everyone is enlightened except me

this morning i have no answers. why are we here? accident? to learn lessons, eventually escaping the wheel of karma? to work our way to heaven, or hell? the more i ask myself, the less i understand. does time really exist, or is it merely a human invention, misperception?

as for personality, how permanent is it? friends i've known haven't changed, unless they've suffered brain-damage. what about extreme suffering? elie weisel says of those inmates of auschwitz, "To the victim of the 'concentrationary' system, it no longer mattered that he had been an intellectual labourer, angry student or devoted husband. A few beatings, a few screams turned him into a blank, his loss of identity complete."

how much does education change our behavior? does it make us more thoughtful and kind, or cruel and self-centered? weisel also writes, "Those engaged in its practice (murder) did not belong to a gutter society of misfits...Many held degrees in philosophy, sociology, biology, general medicine, psychiatry and the fine arts." a movie going around right now - girl with the dragon tattoo - certainly takes this point of view.

one friend keeps telling me i write (think) pessimistically! how absurd. at least i think he's wrong. what i'm trying to do is get down to the essential. and though i have no answers, i do know we always have a choice, how to take an insult, what to do in an emergency, to get married or not. yes, sometimes these decisions have to be made lightning fast, and we may very well go astray, be wrong. yet we are the ones picking the path.

certainly, actions have consequences. sometimes we can't foresee them. lady macbeth goes crazy from committing murder. she thought herself made of sterner stuff. you turned left when you should have turned right and got lost. all we can do in such situations is accept responsibility. to blame others a waste of breath. ,

to know yourself. that certainly helps when at a crossroad. you can ask for help, only you can accept or refuse it. i keep thinking of the good samaritan killed on camera, lying on the sidewalk dying while dozens of people walk past (one even turns him over and walks away). he'd been stabbed helping a woman being mugged. the irony of it painful to contemplate.

no, i don't think i ultimately have a gloomy view. guess i'm really an existentialist, in the classic french philosophy of sartre and camus. what we do comes back to us. at least we can know that.

see the projects for meso-american art history. creating something with a sense of culture and history, it helps us possess another time and place not our own.

www.pbase.com/wwp/meso

conspiracy theory as a grab for power

i hope this doesn't happen to you, a least not more than once. after a viewing of the movie 'white ribbon' about a village in northern germany prior to wwi where the adults turn all their children into evil demons, i got talking with a guy who seemed reasonable.

that's the way these people suck you in. you think you're having a rational discussion, actually being listened too. eventually, however, the truth is revealed. they will tell you the cia bringing all the drugs into the country to ruin people (he said it), and then, of course 9/11, the buildings deliberately blown up from within. it goes on and on.

suddenly, you're being dominated, brutalized by the supposed logic of all this. and if you bring up anything else, that suddenly is a huge conspiracy. the point of all this is to escape responsibility. for example, turns out he's getting medical aid from the state of california, which probably means he's got disability and living on the dole. he constantly bit the hand that feeds him, basically us who pay taxes, though the villains called obama, reagan, etc.

if you try to say 'politics is the art of the possible' and 'we here live higher on the hog than the majority of people in the world,' he/she will brush it off. 'they' are always doing it and never 'me'.

facts of ill-doing explode into what he said at the end, as i refused to partake any more, 'i believe all people are evil.' and that too may be at the basis of conspiracy theorists. i told him what i thought, 'to believe in such stuff is to waste your life.' but as i drove home, i realized, in a sense, it's not. you've something to completely occupy your mind, you can bludgeon other people in any situation without revealing your own hypocrisy, a great way to be self-righteous and get not just a feeling of power but actually, by pretending to partake in democracy, and then demolishing any possibility of it.

so, if you have any conspiracy theory friends, realize they're no friend at all, using you as a front.

new pics of a community talent show:

www.pbase.com/wwp/talent

human monogamy is a myth

i know this is no news to you (there's even a book by that title) but i attended a lecture in the anthropology forum yesterday where the young phd spoke on 'the evolution of human sexuality'.

i did learn some interesting facts. the male gorilla has the smallest penis and the human the largest. looking at any gay magazine for men you'll see some spectacular examples of the latter. alas, chimpanzees have larger testes and healthier sperm. win a few, lose a few.

why this has happened results in many academic disputes. evolution makes strange bedfellows. however, she attempted to chart much more contentious territory. why do women hide their ovulation time and how come everybody makes it behind closed doors? she maintained humans follow these procedures due to being monogamous, while other primates not.

well, i didn't want to rain on her parade. she's far too good-looking with a fun sense of the ridiculous and applying for a post here. i did raise my hand and asked about the affect of private land and inheritance? she obviously hadn't thought about it, nor had the anthropology teachers in the room.

maybe cause we're like fish who don't know what water is. our modern universe totally maintained by the belief in, and laws supporting, private property. people stay monogamous, when they do, mostly for practical reasons. habit, children, fear of alimony and loneliness, etc.

years ago i gave a talk in this very same forum on 'the anthropology of love.' the most interesting book i found published by helen fisher in 1994:

http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Love-Natural-History-Marriage/dp/0449908976/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273275515&sr=8-28

fisher's thesis: men stick around til the kids turn four, this due to the human child being the most helpless and vulnerable of all species, then it's wife-swapping time. she looked the timings of divorce, for example, and much of it follows this pattern. of course, the fun stuff about singles bars. turns out, women always give the first signal of interest, the man being oblivious but responding unconsciously and making a move. i'm sure this would be entertaining reading for you.

i once had an uncle in a small indiana town who said, 'you'd be surprised by the number of women around here i've been to bed with.' we tend to hide such adventures cause it's dangerous (irate wives and husbands, most murders happen in the family), illegal, and threatens our security. thankfully, the last fifty years have changed our mating habits for the better. i give most of the credit to the pill and the woman's movement.

so, though i didn't burst the lecturer's balloon, i was laughing inwardly. and all of us have wandering eyes, regardless of sexual orientation. only the wise know to keep their hands in their pocket.

new pics:

www.pbase.com/wwp/rain

www.pbase.com/wwp/species

www.pbase.com/wwp/fest

at the endangered species faire nobody put up a booth for humans. hmm, fish in water, short-sighted.

how to escape from saving the world

first of all - need i say it - this can't be politically correct. we desperately wish to save the world from pollution, the underclass, volcanoes, economic collapse. yes, indeed, we hope to save the earth from everything except ourselves.

the conservative wishes to feather his/her nest, as does the liberal, the radical and everything in between.

take the first. everything is about me me me. my bank-account, my home in a gated community, my children and their private schools. dare i venture: this breed has no social conscience and must be forced by circumstances to be mildly generous when the mob refuses to let them eat cake.

ah, but does this really differ from the liberal? as long as i'm comfortable, i'll take part in parades, support good causes, walk the talk, and so on. unfortunately, these too wish to make the world safe for themselves.

and the radicals! power, power, power. every theory a grab for it. one friend recently called himself an agrarian revolutionist. well, we know what that led to in cambodia. pol pot forced everyone back into the jungle, deserting the cities and giving young boys machine guns to create the killing fields. my friend, he too benefits from the present state of affairs, and digging in the dirt the last thing he'd ever want to d0, being a truly civilized creature.

who's left? the spiritual, certainly. abandon ambition, live in the present, the universe is perfect as it is, one huge ashram. so many rules, the way to eat, sleep, and have sex without enjoying it. they can't escape ambition, the desire to recreate social life in their own image.

uh, maybe the messiah complex we can't elude, deluding ourselves into thinking we might. however, one thing we can all do is pick up garbage and paint out graffiti. kathmandu drove me crazy (so much for the sacred east). trash lay in the street in front of every home and business. in ten minutes they could have cleaned it up. and the human poop above the burning ghats sending bodies on their smoky way to the next life, how could they not smell it?

or take europe and graffiti. returning in the nineties after the fifties and sixties. i simply couldn't stomach the desecration everywhere. so much for the home of sacred beauty. this tortured public art sets my teeth on edge.

so, you can save the earth except from yourself. get out the plastic bags and the paint brushes. eternity begins at home.

redone pics of 'why torture is wrong, and those who love them'

www.pbase.com/wwp/tortx

obviously, it stirred up this tragic meditation.

on giving up my room

is it spring fever bringing on this rash act? two housemates moving out. the whole constellation changes. the landlord brings a couple from the alternative community, a masseuse and a yogi instructer. they've known each other six months. i know they'll soon be yelling and throwing pie tins. every couple goes though it. not only that, they've lots of friends. i suspect the living room will fill up with clouds of ganja.

of course, he may not rent to them, the two of us left protesting. however, it's unlikely two more hermits will be found. alas, those types i like living with, being one myself. all of us go out to socialize, at home quiet and secluded as mice avoiding a cat.

true, summer's a coming. the lookout, house-sitting. at the moment it seems it will last forever. however, i need a plan. argentina? that's a thought. i did a report in the sixth grade on south america and i've never made it beyond costa rica. am i ready for adventure, not having a purpose? where could i meet lovely women and do the tango, clicking pictures the whole while?

it's a risk. what if it doesn't work out, like the time i gave up a scholarship to stanford in directing, returned to new york to find the director who'd promised me a job had inherited money and skipped the country? damn, that was the kind of winter that tries men's souls. i ended up in london at xmas, watching the gas-meter wheel go round. i didn't travel for another twenty years.

okay, okay, time has passed, a significant birthday coming up. if i don't take the leap of faith and stupidity, when will i? as my therapist friend says, almost all people wait too long to kill themselves, too bed-ridden to do it in the end.

trouble is, i'm not sure i believe in my old myth of myself, ie. poet destined to become posthumously famous, his plays performed to universal acclaim. that was the purpose of the peregrinations: experience finally set down in deathless dialogue, sonnets that made even street-people weep.

yet i believe we have to keep renewing ourselves, until death do us part from this our well-seasoned body.

photos from 'why torture is wrong, and the people who love them.'

www.pbase.com/wwp/tort

ironically, people move to this town to get away from the cruel world. can theater overcome this oversight? check it out,

http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/

and they shall no everything and come to nothing

it's a very strange time. we've all the knowledge that's ever been discovered by humankind at our finger-tips, all the creations: music, dance, movies, history, the list never-ending (almost). yet many prefer ignorance. 'let's throw the bath water out with the baby.'

have we lost our stamina? t.s. eliot maintained we can't stand too much reality. my god, the reality we can stand seems little enough. yet perhaps we do more knowing less, a cause for optimism in the face of change. bizarre, how much is lost upon those who would adopt a certain posture to save themselves from ambiguity. i call it 'the mad tea party.' angry and crazed. if they can preserve their little piece of the world they will be saved.

alas, in a hundred years we'll all be dead. give that a thought. of course, the grand religions promise paradise, eternal life, and rebirth. and i'm not immune. the last seems the most interesting. at least you can imagine you've met your friends (and enemies) before and will again, each a parent, then lover, slave, teacher, acrobat to entertain. even if this means the joys and pains of a bodily life don't end for a long time.

heaven, on the other hand, envisioned by the imaginatively impaired, seems a pretty dull place. the devil has all the good lines and the best people choose the fires of thought in hell over the blindness of bliss.

what i mean to say is, whatever you have is better than what you don't. i hope my friend ed, once an avid cyclist and now a paraplegic, will find pleasure in expanding his mind with an ipad and the one finger he can move. it's not easy changing from the physical ecstasy of rolling down an incline to climbing the steep mountain of an educated and enlightened intelligence. i wish him well.

new photos at www.pbase.com/wwp/mf

a few old opens by a younger and wiser me: www.pbase.com/wwp/quatsch

and last but not least a brief peek into the artistic process: www.pbase.com/wwp/stud

gambling is fun, if you don't win

that's on ebay, i mean. twice this weekend i won what i wanted, but just barely. i calculated what i thought others would bid, then went a bit higher. right both times. poorer, but proud. and ultimately foolish.

consumer therapy (as my mother called it) can send you into a tailspin, downward spiral, to debt, bankruptcy, and the grave. how i've avoided it for so long i don't know.

yes, went on a binge of buying this weekend. first, the new camera. then lenses, a flash, adapters. it all got out of hand. i'm anxiously watching my bank account to see if it all passes, my teeth on edge. the stress of watching the seconds click by and quickly bidding in the last ten, well, i'm a wreck.

of course, i love getting packages in the mail. as a kid i mailed off cereal boxtops and plagued the postman every day, worse than a barking dog. and nothing's changed. i could say, 'amazon is theft,' but i love it. usually i buy books. that's pretty cheap. and when the gifts come, i rip off the packaging like it's christmas.

luckily, it's like alcohol. something in me pushes me above water, i take a deep breath, and go sober for a good long time. that said, everytime i turn on computer or walk down an alcohol aisle, temptation returns. what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, until it kills you.

new photos. a co-housing anniversary celebration: www.pbase.com/wwp/vov

and a look at the tortured fig tree just a few feet from the front door: www.pbase.com/wwp/fig