My great-uncle’s photos 1

pckcnidus5.jpg

I’ve decided to put up some photos that my great-uncle took while he was travelling in the Middle East back in the 60s and 70s (?). My own family has some bizarre and deep connections with the Middle East and the current administration, which I’d rather not get into now.

You can read about him if you google: Peter Kilburn. Most of the entries on the first page relate to him.

irrational rationality (or rational irrationality?)

Perhaps, as Mr. Davis says, we need to let our imaginal forces out to play.

It’s something to do while whiling away the dark corners of the night, anyhow. I also didn’t know where to put this exactly. I’ve been too weighted in my own spurious irrationality these days. It might be time for a break from that.

Especially, considering that my own incantations or weirdnesses seem to be blooming lately. Relearning: it’s dangerous to summon things willy-nilly…

me blowing off steam in a meaningless way

tinkering with the spiteful grimace on his face and growling out the uncontrolled words which pushed their way forwards, granting all the punishment that had been meted out in all the hollandaise or holidays before the quagmire of health and mental scarcity broke upon the shoals of quickly retreating camera angles and despairing monkeys that wallowed in the recesses of all the minds and qualitied folks who liked to stand and sit drinking their maitais and cosmopolitans, their tom collinses and milky dewdrops: which if examined closely would have been repulsed with disgust. to be sure, there was nothing to be said and only a distant few had focussed their attention on what?to be sure?had turned into a lengthy and problematic discourse on freedom and goodwill, which shattered into thousands of logistical and dialectical bits, eager to pronounce a thing good or bad, yet neglecting the simple and simply disquieting facts (or FAQs) which lurked in the foreground or background. the quiet press of cold flesh around him, eyes crinkling in cold regard, kept him pinned to the rhetorical prison that he had erected around about himself and he could feel his face tightening and thoughtful architects constructed ramps for him to flee upon. intuitively, several by-standers urged away sideways, prompting several flies to wave up into the air. ?where?s a conspiracy when you need one, he said, chortling and gulping down his cheap brandy. no one replied. he was caught in a pool of cool disregard and felt his autonomy and presence sliding into a black hole of social rejection? –might as well have been talking about dried monkey dung?.

giggling like the fiend of hell

sowry, sowry for that deep quick sift to the neck. ya, eat eat eatsit. but the dinner’s groaning cold. poiled rice and greamy cornswaryps. try believing nuttin and evrytin at the same time–see where it getsya.
“…around the corner behind a door…”
globalbrain going through pubeythroes? boils burstin out all over t’place? micro vs macrocosm? what’s reflecting what, anyway? and who’s the crazy fucker sterring this bus anyhow?

feels like riding a rampaging cow over a cliffty sauce. ut dies ut dies. wheep! there a cushion down there?

cauldron burn and cauldron bubble. or maybe the sweater’s caught on hook and the tension of the moment before it all aravels. aravelling aravelling we go, high-ho aravelling. what new thing’s being knit?

basically i’m …..

hey, we’ve got a time machine here: books from the future flying in. what ould ya. how much longer can the strain go?

I love these cluetrain guys!

World of Ends

Simple put: what the internet is and what it isn’t, for a second-grader to understand.

This is the thing that I liked best:
The Internet was built to include everyone on the planet….That’s also why the Internet feels to so many of us like a natural resource. We have flocked to it as if it were a part of human nature just waiting to happen ? just as speaking and writing now feel like a part of what it means to be human.

I mean, how often do we think about water? or the air that we breathe? or sidewalks?

Thoughts from a (long-term?) war strategist for the Defense Dept.

This article by Thomas P. M. Barnett discusses longterm international security issues with admirable clear-headedness.

It seems to make sense. But is military intervention the only possible solution? And what exactly would a military made up of so-called “Super Empowered Individuals” look like? And what good will it do if this country gains the world, but loses its goddamned soul in the process?

I suppose I would prefer to live in McDonaldHappyLand instead of IslamoDeathtoTheInfidelWorld… but both seem like soul-killers when the squinting gets too fierce. I do very much agree with this particular quotation though:

“The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, ?Let?s get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won?t have to deal with those people.? The most na?ve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.”

I mean, I think that getting off the oil is great (for economic, ecological and political reasons; ie, we won’t have to prop up nasty blokes like the House of Saud), but were we to do so, that region of the world would twist in the wind. (And if Central Africa–which is probably the greatest tragedy of our time–is what twisting in the wind looks like… yikes…)

So, I guess what it all boils down to is that I don’t really know what to think anymore about anything regarding any of these issues. They are dauntingly complex. My only hope and prayer (and I may just be a completely misguided fool) is that my government is less myopic, greedy and corrupt than I believe it to me… Not a very sturdy reed to clutch at, I admit.

I think it was the lass over at noodniksanonymous who compared this whole thing to a bad breakup experience. Just can’t stop obsessing about it, reading about it, what have you. I feel like I lack the conceptual tools in which to reframe the debate; or maybe because I can see the validity in so many of these arguments, pro and con, and having difficulty transmuting these theoretical arguments into any semblance of real-life repercussions–military violence is completely alien to me and I realize that I am blessed beyond measure in the history of the world for this to be so.

My hope–as unrealistic as it is–is that that will be true the world over, some day, because then what a party we’d all have!

irrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrish (too-whit too-whu) we’re awls too

grinning eartoear, liketosee that crabtree monkey

scrapey scrapey

hierophantismagorical: inside the sinside lurks like treebwise cattlecallers, outside the sinside hides from wary peephole speculars. i’ve found that sinside inside many particulars that nonsense ringers (or rings) have gotten from starting and staring at too many phoebus or ra-styled montagues or curlicues or spendacular criscrossing moldavvos.

ya, that’s a crumb for a larder/princess.
the cat’s gone soft and all its blackwise crossings bring us goodluck instead.