::seeward.com::

Breaking Bad

seeward@gmail.com (::seeward::) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:52:55 +0000

Here is my quick video review of the amazing AMC series Breaking Bad with Emmy Winner Bryan Cranston, as actor, and sometime director. The video tells you all you need to know about my thoughts. Bad is GOOD, oh so good. Please support the wonderful sponsors of this video and seeward.com.

J D Salinger : a Life

seeward@gmail.com (::seeward::) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:17:01 +0000

I have been interested, although not fanatical, about J D Salinger since I had the, not unique, experience of reading Cather in the Rye in high school and feeling that I had finally read a book that made perfect sense to me. What I really loved about Catcher was the natural flow of the dialogue. I admired Salinger for his keen ability to create realistic conversational prose. At the time I knew of the radical reclusiveness of Salinger but I never spent much time reflecting on what it meant or finding deep hidden meanings in-between the words of Catcher. After the death of John Lennon, however, I did have a peak in interest, as many of us did, mostly because of my fond memories of reading the book being a pleasant counter-weight to the tragic events of December 7th in front of the Dakota building.

It was a mixture of these latent memories and curiosities that led me to read J. D. Salinger: A Life. I was also curious just how much information one could dig up on the reclusive author. I was aware of his WWII military service but not aware that almost 1/2 of the book would consist of it's telling. Not that it made for bad reading, mostly due to the intriguing facts that emerge, not only about his rather heroic military career but also about the interconnection to his life as an author and his most famous work : Catcher.

Given Salinger's oddities and quite possibly fear for his life, early drafts of Catcher were in his possession during the storming of the beach at Normandy as well as throughout the entire war. I found it an intriguing although small detail that Holden had been carried around the battles of throughout France and while Salinger took a literary break with fellow author Ernest Hemingway in Paris.

Aside from these details, much of the biography is a bricolage of letters that the author send to attorneys, lovers and magazine publishers. Although the book, as any book on this particular subject, is robbed of any direct insight from the subject himself, "A Life" still does a fine job in penetrating some of the aspects of Salinger's character that might go misunderstood had it not been for this biographer's keen sense of his subject and his focused ability to stick to the facts rather than drifting of in speculation.

In total the book is an interesting literary read and I most enjoyed it final third that reveals the shift of Salinger's life toward a mixture of Zen Buddhism and Catholicism and how writing became his chief spiritual practice. I will leave it to future readers to find the other nuggets of insight into his writing process, love life and need for solitude and simply end by giving this book a solid recommendation. If you are a writer you will learn a few things, not just about and from Salinger, but also from the skilled biographer. If you are not there is still plenty to learn about the ability to attain greatness through perseverance, given that the book records the timeline of almost three dozen rejections from various magazines and eventual book publishers. None of this had any impact on Salinger's tenacious will and in outlining these episodes is when the deepest character of the famous and nearly invisible author emerges. At the end you are left with the inspiring reminder that all great things must face being misunderstood, such as Catcher in the Rye, and all great people, such as Salinger, must learn to face and rise above failure.

For that reminder alone this book is worth the time and a peek into the life of a man who would have targeted that his spiritual work speak for him rather than anything else.

Heal Thyself : Meditate

seeward@gmail.com (::seeward::) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:17:56 +0000

[from New Scientist]
Monks have been meditating on mountaintops for millennia, hoping to gain spiritual enlightenment. Their efforts have probably enhanced their physical health, too.

Trials looking at the effects of meditation have mostly been small, but they have suggested a range of benefits. There is some evidence that meditation boosts the immune response in vaccine recipients and people with cancer, protects against a relapse in major depression, soothes skin conditions and even slows the progression of HIV.

Meditation might even slow the ageing process. Telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, get shorter every time a cell divides and so play a role in ageing. Clifford Saron of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues recently showed that levels of an enzyme that builds up telomeres were higher in people who attended a three-month meditation retreat than in a control group (Psychoneuroendocrinology, vol 36, p 664).

As with social interaction, meditation probably works largely by influencing stress response pathways. People who meditate have lower cortisol levels, and one study showed they have changes in their amygdala, a brain area involved in fear and the response to threat (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, vol 5, p 11).

One of the co-authors of Saron's study, Elissa Epel, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, believes that meditation may also boost "pathways of restoration and health enhancement", perhaps by triggering a release of growth and sex hormones.

If you don't have time for a three-month retreat, don't worry. Imaging studies show that meditation can cause structural changes in the brain after as little as 11 hours of training. Epel suggests fitting in short "mini-meditations" throughout the day, taking a few minutes at your desk to focus on your breathing, for example: "Little moments here and there all matter."

Mental Palette Cleansing

seeward@gmail.com (::seeward::) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:29:56 +0000