I realized that I had to make a living…that my interest in
Buddhism was not going to mean money. I was staying in
Boston when I had the brainstorm to become a plumber. There
were too many carpenters, and I didn’t want to work with
electricity because you couldn’t see it and it could kill you.
Not many people want to be plumbers. And I figured I could
help build meditation centers. I figured my teacher’s students
would all want to become teachers and be important. I thought
he probably wouldn’t have many plumbers as students. I was
right.
And it was great training. My mind, at the time, was spinning
like a top…and I lived in a constant state of paranoia. Working
at plumbing, being in my body, constantly coming back to the
work…which was totally non-conceptual….was very much
like practicing mindfulness meditation, (shamatha).
My dad would have put me through graduate school…first he
suggested law school….then he suggested grad. school in
theatre, but what he didn’t realize is that had I gone that route,
I probably would have blown my brains out in a few years.
Luckily, by that time, I realized I had to figure things out for
myself.
So, I never made very much money as a plumber, but it did
what I thought it would. It allowed me to participate in the
world of my teacher to an intimate degree. It allowed me to
make a living. And it was an important aspect of my Buddhist
practice.
There are plenty of stories. The second apprentice job I had
was with this company in Boston, a partnership where one
of the partners had died, and the one that was left behind was
watching his company slowly fail. So, to compensate, they sold
stolen goods and pornographic movies out of the basement. One
morning, one of the plumbers came to work soaking wet. He had
just climbed out of the Charles river….evidently, his car wasn’t
able to do so. For some reason, I was assigned to work with
him that day. We went to the big job he’d been working on….
a multi-story building renovation. He said: “I’m going into
this room and going to sleep. Let me know if anyone comes.”
I sat outside the room for hours. He finally came out. He’d
gotten a call for a stopped up toilet in the building. We went there.
The bathroom was all tile…walls too…luckily. He started working
on the toilet with the closet auger…a short snake with a crooked
end. Nothing. He took the toilet up from the floor and put the
auger in the outlet hole and snaked it. Nothing. He got a garden
hose, hooked it up and began to wrestle with that toilet like Huck
Finn’s Uncle Jim having hallucinations. Suddenly, the largest turd
I never hoped to see slithered out of the toilet like a snake that had
surrendered. We just looked at each other, agape, in the
brotherhood of amazement.
That was one day.
One of the great rock and roll bands. I saw them in Denver,
late 80’s. My friend, D’s brother was visiting from California.
D. said to me: “We’ll take mushrooms and see a concert with
Hot Tuna and Little Feat. “ I said : ”Sure!” Also, D’s sister
was coming and bringing two of her friends as blind dates
for D’s brother and me…..”Sure!”
We took the ‘shrooms at D’s house and picked up the ladies
in Denver. The moment we were walking into the concert
venue, Fiddler's Green, al fresco under awning structures, the active
ingredient became active. The ladies that D’s sister brought
seemed to have an agenda. The petite one immediately latched
on to D’s brother. The other, lanky, not unattractive, was left
to see what she wanted to do with me.
When Little Feat came on, the drug really kicked in. I was
having trouble handling the waves of hallucinations, my
perceptions were melting. The music was a fantastic reverence
point…”I’d Hate To Loose Your Love.” Yes…I was talking to
my own mind at that point.
D’s brother got up and left to the bathroom. At that point, the
audience was on it’s feet…everyone was dancing…except my
date. I couldn’t care about anything except surfing the ocean
of my mind. After several songs, D’s brother hadn’t returned
from the bathroom. My date said “What happened to D’s
brother?” I said; “Well, he’s high as a kite on mushrooms and
it might take him a while to find his way back here.” She says:
“And he’s driving us home?” I shrugged my shoulders and
kept dancing. After a while longer, D’s brother returned. As
soon as he sat down in his chair, the petite brunette jumped
into his lap and started making out with him.
I started talking to a woman sitting next to me….not my date.
I knew she was a Buddhist, but I had never spoken with her
before. I poured my heart out to her about my relationship
with my daughter, and cried and cried. She took it all in
quite well.
After the concert, we all gathered outside. It was obvious the
brunette was taking D’s brother home. I was told I was
welcome to take my date home, but I declined.
The afternoon my dad died, I was walking along a dirt road
to a building at Shambhala Mountain Center, in Red Feather
Lakes, Colorado. It was near the end of a program. As I was
walking, I looked up in the dead tree in front of me, and there,
on a branch, was an owl facing me.
I had seen the movie, “Thunderheart”. In that movie, about the
A.R.M. struggle in the 70’s in North Dakota, is an image. The
image is that if you see an owl, that means that someone has died.
Owls don’t usually come out in the day, sit in a tree and look at
you. And, yes, shortly after that, I heard that my dad had died.
It was a sign of not just death, but change. Over the next
couple of years, my relationship to the organization that I
had been involved with for thirty years would end, and I would
move to Mexico, as my teacher had predicted thirty years before.
When the city sets up so-called ‘Info Pillars’ on the sidewalks – but then fills them with ads instead of actual information – how should the community respond? In Toronto, hacktivists decided to simply take things into their own hands, and replace the ads with art and information that’s actually useful.
Last fall, the Spacing Toronto blog asked, “Is this really an ‘info’ pillar?”, displaying photographs of the installations. The narrow space on the column itself has info like maps and bus schedules, but the overwhelming majority of the pillar is covered in ads.
Armed with special Torx screwdrivers, guerilla group cARTography TO nonchalantly broke into the Info pillars in broad daylight and replaced 35 ads with poetry and street art. One was cordoned off with a velvet rope and attendant security guard, the sign reading “Sidewalk 54 – Private pavement for diamond members only. Dress code strictly enforced.”
“We got together and started planning an artistic assault against them,” an unidentified cARTography TO activist told The National Post. “One, to beautify the city and beautify the pillars because we thought they were awful and ugly, but also to raise a lot of awareness on the issue…. They disrupt the flow of traffic for pedestrians. They block the line of sight for cyclists and for drivers.”
Toronto artist Sean Martindale donated six pieces of art to cARTography for the guerilla installation, including a modified bicycle. The pillars were previously hacked in January. Activists covered them in chalkboards and invited passersby to ‘Tell it like it is.’
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So, this Continental philosopher writes a reading of the universe, and it syncs up to modernity. He says stuff like that everything is just a play for political power, but he doesn’t back this up with definite evidence, which is sensible enough because it is a metaphysical principle and not a scientific claim. Some of what he says, for example on madness, is merely a repetition of G.K. Chesterton, but he adds a tone of suspicion that makes a perfect fit for the academic culture of critique.
He uses some examples but they are clearly symbols, for example, the Panopticon was a mere idea that never got built. If you wanted to write an anti-Foucault you would do very well to start with the everyday image of a guard rounding a blind corner in an ordinary prison. His premodern historical examples have been shown to be rubbish. Anyway, the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
This metaphysical theory of modernity is then claimed to be the basis of everything that ever happened in history. Well, maybe not everyone considers Foucault specifically when they are rewriting a medieval church-state dispute to claim that nothing was incarnate in the actors for the church or the state except selfish greed, but if they run into a conflicting theory written by someone who claims the church had higher goals in mind (this would have to be a very brave academic these days), they will laugh at them and remind them that Foucault “proved” all of this wrong.
Foucault did not “prove” anything, any more than the Bible “proves” that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Like Foucault, the Bible is a testimony and not an evidence, and the only difference between Foucault and the Bible is that you can believe in the Bible and be happy and content with what life gives you.
But maybe I just don’t understand Foucault.
Over a thousand golden raindrops undulate in programmed patterns, rising and falling in waves and spirals, in a beautiful installation by German design collective ART+COM. Dangling from steel wires, the sculptures put on a mesmerizing display at Singapore’s Changi Airport.
The exhibition, entitled ‘Kinetic Rain’, consists of two sets of 608 copper-covered aluminum raindrop scuptures that are computer-controlled to move in choreographed patterns. It was commissioned as a calming centerpiece for the airport’s departure hall.
“The sculpture aims to be a source of identity for its location, and provides a moment for passengers to contemplate and reflect despite the busy travelling atmosphere,” says ART+COM.
“Kinetic Rain follows a 15-minute computationally designed choreography where the two parts move together in unison, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes responding to each other. In addition, several spotlight sources mounted below the installation create a play of shadows on the terminal’s ceiling as they illuminate the movement of the rain droplets.”
See a video of the installation in action at Dezeen.
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Photo of The Day: July 24, 2012
Opening the Floodgates
Releasing flood water at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Yichang, China.
Mary and Hannah are in Eastern Washington right now. I'll be joining them Thursday, but after 30 hours, I've been missing Hannah like crazy. She's slept overnight elsewhere before, but this is a long time.
The Federal Government yesterday said it had signed a $1.49 billion contract with China Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC) to build a railway between Lagos and Ibadan.
The contract has a completion period of 36 months.
Briefing State House correspondents… Information Minister Labaran Maku said… "when completed, [the railroad line] would generate employment for about 5000 Nigerians. Work on the project commenced in 2006 but could not be completed because of lack of funds."…
First of all, the surviving lettuces on my balcony have set flower:
Secondly, my Kickstarter for “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” finished the other day, not only fully funded, but also having made its first reach goal of $300! This means that I’ll be able to post “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” up on Smashwords as well as a new edition of Grizelda. I’ll send links when there’s stuff to see.
