Chinese Foot Care

This is not going to be very exciting so you might not want to read it unless youre bored.
So this weekend I found myself at a chinese foot care specialist. I had gone to visit a friend, Oziris, and we were helping our chinese friend Hong celebrate his birthday. Anyhow, 4 of us ended up at a chinese foot care specialist and we all goot foot massages. It was a new experience for me. There were big comfy sofa chairs and we each sat in one and leaned back and had our feet soaked and rubbed by old chinese people. There was 1 man, and 3 girls. There was soft lighting and soothing classical chinese music. Accompanying the music was a large plasma screen tv showing scenes of death and destruction caused by the earthquake in china. It was a strange juxtaposition. The sound was off on the tv and you couldnt hear what was being said. It was a satellite station of some sort and it was just news photage of collapsed buildings, dazed, bleeding people, and corpses. There was lots of crying and hopelessness on the screen. All this, with the soft soothing music and old chinese people rubbing our feet. The guy next to me seemed more concerned with his cellphone and his text messages than anything else. This seemed equally surreal to me as both the tv and the old chinese people rubbing our feet seemed to demand attention. I cant imagine how he was able to focus his attention on that phone, but I guess its a skill. It occured to me that it was a day of learning about chinese culture. I thought I knew quite a lot about chinese culture. But that day I learned how to do a tea smoked duck chinese style (something I saw on a cooking show), and all about chinese foot care.
The next day I undid all the good footcare by walking barefoot from my friends apartment to the beach. She lives in Venice LA and it was only a 10 minute walk. But it was enough to mess up the bottoms of my feet. That was yesterday and they still feel sore. It was however, worth it to go and stand in the ocean. I only went in a little past knee deep, but it sure felt good. Something primal about it. Makes me glad I live near an ocean.

Being Spiderman

I had a pretty strange dream the other day. I was planning a trip to see my family and the night before I went over that way in a dream. But before I got to my mothers house, somehow, my brother got into the car and rerouted my journey down the street. We didnt go to moms house, but instead went down the street to a liquor store. This liquor store is a place Id been to before and wrote about it in my last journal where it appeared as a club. Id been there many times in my dreams but for some reason this time it was a liquor store once again (its a liquor store when Im awake, but its usually a club when I dream). So we went into the old somewhat run down dirty shop and greeted the man behind the counter. The fat old latino smiled and said "Ah, hello my friend, this way" It seemed that hed been expecting me. He lead us into the back storeroom. "Over here my friend" he said. It was a dirty, poorly kept room with lots of boxes and junk. There were strange unidentifiable bits of rubbish in piles here. "In there my friend" He gestured towards a bit of the wall that was ripped open. You couldnt really tell if there was some sort of accident, or if they were renovating. But it looked like somebody took a hammer to part of the wall and floor and knocked it in and pulled out all the wood and brick. There was debris scattered about near the hole. There was also some caution tape here and there. Beyond all the broken drywall and insulation was a little tunnel at the level of the floor. It was just large enough for a person to crawl into. It seemed part rock, part something organic. It seemed a little phallic. I took one look at the tunnel and somehow knew immediately what it was. It was a portal, like in the movie Being John Malkovich. I dont know how I knew this, but in the dream it was clear to me immediately. "In you go my friend" said the shopkeeper. My brother stood by shuffling his feet waiting for me to do something. I smiled and without hesitation, got down on my hands and knees, and crawled into the tunnel. Just past the wall , the surface was smooth and a little soft. It began a slow downward slope. I crawled forward and it turned into a sort of water slide. I got down on my chest and let gravity do the work for me. I slid my way down "Weeeeeeeeeee!" I had no idea what was on the other end , but I felt no fear. When I got to the end of the chute, I found myself at an art opening. I was in a gallery, and it was having a reception party for a new show. There were many lovely paintings and sculptures on display. There were strange and thought provoking items for people to ponder and enjoy. I wasnt really very interested in the people or the art. What did interest me was the fact that I had somehow gained the powers of spiderman. When I took a close look at my hands and fingers, I found that like spiderman, I had thousands of tiny little subcutaneous hooks in my skin. I jumped up on the wall to test my new found powers. I climbed up on the wall and then onto the ceiling with ease. It was really fun. I had never considered how much fun this could be. After climbing around on the ceiling for a while people started to take more notice of me. I guess they had never seen anybody do that before. They seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. Eventually I realized that I too was on display. I was part of the art show as a work for people to enjoy. I didnt really give this much thought as I was having so much fun crawling around on the ceiling. Eventually I found myself standing upside down with my feet on the ceiling. I was talking with the visitors to the show and just conversing as if it were nothing strange. It all felt strangely normal to see the world upside down. The people in the gallery enjoyed the show, but seemed a little unimpressed with my super spiderman powers. This didnt really occur to me at the time as I was having a lot of fun, but in retrospect, if this happened in the waking world, it would be a really big deal.
I cant really fathom where this dream came from except that I do have a fear of spiders. Perhaps gaining the power of spiders was my way of trying to overcome the fear. I had also watched a little bit of the movie Being John Malkovich a month ago when it was on cable. That being said, it was still pretty odd...but lots of fun.

Life is Just a Dream

We generally consider our waking life to be a serious and real thing whereas we think of dreams to be completely illusory. Our attitude defines a vast chasm between these 2 different realities we all inhabit. We generally find that our waking life is consistent from day to day, unlike our dreams. Our dreams are usually quite varied and different night to night. One night we're being chased by demons, the next night we're surfing with Jesus. We can agree on our collective understanding of our waking life, we all reach consensus. We can agree on past and present events that we all experience. We also find consistency from day to day. One day we're stuck in traffic going to a crappy job, and the next day we're stuck in traffic going to a crappy job. So we consider it to be more real and valid than our dream life.
However I expect that there are others out there like me who've experienced breaks and violations of the laws of dreaming. Dreams aren't always inconsistent. And they're not just a personal experience. Let me share with you some examples. Just last week I was having a dream where I was hanging out with an old friend. I decided to take him to a local bar/club near where I grew up. It was right down the street from where my mother lives. I'd been there before and was telling him what a fine place it was. When we got there we found that it was just as I had told him and I was lucky enough to meet the manager. I'd always wanted to meet the manager and tell him what a fine place he ran. When I woke up, I remembered that there is no such place in the city. But in the dream I had remembered the place clearly and remembered having had some good times there. The memories however were from other dreams. I can remember about 3 or 4 times I'd been to that place in different dreams.
Theres another very similar place which exists only in my dreams. There is this large Hilton Hotel on the corner of Sunset Blvd and La Cienega in Los Angeles (my hometown). It has a beautiful fountain in the front and a lavish lobby with lots of cool art. I'd visited this hotel in a few different dreams in varying capacities. In the "real" world theres just an old office building there. But when I'm dreaming, I always remember this hotel quite clearly and love to go there.
We also dismiss dreams because they seem to be a private matter that is unshared. Well Ive had a few shared dreams with other people. I know I'm not the only one to go through this. I know a few other people, usually couples who've shared dreams. The nature of the dream does not really matter. The point is that we were able to verify the shared aspects of where we had been in dreamspace. Vanilla sunset skies, giant mountains floating in the clouds, crystal cathedrals on the tops of the mountains, and giant waterfalls crashing down into the fog. It was all specific enough to convince me that it was not a coincidence.
Of course there is enough strangeness to write many many books on dreaming. When I was young, I had a really cool lucid dream. I realized in the dream that it was a dream and decided to fly over the neighborhood. I saw into peoples back yards and saw that a number of my neighbors had swimming pools. There were more than I would have guessed. So the next day when I was awake, I went around peeping into peoples back yards. Sure enough, the folks that had pools in the dream had pools in the waking life.
I cant say that I know enough to draw any particular conclusion from this except to say that our most basic understanding of dreams is completely wrong. Any scientist who tells you that its all in your head or just chemical reactions has no idea what they're talking about. If you've ever studied astral projection, shamanism, or Carlos Castaneda, you're lucky enough to have heard some alternative explanations for dreaming. I don't want to spend all day paraphrasing all that since that information is already out there online. If I had to make a guess as to what is going on, Id say that we live in a thought responsive cosmos. While awake, we live in a collectively created and shared reality. While asleep, we cross the boundaries between individually created realities, and collectively created realities.
The Samurai used to have a saying that when you have a nightmare, you can easily console yourself by telling yourself " it was just a bad dream", and that the same consideration, can just as easily be extended to your waking life.

Synchronicity

I used to really stand up and take notice when there was some synchronicity or serendipity in my life. I once had a journal where I would write it down every time it happened. I started to notice it more and more in my life as well as the lives of the people around me. It seemed as though once I started paying attention to these occurances, they happened with greater frequency. It was as though the universe was speaking to me and once I started listening, it spoke more. It became such a frequent occurance that I stopped paying so much mind. It became an ordinary and commonplace thing, like just part of the game. To me life is like a great symphony and as with any great symphony, there will be some bits which echo other bits. Thats how you get a melody right?
If you are not familiar with this let me give you some examples. I was walking about my apartment with a wandering mind and stepped on my cat Winds' tail.."meow!" he said. Well I usually am very careful to avoid walking on my cats, but just a few seconds later Im walking into the bathroom and step on his sister, Clouds' tail..."meow!" Last week I almost got into an accident because of somebody in my left side blindspot and for whatever reason I didnt check there. That happened twice in one day! Another one from last week was that I was talking to somebody about bald gay guys and mentioned the singer/artist Moby. Well it wasn't more than an hour before one of his songs came on the radio. Once I was in the office looking for a sharpie and couldnt find any. I said to my friend at work "Hey remember that old song 'Where have all the cowboys gone?'? Well somebody aught to write one called ' where have all the sharpies gone?'" We had a little chuckle but then about 20 minutes later that cowboy song came on the radio. We both thought it was quite an amazing thing. That very same night during a conversation with another co-worker the song Closer by NIN came up and sure enough within an hour it came on the radio.
Once I was driving down the road in Pasadena (thats where I live) and a commercial came on the radio for Jiffy Lube . They were talking about all the stresses and strains a car has to endure and they mentioned "potholes the size of Pasadena", and just then I hit an enormous pothole.
I was sitting at work once wondering when the movie Naqoyqatsi would arrive on DVD. I looked it up online and found that it was set to be released 6 months ago, but was tied up in some legal dispute. Just a few hours later the movie landed on my desk as a job ( I work on movie posters and DVD packaging for a living). A few months later when I got the DVD I had it playing while I was getting ready to go out. I was emptying my wallet of excess change and had a pile of coins in my hand. I just happened to look up and saw on the movie, a flury of coins flying through the air.
These sort of things happen all the time and most people just dont notice. At least it happens to me quite a lot. I could go on and on with examples but I wont. Its never anything significant. It’s never anything big or earth shattering in my life. But to the discerning eye, it is pattern in the chaos. If youve ever worked a cash register or observed one being worked you’ll see it. It will be slow all day, and then for no apparent reason, at 3:27 there will be a mob of 20 or 30 people all at once. If you’ve ever read or heard Terrence Mc Kenna speaking his mind, he’ll be quick to point out that time has a quality that comes and goes, one that ebbs and flows. These qualities are completely dismissed by modern science and acknowledged only by astrology, numerology, and the I Ching. McKenna calls this novelty and you can see it in human history. As he puts it, we’re all brought up to believe that every moment in time is the same as every other moment. But if you study history you’ll find that this isn’t the case at all. Not every year, decade, or century is the same as every other. There will be centuries of nothing, and then all of a sudden the great Rennaisance, or the Golden Age of ancient Greece. Ask anybody who survived the 60's in America if they've seen crazy unexpected moments in history. Quite often lots of bad things happen all at once. I'm sure we've all had days, weeks, or even years of our own life that were like that, where all the bad crap you could imagine all came bearing down on you all at once.
So last week was just filled with serendipity and synchronicities. They were happening every day. The near car accident for one. I lost track of all the times I saw strange groupings and patterns in my life. It was like groupings of groupings. Ive heard people call this moments of timefullness and opportunity. Its like a doorway into potentiality which allows us to manifest change. Well I've seen this happening before but I've never quite been able to surf that wave. Maybe its just a practice for me before the real one hits. I once had a dream about surfing a mile high tidal wave with Jesus. Though I know that the giant tidal wave is a common archetype in the collective unconscious. Carl Jung would say that I'm not the first person to have that dream. I guess I should accept it as metaphor and pay more attention to the waves of life.

Content vs. Form

Well I've had many a debate (usually with fine artists) about the importance of content over form. Coming from a background in illustration my interest is usually toward form. By that I mean that I have an interest in aesthetic value, or simply put, stuff that looks cool. But many folks prefer the value of content or, the meaning behind the form. Many folks value only art that has some deeper idea, thought or message behind the image. They would say that form is useless and meaningless without some content or deeper meaning. Ive no problem with people who hold this view. I dont feel that way but I think the world is a better place when there is a variety of opinion on these issues of taste. Some people feel the need to convince the world that their opinion is the true and correct view. They see their way of thinking as being of a higher order and more elevated. Well I don't think that any opinion can really be better than another. I see this issue with most major Hollywood blockbusters, in that they are all form and visual flare with very little content other than rehashed old cliches. Im sure my brother who is a writer would agree with that one. I on the other hand can enjoy a movie purely for its aesthetic value. I still enjoy a well crafted story and find movies that have both content and form to be the most fun. I would say the same of art. But given the choice between aesthetic value, and ideas, I'll take the aesthetics. Im sure there are a lot of fine ideas coming from the minds of artists out there, but I'll just take the cool imagery for myself and leave it at that. This is the same as my attitude towards music. I love music and songs, but rock n' roll singers would be the last people I'd turn to for good ideas or advice. I think its a pretty funny that people value the thoughts and ideas expressed by people like Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Manson. I expect I'd enjoy having a beer and friendly chat with either of those dudes, but I wouldn't turn to them for a paradigm shift. When I want to think, I usually prefer to go to scholars, writers, and philosophers. I respect ideas from scientists like Michio Kaku, movers and shakers like Ghandi, philosophers like Lao Tzu and Ram Dass, and teachers like Allan Watts. While people like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and even Salvador Dali, may have had a lot to say, none of it really interested me at all ( though I still dig Dalis' work on both the visual and gut level).
I think a lot of artists, especially students in school will lie to people and themselves about what they like. There is a pressure in a lot of facets of the art world to hold substance as more valuable than form. There is a type of group mindset in many places that many people fall into without realizing it. I have seen this in art school and I've seen it in the world of galleries. Artists will go into one of these fields with a love of aesthetics and form and it will get squeezed out of them by critics and art teachers. They will try to interject content into works that don't need it like comic book art or sci fi/ fantasy illustrations etc. . With a collective group mindset leaning towards the content, they will move away from what they really like to get recognition, appreciation, and the approval. This to me is a loss of individuality and always frightening when it happens in our culture.
Admittedly, its impossible to create an image without any idea or feeling behind it. The imagery has to come from somewhere even if it is subconscious. Carl Jung described the unconscious mind as a vast dark ocean surrounding the tiny island of conscious thought. I tend to agree with this and I think without some semblance of thought or emotion behind an image, you'd end up with a bland neutral grey canvas. If for example I was to paint a landscape or a simple still life, there isn't much of an idea behind it, but the way I paint it, the subject I pick, the strokes I use all say something, but thats just getting into the realm of psychoanalysis I think.
Simply stated, I like stuff that looks cool. I have no shame in admitting this and if you dont feel that way Im cool with that. If you feel as I do that most artists are overly emotional, naive, and lacking in anything interesting to say, then I offer my thanks and congratulations on reading all the way through my silly naive little rant.

Rainy Day!!

I just looove the rain.
Its raining now and that makes me smile.
I should move to a rainier place.
Theres snow up in the mountains.
maybe I'll go build a snowman this weekend

2007 Review

2007 is finally gone and not a moment too soon. The story was lame and the special effects were overworked. The characters were bizarre and I felt no connection with any of them. The acting was good, but hampered by poor direction. Maybe if we can resolve this writers strike, things will get back into the groove. Though the last part of the year where Chris and Oziris went to Europe was cool. The subplot with the receptionist in Paris was too funny. And all the stuff with Alvin and the chipmunks was good fun too.