Saturday XXXXII: Ten Equanimity • 24 February 2008

Ten Freeway—virgin in the empty dark, whore in the crowded morning.; Love and hate; sinner, saint.

Line across the city from beautiful decrepit corner of downtown to seedy taken-for-granted section of beach. Slicing through the rest, violating it, reducing it, taking its measure. I do think of the ten as a temperature-taker and a ruler.

Equanimity question #857: can you have equal involvement, equal perspective when

1. Eastbound in the 6 am dark on a Thursday, driving 82, feeling new, heading for mysore practice (accompanied, loudly, by Hot Chip’s really good new crossover record)

2. Eastbound at 4 on Saturday afternoon, driving 12 (that’s mph), feeling dissipated, heading for MiL practice (accompanied by Justin Timberlake—sitar music in a “you’ll get yours” song turns it into a riff on karma?)?

Yeah, not so much.

But I don’t know the exact score. My head is a fishbowl. Still. Damp—pruny even. Sloshy? I come down off this drug that’s been in me a year and a half and the body wants none of it. Give me give me, give me. Withdrawal headaches, spaciness, days of a funny clenching around the solar plexus. Bring it on! I take it as good, as detoxification, as my body putting a little drama in the mini-transformation. Wonder how long she will keep at it. Soon, she’ll be back to self-regulation.

Links.

● The Stuff White People Like blog just keeps getting funnier. Recent entries: Study Abroad, Gifted Children, Difficult Breakups, Knowing What’s Best for Poor People. Pretty much hysterical. 

● Apropos of the penultimate post. A nicely written, modest, edifying, short piece on Nietzsche. You’ll like it. [via.]

“To inquire into the origin and value of morality is to peer into the hidden recesses of our ambitions and fears, our longings and loathings—to know ourselves.” And so on. I wonder where we’d be now without him—not a pretty thought.

● Relatedly, all great truths begin as blasphemy.

● Story of Stuff revisited: “Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… at an ever-accelerating rate.” – Victor LeBeau (KM said it better, of course).


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