I am looking out the window of my office as the golden, magic hour sunlight hits the mountains and the few clouds and the palm trees and the ugly ugly buildings.
This place is very beautiful but it is marred by so much (SO MUCH) man made ugliness it boggles the mind.
Now I am not at all one of those people that thinks that all ugliness is man made or that man made stuff is all ugly. It's just that something about Los Angeles encourages or allows or generally leads builders to create shit ugly buidings that last about 15 years rather than beautiful buildings that last forever.
Even the new Cathedral looks like crap. The Getty is crap. There are nice buildings here but 98% is crap.
That's all for today.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
"All are divine, but some don't know it yet!"
"All are divine, but some don't know it yet!"
Just bumping along browsing other blogs I came across this brand new one and was touched and intrigued by what it was saying about education and children and the intersection of the two.
Just bumping along browsing other blogs I came across this brand new one and was touched and intrigued by what it was saying about education and children and the intersection of the two.
Commitment
I have this obsession with conciousness.
Maybe obsession is too strong a word, maybe facination.
Maybe that's the wrong word. I mean I certainly find the topic facinating but at the same time it makes me nauseous. To look inside my own mind and my own sense of myself with my own mind and sense of myself is dizzying. I mean its so very very strange that I exist. When I say I don't mean the body that you see. That is completely unbelievable as well but what I mean is the continous silent, multilayered, multitracked monologue that is me.
Isn't it weird?
The reason it came up was I was sitting down to write a little bloggy blog and didn't have anything to blog about but I made a commitment to myself to write a little bloggy blog everyday. That made me think about commitment. Like promises and stuff like that. Where do those things live? I mean they live in the realm of language, right? We make them up and then they live in our minds as if they are real. Yet they can't be measured and weighed like a car or an apple or a lion.
So they don't have any objective reality.
They are made of the stuff of dreams.
Nothingness or maybe chemical electrical patterns in our brains.
Yet these things - commitments, promises, ideals - make more of a difference than lions and tigers and bears nowadays. More and more we live in a world that is filled with things but what is really important and moving is the ideas behind those thing.
At least that's what I believe.
Perhaps that's why I'm a big supporter of the First Amendment and I'm not so hot on the Second.
Maybe obsession is too strong a word, maybe facination.
Maybe that's the wrong word. I mean I certainly find the topic facinating but at the same time it makes me nauseous. To look inside my own mind and my own sense of myself with my own mind and sense of myself is dizzying. I mean its so very very strange that I exist. When I say I don't mean the body that you see. That is completely unbelievable as well but what I mean is the continous silent, multilayered, multitracked monologue that is me.
Isn't it weird?
The reason it came up was I was sitting down to write a little bloggy blog and didn't have anything to blog about but I made a commitment to myself to write a little bloggy blog everyday. That made me think about commitment. Like promises and stuff like that. Where do those things live? I mean they live in the realm of language, right? We make them up and then they live in our minds as if they are real. Yet they can't be measured and weighed like a car or an apple or a lion.
So they don't have any objective reality.
They are made of the stuff of dreams.
Nothingness or maybe chemical electrical patterns in our brains.
Yet these things - commitments, promises, ideals - make more of a difference than lions and tigers and bears nowadays. More and more we live in a world that is filled with things but what is really important and moving is the ideas behind those thing.
At least that's what I believe.
Perhaps that's why I'm a big supporter of the First Amendment and I'm not so hot on the Second.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Dorky Dads
I was hanging out with Yogi a few weeks ago, playing with him and getting as excited and enthusiastic about something as he was (which is pretty darn excited and enthusiastic) when it hit me. I was acting like a dork.
Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the way I was acting (and continue to act). I believe that its appropriate to relate to children as they relate to you and one of the many gifts that children give is their wonder and enthusiasm. Cliched and mushy as that sounds it is true. The world is fresh and new in the eyes of a child and when you experience the world that way, or are reminded to at least try, the whole experience of living is transformed.
But then it backfires on you.
Usually.
What I realized was that my enthusiasm and excitement, traits that I (by all reports) had myself at the age of five, were re-developed for Yogi. Before he was born I was cool. Not nasty, pessimistic cool but pretty cool nonetheless. Now here I was acting like a big goofball.
The irony is that the person who will most likely be most embarrassed and distainful of my newly developed dorkiness is Yogi. In about 6 or 7 years, maybe sooner, he will wish that I was as cool as I used to be. By then I will be so used to being a dad that it won't be possible for me to reform and any attempts at reaquiring coolness will be seen as pathetic by my young tween.
Oh well.
Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the way I was acting (and continue to act). I believe that its appropriate to relate to children as they relate to you and one of the many gifts that children give is their wonder and enthusiasm. Cliched and mushy as that sounds it is true. The world is fresh and new in the eyes of a child and when you experience the world that way, or are reminded to at least try, the whole experience of living is transformed.
But then it backfires on you.
Usually.
What I realized was that my enthusiasm and excitement, traits that I (by all reports) had myself at the age of five, were re-developed for Yogi. Before he was born I was cool. Not nasty, pessimistic cool but pretty cool nonetheless. Now here I was acting like a big goofball.
The irony is that the person who will most likely be most embarrassed and distainful of my newly developed dorkiness is Yogi. In about 6 or 7 years, maybe sooner, he will wish that I was as cool as I used to be. By then I will be so used to being a dad that it won't be possible for me to reform and any attempts at reaquiring coolness will be seen as pathetic by my young tween.
Oh well.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Yogi's First Poem
Wow - time does fly, doesn't it??
A lot has happened since our last post.
Last night, we (Yogi, John, Mom and I) were watching the Disney movie version of Little House on the Prairie. It was a scene in which Caroline called Charles a poet. Yogi turned to me and said, "Tell me if this is a poem." Then he recited the following:
I love you, I love you,
The sun shines bright
Be cozy in your bed
And have a nice day and a nice night.
So let the record show that Yogi Sylvain wrote his first poem at the age of 4 years and 10 months, on July 9, 2006.
Further proof that my son is a magnificent genius. (No pressure.)
A lot has happened since our last post.
Last night, we (Yogi, John, Mom and I) were watching the Disney movie version of Little House on the Prairie. It was a scene in which Caroline called Charles a poet. Yogi turned to me and said, "Tell me if this is a poem." Then he recited the following:
I love you, I love you,
The sun shines bright
Be cozy in your bed
And have a nice day and a nice night.
So let the record show that Yogi Sylvain wrote his first poem at the age of 4 years and 10 months, on July 9, 2006.
Further proof that my son is a magnificent genius. (No pressure.)
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