God’s in the strangest places. To wit: two days ago everyone had dipped but me & vij, so we hit lunch together at the chinese joint with Ang and Necu — they dipped early cos they had a meeting to go to — and wound up sitting briefly with a prominent geneticist (no links because this is a a personal blog blahblahblah but he’s SMRT for realz and a big-wig nationally in his field) and wound up having a discussion about religion and it’s role in science. For someone who’d put science in such focus in his life, he was remarkably open-minded about religion (paraphrasing, but along the lines of “to be as adamant about the non-existance of god as a lot of atheists are seems kind of closed-minded, especially if you’re a scientist and supposed to be figuring things out, not just assuming they are the way you want”). Dude was totally cool and more relaxed than I’d seen him otherwise, although to be fair, other times I’d seen him had been during emergencies, so uh yeah, I get frazzled too.
He also went into a tangent about astrology — as an example, i think, i forget how we got into it as a subject — and how maybe it isn’t planets or what-have-you, but rather the general temperature patterns during gestation that affect personalities, IE, gemini’s are bastards, cancers are sensitive etc etc because during gestation they had colder or hotter womb temp averages, and he had seen in his own work how minute temperature changes in utero or in vitro could affect outcomes drastically and dramatically. Interesting thought.
post title courtesy El Producto’s new album, “I’ll sleep when you’re dead”, which is still growing on me. Good, but so far I like “Fantastic Damage” more (although the Trent Reznor guest spot was weird on the new one).
Rose left. Been speaking to the Little Trouble Girl, playing guitar by myself and drinking wine. Hung out with the Crafty Witch, made my world-famous (that’s not an exagerration) grilled cheese sammiches, tried her tapenade, watched “The Wicker Man” and played guitar and got to meet her friend Sunny and then we discussed relationships and love and marriage. I don’t know. I think she’s ugh about marriage because the commitment is just a big scary thing and feels dishonest to say “forever, you and only you” especially about love, because the heart is such a fickle fucking cat. But I never really thought that marriage was about that, at least not by the time I got to thinking about that. I don’t know that I got across that I didn’t think that marriage had to be about that, but it was like she just didn’t want to think about marriage not being about love forever and every monogamy. Which, I’m no advocate for polyamory specifically, in whatever flavors it comes in, but from what I know of her specific feelings about monogamy, and the legalities of marriage, it sounds like the only way she could have a relationship (not specifically marriage) for a longer period of time and not get all heartbroken and insane.
But then again, consider my folks’ marriage. I dunno. Dysfunction vs just putting up w/ it?
Buddhism’s suffering-stems-from-desire totally makes sense, especially when viewed in the context of relationships: every relationship problem I’ve ever even heard of has been the result of what A wants and what B wants differing and that not being made absolutely clear because communication between them having been less than clear. A good friend of mine broke up with his fiancee because he wanted kids and she absolutely didn’t and thankfully they realized this before that marriage happened, and they broke up and he found another chick muuuuch more well suited to his temperament and humor. And she does want kids. So there you have it.
The more I consider it, the more I think that marriage should not be about capital-L Love but about lowercase-l love and a recognized partnership. Comrades-at-arms, with fucking and love. Not some romantic idiocy of the twue-wuv variety thinking that things will always be wine and roses. Part of what makes the joyous moments so sweet is that there are the bitter moments to contrast them against. It can always be so much worse, you know? You hold on to the good and you let go the bad and when it gets really bad you go back to the good and weigh it and decide whether it’s enough to stick around for. And part of that marriage thing is just a promise to try really fucking hard. Sometimes you promise yourself, and sometimes you promise the other person, or God, or a judge or whatever. As serious as you make it, man, just like anything else.
sonic youth vid in honor of new friend apparently. litl troubl grl, seems a conglomerate of dee, bee, sun, ces, maybe a bit of reven. whoa havent thought of her in ages. also briefly remembered RA from 7thh grade? funny i remember edgar mocking because she was so annoying and i was crushing and all i remember about that is feeling bad. tht’s not true but i don’t want to remember any more details. the past a different country etc
dream: haiti, lines in travel queues waiting to get in, driving around, rose w/ me then stace, inside a bodega looking place the trouble starts — zombies, well, it’s haiti, what do you expect — and in a building next to the shack we’re sheltering in, above & looking down from a party, b is dancing and laughing and i’m in it to my neck and it’s no picnic but i feel pity for her, and i don’t know if i’m forcing myself or not but there’s knifework to be done so the unexamined life prevails. i get us out, but we lose stuff. i shrug. stuff is easy to replace.
I’m bored and it’s been at least a week since I’ve mailed most of you, so you get a generic mail that is bound to entertain you at least as long as it takes you to hit delete.
The subject is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Goodbye Mr Rosewater”. Vonnegut died this week and if you’re not familiar with his writing, your life is sadder for it. You’ve seen back to school, the Rodney Dangerfield 80′s piece of shit movie? Remember when he hires a guy to write a term paper about Kurt Vonnegut and the professor says “whoever wrote this paper doesn’t know anything about Kurt Vonnegut” ? The dude who Dangerfield hires to write the paper — that’s Kurt Vonnegut.
So last week I spoke to my lawyer/guitarist friend and it turns out that he and his wife are so freaked out about pet food killing their dogs that she’s taken to cooking food for them and giving him dogfood. I’ll miss you bro — can I have your guitars? Turns out that making your own pet food is perhaps not that hard: http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/03/31/100loc_a8petmeals001.cfm
SAMPLE HOROSCOPE FOR GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): Put down that chainsaw! Turn off the particle accelerator! Leave the exploding pudding cups at home! Right now, playing a practical joke could open an energy vortex into another dimension. Instead of pranks, maybe try some of those Random Acts of Kindness?
I hurt my back so I’m bored. Which means you get an email full of weird stuff.
ok, so you may or may not have seen michel gondry’s “the science of sleep” (i haven’t, but i hear it’s good. i recommend the “director’s series” compilation DVD though.) but he’s done a bunch of music videos that are really bizarre and imaginative (bjork, beck, etc — to give you a taste, here’s a Cibo Matto vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPJ9TS_5tAo ). the man’s a visual poet of very high caliber, just take my word for it. but that’s not why i bring Michel Gondry up. I bring him up for cheap comedy; to wit:
am forgetful. i seriously have not spoken to people for months because i just forget to call them back. http://www.hassleme.co.uk/ might help you if you’re like me.
