Strange Days

Strange days have found us. The Doors 1967...
Strange days have found us. 2016, December.
The end of history? I can't stop laughing about Fukuyama.
The disease of capitalism has spread all over the world. No one talks about capitalism a lot nowadays. It seems out of fashion to be critical towards it. We keep accelerating and growing until we collapse.
The rich people are trying to defend the fat of the land from the poor, from the immigrants, from whoever is out there to grab it.
We let some places be bombed to ashes, poison other places with pesticides and fertilizers, and fill the rest with concrete. What for? To grow, to accelerate until we collapse.
From consumerism to standardization we dance in the treadmill until we suffocate in our goods and in our desires.
There is no time for democracy anymore, no time for heartbeat.

However, as a privileged member of this society, I can try to break free. I am not much endangered by starvation or war. Who knows what will wait for me around the next corner, but I am free.
I can stop all this lamentation for a while, look into the full moon, walk the dog in a peaceful forest and meditate.

So it is time. Time to reach out and to try to lend others a hand. It's time to help some other people to leave the shadows behind. It is time to meditate and then maybe to communicate.

In the rat-race that we call career, there doesn't seem to be much time for that. So let the strange days find us. Forget the fear or face the fear. After the collapse we will walk again, but this time slowly, build our houses brick-by-brick and then lie down in the sunlight on a Sunday afternoon.

White Light, White Heat

More drawings of and about technology... (and Lou Reed)

30 Minutes Later

The same result?
But more techno-style...
Well, well: My next drawing will be a secret...

Pornography

Because of my new book: Drawing Your Own Path by John F. Simon Jr. this my blog becomes as explicit as it has never been before and as it will never be again.
Inspired by Simon's first chapter I felt like drawing like a child and three things came to my mind:
Breasts
Mermaids
Lou Reed

Voilà

When Doves Cry

Tree

Here behind my Wall

Sitting in a bunker here behind my wall...
In fact, I am sitting in my office in the cellar of our house.
Somehow I feel as if I were sitting in a bunker here behind my wall...
I only have access to the virtual world, via my Mac or my PC. So I can choose.
There will be a supermoon tomorrow, whatever that means to me.
Will there be werewolves with super-big ears?
I hope so.
Donald Trump has been elected president of the USA.
What is worse?
Leonard Cohen has left us.
The good thing is he has left us words and songs to deal with the strange authority we have to face nowadays, not only in the USA, also in Turkey, in Russia, in Hungary...maybe soon in Austria, too.
Maybe the supermoon will save us and provide us with werwolves galore.
Maybe Siegfried will be born from the ashes like a Phoenix and kill the dragon for us.
Maybe all this computer technology will bring us down one day, Terminator style.
Maybe there will be a movie, even better than Alien vs Predator: Werewolves vs Terminators.
Maybe I should return to being serious again.
Here behind my wall, it's easy to be cool, to joke, to be critical, to be liberal, to be radical, to meditate and to give a fine f... to what is going on outside.
Seung Sahn has posed a koan to his students about a man entering the temple and dropping his cigarette ashes on a statue of Buddha. Maybe today there is a koan about Trump voters. Maybe Zen has got nothing to do with politics, but on the other hand Zen is everywhere.
So here is my koan...What is this picture about?

What does Donald Trump have to do with supermoons, dropping ashes on the Buddha and this picture?

If you know that, you are on the true way....

Sitting in a bunker, here behind my wall...

7 Ensōs

On a day like this, there is nothing else to do but this:

November

Funny. A month named after another number. Nowadays it should be called Undecember.
IX or XI.
Another arbitrary aspect of our grown time culture.

November Rain, Guns 'n' Roses...
Do you remember?
When I was working as ski-instructor in the south of Upper-Austria, it was the only rock title in the jukebox of one of the local pubs. Most of the rest was either Austrian folk music, German "Schlager" or US/British Disco stuff.

In 2016 I am switching to Youtube and I am listening to the tune again.

In newspeak it means No for someone named Vember...

Back to Axel Rose again. "... in the cold Novmber rain"

It is already dark outside. 18:32 local time. Today I have discovered the incredible patterns that the process of decay has left on the vine leafs in our garden. Just before dawn I was alone with the dog in a little forest nearby - fallen leaves around us. Thoughts were absent, technology seemed to be absent.

But the dog lead and my clothes remind me of the old dependence. At least time was absent. However, the leaves might resemble nature's clock: A sign for the coming winter but also a promise for new fresh leaves next spring.

While Slash is playing his guitar solo just for me, my time crystal says: Leave 'em alone with your sentimental gobbledegook.

And it's right.

Buh bye

The Return of the Time Crystal

Here it is again. I am trying to capture the real colors and the shine in the crystal. What a failure.

It is indeed 2016. I don't know how old this mineral is. I don't know how long it took to crystallize, to take shape. I wonder who the owner of the other half is. Is the person male or female, or even a like-minded visitor of the blogger-sphere, blogosphere, blogsphere, or whatever you call it.

So, owner of the other half of the time crystal. If you are reading this, don't hesitate and comment this post, together with a photograph of the other half.

This SiO2 variation is my philosopher's stone. 

By the way the top half is not cut in a straight way. That again makes me think of politics. It is good that the time crystal is in my hands and not owned by a powerful general of the IS, US or the like.

Winter is coming, the zombies of old are crawling out of their graves, they are combing their tiny moustaches and are calling for their followers again. Always leaders, always followers.

I am not afraid, because my crystal will survive all that, polished and shining.

One day, after the darkness is over, and winter gone again, someone else will appreciate it's structure and write another poem about it.

In the meantime I am enjoying autumn, the few days during the year in which temperature is in some balance between the freezing cold and the boiling hot.

I am calling out to my friends to be mild mannered with the idiots who run that planet, and to clean their own teeth and shine their own shoes as long as there is nothing else to do.

Now that I am rereading all this I am discovering that there is no story line in this post.

If you want that - I mean a story line -  I can recommend Ian Banks' "Stonemouth".

For all others I ask you to help me find the other half of my time crystal.