mushinnoshin

so here we go;

sorry I haven’t written much here lately. I have no greater excuse than simply not having been in the right frame of mind.

Well. Don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m here. And it’s Saturday night, after Christmas. It’s been a decent one. Thursday with the dad, brother, and brother’s family, at Granny’s house, which Dad has now inherited. I think I hit a home run with the Fart Machine I gave my nephew. And another, with a most politically incorrect documentary in which the esteemed civil libertarian boundary-pusher Larry C. Flynt chronicles the accomplishments and exploits of an Alaskan pin-up queen gone rogue. We’ll leave the rest to your imagination or google-fu.

Saturday, pizza, party, and presents with the sister and her husband, which rocked. Never doubt the badassedness of four fresh diced jalapeños and a smattering of mushrooms taking a Digiorno to the next level, especially when you wash it down with a steady flow of a brew-kit bitter and a back supply of the same brew-kit’s dark ale. We backed the food with the Mr. Hankey’s Chrismas Classics dvd, and the beer with Weird Al’s videos dvd, which culminated in the main event of Christmas at Ground Zero. Then to the living room for presents, with Koyaanisqatsi muted, just for the visual, and the TSO playing on on the PC/stereo. Good Times. As far as the gift, my & my sister and I have this long running calendar gag, and I won’t bore you with the details but I think I rocked it this year.

So then today I guess is xmas for me. Cleaned up from the party, then spent the day in lazy, beer-sipping play and exploration. I finally opened up the School of Rock dvd that’s been sitting on my coffee table for months. I can’t tell you how much I love the hell out of that movie. It’s stupid, it’s sappy, but goddamn it it rocks and I love it. Of course I’ve seen it too many hundred thousand times on TBS, so I didn’t need to watch it, but watched it with the commentary from Jack Black and the director, then went back and just watched the “one hell of a rock show” chapter. Man, for a stupid movie song, they nailed it. Just enough Yes, Kiss, Bowie, and Floyd all mixed up and dished out over a plate of AC/DC — fuck yeah. And yes, I fucking cry every time when Turkey Sub struts up to the mike and belts out loud and clear how happy she is to be who she is in a glorious declaration. And though I’ve got my issues with the keyboard kid — I would have liked to have seen a little less Rick Wakeman, a little more Ray Manerik with a helping of Jon Lord (that just would have been more rock and roll to me) — I understand better after the commentary that yeah, Wakeman was probably the perfect archetype given the actor/pianist’s true to life classical upbringing and utter unfamiliarity with rock. And even still I did always like the somewhat-Wakemanesque, but almost more Come Sail Away-era-Denis DeYoung sounding portamento-drenched monotimbral solo he does there. My kinda shit, actually.

Had an awesome dinner (yellow saffron rice, with red onions, fresh jalapeños, and mushrooms, well seasoned and sautéed with a Morningstar Veggie Italian Sausage, if you give a damn), then put on Naqoyqatsi, another dvd I’ve owned for a while but been waiting for the right time to watch. Except that I still haven’t watched it, I’ve just been listening as I typed this post. Well, it *is* Glass, it needs at least one listen by itself without the visual.

And it just ended. Guess I should grab another beer and watch it for real this time.

Heh, awesome:

more cheezburger

You can’t be BOTH an intellectual elitist AND someone who actually pays attention when a pastor is speaking.

Besides, I should be the only reverend wright. But of a much weirder church. Maybe I’ll start calling this guy “cousin Jeremy”.

I guess my little holiday bender is officially over now. Well it was fun while it lasted.

Lest you think otherwise, there actually was a greater purpose. 2007 turned out to be a mildly shitty year for me. Mildly in that nothing much happened, the problem was just that, well, nothing much happened.

I spent most of 2005 and 2006 working very hard on my self improvement trip, standing on a tripod of karate, yoga, and meditation. By 2007 I was becoming tired and frustrated, feeling like I’m doing all this work and getting nowhere.

But I *had* been making progress, on many fronts. It’s just the sort of gradual process that’s hard to appreciate one day to the next, especially when the ultimate goal still seems so far away. Hell, understanding exactly what the goal is still seems far away.

Anyway as the year waned on I found myself slipping more and more. Skipping meditation with the Tibetans. Wanting to skip karate & yoga classes — and watching the clock even when I made it to class. Skipping or half-assing my morning practices, and going to bed later so as to wake later so as to have an excuse. Backslid on my ongoing attempts to reduce & eventually give up meat consumption. I only read one book the whole year, and that’s only because I read most of it on the plane to and from California — and I still owe Lesley a book report :)

So by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, and with the added incentive of struggling with a knee injury, I figured maybe the best way to keep from going over a cliff was to take the car into a ditch. No karate, no yoga, no meditation — no concerns, no limits, no discipline. Sensei often tells us, as a metaphor to illustrate that we can only make progress in small steps, that we have to “fill the cup, empty the cup, fill the cup, empty the cup” … my thinking is that sometimes you even have to wash the cup, dry it, apply a new coat of silicone sealant, and let it cure for a few weeks. Or maybe even just smash it and buy a new one.

So now I feel like hell and look like hell and I’ve got a couple of pounds holiday beer cheer to work off, but at least I can again appreciate *not* feeling like this.

And I woke up bright and early, and did my full morning practice.

Interesting compilation of presidential candidates responses to the International Campaign for Tibet. Richardson’s response was excellent of course, though to be fair every response — of those who have responded — is acceptable. Really it’s a no-brainer, it’s the sort of thing you just don’t answer unless you have the right answer.

So naturally, silence from the Republicans. What’s the matter, only people who live near oil deserve to be free?

Not to be partisan, crickets from Obama’s camp are also disappointing.

Hope everyone has a Bhagavad Bodhi Day and a Yukai Rohatsu. OK so I took transliterations of Sanskrit and Japanese words for happy and used them without any concern for whether they’re the right words or in the right context. Bite me, it’s the best I could do.

Anyway, I’m just thankful that O’Reilly and the other Christianists have pointed out to us that it’s wrong for giant faceless corporations to fail to cater to the whims of specific religions, so I can feel justifiably outraged if any cashier gives me a generic “Happy Holidays” today. And I’m sure Romney would agree, seeing as he’s all friendly towards all religions. Or will Buddhism not count since we don’t “acknowledge the Creator as did [some of] the Founders [in half-assed acquiescence to the social demands of their time]” and we’ve never “knelt in prayer to the Almighty”?

Pro:

1. It would be good for me
2. Having been very busy and having kept late nights, I overslept every day this week and only did about half of my usual daily practice
3. I skipped last week due to the Buddhist festival
4. I will feel justified to reward myself with my usual post-yoga Chinese takeout for lunch

Con:

1. Yesterday’s Peace Walk left me with a mild sunburn on my head, which won’t do well for headstands
2. I did already get in a third night of exercise for the week with a karate Fight Night last night
3. I’m still in mourning that my amazing and beautiful teacher is out for a few weeks getting married, to someone who, sadly, isn’t me (I kid! I kid! … well, mostly ; )
4. Too much coffee this morning has my stomach a bit queasy
5. I think spending the next few hours sitting on my ass, perhaps catching up on my Netflix, will be more likely to put me in a place to get some more painting done this afternoon
6. In the time it took me to write out this post, I missed the window to get there on time, and class is actually starting at this very moment.

I think that last one’s the winner.

I should be doing something productive I suppose. I really should be putting coat #1 of the rag-on glazing on wall #2 in the parlor. But hell, it’s 9:00, I just had my weekly batch of tasty spicy vegetable whole wheat spaghetti, this time with a nice glass of pinot noir, and I think I’d rather just nurse an after dinner screwdriver while I catch up here on some overdue rambling. Seeing as I haven’t written anything in, what, two-thirds of a month or so?

Well I’ve been buried at work, been on a major project that’s kept me working nights and even a bit on Saturdays. But it’s almost over, I’m in the final stretch, and hopefully things will get back to something resembling normal soon.

This weekend has been a good break. The symphony kicked off it’s new season and I had my Friday night ticket as usual. I’m in the same second-to-cheapest-seats section this year, but I got them to move me into the center section, which was nice. I suppose I’ll just gradually improve my ticket every year until I’m a blue hair with a private loge box. Ah, who am I kidding, I still won’t have any hair : )

It was a good show. Our “guest” conductor for the evening was one Giancarlo Guerrero, who you may have heard has actually been hired to take the job full time starting next next season. I’m happy enough about it — I can’t say I know enough about contemporary conductors to have a super strong opinion, but I do know that his work last year with the NSO on Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” and Sibelius’ Symphony #6 was probably in my top five for the season, and I wasn’t the only one who thought it was excellent.

Come Saturday it was time to get my dharma on. It couldn’t have been a better day for the Nashville Buddhist Festival. I didn’t get to stay long, but the opening meditation aimed at cultivating peace made for a great way to start the day. And on the subjects of Buddhism and Peace, let me take the opportunity to plug the Buddhist Peace Fellowship event we’ve got planned for Friday.

Anyway, I had to leave the festival early to get some office time in. But after that it was back to the dharma, this time with Krishna, as I headed out to kirtans at 12 South Yoga with my friends in Samavayah, who I’m happy to say have finally found their way onto YouTube:

Onward to today, I continued the theme with a regular Sunday morning at the Yeshe Tsogyal house. Wouldn’t necessarily be noteworthy except that — well for one thing, I’d gotten out of the habit the last few months, so it’s nice to start getting back to it, and for the other thing — AWESOME meditation this morning. Sometimes when you really get there, you feel something shift inside your head. I mean you really feel it, like some sort of neurological equivalent of cracking your knuckles. The only other time I’ve felt anything like it was back when I was doing insane amounts of LSD. And so I sort of wonder if this morning I popped something *back* into place that’s been out of whack all this time.

It would be nice.

Between that and the MCB post about Google’s 10 year anniversary, I had an inkling that I might share with you the story about how I put myself on Goodyear’s payroll when I was around 10 years old or so. And how I once figured out that the fallout from that event shaped everything in my life that would happen going forward. But now it’s getting late, the screwdriver is kicking in, and I think I’m just going to have to let that one slip by for now. Release my attachment to the need to tell the story, as it were.

Not only did i get to see The Simpsons this weekend, I also saw Rear Window at the Belcourt, so I finally get the references in this:

I’m tempted to say “It’s all connected” but I’d hate that to be taken as a subliminal endorsement for Karl Dean. Not that it isn’t one. Eh. I don’t know. I’m leaning a bit towards Dean, but Briley, Dean, and Gentry all seem acceptable. My natural tendency to gravitate towards the outsiders actually has me somewhat sympathetic to Eaton. But I suspect he’s probably both a lunatic and a troglydyte. Nothing to base that on, just instinct. But given that I still can’t vote, I haven’t really dug into this race. Anybody but the tired political hack (Clement) or the raging homophobe* (Dozier) is fine with me.

Back to the movies, Netflix set me up with The Rock. I’m normally not into “action for the sake of action” movies (kung-fu excluded), and I’m really not into Bruckheimer tripe. But I was curious because of the Alcatraz setting, and it was cool to see a few glimpses of spots that I remembered. There wasn’t much of that though. But this all reminds me that I need to get my Alcatraz pictures up for the next post in the California trip recap. Soon, soon.

Maybe I’ll do that once I finish the living room/parlor work that I started at the beginning of the month. So far I’ve gotten two coats of one color in the parlor beneath the chair rail, two coats of another color above the chair rail, and two walls done in the living room. The living room is taking a while because the walls were in pretty rough shape so I’m doing some heavy sanding and spackling. Not to mention constant cleaning up from all that sanding and spackling. Anyway, next up is back to the parlor, where I’m going to try my hand at some rag-painting/glazing. Then back to the living room for the other two walls.

Finally, just – awesome:

* Seriously dude, you’re so homophobic you’ll vote against a person on unrelated issues just because you know they support equal rights??? Meaning you’re willing to subvert the basic mechanics of democracy just to satisfy your prejudices? And you think you have the character and integrity to lead this city?

In 2004, for instance, he voted against a nomination to the Metro Traffic and Parking Commission of a former Metro Council member who had co-sponsored a gay rights bill in the previous council term.

“There was a message that … we don’t want that to come back up this term, and she was the symbol of that,” Dozier, who didn’t serve in the previous term, said after the vote.

Well, I may have to miss Bonnaroo, but I got to hear Carmina Burana. Damn that’s good stuff.

Meanwhile, come out tomorrow for some kirtan chanting with Samavayah at 12 South Yoga. It’s another benefit for Eric Volz. Good vibes and a good cause, what more could you want? OK, sure, you could want The Police, but there’s only so much we can do.