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My favorite comment of the day was from someone who wrote (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘If you record every thing that happens in a day, it becomes an epic’ and I’m not sure if by epic he meant a journey, or a quest, or just really, really long but I realized right away what he meant.

Today I woke up a bit late, after a dream with a black rabbit, watched TV and pootered around on facebook until I left at about 10 for a class with a girl (I’m not sure exactly how old she is – 12?-) who hasn’t had a lesson in two months and I thought her parents had given up on the idea, but if I wanted to really tell the story I’d talk about what I had for breakfast, and all of the back and forth exchanges I had on facebook, and what TV programs I watched and what I thought about them, and how I just had to remember to stick my card in the machine to validate my Metro Pass for another month but I forgot and then after I got off at Malostranska and had crossed the street to catch the tram and nearly stepped in front of one coming the other direction and, just as the 22 was pulling up, I realized I’d  forgotten to validate and I looked at the clock, it was 20 to 11, and I was torn – if I went back to the station to validate I would miss that tram and might be late but if I didn’t, it’s actually  quite a regular route for inspectors, so I went back in and then didn’t have to wait so long for the next one. I knew as soon as I got on that I wouldn’t be late, at least not by more than a couple of minutes, and there were two stunningly good looking women sitting together, one blonde, one brunette, and the brunette was wearing sunglasses, and they might have been sisters, they might have been colleagues, but in the male fantasy cortex of my tram riding mind they were lesbians, and maybe they’d just had a fight because the blonde was staring out the window with a miffed look, but I didn’t want to look like a pervert so I began to look out the window as well, it was a sweltering hot day, and some of the clouds were dark and it looked like it might rain but it never did and there we are up to an epic and the day had barely begun.

I was flipping through the channels, as I tend to do, and all of the entertainment channels had cop programs; I could be wrong, but it seems to me there is no time of day that you can’t watch Hawaii 5-0.  History, of course, just had one of their stupid auction shows, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw something about history there.  Animal planet had fishing.  O.K., he was in South America, fishing for piranhas, but it’s still just fishing – a guy throws a hook into the water, and then pulls out a fish.  It’s no more compelling than watching two guys play darts.  So, I went to the Discovery Channels, because there are four of them, but one of them was talking about big military weapons, two had programs about cars, and one program showing how chewing gum was made.  I don’t really care how chewing gum is made.

So, I came to the learning channel, which I almost never watch because it’s absolute crap, and they had a program on called “Long Island Psychic” and I figured I could  give that a few minutes, might pick up some clues for my Tarot reading, but it was almost over and then they had the ads (which all stations seem to have so many of these days) advertising their own programs.

I think TLC originally meant The Learning Channel, but you’d never know it.  Toddlers and Tiaras, which is undoubtedly popular with pedophiles, two programs about weddings, one of which “Curvy Brides,” sounds from the title that it specialized in fat chicks getting married.  Then there is “Little People, Big World” which is all about dwarves, and appeared to be something less than a sensitive, serious documentary.  (Dwarves drive tractors, hoo boy!)  Then there was the capper, The Undatables, all about retarded people looking for love.

Why not just drop the ‘learning channel’ pretense.  Just call it TFS (the freak show) and be done with it?

(It was a lazy day for me, but got a call from a former student who wants to start up again, and an e-mail with an offer to proofread a translation of a novel from Farsi to English, so plenty of work coming in)

It was quite a pleasant weekend at the cottage, as much as possible.  Picked a lot of cherries and red currants, and took a couple of nice, long walks, but the highlight, the thing that made it an  exceptional weekend, was today’s visit to IQLandia.

It was my first time there but I wholeheartedly recommend it to any of my friends living in the Czech Republic, who have kids.  We spent almost 5 hours there and the kids were still going strong.  I was worn out, but they were still finding new stuff, even on our way out the door.

Sam’s friend is visiting, so we had two 12 year old boys, which was kind of rough on Isabel, but she gives as good as she gets.

The first thing you see in the lobby is a musical fountain.  You can press buttons for different instruments and the fountain co-ordinates with the music, but the backdrop is even more amazing.  Water that drops corresponding to whatever you draw on a pad with your finger.  It was pretty amazing.

Then you walk up a spiral ramp (we never did make it to the ‘secret weapons of WWII exhibit, with which I was fairly pleased) and it’s an interesting structure, because there are views of Ještěd (Yeshtyed) all the way up, and the Babylon water park just across the street, giving the impression that Liberec is actually kind of a futuristic city, even though Ještěd was built in the 1960s.

My favorite exhibits were the journey to the center of the Earth, the Faraday cage rock show, and the giant bubbles.  Isabel liked the water course where you could play with dams and water wheels to control the flow, and try to balance ping pong balls on the fountains.

The boys thought they were being funny when we went into the sex exhibit, saying “It’s about biology” because Sam got a 4 in biology and I’ve been on his case about it, but many a truth is said in jest.  I was thrilled.

They spent a lot of time giggling, but I think they learned a few things.

It’s an amazing place, with a lot of variety.

(we are off to the cottage this weekend, so this is being written Saturday morning and tomorrow’s blog will be written when I get back)

I do not believe in God, yet this post is about God.  I capitalize the word both out of respect for those who do believe and literary tradition.  I think of God as a human construct, real only in the sense that Zeus and Odin are real -they are real within their stories and at one time and place were thought of as as real as the current deity.

But, since human beings of all cultures have believed in in God or in gods, it could be that it is an essential part of the  human experience – in fact, a sign of intelligence.  When ancient man looked up at the stars, and noted the changing of the seasons, and the lightning and the suddenness of storms at sea, they came up with stories to explain these things, which was the beginning of religion, but also the beginning of science.  Before you can test a hypothesis, you have to have a hypothesis.

A friend of mine just posted on facebook a painting by Joan Miro, but it’s not really by Joan Miro, it’s by Deep Dream.  I’ve got to look into this Deep Dream thing, I’m not clear yet on how it works, but basically it is the internet interpreting things on its own.  Some are saying it’s AI, I’m not convinced of that, but its interpretation of Miro gives credence to the position.

See, while most other artists, or topics, fed into Deep Dream, come out as a weird amalgam of animal body parts and other random images,  Miro comes out as Miro.  Maybe Miro+, but very recognizable.

The internet is treating Miro differently than everything else.  Therefore, (just as God spelled backwards is dog, but Bob spelled backwards is Bob, therefore Bob is God) perhaps Joan Miro is who the internet sees as God.

Even though he’s not my very favorite artist, I can see how that could be interpreted as a sign of intelligence.

I’ve been spending a high percentage of my internet time lately on my “Poems about Paintings” facebook page. ( https://www.facebook.com/home.php ) This is generally a positive thing, because it keeps me writing, I generally come up with two or three new poems every day.  Of course, some of them wouldn’t stand up on their own, they are more of a rhyming caption for the painting than a poem in their own right, but  I’m writing a lot, so if one or two of them out of ten are good, then it’s a good thing.

A recent addition

It’s also a good thing because it cuts into the time I can obsess about politics.  There are enough people out there writing crap about politics and I’m not convincing anybody.  Also, I think the solutions to the main problems facing the human race -a clean water supply, global warming, overpopulation, illiteracy, the death of the honey bee, the possibility of a 7.4 earthquake hitting Manhattan, an asteroid strike, the Yellowstone volcano – are going to be technical and not political.  They must be, if there is any possibility of saving the human  race because politically, we are idiots.

One thing is that I spend so much time looking at people’s paintings that I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all.  I am drowning in art.  I guess that’s the end result of social media.  You will drown in something, and it will be the genre of your own choosing.  For some people it’s cat videos.  For a few people I know it’s chess.

The weird thing about it is, though, I’m not good at art, and I’m not even good as an amateur critic.  I’m just looking for pieces with something, anything, that jogs my mind, that I can attach a couple of words to, and expand those words to a poem.

So, it’s kind of surprising that there is actually a lot of good art on the page, but it’s more of a coincidence than good management.