Zooey Sleeping, Buddha Weeping

Zooey Sleeping, Buddha Weeping
Originally uploaded by smartwentcrazy

So I got a kitten the other week or so and like every new kitten owner I have taken to photographing his every move. These two are pretty nice.

[The BBC.]

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I only like the BBC lately. I’ve been on this huge Gordon Ramsay kick and have been downloading past seasons of Kitchen Nightmare’s. This afternoon I’m watching old episodes of Louis Theroux documentaries.

[That's all for now.]\par

[Horoscope For Today.]

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For me:\par
This influence has the effect of quickening your mind and increasing your exchanges with other people – mentally, verbally, through traveling and even commercially. You feel mentally more alert than usual and eager to see and talk to people, even if it is just small talk. But it would be pointless to waste this influence on small talk, because it favors more serious kinds of communication. This influence assists you and others in reaching agreements, even about matters that have been points of dispute. This is a good day for any type of commercial transaction, contract negotiation or buying and selling, either for personal reasons or for business. Communication is flowing so smoothly now that you can easily get all the information you need in order to make the best deal.\par
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For S:\par
This is a good time for communicating with people, writing letters or planning a course of action in your career or your home and personal life. You are inclined to spend a lot of time thinking under this influence, and others may see you as being all thought and no action. However, this is the time for plans, not for action. Your mind should be very clear today, and you should be in touch with your feelings and emotions to an unusual extent, even about aspects of yourself that you normally keep hidden because you cannot express them clearly. Therefore, the plans you make today are more in keeping with your real inner desires than usual. In your job this is a good time to clear away paperwork and handle the more trivial aspects of your work, because you can pay very close attention to details.\par
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I’m not sure what any of this means ever but I did want to remind myself of how great I think it is that we had some small misunderstanding this morning and we didn’t let it grow into something awful or hurtful. I think it was great of you to call and say so and I love you very much for that. [No kidding.]\par

About Those Three Things You Mentioned From Before

Keats wrote in Ode on a Grecian Urn that ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,\emdash that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

I’m like most people and I do feel like somewhere down the line this is a pretty accurate statement and in this world of things that are near-impossible to prove as absolutely true or not I figure this is one of the things that sounds good enough to me. It sounds alright enough to be called true. I’ve probably said it before but I really feel like there is an element missing from all of that. What’s missing, to me at least, is Awkwardness. Truth is Beauty is Awkwardness is Truth is Beauty is Awkwardness. It just makes a lot more sense to me that way. The awkwardness that comes in to play here is that sense of strangeness that we feel when we experience, with any and all of our senses, something that we just don’t quite understand or have never experienced before. There is a complete and utter loveliness in moments like those and should we ever take that opportunity to really experience such moments as fully as we possibly can. I’m pretty certain then that whatever truth there might to discover in those moments would invariably revealed to us.

I’m not sure if I ever make much sense when I start rambling on like this but I did just want to get this out. It’s probably got something to do with the books I’ve been reading lately and one in particular describes the awkward moments like that pretty well. The idea describes what trapeze artists refer to as the ‘dead spot’. This is the place in mid-air when the acrobat swings out from one bar and lets go of it just as they are reaching out to grab the second one. For a brief second they are hanging untethered in mid-air. Buddhists describe this moment as, “the moment of nonaction and not knowing.” There are times, of course, when circumstances force us to let go of the safety of the bar and there are times in our lives when we willingy, and oftentimes grudgingly, let go of it on our own. It is in this ‘dead spot’ where we have the possibility of coming to know ourselves the most. This moment of suspension. Of not knowing what in the hell could possibly ever come next. For good or for bad I really do feel like I’ve lived my life spending as much time as I possibly can in that ‘dead spot’. And I’m not saying it’s been wise or worthwhile even and I’m not sure this is the best path for everyone to take. I’m just saying that when I really get honest with myself I realize pretty quickly that I’m pretty fucking comfortable twirling around in mid-air. I’m not sure why or how. I just know that I am.

You could look at it this way if you wanted: The truth and the beauty might be looked at as either side of those swinging bars. The swinging out from one bar and then grabbing hold of the second bar. Truth and Beauty. But it’s the middle part that whole process, to me at least, that’s the most important aspect of it all. It’s all about the ‘dead spot’. It’s all about the Awkwardness. Hell, if the acrobats never let go of holding on to one of the bars what would even be the point? It’d amount to nothing more stunning than some kid dangling from the playground jungle gym above the safety of the sandbox. And although dangling from the monkey bars is still something that is pretty cool in it’s own right it’s certainly nothing so special that you’d ever pay to see all by itself.

I guess my point in all of this is that if you only ever needed three things, three simple elements, in order to tell some sort of story then I feel like Truth and Beauty and Awkwardness are the only real required elements in order to make it something that was even ever worth telling.

[Nothing Doing.]

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I felt a little sick yesterday and ended up leaving work early. I ate the last of the Moroccan lentil soup that I made the night before and I felt even worse. A bit after that I made some insanely-perfect dessert of a blueberry waffle with vanilla ice cream and topped it all with real maple syrup. I downloaded copies of Juno and No Country for Old Men and stayed up late watching them both. [I am seriously addicted to The Pirate Bay.] I ended up ignoring the first alarm this morning as I just felt awful and couldn’t bear the idea of waking up at 5:30AM. Especially after having fallen asleep around 1AM or so. So I called in using one of the three paid days off they gave me for Employee of the Year. [Funny how that works. Using the award in such a very irresponsible way as that. But whatever.]\par
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So I’m off work and I got to sleep in pretty late. I had strange dreams again. There were these aliens all around on the planet. They just sort of showed up one day and everyone in the world was excited about it and since they seemed nice enough and didn’t plan on killing everyone outright the whole world sort of embraced them. They didn’t talk really but made all sorts of loving gestures with their hands and basically communicated how sweet they were. The thing about it was that they appeared in the form of these elegant-looking Hopi Indian women with really slender features. But they also had these longish things growing from the tops of their heads that were like the things that those anglerfish things have. Everyone thought they were all sweet and normal and took to making art about them. Drawing these weird iconic pictures of them which were wildly popular and ended up plastered all over the world. I was one of the only people that was suspicious of them and tried to pull people away from this spell they had cast all over the rest of the world. I ended up going to Europe to gather some band of like-minded people and I met up with who was already forming a group of similar people in his town. We talked late into the night about what to do to get rid of these things. [And then I woke up.]\par
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I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams lately and this is interesting to me because I really never had much of a dream life. Or, of course, one that I can recall. I’m not sure what any of this means. If anything.\par

[Lately.]

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So after the craziness of getting fired and rehired a couple of different times in the last couple of weeks it gets a little stranger still. I did get the promotion and the raise and this came with the requirement that I attend a two-day training session. The last day of the training session [Tuesday] the management all gathered around for some announcement. It was time for them to announce the awards for Employee of the Year. The last week of the year everyone voted on who they thought should win the annual award and the announcement should have come at the holiday party at the end of the year but apparently they didn’t have the awards engraved yet. So anyway, yeah, I was awarded Employee of the Year. [No kidding.]\par
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They gave me this crystal-looking clock with a little engraved plaque with my name on it and all. I got a nice little certificate and three paid days off that I can use whenever and however I want. So that’s cool. \par
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So I’ve been working a lot lately. And I have this new schedule to get used to. I have to be at work at 8AM and since I take the bus I have to wake up at like 5:45AM in order to catch the bus at 6:45AM. It takes almost an hour to get there by bus. So that gives me a couple of hours a day of bus time and this is really actually pretty nice. I basically get to sit and sip coffee and read a book for two hours every day. \par
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I’ve been devouring books lately because of this. I ran through The Code Book by Simon Singh just the other day. [I love him and I love cryptography even more.] I’m in the middle of Waking Up to What You Do by Diane Rizzetto and I really like this one so far. I’ve also been toting around The Buddha Said by Osho but for some reason or another I’m sort of saving it. [I do this with books sometimes when I know that I already really like the book.] I’m getting a lot of good crossword puzzles done too.\par
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I’m off work today. My fingers are cold.\par

[Since When Did This Become News?]

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The Washington Post is running a headline that says College Drinking Games Lead to Higher Blood Alcohol Levels. The article goes on to state that “the first on-the-scene study of college drinking behavior shows that parties with drinking games result in higher blood alcohol levels, while themed parties encourage college women to drink more heavily than men, new research suggests.”\par
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I first saw this link when I was skimming through the latest headlines on Google News and upon first glance I honestly thought this was something from The Onion.\par

[Shut Up And Sing.]

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We just watched the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing and I really thought it was pretty great all around. Like really great. I’m not sure how you can’t not like those girls. [Yes. I am posting this.]\par
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And speaking of music, thank you Shelley! I mean loads and loads of thanks. [You're just consistently awesome is all.]\par

[Look Into The Eyeball.]

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Since I lost my hard drive and so many backup disks I am without a lot of the music that I love. I’ve been slowly downloading the important stuff and I really have been missing David Byrne’s Look Into the Eyeball. I actually had two of these albums and one of them I even had signed by David Byrne when I met him for his book tour in Seattle. Anyway, I cannot find this album anywhere and was wondering if you have it? Like I said, I’ve already bought two of these things and I just cannot justify buying another copy. But I will if I have to. [I just figured I'd ask around first.]\par
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And while we’re at it, does anybody have anything by The Feelies?\par

Jumping Ship

I’ve been wanting to have my own journal on my own website for a long time now. I can never figure out how to use sites like MySpace and Facebook and I like the idea of using something stand-alone as opposed to LiveJournal. So this is the test run.