Low and slow short ribs… homemade rhubarb chipotle barbecue sauce…
On Climate Change, George Monbiot
Our failure to prevent catastrophic global heating arises above all from the conspiracy of silence that dominates public life, the same conspiracy of silence that has, at one time or another, surrounded every variety of abuse and exploitation.
Wondering if anyone else here has watched We Met In Virtual Reality. If so, what do you think about it?
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.
Notes: July 26, 2022
… 229.8 lbs…
… it’s a Gregorian chant morning…
… Heather Cox Richardson follows the lead of TV news in suggesting that 45 has been weakened by the 1/6 committee hearings… yesterday both the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post ran Op Eds that were negative on 45…
… yesterday, the thought that i lack courage to follow ideas through to their implied conclusions… to my truth… to the truth…
… i envision the apocalypse coming, but, what can I do about it?… we carry on with hope for the future even when we can see how bad things could be… we make modest changes when radical departures are called for… until big things happen… things that can’t be ignored… then we change…
… i try to enjoy each day in spite of fears about the future, the greatest of which is fear of death… there are so many ways to go sideways at the moment… H struggles with this, but she tries… the humming bird project is her trying… the garden is her trying… still, she gets more depressed than i do…
… speaking of apocalypse…
What Happens If the World Gets Too Hot for Animals to Survive… the title speaks for itself… though the attitude is that we especially need farmed animals to survive… farmed animals, particularly cows, are a big part of the problem… we need to eat much less meat than we do… H and i are trying, but when your idea of a proper dinner has centered around some form of meat for most of your life, it isn’t easy… still, we’ve done pretty well the past few days and will continue to do better…
… when knowledge costs too much…
You Can’t Stop Pirate Libraries… pirate libraries are a tool used by the public and research institutions to get around censorship and the unaffordable, to many, price of research literature… i have wondered about this myself… the higher the pay wall, the more elitist access to competent, peer reviewed literature is…
These libraries have found large audiences among academics in America and around the world, thanks to the high cost of accessing scholarly journal articles.
Such economic imperatives are just one part of the Sci-Hub ethos. “Any law against knowledge is fundamentally unjust,” (emphasis mine) Elbakyan tweeted in December 2021.
Many would reply that such piracy is just plain wrong, no matter how much trouble and expense copyright causes for authors and researchers. But copyright, according to some strains of libertarian thought, is not the sort of “property right” we ought to justly respect, given its historical genesis in propping up unjust monopoly by creating artificial scarcity.
… the idea of artificial scarcity again, not in the art world, but in the publishing world… make it scarce, even though it doesn’t have to be, and you make it valuable… copyright law?… a capitalist tool?…
… 45 is on his way out?…
Why Rupert Murdoch Is Finally Done with Donald Trump… hmmmm… i had not remembered that both the Wall Street Journal and NY Post were owned by Rupert Murdoch… while i detest Murdoch, it warms my heart to see him parting ways with DT… next stop, DOJ…
… out the door early… decide on the full Main Street loop… i run into the B of BJ’s who has lots on her mind about the renovation of Mr. Bell’s shop… and… the placement of dumpsters… and… the lack of permitting… and… when she and her mother do anything, they have to do it by the book, while he, a billionaire (which i somehow doubt but who knows), gets to do things without proper permits… she is exercised… i tell her i don’t blame her while wondering what the other side of the story is…
… i get to K&C and discover i don’t have my charging cable for the MBA… last two days have had little start of the day glitches… should i get in the habit of prepping my things at night?…
… i read a lengthy dot to dot passage in Sea and Fog… it treats western history as a churning sea… there is war and death and life and venality… the metaphor seems to work even if a little incoherent at times…
… when i write about venality i think about the aforementioned article on pirate libraries and the false scarcity that capitalism demands of producers of intellectual content on platforms where they don’t have to be scarce… i wonder if the beginning of the end of capitalism is the abolition of private property and copyright… what if all property belonged to the commons?… is that what socialism is?… how does China’s governmental and economic system work?…
Where it comes from matters. My friends and I will raise and harvest these meat chickens. Some of the best chicken I have ever had. It’s important to be involved in what meat eating is on some level if you eat meat.
July 25, 2022
… 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
Why Rupert Murdoch Is Finally Done with Donald Trump… hmmmm… i had not remembered that both the Wall Street Journal and NY Post were owned by Rupert Murdoch… while i detest Murdoch, it warms my heart to see him parting ways with DT… accountability might not be far behind…
Mind has its own technologies; poetry is one, but it eludes total comprehension.
Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog
July 24, 2022
… 231.2 lbs…
… Heather Cox Richardson about the accomplishments of the administration, which are considerable… and yet, the people are not happy and Republicans may succeed in steering us to a one party state…
Love or hate what Biden has done, he has managed to pull a wide range of countries together to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian attack in Ukraine, and he has managed to get through a terribly divided Congress laws to make the lives of the majority better, even while Republicans are rejecting the idea that the government should reflect the will of the majority. That is no small feat.
Whether it will be enough to prove that democracy is still a viable form of government is up to us.1
… i believe in the messy multiarchy… i hope more people can look at what is going on and support democracy… i am pessimistic about that…
… last night we watched Blue Bayou, a movie centered on the deportation of a Korean American who was adopted but for whom the appropriate paperwork had never been completed… apparently there are 25K to 50K adoptees from foreign countries that have the same problem… how is it possible that there isn’t some kind of understanding in the system that it isn’t the adoptee’s fault that the paperwork was not done or done properly?… how are we so tied to the rules that we can’t see our way to making an exception for this class?… how are we sending people back to countries they have never known and can’t even speak the language?… i read the wikipedia write up on the movie and learn that a law passed in 2000 made many in this legalization limbo citizens, it did not cover those 18 and older at the time…
… i read about bird flu killing tens of thousands of seabirds… i wonder if this is something related to climate change… i read the article to the end… it’s not… i remember B warning us that the flu was going around and to mask and glove up when we cared for the chickens this past winter… i wonder about the meat birds coming… tomorrow i think…
… because we have at least one in town, this article on Little Libraries caught my attention… the trend started in Wisconsin as a memorial to the mother of Todd Bol, who was a schoolteacher…
… monkeypox continues to grow as an issue around the globe… i feel like i am reading too much about this new disease of concern… i have read it is only spread through direct contact… is that changing?…
… an article on Tony Wang in Ain’t Bad… i almost don’t click on it, but then do… wait… i know this guy’s work!… he showed at the last Salon… he showed the very work published in the article… he was testing the sequencing… way to go Tony… hope we see you again!…
… Kitchen and Coffee after a walk down Main Street… not many pictures… not much that inspired an effort… it’s Sunday so i treat myself to hot chocolate… it is a spiritual experience… i really have to try making it at home…
… published yesterday’s notes… getting ready to publish yesterday’s group of photos… the things i look at… pay attention to… Gilbert O’Sullivan, _Alone Again (Naturally)_ playing on the sound system…
… haven’t heard that song in a long time…
… signs of Beacon Open Studios around town… wanted to go to some of the studios but the heat dampened my enthusiasm… lots of evidence of people in town… lots of cars parked on streets adjacent to Main Street, where they aren’t during the week… not as many people on the street as there are when the weather is better…
… it’s no longer projected to be 100 today… top out at 96 or 97… cooler tomorrow but more 90 degree weather heading our way next week…
… some more Etel Adnan…
Within seconds, X rays and gamma rays have hit us at light speed. A cloud of nuclear particles at 5 million miles an hour engulfs everybody’s brain. We are monitoring the universe in real time.2
… i read from dot to dot… making my way slowly through the book… usually, there is a passage that jumps out… today it was the above… the idea of monitoring the universe in real time… do we have nuclear particle receptors and don’t know it?… will we one day figure out how to tap into them?… will our minds then expand to be the universe?… will we loose our selves when this happens?… will it be hive mind?… i think about how, in my society, everything is geared towards being the unique, outstanding (good or bad) individual… we are to brand ourselves… make ourselves into a recognized and marketable quantity… is this the right way to think about being?… should we, instead, enjoy our selfness quietly… i oscillate on this… being part of the fabric, undistinguished, doesn’t bring resources… it does bring community?…
… just now i am thinking about how the patriarchal Oligarchs want to remake American society… i hope we can stop them…
… paid the bills…
… edited this morning’s pictures…
… bought the makings of ratatouille at the farmers market… especially wonderful dish in the summer with fresh vegetables… i will cook it on the Green Egg with the hope that it will develop a smokey flavor on top of the oven caramelized flavors this recipe develops… i post my intentions to Micro.blog and Facebook…
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Sea and Fog, Etel Adnan ↩︎
Making ratatouille tonight with fresh ingredients from my garden and the farmer’s market. This Saveur recipe is exceptional We will make it on the Green Egg for a smoky flavor.
July 23, 2022
…232.2 lbs…
… the dogs get me up at 3:30 AM… wanted to stay in bed till 4 but… Fiona pacing the room… i think an animal was passing through our neighbor’s yard… the other day we saw a skunk family pass through… we seem to finally have secured the perimeter of our fence so Fiona isn’t getting out and animals aren’t getting in… except for squirrels…
… H has become determined to attract humming birds to the yard… we’ve had many sightings of them this year… we have flowers in the garden they are attracted to… she wants them to come to the feeders… so far, not much activity there… we have many feeders now… she is trying to find the perfect one… i hope they come to her feeders…
… we made pizza on the green egg last night… tending a fire more bearable than i would have thought in this heat… today and tomorrow are the peak of the heat wave… high 90’s… 100 predicted for tomorrow…
… the mural, “Queens is the Future,” created by Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel…
… an article about Abby Manzella, a micro fiction writer and host of Micro, a podcast… her 400 word piece, Lepidoptera, mentioned… a story about a little girl in the midst of a pandemic… she wakes up with butterfly wings one day… a paragraph about how she writes into her phone at night to get ideas off her mind… how this one emerged almost fully formed… i think, yes, i write into my phone… i have been trying to write more… this will be inspiration…
… this from Maria Popova in the Marginalian this morning…
By the time we can even begin answering for ourselves the question of whether or not is worth living, myriad things have been answered for us by the fundamental forces that have conspired into the confluence of chance that is our self. None of us choose the bodies or brains or neurochemistries we are born with, the time and place we are deposited into, the parents we are raised by, the culture we are cultured in. Any sense of choice we might have is already saturated with these chance inheritances and is therefore, as James Baldwin so astutely observed, part illusion and part vanity.1
… the post is about Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, To The Young Who Want To Die… wait another day… see what’s coming around the corner… wait another day…
… i, myself, have never been suicidal… depression is not frequent with me and never very deep… i once played with suicide, as a kid, in the basement of my parents home… i made a noose… attached it to the steel beam supporting the joists of the house and carefully lowered myself to feel the noose tighten around my neck… i had no intention of swinging from the beam… i only wanted to know what it felt like… when i think back on it, i think… what if i had slipped and hung myself… the world would have thought i was sad… there would have been no clue as to why… i would have seemed a generally happy boy… i don’t think my troubles with my father had started by then, beyond his being a strict disciplinarian… there is a short story in this… i should try to write it… something involving Schrodinger’s cat… am i alive or dead?…
… an article in Mother Jones about an article in Axios that H told me about yesterday… it’s about how the MAGA group plan to remake government when they get in office… fill it with cronies… and then leave the subsequent administration with the choice of doing their own cronies make over or returning to the bureaucratic state of olden times… i think, what makes them think there will be another administration if that plan is successfully carried out?… this would be the mostly white patriarchy taking over and never letting go… this would be the end of the multiarchy… oh god, why must we contend with this shit?… 45 must never be responsible for anything in government again…
… an article about Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan and China’s threat to retaliate “forcefully.”… there seem to be so many ways the world could go sideways right now…
… another review of Nope further reinforces that i want to see it… H feels the same way…
… Ukraine is winning… i read the article… i nod to its arguments… it lightens my mood a bit, but, i wonder, i still don’t see the end game where Putin retreats with tail between legs… another one that could easily go sideways…
… a Jonathan Blaustein review of the photobook Kyanite Miners… i don’t share his opinion of the book… it’s slick, corporate, meant to promote the mining company… it’s competent… i don’t think it is pushing any boundaries…
… Kitchen and Coffee… the handsome bleach blond dude barista… he is less personable than the women… i wonder how women customers respond to his handsomeness?… he reminds me of a young Paul Hollywood…
… as i walk down Main Street i am thinking about writing a short story about a boy toying with a noose… i am thinking that i will write multiple stories within a story, one where the boy toys with the noose, satisfies his curiosity and then takes the noose apart and goes on with his life… another in which he slips and accidentally hangs himself… others in which various plausible scenarios play out, including that he wishes to die, is not only playing with the idea of death… could be a very interesting story…
… i am liking my return to routine and structured workflow… for so many weeks things were moving all about… i was making pictures, writing, but not in the routine and rhythmic way i am now… i have started posting titled journal entries on a daily basis… each day i publish the previous day’s entry… they are Notes On Attention Paid… each day i am posting a selection of photographs taken that day… they are also Notes On Attention Paid… it’s that simple…
… on the way here, a bunch of male sexual performance enhancement packaging on the ground… i photograph all of them… one has the words “rock hard” on it… i don’t know, sounds painful to me… anyway, i am thinking today’s image post will include a number of them, may be only them…
The starting point of infinity is always at the center, where mind resides. Behind an image there’s an image. Nothingness is Being’s foundation, put on stage by poetry, which makes the erotic and the intellect meet. It’s not life, it’s alive.2
July 22, 2022
… 231.8 lbs…
… stayed up to watch the J6 Select Committee hearing… it detailed 45’s determination that the capitol riot should stop the election from being certified by congress… there was not a huge amount of new information, but there was more flesh put on the bones, so to speak… whether it is yet demonstrable in a court of law, it is clear that 45 wanted and motivated the insurrection and that he had control of the mob, could have ended it at any time, but only did so when he saw the gambit had failed… of particular note to me was the way in which Liz Cheney reached out to women… she praised the women, by name, who had come forward to testify and reminded women of how hard they had to fight to win the right to vote… this from Heather Cox Richardson this AM…
At the end of the hearing, Cheney praised the witnesses, especially the women. She offered special thanks to Cassidy Hutchinson, who “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, and 70-year-old men who hide behind executive privilege,” but had courage to testify nonetheless. Cheney mentioned the female witnesses by name, saying they were “an inspiration to American women and to American girls.” 1
… and…
Speaking especially to the American women whose votes will be key to the upcoming election, she noted that the room in which they were meeting was where the committee on women’s suffrage met in 1918. We… “have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for.” 2
… the committee reminded us that the threat is not over… that 45 is still trying to claim the election was stollen, still has the same devout followers enthralled and ready to go and still poses a threat to democracy…
… just posted a reply on HCR about Liz Cheney’s callout to women at the end of the hearing…
… this sculpture by Ai Weiwei is beautiful in appearance and concept…
… i read this review of Nope and confirm the already growing feeling that i would like to see it…
… an article on Crazy Kat and e e cummings is an intriguing read… i read it from beginning to end… one of George Herriman’s strips in the article…
… as i get the coffee ready for H, i am reminded of the sugar water spill she left last night… the floor a sticky mess… i get the mop out, set it up, leave instructions for how to use it…
… i head for Kitchen and Coffee… in a leisurely way… making photographs as i go… at one corner i stop to make a picture and two women in head scarves walk out from behind the building… they stop… i did not want people in the picture… one woman walks back behind the building… the other looks after her… i decide to make the picture with the woman in it… she turns at the instant i snap the picture and looks at me… i wonder if she somehow felt the camera on her… as i was editing yesterdays journal entry i ran across this…
… i think about this… divine attracts consciousness with the power of the sea’s liquid material manifestations… without consciousness, is there any divine?… the pansychic idea that everything has awareness… material at its most basic level has awareness, even if only attraction to that which attracts and in turn is attracted… this is the base level of awareness… to “know” something is adjacent…
… i am even more intrigued by the idea that she sensed me taking the picture and turned to see… i am not sure she liked that i did, but it was at a distance…
… loud talking barista is here today, though being relatively quiet… she is wearing a grey knit top and black stretch shorts down to just above her knees… i note that she has tattoos on both arms…
… the music is soft, easy to ignore… LM barista is talking about going to the pool after work…
… Etel Adnan…
In between there was Greece and Rome, but Rome’s gods, unlike Greece’s, seem to have left for good.3
… i think about this… it rings true… so much of western civilization resting on the foundations of ancient Greece, not Rome… EA observes that God “could be absolute darkness or absolute light,” and i think the only absolute is darkness, when it happens… the absence of light, the absence of consciousness… is there such a thing?… God, EA tells me, is “born out of the fear of pain, decay, or disappearance”… i nod, but my fears don’t create god for me except as absolute darkness… i reject the existence a separate from me they are everywhere and everything all at once… it is meaningless to consider God as some kind of apartness… which is the stance of worshiping, i and thou… rather… god… like the sea, is immersion, we simply can’t separate ourselves from God, if she exists… so what is worship but a kind of arrogance of the worshiper?… there is no point in naming Gods except to name ourselves… “eternity is death’s favorite name” EA tells me… “only consciousness is life,” and consciousness ends… or does it?… yes, in any way meaningful to me here and now… but perhaps not in general…
… a mother asking her toddler Ben what number he is… ten is apparently the right answer, i don’t know why… he’s a toddler, not a ten year old, so i don’t know the significance of ten to Ben… she makes a picture of him as he says to her “ten”… maybe a short video, that would make more sense… dad seems to prefer Benjamin to Ben…
… finished editing photos taken today… ran some errands to gather food for dinner and for dogs… on the way back stopped in a friends wine store and found out their son is sick… in the hospital… doctors not sure what is going on yet… they are waiting for more test results… then he told me his daughter’s dog had cancer and nothing can be done… a bad week he said… i did my best to comfort… glad he told me about it…
… chicken duties today… will plan to get there right at 5:30 as coup is likely to be hot… don’t want the chickens to be cooped up too early… some storms in the area… may cool things down a bit…
… i am delayed in my chicken duties by a thunderstorm passing through… as i am going to the car, a lightning bolt flashes in the near distance… i go back inside and watch the progression of the storm on my weather app… when it is safe i get in the car and go…
Books Reading: Sea & Fog (Lambda Literary Award - Lesbian Poetry) by Etel Adnan 📚 Started reading this earlier in the week. An extended prose poem that with some concentration and effort to understand has become inspirational.
July 21, 2022
… 222.8 lbs…
… been walking more the past couple of days, in the morning… no afternoon labor… snacking more?… eating more?… definitely drinking more… was doing better with shorter, more contemplative walks, but that was coupled with afternoon labor…
… i am determined to loose some weight…
… HCR depressing this AM, for its discussion of climate change and the inability of the US to get its act together… Republicans are uniformly against any legislation that promotes a fossil fuel free future, as is Joe Manchin, who claims fighting inflation now is more important than fighting climate change… inflation is a problem that will only get worse as climate change continues to unfold… fighting it is fighting inflation…
… i read a recipe for “The Ultimate Focaccia” by Paul Hollywood, of the Great British Baking Show… i resolve to make it… i love to cook… and as Hollywood suggests:
Baking is all about sharing. Even after more than three decades in many different professional roles, nothing beats making something for someone else and seeing their eyes light up when they taste it.
… i am hoping to add focaccia to my repertoire…
… an article entitled Sam Gregg’s Captivating Portraits Capture the “Humanity” of Naples… i have a look and think he’s made them look rather disappointed with life… nobody smiles… everyone looks at you as if they are suspicious of you… photographs of details of the environment seem uninspired… at the beginning of the article he mentions how friendly they are… it’s not at all evidenced in the photographs…
… i am reminded my own photography is moving forward again… i have established a new work flow… i have begun building the weekly edit portfolios again, working in the present and backwards a little at a time…
… an article, How Joel Meyerowitz Became a Pioneer of Colour Photography… ah!, a modern master, I will like his work better… and i do, but don’t see pictures i never would have thought to make, except one of a young woman about to bite into a strawberry… i don’t photography people… he manages sensuality very effectively with the soft focus and the trope of a strawberry… i see a photography that comes from the last century… still great photography but one thinks the world has moved on…
It seems impossible to imagine there was ever a time when colour photography was not regarded as an art form. But for decades, the art world dismissed colour as commercial at best, closing ranks and excluding groundbreaking photographers for years. “When I first started shooting I shot in colour,” Meyerowitz says. “A year later, I started shooting in black and white because I couldn’t print colour in 1962. I only had slides to show people and I noticed they didn’t look at them very long. They treated them like everybody’s travel photos.”
… as i read the article i begin to see the art of the photograph of the young woman… made in low light with a relatively slow exposure… she can’t help but move a little and this is what softens her image…
… the article is promotional for Meyerowitz’s new exhibition, Between the Dog and the Wolf
… Anna Leigh Clem, i thought, i know this photographer, she used to come to salon in Woodstock… i look through the work and i believe it has evolved as it is more comprehensible as a story than it was, at least in this selection of images…
… bravo Anna!…
… another article on Great Women Artists, a survey of women painters over 500 years… i have put it on my list at Amazon… liked this painting by Hayv Kahraman…
… a leisurely walk down Main Street leaves me sweaty… the day will be hot… but then i knew that…
… continuing to think about the work of Anna Clem and about reaching out to her, letting her know i enjoyed the Booooooom! post…
… on the way out the door, i photograph tomatoes and think it will be a good picture… in the front there is a Carolina Swallowtail butterfly… it comes closer to work the flowers in front of me… i photograph it… i think these photos will be good too…
… loud talking barista is here this morning… i order decaf with a little agave in it… she squeezes out some agave onto a spoon and stirs it into my coffee… i think that is nice… she is wearing corduroy shorts that end just above her knees… they are green… she has a blue t-shirt… smallish breasts, a bit of a tummy and generous hips… if i make her sound fat, she is not… she could be one day, but not now… i notice one tattoo on her right upper arm… she is pierced through her right eyebrow…
… there was no coffee to set up for H… have to bring some home with me… looking at the coffees here there doesn’t seem enough information to help me make a decision on any of the packages… they are all only 12 ounces too, which annoys me…
… an older gentleman in a British golf cap walks down the aisle, sets his bag and a folder of documents down at a table… he returns up front to get whatever he will get…
… two women walk from the back to the front… they are similar in stature and wear identically colored, though not identical, blouse/shirts… are they a couple?…
… this from Sea and Fog, Etel Adnan…
The divine is not spatial but needs space, is not material but needs matter, is not human but needs consciousness, is not a work of beauty but needs the sea’s power of attraction.
… i think about this… divine attracts consciousness with the power of the sea’s liquid material attraction… without consciousness, is there any divine?… but then there is the pansychic idea that everything has awareness… material at its most basic level has awareness, even if attraction to that which attracts it and in turn is attracted… this is the base level of awareness… to know something is adjacent…
… out of this i think about the rock on Block Island… i am aware of it… is it aware of me?… to the extent that we are bodies with mass and therefore gravitational attraction… we warp the space around us and between us… at least that is how i understand it…
… i publish yesterday’s journal entry and photographs and walk… i included a map… have forgotten to turn on the map this morning… i need to do a routine that asks me to turn it on and off as i leave and return to the house…
… after editing today’s photos… also some photos from previous weeks… working on getting caught up… making progress… deciding that iPhone photos are difficult to do as color… wondering if i need to try to do them in the apple photo app… they always seem to look better in black and white, at least as developed in Lightroom…
Heather Cox Richardson, July 20, 2022
Paul Hollywood: How to Make the Ultimate Focaccia
Sam Gregg’s Captivating Portraits Capture the “Humanity” of Naples
