry of life; Prose of life.
Meter your reality to the taste
Of beauty and continuance.
And to the stripes, the layers acknowledged
Betwixt personal definitions between.

Dude I need to see the rest of the movie!

Life in youtube-esque clips.

Rate of truth.
Measure of you.

Keep your debt free,
Your heart clean,
And your powder dry.

Orwell on Kipling:
“He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.”

I am fearing the overly civilized men, the elite.
I fear that their abuse of civilization shall affect my hours,
Shall affect my view of men, as they become a mass,
Shall affect how less civilized I may have to become to protect
What remains of our better nature.

The details are in the devil
And I adhere to the principle,
I am not the devil.

Fear is responsibility.
Locality is becoming the first Rule.

Civil War?
Is this 1862?
Where is Lincoln?
Do we need to be these united states?
Do we begin to question the reach and claim
Of the District of Columbia?

What sense in Paine?

Last Friday Of February

2009-02-05T09:06:00.003-07:00

Broken kindling for the year
With grease in hand
We stare at darken gear
With momentarily fixed findings
We spot the planet’s motion
And tomorrow begins today

The life we dream locked behind lids of eyes
Lids of Yes closed in crowd dynamic functions
Dreamy motions and light crossing intersections
Of conscious evolution created, rejected, yet surviving

And we try to plan
And we try to forecast the early light of dawn
On this new, delicate and different day

And so no And

Nothingness is becoming recognized sight
The Invisible left invisible
Unlucky retrograde blinding those in fright
In fear

You see
Without pass
Others will lie where I lay

New Names through the twenty-first century
New weight and meaning to satisfy reality

Goodnight Nurse, Hello?

Serious Answers For Serious Times

2009-01-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

Looks Like A Game Of Pick-Up-Sticks

2009-01-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

R.I.P., You Superman

2009-01-14T15:46:00.003-07:00

>Ricardo Montalban, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in splashy MGM musicals and later as the wish-fulfilling Mr. Roarke in TV's "Fantasy Island," died Wednesday morning at his home, a city councilman said. He was 88.

(also a small role in StarTrek II)

...the silver screen just got less teh awesome...

Roll

2009-01-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

A Breath Of Fresh Air

2009-01-09T08:16:00.001-07:00

Fiction Future?

2008-12-29T08:30:00.002-07:00

bias or clarity?

Points After Survival

2008-12-09T08:46:00.004-07:00

"That is the kind of beauty I was trying to get you to see," Orolo told me. "Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways."

-Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Emerging Localism

2008-12-05T09:17:00.001-07:00

...a leading indicator

Cheese Is 'King of the World!!!'

2008-12-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

reality v. humanhope

2008-11-17T20:56:00.004-07:00

reality v. humanhope

instinctual driven beyond the stomach,
altruistic mammalian response, deriven

can't get enough of a drag, drag pull,
johnny waters and his flicked on bride,
don't say goodnight, let me take a ride.

no goodbye to the neighboring city,
who's the die.
see the omega man on his ride.

grip me little, let's keep what's mine.
no goodbye to the city, we'll never sigh.

contract, expand, breathe next to me the land.
what's harmony, my bic sliding in ashtray hand.

the direction is forward, no simpler way to say,
good night as always,
the things you wish to leave at bay.

but goodnight to the city, not while there's yet day.
raucous and rucksacks, human feet beating.

silent see the favors, the violent shaded lee
do you fight, do you agree,
what new gover-ment in the broken street.

hold to the kind, hold to the free,
no city alone can be.

tidal waves,
slavering we settle for nothing less.
then maybe we’ll see,
nothing less than the stars.

Ltlmke and H

2008-11-12T19:01:00.004-07:00

ltlmke

"I'm kinda pysched to see some change.

One thing that irritated me lately,

There's nothing I can do about this at this point in time.

I wish I could tell people about the 3day rule.

Before you do it, take 3days and think about it.

In my opinion, I'm not gonna suffer.

Put it on the blog I'll have to look at that sometime."

H

"The sticker makes it ok."

Subtle Switches

2008-10-31T16:49:00.005-06:00

subtle switches
west bearing witches
follow night follow night

cast the net wide
you unsewn tatters of
most beckoning costume

drink well this well
deep as a desert tree
spy the the owl by one eye
invisible dreams
tonight's success
tomorrow's reprieve

are you sought enough to taste?
to suit
to need

hidden radios glow forbidden breath
under the door
stations identify the roaming hoards
burning, consuming, hunting
another day's dusk

old monsters freshly released
from the subconscious, sub-regilith
dear earth's ID

cash your accounts now
bake your bread
keep the teeth in your mouth
in your head

eye to crack
struggle to breathe quiet
and wait

the breakers are breaking
thrown hard over
by the overload

the lines are coming down
country eating town
eating at the concentrations of old power
embers buried deep in the ash

so strange days upon us again

old legends before sin

we to burn again

In A Strict Sense

2008-10-28T08:51:00.001-06:00

...I secretly believe God lets people into heaven based on how they use punctuation!

Go Ahead...It Ain't Loaded

2008-10-15T13:37:00.004-06:00

Derive

Here It Comes

2008-10-06T09:17:00.002-06:00

the peanuts drop to concrete
the crowd hushes and roars complete
the stance of home, of each base about the diamond

turn, arms raised, pointing, staring

from outside
from left field
from the back screaming
from...

it is here

Abandon The Goal Of Home Ownership Independent Of Ability To Pay

2008-09-30T08:19:00.002-06:00

better to let it burn

Like Old TJ Said

2008-09-26T08:32:00.002-06:00

Hat tip to Ure

Hard to get much better perspective than Thomas Jefferson's letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin in 1802:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Helicon Hail

2008-09-23T10:13:00.001-06:00

Rocks falling through the paper trail,
Holly holly, xmas is going to fail,
The ol’ pale face is looking more pale.

Somethin’ cold following our trail,
Leading us from behind the hive,
Helicon Hellstorm, Hector’s alive.

Eyes ahead, seeing the way yet to thrive.
Find ourselves, selling cool drinks along the Road.
Find the ones, burying their dreams like the mud-borne toad.

Come along and tow with me, this lifting load.
Come see our killer’s teeth brighten the night.
Come remember why we forgot not to bet on kites.

It’ll be the scene of sight.
We’ll know why we’re here again.
We’ll know the name, friend.

round
bend
found
send

And in the end,
The Beatles will sing youth innocent and forbidden,
Whether Broca, Paladin, Cain, or Biden,

I envy not who will be reign-hung and spit ridden.
I’ve always known I’ll last till we march,
Trudging our arms together through the final, gloriful arch.

A sight of smaller lands, and water for the parched.
Smaller hands probing from the midnight dark.
They will be they, night ended and deemed by morning lark.

And in the ending again, eye to eye, cathartic.
Dreamers will wake, and walkers will fall.
We’ll discover within us both the hammer and mortar for the wall.

So it goes

2008-09-18T08:08:00.000-06:00

1RXS J160929.1-210524

2008-09-17T13:05:00.000-06:00

Howdy neighbor!!

Angular Distance Denotes Decay?

2008-09-02T11:33:00.002-06:00

hat tip, Urban

Paper being floated around the funny pages...

Determined Genesis

2008-07-30T11:27:00.002-06:00

Stripes Of The Magnetic Eyes

2008-07-29T10:48:00.004-06:00

All credit card transactions will be reported to the I.R.S.

...more info.

...and more gloom.

Briefest Bird

2008-07-28T13:54:00.005-06:00

see here
I'd thought you'd gone
thought it was over
not lost, but beyond

and that's ok,
i know the way
there's no honor among thieves,
and ghosts no obligation to grieve

like many of us
your friends
we feared to believe
there was a mean to the ends

and that's ok
it's good today
to see the briefest word
flitting shadow of a bird

who knows how far that storm
blowing rainbow colors apart
I love to see just your curve upon the sky
and not ask when, how, or why

Why Does This Sound Familiar?

2008-07-23T13:44:00.001-06:00

Fascists opposed what they believed to be laissez-faire or quasi-laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. People of many different political stripes blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and Marxian socialism. Their policies manifested as a radical extension of government control over the economy without wholesale expropriation of the means of production. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They also introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors.

Waiting In The Sea

2008-07-23T08:31:00.005-06:00

what heroes fall in times of traps
without recovery

when so blue the skies
what heroes can we be

what time is time before the tragedy

what thoughts can fly without urgent need

what life is life with such luxury

will we still meet the scene
we fill with empty space

will we still live within our means
to the edges of our face

what solemn promise can we keep
when no earth shifts below our feet

what heroes can there be
in a land of reeless tv

what lies can we see
in nights unkempt and days asleep

what thunder rolls only beyond horizon
will stories be only of far off trolls and grazing bison

is it only blindness that won’t be seen

is there something else
is there something coming
is there some strange discovery
waiting in the sea

have we seen
the faces in the market have begun to mark it

have we learned how
the powers of survival are numbered and weighed

are the ears beginning to perk to evolution delayed

what heroes can there be
in a land of living free

what sights to behold beyond the end of the street
what sounds to hear from underneath personal megaphones
what words to share when absent electric and alone

do the questions begin to bother
unmarked as shapes in the water

do the waves form the air or the ocean
what saviors will we cling to
what bursting rays will betray us
showing the shadows' nature finally

is this over, or but begun

is there something new on its way to me

waiting in the sea

When Facts Change...

2008-07-22T09:51:00.002-06:00

-David Evans, July 18 2008, The Australian

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

*Rumble

2008-07-02T09:46:00.002-06:00

hat tip to Urban for these June 30th words by Kunstler...

Worse Than Grandma's Depression

This isn't so funny anymore. Intimations of a July banking collapse rumbled though the Internet this weekend while mainstream news orgs like The New York Times and CNN pulled their puds over swift boats and Amy Winehouse's performance technique. Something is happening, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones...? to quote the master.

What's happening is that American society is sliding into a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through. On the technical side, there has been unending controversy as to whether we're gripped by inflation or deflation. It's certainly deceptive. Food and gasoline prices are rising faster than the rivers of Iowa. But the prices of assets, like houses, stocks, jet-skis, GMC Yukons and pre-owned Hummel figurines are cratering as America turns into Yard Sale Nation.

We're a very different country than we were in 1932. In that earlier crisis of capital, few people had any money but our society still possessed fantastic resources. We had plenty of everything that our land could provide: a treasure trove of mineral ores and the equipment to refine it all, a wealth of oil and gas still in the ground, and all the rigs needed to get at it, manpower galore (and of a highly disciplined, regimented kind), with fine-tuned factories waiting for orders. We had a railroad system that was the envy of the world and millions of family farms (even despite the dust bowl) owned by people who retained age-old skills not yet degraded by agribusiness. We had fully-functional cities with operating waterfronts and ten thousand small towns with local economies, local newspapers, and local culture.

We had a crisis of capital in the 1930s for reasons that are still debated today. My own guess is a combination of a bad debt workout that sucked "money" into a black hole (since money is loaned into existence, but vanishes if the loans are not systematically paid back) plus a gross saturation of markets, meaning that every American who had wanted to buy a car or an electric toaster had done so and there was no one left to sell to. (The first round of globalism -- 1870 - 1914 -- had shut down after the fiasco of World War One.)

Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passed through an event horizon out of the known universe into some other realm of space-time, never to be seen again in this realm. This would seem to be the very essence of monetary deflation -- money defaulted out-of-existence.

This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it.

The banks have been doing their death dance for an entire year now, pretending that their problems are those of mere "liquidity" (i.e. cash-on-hand) rather than insolvency (no cash either on hand or in the vault and nothing else to sell to raise cash except worthless "creative" securities that nobody would ever buy). But the destruction of money (resulting from loans not paid back) is now so intense that the game of pretend has reached its terminal point. The question for the moment is exactly who and what will be crushed as these institutions roll over and die.

Complicating matters is a global oil predicament that is really not hard to understand, but which the organs of news and opinion have obdurately failed to explicate for an anxious public. Call it Peak Oil. There are only a few elements of it you need to know. 1.) that demand has now permanently outstripped supply; 2.) that new discoveries are too meager to offset consumption; 3.) That under under the circumstances, the systems we rely on for daily life are crumbling. I've called this situation The Long Emergency.

Our chances of mitigating this, and of continuing our current way-of-life is about zero. I've tried to promote the idea that rather than waste remaining resources in the futile attempt to sustain the unsustainable (i.e. come up with "solutions" to keep suburbia running), that we should begin immediately making other arrangements for daily life -- mainly by downscaling and re-scaling everything from farming to commerce to the way we inhabit the landscape -- but my suggestions have proven unpopular even among the "environmental" elites, who are too busy being entranced by new-and-groovy ways to keep all the cars running.

So where we are at now is the equivalent of standing in the slop by the ocean shore under a gathering hundred-foot-high wave that is about to come crashing down on our heads. Since I sure don't know everything, I can't say how this will all play out in the months ahead, especially with the presidential election coming at the exact moment that voters will be turning on their furnaces for the cold and dark winter beyond. I would venture to say that so far our society as a whole has done a piss-poor job of comprehending the situation. But there is still the possibility, with four months of politicking left, that the nature of our predicament can be articulated in a way that few can fail to understand, the way Mr, Lincoln articulated the terms of the Civil War on the eve of its fateful outbreak.

You Wanna Tell Me Again...

2008-06-13T12:37:00.001-06:00

... how this is done by two guys with rope and some boards in one night?

Almost Camping Season!

2008-06-11T15:41:00.001-06:00

...there's always a good reason to go...

Blink. Life. Blink.

2008-06-11T12:46:00.002-06:00

...well I guess I could write.
Something we seem to never have time for anymore.
Never have unction for anymore.
Never have passion for anymore.
But those are all lies.

So here we are, dear reader, dear writer.
Been a while hasn’t it?
What shall we talk about it?
The future? The past? The ever expanding present?

I’m not sure.

There are times in life, moments really, when you realize how quickly it is passing.

Those are usually unfun moments...
Because otherwise, time would be “flying” wouldn’t it?

So what does that mean?

“Life is passing.”

Is life precious because of its fleeting nature?
Is life precious because of its beauty?
Because of its pain?
Because life is an indivisible mix of both beauty and pain?

What’s the point?
What are we really working so hard for here?
Do you really think it’s to secure your place in the afterlife?
That all your loves and secrets will be protected and preserved once your heart stops and the brain’s electrical signature dwindles to nothing?

In the face of the great unknown, the great unknowing... life looks pretty bleak doesn’t it?

So what keeps us going?
What keeps us questing and questioning?

Is it merely millions of years of instinct... that provides a false sense of providence, of a conjured spiritual identity... so that we can be buoyed by baseless belief in an existence larger than the confines of our flesh?

Whoa, serious questions there.

And no answer to them can be silly.

The truth, as truth in a baby-fed bubble like the brain can be is: the answer doesn’t matter.

Who answers, probably matters the most.

Consciousness is a slippery fish.
A shape, a shadow that yet reflects light, beneath the mental water, refracted and flickering.

Are we the fish?
Are we the lake?
Are we the observer at the water’s edge?
A pretty good set up for Ego, Id, and SuperEgo there.

We are the world awake.
The universe, its material and energetic parts, awake.

I don’t want to Dis the rocks here, but how much does a rock think about?
Just what mental burdens does it have to deal with?

We are but rocks (material) energized (electricity converted from TacoBell).
Organic machines resting on mineral stilts run by straps of connective contracting tissue.
And then there’s the ‘Us’, the ‘Me’, aka consciousness.

Awake.

Awake that it’s awake.
The alarm clock constantly going off... you’re awake, I’m me! you’re awake, I’m me! you’re awake, I’m me!

It’s funny.
Or rather, we think everything is funny.
We deal with the complex, conflicting observations of the universe around us with the tool of irony.
Something is, and not is.
A paradox of meaning... ergo, the HAHA!

So what’s the point?
What’s the answer?
What is salvation and the consequence of ambient faith??

Letting the riddle continue;
Flying diligently by the seat of one’s pants
Riding the joke of the universe to its invisible natural conclusion;

11:11 AM

It’s like when you throw a baseball.

Your mind and body calculate millions of times as you grip it, crank your arm, spot your target.
But once you let it go
That’s the sweet spot of life.
Giving up contact, for a bit
Being the ball, the ball’s influence, seeing the impact
Releasing your actions from yourself
Dissociating your choices from your existence for sanity’s sake
Not taking yourself too seriously!

We’re all responsible for ourselves, whether we know it or not.
Responsible for how the ball is thrown
But to have thrown it.. and observe it flying separate from you,
is relief.

And this repeats non-identically with every tick of the clock, with every cc of blood we pump through us.

The “truth” is the universe/life/existence is but information,
An utterly complex system of information
Interacting... as you the writing reader, and I writer reading are interacting.

And we can’t hold it all
Can’t be responsible for all of it
It’s rather difficult to dicuss
Aka, philosophy

Life is goofy.
It’s a hilarious mix of order and chaos.
The mix tickles the brain like soda pop tickling your nose.
There, yet not there.
When definitions lack all definition...
All that’s left is, Wonder.

And so this essay has succeeded.
I have answered no important questions, directed no dire actions, implored no lofty considerations.
And so have answered a questioning sense, directed a focused motionlessness, implored the parts to see the whole seeing the parts.

Blink. Life. Blink.

Give Us An Analogy George!

2008-06-10T08:55:00.004-06:00

Thought I'd post an excerpt from my man, George Ure...
on the subject of the why our money system is blowing.

Just to make the discussion of unsound money and how the scam works really clear in academic terms, suppose we set up a closed multi-agent system with two players. (Sound's Ivy League'ish, huh?).

Each has $10 dollars. No more money can be created. None.

Agent 1 has a piece of land, Agent 2 has a shovel.

Now, Agent 1 borrows the shovel from Agent 2 at an agreed value of $5 and an interest rate of 50% per day. Agent 1 then uses the borrowed $5 shovel to put in a garden. He puts in magnificent magic beans that grow overnight. $5 worth of beans, in fact. The next day, he wants to sell the crop to Agent 2 for $5.

Before the sale, Agent 1 has: His original $10, a $5 shovel and $5 worth of beans. ($20 total) But he owes $5 for the shovel and $2.50 of interest.

But here's where it gets dicey: The banksters would argue that creation of a crop 'creates value' and therefore more money should be printed and poured into the system. "What wrong with that?" you wonder?

If we agree to the fiat money scam, the part which none of the banksters ever answer (it's sleight of hand, you see) is to answer the question where do we 'inject' the money?

Do we allow Agent 2 to print it up so he can buy the beans?

That would give Agent 2 "Free money", right, and the only thing he's done is printed money!!!

Well, that's exactly how the global fractional reserve banking scam works. Agent 2 is allowed to (wink wink, nudge nudge) constantly printing up money on the excuse that it's needed to offset the 'value created' by all this magic bean farming.

But, why isn't the farmer printing up money? I mean, he's doing the value creation, right? "Oh no!" scream the banksters. "He's got the value of his beans and besides Agent 2 needs to be able to buy beans for food! It's a social necessity!"

See how the bankster spin works? In the evnd, all of us (Agent 1-types who produce value) accept the notiong that Agent-2 types (banksters) have some right to print up paper money and thus over time end up in total control of the economic system.

They live in a scared spitless state, hoping no one will wake up to the sleight of hand about where money is 'injected' into the system. "We need to inject money to offset the value of the crop" is their argument., Well, horse puckey.

I've had lots of economic wizards try to explain why Agent 2 should be allowed to print up money for just lending his shovel and how Agent 2 isn't engaging in sleight of hand by claming the right to print money!

Here's the real deal: In a closed economic system the land and shovel have equal value, and Agent 1 borrows the shovel for his whole $10, leaving him with a shovel, land and no cash while Agent 2 has $20 and nothing else. When the crop comes in Agent 1 sells half to Agent 2 for $10 and retains ownership of the shovel. In this way, the producers over time roll into control of the non-producers.

This outlines the threat posed by sound in stark relief. In order for the non-producers to get the upper hand, they must be the sole proprietors of the printing press. By what Right!!???!!!???

Nevertheless, this is exactly what's going on in the world today. It's why government must grow, purchasing power must be watered down, and the producers power crushed. We're all renting shovels and letting the non-producers print money. This has only one inevitable outcome. You lose the house and your job and you get hoodwinked out of all of your life's work because the Agent-2 types have a grand scam going.

There, don't you feel better now?

Virga

2008-05-29T11:37:00.002-06:00

Guess I seen lighting
guess I seen rain
guess I seen again
how nothing’s ever the same

I know the one I love,
know her in the light
find her sweet, apple shined
taciturn and tight

Been dreaming of far off thunder
waking my middle in the night
not so worried about it
been ready with worry all my life

Met heroes and mishandled hopes
met kind faced bums and devil popes
seen the twinkling in white eyes of the blind
seen the sun calling names the followers find

Hearing the call for her basement twitch
fingers full and flying over jars, rub, switch
telling her i knew the whole time true
what’s good for gander is good for you
what beauty is, is fine for the sippin rich

Been a while since the strange tidings came for me
been a solace on solstices, an equal on equinoxes
been down the roads so many times i know
can speak the colors of the lights guiding the flow

Noticed the forlorn virga falling short of earth
caught the moments of her face that’ll
never fail me till the day I die
found the coming better than the going
some days, sometimes, some ways, some rhyme

Lost the precious youth at a fill up station
traded my irresponsibility for labors of luxury
gave title to names not my own
found the heart of hearts on a beach comb

Became magistrate and masturbate
made it up as I went along
gave half to charity
told the gov the other half was gone

Buried the treasure in chronicled lays of sea
transformed the tears to gold for a simple fee
gave my soul to laughter, gave my smiles away
living but dying but loving ironic hate so I say

Guess I seen lighting
guess I seen rain
guess I seen again
how nothing’s ever the same

Oh Frack!

2008-05-21T08:40:00.000-06:00

People's Luck Is Categoric

2008-05-13T08:12:00.003-06:00

Conflagration And Senseless Hope

2008-05-09T08:26:00.003-06:00

A l e x a n d e r P r a d o

. . .

there is something so strange swimming in my head. some choked river i'm swimming in downslope from the future's volcano. something's stirring, shaking, shelling. like the moment between the bomb's shrieks to the pitch of imminent proximity, and the first flick of your eyes toward the trenches. i don’t know why moods overtake us. it may be what we see, what we dream, what we’re missing, what we’ve had too much of. Cormac’s The Road haunts me. conflagration and senseless hope. that is the world in one measure or another. we strive for what is possible, what is available, what the lessons of the night can lend to morning. something shivers inside me. waking or dying in tremors beelike and directional. something is behind me, threatening me, pushing up through the mental layers of control and conciliation. what scares me most is that this monster of foreign darkness, of staining miasma, of irresistible pain, is merely myself. but the adverb ‘merely’ is only another feint, a ruse to play the trick of seeing it casual and not causal. the demons that dwell within us are the most deadly instruments. they are that, made by us, that screech around bladed mouths designed solely for injury to ourselves. our personal monsters know us, seek us, can never be left behind. the darkness dreams of us. it waits beside us for the brief lapses in reason to bloom blood and breath. this waits within all of us. none are immune to such diseases of the psyche. inconsolable madness we were born from. we are but buskers pole spinning plates of sanity, dancing to music only we hear, only we conjure, colorful street mimes screaming their names into the faces of strangers in the mirror, actors playing in the amphitheatre of our skulls, improvising lines and life. I wonder who inside is left behind. what parallels of time never breathe for fear of discovering who we really are, what we’re really capable of. something is singing the eerie light of dying stars, somewhere beyond the event horizon. i hear it. how long can i not answer?

. . . .

May Be

2008-05-01T08:42:00.003-06:00

Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air:
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree!
Each flower has wept and bow’d toward the east
Above an hour since, yet you not drest;
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have matins said
And sung their thankful hymns, ’tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in,
Whereas a thousand virgins on this day
Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your gown or hair:
Fear not; the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you:
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night:
And Titan on the eastern hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying:
Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark
How each field turns a street, each street a park,
Made green and trimm’d with trees! see how
Devotion gives each house a bough
Or branch! each porch, each door, ere this,
An ark, a tabernacle is,
Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove,
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street
And open fields, and we not see ’t?
Come, we’ll abroad: and let’s obey
The proclamation made for May,
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.

There’s not a budding boy or girl this day
But is got up and gone to bring in May.
A deal of youth ere this is come
Back, and with white-thorn laden home.
Some have despatch’d their cakes and cream,
Before that we have left to dream:
And some have wept and woo’d, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:
Many a green-gown has been given,
Many a kiss, both odd and even:
Many a glance, too, has been sent
From out the eye, love’s firmament:
Many a jest told of the keys betraying
This night, and locks pick’d: yet we’re not a-Maying!

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time!
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun.
And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne’er be found again,
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown’d with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.

- Robert Herrick (1648)

We Love You, Tommie!

2008-04-25T08:28:00.003-06:00

Compel, Intrigue

for We are in desperate need,

and the end of the end has come,

I'll follow the Sun.

(ps, soooo cold)

ToDo

2008-04-17T08:17:00.002-06:00

“to be dead and mad was to be blind”*

to dare ignore dreams is to risk a soul’s surprise
to darken doorways without light
to call too quiet for her ears
to wish a moment
to wait for its truth

to find toys once discarded
to play too briefly to exhaust
to kiss not gently
to feel the biting behind your eyes
to love, to worry, to offer hope’s help

to see her wondering when
to feel her practicing patience’s solitude
to shelter that smoldering ember of joy
to fan it with breath and better words
to say “glow” and see light

a self wandering basket is life
carried by one’s crooked elbow through forested fairytale
to a picnic in the sunny afternoon of decades
filled with toasts, smiling tears, fearful laughter
with love’s company,
with knowing, questing, guessing,
with you

____________________
*Wolfe, Return to the Whorl

Oldbox

2008-04-16T12:31:00.002-06:00

...time for google image brigade...

inspired term for this round: "oldbox"

For Chuck

2008-04-11T12:54:00.003-06:00

May all the "damn dirty" apes of heaven keep their "paws off" you.

RIP, Chuck.

Here's some fine words by the man.

Ps, cop killer was still a good album.

And while I'm at it, here's some imbedded perspective.

Harbor Holds

2008-04-07T09:16:00.005-06:00

When the cold wind blows
And her sails streak with frozen spray,
I call from between the land and sea,
Come here my cherished love to me.

When the doldrums threaten with empty waste
And her skin blisters beneath an angry sun,
Anon I offer from the sheltering shade,
Come wait with me for cruel noon’s fade.

When the boat grows tarnished and frail
And her efforts alone cannot repair,
Throw me your line I say,
Let’s refit joy together, weave again the frayed.

When she cries too quiet to hear
And the blank moon grants no company,
I whisper across the water,
Be steadied here as the sky’s only daughter.

When she’s laughing, rushing and sweet
And the airs and currents bask in her revelry,
I smile in rhythm with her life,
Serving refreshment and repast, flickering shadow and light.

Whatever driving, draining, daring
Cycles of oceans far away,
I harbor here
For her, for her, for she
I harbor here, my dear, for thee.

---------------------------------

Window Pane

2008-04-03T09:50:00.006-06:00

(I don't want you folks thinkin I'm no longer
word crazy and lyrically strange)

Window Pane

As I,
The window allows light
Inside the seer.

Thy sight is framed
By the boundaries of pain.

Edges of choice,
Choosing the boxy shape of a human name.

We, alone in our frames,
Are kin to windows of double panes.

Existence proceeds from outside,
Through the surface of our tension
(the outer pain),
Through the insulated, static air betwixt
(the place of I),
Through the border of our most basic beliefs
(the inner pain),
Finally crossing into the furnished room
Of subconscious.

Pardonably paraphrased perhaps predictably:

The Universal other touches
The human ego’s frontier
(there formed and warmed).

Then allowed into the
‘space’ we ‘demark’ as our ‘mind’.

The You of you is but the filter
Between inner and outer pain,
Inner and outer definitions of Self,
A layer that is you,
Between the strangeness Without,
And the Strangeness within.

Pain the great limiter,
Pain the red signPost,
Pain the Teacher.

Though the truth of Being
May be the very Light
That passes through us
From Chaos dances
Into cells of Order.

We motionful things,
We animated objects of walking dreams,
Are used to defining what is us
And not us,
By the limitations of our skin.

Mind,
Body,
And the often debated third part.

We are experiencing machines,
Blessed with pain and so panes,
Which define personal existence.

Are we going or gone?

Being machines with ‘souls’,
Are we the final fruit
Of concordant chaos or
The initial step towards something more?

It can seem fruitless and foolish
To conjure ourselves as anything more
Than actors writing our own lines
In a directorless theatre.

That is the burden of the
Existential puzzle,
As Zero is the question begging,
“What is outside,
What is inside,
‘0’
This funny circle of meaning?”

A point of origin is the original point.
It asks, “Where to next?”
It begs to be given another point
Somewhere in the distance,
And so know itself a line,
A direction,
A record,
A life,
A length,
An experience,
A revelation,
Of distance,
Of Breath
Of Time
Of birth to death
Of love racing with pain.

It begs this as does our own soul,
To be pointed a way
To more of itself,
To become less alone,
Less singular.

If your You will allow
Such strange descriptions,
Perhaps the next direction for us
Is to be given a third point,
Bequeathing us a nice triangular plane
For our hearts.

And even further flung,
Adding yet more points of existence,
Where we may finally define a space,
A three dimensional square, or circle,
A box, container or sphere,
Not dissimilar from that original ‘0’
Yet older, larger, more colorful,
Baleful,
Binding rocket scientists and Beowulfs,
And oceans and land and fire and air.

Perhaps it is a fair and unjust Earth,
And we will pursue the wonder,
The puzzling Question,
“What is inside, what is outside?”

Perhaps these words are confusion and Night.
But is not everything in Sight?

And are not we over talented still
At pushing such trivialities aside with Will,
Filtering the chaotic light away,
Before shining in the room we call Day.

Beginnings Of "Darkening the Scanner"

2008-03-11T11:07:00.001-06:00

Philip K... this one's for you, buddy.

Of Interest

2008-03-07T13:36:00.001-07:00

2009 (seen and unseen)

Whether That's Because...

2008-03-06T13:39:00.001-07:00

"Mysteriously, four spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions....

The fact this effect seems most evident with flybys most asymmetrical with respect to Earth's equator "suggests that the anomaly is related to Earth's rotation...

Whether that's because of new physics or some problem with the model we have is yet to be worked out, as far as I know. A lot of people are trying to look into this."

--Reminds me of Mr. Hoagland's and Mr. Bearden's 'Hyperdimensional Physics'

My Kinda Guy

2008-03-03T13:47:00.002-07:00

I would love to share a pint with this man...
chuckle at false bureaucratic hopes,
and true species optimism.

(may have to buy his book)

YO! Look Up!

2008-02-19T13:32:00.002-07:00

Wednesday, 2/20... Americas...

I'll be diggin out Valyna's telescope and plopping down on the back patio...

cross your fingers for clear skies...

Carousel

2008-02-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

design, function, absence
aspiration, reality, fantasy
super ego, ego, id

a return to typing with ltlmke

a room for the making,
ventilation is important

paths to glory,
getting new teeth,
only a thousand bucks

'i firmly believe this...
if i don't owe,
i can be honest;
that's a great thing'

shat that redlight,
you'll lose your tourism

can you imagine?

'i was reading a story today'
bought house and left.

general public doesn't understand paperwork

fat fucks have no claim

on that note,
every morning i wake
is an experiment

they're asking for logon information twice

the fucked up thing about it is they don't allow it

they don't try to make it easy for ya

that carousel,
i tell you what,
the capability to glue up
twentyfoot board

someday I'll jump to the level
where i can talk to people

i'm taking america back,
where i take pride in
the people i talk to

i let you into my world
and who are you gonna vote for?

lifeforms thrive on that type of situation;
not only is it fun, it tastes good

roger's going to Mongolia for three months
to work on heavy equipment

it's the basic things you deal with
that you learn upon

who's looked at the pacific ocean lately?

it's a great vehicle to oil now and again

if the language is gonna cross,
know the translation

'reading is fundamental'

Revisiting The Cool Corner

2008-02-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Acquire some sheep?

PHEW!

2008-02-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

damn,

it's rather consuming,
plotting world domination...

I'll get back to ya.

Double Einstein Ring

2008-01-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Somewhere far, far away...

a rude "little" boy is chuckling to himself
how the ants have just now noticed the magnifying glass
pointed in their direction...

This is an image of gravitational lens system SDSSJ0946+1006 as photographed by Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The gravitational field of an elliptical galaxy warps the light of two galaxies exactly behind it. The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances.

...Or Maybe, A Cool Down

2008-01-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Urban.

Today, the Space and Science Research Center, (SSRC) in Orlando, Florida announces that it has confirmed the recent web announcement of NASA solar physicists that there are substantial changes occurring in the sun’s surface. The SSRC has further researched these changes and has concluded they will bring about the next climate change to one of a long lasting cold era.

LINK

hmmmm, maybe they should take back that Oscar,

and that Nobel too.

(Friggin self-aggrandizing Charlatan)