Wildly Interesting Books

  • Adam's Task by Vicki Hearne
  • Anything by Colin Cotterill
  • Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith
  • Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell
  • Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel
  • Gehry Draws
  • Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker
  • Out of Our Heads by Ava Noe
  • Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design, Mannerisms, Quirks and Conceits
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson
  • The God of Small Things by Arundahti Roy
  • The Long Fall by Walter Mosely
  • The Martin Beck Series by Maj Sjowall and Per Waloo
  • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
  • The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank
  • Vermeeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Painting finally takes shape

This took about one half hour. Finding my watercolor brushes took two hours.

Magical Cantaloupe Cures all Ills


The nostrum that addresses all disorders. tomorrow morning, by eating the second half of the cantaloupe, sainthood will be conferred upon the final diners. More on this tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Monday, July 07, 2008

Something to "think" about

An Undesirable Thing

If the basic project of mainstream Buddhist practice is to unmask the ego illusion for what it is, one of the main prongs of attack is directed against desire. Desire gets a very bad press in the Buddhist scriptures. It is a poison, a disease, a madness. There is no living in a body that is subject to desire, for it is like a blazing house.
Now, desire lives and grows by being indulged. When not indulged by the application of ethical restraint and awareness, on the other hand, it stabilizes and begins to diminish, though this is not an easy or comfortable process, for the old urges clamor for satisfaction for a long time.
This kind of practice cut directly against the main currents of modern consumer society, where desire is energetically encouraged and refined to new pitches and variations by the powerful agencies of marketing and publicity. But it also cuts against the more moderate desires – for family, wealth, sense pleasures and so on sanctioned in simpler, more traditional societies, including the one into which the Buddha was born. We can never be at peace while desire is nagging at us.
John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism

much better than my last rant.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Cripple You Yoga


Larry the Fish does not need expensive classes to make him a fish. He's a fish.






Arrgh! The search for enlightenment is over the minute you think it's a search. I'll admit that it's not so easy to discover that you are sitting on a gold mine of peace and enlightenment, but it's gonna be a long way off if you're trying to 'buy' it. Get up and out the door, folks This is America. There's nothing they won't 'sell' you. Don't be mystified (except in the best sense). It's all free. Acceptance is the beginning of the end of all striving. Can we just be? It costs nothing. No one can package and sell it.



Listen. We used to work. We used to do our own work. We walked to work. We were farmers. We worked in the home. We don't walk to work anymore. We aren't allowed to plant and harvest anymore. Big Agro does it for us. Laugh if you want to, but going down to the river to beat the clothes in the stream was a better workout than you can pay for today. And it was a community experience. In the old days we worked our bodies hard. It was a hard life, too hard. But now they tell us that life is not hard. Well it is. It's bitterly hard. Our communities are gone and we don't(for the most part use our legs or our muscles to do work. So we have to pay for a gym or sign up for yoga classes. This is not cheap and not within the reach of most people.



Instead, for the poor, we have television. For all of us we have television. I stood on line at Dunkin Donuts with a huge T.V. in my face while I waited for four minutes for my iced coffee. Four minutes, I can't live without T.V.



Apparently people have T.V. sets built into the seats of their SUV's.



Why not just sew the T.V. onto your head?



Okay, so I'm ranting. But what else is a blog for? Healing, mediation, enlightement,it's all big business in the USA. Mail order mystics, as Chris Smither calls them. Go out, friends, and do your own work. Don't pay people to teach you how to move around. We were born knowing how to do that. Turn on the music and start dancing.



Best of luck,


Jeanne



This could be my last post

If I'm caught putting this stuff....

into this dumpster.

It will probably be just fine since no one knows where I live. And, by the way, that is not the Lorem Ipsum Bookstore across the street in the photo.

Look for me, or don't look for me wearing the black ski mask in the dead of night.

Friday, July 04, 2008