War in Middle East


BEIRUT, Lebanon Hezbollah fighters launched a raid into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers Wednesday, triggering an Israeli assault with warplanes, gunboats and ground troops in southern Lebanon to hunt for the captives.

At least seven other Israeli soldiers were killed in the two Hezbollah raids, the army said.

Israel also reported it killed another Hezbollah guerrilla as he tried to infiltrate a military base in northern Israel during a second raid.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the first Hezbollah raid "an act of war" and held the Lebanese government responsible, vowing that the Israeli response "will be restrained, but very, very, very painful."

The Israeli military planned to call up thousands of reservists. Residents of Israeli towns on border with Lebanon were ordered to seek cover in underground bomb shelters.

Israel's forces are now fighting on two fronts, after the kidnap of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians in Gaza two weeks ago prompted an offensive in Gaza, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports an air strike targeting Hamas commanders missed, and instead killed a Palestinian family of nine — including seven children.

"As bodies were pulled from the rubble here, you could feel the crowd, the anger of the crowd," Logan said in an exclusive report from the scene.

Israel said it launched the air strike in the Sheik Radwan neighborhood, a Hamas stronghold, because Hamas commanders there were planning more attacks on Israel. Israel also said the home it attacked was a "meeting place for terrorists."

The Israeli army said its most wanted terrorist, Mohammed Deif was wounded, but Hamas denied it. Deif has narrowly escaped several assassination attempts in the past.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, on a visit to Rome, condemned the Israeli attack in southern Lebanon, reports CBS News correspondent Sabina Castelfranco. He also demanded the immediate release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, on a visit to Cairo, said the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was "a very dangerous escalation" that "puts at risk all the effort that's being put forth by many to find a solution to the current situation."

Britain blamed Hezbollah for this latest escalation of mideast violence, condemning the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers and the shelling of Israel, but said it wants a measured and proportionate Israeli response. France echoed that, reports CBS News correspondent Larry Miller, calling for the soldiers' unconditional release. Germany described the Hezbolah raid as an "irresponsible new escalation." There was support for Hezbollah from Syria, which claimed the "occupation provokes the Palestinians."

Wednesday's events threatened to complicated efforts to win Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release. The Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah said it had kidnapped the soldiers to help win the release of prisoners held in Israel. Hamas had made identical demands in seizing the Israeli soldier.

Jubilant residents of south Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, and Palestinians in the Ein el-Hilwa refugee camp fired their guns in the air and set off firecrackers for more than an hour after the capture of the Israeli soldiers was announced.

By the afternoon, seven hours after the Hezbollah raid, Israeli military aircraft were striking large areas of southern Lebanon — targeting bridges, roads and Hezbollah positions in areas as deep as halfway between the Israeli border and the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Lebanese security officials said.

An Israeli army statement said the air force attacked more than 30 targets in south Lebanon to prevent the transfer of the kidnapped soldiers.

Several dozen ground troops entered southwestern Lebanon across the border where the soldiers were snatched, apparently only going a short distance in, witnesses said.

But Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned the Lebanese government that the assault would widen. He said the military will target infrastructure and "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years," if the soldiers were not returned, Israeli TV reported.

Hezbollah leadership has told CBS News that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers is yet further pressure to force Israel to release Palestinian detainees, reports Logan.

"We shall not surrender to arrogance and we will not negotiate with terrorists," Olmert said.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would not release the two captured Israeli soldiers except as part of a prisoner swap.

It would be an "illusion" if Israel thinks a military campaign can win the release of the soldiers, Nasrallah said.

"No military operation will return them," he told a news conference in Beirut. "The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade."

Olmert said the attack was not an act of terror but an attack by a sovereign state on Israel. The Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a part, "must bear full responsibility," he said.

Hamas also appeared to toughen its demands for the safe return of Shalit, the 19-year-old soldier its militants seized two weeks ago, saying Hezbollah's actions strengthened Hamas' position.

"We have proven to this enemy (Israel) that the one option is the release of Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab captives. All captives, without exception," said Osama Hamdan, Hamas' spokesman in Lebanon.

"What happened has strengthened the issue of the captives, and the enemy will submit to our choice, which is the exchange of the captives in return for the release of the soldiers," he told Al-Jazeera television.

Hamas had previously demanded the release of some Palestinian prisoners in return for Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release.

Hamdan did not say whether Hamas had consulted with Hezbollah, but he said there may be subsequent "coordination and an understanding."

Hezbollah, which has been clashing with Israel for more than two decades, has repeatedly expressed its intent to kidnap Israeli soldiers to trade for Arab prisoners.

Israel occupied a small strip of southern Lebanon for 18 years before withdrawing in 2000 after high casualties on both sides raised public complaints in Israel. But Israel and Hezbollah still clash over a small sliver of border territory. Chebaa Farms, claimed by Lebanon.

Hezbollah fighters have controlled the Lebanese side of the border with Israel since Israeli forces pulled out. Lebanon is under U.N. and American pressure to disarm the Shiite guerrilla group and move its own military into the south, but the government has refused to do so, calling them a legitimate resistance group.

Israel has carried out several prisoner swaps with Hezbollah in the past to obtain freedom for captures Israelis. These include a January 2004 swap in which an Israeli civilian and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers were exchanged for 436 Arab prisoners and the bodies of 59 Lebanese fighters. In 1985, three Israeli soldiers captured in Lebanon in 1982 were traded for 1,150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.

incoming train in Mumbai, India

Incoming Train in Mumbai

The Rainy Season

Mumbai, India (AP) - Seven explosions ripped through packed commuter trains during rush hour Tuesday in India's commercial capital, killing more than 100 people and injuring 300 in what officials said was a well-coordinated bomb attack by terrorists.

India's major cities were put on high alert after the blasts, which appeared timed to impose maximum carnage on the bustling city of 16 million. Its crowded rail network was thrown into chaos by the blasts and authorities were struggling to determine the impact.

Mumbai Police Chief A.N. Roy said on Indian television that 100 people were feared killed and more than 300 were injured.

"We are busy in the rescue operation. Our first priority is to rescue the injured people,'' he said. However, heavy monsoon downpours were hampering the effort.

The Press Trust of India news agency, citing officials, said at least 137 people were killed.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an emergency Cabinet meeting, and said that "terrorists'' were behind the attacks. Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters that authorities had "some'' information an attack was coming, "but place and time was not known.''

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is located, said bombs had caused the blasts. He said the death toll had reached 105.

"The official information is that these are bomb explosions,'' the minister said.

Police were also reportedly carrying out raids across the country following the explosions, presumably in search of suspects. One television report said a suspect was in custody.

A senior Mumbai police official, P.S. Pasricha, said the explosions were part of a well-coordinated attack.

Witnesses reported seeing body parts strewn about stations, and Indian television news channels broadcast footage of bystanders carrying victims to ambulances and searching through the wreckage for survivors and bodies. Some of the injured were seen frantically dialing their cell phones.

The force of the blasts ripped doors and windows off carriages, and luggage and debris were strewn about, splattered with blood. Survivors were seen clutching bloody bandages to their heads and faces. Some were able to get up and walk from the stations.

Pranay Prabhakar, the spokesman for the Western Railway, confirmed that seven blasts had taken place. He said all trains had been suspended in Mumbai, and he appealed to the public to stay away from the train stations in Mumbai, India's financial and commercial center and principal port on the Arabian sea.

Indian stock markets could plunge Wednesday if nervous investors dump shares following the blasts.

"Terror attacks like these could negatively swing the risk profile of India. Investors, sitting on the sidelines, would definitely rethink to put in money,'' said Trideep Bhattacharya, Asia head of technology research at UBS Securities.

The bomb blasts occurred after the stock markets ended. The financial capital suffered similar serial blasts in 1993 that included the Mumbai Stock Exchange, killing more than 250 people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, but the blasts came in quick succession _ a common tactic employed by Kashmiri militants that have repeatedly targeted India's cities.

The first explosion hit the train at a railway station in the northwestern suburb of Khar, said a police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

India's CNN-IBN television news, which had a reporter traveling on the train, said the blast took place in a first-class car as the train was moving, ripping through the compartment and killing more than a dozen people.

Roy, the Mumbai police chief, said the other blasts targeted trains, railway tracks and platforms. One explosion occurred near an underground subway station.

The purported attacks came hours after a series of grenade attacks by Islamic extremists that killed eight people in the main city of India's part of Kashmir.

Dozens of militant groups have been fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, demanding the mostly Muslim region's independence, or its merger with Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of aiding the militants, who run training camps on Pakistan's of Kashmir. Pakistan denies the charge.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned upon independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir.

Accusations of Pakistani involvement in a 2001 attack on India's parliament put the nuclear-armed rivals on the brink of a fourth war. But since then, Pakistan and India embarked on a peace process aimed at resolving their differences, including their conflicting claims to all of Jammu-Kashmir.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry issued a statement late Tuesday condemning the attacks.

"Pakistan strongly condemns the series of bomb blasts on commuter trains,'' the ministry said in a statement. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat offered condolences over the loss of life, the statement said, adding "terrorism is a bane of our times and it must be condemned, rejected and countered effectively and comprehensively.''

In Washington, two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity while events were unfolding, said it was too early to know for certain what group was behind the attacks. But both officials said they were likely part of the sectarian violence over Kashmir.

One of the officials said the attacks' coordinated nature and their targeting of trains at peak travel times match the modus operandi of two Islamic extremist groups that have been active in India during the last several years: Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or Army of the Righteous, and Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of Mohammed.

The U.S. government has designated both groups as terrorist organizations and considers them affiliates of al-Qaida. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said it had no information about whether there were any American casualties. - AP

End of the Week

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-- William Shakespeare

Kiosk , Billboard, Mirror & Autism

hmmmm : I almost forgot.
this is an SP 0:31:35 scene from

The Big Sleep

my favorite movie she asked what was

although I'd like to look up and see
Geometry of Design
to make sure to be sure to be right
to make sure she's right and I'm right
or make sure he's right and she's right too

--------------------------------

they told me my life would be considered
blackmail
but I'm alone now and forsaken.

--------------------------------

writing is
different
than thinking

by a mile

--------------------------------

is there a bridge
marcel proust asked

--------------------------------

you don't put on much of a front
you don't put up much of a front.

--------------------------------

the key on the book means something

--------------------------------

that's right
you take a good picture

--------------------------------

I said to John O. last week:
if I don't get the money soon
they'll be talking to my brother
through a wire screen

--------------------------------
I notice I always spell AND when I mean AN
how is that a freudian slip

--------------------------------

"What! I called you?????"

--------------------------------

I think I'd better call her now.
you see I don't dislike her liking me or thinking
through what I can't think through but I do mind
not being able to understand what another human means
when they mean to be themselves.

--------------------------------

that's a large word
like a large cavity
a huge meaning
an e(NOR)mouse undertaking.

--------------------------------

but can they or will they follow me
through thought the
remembering.
when I remember myself they seem least able to remember
themself
does THEMSELF qualify?

--------------------------------

never have I not been told.
yes. I do consider a Hermes typewriter to be a ouija board

of sorts

--------------------------------

you named this
KIOSKS, BILLBOARDS & MIRRORS
did you mean what you meant?

--------------------------------

WHAT DID YOU MEAN SUGAR
NIGHTS ARE BETTER I WORK DURING THE DAY.


DOING NOTHING IN GENERAL IS BEST WHEN THE DRUMS COME FOR YOU
OR AS DRUMS CALL IN FOR YOU OR IN YOU CALLING A DRUM BEATS


NOTICE HOW THE CAPITALS ARE TITLES

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

TO BE CONTINUED

---- Wucius Wong
Principles of 2-Dimensional Design

The Divine Substance - Proteus - Bloomsday 2006

If I were suddenly naked here as I sit I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss.

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must be two of em. Glue 'em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss.

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her womb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.

His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now. Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more.

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jess of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan's movement I made nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour, welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.

And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs nebeneinander: He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing landward, a pace a pace a porpoise. There he is. Hook it quick. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.

A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and his my sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.

He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way next when is it? Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Già . For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. Già . My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder? Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?

-- James Joyce

Afghanistan Again

THE Taliban are back.

The resurgence of Taliban attacks in the Pashto-speaking provinces of southern and eastern Afghanistan means that US and other foreign troops in Afghanistan are now taking casualties at the same rate as American troops in Iraq (although the actual numbers are much lower).

This was entirely predictable, but almost impossible to prevent given the strategy that the United States has pursued since overthrowing the Taliban regime in late 2001.

On the other hand, no alternative strategy would have offered a guarantee of success in Afghanistan either.

Afghanistan was always the problem from hell for Western strategists, as it was in earlier times for British and Russian strategists.

It's an easy country to invade, but an almost impossible country to occupy long-term because of the rugged terrain, the deep ethnic divisions (if you make some ethnic groups your allies, you automatically make others your enemies), and the profound xenophobia that so many foreign invasions has fostered in Afghan culture.

That's why Osama bin Laden wanted the United States to invade Afghanistan in the first place.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were all about luring Washington into invading Afghanistan, in order to draw American troops into the quagmire of a long and ugly guerrilla war and turn Muslims everywhere against the United States and their own pro-Western governments.

It was an obvious strategy for al-Qaeda to choose, since bin Laden had been a first-hand witness to the long ordeal that the US inflicted on the Soviet Union after it suckered Moscow into occupying Afghanistan in 1979.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, wanted to create 'Russia's Vietnam' in Afghanistan, so he sent arms and money to fuel a revolt by the deeply conservative hill tribes against the Communist regime that had seized power in Kabul in 1978.

By late 1979 the Communist regime in Kabul was tottering, and Moscow sent in troops to save it.

Gotcha!

The US then gave the local rebels even more arms and money, and encouraged Muslim volunteers from other countries (mainly Arabs and Pakistanis) to join the war against the Russians.

After ten years and over fifteen thousand dead, the Soviet Union pulled out of the endless, unwinnable struggle in 1989.

However, most of the foreign volunteers were fought in Afghanistan were Islamist extremists, and some of them realised that what the United States had done to the Russians, they might now do to the Americans themselves.

Once a friendly Islamist regime, the Taliban, took power in Afghanistan in 1996, al-Qaeda moved its bases there and began planning the attacks that would trick the United States into invading the country.

The strategy worked.

After 9/11, President Bush HAD to invade Afghanistan; American public opinion would have accepted nothing less.

But Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must have seen through bin Laden's strategy, for he chose not to roll into Afghanistan with several hundred thousand troops in the traditional American military style.

Given Afghanistan's history and the profound cultural differences between Americans and Afghans, the mere presence of such a large force would alienate the local population and call a resistance movement into existence.

Instead, Rumsfeld sent in only about five hundred CIA agents and special forces troops carrying suitcases stuffed with cash to buy alliances with Afghanistan's numerous ethnic minority groups, and laser target designators to call in US air strikes on Taliban forces.

Then he let the various ethnic militias do the actual fighting on the ground, and in ten weeks he brought down the Taliban regime without any large-scale commitment of American troops.
He successfully evaded the trap that bin Laden had laid - but his strategy implied that the US would have very little influence over the political shape of post-Taliban Afghanistan.

It had put the warlords in power.

They are still in power today, despite the facade of Hamid Karzai's democratically elected government in Kabul.

Opium production, almost eliminated under Taliban rule, is back bigger than ever, because the warlords need the income.

Even the Taliban (who no longer have any conventional tax revenues) are now taxing opium rather than eradicating it in the areas they control.

And they will continue to have support in those Pashto-speaking areas because the Pashtuns, some 40 per cent of the population, see the Taliban as their best chance of recovering their traditional dominant role in running Afghanistan.

So there will be a guerrilla war in Afghanistan for the indefinite future, but what was the alternative? Sending in a large American army to control and transform the country would have fallen into al-Qaeda's trap and created a much bigger guerrilla war of resistance - and besides, Rumsfeld was reluctant to commit many troops to Afghanistan because he was saving them for the invasion he really wanted to do in Iraq.

There have never been more than 27 000 American troops in Afghanistan, and now they are down to 19 000 (though the gap has been partly filled by 16 000 United Nations troops, mainly from Europe and Canada).

Would the situation improve if they all went home? No; the Taliban would probably win again, after a while, because they are more motivated and disciplined than the warlords.

Will it get better if they stay? No; it will probably just jog along as a low-level guerrilla war, with occasional peaks of violence like the present and no end in sight.

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

GWYNNE DYER

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

And Even You Elephants?

And even a place?
A sounder one.

Whose hanging showed a desperate resignation?
Recognition and restitution prepare extreme pleasure.
Amusing concentrated heaviness can be splendid.

Circulating cigarettes distinguishes resignation.
Exuding recognition won't enlarge all circumstances.
Consider an entirely reasonable description.
Would such a description coagulate recognition?
And what would it express?

Glass.
Four sincerely intentional gliders resigned.
Instruct us to recognize persecution.
Can't all eyes recognize it?
All could.
Nothing's enclosing space, necessity's originary institution.
Which choking explanation is even a sauce for the crestfallen?

We seconded singular eucalyptus preparations.
What preparations?
Isn't that strangely prepared asparagus soup too glassy?
Merciful heating is necessary for cooking.
Have straight descriptions of preparation disappeared?
Can glass establish erections?
Frequently astonishing cooking restores resignation to birthdays.
Resignation and brushing can be especially wetting conundrums.
Lengthening daylight and preparing for penetration are examples of alleviation.
Would counting plates and burning placards distract a mercenary opportunist?
Can Justice's splendid declarations even withstand you elephants?

.

Source : All of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, first edition, as corrected by Stein in her handwritten entries in Donald Sutherland's copy, found by Ulla E. Dydo in the U. of Colorado Library, Boulder, Special Collections. Seed: Stein's title "An Elucidation." Method: Sending source and seed through DIASTEX5, Charles O. Hartman's 1994 update of his automation of my "diastic text-selection" method (1963), and revising the output into sentences by changes of word order, affixes, and "helping words." Form: Five strophes comprising numbers of verse-line sentences corresponding to the prime-number sequence 2, 3, 5, 7, 11.
Jackson Mac Low, New York: 28 September–7 November 2000

Crash in the Castro

FoxReno Video





Castro Crash

Global X photos

Life is agid, life is fulgid.

Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.
Quine

Jeff's Jumboday October - November 1996 Notebooks

Some green drawings with a stencilled R
a bit of blue; some black; a squiggle or two
light green pale green forest green cross-hatch
don't think so much about it; The Fear:
and loneliness : the School for Idiots.
Drawn from Memory: The Woods
robust black lines; double arrows
putting up with Winter
prayers for normal weather for whispers for fog
for stills for stays for stamps for leaves
up the hill to Armstrong Woods; about 2.1 miles

in SF: timesheets due
phone calls of KK3 were taken and delivered
KK3 in 25E x2861 10:00 25W x2831
need time line
phones: Osler; Lippetz
Pitney Bowes
get doc to Rhonda J
brother Frank

Peach Tea
Casserole/tuna
Pugliese bread
channel surfer
too negatively self-effacing
Wanted:
night riders
heavy snuggling
32-33 waist -- 35/36 inseam
preference for artistic clutter
loves washing dishes;
adorable would be just about perfect

soft cotton sweatshirts

agreeing - favorably

in SF: the least important day seems important --
all vapid
beauty about me.
he says you're too negatively self-effacing
indescribably delicious I say he is
ferocious -- ly
boring with compulsive personality

49, basically opinionated
difficult to "get"
tantrum prone
essentially a letter of
the alphabet

don't go backwards in books
do I or does my body remember everyone
everywhere

taking delight in despair --

shoots & sprouts --

blackberry fences --

looking at vast
space way in back
yet to be used

tempered
excitement
contained

composite heap
compost heap
no bones or milk

goofy grins
all over the place
always trying to remember

Basic structures will remain:
Cabins
larger dining hall
bold movements
scaled to the woods

use a similar architectural scheme --
an expansion
almost homage
to the original designers and layout of the place
cutting the back lawn
took all morning --
grass still dew --
red lawn mower
discover a power drive
when work's half-done

many names to begin
many others waiting
your name here

___________________________________

O Please Peter:

lull him nuzzle him lumbar
lull him liquid luscious loom
back to home lounge Lethe he
Na Leethe Bhi
O Peter Please:

pleasing Peter with a quarter
with a dollar with a shower full
of creamy (having) giggles & thigh

___________________________________

having your way with Mr. Gray

Goodbye to the days that were
Goodbye to the night

-----------------------------

mind everywhere
playing briefly
upon her discovery
Calliope sniffed
her food
looked keenly intent around
for you
She was the oldest and wisest of the Muses.

To refer back
What a Warm
& Willing Participant
He Proved

looking shocked
then answering always
with a question

then all that hubbub about
opening a
can of worms

& in an odd
way remained in
my suit --
with agreement --

yes - yes
I'll - accept
that - Steve
perfect - each
word - each
time - he
spoke - my
name

like that --
Briefly in love and through a huge
revision of tears

his hair's cut
as close as mine
fuzzy

French Photographers
express the unsayable
with flashlights

there must be a story
about closing the gate on me
even as I approached and said:

I or him or you
say or he said I said
they said

difficult groves of bamboo
a treacherous weed to a
serious gardner
best left subdued &
shadowy jade
bamboo

crying by the pool
the stream flows down the slope
in winter
with fury

winter deep
water in winter
living
there
with a
purpose
&
place

read Pindar
the power of language
to express whatever we please
or is that Pinter
I can't be sure
ooo's and aahhh's

in walks
R --
phone rings --
he's home --
wish him
happy birthday

Tantra --
he says
I say --
o please --
it's more
than -- that

--------------------------

Linear Confusion

Tuesday
the tender terrible lies
aches & complaints
& tonight Avalo is frisky

on the Blue
trisecting angle; a simple
example of implicit faith

words and a single image
Pantone 3 in 1 pen
a self-defeating argument

send MWelles $50 - due Tuesday
where are my shoes
in need of adventure

I am not a role model
Bamboo Beware
how is October possible

October chill in the Air
we just don't know how
to talk to our son

bamboo doors
bamboo windows
bamboo up close

warm gloves
scarves or mittens
mittens & scarves

painting bamboo with Pantone pens
the wind is about to rise
describing circles in water

Fencing
you can't play with his emotions
thrust into him warrior-like

wars in one's soul
bamboo & redwood
Mason with his fingers loved

pig-headed
like his father
a hundred years ago

stubborn
constrain someone from
doing something

he'll never
amount
to nothin'

--------------------------

wolves
wabbits
cats galore
consider someone or
something

get paperclips
consult with someone
about something

call Sally & Kirsten --
Sally in Seattle
paint that canvas maroon

write Adam -- about
Tennesse Williams or is it
William Carlos Williams

an autumn moment
autumnal shades
walnuts
filberts
thanksgiving
captain kangaroo
turkey
macy's day parade
fall
red
change
Thomas Wolfe
assassination

Opera Robert Ashley:
sometimes in chanting
monks will land upon
a note

stop an experience
stop an experience from happening?
a place
a person
rhapsodize memory
in imagination

stopping for
Melisma
gives the soul
its reason
for being

the nature of Acedia
between
gravity & grace
that time
around 3 to 5
in the afternoon

------------------------

Our Town

------------------------

feasible
sizable
fear

listen to Ashley's
perfect lives
in the kitchen

bathing in shower
soap everywhere
Our Town
on
TV

"music
come into the world
to
give pleasure"

"art thou weary"
"art thou languid"

"isn't the moonlight
terrible"

common sense
in syncopation

pomegrante moon
apple moon
pumpkin moon
nervous: moon

the O's of October

-------------------------------

abrupt changes

Balance:

strangers. nothing all together
but naked or nude or terror or
tears or healthy or heat or heart
or afraid or books

news raps:
words & phantasies and emotions
& things like that
to figure out

chased by an angel in army boots

construction outside
crews rebuilding the Civic Center
planning for 1998

2000 you'll be 54
a mere 4 years
a mirrored life --

memory's a photocopy of the
original

mother gibbs
they're going --

eternal where?

one dare not whisper
for fear of missing

a word --

a hush & then
the evening stars:

when does this feeling
go away : feeling strange
here

legacies
grants
powers of attorney
who will take care of me:
Fear

50/50 turning 50
watching
My Neighbor Totoro

old enough to be the president
or as old as Bill Clinton
without a career

banging bursts of drums
beauty over bridges
brave girls shy boys

----------------------------

billie holiday
was more functional
than you are

----------------------------

A swirl of negative
self-effacing words
says a haunted
Mason Waller:

tempting me
hoping for tears

------------------------------

bathtub boys
who sincerely invite
the sound of your voice

------------------------------

fresh first air
chill early blinded by
ghosts & acorns

------------------------------

hating so deep he sobs

------------------------------

Charles always coy when he
wants something from me, says:
If you're ever lost on Mt Shasta should I phone?

---- email Robert: we all miss you. I think Mason the most

call everyone for Sunday

pretend to be curious about sex
when the deeper doubts occur

expiate dreams

feelin' something special
in the air

Juliet Prowse on TV
Paseo Robles
where the man shines by
attracting the woman
in dance

Smoothely

the couple in stripes

ballroom dancing as an olympic sport

stone bodies
torn bodies
taped bodies
under plastic
beauty pinned
held
perfect
chaos
formulas

the Catharsis of 1996.
visual
how
activated
placed
raw exhibition looms -- hot
sensational show of
eager to share wonder

Michael K
gets distant
when he gets closest

Giotto
is the conclusion
of a long effort: blue

the magnificent chant
of November: close before
December

notice the O's
the sculupted R's
the glorious U's

would you
help me on
with my coat?

the cold is yet to penetrate
his sleep deepens
darkens opens

-- Jeff Wietor

Journey by Rain : Guerneville

Five AM
Saturday
has it's own life:
Indigo/Prussian Blue
Skies
Gray clouds pre-dawn splendor
Is it March 31 or April 1
without a calendar

travelling conversation:
kids can't get loans --
and then these kids
pay all that money --
and then can't get a job --
and they don't help them
find a marketable major --
it's awful I don't see
why kids are going
to school --
a lot of them aren't
well informed --

rain flecks on car window
rain beads; rain fuzzy
rain drizzles; rain designs

you have to shop around
you have to see what area
you can stand
there're no jobs in anthropology --
she didn't like mosquitoes --
she's going in for teaching --
you think it's a question of money
you have to get experience

palm tree silhouette morning sky --
how busy it is
an oak tree in the middle of a grassy field
you have to fight for a degree
green rolling hills
clumps of trees
morning sky silver
it's beautiful
what's that famous school back east?

street lights fluorescent yellow
a chemically bright yellow
stark red lights off the highway
it shows you it's a complex issue
memories of motion:
train rides : lights in the night
lights in the middle of night
lights along the night
light within the night
we pass an orange van
rich color saturation of color
she knew how to ask the right questions
without antagonizing anyone
she got a job

eye to eye with the sky
morning light -- travelling
North
sunlight years away
now she's looking for something else
looking
East
trying to make a name for herself
she's very independent
even though she doesn't share anything with me.

sky changing gray
sky changing clear --
light blue
not in my head blue

the world is an enormous complex

that's pretty neat
wow
she rents out property
she won't rent to me
I was kept out

East it's pink East it's gray
it's a movmement weekend
it's private

I forget
I have forgotten
I forgot
if I be forgotten

Exit Signs
Highway Signs
Blue Signs

he's so alive but
how do you keep
it alive for

the Audience

: Subject: a tough subject
:to do an artistic film:
of a "tough subject" :
very hard

I like film
I like making them --
what's a
tough subject

we can imagine we
hear the
dead can dance
sky light gray

6:09 am
it's still Saturday
the whistle blower
risked everything

the questioner didn't ask
the right questions

I think we need to see other people.

Impressions of travelling North:
we're moving into the
fog the Big Dark --
Rain Clouds - the
W. Sierra Avenue
Rohnert Park exit
Richard Misrach photo of gray sky
North Gray
gray rain slick
heavy rain
thick dense
strong rain
pelting windshield

Santa Rosa Blvd
the green sign

Todd Road

Rain: heavy at times
Rain: it's up for grabs
Rain: I like developing things
Rain: I don't crowd people
Rain: read an autobiography of Gloria Swanson
Rain: she was an incredible woman

6:14 am
pronouns
she got 5 scientists out of
Germany to invent things we
needed

she just did it through her connections

Los Robles Lodge

Rain: still falls.
brightly

6:18 am
he just took the moment and made
an opportunity out of it

6:19 am
I can help in certain ways

Fulton Drive going right
then life
back road that ambience

going into the woods
the forest feel the vinyards
then to the left the forest ahead

meanings: I am who I am
I am becoming what I wish to become

being &/or becoming
these are words that can matter
may matter volitional matter
will matter

6:25 am
overarching trees
brief tunnel of trees

blue sky break
conversational breaks in the weather

vegetation; thickness alongside the road
dense green; John Constable Romantic Green
more densely green; playing chess
with the sky green; a sense of seclusion
green so you can see what's happening green;
there are no jobs so you have to
create work for people.

6:30 am
there's probably a structure
we're not aware of

can you tell
we've made good time?

the river's high
high up the banks
high water flowing thick gray
some white water gray flowing
high up the sides of the banks


they don't throw people out
they may have to give it up
they develop the people
they have given him challenges
they're not trying to use you up
they bet on him
they went back there
they visited them
they took him around
they're way faster than we are

6:36 am

they're inclusive
they can't walk away from their history
they're trying to be socially conscious
they there,
there they . . .
their
the . . . the . . .
Rusian River ahead
river sacred songs
Armstrong River Road
the rhythm of the song kept them going
(Copper Woman)

6:48 am
arrival - fog - rain drips from leaves
from pine needles
what did they do?
fish

S-Curves travel river curves black birds swoop
fog - light choir
of frogs

Cabin 6



Fulcanelli
the mystery of cathedrals
sound installation
sound insulation
below 125 hz - rid
knocking out frequency
piano in room acoustically silent
octaves; Sony headphones

good judgement comes from experience
experience comes from bad judgement
m twain

your name here:
Dionysius the Areopagite
The Celestial Hierarchy
That every divine illumination, while going forth with love in various ways to the objects of its forethought, remains one. Nor is this all: it also unifies the things illuminated.

Project: Lighthouse Moments
spells and wonders of the Castle of Dampierre

Discovery 15th Century
Disciples of Hermes
Veiled Essence Higher
Machicholated conical
Loggia
Romanesque 1545 - 46
history verbal picture
paint history
historical weight
stones; red wash
dried blood and gold
insignia
secret symbolic science
building mix gossip with secrets
excellent memory
per. per seVere
pers. persevere
H.
Castle - alchemically
SE.COGNSTRE.ESTRE.ET.NON.PARESTRE

tO kNOW oNESELF, tO bE & tO nOT sHOW OFF.
P. 292

Study:
DAT JVSTVS FRENA SVPERBIS

The Just Dampens the Proud One

how

my "L" sign/insignia/emblem
with crown: to mean projection : : gold
that is alchemically produced gold

alchemical myth
adam & eve

not unknown in the ancient world:
much in common with Brancusi's Endless Column and
Table of Silence

Have you ever thought about the invevitable consequences
which are to result from unlimited progress?

Have you ever thought about the invevitable consequences
which are to result from limited progress?

Have you ever thought about the invevitable consequences
which are to result from no progress?

PROPRIIS.PEREO.PENNIS

Image: Medieval
Image: Alchemy
Image: Castle XXV

Michael Maier: Alchemical Quadrature
17th Century hermeticist & Physician
determine relationships
Atalanta Fugiens: The Flying Atalanta
or
Philosophical Emblems
of the
Secrets of Nature
(determined relationships)

Alain Danielou: Music & The Power of Sound
Is there --
musical --
the music

Interest:
Medieval. Alchemy.
Christian. Stone.
Masons. Objects.
Traverse. Visit.
Sounds. Gold.
Copper. Anthracite.
Ivory. Cymatics.

Yard Stick segments
rearrange the segments
you still measure a yard

If the cathedrals
were built
according to
we'll say
higher knowledge
they'd have to (be
built) express
certain definite
numerical relationships.
Those relationships
(the structure) are to
be found in
the Just Octave.
(perhaps)
laws/rules
sound & form = Cymatics

sound medieval objects
mystery tableaus
feels like an interval
lunch
do/es

AFTERNOON

frogs ventriloquist
rain puddles pine tree
drip light / rain

idea of Celestial Hierarchies
Medieval sculptures
Saint Denis
panel 8
Medieval Poetry
look into
in building
decorative non-decorative
sculpture
signs of fire
sings of water
sings of earth
signs of air
(triangles of . . )

from 400 a.d. to 15th century
Goodbye to All That . .
A History of Pagan Europe: Prudence Jones
Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror
Robert Graves: The White Goddess
Henry Adams: MONT SAINT MICHEL AND CHARTRES
abracadabra G = 7th
Architecture used to convey ideas: secular
sacred
Cloud of Unknowing;
Evelyn Underhill; Gargoyles; worth looking into

light coming out of
Saint Denis
Abbot Suger
images salvation
rejuvenate
1st ideas : Dionysis Areopagite
worth looking
into

Ron Fricke : Chronos
Steve has images of Celestial Harmony
Image/Likeness
go simple
Shamans, mystics, doctors

5:11 pm
close day
sun setting
evening ideas
group intelligence
to learn
how to coax something forward
inner/outer/question

5:23 pm
relationships to forest sunshine
learning to find a language
shakespeare actors prisoners
Mistletoe grows in clumps
trees without leaves mistletoe grows



Mistletoe is a misunderstood plant. Although most people think of it as a parasite, it is only partially parasitic, or a “semiparasite”. Note that the stems and leaves of the mistletoe plant are green, thus it does produce some of its own chlorophyll. Therefore it makes some of its own food. It becomes more parasitic, however, whenever there is a drought--then the mistletoe will take water away from its host at the host’s expense. Mistletoe dies if its host dies

she mentions Spanish Moss in the trees of Oregon

stopping: Sebastopol
Whole Foods : :
youth, beauty, money, hippie leftover
children, pretty children in flowing clothes
look drugged on some sort of newfangled something
or other I can't tell but guess: happy hippie
money hugs grass or irish stew warm food and
scones (or mistletoe)

why does the sight of big mistletoe
balls intrigue me: faux nests
she looks
she talks
the evening
now long lines of light
coming and going

the day
like
Fred Astaire
practicing
his dance

the realization:
we're all having trouble
organizing our things
our lives
our treasured
treasures
our objects
our inevitable

disappearance
into
rain
into
light
into
earth
into
air

-- Jeff Wietor

The Amoral Descent Into Today Begins with Homer

Prize beauty --
Paris chose this last
for his gift:

an urgent need to
study himself
as the compassionate other

Paris himself:
so often
represented
sent
wanted
misunderstood
urged
appeased
received
inquired of
missed

pronounced

probably
Paris wanted
to spare
to send
to mistake
to feel

probably
Paris wanted
to taste
to sacrifice
to announce sexual appetite

probably
Paris wanted
the great artist
to sing of
his arms
his hands
his thighs

probably
Paris wanted
to detect
to approach
to form
to feel the point
of danger
to have
a human
lover

as of
bleating ewes
that hear the
cries
of their
lambs

preferring
within
to without
to doubt
ensues

-- Jeff Wietor

Casting Call

Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,every minute?

Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

Emily: I'm ready to go back.

-- Thornton Wilder

Desk Notes: March 20 - 24

Speaking in Tongues/Vibrations; Call Cathryn E, call John M; copy To Live Within; Rain; spring arrives; rain in the morning, heavy at times, rain; dripple drips bring bobby knipple grade school recollections -- who's body of work is slowly beginning to emerge, today?; question the times; question "not a discussion" "not a dialogue" not a what not a that not a this but what happens happens happening now not not examples; example of Harold Budd: the piece with a lot of piano; a porcupine society; now silence or unquiet; tell it to the Unborn.

Speaking in Tongues; possible email from David Wednesday mayeremail@overtheresomewhere.com coffee Komodo Starbucks, now you're all caught up; "A Vente?" "Yo, just gimmee a big cuppa Jo!!", no rain sunlight Faithless Pandora; it's happening now not then nor then either but not now either but not now either; go to Asphodel for those tickets; Hecq, Bad Karma, Into the Unseen

Gardner McKay Adventures in Paradise; we're going to go with him; call me at 11:14 today; playing on the porch the TV on Adventures in Paradise - is he really running through a jungle paradise nude or is he just naked running through leaves? hula sunshine warm outside today gather ye sunshine in your ukelele or stay tuned to hula hot boy blend bands; String stories, threads: stay tuned to collaborations nickel plated shine over on the window walled glass lined topsy turvey twang -- they there. Call me: noonish. The simple boy produced a dramatic strumming chord on the ukelele; all . . . hula-hula boy ukeleles . . . Dorothy Sayers said the campers brought gramophones overwhelmed with WOW concertinas or ukeleles; I'll come in barefoot, ukelele, these are cold hard times; I'll come in with a clean face and he can just start; logic and lust; Born Slippy; Moby; Ecstatic Claims; Hi Scores, Boards of Canada; Elliott; False Cathedrals, electric cello, ecstatic musical times; a clarinet; you see something new a Yale boy thrills and cries; melodious cadence of the hula song; superstitious rambling thoughts; a ukelele; Wizards of the Ukelele; Under Control: the Strokes; Shall we note Brad; Bell; noticing Brad; the object of 1976: just say Clipper Street, 472. sounds like the title of a story; Clipper Street anecdotes; ukelele; moments of reprove; repeat; Shoob,E: Bola; biting into him with a lathered hand; combining over him my needs his eyes his hair your you glowing; Vicious Traditions; The Veils -- Runaway; The Runaway Found; Find your way out of this one; Brad Bell -- Beautiful elusive nobody beauty; the phones for you; find your way out of this one; occupied with beauty; Travis; stick it in the back, put it over there, here take this; drought; weather; don't allow for his fatigued nasty TV habits; hardwood floors in the middle of the night; the invitation to watch him roam naked nakedly through the apartment in the moonlight lit hardwood floors walking in his sleep wide-awake looking for his dream in his dreams coming with his dreams searching for his backpack, his cigarettes his "I don't want to go on dreaming" dreams his Beautiful Occupation of his next starring roll; his roaming through life in search of hunger; Two Conversations -- Appleseed Cast -- I'll always love you, I’ll always be your friend; I hold this letter B; Sitting here just watching Squirrels; B. Fleischmann; The Humbucking Coil; didn’t I treat you right? Didn’t I do my best didn’t I give you everything; Golden Brass Summit; Brass Bands of Serbia; God Complex; why you wanna leave me baby? Capitain Troy I love you! be my fire place I got the wood; wildnight.

Lyrics Born; Hieroglyphics; Los Amigos Invisibles
That's what you get when you fall in love
I'll never fall in love
again

Gone Girl; cello, oboe, guitar, languidly yet limping limpidly the long Friday, violin, viola, even oboes have their memories don't they? do they; if you had the ability to compete in the Olympics, what event would you want to be in? you spoke to me in a way; it feels so cold to be alive; so robbed of forgetfulness;

Zodiacal Lights are like a dagger into the darkness over Hawaii: where is the pink dress where is the punk shirt where is the possiblity of knowing him? you can't possibly know him he's been dead since 1985; hardly seems a year since twenty years passed; new music and hardwood floors; we listened to the radio; KSAN. KSAN when it was live djs and fresh rock open live and driven everyday all day all night too;

she's wearing an eclectic blend of textures -- boistrous jovial "we all needed that" dressed alike, down to the shoes, good time had by one and all by one and all; Circus Contraption.com you can find out all about them. how 'bout some chances to see a whole lot of movies? King Kong is at the Red Vic; is that the one about gay marriage? no, I think you're thinking of Confederate States of America.

The Humbucking Coil is a schizophrenic apparatus. A pick-up that eliminates the guitar's usual interferences, its white noise, just by means of doubling them. Two electromagnetic coils turn each other mute. What solely remains is the pure sound of the vibrating string. And that what is done with this single sound.

Bernhard Fleischmann named his latest album after the roughly 50-year-old Humbucking Coil. As old as modern pop music: the pick-up, not the artist. And Bernhard Fleischmann has taken an electronically amplified guitar. This happened for a first, a curious time. The Humbucking Coil has become an open, breathing album. Rather soundbox than hard disk.

Being part of a process that has become visible in different moments on his previous album Welcome Tourist already. In between, and last year, there was the project duo 505, developed together with Herbert Weixelbauer. There the groovebox (Roland 505), here the amplified guitar (Humbucking Coil), there the micro levels of clicks and cuts, here the warmth of an old valve driven microphone. Vibraphone, piano, guitar, they all come together in a still electronic context. The album's cover, this graphic strictness on an ivory fond; a visual quotation of jazz that gets on very well with the music inside.

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

-- Raymond Carver

"Born Slippy" - Lyrics

Drive boy dog boy dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy she was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy and tears boy
And all in your innerspace boy you had
Hands girl boy and steel boy you had
Chemicals boy I’ve grown so close to you
Boy and you just groan boy she said
Comeover comeover she smiled at you boy.

Let your feelings slip boy but never your mask boy
Random blonde bio high density rhythm blonde boy
Blonde country blonde high density
You are my drug boy you’re real boy speak to me
And boy dog dirty numb cracking boy
You get wet boy big big time boy
Acid bear boy babes and babes and babes and
Babes and babes and remembering nothing boy.
You like my tin horn boy and get wet like an angel.
Derail.

You got a velvet mouth you’re so succulent and beautiful
Shimmering and dirty wonderful and hot times
On your telephone line and God and everything
On your telephone and in walk an angel.
And look at me your mom squatting pissed in
A tube hole at Tottenham Court
Road I just come out of the ship
Talking to the most blonde I ever met.
Shouting
Lager lager lager lager shouting
Lager lager lager lager shouting
Lager lager lager shouting
Mega mega white thing mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing mega mega shouting
Lager lager lager lager mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
So many things to see and do in the tube hole
True blonde going back to Romford
Mega mega mega going back to Romford
Hi mom are you having fun and now are you on
Your way to a new tension headache

-- Underworld

Entertaining Mr. Sloane

Entertaining Mr. Sloane - Joe Orton

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

-- Jack Gilbert

Notes of a Weekend: February 26, 2006

I have never received a letter from anyone living in Tanzania.
There's a man on TV reading a letter from someone living in Tanzania.
The letter from someone in Tanzania is a little out of sync.
The letter, a little out of sync, sounds distinguished.

The tone of the letter from someone in Tanzania being read by a man on TV sounds like a doctor wearing dirty boots or a witch painted with lipstick.

All my life you've been America's favorite hamburger
and now you want to be my dad?!

INTERABANG
was the name of a bookstore in Milwaukee.

Damon Wayans is extremely hot! five nights a week.

Today for a while longer for me is but probably by the time you read this was February 26, 2006: event-wise, mostly it rained and I took five or six cat naps.

All the men in the Ulti-meat commercial look like gay woodsmen: big overexposed boy-men who more likely than not have sold their souls to the devil to prevent aging in the wrong spots.

I don't want him awake. He'll wake up fifty years in the future. I am experiencing certain recent memories while I am watching the man on TV reading the letter from a man in Tanzania.

February 24th was a few days ago and like a rose petal has recently floated down the river (of time)-- but you knew that, like Of Time and The River --

Once upon a time February 24th was a warm day. It's a sentence but it's also itis: Today. it surrounded by four lines is itisit or ItsIt a cookie with ice cream.
and it had to be you. or Baby It's You

most of the Tractatus is a tough cookie or
tough nut or a little
girl with a button nose that kicks butt
confident & extraordinary
not limited to propositions of natural science
or even saying what can be said --
but does say something metaphysical

heavy storms threatened
the Fat Tuesday events

Following a thought
going after a thought
so soon
too soon
so soon before I'm
too soon

mystery writers follow things: Pica or Elite

When we ordinarily follow : with closed eyes
theater, taboo, she it is, it is he, he am I.

I thought of Anthony this weekend and spent a lot of time
tracking Bakelite pencil sharpeners on eBay -- Yow! expensive.



She
over there sleeps
mattress mate
drums
sun light
sunlight window
opening

The Way: a series of colorful designs with Caran d/Ache wax crayons: two shades of gray, olive green touch of black and lots of pencil work: Mechanical Pencil
Sanford SPIKE 1.1mm lead. rare.

beyond immediate
deeper motivation
Wittgenstein, no charge, hey baby what's shaken
holds theories that
makes subject or experience
primary
are all
nonsense

can you imagine
yourself
falling asleep and
waking up
fifty years in the future?

painful isn't it.
or exciting.

I spent the weekend misfiring attempts to say something
where nothing can be said

I dreamed of making love with Frank Ramsey, and I emphasized.

I can feel the pain, the innocence; this could be a trap
you've got to get out of here. that makes me sane.
you've got to stop fighting it. you've got to accept that.

+

you ask me why nitrogen nodules cling to roots
and say why love, love
you would

most of the propositions
like coffee shops serve scones
and 7th Heaven starts at Eight
and Pumpkin, I'd rather not carry the extra weight
and look closely at your hand to see the future
and nobody teaches the future like we do
and extend the moment into the night at Cache Creek
and fill your pockets with next Sunday
and for god's sake accept the fact New Orleans is a Dead City
and actors don't talk with their face but speak through their mouths
and avoid answering the phone when it rings
and we experience our sensation but speak of objects
and the world does not alter
but comes to an end
culminate in a simple state:

I've been there but like
being unable to remember when I
(precisely)
played my last game of Tic Tac Toe
only know now:

Secondary events:
1983
phones still rang
we ate popcorn at Thrillers
such & stuff & this & that
& skin and shoes
Norwegian loafers

path
gate
open
run
run
run



I plan a series of
grids with simple statements of dots and
X forms and pencil etches

make a few test drawings and work up to
a world that does
not alter
but comes
to an end --

a series of Xs and Os
while the phone rings

I also spend much of the weekend
thinking about picturing
or at best envisioning
the proper F in February
the more stylized F like a cactus
or finding rhymes that sound
natural and exciting for knucklehead

it's language itself that casts doubt

the world we live in is the world
of sense-data
but the world we
talk about is the
world of
physical objects

I wish I didn't know
about time,
can't be said.



PROPOSITIONS:
1. statements about direct observation
2. an ensemble cast
3. join some newcomers.
4. learn to forgive but not enough to trust others
5. whenever you come around family you can find love
6. people will believe anything if it sounds right even if it's wrong.
7. you've got to remember death is an event we don't live through

mutemath
is a perfect name
for a rock and roll band
because it's graphically pure

observation propositions to
two-dimensional sections through a hypothetical
three-dimensional body
is a certain way to express emotional tension

Build then Release:
draw water, boil water pour water over tea leaves

what a beautiful building that is on TV
alive with the flavor of nature

ANZU
Tansu
shake

bamboo leaf.
cherry blossoms in sake
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
for goodness sake

In 1920 the sky had a new story to tell
a clear statement is the best question.
Chess: going quietly mad
levels of

They're all over 2 meters
with Flat Stomachs
rowers from a British University.

a note of his construal

nonsense: to believe in anything not given in experience.

The Smartones
semitone psychopaths
Benny & the Jets
how big a mug I am
exactly
make sense.
must.
primary
phenomenal world of experience
Secondary: physical world of material objects

hustle or electric slide
penny loafers or bell bottoms

articulate the structure of the primary world:
articulate the structure of Experience
articulate the structure of
Primary World
articulate the structure of experience
Structure of Experience
what a joy
what happened
what a joy: the attempted: what happened
attempt

I was lost I was found
I was a Japanese floral arrangement
Structure: Invisible

set out to articulate the
structure of the Primary World (Experience)

a paradoxical place
where our ordinary concepts
of Objects
Causality
Self & Temporality
no longer apply

make your expectation of what happens
later
with the structural model: Now

make your expectations of what happens
with structural model of now
Now.

the Structure of Now. what is invisibly holding
events together

Immediate Experience & physical propositions we produce
e.g. marks on a page, vibrations in the air

"I don't know my way about."

our language has an underlying
structure; philosophy elucidates that structure

there's no debating truth
as a matter of fact.


Part Two


I never met
I feel I just
Feel complete
feel completely
flat

red tape
reduce
rein
rain

don't use
the word:
always

arrangements

what you hear of
what you know of

Bakelite Scotty Dog
Pencil Sharpener
hypnotic plastic

Swiss Hermes Streaming Video
Online new AT&T delivered
Hi How ya doin
Called down to the #5
I've got to take this other call
Vintage Green Scotty Dog Figural
Pencil Sharpener -- Bakelite
Red Yellow Orange Butterscotch
Learn the Secret of Making Millions
Stop Dreaming Start Doing Call Now
Double Your Refund or a Million Other Prizes
Emphasize Prices Emphasize Prizes Emphasize Emphasize
What's a matter you seem a little down
Well maybe not down -- reflective



Two months ago: Christmas day
Sanford 1.1mm lead SPIKE drawings on white paper

What a Face!
Ace hat

Why did you ----
I couldn't wake you ----
Meet the Deedles ---
Paul Walker's new movies
you can't keep facing your demons
you have to run away eventually

Pierre Cardin mechanical pencil.
Huge hugs
I got this drip

Tom Welling what is
ordinary I'd never imagine him there
of all people
I knew you'd understand
If I were anyone else's son
there's more to opera than singing
I don't want you making a hasty instinctual move
good to have you back, son
it's not the place
it's the face

purgatory mansion

I made my way into one of the broken wings

you certainly have arranged the sky well

I was confused

you weren't yourself

I chose to let that part of my self out

I wanted this so much

I'm not -- this will never stay put

Conversational Incense

Chat cat I is a pronoun
ego's a subject

we fail to be struck by what once
seen is most striking and powerful

a couple of storms coming in from the artic
and from the sub-tropics

rain producer: hot and cold

Winter's Returning

New Orleans on the news.
someone tell them: the city's
broken, the flesh of the body of the city's been destroyed
it's covered in mold the structures demolished
full of worms and rotting dogs and cats
roses have been ripped up the humidity's chewing
what's left into decay; the city's food for Mother Nature

when that happens to a body it's called a dead body

the vegetation which took four hundred years to grow
is gone
tangled mold dissolution storms and clouds and wind coming in

hanging on to Indigo.

the music diaspora has begun

you can rebuild but you can't revive what was
what was is no longer there and
fabricating what was is called
not the same thing not the same at all not at all
the city has passed into a thousand thousand thousand dispersed memories
no one wants to say so they just say
we can have it back
they can't have it back in this life time
in the next life time or the next or the next.
the clouds and the wind are indigo.


Part Three



50 foot Calvin Klein
underwear ad

problem: sadistic, bitter, empty
hide your money in a teapot
what is it gonna take

what if they
Peter Gray
be fearless and call today
I lost him in the sun
our pride gets us talking
favorite bartenders I have known

there's no "J" in Hebrew
no J sound

who took the photo

do you know what the word
manifests

means

he's a sensation
a real reconciliation

I'll buy you a cashmere coat.

they want to do:

Variance
Emulations
Revellings

Longsuffering
temperance
affections &
Lusts

levels of bingo
levels of being

Ananda, don't eat the blanket, ok?
don't eat the bulls and bears
ok?
don't eat the dollar sign, ok?
don't eat Sunday Morning,
ok?

everybody's watching

she's been after me.
weeknights at 6
it's not a music video
lives that breed anger
ranked #2 in the country

making them forget the badness
with fatal consequences
ok. safe. overwhelming -- concentration

Matthew 8

they'll make me laugh. harmfully
they'll accept me. sometimes.
don't worry about things. so much.

I still have the rest of my life
ahead
of me

sheep in the midst of wolves

let the dead bury their dead

Beams & Motes
he felt a warm trickle

doeth

Where Did Tonight Begin

-- Jeff Wietor

February 25, 2006

it came and went.
what came and went
came and went.
what melancholy frown came and went
what came and went
went woe
went gone gloom
what came and went
went hard went
away what came went
what inklings went came
went glistening
came and went came
and went again
and went and
came again once
more once more again
quivering
and went wonderful
went and
came floating
easy
swept away
stolen with
mirthful coming and
going
went and
went
and came devoted
devoting an enormous
amount of
time and
energy to
considering
alternative
arrangements:

I have written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs, of which there is sometimes a fairly long chain about the same subject, while I sometimes make a sudden change, jumping from one topic to another. --It is my intention to bring all this together in a book whose form I picture differently at different times. But the essential thing is that the thoughts should proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks. My thoughts are crippled if I try to force them in any single direction against their natural inclination.

it came and went.
what came and went
came and went.
what melancholy frown came and went
what came and went
went woe
went gone gloom
what came and went
went hard went
away what came went
what inklings went came
went glistening
came and went came
and went again
and went and
came again once
more once more again
quivering
and went wonderful
went and
came floating
easy
swept away
stolen with
mirthful coming and
going
went and
went
and came devoted
devoting an enormous
amount of
time and
energy to
considering
alternative
arrangements:

whispering attendants


-- Jeff Wietor

Mardi Gras New Orleans

(CNN) -- Chiquita Simms lived in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home. She and her son evacuated and are now living in Atlanta, Georgia. She explains why she believes the devastated Louisiana seaport should hold off on Mardi Gras events this year. Below are excerpts from a telephone conversation:

I'm not opposed to Mardi Gras -- I love it, I'm born and bred in it. What I am opposed to is my city prioritizing Mardi Gras over its people.

Everywhere you look there are blue roofs -- people are still without proper roofs. The downtown areas are nice, or I should say, they're better. Canal Street is OK; Bourbon Street is functioning; St. Charles Avenue is OK, but that's about it.

When you go into the neighborhoods, there's no housing for people. There is inadequate food, and they couldn't get sponsors because they can't afford the cleanup and the police, and you know, if you can't afford the party, you certainly shouldn't have one.

The mayor's made a comment. ... [Ray Nagin has] said that we can take these two weeks of Mardi Gras as a break from Katrina and take our minds off of it. As an evacuee, I don't ever have the luxury of taking my mind off Katrina until I have my life a little bit more stable.

I think having Mardi Gras sends the false message that our city is OK and that our people are OK, and that's it really going to contribute to our economy. I don't believe that it will.

People are going to probably get mad at me for saying this, but we've been doing Mardi Gras for 149 years prior to this year. This is the 150th anniversary. Our city is the poorest; the education system is horrible; our roads are full of potholes; we have the worst blighted property going.

In 149 years, this event has not benefited the communities that need it, so why would this year benefit them? Is that money going to go to the 9th Ward? You have to tell me how much, you have to show me a plan -- you're going to have to show me how it's going to benefit them this year unlike the last 149 years.

I don't think the city is getting back on its feet. When I went through the city on January 24, I went to the 17th Street levee, the one that breached. There's no one working on it. But when I drive down St. Charles, everybody is making Mardi Gras plans.

You can't tell me that you're rebuilding the city. You don't see any mass efforts or gutting out of houses, and I'm talking about the neighborhoods where people can't afford to do it, like the 9th Ward, which has mass devastation.

Mardi Gras is the tradition that it is, but I think we can live without it this year, [especially] with as much devastation as we've been through and knowing that 70 percent of the city still cannot return to live. I think we can do without it. To hell with tradition, I think we need to deal with what's real.

Instead of holding Mardi Gras, they need to organize. First, get some cohesion with the leadership. They're not even getting along with each other. I think they need to sit down and say, "Hey, everybody messed up from the top to the bottom, now let's look at how we can heal."

They need to show Americans that they are moving forward as leaders instead of being party planners. We need to sit down and stop arguing our private agendas and deal with Washington and get the type of aid that we need.

If we can build a democracy or stay in Iraq until we rebuild that country, then we can rebuild New Orleans. We need to focus on the solution and getting it done, not having a party. It's taken the focus off of what's really wrong with New Orleans.

Wild Gardens Overlooked by Night Lights

Wild gardens overlooked by night lights. Parking
lot trucks overlooked by night lights. Buildings
with their escapes overlooked by lights


They urge me to seek here on the heights
amid the electrical lighting that self who exists,
who witnesses light and fears its expunging,


I take from my wall the landscape with its water
of blue color, its gentle expression of rose,
pink, the sunset reaches outward in strokes as the west wind
rises, the sun sinks and color flees into the delicate
skies it inherited,
I place there a scene from "The Tale of the Genji."


An episode where Genji recognizes his son.
Each turns his face away from so much emotion,
so that the picture is one of profiles floating
elsewhere from their permanence,
a line of green displaces these relatives,
black also intervenes at correct distances,
the shapes of the hair are black.


Black describes the feeling,
is recognized as remorse, sadness,


black is a headdress while lines slant swiftly,
the space is slanted vertically with its graduating
need for movement,

Thus the grip of realism has found
a picture chosen to cover the space
occupied by another picture
establishing a flexibility so we are not immobile
like a car that spends its night
outside a window, but mobile like a spirit.


I float over this dwelling, and when I choose
enter it. I have an ethnological interest
in this building, because I inhabit it
and upon me has been bestowed the decision of changing
an abstract picture of light into a ghost-like story
of a prince whose principality I now share,
into whose confidence I have wandered.


Screens were selected to prevent this intrusion
of exacting light and add a chiaroscuro,
so that Genji may turn his face from his son,
from recognition which here is painful,
and he allows himself to be positioned on a screen,
this prince as noble as ever,
songs from the haunted distance
presenting themselves in silks.


The light of fiction and light of surface
sink into vision whose illumination
exacts its shades,


The Genji when they arose
strolled outside reality
their screen dismantled,
upon that modern wondering space
flash lights from the wild gardens.

-- Barbara Guest

February 15, 2006

she stands in a cup of water and insists on
washing her atheistic trends with soapy
heretofore

unlike him
she is wearing a blue sarong
his green leaf
legging has yet
to be tied

henceforth three
powerhouse dancers
bruise jungle flowers
worn over their
stealthy incompetence

slick. he's big
on robust fantasy
as a gaggle of ex-possible
lovers and hanger-ons
cavort greenly

exhausted after
too much too soon
he sits on the floor
holding his head
moaning about it

together they drink from
the cup of human kindness
but prefer feeding
walnuts to pigeons
alighting

she's very big
looming over
his prone
position

nestled now
together spent
prone backs to the ground
wet drying

are those
magnolia
in bloom
sure enough and more
a ginkgo sprouting

much to be happy about
especially
in warm weather
with a slight
cool
breeze

-- Jeff Wietor

February 14, 2006

Valentine Pillow Fight: San Francisco