Well I am going to write an article about BPS. Someone else's take on it, which lines up with my views 90% surprise surprise. But it has to be good, and so I am avoiding it. I watched an episode of Frontier... sort if. I was cooking at the same time. The children finished their homework, or so they say, and are playing video games on Scratch.

After I write a rough draft I will let a few people look at my article. See what they think. This o e has to go through a bunch of drafts because nobody else is really writing this article. Everyone else is taking the easy way out, which is so tempting. But this is a key issue that will effect so many families so I need to cover it. It someone does at any rate.

I have been reading Ted Chiang's short stories to Noah before bed. I think after the rough draft I will teach the kids Kung Fu briefly, and them read. Grace should be home by then.

I have been wanting to reconnect with people, or perhaps play out and relive aspects of my past. I guess everyone sort of does that to some extent.

The Nutcracker suite

I truly love this music. I put it on last night while Noah read his comic books and I just feel that no stage production can really compare with the movements if the music.  The story is not even that great I think, but the ideas are. Hoffman's story is in many ways gothic or even a horror story and it would be cool to see a filmmaker take this music outside the box of plot and holiday spirit to just try and create a work if art with it. But then perhaps it is still too difficult to live up to those mysterious sounds that are meant to represent places, far away for the composer, but more familiar in the modern world and places where my father was from.

Actually the Chinese dance is probably the worst of all the songs and usually brings about much racist costume and movements on any production. But even aside from that the song is just not as good.

Well maybe it could be good if presented in a different way, who knows. I have heard some productions go with a lion dance. Not sure if this is done to the music or the drum.

Practicing at night

There is something about practicing kung Fu in the dark. My Sifu had done it in China for purposes if secrecy. And I have written about Uncle Frank talking about a relative who practiced Tai Chi in the basement with the lights off.

There us a mental aspect to it.

I just did meditation and ran through the basic form... though not as a form. More as a freestyle. Obviously I was quiet as well and my m9vements started off rather slow and more inhibited, less fancy and more street. Not for effectiveness though. More so I wouldn't pull something. And also I am working out a way to show adults techniques quickly in a way that is interesting, and have decided that maybe skipping the basics isnt crazy.  Or perhaps that showing basics as an exercise, like jump rope or pushups, might even make more sense.

Talking to tarot

Is talking to tarot cards better or worse than talking tobyoirself... without the cards. After all I mean that's kind of what you are doing... any way its what I am doing right now because Unrealized talking to people over texts may be more or less the same experience.

Looks like life is good for me financially. I think because of this, with all the struggles that people have, that they would be annoyed with me for not being absolutely happy. I mean I really have nothing to complain about.

But I guess I am searching for something and it is always that same something that men and boys search for and write about and obsess over. Whether it is in worship or psycho analysis or the content of media consumed.

You know, many people say they are afraid if failure, of being nobody. But I think a lot more people are afraid of success, if being followed, of being a leader, if being a role model, of being worshipped.

They want the cup to pass from them because they read about what comes next.
Or at least saw the movie.

If you see the Buddha kill the Buddha

I always took heart with this statement. I had confidence in my ability to mentally cut through an answer, a vision, an illusion as not being the true answer and simply continuing on.

Wu Kong had an episode with a fake Buddha that was truly a demon.

From an Abrahamic perspective this would be the smashing if false idols. To cast away what you worship to submit to God.

Jesus was supposed to free people from rules, or rather fulfill the rules by looking past the letter to the spirit, as were many other thinkers who later were worshipped in codified idolatrous fashion.

I like idols too. As symbols. And I like religion as stories and metaphor.

As tools and crutches you can use yo get to the nest level.

But what of instead of encountering the Buddha, you encounter a Biddhisatva who cuts you diwn and your notions and your beliefs right to the core, and done with you moves along in their journey. But you want to go with them and you are unable to let go and unable to avoid the cuts but rather keep coming back for more?

Ego and Pride

I have often been told I am an auditory learner. I cheated in violin by playing by ear instead of learning to sure read properly. Things that people say once often echo u my memory years.... And now decades later. However, I also know that people have often told me that I do not listen to them. That I discount their opinions. In truth, my first reaction to certain ways of doing things is often anger... Though I have changed that throughbtaching children and have tried to always be open to new perspectives, even when it us coming at you in an attack.

I have missed opportunities because I did not consult with my students before making a decision.


But as someone who is known for listening, it can cut right through your guts to hear that you have not been listening to someone whose words you have obsessed over as if they come from the divine.

I suppose that is why so many wars and fabric movements argue about interpretation of scripture.

Madness of desire

Have you ever wanted something so badly that it drove you insane? My children regularly seem to be this incline toward screen time. Some people are addicted to drugs or food or sex, even in an abusive and predatory way as seen by what is happening in the news. Some lust after power or wealth.

But you can also want a family or a house so badly, or romantic love or career. There is also the thirst for freedom, equality and justice.

Recently I have had the mad desire for distraction. For bread and circus. For excitement.

And through that desire I ha e alsi had other yearnings, I suppose for adventure, for the plot if a movie or novel. The truth is I believe mist peoole yearn afterbthis oft not named thing.  It positive like freedom, but not negative like power.

The thirst of the mercenary, the Han Solo or Indiana Jones who yes, maybe searching for wealth or a treasure, but its really the plot and struggles along the way that enrapture tha audience.

My mind has painfully been attacking itself and my body over the need for such a yearning that seems so simple, so easy, and yet alsi impossible. I meditate and during that time I am calm, and I realize I have always had some version of this yearning. Always, since childhood, but of course it would manifest itself in different activities, movements, people, or things.

Like the Buddhist lessons of impermanence though, once attained, that thing or status or person changes. The Buddha talks about this desire as being the origin of true suffering. A friend and teacher of sorts has told me the belief that the only person that can truly love you the way you need us yourself. And the Buddha made that argument that in order to even live others you must love yourself.

And that to conquer the mind within, may sound simple, but is no small feat. Learning and reading this sort of thing in school it all seemed so simple. After all when you are young you are full of potential and any hardship has the potential to change into the origin story of a great story with massive changes. But as you settle in towards the end of the movie and realize there may be no plot twist a great painful fear settles in.

The fear that this is it, that everything is perfect. I realized in highschool that I may fear heaven more than purgatory as Heaven was as permanent as hell and it is the permanence that is to be feared.

And yet it is permanence we seek. The illusions of permanence that we seek after. The ledge, the mountain top that is IT. That we have made it. That we have reached our potential.

I used to think Marc Antony a fool. But all the fools of the past and present have recently been proven to me to be wise people misrepresented by the feeble and ignorant, who in their own way are also wise people misrepresented by othersbstuck in different cages and boxes of feebleness and ignorance.

In any case that thirst for an in permanent thing can driven the mind insane indeed. But what to Do? Poetry painting meditation. Ambition of other sorts....one cannot force fate. Or perhaps there are more malleable ways of achieving a goal through the shifting of perspective.

To love oneself properly...

Perhaps even more difficult than loving thy enemy or neighbor.