I take it as my loss that my whole life Patti Smith has remained off my radar. I knew her as a one-hit wonder with "Because the Night" co-written (but primarily written by) with Bruce Springsteen. But she's released a starving baking student's dozen of albums and has enjoyed a long career as a highly respected artist, musician and writer.

When I was plumbing local public libraries for rock biographies, I did see her Just Kids (2010) and picked it up, but put it back down despite seeing it was highly lauded. It just didn't read like the usual rock biography. Recently I saw her M Train (2015) in the library for the first time and judging it by its cover decided to give it a spin. I was transfixed. Something about her writing style sucked me in and tainted the way I moved about the rest of my day, like every little thing was just hoping to become memory. Kindred mentions of Wings of Desire (one of my favorite movies from college) and The Master and Margarita (one of my favorite books from high school) tugged; although I should mention that I didn't get the vast majority of allusions and references she dropped from her copious knowledge of arts and culture.

M Train put me in meditative, hyper-observant moods that had me thinking and seeing in her voice. Mind you, that happened with Catch-22, too, and after reading that I'd go about making quirky observations and absurd interpretations of things around me. M Train also had me go back to Just Kids (at another library) and I ended up loving that, too. The tone of the two works are quite different despite being published only five years apart. Both can be considered memoirs. Just Kids is about her early life and relationship with artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose name was familiar to me since his death from AIDS in the late 80s was well-reported in the news because of the "controversial" nature of his work. I didn't know there was a connection between them. She wrote the book to fulfill a promise she made to him when he was dying to tell their story.

M Train covers personal aspects of her adult life apart from Mapplethorpe, and is a bit cagey about her music career which was a little off-putting at first but I came to understand. Like she never mentions "Because the Night", but instead says that she "came across a bit of money". She also casually mentions touring to earn enough money to buy or invest in something that was important to her, but touring is a big thing! It means she's a big deal in some way; she has backing, an audience and a way to pay musicians. But that's not the emphasis of the book, so she rightfully downplays it. M Train is in a completely different mental state from Just Kids. The important men in her life have all gone and I got the sense of her moving on with her life in a certain amount of personal isolation and grief. Batty, even. Mental. But artistic, because she's an artist.

I don't know if I would have been a fan of her music if I had been exposed to her long ago (like I would have with Sonic Youth), but unfortunately I only heard that one radio hit and no one I knew had any of her albums or didn't push them on me. She's also a photographer, and it may have been her pictures that prompted me to wonder about my iPhone as a camera and dig up what cameras I had left.

Speaking of reads, I also recently read a book about "The Simpsons" called Springfield Confidential by Mike Reiss, which is a no-brainer, (library) must-read for anyone even vaguely entertained by the show. The thing is a lot of what he writes are actually jokes rather than anecdotes. But it's a simple formula to figure out what is which: if it has a punchline, it's a joke. And a lot of his "anecdotes" have punchlines. He does write about the internationalization of "The Simpsons" and how there are fans all over the world who take sudden interest in him once he tells them his job. What I don't know if he knows is that in the Taiwan market, (I'm told) the show isn't directly or loosely translated but has a completely re-written script in Chinese to something that still matches the visuals but has nothing to do with the original plot in English! That's some mind-blowing, extra-level creativity going on there!

After Phil Collins mentioned his friendship with Eric Clapton in his book, I thought I'd revisit Clapton's autobiography in the library, maybe in a more favorable light. Nöpe. What a prick. What a twat. He can literally go fuck himself. Obviously I'm biased, so what I have to say has zero credibility. I'm not trying to convince anyone to dislike him, nor dissing anyone who is a fan. Since he's a rock legend, I'm not gonna dis his music. I just never liked enough to become a fan, but really I never thought any of it was bad. Unlike Nickelback or Hootie, never did I turn it off because it was Eric Clapton. Just not my cup of vodka. For the record, he does appear on my "every year of my life" mix CDs ("Layla" (1970), "I Can't Stand It" (1981), "Can't Find My Way Home" (1969), "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" (1984), and he may have been on "My Sweet Lord" (1970) on a background acoustic guitar). That is to say as much as I dislike him, I can't deny him.

The funny thing is I didn't particularly like him before, but now I know why I don't like him. Just not an impressive personality. Maybe it's a matter of "camps"; as to likes and dislikes, we would be in opposite camps. He likes killing animals for sport, I only kill insects when I can't get past karmic obscurations that make me find them unacceptable in my personal space. He disses Genesis and Led Zeppelin, two of my top five fave bands of all time, where zero acts he's associated with even ranks. He's into and takes pride in fashion, I'm anti-fashion. Clothes weep when forced to be worn by me. If we met as peers, we wouldn't connect or would rub each other the wrong way. Maybe it's self-fulfilling prophecy – who reads a rock bio of someone they don't even like? I tried reading his book before and stopped because it turns out he's the kind of a man who likes to pull the hooks out of fish. I should have left it at that.

That's actually a good point. Without being a fan of his music to back him up, all I read were his numerous, egregious character flaws. It didn't help that some of his character flaws are painfully similar to ones I see in myself; things about me that disgust myself. If not a fan of Steven Tyler, Keith Richards, Phil Collins, Pete Townshend, Sting, Kim Gordon, Ozzy Osbourne, etc., would their books have impressed? And I shouldn't wonder that a rabid Eric Clapton fan, one with rabies that is, would love his book, despite him coming across as weak, arrogant, cowardly, judgmental, privileged, abusive, selfish and an overall weeny. Oops.

Oh wait, Sting's book didn't impress me, but I pretty much expected that. I was just surprised by what it was that didn't impress. I expected to not be impressed by his arrogance and pomposity, but on the other hand I also expected intelligent, well-written, witty and insightful writing. I was totally surprised at how bland and boring the book was. And I got into Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon) way too late to consider myself a fan, even though I would've been if I had been exposed to them earlier (Versus, one of my fave 90s indie bands was clearly influenced by them. When I first heard Sonic Youth, it took a few seconds to realize it was Versus that sounded like Sonic Youth, not the other way around), but Kim Gordon's book, Girl in a Band, is a must-read for a woman's view in the male-dominated world of rock bios. By the time I read her book, I did have many, if not most, Sonic Youth albums in my collection and a healthy respect for them. Although by the end of the book, not so much for Thurston Moore. Fuckwad. 

I don't want this to devolve into a Clapton diss-fest, so the last thing I'll comment on is the death of his four-year old son, Conor, that made headline news when it happened. I interpret the way Clapton describes that horrible moment in time as him interpreting Conor as an angel who was sent to him. The way I imagine it is that it wasn't Conor playing near an open window 49 floors up unsupervised and then accidentally falling out of it in a moment of carelessness, but it was a condo with floor to ceiling  (at least very large) windows that happened to be open for cleaning, and in Conor's playful, four-year old running around flung himself out the window. No one could've prevented it, it wasn't about no supervision. If there were a camera in the room, it may have looked like Conor just hurled himself out the window. Realistically it must have been horrible for the little boy and his last moments terrifying not knowing intellectually what he had done as he plunged to his death. But spiritually, for Eric, it was recognition of being touched by an angel, having had an angel in his life. Conor didn't fling himself out the window and plunge to his death, but flew up with grace, sacrificing himself, to teach Clapton something about his own miserable life. If there's anything redeeming about Eric Clapton, and there is actually quite a lot, it's Conor. Stevie Ray Vaughan, a blessed spirit in his own right by my estimation, obviously didn't do it.

I found a blue feather today at the end of a 20-mile ride. It was about the last 100 meters when I saw it; swerving so that my wheels didn't go over it. It was an eye-catching blue and I figured it fell off of a pet tropical bird that I know at least one person owns and takes to the riverside parks to get some flight time. I've seen it. It didn't sink in immediately, but blue feather! As soon as I crossed my finish line I headed back to the area to look for it. Why didn't I stop immediately and pick it up? Why did I have to "finish the ride" first?

Anyone recalling Richard Bach's book Illusions would understand the significance of the blue feather. It's on the cover of the friggin' book! The master is trying to teach Richard something or another in response to one of his questions and ends up challenging him to conjure up something, magnetize it into existence. Richard chooses a blue feather, but fails miserably until later in the evening when he gets excited noticing the milk he's drinking is from Blue Feather Farms or something. It's not an actual blue feather that the master was hoping for, but Richard was pretty pleased with himself. Who wouldn't be?

I'm not sure where I stand on that sort of thing now. I used to believe in it, that coincidences were actually rare. More often things happened for a purpose and not just coincidentally. We bring things into our lives, good or bad, when we need them. Now that's more of an idealized, romantic view of possibility that's best reserved for the youth. Not so much for cynical grown-ups who are beaten down and embittered by reality, lol! I used to look for signs, signs of meaning, signs that could be interpreted to mean something. Nothing ever came out of any of that, now coincidences are just coincidences, but that's not the signs' fault. But that sort of reality manipulation by a master is not far off from what realized Tibetan lamas are claimed to be able to do. Miracles. Masters of reality to borrow a Black Sabbath album title. The historical Jesus may have been one according to some theories speculating he spent years as a young adult studying with yogis in India and became quite an adept, having become quite adept at it. 

It's not that I don't believe in that sort of possibility. It's just not manifest in my perceived reality now; causes and conditions, karma.

I was discouraged when I didn't immediately see it when I looked for it. The wind was gusting and it was possible that it was blown away, or maybe someone else picked it up in that minute or two to finish the ride and go look for it? I covered that short stretch of bikeway several times without spotting it and decided it was no big deal, whatever. But as it often happens, just when I gave up on it, I spotted it just off the paving, picked it up, stuck it securely in the brake cables on my bike headset, called it macaroni and headed home. 

But all this is not why I'm writing about it. Later in the day, I was re-reading one of the books I'm constantly reading and came upon this story that I've read and re-read many times and had to smile when I read it today:

There is a very moving story in the Jataka Tales about fearlessness. Once there was a parrot who lived in the forest, and one day the forest caught fire. Since the parrot was able to fly, she started to fly away. Then she heard the crying of the animals and insects trapped in the forest. They could not fly away like she could. When the parrot heard their anguish, she thought to herself, "I cannot just go away; I must help my friends."

     So the parrot went to the river, where she soaked all her feathers, and then flew back to the forest. She shook her feathers over the forest, but it was very little water, not nearly enough to stop a forest fire. So, she went back to the river, wet her feathers, and did this over and over again. The fire was so strong and hot that her feathers were scorched and burned, and she was choking on the smoke. But even though she was about to die, she kept going back and forth. 

     Up in the god realms, some of the gods were looking down and laughing, saying, "Look at that silly little parrot. She is trying to put out a forest fire with her tiny wings, lol!"

     Indra, the king of the gods, overheard them. He wanted to see for himself, so he transformed himself into a big eagle and flew down just above the parrot. The eagle called out, "Hey, foolish parrot! What are you doing? You're not doing any good, and you're about to be burned alive. Get away while you can!"

     The parrot replied, "You are such a big bird, why don't you help me to put out the fire? I don't need your advice; I need your help."

     When the little parrot said this with so much courage and conviction, the eagle, who was actually the king of gods, shed tears because he was so moved. His tears were so powerful that they put out the fire. Some of Indra's tears also fell on the parrot's burned feathers. Wherever the tears fell, the feathers grew back in different colors. This is said to be the origin of parrots' colorful feathers. So, it turned out that the little parrots's courage made the fire go out, and at the same time, she became more beautiful than ever. - Confusion Arises as Wisdom, Ringu Tulku.

That pretty much sorta qualifies as magnetizing. Finding a blue feather from a tropical bird that recalled the book which introduced me to the idea of magnetizing things into our lives, and then reading a tale the same day about how parrots got their colored feathers. Actually, even finding the feather qualifies, albeit taking 30 years for me to finally actualize my blue feather.

When I got home, I wondered what did I think I was going to do with this dirty, discarded, slightly tattered, beautifully blue foot-long feather (yellow underneath) that I had picked out of the dirt off the ground? It went straight from my bike headset to my sitting "altar". Of course.

Phil:
Last month I finished re-reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am", and I was out near Eslite bookstore with time to spare, so I bought Phil Collins' autobiography "Not Dead Yet". I'm a bit surprised I didn't buy it the first time I saw it more than a little while ago, seeing as Genesis is my fave band of all time and Phil is at the top of the list of my fave drummers. But unfortunately he was more than a great drummer who fronted post-Gabriel Genesis to the heights of success. Solo, he also became an international pop superstar and fronted Genesis to their arguable artistic low of the wildly successful Invisible Touch, which for people like me tainted his legacy. As a fan, it's hard to begrudge him success, but . . . "Sussussudio"? I couldn't listen to any of his solo work after that, aside to see if I might like it. I never did.

Reading about Genesis was a delight, and I read extra slowly during the Gabriel years to savor it. He could've written a book twice as long just covering every detail of his Gabriel-era experience and I still would've read it. I would've bought it right away, too. He gives his view of his role in the 80s as the "it" guy who was everywhere and you couldn't get away from him unless you turned off the radio and never watched MTV. In previous interviews he's said that he basically took every call that came his way because you don't know when the calls would stop coming. I suspect constantly working was also his way of running away from his personal problems, which became a part of his personal problems.

Unlike the vast majority of egomaniacal superstars, Collins was aware of his bad press and that there were quarters that reviled him. Despite his success, he remained characteristically self-deprecating, almost to a fault (like when he dismisses claims that he's a "world great" drummer), which likely kept him grounded and realistic. The stunner is how willing he is to make himself look bad in the name of getting his own truths out. And his failed relationships make him look really bad. He just had some seriously wack relationship mojo, aside from engaging in the typical male rock star behaviors. I've read a bunch of rock star autobiographies and messed up and failed relationships practically come with the territory. But this is the only rock autobiography that was followed by a lawsuit by his first ex-wife for defamation. That's wack mojo! For crying out loud, just let a little old man tell his life story.

I went back looking for articles about that lawsuit, filed in 2016, and from what was reported I hope it was or will be summarily dismissed. Collins doesn't ever say anything defamatory towards his first wife, he just gets facts wrong that were construed to be defamatory. He outright states that the book is just how he remembers it and differs from other people, so personal interpretation of even wrong facts I don't think is actionable. How his first ex-wife feels defamed by a wrong fact doesn't make the wrong fact defamatory. How Phil feels about not being a "world great" drummer doesn't make him not a "world great" drummer by any objective standard.

No doubt there are mistakes of fact in the book. In fact, there is one mistake of fact that can be verified by hundreds of thousands of fans who saw Genesis live in the 80s. He was writing about being a showman in the 80s and making the audience do dumb things (pretty close to his words) in the name of entertainment. Specifically the introduction, he writes, to the song "Domino" when the lights come down. Every Genesis fan knows that "lights coming down" doesn't mean they were dimmed, but that the entire lighting rig is lowered so that the stage, seen from the front, looks to be in letter-box format and the lights are hanging just a few feet above the drum overhead mics, extra vivid because they're less diffuse. It was just a gimmick, I reckon, they did just because the technicians figured out that they could do it. It didn't serve any part of the show; it wasn't a requirement that had to be brainstormed on how to do it. To justify the gimmick, Phil had the audience do dumb things. Only, as the video verifies, the song wasn't "Domino" but "Home By the Sea". I wanted to sue-sue-sue-dio Phil Collins for getting the song wrong.

To geek out a bit, "Second Home By the Sea", which is segued into, has my second favorite note Phil Collins sings. The song is mostly instrumental, but at the end reprises lyrics from "Home By the Sea" including the line "things that go to make up a life". The way he sings "life" the last time in the reprise is totally different from all the times before (with appropriate echo) and to me has always been the song's emotional closure before the actual closing line of the song, "as we relive our lives in what we tell you". (My favorite Phil Collins note is the backing vocal on the chorus of "The Light Dies Down on Broadway". He's just doing "ah"s, but on the third note where I expected the note to go down, back to the first note actually, he goes up to a harmony note and I love it every time I hear it.)

And as long as I'm geeking out, my favorite lyric from "Home By the Sea" is:

Coming out the woodwork, through the open door

Pushing from above and below

Shadows with no substance in the shape of men

Round and down and sideways they go

Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair

Then as one they sigh and they moan

Needless to say, it was worth the read. My opinion about him is the same. He's still a drum legend and always a thrill to watch, but I'm not going to be getting into his solo catalog beyond what I already have, his first two albums. He does fill in a lot of information that I didn't know, even about Genesis, and his physical struggles that forced him to stop drumming are tragic. He suffered for a career and ambitious drive that was always pushing his own limits as a drummer, vocalist and entertainer, it's no wonder his own body would smack him down like a fly on a windshield.

Pete:
I will re-read Phil's book, possibly right away, but last month was finishing off Pete Townshend's book for the second time. When I look back and think of my favorite rock bands, The Who is faded far off in the background microwave radiation, but it's undeniable they loomed large in my formative years. It was no less than a legacy they left on impressionable young rock and roll minds without our necessarily even knowing it.

Memory is replete with the evidence. Keith Moon's epic drumming is the stuff of legend, figuring out John Entwistle's "My Generation" bass solo, listening to the synthesizer solo on "We Won't Get Fooled Again" loud in the dark, wearing a Who t-shirt in an extant teen birthday photo, writing out Who lyrics on the cover of school-owned textbooks (we had to cover them with brown paper shopping bags and could write all over them as we pleased), even traumatizing my baby cousin later (she told me even later) by telling her 11 people were crushed and killed at a Who concert on her birthday, December 3rd.

It has to sink in now what a towering talent Townshend was. Reading his narrative of what went on, the words "brilliant" and "genius" don't necessarily jump off the page, but coupled with watching past concert and documentary clips on YouTube and having enough files in my iTunes collection for them to come up reliably often on shuffle, there is a sense of who is this god among us? 

It's hard to conceive of why he couldn't get the "Lifehouse" project off the ground after the success of Tommy. It's actually better explained in documentaries by other people who really had no idea how to make Townshend's vision happen. Out of the rubble of "Lifehouse" we got the classic Who's Next album, but it's confounding wondering what he was getting at and what the album could have been above and beyond the multi-platinum, classic, must-hear-before-you-die Who's Next.

I did download the Lifehouse Chronicles, the "Lifehouse" project demos that Townshend ended up releasing in 2000 and it's fascinating, amazing stuff. Not least because versions of almost everything that ended up on Who's Next is included, plus songs that would end up on Who By Numbers and Who Are You, but these are fully formed, high quality demos that he made himself. He is not only among rock's most underrated guitarists (and by no means is he rated low), but an accomplished engineer, and no slouch on bass and drums. I always wondered how Quadrophenia was recorded because there's so much synthesizer on it, played by Townshend, with lots of space between band-playing sections. It wasn't an album where The Who could gather in a studio and play through the songs. How did they do it? It's likely the band worked off Townshend's demos to record their parts.

Both Phil and Pete mention Phil's offer to fill in for Keith Moon after his death, but they tell different stories. It was fun and interesting reading the differences, because of course they have different memories of the fact. That it was an important enough anecdote for both to mention tickled me pink and erased any suspicion that Pete's rejection might have been a diss, and personally I think Phil's version is actually closer to the truth. He was the one putting himself on the line, so it would make sense that he remembered it better, despite not being able to remember the Genesis song where the fucking lights are lowered.

Phil also mentions Eric Clapton enough that I think I'll try reading his book again in the library. I'm not a Clapton fan. I find him overrated and boring for most part and my favorite work of his (the original "Layla" excepted) is as a sideman playing lead guitar on Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. I tried reading his book before but it was boring going and I swore to myself that if he mentioned going fishing, I was closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. It was totally random, just imagining what is the most boring thing to read about. And then he mentioned going fishing. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

The best I can accept of Eric Clapton's purported greatness is Jimmy Page describing him as the greatest ambassador of American blues. That's totally fair. He's a great guitarist, but basically a copycat and interpreter for white people. As for who Jimmy thinks is the greatest of the Yardbird guitarists, he points to Jeff Beck. There's an assumption that Jeff Beck would cite Jimmy Page. Neither would say Eric Clapton.

I dabble in Vajrayana. I don't claim to practice it. I'll impose on myself from what I've read that if I don't have a guru, I'm not practicing Vajrayana and whatever "dabbling" I'm doing, I hope I'm respecting that. On the other hand, there are many books now expounding upon Vajrayana and its teachings. Perhaps they are just teasers to encourage people to find and follow a guru? I don't know, I've come across a lot of what seem to be substantive teachings.

But I get it, the personal touch of a guru (not the type in recent scandals reported). For even substantive teachings written in books, ideally a guru could go on at length about any, and teach how they should be practiced and even tailor specific instructions for an individual. But I haven't met any such guru and I don't think finding a teacher is something that's going to happen in my current lifetime.

Instead I'm going by my own intuition. And intuition vs. guru, I wouldn't bet on intuition, but it's all I've got. Anyway, according to the Mahamudra view of Vajrayana that I've read, whatever path I'm on and whatever I'm doing on it, that is my path. It might be flawed, it might not be ideal, but if I understand it as my path and treat it as such, I can still learn. A teacher might groan laugh in exasperation, "that's not what that teaching means". Well, then I'm just fucked, ain't I?

I'm currently re-reading a book that I bought . . . earlier this year or last year, I forget, and I latched onto a part regarding mandalas as an example of how intuition kicks in. Mandalas are 2-D or 3-D depictions of Buddha fields or worlds, very symmetrical and include representative characters in Buddhist mythology and various levels and positions of being. They aid in imagination and creating mental images of what's described in the literature.

The author writes:  . . . from an awakened perspective, all pain and confusion are merely the play of wisdom. And that play has a recognizable pattern called the mandala principle. If one can identify difficult situations as mandalas, then transformation of painful circumstances is possible. The mandala principle lies at the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism and is the sacred realm of the inner dakini. Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (2001), Judith Simmer-Brown, p. 118.

She writes that all pain and confusion are plays of wisdom, and that hearkens back to the title of a book I recently mentioned, Confusion Arises as Wisdom, which I only recently started to understand as the basic thesis statement of Mahamudra. She then ties that basic thesis of Mahamudra to the mandala principle and expresses its potential.

She goes on: From a Vajrayana perspective, we live in many mandalas at the same time: our career or livelihood, our leisure activities, our family, our spiritual community, our neighborhood, town, city, country. In Vajrayana, . . .  the most intimate mandala in which we live is our own personal one, in which all of these parts play a role, adding the dimensions of our physical bodies, health, and state of mind. In each of these mandalas, there is a similar dynamic in which we do not customarily acknowledge the sacredness of every part of our circumstances, and because of this we experience constant struggle and pain. Ibid., p. 119

My reaction to passages such as this is intuitive. It's not an intellectual processing regarding whether it makes sense or if I think it's right or wrong. It's an immediate almost emotional whoosh of all reality around me suddenly becoming a mandala, a matrix that I'm navigating through in furtherance of wisdom understanding. And it makes sense to me. Suddenly my world around me is one of those 2-D mandala depictions I have on my altar, and how I travel through it is very important, guided by mindfulness and wisdom and compassion.

The body is a mandala with all its biological systems functioning and metabolizing. Mental space is a mandala with all its neurotic processing and useless thoughts and judgments. K-pop obsession is a mandala that I have to figure out what it means and that I'm not just mindlessly wasting my time in enjoyment. Family relations are mandalas. Your lover is a mandala. Everywhere I go during the day is navigating the mandala and everyone I see is part of it. And the idea of space and position, inner and outer/center and fringe, is important in the mandala visualization. Wherever I might position myself in whichever layer of mandala, there's always the other interlocking and interconnected spaces and positions. Is this getting heady? I don't know. It's how intuition takes over.

Seeing the world as mandala makes it possible for Vajrayana practitioners to drop their habitual ways of relating to events and aspects of life and to engage directly. When this is done everything is accentuated, whether it is pleasurable or painful, and there is nowhere to go. The central seat of the mandala may be a throne, but it may also be a prison cell. When we feel the inescapability of our life circumstances true practice is finally possible. Ibid., p. 120.

Well I sure hope so. Anyway, that's how my intuition works.

The last book I read off the stacks in the public library was The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: A True Story About the Birth of Tyranny in North Korea (2016) by Blaine Harden. It juxtaposes the stories of Kim Il-Sung's rise to power and North Korean air force pilot No Kum Sok (whoever came up with the romanization of his name should be shot) who defected to South Korea at the tail end of the Korean War, delivering a Russian-made MiG-15 fighter jet in the process.

The juxtaposition is a gimmick as No Kum Sok has already published his memoir and I'm sure more in-depth and scholarly works exist about Kim Il-Sung. It makes for a pretty light read and excellent as an introduction to North Korean history. There's not a whole lot to say about the book beyond that, either you're interested in the topic or not. The story-telling is good and contains a lot of information and history about that time and place that I imagine many aren't aware of aside from in broad strokes.

There are things that I consider mistakes which may be small but I personally found glaring and highlight the white, male author telling other peoples' stories. There's nothing wrong with that. Whoever wants to write stories is free to write them, it's just that there are consequences, and always have been consequences, when a dominant hegemony writes the stories of a perceived other. There's always a skewed perspective, if not being plain wrong.

As far as I'm concerned Asians are a race. White people are a race, black people are a race. Differences between races are why we have the word "racism". Therefore only under specifically proscribed circumstances can Asians be racist against other Asians. Chinese and Japanese can't be "racist" against Koreans, as the author tells it, any more than Germans can be racist against the British. Calling the French "frogs" is not racist. It's funny. Even the French condescendingly find it amusing (<French accent> Ah, you styupit Americans are trying to insult me, how amusing </French accent>). Self-hating Asian American kids trying to fit into racist white society by making fun of other Asians is Asians being racist against other Asians. That was me in elementary school, by the way.

He also writes that leaflets were dropped by U.S. forces over MiG Alley on the North Korean and Chinese border that were written in Korean, Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese. So the author doesn't understand how the Chinese language works. You can speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but you don't write Mandarin or Cantonese. Irregardless of what dialect of Chinese is spoken, there is only one written Chinese language, simplified and traditional characters notwithstanding.

The simplified Chinese characters that Mainland China created was to promote literacy because the modern, common, Communist Chinese presumably lack the brain power to handle the rich meaning and art involved in traditional writing. Sounds about right. It likely wasn't in place yet during the Korean War, and even if it was, the U.S., as ignorant and racist as it was at the time, likely wouldn't have known about it.

Wow, I'm just insulting everyone today, ain't I?

WordsCharactersReading time

I don't know what came over me, but I recently read a flurry of WWII books. I guess I have a predilection for reading about harrowing ordeals and a fascination with the unimaginable extremes of the human experience. In this case during wartime. I've always thought it bonkers that we created these beautiful, graceful, elegant, powerful machines like planes and ships and then used them for destruction and killing and to get attacked and destroyed by some construct of "enemy". Well, no, not "and then used them for", but for the purpose of.

Ironically, the first book I read, Flyboys (2003) by James Bradley, is the one about which I'm most lukewarm. The premise was intriguing with the first chapter mentioning a recently declassified case regarding navy pilots who were shot down near a Pacific island not far from Iwo Jima and captured by the Japanese and executed. George H.W. Bush was shot down but was rescued by a U.S. sub before being captured.

It turns out it wasn't that extraordinary a story. It was just another incident of a wartime atrocity. Not to trivialize it, maybe all such stories should be told, but not all of them need an entire book for the telling. What was special about this story? What's the emotional take? Is anyone going to make a movie out of this story like Bradley's first book, Flags of Our Fathers? I doubt it.

Nothing really stands out except a future U.S. president participated in the mission and if he was captured and killed our history would be slightly different (he was a one-term president). This book would still have been written, with one less interview subject and his story as a victim would have been told in it, but we wouldn't know that he would become president, albeit one term, if he lived. I'm being snarky, as a navy flyer defending our country, I'm glad he survived.

(Holy shit! No, our history would be radically different because he wouldn't have spawned that idiot other Bush president who was probably the worst U.S. president ever at the time. Second worst now. Not only that, but I've always said that without Bush junior, there would be no Obama presidency. I had serious doubts that Obama could win because I knew how racist the U.S. is (NB: turns out it's even more racist than I thought it was), and I had trouble believing we'd elect a black man for president. But we did! That's how bad junior was!*)

To compensate for the lack of a book-length worthy story that tells itself, he writes about everything else he can to pad the book. He writes about the history of Japan-U.S. relations, Japan's modern history and militarization, the development of the U.S. air corp, U.S. aggression and racism, and more. It goes beyond just setting up context, but covers things only related with a huge stretch. I was waiting for a chapter on the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the war. It never came, but considering everything he writes about, it was fair game.

The way he writes had me leaving the library always in a sour mood. I'll give him benefit of the doubt that everything he writes is sourced, but I felt he shaded the facts in a way that emphasized the worst, the most negative, unredeeming, gory aspects of war. Maybe he's antiwar, which I have no problem with. If I had to take a stance I'd probably be antiwar, but this book didn't make me feel antiwar. It just filled me with disgust in general, and not at anything.

I have no great love for FDR. I agree that he was among the greatest U.S. presidents, but he's also the one who signed the order to imprison all Japanese Americans on the west coast during the war, a clearly racist act as German Americans weren't subjected to similar treatment and Hawaiian Japanese were exempted because they were too many and it would have been "impracticable". But Bradley's referring to him as "the Dutchman" definitely betrays something about his attitude towards the wartime president. That is not a term of respect. It's like writing a book about killing Osama bin Laden and constantly referring to Obama as "the Muslim" (even if FDR is of Dutch descent (I personally don't know), he was, I imagine, as Dutch as Obama is Muslim, i.e., not at all).


Left For Dead (2003) interested me because it's about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which I knew about already and many people recall from the movie "Jaws", which is mentioned in the book as a key inspiration for part of the story. One part of the story is, of course, what happened to the Indianapolis and how it was entrusted to deliver the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian Island and afterwards was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on its way to its next assignment. The tragedy was that no one came to rescue the survivors who floated three or four days, suffering death from exposure, shark attacks and hallucinations and delirium. Now that's a story that tells itself. No matter how you write it, it's harrowing and emotional.

The other part of the story is the redemption of Captain McVay who was court-martialed for the sinking and blamed for the deaths of his crew and committed suicide in 1968. His court-martial can be viewed as a big black eye on the face of the integrity of the U.S. Navy. It was the classic sacrificing a "lowly" captain to save the careers and egos of higher up generals. It shows the disgusting, shameful, cowardly effect of hubris of those in power who don't want to admit responsibility.

The book also dispelled a myth I held about the Indianapolis that the failure to be rescued was related to its top secret mission to deliver the atom bomb to Tinian. It simply was unrelated. That mission was completed and its next mission was just its next mission.


I found two books at one library that I ended up reading in tandem because they both involved B-17 raids in Europe in the second half of 1943. They sort of complemented each other, although one book was about a single mission involving many flight crews and its aftermath, and the other was about a single incident with the story surrounding one flight crew and one German fighter pilot.

To Kingdom Come (2011) is about the September 6, 1943 deep-penetration, daylight bombing mission on Stuttgart, Germany without fighter escort that one general thought was the road to winning the war. It was basically a "test of concept" mission. He was wrong, the mission was statistically a disaster and such missions would soon be abandoned until the development of the P-51 Mustang long-range fighter could be completed to provide escort all the way to targets and back.

The book is about the mission so it focuses on several crews who flew the mission and survived to tell the story, including crews that were downed and aided by the French Underground to get back to England. Extraordinary stories.

A Higher Call (2012) is centered on a bombing raid three months later in December 1943, so there is overlap between the stories of the two books (crews from To Kingdom Come were still trying to get back to England) as well as mention of same bomber groups. Some descriptions, such as bomber groups taking off and mustering in the sky, are virtually identical.

The subject incident in the book, the purpose for the book, is very simple. The subject B-17 was badly damaged in the bombing raid and against all odds managed to stay in flight. One German pilot was the last chance to make sure the enemy didn't get away, but he ended up deciding not to shoot them down and let them go over the English Channel, albeit certain they wouldn't make it all the way back to England. If the crew were able to see the damage that the German pilot saw, maybe they wouldn't have made it!

The rest of the book is all back story and aftermath, and like To Kingdom Come, which jumps from story to story, so does this book which made reading them in tandem feel perfect. And I have to admit I wasn't sure what to make of the author and his background, but it's a well-written book. Towards the beginning of the book he describes an incident of the German fighter pilot trying to find work after the war and then cuts it off to go into the back story. When he goes back to finish the incident much later in the book, I didn't need to go back and refresh myself what had happened. I remembered exactly what was happening and I attribute that to good writing.

The emotional take from this book was huge and profound. The pilots and surviving crew met decades later and it was amazing the gratitude of the descendants realizing if it weren't for this former Luftwaffe fighter pilot standing before them and his one act of mercy, none of them would be here.

No one forgets who they owe for their survival for generations. Even in To Kingdom Come, the B-17 crews remembered the brave French citizens who helped them survive, some of whom were later caught and executed by the Nazis. All of them doing their jobs and what they believe in. The German pilot didn't do his job, but did what he believed in, which is that you don't shoot a crippled, defenseless plane out of the sky.

This actually hearkens back to the book on the Armenian Genocide I read a few months ago. The granddaughter of the genocide survivor travels to Syria during her research to find the descendants of the Bedouin sheikh who saved her grandfather's life to thank them. They ask her how many people their father saved by saving her grandfather. She counts her relatives and replies 15, much to their dismay. Only 15? That's plenty for a U.S. lineage, but the sheikh's lineage was in the hundreds! It's still a funny anecdote.

It's crazy. The lives we lead are crazy. The world we live in is crazy. Who knows the effects of our actions? The Japanese narrowly missed killing two future U.S. presidents. But they illegally executed POWs whose future effect we'll never know. There's no way to judge it. It just is what it is. I say I'm glad Bush senior survived, but what if his spawn wasn't just a bungling moron and was a Hitler or a Trump? Then it becomes hard to say I wouldn't be glad he didn't survive. It's a conundrum that defies logic or morality. And that's the world we live in.


* more of my hare-brained political theory (a.k.a., the Busherfly Effect, yea I just made that up):

I finished reading Janna Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space (2016), about the history of gravity wave detection and the development of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory).

I've had a lifelong love for astronomy. This is totally boring and no one knows about it, but for that very reason why not mention it? Nothing hardcore. I never owned a telescope although at one point had getting one on my wishlist. I've had binoculars with a tripod mount that I used for stargazing. Mostly it's been naked eye observing and identifying constellations; contemplating the beauty and profundity of the vastness of the cosmos.

I've rarely lived in places that were amenable to stargazing. College at Oberlin was OK out there in farm country, and it was there that I first spotted the Andromeda galaxy naked eye and through binoculars. It's exciting stuff for people who get a kick out of that sort of thing. Deer Park Monastery also had fairly dark skies.

The darkest skies I've seen were in rural western Massachusetts where my brother was living one summer with his girlfriend and some college friends. 1986, I think. I was still in high school. Town called Monterey. It was a lakeside property and once when I visited, some of us took a boat out on the lake at night. It was the first time I realized why the Greeks named it the "Milky Way". Seeing it under such dark skies it dawned on me why the ancient Greeks might imagine milk squirting wantonly from a beautiful, young maiden's voluminous naked breasts across the night heavens. Or a cup of goat's milk spilled on the breakfast table, take your pick. Profundity of the cosmos.

I had a subscription to Astronomy magazine in the early 80s and that's where I first read about the LIGO/LISA gravity wave detectors. I likely didn't really understand any of it but pretended I did. I do remember reading about the L-shaped arm configuration of the detectors, and that's probably all that I really understood; I knew what an L looks like. And what I certainly didn't understand is that those articles were reporting on a massive undertaking that was actively being developed and people were working very hard to get money from Congress to fund it.

The distant background of the book is that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted gravity waves, but even he wasn't confident whether they really existed. The accepted belief developed that even if they existed, they were impossible to detect, being all sorts of non-hyperbolic descriptions of really, really, really infinitesimally small. The book covers the scientists involved and their backgrounds and the decades that saw inspiration, theory, experimentation, failure, and interpersonal friction and drama that eventually led to LIGO getting the green light per my Astronomy magazines. I had no idea what was going on.

Until Levin's book. Fantastic read, I think, for anyone interested in the topic. Very well written with Levin being a physics and math professor herself, so a science insider. As an aspiring writer, this book is very readable (her prior book, which I also found in the libraries, not so much) and even has some Sagan-esque moments in inspiring awe at what's going on in the universe.

It was a timely read, too, as two of the principal scientists, Rai Weiss and Kip Thorne, won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on LIGO and the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Oh whoops, damn! *spoiler alert*. A third principal, Ron Drever, who should have shared in the Nobel, despite being fired from the project, sadly died in March 2017 and thus became ineligible. I think no one doubts that, despite his being delusional and living in his own world and impossible to work with, that he was a genius and would have shared in the honors.

Timely, further, in that LIGO made headlines again in September 2017 with a gravity wave detection that immediately alerted other telescopes and led to corresponding radio and light observations of the event, making a pioneer, so-called "multi-messenger" observation of an event.

As long as I mentioned Kip Thorne, I watched the movie "Interstellar", on which Thorne acted as science advisor, multiple times when it aired on HBO. I also read Thorne's book on the relevant science of "Interstellar", as well as filmmaker Chris Nolan's book on the making of the film. I think the movie has a berth on my top ten favorite films of all time (there are probably more than 50 films on that list). Kip Thorne's book was particularly illuminating as even I started to be able to envision the physics involved. Certainly not anywhere near full comprehension, but a lot of "oh wow!" moments.

And as long as I'm mentioning astronomy, several years ago I read How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming by astronomer Mike Brown. I also recommend it for anyone interested in astronomy with the caveat that Mike Brown, although readable, writes more like a scientist. He writes about his own research and role in Pluto's demotion from a planet, but in no way is he trying to be an aspiring writer. He has no intention of giving up his day job.

Both books convey what a cutthroat world academic science is with competition as emotionally charged as any sports event, just in longer time spans, and with dramas that could put Hollywood tabloids to shame if only they involved more breasts and vapid, vacant personalities saying and doing dumb things.

These kinds of reads make me realize that I could never had made it in the academic world. I'm not that competitive or ambitious. Or smart.

The book I mentioned before about the Armenian genocide is The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey (2016). I peeked at it at the library because of the Armenia mention, still fresh in my mind from reading about World War I. Turns out it was exactly kind of what I would be looking for in wanting to know more about the Armenian genocide, often treated as a side note.

The book is written by the granddaughter of a survivor of the genocide who had committed his experience to writing in hopes that the story would not be forgotten. The book also tells her own story of discovering her family history and re-tracing her grandfather's path during the genocide, which started in 1915 and continued even after the war's end and her grandfather's escape.

The book goes back and forth between the past and present, not unlike how Godfather 2 went back and forth from Michael's main story and Vito Corleone's past story. It's a narrative gimmick which may not be for everyone but I was sympathetic to it. People telling personal stories delving into their past can be stories unto themselves, and there is a lot to be taken from the author's own odyssey. The hundred years in the title connects her with her grandfather, and the odyssey applies to both as well.

The book apparently took a long time to write, about 10 years of research and travel. Her own journey was likely the easier part as it is a first-hand account. For her grandfather's story, she needed his memoir to be translated for her, and then further research and historical corroboration to put it in context and flesh it out into a broader context and experience.

She doesn't include a translation of the memoir as a primary source even in appendix. Her presentation of his story is an interpretation and possibly enhancement, even embellishment, using whatever artistic or narrative license that was her prerogative. It's enough that her mother was a catalyst and involved in the endeavor to accept that the final product is a reasonably accurate representation of what happened.

I was riveted by the book. I even thought that maybe it might be worthy of being made into a movie. Lord knows people should know about the Armenian genocide, especially since the Turks continue to deny or try to justify it. As the book points out, you can't even mention it in Turkey under the current administration without great personal risk. In a relatively recent episode of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" in Turkey, he asks questions of people he knows from past visits, and whereas they talked freely before, this time they politely plainly stated that they preferred not to respond to particular questions. The official Turkish denial of the genocide is ostensibly among the reasons the EU won't even consider admitting Turkey as a member.

Personally, it was a meditation on suffering and the human capacity to endure. Not me, mind you, any upset to my world and I'd be among the first to die; natural selection. Unless we're talking about my capacity to endure the pointless banality of my life. As to suffering it made me very grateful for my circumstances and how much I don't have to complain about. Like I'm not going to complain about the cold, look at what he went through! Cold? Bring it on, I'm not even going to wear a jacket.

(One last aside on the Armenian genocide. People have linked the genocide as having inspired Hitler's final solution with his quote on the lines of, "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's possible that when he decided to eradicate the Jewish population from Europe, his inspiration was the Turks, but a little internet fact-checking, because the internet never lies, shows that quote was made in regard to Poland at the start of WWII. 

Still, though, while reading the book, there are many mentions of Germans observing the genocide occurring and being disturbed, but unwilling to interfere since the Ottomans were their allies. I kept imagining the Germans thinking, "How inefficient, ve Germans can surely do a better job".)

I don't know what came over me, it's probably another obsessive distraction, but I've started reading about World War I. While my childhood included World War II as a hobby, I never had any particular interest in WWI. My knowledge consists of scattered cursory bits of associated information like trench warfare, gas warfare, the first tanks, pointy German helmets, etc. I knew Franz Ferdinand was not the lead singer of the band (apparently there were fans who thought that).

I'm reading The First World War (1999) by John Keegan. As a supplement I also found at the library a rather massive photo book, The Great War, by Imperial War Museums (U.K.). Fortunate for me, since it's a visual reference to help picture how bleak and harrowing what I'm reading was. Fortunate also because it's not a reference that I'd otherwise come by casually. Only people really interested in the war would have it on their bookshelves, I shouldn't wonder.

I think anyone who doesn't know much about WWI but has any hint of interest in it or related subjects (and there are many) should read up on it. On one hand, it's very simple to describe and understand the contours of what happened and what led up to it. On another hand, it's an historical enigma that scholars are still debating about. You can point out all the various factors that contributed to the war, but adding them all up doesn't amount to the sheer magnitude of the horror and suffering caused and endured. You look at results and wonder why combatants weren't smacking themselves in the forehead asking what was going on and how it happened and why they didn't just yell "Stop! Wait a minute. What are we doing?". There were reasons. Many, many reasons, and none of them counters the insanity or incredulity of it.

Having nothing to compare it to, I found Keegan's book quite adequate and engaging. I felt I got a decent grasp of the contours of the conflict, but I would definitely look at other books for comparison if I find them. My major complaint was "white noise" information of troop movements which didn't help illustrate anything or mean anything in terms of strategy or intent. Same with eastern front fighting after the Russians withdrew. Oops, was I supposed to say *spoiler alert*?

I skimmed over those parts not feeling they were important, interesting or compelling to the narrative or knowledge of the war. Similarly, the Russian Revolution is covered so quickly it's almost laughable. That's not necessarily a problem or criticism. In a volume such as this, that's all that could be expected for a topic that deserves its own book. And I did laugh at the description of the Bolsheviks' frantic instruction to sign a peace treaty "at German dictation" when their delay tactics failed and Germany started invading.

Reading about the causes of WWI, it's easy and tempting, if not blindingly obvious, to draw parallels with the current world situation and whether a third world war is in the making. A lot of the debate over WWI is whether it was preventable or was it inevitable. Trying to answer that is to enter the quagmire.

I think the strongest argument today that WWIII is inevitable is the fact that WWI happened. The question whether it is preventable or inevitable is equally uncertain today and as much of a quagmire, and once you draw all the parallels of the fragile relations, belligerent stances and war readiness, the likelihood of a WWI situation goes way up. The scenario of a side conflict leading to an international crisis that no one will check because of self-interest, distractions, basic stupidity or any number of factors, then escalating into a worldwide conflagration is not so hard to imagine when reading about WWI.

Only the over-optimistic would doubt the world situation today is a powder keg waiting to blow. A pot coming to a boil. A powder keg in a pot coming to a boil. No wait, the boiling water would neutralize the powder. But seriously, with the presumptive main combatants being the U.S. and China or India and China or China and anyone but Russia, and non-presumptive but potential flashpoints of North Korea or Taiwan, that shit's gonna be hard to contain.

I finished "reading" Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (1999) by Kay Redfield Jamison that I quoted earlier. "Reading" because I skimmed large portions of it, not because it was difficult subject matter but because . . . it got boring.

I liked the stories. I'm sorry, that's what I could relate to. All the biology, chemicals, statistics and other stuff I'm too lazy to qualify I could do without. There's a natural type of person who would be interested in this type of book. The author is one of them (an insider). I used to be, I shouldn't wonder. People who could relate.

It's likely a valuable reference read for those interested or curious about the pathology. The book limits its scope to the clinical and normative, but that's nothing surprising. It admits to an age bias, so a narrow focus is already intended. I didn't find a whole lot of insight, but I suppose it's difficult to be insightful about suicide. I don't mean this as criticism, the book does what it does well and handles the topic with compassion and empathy, albeit with added emotion at times.

I felt myself strangely detached while reading it. Maybe I've steeped in the topic for so long that it's not something necessarily emotional or even personal. I'm jaded. Or not even really suicidal, a poseur.

It's not a mental health issue for me as far as I'm concerned. Maybe there may have been a connection long ago, but it's a non-issue now. So reading about other people, I sympathize that they were suffering, but it's not necessarily something I share.

I suppose I found it inspirational, which of course was not its intention. It's not you, book, it's me. People who have been successful; also pointing out that I've been a failure and I don't like being a failure. I've failed at a lot of things, but things I ultimately didn't care about. This is something closer to home. And if I fail at suicide, that just means I live for a little while longer and die anyway. Maybe under more desperate or pathetic circumstances.

I'm winding up for another imminent attempt. Yet again. And like before it's totally hypothetical at this point and doesn't mean anything. I feel a need for it within the next half year or so and I'm going to focus and push for it, cognitive dissonance, aspiration, but admit it's not likely.

It's like telling a psychiatrist I'm planning to rob a bank. Which bank? I dunno, the one down the street? When? I dunno, within the next year. How? I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Any accomplices? No. What would you do with the money? Hm, I haven't thought of that. Continue to pay rent and food? It's hardly cause for a psychiatrist to be alarmed.

Forcing myself to read the Chinese newspaper when I go to the library is like sadomasochism for one. So when I find an interesting book in the stacks, it's easy to allow the temptation. At the closest public library (there are four within walking distance (under two miles)), I'm reading Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong.

It falls under world history among categories of reads that interest me; perhaps specifically human developmental history or human cultural evolution. It's a fascinating read that sweeps through various historical cultures in broad strokes, describing the relation between religiosity and violence.

Religion and violence, of course, go hand-in-hand, but the book is very well-researched and offers perspectives that aren't obvious nor common knowledge. There's room for disagreement, but she provides plenty of food for thought. I'd definitely recommend it.

Actually religion and violence don't "of course" go hand-in-hand, you still need human nature in the equation. You can just as easily say that economics and violence go hand-in-hand, and the same with politics and ideology. None of those, including religion, are inherently violent by nature or intent. Just add human nature and the potential for violence arises whenever conflict occurs and a clear "other" can be identified.

Despite reading the Chinese newspaper without understanding it being tedious and boring as hell (hard to stay awake), I'm only allowing reading books one at a time at any particular library. So when I go to one of the other three libraries, I have to read the newspaper. Only when I finish a book can I start another one at any library. Dumb rules I make for myself.

Perhaps some insight into the expert level of my self-distraction: I've spent the summer reading the Harry Potter series of books. HBO was also accommodating with a timely broadcast of the series of movies. Twice, in fact, so I had the opportunity to read the books in conjunction with watching the movies. I'm reminded of this as the entire movie series has been broadcast back-to-back these past few days. Twice! I'm not watching it, I've quite had my fill.

I think it's really impossible to say whether the books or the movies are better. They are quite complementary with their pros and cons. What the movies do great are things that are lacking in the books, and what the movies miss out on are provided in the books. The movies' strengths are their visuals, economy and consistency over 8 films and 7 years. One of their main weaknesses is related to their economy and the amount of information that was necessarily left out. The books' strength is the detail and fleshing out of information that was left out of the movies. At varying points, that's also the books' weakness when they go overboard in detail and prattling discussions that go on ridiculously long and are tightened up in the movies.

One more prominently memorable of the examples is in the Prisoner of Azkaban in the Shake Shack scene when Sirius and Lupin confront each other. In the book it's a long drawn out verbal confrontation. Tensions and emotions are high, wands are threateningly drawn, and . . . they're having a conversation. It's an action point, and that's what the movie realizes. Instead of the drawn-out discussion, Lupin arrives already having figured out the conclusion of the discussion in the book, explained in a very economical and logical way.

There is so much detail in the books that is not included in the movies that it may seem that a lot is lost in just viewing the movies. Maybe so, but it doesn't feel that way and the movies are still great on their own. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, the complementary nature of the books and films is strong. 

An example that comes to mind of the opposite, where the book explains what the movie doesn't is in the last book. At the beginning of the movie version, the Dursleys are leaving with the brief and hurried explanation that it "isn't safe anymore". The book is much more satisfying in going into why it isn't safe anymore. And it's not just that the Dursleys are leaving, but they had been told by the Order of the Phoenix that they had to go and would be escorted to safety by Order members, and the Dursleys actually weren't sure whether to believe them or not and equivocated about leaving.

There isn't a contradiction between the pros and cons of the Harry Potter movies and the books. You can enjoy the movies without the details, then read the books and get the details, but then still enjoy the movies with the added information. That's different from the Lord of the Rings which I both watched and read in conjunction several years ago. Unlike Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings books are flat out superior to the movies. The Lord of the Rings books are near arguably considered literature, whereas the Harry Potter books, I shouldn't wonder, will never be more than Young Adult fiction with a wider appeal. That's not a diss; they are what they are, and are very good at what they are.

The contradiction I find in the Lord of the Rings is that if you haven't read the books, how the hell do you know who everyone is and what their motivations are? And if you have read the books and know who everyone is and what their motivations are, then how do you watch the movies and not think how inferior they are (story-wise) to the books and how much is wrong or missing?

There are also substantial differences between the Harry Potter books and movies, and some the books do better or worse, and some the movies do better or worse. For most part, I think the movies' economy on plot points actually improves the story. Scenes that are convoluted in the books are presented in the movies in a way that improves them. And some not. For example, the fate of the elder wand in the last movie is terrible compared to the book. In the book, it makes much more sense and has much more meaning and is more consistent to Harry's character and his relationship to Dumbledore.

Finally, if I were a parent whose children were interested in the Harry Potter series, I would require them to read each book before watching the movie. Partly because watching the movie first just seems lazy. There's also an element of encouraging literacy and patience in investing the time and effort into reading a book and using imagination, instead of just being fed someone else's visualization of the story (albeit a very good visualization). I don't think children would read a book and then watch the movie noticing what was left out. That's what critical adults do because we don't know how to just enjoy and have fun anymore. Kids would likely enjoy the movie with the extra information simply incorporated into their viewing experience.

Things not as bad as I mentioned before. Negativity has eased off, but inspiration is still blah. As a fellow practitioner said years ago, "stick to your method".

It means when you've affirmed a certain method works, if things start going off, just stick to the method and it will get you back on or point you in a new direction.

It's a matter of faith, but it's faith in something that you've tested yourself. Not blind faith. It's not something pushed on you. You stop, stay calm, and let yourself figure out what the dissonance is and how to get through it.

It's actually no different from a physical training regime. Everyone is different physiologically and regimes that work for some may not work for others.

A book I'm re-reading and slogging through trying to absorb again is Happiness by Matthieu Ricard. I had no trouble with it before. I've even considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way.

I've considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way even though happiness is not a consideration for me. Happiness is not a goal for me, nor is it even possible. But I got what he was writing about.

It's still a meditation. Even if it isn't practically attainable, much less something to pursue, happiness is worth contemplating and analyzing. I mean even living an ordinary life, there's the Tibetan saying that everyone strives for happiness, but so many act in ways that curtails it.

And I'm not living an ordinary life. My life has always been all about multiple layers of sabotaging it and any happiness that may accompany it. It also hasn't been about being miserable, so there's that dissonance.

In re-reading "Happiness", I recognize that everything he's saying is right, but it doesn't apply to me. I don't fit into any of his descriptions or examples or metaphors or parables. The paradigms are normative, and I have no idea what to say after saying something like that.

The paradigms are normative. So what? I'm outside the paradigms of an accomplished monk who has translated for the Dalai Lama? Maybe, his writings are obviously for a general audience, but it's still dissonance. Stick to my method.

What do I do in my daily life to promote happiness? In my daily life, I distract myself a lot with entertainments. That's not happiness. I avoid suffering. That may be as close to what I can conceive of as happiness.

Various levels of contentment. If I'm not suffering physical ailments, I consider myself happy. But that's defined as a negative, an absence. I really, really, really enjoy listening to music. But that's not happiness. It's temporary enjoyment.

Needless to say, the bottom line is that I have no idea about "happiness". It's not a pursuit or a goal, just something to contemplate. At this point, I'd be happy to just dispel the dissonances. Still, it's not nothing. It's not unimportant. Maybe as an unattainable, it's more important to consider.

I finished reading two books by Bart Ehrman that I bought in New Jersey last time I was there, Lost Christianities and How Jesus Became God.

He's not the only author I've read regarding the history of early Christianity, but I seem to have an affinity for his scholarship. To me, his appeal on the topic is similar to that of Carl Sagan to astronomy; an effective communicator of the basics.

I don't get the sense that he's necessarily trying to be controversial. Certainly he has an agenda but a lot of it is trying to push the boundaries of how people think about Christianity. And scholarship is just scholarship. Sure, there's good scholarship and bad scholarship, and with a controversial topic as Christianity in fact is, a lot comes down to opinion.

There may be a progression to Bart Ehrman's books. These two books I bought may be more his branching out beyond the basics. The basics are in his earlier books like "Misquoting Jesus" and "Jesus Interrupted" among others.

I might even suggest that his books seem to reflect the progression of his own personal discovery that his initial beliefs as a young, totally converted, Bible-thumping evangelical Christian were wrought with contradictions and inconsistencies. For God's telling of the ultimate truths of the universe, that shouldn't be so. It should be a neat little package that was incontrovertible, and the only people who could possibly disagree were certainly accursed heathen. 

As his studies into Christianity continued with an intent to enter the ministry, he was introduced to the scholarly historical reality of Christianity beyond dogma and blind faith. He did what most Christians don't do. He thought for himself and found the package wasn't so neat.

His early books are straight-forward. You can follow what he's saying because you can verify with your own Bibles (yes, even without a Christian bone in my body, I have two of my own copies of the Bible in New Jersey) what he considers problems. From there you can accept or reject his thesis, but it's pretty solid scholarship and logic as far as I'm concerned.

"Lost Christianities" and "How Jesus Became God" are more his branching out beyond the basics. They probe into areas that are necessarily more speculative. The former investigates the extant evidence of what "other" Christians believed before the Roman takeover of the religion. The power of the Roman Empire makes it easily credible that other understandings of Christianity would be effectively and efficiently suppressed and disposed of.

The latter looks at the development of early Christology and how it may have been influenced by existing or contemporary myths of the interplay between humans and gods. The idea of Jesus becoming God or being God wasn't wholly unique based on the wholly unique circumstances of the stories being told about him. They were formed within a context to explain what they didn't understand.

One point that Ehrman likes to pick at is how ultimately the Romans, in creating an orthodoxy, synthesized various contradictory ideas without explaining them. A big one is the assertion that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine; separate views originally held by different groups of Christians.

My personal snark on that contradiction boils down to whether Jesus shat and peed like the rest of us. Since he was fully human, of course he shat and peed. That's what humans do. And would Jesus's pee qualify as holy water? But the Romans also insisted Jesus was fully divine. So that must mean God shits and pees, too. Wonder what it smells like. I imagine floral bouquets, but that doesn't make sense. It must just smell like shit.

I don't know why I'm at all fascinated by the truth of Christianity; that it is largely based on myth and has only a little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus. Maybe I've always felt threatened by U.S. Christian hegemony which I didn't buy into, and it feels good to debunk it and knock it off its ideological throne.

Part of me wonders whether it's a past-life resonance where maybe I was Christian. Maybe it harkens all the way back to the few centuries after Jesus when the debates about his message were passionate and diverse.

So by my estimation I've been more or less useless and/or worthless to anyone in any meaningful manner for at least a good five years. Anyone who theoretically may make a claim against that, my response is that I haven't tried to be of use or worth to anyone. It wasn't my effort that made that so. I haven't made any effort for anyone else.

But even with suicide as my intended end, I'm still here now wasting space, creating waste, still contributing nominally to the economy by consuming. So selfish as I've established I am, what's in it for me?

The one unadulterated enjoyment I maintain is listening to music. With everything else falling away, I still listen to music almost obsessively. And it's so appropriate that my one last admitted attachment is to something so necessarily ephemeral. Whether it's a 3-minute pop song, a 10-minute prog rock or jazz song, a 30-minute album side, or 15-minute classical movement, the song ends, the enjoyment passes.

As such, it's easy. If you take it away, I have no problem giving it up. But if it isn't taken away, I indulge in it in all its harmless glory. Listening to and enjoying music never hurt anyone. It's still karma, I'm aware, and if I don't cut off the attachment aspect of it, it's something I'll still have to deal with in future lives in any one or many of innumerable possible ways.

Aside from that, I suppose I've just been reading to add to my selected understanding of the human experience on this planet through its history.

I may have reached the limits of Buddhist readings available in English through libraries and bookstores. I've bought available books that I've deemed important and I constantly re-read those. I maintain my personal mindfulness/dharma practice. Despite being of no worth to anyone else, that has been of worth to myself.

Early Christianity has been of interest, how it was formed and how it came to be what it is today. Looking at the history of early Christianity, it's surprising how it became what it is today, and not. Reading academic and scholarly studies of early Christianity, it's clear that modern Christianity is based on artificial mythologies; nothing or little based on teachings of an itinerant, apocalyptic Jewish preacher and probable miracle worker named Jesus.

But if it's all myth, how could it have become hardwired, literal fact of the truths of the universe for so many people? No one takes Greek or Roman or other cultural myths as literal. Of course it's far more complicated than anyone can sum up, but the brilliant stroke of having the Roman Fucking Empire take up the cause is probably of no little consequence.

I'm under the impression that Europe as a whole doesn't take Christianity as fanatically literal as the U.S. does. Many are very sincere about their faith, but there are also many who assume the supposed truths of Christianity because it's woven into the fabric of their culture. They don't question it because it's not important to do so. If they delved into the scholarship, they would probably be able to look at it critically, admit ignorance and agree with much of it.

I don't suppose scholarship will affect faith for at least another 500 years. It may be more than a 1,000 years before the scholarship is common knowledge and human beings can process it for what it is. I don't think the scholarship showing that Christianity has little to do with Jesus is any threat to Christianity.

Just because it's based on myth doesn't mean it's worthless. It has become its own institution and as much harm as it has caused, it has done a lot of good on the profoundest levels. It's just admitting that it's based on myth will be a hard pill to swallow for many, many generations.

Other histories I've read up on include Auschwitz, the arrival of the so-called Pilgrims, religious extremists possibly, on the Mayflower, the U.S. treatment of Lakota Native Americans and how their land was stolen, and the assassination of Julius Caesar.

The Auschwitz book focused specifically on that camp in the context of the Holocaust and embodies all the horrors one might expect. Poorly edited, though. The Mayflower book seemed pretty comprehensive and balanced. It doesn't seem to play politics and realizes that self-interest is the driving force in dire circumstances.

As for the Lakota and the Black Hills, it's impossible to stay away from the impassioned politics of the issues. As an American I sympathize with Native Americans, but certain white people will defend their actions to the end. My main beef about the book is that although it seems to sympathize with the Native American cause, it constantly refers to white people as "Americans" as opposed to the Indians, who aren't American?

I don't know why I got interested in the Julius Caesar book as soon as I saw it. Probably because it is such a famous historical event, and as much as the Roman Empire played in the development of Christianity, I was looking for insight into it.

I had a flurry of unsettled sleep this past weekend, but last Thursday into Friday I had unequivocal back-end insomnia. It settles my prior mention of insomnia as not being insomnia. Mere unsettled sleep is not insomnia. Insomnia is the switch flipping and nothing happening; unable to sleep, fuhgeddaboudit. Even constant waking up and drifting off into fragile doze is still not insomnia. There is rest still being accomplished.

I finished my most recent recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I don't know if it's a new thought, but it affirmed for me that the recitation isn't strict and should be thought about and can be altered to given situations. As I mentioned before, I would think about removing any suggestive negative portions; don't even bring that stuff up. Reading it that way is fine for contemplation, but I'm uneasy about it in directed recitations.

Also, something I noticed is that there are passages that seem out of place. Deep within some description of a bardo phase might be a general descriptive that sounds like it would be much better as an introduction. From a narrative point of view, it would seem logical that the passage was stated earlier. So I might go through my edition of the book and make notes and rearrange passages.

That sort of deconstruction might be influenced by one of my recent reads on the Hebrew Bible (the Christians' so-called "Old Testament"), Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? I gather the book is nothing new amongst biblical scholars, and is only one voice in an ongoing scholarly debate about the origins of the Bible.

To me it was fascinating. I know next to nothing about the Hebrew Bible except what is generally known culturally (Christian culture); the names and stories are familiar. I've gone through a phase of fascination about how the New Testament came about, and it's nothing what most Christians believe or are taught.

I don't accept the Christian co-option of the Hebrew Bible and making it their "Old Testament". I find that nonsensical and offensive, given how much anti-Semitism there is and how Christianity rejects Judaism and denies that Jesus was Jewish or disconnects Jesus from his Jewishness. It's the ultimate in cultural appropriation whereby a culture is stolen and claimed as its own and original claims to its own culture denied. If the "Old Testament" is part of the Christian tradition, so is Judaism. Accept it, respect it.

I digress. Anyway, it's a fascinating and compelling read which in its course guided me through the history of Judaism as told in the bible, and although nothing new to people well-read in the subject, was a bit of a breakthrough for me.

I also take it as a sign of human progress when so-believed sacred, ancient texts are challenged. Generations and generations are told and taught a certain work is one thing, but then someone comes along with a critical mind and notices something wrong and asks what's really going on.

None of the critical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible, which began in the 19th century, is definitive, but it seems there's a lively debate going on about the sources of the bible and when it was written and by whom. It's compelling when the evidence suggests who the authors were and what their interests were.

Two nights in a row of back-end insomnia. So those one-offs were random just as everything about my insomnia is. I even rode 37 miles yesterday after the first night. But I've already established that exercise doesn't affect insomnia. I'm planning on heading to the gym today, first time in a week, keep it easy.

The effects of insomnia are also pretty random with various amounts of fatigue ensuing, from no noticeable effect to complete zombification. I think the zombification is the only thing physiological when the effects accumulate.

I'm starting to read "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau (pronounced THOR-oh). I don't know why it struck me to read it, but I know how. I was re-reading Maxine Hong Kingston's quasi-memoir, "I Love a Broad Margin to My Life", and she mentions the cabin where much of "Walden" was written. Her title is itself from "Walden", as she explains.

I think I'd easily list Maxine Hong Kingston as one of my favorite authors, and as I don't have a list of favorite authors, she's probably my favorite author. Her "Tripmaster Monkey" is easily one of my favorite novels.

"Broad Margin" was no disappointment, she totally bends the genre of memoir on its head. There's a lot of self-referencing not only her work, but her life, so you kinda have to know that (such as the Oakland firestorm of '91 and that she had lost a nearly complete novel in it), and I do and I'm sure there's still a lot I'm missing.

She then revives the protagonist of "Tripmaster Monkey", Wittman Ah Sing (yes, a Walt Whitman reference), brings him forward in time as an old man and she melds her identity with his and combines his continued (fictional) journey with her own (non-fiction) reflections. Her creativity makes me giddy.

So I don't know what her mention of "Walden" triggered in me, but I went to look for it in the library shelves and found it. Maybe I felt I should respect literature that she obviously respects since I respect her so much. Also "Walden" is considered an American classic, so I'd be remiss to not be exposed to it.

But nothing attracted me to "Walden" before. Never studied it in high school and on its face and on paper, so to speak, it seemed kinda boring.

Well, I just started reading it, and it's not an easy read. It's not written in a style that's aiming to be easy to be read, unlike my way of writing, influenced by law school writing which taught to be simple and succinct. Not necessarily interesting or entertaining, but I try to keep it simple, stupid.

Ironic that legalese is such an incomprehensible, unreadable mess, because that's not what's taught in law school. Actually not so ironic, because simple and to-the-point writing is part of creating legal thinking. But once an attorney, confusion is the name of the game.

But I'm fascinated by "Walden" and I'll slog on. It's not what I expected. Although I expected pretentiously heady and I think I got a little bit of that, already there are parts where I wondered if he wasn't just some punk-ass discontent without any real insight!

He's described as a "transcendentalist", and I suppose that label went over my head. Once described in spiritual terms, it resonated that that's fundamentally exactly what I am. The manifestation may be completely different, but the ground philosophy is the same.

The Five Gospels

Over the past few years, I've been reading a lot on the so-called Christian "Gnostic" Gospels. Not to completely rehash and to oversimplify, they were the doctrinal losing side in the early Jesus movement over the debate about what Jesus taught.

Ultimately when the canon was compiled, these teachings were outlawed and suppressed for 1700 years, but have recently been uncovered with ongoing scholarship being done on them.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was uncovered in the late 1800s, while the bulk of the writings were uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940s, and finally the Gospel of Judas, after a long journey which nearly destroyed it, was first published in 2006.

Also to briefly rehash, I might think my interest in the Gnostic Gospels might be part of this future life resonance theory I play with. If I am angling for a rebirth in South Korea, if any at all, I'm confident that even if I'm born in a Christian environment such as South Korea, I will be able to find my way back on my path.

The texts are readily available, along with more and more books being written on them for anyone interested and not in the mind control of the church. Anyone who is intrigued by the question "There's more (than what a Roman emperor endorsed as the official teachings of Jesus)?" can now find and read about the early Jesus movement and the arguments and controversies over the teachings that were raging.

I imagine that even if I were raised as a Christian in a future life (assuming what I shouldn't assume – that reincarnation is linear in time), I would find my way to the Gnostic Gospels. I'm fairly confident it is in my karma to be inquisitive by nature and to be one of the people to ask, "There's more?!".

Me: "Well, what is it?"
Christian: "It's heresy, blasphemy"
"But Jesus taught it?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway it's wrong"
"Says who?"
"The church fathers"
"Oh. OK. Who were the church fathers?"
"I'm not sure. It has to do something with the Roman emperor Constantine who convened the Nicene Council. You can Google it"
"OK, I will"
"On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't"

Much of the Gnostic Gospels focuses on the hidden, esoteric spiritual interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to the moralistic, institutional, authority-driven interpretation of the current canon. Today, as must have been the case in the early Jesus movement, they appeal to a completely different character and psychological/spiritual make-up than those who favored the straight-forward and direct, and even political, nature of what became the canon.

I was surprised recently to realize that I've never actually read the four canonical Gospels except in portions. I only realized it upon finding a book called The Five Gospels.

The Five Gospels was the result of a project in the late 80s/early 90s by a group called the Jesus Seminar, consisting of about 200 biblical scholars who rendered a modern, scholar-friendly translation of the four canonical Gospels from an original Greek manuscript, plus the gnostic Gospel of Thomas from a Coptic translation from Nag Hammadi.

They then set out to present a scholarly consensus over any quote attributed to Jesus and the likelihood that Jesus himself spoke those words. Consensual certainty that he said something is printed in bold red, certainty that he did not is printed in bold black; and pink and grey are used for weighted votes in between relative consensual certainty.

The reason they included the Gospel of Thomas is that it is simply comprised of alleged quotes by Jesus with no narrative context. Since the project was focused on what Jesus likely actually said, they deemed it appropriate to subject Thomas to the test.

I would say it's a flawed work, for sure, but still fascinating. The criteria for putting words into the mouth of Jesus are based on narrow presuppositions imposed by the seminar. The voting method over a period of years also results in inconsistencies, which the authors reveal in the commentary.

Actually, never having read the canonical gospels didn't mean much. Just growing up in the U.S., just about all of the stories were familiar. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or not, if you grow up in the U.S., you're bombarded with Christian references your whole life.

(Even in the subtlest ways. In high school, a group of friends were playing Trivial Pursuit. Two of the participants were brothers, Mark and John Smylie. The question was what are the four gospels of the New Testament. One of the brothers on the other team rattled off "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", and we were all blown away how they knew that as easily as any of the rest of us could name The Beatles. He casually pointed to his brother, "John", pointed to himself "Mark, and our dad's a pastor, if we had two more brothers, they would have been Matthew and Luke". And that's how I learned the names of the four gospels culturally. The only Luke I knew prior was Skywalker, son of Vader Anakin)

One thing I found fascinating was that just about any familiar quotation, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. culture, was voted black. Jesus likely never said those quotes, but were attributed to him by members of the later movement trying to push their interpretation of what he taught.

This is a good place to note that I realize even though the Gnostic Gospels appeal to me, they also are iterations of positions in a fervent debate. I think they are right and the canon got it completely wrong, but there are billions of Christians who disagree (no doubt Christians who don't even want it discussed or out in the open and would prefer the suppression and censorship to continue).

Also, just reading the red quotations, this Jesus character strikes me as someone enlightened, imparting radical wisdom that was intended to shake the normative sensibilities and mores of the day. I agree with the assessment of scholars that Jesus wasn't into institution building.

That seems to indicate to me that if he were alive today, he would rail against the institution of the Christian church. He would rail against the conformity, control and conservatism of the church. A red quote widely attributed to Jesus can be directed to many Christians today: You point out the sliver in someone else's eye while ignoring the timber in your own.

He wasn't about placating people or making people feel good about being moral and righteous. He was about shaking things up. If you thought something and mindlessly accepted it as the norm, he would say something to disturb you.

Something the Jesus Seminar posits, which I have no comment on whatsoever but think is quite funny, is that he ate well and drank freely. I think they call him a glutton and a drunkard.

To Christians today, those are vices to be eschewed, but they make sense to someone trying to shake the norms of society. I think he did live under Jewish law because that was the water in which he was a fish, but I think he constantly pushed their boundaries to the extent that the law was being abused by temple authorities.

And even if he was glutton and a drunkard, his teachings understood correctly were good. They aimed toward liberation. I'd take a good teaching by a glutton and drunkard over a bad teaching by someone self-professed to be moral and righteous any day. 

It seems to me natural now to be fascinated by Christianity, but it's not. I never was much interested in Christianity until the Gnostic Gospels. The vast majority of my exposure to Christianity was cultural – the devotional side of blind, uncritical faith which never resonated with me.

I did take a course at Oberlin which did critically cover the historical underpinnings of Christianity and I loved that course. Mostly because it didn't deal with the myth of Christianity, which is what most Christians today believe. Myth comprises the reality of most Christians because they for most part reject the scholarship, which aims at getting to the historical realities.