look at this. it doesn't go underwater but this ancient flip phone is purty good in the sky.

once again, it's monkey.

spiritual, not blurry. the soul of the monkey is elusive to film, dissolving into infinite elementary particles that hover and dance in the ineffable form of monkey looking back at you. i'm a monkey too.

i found this picture of mister in my phone. now his hair is long and his necklace is in the lake and the dude who made this structure continued on his manic american walkabout.

maybe i can do some dumbphone pix while i figure out a new camera. i can send them to my puter. atmospheric, right, like this low-res mexican grade b horror movie i'm watching. never mind that now, i gots to walk like monkey.

                capitalism atomizes society into individuals who accept the status quo. 

there's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't even take part. you can't even passively take part. and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, and upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. and you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all.

mario savio

of course naturally it figures there are some absolutely gogeous cumulus clouds hangy around just outside the 15th floor window teasingly, and me with nothing but my tired eyes and floaters.

so, i asked harry, i'm scared to buy another waterproof anything, should i cheap out again or go for the premium and pray. i saw this girl from a distance and though by golly she's butt naked on the bottom, and i had to look very closely to note an ever so thin, almost diaphanous string which really did fool me and allow for a large freedom of imagination. she was almost more than nude, but having that nearly non-existent discretionary garment allowed me to gaze freely.
see little giant aluminuman in the distance. 

i think my underwater camera has experienced death by drowning and it is unlikely as we may imagine in human terms that the little buddy is transitioning. i removed the screws on the back in order to have a look inside and bring in some light and lilac air, but apparently the screws are just cosmetic, though they are actually screws and may be guilty of looseness and leakage. it sits on the windowsill in the light it cannot see. 
on the one hand i met some hideous haters in the park, and i really have gotten a flow going there, like i'm known, and generally liked, so it gets in my gut when assholes come, though i s'pose it's their park too and i will henceforward steer mister well around them. on the other hand i walked monkey, funky monkey, who's so cute he could charm the pants off anyone but the most hateful beast and even though he's stubborn only inspires my own adoration. he kept flattening out in the shade when he got too hot or i went the wrong way, and trying to go in places for air conditioning, and he tooke me to the cleaners for treats. and because i was walking the monkey at that particular moment i passed the free book box and a gent came up with a good clean copy of the 2nd edition150th anniversary edition of moby dick because the 3rd just came out and i was already thinking of moby dick after reading philip hoare's the whale and so on the one hand and even the other really it was a goodly balanced day and i still have one more funky monkey walk though i am under no illusions about my camera being dead.

this may be the last one. it revived for a minute then fogged up and died again. well it lasted a long time, a long time in present day terms, most stuff dies sooner. that said i take the opportunity to say, because it did start failing early on, if it says waterproof, shock-proof, or democracy building, let the buyer beware. but hey, it was dirt cheap, and soon it will be landfill. 
now i got to say it was a splendid day and even with the spike in heat i goosed mister to the water and we did swim. i also got to say on the way back, feeling good, mister went up to a pale cranky dud on a park bench and he said he should be on a leash and i said no he should not, he's not bothering you, he's just being friendly, and then the other, also a hard dark cranky dud, chimed in hatedly, both of them angry now, spitting, he's not a person, and i say you're ain't a person, you're a hateful beast. and the dark one comes at me threatening to beat me to a pulp and i just yell him off with a volley of fuck off stupid fucker motherfuckers and as always i feel like the devil made me do it and righteous to boot and i see a friend with a husky kind of hesitating and i wave and she waves and i go on to my people on the corner bench and tell them of my altercation and they said who and where and we'll all kick their asses so i felt further vindicated. this ain't no haters park.

   some things      cannot            exist        in                                                                               time.
                                                  but  they do                                      for                                                                 some.

last night the wind smelled lilac. this morning we had our first real swim and it was good. i wondered if mister would get in and swim with me, and he did just like last season. when the air is sweet and the water is calm and clear and we are floating i can imagine we aren't in a vast criminal state. we are in a paradise that may yet survive.
though my camera may not. some lake got inside and now it flashes strange signal lights. it's ok. it's ok. it's ok. just a little longer love.

 i don't know how much he sees

or what.
by the bridge he did not seem to see me, but in the water he followed me.
i have to hold his attention like the water holds us.

 things and states are views taken by your mind, pictures of the action that is making itself.

in vital activity we see, then, that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted movement, a reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself.



henri bergson,

creative evolution.

the menagerie is individual. 

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' down to freedom land

Ain't gonna let segregation turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let segregation turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let no Jim Crow turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let no Jim Crow turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let racism turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let racism turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let no hatred turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let no hatred turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let injustice turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let injustice turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let no jail cell turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let no jail cell turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
Turn me around, turn me around
Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land

i was thinking about the relation of disgust and conscience. there's a threshold in most of us, maybe not in the sociopathic politicians and corporate thugs, and often now the threshold is submerged in cares or thwarted by propaganda, but in most regular folks, it's still in there, and i think when they see animals enduring torture in laboratories, or in free range cages, they get disgusted, just as anyone of conscience would, whether by prisoners in our torture camps, or in lab animals, or the pretense of ethically raised animals in hellish darkness and abuse and destined to be eaten. disgust raises and awakens conscience. that is why they hide the reality behind the lie. and the sad thing is even when we see the truth we quickly turn away. we got used to being lied to. we come to expect it, and anyway, we don't know what to do with truth, in a society based on corruption and manufactured reality, where we keep trying to keep afloat our sinking hearts and to hold at bay the thought that it will never stop. 
so i, little i, will feel the disgust about this alien place that i grew up stunted in, where corporations rule without conscience, where people of conscience are relentlessly lied to, where suffering and death are matters of profit, and there is no conscience in profit, nor love or wisdom, i have to let my disgust expand in conscience, in the knowledge that the only true profit is conscience, and conscience is love. constrained by the politics of hate, the abuse of innocence, and the slaughter of life, i will do my best to not despair and to commit myself to radical love.

i know, ha, it sounds like a bloody manifesto. it's really just wishful thinking.

we still have to be tender, though we're disgusted, downhearted and abraded by the culture in which we are captive, because someone needs our tenderness.

i was watching animals in films last night responding to people in pain, acting and real. the animals responded to both with the same love and concern. everything is real to them.

direct action everywhere.

i have to run to get mister. i just want to ask you to look at democracy now today and see what whole foods and amazon are selling as cage free, ethical and responsible animal product, the blatant crime abusing animals and consumers alike. also glen greenwald talks about hideously cruel experimentation on dogs. the corporate nightmare continues.

the thing is you need to reinvent yourself for the world that's coming.

                                                                                            -amy colbert *

* i add that this is from the pearl, a beautiful film about the way we are perceived, the way we are controlled, and the way we really feel.

you have to try to be tender to yourself and then to others. you can start by being tender with a dog and directly the dog will be tender with you. you can go from there to another person. don't be discouraged if tenderness is not returned. it is hard for people in a culture of brute power and deadly fantasy to be tender and real. it is a radical thing.

if you don't expect nothing you don't get much neither.

this morning i fill a black bag with trash from the swamp (which mary noted is maybe more like a marsh) and we see the white truck with the park girls and i say i got some trash i picked up and our friend says you don't have to pick up, we're here, and i say well it's more than you can do, right? the trash chumps keep a trashing. i just like to keep the lil' swamp clean, gnome sane (i hope she doesn't think it a criticism or me trying to do their job.) i say, i think it's all of our job, our jobs?, our jobs, ours job? anyway, as i say, i just feel better doing it. and she starts to tell me about kelly, and i gulp, remember kelly? the sweet one who let mister sit up on her tractor? the girl who had stage four breast cancer? well i'll be dogged, she beat it! she's downtown, doing light duty, and looking great. she wants to get back on her tractor. yay, kelly!

since i discovered his rash and gave him a special bath i've been really hands on with mister. i rub him all over and look in his ears and his groin and butt. i carry the brush and brush him and he makes that grimace like monkeys do that looks a little scary but isn't, though it may be a warning to go gently. he loves the attention and he stops periodically and looks for more. when you give your care and attention and love, like with anything alive i suppose, the dog emits a light, and gives back more, and a glow is generated that envelops you both.

 it's the nature of the dog to defy arbitrary rule not in the dog's interest

and it is natural for the dog to test his interest, to define what it is, and defend it from capricious rule. a dog knows a dog depends on people and must go along to get along, yet a dog knows that authority is not wisdom, nor is control love. a dog responds best to wise love.

i just got this book of john ashbery's poems alongside his collages. i remember loving early ashbery poems long before i ever thought of collage, and i never saw his collage, i didn't know he made collage, but the poems were collages, and they did seem like they were talking with someone, of course they were talking with me, but they also seemed like overheard dialogues that reading you both put yourself into them like an alternate place and listen for suggestions of the other side of the conversation, another room in the same house, another more obscure room inside the same room. a shared room that feels familiar and strange. and i think they inspired me to make things from other things, in a kind of suspended or suggested conversation.

so, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. the evolution of living species within this world represents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality. but let us not carry too far this comparison. it gives us but a feeble and even deceptive image of reality, for the crack, the jet of steam, the forming of the drops. are determined necessarily, whereas the creation of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world participates in this liberty.

                                                                                                                                    henri bergson

think of the totality of all being, and what a mite of it is yours; think of all time,
and the brief fleeting instant of it that is allotted to yourself; think of destiny,
and how puny a part of it you are.

                                                                                                                        marcus aurelius

the wonder of you

 

when no one else can understand me 

when everything i do is wrong 

you give me hope and consolation
you give me strength to carry on
and you're always there to lend a hand
in everything i do
that's the wonder
the wonder of you
and when you smile the world is brighter
you touch my hand and I'm a king
your kiss to me is worth a fortune
your love for me is everything
i'll guess i'll never know the reason why
you love me like you do
that's the wonder
the wonder of you