Andy's Art

Ascent

2012-01-25T17:37:00.002+09:00

Ascent

The view changed often

as I made my way

from the base of the castle to the top;

the sun beat down on me with ancient fire

and my knees nearly forced me to stop

but each step took me higher than mountains,

and birds

flew beneath me as I crossed a bridge

that led to the door of the highest tower

and the darkness and mysteries within

engraved on its stone walls, a story was told

of a life that knew losses and pain;

it might have been your story; it might have been mine,

for it seemed to reveal everyone's name

the pale orange of sunset glowed through the window

giving eerie life to the stone;

enshrouded by darkness both threatening and comforting

I'd never been so alone

I stepped out onto the perch just as a banshee's wail

sent a chill running through my whole being;

it pierced the air from a far off place,

and I gazed out with awe at the scene:

There was fire in the hills as a crimson moon rose

and a dragon flew across the sky;

it was moving slow, as if it wanted me to know

that I could ride on its back if I tried

I might have died that day, or perhaps it was death that died;

releasing its hold on me

and in one perfect instant, I heard a song

and I'm still haunted by its melody

Elephant Dream, Two versions

2012-01-14T21:03:00.002+09:00

Dream of Strange Scene by a Pond

2012-01-12T19:04:00.001+09:00

J, Caco and Friends!

2012-01-11T18:22:00.002+09:00

The Golden Cobra Dream

2012-01-11T17:42:00.003+09:00

Here is another image I did for my friend, who keeps a dream journal. In this dream, she met a magnificent being, a giant radiant Golden Cobra.

Happy NEW YEAR! 2012!

2011-12-31T21:53:00.002+09:00

Happy Year of the Dragon! May this year be a Magical one for you and yours!

- Andy Boerger

Bell Peppers

2011-11-14T18:34:00.001+09:00

Happy Birthday, Hinata-chan!

2011-11-13T16:16:00.002+09:00

Surf's Up!

2011-09-24T09:56:00.003+09:00

My latest in the series of Pet Art Portraits, here's Momo and Luna putting their surfing skills on show in Waikiki!

Girl on a Horse

2011-08-13T12:04:00.001+09:00

An image from an idea for a children's story I'm working on now.

The Deal That Says "Splunge!"

2011-08-02T15:18:00.006+09:00

Remember that Monty Python skit

(and if you don't, it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v0I4OQi7CQ)

where the Texas movie producer gets a bunch of screenwriters in a room and badgers them all until they are reduced to hiding under the table? The Texas producer actually reminds me a lot of the Tea Baggers. But I digress.

Terry Jones is so terrified of getting axed on the spot he shouts out “Splunge”, and then explains that it means that the idea proposed by the producer might be a terrific idea, but possibly not, and he’s not being a yes-man. Quite a word, splunge! Anyway, saves his neck.

So this deal seems to do that. It saves everybody’s neck, it can and must be leveraged to show just what a toxic element the Tea Bagger (aka The Mice That Roared) caucus is, AND it has something for everybody to hate about it, which means it also has something for everybody to LIKE about it. Except the Bagger Caucus, of course, because they are insane.

What’s more, it’s so confusing you can pretty much spin it any old damn way you want.

Personally, I haven’t quite made up my mind about it, splungily, because I have a hard time seeing how this will all play out in the future. It absolutely MUST be played out in a way that exposes the Baggers for the unreasonable folks they are, and makes them radioactive to all but the most Kool Aid slurping RWers come reelection time.

But I’m guessing I probably never WILL make up my mind about it, because I am pretty sure in the meantime, and not too far off, somebody, somewhere will manufacture the NEXT crisis du jour to seize us all by our craniums.
So, Splunge!

Katy and Tiara Get Hitched!

2011-07-23T16:42:00.003+09:00

The latest in my series of "Pet Art" commissions, featuring the lovely Katy and the dachshund who has swept her off her feet (with his paws), Tiara.

The Innocence of the Human Body

2011-07-18T20:58:00.005+09:00

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
- Auden

St Francis of Assissi had, to be sure, an odd relationship with his body. As a strict ascetic, he considered it of utmost importance not to give in to its cravings for pleasure and leisure. He dubbed his own body “brother ass” and felt that it should be treated as any other domestic beast of the time. Beaten when in need of discipline, and given only coarse food upon which to subsist. He was known to curb his temptations by hurling his body into snow, or even on one occasion a briar patch which he tossed himself about in until his flesh was ripped and bleeding. However, by the time of his death, the great man had reconsidered his ill treatment of his body – his earthly vehicle – and asked the Lord to pardon him for having treated Brother Ass so cruelly. He realized that he had been indulging a fascination; an attempt to conquer that which his Creator had given him. Finally, it seems, that he who loved life and all its manifestations, had finally learned to love, or at least honor, his own organism.

Although many may feel that Francis’ relationship to his body was downright bizarre, I think it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we, in our modern age, relate to our own bodies in even more dysfunctional ways, or at least are encouraged to. We obsess over its skin layer, its most superficial aspect. Say the word “body” to a teenage male, and no doubt the image that will result is a female with Playboy-approved proportions. Or perhaps his own body, “ripped” and sculpted. It is doubtful that he will think of the intricate, mechanical wonder he inhabits, the magnificence that goes far beyond the skin layer. I’m reminded of a scuba diver, who, seated next to a friend who looked out at the ocean at sunrise and remarked at how beautiful it was, replied, “yes, and that’s only theroof!”

We indulge our bodies in exactly the way that St. Francis frowned upon, as we load up on ice cream, tortilla chips, cola, coffee and red wine. We then scan it for signs of resultant flab, and hold it up for critique alongside the impossible ideals that mass media relentlessly parades before our eyes. In magazine articles and website pages we are asked to consider which Hollywood hunk or starlet has “the best body”, when presumably the correct answer should be the one that functions best – the one that digests, eliminates, breathes, repairs, etc. most efficiently.

No greater indication of our dysfunctional relationship to our bodies can there be than the fact that we have created a trillion dollar industry that has as its sole purpose the manufacture of machines and devices that destroy and disfigure it by the millions. Our so-callled “defense industry” would perhaps be looked upon less favorably by its supporters if it were referred to, more honestly, as “the body destroying industry”. Although it has numerous competitors, perhaps the most atrocious and obscene example of this in all our sad history was the Treblinka II Death Camp in Nazi Germany. This was the Industrial Revolution meets Dante’s Inferno. For the first and only time in history an actual factory was built, with train lines leading up to it, that served no purpose other than the destruction of human bodies as quickly and “efficiently” as possible. People were carted in by the train car-load, and few lived more than 24 hours after arriving.

And these bodies that we waste and destroy so casually are near miraculous machines that are far beyond the capabilities of our greatest scientific geniuses to create or even imitate. Each cell, when it is first birthed in us, is like any other cell in our bodies, yet each knows how to evolve through exactly the right iterations so that it becomes part of our hair, our eyes, our lungs, our genitals, etc. How do the cells do this? Nobody knows, but it is likely the answer will someday be found in the portion of our DNA that biologists have lovingly referred to as “junk”.

We punish bodies mercilessly, and yet throughout the history of our species they have never sinned in any way. They serve us faithfully to the fullest extent they are capable at any given moment, until they can no longer. When they long for sleep we deprive them of it. When they need healthy natural food to stay strong, we insist that they make do on starchy, sugary, salty substances they have little use for. We keep them chained to chairs when they long to move about in the open air, as they were evolved to do. If we treated our pets the same way we treat our bodies we would be considered negligent, at best. And we punish bodies for the transgressions of the mind. I am opposed to the death penalty because I believe it is always a miscarriage of justice, as the body merely did what it was told, no matter how heinous the crime. To the body, slicing a cucumber or slicing into a human finger is essentially the same act, insofar as it merely follows the instructions of a healthy, or deranged, mind. An eye for an eye is thus two outrages, not one.

I am only writing to say that human bodies are innocent. We have yet, as a species, to demonstrate our worthiness to inhabit them. We should never harm them in any way.

Atlas Buzzed

2011-07-11T23:16:00.001+09:00

While scientists remain puzzled as to the cause of the dramatic decline in honeybee populations in North America and elsewhere, some are speculating the cause may very much be human related; however, not technological, but philosophical. It appears that “Randism”, a trend that has recently exploded on the American political landscape may similarly have caught on among our bee brethren. It seems that the reason for the decline of hive populations is that many bees are now practicing “the virtue of selfishness”, keeping the nectar they collect for themselves and not returning to the hives they emerged from. These bees consider the notion that they should return for the benefit of the whole colony “evil altruism” and look down upon the “Hive-ists” who would act for a goal larger than themselves. They argue that “there is no such thing as a species” and that it all comes down to individual bees and their pursuit of their own happiness. When it is pointed out to them that this could result in the extinction of honey bees and have cataclysmic results on worldwide crops, they scoff and say, “and this is my problem how?”

Meanwhile, more religious-minded bees are concerned about how to carry on in the aftermath of what they regard as “The Great Rapture” that has decimated their populations. “Left Bee-hive”, the bee adaptation of the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, paints a bleak picture of life on earth after the Chosen Bees have been taken up to their Maker.

So, will it be Rand that the bees turn to, or the Good Book? “Why should I care?”, a distraught bee who agreed to be interviewed for this article lamented. “It’s so hopeless that I just may go off somewhere and sting someone!”

Satomi's Tea Party

2011-07-02T18:32:00.003+09:00

My friend Satomi, the photographer who took the pictures of Rosie I posted a while back, is the subject of my latest pet art project, along with her two pups, Shishimaru and Momo. I managed to sneak Rosie in there too! Check out Satomi's blog at

http://ameblo.jp/buchakawa/

The Lonely Ape

2011-06-28T19:15:00.003+09:00

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.”
- Einstein

My morning yesterday was like so many others, riding a crowded train out from suburban Tokyo to neighboring Yokohama for work. As usual, I would have to wait several stops before managing a seat. So as I stood in the cramped aisle in front of a row of seats and watched the scenery change, I happened to glance over at the kangaroo standing next to me. He was reading The Kangaroo Times, and, since I don’t read Kangaroo, I could only get the barest notion from the photographs of what seems to be the chief concerns of kangaroos these days. Some sort of major kangaroo sporting event is going on, as well as what looks to be some sort of territorial dispute in a place I assumed to be part of the Australian outback. When he noticed I was poking my nose into his newspaper, the kangaroo seemed a bit miffed, and ever so slightly folded his paper as if to demonstrate to me it was off limits. Not wanting to make a kangaroo angry, I quickly looked in the opposite direction and found something frightfully interesting about the ad for after shave lotion above the luggage rack.

I’m not quite sure which is more absurd; the scenario I just described above, or the fact that for the vast majority of human beings alive today, nothing even remotely similar will ever occur for them – an encounter with another species of animal, in both creatures’ natural environment, on equal terms. We have fashioned a world that has become so people-centric that some of us go through whole days without ever seeing another species from the animal kingdom. Those of us who don’t have pets might go a few days without even thinking about other creatures, aside from the eating of them. Many will not regard the food before them as a once living animal. Hamburgers and chicken nuggets so completely disguise the fact that This Once Breathed that it is as if food originates in supermarkets and restaurant kitchens. No other species lives like this on our planet; so isolated, so disconnected from other creatures. A hefty toll is being paid for this, I believe. In fact, I believe that one of the main reasons there is so much alienation, depression and other forms of mental illness plaguing the human species is because our relationship to our fellow creatures has become so distorted. We are a lonely species.

To see this loneliness given expression, we need only look at children’s stories and entertainment. When I was a child, my television friends were Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, Scooby Doo and Bullwinkle. Especially Bugs. Now, Bugs is a funny fellow, as are the other characters I loved, but he’s nothing like an actual rabbit, even in appearance, is he? Why even depict him, or any cartoon character, as an animal? Why Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Eeyore, the White Rabbit, etc.? Couldn’t they all be people? They basically are people, just ones wearing funny animal suits.

What does this tell us? That we long to reconnect to animals. We miss them, and as long as we do, we’ll insert them into our culture any way we can. On greeting cards, calendars, animated programs, children’s book illustrations, T-shirts, etc., etc. We’ll also put them in zoos, basically prisons for innocents, and go to gawk at them in an odd and wholly inappropriate gesture of reconnection. Our popular culture indicates a deep yearning within us to restore something beautiful that has been lost.

To be sure, the reasons for our isolation are clear and reasonable enough. Animals threatened us. Whether lions, tigers or bears, whether locusts, snakes or scorpions, whether disease carrying rats, flies or birds, we built our cities and homes to shelter us from the danger so many of our fellow inhabitants of this world presented. But we’ve gone too far. We have created a sterile, barren environment. Wherever you are, sitting right now and reading your computer screen, try to imagine this same spot of land five hundred years ago, and for tens of thousands of years before that. It was very likely a lush forest with a vibrant, cosmopolitan atmosphere of squawking, hiding, howling, hunting, slithering, jumping animals. The land pulsated. The animals had an alertness we can only dream about, knowing that every move they made or failed to make could be fatal. In this threatening world of predators and prey, still they managed to mate and raise children. Surrounded by creatures utterly different from them, they shared and persevered. Consciously or simply instinctually, they participated in life, just as their descendants still do in the vast but ever shrinking expanses of forest that yet survive on our world. But for us, our world has been reduced to slabs, boxes, and slick surfaces. We see a spider or cockroach run along our walls, or a line of ants moving back and forth across our floor and we nearly freak out. “EWwww! How did these animals get in here?”

Our isolationist course has taken us to, and perhaps beyond, the tipping point. The latest hypothesis to explain the disappearance of honey bees in some parts of the world is that mobile phone “noise” is disrupting the bees’ homing sensors. Once they leave the hive to gather pollen, they can’t find their way back. The hives die. It’s hard to proffer a more essential species than the honeybee. Most of the world’s crops depend on them for pollination. So, will it be mobile phones that ultimately do us in? If so, I see a profoundly sad irony in that. Our isolated, lonely species, robbing the planet of its life force, while we go on chattering, chattering, chattering among ourselves.

Kanye West

2011-06-14T19:55:00.001+09:00

La Fiesta en una Cantina!

2011-06-11T14:39:00.003+09:00

Here's my latest Pet Art image, done for my friend Emari, of her two chihuahuas, Cinnamon and Milky, in honor of Cinnamon's 6th birthday. Feliz Cumpleanos, Cinnamon!

Rosie Pics!

2011-06-04T16:28:00.006+09:00

Here are some great pictures, taken by my new friend Satomi, when we met at the Tama River a couple weeks ago. Satomi is a professional photographer, and she was snapping away like mad! So I'm sure I'll post some more of her pictures here from time to time.

Here's Satomi's website address:

http://ameblo.jp/buchakawa

To The Victor

2011-05-28T18:53:00.005+09:00

This year’s NBA Finals match-up has enough back stories to fill out a season ofThe Sopranos. It has the potential to be one of the most exciting American professional sports events of the last ten years. Gone from this year’s finals are the old, reliable Lakers and Celtics. They have been vanquished, nay, trounced, by the two teams that will be slugging it out in a best of seven series inside their glitzy sunbelt city arenas, the Dallas Mavericks (Western Conference) and the Miami Heat (Eastern Conference). Those two teams have met in the Finals before, in 2006, with Miami winning four games in a row after losing the first two. So the Mavs, still featuring many of the same players from the earlier series, will have revenge on their minds, without question. But this season even that little slice of drama must take a back seat to the bigger saga that will unfold. Call this one The Legacy Series.

The two teams each have a player who has simply risen above the numerous other great stars who have played throughout this post season, so much so that each has looked like the proverbial Man on a Mission. And, indeed, both are.Lebron James and Dirk Nowitski are two of the best players ever to lace up, just coming short of belonging in the same conversation as such greats asMichael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, et al. But, like the diploma-less Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, they both lack something those other players all have – a championship ring (actually, multiple ones). Naturally, only one is going to come away with that this year, and since neither wants to retire with the unenviable epithet of Greatest Player To Have Never Won A Championship, we fans can look forward to two warriors playing their hearts, guts, spleens and toenails out in order to be the last man standing. Let the battle begin!

Rust Belt Warrior vs. Bavarian Giant

It is hard to imagine a more picturesque city than the medieval fortress town of Wurzburg, Germany, nor one less so than grimy Akron, Ohio. These cities, similar in population sizes, but very little else, are the hometowns of the two main protagonists in the drama that is about to unfold. Dirk, the seven foot giant from Wurzburg, has a sports pedigree as stately and impressive as the town he hails from. His mother was a professional basketball player,while his father was a handball player who represented Germany at the highest level. His sister is a former track and field star/basketball player who now works for the NBA’s International TV division. Conversely, Lebron’s background matches his town’s tough, hard scrabble condition. The only child of an unwed teenage mother, if it weren’t for his phenomenal athletic abilities (he could probably start in the NFL if he chose to), it’s doubtful he would have risen above the hard knocks of his upbringing to be anything more than just another struggling nobody in a region plagued by one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Instead, he’s one of the world’s best known athletes, with more money than God. Only in America, as they say.

What a Ring Means to Dirk:
Dirk (32, 13th year in the NBA) is widely considered to be the best European basketball player to ever play in the NBA, if not the greatest European baller of all time. His career in the league, all with the Mavs, has been stellar. His individual stats, as well as the achievements of the team he plays for, are impressive enough to place him alongside the other great stars of his generation, Kobe Bryant (five championships), Tim Duncan (four championships), and Kevin Garnett (one championship). So why no ring? The answer to that gets to the heart of the nastiest dragon that our Bavarian giant is out to slay this year, the perception that he is soft, especially when it counts the most. That his teams fold in the playoffs, that he as an individual can’t handle the increased pressure and physicality of playoff style basketball. Going back to that ’06 Finals series with the Heat, Dirk’s Mavs were up by two games, and well on their way to winning Game 3, with a comfortable lead going into the fourth quarter. A 3-0 edge would have been an insurmountable deficit for the Miami squad (led up to that point by Shaq O’Neal), one that no NBA team has ever fought back from. But what happened next is legendary in NBA folklore. The young star, Dwayne Wade, Shaq’s sidekick up until that point, found a new gear, playing at a Jordanesque level from that point onward, never looking back as the Heat came back to win that one, and the next three as well. Wade, almost overnight, became the biggest star in the NBA, and Dirk became a mere footnote to the younger star’s ascension.

Wade is still playing for the Heat, who are now supercharged with the added talent of James, and Chris Bosh, all three of whom entered the league in 2003. It is Wade, more so than Lebron, who Dirk undoubtedly feels the need to vanquish. A championship will give him what he needs to move into the conversation as an all time great, and the chance to win it over the very same thorn in his side who kept it from him last time around would have a taste more satisfying than the most robust Bavarian beer. As for Wade, his career after that championship has dipped a bit, and in a sort of payback the Mavs have pretty much owned the Heat in the regular season ever since their humiliation in ’06. Wade would love to prove himself once more on the sport’s biggest stage. But there is someone else on his team who wants redemption so much more…..

What a Ring Means to Lebron:
We all make bad decisions from time to time. But while the rest of us merely make decisions, Lebron James (26, 8th year in the NBA), disastrously, made “The Decision”. Sticking a dagger into the heart of the very region he hails from, Lebron announced, on a shamelessly self aggrandizing hour-long ESPN TV special, that he was leaving the team he had played for ever since entering the league, the Cleveland Cavaliers, in order to “take his talents” to Miami, to hook up with buddies and fellow greats Wade and Bosh, in search of, in his own words, “multiple championships”. Rarely has a star’s popularity fallen so spectacularly as Lebron’s did with that one decision, and how he went about announcing it. He instantly went from being one of the most liked players in the league to easily the most reviled. He left the Cavs without ever getting them the trophy they badly needed, not only for the team, but for the entire city. Cleveland, Ohio, among all professional sports loving American cities, is famously “cursed”, and neither its Browns, Indians nor Cavs have been able to win a national championship since all the way back in 1948, though they came close many times (most recently when Lebron led his ragtag bunch of non-star teammates all the way to the Finals in 2008, where they were summarily swept by the vastly superior Tim Duncan-led San Antonio Spurs). Unfairly, the hopes of an entire sports loving city were placed on one young man’s shoulders. If he had managed to deliver the goods, he would have become a city hero like no other, worshipped for decades. Instead, he made The Decision. He made it clear to his fans that he just didn’t see a championship happening there, not without a better supporting cast. He had lobbied buddy Wade to leave Miami and join him in Cleveland. But. Nobody leaves Miami to go to Cleveland. Lebron did what he felt he had to do, on a personal level, and a city’s dream died.

He couldn’t possibly have imagined how big the hit to his reputation would be. He was booed in every arena he played in, each time he touched the ball. It was not that suddenly everybody fell in love with the city of Cleveland. It just more or less became a de rigeur thing to do, to boo Lebron James, a reverse form of Beatlemania. The purpose of all the scorn was to show him how arrogant and cocky the folks in the stands perceived him to be. To let him know how unfair they felt it was to the rest of the league for such an All Star team to assemble. Wade and Bosh got some of it too, but Lebron, who always seems to court a brighter spotlight, received the lion’s share. When the Heat started out badly, people were all too delighted to see him struggle, as if he were being zapped by karma. When they got it together and showed the greatness that was more or less assumed of them, people hastened to call him a “quitter” who couldn’t win without help. He was suddenly Robin to Wade’s Batman (although this was never the case on the court, where both players have played equally well). Jordan and Magic, two of the top five all time players by any standard, took turns announcing that they would never have done such a thing, and tut tutted about how this new generation of stars just don’t seem to have the same competitive instinct they did. One can only guess, but the criticism of those two elites probably stung Lebron more than all the booing of the mere mortals in the stands. It seemed that they were preempting Lebron from ever entering their club, no matter how many championships he may end up winning before hanging up his sneakers.

Ascending Mt. Redemption

Although both the Mavs and the Heat looked impressive enough in the regular season, as did Dirk and Lebron, it wasn’t until the second round of the playoffs that their hunger began to show. For Dirk, that meant facing off against a man whose shadow he has lived under nearly his entire career. Kobe Bryant has already placed himself in the conversation for All Time Top Ten, by virtue of the five championships his Los Angeles Lakers have won during his tenure. A title this year would have made him the equal of the man he is often compared to, Michael Jordan, in at least one respect. Not only would it have been his sixth title, the same number as Jordan, it would have been his second three-peat, three consecutive titles in a row, exactly the same way Jordan won his six rings. Going into his series against the Mavs, it was widely thought that it was Kobe, not Dirk, who was the man on the mission to place his name indelibly among the immortals. What happened instead sent shock waves throughout the basketball hierarchy. Not only did Kobe not play magnificently, thereby demonstrating that he understood the significance of what he was aiming for, rather he turned in an anticlimactic performance that has basketball fans all over the world convinced that he’ll never be another Jordan. Meanwhile, Dirk was dominant. He was the best player on the court throughout so much of the series that the Lakers appeared unable to defend against him. The result: a four game sweep of the two time defending champions. Basketball fans quickly took note; Dirk wants it this year.

Lebron was on a parallel mission. He needed to do with his new team what he hadn’t been able to as a Cavalier: vanquish the Boston Celtics. The C’s had actually created the template for multiple superstars-led teams that the Heat simply took to its logical conclusion. In 2008, perennial All Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen joined the great Paul Pierce in Boston to form a team capable of what no one of them had been able to do so far in their careers, hoist a Finals trophy. Once they got together, they did that in their very first season, beating James’ Cavs on the way. Just as they did in James’ last playoff series as a Cav (before losing to the Lakers in the ’10 Finals). The C’s both played the role of spoiler to Lebron’s ascension, and made it clear to him what he needed to do to get past them – hook up with his own All Star buddies. It was a smart move. While the Mavs were busy sweeping the champs, the Heat’s fearsome threesome was having its way with the league’s original Big Three. Lebron & Co. made the other guys look old, slow, and human. The Heat were never meaningfully challenged, and the series lasted a mere five games.

Advancing to the next round, Dirk and Lebron were once again on parallel courses, as they faced off against the league’s two young guns. Dirk outplayed two time scoring leader Kevin Durant (22), and his Oklahoma City Thunder, to earn a Finals berth. Similarly, Lebron outshone, and manhandled,Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, another 22 year old who snagged the MVP trophy from him this season (Lebron had won it the last two years in a row). Both series lasted only five games. Dirk’s Mavs seemed in control the whole time, and Durant was held well below his scoring averages. Lebron looked terrible in the first game, a loss for the Heat, but afterwards he played spectacularly, and the Bulls never really had a chance from that point onward. By the time both the Mavs and the Heat were up 3-1, the outcome was never really in doubt, and it was clear that Dirk and Lebron were on a collision course, both desperate for something that only one can have.

And In This Corner….

So who needs the ring more? Although Dirk has played stronger all season than his similarly aged counterparts, Kobe, Duncan and Garnett, who this season have all showed signs of slowing down, Dirk’s age is very much a factor in his quest for rings. This is even more so the case of his All Star teammate, Jason Kidd, one of the greatest playmakers the game has ever seen, with by far the greatest number of “triple doubles” (double figures in points, assists and rebounds in a game) of any current player (and one of only three in league history to have more than 100). Kidd is 38, grandfatherly by league standards. All things considered, this Dallas Mavericks team is the most talented group in the league that boasts not a singer player who has ever played for a championship team. And the clock, as they say, is ticking.

Time is something that Lebron has more of. Still only 26, having come into the league directly from high school, he still has perhaps another five or six prime years left to play. On the other hand, he might not. Players who come into the league directly from high school tend to wear down a bit faster than their counterparts who had some college years. Playing in the NBA is a far more brutal experience to a player’s body, and psyche, than the NCAA, and it extracts a heavy toll on those who take the fast track. None more so than James, in that he had to pretty much be on the floor during every crucial minute of game time while with the Cavs in order for them to have a chance of winning, such was the drop-off from him to the second best player on any of the Cavs’ rosters during his tenure there. Although he still looks and plays like an immortal, a sudden decline is not unthinkable. In fact, it may be one of the most sensible of all the factors that led to his infamous Decision. Having stars alongside him to share the burdens, emotional and physical, just may be the thing that makes it possible for him to keep playing at a level necessary to earn multiple, rather than one, championships.

Meanwhile, however, Durant and Rose are smarting from the schooling they just got at the hands of Dirk and Lebron. These two young stars, born only five days apart, have done amazing work so far, to lead their teams to respective east and west semifinals appearances in only their fourth (Durant) and third (Rose) seasons. They are the new faces of the league, and they aren’t going anywhere. In fact, their defeats this year are certain to motivate them to come back even stronger next season, the taste of blood still fresh in their mouths. The possibility of a Durant/Rose rivalry, similar to the famous one between Laker Magic Johnson and Celtic Larry Bird back in the ’80s (who won eight titles between them), has the potential to give Lebron and Dirk shivers. They could end up as old news no matter which of them ends up with a trophy this year if that happens. But that is next season’s concern, and the seasons to come. Neither Durant nor Rose looked ready to take over from Dirk and Lebron when their chance arose on the big stage. At this rare point in time, when a mere sports event has such a compelling back story, all basketball fans should savor the moment. This is going to be a Clash of Titans.

There is one little extra bit of drama playing out. When Lebron finished up his contract with the Cavs, and announced his free agency, every team in the league was salivating at the prospect of signing him, but none more than the Mavs, and their brash billionaire owner Mark Cuban. It was an open secret just how much Cuban wanted Lebron on his side. We’ll never know exactly what sort of courtship ritual ensued, but it is safe to guess that a megalomaniac like Cuban didn’t take too well to being jilted. He seemed as amused as anyone early in the season when the Heat started off slow and dropped a lot of games they should have won. That was then, as the cliche goes, and this is now. The superstar he once courted is now the rival he wants his own superstar to make mincemeat out of. A few days from now he’ll be the Happiest, or the Saddest, Billionaire.

Cyber Pixies!

2011-05-14T12:09:00.003+09:00

Here’s my tribute to those adorable, impish critters, without whom the Digital Age would seem oh-so-mundane, the cyber pixies! Just as their woodland cousins delight in visiting mischief upon humans who happen upon their forest dwellings, these little rascals are responsible for all the foibles, mishaps and just plain goofiness that occurs as we traipse through cyberspace.

Cyber pixies are the ones who induce amnesia in you just as you are about to attach a file to your outgoing email. They place all those double “and”s and “for”s into your text, after you have thoroughly proofread it! They lure important emails from prospective employers into your junk file, cause reply emails to go out from you with no message attached, and send you the exact same email three or four times. Why do they do these things? Why, because it’s fun, of course!

But where they really work their malicious magic is on the blogosphere. They perform a kind of hypnosis on online readers so they always take messages in ways they weren’t intended. They cause you to feel humiliated, angry, jealous, all those nasty human emotions you supposedly moved into online relationships to get away from! So far, the only defensive weapon humans have come up with to defeat their hypnotism is emoticons, but it’s the cyber pixies who generally get the last lol.

So the next time you have to apologize for yet again forgetting to attach a file to your email, rewrite a paragraph that suddenly and inexplicably disappeared into the ether, or spend an afternoon in a funk because of something someone wrote on a blog that you know was directed at you, blame the cyber pixies. Every computer ever created is infested with them, so you might as well just learn to live with ‘em. They’re here!

The View From The Left Hemisphere Of The Universe

2011-04-26T18:59:00.003+09:00

After the Big Bang came the Great Darkness. In indescribable darkness, matter raced away from itself in all directions, pushing space into being as it did so. Darkly, it spun and coalesced, exploded and merged, exploded again, grew heavier, impossibly; formed stars that lived billions of years, died, and in that dying gave rise to new stars, stars that spun off particles that, trapped in orbit, coalesced into planets. Galaxies, containing billions of stars, expanding, moving away from each other, pushing at the frontiers where What Is Not yielded to What Is. Unfathomably, Improbably. And all in total darkness.

Because no one was there to see it. A spectacle of unimaginable beauty, resplendent with colors beyond our own limitations of red at one end and violet at the other, played out over billions of years, and yet this spectacle was for not. As bland as a painting of a snowflake floating in a glass of milk, or an inkblot on a lump of coal. For, for only a brief period of the many billion year history of the universe has anything been seen, anywhere, and only as the result of a chance occurrence. On our planet, and perhaps others, matter formed itself into something that could sense light, and by gradual modifications these light sensing mechanisms became more sophisticated, up to and including our own wonderful eyes. And these modifications; did they occur so that the beauty of the universe could be beheld and appreciated? No. Every modification, from the simplest eyes to the most complex, merely helped an organism secure food. Or not become food. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

Think about that for a moment. Do a gut check. Does it seem credible? That except for on our planet, and perhaps other planets similar to ours, and only in a relatively brief period of this and similar planets' histories, has the grand spectacle of the universe been even partially visible to itself? And only through the vulgar mechanism of keeping one step ahead of a mouth or a grabbing appendage? That up until the time that these modifications came about, on perhaps this planet exclusively, even though it is made up of light and its very mechanisms are circumscribed by the speed of light, the universe was completely and utterly blind?

Such a scenario lacks poetry, to say the least. That a cosmos could be at once so dazzling and yet completely invisible to itself for such a long time, only to finally become visible through the merest chance on an inconsequential rock - somehow seems decidedly unsatisfying to my poetic nature. There, where my mind is free to wander and extend beyond what is rational and explained, the above scenario seems to me to have it all backwards. Eyes, my poetic mind persuades me, do not make sight possible. On the contrary, it is sight that makes eyes possible! Eyes did not develop because, for some odd reason, in a universe that up until then had been completely blind, there was suddenly some reproductive advantage to sensing light (imagine what an extraordinary moment that must have been, and yet so under-appreciated by its experiencer. Hey, now this is interesting. Munch munch).

Rather, eyes are a (but one, I dare say) manifestation of vision. It was not mindless food-seeking that brought them into being. Vision gave them birth, no less so than a painter's vision gives birth to a masterpiece, and an inventor's vision gives birth to a flying machine. Speaking of "flying machines", in the same vein I posit that birds did not develop wings because there were things to eat up there. Birds rose to fill the sky because the sky, because flight, summoned them.

Viewed through the lens of reason, such notions are risible and wholly passe. Where is the evidence to support such outlandish claims? Where do these bizarre notions of vision and flight come from? Obviously, they don't come from a scientific theory or an experiment, or from an objective, wholly rational observation of naturally occurring phenomena. Rather, they come from an area of human consciousness which science knee-jerkedly meets with cool skepticism, if not outright disgust: intuition, subjective feelings, and our mysterious human quality of looking for meaning in the cosmos.

Yet, how firm is the ground upon which science so confidently, even arrogantly, dismisses such rival attributes of human nature? For someone who is convinced that science is man's greatest achievement, and moreover is our greatest hope for improving our condition in the future, the very question probably sounds preposterous, perhaps even insane. Nevertheless, I will dare to ask: as reason and intuition are both essential aspects of a fully human mind, can one arrogate to itself an exclusive "rightness" from which to dismiss the properties the other might bring toward understanding the universe which we inhabit, and our relationship to it?

Science, as we have come to define it, has a very brief history. For all practical purposes, it begins in ancient Greece, notably with Socrates, and his method of questioning hypotheses. From there we move to Aristotle, who applied the Socratic Method, with his own modifications, to a variety of fields such as ethics, poetry, politics, etc., and most famously, science. The derivation of the word is perhaps related to cutting, or more accurately, separating. The Greeks, with Aristotle first among them, learned about their world by dissecting and examining it, reducing it to its parts, separating what could be determined to that point, and then investigating more fully into those "parts" which remained mysterious. Aristotle applied this method to zoology, anatomy, botany, and pretty much all aspects of the physical world. What he accomplished, with his stellar intellect and unquenchable curiosity, is mind boggling.

Aristotle's discoveries and theories went on to fuel scientific inquiry for centuries. His vast achievements functioned as a template for the Renaissance. The great Arab scientist Alhazen refined the scientific method into its current form roughly a thousand years ago. It came into its fullest expression through the Italian super-genius Galileo in the early seventeenth century. Completing the process, the great inventions, such as the telescope and the microscope, along with the higher mathematics of Newton, arrived on the scene in the century after Galileo's achievements, giving birth to the era that we live in now, the Scientific Age. That's pretty much the extent of it. The entire history of science (as we think of it), subtracting its fallow period in the Dark Ages, is less than two thousand years roughly one percent of the history of our species. The duration that it has been the dominant way of seeing the world is much shorter, perhaps no more than three hundred years.

Given such a short history, we can only conclude that science, according to science, was not selected for in the human species. One must keep in mind that according to our present understanding of how natural selection works, traits only pass the test of selectivity if they help the extant, hosting organism to survive. Ask any biological scientist, and he or she will hasten to assure you that evolution doesn't know what it is doing. It has no grand plan, no concept of a future, no notion of how newly acquired traits may spread among the entire species; no such scheme. Rather, it plays out one groping, clawing, devouring organism at a time.

Our large, multifaceted brains were selected for, most certainly. The knowledge we needed to explore caves, to use weapons, to hunt, to organize against stronger predators, was provided by those brains. The human resourcefulness and inventiveness that our brains made possible was selected for along the strict and narrow rules of natural selection. But science wasn't. Remember, for only the last three hundred years or so has there been any demonstrable survival advantage to having scientific knowledge, most obviously in terms of decreasing infant mortality, and extending the average human life span by several decades. For the vast preponderance of the history of the species homo sapiens, approximately 200,000 years, the scientific method provided mankind with no survivability value whatsoever, proved by the obvious fact that we survived without it. In purest evolutionary terms, it is nothing more than a "lucky accident", an ancillary feature of our large brains (which developed, remember, solely to help us secure food and avoid becoming food), that didn't even begin to reveal its usefulness until twenty millennia after our brains' development had made it possible! How utterly insignificant the very feature of human consciousness that devised the theory of evolution is, from the perspective of that very theory!

And yet the champions of science hold it up as a paragon against which all other features of human consciousness cannot even hope to compare. Did intuition and and hunches help our species survive before science? Assuredly so. Did poetic and spiritual insights provide strength and succor to our lowly and set-upon species, huddled together in small tribes against a world vastly more threatening than the one we inhabit today? Bet on it. Without them, would we even be here? That I very much doubt. That science, coming along so late in the game, should nevertheless hoist itself to such a lofty and judgmental position seems rather presumptuous to me.

Imagine a basketball team that plays well enough in the regular season to earn a playoff berth. The team advances, all the way to the last few minutes of the championship game. A talented rookie comes off the bench, and makes a few clutch shots. A star is born! But no, because this rookie then kicks everyone else on his team off the court. He's decided they've outlived their usefulness, and that he alone is the only hope the team has of winning the game. Every error his teammates have made throughout the season that he didn't play in proves to him their unworthiness to even be on the same court as him. Their mere presence weakens his chance of bringing home the trophy. Well, I think we can all imagine how that would turn out! And yet that is basically the arrogant stance that science's staunchest champions take. Any talk of hunches, intuition, to say nothing of spirituality and supernatural phenomena, is met with the same level of disdain our imaginary rookie shows to the very teammates whose efforts have made his appearance on the court possible. Religion? They are convinced that it has been nothing other than an unmitigated disaster for mankind.

Science is so convinced of its own superiority that it uses itself, its own methods, to judge the validity of those concepts that arise from other areas of human consciousness. If something can't be tested in its laboratories, and proven according to its rules and methodologies, then it becomes fair game to be scoffed at and labeled woo woo. This strikes me as absurd. Imagine a chocolate lover telling you that chocolate is the only legitimate sweet. You proffer a banana. "What is this ridiculous object? It isn't even black! It fails!" He dismisses it without even tasting it. Dutifully, you come back with a black banana. The chocolate lover puts it in its mouth and instantly spits it out, disgusted (understandably). The banana lover is in a hopeless situation. Playing by the rules the chocolate lover has set up, is it any wonder that chocolate always wins?

Don't get me wrong; I love science. It is scientific triumphalism that I take issue with. What we have today is perhaps less true science than a raging tyranny of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right, and the consequences scream out at us. On the one hand, scientific experiments have improved medicine and lengthened our life spans, and technological advancement has improved the quality of human life. On the other hand, science has damaged the environment to the point where our very survival is threatened. Factory farmed, steroid injected animals harm our health. Acid rain weakens our forests (the very "lungs" of our planet). Oil spills and nuclear disasters point out the price we pay for our brave new technological world. Beyond all that lurks the mother of all environmental threats, catastrophic climate change. That we could have placed ourselves in such a dangerous predicament a mere three centuries into the Scientific Age should clue us that we should be going about things differently.

To me, the Great Lesson of our time is not that the ascension of science over the last few centuries is a harbinger of a new age of enlightenment, if we can just hold on and solve our current existential threats. It is that our survival depends upon striking a balance between the wonderful possibilities that science brings about and the poetic, intuitive, meaning-seeking portion of our consciousness centered in the other hemisphere of our magnificent brains. If that balance cannot be reached, I for one have very little hope that mankind will escape destroying itself. We will,rather, hasten our return to the Great Darkness, clinging to our belief in an unconscious universe that is completely blind to our existence, and never even returned the favor of seeing us.

Rockin' Night at Club Ikeda

2011-04-25T21:10:00.005+09:00

Here I am having some fun and singing some songs, last Saturday at Ikeda in Setagaya-ku. Many thanks to Guy, Chico, Nori and the lovely Ayano, et. al. for helping me get my ya yas out!

S'cuse Me While I Kiss The Sky

2011-04-05T14:23:00.002+09:00

“That particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature- I’ve never received it from nature, only from. Buildings, Skyscrapers. I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.”
- Ayn Rand

For all the disruption the largest earthquake to hit Japan in 300 years caused, the one thing it didn’t bring to a halt was the erection, to full height, of “Sky Tree“, Tokyo’s replacement for the now-too-short Tokyo Tower broadcasting tower (in the Roppongi district, which has recently been built up with skyscrapers that nearly reach its height, blocking its transmission capabilities). Yes, construction workers were way, WAAAY up there in the sky when the quake hit. I bet they felt it. But that didn’t stop them from going back up, day after aftershock smitten day (some of which felt nearly as frightening as the first – and that’s at ground level!) during the following week, to bring the sleek behemoth up to 634 meters (that’s 2080 feet for those of you who don’t want to bother with the metric system), and bragging rights as the Second Tallest Thing Ever Built by Man. That particular number is significant, as 6,3,4 can be read as Mu-sa-shi, which was the name of the largest castle town in the region before Edo transformed into Tokyo, the nation’s capital, and eventually incorporated its neighboring towns.

Sky Tree probably won’t hold that #2 distinction for very long, however. It only beat out Canton Tower by 34 meters, and taking into account China’s nonstop building boom, it likely won’t be very long before they slap up a tower, or even a building, even taller. #2′s kinda boring anyway, right? What it never even had a chance of becoming was the Tallest Thing Ever Built by Man (or TTEBBM), which, as many know, is The Mother of All Skyscrapers, the “Building of the Century”, the one and only Burj Khalifa (during its planning and building it was known as Burj Dubai), which rises a staggering half-mile into the sky (828m,2717 ft). Now, height is a relative thing. After all, if it were a natural feature of the geography, people would debate whether it should be called “Mt. Khalifa” or just “Burj Hill”. Nevertheless, what makes B.K. so impressive is not just how tall it is, but how much taller it is than the previous holder of the record for world’s tallest building, the supertall (a term used for skyscrapers above 300m) Taipei 101, which rises to a comparatively pip-squeaky 449m (roof height; with its antenna it clears 500m). In other words, the Big B.K. nearlydoubled the height of its rival.

When was the last time that happened? That would be 1889, March 31st, to be exact. That is the inaugural date of The Eiffel Tower, the main attraction of the Paris World’s Fair of the same year. Amazingly, the 324m (1063 ft) architectural/engineering triumph was slated to stand for only twenty years. Yes, what is still today one of the best known (and often imitated; the original Tokyo Tower was designed to be a near match) structures in the world was intended to be only a temporary feature of the Paris cityscape.

The structure that the Eiffel Tower nearly doubled in height to claim the title of TTEBBM from was The Washington Monument (169m, 555 ft). Construction delays (caused by, among others, The Civil War) supplied yet another humbling experience for the Monument. Not only did it barely come up to the kneecaps of its Parisian rival, it finally reached its completion on October 9th, 1888, meaning that it only held TTEBBM bragging rights for just shy of half a year!Sacrebleu! Freedom Fries, anyone?

Interestingly, there are two other cases in modern history of a TTEBBM quickly being bested by a rival before the paint barely had time to dry. The Chrysler Building (319m, 1047 ft) took over the title from the Eiffel Tower (which was less tall at the time; it has since been topped by an antenna), and then handed it to Midtown neighbor, The Empire State Building (443m with antenna, 1454 ft ), a mere year and seven days later. The Chrysler Building can, however, cling to another distinction. This was the first time in recorded history when the height of the structure was due to function, not display. Unlike a monolith or a cathedral spire, there were actual offices going nearly to the top, where people could work, stare out windows, get nosebleeds, etc. This trend has repeated up until the present day, where the TTEBBM has been either an office building or a broadcasting tower.

The Eiffel Tower had stood proudly as TTEBBM for just over forty years. The Empire State Building would do so for almost exactly the same amount of time. But such would not be the fate of the building(s) that surpassed it. The ill-fatedWorld Trade Center ( 526m, 1727 ft with antenna on WTC 1) snagged the title in ’71, and was summarily bested by The Sears Tower (now known asWillis Tower ) in Chicago, less than two years later. The 527 meter (1730 ft, antenna height) new champion retained bragging rights from ’73 until ’98 (until which time all five of the world’s tallest buildings were located in New York and Chicago), when the Asian Building Boom started getting into full swing. Up rose the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (which never really passed the Willis Tower, but got by by on a weird structural technicality – its antennas were actually included in its spires), and then the Taipei 101, which brings us up to date. Nowadays, nearly all of the tallest buildings are in China, many in just two cities, Shanghai and Hong Kong. And then there is the Burj Khalifa, in a class all by itself.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Burj ends up holding its title as long as The Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building did. Oh, I imagine that broadcasting towers may surpass it, but not an actual, inhabitable building, I’m guessing. Certainly not in today’s economic climate. The Burj is, in some respects, a white elephant (even the name change was caused by Dubai needing to borrow money from its neighbors in The UAE) to begin with. Imagine the burden, and folly, of building something even taller!

Inevitably, however, someone will. in 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright proposed a building for Chicago, dubbed The Illinois, which would rise to a full mile in the sky, nearly twice the height of The Burj (which bares a striking resemblance to Wright’s drawings of The Illinois). Just as some people have to climb mountains, others, it seems, have to build them.

It is doubtful that any building will ever again hold the title of TTEBBM for more than 4000 years, as did The Great Pyramid of Giza (146m, 480 ft). The Pyramid finally lost the title to the Rouen Cathedral (151m, 495 ft), which was completed in 1880, six hundred and seventy eight years after its cornerstone was laid. The Great Cathedrals of Europe were the architectural wonders that stoked the imaginations of builders everywhere, ultimately leading to the Eiffel Tower, The Chrysler Building, The Burj Khalifa, etc. The Giza Pyramid, however, is certain not to care about the showy upstarts that have one-upped each other, year after year, century after century. It holds its position majestically in the Egyptian desert, timeless, ever mysterious, ever directing our eyes, and spirits, upward.

To Censor Or Not To Censor

2011-03-29T21:41:00.003+09:00

Imagine some of the things that you least (and I mean least) want to have happen to you, or to someone you love. Now imagine that a very sick person is doing all those things to you, or forcing you to watch them being done to someone you love. Now imagine a movie about this. Only about this. You don’t have to imagine, because I have just described the “plot” of a Japanese movie titled Grotesque, by horror movie director Koji Shiraishi. Except for a ridiculously out of place supernatural revenge sequence at the end, the only thing that happens in the movie is that two innocent people, a couple, are tortured and sexually abused for an hour and ten minutes. The English promotional materials promise to so outdo Saw and Hostel in gore, violence and depravity that watching those movies would thereafter be no different than watching West Side Story. Well, that was quite enough for the British Board of Film Classification, a body that determined that the – film – (can I just start calling it “piece of filth” or pof, for short?) had no redeeming value whatsoever, merely showed sexual depravity for its own sake, and presented a “risk of (psychological, I assume) harm” to potential viewers. “Not on these shores!”, decided the BBFC. They prohibited Grotesque from being shown or distributed in the UK, something that they normally just don’t do. Not surprisingly, Shiraishi wore this condemnation as a badge of honor, stood up for “artistic integrity” and redoubled his efforts to market his pof as the one film they don’t want you to see! Naturally, boasting this as its claim to fame, the standard audience for pofs of this nature felt even more determined to stand up for freedom of expression, to see what all the fuss was about, or to “test themselves” (let’s remember that no bravery is required to sit one’s posterior on a couch and watch a TV screen) against that which sought to disturb and disgust (or, just as possibly, arouse) them in every frame. The BBFC had their moral victory, and Shiraishi picked up a few extra yen. A win/win, if you will.
Why did the British film board decide to censor Grotesque, and not, for example, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, a pof that features such heartwarming scenes as an innocent woman being forced to don a “mask” that has been fashioned out of her tortured-to-death husband’s facial skin? Because in the case of the former, it was determined that it in no way, shape or form even constituted a work of creativity. It was just, simply, extreme violence realistically portrayed so as to appeal to the most base and unhealthy interests of those wishing to watch it. In other words, they refused to recognize it as a work of art. Rather, they determined that it was just an unwholesome thingie, probably falling somewhere between rabid dog saliva and Weapon of Mass Destruction in terms of how beneficial they considered it to be for the citizens of the UK.
Many people called foul. Many people here, I imagine, may feel that the BFFC’s decision was lame and convoluted, and that is probably true. Essentially, thereis no difference between Grotesque and other “torture porn” movies that wereallowed, and hence the decision merely served to bestow upon it an “honor” which it doesn’t actually merit, thereby attracting a few more viewers to a pofthat, in the best of cases, has only a very limited audience, and could only stand to benefit from being turned into a cause celebre.
Personally, however, I stand behind the decision, not because I think the matter was handled particularly well, but simply because I think that a country has every right to empower its review boards to reject things that, patently, have no merit and can only add more upset and horror to a world that already has more than enough. I believe, in other words, in censorship. At the very least, I believe it to be an arguable position.

Censorship? Surely there are few things more revealing of a reactionary mindset, some would hasten to assure me. Why, censorship can be identified with all the cruelest dictatorships, the most oppressive regimes, the most hardcore religious fundamentalists, etc. This is indeed true. I believe that in any way limiting a person’s right to express his or her political or religious opinions can only be a sign of an outlaw government. There is no excuse for it, even less the means by which it is often enforced. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people have been executed, tortured, or wasted away in prisons for making statements (or being alleged to have made them), writing letters, drawing cartoons, etc. that dared to criticize the Powers that Be in countries all over the world, and throughout history. Such censorship can rightly be considered evil.
However, depictions of sadism and depravity fall under another category, surely. The human race has certainly evolved in terms of what it no longer considers entertainment. Romans went to watch gladiators fight to the death, starved animals loosed upon slaves, criminals, Christians, etc., and a vast parade of cruelties at their circuses. In the Dark Ages, asylum inmates were sometimes displayed to entertain passersby, petty criminals were dunked or placed in stocks and pillories, and in a plethora of other ways pain and humiliation were inflicted on some in order to entertain others. Although benighted governments even to this day continue practices just as heinous, it is a mark of the march of progress in human thinking that civilized countries and persons no longer consider such “entertainments” to be acceptable. Ditto for dog fights, cock fights, bare fisted boxing, etc.
One of the problems in our modern world is that technology has reached the point where the depictions of violence now appear every bit as real as actual acts of violence. We can now see on our film screens exactly what the Romans watched in their circuses. The only difference, a huge one assuredly, is that the acts are not real, and there is no real suffering taking place; no victims, in other words. But with the appalling stories of Abu Ghraib, and the more recent revelations about an Afghanistan-based GI rogue “kill team” and their trophy photos of their innocent victims, mightn’t we consider that there in fact is a victim; namely, society itself? Extrapolating into the future, can we imagine that technology will eventually make it possible to play one’s own virtual reality serial killer game (and the advertisements proudly proclaiming, “this is as real as it gets!”)? As we are obviously moving in that direction technologically, don’t we need to be thinking about how okay we are with that? When cruelty, whether real, filmed, or holographically simulated, is considered entertainment, doesn’t that throw up a red flag, or shouldn’t it? It does for me, certainly.

Sure, you can start by censoring things that nearly everyone finds objectionable, but aren’t you worried about a slippery slope?” Indeed, I am. It’s just that the slope I worry about slips in the other direction.

Consider this: imagine that you travel to a tribe in the Amazon that has almost no contact with the outside world, and still lives more or less exactly as their ancestors have for thousands upon thousands of years. You present an inhabitant there with a chocolate ice cream bar. I imagine that one of two scenarios would result:

The first would be that the sensations of super-sweetness and cold entering the mouth of the tribesman would be so unlike anything he’d previously experienced that he would instantly spit it out, perhaps considering it to be some kind of poison. He would be hard-pressed to identify what you have presented him with as “food”.

On the other hand, I suppose it is also possible that he would be delighted, as if the food had come from the world of the gods. He would want to share it with all his tribe’s members. Soon after, the tribe would come to recognize that their teeth were rotting, their overall health was decreasing and their children were becoming hyperactive and irritable. The tribal elders would insist that the tribe be allowed no more ice cream bars. They would censor that which they correctly determined to be harmful.

Ice cream is not a natural food; it is something that has evolved, as people have craved newer, fresher, sweeter, more stimulating sensations as they grew accustomed to the foods they were already eating. Cooking is an ongoing and evolving creative process, no less so than film-making, music, painting, etc. In all creative endeavors, it seems to be human nature to demand more, and for certain creators to strive to provide that. In other words, you make something sweet, I’ll make something sweeter. Oh, yeah? I’ll make something so sweet that your teeth will disintegrate. You show blood and torture, I’ll show twice as much blood and torture! Oh,yeah? And so on. That is the “slippery slope” that alarms me. A mere fifty years ago, audiences were so shocked by the infamous shower scene in Psycho that they fled the theaters, retched, broke down and cried, etc. Nowadays, “Psycho” can be shown unedited on prime time television. The iterative nature of film-making has reached the point where any depraved act that is shown will be seen as nothing more than a challenge to some audience members and directors to go even further. And, unfortunately, we don’t have tribal elders coming to the conclusion that this is not good for us. That it is poisoning our very souls. Instead, we have “staunch defenders of freedom of expression”.

There is no evidence that watching such movies influences people to actually go out and do such things! Hmmm….well, in that case, perhaps we should start telling companies to stop throwing away all those billions of dollars they spend annually on advertising. The images and messages we are exposed to through film and television don’t influence our behavior. Let’s remember that advertisements are rarely of the blunt, literal, “Go! Buy a Coke! NOW!” type. They aren’t even generally of the “You should buy only coke because it tastes so much better than its rivals!” variety. Indeed, in the early days of advertising, copy like that was quite common, as advertisers logically assumed that the way to get the most bang for your buck was to get straight to the point (an actual ad suggests, plainly, “Drink Coca Cola from a bottle through a straw, Absolutely Sanitary, Delicious and Refreshing”). As the industry moved out of its infancy, and became increasingly sophisticated, it was discovered that more subtle, subconscious associations that the viewer made about products were more likely to influence their purchasing habits. So we have “The Most Interesting Man in the World”, and product placement in movies, etc. In other words, media experts will vociferously argue (if there’s a buck to be made) that even subtle messages, through repeated exposure, can and do influence the external behavior of an audience. Of course, not everyone who sees a Coke commercial will go out and buy a Coke, but the whole industry depends on a sizable number doing so. And yet we are expected to believe that continual exposure to bodies being tortured and sexually abused will not impact the behavior of a segment of the viewers? A the very least, that it will not change their way of looking at the human body, what it is, what it is for, what is acceptable to do to it, or with it, etc.?

If not, why? Why can advertising influence our behavior but depictions of violence not? Does advertising activate a different part of the brain? Of course not. The same cerebral centers are responding to the same basic stimulus of filmed narrative. So, again, why one and not the other? Mightn’t that just be a disingenuous evasion tactic used to protect the profits of “the torture porn industry”? Put another way, if Grotesque isn’t, in effect, an advertisement for sadism, what is it?

****As a footnote, although Japan has a considerably lower homicide rate than the United States and many other countries, over the past few decades there have been a number of crimes that have shocked the country to its very core, involving sexual violence and barbarity beyond imagining. In all the cases that I can recall, the perpetrators were discovered to have a large collection of violent films and/or manga, even to have gotten their ideas from such. Japan is coming around, and a debate is taking place in the nation as to what type of content should be made viewable to the public.

I don’t want the government telling me what I can and can’t watch! Well, in fact, we do. It is the government, after all, that decides that we don’t have to watch a man pull down his pants and start masturbating in front of our home, or in front of a nursery school. Although the man may protest that he was simply expressing himself as he is hauled off to jail, I doubt that many would see him as a martyr at the altar of Artistic Freedom.
To say that the government has “no business” making judgments about such matters is basically to argue against any form of government, as if it is alwaysuntrustworthy. If we are worried about government overreach gradually leading to oppression, then perhaps we should do away with the Food and Drug Administration, The Surgeon General’s Office, etc., and no longer permit the government to determine how much nicotine can go into a cigarette, how much air pollution is too much air pollution; in short, to make any judgement calls regarding the health of its populace. Could a move to censor torture porn movies be used as a shoehorn to eventually legislate against other forms of expression? Certainly, the danger is there. But I’m not convinced that’s very likely. I think it would be a fairly simple matter to create clear guidelines as to what is or isn’t acceptable in a film or video game and to stay within those limits. I would like to consider what those type of limits might be.

Let us begin with one of the earliest filmed depictions of depravity, the infamous eye slicing segment from Salvador Dali’s/Luis Bunuel’s bizarre short film, Un Chien Andalou. Probably many people reading this have never seen it. For those who have, how many have seen it twice? As for me, though it has been more than twenty years since I first saw the scene, and I have watched other portions of the film in the interim, I have absolutely no desire to ever again subject myself to that short bit of extreme gore, and in fact I cringe at the very thought of doing so. No doubt, that speaks to its power to evoke a response. But does that make it art? And even if it does, what kind of art? Am I in any way a better person for having watched it? Are any of us? If so, I would like to know how. Watching that scene, I am quite certain, has in no way elevated my spirit, expanded my horizons, raised my IQ, or made me a better person in any way. If it had never existed, I can’t see how I, or the world, would be the worse for it.
That raises the question as to what is art for? Should it only be that which elevates our spirits, expands our horizons, etc.? Plato, famously, felt so. He was of the, radical for our times, extreme view that art should show and promote “only the good”. In other words, he was of the belief that art, as is sometimes said about money, makes a great servant, but a terrible master. For him, censorship was an obvious response to this extremely powerful mode of human expression. To him the idea was preposterous that artists and poets could express themselves any old way, regardless of the effect that may have on audiences, and the public in general. Surrealists like Dali and Bunuel would have challenged this viewpoint from their own understandings of the emerging science of psychology. Surrealism can in fact be seen as a direct outgrowth of Sigmund’s Freuds enormous influence. Suppressing humanity’s darker impulses can only be harmful, the argument goes. Art is a useful way for mankind to get its “shadow” out of its system. Personally, I suspect that both Plato and Freud (and Dali, Bunuel, etc.) are partially right, and that responsible choices can still be made about what to show and what not to show. After all, taken at its extreme, the pro-Freud notion (had it existed at the time) could have been used as an argument in the Roman days for continuing the torture shows in the circuses.
So, should the eye-cutting scene be (forgive the pun) cut? I think that would make an interesting debate. Personally, I’m not sure. The whole purpose of the movie was to shock, thereby stimulating the subconscious mind, the point of surrealist art in general. The film is not pandering to anyone, it is not a commercial film and the motivation for making it was not to make an easy buck, as I suspect it is in the case of directors like Eli Roth (Hostel) and Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects, House of a 1000 Corpses). Furthermore, the entire scene lasts only a few seconds. The man doing the cutting is not shown as an evil, leering sadist, and the woman victim is not shown bleeding and screaming afterwards. It is all very clinical, even as it horrifies and shocks. Maybe the above points would be considered mitigating by a review board, maybe not. Personally, I feel they are points worth considering.
What about movies that are considered major artistic achievements that nevertheless contain scenes of extreme violence, such as Goodfellas or Saving Private Ryan? The case of the latter is perhaps the easier one to consider. The Normandy beach sequence was so horrific that the audience response was on a par with the earlier reaction to Psycho. People fled the theaters, or broke down sobbing in their seats. Saving Private Ryan is perhaps the most widely seen movie ever made that doesn’t shy away from the kind of carnage that is the torture porn auteurs’ stock in trade. Plato, no doubt, would nix it without a second thought, but few in our modern age would agree. Director Steven Spielberg’s intentions in showing such extreme violence could not be more clear. He wanted to show what really happens when countries clash. He wanted to impress that reality on our minds in a way that no previous war movie had ever done. It’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying the first half hour of violence, identifying with its faceless killers, or getting any type of cheap thrill from it. Spielberg is an undisputed master at provoking the reaction he intends from his audience (to a fault,many would argue), and he made sure this scene became nobody’s wet dream.
Goodfellas is more problematic. It has numerous detractors. There are those who want to know why Martin Scorsese chose to make such a film. If Saving Private Ryan was an anti-war movie (or at least had anti-war overtones), wasn’t Goodfellas practically a pro-mafia one? With his scenes of spoiled hoodlums getting the best tables at the Copacabana, turning jail cells into bachelor pads, and sneering at the rest of us “shmucks”, this is clearly not your average cautionary tale. Far from it. It is more a grandly entertaining celebration of filmmaking that succeeds in entertaining us because its main characters are outrageously over the top, shockingly amoral and (in the case of Tommy and Jimmy) violent beyond our wildest imaginings. These are notpeople you want to go out and have a beer with. Just ask Billy Batts. In fact, the scene that depicts the unfortunate Mr. Batts’ brutal demise has some 2 million viewings, roughly, in its various incarnations on Youtube, and reading the comments, many of those are repeat viewings. Unlike the Normandy scene inSPR, which I imagine most people are content to see only once, many folks just can’t seem to get enough of Marty’s wiseguys, and their mayhem.

And, Goodfellas is considered by many to be one of the greatest movies ever made. It is a personal favorite of mine as well. Yet is it really all that different from the torture porn movies? Should it get a pass if they don’t? I waver on this one, frankly. Going back to my observations about Un Chien Andalou, I can’t very well argue that my spirit has been elevated in any way by having watched it. I am impressed by the breathtaking talent on display, particularly the masterful direction and Joe Pesci’s Oscar winning turn as Tommy. One might say that watching it and admiring it challenges and inspires me to go as far as I can with my own craft, and that I consider to be a good thing. Beyond that, I’m not really sure how best to argue on its behalf.
That is not to say that I equate Goodfellas in its most existential way with movies like Grotesque and The Devil’s Rejects, the Hostel series, etc. InGoodfellas, bodies are abused terribly, but in those other movies the abuse of bodies is their only reason for existing. Moreover, it is pretty much the onlything, or certainly the main thing, that viewers want to see. This is an area where I feel that societies have a right, perhaps even a duty, to make a stand. In my opinion, a society that does not honor, does not teach love and respect for, does not, if you will, revere, the human body, cannot truly be called civilized. The human body is our vessel while we are here. We don’t know how to make them, and our best scientists don’t know how to make a machine in any way as exquisite as them. We only get one, and without one, we’re pretty much up shit creek. Therefore, protecting and promoting the health of the body should be the central concern of any society, because after all what is society other than an community of human bodies living in close proximity to one another?
Is freedom of expression more important than that? I don’t see how. Freedom of expression is an important concept, of course. But it is, after all, a mental construction. It is an idea that people have come, over time, to accept, and some to revere. It is an invention. The human body is not; it is far beyond that. Whether you believe that it was created by God, or emerged by natural processes, it is decidedly not something that humans came up with and started talking about in the last few thousand years. Torture porn movies do not honor the human body. They spit on the very concept. They use the body’s limitations and capacity for pain as ingredients for a burlesque show of horror. They treat the body with the utmost contempt. What sort of notions – conscious/subconcsious/subliminal – does this create in the viewers of such films? How is it good for society to have its most important and valuable assets being thoroughly trashed for the cheap thrills that provides viewers? How is it wrong for a society to stand up and say, “no” to that?
I feel that censoring such films makes good sense. As to how to go about this, the film review boards of nations would need to go beyond just rating films as unsuitable for children, but would in fact be empowered to decide that some films are not even allowed to be released, shown or distributed. The determining question would be, I feel, something along the lines of “to what degree is this film dependent on the degradation and torture of the human body for its entertainment value?” I believe that there is nothing wrong with asking film directors to answer that simple question. Before being allowed to release a film, I believe that film companies or directors should have to present its outline to the film boards. In the case of directors such as Zombie and Roth, whose reputation, shall we say, proceeds them, I think it would be made clear to them that the odds of getting their next films released were slim to none, but they are welcome to try. Perhaps it would be a good opportunity for they, themselves, to look into what it is they are doing, and feel they are accomplishing. “I want to make this movie because there’s a market for it”. Sorry, you’ll have to do better for that. There is a market for slaves, Saturday Night Specials, and crack cocaine as well, let’s remember.
Clearly, this would lead to a number of films not being made (the whole torture porn genre would be unceremoniously dropped into the dustbin of history), and perhaps a number of scenes being altered or removed from movies that do get made. Perhaps future Goodfellas and SPRs would need to tone down the gore. I’m okay with that, I think. For me, the deeply held philosophical belief that the human body is sacred trumps my (perhaps selfish) desire to see what I want to see, all other considerations be damned. I believe that a group of highly respected professionals, consisting of philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists, educators, art historians and film experts, etc. could be trusted to devise a sensible set of standards, and make those clear enough for anyone to understand and follow. I think the discussion that would ultimately lead to would, in itself, be good for society, if it got people to question their attitudes toward the human body, the nature of entertainment, and all the philosophical issues that would be raised.
With so much actual cruelty taking place in the world, with so much real bloodshed and pain, is this even a battle worth fighting, some may ask. I feel that it is. I feel that the human spirit, and the great gift that is having a body, would be the ultimate beneficiaries of such censorship. I can’t say for certain that any lives would be saved, or that any potential psychopath would be steered away from actually becoming one, or sinking deeper into depravity, if pofs were to be outlawed. Nevertheless, I still feel the benefit would be real, and felt. Furthermore, I hardly feel that the human race in any way loses by deciding that people can’t make torture porn movies anymore. Rob Zombie can stick to his music, Eli Roth can stick to his acting, and the director of Grotesque can, I don’t know, go work at a car wash.

New Pet Art

2011-03-27T21:31:00.002+09:00

Meet my latest "stars", Hana, Crea and Leon! These are the two most recent pet art paintings I have done for clients. I have always loved old fashioned circus posters, so was very happy to have the opportunity to cast Crea and Leon as stars of my own homage to them.

Hana's "mom" loves the American Southwest, in particular Arizona's Monument Valley, as well as Native American art and culture. So those themes provided the inspiration for Hana's painting. These two are both very colorful, and in terms of theme go a little beyond what I have done previously with pet art. So they are welcome additions to this growing category of works by me.

Recovery

2011-03-20T18:54:00.009+09:00

For Japan

I wrote this song during a personal crisis; it now seems very appropriate for Japan and its people:

Recovery

There are times when your soul’s had to pay so many tolls

that it falls under their weight and is smothered

it’s as good to you as gone, so you have to carry on

while you wait for it to slowly recover

You know your life has changed when you go from day to day

and you just don’t want to show up for tomorrow

You look into the mirror, and the image that appears

is a face so unlike yours you’d swear it’s borrowed

I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew that where I was

was no place that I wanted to stay

carrying my past around ‘cause I didn’t know how to put it down

is how I wound up where I am today

Just as a river flows sometimes high and sometimes low;

but without the rain would dry up like a stone

yet there are different kinds of rain as there are different kinds of pain

and there are kinds you wish would just leave you alone

I've had no grand adventures; I’ve just had some ups and downs

and I’ve made and lost some friends along the way

I’m not looking for attention; you can go or stick around

but I’ve got some things I've wanted to say

I’m not glad and I’m not sad that I’ve had the life I’ve had

at least it’s taught me some things about living

of all the things that I possess, the one that serves me best

is that I’ve gotten pretty good at forgiving

There are times when your soul’s had to pay so many tolls

that it falls under their weight and is smothered

it’s as good to you as gone so you have to carry on

while you wait for it to slowly recover

Legs (March 14th, Tokyo)

2011-03-16T11:48:00.006+09:00

Today was weird, of course. All days have been weird since Friday. Tokyo feels almost like it is made of jello sometimes. I mean, you can feel the ground moving so often that it sometimes seems like you have to get your “sea legs”;and it all seemed so solid before. Unsettling and disorienting. The news we get is no less so. It has become as unstable as the earth. So many different sources! Saying so many different things, from the most bleak and frightening to at least somewhat optimistic. The Age of Information meets The Land of Rashomon; there is no clarity, there is only the surreal, unstable earth beneath us and the surreal, unstable news reports.Today I looked across the street at the schoolyard, to see a group of kids playing stickball. There is a hedge of sorts; short, thin trees spaced about a foot and a half away from each other. They green out at about fifty centimeters, so it’s clear to see everything under that length, and above it things are mostly obscured. So I got to see all these little legs. The legs that quickly caught my attention were a little girl’s. She was obviously really happy, even though I could only see her legs. She also didn’t seem very focused on the game. She, or rather her legs, just couldn’t keep still! They pirouetted, they jackknifed, they pranced around. It was, yes, slightly erotic. But mostly it was just cute and artistic to see those hyperactive legs, and nothing else! This is not related to the quake, but it’s so heartbreaking to think that there were LOTS of legs like hers, running around on a playground (the quake occurred at about three pm) up north when the quake happened. And the water came out of nowhere. And the little legs were crushed under the full assault of the wall of water, or were swept out to sea. It’s just so sad. It is reassuring to see children just going on with their merry little lives a hundred odd miles from where a colossal tragedy has taken place, but it is very sad as well.

Tomorrow

2011-03-14T13:35:00.003+09:00

Of course, living in Tokyo, it is inevitable that at this time of tragedy, and predictions of more to come, we are all living in a somewhat surreal state, as if under The Sword of Damocles.

I wrote this poem a few years back, but I see it speaking even more to the current situation of those of us in Japan.

Dedicated to all of us here, and everywhere, who are anxious and concerned right now

Tomorrow

If I die tomorrow, let me be surrounded by the ones
that I love
and if I die tomorrow, let me be reminded that my life was a gift
to someone
if I die, if I die
Tomorrow

and if I die tomorrow, let it be without anger
and without blame
without needless sorrow, without guilt, without fear
without shame
if I die, if I die
tomorrow

Well I don’t know what comes tomorrow, but
I know there will be hard times aplenty
yet I believe I’ll make it
as I’ve been through hard times already

but if I die tomorrow, let it be without me
looking back
and as my eyes are closing, let them gaze
without longing upon the past
if I die, if I die
Tomorrow

And if I live tomorrow, let me be surrounded by the ones
that I love
and if I live tomorrow, let me be reminded that my life
is a gift
to someone
if I live, or I die
Tomorrow
if I live, or I die
Tomorrow

Endless Embrace

2011-02-15T20:37:00.004+09:00

Well, I missed Valentine’s Day by a bit, but here is some poetry and artwork of mine on the theme of eternal love. More specifically, both song and image were inspired by an archeological discovery a few years back in Italy, wonderfully ironically not far from the village where Romeo and Juliet was set. 7000 years ago a man and woman were buried together in the passionate embrace depicted above. You may all recall seeing or hearing about this before. More information can be found here:

http://www.archaeology.org/0801/abstracts/valdaro.html

Endless Embrace

I remember the time when you and me

walked for miles to reach the sea

we stood and stared at water so wide

we couldn't see to the other side

I said our love was just like that

You pulled me forward and said through a laugh

let’s be careful then, that we don’t drown in it

we swam out as far as we could

and made love out in the deep blue

I was one with the sun and the salt and the sky,

and with you

and we knew that our love was endless

we knew that our love was everything

we gathered it up into our own sacred space

out where dolphins swam

I remember the day, and oh how you cried

as they led you away from your father’s side

and you came to live with me and my tribe

I swore to you then like I swear to you now

to give everything that I am, to somehow

mean more to you than all that you left behind

And I swore that our love would be endless

I swore that our love was, to me, everything

you looked up at me with a trusting face

and then we began our endless embrace

through the years our love’s grown strong

we’ve shed our tears, we've sang our songs

you’ve been my legs when the road was long

some far off day, when the Milky Way

has fallen down from the sky to the ground

they’ll find our remains, linked together

and though our bodies will have turned to stone

they’ll know that our love hasn’t died, but has grown

let me hold you like that now, like it’s forever

and they’ll know that our love was endless

they’ll know that our love was everything

we gathered it up into our own sacred space

and lived, as we died, in an endless embrace

A Rosie Outlook

2011-01-28T16:44:00.005+09:00

About the name. It has nothing to do with the color of her nose, her mouth, her feet, or her eyes (which happen to be a deep burgundy, in the right light). Nor is it intended to evoke images of diner waitresses or wartime riveters. It isn't even meant as a tribute to my own mother, Rose. Rather, the family ferret owes her name to my daughter's peculiar habit for christening pets, combined with the fluidity of the Japanese language as pertains to names. Earlier, our family had a pet chipmunk named Risu. That means, simply, "squirrel". The Japanese word for chipmunk is "shimarisu" (striped squirrel), and my daughter just shortened it to the stripe-less variety. Naming the critter 'Risu' was hardly any different than had my wife and I decided to name her "Kid".

In Rosie's case, only a tad more thought on the part of Kid (actually, Mika) came into play. Rosie's official name is "Long", because ferrets are, that. She looks a little like a lab rat that got caught in a taffy puller. That her name has any sort of character at all owes itself not to my daughter's lackadaisical naming style, but rather to certain distinct features of the Japanese language. First, there is that notorious pronunciation issue. In Japanese, there is no distinction between the sounds of the English letters 'l' and 'r', so "long" in Japanese ends up at a midway point between "long" and "wrong". Now, how do we get from long/wrong to Rosie, you are no doubt wondering? In Japanese, especially where pets, animated characters and children are concerned, official, given names are really just starting points. There are all sorts of ways to modify, and thus "cutify" them. For example, at different points, and by different people, Mika has been called Michan, Mikabu, Mikarin, and so on. Certain endearments, particularly "chan", are standard, and every child, and I would guess most pets, get that tagged onto their given name (which is often subsequently abbreviated). The others just depend on how certain people - parents, friends, pet owners, etc. - feel about certain sounds, and which ones feel right to them when applied to the creature they wish to dote upon.

In addition to Rosie, she also goes by Ronchan, RonRon, and Ronbu from time to time. Rosie is in fact my own Anglicization of what Mika calls her in Japanese, which would more accurately be spelled "Roji" (with a soft, French pronunciation on the 'j'). I do rather like the similarity between my mom's and ferret's names (as does my mom), however unintentional it may be. It is just one of those happy, bilingual accidents. Found in translation, you might say.

The last place we lived prohibited owning cats or dogs, hence our rather unconventional choices for furry friends. Throughout Mika's toddler-hood and on through early adolescence, we went through a handful of hamsters, "graduated" to Risu (chipmunks are quite a bit smarter than hamsters, who seem to have no other purpose in the wild than to supply the low end of the food chain), and then finally a ferret. Prior to owning Rosie, were someone to have told me that a creature resembling a stretched out hamster would steal my heart one day, I would have scoffed. What I didn't realize until we welcomed Rosie into our home is just how intelligent and friendly, and downright adorable, ferrets are, when raised properly. Like dogs, they are a domesticated species with a long history of keeping humans company. If a dog matches a human's intelligence level at roughly the age of four or five, then ferrets, by my estimation, match up with us at just shy of two. In other words, what is arguably our cutest and most endearing time of life. Looked at from that perspective, perhaps one can better understand my deep affection for lil' Rosie.

But there is more to it. Rosie came into my life at a time when I was in dire need of the kind of unconditional, nearly automatic, affection that only a pet can provide. I confess that I had put my daughter off for a few years, as she had been pleading for a ferret for that length of time. The reason for my resistance was that, as our experience with hamsters and Risu had shown, it would be I, not she, who would do all the work of taking care of her pet. Ferrets seemed like (and are) more work, and having watched her interest level and commitment decline with each previous pet, that was a burden I was reluctant to take on. As it turned out, in my early forties I fell into a severe depression that lasted for several months. With proper care and support I was able to fight my way back out, and Rosie was a part of that. Both my wife and Mika wisely (and perhaps in Mika's case, a bit opportunistically) felt that having a fuzzy to look after would be a good form of therapy for me. With my weakened mental condition leaving me too exhausted to protest, the decision was made, and our family welcomed its smallest member. It was, more or less, love at first sight, and although my predictions about having to do all (or nearly all) the work have come true, I have nothing but gratitude toward Mika for her persistence. She got what I wanted (perhaps even needed), but just didn't realize I did.

What ferrets are, more than anything, is curious, and this is a big, perhaps the biggest, part of their charm. They want to know everything about their world! When they aren't sleeping (which they almost always are) they are nosing around. They are right there, snout to shoe tip, whenever a new person comes to the door to deliver a package or do some household repairs. A bag brought in containing groceries or clothing back from the cleaners can no sooner settle on the floor than be rifled through by Rosie, who plunges in head first and sniffs around until she has satisfied herself about its contents. There really isn't any crevice, any hole, neither nook nor cranny, that Rosie, and I suspect all ferrets (as they were bred for heading down rabbit holes and ejecting garden pests), won't fearlessly and instinctually poke her nose in, and as much of the rest of her body as it will accommodate.

During the warm months, or on sunny winter days, I often take Rosie to a park, or to the river not far from where we live, as ferrets need to run around on occasion to keep healthy. The leash hasn't been invented that she can't wiggle out of with an alacrity that would shame Houdini, so the prime criterion is that there be a large expanse of land, such as a soccer field, that offers me an uninterrupted view of her while she scampers about. This wasn't always the case. Ferrets being such curiosity addicts, in the past I let her play in places that offered enough variety to keep her in constant search mode. That was until the day of Rosie's (and my) Big Adventure.

Her favorite spot for nosing around was a small wooded knoll alongside the river. It was perfect, in that it offered enough vegetation to provide the sensation of exploring the Amazon to a small critter like Rosie, while at the same time said vegetation was thin enough that I could keep a stern parental eye on her. Most importantly, it didn't have a lot of natural or manmade holes for her to squirm into, leading who knows where. On this day, her attention was fixated upon an old tree stump, and I crouched near her while she poked around it. Eventually she managed to find a small hole that had been created by erosion around the stump's roots. I placed my own hand in and probed around, satisfying myself that it had only one point of egress, and then let her in, imagining her popping up in a short while, the color of coffee grounds but fully satisfied that she knew everything there was to know about that hole.

After perhaps twenty seconds, I was puzzled as to why she hadn't surfaced yet, and reached in to retrieve her. No Rosie. With that first rush of panic that we have all experienced, the ones that our rational minds dutifully rush in to stamp out with assurances that there must be another explanation, I nervously thrust my hand about, to no avail, and to the horrifying realization that my earlier examination had been less than thorough. Ferrets, on the other hand, don't miss anything, and it was clear that she had found another way out.

Ferrets are tiny. They move low to the ground. They don't make any sounds. They move in unpredictable ways. Although my logical mind was going into overdrive trying to calm me down with the assurance that it had only been a minute or so at most since I had last seen her, my heart was beating madly because I knew that in fact a minute was sufficient for her to put a fair amount of distance between us, and each added second while I searched had the potential to increase that distance. This was not good.

When one's eyes are situated a mere inch above the ground, the world one sees is completely different from that which you and I see. The terrain that Rosie was happily gallivanting over now was not the one that I frantically scanned with increasing panic. A small patch of woods that five minutes ago had seemed to hold no secrets had in fact revealed itself to be a labyrinth with seemingly infinite options for getting oneself lost. The proximity to the river also scared me. Rosie can swim, and if she reached the water's edge I could easily imagine her wading in. Unpleasant scenarios began to multiply. The knoll itself was home to stray cats and large crows. Along the river I had seen the occasional hawk, and once, an owl. If Rosie was lost, the world she was lost in was not likely to welcome her with open arms. Open beaks and talons seemed more plausible.

If you've never seen a grown man crying out "Rosie!" in desperation, and then having to explain to concerned folks that it was his ferret, and not his daughter, whose loss was causing him so much anguish, then you've certainly missed one of life's more absurd scenes. Those who came upon the spectacle walked away with a mixture of relief (that it wasn't a child who had gone missing), puzzlement (a ferret? He's crying his heart out for the loss of a ferret?) and confusion as to just how much compassion was still owed, when a second earlier you had felt like nothing you could do or say would have been enough. I wondered if perhaps I should apologize to all the good people, out for a pleasant Saturday by the river, who had been led to believe that a parent's worst nightmare had just played out. In a sense, however, my anguish was related to my daughter, in that I feared that I might actually lose, not her physical presence, but her love. Rosie had won the hearts of the entire family, not just I, and I could only imagine how Mika would receive the news that, through my carelessness, she was gone.

I used my mobile phone to call Mika and explain the situation. She rushed over as soon as she could. We, along with some lovely children who wanted to help, scoured that area over and over. Eventually, it was apparent that Rosie was utterly lost, and as the sky showed signs of darkening it was clear that we would soon have to abandon the search. I couldn't look Mika in the eye as we headed home, nor my wife when she came back later that evening. I ate in silence, while my wife and daughter, more forgiving than I had imagined, or felt I deserved, were already making plans to go out and buy another ferret, as the house suddenly felt very empty. Dinner might as well have consisted of nothing but paper to me as I mechanically sat there eating, while descending into a gloomy, guilt-laden despair.

Sleep, that night, was a lost cause. I probably never got more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, as I contemplated what had happened, what I had caused. I feared the return of my depression. I was still in the process of recovery, and was feeling worse at that moment than I had felt since the darkest months. The months before Rosie had brought in light, light that I had just snuffed out. If I did sink back into a mental collapse, I was more or less convinced that I was only getting what I deserved, especially when considering the probable fate I had abandoned her to.

The last little stint of sleep that I got ended precisely before dawn. As I lay staring at the ceiling, a strange notion quite suddenly came upon me. I had better go back and search for Rosie. More than that, I had better go right now! In fact, what I sensed at that moment was: if I get up out of bed, and go now, I'll find her. If I don't.....

So I did. I dressed quickly, and was out the door and on my bike, heading toward the river, in the manner of a fireman responding to an alarm. I was speeding along, feeling oddly optimistic. The long shadows of first light pointed like compass needles toward my destination, the knoll where I had last seen Rosie. If nothing else, I considered, an energetic bike ride might tire me out enough so that I could at least get an hour or two of proper sleep after returning. On my bike, I reasoned, I could start at the knoll and then proceed to cover a lot more territory than I had yesterday on foot. As I cleared the last row of houses before the vista opened to reveal the wide expanse of the river bed, the knoll came into view in the near distance. As I approached it, I saw a cat moving about. Not good, I felt. Dawn was when the strays that made their homes on and around the knoll began their first prowl. It occurred to me that indeed I may find Rosie, or rather what was left of her. I sped along, trying not to think the many uncomfortable thoughts that raced through my head.

What next came into view, at the far end of the knoll, was a shape. A white shape, contrasting strongly with the green of the foliage surrounding it. From a distance, it could have been a plastic bag, or a piece of paper. But as I got closer, it began to look more familiar. Then I observed that alongside it was another shape, the unambiguous shape of a crouching cat. Less than a second later the entire scene was clear. Rosie was there, curious as ever, and less than a foot away from her was an equally curious, and possibly hungry, cat. They were motionless, staring intently at each other. Who knows how long they had been frozen like that, checking each other out? A second? Half a minute? Was the cat about to pounce? Or was it just welcoming this oddly shaped newcomer to the neighborhood? I wasn't about to find out. I thrust the bike between them, shocking them out of their trances, and with one swift movement scooped Rosie up in a flash, as the cat turned tail and ran off.

With Rosie safely stuffed into the pocket of my windbreaker, I sped home, ecstatic, and hardly believing. I burst through the door, at just past five a.m., waking everyone up abruptly. "I got her! I found her!" Mika and Junko were as unbelieving as I was. In fact, at first Mika looked at Rosie and wondered if she was in fact another ferret who happened to be exploring the knoll that morning, so final had yesterday seemed and so implausible the chance of ever seeing her again. It was Rosie all right. And she stank! She smelled like every runaway animal does when they make their way home, leaving their owners to wonder just what sort of adventures they had been up to. I took her into the bathroom and scrubbed her off, while my wife and daughter stood behind, still barely believing. "I made it right!", I remember saying, to no one in particular. Coming so soon after I had experienced the low point that had been my illness, and coming so close to returning to that condition, fetching and bringing back our overly curious adventurer stood out as one of my life's greatest successes.

With ostensibly clean but still malodorous Rosie sleeping on my chest, I lay abed reliving all that had just occurred. Not surprisingly, my thoughts centered on the hunch I had received, the exhortation to "go! NOW!" If indeed the cat had intended to have Rosie for breakfast, then the stress on the importance of timing seemed almost miraculous. Another mere ten seconds or so may well have presented me with a very different scene. Equally curious was finding Rosie only a few meters from where she had gone missing, the same area that I, and Mika, and a troop of pint-sized Good Samaritans had spent hours going over with a fine tooth comb. She had since had another twelve hours to wander, and yet there she was. As if she too were answering a call. The moment felt very blessed, and I lay there radiating gratitude. As the weeks went on, Mika and I observed that our relationship with Rosie became heightened after that episode, in a way that didn't wear off as one might expect. Although we had loved her before, our affection intensified, as we valued her more, and her return seemed to have been angelically engineered. Years have passed since then, but still that feeling persists.

These days Rosie leads a decidedly less risky lifestyle. For her it is not as interesting loping over grassy fields than burrowing through wooded knolls, but since I'm the only one of us that managed to learn anything from that earlier misadventure, I'm not taking any chances. Ferrets don't live forever after all, and in fact their average lifespan is considerably less than a cat or a dog. Not a pleasant thought to be sure, but neither is it one that I dwell on. I'm more interested in enjoying every precious moment of time I have with Rosie, the little gal that got away. And I got back.

The Politics of Spanking

2011-01-12T15:14:00.001+09:00

This article is reproduced from Planet Pov, a progressive website. It was written by my good friend, Stefanie Lindahl, with accompanying illustration by me.

Proverbs 22:15: "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him."

I was once spanked in public, in broad daylight... and as an adult.

The spectacle happened umpteen years ago. It included me, my boyfriend, a New York City backdrop, and a Greek chorus of anonymous boys from the hood. To add to the romance, the chorus appropriately consisted of rappers. My boyfriend and I were walking along, I must have said X Y and Z , when suddenly he spun me around and discharged three perfectly executed rapid fire smacks on my patootie. Dazed, I turned only to see said chorus approaching, grinning, with one of them rapping the words "Slam Slam Cinderella.” To add to the surreal quality of the event: I didn't feel humiliated.

Ever since that incident I've thought about what spanking means in general. The politico-bio-psycho-sociology of spanking became a compelling topic, fueled by this ambivalent reaction of mine and the overall ambiguous nature of pleasure/pain, notions of feminism, humiliation, attention, punishment, anger, and fetishism that can come from being spanked. I can’t remember ever having been formally spanked as a child and so I wondered how those who were routinely spanked as children are later affected; even to the point of what sort of political choices they might make. Could there actually be a politics to spanking in our nation's family?

Some form of innocuous spanking exists throughout the human life cycle. The archetypal smacking on the bottom of a newborn is the first zen slap when life says “OK, now contend”. It may continue as a possible item on the retribution menu through childhood and then into adulthood usually assisted by a proxy, e.g. the salvo of a snapped locker room towel. On the fun end, beyond it being the seat of punishment both mock and real, the bottom cannot help but be erogenous. It is served by the same plexus of nerves which serves the flip side. Moreover, since the nerves are deeply buried beneath fat and muscle, it requires more than just a soft brush to activate them. It requires the solid, nearly Puritanical work ethic of a focused and penetrating spank. To spank is to pay attention. It forms a percussive connection between the two cheeks, either of the two hands; the locations of both that can be adjusted to maximal variety. The invisibility and possibly imagined anonymity of the spanker, the faceless, non-witnessing aspect of the spankee. It is dramatic and holds a certain degree of theatricality that has not gone unexploited in cultures worldwide. Spanking can be fun even if done in public.

After the Chinese New Year is a week long affair which culminates in light spanking of the men and light whipping of the women to expunge bad luck. In Eastern Europe, boys chase girls in the Spring sprayng them with perfume whereupon the girls tagged with scent in turn chase the boys to issue their spanking revenge. Egypt may have been the birthplace of the birthday spank as it was intended to prepare the body for the afterlife. And you can bet your bottom dollar Ancient Rome had "Spankatoria".

But there is the sinister side to spanking which affects the US today. Spanking is still a vestige from the pre-sixties mentality of disciplining children coming mainly from binary-thinking right/wrong authorities who do not believe in the relative merits of talking through and time-outs. Research has shown that spanking children as a punishment based on pain and humiliation is a typically Republican activity. Democrats tend to choose time-outs and discussions. The right wing, moreover Conservative Protestants, whip asses and tend to dwell in appropriately “red states”. Research has shown this to be true. The power of control, the need for hierarchical dominance, the unwillingness or incapacity to talk through a transgression whereupon "justice" is measured and evidenced by tears. In the days before Child Protective Services, that is to say, in the days of Tea Partier childhoods, spanking was the norm. If liberals tend to talk and conservatives tend to spank, what does this mean?

Repeated spanking of a child is a reinforced connection between a parent, who is supposed to love, and the “bad” child. This inherent cognitive dissonance creates a conflict which needs to be integrated somehow into the psyche. Some may go on to eroticize it, but many will develop a view of distrusting authority and identifying with the aggressor. By identifying with the aggressor the displaced conflict ends up in subsequent spanking of the "weak" and, indeed, masochistic "self-spanking" since so many of the spanked ultimately vote against their own best interests politically. For a butt regularly spanked will sculpt the brain’s neurobiology to dedicate more brain area to represent "butt" and if the spanking is linked to conservative views of right/wrong, good/evil, then the brain becomes a bio-political hostage to the butt. Beyond a brainwashing there is political brainspanking. .

If families are the first form of government then James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" type is the first experience a child brought up in a traditionally Conservative home has with government as a truly intrusive and noxious entity. “Painful enough” spanking according to Dobson, is a necessary practice to teach right and wrong because kids "just want to feel free to do what feels good" and "feeling good" is, in a word, liberal. Fortunately, Dobson recommends not spanking a child under fifteen months, but some Conservatives advocate spanking from birth. It would make perverse sense: good disciplining at birth means good fiscal discipline later when kids enter the free-market. But spanking doesn’t stop there. What if you don’t succeed in the capitalist system? Then you weren’t disciplined. Not disciplined? Then you’re not moral. Not moral? Then you deserve to get punished: >>Spank<<. You deserve to be in poverty >>Spank<<>>Spank<<, without prospects <>. Just turn your other butt cheek so God and the Spanking Right may take cracks at you. To assure you understand your place you will be relegated to a life more suffused with alcohol and drugs to dull the sting and be given lawlessness and violence for your recreational and intellectual outlets.

Yet the basis for democracy is fairness and freedom and these moral values are predicated on empathy. Fairness and freedom should exist for everybody and not just those in authority. Yet fairness in a certain sense goes unrecognized and freedom is by and large corporally punishable in the Conservative home. Forget "pursuit of happiness" which is a higher order of approximation and one that can only be based on fairness and freedom in place and fully operative. These values have been spanked out of our country because of a long-standing conscious and conscientiously spanking by the right wing. It is best evidenced by the fact that many conservatively leaning people vote against their own self interests, masochistically punishing themselves to substandard lives and sadistically punishing the next guys down the totem pole, usually immigrants and minorities.

How did this happen? The short answer is, working class liberals who were strong on family values and who probably spank and were spanked (even Dr. Spock was an advocate of spanking at a time) made Conservatism their identity after the sixties spanked them with feminism, civil rights and war protestations. It extended far beyond values and into the fiber of how they see themselves in the world. In addition, the idea of "liberal elite" was concocted and the recognizable party demonized. Hollywood made fly-over country the butt of jokes and so the poorer liberal was spanked by the enlightened, educated and emancipated liberal at a time when the right wing had strategically placed the seed of "the liberal elite" as bogeymen into their mindset. With a sense of a strict father-run family already in place, the working class liberal opted out and has been brainspanked ever since by the highly structured and organized conservative message spreaders including the right wing-run media. The reporters may be liberal but the messages, the linguistics and words are straight out of a right wing dictionary. The simple and repetitive messages are so amenable to be like spanks: "Death Panels! Death Panels! Death Panels! Government Takeover! Government Takeover! Government Takeover!" and so on.

The empathic father and mother in our nation's family are not recognized. The father who listens and at most gives time-outs, who expects enlightened discourses on policy (like our President), who care about protection through consumer rights, workers rights, affordable health care is seen as socialist Kaiser Söze. The brain that went un-spanked, that stayed all-brain and continues to communicate the truth in all-brain language about caring, something that exists on a visceral plane, will never be able to compete with the spanked brain that has made that exquisitely trigger-able connection between brain and butt. If the best the left can do is smack trolls on places like Huffington Post then it needs to up its game.

Regaining the balance requires those on the Left to understand several things: 1). The need to connect and communicate on an emotional level which means giving a straight-out narrative of the truth without fear of "playing dirty" like the other side; 2). Appearing authentic and unscripted, a "I'm like you" tack and not a "you can't even spell right, you hillbilly" one; 3) Describing the core values of America, including moral ones like available and affordable health care since life and death are moral issues, issues that supplant whether gays are allowed to marry, or any other "moral" red herring issues dangled before us by the Right Wing; 4). Engendering trust (eventually) so the 5) Identity can be re-established as one which is aligned with its own self-interests.

Slam Slam Cinderella. This spanked, impoverished, working class girl of a nation amidst the ashes of her own defeat has choices of godmother. Hopefully, it will be the one who isn't part of a fairytale.

Hair of the Dog

2011-01-10T18:56:00.005+09:00

Here are three dogs that have partied a little too hard! Meet Yuzu, Marquis and Duke, after a night of revelry at Crumpets. This is the latest in my serious of pet artwork for the local pet owners of my neighborhood. Hopefully you'll find it to be a nice postscript to the Christmas/New Year's festivities!

"War and Peace", sans Tolstoy

2011-01-06T16:16:00.014+09:00

(click on image to enlarge)

“My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

-J.B.S. Haldane, geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Let’s imagine a world very different from our own. The only thing on this world are tiny curves and tiny straight lines. These tiny curves and straight lines get tossed around by the wind a lot, and so they often bump into each other. Sometimes, when they bump into each other, they connect. So, for example, amidst all the many possible shapes that may arise from that happening, you sometimes get alphabet shapes, such as “f” or “S”. Now, imagine that for some reason, there is something about the makeup of this world that selects for alphabet shapes; in other words, there is some advantage to the 52 letters of the alphabet (lower and upper case), the digits 0 to 9, and all the punctuation marks of the English language, over the other myriad of shapes that form. Therefore, when these selected shapes form, they reproduce. The other shapes do not; they quickly become extinct. Keep in mind that none of these letters that are forming and reproducing are the slightest bit aware that they even exist, much less that they are reproducing. There is just something about this planet I am describing that promotes their existence.

After a very long time, the 70-odd selected shapes are the only forms left on the planet, and they flourish. Naturally, the same wind that caused the tiny curves and straight lines to bump into each other causes the letters to bump into each other as well. All sorts of combinations follow. “cY”, “tIw”, etc. Inevitably, combinations that we recognize as words also come together. “And”, “so”, “on”, and so on. As before, there is some property of this world that selects for the word-combinations, and not the meaningless ones. Eventually, after a very long period of time, all the words in the dictionary exist on the planet.

The next progression, also by process of selection, is short sentences. “I am”, “It is hot”, “Today I will go”, and so forth. Combinations such as “wood to shabby” and “door bag never” are de-selected. They have no advantages which would enable them to survive on this world, so they go extinct.

You get the idea. The key thing to keep in mind is that when a sentence forms, even a really beautiful one such as, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, it has no idea that it even exists, far less that it is beautiful. It’s just selected for. There is some advantage to being exactly like it is, so it gets to make more of itself. From sentences we go to paragraphs, and so on. If we were to take the case of the line from Shakespeare’s famous sonnet quoted above, it won’t select for that one line to just keep repeating itself, the way the mad writer inThe Shining kept writing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. It also won’t select for this:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

Thou art more lovely and more temperate

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

That, after all, is backwards. Of course the idea of “backwards” would only have any meaning if the lines above were aware that they were composing something meaningful. They aren’t aware of this. They just keep on blindly reproducing, but they only manage to survive and propagate by being in the right order. This world offers advantages, the greatest of which being survival, to passages of prose and poetry that have meaning.

After long, long periods of time, and the same processes going on blindly and mechanically, we move from paragraphs, to short stories, to novellas, to novels, ultimately to “War and Peace”. No author, just the natural selection of meaning over meaningless-ness. “War and Peace” doesn’t know it’s a novel, or a work of brilliance, or even that it is very long, as novels go. It just is. A work of art, unknown to itself, equally unknown to the blind forces that brought it into being.

Until eventually a being from another world comes upon it. This person is a scientist, and so he begins to study it. He can see that it is exquisitely organized. However, he is a little confused about some parts of it. On his world, there are no such things as names. So every time he comes upon a name in “War and Peace”, he doesn’t know what to make of it. Moreover, the names don’t help him understand the story; i.e., who is doing what to whom, etc. So he calls the names “junk”, and just tries to make the most of understanding the novel as best he can.

The other problem is that on his world, the concept of philosophy doesn’t exist in prose, only narrative. As you may know, “War and Peace” contains long sections of philosophy interspersed throughout its narrative. The scientist from another world is not able to recognize these very long passages as having any meaning whatsoever. Again, he calls them “junk”, and concludes that, taking into account the names, and the philosophy, somewhere between a third and a half of the novel is nonsense. To him, it has no meaning (although to us of course it does). Let’s say that another, more intuitive and less analytical member of his species (let’s say a female!), were to suggest to him that perhaps the novel did not come about by purely mechanical processes, but was actually composed. He would scoff and ask her, “If it were composed, why would it contain so much junk?”

On this world, short sentences become longer sentences, and onward and upward, by a series of mutations. These happen for no other reason that thatthey just do, because the duplication process is not 100% accurate. However, each mutation, for it to survive, has to conform to the same selective criteria, the “laws” of this planet; it must mean something. So let’s take an example of a very common error, both in our own writing, and on this hypothetical planet. Let’s say a comma accidentally reproduces as a period, in the sentence, “When I left the office, I was very tired.” Due to the error, we now have two new, shorter, “sentences”:

When I left the office. I was very tired.

You can easily see the problem. The first sentence does not obey the rules of grammar. It doesn’t make sense. Therefore, it is rejected. We are left with the much shorter, and less informative sentence, “I was very tired”. This represents a loss of information, hardly unusual on this world. Loss of information is, as you may guess, by far the most common result when a mutation occurs, since they are random.

On the other hand, it may happen that two mistakes can occur at the same time, which effectively cancel each other out so that no information is lost, or even that new information is added. For example, the capital W at the beginning of the word sequence could erroneously reproduce as a capital T, at exactly the same time that the period subs in for the comma. In that case, you’d have:

Then I left the office. I was very tired.

This is new information, and because it makes sense, it reproduces. We have now added to the pool of available sentences on this planet. Still, to be truthful, the information has changed only slightly. To get from really simple sentences all the way to stunning prose – to “War and Peace” - these positive mutations have to occur millions upon millions of times, and only the mutations that make sense, each step of the way, can go on to reproduce and be a part of the evolution chain from sentence to paragraph, and so on.

In other words, if we want to go from a sentence in a child’s reader, such as “See Jack and Spot run”, to this line from “War and Peace”:

“Gazing into Napoleon’s eyes, Prince Andrei mused on the unimportance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.”,

we can’t have something like: See Gazing into Jack Spot, eyes Prince run mused, etc.

That may be considered a crude link between the two, but it can’t survive, because it doesn’t meet the fitness requirement of this planet. It makes no sense. We would need to have something like this:

See Jack gazing into Napoleon’s eyes, musing on the unimportance of greatness, which Spot can not understand.

Hardly beautiful prose, but it does make sense. Remember that beauty is entirely irrelevant on this world, as nothing is even aware that it is doing anything. The natural laws of the planet are simply operating, and the only thing they require is meaning.To make it even more complicated, even to the precise step before we see the longer sentence emerge, long after Jack and Spot have been abandoned, we can’t have the sentence go haywire at the end, and finish with, “….which no one alive could understand on explain”. If that happens, the entire sequence may end up being rejected. Clearly, moving from a simple sentence to a very complex, and more meaningful one, is a very, very, very,very iffy business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now you know how “War and Peace” can write itself! You also have a fairly workable analogy for how Leo Tolstoy himself, in all his genius, came to exist without any “creator”, in the absence of even the tiniest iota of consciousness; with nothing more than natural laws playing out over a few billion years and trillions of mutations, beginning with a chemical reaction that took place in the distant past that resulted in a self-duplicating piece of matter. All things, from a grizzly bear’s biceps to Leo Tolstoy’s incomparable mind, in fact every living thing and every part of every living thing, are merely variations on that first chemical reaction.

You are forgiven for finding that hard to believe. You are forgiven for thinking that no matter how many monkeys you have banging on typewriters, and being rewarded with bananas only when they type something that makes sense, you are never going to get “War and Peace”. Personally, I don’t think the universehas that many bananas! However, those who are convinced that the emergence and evolution of life on Earth can be fully explained as a result of natural selection by random mutation will adamantly disagree with you. They may even call you deluded, for imagining that if there’s a novel, there must be a novelist.

Oh, how could I forget? “War and Peace” is a Russian, not English novel. Not to worry. On my imaginary world, novels have even learned to translatethemselves! You now have a glimpse of the incredible world of the genetic code. But that, my friends, is another story.

More of Us to Love

2010-12-15T19:13:00.003+09:00

(click on image to enlarge)

Chances are good that you’ve never heard of Cambridge, Ohio. It’s a tiny hamlet located in eastern Ohio, near the West Virginia border, that happens to be my ancestral home. My maternal grandparents, along with relatives and fellow immigrants from the same region of Lebanon, made their way over in the first decade of the last century, set up shop, and had a lot of children, my mother being the final installment (she moved to Columbus, where I was born, to attend nursing school, and has lived there ever since). Cambridge is nestled at the foothills of the Appalachians, and there are some beautiful state parks nearby. It is God’s Country; quite literally, as “The Living Word”, a popular outdoor drama depicting the last week of the life of Jesus, is performed at an amphitheater outside of town on weekends during the warm months. Collectors of glass know Cambridge for its historic glassworks factory that closed in the 1950s. The name “Cambridge Glass” is associated with a high quality, distinctive product line that eventually fell out of favor as tastes moved on. Cambridge has a picturesque Victorian county courthouse, and a quaint main business street. And that’s about it.

Oh, and Cambridge has LOTS of fat people. I’ll never forget an experience I had when my daughter and I were back in the States for a family visit a few years ago. We were in Cambridge, and decided to head down to the charming, and miniscule, downtown area for lunch. The restaurant we had decided upon, we were informed, was famous for its pies. Now, I love pies -blueberry and pumpkin being my two favorites – and as we headed over, one of these was what I was looking forward to wrapping my mouth around. However, to my disappointment, this place didn’t have either on offer. They only served cream pies, which were proudly displayed in the storefront window to attract passersby. These pies; how to describe them? They were gargantuan! They rose up from their dishes like puffy souffles, but they were all cream. Banana cream, lemon cream, chocolate cream, and another one that I couldn’t be sure about, but perhaps it was cream cream! No longer in a mood for pie, but still plenty hungry, I wandered in with my group, and things got surreal.

My family is blessed with a metabolism such that we generally don’t put on excess weight. In actuality, I considered this more curse than blessing for much of my life, as, to my humiliation, I was rewarded with the unlovable nickname of “spaghetti legs” by my second grade classmate Carla. Carla is of Italian descent, and her mom was a great cook, so I can easily imagine that she wouldlove to be called “spaghetti legs” herself these days, but I digress. Anyway, we sat ourselves down, five or six skinny folks at a table in the middle of the restaurant. It was then that my daughter and I, accustomed to seeing Japanese bodies all around us, observed that everyone else in the restaurant was enormous! One of whom was the waitress, who brought menus to our tables and, while walking off, told us to “be sure and leave room for some pie!”

I’m not exactly sure where she imagined that room might be, as the portions of food at this eatery were staggering. The only thing remotely healthy that I could make out was the Greek Salad, authentic enough because the proprietor was Greek, but still an Olympian mountain of feta cheese and olives. Almost everything else was grilled, or deep-fried to the point that one may as well have inserted Super Glu directly into one’s arteries. Barely able to finish what was on our plates, dessert was out of the question. The waitress was aghast. Surely we couldn’t leave without tasting this restaurant’s specialty. As she persisted, I began to get a weird feeling that I had entered a Twilight Zone episode. Perhaps just one bite of pie would have been enough to transform us into the restaurant’s typical patrons. I could practically hear the chant from the movie “Freaks” in the back of my head as I doggedly refused: One of us! One of us! Gobble Gobble One of us! We left, as the waitress saw us off by shouting, “Y’all come back and have some pie next time!”

The U.S. has a weight problem, and Cambridge is hardly outstanding in this regard. As someone who only visits the country occasionally, I may be less inured to this fact then my fellow countrymen, but people from other parts of the world are looking on in amazement. Nearly every Japanese who has visited has a story to tell about the giant portions served in restaurants, and the fatties who order said along with that ultimate gesture of futility, a Diet Coke. If our blubber was just the (elephantine) butt of jokes, it would be bad enough. But with the number of Americans suffering from diabetes, heart disease, clogged arteries, etc. the country’s obesity curse is far beyond a laughing matter.

How did we get here? There are numerous explanations, and as I am not a dietary expert I shall limit myself to my own observations and thoughts on the matter, coming from someone who has spent twenty years in a country highly regarded for the nutritional value of its traditional cuisine, and the longevity and slimness of its citizens. Let’s begin with that Diet Coke mentioned earlier. Leaving aside the hopelessness of doing anything positive for one’s health by slurping one down, one might begin by asking: why have soft drinks with meals in the first place? Japanese people don’t. Certainly, for most of the country’s history, neither did Americans. Where did this habit, of drinking fizzy, sickly sweet beverages with meals come from? And that is the right place to start, because much of America’s fat problem can be attributed to the brilliant (and tragically so) promotional schemes of America’s junk food purveyors. Here is how cokes became a staple of America’s restaurant (and eventually home) meals. The Coca Cola company made a “generous” offer to all food establishments, large and small, all over the country. Install a soda fountain that serves our drinks, and we’ll buy you an electric sign to display outside! What could be better for attracting clientele than a brightly glowing sign? Only one little thing: half the sign space had to be used to advertise – you guessed it – Coca Cola. And thus it was that a triumverate of American cuisine, an Axis of Dietary Evil, was now complete; a burger (or a BLT, or a grilled cheese sandwich), fries…..and a Coke!

Burgers! Aw, yes, now we are really getting to the meat of the problem! For burgers mean fast food, and fast food, in two fell swoops, delivered the coup de grace to America the Beautiful (or at least beautifully built). I remember when there was only one Wendy’s on the entire planet. It was a fantastic and hugely popular eatery in downtown Columbus, at the intersection of Broad and High, which, as Columbusites will inform you, is smack in the center of town. It may also be the epicenter of American fast food culture. For not only did it provide the birthplace of America’s third most successful burger chain, Columbus itself is known as an ideal “test market city”. So many of the things that Americans devour in fast food restaurants, from chicken “nuggets” to burritos the size of your head, appear on the menu because they tested well in Columbus. But back to that first Wendy’s. The burgers there were not just good; they were amazing! Pretty much everyone who walked out of there, when it was just the one store, was certain they had just consumed one of, if not the, best burgers they had ever tasted in their lives. They were nothing like the burgers you get in Wendy’s chains nowadays. They were handcrafted antique Swiss watches to today’s mass produced gadgets. But, success breeding excess, Ray Thomas, Wendy’s dad, was not content to leave well enough alone, and Wendy’s was soon challenging McDonalds and Burger King for American burger supremacy. The only thing he had to squander was the impeccable quality that made his burger joint a star in the first place.

Mass production: that was the first ingenious, and disastrous, step that fast food restaurants led the American people down into today’s dietary fiasco. For perhaps the first time in human history, all pretense of there being something special about food, and a human being’s relationship to it, was trashed, or at least drastically altered. Prophetically so. Long before fast food, everyone in the U.S. had heard the expression, “you are what you eat”. That expression could thereafter be modified to say, “…and what I eat are mass produced food thingies that do more harm to my body than good”.

The second step flows naturally, or unnaturally as it were, from the first: drive-through windows. Only in America could such an insult to dining have come about (the first McDonald’s drive-thru appeared in 1975, six years after the first Wendy’s was opened. This period of time should perhaps be thought of as the beginning of the modern American diet). Food had now morphed into what most Americans think of it as today: fuel. Nothing more, nothing less. Your car runs out of fuel, you pull into a filling station, plonk down some money, fill up, and you’re all set. Same with the body. As all too many Americans practically live in their cars, the metaphor was now complete. Americans are cars! Large objects that move around from place to place, filling up on fuel when necessary, and continually getting bigger. SUV, you ain’t got nothing on us!

Food as cheaply mass-produced fuel. This, I believe, is the key to understanding the obesity problem in America. Truly, you are what you eat. If you think of food as merely fuel, then you do not love it. You do not revere it. You, I believe, dishonor it.

And then you put it in your body. So this stuff, that was never loved, not by the farmers who factory-produced it, not by the hands and machines that processed it, and not by the person actually eating it – is it any wonder that when it gets inside it becomes more ravaging marauder than nourishing friend? When you love the food you eat, really love it, it loves you back. There are plenty of French and Italians and Swiss and Belgians and Austrians stuffing themselves with rich concoctions, washing it down with beer or wine or cream dolloped coffee, and still not bloating up like beached whales. There are Chinese and Japanese stuffing their faces with foods that are too salty, too oily, too sweet. But their mentality as they do so is totally different. They love food! Ask the Japanese. Better yet, ask any person who comes here from overseas. They turn on the TV and it seems like all they see are images of Japanese, almost worshipfully, stuffing food into their faces, and then gushing about how delicious it is! Ridiculous? Perhaps, but telling as well. These are very old cultures, and they retain a relationship with food that, even in this age of mass production, of nearly everything we eat coming out of a box or a can or a jar, acknowledges a simple truth that the majority of Americans have lost altogether. What you eat becomes you! You wear it as your cells, and your cells keep you alive, keep you vital and healthy. Or not. Americans have got to relearn that simple truth, as valuable in its own way as The Golden Rule. Otherwise, we may as well just change the “four food groups” to Sugar, Salt, Fat and Artificial Coloring. And save room for some pie.

I'm You; Kanye, Lebron and the Cult of Celebrity

2010-11-26T23:43:00.003+09:00

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Am I the only one that's not crazy here?

- Kanye West, November 23rd, Bowery Ballroom

In the solipsistic universe that Kanye West inhabits (in which he is Kanye West, and we are not) he has been done an injustice. By Taylor Swift. Yes, the winsome VMA award winner who stood, dumbstruck, as Kanye jumped on stage, grabbed her microphone from her as she was giving her acceptance speech, and proceeded to let viewers know that he felt the award was undeserved, and should have gone to Beyonce instead, has not gone to bat for him in the year since. "Taylor never came to my defense", he lamented, toward the end of a very bizarre soliloquy he ad-libbed at the end of a concert at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC earlier this week. In the nine minute rant, Kanye had plenty of other gems to offer his adoring audience as well. Hastening to assure them that "I never talk about the numbers", he proceeds to do just that, bragging about the sales of his recent album, (100,000 the first day, digital alone, 650,000 projected in the first week, without a #1 single - just some of the numbers he never talks about); defending former nemesis George W. Bush, portraying him as equally "villainized" as Kanye himself by a rabid media always looking to tear people down, etc. He tops it all off with the humble admission that, "I can't be your role model. I can't be your savior. I can't be your antichrist". Personally, I was thinking to myself, "well, that's a relief, because I wasn't really counting on my savior being a boorish, loutish, self absorbed egomaniac to begin with".

But that's just me. For their part, the audience gave him the requisite dose of adulation, even as his rabbit-hole speech took them deeper into his child's brain mentality about the world. Like the frightened adults in that classic Twilight Zone episode, who heaped only praise upon the terrorizing bully child who otherwise would "send them to the cornfields", Kanye's fans shouted out affirmations and gave their applause to his every utterance, no matter how bizarre they increasingly became. And why wouldn't they? In our celebrity-obsessed culture, why should we use our own minds to decide if what we are hearing is egotistical drivel or words of wisdom, even "salvation"? He's famous, after all! If his words seem weird and hard for me to make any sense of, if they seem to go against my own ideas about what is and isn't proper behavior, the problem is obviously with me. I'm not the one who's up there on stage. I'm not the one who never "talks about the numbers" of my mega-selling records. In the presence of a genius like Kanye, my own conventional assumptions need to be checked at the ticket gate.

Meanwhile, for self-proclaimed "king", Lebron James, things are not going according to plan. Ever since his nationally televised (and widely watched ) "Decision" (which I suggest should heretofore be known as "The Derision") to bolt his home state of Ohio and head for Miami to join fellow superstars Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in pursuit of multiple NBA championships, the wheels of karma seem to be churning as if propelled by a benzedrine popping lab rat to bring "the chosen one" down to earth. A week from now he will be returning to Cleveland, and the team he jilted, for a match-up between his Miami Heat and his former team, the Cavaliers. And the Cleveland fans are going to be rabid! Never has a local hero fallen in stature faster than this "traitor", and the boos that will fill the stadium from the second he exits the locker room to the second he heads back in again, surrounded by security, will be deafening, a cathartic primal scream from a fan base that had placed their hopes and dreams and aspirations in him, who had believed him when he proclaimed as an eighteen year old rookie, who had already appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, that he wouldn't quit until he reached his goal of bringing a championship to the city on Lake Erie that has known nothing but heartbreak and decline for decades. And the moment will be all that much sweeter for his former fans knowing how disappointing this season has gone thus far for the would-be superteam. Currently standing a mere one game above .500, with a record not all that much better than that of the Lebron-less Cavs, the Heat players are well aware that they may very well lose that night, as derision rains down upon them and unprecedented hatred blasts James at every turn. Cleveland fans would probably prefer that the Cavs lose every other game this season in exchange for handing Lebron a humiliating defeat on his former court. The mayor of the city would be crazy not to declare the next day a city-wide holiday if they win. Adding an almost painful note of irony, a few years ago, when he was Ohio's favorite son, Lebron built a fifty million dollar home in nearby Akron, and is now probably the least loved person in the entire state. Will he shut himself up there, like Charles Foster Kane did, surrounding himself with phantoms and mirages?

The story of Lebron is similar to that of Kanye, one of unrestrained hubris that tunes out everything that doesn't speak of ones own personal greatness. At the tender age of eighteen, upon entering the league, Lebron declared as a goal that he become a "global icon", as if unaware that no one in history has ever become a global icon by having that as their goal. He could say that with a straight face because his basketball skills had elevated a mere teenager to a stature that could only exist in a society gone screwy. The hatred being shown toward Lebron now is nothing other than the flip-side of the inappropriate and unjustified adulation showered on him by the working stiffs of northern Ohio and elsewhere as they built his ego up to Ozymandias-ian proportions. In short, it says more about his fans, and the American Cult of Celebrity they spring from, than it does about the man-child himself. What did they want him to be, and why? What part of themselves did they transfer from themselves to him? Like Kanye, Lebron is nobody's role model, or savior, OR antichrist. He's Icarus. And as his former fans watch with glee as he falls like a stone through the sky, one hopes they might remember that they are the ones who gave him the wings.

Wild Night, Good Cause!

2010-11-14T22:39:00.006+09:00

Guy and I performed as "The Rusty Nails" at a charity event last Thursday to support a school for the deaf in The Philippines. The event was called "The Rose Sessions II" and the main draw was clearly the many belly dancers who appeared and did their thing.

A night to remember!

photo credits:

Charlie K and COBA

Frog and Friends

2010-11-09T19:25:00.003+09:00

A watercolor I completed recently for my friend Kyoko. The "frog" in the story is actually the name of her German Shepherd. Kyoko loves frogs! So much so, in fact, that the little frog getting tea poured to her is actually Kyoko herself, in another incarnation. :)

The pets are named Frog and Mame. And the setting is Kinuta Park, near my home.

Interview With Kim Kardashian's Butt

2010-10-21T22:20:00.002+09:00

Unless you've been living on another planet recently, you're surely aware of the phenomenon that is Kim Kardashian's butt! We caught up with it outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, just after making a fresh imprint on Hollywood Boulevard, and it agreed to sit down with us and tell us what it's like to be one of today's hottest stars.

wts: It's so great to finally get to meet you, face to.....it's so great to finally get to meet you!

kkb: The pleasure is all yours!

wts: Indeed! You've become so BIG recently!

- Yes, isn't it great? I owe it all to my fans!

- what I mean is, you've become, uh, really big!

- yeah...? What are you trying to say?

- well, is there such a thing as becoming too big?

- Gosh, I guess I never thought about it that way! I'd have to say no. I like to think I'll just keep getting bigger and bigger!

- I imagine you will! I notice you've come all by yourself to this interview. May I ask, where's the rest of you?

- you mean "ROK"? That's what I call her, it stands for "rest of Kim". She's been a little difficult, lately. It's become clear that I'm what everyone wants to see, and frankly, she's pretty jealous. She doesn't like standing in my shadow!

- I see. So is it kind of like Michael Jackson? You know, how he got so much bigger than his brothers?

- Yeah, maybe. I never thought about it. But I loooove Michael! I practice all his moves. You should see me moonwalk!

- I certainly should! Tell me, as one of the world's most popular celebrity body parts, how do you feel about your chief rivals? For instance, what do you think of Katy Perry's boobs?

- Oh, please! Don't get me started on those! Talk about trying too hard! Always so flashy, anything for attention. I like to think I'm above all that.

- A butt above boobs, huh? That's an interesting perspective.

- Well, on second thought, maybe that's not the best way to put it. We're just in different places.

- You mean in your careers?

- No, just different places. I'll leave it at that.

- Gotcha. Look, I know this might be a sore subject for you, but...

- You're going to ask me about the sex tape, aren't you? I knew it!

- Just a few words....

- Look, I'm really trying to put that behind me. All that overexposure! It really left me badly burned!

- I understand. You were the butt of a lot of jokes for a while.

- Het, watch it!

- So what would you like to talk about? Any interesting new projects in the works?

- Are you kidding? These days I've been working my....working my.....uh, I don't know how to finish this sentence.

- You mean you've been really busy, right?

- Exactly! Ever since the Huffington Post set up a whole feature page about me, I'm in more demand than ever! People want to know who applies my dresses, what beaches I've been plopping down on, you name it! So I'm working on my newest reality show, "The Ins and Outs of Kim's Butt". And I'm starring in a superhero movie that comes out next year!

- Wow, you are busy! Tell me more about the film!

- I'm not supposed to say much, but I will tell you that I'm a super-powered heroine from the moon! I have to stop asteroids from smacking against the earth. I don't know where they get these crazy ideas, tee hee!

- It sounds like it was made for you!

- You think so? Anyway, It's going to be a lot of fun! But you have to see it on the big screen! And in 3-D!

- Well, you certainly lead a full life, KK's Butt! Thanks so much for your time. Any last words for your fans?

- Just keep watchin', folks!

- Don't worry; we will!

Andy Live

2010-10-19T23:03:00.006+09:00

My friend Yasuko took this picture of me singing at a Live Event (hosted by JAMBO International) last month. A very fun night, that!

Images from Roti Show

2010-10-18T11:26:00.003+09:00

Here are some images taken by Lauren Shannon (show's organizer) from the show at Roti.

What Color Is Your Paradise?

2010-10-13T19:38:00.009+09:00

click to enlarge image

Okay, I suppose it's possible that the reason I am not as happy, rich, famous and world renowned as I could be is that I didn't read "The Secret", the blockbuster bestseller that proved the effectiveness of "The Law of Attraction" for one Rhonda Byne, the author who "magnetized" millions of happiness seekers as purchasers of her book and DVD, by first "giving intent" that Oprah Winfrey would do that thing she does, which is turn self help authors into overnight sensations, such being the "manifestation" power of the Big O.

On the other hand, I DID read a book that, from what I can tell, is nearly identical to it, which came out about ten years earlier than "The Secret". That book was titled, "Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting!", and it also sold quite well. In it, author Lynn Grabhorn makes the same points that Ms. Byne makes; essentially, everything we could ever desire, including, say, a European sports car right down to make, model and color, is there for the taking if we just feel strongly enough about having it. According to both books, the all important tool to use is "The Law of Attraction", an aspect of this universe that simply can't refuse us anything we want, provided we are so attuned with our desire for it that we have no doubts whatsoever about its arrival, and are able therefore to experience it as if we already have it; in other words, feel it into being.

Well, it seems pretty obvious that this "secret" doesn't work as well as advertised, because if it did, we wouldn't need to have these books pop up in stores every ten years or so, would we? And certainly, no one who bought Ms. Grabhorn's book would have needed to buy the Byne one, right? But, you want to bet some did? Yet there is an even more glaringly obvious fact of life that makes it clear that there is more to fulfilling our desires than what the two books teach. That being, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, babies don't simply dematerialize their restrainers and fly over to the toy they want to play with. I mean, babies? Certainly they don't have the "negative mindset", the "poverty consciousness" that messes up the smooth functioning of the Law of Attraction for us neurotic adults, do they? They just got here! If anybody knows how to "feel" strongly enough, it's a baby. He sees that toy, and it's the only thing in the room, in the universe, for him. His eyes light up, his hand reaches out, and then somehow, unfathomably, his hand fails to grasp the longed-for object. Hey, no problem for the baby. He'll just make everything between him and the object disappear, grab the sucker, and then.....still doesn't happen! Now it's time for the poverty consciousness to kick in. The baby wails like life has no meaning, as he sits trapped in his high chair. Poor dear! What could have possibly gone wrong?

Well, it could mean that there IS no "law of attraction". In the first place, calling it a "law"; what is that? Is that meant to make it sound like some scientifically demonstrable universal phenomenon like gravity? Was it called a "law" just because that makes it easier for self help gurus to deceive the gullible? On the other hand, it could also mean that there is some truth to be found there, that our life experiences do, in fact, tend to mirror our outlook on life, at least in certain ways, but that the authors have just overstated its power. We all know some glass half full types, and glass half empty types. Give each type the same boss, and for the latter, they end up wondering why they "ALLLways have to take orders from such assholes!", while the former often ends up winning the boss over and getting a promotion. On yet another hand (which I am magically manifesting now using this all-powerful tool), it could be something far more, to me, wonderful and mysterious that is happening. And that is that this universe is very complex, and we humans are very complex as well. At any time within our consciousness, all sorts of ideas, memories, patterns, images, etc. are at play within us as we go through each moment of life. We can't reduce ourselves, the universe, or the results that we experience in our lives to simplistic formulas that fit into a paragraph of gushing, exclamation point-laden prose from a self help author. Would we really want to? Would we want either ourselves, or the universe, to be so flat, so one dimensional? Even if we managed to manifest a Ferrari for each day of the week, would that kind of basic, yes/no, ones and zeroes universe, completely lacking in nuance (both authors liken it to a copy machine) suit our souls?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But then, who am I to judge success? In the New Age world of the self-help movement, a bestseller bestows a great deal of credibility on its author. Since the purpose that compels people to purchase such books is to achieve more in life, the fact that someone does just that, by writing a book and becoming rich and famous, makes them, de facto, a person to be emulated and listened to. A guru. And then, the bonanza begins. The tapes you can listen to in your car. The workshops and seminars and DVDs. The crowded auditoriums from Fresno to Jacksonville to Melbourne. The overpriced cruise ship tours to Mykonos and Hawaii in the company of the teacher. As the success trajectory shoots upward, the authors can begin to start wearing white all the time, to have beatific photos of themselves doctored to make it look like they have halos. They must appear to be happy at all times, enlightened beings who show the rest of us how far we still have to go. Their critics can be easily dismissed as being "negative", "not ready to heal" and "still under the spell of poverty consciousness". Poor things, stuck in kindergarten while the newly wise followers of their rich, famous,newly-minted guru prepare to graduate to a form of existence where only benevolence prevails.

And here's the thing. In the New Age, you can write the most outlandish things in order to get that book up there in the Oprahsphere, and hence up the New York Times chart. Because we're talking about, you know, the Universe, it can pay (literally, and handsomely) for the claim to be as outlandish as you can make it. For example, you can claim, as Neale Donald Walsh did, that lil' ol' you had a conversation (actually a whole bunch of conversations) with God! His Conversations With God series has sold tens of millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages. Mr. Walsh, with his long flowing white beard and impeccably white robes, was obviously so impressed with his conversation partner that he decided to copy His fashion sense! Or, you can claim, as one Gary Renard did in his bestseller, The Disappearance of the Universe, that two attractive "Ascended Masters", one male and one female, just happened to appear in your living room one day, from the future no less, to share with you cosmic wisdom, along with instructions to share it with the remainder of humanity that doesn't have beings from the future materialize in their living rooms on a regular basis. Maybe they liked his CD collection?

But even those claims fall well short, on the hubris meter, of what I consider to be the most outlandish claims I have ever encountered from any author (I've forgotten his name), in any book, (the title of which escapes me). His book didn't go on to become a bestseller, but I can assure you he was none too disappointed about that. Because, you see, according to the book, this individual has had many incarnations on this earth plane, and was always a king and a leader, even the founder of religions. In order to be coaxed, grudgingly, by his Spirit Guides to incarnate just one more time (this current life) he accepted, on the condition that he "[wouldn't] be worshipped again!" I kid you not. The only other thing I remember about the book (interesting how little of its actual content stayed with me) is a passage that describes him visiting a psychic of considerable power. As she read his energy field, she became increasingly astonished at just who was sitting in front of her, thinking perhaps he may have been one of the Twelve Apostles, and then finally exclaiming to an onlooker that - wait for it - "this guy taught Jesus!"

Such extravagant claims for oneself is an area where the New Age excels, and it is not simply because its adherents are gullible, foolish, and easily misled, although that certainly figures into the equation. More significantly, it is that the New Age is a unique field of human experience, one where the goal is to be as "high" as possible. People who delve into it are seeking, above all else, enlightenment. And it doesn't help to have a lot of "judgment" and "negativity" floating around in your head if that is your goal. New Age authors and teachers are thus able to make use of a loophole that nearly all their followers would, a bit red-facedly, admit to, regardless of how intelligent and thoughtful they are. They want to believe in a world where something as extraordinary and desirable as their own enlightenment is possible; they want to be able to do things with their own minds, and experience things in their own reality that, if not as hard to believe as the claims of the teachers, are nevertheless far outside of our everyday world of frustrations, disappointments and heartbreaks. If they, the followers, feel that being positive, non-judgmental, accepting, etc. is going to put them in the right energetic space to receive the teacher's messages and move closer to that goal of enlightenment, whereas being "negative"; i.e., using their critical thinking skills and God-given bullshit detector, will only serve to keep them stuck in their unenlightened condition, they will feel an internal pressure to choose to approach the material with the former attitude. Suspension of disbelief never had a higher incentive!

Now, it would be all too easy at this point to clutch one's Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan books close to one's chest and say that the whole New Age deal is just one enormous mountain of hokum. That it only exists because certain "memes" about the nature of reality have hardwired themselves into our awareness since long before the Scientific Method was ever developed, and that some very flaky folks with loads of ambition and no problems stretching the truth have decided to exploit those memes for maximum profit and self-aggrandizement. I can certainly understand why people would hold this view. But I, personally, will not go there.

Because despite all the flimflam, all the grandiose claims, all the marketing excess and fallen heroes of the New Age movement (including Rhonda Bynes, who has been sued by some of her earliest collaborators on "The Secret" for not paying what she owes them), I am convinced, as I am of anything in this world, that the existence of the New Age "movement" (and it should be said that nobody involved in it really thinks of it as such) is attributable not merely to human gullibility. Rather, it has emerged from mankind's eons-long associations with some very real aspects of this universe, and very powerful ones. I think that people do themselves a disservice, and pay a price for it, either by attempting to turn these universal forces into a hyped-up, dumbed down industry, or by denying them altogether as unscientific woo woo.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you live in a fairly large city, and you spend any time exploring the New Age community there, you will meet some truly exceptional people. Well educated, intelligent, clear minded, open hearted, fit and youthful, hardly conforming to the stereotype of suckers lining up to buy the latest snake oil. Furthermore, you may note that they are not at all defensive about the low regard with which they are held by the scoffing, science minded, "rational" types whose views adhere to Dawkins and his ilk, and are convinced we are living in an essentially stupid, dead and mechanistic universe. If anything, they are bemused; certainly you won't hear the vitriol that comes from the other side, the pejoratives such as "whack-job", "nutter", "loony", etc. Indeed, one reason for the lack of animosity will be that many of them, perhaps even most of them, have been in a similar state of mind at some point in their lives. Having seen through the baloney of their childhood religions, they went through a period of questioning, doubt and agnosticism that those who scoff at them still inhabit. When one can look at one's own history and recognize that ten or twenty or thirty years ago, one was in precisely the same position as the scoffers, it is hard to feel overly sensitive, or needlessly retaliatory.

Some among the people you encounter will be practitioners who have trained in, and offer services in, such esoteric "healing modalities" as reiki, psychic reading, feng shui, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, shamanism, channeling, past life trauma work, Rolfing, tarot, crystal, etc., etc. You will hear from people you talk to that some of these healers have extraordinary skills or talents. They may have the ability to see auras, for example, or have experienced numerous out-of-body experiences, and so on (indeed, one of the reasons that New Agers are receptive to the outlandish claims of the megastars of the field is that even in their own circles there are people they admire and trust who have some pretty amazing experiences to tell of). Furthermore, many of these teachers will have achieved a considerable reputation, at least at the local level, and have a following of people who can testify that without question their lives have improved immeasurably by working with them. They wouldn't be paying large, sometimes very large, sums of money for the workshops, one-on-one sessions and so forth unless they were experiencing tangible results. Furthermore, those who visit the teachers and healers are themselves not just spiritual wannabes. Many of them will also have experienced (as I have) truly extraordinary, transformative, revelatory experiences, the kinds which are far too lightly dismissed by science-minded atheists who consider all such things delusional nonsense.

So it's not that there's no there there. There is. The problem lies in how, in our commerce-driven world, even the mysteries and powers of the universe end up being corralled into a moneymaking "industry" that doesn't always benefit those who get caught up in it. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time exploring the New Age, I have come to the conclusion that it is indeed very problematic when The Big Questions become Big Business.

We all gotta make a living. That's the way the world is set up, isn't it? But when one has "been to the mountaintop" (i.e., had a numinous experience of some kind), it can seem like a real drag to go on working the same boring job, and continuing to share office space with folks who "just don't get it". It can easily cause you to lose your high. When a spiritual awakening occurs, it doesn't simply find a nice little place to inhabit in the back of your mind. Spiritual awakenings are powerful things, and don't comfortably settle into your consciousness; they tend to blast all the doors and windows open and tear up the lawn! They quickly become the most important thing in your life, and your goal becomes staying in that energy, and moving it forward as much and as quickly as possible. This is not some small, egotistical thing. It is in fact very analogous to the sexual awakening that young people experience, when all of a sudden, family, jobs, studies, etc. fade to insignificance as one's attention fixates almost exclusively on this new, immensely powerful energy in one's life.

It is only natural that when this happens, many people feel a strong urge to change their jobs, to make their work about spirituality and healing, so that they can spend the majority of their time in that energy, commingle with like minded people, and give something valuable of themselves to the world and the universe. This should not be looked down upon as mere vanity or delusion. This is both an appropriate response to the transformation one has experienced and a clear indication that the spiritual energy has begun to put down roots in one's consciousness.

And that's where the problems occur. Because ours is not a society that has the slightest notion what to do about spiritual awakenings. We've barely managed to deal with sexual awakenings! Consequently, all too often what happens is one decides to get "certified" in some special esoteric field so that one can then begin to charge a fee for services of some kind. In some cases, this is a very good thing. There are many reputable schools of alternative healing therapies, any number of really good teachers out there, and lots of genuine healing happening in this world as a result. But there is also a lot of what can only charitably be called dubious in content. There are courses being offered in all sorts of "energies", "mastery courses", courses that teach you how to become a channeler, etc, etc. Often as not, and this should throw up a red flag for anyone, the courses become increasingly more expensive as you move up the ladder and attain different levels of certification, so that you can ultimately go on to become a teacher yourself. This "certification" process has become downright silly. I know of a person who developed a very unique and quite wonderful spiritual dance and movement program, and subsequently started up a "certification course" when she herself had only been doing it for a few years and had only a small following. I'm sure she figured, "hey, why not? It's my program, so I can choose my own way of certifying that others are able to begin teaching it, right?" Well, actually, no. For certification to have any meaning, it clearly must be administered by a body that consists of more than just one person, and it must involve a discipline that has been well observed and tested, by numerous practitioners, and over a number of years.

But at least she wasn't selling enlightenment! Seriously, that's what some of these courses do. As you move through their various esoteric courses, each revealing an even more wondrous and mysterious power that the universe withholds from all but a select few, each costing many hundreds, or even thousands of dollars (because, hey, the universe needs to eat too, right?) you will become a "master". Well, whoop de do! While some people blow twenty grand on something as silly and material as a car, you just went and purchased yourself the same status as the people in the old dusty books! All you need is to go out and find some apostles!

As a result, in the New Age movement, there are thousands of "masters", anywhere from their late twenties to early forties, certified, set up, offering their services, and (at least many of them) working with some very real and powerful energies, and passing these on to paying customers. In a more enlightened society, with a saner approach to the numinous, these young and middle aged people would still be apprentices. They would still be spending years of their lives in discipleship to a true master, who would demonstrate to them as clearly as possible that what they are working with is not something to take lightly, nor to pass on to those who are not able to handle it. There can be consequences, really devastating ones. Furthermore, the work shouldn't essentially be about helping others, to begin with. It should be about self mastery, and then, as a result of that, if one happens to be graced with some healing powers, then these can be offered discriminately, and under the teacher's tutelage. One has to be absolutely clear about one's motivation for becoming a healer, as there is a lot of glamour involved in that term and it is very easy for the ego to reduce one's work to a caricature of true spiritual practice. What is required more than anything is patience, and patience is the first casualty of our crazy, money-centered world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several years ago, I experienced a personal tragedy, the suicide of someone I'd known my whole life. This happened in January, shortly after the Indian Ocean tsunami that had wiped out whole villages, and caused the death of upwards of 200,000 people. Those two events, coming so soon one after the other, affected me very strongly, and as a result I was at a very low point in my life. I had been a spiritual practitioner for many years, mostly meditating, but having also participated in various spiritual study groups. I had many friends who were engaged in various esoteric practices. During a get-together at the house of one of these friends, a very lovely, deeply spiritual, woman in her mid-thirties announced that she had something to offer anyone there who was interested. She had just returned from an ashram in India, and while there, had studied with a renowned guru. He had passed on a powerful healing energy to her, and explained that she would be able to pass it through her to others. She had experienced this energy as very beautiful and very healing, and wished for those of us who were willing to experience it as well. Feeling that I needed something to help me shake my blues, I gratefully accepted her offer.

I got into a meditative pose, perched upon a stool, and she held her hand near me as I sat there, eyes closed. Almost immediately, I began to go into a deep trance. I experienced an incredibly blissful energy moving through me. I felt as if I could have stayed there forever. I was aware, vaguely, of all that was going on around me, such as snippets of conversation and so on, but my overriding state was one of absolute bliss that seemed to get deeper and deeper the longer I stayed in it. There was no desire on my part to move myself out of it, so I let my body go stiff as a statue, in that precarious perch on the stool. Other people also received the energy, but no one in the room experienced it as powerfully as I did. Perhaps no one else welcomed it in as deeply as I, because it had been a long time since I had even felt good, much less blissful. Eventually, after perhaps an hour, I had to be nudged, gradually, out of that trance so that I could return to the world of the here and now.

What followed in the subsequent days and weeks was not as wonderful as the feeling that I had experienced that day. Soon afterwards, I began to feel quite strange. My identity seemed to grow more and more precarious. I felt sometimes like I was losing my mind, at other times that I was hollowing out somehow, perhaps even losing my soul. I couldn't explain these feelings to anyone, and tried to hide what was happening. To make a long story short, eventually I fell into a deep and hellish depression. Only after about six months, and after finding the right type of traditional medication, was I able to recover, slowly and agonizingly.

Now, I can't say for sure what influence, if any, my experience at the party had on the events that followed. Human psychology is very complex, and I am sure that a mixture of many things, most certainly the personal tragedy, the entry into middle age I was experiencing, different problems with work and relationships, etc. contributed to the depression. Furthermore, I cannot say that even if that energy had played a role, that that was necessarily a bad thing, considering my life as a whole. As difficult as that period was, as I recovered new talents and personal qualities began to emerge, seemingly out of nowhere. Before my depression, I couldn't have imagined writing these "visual essays", for example. I am happier now than I have ever been at any time in my life, and it is possible that going through that dark period was exactly what my soul required in order to grow and ripen. Nevertheless, on that day I possessed neither the wisdom nor discernment to know if accepting that very powerful energy at such a vulnerable time in my life was the right choice. I don't think the lady who passed it on to me did either. Without question, her intention was purely altruistic. She simply wanted to freely share something beautiful with her friends, no strings attached. But there was no warning that I may be biting off more than I could chew, either.

I feel this episode reveals that much of what is referred to as the "New Age" is rooted in things that are indeed very powerful, and must be treated with great care and respect. They are not something to be packaged in bright, appealing colors or passed around like a new cake recipe. We occupy a precarious place in the universe, the nature of which we ourselves are quite uncertain about. It is unwise to cavalierly experiment with energies that have been here since before our ancestors wiggled out of their prehistoric lakes and rivers, or to audaciously attempt to fit them into our monetary system and reduce them to mere products to be sold. "The Secret" may be over-hyped nonsense, but The Great Mystery is something else entirely.

Kings and Queens

2010-09-30T19:35:00.005+09:00

I am excited to be showing a group of eight of my earlier works, the majority acrylic, with one graphite and one pastel, for a month (October 15th to November 15th) at a great restaurant near ever popular, unabashedly upscale, Roppongi Hills. The restaurant is called Roti, and the Maestress Of Ceremonies is Lauren Shannon : writer, activist, chef, curator, teacher, and probably the busiest person in Tokyo!

Here is what I wrote about the show for the postcard announcement ( the images shown above are the ones that will appear on it):

The show is called "Kings and Queens", as that is a subject that has long interested me. Whether it be playing cards, fairy tales, medieval tapestries, stained glass, etc. (the influence of all can be seen in this work) these archetypes touch me very deeply. They are not meant to represent worldly "power over", but rather "power within", as I think that human life is foremost about attaining a higher level of being, and in that sense the royalty and mastery of a king or a queen are personal qualities within us that we should seek to cultivate, and that I wish these paintings to evoke.

Selling Gingerbread

2010-09-19T17:38:00.007+09:00

Here we are now, entertain us!

- Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Just look at Bob and Judy, they're happy as can be

inventing situations, putting them on TV

- Talking Heads, "Found A Job"

About six weeks ago, the world was introduced to its newest superstars. 33 Chilean miners, who would otherwise have passed their entire lives unknown to anyone other than their neighbors and family members (and really, is that so bad?), became trapped in a precious metals mine in the northern part of the country, and instantly became world news. With horror, we learned that the miners were stranded 3 miles below the surface of the earth, and would remain so for anywhere from three to six months. The story, that the world's media purveyors rushed to report on, had it all: heroes - the miners themselves; villains - the heads of the mine company, Empressa Minera San Esteban, which has a shoddy safety record that has resulted in earlier tragedies; suspense, drama, and a setting right out of our scariest nightmares. The world's attention has since moved on, of course, as is its way, although the story of the miners and their ongoing ordeal continues to make headlines in Chile and throughout portions of Latin America. But when their story first made its way onto the airwaves as the-thing-you're-supposed-to-be-fascinated-by-today, and millions of people fixed their attention on it, received updates from breathless reporters and anchormen and women, and contemplated the unimaginable hardship being endured by the new TV stars, I cannot help but muse, ironically, that the thought occurred to many of them, "six months without television? How will they survive?"

In the midst of the real life drama of the miners, the media had an even more compelling subject to consider - itself. Yes, the 62nd Annual Emmy Awards Ceremony was held with much fanfare, as television, for a brief, but yearly, sliver of time had nothing better to entertain us with than its own greatness. Again, audiences had their heroes and villains, along with suspense that reached a crescendo as millions quivered in their chairs awaiting the news that their favorite celebrities, such as Alec Baldwin of 30 Rock, and programs such as Mad Men, had prevailed against worthy, or unworthy, adversaries. With the unearned pride that only a fan can understand, they watched their beaming heroes head for the stage to grab that slender little gold plated angel holding the world, or an atom, or whatever that thing is she's holding, and hoist her proudly into the air. The case of Mad Men, and 30 Rock, are particularly revealing. These are shows about mass media. When one chooses to spend a night of one's life being entertained by rooting for an entertainment program about entertainment,then one is being meta-entertained. And no, I do not think this is a good thing.

As a continually evolving species, perhaps we should now be referred to as "Homo Entertainus". Entertainment, for many, has quite literally become the most important thing in life. I doubt many readers would argue this. I bet we all know at least someone, an elderly aunt or parent perhaps, who turns on the tube first thing in the morning and basically leaves it on until it's time to sleep, to finally give their brains a brief respite from its spell. Their daily schedule revolves around what time shows come on. The only things they seem to enjoy talking about are the programs they watched recently. In all of the long march of human evolution, people like them would have been unthinkable, even unimaginable, up until a very recent period in our history. This is not to put them down, necessarily. I fully understand that for those who are elderly and alone, perhaps unable to get around much, the television and its offerings are nothing less than a savior. I'm just pointing out that, for well over 99% of our existence as a species, such a lifestyle was neither possible nor desirable.

We are vastly, grotesquely over-entertained, no less so than we are overfed, as a nation. Our Ipods are filled with thousands of songs, our computer's memory is filled with movies, TV shows and sports events, our conversations have become flabby with limitless commenting on films, sitcoms, albums, games, etc. It has become such a large part of our lives that we have ceased to ask, if indeed we ever did, what is the point of all this entertainment? How could it possibly have come to play such a large role in our lives? What does it give us that we can't get in some other way? From our own lives, not fantasies?

It's been a long road getting here. Perhaps the modern age of entertainment has as its beginning a date in late 1902, when Enrico Caruso's angelic voice was recorded and made available for distribution. For the first time in history, the world's greatest opera singer could be listened to and appraised without traveling to the theater to see him perform. In that instance, every local singer and musician, from opera diva to Mississippi bluesman, was put on notice. The competition just got stiffer, pal. From now on, you're competing against the best the world has to offer.

Plato, surely one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, put a lot of thought into the value of art and entertainment. One shudders to think what he would make of the world we live in today. It is like his Republic turned upside down, particularly in terms of entertainment. In his ideal society, plays, musical performances, poetry and pictorial arts were to be strictly censored. They were to show "only the good". Those who created them were to be placed in special colonies outside the metropolis, as their very presence among regular folk was potentially corrupting. Why? First of all, because the very nature of art, as a representation of something, whether an event or a flower, was a further diminishment of the real, the ideal world beyond from which this one arises. A painting of a flower was thus a further removal from reality than the flower itself. Looking at the world around us now, is it not possible to see some wisdom in his apprehension? When people spend as much time talking about their favorite shows with their colleagues at work as they do actually working, when characters in dramas seem as, or more, real to us than the people we share our lives with, have we not perhaps crossed a line the great Athenian warned us about?

Furthermore, according to Plato, art is intrinsically manipulative. Because of the way it entraps our senses, it wields a power, that can be used for good or evil, to influence us. In his age, when poetry and plays were the chief form of entertainment, retellings and enactments of battles could easily have the effect of stirring up uncontrollable, violent passions, such as emotions of rage and desire for revenge. We take this for granted now; in fact much of our entertainment is built upon generating precisely those emotions, even in the entertainment we create for our children. This would have outraged Plato. He was particularly censorious in his attitude as to how children should be introduced and exposed to the arts. Though many would like to reduce Plato to a caricature, an old fuddy duddy who wanted to control people like some small town city council member in the Bible Belt, the reality was that Plato felt threatened by art in the same way that a great Native American hunter would have felt threatened by a grizzly bear. He himself was a poet, and a great lover of music and all arts. Writing as an artist, and a great one at that, he understood its power as well as anyone in The Age of Pericles, and he felt that the place of art and entertainment in one's life should be limited, and its content controlled by discerning folk.

"The Circus is coming to town!" In our hyper-entertained world of today, it is hard for us to imagine the excitement that exclamation generated among young and old in the small towns of Europe and North America, for centuries. For only a few times in one's life, one could be dazzled by the extraordinary skill and strength and bravery of the performers, awestruck at the sight of exotic animals, particularly elephants and giraffes (the "stars" of the animal world during the heyday of the circus industry), and swept up in the spectacle and grandness of the atmosphere. Mothers could be shocked at the costumes the lithe lady acrobats donned, while fathers and sons hid their enthusiasm under pamphlets or boxes of popcorn. When one's life was for the most part a monotonous repetition of the same necessary acts, day in, day out, imagine what an otherworldly diversion these shows must have provided the masses. And today? The circus has been relegated to the furthest fringes of the vast, multi trillion dollar worldwide entertainment industry. Once its sole titan, it now barely registers as a sliver on the Entertainment Market Share pie chart. And to survive at all, it has found it necessary to modernize. The most successful "new circus" in the world today, The Cirque de Soleil of Quebec, has incorporated a story line into its shows, and done away with animals. Where is the shock and awe of seeing an elephant or a giraffe these days, even for children, who can look at them any time they want on their giant TV screens, and can see even more fantastical creatures in movies like Star Wars, Avatar, and the Harry Potter series? And they talk! Though adult viewers were appalled by the Jar Jar Binks character in the 4th Star Wars movie, he (or it) had the kids at hello.

So, what about the 360-odd days of a year that those country bumpkins had to endure when the circus wasn't in town? Were they deprived? Were they like the Chilean miners, trapped in a world of darkness, without stimulation, without color and spectacle? Of course not. They just had to make their own fun. If they wanted to reenact the circus scenes that had so enchanted them, but were without all the "merchandising" of toys, games, dolls, pajamas, costumes, etc. that modern day entertainment events leave in their wake, they had to make their own toys, out of corncobs, buttons, animal hairs, peach pits, whatever their searching hands could come upon, and their fertile minds could synthesize. The adults were okay as well. When work was done and they felt like treating themselves to entertainment, they had music to listen to - their own, in many cases played on instruments fashioned by their own hands. Sure, the singers didn't sing quite as well as Caruso, and the fiddler was no Paganini, but what did that matter? Likely as not, they had never even heard of Paganini, such was the benighted nature of their plight. But in such a case, ignorance is bliss, because without the multi-billion dollar recording industry pointing out to us just how far short of greatness we mere mortals fall, without it serving up Maria Callas and the Beatles to our hungry ears, what difference does it make if the music is awkward and unprofessional? Making friends and neighbors happy is what it's about, right? Or shouldn't it be? The same with sports. Without the entertainment industry turning folks like Joe Montana, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods into demigods, would folks still have the same incentive to achieve their own, personal best? If anything, even more so, I imagine. Insidiously woven into the world of hyper-entertainment we inhabit today is the message that we, the vast majority of us, are entertainees. Our job is to sit back, absorb, adulate and even worship the output of the well-paid pros who we give large swaths of our lives to.

I readily concede that in a world as fraught with problems as this one is, railing against the entertainment industry, not for its content but for its pervasiveness, must seem to some like a waste of effort. Why go after our diversion, our culture, our escape? Well, in answer all I can say is that I don't feel comfortable about an industry of diversion and escape becoming such a large part of peoples' lives. It robs us of reality, I feel. It violates my personal belief in the adage, "all things in moderation". It dements our perception to the point that all phenomena is on its way to becoming fused, such that politics is entertainment and war is entertainment and sports is war and the circus has reinvented and reasserted itself resulting in our world now being run by clowns who do and say the most outrageous things to get our attention, and daredevils who take tremendous risks with our money. Many people will tell you with pride that they have unplugged their TVs, that they "hardly ever watch television". But if they are still listening to music for hours each day and catching a movie a week, is that really all that different? As I see it, when one is bored, one has three options. One can just accept being bored. This is not so bad. Being bored can be a good thing. It is not an evil to be clobbered by a gigantic octopus of an industry that has a diversion to offer for each moment of our lives. The second is to be an entertainee. Watch something. Listen to something. Read something. I would say that both of these options have their place, and are roughly equal in my estimation in terms of value. I would hope that would be reflected in the amount of time one spends with either choice. The third choice is to me far more interesting and important and valuable. Create something. By yourself or with somebody else. Write a poem to a lover or sing a song to nature. Deposit something into the Bank of Human Creativity; don't just consume that which others have produced. It doesn't have to be great, what you create; in fact, a disservice has been done to you if you have that expectation. A silly little ditty that you take the time to write and sing can be more valuable to your soul by far than listening to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony for the umpteenth time. I don't think Beethoven would mind, either. He wasn't making music because he wanted to be worshipped long after his death. He made music because it was in him. Just like something is in you, longing to be expressed.

Tradition!

2010-09-13T19:12:00.007+09:00

This last weekend I taught a two day art course focusing on reproducing Old Masters' works, and teaching fundamentals of artists' anatomy to an eclectic group of very talented pupils. Here is a selection of my demonstration pieces; the reproduction is a graphite drawing from a detail of a well known painting by Velasquez, "Infanta Margarita hacia los tres anos".

Rosie at Crumpets

2010-08-07T14:51:00.004+09:00

We've moved to a delightful neighborhood recently, and one of its most endearing features is a cafe, called Crumpets, which serves luscious homemade English treats like scones and crumpets (hence the name, of course). Even better, pets are welcome (more like encouraged) as the owner, Junko, loves animals and her own pet Dachsund Yuzu is always to be found there. She and Rosie are friends, of a sort, and the idea of painting the two of them taking tea there appealed to me. The caption says,

Yuzu has invited her ferret friend Rosie, to

join her at Crumpets for tea. "I've been so busy lately!"

says Rosie. "Two or three naps a day leaves so little time

for friends!"

The Dissent of Man

2010-06-28T15:00:00.009+09:00

We are stardust, we are golden

we are billion year old carbon

and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

- Jonie Mitchell, "Woodstock"

Ferrets are more determined than they are bright. Case in point being my own pet ferret, Rosie. Rosie explores nooks and crannies with the unrestrained zeal of a fanatic. Wikipedia tells me that ferrets have been domesticated (they are the domesticated version of the polecat) since perhaps the time of Socrates and Buddha, and all that breeding - for going down holes, for ferreting out pest rodents - has resulted in a lovable freak of nature that behaves nearly suicidally in its compulsion to know, KNOW!, what's down that hole, or in that crevice! Even if that hole leads to a drop off of ten or more feet (that's like a twenty story building to a ferret), and a fatal fall, the only thing that will stop a ferret is the loving hand of its exasperated owner. We can't understand ferrets in this regard; it's something they "just gotta".

Or perhaps we can understand them, and all too well at that. My thoughts are now joined with those of so many others as we contemplate the unspeakable tragedy that is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. As the oil spews out from a mile below, it is staggering to consider how technology has been so horrifyingly misapplied in this instance. Explorers were able, through sophisticated devices, to discover that there is a vast reservoir of oil out there beyond sight of land. Engineers developed machinery that can dig through solid rock, three more miles below the ocean floor, in order to get at that reservoir. Because we "just gotta" have that oil! Cruelly ironic that we have developed astounding technology in order to drill through bedrock, but have not developed applications to produce or harvest energy that doesn't send the environment, our one and only home planet, down a tailspin of degradation. Humans, like ferrets, are more determined than they are bright.

Lemmings, on the other hand, don't really commit mass suicide. It turns out that that is a myth. The whole myth developed like a meme in reaction to some wildlife footage shot in the mid 1950s, and televised frequently thereafter, for a Disney-produced wildlife documentary. Multiple generations gathered in living rooms and watched in horror, on their upholstered couches (and I was among them) as a mass desperation forced the pathetic critters to fling themselves out over a cliff, into the cold, cruel sea, where they swam a futile swim to exhaustion and a watery death. This was a culling process of nature, we were taught to believe; that as their population exploded beyond a certain point, instinct forced them into behavior that they would never otherwise consider, as if a switch had been thrown by Mother Nature. The footage itself, and how it was presented, was hokum. First of all, the "documentary" aspect of the scene that fused itself in our brains has been challenged. The animals we saw were herded, it is now alleged. The rush hour subway density of lemmings was staged in order to heighten their panic. Lemmings do behave radically when their population exceeds a certain quotient. They do fan out in all directions in search of new habitat. They do, if they encounter a body of water, jump in, in order to explore the land, and its food potential, on the other side. But lemmings are very good swimmers. More often that not, as in WAY more often than not, the majority of them reach the other side. Therefore, the fact that they were transported to an inhospitable coast by filmmakers is all the more ghastly. Those critters thought they had a good chance of crossing over, because in a natural situation, they would have. Thus, this all too convenient, and frequently used, metaphor for our own existential situation is forced and inaccurate. We do not have allies among our fellow animals (or at least if we do, it is not the misunderstood lemming) in plunging carelessly toward our own demise. We as a mammalian species are alone in engaging in obviously suicidal behavior, with the concomitant collateral side effect of taking billions of other life forms with us.

And there can be no mistake, this IS the direction we are heading. One of Einstein's most famous quotes is that problems cannot be solved at the level of consciousness at which they were created, and yet many hasten to assure us that technology, for all the devastation it has wrought since the Industrial Revolution, is nevertheless the solution to the ills we face today. Apparently, according to this way of thinking, it is now incumbent upon our technology to transform itself into Superman, and rescue us from the death trap its Lex Luthor alter ego has placed us in. Uh....right.

Technology is not the answer. Nor is it the problem, per se, so much as it is a symptom. There is a sickness affecting humanity that threatens our very survival as a species. We have lost touch with our center, our very DNA, and are behaving as if we are not part of this earth any more. We base our way of life on a system that will stop working in less time than the duration between now and Shakespeare. It is utter madness, but we go about our lives as if it will all work out somehow. We are the true "lemmings", and our divorce from our naturalness will not, and cannot possibly be, solved by forcing ourselves even deeper into the ouroboros that is the left hemisphere of our brain, there to extract ever newer technologies to serve as antidotes to the technologies that are being run with such destructive consequences in our modern civilization.

Our survival as a species has nothing to do with technological geekery or, as some technophiles have suggested, "heading out to the stars". Imagine the audacity! We trash life on this planet, but hey, it's okay, so long as we learn to cultivate our own moon, or the moons of Jupiter or wherever. The very fact that some would consider this to be a solution is indicative itself that something is really wrong with our current mindset. A species, a contributing member of the biosphere and completely dependent on it, deluding itself that it can pick up and move elsewhere if need be. The Sufis advise us to "be in the world but not of it". Sound advice when its meaning relates to an individual striving for peace of mind. But for the human race as a collective, the admonition should be, "Be in the world and don't forget for a moment that you ARE of it!" Ours has been a history of pulling ourselves out of the real Matrix, the impeccable miracle that is our planet's propensity to, generously, host ecosystems based on the simplest and most brilliant of exchanges - oxygen for carbon dioxide, food for fertilizer, death for life - and placing ourselves in an unreal Matrix that weakens us fundamentally and threatens us existentially. And we must learn how to stop.

Surely Tokyo, where I live, is one of the most wasteful cities on the entire planet. The foods that are thrown away each day, the electricity used in the neon signs and giant televisions advertising bubblegum pop music in front of the major train stations; the air conditioners blasting out from four million domiciles in the summer, raising the temperature two degrees (Celsius) higher than outside the city; the appliances and computers and cellphones that are pitched and replaced rather than repaired, etc.; taken together this would easily provide enough food and energy and sundries to supply a city of a million or more people each day. And yet, a mere hundred and fifty odd years ago, Tokyo, or as it was then called, Edo, was a very different place altogether. It was, as has been suggested in a book by novelist/historian Eisuke Ishikawa titled "The Edo Period had a Recycling Society", the most environmentally efficient city on the face of the earth. The Japanese of Old Edo were not self consciously preserving their environment so much as they were subconsciously aware of themselves as part of the environment. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the commercial use of "night soil", a lovely euphemism for human excrement, as a fertilizer. If you were to go back to Edo and stop by a roadside teahouse, you might meet a man who would proudly tell you, "I sell shit". And why not be proud? While Europeans were risking plague at every turn, throwing their raw sewage out onto the street, the Japanese were living healthily and sanitarily, giving their produce back to the earth, so that it could continue to yield its produce for their use. This is the way of things, it is what Nature teaches us, and yet it is something that we have forgotten. Instead, we eat chemically fertilized foods, laced with pesticides and denuded of nutrients, and dump (literally) that into our water supply, of all places! We have night soil for brains, it seems!

We have to, metaphorically if not literally, return to the wilds and become creatures of the forest again. In a forest, absolutely nothing is wasted. Not air, not sunlight, not a drop of rain or sweat, not a carcass or a pellet of shit. A forest can run, continually rejuvenating itself, for millennia, once a system is set in place. In a place called Gaviotas, in Colombia, a group of scientists and environmental engineers figured out a way to put a rainforest back where the desert had encroached, and not by simply planting trees. They built it up from the ground floor, beginning with the small plants that would have originally grown there, and moving forward incrementally. Almost miraculously, the birds began to appear as if from nowhere. And the lizards, and the rodents. Over time, the forest was back, and all its creatures were working in harmony. Gaia knew what to do, and just needed a nudge.

I am not idealizing forest life as if it is some sort of trans-species hippiefest waiting to welcome us back. I am well aware that it is not. In any given clump of dirt in a forest that you may happen to pick up with your bare hand, an atrocity is occuring. The little things of this planet dispense with each other in ways so gruesome and cruel that they would blush the face of the most depraved Medieval torturer. It can easily be surmised that such very terrors of the natural world have impacted our psychology and seeded our destructiveness. We needed to learn to use our brains for protection, for offense and defense. We would not have survived had we not learned to attack, fight for our very lives, take without asking. It's part of who we are, and it was bequeathed to us by Gaia. We are her legacy. Nevertheless, that is not an excuse to stay on our present course as it leads down a road toward extinction. We can use our minds to imagine, and create, a new Eden. Our children can be the butterflies and birds that spread the seeds, through their vigor and curiosity. Our senior citizens can be the massive sycamores that hold the very life of the forest in their hearts and minds. Every one of us must discover our place in this new "human forest" before we can reintegrate ourselves with the broader ecosystem both on our terms and its. As wasteful as our modern society is, what we are wasting more than anything is our minds. As destructive as we are to the planet, what we are destroying perhaps even more rapidly is our humanness. We have to remember what that means first, to be human. If we want to be sane again.

Change He Can't Believe In

2010-06-06T15:10:00.004+09:00

Well, Joe Biden was certainly right when he said that President Obama would be "tested" soon after taking office. The question is not so much "how did he do" on the test as it is, "when will the tests ever stop?" It is perhaps more accurate to look at these entire four years of the Obama administration (first or only) as an ongoing test, and one that grows increasingly difficult and challenging as it progresses, like the LSAT. Furthermore, much more is being tested than this still young presidency. The entire nation is being asked difficult questions about itself. Encapsulated into one question, what we are being asked is - As a nation, what are we?

- Are we a nation so divided by vapid ideologies that we can do nothing but shout at each other and hold those with whom we disagree in the utmost disdain, a disdain fueled by obnoxious purveyors of half truths and grotesque characterizations on our airwaves and our computer networks?

- Are we a nation that, forty years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech must nevertheless experience a form of shock that we finally, finally, have managed to elect a person of color to the highest office in the land?

- Are we a nation that truly can envision no other course for itself than to keep fighting wars and wreaking destruction, even as the jury is no longer out about how effective these military escapades are in actually solving the problems our country faces in its dealings with adversaries?

- Are we a nation so beholden to the economic powers that essentially run things in this country that we powerlessly bear witness to the destruction of two of our most valuable national assets, the American Middle Class and the Gulf of Mexico, conceding all responsibility to big, self serving corporate entities that have shown time and again that their interests are, charitably, clearly not prioritizing the health and well being of our floundering country?

In the middle of the fray stands President Barack Obama. Born in the last year of the postwar Baby Boom, campaigning with the invigorating, motivational catch phrases, "Yes, WE Can!", "Change We Can Believe In" and "The Audacity of Hope", his victory in November 2008 inspired and uplifted a large portion of the American public, many of whom had nearly given up hope that the trajectory of self serving government, and the decline of America's status globally, could ever possibly be reversed, particularly after eight years of a presidency that felt downright alien and Orwellian to them.

Yet, a few short months before crucial midterm elections, those catch phrases ring hollow. The Obama presidency, viewed as a whole has not delivered in a way that justifies their bold and cheerful optimism. Indeed, many, I'm guessing millions, of Americans feel deceived about those words, and sold out by this presidency. It is as if Obama never really, truly, understood the nature of the "change" that the majority of the American people wanted so desperately to believe in.

I find myself asking, "Why did Barack Obama want so desperately to be president?" I am frankly stumped by this question. The question is much easier to answer when applied to his recent predecessors. Richard Nixon (a Shakespearean character if ever there was one) wanted the job because nothing short of that would satiate his monumental ego and lust for power. Jimmy Carter had an evangelistic and fervent belief that the country itself was far more decent and honorable than its leadership, and that its true heart and soul were crying out to be affirmed. Ronald Reagan was so driven by his Ayn Rand-influenced philosophy about government, capitalism and communism that he stormed into office as a True Believer, ordained, or so he believed, with the power to remake the country into a sort of real-life version of "Atlas Shrugged" (it is interesting to wonder if he, and not Gary Cooper, had landed the lead role in the Hollywood version of "The Fountainhead", that he may have gotten his ya yas out that way, and spared the rest of us the consequences of his Objectivist wet dream). Bush the Elder and Bill Clinton were both convinced that they were the smartest guys in the room, and that nobody else was as capable as they were of running the enormous machinery that makes the world's most powerful country tick. And Bush the Lesser was just a frat boy who, his entire life, basically proved the Peter Principle, simply coasting along on the zephyrs of forces and connections far more powerful than him to increasing Levels of Incompetency.

I am quite certain that Obama did not become president, to, paraphrasing Churchill, preside over the demise of the American Republic as a great nation, and yet why does it appear that this is what he is doing? Is the job bigger and harder than he imagined it to be? Are many of his detractors right in proclaiming that he is in over his head, a "community organizer sent to do a president's job"? Are the problems our country is facing too large and complex and metastatic for any leader to make headway against them? Is our president, like Hamlet, caught up in such a swirl of dark doings that he can only retreat into a cool, calculated inertia? At a time when the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, etc. - nothing is going right, does anyone really believe that this hesitancy to seize the zeitgeist and place his stamp upon it is a matter of him "playing chess" and "thinking three steps ahead of his adversaries"? If so, how does that Kool Aid taste?

Returning to the American public and the landslide victory it gave him, what was the change that we pinned our hopes on Candidate Obama to achieve? These were not small things. In a word, what we were hoping to see was a reversal of Reaganism. Just as Hamlet was haunted by the ghost of a king, so it is that the Obama presidency, and the nation as a whole, are even now haunted by the "ghost" of a former president whose disdain for government shows up like fingerprints on all the troubles we are facing today. Remember James Watt? Reagan appointed him to head the Environmental "Protection" Agency as a slap in the face to environmentalists. This country has more than enough trees, rivers, large bodies of water, etc. - King Ronald decreed. While I'm president, no tree huggers are going to tie the hands of industry and keep this country from reaching its full economic potential! Now, because the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is foremost on everyones mind, that example seems particularly glaring, but run through all our current problems, the ones President Obama is charged with dealing with, from banking to the military, to healthcare, to corporate outsourcing, etc. and they can be connected as if by Day Glo dots back to King Ronnie's obsession with small social government and a huge military, and his Holy Mantra, "deregulation". That was what we believed in as we threw our support behind Obama, that that could change. We're not so sure anymore, are we? It appears abundantly clear that that was not the change that our president was referring to or envisioning.

I truly believe that he is at heart, a good, decent man who wants his presidency to be a great one, one that goes far toward uplifting this country, morally, economically, ecologically. I believe that, much as MBA George W. Bush believed that this country should be run and operated as if it were a company, former community organizer Barack Obama believes that this country can grow and flourish through outreach, networking, coming together and working together. Cooperation and sacrifice are his lifeblood, and what he has the power to extol us toward. But we need that voice! We need to believe that it applies to everyone, most obviously the arrogant, "Too Big To Fail" (Too Big to Make Sacrifices?) entities that have caused so much trouble with neither governance nor guidance from elected officials. "Guidance"; that is what they need. Even big companies are made up of little people, just like us. If the U.S. government, with Barack Obama as its leader, could take responsibility for telling the suits, "We are going to do things differently now. You are going to play a different role. Your interests and the interests of this country as a whole are going to conjoin. You are going to play a large role in making this a great, safe, prosperous, and happy nation and you will have the gratitude of its people as you do so", things would change. The nations of Europe, Japan, etc. have achieved this with far greater success than any of our leaders since the Reagan Revolution have managed. It's doable, clearly. But if the country sees that its president and elected officials appear to be abdicating that role - the very role for which they were elected - then "hope" and "change" seem to be as hollow as the reassurances of BP officials, and as void of life as large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico have become.

A Dour Visage

2010-05-10T13:00:00.004+09:00

This is from another "Old Masters" drawing workshop I conducted over the weekend. My demo piece. Great students, and all made wonderful progress!

Evolve or Perish

2010-05-04T22:49:00.004+09:00

click on image to enlarge