Just Like in the Movies!

We had a little excitement on the train this Sunday. As the train approaches the Chinatown station, it crosses over the L.A. "River." The train came to a stop on the bridge and we heard the conductor talking to people outside (the intercom broadcasts both inside and outside the train). She said something about the police chasing a guy down the tracks. A few people started glancing around, out the windows, but we couldn't see anything.

"Don't do it," came the conductor's voice. "That's a suicide jump, you moron!"

Now heads were really turning. There was a pause. Then, "He's down, guys. He made it to the ground."

Then silence. The train was still stopped. Out the window, we could see a freight train passing by below. I thought, "Maybe he'll make his daring escape on the train!" So I watched. At first I didn't see anything. But then, there he was. Some guy wearing a white t-shirt and black shorts standing all cool and non-chalant between two of the cars. Off he went. We waited another little while.

"I'm gonna go by you guys really slowly, okay?" said the conductor. The train slowly passed by about five police officers. The conductor informed us, "The police were chasing a suspect down the tracks and it looks like he jumped onto the freight train."

And that was it. Crazy, eh?

relativity

the human heart is fickle
mine especially
that woman
so irritating six months ago
today in a sea of unknown faces
my heart leaped at sight of her
blazing light of history shared
no matter contents half forgotten
there among strangers
my cherished best friend

[Some at best mediocre poetry. But I wanted y'all to know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I am enjoying the exquisite torture that is learning Arabic. Woot woot!]

Doctors Can't Be Trusted

There are some things on which Brandon and I fundamentally disagree due to differences in our upbringing. One of them is our attitudes toward medical professionals. Brandon, whose father is a veterinarian and whose mother works for an orthodontist, is willing to place implicit trust in doctors. My mother, on the other hand, is a former childbirth educator and birth doula who, in the course of her former career, was often frustrated by doctors and their pig-headed notions.

And so when I go to the doctor and they take my blood pressure and they say "60 over 102. Very good!" I say to them in my mind, "You people are so unhelpful. All you think about is whether someone's blood pressure is too high. It never occurs to you that someone's blood pressure might be unhealthily low. I'll just have to go home and find out what the actual ideal blood pressure is, because I know it's not 'as low as possible,' contrary to what you cotton-headed ninny muggins think."

So I looked up ideal ranges for blood pressure on the internet. Based on numerous attestations, it seems 60 over 90 and below is unhealthily low blood pressure. So actually, I'm pretty close and I probably wouldn't feel so lightheaded and weak just before dinner if I drank more water and ate more salt.

And the moral of the story is, doctors can't be trusted implicitly, so look things up for yourself on the internet (which can be trusted implicitly). (-;

Eine Kleine Nacht Fishen (A Little Night Fish)

Here is the painting I mentioned. It's the first real painting I've done and actually been excited to hang on the wall.

And yes, that's a little guy with a fishing pole. He seems to have been out for a little night fishing. I don't think he caught anything. Probably because all the fish are in the sky.

Perhaps another reason I loved Ponyo so much: I've always thought of slightly anthropomorphized fish as being all happy and exuberant, just like in the movie.

I also like this painting because it's kind of in the style of children's books illustrations. I remember seeing an exhibit of illustrations from some award winning children's book in a museum in Washington D.C. and realizing that illustrations in children's books are often fine art with as much merit as the stuff hanging in museums. And in fact, I often find illustrations in children's books more compelling and accessible than stuff in you find in museums or art galleries.

Oh, and for those who are curious, the stars are indeed meant to imply the constellation Pisces.

making art; writing stories; Up

When I was young/in college/13-19, I would get an idea for a poem, or a painting, or a story, and I would sit myself down to create it. Poems and paintings I would finish in a single sitting. Stories I virtually never finished at all. I was full of ideas, excitement, and energy.

Now as I get older, my brain processes are slowing down. I don't have so many ideas, or so much energy. I used to feel grieved by that. But now it seems to be turning out for the best.

I used to be so impatient, wanting the satisfaction of a finished project immediately, and losing interest if something was taking too long. If I got stuck writing a sonnet, I would jump on the first solution that presented itself, even if it sounded awkward. But now I care about making every line smooth, and I'm willing to wait for just the right words, even if it means completing a project over several days rather than in a few hours.

Anyway, likewise with writing stories--I've actually finished a few. And with painting. I've been working on this painting and--well, when I'm finished, I'll take a picture and post it on here.

But anyway, about writing stories and my feelings about Up: I enjoyed Up, but I was kind of thrown by the wacky story. I've thought up some wacky stories like that, and I feel such wackiness needs to be reworked and refined until it becomes smooth, and inoffensive. It seemed like they did their preliminary rough story sketching, and then instead of working it into a seamless, compelling narrative, they left it jarring and weird.

But I am glad that other people enjoyed Up more than I did.

CRAP.

So, I was looking into what new movies are coming to the (two) dollar theater this weekend, and I saw that there's a film playing today called NoBody's Perfect. It's about a German filmmaker's project of creating a calendar of nude photos of people (including himself) with congenital deformities resulting from their mothers' use of the drug Thalidomide. I was intrigued and checked out the film's website. Now I really want to see the movie, but unfortunately, its last showing in the L.A. area, as far as I can tell, is going on right now. No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o ...

An Aha! Moment

Yargh! Too many things to blog about today: I want to write about being "an aging artist" (yes, yes, I know, I'm only 23, not very aged, but still, aging), and about why I loved Ponyo, but was not so impressed with Up, and also about how in Christian Apologetics class last night, I finally felt like I understood what the Buddhist nirvana is about.

But I'll start by letting you know: I did eventually figure out where that cut on my face came from: it was a papercut! A papercut on my face! Oh, the hazards of being a student.

Okay, now about the Buddhist nirvana. When I took World Religions at Whitworth, I felt that of all the major world religions, each one held a peculiar appeal for me, except Buddhism. Our text book explained that the Buddhist idea of nirvana should not be understood truly as nothingness, and that Buddhism is not really so pessimistic as Westerners think. But the author did not explain what exactly the Buddhist nirvana was. Which makes sense, since it cannot really be described. But then, how are you suppsed to know what is meant by the term?

So in Apologetics class last night, Dr. John Carstensen was giving his argument for belief in a supernatural God, as opposed to a pantheistic God. His argument was something like this: For the pantheist, all of Nature is the infinite God. Because God is infinite, God cannot be described, except by way of negation (not finite, not divisible, not possessable, etc.). And because all is God, and God is one (not divided), all plurality (things being separate from each other) is an illusion.

Carstensen's critique here is that this is not a reasonable belief because it contradicts the whole of personal experience. We do not experience the oneness of the infinite, we only experience a plurality of things in the world. But I doubt this would be at all persuasive for a Buddhist, since they presumably just take it on faith, by intuition, and by some mystical experience of oneness, that in fact, contrary to experience, plurality (the separateness of things) is an illusion.

Anyway, Carstensen then introduced into the pantheist's world Descartes's one supposedly unquestionable fact: I exist. For the pantheist, this statement does not work. Because the only thing that really exists is the oneness of God, not the separateness of the self. It is not quite right, even for the pantheist to say, "I am God," because it is the whole of the universe, not the finite self, that is God. And to a Westerner, it is also nonsensical to say "I do not exist." But that is what Buddhists say.

Also, the problem of evil becomes more acute for the pantheist even than for the supernatural monotheist. If God is identified with a world that contains evil, then either God contains evil, or evil is an illusion. It would seem Hindus go with the option of God containing evil. Buddhists go with evil as an illusion. And I must say, I much prefer the Hindu approach to the Buddhist. And the Christian approach to the Hindu.

In fact, I think it's an outrage to declare evil an illusion.

But anyway, now I think I actually have some idea of what Buddhism is all about. It's like a pantheist religion that refuses to say "all is God" because they don't want to name the infinite oneness in any way, even by calling it God.

If you have made it to the end of this post, congratulations! I will write about those other things some other time.