Welcome to my imagination or something like that - if you came here expecting anything you are greatly mistaken and mis-taken - you will find here just my diarRHETORICS - sort of random ramblings of a rambler/wanderer who isn’t wandering as much as wondering - so where did the word diarRHETORICS come from you might be wondering - well having the gift of dyslexia and never writing much in the way of written letters since i never was able to memorize the rules - well i am not very good with rules they are too constipating which is also one of the reason for the title of the web site - so when the internet came along and i hoped on or is it hopped on, oh well spelling, grammar and sentence construction are not my strong point, which is why you don’t see any because i don’t know where to put them - so jumping on the bandwagon in 1995 - i thought to myself - “SELF” you there is a wave of change you can’t avoid coming and “SELF” to my little self said better pay attention to this internet stuff and not be left behind - i was on compuserve for a little bit in the 1980’s but at a buck a min if i recall - it was a little too much - so back to big “SELF” to little my self i said he said she said - oh me oh my - you are going to have to learn some new tricks if you want to be apart of this wave this social evolution - i remember at the time i had just bought a bunch of midi musical instruments to compose music for my paintings (sound paintings) and so i was in conflict and well i still have the equipment and its old and dusty and out dated too
so where was i - oh yes - anyway so i really started diarRHETORICS and writing with having to write emails - since i was basically too shy and didn’t appreciate my inarticulateness and imagination as much as i do now - plus i realized its not what people expect that counts its what you have to say and how you say it is a process of discovery for yourself and others - and so for somebody who never wrote much of anything i figured i would start just throwing words like colors together and see what came about - plus i had my own randomplace.com web site and i stumbled around i started producing a RandomReport - which years later danny schechter the news dissector said i was a one man private news agency like AP or Reuters - i think he was exaggerating - but that is the poet in danny - anyway the RandomReport is still going going on since 1996 more random then before - know its morphed into knock knock which is like somebody knocking on your door and is how if anybody sends me an email they should write knock knock since i use pine thanks to jeff pulver - we think we are the only two people in the world who use it still - hmmm -
i guess there is no real randomreport archive its an email i send out to mostly people i know in person or over the web - when i stumble on something that i find interesting or know somebody might be i send it out to mostly a select group that i pick and chose - other then announcements - so oh yes where was i, since i don’t really have some coherent plan for this intro just waving hello - i write or don’t know how to write and since i wasn’t very good in school… oh well - if you must know - i saw the same summer school teacher twice - which meant that something was missing some would say - i always got could do better on my report card and i remember every time i read that i thought - who are they talking about - i am doing the best i can - just not interested in what they were trying to get me to swallow - still not - so now i think of dyslexia and my mind as a gift of the imagination and reality is just a collective imaginary world that people want to believe in - well that is also another story - its not that i couldn’t learn - i can’t memorize things - and all people learn different - for me i have to get inside of something to really understand it and it has to get inside of me as well - so for me, if i am interested in something i am a vacuum cleaners for it - well i figure since only geniuses read this non-sense and that a genius is simply somebody who is interested in something and consumed with it - so i guess that makes you a genius if you are interested in this… so where was i … oh yes, no!… oh, so in as much as playing with words and or maybe they are playing with me - and maybe we are all just playing in the playground of our imagination and nobody knows it - or maybe - who knows what we don’t know -
oh yes i have a series of poems from my garden of poems but i can’t remember what or where they are other then the title - or which ones are which - oh well but that is another story -
so well it is said that in the beginning was the word and i am not sure words came first - i think we are again just deluding ourselvess - in the beginning there was nothing and that nothing couldn’t live on nothing so it became something … hmmm or maybe since nothing can living in a void or maybe it could… anyway in that moment of conception when the great big bang of nothingness turned into some something then and only then and then again well that is my theory of nothing and that we should honor and respect nothing because - well how would you like to be nothing - well thinking about this and chew on this too that from ashes to ashes and nothing to nothing came us and we came in singing a song side by side through all kinds of weather and in the middle of the night wearing only nothing we entered through the back door of the universe and there wherever there is or was the word and the word flowed like diarRHETORICS from my mouth and mind to yours and beyond -
time passes: i used that in a script i wrote called dying to live - the concept of time passes but does time really pass or is it our imagination are we standing still and the world and universe are in reverse and aldious huxley said maybe this is another planets hell and to hell with hell - but back to and in time - maybe time is just a construct - in an errol flynn movie i recall him taking this couple up to see the most dangerous weapon ever in the history of humanity and at the door at the top of the tower he says - are you sure you want to see this and as the door opens you see these wheels turning and he turns slowly to them and say you see this - its called a clock a watch and when people know about time they wonder how they are going to spend it and so time just be the real time bomb that we are sitting on - or maybe its just a metaphor for us word whores - or maybe not so one might think the unthinkable and nothing might be something and to be or not to be might just be an not be at the same time - so more or less might just be more so
oh, so where was i, now i have these periodic episode of what i call binge writing - well diarRHETORICS isn’t binge writing actually it a very mild form - more like spirits or splashes of color were as real binge writing for me is a disease its the part of being consumed - its a fire that eats you up and takes over your mind and body and thoughts invade your you and you are transformed into a stranger to yourself - i have friends who hear voices - maybe there is something linked to that or maybe not - anyway and when you are in the heat of the moment you are carried away beyond yourself beyond help beyond hope - lost in thought and in life and not here in this moment - as henry miller paraphrase once said when asked where he got his inspiration - he said - he hated inspiration and couldn’t wait to get rid of it - when i read that i said - ah somebody who understands being inspired and consumed - he also said “paint or die” and much more too -
well lately i have taken his inspiration comment one step beyond - maybe - i like to think - and have been knows to say “inspiration is bad enough but curiosity is killing me softly” i have a web site called curiosityitis.com that doesn’t have much on it but i “>hope to get people who suffer from curiosityitis to tell their war stories - oh well - so you can see some henry miller quotes i gathered over here - randomplace.com/henrymiller - so my binge writing usually lasts a year and half i figure from my 2 bouts of it in the last fifteen years -
so far i have been free of symptoms except for petite mals or little slips for about six or seven years - so well ok i am a binge writerholic - but i am getting better - i am now able to control it somewhat - i have bouts of diarRHETORICs which are random limited editions so binge writing is were you are constantly writing on everything and anything you can find even in the dark in your sleep in your mind while you are everywhere and anywhere imaginable - its sorta like a play trying to find your self even though you are blind -
on the average symptoms i would say you are consumed for 20 hours a day until you drop dead from exhaustion and i use to figure when i saw double i was sleepy but when i started seeing triple and writing with one eye open and falling asleep in between writing then i would crash and go to sleep and wake up in the night writing and pecking away looking for seeds in my imaginary landscapes of my imagination - for those of you who have never been touched by gift and curse of passion by obsession by invention its unimaginable unthinkable its like your body and mind has been invaded by an alien you are not you… you are in a trance that is so focused and paying attention to the littlest of nuances looking for the most subtle of microscopic subtleties — truly it is a gift and a curse at the same time that unless you can’t help yourself i would suggest avoiding at all cost - its like icarus flying too close to the sun - some might thing of it as mental illness and others might worship it as the source of inspiration and other desperation - the imagination is a unimaginable journey into the beyond the beyond - so at the time you think you are more you and not you at the same time and sometimes there is no you at all too - all of what an who you are and will be and could be that is you is all wrapped up in the unwrappable and un-rappable and one and the same and in the middle of this is you an invisible you consumed by the fire of the imagination - something like spontaneous combustion except it your imagination that has carried you to places near and far and far and near - and be prepared for sleepless haunted nights swimming in a pool floating in an out of body like experience - all art that touches us deeply must have come from this place of all consuming energy - so food for thought - if you can’t stop thinking about something can not not do something - are compelled - then you might do something interesting - and maybe as saul bellow said - we are so shock resistant maybe the only thing that can touch us is poetry - and all of a sudden your hear something or think something and it starts all over again and it doesn’t stop until you are exhausted - some might think of it as a drug - others might think of passion as symptoms of mental illness - but to me art is about caring for the imagination -
so back to diaRHETORICS and binge writing, for me it was taking things i heard mostly lots of endless words and one liners and writing them down - well if you really want to know - it started way back when i was painting - i stumbled on these what i called shadow painting or dream paintings that i painting - i use to paint only in black and white for years during the fall and winter and in the spring i would paint using colors - flowers, flowers of my dreams - i liked colors especially the surprise of colors when they come together by accident - someday i will write about my quest of five years trying to figure out how the english painter turner was able to have so much mystery in his paintings and to get that water color effect in oil paintings - talk about driving yourself crazy trying to figure something out -
oh well so when i lived in paris (i lived in europe on and off from 1987-1992) on one spring day while walking in paris i found these smooth rocks and thought since i never know where i am going to be living and to have real garden and real flowers is too much too.. to have responsibility for flowers is way too much for me to handle - so when i saw these round worn rocks on the street i decided i would have my own private rock garden - and painted on rocks all sorts of rocks and had many a rock garden since - well not that many - oh so one thing when i was painting using black only i realized that i was painting something that looked like shadow painting but more then that it was about what the people were doing in the painting - which became the challenge to and play within the play for me to figure out what were they doing - like Roschach’s test - so what they were doing became the title of the painting -
now for your info - i never before put titles on my painting nor do i usually sign my painting unless people ask me - other wise i like for the painting to be what it is - and its not about me but about the relationship the painting has to the observer and vice versa - i use to have 10,000 painting now i probably have 9,000 painting but that is another story which i will delve into another time i guess - anyway so the binge writing started in the mid 1990’s i guess and seems like a long time ago - another life time - and both times it lasted about a year and half and each time it ended i was so relieved and for a few months i thought hmmm is it really over - can i breath with out this weight of obsession, passion, intensity really let go its hold on me and i walked around in dis-belief - i can’t remember the cause - probably some emotional incomprehensible situation i got myself into or out of - some thing that grabs you - maybe part of it is morning for your innocence or trying to understand the incomprehensible, the unknowable - hard to say - but it got me here and into diarRHETORICS -
so can you remember the mid 90’s oh well not to get to far afield - so binge writing - do you really want to hear about this - oh well anyway its the precursor to the curse of writing and to diarRHETORICS so i guess its important to understand that i would write morning and night these one liners thinking i might use them as a resource for painting titles and then one year my daughter was having a b-day and i thought i would write her a poem and i looked through my one liners for the painting and said hmmm this looked interesting so i took a random bunch of one liners printed them up and realized they made a better poem by themselves then anything i could have done no matter how imaginative i was - the randomness of the collage of one liner was full of real poetry and insight - so the poem was so good that i thought at the time 1996 hmmm maybe i should create a web site and have a random poetry generator with one liner where people could check boxes and it would kick out a random poem and so i spoke to a few friends who made web sites and who another who could program and we did it and called it RandomPlace.com -
i asked a friend to register the domain name and it was before their was a charge for domains and by the time he began to register it, it was too late to get it for free they had just started to charge for domain names them - it was when the web was just text based and netscape was a baby - who knew - well actually some of us could see that the web was going to change us at the roots and core of how we live - we just had to be patient - to me the web is and has always been a social sculpture but that is another story too — ok so binge writing is a disease i have probably 10,000 poems not including a few thousand random poems from the randomplace.com random poetry generator - randomplace.com/randpoem.htm - you can make it yourself there just click on check boxes and put your name in and send and it will kick back something that might just change your life and your wife - hmmm who said that - ok so now you might be getting the idea that diarRHETORICS is short burst of diarrhea of the mind of words where they just flow and i never know where it will go and when it will stop - editors note - stop
and there you have it
be well
geo
the art of life is making your life an art