January 6, 2013. Canadians

Overheard at lunch, at a restaurant on Church in San Francisco: "Canadians are a simple people, a friendly people!"

January 2, 2013. Apocalypse

The 'Apocalypse Survival Seminar' sign has reappeared outside a local shop. Does the shopkeeper know something that we don't?

December 28, 2012 A Sign of the Times

A Sign of the Times, outside a shop on Valencia Street: 'Gangrene: Threat or Menace?'

December 22, 2012. Apocalypse.

Outside the local shop where the sign 'Apocalypse Survival Seminar' had appeared for some weeks before the solstice, now appears a sign that reads 'Still here!'

December 14,2012. Crime scene.

I arrived in San Rafael early Friday evening, to find the Transit Hub surrounded with crime scene tape. Evidently there had been a shooting. This was more than disconcerting, with the events in Connecticut fresh in my mind.

AK-47

Late this afternoon, while on my way to a service of Advent Lessons and Carols, I observed, leaning against a wall, a full-size plastic replica of a gun, which strongly resembled an AK-47. The dominant color was electric orange, over which were painted bright green stripes, spaced diagonally three or four inches apart, from one end of the object to the other. I suspect that the object was actually a water-gun.

Royal Treasure

Yesterday at the Legion of Honor Museum, I looked at the Royal Treasures exhibition from the Louvre. There weren't too many other visitors. The pieces, at least half of them small and exquisitely worked, were well worth looking at. I spent some time imagining the people who had them, and used them, when they were new. It is an interesting exercise, to determine which pieces actually were meant for use, and which were meant only to be looked at. Did anyone actually place figs, say, or sugared fruit, or wine, in a remounted 11th century Byzantine cup?

Juggler

Late this afternoon, while I was waiting for a J line streetcar at Market and Church, I observed a young man on a Market Street boarding island, balancing himself on a unicycle. Simultaneously, he was juggling three clubs, and soliciting donations from passing motorists and pedestrians. Quite the most complex street performance I have seen in some time.

A Sign of the Times

A Sign of the Times, outside the front door of a neighborhood second-hand goods shop: "Apocalypse Survival Seminar."

Field Conditions

This afternoon, during a visit to the SF Museum of Modern Art, I walked across a large white room with a black-and-white tile floor, and many fluorescent lights, which rotated slowly, like ceiling fans, as I passed under them. I reached a doorway, where a group of visitors and a docent were watching the lights move. The docent thanked me ("the nice man in the black suit") for activating the installation, which was called Field Conditions. I was wearing a charcoal-grey jacket, red button-down shirt, a dark blue sleeveless sweater, and black pants, sox, and shoes.

The Fall of Civilization

A dream, from February 2006.

I am teaching a class of college students. The wall behind me is lined with books on freestanding bookshelves. The class cries out in alarm. One stack of shelves begins to fall toward me. I turn to stop its fall. "I need some help here," I said. "I can't save western civilization by myself!" The students leave their seats and rush to stop the bookshelves in their fall.

The Undiscovered

Do we create or discover? If a collection of all possibilities exists in the mind of God, then every human act of creation is a selection from that collection. To be a creator is to discover, to reach, a previously unreached, undiscovered, unrevealed area of the mind of God. All actualities and possibilities are eternally present to God. Some of them become present to us in creative work and discovery. Some become present in revelation. God creates out of nothing. We "create" out of what God makes available to us, out of what He allows us to discover. All actualities are revelations.

Foresight

Said by Ernest Stein (age 99) on Prairie Home Companion: "Look forward! Don't look back! And have a martini!" (25 XII 99)

Doctrine

Christian doctrines are transcended by their own content.

Mahler

Mahler's Das klagende Lied: harbinger of the end of the Age of Kings.

One Dharma

According to a friend, there is only one dharma. In Buddhism, we open ourselves to it through satori; in the West (Christianity, et al.), "it" opens itself to us through revelation.

History

The historical Jesus and the historical Buddha can't be discovered; perhaps they are ultimately irrelevant. The ultimate koan? Since Jesus and Buddha had no self, they did not leave traces of self and therefore did not leave much for us to find in history, which is mostly the disastrous record of self, individual and collective.

Magical Thinking

Magical thinking, circular reasoning, and the like, are a few of the results, or manifestations in time, of the extra-temporal nature of spirit.

Church and Sangha

The Church, and the Sangha, are the wakes in time, of the passings of Jesus and Buddha through the world.

Fish

A friend said, that "the world has been going downhill since fish first walked on land!"