jeblog

Houston, we have a problem

Last night I was watching the news. I heard (and saw) reports of hundred-mile back-ups of people in cars attempting to escape Houston, many of them running out of gas while stalled in traffic, and most of the gas stations along the route out of gas.

Then there were images and reports of oil refineries abandoned to Hurricane Rita. Most of the oil produced in the U.S. is refined along the Texas-Louisiana coast.

There was a report that gas prices would probably go up as a result.

There was no report, however, on the connection between the burning of fossil fuels, which causes global warming, which causes monster storms like Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

It's all about oil, folks. Monster storms, and wars in the Middle-East (and subsequent terrorism)--and so many other things (the key-board I'm tapping into, the screen I'm peering at).

Some experts say we're going to run out of that oil within 50 years, and we haven't even begun to prepare for it. After the oil is gone, the houses might still be left standing, but the world will be devastated--far worse than what a mere hurricane or two could cause.

Unless we start preparing ourselves. Using less gasoline and oil, using alternative fuels, using natural fibers (most of the synthetics are made with oil), growing and eating organic food (most of the fertilizers and pesticides are made with oil), learning to live with less power.

In this case, as in so many others, it will be a matter of, in the words of Gandhi, "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." Because right now our leaders are not leading us, not on this issue anyway. Or if they are leading us, it's right into the path of the hurricane...

All that said, my prayers are with those in the path of the latest hurricane, and I hope it avoids heavily populated areas.

phoku.29

I found a recent book by Haruki Murakami at a used-book store. Of course I bought it, because I think he's a highly original writer (see The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle).

But then a haiku came upon me (appropriately enough, I think), and I didn't have a note-pad, so I scribbled it in Murakami's book, in the front matter. Then I took a picture.

So instead of my usual phoku format--picture taken, text superimposed upon it--the text is an organic element of the composition. Or whatever.

Here's a link to a Salon interview with Murakami.

And in case you can't read my handwriting, here's a transcription:

"this is what happens
marking up your brand-new books
left your pad at home!"

Borf lives!

Over the weekend I went to a party to raise money for various causes (Hurricane Katrina relief, the protests coming up this weekend). There was a spray-painting workshop, which I missed, which was a pity because the name "Borf" was mentioned in the literature, and that piqued my interest.

I blogged about the once-ubiquitous Borf on July 14. He got himself arrested and, presumably, went out of business. Or so I thought.

I've seen his tag line around town (on a mailbox a couple blocks from here, in fact) and I assume other graffiti artists are taking up his moniker and his cause. I'm guessing the organizers of the workshop I missed are part of that crew.

I missed the workshop, but I did get to do a little graffiti myself! Nothing illegal, mind you. There was a sheet of plastic up--to be carried in the march on Saturday--and spray paint cans, and everyone was invited to make their "tag."

My first thought was to put up a quote from William Blake. I thought a proverb from Hell would be best, but all I could think of at the moment was "The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom," but that didn't seem appropriate.

I ended up painting a white lotus of peace. At least, that's what I intended: it was more like a white blob. Anyway, I knew my intention, and I believe the intention alwasy is somehow, mysteriously, communicated anyway.

I also found some xerox copies of the famous (or infamous) Borf face! I guess it was meant for folks to take one, cut it out as a stencil, and add it to the public art space of DC. One person did it and painted Borf's face on the plastic, but it didn't come out very well.

I scanned the picture and offer it here.

Perhaps someone out there in blog land can do a better job. And I'm not advocating illegal activity. I found a suggestion in some "tagging" literature at the party: you can actually use chalk to do stenciling. You just crush it up, put a roller in it, and roll it across a spot sprayed with adhesive. It washes away with water, so I'm pretty sure it's legal. Or just paint it on your wall at home.

Have fun being Borf, those who want to try it...

Gates of Paradise: Plate 18

Plate 18

Unlike the previous plate, this one takes the idea of the memento mori to a place many of us would not follow. In short, it's creepy. It was something of struggle to keep as my computer desk top as long as I did (a couple weeks).

The plate depicts a woman, in "conjurer" mode (with her wand), surrounded by a very large worm. The inscription reads: "I have said to the Worm: Thou art my mother & my sister." An allusion of sorts to the idea that we're all "food for worms."

I believe this plate displays Blake's discomfort with women and sexuality that we see in some of his other productions in the 1790s (e.g. there's a woman with wand in Songs of Experience, and a plate depicting three women with worms in Urizen--forgive me for not taking the time to find and paste in the links; those works are always worth a perusal, so I invite the reader to find them on their own). The discomfort gets a lot worse as Blake gets older: see the horrific, powerful women in Jerusalem).

Once again, as he's done in the rest of Gates of Paradise, Blake's extravagant (some might say disordered) imagination saps the "spiritual" from this plate. It's just too weird, too surreal, to serve as a memento mori--which may have been Blake's intention: to deconstruct as he constructs his images.

This was the last plate in For the Children (so the boys and girls could go to bed and have their nightmares), but there are three more plates Blake engraved for For the Sexes.

I don't know if I'll miss this series when it's finished.

"Albatross!"

I'm in Rehoboth Beach, in an internet cafe, sitting with legs crossed on a black bean-bag chair, typing into my laptop on the floor. Lot's of young folks here, some from Poland--maybe all from Poland. They all seem to be speaking Polish anyway. The guy at the front desk might be German; he seemed to have a German accent and he wasn't speaking Polish to the Polish people. I must have gone through a black hole and ended up in Europe. If so, I'll have to come back here next time I want to get to Europe and can't afford the air fare.

I'm just in town for a couple hours, to check email, etc. I'm staying with my friend Leslie at a lovely, big house at Broadkill Beach, about 12 miles up the road. The house is an off-season rental, friends of Leslie's. It's on the Chesapeake Bay, not far from where the bay meets the ocean (the water is salty); the house is right across the street. Once again I've lived up to my last name--Byrne--and spent five minutes in the sun today, which is always enough to get me a little sun-burn. It'll probably fade by tomorrow.

I'm on a kind of working retreat. I thought getting away from the city would help me get on track re: all the reading I have to do for my comps. I did do a lot of reading today. My system so far is this: read at the house in the morning, then go to the beach and read there (and swim of course); after lunch, read at the house, then maybe take a nap, and then go back to the beach around 5 or 6, swim a little more; then back to the house for dinner and maybe more reading, or making music, or maybe watching a DVD--or go to Rehoboth to find an internet cafe...

More on my "system": I've been reading secondary sources at the house, primary sources at the beach. I couldn't imagine reading about the Romantics' reception anxiety (secondary) at the beach, but essays by William Hazlitt (primary) seemed appropriate. I'm sure it was what all the fashionable people read on holiday in 1825...

I've been giving Leslie a running commentary on the Romantics and she isn't bored stiff--which is a good sign (today while we were swimming I told her about Dorothy Wordsworth's gossip about Coleridge--how supposedly the opium he was taking made him a lousy lover and gave him sagging breasts...).

That, and the beach, probably made me think that I should be reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which is on my list. I'm going to download that now and read it at the house (even though it's a primary source, not a secondary, and thus violated my day-old system. Even I'm not reckless enough to bring a laptop to the beach so it could get filled with sand or carried out by the tide into the ocean).

"Albatross!"

review of The Constant Gardener

A very fine film adaptation of a very fine book by John le Carre. Ralph Fiennes is very well cast in this role as a milquetoast diplomat Justin Quayle who finds his strength and courage as he investigates his wife's murder and undercovers the conspiracy of a big pharmaceutical company to cover up its medical malfeasance (based on some hard research on Big Pharma by le Carre). Rachel Weisz is very convincing as his trouble-making do-gooder wife Tessa (though Kate Winslet, at one point considered for the role, would have been good too). The rest of the cast is equally up to the task, especially Pete Postlewaite in a cameo as Dr. Lorbeer.

Fernando Meirelles is the director in his first big-budget feature, and he uses his big-budget well, without seeming to sell out like so many indy film-makers enticed to take their director's chair to Hollywood. I didn't see his break-through film City of God because I heard it was ultra-violent, but I may have to go back to it after seeing this film. He brought to the film something that was a little lacking in the novel, namely a developing-world sensibility. With the help of fabulous cinematography, we see both the beauty and the terrible suffering of the ever-exploited Africa. Many, many stunning shots.

And now a major pet peeve.

All summer I've been seeing ads on the internet featuring a figure in silhouette (the main character Justin Quayle) pointing a gun. Once upon a time, I would have avoided the film altogether because, on principle, I didn't see films that featured guns in their ads. But this was a John le Carre adaptation, with Ralph Fiennes, so I had to see it, despite the gun.

Now here's the thing: at no point in the film does Quayle fire a gun. In fact, in the one scene where he might have used a gun, he purposely dumps the bullet cartridge, in effect disarming it. Which makes it all the more disgustingly cynical that the ad campaign would feature said character pointing said gun. Obviously, it was meant to bring in the young, supposedly gun-happy, male demographic. Either that or it was kow-towing to the gun lobby. It disturbs me greatly that even films that have an essentially non-violent message have to pretend that they are violent to sell more tickets.

Well you can read it here: if you want your main protagonist to be a vengeful, gun-happy nut, this is not the film for you, despite what you see in the ads.

If you want your main protagonist to be brave and resourceful without resorting to violence, you might want to check it out.

And Hollywood, keep your stupid violence-pandering ad campaigns away from me and fine films like this one.

Final note: I found the film web-site to be poorly designed (despite the snazzy graphics), hard to navigate, and not very informative. Note to the web site designers: larding your site with distorted film clips, making the viewer sit through them before getting to menu options, is NOT a good idea. And making you click on a gun to get into the site is juvenile. I'll give the URL, though I don't recommend the site:

http://www.theconstantgardener.com/

confronting my technophobia

I've done it again.

A month after stupidly leaving my iPod in an Alamo rental car (from which it was subsequently stolen), I've managed to kill my digital camera.

I went swimming at a place called Savage Mill and saw a lovely yellow poplar leaf in the water and thought I would take some pictures. I put the camera in the breast pocket of my shirt, thinking if I left it in my pocket of my shorts, it would get wet. I can remember thinking: "if you're not mindful, that camera is going to go 'plunk' in the water."

I was mindful for a while, but then I forgot. I was multi-tasking, taking pictures but also picking out beer cans from the water, and after the third beer can or so...my camera went 'plunk' in the water.

It was only in there for a second, and I dried it off immediately, but it was enough to kill it.

It gave me much food for distress--and then thought. After deep psychological introspection, I'd decided that my recklessness with machines is largely due to my ambivalence towards technology.

For much of my life, attempting to live in Gandhian simplicity, I was antagonistic towards technology. Then, in an activist job, I started using the computer for more than word-processing. I started doing desk-top publishing, and then moved on to web design. I really liked it, and still do.

Then when I went to the U. of Maryland for the MFA program, after a year of teaching, I got my present Graduate Assistantship job doing web and graphic design (and editing) at Romantic Circles. And I'm poised to do very similar things once I finish my doctorate.

But then all along I've had "issues" with technology, not wanting to turn into a cyborg, and not wanting my life and environment dominated by machines. Which has translated into behavior that is reckless towards machines; that is, I lose, or break, machines, out of my ambivalence and frustration.

It's gotten better. I don't have machine-rage anymore, punching out printers when they don't work, or smashing lap-tops when they don't process fast enough (both, unfortunately, true stories for me). But my reckless behavior has continued in other ways.

Technology can, and is often, used for destructive purposes, but it also--especially in the realm of communications--is very constructive. We can see that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. People are searching for, and finding, information and ways to help through blogs and the internet.

I have now decided: it's all right for me to play with tools in a mindful way. (It's also all right for me to save money from not having to replace my tools that I break or lose!)

Humans have developed large brains through the use of tools and technology. Using tools makes us human, not cyborgs. So it's OK for me to use technology--as long as I also know when to step away from the machines to pick up my dulcimer, my drum, or my spindle (which some might argue are just other forms of technology).

Now if I could get over my ambivalence about buying new shiney things (when I have the money to afford them, that is)!

kwan yin, my neighborhood bodhisattva

My little "daughter" Kwan Yin (along with my boyfriend Wallace) will be leaving today after a two-week sojourn. I will miss them both terribly.

Walking a dog every couple of hours or so is a pain, I admit, but there are definite fringe benefits. I think I got to know my neighbors better in the past two weeks than in the past five years through the intervention of our puppy dog. Who can resist a puppy? Not many in this neighborhood.

I wonder if those neighbors know that Kwan Yin pooped in the majority of their yards? That's all right, I picked it all up. And the pee-pee? It's full of nitrogen, which is good for growing things. That's my justification, anyway.

Of course, I've gotten to know much of the garbage of my neighborhood (most of it, according to Kwan Yin, edible) as well. Which has given me an opportunity to clean it up.

I guess, with the dog gone, I'll return to my monkish ways. Or maybe I could get one of those Japanese virtual doggies. I would just have to figure out how to take it for a walk through my neighborhood...

not even close to the Big Easy

Things are certainly not easy in the Big Easy right now. My thoughts and prayers go out to those who are still trapped in the toxic sink that is New Orleans. (Sure would be nice if New Orleans had those soldiers and equipment that are now in Iraq...)

Technology is playing a part in the coverage, of course. Like during 9-11, folks who are trapped are using their cell phones to call for help. There are also lots of bloggers reporting about the hurricane.

A good source of media (albeit left-leaning), including images, podcasts, and blogs, is one I've plugged before: alternet. Check it out if you're not already overwhelmed by images, podcasts and blogs about Katrina and New Orleans.

military recruiters: no child left behind

There is a little known provision of George Bush's No Child Left Behind act that requires schools to hand over students' info to military recruiters. The military will do everything in its (taypayer-financed) power to make sure No Child is Left Behind.

There is an even littler known provision that allows for parents to "opt out" of having their children be added to the recruiters' database. You can watch online an interesting little video (featuring Cindy Sheehan) and organizing site that makes these little known facts more well-known.

There's also a recent Nation magazine cover story on child recruiting, as well as a list of resources on how to "just say no" to child military recruitment.

spinning more colorful yarns

Lately, I've been spinning colored wool roving that I bought at the John Campbell Folk School.

It doesn't spin as softly (or as thin) as the alpaca I've been spinning, but I've really been enjoying watching the different colors get twisted into the yarn.

I have to also confess that I'm becoming a promiscuous yarn spinner. I have three spindles going now at once: one with alpaca, one with flax, and one with this colored wool. I'm such a fiber slut.

Gates of Paradise: Plate 17

Plate 17

I became quite attached to this image and was actually happy to have it as my desktop wallpaper, even though it's entitled "Death's Door" and might be considered morbid. It's one of Blake's most evocative and well-executed emblems. Blake must have thought so because he used this image again (America A Prophecy Plate 14).

I don't think it's morbid. I found added meaning in the idea that this emblem is a kind of momento mori (something like Durer's "Death and the Maiden," which Blake hung above his work bench)--that is, a reminder of death and the brevity of life. The classic memento mori, often show in the hands of saints in paintings, is a skull.

There is no skull here, but certainly an image to cause and think about mortality. There is an weird, interactive aspect to the image: the figure of the decrepit old man, and the eye that follows the figure, is seemingly sucked into the door. Note the hair, reaching ahead of the figure). The bottom of the long, shroud-like tunic is also shows movement, as if it were also being sucked in (though I'm also aware that Blake often, as in plate 16, often gives this scroll-like flourish to the bottom of robes and tunics).

I've written elsewhere that Blake is very conscious of such effects--using multimedia and framing to create a sense of virtual space--which is why Blake seems so at home on the web. He means to draw in the reader/viewer into his transformative space. This image does it better than most.

Life indeed is transient and precious. During this past week I learned that my father had a mini-stroke, which gave me an opportunity to peek inside death's door. I know I will be peeking again (but hopefully not any time soon regarding my father) and may have to come back to this image again, maybe even make it my computer wallpaper again.