Last night, eight of us went to see Nicholas Ray's King of Kings. As I have written previously, I would not have seen this film save for the fact that it was by a great film maker; I'm a Christian who is prejudiced against Bible films. I write and speak out of ignorance, however, since I have actually seen very few films drawing from Biblical stories (and specifically the life of Jesus). But that hasn't stopped me from writing them off as schlock.
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"But I love Bach."

"You don't love Bach -- you analyze Bach."

In all my blog writing so far, every time I've written "I", I have been speaking for myself. I've also been very careful in what I've written, to be as honest and truthful and accurate as possible -- stating what I do know and don't know.

I'm getting tired to writing in just this way.

So how can I write a poem or a story or a blob of text or drop in a drawing in this space without the "I" literary being "me"? Should I depend on context? Should I use some type of typographic or graphical convention? Should I mark it "story" or "fiction". I hope that if I'm writing a parody (say a parody of myself), that I wouldn't have to explicitly mark it with "Warning: self-parody".

How do others do this? There are probably examples in my own blogging community of such doings -- forgive me for not paying closer attention and missing out. Something I think that Laura might have something in her blog of this nature. Maybe Chris or Lloyd or Catherine. I thought tonight that textism might be what I wanted to study -- but my initial look did not yield what I wanted. Actually, maybe it's Ray Davis who has blogs that address this issue.

Both Lloyd and I wrote about Kenneth Pollack's Threatening Storm some time ago in our blogs as a must-read book in assessing the case for an invasion of Iraq. Pollack's book made me think, "hey maybe there is a sound case to be made for war given how Iraq might become an even more terrible menace to the world". So as I mull the current post-Iraq war situation, as I wonder whether the Bush administration misled the American public about how much it knew about weapons of mass destruction -- indeed wonder what is really true and who I can really believe in such a complex morass of spin -- I've been wondering how Pollack now stands.

Salon.com | Joe Conason's Journal points to a recent NPR interview with Kenneth Pollack. Now is Pollack back-peddling or was he duped or did we misinterpret Pollack? He seemed to one of the more credible analysts on the scene, but I don't know what to think right now.

When I decided to see whether I could put a hold on Hillary Clinton's new book Living History at the Berkeley Public Library, I discovered that 22 people had beaten me to the punch. The BPL hasn't even taken ownership of any copy of the book. I look forward to reading the book sometime this fall....

Although I missed all the programming from KQED during Asian Pacific American Heritage month (May), I do appreciate KQED's KQED | Asian Pacific American Heritage: Resources 2003, which is described as "only a small portion of the many resources that serve the Asian Pacific American community in the Bay Area." This list should come in handy as I get increasingly involved with the Asian American/Canadian communities.

This afternoon, I was going to sit down to do some leisurely modification of
my new blog. It was supposed to be a low-stress activity -- but as I got into
it, I got sucked into an obsessive-must-figure-it-all-out-right-away-or-else-I'll-go-crazy
frenzy. That's when a nice walk helped me to break free from the infinite loop.
Now I feel free to move on to other matters more conducive to restful contemplation
on a Sunday afternoon. However, I also decided that I wante to write up what
I've looked at instead of just leaving my thoughts in a disorganized jumble.

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This morning, my housemate Ildi and Orsi -- one of her daughters -- came with me to experience the first of the monthly "Family Days" at the Asian Art Museum. As a member of the museum, I'm able to take some people with me for free -- in fact, I've been wanting to issue a more general invitation to friends to join me. Each time, I think that I want to go off on my own so that I see new things. Each time, I also want to hang out with my friends.

Today, I got to do a bit of both. In three previous trips, I never seem to get past the first of two floors on the tour. Today, I started in the Chinese galleries (at the end of the first floors of exhibits) and also checked out the resource center. I have been reading Art in China (Oxford History of Art) to help me better understand what I see. (It was gratifying that one of the videos I watched hit directly upon the issue of bronze work in non-Shang dominated China, an issue addressed in the book.) One of the real finds of my trip today was the "Educators' Guide to the Asian Art Museum" -- a booklet that is helpful to any student of Asian Art, and not just those who are trying to teach others about the subject.

Tonight, I got the special treat of seeing my friend Deborah for the first time in about a year. She just got back from China -- and it was great to see her. My housemates know her too and the kids in the house were especially excited to be with her. I'm thankful for email and the phone, which have helped us to stay in touch -- but there's nothing -- nothing at all -- like real life presence, is there? Tonight, she introduced me to the Red Sea Ethiopian restaurant in Oakland -- where there was tasty and filling food to be had. After talking for hours, we got the signal to leave the restaurant (the lights were being turned off -- hint, hint). I told her about my blog -- let me know, Deborah, if you read this item!

It's time to go to bed now for me. I'm finding it hard to imagine why my readers might care concerning what I just wrote. More precisely, I'm used to thinking that my readers might care about what I thought -- but maybe less so about what I did. Nevertheless, I felt the need to write something about the matters the mean most to me. In the byline of the blog, I mentioned friendship. I wanted to remember this day as one dedicated to spending time with my wonderful friends. That's it. Nothing grander or more abstract to say than that. (Perhaps this last paragraph is itself extraneous.)

Thanks to Lloyd for publishing a picture from our bloggers' lunch:

There is more I'd like to say -- but it's already 11:30pm and it's been a long day. Suffice it to say that I loved every moment of our lunch; I wish we could meet more often in "meatspace" or "IRL". [See other blogs for "coverage" of/reaction to this lunch: Isaac, Laura, Lynn

Because of a series of wonderful hours about Bach, I decided to tune in to the latest goings-ons at the WBUR interview show "The Connection". I'm listening to The Connection.org : The Fresh New Beat of Early Music right now through the wonders of streaming audio. Soothing and entertaining.