"guest room"

the "holidays" are here yet again...or so the retailers would have it..and this has me thinking about the very first christmas..exactly how far above "cattle shed" would accomodations at a bronze age judean "inn" be? well...while i have not been what could be called "exhaustive" in my research i still cannot find any evidence that a bronze age judean "inn" existed...however...

what i have found is the standard bronze age judean house had four rooms and the two long ones on either side of the entrance had a second floor accessed by climbing a ladder...one of which was called a "guest room"....something like a bronze age air bnb...the rooms below were indoor cattle stables where oxen and domkeys as well as pregnat livestock were kept for greater safety from predators...so perhaps mary and joseph were wandering from house to house rather than inn to inn looking for accomodations and perhaps the town was full of conventioneers and there were no unoccupied "guest rooms" to be had and a stable would have to do...or perhaps mary was knocked up and in labor and wasn't up for climbing ladders to reach accomodation literally just above cattle shed level...the world is full of unanswered questions

wolfgang goes off the rails

“here is a movement that follows all the typical stages in the history of innovation: some novelty fulfills its historical role, namely to reshape reality in some crucial way, first in the public sphere, that is to say, in the sphere of collective consumption and only later finds its way into the realm of private, domestic consumption. the public phase of an innovation can be termed heroic, in that it changes reality. the subsequent private phase must be termed conformist in that, on its own, it demonstrates no change of dynamic, but rather serves to affirm and stabilize. thus, for example, the transportation revolution in the nineteenth century began publicly with the railroad as a means of mass transportation; in the twentieth century it took a private and domestic turn with the family automobile. films began publicly with movie theaters; they then became privatized with the advent of the television set in the living room. in each instance what comes after is a reduction. it is not merely in the scale or dimension that the machines in question are reduced when they move from the public sphere into the domestic one, cars are smaller than locomotives, television sets smaller than movie screens, but the essential character of the thing has diminished; the heroic aspect has been lost so to speak. in comparison with their tiny successors the railroad and cinema are powerful instrument that excite the imagination, inviting their near mythical associations. cars and television sets lack this power and impact.” wolfgang schivelbusch. tastes of paradise: a social history of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants. pp.62-63_______________________________________________ “some novelty fulfills its historical role”_____...ah...historicism...has wolfie been reading ozzie spengler...thinking so...well..i have read ozzie as well...and he had the advantages of considering hitler to be a nonentity and could say things that could knock you out of your chair...but his histoicism was ( and is ) rank bullshit...so to with wolfgang...all of life is contingent with a critical lack of actual meaning and nothing is predetermined by “the laws of history”...no one actually knows what’s next and anyone who wants me to believe they do has an agenda… _____“the subsequent private phase must be termed conformist, in that, on its own, it demonstrates no change of dynamic…”_____ “cars and television sets lack this power and impact”_____ what? not being a prolific user of television i probably am not in any position to dispute old wolfgang here...although one wonders who goes to theaters to binge on theatrical films...say “the godfather” series or “star wars” or “star trek” for that matter however will watch film after film on a streaming service on their televisions...with the railroad/automobile comparison wolfgang seemingly disjoins from the reality he says the railroads changed...true they were mass transportation and the creators of suburbs and in that respect they did create a new dynamic...to say that automobile “lack this power and impact” seem absurd to me on a camus like level...let’s stop and consider how much land has been paved over for roads and parking lots to pander to the driver...and how much land has been utilized for malls, strip malls, professional buildings, supermarkets, and the other “conveniences” that driving an automobile provide the consumer...not to mention that the lack of walkable, public pedestrian spaces has made auto ownership a necessity in most places...looking at change in landscape and the displacement of species i have to say the auto has had some “impact” on the “dynamic” and probably stands second only to agriculture in doing so...at least in anthropogenic terms...the historicism and this howling error have me wondering about old wolfie and intoxicants.

radical agnosticism

one one level i am forced to agree...looking towards the past for configurations ( or what to do next ) is inherently foolish and will leave considerable lattitude for repeated mistakes and recidivist behaviors...the issue is, since this is nothing if not a pastoral message, that the "church hierarchy" is trying to control my present by placing my future in some fundamentally unproven haven of eternal bliss...i think you are manipulative here and really haven't any better idea of what might occur at or after death than i do...you simply believe you do ( or want me to believe )...to borow one from old fred nietzsche,"a casual stroll theough the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."...i don't believe you know...i believe you are delusional in your hope...or you are cynically manipulative...either way i will remain agnostic...you will not see me in church sunday...or any other day for that matter.

wine

this is from five years ago and it still confounds me whenever i run across it in an old file...$79300 for a double magnum...three liters...$26433.33 a liter...$26.43 a milliliter...has someone opened this and had a taste...or is it an investment? seems more likely the price was the result of a bidding war between wine snobs with too much money for their own ( or that of anyone else ) good...what would you do with a now twenty-two year old bottle of wine that couldn't possibly be worth the amount that was paid for it? the end purpose of a bottle of wine is to be imbibed and i have to wonder what occasion would merit $1321.50 a sip ( i measured out a comfortble mouthful of water and it came to fifty milliliters...so that is how i calculated the cost of a sip )...the disjunction between the cost and the reality of use is nearly complete here...the real can die in a multitude of ways...tulipmania for isntance...there are bubbles of all sorts from spices to housing to, seemingly, wine...reality has slipped a pulley here.

rehab

thirty four years ago today i checked myself into rehab...a confirmed alcoholic at thirty-two it was what needed to be be done...mostly because i was trying to cut back and was having seizures so needed a medically supervised detox...and that was something rehab provided that was effective...thirty four years provides something of a longer view and the view informs me that after the detox rehab was pretty much a dead end...the "help" the therapists provided was mostly suggestions from a book they read along the way somewhere...trite stuff about altering routines and assessing triggers...a recipe for failure that would keep you coming back...dependent...even worse was the mandatory aa meetings we attended..."admit you are powerless against alcohol" and you're screwed from the get go and holding onto the organization for a trace of sobriety...dependent...dependency was what i was trying to end and none of this was going to help much...and yet i have been sober since 3 september 1986...it wasn't easy...it got easier...and it wasn't all that complex either...the largest and most difficult step was assuming responsibility for what and who i was...my problem was not my wife or my children or my job or my boss or my parents or my siblings or who was president...my problem was me...i was the root cause of my drinking and if it was going to stop i had to be the one to do it...not the therapists...not aa...and not an on line forum ( not to discredit the que or the people i met there...or the hard work they did to overcome their issues...or the caring they gave on another...it was a special place...but i had been sober twenty five years when i found it...thinking there were not many on line forums in 1986 )...and how did that come about? probably perseverance and a good deal of luck...i went to group therapy for nine months...because it is what they told me i needed to do...they were mistaken...what i needed to do was to redirect the still extant addictive personality i possessed ( and still possess...there is room for ambiguity in my life but i hate being conflicted and i do very little moderately ) to somewhat less self-destructive pursuits...among other things i went back to school and, perversely, came to gardening ( relatively non self-destructive ) through a class in physical anthropology...and what i turned that addictive personality loose on was my addiction to alcohol...twisting the single-minded activity of acquisition and use around and becoming relentlessly sober...it wasn't easy...there were white knuckle moments...i dreamed vivid technicolor dreams about drinking every night...right down to the small print on the vodka label..."come on" my addiction was saying..."just a half-pint...given the amount you were drinking no one would notice"...well...working on me at my most vulnerable...i would wake up swearing i wouldn't drink today ( something i have not done in decades...i know i won't drink today...i have no time for it and i am keenly aware that it wouldn't improve any situation i might face...infinite bad judgement in a bottle )...when those dreams stopped ( and it went on for two years ) i was deeply relieved and i knew i was in much firmer control of things ( incidentally i haven't has a technicolor dream in decades...my subconscious is still pissed off at me )...from then on sobriety became just as much a habit as drinking had been...sobriety as a mental shortcut...thoughtless...assumed...unconscious...i said it gets easier...those of you with years of sobriety probably find this all to be coals to newcastle...obvious...a no brainer...i seriously doubt i have recounted anything unique or revolutionary in the methodology of overcoming an addiction...for anyone still struggling, hang tough...no it is not easy...coming out the other side is worth all the effort it takes however...keep quitting.

the real is still dead

yes it is

the church as the nexus of the material and false spirituality

church (chûrch)► n. A building for public, especially Christian worship. n. The company of all Christians regarded as a spiritual body. n. A specified Christian denomination: the Presbyterian Church.____________________________________________________ we will be concerned here with the first definition...why a building? and why specifically christian? because it's not about spirituality...it's about the material...about behavioral control...it's about money...you don't need a building to be spiritual...you can go out and look at the stars at night or watch plants grow to know you are living in cycles within cycles and realize that you are not the final end the universe had in mind...just a part of it...that's not what a building is for...it is actually an impediment...no...you need a building to bring people together in a group and establish a group mentality...one less open to independent, critical thought and more subject to group assessment and approval/disapproval..."are you one of us...or are you 'the other' "...the other is damned...institutional architecture is purposefully designed to diminish the individual...public buildings are large to instill what geert mak calls "antness"...a diminusion of self...some cathedrals would fill the same purpose...however small churches and even chapels are designed to negate the self by invoking the eternal in the face of simple human transience and ultimate oblivion...and that fear of self oblivion is the key to religion's behavioral control...alone, individuals might begin to question the veracity of the clergy...stray into heterodox thought, the bane of true faith..so the "individual" needs to be controlled...watched for signs of inattention or heresy "...and the seating is so arranged that the males are in front of the house father, and the house mother acts as a rear guard for the females. this ensures that everyone's conduct in public is watched by those who are responsible for his discipline at home. here too they take great care to see that a young person always sits next to an older one; for if children are left to themselves they're apt to waste their time in church playing childish games, when they, above all, ought to be developing a sense of religious awe, the strongest, if not the only, incentive to good behavior"...that is the ur-maoist sir thomas more ( a saint no less ) embraced by teleological authoritarians, religious or secular ( hitler was an austrian choir boy who "drank in the awesome solemnity of the catholic ritual" and sought to emulate them in the rites of the nazi party...stalin was a seminarian...there is a critical thread that links theology and authority ), to this day...so, in these terms, the material becomes a necessary part of the "spiritual" because there has to be containment, group think, peer judgement, and a loss of self for those commandments ( authority again ) to take hold and for us poor miserable sinners to toe the line and support the church...whether that be a poor parish priest or a jet owning televangelist...the church is a way to earn a living..and like all ways there can be big money in it if you have an entrepreneurial bent and the will to diminish individual thought...hurry...someone will snap this property right up.

apocalyptic failure

david meade...bible scholar...ranting evangelical...failed numerologist...

there are quite a few cars at urgent care on central...but not because of nibiru...

there is considerable damage at the strip mall...but it was a fire a few weeks ago...not nibiru ( and in an inversion of the "end of the world" scenario as well as a sort of a lake station miracle, the bar at the end survived unscathed )

and there's a lot of traffic on willowcreek...but not because of a nibiru based evacuation...it's just another busy evening with everyone headed home...the world will end at some point..it is true..but not the way these doomsday twerps think...or the way you or i think either probably...the variables are unknowable...accept your limited human cognition and denounce bogus manipulators...we have enough to worry about without some attention whore tugging on our coat sleeves...fuck these people.

calling planet nibiru...

the dense yellow # 2 is still ripening in the quasi rural fields here in the nexus...

and my nascent winter rye is still standing as tall as it can...

the parking lot at the local supermarket is full...at least half way...

the macdonald's out on route six seems to be doing a robust business...nothing extraordinary on a saturday moring...

admittedly it is a bit on the warm side for the second day of autumn...

and there is an azure sky redolent of deepest summer..and there is part of the problem...the anti-life nihilist fundamentalist evangelical in me is crying out at the failure of planet nibiru to materialize and obliterate the fucking godawful terrible sinful hedonistic human race ( that this would have obliterated every trump supporter is the only real shortcoming i can see in its non-materialization )

oddly the only empty parking lots i saw were at churches...have the faithful already been raptured up and i missed it? or have the faithful seen through the lame numerological con game that is an evangelical side line? remember harold camping and his confused babbling from 2011? david meade can join him in the pantheon of failed prognosticators who fade into oblivion muttering to themselves about what could have gone wrong and god's treachery...personally i am going to have some lunch.

"well...that passed the time"

made a call at the "behavioral health" segment of a local hospital today to make a visit...i found it all to be rather formal and constrained even though the staff was "glad" i was there...as long as i succumbed tot he list of rules...one of the first of which was "no cell phone use " which i promptly violated by taking the attached photographs ( grainy though they may be )...each inmate..er, patient...was allowed only one visitor at a time so i was left to cool my heels in the hallway for about half an hour and wait...so i began to live through waiting for godot line at a time as i paced around...until i noticed the surveillance camera...so surveyed it and its 180 degree field of vision and saw that it overlapped another that was about fifty feet down the hall...behavior was being watched...i was suspecting a shrill whistle followed by a stern voice calling me to task for rule violations...i looked around for refuge and saw a nook where the wall extended by some disused elevator doors ( nothing in good repair...oceania...airstrip one ) unfortunately it was not nearly a deep enough recess to avoid the camera...winston smith had it made compared to this...so i spent an hour on camera ( there was one in the "visitor's lounge" as well...as we left i noticed the cameras vanished...or were better hidden...wondering how much more of my life is surveiled.

mired in an ego viewpoint

"western mankind, without exception, is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. everyone demands something of the rest. we say "thou shalt" in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to that order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable...in the ethics of the west everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant. here luther is completely at one with nietzsche, popes with darwininas, socialists with jesuits..." oswald spengler. decline of the west___________every now and then you can open a book....journey to the end of the night, cosmos, confessions of an english opium eater...and find a passage that rings so true at that particular moment that it laves you gasping...old ozzie damn near knocked me out of my chair this morning...we are all stuck behind our own eyes...it is difficult, if no impossible, to view others without making their existence relative to ours...we have difficulty empathizing...it can be done...it takes some effort...and there are those times when you come across an individual so utterly self-absorbed and buried so deeply behind their own eyes that they don't seem capable of any sort of understanding....who can only positively sanction the existence of others in terms of what those others can do for them...it is about them...period...we call that sociopathy...or indifference...or cruelty...or megalomania...and find it abhorrent and react with revulsion and avoidance...just wondering how much of ourselves we see there before we react.

the blanching hour

i spent an hour working on the first step in making what my carpatho-rusyn granny would call holubci...you can call it stuffed cabbage or whatever non-authentic name you want to apply...i will stick with what i grew up with..one head of cabbage in the pot blanching...another on the counter waiting...peeled off with tongs and into a bath of cold water to stop the cooking...then into a colander to drain..forty leaves in the first head...forty-seven in the second...the last two photos are the largest and the smallest leaf from the second head...my work is done here...the rest of the project is in other hands...i am free to ponder whether this qualifies as a post-modern "death of the real" since the generation that brought this to my family is long gone...or if my inclusion of this post in the blog carries on my tradition of satirizing the whole bogus theme of post-modern claptrap...i lean towards the latter...we need g.e. moore now like never before.

just another grifter whore

my garbage can isn't real anymore...it has become a simulacrum...a mere shadow of a real garbage can...you can tell because it says old keith soderquist is mayor and he isn't anymore...statutes enacted in, i believe, 2008, stripped him of his office as soon as his conviction on all counts ( including taking money from the food bank account to spend gambling..up in michigan so he wouldn't be recognized as easily i suppose ) and rendered my garbage can fallacious...the times of northwest indiana says his conviction "casts a pall" over the city...how? a whore is a whore...some political grifters are bigger than others...too big to fail...others not so big...still...cut from the same cloth...let the light in...recognize where we find ourselves for what it is...a free-for-all at the public trough...fuck these people.

bureaucratic blowback

have we ever discussed the nearly criminal mayor's ( trial starts next month...the maw of justice grinds slowly...but it surely grinds ) decision to move trash and recycling collection curbside because scrappers were cutting into the city's revenue stream ( much like the mayor has allegedly done )and, in the process put his name on every damn garbage can in town? well...when he did that he decommissioned the alleys and made individual homeowners responsible for their maintenance where they abutted their property...it is widely ignored and i was cited for having "weeds and rank vegetation over 12" in height.." behind my house ( photos two and three )can't really argue that but so do my neighbors ( photo four ...and i have more )...to cut to the chase...i took the lawnmower back there and scalped it ( photo five ) and lopped off a bunch of overhanging branches as well as cutting down a couple of small trees...i bagged a bunch of "waste" per the citation's instructions ( sixth photo ) but the citation also said , " any cut branches or limbs that cannot be paper bagged can also be placed on the easement for pickup."...never one to deny city workers work i did so ( last photo )...i had until sunday to do this..i expect credit for doing it early...i expect my neighbors to clean theirs up too...one wonders if those expectations will be met in this half-assed town...one wonders if the next mayor will be less of a political whore...hoping so since he was pretty much elected in the primary and i voted for him.

carboniferous detrivores*

at the moment much of my yard is taken up either by plants i aim to eventually eat ( top photo ) or green manures i am letting go to seed ( second photo ) so i can continue the process of adding nitrogen to the soil naturally a bit more cheaply ( i have some alfalfa and a few more goodies like illinois bundleflower to add to the mix )...the bulk of the rest of it is made of a bit of grass and a lot of weird ground cover and moss..but the stuff grows...and for all my pretensions to organic gardening, natural fertilizers, compost ( there is a bin out back too ), and a healthy disrespect for the social conventions of my neighbors, there are still expectations that seemingly have to be met..like mowing the stuff...if i don't someone will call code enforcement and they will tell me to mow it on pain of a fine and anything else the powers that be can throw my way...it is expected...so i load up my lawn mower with 89 octane gasoline and cut away...i am using the remains of the carboniferous epoch of geological history to cut my alleged lawn...and to go to work...and to post this blog...and to heat and cool my home...and buy food to eat that is produced with an abundance of petrochemical...the culture ( ha! ) i live in is universally ( almost ) dependent on these remains...a scavenger society that searches high and low for new sources and is prepared to go to war over them...even trying to live on the fringes sucks me back in...even going "off the grid" entails using technology that is manufactured with carboniferous waste...no fucking way out seemingly until it all crashes from entropy and sky high oil prices....like bugs headed towards a zapper we just keep going...how long can i fool myself? how long can we fool ourselves as a species? "denial runs strong in these...how can we use it?" *from william cattons' book "overshoot"

shelter

life is transitory and so is "home"...this was home for seven months...and with its drafts and uneven floors and low ceilings and impossibly small kitchen that seemed to be added as an after thought it felt like "home"...now we are really home...have been for twelve days...i can tell...the neighbors haven't budged and there's an internet connection...the cat has reclaimed her territory and resumed her feral ways killing whatever comes to hand...i look out the front window down the alley that's been there since 1987 ( the reason the front drapes stayed closed for twenty-five years )...but it doesn't feel like "home"...it's too new and nothing is as it was...the kitchen is impossibly large...aside from the cabinetry and a few appliances it is empty...there have never been children there asking for cereal or a drink of water...there have never been children there at all...there aren't even ghosts of what was here...i suppose i could look at it as a clean slate to write new history on...but i am weary of history...it could be home one day...and since i own it it will have to be...but that will be some time in coming...i still wake up feeling like i am a guest in someone else's house....still asking "where am i?" _______________13 september 2015...there has been a child here...many times now...she has been in the kitchen...she doesn't ask for much but she's comfortable here...she knows she belongs...home again.

where am i ?

It’s weird to be standing in the house you’ve lived in for twenty-five years and be able to look through the bathroom from the bedroom and see the kitchen…that’s what a gutted house will do for you…distort your perceptions…the geography isn’t the same…and won’t be again…what was, isn’t and it’s not coming back…well…that is the way of things…and it’s not a great loss either…it was a form of stasis and that probably isn’t the best way to live, humans being creatures of habit non-withstanding…so it’s a step towards a new form of reality…a genuine deconstruction…not some post-modernist claptrap…more like some good old g.e.moore “get a grip on all this dualist bullshit, it’s change that I can see”…derrida and his overblown imagination can go fuck off…but i am digressing ( digression is the structure of human thought )…still…seeing a set of familiar visuals so radically changed can be a bit disorienting and lead one to ponder the transitory nature of anthropogenic structures and artifacts…there is no permanence here…or anywhere for that matter…life is short and the rest is unseen…what’s in store for tomorrow? more of the same? where’s my copy of principia ethica ?