Posted 5/18/2002 03:31:37 PM
...
trading joy to miss pain,
i doubt i'll ever fit this pattern.
filling and breaking seems the natural flow of life,
having given up all concepts of best,
walking in the more difficult tensions of honesty,
for fear that burying the master's coin will squander life,
more than the potential soiling that seems inevitable with investment,
passing time by repressing treasures not mine to possess, only mine to give, this seems a travesty.

whether tragedy, or fable,
comedy, or drama,
boring B-flick, or passionate spectacle,
life demands to be lived,
and if real, life finds all of these.

i want to awaken in morning silence,
be lost in afternoon conversation,
be seduced by evenings that end too soon.

i want to smile at my ineptness,
find laughter amidst my failure,
find hope when all seems vanity.

i want to lose myself in the gifts,
of real community, of family, of anonymity, of you.

i want to continue to arrive in this place
without ever fully realizing that i am here.
i want to loosen my grasp and awaken to life.

Posted 5/16/2002 09:41:28 AM

Posted 5/16/2002 09:27:05 AM
tired. saw ep.II at 12:01am. negative thoughts: dialogue a total disappointment... that can be excused to a certain threshold given the lucas tradition... but come on he is a billionaire with a global franchise... get some dialogue people writing for you, george! the bad dialogue in this film exceeded the lucas threshold. early action sequences filled with convenience to the point of being childish. my broad brush negative critique: explicit and convenient... the ingredients at the heart of a kids show like the power rangers.

the only real power that i felt in this film came from the battle scenes. wow. i could have watched two hours of the AOTC score and straight battle scenes. this is what lucas does best. as wooden and empty as his characters and dialogue are (is it windu that makes jackson look so bad or is he really a horrid actor now?) his action sequences are visually nuanced and majestic--though not in the way gladiator or crouching tiger were these (after all this is cgi sci-fi).

anyway, the long and short of it for me is simple: the first hour+ of AOTC seems a parody of itself (the silly orchestral movement in the first kissing scene, the forced, stale relationship between the padawan and his master obi wan, the thin whiney character of "i'm angry" pubescent anakin, the terribly uncreative "star wars diner" and "star wars nightclub" set concepts, et al). seeing a band of jedi fight and a clone army in full battle was cool, but come on story telling is the basis for great movies not brilliant technology! that is all i can say without blowing it for those who have not seen it yet.

may the force be with you.

Posted 5/14/2002 08:09:22 PM

reverence

without reverence education is just information and technique,
educators mere service providers,
family is convenience,
love is an exchange of needs met,
politics is simply corrupt empowerment,
friendship is usefulness,
art is waste, artists sloth,
without reverence hope, meaning, direction and love,
are reduced to manipulation, contrivance, convenience and control.

there is more to be had than these.

even irreverence is reverence,
an opposing reverence,
our challenge is not the lose of one,
but of both.
after (ir)reverence is human life possible?

Posted 5/14/2002 07:58:16 PM
...moods, fantasies, memories, longings, passions, emotions, and fears. When you glimpse a person's soul, you see that person in ways they might not even know themselves. The kind of individuality that soul generates... is a mysterious emergence that is seeded in eternity and is truly limitless. The power of this individuality is not forced but emanates from its own depth and inherent veracity.... Our problem in relationships is how to have an ongoing, intimate life with another person at the same time as we invite this completely unpredictable depth to have a significant place in our lives. It isn't easy to live with the power and mystery of another's soulful personality.... The only solution that I know is for both parties to respect soul, to acknowledge the mystery that is inescapeably contained in the soulful life, and to come to treasure that very unpredictability.

Posted 5/14/2002 07:00:18 PM

things get weird.
it's ok.
that's life.

Posted 5/14/2002 06:59:20 PM

there is no such thing as an "unmediated presence" to be experienced in some manner. to be human is to be within a rubric of mediation relationships. so while we claim, enact and look toward the unmediated father of the unmediated kingdom these acts of the kingdom, this enacting of the impossible, never, in this human life we all share, encounters the father or his kingdom as pure presence. we are always looking through a glass darkly; always already pilgrims in a strange land; always we find ourselves in the grip of grace; always finding our way by faith.

Posted 5/14/2002 06:46:49 PM
i met mark w. at axxess a couple of weeks ago. he started blogging.

Posted 5/14/2002 06:42:54 PM
fyi, i have the e.II and spiderman VCDs... thanks spy1d...

Posted 5/14/2002 06:34:07 PM
went to see chelsea walls last night. i was surprised to see it playing at the magnolia when i went to their site yesterday. we have a 6 day run here. i wanted to see it at SXSW, but the whole $700 wrist band thing kinda got in the way... i enjoy hawke's work. this is definitely an art film. not going to make a noticeable splash on the mainstream--probably not even the indie art house circuit. the characters were not developed enough. there was a lot of building up to nothing. building up is a nice way to put it. it is almost that there was good ground work to begin building up. this is the way of films of this ilk, but i hate to feel so much potential only to see it played out in a semi-inspired collage of story telling. the DV shooting was good. the scenes with uma were especially enchanting, though her character was paper thin.

Posted 5/13/2002 12:40:56 PM
The Catholic Church is acting like the mob and should be procecuted as such says, Jeffrey Anderson, an attorney who recently filed three racketeering lawsuits in which he argues that the Church acts like a crime family. These RICO suits (Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations) could create serious financial consequences and certainly contribute to the overall loss of practical authority the Church is able to maintain in the USoA. I doubt that anyone foresaw the RICO laws being turned on the HRCC. @

Posted 5/12/2002 10:13:14 AM
this whole official hatred of castro "the great big bad communist boogie man" is so cold war. i mean, come on, there are bigger fish to fry. open up the frickin' island so that we can vacation with the rest of the world. i'm glad to see carter forcing the old guard USoA out of their comfort zone with a little "rr" in cuba. somebody needs to appoint carter secretary of state in the next administration. or maybe we should setup a college of former presidents that helps lead until they die. that would be cool. they get paid and protected anyway. why not? it should be part of the presidential gig. while ex-presidents are out making moola with the carlyle group they could try to broker some peace deals and build lasting diplomatic relationships...

i hope carter at least comes home with some havana fuentes.

Posted 5/12/2002 02:46:11 AM

Ok, people, you thought that Episode II was the big release for this week... it is actually number two on the list of major releases for the week of May 12. Stephen Wolfram's long awaited (literally years "late!") magnum opus, A New Kind Of Science will be released on May 14th!!!! This is an undertaking of massive proportions that may very well be the next simple opening for a massive reenvisioning of math, science and meaning.

For those who think they recognize this guy... yes, he is the famous boy-genius who went on to make his fortune as the creator of Mathematica. With the publication of A New Kind Of Science Stephen is positioning himself to be the next epoch shaping scientist with kitchen table name recognition. Will he accomplish this? We shall begin to see in two days.

Until then, some of you might enjoy reading this old Forbes article from 2000. I remember it as fascinating.