Today I will...I did

Not necessarily in this order...

1. Make myself a cup or two of cappucino (I have my own grinder so the results are often reasonably good). Yes, did it

2. Go to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park to check out the Jeff Koons exhibit. So far, I don't get Koons. Seems like a warmed-over combination of Warhol and Rauschenberg to me. But it's my own little thing where I'll try to expose myself to something just to keep myself on my toes.
Did this too. Still don't know what to make of Jeff Koons' work. He's got blow-up floaty toys all over his art (though the blowup floaty toys are actually made of painted Aluminum). There are large paintings, too, sometimes with pictures of a giant Popeye the Sailor Man, sometimes with naked women. I've very tempted to say that there's a lot of flash but not very much going on under the hood, though pretending there is.

3. Swing by my favorite place in London, Speaker's Corner.
Well this kinda sucked today. Real slim pickins. One Jewish Christian Evangelist, one Muslim evangelist, and (later) one Irish evangelist. None of them seemed to have a hell of a lot of real spiritual authority.

4. Grab some lunch. I may do this in one of the nice little restaurants inside the big Oxford Street Selfridges, or I may hike over to Marylebone.Did it. Had French steak, fries, and a salad at a great little place in Marylebone that ONLY searves steak, fries, and salad, all for £19.95. You have few choices to make and if you try something fancy (like "medium rare"...medium is a choice, rare is a choice, but medium-rare is not), the waitresses will let you know immediately. But the food is really good, and plentiful, and you can have as many fries as you can stuff yourself with.

5. Grab a CD or two on Oxford Street. I've been looking for Bruce Cockburn's new solo live CD, but it has yet to show up on London shores. Hooray! Finally got a couple of CD's from Tinarewen, who'll be playing at the Roundhouse in Camden later this week. Here's the song that's already kicking my ass...crank it up and let it wash over you:



6. Accumulate some groceries and associated provisions in Marylebone, including at Le Fromagerie, an impossibly snooty but really excellent cheese and gormet shop. Me, I never really get the idea of being snooty about food. I do have to say that the New Yorker act seems to stop them in their tracks: I know what I like and in NYC I've had access to really great and even obscure stuff. So I don't neatly fall into any category or ring of "coinnesoir" (I don't even know how to spell connesoir!). Did it. Good stuff, but very pricey.

7. Hike back up through Regent's park to home base here in St John's Wood. Didn't do it! I figured the bottles of beer and wine would rip my arms off before I made it all the way back to St John's Wood, so I took a cab.

8. Hope on the bike and get a couple of hours of riding in.
Did it, though my legs were made of poo and I cut my usual ride short by one lap. Still must have done over 90 minutes, though.

9. Look at some TV, do some cleaning, get to sleep. Let's see what's on...

Ah the life of a psuedo-bachelor. A man could get used to this.

(Come to think of it, a month ago the wife was watching some sitcom wherein David Spade tells a table full of married couples, "Excuse me, I have to go and do whatever I want to, all the time.")

Another Perspective on Iran

Ahmadinejad Accuses West of Steering Iran Opinion Over Election.

That's really crazy, right?

Not necessarily. Actually, in the 1950s, the CIA actually fomented the overthrow of Mohammend Mosadegh, and they admit it freely. Mosadegh nationalized the oil companies (which brought practically zero revenue to Iran) and was buddying up to the soviets, so out he went.

During the Iran hostage crisis, it turns out that some of the US embassy workers were indeed CIA.

So in other words, the US has a history of meddling in Iran and their affairs. Too bad all those persians happen to be living on top of US oil.

That's why I haven't totally ruled out the possibility that Ahmadinejad may be right. And it certainly doesn't seem beyond possible that the US (or at least the CIA) decided that it would be "best" for Iran for them to have a more liberal leader.

Meanwhile, like any country there are plenty of power-hungry bureaucrats around who would certainly take advantage of the chaos to accuse outside forces of meddling, and by such an accusation hold on to power, even though they don't seem to be delivering the goods, economically at least.

No doubt young people want more in the way of freedom. And no doubt the old guard isn't particularly effective at moving Iran forward.

On the other hand, if you look at the history of South American countries that towed the US line (via Chicago school ecnomics), many of them have done terribly, becoming arguably a mere shell from which oil companies and other big firms extract profits.

So oddly, it just may be that Iranian hard line leadership is kinda protecting their country from exploitation. Of course, they don't seem to know what to DO, but on the other hand merely selling out to an American and British version of progress could easily be a bad thing.

Look at China: Only when they really decided to do things their own way did they advance, and boy have they advanced. Perhaps the way forward for Iran lays in them creatively finding a new path that does far more than mimic western economies or else simply throws the doors open.

Oneiric Machine

We'd hiked for some hours, steadily upwards, in the dark green lush tropical Island foliage. Sometimes, I'd look up to see the deep blue sky just to remind myself that it was actually bright and sunny up there; that's how thick and rich the vegetation was.

Periodically, we could catch glimpses of the extinct volcano that was on our right and around which the trail appeared to be slowly spiralling. Howler monkeys could occasionally be heard, but their "howls" sounded nothing so much as some teenagers playing some kind of belching game. And you'd see the monkeys up there in the trees sometimes, sprawled out and doing nothing.

Eventually our tail turned inward, towards where I imagined the volcano must be. The trail meandered quite a bit there, skirting along the top edge of a deep pool into which a waterfall plunged. And then we began to see the odd angular porous chunks of volcanic rock scattered about and through which the trail passed.

And then the trail hit the wall of the volcano and turned left, hugging it tightly and curving around. It was a sheer drop to the left, perhaps 20 feet. Not certain death but certain steep enough to break something if you fell. The trail was wide enough, however, that you didn't really worry about falling off, though two people could not walk safely side by side.

And then the trail took a right turn and we entered a dark space, a cave. As my eyes adjusted I couldn't see any clear way to go forward, but there in the back, at what appeared to be 50 or 60 feet in, we could see a glow, so we went forward.

As we approached the glow, however, it became quickly apparent that this was not an exit. In fact, as our eyes adjusted, we could see that it was a machine with many whirring gears. The gears were moving quickly, in a blur, but seem so well meshed that they made only the slightest warm hum.

We stood and stared gap-jawed at it. It was, to say the least, pretty odd to see a machine here in a volcanic cave deep in an island jungle. I thought for a moment that the machine was a pump, to pump water out of the cave for hikers, but somehow that idea didn't lock onto my brain. It was first of all far too quiet and second of all, it didn't look anything like a pump whatsoever. The gears, too, seemed arranged not in right angled planes but in any possible spacial orientation imaginable. I could not in fact imagine how such gears could mesh; it looked almost more organic than mechanical.

After several minutes of mute silence, someone poked one of the gears with a hiking stick, and what happened was really hard to describe. The gear seemed to respond somewhat to the poke, pulling more deeply into the machine for a moment, in between other gears and not directly visible. It then sprung back into place but now there seemed to be another gear connected to it just above it. I wondered for a moment if that higher gear had been there before and we didn't notice it, so I took the hiking pool and poked a few more gears. As I poked and then poked again, the gears were definitely sprouting more gears and, did I imagine this? Whirring and move ever so slightly faster.

We shook our heads in disbelief, and that's when I noticed that no external power source was visible. In fact, the machine was not visibly connected to anything at all, though I guess there must be some kind of connection to the outside world down below it. Was the thing gas powered, perhaps? Well, we didn't smell anything and there was no sign whatsoever of combustion. It was damned weird.

I think someone tried bracing the pole against a non-moving piece of the machine, and we got behind him and helped him push. I don't know if any of us were trying to push over the machine, or see underneath it or just to try to detect how heavy it was, but it didn't matter. Either it was extremely heavy or else extremely well-connected to the cave floor, but in either even we didn't feel it move at all.

We all then encircled the machine and searched for a sign or a switch or anything else that would identify its operation or purpose, and after a few minutes we were ready to give up. But one of us noticed a small hole along one of the few non-gear surfaces that were visible. The hole was just large enough to accept the end of a hiking pole so we stuffed an end in the hole. Someone made an off-color joke, but I think they were trying to disperse the tension.

And then, a click. The pole seemed to engage something, so we tried pull it out. It wouldn't go. After a minute, however, someone pushed downward on the pole like throwing a big lever, and I swear that emitted a loud kachunk and then the gears started doing something I couldn't quite understand. They seemed to all be drifting in and out and amongs each other, some whirring even more quickly, others slowing down conisderably. If you squinted and defocused your eyes, it looked almost like a giantbroiling mass.

But then, after a minute or two, the gears all seemed to find a new place and then they stopped moving around, though they kept whirring and gearing of course. In fact, they seemed to have found an entirely different but equally acceptable configuration.

We tried throwing the pole-lever again, but it didn't work a second time.

Eventually, we just turned around and left and made our way down the jungle trail in silence.

When we got back to town, something seemed different. Everything looked the same, but on the other hand the content of everything, it's very meaning, somehow felt different. Yes, our hotel was still a hotel, but now it was something else too, perhaps many things. It was an empty space surrounded by the materials consisting of the hotel's walls which blocked out inclement weather. Cars were still cars but instead of being merely machines that you drove somewhere, all of a sudden they were physical devices that gave a human rider kinetic energy while protecting the rider the consenquences of increased kinetic energy.

In other words, everything was the same, but different.

And then I directed this new inner vision (or was it truly inner? Somehow, it felt like everything else had changed) to the other people I saw. What did it mean to be "human" in this new light?

The answer can not be answered easily. To put it simply, I saw a human in terms of everything else in the entire universe. A human, unlike anything else, seemed to somehow distantly reflect all possibilities, all potentialities, all possible meanings everywhere, and at all times. It was in some ways grand and glorious but it was also disorienting and frightening because I sensed that there were too many possibilities for any one (or even a good subset) to lock onto. In other words, anything goes and this was not just good but evil and mostly everything in between as well, most things having no relationship to good or evil at all. In other words, we people seemed to be "about" the limitless possibilities that being "about" something can point to.

It was a self-referential feedback loop that disoriented and confused me.

Like the others, my dreams that night were all distorted and incomprehensible. I woke up shaking and trembling and with dark rings under my eyes.

After taking a shower, I got dressed for a hike and knew what I would do. I kocked on the others' doors and we hit the trail, not forgetting to take several hiking poles. The plan was obvious: To switch the machine back to the way it was before.

So far so....

I'm starting to get the appeal of a Bachelor-like existence. More than anything, you find you finally have a little more time. And time is precisely what I have lacked so much of over the last bunch of years...the "need" for full time employment has eaten so much of my time and energy over the years that it's a shame. I'm working, many days, 10 hours a day which for some may not seem a lot, but for me I don't have much energy left after that. Sure, I'm getting paid pretty good (translate it into US dollars and the result at times is not insignificant), but for what? So I can crash out, exhausted, and then brave a new day?

And at work so much of your effort is sunk into stuff that doesn't end up panning out in the long run. So not only is your creativity sunk into some employer, even then only a very small percentage of your output ever makes it past powerpoint. And not for good reasons, either.

On the other hand what the hell else would I do with myself? Had I poured myself into some sort of artistic endeavor, I'd probably be working an even shittier job that paid even less. No doubt, in part, due to the fact that any art that I'd make (that would have any merit) would never be popular. Or at least not for very long. So I would have needed a job anyway, I figure.

Meanwhile, I can't help but think and even believe that something lays in wait for me in the future, but as I age I continue to try to get myself to wake up to the fact that such will probably never occur.

On the other hand, who knows? Sometimes, you have a feeling that defies logic and that, deep down inside, doesn't ever really waver and that remains constant throughout the years. Maybe that feeling is itself a seed that will seek out exactly the right conditions to make itself known to the outside world and then bring something interesting into being.

In other words, perhaps I should sit back and trust the process.

Bachelor Time!

Well, for a few weeks, anyway. The wife and son are already on their way over the Atlantic, flying back to old New York, where they will remain until I join them later in July for a few weeks. The we'll all come back to London.

Let's see how I spend this time. Will I waste it? Will I put it to some kind of good use?

Beats me.

But I'll probably be blogging more, that's for sure.

His heavenly descent

After he ascended, the Lord took one look at him from behind St Peter's Gates. With a discrete shake of the head the Lord signalled to Peter, who said,

"Really sorry about this but we can only accept so many in a day. He'd like to let you in but we have rules...you understand, doncha?"

He nodded his head in grim acceptance and then went down.

From behind the Gates of Flames Lucifer rolled his eyes and shook his head to Cerebus who denied him entry. So he went back up to St Peter and in an odd, unsettling falsetto said,

"They won't let me in down there and said I'd fit in better up here. I can sing and I can dance so I know I could really entertain everyone up here in a way they deserve."

The Lord, upon hearing this, went down to Lucifer and spoke with him. "Just what do you expect me to do with him?", He said. Lucifer replied, "I dunno but he gives me the creeps and I for sure don't want him hanging around spookin' my clients. And kinda high maintenance, if you know what I mean."

The Lord nodded at this, knowingly. "OK", he said, "I have an idea. There're a lot of people that I think could really enjoy what he does that I'd just as soon get out of my hair. How 'bout we put on a show?"

Lucifer grinned at this and agreed immediately. "This could help with my workload," he said, "I think it's a great idea."

Invitations went out to everyone in both heaven and hell. Tickets were first-come-first-served. It'd be the entertainment experience to end all entertainment experiences.

As the ticket line people from both heaven and hell lined up for months in advance, munching on manna and clouds while they waited. Some people noticed those they hadn't seen in a long time and discussed old times. There were, of course, a couple of scuffles but in the end everyone got a ticket.

When the big day came around the multitudes gathered in front of the concert doors and, as the doors were opened, entered. The vast hall was packed to capacity (and even slightly beyond) and, a few minutes before he was scheduled to come on, they closed the vast bronze doors with a deep, resounding clang.

The concert went on forever.

In fact, no one who attended was allowed to leave. Ever.

Both sides, heaven and hell, chalked the event up as a win. Lucifer called it a fitting punishment and the Lord called it a fitting reward.

Bland Prophecy

Heed ye this prophecy for it is true and good and verily will fly to its mark like an arrow from a bow.

One day soon ye shall go out onto the streets, onto the byways, and that shalt walk for a time, times, and half a time. And in the sky there shall be a sign such as never seen by human eyes. The vision shall be exceedingly glorious and abolish all doubt as to it source. However, ignore ye such a sign, (should ye see it) for it is not for you but for someone else.

After the sign and the vision has passed, thou shalt continue on to the place of exchange and barter. And Lo! Ye shall find fresh milk in a predetermined place. Do not look down upon the lowly placement of the milk, for despite the fact that it has been placed there by human hands, know ye that the Lord has guided those hands and has caused that milk to be placed there for ye. When thou seest the milk that thy Lord hath provided ye, reach ye out and take the milk and barter for it with the coins that the Lord hath provided ye with at that time.

After thou has securest the milk in thy possession, make ye haste homeward and consume ye the milk. Should thou drinkest overly hastily and wipest the milk off on thy sleeve, fear ye not for the Lord is with thee. Indeed, when all these things that have been prophesied over thee have come to pass, thou shalt know that this prophecy was true and from the Lord.