One More Saturday Night

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Bobby is having fun being a rock star.  Donna is having fun doing whatever that is that she's doing.

And I am having fun watching and listening.

Petty Concerns

"If we are attached to petty concerns and never aspired to anything great, we won’t accomplish much. What is petty and what is great? Petty is for oneself alone, for immediate gratification, and for harmful deeds, while great is for the many, for the long term, and for positive pursuits. Look closely-- what have you or those around you achieved? Avoid pettiness and aspire to great things!"  ~Ogyen Trinley Dorje

Somebody said that there is really only one sin-- selfishness-- and every other sin is just a branch from that one.

When I'm faced with a moral ambiguity, I reflect back on that and ask myself, "Who benefits?"  If the answer is "Only me," I know to tread carefully.

Perfect

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There are people who will passionately argue that this is a song about heroin addiction, but Lou Reed always said it was about a lovely day in Central Park with his fiancée.  Of course, that raises a number of questions, too.

For some reason, the verse

Just a perfect day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was
Someone else-- someone good…

always hits me hard.  It's one of the saddest lines I've ever heard.

I'd love to hear Weezer cover this song.  As far as I know, they never have.

Full lyrics HERE.

What's the big deal?

"Renunciation mind is very simple in a way: we have renunciation mind when we realize that all this is not a big deal. Somebody steps on your toe-- what’s the big deal? The more we get used to this notion, the more we have renunciation mind. Renunciation somehow has this connotation of giving something up. But it is like the example of the mirage. You can’t give up the water because there is none; it is only a mirage. Moreover, you don’t have to give up a mirage, because what is the point of giving up a mirage? One need simply know that it is a mirage. Such understanding is a big renunciation. The moment you know that it is a mirage, most likely you will not even go there because you know it is fake. Or even if you do go, there is no disappointment because you already know what is there. At the very least you will only have a little disappointment."  ~Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Ah-haaa

Excerpted from Nashville’s Mother Church:  The History of Ryman Auditorium by William U. Eiland, ©1994:

One such act gaining nationwide exposure was Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, whose song San Antonio Rose (YouTube Link) was the best-selling record of 1939. One of his guest appearances at the Opry caused an incident which Minnie Pearl describes best:

Bob Wills was young and handsome in that devil-may-care sort of way. When he did all that Texas hollering, that "Ah-haaa," some of the ladies would go all to pieces. He was the first person to park a bus in front of the Ryman, and what a sight they were coming out of it. He and the Playboys and San Antonio Rose all dressed in white cowboy outfits. Well, as you know, the Ryman has that semicircular balcony that curves around over the wings of the stage, and one of the ladies up there could not control herself when she saw Bob Wills. She stood up, started to shout, and fell out of the balcony directly onto the stage-- a real showstopper since they had to stop and pick her up.

She said that retelling the story reminded her of a routine she did with Rod Brasfield, who told her, "Miss Minnie, I shot my dog."

"Why?" asked Minnie. "Was he mad?"

"Well, he wasn't very happy about it," replied Brasfield.

So, when people asked her if the lady who fell out of the balcony was hurt by the fall, Miss Minnie always answered, "Well, it didn't help her any."

Signature Style

Excerpted from A Geography of Time by Robert Levine, ©1997:

The Chinese developed an incense clock. This wooden device consisted of a series of connected small same-sized boxes. Each box held a different fragrance of incense. By knowing the time it took for a box to burn its supply, and the order in which the scents burned, observers could recognize the time of day by the smell in the air.

If he hadn't told already told you that it was the Chinese who invented an incense clock, I bet you would have guessed it.  That just seems like the sort of thing they'd do.

 

With Those Who

Scanned from Catholic Worker, June/July 2019

Perfectly Satisfied

Excerpted from A Geography of Time by Robert V. Levine,  ©1997:

In the United States, today’s latest hit, by its nature, becomes tomorrow’s throwaway. Fred Turk, who was a colleague during my year in Brazil, is a U.S. citizen who has spent most of his adult life teaching in countries throughout South America. “I don’t know if I could ever return to the States,” he told me. “I’m always amazed by how alien I feel when I visit. It seems like every time I return people have totally cleared their shelves of yesterday’s fashions-- not only in clothes, but in music and art and everything else. Even the language seems to change. I never know how to dress, what to talk about or even what words sound foolish. Sometimes, particularly with young people, I can’t even follow the conversation.”

Turk is describing the U.S. addiction to change that occurs over the time span of weeks and months. An even more dramatic craving for variety may be observed in moment-to-moment shifts. We see this, for example, in the shrinking attention span of television viewers. The popularization of remote control devices and multiple cable stations have produced a generation of what media analysts call “grazers.” Recent studies indicate that these viewers change stations as much as 22 times per minute, or once every 2.73 seconds.  They approach the airwaves as a vast smorgasbord, all of which must be sampled, no matter how meager the helpings. Compare these grazers to the traditional people of Indonesia, whose main entertainment consists of watching the same few plays and dances, month after month, year after year.  Each viewer knows every nuance of movement and each word of dialogue but are perfectly satisfied to return again and again.

I like repetition, myself.  When I lived alone, I ate the same things every day and was perfectly content.  I take a lot of satisfaction in re-reading old books, listening to old albums, seeing familiar birds at my feeder.  I don't have a cell phone, and the only thing I watch on cable is baseball.

I was born American, but I identify as Traditional Indonesian.

 

I

"The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life."  ~the 14^th Dalai Lama, excerpted from Kindness, Clarity, and Insight ©2013

First

Appropriately, it's the last sentence that's the most important:

Marsiela Gomez, a doctoral student in pharmacology at Johns Hopkins, is a part Mayan who was raised in a culture that taught the value of waiting for others to speak first. This habit has often caused problems for her in the United States: “It is very frustrating, because people think I have nothing to add. Sometimes I find that when you wait to speak the answers are upcoming. In this society, it’s so important for individuals to own a point of view that everyone feels the need to be the first to put a certain opinion forward. Oftentimes, if I wait long enough, someone will express my point of view.” She adds, “Sometimes if one waits too long, the subject changes and then my response is no longer relevant. The need to be heard first seems to be more important than the appropriate response.”  ~Excerpted from A Geography of Time by Robert Levine, ©1997

Abusive Relationship

The idea that I could be my own abuser is not an idea that ever occurred to me before.

Hmm…

I'll just dream and stay tan

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Chances are pretty good I first heard this song on AM radio; a half-inch mono speaker pressed to my ear.

Full lyrics HERE.

Two Daughters of the Devil

Excerpted from Nashville's Mother Church:  The History of Ryman Auditorium by William U. Eiland, ©1994:

None was more famous or gifted than preacher Billy Sunday, who led revival meetings in the Tabernacle (later Ryman Auditorium) in the 1920s and 1930s. Once, as prominent Nashville attorney and author Jack Norman, Sr., relates, the Reverend Sunday held a service at which he condemned lower Broadway and the red light district of Nashville as "the devil's backbone." He excoriated the city's fathers for allowing such goings on in a co-called Christian city. On this occasion the crowd included two ladies who happened to be employed in that district and had come to hear the famous Reverend Sunday, probably more out of curiosity than genuine interest in salvation. Their curiosity satisfied, they did not remain to be saved. "They arose and started to walk out," said Norman. "When Sunday saw this, he could not resist the chance to further condemn and shouted to the audience, 'See, there goes two daughters of the devil!' Having nearly reached the exit, one of them turned, waved to Sunday, and shouted back, 'Good-bye, Daddy!'"

Twilight

Twilight by Maxfield Parrish, 1935

Parrish's paintings are large, typically about 1/2 to 2/3 scale, and up close you can see that the final work is almost a collage of earlier works.  Many features have been carefully (and literally) cut-and-pasted from other canvases.

If you ever get the opportunity to see his art in person, be sure to take advantage.  There are a lot of things going on you can't see from a picture on the internet.

As

"Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else."  ~Shunryu Suzuki