Someone else's idea

For that's what most of us are looking for, shopping you might say.

To that Sex in the City, Pyramid scheming, DOW obsessed, interior decorating, Oprah worshipping, man or woman I suggest that maybe, just maybe:

"YOU ARE NOT HERE TO BECOME HAPPY; YOU ARE HERE TO BECOME CONSCIOUS..."

Eckhart Tolle

Fall to Spring to Summer to Winter

There is so much to write about, yet I seem to have few words to say. I'll start with what's most remiss: my gratitude and thanks to those in the States. To those I did not see for their understanding, and especially to those with whom I was able to spend some time. It was rich.
Words cannot properly express (in a so-called normal visit) the joy and the pain, the pleasure and the gap in having that time together, Even harder in these days has it been to see you and carry onward.
The title is a reference to the temporal traipse that took me from the solstice in the Southern hemisphere to the other side of the world in it's (other) solstice. It could have been interstellar travel for all I knew as the reel of daily life had little reference save gravity's pull.
And I hate to use the descriptor, but it was surreal seeing everyone still carrying on in their lives. I don't know what I expected to see--and I was touched frequently at the poignancy I felt in each everyone's presence.
It is always such a tug at the heart to come (some say) home. I'd wondered if I was more vulnerable to that in the circumstances--and concluded i'd just see. Yet the same things that have always driven me mad with their power; the complacency, resignation, the apathy; racism, rationalization and distraction all in the midst of great intellegence; the trashing of a great land; the congestion, pollution and entitlement. It's still a drag, and there's evermore no excuse.
Never more in my life's experience has the bounty, the spoils of the world market been so apparent. Had I any sense, I may have loaded a container for a lifetime, maxing out my credit card, so cheap were the prices I was seeing in the midwest and Colorado. Candy, water barrels, books and clothes, building materials, make-up, you name it. For it is all.more.expensive.elsewhere.
But I was not thinking any more of a lifetime. The dream of building a home had been borne away, as if by some fierce channel winds. It was all I could do to just be. with whom. I was.
A lot of recovery was done while I was in the States. No one told me what to do (Bless You!)--we simply talked, did stuff, got some things that needed, done. Sorting through some physical boxes of, well things; just talking and being together was the best medicine I couldn't ask for.
One that there is no prescription for (me, yet) in New Zealand.

You have my eternal gratitude (in only an unweighted temporal, time order!):
Mom, Christopher, guy at the phone shop who set me up for pennies, the memory of my grandparents, Tom Mc, law enforcement between Ohio and Colorado for not suspecting me in my rented Soprano-mobile, North Coast Brewery (not a sponsor, unfortunately it's the other way around) the Sheridan family, Diana H., M&m Mars Co. and Darryl. Each of you really, really helped and enriched me.

Love, love love~~!

Jesse

Excellent reads

New Yorker: Turf Wars

Kiwi Solutions

The latest thing you've never heard of that could save our skin

More Fruits from our garden of eden

More stuff I liked

It's a gas, gas gas.

Road rage, desk rage?

More on bees: maybe it's simpler than previously thought.

Losing my religion: the Gospel of Consumption

World Heritage Sites: collect them from the comfort of home!

Hope for a life less Plastic:
the Blog

Cynical yet? super size indeed. No mention of the fact that it costs to re-design packaging the latest con

Solar: new directions?

I liked these

Vaccine + Flatulence + New Zealand???

Ack!: from the Brookings Institute

US Cities with the largest carbon footprints:

1. Lexington-Fayette, Ky.
2. Indianapolis
3. Cincinnati-Middletown, Ohio-Ky.-Ind.
4. Toledo, Ohio
5. Louisville, Ky.-Ind.
6. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tenn.
7. St. Louis

Do Unto your cell phone, before it's too late!

Recourse, and how!

Well, I notice that grueling and lonely have been two adjectives I've used recently in the blog. So it's time to clear away some cobwebs and air out some laundry. It's awfully stuffy in here.

It pains me to say that Beth and I will not be celebrating an anniversary this year, or presumably any other. Some of you already may know of what's happened in New Zealand, and though I've waited for weeks for the dust to clear and the air seem clearer, I see no reason to hide.
Who knows what it is really about?

When I asked questions she either had answers about which she was sure or she shrugged. She has always refused questions I’ve raised or connections I’ve made that weren’t felt by her then. Right then.
She has no answer to the point I’ve raised about having left so many friends, family and counselors behind us over the sea. She’s replaced them here with a revolving coterie of predominantly younger, single artist types. Ironically, the half dozen marrieds and\or couples we've made as friends have, for the most part been reduced to the background. It's tough when your married friends are suddenly no more.

I do not write these words for revenge. I write after having drawn inside myself for weeks now examining what I'd done wrong, why this is happening, what should I do now? All virtually unanswerable.
I write them because the truth is above all important to me. Even if there is no one here for me to share reality, it is no less itself, right? Whatever the words may mean to anyone else, I need to hold to objective truth, especially when it seems that there are none anymore. I've been unable to understand (who has?, what's to understand?!?).
Until recently I believed our marriage vows epitomized a truth, but life has a way of catching you broadside. I'm just clearing the decks.

So count your blessings, snuggle right tonight. I'll remember every one of you whose faith helped to hold me fast over the years. Never since I was a child did I feel so much hope and love as in marrying in your presence. I'll never forget it. Thank You!

Postscript: I'll be riding what's left of the grand intersea and air transport infrastructure into the States in a couple of weeks. Don't know what happens after that. I hope I can see you!

(My) Back Pages

A word from this blog's sponsor:

Been called crazy enough to fill a couple of handbaskets; so I dumped them out and paddled myself across the sea. While the dream makers had spun their golden webs and most Americans tried to hitch a ride on one or another bubble, I sat on the sidelines and tried to find a tribe. For years I did not. Now in a foreign land, I reap the loneliness that lay beneath my words for years. Whoever reads these words should expect hard times ahead, and no silver bullet or happy ending. Fortunately, most are smarter than I. Here's hoping you work fast, as well!

Poppycock? Bananas!

Why is this not a surprise? It's the Crusades 8.0

Had it once, in my yunger days: Squirrel soup

Creamy, dreamy derangement: Holidays on the Moon

Eye in the Sky: Helping products choose You!

"(I)n the 1990s, when Osama bin Laden was still giving interviews to journalists and didn't have a $50-million bounty on his head, one of his biggest grievances with the West was over the price of oil. At around US$30 a barrel, it was far too cheap, he reasoned. The Western world was ruthlessly bleeding the Middle East by not paying fair market value for oil. It had to be stopped. A more appropriate price? At least US$100 a barrel, he once said, maybe even US$200. Mission accomplished. "

R.I.P.

Utah Phillips

Reading

Lead: What you say!

Wine: don't think twice

Enjoy your mussels

Guerrilla Gardeners

Strange: Coherence : the Mirage Economy

Growing up: It's never too late

Death: It's what's after life

Words: Extinction

Nice Looks

Abandoned offices

More abandoned architecture

Plants for Life

Due Recourse

Friday a week ago, following the MAF Policy Conference and after several weeks of a grueling process including a panel interview, I found out that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry hired me for a permanent role. I've accepted the position of MSO-Records in Wellington at MAF! I walked out that evening and shared a quietly joyous weekend with Beth, culminating in dinner out together on my 36th birthday. The tumult and insecurity of the last six months drained slowly away, and is being replaced by a necessity of purpose.
This follows our being invited to apply for Residence by NZ Immigration this season. This and the faith shown by my bosses in hiring me into a regular vacancy aids my confidence that the process go well in the coming months. Slowly, Beth and I have stacked a pretty good deck and await only the faceless beurocracy of NZ Immigration now. Here's hoping the current scandal over nepotism by it's head will not adversely effect us.
After joblessness, the most troubling foe has been Landlord Leaky's Moldatorium: a.k.a. our place.. Following the completion of our 6 month lease in early June, Beth and I are moving just over the hill to a sunny flat in Crofton Downs. That's the first stop on the train. Come by sometime, there's room.
Much of this has been hatched and plotted (Hell, all of it was) over the last few months. Dreams to reality. An example of Beth's efforts sown are birthing this weekend in her participation in the 48 Hour film festival that's taking place ( I believe worldwide) this weekend. She can tell you more about that. Mine will be borne on the wings of a jet airliner next month for a visit back to the home territories. I'm hammering out the details but, spirits willing, it will take a similar format to past tours. Cincinnati->Champaign->Denver are on notice!
I do this because we (I anyway, for the moment) can. Beth has little vacation time and will remain in Wellington. I bear little faith that the cost or ease of travel that the last generation has enjoyed will continue. Conversely, my love for friends and family is a greater motivator in the choice to do this now.

See you soon...

Reads

Foreclosed homes and Mosquito Fish

Hops Alert

Clearing House: Lock, stock and storage unit

Denver is Pedicab 2.0

What are Yawns?

Not. A. Showww.

Reads

Blowback: This is (who. we. are.) r.o.e to the homeland after they exported Democracy.

Conservative Kevin Phillips on a goose we all know and love: cooking the books.

What's for dinner?

Take a deep breath, but be choosy where.

the excellent new Orion's Gospel of Consumption

the Webby's are back!!!

Last month they did comedy sketches, now it's commercials. Ya gotta laugh too.

Internet reads I have enjoyed

This is far too rational for CBS News. "Waking Up From the American Dream"(?!?)

Peak Honey. So that's the mother lode! You saw it here first.
Not that you'll have toast to slather.....

Fun with opressors! O yeah, you've been embedded. How does it feeeeel?!?!?

Passing through the homeland: from the EFF. Another way the Feds keep ya safer.

Not even your shoes are safe, I tells ya! And this is fascinating anyway.

Owwch ! Dmitry Orlov:
"Many people in the United States don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. The drive to maximize profit while minimizing costs has resulted in a product that manipulates the senses into accepting as edible something that is mainly a waste product. Under strict process control procedures, agro-industrial wastes, sugar, fat and salt are combined into an appealing presentation, packaged, and reinforced by vigorous advertising. Once accepted, it beguiles the senses by its reliable consistency, creating a lifelong addiction to bad food. The chemical industry obliges with an array of deodorants to mask the sickly body odor such a diet produces. Immersed for a lifetime in a field of artificial sensory perceptions, dominated by chemical, man-made tastes and smells, people recoil in shock when confronted with something natural, be it a simple piece of boiled chicken liver or the smell of a healthy human body. Perversely, they do not mind car exhaust and actually like the carcinogenic “new car smell” of vinyl upholstery.

Since good taste is no longer on the menu, the focus shifts to quantity, resulting in appallingly sized portions of undifferentiated protein and starch drowned in fat, administered in national festivals of pathetic gorging, of which Thanksgiving seems to be the main one. But this is all good for business and keeps the cancer, diabetes and heart disease industries humming. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth is visible clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what is coming next."

And on that (talking about what we can yet hardly let feel) note; there should be hope.

Last but (in other forums, all there is) not least. For the funny bone; someone's list of the worst music bequeefed by man or woman, on video....Though its smartly limits to the sixties and seventies.

So many frivolities, so little time

This is 'fun'. Before and after, without the in-between. I believe you say Fresh!

And just to counter the rabid intellectual freedom lovin, library geeks in the house:

OPEN ACCESS

Get it while it is!

The internet's quite a thing! And while we're looking at pictures, here are some good ones I've enjoyed of late......

Landscapes

Nature's Creep

What you don't know can't hurt ya

Unless it clubs you over the head, and takes your mocha latte.

NYT: "In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.” "

And in the most densely populated areas of the world (China, Indonesia, India), New Zealand is brokering unprecedented trade agreements.

And also from the NYT:
“It is unprecedented,” Mr. Holle said. “Nobody saw these kind of market prices coming.”

No one my arse. The bulk of the United States, maybe. Where (for instance) despite journalism for once covering the effects of the corn boom and biofuels, people still are warming to ethanol as fuel! This in a nation where it is not daily survival, but health insurance and retirement that is worth our attention. {"Sicko, this is Whatever Happened to the Electric Car?; I believe you two have some things in common"} By the time Americans get used to (the outrage!) $4 gas, people in nations where it's seven dollars have already moved on with their blessed lives.

The "bitter" thing. Sidestepping the grandstanding press...So there's some good dialogue going now surrounding the 'bitter comments'--and none of it positively inspired by ABC and their debacle--I mean debate. Let's face it--there are a number of words that are off limits in certain political frames. This is one of them (denial, extinction, paradigm, evolve also come to mind--the use of them more strictly governed than we'd like to admit). Our collective lexicon is a more 'vaccum sealed' environment than it seems. O for shame a black man speak of a nation's prevailing reality--which the media have refused to acknowledge since they traded their best intentions for political favors and advertising dollars. Bitter? Well I miss decent television, good journalism and many of the values found outside DC, Vegas and Walt Disneyville. Is that so wrong?

What do Fido and Charlie the Tuna have in common?

And from the Wild North country, where freedom's still free and (Police)"do what police do"...(clues: transit fare + taser)

At least they're talking about the difference between BE-ING citizens, and consumers.

If you're feeling really brave.....ArtVoice. It ain't all cubists and nudes....

Many years ago Winston Churchill said: "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

Convergence

If you've got a half an hour, Al's at it again. Laying it out there for anyone not yet 'embedded' with official truththink. I highly recommend it.

O, if instead I was paid to blog I'd spend hours fruitlessly casting stones at the zeppelin of fantasy that's replaced living. Beam us some sunshine, Today!

Upon the adding of another cell phone to the household:
Toys that make adults act like children and children feel like adults: Cellphones! Not just convenient! Cancerous! WooHoo--I'm modern!

Scrawled on the Wall

Now math was never my strong suit, but the language in this seems pretty clear.
"98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success."
Bushwhacked

Mike Wallace

So sure, Mike lobbed softballs (whiffle balls actually) at Roger Clemmens this year in an interview. But at least history has all of this

Not sure what Americans are concerned with

Anymore, but I know John McCain hasn't any clue