Picture and Stories (Coming Soon)

I am so behind on this whole blog thing, I am going to end up making like 10 separate entries on one day.  Posts I have got to stop procrastinating:

Serenity Coffee Poetry

Particular Poet from the Coffee Shop

North End Extravaganza

BU tour

Boston Bike Riding

Posts I screwed up because I forgot to take pictures:

Dragging Kendall through Cambridge

Fire and Ashes

I have been postponing making another blog entry because I have had really large entry to make on the poetry gathering at Serenity Coffee, but as time passes I feel more and more disconnected from the feelings I experienced while I was there.  I better make it soon, first I need to contact a particular poet.  For now I feel moved to speak, particularly by some music Tereza gave me that puts me in an emotional mood.

Birth and Death and Rebirth.  I feel like I die multiple times a week, but burnt out, there is always some spark in the ashes that lights me back up.  In one hour I can be on fire with vision and thought, the next I am a pile of ashes.  I am not a science guy (Although relative to my ancestors I am) but I tend to see things as though they were symbolic paintings.  I feel like the suburbs is a society of ashes.  Burnt out people with burnt out lives.  I know many people who seek to move somewhere that is alive, flames well kept, spirits looking forward, but I am not concerned with these people.  I look at the ashes around me and ponder how can life be breathed into the dead.  What spark is the right spark, how can I light a people who sleep and do not know?  Hidden among the ashes there are allies, but while they themselves are very much alive, they are clueless as to what to do about a stale culture.  And while one of my favorite fires leaves town for Canada, to experience a region that still has spirit, vision, vibrant culture, and a forward looking attitude, I regret abandoning this mountain of ashes for a city bound to a rigorous intellectual outlook which, while passionate for knowledge, lacks spiritual direction.  

When I think about Glenside, I feel the need to become a monk immediately and begin wondering around talking to people on the streets, ignoring education or my economic visions.  When I think about Boston, well, let's just say this:  In Glenside when I say I am Buddhist, I am occasionally greeted with interest, but most often with an apathetic, "Oh, thats interesting" from an agnostic.  In Boston, when I say I am Buddhist, I find a general intellectual backlash.  "Oh, I've read what you people believe, and I think you people just waste your lives," sir, how little you understand of our teaching.  In Glenside, I feel like people go to work, eat, watch TV, and depending on the person, have sex.  In Boston, I feel people are too busy following the neo-school of transcendental libertarian-anarcho capitalocommunism of social-populist bent with emphasis of (Insert Western Philosophical Windbag here).

We are remembering to bring our textbook to class, but not our soul.  "What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind." - Einstein

May the soul of this community and this city, a city founded with a philosophy in mind, rise up again like a Phoenix.

Dovetail Artisans

Now, I'm an economics major, and if you have ever read the beginning of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you will learn that the reduction of the creation process to simple repetitive processes is the source of modern wealth.  Eventually, age old traditions of crafting were sucked into the vacuum of factory produced goods.  Craftsmen who had been self-employed since the beginning of civilization finally found themselves putting down their tools and putting on their overalls as they filed into the factory to make 300 shirts a day, or 200 pots, or 30,000 sheets of paper.  Adam Smith's example is the mass production of nails, which I think is a wonderful thing to gain a lot of efficiently.  There isn't much noticeable art to nails or sheets of paper, but other things were taken over by the system that should have stayed with the now deceased craft class.  The traditional society's economy is described by administrators, artisans, farmers, and merchants.  The modern economy could be described by Capitalists (investors and entrepreneurs), white collar (bureaucrats and office workers), blue collar (factory workers, non-creative service jobs like waiters and retail), and academics. (note the exception that doesn't seem very important to me is the small sector of creative service jobs that could not be called a substitute for the craftclass such as event planners, non-chain restaurants and others who mostly fall under capitalists in a small business sense).

But there is something soulful about the design made by the unique human hand movement and unique human thought.  The handmade good, the good with heart, with soul.  Do we really need more vases, more factory made vases?  Or do we need less vases but soulful vases.  I would argue market failure, but I think a legitimate argument could be made against that in the form of "people like the things they get at walmart and target and not everybody enjoys to step outside of the comfortable and into the artistic."  For the Glenside resident looking for an avenue to push back against the factory, there is Dovetail Artisans.

My friend Elayne (If I may take the liberty of claiming friendship) adopted the store and has accumulated a wonderful array of handmade pottery, woodwork, glassware, jewelry, and other pieces of art.  You can find this store next to Rizzo's on Glenside Avenue near the east road intersection. (Be sure to check out Hamid's ethnic art gallery also while your there, just for the experience)  Now let's get to some pictures:

Everytime I go in there, I find these bowls, that are handmade from start to finish absolutely striking

When I went in there today, she had all of these excellent new canvas prints that this picture can not do justice to.  Here is the arrangement of the prints on the floor while she plans how she wants them to go on the wall.  I acted as her apprentice in layout plan, note my foot

This does absolutely no justice, if you can, go look at them, treat it like a chance to see a display of a particular artist.  The one to the right of my foot ended up being my favorite, and started out as my least favorite.  It is full of subtle characteristics that lead to a vision of a free life.  It is a fashionable woman in a fancy trailer, and the trailer's brand is "Lifestyle" I really recommend you look at this one for awhile.  If I could only remember for the life of me the title of the piece.

Finally we arrive at Elayne, the best piece of art in the store!  Also note the clocks in the background (Not that you could miss them, I had them frame her head)

Things I don't have pictures of that are worthy of admiration:  Navajo Tiles, all of the wooden goods, the other clocks (She has a lot of clocks), the glassware, a lot more pottery, the knickknack type things, the handbags, and a ton of other things.  All I can say is GO VISIT!  Here's praying that there is some way to fully revive the craft and the creativity we have lost in the death of the craftclass.

Ultimate Death Match, Pro Wrestlers Vs. Poli-Sci Majors

As a child, I lived on a street with a variety of different kids my age, and one Willie Jenson always made me laugh with his passion for wrestling.  Now I was a skeptical "smarter than thou" child who thought I was better than all those ignorant people.  Wrestlers are retards (Sidenote, retarded people are wonderful and beautiful human beings that I would never seek to offend and often live with a level of sincerity that non-handicapped people could learn from) and anyone who likes them is stupid.  Well today, I am stupid, really really stupid, because I am a fan of Jesse Ventura.  Not because he's a wrestler but because he was governor of Minnesota for the Reform Party (Which the Minnesota branch later broke from).  He is a rare example of a third party making it to a significant office, and his policies were pretty sound too!

I guess the question is, why would I like someone who ever used steroids (And if you say, 'I would never vote for someone who used steroids' which he used to heal faster from his occupation, you better as hell say also that you would never vote for a politician who tried cocaine for fun(Obama) or marijuana(Bush)) and participated in a farce of equal ridiculousness to a session of congress?  Me, Brian, Mr.Principle, blah blah.  What I want in a leader is a strong-willed person who will stick to a set of principles not to be sold out while in office.  It is about a leader who can lead and inspire the people to a philosophy (And I do not mean the vague philosophy of Obama) and who can admit that he does not have all the answers (Which Ventura said frequently during debates) but that he would defer to trusted experts on certain issues.  A Leader is a thing of spirit and wisdom, the practical administration should be done by advisors.  Leader's embody the direction and the philosophy, advisors run the details.  Thats the way it was done in the old times (during good governments) but now we elect bureaucrats for being great bureaucrats.  Then again if I had my way I would replace the president of the United States with a Native American chief for a term, and have all members of congress cleared out for a completely fresh outsider congress.  See what happens then (The ensuing chaos while all the issues with the radicalness and inexperiece were worked out would be better than the organized bureaucratic insiders with their spiritual deadness).  I think it might look something like unicorns and rainbows.  Picture foreign dignitaries being greeted by the man below.  As I said, people with degrees can do the paperwork, people with wisdom can lead the country.

Jesse Ventura is a simple minded man.  Straight talk, strong libertarian principles, dislike of the establishment, thats all that I need.  You can see right through him, he's transparent.  I would pick a simple-minded leader over a clever leader any day, Lao Tzu would be proud of me.  Mr. Ventura, I hope we get to see you return to politics.