The eternal moment

While eating a tuna melt at the Little A 'Le' Inn I experienced the Now. Remember guru Ram Dass's book Be Here Now? The purple book had a square format necessitated by the mandala on the cover. "Be Here Now" is used by Senn Delaney as a management technique.

On the other hand, for God, time is an eternal moment (totem simul) - Thomas Aquinas. He wrote this in the thirteenth century hundreds of years before scientists discovered that the entire universe was once the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Aquinas postulates that everything is simultaneous for God. Perhaps time is God's gift to us. In an interview on PBS, Lari Pittman posits an interesting idea about hyper-capitalist time vs. Latino time.

LARI PITTMAN:
The paintings show the viewer many temporalities. There’s climate and there’s time. Sometimes there’s even an indication in some of the paintings that the top half of the painting might be at night and the bottom half in daylight. I think that, in southern California (whose only history has been hyper-capitalism) hyper-capitalism foregrounds this idea of episodic time: “This is the eight hours for work; this is the eight hours to sleep. And this is the eight hours for waking leisure.” Capitalism really enforces compartmentalized, sequential time. As I look back on my formative years, I didn’t grow up in that sense of time. You have to take this in a broader sense. Latino time is profoundly bittersweet because of its simultaneity. Even oppositional events can occupy the same spatial moment, the same time moment, and not really be contradictory. They’re just there, side by side. And I think that simultaneity of time and imagery exists in the paintings.

Paintings (c) Lari Pittman. Interview (c) PBS

Little A 'Le' French Bulldog

A crude painting on the wall of Little A 'Le' Inn made me realize that one-eyed aliens have no depth perception.

Portobello Ponderosa

The Portobello is back from the shop - its brake in full working condition. Yes, I said brake singular for the 'bello has only one wheel. The car gives me such a feeling of freedom. Though it is difficult to drive by oneself since it normally uses party steering, I raced east up Highway 80, stopping at the Pollack Pines Safeway for some celery, mushrooms, tomatoes and green goddess dressing, and then on to Incline Village, I mean the Ponderosa Amusement park to tip my hat to Pa and the boys. Ponderosa would be a great name for a truck n'est-ce pas? Alas, it is only a horse trailer. After viewing the park (it took two days to see all the attractions) I was off to Area 51, zooming across the Nevada desert at full speed, the high chaparral blurring out the window.

The road sign NV 375 gave me a chill even though I do not believe in extraterrestrials. I was hungry and needed to refuel the Portobello. The vision of a saucer shaped car parked outside of the Little A'Le'Inn had UFO buffs come running out of the restaurant. I think this is where the rumor started that the American car industry may be in trouble here, but is doing fine in other galaxies.