The Oscar for most self-congratulatory, masturbatory, narcissistic, blind-spot inducing, vanity-stoking, glorious false humility, most irritating minutiae, best ego-inflation while seeming humbly grateful, best navigating amongst various offers for the one that makes me look the most Award-worthy, goes to
February, 2011
26
Feb 11
flashlight
I have a flashlight. It’s my attention. In a dark world, I turn my flashlight this way, that way, turn my attention here and there, and it illuminates corners of my world. My inner world, my outer world. I need more light. This flashlight only lights up small areas. I have heard there is another light, and if you can find a Certain Something to point your flashlight at, it causes another, bigger light to come on.
19
Feb 11
Born behind a windshield
Our fascination with fictional characters in books, film–is it because we’re dimly aware that we don’t understand the people around us, in our own lives? Our mental models of those people are usually wrong or woefully incomplete–we can’t share their core experience. We don’t understand their subjective dilemma. We try to understand through fiction, through metaphors that we hope might explain the enigma of people around us.
19
Feb 11
two occupying the same space as one
I can be a skeptic and a “believer” at once. I can be a conservative and a progressive at once. I can be a rebel and a believer in the rule of law at once. I can be an artist and a mercenary at once. Combine two and a third arises. “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer…then you will enter the kingdom.” –gnostic gospel of Thomas.
19
Feb 11
Chaos is not so unreasonable, quite a decent chap, really
People who say “everything happens for a reason” annoy me. A child is tortured to death, for a *reason*? No. But everything has a *cause*. A meteor hits me: it’s random accident, yet it had causes involving mass, trajectory, gravity wells, orbits.When objects fall apart due to entropy there’s increased disorder relative to the object–but it’s quite orderly according to rules of entropy. Chaos is strangely orderly.
19
Feb 11
Once upon a time a vindictive frog
Once upon a time a vindictive frog, hurt by rejection, magically turned a princess into an ugly witch. The witch then turned the frog into a handsome prince, who rejected her because she was ugly. He sent Hansel & Gretel, undercover, to shove her in the oven but she sidestepped, kicked the brats into the oven instead. She cooked & ate them, then magically turned into a governor of Alaska, but she resigned early.
9
Feb 11
2012, ends of worlds, New Age Spirituality etc
The Mayan calendar–there are still Mayans around and they say that ‘Mayan calendar predicts end of the world’ stuff is all wrong. It’s like someone found a Rigid Tools calendar for the year 2011 and: “Look! It ENDS in DECEMBER! That means the world ends in December!” No, you numbskull, that CALENDAR PERIOD ends in December.
Indeed –New Age spirituality, if it is spirituality at all, with its channelers and its “The Secret” and its aromatherapies, and its vibrating tuning forks placed on chakras, and its egregious simplifications and misinterpretations of esoteric traditions and its outright fabrications…is like a bad radio signal coming through a crappy transistor radio with a broken antenna. Mostly static.
9
Feb 11
A MOVEMENT AND A REST
“When one thought has passed, another arises. But between the two there is an interval, a stop, a space that is extremely important. Behind the movement that has begun and finished there is a reality…In this interval I can become aware of what is behind the movement.” –Jeanne de Salzmann ; “If they ask you: What is the sign of your Father in you?, tell them: It is a movement and a rest.” – Gospel of Thomas
9
Feb 11
The soothing hiss of the freeway
Yesterday we sat at an outdoor coffee shop, fairly close to a freeway. We’re Californians–the sound of the freeway is to us like the sound of the sea to people who live on the coast of Maine: soothing, the sound of the world. We’re Californians–we didn’t want to think about the plume of air pollution that spreads out from a freeway, so that people living nearby are more prone to asthma, & lung cancer.
9
Feb 11
NOTICE
It has come to our attention that some people are flagrantly advocating disobeying THE MACHINE. There are those who refuse to follow GPS directions that take them off a cliff; this petty, selfish response cannot be tolerated. There are those who will not watch the Superbowl today. THE MACHINE wants them to see THOSE COMMERCIALS. There are those who refuse to tweet on twitter. Cease your obstinacy. OBEY THE MACHINE.
