Guest Blog, by Jimmy Lydecker

Jimmy Lydecker is one of my best friends of all time; he and I see things pretty much the same. I was engaged to his sister at one time; 'nuff said, except that we didn't get married, which is probably the best for both of us. He lives in Marin County, CA. He is also probably a better writer than I am; you judge.

Jimmy Journal
.MY WORLD WITHOUT OIL

San Rafael, California
May 14, 2007

I woke up this morning to the sound I fell asleep to last night: The whooshing of cars going north and south on 101.

Actually, the whooshing is being replaced by a huge sucking sound... It is the sound of crude oil being sucked out of the ground to allow those cars to go flying by.

In America, unlike the rest of the world, 1/2 of the oil we use goes to the production of gasoline. Each day, the world uses over 80 million of barrels of oil. The United States, with 7% of the world’s population, uses over 25% of that 80+ million. That’ll happen when a nation of 320 million has more cars and trucks than people.

I laid in bed thinking of all the other things oil and its cousin, natural gas, are used for and how today would go if they were non-existent. This little exercise has been done before and everyone should think about it.

Living in Northern California, we have a fair amount of electricity generated by hydro, but not enough to keep all of us out of the dark all the time. Since it is 6:30 and still dark, I roll over, turn on my light and hope my section of the grid was not blacked out.

The light, in a fixture circa 1890, lit. I noticed the wire from the light needed attention as the fabric covering it was coming frayed... remember, no oil means no rubber insulation.

I roll onto the wood floor. My Dupont Stainmaster rug is no longer there. It was made out of oil.I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and decide I need to shave and get ready for another day in San Rafael. This is not going to be as easy as usual. Without oil, all my toiletries are history. There is no disposable razor as it is primarily plastic. Without oil, there’s nothing plastic.

Even if I had one of those old fashioned straight razors, I’d have no shaving cream: The lather is oil based.

For that matter, I have no shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, soap, toothbrush or toothpaste as they are all made from oil.

I look into my empty medicine cabinet and wonder where did my vitamins, aspirin, Zantac and antibiotics go? Oh, yeah, they are all made from oil. Even the moisturizing cream I use is no longer there.I decide to jump into the shower. At least the cold water will wake me up. But then I’ll have a hell of a mess to clean up as the water will splash all over without my shower curtain. It, too, is made of oil.It is au natural for me today.

Luckily, I am a cotton guy. I pull on a pair of Levi’s, t-shirt and socks. The socks suck because without oil, there is no elasticity to them and they keep falling down to my ankles.

I look for my Nike’s. They are not here! God, that’s right! Sneakers, one of the best inventions of all time, are non-existent. They are primarily oil based. I have to wear these uncomfortable clodhoppers with thick, stiff leather soles. Uncomfortable and just plain ugly!

Still cool outside, I look for my familiar multi-use Patagonia jacket. It is no where to be found. Ahhhhhh!!!, now I remember! It is made from oil. Instead I reach for my denim jacket.

Leaving my house on Hammondale Court, I am surprised by all the dust caused by the occasional horse or carriage going downtown on Lincoln Avenue. Without oil, there is no asphalt and the streets are dirt.I traipse the mile downtown to 4th Street where there are a number or restaurants. The trick is to find one that has what you want to eat. Today I decide to keep it simple: Eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast and coffee.

Eating is the most challenging part of the day as nothing in our lives is more affected by a contraction of oil and natural gas supplies than agriculture. In 1859, when we entered the oil age, we were an agrarian nation where 90% of the population produced our food. Oil and natural gas, from which all pesticides and fertilizers are produced, are directly responsible for the Green Revolution. Today, 2% of the population produces the food for the other 98%.

Without pesticides or fertilizers, crop yields plummet. Without oil, there are no tractors, combines, threshers or any other of the mechanized methods we now take for granted. And the transportation of our agriculture products becomes a nightmare at best without reliable refrigeration.

Curse those futurists, I think, those that said we can get by using ethanol and other crop-derived energy sources. Haven’t they thought of Jevon’s Paradox? I guess not! Jevon’s Paradox is when you attempt to get yourself out of a progress trap by doing something that makes everything worse.

In fact, every alternative source for oil or oil based energy is ruined by Jevon’s Paradox.To switch to ethanol would consume what is left of oil and natural gas faster than just continuing on our present course.

Hydrogen? We’d need an additional 300 nuclear power plants to produce it for 300+ million people. Before the first 50 were built, we’d reach Peak Uranium and be in South Africa fighting for control of the world’s uranium.

And replacing 10% of our cars with fuel cells would use up the world’s supply of platinum.

I think of all the promises made about the oil sands of Canada... Oh, that’s right, the problem is the same as making synthetic oil from coal. It is a big problem with a big acronym - EROEI: Energy returned on energy invested.

If the EROEI is a negative number where you have to invest more energy into getting the same amount back, then what is the sense? This is the ultimate Jevon’s Paradox.There was a time when the EROEI from Middle Eastern oil was a staggering +30. At best now it is +10.

The best we can do with oil sands is about -5. The only way the industry stumbles by now is because of huge subsidies from the American and Canadian governments. Since it requires huge amounts of natural gas, the EROEI will keep heading south as natural gas is depleted.

Wait a second! What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be contemplating this over as I’m in the middle of my oil-free exercise.

Quietly I finish my single egg, piece of bread (no toast), potato and wish I had some coffee. Coffee is difficult to come by without reliable shipments from South America.And I don’t know about that glass of milk I drank. The waitress said it was pasteurized but...Sheeeeesh, I sigh as I begin the mile long hike back home. I figure I’ll kick back the rest of the day and relax.

But what to do in a world without oil? I can’t watch the tube or listen to the radio. They both require massive amounts of oil to manufacture.

Watching a DVD or listening to CD is out as well! In fact, I won’t even be writing this little exercise of mine now as computers will be non-existent.

Despite it all, I look around and notice the world around me seems cleaner. Probably something to do with our disposable society that no longer exists. And the air is cleaner without all those cars on 101 - Hey! It is quieter, too. I can actually hear birds singing up above and children playing in backyards.

But it is not going to a pretty scene as hydrocarbons are depleted. We are talking social strife, mass migration, starvation, epidemics and worse. The world’s population has become unmanageable to exist without oil.

I always tell people to go to YouTube and type “post-oil man” into the search bar. It may be the most eye-opening 4 minutes you’ll spend in your life.As I reach home after my dusty walk from breakfast downtown, I look around and know at least it’ll be light today even if PG&E turns off the power on Hammondale Court. Nope, a rolling blackout won’t affect the light or temperature indoors.Up above, our familiar ol’ friend, the Sun, shines bright and warm.

Jim Lydecker
Jimmy Journal
OF EINSTEIN, BEES AND PEAK OILMay 13, 2007San Rafael“A crisis is a problem that was ignored. All great crises were ignored until it was too late.” - Matthew Simmons.

Walking to my weekend bookkeeping job early this morning, I reflected on two issues that challenge us now. These are problems at our doorstep that, as Matt Simmons says, can become very large crises very quickly.

“Bee Colony Collapse Disorder - Where is it Heading? Filed under Agriculture & Food by Craig Mackintosh) … There’s still no concrete evidence about what is killing the billions of bees around the country, but there are a lot of guesses. If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply…”

From Science Daily: “Honey Bee Die-off Alarms Beekeepers, Crop Growers And Researchers… An alarming die-off of honey bees has beekeepers fighting for commercial survival and crop growers wondering whether bees will be available to pollinate their crops this spring and summer. Researchers are scrambling to find answers to what's causing an affliction recently named Colony Collapse Disorder, which has decimated commercial beekeeping operations across the country…”

The US Department of Agriculture has placed CCD at the top of their priorities. UC-Davis and Texas A&M have been given million dollar emergency grants to figure CCD out. A spokesman at Davis said we could be looking at “a precursor to famine.”


A chilling prediction about the importance of bees to mankind comes from none other than Albert Einstein. When at Princeton, Einstein learned to relax from academia by gardening in the backyard of his New Jersey home. One day he mused, "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

A Davis scientist on Coast-to-Coast AM last week said we have no more than 4 years to do something about CCD; two years beyond that and things will become dire.

Einstein has been a dead dude for 52 years but he still walks among us.

It is impossible for me to go very long and not worry about Peak Oil. My place here in San Rafael is a stone’s throw to 101 and the non-stop whooshing of cars never stops. I was unable to sleep the first few nights after moving in until I deluded myself into believing I was actually at the ocean listening to the sound of crashing waves.

Well, not really…

You’d have to be a three-toed sloth hanging upside down from a tree in the Amazon to not be aware of how expensive gasoline is.Most people want to lay blame on Big Oil, OPEC, lack of refining capacity or any other of the usual suspects.

Now, I am not an expert like Mathew Simmons but over these past several years I have become extremely knowledgeable on oil and think Simmons is correct. Remember, Mathew Simmons owns the world’s largest energy investment bank (Simmons International, Houston), is an oil geologist and insider who also is principal advisor to both the Bush and Cheney families on…oil.
Simmons has intimate knowledge of what lies under the Middle East sands since he was one of the last booted out from Saudi Arabia after OPEC nationalized the oil industry.

Simmons is also the one screaming loudest about Peak Oil and how it is upon us.Last week the Department of Energy and International Energy Agency posted some scary numbers that shed light on gasoline’s unprecedented upsurge.

First, world supply of crude, gasoline and various distillates is at the lowest level in four years and continues to draw down.

Second, world oil production is at the lowest level in 5 years and producers, particularly OPEC, say they are coaxing as much out of the ground as quickly as possible.

Remember, the North Sea and Mexico’s giant Cantarell oil field, the eighth largest in the world, are suffering from “severe premature declines of unprecedented proportions.”

The real question is the health of Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar, the largest oil field of all time. Ghawar has been producing an average of 5 million barrels of crude a day since 1951. When Simmons left Saudi Arabia in 1979, the Saudis were pumping over 9 million barrels of sea water into Ghawar daily. Rumors creeping out of the Saudi Arabian Empty Quarter are that Ghawar’s water cut has reached 60%, an unacceptable amount.

Simmons says we are in trouble when Ghawar winds down. And how will we know? Most experts say when Saudi Arabia announces it is going to open up Manifa for drilling, which is exactly what they said last week. But here is the latest on Manifa:-After OilBy David Fleming(C) Prospect Magazine “Beneath the seabed off the coast of Saudi Arabia is an oil field called Manifa. It is giant, and its riches are almost untapped. There is, however, a snag. Its oil is heavy with vanadium and hydrogen sulphide, making it virtually unusable. One day the technology may be in place to remove these contaminants, but it will not be for a long time, and when, or if, it becomes possible, it will do no more than slightly reduce the rate at which the world's oil supplies slip away towards depletion. Even this field has one advantage over the massive reserves of oil which Middle East suppliers are said to hold, ready to secure the future of industrial civilization. Unlike those fantasy fields, Manifa does actually exist.”

Consider us lucky for paying what we do for gasoline because the problem is much worse. According to a report two weeks ago from the CIA, virtually all oil producing nations are quickly going broke. Every nation in OPEC, except Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, are borrowing tremendous sums from the World Bank and other sources to stay afloat. (Iran’s financial position is so precarious that it will be unable to fund their nuclear ambitions much longer, says the report.)

Since they are hurting so bad, they are underbidding each other while pumping as fast and as much as they can. They still are unable to keep up with demand.

With Peak Oil and the bee Colony Collapse Disorder, I find myself humming that REM song over-and-over again: “It’s the end of the world as we know it…”*I’ve got to give credit for credit due… Ernie, my brother, turned me onto the dead dude Einstein antidote. Nice story, I thought until checking it out.

Most sources accept it as true.

Jim Lydecker

Greta the Beagle

As may have figured out, I've been too busy with various and sundry activites to have any time left to spend on this blog; so, let me present for you enjoyment, my latest cell phone video of Greta the Beagle being petted by me.

Various and sundry activites include working on the Nashville Buddhist Festival website, including adding a new slideshow of the first Festival in 2003; my new workout schedule, including some excellent yoga classes at the Green Hills Y; and reading For a Few Demons More by Kim Harrison. Soon I'll get around to telling you why all these things are important, but for right now, it's been a long time since I've been this busy.

More soon, I promise.

Kozan Update

I just got back from the ASZC again, my seventh weekend down there since my first in April, 2006. As you may recall, my Buddhist initiation was this last September, at which time I received the Buddhist name, Kozan. This last weekend was the 2007 Initiation ceremony (Zaike Tukodo), at which seven new Buddhists were named. I keep getting emails asking me what my newest posting name, Kozan Bob, is all about. This answers the question at least for you Ratzaz Diaries readers; the rest will have to suffer. I started using Kozan Bob because I can't get away from this silly image it gives me of a Japanese guy in a cowboy hat, for some reason.

My excuse for not blogging much lately, this time, is just that I've been happily busy. Happily, because I've got a lot of stuff to do that I consider worth doing, so that some other stuff has been falling by the wayside until it screams for attention. My lawn seriously needs mowing, and my floors haven't been vacuumed in a month; the cat mess from the kitchen is starting to take over the house again. There are dozen of Nashville Buddhist Festival t-shirts from the Second and Third Festivals sitting in my living room that really need to be sold or moved somewhere. There are unwatched DVDs and unread books everywhere. But no matter what else I do, at this point I have to work eight hours a day and I've rededicated myself to my exercise schedule (which includes more and more yoga, since I've lately found more good Yoga instructors and classes at times I can do them than anything else), so that as I write this blog entry I really should be working on an "About Us" page for the Fourth Nashville Buddhist Festival. I'm finding that page hard to do because it's very hard to me to write a straightforward promo for Nashville Buddhism. First, it's hard for me to get my tongue out of my cheek in the first place. Then, it's kind of ironic that I wound up as the Nashville Zen Center representative to the Nashville Buddhist Festival, because I'm probably the least ecumenical Buddhist I know in Nashville.

Yep, I finally wound up conservative on an issue. Certainly not in a political sense. If you've been following my return-to-Buddhist experience, you know that Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen was the book that finally brought me back to Zen, and I'll stick to that decision, and to that book. Brad, incidentally, has a new book just out, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye which I haven't gotten around to reading yet, and is apparently on a heavy speaking and appearance schedule behind it; good for him! And yet he opines about the lack of attendance at his weeky zazen sessions.

Which in unfortunate, because not only is Brad the real deal (and there are lots of fake deals out there attracting throngs of people), he is a genuinely nice guy. He's not nearly as iconoclastic in person as he comes out in his writings. And his idea of a sesshin is much lighter on sitting than most others I've tried. His teaching is light on the Sutras, heavy on, just sit and look at the wall. And most of the Buddhists I've met in Nashville are more fascinated by robed unintelligible foreign monks, or by counsellors disguised as Zen masters spouting platitutes for big bucks, than by guys from Ohio who'd rather talk about music and movies and then actually do zazen instead of talk about it.

Which is why I found the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in the first place, of course. Overall, I get the most benefit from educated intelligent, caring people with backgrounds and experiences similar to mine who happen to have twenty or thirty years of authentic Zen experience behind to help me out. But that's just me.

Anyway, this time I did get a chance to talk to Gakusan Terry Sutton, who picked my Buddhist name, and found out who Kozan was. He is a character, if you want to put it that way, from the Lotus Sutra, one of the bodhisattvas who show up on the mountain to hear the Buddha preach the Sutra that is usually regarded as his ulimate teaching. It is again interesting that Terry picked this name for me, since although Zen is usually seen as a teaching outside the sutras --the dharma of mind-to-mind transmission, my most extensive Buddhist background prior to my return to Zen in 2004 was with Nichiren Buddhists, who chanted the Lotus Sutra, or portions thereof, twice a day. So it's very appropriate for me. (I haven't yet found out whether Kozan was one of the Bodhisattvas of the earth, who arise in the sutra, and the SGI sees as the agents of Kozen-rufu, the triumph of Buddhism on earth; anyone with a copy of the Sutra where the bodhissatvas are named in Japanese, research that for me please....)

Interestingly a lot of the new Buddhists I talk to, or the people who come to the newcomers' meetings in Atlanta, or show up randomly at the NZC here, or whom I met at the MTAC, have read Brad's stuff, and are fascinated by it. The ultimate measure of Brad's success as a teacher will be how many of these people actually take up a lifetime practice of zazen; I'm sure that to him this is the reward, not the books or the interviews. It can be a little hard to make the transition from punk to monk; it appealed to me just because I'd had a little taste of Zen and a lot of time listening to rock music. By the way, I can't let the opporunity pass to recommend the teaching of Brad's teacher Gudo Nishijima; you can buy A Heart to Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo from Amazon for about $13, and it's the most straightforward guide on how to practice Zen Buddhism I've ever seen. He does not dodge the questions nor answer them with poetry. If you want to know how it's done, read this book.

More soon, I promise. After I mow the lawn, and write that page for the Buddhist Festival.

Yoga on the Roof

The image for this one has to be in your head.

I just had a reminder that this world, this society in all its dying glory, can be a very beautiful place to live in one exact moment.

I've been very stressed this week, not least because my internet connection has been shit; Comcast, the country's largest cable provider, can't be bothered to properly maintain its broadband lines in the economically challenged parts of Nashville like the one I live in, so this is the first morning since last Thursday when I've gotten up with a decent cable connection. As I do most of my internet stuff in the very early mornings, you understand I was more than a little crabby. I did get to go shopping and look at all the incredible computer deals you can get now, but I couldn't get past the fact that broadband, when it works properly, is by far the best connection, and when there's only one provider and that provider is a negligent monster -- you see my stress.

I couldn't do my Sunday workout because I had to wait for the cable doofus to come by on a beautiful afternoon, so I was really looking forward to my step aerobics class last night. Step aerobics is a maligned art and a dying one; I've been doing it since the late 80's, and when it's done right, it's probably the closest thing to moving meditation I've ever done. Properly cued, you can totally yield control of your larger bodily movements and do amazing complex routines the first time, right. Unfortunately, the instructors who are capable of doing that cuing have either moved on to other fields or left this town, anyway. Stephanie, the instructor for the 5:30 p.m. class at the Downtown Y, is the best of them left, and she has become very good, so that the entire hour is a joyous release. However, Stephanie has a bad habit of taking on more than she can handle and dumping the class at the last minute on substitutes who are less than stellar. Such was the case last night.

Last night the sub was some large guy who talked a lot and started the class fifteen minutes late because he hadn't bothered to figure out the sound system beforehand, so I snarled and went to kill some time on a cardio machine (all of which I hate) and wait for Shawn's Yoga class. Thank, you Stephanie, for pursuing whatever lame excuse you pursued last night instead of your Step class, because the Yoga class was an unparalleled treat.

Shawn, along with Stephanie, is one of maybe four instructors left in Nashville who can still teach step classes properly, and the last year or two she's take up teaching Yoga. Usually when group fitness instructors cross over into another field, the results are not good. The worst was the aerobic boxing (generic Tae Bo) classes that flooded the market a few years back. I had a great boxing workout taught by Joanna, a black belt from Nashville's top karate school, but when she left I had to give up the bags and my arms will never be in that kind of shape again; most of the other instructors teach some sort of dance-boxing which is best not seen nor done nor remembered. Anyway... step teachers going over to Yoga have about the same record, but Shawn is an exception. She normally condenses a 90-minute vinyassa-style class into an hour so it's a very athletic yoga class.

I do yoga because I'm not good at it, and because it fills most of my fitness needs not filled by step. It's great for strength; I really hate weight-lifting and can't stick with it, and I have plenty of body weight to do all the strengthening I need without having to blow out my joints. I started doing it after a car wreck I had in 2000, for rehab (the stuff they do to you in medical offices is lame, expensive and ineffective) and because I, like most people who've exercised for a long time, had terrible short tight hamstrings. Now I do it for all the above reasons plus keeping my ageing body as limber as it can get, and the occasional great psychological release, like last night.

So I'd just finished my boring cardio workout, listened to the end of the droning self-advertisement of the step sub, and gone into Shawn's class when she suggest Yoga on the roof. The roof! The roof the Downtown Y in Nashville is an underutilized gem; it's basically unfinished, just concrete and a magnificent view of downtown Nashville. There's a pool up there that used to be great to hang out at early mornings in the summer, before the Y bureaucrats took over and decided it need a lifeguard and that it should only open at 11 a.m. (! prime sunburn time) for a few months a year. But last night I was tense as hell and the last thing I wanted was to move my long-delayed workout up the roof, mat, blocks and all. But I did. And it saved my night.

Last night was one of those magnificent sunset evenings you get this time of year when the rain has been off and on, the moon is out early, and the clouds are there for movement; breathtaking. And in this breathtaking magnificence, to be breathing in Yoga, with compassionate teaching and this physical release of pent-up tensions, was not to be missed.

I know a lot of Zen people who do Yoga. There are spiritual schools of Yoga which are based of course in Hinduism (for years the Christian Thought Nazi's at the Y wouldn't have a Yoga class: it was called Relaxation. Seriously.); and Yoga meditation is not zazen. But it is a great complement, especially with a great teacher with an open mind. Yoga is one of those activites that gets lost for me when I get busy, but every time I come back, I ask myself, why did I go?

I won't be able to duplicate last night's experience; I'm very happy that now I have the werewithal to appreciate such an experience as it happens, and not see it as a key to something more, or to something else at all. Because being in that moment is alway, enough.

Thanks to the moronic corporate dweebs at Comcast for giving me back my morning internet. And thank you, Shawn, for the sky.

Zen in Strange Places

I've been wanting to put this blog entry up all week, but I've found excuses to delay it. First, like an idiot, I forgot my camera (among other things) and I've spent hours looking at pictures online to decide what to use to give you some flavor of the costumes I was seeing; there are a few here, and lots more here.


Anyway, last Sunday I headed out for the second year in a row to do a presentation on Zen at the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. The whole thing started last year when on a whim, I emailed the organizer of the convention to see if there was any way I could be involved. I was a little hesitant; most of the attendees are kids, but I am a big fan of anime and wanted to check it out (I'd gone in for a few hours the year before, but I wanted to be involved. Anyway, Lucas Leverett, the president, noted the Zen presence on this blog and asked me if I wanted to lead a Zen "panel."




With some trepidation, I said yes. Please understand, I'm not certified to teach Zen to anybody, and April last year was when I'd first begun to make my connection to the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and an authentic Zen school; this was just after the disappointing Nashville Zen Center spring retreat that led me to look elsewhere for Zen experience, and I was open to anything. But I went in by myself on a Friday afternoon, winged it, and got minimal response, thought I did meet my friend Ana, whom you've seen mentioned here. This year, knowing a little more, and knowing how unlikely the event still was, I got Ana involved and volunteered again. I told myself that if it didn't work out, I'd sit for an hour, and that would be the last trip.




In my opinion, this year was an unqualified success. At least fifteen to twenty people showed up at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, some after an all-night rave, and most of them sat zaze with us for five minutes and chanted the Heart Sutra. I had the big bell from the NZC and the fish drum, and eveyone got involved; we even had them doing kin-hin (walking meditation). I don't know if any of them will sit zazen again anytime soon, but the seed has been planted. Hell, I wasn't ready to sit regularly when I first started, and I was at least seven or eight years older than these kids.


I wasn't the least bit shocked or startled by the mass murder last week in Virginia; if you 've been reading this, you know that I know that that's just the way things are going. I didn't even follow the news. I felt like I'd heard it all before. I didn't stop that one little nutball from killing all those people, but Ana and I did show a few kids who are already looking for another way, in their own way, that there are options. And that's all I can do for now, and maybe all I can ever do.

More on the Evil Dentist

I never know which blog entries are going to draw attention. Part of the problem is, I really don't know who reads this thing. I used to have a hit counter on it so I know there are such people, but for the most part, other than the ones I email, I don't know who the readers are. And another strange thing: most blogs I read draw tons of comments. This one doesn't; everyone just emails me instead. This could be because most of the people who read this blog don't read other blogs; I just don't know.

Anyway, except for Ms. Johnson, who's always popular, usually what draws emails is some secondary thing which was not the main topic or point of the post, and that's true of the last one. My mention of the dentist who did unnecessary drilling is my teeth when I was a young man drew several emails from childhood friends who had had the same experience, or had heard of the man's incompetence. The pattern was the same: lots of "cavities" while using the bastard dentist, none after leaving him, and then a lifetime of bad teeth from all the unnecessary and poorly done fillings.

However, it got more interesting. There were several dentists in my hometown, but everyone who emailed me knew immediately who I was talking about. In my response to one old friend, I noted that the bastard was probably dead by now. My friend responded, somewhat to my embarrassment, that I was right, he had died just a few weeks before. This led me to some online research, and to my amazement, a discovery of a raving eulogy. Allegedly the man was a co-founder of a major scientific research institution, as well as a state political figure. Why he would need to be hanging about in Manchester, TN, putting unnecessary metal in kids' mouths, if he was in fact such a saint and a pioneer, is beyond me. This is the crap you read when people die.

I really wanted to out the dentist here and publish the obituary as well as his name, so that his heirs would have to live in as much embarrasment as possible, but my legal background convinced me otherwise. Truth is a complete defense to a defamation suit, but trying to prove dental malpractice from thirty years ago is more trouble than I want to take on. Not that I'm much of a target financially, but you never know. I do wish I'd known how widespread and well-known this slimeball's activities were, or there would have been a class-action suit many years ago.

I don't know what the universal truth behind this post is; I just thought it was interesting. Perhaps it's just a sad commentary on the human condition that a person who was lasting accomplishments in his personal history, as well as a modicum of social prominence, could still be knowingly damaging the health and futures of children while fleecing their parents for money. I could blame the decline of modern culture, but this is a story that sounds like it could have been written at any point in human history; I imagine the ancient Egyptians had similar problems.

Meanwhile, I'm still avoiding doctors. Eat right, exercise, and die when your time comes. At this moment that seems prudent to me.

Cages in Our Heads

I just went to the doctor yesterday for the first time since, I think the year 2000. What drove me to this desparate act? A sebaceous cyst.

If you know what that is, you know it doesn't need medical attention, unless you're into cosmetic surgery. And it's on my shoulder so who cares? The problem was I needed to have it diagnosed as such, and it took me probably a year to get around to it.

Part of the delay was my aversion to the medical profession. Despite all the alleged hi-tech advances, I don't see a lot of improvement since the middle ages, or maybe it's the fact that the dedicated professionals in the business appear to have been driven out by the quacks and the slaves of the drug salesmen. Or maybe it's the fact that my mother died a few years early because of the gross incompetence of her doctor, whom I'd told her was incompetent years before.

Funny how parents won't listen to you. To this day I have terrible teeth because when I was about 18 I discovered that the dentist I'd been going to since I was a child was filling cavities that didn't exist. My father went to this quack until the quack either retired or died, I don't care which. Anyway, I tended to go 10 to 15 years between dentist appointments. I still don't have a dentist, although any day I anticipate a blinding pain in my head that forces me back into one of those hellholes.

Incidentally, the doctor I saw yesterday was great, as far as I can tell. He took about thirty seconds to diagnose the problem (which is not always a plus, but I'm pretty sure he was sure). He was recommended by someone at work, and I need to thank them today. He even recommended an herbal remedy instead of a prescription drug for a separate minor problem I told him about, which sold me. I think prescription drugs are a bigger problem in this country than cocaine or meth will ever be, because the pushers are institutionalized, and it's nice to have a doctor who's not in their pocket.

Anyway, last year while I wasn't working and had no medical insurance, I noticed this knot on my shoulder. After a while when it didn't go away, it began to worry me. I figured it was probably a cyst, but it didn't feel like the cyst I've had on my wrist for 10 or 12 years (which is the difference between a ganglion cyst and the sebaceous version, I now know). So I couldn't get out of my head the possibility that it was a tumor, either cancerous or otherwise. I tried not to think about, since it wasn't going away or getting any bigger, but I couldn't. The thought found a little niche in my head to live in and wouldn't go away or die. The thing never hurt of course and it's not immediately obvious to anyone else. But I thought about it several times, every single day. And when I went to the gym or wore a sleeveless shirt, I was thinking, does everyone else know I have cancer and they're just too polite to say? And I was thinking people were looking at my shoulder; I'd just catch them looking away.

Then it began to interfere with my planning for the future. Would I die before I could complete the activites I planned? Finally last week I forced myself to make an appointment (that's right, I got in to see a new internist for the very first time, in a week!) and then I was putting off starting any new projects til after the appointment. After all, cancer treatment is long and expensive and makes you sick, so why start back into yoga?

Of course, this is all absurd, and I should've know better. I did know what was going on, but I still couldn't stop obsessing. Those of you who've read Kathe Koja's Bad Brains are probably getting flashbacks (and if you haven't, go buy all her early stuff while you can find it, it's mostly out of print; start with the link hidden in my graphics over there on the right side). Finally, I took the only treatment I could find for my real disease, the mental one, and had someone else tell me I was healthy. That's not the way it should be, but sometimes it's the way it is.

Of course now I feel totally empowered. Everything was going great before, the best in years in most ways. I'm finally making enough money to really live on for the first time in four years, my fitness is coming back, hell I'm even losing weight finally. Living situation is good, and I know better people (the rare times I want them around). In short, everything's been great, but now the rider in my head is gone, and I'm out of the cage. Look out, world!

Fundamental Alchemy

That's Ed and Al and Scar, some of the main characters from Fullmetal Alchemist, one of my favorite anime series. I've often regretted the absence of an anime presence on this blog, because it's become important to me and is one of my main joys these days; if you were to examine my Netflix cue, a good two-thirds of it is anime. I haven't done any blogging on anime because it's very hard to talk about to people who've never really experienced it, kind of like zazen; people walk around talking about it with no real understanding at all. But if you want to watch some good intelligent anime, this series is a really excellent place to start.

In fact, I think for the most part this blog grossly understates the value in my life of really good fiction; I'm dying to talk about some of my favorite fiction writers, especially William Gibson and Kathe Koja. But those articles are going to take a little time, and I just wanted to spit out this thought that's been occurring to me through the wee hours of this morning while the rest of you are sleeping, and Fullmetal expresses it as well as anything: the Principle of Equivalent Exchange, the fundamental law of alchemy.

Alchemy has really gotten a bum rap. It is of course, a false science and a myth. But it was the primary obsession of Isaac Newton's life (there are some great history pieces on this, none of which I feel like digging up at the moment, but for a fascinating historical fiction treatment, read the best fiction epic series of the last ten years, read Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle) and the driving force behind the creation of chemistry and modern science. And compared to some of the other really stupid things people believe these days, alchemy is a real prince of a belief system. Most people think of alchemy as the attempt to turn base metals into gold, but it ultimately was a quest to turn the base metal of humanity into eternal life, in line with another familiar myth of the last two millenia. And it has some very basic and true premises, the most fundamental one being the law of equivalent exchange; the fact that for everything taken something must be given, and that for everything gained, something is lost. Ed and Al forget this when they try to bring back the dead. Most of us forget it every second of our lifes.

If you went to high school back when they used to teach science there, you should remember from first-year Chemistry the necessity of balancing chemical equations. In every chemical reaction, you must have the same amount of stuff (or stuff plus energy, when you get a little further in) on one side of the equation as the other, or before and after. This comes from alchemy and is a fundamental rule of existence. Isaac Newton knew it, Einstein knew it, why don't you know it?

You may think you do but you don't. It comes down to what Brad Warner (and every other decent Zen teacher, but I just like Brad's style) keeps saying; the fundamental delusion and cause of suffering in human life is the desire to end suffering, to get to that next stage where one little thing is fixed, so that everything will be better and you will live happily everafter. You probably know that with your mind, but you don't live that way; it's the not the fundamental color of your mind from second to second. You just think, if I could get that girl, if I could get that job, if I had that car, if I just didn't have cancer of heart disease or gout everything would be perfect. You know better? No, you don't.

It occurred to me many years ago, that no matter what my circumstances were, and by extrapolation your circumstances, I was going to be happy and unhappy about the same amounts of times. Live as a rock star has its ups and downs, as does life as a prisoner. Some of the best times I've had, subjectively, were in the best parts of some of the worst circumstances. It's got more to do with your brain chemistry than with your external circumstances. One of the most basic things I've come to realize in the last couple of years is that nothing is going to make things better on a personal subjective level, and nothing is going to make things worse. You just think they will.

"Nothing is better, nothing is best. Take care of yourself, get plenty of rest." - Bob Dylan and the Band, the Basement Tapes.

And that from my point of view on this Thursday morning has everything to do with living our lives as they are, not as they wish we were. It's all perfect because it's all there is, and it's the only way it could be. The fundamental cause of unhappiness is the quest for happiness. But you can make yourself happy in this moment. Go watch some good anime.

The Whole Beast

I've been reading and commenting on Brad Warner's last article on the Suicide Girls sight. If you haven't checked out his stuff written for that site, you should do so; it may seem like an odd place for a Zen teacher to be posting, but it fits in quite well, and if anything I think I like his articles there even more than the ones written for his regular blog, probably because on Suicide Girls he's writing less for insiders. You don't have to be a member of the site to read the articles, and there's a link to it in my directory to the right.

Anway, in the latest article, Brad writes of how the recent death of his mother led him to look at his place in the world and his responsbility to it differently, and to appreciate the value of each moment of life. When my mother died almost four years ago, I fell apart and went crazy for a while, but when I came back to myself a year later, I felt the need to define myself in a new way. As long as your mother lives, you have a mediator between yourself and reality, but with her death, you face the great unknown head-on for the first time, and it becomes necessary to do so clearly. In my case, it led me back through various forms of Buddhism to Zen, which as you all know by now is where I started in about 1981.

I always have a dissonance with all the Buddhist writers who talk about Zen or Buddhism as a way of saving the world. First, as my friend Gareth has pointed out, Zen will never be a majority religion in the country, and I think that the reason for this is most of the Zen teachers in America, as opposed to what has happened at various times in its long history in Japan, have tried to keep it pretty true and honest, avoid all the mythologizing and devotionalism that tend to inflate popular religions and make them acceptible to the masses. I'm not against the other branches of Buddhism, mind you, but I think that for the most part they are what Buddhists talk about as skillful means, or as I might rephrase it, expedient means.

The only way to get to a real understanding of Zen is to burn out all of the shortcuts and easy answers that your brain will try to give you on the way to an understanding of the truth. I try not to talk about Zen too much (except for its history and a listing of my activities) because it ultimately can't be talked about; words always fail, by definition. The only truly accurate map of the world is a the world itself, but we have to have less accurate maps because the world is hard to fold up and put in the glove compartment. John Dewey's discussion of mistaking maps for territories was one of the valuable things I brought out of my undergraduate education in psychology into my adult worldview. This is how all the books and speeches on Zen compare to the real thing.

So in other words, I think the people who have come to Zen in America are the people who have come through the games of philosophy with its ulimate message: that the mind is limited and cannot grasp reality. They have come through conventional religion and seen that it is a delusion. If Zen were taught to everyone, if it were a mass religion, it would have a lot of deluded adherents. Maybe I'd feel differently if I liked in California or somewhere with a lot more Buddhists; there are fools in every crowd.

My point to all this is that the completion to my understand and acceptance of where I stand in relation to the universe came when Jim Lydecker began hitting me with his Peak Oil stuff. Oh, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was the other part that completed the whole. Realising the influence of petroleum and post-WW II surplusses in ammonium nitrate on the modern food industry, one finally has grasped enough parts of the elephant's body to realize what the whole beast looks like.

And what it looks like is the end of civilization. We are already in the beginning of the Oil Wars, and I believe we will never see peace again. In pursuit of the Carter doctrine that the U.S. is willing to go to war for oil, with no intention of reducing our consumption, we will have to fight the rest of the world for the rest of our lives to feed the burgeoning monster that is America. And it's not just us; the rest of the world will have to do the same. In one sense, the Bible-thumpers will be vindicated; the End Times are coming, and I think those in my generation will see by the end how lucky we will be not to see them through to their own bitter end.

I tend to agree with the thesis of Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation, that my parents' generation, who grew up in the Great Depression, fought and won WW II and turned America into the greatest power in the World, was the greatest American generation. It appears also that they drove the final nails in the coffin of world civilization, although they did so with the best of intentions. Ironically, I think it will the revolution in food production which occurred in the forties, fifties, and continues, which will be the death knell of humankind. Peak Oil has always been inevitable, but it is the mindless and ridiculous expansion of human population, which Paul Ehrlich pointed out in The Population Bomb in 1971, resulting from literally forcing food out of the ground with petroleum fertilizers, which have made it occur within our lifetimes. Maybe fifty years ago civilization could have been redirected in a way to let us and our children and maybe the next generation lead decent lives, but it's too late now. Life for children born now will be hell by the time they are middle-aged.

And there's not much you can do it; if it makes you feel good to try to save the world, by all means do so. Jim is still upset up the end of the world; I'm not. The same human drives and human nature that build civilization have led it to its almost inevitable end. I accept that, and I thank Zen for that acceptance. No, Zen is not fatalism. In my case, it is the tool that enables me to perceive clearly and apply what I feel is appropriate effort to the world around me. I would like to promote Buddhism, and ultimately, Zen, as my own particular kind of compassion; I feel it is a tool that may enable those about to walk into hell to endure it as well as possible. And none of your delusions will help you with the walk through hell.

Shawna Potter and AVEC

This video was included in my last post as a link, but for those of you too lazy to check it out, I've put it front and center here; when I found it, I was just looking for anything featuring Shawna Potter, formerly of Fair Verona, here with AVEC, but I frankly didn't expect to find anything this good. My question is, why hasn't everybody found this?

As I understand it, AVEC is formed of Texans who have relocated to Baltimore, for whatever bizarre reason. Personally, my acquaintance with this band came through my being a fan of Shawna Potter, through her first band, Fair Verona (the links are in the previous entry, people). Fair Verona was a victim of a combination of young musician innocence in contract-signing and corporate greed, and had to cease to exist, much to the dismay of Nashville rock fans. The members went their separate ways. I have no idea what happened to Leah, the bass player; maybe Shawna will fill me in. Beth is now in a band called Forget Cassettes, a band I'd truly like to forget (Shawna tells me they just had a bad night the one time I saw them, and they're apparently making it big, relatively speaking, so what do I know?). Shawna linked up with AVEC and moved to Baltimore, and at first I didn't think the band was a good enough showcase for her talent. Apparently I was wrong, or the band has gotten better.

A lot of things have gone wrong in America in this century, more bad news than I could have thought would happen in six years. An evil moron has been elected President twice, by evil moronic people. America is on the road to becoming a totalitarian state, although some slight resistance has arisen (too late?). But the music! Listening to pop radio is now a Hellish experience, almost worse than TV. I listen to NPR or jazz radio or my IPOD linked through the cassette deck.

In the late 90's, rock was on its way to becoming the best it's ever been, largely due to the female influence. Prominent on my IPOD are Julianna Hatfield and the Blake Babies, Bif Naked, and lots of others I don't want to digress into at this point. I went to the first two Lillith Fairs, being one of about 5 percent of males in the audience. One more digression: if you've never seen Shawn Colvin perform live, you've missed out on what acoustic live music should be. As Stan Lee would say, 'Nuff said.

Anyway, that was probably the milieu that gave birth to Fair Verona, and I'm glad it did. When I saw them live, I was drawn to the voice, guitar and sheer persona of Shawna Potter. I think Shawna was 17 when the band started, the youngest of them. When I saw her play, I swear I saw the future of rock and roll. I still think that. Who was to know that rock and roll had no future? The music on the radio is shit, and if I sound like an old fart saying this, let me say that I have no stomach for "classic rock" either. My music in the early seventies was Bob Dylan, John Lennon, David Bowie, T. Rex, Mott the Hoople; when punk broke, it was Elvis Costello, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones. The eighties was a long dry period, but when the new rock era broke in the 90's I thought there was hope. But the vapid slush that composes pop music today is in keeping with the times -- hopeless and doomed.

So, when you find a band like AVEC, support them. Follow the link; they're very hard to Google, because you get every French site ever put up. Buy their CD's and when they come to your town, go see them, support them. Shawna says they're gonna be touring this summer or fall behind a new album: I'll post or link to the schedule. Go see the alternative present of rock and roll. This is the world you should be living in.

DIY

No, this post is not about this band, as interesting as it is. The band I guess is called Nouvelle Vague, and according to their website, is a group put together by some French guy to do these cocktail-lounge version of what they call post-punk music. You gotta love their version of "Guns of Brixton." This version of the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" was the most refreshing thing I found on You Tube yesterday, so I thought you had to see.

I guess this kind of relates to the point of the post, which is that I saw American Hardcore last night, and it's a great documentary. Brad Warner reviewed it in his blog last year, and did a damned good job of it, which he should, since this is his millieu, not mine; for those of you who haven't read even the into blurb on his site (first, shame on you), he was the bass player for ODFx, an Ohio hardcore band, long before he was a Zen web pundit. But this is not my music. My era was earlier; I loved all the pre-punk bands, especially the original punks who started the whole thing, the New York Dolls. Seeing them last year here in Nashville, even with only two original members, completed my concert-going experience. The Nashville "alt-rock' scene was fairly interesting a few years ago, with bands like Fair Verona around to demonstrate that a (then)17-year old girl like Shawna Potter can riff with anybody; although I'm admittedly out of touch now, except for Be Your Own Pet, who are not to be missed and rarely grace Nashville with their presence anymore, I don't see anything else that holds up.

Anyway. I find the music in American Hardcore barely listenable, but I gave it five stars on Netflix because the movie was so inspiring. The story of Hardcore music, the bastard stepchild born when punk died and morphed into New Wave around 1980, is the story of punk all over again; young kids with no money, no connections and only moderate (at best) musical talent, doing their own thing, with no hope of transcending their environment. Dead end at its best. It was played with no publicity in mostly illicit venues throughout the country; the film puts its run at 1980- 1986. If you're 15, you get together with a bunch of your friends, misunderstood misfits who are learning to play their instruments onstage; you pick a good name, dress in whatever rags you can scrounge, rent the Ukranina polka club for the night, trash it, and then go find another innocent landlord and do it again. Advertising is flyers and word of mouth.

Some of the best of these bands, the Dead Kennedys (who started) earlier and the Circle Jerks were around in San Francisco when I was there 1980- '83, but I never saw them. Not my scene; I was too old in my early twenties, though I built up the nerve to brave what was left of this scene and its legacy years later when I was much older. I do remember the flyers, though, and the band names. The Snap-on Tools come to mind (this was San Francisco).

The flyers are key, though; the art was sometimes great. In one of the film's most revealing scenes, Keith from the Circle Jerks shows how the band hand-made the sleeves to its EP's, thousands of them in that pre-CD era. If you wanted to start a Hardcore band, there was no momma-poppa record company, no Svengali manager or agent; you booked your own venues, paid for your own bus trips (Henry Rollins discusses a two-show road tour with the Teen Idles), and did your own thing.

The inspiration for me in a movie like this, about a music movement which produced little if anything that was (to me) listenable, comes in its subtext message: Do It Yourself. Which is not so much, do your own work, but create your own thing, even if no one else listens to your music or understands or appreciates what you do. When I was young, I wrote and drew quite a lot of really bad comic books; later I wrote some decent songs and accompanied them with some fairly poor guitar playing. Lately, all this web stuff is strictly DIY on my end.

The point, is, it's your life and you'd better do what you want to do and do it now. I fail to stick with this even now, sometimes, even as I approach 50 and should know better. I am extremely dedicated to my Zen practice, and I love anime and I really like writing these blogs and trying to teach myself to build a website; I am quite attached to my cat and to my Rufi. I am extremely glad I never married or had children; I cherish my time alone. I don't like housecleaning, no matter what Zen says. What else do you want to know?

The mistake I make is in expecting anyone else I know to share any two of my affections. Most of the Zen community consist of affluent educated people who will never understand my musical tastes or my interest in anime, manga or cyberpunk (I apologize in advance to William Gibson for using that term, but I'm trying to be terse). I intentionally took myself out of the "professional" community a long time ago; most of the people I work with watch American Idol. Yesterday there was a huge in-house sale on cheap Prada sunglasses. Do you see?

So, the message of American Hardcore for me was: Do It Yourself. Build your own life, even if no one else wants it. I probably wouldn't want yours either, but for today, mine is exactly what I need.

Emptiness

I've been trying to get the top part of the background to this new blog template to turn black, hacking away at the html, but it stays pink regardless of my efforts. The Rufi are laughing.

Today had a sour start to it. Birds have covered my car with shit again, and there was no opportunity to wash it off. I'm still having trouble getting paid for all my collections at work. I still don't have an insurance card despite assurances, after almost five months of employment and four weeks of deductions. The more I learn about the websites I'm trying to build, the more frustrated I get.

The front of the duplex I'm renting is really ugly and getting worse. One of my old friends keeps borrowing minor sums of money and being really slow about returning them. It's frustrating trying to lose the weight I put on in a year or two of semi-involuntary lethargy. I worry about going to the doctor for the first time in years; what will he find? I constantly realize no one around me thinks at all like I do.

I have artistic visions I can't express; I don't have the talent. One of my favorite writers actually responded to my email. I wonder if my fellow Buddhists are making a mistake not being politically active, and whether I'm making the same mistake. I have visions of grinding metals and heat. I don't like all the thoughts that come through my head. I wonder if I'm crazy.
Sometimes I wonder if delusion is not better than seeing clearly, then I wonder if I know the difference. The United States is about to attack another country; no one is doing anything to stop it.

I cried when John Lennon was shot. He was my first hero.

This must be what blogs are like.

Whoops!

Due to some unfortunate early-morning fiddling around with the template, my links section and some of the add-on features have been deleted. We'll be paying some attention to that on Sunday.

Meanwhile, all the content of the blog entries is still here, so enjoy!

Christiane F.

At various times throught a lifetime, one sees movies that change that life forever, and for me, this was one of them. It gave me a vision I'd never had before, and it's been with me since. I've been trying since yesterday to remember just where and when I saw this movie. It must have been in 1982 or 1983, when I was living in San Francisco, making occasional visits to Palo Alto to complete my law degree at Stanford, but mostly soaking up the ambience of the City itself; I remember how this films' incredible soundtrack inspired me to ride the Muni underground late at night with my cassette deck and headphones, listening to Bowie and Eno, looking at the other riders. Looking up the movie's history now on the internet, I see it was completed (in Germany) in 1981, released in theatres there in 1982, so probably only in a handful of US cities could I have seen the film, especially that early. Then I lost the film for years -- couldn't ever find it on VHS, or on DVD, until I randomly turned it up on a Neflix search last week, and had to have it immediately; the film pulled on me like heroin did on its young protagonist.

Christiane F.: Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is a true story, ripped from the headlines of Berlin circa 1980. Its heroine is a 13- and 14-year-old girl who gets into drugs through the club scene, becomes addicted to heroin, and winds up as a train station prostitute. The film is ostensably an anti-drug movie, but the only redemption for the film's protagonist comes in a voice-over at the very end; the real message here is in the imagery. And the imagery is some of the most powerful, maybe the most powerful I've ever seen in a film. The soundtrack is David Bowie's best music, mostly from the Low and Heroes albums he produced with Brian Eno during one of his own druggie periods. The visuals are stunning, gritty yet cold, the lonely horror of the train stations, restrooms and Soviet-era block apartments set as background to the warmth and humanity of the characters. Amazingly, Natja Brockhorst, the actress who portrays Christiane and probably the most beautiful child actress I've ever seen, doesn't seem to have had that much of a career after, and is now working behind the cameras.

Although I searched for this film for years, I had no idea it had a cult following until I renewed my internet search; it looks like I am far from the only person whose life it touched. Yet when I try to reach into my head to tell you exactly how this movie affected me, I suffer from a rare loss of words. Certainly, the ethereal, haunting beauty of the film is memorable for a lifetime; yet many of its scenes are of stark depradation. In today's films, even the supposedly "hardcore" ones like Alpha Dog, drug use (except for marijuana) usually occurs off-screen; in Christiane F. is is explicit, in your face; it is the character's lives, and there is nothing glamorous about the way it is portrayed. As opposed even to later well-done drug movies like Spun, there is no humor here, no let-up; just sadness and warmth, icy cold and pragmatic reality.

So. I did not become a heroin addict after watching this movie; I did not move to Berlin. After all, this movie was about kids, and I was probably about 25 when I saw it. It did give me a new vision of cool, a kid with his or her head all smacked-out riding the subways. It took me years to figure out you can't get that head from drug use; it just comes from watching movies as good as this one. You can't groove on the beautiful Bowie soundtrack when you're jonesing for a hit, of heroin or anything.

So when I think of the image the film formed in my head of a cool junkie riding the subway through the night with Bowie in his ears, I realized that's an image that could never meet reality; only the voyeurs like me could do that. The real junkies were having an existence I wouldn't wish for you (unless you're in the Bush administration) on your worst stay. It think that maybe heroin addiction is such a powerful and compelling image for us because it is the distillation of essence of a life driven by desire and attachment. We are all, in a sense, junkies, wanting that perfect buzz we can never have it, and we don't all seek it from drugs. We seek it from money, power, sex and all the other cravings signified by all the obvious buzzwords and labels. And like junkies, we'll never lose that urge, but it's part of who were are; to steal the words of one of the biggest cults in operation today, we have to just deal with it, one day at a time.

[I'm writing this early on Sunday morning with a head full of sugar and caffeine, having made myself buckwheat pancakes for breakfast. Now here's a drug buzz I can live with and still work out later today. Find your own comfort zone.]

Oh, and by the way, this movie is available only in German or in English dub; I would have preferred to watch it in German with English subtitles. So much for the comfort zone.

Zen Updates

I made it back to the Atlanta Soto Zen Center last weekend for the first time since last October; what used to be the monthy sesshin is now the zazenkai, to differentiate it from the longer events that happen now three times a year and has, counterintuitively, gotten longer; aspiring zazen-sters can now sit from Thursday evening through Sunday. This time the emphasis was on the minute details of Soto Zen ritual, which can be a bit much if you don't do them all the time, but which were interesting to me since most of the ritual is pretty much blown off here at the Nashville Zen Center.

The down side of the weekend was that the ASZC isn't heated properly, so the sleeping accomodations stayed right at 58 degrees, which if memory serves is the constant temperature of a cave, until Nat, who accompanied me, broke down and bought a $9.99 space heater at Eckert's the night before we left. The upside for me is that a record number of Nashvillians went with me: new NZC president Nat, who'd gone with me to my initiation in September, 2006, and Ana. Ana is probably the story of the retreat for me; she's a 19-year-old Zen student who's been sitting by herself or friends for a few years and who finally came to sit with us at the Barn the weekend before the zazenkai. To watch someone handle their first extended sitting, with minimal attendance and at adverse temperatures, as well as she did was inspiring, and a reassurance that you don't have to middle-aged to appreciate Zen. After listening to Nat whine all weekend, her fortitude was impressive. Here's hoping Ana stays in the practice; we need her.

Next on the menu: ASZC Abbot Taiun Michael Elliston returns to Nashville for a one-day zazenkai (no one else here is calling it that, but I like the term) on Feb. 24 at Jennye's mom's beautiful lake house north of Mount Juliet. Meanwhile, I've just joined the Board of the Nashville Buddhist Festival, a cooperative event put on by various schools of Nashville Buddhism set for Sept. 15. The event is supposed to be annual (this will be the fourth), though it was cancelled last year for various reasons. The Tibetan Buddhists who had been a mainstay of the event have pulled out, allegedly on the instruction of their teachers (?), so the event is apparently being hosted by us at the Barn as usual (a recent tidbit of knowledge which came to us a couple of weeks ago from an outside source, prompting our inquiry and my concommitent participation), being put on this time by the remaining Buddhist groups, including the Vipassana group, One Dharma (a non-sectarian group with Zen tendencies organized by previous NZC president Lisa Ernst), a Thich Nat Hanh group of which I had no prior knowledge, and us. I think there may be a Shambala-related Tibetan group in there somewhere, too. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it comes off without the Tibetans, who always supplied the crowds.

A side note: There is an ongoing project involving some Theravadans (Southeast Asian Buddhists, I believe) who have acquired and have been working on renovating an old house near the Hood in downtown Nashville into what is being projected as a non-sectarian abode for the use of all Buddhists in the area. They have never been involved in a Buddhist Festival before, but now I am thinking.

Also, as of this date I am scheduled to host a "panel" on Zen at the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention on April 15, a seeming dubious venture, but I did it last year and met Ana, so if I have to unearth one Zen student at a time, it's worth it; hopefully Ana is helping me with the presentation. It's currently scheduled at 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning, prime time to be sure.

Also, I blithely write along in these posts without ever referring to my Links sections, which are just over there to the right, thinking that the additions would be pretty obvious, but I may be over-assuming the attention of my readers to these things; so I would just point out that I have re-organized the things a bit in the last few months, and also added some more Buddhist links and some personal sites of my friends: note particularly the blog of Shiho Gareth Young, a senior disciple at the ASZC, as well as that of Shokai, another ASZC student/teacher, and Ana's MySpace page, which has an ongoing blog as well. Check out the links; there are a few surprises there as well.

I'll be back with another thematic rant in due time. For those of you checking out the hyperlinks, which was half the point of this entry, some of the above have no web page. If I have missed anything, let me know.

The Return of the Beast

Forget the Super Bowl. I'm sick of Peyton Manning, and whoever cared about the Bears with their pasty-faced prepubescent quarterback? No, the sports event for me in the opening months of any year is the Australian Open, played as usual this year in the middle of the Sydney summer, this time featuring players suffering on Day 2 with heat and dehydration while America digs out from a foreshadowing of the coming Long Winter. Of course the men's game suffers from the oppressive dominance of Roger Federer, whose friendly Swiss arrogance reminds me of vintage Hingis; but the women's game as usual provided the full panoply of personalities, which distilled down to the final with the World's Pin-up Maria Sharapova meeting American Gorilla Serena Williams in the final.

For me, a fan since the seventies, tennis has never had villains like the Williams sisters. Every sport needs a villain, but the entry of Venus and Serena onto the scene in the late 90's brought the WTA into the world of the WWF. Long after the Martina Navratilova and Chrissy era, and following upon the heels of Steffi Graf's long dominance, tennis prodigy Martina Hingis burst on the scene in 1997 at the age of 16, winning everything with the assurance of an undefeated child and possibly the best tennis mind of all time. Then, from the darkness which had given us Darth Vader in the previous generation and the New World Order in pro wrestling, emerged Richard Williams with his offensive progeny and his mission to prove that grace and intelligence meant nothing besides raw power and ghetto trash talk.

Richard Williams was the Don King of tennis. He nurtured his evil brood in some hidden compound somewhere; the Williams sisters were never allowed to compete in the juniors, gestating in some private hell while Hingis and Anna Kournikova were evolving toward the non-rivalry of the late 90's (said Hingis, in classic style, "What rivalry? I win all the matches."). Then first Venus, then Serena emerged to throw Hingis into mediocrity and despondency as brain yielded to brawn and the Sisters dominated for several years. They were hailed as the return of the great American tennis player, though what their trash talk and oppressive power had in common with Chris Evert's grace, I'll never know.

The Williams sisters, victims of their own success, began to languish a few years into the millenium. As usual with rich people with no culture, they flaunted their ignorance in a variety of ways, the most hilarious of which is Serena's entry into the field of fashion. Serena has the fashion sense, particulary with regard to color, of a technicolor hooker on meth (witness the black leather with studs look or the blue hoop earrings with the green head scarf last night. Sassy.). Sadly, no one rose to prominence in the sisters' decline, leaving us with the mediocrity of Amelie Mauresmo as temporary world number one. The field in women's tennis, decimated by the Williams dominance, became reminiscent of the seven dwarves era of the 1992 presidential campaign. But even as the dwarves ultimately gave us Bill Clinton, who may turn out to be the last rational President, the lukewarm broth of post-Williams tennis gave us Maria Sharapova, who at 17 kicked Serena's erratic ass at the 2004 Wimbledon in the greatest underdog victory since another 17-year-old named Boris Becker won the same tournament unseeded in 1985.

Sharapova at her best combines grace with beauty and power in an unprecedented manner that sports marketers had only dreamed of until her. Anna Kournikova actually was a rival to Hingis in the Girls game, but turned out to winless and unable to cope in the WTA, and whatever motivation she may have had to get her game on track was doubtless drained by her celebrity in spite of her lack of success, and her career as a model. Sharapova is the highest-paid women's athelete ever and only a fraction of that comes from her tennis success. She is the beautiful face of women's tennis, and has the skill to back it up. This year, with Justine Henin finally breaking up with her effeminate husband (was he a beard? dunno), Sharapova came into the Australian as the top seed, and does in fact emerge with the number one ranking, despite her ignominious loss last night (today, actually).

But Serena came back. I hesitate to say she is back; every since the Serena Slam of 2002-03, her career has been checkered by stops and starts, erratic performances, bizarre outfits and fits of ball-spraying, mixed with sheer exhibitions of power and yes, skill, like last night. Watching Serena curse Maria after Sharapova finally won a rally with a direct shot to Serena's body, watching Maria roll her eyes to the heavens as Serena's victory speech sank to the level of thanking all the little people, I can't think there's any love lost between these two, despite the respectful speeches belied by their facial expressions. Maria will come back to battle the darkness; may the Force be with her.

Post-Oil Man

I sort of have mixed feelings about this guy, sent to me by Jim. The artist, whom I've never encountered before, is James W. Johnson. This guy is certainly a mild version of what's bound to be going on within the next century, but if it takes a cartoon to get people to understand or even be interested in what's right before their faces, so be it.

I was always fascinated by dystopias like Brave New World, 1984, Dhalgren, etc. Even the most illiterate of the population have seen Mad Max and its ilk; Dark Angel was one of my favorite series of the last great gasp of network TV at the turn of the century. The population of the post-apocalypse was always pretty much the same, the quality of its representation depending on the author, but the cause was always different.

The cause of the end of civilization as we know it is now apparent: overpopulation, as stimulated, aggravated and made possible by Peak Oil, soon to be dealt with the way nature has always dealt with excess; by massive war, famine, disease, misery and death. As optimistic as some of my fellows are, there is no way to straighten the situation out without unprecedented human suffering. Most of the earth's population will have to die off, and the time frame is too short for any kind of population management, which has been fought against by morons for several generations now until it's too late.

The point at this point is not to save humanity; it's to prepare oneself to deal with the inevitable. The efforts made by the guy in the video won't last him long, any more than hoarding and the most strenous efforts you can make now can prepare you for the worst. In the war of all against all, nothing can survive, not even the strongest and the fittest. It's a battle to see who starves last. The current Oil Wars are only the most obvious sign.

All my efforts the last few years just enable me to see more clearly, and I can't filter it with wishful thinking any more. Just enjoy the fact that we've seen the high point. All those Jetsonian future utopias will never happen; we're almost as hi-tech as we're gonna get. Yeah, we'll have niftier cell phones. But the real things that could've been done in the previous generation that could've considerably lengthened the arc of the curve of human culture -- such as population management, rational and conversative planning for the earth's energy future, and political realism -- weren't. And it's too late now.

Maybe this is one reason I've lightened up on the Bush Cabal and the neo-fascists these past months. It really doesn't matter. The Republican losses in the last election may or may not slow the descent into hell, but the brakes are made of cotton candy and the roller coaster is already on the downhill track. So hang on and prepare to hit bottom, probably within the lifetime of current generations.

Have a good weekend.