gurdymonkey: (Default)
gurdymonkey ([personal profile] gurdymonkey) wrote2009-10-18 06:03 pm

In Which The Curmudgeon Is A Complete Slacker

Well, I did daytrip Coronet. I spent almost all of it sitting in the cool shade at the picnic tables under a bunch of trees well away from the tourney, chatting with [info]layla_lilah, [info]katerit and  [livejournal.com profile] mamapduck,  though I did decide at just the right moments to "downtown:" getting to meet [livejournal.com profile] helblonde 's Baby Bear, collect a Sweaty Fighter Hug (TM) from Aelf and another from Staffan, who taunted me with news of a sushi place in Cupertino that I evidently need to seek out and try.  Still not queen, still not gettin' any, but at least Aelf thinks I smell good.

I also managed to catch the final round. Hearty congratulations to [info]leohtulf and [info]misagillian whose reign I look forward to. Let the fun begin!

[profile] layla_lilah,[info]mamapduck and I adjourned to a place called Sushi King over at a nearby mall. The King was, in fact, quite dead, particularly for a Saturday night, the food was ok, prices were pretty reasonable, but it's not really anything to write home about.

[livejournal.com profile] mamapduck stayed overnight with me, we did breakfast at the Crepevine in Rockridge and my record of being unable to finish a stack of their nummy pumpkin ginger pancakes continues to hold. We stopped at Moe's since there aren't any good used bookstores where [livejournal.com profile] mamapduck lives these days: I scored a very clean copy of When Art Became Fashion: Kosode In Edo Period Japan for $20 and picked up a cheap copy of [livejournal.com profile] sengokudaimyo 's Early Samurai 200-1500AD in the Osprey series, just 'cause.

We hit the final day of the Alameda Public Library book sale. Things were extremely picked over and quite honestly, the feeding frenzy mentality I was witnessing made very little sense to me given what was there at that point. I didn't even fill my grocery bag to maximize my $3.00 expenditure. I picked up an old Time Life volume on Ancient Japan which is extremely basic, but has some nice photos and art in it, including images from a picture stroll that I  need to research further since I've never seen it anywhere else before. There's also The Chinese Exhibition, ( a black and white exhibition catalogue from a mid 70's show at the National Gallery of archaological finds from China), The Jane Austen Quiz and Puzzle Book, and Japan From Prehistory to Modern Times by John Whitney Hall, on the grounds it would be good to have a good overview text to add to my library. Oh, and On Becoming A Musical, Mystical Bear, which I tossed into the bag mostly because the title and cover art amused me. Turns out it's a 1970's treatise on trying to find spirituality in modern America by a Paulist priest.
[livejournal.com profile] mamapduck managed to fill a copy paper box with a fair number of books and old movies on VHS for herself and Her Boys for a princely $5.00.

Seemed to need a nap, so I took one, then caught Slumdog Millionaire on HBO.

[identity profile] didjiman.livejournal.com 2009-10-19 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
I foyu ever see books on calligraphy, photo books etc. cheap, pick them up for me please :-)

[identity profile] katerit.livejournal.com 2009-10-19 03:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Matthew Fox is supposed to be quite good. I have a book of his in my "I need to get to this" pile (or rather, mountain).

[identity profile] gurdymonkey.livejournal.com 2009-10-19 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, the name rang a bell with me. It's certainly a small enough paperback I'll probably give it a look at some point.

[identity profile] layla-lilah.livejournal.com 2009-10-23 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Matthew Fox (no, not the actor in LOST) was a Dominican priest. The book you bought was his first published work. He has written quite a few interesting books on spirituality. I have a couple from back in the 1980s.

Fox is very interested in creativity, in various traditional approaches to spirituality and the divine from all around the world, and in alternate views of spirituality.

What he calls Creation Spirituality (NO relation whatsoever to "creationism") was a movement he based on mystical philosophies of a number of medieval visionaries, including Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa. He wrote a book called "Original Blessing" and he is opposed to the idea of original sin, one of the many things that got him in trouble with the Dominicans.

He was silenced largely because he was running a spiritually oriented school and included people of spiritualities not considered main-stream in the USA, such as local pagans, shamans, santeras, etc. He left/was kicked out of the Catholic Church after years of problems with the Dominicans, especially with Cardinal Ratzinger, now the Pope.

Fox is now an Episcopal priest and is married.

[identity profile] layla-lilah.livejournal.com 2009-10-23 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)
> He was silenced largely because he was running a spiritually oriented school...

And he was putting on large "eucumenical" rituals in concert with various "alternative" religionists.

He used to do the Techno Cosmic Mass in Oakland, sort of a ritual rave, but a bit tamer than the usual raves.