I had it with "word verification"

It takes less time to sift through and delete unwanted and unsolicited comments than bother with this "wordverification stuff" - at least I am going to try it out for a while. We'll see ...

Cold Water Street Project

Second Chance

In my dream I return
to the place I went
wrong, and given this
chance to change
things, I go on
down the way I went
before. Even in sleep
I know there is only one go—
and it went well
the first time. Where
it didn't- well, it will
be good to see her again.

by Louis McKee

With the obvious danger to bore you to death, I still dared to put up some pictures of the place I'm working on right now. It's my friends place down in Hillsdale. The images are supposed to convert to you that I actually work on something sometimes... Don't know if that will suffice. but hey - it's a try!
(PS the place used to be a dump not long ago, now I even dare to take a nap there once in a while)

immigrant punk

"WE, THE PEOPLE..."

was the rallying cry for the constitution of the United States of America. That was way back then. The last amendment to the constitution was not so much about "PEOPLE" - but more about power and money. It reads like this:

Amendment XXVII (1992)
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

This is the last amendment folks, fourteen years ago or so. Previous additions to the constitution took up topics like the abolishment of slavery (1865), the inauguration of income tax (1913), and the woman's right to vote (1920).

I believe we need a new amendment! It would have to go along these lines:

Amendement XXVII (2006 by Zee)
If governance in the United States ceases to have less than two political parties representing the constituency and the people of all states, the House of Representatives in Washington will have to be disassembled followed by new elections; in the order of townships, counties, then States.

We are there right now, seriously! The "duocracy" of previous decades has been replaced by a "monocracy" - or shall I just say as it is: Monarchy! The concept of DEMOCRACY has become a lofty concept you read about in history text books alongside with Marx and Engel's convoluted and abstract concepts of communism that never worked out in real life (both of them being representatives of the bourgeois middle class at that time, one of them being the son of a wealthy industrialist ). Pipe dreams of the past gone astray ...
Today we face the encroaching imagery of globalization in the name of Money, Power and Greed. Instead of being more united, the disconnection between people around the world is forced upon us by big cooperations who give a flying fuck about "collateral damage", the people like you and me!
Both, the Republican and the Democratic party in the United States of America are "niggers" towards sucking dick of these cooperations. Therefore they are both the same

I declare that the US has ceased to exist as we knew it.

... unless we incorporate the Zee amendment. No, perhaps not that drastic, but please you all, - fight for a multiparty system that has a resemblance of representing the people:

We the people!!!

... otherwise stay and remain to be anIMIGRANT PUNK!!! and tend to your hair due, or the lack of it.
And if you wish to listen to a cool tune along the lines, upload

IMMIGRANT PUNK from Gogol Bordello, a symphonic treat :)

As usual, click on FREE user when you get to Rapidshare from the link above...

not my turn tonight...

... to wash the dishes.
(that's my kitchen window by all means, my daughter doing the dirty works, tomorrow is my turn again...)
(( whatch out, I might slash out political nastiness tomorrow again if I find the time))

you better run for your life little girl...

... hide your head in the sand little girl - catch you with an other man, that's the end of, little girl.

Public bus sign posted in Provincetown, Cape Cod MA - USA.
I should live there, they got the story right, and they got the ocean, they got writers, poets, painters and drag queens. They got cozy restaurants and gay bars with leather, chains and smelly semen lingering in the air. They got seagulls and sailboats, sand and laughter. Music and the history of the first settlers still clouded in the mist of innocence ...
I could build castles in the sand everyday and keep dreaming upon endless dunes of off-white.
What a breeze!

you ungrateful bunch you!

So I give away something for free and you don't even bother - this would be like if McDonald's gives warm, steamed, face-cloth tissues to any potential customer at the door before they even superzised their BigMac and you pick it up and throw it into the trash - and you hardly even touched it! Shame on you ...
Sure you can upload songs at iTunes for $ .99 a pop - I never did, probably never will. But suit yourself, throw your money into the dragons mouth and feel content ever after like the princess who got saved while you could have gotten this song for free! even without the support of the mighty sword of a fairy tale prince.
Amarisi is a cool song. I still challenge you to listen to it ...
Gosh, the worst scenario in my book is that you will delete it right away - and I will not even be mad! :)))

do I need to read this book?

It starts like this:
Renowed curator Jaques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Sauniere collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.
As he anticipated, a thundering gate fell nearby ...

Do I?
Come on, there is a movie - would be so much easier, one and a half hour and all is sucked in.
Do you know the book I'm talking about? If you do, tell me about it.

OK, I give you a hint - the book has nothing to do with Michelangelo. Can you guess it now?

this tune (Amarisi)

This is a cool song I uploaded for Nazli but you can download it at your own leisure and enjoy it as well. Just follow the steps within Rapidshare and you will be alright. I know 30Megs are a "load", but just wait until you hear that gypsy sing, you will not regret it :)))

Ok, hold on ... wait - you have choices!!!

The above link is CD quality (aif format) but LARGE (over 30megs)
HERE is a compressed version (mp3) that only takes up 4 megs and is just as fine!
Once you are at Rapidshare click on FREE user. You might have to use the password "zee" - I don't know.
Enjoy and tell me what language they use for this song, Hungarian?????
---------------
And Yes, the artist of this picture is Pollock, that Pollock who dribbled paint out of buckets all over a huge canvas spread out on the floor, beginning the movement of American abstract expressionism. Hard to believe, I know.
---------------
For your immediate listening pleasure you might like to listen to BUSH - a real "ear opener". I still think Goebbels had more style though ...

Peaches from heaven and a prayer

Not everyone has the ambition or time to tend to a garden of their own, may it be small and tiny like the tomatoes or basil in a pot, or more ambitious and actually grow vegetables and lovely flowers to be enjoyed long into winter months. Not everybody can do this...
But everybody can plant a tree, a fruit tree perhaps and relax, go away for weeks and come back to a bounty of treasures. It is easy to do, you really don't have to work or pay attention, you can remain sloppy and careless. Perhaps every other year you cut the branches back, a thing of ten minutes tops!
So why haven't you planted a tree yet?
The rewards are immeasurable!

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sew love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is dispair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
(Francis of Assisi)

P.S. may I add "eternal life" already exists right here on earth since we actually do incarnate again and again - and "now" is just a stage, a small piece of the mosaic of that what we are inclined to call present - or presence... the fragment of an image in making since the beginning of time.

will money buy unity?

Here you go again, more trouble in the making!
Hezbollah has set up 12 centers to organise the hand-out of cash for families who's homes were destroyed.
Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, promised the money in his first speech after the truce took hold this week.
He said 15,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed in the Israeli bombardment but the islamic guerrilla group, which also runs a large network of health, education and social programs, would pay for the repairs of houses that are still standing plus reimburse people who lost their dwelling.
The problem with this scenario is, that again Hezbollah and not the Lebanese government takes the lead!
Of course the people in need will gladly take the average $12,000 handouts, (source Reuters) that is only human... But please do the math, 15,000 times $12,000 - it's a lot of cash, I don't even want to know where all that money came from ...
You see, Hezbollah has taken over the role of "GOD" and "RULER" in Lebanon: "It can take (destroy) - and it can giveth again!"
The official government, a mandated pluralistic mix of different religious makeups in the mean time stands in the shadow of things to come, powerless, weak and fragile. The only hope I see is that the educated middle-class people will rise up and stand on their hind legs and shout: Enough is enough! This action of course can't be the task of those who live in the south, understandably.
Lebanese people - will you stand by and watch your dream of a country in making get sold out to a Sheikh , or will you stand up and demand your country to be free of religious mingling in politics.
I'm watching ...intensively!

An other kind of beach

So yes, I was fortunate enough to enjoy pristine waters and superb dunes and costal vistas in Cape Cod last week. In the mean time up to 30,000 tonnes of oil flooded into the sea at the coast in Lebanon after Israeli jets had attacked storage tanks at the Jiyyeh power plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15. That amounts to about two thirds of the Lebanese coast. That coast now is useles for years to come and the marine life and the ecosystem there is dead and unsuitable for fishing. Let me put this in context. In the US this would equal to a complete shutdown of the coast from Maine to Florida plus the coast from Mexico to about Los Angeles. Exxon's "Valdez" was nothing compared to this disaster.
Yes, it is one way to look at the immediate death counts in a crisis of war - but those are "silly numbers" compared to the long term implications.
If it wasn't such a sad and painful story, a cynic might sum up the present crisis in the Middle East as such:

no regard for life on earth by Israel and Hezbollah alike

Both have lost in the battle of humanity.
Both stink to heavens and above.
Both are criminals of earth existence.
Both have lost moral ground.
In the mean time the US is supporting blindly one of them and curses the other. That is not naive, that is a recipe for destruction - self destruction.
A nation on moral grounds would declare: BOTH OF YOU ARE WRONG!!!

OK, I'm back

After breathing salty air, swimming in the ocean, camping under good smelling pine trees, visiting daily the crazy and beautiful gay capital of the world, Provincetown MA - I am back!

Sure, world affairs still touch me, they couldn't be washed away completely. But my perspective has shifted a bit. Harshness of attitudes rubbed of in the sand...

It sounds delirious, but sometimes I believe the whole world needs a vacation, breathe out and regain new perspectives.

Perhaps we need to have the courage to jump over the "dunes of misconception", land on new grounds - despite the risk of thistles that might be hiding in the sand...
What is a prickle in your foot when you still can walk and stand upright as a human being?!

the dog made me change my mind

I will put the temporarily vanished "Israel" post up again. After all, it is part of my evolving journey. Why not stick to what I have done and experienced on my path. It's part of the mosaic into the future ... why censor some of the stones that are part of the picture, even though they might be inappropriate for some.
I have no hatred against Israel, don't get me wrong. I play violin, and Israel has produced the finest violinists in the world...
My grunt is with the political establishment who groans and moans and refers to the Holocaust whenever convenient. My problem is also with Judaism where I sense no development arising out of the old. (As is the case also with Islam...)

For goodness sake, religion should be a private matter and choice - not some kind of state sanctioned behaviorism. It makes no sense in our present world to have crusades on the basis of religious beliefs.

It is interesting to note in that context, that Saddam Hussein was a non secular tyrant who managed, with the inclusion of many atrocities, to keep Iraq together as a country (Tito in former Yugoslavia comes to mind).
No, I do not adore the kinds of Saddam or Tito. But looking at the present parallel reality of the "US Green Zone Occupation" I wonder who of them was the lesser evil, Saddam or Bush? There is no doubt in my mind that Iraq will continue it's spiraling decay into a full blast civil war, slicing the country into several entities, just like the days in Yugoslavia after Tito passed away.

As for the dog in this post, I will have my "dog-days" next week, go to the beach, enjoy the ocean and recuperate.
I hope that you all find moments of replenishement this summer.
See you in a week or so...
Cheers, Zee

NEW YORK

America Can Stop the Bloodshed
WHAT: Silent candlelight vigil
WHEN: Thursday, August 3rd, 7:30pm
WHERE: South side of Union Square Park, New York City
This event might happen every week until...

And now a question:
If in the future there will be such a thing as a "buffer zone" between Israel and Lebanon, controlled by an international presence, would it not be correct to create such a zone taking space equally from both countries?
Let's say for example 15 miles into Lebanon and 15 miles into Israel?