Week 02 Image Poem
… sitting here procrastinating about going out to walk and make pictures… it’s only 2 degrees F out… going to be like this for the next week… i will, however, persist… just need to get my inner warmth going…
The Disunited States of America: Gripping Photos of a Country in Crisis, Abigail Ronner, AnOther
FXCK July 4th: Rally cultivating change from injustice and police brutality toward women and LGBTQ+, Atlanta, Georgia, 2020
“Was the violence ‘structural’ – the result of an intersecting and overlapping complex of institutional practices: the tradition of armed police; the prevalence of mayhem in the mass media; the refusal of Congress to pass tough gun-control legislation despite the menace of one hundred million privately owned handguns, shotguns and rifles? Finally, was the society by nature violent?”
… hard to believe those words were presented as part of an exhibition in 1969… they are re-presented in a new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London…
… i was reading up on the Ancient Greek philosophers this morning… this quote from Heraclitus stood out…
“Although this Word is common, the many live as if they had a private understanding”1
… the Word is a kind of universal truth that Heraclitus believed all people had access to although he didn’t think most people were capable of seeing it and, as a result, operated according to their personal truths… it seems people have been living in their own private Idahos for some time…
…and since Heraclitus was an influence on Plato, i was thinking this line of thinking might have inspired the famous Cave analogy?…
… for a long time i have been photographing with my iPhone exclusively… the urge to use the Nikon came on me this morning, so i did… it is interesting… the Nikon favors the horizontal image whereas the iPhone favors the vertical image… the effects of your equipment on your production…
October 19, 2022
… Letters From an American this morning is rich in details on the difference between the MAGA Republican agenda and the Democratic agenda… between the accomplishments of the Biden Administration and the what?… moral depravity of the MAGA Republicans?… it ends with a note that yesterday was the first day of early voting in Georgia… almost twice as many voters voted as in the 2018 election… dare i hope that this favors Democrats?…
… from How to Cherish Your Human Condition: The Poetic Naturalist Loren Eiseley on the Meaning of Life #science #meaning #maria-popova #loren-eiseley #human-condition
Through how many dimensions and how many media will life have to pass? Down how many roads among the stars must man propel himself in search of the final secret? The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible, yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it… We have joined the caravan, you might say, at a certain point; we will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or learn all that we hunger to know.
… will we ever know what life means?… or is that a silly question?… do we loose the ground we seek to gain by consciously attempting to gain it?… or will we (humans), one day know?…
… Anna May Wong Becomes the First Asian Americn on US Currency…
Beginning next Monday, October 24, the United States Mint will begin making quarters imprinted with the face of Anna May Wong, commonly regarded as Hollywood’s first Chinese-American movie star. She will be the first Asian-American person to be honored on any US currency.
… Why Does the Art World Hate Fat People?… the curator of an art show centered on fat artists dealing with the subject of being fat in a culture that abhors fatness writes about her experience…
Curating this show requires not only urgent and caring attention to artworks and artists but also to the living ecology of communities that exist within the radical fat liberation discourse being created between the artists in the show, between myself and the artists, and between the artworks and the audience.
… as i read the article i wonder about all the identities that are stepping forward to claim space and acknowledgement in the “multiarchy,” as i like to call it… the multiarchy is what is struggling now with the patriarchy for control of the country… and the struggle is in part about the right of marginalized peoples to have a seat at the table… it gets confusing and a little tiresome sometimes to listen to and acknowledge all those voices, but it is much more positive in the long run… and anyway, i am borderline obese, have been for much of my adult life… i don’t think of myself as being almost obese, but there we are… is there a scale running from perfect weight, to overweight to obese to fat?… are we ever happy with ourselves, regardless of our place on the weight spectrum?… do we have a right to be?…
… Why Family Isn’t Everything–And How We Can Create More Liberatory Alternatives…
… who doesn’t wonder if family life is all it is cracked up to be?… the author suggests that the capitalist underpinnings of the ideal family unit should be undone, and that we should opt for intergenerational communities of shared labor and love… why this would be any less complicated and messy than the nuclear family unit, i don’t know… what the author is really attacking is capitalism, and doing so through what she believes is its foundational unit, the nuclear family… her suggested replacement is more akin to a complete socialism, even communism… the broad point is that capitalism makes few of us truly happy… i don’t disagree with that point… perhaps it is time for a new vision… i am not sure she makes a compelling case for an alternative, at least in the excerpt linked which i quote liberally from below… but i am intrigued by the effort to reconsider the situation and wonder if the case made for an alternative is better than the rehashing of socialist/communist tropes that haven worked in the past…
Those who breezily deploy it forget that there is a “whole substructure of sacrifices, repressions, suppressions, choices made or forgone, chances taken or lost, balancings of greater and lesser evils,” at the foundation of familial happiness. They ignore “the tears, the fears, the migraines, the injustices, the censorships, the quarrels, the lies, the angers, the cruelties.”
What if _unhappy_ families are all alike, in a structural sense, because _the_ family is a miserable way to organize care—whereas happy ones are miraculous anomalies?
The family is an ideology of work. In the early twenty-first century, as Oster shamelessly details, its credo has become the optimization (via violin-playing and other forms of so-called human capital investment) of a population of high-earning, flexible entrepreneurs.
Realist and gothic traditions alike view family as a field of howling boredom, aching lack, unhealed trauma, unspeakable secrets, buried hurts, wronged ghosts, “knives out,” torture attics, and peeling wallpaper. Yet in “cli fi” and related representations of national emergencies and the apocalypse, authors insist on family as the core relationship we will _need_ to rely on, when all else is stripped away.
Think of the menacing domestic interiors, hostile kitchen appliances, creepy children, murderous kin, and claustrophobic hellscapes of your favorite horror flick. In slasher, home-invasion, and feminist horror canons, the narrative pretends to worry nationalistically about external threats to the family while, in fact, indulging every conceivable fantasy of dismembering and setting fire to it from within.
Together, we can invent accounts of human “nature,” and ways of organizing social reproduction, that are not just economic contracts with the state, or worker training programs in disguise. Together, we can establish consensus-based modes of transgenerational cohabitation, and large-scale methods for distributing and minimizing the burdens of life’s work.
… that will be it for today… we are off to the mainland and have an early ferry to catch…
Some photos from yesterday…
… all photos taken at or near the shore of the Hudson River in Beacon, NY… the temperature at the time was 0 degrees F… in the parking lot there was a couple having sex in their car…
This article on rap music by Daniel Levin Becker catches my attention… especially this assessment of Rap music…
Rap music serves, consistently, contagiously, sometimes in spite of its own claims to the contrary, as a delivery mechanism for the most exhilarating and crafty and inspiring use of language in contemporary American culture.
… i struggle to get very much into Rap, even as i am aware of its enormous significance… i keep trying though… this article may be a window in, as it analyzes lines from a number of songs (raps?) and so could point me to some raps to listen to…
This is just it: taking words at face value is what good rappers almost militantly don’t do. They find the blind angles, the shortcuts, the secret overlaps, and use them, sometimes, to build stunning models of invention and entente, spaces where small discords combine into larger resolutions and we see, hear, how boring it would be to live in a perfect world where like belongs only with like.
… hmmm… saving this article…
… i read Heather Cox Richardson and get the overwhelming impression that democracy is crumbling and there is little we can do about it… its not a good start to the day…
228.2 lbs
… weight down when there was the possibility of up… that’s a good start to the day…
… BP has been running a little high… not sure why… weight is down overall from a year ago… need adjustment in meds?…
… yesterday filled with tech frustrations in addition to not feeling very well… hangover… headache all day… went to bed early and slept reasonably well… seven hours in bed, about six hours good sleep?…
… strained muscle in left hand… evidently my fall the other day did hurt a little something… really lucky it was not worse…
… depressed that the dems don’t seem like they will be able to get voting rights legislation passed… feels like it spells doom for democracy in the country… i struggle to believe the times we are living in… it also doesn’t feel like the Biden administration is being very smart… lots of missteps, unforced errors… also bad luck… it isn’t that we didn’t see Omicron coming… the scientists probably did… but probably didn’t see such a contagious version… the scientists are saying that most everyone will get it… one should still try to avoid it but the odds are against success in that department… how is it we don’t have adequate testing?… it’s a miserable time…
… my deep reading project is managing to uplift my spirits… having something meaningful to concentrate on helps…
… i have been carefully making my way through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, taking notes, saving quotes as i go… it is a book i have read several times and it inspires me in all kinds of ways… it is part of a list of texts that i have read and been inspired by that i have decided to re-read and really pay attention to… my quest is to see what they might have in common and weather they together have a message on how one should embrace their life, find meaning in it… a big spiritual mountain to climb, but i have been all around the base and part way up the sides in numerous places numerous times… it is time, i am thinking, for an all out assault on the summit… my 4K weeks are well beyond half done…
… Heather Cox Richardson post this morning is largely about voting rights… Biden and Harris went to Georgia and made a speech vowing to protect voting rights and urging legislators everywhere to stand up for Democracy… the Senate is the roadblock… the filibuster is the roadblock… Senators Manchin and Sinema and possibly a few others are the roadblock… all the news analysis is suggesting that Manchin and Sinema will not budge… i am presently skeptical about whether Democrats are going to be able to do anything… but, as Rachel Maddow might say… watch this space…
…it’s late in the day… relatively speaking… i usually make my first note somewhere around 4:30 AM… its going for 3:30 PM… i started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance… an important chapter it turned out… lots of significant content… in any case, it was time to go for my walk before i knew it…
… the day has been a little odd in structure and feeling… i told H that severe cold is coming and a snowstorm to boot… H got immediately concerned about the generator and whether it would work and so forth… we haven’t cranked it up in years so i am afraid it won’t work… the electrical system in the house has been altered so i am not even sure it will hook up to the house the way it should… i am embarrassed that we haven’t done the little maintenance needed to keep it as an option… the whole conversation sent me into a tail spin… it left me feeling so inadequate and pissed at them… uggh…
… then deal with bills that need to be paid… i adopted a policy of every piece of mail is dealt with and disposed of/filed before i can move on… traditionally i have let mail pile up on my desk, dealing with only the must pay bills and letting the rest languish… not today… successfully cleared the mail away…
… then it was prep for Salon which took longer than it should of… had to track down the emails… had to acquire the shared dropbox folder, etc., etc., etc… a full crowd sharing tonight… pent up demand i am thinking… we skipped salon last month…
… just finished editing photographs… there weren’t too many… it’s been very cold and i haven’t wanted to be out too long…
… i am tired and a little depressed…
This article on Letters Home, by Adolphus and Jonas Mekas catches my attention…
When Jonas Mekas died in 2019, aged 96, he left behind a monumental legacy. Widely recognised as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, the auteur and poet’s boundary-breaking works propelled the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s to brave and brilliant new heights.
… it mentions Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Maya Deren as friends and collaborators with Jonas Mekas… i know of two of the four…
… Deren’s film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) “has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history… the film is short and can be watched through its Wikipedia page…
… here lies a rabbit hole of substantial proportions…
… i have decided to adopt the eightfold way of Buddhism as my guide to living ethically… the eight fold way is as follows:
- right view - that we see clearly where we are heading before beginning
- right intention - the resolve to follow this path
- right speech - no harm to others by our speech
- right action - no harm to others by our actions
- right livelihood - no harm to others by our habits and work
- right effort - attention focused on the task at hand
- right mindfulness - be aware of the mind and body with discernment… practice mindfulness to discern whether your activity might be harmful
- right concentration - the dedicated practice engaged in to help bring about awakening
… it seems to have all the bases covered…
… yesterday i did an analysis of my recent purchase choices after the fact and i saw how effective such an analysis would be if undertaken before the purchase… the analysis falls mainly under paths 4, 5 and 6… you can see that analysis here…
… three items ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday… a new cast iron pot, new wheels for my desk chair and new chains for my shoes…
… wheels have been installed on the desk chair, cast iron pot immediately put to use to make Persian rice with Tadigh, chains for shoes awaiting first deployment today…
…the Tadigh stuck to the pot as expected, even with pre seasoning… i have read that pre seasoning is not as good as the seasoning one builds themselves, so this week i will be doing some seasoning building of the new pot… this will be a mindfulness activity…
… i am happy with all three purchases and feel i have made appropriate choices in consumption with the exception of purchasing through Amazon, though i could only have gotten one of the items locally…
228.4 lbs
… i expected the weight gain as i fell off the no seconds rule last night… still, if i get back on the no S track today, i expect the weight will come back off quickly… loosing weight, maintaining weight, a true Sisyphean enterprise…
Deliveries
… i am expecting some deliveries today… slip on traction cleats for my shoes, new casters for my office chair and, as it turns out (a day earlier than projected), a new cast iron pot that will replace (i hope) the last non-stick coating pan in my kitchen… i say ‘hope’ because the non-stick pan was purchased for the main purpose of making Persian rice with Tadigh… all the cookbooks advise the use of a non-stick coating pan because it is critical that the rice not stick to the pan… the advice is use lots of extra oil in any other sort of pan… we shall see… i will immediately attempt to cook the Persian rice in the new pan… very excited…
… in my pursuit of Buddhist thinking, it is appropriate to assess the rightness of these purchases, this consumption…
- the traction cleats are for my safety while walking in conditions of snow and ice
- they replace a pair that broke
- i did not try to repair the pair that broke
- i ordered it through Amazon
- i could have purchased locally
- the new casters are to make my office chair work better and to stop it from scratching up the floor
- they replace the casters that have become frozen with hair and dust
- i did try to repair them but failed with two out of five casters
- the new casters are made for hard surface floors, the old ones were not
- i ordered it through Amazon
- i could not get them locally
- the new cast iron pot/pan was purchased to replace a pan with non-stick coating
- i have been eliminating non-stick surface pans from my kitchen, this is the last one
- i have been researching this purchase for a long time
- the new pan seems quite versatile so hoping it will have multiple purposes in my kitchen
- the new pan seems right sized for the cooking i do, which is generally only for small numbers of people
- cast iron is not toxic and supplies iron to the diet
- i don’t know what the impacts of cast iron manufacture on the planet are, but properly cared for, cast iron lasts many lifetimes
- cast iron requires a certain amount of care maintenance which i have come to consider mindfulness practice
- ordered thorough Amazon
- was not available locally
… i am wondering if i should apply this analysis to anything i consume in an effort to know the rightness or wrongness of it… preferably before consuming…