The Blue Notebook
Saturday, 31. October 2009, 20:29:47
Just some random thoughts I've had over the past days.
I've left out anything truly X-rated or which would get me
arrested.
I.
There's been a commercial on TV running for quite some time
now for Existenz male enhancement pills. Existenz is sort of
like Viagra or Cialis but is evidently made out of some natural
substance, and like the other more pharmaceutical types is
supposed to help a man get a good erection. In some way too
it is supposed to arouse women. In the commercial, a man and
a woman sit on a couch. The man proceeds to talk about how
he was sceptical at first but then took Existenz and really
found it worked for him. REALLY found it worked for him, if
you know what I mean. His significant other ends up talking
about how it has really improved their love life. But during
the first half of the commercial she sits there with this
sort of stupid smile on her face, looking back and forth
between her husband and the camera.
I can just imagine being the director of that commercial.
"Okay. Now in the first part of this I want you to just
sit there and smile real big. You know, like you've just
had so many orgasms that you're brain dead."
There is an ironic element to this commercial too that
always gets to me as I watch it, inasmuch as existenz
was also a philosophical term used by Karl Jaspers (among
others.)
"Okay, Karl. In this part just sit there in the
chair and pretend you've just philosophized
your dick off."
II.
My mom seems to have this idea that French people don't
bathe and that France is dirty. I guess she must have
picked that up from a few people she knew along the road.
It's always dangerous to make generalizations from a small
sampling. And yet that is almost always what happens in any
type of racial or ethnic prejudice. That is why anthropology
as a discipline always makes a point for the researcher to go
into the field and conduct their investigations. There may
be some value in armchair research in some cases -- Emile
Durkheim seems to have done some significant work without
hardly ever leaving his library. But there is no doubt that
research in the field is the best way to learn about "the
other." It is important too when looking at another culture,
the Culture of Visitation, to put away as much as possible
the preconceptions and prejudices of our own culture, the
Culture of Orientation. It is truly difficult doing that.
But my view is that the best way is to release ourselves
to an open and natural curiosity. Curiosity is the root
of knowledge.
If a place like Paris is dirty, well then so is New York.
And while the whole bathing thing certainly has a cultural
aspect, that aspect is really more historical. In Elizabethan
times, for example, it was considered to be unhealthy to
bathe too often; and of course in the past not all apartments
or houses had the immediate convenience of piped-in water.
But for the most part I would guess that these days bathing
in most cultures is more a matter of personal choice.
NOTE TO SELF: Take a shower tomorrow.
III.
I wonder how many honorary degrees the Dalai Lama has by
now. And I wonder where he keeps them all.
IV.
"It is precisely because our present life is so
inseparably linked with desire that we must make
use of desire’s tremendous energy if we wish to
transform our life into something transcendental."
-- Lama Thubten Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra
Next week my little check comes in. And I will go downtown
and have a few drinks and then go to Thai on 1st and get
carry-out. It has become a ritual for me over the past
months. I always feel such a sense of peace sitting there
in the restaurant, having a beer, watching Chin dart to
and fro between the scant customers, looking at the little
statues of elephants and such and the photo of monk Loung
Po Wan on the wall.
Come to think of it I might skip going to the Satellite for
those drinks. The place is always so depressing -- the Desolate
Ones. And I have been among them.
V.
I watched The Assassination of Jesse James the other night.
It was the second time I had seen it. The movie has such
a sense of karma about it, like James' whole life had been
written ahead of time by some Eastern city-slicker tabloid
writer.
And just who has written my life? I'll leave that --
WIDGETIZE
gdare # 31. October 2009, 20:41
As for bathing, people believed bathing too often would make skin too thin and disease will enter
"Take a shower tomorrow"
edwardpiercy # 31. October 2009, 20:46
"people believed bathing too often would make skin too thin and disease will enter"
I've never known the exact reason for that craziness but that sounds like a good explanation. They at one time too thought that the bubonic plague was transmitted through the water or a "miasma of the air." Wrong on both counts.
gdare # 31. October 2009, 21:02
Man: It reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyy helped me (with a wide smile).
Woman (smiling even wider)....
edwardpiercy # 31. October 2009, 21:11
Stardancer # 31. October 2009, 22:53
to an open and natural curiosity. Curiosity is the root
of knowledge."
That is so, so true. How do we find answers if we don't ask questions? And where do questions come from, but from curiosity?
Questioning has been very much discouraged in my life. The exception was my dad, who told me, "Question everything." And, "Think."
Questioning leads to truth.
Truth leads to freedom.
edwardpiercy # 31. October 2009, 22:58
Yes -- knowledge, truth, freedom -- the best of the Enlightenment ideals.
Oh, Happy Halloween, too!
Stardancer # 31. October 2009, 23:46
ellinidata # 1. November 2009, 01:12
the first half of the commercial she sits there with this
sort of stupid smile on her face, looking back and forth
between her husband and the camera.
* takes notes to watch the poor actress who accepts a crappy commercial o pay her rent, instead of living in a homeless shelter *
if mom is in her 70's then she met people that most probably warmed water on a wooden stove to take a bath... sometimes that alone can make the process a not so easy one..
I grew up in small villages ,
where the indoor plumbing or electricity wasn't available.
During the summer we did swim in the near by river and got a good wash but in the winter we did wash our hair once a week... Now that my life is day and night since then , i just see people in poverty with love and understanding..
I had a student in my classes (when I was practicing teaching) and she was always dirty, later I did found out ,that she was living in a house with another 30 immigrants. No wonder her appearance.
Do you know that there are Greeks to this day living in one room (the whole family) and they buy clothes just before they travel to Greece to show that their life is a "good one" even if they sell hot dogs at the corner in a snow storm in NYC?
When I bought my first house in America my late mom told me "America gives loans and everybody can succeed" of course she did see these people that were removing price tags from their clothes before they board planes.. to her they looked successful...
I wrote too much and 99.9% is off-topic,
I hope you don't mind if I do not edit it..
All I wrote is a fact.
Do you know something Eddie?
your posts were always loved for a reason...
you are such creative thinker it hurts me to know
that times come that,
you walk away on us!
Good to have you back!
edwardpiercy # 1. November 2009, 02:08
If I do walk away, it's usually not on purpose. This for whatever reason is what I do now. I thought I would be working on my dissertation by this point. But I write instead. And in doing that I have done enough fiction now that it gives me a feeling of having accomplished something in life.
It may all be written into eternity. But I write here on the walls of Opera and for all of you firstmost and the tomb is never sealed.
ellinidata # 1. November 2009, 02:11
PainterWoman # 1. November 2009, 13:00
I always thought that water had to be brought from a well and heated one bucket at a time and that it took 40 buckets to fill the wash tub. Because it was so much work, that's why people only bathed once a week, or a month. First the wife bathed, then the husband, then each one of the kids, two at a time if they had several. By the time the last person bathed, the water was cold and dirty.
Now is that photo Thai on 1st or the Satellite? It's too bright and airy to be the Satellite. The inside looks nice. I'd sit by the window to watch the people passing by.
edwardpiercy # 1. November 2009, 14:24
Yes, it's Thai on 1st. The light just seems to filter in. After dark their lights are very mellow -- but not so incredibly dim so that you can't see your food. The Satellite is a typical bar. I like it but the people there depress me. And the ones in late afternoon while I wait for Thai to open at 5:00, they seem not all that much different than me, older to very old and on social security. But so many of them are hard-core alcoholics. Maybe that explains the depressing part. Most of the bars I've gone to in my life might have some heavy drinkers but they are all people with a life. Most of the ones in the Satellite just seem to live there, like some outer ring of Hell in Dante. Compared to that Thai on 1st is truly nirvana.
PainterWoman # 1. November 2009, 14:40
Haven't been there in a while, probably more than two years, because they started having Karaoke during the early evening when I'd go. Personally, I'd rather hear just the juke box occasionally playing.
edwardpiercy # 1. November 2009, 14:55
These days if I go out for a few drinks I prefer to go late afternoons and then head home to eat by suppertime.
The name Peppys sounds familiar for some reason but I can't exactly place it in my mind. Do you know Long Wongs in downtown Temple? I used to love late afternoons there, the AC going full blast and no one in the place hardly. And DEFINITELY great buffalo wings, although I usually wouldn't eat in the afternoons. Me and my girlfriend Machell went there one night after an REM concert.
PainterWoman # 1. November 2009, 15:01
I went to Long Wong's once and, yes, the wings were great. Haven't been that way in about three years now but I'm assuming it's still there.
edwardpiercy # 1. November 2009, 15:14
That's the first thing a newbie in Phoenix learns. Real quick. Especially when going for job interviews. LMAO.
PainterWoman # 1. November 2009, 15:20
edwardpiercy # 1. November 2009, 15:23