Scenes From A Walk

Spyware

… an interesting article on spyware created and distributed by NSO Group, an Israeli company with close ties to the Israeli government and military… the spyware is called Pegasus and is capable of lodging itself in cell phones and tracking the activities of the owner of the phone… it is allegedly being used by repressive regimes to track journalists and dissidents wherever they are around the world and a recent version is reputed to be able to lodge itself on a phone without any action on the part of the phones owner, such as clicking on an email designed to trick the owner into installing the malware…

… i am sure this is the tip of an immense iceberg…

… there are times when i think about how generally pleasant and unthreatening my life is… then i read articles like this and it is like the opening scenes to Blue Velvet, where all looks pleasant, beautiful and good, when just under the ground there is war, rot and decay… do i want to remain pleasantly oblivious?…

Sex, Cats and Dogs

Mostly about cat porn…

… yesterday i shared an article on AI generation of cat images that seemed every bit as real as the images of cats posted by so many people on social media… it’s always been a little distressing to me that people can get more attention by posting and writing about their cats (and dogs) than anyone can get with most other kinds of posts… it’s click bate really… everyone loves a good cat (or dog) pic… i’m not sure images of newborn babies even do as well… well, i shared the article to FB and wouldn’t you know, it is tied with a post on the flowers in our front garden for the most views ever!… in one day!… i posted a selection of edited photographs from my walk earlier in the morning and shared them to FB at the same time… only four people brought to my site as a result… in addition to sex, we have to add cats and dogs to what sells…

The Haiku of Issa

Today’s six Haiku summarized with notes on what they mean or suggest to me, or the questions they raise…

• watching dawn over green fields with his father…
  • the generations, time, intertwines… green fields are spring, early summer fields, the poet will be younger than the father…
• unaware fish in a tub, cooling at the gate…
  • about to be dinner?… this is not the first poem suggesting animals are unaware of time, of the near future, of the past… they are all about just being in the present moment…
• ducks quacking on a new year’s morning…
  • in celebration?, or just doing what ducks do?… a sign that nothing has changed… a quack to greet the new year… humans make of it what they will…
• the world of dew, and yet…
  • one of the more famous and enigmatic poems Issa wrote… dew is short lived past the dawn… as the sun climbs, it evaporates away, yet while there, magic occurs, little worlds by the millions, sparkling diamonds… yes, dew is dew, nothing more, and yet, when gazed upon by eyes that see… and yet…
• a spring day lingers in the pools…
  • i guess this would be the pools of a stream or small river…
• beneath an image of Buddha, tiresome spring flowers…
  • initially i thought statue of Buddha, then i thought painting or print depicting Buddha… which makes me think of a Buddha alter in the home with spring flowers placed beneath it… why tiresome?… is it tiresome by comparison to the concept of Buddha?… is the devotion of placing flowers tiresome… why tiresome?…

First Thoughts

… angry with myself… drank a little more than i should have last night… drank enough that i lost motivation to clean up the kitchen after dinner… this gets the following morning off to a bad start… it’s a negative energy start… plus, i feel a little the worse for the alcoholic wear… i don’t have a drinking problem per se, it’s just that i like it a little too much in the moment… i exchange those momentary good feelings for a cascade of not so good feelings, physically and emotionally, following in its wake… i keep trying to remind myself that i don’t like the negative cascade that follows, but it doesn’t usually stop me… how much better i fell all around when i drink moderately or not at all… how much better the next day starts… i am determined to learn this lesson before i die…

… the January 6th Select Committee hearings began yesterday… i am in awe of Liz Cheney… maybe even a little in love with her… she and i are on the opposite side of almost any policy debate, but i deeply respect her for putting her political career on the line to do the right thing… the testimony from the police was powerful and moving… it’s too early to hope that there will be consequences for those involved from within government… it’s too early to think that the hearings will persuade enough people that the far right is a problem… but it got off to a good start…

… i hear Fiona scratching around downstairs… she was a restless girl last night… got me up at 2 AM to let her out… not sure she did much when i did… i did get back to sleep but up again at 4 AM… she is coming upstairs now… she is on the studio bed now… good, i don’t have to go see if she is getting into trouble…

… the birds are starting to sing…

… yesterday i paid attention to the Cicadas for the first time this summer… i assume they have been rattling for a while and i haven’t focused on it… the Cicadas a sure sign that we are past the middle of summer, i wrote a haiku about it…

Cicadas rattling in the trees— where does the time go?

… it doesn’t appear to be the predicted brood X inundation… there was one year when in some places there were swarms of them flying through the air… i haven’t seen that this year… maybe i need to drive north… that’s where we encountered the swarms before… we have to do that on Sunday, so maybe then…

Micro Poem

_ Cicadas rattling in the trees– where does the time go?

Scenes From Today’s Walk

The route…

… the scenes…

Walking

Sitting in Long Dock Park

… quiet summer morning… thinking about places to publish what i write… this morning the idea of writing longer, more considered posts, weekly, publish to Medium?, Ghost?, how to get it out… what to get out…

… trying to find words for the sound of cicadas… rasping is what i have come up with… it’s not right as rasping is an unpleasant and grating sound, which cicada noise is not…

… i have stopped to listen to the water rifle by in Fishkill Creek, Madame Brett Park…

The Antidote to internet Cat Porn?

These images were created with a machine-learning technology called Style-GAN. It’s an AI algorithm that can learn how to sketch almost anything, including human faces, by studying hundreds of thousands of existing images. And as we know, there’s no shortage of cat pictures on the internet.¹

thiscatdoesnotexist.com

… you be the judge…

Film

• The World to Come: this looks good, and perhaps a little steamy…
  • “Sometimes stories choose you”: Director Mona Fastvold opens up to Martha Alexander about shooting her latest film The World to Come, which tells the tragic story of two farmers wives who fall in love in 1850s upstate New York¹

… that it takes place in upstate New York (actually filmed in Romanian mountains?) makes it more of interest to me, that being the state i live in, also that it is a lesbian love story, produced by a woman, directed by a woman… apparently there was a lot of toddler chasing and breast feeding on the set during filming… what enterprise looks like in the hands of women…

New (to me) Music

… among my somewhat daily routines is to look through Pitchfork reviews of newly released music… i will pay attention to anything with a rating of 8 or higher, sometimes to things with a 7.5 or higher if it is a genre of music i am fond of… i have music nerd friends who say this is a terrible way to find new music… all i know is that i have often enough found new-to-me music that i really like… so i continue to the practice… here is some new music added to my to be listened to list…

• Mega Bog: Life, and Another… this review got my attention because of the high rating the music is given, that it is experimental, referencing folk, jazz and chamber pop, but also because i learned about Green Porno, a series of films wherein Isabella Rossellini costumes herself as a variety of animal creatures and demonstrates their sex lives… trust me, watch the trailer, it’s hysterical…
• Yves Tumor: The Asymptotical World EP…
  • The music of Yves Tumor moves like something molting. At first, it cleaves to genre, taking recognizable shape—a loping bass line, a steady backbeat. And then the shape dulls. It starts to appear as a copy of itself, not a rock song but an imitation rendered from paling memory. And then the form splits, and from the split comes something glistening and new, in the same arrangement as the old, dulled thing but rawer and more perceptibly alive.¹

The Haiku of Issa

… reading and thinking about these poems as a daily practice has done a great deal to center me… they are guiding lanterns, illuminating what is truly important, not the glorious deeds of men and women, not conquering heroes and explorers, not rich men shooting themselves into space… but the fly that mimics the actions of a person praying over their rosary beads or brushing the flies away from the father’s face one last time… what is important is humility in the face of a cosmos in which we are a minuscule factor and will always be a minuscule factor…

… on with today’s six haiku…

• the snail going through it’s daily routines with little fuss…
  • despite all the petty concerns of people, the snail just is…
  • nature just is…
  • people need to learn to just be…
• flies imitating people with prayer beads…
  • even flies pray?…
  • but it is imitation, not the real thing…
  • is what people do with prayer beads important if the flies imitate them?…
• something about fluids, if they were sweet, being the poet’s dew, his dew…
  • my immediate impression is of a homosexual relationship… though Issa did sleep with women, prostitutes… was he perhaps bi-sexual?… or is there another interpretation…
• something about the sight of the ocean invoking the mother he never knew, every time…
  • his mother died when he was young and the ocean makes him long for her?…
  • the ocean is the mother he always wished he had…
• about a summer night where even the stars are whispering…
  • is this anything more than the evocation of a still summer’s evening?…
  • all the cosmos is hushed…
  • being one with the stars…
• about brushing the flies off his father’s face for the last time…
  • melancholy, old age, death…
  • my father is dying, if i weren’t so angry with him i might be melancholic…

First Thougths

… a good day yesterday…

… some research and thinking about web presence, nothing conclusive… assemblage of some ideas… the main decision being whether to have a news letter only, or a second blog site where more carefully composed writing happens…

… a good walk, photographs made and edited, there were some good ones…

… a nice dinner

• mothership tomato salad
  • we will be making this salad numerous times in the coming weeks as the summer tomatoes are ripe in our garden and at the farmer’s market
• lacinato kale and ricotta salata salad
  • this is a longtime favorite that features raw kale
• pan fried crispy skin salmon
  • first time i have ever managed to crisp the skin and have it not stick to the cast iron skillet…
    • salmon in the pan before heating up
    • lots of canola oil
    • medium heat
    • finish in oven under the broiler…

… it was a perfect summer dinner that met my dietary goals, low animal fat, low carb…

… the news from Heather Cox Richardson is of the more distressing kind this morning… 45 is consolidating power, continuing to divide the nation, trying to undermine the bi-partisan infrastructure bill… HCR wrote:

One of the hallmarks of a personality like that of former president Donald Trump is that he cannot stop escalating. It’s not that he won’t stop; it’s that he can’t stop. And he will escalate until someone finally draws a line and holds it.

… 45 needs to be god… he won’t stop trying to be god until someone draws that line and there are consequences for stepping over it… this is what bothers me so much… the inability of our governing system to hold him accountable… we have completely failed on that score and with every passing day that we continue our failure, the closer we come to a dictatorship… this is what keeps me awake at night…

Scenes From a Walk

Some pictures from this morning’s walk…

Walking

… warm and humid today… will be hot later and again tomorrow…

… sitting on Roundhouse property by the falls…

… thinking about my web presence, wondering about a three branch approach…

• notes on attention paid
  • micro.blog quasi stream of consciousness
• on attention paid
  • ghost hosted monthly formal post and newsletter
• StudioMBK
  • portfolio site

… thinking about the complexity of our lives in the next few months…

… thinking we should postpone Fiona neutering… lots of moving parts in our lives and the vet practice we have been using is in transition, moving offices, new owner, staff upheval, we need veterinary practice to settle down…

… i’ve decided to map my walks going forward and include as part of walking posts…

… thoughts about a Patreon account linked to my news letter…

… shooting in manual mode with the Nikon… it is slowing me down… pictures are more carefully considered…

… a pause to rest my back… Ron’s Icecream…

First Thoughts

… a better night’s sleep again… without AC…

… Cardinal singing loudly outside my window… standing in for the Robin which has been absent lately?…

… i need to step up my daily reading time… i have a growing pile of books on subjects i am interested in to wade through, both ebooks and analog form books…

… C says J has been doing worse the last few days… she is not sure J fully understands what hospice care means, that maybe his cognitive decline is preventing him from taking it fully on board… i think it might be denial… i am wondering what i will find when i go down to see them at the end of August…

… eras in both our families seem to be coming to an end and new ones begun… the nieces and nephews are all starting their new lives and creating their own eras, while our parents are reaching the end of theirs…

… i continue to think about why i produce art, how i produce it, and how i will make it available to the world if at all… can something be done purely for its own sake?… i continue to be disenchanted by the art market system, which generally has artists at the bottom of the profit pyramid, and works to coop challenges to the system into itself, or suppress those challenges… the capitalist/market system sucks the soul out of just about everything it touches…

… news that our vet has been bought by a corporate entity, PetMed, or PetMD, or something like that… we don’t like that our vet is going corporate… already our primary doctor has left… must everything become corporatized?… we also wonder if they will ever go back to in-person care, as opposed to curbside drop off… we fear that we will never see a doctor in person again…

The Results Are In!

… blood panel results are in… less pasta, less sausage… will life be worth living?… on to skin and colon inspection… am i the only one who deferred routine doctor visits during the pandemic?… probably not…

Walking

… after tending to the chickens…

… it’s a walk on the Madame Brett trail… a blustery day, almost feels like the beginning of Fall which is a month and a half away…

… some scenes along the way…

… a white butterfly flits across the path in front of me… actually, probably a cabbage moth… this morning i read that butterflies are symbols of renewal and rebirth in Japanese culture and also viewed as the souls of the departed… they are generally a benign or good sign…

… as i write this i wonder about living in a way that makes the world symbolic and sacred… can this be done without devolving into superstition and suspicion?…

… some more scenes…

… that’s all for now…

The Haiku of Issa

… less progress on actual unraveling of meaning in these haiku today, but, several books on the subject, one of which i have ordered for my library… one thing that i knew, but which is confirmed in my exploration today, no single translation can transmit all the meaning possibilities packed into a great haiku… numerous translations are required…

• on turning fifty: from this day on, it’s all profit…
  • was fifty the life expectancy when Issa was alive?, that would seem to be the implication…
• a butterfly flitting, a child crawling, repeat…
  • another one of those ordinary moments
  • but also, butterflies are symbols of rebirth and transformation and are thought to be the souls of the departed… so the image of child and butterfly is one of a conversation between a new being and an old soul…
• on sea slugs not seaming Japanese…
  • as i look up the significance of sea slugs in Japanese culture, i find [a review](http://www.modernhaiku.org/bookreviews/GillSeaSlugs2004.html “William J. Higginson, book review: Robin Gill, “Arise Ye Sea Slugs!"") of [“Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!”: A Theme from In Praise of Olde Haiku, with Many More Poems and Fine Elaboration by Robin D. Gill](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Sea-Slugs-Robin-Gill/dp/0974261807/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rise+ye+sea+slugs+gill&qid=1627210821&sr=8-1 “Robin Gill, “Rise Ye Sea Slugs!"")… a book on interpreting Haiku which uses multiple translations to show how much meaning is packed into the tiny space of a haiku… it’s a little expensive for the present moment, but i order it… another rabbit hole is opening up!…
• writing poems to please the rich is not art…
  • i can relate to this… art is too much driven by wealth now as it was then…
• envy of the child being scolded, end of the year…
  • to be a child again?, from the vantage point of old age?…
• cuckoo singing, nothing special to do, even for the burweed…
  • not much information on burweed, another book on Japanese haiku: “Basho: the Complete Haiku” by Jane Reichhold.

First Thoughts

… a successful day yesterday… visited M and P in rehab, had barbecue at C and A’s and did the seven hours driving without much strain… yay me!…

… i didn’t take any family pictures and i am disappointed by that… we were in too much of a rush on the way out…

… it was good to be among people socializing…

… C and A already with a nursery set up in the house… won’t be long before we have a what?, grand nephew or niece?…

… H very happy with the day yesterday… she did little to help prepare, required some prodding to go, was in a really grumpy mood the day before, but yea!, was really glad we went!…

… today is cool and rainy…

… i managed to sleep in, a full eight hours sleep…

… a dream about being hung for some crime that wasn’t a crime and certain i would be reprieved at the last minute, so not too worried…

… rooster screaming in the distance… this is the one H has been telling me about but i don’t usually hear… sounds like the rooster from hell…

Fiona Sleeping

Erwin Olaf

“Palm Springs”, American Dream, Self-Portrait with Alex I, 2018 © Erwin Olaf

… another wonderful artist written up by Miss Rosen…

_ “I always have to be a little bit angry otherwise I don’t work,” Olaf says with a frankness that underlies the heart of a true revolutionary. A rebellion is driven by love, and a desire to tear down false truths propped up by our current world. “I always get the question, ‘Is it real or unreal?’ With photography, why are we thinking we are looking at reality? Olaf asks._¹

… Olaf works in a similar vein as Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson…

… in addition to the tableau photographs in this article, the full article on Blind Magazine includes some wonderful portrait tableaus…

Judy Chicago

… feminist artist trail blazer…

… a really interesting artist and article about her written by Miss Rosen, another of my favorite reviewers of photographic art and art in general…

I never thought I would live this long,” says Chicago, who is now 82. “Understanding mortality at such an early age gave me an impetus to work. One of the reasons I produced so much work is that I never knew how much time I would have. The other reason is that every time I lost everything – like when The Dinner Party became the piece that nobody wanted to show, or when Congress debated it, or when I had to start all over again – I didn’t know what to do so I went back to my studio and made making art my reward.”¹

… this quote inspires me… make the work, something will come of it… it’s the making of the work that is the important act… making it for its own sake, wherever the creative imperative leads you… i suppose this is what i want to do… make the work i am compelled to make, and let the rest take care of itself or not… this blog is part of that… my daily photo walks is part of that… this act of living and recording it is part of that…

… I will keep forging ahead…

There is a Strange Silence

… this morning… usually there is a robin singing loudly outside my window, then by now, some other birds may have joined, sometimes a cardinal or two… there is nothing but the faint high pitched noises the insects make, and, very faintly, a robin in the distance… what is going on?… i suppose this might be the time for a new micro poem?… this one was written yesterday when a robin was singing loudly outside my window…

Before dawn, a robin sings by itself— watch out worms!

Haiku of Issa

• sin is not possible without talent, on a winter day…
  • if talent is lacking then being lazy on a winter day isn’t a sin?…
• four or five pennies for the poor, evening rain…
  • the scene set, it is melancholy…
• a cuckoo singing to the poet and the mountain, the poet and then the mountain…
  • like an echo?…
  • summer harbinger, summer poem…
  • mourning, melancholy, longing… these are the things the bird symbolizes, though, not being Japanese, i don’t naturally pick up on these implied feelings…
• holes in the wall whistle flute like on an autumn evening…
  • imperfect human-verse…
  • there is a without and within to this poem… without, winter is coming… holes in the wall need fixing… but for now… a pleasant song…
• a fat priest with one foot out the door on the last prayer…
  • even priests can be half assed…
• skinny mosquitoes, skinny fleas, skinny children, stupid world…
  • why is the world stupid and not wondrous?…
  • who would think up such a world?…
  • mosquitoes, fleas and children, all in the same world… imagine that…