prayer culture goddess love

I was just reading Paul Krugman's blog. The name of the blog is something like "Conscience of a Liberal" but I might be all wrong in that guess.  I admire the guy's thinking. He is a Pulizer Prize-winning economist, a Princeton professor and a columnist for the NY fucking Times. The NYTimes publishes some conservative columnists but not many.  Plus, consider I know jack shit about economics, never took a single course in it.

I would like to believe that studying economics makes things better for humanity. I would also like to believe science makes things better. I know materials management and engineering is behind the invention of new tools like iPads and solar energy.  I know we are going to snuff ourselves and the earth out if we don't stop depleting our resources faster than nature can replenish them. It took millions of years to create the stuff in the earth needed to make a touch-screen tablet and all the cables and equipment to make the internet. And I know I am leaving out most details. This is broadstroke speculation offered as preface to even broader declarations below.

I don't think western humankind is on the right track. And I don't think eastern humankind is on the right track.  I want to believe, i.e. I hope, that some people somewhere are thinking right.  I am sure some humans are thinking right. But the right thinkers do not have a lot of power, connection, clout, whatever it takes to be heard and attended.

I think folks are focussed 'out there', looking at the physical world they 'see' with their eyes but the answer lies 'within' us. Once, a guy I met at a conference who I thought would become one of my best, if not my best, friends said to me, soon after we met, when I had hope for friendship, that he was not sure what inner and outer meant. I had asked, I think, if he thought he was an introvert or an extrovert and he said something brilliant. I thought it was brilliant, anyway.  He said he wasn't sure if 'going within himself' to get his energy, which was how I had defined introversion (going inside one's self to get energized) involved actually 'going into the within contained in his body, i.e. his private thoughts, feelings, reflections' or if he was actually going way out into the cosmos when he paused to contemplate 'within' himself. Within or without.  I thought "I have found a partner in my work, this guy would get my work".

Almost seven years later, I am sure he would get my work. If he would spend enough time with me to get it.  But he hasn't spent any time with me, not enough to count.  He has not become my friend. And I feel stupid as I see myself still deeply engaged, inwardly (whatever that means) with the sense I have that getting to know him and being known by him is a portal I need to cross.

Fuck this.

Shake this.

I think humanity is far, far off course. As far as I can tell, and I freely admit I don't know jack shit, that just about everyone is spinning off course. Lots, even most, do good work. But the work is not out there.  Choose any work in the world that you think is good and, I am sorry to suggest, that work is undertaken in a dysfunctional system.

What if aliens did land here and offer to take every human on earth willing to go with them to a better planet where things were just?  Would you go?  Would you trust aliens offering you a trip to another planet?  How would you decide? The capacity to make such a choice, I believe, is where we huma s should be focussed. Yes, yes, in the mean time, we need roads, water, power, food, so until salvation comes or the second coming of Christ or the first, depending on your religious dogma, or depending on religions I don't know about. We need bus drivers, car mechanics, farmers, caregivers, and tools and power so all that stuff has to keep going. It's like a juggling circus act, where the juggller juggles two completely different sets of things in each hand and then, to really dazzle her audience, after she has the two juggling acts in each separate hand, she gets a third one going using one of her feet kicked up behind her. This planet is millions of simultaneous juggling of energy acts, most essential to survival, many helpful for happiness.  All slightly off kilter, slightly misaligned.

I'd settle for feeling aligned with just one person.

cloud atlas

It would be hard to do justice to this amazing novel in a movie. A friend commented on Facebook that there is too much violence.  Sadly, I think violence has played an overly large role in humanity.

I want to reread Cloud Atlas but I don't have a copy.  Darn.

After the movie, my friend and I decided to walk to Smokey Joe's Bar B Que.  I was going to share some ribs -- just the ribs, no potatoes. Maybe slaw -- this guy's cole slaw is only shredded cabbage, so I can eat that. The ribs are fatty, so loaded with cholesterol. I remember a line from a Jerry Seinfeld episode when a shiksa girlfriend offers him a pork chop and he says 'heart attack on a plate' and I had never known someone who refused pork because of a health reason, not at that time.  I know plenty now, including me.

But geez, I eat to well now. I literally eat no fat or cholesterol. Once in a blue moon won't hurt me.

But Smokey J's (which I think is the correct name) protects me. Twice now I have walked all the way to his shop, about 1.2 miles each way only to find it closed even though it is normally open at the time I go. Today I found a sign, near 8 p.m. indicating he would be closed to next week.  I like it that the guy closes when other stuff in his life matters more than the day's profits. And I am glad the few times this has happened cause I don't need the high fat ribs.

I have rationalized these ri b forays by walking there and back, at least 2.5 miles, but it is a weak rationale.

So then I thought I get some braised chicken at Berkeley Bowl but it was closed. Then I just walked home, kissed my friend good night at my door and had a protein shake.

And now I am going to try to go to bed early -- this is very early for me, cause I am doing a day trip to Sausalito tomorrow, with picnic.  We're taking the ferry from SF. I haven't ridden the ferry from SF to Sausalito since a trip to SF with my then-nine-year-old, now-30-year-old daughter. It was thrilling to pass close to Alcatraz.

I've been to Sausalito a few times, but not on the water in the SF Bay since then.  Cold and wet, I'll still have a happy day.

I can forget I live where I do because I never go anywhere. This weekend, it's tourist trips all over.