Check out my other blogs and website

Natura
Consumer America
Our Bus Project and Future Travels
The Art of Production
American Recreation

www.blairbutterfield.com

Internet-less Wonder World

I have been thoroughly enjoying a technology free existence in which my productivity and joy have increased a hundred fold.

The Spring has been beautiful and fertile. There are exotic flowers and plants surprising me every where in our jungle.

The bus is nearing completion and soon we will be traveling full time.

Failed Optimism: soon published

A preview of the soon published book of suburban photographs

Failed Optimism, American Suburbs today:

A collection of photographs by Blair Butterfield.

The streets are silent, the sidewalks are covered with grass like archeological finds. Cars are parked like armored machinery in front of the houses. Anyone who you might encounter outside is guarded with a fierce stare and uneasy fear.

The architecture is contrary: with friendly decorative concrete designs, patterns, bright colors, awnings and a backdrop of a surreally blue Florida sky.

We imagine the first inhabitants of these places:

Dick and Jane seeing Spot run. Dishwasher day dreamers.

They were a generation that had complete faith in a system that has lead us to the road we are all so desperately trying to diverge from as it crumbles beneath our feet. To untangle the international web it wove and is still weaving would require the same propaganda techniques employed to deceive us in the beginning.

Post war Men, like the Bowerbird, constructed homes designed to keep their wives and raise their children while they were away working in the inner city. What they were working on, would eventually lead this “nuclear family” to become fractured. With industrialization came mass production and soon mother and wife were separated from the home, as she had graduated in society, and was now deemed: capable of work outside the home.

Appliances, canned food, frozen dinners, baby formula anything that would synthesize in exchange for time, was the new home life. Children raised by others as Mother brought home a second income. Not only did this raise the cost of living as families now had combined incomes, it separated women from the natural bonding that a child needs in the early years of life. Many agree that this creates an imbalance in an individual which primes them for a life of consuming to achieve illusionary emotional fulfillment and happiness.

Consumption became a lifestyle. Appliances were sold as futuristic and revolutionary. It started a phenomena of consuming products as identity. Product mythologies entered every home through advertising: TV, radio, print, even the waste from the product advertises itself as it enters its last stage of life as: trash. Consumer ideology saturates the media across the globe and is devouring our civilization like the plague. In consumer society enough is never enough. There is a longing for more and better: a need that is never satiated.

Micro[Pollen]tin: Like bees in a corporate hive. Better then suburbia, a corporate town and its own metropolitan:

The idea of suburban neighborhoods spawned a phenomena of ideal living propaganda. In reality the idea is simply a ploy for corporations to house and feed their workers. Like the old mining towns of the past. Where miners would work for room, board and coupons that were only exchangeable for goods at company stores, which usually charged higher prices than regular retailers. It is a little less obvious in more modern living situations as seen in micropolitans. For instance, Plano Texas. This little place was nearly a ghost town before ten major American corporations decided to buy it all up and put their corporate headquarters in its center. Outside of its center they have contracted developers to build popular franchised restaurants, a plethora of themed shopping , a cinema and two different lifestyle living situations. One is the popular suburban dream of a house, a yard, a garage and the other is a more city style apartment living just outside of the shopping and eating place. Little do most employees of the corporations know that after they get their salary from Frito-Lay and go spend it at the Plano cinema or Plano grocery store, that they are in fact just returning the money to Frito-Lay or Bank of America. (These names are used for example, but they are in fact a part of this micropolitan of Plano Texas.) It is like herding technique that involves deep rooted psychology of the fragile emotions of the human mind and the disgusting greed of money and ego.

It is ironic that the idea behind suburbia, the ideas of protecting, nurturing and connecting with a community, has become the very utility that has separated community and facilitated an isolated, competitive consumer lifestyle.

These photographs seek to capture the reminisce of these homes and ideas. Perhaps all of these neighborhoods will be replaced with duplexes, tower blocks and paved parking lots. They are apart of or cultural archaeology and provide great insight into our current civilization and perhaps could offer us a perspective to look into our future.

All images can be seen:

http://www.blairbutterfield.com/lostinfl.htm

http://www.blairbutterfield.com/america2.htm

inter-thought

Moments forgotten, a documentation of all things passed through my mind in hopes of a profound interesting thought? To pass beyond the physical now and to really engage. How does one feel, not in his body but as a part. We are all being buried alive, quickly and seemingly slowly. So many distractions. Bright lights like sharp laser beams coming through my eyes piercing my brain. A cold species of metals is a parasite that lives upon us. Slowly it works its way into our everyday, in our hands, in our ears, in our mouths, under our skin, soon in our brain. They sterilise us and give us cancer. We become more inert than we already are. Are our brains trying to escape the physicality of the body? The brain is an organism more powerful than any other force. It alone controls the entire body physically, psychologically, sub-consciously and we still do not understand it entirely. Even after death it continues to operate for 37 hours. Are we separate from it or is it who we think of as “me”. That moment of where did I put my keys and you stand in the middle of the room and your head moves unconsciously to a particular spot as you gaze blankly. Around and around the room you looked, but there they are as your eyes focus. As though your subconscious knew all along.

The internet is one of the most cerebral activities. Anything your mind ever wonders, instantly satisfied with many sources, images, videos, and a multitude of opinions. Learn anything, be an expert at everything, but again our bodies are forgotten and inertia kicks in like rigor mortis. Especially with a taste of western globalisation in everybody’s mouths. A life style of quick, easy, fast, in my car, there and back with as little effort as possible upon the physical body. Meanwhile the media has a frenzy documenting the illnesses of the culture it perpetuates. A viscous cycle of distractions. One is unable to write anything anymore, unless the writing its self is in the cycle and provides a distraction. People want to be distracted. They need it, the World wishes to be decieved, so it shall be.

Mundus vult decipi, otherwise fear would overcome. The social climate of today is an elaborate patchwork of neurosisneuroses. And this is the attribute of a society where everyone is forced to compete in a multitude of levels. It created the cycle and allows it to grow bigger and bigger, there are no limits. The fear is diminished by a forced acceptance and the forced acceptance is compensated for by consumption. Allowing the person to feel that they gained and that they need to gain more. And the media is 100% responsible for this and its reinforcement, so much so that it provides a selection of reinforcement like a box of sweets. Are you this sweet or that one, whichever one, it’s all the same. And this accounts for the majority of neurosis. The other stems from this being the most claustrophobic society ever. Everyone in their cars, boats, airplanes, the inescapable and relentless advertising. We can not move freely anywhere. Everything is owned and yet nothing truly is. When all of this construction falls and human beings are stripped of these puerile and infantile excesses their money will mean nothing. Its absurdity will be revealed as well as the overall problem. It is unfortunate that we have played this game too long to change it now and the few that try are just pushed to the side by the majority. It would take millions to behave radically and none, at no fault of their own are willing to sacrifice the comfort or potentially the survival of those that they love.

On the other side there is the self. An absolute reason for being, may not to be to change the world and who is one to do so. But they have, and I’m not happy in what they have created. So, I write and make things as an artist only to have them criticise in the light of capital and all of the above. What is there to receive pleasure from, if I identify with few and enjoy only a few of the things left. The land is going, the boundaries put high and I’m forced to be put in a limited function. Where am I to find hope and inspiration except in my discontent?

New Years Eve and Birthdays

I haven't really taken too much time to analyze why I find these two occasions particularly depressing. Perhaps it is the endless quest of deciding what to do, but in the years of experience I find the best solution is either to do absolutely nothing which involves eating delicious food and spending the evening indulging in the pleasures of a lover, close family, friends or anyone to hold a good altering conversation with.

Entering a new year of life, either by birth or calender, in an intoxicated, hungover state never was very much appealing to me. It seems the contrary of what we deeply wish for. It's as if with every recreational drug use or sip of alcohol we imagine some magical wisdom coming into our bodies and minds to liberate us from the terrible sober existence that is YOUR real life. Only to wake to dehydration, forgetfulness and the same life. If you want your life to change then YOU must do something DIFFERENT, then the same ritual and habitual activities.

In my recent reading of some Sufi literature from perhaps the 70s coming out of the 60s. They have suggested that recreational drug use such as LSD, mushrooms and other psychoactives (natural or man made) had given people false enlightenment, meaning that they were enlightened to something for a short time of consuming the drug, but soon after the effects wore off they returned to being robots. It is suggested that the way to true FREE WILL or enlightenment is through powerful mental exercises such as meditation. I tend to agree with this idea, for sometime I have suspected it to be true.

Through out MY life I have had many chances to contemplate in isolation. Times waiting in or driving in cars, long bicycle rides, poverty, elevators, home alone, ferries, airplanes, waiting rooms, bathrooms, showers, etc..In those times I clear my mind and concentrate on the present state of being. I ask myself how I came here and how this place came to exist. Once I move beyond these I allow my brain to open itself and look inside, to explore my thoughts and behavior and to be honest with myself. This reflection ultimately leads back to civilization and then the physics of the universe or the existence of anything at all, which out of all phenomena is THE phenomena and there is nothing left to do but smile and love.

I recently wrote a letter to a friend in which I discussed this topic of spirituality and meditation. I mentioned that to me, the objective of most religious or contemporary spirituality is to let oneself be undone and to rid yourself of preconceptions, to allow every experience to be new and enjoyed. But this seems to be a circle in which we return ourselves to something like, ignorance is bliss, but achieved through knowledge, acceptance and appreciation. I likened it to the experience of a Gold Fish with a 3 second memory. That everything becomes renewed and therefore grossly enjoyed. That may sound really cynical, because I enjoy most of my connotations from previous experiences, and I do use them to make expectations, but not exclusively. But there are exceptions that apply to most, the MOST that operate on auto pilot who are asleep 100% of the time.

I just considered for the first time that Television instantly silences the mind, again of MOST, and it is ironic since we work so hard to achieve the silencing of our thoughts for deep meditation and spiritual growth. I suppose the difference is that TV silences all thought.

I wish I could articulate these ideas clearer, but the medium is always an obstacle.

Art Basel and Worker Explotations

Ah, that time of year that everyone waits for in Miami.

The time of year when South Florida is graced with the thousands of money hungry art pimps and whores.

This is when most of the locals make their money to survive for the rest of the year. I don't really care about that, since most Miamians that you encounter are greedy nasty people who will stab you in the back for a buck or points for their egos. And encounters of these people are either on the road in your car or in a store shopping, because everyone is so self, cell phone, car and money focused that they dare not be caught on a bus, walking or worst yet a bike (we love you Miami cyclists, critical mass!!)

But recently I was browsing Craigslist for work and what did I see? I saw post after post of galleries, artists and even institutions soliciting for free, yes FREE workers.

Okay let us summarize the situation:

For a year people have had none or very little work. People have lost their jobs and are desperate. Even Union workers are accepting non-union jobs because everyone knows that in times like this they can pay very little and get people to work and for ridiculously long hours.

So Art Basel comes into town and these galleries, curators and artists want people to "Intern"?!!

And they want you to have experience to "Intern"!? Isn't that the point of an internship?

You can afford a flight from London, to package and crate all your pieces, ship them, to rent a car or take cabs, to eat at all the fancy places, to stay in a nice hotel or rent a house for a week, but you can't afford to pay someone to hang the artwork on the walls? So you ask for "experienced interns"?

This matter doesn't even concern me personally, but when I see people mistreating or taking advantage of others, I call it like it is. Why don't people stand up for themselves?

Another occurrence that I have recently observed is in the film industry. My husband works in film and tries to screen his jobs by choosing to work with people who pay good and treat everyone fairly. But you would be surprised how mistreated these film crews are. For instance, Doritos, big USA company, product all over the globe, is doing a commercial in Miami. I think it was a photo shoot. Our friend was the art director and was given very little budget to build and dress and entire set. She needed an extra person to help her build and this person was paid $50 a day for two days working more than 12 hours a day!!

Another instance, a music video. Music videos are the worst, they expect to shoot an entire video in one day, they expect you to work over time without extra pay, they feed you junk, if anything and the amount of labor is beyond the amount of people they have hired. This isn't always true, but the majority would agree. Some R&B singer named Trina came into Miami at 4pm to shoot a video. The crew was called to be at the studio at 4pm. They built and shot three or four sets in one day, got paid for one day and didn't leave the studio until 5am.

The workers are afraid to join a union, they see that the union takes money out of their checks and that scares them. But they must be told that the union will protect their rights and wages. That it will force these companies and productions to treat people fairly!

It is strange to me that America calls its self the "land of the free" but everyone is slaving for the dollar. However, in Europe, everyone is protected and granted vacations, healthcare, lunch, breaks, good pay and job security. What is so hard about this that the US can not implement it?

Thinking to re-think

I haven't been doing much thinking recently. I've been concentrating on the doing aspect of existence. And without too much thought I began to worry that my mind may go or perhaps become out of practice. I have discovered this to be impossible, instead the mind becomes focused and sharp. There is no frivolous conversation needed. Your intentions become wholesome and true.

For instance, I have not attended any big social occasions such as an art opening, for a VERY long time. Now that Luciano is older and enjoys going out, we attended such an event. People want to talk for the sake of hearing themselves speak. They stand in circles with their mouths moving and their eyes wondering around the room behind you, occasionally peering over your shoulder. This is terrible engagement. I look in to a persons eyes when they speak to me and try to gaze into their soul and feel their energy and get a sense of who they are, where they have been and perhaps what experiences have brought them to say what they wish to communicate to me.

This is hard to find, even a friend who calls himself a Buddhist could care less about what you are saying to him and prefers to eye up everyone else standing around you.

I was considering this stupid credit and 401k believing generation that we come from and its progress in the context of humanity. There is a chart of human inventions through out the years and this chart shows a peak around the time of Thomas Edison and a recession thereafter. I attribute this recession to the mass consumption of, yes, TV among other useless time consuming activities, like working in retail, driving cars across town, talking on the phone endlessly, computer games and by now everyone knows what I am saying.

It is so hard to regain this mind frame. A mind free of brainwashing and conditioning. I suffer it, I know I do. Someone once recommended an Anton Wilson book titled Undoing Yourself. When money comes I might give it a try. I need everything to be a new, semi first time perspective. Un-fog my mind.

Otherwise, gaining complete discipline and self control is a start. But this becomes complicated when involved in a relationship and your partner perhaps isn't in the same place. It is like being vegan and your partner not, can you really eat separately and be connected, I don't think so. Progress must be made together and one must be careful not to out grow the other. And of course the desire is stronger in one then the other. But not enough to tread on that sacred line

every couple has that keeps them balanced together.

I finally started a new painting and some new photos:

Busy

Been being busy.

Change is in the air.

On Motherhood

I have for awhile avoided this topic, since it seems only identifiable to other mothers. But as we were all once children we must identify with all children and perhaps see ourselves as parents and teachers of all children.

When Luciano was born I felt great joy and the greatest fear I've ever known. I would not say this fear was rooted in how inadequate I would be as a mother, but a fear that made me want to put him back inside my stomach and let him live there forever, protected from the ugly world. Which at the time included cars, germs, negative energy, TV, pollution, capitalism, being policed, bad food, bad ideas and all the other anxieties we just eventually accept. Somehow these words do not completely describe how I felt, it was so much more, it was the moment he opened his eyes and perhaps he would want to ask me, why would you bring me into this world. This was my fear.

I assuage these fears with the belief that in order to better civilization, you must put a generation of conscientious thinkers into the world. That I will teach my children to be wise, sensitive, thoughtful, healers of negativity.

Time went on in the first days and he was perfectly content, no crying, no sleepless nights, no colic, nothing, just perfect bliss. I usually attribute this to the natural waterbirth, but perhaps it is just his disposition. And that is what I try to remember, he is already himself, born with the intuition to comprehend, sent through the stars with the collective memory of every sentient being that ever existed.

I tried to make everything perfect, everything clean, everything ideal, but this is impossible and as he has grown older I don't even hold those ideals any longer. Things manifest as they do and I can just help him not to hurt himself and sit back and enjoy.

It seems the older he gets the more relaxed I become in allowing myself a little frustration. For instance if he is tired, most of the time I can lay down with him while breastfeeding and he goes to sleep, but other times, I do this and then he cries, so I stand up and rock him while he still has the breast, and he closes his eyes and then I lay down WITH him and he cries, this is my frustration. I want to be painting, I need to clean house and take a shower and I'm all alone and he wants to do nothing but sleep and instead he cries. But I have learned to appreciate this, this time is fleeting and it forces me to be patient.

The thing that really surprised me, since I had no real expectations of Motherhood, is that the responsibility and the desire for the best would be so stressful and solitary. That the desire to stimulate and educate at every moment would be a job shared equally. But men are men and women, women. Like that Sean Connery film where he cures cancer with a fruit and calls in a female assistant to help him figure out how he did it, but in the meantime the rain forest where the fruit is native is being destroyed and they never duplicate the results and in discussion they find out that the woman was cleaning the ants off where as the man was just leaving them be. Like dirt on the floor doesn't really seem to be an inhibitor of letting the baby crawl on the floor and then putting his fingers in his mouth.

But all must be forgiven and overlooked or at least compensated for and this is what makes a good mother. The ability to maintain a balance between man, woman, family, and individual needs. And this ability always comes at the cost of the mothers individuality, her desires always sacrificed and done so without spite or resentment. And in return she has their love.

This is all in the context of a stay at home Mom without any help or maid, with which I think the experience would be completely stress free. Just someone to do the things that need to be done instead of trying to do them and only halfway doing a good job and not to mention injuring yourself in the action because you are holding baby on one hip and washing dishes with one hand and cooking while someone knocks on the door and you have to go to the bathroom. But that is the comedy of it all. Except in it, I'm not laughing.

It is all out weighed by a simple smile and cuddle. Giggling little voice and sweet gestures.

watin' bussin'

The weather is cool and as usual in Miami, feels like Spring. It is exceptionally nice at our place since we live in a little jungle. The bamboo is swaying and making a good noise, the insects have all gone underground,the mosquitos are hiding and we can all sit out and enjoy.

We have our school bus, we took the chairs out, cleaned it, treated the rust, painted the floor, pressure washed and now we are ready to build and implement the design. But money is tight and jobs are nil.

Things are in line, we are just waiting to play our cards, we got a good hand.

Another day

Quick, think of a good idea and do it. Something profound, something grand, something so simple that it is brilliant and creative and gratifying to all. Write, draw, paint, make or just say something. Everyday seems to pass me by with the urgency to do. It coagulates in my head and builds weight upon my shoulders until something good comes out or if there is no outlet a great deal of unhappiness.

Human time moves so slowly, yet so quickly. I remember as a child telling myself to stop, right here, at this moment and take a mental picture and try to hold on to it forever. This very moment right here, right now. No matter how random of a moment, this is it, this is your life, this is your experience, so stop and look around, open your eyes and remember: the room, the smell, the weather, who you are.

But I can only recall maybe one very clearly. And this may make me a bit sad, as it reveals that the days are composed of these ephemeral experiences that equate to one: your life. So I try to be aware, awake, conscious and present, as much as possible, because before you know it you have kids (which I do) and then your 50th birthday and then your 65 and you wonder where was I, and as I have mentioned before, Thich Nhat Hanh, maybe you were living in another time, perhaps the future, the past, the TV or your mind was possessed with drugs, overwhelming jobs, etc..these things distract you from your life.

But then again, if you do nothing in a day or you accomplish a million chores, is there really a difference?

Television Kills

Television

That which entertains us, no, not entertains, but knocks us unconscious. At least American television. So many adverts, over and over, the same commercials on every channel and it even reaches out from the Tele to the radio and then to print, like the film The Ring. It is all so mindless and incessant.

I believe that ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) can 100% accurately be attributed to the viewing of overly commercial television from a young age. Scenario: Youth watching a cartoon. The cartoon is on for ten minuets before it is interrupted with a series of commercials. The attention is lost, then the program continues at another interval of ten minuets and the cycle continues. The young forming brain is being conditioned to be attentive in short bursts. Even if they actively view the commercials, each advert is only about a minuet in length and about five at a time.

Most American parents think nothing of sitting any child as young as six months old in front of some hyper real television program to buy themselves some time, to begin inoculation of this insane culture that these tiny innocent creatures were born into. Osho would consider this a crime of ignorance.

For nearly six years I was, at least in my home, television free. Maybe it had something to do with living in Europe, they are so much more conscientious about how they spend there time and developing their interests. So this granted me a great power when I stepped back into TV lifestyles while visiting the States. It seemed such a strange practice. To sit in overly comfortable chairs and sofas in front of this image box for hours and hours. The super loud, hyper-intense advertising was like watching someone get hypnotized. Like the spinning of an evil clown’s umbrella. If you suspend your vision comprehension, you will see this monster. A pounding of images, a flashing of a million lights carrying messages of secret ideologies with sign and signifiers, propaganda, patriotism, sex, consumption and the perpetuation of image addiction: headache.

In America it is true that most suburban houses will contain a television in any commonly occupied room. Families sit evenings and nights in separate rooms viewing sitcoms, sports, over reduced and dumbed Discovery shows. To an outsider who may have aerial, better then x-ray vision this custom may seem like a virtual drug use, as it leaves its participants drooling, lifeless and eventually asleep.

Entering back into the realm of television watching society with this power of perspective made everything broadcasted seem like a joke. It seemed like everything was an over dramatic Hollywood B-film, even the news. I remember looking at everyone in the room with laughter, but it was not shared. It was as if I could see right through the act and see it for what it actually was, the over use of bold graphics, music and . Like Rodney Piper in that classic 80’s film They Live! (A must see by the way.) It is as though people “evolve” with the TV, and those that have not see something very alien. Like traveling to another world.

It is interesting to consider the evolution of the television, not mechanically as much as psychologically. It is as if the Television is evolving/mutating to keep brains permanently entranced. So the louder and faster, the deeper it can penetrate our subconscious. It seems like it is trying to mimic the process of the brain. The length of time it takes for synapses to fire and send impulses and commit the information to peripheral memory. I suspect they hold focus groups on the subject. People sitting taking notes behind mirror windows, watching people screen hours of subliminal messages and then quizzing them for effectiveness.

What about these Nielsen ratings? As far as I understand, there are random televisions fitted with monitors that report how much TV you watch, what you watch, when and etc. But I suspect that with the recent mandatory switch to digital and the ceasing of broadcast, they will be monitoring every television, internet and phone, since it is all in one now. That is how they successfully evolve TV, they try to narrow down those scussefeul elements, then deliver them constantly and while your watching, steal all your money.

This is a real science, like a millennium long PHD is anthropology, statistics, Race relations, Political Science, Cultural Studies and business in one. I think the beginign of this PHD could be credited to someone like Edward Bernays. (Another must see documentary Century of the Self, it is a full length film available on google.)

TV is all over the world spreading information and this was good, in the beginning, but it has been infiltrated by a capitalist disease that intends on infecting the entire world. But the new TV is slowly becoming the internet. Sometimes people even do both, like a unconscious cerebral orgasm. Drooling TV, while facebooking, Myspacing or googling any little thought you may have, it is obscene. Like eating and masturbating on the toilet. Internet is worse then TV in so far as it is everywhere, carried on phones, mp3 players, computers, you can’t have a conversation with anyone in this city without them checking emails or googling to win a conversation.

I can’t help but want to remedy the situation with the recent reading of The Art of Mindful Living by Thich Nhat Hanh. If everyone was to concentrate for a moment on their breathing and to simply breath in and breath out and be utterly aware of it, Hanh says that something miraculous happens: you stop thinking and you are in the present moment. He suggests that we spend so much time thinking of the past and the future that we are not living at all. We are mindless and unaware of our surroundings. He suggests that we do this because we are afraid of the now, we rather say “Tomorrow will be better” . Perhaps this has something to do with the existence of time and our knowing that our experience is short and there will be an end and this brings us fear or being in the now. We rather watch TV and fiddle the phone and perhaps drink and take drugs.

Internet is more frightening, because its potential threat is higher in terms of sucking your life away for hours. Unlike television, the Internet is interactive and self gratifying, there is never “nothing on”. So it engages you longer and when you get into the nice sedative state it begins to inundate you with pop ups and faux informative advertising sites, flash ads and trash. Even an honest use, perhaps research may steal six maybe seven hours of your day away. I read an article that leads to another and so on. Now I limit myself to only objective research at one hour intervals for no more than three a day. It even makes my success rate higher since I have a sort of grocery list instead of just wondering hungry through the store.

I once watched some over dramatized program about the Universe’s creation and modern physics. It mentioned that the static or snow channel was actually background radiation from the Big Bang and the expanding universe. Which leads me to an appreciation of a wonderful technology, it was a discovery, it could be used in such lovely ways throughout the entire world, but instead it has been used to sell things we don’t need, make think we are suppose to live certain lives and spreads political propaganda and fear.

So, what can we do? Well, I was given a TV when I first moved to Miami by a friend. I was reluctant to accept, but it was bought new as a gift and refusal would have been hurtful. So there it sat, no cable, no rabbit ears. I eventually watched films on it and in the last year we found a white cable buried in the dirt in our most recent house. So we plugged it in and there was clear pictured, bright colored, non-stop American cable television. We watched it like we went on vacation to another planet. I took advantage of it as an indicator of the contemporary situation. I look at it like an anthropologist and what I see helps me to understand the little intricate mechanics of its slow psychological effect on this society and all the above considerations. But for most, I believe it is their reality and everything they know of the world outside of their family and home is what is brought to them via the television. Everyone should meditate, take deep breaths, be mindful, try to figure out how ones life could contribute to better the situation and change.

Serve others, think, grow your own food, permaculture, bicycle, collect rain water, speak truth only and recycle your TV.

Televisions in the world

Century of the Self

Existence of Time

Time is relative and for our intelligence, it results in seeing nothing more then Chaos. But for most of us trapped by a society that teaches our minds to be closed and utilitarian to function correctly in this civilization, we feel time is linear and absolute. What is time to us, a series of events that happen between sunrise and sunset: hours, days, months, years, all based on the sun.

But the real experience of time is in our physical bodies. We are so self centered that time seems linear: I did this then this happened and I did this and this happened, then I saw somebody, then I went here and someone did something to me and I had to do this and etc, etc till bed. I expect that this has something to do with most of us operating on a primitive rule, the rule of animal. That every action performed is to gain pleasure or to prevent pain. There is not one single action that you perform that is not motivated by this rule. Even the most self-sacrificial, Mother Theresa of Saints is governed by this rule.

This usually has me feeling a little existential, because it means that however different all of us are, we are all the same and we can never experience the world outside of the limitations of our chemical emotions or our physiology.

I was considering a story I read about Kurt Vonnegut explaining why people like drama. (I’ll put the link at the bottom) But he draws a story line/graph and illustrates that most people have a life that is right in the middle and waivers up and down between ecstasy and misery. He draws a line that moves through time, a linear line. This seems awfully grim to me. But in this world, if you stand still like most of these football watching, joyless job going, contents, the world is grim. But even in the most mundane situation I see a life through time something like this:

Of coarse this is oversimplified and perhaps just an aerial view of three or four people.

Up and down is not the emotional highs and lows, but instead the encounter with others. Even at the time of conception you have already interfered with someone else’s life, whether you are the fetus or the mother or the father or the family, employer, etc..and then it continues. Time is made of all these things, encounters that lead to events and experiences (at least in the human concept) There is two definitive aspects, the start and end of physical existence here. Birth and death. But everything in between is unpredictable, in/un-graphable, chaos.

In considering birth and death, I can’t help be brought into ideas of religion, of reincarnation, of heaven and hell. In all mythology is some glimmer into a knowledge of a truth, some real meaning to be deciphered. After looking at a number of images captured by the Hubble and contemplating them for some time and seeing unimaginable depths, vastness, objects and materials, I have concluded with absolute certainty that there is a plethora of life beyond Earth. Existence and consciousness is unfathomable and for us to deny possibility of other life just proves our minds feeble, primitive and full of fear. There must be millions of life filled galaxies, older, wiser and more advanced then us. They visit us with nervousness. They know our fear will murder them, they know our fear will murder ourselves.

Perhaps heaven is in essence the transcendence of fear, the fear instilled into us by this civilization. And when we die our energy (everything being made of energy like 1’s and 0’s or on and off, vibrations, heat, the sun, etc) is freed from this Earth and hence transcendence. Could be to a higher consciousness. However, Hell would equate to something like staying still, purgatory, not being reincarnated, burning back into the Earth, back to the ground, not the sky (the Heavens always being a world above). Or perhaps just being dead. In this idea, it might be suggested that returning back to Earth in terms of energy, life cycle, etc. is negative, but I certainly do not think this. The point is that in all the creativity in existence of everything, it must be something a little more complex then just physics and organic chemistry.

I believe that transcendence is found in the inherent innocence that we are all born. Children are born with good moral, it is we as a society, as parents that corrupt with ideas of hatred and fear.

We are all connected and share the subconscious chatter of the Collective Unconscious. Collectively we must try to return to our instilled ability of judgment, which is inherently good, moral, natural. To help rather then to compete, to conserve and respect our resources, to nurture our strengths and collaborate. Without these changes the world will continue to become globalized with bad ideas, money, poverty and synthetic, shallow beliefs.

North Florida, the start of the real South

Florida

I am up in Macclenny, my sort of hometown or at least the place I grew up from birth until I became self aware and yearned for more. My childhood memories include things like pine forests, white fences, cows, horses, chickens and rodeos. A quaint little piece of country, quiet, religious, kind and respectful. It had its mom and pop restaurants like Day’s Deli where you could get homemade pizza and sandwiches, Lyma Greens with old fashioned Barbeque, Country Junction with its high quality, not made in China, probably made in America, western wear. There was one, maybe two fast food places, there was a butcher, a hardware store, corner stores where parents would send their children to pick them up a pack of cigarettes without any dubious hesitation.

Everything was green, the homes made uniquely and with real craft, with backyards that had pecan trees and vegetable gardens, bird baths and ponds. There were wild rabbits, foxes, turkeys and maybe a boar or a bear. We would play outside until dark (even in the heat), we would swim in the black, murky waters of the Glen St. Mary river and not think about snakes or alligators. It was innocent, it was pure, it was before Capitalism with its shiny lights, faux stucco and Hollywood placed signifiers crept into our homes through the TV.

I remember when Burger King and Wal-Mart came to town. Then I recall the local sheriff and perhaps some other city officials were done in for some sort of marijuana dealings. So the old boys were out of the way, which meant the old money was gone and the little town was prostituted to franchised business as usual, all the “Mom and Pops” were put out and now your options are the same as any truck stop or highway exit in most of America. A super Wal-Mart knocked down over 25 acres of pine forest and now threatens even the franchised businesses.

I suppose the old Macclennians were preserving this little old town, perhaps with things that were illegal, but really there was no crime against anyone. It was just a plant that causes less harm then alcohol, that mellows people out and lowers the violent tendencies of testosterone carrying hot heads. And now the innocence was sold lot by lot, cemented with identical lego land houses and everything has become the ultimate manifestation of Postmodern. The ultimate manifestation is when everything imitates what it is suppose to be. Everything is artificial. Artificial food, tastes like cheese, looks like cheese, but its components are nothing more then coloring and something like MSG and maybe some dairy cultures. We buy fruit imported from Chile that should grow in our backyards. Just another commercial institution that makes big money for some American CEOS of a Chinese company, no care for the people, but that is nothing new.

What is new, is that the farther into the South we drove (meaning the farther north into the Southern ideologies) I started to notice anti-Obama signs. I knew these Republicans would be pacing the fence about a Black president. They say things like, “Obama is trying to turn this country Socialist.” And “What he (Obama) is doing is illegal.” And “Obama isn’t even an American citizen.”, Oh and healthcare, that is a big word and complex idea for these folks. What is going on up here, everyone is crazy. Firstly,this country will never be Socialist, the people here are too greedy, competitive and ignorant to be Socialist. I mean the idea of distributing wealth to everyone, please, that is just un-American. Secondly, Obama asking school children to get involved in politics by writing a letter to their president is something almost every American elementary school child has done and now these uneducated, stubborn, know it all Republicans are pulling their children out of school so that they miss Obama’s speech. Who bloody cares? Does it mean that much to them? It is just so, I can’t even think of the word. I guess ignorance is the best word.

Yes, Macclenny, a deformed child of the modern world, somewhere between mutating into contemporary and staying religious and moral. A drunk, wife beating priest, a child technologically connected to the rest of the world yet but confined to his parent’s, parent’s, parent’s ideals. Change happens in this place when money is dropped like a bomb that transforms everything to this and no one says or does anything about it because they bow to it because they believe that it is all powerful and perhaps even bigger then their God. They let it put them out of business, destroy their farms and enslave them to the Wal-Mart employee hand guide.

I remember a winter here, it was chilly, the pine straw was heavy on the ground, the air was fresh and everything seemed like an ideal from a Steinbeck novel, but perhaps now it is the place where the ear is crawling with ants in the grass, where Kyle Mclaughlin lost his innocence and Isabella Rossellini forever sings Blue Velvet and someone like Dennis Hopper is selling family land and businesses to the devil while molesting prostitutes.