Goodbye, old LiveJournal.

By chance I found myself wandering back to my old LiveJournal account. From the summer of 2001 through early 2007, I chronicled my joys, frustrations, and confusions for an audience of whomever happened to drop by. I filed entries from all kinds of moods (chipper, depressed, bitter, ironic, prayerful) and locations (Charlotte, Chapel Hill, New Zealand, Maine, New York). Needless to say, it was a total mess of the intensely personal spilling out into public view.

I was surprised, though, by the sympathetic comments that people left even on some of the weirdest entries. It's hard for me to see how the writing and posting of this stuff could have helped me, beyond giving the illusion of confession without real confession. But the comments—those were just wonderful, and probably redeemed the enterprise on some level.

In the last few months, I had realized I used the LiveJournal to create a false intimacy. By the end, I was just posting quotes without commentary, drawing back as far as I could from the emotional outbursts that had punctuated the journal for most of its existence. And so I finally did what I should have done a while ago: drawn a veil over the best and worst times of my life.

It was something like burying a bunch of old letters in the backyard.

Did anybody else have one of these things, or was it just me?

Animals

Several times this year, I have seen a fox in the parking lot behind my apartment building.

Yesterday afternoon, the hawks that live somewhere on campus were swooping around the quad. The squirrels, for once, were nowhere to be seen.

At night, I saw two raccoons digging around in the leaves behind some cars. They weren't scared of me at all; I was only about ten feet away from them.

Last Friday night, I saw Butterflies. They opened for the Physics of Meaning. I wish the rest of you could have been there.

(Get it? “Butterflies” is an animal and an band!)

"thoughts" (and many meems)

Time to go abstract on a mutha.
I picked up the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth today.
(That link goes to the full text if you're interested.)
Written in 1969. Fuller, its author, was a prophet--of sorts. This can be quite heady stuff, so feel free to ignore it (or just check out the links if you don't like reading).
But, for now, I'll save my own commentary and let your mind commentate at will.
(BTW: Quotes are always out of context.)
So,
Decipher as you see fit...
...existence*

From a philosopher of the mind, R. Buckminster Fuller:

“Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man’s consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings. But all the larger evolutionary patterning’s seeming favorable or unfavorable to man’s conditioned reflexing are transpiring transcendentally to any of man’s conscious planning or contriving.”

Here's another mindbender:

“A thought is a system, and is inherently conceptual—though often only dimly and confusedly conceptual at the moment of first awareness of the as yet only vaguely describable thinking activity. Because total universe is nonsimultaneous it is not conceptual. Conceptuality is produced by isolation, such as in the instance of one single, static picture held out from a moving-picture film’s continuity, or scenario. Universe is an evolutionary-process scenario without beginning or end, because the shown part is continually transformed chemically into fresh film and reexposed to the ever self-reorganizing process of latest thought realizations which must continually introduce new significance into the freshly written description of the ever-transforming events before splicing the film in again for its next projection phase.”

Post-Bush, soon-Obama-present = "the next projection phase."

And what more, in days of economic "crisis," with the Obamanomics ahead, how might we bring about a new "wealth" which could relieve us of our evolving woes?
(Well(th)...I put crisis in quotes there because I think the economy as being in a state of crisis might be arguable, in the least, depending on how you define wealth...)

Bucky gives us the answer...and no, he is not a computer as you might guess from his writing style, but, instead, a human being (see above)--

again, written in 1969:

“Wealth is anti-entropy at a most exquisite degree of concentration. The difference between mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and integrates and interrelates their effective employment. Brain deals exclusively with the physical, and mind exclusively with the metaphysical. Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of matter by mind, and is specifically accountable in forward man-days of established metabolic regeneration advantages spelt out in hours of life for specific numbers of individuals released from formerly prescribed entropy-preoccupying tasks for their respectively individual yet inherently co-operative elective investment in further anti-entropic effectiveness.”

YES--invest in the dollar not for the dollar's sake, but for its potential output. Not in entropy, but in order. Buy a baby.

Sorry for my preoccupation with words and links today, but here's a finale:

“To take advantage of the fabulous magnitudes of real wealth waiting to be employed intelligently by humans and un-block automation’s postponement by organized labor we must give each human who is or becomes unemployed a life fellowship in research and development or in just simple thinking. Man must be able to dare to think truthfully and to act accordingly without fear of losing his franchise to live.”

Oh, and for those of you who don't already know...I quit my job about a month ago. Now (unemployed) in the process of daring to think truthfully and act accordingly without fear of losing my franchise to live.

*love

Anathallo loves Sweater Weather

Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of knowing Sweater Weather when they opened for Anathallo at Cat's Cradle in 2006. I hear it was an incredible show.

Last night I got to see Anathallo live at the Local 506! After playing their first song, Matt Joynt talked about how great it was to be back in Chapel Hill and reminisced about playing with this really incredible band called Sweater Weather. I was very impressed with their performance and they overcame what I'd describe as a lackluster audeince (thanks to one obnoxious fan's inscesent yelling.) Cheryl and I found ourselves wishing that the members of Sweater Weather would emerge from the crowd and surprise us. Yes! I also got to see the newly weds who drove down to see the show to begin the celebration of Cheryl's birthday. Happy birthday Cheryl!

A Way to Celebrate America

This 3-disc set looks pretty dope: Of Great and Mortal Men

43 songs about 43 presidents!

Have fun!

Studs

The great Chicago storyteller Studs Terkel died on Friday after a nice long life. I think you guys would like him, if you don't know about him already.

Here's the Chicago Tribune's story.