I am thankful that I have found, I think, the Gandhi biography I've been looking for.

I knew I wanted a biography of Gandhi by an Indian who could tell me, for one thing, about the details of political situations Gandhi faced.

One of the mainthings Gandhi was was a politician. He had to face situations where all the choices were not wonderful and act. Or not act.

I've read enough Gandhi biographies to know that sometimes he could act by not acting, that much of a sub-continent could be riveted on him as he did nothing, which was sometimes his dramatic and transforming action.

I wanted to know more specifically about the situations he was responding to when he acted or didn't.

I also wanted a biography of Gandhi, though I didn't articulate this--I daren't not hope--that wasn't so dull at the beginning.

Gandhi, the civil rights leader in South Africa and the civil rights and nationalism and democracy-seeking leader in India was intrinsically very interesting, charasmatic.

Gandhi biographies I've struggled with gave me the feeling that Gandhi after the start of his life and a quite a while after wasn't interesting--timid, borderline vapid.

[more to come]

"Gandhi: The Man, His People and the Empire" by Rajmohan Gandhi, one of his grandchildren. Already it's helped ground me in Gandhi and India.

Gandhi. I really knew that the man's first name was Mohandas and that Mahatma was a religious title of huge respect. Rahmohan Gandhi helps cement that more firmly in my mind by calling Gandhi the young by one of his young nicknames--Mohan.

India. What, R. Gandhi asks in the introduction, would have happened in India if M. Gandhi hadn't existed.

It would have probably, he thinks, split into many more pieces with little chance of any of them being as democratic and stable as India is.

A huge bouquet of red and yellow flowers is walking down the street with the aid of a less interesting looking human.

Pacing is all. Once you've made the scientific or artful amazing thing, the question is what to do with it.

Doing the first thing you think of as fast as possible is probably not the answer.

I'm thankful that the morning sky is skidding across the small, square metal plate embedded in the sidewalk in a way that makes it look silvery and wise.

We stand on the edge and piffle. We don't growl in either direction. We such things as "Your arm movement is quite skilled" and "The haystack in the morning is pretty."

We are meanwhile building something that doesn't have an edge there, where the old edge is. Rich top soil collects in what we build and beings are free to grow up and out.

I'm more likely to believe the official story if I like the officials. I want to buy what my friends are selling, be it chocolates to support the band or inaccurate stories about how they are living their lives.

I am fairly certain that certainty itself creates inaccuracy. The certain don't want new information in their area of certainty. They tend to avoid new information, missing both small adjustments and the new insight that destroys and recreates that world.

He kept doing his best impression of being a Helvetica "I," but inside he was more like a tree. Then one day he leafed out.

Wear it like it's expensively distressed rather than like it's old and dirty.

Spreading and threading towards wedding.

You don't have to understand it to bless it. Bless it. Bless it.

Looking for everything and something and nothing. Nothing can be a good thing to find--like they don't believe what they say. They just want us to believe it so we can be controlled by the nothing of their not belief. But seeing that their nothing is nothing starts to stop the control.

They planted plants around the pump so it seems like a plant itself, a thick-skinned succulent with handles.

People calling for military action often sound like they are calling for a clear, unambiguous gesture, but actual military action tends to make a mess.

For one thing, the rules of what one might do to get through the day change profoundly for everyone. So the picture of making the clear gesture against the way thing are now is never true, because the minute war starts thing aren't that way anymore. Everyone has permission, drive, the force of vengance, to push them to do thing they wouldn't have done before the war.

Generally, clarity doesn't have a chance.

Large snowflake shapes made of little white lights line parts of Market Street downtown.

As I walked along Market looking at them, some tree branches visually intersected one so that it looked, for a few steps, like a butterfly, something that actually occurs here.

Stupid? Inexperienced? These can seem similar in results. If the basic problem is inexperience, how do I use more experience in a way that reduces apparent stupidity?

What with the paving and the rocky buildings and the thinking about money, downtown can use what raindrops give it--soft touch, soft touch, soft touch.

"I've been here before. I've been down this street. It's just been a really long time."
--sidewalk voice

I think the people are crying out for a party called "Not This."

During the journey from being the Soviet Union to being Russia as it is now, there were elections which had power and in which people could vote none of the above. If none of the above got above fifty percent of the vote, the election had to be held again. That did happen sometimes, and it focussed the attention of the politicians wonderfully.

In countries that haven't had real elections and then do, people often notice and like less corruption. Not the new heaven and the new earth, but better behavior.

A new moon hangs above the short skyscraper. The plaza around the skyscraper, rock hard and lacking green, is more like the moon than the meadows, ponds, seas and forests it also shines on.

If I pray for a game to have a particular oucome, does that dilute the power of prayers I pray about serious events?

Cities are primate-intensive.

Beep, beep, beep, beep. "Giants!" "Giants!" Beep, beep, beeeeeeep. "Yow!" "I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" "Crack!" goes the firecracker.

The man going down stairs into the Montgomery Street BART station during the street celebration the night the Giants won the World Series yelled back over his shoulder, "Thank you, Giants. I'm going home now because my head hurts."

The string quarter was playing in the BART station early morning as people bustled toward wor. The musicians were taking the occasion to seriously rehearse.

They didn't stop a piece and start again to correct, but they did talk to each other technically as they played and between pieces.

The music they made was focussed with more "this is it" than most station music.

Work again, but today, this is it. Music hundreds of years old again, but this time alive in a new way.

Simpler.

It was done to honor a particular group of women, so it was widely treated as a joke.

Who sets the tone? Who resets the tone?

How do you spell respect?