Rubens, or the Michelin people.

Now and ZenToday I went to U.C. Berkeley Art Museum to see the oil sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish/Dutch/Spanish painter. If you live around here, it's a show to see. Go now.

It's always been difficult for me to discuss art. I was terrible in Art History classes. But I'm the person the guard has to tell to keep their hands away from the works because I get so excited in talking about technique. I paint, too. I love painting.

Rubens' work is highly regarded for its rendering of the human figure as musculature draped in skin with white highlights in all the light/right places. He studied Caravaggio in Italy. His compositions kind of show this. He mentored Velazquez in Spain.
He studied Michelangelo and Raphael in Italy.

His work isn't perfect in the way that Michelangelo's is. The faces of his figures are not interesting except in the family portrait. But his use of dark umber and darkness and light is so fascinating.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired--and anonymous.

Now and Zen: The orange and the green without the wheel.Sometimes I get comments on my blog. Now, I know I don't write often enough to get many comments, but sometimes I do get them. I understand them and I receive them. However, I never get a signed blog comment. My need to communicate is somehow subverted by the commentary of those who would communicate only through anonymity.

About being sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of anonymous bloggers. But I'm actually really sick of my life and job and lack of a love life. I'm so tired of this situation that I can't get up with any kind of glee. It's so tiring being tired of things that don't change.

I saw the film 'What the Bleep do we Know' the other night. If only I were a photographer! If only I knew a little kid with a basketball! If only I had taken quantum physics at the university in which I spent so much time dreaming (I'll let you guess which one it is--not UC Santa Cruz, for you in the Sufi crowd, though)! If only I didn't have these major mood swings (except I'm always loathing my job (you'd have to read about it in another blog). Quantum physicists, please explain!

The orange and the green without the wheel.

MSN Hotmail - Today
Today was another Hallmark holiday. However this one benefits the bar scene and purveyors of alcohol, a poison. A friend of mine was telling me that there is a whole ritual around the drinking of alcohol. I believe this is true. When I didn't have the choice of spiritual convictions, I went to Catholic school. The only thing I liked about it was the incense. The same is true of bars. They have a distinct scent. Pepe le Peeuw (sp?) would be proud.

Meanwhile, Irish people of all descents have converged today. I like that aspect of things. It's like imagining you're from India, a country with a green and orange and white flag, too. But it's flag sets it apart from the drinking people. It has a chakra in the center. There is a spiritual component to the flag. Just like Korea's, for example. Today I am Korean and Indian and Irish with just a distant piece of Denmark. Just today. Tomorrow I'm exploring Chad.

Now and Zen

Now and Zen

Tonight I worked on the San Francisco cable TV show "Bro Jud on Love Energy." I am the "reader" for the show. Jud gives me articles to read, and I read them.

The first time I saw this show was back in 1995. It appeared on the cable menu, and I was looking for love (like always), so I switched the remote to it. Actually, I'd only had cable tv for about a few months. When I first got it, I was terrified. The whole world available in this box. It was weird and overwhelming. Now I was watching a local show that promised to give me tips on what love might be.

Tibet: Farms and Office Spaces

This is a poem I wrote October 14, 2003. Right now I can't come up with anything decent to write about the tsunami tragedy. So, I thought I'd post this poem written upon viewing the film 'Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.'



Tibet: Farms and Office Spaces

I've watched ou leading the prayer wheel
Around, itself a tall, wooden tsunami of intention,
Kind of like pine and redwood trees swirling
To the beat unheard yet heard, felt and shown.

Crying at the survival of burnt flesh and
Emotional watergush, we both are spectral,
Dreamlike machinations of a world not tall
With great gods of green and inverted life.

It is the concrete, mere sand and rock, that
Looms greyly, sometimes white-washed,
Above what used to be dirt, that is, earth,
Land, replete with worms, bugs and prayers.

There is blue, there is purple, there is yellow
And green, conjoined with this concrete.
Images of serenity yet to be born and yet
Then remembered, and soon to be torn down.

I want to tell you more about my longing
To know you, come into astral vortices
With senses over and over again enticed
And with much weeping more to be done.

Roots of radishes and potatoes might soothe
The hunger to be heard. Yet speech has been
Blocked--in your heart there is peace, and
In our hearts pain is truth, truth water and food.

A New Year in Spirit and Time

Today is January 2, 2005, a Sunday in California. Tomorrow will be January 3, 2005, and I will resume work as a teacher of physically and cognitively impaired children, ages 5 to 8 years-old. There are 5 five-year-olds and 3 over that age. Wow. Three of the children are autistic. Three of them have severe orthopaedic/cognitive conditions. One has Down's Syndrome and another a nameless cognitive thing. I have two aides and a nurse in the room. One of the aides sexually harassed me a couple of years ago and I didn't nail him. Now I have to deal with his subtle leers and nosiness. The other aide is also a man but he is a gentleman, kind and thoughtful. There are actually two nurses; they trade off weeks. The nurse I find most helpful to me will be there tomorrow. Something to be thankful for! She makes me laugh and see through the obstacles toward making this teaching situation less tense. Many people who think about K-12 education and especially that of special needs children have no idea how difficult it is to find like-minded people to work with in helping these children. I'm saying that someone doesn't have to have a compatible personality to work with me they just have to have the needs and safety of the children in mind first and not that of their egos. Find ego gratification in helping a child recognize a letter or learn to paint.

So, since I don't want to go to work tomorrow (for reasons implied above), I went to see Almodovar's 'Bad Education' today. This is not a film I would recommend to my co-workers. I saw it because I've seen practically everything else out there!?! (not really). This film taught me a lot about dreams and dreaming and film-making and image-making. I recommend it. It's getting to be about time to try to sleep so that I can get up tomorrow for my first day back of service. I'll write more about this film and others I've seen over this holiday break.

Blog blog blog....

Tonight I'm watching the classic Tarkovsky film, Andrei Rublev. I hope I don't fall asleep. It's been an odd day. Spent most of it in bed reading about how I might change my job without too much pain. Walked to the pet store for kitty litter and food and ran into a former neighbor with whom I had never spoken. I lost my house I was renting back in August of 2003. The greedy landlord wanted to take advantage of San Francisco housing and the people who are moving here and buying houses at ridiculous prices.
After living in Berkeley for 6 months after the eviction in a crack neighbor near the Berkeley marina, I moved back to the old neighborhood which is called Bernal Heights. Back to the meeting with the old neighbor. He was extremely drunk (most people could tell by his body language and manner of speech.) He got up the courage to say hello to me. I said hello back and then he asked me if I wanted a drink. I said I don't drink. He said he'd buy me a coke or something. Somehow fascinated by this person whom I'd seen so many times in the ten years I'd lived on the street now accosting me, I decided to go have a cranberry juice with him at the nearby bar.
It's kind of difficult to have a conversation with someone who's drunk to begin with. This was not going well. The person at the pet store had told me that he was worried about this guy's dog, so when he invited me to see how well his dog was doing, I decided to go into the house I'd seen so often and never had been in. The dog was very cute: small white terrier with long kind of dreadlock hair. The guy showed me his many guitars, none of which was in tune or playable!
I decided to say hi to his grandmother who owns the house and made my get-away. Perhaps I will try to bring back Prohibition. Drinking is so harmful to everyone. It really disgusts me. People who drink don't disgust me, however. I feel bad for them because there is a lurking depression under the veneer of being drunk.

The Incredibles

Will there be no more superheroes if everyone is one? Is there a God or some approximation of a Universal Spirit?

The Incredibles, a recent animated film, had me very skeptical about its intentions at first. The superheroes are banished from the city they had been defending against evil. They then live in a suburbia reminiscent of that in which The Flintstones
lived. Mr. Incredible's name is Bob Parr (a golfing reference?). He gets a job in the bowels of an insurance company where he gets every customer over the hurdles of corporate greed. He still is an Incredible.

Proving genetic theory, his offspring are also Incredibles. They each have there own supra-human talent. Even their baby is discovered to have hidden Incredible "powers."

What kind of bothered me about this film is the fact that the counter-hero states that he would like to be a superhero also. The Incredibles are not the only superheroes in this film. But, alas, he is not a superhero, really. And his statement: "Once everyone has become a superhero, there will be none" is the existential question I'm asking. Perhaps its Nietschzean...

The film is very cleverly done, and I'm glad I saw it. But it leaves me asking questions that I would appreciate some comments upon!

Samhain

Now and Zen
This is my favorite holiday of the year. Harvest time. People celebrating with pumpkins or jackfruit or whatever they please. The best part is dressing as one pleases. That should be the fun part.

It is a huge drag, though, that election time in this country immediately follows the celebration of the harvest, Day of the Dead and Samhain. This year, just like 4 years ago, the American people have been duped again into thinking that they are safe and secure in the hands of the people who run Washington, D.C.

I've always thought it odd that Bush has been given credit for anything. He, like Reagan, is a very plausible public speaker to those with little education and lacking in critical thinking skills. There is no excuse for people with education beyond the 8th grade voting for Bush. Sorry, but even the country's intellectual elite will vote for him. I'm not referring to those who might have gone to Yale on a scholarship. They worked for their education. How Bush got in is obvious: his family could pay, and etc.

On the whole, though, I'm an optimist. The media and Washington D.C. elite will not win this time.

Now and Zen

Now and Zen

Today I went with my class of cognitively challenged children, ages 5 to 8, to the pumpkin patch in San Francisco. One of the students, a female sumo wrestler, wouldn't get up off the floor to walk to the bus. As soon as we got there, one of the students cried for 20 minutes straight. Leaving, another student cried for 30 minutes really loud. I often wonder whether I have been given this job as a gift. There is much humility and patience that is required. The present is spiritual oneness.

Pumpkin, not always green,
Or orange, sometimes white
Raises its vine, yours.

Now and Zen

Now and Zen

It is time to blog again. So much is so complicated in this lifetime. I want to write a poem a day, so I will use the blogger for this. It's too bad I can't use the computer at work, because when I'm at home I'm very tired and unable to get much enthusiasm up for blogging. I will just include a haiku today for the sake of brevity.

Red Wood

Spindly fingers reach
To spin a favorite spine
And it comes up, strong.

The Delinquent Blogger

Sorry I have been away from blogging so long. I intend to blog at least once a day. Today is a holiday, Columbus Day, otherwise known as Indigenous People's Day, which is what I prefer to call it. I wonder if the taqueria is open.

Bihar

Salty, sunless, full.

The Roar of the Honk and Hammer

It's been a while since I've blogged. Maybe today it's time to kvetch. I went to the post office and it was closed--no sign, no indication of anything interesting having taken place. Even the windows were mirror-like. I was staring at myself in dire need of stamps.

A man walking down the street was noticing that his destination would not yield him his needs either. He said to me, "I think they're supposed to move across the street." So we both looked fervently at the new building across the shabby street. No post office to be found.

Then he had the newsworthy idea that public works operations would be closed today because of the death of the man who was forgetful before he forgot to use the toilet. He had early onset Alzheimer's while working as the "President." Perhaps his lack of empathy with those like himself--his self-hatred and fear caused him to close so many homes for the mentally fragile and infirm. That is his what I remember about him. It's worth blogging about since his good buddy Margaret Thatcher spoke at his wake or whatever. She has had two strokes to the brain. It's always been my belief that one dies from the breakdown of what one has lacked most power and strength.

Keeds and Computers Forgetting

It seems very complicated for me to transfer pictures on the computer. Is it because I'm a Keed? There are tons of excuses for not getting it right. Teaching keeds is what I've done as a life path for 10 years. The younger they are, the more excuses. Computers, on the other hand, are not like keeds. They don't make excuses. They just tell you everything you need to know to use their creativity. Maybe I need to read a book or just practice like practicing an instrument...learn through doing. But, meanwhile, I'd rather not stay a keed since I've been surrounded by them and I can't explain what I want them to do any better than a computer can.

Identity of the Blogger

Why blog? Why talk?
It's fun to see words, even if they don't mean anything--except if they're words associated with "bad" human qualities, such as what we call cruelty or meanness. If this blog approaches cruelty in any sense, let me know. This blogger is for love in all its forms.
Bhakti.
Poems.
Favorite thoughts that come up. Loving, happy thoughts. Serene and peaceful thoughts, putting out a message through these electrical wires that our nervous system has a friend.