Posted inRecreation

Six Maui photos and a few words

click photos to enlarge How we spent much of our time in Lahaina A professional shopper knows how to perfectly match T-shirt and cap Beautiful Maui maiden under the Lahaina banyan tree Brian waiting for waves (today, the wait never ended) Laurel and some close friends Maui sunset, our last day here (boo-hoo! but our dog soon will be freed from the kennel, hooray!)
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

“He is risen!” No, almost certainly not

Once again I brought too many books to Maui. Back in Oregon I forgot how enjoyable simply sitting on the beach is. I picture myself reading much more than I end up wanting to do. However, I’ve slowly been making my way through a wonderful book, “Think,” that I started reading several years ago, re-discovered on a shelf, and decided to throw into my suitcase. With Easter tomorrow, I figured it would be appropriate to share some thoughts from the chapter on “God.” Simon Blackburn, the author of "Think" is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina.…
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Posted inRecreation

Bad news, good news on Maui

Here’s the bad news: rain, and lots of it. click to enlarge Naturally we’re familiar with Oregon rain. Tropical rain is different. It comes in waves, like the ocean. You think the rain is over, then, swoosh, it’s back, raining harder than you thought rain could rain. Here’s the good news (for Laurel, at least): rain, and lots of it. We already were planning to go to Kihei and Wailea to shop today. The weather here in Napili caused us to leave earlier than we otherwise would have, which added an hour or two to Laurel’s shopping time. I say…
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Posted inRecreation Sustainability

Out waited by a sea turtle

I was alerted by the cry, “There’s a sea turtle!” Not from Laurel, of course, because she is super-sensitive about environmental correctness, which in the case of sea turtles means leaving them alone when they surface for air—and also leaving them alone when they dive for food, or, I have to believe, privacy. This morning we walked to a neighboring cove where the snorkeling is good and the sea turtles plentiful. The only downside is having to get in the water off of some slippery and sometimes sharp rocks, but when the waves are gentle, as they were today, it…
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Posted inRecreation

Paradise isn’t 100% paradisiacal

Not infrequently before we left home, when we mentioned to someone that we were about to go to Maui, they would reply in a mildly sarcastic tone of voice, “Gee, that’s too bad; what a rough life.” Well, it is. Sort of. Maybe not exactly rough, but certainly not surfboard smooth either. Consider some of what we have to put up with here on Maui: (1) At some point every day, usually while we’re lying on the beach in the afternoon, we have to decide where to go out to dinner that evening. This takes a lot of thought since…
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Posted inRecreation

Washing machine fantasy fulfilled

Actually, I didn’t even know that I had a washing machine fantasy in me. But if there is any truth to the adage, “we create our own reality,” on some karmic level I must have wanted to experience life on the inside of a washing machine. I’m too large to fit into a real washing machine, so the Cosmic Wish Fulfiller substituted what I learned today is called a “barrel” wave. (I learned this by overhearing some local kids out boarding next to me say, “Man, I’ve never been thrashed in such a big barrel before.”) Most people have heard…
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Posted inRecreation

Hunting and gathering on Maui

Today Laurel and I played out our prehistorically-determined sex roles, not in the bedroom, but in the shops of Lahaina and the waters of Napili Bay. Evolutionary psychology tells us that deeply engrained in the female and male psyche are traits accumulated over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years of genetic experience in Homo sapiens and prior species forms. Laurel is the quintessential gatherer, finely attuned to the shapes, colors, and textures of what is hanging in the (many, many) stores we entered this evening. I tag along a humble three steps behind, well aware that I am…
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Posted inRecreation

Only on Maui…

Only on Maui could we see eight, count ‘em, eight, weddings on one beach, all at one time. Well, almost at one time. At least four or five, I think, were happening simultaneously, while others were on deck. It was quite a scene, like something out of a Fellini film. We had gone to snorkel at Kapalua, the next beach up from Napili Bay. Kapalua regularly makes it on “10 Best” lists of U.S.A. beautiful beaches. Picture perfect (aside from the recently built expensive condos behind the center of the beach, which used to be grass and palm trees), a…
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Posted inRecreation

What is it about waves?

click to enlarge It’s hard to write about waves without sounding all New Agey or surfer-spiritual: “Hey, man, waves are God’s way of saying ‘I’m here; all you need to do in tune in to me; find the right spot, catch me, and become one with me. It’s so far out!” Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this is just the way I’m about to sound. The photo shows Napili Bay this morning when the surf was kind of up. I took it from our balcony as I was trying to decide whether it was more important to meditate for…
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Posted inRecreation

Just married on Maui

No, not us. The couple I’m watching right now from the deck on our condo at Napili Shores Resort that faces beautiful Napili Bay. The sun has just set and the wedding, on a sandy spit facing Molokai, is winding down. Soon the sounds of a conch shell will echo over the bay from the Napili Kai Beach Club, where every evening at sunset an authentic-looking Hawaiian guy runs around with a torch and fires up the Tiki lights around the resort, pausing at the end for photos with happy tourists like us. We’ve been to Maui thirteen times, I…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Some writing-related snippets

Orblogs: Community of Oregon Weblogs—This is a great service to the Oregon weblogging world. I’ve learned about some interesting weblogs and met, cyberspacely, some equally interesting webloggers. The first few lines of postings pop up here almost as soon as they are posted. I love to troll down the listings and see the wonderfully wide variety of subjects people are writing about. Child Safety 101—I talked today with a friend, Benny Mares, who wrote this book and told me that this Child Safety 101 website is up. Click on “Book” and you’ll find a nice blurb from Laurel. Benny has…
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Posted inPhilosophy

On finding a quarter and forgetting a towel

“Find a quarter. Forget a towel. Marvel at the mystery!” OK, it’s not exactly a haiku. Which isn’t surprising, since I can never remember the rules for making a haiku. Still, a haiku is just a pointer. Words gesturing toward what is outside the reach of words. That’s all I’m trying to do, as are we all, aren’t we? Trying to grasp the ungraspable via glimpses of the unseen. On my way to get a slice of pizza Saturday I saw a man sitting on the bench outside the Court Street Starbucks. He was holding a guitar case. Walking by…
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Posted inHome life

Most dangerous Greek philosophy author?

click to enlarge I just finished a grueling three-hour black belt test, and for some reason what pops into my mind is…Could I now be one of the most dangerous authors who write about Greek philosophy? Here’s a hot-off-the-digital-camera photo of Mike, me, and Dave, trying to hold each other up after the testing was over and belts awarded. It’s been a long, hard, grind. About nine years in traditional Shotokan karate, where I made it up to a brown belt rank, and now over three years in a mixed-style school of Wu Shu Tao, which we translate as “way…
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Posted inHome life

Surreal mattress selecting at Sleep Country

The big moment finally arrived for Laurel yesterday—our Sleep Country 30 day try-the-mattress-and-see-if-you-like-it period ended. Laurel knew that she didn’t like the Spring Air mattress after the second night, but Sleep Country wanted us to live with it for a full month, just to be sure that we weren’t having some sort of slumber time spat that would blow over after a while. Well, it didn’t, so there we were back at the Sleep Country store on (ugh!) Lancaster Drive, sales slip in hand, ready and eager to exercise our mattress exchange rights. The salesman from whom we had bought…
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Posted inPlotinus Writing/Weblogs

“Return to the One” revealed

click to enlarge Here’s the cyberspace unveiling of the cover of my soon-to-be-published book, “Return to the One—Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization.” This afternoon I sent the laboriously-compiled index (see posting below) off to the book designer, Charles King, which means that I’m done! Done with the book, that is. Soon come the practicalities of helping to sell and publicize the book. Which I guess I’ve already started doing in this low-key fashion. You can be sure that I’ll let HinesSight readers know, via the weblogging equivalent of a trumpet chorus, when the book is published and possible to be purchased…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Oh, the joys of writing

I’ve just finished the index for my book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus: “Return to the One—Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization.” There are various ways to prepare an index. The approach I used must be the hardest on the back and the knees, but fortunately I don’t have any back/knee problems—until now, at least. I scattered 18 pages with index entries in a semi-circle around me on the floor. Then I leaned over and jotted down the page number(s) that had entries for various subjects, working from the galleys that the book designer had sent me. It took me three days,…
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Posted inPhilosophy

I get myself thinking (and also, not-thinking)

This morning I kept hearing echoes of what I wrote in yesterday’s posting, “One thing the world desperately needs now is less religion and more spirituality.” I’m part of the world, so I’m talking about me. Before my habitual morning meditation-time I walked to a bookcase, searching for some spiritual inspiration. My eyes scanned the shelves holding the many books I’ve accumulated over the past thirty-five years or so: I’ve got several feet of Zen Buddhism, about the same of Rumi/Sufism, a yard of Sant Mat teachings in various guises, lesser but still substantial shelf space for mystical Christianity, Judaism,…
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Posted inEntertainment

The Triplets of Belleville

Wow. Last night we saw “The Triplets of Belleville” at Salem’s one and only “art house,” Salem Cinema—an Italian soda/truffle oasis in the Coke/popcorn desert of our local movie-going options. I loved the song from this animated movie that was nominated for an Oscar, but the snippet from “The Triplets of Belleville” that was shown at the Academy Awards doesn’t begin to do justice to the amazing originality of this artistic creation. As Ebert notes in the linked review above, this is a movie that you can’t neatly categorize in the usual “X meets Y” fashion, as in horror flick…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Thank heavens: there is a God!

News item I just noticed…“'Dawn of the Dead' debuts with $27.3 million, dethroning 'Passion'” And, no, I haven’t seen “The Passion of the Christ.” My distaste for the movie is based on utterly sound philosophical grounds, discussed previously in my “Plotinus and the Passion of the Christ” posting. Since my book about Plotinus, a marvelous 3rd century Greek mystic philosopher, is about to be published, you will find me shamelessly using every opportunity to work, and rework, Plotinus into this weblog. My (probably vain) hope is that these humble meme-seeds somehow will cause interest in Plotinus’s admirably non-religious approach to…
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Posted inFamily

Paris Hilton and I become more intimate

A belated public thank you to Isaac (I’ve already thanked him via an email) for giving me some genealogy education—and, most importantly, for increasing the intimacy between me and Paris Hilton. As noted in a comment on a posting a while back, Isaac assures me that Paris and I are second cousins, not third cousins. Where I had gotten confused—and you have to admit that this genealogy stuff is indeed confusing—is that Conrad Hilton’s parents are my great-grandparents, whereas they are Paris Hilton’s great-great-grandparents. So I was looking at things from Paris’ perspective, kind of a scary thought, rather than…
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