noted

Leslee at 3rd House Journal writes about watching the moon rise on the New Hampshire coast…. I was doing much the same thing over on the other side of the country in Sausalito, California around sunset. We were to meet a friend for dinner, then a couple of hours of inspired jazz at the “No Name” bar. We left our house, some 6 miles or so north of Sausalito, in the gentle heat of an August evening to arrive to the bracing winds driven by the fog struggling to cascade down the ridge above Sausalito.

All this, the California sunset, the moon rising, the food and company, the quirky ambiance of the “No Name,” the captivating music of the jazz group and the silky voice of the lead singer would have been enough in itself to feel grateful for the moment … and yet, when close to midnight we walked back to our car, which we left near a marina of bobbing sailboats, the most amazing performance was waiting, like some precious dessert. This was the otherworldly chords of masts fingered by the wind, that master musician of the Aeolian harp.

alabaster wings

I have been living in the “here and now” so much so that it has become a near impossibility for me to record the moment that has just passed and also, at the same time, to be fully present in the one in which I find myself writing. This is a big problem, if not a paradox, for the writer who takes her yoga practice seriously, or the yogini, who takes her writing practice seriously…

How is that for a great excuse for laziness?

Or for a lack of inspiration that can’t be covered up with the mists of perspiration?

♣

Then again, this “laziness” may be just my way of resisting the trend to make hay of all sorts of personal information that sprouts up across the vast, vacant lots of cyberspace … the way Facebook is trying to be innovative about harnessing all that chatter and self revelation for fodder for advertisers.

According to a piece in The Wall Street Journal today, Facebook’s ad plan is not just about matching products with people based on the free information these people keep generating about themselves, but rather, matching products with a generated demand in people who have no idea, just yet, that they might even want such a product:

Facebook’s plan, if it works, could be potentially powerful for advertisers. While Google’s keyword-targeted ads aim at “demand fulfillment” — that is, they are triggered by Internet searches conducted by people who are actively looking for something that they want — Facebook’s new ad plan could help advertisers address an area called “demand generation.” This involves using available information — not just from a user but also the activities and interests of his “friends” on the site — to figure out what people might want before they’ve specifically mentioned it. [emphasis mine]

Gives the phrase “a friend in need” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

on change

The current daily dharma on the site of Tricycle, the Buddhist Review, is about reminding you of where you came from, of who you were and who you are now. One of the questions is this:

Would your present self and past self be friends if they met?

I was stunned to realize that no, my past self and my present self wouldn’t be friends. My past self would mock my present self’s preoccupation with yoga. My present self would consider my past self too shallow and self-centered for friendship.

On the other hand, this doesn’t speak too well of my present self either. For where is the compassion, that fire of true change?

So, have I changed? Or have I changed only the obsessions on which the mind can weather the rough tides without getting wet?

light as a feather

It’s an uneasy (well, from our standpoint) truce between the big white cat and us. He has been camping in our backyard — more accurate to say, his face glued to our glass doors — coming on close to a week now. We feed him, so that he won’t be going for the birds that have had the run of the deck for months now. But we won’t let him in the house. The more we resist him, the harder he tries to charm us.

We’ve been down this road before. With Kitty, the cat that came to us the same way and stayed on for years to brighten our days. When she appeared all scrawny and staved, she was older than this cat appears to be, and she was more delicate not just in constitution, but also in manners. We saw her through her long illness up to her last breath, which she took, surrounded by the people who adored her.

But this young cat, turning up just as we are ready to give up so many of our care-taking duties, this is a different story. We have to find her a home. Not ours. For us, it’s time to let go. That’s the harder path, for we automatically chase the care taking, almost as a reflex.

Still, we must hold on for a few days until the neighbor comes home, she of the big heart who has had half a dozen or so cats come and go through her house … all of them having come in search of a new home.

With our kids having taken flight, so to speak, I am more drawn to the birds these days, and less likely to want to encourage the predators for whom every flutter of the wing is a signal for the hunt.

when the universe throws you a furball

So, we have been staring at this face staring back at us for days now…. And just as we are ready to take up the joys of an empty nest and its freedoms from the care and feeding of young and otherwise dependent beings, this ghostly white cat turns up, in the shadow of the black Buddha I placed on the deck days ago, as an invitation of sorts.

pass the ashtray

If you are tired of watching the kind of trash served up by network TV these days, head on over to cable TV for a taste of the good old pre-PC days, and I don’t mean the days before computers. Nope, I mean the days when steak fried in butter was the dinner to have, when swilling down a scotch or gimlet was as matter of fact as taking a gulp form our pricey bottled waters these days, and when pregnant women not only drank, but also smoked…

Yep, the shows glimpsed through the screen of growing smoke are multiplying these days over on the cable channels. There is Matthew Weiner’s (of “Soparanos” fame) Mad Men, on ACM unfolding the business of advertising back in the days when its business was glamor. And then, there is TNT’s The Company, the story of the CIA, glamorized through the haze of smoke and alcohol.

It is as if these stations have taken a cue from the script of Thank You For Smoking. But hey, what’s a little smoke when the writing in these shows is full of fire? A bit of heat and some light on topics that may seem quaint or the domain of days past. And yet, the more smoke is blown across the screen, the more the show seems to distance us in style, the more relevant, or the closer the topics seem to get to us. Marriage, int he case of “Mad Men,” and politics, in the case of “The Company.”

I may never watch network TV ever again. After all, cigarettes and alcohol are not the only threats to your health. Watching a bunch of sniveling “apprentices” grovel for Donald Trump, or a group of women set up to fight over the attention of a guy for whom we have to feel pain for having to choose among them … well, the”reality” shows can harm your brain and impair your ability to think. Then again, that may be the point….

friday follies: aug 3, 07

… and then I wonder why the flock of birds, those demanding regulars, have stopped coming to the feeder, with this new(and perhaps a bit too stuffy?) crowd on the deck…. A bearish Buddha or a Buddhist bear, each an equally unnatural element in their midst.

♣

In New York, public hospitals have taken their health care mandate seriously when it comes to the business of mothering. To encourage breastfeeding of newborns, they have banned formulas in gift bags. Apparently, this move has been coordinated wit the start of World Breastfeeding Week — now, I had no idea that there was even such a week. Checking out the site, briefly as I did, I see that the images of mothers breastfeeding are all form the “Third World,” which is understandable, given the aggressive move of formula makers to (forgive the male language here) penetrate that market for their products.

Still, if we are talking about encourage women in the US to breastfeed, we need to do more than take away the formula. For one, it would be nice if women weren’t if not exactly prosecuted, at least hounded for breastfeeding in public. It seems that in this culture the only publicly acceptable image of breasts are the ones that are oiled or have tassels hanging from them. Which makes me think that the offense int he eye of the beholder is the infant hanging at the end of the breast, and not the breast. Talk about envy….

At any rate, it’s nice to know that women have the right to breastfeed in all 50 states, even if they urged to do so with decorum and after practicing in front of the mirror “to learn to breastfeed so modestly the public will scarcely notice — let alone object.”

♣

Then again, maybe this woman from Arkansas, has the best inside scoop on breastfeeding….