21 Septembrie

Cloudy covered day over L.A. - I miss the sun already. Ne-am decis sa vedem filmul The Town la the Grove iar apoi ne-am oprit la o librarie pe trei etaje unde am gasit o perla: Coast of Dreams, California on the Edge, 1990-2003 a lui Kevin Starr, profesor de istorie la Universitatea California de Sud la Los Angeles.

Despre obsesia fitness:

"Extending back into the 1870s like the patristic and medieval eras underpinning a theology of redemption through fitness, extended the entire history of health culture in California. Critics such as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh had satirized this preoccupation, depicting its more extreme edges and noting an almost Faustian rejection of time and decay lurking at its core.At its best, such devotion to the flesh was a health thing, if little narcissistic; at its worst, it was an unholy defiance of death. California was the place, it had to be remembered, where a company in the Bay Area city of Emeryville deep-froze bodies on a long-range contract basis pending their eventual resuscitation. [...]

While some satirized, others praised coastal California for achieving a revitalized relationship to the mind-body problem preoccupying Western culture since ancient Greece. Here was the region that had promoted fitness of mind and body - and had virtually ended smoking among the middle classes as well. By January 1998 it was against the law for anyone to smoke in a bar, restaurant, office building, or any other interior public place throughout the entire state."

Despre religie si spiritualitate:

"Tracing itself to the moments in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit was said to have descended upon the disciples and they spoke in tongues, performed miracles, and were not afraid, Pentecostalism had become by 2001 a worldwide movement with a half-billion adherents. Because it avoided intricacies of theology or church organization in favor of an emotional, existential encounter with the Spirit, Pentecostalism seemed especially suited to California, where it was answering the needs of a disproportionate number of emotionally starved people, deracinated from elsewhere, cut off from their roots."