For awhile–well, five minutes really–I have been thinking about the way the East and the West are coming together in the worst possible ways.  For both East and West I have in mind astereotyped notions that might be represented by Budhist sand sculptures and museums of art, the one directed at a communal beuaty that the makers let wash away almost as soon as they have made it, the other directed at the idea that the the challenge of life is to last.

This eastern impulse has filtered into the west in the form of Yoga studios and wellness centers, as useful or silly as any other form of life.  The Western inpulse has become part of the East as corportations and materialism just as generative and destructive as it