POSTCARDS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD

#1

The nights aren’t long enough, these days.  I sleep, fitfully, wake up periodically, punch in on the Earth Time time clock, put on Kevlar vest, superhero mask, tights & cape & go on guard duty watching for sudden explosions of beauty on the golf course & in the surrounding nite & blast them with my Mark 4 Quantum Pro Plasmaray Gun..  (Too much beauty is bad for the economy.)  A thankless task.  Nobody knows, nor should they, lest they too not sleep well) how much I go thru to keep us safe & The Constitution inviolate.  Then take the jetpak hovercraft over to the Santa Cruz & walk the river until dawn looking for this so called “place” some people call “home”. 

Yours Truly, 

Super Dummy

ON THE INTELLIGENCED OF NATURE (OUT TAKES(

ON THE INTELLIGENCE OF NATURE

(THE ENDURING COMMUNITY)

December 10, 2011

Some fishing stories are a little hard to believe, But this guy has pictures to prove his story... Tom Satre told the Sitka Gazette that he was out with a charter group on his 62-foot fishing vessel when four juvenile black-tailed deer swam directly toward his boat. "Once the deer reached the boat, the four began to... circle the boat, looking directly at us. We could tell right away that the young bucks were distressed. I opened up my back gate and we helped the typically skittish and absolutely wild animals onto the boat. In all my years fishing, I've never seen anything quite like it! “Once on-board, they collapsed with exhaustion, shivering. We headed for Taku Harbour. Once we reached the dock, the first buck that we had been pulled from the water hopped onto the dock, looked back as if to say 'thank you' and disappeared into the forest.” After a bit of prodding and assistance, two more followed, but the smallest deer needed a little more help (that’s him in the wheelbarrow). My daughter, Anna, and son, Tim, helped the last buck to its feet. We didn't know how long they had been in the icy waters or if there had been others who did not survive. My daughter later told me that the experience was something that she would never forget, and I suspect the deer felt the same way as well!" See More

By: Second Chance Ranch (Elma, WA)

A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE INTELLIGENCE OF NATURE....

(THE ENDURING COMMUNITY)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EDdCrv446o

I've often wondered if nature is intelligent, why are people so stupid?  

Maybe it's because they think too much and feel too little?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/16/survivaball-new-yes-men-p_n_288550.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3a3XBnMe5Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3a3XBnMe5Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEuzVMwsK7o&NR=1&feature=endscreen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZuyiAFTtb8&feature=related

In his book, People of The Lie, psychiatrist Dr. Scott Peck had this to say: "Among themselves therapists will not infrequently refer to a patient's psychopathology as being 'overwhelming.' We mean this literally. We literally feel overwhelmed by the labyrinthine mass of lies and twisted motives ... into which we will be drawn if we attempt to work with such people..."

The Survivaball campaign seems to be discovering more and more sociopaths among us.  Maybe the human race is sociopathic in its relationship to the community of nature, the enduring community, the primary example of the intelligence of nature. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

Shy Boy, by Monty Roberts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BB4XCdQCts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D76IuSvP9Nc&feature=related A Conundrum: The Right Message, The Wrong Man? http://citizensforjustice.org/component/content/article/78 The Parrot Who Owns Me By Joanna Burger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk&feature=player_embedded

some people said they thought this (elephant painting self portrait above) could have been faked but I went to the U Tube site and saw other elephants painting, with the camera pointing toward their tails, and any time you can see the ass of the artist while he or she is at work I figure the provenance of the resulting paintings has been verified beyond dispute. 

At that same location there are dolphins painting.

YouTube - Videos from this email

Reply

Reply to all

Forward

Dennis Williams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk&feature=player_embedded

Sep 13

Elephant dog friendship

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQYx3QOf4M

a miscellany of really brief encounters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYmsm5lmNwI&feature=related

Do you like cats?  Do you REALLY like cats?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev7oLCwD3ME

Kevin removes cubs from mom….is there gonna be trouble?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2jrS27USQE&feature=related

hundreds more u tubers with different animal friendships

kinda remind me of human friendships....such vast differences...

Here are some books:

THE PARROT WHO OWNS ME


Monty Roberts:

How to tame a wild horse:

Join Up Part One:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rz1SXJTVoE&NR=1

Join Up Part Two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTW5kUbE-vQ&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dx91mH2voo&feature=fvwp&NR=1

“join up” is when the man becomes part of the horse’s “herd”

things that don't work but...?

YouTube - Videos from this email

Casa Goofy has a new tenant, or member, or should I say inmate, because he doesn’t pay rent, or get a vote on anything, and he has to be caged. He’s a Cockatiel, (that’s a bird, not a sex toy) named Jojo.

I had goats for awhile but they ate me out of house and home, I had ducks and geese, and someone stole them. I had pond systems but the mosquitoes annoyed the neighbors so I dried them up. Then I started over using solar pumps to make ten ft. high water falls to aerate the water.

A dog and a cat was ok for awhile, but something was missing. I want one of everything I said, but I’ll settle for just one more representative of another species. There was a big debate about that and the extravagant side won. No it didn’t win, it SETTLED. It wanted an octopus that could predict stock prices. It wanted a big Amazon Grey that could do trig and solve Rubrik’s cube faster than your honor student, but the price was out of sight. Ok maybe just something different.

Enter Jojo. I keep him in my aerie, the top half of a VW bus (hereinafter referred to as the camper) on top of my school bus parked under a mesquite tree in the back yard. The branches of the tree cover the back end of the big outdoor bird cage I have set just outside the roof hatch of the camper, and the branches also shield the back end of the camper where I sleep and, just past my feet, keep the small indoor cage.

From the rear camper door, I can observe the tree which some summer mornings has birds in it, and/or my cat, Tiger, swinging from the tallest tiniest branches, from the roof hatch I can observe (Yogi Bera said “You can observe a lot just by watching.”) clouds and moon and stars, sun and rain, and from the side window I can keep watch over the golf course for sudden explosions of beauty, and alert the neighborhood before it disintegrates in them. Nobody pays me for this, it’s just something I do, I mean, what the heck, it’s a job, keeps ya sane.

Jojo was really LOUD when his owners showed him to me, so, as a joke, I told him to shut up and was so surprised when he did, and started making softer sounds. And now when I come in he changes his song from shrill to chirps and gurgles. When I get up he comes to my side of the cage and stares at me and chirps. His vocalizations have become extremely complicated and varied, kind of like he might be imitating a pop song or two and some random bird calls he heard during the day, and trying to say something himself that's VERY important....so insistent and patterned and complicated that I feel like these natives in the jungle when Max Roach set up his drum set on the shore just to see how they'd respond if he played for them. He had a native interpreter with him and when the native drummers responded, the interpreter told him, "They are saying, 'We understand that you are trying to talk to us but we don't understand your language.'" EGG ZACTLY!!!!

I’ve never fully understood my growing fascination with the intelligence of nature. Is it that as I enter my anecdotage I get smart enough to appreciate non human forms of intelligence (and consequently frequently (and often) shut the side window to the ominivorous beauty of the dawn fearing the cosmos may swallow my ass whole, or is it that as I lose competence, common ground and bargaining power with my own species, I have no choice but to turn to other species for comfort? O all of that, of course.

In the morning I open the rear door behind Jojo’s cage and the sunlight comes streaming in thru a shade screen curtain and dead mesquite branches and you can hear the sound of falling water from the solar pump I have rigged up over the closest pond to the bus. And Jojo screeches in his louder calls to distant relatives in forests thousands of miles away, and I imagine he’s part of a flock of parrots beside a waterfall on a tropical isle.

Recently I’ve had a resurgence of beating my head against the wall of the world, because I can’t get Casa Goofy to a place where it can take care of itself after I die. It won’t, in its present state, be able to provide housing and a website for an international exchange of art and artists, or provide an art-in-nature laboratory, or have an advisory board that can lobby for large scale green energy solutions for the community….none of the above. It will fall into the hands of the same banality gang of real estate brokers and gentrification dancers who gobbled up and shit out every art enterprise in the inner city I was involved with for the past thirty years. I want revenge, revenge for crimes against consciousness, the best kind of revenge, which is living well and doing good. I want to speak and be heard, answered and challenged. (I think that’s called a conversation.) But I was recently told by a lot of BIG SILENCES from some editors, and a disappointing reply from another, that I didn’t have a place at the public table, that my enterprise would not even be discussed, would not even qualify for a refusal. Not that I was ever even entitled to life, even, not that I shouldn’t be grateful, even, for a whole bunch of ALMOSTS…but it’s understandable that so many incomplete projects is maddening, and that I’d be totally vulnerable to the maddening, and that the shit I’ve seen in national politics and in particular in the so called arts district (I wish they’d end the cognitive dissonance and turn it into Las Vegas for godsakes) the past thirty years could give anybody PTSD, and it’s natural to want revenge, but the first and only and most feasible thing I can try to enhance (if never to control) is my own consciousness, if by no more convenient and immediate medium than by continuing my study of the intelligence of nature. And so, once again, from STAGE RIGHT

ENTER JOJO the birdbrain…you must understand this is not pejorative, everybody’s brain has its own particular genius…and such a cheerful fellow he is, especially when the back door of the camper is open. His louder screeches can be heard all over the lot. And he seems to not only know I’m there, but is perfectly willing, ready and able to challenge me to some kind of duel, the rules of which I don’t understand. They involve running back and forth across the bottom of the cage and hollering nonsense syllables. OK maybe I do understand. That’s me trying to talk to an editor. So just because I don’t know exactly what he’s saying, doesn’t mean it isn’t a conversation, eh Max Roach?

He starts chattering in low chortles like a tiny Model T trying to start, and then he sounds like a catbird doing imitations of other bird calls. Then it doesn’t matter much that we don’t understand his language. There’s a lot of music in foreign languages that can still be enjoyed even if we can’t translate any of the words, IF we’re grateful for what we DO have and understand, within limits, (which is always a hassle).

What It Is, Part 1

Casa Goofy International

is a non profit group whose mission is to facilitate an international exchange for artwork, artists and performances.

Using Student Exchange as a model, we are developing local hosting facilities and looking for individuals and groups in the greater Tucson area who would also be interested in hosting artists, their artwork and performances.

To accomplish these goals we are associated with:

Couchsurfers.com, an online organization which makes it easier for hosts and guests from separate countries to find each other, organize a schedule, and a “Plan B”, and have an enriching cross cultural experience.

WOOFERS (Worldwide Organization of Organic Farmers): an international exchange for farmers and farm workers.

LOS AMIGOS DAY CARE: for a series of participatory murals, artist presentations for the kids and kids participation in decorating the day care.  Casa Goofy and Los Amigos are looking forward to a long contest to see which organization can be the most childish. We are actively looking for a sister day care in Mexico.

Check us out on http://casagoofy.blogspot.com and on Facebook and follow the links to our member pages and blogs.

 

MISSION:
Promote art that crosses borders because it is key to whole earth, non linear thinking which is necessary for our spiritual and physical survival. 

GOALS:

Reinvent the old International Arts Center (the old Y at 5^th Ave/6^th St.) and create an international exchange for art and artists, modeled on Student Exchange. 
Invest this time in people instead of buildings.

Create an art-in-nature laboratory.
Follow the example of Bisbee, Cleveland and Austin and put Tucson on the map as the host of cultural exchange. 

STRATEGIES: 

Assemble an auxiliary board for the purpose of working from small scale art-in-nature projects into large scale alternative energy/art projects, such as:
Tucson’s own “smokestack algae biofuels plant” (check it out on Google) at the Apache Power plant near Benson utilizing the million gallon tank abandoned by the U of A after its non smokestack, pond style plant failed to live up to expectations.   (Maybe someday we could see an image in algae in that tank from Google Earth.) 
And such as:
A green walls and green roofs project as also noted in Google, but with the addition of photovoltaics for shade and energy.  (and someday could we see an image made of roof gardens from Google Earth?)

TACTICS:

Host a website specifically designed for facilitating meeting and dialogue between local artists and artists from other countries. 
Finish visiting and permanent artist quarters (which would make 17 units or more)
Find people willing to be hosts and/or guests through couchsurfers.com.
Have a regular schedule of fundraiser performance nights with food, entertainment, raffles and auctions.                                                                                                            Community participation murals (make a place for the art of children of all ages).

Gradually change Dennis Williams’ HVAC-R business by

Adding businesses one at a time that can offer: waste cooking oil, use of space on off hours, catering, or just sympathy for the project so that, little by little, more time

Can be devoted to CGI. 

                                                                       

AND IN ALL THE ABOVE:

Have fun and,

KEEP IT GOOFY!!!

CASA GOOFY NEEDS:

a $40,000 line of credit.  Several amortization schedules have been drawn up for any individual or institution to choose from or offer their own terms.   Payments (around $450/mo.) will all be handled through a title company with one free and clear duplex, appraised at $125,000, for collateral.   The uses of the line of credit are:

Purchase grid tie photovoltaics to stop the escalation of utility bills. 

Finish the conversion of 8 rental units into artist live/work spaces. 

Finish the construction of visiting artist quarters at the art-in-nature lab at 1323 W. Hualpai Road.

This will:

make the project financially and ecologically self sustaining,

complete the artist community that will support the mission of outreach to other countries

unite the project around one clear vision:

a world in which the imaginary lines drawn by scientists, economists, politicians and countries are seen for what they are, so that our vision of global problems and solutions can be made whole.

ASSETS/PROJECTS IN CASA GOOFY:

9 artist’s spaces 70% completed.

7 rental units in the process of conversion. 10% completed.

Art-In-Nature Lab 50% (?) completed.

Community participation murals on front fences and walls 5% completed.

International art exchange website, planning stage.

VISITING ARTIST QUARTERS IN CAMP GOOFY:

Vans & busses in U shape with campers on top, common kitchen & bathroom.  50% completed.  Large work-shade common studio between. 

(When finished, these will be free housing in exchange for working on projects in the art-in-nature lab. 

ADVISORY BOARD & ASSOCIATES:

Brian Flagg, Casa Maria Soup Kitchen

Bill Knauss, Builder

Jon McLane, host of “Free Green Radio” (KVOI) and Green Party Mayoral Candidate

Carlos Lozano, CEO hunter for Lozano And Associates

Paul Schock, founding partner of the former International Arts Center at the old Y at 5^th. Ave and 6^th. St.

Peter Anton (retired) electric bike enthusiast, ecologist.

John Peterson, HVAC-R engineer

(Your Name Here)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SO???

WHAT YOU CAN DO
PARTICIPATE:
Get on our mailing list.
VOLUNTEER:
Volunteers will be fed, entertained and spoiled rotten.  Donations of $100 or more grant you founding member status and get you a comic book face and a few choice words on all our community murals. 
Bring food, friends, art & entertainment to fundraisers.
Help with clean up, construction and gardening.  Help us work with the kids. Just take an interest.  Be someone we can talk to about how we’re doing and what other things we could be doing on an on going basis.
Become a host.  Think about what space you might have for visiting artists to use for a few days to a few weeks.  Help us get a list of potential hosts going.
Participate in the fence mural project.  There's a place for you and your kids. 
BECOME A MEMBER:
Lifetime:  $100  (gets your name, photo, & comic book face in one of our participatory fence murals (you participate in the creation of your image, and to get to attend (or not attend) all meetings of The Bored).
Annual: $50 (free pass to our shop & kiln & other facilities).
Contributing: ($25 or more.  Five free art-postcards & whatever other goodies we can come up with.)
ISSUE A LINE OF CREDIT:
See “Casa Goofy Needs” or do it your way and organize your own gift.
 (be a big time artist) DONATE ART
or just DONATE:
vehicles, ,anything that could be raffled off or sold for scrap.
(have trucks, have people, will clean your yard)
New or used vegetable oil.
(any kind of waste oil)
Solar panels, PVs, DC or AC pumps, generators, tools. Building materials
(come visit, see what we’re doing, see if you have anything to
contribute, and talk to us about YOUR ideas.)
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD:
(attend online meetings, and less often physical meetings, help with fundraising, structural problems and planning.)
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE ADVISORY BOARD:
No responsibilities, just be wherever you are but be there for us: read, bear witness, listen, review & comment.  Be somebody just to talk to about how we’re doing.  (What is this? See the note below.) 
BECOME A MEMBER OF THE CLOWN COUNCIL
Be on call to help mediate disputes, misunderstandings, etc.  You have to wear some part of a clown costume while you’re mediating.  (hmmm “The Clown Council”….does that phrase sound FUNNY to you?!)

CONTACT:

Dennis Williams

1323 W. Hualpai Rd.

Tucson, AZ 85745-2051

520-429-0347

dennishwilliams@gmail.com

ON FACEBOOK:

Dennis Williams

Casa Goofy International

AT BLOGSPOT.COM

http://casagoofy.blogspot.com

http://superdummyinlovandwar.blogspot.com

http://secretidentity.blogspot.com

http://logosteleos.blogspot.com

AT BRINK.COM

Superdummy

Fathed


AND SPEAKING OF FATHED, HE WOULD LIKE TO DELIVER A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS:

(FIRST PRINCIPLES)

“A very good philosophy could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” 

----Ludwig Wittgenstein

Embrace absurdity.

The rest of the world is the rest of you.

Therefore embrace absurdity around the world (and in neighboring universes).

OUTWARD!

Love that does not go outward to the community dies of its own symmetry.  (An expanding universe demands it.)

The community does not end at the city limit sign or at any border or any (necessarily) arbitrary line between the human and the natural community or between that and the physical universe. 

An intelligence inheres in it, and in our life and in our death.  This intelligence somehow encompasses an inconceivably enormous human stupidity.

Whatever the ordering principle of the universe is, it must like a little gambling and humor too.

Human survival depends on our vision being restored to wholeness by artists and clowns.  Scientists, by nature of the demands of their discipline, are incapable of considering global warming in terms of process and whole systems.    

Human survival depends on all borders being recognized for what they are: arbitrary lines drawn in the sands of time and space.  (There is no “away”, there is no place called “downstream”, there is no place like “home”, there is no solution not connected to hundreds of other solutions all working in concert.

There is nothing we can keep except what we gave.

Love is always incomplete.  Love is always a heartache.  (Pass it on to the kids, but be sure and tell them what you’re doing.)

All investment depends on trust and is at risk.  Even gold has only an arbitrary and speculative value.

The human mind……hey wait! Is this some kind of JOKE!!!???

FROM NOW ON ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE GONNA BE STRANGERS

http://www.americarecycled.org/music/

 

The song, "Man Without A Country" and the community it came from is great.  But it also reminded me, that a lot of intentional communities are in retreat.   Thirty years ago, another man without a country, “The Ladybug Man” walked a little town out west called Tucson,  measured its sprawl with his body, and gave out mesquite and wildflower seeds and gifts from “The Invisible Community”  a  community of strangers who are joined by common concerns.  Ever since I’ve been wondering if there could be a community based on the idea of crossing instead of creating borders.  A community based on the idea of outreach, with the figure of OUTWARD at its masthead. 

Somewhere inside me, it will always be sundown on Main Street in Carlsbad New Mexico, where I saw an old hobo and asked if I could buy him dinner and we went into a little café’ across from the La Caverna Hotel, and he said,

I’ll always work when I can but I’m getting a little old for it now.  Got something wrong with my foot.  Doctor says I have heart trouble.

Everybody does.

Yeah, that’s right, reckon they do.  But people don’t want an old man like me, rather have a kid like you….course I guess you’re not a kid anymore.  You must be a man by now….you been to college?

Yeah.

You going back again?

It got to be too much of one thing.

Oh…I think I know you.  You’re a citizen of the world.  Don’t belong to this country or anybody’s country.  Belong to man.

Ah…I dunno….

Thinking about Monroe, what do you suppose that was, too much time?

Ever see a monkey at a zoo, when a crowd comes by, how he hides?

Yeah I seen that, but with me, I guess it’s just time.  You know two things that always win’re old man time and John Barleycorn…

There’s a place down by the river where you could sleep tonight, has grass and trees….

Naw I’ll just sleep by the railroad, maybe catch a train in the morning.  You’re kind of a nice kind of feller.  Goodnight.

And it’s always Delancey Street in Manhattan and I’m sending a 6 foot painted cardboard word mobile and a TV set I found on the street and rigged up with long rolls of painted paper in the top and bottom which you could roll from one side to the other with big dowels sticking up through the top…sending those and some painted window shades to El Diagonal Cero in Argentina with a cover letter about how I couldn’t seem to find an audience anywhere.  And the guy on the other end is replying in a letter, how he knew it was hard but hang in there,

You have my solidarity.

Your solid what? We don’t have any of that stuff here in America. Can I get coke and fries with that?

And it’s always after a rough day working on the Air Conditioning at The International Arts Center and this tall, young German guy who just decided to just camp out there in all the dysfunctionality that just seemed to be the sickness unto death of that place, was reading a book of my poems and liking them and having A CONVERSATION about them with his GIRLFRIEND??!!….I mean, what kind of person (outside of a mental institution) does THAT?!

And it’s late at night at a wedding party for a friend of his from Sweden, Anne Carrel, and Flower The Clown is preparing to hold up a big empty cup before a broken ladder pointed at a full moon full of clouds, but he’s having trouble getting through all the noise and jabber of the crowd and she stomps her foot and says,

SHUT UP!  DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?!  IT’S BEAUTIFUL!!!

And they hear her passion and are actually quiet and….this can’t be happening in America where crowds have an inalienable right to relentless banality….says so somewhere in the manuscript for Guy Debord’s SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE.  Guy Debord?  O well he’s French so that explains a LOTTA things.  The French are kinda funny about art and music, maybe that’s why so many artists and writers and musicians found refuge in Paris…you know silly people like Ernest Hemingway…the guy who blew his brains out with a shotgun after this mental institution took away all his memories…it’s kinda sad in a way…

And some working people in Nogalles, Sonora, are sitting on the floor during their lunch hour to watch an unknown artist from the U.S. named Robert Bray do a performance. It’s kinda weird, but you gotta give ‘em some slack, they’re foreigners you know and don’t know everything like we do so they have to listen a lot….

Somehow, like Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire, my art has always depended on the kindness of strangers.  I’ve always found that crossing borders crossed some line inside myself and always believed the rest of the world is the rest of you.  Sometimes, if I  take notice of who really seems to know me, or if I pay attention to time at all, there is no PLACE like home.  One of the best times in my life was when I hosted The Dark Bob, Giudetta Tornetta, Carol Leigh and Michael Peppe here in Tucson, and when I could interview Karen Finley and other performance artists for KXCI.  That was when I first understood, personally, what the word “Renaissance” meant.  But that place too, is gone. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr8NjJvoJiE

Working For The Man

Dennis and JoJo say, "help us get out" (of all the boxes).
http://www.truth-out.org/the-new-earthquake-manifest-haiti-monsantos-destiny66930

"THIS IS GOING TO BE....LOUD!!!!"

It’s 4 A.M. and colder than it’s been in twenty years in this school bus because storm systems are blowing straight in from Canada instead of coming down the coast and swirling around the Baja like they did before global warming disturbed the weather patterns.  The cold wind whips through all the cracks and tiny holes and I wake up scared.  It’s so cold that my “Builder Bob” doll, who stopped talking months ago, suddenly wakes up and says, “This is going to be LOUD!!!”  I think I’ll write a friend in Columbus, N.M. to see if he can help me insulate this tin box (where the temperature is always instant ambient) with paper pulp.  Not much chance.  He’s got to make a living too.  This is the price I pay for trying to escape from the vicious cycle of THE MAN’S addictions to highly refined fossil fuel and food and drugs and diplomatic doublespeak.  It’s cold here but it’s hot in Egypt right now where their eyes and skin are burning from tear gas, but they are not only clearing the streets of trash from their own demonstrations they are RECYCLING the trash.  Recycling (in all senses of the word and world) is the real revolution that breaks free of the vicious cycle of tyrants being replaced by tyrants in different costumes.  I see hope in this kind of consciousness, I see hope in ALL those, like Julian Assange, who break free of the tyranny of governmental addiction to lies and the addiction to accounting systems abstracted from natural systems. I see hope in every individual who finds an alternative to oil and interest and the cycle of debt, in all those individuals who dig and beat their way up from dependency and depression by learning to be their own parents instead of asking friends and lovers to do that for them.  I especially see hope in art that recognizes the inherent absurdity in all that is human, that breaks free of the marketing system, and the system of big money, big names and highly refined criticism, art that reaches beyond borders, and, however limited its audience, creates its own intelligence and conversation, based on the conversations and intelligence inherent in natural systems.

Cooking with Fathead - PERFORMANCE ART IN TUCSON

IN SEARCH OF THE COLOSSAL CONVERSATION

WHY CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL

(and why it matters)

The MISSION of Casa Goofy is:

Crossing borders to build the real community.

Why? To see the world whole so we can see ourselves whole within it. 

What Borders? Between countries, between art and life, youth and age, downtown, uptown, all around town, out of town, out of luck, in luck, mine and yours,  right and wrong, good and evil, third world, fourth world, fifth world, outer space, inner space, the knowns and the unknowns, the Smiths and the Joneses, the fleshes and the boneses, life and death, the human and the natural community….

Because?  It’s the vision thing, it’s the little thing, it’s the big thing  (it’s all of these of which I sing).  It’s a human thing.

Because it’s the only way to fight global warming. If it’s a losing battle it’s the only way

I know to have fun trying to win, because?

Partial vision screws it up

Every time.  

(LET ME EXPLAIN:)

Very few scientists have come to terms with the destructive potential of global warming.  Every year mainstream science issues estimates for isolated global warming factors such as ice melt, ocean temperatures, greenhouse gas volume, species extinction etc. which turn out to be underestimates by over 100%.  Why?  Because the factors are isolated.  Because that’s the easiest way to study them, in bits and pieces.  Because?  We’ve always done it this way.  And then the bits and pieces of data are dumped into the all wise all knowing computer which is instructed to add them with grade school math while in the real world, in process, they are accelerating and multiplying each other by exponents and unknown factors. Could scientists make such a basic, simple error?  And on such a crucial subject?  Of course not!  (It’s never happened before.)

So let’s just

IGNORE

The fact that:

scientific estimates of global warming factors always turn out to underestimates by over 100%

that all of Washington’s proposed conservation measures are only decreases in an increase. (which might be a good political ploy, except nature doesn't make deals.)

that even if we got back to pre industrial levels of greenhouse gasses the feedback loops would still be aggressively multiplying each other’s combined synergistic effects.

AND LET’S

just concentrate on the MONEY, just keep on looking at your environment as a business model and you’ll be fine.

BUT (OOPS!) LOOK:

Violent weather costs money,

Wars over depleted natural resources cost money.  

Failed crops cost money.  Droughts and famines cause wars over territory which exponentially increase environmental damage.

Disease outbreaks cost money.

Social damage increases the damage left by weather related disasters.

If insurance companies are starting to recognize these facts how does that affect your business model perception of your environment, and finally your bottom line? 

LOOK:

At the earth from outer space.  Do you see any borders?  Stay up late at night with me on security patrol watching for sudden explosions of beauty which is somehow inseparable from tragedy….and as the dawn comes up you’ll see there are also no lines between night and day, just like there are no more safe places because there is no place called AWAY. 

And you’ll see something else.  That what has been our strength through the ages is not our lone wolf survival skills, but our ability to form communities, to care about each other and the natural world around us. 

So on a good day, I believe in community.  On a bad day when the communities I interact with are being just unbearably stupid, I’m with Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea. 

SO?

Every anti global warming measure has to combat the global warming feedback loops by doing more than one thing or you can’t combat the negative synergy.  Even if we got back to 356 PPM, the pre industrial level of C02, what about the other gasses, and the feedback loops (by that time) in FULL acceleration? HOW could we ever refreeze the ice and snow pack, the tundra and permafrost, or reverse one, much less thousands of feedback loops?  We could start NOW by shading the polar ice with thin film photovoltaics stretched between dirigibles to prevent the loss of reflectance and use the sun’s radiant heat to produce electricity which would otherwise be produced by burning fossil fuels.  Or in a desert climate, shade gardens by the same method and produce electricity.

For another instance: smokestack algae biodiesel (google it) & straight vegetable oil, NO WATER WASTE, NO ARABLE LAND REQUIRED, the algae sucks up CO2 from the smokestack & turns it into carbon neutral fuel.  NO WAR REQUIRED which eliminates an all too human global warming feedback loop that each year multiplies its waste of fuel and production of gigatons of greenhouse gasses.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Because, in the process of conquering and insulating ourselves from nature, we’ve lost our connection to nature.

Art can help us get back to nature, but we’ve lost our connection to art.

Kids can help us get back to art but (in losing our connection to nature) we’ve lost our connection to our kids. 

Los Amigos Childcare can help with that, assuming we haven’t lost our connection to our basic humanity.

Casa Goofy International can help us make ourselves whole again by seeing the world whole, by teaching us to look across and beyond all kinds of borders.  But first we need to be able to make enough money to survive in the artificial form of sustainability that we call the economy. 

Artfare has helped with that by accepting Casa Goofy International and Los Amigos Childcare as programs under their 501c3 non profit, and by forming modes of self employment that artists can afford to use.  And in return, Casa Goofy and Los Amigos can help Arftfare with the artist employment problem with opportunities in education and maintenance.  

But how do we get our lost connections back? 

What is happening at OCCUPY WALL ST. is a case in point.  The central command structure is broken.  The President’s chair is empty.  We don’t have an environmental crisis, we have a communication crisis, humans to nature, nature to humans, humans to humans.  As Coolhand Luke said,

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

There is a form of governance working very well within the OCCUPY movement which is classic (not Faux News’ hysterical definition of) Anarchism.  If you watch the process of the General Assemblies you will see actual democracy working, building consensus, leaving very few people out, depriving no one of their right to privacy & reasonable ownership.  It resembles the way primitive societies, flocks of birds, herds of animals, groups of fish etc. move in unison, generally promoting survival. 

An article in the AZ Daily Star, 6/1/10 by Tom Beal echoes: “UA Biologist: Cues from nature useful in keeping humans safe”.  Herds of animals, insect colonies and microscopic life, and primitive human societies that operate independently of central command, do so very successfully and efficiently.  Natural systems, including the human immune system, operating independently of the cerebral cortex keep creatures (like us) safe.  Activist political movement cells without central headquarters are less vulnerable to infiltration by agents provocateurs, legal and militaristic challenge.  Artist housing that is decentralized, away from the gentrification, boom and bust cycle of the inner city is more sustainable.  Recent studies of insect colonies confirm this.  Neurological studies now suggest that we as individuals move this way: the impulse to move a limb occurs before the thought goes through the cortex.  You get the car back on the road (or don’t) and then figure out how you did (or didn’t do) it.

Correct me if I’m wrong and I’m sure you will, I think our survival depends on giving individuals choices that allow them to vote with their money, and live outside the box.  You have to think and act really small to get past the big shots in the international cartels.  You have to give the little guy more choices.  Every intensive garden, waste water and rain water harvesting project, WVO/biodiesel plant, food co-op is a step toward a natural and sustainable, rather than an abstract, economy, AND a community based art that is so present to the world it doesn’t have to sell for millions to make it.

An artist’s best weapon is single celled images that speak directly to this primitive command system in the individual’s brain.  Once the back brain, the lizard brain, the inner baby Tyranosaurus Rex gets it, the argument is over. But you can’t organize artists anymore than you can herd cats.  And doesn’t art die when asked to be programmatic, propagandistic, formulaic?  Sure, but what else is there in the roots of our being where nothing (like energy) can be destroyed or created, except nature?  And where do you think art comes from anyway, Safeway, Walmart, Wall Street, Sotheby’s, Art In America?  Or didn’t you notice those guys are mostly into marketing? 

In my darkest hour, hope sprang infernal.  I found an onion I’d stuffed in a drawer to mix with vinegar to restore my weather damaged skin.  It had sprouted long, thick, green leaves.  If nature can do this with nothing, in the dark, without soil, in the world as it is given us by a system of abstract greed, there can still be little islands where…but if onions and positive scenarios just make you cry, anymore, try doing it with a potato (many eyes to see you).  Because it’s a potato sack race and you do it for the laughs, because you gotta.  You gotta laugh, you gotta cry, cause you never know what you’re doing, that’s why we have this thing called art, so we can not know what we’re doing accidentally on purpose.

So in such a dying world as you think I only imagine, how could I propose art-in-nature projects as leisure time activities?  Because back to nature is back to our nature, and has the potential to put it all back together.  Because, as Wordsworth said, there is a primal sympathy that runs through all things.    

So here’s my vision: kids from Los Amigos visiting the greenhouses, ponds, aquaculture and intensive gardening and art projects at Casa Goofy, the roof of Artfare’s Arizona Hotel and gallery with decks and roof gardens strategically shaded by photo voltaic panels, exchange artists from other countries doing projects at all the facilities, and the kids see and learn, as these modules spread across the roofs of Tucson, and from there, the world.

It’s too much to ask, right?  OK, so maybe it’s the people we meet, the community we form and what they made of the project as it progressed, the process and not the product, the journey, not the destination?  So maybe we can accomplish parts of it, little by little, in bits and pieces, the way we screwed things up in the first place.  Or maybe, just maybe, we should do it just to be as absurd as we possibly can, right back at Stupid.