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  • Defining Moments of Our Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                        Bloodroot Moon

    Watching Margin Call while I workout.  This 2011 movie with Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons and a wonderful supporting cast gives me chills.  It sets

    itself in 2008 in a company that sounds a lot like AIG or Lehman Brothers.  A rising young analyst, really a rocket scientist gone over to finance for the money, discovers the company  has already passed its margins of safety.  A coldly calculated retreat then follows.

    What struck me, more than the historical period piece about the biggest financial disaster of our time, were some simple shots.  Demi Moore and the CEO of the local branch walking down a darkened corridor to a meeting with the chairman of the board.  They’re serious.  Their world is about to come apart, a world they’ve worked their lives to achieve.

    And I thought.  Gee, step outside that darkened corridor.  Go down and walk on the sidewalks of New York or the trails of Yosemite.  Wander the blue highways of Minnesota or board a boat on Lake Superior.  The world in that corridor does not matter.  It’s not existentially important.  It’s a constructed, artificial world no different from an amusement park or a video game.  Everybody agrees to treat it with gravitas, putting it in a movie with serious music in the background and tension building.  That’s all it is, another way this animal lives its life, and not a particularly significant part of that life.

    Kate and I got the first disc of Homeland a couple of days ago and we’ve watched the first four episodes of this Showtime series about the CIA and the war against terror.  Claire Danes, a favorite of mine among young actors, and Mandy Patikin, a wonderful and sensitive actor, give the series bite.  It’s an interesting peak into the world of spies and terror and contemporary events.  In that regard it’s similar to Margin Call.

    The two works together summarize defining moments of this very young millennium, moments that have had a huge impact on all of our lives and will continue to effect us for years to come.  They will be historical documents a hundred years from now, a Rorschach on our hopes and fears, mostly our fears.  They’re both high caliber, sophisticated presentations worth your time.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television 📎and tagged

  • Hail, La Nina

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                New (Bloodroot) Moon

    A while back I asked John Harstad, then the naturalist at Cedar Creek Nature Center, a wonderful place run by the University of Minnesota and only about 15 miles from home, about first signs of spring.  His answer coincided with a local master gardener, “Bloodroot blooms.”  Since that should happen within the waxing and waning of this moon,  I’m choosing Bloodroot Moon for its name.

    The snow began to come down this morning and has some legs.  The sky has turned sheet metal gray and the wind blows in from the northeast.  If I recall correctly, such wind direction can foretell deep snow.  Not predicted though.

    This is the half-way point in my stay here at Blue Cloud.  I’m feeling it, too.  I’ve been working almost twice as long each day as I usually do when I write at home.  Though I love it, I’m getting tired.  Might be another 10 am nap coming on, too.

    Conspirata, a novel about Cicero’s life, has been my casual reading.  I’ve finished 60% of it; I know this because the Kindle gives you a percent read number for each page since you don’t have the sense of the book’s length but its heft.

    The other reading I’ve been doing is Livia Kohn’s introductory text on Taoism.  As with most things that interest me, I find as I get deeper into it that my opinion begins to change, split along certain lines where my own sensibilities face challenges.  In the instance of Taoism I find myself drawn more and more into the mystical, physical aspects:  the Dao, the exercises, meditation practices and pushed further away from the political implications, or wuwei (inaction) applied to political affairs.

    This doesn’t bother me as I’ve learned, quite a while ago, that I don’t have to swallow the whole message to be enlightened by a school of thought.  Part of the creation of dogma comes as an institutional base emerges around any school of thought.  The dogma supports the creation of certain organizational structures, then the structures become a conservative force clinging to the original dogma, thoughts most often far removed from what Max Weber called the original “charisma.”

    Thus, by the time most of us enter into a body of religious or philosophical thought the original genius behind it is hidden by layers of defensive structure and dogma hardened over time, often hardened against the danger of the original charism.

    And so forth. Time to pick up the tablet and get to work.  Bye for snowy now.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Great Work Humanities Weather +Climate 📎and tagged