Ornoth

As I mentioned last year, I occasionally pop over to Google Street View to check out various and sundry.

As a cyclist with around 7,000 hours of road riding since Street View came out, I’ve seen numerous camera vehicles during my wanderings, but I’ve never happened to come across my own image.

But having seen the Street View camera car while checking our mailbox a couple months ago, I recently looked to see whether they’d updated their imagery, and whether Y.T. had made the cut.

I’m happy to report that there’s now a permanent visual record of my presence in this benighted world, in the form of the following two images (as always, click for teh bigness):

My meditation practice has been in maintenance mode since moving to Pittsburgh in 2015. But helping establish a new group and delivering my first dhamma talk has injected some energy.

The new group that’s starting up is organized by two women whose backgrounds include Thich Nhat Hanh, IMS, and Tara Brach. They sent out feelers looking for like-minded Vipassana practitioners, and got enough response to form a small practice group. Typically eight to ten people show up from a total pool of a couple dozen. I think we’d all like to see it grow into something more substantial, but that’ll take time and effort. And none of us are authorized dhamma teachers, so right now it feels very reminiscent of my old kalyana mitta (spiritual friends) group back in Boston.

CIMC meditation hall

A fair number of us—myself included—have long attended a Wednesday evening meditation group led by Rhonda Rosen. So far the two groups seem to be complementary, in that Rhonda focuses on Goenka’s guided meditations and Q&A about practice, while the new group seems more philosophical and a bit less secular.

At the first meeting, we talked about our individual goals for the group, and I think I summarized mine pretty effectively. What I am looking for is the opportunity to learn from other local meditators, the chance to invite distant dhamma teachers to visit Pittsburgh as guests and learn from them, the opportunity to share the learnings from my own practice with others, and to help build a venue where all of that can happen. And I emphasized that for me, the biggest thing I’ve missed since moving to Pittsburgh has been dhamma talks, where experienced teachers expound on the philosophical teachings of the Buddha.

Thereafter, we’ve met weekly for brief meditations—both sitting and walking—followed by some kind of dhamma talk and discussion.

As I said earlier, our biggest challenge is that none of us are teachers. So we’re sharing the responsibility of preparing material to present, whether it’s readings or recordings or original thoughts. Predictably, we began with the central tenets of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths. I was asked to lead an evening discussing the Second Noble Truth: the Origin/Source/Cause of Suffering.

Treating this as my first proper dhamma talk, I spent some time gathering notes, and found that although the subject was far-ranging, everything fell together nicely with obvious segues. I put together an outline and ran through it a couple times in my head. Ample client facilitation experience as a consultant, plus the sessions I’ve led in my old kalyana mitta group, all gave me confidence and kept any nerves at bay.

Unfortunately, I set myself a very ambitious task: explaining how the sequence of events in the Buddhist psychology of Dependent Origination give rise to the pain of desires that ultimately cannot be fulfilled, along the way touching on kamma, ignorance, the Three Characteristics of Existence, the Four Divine Messengers, the Five Recollections, and the Eight Worldly Winds (Buddhism is *all* about lists), then closing by revealing the often-unexplained link of why silent meditation is the chosen tool to reach the goal of alleviating suffering. It was pretty much the Grand Unified Theory of Buddhism According to Ornoth.

Although ambitious, I think the idea was really worthy; but with so much ground to cover, the execution wound up being a bit strained.

After the talk, the verbal feedback I received was all very positive. The two founders were both effusive in praise, as was one of the new practitioners who admitted an intellectual inclination. But two longtime practitioners and the three new practitioners were all silent during the Q&A, which tells me that my own impressions about overreaching myself were probably correct.

Specifically, I tried to plow through way too much material for a single dhamma talk. I didn’t need to go into quite so much detail, nor be so technical. The delivery wound up being a lot more intellectual than I had hoped, and I think I lost some of the attendees as a result. Although that probably happens at every dhamma talk to one extent or another. Still, I should tighten up my material and make more effort to keep people engaged in future talks.

Giving such a long talk—40 minutes plus a few minutes of Q&A—was surprisingly tiring. But I’m really proud of the ideas I presented, especially explaining the mechanics of how and why Buddhists use silent meditation to address the suffering we all experience.

Preparing and delivering my first dhamma talk was novel and fun. But more importantly, I found it deeply rewarding to share some of my insights in hopes that they might help others along the path—whether experienced practitioners or relative newcomers. It was very satisfying, despite my inexperience in a teaching role.

Of course, the one thing that cures inexperience is practice. So it’ll be interesting to see whether I will enjoy and grow in proficiency in that teaching role, and to what degree my knowledge and experience can be of meaningful value to others. I look forward to that exploration.

It wouldn’t be the most entertaining use of your time, but if you’re truly curious, I’ve shared a written transcript of the talk. And if you’re truly masochistic, here's the 44-minute audio MP3, although be forewarned that the audio quality is low.

“Kinda bored on a Wednesday morning, I guess I’ll go see what’s shown up in the ol’ RSS reader. Ah, the Humor folder. Really nothing in there but LOLcats from the I Can Has Cheezburger site, but I like cats, and the captions are often worth a smile… Delete… Delete… WAIT A FREAKIN’ MINUTE THAT’S GRADY!”

So that was my morning surprise. Yup, someone took one of my photos of my cat, posted it on ICHC, and over a dozen people have added LOLesque captions. And for whatever reason, one of them was posted to ICHC’s RSS feed and thus straight to my mailbox.

Although unintentional, that caption was particularly apt, too: Praying? No… Imagining this around your throat… Yes!

You can see them below and click for bigness, or just go to the photo’s index page on ICHC.

How do I know that’s Grady? Well, aside from knowing my own cat, I’m also a photographer and know my own pictures. The original was posted to Flickr here back in 2008. For more words and pictures about Grady, read my post after he died last year.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time a photo of mine showed up on ICHC. Back in 2009, a coworker uploaded an embarrassing photo of an eagle that I’d taken on my trip to Scotland in 2002. You can see the resulting LOLpix and read my reaction in this blogpost. It provided a very handy template for this posting!

What I said then about the eagle pictures applies equally well to the LOLcats people have made of Grady: it’s a little slice of notoriety that I find amusing, and it’s interesting to see what captions other people have added to it.

I kinda wish he was here to see them…

Mise en scène: a tiny village in northern Scotland called Huntly, Thursday, May 28 2002. Seven DargonZine writers and one NPC follower pile out of a rental van for a tour and demonstration at the North East Falconry Centre.

After the show, I saw something that just screamed to be captured. Here’s how I wrote it up in my original travelogue, seven years ago:

On the way out, I caught a singularly amusing moment. One of the bald eagles had decided it might be fun to stand in the big water bowl I described above. So here’s the symbol of America, standing in a pool of water up to his knees, looking down as if to say “Goddamn, I’m standing in water! What the hell’s going on here? This is so humiliating! Somebody ought to do something about this…” I dunno, it struck me as hilarious, and still does.

The photo lived on my Scrapbook page for years, where I’d occasionally share it with friends.

A couple days ago, a former coworker pointed me here. Apparently he’d uploaded the photo to LOLcat central: ICanHasCheezburger. Beyond that, eighteen people have made up their own captions for it!

It’s a little slice of noteriety that I find amusing, and it’s interesting to see what captions other people have added to it.

Y’ever get bitch-slapped by reality? I’m still rubbing my jaw over this one.

I’m watching the noontime Webcast of my local news. Along comes some dumb human interest story about some Internet geek who secured the domain name BenedictXVI.com. Some guy in Florida named Rogers Cadenhead.

WHAAAT?!?!

Yeah, Rogers Cadenhead. Florida. Author of technical reference books.

Yup. Same guy. Same guy who was with DargonZine from July 1989 through September 1996, then briefly again from June 1999 to January 2000. Same guy who wrote the stories “Endgame”, plus “The Dwarf 1” and “The Dwarf 2”. You can see his bio page here, or go to his own Web site.

The television story had a brief interview with him, wherein he talked about getting the domain, and what he might do with it. Actually you can read about it all over the news, but here’s the CNN article.

How often do you see that? Some old friend suddenly popping up on the national news? I’m flabbergasted!

So yesterday evening I mosey on down to the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University (NESAD) for the first session of my penultimate graphic design class. Incidentally, it’s a class with a female instructor and twelve female students—most of whom I know from previous classes—and me.

I walked in and before I could even sit down, Ellen is giving me shit about presumably being on the cover of some NESAD brochure. I express my disbelief in typically eloquent fashion, but follow up on her challenge to go check it out.

In a couple of the literature racks around the building I find a white 5.5 x 8.5" brochure—NESAD’s continuing ed fall 2004 course catalog— and, yes, I’m right there on the cover.

I’m there in full skinhead glory, wearing my green Toasters tee shirt, jaw hanging open, cutting a mat for a print in Ken Martin’s spring photography class. Clearly, it was one of the shots he took while we were working. Goof.

Amusingly, the image is repeated on page 12, the “Administrators” page, but it’s been mirrored, so that I’m facing left instead of right. Like no one is gonna notice that? Amateurs…

But I must say, it’s pretty amusing to think that they’d choose my image to sell the school, even to continuing ed students. But, hey: I made the cover! Makes me wonder about whether I should have pursued that modeling career I looked into ten years ago…

Who is your favorite celebrity?

You’re kidding, right? Do people really live like that? How sad for them.
 

Who is your least favorite?

Well, this week’s Five isn’t going to be very interesting, now, is it?
 

Have you ever met or seen any celebrities in real life?

Okay, at least I can answer this one. Probably the most notable person I’ve met was Stephen King. I used to live in the same town, and for some inexplicable reason I was in the local comic book/game store, and he walked in. It was pretty scary. First, he’s a big boy. I’m six-foot-four, but he’s got to be at least six-nine and 270 pounds. Second, he was being followed by a handful of five-foot, high school aged comic book geek groupies, who swarmed around him saying things like “Yeah, Steve, you’re cool! Heheh heheh!” I left there with a new appreciation for why not to become a famous writer.
 

Would you want to be famous? Why or why not?

No thank you. See Stephen King, above. I’ve also had encounters with people who aren’t well-grounded in reality who read my stories (which usually tend to be medieval fantasy) and “overreact” to them. Some people take escapism to an unhealthy and downright scary extreme. In fact, when I discovered that one of my fellow writers treated one of my stories as more “real” than the real world around her, it put me off writing completely for about five years.
 

If you had to trade places with a celebrity for a day, who would you choose and why?

Why do you assume I want to be someone other than myself? I’m very happy with my life. Or would you rather I gave a witty answer, like trading places with a cat, to see how cats live, or with a dead celebrity, to see what the proverbial “afterlife” is like?

Well that was hardly worth waiting a week for…

What was the first band you saw in concert?

Uh, that would be Loverboy, 8pm July 5th 1982 in Portland Maine, with my first girlfriend, ailsaek. Although Huey Lewis and the News was the opener, so I guess they would technically be the first band that I saw.
 

Who is your favorite artist/band now?

The question is too ambiguous. I don’t think I could give you a favorite band of all time, although candidates would include Devo, Stan Ridgway and Wall of Voodoo, Billy Squier, KMFDM, the Toasters, Gangster Fun, Dance Hall Crashers, and They Might Be Giants.
 
Favorite local bands would include Beat Soup, Bim Skala Bim, Steady Earnest, Brass Monkeys, Pressure Cooker, and Concussion Ensemble.
 
Favorite band of the moment would probably be Joseph Hill and Culture, followed by Third World. I’ve been in a roots reggae phase for the past year or so.
 

What’s your favorite song?

That’s utterly impossible. Every year since 1991 I’ve put out a “my favorite songs” compilation, and I always have a hard time limiting it. How could I possibly choose between Devo’s “Going Under”, Sweet’s “AC/DC”, KMFDM’s “Brute”, and so many others? It’s just not possible.
 

If you could play any instrument, what would it be?

Drums. No question there. I’ve done some African hand drumming (on my klong yaw), and a little kit drumming (I own both acoustic and electronic kits), and there’s nothing as cathartic as banging on things. Unfortunately, I have no sense of rhythm at all, so it’s a lost cause. Hopefully, though, I can con my buddy Matt into giving me some lessons.
 

If you could meet any musical icon (past or present), who would it be and why?

I’ve always wanted to talk with Bobby Chouinard, the drummer for Billy Squier. I’ve always admired his beats and particularly his fills, and aspired to his sound. Unfortunately, Bobby died about five years ago, and I was crushed when I heard the news. I’d always meant to actually look him up and get in touch with him sometime.