The other day I came to my 2nd favorite pizzeria to have a nice lunch (their uneven crust was great this time) and to work on my computer. By the time I discovered their WiFi was not functioning, my order was already in progress. I was a little snippy with the waitress. Not rude, but snippy. A rare but recurring aspect of my greening work is finding money. Sometimes people in back stage areas are impressed by the way we (literally) make their problems go away, and give us a little cash bonus (which I usually share with the crew). More frequently, I find $10 or $20 bills on the ground or, as was the case yesterday, in with the trash. I tend to be honest to a fault -- I returned hundreds of dollars left behind in taxis when I was a starving college student -- but I’m not stupid enough to shout, “Did someone lose a $20 bill!” So my plan coming to lunch was that I would pay for my lunch with the found $20 and leave the balance as a generous tip. After I was snippy, I decided I would stick to this plan, since the lack of WiFi was certainly not the server’s fault. And that’s what I’ve done, (as I ate, it also occurred to me that I could still do my writing here and post things later). But this got me thinking about the debate on tipping I had with a person on Medium. Another thing tipping is good for is compensating for when you realize you’ve been dickish. Or, as was my original intention, when you just feel like sharing some good fortune. And the pleasure of receiving a nice tip is nothing to sneeze at. No, people shouldn’t be dependent on gratuities to pay their rent, but as a bonus, tips can be great for all concerned.
To Brain Wash
Walking to Brain Wash today I preferred the shady sidewalk I rarely walk on (it’s in the 80sF). Thus I walked past the fire station and noticed for the first time their Safely Surrendered Baby sign.
Because I’m not a very nice person, I immediately imagined a second image showing a sullen teen being led by the ear. I think a teen surrender program would be more popular than this program that allows parents to surrender their newborns. Now reveling in my vileness, I went on to imagine a special white, five minute, parking zone with cars backed up down the street, each car featuring an intense, emotional scene with a parent and teen shouting at each other. There might be benches for curious observers. And a stand selling popcorn.
Comic Sans Swift
The theme of my week seems to be poor or non-functional WiFi. As a result I have been writing into a local Google doc instead of into Blogger. And for some reason I formatted this doc for Comic Sans. I often use Comic Sans ironically, or for the display reasons it was originally designed for, but I have to admit that I like the way this looks. (Blogger doesn't seem to offer Comic Sans as an option.) Perhaps my fondness for Taylor Swift’s music is spreading in my brain like a prion disease and affecting other areas of taste? I should probably give Velveeta cheese another try.
Compassion
Still from the Third Invitation I can't recall precisely, but I think it was this notion of compassion, and how we are all in this together, where I fell out with Buddhism back at the time I became a vegetarian. I think it ought to be true. I think it probably is true in a situation like a hospice. I think it's valuable to at least pretend it's true, most of the time. But there are limits. It is worth noting that Zosima and Ostaseski preach a very similar sermon here. The point Ivan made in The Brothers K about the Church not becoming the state, but the state becoming the Church, applies here as well. For everyone to act with wisdom and compassion would be to transcend Maya and for us all to realize out Buddha nature. It would be game over for The World Illusion. Or that may just be a justification for my not wanting to do the work.
DOG is my copilot
Now when it comes to dogs -- and animals in general really, with the exception of pigeons, and tiny dogs -- it's much easier for me to approach this standard of universal compassion. I'm much less likely to judge animals. When I see people begging with pets I would always give something to the pets if it weren't for the humans.
Samsara
P190 Remember how I was not fond of the Hindu goal of transcending this cruel world of non-enlightenment? Well Samsara is the Buddhist equivalent of moksha (this is not even close to being correct. Samsara is the process of rebirth and moksha is release from this cycle. See here.) Anyway, I have the same issues here. Ostaseski warns us against craving/greed/demand, aversion/hatred/defense, and ignorance/delusion/distract -- you can’t have too many terms to describe these “poisons.” All this does is bring me back to my conception of “story.” These poisons are merely the necessary plot elements to create interesting stories. Yes, as you near death it probably makes sense to try to see past them. And if your life is a living hell, again, you might want to give it a try. But to oppose “poisons” in general is to oppose life -- and in pantheistic terms, to oppose our collective creation. (Even if you aren’t a pantheist, you are thwarting the “plan” of your creator deity of choice.) P194 The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” The deeper we go within ourselves, the more expansive we become. We allow everything to show itself, even what is buried in the unconscious... This is the ecumenical appeal of the monastic life... the life of silence... or of chanting, depending. Though, to be honest here, I quoted this because Pascal is yet another reference to Port Royal, the Jansenists, and consequently Augustine. I’ve lost count how many times this has come up since Henry Ryecroft.
One really should confess ones shortcomings, both to others and to oneself, so here goes: The other day I discovered a cache of longer versions of Glee covers (with lyrics) on YouTube. I finally made it to Santana's (Naya Rivera's) cover of Taylor's Mine and it was a revelation. I've heard Taylor Swift's version of her song many times and there are some great parts, but Naya's version was so much stronger. Mine is a classic Country song. This tune is from earlier in Taylor's career when she was still in Nashville, and it shows. But I never noticed just how good, and Country good, the song was until hearing Naya's version. Now, the virtue of Glee is that they most often framed their covers in an emotional context -- in this case the troubled relationship between Santana and Brittney -- so some of that rubs off on my reaction to Naya's singing. But I really don't think that's the key ingredient. It could also be that I'm just hearing the song with fresher ears in this new version. But, again, I doubt it. On We Found Love, Naya does an amazing job of capturing the little vocal things that Rhianna does that makes that song so memorable. I can't speak to her cover of I Love You Like a Love Song, because I don't know the original version, but Naya's cover, in its long form, is now one of my favorite Glee songs. Here's Naya's Glee version of Mine for your consideration:
Faust
Really, Doctor Faustus. I'm re-reading my blogging of this book from February of last year. This is the first time I've reviewed this material since reading The Brothers Karamazov, and especially Ivan's dream sequence. I might as well say that it's the first time I've re-read it since the last time I read it, as you always bring that to a re-reading as well. I envy my friend who is into the double digits of her re-readings of Proust, both because she started before me, and so can recall what it was like to first encounter this world as a quite young woman, but mostly because she can read it in French. Am I at four readings? I'm not entirely certain. But I can't imagine getting into it again for at least a decade. I'm much more likely to re-read Parade's End (almost certain, in fact) and even The Magic Mountain. I was thinking, after Doctor Faustus, that I didn't need to go back to TMM, but now I'm thinking it would be interesting. That was the original plan after all -- to tackle Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy before blogging TMM. And instead Doctor Faustus and The Brothers Karamazov turned out to be even more important. I just realized I haven't blogged Parade's End, either. And that would be especially challenging as I would want to talk about Tom Stoppard's screenplay as well as Ford Madox Ford's original text. Just the other day I was thinking about some of the things Ford did in his final book that revised or undercut assumptions from the earlier books. And as wonderful as I think Stoppard's screenplay is, it couldn't capture the literary marvels of the text. What's compelling about Parade's End is both the story and the way it is told. My aunt, who passed away last year at 94, never read a book twice. She saw it as a waste of reading time. I could see going the other way and only reading books I had read before. Not that I would, there are still too many important books I've yet to read. But I do think that would be a reasonable plan. For one thing it would guarantee that you weren't wasting your time on books you wouldn't end up liking. And, as long as I'm reflecting back on earlier blogs, a friend is traveling around the south of England and today posted photos of Exeter cathedral on Facebook. I immediately thought of the fictional Henry Ryecroft and his snug cottage not that far from Exeter. I really should go back and add links to my later posts about disease and genius in Doctor Faustus (what I was reading last night) and autism and genius in Thinking In Pictures. George Gissing and Mann, I suspect, would have gotten along just fine, but it's hard to imagine what Gissing would make of Temple Grandin, in her Western outfits, designing more efficient (and more humane) slaughterhouses in America. Would either Gissing or Mann have been receptive to her science based interpretation of her world? That is hard to imagine.
Tiny
After attending my only boat show, in the mid-1960s, I became enamored of sailboat interiors. I still look at mid-size boat tours on YouTube, but have added RV tours and, more recently, Tiny Houses. I think what appeals to me, beside the intimacy and efficiency of these spaces, is the attention to detail. In larger spaces you can waste space or not pay much attention to entire walls or even rooms. In a tiny space every cubic inch has to justify itself. Of course I've also argued that often these spaces I see on YouTube are in fact over-designed. Intensely planned and crafted fixtures often mean that there is only one way to use the space. A Lamborghini is a thing of beauty and perfectly designed for its purpose, but if you need to pick-up a purchase or take friends to dinner, a Tesla X is far more flexible and -- dare I say it -- practical. If I ever had the opportunity to design a tiny space (I forgot to mention container conversions, which may be my favorite) I would start by subtracting as many of the features you commonly see as possible. I would try to introduce functional minimalism as well as aesthetic minimalism (the decorative details of many of these designs would make the Victorians blush.) I could even demonstrate this concept in my own tiny apartment except that making marginal improvements in such an awkwardly small space simply isn't worth the bother. And so I read Dwell magazine instead.
Yesterday someone on my Buffy forum posted a video about teenagers reacting to music from... the 2000s! I didn't play it since I find these videos annoying, but Lamey, the one who posted it, added "I feel so old" since she is in her 20s and can't believe the kids today don't know her music. I've written about this before. I keep embracing newer music, generation after generation, only to find that the "new" music so quickly becomes "old" music. Though, OMG!, since I only a few days ago proclaimed myself a "Swifty," (my hair is almost long enough to flip) this feeling old doesn't apply to me, of course.
The Sunflower - last
Yesterday I thought there was either a good deal or nothing more to say about this book. The final commentator -- and they are in alphabetical order -- actually does the best job of expressing my take on the situation and saying what I think I would have done in Wiesenthal's place. Harry Wu was a Chinese academic imprisoned by the Communist Party from 1960, when I was in second grade, until 1979, when I was a college graduate working in a bookstore after spending time after college driving a taxi, running a copy store, being a volunteer coordinator at a social services center, and spending a year repairing and selling typewriters. So a long time. p274 "... the society that the Communists founded was designed to drain any remnants of humanity out of a person. Like Mr. Wiesenthal, I would not have forgiven the Nazi soldier on his deathbed, but I would have been able to say to him: 'I understand why you were a part of a horrible and vicious society. You are responsible for your own actions but everyone else in this society shares the same responsibility with you.' "
Potty
This is the sequel to FUBAR from #20. a week later. Yesterday I was anticipating some Keystone Cops potential in the alley in the morning when both the garbagemen and porta-potty service guy were both due around the same time. Last night we moved up to DEF-CON 2 (2nd highest level). And what a colorful tale it is... I've mentioned the painting of the facade of the building next door (with the difficult scaffolding) and how lucky we are they aren't also painting the alley side. They too have a porta-potty which was sitting out on the sidewalk and kept getting shifted about. Saturday it had been moved in front of the building next door to them. Saturday morning it was flipped on its side, no doubt the act of yobs. When I put our landfill and recycling toters out I discovered they had pushed the porta-potty up into the alley where it sits against their building but blocks a fair amount of the roadway, since there is no sidewalk. I didn't think there was enough space for the service truck to back past it to our end of the alley, where our porta-potty really needed to be pumped.
This sets the stage for this morning when, if the timing was less than perfect, the service guy would overlap with ether the garbage collectors or our contractors and slapstick would ensue. Around 6:30am I jumped out of bed at the first notes of the rolling toter chorus, and was in the alley in time to receive the empties back from the Recology guys. After bringing our toters down the stairs and putting them back in their usual places, I took a morning pee break. By the time I returned to the alley I could hear, and then see, our porta-potty service truck just starting to pull into the alley. I ran up and caught him and we ran through the options, deciding to push the vagrant porta-potty further back into the alley rather than out into the street where there were curbs (and scaffolding). So we pushed it back past where his truck needed to park. Then we rearranged the toters which had been placed in an awkward position in the lee of the toilet. He backed in, irritating the human vagrant sleeping behind a planter on the other side of the alley (and actually chasing him out... yay!) I had unbolted the wood frame around the porta-potty before I went to bed -- just in case I didn't make it out there in time -- so the service guy made quick work of finally doing his job. He was going to help me return the wandering porta-potty to its previous location (now I'm thinking there might be a children's book here) but I told him I would get our contractors to do it, as they needed to park where Potty (the adventurous porta-potty) was now sitting in the middle of the alley. He, the service guy, not Potty, was happy with this plan. I then ate my breakfast standing out in the alley waiting for the first contractor to arrive. Just as I was finishing my orange juice, the guy with the nice black ride started backing in. I used sign language and loud English to communicate the need to shift Potty precisely "here." That accomplished, I returned to my kitchen as he delicately backed his car around Potty. It all worked perfectly. Having just read (and written) about the 2nd Commandment and sacrificing to totems, I'm considering leaving an offering of tofu out in the alley for Potty. No babies left in the building to shovel anywhere. (Thank Potty.) Hardly an hour later and I'm sitting in the Bank Cafe and Potty has already taken yet another trip down the alley (to make way for our contractor's big truck.) I'm now thinking, and this may be related to my reading The Sunflower, that Potty might not be so much adventurous as Jewish... driven here and there by forces beyond his control. A tale of adversity and spiritual awakening perhaps. I mean, think about it, he's literally shit and pissed on! And since I'm still reading Belle Ruin, I'm thinking I might want to go beyond just the children's book to a musical. I'm now working on new lyrics to Don't Cry For Me Argentina. UPDATE: hours later and Potty continues to be shifted back and forth in the alley. Now I'm remembering a scene in a (Ken Russell?) movie where an actress was rolling back and forth in the back of a car or carriage. Not sure if you could do that while singing. And portraying a porta-potty. (Ha! I actually found the scene. It's Glenda Jackson on the floor of a train in The Music Lovers -- where Russell subtly hints that Tchaikovsky might be just a tad gay.)
Lunch
I just had a very interesting lunch. No, that isn't quite right. I had my usual Bun Mee crispy tofu with jalapeno (delicious, and my mouth is still tingling), but what was interesting was my reverie while sitting at the window counter looking out over Market Street and the Palace Hotel across the street. You can't get much more "San Francisco" than this location. The Palace Hotel has been an SF tradition since way before the 1906 earthquake and fire. The stunning hall where today you can enjoy a very expensive brunch was at one time the coach entry and there are photos of actual coaches navigating the space.
This is the image I was thinking of but it is actually a previous building. But what I said could have been true if we weren't sitting on the San Andreas fault.
The building that houses Bun Mee (a great Vietnamese sandwich and salad place) sits on the hypotenuse side of this flat-iron shaped block. Directly behind us, on what would be the heated surface of the iron, is the Mechanics Institute and their interesting library. At the end of the hypotenuse on my right is the De Young Building that has been converted into the Ritz-Carlton Residences -- a very upscale condo conversion with an ugly steel and glass excrescence rising out of the restored stone grandeur of the old De Young. Right in front of that building, in a little island where Market and Kearny Streets meet, is Lotta's Fountain, one of the most famous monuments in the city. That history, while watching the variety of people walking past me on the sidewalk, is what got me thinking about the multiverse. The "multiverse" is an interesting concept in theoretical physics that, I suspect, would be very hard to either prove or disprove. But there's another kind of multiverse that exists without a doubt. The multiverse of the people strolling that sidewalk. But first let me add a bit more about the setting. Under Market street -- where old photos show horses pulling carriages and wagons, where really old photos show plank walks lining dirt streets -- two levels of train tracks are buried. This Bank Cafe is in the next block to the right, and a block past that is the Phelan Building, another of SF's grand old buildings (and a favorite of mine) that is now home to Medium. This area is both the past and the cutting edge of the internet economy, where start-ups come to rub real and virtual shoulders while sniffing out venture funding the way pigs sniff out truffles. But now to the sidewalk. It's summer so there are the tourists, most obviously the family groups. There are new economy workers going someplace trendy (like Bun Mee) for lunch, but also the people who work all the back-of-the-house jobs that keep everything moving. There are a few older people still dressed for when this was the edge of the Financial District and "The Wall Street of the West." All these people inhabit different universes and see the place and the other people a little differently. But we're only getting started. What really got me thinking were the feral people, mostly individuals, who seem to wander past every few moments... or less. For a while there was almost always at least one of them in sight. One was bare chested and walking not on the sidewalk but in the street (that phenomena again.) Most were poorly -- and filthily -- dressed. One was in his socks. (Something else I notice frequently.) The universe these people inhabit has so little in common with the others they may as well also have different laws of physics. I will grant you that many people would question my own sartorial choices (and, while in many cases I would question their's as well, in at least some cases I could only respond with mea culpa.) But given the state of our sidewalks and streets, even Diogenes the Cynic would have somehow kept sandals on his feet.
