The Meaning of Life

When son Clay was in the fourth grade, one night we watched Montey Python's The Meaning of Life, a delightful film to my mind. It had a lot about sex in it - sex education, contraception, and so forth. On the way walking to school in Sebastopol the next morning, Clay asked a questio. "Is sex when a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina?" he asked. "That's defintiely one type of sex," I said. "I think of it as the number one type of sex." He nodded, and then with a dramatic sweeping gesture he said, "And that's the meaning of life!" 

Gary Snyder's Sutra

 Smokey the Bear Sutra

Dinner Conversation

Katrinka and I were having dinner at the beach at Genius in Sanur as the sun set and the August winds blew on us almost chilly but not. Two women at the next table, the next couch in the sand with a low table in front. One of them asked about what we were eating and we got talking. Prima Dita is from Java. She's worked with the Ubud Writer's Festival or something related. Katrinka mentioned that I've been involved with the Bali Unspoken Poetry Slam and then Prima said Oh that's where I know you from. That was neat. The other is Kasia from Poland. She is a psychologist who specializes in working with survivers of childhood violence and trauma. She has a website: kasiamay.com. The four of us talked a bunch. As soon as Prima said something about being Muslim I went, Oh good. I explained I said that cause her English is so good and, well, I'd love to have her as a guest for a podcast, told her she can talk about anything she wants but I especially want to hear what she has to say about Islam and being a Muslim woman. Actually, she's the 2nd woman I've enlisted today for such a purpose. Now Prima is on board to be a guest on a Life in Bali espisode on Cuke Audio Podcast, I suspect this coming Thursday, one with her in it will go up.  Looking forward to seeing how that goes. Here's the Cuke Audio Podcast page on cuke.com.

BAD TIMES IN BALI – AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT

Today's guest in Cuke Audio's Life in Bali podcast is the man who told this story from Bhikkhu Moneya's BaliforTulsi website. This site will disappear soon and be transplanted in Cuke Annex with a disclaimer from me that "Opinions expressed herein are not necesariy those of managment. But that doesn't apply to this article. - dc 

Weird Body Stuff - Eye Color

 When I was young, my eye color was called hazel. They were a mixture of brown, grey, a little green and sometimes a bit of blue. The colors would change somewhat and the shirts I wore brought out different ones. As I got older every now and then I'd hear blue when I was wearing a blue shirt but hazel remained the official color. No one commented on them mucnn but I got lots of comments on my once long eyelashes from girls then women. When I returned to the US in 1992, after living in Japan for four years, I had to apply for a new driver's liscense. The clerk at the DMV looked at the form I'd filled out and compared it to prior info. He looked up at me and said with a bit of disbelief, "What? Did your eyes change color?" "Yep," I said. The blue had been creeping up for some years and it finally took over. "Really?" "Yep. It happens I've learned. Not a lot." "OK." And he passed me on to the next counter.

Postnote: Katrinka says I have aqua-marine eyes. Hmm.

Go Bill Gates!

 Breakthrough Energy - As I see it, Gates is not into trivia, uses his resources for the general good. He's a friend of the biosphere. - dc

Katrinka gets a Mask

Katrinka was in a farmacy and the woman in front of her, another bule, foreigner she didn't know, found she was short 20,000 rupiah, about a buck and a half. So Katrinka gave it to her. The woman wanted to know how to pay her back but Katrinka said, "What goes around comes around." Flash forward a month. Katrinka's walking to yoga when she realizes she's forgotten to wear a mask. Oh darn, have to go back home, she thought. Just then a voice called out. It was the woman Katrinka had given the 20,000 to riding by on a bicycle. She stopped and said hello and thank you and I can pay you back now. Katrinka told her not to worry about it, do someone else a favor, and added she had to walk back home to get a mask that she'd forgotten to wear. The woman said she happened to have an extra one on her. So Katrinka didn't have to walk back home to get a mask. That worked out nicely.