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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1. ha ha ha the Stuff White People Like is funny! Now I know what to say to the annoying guy in my team who goes on and on about how he doesn’t have a TV.

   Posted by: V · Feb 24, 01:11 PM · #

2. I have to admit, I REALLY like “What Goes Around Comes Around”. It’s embarrassing, but I went through a phase over the summer where I listened to it like ten times a day.

   Hormones right? I could never take them. I tried a few times when I was younger & irregular. Wouldn’t be that I’d just skip a month and be normal. I’d end up caught in a suspended animation limbo of ever heightening PMS. But I could never make it through even a month’s pack of pills. I tried different kinds, but I always felt “not myself” in all sorts of bad ways. Inhabited. Taken over. Couldn’t deal.

   Posted by: boodiba · Feb 25, 04:40 AM · #

3. What White People Like #61. Welcome to Portland.

   Posted by: mudh · Feb 25, 10:04 AM · #

4. Ha! I love the gifted children, gentrification, and study abroad entries: brutal. And am guilty of promoting TV-free lifestyles, like V’s coworker, which is probably obnoxious. The best entries are about how white people try to distinguish themselves and get a little class superiority over other white people: bicycles are a kind of innocuous in that sense. Bicycles are cute.

   Boodiba, it’s a really good song, isn’t it? Irresistable in its engineering and the emotion JT brings to it. I put it on this morning while A and I were driving the last bit of the 10 Freeway west on the way to practice. Speaking of class distinction though, the video is as lowbrow as it gets, thematically: JT’s girfrient Scarlett runs around on him a bit and her “karmic” return is to die in a fiery car accident. Justin “I was gonna give you my name” (gross) Timberlake became my icon of weeniehood for that. Slimy little boy. Doesn’t he know forgiveness is the new revenge?

   Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 25, 10:26 AM · #

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