Life

5 Thoughts: The Solstice Eclipse

1. A CORRECT USE OF FACEBOOK is evidenced by all the pictures my friends took of last night’s eclipse. (Also nice: Chanukah’s virtual latke banquet.)

2. The overhead wonder was no less wondrous for being swathed in translucifying cloud at 0145 local (PST).

3. A good many of my friends are pagans, poets, artists or other types of beautiphile whose inspiration at times like these is also wondrous. I am supremely thankful, at these seasons no less than others, to be surrounded by so many intelligent and creative people.

4. Speaking of which, solstice is a good time to ponder cycles and time in general: say, how life is lived by the big circle in the universe instead of the little one on the wall.

5. Winter solstice even more pondered: how the dark reaches its depth for one half of the world, even as the other experiences summer’s greatest light. Omnia vincit lux! and whatever you celebrate, celebrate the living daylights out of it.

Life

Pithyism #6-7/8

EVERYBODY IS A BIT LOONY, until you understand their reasons.

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Fezzini for Foreign Policist

“HA HA! YOU FOOL! YOU fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia!‘ But only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha–”
— Fezzini, The Princess Bride. Granted, he was trying to start a war at the time…

Life

Viral Into Life

WE’VE ALL SEEN THOSE VIDEOS of people semi-spontaneously bursting into song in public places, to the bemusement, amusement, and eventual participation of the earshot citizenry.

Let’s take it offline, folks. Bust into song. Right now. Wherever you are and with whoever will join you.

Spontaneous worldwide singing may just be what saves us all. We’ve tried everything else, right?

?, Life

Fear of Fear Ourselves

WE ARE FROZEN INTO SOCIETAL uselessness through fear of liability: who’s responsible, what are the ramifications, an obsessive-compulsive moral handwash. Perhaps that’s one reason scapegoating is so popular: release of tension. Everything flows when the ice is cracked with a lusty “Get ’em, boys!”

?

More Than A Game, Less Than A War

THERE ARE SPORTS WHICH CALL forth the most primal emotions in order to exorcise them for the good of the community — sports which make lesser men wonder and cringe, and old women pick up a frying pan — sports which proclaim a national character unchanged by time and politing circumstance — sports which sort of make me wish I was the sort of man who plays them. Forged among the Orkney Islands where men wrest their very living from the hoary North Sea …. Ba’.

(If you’re reading this on Christmas or New Year’s Day, watch it live at http://www.thelongpartnership.co.uk/profile/orkney_webcam.php or http://www.visitorkney.com/webcams.asp.)

Writ

What Do You Say To A Partly Naked Woman?

SHE WAS WALKING UP THE hill toward us through the sea of sprawled bodies surrounding the stage at Laguna Seca Speedway, where some friends and I were enjoying three days of the Grateful Dead and Los Lobos in the summer of 1988.

My own life was at a crossroads. I was coming from a year aboard the Golden Hinde II (many stories there, oh yes) but hadn’t decided whether to hitchhike to Alaska and work on a fishing boat or return to the Northern California Renaissance Faire and eventually settle into landbound life.

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