First Thoughts

… awoke with a start this AM, realizing i had forgotten to take my BP meds yesterday… a very rare occurrence… back on track now…

… months ago, i bought a vertical mouse, partly because a very expensive track ball had failed, and partly in hopes that neck pain i was experiencing was some form of mousing injury… the pain has almost disappeared… can’t attribute it to the vertical mouse with absolute certainty, but it is an interesting coincidence… i should note also that the vertical mouse has felt very natural to use…

…the HCR meter this morning is neutral… it was all about how Social Security got enacted and the woman responsible for it, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a position in the U.S. Cabinet… it ends on a somewhat disquieting note, a quote from Ms. Perkins…

One thing I know: Social Security is so firmly embedded in the American Psychology today that no politician, no political party, no political group could possibly destroy this Act and still maintain our democratic system. It is safe forever, and for the everlasting benefit of the people of the United States.¹

… fast forward to today, Democracy is under attack and if the siege is successful, Social Security and other social safety net programs will be on the chopping block…

… i was reading about China yesterday… an article on their move to reign in their tech industry… they have given it unfettered existence to this point… one of the things they are doing is forcing platforms to play nice with one another, so that they can’t monopolize a space… this surfaced my enormous frustration with the distribution of films in this country… i have been wanting to watch the movies of Kelly Reichardt all together, one after the other… it’s impossible… they are available on different streaming services, or not available at all… one needs to sign up for every f’ng media service out there to do it… it shouldn’t be like that… i am all for companies making money from the content they own, but there must be a way that delivers more value to the customer… it should be available for rent on all services, even at a somewhat higher price, and can be offered as part of a subscription for free or lower cost on the streaming service with the rights to distribute… then services can compete to provide the best user experience, the best stable of content to provide free or lower cost, etc… nobody would have to sign up for half a dozen services to watch the variety of content they want to watch… the Chinese government could make this happen, that might be its advantage…

NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens)

… a new platform to help artists make NFT art…

… which reminds me of another rabbit hole i need to get back to…

The Essential Haiku, Notes

… continuing with my reading of the end notes of the book…

… i learn that the Japanese have a word, tani-watari, for the sound a Bush Warbler makes when flying from one valley to another…

… i learn about a book, The Karma of Words, written by William LeFleur, and order an inexpensive used copy… the subtitle is, Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan…

… this poem is discussed…

still alive

and frozen in one lump—

the sea slugs

… i am reminded that i received my copy of Rise Ye Sea Slugs!, by Robin D. Gill, which turned out to be nothing like what i thought it would be… i wish i could retrace my steps in purchasing the book because it’s a pretty humorous mistake and difference… what i thought i had purchased was a book that offered multiple translations of Japanese haiku, by well known poets, in an effort to get at the difficult to translate subtleties of the poems… what i received was a book of haiku, with large amounts of explanatory text of various kinds, solely on the subject of sea slugs!… oh my… i’ve read snippets and am intrigued… when i am done with TEH, i will start in on the sea slugs… the note that Haas provides on the above poem tells me that the sea slug is usually a humorous reference in Japanese poetry… indeed…

… i learn that Night Herons are associated with the uncanny by the Japanese…

… on the recommendation of Haas, i also purchase a previously owned copy of Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary… i think i am officially diving down a rabbit hole, Japanese haiku… it’s an indirect way to get at Buddhism also… that i am finding it compelling at this moment likely has to do with my dad’s impending death… i have found it helpful…

First Thoughts

… HCR meeter neutral today… about the census and the political machinations that will be attendant with redistricting… major point is that urban populations are underrepresented and rural populations are overrepresented… that rural, white minority populations will continue to press this advantage and urban majorities will increasingly not tolerate it… it sounds as thought there need to be changes in the way representation is calculated, on a per multiple thousands basis… it doesn’t sound like this requires a constitutional amendment from my read of this AM’s post… i just re-read, and yes indeed, Congress set the cap on number of representatives… the constitution is mute on the point… one wonders why there isn’t talk of changing the cap as an effective antidote to voter suppression etc…

… a less fraught day yesterday… i spoke with Mom, things seemed a little less dire when i talked with her about Dad’s condition though i learned that she has one way of thinking about my Dad sleeping in a chair, and my sister another… the former tries to get him not to do it and is frustrated at not being able to, the later believes he does it because it is more comfortable, which tracks with his condition… i think mom is in a little bit of denial… not that she doesn’t know where this is heading, but she would like it to slow down… Rick arrived last night… there have been no reports from him yet…

… the heat broke a little, but not completely… going to continue to be hot, though not as hot…

Mac Update Update

… after the hour long fifteen minutes my Mac is telling me there is an update to install, which is the same update i just installed, or thought i did… wtf?… this happened with the last update too… really annoying…

****First Thoughts

… how is it that Apple gets it so wrong about length of time remaining for an OS update?… i mean, it’s not even close!… why bother with a time remaining display if it is so wildly inaccurate?…

… the deterioration of my father’s condition continues… my sister is getting on my nerves… trying to understand why and how i can transcend my irritation given the situation… my brother will arrive there today and provide us with his assessment… i should call mom today…

… realizing a trip to see my parents might be more imminent than i had expected i booked a service appointment for the car which turned out to be weeks away, about the time i originally planned to go… might have to fly, but then again, my sister is planning to go down after my brother leaves if the situation continues to decline… one of the reasons she is irritating me… she has just been and will be flying from Seattle… she is pursuing her best daughter ever routine… my decision is to let it be, let her do what she needs to do, go down when neither she or my brother can…

… HCR meeter is zero today… she needed a break… she did say the 2020 census has been released… i am sure there is some bad news in it for Dems…

Soft Copy Hard Copy, Stephan Keppel

… a book review by Jörg Colberg and GPT-3…

… Colberg experiments with an AI writing partner… to be honest, i don’t like the results very much… i laud the attempt but think it does a disservice to book and author, as the language is a bit clumsy, somewhat repetitive and all the while, one wonders, what is human reaction to the book and what is AI reaction to the human reaction?… it obscures an honest review and appreciation (or not) of the book, though your mileage may vary…

… there are two reasons this article caught my attention… Colberg wrote it and i have high regard for his reviewer perceptions and knowledge of photography, and his AI co-author had come to my attention in an article i read the other day in which a woman author was telling the story of something significant and sad that had happened to her (her sister dying of cancer when she was a teenager)… she would start a paragraph and let the AI complete it, experimenting with getting more and more honest with her own thoughts and memories in her prompts along the way to see how the AI writer responded… her result was more coherent and satisfying, but also suspect, because as humans, we want to read what other humans think and feel, not what an AI partner intuits that we think or feel…

… the gorilla in the room, however, is, will there be a moment when we won’t know if we are reading words assembled by a human or AI (a variation on the Turing test) if we are not told? (as i was in both articles i have read with AI co-authorship)… and what are the implications of that?… or, more scary, have i already read an article either co-authored or solo authored by AI without knowing it?… hmmm…

… there is a wider conversation to have about AI in general… I shared a micro poem about that yesterday… but that is for another time…

James Whiting, Roaming Near the Fireplace

… this photobook intrigues me… it is about people, civilization if you will, without many images of people… my kind of book, since i am somewhat averse to photographing people myself…

… it is available in an edition of 100 for $65 dollars, and i would buy it, but money is tight right now…

… this is not the sort of book that is popular in the United States, given its oblique approach to generating meaning… i am reminded that i was once told to pedal my work in Europe where there might be a more receptive audience… this kind of work is like that, more suited to a European audience… but hay, it’s the same with Jazz, isn’t it?…

The Essential Haiku

… still making my way through the notes, which are numerous and informative…

… a note about the Basho poem More than ever I want to see… what Basho wants to see is the face of a god that is so hideous he will only appear at night, at dawn… hmmm… how would one ever know if not Japanese?… or have some good notes to learn from…

… Spring going… a departure poem that opens up The Narrow Road to the North… it speaks of birds weeping and tears in the eyes of fish, which the note tells us is about his departure from friends to journey to the north… context is important…

… in another note i learn about the book Basho’s Ghost, by Sam Hamill… i look to see if it is available, only a collectible one, paperback, for $200… there are two others starting at $796… umm… i will have to see if the Public Library has it, hopefully under lock and key…

… i will stop today, with the note on A Wild Sea…

A wild sea—

and flowing out towards Sado Island,

the Milky Way.¹

… Robert Haas fears his translation doesn’t capture the grandeur of the poem commentators point to… he also tells me that at the time of Basho, the island was a penal colony where, according to Wikipedia, losers of political conflicts and dissidents were exiled… interestingly, i think one gets the grandeur of the wild sea and the Milky Way… the Island, it turns out, is fairly large, currently supporting a population of a little over 55,000, though in 1960, the population peaked at just over 113,000… the island has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years…

First Thoughts

… the HCR meeter points downward today… she talks about the fascist tendencies that are being expressed across the country, especially, at present, around local officials’ attempts to meet the COVID resurgence with mask and vaccine mandates… she points out that something similar happened in the 1930’s during FDR’s time in office with an actual coup attempt in 1934 (which was strangely absent from the history i learned)… whether we head in that direction seems hinged on what Democrats in congress do about voting rights… many would argue that the need is urgent, and yet, there are Senators unwilling to part with the Filibuster rule…

… news also, in the form of a text exchange between my brother and sister, that Dad gets worse… i feel a tinge of sadness about it, even if i am estranged from him… even though i long ago gave up any expectations that we might one day come to an understanding… i don’t know if this tinge of sadness is about loosing a father or about the sadness anyone might feel on hearing of the descent towards death of another human being… And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.¹

… a comment on one of my posts!, they do get read after all…

… i have been watching the films of Kelly Reichardt… while H is on Block Island tending to her mother… i am watching art house films she may or may not have been in to… the Reichardt films are what i like to call slice of life films… that is, films which pick up in the lives of rather ordinary characters, observe them for a while, then set them down without full resolution of their present situation…

… last night i watched River of Grass and Meeks Cutoff… the first set in contemporary times, the second set in the 1800’s… Meeks Cutoff was the more enigmatic and thought provoking… basically, a group of religious pioneers making their way across desert landscapes, short on water, not really knowing where they are going or when they will find water… they have a guide, Meeks, who they wonder about the intentions and capabilities of, consider whether to hang him, but don’t (it is a religious group)… along the way, they capture a Native American whom they can’t communicate with but whom they decide to have faith in to lead them to water… it’s questionable whether he understands that is what they want or even if he does, will lead them into the hands of hostile Native Americans… at one point Meeks decides to kill the NA (which he had recommended from the beginning) but one of the pioneers, a woman played by Michelle Williams (one of my favorite actresses), steps in to stop him… shortly thereafter we leave the intrepid band of settlers following the NA into the distance… not very much happens during the film in action terms… it’s almost laughable that it got a 16 or older rating for violence, of which there is practically none…

… i had already seen one of Reichardt’s films, Wendy and Lucy, featuring Michelle Williams as Wendy and her dog Lucy, making their way across country on a tight budget, when Wendy gets arrested for shoplifting, she is separated from Lucy whom she spends the rest of the film trying to find and reunite with…

… there are three more to watch, Old Joy, which appears to be unavailable on any streaming service, Night Moves and Certain Women… i will try to watch the last two tonight and tomorrow night…

Bill Gunn, Filmmaker

… this work looks interesting to me… hard to see through any of my streaming services… i am getting tired of the idea that one needs to subscribe to every streaming service to be able to pursue all the movies one might like to pursue… corporate slime with their hand in my pockets, everywhere, all the time… and don’t get me started on the corporatization of my local vet practice…

… rant over…

… if you live in NYC you can see an exhibit on Bill Gunn’s work, long shunned by the mostly white patriarchy, at Artist Space…

… on another down note, does this mean that the patriarchy is ready to take the message on board without doing anything to change?…

AnOther promises: The Best Art and Photography Books to Buy This Summer

… human centric… as in all humans all the time… not that there aren’t good works in the lot… it’s just that, maybe, if humanity spent less time on its selfies and more time on appreciating anything other than self, perhaps the planet wouldn’t be the mess that it is…

The Essential Haiku, Notes

… in the very first note i read this morning, an academic article is referenced, Basho—The Man and The Plant, by Donald H. Shively… i look up the article and it is only available through JSTOR, i look for it elsewhere but can’t find it any other way… at this point i discover that i can register for JSTOR and read up to 100 articles a month for free… um, i am not an academic, so the prospect that i might exceed the limit in any given month is unlikely… what a find!…

… and, on to the article, the plant is appreciated in China and, to a lesser extent, in Japan, as a symbol of ephemerality, as the leaves of the plant are easily damaged by the wind and the plant withers and dies in the winter in these places… Basho’s students took to calling him Master Banana Plant, because of the specimen he kept in his garden… Basho like this and adopted it as his poets name… a poem by Saigyo, one of Basho’s favorite poets, talks about the banana plant in this way:

When the wind blows

at random go

the banana leaves;

Since it is thus laid waste, is this a world

on which a human being either can rely?

… ephemerality of plan and human life… very buddhist…

Many of the traditions about the banana plant in Earlier Japanese literature are brought together in a Yokyoku of the fifteenth century entitled Basho. This No play is based on a theme suggested by the Lotus sutra, that even grasses and trees can be reincarnated as Buddhas.¹

… this idea immediately leads me to think about the concept of Panpsychism, which postulates consciousness as a fundamental quality of all matter…

… Basho apparently enjoyed the concept of non-functional beauty… that is, beautiful plants, things, that had no apparent use, which left them undisturbed by humans, and therefor, made them a reliable presence… one could ground themselves in and around non-functional beauty… i relate this to my reading on the Greek concept of techne yesterday…

_ Techne (Greek: τέχνη, tékhnē, ‘craft, art’; Ancient Greek: tékʰnɛː, Modern Greek: ˈtexni (About this soundlisten)) is a term in philosophy that refers to making or doing. As an activity, technē is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. The term resembles the concept of epistēmē in the implication of knowledge of principles, in that “both words are names for knowledge in the widest sense.” However, the two are distinct._²

… the importance of usefulness or functionality in Western culture which also appreciates the fruit of the banana plant rather than the ephemeral qualities of the plant itself, which has no “concrete” value other than to produce the useful fruit…

The world of robotics…

The world of robotics, is the world of robotics— and yet.

… this is a play on the Robert Haas translation of a famous Issa haiku…

The world of dew, is the world of dew— and yet, and yet.

… dew is symbolic of ephemerality and in this particular Issa poem is thought to be expressing grief over the death of his daughter…

… my “homage” picks up on the idea that things are what they are, neither good or evil in and of themselves… there is nothing inherently evil about robotics… it all hinges on the uses humans find for their creations and, on that score, the historic record is not good…

To Ants…

To ants on the kitchen counter— I am a wrathful god.

First Thoughts

… the HCR meter is encouraging this morning, day off to a good start even if an extra early start… the jobs report was stellar… the Dems are making their counter argument on the economy and it is a successful and popular argument, which is important, one of the things that can stave off a return of 45 or someone like him… now, some form of voting rights legislation needs to be accomplished… if it is, we’ll have our best possibility of staving off authoritarianism…

… presented my wires, mannequins, greek myth, techne image set last night, the salon was underwhelmed, thought the connection was what?, forced i guess… i have made up my mind to keep pursuing for a while anyway… it feels right…

… some good interactions on micro.blog yesterday…

… some progress on the dining room trim yesterday… the usual two steps forward, one back, but that will change as i remember the process…

… dogs sleeping in the studio, they have the good sense to go back to bed, me, it’s hours to make good use of… i have always been a morning person… if i become much more of a morning person, i will be a night person!… interestingly, alcohol is not to blame… i slept the night through… about 5 1/2 hours…

… i am thinking i will take the Nikon with me on the morning walk…

… the weather has been humid and hot, dog days for sure… it’s also been cloudy and a bit dismal… it will be on the far side of 95 degrees F for the next several days… hunker down, hunker down…

Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster

… A Molluscular History of New York…

… years ago, i read Cod, another of Kurlansky’s funny but insightful books on the ecological disasters revolving around particular creatures… wonderful author, wonderful books…

… and with that, it is time to go for my photo wander…

The Essential Haiku, End Notes

… a sense of the impossibility of translating Japanese haiku is given in these two paragraphs…

Winter Sun: This is Ueda’s translation, from Basho and His Interpreters, p. 170. The alliteration and assonance in this poem are particularly admired: fuyu no hi ya bajo ni koru kageboshi.¹

… and…

A Petal Shower: The phrase used to describe the falling petals is onomatopoeic: horohoro. Some connection between that sound and the sound of the river.²

… in the note to the poem How Admirable!, some sound information on enlightenment, which is…

to see nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.³

• squid seller/summer
• cuckoo/summer
• peach blossoms/late spring
• foxes/mischievous, supernatural powers

… the commentary on Hailstones…

Hard things hitting hard things in a hard place. Mountain passes were mysterious places in old Japanese culture, inhabited by boundary gods and placatory shrines, sometimes with the carved figure of a man and a woman coupling.⁴

First Thoughts

… a friend once said that his day got off to a good or bad start depending on what Heather Cox Richardson had to say… it is similar for me, and today it’s a bad start… she calls a spade a spade… radical conservatives are working hard to move the country in an Authoritarian direction, praising Victor Orban, president of Hungary, whipping up anti-immigrant frenzy, telling their constituents that immigrants are to blame for the current Delta variant crises and blaming it on lax immigration policies of the Biden/Harris administration… it isn’t true… all to preserve the white male patriarchy hold on power… i saw this coming years ago… it is reaching the decisive point… the next three and a third years will be the pivot point or not…

… critical to stopping the authoritarian move is to enact federal voting rights legislation of some kind…

… i am feeling anxious about the coming day… anxious that there are too many things i should do and not enough time to do them… i will have to triage…

… K comes to weed the garden today… it will be a novel concept to have a well weeded garden…

… J and i talked a bit after the family call yesterday… we agreed that with current trends, we don’t expect J to last beyond October… my mood about that is somber… we are going where we are going… the goal is to get there with as little suffering as possible… certainly for J, but also for all of us around J… of course, accepting the inevitability of J’s death is accepting the inevitability of our own deaths… this makes it hard to face…

… time to be a bit more optimistic about the day!… i will get what needs to be done, done…

Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A

… this blog is all about the attention i pay… it is rare that i read a Pitchfork review from beginning to end, but BS is sort of my era… i like, sometimes love, his music, but i have never been an avid fan… truthfully, i have never been an avid fan of practically anything or anyone… i have my flirtations, but they all stop short of avid fandom, which always struck me as giving too much power to the heroes… excused you from being your own hero… it’s also rare that Pitchfork gives a 10 rating to an album, so i read, and kept reading to the end…

… it seems that BR enjoyed the stardom and didn’t…

… Born in the U.S.A. speaks about an America that i grew up along side of, but not in… it’s full of blue collar music that appealed to me as i rejected the white collar life my parents brought me up in as being sterile and boring… i have always been more comfortable in artistic communities and neighborhoods that sit on the edge between blue and white collar, if those things mean anything anymore…

… i may have to crank the album up later on…

First Thoughts

… Heather Cox Richardson made a post today… she usually takes Saturday night off… however, Rod Rosen testimony has begun… there has been news reporting that 45 directly pressured the Justice Department to overturn the election… it was barely resisted… but, it was resisted and now it will be testified about… will be interesting to hear what the reporting is in the coming weeks… is the noose tightening around 45?… will there be justice served?… or will our system allow him the weasel away?… HCR is hopeful… stay tuned…

… E and B had a movie night last night… wasn’t totally in the mood, but went anyway… it was fun… it was outdoors… most surprising was that i wasn’t bitten by mosquitoes… fans seemed to do the trick of keeping them away…

… had to change track on construction projects… did some research on PT lumber and the consensus seems to be that it is good to let the lumber do some drying before installing it… so i set it up with air circulation and we will wait and see… in the meantime, i plan to move on to the dining room trim… i have some boards and should be able to get it started…

… i am glad to have no commitments today, other than family zoom…

… i purchased a subscription to SetApp… i think it will be less expensive in the long run, once i switch Ulysses over to being managed through it… i also really like the NotePlan app for tracking what you plan to do, what you do… there is an Instagram uploader that may be moderately helpful in posting my images…

… yesterday i didn’t turn the TV on at all… if i had been home last night, i would have watched a movies, but that is my plan, little TV for the time that H is on BI…

… also, i continue to spend very little time on FB or Instagram… not missing it that much… feeling more at peace… it helps to not engage in the desire disappointment cycle of being liked or not…

Catherine Opie

… a retrospective volume of her photographs… the review talks about her prolific production, that it is normally organized chronologically, that in this volume, it is organized thematically… i am not sure i am as interested in the photographs as i am the words, prolific, chronological and thematic, all three of which apply to my work…

The Essential Haiku, Notes

… reading the notes, i learn or confirm that…

• Basho was most likely gay
• cuckoo = summer
• squid = summer
• Japanese haiku are full of nuances that don’t translate… thus, the book that is on it’s way, featuring multiple translations of single haiku…
• chrysanthemum = fall
• chrysanthemum is competitively cultivated in Japan, is associated with purity and the royal family of Edo

First Thoughts

… a long post from Heather Cox Richardson, the history of voting rights, the prospects for new legislation to protect rights… some hope that legislation will be formulated and passed, some hope that the Democrats will meet the dire situation… if they fail to pass legislation, the country is heading down the road of authoritarianism…

… curious movie last night… Test Pattern… about sexual assault, a young woman with a boyfriend goes out with a friend, gets drugged and raped… the drugs made her appear to be willing… though she was not… the bulk of the movie centers on her boyfriends insistence that she go to a hospital and have a rape kit administered, and where it gets interesting, the boyfriend is borderline controlling and possessive… it’s more important to him that she do it than to her… that she is black and he white adds further complexities to the situation… the movie is inconclusive about her and her relationship at the end… it’s interesting, critics seem to have loved the movie, audiences not so much, and i get that… intellectually i appreciate the movie, emotionally, i didn’t really connect…

… i decided yesterday to lay out a plan of what i thought i wanted to accomplish for the day, and then write down what i actually did… it was a mixed bag… things got done, things i had been intending to do, or needed to do, but not everything i planned…

Women Pushing the Boundaries of Image Making

©Carey Ellen, Crush and pull

… an interesting article on an exhibition of photo process imagery by women…