A Tranquil Star: Fiction: The New Yorker

A Tranquil Star: Fiction: The New Yorker

Being Called To the Torah

We went to Jacob Martin's bar mitzvah this morning. Lots of fun. But after two days of socializing I was beat. When we got home, I promptly went to bed and didn't budge for another 3 hours. Now it's time to go to bed again. The last of the great party people.

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Endings

The end of my time in the PD office. So glad. So happy it is all behind me. Some great friends, and good stories, and lots of hard work. So glad it's behind me.

technorati tags:Sky

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Cat Friday

The King Of All He Surveys
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Sweet Alyssum

As I walked toward Zoe's house, I passed a tiny garden. Only a handful of well-tended flowers surrounded by concrete, yet they said, "Spring."

Downtown

Downtown
Originally uploaded by vajra.

The softness of the pear trees against the concrete and glass was so unexpected. Even the heavy planters could not suppress their exuberance.

Spring Is a Blue Season

After yesterday's rain, today was beautiful. The air was clean and fragrant. The sky sparkled. It was a bit cool but perfect for a walk.

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Rainy Monday

Nothing much happened today. Or at least I seemed unable to do anything of any consequence.  A sense of pervading anomie. What the hell.

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Wonderful, Restful Sunday

It was cooler today than it has been, yet, no need for long sleeves. We walked to Rooz after showering: bagels and lattes. Yum. Lot's of flowers blooming although the magnolias are almost at full leaf and the fruit trees are starting to shed the remaining blossoms. Early roses are starting and the tulips are glorious.

Mid afternoon, we went to the open house for the two condos across from the school. Well-designed, although the finishes were definitely mid-range. Pricey though: Over $4000.00 piti! That's a big monthly payment. Oh, well, someone will come up with it.

Dinner was fantastic: ham, scalloped potatoes, and steamed broccoli. Then the final episode of Rome, followed by blueberry pear gallette and whipping cream. Reeeeeeallllly good.

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Walking Home

Walking home from morning errands, the weather turned cold. Perfect for highlighting the perfect spathe of the perfect calla lily. Perfect.

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Little Acts of Genius

AFTER DIY: medicine cabinet
Originally uploaded by mariegael.

Cat Friday, Too

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Cat Friday

You Talkin' To Me #3
Originally uploaded by vajra.

First Day of Spring

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Global Warming

Vernal equinox
Pear trees blooming riotously
Today I won't worry

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Planetary Climate Change

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘I read a science fiction novel that says it’s not a problem.’ You take action.__Al Gore

Where There Is a There

Oakland has ugly stepsister syndrome.  Toklas' statement was a reverie but no one knows it.  Or at least not those who depend on popular culture for their definitions of place and time forgetting that the past is just a goodbye.

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Photos

R sent me lots of photos. I took lots of photos. And that was my Monday. Except for helping with a hearing, twittering like mad, drinking an iced chai, making dinner. Pretty easy day.

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Sunday

House is quiet.

She is napping

Walk to park when she awakes

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Is He the Real Deal?

We went to see Barack Obama yesterday in downtown Oakland. Beautiful warm day. Mellow Oakland crowd. Good speech. He's genuine. He can move the crowd. We are looking for a leader who respects us. Barack Obama may be the one.

Too Tired

Too tired to uplaod my photos or write much now.

Will post them here tomorrow.

Grammar

If a sentence expresses a complete thought, is War and Peace a sentence?

Into Great Silence

Lives Lived at a Monk’s Pace, Allowing Time for the Spirit to Flourish - New York Times





M and I saw this film today. The film shows the daily life of French Carthusian monks at la Grande Chartreuse. The filmmaker attempts to erase or minimize and editorial position. There is no music except for the monk's Gregorian chant, no explanations, no voice-over, and very little talking. The effort results in a film that is exquisitely nuanced. Without overt narrative we focus on a string of white buttons, a sunbeam on a worn wood floor, a snowfilled garden to tease out the meaning of these lives lived so abstemiously. It is, as the NY Times'reviewer states, a life of reticence. The monks do not so much reject the world as withdraw from it, and each other but with fraternal care.

Cat Friday

Beautiful Blue Eyes
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Finding Balance

What is necessary to find balance in one's life?  Recently, I've been focusing on home, photography, decluttering, and tech.  These activities are relatively passive, in the sense that in none of them do I work up a sweat, and the challenges are entirely of my own making.  What's missing?  Physical exercise is definitely missing.  So is a spiritual component. 

Is this the kind of intention that requires a to do list?  If not, what kind of intention will bring the balance that I'm seeking into my life?

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Community

City Planning has, or is expecting, applications to build several 6 story apartment buildings in the Broadway Auto Row corridor.  Ugh.

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To Do

1. Backup more photos
2. Catalogue already backedup photos
3. Write a letter
4. Set up new computer
5. Write in journal
6. Read in Apartment Therapy

Already Acclimated

Usually I'm out of sorts and groggy when Daylight Savings time starts. Today, not so much. In fact, I feel energetic and clear. So Spring is beginning on a good foot.

technorati tags:Magnolia

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Daylight Savings Time

It was gorgeous today: warm and clear. The air was actually fragrant.But no one can persuade me that the lost hour will ever come back. Anyway, as there's no way to change it, I've decided to enjoy it. I want to get up earlier now so that I can take a walk. The tulips will be blooming soon: more reason to take a daily walk.

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Twitter Tips the Tuna

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Twitter Tips the Tuna

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.



The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.



The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.



The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.



And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Dylan Thomas

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BELIEFS; Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

By PETER STEINFELS

Hey, guys, can't you give atheism a chance?

Yes, it is true that ''The God Delusion'' by Richard Dawkins has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 22 weeks and that ''Letter to a Christian Nation'' by Sam Harris can be found in virtually every airport bookstore, even in Texas.

So why is the new wave of books on atheism getting such a drubbing? The criticism is not primarily, it should be pointed out, from the pious, which would hardly be noteworthy, but from avowed atheists as well as scientists and philosophers writing in publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, not known as cells in the vast God-fearing conspiracy.

The mother of these reviews was published last October in The London Review of Books, when Terry Eagleton, better known as a Marxist literary scholar than as a defender of faith, took on ''The God Delusion.''

''Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds,'' Mr. Eagleton wrote, ''and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.'' That was only the first sentence.

James Wood's review of ''Letter to a Christian Nation'' in the Dec. 18, 2006, issue of The New Republic began, ''I have not believed in God since I was fifteen.'' Mr. Wood, a formidable writer who keeps picking the scab of religion in his criticism and fiction, confessed that his ''inner atheist'' appreciated the ''hygienic function'' of Mr. Harris's and Mr. Dawkins's ridiculing of religion and enjoyed ''the 'naughtiness' of this disrespect, even if a little of it goes a long way.''

But, he continued, ''there is a limit to how many times one can stub one's toe on the thick idiocy of some mullah or pastor'' or be told that ''Leviticus and Deuteronomy are full of really nasty things.''

H. Allen Orr is an evolutionary biologist who once called Mr. Dawkins a ''professional atheist.'' But now, Mr. Orr wrote in the Jan. 11 issue of The New York Review of Books, ''I'm forced, after reading his new book, to conclude that he's actually more of an amateur.''

It seems that these critics hold several odd ideas, the first being that anyone attacking theology should actually know some.

''The most disappointing feature of 'The God Delusion,' '' Mr. Orr wrote, ''is Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology'' and ''no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions.''

Mr. Eagleton surmised that if ''card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins'' were asked ''to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Africa, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could.'' He continued, ''When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster.''

Naturally, critics so fussy as to imagine that serious thought about religion exists, making esoteric references to Aquinas and Wittgenstein, inevitably gripe about Mr. Harris's and Mr. Dawkins's equation of religion with fundamentalism and of all faith with unquestioning faith.

''Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that,'' Mr. Eagleton wrote.

In The New Republic last October, Thomas Nagel, a philosopher who calls himself ''as much an outsider to religion'' as Mr. Dawkins, was much more patient. Extracting a theoretical kernel of argument from the thumb-your-nose-at-religion chaff, Mr. Nagel nonetheless had to point out that what was meant by God was not, as Mr. Dawkins's argument seemed to assume, ''a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world.'' (Mr. Eagleton had less politely characterized the Dawkins understanding of God ''as some kind of chap, however supersized.'')

Nor was belief in God, Mr. Wood explained two months later, analogous to belief in a Celestial Teapot, the comic example Mr. Dawkins borrowed from Bertrand Russell.

If this insistence on theology beyond the level of Pat Robertson and biblical literalism was not enough, several reviews went on to carp about double standards.

Mr. Orr, for example, noted the contrast between Mr. Dawkins's skepticism toward traditional proofs for God's existence and Mr. Dawkins's confidence that his own ''Ultimate Boeing 747'' proof demonstrated scientifically that God's existence was highly improbable.

Mr. Eagleton compared Mr. Dawkins's volubility about religion's vast wrongs with his silence ''on the horrors that science and technology have wreaked on humanity'' and the good that religion has produced.

''In a book of almost 400 pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false,'' Mr. Eagleton wrote. ''The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history -- and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry.''

In Mr. Orr's view, ''No decent person can fail to be repulsed by the sins committed in the name of religion,'' but atheism has to be held to the same standard: ''Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual fact that (1) the 20th century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.''

Finally, these critics stubbornly rejected the idea that rational meant scientific. ''The fear of religion leads too many scientifically minded atheists to cling to a defensive, world-flattening reductionism,'' Mr. Nagel wrote.

''We have more than one form of understanding,'' he continued. ''The great achievements of physical science do not make it capable of encompassing everything, from mathematics to ethics to the experiences of a living animal. We have no reason to dismiss moral reasoning, introspection or conceptual analysis as ways of discovering the truth just because they are not physics.''

So what is the beleaguered atheist to do? One possibility: take pride in the fact that this astringent criticism comes from people and places that honor the honest skeptic's commitment to full-throated questioning.

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Get Thee Behind Me

Settling In

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Cat Friday

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel
Originally uploaded by vajra.

"See that you despise not one of these little ones; for I say to you that their angels in Heaven always see the face of My Father Who is in Heaven"

Bustin' Out All Over

Finally got out of the house after several days sticking rather close to home. I packed my very cool backpack and headed to Rooz. In the pack: my 12" PowerBook, some stationary, Apartment Therapy, a journal, my camera, an extra lens, my cell phone, a gorillapod, earphones, and several cds to catalog. I listened to the News Hour, wrote a letter, and ate a delicious pumpkin muffin. Then to DakotArts to order some light strings. All in all a wonderful way to spend an hour. The downside is that the caffeine is keeping me wide awake. But sometimes a teeny bit of decadence is worth it

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Pan's Labyrinth

Embraced by many religions, 'Labyrinth' allows broad discussion of faith issues

Warming Up

Another beautiful day.

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Considering Social Networks

/Message: Leisa Reichelt on Ambient Intimacy

Organizing

It seems as if there's a base of disorder or accumulation which cannot be dealt with. It's a baseline. No matter how much is discarded more comes to take its place. Will the "Cure" help? We'll see.

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Breathe

How much happiness can a day contain? Walking to Rooz in the warm sun. Two small errands to the market and the bank. Home to make a new batch of lentil soup. Watching Rome. Looking at the photos I took today. So much happiness.

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Unexpected Summer

It was warm today, like the most glorious early summer. Even a sweater would have been superfluous. Everyone on the street seemed relaxed. People were lined up at Fenton's for ice cream and at Tango Gelato for gelato. Flowers everywhere: daffodils, camelias, hyacinths, oxalis, plum, cherry, and pear blossoms. Glorious.

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Getting the Perfect Shot

I fell today while trying to get this shot. My only thought was "I hope I didn't hurt my camera."

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Cat Friday

Song Sung Blue
Originally uploaded by vajra.

San Miguel

This bulto makes me long to go to Mexico. I think 2 or 3 weeks there: sightseeing, shopping, decompressing would be wonderful. Maybe we could go to San Miguel de Allende. I'd like to look at lots of art. It would be so cool to find another angel.

The face of my San Miguel is interesting because it's not fierce: it's sad or comtemplative. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."

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Short

Movies: ShortThe Danish Poet -

Erased.info - The Danish Poet