ATTENTION: More beauty please

I very rarely use other peoples photographs on my site here, But I found this and had to post it. The photo is by John Stanmeyer and was posted on the National Geographic site.
Mt. Bromo and Mt. Semero in East Java- John Stanmeyer
(click on photo for larger version)

L.A. called me. It called me in class one day in fourth grade. I was sitting in my chair staring at the clock. I could see it, for once, because I had glasses for the first time in my life. My vision had always been terrible though I didn’t know ‘til my visit to the Doctor. I missed out on a lot of basics because I couldn’t see the chalkboard unless I squinted hard, and even then it was hit or miss. I didn’t ask for clarification of the things I wasn’t getting because I was the new kid in town, so I did my best to keep a low profile. Everyone had pencil to paper and the carbon scratches were all I could hear. I was supposed to be scratching away as well probably, but I was fixated on the sliver of the second hand that I could now see so clearly. I watched it glide around the face, distinctly straight and precise, yet fluid in its rotation. I focused on the minute hand next, seeking to detect its motion. Suddenly, the minute hand seemed to flow like the second hand and twenty minutes passed in the span of 20 seconds. The bell rang and class was over, and the all the hands seemed to resume their proper speed. I walked into the hallway and knew that I was moving to Los Angeles. I pictured myself there as a matter of fact realization that I would be there, not as an idea, or a goal I had suddenly aspired to.

One day, while driving down Highland Blvd. on the way to emcee at the Mad Hatters, I suddenly felt a “ping” of sorts. I thought “this is my life” and I started looking around wildly for signs of where I was. I saw DeLongpre Avenue, I saw Fountain Avenue, and then I saw a billboard for the Los Angeles Times. “I’m in L.A.” I thought. Then I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that I had long hair. “I have long hair,” I thought. I looked at the open topped Land Cruiser I was driving. “I drive a Jeep,” I thought. Then the ping faded. I was once again driving to my regular gig in the town I had lived in for a year. Then I thought of fourth grade and I thought I heard pencil scratches, but it was sub aural. Beneath the resonant growl of the six-cylinder engine, below the hum of the tires, beyond the audible buzz-hum of the city, I felt the sound in my being. Imagine an electro-metallic grinding sensation as a life form. I felt I was hearing a colossal note, tremoring for generations in a living score beyond time. Then I thought my pervious thought had been quite odd, and wondered what people would think if they knew what I had thought.

A NEGATIVE VIEW OF LOS ANGELES

Hi. Writing About LA in the 90's motivated me to pull out the photo archives. These are shots I took in and around the Los Angeles area, including son photos from the riots of '92. (click on photos for larger versions)

More...

Photos from the LA archives:

More random photos from the archives. LA shots from the 90's, including a few shots of the effects of the riots.

Brian Holtzman,April 28, 1992, Santa Monica_

-Hollywood April 29, 1992-

-Ralphs, Korea Town, April 31, 1992-

-Korean Grocery Store Defence, April 30, 1992

Downtown LA, April 29, 1992-


-Death Valley 1994-

-Joshua Tree, 1991-


-Healthy Coyote 1994-

-Hollywood Blvd. 1990-

-405 and Mulholland overpass 1992-

Unmitigated Blog Entry. #1

Honolulu

Dead Fish on Moss with Duckweed

The deadly Retard-o Ray.

It's hard for conspiracy aficionado to keep up with new developments in the arsenal of the military-industrial-police-state. There are remote control flying bugs now, the debilitating heat ray, the head splitting sonic weapons, and so on. These are just a few of the crowd control weapons that are not the products of conjecture, but documented and accessible to anyone that cares to look. Weapons that used to be sci-fi fantasy are now in weapons catalogues of military and police forces around the world. If these are the ones that are verifiable, what is in R&D?

That said, are these the scariest things to pose a threat to humanity at present, or are there even more dubious suppression devices that we might be concerned about?

I was certain for years that the most powerful tool used in the march against humanity was...Television. Bill Hicks described the pop culture players as "fevered egos that are tainting our collective unconscious (sic) and making us pay a higher psychic price than we imagine." I think that television, in particular, and pop culture in general yields systematic degradation of human expectation.



I was aware of the human (though predominantly male) tendency to fixate on the television due to an evolutionary fight or flight mechanism in the brain. We are compelled to make sense of strange things in our environment. On a deep level, we ask "that thing- am I going to eat it, or is it going to eat me? and the strangeness of the telly keeps changing, flashing, and exploding more and more every year. We're wired to do it.

So I kicked the TV out of my house. Felt good about that. Stayed away for close to ten years. In that time I replaced the passive viewing of TV with self expression in the form of writing, sculpture, stage performance, etc. I went outside, hiked in the mountains, altered my sense of time by just sitting and being, randomly interacted with people on the street, had more sex.

Then I entered into the world of the Web. Timidly at first, I felt I needed to familiarize myself with this new medium. First there was the chat rooms, then the blogging, then the news aggregate sites, YouTube, MySpace, Tribe, Facebook, Bebo, Craigslist, etc.

Yesterday, I found this article , "Why we're Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Data" in the Wall Street Journal. I realized that I have succumbed to the fight or flight mechanism again. This time the TV editors aren't making the rapidfire editing that keeps me glued to the box. I am. Cyber opiates. I'm addicted and they are destroying me.

I have to balance my consumption before I overdose. Less web consumption, more creative production. It's that fucking moderation thing again.

A smart drug dealer doesn't touch the stuff he sells.

Rock Star Nation

Still not the best quality version of this, but I fixed the audio, at least.

I miss being angry. I used to be so full of vitriol and rage that I was certain that I could change things with unbridled passion. I sustained it for years, bolstered by the outrage of fellow humans that shared my sense of unease with the human condition. Something happened that sparked my anger, and it happens- daily and incessantly, and its been happening so long that it’s become normal and my anger has become jaded to the point where it flares into passion much less often. Keeping an eye out for 1984 in a Brave New World as a new story unfurls that makes the classic cautionary tales look like children’s stories.

When the towers fell in New York, our nation lost its mind in the trauma. They fell so fast that we didn’t see 7 collapse for no apparent reason. Or we ignored it. To see the collapse of building 7, for no apparent reason would necessitate some questions about the nature of the whole event. Those questions were too much to ask for a nation in shock. To question what happened, how it happened, why it happened would only lead to more questions, and those questions would lead us back to ourselves.

It was easier to look at the spectacle, over and over and over. It was easier to listen to wailing of the mourners, to stare at the bodies falling in slo-mo, than to ask our selves what really happened, and then demand the answers. We didn’t want to seem insensitive to the tragedy, and so we did not pursue the cause. And the cause was emboldened.

September 11th was not what made me angry. I was angry long before. I was angry at the audacity of a society to ignore its hypocrisy. Our Democracy has been a cover story for our self-indulgence for more than half a century. Our ability to do what we please to get what we want has led us to believe that we’re free. But we’re not. We’ve become more American than human. Entertained, but not sustained. Out notions of ourselves have been corralled into petty selfishness packaged as success. We failed. We failed to fulfill our needs before our wants.

We are broken as a people. The nightly news as our confidence man, sandwiched between cleavage and guns. We know we’ve been taken for a ride, so to make ourselves feel better we decide to do good. We strive to heal the planet and pick up our mess, and yet that was the confidence mans suggestion as well. We’re in hell, and we’ve condemned ourselves to it, because heaven always comes later.

There was a moment in this world when the con mans game wore thin enough for people to be able to see the enemy. The headlines told of the WTO, and the GMO’s and CFR, and the electric car…

And then there was an emergency that we all had to see. A new and improved enemy. Much more sexy and exotic than that boring old rhetoric about human sovereignty, and dignity. And humanity.

A dictator has come unwittingly, and it is we. We let this happen through inaction. We enslaved ourselves with our greed for “Freedom™”, and our neglect to understand what it means to truly be free.
We don’t want to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories.” We don’t want to question the integrity of our culture. We don’t want to know what happened that makes us all feel so powerless and small. But we need to.

New Quadraphonix music video.

My last official day at the Waikupanaha Farm was supposed to be Thursday, January 31st. It has been a mad scramble for two weeks. Weeding plants, potting plants, digging out plants. Throwing away things, organizing stuff, fixing broken equipment (or spending money on broken equipment and not fixing it), etc. Much help was received from many friends, and much more help from a few.

Hunter brought his box truck and we took a load of materials to the Saddle City site on the 31st. Recent rains have turned the driveways of both nurseries into chocolate. Truck got stuck. I towed it out with the Jeep. So a second trip to the new site was out. Jessica split for class and Vanessa returned for her second shift that day. We loaded the box truck again. Shawna came over and brought guacamole, chips and wine.

By the light of head lamps and a floodlight, we finished stuffing the truck with my show plants and supplies around 10 o’clock. We dropped them in Brynna’s yard for the time being. Carson showed up, then. Jonathan showed up and he and Brynna followed us back to the house where I unloaded a large speaker box on Jonathan and Brynna gained custody of my inlayed coffee table.

My centipede bite was 36 hours old by the time I went to bed, and it was hideous. Half my thigh was swollen and glowing red, while the bite itself was black and blue with a necrotic spot in the middle. Sleep was ambrosia.

The State didn’t come to chain the gate on the 1st, as was claimed. It was Friday.

The chaos was over and the orchid guys were done with their move, leaving thousands of orchids behind. I was using the lack of lock as long as I could, so I continued moving my plants and pots and scrounged together as much as possible. I moved most my personal stuff under Brynna’s house.


It was eerie on Friday. I was in hyperspace. The property was officially back in the States hands, the lease holders were through with their moving motions.

I stared at the orchid house. Thousands of orchids. Tons of cement pots. Cinder blocks, rubber mats, gravel, scaffolding, ladders, lumber. Raw materials.

(Before the move)

A few scavengers came to take some orchids, but the five gallon sized pots full of gravel and fused together with layers of orchid roots don’t encourage one to take very many. They’re heavy and incredibly bulky. I went on a mad clipping spree, hand picking as many of the keiki’s as I could muster. Tens of thousands remain. It was mind numbing.

I drove to town late, with personals of Carson’s and mine. And the cats. They’re country cats. They don’t care much for driving around in cars. Hester was at Carson’s and I showered, ate yummy food, drank whisky, and talked. Then I passed out hard from exhaustion.

It’s Feb 2nd today. I went back for more. I picked up Jessica and she spent hours clipping orchid plants while I scavenged more of my things. There was a new chain around the farm gate today, but the house gate was dummy locked. Several trips between farms with loads. Grabbing lots of orchids creates a need for lots of pots, and lots of gravel, and lots of space to store and construct. I saved my fish and their tanks and the water plants. Jessica and I were working after dark at the Saddle City farm tying netting in a grove of trees to suspend the piles of orchids until they can be planted.

We were preparing to leave when Jessica noticed a dark figure walking up the muddy drive towards us. I said howzit a couple of times as the figure approached, but did not respond. I moved towards it and saw that it was wearing a black motorcycle helmet. I hailed once more, as the person was six or seven feet away. Then he pulled off his helmet. It was Jesse, an 11-year-old kid from the neighborhood out trying to spook adults. Mission accomplished

Three other night urchins emerged from the shadows when they saw the situation was safe. They asked questions about what we were doing with the property. I took them into the shade house and potted up an orchid for each of them to take home if they agreed to act as nursery security. They agreed and scuttled off into the night.

Sunday would be the last day of salvaging, and then the new place will occupy my full attention.

Tough Questions #3

Tough Questions #2

New project. Two questions. Many people.

Alien Ant Boy Dances to Quadraphonix:

Another incarnation bites the dust.

The DLNR will not extend the lease. I have until February 1st to find a new place to be. I don't think I can move the farm again. I'm selling all the stock that I can and trashing everything else. Lots of "art supplies" going back into the rubbish piles from whence they came.

Oh that magic feeling, no where to go.

Nostalgic.

I will continue with the art work. Will continue the video work. I'm hanging my show at Ong King on Friday.



Someone has been reading my blog. The were three comments on my posts this morning going all the way back to 2004. Anonymous knows me from LA it seems. Hello Anonymous.







Photo and video from Ka'ala Learning center in Waianae.

Timelapse of cration of a Wabi Sabi Xeriscape