… down to the river… an eagle calls out… i look up to see it glide by… heading somewhere rapidly…

… seagulls, corvids, geese, eagles, all on the move this morning…

… the tide is really high today, and past it’s peak… wonder if the recent rain has anything to do with it?…

… eagles very active… lots of calling… three eagles cavorting?, arguing? Courting?…

… lots of water running across the landscape towards the river… two days after the big rain event…

… as i approach Madame Brett Park, the sound of raging rapids…

… this ProPublica article is an informative read on the need for and cost of climate change mitigation (or lack thereof)… sadly, congress is not yet up to the challenge of doing all that is needed, but hopefully, in the next few days, we will see a down payment being made… if our democracy withstands its existential crises, we can hope for more…

… i tried to use the word entropy to describe a situation this morning and realized that i don’t really understand it… i duck, duck go the term and turn up this article in Wikipedia… from there i follow a link to the disambiguation of Entropy… where i find that in the study of social systems, entropy is the natural tendency for any such system to decay… and i think, that seems to be what we are in the midst of right now… the decay of our organizing democratic norms… i start to think i want to do more reading on entropy… at least come to understand it so that i can apply the concept more accurately…

… as i start to post this, a thought passes through my brain that is based on my perusal of Wikipedia articles on the Carnot Heat Engine and the Carnot Cycle, situated within the Wikipedia article on entropy… i read that the Carnot Cycle is a reversible process, that is, instead of heat being used to do work, a heat engine, work can be done to accumulate heat, a heat pump… the Carnot Cycle is reversible and thus, one can have a heat engine or a heat pump… heat engines enable heat energy to be converted to work… heat pumps use work to concentrate heat energy…

… now, in my feeble brain, i combine this idea with the idea of social entropy, which jumps me to social media, and i wonder, do you have something like Carnot Cycles in the operation of a social network?… that is, do social networks pump human emotional heat from one place to another?… is radicalization on social media a kind of social heat pump?… are then, events like the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the result of a social Carnot Cycle in which human anger is concentrated and then released in the form of an angry mob storming the Capitol?… do algorithms act as switches to determine which part of the Carnot Cycle is in operation, heat pump or heat engine?…

… we have learned from Frances Haugen, the FB whistle blower, that human anger was discovered by FB to be a powerful aggregator, much more so than love or empathy… their engineers created algorithms to use shared anger to congregate market segments where they can be sold to with pinpoint accuracy…

… it has always been that sex sells, but it appears that anger and hatred are very effective sales aggregators too… in a strict and unregulated market capitalist society, the system objective is to accumulate as much heat as possible and cause it to do work that can be realized as gain of capital… might it be possible to have a different type of social system where the emphasis is placed on the accumulation of positive human emotions and actions where social and planetary well being is the primary objective?… to create algorithms that consistently pump us in the direction of social well being?… hmmm…

… morning off to a bad start… Chas whines until i get up… it’s almost time anyway… both dogs ready to go… running around the ground floor while i weigh myself and get dressed… weight on a steady upward trend… don’t feel like i have been eating too much, but the trend is the trend… then while doing the morning set up, the dogs prancing all over the place until the side table by the couch is knocked over… not hard to do, it is too tall for the three legged slenderness of its legs, making it wobble at the slightest touch… the crash startles and enrages me, WTF! i scream several times while turning on lights to see what damage has been done and return everything to it’s wobbly higher potential energy place¹… H gets up to ask what’s going on… i explain and apologize for waking her up… i think she was up already anyway… Fiona slinks off to the second floor and back to bed with H… Chas braves my ill mood on the ground floor, then accompanies me upstairs… i let him in to the bedroom and then happily am by myself again, the house at peace…

… HCR meter, Alarm! Alarm!, democracy is under assault… yes it is, and whether congress is going to do anything about it is a serious question… so far, it doesn’t look like it… all kinds of sinister shit going on… contemplating the need to get involved locally… it’s all hands on deck for the 2022 midterm elections… congress must stay in the hands of Dems…

… drank too much last night… feeling the effects this AM… combination of needing to relax in a very worryingly unsavory national climate and just liking the effects of a drink or two at night… during dinner H wonders if we should line up to get our free joint on Friday… a store is giving them out two Fridays a month… i am sure they will be selling when the state works out the appropriate licensing regulations… i thinking that might be a better way to relax… less unpleasant effects the next day?… or would i overdo that too?… i wonder if there is a legal limit to pot and driving?…

… H and i got our booster shots today… Moderna… wish it made me feel like i could drop the mask or be in crowds again, but it doesn’t…

… cloudy, dark, windy… car plastered with pine needles…

… at the Roundhouse i stop on the bridge over Fishkill Creek and thrill to the raging rapids… heavy rain yesterday, heavy rapids today… i like to think of the spot as a cosmic destructive/creative rip in the time/space continuum… one of countless numbers in the cosmos…

… a distant drumming, as if someone were banging on the bottom of a giant plastic bucket…

… siting by the side of Fishkill Creek… banks normally walkable are flooded…

… now sitting on a bench across the street from the falls… this bench is notable for an attractive and friendly young woman who sits here with her dog in the early morning…

… DW appears to be a bit of an aristocrat in attitude if not in actual wealth… he seems to admire the trappings of wealth, refined things, interiors, private pew boxes for the wealthy…

… and then, a passage describing an encounter with a young working class man… he seemed to be attracted to pleasantly muscled with labor and tanned from sun exposure young men… it’s his version of a pinup that he might pleasure himself to… it’s rather contradictory, a bit Lady Chatterly’s lover, LGBTQ+ version…

… John Cowper Powys A Philosophy of Solitude is mentioned… Wikipedia describes this book and two other non-fiction products as better aligned with the self-help books of the modern era… offering advice on the achievement of happiness in an otherwise ordinary and mean existence…

… DW goes on at length about all the “boys” he encounters in the landscape… very few women and when encountered, a more matter of fact and brief assessment… well healed and well connected women are worth his time in description but mostly he has eyes for the men… homosexuality is a clear subtext of his observations of men and boys… so clear that it is frank and honest without being in your face…

… was looking through a selection of photographs from Photo Vogue Festival and this:

A photograph by Kennedi Carter from “10 Years of PhotoVogue”

… immediately reality is distorted and the mind bent… woman or man?… it’s a bit erotic… a bit forbidden delight… hmmm… an image that really explodes the idea that gender is tied to the genetic sex of the body… amazing image for the way it crystalizes the fluidity of gender…

… HCR meter, broken record, except, it’s a really important broken record… conservative forces that are in the minority are trying to seize control of the government… right now, they are on a track to succeed, unless, something is done about voting rights… will Manchin and Sinema come around to altering the filibuster?… no signs yet that they will…

… spent a bunch of time making my computer work better (more rapidly) and fussing with other issues, like my proton mail account which i am trying to make my email for correspondence with people i know… part of my withdrawal from Google… i have made decent progress on that front… oh, and i also installed Monterey, which appears to be not much of a change, except, shortcuts… i will be exploring the usefulness of shortcuts…

… COVID booster shot today… yay!

… the rain gave way to wind last night… no more rain for today, but more tomorrow and into the weekend…

… H woke up when i went to the bathroom and worried that the tree of life would be blown down… i told her there wasn’t enough wind to do that… she said the ground was saturated… i didn’t reply but maintained my position in my thoughts… if it ever did come down it could be a problem… it’s huge and would easily reach our or our neighbor’s house if it fell in either direction…

… i am trying to forward email from my mkriegh@studiombk.com email account to Proton, but so far, it hasn’t worked… it keeps going through gmail… and then i figured it out… i had two studiombk email addresses and had only configured the admin one to forward to Proton… i log into the mkriegh one and discover that lots of stuff goes through it from apple and adobe… so much for not having that email spammed… still, it is better than gmail which is spammed beyond belief…

… the wind blowing outside… a rushing sound…

… DW recounting a reunion at the boarding school he ran away from… the young men he describes seem to be gay, or willing to allow themselves close physical proximity to DW, who is… in an odd way, a partially closeted gay in his own journals… walking up to the subject of attraction to other males, and even sexual experiences with them, without being point blank explicit…

… DW receives news of his father’s death and confesses to little sadness about it… echoes of D’s death and the relief felt… engaging with M easier free of D’s angry, jealous presence…

… as i continue to read DW’s journals i am getting the sensation of Proust with the attention to detail and the amazing memory… i wonder if he really remembered in such fine detail or embellished with details as one might add color to the outlined spaces of a coloring book… that is, the outlines are accurate but the details are imagined and hung on the skeleton of the outlines…

… it is so interesting how he describes enthrallment with the body of a young man, a little older than DW, who walked up to him by the banks of a stream… removing his clothes and going for a swim… not minding DW’s longing(?) gaze passing over his body… no need to bluntly proclaim the obvious… he states it in every action and gesture described… it reminds me of my young manhood just after college… a young black man took an interest in me… he was gay and courting me, dangling his editorship of some design magazine… asking me to dinner and making his desires clear (did i really not know?)… i was not repulsed, even somewhat attracted, but demurred… i had a couple of sexual experiences with boys my age when i was a randy teenager exploring my sexuality… gay men were from time to time drawn to me… i didn’t mind but steadfastly proceeded down the path of heterosexuality where i have been since… sometimes i wonder what it might have been like if i were more adventurous, more willing to break the norms…

… i reach a place in DW’s journals where he is being compared to Proust by a critic… it’s nice to have such a thought confirmed from other sources… gives me confidence in my ability to assess and understand what i am reading…

… heavy rain last night… woke up intermittently to the sounds of splashing water… gutters that are clogged and overflowing?… don’t think it’s our gutters… the houses next door?…

… HCR meter, interesting and disturbing… more and more information coming out about January 06, the administration of 45 and Facebook… a lot of evil afoot… it’s more and more likely that the insurrection was planned… Republican House members are implicated… 45 is implicated… there seems to be a “festering turd” pile of rich conservatives trying to cement power towards an autocracy… HCR points to 1903 as the last time the wealthy made such a significant play for control at the expense of democracy… it was turned back then… there is no guarantee it will be now… even so, with so much coming out, there is plenty for the people to act on and a number of actors intent on doing that… hoping the people prevail again…

… made Moela (or Moelas, as a Portuguese contact spelled it) last night… chicken gizzards… it’s a good way to make them… H is not a fan of gizzards in general but said she liked this dish, as she has in the past… it wasn’t quite spicy enough… omitted crushed red pepper in favor of two fresh poblano peppers instead of the one called for… the long cooking tempered the heat of the poblanos to the point of non existence… should have kept the crushed red pepper… next time… my Portuguese contact has promised to compare my recipe to his mother’s and let me know of differences…

… there will be no photo walk today… rain all day… not really interested in a photo drive as i used to do on such days… will just skip the day in photograph making and focus on processing and other photography practice objectives…

… i over-drank last night… not badly, but enough to feel effects… sigh… it’s a struggle…

… i remember that D and K are coming for dinner on Friday… i remember that there is money owed me… will this be the day i communicate with people such that it will come to me?… i have been oddly resistant to doing that… in one case, i am not ready to start the work again… or at least hesitant about doing so… in the other i am unclear of the price i should ask… anyway… lets make a pact with ourselves and get it done today, shall we?…

… i couldn’t resist… started the download of OS Monterey… several hours of wait and watch i expect…

… wishing there was a way to capture smell the way light can be captured in a photograph… i have a Portuguese chicken gizzard stew on the stove and the aroma is out of this world…

I have been collecting flattened can images for a long time. I am interested in the collision of massed produced near perfection and entropic forces of the cosmos. I am interested in the archeological aspects of what brands wind up in the streets over time. I am interested in the idea of uniqueness as the product of entropic forces.

View the portfolio here.

… a young couple passes with luggage, hustling towards the train station… a delivery truck pulls out in front of a car driving down Main Street, leaving it little time to stop… an emphatic protest honk…

… a mannequin at lucky 31 clothing has changed into a black dress and is sporting, for a change, a sensible handbag…

… a short, stout woman, with gray hair pulled back in a bun, stands outside her building watching a video on her iPad… we say good morning and inquire about each others state of being, which is good by both accounts… i see this woman most mornings…

… the aftermath of a pleasant fall weekend, overflowing garbage bins everywhere…

… rainy day… i confine my walk to Main Street… i sit down on the steps at the falls, accepting the probability of dampening my derrier… releasing my back… as i consider the pain in my back i wonder about exercising to strengthen my stomach muscles…

… as i walk along the downstream side of the bridge near Roundhouse, i remember a chance encounter with M and their spouse P, near this spot… i catch M’s eyes and they are radiant… their smile… their green hair… the warmth of recognition layered with longtime affection… even as they lean into P, holding their hand, love obvious… every encounter with this creature is beguiling… i worry that P has noticed i only have eyes for M…

… a third of the way back along Main Street the sensation something is missing… my umbrella!… left at the falls… i turn around to head back and retrieve…

… a young woman pushing a stroller, expressionless… as we pass i notice there is no child in the stroller or nearby… i have a momentary flash of a child lost and a grief stricken mother pushing an empty stroller around as if waiting for the child to reappear and take a seat… she, suspended between incomprehension of loss and acceptance…

… the umbrella is where i left it… i pick it up and set out on my second attempt to return home…

… a lengthy, informative and interesting essay by Cathy Young in the Bulwark about what cancel culture is and isn’t…

… while accepting that serious cancel culture incidents are, in relation to the size of population, not as common as one would think given the media hype of the most dramatic stories of CC, it is none the less significant in it’s impact on the public discourse, with both conservatives and liberals being illiberal in relation to views that offend them… it’s a complicated subject and hard to draw the line between the truly abhorrent and should not be tolerated and the expression of a differing, even if on some levels, problematic, point of view… i guess i log in as a moderate in this regard… i believe in broad tolerance of expression of differing points of view while realizing that dominant cultural world views, such as the Eurocentric white patriarchal one, are so dominant that they overwhelm other significant and valid world views, subsuming them in ways that diminish them…

… so far, i am not certain of the broader value of DW’s journaling… his descriptive powers and command of the English language are, as advertised, impressive… but he seems arrogant, self indulgent and often petty in his assessments of people around him… i am not sure i see the potential for any profound observations… an observation that dives to the core of what it is to be human in this cosmos… or perhaps he is the profound observation… a complicated human being that seems more honest than many in his journals…

… most who write about him or his work excuse his less attractive qualities because of his accident and the, reputedly, constant pain he suffered… they make him out as a kind of saint to endure such affliction and produce so much so well… i think at best one can excuse him for being young and vain, complicated by his unfortunate physical circumstances and consequent short life…

… i read further and recognize the over abundant passion of a young man responding to the cosmos around him… the lovely description of an oriental lacquer screen in the fading daylight…

… and then, a really lovely entry, from his sick bed, imagining an historic old house as it might have been inhabited more than a century before… observations of the solemn, harsh adults, the contrasting gaiety of children and of servants quarreling and making love… this starts to be less the arrogant, over passionate youth, and more the maturing writer who is beginning to understand restraint and, in any case, is focused on something other than himself for the moment…

… the description of a suicide attempt… the rough draft for a story… compelling… the editor of the book warns in a footnote that the scene is fictional… still, it compels me to think it real and i wonder whether there is some basis in facts as all DW’s work is autobiographical… he writes powerfully in this passage… i begin to be a fan despite his foibles…

… 1 cocktail last night, the dishes got done, good sleep was had, no ill effects in the morning… i wanted a second but never got around to it and then was past the moment of want…

… blowfish for dinner… not the Japanese poisonous variety, but the local non poisonous kind… not often available… the fish that most tastes like chicken to me… dusted it in flour and fried in a cast iron pan… served with a salad of bitter greens which i don’t think was the best accompaniment…

… got lots done yesterday… reading and writing first thing… photo walk with some good images made… breakfast of Scottish oatmeal (we particularly like Scottish oatmeal, cooks up quickly and tastes better than most)… farmers market… family meeting on Zoom… then errands in the car, cat food, dog treats, Kombucha, pears… bed linen laundering… watched Corpse Bride (Tim Burton) and then Edward Scissor Hands (also Tim Burton)… made dinner as noted above… made the bed when the linens were done…

… the sounds of a steady moderate rain out my window… the weather app tells me there will be rain all day tomorrow… two inches of it… i remember seeing news of a giant storm moving in on the Pacific coast… center zeroing in on Seattle, or so it seemed from the radar pictures on the news… that storm has not had time to reach the west coast, let alone us… this is something else…

… ran into M at the market… told them we bought the candlesticks they designed at Hudson Beach Glass… they said they had heard and that they were discontinuing them because they are hard to make… i thought that was a shame and said so but then postulated that this would increase their value over time… why is it important what things are worth over time?… M was also on a mission to discuss their garlic growing issues with the venders at the farmer’s market…

… i continue to like the new direction i am heading with the photography… not sure where i will land with it, but generally like the pictures i am posting to Micro.blog and M.b as a platform for posting… it gets very little attention there, but they are not evil like FB, Twitter and Instagram, which is owned by and might as well be FB… i am intrigued by the idea of making and posting without caring whether anyone looks or not… it’s freeing… though, honestly, i still care a little… patience grasshopper, you will be free one day…

… cool and wet this morning… cloudless sky… car down the street ignites and hums towards warm, driver rolling windows down and up to clear the dew…

… cleaning woman unloading equipment and supplies to the front steps of the Telephone Building… i wish her good morning… “Good morning sir,” she replies… her music drifts out the rear end of her car…

… birds twittering…

… part of Main Street improvements are new two posted directional signs… the extra post feels unnecessary and unattractive…

… i have made my way down to the falls… the cold is reaching in through my extremities… hands tingling and slightly cumbersome…

… no word on chickens…

… waiting for the warmth of the sun… was i out extra early or is it arriving late?…

… just wrote to E and apologized for forgetting the chickens… offered to make up any loses… feel bad… i let E, B and the chickens down… what do we have in life that is meaningful beyond caring for one another and living things in general?… entropy working its wickedness… it claims us all eventually…

… there is mention of an article on Gerard (Manley) Hopkins… DW apparently admires him as a genius and is disappointed in the article for making him seem ordinary… i have no idea who this is so I look him up… an English poet and Jesuit Priest who became widely recognized, posthumously, for his poetry… he was an innovator who influenced the work of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis… i read about sprung rhythm… it does not make complete sense to me…

… Hopkins was becoming a recognized poet at the time DW was writing his journals… one wonders if he knew of him before his popularization or as a result of that… it makes a difference to his assessment of Hopkins… did he recognize him as a genius on his own?… or was he being told he was a genius?…

… a link to the poetry of Hopkins…

… oh my, DW has such a huge opinion of himself…

This is a terribly muddled state to be in. It shows that I can never be true friends with anyone except distant women — far away. For I wish for communion with the inarticulate and can only fray and fritter with the quick. I would tinsel, tinsel all the day if I were so placed. Yet I love myself and my company so much that I would not even ask the soldier to come in for fear of his becoming a regular visitor. I even feel people pollute my house who come into it.¹

… not much progress this AM… a little distracted…

… this morning, minutes after waking up, i remember that i forgot the chickens last night… what is it about habitual practices that sail along successfully for months and then boom, you forget?… i almost never forget the chickens, but then, i hit a day that has me otherwise engaged in a concentrated way at the time for chicken care, and i forget… i am hoping that E noticed and put them to bed… if not, then they were exposed to predation all night… sigh… i let the chickens down… i let E and B down… they will forgive me, they have before… still, i am upset with myself… not as much as the first time it happened, but enough to color the day in an unhappy way… i just hope E saw it and if he didn’t, they all made it through the night…

… apart from forgetting the chickens it was a good day yesterday… spent puttering around the house getting things done… cooking breakfast, harvesting herbs, plucking off all the leaves and putting them in the drying rack… we will have a lot of sage, thyme and oregano for the winter… more than we will use, maybe i can give some of it away…

… also did the laundry, all folded and put away… it was the folding and putting away of the laundry that occupied my thoughts when i should have been tending to the chickens…

… i made us a nice dinner, celery risotto with mutton-merguez¹ sausages… a nice wine to go with it…

… then i read more of The Haunting of Hill House out loud to H… we are making good progress… by the time i am done it was time for bed… how is it i don’t think about the chickens once?…

… Main Street was nuts yesterday… lots of weekend escapers… we’ve become a destination town for weekenders looking for something to do… i complained to M in the wine shop, noticing how empty their store was and wondering how it was escaping the hordes… they said large groups will come in intermittently… the reason i complain about the weekenders is COVID… i don’t like being in a sea of random humanity during the pandemic… may never view that sea the same again because of the pandemic… i suppose i should just get used to wearing a mask on the street as well as in the store…

… we humans love to put things together into an ordered whole… then it’s the maintenance of that whole that brings us to our knees from time to time… too much to do to keep it together unless we hire others to do the keeping of it together…

… i like the work of maintaining the house and our lives, but there is an endless list of things that need doing… longer than i will ever get to… we do the most important things on the list and let the universe do what it will with the things that don’t make it to the top… of course, when the universe does what it does, which is usually an entropic deterioration of what has been put together, things move to become priorities that were not before…

… today we have an apology to deliver to E and B, a morning walk, breakfast, the farmer’s market, family zoom meeting, vacuuming, moping the kitchen, washing bed linens, perhaps some clean up in the garden… i would like to get better at keeping the garden neat and tidy…