102603

 

Arcata, CA

Sunday October 26, 2003

     7:05am  I just woke up in the barn. There's no mist or anything out there. It's pretty dry outside. The sun is about to come up. We're all just chilling.

                   I'm going to see if I can bum me a cigarette.

     7:50am  We started the fire pit this morning and we have five people warming up right now. It's cool. Not really, though.

     8:22am  I just took a picture of the people in the barn. Some people are crowded around the fire pit and other people are in the background. Devan is building a new room, where Sean's used to be. Where Sean had swept it all out with a sweater. He just disappeared. His room was taken apart.

                   Got another picture of the crowd by the fire.

                   Head-count is twenty three so far.

     8:42am  I just took another picture in the barn. Everyone by the fire. Man, I'm going to end up wasting this whole roll in the barn today.

     9:40am  I just took a picture of Devan's room. He just built that, man. Good job, Devan.

     10:00am..Well, it's 11:00am actually.  We just had daylight's savings. Oh wait, it's 9:00am, I mean. Mark just gave me the very last of his rolling tobacco. Enough for a couple smokes.

     9:17am  I'm walking to the Cash Oil from the barn. Man, the barn was rad this morning. Devan made a whole new room. He's got the coolest room in the barn, now. There was a big gathering at the barn. Tons of kids. It was awesome. I never want to leave Arcata, now. I can't wait to tell(and show) everybody about this place.

     9:29am  I've been at the Cash Oil for I don't know, like five minutes maybe. I got like a dollar in change in my pocket. I'm going to get me some food. I know, I'll buy me some cookies.

                   Oh yeah, I bought two packages of vanilla crème cookies for a dollar. I brought them back to the barn and shared them with everybody. Now, I want a cigarette.

                    I'm going to take off my sweatpants and thermals. It's getting hot.

     10:31am  I just took a picture of the private girls' room at the barn.

     10:36am  These guys came back and we're finally having the Bloody Mary's 

 that everyone's been talking about.

     10:55am  I just took a picture of Kimber's room.

 

We got lots of rooms now.

                     Whoa, I live in a six room house, hehe.

                     We have a badass fire pit in the middle. That's cool.

     11:09am  I just took a picture of the food in the kitchen.

 

                     We use the fire in the fire pit to cook.

     11:29am  I just got a picture of Dave 

 cooking macaroni in the fire pit.

     11:34am  America suggested I turn my first name to San and my last name to Texas. Hehe, San Antonio Texas. They said I should get a, "Don't mess with Texas," tattoo.

     12:00am  Jackie, the mom who slept with all her kids the other night in the barn showed up. I heard the, "I got Marlboro," call and Jackie is hooking me up with a Marlboro.

                      I just had a great listener, man. This guy Root, he listened to all my shit. His email address is mind-flight@earthling.net. Email him and ask him what he thought of my stuff.

     2:15pm  Prodigy just came up and handed America a cigarette. Just like that. What generosity.

Page 464

                      "What, for example, are the possible futures of urban transportation? Traffic is a problem involving space. How might the city of tomorrow cope with the movement of men and objects through space? To speculate about this question, an imaginetic center might enlist artists, sculptors, dancers, furniture designers, parking lot attendants, and a variety of other people who, in one way or another, manipulate space imaginatively. Such people, assembled under the right circumstances, would inevitably come up with ideas of which the technocratic city planners, the highway engineers and transit authorities have never dreamed.
                      Musicians, people who live near airports, jackhammer men and subway conductors might well imagine new ways to organize, mask or suppress noise. Groups of young people might be invited to ransack their minds for previously unexamined approaches to urban sanitation, crowding, ethnic conflict, care of the aged, or a thousand other present and future problems.
                      In any such effort, the overwhelming majority of ideas put forward will, of course, be absurd, funny or technically impossible. Yet the essence of creativity is a willingness to play the fool, to toy with the absurd, only later submitting the stream of ideas to harsh critical judgment. The application of the imagination to the future thus requires and environment in which it is safe to err, in which novel juxtapositions of ideas can be freely expressed before being critically sifted. We need sanctuaries fro social imagination.
                      While all sorts of creative people ought to participate in conjecture about possible futures, they should have immediate access - in person or via telecommunications - to technical specialists, from acoustical engineers to zoologists, who could indicate when a suggestion is technically impossible(bearing in mind that even impossibility is often temporary)."

                      Wow, I'm going to end up copying the whole last part of this book.

Page 475

                      "The working masses in the high-technology societies are totally indifferent to calls for a political revolution aimed at exchanging one form of property ownership for another. For most people, the rise in affluence has meant a better, not a worse, existence, and they look upon their much despised "suburban middle class lives" as fulfillment rather than deprivation.
                      Faced with this stubborn reality, undemocratic elements in the New Left leap to Marcusian conclusion that the masses are too bourgeoisified, too corrupted and addled by Madison Avenue to know what is good for them. And so, a revolutionary elite must establish a more humane and democratic future even if it means stuffing it down the throats of those who are too stupid to know their own interests. In short, the goals of society have to be set by an elite. Technocrat and anti-technocrat often turn out to be elitist brothers under the skin.
                      Yet systems of goal formulation based on elitist premises are simply no longer "efficient." In the struggle to capture control of the forces of change, they are increasingly counter-productive. For under super-industrialism, democracy becomes not a political luxury, but a primal necessity.
                      Democratic political forms arose in the West not because a few geniuses willed them into being or because man showed an "unquenchable instinct for freedom." They arose because the historical pressure toward social differentiation and toward faster paced systems demanded sensitive social feedback. In complex, differentiated societies, vast amounts of information must flow at ever faster speeds between the formal organizations and subcultures that make up the whole, and between the layers and sub-structures within these."

                      Okay, I've been copying from the very last section of the book. There is plenty more great stuff, but I'm going to call it quits for my copying from the book, for today. I plan to have the rest later. I'm going to go ahead and finish the day,

     3:31pm  I forgot to mention that I finished reading my Future Shock book. The end of it is awesome.

     3:55pm  Bill just hooked me and Katie up with some tailor-mades. Good American Spirits. Thank you, Bill. And some marijuana, too. I can't forget that.

     3:57pm  I just took a picture of the people at the barn.

                   Annoying Jonathan showed up and he's matching bowls. Thank you, Jonathan.

     5:24pm  Jeffrey just brought the broom. The arrival of the broom at the barn.  

     5:28pm  Josh is hooking me up with a cigarette. Badass.

                   Josh said it was a peace offering, like Native Americans and other cultures used to do.

                   Oh yeah, remember to change all mentions of Jonathan to AJ(Annoying Jonathan). That's his new name.

     6:05pm  I'm walking into town. I'm going to go get me a donut. I'm hungry.

     7:05pm  Oh yeah, I went to go get a donut, but Food-Not-Bombs is in the plaza. It's so weird how it's all dark so early. After that, I got a chocolate buttermilk donut for dessert.

                    Oh yeah, I ran into Sears, the gay dude who I smoked with before. He asked me if I wanted to smoke a bowl and I told him sure. He told me he was about to walk over to HSU to check his email. I had been procrastinating about going, but since he was I decided I would go too.

                    We smoked at the trail by the stairs.  

     10:27pm  I'm leaving the library. I'm hungry.

     10:43pm  I just got to the sidewalk across the street from the plaza. Where the trash can is. I asked this dude if he'd give me a cigarette and he gave me an American Spirit. Cool. I didn't get his name, but he knows who he is.

     10:48pm  I ran into Casey, the guy who made my glasses the other day at Site For Sore Eyes at Bayshore Mall. I was standing in front of the donut shop and he comes out saying, "Hey, didn't I make your glasses the other day? I recognized the rainbow beanie and walking stick." He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was waiting to get twenty more cents so I could buy a donut. He's all, "Man, I'll get you a donut." I appreciate it, Casey.

                      Sweet, he's getting me two donuts! That's awesome.

     11:19pm  Man, that was rad. That Casey dude from Site For Sore Eyes recognized me and he bought me two donuts! They were good. And he listened to my story! The whole thing! That's awesome.

     11:25pm  I'm going to the barn now. I had a good night tonight.

     11:44pm  I just got to the barn.

Next day..