Cleaning, framing, mourning, and the election

When cleaning your house, things have to get dirtier before they can get cleaner. You have to take things out of drawers; you have to move things onto the bed and table in order to mop and vacuum. My sister is coming, and I still need to clean my bathroom!

The beating of the taiko drums are now echoing throughout the dark streets of my town, tapping on windowpanes, straddling the moon and licking the dragonflies. Don den dekoden, don den dekoden.
Festival is coming, leaves are growing red,
bowing to the wind.
The potluck party is about to begin.

I got my friend Tako’s djimbe drum and am practicing for the butoh collaboration that will happen on the 25th. I’ve also mixed some samples together to play on top (mostly Tim Hecker, Doudou N'Diaye Rose, Kangding Ray, T.S Eliot reading Prufrock, some Ram Das, The 17th Karmapa, Paramahansa Yogananda, Zoe Keating, Brother Sun Sister Moon, Steve Reich, a bunch of stuff. Let me know if you want a copy.)

Yesterday I went to the local home-depot with Ma and cut wood for frames. I’m gonna have to spray paint them black and nail them to the paintings while Martha and Erin are here. The crows will fly overhead. Crows always hang out by my back parking lot. They wake me up into the mornings and wake me down into the evenings, and they caw black death/depth into my world when it’s becoming a bit to bright.

It was kind of a pain-in-the-ass measuring the wood and ordering some nice old Japanese man to cut it, but when I make my own frames, I can sell the paintings for a lot cheaper. I just hope the trees find me worthy.

I’m still so sad. I think about Devin, suffering in her car, alive to respond to the police, but dead by the time the ambulance arrived. (most of you know this, but recently an old friend was killed in Kansas city.) “Guns don't kill people, people kill people.” Good point, but not always true. In Devin’s case, if the two kids didn’t have such an easy access to guns, and if they instead wanted to rob her using, let’s say, a knife, then well, you can’t stab a knife through a car window! Guns help people accidentally kill people. Guns help kids kill people. Without them, or with more regulations, there would be less gun-related accidents. Unless it was a hate-crime, and I doubt it was, it’s hard to believe that these two kids (18 and 19-years-old) really wanted to kill her. No, they were probably just scared, tough guys. Their great robbery plan went wrong. Their target didn’t unlock her door, didn’t roll down her window. So they shot her and ran away. There were so many witnesses and police close by; the kids were caught shortly afterwards. Their families must be suffering as well. “Really, three lives were taken that night.”

In class last week I got to lecture the 15-year-olds about the election. “Does anyone know the differences between Obama and McCain?”
One student called out, “Obama is black, McCain is white.”

I told them about how Obama is actually half, and about the war, abortion, gay rites, and guns. It’s an interesting story…the differences in values between the two political parties. Two different value structures are competing for the power…I sure hope Obama’s value structure wins. But if it is McCain, I hope he does a good job. Luckily, the secret revolution, which is evolution, is going on anyway, regardless of who the American president is. Evolution pushes forward, continually writing new habits into the universe, and unfolding new, higher value structures into more and more people.
Good to know.