camping again. a quick 20 mile road ride after breakfast. the kids and Janet off fishing in the West Dolores River. Janet, Lexie, Loki and I convoy up from Prescott yesterday, picking up a new doxycycline (tetracycline antibiotic) prescript that Jason phoned in on Sunday. sheesh. he's having dental work done as well, much more serious than mine, and so far, more expensive. so it goes. but the pain is really strange, coming and going, more depending on my attention than anything. if I focus energy elsewhere, it goes away, but before sleeping last night, there was a wave that washed over the left side of my face, filling all nerve pathways with boiling acid. the nerve structure of the face seems compromised by the combination of the pain impulses and the pain shunting effect of the ibuprophen. like the impulses hit a wall and then ricochet around the ends of the nerves, hurting. pain and hurt. what a concept!

but back in Colorado. high altitude, especially relative to the sea-level cultural perturbations of the last six months. it always tickles to be back in the ponderosa, aspen, and spruce glades here in the Rockies, the San Juans, to be precise, mountain biking, sleeping in a tent, and cooking food in the open air, just a few days or weeks after putzing around Berlin, or some other Euro-capital. so far away. yet both being so comfortable and inspiring.

Arizona is a dusty-dry, parched, de-hydrated, stricken and cooked land. wind-devils swirl in air that is tinged and hazy from down-wind firestorms to the south. the run across the Navajo reservation is blessed with a little rain and extensive cloud cover, and, leaving the dry wild-fire land behind, we make it to Colorado with time enough to set up camp, eat dinner, build a fire, and for the kids to make s'mores, then wearily crawl into bed before the real rain hits. downslope breeze carries it. a bit unusual for this time of year, long night-showers. usually it's day-time, afternoon upslope thunderstorms, but seems to be some kind of cool air coming in strongly from the north.

moving through the solstice, hardly noticed at lower latitudes, as summer will linger for another three, four months yet, in this place. everyone waiting for the monsoon to arrive. water crazed, and running out as the graphic meter on the front of the local paper attests. so it goes.

now enroute with Loki to Houston, a call for doctors on board is made. the defibrillator is taken to first class and a passenger is laid out on the floor. clouds outside are rising like cosmic intrusions from one universe into another. flying immediately over the area where Marlin jack-up rig #3 was located 26 years ago, my home for week-on-week-off summer roughneck work. recalling those ages of time. the whole scene off the Mississippi delta, Cajun country. skirting thunderheads shimmering with early-morning lightning strokes, platinum edges blinding against gray bodies...

church and a Sunday dinner. eating far too rapidly, though, a family thing. recalling one Thanksgiving with about 20 people or so where from sit-down start of the meal to clearing the after-dinner coffee cups away took less that 40 minutes. not so much enjoyment of the food at the table, just stress about getting finished and eating enough to make it worth it. hmmm. but good food none-the-less. the church service includes a long-distance live phone patch to the minister's son who was in France studying as a missionary soon to be going to Senegal. a surprise connection on Father's Day facilitated by one of his assistants.

at the beach. manta rays, bikinis, jet-skis, parasails, and heat. brazen skin, hubris, and skies.

Sanibel Island, 20 kilometers of white shell sand beach, lined with mangrove, non-native tamarisk, and palm trees. early morning arrivals are best, before the few baked tourists who can't afford to come here for a couple months to a palatial winter get-away estate. cheaper in summer. so they come, despite the high gas prices and the threat that the terror of life might happen to them. from the northern realms only recently liberated from the Midwestern chill. couple hours in the almost waveless water, imagining that there might be a 3-footer lurking out there beyond immediate view, waiting to curl slowly up, 100 yards off-shore, breaking left and right, doing that special rolling break like at Huntington Beach. a curl to ride forever, all the way in. but this is the Gulf Coast, so, more like a warm bath-tub, with minimal slopping around, and nothing remotely rideable. scoped out a free 25 yard pool halfway up the island. free, lanes open, pull-buoys, extra #45 sunblock, kickboards. open air swimming with the sun popping up between the legs on each kick-turn. direct overhead. burning a brilliant path.

Amurikans have a sense of complicity and guilt for anything that happens in the world.

commentary on the state of things. or energies and their propensities. birds around. black turkey vultures on the side of the road -- feasting on some unfortunate beast's recently intersected bodily incarnation with the pent-up energies of hydrocarbon-driven monsters. at least they were happy.

development seems to be a substitute term for the large-scale redirection of concentrated social energies to alter the natural landscape. scale is an interesting issue, however. it is such that at the most obvious human metric, that of feet and meters, humans concentrate most their efforts. but at other scales, their 'dominion' is much more transitory and their hold less intense.

somehow the miasma of corporate food chains and globalized society that is centered around consumption of a tedious modicum of cheaply manufactured material goods. food no different from plastic deck chairs, disposable particle-board furniture, and 'art' reproductions. in perpetuity. with the end-point not just extrapolated, but reached, over-reached, and saturated.

(fabulous that Coppertone is made of a tan-coloring agent, saves the trouble.)

back from another dentist's office. more work, some drugs, this time, to curb an infection. making the perhaps chronic instability of the immune system, due to sugar consumption, an important object of scrutiny. made it to hot and humid Florida yesterday afternoon, and collapsed, exhausted in the hotel near Aunt Mary's flat in the Shell Point retirement complex. the week in New Jersey seemed to blaze by, mostly because of the cotton-headed-ness of my senses on simple 2x200 milligrams of ibuprophen daily. remarkably over-sensitive to even basic pain-killers and anti-inflamatories like that. seems to affect my whole being. but, lumbering around, trying to avoid the mosquitos and the rain, making the system-jarring transitions from outside to inside environments. that's the hardest. small air-conditioned interior spaces at maybe 22C, forty percent humidity, and exteriors at 35C and ninety-five percent humidity. the body reels from switching on and off of body temperature-regulation mechanisms. sweating to chill, skin clammy with condensing water immediately on exiting to open air. stays cool for a few moments, then the real heat takes over and the body withers. I'd much rather be in the heat all the time and acclimate to the ambient environment. but in this age, humans make the re-engineering of the world the paramount aim. to conform it to a narrow band of temporate, un-threatening, and benign artificial living situations. not recognizing that this makes the species soft, vulnerable, and ultimately unable to deal with the real environment. it makes, among other class structures, a split society -- those who function mainly outdoors, and those who stay primarily indoors in a steady climate regime. this class structure is often delineated along education and class lines, but can be crossed by yacht-owners, boat-racers, and hotel maids.

Floridada. as Paul named it. thin sliver of earth between swamp and sea, tangled vegetation, voracious insects, carnivorous reptiles, strip malls, developers, and snow birds. not to mention the German tourists -- signs in German signify that, though the real bodies are not much in evidence, at least I haven't heard them around. pro'bly too bloody hot for 'em.

go swimming and listen and look

a day of urbanity , Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, Jersey City. street Life, pizza, chili relleno, art, airports, cars, traffic. Loki arrives early.

sweating in Jersey. making the rounds, feeling the heat. recovering from the long walk. hanging with Stefan, Ellen, and the boys. doin' the Lego scene.

back in the ussa... after a grueling series of transport modes -- walking, bus, wait, flight, wait, flight, monorail, train, wait, train, car -- Stefan there at the station to meet me, so thankful for friends. remained comatose throughout the latter 14 hours of the 21-hour sequence. culminating with 90 minutes sitting in the waiting area of Penn Station, with that energy seeping into my reality, living Amurikans. seem so different from the re-presentation.

gravity vortices spinning out from solar-venusian intersection draws me along, trailing, but engaged at high altitude. als kleiner dunkler Punkt vor der Sonne vorbei. a tracer.

after a nice afternoon re-connecting with Simon, listening to a whole slew of new sonic impressions since the last time we crossed paths long around about a decade ago across on the other side of Germany. decades that include the age of The Wall, a mark largely erased from the Berlin landscape. only a quick glimpse down the Unter den Linden to the Brandenburger Tor. can't see anything, the linden trees obscuring most except the spinning Daimler-Chrysler ikon.

thinking that this place would be a nice landing zone. with energy that is picking up, focusing. but it would also be necessary for it to be a humanely warm place. no solo mio.

day and night sounds on Goslarer Platz outside Wolfgang's flat are urban and rural at the same time.

still have a laminated copy of the Doonesbury series on "A Tour of Ronald Reagan's Brain" that was realized during the 1980 campaign. it was pointed out that his brain cells had been dying for 45 years, versus Jimmy Carter's only having been dying for 30 years. clear choice for the electorate. gobbets of platitudinal mucous-praise are now stuck on the covers of media everywhere, expectorated by phlegm-producing corrupt assasins. yuck. blah blah blah. hhhreeeeeckkkk-ptoui! sam-mo' sam-mo'. so it goes. here in Berlin.

at Wolfgang's flat there are day noises and night noises outside in Goslarer Platz.

after a shaky start on Friday (combination of not enough sleep, early rising, not enough food, water). today flows. rainy outside, sun now.

This seminar/workshop explores some particular pathways and practices of creative activities with a close look at the impact of contemporary technological developments. It proposes and critically examines implementations and strategies for sustainable and relevant social engagement as mediated by technological networks.

Especially important is the establishment of an in-class situation for open dialogues on personal world-views and experiences. This distributed human situation will be the core source for the seminar and will allow us to explore topics that are directly relevant to the practices of the individual participants. Another words, the actual form of the workshop will, by necessity, reflect the content to be discussed.

Participants are asked to share their experience-base and engage in attentive and focused discussion about the ideas that arise in the moment, and to target specific issues that inspire, challenge, or block their creative engagement of technology. These programs tend to be highly flexible and dynamic, with uncertain outcomes. But it is exactly in those un-defined spaces that novel and life-changing events occur.

The seminar facilitator, John Hopkins, is an experienced international artist, teacher, and technologist who is most currently working with live/online collaborative performance actions -- occupying the social spaces represented by global telecom networks and facilitating creative action in those spaces. He maintains an extensive web space at http://neoscenes.net. Particularly relevant as an introduction to the seminar is a brief article that he wrote about his praxis for the AcousticSpace 2002 entitled "1+1=3". That article may be found at http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/xchange3.html. Documentation of recent activities may be found via his CV at http://neoscenes.net/info/cv/index.php.

with the throbbing, aching jaw continuing for now two weeks, faugh, ibuprophen the only aid: nomadism seems ill-advised. security, stability, normality, insurance, and a steady income. retirement, pension, a house, a car. a zip code 'til death. head to Berlin tomorrow with Wolfgang. go directly into the workshop upon arrival, so.

a nice long walk last night to the harbor with Zorak und Steffi, full moon rising, wandering back by the old homes of Admirals of the Baltic Fleet.

today spent in organizing bags again, easier when not flying, so fragility and contents not such a factor. email from Janet, the roof collapse at de Gaulle in Paris is somehow affecting my connecting flight, have to check that out. warm sunshine outside.