it's dreamy weather

2011-09-07T12:31:00.002-05:00

"I, too, command the wind!"

"tell me there is no certainty!"

"when the branch breaks each man replies in order of his own nature."

2011-09-07T12:31:00.001-05:00

"I don't like peas and I'm glad I don't like them because otherwise I'd eat them and I hate them."

2011-09-07T12:31:00.000-05:00

In dramatic tableaus of sex acts, one is always in ecstasy. Almost never two, comical to look at it then.

Me and the Dog

2009-08-05T08:48:00.002-05:00

empathy/experience/expression

2008-08-23T18:21:00.000-05:00

what is the relationship between empathy and expressiveness? is it expression we empathize with in the first place, and not experience? children, for example, are concentrated in their expression -- they openly sob, pout, and laugh. we empathize with them most directly, perhaps not because they are 'helpless' as is often taken as folk wisdom, but because they (must) demonstrate (thanks to this helplessness) their emotional experience with the most clarity and overtness. the autistic experience may have something to do with this -- if expression is fractured from experience we lose empathy in losing any way to predict that experience. we feel guilt when animals are hurt or killed because we can see what they express and relate that to our experience of that expression. whether they have nerve and physical experiences in that same vein that we do is irrelevant to what they communicate to us and the responsibility we feel to it. plants, for example, seem to make willfull choices which suggests a sense of experience, yet they can express nothing in what that is empathetic to human beings. we, rightfully and thankfully, feel no sense of empathy and responsibility to a plant. if empathy is completely dependent on expression we will continue to empathize only with those who can express their experiences in a way that we can process.

horomal health

2008-08-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

it's easy to find information on the correct hormonal balance for men. around 30 testosterone levels start to drop so a healthy man should find ways to maintain them. depression, sugar (which incites cortisol production), lack of exercise, and diet issues can all negatively affect hormone levels and should be avoided. there are ways to naturally raise levels, down to what foods stimulate testosterone production. look up female hormone health and all you find is articles about waning libidos after menopause or birth and explanations that without fail lean to the psychological.

"A woman's desire for sex is based on a complex interaction of many components affecting intimacy, including physical well-being, emotional well-being, experiences, beliefs, lifestyle and current relationship."

the mayo clinic. banning the word intimacy from the vocabulary on the system of the female body and how to maintain its health.

energy

2008-08-09T00:34:00.000-05:00

if the cost of energy - when the cost of energy - plummets, all commerce will be directly affected. the only limiting principle applied to production right now is energy - human and otherwise, but mainly otherwise. if the sun creates enough energy to power the earth's energy needs for a year in about an hour, and if the history of human innovation foreshadows as well as it has a habit of doing, the energy of the sun will be harnessing and will usher in a new age. however involuntary, however unconsidered, it will change the structure of all things - business, family, what does it say about me personally that those are the pillars of existence i can think of? all masculine ideal - all production of any kind - may be virtually free, comparatively speaking. what markers of social darwinism and economic values will be able to survive that? rare materials? do rare materials have value if they have no necessity? if you don't need gold to buy oil, does it retain its value? or is this a fabled time of the value of efficiency and consumer-grade value, i.e. whoever does what we need done best, most innovatively, and most quickly, is on top?

http://www.forbes.com/energy/2008/07/30/nocera-solar-power-biz-energy-cz_jf_0731solar.html?feed=rss_popstories

And a whole continent full of rare materials and crude oil sits confused and a little dusty

2008-07-24T01:32:00.000-05:00

The generalized continent of Africa has been robbed of its family figureheads, literally, and later its resources. Its social set-up is dependent on an exported economy. Materials out, money out, money trickled back in much later, handwashed a couple of times. What it needs is a source of validation for individual leaders. Universities, respected and sought after universities, so that graduates can start business to manage resources and finances, buy back some colonial land, become a viable world market. It's one of the few remaining through and through third worlds, but it contains the resources, manpower and history to become a leader on a global scale -- lacking only internal leadership on a global stage. That's where they should be getting rid of the politics of old and focusing on new-minded leadership, preferably inexperienced in the corrupt (really) system.

ways of speaking

2008-06-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

writing something down, as in thinking in a literary tradition that allows a timeline of connections to discover themselves on a page/screen as a second ego, and writing that defines itself as literary communication (especially social communication) are remarkably different disciplines. my interest veers (here), generally, away from the journalistic so i may be satisfied on a somewhat continuous basis by the sensation of continuous innovation or something like new territory. the secondary thought path before it's translated back to the first -- that's the exciting foreign land. selfish preference, not exclusive. i like talking to you, too.

composing to the stage

2008-06-10T14:04:00.000-05:00

In what way can individual artistic choices feel lifelike, if they are reactionary only in an internal sense? The situations addressed must be empathetic and uncanny to the intended audience. They must be conversations everyone has had, images commonly seen, sounds that are familiar. There is an artistic language in every discipline already in place that may be referred to ad naseum, that may be self-referential but is not emotionally affecting. If not familiar there must be a reaction to space, time, a conversation with medium and presentation.

the concrete audience is public

2008-06-06T15:34:00.000-05:00

To be valid a story (here, as in a lifetime or a personhood) must be from a firmly realized individualized perspective -- pluralism is contemplated alone, silently, nearly secretly. This is related to our idea of linear lifetimes and selves -- where Sontag says that prose must address a concrete audience (where poetry is free to wander and wonder) a lifetime must be addressed similarly. Relationships are effected here -- we may fantasize about another lifetime but it may not coexist with our reality, so affairs are most seductive when they are secrets. They are private fantasies of a parallel existence that are not even, really, ever intended to come to fruition (fruition in the sense of commitment, or lifestyle - physical reality is an afterthought here). An exploration of the pluralistic nature of an individual.

pluralistic religion is philosophy - true religious belief must be supernatural and absolute

2008-06-06T02:21:00.000-05:00

The fundamentalist sect of the Mormon church is unique in its continued belief in prophets, in a defined heavenly life, in visits from Christ himself. "..It is also the teaching of the LDS Church that unless a spirit child inhabits a physical body, he cannot be elevated to godhood in the next life." Read short parts of a book by a woman raised in the sixth generation of polygamists and since separated from them today -- family folklore included a major raid in 1953. All the wives stood together, a man (her great-grandfather) walked out with his full white beard, "If you've come here for blood, you can take mine, I'm ready."

Joseph Smith Jessop

He posed for this photo with his youngest daughter, Mabel Ann, 4, after his release from jail. He stated it would probably be his last photograph and was dead within the week, at 84.

A young boy had been stationed at the front of the compound and set off dynamite when authorities were in sight, just before dawn; he ran to the foot of the town leaders and cried that 'they' were on their way and there were hundreds of them.

Short Creek, Arizona

The town's 36 men were arrested under charges ranging from statuatory rape to misappropriation of school funds, all 250 children scattered to protective services to be adopted by non-polygamist families, all 85 women were taken into custody and moved to Phoenix.

Just before dawn on July 26, 1953, more than 120 Arizona police officers descended on Short Creek in what then Gov. Howard Pyle called "a momentous police action against insurrection." They found residents of the polygamist community, who had been tipped off about the raid, gathered at the schoolhouse, singing. In days that followed, families were lined up outside their homes and photographed.

The five wives and some of the children of Richard S. Jessop, one of the men arrested when police entered the tiny Mormon community of Short Creek, Arizona.

29th August 1953: An empty chair in a Mormon household waits for Richard S. Jessop, who was among those arrested in a police raid on Short Creek, Arizona. The police arrested every man in the community on charges of polygamy. The two women on the right are both wives of Jessop, and some of the children are suspected of being child wives.

It was intended that the chaos would wipe out the community completely.

Their wives and children in state's custody, "Fundamentalists" of Short Creek, Arizona live in an all-male atmosphere. Here, they eat their breakfast.

The grandmother (the storyteller) had had a dream a few nights before the raid that the place was taken over, but Uncle Roy had gotten everyone into a wagon in time. Before the trial Uncle Roy hired a lawyer and told him to find the law on the books that stated a child may not be taken from parental custody without parental consent. He was understandably scoffed at, though not by members of the community who believed he must have had a revelation and be acting under the orders of God. Such a law was found and all children were returned to their parents, the case dropped.

Women and children taken in for questioning in the 1953 Short Creek raid

Today in the twin communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., monuments serve as a reminder. "July 26, 1953. We must never forget how the Lord blessed us in restoring our families taken in the 53 raid — Uncle Roy."

The dramatic story is worth telling, but I was getting to the more powerful folklore. The founder, or prophet, depending on your lean, of the Fundamentalist sect of the LDS was visited by Jesus Christ himself, shortly after the Mormon church rejected polygamy and stated a man may keep no more than two wives. Christ told him that polygamy was an integral part of faith and that those who rejected it rejected God, and to carry on with the true faith. During this meeting Christ handed the keys of the Mormon faith to the new prophet. Leroy S. Johnson insisted up until his death that he would live until the Second Coming of Christ and would be present to, "hand the Keys of Priesthood back to Him."

Leroy S. Johnson, first Prophet of FLDS

Revelation (literally, in the sense that one may have a revelation from God) is still an indispenable part of spiritual leadership here -- aside from this extreme example, it is believed that God will reveal to the prophet who a young girl should marry, based on her pact with God to marry a certain man, a pact made before her birth. It is believed that if a man lives correctly, with faith, and to serve God he will become a god himself in the afterlife. According to the doctrine, a man must have multiple wives if he wants to become a god in heaven and receive his own planet to populate.

Outside of the fundamentalist sect the roots are similiar:

The LDS view of the nature of humanity. The LDS Church teaches that all humans existed prior to life on earth as the "spirit children" of the Heavenly Father (and his wife/wives) in heaven, and that our earthly birth came about when our spirit willingly chose to inhabit a physical body on earth.

The LDS view of the nature of God. LDS theology states that God (or more commonly referred to as "Heavenly Father") is an exalted glorified man, that he has a physical (albeit immortal) body. It is also taught that qualifying Mormons can also become gods, just like the Heavenly Father, in the next life, and produce offspring (presumably to populate another earth.). The doctrine of the Trinity as accepted by Biblical Christianity is rejected by LDS theology. The LDS Church teaches that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are "spirit children" of God, and that Jesus is unique in that he is also the fleshy son of God (conceived by a physical union of the Heavenly Father and Mary). It is also taught that Lucifer, or Satan, is also one of the Heavenly Father's spirit-children, making him a "spirit brother" of Jesus.

All of this stands in sharp relief against the sensible ranks of modern religion -- those patrons that would openly reject prophecy no matter its source or reliability and much prefer more logical delusions. Those delusions that relate more closely to marketing than blind faith or supernatural creation and existence -- the new age-y ideas of laws of attraction and internal balance that cut out the mythical origin of religion altogether strike me as purely philosophical endeavors intended to strike an even more logical, sensical and individually conscious way of existing -- nearly the opposite of religion's structured traditions and rituals intended to impart a sense of balance and true place in the world via inherited culture. These rituals are set up to be the foundation of the individual -- to define the role of the self in the context of a social circumstance (and family history) built on that same foundation. What seems to me as their radical nature is unsurprising in that light - certainly none of this is inherently "stranger" than catholicism - what is surprising is the complete lack of such systems in an individualized culture and the stubborness of those few pockets of true religion left.

god and money

2008-04-18T00:48:00.000-05:00

If our personal value system is reflective of economic value systems then ours must be based on a Limited Value structure. The less there is of any one thing, the more coveted, the more powerful -- our emotional reflection must function the same way. If the body is most comforted by certainty, and the psychological weight of emotion determined by rarity, are we predisposed to a depressive sense of daily life? A suppressed version of reality, maybe.

The perception of value in general is economic, the word is economic. As a colonial island culture the cultivation of difficult to obtain but more importantly rare goods was and is vital to survival. If now we lack industry the power structure of such a large social group is built on money, the obtaining, to have access to the scarce and claim dominance. More sticky though-- experience itself is valued on an economic scale: so even personally, the rarer, the more valuable. Awe or even the reality of being is nearly impossible to sustain because experiences with the divine are intended to be the Most valuable, i.e. rare, so they should be revelations and uncommon. Is it possible to value personal experience on any other scale? It may be capitalistic, or just the hierarchy of social order going back much further which demands a value system for structure itself.

The way I talk to you doesn't even start a thing at all

2008-04-05T22:04:00.000-06:00

What is this way the mouth works? That our guttural grunts can be shaped so finely and minutely -- the most dangerous power, falsely confident expression, clumsy expression, that destruction. And writing, one step further out on the balance beam of illusion. The illusion: that anyone, myself included, might understand my motivations or standpoint with an arbitrary word or two arranged to trigger mental recognition.

So we possess this conscious neural network that lets us develop unbelievably complex sounds and meaning attachments and rules for ways that meaning may be attached and this has us further believing that our mind works for us, for our souls and empathy. That we can understand each other and our being. So communication is secondary -- the true illusion of language is that I can express to you somewhat accurately how I feel, where I stand and exist in my body, what I think, what I believe and you can understand, that you may even empathize. But truly language is something else, a function of consciousness and not the body at all. A way of ordering experience and existence, to compartmentalize sensation, to direct the barrage. I am telling myself what to believe as well, acting. This mask that's evolved makes us more eerily alone than any other animal. More susceptible to self-delusion and starkly aware of our silent desires to do damage to one another -- those things have to be bulkily and clumsily dragged out of the body with words and they stand in harsh relief, bulbous and awkward in the middle of the room. We could not be more vulnerable to each other than when we all speak the same nuanced version of any language.

How does your tongue, palette and throat even begin?

If we all stumble and try to pick up pieces of learned behavior here and there, make a face -- its a leap of faith that we won't look at one another and point out the poor parts, the existence of a mask at all. That we will see the porcelain perfection we intend, that a fleshy human mask might even poke through and be sealed and animal and solid in the eyes of those who look at us. Either to believe and feign belief that the mask of language is the face, or that their need to be no mask at all.

The answers you can't find on message boards, yet

2008-03-28T02:44:00.000-06:00

Fire ants are attracted to all sources of electricity, most intensely to systems like circuit boards. They may hone into systems far from their location and migrate there, relocating the entire nest in the process. 'Relocate' though may be the wrong word, generally the ants stay close to the buzz in a state of, at the very least, forgetfulness until they starve to death or are electrocuted. Since this is based on observation of animal action within a relatively new system, there's no explanation. Cultural behavior of the fire ant and its course of life has been altered by the way we harness and use electricity. But everyone wants to know why they're attracted in the first place.

Why are fire ants attracted to sources of electricity?

"I would assume that the response of the fire ants is a taxis for the
current carried in the wires of power supplies for pumps, electric
fences, etc. A colleague said that there was "something sweet"
produced by the electric current and this material was why the ants
were attracted. I have searched a number of web sites, but could not
find an answer. Thanks!"

The only thing to kill a sweet electric taste?

"Sparks and other UGA entomologists are studying new and unconventional ways to fight fire ants. One new technique is to introduce one of the ant's natural enemies, the Brazilian phorid fly.

The tiny fly lays its egg inside a fire ant's body. The egg hatches into a larva, which moves into the ant's head and causes it to fall off. The fly completes its development inside the fallen head."

Momentum in dramatic dialogue, we <3 apocalypse

2008-03-28T02:33:00.000-06:00

Nabokov on happy endings (in fiction), from Pnin:

"The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally, but unethically."

"On Certainty" is good for feeling uncertain

2008-03-19T12:15:00.000-06:00

Either there exists no physical object (that can be proven) or physicality is what it seems. A mistranslation of the senses seems inefficient as an animal -- we must perceive what exists as it exists. So our sensory sensation is explicitly related to a moment in time because it confirms not only our existence, but the existence of what or who we experience. Which is related to desire, confirmation (certainty), and hunting. The physical sensation of consummation may be necessary to believing, convincing the mind, that we are our bodies.

Even unthreatened, you're a goner

2008-03-19T12:07:00.000-06:00

Even unthreatened, you're
a goner, singer. Say this
and your face goes
under. We're of the same dark
ages, same flashes, but my mouth
is more a cause-effect flower.
There's a room—Hello!—full
of everything we've ever out-
grown, and not a bit of it
is money. The creatures
there were killed for so much less
than their obvious sweetness.
The barely dreamt-of alarm's
the more frequent alarm.
I make us explain—A passing
machine shines
missing.—the screen, a slice
of lecture dire with color.
Calculable—Got it.—and radiant
cuts, that's
the policy. The world
was always yours, you.
The dead are fine.

-Graham Foust

The advice and insight of

2008-03-16T14:02:00.000-06:00

What is the role of disorientation in self-identification and awareness? In places and situations most novel, most out-of-body, the self is loudest -- or an unnameable sense of "soul" or "being". Rothko gets at this and the big Eliasson light room, but why do we relate to the mentally alienating environment so physically? Richard Serra talking about his bent steel sculptures you walk into that have the sensation of moving around you, and why they're successful: "People are surprised. They cannot locate themselves."

Louise Bourgeois, talking about sculpture made from her own hands: "Something that has been lived is real, the emotion is real, it's not made-up." Sculptures of two sets of hands in varying frailties, her own included: "These say we are not ashamed of our own helplessness. That you could say helplessness could be a charm. I may not believe that or I may, I don't know. It could be true, that helplessness could be a charm because it makes you feel good to help someone who is helpless. Even though that's very arrogant to say."

And Shahzia Sikader, "I work mainly in divine circles. ... You go, you experience something, then you come back right where you started."

Consummation of the senses

2008-03-12T02:06:00.000-06:00

The whole of one's life reality is continually consummated in the mind. Motherwell follows his thought process while he paints and sees flashes of clarity through decision (this seems important, is the picture place a moral backboard for the artist to act against?) -- the rest is faith defined as that one's existence has meaning. He almost concentrates further but lets it go, I think he means to say the faith that one exists. The consummation of reality in the mind -- just in time to see the last glimpse of it. You can never see with the intellect, and yet we approach the intellect to deepen experience. The senses require no process - you may think about being, ferment reality, and just in time to remember it.

Motherwell on Hitler's more Seductive qualities

2008-03-12T01:53:00.000-06:00

"... Tribal customs are less strong here. That puts much more pressure on any given individual in relationship to what his identity is going to be. He has to choose, alone. I can't emphasize how strongly in relationship to what I personally know about Europe, how much more - thought we're supposed to be the great conformists - how much more, at least in this kind of enterprise, one's on one's own. And now, without being romantic, there's a terrible human price to pay for it. I mean, one has to be a 'hero' in a way, or not exist at all, given such conditions. There's not a society to pick us up and incorporate us..."

Consistently self-defined self-identity, the ultimate taxation on the acceptance and certainty of rhythmic life. My adolescent struggle may be this, a fractured and alienated familial role that leaves no obvious life choices, no correct choice. Its convenient, or unavoidable, that I believe it to be a relatively thorough representation -- that is there in many ways no more "correct" choice than another. Each step is forcefully large and responsible if all options present themselves. It seems strange to be without ideal or expectation at all: that the ideals set up for me were somewhat pathological, flimsy, easily broken, without merit.

Paglia doesn't ramble like I do, she's focused on just one thing

2008-03-09T23:26:00.000-06:00

Paglia argues that the nature of man is not primitive, primal, animal or even genetically survivalist, but self-protective. She seems to stop short of saying psychologically self-protective, but isn't the mind the first priority of socialized man? What he thinks of himself, his world, his place in his world is paramount to his virility, success, satisfaction, breeding. (German birth rate since WW2, for example, though I recognize the intuitive nature of the argument without anymore evidence.) So hierarchy is in place to restore power (could this be "understanding" or "certainty"?) to the individual mind. To take the place of familial structure, which disintegrates in agriculture and further in industrialization to make room for commerce, which is dependent on innovation. So we drive a male creative process, which Paglia takes as more necessity of the ordering of nature, a rejection of the mother. (Though how familial structure is the rejection of the maternal, other than it being patriarchal.. I don't know.) How do you willfully separate yourself from your maternal figure? You make something of only yourself, you order your individual experience via externalized expression. Power has strange vitality, however thin and barely attained.

"Can you believe? We were birthed by human mothers."

highways of the byways

2008-03-09T10:08:00.000-06:00

The truth may be that the brain is a collection of unintelligent parts functioning as a sophisticated system. That the connections and communications between functional parts are the intelligent expression suggests to me that individuation happens in these associative paths. Or what is unique from one individual to another (which may be highlighted or subdued by learned behavior and cultural situation) is the way the centers of the brain's activities are connected, their paths of thought and process.

In what way we are always grounded

2008-03-08T22:58:00.000-06:00

The mind resents belonging to the body. It resists dependency, believes itself to be autonomous, superior, yet it may only be subordinate. We grope into ideas about what is called spirtuality, we imagine the body is temporary in a way We are not, we convince ourselves of the divinity of thought and the divinity of being beyond the body. What is holier than a spirit without physicality? What is pure is what does not engage the body of itself, the body of others, or serve any physical need. The rejection of our violent nature results in the ordering and object-making on the one hand, and in the fetishizing of the spirit without the body on the other. What better escape from the slavery to a constantly failing, aging, demanding being than the escape into the mind? The intellect believes itself to be the mind, self-consciousness believes itself to be necessary to the intellect, so on and so on. All consciousness is at the mercy of the function of the physical self - the body creates the mind. The body creates process, connection, and all thought. The body creates the mind. It's the soul that's created by the mind that may eventually assent to the divinity, necessity, elemental tie to (the only expression of) existence of the body. We must make such wide circles to find our feet.

Looking privately at someone who can't see you

2008-03-04T00:49:00.000-06:00

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin of choppedliver.info (posted from below, the boy in the ninja mask) have only one film on the site, called Going Under. As with much of their work the subject is three-dimensional, the focus, and just highlighted by the artistic choices here. The context is the work, though it's all well-executed and suffers no lack at all of technical mastery. In this case the appeal is simply access, and the kind of access. An old man is in the center of a static framed shot, we hover above him as he lays in a hospital bed and wears an oxygen or anaesthesia mask. The monitor beeps jump in the background, we register he hears them, his expressions show for the first minute or so. He fades in and out of different levels of consciousness, he never confronts the camera. Once he's out completely he's intubated procedurally, not roughly and not gently, the tube is taped down, his eyes are taped shut. It isn't uncomfortable to watch, because it doesn't feel as if it expects to be watched. This is a difficult sensation to pin down - the purely voyeuristic. It anticipates no response, it seems dreamlike, as if it is not an action taken to have really looked at this man. It affects nothing necessarily. In this newer genre of art film, especially video work, you may watch the entire process of a beautiful man losing consciousness, without subjectivity and without charading as related to practical concern. It is response to news footage of the outskirts of every gory happening, those newcasters with crime scenes at their back, far enough away that you can only see a door, a slab of road, or a gate, that masquerades as relevant for concerns of safety and information. It's simply a window, almost not a camera. You keep looking because his eyes are beautiful, or he's strange, or you empathize and wonder how losing consciousness seems despite knowing how it feels. Because everyone involved in the making of it has somehow agreed it is elementally interesting, this window exists. (This window exists in plenty of incarnations -- the last video art I saw was the artist's two hands fucking one another in a black box -- this window just happens to be captivating.) It is as directed as those two hands I guess, it is one room, and you could be equally bored by both. My fascination with unconscious appearance makes Going Under the opposite of the self-awareness and reference of that Other video art.

Himmler blows my mind

2008-03-03T01:01:00.000-06:00

After a few weeks of mental speculation about the events inside the Third Reich, lingering somewhat from long unanswered or poorly answered questions and fueled forward by clips from a fictionalized film of all things, I find the commander at the camp at Auschwitz has this to say on trial at Nuremberg:

Q. From 1940 to 1943, you were the commandant of the camp at Auschwitz. Is that true?
A. Yes.
Q. And during that time, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to their death there, Is that correct?
A. Yes.

And later, this:

Q. When were you commandant at Auschwitz?
A. I was commandant at Auschwitz from May, 1940, until 1st December, 1943.
Q. What was the highest number of internees ever held at one time at Auschwitz?
A. The highest number of internees held at one time at Auschwitz was about 140,000 men and women.
Q. Is it true that in 1941, you were ordered to Berlin to see Himmler? Please, state briefly what was discussed.
A. Yes. In the summer of 1941, I was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfuehrer S.S. Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect - I don't remember the exact words - that the Fuehrer had given the order for a definite solution of the Jewish question. We, the S.S., must carry out that order. If it was not carried out now then the Jews would later on destroy the German people. We had chosen Auschwitz because of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site could readily be isolated.
Q. During that conference, did Himmler tell you that this planned action had to be treated as a "Secret Reich Matter"? (Geheime Reichssache).
A. Yes. He stressed that point. He told me not to say anything about it to my immediate superior Gruppenffuehrer Glucks. This conference only concerned the two of us and I was to observe the strictest secrecy.
Q. What was the position held by Glucks?
A. Gruppenfuehrer Glucks was, so to speak, the Inspector of Concentration Camps at that time and he was immediately subordinate to the Reichsfuehrer.
Q. Does the expression "Secret Reich Matter" mean that no one was permitted to make even the slightest allusion to outsiders without endangering his own life?
A. Yes, "Secret Reich Matter" means that no one was allowed to speak about such matter with any person and that everyone promised upon his life to observe the utmost secrecy.
Q. Did you happen to break that promise?
A. No, not until the end of 1942.
Q. Why do you mention that date? Did you talk to outsiders after that date?
A. At the end of 1942 my wife's curiosity was aroused by remarks made by the then Gauleiter of Upper Silesia regarding happenings in my camp. She asked me whether this was the truth and I admitted that it was. That was my only breach of the promise I had given to the Reichsfuehrer. Otherwise I have never talked about it to anyone else.

Some of this starts to allow some humanity in, into a government operation that was not a matter of public policy. Men who could not tell their wives, or should not under penalty of death. The belief in what was being carried out is still the mystery, there is so little moral ambiguity in much of this testimony. Certainly later with Eichmann, none at all. More:

Q. Will you briefly tell whether it is correct that the camp of Auschwitz was completely isolated, and describe the measures taken to insure the secrecy of the carrying out of the task given to you?
A. The camp Auschwitz, as such was about three kilometres from the town. About 20,000 acres of the surrounding country had been cleared of all inhabitants, and the entire area could only be entered by S.S. men or civilian employees who had special passes. The actual compound called "Birkenau," where later on the extermination camp was constructed, was situated two kilometres from the Auschwitz camp. The camp installations themselves, that is to say, the provisional installations used at first, were deep in the woods and could from nowhere be detected by the eye. In addition to that, this area had been declared a prohibited area and not even members of the S.S. who did not have a special pass could enter it. Thus it was impossible, as far as one could judge, for anyone, except authorised persons, to enter that area.
Q. And then the railway transports arrived. During what period did these transports arrive and about how many people, roughly, were in a transport?
A. During the whole period up until 1944, certain operations were carried out at irregular intervals in the different countries, so that one cannot speak of a continuous flow of incoming transports. Each series of shipments lasted four to six weeks. During those four to six weeks, two to three trains, containing about two thousand persons each, arrived daily. These trains were first of all shunted to a siding in the Birkenau. region and the locomotives then went back. The guards who had accompanied the transport had to leave the area at once and the persons who had been brought in were taken over by guards belonging to the camp. They were there examined by two S.S. medical officers as to their ability to work. The detainees capable of work at once marched to Auschwitz or to the camp at Birkenau and those incapable of work were at first taken to the provisional installations, then later to the newly constructed crematoria.
Q. During an interrogation I had with you the other day you told me that about sixty men were designated to receive these transports, and that these sixty persons too had been bound to the same secrecy described before. Do you still maintain that today?
A. Yes, these sixty men were always on hand to take the detainees not capable of work to these provisional and, later on, to the other installations. This group, consisting of about ten leaders and sub-leaders, as well as doctors and medical personnel, had repeatedly been told both in writing and verbally that they were bound to strictest secrecy as to all that went on in the camps.

Still more, detail, and continued military testimony:

Q. And after the arrival of the transports did the victims have to dispose of everything they had? Did they have to undress completely; did they have to surrender their valuables? Is that true?
A. Yes.
Q. And then they immediately went to their death?
A. Yes.
Q. I ask you, according to your knowledge, did these people know what was in store for them?
A. The majority of them did not, for steps were taken to keep them in doubt about it so that the suspicion would not arise that they were to go to their death. For instance, all doors and all walls bore inscriptions to the effect that they were going to undergo a delousing operation or take a shower. This was proclaimed in several languages to the detainees by other detainees who had come in with earlier transports and who were being used as auxiliary crews during the whole action.
Q. And then, you told me the other day, that death from gassing occurred within a period of three to fifteen minutes. Is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You also told me that even before death definitely set in the victims fell into a state of unconsciousness?
A. Yes. From what I was able to find out myself or from what was told me by medical officers, the time necessary for the arrival of unconsciousness or death varied according to the temperature and the number of people present in the chambers. Loss of consciousness took place after a few seconds or minutes.
Q. Did you yourself ever sympathise with the victims, thinking of your own family and children?
A. Yes.
Q How was it possible then for you to carry out these actions?
A In spite of all the doubts which I had, the only one and decisive argument was the strict order and the reason given for it by the Reichsfuehrer Himmler.
Q. I ask you whether Himmler inspected the camp and convinced himself that the order for annihilation was being carried out?
A. Yes. Himmler visited the camp in 1942 and he watched in detail one processing from beginning to end.

So it is systemized extermination, state run and dictated; the generalized discrimination of a people is no relationship of guilt to that decision -- but there must be some reason, however cold, to undertake such a huge task. One deeper or at least more logical than the general "hate" and "intolerance" that are cited. If for nothing else, the huge financial undertaking of such an operation would have to be justified in some however spotted way. The 1,700 year history of the Jewish people in Germany requires more research than I've put into it, I don't understand the economic set and climate of 1929 or 1933. As generally as possible: Germany was a defeated nation, surviving politically and economically but "spiritually" fragmented. Did this new leader promise a holism long lost (or recently lost) in a western idea of democracy and individualism? The only census information on the Jewish population in Germany in 1930:

The social position of the Jews in the various economic branches was also different from that of the total population. Only 16.4% of the total of German gainfully employed persons were independent, but 46% among the Jews. The figures for employees (white collar workers) were 12.5% and 33.5% respectively, and for manual workers 46.3% and 8.7% respectively. The Jews were better represented in the liberal professions than the average population, e.g., while the Jews constituted 0.74% of all gainfully employed persons, their proportion in the total number of physicians, lawyers and notaries public, and dentists was 10.8%, 16.25% and 8.59% respectively.

Most intrigued by Hitler's close Jewish aides and advisors, they seem to be difficult to track information on, and in the activities of the camps themselves. The photographs recently released (http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/) of guards at Auschwitz stand in some stark constrast to the impression I've had of daily life in the camps. Or to what one would imagine the affect would be of seeing constant suffering. So is it cruelty on the extermination end, decent camp life, near starvation as the war ends and typhus breaks out, or is it dependant on some mood, the camp, the year. What is camp policy, what is behavioral policy? A puppet show at Ravensbruck, late in the war:

Whether it was because the SS too had the feeling that the war was coming to an end, or that not even the toughest Nazi could help being affected by the fact that there were children in the camp, when Christmas Eve 1944 approached, the SS agreed that a Christmas party for the children be arranged.

At the time there were about 400 older and younger children in the camp. After the war Ilse Unger, a well-known German political prisoner, has described the children’s Christmas party in Ravensbrück, as follows:

“In every block women sat and sewed, knitted, embroidered, darned and made the loveliest toys from the smallest remnants. Innumerable gifts accumulated. The women created veritable works of art, toys, dolls, sweaters, clothes and suits. Tenderly we clutched toy after toy in our hands and dried our tears as they fell.

Christmas Eve arrived. The puppet show began. The flashlights that were used as stage lights illuminated the dolls’ faces with a fairytale-like glow. As for us, we sat and watched the children’s faces. The children were completely absorbed by the play forgetting, for a little while, the sad fate they had met with. And when they began laughing and eagerly crowded together around the stage, a quiet joy surfaced in all of us. Something dissolved within us, and the desire to right again the wrong that was done to the unfortunate tiny human beings in this camp, rose in all of us.”

Monsters are so much friendlier than monstrous ideas. It is still nearly impossible not to think of these men as that, it makes it able to be taken. Hitler quoted Wagner, must find out what his issue was with the Jews other than the competition of Mendelsson. There is always the question of the assertion of authority -- if you are elected by popular parliament vote to the exclusion of an economically powerful, the most economically powerful, group must you cripple that group and alienate it to maintain authority? If he knows the Jewish constituency holds most of the financial capital, why speak against them so openly and early in his career? What is it he believed the deficit was to the German people to have a flourishing Jewish sector contributing to the economy? Back to the question of holism, maybe. This may be an embedded splinter group mentality -- impossible to unite the nationalistic pride of the country without excluding and expelling it. The testimony of the commander nonetheless distracted and unhinged my initial desire and interest, the un-archetyping.

A country built up, quite high, on idealism willfully implemented collapsed in 10 days and in a hailstorm of weaponry of apocalyptic proportion. This is the ordering of nature collapsing, social order giving way to survival, and a major western city destroyed to the ground. Men hung on the streets for a lack of valor, supposed support of the russians, mocking and warning signs hung around their necks ("I support the bolsheviks") so all civilians should fight to their death before surrending to the red army. These are complex social laws, reverting to the barbaric and yet maintaining their code to the last second. A functional, economically flourishing nation hellbent on its own self-determined (or, selected dictator-determined) system, total national control, which dies by it, refusing to even surrender together, splintering.

We reject Hitler as an unsavory symbol of the archaic desire to control the outcomes of nature, sex, individual will. To regiment what a people will be -- imposed and forceful holistic culture. We move together as one, like it or not, is how I imagine we'd hear it now, though it could be more -- it could be the small space in which a people could rush in and still be one identifying culture. If individualism is just setting in, if it is alienating generations and confusing the goals of individuals, families, and nations. And if your country is on its knees after a surrender a decade before, more so. Is there a patriarchal breakdown? Why in this symbol-making, this object-making and vibrant artistic and scientific country does this fall on such grateful ears? Why was individualism not rewarding?

And, before I'm out of juice, the consideration of state communication. For 12 years there would be news from the Third Reich, little else to connect it to experience. This must be related to all things -- to the way a people could then be so led by one man's vision. Hitler may be the last first-world king in the sense of control over a land. It's difficult, or too easy, to accept an idea of propaganda completely wiping clean and gullible the brains of intelligent Germans, but it certainly affects the plausibility of belief in the general principles of the party, which may have centered on discipline and honor and pride and less on exclusion and certainly less on murder. Those ideas are all military traditions -- the haywire parts are all archaic land feuds from a distance. More delving, more and more delving.

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-11/tgmwc-11-108-01.shtml
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/occupation.htm
http://www.theverylongview.com/WATH/mothers/children.htm

sex and violence

2008-01-05T02:12:00.000-06:00

violence is related to sophisticate imagery -- the reasons that high emotion and high violence are exploited in cinema and popular communication must be related to the marketing aspects of memory and adrenaline. if high adrenaline experience is significantly more memorable -- and pain and sensory experience are the easiest to relate to in the sense that they are tied to one moment of happening -- then the way to create a lasting and, in cinema, successful impression is to portray a sensual experience that happens at a time of raised adrenaline in the viewer.

it may only be marketing in the sense that people are always trying to affect one another, no further motive.

after julia magaret cameron

2008-01-02T02:56:00.000-06:00

i partially wish to have lived at time when the regard of the lens was both more innocent and more suspicious, less familiar and more trusting, less explicitly connected with thousands of ideas each individual has and daily maintains about imagery.

but it is always more exciting to live in one's own time, if only for the fact that no one knows what will happen here.

2007-04-29T23:36:00.000-05:00

'I made this mask myself, every time I put it on I become the American Ninja.'
Gerard, 12, Lukole Refugee Camp, Tanzania
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

must symbolize

2007-04-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

experience must symbolize progress. it's most comfortable to believe that knowledge is linear, and that circumstance (past and present) can be not only understood but quantified.

what is the symbol, how do we fit experience into it

let the questions remain

2007-04-17T03:56:00.000-05:00

no individual has a responsibility to the health of a social idea, and no individual perception of beauty is indebted to youth. so, a gaunt person can be beautiful for reasons not necessarily related to sexual attraction, though not necessarily unrelated, and the underweight or the overweight or the appearing to be sick or the scarred or the filthy can all be complex and divine without being glorified; but why not glorified, and is that again not a sense of responsibility? i'm not sure that there is any ethic code applicable to aesthetic perception, or that there should be. the simplistic version is that what is attractive is what is healthy, but the complex interaction of people is nuanced into many different kinds of health, and what people are drawn to in one another isn't quite straightforward. consciousness existing, what you could do with and be with another person is open-ended. which, if the topic is fashion models, is wandering off.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366299-details/Skinny%20models%20banned%20from%20top%20fashion%20show/article.do

should a governing body be able to control what is glamorized? i'm not sure that it should feel responsible for doing so, or that anyone should.

some more

2007-04-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

Which is to say the eroticism of hunting and eating is similar to the eroticism of seduction. the closed space of consummation is the same; even the obviously successful bear and the passive seal are still experiencing the tension of physical touch, or the promise of it. sugimoto using models in natural history museums amps the eroticism up a bit, since the taxidermied animals (in this case, in some case modelled sculptures after, say, neanderthals) are in an extended indefinite state of promise and suspension. who's to say the heavily intellectualized, analyzed, hyper-conscious modern ideas about romance and love and sexual relationships don't originate from a history of hunting scenarios.

love and consumption

2007-04-09T03:28:00.000-05:00

the origins of love; hiroshi sugimoto

who's the rock star, just the one image

2007-04-09T02:24:00.000-05:00

the idea of artist, creator, etc, as celebrity or privileged one is a strange and, i think, distinctly american one. talking to william betts last week about the emerging artist financial model. ideally you find immediate representation, a show is scheduled maybe a year out, you sell out a 30,000 show, gallery takes half and you've made 15,000 for the year. i guess the answer is to do more than a show a year; i feel grateful for my natural desire to do something else and still create. it isn't a new idea that whatever i do artistically would consume itself if it had my undivided attention.

and still a preoccupation with what makes an artist entitled to say simple things and still be effective. and a quiet malaise or anxiety when i realize how easy it is to make a charged thing, to produce an incredible image. anyone with a desire and hot blood and a camera or a brush can do that; what makes the work valid is the body of it.

is validity judged by rarity, is that another commercialized american idea?

anonymous but public

2007-04-09T02:11:00.000-05:00

journaling doesn't feel like actual output, i feel no responsibility or anxiety toward it, on to new frontiers. have been pouring over sugimoto lately, wrapping entitlement around my finger like gum. is the work effective because he feels no anxiety about his qualification to make such simple, effective statements? the many things he says (that time and space are the same in all places in all times, but different colors, and different contrasts; that love is related to consumption, married to consumption; that shape is appreciated in an obtuse sense by natural perception) could all be seen as overly sentimental or simplistic or bratty or pretentious, but they aren't. in the end i'm of the mind this comes back to the artist's intention, or the artist's perception of himself and his work. and so, a recurring theme, that creating is entirely desire and execution.