"It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world...."
Ben Pentreath, head of the architectural and interior design studio of the same name, is widely reported to have assisted the Prince and Princess of Wales... has had a connection with the Scottish west coast since he was a teen.... In 2018 Pentreath and his gardener husband, Charlie McCormick, bought a teeny pair of buildings (a Victorian two-roomed cottage and a much earlier stone bothy) on a sea pink-covered estuary in the far west coast of Scotland. “It really does feel a long way away,” Pentreath says. “Bothies really can’t be more than one or two rooms. And I think we all find romance in living in small places — for a while!”
I had already decided on the title "At the Mudface Café" for my day-ending open thread post using that photo of the seeming face I saw in the mud on the trail today.
And after that pedestrian pareidolia, as I kept walking the muddy path, I was struck to hear this passage in my audiobook:
"Parents teaching their kids about safe spaces, and 'I feel uncomfortable'... It’s, like, You know what? The world is not a safe space. You have to find the comfort. It’s mostly uncomfortable.... I don’t like kids."
Later, RuPaul seemed to want to revise that "I don't like kids" remark. He's quoted as saying that he'd "be a great parent" and that he "fucking love[s]" the "white noise of joy" of kids playing outside in the schoolyard near his cottage.
Farrow tells us RuPaul is "a proponent of psychedelics":
"This stated that there seems to be a correlation between the standard
of writing about a particular sport and the ball it utilizes -- that the
smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature. There are superb
books about golf, very good books about baseball, not many good books
about football or soccer, very few good books about basketball and no
good books at all about beach balls...."
Consider the ur-text of New Age golf writing, ''Golf in the Kingdom'' (1972), by Michael Murphy, a founder of Esalen. In the course of the book, the reader is introduced to a guru-like golf teacher named Shivas Irons, who spouts aphorisms like ''let the nothingness into yer shots,'' and is pelted with a boggling array of metaphors: golf as ''the new yoga of the supermind,'' golf as a recapitulation of evolution and golf as a Rorschach test of character....
Two recent novels -- ''The Legend of Bagger Vance,'' by Steven Pressfield, and ''Follow the Wind,'' by Bo Links -- give us Shivas wannabes, who tell their disciples to find their ''troo self.''... Perhaps sappiest of all is Jeff Wallach's ''Beyond the Fairway,'' a series of essays that purports to be a golf version of ''Zen in the Art of Archery'' when in fact it's closer to one of those business manuals that try to adapt the principles of Sun Tzu's classic ''Art of War'' to corporate back-stabbing....
Back to Kakutani (whose name is misspelled in the NYT scan of her ancient article):
Zen golf, [Wallach] writes, is ''a way of transporting yourself to a new dimension, gaining access to new perspectives, and maybe racking up a few birdies along the way.''
The problem with such passages isn't just the bad writing (which pretty much negates George Plimpton's famous ''Small Ball Theory'' that the smaller the ball the better the writing), the sanctimoniousness or even its startling trivialization of Zen. The problem is that such writing takes sport out of the lovely pure realm of the physical, where talent and strength and discipline are measured in unforgiving inches and lifetime stats, and plunges it into the warm recovery movement realm of subjectivity and self-esteem.
Little did Kakutani know, the very year she wrote, 1996, a new phenomenon would take over golf. Tiger Woods went professional that year, and just about ever since, the main thing about golf has been how is Tiger doing? An in-the-flesh icon overwhelmed the old hippie psychobabble of "The Legend of Bagger Vance."
"I am perhaps overreacting to the news that domesticity diva Martha Stewart pops about 20 CBD-laced treats a day. CBD stands for cannabidiol, a cannabis byproduct. America’s most fabulous felon reports that 'it’s not a high like a marijuana high. It’s a CBD high, like, relaxed.'... Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston, Megan Rapinoe, Morgan Freeman, and Whoopi Goldberg have all boarded the CBD train. Kim Kardashian is said to be 'addicted' to CBD salves. 'Anyone that knows me knows I am obsessed with CBD everything,' quoth the lifestyle goddess. 'Let’s zen out for a Saturday.' Let’s! Good grief, why wouldn’t you want to take the edge off? How can you face 'reality'... without a crutch?... If you are willing to face this world straight up and sober, you have more psychic fortitude than most of us...."
Are people actually getting "high" on CBD? Quite aside from the stupidity of fawning over yourself for getting high, I don't believe these people are getting high at all. They're just selling products, including the product that is their celebrity persona. That is, I think they're lying about getting high, though it's possible they're getting a placebo effect.
And I don't think Zen is about using drugs to relax on weekends. If you're going to water down a religion, you ought to go for your own religion.
On a recent afternoon, there were around ten bears on the cam, using a variety of techniques to stalk the salmon. Some stood downstream of the falls, upright and staring straight down into the water for fish to grab, almost as a person might do. The most dramatic were those that perched on the rocks at the top of the cascade, grabbing at the airborne salmon attempting to leap over and continue upstream. It’s innately satisfying to see a bear grab hold of a salmon with its mouth and trundle off into the shallows with the fish still flapping in its jaws.
Not so "zen" for the salmon, but it's amazing how many salmon a bear lets go by and makes no attempt to catch.
That reminds me, are any of you watching the "Yellowstone Live" show on National Geographic TV? It's not much like the bear video above, because there's kind of an idea of covering the park like you'd cover the Olympics, jumping from venue to venue, with enthusiastic "sportscasters" telling you what to be excited about seeing. But Forbes has "Why You Should Watch This Live Show On Yellowstone National Park."
Eight men died on this 40-foot boat that washed ashore here on the Oga peninsula along Japan’s northwestern coast late last month. The Coast Guard found their bodies, some reduced almost to skeletons, on the boat, which is believed to have come from North Korea... The boat that landed on Miyazawa Beach in Akita prefecture was just one of 76 fishing vessels that have ended up on Japanese shores since the beginning of the year, 28 of them in November alone....
“I am wondering why so many of these have all of a sudden come in such a short time,” said Kazuko Komatsu, 66, who lives in a house close to the marina in Yurihonjo. North Korea, she said, “is a mysterious country. We don’t know so much. I don’t know if they are coming here to escape or whether they just accidentally drifted here.”...
“Are they spies?” read a headline in the Akita Sakigake Shimpo, a local newspaper....
Ryosen Kojima, 62, [a priest at a Zen temple in Oga, which takes in ashes of these washed-up dead, said] “They are humans just like us... But they have no one to look after their ashes. Since they were born into this world... they must have parents and families. I feel so sorry for them.”
Some are activists for the homeless, trying to gain information and experience to help them with their advocacy. But some are (we're told) "Zen practitioners" who "organize meditative 'street retreats'":
Critics might object that “this is a kind of voyeurism or spiritual tourism,” said Sensei Joshin Byrnes, who lives in a New Mexico monastery. But the goal is in fact “to really change our own hearts and minds and the way we view people who we commonly think of as the other.”
Participants in his programs, the shortest of which last four days, are asked not to shower for a week beforehand and arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs, $1, a form of ID, and perhaps a blanket or trash bag for protection from the weather.
I have 5 things to say about this:
1. Should a city be able to criminalize "unauthorized camping"? If you
think the answer is yes, would you make an exception for people who have
nowhere to go?
2. People living on the streets impose burdens on the people who are managing to take care of themselves by maintaining housing. If you do have a house, you shouldn't choose to add to that burden. It's not a nice thing to do to the people who own or rent housing in the area, and it's making the truly homeless people seem more burdensome than they actually are.
3. The fact that you are concerned with the condition of your own heart and mind does not absolve you of the charge of "voyeurism and spiritual tourism." Thinking well of your own good intentions and religionish loftiness can make you even less sensitive than most people are to the impression they make on others. You can absorb yourself with the way you "view people who [you] commonly think of as the other" and lose track of how other people view you.
4. When is it okay for people to pose as something they are not? Isn't dressing up as a homeless person and acting like them — when you could go home and take a shower and sleep in a bed — a kind of disreputable fakery? Isn't it like Rachel Dolezal taking on the appearance of a black person — not for mockery but out of empathy and concern for people who didn't choose this status? If it is, which way does that cut — pro- or anti- Dolezal?
5. Your imposition of yourself in an environment that is not your own changes that environment. This is a problem I have with travel that is aimed at seeing what people are like in some exotic place. You don't belong there, so it's different once it has you in it. Do you think you are improving it? Do you want to look at the impression you are making on this culture you are curious about?
"Focusing on the present, Zen Hospice Project believes, is where the potential for living most meaningfully — even while dying — exists."
Walk through the front door of the Guest House, as the project’s rambling Victorian home is known, and smell the strong coffee brewing or the homemade chocolate cookies cooling in the kitchen. The cookies aren’t just a nicety. According to Dr. B.J. Miller, the organization’s executive director, piquing the senses is a key strategy to dying well. “No future necessary when you’re in the moment,” he says.
William Knowlton Zinsser was born in Manhattan on Oct. 7, 1922. He escaped the urgings of his father to join the family’s shellac business but could not escape his mother’s counsel that being cheerful was a Christian obligation.
"... and put your complete focus on this one project. This might be school, or a project at work, or a volunteer project… but just one thing. You'd learn to do it well, and get better and better at it, and serve people exceptionally. However, that's not reality. We can't always pare things down to one thing, so focus on two. I've found that you can do two things well, and one thing really well. With two focuses, you won't be as concentrated, won't learn as deeply, but it's doable. With three or four focuses, you won't do anything well or learn anything deeply or serve anyone exceptionally."
Why not? How many things are you trying to do well? Is there some way not to have to do everything else? It seems wrong to signal to everyone that you're only going to do your special 2 things. What happens to the things that need to be done that no one selects as the things they will do well? What happens when crucial functions are ceded to the kind of people who feel they must take responsibility for everything? And are we doing well — doing good — when we rope those people into to these tasks? And what if those people aren't trustworthy? What if they are nefarious power-mongers? The article at the link originally appeared at a place called Zen Habits, and the illustration is of a man in a suit in a state of blissful meditation.
[Bartlett Durand, a Buddhist and former vegetarian]... designed the processing facility with minimal industrial equipment, and to operate only on a scale small enough to accommodate a slower, more mindful rate of slaughter. Even from the moment of their arrival, the animals would be treated calmly and with kindness.... Durand worked to develop the skills of a group of eight butchers who could handle the entire animal, as he says, “from stunning to steaks,” and training them in what he called “the philosophy of sacrifice.” The butchers were taught that when engaged in taking a life, they were doing so with purpose, for the good of the community....
Relocating the slaughter was a problem for a number of reasons, both practical and ideological.... Bartlett Durand cried as he read a prepared statement to his 47 employees....
From the NYT obituary for Dr. Albert J. Stunkard, who "was the first to identify binge eating as a medical disorder, one of the first to link obesity to socioeconomic factors, and the first scientist to show why so many obese people have about as much control over their body weight as they do over their parentage [and] also one of the first medical professionals to condemn the stigmatization of overweight people."
The NYT links here for the meaning of "beginner's mind," which extols the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and quotes the first sentence — "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few" — but gives very little basis for understanding what drove the skinny Stunkard to study the stout.
We did not deal in these cases, nor do we here, with... We express no view about....
It's almost metaphysical. Reminds me of the philosophical questions of childhood like what if nothing is something? Or the conversational riposte when you drop the phrase "not to mention" and your interlocutor snarks "You just did." Or what is the sound of one hand clapping?
I hope this is a harbinger of Supreme Court writing to come. These characters have been too blabby for too long. If you're not going to talk about something, don't talk about it. Let's get tough. Let's get cranky. As Psycho Killer says: When I've got nothing to say, my lips are sealed...
Message to the Supreme Court: You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything.
Says a commenter to Ezra Klein's announcement, on Vox, that "Vox is our next," which seems to have puzzled the Vox readers. Ezra responded to that comment with:
This is fair! This article absolutely lacks some necessary context. OTOH, the necessary context is a site we haven’t built yet! Stay tuned!
Puts a new twist on the old saying: You didn't build that. Sometimes "you didn't build that" means "It ain't built."
Unbuilt websites... to clarify the context... and Ezra clarifies the context of nonexistence of the context clarifying. When there's nothing to explain, is it a criticism to say that nothing has been explained?
An aversion to paragraph breaks? That's my first thought on looking at Will Wilkinson's post bemoaning the loss of something that once was.
Why can't I just drain a little overflow off the top of my head at any given moment and move on? Will says:
The idea that the self is an “illusion” tends to be grounded on the false assumption that if the self is anything at all, it must be a stable inward personal quiddity available to introspection. But of course there is no such thing. The Zen masters are right.
Okay, so maybe a blog is a better representation of who you are and what life might be than any other form of expression, but Will's main problem seems to be that you can't do it right if you're doing it for money.
A personal blog, a blog that is really your own, and not a channel of the The Daily Beast or Forbes or The Washington Post or what have you, is an iterated game with the purity of non-commercial social intercourse.
What do the Zen masters say about purity? Hei Neng said: "If you cherish the notion of purity and cling to it, you turn purity into falsehood. Purity has neither form nor shape, and when you claim an achievement by establishing a form known as purity... you are purity bound."
If you're enjoying the Althouse brand of old-school blogging, please use the Althouse Amazon Portal. Perhaps you need some quiddity. Or Zen supplies.
I'm getting a late start this morning. Only yesterday — ah, yesterday! — I had my first post up at 6:21. It contained the memorable Drudge headline "Big Sis Wants to See Under Your Clothes." Today, the blog didn't get going until 8:45 (and that's Central Time). If I wanted a cover story — a story that you can't see under even with your National Surveillance X-Ray Robot Eyes — I'd say I needed to meditate for hours upon encountering — on the front page of the NYT — the equivalent of the old what is the sound of one hand clapping? zen koan.
Having achieved oneness, what is its sound? In other words, how does it reverberate? How does it go out into the world and function? If we're just being "one" with our own hand, what have we accomplished? If it's all about our own private experience, it's nothing but a hand job!
If it's a hidden hand, how is it seen? Some unnamed entity/entities are seeing, but they are hidden by the hidden hand of the headline writer using the passive voice. The passive voice is evidence of the unseen hand of another hand job for President Obama.
The leaves of the newspaper are trembling with the wind that passes through, and thus do we "see" the unseen. But what is this wind? The underlying article, written by Peter Baker begins like this:
"I got my head above water again and this time I was swearing and saying get this thing off me. I was just screaming for help. I couldn't feel any pain but I could see his teeth sinking into my leg. I thought I was going to die. I could only see about four centimetres of the top of my leg and the rest was in the croc's gob."
Well, clearly she survived, since we have that quote, but how did she survive? (The saltwater crocodile was 3 meters long.) Her friend on the shore — Al Sartori — went in:
"I jumped into the water and on to its back and stuck my thumbs into its eyes until I felt it start to slacken off.... I picked up the croc and chucked it back into the water and it came back at me. It was pretty heavy."
The student's mind must be prepared by rigorous study, with the use of koans, and the practice of meditation to concentrate the mind, under the guidance of a teacher.... Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai (無門慧開)... struggled for six years with koan "Zhaozhou’s dog"...
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
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