ready to vacate the camp ground, the omens and portents not good.

bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. camping in an BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicles) area. premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. for entertainment. (note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). the word entertainment is key. it is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. the body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). speed and flight, and the power to conquer the land makes one a lesser though very carnal diety. it's great fun. the wider world is narrowed down to a small slice of the road ahead and some limited peripheral vision that is otherwise masked with the (state-required) helmet. the system narrows to the 'challenge' of moving forward along a pathway (state-defined, in this case, with designations for beginner, intermediate, and expert, like a ski area), maintaining forward motion and lateral balance while negotiating the shifts in speed and orientation. essentially an immersive video-game experience. back to the virtual. hearing is both muted in the helmet, but also assaulted by the viciously loud hydrocarbon explosions happening with minimal attenuation between the legs, touch is overwhelmed by the vibrations of hands, holding onto the handlebars (feeling reduced by gloves) and actions reduced to wrist rotations for accelerating, and gripping for braking. sight, limited by the helmet. smell coming through a nose filter, and otherwise, smell and taste dominated by the grit of dust that chokes everything. this is circumscribed by my definition of virtual as that which entails an attenuation of sensual input to the body-system.

it's a holiday weekend, one for remembering the dead, fallen heroes, and the reasons that nations exist. the right to bear arms under any circumstances.

a radio blasts into the night as soon as the working folks arrive late on the Friday evening for the three-day weekend. motors are tuned, beer is drunk, laughter and shouting echoes around the local space. the local space is a mis-en-scene, a tableau. the trees are decorations to be cut for fire, nails inserted into and chopped with hatchets because they are there, intruding from what is taken simply as painted backdrops.




the camp ground is, as darkness falls, a backdrop for yet another kind of entertainment to take place. the BLM has posted a regulations sign-board, but it is the victim of target shooting with large-gauge shot-guns. most of the regulations are unreadable, peppered with holes leaving letters, words, whole sentences unreadable. no shooting so far this weekend yet, but it's sure to happen. our campsite has a mound of big red 12-gauge shotguns shells, spent, under one tree, and several hands full of high-power rifle shells scattered around of a variety of calibre. and every once in a while one sees side-arm shells. spent ammunition. broken glass, beer bottle tops. past remembrance-of-the-dead weekends. celebrated by shooting into the air, shooting the trees, shooting anything that looks non-human. most of the time.

the ambient audio mix also contains material from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas compound.

There is nothing that does not flow forth from the Dharma Realm,
And nothing that does not return to the Dharma Realm.

bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

a fine afternoon hike in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with a small group of folks that Howard assembled. fantastic weather, occasional views of the City shimmering south across the Bay, groves of (relatively) small second-growth Coastal Redwoods, some huge manzanitas (this is their optimal zone) and good conversation.

with the mass of storage space available on the godaddy account, anything's possible. so, an upload of a work finished a couple years back -- a prototype for the kind of works that I would really like to make for all the friends that have been included in the archive over the years. ideally, making individual video-based works which include the diverse re-presentations of people and events that have transpired over the years. it's a tremendous amount of work, and requires a dedicated working place with two or three machines crunching away on the material. along with the four or five terabytes of raw digitized material easily available. not possible at this time. will it ever be? hmmm. we'll see.

this work starts with the visit Stefan made to Finland back in 2000. we rented a car and spent a weekend with Kaisu and Risto in Noormarkku. Kaisu took us on a tour over to the Bay of Bothnia, but the high-Light of the weekend was a private tour of Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea which Risto's company was managing, and that was just a five-minute walk away from their apartment. amazing house that my old acquaintance Johanna still uses as a summer retreat on occasion.

the video follows us to Tallinn in Estonia, followed by a brief pizza dinner in Tribeca with a visit to the WTC, then there is a fast forward to 2004 when Loki and I visited Stefan and Ellen in their place in Glen Ridge. We all make a party & campfire visit to Bill and Andrea's place up in Bedford.

head hanging, I have the distinct mis-pleasure of missing my godson's Bar Mitzvah this coming weekend. hmmmm. lack of disposable income to increase carbon foot-print-stamp and head East. that'll come shortly perhaps. but in the meanwhile, Andrea (Simon's mum) shares her script for the evening (mind you, the photo above post-dates the beginning of this narrative a couple years -- around the Buttinsky-Hoppy-Top & Armpit Dancing Era), that's dad, Bill with big bro Zander along with Simon in his mother's arms, lil' sis Maxie is still in the oven):

Simon Arthur gracefully slid into the world on May 2, 1994. He had a powerful set of lungs, but he didn't get much chance to talk those first few years. Zander was his big brother, and rarely missed an opportunity to speak on Simon's behalf. Simon had to learn other ways to capture an audience. Silent, sly, comical ways. He innately understood the power of nudity to gain the spotlight, and used it regularly. It was the rare gathering in our house, or anyone else's house for that matter, that Simon did not make the scene if not fully undressed, then in his tiny little briefs. Whether it was his stunningly fast Ninja moves -- which often had the unintended result of landing him on his own back -- or his oddly endearing Armpit dance, Simon relished entertaining the crowd his way.

His casting as second brother also seemed to give him an ability to communicate empathetically with children all over the world, transcending language. Simon was a little Pied Piper. Somehow he'd end up as the leader of a small gang of kids wherever we went, who drawn by his sweet smile and antics, wanted to be near this brown-headed American boy who could climb like a billy goat (barefoot!), do cool flips and headstands off walls and in the sand, and all kinds of tricks with balls.

Simon always had an uncanny sense of physical perception. I remember a particular moment on the tree-swing out in the backyard. Simon liked me to twist the swing as tightly as I could, then let go, so he could spin at high speed. I could barely watch him without getting sick, but he made it ballet. He slowly rose, like a figure skater coming out of a sit-spin, and in the most elegant way, raised his knee and extended his leg, his head dropped back. It was the most natural artistry, and the kid was 3, maybe 4 years old.

I am stilled awed watching him play lacrosse, how he can move at such high speeds, covered with all that gear, and track that tiny ball and all the other players, moving objects that they are -- and still get the ball where it should go. At soccer, even as a little kid, a ball would come sailing on high down the field. Simon would place himself precisely wher e he had to be to meet that ball with his forehead. I'd picture him with little birdies and stars dancing around his head and swimming before his eyes, and he'd be off for the next play.

And on a mountain. Skiing behind Simon is just pure pleasure. And pride. His speed of perception is so fast, he finds every opportunity -- every bump, bank, and chunk?over which to propel himself into a jump, a spin, or a twist. In a terrain park, he takes the bigger guys by surprise, this slim little kid who not only hits the jumps, but nails things like 540s, 720s, and even, this winter, a 900. Those numbers may not mean anything to you, but to Simon they mean everything. It hasn't hurt his math skills, by the way, to learn to count by 180s. I love to hear the comments of the behemoth teens who populate the terrain park after Simon's hit a jump. "You see that little kid? __uckin' 720!" That's my boy. And, by the way, he did not learn anything like that from me.

Skills. As Napolean Dynamite explained, you need skills. And Simon's got them. It makes him an acceptable tagalong with his older brother's friends, and a special guest star at his younger sister's play dates. Simon is always welcome, because he always has a game to play.

He still entertains us, but he keeps his clothes on now. His sense of style is, shall we say, still in the early stages of development. Zander uses the word Hobo to describe Simon's sartorial look. At the end of six weeks of camp, Simon appears tan, but when you look closely, you realize it's just dirt. His leathery feet are ready to scale the rocky cliffs and rough beaches of Greece, always barefoot. I have never worried watching him climb a steep face in front of me, or ski off some gnarly outcropping. Never. I have total faith in his skills. He knows where his body is and what it has to do. And make it look good.

Simon always takes me by surprise. That's what happens with the quiet ones. He is funny, though it is always an offstage humor, not to mention off color. Simon can access the exact line from a movie to apply to any situation. I remember him performing the dance finale from The Full Monty, with perfect mimicry. Wish I had gotten that on videotape. I did get this one, though: when he asked if instead of a bed, we could get him a cage, like the dogs, so we could lock him in at night, and let him out in the morning. You can't, as they say, make this stuff up.

Throughout the whole lead up to his bar mitzvah, Simon, fortunate to be working with friends and with a rabbi he adores, willingly and good naturedly studied, almost daily. I only had to say, "Simon, how about reading your Hebrew," and he was right at it. Or, he'd beat me to it, and was already done. He's the same about his homework, his projects, his reading.

I am blessed to have this family, blessed with a husband who not only enriches my life, but takes active involvement in the daily doings of his children. Blessed with three children who love each other, like each other (except when they don't), teach each other, push each other, and revel in each other's accomplishments. Simon deserves all the attention he is getting today, and if all continues to go well, he will not have to take his clothes off and do the Armpit Dance. -- Andrea Raisfeld (Simon's mom), Bedford, New York, May 2007

Montgomery Village Junior High School, MVJHS. seventh grade. Miss Burrough's English class. was carrying a small Sony cassette recording deck. recall recording some of the top-100 pop hits off the radio, when home sick from school one day, and I wanted to play music at school during lunch with my friends. anyway, I covertly recorded part of class, including Miss Burrough's yelling at us -- she probably had very good reason as Gary, myself, Fritz, Bruce, and few others of us were constantly cutting up in class -- she found out that I had made a recording, and I ended up in the principle's office. my first foray into ambient phonography got me into big trouble.

the latest is a simple remix of sounds from Sydney along with a video segment -- the Sydney sky line -- that is, the tracing of the separation of earth-bound objects and the sky. trouble, what trouble? can you pick out the numerous CCTV's?

head down to San Jose State University Art & Design Department to the Cadre Laboratory for New Media run by Joel Slayton for a seminar in their Speaker Salon presented by two of the principles of Neighborhood Public Radio, Lee Montgomery, and Jon Brumit.



immediately prior to that I checked out some of the MFA exhibitions that were happening around the art building. ran across some work by Wendy McDermott which was quite nice -- refined metal objects dealing with narrative, stories, and her personal network.

afterwards, a small group of us retire to the Excelsior Hotel in downtown (after I find the $51 parking ticket on the windshield!). good to get some face time with these guys