the groundhog day project

Tonight in class, we were running ad hoc focus groups. A couple topics were political. Mine was not even really conducive to much disagreement, or necessarily a lot of conversation... I thought. I started with the Jelly Bean video I've linked a couple times in this blog, notably in Day 52: if you only had one day to live . My first question was simple enough but lead to discussion of elitism and whether or not any of us are wasting our lives, as the video seems to be telling us. Good times were had. A fellow student, Shawn, had us discussing the concept of villains in his focus group. For the briefest of moments, I thought I'd use that as the jumping off point for today's Groundhog Day Project entry, but I've already talked about how a) there is no villain in Groundhog Day or b) Phil is his own... antagonist ; there is no villain in Groundhog Day . (I would link but I don't think that topic was its own entry, just part of some other one. And, really, the conce...

I drove past my childhood home today--hadn't seen it in a while. It looks different but the same. Where there once was no fence dividing the front yard from the side yard, and where my father once built a fence, there's now a wall. Where there was a tree I used to climb and from which hung a tire swing and a rope, there is a different, smaller tree. I imagined going inside but the inside would probably be even more different than the outside. My memory of the place remains intact. That's good enough, I suppose. My daughter is in a play next week, and this evening she lamented that she's grown close to the other members of the cast and after their string of performances in just over a week she might not see some of them ever again. I thought that was at once a sad fact and a fascinatingly... happy isn't the word, but maybe somehow enlightening. Like a sand mandala or an ice sculpture--it's a form that exists here and now and is that much more powerful and affect...

I imagine the days where Phil Connors gets contemplative. Maybe it’s before he turns to depression. Maybe it’s after. And, a weird thought occurs to me—he can never fast. I mean, he can go without food for a day, sure. But, that’s it, a day. His digestive system will have food from the day before, so he probably won’t be all that hungry. I mean, yeah, when we’re used to eating regularly, we’ll get hungry after missing a meal. But, that’s not real hunger. There’s an interesting bit in Siddhartha in which Kamaswami asks Siddhartha what he has learned that he can give. Siddhartha’s response: “I can think. I can wait. I can fast.” Kamaswami asks, what good is fasting? He’s a businessman, a merchant who certainly doesn’t value the contemplative moments of life. Siddhartha explains: It is of great value, sir. If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned how to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work t...