Notes: July 27, 2022

… 230.2 lbs…

… somewhat restless night…

… when i step out of the bedroom i can feel the air is cooler than it has been… once downstairs, i open the front door and lock the storm door as i usually do… the air is almost crisp… as i make my way back to the kitchen, i open the dining room window… once in the kitchen, i open the kitchen window over the stove… a morning routine to flush the air in the house… so is letting the dogs out, feeding the cat and taking my meds and vitamins… after returning the dogs to the bedroom, i sit down to read and write…

The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on the Art of Noticing and What Artist Can Learn from Naturalists… these quotes from John Burroughs…

The habit of observation is the habit of clear and decisive gazing. Not by a first casual glance, but by a steady deliberate aim of the eye are the rare and characteristic things discovered. You must look intently and hold your eye firmly to the spot, to see more than do the rank and file of mankind.

This is just as necessary to the naturalist as to the artist or the poet. The sharp eye notes specific points and differences, — it seizes upon and preserves the individuality of the thing.

… i do this when i find distinctive traits in the people of the cafe… i name them with these traits… i invoke them in my journals with these names…

Interference Archive’s Democratic Approach to Preservation

Run entirely by volunteers, Interference Archive is a true alternative to the city’s market-driven gallery scene. All of the workers make a living elsewhere, largely in nonprofits and creative industries. Despite a non-hierarchical approach to organizing, the archive runs smoothly and without conflict, speaking to the sustainability of art spaces without a profit motive.

GL: Everything we acquire now is donated, and the collection is composed of works that were made for widespread distribution. Our focus is on accessibility, and we do not want to endanger anyone. For that reason, we largely collect zines, newspapers, posters, and print ephemera, rather than records of organizing that would expose sensitive personal information.

… i scan the article for ideas of a different way to conduct ourselves… i am not convinced on this one… it’s a utopian corner… does it scale?… dependent on grants and donations, in turn dependent on capitalism… volunteer labor that feeds and houses itself through other paying endeavors… a buddhist economics model?… one does what the do to sustain themselves, and then does something else with their free time?… space, utilities and supplies paid for, but not people?… hmmm…

… K&C…

… delicate tattoo barista at the helm today… she was late to work and is in a frenzy to try to catch up… the decaf isn’t ready… i treat myself to hot chocolate…

… still thinking about Interference Archive… still thinking, what is the alternative to capitalism?… is there an alternative?… how can the dominant system be undone without massive upheaval, or does the upheaval happen first?… that seems likely the way it will go… J is involved in trying to make it sustainable… she thinks it can be… can it?… i don’t think so… if i don’t think so, how to prepare?… or… will the collapse happen after i am gone?… a system as ubiquitous as capitalism would have to collapse under its own weight if something new is to take its place…

… a text from B that the meat chics have arrived… i ask her when she needs me… no response yet…

William T. Riley’s Wild Art Legacy

Maija Peeples-Bright, “Parrot Carrots” (1978), acrylic on canvas with artist’s frame, 30 3/4 x 24 3/4 inches

Climate Change Activists Glue Themselves to Priceless Botticelli Painting… getting the attention of the elites?…

What Viktor Orban Revealed This Weekend

In Bibó’s analysis, existential fear leads to “anti-democratic nationalism,” a form of nationalism that appeals to ethnic or national groups that fear they will lose out in a democracy.

… this aligns with White Patriarchy behavior in the US…

The indispensable figure of a non-democratic political regime, Orbán has managed to become the political embodiment of every latent pathology in the Hungarian national character.

Orbán believes in, and is banking on, the demise of the West.

… 229.8 lbs…

… two consecutive days of vegetable heavy, low carb dinners, and my weight is down… quite a bit… lets see if we can continue the trend… or is it just the flux of water?… like tides rising and falling in my body…

… had a nice evening last night… we made ratatouille on the egg, grilled a pork chop too… delicious… then watched Ratatouille, the movie… then H, in a moment of irritation that i had shut the TV off before she could see the voiceover credits, was unkind… i didn’t do it on purpose… i went to bed…

… solid 7 hour sleep without waking… feel good about that…

Heather Cox Richardson writes about the Axios series of article that began on Friday

Within days, Trump had put fierce loyalist John McEntee in charge of the White House office of personnel, urging him to ferret out anyone insufficiently loyal and to make sure the White House hired only true believers. McEntee had been Trump’s personal aide until he failed a security clearance background check and it turned out he was under investigation for financial crimes; then–White House chief of staff John Kelly fired him, and Trump promptly transferred McEntee to his reelection campaign. On February 13, 2020, though, Trump suddenly put McEntee, who had no experience in personnel or significant government work, in charge of the hiring of the 4000 political appointees and gave him extraordinary power.¹

… it exasperates me that more people don’t see this and aren’t horrified, that the MAGA Republicans and especially 45, can’t be trusted with the government… people seem more concerned with their own pocketbooks and less concerned with competent government… or they don’t care… they think Democrats are their problem… but that isn’t true really… poles show more Americans aligned with Democratic priorities than Republican priorities on many fronts…

… a review of Sons Of by Sam Prekp, John McEntire… 8.3, electronic rock… i find it in Apple music and listen… so far i like it… and i like my headphones as opposed to my ear buds… i wonder, if our country goes the way of MAGA republicans, will some kinds of music go underground?… as i continue to listen, i find it not too distracting as background music, and could see it as the soundtrack to dance parties… i turned it off after a while… seemed a little mindlessly repetitive, which synth music often seems to be…

… a review of Judy Chicago’s Wo/Manhouse, 2022… i like Judy Chicago… the review is positive, notes the effort to enlarge diversity in the new iteration, but says the effort doesn’t go far enough…

… the Newark and Brooklyn Museums have installed Buddhist spiritual artifact rooms… a statue of Green Tara, at the Brooklyn Museum…

In Sanskrit, Tara is the word for “star” or “constellation.” It relates to the verb tar, meaning “to lead over or guide across.” One of her popular forms, Green Tara is known for rescuing her followers from peril. This specific avatar is depicted holding a closed blue lotus; her right hand is in the position of bestowing boons, with both a devotee and a multi-armed attendant at her feet.²

… spirituality within spirituality… museums are the churches of secularism in our society… Buddhism presented as spirituality within a broader secular spiritual context…

… after a shower… and returning to Buddha in the secular sacred spaces of museums, a sort of Russian doll within doll concept… i think… what am i doing to find spiritual peace in this bat shit crazy environment we are living in with so many stressors running all at once…

… We Met in Virtual Reality filmed entirely in virtual reality, an in VR camera app filming the conversation… i am intrigued… premiers on HBO Wed…

K&C, favorite barista at the counter… she has such warmth…

… i walked out the front door of my house and was half way down the block before i realized i didn’t have a memory card in my camera… i walked back and left the camera and proceeded with my iPhone… i immediately recognized the greater flexibility and the different kind of photographs…

… i am wondering if i got any agave in the coffee… hopefully she got the decaf part right…

… up front, people speaking in a language that sounds made up… pretend foreign language babble… its not, but i have no idea what it is…

… i started to write in the analog journal and then just couldn’t continue… i want to write where i can edit… easily, digitally…

… the baristas talking too loudly…

Mind has its own technologies; poetry is one, but it eludes total comprehension.³

… what an interesting idea!… poetry as a technology of the mind…

… baristas talking about how they had hoped 2022 would be better… which gives me the sense that they don’t think it is… i am trying to make it better somehow, but mostly it is by ignoring the shit storm going on…

… preparing photos for upload to micro.blog, maybe other places…

… an old man, with well developed beard stubble, clutching a loaf of French bread in one hand, coffee in the other… spine curved backwards… looking a little surprised to be alive… walks to the back and, i presume, out to the back garden…

… i keep looking for a photo editing workflow that is seamless across devices and gives good results for all kinds of photographs from different sources… i keep encountering problems… i don’t like the way iPhone color photos develop in Lightroom… i wonder if i need to find a different editing approach… i look for possible alternative apps but conclude Lightroom is still the best if i want to catalog in one place…

… later… at home… i have edited today’s pictures… doing some reading before i swing into action to make dinner… i read about American new fiction and a story in the New Yorker, The Ghost Birds… a post apocalyptic story about a father and daughter on a camping trip to see ghost birds… there are no birds alive, only their ghosts… the author is Karen Russel, who, i think, doesn’t really manage to inhabit the male mind… still, the story is interesting…

… i am in the dining room, trying to ignore the TV news asserting itself from the living room… i am in the dining room because it is too hot upstairs… i have no AC in my studio… i have spent the past many summers here when the heat is too much… upstairs, a small horizontal fan under my computer does an amazing job cooling me down, but it’s no match for the worst of the heat and, especially, the humidity…

… the article that led me to The Ghost Birds… it’s a dizzying tour through both European and American modern fiction… it mentions many, many authors and books, one of which (Toni Morrison) i have actually heard of and read… i will need to revisit…

… as i am working in the kitchen i am wondering, is this my literary form?… no story, just thoughts… some links to articles i read… this is the work?… put out daily… a few pages of mind to fingers to keyboard to the digital space… a coherence and yet, not… too much about some things, not enough about others… no focus… but over time, focus… could i put these together into chap books?…

… dinner has been started… bacon sizzled, corn and shishito peppers sautéed and cooling down… making Pan-Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad from the NY Times… the recipe tells me not to bother making it except in the summer… my kind of recipe… seasonal… only to be made at a certain time of the year… i like to be tied to the rhythms of the year…

… an article about Ani DeFranco… from which this quote comes…

We all love to pretend that when we finally do grasp large-scale injustice and perversity, we are simply emerging fully formed into an enlightenment that is our birthright. Obviously we are awake to racism, to sexism, to the destruction, for profit, of the earth and all its inhabitants. Obviously we are enraged at the systemic oppressions and power abuses that characterize every human society in history. We are so eager to erase our own complicities and blindness. We are forgetful of our own historic failures to call out injustice until a tidal wave of popular opinion carries us effortlessly along on its swell, when we are glad to pretend we emerged fully formed into the progressive stances that should have been innate all along.⁴