Collected random thoughts, questions, and pictures

• What sound does a giraffe make? What sound does a turtle make? When you have a toddler and you let her pick the next animal Old MacDonald is going to have on his farm, these questions become more urgent.
• About a month ago when my wife and daughter were out of town visiting family, I also decided to check out this Jim Jarmusch guy -- director. Ever watch any of his movies? I watched Night on Earth, Mystery Train, and Stranger Than Paradise. Night on Earth was kind of eh… I did not like Night on Earth much. Five taxis around the world, L.A. (Wynona Ryder), New York, Paris, Rome (Roberto Benigni, "Life is Beautiful"), and Oslo, and the events of each ride. A bit interesting at times but generally ho-hum.
  I liked Mystery Train. Set in Memphis, it is the interwoven stories of a teenage Japanese tourist couple, an Italian lady collecting the body of a deceased relative, a recently broken up couple (Joe Strummer), the people he gets into some trouble with (Steve Buscemi), and the hotel where they all end up staying (Screamin' Jay Hawkins, proprietor). This movie was interesting just for the wide variety of people and how all the things they do, even the simple things, interact in ways none could ever imagine.
  Stranger Than Paradise was ok. About the most dysfunctional immigrant family from Prague you can imagine. So have you seen any of this guy's movies?? Because having surveyed his work thus, I really wonder if as a director, he is trying to romanticize boredom…
• I also watched Dogma. Alannis Morisette plays God. I must admit that was something to chew on. It's not that I have an issue with the possibility that God may be a woman. Or both genders and neither. It's not that I have an issue with the idea of God taking human form to enjoy doing things like headstands and somersaults. That is God teaching us to enjoy life. No, I think my issue is with Alannis Morisette playing God. I mean she abandoned her musical persona as much as possible and just played the role. She really did her best at that. But anyone with a persona as strong as Alannis Morisette cannot abandon it completely. It's just not possible. It comes with her face. My issue was imagining God as a being that has as much anger as Alannis Morisette does…
• At times I am so sad Grover Washington Jr. is dead. He was just an incredible, awesome musician. Speaks to my soul.
• Some Buddhists you may have heard of:
  • Richard Gere
  • Tina Turner
  • Phil Jackson
  • Tiger Woods
  • Oliver Stone
  
• I had the idea of starting an internet business wherein I would offer, for a nominal fee, such services as:
  • Paying Lip Service
  • Singing Praises
  • Creating Award Certificates for the arbitrary award of your choice, regardless of how abstract, creative, or nonsensical
  What'cha think?
• So this book about the poetry festival, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, NJ held every 2 years, turns out to be the companion book of the Bill Moyers series on PBS, The Language of Life. Anyway, one of the poets says she became a poet under the influence of her Czechoslovakian grandmother, who would make up words in English. In the kitchen she'd ask her to get the (thick slavic accent here) macaroni-stop-water-go-head. Colander. I've always just called that a "drainer". Did I make that up?? Anyway, this made me recall my own grandmother's colorful expressions, which I will now list here. Ebbaisms, we call them in the family, from Ebba, her name.
  • Two heads are better than one, even if one is a cabbage head.
  • Busier than a one eyed dog in a meat house.
  • Every little bit helps, said the old lady as she went in the lake.
  
• I've always thought of symbolism in cultural terms. The symbols of a culture and what they represent in that culture. Now I'm wondering about personal symbolism. In his book "Tibetan Dream Yoga", Lama Surya Das in referring to dream imagery, almost as an offhand remark referred to "symbolism that means something to you". Symbolism that means something to you. Personal symbolism. People who are good at dream analysis understand what this is. With the book I'm reading now, I see poets also understand this. Many poems seem to be in large part the personal symbolism of the poet. These poems need to be structured in a way that makes the meaning of the poet's personal symbolism evident. What, I wonder, is my personal symbolism? What symbols mean something to me alone, and are not symbols of my culture or of any culture I've read about? Have I purged any personal symbols I may have had out of a misguided obligation to the fact that they would be misunderstood or utterly meaningless to anyone else? Hmmm… This, I will be pondering.
• These commercials for luxury cars are really starting to be offensive to me. I'm sure the cars are very nice, but they aren't selling the cars -- they're selling you a perfect, happy life, for the price of a luxury car. These ads are getting worse and they offend me on two levels. First, in purely western terms, this is really excessive materialism, and the "happy life" is a blatant lie they're trying to sell you. Second, in Buddhist terms, this is exactly how materialism causes suffering. The belief that the right things will make you truly happy. Suffering occurs when the thing stops making you happy, or is broken or destroyed, or instead of realizing things just cannot make you happy, you think the thing was not as great as it was "supposed" to be... Expecting this kind of satisfaction and happiness from things is its own problem, but these ads set you up for it. Set you up for disappointment. I pity those that fall for it, I really do. Selling this lie is shameful. These commercials disgust me.
  However, the real problem with materialism is attachment. In the Buddhist view, it's perfectly fine to have the car and enjoy it thoroughly, as long as you do not expect lasting fulfillment from it, and if you are comfortable with the reality that it will one day stop making you happy, because all is impermanence. Have the car, enjoy it thoroughly, just don't expect paradise or permanence from it. It is foolish to expect that, right? Yet these commercials make every attempt to lead people to believe they can expect exactly that.

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