mushin no shin

I saw Trouble the Water tonight — excellent, deeply moving film. I think the tag line sums it up nicely –

It’s not about a hurricane… it’s about America

I mean just damn, what more can be said? Katrina showed us our worst and our best all at once, and they’ve captured it masterfully in this documentary [...]

weirdness
everything is just — unsettling. I’ve got a nice buzz on — partly vodka, partly oxycodone.
But I should be nearly unconscious, which as you can see, I’m not.
It’s been a weird and shitty week, as you are aware.
tomorrow, things should start to get back to normal. I suppose I’ll go back to karate, though [...]

Awesome, in one night I can give example and counterexample to the ancient question of irony;
it’s not ironic that my knee injury forced me to miss karate tonight.
It is ironic that this leaves me home on a night the television happens to deliver both a show called “Bones”, and Doc Opera about an alcoholic curmudgeon [...]

I add, “I think I threw my knee out playing piano”.

Got my 2nd Degree Brown Belt today. It was actually pretty late, I should have been there in January, but I had my sabbatical in December which set me back a month, plus another month or two to get back where I was. Still not there really, but enough so to pass.
Anyway, onward.

I guess my little holiday bender is officially over now. Well it was fun while it lasted.
Lest you think otherwise, there actually was a greater purpose. 2007 turned out to be a mildly shitty year for me. Mildly in that nothing much happened, the problem was just that, well, nothing much happened.
I spent most of [...]

Pro:

It would be good for me
Having been very busy and having kept late nights, I overslept every day this week and only did about half of my usual daily practice
I skipped last week due to the Buddhist festival
I will feel justified to reward myself with my usual post-yoga Chinese takeout for lunch

Con:

Yesterday’s Peace Walk left [...]

Yup, as of today I’m a brown belt! Sort of a major milestone I suppose. A little over two years in, with two years to go towards black — I guess it’s a bit like becoming a junior in high school.
Well, I made it this far, the goal is in sight and there’s no [...]

Let me start by pointing out for obvious reasons that I don’t think an arrest record means jack in and of itself — not when our laws have little basis in reason or rightness. Further I do believe that even those who commit real crimes should not necessarily suffer the burden of their history forever, [...]

Penne pasta instead of rice in tonight’s soup was a nice change of pace. Jalapeños on the other hand were a very bad idea. At least, the slices-in-a-jar type were a bad idea, because it wasn’t the spiciness that spoiled it, but the pungent vinegar-iness which I suppose is mostly from the juice they’re stored [...]