Annonyme is alive

ummm.... I do want to do this still.  I'm still interested.  I just work a lot, have teen aged daughter and, although I think all day throughout other activities, by the time I have a half hour or so (which is rare) those thoughts are droopy and not presenting themselves in formation.  My posts are extremely brief because I realized that if I waited till I had time to develop a thought there would be no blog.

It's always on my mind to correct this prioritization disability embedded in circumstance.

  I just checked in and found another one of those bizarre spikes in views.  It's not just a rusty crawler.  I wish I knew what's up with that.  I think there's a really huge class in Israel, (an auditorium class like the Astronomy class I tried to take at the University of Maryland at 19) (what was I thinking?) with fabulously large numbers of students.  I think they are surveying blogs with religious themes, for some reason, and I'm a sample.  That's the only explanation I can come up with for another spike of 1332 views amidst the barren-nobody-looking-plain of negative stats around that number.  The page view spikes are clearly coming from Israel.  What?

If it were daytime I'd run outside and take a picture of the bushes in front of my super humble apartment building.  There was a growth spurt in the past week or so due to warm and rainy weather.  That greening of a clipped shrub coincided with a talk on the development of dendrites in the brain given by the principal of the school I work in.  Together they reminded me of my old speculation that the burning bush is a metaphor for the mind.  Actually, I pretty much think of mountains, roof tops, tops of stairs and ladders and upper rooms as representing the mind.  A friend of mine had a lovely dream she shared regarding the end of the world.  She dreamed every body went up on the roof of her house to watch the end.  The mood was light as if for a picnic.

Toward The One

Toward the One


When I was in my early teens in suburban US (OMG no secondary bus routes yet, so stultifying!,....! Can you believe I had to live through that?) Anyway.. my mother joined a book club and, very democratically, allowed me to choose a couple of the free books per year allotted to the membership.  One of my selections was Toward the One.  I have thought of this book many times over the years.  It's the delight I felt upon receiving it which leaves this residue of memory.  I was so delighted when it arrived on the doorstep.  Older me has puzzled over the recollection of that response.

I lost track of the book itself.  I remember it had a dedication to Noor Inayat Khan.  I noticed the photo of Noor Inayat Khan accompanying the dedication.  In later years I recognized the same photo in A Man Called Intrepid and made a connection.  Hey!  That's the same person!  What does that mean?  I still don't know what it means.

I have an idea that spirit approached Earth for that battle (WWII).  Spirit was not invested on behalf of precision in train schedules.

I'm thinking of this now because PBS has a biography of her on broadcast currently.  Get your learn on.  sigh.  It's rough out there.

loving your neighbor as yourself

This picture is in my living room.  It's by Andrei Rublev.   I know this because a friend shared the movie Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky with me about 18 years ago.   I think of this Icon in connection with the idea of 'two or more being gathered in my Name'.  If 'my name' is roughly equivalent to 'my Self' and my self is another way of saying my identity, then when the requirements of 'two or more present in my name' have been met one would, in effect, be loving one's neighbor as one's Self because the several parties would be sort of under a cone of SELF, to borrow an image from Get Smart .  The white space in the picture is actually a little like the cone of silence... it indicates the way in which the minds in communication form a Chalice, or grail.  The communication itself is the Grail.  Another way of saying this might be, Where two or more are gathered in recognition of their shared identity I am there with them.  I think the active ingredient is the recognition of shared identity.


Tonight on MSNBC Lawrence O'Donnel included a clip from The West Wing.  I couldn't get it off the MSNBC site but I just found it on Facebook.  I hope the clip will translate:

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100779896922119

As an aside, it surprises me that the similarity of the name of Jesus to 'the I am' is not more widely commented on.  I've never noticed it commented on at all.  I am.  Yo soy.  Je suis.

to clarify the reference: Soul in Bondage

Soul in Bondage 

The soul is not in bondage

Nadia and Masha in Vanity Fair  (<--- link)

I accidentally got a lot of hits to this blog, seems like such a long time ago, when I posted something about these women who had done an un-permitted performance piece in St. Basil's Cathedral.  I don't think they'd been imprisoned at that point. The theme of feminine power and vulnerability in this blog started with that post.  It hasn't really been my bailiwick.   In my reading of the situation, they aren't doing any of this to demonstrate their own worth, innocence or great talent.  They are doing this because their self worth is unrecognizable without the worth of the prisoners who are not gorgeous to look at; who don't generate wealth but do generate grace.

then I am filled to my brim with sky

We are thinking, as the son of man, about the justifications we can understand, undersign, forgive, forget, forbear or mock.   Sometimes we just have to sit apart from a brother.   Waiting for his mind to change.

the biggest challenge facing our world today is the subjugation and abuse of women and girls

Jimmy Carter's new book hitting the nail on the head big time....
because something in us sees receptivity as weakness and agrees with that comb-over guy who fires people for a living when he says that 'Weakness is a provocation'.



http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking

not succeeding at getting an image to go from internet to blog with my chromebook.  what happened to  right click and save image as?


http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/episodes/gs2him/march-25--2014---jimmy-carter

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0326/Jimmy-Carter-s-new-book-A-Call-to-Action-receives-positive-reviews

A big flashing arrow indicating the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road.  We are all feminine in relation to God.  (from Autobiography of a Yogi).

Ecumenical Room

Did you know that some airports have Ecumenical Rooms?  I learned this from one of Anthony Bourdain's travel shows; I think it was the Layover oriented program and I think he was laying over in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

I love Anthony Bourdain.  When I first started this blog I talked a little about Craig Ferguson and Russel Brand.  I'd noticed a somewhat mysterious similarity in the appeal they have as people who've written readable memoirs which include horrible choices, embarrassing low points, alcohol, drugs and general debauchery.  They also share an enduring longing for the good, the true and the beautiful, or so it seemed to me.  Anthony Bourdain shares some profile elements.  He is clear that he eschews nothing based on appearances alone. He judges not and accepts not judgement.  Kind of like Ferguson and Brand?  They question.  They are endlessly curious.  They want to find stuff to be enthusiastic about but don't become downcast or resentful if it doesn't work out that way.

I listened to Ted Radio Hour  this morning while I waited for a technician to come to my home to fix my wi-fi, which was suffering 'signal leakage'.  The topic was success.   During the Tony Robbins portion on 'drive', I was thinking that my drive has always been to establish and maintain a connection with, for lack of a better term, God.  Success is guaranteed since God also wants this.  (Sometimes I haven't been so clear on that last detail.)  In the next portion Angela Duckworth explored the role of grit in attaining success.  I thought how little that term applies to me.  But when I think about it in relation to these three guys, I realize there's something else that's inside of what she's identifying as 'grit'.  It's sheer buoyancy and resilience.  That I can identify with.

Pussy Riot on Colbert!

Stephen Colbert is one of my favorite humans of all time.  I knew he was seriously a kindred spirit when he suddenly began reciting The Song of Tom Bombadil during an interview a couple of years ago.  (I read and reread Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring at least 10 times before the end of 11th grade.)  He is famous for not being what he pretends to be (conservative) and for saying what he doesn't believe (that Karl Rove is a lovely human being) but the truth is he's a very tenderhearted individual.  I have no doubt that his religious feeling is deeply sincere.  His interview with Pussy Riot is great fun to watch but I think Colbert, the Dad, is genuinely worried about 'these girls'.  I know the current president of Russia prides himself on looking as though he eats slow moving citizens for breakfast but I wouldn't want Colbert mad at me either.  The artists' humor was a perfect match for Colbert's.

Stephen Colbert was made a member of the band.  This makes me happy:

Everyman in thy most need

I've had this phrase in my head all week,  Everyman in thy most need  ( <--- link to everyman's library)

(By the 100th Anniversary in 2006 the list of authors Everyman’s Library publishes has been joined by Achebe, Allende, Bassani, Borges, Bulgakov, Calvino, Camus, Chandler, Penelope Fitzgerald, Forster, Grass, Greene, Hasek, Highsmith, Levi, Mahfouz, Mann, Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Naipaul, Orwell, Plath, Rushdie, Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck, Svevo, Updike, and Waugh, a catalogue that few publishers can rival in paperback and of course none in hardcover.)

actually the phrase I was trying to remember goes:  ”Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side” 

Annonyme has something to do with the generalization of Identity in same sense as Everyman.  Questioning the significance, import and stability of individual identity sounds whack but it can lead to some great thinking.  See the work Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges for an exploration of the I in relation to it's biographical host.  I haven't read it in years.  I think I will put it on my list.  





My daughter is in the room listening to TimWillDestroyYou.  This is making me laugh a lot.  I had the thought that my efforts to create a blog similar to the one I admired in 2003 or so (lemonyellow) might be pretty lame.  I wonder, since I don't actually look for or read other people's blogs (although I enjoy Herbivoracious and am worried that I stopped getting newsletters in my email from him) whether anyone even bothers with the hyperlink.  Here I am fussing about whether any reader's will be able to tell a hyperlink when they see it and why I can't make the titles be links anymore.  Oh Well.

I just hit 16,000 page views. still not one comment other than one from a close friend and from me.... I don't really understand that.

This is church too!

macklemore & ryan lewis tiny desk concert TINY DESK CONCERT (<_ link)


It's hard to hold hate in your heart and be joyful. It's hard to keep a good love down.   It's hard to keep a good preacher off the desk.  

Salinger

My TV died suddenly.  I was half way through the PBS piece on J.D. Salinger.  (He was the topic of one of my first posts. September 22, 2009 - I said I was writing for J.D. Salinger.) Happily, the program was available on Netflix. I was able to view the rest of it tonight without my television.  Nicely done with the alternating narrators and use of sound to punctuate image.  I wonder if the two screens of Joyce Maynard were really necessary, though.  It seemed to imply that she was two-faced precisely as she was defending herself from that accusation.  Kind of artsy in a heavy handed, deceptive way.  Probably no one told her she would be interviewed in two settings from two different angles so that the editor could create the impression of two Joyces. Why echo the accusation?  Just let her talk then move on.  

Somehow I managed not to read The Catcher in the Rye.  I read almost all of Salinger's other titles with relish. It was because of Salinger's Franny and Zooey that I read The Way of a Pilgrim.  The Way of a Pilgrim is the first person account of a Russian (pretty sure) man's journey to establish in his soul  prayer that does not cease.   The Way of a Pilgrim led me to The Philokalia.  If I have any humans reading this they seem to be in way Eastern Europe/ The Ukraine.  or so Google analytics says.

I will read  9 stories again.

Perhaps this post will elicit more chaste advertising choices from the world of artificial intelligence governing adsense. lately it's been a little depressing.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

Eight Joyful steps to Magical Manifesting

The link above leads to a registration page for a teleconference call with SARK. FREE! I think SARK has grown tremendously as a teacher since I first started seeing the explosively cheerful posters she designs on the walls of a few classrooms in the late seventies.  I liked the unapologetic positivism then and I appreciate how powerful it is even more after all these years of struggling to think my way out of obstacles in the world. Happiness is pretty much a choice as is the acceptance of growth and healing.  We have to make the choice every day and that's where this dedicated coaching comes in handy.

Thanks for being so relentless in your joy Ms. Kennedy.