Comin' home

[curt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_ODg0FmzQ

soon

[waldopaper]

Tribe site is down again (1/2/08 2:19pm est)... since just about everybody here is a Chimp refugee (except you happy few not yet banned... which probably won't happen unless there's another purge... which probably won't happen because JT is desperate for clicks and eyeballs).

Swanson's Death By Election says very well the sports-mentality binkie-suck farce of elections are about as relevant as a VR video game during a planetary war. Such thoughts would have been inconceivable on SC or most other places prior to the 06 American Idol "election" game.

Now is the time to think impossible things... and most of the world is still hung up on what to "DO." First, we have to INVENT what to "DO," and there aint enough people working on that... because the usual shit (vote, write, demonstrate, "speak out" etc,) is as useless as a cement hemorrhoid. Conventional wiz-dumb is just do the useless shit HARDER. Perhaps the next sign to watch for... when some of the best writers start saying things like, "... when "Al Quaeda" allegedly attacked the US..." Why the "inside job" idea is so far over the bucket is beyond me... but then... the big razz on SC was not to "alienate" the "swing voters."

Perhaps the shocking idea that the levers aint connected to anything will create such a paradigm shift. Naturally it may be moot anyway when most are in foreclosure or piss-reeking "emergency rooms" trying to get "health care," and the paradigm in that system could be about to become operable in all facets of life: "pay or die." Not hard to imagine how most will choose to opt out of THAT dualism... take what you need by force.

That's why invention in advance aint just a jagoff intellectual exercise. There will be enough Mad Max and grubbing for tubers anyway. Will these conditions have to be present before more try to imagine an alternative? Looks like it. The comments everywhere on Swanson's piece are informative, depending on how "partisan" the site.

Cindy Sheehan mentions the White Rose... and Robert Scheer talks about "Charlie Wilson's War" (the movie, of course). Better than before. But still not enough.

How how how how...

[Mouse]

"The mathematician, Hadamard,
who became interested in the psychology of mathematical thought,
emphatically states that any attempt at visualising the way ahead clearly only leads astray;
the decision must be left to the unconscious."
The Hidden Order of Art by Anton Ehrenzweig, University of California Press, 1967.

[Mouse]

I just wrote a nice bit and accidentally deleted it. That's another hour gone.

What it said was why don't we make some 2-3 minute paradigm shifting films for youtube. There may be some humourous writers called Bo and Waldo knocking about with clever ways of putting things across, so the message arrives.... ping!

I have a little movie camera that I need to learn how to use. Went to film school 30 years ago, accidentally deleted that story. Also have nice little sound machine and soothing voice with English accent. Can supply little creatures, abstract and figurative, for animation; also limited supply of painted backdrops.

How about it?

[BO]

A cousin of mine sent me this link to a story about North Dakota where my grand parents and many relatives had farms. It was largely populated by scandinavian/german immigrants in the late 1800's. Since then, the population has been in decline as people either died off or left for large cities. So few remain that the state is classified as a frontier once again.

Long story short: Fitting within the theme of 'Comin' Home', it seems sometimes you can't go home because 'home' no longer exists. If I were to make a video, this would make for a great subject. Check out the beautiful/spooky photography accompanying the article. Beautiful and sad. But it says everything about our temporary-ness. Dust in the wind.

[waldopaper]

Looks like Regent and the Enchanted Highway happens to be in the new Lakotah Nation.

Zeke and I checked it out on the way back from Portland... the Enchanted Highway. It was hot as hell and the skeeters would drive you mad. Still, with a modern wind turbine, and some radical construction-- homesteading would be much easier now. Still... not easy. I like the video idea. The "home" that disappears in the past... and rises in the future like Brigadoon. Like the Strange Family with Small Lanterns...

If this life is all there is, then understanding the journey is far more important than the destination. Perhaps that's true even if there IS something beyond...

[BO]

Spent Tuesday researching and I found my wife's grandmother and great grandfather on the census rolls of the Creek tribe. (Department of the Interior. Office of Indian Affairs. Office of the Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes. (1893 - 1914))

Gonna get my wife and son signed on as citizens of the tribe. Hell, at least they can be citizens of another nation even if I can't. And who knows, maybe the Creek/Cherokee peoples will join the Lakotah succession.

I have a dream....

[curt]

Sign em up real quick. My grammy's mum was BSed out of her money as she hired a liarman to enrole her. Money gone and no name on no role. She gave up and went "home". That was northern Oklahoma. That home moved up to southern Kansas after the great depression. That's where I was born AND where my ggranddad from Saltburn came to stay. He never went "home" but his dad did, a few times as I've been told. He was from Stockton. Middlesbrough didn't exist back then. Lots of homes to go to. We moved out to Arizona when I was about as high as the johnson grass gets. Left there for here right after lowschool. Loads of homes to choose from. I guess we is a bunch of gypsies after all.

Like the short film idea. Will assist.

[BO]

"Like the short film idea. Will assist."

I don't know when I'm gonna have the energy or time to take on another project. I've got a new mac with iMovie and Flash developer, and really should start something, but I've got some money makin' projects that I need to do first. Probably be summer before I can even think about it. But thanks for the offer.

Pretty lame huh? I agree. I think my priorities are fucked up. And this fucking cold doesn't help much.

[waldopaper]

Tribe site down again. Bo's "Hollis Brown" link to North Dakota won't leave me be. Perhaps anecdotal rather than scientific data, the article says this:

"Today in western North Dakota a 3,000-acre (1,200 hectares) spread of wheat is necessary for survival, and so the ground is littered with dead towns and empty kitchens where people once painted the walls a cheery robin’s-egg blue."

Wait a minute... by quick calculations... that's about a 2x2 mile square. The permaculture folk say a family of 4 can eat well on the produce of less than 2 acres. North Dakota is an allegory of what will soon happen to all of us. The land "swallows us up," which will happen more quickly in ND... but will eventually happen to the old energy-hog paradigm everywhere.

So... whatta we got here: good voice-over talent, videography with table-top props... possibly more technical input... and an idea that the paradigm has to shift. Central theme (for now) about "going home." Where is "home?" I would say wherever it doesn't take 4 square miles, tons of machinery and hundreds of gallons of petrol "just to survive."

Where is such a place?

[curt]

Kansas

[curt]

and I is a homeboy. Not that that is of any interest to anyone in Kansas. I know a corner where ........it's a secret. It won't last long without a fight. Ah, fuck it. One such corner does indeed exist but I haven't been there since 1978. It was good enough in 1950. A real haven in 1853. Damn, time is not on our side. We must learn to adapt. But even if we were lucky enough to find such a haven....who could defend it ? We despise violence.

This is where Dakota comes into picture. As a member of the Dakota Tribe, I would work to defend our land. Yes, I would. As an outsider, a suvivor in Ks. ....I would not stand a chance ....without a tribe.

[Mouse]

We have so many ancestral homes. The magical place that I loved and left is still there, waiting for the harvested woods to grow again. And I know a secret place where I can go, a wild little place. The natives are definitely unfriendly, torched the main house and drove the last resident to insanity.
Here is a little story that happened to my very own self, when I was calling the cats in one evening, looking at the attached view, I was punched in the stomach by thin air. I recovered very fast and told it: "It's our turn now, bog off!" It didn't bother me again, apart from the smell.

Well I found myself back in the place where I'd burned my bridges. And I'm still here. No tribe. Still an outsider after 20 years. The most frightening thing to me is the cars and the way that roads have eaten so many of the places, decimating the birds and beasts. I don't drive. I ride an industrial bicycle, very heavy and solid, good for heavy loads.
I must be one of the luckiest people in the world. I have my garden between me and the lovely view, and things have gone a bit wild there. Whenever I try to tidy up I find a nest, hedgehogs, blackbirds and bees. So I try not to interfere too much.
A touch of trauma has made it difficult to go down into the lower garden, past the place where I spend so much time gazing out across the valley.
The place exudes peace.