Spring

It's Spring, so what? The meaningless solution to a calculation in spherical geometry that may or may not have anything to do with you or your garden. The soil temp in ours is stuck at about 45 degrees and although I planted radishes today, any attempt at shovel work would be disasterous since the mud doesn't know anything about Equinocci. That's all just as well though because even in the 15 minutes it took to plant radishes, I was already completely relapsed into my gardening addiction and questioning why in the god-given world I ever thought I wanted to go back to school and trade dirt under my nails for nail-biting and pencil pushing on exams, intimate knowledge of earthworms for headscratching and brain twisting to write silly papers. Really it would be better to work with earthworms than with drug addicts, and, were the truth to be told, either one has about the same rehabilitation potential. Oh well, maybe the addicts will like the vegetables I'm going to grow--or perhaps I could open a "Psychiatric Help" booth down at the end of the driveway like Lucy and sell vegetables on the side.
Hic si stas, hinc eris.

Hope this finds you all digging. お春を大変よろしくに。。。

Words:

Read this:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/precepts.html

Everybody happy?

I did not sleep well last night--the cat had sudden onset idiopathic paranoid schizophrenic howling fits and woke me up repeatedly until all my poor mind could do was to adopt an (also idiopathic) metaphysical bent which left me wondering about the Reason We Are Here. No big religio/spiritual discussion intended--it just occurred to me that the human population is pretty evenly split between those who say our purpose on Earth is nothing more than to maximize happiness and those who take the gloomier view that such behavior leads to perdition. The party of the first part would ideally go about their lives acquiring things, experiencing things: fine wine, good sex, second homes in Vail (sorry, that's about all the Good Life I can imagine this morning), while the party of the second part will typically be found repenting in the church of their choice or in the case of radical left non-believers, telling us why our present behavior will sooner rather than later lead us directly to destruction and extinction. I do have a taste for good wine and have no particular quarrel with good sex, but other than that have never been able to happily sign on to the live-it-up, there's-no-tomorrow, fungal colony-like philosophy. Lemmings are probably as happy as (clams? lemmings?) eating nice Arctic greenery to their little hearts' content until it all goes bad and they stampede into the sea. And those fungal colonies just never do know what is going on when they run out of resources and die off suddenly. I may be speaking from my early brainwashing in the Episcopal Church, but it has always seemed to me that there should be a higher purpose to us (and maybe to fungi as well). And I confess right now I have now idea what "higher" means--I guess it can mean millions of different things to millions of different people. I personally mean something a lot more complicated than Mr. God sitting up there in a big gold chair. However, I do congenitally fall into the scolding camp, being ever ready to speak ill of my fellow humans when I see them doing asinine things like building more coal-fired power plants, but there is part of me that feels a little guilty doing that since I am part of the self-destructive colony too and am going just as rapidly as everyone else to perdition. So why shouldn't I just relax and enjoy it? Still no answer on this one, as usual I have one leg on either side of the fence, which luckily for me is not barb wire. Maybe I will just live it up today as my mind is so exhausted from doing the taxes, editing a legal brief, worrying about whether my daughter will get home safe, and that damn cat's howling all night that what else can a sane person do? (Sane?)

Sites

No great insights to share, to busy memorizing the deatils of endocrine function for a class. I feel like I'm in med school. But here are two sites I used recently for research in another class. Worth looking at:

http://modelminority.com/

http://www.sph.umich.edu/apihealth/2006/antiasian.htm

Blog on vacation (busy filling up brain)

I am again deep in the rigors of counseling and psychology classes, getting lots of yummy new ideas on which I can cogitate and base crazy new curmudgeonly theorems for the rest of my days. I am even learning new words (so late in life) in my "Medical and Psychiatric Aspects of Disability" class. Favorite so far: "iatrogenic" =caused by the practitioner (i.e. grounds for a malpracice suit). Also "cephalomegaly" (enlargment of the head). A class on multiculturalism is giving me some amazing personal insights as to why I flipped off the academic establishment thirty years ago and ran away to the sticks to become a potter (more on that some other day). My third class is online and therefore somewhat frustrating (why can't I just TALK to these people?). It is also a rather boring historical excursion through the dusty rooms of personality and psychotherapy theory, mostly ways of thinking that, if they are still being used by anyone out there, are definitely showing their age, creaking and groaning through the cracks. I'll get through it all if I can keep my sassy mouth shut and my words on task. Gotta keep telling myself academics are people too and they don't know what to make of middle fingers in their faces, nothing personal, it's just the same thing it was all those years ago at Stanford--everyone talks too much and does too little--they need to get out more. But, on with the show.

So bear with me, reader, if there are any of you left. There may be a post from time to time just to make a vain effort at regaining my sanity, but mostly I will have my nose in books and if I come up for air it will be the real thing, outdoors, not stuck in here linking sentences together. I'll be getting enough of that in class. Thanks for your support, as the two wine cooler guys used to say.

The joker and the scold

I was thinking about Buddha and Jesus the other day (just something my mind does to keep itself busy instead of crossword puzzles) and I realized I had never seen a representation of Jesus with a smile on his face whereas all the images of Buddha show him smiling, if not laughing out loud. This Jesus guy really must have been kind of a gloomy fellow, took things a bit too seriously, perhaps weighted down by his responsibility for being The Saviour. I mean really, if you're drowning in the river you'll grab at anything that floats as a life preserver, and if Jesus hauls you into the boat you're going to be grateful, but after putting up with this morose bearded guy rowing you to shore while telling you in a solemn voice how Father is really not too pleased with you for jumping in the river, you might be better off to dive in again. Did Jesus ever tell a joke? "Hey Peter, how's it hangin'? How's that rock doin'?" "Maggy! Girl you look HOT!!" "Did I ever tell you the one about the loaves and the fishes?" No, let's face it, Jesus was a didactic nerd, given to rolling his eyes heavenward and proclaiming things, asking forgiveness for people who either didn't deserve it or didn't want it. Buddha on the other hand couldn't help smiling because he saw the whole world as a cosmic joke and thought that the more people that got the joke the better. I guess it would be easier to laugh if you lived a long happy life rather than getting nailed to a post and taunted until you die, but you have to wonder about the personalities involved--someone who is nice to everyone and just tries to help them see the light instead of ranting and raving and tipping over money changer tables is going to get along a lot better with the powers that be and probably live long enough to really develop into a whole person. If Jesus hadn't been such an unbendable preachy kind of guy, think of all the wisdom he might have passed on. Thirty-three is just the beginning of the age of wisdom--I personally don't think anyone younger than 50 even knows which side is up. Gotama lived to 80+ and died happily eating a meal with his supporters. Interesting to imagine what would have taken place if Jesus and Buddha met up, maybe if they had to share a straw pallet in a crowded inn somewhere in the Syrian desert. They probably would have had a lot in common, but The Buddha might have regarded The Christ as more than a little immature with a dangerous level of attachment to the world. On the other hand J-boy probably would have considered B-boy overly apathetic and dangerously complacent regarding all the bad things the government was doing. Jesus was an activist, a revolutionary, Buddha a quiet professorial type. I guess, upon reflection, the world will always have both types, and perhaps that is the way it should be. We need people to shout out at injustice, meditating it away does not always work. And we need people that can rise above it all and not always be pushing situations to the limit.

Next time: more thumbnail sketches of major religious figures--"Mohammed: The Man Behind the Portrait!" and "Joseph Smith--Inventor of Science Fiction!"