December, 2009
Vermont

It's so long to the silence of the white winter wood, westward bound to golden shores. In a chariot of wine found for a song I've loaded tools of inspiration, wood with string and cords and tines.  Next stop Asheville, and then the high desert of New Mexico.
Potentials pass as monuments, I'll choose the stone that beckons brighter than the rest.   

November, 2009
NYC...

So now here we are in metropolis.
This is the end, the beginning. The sum the apex the climax too. There's nowhere to go from here but everywhere.

To the electric west, the edge of the world, where you have the right to stand. The longing dreams of home meet the allure of the road and somewhere in between is where I am. I long for roots but only float; I long for stone but stand on sand. And love and Love the grounding wing the angels seat the ghost's fair skin, the one and only everything which ties all these too loose ends together, Love, the elusive everything, waits divine and patient.

I'll wander there, I'd give it all, to travel with that edge in sight. I'd give it all, my everything, to tread that isle sublime. This wealth it has begun to drag, amidst this bounty I have starved, this treasure drives me to my knees, but horizon-bound lies a spartan shore where passion is not hunger, where bound I am forever free, where held I am forgotten, where without hope I´ve ecstasy, my longing skin not shined but shed, mask after mask unpeeled to dust and left beside the crystal waters.

Autumn, 2009
Vermont...

Suzee and I flew north on a train from the radical city.
Now we're climbing the green mountains before they go white.
Standing over a steady sea of cloud, listening completely. Every sound and every song coming from out of the sailing mist is vivid and electric. These are eternal voices. Above the din of the collective mind the sirens are angelic, and the devas do not hide. But remember, the objective isn't to get to the top, it's actually to get back to the bottom.

Vermont in autumn is a paradise of fruit and friend and flower. The trees are starting to show their true colors. The world is spinning fast and some are falling off, but when rolling lazy in wild fields high with september's goldenrod, dreaming under a revelatory sky, it's easy to forget.

New York City was alive and racing, as ever without limit, and fertile with humanity's potential. A living museum of man and her works, ever expanding with new additions by the second. With each visit to that city the optimism and potential astound me. There are so many worlds within its elusive confines, and some of them are undeniably harsh and flawed and vile. But there is so much creation there, there is so much intention, that one cannot help but be moved by the olympic will, and a golden thread runs throughout. The city is a radical fount that brings forth world-shaping floods. The result of that environment on an artist is impulsion, inspiration. The result of that fountain on the collective mental environment is genius, creation, climax and change.

Now what we must do is radically change the effects of the city, of every city, on the physical environment. Because it's hard to be creative when you're starving.


•


Consider this: synaesthesia


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Go to SONGS to read some songs from the good long road
Go to CONNECT to send gregory a message or to sign the guestbook.
Go to WORDS to read writings on community, society, spirit, Earth and future
Go to JOURNEY to see the incomplete and infrequently updated archives of this site.


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The Guestbook is back! Please sign it. Use it for comment, conversation, information, invitation, poetry, promise and threat.


THIS ENTIRE SITE AND ESPECIALLY THE PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY IS still BEING REVISED AND THEREFORE WILL BE WEIRD FOR AWHILE. BUT WHEN IT COMES BACK IT WILL BE b e a u t i f u l. Am I lazy or am I sane? I am not sure but I am certain that I do not like to sit in front of this insidious screen and do mindless photographic processing.

Please check back later. Here's a new preview of the way the new gallery will look...

•••

Summer, 2009
Amsterdam...



THE SUMMER ROAD IS OPENING FAST
THREAD BY THREAD MY WINGS UNTIE
TO FLY, TO WHERE?
JAPAN, SWEDEN, AMERICA...
THE REFINED EAST, THE COOL NORTH, The New world, THE ELECTRIC WEST...
I HOPE TO SOMEWHERE QUIET,
MERCY, STILL AND QUIET,
DARK TREASURE SKY AT NIGHT,
AND pure air TO BREATHE IN DEEP.


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Lately I have been thinking about translation.
I've begun a project translating this book into English.
The question is how to change language without changing meaning
how to paint a face with another pen,
how to preserve color.

There is some very poor translation in the world of poetry
the lack of attention can be disturbing
to tone, to meaning, to word choice.

Once upon a time, in some dank, uninspired, erudite past,
poems were translated with as much attention to rhyme,
that superficial skin of letters,
as they were to meaning, the burning heart of word.

Forcing a poem in translation to rhyme
at the expense of a care for the image conveyed
is like insisting upon following the quantities of a recipe to the milligram
without minding what ingredient exactly you're measuring.

Once I returned a bilingual collection of Verlaine
to the small St. Michel shop where I had found it the day before.
I said that I didn't know who had given the translator his poetic license, but that it should be revoked.


•





With a quiet eye on the gauntlet of sea
I fathom the depths of it and me.
In the rising embrace of these murderous hills
there crests a reward of wisdom.

For out away far in the swollen deep
there is only mercy or flood.
A sailor must make his humble ship fast
or failing, must go down in glory.

The mariner vain is coaxed into wise
by every day's struggle and its lonely prize,
as a man at sea, a man unveiled,
chasing the horizon.

The storm flaunts his mortality,
but he is calm within the rage
for he knows eternity
is just below the sodden dusk,
and with a turn of that crimson page,
with or without the seaman sage,
tomorrow's dawn will rise, will rise,
tomorrow's dawn will rise in rust.

Gone, the illusion of security,
granted, nothing but wet and free,
naked he sails above his death.
It is this, the privilege of the sea
and the sacrifice that is its cost
to the sailor humble, small and lost
who though to his end does surely flee,
over his doom he flies there free.



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Go to SONGS to read some songs from the good long road
Go to CONNECT to send gregory a message or to sign the guestbook.
Go to WORDS to read writings on community, society, spirit, Earth and future
Go to JOURNEY to see the incomplete and infrequently updated archives of this site.


•



The Guestbook is back! Please sign it. Use it for comment, conversation, information, invitation, poetry, promise and threat.


THIS ENTIRE SITE AND ESPECIALLY THE PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY IS still BEING REVISED AND THEREFORE WILL BE WEIRD FOR AWHILE. BUT WHEN IT COMES BACK IT WILL BE b e a u t i f u l. Am I lazy or am I sane? I am not sure but I am certain that I do not like to sit in front of this insidious screen and do mindless photographic processing.

Please check back later. Here's a new preview of the way the new gallery will look...

What am I listening to right now?

Nosy Be, Madagascar


Hello good people

I am back on the hard dry land.

I was away at sea, sailing across the Indian Ocean.
The world is definitely not flat, and I did not drop off its edge. I believe some people still consider this a topic for debate.

Inadvertently, I left the only mobile phone I ever had somewhere in the mountains of Morocco. So if any of you get any strange calls from Ahmed, Abdul, or Abdel-kebire, asking if you'd like to meet for some mint tea and a sheesha, or maybe a little haggle, send them my way. And, if we have recently communicated by that remarkable device, or may wish to some time again in the future, you should send me anew your telephone number.

My former domain universalcat.org was pickpocketed while I was incommunicado at sea, so my site will be offline for a while while things get back in order. Stay tuned because when it comes back there will be new photos and songs and more from the heart of the sea and the beautiful road... The songs flow out there like lava. The domain name will be changing to gregoryprimo.org.

Meanwhile, here are some things to consider in the early hours of the dawn:

Parasitism tends to evolve to symbiosis.

and,


Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency will accumulate sufficient energy even to explode, while none of the other glasses will be effected at all. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called "strongly coupled" regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient, even over great distances.




Thanks for all the telepathy.

Love and strength

Now in: Amsterdam

ENTER THE PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY. . .

NOW THAT IVE SHOWN YOU
MY WILD SECRET
ALL YOU CAN SAY IS
WHY CANT I TOUCH IT


•

Love is a wonderful accident made possible by lust.

•


I am an optimist.
This does not mean that I ignore the things that appear to be going wrong.
It means that I don't focus on them.

I stay focused forward, on where I want to be.
In this way I ensure that the steps I take every day bring me closer to my vision.
I see all of the different scenes around me, and I try to understand them, especially those which fall between me and my vision.
But I don't let them attract my focus, for that would change my direction.

This is the way I see my dreams into action.


•


Amsterdam is such a wonderful city. When the sun is shining, there's few that compare. Of course, there are plenty that can compare, weather-wise, between September and May. But you toughen up and get on your bike, braving the wet and cold, and you go find a cozy place to sit. Even in th cold rain, you can still find a great game of football at the Rijksmusseum. And football in the rain saves me the trouble of finding somewhere to shower afterwards. Heading to Morocco soon.

•


Fragile as a diamond,
this beauty conquers truth.



•


Now Reading: Gore Vidal's "1876" and "Creation", The short stories of Dostoevsky, The Odes of Horace, Catallus, and as always, Jorge Luis Borges...
Now Hearing... Live in Amsterdam: Toumani Diabate and his band of musicians 15 strong culled from every corner of the Mandinkan Empire. Guinea, Cote D'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania. An Incredible concert, such powerful music, such expert musicians. Toumani is the 71st generation of Kora Master in his Jeli family, a tradition which goes all the way back to the beginnings of the Mandinkan Empire, 1500 years ago. As he played the kora alone, I had a vision. I saw an enormous flock of small black birds flying quickly through the air. With every note from one of the 21 strings of the kora, which were flying from his fingers with impossible grace, one of the many birds in the moving flock would rise or fall in synchronicity with the plucked string... The flight of the flock was a living visualisation of the music. I then saw the same with a school of flying fish, rising and falling out from and back into the sea... Powerful music. Also, Yann Tiersen, Bonobo, Tanya Donnely, Antibalas, Cat Power, Gorillaz, Bill Evans, Phillip Glass solo, The Decembrists... Groundation, Andrew Bird, Feist, PJ Harvey, Pentangle, Sandy Denny, Goran Bregovic , Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nina Simone, Steeleye Span, Ethiopiques...


•


Some recent links:
Antigone
The Festival in the Desert hmmm, Morocco to Mali, overland... Want to go? Contact me.
Perry-Casteneda Historical Map Collection
The Journals of Leonardo Da Vinci
Bibliotheque Nationale de France

•

Today, October 9th, is a significant day. For the rest of the year we are all collectively in debt. As of today, human beings have used up all of the resources which the Earth will produce in 2006. By consuming resources faster than they can regenerate, our annual demand on our environment is almost 30% larger than the planet's annual bio-capacity. In other words, it now takes more than one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. The resources measured are cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries. This "World Overshoot Day" is currently coming one month earlier every 8 years. For more information, see the Global Ecological Footprint Network.

Now in: Paris

ENTER THE PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY. . .

EVERYDAY
Everyday ANOTHER IDOL SMASHED
Keep the hope, people.


All things in creation
are tied to each other
The simple answer to all of our troubles
is to live as if this were so

The complicated question, of course,
is how do we do this?


I've been parked in Fontainbleau forest for half a moon, picking mushrooms, running madly through the dewy night, and climbing les blocs, when they were dry. Amazing bouldering here in the magic trees. Like a Hueco, Texas in green and grey.

Photos of paradise in the Spanish Pyrennes coming soon... and of skin and stone in the Barcelona night.

A man's eyes get clouded by his truth
the very concept it obscures
too solid to let the light pass,
the truth is pavement, the world is grass
and reality moves like a gas
ever reacting, ever changing

Now Reading: Gore Vidal's "1876" and "Creation", Edgar Allen Poe, Catallus, A thick pile of New Yorker back issues, Jorge Luis Borges, as always...
Now Hearing... The forest rain,The Decemberists, Andrew Bird, Goran Bregovic , Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Groundation, Gabriel Rios, Classic 12" roots reggae, Nina Simone, Koko Taylor, John Lee Hooker, Gong Yi (ancient chinese songs on the giqin), Ethiopiques, so much new music now... unfortunately I can't hear it. My ipod died. So I'm singing instead, and playing the melodica, the wanderers piano.

I was with horn
one bronze and red
my gaze it wandered from my head
out into the streets so dead
with nightfall coming down

I rode, my horn
bright in the dusk
i called to her
she surely heard
but frightened was she by the must
whose heat would burn, her fairness feared

Next another fair I saw
and firm was she
she'd take the heat
but alas she did not hear my call
and disappeared down the dark street

And then I saw her standing straight
this one for whom so long I'd wait
and smiling quick with eye so bright
with speed my blood she did alight
spreading warmth it took my soul
and up I clamored from my hole
out into the world she'd built
my horn the blade
her love the hilt

Look, if I hear one more person criticize the theory of evolution for suggesting we evolved from chimps, I'm going to scream.

We didn't evolve from primates, and there isn't a single evolutionary scientist claiming we did. Saying we evolved from chimps is like saying you evolved from your cousin.

There is no direct chimpanzee-human line. We merely share a genetic ancestor. And from that ancestor species, 2 diverging paths evolved until there existed chimpanzees at the end of one line and human beings at the end of the other. Evolutionary biologists believe that this divergence occurred roughly 6 million years ago. A lot of things can happen in 6 million years.

I suppose if any creationists have read this far, I may as well state for the record that the Earth has been around a good deal longer than 4000 years, it ain't flat, and it's not at the center of our solar system either.

Religion is not divine in origin

Look, its wonderful to believe in the divine. It is normal and human to believe in a force, a concept, that is greater than a man. Because sometimes we forget how small we really are. This belief can carry one through hard times, and make one a better person when the times are good. Just look up into a dark sky at night, if you don't know what I mean by divine.

But people who wish to follow a religion need to understand something: no religion is divine in origin. Gods don't make religions, men do. And it is men and their times which decide the way that religions grow and change over the centuries. Throughout our entire history, every religion that has grown sufficiently to gain political power has used it, whether as an army of mercenaries or in the person of a pontiff king. More often than not, religion has been the result of men not merely trying to organize, but in fact trying to capitalize on belief.

Now I think it's clear that there is nothing to debate when it comes to faith. Faith isn't a topic for debate. It lies between one person and their own heart, or perhaps, their own mind. But religions grow far away from faith. Religions are paradigms created by men, to give a structure to belief, and their inevitable result, should the belief gain sufficient a following, is a hierarchy to control the believers. This statement is plainly supported by history, by any history.

In era after era religion and politics merge, and rarely to the benefit of the community. The fundamental nature of religion is control, and it should never be confused with honest faith; the two can be and often are worlds apart. When a man subscribes to a religion, he surrenders his own personal faith to be led by others. He allows the relationship between his heart and the universe to be directed by other men.

What a great leap of faith, indeed! A great show of faith in one's fellow man. Unfortunately, there exist men who are not deserving of this remarkable trust, and they are usually the men who find their way into positions of power.

Thoughts of Asia, India, Mongolian steppes. Questions of transprt romantic and lost. I keep wavering between bicycle, train, and truck. LONGING FOR A CARAVAN, A CENTAUR DREAM. A JOURNEY INDEPENDENT OF VOLATILE FUELS AND REGISTRATION PAPERS. IM A CENTURY OR TWO TOO LATE OR TOO EARLY. Someday we'll wander again dusty and slow. Someday we'll unfurl hempen sails. AIRPORTS ARE THE VERY WORST.... THATS NO INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE. THE LEAST ROMANTIC STATIONS I'VE EVER SEEN. MUCH TOO MUCH TOO CLEAN TOO FAST... BUT THE TRAINS ARE JUST RIGHT, TURN OUT THE LIGHTS AND WATCH THE WORLDS MOVIE. THE SOUNDTRACK IS YOUR OWN.


Now Reading: Ovids Metamorphoses, Jorge Luis Borges, "The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt"...
Now Hearing: Nina Simone, the oud, Sanaa, Toumani Diabate, Bill Laswell and Gigi. Shpongle's otherworldly sounds while passing slowly through the pyramid field... the birds of spring, the droning call to prayer, the raging force that is the wind on the coast of the Nile delta.

Barcelona

CATALONIA FOR A SPELL, NOT LONGER. I'M IN A NICE SHADED ATTIC APARTMENT IN AN OLD BUILDING. THE TOILET HAS CHARACTER AND THERES ONLY HOT WATER WITH AN ELABORATE RITUAL INVOLVING PUMPS AND DIALS, BUT ITS PRIVATE AND QUIET AND THERES A HUGE TERRACE WHERE I CAN CRAWL THE ROOFTOPS WITH THE SPANISH CATS. QUIET IS VERY IMPORTANT HERE, I AM OVERWHELMED BY THE LACK OF SILENCE IN THE CITY, SO I STAY UP ALL NIGHT AND SEEK IT. LIVING WITH A 1976 RHODES PIANO, IN NEED OF AN OVERHAUL BUT WITH THAT SOUND NONE THE LESS. MAY HAVE EVEN GOTTEN A PRESS PASS FOR THE SPANISH LIGA... WE'LL SEE. EXPLORING ALLEYS AND ABANDONED LOTS, GATHERING GIFTS FROM THE STREET, JUST FOUND A CLASSIC LITTLE OLIVETTI TYPEWRITER, ITALIAN STEEL. CASTLES ABOUND IN BARCELONA. THE ARCHITECTURE IS WILD and the women are strong.

There is magic here in this close city, and it manifests freely.

Paris, this beautiful, beautiful city
wasnt built so much as cared for
since her birth on an island
at the center of her nation
her literary stones and her painted tiles
have framed strange old bones and laughter, smiles
even sadness is pleasant in these streets
and poverty romantic

Paris is a woman with long grey hair
she is beautiful, kind, old and wise
a muse for so many,
with eyes alive, piercing
her walls of mystery
she has many secrets
in the shadows her history
lingers it lingers
where the blood of her lovers has painted the street
with her children's bones buried deep at her feet
so much she's seen
this grey stone queen
in the centuries since her birth within this land
yet at heart she is lithe like a dancing girl
with a dry red rose held light in hand

July 25, 2005

2005

New York City > Vienna
Vienna >> Augsburg, Germany
Augsburg >> Lago Di Garda, Italy
Lago Di Gardia >> Villefranche Sur Mer...
Villefranche sur mer....
Villefranche >> Alpes
Alpes...
Alpes >> Villefranche... Nice... Monaco
Villefranche >> Mezel...
Mezel... Castellane... Verdon...
Mezel > Alpes... Col De la Cayolle... Col de la Bonnette...
Mezel > Paris...
Paris...
Paris >> Mezel
Mezel >> Alpes >> Col D' Allos >> Mezel...
All over Haute Provence...
Mezel >> Montpelier
Montpelier...
Montpelier >> Barcelona...
Barcelona...
Barcelona >> Ibiza >> Formentera >> Ibiza
Ibiza >> Barcelona...
Barcelona >> Mallorca
Mallorca >> Barcelona
Barcelona >> Paris...
Paris...


2006

Paris >> Barcelona
Barcelona >> Villareal, Spain
Villareal >> Barcelona
Barcelona >> Frankfurt, Germany
Frankfurt >> Crimmitshau, Germany
Crimmitshau >> Rostock, Germany
Rostock >> Malmo,Sweden
Malmo...
Malmo >> Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen > Milan > Beirut, Lebanon
Beruit...
Beruit >> Cairo, Egypt
Cairo >> Saloum
Saloum >> Siwa Oasis...
Siwa...
Siwa Oasis >> Alexandria
Alexandria >> Cairo
Cairo >> Aswan...
Aswan >> Luxor
Luxor >> Cairo
Cairo...
Cairo >> Beruit
Beirut...
Beirut > Milan > Copenhagen > Malmo, Sweden
Malmo...
Malmo >> Svanholm, Denmark
Svanholm...
Svanholm >> Christiania, Copenhagen
Copenhagen >> Amsterdam
Amsterdam...
Amsterdam >> Barcelona
Barcelona >> Pyrennees
Pyrennees...
Pyrennees >> Barcelona
Barcelona...
Barcelona >> Paris >> Alpes de Haute Provence...
Alpes de Haute Provence...
French Alpes >> Italian Foothills
Damanhur...
Damanhur >> Paris
Paris...
Paris >> Fontainebleau >> Paris
Paris >> Amsterdam
Amsterdam...
Amsterdam >> Paris
Paris...
Paris >> Amsterdam
Amsterdam...

Amsterdam >> Malaga
Malaga >> Granada
Granada...
Granada >> Algerciras
Algeciras >> Ceuta
Ceuta >> Chefchaoene, Morocco
Chefchaoene, Morocco...
Chefchaoene >> Fes
Fes Medina...
Fes >> Moulay Idriss >> Volulibis >> Fes
Fes...
Fes >> Essaouira
Essaouira...
Essaouira >> Marrakech
Marrakech