Odjak

I saw this on bbc online this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5299682.stm

“A US team followed 670 male military veterans and found those with high levels of hostility had poorer lung function than their happier peers.

The scientists also found that the angriest men suffered a more rapid decline in lung capacity.

The researchers believe that anger and hostility could be affecting neurological and hormonal processes, which in turn could cause chronic inflammation in some of the body’s systems, such as the lungs.”

A new twist on the meaning of “suicide bombers”.

Sometimes I imagine the babyhood of a person I like.
I imagine him/her in the arms of a parent.
I see innocence, tenderness, love.
I feel happy that I became to know that baby later in life.

Sometimes I imagine the babyhood of a person I don’t like, a person who has been mean to me.
It doesn’t work the same way.
It’s hard to feel anything tender from that vision.
It helps to humanize the meanness though.

All executioners have been babies once.

A futile exercise or what?

Today is a special day. It is one of a kind, unique.

Today will never ever repeat itself in our lives.

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, the following will happen in New York:
Tuesday, August 29, 2006 Eastern Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:51 a.m.
Sunrise 6:20 a.m.
Sun transit 12:57 p.m.
Sunset 7:33 p.m.
End civil twilight 8:01 p.m.

MOON
Moonset 9:29 p.m. on preceding day
Moonrise 11:57 a.m.
Moon transit 4:59 p.m.
Moonset 9:54 p.m.
Moonrise 1:03 p.m. on following day

Phase of the Moon on 29 August: waxing crescent with 28% of the Moon’s visible disk illuminated.

I often think about my parents, my brother, my uncles and my aunts.
They are not alive on this special day.

Tomorrow will also be a special day, one of a kind, unique.

Will it?

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination not yet beautiful.
Emerson, “Beauty” The conduct of Life (1860)

Where does beauty begin and where does it end?
Where it ends is where the artist begins.
John Cage, “Lecture on nothing”, Silence (1961)

O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of the mirror.
Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, (1916)

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. (1819)

This selection comes from The International Thesaurus of Quotations.

When I was growing up I would voice my opinion at the dinner table.

My mother and father would look at each other and put on a facial expression I was not able to interpret.

Did they accept my opinion as valid? Did they find it simple, childish or naïve? Did they feel I was inventing the wheel once again and had so much more to discover in life?

Probably all of the above.

The effect of this was neither stifling nor encouraging. It was more like a mysterious code that I thought I would be able to break when I became older and more mature.

To this day, the code remains unbroken.

One thing I have learned though is that each time I voice my opinion I know its validity remains uncertain and its argument open ended.

There is hope that I’ll keep growing up and become more mature.

More often than not, some unreasonable idea becomes reasonable in the minds of many. A trend settles in and it starts feeding itself.
The textbook example of this is the tulip crisis in Holland. Check it out

http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes2.asp

Why am I interested in this?

I have a visceral reaction to situations that dupe the largest number of people. The situation I am reacting to viscerally can be financial, political, cultural, moral… you name it.

I happen to think that people are duped because of their personal weaknesses.

Greed, fear, pride, and hope rule our hearts.

We are all potential self-dupers. Wannabes.

Professional dupers know this and deliberately lay out the traps.

Years later history reveals the “set-up” and we all shake our heads with some superior sense of incredulity.

Why do I have a visceral reaction to this?

One explanation may be that in our civilization, being duped is the rule and not the rare exception. Each one of us will be or has been or is being duped.

The visceral reaction is there because I am outraged and can’t express it usefully and effectively.

I am outraged to witness that so many of us are duped every day on many different levels and yet while we are capable of picking up the pieces and moving on, those who maliciously benefited from duping us are going on with their lives, unaccountable.

Is fairness a fantasy?

How to differentiate between self-expression and exhibition? When does candid talk lack decency?

I don’t know the answer. Maybe the answer lies in our upbringing.

Or maybe self-expression is already becoming indecent when it is organized into a “product”. To create a product is a commercial undertaking where self-expression has secondary importance. Indecency sells. Can a “cultural product” be indecent?

Is this discussion comparable to the debate that pits eroticism against pornography?

If I play a musical instrument when there is no one around me, I’m playing music for myself. I’m practicing “self-expression”. As soon as I have an audience I start struggling between staying true to myself and pleasing the other. The more I try to please the other consciously the less I am in the self-expression mode. My focus has shifted from what I’m doing to what the other is doing. Even an imaginary audience has that power on me.

Self-expression is to be in the moment, oblivious of the other.

But that’s not enough to define decency. I can be oblivious of others and be very indecent too.

Do I need to self-censor my expressiveness to stay within my norm of decency?

It may be so.

Trial and error works only if I allow myself to make errors.

Some days I feel compassionate towards myself (see the teachings of Dalai lama). I talk myself into allowing the error I made to stand as an error and not as the indelible expression of my overall inadequacy.

A good device is to label that error a lesson… The lesson hardly works but it helps to think it does.

Other days though, I revisit my past errors and punish myself incessantly. I have done that regularly in my life. It makes me feel stupid and unforgiving.

Double errors are the worst. An error done and recognized as such has been repeated again soon after. Sometimes I can even get to triple or quadruple errors at which point, after having punished myself sufficiently, I must accept that this category of error is built in my personality and that I must now consider it not as an error but as a personality trait.

I know I’m bold. I know I have a tendency to gain weight. I know I love munching all day long. I know my height is not the height of an average American.

Most importantly, I know that fear, greed, pride and hope are built into my system.

How can I live a peaceful life with fear, greed, pride and hope?

Trial and error?

Today the moon will not be visible although it will be there in the sky, between the sun and the earth. The sunlight reflecting off of the moon’s surface will not reach us. We will not see the moon yet the moon will keep having an effect on us.

I care about where the moon is in my daily life. I care about cycles, waves, rhythms. I expect to see the new moon tomorrow.

Life has a way of lulling us into certainties. Day, night, new moon, full moon, no moon, breakfast, lunch, dinner, summer, winter, hot, cold…

It is treacherous to take the next phase of anything for granted.

Warning!

The next phase may not be there, or we may not be there to see that next phase.

And then what?

This question is not about after life. It is about today. How do I live today? What do I do with my time? What are my responsibilities towards myself and towards others?

Heavy stuff if I take myself seriously.

I would like to be lighthearted. And mindful of how I live my time.
Practice of living will lead me to the right balance, I say.
My life may consist of a series of trial and errors.

I was looking for an apartment to live in. I had no idea how things would pan out. Things did pan out all right!
I’m grateful.
An understatement.

Last year this time I was planning a film that is becoming another film.
The transformation of an idea into another idea happens as mysteriously as anything else in life.

I believe our lives are configured in ways we have no clue of. We go through sometimes arduous and other times easy stuff.
There is no knowing ahead of time. Expect the unexpected I say.
Then again, the unexpected will not happen the way you’re expecting it to happen.