inja From Marrakech" at GSL Projekt, the artist allowed us to sneak in behind the scenes, and showed his exhibition while still in the making. At the time we arrived, Suvi Lehtinen (gallery owner) and Arielle Bier (curator of the show) were figuring out...
This year the 1st of May is more than just an excuse to get wasted in public at midday; it is also the Berlin art scene's favorite holiday – the Gallery Weekend – and the first day of the last Month of Performance Art. Try to stay moderate and survive through the afternoon events and openings all the...I think this may be a big gender thing, as men seem to adore uniforms, titles and hierarchies. Oh so vertical. Women for obvious reasons are more egalitarian. As a woman involved in the dharma, I'm a Nichiren Buddhist in a traditonal sect (from the 14th cent.) for the very pragmatic reason that it is a based on a famous sutra, the Lotus, which most can understand and Nichiren's teachings are free, easy to practice and available to everyone. As Ven. Indrajala says these elaborate Vinayas, sects with degrees, titles etc are just social constructs. And they don't benefit women, rather they exist to keep a status quo of in and out groups, maintain an elite and perpetuate hierarchies. Now if you like this way of practice good for you, but be aware enough that it was created and is imbued with the culture, customs and prejudices of the region. Don't confuse the construct with the Dharma.
gassho
RoryQuestion:
Got my Vibram FiveFingers Sprints today!   They fit awesome!  I'm on my way to having yoga feet.  haha
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positive


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the gourock pool is one of the loveliest places in the world 
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positive


Question:
@orbitz_a Sociology 11 will be the cause of my untimely academic death  it'll be hard  plus I'm feeling the pressure already hahaha
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negativeWeek 2 | End Zone ‘informal’ read | Part 1, Chapters 12 - 18

Welcome to week two, where we finished off Part One of End Zone. We got some fun chapters in here. The book generally feels very straightforward, but I note chapters 14 and 16 as those that were a bit more postmodern in their structures and jumps - not always chronological, and dropping/picking up narratives. It is something DeLillo does well. Here are some of my notes and observations from this week’s reading.

**I noticed more reference to the body/physical form in these chapters**

* Some of that was thanks to Myna (not sure if we are supposed to make a link to the bird with her name - any thoughts?), as it is a preoccupation of hers: “it’s hard to be beautiful. You have an obligation to people. You almost become public property” (65) - surely something that resonates with those playing sport. She was presented with the choice between body and soul and chose to “be emotional and do what I want” (97).
* Gary refers to the exercises and training “instructing our collective soul in the disciplines necessary to make us one body” (54), which resonates with the above but also brought back the ‘oneness’ Gary had mentioned before. He enjoys that “life is simplified” by the basic exercises and training (54), but by the end of Part One his physical self is under more strain: “I was having trouble breathing and an awful sound was filling my helmet, a sound that seemed to be coming from inside my head” (104).
* Creed’s physicality comes into play as well: “Creed didn't make an appearance. As the season progressed he had become more remote. We saw him only at practice and at the games...he seemed to be losing weight and he moved slowly now, with a slight limp” (92)
* “In slow motion the game's violence became almost tender, a series of lovely and sensual assaults” (94)
* “It went from there to fights, to mass vomiting, to singing and comradeship” (95)
* Bloomberg also raises concerns with the self: “I was losing the idea of my body, who it belonged to, what exactly it was...I was losing the most important part of my being...my self awareness started to fade. It was a terrible shedding of the skin. I was losing more and more of myself. I was losing more of the old body and more of the newly acquired mind” (73). And beyond the body, he notes “I am working myself up to a point where I can exist beyond guilt, beyond blood, beyond the ridiculous past...I reject heritage, background, tradition and birthright. These things merely slow the progress of the human race. They result in war and insanity, war and insanity, war and insanity” (74).

**War and nuclear technology is moving closer to the centre stage**

* Linked to Bloomberg’s observation above about ‘war and insanity’, we got deeper into Gary’s obsession with nuclear war - he sought out Staley to find out about “nuclear war, sir. What it might be like” (83). Staley obliges with reflections on war as theology, and the technological future. Staley also refers to “my fellow co-liberals” (79), which jumped out at me.
* “There's a kind of theology at work here. The bombs are a kind of god. As his power grows, our fear naturally increases...there's a kind of theology of fear that comes out of this...now god is the force of nature itself, the fusion of tritium and deuterium. Now he's the weapon” (77). There were other discussions re god and religion throughout these chapters (eg linked to science below).
* “War is the ultimate realization of modern technology...war is a test of opposing technologies...now it informs the machines. It's the best test of a country's technological skills...your technology doesn't know how good it is until it goes to war” (80 - 81).
* And Gary earlier raised the question, when discussing technology: “the philosophical question has been asked: what will become of death” (75) - death in all its forms (accidents, suicides, war) seem to keep coming up in these chapters - all linked to technology if you include the car and gun, I suppose.

**Language, another DeLillo trope, kept coming up as well**

* “Most lives are guided by cliches. They have a soothing effect on the mind...their menace is hidden with the darker crimes of thought and language” (67).
* “We repeated certain phrases to each other and dedicated our next game to his memory...we believed the phrases” (67 - 68)
* “Four point five billion years. Science is religion, did you know that?...But in approaching each other to discuss this thing we have to get through all the barriers imposed by all the allied sciences and disciplines—that of multiple definitions, that of cross references nobody's even begun to put in any coherent form, that of terminologies which are untranslatable” (88)

**A few tidbits or related materials**

* Am still plugging away with the book *War As They Knew It*, which is as much about the radical campus politics of the 1960s as it is about college ball - and very much enjoying it.
* *The Memory Palace* this week had [a sports related episode](https://thememorypalace.us/betty-robinson/), worth checking out. If you have never listened to this podcast, give it a go. If anyone asked me for one podcast that has shown what amazing things can be done via audio for shortform narrative nonfiction, this is the one I would recommend. Just plug in your headphones (always a better experience) and sit back for 20 minutes and enjoy the ride.
* I also watched the Netflix documentary on Naomi Osaka this week - well worth checking out - it explores where commercialism, politics and personal identity come together within sport. Was made before her recent French Open withdrawal made the news, but that just works as a coda to a story about a clearly fascinating and (at what at least feels like) a somewhat atypical sportsperson at the top of their game. These sorts of docs are usually just marketing tools all about the hype and gloss - this was a great antidote to that.

So what did you think of Part One? We end on a cliffhanger, as the big game is about to begin, so see you next Wednesday for Week Three, where we tackle all of Part Two/Chapter 19 (it's relatively short).How many gated communities do you think there are in America? I've lived in three different states (NC, IL, MD) and the District of Columbia and I've seen one gated community in my entire life. It would be bizarre to me if somehow the people in this thread managed to all live in gated communities. ([Trump](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-trump-got-his-edge/) voters, by the way, were largely clustered in whiter than average communities)

I live in an apartment building in NE DC that is by appearance to me largely black (I am a white liberal, I'll grant you that). I oppose Trump's position on this because 1) I've studied criminal justice issues