Hey
I haven't put anything here in a while, which is ridiculous, because I started this in order to write every day. But not ridiculous, because I still do write every day, but most of those days I don't put it here, though some days I do, and then I take it down the next day, and then some days I think about putting something here, but don't because I have no internet at my house, which is really a philosophical issue when you boil it down...
Here is an article I just scribbled which will come out in the March issue of Be! Magazine. It's not very interesting and I recommend not reading it at all. I briefly considered calling it "Chilly Charity for Charred Children" but thought it in bad taste.
The Paddy Plunge:
Polar Dipping to Lend a Hand
For some people, charity is a way of giving to those who have less. For others, it is an unqualified love of all mankind. But for the participants of RiRa's annual "Paddy Plunge," charity is bee lining it down the strand, and charging headlong into the frigid North Atlantic water on St. Patrick's Day.
If you go out to east End beach this March 17th, you may catch seventy to a hundred of them sprinting their way towards the water --- you may even feel inclined to join in. Now I know what you're thinking. Words like hypothermia and trove of bally lunatics, and no doubt a few others are jumping quickly into your head. Add to that the fact that the ocean is even colder in early spring than in mid January, and the fact that they dove in last year in the midst of a raging Nor'Easter. But to them, there's no other good time quite like it. John Seymore, who has taken the plunge for the past four years, told me, "It's absolutely fun," Naomi Neville, general manager of RiRa added, "When you're running down the beach, you take off all your clothes and your adrenaline is carrying you through, and you feel warm. Afterwards, when the cold sets in you have to have people there who aren't jumping to help out, because your toes and your hands don't really work very well."
Naomi recalls the birth of the event. "The first year we were open, we were just looking for something to kick off Paddy's Day. It was five o'clock in the morning and we all had to be at work in an hour, so we just did it to get riled up for work on St. Paddy's Day. Afterwards, we were all like, 'Why did we just do that?' and so we figured we might as well find a good reason for doing it."
As you've guessed, the Paddy Plunge transcends simple thrill seeking. For the past four years, RiRa Irish Pub and the Shipyard Brewing Company have organized the event around raising thousands to finance a camp for children burn victims. The camp buses teens from all around the north eastern United States to Maine in the winter for a week of skiing, sledding, skating and general kid fun. Naomi remembers how this all began. "There have always been a lot of firemen who come to the pub, so we started talking about it with them. We just figured that jumping in the freezing ocean was the total opposite of the burn victims. I suppose it just came about that way." Since then, the Paddy Plunge has become the yearly event that raises the most money for the Burn Camp.
Dave Petrocelli, who runs the camp, says it's just a place for them to have a normal childhood experience. "Here, every kid there is facing the same challenge. So that means that at that camp, they're not facing those challenges, they're just kids. It's just being a kid, being at summer camp, and not having it be about the burns. It's about being a kid."
And the kids really are just like any other kids. "There was two or three kids that had been there for a couple of years, they were rooming with a couple of kids who hadn't, typical kids, there was the bullying thing going on. Two of us counselors went into the room, and we said, 'If you wanna pick on anybody, you need to pick on us. They're with you, and you need to teach them how to pick on the counselors, and how to stand up to the firemen, and how to cause problems and hopefully not get caught."
You can't work in that kind of environment and not be touched by it. Dave's experience working with the camps has had a deep impact on his whole life. "By getting involved with burn camps and burn survivors, I've met the woman of my dreams, and now we're raising two kids."
It's not just the polar dippers that are helping out either. Everywhere Dave Petrocelli goes, people seem to want to contribute what they can. From free lift tickets and ski rentals for the kids at the Camden snow bowl, to the Rockland fire department serving them lunch. All of this means that the kids families pay nothing to send them to the camp. Not even for the transportation to get them there. The divers each year are well aware, also, that they are doing this all to help someone out. "Knowing that there's a good cause makes me want to bring other people." But make no bones about it --- it's cold. Really, really cold. That's part of the excitement for the divers. "It's like you're being stuck by a billion tiny needles." But it won't deter them one bit. This year is expected to have the largest turnout yet. "Ultimately it's for charity. Jump in the ocean one day a year, it could be a world of difference for a child. It's absolutely fun. If you don't think it is, try it." And it doesn't hurt that the divers can go to RiRa afterwards for a full on, all day St. Paddy's celebration. As Seymore told me, and the other divers would no doubt agree, "The best Irish breakfast is a free Irish breakfast." When I asked Naomi what she would say to someone who might be a little queasy at the idea running down an ice coated beach into near freezing water, she just said, "Just try it, you know, it's helping out the kids. It takes five minutes to help them out, and it's really exciting." John Seymore agreed: "I recommend it to everybody. It's something everyone should do once. Or, once a year."
There is also and auction afterwards at RiRa to raise money for the charity as well. If you'd like to Plunge, you can contact RiRa Irish Pub. For more information, or to get in contact with the Burn Survivors Winter camp, you can visit www.MaineBurnSurvivors.org.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Growing Up as the Enemy in America
Dear reader,
This post is to notify you about something every self respecting decent person in our country should be acutely aware of. I remember my high school years clearly. I remember being yelled at for various breached and misdeeds. Things such as walking through the halls, eating my lunch on the lawn. Leaving class before the bell rang, when everyone was standing around waiting for the bell to ring. I was continually made aware of how little respect the authorities of the school had for any of the children going there. But this post is not to tell you about me. It is to talk about an attitude in America that treats children, as a recent article in Mother Jones Magazine puts it, as enemy combatants, reminiscent of Abu Graihb or Guantanamo Bay. It is not incidental that the United States public school system is based directly on the prison system, nor that for-profit prisons are now one of the most lucrative businesses in the world.
A School in Eastern Massachusetts called the Judge Rottenberg Center is the most extreme case of this idea. The 'school' boasts itself as a radical behavior modification program for children with extreme problems. Initially, the school was tailored to severely autistic and mentally retarded children. In recent years, it has expanded its program to include poorly behaved and violent teens who are not accepted anywhere else. These teens are usually from the inner cities, and thought the actual racial breakdown is unknown to me, the students I have heard referred to all have names like Luigi, Rolando, etc. This also, has never been incidental iwhen we look at mistreated people, people who get the brunt of the 'education system.'
The Rottenberg Center's methods are based generally on the idea of Pavlov's Dogs. Combinations of positive reinforcement and negative, (usually negative in Rottenberg's case) are used to modify inappropriate behaviors. The school uses varied methods to turn children away from bad behaviors: electric shocks, 'white noise helmets', pinching, muscle squeezing, strapping them face down on a bed, spread eagle for hours, and in extreme cases, days at a time, depriving them of proper meals, and forcing them to inhale ammonia fumes when they act inappropriately. The definition of inappropriate action is loose at Rottenberg. It can range anywhere from violent outbursts, to asking for a tissue. Mentally retarded students are inflicted with acute pain for chewing on themselves, banging their heads against the floor, etc. Nagging and complaining often result in acute electrocutions that leave former students with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Not uncommonly, the school's graduates wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, dreaming about electricity coursing through their bodies. While the school bills itself as a place for psychological treatment, yet to this day, none to the Rottenberg school's treatments have been proven by science to work at all. No psychotherapy is administered to it's students. They are not allowed to speak about their experience, express their emotions, or socialize with other students.
The same tactics are applied to their staff, who can be fired for failing to electrocute a student when the school's mastermind, Matthew Israel, has deemed it necessary. Staff are prohibited from socializing at work or expressing concern to one another about the treatment, and are monitored at all times by video camera to ensure their compliance. At times, one staff member will be forced to ask another about misgivings, in front of a video camera, and if the confronted employee does not respond as they should, they are immediately fired.
There have been several incidents which have led to the school being embroiled in lawsuits; in one case, a student who was strapped face down on a bed for days, while wearing a 'white noise helmet' and being repeatedly electrocuted, died after having a seizure. In another case, a student began screaming and complaining, and as a result was repeatedly pinched on the soles of her feet and forced to inhale ammonia to stop her negative outbursts. They later found that the students outbursts were caused by pain she was suffering from a perforated stomach, which she died of later that evening. In one case, a student was ordered to place his hands on a paddle, and when he removed his hands was automatically electrocuted once every second that his hands were not in contact with the paddle. He was shocked a total of about 5000 times that day. The school's founder and director, Dr. Matthew Israel, noted that "in that case, the treatment didn't seem to be working."
These lawsuits against the school have brought not litigation against the use of painful and inhumane punishments. Possibly coinciding with the school's tremendous profitability (it costs the state $220,000.00 a year per student) the school's lawyers have each time had charges thrown out, and in one case, the Chair of the Massachusetts board of Special Education lost his job for bringing the charges at all.
The Rottenberg school, while advertising itself to parents as place to treat their children psychologically, has no Therapy program for the students. Beyond this, there is no investigation into the specific causes of each students misbehavior, into the events in their past which might trigger them to act out violently, and all in all the schools therapy program is one-size fits all. One graduate later found himself in jail for drug abuse, and noted that jail was a walk in the park by comparison to the Rottenberg School. Yet Matthew Israel maintains that a part of his interest is to create a Utopian society. In my view, it would not be to rash to say that someone should modify Matthew Israel's beavior with a radical new treatment: life deprivation.
For more information
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/school_of_shock.html
This post is to notify you about something every self respecting decent person in our country should be acutely aware of. I remember my high school years clearly. I remember being yelled at for various breached and misdeeds. Things such as walking through the halls, eating my lunch on the lawn. Leaving class before the bell rang, when everyone was standing around waiting for the bell to ring. I was continually made aware of how little respect the authorities of the school had for any of the children going there. But this post is not to tell you about me. It is to talk about an attitude in America that treats children, as a recent article in Mother Jones Magazine puts it, as enemy combatants, reminiscent of Abu Graihb or Guantanamo Bay. It is not incidental that the United States public school system is based directly on the prison system, nor that for-profit prisons are now one of the most lucrative businesses in the world.
A School in Eastern Massachusetts called the Judge Rottenberg Center is the most extreme case of this idea. The 'school' boasts itself as a radical behavior modification program for children with extreme problems. Initially, the school was tailored to severely autistic and mentally retarded children. In recent years, it has expanded its program to include poorly behaved and violent teens who are not accepted anywhere else. These teens are usually from the inner cities, and thought the actual racial breakdown is unknown to me, the students I have heard referred to all have names like Luigi, Rolando, etc. This also, has never been incidental iwhen we look at mistreated people, people who get the brunt of the 'education system.'
The Rottenberg Center's methods are based generally on the idea of Pavlov's Dogs. Combinations of positive reinforcement and negative, (usually negative in Rottenberg's case) are used to modify inappropriate behaviors. The school uses varied methods to turn children away from bad behaviors: electric shocks, 'white noise helmets', pinching, muscle squeezing, strapping them face down on a bed, spread eagle for hours, and in extreme cases, days at a time, depriving them of proper meals, and forcing them to inhale ammonia fumes when they act inappropriately. The definition of inappropriate action is loose at Rottenberg. It can range anywhere from violent outbursts, to asking for a tissue. Mentally retarded students are inflicted with acute pain for chewing on themselves, banging their heads against the floor, etc. Nagging and complaining often result in acute electrocutions that leave former students with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Not uncommonly, the school's graduates wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, dreaming about electricity coursing through their bodies. While the school bills itself as a place for psychological treatment, yet to this day, none to the Rottenberg school's treatments have been proven by science to work at all. No psychotherapy is administered to it's students. They are not allowed to speak about their experience, express their emotions, or socialize with other students.
The same tactics are applied to their staff, who can be fired for failing to electrocute a student when the school's mastermind, Matthew Israel, has deemed it necessary. Staff are prohibited from socializing at work or expressing concern to one another about the treatment, and are monitored at all times by video camera to ensure their compliance. At times, one staff member will be forced to ask another about misgivings, in front of a video camera, and if the confronted employee does not respond as they should, they are immediately fired.
There have been several incidents which have led to the school being embroiled in lawsuits; in one case, a student who was strapped face down on a bed for days, while wearing a 'white noise helmet' and being repeatedly electrocuted, died after having a seizure. In another case, a student began screaming and complaining, and as a result was repeatedly pinched on the soles of her feet and forced to inhale ammonia to stop her negative outbursts. They later found that the students outbursts were caused by pain she was suffering from a perforated stomach, which she died of later that evening. In one case, a student was ordered to place his hands on a paddle, and when he removed his hands was automatically electrocuted once every second that his hands were not in contact with the paddle. He was shocked a total of about 5000 times that day. The school's founder and director, Dr. Matthew Israel, noted that "in that case, the treatment didn't seem to be working."
These lawsuits against the school have brought not litigation against the use of painful and inhumane punishments. Possibly coinciding with the school's tremendous profitability (it costs the state $220,000.00 a year per student) the school's lawyers have each time had charges thrown out, and in one case, the Chair of the Massachusetts board of Special Education lost his job for bringing the charges at all.
The Rottenberg school, while advertising itself to parents as place to treat their children psychologically, has no Therapy program for the students. Beyond this, there is no investigation into the specific causes of each students misbehavior, into the events in their past which might trigger them to act out violently, and all in all the schools therapy program is one-size fits all. One graduate later found himself in jail for drug abuse, and noted that jail was a walk in the park by comparison to the Rottenberg School. Yet Matthew Israel maintains that a part of his interest is to create a Utopian society. In my view, it would not be to rash to say that someone should modify Matthew Israel's beavior with a radical new treatment: life deprivation.
For more information
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/school_of_shock.html
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Death and Babysitters
This is a few excerpts from Pema Chodron's writing. I wrote a lengthy analysis on how this relates to Jesus, and I believe it does on a deeper level than most things I've heard, but I had a great deal of difficulty putting it into clear and meaningful language for you, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions instead:
“Nontheism [as opposed to atheism] is finally realizing that there’s no babysitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it’s not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.
This is where renunciation enters the picture—renunciation of the hope that our experience could be different, renunciation of the hope that we could be better. The Buddhist monastic rules that advise renouncing liquor, renouncing sex, and so on, are not pointing out that those things are inherently bad or immoral, but that we use them as babysitters. We use them as a way to escape; we use them to try to get comfort and distract ourselves. The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something.
Renunciation is a teaching to inspire us to investigate what’s happening every time we grab something because we can’t stand to face what’s coming.
All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reasons for hoping that our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. Fear of death is always in the background. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, life is like getting into a boat that’s just about to sail out to sea and sink. Bu it’s very hard—no matter how much we hear about it—to believe in our own death. We don’t go so far as to say, “No way, I’m not going to die,” because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later. That’s the biggest hope.
Trungpa Rinposhe once delivered a lecture entitled “Death in Everyday Life.” We are raised in a culture which fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of dissapointment, of things not always working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life.
Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out. As the years go on, we don’t call the babysitter quite so fast.”
“Nontheism [as opposed to atheism] is finally realizing that there’s no babysitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it’s not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.
This is where renunciation enters the picture—renunciation of the hope that our experience could be different, renunciation of the hope that we could be better. The Buddhist monastic rules that advise renouncing liquor, renouncing sex, and so on, are not pointing out that those things are inherently bad or immoral, but that we use them as babysitters. We use them as a way to escape; we use them to try to get comfort and distract ourselves. The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something.
Renunciation is a teaching to inspire us to investigate what’s happening every time we grab something because we can’t stand to face what’s coming.
All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reasons for hoping that our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. Fear of death is always in the background. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, life is like getting into a boat that’s just about to sail out to sea and sink. Bu it’s very hard—no matter how much we hear about it—to believe in our own death. We don’t go so far as to say, “No way, I’m not going to die,” because of course we know that we are. But it definitely will be later. That’s the biggest hope.
Trungpa Rinposhe once delivered a lecture entitled “Death in Everyday Life.” We are raised in a culture which fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of dissapointment, of things not always working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life.
Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out. As the years go on, we don’t call the babysitter quite so fast.”
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The New American Empire
President George W. Bush maintains that we're 'kickin' ass' in Iraq while thousands of other people die for an idea he can't admit was wrong, and won't stick his own neck out for. Why don't we send the suits to war? They're the ones who want it so bad. Regardless of General Patreus's testimony that we are seeing military success and moving closer to reaching coalition military goals, these are just that, military goals, and do not speak largely to the overall situation in Iraq. It was stated, among a slew of other half truths by the crooked smirks of our country's administration, that our overall goal was a self governing and free Iraq. This implies that the Iraqis would be free to choose their own government, and that the Iraqi people would be autonomous over their own country, without the rule of despots or occupying foreign nations. Yet today, seventy nine percent of Iraqis disapprove of the presence of American troops, while fifty seven percent call attacks on American soldiers 'acceptible.' And still we hear the languid cries of 'stick with it' emanating from the whitehouse. It seems to me that this absolute lack of responsiveness to the wishes of Iraqi civilians flies entirely in the face of the idea that we were ever there to create a free and independent Iraq. It exposes yet another lie by a group of people who have created a situation to which there is no good way out, and have done so with repeated lies and slanders in the name of the American people. George W. Bush is a textbook war criminal, and a menace to the national security of the United States.
This from 'The Carpetbagger Report' as of September 10, 2007:
"Seventy-nine percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition forces in the country, essentially unchanged from last winter — including more than eight in 10 Shiites and nearly all Sunni Arabs. (Seven in 10 Kurds, by contrast, still support the presence of these forces.)
Similarly, 80 percent of Iraqis disapprove of the way U.S. and other coalition forces have performed in Iraq; the only change has been an increase in negative ratings of the U.S. performance among Kurds. And 86 percent of Iraqis express little or no confidence in U.S. and U.K. forces, similar to last winter and again up among Kurds.
Accusations of mistreatment continue: Forty-one percent of Iraqis in this poll (vs. 44 percent in March) report unnecessary violence against Iraqi citizens by U.S. or coalition forces. That peaks at 63 percent among Sunni Arabs, and 66 percent in Sunni-dominated Anbar.
This disapproval rises to an endorsement of violence: Fifty-seven percent of Iraqis now call attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” up six points from last winter and more than three times its level (17 percent) in February 2004. Since March, acceptability of such attacks has risen by 15 points among Shiites (from 35 percent to 50 percent), while remaining near-unanimous among Sunnis (93 percent)."
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Over the Pond
Hey, all
I realize I posted a 'more to come' at the end of the last post, and there will be, but it will take a while, because I will be perambulating the gorsebushes of Caledonia for the next three weeks. I'm going to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest theater festival in the world. I designed the set for "A Thousand Cranes" which will be going up on Sunday. Check it out at www.edfringe.com or at www.psfilms.org! Have a good three weeks. I will!
I realize I posted a 'more to come' at the end of the last post, and there will be, but it will take a while, because I will be perambulating the gorsebushes of Caledonia for the next three weeks. I'm going to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest theater festival in the world. I designed the set for "A Thousand Cranes" which will be going up on Sunday. Check it out at www.edfringe.com or at www.psfilms.org! Have a good three weeks. I will!
Monday, August 6, 2007
Why Iraq? Why Iran?
American Mideast relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries:
A country song blares over the radio in the year two thousand and six, sung by a man who undoubtedly has little more ‘country’ in him than an oil baron sucking a stoagie in downtown Dallas. “Have you forgotten how you felt that day?” he sings. He refers to the fateful day of 9/11, and refrains, “You can bet the soldiers in Iraq know what they’re fighting for.” And this is a typical understanding of the American intervention in the Middle East. That we are there to prevent further terrorism and defend freedom. That we are there to establish democratic governments and aid the Arab peoples in becoming free, peaceful sustainable societies. It is an unfortunate misunderstanding that so many Americans believe that our invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11, or that the two were even closely related. This idea is false. Robert Kagan, director for the “Project for a New American Century wrote in 1998 that “Any sustained bombing and missile campaign should be part of an overall political-military strategy aimed at removing Saddam from power.” General Colin Powell stated some time after Saddam Hussein had been deposed that Saddam had no clear ties to terrorism. But to retort the overconfidence of the country singer I heard on the radio the other day, and more importantly this commonly held and incorrect idea, I would like to address the question of why the American military currently occupies Iraq. What are we fighting for? Some would say oil, but even this is to simplistic and singular a reason, though it may contribute to the fact. The real reason that the American military’s presence in the Middle East tops the front of newspapers dates much farther back.
This follows the recent discovery of oil in western Persia (Iran) in 1908. Around this discovery, Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed but soon ran into financial difficulty around the problem of transporting oil from the site to the west. In 1914, just before the start of the First World War, Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill proposed a bill to the British Parliament to buy 51 percent of the floundering Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Anglo-Persian Oil was owned by the British government. In 1916, two diplomats, from Britain and France met and formed the Sykes Picot Agreement, stating that the former Ottoman Empire which had reigned since the sixteen hundreds, and which had been allied with Kaiser Wilhelm, should be divided as spoils among the victors. Modern day Iraq belonged to Britain, and the boundaries set up by them remain more or less the same to this day. The Sykes Picot Agreement states:
"That Great Britain has the right to build, administer, and be sole owner of a railway connecting Haifa with area (B) ... this railway is to facilitate the connexion of Baghdad with Haifa by rail ... There shall be no interior customs barriers between any of the above-mentioned areas."
Now there was a was to get it out, free of Tarriffs, no less. They could supply their battleships and transport vehicles with as much oil as they needed.
However, the Sykes Picot Agreement went against the promise that Britain had made to the Arab peoples for a free and independent Arabia in return for fighting alongside them in the war. Following this agreement, the land which had once been seated at the head of the world for hundreds of year in math, science, government, equality, humanitarian issues and even basic cleanliness was now once again in the hands of foreign colonialists.
In 1917, Anglo-Persian Oil began trading under the name British Petroleum; the name it still holds to this day. During this period following the war, Britain made several attempts to turn Persia into a weak protectorate, or even a territory of the UK. Throughout, it held soul ownership of the Iranian oilfields. Compounding the difficulties of the Iranian people, they were under the brutal dictatorship of the western supported Shahs, who used Savak secret police to kill and torture dissenters. By 1951, the government of Iran had lost so much credence due to allowing the British to take such liberties with their oil, the a coup occurred and Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was elected as Prime Minister. He immediately nationalized Iran’s oil fields and dissolved the agreement held since 1908 with Brittish Petroleum. Under his government, free press began to emerge, and the tactics of crushing dissent during the former regime ceased. In 1953, however, responding to the nationalizing of Iran’s oil fields, the British government and the CIA under Eisenhower staged a coup d’etat to overthrow the democracy in Iran (Operation AJAX) and reinstate the inhumane but western friendly Shah and regain control of the oil fields. The Iranian people did not respond well. Having already tasted freedom, they did not take well to a brutal United States imposed dictator.
"The monarchy was toppled in Iran on February 11th, 1979 (22nd day of Bahman 1357, Persian calendar). Savak dissolved and the Iranian people, along with the political prisoners, tasted the blossoms of freedom (Bahar-e Azadi) for a few months. The banned and forbidden newspapers, magazines, and books started re-publishing until the religious dictatorship took place and then Savama was created that resembled Savak in different forms of oppression."
More to come.
A country song blares over the radio in the year two thousand and six, sung by a man who undoubtedly has little more ‘country’ in him than an oil baron sucking a stoagie in downtown Dallas. “Have you forgotten how you felt that day?” he sings. He refers to the fateful day of 9/11, and refrains, “You can bet the soldiers in Iraq know what they’re fighting for.” And this is a typical understanding of the American intervention in the Middle East. That we are there to prevent further terrorism and defend freedom. That we are there to establish democratic governments and aid the Arab peoples in becoming free, peaceful sustainable societies. It is an unfortunate misunderstanding that so many Americans believe that our invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11, or that the two were even closely related. This idea is false. Robert Kagan, director for the “Project for a New American Century wrote in 1998 that “Any sustained bombing and missile campaign should be part of an overall political-military strategy aimed at removing Saddam from power.” General Colin Powell stated some time after Saddam Hussein had been deposed that Saddam had no clear ties to terrorism. But to retort the overconfidence of the country singer I heard on the radio the other day, and more importantly this commonly held and incorrect idea, I would like to address the question of why the American military currently occupies Iraq. What are we fighting for? Some would say oil, but even this is to simplistic and singular a reason, though it may contribute to the fact. The real reason that the American military’s presence in the Middle East tops the front of newspapers dates much farther back.
This follows the recent discovery of oil in western Persia (Iran) in 1908. Around this discovery, Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed but soon ran into financial difficulty around the problem of transporting oil from the site to the west. In 1914, just before the start of the First World War, Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill proposed a bill to the British Parliament to buy 51 percent of the floundering Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Anglo-Persian Oil was owned by the British government. In 1916, two diplomats, from Britain and France met and formed the Sykes Picot Agreement, stating that the former Ottoman Empire which had reigned since the sixteen hundreds, and which had been allied with Kaiser Wilhelm, should be divided as spoils among the victors. Modern day Iraq belonged to Britain, and the boundaries set up by them remain more or less the same to this day. The Sykes Picot Agreement states:
"That Great Britain has the right to build, administer, and be sole owner of a railway connecting Haifa with area (B) ... this railway is to facilitate the connexion of Baghdad with Haifa by rail ... There shall be no interior customs barriers between any of the above-mentioned areas."
Now there was a was to get it out, free of Tarriffs, no less. They could supply their battleships and transport vehicles with as much oil as they needed.
However, the Sykes Picot Agreement went against the promise that Britain had made to the Arab peoples for a free and independent Arabia in return for fighting alongside them in the war. Following this agreement, the land which had once been seated at the head of the world for hundreds of year in math, science, government, equality, humanitarian issues and even basic cleanliness was now once again in the hands of foreign colonialists.
In 1917, Anglo-Persian Oil began trading under the name British Petroleum; the name it still holds to this day. During this period following the war, Britain made several attempts to turn Persia into a weak protectorate, or even a territory of the UK. Throughout, it held soul ownership of the Iranian oilfields. Compounding the difficulties of the Iranian people, they were under the brutal dictatorship of the western supported Shahs, who used Savak secret police to kill and torture dissenters. By 1951, the government of Iran had lost so much credence due to allowing the British to take such liberties with their oil, the a coup occurred and Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was elected as Prime Minister. He immediately nationalized Iran’s oil fields and dissolved the agreement held since 1908 with Brittish Petroleum. Under his government, free press began to emerge, and the tactics of crushing dissent during the former regime ceased. In 1953, however, responding to the nationalizing of Iran’s oil fields, the British government and the CIA under Eisenhower staged a coup d’etat to overthrow the democracy in Iran (Operation AJAX) and reinstate the inhumane but western friendly Shah and regain control of the oil fields. The Iranian people did not respond well. Having already tasted freedom, they did not take well to a brutal United States imposed dictator.
"The monarchy was toppled in Iran on February 11th, 1979 (22nd day of Bahman 1357, Persian calendar). Savak dissolved and the Iranian people, along with the political prisoners, tasted the blossoms of freedom (Bahar-e Azadi) for a few months. The banned and forbidden newspapers, magazines, and books started re-publishing until the religious dictatorship took place and then Savama was created that resembled Savak in different forms of oppression."
More to come.
Friday, July 6, 2007
France, Oil and My Friend Nathan
My friend Nathan left for France a couple months ago to stay for a year. He's been living and working on an organic farm there, in trade for food and lodging. I spoke to him on the phone today for the first time since he left. Aparently he's decided he's not coming back, and judging by how it looks in the pictures he posts, I can't really blame him. We talked for a while today about the way the infrastructure in France is run as opposed to the way it is run here. Very interesting. Gas prices in France are about double what they are here. Not surprising, since our gas is so heavily subsidized; about the only thing our government seems to subsidize. Nobody in France owns an SUV. If we had to pay what gas really costs, nobody ehre would either, let alone a Hummer. The interesting thing is that the value of the dollar is so linked with the price of gas, that they are nearly interchangeable. Five out of eight of the OPEC nations trade their gas with the dollar. The rising price of gasoline we experience here in the states is only a foretaste of things to come. The amount of oil that is contained under the earth's crust is over half depleted now. This has happened within a hundred years. Which means that since we weren't consuming oil at nearly half the rate we are now a hundred years ago, we have much less than that amount of time before we run out. Not only this, but the supply of oil in relation to the value of oil is shifting. More and more nations in Europe are moving their way toward become oil independent to avoid rampant economic crisis, or worse, considering the amount of things we use oil to run. America's best guess is the Prius. So oil may be entirely gone in about fifty years, tops. Probably less. Even given this, though, being that the value of the dollar is so linked to oil, the fact that the oil market will inevitably begin to tank long before the oil is actually entirely gone, there is a more immanent economic crisis facing the United States in particular. Our money all around is facing the kind of inflation worse than there was in the great depression. Not to mention the humongous debt Americans hold to other countries. Let alone the national debt of six trillion dollars, the average American is in debt for car payments, mortgages, student loans, small business loans, etc. that amount to a figure which towers over even that. This is not so in other countries, and it translates to the fact that when the value of the dollar declines sharply due to the tanking oil industry, no one will be able to pay off their debt. For me personally, the amount of debt I have in student loans alone is over twenty times everything I own. In short, this is all due to the fact that we want whatever we want and we want it now: a motto which was not all that sustainable to begin with, but which will not work at all whatsoever in the coming years, when no one will be giving loans to Americans at all, because they know they won't be able to pay them back. People's retirement funds run a high risk here, not to mention plastics production: if you are reading this a a computer, how much of that computer do you think is made out of plastic? When you go to the hospital, when you drink out of a soda bottle, wherever you go, how much plastic is involved in supporting our basic infrastructure? If there is no oil, there is no plastic either. And the gung ho, take whatever we need mentality we have, embodied most visibly in the current American administration, is directly to blame for it. If I may digress for a sec: George W Bush is a liar and a thief. There, I said it. And shame on you America for blindly following him. If we had paid any attention at all to the rest of the world, we would have seen that the supplies we import from them, which run our whole society, are running out, and the extortionist practices we use to get them cheaply have offended a world to which we are deeply financially indebted. But we don't pay attention. This was and is the main reason for the Iraq war. A last crazed attempt to keep our heads above water, and we should have known it all along. I am not ranting. I am putting this mildly. Pay some more attention America, please.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Les collines de la campagne Francais
Ici est un photo de la Campagne de France, ou mon ami Nathan maintenant est faire un tour a bicyclette. Voici plus photos de ses voyage a la site internet Flickr.
Acts of Prayer, Acts of Love
Action is a strange thing. Doing, being, speaking, living, loving, these are all 'action words,' as my first grade teacher informed me. I have noticed many things about Christianity and it's relationship to action. Nate recently Posted a comment about prayer thought that got me thinking about this in different ways. He postulates that prayer which uses cliche and hackneyed terminology is often not really praying at all. The terminology he speaks of is often one of my greatest turn-offs in going to church.
Another friend of mine and I were recently talking about love in a similar way. He was telling me that he has begun to realize that when he meets someone, or is friends with someone who is making choices which he takes moral issue with, he speaks to them in the vein of attempting to correct them. Trying to make them see the error of their ways, trying to help them understand what they should be doing. He realized recently that this is not loving at all. It is placing certain aspects of them on the level of acceptable, and rejecting others. This is not loving someone, it is disassembling them, and not seeing them as a whole person.
how do these to things relate? When we pray, or if we are speaking as prayer, but our prayer is not "truthful," then the biggest reason I can see for this is that we are not choosing our actions well; choosing them at all. Prayer is in and of itself an action, but is that action does not correspond to the words in the prayer, then we are not praying. The biggest reason for this I think is habit. Addiction might be an even more apt word. I define addiction as one or both of the following things:
1. A behavior which "wields" a person, instead of the other way around, as in: our actions are in control of us rather than us controlling them.
~or~
2. Having, (partaking in, consuming) the world for the sake of our experience of it, and because we are in some way gratified by that experience, rather than allowing our experience to point us to the truths of the world. Our experience of the world becomes paramount, rather than what the world is.
I think people speak what they would call 'prayers,' or interact with each other in ways that they would qualify as 'love,' for both of these reasons.
This is part of a very long and ongoing thought process for me. As of right now, it speaks to problems I see in the church. But in connection with this, it also speaks to problems I see in the way in which people criticize the church. This is so because the real issue that I perceive to be causing problems is a consistent and severe lack of conscious choice of our actions. To illustrate how severe I think this is, I place certain aspects of this behavior on par with such things as looking at a person's body for the sake of your own sexual arousal and not giving a lick of thought to who that person is, but only because you are desiring the feeling of sexual arousal. These actions are not committed consciously, but we continue to do them because our brains know that the feeling of these things is gratifying in some way, but we have ceased to understand or pay attention to what is actually going on, and therefor have lost our ability to make choices about what we are doing. We are addicted. This is exactly what I think is going on in the church, with its prayerless prayers, and its loveless love.
Only part of the time I grew up did I attend church with any regularity. I remember feeling very much that I was in contact with something very vast and beautiful, but the time came when I realized that most people there were not having that experience, and what was more, would have thought it ridiculous had I spoken of it to them. Perhaps because in the pattern of behavior that was using them, these things were not common. I think they could tell, as well, because at times, I would say hello to them after the services, and they would glare at me like a 'hethen faggot,' who did not understand their religion of 'love.'
Many years later, I noticed, in reading the book of John, that it didn't really say any of the things they had told me it said. I felt at once the feeling of disillusionment, and a sense of joy entwined with the fact that there really was someone, somewhere, who not only said things like love your enemies, love your neighbor as yourself, and so forth, but actually did so, in the same breath. It was never this, "we should love everyone, at the earliest possible convenience, and with the fervor and conviction that they are exactly the same as us." Christian wars that have been fought (Northern Ireland, for example,) have been less about religion and far more about identity. In the same way, I deeply question whether the bible belt has any interest at all in the bible, but in an idea of who they are, how they are defined as a group of people. The realness of their identity depends on the realness of their religion, and the realness of what anyone believes is highly contingent on those around them believing the same thing, and therefor, their identity, drawn from the corporate identity of their culture, is highly contingent on me and you and everyone we know believing exactly what they do. This is the deepest kind of unlove and hypocrisy I know. But as for a nation which has been and is still called by some a Christian nation, there are very little conscious choices made to act with love. Act in the sense of basing your decisions around it because it is most important. We sometimes base our decisions around it secondarily, but not primarily. And we are terribly afraid of breaking this cycle, and rightly so, because if we actually began to remotely try to act the way we are commanded to by Yeshua, it would uproot every single thing we have based our lives in thus far. We do not try to do it, because we honestly do not believe the promises Yeshua makes us. For Paul and Barnabas, for example, they took no issue with owning nothing, living on the charity of others, and having no continuous home, because they believed the promises made to them that Yeshua would come and walk with them wherever they went. There was nothing more enticing than this prospect, and so they left everything. We are hard pressed to give a bum a dollar, and think ourselves extra spectacular when we do. It is not that everyone must leave their homes and give up everything else for this one thing, yet, at the same time, it is exactly that, or to understand that this one thing is more important than all the rest, and to remove all which distracts us from it. To act without hesitation when Yeshua tells us what we must do next, and to not turn away because it is uncomfortable, and because what is asked does not fall neatly in line with the rest of our habits which we don't like to think about (to the extant that we barely any longer realize their existence). If the church is floundering, and if the spirit of God does not move in it, it may be because one too many times it said "Lord, we will do whatever you ask!" and received a very clear and simple answer. "Be like Yeshua. Love everyone. Without condition, and without regret. Above all else." And one too many times, the church replied, "Lord, is that what you really meant?"
Another friend of mine and I were recently talking about love in a similar way. He was telling me that he has begun to realize that when he meets someone, or is friends with someone who is making choices which he takes moral issue with, he speaks to them in the vein of attempting to correct them. Trying to make them see the error of their ways, trying to help them understand what they should be doing. He realized recently that this is not loving at all. It is placing certain aspects of them on the level of acceptable, and rejecting others. This is not loving someone, it is disassembling them, and not seeing them as a whole person.
how do these to things relate? When we pray, or if we are speaking as prayer, but our prayer is not "truthful," then the biggest reason I can see for this is that we are not choosing our actions well; choosing them at all. Prayer is in and of itself an action, but is that action does not correspond to the words in the prayer, then we are not praying. The biggest reason for this I think is habit. Addiction might be an even more apt word. I define addiction as one or both of the following things:
1. A behavior which "wields" a person, instead of the other way around, as in: our actions are in control of us rather than us controlling them.
~or~
2. Having, (partaking in, consuming) the world for the sake of our experience of it, and because we are in some way gratified by that experience, rather than allowing our experience to point us to the truths of the world. Our experience of the world becomes paramount, rather than what the world is.
I think people speak what they would call 'prayers,' or interact with each other in ways that they would qualify as 'love,' for both of these reasons.
This is part of a very long and ongoing thought process for me. As of right now, it speaks to problems I see in the church. But in connection with this, it also speaks to problems I see in the way in which people criticize the church. This is so because the real issue that I perceive to be causing problems is a consistent and severe lack of conscious choice of our actions. To illustrate how severe I think this is, I place certain aspects of this behavior on par with such things as looking at a person's body for the sake of your own sexual arousal and not giving a lick of thought to who that person is, but only because you are desiring the feeling of sexual arousal. These actions are not committed consciously, but we continue to do them because our brains know that the feeling of these things is gratifying in some way, but we have ceased to understand or pay attention to what is actually going on, and therefor have lost our ability to make choices about what we are doing. We are addicted. This is exactly what I think is going on in the church, with its prayerless prayers, and its loveless love.
Only part of the time I grew up did I attend church with any regularity. I remember feeling very much that I was in contact with something very vast and beautiful, but the time came when I realized that most people there were not having that experience, and what was more, would have thought it ridiculous had I spoken of it to them. Perhaps because in the pattern of behavior that was using them, these things were not common. I think they could tell, as well, because at times, I would say hello to them after the services, and they would glare at me like a 'hethen faggot,' who did not understand their religion of 'love.'
Many years later, I noticed, in reading the book of John, that it didn't really say any of the things they had told me it said. I felt at once the feeling of disillusionment, and a sense of joy entwined with the fact that there really was someone, somewhere, who not only said things like love your enemies, love your neighbor as yourself, and so forth, but actually did so, in the same breath. It was never this, "we should love everyone, at the earliest possible convenience, and with the fervor and conviction that they are exactly the same as us." Christian wars that have been fought (Northern Ireland, for example,) have been less about religion and far more about identity. In the same way, I deeply question whether the bible belt has any interest at all in the bible, but in an idea of who they are, how they are defined as a group of people. The realness of their identity depends on the realness of their religion, and the realness of what anyone believes is highly contingent on those around them believing the same thing, and therefor, their identity, drawn from the corporate identity of their culture, is highly contingent on me and you and everyone we know believing exactly what they do. This is the deepest kind of unlove and hypocrisy I know. But as for a nation which has been and is still called by some a Christian nation, there are very little conscious choices made to act with love. Act in the sense of basing your decisions around it because it is most important. We sometimes base our decisions around it secondarily, but not primarily. And we are terribly afraid of breaking this cycle, and rightly so, because if we actually began to remotely try to act the way we are commanded to by Yeshua, it would uproot every single thing we have based our lives in thus far. We do not try to do it, because we honestly do not believe the promises Yeshua makes us. For Paul and Barnabas, for example, they took no issue with owning nothing, living on the charity of others, and having no continuous home, because they believed the promises made to them that Yeshua would come and walk with them wherever they went. There was nothing more enticing than this prospect, and so they left everything. We are hard pressed to give a bum a dollar, and think ourselves extra spectacular when we do. It is not that everyone must leave their homes and give up everything else for this one thing, yet, at the same time, it is exactly that, or to understand that this one thing is more important than all the rest, and to remove all which distracts us from it. To act without hesitation when Yeshua tells us what we must do next, and to not turn away because it is uncomfortable, and because what is asked does not fall neatly in line with the rest of our habits which we don't like to think about (to the extant that we barely any longer realize their existence). If the church is floundering, and if the spirit of God does not move in it, it may be because one too many times it said "Lord, we will do whatever you ask!" and received a very clear and simple answer. "Be like Yeshua. Love everyone. Without condition, and without regret. Above all else." And one too many times, the church replied, "Lord, is that what you really meant?"
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Nathan en la France, pour un anee.
My friend Nathan arrived in France on Monday, where he will be spending a year biking, farming, and imbibing large amounts of French wine. He has a photo share acount, and anybody who wishes, can go and see his pictures of France at Flickr.com. He'd like to tell you all that "j`ai été une bonne opportunité de parle français, et je pense que je deviens parler avec fluidité."
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
I live in paradise
The place I live in is the only place I've ever found where the world I see outside me reflects the world in my mind. These images don't even come close to doing it justice.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
New Git Gets my Gizzard Goin Great Guns!
I just bought a new Guitar. Not sure about a name for her yet, but I'm thinking of Tirnanogue, after an Irish myth about a woman who turned into a horse. (I think) Here's a picture of a different one, but same model, and pretty similar:
Tirnanogue and I have been getting along quite well thus far. I spent all day yesterday strumming her, and came up with some mystical melodies. Now I just need some people to jam with, and I'll be set.
Tirnanogue and I have been getting along quite well thus far. I spent all day yesterday strumming her, and came up with some mystical melodies. Now I just need some people to jam with, and I'll be set.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Shrine, Temple, Sanctuary...
I am having a debacle of wording.
Thank you Nate and Flyawaynet for your comments on the last post. Even the nitpicky ones help. Actually, I especially like nitpicky comments, Flywayanet; being out of school opens up a whole new set of possibilities, but I loose the commentary of the other students on my work. I am very much a perfectionist when it comes to making art, and so I like it when people really tell me exactly what they think, or get into little details.
So I have another question to pose:
When I was driving the other night through the woods with a friend of mine, I was watching the landscape go by and admiring it. The word 'shrine' suddenly popped into my head. I have always been sort of fascinated by old forms of functional art; religious or otherwise, and the idea of a shrine suddenly slunk its nearly obselete way into my consciousness. In Mexico there are little shrines everywhere. To different saints or places people died on the side of the highway. At this moment, I was thinking of a shrine as a place in which to engage deeply and spiritually with something; with one's surroundings, with God. But Shrines tend to be dedicated to a particular figure. so then I thought of Temple. Temples are built in almost all religions in some form. Bhuddist monks live in them. Cathedral or church are really just other words for Temple. And I think that what all of these different Temples have in common, across the globe, is that they are places that people go to actively engage with the invisible, or with the eternal within the visible.
So the reason I am bringing this up is this; I have been interested for a long time in making pieces of art that are spaces into which people can go and engage with such abstract realities; much in the way that a beautiful cathedral or a Zen rock garden can offer a space which puts everyday worries and fears into the perspective of the infinite, or or shows us the infinite within the everyday. Spaces like these can be calming, exiting, enlightening, gratifying, uplifting, restful, communal... what I mean to say is spaces from which we can see things in a broader perspective. See what really matters, and value it for what it is. I don't want to make overtly religious pieces, as I don't feel that that is really my place. That would border on instruction, which is important, but I don't think is my forte. But a place where someone could possibly go to engage for themselves, and find value in that.
The previous post is a description of such a place that I am hoping to build. The word that I finally came up with for how to describe these spaces is 'sanctuary.' It seems to be closer than any other description thus far. In medieval times, people were safe from arrest in the sanctuary of a church. And in modern times, there has been a Sanctuary movement among some southwestern churches to hide illegal immigrants running from the INS. But the simplest definition of Sanctuary is "a safe place." Not necessarily a place to engage. Although I like 'Temple,' and I don't necessarily want to eschew religious connotations entirely, (I think that there is a great deal to be said for ceremony and tradition) I also don't want to limit them by it. But I am interested in reviving these places and spaces that don't seem to be given much credence any more. The closest thing we have in our society to function in the way of the old shrines and Temples is the public park. A lovely thing, but almost too non-specific. And it almost seems like a packaging of nature; a taming and captivating of trees.
So I don't exactly know what my question is, but I would love it if anyone felt inclined to answer, or respond in any way.
Thank you Nate and Flyawaynet for your comments on the last post. Even the nitpicky ones help. Actually, I especially like nitpicky comments, Flywayanet; being out of school opens up a whole new set of possibilities, but I loose the commentary of the other students on my work. I am very much a perfectionist when it comes to making art, and so I like it when people really tell me exactly what they think, or get into little details.
So I have another question to pose:
When I was driving the other night through the woods with a friend of mine, I was watching the landscape go by and admiring it. The word 'shrine' suddenly popped into my head. I have always been sort of fascinated by old forms of functional art; religious or otherwise, and the idea of a shrine suddenly slunk its nearly obselete way into my consciousness. In Mexico there are little shrines everywhere. To different saints or places people died on the side of the highway. At this moment, I was thinking of a shrine as a place in which to engage deeply and spiritually with something; with one's surroundings, with God. But Shrines tend to be dedicated to a particular figure. so then I thought of Temple. Temples are built in almost all religions in some form. Bhuddist monks live in them. Cathedral or church are really just other words for Temple. And I think that what all of these different Temples have in common, across the globe, is that they are places that people go to actively engage with the invisible, or with the eternal within the visible.
So the reason I am bringing this up is this; I have been interested for a long time in making pieces of art that are spaces into which people can go and engage with such abstract realities; much in the way that a beautiful cathedral or a Zen rock garden can offer a space which puts everyday worries and fears into the perspective of the infinite, or or shows us the infinite within the everyday. Spaces like these can be calming, exiting, enlightening, gratifying, uplifting, restful, communal... what I mean to say is spaces from which we can see things in a broader perspective. See what really matters, and value it for what it is. I don't want to make overtly religious pieces, as I don't feel that that is really my place. That would border on instruction, which is important, but I don't think is my forte. But a place where someone could possibly go to engage for themselves, and find value in that.
The previous post is a description of such a place that I am hoping to build. The word that I finally came up with for how to describe these spaces is 'sanctuary.' It seems to be closer than any other description thus far. In medieval times, people were safe from arrest in the sanctuary of a church. And in modern times, there has been a Sanctuary movement among some southwestern churches to hide illegal immigrants running from the INS. But the simplest definition of Sanctuary is "a safe place." Not necessarily a place to engage. Although I like 'Temple,' and I don't necessarily want to eschew religious connotations entirely, (I think that there is a great deal to be said for ceremony and tradition) I also don't want to limit them by it. But I am interested in reviving these places and spaces that don't seem to be given much credence any more. The closest thing we have in our society to function in the way of the old shrines and Temples is the public park. A lovely thing, but almost too non-specific. And it almost seems like a packaging of nature; a taming and captivating of trees.
So I don't exactly know what my question is, but I would love it if anyone felt inclined to answer, or respond in any way.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Percent for Art
I would like to once again ask the input of anyone who cares to give it. I am applying for a percent for art competition to design a piece of public art at a middle school. This is my letter of intent. If anyone feels incline to praise, mock, or deeply and honestly criticize this idea, please feel free, and don't hold back. Art has much room for loud voices. I would love to hear yours.
Dear ....
In a period of transition such as adolescence, children deeply need to feel the support of their community. In addition to this, they need to feel that they are connected to and valued by each other and the wider world. We don't need a scientific study to tell us that children who have these conditions affirming them will learn better and have higher self esteem, be less likely to use drugs and more able to choose a course in life which is successful and fulfilling to them. I feel strongly that any work of art installed at the school should contribute to these factors, and that the students, in turn, should be able to directly contribute to the work of art.
What I propose to install at the new Medomak Middle School is a kind of walkway by which the students and faculty will enter the school. The walkway would have two ten foot diameter circles made of black granite installed in succession. Surrounding these circles would be concentric rings of clay tiles, carved by the students. These tiles would use the natural colors of different types of clay to create pattern. The creation of these tiles could be guided by questions such as "What is important to you?" or might be simple self portraits, or freely created works of art. This would allow the students to have their individual voices visible in the piece. They would be able to find their on tiles, and show their families how they had contributed a permanent piece of art to the grounds of the school.
Each of the two granite circles would be carved with a chart of the stars in the night sky. Each chart would correspond to the position of the stars on one of the two equinoxes, as both of these fall during the school year. This would account for both summer and winter constellations. While standing on one of these circles, a student would be able to find a star labeled on the chart and then find it in the sky in the corresponding direction.
The charts would be lit with just enough light to make them visible at night, while not creating so much light pollution as to dim the appearance of the stars. These lights would be installed in short stone cylinders, standing upright, which would also function as places to sit, creating a pleasant common area or place to wait for a ride.
Art is important to children's development. Many artist have spoken of art as the process of becoming sane, and of learning to experience one's life more fully. Writer Ursula K. LeGuin spoke of this, saying, "...I use the words "literature," "art," in the sense of "living well, living with skill, grace, energy" - like carrying a basket of bread and smelling it and eating as you go." It is this sense of connectedness, of living well, and of appreciating and supporting each other that I intend to convey with this work.
This project would give the students each an individual connection to and voice in the final product. It would also create a visual display of the connection of the students to one another and to the wider world, and the stars. It would illuminate the idea that we all affect each other and none of us is alone. As Natalie Goldberg put it, "Art lives in the Big World." Functionally, the work would create an exciting entrance to the school, a tool for learning, and a common area for students to gather and spend time together.
My intention with this work is to support the needs of the students and encourage them to contribute their voices. I feel strongly about the need to create a good environment for young people. I expect that the direction of the project will evolve to be able to support this need as well as possible, given time and new information.
Sincerely,
...Leopold
Dear ....
In a period of transition such as adolescence, children deeply need to feel the support of their community. In addition to this, they need to feel that they are connected to and valued by each other and the wider world. We don't need a scientific study to tell us that children who have these conditions affirming them will learn better and have higher self esteem, be less likely to use drugs and more able to choose a course in life which is successful and fulfilling to them. I feel strongly that any work of art installed at the school should contribute to these factors, and that the students, in turn, should be able to directly contribute to the work of art.
What I propose to install at the new Medomak Middle School is a kind of walkway by which the students and faculty will enter the school. The walkway would have two ten foot diameter circles made of black granite installed in succession. Surrounding these circles would be concentric rings of clay tiles, carved by the students. These tiles would use the natural colors of different types of clay to create pattern. The creation of these tiles could be guided by questions such as "What is important to you?" or might be simple self portraits, or freely created works of art. This would allow the students to have their individual voices visible in the piece. They would be able to find their on tiles, and show their families how they had contributed a permanent piece of art to the grounds of the school.
Each of the two granite circles would be carved with a chart of the stars in the night sky. Each chart would correspond to the position of the stars on one of the two equinoxes, as both of these fall during the school year. This would account for both summer and winter constellations. While standing on one of these circles, a student would be able to find a star labeled on the chart and then find it in the sky in the corresponding direction.
The charts would be lit with just enough light to make them visible at night, while not creating so much light pollution as to dim the appearance of the stars. These lights would be installed in short stone cylinders, standing upright, which would also function as places to sit, creating a pleasant common area or place to wait for a ride.
Art is important to children's development. Many artist have spoken of art as the process of becoming sane, and of learning to experience one's life more fully. Writer Ursula K. LeGuin spoke of this, saying, "...I use the words "literature," "art," in the sense of "living well, living with skill, grace, energy" - like carrying a basket of bread and smelling it and eating as you go." It is this sense of connectedness, of living well, and of appreciating and supporting each other that I intend to convey with this work.
This project would give the students each an individual connection to and voice in the final product. It would also create a visual display of the connection of the students to one another and to the wider world, and the stars. It would illuminate the idea that we all affect each other and none of us is alone. As Natalie Goldberg put it, "Art lives in the Big World." Functionally, the work would create an exciting entrance to the school, a tool for learning, and a common area for students to gather and spend time together.
My intention with this work is to support the needs of the students and encourage them to contribute their voices. I feel strongly about the need to create a good environment for young people. I expect that the direction of the project will evolve to be able to support this need as well as possible, given time and new information.
Sincerely,
...Leopold
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
In Love 2
This is the much longer addendum to my last post, which was hastily scrawled at half past midnight.
We throw around the term "In Love," like it is the secret ingredient of our happiness. I dare say that much of our society looks forward to this phenomenon to cure them of the hum drum of the everyday: to make them happy, rightly or not. Being in love is even something we strive for (though striving hardly befits it). I have often known people who are not in Love, have no interest in being in love, and don't look forward to it. These people are seen, by and large as some kind of neo-hethens, in as much as they are not interested in what everyone is supposed to be interested in. In the movie "The Tao of Steve," the hero states that the United States should just get down to it and declare romance our national religion. As far as I can tell, nothing could be truer.
But this quote from John makes me think again about this phrase: "In Love."
"God is Love, and whoever lives in Love, lives in God and God lives in them." What does it really mean to be "In Love?" Inside; within; enraptured by; encased in - Love. We speak of Love as though it is the whirlwind we are itching to be taken to Oz by. If God is Love, then can this kind of enrapturing love be any different, if it is true? Can you be, literally, In God with someone? Such that the connection to this other person makes you feel swept away by God, and that God lives within you? That's a phenom for ya. What would that mean for both Christianity, and for romance? John also states in a nearby passage that whoever says he Loves God and hates his neighbor is a liar. So if Love of God and Love of others are so completely intertwined that they can never really be distinguished as separate in practice, then it makes perfect sense to be In God with someone. What if our daily interactions with people, were, in some sense, interactions with God? Earlier on, Jesus said "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me." This changes things quite a bit. If this were, for one instant, taken seriously, by and large, what would change? It would be impossible to think of the paradigms of loving someone the same way. If in showing your love for someone, you are practically showing your love for God, and rather than building a church which which only worships God (a good thing to do, of course), or day by day fills the world a little more with the bland recitation of inert liturgies, rather we would show our Love for God by Loving each other. Not just romantically, but every kind of love. We would no longer approach our love relationships as ways to become happy, but happiness would be the obvious side effect of Loving someone for Love's own sake. If you can be in God with someone, can you be in God with God? For God's own sake?
We throw around the term "In Love," like it is the secret ingredient of our happiness. I dare say that much of our society looks forward to this phenomenon to cure them of the hum drum of the everyday: to make them happy, rightly or not. Being in love is even something we strive for (though striving hardly befits it). I have often known people who are not in Love, have no interest in being in love, and don't look forward to it. These people are seen, by and large as some kind of neo-hethens, in as much as they are not interested in what everyone is supposed to be interested in. In the movie "The Tao of Steve," the hero states that the United States should just get down to it and declare romance our national religion. As far as I can tell, nothing could be truer.
But this quote from John makes me think again about this phrase: "In Love."
"God is Love, and whoever lives in Love, lives in God and God lives in them." What does it really mean to be "In Love?" Inside; within; enraptured by; encased in - Love. We speak of Love as though it is the whirlwind we are itching to be taken to Oz by. If God is Love, then can this kind of enrapturing love be any different, if it is true? Can you be, literally, In God with someone? Such that the connection to this other person makes you feel swept away by God, and that God lives within you? That's a phenom for ya. What would that mean for both Christianity, and for romance? John also states in a nearby passage that whoever says he Loves God and hates his neighbor is a liar. So if Love of God and Love of others are so completely intertwined that they can never really be distinguished as separate in practice, then it makes perfect sense to be In God with someone. What if our daily interactions with people, were, in some sense, interactions with God? Earlier on, Jesus said "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me." This changes things quite a bit. If this were, for one instant, taken seriously, by and large, what would change? It would be impossible to think of the paradigms of loving someone the same way. If in showing your love for someone, you are practically showing your love for God, and rather than building a church which which only worships God (a good thing to do, of course), or day by day fills the world a little more with the bland recitation of inert liturgies, rather we would show our Love for God by Loving each other. Not just romantically, but every kind of love. We would no longer approach our love relationships as ways to become happy, but happiness would be the obvious side effect of Loving someone for Love's own sake. If you can be in God with someone, can you be in God with God? For God's own sake?
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
In Love
"God is Love. Whoever lives in Love, Lives in God, and God lives in them."
Is it possible to be "in God" with someone? Could you say to someone, "You know, I've been thinking really deeply about this, and I think I'm in God with you"? What a difference that might make.
Is it possible to be "in God" with someone? Could you say to someone, "You know, I've been thinking really deeply about this, and I think I'm in God with you"? What a difference that might make.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
A New Phantasmagoria Play
I would like to ask the help of anyone who reads this on a story idea that I have. Since I have virtually no readers, I guess I'll just ask generally. I have been inspired recently by Pan's Labyrinth, by The Science of Sleep to write a play about a certain young adult who confuses fantasy and reality. I'm not sure how to proceed though. I would like to be able to depict their inner life crossing over or overlapping their 'real' life. The way that I have to do this so far is to have some fantasy character or monster come on stage at times who the main character, (male?) will converse with. This would be one way of putting their inner life on display, showing a kind of inner monologue. One of the catches is that the main character is about eighteen or twenty and still has this imaginary friend. At other times, the other 'real' characters in the play could be shown as the main character sees them, in phantasmagorical costumes, physiognomical representations of their personalities. I am not sure about a lot of details. How clear should this crossover be? Should it be clear which part is fantasy and which is reality? Are there other ways to show the character's inner life? What does this character want? Is there a love story? (I think there is) Is the love requited? What kind of family does this person have? Does he live with them? Is he funny? Do they understand him? What is the conflict? These are all the questions I need to answer, but I am asking them of you as well, if you have any thoughts or insights. Peace,
Leopold
Leopold
Friday, February 9, 2007
The Unfortunate Annals of Alfonso McPhee
Alfonso McPhee is stupid. He’s utterly a numbskull in the highest degree. I know this, because the other day I saw him laying down in a little brook, not even deep enough for him to totally submerge his pale skinned body in (the water was very dark around him, and folded over him crisply) and I said, Alfonoso, why are you laying in that borok, don’t you know you could get geodia, or bloodsucking leaches?? And he replied calmly, “Who cares about bloodsucking leaches, I’ve got plenty of blood, and there’s quite enough to share.” But I persisted, surely because I was concerned for the general staten of his health, and I said, “Alfonso, it’s February, you’ll catch your death of cold, surely as sure as I’m Leopold Lepin.” But still he remained there heedlessly, basking in the chilly icy aquatic trickle, and asking nothing of no one, and occasionally looking up at the sky, and remarking, “Leopold, isn’t that a big sky? What a big sky that is! How very very big. Oh I am glad the sky is so big today.” And I could only roll my eyes, for he would not listen to my reasonable persuasions that the sky was immaterial, and could be neither bigger nor smaller than yesterday. And that to find it remarkable was quite as silly as being amazed the you woke up, when you’ve woken up every day of your life, and reason tells you that it’s going to keep happening for a while. Silly as laying down in a brook full of bloodsuckers in February. And he informed me that one day I wouldn’t wake up in the morning, and that every day after that I again and again wouldn’t wake up in the morning, and I said “I don’t like you, and you look like a diarhetic partridge, and I went bowling.
See, I told you that Alfonso McPhee was a fool.
See, I told you that Alfonso McPhee was a fool.
WhatEver are you, Leopold?
A lot of people have come up to me and asked me, “Leopold, what species are you? I tell them that I got the butterfly wings from my mother’s side of the family and I got the tusks from my father’s side. But if I had my choice, I’d have bought a house on the lakeside, and had some webbed feet, too. No such luck. Alas, I can’t quite tell you what I am, because there’s been no precedent for a confuence of such disparate physical features as mine. nevertheless, I try my best to fit into society, make my contributions, and have a little fun here and there. You have to enjoy life. That’s what my old grandfather told me. “Enjoy it, every minute, it’s the only one you get.” I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Now despite my butterfly wings and tusks, I actually read lather a mundane exhubrence. I mean, I don’t go out with a lot of people, though alot of people have asked, but I always feel they aren’t really seeing me for me. I don’t go many places. I can’t get up the courage to dance, and so my life seems to be rather unpercolated, socially speaking, of late. Little kids give me silly stares sometimes, and I give them conniving grins in return, because that seems to be what they’re looking for, and mostly, the giggle with glee. But most of the time, their parental units escort them off after getting a good look at me, which leaves me gloomily glum.
So if you have been wondering anything that that was an answer to, then there you have it.
Now despite my butterfly wings and tusks, I actually read lather a mundane exhubrence. I mean, I don’t go out with a lot of people, though alot of people have asked, but I always feel they aren’t really seeing me for me. I don’t go many places. I can’t get up the courage to dance, and so my life seems to be rather unpercolated, socially speaking, of late. Little kids give me silly stares sometimes, and I give them conniving grins in return, because that seems to be what they’re looking for, and mostly, the giggle with glee. But most of the time, their parental units escort them off after getting a good look at me, which leaves me gloomily glum.
So if you have been wondering anything that that was an answer to, then there you have it.
With my own eyes
I want to write something beautiful for you to read, that will be like entering a meadow on a sunny day after walking through a dark, cold forest. I want to show your breath in the cold, crystal in the air. And want you to feel the thunderstorms in your bones, and the rain wetting your nostrils. But I don’t know where you are in that forest. I don’t know which part you’re in, only that we’re both there somewhere, and so I can’t tell you which way to go. All I can do is yell very loud and hope you’ll hear me. But I don’t think it’s enough to yell about myself, about the spot that I am in in the forest, because you’re not there, so what good does it do you? And besides, it’s dark in the forest, and we can’t see very well. So what good does it do to know what someone else can’t see when you can’t see either? Well, maybe a little, but only when talking about what’s dark is counterpart to talking about what’s light. So I should just yell, “Hey, somewhere there’s a big sunny meadow. Go find it. And when you get there, shout back at me, so I can follow your voice there, and be with you, and see your face.”
Leo
Leopold, they call me. How did I get that name, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Because I'm absolutely the best at stamping price tags on canned goods. That's how I got my name.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Christianity and Spectacle Consumerism
A crowd gathers. Bells ring. Bright colors flash everywhere, fast paced marketeers tell you that things are looking good for the future. People tell you that you can be happy, and that your future can be brighter than your past. The doldrums of everyday living can be alleviated. For a small price, you can buy something, an idea, a plan, to make things better for you and your loved ones. In conjunction with this scene, strange spectacles pepper the place. Oddities, objects, stories, sensations, dramas, tragedies – you can see objects associated with celebrities, you can even buy them for towering sums. You are surrounded by promises that can be fulfilled in return for the contents of your wallet, and stories that tell you how and why that is so. Over all this, there are beautiful looming words. Fulfillment. Freedom. Solidarity. Holiness. These are the expressed purpose of the hubbub.
Sound like a flea market? An infomercial? Any single hour of television watching? The weirder parts of a county fair? What about a day spent in the Vatican in 1490? You got it.
I often hear about the concerns of people for the well being of Christianity. From people like Bob, and Preemptive Karma. They ask about the state of the church in modernity. About how the church has capitulated to contemporary commercialism, become too like “the world,” and lost its spiritual foundations. It is true that today, with the rise of Corporate industry and media to a new level, the church has seen a growth of materialism within its ranks. But I do not believe this to be a new phenomenon. In fact, Christianity is in many ways the founding source of this tirade of commercialism. In the age of indulgences which Martin Luther rebelled against, a saint’s toes could be seen on display, or the foreskin of Christ, or any number of celebrity worship icons and relics. The difference, we tell ourselves, is that today... well... there isn’t much difference, actually. A piece of gum which was supposed to have been chewed by Brittney Spears was sold on E-Bay for thousands of dollars. This is not so different from the general fascination with the undergarments worn by a particular saint in the late Middle Ages. And still, to this day, the worlds abounds with promises of how your life can be better, if you buy this or that self help book, or sign up for this or that program. We should not be asking so much why the church is a part of it, but why it started it in the first place, and why it remains in the thick of it. It is not a new thing for the endeavors of people’s hearts to be so intertwined with and manipulated by other people’s desires to fatten their wallets. We think for some reason that Christianity should be different, above it all. but in truth, our spirituality and our economic meanderings have never been so separate, at least as a culture. The question that I think is more pressing is an individual one. Everyone wants the world to change. But no one wants to change.
One of the interesting things about this information age in comparison to the age of the Holy Roman Empire is the sheer ease for anyone to learn. And one would think that by this sheer factor, considering the surpression of public knowledge in the old age (the Bible was only in Latin, preventing anyone outside the clergy from reading it), that we would finally see through such gimmicks. Yet the fact of their continued existence shows that people still buy them, hook, line and sinker.
I found out recently that MIT and several other notable universities are in the process of making all of their classes available online, for FREE. You can take the whole class, any class that MIT offers. You can do it all online, and learn everything they teach. However, you don't get credit for it. But if you pay the tuition price, you can take the whole class, you can still even do it online, and you can get credit for it. So what you pay for is really the transcript. Not the education. The reason I bring this up in a post about Christianity and consumerism is that it is a distinction between classes, in the same way that there was distinction made between the clergy and the laity through their ability to read the Bible in the Middle Ages. If you can pay, then you get the credits. If not, you are likely one of the seventy-five percent of American adults who are without a college education. Such things as this being decided by the accumulation of material wealth seems ludicrous. But ultimately, it is the same problem as is asked about in this common question of "How did the church get like this?" And as our cultural sense of spirituality informs our material wealth, so our wealth, certainly, informs our spirituality, as can be seen in books by the unpalletable Joel Osteen, who promises that through prayer and spirituality you can become rich. Or Amway, or any number of organizations and mindsets. This is not new.
The better question to ask is "Why do class and materialism and class taint our sense of what is supposed to be transcendent to them?" We have lost our reckoning with the more recent developments in History, of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emmerson, who proclaimed a new spirituality transcendent of such things in his address to the Harvard Divinity School in 1838. A spirituality which remained unfettered by attachment to success. Saint Paul wrote, "all that I once thought gain, I now count as loss." Jesus overturned the money changer's tables. John the Baptist's head was presented on a platter, and Ralph Waldo Emmerson was labelled a heretic, and lost his job at the Harvard Divinity school. If one were to ask why, the answer would be "the same reason that megachurch preachers are becoming millionaires, Africa is starving, and we still can't stand the Commies." The decency and generosity of good people will always be challanged with the malice of those who do not wish to change. Yet as I said before, we all want the world to be a better place. Even the megachurch millionaires. The question that could really change the world, is "How can I change myself?" This is the question which Henry David Thoreau answered by going into the wilderness in the style of John the Baptist. He then wrote "Civil Disobedience," which DID change the world, as later on it was read by both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Sound like a flea market? An infomercial? Any single hour of television watching? The weirder parts of a county fair? What about a day spent in the Vatican in 1490? You got it.
I often hear about the concerns of people for the well being of Christianity. From people like Bob, and Preemptive Karma. They ask about the state of the church in modernity. About how the church has capitulated to contemporary commercialism, become too like “the world,” and lost its spiritual foundations. It is true that today, with the rise of Corporate industry and media to a new level, the church has seen a growth of materialism within its ranks. But I do not believe this to be a new phenomenon. In fact, Christianity is in many ways the founding source of this tirade of commercialism. In the age of indulgences which Martin Luther rebelled against, a saint’s toes could be seen on display, or the foreskin of Christ, or any number of celebrity worship icons and relics. The difference, we tell ourselves, is that today... well... there isn’t much difference, actually. A piece of gum which was supposed to have been chewed by Brittney Spears was sold on E-Bay for thousands of dollars. This is not so different from the general fascination with the undergarments worn by a particular saint in the late Middle Ages. And still, to this day, the worlds abounds with promises of how your life can be better, if you buy this or that self help book, or sign up for this or that program. We should not be asking so much why the church is a part of it, but why it started it in the first place, and why it remains in the thick of it. It is not a new thing for the endeavors of people’s hearts to be so intertwined with and manipulated by other people’s desires to fatten their wallets. We think for some reason that Christianity should be different, above it all. but in truth, our spirituality and our economic meanderings have never been so separate, at least as a culture. The question that I think is more pressing is an individual one. Everyone wants the world to change. But no one wants to change.
One of the interesting things about this information age in comparison to the age of the Holy Roman Empire is the sheer ease for anyone to learn. And one would think that by this sheer factor, considering the surpression of public knowledge in the old age (the Bible was only in Latin, preventing anyone outside the clergy from reading it), that we would finally see through such gimmicks. Yet the fact of their continued existence shows that people still buy them, hook, line and sinker.
I found out recently that MIT and several other notable universities are in the process of making all of their classes available online, for FREE. You can take the whole class, any class that MIT offers. You can do it all online, and learn everything they teach. However, you don't get credit for it. But if you pay the tuition price, you can take the whole class, you can still even do it online, and you can get credit for it. So what you pay for is really the transcript. Not the education. The reason I bring this up in a post about Christianity and consumerism is that it is a distinction between classes, in the same way that there was distinction made between the clergy and the laity through their ability to read the Bible in the Middle Ages. If you can pay, then you get the credits. If not, you are likely one of the seventy-five percent of American adults who are without a college education. Such things as this being decided by the accumulation of material wealth seems ludicrous. But ultimately, it is the same problem as is asked about in this common question of "How did the church get like this?" And as our cultural sense of spirituality informs our material wealth, so our wealth, certainly, informs our spirituality, as can be seen in books by the unpalletable Joel Osteen, who promises that through prayer and spirituality you can become rich. Or Amway, or any number of organizations and mindsets. This is not new.
The better question to ask is "Why do class and materialism and class taint our sense of what is supposed to be transcendent to them?" We have lost our reckoning with the more recent developments in History, of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emmerson, who proclaimed a new spirituality transcendent of such things in his address to the Harvard Divinity School in 1838. A spirituality which remained unfettered by attachment to success. Saint Paul wrote, "all that I once thought gain, I now count as loss." Jesus overturned the money changer's tables. John the Baptist's head was presented on a platter, and Ralph Waldo Emmerson was labelled a heretic, and lost his job at the Harvard Divinity school. If one were to ask why, the answer would be "the same reason that megachurch preachers are becoming millionaires, Africa is starving, and we still can't stand the Commies." The decency and generosity of good people will always be challanged with the malice of those who do not wish to change. Yet as I said before, we all want the world to be a better place. Even the megachurch millionaires. The question that could really change the world, is "How can I change myself?" This is the question which Henry David Thoreau answered by going into the wilderness in the style of John the Baptist. He then wrote "Civil Disobedience," which DID change the world, as later on it was read by both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A cold january night
Whatever misfit creature invented the term, brought such an ego fraught mandate into the world, this thing, this idea of contrasting what something is with what else it could possibly be -- nothing but unequivocal, rampant, agonizing narcissism can ensue, when it collides, as it inevitable does, with the similar contrast between the lens of depravity through which we see, coloring everything in its own likeness, and the pure austerity we presume should be, merely because it is in contrast with the thing we call depravity.
So the 'potential' of a given object lies in how closely we can compare it, once it has passed through the subjunctifying processes of seeing, to the things in ourselves which we have assigned with the values of 'good,' 'austere,' 'vivacious,' in contrast with how much more we think we could make it like that.
But here's the rub: Henry David Thoreau observed a philanthropist to be a man who ate a bad apple and got sick. His vision blurred, and he became feverish. He then set out to cure the rest of the world of these problems; of being blurry and too hot.
So the 'potential' of a given object lies in how closely we can compare it, once it has passed through the subjunctifying processes of seeing, to the things in ourselves which we have assigned with the values of 'good,' 'austere,' 'vivacious,' in contrast with how much more we think we could make it like that.
But here's the rub: Henry David Thoreau observed a philanthropist to be a man who ate a bad apple and got sick. His vision blurred, and he became feverish. He then set out to cure the rest of the world of these problems; of being blurry and too hot.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
The Sideways Children of 1985...
The year, 1985, was the year that O. J. Simpson was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. It was also the year they found a grave of a man named Wolfgang Gerhard in Embu, Brazil, and dug him up to find out that he was really Josef Mengele, the Nazi officer they called the 'Angel of Death.' And there was a guy with one leg who ran all the way across Canada in fourteen months. An airplane was taken over by terrorists, and the Vice President, George Bush, announced that a teacher from New Hampshire named Christa McAuliffe would become the first schoolteacher to go to space, riding in style in the Challenger shuttle. A Japanese Boeing 747 jumbo jet had crashed into a mountain in Gunma and killed 520 people, and four of them somehow managed to crawl out of the wreckage and live to tell about it. There was a cruise ship called the Achille Lauro carting rich Europeans and Americans around the Mediterranean Sea. It was taken over by Palestinian Liberationists, who ransomed it for prisoners held by Israel, and succeeded only in chucking a guy in a wheelchair overboard, into the winedark sea, before being captured. Then there was the volcano; Nevado del Ruiz, that buried the city of Armero, and socked the breath out of twenty-three thousand people. And it was the year Tipper Gore decided that there should be warning labels on albums that contained curse words. There was a guy who got life in prison for selling stealth bomber secrets to the Russians, and in New York City, two Mafia bosses, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti got gunned down by their own men in the middle of having coffee. The ancient Aztecs said that it was the year in which the future savior of the world would be born. And it was the first time that “Calvin and Hobbes” hit the newsmen's press.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Truth?
I saw this quote on a blog called Iambic Admonit. I was really just drawn there because I have such a fascination with formalism, i.e. specific styles of constructing writing or other media (Iambic). This quote jarred me a bit, and it speaks to a sour feeling I get sometimes when I think I have written something profound. It also speaks to the icky feeling that I have had recently while reading some blogs. I am new to blogging, and I wanted to find some others who had interesting things to say. Much of it, I was half surprised to find, consists of this or that socio-political rant. When I look up Christianity, it tends to be just the same, or moreso. The quote is this:
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
--C. S. Lewis
This hits home pretty hard, and is a good thing to remember. I have been writing a scene in a novel recently in which a character gives some unorthodox ideas about truth. This could speak to that as well. If what we say is lacking in love, compassion and edification, there is little it can do to help. If it is spoken with a proud ego, it is rare that the truth itself is heard above the din of our self-centeredness. The more we become absorbed in our ability to convey truth, to dazzle with witticisms, the greater danger we are in of losing sight of the importance of that truth over our own pride. Ego is the first to jump in front of the bus. And even when it gets run over time and again, we keep pampering it, believing that our ego and our value are synonymous. This could not be further from the truth. In the words of Eric Clapton, "I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." And it is such a common thing. The Bhuddists say that enlightenment involves the death of ego. This does not mean endless self effacement; far from it. It is refraining from feeding our petty illusion of self over the greater, Universal Self which we are privvy to. Or as a hindu guru said to someone who could not understand why he would choose to live in poverty, "I have renounced the finite for the infinite, but you have renounced the infinite for the finite. Which renunciation is greater?"
I think that it is important to keep ourselves in perspective when we create. I tend, more than anyone I know, to define my own value by how well I can create. But this is not so. My value is inherent, as is yours. It precedes our actions. Ego is what follows them. What I have learned recently, is that in giving up my own attachement to my acheivements, in relenquishing the idea that it is about me making something, saying something, and not what I am talking about, the boat flies farther. And yes, the boat flies.
The denizens of far right Christianity seem utterly preoccupied with differentiating "capital T truth." I would admonish them only by referencing them to St. Paul: ...Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love. I may speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but if I lack Love, I am no more than a loud gong or a clanging symbol.
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
--C. S. Lewis
This hits home pretty hard, and is a good thing to remember. I have been writing a scene in a novel recently in which a character gives some unorthodox ideas about truth. This could speak to that as well. If what we say is lacking in love, compassion and edification, there is little it can do to help. If it is spoken with a proud ego, it is rare that the truth itself is heard above the din of our self-centeredness. The more we become absorbed in our ability to convey truth, to dazzle with witticisms, the greater danger we are in of losing sight of the importance of that truth over our own pride. Ego is the first to jump in front of the bus. And even when it gets run over time and again, we keep pampering it, believing that our ego and our value are synonymous. This could not be further from the truth. In the words of Eric Clapton, "I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." And it is such a common thing. The Bhuddists say that enlightenment involves the death of ego. This does not mean endless self effacement; far from it. It is refraining from feeding our petty illusion of self over the greater, Universal Self which we are privvy to. Or as a hindu guru said to someone who could not understand why he would choose to live in poverty, "I have renounced the finite for the infinite, but you have renounced the infinite for the finite. Which renunciation is greater?"
I think that it is important to keep ourselves in perspective when we create. I tend, more than anyone I know, to define my own value by how well I can create. But this is not so. My value is inherent, as is yours. It precedes our actions. Ego is what follows them. What I have learned recently, is that in giving up my own attachement to my acheivements, in relenquishing the idea that it is about me making something, saying something, and not what I am talking about, the boat flies farther. And yes, the boat flies.
The denizens of far right Christianity seem utterly preoccupied with differentiating "capital T truth." I would admonish them only by referencing them to St. Paul: ...Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love. I may speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but if I lack Love, I am no more than a loud gong or a clanging symbol.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Mmmmmmm....
Many marmalade munching magistrates mangled my motorbike. Moreover, Mama means to make merry in the moonlight, muttering to me malevolent misgivings. Misunderstanding my motives, many may mumble meanness at me. Most of my mates are mad; maybe my mother mistreated more men than mice.
Miserable magistrates. My motorbike's mobility is mute. May maggots and mealworms and mantises munch them to mayonaise.
Me? I'm mellow on the monkeybars.
Miserable magistrates. My motorbike's mobility is mute. May maggots and mealworms and mantises munch them to mayonaise.
Me? I'm mellow on the monkeybars.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Sweet Maria's Revenge
I have been working on this Nano Novel for about two months now, and just gotten to the 50 thousand word threshold. But I am not nearly as close to finished with it as I thought I would be. I don't even have an ending yet. Actually I do, but none of it is written, and the text that supports is isn't written. This is for all you novellers out there.
So one figures, "I can fill a hundred and fifty pages with nothing in particular in order to recieve the arbitrary title of nano-winner." But then all my characters started chattering at me, and they're all like, "man I don't think I would do that,' or 'why won't you make me go do this?' or 'that character's really bugging me and I'd really like to give him a piece of my gosh darn mind.' Amid this clatter I was able to scrawl the few bits of dialogue floating through my head that made considerable sense. But when Maria started drinking all my coffee, and Jamie left a mess of P B and J all over my counter and didn't clean it up, I thought I had to put my foot down. I tried, but the kids just don't listen, you know? Next thing you know they're leaving the door open in mid December, staying up and singing at all hours of the night, and inviting random people in the coffee shop over to come and sit with us.
To top all that off, after everything, they start telling me, 'Tim, you really need to loosen up. Try to understand yourself a little better. You don't always have to be accomplishing something great. Learn to be happy with who you are, where you are.' Sound like good advice? Well it might, excepting for the fact that it's coming from a fictitious character who can't learn to put the cap back on the friggin jelly when she's done with it. The audacity of it all, I tell you! Her, giving me advice?
But in their defense, I should add that they have come a long way since I first met them. They have changed and grown as people so much ... I know, Neal, I'll write you some more lines ... Honestly, though, I can say I'm proud of them.
Fellow novellers, there is hope. By the way, if you liked Nanowrimo, check out this site: http://www.3daynovel.com ... Yowza - Caffeine.
So one figures, "I can fill a hundred and fifty pages with nothing in particular in order to recieve the arbitrary title of nano-winner." But then all my characters started chattering at me, and they're all like, "man I don't think I would do that,' or 'why won't you make me go do this?' or 'that character's really bugging me and I'd really like to give him a piece of my gosh darn mind.' Amid this clatter I was able to scrawl the few bits of dialogue floating through my head that made considerable sense. But when Maria started drinking all my coffee, and Jamie left a mess of P B and J all over my counter and didn't clean it up, I thought I had to put my foot down. I tried, but the kids just don't listen, you know? Next thing you know they're leaving the door open in mid December, staying up and singing at all hours of the night, and inviting random people in the coffee shop over to come and sit with us.
To top all that off, after everything, they start telling me, 'Tim, you really need to loosen up. Try to understand yourself a little better. You don't always have to be accomplishing something great. Learn to be happy with who you are, where you are.' Sound like good advice? Well it might, excepting for the fact that it's coming from a fictitious character who can't learn to put the cap back on the friggin jelly when she's done with it. The audacity of it all, I tell you! Her, giving me advice?
But in their defense, I should add that they have come a long way since I first met them. They have changed and grown as people so much ... I know, Neal, I'll write you some more lines ... Honestly, though, I can say I'm proud of them.
Fellow novellers, there is hope. By the way, if you liked Nanowrimo, check out this site: http://www.3daynovel.com ... Yowza - Caffeine.
my American and unamerican saints
Hey cyberspacers. I am hoping that in starting this blog it will give me some incentive to write every day. To write things that don't have too much reason to be written other than that I thought of them. I suppose if I had to introduce myself to you I would say that I am 7 years old, 25 years old and 86 all at once. I live in a house that is surrounded on all sides by the Atlantic Ocean. I know how to juggle, but I don't know how to knit. I am fascinated by revolutionaries but realize that they all become a little too comfortable with themselves over time.
I am a Christian, but I can rarely abide going to church, and so my faith tends to be satiated by reading and talking with friends. I LOVE people. People are my favorite things thing the world. I also am deeply in love with Montreal, but I do not live there anymore.
I am pretty sure that space goes on forever but that there is something even more infinite that makes it all worthwhile for it to be so big. And if you think that there is no infinity bigger than infinity, read a little about complex numbers, and find out that scientifically, there is.
I want to know more about everything. Especially about people. I want to go to Turkey and teach English, but mostly so that I can meet all the people there. I love art, but hate the elite institution.
"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs."
God is with us always, even when we are not with ourselves. Love is the best.
Okay, so that's me. Once I forget everything they taught me in school I will be able to tell you a little more clearly who I am. Tell me about you?
I am a Christian, but I can rarely abide going to church, and so my faith tends to be satiated by reading and talking with friends. I LOVE people. People are my favorite things thing the world. I also am deeply in love with Montreal, but I do not live there anymore.
I am pretty sure that space goes on forever but that there is something even more infinite that makes it all worthwhile for it to be so big. And if you think that there is no infinity bigger than infinity, read a little about complex numbers, and find out that scientifically, there is.
I want to know more about everything. Especially about people. I want to go to Turkey and teach English, but mostly so that I can meet all the people there. I love art, but hate the elite institution.
"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs."
God is with us always, even when we are not with ourselves. Love is the best.
Okay, so that's me. Once I forget everything they taught me in school I will be able to tell you a little more clearly who I am. Tell me about you?
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