breakingsod.com

Arundhati Roy writes of her journey amongst the rebels in the Indian jungles and of the ravaging of India’s resources by government and big business. Beautiful, eloquent writing and a telling exposure of the horrific shortsightedness of greedy humans in their hurry to profit at the expense of the world they live in.

Her article on Democracy’s Failing Light is well worth perusing, too.

‘Could it be that democracy is such a hit with modern humans precisely because it mirrors our greatest folly—our nearsightedness? Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do) combined with our inability to see very far into the future makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost.’

Sam and I took a happily gigantic pile of library graphic novels to the Wallingford Chocolati for an early evening’s munch, slurp and read fest.

The place was packed, so we ended up at the only available table, in the loft in the back.. Which, apparently, is where two-timing Christian girls hang out to skype their dates. It’s not like I was evesdropping, seriously, the woman was talking so loudly the entire room couldn’t help but hear every sordid detail!

She spent a good 20 minutes flirting with the poor fool, assuring him that he wasn’t too old, even if her parental units thought so and then cut him off to greet her arriving posse of study buddies, put her long, carefully tousled tresses up and giggle over whether she should tell the boy she really likes to kiss on about the others.. One of the other girls asked if she was going to tell the boy she’d just got all hot and bothered on skype about her other dates. Her reply? Snort(seriously, a bonafide snort!)! ‘Why? He’s a jerk, he doesn’t deserve to know!’

And then proceeded to talk about going to church in the morning.

Gah. At least the green tea latte was good.

SJ Tucker, with horns.

Click on the thumbnail, so you can enjoy the horns in all their horny glory.

Don’t forget to buy Ravens in the Library!

It’s a glorious collection of tales by awesome(even renowned) authors and will raise monies for the singer’s hospital bills.

My latest illustration. So far, my favorite in a series of illustrations I’m creating from Catherine Valente’s novel Palimpsest.

Click on thumbnail to see a larger picture.

A debate(although Trungpa Rinpoche hardly gets a word in edgewise) between Krishnamurti and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

View it on U Tube. Hang in there through part one, things get infinitely more interesting as they really start enjoying themselves.

Having been raised on Krishnamurti’s teachings, it was really amusing for me to watch him debunk formal meditation and to see Trungpa Rinpoche(one of my favorite teacher/authors) beam at him.

I only wish Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche could have taken part. It would have been enlightening to hear them discuss neuroscience and meditation.

Then again, it might have made our ordinary disorderly human brains asplode.

:}

Had a fabulous five day getaway out on the gorgeous Olympic peninsula last week.

Sam and I started out with a day in Port Angeles. I really enjoy exploring a new town with my kid. It’s kind of nice to see things from the perspective of a ten year old-especially one who likes the same sort of things I like.

We played on the beach for hours, browsed the bookstores(quite a well-book-stocked town, Port Angeles), admired and goofed around with the numerous sculptures that adorn the street and waterfronts

We’d cozied up in our little hotel room near the ferry with stacks of books and drawing materials when the gorgeous golden sunset light came seductively slanting in the window.. Somehow(bagels or chocolate usually work), I managed to persuade the foot-weary Sam to go for another little walk with me to capture the loveliness of the world’s turning.

Sooooo purty.

Back at the hotel, we settled in for a snuggly night of reading chapters(halfway through Tailchaser’s song and finishing up Sea of Monsters) and laughing at the monotonous, incessant chirping of the crossing lights, repeating the same call over and over like some deranged wind-up bird.

It was sweet to go to sleep in our little white room, looking forward to meeting Rita at the bustop after breakfast and Delayne at the ferry in the afternoon.

But that’s the next post…

I just found out the translation of ‘The Wind-up Bird Chronicle‘, one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors(Haruki Murakami) was cut down by 25,000 words due to a contract stipulation at Knopf.

Damnit. I want to know what we missed!

Stoopid publishers.

Hurray, a new author to devour! I loved this book. Ben Okri writes beautifully, telling the story of a tender-hearted artist maturing in a Nigerian ghetto compound. His writing plunges you into the horrors endured(or perpetrated) by his characters in a similar way to another of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. It’s an intense and magical portrayal.

I should warn you though, it’s potent medicine. Read it only if you have the fortitude to be shaken and stirred by the passion, brutality and confusion of life.

is a tremendous book. It was recommended to me on Goodreads, by the Murakami fan club.

Really looking forward to the rest of his books!

Goodreads will suck you in.

I hooked Sophie up and now she’s happily cursing me as her day disappears online in bookish delights.

Mine too.

“One of the most important tasks of adulthood is to discover, or to rediscover, the ability to lose oneself. To do this we must understand the difference between unintegration and disintegration. The Chinese expression for orgasm, ‘having a high tide‘, describes this difference quite effectively. In a high tide everything is floating, the self is submerged or dissolved, there is no longer any foothold or point of reference, but it is not chaos. When we are afraid to relax the mind’s vigilance, however, we tend to equate this floating with drowning and we start to founder. In this fear, we destroy our capacity to discover ourselves in a new way. We doom ourselves to a perpetual hardening of character, which we imagine is sanity but which comes to imprison us. Our shoulders get more and more tense.”

Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Mark Epstein, MD.