Stir (like) Crazy/Stick in the Mud

mind alive with language,
myriad fumbling tongues
slavering, sloshing, frothing out
thoughts
slipping on word formation of
electromagnetic impulse,
dense clouds gather fast
try to scream lightning and leap
before it catches the tree,
we must seem to all-seeing eyes
immobile of mouth and foot
unable to get away
with what we want to get across
mind
like time
flies

summer watermelon mississippi joy

a very talented New Orleans friend named Hayley painted this classic image of my friends Helmer, Johnny, Laurence, and me kicking it in Clear Springs, Mississippi.

River trails

Louisiana green tunnels are like giant lungs. It’s an ebb and a flow that I simply have to let carry me swiftly in bursts of joy-filled fear along the Comite River until I am coughed out onto a white sand river bend beach where I search slowly and peacefully for the Huckleberry Finn within. So much birdsong. There! A giant snapping turtle. And then a pair of alligator gar swimming beneath the sun-reflecting surface and I stop at once. Look around, listen closely. Beginning to know each little sound. The quick burst of the rabbit. The gentle, short slither of the lizards tail. The hop-skip of the birds in the brush. The long, ominous slither of the snake that is almost always a tree root. And goddamn, that armidillo just doesn’t give a shit. He keeps up his relentless search for grubs regardless of any curious blonde apes that come his way.

proverbial dessert

in this
the time of sinking ships
we still want to have
our damn cake!
and eat it/smash it
into our faces/the
faces of loved ones/
parade in it/
parade on it/
take it to bed/
sneak it into the movies/
lick the frosting off of it/
or fingers/
slowly or hurriedly
too!

nevermind that.
what we WANT
is to have the damn cake!
and continue to do whatever we want!

ode to Teddy's Juke Joint

E-LEC-tricity
is a rumbling Wipe Out
jumpin’ on that wooden
-- DaNcE floor --
of Teddy’s Juke Joint.

Passion
is Selwyn Cooper
& da Share Croppers
SWEAT caked
audience of 10 (screamin').

Mother of Soul Monsoons
is that Guitar Scream
that Mem Shannon
is sure as hell gonna bring
on a Sunday eve.

Don't Let Me Fade Away

Into eternal Bliss

We/Create (a week, get it?) 2010/11

To people on and enjoying this blog/Hawai'i dreamers and East/Sur-coasters alike...

Can we have a physical meeting of the minds for a week of unbridled creativity? mm-mm and OOO la la...a delicious festival of collaborations that you could never come up with on your lonesome, and that's the point--the spearhead straight to the heartline every time...what's a salad smoothie without the kale AND ginger?

Come ye Come ye to the fantastical We/Create 2010(or 11) time and location and posters TBD...I can put in 2 votes for Hawai'i or here, or EVEN the fantasyland of Gesundheit! WVA (SUMMER ONLY).

what'ya think? an excuse to fling work out the window and hitch it to Hawai'i?? Dare I say F YEA???

with love,
c

Long Live the Ghost

Barnett Wins, Disappears

Update: Rare video of the ghost has surfaced:

The Solutions Journal

Those involved in the global movement for a more ecologically sensible human civilization are damn good at pointing out problems. It's pretty easy to spot ignorance, to condemn ignorance. One only needs to open his or her eyes (or sometimes just sniff the air). It is MUCH harder to develop viable solutions for sustainability in our increasingly complex world.

This is all especially true in academia. However, it seems like a culture of idealistic pragmatism, positive thinking, and experimentation is growing. So, in this spirit, a new journal has been founded with free internet access that is focused solely on SOLUTIONS. It's about time:

Awesome nerdy eco-reads

Marty Graws

need more than words!









2 hr podcast that digs into the awesomeness of Louisiana music - including that related to Mardi Gras
right here

Whisky Dreams!

Spiritual Forefathers

Hubble and the heart

a void

avoided likened to

bivalves' secret

quickening pearls secretions

shut tight in a bubble galaxy of

creamy pixilated mollusk husk

mystifying Hubble captures

snap emergings dividing

decayings diverging

implodings opposing flash

force no mortal could muster

tucked and folded

bundled up neural networks beyond measure

highways to the moon and more wrapped

back in the corporeal cranial

double design in real time

a dash of Carlos Casteneda's

hey baby I can help you heal that

ephemeral hole

meshed

the mess of wholeness and the liberated vein

transcendence everlasting everliving love

ad infinitum and all that

here, here the concrete

slam your hand with a hammer and

damn

that hurts

notion not inescapable

give it some time, baby

give it some time

that light may reach you yet

things always spinning you never even mess your pretty little head about

the heart as a collection of cells

three weeks in the making begins to beat

spontaneously

with no provocation but the onset and onslaught of time

relentless fractionless time, baby

ever so subtle

the change in the neverending conquest of

light versus dark, the difference, the spectrum, the circle, baby

ya dig?

[CASH 2.09]

love,

c

Lovely, Dark, and Deep...

Richmond, for the past month or so, has had a serious cold. It's kept almost everybody indoors, save for only a few. I haven't felt temperatures this low in the city in years; it's ghostly, watching the steam fall into the blue sky from the top of your head. Families who are lucky enough to own their homes in the Fan are definitely using their fireplaces, because you can smell the wood burning.

I call it a breath of fresh air. I want to see the changing of the seasons. So many people are ready for Spring, and I can't blame them. How awesome it's going to be in only a month or so: rocking shorts and a bandana, kicking up some warm dirt on the Buttermilk Trails and Forest Hill Park with a bottle of water and a camera hung around my torso. But I don't mind waiting. It's beautiful. Let it snow.

- Chris

beards 1.0

alan moore

the nature of natural

how we think about nature...is it possible to think about the natural world without politicizing it? without fettering it with possession, romanticizing it, thinking of it in the context of us, instead of vice versa? is it possible to appreciate and admire for the truth of it, and not the conceived meaning?
i'm not talking coats and rugs. i'm not talking cameron's avatar dream...what is the mystical but an experience?
we must be together...
i almost said without words,
without clothes,
without the fucking money.
and speaking of,
is that it? the last remaining vestiges of the natural within us?
meditation and sex? or a combination therein?

too many people on the side of mythos are dedicating their energy to alchemy, and not the real kind, not the kind that can save us (finding the chemical compassion), but still the fucking money. if you can hear me, false-chemists, hear this: IT'S STILL ABOUT THE MONEY, FUCKERS! by putting your learning in the desire of the material, you are missing the point. put your learning in the desire.

love,
c

river music

belle by sun apes

inspired by buttermilk voodoo & poison ivy

The Search

We should always be on the search but never the hunt; for the search allows us to see and find the truth, regardless of previous thoughts and/or conclusions; while the hunt aims at finding what we already feel to be the truth. In short, be mindful that you are always searching and never hunting. Until next week...
(pic taken in Germany near the Austrian border in the Alps)

va beach squirrel goddess

My friend Jackie Tripp told me this story yesterday. When she lived in VA Beach as a kid, her babysitter was known as the Squirrel Lady (do you know this lady?). This lady was lucky to have a wooded lot in the beach town, and felt she should express her gratitude to nature by building houses and a network of bridges in the treetops for the squirrels. No lie. It gets weirder.

Apparently, the squirrels were so impressed by the treetop housing that they began to regard this lady as some sort of deity, and would drop off their live babies on her porch so that she could raise them by hand, bottle-feeding and keeping them in blanket-filled terrariums in her kitchen! Jackie saw this with her own eyeballs! When the babies were big enough, the lady would release them into the trees, where the adult squirrels would collect them.

Suburban Squirrel Goddess...just something to think about.

Photo of the Week ~ Good Times

Always Dreaming.....

Explorations around the island

charlotte's spherical education

charlotte has a new blog about an atom-to-globe learning model that i'm guessing will frequently host some lovely/killer poetry.

check it out:
spherical education

i've invited her to join in on our fun here too!

New Year's Friend

I went to Atlanta for New Years for a week and while I was walking around downtown I met the following woman. She was on the phone while I was walking by her and she said the following to whoever she was talking to, "Girl, I'm gonna have to call you back, something too good to past is walking by and I ain't gonna let it past." She immediately hung up and started shouting at me. I walked over to her to see what was up and the following entailed. She began telling me about her life in the ghetto and how rough it was with all the drugs and violence. The story went on to say how she left the ghetto and traveled all over the world living off the land and doing humanitarian work for people less fortunate. She told me how she sits with her signs at the airport, or on the streets, just to make at least one person feel better or at least brighten their day. I ended up talking with her for about an hour. She was one of the sweetest old ladies I have ever met; a mother and caretaker to all. Needless to say, she brighten my day.....

Happy New Years to everyone and all the best for 2010

Pat

camber sands