Alan Rabinowitz

December 18, 2007
A Conversation With Alan Rabinowitz
Zoologist Gives a Voice to Big Cats in the Wilderness

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Among zoologists, Alan Rabinowitz is known as the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation. But he is actually more the Dag Hammarskjold of biology.
That is because Dr. Rabinowitz, executive director of science and exploration at the Wildlife Conservation Society, is a kind of international diplomat for big cats — jaguars, leopards, pumas.
For 20 years, he has traveled the world, imploring the power elite of democracies and dictatorships to dedicate large parcels as reserves for these imperiled felines.
In the 1980s, he persuaded the leaders of Belize to establish the world’s first jaguar preserve. More recently, this Brooklyn-born biologist prevailed on the junta in Myanmar to transform 8,400 square miles of forest into the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve.
Dr. Rabinowitz, 53, recounts his Burmese adventures in a new book, “Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in the Land of Guns, Gold and Greed” (Island Press). An edited version of a two-hour conversation in New York follows.

Q. With so many of the world’s animals in danger, why do you mostly advocate for big cats?

A. Because cats get to the human psyche. People love big cats. If I go to a government and say, “If you don’t do something quickly, you’re going to lose your tigers,” they listen. If I say, “You’re about to lose all your wolves,” they won’t care. But leopards, tigers, jaguars — people have a huge admiration for them,
My real goal is to save large sections of pristine wilderness for all types of wildlife. One way to do that is to make sure that the top predators have enough safe territory to thrive in. Because big cats need so much territory, when you save them, you’re really saving whole ecosystems and you’re saving the other animals down on the food chain. This is what’s called the “apex predator strategy” in conservation.
The other thing I’ve seen is that no government, even if they are doing a lot of development, wants to lose their big cats. Even when you’re talking to the most authoritarian of dictators, none of them wants to be the guy at the helm when the last of his country’s tigers go extinct.

Q. How does a conservationist negotiate with dictators? Do you employ special strategies?

A. I don’t go in with a plan. I just talk from my heart. These guys, they are used to people coming to them with hidden agendas. I think they can see that I don’t have any other than the wildlife.
When I first went to Burma-Myanmar, for instance, there wasn’t a lot of trust there (laughs). I was told, “You don’t look like a scientist.” But the situation for the Burmese tiger was desperate. Between habitat destruction and hunting, they were almost gone. We did surveys, and in a lot of areas where tigers were supposed to be, you saw none. I was pretty blunt about that.
Sometimes, personal things worked for me. In 2003, I was diagnosed with a slow-growing form of leukemia. Some of the toughest leaders in the Burmese military, they just couldn’t fathom why anyone with cancer was repeatedly coming to their country and going into the jungle when in their mind I should be meditating or having a more easy life. “So what if I have cancer?” I told them. “The tigers still have to have a home.” I think my personal situation helped win some trust.

Q. Because of gross human-rights violations, the military government of Myanmar is under economic sanctions from the United States. There are people who wonder how you could work with such a government. What’s your answer?

A. Tigers have no control over what human governments they live under. If we’re going to draw lines on what is an acceptable political landscape for saving wildlife, where can we work? Wildlife always ends up taking a back seat to what’s going on among humans — always. If we’re going to save wildlife, I’ve got to give it a front seat. Nothing we do hurts the people of Burma.
But if I based conservation on what I considered moral subjectivity, I’d be doing the wildlife no favor. And we’d be virtually guaranteeing the extermination of tigers from Burma. They’ve been almost hunted out for their skins and for the traditional-medicine trade.

Q. How are the tigers faring since the preserve was established?

A. Tigers don’t come back so quickly. When you’re down to very low numbers, you have to get a male and female just even meeting. With so few, it’s not easy for them to find each other. Even when you get them meeting, the young stay with the female for about three years. She doesn’t breed again until those young leave her. So if the tigers are coming back, we won’t know it for a few more years.
For the meanwhile — since hunting has been banned and since we’ve started some economic development projects for the local people — there’s been an increase in the prey-species that tigers eat: wild pigs and sambar deer. We’ve set up “camera traps” on animal trails where you can photograph everything that passes. We haven’t seen a lot of tigers yet.

Q. We understand that you’ve been trying to negotiate with the North Koreans to set up a wildlife sanctuary.

A. In the Demilitarized Zone, yes. We think there are a lot of animals in there. It’s forested. And because it’s so heavily fortified, there isn’t human settlement. We reached out to the North Koreans. We thought, why not make the DMZ into a peace park?
We first approached the North Koreans years ago to try to study the Siberian tiger that migrates into there. They wouldn’t let any Americans in. We were able to get one British scientist to visit their capital city, a birdwatcher. They never allowed him out of the city. There’s no story to tell there.

Q. What originally drew you to conservation?

A. As a child, I had this horrific stutter. In school, I was put in what was called the retarded classes. I was very angry that people couldn’t see past the stuttering. From the second grade on, I stopped talking, except to the little green turtle and the chameleon I kept at home.
Talking to the animals, I realized they had feelings. I didn’t know if they understood me. But I saw that they were exactly like me. They weren’t broken, but people mistreated them because they can’t communicate. I thought if these animals had a voice, people wouldn’t be able to crush them and throw them away. When I was a child, I promised the animals that if I ever got my voice back, I’d be their voice.
It makes me feel whole, knowing that I’m allowing more animals to live in this world. Every time I set up a protected area, I feel I’m paying them back for helping me speak. When we got Hukawng established, I thought, all those turtles, otters and tigers, they now have a chance to live.

shibboleth

"Shibboleth” takes its title from the Old Testament story in which the ability to pronounce the word was used by the victorious Gileadites as a test to identify members of the tribe of Ephraim who were trying to sneak back into their home territory. Those who couldn’t say it correctly were revealed as Ephraimites and killed.

Gutai

The Gutai Manifesto
Yoshihara wrote the manifesto for the Gutai group in 1956. The full text of the "Gutai Manifesto" is available in English at the website of Japan's Ashiya City Museum of Art & History [2]. Among its preoccupations, the manifesto expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things become damaged or decayed. The process of damage or destruction is celebrated as a way of revealing the inner "life" of a given material or object:
"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?...." [3]

Transautomatism

Transautomatism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Transautomatism is a modern style of painting, founded by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It is a kind of surrealism, which also point of the viewer's fantasy. Different people see different things in the same picture. It is less what the artist wants us to see, more about how we interpret it. The transautomatism is based on the different styles which Hundertwasser developed, e.g. the spirals and drops.

Many of the Dream Last Night

Mental excretions
piling up
creating oily walls that talk
in the thousand languages of touch
Every brick every word
a window
leading between flicking dimensions
a dream
into
a dream
retelling the middle of tales
and letting go
of beginnings
and endings
as loose ouroboro tails
flailing to find one another
to make sense
of senselessness
under the guise
of sleep

the two of us

He knows the number
Of people he’s kissed

I don’t know the number
Of people I’ve fucked

He knows how it feels
When he is in love

I am not sure
That kind of love exists

He is a child who is a man
Who knows how to ask

I am a woman who is a girl
Who stopped asking

He remembers something easy
Without using his memory

I focus to understand easy
By abandoning my memory

He is not innocent
Because no man is

I am innocent
Because everyone is ignorant

from the room next door.

Near by
Huddled in the far
Corner-less
Horizontal wood
Left eye to the floor, seeing gravity
Feeling a long slant of light
Next on the nose
Guiding forward
As arms and legs slide effortlessly
Toward
Some forward
Some center
Now warmer, now less resistant
From wherever it is
You came

Popped Bulb-No ideas-Broken Glass

I can’t imagine
The spell
That took you into your own mind
And told it lies
That told it to love
What isn’t love
That told it to ruin
What wasn’t yours

I can’t fathom
The stories yourself told yourself
So that you could
Tell yourself
To tell others
Whatever fit the moment
A shape shifter
Manipulating the air so that the air could manipulate
The mind
The words are trapezes keeping
All souls up in the air
Bouncing upward in anticipation
In acknowledgment
Of imminent decline

I can’t think of
The way you walked
to prevent your own fall
The steps you took
To claim bodies
To cushion the road beneath you

I never imagined I’d be here
At this juncture
In this space
For these reasons
On this day
With no peace
And no mind
And no imagination to help
Light understanding

Technological singularity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

--was this touched upon by Ken Wilber in Boomeritus? Blade Runner?

The technological singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer interfaces, of smarter-than-human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond the capability of human beings to participate meaningfully in said progress. Futurists have varying opinions regarding the timing and consequences of such an event.

My breath skipped a beat
But its back in synch
Because nothing turns my head around forever
It all twists back
To the origin

colbert

October 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Mock Columnist, Amok
By MAUREEN DOWD
I was in my office, writing a column on the injustice of relative marginal tax rates for hedge fund managers, when I saw Stephen Colbert on TV.
He was sneering that Times columns make good “kindling.” He was ranting that after you throw away the paper, “it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.” He was observing, approvingly, that “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.”
I called Colbert with a dare: if he thought it was so easy to be a Times Op-Ed pundit, he should try it. He came right over. In a moment of weakness, I had staged a coup d’moi. I just hope he leaves at some point. He’s typing and drinking and threatening to “shave Paul Krugman with a broken bottle.”
I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
By STEPHEN COLBERT
Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(
I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:
Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.
There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.
So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.
For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.
Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.
And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.
Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.
While my hat is not presently in the ring, I should also point out that it is not on my head. So where’s that hat? (Hint: John McCain was seen passing one at a gas station to fuel up the Straight Talk Express.)
Others point to my new bestseller, “I Am America (And So Can You!)” noting that many candidates test the waters with a book first. Just look at Barack Obama, John Edwards or O. J. Simpson.
Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”
Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.
Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.
What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.

The real, the unreal, and the neitherness

Every moment of this waking life
An undertow rumbles
Bringing my heel to meet my face
A close encounter
A tumbling weed going along the road
feeling the stretch that bars the east from the west
That encapsulates the between
Rolling in the sun
Guided by the wind
To a shore blocked by mountains
Higher than aspirations and traceable to the first cause
First cause for alarm

Round about the dream cage
An animal rumbles
Looking for daily bread
Expecting a cut
And turning circles until that very something
Becomes a something found
Something tangible and relieving
Like a pillow
Like a drugless drug
A leaving for a higher nothingness that cannot be
But is

Every day the same is altered but seems to mimic
Yesterday in a broken mirror
providing different paths
Of possibility
A reflection bent
Allowing light to find its own
Despite eyes

Does the devil dare to ask?
To want something good for himself?
Can he expect more than failure?
Can he dream while awake about the death of life or about the life of death?
Can the devil expect a change?
Can the devil repent?

The expanse has shriveled into a diamond
Perfectly cut
But not for sale
A caveat meant as a practical joke
So as to make light of
dead weight
So close in appearance
To seriousness

lately

Lately (1)


Lately the leaves are skipping out on all the green
Going straight from red to brown to red
Orange veins reflect a drowned out sun
Asking us to let her in

Lately a permanent nyctinasty
Has taken hold of every flower
They sleep indefinitely
But still skip out on dying
A sleeping beauty

Lately the tiniest rocks
Are roller balls
Taking paws out towards the sea
They hear the roar of a mother
They instinctively go to the source
In a wind driven tide directing
All lungs to water
In a tide driven wind directing
Air inside of waves

Lately the slight movement of time
Is gathering menacing speed
In drawing together shards of something soft
Back into a whole
That never knew
Until the call
Began the call






Lately (2)


Lately the impossible has shed snake skin
Turned into a night moth
Wider than an owl’s wingspan
Speckled in a vacuous brown
On top of brown dust
Reflecting the moon’s smile back onto her

Lately secrets are illusions
A mirage of whisper
Concealing a loudspeaker on a soapbox
Telling the truth without speaking
Revealing the real because the unreal is not

Lately I wear my insides out
Without an armor to bear
All mushy like oatmeal and nutrition
Malleable in your hands
Easily taken and replaced
Impervious

Lately it gets brighter earlier
The sun is restless
Wakes up in the middle of the night
Feels the hangover of insomnia
But comes out relentlessly
To see
What everyone else does

anchor to the floating

Weightlessness
Is the light
Unhinged
Floating
Both still and moving, something paradoxical
A question
That remains a question
Rhetorical from joy
From not needing the answer, or any answer at all

Happiness
is lead
weighted and connected to the floor
an anchor if
happiness
is still unsure
of its grin if
happiness
is still contemplating the future
is still thinking about all that isn’t
but could
and should
or shouldn’t
or couldn’t become

Said the person to the same person

Maybe I can convince you to convince me
We all need this convincing
A voice
Positive reinforcement
To say
What was already said
To say
What I’m already saying
Out loud, in mumbles, in half sweeping statements
That shatter marble
Crawl underneath covers
Underneath the mattress
The door
Clean through to the other side,
outside
where clarity is achieved
So that someone can convince me
That clarity
Is real
In the realm of gray

home

The center of the web
Is a little whole
Entire
Entirely transparent
The center of the web
Is a little hole
Clarity balancing the weave
Traceless
Backlit until the night
Backs off another hemisphere
Comes close again
To claim its territory
The matchless sky
Hiding complexity behind it
As the mask of maya
Asking
For silk
And death

blame numbers

Stringy sidewalk turning towards the road
asking for direction
while the whole thing spirals
saying both ways are good.

Directionless itself is the direction
all is forward while backwards is just
another attempt to anthropomorphize
the non human in the mind of a human
navigating a four cornered world
pretending to know the softness of the round
but rounds don’t gather momentum
between the pillow and the head.

Allegations of progress
reveal the materiality of time
adding up atoms until a blooming
of minutes past
emerge on the edge of a cycle.
Each lizard eye is open
focusing on two different sides
of one self
not asking which one is right
but knowing both are true
true enough to be recorded and burned away.

Blame the sun because she laughs
without flinching
Blame arrogant selflessness
for thinking there was a self to give away
Blame numbers because they suggest
order in a circle.

Synergistic capsule floating against
a rejecting oil claiming continuity
as a non-chore, as fact, as immutable
against water downed claims of the same
not being the same.
Differentiated outside withers against
the backdrop of another one born,
ten toes and all,
recorded in books bound to outlast
the materiality of feather shrouded skin
basking within telos and incapable of denying
not knowing
just the same.

Variations on a Theme: The Wars of Something and Nothing

Blooming to death
for stasis mud puddles
gathering up the edges to focus
on one deep well.

Birthing the end smell of leaves
caught beneath an angled rock
cutting deeply
embedded miles down.
Round hands pull it out forever
creating lines that extend around the Potomac
forcing the tide’s hand
asking what she can do for
a stolid nonchalance
outfitted in the immovable.

Growing outwards in all directions,
lightless for a shaded mark
of the point
that is no point at all
but the coreless sphere
constantly shape shifting the face of an
octagon times an enneagon
of substancelessness

Nano dirt of the outside
closing in while
atmospheric trouble arouses the purple
arcs that reach further
and further yet
towards a center, a teleology to hold
the reason for the single thought.

conversation. work.

I can't top that.

From: Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 3:22 PMTo: : RE: hey ho
the last to pretend
that email
will be
meant in creative
form
was you

-wrote i

From: : Friday, October 26, 2007 2:31 PMTo: Alexis : RE: hey ho
I will,
Pretend:
That the Last
E-mail
You wrote-
was meant
to be
Create-
ive
IN fORm

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

October 19, 2007

By NEELA BANERJEE
LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 — On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.
The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.
“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”
The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide. In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more considering the option.
For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.
“It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in conflict here,” said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington. “Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.”
The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.
For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings, regardless of Turkey’s response.
The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.”
Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.
Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee, oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to persuade the Turks to examine their past.
Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.
“Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States,” Mr. Foxman said. “All this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be waved away.”
Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the Anti-Defamation League.
He wrote that the A.D.L. “has made the Holocaust and its denial key pieces” of the program, “while at the same time hypocritically working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”
The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently, Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17, the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by the national group the next day.
The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton, whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the resolution.
Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr. Foxman wrote, were “tantamount to genocide.”
He added, “If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”
Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far enough.
“It denies the intentionality of genocide,” said Joey Kurtzman, executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr. Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.
“If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel, for U.S. troops in Iraq,” Ms. Tassel said. “It will lead to more anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.”
Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as particularly vulnerable. “I see Israel as a strong nation,” Dr. Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation League at the Lexington meeting. “Jews are strong. They don’t have to be intimidated by politics.”
The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back the genocide resolution. “It’s very hard for me to support a position that could be detrimental to Israel,” he said. “But for me as a Jew, I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do what is right and righteous.”
At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past seven years.
Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier, another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.
“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” Ms. Blier said. “In my experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.”

life lived behind lids

During a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming[1] (which is about 2 hours each night[2]).

...as in, yorke p2

True to Form



gas leak dream.


in the garage i pull a bike out and it knocks the gas main conection.

i tried blocking it but every time i get near i cant speak. feel i am suffocating.

panic. family is inside. call the emergency. who is calling the emergency, am i?

feel i am suffocating. i stick a pencil in. a pen. the wrong end of a garden fork.

it still comes out and i have to run out of the garageunable to speak or scream.

i run to th eneighbors but semi collapse on the lawn trying to explain but nothing comes out.

debilitated.

once ive got my breath back i go back in.



rageing egos,
paranoia and
knives in the back will not stop the rising tides,
they are in themselves a form of poison
hanging in the atmosphere.


Thom

...as in, yorke

mental note


disconnected
disjointed
accidental
sketchy
fragmentary
synthesized
impermanent
momentary


Thom

"Repetition as a kind of solipsism"

Marcel Duchamp told an interviewer in 1960, “The idea of repeating, for me, is a form of masturbation.” Whether you find his statement contemptuous or commendatory, it speaks to a particularly 20th-century idea of repetition as a kind of solipsism. As “Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces” at the Walters Art Museum underscores, Duchamp’s 19th-century compatriots had no such qualms about revisiting, or even replicating, a subject.

radiohead's image

i've been published. wahooo

i've been published in issue 79

for more info, please see:

http://www.iotapoetry.co.uk/

brownen outen

1000 grandview

Thursday

What to do? The impasse is still an impasse. The plateau is still the peak from which I can always fall, but can I surpass? Perhaps. The years of narrowing down to affordability, the lack of possibility, and the need for sustainability: is this all about ability or the lack thereof? Are we all the same person wanting the same things for ourselves and thinking similar thoughts behind similar faces? People: variations on a theme? From a distance, are cultures homogenous and noisy enough to sound like a symphony? Or, perhaps, are things slowly but surely pulling away from a calm core of a chorus into chaotic dissonance? Arguably, we are out of harmony with our environment, pummeling past it into the graces of clouds where only imagined immortals once dwelled.

Who cares?

This desk is still a desk. This chair, these clicking sounds that rise up into the air hit the ceiling (cement, not glass) and bounce back down again. False dichotomies have my analytic mind in a vice: meaning versus no meaning, something versus nothing, fatalism versus nihilism.

The middle path…who has discussed it before? Did it start with Aristotle? Maybe Socrates, or a Pre-Socratic Heraclitus? This was discussed by the much revered Buddha and centrists/moderates across the universe. But, is this compromise? Can a vision be so clear as to lead in one direction beyond all the others? The Buddha walked the middle path, but the same time was a rebel. That is to say, he followed an extreme that was radical because it was his own path. Is this what Heidegger called the calling?

Nothingness. Nothingness is still the something that hums like an OM that never gets as simplistic as an ocean’s breath. Nothingness that is the mundane that cannot or will not reveal to me its supposed sacredness. Human ideas imposed upon a world that was not conceived by human ideas…

When we were younger, we imagined that the future might be molded from our attempts and wishes. The future was (was!) a malleable thing and we were (were!) capable of holding it in our hands. That’s right, it in our hands, as if it was an object to be beholden to. Now, the future is no longer an object, but a mirage. A thing we cannot help but plan for (it is predictable), but also cannot count on (it does not exist). Life is unpredictable, or so we are told. Or, so we have witnessed. The random death of a child. The random strike of lightening. Randomness in itself may just be a human misconception. Chance…the human inability to assign meaning to events? Or, is chance instead meaning that is the human misconception: the drive for reason over stretching itself into arenas in which it is not applicable? Perhaps, this is the fourth, fifth, ninth, whatever dimension. Perhaps, this is the unfathomable cube for an ordinary square. What I conceive as my hidden inside might just be a perspective from which I cannot yet gaze.

Regardless, these thoughts are shot. They go nowhere faster than air arrives into lungs and proceed to leave them. Just another electrical wave in the dark. “Just another”? “Just”?

The assigning of value, the grand dreams of a broken ordinary genius.

Henry David Thoreau

“rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”

Formalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(art)

I stole this poem...

Hey Karl Marx!


Hey Karl Marx!
Are you listening?
Can you see it?
Your words are
being taught at
elitist universities
to the childrenof rich white republicrats
while laborersbuckle under
the weight of a system that
they can't beat
Obviously, they have missed the point.


© Wayne Mason 2004

Out of the unparalleled distinction
this young girl grew five heads
Each turned in a cubic direction
with the luckiest facing the clouds
smiling towards rain
evaluating the differences in grey before they inevitably give way to a myriad of
pinhole distinctions
unknown to those
Heads that face west
or east
or north
it truly depends
But only one only knows
up
The anti gravity
But only one only wonders
about the appearance of feet
But she can feel the differences between toes, all jammed together and sometimes
spread, allowing tickling blades of grass to slide between
instances of skin

But only one only wonders
about the contraption of shoes
aiding in walking
only wonders
about this act of running
She feels her legs
Legs?

When in the middle of the city
the only city in the world
and the lights outshine the moon
and the towers of commerce seem to lean together
creating a canopy for the
stone forest
she can still see every star
they cannot seem to hide
nor do they seem to want to hide
because she is the only head
never bowed, but forever face to face
speaking to you

Doldrums he said

Doldrums he said
On the flamingo lit beach
Highlighting a sand bar

Buried bar between
While the grays get angrier
While trying to outshine the inward intensity
Inherent to black
That grows warmer in the heat
That fails to get attacked

Nothing as usual
The game plan going
The wining of the millionth time
The inconsequential loss that never

Really means losing

Adding up to a time pocket
Rounded
At the edge
Secretly writing brightly
Of fuzzed indigenous neon
Unrelenting
In stretched flanks of horizon
Covering
An unmovable inch
Regarded as plastic encased
In further inflammable plastic

Same old same old

As the repetition means growth
As the repetition sparks the slow diamond

Beyond the departing and recumbent eyes of

Rationale
Moving

eat your ADD

September 6, 2007
Some Food Additives Raise Hyperactivity, Study Finds
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Common food additives and colorings can increase hyperactive behavior in a broad range of children, a study being released today found.
It was the first time researchers conclusively and scientifically confirmed a link that had long been suspected by many parents. Numerous support groups for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have for years recommended removing such ingredients from diets, although experts have continued to debate the evidence.
But the new, carefully controlled study shows that some artificial additives increase hyperactivity and decrease attention span in a wide range of children, not just those for whom overactivity has been diagnosed as a learning problem.
The new research, which was financed by Britain’s Food Standards Agency and published online by the British medical journal The Lancet, presents regulators with a number of issues: Should foods containing preservatives and artificial colors carry warning labels? Should some additives be prohibited entirely? Should school cafeterias remove foods with additives?
After all, the researchers note that overactivity makes learning more difficult for children.
“A mix of additives commonly found in children’s foods increases the mean level of hyperactivity,” wrote the researchers, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Southampton. “The finding lends strong support for the case that food additives exacerbate hyperactive behaviors (inattention, impulsivity and overactivity) at least into middle childhood.”
In response to the study, the Food Standards Agency advised parents to monitor their children’s activity and, if they noted a marked change with food containing additives, to adjust their diets accordingly, eliminating artificial colors and preservatives.
But Professor Stevenson said it was premature to go further. “We’ve set up an issue that needs more exploration,” he said in a telephone interview.
In response to the study, some pediatricians cautioned that a diet without artificial colors and preservatives might cause other problems for children.
“Even if it shows some increase in hyperactivity, is it clinically significant and does it impact the child’s life?” said Dr. Thomas Spencer, a specialist in Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Is it powerful enough that you want to ostracize your kid? It is very socially impacting if children can’t eat the things that their friends do.”
Still, Dr. Spencer called the advice of the British food agency “sensible,” noting that some children may be “supersensitive to additives” just as some people are more sensitive to caffeine.
The Lancet study focused on a variety of food colorings and on sodium benzoate, a common preservative. The researchers note that removing this preservative from food could cause problems in itself by increasing spoilage. In the six-week trial, researchers gave a randomly selected group of several hundred 3-year-olds and of 8- and 9-year-olds drinks with additives — colors and sodium benzoate — that mimicked the mix in children’s drinks that are commercially available. The dose of additives consumed was equivalent to that in one or two servings of candy a day, the researchers said. Their diet was otherwise controlled to avoid other sources of the additives.
A control group was given an additive-free placebo drink that looked and tasted the same.
All of the children were evaluated for inattention and hyperactivity by parents, teachers (for school-age children) and through a computer test. Neither the researchers nor the subject knew which drink any of the children had consumed.
The researchers discovered that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive and that they had shorter attention spans if they had consumed the drink containing the additives. The study did not try to link specific consumption with specific behaviors. The study’s authors noted that other research suggested that the hyperactivity could increase in as little as an hour after artificial additives were consumed.
The Lancet study could not determine which of the additives caused the poor performances because all the children received a mix. “This was a very complicated study, and it will take an even more complicated study to figure out which components caused the effect,” Professor Stevenson said.

A loitering of clouds
Hanging around, light
Intrinsically carefree

Meshell Ndegeocello at the Rose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me'Shell_Ndeg%C3%A9Ocello

she jams out around nyc town. twas a pleasure

गुइदोनिअन् Hand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GuidonianHand.PNG

Parthenogenesis....the new jesus?

'Virgin birth'
Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis.
This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm, and has been achieved in animals.

svaha 1

There pops the shell, it disappeared over night. I think the wind turned it to a liquid that now lightly lines my sidewalk. I walk over it daily, but the delicacy is gone. Now it is the same impermanent hard stuff that I can use and use over again.

This tool is a stem
Plucked straight to its
Death
And placed kindly in
Your hand
Do you like
Your dead
If it has petals? Is the dead
A beauty
When you cannot touch
The pain
It feels from infinite thirst
While you remain
Mostly water
Standing under a winning heat?

Traveling while their backs are turned. I’m just talking about some rail guards who have their own daydreams going blank against the tv screen. No more thinking about thinking and all the thoughts one thought to have. They die inside the creation of a million thoughts focusing on

Nothing

No commentary bubbles
No tiny stone under my fingernails
It’s sand that falls from
Between the cracks of what I hold and what you once held
We can’t have the same and the same time
I can breathe the boundary between us as I remain a pretense until I become

A tool
That is a dead thing
For the next to rise and conquer
A stepping stone
For yesterday’s pyramid
Or a copper plate on an old lady’s neck.
I want to turn into oil
Running thick on the minds of nations who want me to remain where I really belong
Back into the muck
Of the land
Hardening into millennia long strands of interwoven pressure

"If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will." This is a quote from Abraham Lincoln.

.....WAIT...w...a...it...

Tremendous scattering of the tiny reflects oil in the dust. There are no branches to intertwine, no vines to birth the soma elixir coaxing my throat to forget all the outside so as to focus on the inside wanting to transcend back out to the outside always there. Transcendence is a bitch in heat waiting for the noon sun to set and her tail to stop wagging at the gloriousness of the day. It takes too much and leaves only scraps behind suitable for minions in a web complex enough to have minions and pawns, ingloriously for the rise of glory. To get to the top step a high heeled broken ankle must find the golden duck tape and piece it all back together again. If gravity would bend for a moment in time, take a rainbow and make it a black frown, then subjectivity could reign supreme and we could pretend that opposites are detachable so as to enjoy the false extreme. Fingers are going backwards into their sockets, they care not for awkward landings on strangers’ shoulders that want strangers’ fingers one day and smack them with the fly swatter the next. A prayer to indecisiveness accumulates as a cloud rising straight up just to fall back down into the piss pool gathering underneath the leg of a scared child trying to think, trying not to think, of next.

Jim Cohn excerpt

...taken from "Treasures for Heaven"



XXXII
The smell
Of burning tires
Comes through the window
Near the bodies
Roped in moonbeams
Of unity
Where they were separated
From time––often & without fail.

Society for Humanistic Judaism

July 25, 2007
Sherwin Wine, 79, Founder of Splinter Judaism Group, Dies
By DENNIS HEVESI
Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, founder of a movement in Judaism that says there is no reason to believe in God but that the religion’s highest ethical traditions and the value of each person should be revered, died on Saturday in Essaouira, Morocco.
He was 79 and lived in Birmingham, Mich.
Rabbi Wine was killed in a car accident while on vacation with his companion, Richard McMains, said Rabbi Miriam Jerris, president of the Association of Humanistic Rabbis. The association is an affiliate of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, which Rabbi Wine founded in 1969. Mr. McMains was injured in the accident.
Rabbi Wine started the Society for Humanistic Judaism six years after he sent ripples through the American Jewish community by urging eight families who were doubtful of their faith to join him in establishing the Birmingham Temple, in a Detroit suburb.
The congregation, now based in nearby Farmington Hills, eliminated the word “God” from its services. For example, “You shall love the Lord your God,” became, “We revere the best in man.” The congregation also stopped reciting the Shema, the basic Jewish proclamation of faith in the unity of God.
As word of his innovations spread, Rabbi Wine became controversial. He was castigated by other rabbis.
In 1965, he was the subject of articles in The New York Times and Time magazine.
“I find no adequate reason to accept the existence of a supreme person,” Rabbi Wine told Time.
In the interview with The Times, he said the existence of God required “empirical criteria.” As a substitute, Rabbi Wine preached “humanism,” describing it as a religion “because, like all other religions, it enables man to relate himself to his universe.”
He also emphasized ethical imperatives of Judaism.
Although the Society for Humanistic Judaism has 10,000 members in 30 congregations in the United States and Canada, its tenets are held, to varying degrees, by more Jews. According to the American Jewish Identity Survey of 2001 by the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about half of the 5.3 million Jews in the United States identify themselves as “secular” or “somewhat secular.”
Sherwin Theodore Wine was born on Jan. 25, 1928, in Detroit, the son of immigrants from Poland, Herschel and Teibele Israelski Wengrowski. His father was a cap maker and trouser cutter.
Besides Mr. McMains, a sister, Lorraine Pivnick, of Farmington Hills, survives Rabbi Wine.
The rabbi came from a Conservative Jewish tradition. His parents kept a kosher home. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy at the University of Michigan and was ordained a Reform rabbi after graduating from Hebrew Union College in 1956.
By 1960, Rabbi Wine had founded a Reform congregation in Windsor, Ontario. After three years, he acknowledged his discomfort in addressing a God he was not sure existed and broke from Reform Judaism.
Part of his estrangement was rooted in the Holocaust. In an interview with The San Diego Jewish Journal, Rabbi Wine said, “The message of the Holocaust is that there isn’t any magic power.”

gestalt psychology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

random window to no where. slowly

Decorative Art

Decorative art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Decorative metalwork designed in the Art Deco style by Maurice Ascalon and manufactured by the Pal-Bell Company during the 1940s.
The decorative arts are traditionally defined as ornamental and functional works in ceramic, wood, glass, metal, or textile. The field includes ceramics, furniture, furnishings, interior design, and architecture. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts", namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale sculpture. Some distinguish between decorative and fine art based on functionality, intended purpose, importance, status as a unique creation, or single-artist production. Decorative arts, or furnishings, may be fixed (for example, wallpaper), or moveable (for example, lamps).

Instruments (Street Performer)

Singled out single thread
Note undulating
It has stopped
two doors after years of swinging
While no one noticed
While no one cared
Hesitant in the forced opening
Hinges easing into this decision
They wanted some open
They wanted wind too
Go through
Unimpeded, notes undulating, between new cracks feeling
Themselves
New on the line
Amicable to the old new white linear
Way of thinking
Leading music straight down for the outs
Exploring
Elegant refraction caused
By the
Brick causeways
Causing street lines
To deconstruct in ears

He knew that as soon as he turned that knob and opened the door it would all flood down. The lights would hit the streets and the sky would resemble an ocean. Already he could sense the abandonment, the escalated terror of drowning and breathlessness. Yet, he had to open that door. He didn’t expect anything dark and horrifying, only a torrent or a tsunami.
The knob was made from a dirty late 18th century brass. He couldn’t see it, but underneath a quarter inch of dirt there were decorative engravings. The knob might actually be quite elegant if given a proper cleaning. But all he could see were his imagination’s shadows projected onto a dimly lit door bound to unleash a storm. His hand encapsulated the entire knob and the sweat on his hands caused the dirty knob to shed its top layer. He didn’t notice. There was nothing to notice anyways, only the drag of anticipation holding him back like an anchor. Yet, after a quick twist of his right wrist he firmly pushed the door open with wide eyes.
The scene immediately contradicted his thoughts. There was very little to see, only pieces of crumpled paper occasionally covering an aspect of a dusty wooden floor. The nails on the floorboards protruded quite a bit and he nearly tripped on his first step. She was facing the far left corner while sitting on the floor. From her hunched over physique he could tell she was writing. He could also hear her delicate typing. She stopped as soon as she noticed a presence, but failed to turn around. She merely stopped as if to listen to a whispering one could scarcely hear.
Outside a lone dog was barking in the distance. The familiar smell of the restaurant downstairs emanated through both their windows. He stood there for about a minute just looking at her back, at her horrible typing posture. He tried to think of something to say, but really he hoped she would turn around and say something first. Even eye contact would help him find the words to help them progress to another and better place of mind, but nothing happened. She never resumed typing and hardly moved. Eventually, He retreated by taking the same path he used to advance and closed the door gently behind him. Who would want to ruin the moment of writing?
That’s precisely when the rain began. At first it was a drizzle that followed him as he walked from his room to his couch and back towards his room again. By the time he advanced towards the tan and stained couch for the second time the rain picked up its pace. Now whole droplets were falling from his head and little puddles were growing on the linoleum. He knew she’d get mad when she found the mess. He could hear her voice already:
What, you expect me to clean up after you? I’m not your mom. You’re
a man aren’t you? I work all day, why do I have to come home to
a dirty place? When I wash something it should at least be clean for me
when I use it! What do you expect? For me to constantly clean after you?
But he couldn’t help it and he didn’t truly care. He resented it. Of course he was a man! How could she say that? Doesn’t she know how much that hurts…what that means to a man to hear?
Soon it was pouring inside. He heard warnings for a flash flood and was told to take cover by strangers. Incase of lightening he should stay on dry land, but he didn’t want to. No, he demanded to stay immersed and to feel the coldness of the water on his skin. He lusted for the pain of skies to drench him so as to feel connected with his inability to connect.
After approximately ten minutes he grew cold and felt his hands shiver as he rubbed them over his legs. We sat cross legged on the floor in the midst of a quickly growing puddle of rain water. He cooled off and felt cold. From beneath her door he saw a light coming out. Was it sunny over there? Was it warm with clear skies? In this condition it was worth discovering the truth.
He slowly stood up and felt the quasi numbness of his legs and knees briefly paralyze his ascent. Thoroughly soaked, he trudged towards the door. Already he could feel a sort of warmness wafting from her door only 8 to 10 feet away. Nothing could keep him out, he felt assured that as soon as he crossed that threshold that his bones would warm and his shivers fall from him.
Now right outside her door, he could feel the heat. The light sneaking through the door cracks were brighter than he had originally realized. It was more than merely warm in there, it was hot. Why? He reached for the knob as it nearly burnt his hand, but braved the heat and turned.
It must have been 90 degrees in there. No, maybe even a hundred. The crumbled papers he previously saw upon her floor now appeared dry and thinned out. There was aridity to the room. Surprisingly she was still facing the corner. This time, however, she wasn’t typing and she wasn’t moving. Already the corners of his shirt and pants had begun to dry and he felt quite comfortable. In fact, although he hadn’t noticed, he stopped shivering while standing outside her door. His curiosity ultimately distracted him from his ice hard pain.
The wood panels this time appeared older and somewhat bleached out by the brightness of her room. He approached her while leaving a slight foot trail of water on his way. Seconds after stepping down each wet impression would evaporate back into the air.
When he touched her should she immediately turned around. Her face was slightly burnt from the sun and she couldn’t speak. The dryness of it all caused her to lose her voice, that is, her throat was far too dry. She looked weak…weak and reddish. Remembering the comparative cool wetness of his shirt, he dropped to his knees and pulled her in to cool her down. A moment later, he helped her to her feet so they could leave the room. She could hardly walk and depended upon him to keep her self firmly balanced.

Dead Building

Element all been in
It
Passing by to all ready
Gone
Over with the birth marked
Brown
From that one angry sun
Hay wire climbing through translucent barns
Faceted
With the half glass half soap
Of one sea once unclean
Un roped, let loose
Hand some with out the tie
leash snapped
two parts fix ate it claimed the break its own
hand tied un relinquished
a structure unburdened by structure
permeable but under stood

kball

http://brooklynkickball.com/IMG/TEAMS/061707/XR5T009172_1.jpg

Definitive for a 360° point
(a spherical eye)
engrossed absorbing
(a black hole of perception)
allowing nothing out
(grabbing mercifullesly)
unconditionally poignant in observation of variations:
stems facing upwards
mechanic pillars breaking sky
shrouded airy remnants of twelve billion hands
(reaping worth to them
in the spiral of
asserting value
with a body made mind)

Memory envelopes comparison
keeps contrast warm while growing bodies:
bulbous empires unscathed through
endless kinesis
(an intangible corridor both blind and black)
overloaded with possibilities
(color begging for witnesses
to see the variation
let individuality reign as a thing amongst things,
a heap)

nit grit shit

Press

Sri Lanka
Sarajevo
On the front porch
J.R.R. Tolken
hanging on to shelves
hugging sacrificial wood
in hopes of survival
recording the lack of water
manipulated for beauty
in dendritic patterns resurfacing
at the worshipping
of heat

Continuous Narrative (one and many)

Elizabeth is dead
is the first thing
I ever wrote on a wall
I was five
it is not the last time
I wrote on a wall

Vowel covered bedrooms
wrapped in newsprint
retelling the same stories
again with a change
a relevant ripple acting out
the tidal wave
covering cities in a blanket
thread in oxygen.

Gradually the end overflowed
Poured out along wood floors
Sought cracks amongst tiles
individually placed by hands
speaking to eyes

Putting out the fire
Inhaling trials of smoke
Tasting the lack of tomorrow
already replaced
by the return

Tasting the gain of tomorrow
Spread on top of scales
Bowing down to gravity’s pull
inside

Conscious going again
to the same house
abandoned on a street
adopted by trees
sleepy at the sound of a highway
Constantly copying the words of wind

To the same steps
a red carpet
leading up to brick


Walking through Walls

Wanting and not wanting

Oscillation hinges on
between
amongst purple blackberries
Wildly teasing out red
making fun of its intensity
marooned in a burgundy
a stalemate
who plays out the game?
King versus King
the Queens died long ago
maybe even first
acting a pawn in the front line
willing

no no gesso

the act of continuing

Each step precedes the next
outside meditation
Immersed in the fortress of words
endangered by
renegade beetles emboldened by the sun.

Our conifer is talking
but only
whales perceive the sound
in a rush
while shifting to the next wave
coming on.

Coming on
thick waves of snow
Building fortresses around each object
dressed down
to match the rest of winter
to these movements.

Locking in an expression
laying down, sitting, thinking, working,
walking up subway stairs
ambivalent seats open and close like firecrackers
set off
by tiny shiftings of rail.

for all

O omni bus
sprout edifice
Scab flowers unroll
4 circular buses
unrolled flowers
scabbed in the eddy fence
spouting o omni

numerology...we guess.

What, for example, should be made of the following similarities (not all of them numerological) between U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, taken from a far more extensive list in Martin Gardner's The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (1985)?
Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
Both were assassinated on a Friday.
Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theatre; Kennedy was killed riding in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company.
Both were succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.
The first name of Lincoln's private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy's private secretary was Lincoln.
John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both have 15 letters.
The first public suggestion that Lincoln should run for president proposed that his running mate should be John Kennedy. (John Pendleton Kennedy was a Maryland politician.)
Shift each letter of FBI forward by six letters in the alphabet and you get LHO, the initials of Lee Harvey Oswald.
One explanation for coincidences of this kind is selective reporting. Anything that fits is kept; anything that does not is discarded. Thus, the coincidence of day of the week for the assassinations is emphasized; the differences in month and number of day in the month are ignored. (Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, Kennedy on November 22.) More subtly, only one choice is made from many possibilities, the one that maintains the numerological pattern. Sometimes the date of birth is used, sometimes the date of election. If those do not work, how about the dates of college graduation, marriage, firstborn child, first election to office, or death? Moreover, some “facts” turn out to be false. The correct birth date for Booth is now thought to be 1838, not 1839, and Booth actually fled to a barn. It is common for coincidences to be exaggerated in this manner. And once one starts looking…Lincoln had a beard. Did Kennedy? No, he was clean-shaven. Do not mention beards, then.
Many of the coincidences listed here are exaggerations, lies, elaborations chosen from an infinite range of potential targets, or the result of a hidden selective process. Still, a few of the coincidences are quite startling. Although rational explanations exist, a true believer cannot be convinced. It is in this fertile territory that number mysticism thrives.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9390162/number-symbolism

moo knows

May 29, 2007
N.Y. Steer's 6 - Week Romp Ends in Capture
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:38 a.m. ET
MATTITUCK, N.Y. (AP) -- An escaped steer's six-week romp through back yards, roadways and beaches ended when he was finally cornered and returned to his owner, authorities said.
The roughly 600-pound bovine, named Moo, was captured Saturday evening after showing up on a crowded beach.
Moo led police and a veterinarian through sand, swampland and into a back yard, where his escapade finally ended. The steer was shot with a tranquilizer dart, said veterinarian Dr. John Andresen, then taken back to Greenport farmer Joseph Barszczewski.
The farmer said Sunday that the steer -- secured with a rope -- seemed content now in the company of a horse and dog.
''It looks good right now after a very ugly whole situation,'' Barszczewski said.
Back in April, the newly arrived Moo broke through a metal fence, starting his life on the run, Barszczewski said. The farmer had just bought the steer to raise for slaughter.
Moo hunkered down in woods near Barszczewski's vegetable farm and then began to roam, covering about 10 miles of eastern Long Island, police said. At times, the steer turned up in homeowners' yards; at other points, he nearly caused car accidents on a local road.
''He didn't charge,'' said Southold Police Sgt. Raymond VanEtten. ''He wasn't an aggressive-type animal -- he just was on a mission not to get captured.''

not knowing naught noing

Synergistic capsule floating against
a rejecting oil claiming continuity
as a non-chore, as fact, as immutable
against water downed claims of the same
not being the same.
Differentiated outside withers against
the backdrop of another one born,
ten toes and all,
recorded in books bound to outlast
the materiality of feather shrouded skin
basking within telos and incapable of denying
not knowing
just the same.

Attachment to Fleeting

Rotating dice between two hands
They bounce and add
Then three fall out across the grass
And tell all
Before rolling away

We chase after in pint sized shoes
With the shoelaces chronically untied
No worries, no life
Only intermittence of an easy limbo
Lacking obligation, a destination
Acting out the clouds imploding
Mimicking multilayered waves
Exploding in white stripes leaping
For the running

china

office products
from dayton,
ohio
fresh from somewhere
in that china
divided yet
all the same
to an american
who calls plates
china

oil pastels

Oil pastels can be used directly in dry form; when done lightly, the resulting effects are similar to pastel chalks. Heavy build-ups can create an almost impasto effect. Once applied to a surface, the oil pastel pigment can be manipulated with a brush moistened in white spirit, turpentine, linseed oil, or another type of vegetable oil or solvent. Alternatively, the drawing surface can be oiled before drawing or the pastel itself can be dipped in oil. It should be noted that some of these solvents pose serious health concerns.
Oil pastels are considered a fast medium because they are easy to paint with and convenient to carry; for this reason they are often used for sketching, but can also be used for sustained works. Because oil pastels never dry out completely, they need to be protected somehow, often by applying a special fixative to the painting or placing the painting in a sleeve and then inside a frame. There are some known durability problems: firstly, as the oil doesn't dry it keeps permeating the paper. This process degrades both the paper and the colour layer as it reduces the flexibility of the latter. A second problem is that the stearic acid makes the paper brittle. Lastly both the stearic acid and the wax will be prone to efflorescence or "wax bloom", the building-up of fatty acids and wax on the surface into an opaque white layer. This is easily made transparent again by gentle polishing with a woolen cloth; but the three effects together result in a colour layer consisting mainly of brittle stearic acid on top of brittle paper, a combination that will crumble easily. A long term concern is simple evaporation: palmitic acid is often present and half of it will have evaporated within forty years; within 140 years half of the stearic acid will have disappeared. Impregnation of the entire art work by beeswax has been evaluated as a conservation measure.

real tooooooo000000

Kristeva, Lacan and.....Zizek? : Psychosexual Development

JULIA KRISTEVA for the most part follows the general parameters of Lacan's model of psychosexual development (see the first Lacan module); however, she adds a number of elements that recast the valences of Lacan's terms. In particular, Kristeva offers a more central place for the maternal and the feminine in the subject's psychosexual development. For this reason, she has been particularly influential on feminist psychoanalysts looking for a less sexist and phallocentric model for the subject.
Here, then, are Kristeva's variations on a Lacanian theme. I will here repeat elements from the Lacan Module on Psychosexual Development, clarifying how Kristeva reworks elements of each stage:

0-6 months of age. Kristeva refers to this stage as the chora. In the earliest stage of development, you were dominated by a chaotic mix of perceptions, feelings, and needs. You did not distinguish your own self from that of your mother or even the world around you. Rather, you spent your time taking into yourself everything that you experienced as pleasurable without any acknowledgment of boundaries. This is the stage, then, when you were closest to the pure materiality of existence, or what Lacan terms "the Real." At this stage, you were, according to Kristeva, purely dominated by your drives (both life drives and the death drive).

4-8 months of age. Kristeva posits that between the chora and the mirror stage occurs a crucial pre-linguistic stage that she associates with the abject (see the next module on the abject). During this time in your development, you began to establish a separation between yourself and the maternal, thus creating those boundaries between self and other that must be in place before the entrance into language: "The abject confronts us, on the other hand, and this time within our personal archeology, with our earliest attempts to release the hold of maternal entity even before ex-isting outside of her, thanks to the autonomy of language. It is a violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling" (13). Like the subject's confrontation with death, the threat of falling back into the pre-linguistic stage of the chora strikes the subject with fear and horror because it means giving up all the linguistic structures by which we order our social world of meaning. Kristeva sees the stage of abjection as "a precondition of narcissism" (13), which is to say, a precondition for the narcissism of the mirror stage, which comes next.

6-18 months of age. This stage, which Lacan terms the "mirror stage," was a central moment in your development. The "mirror stage" entails a "libidinal dynamism" (Écrits 2) caused by the young child's identification with his own image, what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego." This recognition of the self's image precedes the entrance into language, after which the subject can understand the place of that image of the self within a larger social order, in which the subject must negotiate his or her relationship with others. This "Ideal-I" is important precisely because it represents to the subject a simplified, bounded form of the self, as opposed to the turbulent chaotic perceptions, feelings, and needs felt by the infant. In particular, this creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of phantasies in the fully developed subject. It establishes what Lacan terms the "imaginary order" and, through the imaginary, continues to assert its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the next stage of development. Kristeva offers a different spin on Lacan by emphasizing the fact that this stage is preceded and troubled by the subject's relation to the abject: "Abjection is therefore a kind of narcissistic crisis" (14).

18 months to 4 years of age. The acquisition of language during this next stage of development further separated you from a connection to the Real (from the actual materiality of things). Lacan builds on such semiotic critics as Ferdinand de Saussure to show how language is a system that makes sense only within its own internal logic of differences: the word, "father," only makes sense in terms of those other terms it is defined with or against (mother, "me," law, the social, etc.). Once you entered into the differential system of language, it forever afterwards determined your perception of the world around you, so that the intrusion of the Real's materiality becomes a traumatic event, albeit one that is quite common since our version of "reality" is built over the chaos of the Real (both the materiality outside you and the chaotic impulses inside you). Kristeva adds to Lacan her sense that language is ultimately a fetish, an effort to cover over the lack inherent in our relation to death, materiality, and the abject: "It is perhaps unavoidable that, when a subject confronts the factitiousness of object relation, when he stands at the place of the want that founds it, the fetish becomes a life preserver, temporary and slippery, but nonetheless indispensable. but is not exactly language our ultimate and inseparable fetish?" (37).