Steven Barnes's Blog, page 52
July 4, 2017
Enter the Machine
I was maybe twelve. I remember the heat on my face as my mother shoved my story into the barbecue grill and set it on fire. The curling black pages. I was beyond angry, I felt crushed. But…I knew she loved me.
At least partially because my father’s failure in his singing career damaged the marriage, my Mom discouraged me from pursuing my writing, so I had no support. I tried to put my dreams aside, but couldn’t do it. When I wen tot college, I studied speech and Broadcast Technolog...
July 2, 2017
Thoughts on MMA
About thirty years ago, I saw the first blurry video of Gracie Jiu Jitsu, where they demonstrated their effectiveness against judo and karate and boxing. It was fascinating. While clearly the Gracies were showing their best examples, stories of their students trouncing classical martial artists like William Cheung were trickling in in the whisper-stream. A lot of martial artists refused to believe, thought it was fraudulent, or that their arts had “secret techniques” that were too leth...
Definition time
(From 2010)
I was accused of thinking I’m enlightened recently, and I wanted to clarify a couple of terms that I use. Remember that my definitions might not be exactly what some particular teacher uses, and that’s fine. The terms are Adult, Awake, and Enlightened.
Adult: a person who takes complete responsibility for their emotions and actions. To be recognized as a “successful” “Adult,” it would be nice to make enough money to support yourself and two other people. Preferably, own your own h...
July 1, 2017
A former student, Jeff Harris, posted a note that we have...
A former student, Jeff Harris, posted a note that we have been Facebook friends for six years. Fifteen years ago, he and Rich Redmond used to drive down from Seattle to study Tai Chi with me in Longview Washington, and I was always so happy to see them: good students, good people both. He said on his post: “Steven, you have been an important influence in my life. I am a better person thanks to you.”
So happy to hear that. There is nothing special about me, but there is something very sp...
June 30, 2017
We all want the same thing. Or: “Oops” is better than “Aargh”
Yesterday I asked a potentially important question:
“Proposed:
1) Sexism
2) Homophobia
3) Racism
4) Pollution and environmental damage
All relate to obsolete or outmoded tribal survival patterns. Therefore, those committed to solving ANY of them are potential allies of those concerned with the others.”
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Lots of interesting answers.
Most human problems have multiple contributing causes. On one level obesity is a vast interwoven skein of psychological, tactical, social, physiological and n...
June 29, 2017
TWELVE DAYS is finally here!
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For years, people told me that my 1986 novel THE KUNDALINI EQUATION was the best thing I’d ever written. The tale, of a computer nerd who mashes-up meditation patterns from a dozen different disciplines and accidentally discovers the secret to human transformation, was my own young attempt to answer questions I could barely form about the nature of evolution and spiritual transcendence, wrapped in a (hopefully) neat adventure story.
And people asked me: “what happened next?” For twenty-five...
Winning the peace
An excellent method to reduce eating is to eat more slowly. Why? Because it takes time for your appetite switch to move from “empty” to “full”, and the lag time can end with swollen bellies and unneeded calories.
We’ll return to this later.
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I remember my mom and dad taking me to the circus. Its one of my few memories of an intact family, and remember holding both their hands walking through the crowd, just totally in love with my life. I was thrilled by the sound of the calliop...
June 28, 2017
2001: A Race Odyssey
My very favorite movie of all time was the amazing 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. In it, two protean geniuses, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, offered a glimpse of what contact with an alien species might look and feel like. No movie has ever blown my mind like ODYSSEY, or probably ever will. But all stories have to begin with the Backstory, the way things were before some pivotal change. And 2001 began with the pastoral, bare-survival world of Moonwatcher and the Australopithicines, befo...
June 27, 2017
Ego-Terrorism and the Leap of Faith
Remember the climax of STAR WARS: A New Hope? When Luke Skywalker was in the middle of the Death Star battle? All his friends had been blown to bits or fled, the rebel base was about to be destroyed, their efforts to drop a bomb into the exhaust tunnel had failed, and the targeting computers had proven useless.
All rational argument said that the cause was lost. This is the “Dark Night of the Soul” and will attack everything you love, and was inevitable the moment you committed to the...
June 26, 2017
Recapping “Better Call Saul”
WARNING: SPOILERS A’PLENTY!
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Most stories are about growth and change. But most series drama is not about growth–they are about revelation of character. This is cyclical in a James Bond movie–the arc is always from external image (playboy) to internal reality (world’s deadliest commando), with only a couple of exceptions to the rule.
Television is evolving into a multi-season arc of personal revelation. BREAKING BAD is a perfect example, and I suspect that BETTER CALL SAUL will be sim...
