… we have to deal with reality.” Nong, enterprising business woman in Bangkok 8 by John Burdett.
So, the fever revving questions about imagination, creativity, reality, and what … really … does one do about despoiling Traffic?
The noises of millions, honking horns, blaring sirens, whirring helicopter rotors, gunning motors, tromping through nervous systems.
The big picture, just beyond the front door; the even larger one down the block. The more pleasant one- or not- two miles beyond.
I am living in a foreign city; it is given that I have to work to be accustomed. Still, L.A.~SoCal assaults my Oakland-San Francisco-NoCal configuration, more than Madrid ever did. City lay-out and 600,000 fewer inhabitants probably account for part of that. My own changes in the twenty years since I resided here may account for the rest.
I had been grieving those L.A. changes, overwhelmed by them. Then I started reading Bangkok 8, a tale of individuals and a city, as is my other read: L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. One, fiction; the other, not. Both are history, urban commentary, and explorations of faith. Deft, dramatic explorations of psyche, police, crime, opportunity, and AMERICA.
Bangkok 8 bowled me over. L.A. Noir re-reminds me of all the ways I- we all?- look elsewhere, forget and never knew what has gone before. Both refresh the lens, shift the mirror, kick the butt. Each makes me step back to wonder, one more time: Road? Life? Humanity? Adulthood?
I hear whistling wake up calls not to take it all so seriously.
And to know that something is very serious, indeed.
The Buddha is in the paradox, eh?
Tomorrow, to change landscapes, I will transport by airplane. There will be a new view; I will see what I will see. I am ready to live anew, ride from a different perspective, with a different call to life.
The Bicycle is doing its job well. The invitation to reality unfolds.
4 comments
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July 11, 2010 at 8:54 am
Kathleen
Oh, yes. It’s all serious. From the Pacific Gyre to the mega-dairies to the children being killed on the South Side of Chicago, just to name a few. It’s beyond serious, really. It’s cataclysmic, and there may be no recovering from it. Does that mean that being serious at all times is the best way to do whatever fixing we can do? Does taking ourselves seriously help us find our way to a better world? Not in my experience.
July 11, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Christine
Given the definition of insanity (doing the same thing, expecting different results) and the state of things, my question remains: what does one bring to the table to create something truly different? In fact, what is, at this juncture, actually ‘different’? I want to step away as much as I can to find a new way to step up. I would like to have a sense of new engagement. It is as though I have to find a way to shake myself loose.
July 12, 2010 at 5:27 am
Bill
I had always assumed that you almost need a passport visa to travel between northern and southern California. Be interested to see how the home turf feels after your sojourn South. While taking things seriously does have its head-banging moments of frustration, it gives you the passion and energy to experience both pain and pleasure more intensely. Not sure you can avoid the trade-off. And yes, sanity does involve backing off and regrouping from the head-banging. You seem equipped for that. good luck.
July 12, 2010 at 10:02 am
Kathleen
Hmmm. “Being serious at all times.” “Taking ourselves seriously.” Those both seem to me to be different from taking the world seriously. Passion and energy can coexist with humor and a sense of our own ridiculousness. Food for thought:
“It is not true that we cannot think without weakening nor be strong without talking nonsense. It is not true that good intentions justify everything, nor that we have the right to the opposite of what we want. The comedy of history, the switching of roles and the frivolity of the actors do not prevent us from discerning a clear enough course of action, provided only that we take pains to know what is going on rather than nourish phantasms, and provided that we distinguish anguish from anxiety and commitments from fanaticism.”
Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, position statement for Les Temps Modernes