The Lathe of Heaven

quote from wiki...

[Quoting Chuang Tse.]
George Orr: Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

Quote from the movie, The Lathe of Heaven, from the book by Ursula Le Guin…

Well, CNN has a doc on called The Anvil of God and it’s about the battle for Fallujah in Iraq, and the title they chose reminded me of The Lathe of Heaven… and now they repeat it back to back...

I saw the movie once, and I think I read the book. Le Guin found a really cool old Chinese poet to use for the idea of the book.

The tale goes that Chuang Tse was dreaming he was a butterfly, woke up, and wondered if he was a butterfly dreaming of Chuang Tse.

The movie, if I remember right, has the hero surviving a nuclear war by going back in time and creating a different reality. He has a girlfriend, and spends a lot of time in a doctor's office trying to convince the doctor he can alter reality. It’s kindof a ground hog day problem, and a painting on the doctor's wall keeps changing with each visit..and the doctor finally catches on.

Wikipedia sites are kinda like the painting…

And that’s what I was thinking about today. There IS a collective consciousness now, the web, and individual experiences and thoughts are indeed remembered by it. And the web, like the moon, has no atmosphere, and there’s now “footprints” everywhere.

In the movie, as the shifting realities of Orr evolve, aliens show up.

I thought of a cool “photoshop”-- cut and paste some small versions of the footprints of the monster in the movie Forbidden Planet beside the footprint on the moon pic of yesterday! For another "time"...

The Krell, of course, pursued a reality of pure mentation, until the “monsters from the id” did them in. That movie ends on a very Chuang Tse note…

Quote
Alta, about a million years from now the human race...will have crawled up
to where the Krell stood...in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. And your father's name will shine again...
like a beacon in the galaxy.
It's true, it will remind us...that we are, after all, not God.

Unquote

For it's time, to see the notion of a "million year future", in a movie was unheard of-- SF books readers were familiar with the stretch of time, but this was a first for Hollywood. Compare this to the ending note of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Disney's movie version...and now that I think of that...add Donald in Mathamagic Land's last note...I collect this stuff...:)

And, dare I say, ancient Asia, and middle eastern Asia especially, is just rife with this virtual reality stuff...

"...it was a nightmare..."CNN, The Anvil of God


DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 31, 2007.

Footprints On The Moon

Here and there, I've posted some of this once before too....this another permutation!

Jackie Chan is on...

Without an atmosphere, the moon hasn't any erosion, save for debris tossed about by meteor strikes, and volcanic activity, which means if one steps on the moon and leaves a footprint, it will stay there undisturbed pretty much forever.

Contemplating this, I've thought if aliens ever did visit the earth, they have visited the moon too, and if they walked about there, they would have left footprints.

Now and then there is a lot of excitement over finding really old human footprints fossilize in stone. Dinosaurs too, but they're of a different epoch. Fossils are natural souvenirs--memories.

It's said we actually remember every little thing, we just are limited in being able to recall things. Some have photographic memories, and others, well it's a struggle, and senior moments abound! But our memory is like the surface of the moon, I suspect, something imprinted is unaffected by an "atmosphere". There's no erosion.

Thinking on this makes me wonder if there could be alien "footprints" in our collective memory!!

I dont know if the the collective memory even exists, or if our individual experiences and thoughts are added to it. But if it does, it would be like the moon.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 30, 2007

Hetch Hetchy

Gifford Pinchot and Hetch Hetchy
http://www.sierraclub.org/ca/hetchhetchy/ghosts_of_hetch_hetchy.html

Gifford Pinchot and Forestry
http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/usfscoll/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.html

Cord Meyer and world government under United Nations
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,794188,00.html

Cord Meyer Sr.
http://www.earlyaviators.com/emeyer.htm

I believe there was a friendship between the Meyers and Kennedys which has brief mention in a the biography of Rose Kennedy, called “Rose’ I think…

Teddy Roosevelt’s son Quentin was killed flying in WW1, and Cord Meyer Sr. named Cord Jr.’s twin brother, Quentin, and he was killed in WW2. Cord Meyer Sr. flew in WW1 too.

Mary Pinchot Meyer is Gifford Pinchot’s niece. Gifford Pinchot is famous conservationist.

John Muir and Gifford Pinchot quarreled mightily over what to do with the wilderness. Generally, Muir wanted it left alone, “pristine”, and Pinchot thought careful use of the resources the way.

The damn built at Hetch Hetchy, the other Yosemite, came about from Pinchot’s view. Muir was said to be broken hearted at this loss.

Now, this summer I hiked up the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, and from the trail start descending into Paite Valley I could see the east end of Hetch Hetchy reservoir. On the trail from there to Glen Aulin, 21 miles, I saw all together maybe six other backpackers.

Hiking up the Merced to Tuolumne this same time of the summer I would see more like sixty, most day hikers clambering up the Mist Trail to Half Dome. (Actually, hundreds as far as Vernal!) (And come to think of it, I think there were maybe forty or so hanging on to the cables, waiting for me hanging on the cables!!)

Muir’s meeting with Teddy Roosevelt, spending some time camping together in Yosemite is famous. And Gifford Pinchot was good friend of Teddy Roosevelt.

The wilderness as we know it today in America owes much to Pinchot, probably more than to Muir, though sentimental romantics, like myself, dote on Muir.

Paite Valley is said to haunted…some left over restless spirits from an Indian /Whiteman conflict. I don’t believe in no ghosts! But, after hearing ghosts stories told by a friend who does, and recalling a night of nightmares in Paite Valley, my dismissiveness wanes!!

In some ways, the story of JFK, is a ghost story. Most of the cast is passed on, but needless to say, still engage our imaginations.


Certainly the senior family members, some who lived long enough to see the unfortunate tale unfold, deserve mention.

Ironically, I found on my hike, the Grand Canyon of Tuolumne is now “pristine”, relative to Yosemite, because of the Hetch Hetchy damn.

Frank Sinatra sang a funny little song about a damn, one which found it’s way into JFK’s campaign. An advocate giving a talk incorporated it into his spiel to take down the Hetch Hetchy damn (it’s a violent little ditty actually), and I thought to myself, ‘no, no.no, just leave the blessed thing alone’.



DavidDavid

That, ladies and gentleman, is a "jfk post". There are many threads about the mysterious death of Mary Pinchot Meyer, and on reading the most recent over in jfk about Mary Meyer, I tonight spun yet another. It's not glued enough to the narrow realm of jfk, so wouldn't make it past the sysops likely...so I'll just post it here in the blog.

Duvall and Costner in a western, which has gone a long way with no gunfire, but it looks they're getting ready...

"Sounds like you got it all worked out.."

I think Duval's quoting Oliver's Stone's JFK!!

Well, the movie is about "open range"!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 29, 2007

Chasing Mules

Dirty Jobs on, back to back to back to back--making oak barrels, cutting down oaks and hauling them with mules, horses on some island hauling recyclables, then banding geese in the Yukon Delta.

There is a dirty job hereabouts, hauling out the night soil from the latrines in the high country...Vernal and Little Yosemite valley too. They put it in metal barrels and load it on mules. Everything is hauled back and forth to the High Camps by mules. Probably the best dirty job!

In Little Yosemite Valley once, the mule train passed me...I was carrying full pack on way down from Vogelsang hike...and a mule lost a shoe. I picked it up, and not certain, or knowing of such things, wondered if it was important...and started to walk faster to catch up and tell the mule skinner? (the stable hand on the horse) about the shoe...a walk wasn't fast enough, so I went into a trot, then a run...this with the full pack...and I'm laughing at myself...and then finally I shouted out and got his attention. He turned in the saddle, took in me holding the shoe up, and dipped his hat. I stopped, tuckered out. I still have the shoe...a souvenir for luck.

It may be what I'm about, chasing mules.

Yes, a wild goose chase...

Pic is a hare(?) seen at beginning of yesterday's hike to Mt. Dana.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 29, 2007

Seed Bank

quote
The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built inside a mountain in a man made tunnel on the frozen Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. It will be designed to survive catastrophes such as nuclear war, hurricanes, and world war. It will be operated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. A tunnel will be created in a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen, which is part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 966 kilometers (600 miles) from the North Pole. The area's permafrost will keep the vault below the freezing point of water and the seeds will be protected by 1-metre thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete. There will be two airlocks and two blast-proof doors.[2]

From wikipedia…search: seed bank
unquote

I picked up new issue of New Yorker which caught my eye with story of seed banks.

I thought once to store food at the poles...natural refrigeration...or the abyssal ocean...but not the seeds.

And I thought too how use full the moon can be with it's vacuum and cold and hot environment. Food could be stored there for a long time, along with most anything. The potential uses of nearby outer space are immense.

Pics are of a marmot from today's hike to Mt. Dana. One tiny patch of snow...

Animal planet is on...Meercat Manor...film of a Goshawk that I missed...now the animal abuse police show.

Permafrost...??

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 27, 2007

Warlords of Atlantis

Doug McClure stars in this old sci fi fantasy film, Warlords of Atlantis, and I keep coming back to it. I've posted about it both in jfk and the Panay weblog (and even back on old GEnie!).

There's a scene in it where the villains explain human history to the hero, McClure, and watching the Time Machine last night reminded me of the Warlords when the villain was explaining the history of the human race, which reminded me of the Matrix trilogy when the villain is explaining to the hero the history of the human race, which reminded me of the Dr. Who episode (see previous post here) explains to the hero the history of the human race, which reminds me of Walter Pidgeon in Forbidden Planet explaining the history of the Bellerophon, which reminds me of James Mason in 20,000 Leagues to the Sea explaining to the heroes his personal tragedy...I could go on...Obiwankinobe explaining to Luke the clone wars, and I dont recall where but somewhere in the Terminator films there's an explanation.

Clearly plots have these set scenes where everything is explained, and Hollywood reuses over and over a short list of plots...

This has set me off in the paranoid realm of thinking the Hollywood scriptwriters are a conspiracy...and I've given it the general rubric of "Hollywood's Metaphysics".

I thought to find the scripts, cut and paste these sections here...it would be an interesting side by side!

For another time...

Oh, the villain explaining Conan's history to Conan/Arnold in Conan the Barbarian. I think I just read Oliver Stone had a hand in that script.

It's a strange business. I know flesh and blood makes these movies, but once made, they take on the character of prophecy from the piping oracle.

Warlord's is sold from sites in UK, but I can't find it anywhere in the states!!

McClure made a bunch of these adventures.

Blue Ocean is on...it was Patton, LAInk, or Blue Ocean....I dont get a sports channel, not even Fox, so no Raider's football.

I have no idea what George C. Scott was trying to explain...or the imaginative mind's of Hollywood.

Dumbo octopus...how neat.

I'm a little envious of these guys...but I dont know if filming this and that all over...well, it's touristy...it's Thursday it must be Belgium...and I'd do something with the narration...use poems or songs or something...and trash the soundtrack...they're all kindof trapped into making them into music videos about how things eat one another.

Sheesh, Dante, the fumerals again!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 24, 2007

Hugin and Munin

quote from wiki
In Norse mythology, Odin has two pet ravens Hugin and Munin serving as his eyes and ears - Hugin being referred to as thought and Muninn as memory. Every day the ravens fly out from Hliðskjálf and bring Odin news from Midgard.
unquote

I dont know which one this raven is!! Hugin or Munin. The other was on the cerdar forest floor, and this one was talking.

Wiki says they are the smartest birds. One story I heard told how they rescued a child on a road in traffic, probably by bringing attention of the peril to the parents...but I forget how it went.

The 12x was set to take three pics, focus bracketing...and pretty much on it's own took these remarkable pics.

Fump...blogger has put them in reverse order...but just scroll up to see the sequence.

more wiki
quote

Sierra Miwok (How Ravens Became People)
In the myth How Kah'-kah-loo The Ravens Became People, there was an epic flood, and the first world people climbed a mountain to avoid drowning. The water finally receded. They were starving, they thought it was safe to come down and look for food. But they sank into the mud and died. The ravens came to sit on the holes where the people died, one raven at each hole. The ravens turned into new people the Miwok

unquote

That's cool. The Miwok were the last Indians to live in the Valley.

And one more....

Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

unquote

I'd be content with equal.



DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 24, 2007

God's Warrior Angels

The remake movie of The Time Machine was on when I came home...the scene in the cavern when the villain is explaining the future's history after the moon fell..the morlocks evolved underground and self genetically engineered themselves into a cast hierarchy...the villain in control of it all.

Next movie was Reign of Fire, about the dragons that come out of a mine and devastate everything..."Only one species will survive..."

Ah...melodrama...but something of yesterday's ideas are in that cast society notion...in India they had casts.

The metaphysisists chart a hierarchy of four kingdoms..mineral, plant, animal, human...some add a fifth...angels..the kingdom of heaven.

And consciousness evolves through the kingdoms. I'm not sure they understand how slow evolution is...one could spend a long time as a piece of granite.

The first four are interdependent, and here on Earth...one wonders what, if any, dependency the kingdom of heaven has on the earthly ones...Charmed seems to be trying to sort it out!!

I kind of left out the mineral kingdom yesterday...

And God's Warriors of course are the angels that engage in the end time war in heaven. One painting I've seen has them slaughtering the devil's cohorts with an implacable serene expression.

On CNN Nicole gets 82 minutes in the hoosegow... evolution can be shortened it seems!!

Back to the big dragons and big music!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 23, 2007

Ancient America

Pic from wikipedia "species" site.


Coming home, a show about Ancient Amercians was on National Geographic. I'm not sure why ice would be a barrier to migrations...Eskimos travel along it okay...and the Shakleton story suggests survival and long travel is possible.

But anyway, I was thinking on...what to call it...categories...

Naturalist books show the family tree with all the animals and plants sorted out...humanity being one species on one branch..Homo sapians.

What makes us unique is this...

When a study is made of an individual of another species, all the species except us, one individual, how it looks, how it lives, pretty much defines how all the other members of the species look and live. It's not total uniformity, individuals have personalities, and each unique, but it's pretty close to uniformity.

With people it's different. Study one individual, how they look, how they live, and you will not have a grip on how every person lives.

You know, on thinking on this, I realized that if you study an individual's career, like a dentist, you might have a handle on "dentists" in a rough sense like the other "species". Sometimes I think whatever differentiated the species is still at work, but on a different level, in people.

Which, hold your hat, has led to think that there is a Human Kingdom in the Tree of Life, like there is an Animal Kingdom, and Plant Kingdom.
(hmmph...a search of 'Human Kingdom' turns up a lot, so it's not a unique notion...though it looks to be picked up mosty by metaphysical groups with small concern how people cooperate with the other Kingdoms...)

We're not a species, we're a whole classification.

Now, this whole notion was more distinct in ancient culture. One tribe would all wear the same clothing, and have the same religion, and pursue daily life much the same way. Study one Eskimo and you have a handle on all of them.

This was the old world, in the new, the present, it's tough to tell from how people look, mostly from the clothes they wear, what sort of people...what "tribe" they belong too.

I see people from all over the world on holiday, so I know a bit here.

This will change...if how I think Nature has people gravitate to tribes. By tribes I mean uniformity in life style and appearance. Dentists will someday wear distinctive clothes, and their children will become dentists, and so forth, if my idea has merit. It might get to the point where only dentists can mate with dentists, the defining bench mark of a species is only a member of a spiecies can successfully mate with another member of that species.

(It might happen that an infant dentist might take to dentistry the way a young bird takes to flight...this to say what is learned now may become instinctive. I've seen something like this in baseketball...some kids take to it seemingly instinctively...almost a telepathic absorption of the "skills". And if this happens, the new species of dentist may discard the kindof swiss army knife hallmark of people, being able to learn most anything. That skill would only get in the way of a young dentist's maturation!! I'm picking on dentists...toothache.)

The Kingdom of People will be a whole new level of the ecosystem...and one wonders if it will be in cooperative relationship with the Animal and Plant Kingdoms, whose ancient cooperation with one another is the foundation of life.

The scenery in the TV shows is almost devoid of animal and plant life. A walkabout in the city and all around is an 'ecosystem' of machinery and technology. We could live in outer space with it, no problem, or on a world sterile of other life, or in some giant space craft...but is that what we want, or some subset tribe in the Human Kingdom?

I dont know...

"Who will wear the starry crown?"

Next a show in the Roman Colosseum, and then one about a 'monstrous machine"...a giant skip loader...with "massive biceps"... the coming Kingdom of the Machines...

We'll shop, and excavate, 'till we drop!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 23, 2007

God's Warriors

To continue yesterday's mentations on CCN's doc., God's Warriors.

Well if they are not God's than whose are they?...and that would be Israel's, Palestine's, Syria's, Iraq's, Egypt's, Iran's, Saudi Arabia's...I can't recall them all.

If they are God's warriors than these are God's nations, and I dont know, the contemplation of it makes me dizzy.

America's soldiers are America's. Separation of Church and State.

But there's a peculiar wrinkle to that if one turns to Pat Robertson's news channel. Last night it was the last one I watched, and I got suspended while he did a prayer...seemed rude to channel click then...but when the telephone number came up off I went!

Anyway, awhile back he brought up the story of an early pioneer settler, like back in the Pilgrim's time, who announced that the purpose of the colonists was to bring Christianity to the new world, and eventually all the world. He had a manifesto of sorts, and Robertson has it printed up as a show piece document that the viewer can acquire...the phone number again.

(From these shores the Gospel will go forth to the New World, and to all the world. R0bert Hunt, chaplain of Jamestown...form CBN site...)

http://www.cbn.com/special/spiritualroots/

My take on this is that Robertson works towards the eventuality of America championing Christianity, and while it wasn't said, the impression I had was that the war in Iraq has the channels support because it furthers this effort.

In thinking on this today I recalled the medieval Japanese soldiers that wore their clans flag on their back when they went into battle. If they lost, and survived...they took their flag out and put the victors in. I think I have that right.

I regard the phrase "christian soldiers" as an oxymoron too...though the song says "as to war". Oxymoron is such an ugly word...and to express the idea further I'm just going to use 'paradoxical'.

It is paradoxical that God's nation's warriors would fight one another.

Constantine turned old Rome to Christianity with the force of arms, (recalled on the CNN show) and a lot of that has gone on in history, but that's not Christianity.

Children grow up in America not knowing it was taken from the indigenous people, the Indians, and when that's learned it's kindofa shock, especially if you are an Indian. Somewhat like what a Black kid experiences regarding slavery.

The history of Christianity has the same sort of unpleasantness.

But what can you do?...Every nation seems to have been founded in bloodshed, and stolen from a predecessor. In like fashion the House of Saud came to power in Saudi Arabia. And the founding of Israel, modern and old!!

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

It was the sword that converted my Scandinavian ancestors, who were no slouch with swords!!

But anyway, Graves tried to focus the whole thing into a patriarchal priesthood conspiracy, and looked to a time when the White Goddess would return. Which is why he gets picked up by Wiccans and the like.

I suppose I could be categorized as a pagan christian...a fine paradox!!

Throw in american, and there you have it...Dont tread on me.

Animal Planet was on...lots of birds and seals and penguins and whales...and a sound track from a B Western...sigh...then Cash Cab...that's a cool show...

quote from Ben Franklin...I saw my first adult rattlesnake on the Tuolumne Canyon hike...wild one that is...

I recollected that her eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids—She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance.—She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.—As if anxious to prevent all pretentions of quarrelling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her, she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be a most defenceless animal; and even when those weapons are shewn and extended for her defence, they appear weak and contemptible; but their wounds however small, are decisive and fatal:—Conscious of this, she never wounds till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.—Was I wrong, Sir, in thinking this a strong picture of the temper and conduct of America?

unquote

No Ben, well said....

from wiki




DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 22, 2007

Entertainment News

God's Warriors

Well, it's one of those oxymorons, and it's a moronic documentary on CNN this evening.

"a figure of speech that uses seeming contradictions, as "cruel kindness"

Random House Webster College Dictionary

I have the computer one, and the icon is always present in the upper right corner.

I pointed out to a friend, who looked forward to seeing this, that the German's in the Wars wore belts that said "God is with us"....another goof..

Here's fine rant with the buckle illustrated:

http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/herman/herman3.html

Earlier today the CCN cast had "Entertainment News", which referred I think to an entertainment segment, movies and such, but I mistook it to refer to the entire cast, and thought on that...

It may all well be "entertainment news".

demagogue

a person, esp. a political leader, who gains power by arousing people's emotions

intellectual

4. developed by or relying on the intellect rather than emotions or feelings

Put together..

Intellectual Demagogue

I noted the mine stories were playing on viewers' emotions, the melodrama of the trapped miners and the unfortunate rescuers. But it was an intellectual decision making that crafted the cast.

The media process the viewers emotions with the same aplomb as a butcher rendering carcasses in a meat plant.

The media is demagoguery...

quote (from Spartacus)

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.

Joseph Pulizter

unquote

"Dog days for Michael Vick.." Anderson introducing next segment...

"Search inside" indeed...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 21, 2007

Chronicles and Souvenirs

On the walkabout I was able to get a pic of a little bird called a brown creeper, and in looking it up I happened on John Burroughs, an old time Naturalist like Muir, and in looking him up happened on the Harriman Expedition, and the pic is snagged from American Memory, which has the whole book.

And, there is DVD called The Harriman Expedition Retraced, which was an effort to go to all the same places, and so make a correspondence.

Watched CSI repeat..and now on the news they found the body of a WW2 airman in the Sierra.

Lemesee if I can find one of Burroughs poems...

Meanwhile I found this site!!

Back to finding the poem!!

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_nature_notes/

I saw one of these in a second hand store and wished I could get them.

What took me here was Burroughs Muir Yosemite search..see pic.

Found an audio poem, librebook.com??, at a site called Drake's Blog, or something, and it's good...he's writing like Skelton...I'll have to look in the Gallery tomorrow for a book, they might have one.

Continuing...found the librivox site...

http://librivox.org/

Now, if Harriman, who had all the money, and other rich folk like 'm, hadn't dragged the Naturalists about...or bought up things...where would we be!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 21, 2007

LanguageNations

Not much on when I came home...I cant follow The Company...and I didn't think of much today...oh I did...but it's kinda elaborate...lemethink.... Well, Larry King's doing an Elvis show.... Our culture made Elvis, and Elvis made our culture...American culture, and it's worldwide spread. But Elvis is flesh and blood like anyone, this too say we all have a natural being, or culture, which is our bodies, and everything that goes with them. Culture is all wrapped up with language. I've thought passports should just say what language, or languages you speak...which goes into my old idea of LanguageNations. Here in the Tree in the Door I deal with my culture, my LanguageNation, TV!, over in Fauna and Flora it's what I call The Language of the Trees...actually Robert Graves called it that. Nature is a LanguageNation older than humanity.

Well, I missposted that and had to cut and paste it and there it is all stuck together!

Anyway, it's curios that I walk quiet on my walks out back, and look forward to seeing what the critters are up too, or what stage the plants are in their growth.

When I come home from work I flop on my bunk, turn the TV on, and hop about the channels.

I think on this a lot...it has ins and outs difficult to articulate!!

Lemesee if I can find Graves "Close observation of Nature..."

Well, that quote is in the intro to The White Goddess. It's a poets task to observe nature and add to a storehouse of lore.

Surprising the numbers on the web who quote Graves for one purpose or another.

A guided tour of the King's mansion...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 18, 2007

Gone for Good

Jack Hanna was on on the Weather Channel talking about frogs, and amphibians...fifty to sixty percent gone since 1950...and the changes brought on by the restrictions of habitat.

Don't know but that the Fauna Flora by the creek might take over as finding things there gives an idea of what IS there still...

Kindof cool to see Willie Nelson strap on his old guitar.

I cant play guitar very well, but until my finger tendons cinched up I could plunk it. Been hauling an old one about but just gave it away, and now miss just having one about!! Martin makes a Mini Martin, one decorated with trees and leaves...I might be able to chord one of those...

The loss of the Baiji might be my battle cry...Remember the Baiji.

The Dancing Dolphin widget has a nice pic...I'll snag it...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 17, 2007

Mountain Bumps

Well, Anderson on CNN owned up that they hadn't delved into things enough. I explained to a friend today at break, after watching the marathon last night that pushed all other news to the side, notably those buried in Peru, that these seismic bumps, mountain bumps, aren't natural things, like earthquakes, but rather cave ins in the mine. The miners have made the mountain into Swiss cheese, and the salvage mining weakening it more, and there are cave ins that cause the little earthquakes. Tonight CNN had someone explain with a graphic showing the cluster of 'bumps' that indeed this is the case.

The whole thing is a good example of the media being bamboozled by bamboozelers. What they sought out was the emotions, not the nuts and bolts of the stories.

I've seen it all before, elsewhere...jfk.

Anyway, Bush has passed a new executive order that puts the Iranian Republican Guard, their elite army branch, on the terrorist group list. This means any funds going their way can be stopped, and companies dealing with them persuaded to stop, and this is somewhat unique, as this army is the government's. The story I read said the army has many business interests as well, and in that regard is like China's army.

Well, finally someone articulated what I've been carping about. It was Eisenhower's warning, that the military industrial complex would be a danger. What he didn't point out however, the danger isn't so much are own, which is a concern to be certain, but "theirs".

I always like this part of Ike's speech...

quote

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

unquote

Tinkering...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 17, 2007

Salisbury Hill

Pic is John Constable's Salisbury Cathedral



quote from Peter Gabriel's song Solsbury Hill

I was feeling part of the scenery
I walked right out of the machinery

unquote

I keep taking the same songs along on my hikes. I have a couple of the little mp3 players, and I listen to them in the tent waiting for sleep (it takes awhile in an unfamiliar place on the ground!!). This one always goes along.

Full lyrics and commentary can be found at Songfacts, which is very cool site.

And another quote from Wordworth's poem Salisbury Plain

Hard is the life when naked and unhouzed
And wasted by the long day's fruitless pains,
The hungry savage, 'mid deep forests, rouzed
By storms, lies down at night on unknown plains
And lifts his head in fear, while famished trains
Of boars along the crashing forests prowl,
And heard in darkness, as the rushing rains
Put out his watch-fire, bears contending growl
And round his fenceless bed gaunt wolves in armies howl.

unquote

sheesh! But soons as I can figure it out I'll take along some digital books.

CNN is covering the mining disaster, which in itself is a kinda disaster.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 16, 2007

Yazidi

Well, it's a shame that I study out a religious group because it's in the war news. Never heard of them before, but after reading wikipedia's take, I'm struck by the Heptad...at the center of their faith are seven angels, which harks back in the blog here to my interest in the hierarchy of angels...see Seven Sleepers posts.

I don't understand how such elaborated explanations of things, the descent from Adam, rather than Eve, or Adam And Eve, gets passed down from generation to generation for centuries. There is a puzzle in this.

And the connection to the Sufis is a puzzle. My poetry teacher was a Sufi. At the least he wrote a couple little books about them, Another Way of Laughter, and ...I forget the other one, it was about Nasrudin.

I've followed the war news with some trepidation for the Sufis. But have learned too, in reading about old war in Chechnya, that they're no strangers to war, and take to it like fish to water as everyone else does!!

And this new horror seems to have come about as a vendetta. The Yazidi, members anyway, stoned a young girl for falling in love with a Muslim and converting to Islam. Now, in a dual purpose, Al Quida has blown up a great many Yazidi. What next!? They're all capable of mythologizing this and making a perpetual vendetta that will last till doomesday. Which the way things are going isn't far off!!

It's become a war of irreconcilables, to use Newt's term...

Another curio is Gurdjieff, who wrote a book called Meetings with Remarkable Men a long time ago, and it was made into a curious movie. I didn't know the movie was made from his book, as I liked the movie, but dont like him!! His book was partly based on the Yazidi, according to Wiki.

I tied in Gurdjieff with jfk lore, though at moment I cant recall how...something to do with art and color theory and Mary Meyer...who dabbled in colorist art.

It's remarkable the number of exhibits, threads, I've posted over in jfk, whithout really knowing what whole cloth and fabric they belong too.

Everything is in fragments, snips of thread.

Illustration is one of the Yazidi angels.

Peacocks are cool. We had a pair for pets. To see them fly is remarkable. They look like angels. One was hit by a car, and the other stopped coming around.

Considering the carnage on the highway, one would think cars would be the object of vendettas.

I wonder what the media journalists are doing googling up Yazidi?? It was just a matter of time before the conflict introduced Americans to the hodgepodge of faiths over there.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 15, 2007

Hard Rain

Could be worse,
How?
Could be raining…

Young Frankenstein

It's a great movie....hmmmmmmm!!

quote (final lyric of one of Dylan's songs)

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?

I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,

Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,

Where black is the color, where none is the number,

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,

Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',

But I'll know my song well before I start singin',

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall

Bob Dylan

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 14, 2007

One Day

I collected butterflies when I was a kid, and I always wanted to capture one of these big moths. The shadow is a tourist sitting on the nearby bench.

I've been thinking on what all can be done in one day, and since today has been kindofa wash, plans for Tuolumne scraped just from being plane worn out, I would have to point to today's effort as this pic!

Any long time effort narrows down to one day, and the moments of that day. And if you look at these moments it's hard to figure how they fit into a long time effort.

Like when I was learning to play the trumpet...one day's practice can just seem futile.

I dont know what's happened to the ceiling music at work. Home on the range to violins. And Amparita Roca, my festival, and many others, solo piece at Festival. And Strangers in Paradise. Sheesh. Soothing though...Trumpeter's Lullaby by Leroy Anderson, not Amparita Roca, and we did it as a trio I think. What a fine old memory web search that was!!

I set aside the trumpet on high school graduation...commencement last time I sat with the band. Imagine the racket I'd make here if I picked it up again!!

A full blown orchestra playing in the valley would be very cool.

Ferguson show his clip with Merv Griffen...the scottish kilt story. :)

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 13, 2007

JFK and the Bay of Pigs

Well, the new show, The Company, is on. They just hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs...

This is all jfk stuff!!

Forgoodness sake...lemegosee what the buffs are saying!!...

No threads on this one...yet.

It will be a curio to see if the show crawls through time up to the assassination.

More melodrama...the American advisor swims...

I've read the books about the BofP could fill a large library all by themselves.

Meteor shower is on, so up to Tuolumne tomorrow.

And now Kevin Kostner is on in something about JFK too....sheesh...well...I dunno...Oh, it's the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had a wall to climb in Jr. High on the obstacle course, part of the fitness craze, and I remember sitting atop it contemplating this with friends.

I grabbed a pic of Castro from wiki.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 11, 2007

Science Fiction

Well, the new show, Master's of Science Fiction, was on. At the brink once again, humanity survives. Interesting the quote from Isaiah as it's one bit that often draws my curiosity.

The story seems familiar, I mean I may have once read the story the show was based on...lemegolook!!...based on a short story by Howard Fast.

I was gonna post about a Peter Gabriel song...for tomorrow...I'm sleepy.

Pic is bird outback with crippled right leg.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 11, 2007

Fallen Soldiers

Steven Segal is on the train again...this is the one where the villain has control of a laser beam satellite.

Sheesh, lost in thought I held down the shift key too long...sounded like a light bulb popping!! Some trick called Filterkeys...

Segal is reassuring, and the other Heroes.

Front page had another fallen soldier story from the San Joaquin Valley. The young people in the long valley are a soldiering bunch.

In the back page was a bit on the Nagasaki memorial...Japanese spokesman calling for nuclear disarmament.

I suppose, proportionally speaking, that story should have been on the front page. I would hope it's not just there to fill some obligatory need!!

The front page story was a bit of an example of yesterday's post about iconography. And it was sad.

Funeral rituals are often used to re enforce the culture. And to establish the legitimacy of the successors.

Fallen Heroes.

Segal movie ends with the graveyard scene.

The doggone spacing between sentences is wrong in this post. This happens when I paste a post that I missposted to Fauna and Flora...I try to reestablish the line breaks but some things just don't get picked up...frustrating!! Everything looks right in the edit... but...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 10, 2007

Iconongraphy

Pic is the poet Robert Graves from site mentioned.



On the news last night was bit with a general talking in Iraq. Behind him were the American flag and the Iraqi flag, and some shields...it was all an iconograph.

Old Egypt didn't have radio and TV, and to communicate they used iconographs, and the hieroglyphs. These things weren't limited to two dimesional graphics, but three dimensions too..the pyramids and temples and such. All of the clutter of things in King Tut's tomb represented a hieroglyph, or illustrated an iconograph.

Robert Graves explains in the introduction to his two volume Greek Myths that the ancients saw the myths as iconographs, that in fact many of them are stories made from graphics, like a story made from a painting.

What we have that is something like it, is the politcial cartoon. Uncle Sam, the Elephant, the Donkey. What's been lost is the sense the ancients knew for their iconographs. Graves tries to restore them in his books.

Maybe I can find what he wrote....brb...searched Robert Graves Greek Myths Political Cartoon...and found

quote
Robert Graves noted that the myths were no more than political cartoons and what the myths represent is a very cloudy, but nonetheless very interesting, history of a world of markedly differing values from that of the classical world.
http://www.islomane.com/thebookreview.htm
unquote

He also explains that all expressions of art were tied in with worship, and heavily charged with magic and superstition. There was no notion of ornamentation just for ornament, or personal decoration.

This gets at my notion of a hieroglyphic fabric, where everything is mention of a central, I don't know, deity. All the Egyptian hieroglyphs were mention of Pharoah and the mystery religion surrounding the king.

Everything in St. Peter's Cathedral is tied in with Catholic Christianity, as our the rituals that go on there, and I would suppose all of the Vatican.

Now, when the general stood there doing his CNN interview there was something of all this!! The media has created an iconographic fabric. And it's all ritualized.
quote

Dale Fuchs in MadridSaturday July 1, 2006The Guardian
The Spanish holiday island of Mallorca is to honour its most illustrious British expatriate resident, the novelist, poet and scholar Robert Graves.
The hilltop stone country home where the novelist lived on and off from 1931 until his death in 1985 will open as a museum tomorrow. During his self-imposed exile in the once bucolic town of Deya, he wrote many of his most famous works, including I, Claudius, The White Goddess and The Greek Myths.

unquote

That's cool.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 9, 2007

The Long War

The politicians would seem desperated to articualte what were fighting over there, and here when they from over there infiltrate.

As evidence of the seriousness they bring up the atrocities, and the rants of intellectual demogogs.

Newt Gingrich is reiterating the concept of "The Long War Against The Irreconcilable Wing Of Islam".

First I heard of it was on CNN news last night during an interview. I thought he said something about "irreconcilable muslims" too.

Well, I find it all pretty unconvincing. America has enemies, and I'm not sure why that needs such an elaboration.

In 2005 he wrote up a manifesto of sorts that lists the grievances and threats and one of them was EMP, electromagnetic pulse. This is what happens when an atomic bomb is exploded high up. Simply put, it overloads electrical devicies, like computers, and renders them broken.

I mention this as I read an old spy novel while camped at Parker Pass and the crux of the plot was a scheme by the villians to explode an atomic bomb over the middle of the US and create and electromagnetic pulse. I was so intrigued by it that I did up post to jfk. I'll go retrieve that and post it here.

quote


For forty years Western intelligence agents have known a terrible secret: the Russians have a mole--code-named Talbot--inside the CIA. At first Talbot is suspected of killing European agents. Then a street- smart ex-cop uncovers a storm of espionage and murder on the streets of New York, while in a Long Island suburb a civic demonstration against the Russian mission masks a desperate duel of nerves and wits. Engineered by Talbot, a shadow world of suspicion and deceit is spilling onto the streets--leading to a new Soviet weapon and a first- strike war plan threatening the foundations of American government. For the U.S., time is running out. For Talbot, the time is now.
The Talbot Odyssey (Mass Market Paperback) by Nelson DeMille

There's some odd things in this book, a work of fiction. The one that brought me to post here was that it says the Soviets had an obsession with the number three, which recalled for me some of the discussion about Oswald's preoccupation with threes, as told by Priscilla. In the book, the Soviets (book was written in 1984) make three different plots to first strike the US.
I haven't finished the book yet! A friend loaned it to me and I took it along on a hike to Parker Pass, which I found exhausting having a bit of stomach flu. Most of the afternoon and into the night I just lay in my tent and read. Nothing but rock and a blanket of stars and this odd book!!
The other oddities: Arrows and "Empire State Building" on the sidewalks of New York point the direction for tourists to the Empire State Building. The sidewalk signs had been graffitied with "ground zero".
Another oddity, Talbot is a code name taken from an actor in a werewolf movie. The villainous plot has the code name "wolf" or "wolfbane". I can think of at least four other fiction works that have "wolf" as a code name for a plot, or plotter...I watched Dr. Who tonight and the "wolf" code in that was explained. Then there's an Arnold movie where he goes about foiling a latin American villain who takes the code name wolf. Then there's a Peterson (I cant read these!!) detective novel with a Russian viliian code named wolf, who looks to be a copy cat of Demilles...and now I cant recall the fourth...
And then the villain, Thorpe, in the book, is the head of the CIAs Domestic Contact Services.
I just don't read much fiction anymore, but it's a notable curio that the lore I've collected from JFK searches was spread through this book, names I mean, like Wild Bill Donovan, and the whole business of the OSS morphing into the CIA.
The writing is kinda weak, some really oddball paragraphs, but like a Clancy novel, and I suppose all these spy novels, it's hard to put down. Clancy's Red Storm Rising nearly gobbled up an entire week in the Valley with family on vacation!!
DavidDavid
(PCT hikers in the Sierra nowadays all have nicknames...trail to Parker Pass is one small section)



Oh, the Fourth is LeCarre's "Karla" , though I also had in mind the Harry Potter movie (the one with mouse and the missing toe). Curiously the Potter movie had an "Odyssey" twist too!!
And by jingo, I walked in late to the new Die Hard movie to hear the explanation of "threes" and "Fire Sales"!!
It's a small Spookdom...
DavidDavid

unquote

Actually that's two jfk posts. And likely difficult to follow. And I don't know what the import is of the threat in the fiction book being so much like the threat Gingrich perceives from Iran.

I cant even follow myself sometimes... Needless to say America has been at war with someone somewhere somehow since before the Revolution. Peace makes the Gun Club restless.

A fellow with a trained bird, AJ, on Letterman. AJ the putting bird... :)

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 8, 2007

Dendera Light Bulb

Well, National Geographic channel has UFO stuff on, after the story of Apollo 13...always entertaining!! And they mentioned the "Egyptian Light Bulb" which is a very strange Hieroglyph...there is something about Ancient Egypt we're not getting.

And they mentioned Mystery Park in the Swiss Alps, which is a theme park inspired by Von Dannekin...cool...one mention has it that it's closed..cant tell from the sites.

One theory has it that humanity was genetically engineered by aliens...and I recall one take on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs is that they have multiple sense, and one sense is a depiction of the principles of cell division.

The hieroglyphs themselves were like a 'genetic code' passed down from one generation of priests to the next. One mention has it that they lost their template books, and had to go down into an old tomb and get a new copy.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 7, 2007

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hiroshima, August 6, and Nagasaki, August 9

The buses at night going through the forest with their white and yellow lights remind of the the fair ground caterpillar ride. After taking your seat in the caterpillar, it's skin covered over everyone and the roller coaster ride was in the dark.

X File episode on about the side show circus.

Invasion

Well, a new movie is in the ads...Invasion with Nicole Kidman. Let me guess...another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers...the first being a genuinely scary movie...lemegolook...

Well, no, plot doesn't look the same, but it's about something out there that brings grief.

Watched Fletch, then ALIAS...

Oh, now 24 Hours is on...I never watch it...clocks always tik toking...then the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

Melodramas...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

August 5, 2007

Monsters

Well, to continue, animals aren't plush toys, and they're not cartoon characters, and they're not monsters.

And I just got from Amazon some of my old favorite monster movies...Forbidden Planet, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and a collection of Sinbad movies.

Saw a bear in the backyard today eating berries. Camera ran out of batteries...but there's always words.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 5, 2007

Fractal Fabric

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/cauliflower.html

Where pic is from...

Well, I was thinking of the Plush Toy post of yesterday sitting on the bus while an effort was made to chase a bee out side with a rolled up Park newspaper. The thought was to get the bee to walk on to the paper, and then carry the paper outside. I do that all the time. But sometimes the effort fails, the bee stubbornly kept trying to fly out the ceiling skylight, and then got swatted, fell to the floor wounded, and then stepped on. "Five hundred dollar fine!" And sardonic laughter. "Oh, the cruelty." I added, smiling.

The adventures of Wily Coyote and the Road Runner are funny, and there was something of that amusement. They were teenage boys.

Animals aren't plush toys, nor cartoon characters.

I don't know sometimes if my thoughts are sticking together...but the thought I had was...'Someday the life of the bee would no more be taken than a concert professional orchestra musician miss a note.'

Then I got to thinking about "fractal fabric" and that lettuce, or cabbage, that looks just like a fractal...I'll go find that.

Maverick movie is on...I used to try to play the old Maverick theme fooling around during band and orchestra practice.

This to say even the smallest acts have correspondences...a thought path that leads to the disciplines of Tibetan Buddhists, some of which the Chinese have tossed into the clink today.

"As flies to wanton boys...."

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, —They kill us for their sport.
Gloucester, scene i King Lear

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 4, 2007

Plush Toys

Pic is Vogelsang from last summer.



Out front two days ago a dead ground squirrel and a crow pecking at it. "Euu", the comment from the tourist spectators.

The animals are charming, and the toys of them too.

Jay Lo in a police story. She's a cop. I think it's Jay Lo. A tough cop.

Maybe we should all be tough.

But, for the most part the people I know are all very gentile. And polite.

The night the war started in Iraq, I thought along these lines. My class mates are too gentile for all this, I thought. Some were in their sixties and seventies.

An eighty year old has gotten lost up at Vogelsang. Posted on the Food Court doorways. Every season a couple of these lost hiker things happen.

A few Iraqi vets are among the employees now, and they are gentile and polite.

Monday on my days off I thought to be going near Vogelsang, near Mt. Florence. They want volunteers to search.

Jay Lo's new boyfriend, something of a mystery, plays the trumpet she's learning. I played the trumpet!!

Some guys have all the luck...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
August 2, 2007