the things you never thought you would miss and other strange beasts int he night

Damn that was a long title, but it needed to be said. I may be re-iterating something I have said in the past, go shoot me.. allow me a senior moment.

oh the first word of the day is Tableau..

Where to start?

Somehow our lives are judged, or should I say we judge our lives and or any combination thereof.  The things we miss, the things we do, the things we wished we had done, the places we want to go, the places we have been. These are all choices, fleeting through our lives. I was going to metaphor-ze that statement, but in flight realized that would be overkill. I read a book recently. I think I may even have mentioned this, BUT interestingly i read a blog of a random person yesterday and they were discussing the same book. Oh yes the book. It is outliers by Malcom Gladwell. I found it terribly illuminating for a number of reasons, but one of the interesting points was the 10000 hour scenario where it is implied that to master anything we need to practice or do or action something for more than 10000 hours. Without this magical number of repetitions or skills development it appears that no one can excel at anything. It is a strange thing.. but the book appears to be well researched, or at least it gives that impression. Albeit that it is rather soft-science-ish and all social science and the n! efficient strategies to do x and y the best. I enjoyed it. But my point being? The blog i read actually pointed to this article and related this to the "art" or process of writing and most specifically blogging. It is sad, the blog is nice and natural, the author could actually have carried on, but has not for the last few years. You may ask or even intimate, what the FRIG is my point. Eventually this blog may actually become readable. I suspect there are only about 100 hours into this blog so we are a couple of orders off the mark. So be patient, is all i ask. One day this may or may not actually sprout some value and wisdom. I may also fall into the category of the room full of monkeys and typewriters. Apparently this anecdote is actually called the infinite monkey theorem . 

Given enough time, a hypothetical monkey typing at random would, as part of its output, almost surely produce all of Shakespeare's plays. In this image a chimpanzee is giving it a try. (from wikipedia)

 

 

The last note on the monkey is that through this I have learnt a fantastic new word, namely dactylographic. But I do see that the person who tabled the infinite monkey theorem was a definite strong anti-creationist.

Oh yes and here is the other monkey:

To get back to the original train of thought, or rather the actual human condition that I wanted to raise. This point being the process of being through the expression of our existence through travel, discovery, production, art and general social condition.
We measure ourselves via the external representation or even internalization of these factors and the consequent diatribe and verbosity or lack thereof that we exhibit. Have mind will travel, have fears we are held back. We have a physical manifestation, we have a physical form and space we inhabit, whereas our minds travel backwards and forwards in time and across space, physical space.

What is it that inhibits our travel in all these manifestations; physically, emotionally, temporal-y and intercontinental? Is it the amount of gadjo within in me that attempts to find roots like a strangling fig? Sometimes the roots break loose, I fall into a dream state, I watch the line of green ants. The wind blows from whence I cannot say, it is not a foul wind, it is a wind driving us forward into the unknown. Is this what I dreamt of in my youth. I hope not, but if it is then it is.

 one of the many sights I saw today on my short traveling through the streets of wellington. Is it a UFO, not sure but it was pretty Wired

 some more sights in an around wellington, and for all those doubters .. look the sky is Blue ;-)

  My favorite urban decay, well actually not really this is a building site, where an old building has been pulled down to make space for something new.












So where does that take us or leave us? There is no absolute or even grey answer to this. But I do still pose the question around how our ability to move and travel reflects on us as beings on this planet. I look and ponder when I view the various photos of people I know and don't know on the interWeb. How much are we constrained by our inability to let ourselves go and experience the flows of life through the interactions of others and our physical location and in contradiction how little others are bound by their inability to be constrained to one thought or the other. In the eventual stream of global consciousness are we better or worse than those who do or don't?  Is it the vague reference to me having eastern european blood or even vaguely germanic with  blue eyes could point to some Viking or even possibly Gypsy blood, but not enough to put me a wandering, I wonder a lot about wandering though! But i suppose being an immigrant makes me part of the global mixing of society, is this our last ditch internalized effort to maximize our survival on this planet?

Have we as humans reached the eventual end of the rope?

Yes things are falling apart faster and quicker than we would ever imagine. But where does that leave us? In a state of anarchy, or does it require something else? at this stage I am without thoughts on this.

todays words

In no particular order other than they appeared to me in conscious thought

Kapow,Steve from iSys ,RAP and CEP,That darn Cat 1965, Tron Evolution 2010,Arthur - 2010, Source Code,Christopher Brookmyre

There were no fossils in New Zealand till a while back. That is there were no Vertebrate Fossils. But they found them. They found arrow heads in North America, that changes everything. Japan has to little Electricity and have been plunged into a dark age.


It is still shaking here, but not so often near us, but Charl did say it shakes to much in CC .

No not in this pic, but this is a picture of me running nowhere in particular.

this is in its rawest form CZ 3, there will be more, particularly this was untouched by my hands, baring the piece of pua shell that I flipped to show the sheen. It is amazing, that the Maori made Lures out of these shells hundred of years ago and caught a wide variety of carnivorous and bight-y fish. They even trawled behind their canoe's.


and here is Ronnie... just because I  miss my chikins..

FYI relative sunshine hours from wikipedia
Wellington            2065 hours
London               1461 hours
Basel                   1599 hours
Johannesburg       3130 hours
Edinburgh            1405 hours
Cape town           2993 hours
Sydney                2480 hours


enough randomness for now.. more tomorrow

Random things

I was browsing flickr (me on flickr )the other day.. well yesterday and the day before and many others, I always look at the new and "explored" pictures and came accross this picture (this link):

No not one of mine.. but it got me to think about a book I had read a long time ago, something I think i remember, but will have to go and re-read again. The book is called count zero written by William Gibson, I am not sure if this technically still fits in the cyber-punk Genre or not, as this was after the inital neuromancer and other books that brought this into common cutlure. But I do digress, the aspect of the novel which fascinated me was nto the hacking and all the other intricate dealings in a virtual reality, but rather a couple of scenes in the book where there is an "installation" of objects that is in space, in a random orbiting collection. My memory is most probably clouded.. but I still would like to re-read the book just for this piece. My reasoning, strange, as it may be, is an internal fascination with collages. More than collages though, Collages tend to be one dimensional and at best 3 dimensional when the artist attempts some dimensionality. Here is a postcard from an exhibition i went to recently in Wellington.

 It was at best disappointing, why you may ask? It jsut was, it showed little dimensionality, it had some temporal distortion, some lapses in generation and mixed media and days, but it was childish and he was trying to sell it as ART. But that is neither here nor there.

I think it relates more to these random collections of objects that we as humans gather over time and place on our desks and mantlepieces and all over our existence. Yes this does sound a lot like the social Cairns concept, which i see has now been superseded and destroyed with Geocaching. but there are elements of insane originality and amazing conceptual art. For example the drop boxes, the USB devices that are mounted in places all over the world.

Ok so after a quick reccie over the googleweb if find this artbasedoncountzero 1 2 , not what i had expected. notquite  ... alotcloser  

Gets me a thinking about the media that would best represent the images inside my head, most probably at the end of the day the written word is all that can represent the thoughts in our minds, the more we try to abstract them into physical or visual representations the more we fail, or do we? Can we ever do any justice to what we envisage, or is that part of the challenge to cement our multidimensional thoughts into a single digit dimensional representation, be it an electronic image a 2 dimensional canvas, a sculptural representation of an aspect of something we visualize.

I look i see, I think I am lucky because I have not seen this before, I can see everything with young eyes, it is simple because I am not of this land.

Slowly the sun sets on the past, the silhouette of a life past fades into the dusty red sunset....

a new dawn, a crisp dawn I keep expecting my beard to ice up on the way to work, somehow unlikely but it is starting to feel that way. Every day  heralds a crisp dawn.

well enough of that for now..

time to go and enjoy the weekend

vunerability

So where to restart again,
(and once again this is fictional and not relevant to anything in particular,
for email recipients you need to actually look at the website)

things return to a semblance of normality, the Christians are back at the station. The sun rises the sun sets, the earth shakes a lot, the sun rises it shakes some more, the waves pummel, the tears flow down our cheeks.

I wonder do we have an internal compass guiding us back to a past known or unbeknown to ourselves?  Is there a part inside us which holds a direction to true home? When we are separated from our home, albeit if generations pass. Is there still an internal song line inside us caucasians taking us back to the route of our origins? Is there a song drawn across the globe calling me back to my roots, is the route back to my home? Does my spirit have a home or will it drift endlessly in this mortal existence that i call my life?

I find my self being pulled and pushed and drawn all over my surrounds searching for a glimpse of a  petrosomatoglyph, could it be that this which i had seen as social cairns could not maybe be the afore mentioned?
The only consistency is the change and time fleeting like wind blowing through my hair, I stand atop a large hill viewing the landscape of my existence.  I listen closely but the songs are confusing, pulling me back to a home (s) that I do not recognize and a home(s) that is not the one that my physical form has ever visited. My dreams and spirits flows through time and space being pulled towards a land on another continent.
Would it be a path it should follow, a journey along the path of my forefathers, to see what?

I stand with the brisk wind howling through my short hair, wind so cold and strong it brings tears to my eyes . The waves of wind creating visual poetry in motion as the boughs of the grasses sway and weave intricate patterns apon the side of the hill. I walk slowly through the forest and with little more than a sense of fascination and awe of the splendour, but I cannot yet call this my home, it happens to be the location that my physical form enhabits. Strangely at peace I walk faster and faster looking to get to the top of the hill, to break out of the forest and seek the air and the space and see the sea in the distance.

what will tomorrow hold for me and you?
I do not think we need to worry, the world continues with or without us,

I stand with my eyes affixed to the north staring to a location at this point unbeknownst to me. All i know is that this is where the roots of my current seedling made roots.  For the time being this is where is call home. More like a bough visciously ripped during a storm, only to be washed a shor ein an unknown land, sprouting and trooting to give a new home to its vicariously transported thoughts and tenants. All I know is that there is an internal song calling me to the origins of it all. Time will tell where the song takes me, what beacons of home I shall find on my journey forwards. There is no knowing what language that song is sung in, all I have to hope is that the internal rhythms guide me along the path that the dreaming totemic animals call me on my path forwards.

To say this is anything but true, is to say anything else is not. Irrespective of the truthfulness or validity of  this outlook.

So where does this take us, through a winding route through the dreams and thoughts of my mind on roads paved with good intentions and loaves of bread. I stand hoping to leave a trail behind for someone to follow as i seek the path or route back to my origins.

The words fall through the spaces in my thoughts rapidly falling swirling and mixing to create strings of meaning about the past future and present. What is the truth of the dreams we dream? even if they are not our own dreams  or words, does that make them any less fantastical. In this day and age of rationality and absolute truth is there any space left for the dreaming of our lives within the confines of our minds, knowing full well that the stark reality of life lies outside, the soft and melodic story that is woven inside my mind, in certain cases I could say my soul. My soul is transported to a land of memories, mingling with words of others, mixing with the tears flowing from the corner of my eyes, running down my angled and aging cheeks into the corners of my mouth illiciting a salty reality which momentarily returns me back to the present. 

where does this fictional story start? Does it start in the dust or the forests under an Acacia tree, an Albizzia an Artocarpus or whichever one and in a really absurd notion that the future is before the past it could even be a Podocarpus totara. There is no knowing where the dream of the lion and multitudes of beetles will take me.  As I walk down the wondrous pathway with Alan on my side, the call of the Tui rings shrill in my ears, carefully i make sure not to break the line of  green ants dreaming of red rocks and beetle fruit and jack fruit and my mind slowly but surely enters the dream plane. Slowly the rhythms combine to push me forwards on this journey we call dream time traveling. Long lines of green ants are silhouetted against the dusty red sky.

For the answer to this you will have to wait and dream the dream with me.

Yes in retro and even introspect the cheese slowly cakes against the side of my mouth, but it is not a reality, neither the words I write nor the experience illicited by them. The life as beautiful as a a tretchikoff stands before us ;-)