This year I want more beauty-I realize it's a fallback position; first choice would have been World Peace or hover cars never crash and run on sunlight, but since those aren't available presently, something I CAN have is more beauty- But what is this beauty and how to we experience it?
We hear it's in the eye of the beholder, but I'd say just as much its in your ear, possibly your finger tips, too. Like when I hear beautiful music, folk, classic, birds singing, a baby's laugh - that's all it. And you can arrange this by buying stuff, finding it through Google or Wikipedia, asking to babysit, petting the cat. So that noise kind of beauty and touch kind of beauty is available to all.
For visual beauty, I'd take a walk to an art museum, though here and now it would have to be an art gallery since the Petaluma Art Museum of the future isn't here yet. Sonoma countryside is so gorgeous just after spring rains when the grass is emerald and the sky starkly clear. Even white thunderheads are gorgeous. And there is the miraculous photography of locals Scott Hess, Murry Rockowitz and the fine collections at Barry Singer Gallery, to name a few beauties. I'd add the River view from the new benches.
Another big question connects to this experience of beauty. A big question that's been poking its way through my brain and over the airwaves this last week is who am I and what am I doing here? One of my favorite questions in life, I sometimes ask a friend or tolerant acquaintance. It's a puzzle I love. Tried that line on follow Argus blogger, our illustrious Cyberspaceman, Bill Hammerman, at Meet the Bloggers party in the Argus lobby, and he thought I might be referring to memory loss-
According to self-proclaimed skeptic, Frederick Crews, interviewed this week on Michael Krasny's Forum show on KQED FM, we may not be who we think we are! Our sense of self may just be an illusion according to Crews, who's done a study on this. Crews is a professor emeritus of English at UC-Berkeley and is the author of The Pooh Perplex, Skeptical Engagements and The Memory Wars. His latest book is Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays. "The self may be a complete illusion, but it may be the most important illusion we have," says Crews. "I rather doubt the location of the soul is going to be found".
Earlier this week, an NPR Radio Lab show guy said Einstein began to tell us we act before we think-you reach for a cup of coffee before you decide to. According to Petaluma's Peter Dunlap, Ph.D., that's just physiology over psychology. Saw Peter this week in Deaf Dog downtown where many curious, entertaining and sometimes enlightening conversations happen.
State of consciousness: this week we read people in Seattle don't get SADS; aren't very affected by rain because they have so much of it-hmmm-
Tis' a puzzlement
We are SO VERY FREE
We get to be ourselves
Have our voices published,
Our blogs, our plays, our poems
Our mind and synchronisms,
In searching of love and home and
Friendly ones and grand meaning-
And then we hear that free choice may not be real?
Physics guys tell us Einstein said our body
Acts before it chooses;
We may be sipping a chai latte in one universe
And a Coca Cola in another - simultaneously-
Is this, then the Elegant Universe?
So Who Are You And What Are You Doing Here?
Never held more meaning-
