The Tsar's finger

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/580-the-legend-of-the-tsars-finger

Oh

R Kelly . . .

Trapped in the Closet ch 1

cute

http://www.funnyfoodart.com/

Get lost

lost lectures

Hope

Obama's reelection victory speech 2012

"I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting."

Words

You have no enemies, you have no friends, you only have teachers.

In the particular lies the universal.

here.

Invocation to Patanjali

yogena cittasya padenaa vacam

To purify the mind, the consciousness (citta), Patanjali gave the science of yoga (yogena) to us. To purify our use of words (pada) and speech (vaca), he gave commentary on grammar to us, so that our use of words and way of speaking is clarified, distinct and pure.

malam sarirasya ca vaidyakena 

To remove the impurities (malam) of the body (sairira), he gave us the science of medicine (vaidyakena).

yopakarottam pravaram muninam 

Let me go near the one who has given these things to us.

patanjalim pranjalir anato'smi

Let me bow down (anato'smi) my head with my folded hands (pranjalir) to Lord Patanjali.

[In order to meditate on the Patanjali's work we are then given his form]

aahu purusakaram 

From the hand up to the head he has the shape (karam) of a human (purusa).

sankha cakarasi dharinam 

In his hand he is holding the conch (sankha) and the dosc (cakra). 

sahasra sirasam svetam

On top of his head (sirsam) [because he is the incarnation of Adishesha, the greatest cobra] he has a thousand (sahasra) bright/white (svetam) hoods of the cobra.

pranamami patanjalim

I bow down to that Patanjali. 

listen
commentary 1
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just between you & me

cm . . . as you're my only follower and I am about to embark on an attempt at something, I know not what exactly, please excuse the pastiche of randomness that I hope to lay before your solitary eyes. x

30 days

I just watched an episode of thirty days in which a couple, middle classers, lived on minimum wage for 30 days. From my window on their world it seemed to me that the main difference between actually poor people and middle class tourists (pourisists?) is that the MCs complained about it a lot. Nothing in the episode really surprised me content-wise but it did make me think about the difference between working class and middle class expectations and how powerful that difference is in shaping what people not only feel they deserve but also in framing what they strive for and how they go about it.

Speaking for others

Here I go doing it and I think this is something we all do to some degree but it troubles me somewhat. I have some weird rich ore vein of honesty running through me that is UNhelpful. I cannot agree to a proposition without ironing out and declaring all exceptions. This makes it exceedingly hard to have an interesting intellectual discussion that goes anywhere. It's like having or being the hall monitor pointing out every deviation from the prescribed code of honesty. And we all know how that frees up creativity to explore novel ideas. Or, not ALL of us I must be hall-monitorly honest and say.

And so I wonder, is this rigid honesty self-blockading. Getting co-conversants to agree with banal true minuitae constantly interrupts the flow of a wave that might actually take us somewhere. And cutting off someone not only bogarts their wave but ends up giving them the feeling (it seems from the outside - full disclosure now ; )) that there is little point in pursuing the topic or that for some reason they cannot articulate they need to dig in and really insist their point through whatever devious and confusing labyrinthine means necessary to maintain a sense of their own superiority or rightness.

I create a tiny pen from which to lust after the landscape of stimulating discussion. And finished my build there I sit, longingly looking out at all that I have made sure to keep myself from.

Porridge makes me happy

And why?
The ritual of it. For someone as leaf-buffeted-in-a-storm as I am it is a kind of an anchor to each morning from which to build a day. From the base of this warm, nourishing, and actually predictable part to a day I can then happily surrender to the wind-whipped vivid ephemerality of the day blustering me about. Robed in chaos the still centre remains safe, content with ritual's intangible mooring line that promises a new chance each day. Like Odysseus strapping himself to the mast to hear the Sirens' song I can take the wild, mad, unpredictable beauty of my existence. I can accept as Paul Klee says that "a single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller" because I know that it will come again. The sun of the new morning rising up over the porridge bowl that welcomes the possibility of all that is or may be.