Cheese and Pepper

I had a busy day today. My brother bought a new Chevrolet Malibu, which looks incredibly spiffy. My parents agreed to foot the down payment for it as long as he pays for the rest of the car himself. I had to drive to the dealership with my mom to make sure she didn't murder my dad and brother for making her meet them there. After we all got home I went to look at Gaiylee and the kittens one last time. Unfortunately, this time, the gray and white kitten, whom I had also seen earlier nursing(So. Cute. *head explodes*) tried to get away from Gaiylee and run down to me. Gaiylee forceably restrained him/her and then jumped down and snarled at me. My skirt was stuck on several thorns and since I had to untangle myself I had plenty of time to realize that she was nervous about what she was doing and that she liked me and didn't actually want to attack me. That was my parting meeting with them. Also, Gaiylee most likely moved the kittens because Snuggles marked his territory in front of the shed when he went out with my mother. Snuggles doesn't go by the rose garden, however, and comes when called.

We broke in the new car with the drive down to San Diego. Christopher has free Onstar and XM radio service for three weeks, so we listened to 80's pop music until I fell asleep. At that point my mom apparently changed the station to some sort of Christian or Country that I objected to as soon as I woke up. The 80's music reminded me of a certain someone who loves 80's music and how funny he would have thought it was when Amadeus came on. When we reached San Diego the calico kitten was gone, but we got to witness another tiny mother cat nursing her kitten. We also ate at BGs, where I sprinkled pepper into my broccoli and cheddar soup that tasted good enough to make it the title of this entry.

Then I got home to a faulty modem. After thirty minutes of tech support with accents ranging from Indian to Midwestern it was confirmed that my modem was, indeed, broken. Right now I'm stealing wireless from a suprisingly fast network. I just hope that nobody is downloading horse porn onto my computer.

When I was at home I spotted a tiny monkey peeking out of one of the Rubbermaid tubs that contains my stuffed animals and for some reason could not resist taking him back to San Diego even though he was never a toy I used to particularly play with. I will post a picture of him in my next entry, which will include an update on my aquarium. Will I ever throw out or give away my stuffed animals? No, and Chris and I already have a room in our imaginary house where we've put all of ours together to smile on shelves. With material things I don't really get attached to the fabric and wood themselves as the memories surrounding them. The objects act as an anchor for previous times, helping me to ground my past, and their disappearance is the first step for those memories fading. The objects themselves can also develop almost animistic personalities of their own in my eyes. The longer I keep something the less likely I am to let go of it, and the harder it is to get me to do so.

Yesterday Robinson Crusoe and the paper by Crick and Watson describing the double helix were published.

Today's Desirable Freecycle Entries:
Free Palm Pilot
Free 15'' CRT monitor
Free Queen Mattress
Free Spider Plants/Geranium plants
Free Worn Couch
Free small desk

he

I am in pain and having some trouble sleeping. So I want to rewrite an idea I had a little while ago.

I would, as a reaction to shows such as "Gossip Girl", love to see a film taking the life story of the Buddha and setting it in the modern day, because I feel as if it would not only provide a chance for a unique adaptation but also help to cram some of his message down people's throats.

(Honestly, I personally would be more interested in creating a film about Buddha set in the correct historical time period because of the the beauty of the land and architecture that could be filmed and because I would be interested in researching the aesthetic groups he was involved in before his enlightenment. This film would probably be grittier, though it certainly could be beautiful.)

But anyways, this made me think at the time I had the idea, "Would people be fine with a Caucasian actor in NY playing Gautama Buddha?"

I didn't and don't think so. My reasoning is that I don't think people would be able to accept a white Buddha anymore than an Indian Jesus Christ or a black Confucius. My personal feeling on the matter is that such stories transcend race and time, but the possessiveness cultures feel about their central figures is not to be taken lightly. Of course, Jesus and Buddha have both already taken on alternate iconography in the cultures their religions/philosophy has spread to. Will new iconographies, even in a nonreligious sense, be accepted or tolerated in the world today on a mainstream level? The truth of the matter is that they spring up all the time in microcultures, but could they also tolerate exposure outside of them? This is a different topic, of course.

A culture generally has a large part of its identity based on these iconic figures. I somehow get the impression that the general audience would consider it "theft" of one of their central stories. Of course, adaptations have generally never destabilized the original culture or figure, but the artistic choice by a single person may be looked down upon for this reason(which I don't agree with). I also get the impression, in the case of India, that there are still hard feelings over England taking over the country, which would worsen this feeling of theft.

Part of the problem I have with this notion of theft is that it equates culture with race. If you are representing these figure's symbolic life story, they are just serving as that-symbols which everyone should be able to share a part of, no matter where they originated.

This is a long question and topic, and I feel as if I finally am going to be able to sleep. I may return to this tomorrow, or some other time, for some mental exercise.

Symbols?

So reading the Tale of Genjii got me thinking about how people used to (at least in story) communicate with each other through poetry and picture. As someone who loves the deeper-than-words communication that can be conveyed through these, I feel as though, in part, I miss the days when this was much more commonplace. Of course, part of the reason that we could never communicate this way in the modern day is that for many cultures, symbols had sort of a standard meaning. Now due to the mixing of cultures and experiences, things such as fall and autumn have many different meanings to many different people. I personally think that ultimately this can lead to deeper and richer symbolic communication, though it has also contributed to its disuse and to miscommunication in logical and *normal* communication due to the symbolic nature of language itself.

This also lead me to think about how in the Golden Dawn part of the requirements of the material is to absorb the symbolic aspect and then manipulate the symbols through ritual.
Part of the reason I feel compelled to write this down is how strange the idea of an almost-standardized symbology is to me. Due to human nature fully standardizing symbols is, of course, impossible, but it is just striking when a concept that was extremely commonplace for a long time is completely alien. I guess this is also true of racism, but that I just chalk up to mass ignorance and try not to think about.