gilmore girls spoiler causes injury to helpless mom

I've tried to refrain from binge-watching the recently released Gilmore Girls sequel episodes. I wanted to savor them. Watch one episode per week, so I could delay the withdrawal symptoms I surely would suffer from, once I was done with them all. Unfortunately, I live with another Gilmore Girls fanatic. One of my own creation, no less: my younger daughter Nini, who is now 12 years old.

The moment the new episodes were released, this kid proceeded to watch all four seasons over the course of two days (each season captured in a movie-length episode). From the moment she began her full-immersion experience, she needed to comment and gasp at every scene change it seemed. Needless to say, there was a lot of yelling on my part, ordering her from the other room to keep her reactions to herself! Not only was she not able to follow this order, she also felt the great need to more effectively share her excitement by running over to me so she could hint at what was happening on the screen. Since my ear-covering and humming loudly to drown her out wasn't effective as more than an interim solution, I had to escalate the situation to physical removal of said disobedient child. And while she found my shoving and pushing funny, I got actually hit in the face by a door edge in the process. A door I was trying to close on this little Gilmore Girls spoiler.

The problem is that I seem to be the only one who has been trying to savor the new episodes while everyone else has watched them like Nini did (i.e. immediately and all at once) and is already talking about them everywhere. So, I had to catch up and get with the program and am now almost finished with the last of the four episodes.

As I was watching the very first few minutes of "Winter" (the episodes are named after the four seasons), I was so excited. I don't recall being this excited about anything since childhood. It's ridiculous. And like with anything you're super excited about, there is always a let down, for the higher your expectations, the deeper the fall.

First of all, I really do enjoy seeing everyone again. It's like you get a piece of your past back. It feels a little bit like time traveling. So many things have stayed the same and I love it because I truly dislike change, an inevitable constant in everyone's lives. Following the camera as it pans over this familiar set, showing us characters we've met a decade ago, brings nostalgia and a sense of security, as well as contentment that all is right with this world.

Alas, things have changed. Rory's character has changed completely. She is now drinking hard liquor in the day time, lacks journalistic integrity or professionalism, and is having an affair with her ex who is practically married. Soap opera kind of material. It's like the writers were trying so hard to make her character of modern times, it became a bit cliché. We loved Rory because she was so golden and rare. A girl with principles, not without faults, of course .. but, generally, a good person with integrity and a strong moral compass. Someone we could admire.

Overall, the plot and dialogue isn't as strong as it was in the originals, but it has its moments. And, just like when I saw Twilight (which was awful and beautiful at the same time), I have too much love for the Gilmore Girls characters not to finish watching.

is it wrong to combine smoke breaks with mediation?

I live by a fairly busy street and have grown used to the noise of passing cars, so it is particularly strange when it suddenly becomes completely silent outside because of an unpredictable traffic hole. I love this phenomena. I usually pause everything I'm doing, for the moment almost begs for attention. I was just presented with one of these rare moments. An opportunity to pause and listen to what remains - the birds, the sound of the wind in the treetops. A micro-meditation.

I've become accustomed to such mini-meditations, for I have decided a while back that I will settle for whatever brief pocket of time I can find in order to rebalance myself. Yesterday was so busy (although, I can't remember anything I did) that I combined my mini meditation with a cigarette on the fire escape. Is it wrong to combine Om-chants with smoking breaks?
I can't stand pan-flute music, but apparently it's a very hip instrument in the meditation music genre. So, I was very happy when I finally found this very basic Om-chant online.

I first learned about the ataractic physical sensation brought on by chanting when I was forced to go to a yoga class by one of my friends. She was actually teaching the class, so I had to be there for support. I used to despise yoga and thus it was a true friendship service for me to attend, particularly challenging in nature, for she included candle lighting by a picture of some guru and then - oh God - the chanting. However, I have to admit, to my great surprise, when I dutifully (and supportively) chanted along with the room, something happened. The vibrations of everyone humming together were incredibly realxing and left me liberated from the tension I had carried in my shoulders as well as, once again, reminding of the rewarding possibilities of opening up one's horizons.

Nowadays, I try to recreate this feeling of chant-vibration-induced serenity by sitting in front of a base-heavy speaker playing similar Om chants I find on Spotify. It's subpar to the real thing, sitting in a room full of people chanting together in unison, but it's like my micro-meditations: it'll do. it'll do.

making sense of things (and not)

I usually just write my own stuff (with a quote here and there), but this piece in New York Magazine really struck a chord with me and since nobody seems to have the attention span to read a long article anymore, I've pulled a few paragraphs to summarize Mr. Sullivan's point (or at least, my perceived point of the article):

"American democracy has been able to thrive with unprecedented stability over the last couple of centuries even as it has brought more and more people into its embrace. It remains, in my view, a miracle of constitutional craftsmanship and cultural resilience. There is no place I would rather live. But it is not immortal, nor should we assume it is immune to the forces that have endangered democracy so many times in human history." [...]

"In Eric Hoffer’s classic 1951 tract, 'The True Believer', he sketches the dynamics of a genuine mass movement. He was thinking of the upheavals in Europe in the first half of the century, but the book remains sobering, especially now. Hoffer’s core insight was to locate the source of all truly mass movements in a collective sense of acute frustration. Not despair, or revolt, or resignation — but frustration simmering with rage. Mass movements, he notes (as did Tocqueville centuries before him), rarely arise when oppression or misery is at its worst (say, 2009); they tend to appear when the worst is behind us but the future seems not so much better (say, 2016). It is when a recovery finally gathers speed and some improvement is tangible but not yet widespread that the anger begins to rise." [...]
"But the most powerful engine for such a [mass] movement — the thing that gets it off the ground, shapes and solidifies and entrenches it — is always the evocation of hatred. [...] And what makes Trump uniquely dangerous in the history of American politics [...] is his response to all [...] enemies. It’s the threat of blunt coercion and dominance.

And so after demonizing most undocumented Mexican immigrants, he then vowed to round up and deport all 11 million of them by force. “They have to go” was the typically blunt phrase he used — and somehow people didn’t immediately recognize the monstrous historical echoes. The sheer scale of the police and military operation that this policy would entail boggles the mind. [...]

[Trump's] movement is clearly fascistic in its demonization of foreigners, its hyping of a threat by a domestic minority (Muslims and Mexicans are the new Jews), its focus on a single supreme leader of what can only be called a cult, and its deep belief in violence and coercion in a democracy that has heretofore relied on debate and persuasion."
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It's an older article but the analysis is still (tragically) on point...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

on gratitude

Every morning, I sit down to write a bullet list of things I am grateful for, a good practice I heard about on Tim Ferriss's podcast a while back. It's hard for me to be grateful in the mornings. I'm not very happy (i.e. grateful) to be awake, nor am I particularly articulate. In fact, my children know not to tick me off in the mornings, for I am an animal of instinct when I've just woken up. This usually very composed and restrained mama will become a force to be reckoned with if poked in the early hours of the day. There is cursing, needless aggression over Nutella depletion or teenage clothing choices, there are non-sensical accusations and things are said that would never come out of my mouth at any other time of the day. So, at this point, I have trained my children well to keep things calm in the morning and not agitate me, for I will regress into something, which nobody in the house wants to deal with (including me).

But - other than my state of morning madness, I am pretty much grateful all the time. For everything. Okay, maybe not everything. But, a lot. I am so incredibly grateful so often during the day that I feel it is, perhaps, built in. Is gratitude part of human nature? Or is it nurture? So many people seem to not be grateful or appreciative at all. Or maybe, I just don't know that they are. Or could it be that they are, but just for the wrong reasons? Can there even be such a thing as a wrong reason for gratitude? Do dictators, ISIS members, and other atrocious members of our world experience gratitude? And, if yes, what for? Does it still qualify as wholesome gratitude if the appreciation is for something awful or selfish? Then again, isn't all gratitude due to some sense of selfishness? We are grateful because something is good for us. Although, we do experience gratefulness on behalf of people we care about, right? Question is, is that a true altruistic sentiment or is it also based in the "selfish" interest of making oneself feel good?