The Third Street Promenade is Santa Monica's main consumer artery, threading through the centre of the town--it's traffic-free, open air shopping--big name brands--the typical big city tourist attraction--the same shops as at home, with a big city sheen, and lots of sunshine. It is reminiscent in some ways of Covent Garden--lots of places to eat, and loads of street performers of varying degrees of capability, and sanity! Yesterday, I bumped into a new one. This guy, P.H. Weber, was leaning on a lamppost offering free copies of his book. When I asked him what it was about he said, "everything--you know, consciousness, enlightenment, politics, freedom, god." He gave me a copy, signed it on fact, "Barry, Mindreader, PH Weber. Inside is a fairly linear distillation of a whole bunch of stuff from cognitive theory to spiritual psycho-babble, to First Amendment political treatises. There are pages on the Bible of course, every grand theory has to tackle Western Civ's big idea shaper--Weber, is not too thrilled with either the church nor its interpretation of Jesus--what else is new?!! His grand theory, is largely a series of questions, cobbled together bu some ideas he has lifted from here and there. He even ends the book by saying, "Of all the questions answered by this book have there not been many more raised? Do we not have a lot to learn about ourselves?" He might be slightly off-centre, but that much is true, there is so much more to learn. It's stuff like this that makes living in a icty so interesting, everywhere you turn someone is pitching another way of looking at the world-some don't like that too much, but I do. He has a website, if you are so inclined, you can check it out.
