7:15 am I have not been kind to myself.

The last 7 or 8 weeks have been both good and bad. Good because I have embarked on a fitness regime, one that I should maintain for the rest of my life. That is very good. However I have begun by choosing the early morning for this activity. This is not so good. It is good from the perspective of the fitness. But it conflicts with my early morning routine of reflective reading and studying.

This morning the person responsible for opening the gym failed to arrive. So I returned home, brewed myself a cuppa, and began some quiet reading. An hour later I am back to my yol web site. Hopefully I will not stray from the path again for some time. I must try a new time for the fitness.

We are just back from a delightful trip to Kelowna, having spent the Thanksgiving weekend with Unk. Both the drive through the mountains and the time with Unk were a joy. While in Kelowna, we chanced to bump into a bookstore.  Among the books that I bought were the following:

• The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby.
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch
• Otherland (vol. 3) by Tad Williams
• Bhagavad Gita. A new translatiion by Stephen Mitchell
• Some of the Dharma by Jack Kerouac.

A fairly typical visit to a bookstore.

Why these books, instead of the ones I left on the shelves?

• the novel about Murasaki is a neat idea. I have read much of the Tale of Genji - claimed by many to be the world's first novel, and here is an attempt to provide a fictionalized view of Japan in the eleventh century while the author (Murasaki) is writing this novel.
• This is just a hunch. I have seen this book many times and have been intrigued by it. The clerk said that it is the book that is stolen most often from the store. I guess that is some form of recommendatiion.
• The poetry book looks like a treasure. I enjoy poetry, and books such as this will help ensure that I continue to enjoy it. I am not too old to learn new tricks.
• I have read the first 2 volumes of the Otherland series about adventures within a virtual world. The series is unique and a clear peak into the future that we are inadvertently building.
• I have seen many references to the Bhagavad Gita in my readings on Buddhism. Here it is. I didn't hesitate.
• Finally, a large folio book on Kerouacs notes on Buddhism. This looks like a fun exercise, much like my own encounters with the topic.

However, now that I am back to yol, I need to spend some time fixing up the links and getting the structure back up to date.

While in Kelowna, I made a few notes about the first chapter of the novel The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie.

• What kind of a novel is this? How should one make notes to capture the essence of the novel? Is the novel worth this effort?
• Look at the characters.
• Vena Apsara (popular singer, rebel)
• Ormus Cama (singer)
• Rai (photographer)
• Look at the story line. But this must be constructed as one reads the novel.
• Look at the setting. Bombay in the 1950's and 60's.
• There is reference on the back cover to the myth of Orpheus. Another gap in my classical education! However a quick use of a search engine gives the following url: http://www.mythologyweb.com/orpheuseurydice.html . That helps.
• Vena corresponds to Eurydace from the myth, Ormus to Orpheus, and Rai is the storyteller.
• The opening publisher's informatiion includes a reference to Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes by Rilke. Here is a website for that reference: http://www.dac.neu.edu/spectrum/winter98/orpheus.htm
• Here is a painting about this story: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/corot/orpheus.jpg.html
• Chapter 1 The Keeper of the Bees
• the title is a reference to Virgil's poem on Orpheus
• the idea is that he is able to bring life from death (i.e. bees emerge from a rotting carcus)
• this is Rai's role - to bring Vena back to life by retelling her story.
• Here are some quotations that I like:
• "the meaningless misery of the nocturnal encounter" [p. 5]
• "her whole self momentarily out of focus" [p. 5]
• "Disorientation: loss of the East" [p. 5] this is a lovely play on the meaning of the word dis-orient. It also connects strongly with the quotation on page 177 on facing the East. Lovely!
• "Vina was already passing into myth, becoming a vessel into which any moron could pour his stupidities, or let us say a mirror of the culture, and we can best understand the nature of this culture if we say that it found its truest mirror in a corpse." [p. 6] The rock star Kurt Cobain comes to mind. What about Pierre Elliot Trudeau?
• "A photograph is a moral decision, taken in one eighth of a second." [p. 13]
• "What Actually Happens: nothing to beat it." [p. 14]
• "Rai. It also meant desire: a man's personal inclination, the direction he chose to go in; and will, the force of a man's character." [p. 18]
• "In the home of this music, alas, religious fanatics have lately started killing the musicians. They think the music is an insult to god, who gave us voices but does not wish us to sing, who gave us free will, rai, but prefers us not to be free." [p 19] Autobiographical?
• [music] "is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love." [p. 19]