Monday, March 01, 2004

I can't find the story online. Which makes me wonder whether I heard the story at all. Not even the BBC news site has it in any searchable form. Maybe it's being censored to avoid the prying eyes of folks just like me, worried that the last bastion of tradion over trade is nearing her final bow. Paris is considering changing its maximum height in the central city from 25m to 31m. While building up rather than out is one way to address urban sprawl, I wonder if we, as a global economy, couldn't kick in to pay for better hi-speed rail services into the city. Something, anything, to delay that inevitable slide down the slippery slope of commercialism. Reading Peck's The Road Less Traveled, I thought maybe I'd been fooled again. This time, the evidence sits on my bedside table. After plodding through his case studies, and self-indulgent words on love, the shift to his discussions on spirituality were astounding. For the time, I imagine the writing about psychotherapy was profound - now, it's like reading early discussions of the theory of relativity, so much has psychology permeated popular culture. But his thoughts on grace on godhood still resonate. I don't even know if Gestalt was going on then, but for him to be integrating his own thoughts on Western psychiatry with a fairly eastern view of spirituality felt like Dr. Phil meets Alan Watts. 4:29:36 PM