Friday Odds & Sods is Out the Chute and Bucking Hard

A thought occurred to me the other day in the vicinity of Union Square, where I was sipping coffee and waiting for a second party to rendezvous, an activity that seems to occupy many of my waking hourss: How much of a life does anybody actually live?  Consider how many mundane moments of a day are passed over in a haze and linger for hardly an instant in the memory before disappearing forever.  How much of life is the biological and social processes that sustain us and how much is the awareness of ourselves and the surroundings we are in?

• Some reading this weekend for the classic movie fan (or obsessive?): The relentless pursuit of a rare Godard film and a first look review of the top film of 1977
• As a proud philhellene, I've for a long while had a passing awareness of the bull-jumping cult of ancient Crete.  What the frescos of Knossos don't depict, of course, are the gorings and scars that such a practice must inevitably have produced.  One wonders what, in 2,000 years time, our descendants will make of the practice of junior rodeos
• A song for February that works, I think, just as well at this point in December