Don Quijote, p. 390 of the translation by Burton Raffel

April 4, 2013 at 6:31 am (Books, Sayings)
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By killing giants, we must also kill pride; so too we must kill jealousy with kindness and generosity; anger with tranquil actions and peace of mind; gluttony and laziness with abstinence and careful attention to duty; lechery and lewdness with devoted loyalty to those we have made mistress of our thoughts; and sloth by journeying all over the globe, seeking opportunities to act and then acting, not just as Christians, but as famous and worthy knights.

– Don Quijote to his faithful squire, Sancho Panza

After reading the above, self has put her finger on how to deal with difficult people, and perhaps the reason for her traveling “all over the globe” is really her hatred of sloth.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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1st Wednesday of April (2013)

April 3, 2013 at 10:49 pm (Food and Drink, Recommended, Sayings, Surprises, Writing, Zack)
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Self had just pulled herself together enough to revise two very short stories (1,500 words each) and send them out, and seat herself in front of the TV in the living room to watch “Bones” while having her lunch (It is 3:21 pm, that is how busy she was today), when she decided to check her e-mail (which she does almost every hour), and there was already a rejection for one of the short stories she’d sent out today.  Honestly:  this was the fastest rejection ever.  Faster even than anderbo.com!  She hopes they’re still considering the other story (They allow two stories per submission.  Don’t ask self to name the magazine:  self has decided that discretion is the better part of valor.)

Then she decided to –  Holy Cow!  This rice that she is having with her stir-fried boneless chicken thigh fillets is absolutely yummy!  It’s the first time she’s tried this Elephant Brand Thai rice (from Marina Foods in Hillsdale:  she would have preferred to drive across the bridge to Island Pacific in Union City, but has been feeling quite pressed for time) and does it ever go well with stir-fried chicken!  Especially with stir-fried chicken in Hoisin sauce!

Her eye wanders over to the TV and –  Wow!  Cute shirt the African American supervisor is wearing!  Lime green, with beaded keyhole neckline!

Back to self’s lunch.  She is washing all down with a bottle of beer.  And –  Holy Cow!  This is absolutely a fantastic beer!  Self peruses the label:  California Lager, Anchor beer, founded 1896.  She wonders if this is from Trader Joe’s, or from Draegers.  It’s definitely not Safeway or Whole Foods.

It has turned into a very hot day.  Self knows she needs to water.

Sweet-smelling Bella is wiped out from the exertion of climbing the kitchen stairs in the heat.  She’s on the kitchen floor, because the linoleum feels cool. (Self is tempted to carry The Ancient One here, there and everywhere, but is realizing that The Man’s insistence on making the poor li’l crit walk as much as possible is why Bella, at 17 1/2, is still ambulatory.)

And –  Self!  What are you doing!  You have just downed your third serving of Thai rice with chicken fillets stir-fried with green onions and Hoisin!  Aaach, aaach, she can’t help it, the rice and the stir-fried chicken and the hoisin sauce and the beer are such a perfect combination.  Not only that, self must be allowed to drown her sorrows regarding last night’s Justified season finale.  When might Season 5 be occurring, self wonders?

She finally got to the last page of the San Francisco Chronicle of precisely one week ago.  The bottom of the last page is the Dear Abby section.  Here is one of the letters:

Dear Abby,

I am a plus-size woman.  I am loud and boisterous, and I like to surround myself with similar women.  However, there is a problem I am now facing.

Many of my friends have made amazing transformations and gotten fit.  I am fully supportive and impressed, but I see the price they are paying.  They are no longer confident and vivacious.  They have become timid, approval-seeking shells of their previous selves.

Why do newly thin women forget how awesome their personalities used to be?

–  Big Beauty in Illinois

*     *     *     *

Dear Big Beauty:

Not knowing your friends, I can’t answer for them.  But it is possible that having become “transformed and fit,” they no longer feel they need their loud and boisterous personas to compete for attention.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Inspiration: Shunryu Suzuki

November 25, 2012 at 9:32 pm (Sayings)
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Self’s calendar for 2012 was something she picked up from, she thinks, Keplers in Menlo Park.

How quickly the time has flown!  The calendar still strikes her as a “new” thing.  She can’t believe that in one more month, 2012 will be over.

The calendar features Zenga paintings from the Gitter-Yelen Collection.  Until this year, she’d never heard the word “Zenga” before (She associates it with a high-tech company).  The back of the calendar contains this explanation:

The mind of Zen Buddhism is revealed through authentic sacred art and profoundly simple wisdom.  Zenga art, Zen-inspired brushstroke paintings, surprise and confound our expectations.  Although created by seventeenth and eighteenth-century monks who were amateur painters, they have startlingly modern appeal.  Each month features a unique Zenga masterwork paired with quotes from Not Always So by Shunryu Suzuki (1905 – 1971), one of the most influential Zen teachers of his time.

The quote for December is:

When you empty your mind, when you give up everything and just practice zazen with an open mind, then whatever you see, you meet yourself.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Quote of the Day: Halloween 2012

October 31, 2012 at 2:48 am (Movies, Places, Sayings, Surprises)
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You don’t really understand power unless you’ve lived in Bacolod.  At least, self didn’t.

America is about privacy.  The suburbs swallow you up, and you become just like everybody else.  John Lee Hooker, the great R & B/ jazz singer, lived in Redwood City, just blocks from self’s home, and she found out only after he died, in 2001.  This deep privacy can be either a comfort or a form of erasure.

Self’s quote of the day comes from Mongol, a movie about the early life of Genghis Khan, directed by Sergei Bodrov.

(BTW, that was one wiiiild movie, dear blog readers!  Borderline cheesy and over-the-top!  Just the kind of movie self thoroughly enjoys!)

Here was one trenchant line:

Do not scorn a weak cub, for he may become a brutal tiger.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Parabola, Fall 2012: “The Unknown”

September 21, 2012 at 7:17 am (Lists, Sayings)
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“Sought, it will not be found; watched, it is not seen.”  –  Longchenpa

According to the article in Parabola, “Longchenpa is one of the great exemplars of Tibetan esoteric mysticism . . .  His writing grounds the reader in the here and now as the field of mystery that cannot be explained, but only inhabited.”  He was a sage who practiced “the Great Perfection tradition known as Dzogchen.”

In August 2011, the writer of the article, J. M. White, traveled to Tibet and visited a monastery associated with Longchenpa, the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, in an area of the city called the Barkhor.  Here are a few of his observations:

  • “In Lhasa, and in many of the major cities of Tibet, the Chinese outnumber the Tibetans five to one.”
  • The Jokhang temple houses a statue called Jowo Sakyamuni, “the most famous and most revered statue in Tibet.  The building has been destroyed and rebuilt at least five times, but there are parts of the interior and the foundation that are believed to date back to the seventh century.  It was seriously desecrated by the Chinese in the 1960s, when for a while they used it as a pigsty.”
  • “The most famous statement in Tibetan Buddhism” is this one, which Longchenpa claims to have “heard in a vision:  All form is void, all void is form.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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New Mantra, For the Rest of 2012

August 12, 2012 at 5:32 am (Sayings)
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You can die from someone else’s misery.

You can die from someone else’s misery.

You can die from someone else’s misery.

Self will not die from someone else’s misery.

Self will not die from someone else’s misery.

Self will not die from someone else’s misery.

Quidditch team news:  Let’s see if self can do a quick scan of her memory.  Richard the Canadian is traveling (without leaving the confines of Canada).  Jenny the Oxford Professor and Poet is in Oxford (of course) as the term has begun.  Joan is being very industrious and writer-ly because she has not written.  Marylee is doing very intensive research for her novel in Paris (Would that self had done the same when she was in Paris, instead of wandering the city like a lonely waif, in search of that damn Louvre!  Which turned out to be as big as a Mountain!).  Allison is teaching a summer writing course in Oklahoma.  She sent a couple of pictures from her apartment, and it looked as if there were actually palm trees growing in the parking lot (of this place in Oklahoma), will wonders never cease?

Bella’s nails are growing awfully long.

Self really is developing quite a fascination with Tom Hardy.

The new Will Ferrell movie has a scene with 27 Filipino staff on a cruise liner.  One day, self must take a cruise for the purposes of interviewing the Filipino staff.  This is her firm resolution.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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More From the Jesuit Baltasar Gracian (1601 – 1658)

July 26, 2012 at 5:49 am (Books, Sayings)
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Our good friend Baltasar Gracian puts in another appearance on p. 88 of The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene:

He who has slaked his thirst, immediately turns his back on the well, no longer needing it.  When dependence disappears, so does civility and decency, and then respect.  The first lesson which experience should teach you is to keep hope alive but never satisfied, keeping even a royal patron ever in need of you.

Robert Greene’s Interpretation:  You should create a situation in which you can always latch on to another master or patron but your master cannot easily find another servant with your particular talent.  And if, in reality, you are not actually indispensable, you must find a way to make it look as if you are.  Having the appearance of specialized knowledge and skill gives you leeway in your ability to deceive those above you into thinking they cannot do without you.

Self doesn’t know why, she finds the above hilarious.  Absolutely hilarious.  Especially this:  “…  if, in reality, you are not actually indispensable … “

Stay tuned.

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Wednesday Morning: A Fable (While Waiting for the Garbage Collectors)

July 25, 2012 at 8:55 pm (Sayings)
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A frightful epidemic sent to earth by heaven intent to vent its fury on a sinful world, to call it by its rightful name, the pestilence, that Acheron-filling vial of virulence had fallen on every animal.  Not all were dead, but all lay near to dying, and none was any longer trying to find new fuel to feed life’s flickering fires.  No foods excited their desires, no more did wolves and foxes rove in search of harmless, helpless prey, and dove would not consort with dove, for love and joy had flown away.  The Lion assumed the chair to say:  “Dear friends, I doubt not it’s for heaven’s high ends that on us sinners woe must fall.  Let him of us who’s sinned the most fall victim to the avenging heavenly host, and may he win salvation for us all.  For history teaches us that in these crises, we must make sacrifices.  Undeceived and stern-eyed, let’s inspect our conscience.  As I recollect, to put my greedy appetite to sleep, I’ve banqueted on many a sheep who’d injured me in no respect, and even in my time been known to try Shepherd pie.  If need be, then, I’ll die.  Yet I suspect that others also ought to own their sins.  It’s only fair that all should do their best to single out the guiltiest.”

“Sire, you’re too good a king,” the Fox begins.  “Such scruples are too delicate.  My word, to eat sheep, that profane and vulgar herd, that’s sin?  Nay, Sire, enough for such a crew to be devoured by such as you, while of the shepherds we may say that they deserved the worst they got, theirs being the lot that over us beasts plot a flimsy dream-begotten sway.”

Thus spake the Fox, and toady cheers rose high, while none dared cast too cold an eye on Tiger’s, Bear’s, and other eminences’ most unpardonable offenses.  Each, of never mind what currish breed, was really a saint, they all agreed.

Then came the Ass, to say:  “I do recall how once I crossed an abbey-mead where hunger, grass in plenty, and withal, I have no doubt, some imp of greed assailed me and I shaved a tongue’s-breadth wide where frankly I’d no right to any grass.”  All forthwith fell full cry upon the Ass:  a wolf of some book-learning testified that the curst beast must suffer their despite, that gallskinned author of their piteous plight.  They judged him fit for naught but gallows-bait:  how vile, another’s grass to sequestrate!  His death alone could expiate a crime so heinous, as full well he learns.  The court, as you’re of great or poor estate, will paint you either white or black by turns.

–  re-told by Jean De La Fontaine (1621 – 1695)

Self is a little confused as to the moral of this fable, which as you might have guessed is lifted from His Eminence Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power.  She thinks it means that the Ass should not have presumed that his story was as interesting (or as worthy of awe) as the Lion’s?  Well, that’s why the poor creature is an Ass!  One can’t have an Ass presuming to be on the same footing as all the other animals!

Simply put:  “Whether the exact same deeds appear brilliant or dreadful can depend entirely on the reputation of the doer.” (Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power, p. 41)

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Dissimulating Monday: # 3 of Robert Greene’s THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

July 23, 2012 at 4:57 pm (Books, Sayings, Surprises)
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Today’s Wise Man is Baltasar Gracian (1601 – 1658).  His pearls of wisdom occur on p. 19 of Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power:

Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to live today without being one.  Let your greatest cunning lie in covering up what looks like cunning.

Dear blog readers, the guy was a Jesuit priest.  Those Jesuits are just so — worldly!  And cunning!

And that’s all for now, folks!  Stay tuned.

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The “Restraint” Issue, PARABOLA, Summer 2005

July 16, 2012 at 4:51 pm (Recommended, Sayings)
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Self keeps coming back and coming back to this issue of Parabola. Why?

In the opening essay, Lorraine Kisly writes:

The blessed freedom of not doing is of course a gift, and can never be generated by effort.  But will this gift appear without effort?  As is so often the case, the answer appears to be both yes –  and no.

“When you practice,” writes Master Sheng Yen in this issue, “you begin in the dark room of your ego.”  The passive and reactive state in which we live usually is one in which we certainly are constrained.  Whether termed defilements or sin, the self-enclosing grip of anger, hatred, vanity, and greed may only be dimly sensed but nonetheless it lies at the root of our wish for freedom.  It is within that grip that the search for freedom begins and effort begins as well.  Until the state of no-mind is reached we reside in the realm of gain and loss, he adds, “gain of wisdom and loss of vexation . . .  gain of clarity, loss of scatteredness and confusion.”  It is only through a long and patient practice, however, says Paul Reynard in our interview with him, that we are able to understand, through our own hard-won experience, that the ultimate nature of effort is to allow something to appear.”

On p. 45 of the same issue, there is a poem by C. P. Cavafy:

As Much As You Can

Even if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Do not degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social relations and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

–  from C. P. Cavafy:  Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, Princeton University Press)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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