An Ode To Wonder Woman
July 25, 2010 | Filed Under Micah | Leave a Comment
My favorite heroine …
and her Lasso of Truth…
Rumors are that a new Wonder Woman movie is about to be announced for 2013. IMDB even has a page up.
Conceptual Landscapes and Shapes
July 25, 2010 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I’ve recently gone through a long set of experiences that have raised an important question in my mind.
For the most part, I’m an empiricist in the spirit of Locke and Hume, in the sense that I believe that the most salient aspects of our conceptual landscape are shaped by our environment. Yes, I believe that there are innate constraints imposed by biology. Our brains have tendencies and limits.
But within the constraints of biology, there is quite the tabula rasa. A landscape of diverse possibility. Just because the blank slate has physical restrictions and limitations does not stop it from being a blank slate, ready to be impressed upon.
What I’m discovering through various friendships (there is no news here) is that people who have gone through radically different life experiences in radically different environments have radically different ways of thinking. Put more succinctly… people who speak the same language syntactically might communicate in different languages semantically. Frameworks for understanding and communicating can be so different that communication becomes impotent. Words are interpreted, but the meaning is distorted or completely lost.
No news. People speak past each other all the time. We are all hidden behind the veil of communication. No two people have the same conceptual landscape nor think with the same progression .. the same shapes.
What’s interesting to me… the question that really interests me here… is whether we can have control over the shape of our conceptual landscape, the structure in which our thoughts take place. Whether bridges can be built … between radically divergent frameworks. And I think the answer to this is clearly yes, with mutual commitment and hard work. But that leads me to an even more important question… are some conceptual frameworks more desirable, or say, better/noble/worthwhile than others? And the contrast… are some ways of thinking destructive, deadening dead ends that we should avoid.
I taught over 20 philosophy courses at various universities. One of the fundamental principles of my teaching was that there are better ways of thinking and relating to the world than others. I tried to hold students accountable to their humanity, their rationality, their emotions, their Universe. A hard task in a post-modern world of extreme egalitarian relativism.
What I’ve discovered lately is that in trying to bridge conceptual frameworks, it is not all that difficult to poison the well… to go in a negative direction.
What you find when you look around America is a homogeneous culture flooded with stereotypes and simple rules of thought and primitive shapes that keep people imprisoned … lonely, shameful, empty, lacking direction.
The tough question is this: do you choose to better your own soul and sacrifice the ability to communicate/relate to the average person or do you choose to expose your soul to the toxins of the mainstream. In reality it’s probably not an either or, just a matter of finding proper balance. Nonetheless…
Isolation sucks. But so does the mind-numbing naivety of the mainstream. No easy choice. No easy answer. No easy balance.
Aborted Love
July 24, 2010 | Filed Under Poetry | Leave a Comment
In October, the rainy season stream,
flows with a sense of urgency
vibrant, vital, perpetual
like air.
The stream flows and feeds
into waterfalls,
and people passing by become
overcome by breathless beauty
like silent waves of a distant sea
the ebb and flow of eternity.
Except this stream dries up around June
aborted by the gods of summer,
the ones who selfishly steal away beauty.
It slows until it’s barely going,
like a smashed up wasp,
gasping for its last breath
and then one day it just stops flowing.
Pantagruelism
July 19, 2010 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I just discovered that I’m a Pantagruelist.
a certain jollity of mind pickled in the scorn of fortune – François Rabelai
It is that odd cast of mind which allows one to see the corruption everywhere, including in oneself, while still loving the world. – Caleb Stegall
We believe that to suffer one’s place and one’s people in the particularity of its and their needs is the only true basis for finding love, friendship, and an authentic, meaningful life: to live in love with the frailty and limits of one’s existence, suffering the places, customs, rites, joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, and community–all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced directly. The discipline of place teaches that it is more than enough to care skillfully and lovingly for one’s own little circle, and this is the model for the good life, not the limitless jurisdiction of the ego, granted by a doctrine of choice, that is ever seeking its own fulfillment, pleasure, and satiation.
- The New Pantagruel
Speachless Beauty: Ibarra Quartet and Makoto Fujimura at Le Poisson Rouge
July 18, 2010 | Filed Under Poetry | Leave a Comment
Splendor
July 18, 2010 | Filed Under Poetry | Leave a Comment
Splendor for Kayama
Mineral Pigments, Gold on Kumohada
MAKOTO FUJIMURA
Thank You, August 27
July 6, 2010 | Filed Under Poetry | Leave a Comment
For your understanding,
your enlightenment.
your patience.
We did not need that path.
But have forged our own.
Rare and noble sinews,
In the body of life.
I admire you.
The path may not be perfect; that died long ago.
But from new beginnings we shall go
Standing tall and unencumbered
by notions of possessing
We are now free
To be.
Real.
Love.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten
July 6, 2010 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Communication
July 6, 2010 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Two thoroughly true quotes on communication:
But communication is two-sided – vital and profound communication makes demands also on those who are to receive it… demands in the sense of concentration, of genuine effort to receive what is being communicated.
~Roger Sessions
And it’s absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating – and the levels of the communication that I’ve seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don’t we have that here?
~ Emma Thompson
God Bless You Mom Mom
July 6, 2010 | Filed Under Micah | Leave a Comment
This is my MomMom, Rose Joslin, making cannolis at my wedding. This woman was a true Italian lady. Feisty but full of love. And damn, she knew how to cook. But even more than that… she was the best hugger in the world. God bless her as she passes to the other side.