zero point zero zero

zero point zero zero
zero point zero zerozero point zero zerozero point zero zerozero point zero zero zero point zero zero zero point zero zero zero point zero zero zero point zero zero zero point zero zero

the clock screwed up. all night it flashed the same message : start / finish start / finish start / finish start / finish start / finish start / finish start / finish

getting started again

I noticed that the light changed, this far north the seasons are more palpable than down south. The change may help. The 1.9.06 date is usually significant, but only symbolically. Getting back to work the shadows are cooler than expected, or the sunlight hotter.
Die Eich.
P.

Off track

I started this project as a way of looking forward, a future directed diary. The impact of the war in Lebanon forced me to think in a chaotic and reactive way. That's what happens when you see a country under fire, babies blown away by weaponry that costs more that that child would make in a lifetime.

But now I have to return to my purpose, to start looking out and through rather than back and into.
P.

Information

Very few things are worth the information that is printed on them. P.

The unresponsible

The unresponsible : that was the right word, le mot juste.
Everyone is now 'unresponsible' for what they do. Everyone?
P.

Fruit flies

We really are fruit flies, no ability to concentrate. Lead not astray but askance by "news" that is just press releases. News values : a contradiction in terms?
I went to visit friends who had a death in the family, far away a brother, father, uncle, husband, cousin, neighbour and friend had passed away, a peaceful death from disease. I saw the devastation on his son's face. Try to imagine a child dying, directly caused by the unresponsible.
P.

Silence is not rare

Silence is not rare; it is impossible. Sound is essential. Silence is only a relative diminution. Absence is, however, very common. The lacunae, the space occupying lesion, the babble that says nothing.
"I would rather be watched by a hidden camera than blown up by a bomb."
How many light years of empty does that include?
Empty.
P.

a ceasefire

P.

a journey

All action is a journey, without a map in the dark against the odds in bad weather to an uncertain destination and the ambiguous greeting of distant former friends. And the alternative? P

silent

silent silent

current state

consciousness

Nothing happened

Very little happens. It's rather that events are filtered and refashioned into happening. We have been taught to think in 5 second bursts then shut down.

Each event is a ball bearing : round shiny and very hot. We catch it and then have to drop it. We stare at the little mark and we never join the ball bearings together into a framework, a structure, a set of relationships.
We just squeal and then nothing happens.
The pattern is not a conspiracy. It is a philosophical view of what is happening. P

A State of Emergency

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.

Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.

One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical.

This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable." --Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," (Spring, 1940) trans. Harry Zohn.

Benjamin wrote this more that 66 years ago. He wrote about fascism and the state.
We lack anyone as clear in their thinking as Benjamin. But we really need them now. P

Value

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion" Simone de Beauvoir

No planes

No planes are flying. I live near an airport and under a high level flight path where the planes do a slow and beautiful curve to the right and then follow the coastline south. No planes today so the news ids full of crowded concourses and kids with their passport in a plastic bag.
Further away, there are planes flying over Tyre, Sidon, Baalbek and Beirut. Blink and we've been moved on.
P

Reaching the edge

It's possible to reach the edge and then return.
P

What?

That Coca Cola was there before along with Burger King. And will be there after. And possibly that's all that will be left.
There is no picture of that.
P

Trying to look ahead

Trying to look ahead, in particular beyond the carnage in Lebanon.
Everything moves so fast that you can hear their thoughts. Negotiations which used to take weeks have to be dragged out into minutes.
It is of course a paradox and an endless repetition.
I resist affability.

It was on Sunday that my partner bought a bottle of Coke in a Pakistani shop in England.
She brought it home, then she realised what it said and what it meant.
P

Witnesses

The situation we are in - profoundly but helplessly involved - is being a witness to a 30 car pileup and then being asked to go to the supermarket.
P

Whinging

I'm whinging about stuff - see previous posts. There are wars fought today and tomorrow, seemingly forever. At an individual level pointless suffering is inflicted for a theoretical or ideological gain - roughly translated as blood, bile, vomit and destruction.

I don't have the right to whinge. While men in suits say that they think they have the text just about right. And death happens in silence. Under the scream of jets and munitions. Right now.
P

drawing by Mazen Kerbaj http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/

Part of the problem

This is part of the problem along with all the self indulgent, badly done, cliched, nonsensical blather. And just in case there is a moment to think up pops a Limbaugh lite to sway on his rubber heels and declaim a snide but trivial comment from his big bag of bubblegum.
It's white noise lacking form or purpose? But it has a purpose. To maintain an illusion that a bomb could be stopped, a bullet misfired, a bad decision rescinded.
The centre is anywhere but here.

P

Infinite variety

I was just at a shopping centre, thousands buying millions of things. Sweating, arguing, waiting, being patient to acquire. Consumption used to be an illness now it's a drug.
An anaesthetic, a soporific, an anxiolitic.

Pregnant women hours away from birth, babies days old are swept through. Everyone is disposable
only their money remains, eternal and intransigent
Forty years later the Situationist analysis is proved right but there is no one left to notice.
What is to be done?
P

Currency

The process of communication gets in the way of what could be communicated. Worried about whether the message gets through, when the eyes and ears are already blocked with dust and debris or pre-digested opinions. Thirty three farm workers are dead in a village in Lebanon.
When the silence is broken by excuses and justifications that were written before the planes left the ground.
Act or react. Choice or no choice.
P

Causing offense

I found a comment : "an artist should be more careful speakin on devisive issues. could be offensive. "

The reference was to the Armenian genocide of 1919. But it could be any state sponsored pogrom.

What I like about it is the implied bureaucratic threat.
"I will forward this to the appropriate authority whose responsibility under S22, sub S 38[a] of the Penal Code is to question with the utmost vigor and rigor the minds and bodies of those who cause OFFENSE to any and all organs of state and historical, mythical or real figures."
So this one's for you.
P

Another thought

There are thousands of silent comments being made. They are below the radar, off the screen, piling up like dust. The dust gets in your eyes. Cement dust stings and burns.
Paint like an ointment.
P

Missing the point

With so many rightly commenting on the present horror, I have missed the point of this project : to look at the future.

Perhaps the purpose of war is to keep us swaying on the edge of the now and the past. Waiting for some admiral of a landlocked country to come along and show us the way. [That was Admiral Horthy, Hungarian fascist.]

The delusion that the future is theirs has to be fought.

P

mutilé [en gurre]

This is an chance image of a road marking.
At the moment it seems entirely appropriate as a comment on what is happening.
The dehumanisation of the object and the disappearance of the subject is a process which ends like this. An icon, a hieroglyph
a mutilated simalcrum. To be ignored.
P

Under fire

A few years ago I was a few miles from a war zone. When the day wound down you could hear the guns in the dark. They were random and moved around. People there talked about it with a kind of brave humor.
I went away for a few weeks and came back. They told me that 22 people were murdered in a village a few miles nearer the gunfire.

It was probably just a medium term tactical goal. Entirely justified by military necessity.

Or some such bullshit.

P

The Crusher

This is the crusher, a massive force.
At the moment it is easier to express through
images.
P

The Gateway

The Gateway
a threat and a promise
P