GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • Summer, Joe Hisashi, 1999

    In January 2020, the Vegas arts scene was struck with an early tragedy when Alexander Huerta suddenly passed away.

    Given our fears of the incoming pandemic, I skipped his wake, though I left some offerings outside his studio before the world shut down.

    I met Alex in his studio during a First Friday art walk soon after moving to Vegas ten years ago. He was working on a series of collages with old black and white magazine images on a black scratchboard background.

    As an architect, I was struck with the sparseness of the series with its urban perspectives. I lent him an exhibition monograph of black and white collages by Romare Bearden.

    Over the years, I’d deliver old architectural sets to his studio. I was excited to see his work exhibited at the library — some of my drawings had been incorporated into his collages! We enjoyed the occasional chat, where I learned that he used to valet cars at a casino, but taught himself how to paint, rescuing himself from alcoholism with the brush.

    These chats didn’t happen nearly enough, because of the arrivals of my daughter and then her brother. One day, I planned on introducing him to my kids, when they were old enough to understand what it meant, “Here’s a real artist!”

    Then again, the kids see him every day, in two small paintings I picked up from our time together. The best money I’ve spent in Vegas.

    perspective of a black and white collage with the artist in the background.

    February 2020 was a long month, processing the loss and watching the pandemic inexorably work its way towards our shores.

    During that time, I listened to this song on repeat. I was lucky to find something that meshed perfectly with my emotional turmoil.

    In America, Joe Hisaishi is known for his collaborations with Studio Ghibli, but this song isn’t from one of those films. Maybe that’s why it touched my soul. I could imprint this music with my own memories.

    Even though those personal and global tragedies came in winter, I always think of this song when it gets hot.

    The air conditioning kicked on for the first time yesterday.

    Welcome to “Summer”.

    I never reclaimed that book, I should replace my old copy.

  • Basic Structures of Buddhism, R. Eno

    While reading the Bodhicaryavatara, I was struck at its resonance with Christianity.

    It has an intense focus on good and bad (defilement), a clear conception of hell, a strident moral directive evangelize (alleviate suffering), and even included a chapter of detailed logical argumentation to prove the another world is more real than our physical world.

    I did not expect this Buddhist text to rhyme so closely to my experience as a reformed Baptist high schooler — there even multiple passages that even vilifies sexual desire!

    Over the past few years, I had focused on Confucianism and Daoism which feels totally foreign from Christianity. I assumed Buddhism would be similarly alien from the religion of my childhood. It wasn’t.

    I needed a quick primer on Buddhism to reset my expectations, and this short essay by Robert Eno delivered. It covered a lot of ground in a quick read and I enjoyed Eno’s slightly irreverent tone. Clearly, he has taught this material many times to sleep deprived college students.

    ~

    To wildly speculate on parallels with Christianity, Buddhism came as a reform religion, stripping away calcified rituals, with an focus on (avoiding) the next life, and had an egalitarian imperative that energized it to spread across the continent.

    In contrast, Confucianism and Daoism were uninterested in the question of salvation. These were elite philosophies that were wrestling with how to craft a state (or withdraw from the brutality of court politics) in the throes of a dying empire.

    ~

    As a pantheistic atheist, I often worry about the old warning “if you believe in nothing you’ll believe in anything”. Hopefully I don’t fall into that trap, but I also can’t shake the intuition that billions of people can’t be all wrong. At the very least, there must something that has made these teachings worth transmitting to the next generation again and again over the millennia.

    ~

    I never skip a chance to plug Robert Eno’s great chinatxt website. Go check it out.

    I started a Great Courses lecture series by Malcom David Eckel, I’m enjoying it so far (two hours into the twelve hour course).

  • Hangzhou Hua

    My wife and her parents speak dialect at home. It can be off-putting to be left out at the dinner table, but I speak English with my wife, so it evens out.

    I occasionally mention that she should teach the kids Hangzhou Hua, but I know that it will never happen. My sister and I also started in Chinese but migrated to English after hitting elementary school.

    The other day, we tested them on the dialect. Like my halting mandarin, they have a functional knowledge of their mother’s tongue without speaking it.

    Amidst the lunchtime banter, the decades collapsed into a flicker. One day, this unique set of vocalizations will disappear from the aural background of our home.

    Unless we move to Hangzhou, my wife’s dialect will follow her parents. Her childhood will go mute. Like other indigenous languages, it will disappear slowly then suddenly.

    Another casualty of mass culture, one more accommodation in an immigrant’s story.

  • Excerpts from Tao Te Ching, Ursula K. Le Guin

    I’ve always thought I’d read some Chinese philosophy, someday.

    That day came on a sunny afternoon my mind was blown as I was parking my car behind E-Jo, a Korean bone broth restaurant. The History of China podcast was talking about a Han dynasty emperor who used Daoism as his ruling ideology.

    That blew my mind. I always thought Daoists were crazy drunks in a forest, not competing with Confucians in the halls of power.

    Don’t get me wrong, the Tao Te Ching is great stuff for skipping out into the woods. But there is plenty of “leadership advice”. Timely stuff before landing a gig as a Project Manager representing the State.

    ~

    True leaders
    are hardly known to their followers.
    .
    .
    .
    When the work’s done right,
    with no fuss or boasting,
    ordinary people say,
    Oh, we did it.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 17

    My project teams have been complimentary of my leadership. Of course, I’m the source of their next project, so it’s hard to know how much of it is sincere. Then again, I guess such compliments are better than the alternative. On my end, I believe that I have the easiest job on the team. I move some paper around and they do all the real work.

    ~

    And so the wise soul
    predominates without dominating,
    and leads without misleading.
    And people don’t get tired
    of enjoying and praising
    one who, not competing,
    has in all the world
    no competitor.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 66

    A hidden benefit of joining the State is that any promotion includes a significant increase in stress for a marginal pay raise. There is no financial incentive to rise up the hierarchy. As such, I have no competition in my office. If someone else wants the headache, let them have it.

    John Minford’s commentary for this section includes this short poem by Li Bo for his friend the Taoist Hermit Yuan Danqiu.

    I envy you, my friend,
    Dwelling on East Mountain,
    Lover of beauteous hills and valleys,
    Asleep in the green season of spring
    Among empty forests,
    Rising long after daybreak,
    The wind in the pines
    Blowing through your sleeves,
    The stony brook washing your soul.
    I envy you,
    Lying there unperturbed,
    Pillowed high
    On your emerald mist.

    ~

    How to make peace?
    Wise souls keep their part of the contract
    and don’t make demands on others.
    People whose power is real fulfill their obligations;
    people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 79

    In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get annoyed at an underperforming contractor or consultant. Such tendencies get worse the longer I hold this comfortable position of power. I need to constantly remind myself that I don’t have to insist on my rights — I hold the fucking checkbook. Unfortunately, I’m sometimes forced to remind my partners of their obligations and my expectations of their performance, but there’s no excuse for losing my cool.

    Whosoever lacks Inner Power will try to control Others by Force, will demand a due, exact a tithe, and Bitterness will ensue. The Tao of Softness and gentleness wards off Bitterness. Hardness and Strength, Vanity and Pride create Bitterness and Resentment

    John Minford’s translation of Magister Liu’s commentary

  • Nobody Speak, DJ Shadow feat Run The Jewels, 2016

    I was waiting for Election Day to share this banger with Run the Jewels.

    But today (with the twin firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon) was too perfect not to share.

  • The Box, Marc Levinson, 2016

    I’m only a third through The Box, but I can already recommend it.

    A good history book creates context and energizes the mind. As we wrestle with the advent of AI, Levinson tells a a story of disruption that rhymes with what I fear we will see in the coming years.

    The world of shipping was completely different up through the first half of the 20th century before the invention and adoption of containers. Then the 50’s and 60’s flipped it upside down.

    • It’s mindblowing that we had a world of international trade with individually packed ships. How did we supply two world wars on opposite oceans merely with muscling things in and out holds?
    • What American doesn’t feel some sense of pride at a crazy innovator- entrepreneur stumbling into the creation of a new system to revolutionize the world?
    • The next chapter tells the utter devastation that this change wrought upon New York City. But was it ultimately for the better?
    • And chapter 6 details the struggles of the Longshoremen unions grappling with this change. (Good luck to us white collars, without any union support!)

    I’m curious what the next chapters will bring. It’s already been well worth the time. So surprising that the boring shipping container is the center of such a riveting narrative!

    ~

    Here’s a gratuitous plug for the boardgame Container by Franz-Benno Delonge. It’s one of my favorite games — a basic ruleset for a brainbursting experience. It’s been out of print for a while but can be easily DIY’ed.

  • My Little Library

    At the end of 2022, I started a rotation of books and essays to re-read regularly.

    I’m slowly going through them on this first pass, but in the future I plan on just reading selected passages.

    And yes, I’m open to suggestions!

    A spreadsheet with 45 books with their publication dates. Cells are colored by the region of origin.

    ~

    Main List

    1. The Art of War
    2. The Wisdom Books (Job thru Qohelet)
    3. Tao Te Ching
    4. Analects of Confucius
    5. The Way of Chuang Tzu
    6. Mencius
    7. Dhammapada
    8. Letter to Menoceus, Epicurus
    9. Bhagavad Gita
    10. Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius
    11. The Gospels and the Epistle to the Romans
    12. The Book of Lieh-Tzu
    13. The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton
    14. Bodhicarayvatara, Santideva
    15. Havamal
    16. The Book of Rumi:105 Stories (Masnavi)
    17. Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho
    18. US Constitution
    19. Gettysburg Address
    20. Nevada Constitution
    21. The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
    22. Letter from the Birmingham Jail
    23. Labyrinths, Borges
    24. Invisible Cities, Calvino
    25. 5000 B.C., Smullyan
    26. 8 Pieces of Brocade
    27. Opus, Satoshi Kon
    28. Fail Safe Investing
    29. Bed of Procrustes
    30. Vis for Vulnerable
    31. Several Short Sentences about Writing
    32. Salt Fat Acid Heat
    33. Creativity, John Cleese
    34. Smart Brevity

    Maybes

    1. Upanishads
    2. Socratic Dialogues, Plato
    3. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
    4. Quran
    5. The Journey to the West
    6. Self Reliance, Emerson
    7. Civil Disobedience, Thoreau
    8. Essays and Aphorisms, Schopenhauer
    9. Species of Spaces, Perec
    10. Amusing Ourselves to Death
    11. Radically Short Instructions, Matthews

  • Infected Mushroom, Guitarmass

    My musical secret is that I’m a sucker for EDM.

    When the deadline is threatening, I’ll be jamming to the heavy beat.

    When a deadline isn’t threatening, I enjoy the candy of the lighter stuff filling the background.

    My tastes vary wildly with no depth. To be honest, I don’t follow Infected Mushroom, but I did listen to Converting Vegetarians on repeat in the mid 00’s when my wife (then girlfriend) gave me a copy that a studio-mate had shared with her. Almost two decades later, that album might have been our only successful cross-pollination in our wildly divergent musical tastes.

    For Monday Night Music I’m sharing a recent song that I’ve been running on repeat. Here is an interesting reaction/analysis video of Guitarmass.

  • Monday Night Music

    A few months ago, I started sharing a song on youtube every Monday on Post.News

    I just transferred the archives back here onto Grizzly Pear under its own WordPress Category.

    I’m also tracking it on Youtube as its own playlist.

    At the start of the year, I also culled my subscriptions. Youtube is an amazing platform … and incredible timesuck. I also blocked channels from the recommendation algorithm, especially the ones with entertaining videos.

    In making Youtube boring, the algorithm was freed to unearth richer content. The latest random viral video pales against all the musical output that’s being shared at scale.

    Youtube may be the best music provider on the internet, you just have to get rid of all the other videos.

  • 402 (on Post.news)

    It’s fitting that this centennial post doesn’t land on a ’00 because I rePosted right past the landmark this morning.

    It’s been crazy busy at work for the past month. Good busy, but it takes a toll on creative output outside of work. (And inside work too!)

    Hopefully things will slow down in a month.

    In the meantime I’ve been happy finding (and sharing) the cool things everyone else are making. I’ve been using RP’s as bookmarks. Before posting, I enjoyed a quick stroll through through the recent past.

    I hope to return to a half-half equilibrium between original posts versus sharing other people’s work, but that might be after the next centenary.

    ~

    On Post in general, it feels that this place is going through a lull.

    The platform is still young, but no longer new. The limitless promise has worn off so the rough edges have become irritants.

    When are we going to get global notifications on comments? How much longer for lists! Why does rePosting something send me back to the top of the feed? Ugh, three columns. Bugs!

    I know, #StillinBeta! It helps to feel that management cares. Hopefully the doldrums are just a phase as it matures into a richer platform.

    It’s still a great crowd here. And I’ll be here as long as y’all are here.

    Here’s to more 00’s!

    ~

    Though you never know…which is why I believe everyone should keep their own website as an archive beyond of the whims of others…like here!