TURN THE RADIO OFF

anselm kiefer

It's been something of a day of rest. So beat down and worn out by a never-ending project I foolishly got myself into, yesterday drained my energy like pulling the plug in a sink. Today, I performed the next step like an automaton and got it in the mail. I've settled into this project going on forever and have quit looking forward to it ending some day in the far distant future. Today I have slept until I can't sleep and had to get up. Up is back in that mind drained of energy. Watched an Australian film from 1976, Picnic at Hanging Rock, story made from something that happened in 1900. Girl school summer picnic at a beautiful outcropping of rock called Hanging Rock. Four girls disappear, vanish. One was found four or five days later barely alive. She can't remember what happened. It falls into an unsolved mystery and the survivors are changed. Directed by Peter Weir. Well made film and well conceived. Read some in the van Gogh biography. And slept. Brought three bales of hay from the barn to the donkey lot in the trunk of the car. I've heard talk of snow in the next few days, but didn't pay it any mind, the source not credible. The weather report predicts rain tomorrow and rain Saturday, mild temperature all week. We could use some rain. The ground is dry. It was mud for so long, dry is good. Couldn't work on any art projects today. Paralyzed by weariness of mind. I know not to involve myself in the world of human busyness. I jumped in, knowing better, it went up over the top of my head. I've become so indifferent to this project I don't even pray for it to end. If this project ever has an end date, I will take a quart of liquor out into the donkey meadow, sit on the ground and drink. Sounds awfully romantic. Even too corny for a movie. And presumptuous to think it may someday end. 

anselm kiefer

I've caught myself being presumptuous so many times, I tend to articulate meaning so specifically there is no place for presumption. I don't like to presume. I do, but don't like to. Pulling away from presumption, it seems like it brings me closer to the moment, the now, seeing what is, not what I suppose. This one clue toward finding the now, not supposing, allows the moment to be as it is, instead of wanting it to be some other way. I feel like this endless project is teaching me something about supposing, presuming. Each time we have a communication, I presume this is the time it will be fixed, and I'm always wrong. From here on, I accept it as it is and project no hopes it will ever end, let it do what it does. I still can't believe how complex this project has become. I don't even remember everything that went wrong. Everything. Nothing has gone right after two months. Rather than groan and moan about it, I must accept it as what is happening now. Allow it to be what it is. Can't turn on the radio without hearing about the 100+ kids killed in Pakistan by the Taliban. I don't like to hear it, and turn the radio off. Internet news is full of cops killing unarmed black men someplace in the country every day. Police have become the kkk. Afraid for their lives. This is obvious acting out of John the Revelator's prophecy of the end time. In youth I hoped to live long enough to see what the end time will be like. Now I see what it is like and I don't like being in it. A good time not to be of it.

anselm kiefer

I followed the prophecy years ago, interpreting by the best interpretations I could find, though have not paid much attention to it in the last several years. In my reading of it, I see that everything is done, the vials all poured, all of it, but Armageddon. Small wars in defenseless countries, annihilating them, the US military takes on the people of destroyed countries and calls them insurgents. USA has brought so much misery into the world, at home and abroad, surely some kind of karmic return is happening in US. Tighten up the borders to keep terrorists out, and they break out in school shootings anywhere at any time, inside the border. We don't need them coming at us from outside. Our society has become so dysfunctional, we don't need to worry over doom coming from outside. The depersonalization of the human being has created a terrorist war inside our borders. We have police state now, so it's only going to get worse. Fascism always self-destructs and it takes the whole country down with it. I hope to be in my next lifetime somewhere in Asia when USA self-destructs. I see the whole world coming down on USA like was done in Germany after WW2. The rest off the world will stop USA, after it self-destructs, from ever again having a military. This is the murder capital of the world, incarceration capital of the world, the mood enhancing prescription drugs capital of the world, the cocaine and heroin capital of the world, the homeless capital of the world, the deception capital of the world. It's shocking to me, as one not tapped into television, to see how central television is to the people of the world I live in. Separate from it, I can see it a propaganda device, in ways few everyday viewers would see as such, even if they self-examined. It's subtle, hyper-advanced propaganda. A century and a half of the science of psychology, police state is where it's applied. 

anselm kiefer

All the more reason for me to stay at home, stay off the roads, stay out of town, stay out of involvement in anything. One thing about living with myself, I always have somebody who agrees with me. That can be a setback too, but I look for balance. I stay in touch with my friend Carole, we talk every day at the beginning of the day. It's kind of like morning meditation with the feminine. Many days I feel like the day is complete once we've talked, the rest of it is what's left of the day. A couple of art projects are growing. I must give more attention to my everyday life and less attention to the fascist takeover of the American government. At the same time, it is so interesting to be witnessing the most significant time in American history since the founding, I can't stop paying attention, something more horrific happens every day, here and everywhere. I've had to resign myself to allowing it. It's bigger than me by so much I don't even figure. I have no say in any of it. All I can do is the boycott of one with television and Walmart, a game where I am the only player and the only one to care. I can't take an interest in social causes in a time when everything is about money. America is the new Babylon. I think of Burning Spear's reggae song, Babylon Will Fall. I'm seeing it now in the news every day, the crumbling, the breaking down from a cancer within, the fall of Capitalism. I have a hard time not paying attention to current events for what I see happening. I like seeing it from a mountain glen in a place where a little bit of wildlife is left, a place where hawks and buzzards circle in the sky, a cellphone dead zone.

anselm kiefer

*

ONE OF THEM DAYS

john mccracken

I'm about to take a vacation. Worn out and tired, I had to write an email this morning that wrecked the whole day. Knocked me down to the ground within. At the grocery store I ran into my friend Susan and she asked how I was doing. My spirit was dim, I said the body is fine, but the mind is not working today. I stopped a few places and saw people I knew, mind like a swamp, nothing going on and not hearing much I heard. I think I was in what WH Auden called, "the slough of despond." Earlier, in Farmer's Hardware, I saw Susan from a distance, thought I recognized her, but wasn't sure. I said to Marsha, "Who is that?" She said, "Sue Senter." I knew Sue as Susan Tucker. I knew Susan was born a Senter. I said, "I thought she was a Tucker," and Marsha said, "It's her mother." That threw me all the further. Susan went out the store before me and I ran into her later at Food Lion. Up close, I recognized her. My feeling is she lost weight, was wearing jeans, and had a pony tail I'd never seen her in. Plus, I've noticed recently my vision is going a bit blurry. Talking with Susan I was disoriented. I knew it was Susan, but my mind was stuck in its somebody I don't know who looks like Susan. I felt like I was in a cage in a new environment and couldn't figure out everything around me. I remembered when Jr Maxwell's mind was slipping away, a similar disorientation. I don't think mine was from mind going away, but from mind being shut down. It's like being online, then the modem quits working. I have to unplug to modem for ten seconds and start over. I carried groceries into the house just in time to take some grain to the donkeys as it was getting dark. 

john mccracken

I went to bed without putting up groceries. Couldn't move. Woke a couple hours later feeling no better. Put on a French film that arrived today, Fear & Trembling, by a director whose films I like, Alain Corneau. It was good. It was very good. The moment it was over, I went back to bed, unable to be up another minute. After a few more hours, I woke, unable to sleep, turned on BBC news and listened for awhile about Taliban shooting up a school in Pakistan, over a hundred kids shot down. Turned the radio off. Couldn't sleep for thinking about another atrocity done for God's glory. I got up and here I am, feeling like my head is a block of wood. I've been through one of the very worst ordeals of my life, one that never ends. It started in late October; as of yesterday, I am back to what they call square one, the starting point. Time to start all over. I've not been wanting to write about this ordeal, hoping it would come to an end some time in foreseeable future. As of yesterday, I learned it will never end. I had to write an email this morning saying I regret with all my heart I got involved in this project, am through with frustration and anger, am disheartened unto indifference, though if it takes all of 2015 to get this project completed, I'll bear down and do it, only because I've committed. I volunteered (BIG error) to make the video at the hillbilly show and take care of getting the video transferred to dvd. Was given a catalog of a place that does this promising results in 3 days. It's two months now. Thought I'd save us some money. This time, it's going to cost more than it ever has. Emails, phone calls, trips to town to take snail mail to the post office. 

john mccracken

I spent a whole week attempting to email the video to them by ways I had to consult a friend who knows computers how to do, and even then had to have her do it for me. Downloading time took so long and I had to do several of them three and four times. Two-thirds of the way through one, the connection would go offline. It gets worse. Much worse. It started much, much worse. Much of the problem was my own ignorance. This is a hi-tech place where I have to ask them to explain what they're saying, like doctors, young guys for whom I am a dinosaur, and not Dinosaur Jr. Now, I have to mail something else tomorrow. And it's all my fault. Like it's my fault they lost all the information over Thanksgiving vacation and when they came back, they'd forgotten it and I called a couple weeks later to ask about the delay. Oh, we forgot about it. Gee thanks. For over two months there has been only one thing I want: this project to be over. They sent a sample copy of the dvd. I put it in the player full of hope that this was it. It's over. Until it cut off two-thirds of the way through the show. It's not over. I had to write an email explaining the problem. It's not over. Starting over again. I noted in the email I regret with all my heart that I'd already given them my credit card number. They've been friendly, but I think my email this morning might have squeezed the friendly out of them. I don't care. I have fallen into the zone of indifference. I don't care if it's not over for a year. I don't care if it never gets taken care of it. I don't care if this starting again solves it. I don't care anything about it anymore. I have come into a kind of debilitating slump. There's nothing I want to do and nothing I'm able to do.

john mccracken

Devoid of motivation for anything. Thought I'd force myself to write. Didn't want to watch another movie. Didn't want to read. Only one subject in the front of my mind. Didn't want to write about it, but here it is. I can't get into the progression of the story, all the steps along the way that did not work, over and over, until I get so frustrated it turns to anger. Nothing to take the anger out on, so I swallow it into depression. That's where I've been all day, in the depression of swallowed anger. Every step along the way in this project from the very first moment has been a frustration. First, I was promised help by a fickle twenty-something, which never materialized: I hadta, I hadta.... Otherwise, I'd have got help from a friend I could count on, another twenty-something. No help in a project I needed an assistant. From then on, nothing worked. I realized I had jumped into something out of my league. But it was too late. I had to see it through. Two months ago. It still haunts me every day. I have pressure from two sides and I'm in the middle in stasis. I feel like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star's trash compacter. I've been thinking I'd like to do it next year, and do it right, now that I know what not to do. There is no way I can even consider for a nanosecond jumping into this bottomless pit again. It started as a volunteer effort to save our group that puts on the hillbilly show some money. What I did was screw everything up. It started on an off-note and every step along way was off, a fiddle out of tune played by a beginner. In the morning, I'll do what I have to do to get the next step going, another of the many that have promised to be the last. I've given in to seeing there is no end to it. I'll just continue, one step at a time, on this endless journey to nowhere. 

john mccracken himself

*

A RHYTHM OF PEACE

I've fallen into a continuum of being awake, being asleep, days go by and from time to time I need to know the date. This is what calendars are for. I keep one with big numbers on the kitchen wall to consult when I suddenly need to know the date. It becomes a nuisance to look up the date and a bigger nuisance to keep up with it. It seems like there comes a place where alternating states of awake and asleep make a rhythm of their own and it's all one nameless stretch. Awake and asleep become like waves on the beach; water advances, water recedes. I like this rhythm. It feels like the rhythm of the old-time days, working on the farm, working by seasons and daylight. The calendar has its place on the wall, a document that keeps us in sync with everyone around us by way of agreed upon time. The Atomic Clock is civilization's official time keeper, gives us divisions of the earth's rotation so we can coordinate time in a way that is agreed upon all the way around the globe. The clock is the closest device we have to being able to see time, as far as I know. Like gravity, time is invisible. Gravity is measured in weights. Time is the spinning of the earth spiraling around the sun, the moon going around the earth, and the bigger transit of the sun spiraling in the Milky Way galaxy. Hence, astrology, given that cosmic arrangements of planets are in a continuum of change, never two nanoseconds the same. As in our lives where change is the nature of the continuum. Like cigarette smoke rising into spirals, the spirals in turbulence, the spirals in water flow. Another vision of as-above-so-below. 

My friend Carole and I have come into a place of living by light, dark, weather. When things are going my way and I have no appointments in town, I like the rhythm of awake awhile, asleep awhile. I sleep when I feel like it, night or day, am awake night or day as I feel like it. It's not very ambitious living. It separates me from the rhythms in everybody I know. Add to the list television that separates me conceptually from everyone around me, given exceptions. I can go with the core of the religion around me, but not the trappings. That I have to swear to believe immaculate conception, I cannot. I don't care. I don't care if Jesus was born biologically or mythologically. His life is more important to me than his death. His message of love is the only reason to know about Jesus. That he walked on both land and water is cool, but love was his only reason for being. The trappings make the followers into a herd of sheep. Love frees one from the herd and sets the seeker on one's own pilgrimage, whatever form or path it takes. Each one is unique, leaving no room for s'posed-to, and no being held back by a committee. I see a headline about Joe the Plumber saying Obama girls are promoting gangs. It doesn't annoy me anymore that ignorance is front and center. When I look at the progression of American public education and the progression of American politics, I'm surprised by no extreme degree of ignorance. Our politicians are corporate stooges. They are not put in place for any reason but their ignorance, they truly do not know right from wrong, people easily told what to do and eager to go along, fame and money, glitz and glamour, face-lifts, looking like a mummy in old age. 

My purpose leaving the world of commerce and committing to rural life on a remote road in the mountains was to find a way to live "in the world, not of it." First thing, I had to define for self what is meant by "the world," which took some years. Finding the place to draw the line between world and not-world gets subtle and at once obvious. I gradually came to The World is the world created by human mind, the not-natural world. This includes everything from architecture to music to religion to spiritualism to art to getting up in the morning. Everything. Duality. Ok, this is the world I want to live in, but not of. I can see I'm in it, the playing field. Then I had to figure out what OF meant. Attachment comes to me first. Ego. It's ego that wants to attach to things, ideas, agendas, purposes, and again, everything. I took it that letting go of attachments is a way to not be of the world. I didn't know why it was important to me, but that it is universally said to be the way, the path. I had no idea of why, except figuring there must be something to it. By now after years of mentating on the issue and allowing the super-conscious to search on its own while mind is distracted by the world of commerce, getting basic bills paid, I feel like I have some insight, a little bit. It's about inner peace. Attachments of my past have fallen away due to waning interest. Turns out attachments worry the mind. 

I used to want stuff for myself, paintings on the walls, books, music. Now I have more than I want. I want to get rid of stuff, wants of the past. Like I want to keep a copy of Pinocchio in the house, knowing I'll never read it again, but love it so much as a story I like seeing the spine of the book on the shelf. It's a reminder of the story within. I like seeing the spines of books on shelves, titles I've read and remember in a nanosecond my feeling about the content. I see the poetry of WB Yeats and feel a soft glow in the heart. Three months in London in 1972, I carried a paperback of Yeats poetry in a pocket, reading in it every day on "the tube." In that way, a book is, indeed, a friend. I want now to keep the donkeys comfortable, Caterpillar comfortable, and want the well-being of my friends, want them all to have a good life on their own terms. I have to pull back from wanting a reasonable government. That hope is over. Learning from the nature of the world to step back and let it go by, the world of treachery and me-first, I let the people that want to partake of it have at it. I see news about police brutality, killings and mayhem in general, and look out the windows at the green world, the birds, the squirrels, the donkeys, the meadow, thinking, this is peace. I see the occasional car go by on Waterfall Road out the windows, the road of peace. I tell myself none of the nonsense in DC applies here, nor do the Koch brothers, except in destructive ways that apply to the future. As long as they're not bombing Waterfall Road and a SWAT team isn't breaking down my door with guns blazing, the wrong address for a meth lab, I live in peace. Waterfall Road can exist in a condition of peace because the road, like the country Costa Rica, has nothing of value to corporate mind.  

*

   

MY FRIEND ROSS

maxwell equipment, whitehead

I stopped in at Maxwell Equipment in Whitehead to see Ross and the others working there. Ross was the only one in. He was going through some boxes he kept odd parts in, used pipes of various sizes, parts he kept for unknown possible needs. I didn't want to interrupt his focus. I waited and fell into looking at a photograph of Jr Maxwell on the wall under the clock. The photograph was taken by Ross's dad, Dean, who went on a couple years ago. I think Dean was eight years younger than Jr. He told me when he was a kid at Whitehead school, Jr was one of the older kids. He didn't know him well, but looked up to him, because Jr, of the older kids, never picked on him and took up for him. Dean and Jr were never close friends, as Jr was older and they lived in different worlds. Though toward the end, Dean proved himself to be Jr's true friend. Jr worked a sawmill in his teens for Dean's dad, who was a sawmiller as well as farmer. Dean went on to college and worked as a ranger on the Parkway, got his kicks chasing bootleggers using the Parkway for late night runs with absence of other cars at night and no stop signs from Front Royal, Virginia, to Asheville, NC. Dean loved to drive fast. Chasing liquor runners was his thrill. He never worried about getting tickets for driving fast off the Parkway; he knew all the highway patrolmen. His wife, Betty, was terrified of his driving. She rode in the back seat, which she made into a lounge area with pillows, magazines, books and snacks. She distracted herself from paying attention to how fast the car was going. Dean's driving was what we call a "white-knuckle flight." 

reflection on my car's window

we can fix anything but broken hearts

I was looking at the picture of Jr that caught his character in one snapshot when Ross came back from his search through the parts boxes. We started talking about Jr, what a fun character he was, what a true human being he was, what a complex mind he was, how generous he was, how tight he was, how odd it feels to be saying "was." He lives in my heart and Ross's heart as if he were at home in his house as we spoke. Ross took up with Jr in his childhood. By the time he was fifteen, he was hanging out at Jr's tractor repair shop such that Jr became his surrogate daddy. Ross admitted openly before Dean that Jr, in effect, was his real daddy. Ross's attachment to Jr was that kind of strong, and not in defiance. I saw an obvious past-life association the same as I see with Justin and myself. I'd be visiting Justin's parents and gave more attention to Justin than to them. Justin was a special kid to me. I felt close to Justin and protective when he was little. In his mid-teens when he was able to have his own vehicle, my house was his "calm down place," where he went when the riot at home was too much to bear. We played rock n roll on the sound system and talked. I listened to him all the way along, which, I see now, bonded us when he was a youngun. I'm convinced of a past-life connection with Justin, which I didn't talk about. A couple years ago he told a dream he had of a lifetime as a farmer. The dream covered his whole life from childhood to old age. He said in the childhood of that life he and I were brothers, close brothers. I died in that life young, leaving him devastated, explaining the age difference between us now. I feel a similar past-life connection with Jr, whose name is actually Wiley, Wiley the third. He was one of the first people I met in my new life in the mountains. From first meeting him, I felt like I knew Jr. Our association was always honest and open.

jr by me

Ross and I talked about the snapshot Dean took, how it makes you feel like Jr is there. He said he wanted to go with me to Jr's grave and have a drink with him and pour Jr a drink. I've been doing this every year on the day of the full moon he left the body, the full moon in early November. Ross suggested we go have a drink with Jr Christmas day. We set the schedule in our minds. I told him about the time I told our friend Frank of pouring a drink for Jr on his grave. I thought he'd think it was funny. He said, "Waste of good liquor." Ross said, "That's Frank." He said, "It's probably what Jr's thinking, up there looking down on us thinking: Those dumb shits, wasting good liquor." We had a good round of laughter. Ross said, "It aint about the liquor. I'm doing it for me. It means something to my heart." I laughed and said, "Right. It wasn't like I poured out a whole quart." Ross said, "Right. Pouring out one drink aint gonna hurt a damn thing." He said, "Yeah, let's do that, give ol Jr a good laugh. Shit, I miss the old fucker." I said, "Yeah, I do too. It's not the same world with Jr missing." Ross said, "It sure as hell aint." We fell into talking about other things, like two motorcycles he kept in the shop for a place to keep them. He said the yellow one likes him, but the black and silver one doesn't. He rode it twice and wrecked both times. He rode the yellow one half a dozen times and never wrecked. He has a propensity to run off the side of the road. When you do that, it's over. For an example of the yellow motorcycle liking him, he told of a time he left the road and whoever owned the house kept the grass mowed up to the road and the dirt was the same level as the pavement. He said that one was easy to get out of. 

ross

He explained when you leave the pavement, you don't just get back on, you stay beside the pavement until you find a good place to get back on. In the time Jr was housebound, Ross was out riding, left the road and hit a culvert. It tore the bike up and hospitalized him. His shoulder still has pain from it. He's not been riding since. The thrill went out of it for him. He has reason to live now. An X girlfriend had a child by her divorced husband, who didn't want the kid. She couldn't take care of him and turned the kid over to mama to bring up. Ross felt drawn to the kid as a toddler. He saw the kid was simply lonesome. When he was able to walk, Ross would keep him over the weekend. He's in the second or third grade now, and Ross is his big brother and closest friend, family. Ross's older sister brought her baby boy home to mama to raise on the farm. Ross, John and Milly were big brothers and sister. Ross is raising B, the name Ross calls him, like he helped raise little nephew as brother. Joe grew up into a cool guy who can do anything he wants to do. He raced motorcycles and dirt bikes for several years, as did Ross. The yellow motorcycle in the shop was his racing bike. Ross has recently talked with B about staying away from sports in school and focusing his attention toward learning to make music with the Junior Appalachian Musicians at school; you can play music the rest of your life. When school is over, sports is over, you waste your time learning something you can't use the day after you graduate. And later, he will advise B to stay out of the military. B is a neat kid. He's a kid it's fun to be around, comfortable with adults. When he's with Ross and Ross's family and friends, he's at home, safe and loved, one of the fellers. There, again, I can't help but see a past-life connection Ross intuited in the baby without knowing that's what he saw. Perhaps B is a soul who wanted to be Ross's child and got there the best way he could.

john

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