{"id":343,"date":"2008-08-09T21:10:59","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T02:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=343"},"modified":"2008-08-09T21:11:34","modified_gmt":"2008-08-10T02:11:34","slug":"vacation-from-the-large","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Vacation from the large"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arrived in L.A. today and checked into the wonderfully fun and oddball <a href=http:\/\/www.figueroahotel.com\/>Figueroa Hotel<\/a>.   I was given a tiny tiny room, no bigger than a monk&#8217;s cell, which barely had space for a bed and a little writing desk.  And I find myself charmed by this.<\/p>\n<p>I am pretty sure I would not want to dwell in a monk&#8217;s cell.  And yet there is something comforting, in an unexpected way, in temporarily entering a smaller and simpler world &#8211; for a time reducing your personal space to not much more than bed, desk, and a little nook to hang your shirts.<\/p>\n<p>It is a kind of vacation from the large, an affirmation of Thoreau&#8217;s observation that &#8220;Our life is frittered away by detail&#8230; simplify, simplify.&#8221;  And in a way such a little aesthetic vacation validates what the Zen Buddhists have been saying all along: once you stop focusing on adding objects into your environment, you become more able to wander at will in your mind, unfettered and free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arrived in L.A. today and checked into the wonderfully fun and oddball Figueroa Hotel. I was given a tiny tiny room, no bigger than a monk&#8217;s cell, which barely had space for a bed and a little writing desk. And I find myself charmed by this. I am pretty sure I would not want to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=343\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Vacation from the large&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}