so, i finished reading lacuna, it was ok, but somehow left me unmoved, i just wonder what coetzee thought. i may look into it, but i'll probably just wait and see if anything pops up. now in my salt bath i started how high we go in the dark, and i don't want to say it's better, but it starts well. i don't feel like reviewing books, i just keep adding to my queue (and r.'s) and reading every day, maybe i'll get more done now tennis is over, it's different reading during matches, your eyes darting back and forth over sentences like fuzzy balls over the net. 

i dumped how high we go in the dark after one chap. on red milk now.

what do we need? 

abolition! 

when do we need it? 

now!

                                                                            —the obamachron, 1/31/22.

 so when you see the last three presidents in the same picture it's like aha! they all have the same shit-eating grin!

 here's lulu leaping over a snow angel. she was so exuberant, i just watched her go, my heart leaping with her, so what's a broken toenail when you consider such joy?

 lulu ran around the other side of the evergreens and i found her munching these brilliant red winterberries. on the quadrangle the plows blocked the snow tunnel charlie ran through yesterday because she's small. lulu probably wouldn't have fit. then i see brilliant red spots on the snow. lulu broke her toenail running bonkers through the trees. she was supposed to get her toenails trimmed last weekend. so that's why i heard john say it's neverending while i waited for the elevator and i cast my eyes down for i should have stayed to help mend lulu.  

post dat: john says no worries, we filed it down.

 i ask lulu to please sit by this snow being for a lovely winter picture and instead she eats its head off.

 john said it's neverending. it's true, it never ends.

 i could walk dogs maybe a couple more decades, though dog knows how i'll deteriorate in that time, and i still won't be an expert, and the world is getting ever more dangerous and complex. clearly we suffer while illusion governs us.

yay, opal & charlie! you did soul good!

yesterday when they met at the end of the alley they went mad, and i was a little tiny bit apprehensive about the proposed playdate today. today they met at the bottom of the stairs and went mad. then we detoured down harper avenue and back and i said do you think you can play with opal? and when we got to the fence they didn't bark, so i let charlie in and i was not apprehensive and they started playing! charlie barked and yipped some, but i do believe it was within the spirit of play. i can imagine back at the building they may still go mad, but this is a good beginning. praise dog! 

 penny digs the new arrangement, with the churlish green walls and the furniture in the middle of the room. 

 sometimes i feel caught between two opposing selves — the “false self” imposed by society and what i would call my “true self.” 

 i saw that the entity i had taken to be “me” was really a fabrication. my true nature, i realized, was much more real, both uglier and more beautiful than i could have imagined.

 thich naht hanh

The self, the place where we live, 

is a place of illusion. 

Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, 

to see and to respond to the real world 

in the light of a virtuous consciousness. 

This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence 

to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their 

explanations of goodness. 

“Good is a transcendent reality” means that virtue is the attempt 

to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world 

as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature 

that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.

Iris Murdock

The Sovereignty of Good

 j.c. oates wrote, twitter is a haven for people who'd studied too hard while in school & are compensating by deteriorating in semi-public in adulthood. i wrote, i didn't study too hard, yet it is true we are all living in a deteriorating world, and i find no haven here.

 don't put all your turtles in one pickup.

 I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind,

 oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to

 my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment

 everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has

 disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to

 thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this

 is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to

 nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

Iris Murdock

but don't worry about the park, the wetlands, the landgrab — the obamachron is only relatively real, a built illusion of hope and change — nothing lasts.

life is suffering because you want something else.  

no longer interested in the politics of experience. have to look at our insanity.

look at the shit. receive everything. you're nobody, there's nobody here. 

—sokuzan,

ego intelligence notes

 we are currently experiencing the 4th super-bubble of the 6th extinction.  every other bubble in history has popped.   

                                                                                        —the obamachron.

 the forces of empire have decided, to save the dying empire we must have endless war.

good grief!
the voice of charlie brown has died
at 65
by suicide.

 

 

 apocalyptic world-building. the obamachron.

 the park will now be a private club—the obamachron.

 w.w.k.d? what would kiki do?

 i didn't get a good picture of opal. i'm not used to night walks now. it was good anyway, though i was thinking how opal doesn't check in like charlie does. then at the end we met charlie and opal wanted to say hi, and we thought maybe it will be fine, and suddenly charlie got mean and it was a bad scene. maybe off leash she would be ok. i know a. is nervous, and charlie picks up on her vibration. after, i said to opal, why can't we just be gentle with each other? it would be so much better! 

charlie's early trauma with a pair of yappers on the elevator left a residual fear that she generalized to the whole dog community of the building, and that fear makes her defensive and aggressive. out in the world she's happy and good. 

 i'm exhausted and i have no reason to be. something feels wrong in my brain. i almost forgot i have to walk opal at 5. it should be simple but it's heartbreakingly complex. what's real? but this is just my brain spinning like the world in a snow globe.

dogs here and dogs past make a continuum. i had that feeling today, seeing things i'd already seen. i'm re-doing this with less words. many words are there for silence. maybe our cells are savoring memories we think we forgot.

please, don't let the book burners rule the schools!
 

he is still glad for you. 

 as bridges collapse, book burning begins again.

i was marveling at how the snow balls appear on charlie's legs and belly. she looks like a furry dog-bee laden with white pollen. she weighs more going home and then has to eat all the snowballs as they melt into a puddle in the kitchen. somebody told me you can use a whisk to whisk em away. 

 when a historical injustice passes without serious consequences for the perpetrators, the victims are unable to heal. they remain stuck in a situation where the weight of their trauma prevents them from moving on. perpetrators of the worst atrocities in history have the ability to move on very quickly from what they did. they might feel some superficial remorse, but it doesn't stop them from succeeding.

fiona snyckers                                                                                            lacuna

 whatever you said, sounds good to me!

 i suppose a lot of uncomfortable things that used to be normal are attributed to the omnichron now.

 shining city on a swamp. the obamachron, 1/28/22.

 i didn't have any symptoms after the omnichron shot, just the normal pandemic brain fog. eric said he was relieved to see me, he was thinking i might have croaked. i'm still here, glad to say, solid among the shadows, or shadow among the solids. 

what we're feeling is the breakdown of the empire. the destruction the government has inflicted on the planet turns out to be our own, as it was from the beginning. it didn't take that long. i used to think i wasn't made for these times, but i undeniably was.

 dogs are fun. the government is hell.

 dogs are good. government is evil.

did you think settler colonialism was in the dark past? in the city that works (for the rich) we call it urban removal. trees, critters, folks—find another place for your humble and precarious existence.

 lo, the seething ghosts of the obamachron, this massive engine of gentrification and displacement, bringing the rich in and driving people out. we saw it coming and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

idle know what these laboratory kids are trying to do breaking up trees to make some kind of useless structures, forts i guess, but so pathetic, we used to make real forts you could hide in and play illicit games. 

lulu ate something awful but let us not talk of that now.

 the dining room is painted churlish green and my head is woozy. lulu and opal had a nice romp. good thing about lulu, she loves everybody, though i wish she wouldn't jump on 'em. i want to crawl into bed now. it's only 4 o'clock. still gotta do the sky watcher obamachron picture of the day and move some furniture. 

ok, i'm boosted. it was a smooth experience at the neighborhood club, and an easy walk home, feeling elevated until after lulu. now i'm zonked. i tossed and turned in anxious tides last night. there's less of an undertow now though. it comes and goes in waves with a line between. 

 easy money. the obamachron, 1/26-7/22.