Pieces from a World Intact • 11 October 2008

Warm short October day with golden glow in the light and dried leaves in the breeze. I sit an my old metal desk next to the tall tall window that looks on to a square of warm humming-green lawn and beyond that Royce hall (Josiah R being another hero, I’ve been remembering). A 10-by-12 square of light flashes on to the 8-by-10 pinup calendar on my wall (my idea of pinup is a vibrating Rothko, red and orange). It's a woman across the quad with her Macbook.

Driving home Tuesday, sitting in two-way gridlock on Ohio around Sepulveda. In the rearview a woman in a dusty Corolla shakes her head just as John McCain’s voice comes through my radio saying “Obama and his cronies.” Roll down the windows of my Civic, listen to the debate in surround soud.

Jasmine tea, with little flowers.

Wednesday after practice, a two inch neon green ficus leaf attached to the window. With swaying antennae and a perfect trapezoidal little green head. Forget human “creativity” (derivatives, accounting, executive powers) and the messes it makes. I thought evolutionary creativity like this only happened in the fecund tropics? Brilliant little green bug hypnotizes me with its dancing antennae. Good trick.

Took part in pre-dawn Stephen Colbert Practice a few mornings. These are important times and he is, well, just a little bit perfect. So repressed! And the almost-irrepressible grin. Still, Colbert Practice hilariously compromises one-pointedness practice in a way that reading the NYT in the mornings does not—very intresting to see my mind produce cutesy one-liners while supposedly focused on putting feet behind the head and shit. Probably something like dreams and meditation-retreat epiphanies—the one-liners prove to be worthless when you look at them again back in beta state. Guess my Stephen Colbert Practice just is not very advanced. (Watch this.)

What else? I just slept 12 hours. The Editor has had a cold all week. Maybe this is my immune system fending it off. Later I’d like to write a little bit about what’s going to happen to ashtanga in the coming economic hard times, and do a Patriarchy Redux, and also come back to that Budhismo y Yoga post that Juan Andres put together recently. For now, ethical consumerism. Suddenly, my dissertation is quaint. I don’t mind.

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