Embattled

It's clear we've been born to sleep
Or battle
But I've been reluctant
How to battle without destroying one's self
In the very effort
And even fretting too much over
One's fine filaments
Is a blunting.

blandeur

Talking Heads

This distaste with "talking heads" as handed down by corporate wonks
reviewing film work, is just indicative of the corporate mindset,
which has no faculty for understanding what is not explicit or
unquantifiable. Rather than see a face talking, conveying as it does
the thousand clues and wordless intimations--a feast of emotion and
knowledge for a human being, it sees merely a "talking head". This
kind of incomprehension would apt for say, an autistic person.
Wonderful irony that corporate abuses ruining our environment and
food supply are directly leading to an explosion of autism in the
coming generations...

Elitist dreams

about walking down Parisian boulevards thinking about history
drenched places and ways to have sex in them.

Associations

Poor with associations, humans. I see boxes around the apartment
that say "Poison-Free" and of course the message conveyed is
"Poison". At construction projects along 4th avenue, likely
respectable union men sit on folding chairs beside their colossal
inflatable rat, dirty stubbly with a cigarette out its mouth. They
are the keepers of the rat, having more to with it than the brick
masons ignoring them on the girders, going about their business.

I could never be a capitalist

It's repugnant to me. But that doesn't mean capitalists are
repugnant to me. Some of my best friends are. You see, it's not a
principled stance, it's a visceral one.

Jacqueline Tern

jack o' lantern

goes in circles

an unequal marriage is like a wagon with one wheel too small--never
gets anywhere new, but deeper into ruts

like all artists

"Like all artists, she is selfish. You just hope that she's a good
enough artist to make the selfishness worthwhile. There's nothing
worse than a mediocre artist who claims the prerogative of selfishness.
Twice damned and no fun to be around."

a kid watering his garden out front

squirting the water gun nozzle intermittenly in his dogs jowly mouth,
who would then try to chop the water with bites of drinking in the air,
snorting.

toy in a basket outside a stoop

with a note that read, "Please take this before my daughter returns
from camp today!"

the minus time diet

because it's time passing through your gut that actually kills you.

music's mimicry

Music is the only satisfying--therefore only fitting--response to this existence we find ourselves in. It reminds of the wonder of it by matching it for ineffability.

Filmmaking, as it springs from the genius of music, is a kindred response. But only real filmmaking. A film as a response to this all. If I'm lucky and don't die first, I'll practice such filmmaking again.

bath vs. stew

the warm bath of self-regard vs. the stew of resentment. Inclusion in
either group lends insight on the other, though not on itself.

Both Sides Now

The Judy Collins cover is touching, but shrinks in comparison to Joni
Mitchell's own version. It's a useful comparison for revealing
something commercial and calculated for mass appeal (and now dated and
tacky sounding) in the former, and the totally original and
spellbinding utterance of the latter (by the composer herself), which
really is timeless. The Collins version does move you, but in a
sapping surrendering kind of way, unlike the charge you get from the
original.

the physics of wealth

<fontfamily><param>Skia</param>

</fontfamily>

paranoia x 2

A couple whose spasms of paranoia were cyclical, and woe betides he who
crosses their path when both husband and wife's cycles coincided in a
wall of paranoia and vituperation unbreachable by mere mortals.

mediocrity

active contempt for it is to enter its vortex. mediocrity is the dark
flipside of self-love, parasitic on it. it's a craving, this contempt
and it makes you into somewhat less of an original human being. It's
subtle, and you may never realize that your predominant activity is to
scrape the sides of the well with your claws as you fall.

turning off the radio

the voice grows urgent and fast every time your hand comes near to the
knob.

the father

frustrated by time running out and knowing his son won't know til after
he's gone how irreplaceable that time was...
such an immensity of time.
we here for so little of it.

Lottery/Fortune Cooke

<fontfamily><param>Times New Roman</param><bigger><bigger>FROM
NYTIMES:Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110
players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right?
That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of
tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should
have been only four or five.

But from state after state they kept coming in, the
one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.

It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their
numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same
factory in Long Island City, Queens.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery
Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began
at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.

The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each,
depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19
million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a
$25 million reserve for odd situations.)

Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong
sixth number - 40, not 42 - and would have been first-place winners if
they did.

"We didn't sleep a lot that night," Mr. Strutt said. "Is there someone
trying to cheat the system?"

He added: "We had to look at everything to do with humans: television
shows, pattern plays, lottery columns."

Earlier that month, an ABC television show, "Lost," included a
sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn't match the
Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15,
16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a
soap opera, "The Young and the Restless," didn't match, either. Nor
did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a
cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery
offices.

"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said
Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second
winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came
in and said it was a fortune cookie."

Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and
buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that
many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long
Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four
million a day.

"That's ours," said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a
picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice, 110 people won
the lottery from the numbers."

The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The
workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. "We are not going to do
the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer," Mr. Wong said.
"It's more efficient."</bigger></bigger></fontfamily>

if you're burning to teach someone something

consider indirection. Finding a book at a used bookstore, your own
rare find, is a species of this. The dislocation of time and oblivion
enabling your discovery is a kind of indirection. The writer wrote it
in hot haste, but you were more receptive once that haste had cooled.

This has something to do too with poetry, and my agreement with Stevens' formulation that it must "resist the intelligence, almost successfully."

Product Placement

As works of art become product placements, the effect of diminishing
resources and corporate dominance which emphasizes its own survival,
therefore prodding the survival instinct in people, stifles even the
ambition to look beyond onesself, to place onesself in the universe,
to wonder. A corporation never inspired a person to do anything.
Except in the sense of negative inspiration, as a lightning rod for
protest. But since the 60s corporations have long recognized this,
and coopted the protest by borrowing its trappings, aestheticizing it,
mainstreaming it and therefore marginalizing it. They have quite successfully folded protest, environmentalism etc into realm of consumerism and the consummate infantilization the individual human being.

It must be recognized that corporations are here to stay as our civilization now
cannot work without them. It is a question of changing the cultural,
perhaps with the model of a corporation that survives by appealing to
an awareness of the need for coexistence, and that this race to the
bottom will only in end in our destruction. It's a matter of creating
an emblem in a corporation that makes the typical corporation of today
look bad. And moreover, one that thrives economically. Is this
possible...

Covers

On the one hand thinking that musicians who play covers of say, Bob
Dylan, in the subway are pathetic. On the other, perceiving that it's
pathetic to not recognize something of value, which they are doing.
It's a kind of piety. And then thinking, a priest or minister is in a
sense doing the same thing: a cover.

an artist should never complain

ever. & above all not about the state of the world. that's a given,
and the task at hand. to disclose that is a capitulation.

He thought I quit

I didn't resign. I re-signed!!!

what did I do?

I stopped a seal hunt.

They had another.

I fought for clean air.

The government lawed that away.

Resentment choked me to death.Skia

death, the last novelty

bedroom talk

"I can see your mushroom cap"

"I guess I'm wearing briefs..."

Skia

eager to communicate

"I leap to the general. I want to include, include, include!
I hardly know you and I'm talking about the cosmos. I know
I'm a fool, I should show restraint. But there's so little time."

He was endearing.

Mothers write their signatures on their daughters' heads

Scenes of Annoyance Part I - The Pizza Ghoul

Man munching pizza at Smiling about 1am. Stood there, jaws working in rhythm, getting through it.
Pocked marked folds and waxy features. No sooner finished and licked fingers than superciliously pointed and nodded at the pepperoni slices. Guy behind the counter picked went for one. "No, the other one, yes, yes THAT one" Smile of smugness, satisfaction. A vision of ugliness such as I have never seen. It was as if he would go on putting away slices like that forever--the eternity of self-serving, murderous, craving.

living will

to my descendants I bequeath these same damn dumb misunderstandings

we live only long enough to get it, not to fix it

and to view the spectacle of others used and squeezed in the glee of
ambition

we take the earth down with us

on the other hand if we lived much longer

who would need a good story

post office = pissed-office

deterring insurgents

with detergents

extinction of the audience

Hand in hand with wholesale species extinction, in film over the last 25 years the audience for works that engage our intelligence and enlarge our souls has been deprived of its natural habitat: films made by filmmakers inspired by and extending that tradition. It can only be built up again by filmmakers who act as if it still exists. The audience inside us must stand for the one out there that must await evolution, fed by the right films and skillful enlightened distribution, to exist once again.

Fwd: Schiavism Schism

0000,0000,0000Subject: Re:
Schiavism Schism

I didn't know that about breastfeeding, but now as a parent am totally
alarmed by what I'm learning about ADD and autism, both of which are
showing like a 1000% increase over 30 yrs ago. And yep, the drug
companies lap it up--the more things to treat the better... Bottom
line is, and I want to make a film about this I think, is the way
corporate culture hides behind the indeterminacy of cause and effect,
their big honkin' loophole. They get away with murder and then not
only claim no responsibility, but muddy the waters with bogus studies
indicating we need more research, lack conclusive evidence etc.
They're still out there telling people Global Warming is a liberal
hoax, when 99.7% of all scientists say it's irrefutable. It's this
vicious FEEDBACK LOOP with religion, and hence the relevance to the
Schiavo story. I'm no scientific determinist--I think religion is
important and wonderful and wouldn't want to be in a world without the
perpetual wonder of what it's all about. But what's happening is that
corporate culture is wrecking life in this country (on this planet)
driving more people to desperation, people take more and more refuge
in religion not just as a metaphysical spiritual concern, but to
supplant all reality (and most pointedly the reality of others
different from them), and the constituency of believers in the liars
and corporate cheats claiming God's proxy GROWS! That these guys
thumb their noses at all the long hard work done in the courts over
the last 7 years to determine whether it was right for Schiavo to die
is just an effort to exalt this parallel reality that has contempt for
the idea of others' real lives, for anything but the messianic idea of
specific reward in some post-mortal time as understood by the elect,
the true believers. The networks are now saying Bush signed the Terry
law not for political reasons, but for his deep moral convictions--as
if he has the right and excuse to do that. And as if we now have to
respect Bush for his very personal difference of moral view after he
has just gotten through disrespecting the law of the land and the deep
moral conviction of the brain-dead woman's husband....

On Mar 24, 2005, at 3:30 PM, Kristin Dilley wrote:

hypocrisies like "promoting a culture of life" in FL while
simultaneously pre-suing preemptive war in Iraq? The list goes on and
on. Speaking of mercury: did you know that women who breast feed their
children are less likely to develop breast cancer later in life? Why?
because they feed it all to their little ones and now those children
have ADD. Which isn't such a big problem because Phiser has a full
line of drugs to "cure" them and has pressured India through the WTO
to stop selling generics for the safety of their markets--i mean those
unfortunate children--whose mothers are at a lower risk of
mastectomies. Problematically again, many women are valued by their
breast size so losing one puts you back a couple notches on the red
carpet of national importance. Except for Terry, we love her even with
her drool and unflattering bathrobe.

On Mar 24, 2005, at 2:16 PM,

Hear hear. In all seriousness though, isn't it just
disgusting to the extreme that the Republican Congress is deeply
concerned about this brain-damaged woman's rights, trampling all over
the eight years of agony it took her husband to come to the decision
to no longer keep her alive, while their allies in the executive
branch just gutted a Harvard study that argued strenuously for the
economic and health sense behind curtailing mercury emissions in a
meaningful way. http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/032305EA.shtml
Mercury of course being linked to among other things...brain damage.
I live for the day when history gives these grandstanding hypocrites
their due. Hope it comes...

On Mar 24, 2005, at 1:33 PM, Kristin Dilley wrote:

my goodness, that's revolutionary! All hail Mother Terry and
her "umbilical" of LIFE!

On Mar 24, 2005, at 12:13 PM,

Schiavism is progressive in that sense--it realizes that the

patriarchal thing is outmoded. The rite of communion will no longer
be administered by god's patriarchal intermediary, but by a tube
coming from the altar.

On Mar 24, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Kristin Dilley wrote:

my question is: what happened to the cherished republican
platform of strong patriarchal families. How could we undermine a
husband's right to "kill" his wife for the paltry tears of a woman
(her mother). Republicans are going soft.

mkd

On Mar 24, 2005, at 11:48 AM, Bob Weidman wrote:

Yes, this was the first I've heard of this. Your prophecy is
duly noted. Hopefully shortly thereafter, you will be beatified for
your prophecy.

--Dr.

On Mar 24, 2005, at 11:29 AM,

Re: Terry Schiavo. Here is my prediction: When she dies,
she will be elected to be a candidate for sainthood. When the
Catholic church refuses to go so far as to beatify her, a whole new
offshoot of Christianity will be born. No joke. You heard it hear
first (presumably).

Kevin

Tahoma--

Bob Weidman | Chief Operating Officer |
CBC4,0000,0000Aaron
0000,0000,7F78Consulting
Company | +1 (718) 965-3344 |
aaronconsulting.com

Smile for sure

Hart most definitely smiled two nights ago, and many times yesterday.
Hooray!!

In the wine shop

A child resents being made to stand outside while his father shops.
Comes in and starts smashing bottles.

Decisions

One man thought all the decisions he made were right, and basked in them.
Another was convinced otherwise and dwelt in the agony of knowing he always chose wrong.

Butcher Shop Slogan

We make ends meat.

smile

We think Hart may have smiled at Sevi at dinner tonight! First smile,
though not a certainty...

thankyou thankyou

story about a guy whose celebrity has him saying thank you so much that the action of the tongue against the back of his front teeth in making the "th" sound, erodes the teeth away, much as the steps of the Vatican are worn down smooth by worshippers

Icicles

Sevi was very preoccupied today breaking off the unusual icicles hanging from the bumpers and underbellies of the parked cars on the walk home from school. Some were over a foot long and needle sharp.

pandemic of holy shit

one kid in preschool hears it from someone on the street and thinks it's funny, says "holy shit" and giggles like hell. Before long all the kids are saying. Teachers just want it to subside but it won't--visitors to the school appalled.

won't stop moving

He just wanted money to stop. To stand still, to just be. Not realizing that money was the opposite of being and could not tolerate that condition.

toothpicks

The babysitter left toothpicks like little snares all over the apartment.

meditate on a kid looking at a baby

re: the Gates

"I haven't seen them. They say orange is the new black, but I don't
believe them"
Grabbing up her muted orange purse, that she had forgotten. "I'd hate
to have to go back to Istanbul!"

lawsuit from broken baby tooth from chewable vits

expand upon

winner society

expand upon

Shadow

Sevi: When the sun is towarding you it makes a shadow, but you need
some dark too.

The Ethical Philosophy of Life by Felix Adler

This, read a few months ago, has I think, got to be one of the more valuable things to me that I've ever come across. And unexpected. I had been prepared for some Victorian staled, failed idealistic tract. Some of which it actually is, and there's even some startlingly off stuff in there. But the kernel of it, that the focus of an individual's life, the quest for ever greater individuality, can only come in relation to others, and only in the attempt to coax our THEIR spiritual life and individuality. It's something like seeing the potential, the gleam in the other. It's an agnostic tract, but really all about the urge to belief. You might even say that the purpose of life was strive and prepare the way for a belief in the spiritual. In this it was incredibly novel, and his assessment of the political movements and their possible flaws and failings is nothing short of prescient for the 20th century that had barely begun to unfold when this was written (during WWI)--he basically diagnosed what could happen, and did, with Bolshevism and later even Fascism.

It was very interesting to me that he progessed with his argument from a real foundation in his own experience, understanding the appeal of Judaism and Christianity in turn, before finding both insufficient, yet helpful in formulating the ethical way. Particularly the principle of "non-violation" as he examines it as the basis of these religions, which yet fail to put forth a matching positive ideal to buttress the injunction again violation, resulting in something short of vital for one searching for a way to live a meaningful life.

These are vague impressions a few months later. It's worth another read to me. Would recommend to others, but probably too much chance of the recommendation being misconstrued and having its impact blunted. Probably best to just happen on it, although I don't imagine many alive today or in the future would ever dust off this forgotten tract.

energy

You're all about displays of boundless energy, as if you feared being weeded out as unfit. Oh well, maybe it's just your way. I don't have energy to burn. Just a soul every bit as concerned with tenderness as you could imagine. You'll pardon me if I conserve it for the most effective deployment.

blues clues hosts and corporate terrorism

reminder to do close analysis of the difference between Steve, the original host of "Blues Clues" and his replacement "Joe". It really is in a nutshell emblematic of the takeover by Corporate America. Lodged in "Steve's" persona are the last lingering remnants, self-deprecating though they are, of cultural references and nods to the past. "Joe" is totally sanitized, robotic, elastic and unreal, although NEVER self-doubting, self-deprecating, musing or reflective. It's really an amazing distillation. Puts me in mind of savage satires like George Saunders' "Pastoralia"...

Sevi pronunciations

She says "because" like "beguzz" as kind of a throwaway. "I can't
beguzz I..."

Hart!

Hart - 1/21/05 (3 weeks, 2 days since birth-- or 37 weeks, 2 days)

Take Note

My feet slapped the sidewalk
I was a thought-darter
Preoccupied
Ambitious
Neglectful
Living
Quick
Just
Like
You

Rejoinder

Whether or not
You: an Adult
In your Pro-Keds
And Baseball Cap
Cutting Me Off
On the Sidewalk,
Some Loping
Computer Hacking
Self-Stroking
Smugger Than Thou
Digellect,
Are a Lurking Plotter,
A Dark Prince of
Infinite Calculation
A Maverick or
A Serial Murderer
Just Makes Me Yawn
Til my Eyes Juice
Tears.

thought of the day

upon seeing the phrase "Open immediately! Time-sensitive material" on a piece of mail. Aren't I as well?

the whole rurald

I've always been touched by Sevi's pronunciation of "world" as "rurald". Just today, when we were talking about a new "rule" for breakfast, to always eat something in addition to mere cream cheese and raisin bread, that it occurred to me that to her, the world sort of consists of rules, hence it is the "ruled" or "rurald". a theory...

Omelette Theory in Iraq

To begin to get on the right side of the rhetoric about Iraq, what I dub the "Omelette" rationale must be punctured. Which is to say, you can't simply decry the misery of the war, the fatalities, etc. You must condemn the whole project. The line of our government is that if you want to make an omelette you have to break some eggs. Question the omelette, not simply the breaking of eggs. Kerry wouldn't do this, and I believe his loss was tied to that fact. Dean perhaps would have done it. Perhaps he too would have lost, but not without mobilizing and emboldening the majority who believe this war is the biggest mistake, the most profound disaster of our generation.

phrase of the day

The precise mechanism isn't yet fully understood.

anti-corporate thoughts in response to nostalgic email

Even though it's hardly in keeping with the light and inspired nature of this email, I've just got to vent about something I find troubling in it. So if you'd rather not hear a humorless rebuttal, stop reading now.

This is entertaining and touching and great up until the next to last sentence. Yes, my how sadly things have changed, and so quickly too. But it ain't the government's fault, folks. The current government especially would welcome the conclusion that regulation has a stranglehold on America--while they proceed to dismantle every last "entitlement" (what used to be called god-given rights, natural rights, birthrights) in favor of the purely "ownership society" they want to see realized. Corporations have a stranglehold on America. First they got themselves the legal protections of individuals (ironically via the amendment to Constitution intended to protect minority disenfranchized PEOPLE), and in the last 30 or so years have nearly perfected the art of marginalizing the worth of human beings and the things they have held dear. In such a climate, it's no wonder that people leap to litigation and profiteering, and our world becomes ever more convoluted and inessential. The corporate mindset knows no other basis of value, and to the extent that it has cajoled and terrorized itself into the American psyche, it has made so much of what is mentioned below a source of sad nostalgia. And yes, before you yell "Marxist!" or "Conspiracy theorist" or even "Liberal", all of which monikers merit the corporate blessing to desist from thinking or even acknowledging the crisis we're in; the idea isn't that some few masterminds are at the helm, but that this is a juggernaut that's bigger than any one person and bodes very ill for our future. Which isn't to say many crafty people who like power and lack a conscience aren't having a field day...just that the culture now makes this field of action simply the default. How often do you remember in the 70s there being an appeal almost on a par to one's man or womanhood to be a "Smart Investor" or powerful and wealthy as an end in itself. What about what's being invested IN, and what about where the wealth CAME from. Is it helping people, helping communities, or trundling them under? These are beside the point. In corporate speak they're called "externalities". In the language of sane human beings it's called amoral. Yes it's a distressing road we're on, to be sure, but please always be alert to the ready-made and insidious corporate-spawned argument that lawyers and regulations are to blame. They are mere symptoms of a much much more dire shadow cast over our future by the amoral power of corporations, who look no farther ahead than near-term profit, even as they despoil the land and progessively sicken and curtail the lives of people from whom that profit is derived.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. --Edward Abbey.

--KB
wideiris.net


On Jan 13, 2005, at 8:29 PM, Ivonne Sánchez wrote:

 ----- Original Message -----
>
>
> > To the kids who survived the 30's  40's 50's 60's and 70's (this is soo True):

> > First, we  survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried  us.

> > They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested  for diabetes.

> > Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered  with bright colored lead-based paints.

> > We had no childproof lids  on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no  helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

> > As  children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.  Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special  treat.

> > We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a  bottle.

> > We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle  and NO ONE actually died from this.

> > We ate cupcakes, bread and  butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight  because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

>> We would leave home in the  morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came  on.

> > No one was able to reach us all day. And we were  O.K.

> > We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and  then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes After running  into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

> > We  did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99  channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

> > We fell out of trees,  got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these  accidents.

>> We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate  worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very  many eyes, nor did  the  worms live in us forever

> > We rode bikes or  walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just  walked in and talked to them!

> > Little league had tryouts and not  everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with  disappointment. Imagine that!!

> > The idea of a parent bailing us out if  we broke the law was unheard of- They actually sided with the  law!

> > This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers,  problem solvers and inventors ever!

> > The past 50 years have been an  explosion of innovation and new ideas

> > We had freedom,  failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW
TO DEAL WITH IT  ALL!

> > And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! Please pass this on to  others
who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.


> > Kind of makes  you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Take 5 on Chinese 2 stringed instrument

Surreal moment when I picked up the food at Red Hot Szechuan. Brubeck's "Take 5" was playing over the sound system, performed by someone on one those plaintive plucky two stringed instruments, the kind you see all talcumed up in the fingers of a street or subway player giving voice to some forgotten courtly lament from the Sung dynasty. To me, hearing that tune on that instrument was the apotheosis of something, the incongruity of this poor world never quite getting it right--flooded me with pathos for our malapropic multitudes, us poor laughably benighted fools...

"You're a middle-aged rocker manque stranded with your memories on ludicrous isle.

Buddhism does tend to throw out the baby with the bath water.