August 14th, 2009

Just saw Julie / Julia which was, like many Nora Ephron films, enjoyable but not meaty. However, one has to stand amazed at the virtuosic performance of Meryl Streep, as always. The film has inspired me in one way, however, to begin to write regularly again in this space. I’ve decided to take a vow to write at least once a day, even if it is only to write something quite brief. After all, I nagged Heather Anne Halpert for years about restarting her blog, which she has finally done, wonderfully; I should follow my own advice.

I had a conversation with Orion the other day, and she was telling me about her desire for privacy; her reluctance to be too public, to have her writing too much in the public eye. This is a concern a number of other people have expressed to me; Heather Anne, Katharine Tillman, and other friends who I can’t even mention because they’re so private! The fact that they’re all women is a curiosity, yet to be explained — but they all seem to have their own reasons for their reluctance to write or reveal parts of themselves in public. Katharine, however, was just remarking to me yesterday that she now finds herself fairly exposed online — her excellent blog is viewable to all (she used to keep much of it password-protected), her Facebook account is visible to not only her online friends but her family, etc., and somewhat to her surprise, she finds herself comfortable with this.

Rather contentious, but interesting, debate on “religious” versus “secular” Buddhism on the One City blog, in which I and a number of other people participate in a lively debate touching on everything from questioning the ontological distinction itself to the status of “metaphysical” concepts such as reincarnation and karma to the relative importance of “belief” vs skeptical inquiry in Buddhism both traditionally and in the West.

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