things to be greatfull for

We have to be greatfull and go forth and do things, after watching a video link about killian jornet,

and yes this is a Multimedia Blog .. And yes I think for a while we will need to return to Courier New .. It is Proportional

I digress again, returning to Killian who is an amazing athlete, but he points me int he direction of another book I recently read called Born to run of which the jury is still out on whether or not I enjoyed the book totally. But interestingly Killian a really accomplished ultra trail runner and the aforementioned book have something in common, running is about loving running, Killian says the more meters (yes American, no he is not) we climb the more we see. In my personal quest I have been riding every possible hill I can on the way home, my last being more of a stumble and crawl than a Ride .. But amazing .. only a couple more routes to Go and I would have completed this minor quest. I did Kau Kau on Tuesday.. in the wind and light drizzle .. I did the Metres and enjoyed every last second of the ride, stumble and craw.. Yes this is a little like a very large nested if or case statement....
But to return to Killian, it is all about the love and experience of the run for him, the ride for me. We bind ourselves to what we believe we can achieve.. We can do more, but we dont, WE can bake our own bread but we dont, we chose less and not more..
Back to the book, Born To run is an interesting book, I felt it lost a little bit of steam towards the last third of the book, I would like to read more about it... I suppose i will have to research and see how much of the book is fact, how much is embellishment and how much is fictional? Ok so there is something to the barefoot running debate Zola could do it.. well not sure about Emile, but the other barefoot one..so we will have to try this 100 up technique and get back to you on that ...

Oh yes being greatfull ... that is difficult in this day and age and after #black tuesday.. But there is a lot to be greatfull of, sometimes we dont see what is in front of us, we just see what is behind us, sometimes what is behind us was both good and bad, we need to do the meters and time, then it will tell..

Bla Bla Bla Bla .. yes it is babble, I was browsing the greater inter~blades and found an interview and piece on Die Antwoord, it was intriguing.. It was an interview with an overseas media organization and they asked the question of DA if they are conceptual artists, to which Yolandie Vi$$er asked con what die f septual I dont understand your question and Ninja says.. this interview is over, you do not understand we are in the zone.. It added a new dimension to something seemingly thrashed to death over the last while, I then also had a look at their previous venture Max headroom ... I must admit the Jury is even mroe confused now.. there is significantly more depth than previously imagined? Or maybe not?

On another note, something to wait for will be the mantis dream~time project...

Till later, yes you, we us all have JJ to blame, there will be much more, in the same way we need not ask why did i not have time to eat.. I do have time to Blog.. and remember "Yo snooze you lose, you snor you win"

inspiration and living in 2 parts part 4/2

The piece I wanted to add was to question our sensitivities to multimedia textual experiences. Is it still writing or more so reading when it is required to read something a scene is set using other media like music or the smell of fresh lavender? this is not a new question? Not something I am the first to ask? It is just something I often think about whilst rambling in this electronic paper? Is it even right to post pictures? Or is the skill in actually capturing the mood and event in words and not in multimedia, is that the divergence from writing and move into a form of installation art.

I question that, in the light that our lives are a mosaic of events that merge between the senses and dimensions moving steadily from auditory, tactile and temporal nature of life as we live it.

Is the art in going fishing, tying the fly, casting the fly, hooking the fish, landing the fish, taking the photograph, thinking about it, thinking about doing it or talking about it before or after the event or is it just a momentary lapse in the fabric of time and existence.

We have to question what inspires us, what drives us, what makes us cycle up a hill? What makes us take a photograph, what makes us chose life?

inspiration and living in 2 parts

Ok so this is a re-edit:

This will be a piece in two parts, yes and the first half may be sadder than is required .. but wtf .. I wrote it half way never fisnished it and will just post it as is ..

part 1 inspiration and living


a whole lot of really random things are rushing through my head, it seems !?
this is about us, inside, sadness, happiness and life, fishing, happiness, insects, creativity and expression

and missing friends!!!

and the sources of inspiration...


Do I have to find and befriend the Taniwha  or is it that it has to be conquered?


it is about braveness to live and express  and accept the way we live and experience the world and the universe around us. 

Who knows, but we know we have to face this next step in our lives, we took the leap of the chasm into the dark water. Once again I face the fear of the known unknown.  We have created the opportunity to remodel and start again without planning. I suppose that is how it must be. All I know is that I have learnt more about myself and how people perceived/perceive me in this one past year than in many. It may be due to the way our lives suddenly accelerated to somewhere clsoe to the speed of life only to be suddenly stopped throwing us onto a wet sandy beach without instructions. Somehow when you have the chance to start your life over again, note to self, Again... then we somehow flounder like fish out of the sea and tend to look back and not forwards, I know going back what I have said about looking forward and backwards to ad infinitum. Yes but now we stand and it is relatively simple. Yet it is not that simple to change the smallest things inside our minds, we move many thousand kilometers and the leap inside our minds is more difficult to make. At times it is the slender binds of our past that hold us back, the friends we left behind. On that note I fell down the hoel fo nostalgia and on occassions i watch trashy south african artists on youtube, to get a context of what we have left behind. Not all are trashy, some are.. some are brilliant others just justify. On the last occassion I did however find something that was so sad, I watched some Bok van Blerk .. yes OMG.. But there is something so bizarre about what he says in a lot of his music, he chose to flog the old riding horse. In between the few songs of his I listened to I found a sad and poignant song about leaving friends and family behind when  leave africa and the choices those who stay have made to stay.

But there is nothing that could have prepared us for the emotional turmoil you face as an immigrant. It has highlighted the gradients of happiness and sadness and strife and anguish others have to go through to survive the journey to the promised land/s. I have met people from so many corners of life here in kiwilandia, yet have met very few Kiwi's ;-)

As I sit here the words or wordless moments of emotions churn through my brain. the little bit of connection i have had to this mortal coil slowly drifting away. the longer I stay here the more separated I become with the world around me. Words fall on deaf ears, I sit/stand and call, but nothing  seems to stick. I walk this land alone it seems I walk, cycle and fish alone in a land of beauty and splendor challenging all senses of fear of the unknown. Oh I walk through the green fields and rocky hills, all i have to fear is fear itself and the forces of nature and chance.



Part 2: influence and memories

Today the melancholia filled me with thoughts, my first stop is to return to youtube and watch some Heuwels fantasties videos. Somehow they have a grounding effect. Grounding effect is most probably the wrong word for what i feel. I watched two or three music videos today.

The first being

                Die Heuwels Fantasties - Heel Te Mal (official video)   

the most amazing thing about this being that this mixes the old and the new so well and causes a wave mixed emotions. To clarify more, the video is shot in wellington kiwilandia which now strangely fills me with a sense of home. Seeing palces i recognise and walk past fairly often, but mixed with the old and the "other" immigrants and rugby watchers.. yes I must say am still not a devout Rugby follower one year on in kiwilandia.. But hey some things just wont change all that easily.  But what did sadden me was the fact that they played at the "waterfront" ZA stand, which I very much would have liked to have seen.. But sometimes things are better left un-done :-) I saw images of people and realised it was most probably quite right that i did not go.. WTF .. who knows.. Well I dont know at this stage.

I then watched a few of the older videos that I watched before.. the one that really sticks every time I see it is

Die Heuwels Fantasties - Buitenste Ruim (official musicvideo)

which raises a whole lot of emotions about life as a child and all the other things that they portray in the video, but things deeper than that it portays or evoked within  me are how our memories and actions are driven by our reference to contemporary culture albeit frionge or otherwise, The video above opens with a scene of a bloudraad washing lind dangling in the back of a recognizable house from somewhere in the hinterland, but most striking, the scene opens with barking of dogs with a slow interlude of music it reminds you of what ? .....

no not this track this one  .. Eventhoug the son and sound is different, it evokes a memory of this. Within a larger community it creates a shared response to hearing a song or seeing an image of the wall album cover or similar. where Am i going with this obvious fact you may ask? We take a lot of solace in the common frame of reference, it is what allows us to communicate and relate to those and to events around us. Once we are uprooted and moved to a place where the common frame of reference and relationship to iconic musicians and events is totally different it furthermore creates a gap between us and our new home. BTB I registered as a voter today in my new home, a strange thought voting in another country.... But there is a lot to be said for integration by means of a common frame of reference, there are similarities in the anglo-saxoness of our lives, the internationalization has also gone a long way to reducing the impact on us and those around us.  I see the place for joining an ex-pat organization. But I am not really sure if I am truly south African, I am sure a part of me is, a part of me has pieces from all over? I think to me that is what is half saddening about being here and looking back and wondering am I actually an ex-pat or not, or just on another leg of a part of my journey through life? who knows, well i definitely dont,  you may question why I say that and still actually write things If there is so little that I know and yet I have such opinions on a whole lot of things.  I really don't know.

Part 3 of 2:Some new heroes

There are a few that need mentioning for the moment, as always I had never really mentioned soem of them, some had disillusioned me other never, some came out of nowhere.. where to start, most probably Jonathan Jansen (the rector on the UOFS), he has always stood out  as beacon of light in the landscape of political turmoil in South AfriKa, his diffusing of the incidents in the residences at the university. He then said and did a whole lot of inspirational things, A long time LaTer I suddenly found him on twitter, I now follow him avidly. Then one that you will find strange is P Divvy, I am utterly amazed at his comments on twitter, either this is not him, Or this IS the real person and if the second then he is a wholy misunderstood individual who is definitely worth his Moustache, no seriously it appears as if there is some real substance behind the man with the moustache, I will end his piece with "Dear ANC. You can take away my freedom of speech but you cant take away my freedom of snor!"

And the other being as an afterthought almost forgot about him, but koos kombuis, he kinda drifts in and out of consciousness, mine not his.. :-) 

Some new things .. cannot remember them

WTF.. the wind is really blowing today, it feels like I am in boat on the open see.. this building is swaying so much, which brought me to a wondering about "are windmills effective?" and if so why do the Kiwi's hate them? A strange thing I was talking to someone who i was flyfishing with and it appears that there is a great deal of FUD around wind energy in Kiwilandia and its ROI and cost effectiveness and subsidization. Interesting I was rather shocked and thought maybe I misunderstood all of this wind power stuff and that maybe it was not the good that I imagined.. I have been wrong in the past.. so off to google and I could not find the negative sentiment? But I did find out that in kiwilandia there is no subsidization of wind energy generation as there is in other countries ... so I was right for a change .. ;-)

But I suppose all good things must come to an end at some point, I have to finish off for now.. more later.. Iw ill attempt to follow the words of JJ  Letters to my children #98: I love only two things in life- eating and  writing. Nobody has ever asked me where I find the time to eat 10th nov

 and as a last point JJ follows Pdivvy makes you think something must be up?