Thursday, November 30, 2006

A WALK DOWN MEMORY GRAIN

Michael Leddy, my new fave over at Orange Crate Art has written a great piece on "granularity" - the importance of breaking things down to their constituent parts.

It is so simple and so insightful, something it's taken poor Blue Mandy thirty-four years to figure silly: DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BIG THINGS little boys and girls. THINGS MAY, or probably, MAY NOT work out. But give the anxiety a break. Break things down to what is manageable today.

OC also has a poignant piece re: Ralph Ellison, a 20th Century giant if ever there was one. That post got me thinking about the power of memory and place. I've been trying to remember the name of a certain Boba place in the San Gabriel Valley that's magical. But I forget the damn name!!!

I also had forgotten the name of a special place in San Francisco where I had one of my best, recent meals. But then I found it: Burma Superstore. But like the Boba place, the only way to be sure memory "serves" is to return and luckily, I remember the location, kind of, in San Gabriel. But it never is the same as trying something the first time.

PS: LifeHack, the blog which published Leddy's piece also has excellent piece on the power of a good attitude. Worth checking out (I will in further detail once I turn in my first big grad school final paper tom. on the little subject of freedom, liberty, technology and social movements as seen in the Knowledge Good Ecology movement, of which the organization, CPTech (my paper's subject) is a leader. That's what you get when studying under just the most famous sociologist since the 19th Century Emile Durkheim, USC/Annenberg's Manuel Castells)

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Book of Job 30:15-18

In dreams, in visions of the night
when deepest sleep falls upon men,
while they sleep in their beds, God makes them listen,
and his correction strikes them with terror.
To turn a man from reckless conduct,
to check the pride of mortal man,
at the edge of the pit he holds him back alive
and stops him from crossing the river of death.

The power of Uncle Sheriff, let's just call it hope, or the destructiveness of man's basic nature. You decide which is stronger.

PS: Just don't ask Dr. Stranglove or the folks kidnapped regularly in Sri Lanka (home of Free Culture fave Maya Arulpragasam)