GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • The Aristocats, Wolfgang Reitherman, 1970

    This show started with a content warning, maybe for a couple stereotypes that are bit distasteful in today’s sensitive era.

    I could see it being annoying but it seems overblown in today’s plethora of awful options on YouTube. To be honest, the Shang Chi’s lousy execution was more offensive to my Asian Asian American identity than ten seconds of a buck tooth Siamese Cat playing drums with chopsticks.

    Aside from the content warning at the start, this was one heck of a fun animation, Siamese and all!

    Like 101 Dalmations, it tells a fun short story with a few memorable scenes, especially the one of the alley cats (including Shun Gon the Siamese) are really wailing on the music.

    As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost interest in challenging art. I might be able to handle half an hour of an avante garde jazz album while falling asleep, but movies and TV shows are too visceral. I can handle a little cringe, like that Siamese cat, but I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to focus on heavy stuff for 90 minutes (much less 10 hours!).

    I just want well crafted fare that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

    Turns out Disney+ was a godsend for me.

    ䷰䷤

    BTW I found Eva Gabor’s accent on the mother cat delightful, it made the movie feel properly European (if not exactly French). And Phil Harris’s all-American accent was perfect foil as Thomas O’Malley.

  • Travels with Epicurus, Daniel Klein, 2014

    I’ve recently become a big Daniel Klein fan so I borrowed this book without much thought.

    Turns out that it dovetails perfectly into my current kick of learning about the phases of life, especially aging and death.

    The book is a meditation on growing old. It makes sense that a countercultural philosophy student from the 60’s would question our current obsession on everlasting youth.

    The “Travels” in the title is a stretch — he stays on just one Greek island. But the “Epicurus” part is dead on. Klein is clearly biased towards the gentle hedonism of the philosopher and sees it reflected in world view of the inhabitants on this island.

    He shys away from the gnarly parts right before you expire, but the book is otherwise a fulsome exploration of that season of life when one is no longer young but not yet decrepit.

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    Seems that I’ve developed a syllabus of self-help books for the arc of one’s life.

    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – top notch advice at the start of a career
    • Wild Problems – a framework for thinking about life decisions
    • Midlife – contemplations of viewing life from the middle
    • From Strength to Strength – encouragement to step into the second half of life
    • Travels with Epicurus – embracing the foibles of old age
    • Being Mortal – ruminating on the reality of death
    • The Five Invitations – thoughts on living fully from the perspective of death

  • OPM.36 (notes on) From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks, 2022

    I listened to this book a few months ago and listened to it again after Richard Rohr’s Falling Upwards.

    While Rohr book is explicitly spiritual, Brooks stays within the contemporary self-help genre. He mixes psychology, social studies, ecumenical spirituality, with some actionable exercises.

    Having listened to this book twice, here are some key takeaways:

    A formula for a life of satisfaction is “What-you-have (Divided By) What-you-want”. Unchecked desires will always outpace what you’ve earned, so controlling wants is the key to satisfaction. Acquisition will never lead to happiness.

    Thomas Aquinas has a challenge to search for one’s idols – Money, Status, Pleasure, and Power over others. Rank them in attractiveness and the top item is your idol. Tread carefully when toying with your personal idol.

    As we get older, our quick witted “fluid intelligence” gives way to plodding “crystalized intelligence”. We used to quickly flip through the Rolodex. Now we’re slower, but the mental phone book is much bigger. Instead of fighting the inevitable, we should change our work to fit our older brains.

    We should consider the Hindu concept of Ashramas, the Four Stages of Life (about 25 years each). Start as a child (student), then a householder (prime earning years), hermit (when the grandkids arrive, retreat into wisdom), and finally the wandering ascetic (give everything up for the divine). Most strivers get stuck between the second and third phase. Refusing to enter the hermit phase leads to bitterness as the world leaves you behind.

    To grossly oversimplify the book, Brooks closes with this seven word summary

    Use things, love people, worship the divine.

    This book was worth two listens, but I must admit that audiobooks are a multi-tasking form of consumption. Even though it’s a favorite listen of the year, I haven’t felt compelled to sit down and focus upon the text.

    So, a qualified endorsement for us middle aged folks figuring out “what’s next?”

    ~

    I tweaked my upper back a month ago and a coworker brought up the idea of getting a foam roller. I missed out on this fad over the past decade. Its like having your own personal masseuse. Not perfect, but for $17.13 it’s awesome!

    Here is a video focused on the upper back, and another that included stretches for the armpits.

    As counterpoint, here is a video that questions the efficacy of foam rolling. My takeaway: use the foam roller as a stretching tool, but don’t overdo it. (The channel’s explanation of fentanyl addiction is excellent and depressing.)

    ~

    Örelid, Tjärby, Halland, Sweden, 1930, Mårten Sjöbeck

    ~

    Thanks for reading and please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.

    Justus Pang, RA

  • Being Mortal, Atul Gawande, 2014

    This book is hard (though not as difficult as The Five Invitations).

    We’ve entered a new phase in humanity where most of us will suffer an extended period of dying. Medicine most likely won’t let us just keel over on the sidewalk.

    We need to plan on navigating a harsh decline as time slowly eats away at our bodies.

    The book explores this new phenomena, how we’ve dealt with it in the past century, and proposes better ways for managing our final days.

    Ultimately it’s an upbeat book about a dreadful subject.

    Though it’s gonna take some hard work to make it happen.

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    “A Better Life” (chapter 5) is one of the most inspiring things I’ve read as an architect. It’s a full throated endorsement that small improvements to an environment can improve lives. But as an owner, I am now keenly aware of the operational constraints push against such initiatives. Tellingly, it was a doctor who proposed (and realized) the changes that greatly improved patient outcomes. If we want to stay relevant as an industry, we can’t settle for being as service providers. Effective architecture is not just designing the structure, but challenging the entire system.

  • Wild Problems, Russ Roberts, 2022

    Should you do something that will change you forever?

    Get married, have kids, become a vampire? Once it’s done, nothing will stay be the same. And you can’t go back.

    How can you assess that decision before making the fateful step?

    The book is great at laying out the dichotomy between wild problems and tame problems. A simple cost benefit analysis is fine for figuring out the best method to get your stuff to New York.

    But should you move to NYC? That’s a wild problem.

    Wild problems are challenging because they ask what you want to become. Wild problems probe your dreams.

    Unfortunately, defining the question is much easier than finding the answers. Plumb your core values and hold fast to them. View your life within the context of your relationships and community. (In podcasts Roberts admits that he has transitioned from an economic libertarian towards a temperamentally conservative worldview.)

    Fundamentally, you just won’t know what your future altered self will judge the results. It can go well — it can go horribly. At some point, you make a leap of faith. But stay flexible and adjust in mid flight.

    Fortunately one doesn’t come across many wild problems. Hopefully most of them are in my past…but the kids have all theirs in the future.

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    I shouldn’t get too cocky, the gods love to throw wild problems at fools who have settled into comfortable circumstances.

  • The Five Invitations, Frank Ostaseski, 2017

    This book explores the question of living fully from the zen perspective of one who has worked closely with death and trauma.

    • Don’t Wait
    • Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing
    • Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
    • Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things
    • Cultivate Don’t Know Mind

    It’s a long read, but worth the effort. I ought to listen to it again. But it’s heavy.

    One day (like it or not) I’ll be back.

    ䷜

    I heard about this book from the excellent episode 204 on Risk Parity Radio.

    ䷁

    Sometimes I imagine writing something that leaves a lasting impact.

    A book like this reminds me of the cost.

    Nah, I’m good.

  • Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It, Daniel Klein, 2017

    As a sucker for collected aphorisms, this is the perfect format — aphorisms with commentary!

    A thin thread connects the essays from piece to piece, but there is no overarching narrative to this book as Klein meanders through a variety of philosophers and their thoughts.

    I enjoyed having the meaning of life be the driving motive of this book. Though of course, philosophy doesn’t readily grant such a simplistic deliverable.

    (But at least he didn’t get mired in the arcane elements of this field.)

    In the end, maybe the search is what counts.

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    I started relistening to it, but got sucked onto other fare. One day, I should re-read this book, preferably with my eyes.

    If I were to create a 5 point scale for books it would be

    1. Didn’t bother to finish
    2. No plans on rereading it
    3. Should reread it one day
    4. Read this book twice
    5. Have reread this multiple times

    3/5

  • 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies, Raymond Smullyan, 1983

    I stumbled into the midst of a forty year old debate.

    I enjoyed his puzzle books and his book on Taoism.

    The Tao is Silent dipped its toes into polemics, but 5000 BC waded into the melee.

    Smullyan tackles a variety of philosophical topics.

    Most of it was over my head.

    I enjoyed his chapter of short “Miscellaneous Fragments” (I’m a sucker for aphorisms), and I understood just enough to persevere to the end of the book.

    From my dim perspective, he seems to be taking on the logical positivists and moralists on their terms and arguing for a fuzzier more Eastern view of the world.

    In that vein, it may be a less personal and more rigorous extension of The Tao is Silent.

    But I’m not surprised that it hasn’t been reprinted and I won’t be surprised if I don’t revisit this book — unless I stay on this philosophy kick.

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    pushing upward has supreme success
    one must see the great man
    fear not

    It’s time for GEB.

  • V is for Vulnerable, Seth Godin, 2012

    My boy was curious about the book, so I read it to him, as Seth recommended in the postscript of his introduction.

    Per the subtitle, it’s an “ABC for grownups”.

    This book is distilled Seth.

    If you follow his work, it’s nothing new — a collection of his key maxims, with colorful illustrations by Hugh MacLeod.

    It embodies the “simple not easy” model, discarding the customary fluff that self-help authors use to make the “simple” feel less “not easy”.

    I like Seth, but I’m not an tech-gig artist-entrepreneur so much of his work isn’t for me. I appreciate his gracious demeanor though I fear I’m overlooking a catastrophic deficiency in his optimistic worldview.

    Oh well. Until I figure out the source of my nagging discomfort, I’ll keep saying that Seth is the great self-help artist of this era.

    My two Godin favorites are the Dip and Linchpin. This book comes close to that top pairing.

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    I should write a book of 26 maxims.
    But of what subject?
    One day.

  • The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton, Selick, Elfman, 1993

    A CEO experiences a midlife crisis and attempts a bungled corporate takeover before returning to his company to their core competencies

    (He also finds true love.)

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    The kids loved it.

    Great visuals and we’ve been playing the soundtrack on repeat for the last three weeks.