any paradigm can be proven true

i know this is a painful fact. we want our vision of reality to be true for everyone. otherwise, we feel alone.

hey, wake up. you are alone!

so it's a matter of constructing (choosing) the world in which you wish to live. this can be the dream world, the religious world, the artistic. or the scientific. if you haven't read heisenberg's autobiography, i heartily recommend it. why shouldn't he believe in the 'uncertainty principle' after everything he'd been through.

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Beyond-Conversations-Werner-Heisenberg/dp/0061316229/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5

the sparticist uprising in munich, the rise of the nazi party, the making of rockets (to avoid making atomic weapons for the hitler). if we knew history, we wouldn't be surprised by the everyday news.

yes, you can prove there is a god, that there is no god, that we vanish without a trace or inhabit a tavern forever after.

the consequence is: you can believe whatever you want, as long as you don't force it on other people (be happy only you live in your universe), and because anything can be proven true, we live in a world of mystery. if you can learn to live without answers, you'll mine a rich life.

and speaking of the mysterious, just watched this documentary on the composer phillip glass:

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Portrait-Philip-Twelve-Parts/dp/B001PCNZGI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1262673149&sr=8-1

i find his music mesmerizing. of course, it's not for everyone. his mind somehow inhabits the same space as mine, yet in my own case i'd rather create preparations and climaxes, rather traditional, classical stuff.

okay, new year's resolutions. find a way to physically exercise and learn to love it. secondly, not worry about creating new stuff, but working with the mountain of inspirations i've already had.

sounds easy, doesn't it? alas, we usually have to be scared to death to make a real change.

here are photos from a delightful review, 'everything but the kitchen sink' put together by allison rich.

www.pbase.com/wwp/sink

a question of anonymity

new year's in berkeley full of emotion. guess we have to get out of town to loosen up and face new challenges. afterwards, chico felt like heaven.

it's the trees. the feeling of things being on a manageable scale. also, just the right amount of invisibility. freedom: the balance between being irresponsible and in demand.

my landlord/retired therapist says, 'at least three satisfaction-with-life studies (for parents) say the curve drops lower as kids age, the bottom at their children's puberty.' i'm so bewildered why people have children. i just don't understand it. am i missing the parent gene?

of course, i've always thought evolution expands us in different ways. the unmarried serve as an example of independence. they teach. they take care of orphans, the nuns and priests. the intermediaries.

you see, not everyone born ordinary. often the oddballs go gay or into poetry, into wandering and philosophy rather than parenting. it's as if the whole human gene-pool requires many different characters and abilities. we're we pure and all one, we'd die out in an instant.

so, here we are, one of the crowd yet not too invisible. i remember the boarding-house in new zealand where men seemed to be disappearing without ever existing. how do you make your mark? or is it necessary?

i'm vanishing into my past. how do you hold on? this weekend visited

http://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Theatrical-Release/dp/B002VPE1AM/ref=sr_tr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1262503753&sr=1-1

and

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Don-Story-Leslie-Caron/dp/B001KZOUXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1262503814&sr=1-1


whether our lives epic or purely personal, they make a contribution, if only to those close to us. as james joyce wrote, 'history is a nightmare from which i am trying to awake."

house-sat for laurie this new year's:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/laurie

continuity becomes precious.

enlightenment, the red herring

you can chase it as much as you want, but the moment of glory comes and goes. the brilliant sunset transforms into night, and you have to accept the milky way. the unifying sun divides into a thousand thousand stars. your choices become harder, given the potentials. the poet william everson says americans driven crazy by the endless possibilities.

once i compared studies of zen and therapy. they led to the same conclusion. once you've accepted your own authority, you've a freedom you haven't known before. you bowed at the zen master's (the therapist's feet) until you say, 'fuck you, i'm seeing things for myself and going my own way.'

of course, this can lead to terrible misadventures and mistakes. so be it. the flute teacher made the disciple play the same tune over and over again, until he really got disgusted. so he escaped into the world, accumulated a fortune and lost it, found love and destroyed it, decayed in his body. when he returned to the village and played the tune the master had taught him, people said, 'we have never heard anything so beautiful,' and they wept.

let's face if, enlightenment comes and goes.

suddenly, i'm bored with photography. i can't bear this particular relationship to the world, being the fly on the wall. yet i recognize it has been a way to ecstasy: 'everyone is enlightened but me.'

i look back and think, 'i've been so lucky, never to stay in one state so long.'

i've always loved utopias, fairs and festivals. leaving them, a great shock. do we only grow through loss?

the county fair: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/county_fair&page=all

think for yourself

now, i have to admit it. in general i avoid social gatherings. i used to get a fist-like tightness in the stomach. that has disappeared (much like the fear and visions i had in the early days at the lookout: crazy people throwing rocks through the windows). now i merely regret afterwards all the stupid things i said!

yes, i can be very competitive and forceful. yes, i try to fight it. no luck. and so, at the xmas dinner in the co-housing common-house, i shot off my mouth.

today the conversation turned to heidegger (nazi or not?), the holocaust, civil war in sri lanka, the philosophies of josiah royce and wittgenstein. everything someone else said made me think of something. alas, all-too-often i was eager to say it and cut in.

this reminds me. i took a night class in dramatic literature when i lived in oxford uk. most of the people in class were americans from the air force base. since drama my passion and study, i knew a lot and did an enormous amount of talking. suddenly, i realized i wasn't learning anything. i fell pretty much silent. and you know what, eventually almost every point i would have made would be made by someone else.

well, there it is, i've defeated myself! and perhaps that's the answer. a friend wrote that i seemed tortured. at first i thought, 'that's ridiculous. i'm enjoying all this. i believe in the present.' but of course, i'm always arguing with myself. joyce cary said, 'to be a fiction writer you must express the opposite of what you believe as strongly as what you do.' or as i once so famously said to myself, 'put your drama into your work and not into your life.'

unfortunately, i'm reading http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Secrets-Steve-Jobs-Insanely/dp/0071636080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261796653&sr=8-1

the number one point is you must have a passion about your project, idea, whatever it is you believe other people need. ach, no wonder i've never been a good salesman for myself. i want you to be like you and not me. what a dilemma. maybe all these blogs mean 'whatever this guy's done, it's the last thing i want to do.' and yet...i thought i was setting an example.

anyway, reading the jobs book, i've been asking myself, 'what's your messianic mission?' and all i can say is what i was saying at dinner, 'think for yourself.' with the proviso you must study the history of everything. 'nothing can come from nothing,' said king lear.

the psychologist c.g. jung said, 'everything important in culture created by the individual.' i couldn't put it any better.

just posted scanned bali slides: www.pbase.com/wwp/bali yes, live your own life, not the one other people want you to.

boy, that pint of celebration ale from sierra nevada brewery makes me feel like a genius. could everything i've said here be wrong?

MERRY XMAS!

thank god for film (video)

cause it erases time. (a friend, sandy pepper, once said, 'time is what makes us human.')

does the future exist? that is the most important question you can ask. if you say no, you're a process person. if you say yes, you are able to sacrifice much to reach goals. absolutely two different ways of living.

personally, i'm a process person. when i was in college, i remember saying, 'the future does not exist.' hell, there it was, the curse of a life. it meant i would never really be able to plan anything. i envisioned myself as a clown tumbling through the universe. damn, i still do.

ah, if only i could have been a new yorker, working my way through an mba, setting myself up in paris as the head of american express, letting the dollars roll in, living in the fourth arrondissement

suffering succotash, not to be. i had to roam around bali, the pictures here: www.pbase.com/wwp/bali wandering in and out of night-time dances, climbing volcanoes in the early hours. the imperative: life has to be an adventure.

well, here it is, the verge of old age. very little in the bank. don't drive a new car. renting a room (which actually feels very luxurious and which i love), not concerned for a plot in the cemetary, ashes scattered in the woods enough.

on the other hand, the process person needs those who live with goals. they've helped me enormously. and i recommend if you're an old hippie who can't stand setting up a retirement fund, that you team-up with those who can.

the two need each other. the present-obsessed person supplies the needed energy for the one who would live to save for a comfortable old-age. and the latter supplies a certain continuity for the future-challenged.

we don't live to be alone, and fool ourselves if we think we are.

new photos searching for shamanism: www.pbase.com/wwp/loop and www.pbase.com/wwp/loop2

sound in mind and body

video, what's that? i was raised on radio. we weren't invaded by a television set til i was fourteen. and that was too late. at seventeen i decided you either watched television or did something else in your life. so i've seen very little of it.

i can't stand the hype. it's not the ads, rather the over-the-top energy everyone displays. tough on the nerves. and i always hated the fact it killed conversations. sure, you can share a football game or a talk show, however usually everybody sinks into a blank stare and silence.

no, i'm not from another planet, but sometimes i feel i am. and though i'm passionate about movies, video art seems wasted on me. i like the still photograph, the unmoving painting, the sculpture which, unlike human beings, invites me to walk around it and caress it with my eyes.

so, it is a bit of a personal revolution to have a miniature hd camcorder myself. up to this point i've used it in snippets. and that's led to some unexpected perceptions. here's a bit from fall at mt. hough lookout, amidst a storm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQcG8dFhOU

what strikes me is the quiet, despite the rain and wind. and here is one taken on the train pulling into oakland, ca:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nte72DnOPpI

the scene feels much harsher, not just visually. taken out of context the mechanical sounds scrape the brain. and here's one waiting for a play, reservoir dolls, to begin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWp34QxzyWo

obviously you have to be in the mood for companionship. the audience adds to that push which turns stage performers into miniature gods. (never fall in love with one until you've known them offstage!)

putting these pieces of an autumn life together impresses me with how much not only scenes but their audio affect me. to leap from one to the other is energizing, as long as one state or another does not go on too long. variety is the health of life, not just the spice.

here are the final photos from chico dance theater 2009. a real pleasure for me and i think everyone involved.

www.pbase.com/wwp/dress1

www.pbase.com/wwp/dress2

www.pbase.com/wwp/choreoshoot

www.pbase.com/wwp/shoot2

i've also posted video nippets from the class. now this is where video gets useful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv05yjgx4do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88PqPxjY95c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbDI30x0rVE

your dreams at night your other life

isn't it terrible to waste your time sleeping? well, here's the key to not doing so.

regard those dreams as a parallel existence. the wise say we're dreaming all day anyway. we rarely wake up. and when we do, it's such a shock we go right back to sleep, inhabiting the past and future, never the present.

yes, these thoughts proved by last night, when i once again wandered my magic city which goes by the name of 'new york.' no, it bears no resemblence to the real city. rather it's a combination of new dehli (which certainly can't be real, it contains such contradictions), tokyo, wellington, munich. obviously, if you cross all those cities with each other, you end up with - xanadu.

i tossed and turned. revolutions. the communard of 1871 paris. plenty of foolishness and dead bodies. in the end i escaped (after being a temporary revolutionary) in a laundry basket. am i really a conservative? the thought disturbed me so much i woke up!

yes, don't try to interpret your dreams. they don't mean anything, except they're the diary of a life you live alongside this one. it's your chance to multiply experience. to feel less bounded and controlled.

chang tzu dreamed of being a butterfly. then he woke up. or did he? was he chang tzu, who dreamed of flying? or was he a butterfly, dreaming the gravity-bound philosopher?

like every dancer, i sometimes feel airborne. only to land on bad feet! yet, perhaps i've only dreamt i've come to earth. why bother? who's to say that second beer not the real truth, the feeling of being blessed?

more chico dance theater pics at

www.pbase.com/wwp/dress1

www.pbase.com/wwp/dress2

www.pbase.com/wwp/shoot2

www.pbase.com/wwp/choreoshoot