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Only Yesterday - an anime by Isao Takahata (a long-time colleague of Hayao Miyazaki) is called Omoide Poro Poro in Japanese which means "Memories Like Falling Teardrops".

In the film, Takahata poignantly captures the emotions of the rite of passage between girl and young woman. The anime - much of it taking place in the countryside of Japan - is beautifully artistic.  The plot revolves around the main character’s childhood dreams juxtaposed with her adult ones - switching back and forth between them.  A coming of age tale, the story is simple, direct, heartfelt and crosses cultural boundaries as a story any girl or grown woman could relate to. Notably, the article at Wikipedia on this movie states "In spite of its subject matter, the film was a surprise box office success, attracting a large adult audience of both sexes." So don’t shy away from watching it just cuz your a guy.

I’ve read all of Jack Vance’s books at least twice.  Then there are my favorite Vance books like Rhialto the Marvelous which I reread with great satisfaction every 3 or 4 years.

The book is collection of linked stories revolving around Rhialto, magician extraordinaire.  To sample some of Vance’s other works, check here.

The music in this collection of music by Richard Bone invokes relaxation and calmness and is perfect for unwinding or listening to while writing or doing art.

John Brunner describes a world overrun by consumerism, and corporate politics which is, at the time of writing, in the future.  

The book is wild and strange and also a bit spooky since that future has arrived.

Ronald Hayman’s biography of Jung starts out reasonably well but starts quickly degenerating into a Jung bashing fest around page 200.  For instance Hayman states that "Jung thought it healthier to blame death on witchcraft, sorcery or magic than on old age, disease or accident." (p.224)  Anyone who’s read even a little Jung would see the silliness in this claim right away.  The documentation Hayman provides for this claim is a quote, not of Jung’s, but from someone Jung once studied!

In another section Hayman calls Jung a cult leader and compares him to Jim Jones!(p.239) Jim Jones was the master mind behind the mass murder of 900 people via cyanide poisoning and gunshot wounds.  I’m hard pressed to understand how C.G. Jung can be compared with him.  But Hayman (who is noted to be a Freudian) apparently wants people to dislike Jung so much that he’s willing to intimate a connection between the two.  If Hayman is just sparring for a Freud vs. Jung fight then a pro-Freudian argument using sound logic and fact might serve his cause better than the ludicrous and mean spirited connotation that Jung and Jones have something in common.

Hayman tries to paint a dismal picture of Jung as a lazy mimicker by quoting what he falsely claims is Jung’s wife’s description of her husband’s type (based on Jung’s Personality Type system).  Hayman refers to a lecture Emma Jung gave on the Introverted Sensate type saying her statements were "based on her relationship with Jung."   But Jung isn’t an Introverted Sensate type at all.  In fact, his type, an Introverted Intuitive according to his wife and all those who knew him, is considered to be almost opposite to the type his wife described in the lecture Hayman quotes. Worse than this, Hayman’s sole "proof" that Emma, Jung’s wife, is describing her husband is that she uses the personal pronoun "he" in her lecture, not "she." (p.293)  Wow! With this kind of logic the world could be reinvented any which way in any moment.

While I find a good argument worth reading even if I strongly disagree, this kind of utter silliness starts to cast a dim light on every word the author says.  I’d have to concede that much of the book is very well written and at cursory glance, appears to be well documented, but boondoggles like this started leaving me wishing I was doing chores or taking a nap.

One is left with the impression that Hayman has made no attempt whatsoever to understand even the most basic tenets of Jung’s work and instead is hell bent on making distorted, unsupported claims that attempt to misrepresent Jung’s life.  To my mind, that’s the last thing a biographer should do.

Doctor Who, a space traveler, takes on a passenger and assistant, Rose and together they explore dimensions in time. I liked some of the older Doctor Whos starring Tom Baker, especially because of the quirky, sometimes cheesy, special effects. Although the effects are much more sophisticated now the delightful quirkiness of the older shows is still very present. The chemistry is good between Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, the two main actors.

This definitely provides the ticket to some fun, light entertainment.

Read a copy here.

The first time I read The Way of Man by Martin Buber I felt like I was free falling into the abyss that would lead me home. I was amazed that the written word could have so strong an effect on me. But more disarming was the fact that patriarchal, religious words describing Hasidism could have such an effect on me; a very unconventional, anti-authoritarian freethinker. Despite this, I came away from reading “Way of Man” with a deep sense of having glimpsed home; all the salient details were there. In fact, I was high on Buber’s “Way of Man” for days after reading it.

I eagerly purchased “I and Thou” by Buber thinking to find more soul awakening reading only to find the book confused and incomprehensible. I did better with “Meetings” but the book also didn’t move me in any personal way.

Still “The Way of Man” has become one of my most cherished texts. It really defines the path with the heart for a person who is both fiercely adamant in their quest for individuality and who simultaneously deeply cares for and feels profoundly connected to humanity.

This double album set is my favorite Steve Roach.

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

This psychological, psychedelic film was (to me) about the soul’s journey through the world from the point of the unconscious world of collective archetypes. The attempt to take on the depiction of such a journey seems just crazy and also very exciting and awesome. It’s so rare to see this side of existence portrayed in art and I wish there was more of this type of film making.

If you check out the reviews at amazon.com you’ll see that this movie downright brings out hostile, angry feelings in some people and in truth there’s not an iota of respect for sacred cows of any breed in this film.

Some admirable effort was put into this BBC Warner miniseries based on Charles Dicken’s “Bleak House.” I’d just read the novel and was wondering how all the complexity would translate into film and this adaptation did an excellent job of it.

Dickens gets away with rather cardboard characters because his writing is rich in underlying social and political analysis. But often the translation of these 2D characters into film makes for maudlin entertainment and doesn’t do justice to Dicken’s stories or writing. In this adaptation many creative filming devices are used to convey nuance and subtlety that add some of the deeper meanings (not necessarily portrayed by the characters) into the film. It truly captures Dicken’s juxtapositioning of the dark and deluded aspects of humanity with the potential for goodness or at least humor.