I love movies. It has been a lifelong love affair for me. Over the course of my life I'm sure I've seen thousands of films. I've learned many things from them. So, when it came time to start 2014, I thought I would start with one of the things I love. Today, I watched one of the greatest movies ever made, Casablanca. I don't know how many times I have seen it. I would guess in the dozens at least. It's an amazing movie, simply amazing. A perfect way to start the new year.
I'm still a little bit behind the curve in my years end reflection. It was floating around in my mind all day. I started the day with the Rose Parade, then Tyrone and Tony for breakfast at the Hickory Pit. We had a nice breakfast, good food, good conversation. It was the first time Tyrone has been out in a while, he's been working two jobs trying to close some debt. It's an admirable choice. After breakfast we took a walk through the electronics store. I actually didn't buy anything, which is unusual for me, there is almost always something that catches my eye.
After the walk-through I dropped Tyrone off then picked Tony up over at the AMC 14 theater. We drove down San Tomas to the Barnes & Noble at Stevens Creek. We had about an hour to kill before the movie started and I wanted to start the new year doing something that I also enjoyed, browsing bookstores. I picked up an assortment of things to start the new year.
I picked up the book "Work" by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Teacher. The subtitle of the book is how to find joy and meaning in each hour of the day. I'm looking forward to reading it. Then, I picked up a small calendar for my living room wall next to the door. It's a Japanese woodblock print calendar from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I already have a Zen calendar for work and a classic pinup calendar for the home office (Elvgren mostly). I picked up the nonfiction, true crime book "Lost Girls", An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. It was the book my brother was reading when he was here on vacation and I made the mistake of picking up and reading the first chapter, which got me hooked. I also got "A Lamp In The Darkness" by Jack Kornfield. That one, the author, was a recommendation from TR. Add in the latest copy of Heavy Magazine and a work-related book on Windows project and you rounded out the trip to the bookstore.
Oh, and one last thing, I got a new bookmark. The bookmark is black and gold and has a saying from Lao Tzu: "At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want." That is a good thing to be reminded of. In the strange synchronicity that drives our universe that sums up very neatly the over arching theme I'm going to try to stick to in 201
I've yet to complete my New Year's resolutions, I want to spend a little more time thinking about them. I've got a rough start, just a list of items that I'll be working on over the next couple of days. They're still a rough draft, a simple bullet list, so I'm not yet ready to publish them here. A little more polish. A little more thought. A little more reflection. It's about 4:30 PM here in California so the evenings just opening up. I'm looking forward to a conversation with TR tonight. I'm looking forward to a hot bath. I've yet to decide if I'm going to watch something off the DVR or spend the evening reading. Right now I'm sitting in the silence of my living room and is a very content place to be sitting.
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The First Battle of the Books
Okay, I have paused to take a breather, having run up and down the steps several times with boxes of books, bags of papers, and a desk. I've reached the end of "The First Battle of the The Books". As I continue down the path toward a simplified lifestyle, in fits and starts, I periodically find myself struggling with my possessions.
For those things that I am fond of, like my books, it can be a real battle. There can be a real back and forth. I am trying to pull my book collection down to the books that I routinely use and read, with minor exceptions for collectors items or items of significant value. A few weeks back, when they put the new carpet in, I moved all of my books from the shelves onto the kitchen table. I was pretty impressed that they all fit on the table. All told, there were about two hundred and forty books.
Well, fits, starts, and weeks later I've cleared the books from the table - some of them made it back to the shelves, perhaps too many. Others make it to Goodwill. Still others ended up in the recycle bin. What remains is back on the shelves, though not in any specific order. "The Second Battle of the Books" is forthcoming. As I re-order the books on the shelves, I am hoping to make another cut - again, I hope to cut it in half.
This is a struggle for me because I can look at almost any book and think "gosh, I need to re-read that" or "I may need to look something up in that one" or "that was a good one, I think I will hang onto it." When, practically speaking - probably less than twenty of them get routine looked at. So, this is just a breather between the First and Second Battle of the Books.
For those things that I am fond of, like my books, it can be a real battle. There can be a real back and forth. I am trying to pull my book collection down to the books that I routinely use and read, with minor exceptions for collectors items or items of significant value. A few weeks back, when they put the new carpet in, I moved all of my books from the shelves onto the kitchen table. I was pretty impressed that they all fit on the table. All told, there were about two hundred and forty books.
Well, fits, starts, and weeks later I've cleared the books from the table - some of them made it back to the shelves, perhaps too many. Others make it to Goodwill. Still others ended up in the recycle bin. What remains is back on the shelves, though not in any specific order. "The Second Battle of the Books" is forthcoming. As I re-order the books on the shelves, I am hoping to make another cut - again, I hope to cut it in half.
This is a struggle for me because I can look at almost any book and think "gosh, I need to re-read that" or "I may need to look something up in that one" or "that was a good one, I think I will hang onto it." When, practically speaking - probably less than twenty of them get routine looked at. So, this is just a breather between the First and Second Battle of the Books.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Running Toward Emptiness
I've been on the journey toward minimalism for the better part of a year and a half now. It was a natural inclination that found a window of opportunity when I was recovering from surgery last year and was definitely inspired and encouraged by TR. She is my touchstone of simplicity among other things.
I woke up this morning thinking about minimalism, thinking about the journey to simplicity, and specifically thinking about what my next steps will be. I've got new carpet coming into the apartment on the 29th. To facilitate that I need to move everything off the old carpet onto the portions of the apartment that are hardwood or linoleum. Since I've minimalized it's all actually going to all probably fit in the kitchen.I may move some of the longer term storage stuff out to the storage unit near my carport. I've flagged half a dozen items of furniture to go.
And I'm about to start when may be close to the final run to simplicity. As I approach it I feel like I felt when I donated my Encyclopaedia Britannica. I feel attached to the things I'm going to sort through and donate. Though there is no real attachment when I think about it it's all an illusion. One of my other personal touchstones as I've gone through this process has been sort of the utilitarian approach to it. I made sure the value of things based on whether or not I use them. It takes some effort but I've learned to set aside my assigned value. I'm learning to understand that just because society or someone else thinks something has value doesn't mean it actually does.
So that brings me to the point where I'm standing right here, right now. Having spent the day in contemplation, having searched for some sort of theme, some sort of inspirational reference, I decided to take an approach that will limit what I retain. Two of the areas where I'm going to do some healthy purging are my movie collection and my books. Now, I haven't touched my movie collection yet. I have previously purchased a lot of books. The book part of it is going to be fairly easy, the reality of many of these books is as much as I like them I don't use them.
And it's that same reality that's going to let me purge a big portion of my movie collection. The truth of the matter is two thirds of my movies I will in all probability never watch again. I'm going to try and restrict it even more, I'm going to try and keep only 50 movies at the most. I'm going to aim at keeping 50 movies and 50 books. I'm going to aim at keeping one five shelf bookcase. I'm going to try and get the entire collection into it.
Honestly, I expected to be hard. Donating the Encyclopaedia Britannica's set was not easy. I really struggled with that for several months. But in the end utility wins out. If I'm not using it what value does it truly half. Most of the movies you can buy for five bucks to for 10 some cheaper some may be a dollar or so more. And of course it got almost no resale value two bucks at best. So why let them take up the space in my life? Purely and simply they need to go.
TR said something the other day when we were talking about a related subject that's actually given me some fuel for this last purge. We were talking about the changes of technology and she had commented that everything of course is going digital and that includes our movies and music. That was an inspiring thing to say. DVD's are going the way of videotapes, they are nearing the end of their run. Regardless of my attachment to them their value falls every single day.with on demand and streaming they've rapidly becoming irrelevant.
So here I sit, on the edge of another short journey of simplicity, coming closer and closer to my goal of minimalism. I'm actually kind of excited about it. I think that the end of this cycle of purging I'm going to come very close to having maybe 10% of what I had when I started two years ago.
Now there is one thing that I'm keeping, one item that I'm clinging to. That item is my comic book collection. My collection of comic books and graphic novels and trades. I'm going to parse through it in the coming months, simply because it needs a good pruning. But that's a pruning I actually routinely do. Like novels some comic books are read once and forget. When it comes time to forget them you simply forget them. Comic books and graphic novels are one medium that has yet to successfully migrate into the digital world. Oh, you can find all kinds of scanned works on the internet. But, a big part of the older of comic books and graphic novels is the format.with that format comes a certain look, certain feel, certain texture.
TR and I had talked about that in regards to regular books. I'm a big fan of my Kindle, I do probably 80% of my reading on the Kindle.but there are certain books we need the actual book. There is a substance to a book that's lost in the digital media. Again, it's texture, it's scent, it's look, it's feel. All of those contribute to the nature of books themselves. It's definitely a Neo-Platonic kind of thing.the shadow of the book is not the book itself. Electronic text is just a shadow of a book. We can learn a lot from that shadow, that shadow can be very revealing, but in the end there is some substance, some invisible essence, that resides in the form of a book. There is a purity in a book, appeared either doesn't exist in electronic text. Poetry, art, philosophy, great literature – all of those best reside between the covers of a book. Does my lifelong love affair with books reveal itself? Good, it should.
I woke up this morning thinking about minimalism, thinking about the journey to simplicity, and specifically thinking about what my next steps will be. I've got new carpet coming into the apartment on the 29th. To facilitate that I need to move everything off the old carpet onto the portions of the apartment that are hardwood or linoleum. Since I've minimalized it's all actually going to all probably fit in the kitchen.I may move some of the longer term storage stuff out to the storage unit near my carport. I've flagged half a dozen items of furniture to go.
And I'm about to start when may be close to the final run to simplicity. As I approach it I feel like I felt when I donated my Encyclopaedia Britannica. I feel attached to the things I'm going to sort through and donate. Though there is no real attachment when I think about it it's all an illusion. One of my other personal touchstones as I've gone through this process has been sort of the utilitarian approach to it. I made sure the value of things based on whether or not I use them. It takes some effort but I've learned to set aside my assigned value. I'm learning to understand that just because society or someone else thinks something has value doesn't mean it actually does.
So that brings me to the point where I'm standing right here, right now. Having spent the day in contemplation, having searched for some sort of theme, some sort of inspirational reference, I decided to take an approach that will limit what I retain. Two of the areas where I'm going to do some healthy purging are my movie collection and my books. Now, I haven't touched my movie collection yet. I have previously purchased a lot of books. The book part of it is going to be fairly easy, the reality of many of these books is as much as I like them I don't use them.
And it's that same reality that's going to let me purge a big portion of my movie collection. The truth of the matter is two thirds of my movies I will in all probability never watch again. I'm going to try and restrict it even more, I'm going to try and keep only 50 movies at the most. I'm going to aim at keeping 50 movies and 50 books. I'm going to aim at keeping one five shelf bookcase. I'm going to try and get the entire collection into it.
Honestly, I expected to be hard. Donating the Encyclopaedia Britannica's set was not easy. I really struggled with that for several months. But in the end utility wins out. If I'm not using it what value does it truly half. Most of the movies you can buy for five bucks to for 10 some cheaper some may be a dollar or so more. And of course it got almost no resale value two bucks at best. So why let them take up the space in my life? Purely and simply they need to go.
TR said something the other day when we were talking about a related subject that's actually given me some fuel for this last purge. We were talking about the changes of technology and she had commented that everything of course is going digital and that includes our movies and music. That was an inspiring thing to say. DVD's are going the way of videotapes, they are nearing the end of their run. Regardless of my attachment to them their value falls every single day.with on demand and streaming they've rapidly becoming irrelevant.
So here I sit, on the edge of another short journey of simplicity, coming closer and closer to my goal of minimalism. I'm actually kind of excited about it. I think that the end of this cycle of purging I'm going to come very close to having maybe 10% of what I had when I started two years ago.
Now there is one thing that I'm keeping, one item that I'm clinging to. That item is my comic book collection. My collection of comic books and graphic novels and trades. I'm going to parse through it in the coming months, simply because it needs a good pruning. But that's a pruning I actually routinely do. Like novels some comic books are read once and forget. When it comes time to forget them you simply forget them. Comic books and graphic novels are one medium that has yet to successfully migrate into the digital world. Oh, you can find all kinds of scanned works on the internet. But, a big part of the older of comic books and graphic novels is the format.with that format comes a certain look, certain feel, certain texture.
TR and I had talked about that in regards to regular books. I'm a big fan of my Kindle, I do probably 80% of my reading on the Kindle.but there are certain books we need the actual book. There is a substance to a book that's lost in the digital media. Again, it's texture, it's scent, it's look, it's feel. All of those contribute to the nature of books themselves. It's definitely a Neo-Platonic kind of thing.the shadow of the book is not the book itself. Electronic text is just a shadow of a book. We can learn a lot from that shadow, that shadow can be very revealing, but in the end there is some substance, some invisible essence, that resides in the form of a book. There is a purity in a book, appeared either doesn't exist in electronic text. Poetry, art, philosophy, great literature – all of those best reside between the covers of a book. Does my lifelong love affair with books reveal itself? Good, it should.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Book Review: Shadows At Dawn
My brother recommended this to me a while ago and it seemed interesting enough that I downloaded it to my Kindle. I spent the last week or so reading it. It is a history book (non-fiction) and, from the standpoint of story-telling, I personally found it jumbled for no apparent reason other than to make it longer.
The author tells the story of the Camp Grant Massacre in Arizona from four different points of view – the American’s, the Mexican’s, and two tribal groups – the Tohono O’odham Indians on the side of the attackers and the Apache victims of the massacre. It would have been interesting except for what I considered to be technical problems – the author first establishes that he is going to write it from the four POV’s and then promptly proceeds to routinely disregard the framework he established.
The result, though interesting, in thematically jumbled.
That said, it is an interesting book and it does reveal the “intimate violence” of the frontier and has a moment or two of brilliance. I think it would have been a better book if the author had kept to his self-imposed narrative framework more rigorously because he kept representing things he had already presented (which it was lead me to the conclusion that he was padding the book). If you are unfamiliar with the Camp Grant Massacre however, it is worth a read.
On the tail of this book I have started another one that have been looking forward to – “Cleopatra, A Life” by Stacy Shiff.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Daily Life: A Bit More of Birds and Books
Birds
To dream of chirping and/or flying birds, represents joy, harmony, ecstasy, balance, and love. It denotes a sunny outlook in life. You are experiencing spiritual freedom and psychological liberation. It is almost as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.
Books
To see books in your dream, indicates calmness. You are moving toward your goals at a slow and steady pace.?Books also symbolize knowledge, intellect, information and wisdom. Consider the type of book for additional clues. The dream may represent your calling into a specific field of work or an area that you need to devote more study to.
http://www.dreammoods.com/
Well, I had a little bit of time in the inbetween and I went over to Dream Moods (thank you Cynthia) to check on the meaning of birds and books in a dream. I've posted the interpretations above for each of them respectively and I have to say I was pretty amazed at the accuracy of the interpretation from Dream Moods to capture the "mood of the dream". I woke from the dream of birds reading and discussing books in my room in a very good mood - definitely a sunny outlook on life and definitely a great feeling of wonder and calm. The morning of the dream I was talking to my dear T.R. and she imagined the dream as "chikadee's with chapbooks" and that image is also a delightful one to visualize.
To dream of chirping and/or flying birds, represents joy, harmony, ecstasy, balance, and love. It denotes a sunny outlook in life. You are experiencing spiritual freedom and psychological liberation. It is almost as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.
Books
To see books in your dream, indicates calmness. You are moving toward your goals at a slow and steady pace.?Books also symbolize knowledge, intellect, information and wisdom. Consider the type of book for additional clues. The dream may represent your calling into a specific field of work or an area that you need to devote more study to.
http://www.dreammoods.com/
Well, I had a little bit of time in the inbetween and I went over to Dream Moods (thank you Cynthia) to check on the meaning of birds and books in a dream. I've posted the interpretations above for each of them respectively and I have to say I was pretty amazed at the accuracy of the interpretation from Dream Moods to capture the "mood of the dream". I woke from the dream of birds reading and discussing books in my room in a very good mood - definitely a sunny outlook on life and definitely a great feeling of wonder and calm. The morning of the dream I was talking to my dear T.R. and she imagined the dream as "chikadee's with chapbooks" and that image is also a delightful one to visualize.
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