October 07, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson, October 06, 2022

Trump’s continuing insistence that he won the 2020 election, and the Republican Party’s embrace of that lie despite the fact that Biden won by more than 7 million votes in the popular vote and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, says that they will never again consider the election of a Democrat legitimate.

“If you care about democracy and you care about the survival of our republic, then you need to understand—we all have to understand—that we cannot give people power who have told us that they will not honor elections,” Cheney said.

… the next two elections will be determinative about which way the country is going… democracy or authoritarianism… conservatives, don’t believe in democracy, haven’t believed in democracy for some time now… why?… because conservatism in this country is presently focused on the preservation of the power of the mostly white patriarchy and they can’t preserve their power if elections are free and fair… they are in desperate survival mode where any means justifies the end… thus, scandals like those of Herschel Walker, which would have taken down any politician just 10 years ago are no longer disqualifying… there is an absolute abasement in this desperation… the trouble is, it may prevail…

Want Lipstick That Actually Lasts? Rouge Dior Forever is the Answer

… i have a deep love of the feminine and what is more feminine than lipstick, or more important to lipstick than it be lasting?…

1. Who should use it? Anyone who wants intense, pigment-rich matte lipstick that actually stays where it’s supposed to – there are no smears, smudges or fading here

2. How long until I love it? Probably 16 hours after you first put it on, as one application promises to last that long
3. How planet-/people-friendly is it? As part of Dior Beauty’s Responsible Formulation Charter, the brand aims to source all ingredients in the most socially and environmentally responsible way possible
4. How do I use it? Make sure your lips are primed and moisturised with a good balm, then add a slick of Rouge Dior Forever and leave to dry for three minutes

Mushrooms: Cellist Zoe Keating Brings to Life Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit

They were the first to colonize the Earth. They will inherit it long after we are gone as a species. And when we go as individuals, it is they who return our borrowed stardust to the universe, feasting on our mortal flesh to turn it into oak and blackbird, grass and grasshopper. Fungi are the mightiest kingdom of life, and the least understood by our science, and the most everlasting. Without them, this planet would not be a world. Like everything vast and various, they shimmer with metaphors for life itself.

Viruses Are More Like Cone Snails Than Hijackers

… as i read this article, there is this growing sense of interconnectedness… that all things are connected to all other things and that the universe can only be understood as an incredibly wondrous tapestry of matter and energy and a byproduct, life… we can’t understand the parts without some comprehension of the whole… and we can never think that anything can be understood in isolation…

Viruses, like cone snails, evolve to be more like what sustains them. It is an uncomfortable form of relatedness, this predatory metabolic convergence, but it cannot be denied that it generates amazing patterns of likeness across biological kingdoms without everything having to be descended from the same line of direct genetic inheritance.

Even if something has evolved to get away from its mimic, it holds the imprint of that entity’s influence in its difference, like a shadow.

Immersing Yourself in the Works of Gustav Klimt #art #gustav-klimt #exhibitions

In the unlikely setting of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in Manhattan, seeping into the ceilings, floors, walls, and recesses of the hall, projections of Gustav Klimt’s paintings are now set on an hour-long loop. Built between 1909 and 1912, the bank’s interior retains many of its original decorative elements, which include elegant glass panels, patterned limestone carvings, and brass detailing. Contrary to what its facade seems to convey about what happens inside — mysterious and important affairs of the economy and the state — people inside are huddled and seated in clusters on the ground and on chairs in darkness, hushed and sedated by a carousing Johann Strauss waltz.

Wrightwood 659 Hosts Exhibitions on the “First Homosexuals” and Michiko Itatani

Roberto Montenegro, “Retrato de un anticuario o Retrato de Chucho Reyes y autorretrato” (detail) (1926), oil on canvas, 102.5 x 102.5 cm, Colección Pérez Simón, Mexico

The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930 starts with the year 1869, when the word “homosexual” was first coined in Europe, inaugurating the idea of same-sex desire as the basis for a new identity category. More than 100 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and film clips from public and private collections around the world are on view, including works that have never before been allowed to travel outside their respective countries. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first multi-medium survey of early, determinedly queer art that explored what the “first homosexuals” understood themselves to be — and how the dominant culture, in turn, understood them. This is part one of a two-part exhibition (the second is planned for 2025 and will feature 250 masterworks) developed by a team of 23 international scholars led by distinguished art historian Jonathan D. Katz with associate curator Johnny Willis.

French author Annie Ernaux has won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

Annie Ernaux is the author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, winner of the Prix Renaudot for _A Man’s Place_, and of the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work, and recently the winner of the International Strega Prize and the French-American Translation Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for The Years.

Annie Ernaux on the “Infinite Lack” in Our Search for Love

Anyway, what does this sign really mean, the phone call from the Latin Quarter? That he’s thinking of me? But in what way? There’s nothing more impossible to imagine than the desire, the emotion, of the Other. And yet, only that is beautiful. All I dream of is this perfection, without yet being sure of attaining it—of being the “last woman,” the one who erases all the others, with her attentiveness, her skilled knowledge of his body: the “sublime affair.”

It was a week of struggle for me. I have been trying to manage my weight and not succeeding. I was in and out of depression and couldn’t really say why. A combination of little frustrations and big fears. I wrote a quasi mathematical equation to represent it.

-1-3-5-2-7,243=f^$&%k me

Clever I thought. Maybe it’s a micro poem. Did you notice it is all prime numbers? Except for the f^$&%k me. Well, maybe that is prime too, just in a different number system. A parallel universe.

Still, I am reminded by the struggle in Ukraine that things could be worse.

The photography of Boris Mikhailov came to my attention. One of the first photo books I bought as I was getting into photography was Books. It is a reprint of two separate books in one volume. One book explores rock outcroppings through photographs paired with sketches of the outcroppings. The sketches emphasize what he saw in the rocks. Human and animal forms, women’s private parts. Just now, when I looked up the book on the web, I learn that he is noted for his:

“clear-eyed depictions of his homeland, Ukraine–most famously, his portrayals of the everyday struggles of the bomzhes, the homeless, a class that dramatically enlarged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.[^1]

He was born in 1938 and is still alive apparently. His hometown is Kharkiv. Oh my. I wonder if he is still there. If he got out. Is he making pictures?

The Ukraine conflict inches forward towards a direct engagement between the US/NATO and Russia. The US/NATO is openly supplying evermore sophisticated weaponry and now training of Ukraine soldiers to use the weapons. Current speculation is that Ukraine might be able to win the war. One commentator suggests they already have. Russia, for its part, shakes the nuclear stick clenched in its metaphorical fist. Does anyone think that Ukraine can “win” without suffering at least a limited nuclear attack in the endgame?

The war has apparently been a boon for fossil fuel profits for Russia. If we don’t immolate ourselves first, will we finally give up fossil fuels for less blood thirsty alternatives?

This article about what we have gained since the end of the Soviet Union and what we are now set to loose was interesting. Fans of Steven Pinker will find confirmation of his thesis in Better Angels of Our Nature, but also how it is presently coming apart.

The World is Back on a War Footing and We’ll All Pay the Price

Mourning the resurgence of militarism and the fading of the environment of peace and prosperity the article tells us that:

“The speed of poverty alleviation in the last 25 years has been historically unprecedented,” Alexander Hammond of Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs wrote in the happier year of 2017. “Not only is the proportion of people in poverty at a record low, but, in spite of adding 2 billion to the planet’s population, the overall number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen too.” He added: “The new age of globalization, which started around 1980, saw the developing world enter the global economy and resulted in the largest escape from poverty ever recorded.”

This article attributes the worlds troubles to the lack of clarity as to who runs it.

When Superpowers Lose Their Power, the Chaos of War Follows

It’s an irony that theorists of war—from Thucydides onwards—recognized. War occurs when it isn’t clear who holds power. War happens when the answer to the question of who is running the world is simultaneously nobody and everybody. War is a result of uncertainty. The fog of war is caused by the fog of peace.

Elon Musks attempt to purchase Twitter was big news this week, with lots of speculation about what it will mean. I found this article interesting:

Rotten to the Core: Why Twitter and Elon Musk Deserve Each Other

Trump isn’t worth banning. American democracy might be in crisis. But it’s not because Donald Trump is or isn’t on Twitter.

On the Democracy crisis front, there is a steady stream of news about how close we came on January 6 to loosing it and how far right conservatives continue to mess with the mechanics of elections to make it more likely they will succeed next time. It would be a cosmic joke if the Ukrainians succeeded in defeating Russia and preserving their democracy but the United States was lost to some form of Authoritarianism. Both Putin and Trump are anxiously eyeing the 2022 and 2024 elections as the solution to their problems.

Heather Cox Richardson posted an interesting article about the threats to democracy that are running in parallel at the moment. Each line of attack is being headed by an individual with presidential aspirations. Donald Trump is pursuing family autocracy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is pursuing “illiberal democracy” modeled on Victor Orban’s illiberal democracy in Hungary. Texas Governor Greg Abbot is pursuing “soft fascism.” Ms. Richardson concludes:

Trump’s type of family autocracy is hard to replicate right now, and our history has given us the knowledge and tools to defend democracy in the face of the ideology of states’ rights. But the rise of “illiberal democracy” or “soft fascism” is new to us, and the first step toward rolling it back is recognizing that it is different from Trump’s autocracy or states’ rights, and that its poison is spreading in the United States.

And then there was this article on the disinformation problem, which has as much to do with people’s craving for material to support their position regardless of whether it is factual or not.

Amusing Ourselves to Autocracy – Mother Jones

The day after the Giuliani episode aired, former President Barack Obama delivered a thoughtful speech at Stanford University on disinformation. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it’s worth watching. He discussed the obvious problems presented by social media and offered a few general notions about solutions, noting that Big Tech can do more to restrain the flow of dangerously false information. But what he didn’t confront was the demand side of the equation, the immense desire for disinformation. What do we do when 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, or more of the public craves disinformation to feed and bolster their prejudices, grievances, outrage, and anger?

On a literary front, when H and I moved to Beacon, we contemplated opening a book store. Beacon needed one at the time. We visited numerous independent bookstores in the valley. It was a pipe dream. We never had the money for it. Or maybe just not the true entrepreneurial will. At any rate, this documentary came to my attention this week:

The Profound Impacts of Decency: On ‘Hello, Bookstore’

As pleasurable as the storyline is—getting to watch a good man with a much-loved business triumph—there is also a great joy in simply watching time pass in The Bookstore.

We plan to watch it.

There was also this article revisiting a talk given by Robert M. Pirsig at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He talks about how he and his then wife moved to a small house in a small town in southern Mexico. The idea was to write his great American novel in those idyllic conditions. It turns out he wasn’t ready to write a book. Later in his life, he wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which, he tells us, emerged organically from the midst of his messy life. He wrote what he knew.

The reviews I’ve read all seem to regard this as some great act of creativity. It was a very systematic, deliberate act. I was about as creative as an accountant at this point. I was just putting down these slips and comparing them. But this particular form gave me the advantage of being able to expand in the middle, of being able to reorganize at any time, so I had a flexible outline that could grow as my understanding of the story grew. I was never limited. I was free to throw away where I had been and restart again, over and over again, with what was coming in new. And I’m sure that in any creative project you really can’t perceive what the end is going to be, unless it is a very small thing you’re doing. I think the advantage of this particular device was that it always kept me open, it always kept me flexible, it always gave me a kind of a hollowness, so that I could constantly be refilled with new things that were coming in. The result of this was a book of many levels and of much complexity, but whose levels and whose complexity somehow always seem at the last minute to hang together.

I intended this to be a little more polished with some images included, but time has run out and I think it better to go ahead and publish it. Maybe I will revisit it and update. Maybe not. It’s decent reflection of what caught my attention last week either way.

20220428.06

I had kind of a crap day yesterday… got depressed… woke up with still a rather heavy heart… H asked what was wrong… nothing specific i could put my finger on… just the sort of depression that is the negative sum of all the little and big things that get to you… might get to anyone… -2-2-2-7,635 = fuck me…

I cast around this morning, looking for relief… some way forward that would make the heaviness go away… i asked myself the question, how can i enjoy the day just because it is here and i am here?… and then i let go… i let the morning take me where it would and lo and behold…

It appears that just asking the question was the right place to start… what followed was a pleasant series of reminders that the world was still capable of being beautiful, even if we are in it…

20220425.04

> Little things I should have said or done

> I just never found the time…

… the point at which any sane person would walk away… like “you were always on my mind” is supposed to fix things?… unless, of course, the person singing it to you was Willie Nelson…

… i have returned to Ulysses for all notes made on a daily basis… it is so much easier to make blog ready notes, quote articles, etc… i am always looking for the next great app or process… early adapter… but it leaves scattered records… i need to get over my commitment issues…

20220420.07

233.4 lbs

… not enough steps… Chinese food for dinner… skipped lunch, snacked instead… so maybe i had lunch, but not a proper one… no weight gain or loss…

… depressed most of the day… tried to share my thinking on leisure and wisdom with H yesterday… that i thought a constructive way to fill the “leisure” of “retirement” would be to read and study in ways that could lead to wisdom… their response was underwhelming as they imagined i would cloister myself in my studio more than i do now… they hoped i would have time to work on the house all they could say… i got so angry… bad on me for trying to share thoughts about something that was significant to me… i have been looking for “purpose” or at least a pursuit that could be beneficial to someone, somewhere… the truth is, i have been intermittently pursuing something like this for most of my life, but only in fits and starts, as i could work it around the demands of supplying practical necessities for myself and any partner i was with at the time…

… we went to see the new Batman movie… not my favorite iteration… the story doesn’t progress much from movie to movie… the city is lost to corruption, crime is everywhere… there is a benevolent guardian… wealthy, strong, maybe heroic… he seeks to restore order… he battles pervasive corruption and evil actors, defining himself in opposition to them… he struggles with the anger and hatred that threaten to make him no better than the criminals he brings to justice… indeed, the public and honest police are not sure of him… the power of the state is still needed, but first it must be cleaned up… is a benevolent extralegal actor the way to do it?… is selflessness another word for selfish?… how to retain humanity, already hanging by a thread, when confronted with inhumanity?…

… NATO is discussing what to do if Russia deploys, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Ukraine… are we reaching the moment of finding out if the bully will use the nuclear club?… i am happier not watching the news at this moment… i try to forget my fears of death and carry on… fear of death limits us… Ted Lasso hit on this point in season 2… soccer is life, soccer is death… soccer is soccer… Tony Rojas… really like Ted Lasso… a respite from all the darkness hovering…

… didn’t get many photographs yesterday… rain this morning… not sure what i will get today…

… a Paris Review article by Stephen Shore, talking about what inspired him… i tried to think what my list would be… its not close to being as glamorous as his… but i can think of things… there were a few photographs in the article made by Shore… i remember thinking, what is special about these and how are they better than the ones i make… they weren’t that special, to my eyes, and i make lots of photos as good, to my eyes…

… the arborist came and repaired the driveway yesterday… the result was better than i thought it would be… we’ll see how it stands up…

20220324-02

233.4 lbs

… some snacking last night… alcohol… only 13K steps… no weight gain or loss…

… HCR meter distressing this AM… a report from years ago that the Republican party has moved so far right that it wasn’t possible to govern… it is worse now… there is a real chance 45 will become 47, even as the Biden/Harris administration attempts to rescue Ukrainian Democracy from the Russian fires of hell…

… the first Black woman will be appointed to the Supreme Court… the news pundits act as if she will make a difference… i am pessimistic about that… if things go the way i believe them capable of going, we may arrive at a place where she is removed from the Supreme Court… it is hard to imagine an authoritarian government allowing her to stay…

… my foundational thesis remains as it has been for at least a decade… the mostly white patriarchy is attempting to make sure it has the reigns of power forever… Democracy is not convenient so they will get rid of it… what the majority of citizens want does not matter, just as facts don’t matter… the mostly white oligarchs want something else… how to hold on to self and principles regardless of what the patriarchy does…

… i keep looking for a lever of understanding to pull, that anyone could pull… or at least a “don’t worry be happy lever”… such an insipid sentiment… i read philosophy looking for that lever, that revelation that will let me understand how it can be better or at least help me be at peace when it gets worse… i am learning that these things happen in cycles and one does what one does… Socrates chose a principled position… it didn’t stop the cycle… he was executed… his legend continues to this day… how has that legend helped anyone?… has it stopped or even appreciably altered the cycles?… a far as i can see, what he railed against in his day continues to come back in cyclical waves of human misery…

… i think of myself a feeble imitation of Socrates… as if his blood line diminished in Socratic intensity to the point of barely flavored tea or coffee in me… the cycle is at a place that won’t be to my liking for a good long time… long past my death… one needs to cope as best they can… to have horizons… to bequeath something positive to the future…

… how am i to be happy with my remaining years?… will i contribute something meaningful with them?… i continue to make the work i have always made… images from walks… a refined selection of those images… these journal entries…

231.8 lbs…

… i have been experiencing huge frustrations in my blog flow… on Block Island, i am limited to my iPhone as a collection/production device and virtually everything is harder and behaves in ways that are downright annoying… i can’t seem to find the right connection flow between Feedbin and Ulysses, for example… or between Feedbin and any other app… everything is glitchy… everything happens in a partial way that isn’t suitable to me…

… add to that the incredibly useless internet connection we have out here and my frustration is at a maximum…

… i can’t wait until we get home…

… i don’t hate Block Island… there is lots to love about it… but over the course of two weeks the ways in which being here frustrate me begin to wear my patience thin…

… the war in Ukraine proceeds… H is worried it will lead to nuclear war… i am not so worried about that at the moment… what i worry about is that the rise in oil prices and the further stress the conflict and our reaction to it will put on the world production and supply system will come together with already strong authoritarian impulses to bring about the election of a Trumpian president if not Trump himself… it would be a disaster for the world as i and H know it…

… rain and sleet overnight… a winter storm, that on BI, sounds worse that it really is… back in Beacon, it looks like something approaching a foot of snow and then a little icing on top of it…

… i have put together a nice set of wind swept beach and stone photographs… i have a lot of work to draw from for this week’s photo poem…

20220225-02

230.2 lbs…

… weight gain not a surprise… little exercise yesterday due to rain and intense wind… pasta for dinner… wine for dinner… a precipitous drop from the day before yesterday indicating a water weight shift… still… the broad trend is down…

… the drums of war beat louder… Biden has indicated that he believes Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and will target Kiev… we plunge into the unknown…

… 45 keeps loosing in court…

… John Durham walks a court filing back just a smidge…

… Dinner with M and PW last night… made Bucatini all’ Amatriciana last night… served with an arugula, red onion and orange bell pepper salad… i put a little too much red onion in which also didn’t seem to get less sharp from soaking in cold water…

… PW saying they didn’t understand what Putin gains from a Ukraine invasion… invading and subduing a population that doesn’t want you is bound to be messy, even if your force overwhelms in the early days… i couldn’t think of a good answer… i don’t know what he gains other than a confrontation with NATO and much of the free world…

… yesterday morning H, i and the dogs drove around the island experiencing the storm… i stood for a while at the top of the stairs down to Mohegan beach/bluffs… the wind was blowing so hard the stairs were shaking… elemental… i made some pictures and a couple of videos…

… in an effort to be able to produce an image poem for posting on Sunday, i discovered that images can be rearranged in the photo app that comes with the iPhone… from here until we go home, my efforts will be concentrated in that app, possibly beyond… it is certainly how to keep up while traveling…

229.2 lbs…

… and now the dog wants to go out, have his treats… the wind is howling… it is raining… i don’t want to take him out… can i get away with not doing that?… let’s see if he gives up, even though i am pretty sure that he wont…

… HCR depressing today… pointing out how ready the current Republicans are to pursue authoritarianism… Newt Gingrich rearing his ugly head…

… the dog wins…

… dogs walked and treated… wind not as bad as i was imagining it… pretty gusty, but not knock-me-off-my-feet gusty…

… i have so much anxiety about the country i live in and those who care only about power, not democracy… it is horrible to be going through this now, at the latter stages of my life… to think that in a few years time life could be very different… the country could be very different… all, or mostly, because of the white male patriarchy… i begin to sound like a broken record…

… that my weight is down almost two pounds today is pleasing to say the least… a two pound loss over 24 hours is mostly water… still, its the right direction since i stopped drinking and became more careful about what i am eating…

… last night i grilled a pork chop which H and i split and roasted a colorful medley of sweet potato, orange bell pepper, and red onion (which really should be called purple onion) with fresh garlic cloves… should have added some rosemary to it, which i had… next time…

… i slept well last night… up once to the bathroom… slept seven hours total which is on the max side for me…

231.4 lbs…

… up slightly… was hoping for a little loss, more walking, no alcohol… water weight?…

… the wind was borderline howling last night… supposed to have high winds today, gusts up to 65 miles an hour… knock you off your feet wind… will have to hunker down…

… internet is more spotty than usual… it’s never very good out here… the worst thing about being here…

… i am sitting here looking at an RBG mug M bought for H… i think, damn woman, why didn’t you retire during the Obama admin?… even you regretted that one…

… HCR a bit of a mishmash this morning… about the Canadian truckers… about the Durham investigation… about the right wing echo chamber… about tragic misinformation…

… i am sitting here, trying to think of something non-trivial to write about… nothing comes to mind… just the mundane shit that most of life is composed of… what is wisdom or profundity in a world of mundane shit?…

… i partially worked out my photography workflow for editing a set of images into an image poem… i am presently lacking the ability to reorder the photographs on Lightroom in the phone… an internet search is not helpful… i will figure this one out… need to do some research… maybe there is an app for that…

20220217-01

231.0 lbs

Up at 3:40 AM… pleasantly surprised by my weight… hadn’t been on the scale in a few days, hadn’t been particularly abstemious in what i ate, hadn’t been able to walk much, so was expecting to have gained a bit… instead i lost a bit…

… made a really nice turnip risotto last night… however, bought bacon to put in it and then forgot to… H and i agreed that bacon would have been a great addition… so, i have more turnips and i have bacon, we will revisit the recipe later in the week…

… one interesting thing about the recipe, it was meant to avoid having to stand at the stove and stir for half an hour, instead, using less water and adding an egg yolk at the end for faux creaminess… i thought to myself, what is the point of that? standing and stirring just isn’t that hard… i did it the traditional way, sans egg yolk and faux creaminess…

… as i sit here typing, Rubie cat is lying at my feet, kind of the way a dog might, which Rubie thinks he is… he was also lying on the top step outside our bedroom door when i came out this morning… he seems to crave our company and wishes he could be in the bedroom with us… dogs don’t generally permit it though… they chase him off immediately…

… full moon getting ready to set in the west… which makes me think of the series “For All Mankind”… i am not 100% on board with the conceit of the series, which is that the Russians won the race to the moon and that there ensued a much more lively moon exploration and colonization program with astronauts coming and going at regular intervals and a moon base that supports tens of individuals rotating to work on the moon… what is very good about the show is the exploration and depiction of the interactions of humans under normal and not so normal life stress conditions… very well written and acted… in particular, they seem to have grief and reaction to trauma down in a very realistic way…

… the routines are settling back in place, albeit their Block Island place… the dogs can’t just be let out the back door, they have to be leashed and taken out… i have to work on my iPhone, rather than my desktop computer… everything being done on the iPhone… the challenge will be when i attempt to produce a long form post (less difficult) and an image poem (more difficult) this weekend…

… H has started their bread baking operation again… they are doing sourdough without their stand mixer and proofing box… more rustic, requiring more intuitive skill… it looks like it is going well… i will need to clean out the cast iron combo cooker before i leave for my walk as they will want to use it while i am out walking…

… tried to walk on Dickens Farm Preserve yesterday morning but a sign indicated that this week, during the week, hunting is allowed… i didn’t hear any shooting but one does not tempt fate, even with blazing bright orange on their bodies, which i did not have… so, i will be contained to beach, roads and downtown this week and save the nature preserves for next week…

… J has booked tickets to Florida in early June so that C does not have to be alone for their birthday and anniversary… that’s a good thing though i get concerned with what they might talk C in to our out of while they are there… J has nothing but good intentions but she can be intense…

20220216-01

… we got to Block Island… trip was very easy… no traffic and, for the most part, no treacherous conditions… BI was on the higher side of the snow amounts… i don’t think i have ever been out here when there was snow… the dogs are beside themselves with the smells… it appears there is animal activity everywhere… or maybe something about the cold and snow concentrates the smells… whatever it is it makes them hard and almost pointless to walk… they are so distracted they don’t do their business quickly and it is cold and windy and the snow makes it hard to walk easily… argh… i miss having a backyard to let them out into already…

… the Boeuf Bourguignon was easy to reheat, as promised by the recipe, delicious and went over well… M & P like it a lot… they also like the Haikon chocolates… hard to believe we have a world class chocolatier in Beacon, but we do… an interesting fellow… he seems to have a very good memory… i am an infrequent visitor to the store but he has remembered me ever since our first meeting and knows i take pictures…

… it’s a small struggle to transition to being here… to re-establish routines in similar or altered patterns… i am hoping i can get the dogs to wait to come down until the sun starts coming up… the animals were a little restless this AM… Fiona pacing the room, Rubie meowing at the door at 3:00 AM… i was done for… that plus we sleep in a queen size bed out here… not enough room for us and the dogs… thankfully, there is a comfy lounge chair that one of the dogs can occupy…

… i must say, i am not looking forward to the morning walk… it is cold and there is a stiff wind… i can here it now, almost howling through the trees and around the house… oh god, the dogs want to get up… up, walked and treated… it went better than expected… both dogs peeing right away…

… as for the morning walk, i will do it because that is what i do… might have to be a shorter walk… that is the hard part of deep winter… can’t get my long walks in all the time…

20220216-01

… snow predicted by the weather app has materialized… conditions are going to be at their worst at our anticipated start time and as we climb over the (not very tall, but tall enough for lower temps and freezing) mountains… i am weighing options and leaning towards aborting departure until tomorrow or next day when weather will be better… H will not be happy but, we do not work a day job anymore and there really is no reason for us to take risks… we should be able to reschedule our ferry reservation to the next couple of days, the timing of the snow is perfectly placed to be disruptive…

… i have reviewed the radar map and relative projections… the situation is more significant in Connecticut which is most of our journey…

… HCR with a nice piece on Abraham Lincoln… timely too… we are facing similar challenges to our democracy in the present moment… would love to have a leader such as Lincoln step forward…

… we lost a chicken yesterday… hawk brazenly feeding on it as i did the food and water… brazenly perching on top of the coup… i disable the auto door to the main coup… chickens will have to stay put… otherwise hawk will pick them off one by one… as B famously says, nature wants you dead, especially if you are a chicken… actually, death is simply a part of living… for creatures with predators, a premature end is always a risk of living…

20220213-01

230.4 lbs

Weight coming down, good!…

… preparations for departure to Block Island continue… we leave early AM tomorrow… most of the shopping complete… need to buy some wine, pick up my BP meds, put gas in the car… today will mostly be about containerizing what we will be taking and determining how many containers will fit in the trunk…

… the world careens towards war in Ukraine, truckers in Canada are clogging the arteries of commerce, HCR tells me that the past month saw a budget surplus as tax revenues were up (due to a booming economy) and expenses were down (who knows why that should be)… the point of the trucking protests, which are being conducted by a small group of truckers and are not supported by truckers in general, is to disrupt the economy and weaken government… there is indication that foreign troll farms are stirring the pot and Fox News is giving the truckers a lot of air time compared to other networks, with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity egging them on, calling for an American version of the protest… there are times when i wonder if speech should be so free…

… i have managed a long form, titled post for the second week running… it works to dedicate a morning of the week to it…

20220212-01

231.4

… a longer walk yesterday, treacherous here and there but mostly not…

… as i am sitting here, i am listening to a newly developed humming of my external hard drive… hmmm… i have had it for a while… i wonder if it is on its way out?… i have multiple backup systems, so not worried about loosing anything… but… i look up the price of a new external HD… 6TB not too bad… raid array expensive… hmmm…

… not a bad day yesterday… began organizing for BI in earnest… ordered another duffel dry bag for top of the car… also a containment net… streamlining the cargo system… bought some meat, will probably buy a bit more… decided to make Boeuf Bourguignon for Valentines dinner… H is enthusiastically on board with that…

… ordered new glasses from Liingo… easy peasy, inexpensive… now, is the quality good?… we will see…

20220210-01

231.02 lbs

… downward trend of weight is a good was to start the day…

… slept in a little this AM… then the dogs suddenly had an urgent need to get out of bedroom… it was time to get up anyway… disrupted the normal order of the morning though… that has a discombobulating effect on one… when you have an out of the bed routine, it means you are on auto pilot until some of that delicious coffee starts flowing through your system… you struggle to think what’s next… oh yah, gotta feed the cat… not that the cat would ever let you forget for long… but after a few minutes, the flow of things is gently pushed back on track and auto pilot engages again…

… photography salon… a lot of abstract work last night… a lot of good abstract work… my image poem received reasonably well… i am well into it as a weekly production habit… more auto pilot… or is it a discipline that projects one more deeply into their life?… shaking things up once in a while is good, but disciplined routine certainly has its rewards…

… H asked me to call them last night… they announced their pending departure from CPW… big changes… H is a confusion to me… is it my leadership of the Salon that puts me on the list of people that should be notified before the general public learns?… our interactions have always been a bit stilted, distant, like we both want to connect but struggle to do so… they said they are working on a personal project of interviews with photo artists and i was one they wanted to connect with… i will miss them, but not completely clear in what way… she and C haven’t figured out exactly what they will be doing, or rather, the particulars of what they are doing… as we walked i wondered if they were pushed out or they are leaving under their own steam… i am distant from the politics of the center, so i don’t know… it could be either… H would never make it clear which… they will leave the area, they said… not clear where to… C is pursuing a PhD but it doesn’t sound as though the institution that will grant it is lined up yet… i think i will make a point of reaching out to them now and again in coming weeks and months, see if i can establish more of a relationship…

… S was not at Salon last night… they have been a bit silent lately… hope everything is good with them…

20220209-02

232.0 lbs

… my weight dropping slowly as i manage what i eat and get out for walks again… looking forward to better walking conditions so i can walk further…

… dinner with D and E last night… so nice to spend time with friends… brought them copies of Etel Ednan’s book Shifting the Silence and Kitto’s book, The Greeks, as well as a nice bottle of wine…

… E and i in similar places about making art, though my advantage is that photography fits mostly on a hard drive… E says their first art focus was photography and they think sometimes about returning to it…

… a lazy day yesterday… spent most of the day laying around watching tv… The Summer of Soul documentary… some Olympics…

… a disappointing response to my posts yesterday… only a couple of likes, no comments… haven’t checked the analytics yet to see if there was action beyond my own… i need to do something about making the analytics such that it doesn’t count my visits to the site…

… just purchased a copy of Bertran Russell’s History of Western Philosophy… before i tackle it i will tackle Virginia Wolf’s To The Lighthouse…

20220207-01

First notes…

227.8 lbs

… first day of following No S diet… weight loss… it’s one day… i will see if i can keep it up…

… last night, as i was lying in bed i wrote a note… “i am beginning to imagine the unimaginable”… that is, i am beginning to imagine the United States as a failed democracy… i have started to give up hope that the ship can be righted… i did this partly on the advice of Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, and partly out of real despair that the political stars are aligned against democracy right now…

… this morning i read Heather Cox Richardson’s posts from yesterday and today… hope flickered to life… the stage is set… a battle for the soul of the country will unfold in the coming weeks and months as the January 6 Commission makes its case to the public… and the Senate will try to amend the filibuster in order to protect voting rights… if enough people believe the findings of the J6 Commission, and the Senate passes voting rights legislation, all may not be lost…

… in the meantime, what i can do is help make sure the small levers of democracy where i live aren’t corrupted and make genuinely good information available to anyone who will read/listen… and, of course, i will vote like democracy depends on it…

… more broadly however, in the department of letting go of hope, i acknowledge that this democracy may well be reaching the end of its run… the cosmos, as Burkeman and so many before him have pointed out, really doesn’t care if democracy continues in the US or not… it simply unfolds and humanity responds in whatever way helps it survive… it may even be that the welling up of intelligence on the planet is pointed to an advancement that will have little to do with human freedom… i prefer to think not, but this is the trend of the “dominant culture”, for a few powerful elites to be in control and for the rest of us to be subsumed in effective slavery…

… i think to myself, nobody asks to live in a time when the social order turns itself upside down… i think to myself, i did not plan for my old age to be lived out in times of social order dismantling… i planned for it to run out in relative peace and quiet… i wonder if senior citizens overtaken by WW II felt this way?… looking forward to a little peace and quiet and not being challenged by the rigors of making a living and what happens?, a devastating war… as a white, middle class male, am i one of the few to have this blessing?… it did not feel that way as my life unfolded… there were certainly disappointments and challenges… but was i ever really challenged the way, say, a black man is challenged in our society?… we all have troubles… some of us from positions of relative advantage… even with that, there are troubles…

… i was thinking yesterday, why do people write?… originally, to express and communicate, to develop and record collective wisdom… i was thinking about this because i was thinking about how the dominant culture turns writing from expression and communication into a means for economic ends… we are made to believe that we must have an audience because we can’t monetize if we don’t have an audience… for this reason, we don’t accumulate wisdom and share it freely… we put a price tag on it… and because the ability to put a price tag on it means the work must be marketed, we start to see a world in which wisdom doesn’t prevail, only what is marketable prevails… words are useless if one can’t monetize them in this society… but really, reading and writing is about developing and communicating wisdom…

… we started watching Station 11 last night… central to the narrative is a graphic novel written by a young black woman… she writes and draws, but nobody has ever seen more than little bits and pieces of what she writes and draws… one day, she delivers a copy to her ex and says, “i finished it”… until that moment, she does it only for herself… this to me is the purest form of creation… work done entirely for its own sake… work done because we feel compelled to do it… that is what this blog, this Notes On Attention Paid is… something i do trying not to hope anyone will read it and doggedly pursuing it even though nobody reads it… i apply time out of my precious 4K weeks to doing it largely because i don’t seem to be able to not do it… it anchors me… it gives me something meaningful to do…

… probably many of you, but not me… i have figured out how to get the best of both worlds and it involves a feature of Obsidian that i just stumbled on, which is ‘open in default app’… yesterday, as i was poking around, i clicked on it and low and behold, Ulysses opened up and was displaying the page i had just been working on!… i must have been asked what my ‘default app’ should be when i first installed Obsidian, but it was a complete surprise to me to discover the connection… so now, i start a page in Obsidian… open it in Ulysses and type away… post to Micro.blog when i am ready, tag it, etc… it continues to reside in Obsidian which becomes the archive upon which all the mapping magic can happen… what bliss!…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… DW says not to worry what people will think about his journal writing, time will eradicate what it needs to and embrace the rest… he thinks people will blush reading the journal, not in 200 years time, maybe a little in 100 years time… well, it is not quite 80 years time that i am reading it… no blushing here… i suppose he might have been referring to some of his remarks about people he met… he sometimes wasn’t kind… people who knew the people might blush…

… DW is more and more often sick… all of this flows from the accident he had when 20… i wonder what got so messed up the it should become a slow but steady decline until he dies in his early 30’s… what the cosmos serves up to people… it’s a crap shoot really… by any measure, the cosmic forces that be have smiled on me… i wish i felt better about it all… i still want to find that fundamental truth that makes it all ok…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… DW has been asked to write an article supporting nudity at boarding schools as a means of reducing sexual interaction… he believes it will have the reverse effect…

… he writes frequently about passing through army camps no longer in use… military ghost towns left from the Second World War…

… DW frequently has fans write him and even show up to visit… i have rarely reached out to anyone i appreciated the work of… once or twice to photographers… i am not very interested in celebrity if it isn’t my own and i have no celebrity myself to speak of…

… i have reached page 300, seventy to go… it’s been a long read, sometimes boring, often enough interesting to keep me going…

First Thoughts

Weight: 231.8

… i will be writing my weight down daily to help me get it back under control…

… started the morning with a review of the first week of journal entries in 2021… i am hoping to review all 52 weeks during the month of December and identify themes that emerged over the year… my system of tagging and saved filters is proving enormously valuable in this effort… i am able to gather together the attention i have paid to people, books and topics by person, title and topic…

… yesterday’s FT with M and J was a little fraught… M and i got into it briefly over January 6, 2021… they have bought the idea that it was a legitimate protest… that infuriated me… i had hoped for better from them… J also got on my nerves a bit over website optimization issues… i need to do some further research into how Square Space handles search engine optimization before we talk more about that… they seem to think i have not done what could be done while i think we pretty much have…

… my weight situation, disappointing, but what should i have expected given two Thanksgiving dinners etc…

… it is already proving enormously satisfying to read through the past year’s journal entries… it is turning out to be time intensive because i am having to fill in keywords and set up filters for a plethora of people, readings and ideas… i don’t think i got super religious about this until about mid-year and i didn’t start gathering things together in saved filters until the end of the summer, beginning of the fall… if i can keep the pace and get it done for the year, i should have an impressive list of ideas, people and readings to share as a summary of my year…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… DW was continually meeting strangers, having extended conversations with them and often being invited into their homes… he seems to have met people easily… more easily than i do… was it an easier time for people meeting?…

… DW has incorporated the people he knew into his fictional work without much disguise, often changing their last names while retaining the first… i have a feeling that i should read at least one of the fictional works, but i am anxious to move on to the so-many-other books i have waiting… to dive further down the rabbit hole or not, that is the question…

… after 10 years, Evie leaves him to work for some ladies in Cornwall though it seems it didn’t last more than a month and it seems Eric and DW didn’t expect it to last long…

… this:

_ I know tonight it is best for me to be alone most of the time — near people who wish me well and like to see me, but alone; for in loneness everything seems to grow into its proper place and there’s hardly any waste of spirit. What little there is does not offend, it’s is one’s own fault, one lets it pass._¹

… how well i relate to this sentiment… precisely the way i like my world to operate…

… and this:

_ yet it is most important to have people near one that one need hardly see. Without this consciousness of other human beings I think almost all of us are liable to be swamped by the power of matter. One’s strength is not enough to bear this with no other help near._²

… this makes me remember the countless hours i have spent in coffee shops and lunch shops, just to be near people but not, generally, to talk with them, unless they were attractive young women…

… i miss pre-covid life… i felt comfortable with more people around me then… i have chosen Trax on 52 as my winter “headquarters,” precisely because so few people go there in the morning… i would rather go to Big Mouth or even Kitchen and Coffee (despite it’s plain vanilla decor and music)… there are more people there as the hour gets later… i like to start with a place virtually empty, then watch the regulars and newcomers come and go… i like to observe and write about them in this journal… the pandemic has not been easy, but i have been well suited to what it requires of us for safety… my habits didn’t change much at all…

… DW has an old doll house he got from a friend… he lovingly restored it… he mentions it in his journals when he finds something suitable to add to its interior… at this moment he mentions a little pin cushion in the shape of a stool that is so much more the stool than the pin cushion that he buys it immediately for the doll house… it is interesting to be furnishing one’s full scale living quarters simultaneously with a doll house… a house within a house, like the nested Russian dolls… one imagines that he wears the full-scale house and decor, as most of us do, as an extension of his psyche, but also, this miniature house… do they engage different aspects of the nesting instinct?… one could build a short story around this…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… this passage:

It is quite true that a general unwillingness to appreciate robs most people of their eyes, nose, mouth, ears, limbs. They are trunks of wood always repudiating; although they have already been deprived of all sense and movement.

… there is an odd connection between the people DW describes here and the lunatic fringe that would hang their fellow citizens in this country in this time… the rabble roused to illogical belief in conspiracies of evil being perpetrated against them…

… the character of Evie interests me… she was, essentially, a housekeeper and cook for DW… she lived with him and moved wherever he moved… he describes her as inhuman, by which i think he suggests that she is a remote or distant sort of character… what led her to be this sort of figure in a young and damaged man’s life?… what personal life did she have?… it seems we are never told…

… i read about the Essays of Elia, written by Charles Lamb… DW relished them in his youth (while convalescing from his accident?)… i find a copy on the internet, offered by the Library of Congress…

… as i am reading, i am listening to a marvelous set of cello suites performed by Marcus Wagner… Paul Torelier has composed one set… we have a set of Bach Cello suites performed by Tortelier in our music collection that i have listed to over and over and over again… its good music to be going in the background while you are reading, studying, editing photographs, writing…