Randomness

It's not often that Georgia gives me reason to be proud, but I'm happy that this year Georgia voters defeated both Ralph Reed in the primaries and Cynthia McKinney in a run-off. Hmmmm. . . . I'm proud that a manipulative power broker and a political embarrassment actually ran for public office before being defeated? My God, Clinton was right after all - we do live in a time of diminishing expectations.

Only one person showed up for Monday night zazen this week, the same young lady who was the solo practioner last week until a second finally arrived five minutes before closing. But no second showed up this week. However, the practice and the discipline are still their own virtue, not the numbers that attend. If we were only interested in numbers, it would be easy enough to water the dharma down and provide ego gratification and easy lessons that everyone wants to hear, but then, that wouldn't be Zen.

The "Teen Lust" post and Greensmile's comments remind me of how music, for the young, is as much about tribal identification as anything else. Goths, emos and punks all identify themselves as much by the bands they listen to as their clothes and hairstyles. In fact, over at Live Journal, the question "Current Music?" is a default entry for every posting using their standard templates (I turned that feature off for WDW. . . Live). Blaming teen's lifestyle decisions on their music is as silly as blaming their clothes or their haircuts (although, come to think of it, I have heard promiscuity blamed on skimpy clothing and not vice versa, and my generation's hair was blamed for nearly everything).

The after-hour public meetings continue. Last night was the neighborhood civic association and tomorrow night there's a meeting of an alliance of local civic associations. Last week it was the Neighborhood Planning Unit and a City Council meeting to organize a citizen's advisory board. These meetings are all a part of my grand experiment: to see what life would be like it one stopped saying "no" to people, and only answered "yes."

Tonight's my night off, so please excuse me if I'm brief with my posting.