month's ending. All Hallows. images accruing in a form to share -- 1996 (of this travelog) will be augmented first. complications with Berlin logistics, may throw off the November trip. and force a cancellation of Transmediale collaboration, hmmm. recalls the cafe9.net debacle in 1999.

end of the month, Friday.

finished with the DFW immersion. Oblivion is a brilliant set of stories, each one containing numerous positions, layers, points-of-view, (what to call the vantage of his voice/eye?). maybe the term channels applies. he has a multi-tasking eye, picking up information not just at the focal point of optics, but instead of immaculate macular generation. he has the recall, along with synthesis. imagination? springing from impression and spreading out through spaces which have not been mapped in that exact way. an example of voice-declaiming-self's-model-of-cosmos. with a pivotal crux for the entire collection coming on page 326:

'Who?' She had ten weeks to live.

the deeply buried oblivion of our situation, now. everywhere. whenever. a weepy sad sketch of the human conditions. here, now. whenever. and a stiff finger punched into the chest of gloating cultural superiority. it all falls down.

how to push shaped impulse charges out, through the gate of psyche. and while pushing out, receive direct all the more.

ever the pragmatist with significant experience in radical education:

The anarchists have this beautiful principal line: If elections were capable of changing anything, they would long have been forbidden. -- Frieder Nake, email

what about it. is it recall, pure recall? or is it synthesis. or a combination of the two, or something completely elsewise, like a state of head that comes during a seizure, magnetic vortices swirling around picking spun and un-blocked beta adrenergic receptors in heart-felt relaxation and then the words all spill out. perfect recall? imperfect recall? replicating dialogue, reconstructing conversation, impression, apprehension, perception. stretch, scratch. back to the less descriptive and to the more surficial of textual generation. better yet, the visual. easier to cope with. but without any possibility of breaking out into a pluralistic space where threads of the Other are artfully woven into the text(ile) of word here. so that goes. the accession to expression in the midst of compression of social division to sparking violence. only the sounds that are in the head are worth reflecting. where the head gets filled in the movement of day-to-day through the systemic participation, this followed by a core dump of the consequent alteration of neural system in reaction? or is this reactionary writing? a real-time tap into the momentary flow of thought cannot, in fact, happen. unless fingers can transcribe this floating, channeling of sensation in-to-out. it happens. rarely if ever for most, sustained for a select few who are configured for this state of flow. hmmm.

college art gallery, opening, student work, yawn. Dana and Marianne were there and then we run over to The Raven, the only reasonable place in town to hang out in the evening. until some guy dumps a beer over on my lap which was holding my pack with camera and audio recorder in it... shhh...

coming to the conclusion that my writing talents are nowhere near my image-making talents. focusing on the image work might make more sense. but writing (sometimes) is more accessible as an output. here, sitting on a huge archive of images, the vast majority which have only been seen by my self, through the view-finder. the world framed there, then. and also, then, comes the question about the sonic work, and the moving image work. more on that later. I have to remember when back in Berlin soon to transfer all my recent miniDV tapes to hard-disk since my Sony miniDV cam is no longer functioning properly. I need access to all that newish material! it's like the five rolls of Tri-X sitting in a box here. undeveloped since 2000.

so, a little bit of walkabout (on bike) of the town, beginning to see the place, warts and all.



and then, back to this flood of Wallace that I happen to be consuming right now. to catch up on his legacy -- and his political oracle.

Now you have to pay close attention to something that's going to seem real obvious. There is a difference between a great leader and a great salesman. Because a salesman's ultimate, overriding motivation is his own self-interest. If you buy what he's selling, the salesman profits. So even though the salesman may have a very powerful, charismatic, admirable personality, and might even persuade you that buying really is in your interest (and it really might be) -- still, a little part of you always knows that what the salesman's ultimately after is something for himself. And this awareness is painful ... although admittedly it's a tiny pain, more like a twinge, and often unconscious. But if you're subjected to enough great salesmen and sales pitches and marketing concepts for long enough -- like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let's say -- it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is a salesman and really ultimately doesn't give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself. -- David Foster Wallace, from "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub: Seven Days In The Life Of The Late, Great John McCain" in Rolling Stone 13 April 2000

finally done with getting 430 images from my senior year at Gaithersburg High School. I was the Photography Editor for the yearbook, and had originally wanted to get all the images up and running for the 30-year reunion, but never made that deadline. the scanning followed by the retouching work was mind-numbing and has been on my To-Do list for these two years as an escape from more important work, yet it never seemed to get finished until last weekend, after getting a nice email from Renee who had stumbled on the images that I did have up, I was determined to finish the damn project.

when do personal histories become interesting? scandal, documentation of publicly shared events, the historical record, curiosity, obsession. where the volume of material becomes overwhelming. nah. it is the compelling character of the narrative. story-telling. no stories here, only images. and notes rattled off after things seen. (guess what I saw?)

and BTW, George has this nice riff in the New Yorker (that, of course, only Élites read, so, hmmm, how's that?) But he asks the all-important policy questions (largely ignored as we float down the main stream): Do you know the difference between me and a Hockey Mom who has forgot her lipstick?

update on the collaborative Infinite Jest project -- home page for it is here, some nice pieces.

When the high winds blew off Country," the Ranger said, "I was able to hear the infinitely many soft sounds of the millions of delicate petals striking and rubbing together. They joined and clove together in wind. My eyes are blowing everywhere, and the rush of perfume sent up to me by the agitation of the clouds of petals nearly blew me out that window. DeLighted. Aloft. Semi-moral. New." -- David Foster Wallace, in John Billy

no fond member/consumer of any blogospheres, I have to link to this Huffington Post Stefan Sirucek article on the election...

Now, in a highly touted "change" election, one party is running a former D student who himself admits to being hot-headed and impulsive, whose low-road campaigning has tarnished both the electoral process and his own reputation and whose political ideas become less credible with every emerging reality. As his running mate this man has, either recklessly or cynically, chosen a woman who believes instead of thinking, who knows little of the world and whose every tortured sentence is an affront to the logic of language itself.

Forget the White House. The only public building these people should be heading for is the library.

yes, it's true, few Amurikans have even a modest command of the language of the land -- but I want, after eight years of a distinct lack of intelligent and thoughtful speaking (not to mention actions!), a political leader who can speak at least a handful of coherent words in a row, better yet, a number of sentences, or even several paragraphs. without teleprompters, handlers, and the assorted spin-meisters that ride herd on these ... puppets ... like so many ... sheep. not to mention a media who only serves the interests of, you guessed it, THE MEDIA. sheesh, enough of this!

robocalling anyone?

hospital reception and lobby, and on to hear the cafe at the way-overpriced health food market.

dredging (scanning) personal archives, negatives unseen until now -- 1979, 1989, 1992, 1996, and then far back into pre-histories. an image of my mother taken by my father on their honeymoon in 1945. near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

it takes a day for one roll of 36 exposures, and entails multitasking that makes any coherent writing impossible. editing is possible, but not raw writing. and acquiring more digital scans seems vaguely senseless. what to do with all the ones that already are there? sounds, videos, texts, images. when life gets reduced to leaving traces, what then is life? stepping out of life to make a transitory tracing of energies, then stepping out for a longer time to take that tracing and massaging it into something coherent. (what is coherency?) much massage makes mashed potatoes out of some material. monster mash.

Kim proposes a new microsound project, making sound tracks for the experimental films of David F. Wallace's fictional character James O. Incadenza in the book Infinite Jest. I pick Kinds of Light as it immediately strikes. patch together an obsessive piece in 24 hours (4,444 frame splices on a multi-track of a water performance in Pool Creek Canyon (changing the course of history)), shatter-welded with audio from a video of standing at a confluence in the West Elk Wilderness entranced by the Pele's hair of water coming from the sun). definite sonic hyper-retinality.

I missed Wallace during my North Amurikan vacancy of the last 20 years. surprised I hadn't run across him randomly, though, given the households that I have ramble through on the nomadic way. George knew him and speaks highly of his character. sadly for all of us, another victim of the intensity of be-ing. I plow through Oblivion, and a couple other books that I managed to recall at the library. extremely dense. the first short story I read drove me, half-way through, into a delirious sleep from which I woke ten minutes later, not knowing where I was. jittery, caffeine-fueled, precise jewels. you see the faceting process, the cutting of the entire glittering crystal, a tedium of focus, the high-speed grind with diamond grit, rocking polish movement across the charged wheel. spun tales. fiber glass. each brittle thread opening a bloodless wound which nano-gapes at the whole fuckin' world, all at once. he would be Brakhage's cinematographer if Brakhage was blind and able only to see the inside of his eyelids.

"Kinds Of Light" - B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. No cast; 16 mm; 3 minutes; color; silent. 4,444 individual frames, each of which photo depicts lights of different source, wavelength, and candle power, each reflected off the same unpolished tin plate and rendered disorienting at normal projection speeds by the hyper-retinal speed at which they pass. CELLULOID, LIMITED METROPOLITAN BOSTON RELEASE, REQUIRES PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE

can't find the cassette tape of Alton Ellis co-hosting a 1983(?) edition of KCRW's Reggae Beat program with Roger Steffens. nor are my Studio One and Coxsone vinyl's easily accessible. dang. rocksteady Master Ellis, all da way tru dem pearly gates!

Look here now
Children go out to school
Smarter than your father
Don't be a fool
Let the people be led
Take care of them instead

Lord, deliver us
Lord, deliver us
Lord, deliver us
Coz with all the things that men have earnt
To make things that frighten the world
Still can't help us, still can't help us
Still can't help us

-- Alton Ellis, from "Lord Deliver Us"

WOW, my all-time favorite writer, Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature! Splendid! Incroyable! very deserving! I first picked up a copy of Les Giants, The Giants, in English translation back in 1987 or so at the CU Boulder library. I was hooked. fantastically minute and prismatic observations of everyday moments. incisive and elemental critique of human be-ing on the planet. on one of my trips to Paris in the 1980s I attempted to make contact with him through his French publisher, Gallimard, but was not successful.

I suppose this will get more of his books into translation which is a good thing, IMHO. I think that at least seven of the thirty or so may be found in English, slightly more than that in German.

as a preface to the online Center of the Universe documentation, I use

So everything is ready: ready for the journey to Purgatory, the journey to the land of black and white... The last remaining area of imperfection seems to disappear; the perfect work of not-being, a beautiful poem, monochrome and illegible. -- J-M. G. LeClezio

my swimming pal, Buddy van Kirk passed away recently -- I shared a pool, a lane, with him more times than I can count here in Prescott. either at the "Y" or at the college pool. he was there practically everyday to do a leisurely but long swim. he had knee problems and some heavy arthritis, but always kept moving. you will be missed Bud!

the migrating realities book is about to go to the press in Vilnius after a long haul on editing. I like the design although I'm not thrilled about the font face that the designer chose. more on this when the book comes out in hard copy.

stopped by the county elections office to keep on track as an elections volunteer, and now they want me to be a polling trouble-shooter which is a bit daunting (given the contemporary predilection for very third-world election standards here in the US and the dearth of International observers, not sure I want to get caught up in that). not to mention that the county uses a combination of paper and electronic balloting methods. we'll see. the ladies in the office were quite nice and joked about locking the doors after I had said I was there to volunteer -- apparently they never have enough people to help out. technically it's not a volunteer position either, as one receives for the 0500 -- 2100 day around USD 90 for helping out.

driving around, I pass the migrant worker hang-out, the corner Lincoln and Grove Streets, the site around which numerous letters-to-the-editor have addressed both sides of the illegal immigrant issue. apparently some Minutemen have set up a post across the street, although I didn't see them today. there were plenty of Latino fellows hanging out under the scraggly trees that lead down the dip in the road off Grove to the flood wash. I can imagine the tanking economy makes marginality even more precarious.

this may appear as a technical image-rendering glitch, but, well, what can I say about the situation? it says it all.

take a wander around the center of town, to Courthouse Square and the library.