and how the world did not end and i miss or missed the jackarandas

strangely whilst looking at a Portuguese person who i follow on Flickr's photos , there were a whole lot of pics of jackaranda flowers from somewhere in spain or Portugal or somewhere but not south Africa, and it made me think once again how i miss and missed the jackaranda flowers

But of all the things i left behind the beetles rank highly
I stand with the misty drizzle condensing on my ragged beard
silver streaks shining through
I wonder what the next brown trout will look like
will the jerk on the other side of the line be a fish this time
lets hope there are two jerks on the line and not just one
flailing against the elements

well it is summer they say
it may not be here
Evan has his say
cyclonically speaking of course

The heat the flies are almost a distant dream
i slowly but deliberately wife the fine mist of my face
I stare at the beauty that is my potted garden
the images rush in and fill my mind

I stand staring waiting for tomorrow and the next day
in the hope and knowledge that it will be different and that i will make it so
the may will drift and I do

all about perspective

Strangely we move forward, but we keep returning to the same place, not through error but through time. But as expected our perspective changes along the way, some aspects remain consistent, others are less obvious. This may not make sense on the outset, but over time my perspectives have changed, but this leaves me wondering about the wandering inside my thoughts?

round and round the merry go round i go, life moves, shifts and ebbs  thanks to Sonikie for lending us Material ( a new movie set in ZA ..old theme .. but i would watch it.. with Riaad Moosa ) but it is not with a little of sadness and happiness all rolled into one that we watch this. Strange it rolls into one, everything we miss and don't miss about our previous lives and about perspective and happiness, sadness, laughter and pain, not to different from our calvanistic upbringing the Garam (spelling?) is no different to those of the doppers, fun is bad and evil and wrong and wrapped into all of this the sadness and joy of it all. Life worth living, hidden away from the reality and daily drudge.

To much to little we stand waiting for the new day,
mine comes before yours,
mine ends before yours
it didnt end today as the mayans said, maybe we got to wait a couple of hours
maybe the tequila in their veins got it wrong :-)

well onwards and upwards .. less and not more,

OMG WTF ;-)

double appologies, this was posted accidentally a couple of days back on another blog ..:/ copied it .. tried to post.. btu ti never got here ..

-- from a few days back ..

apologies to all and me, it has been a while since I penned to paper metaphorically. Things change, we all get challenged in different ways, some more than others. But there is something we can all accept and that is that we will be challenged to some end or another.

I knew there was something that i  was meaning to go through, i had made some notes on a notepad on my desk. It still amazes me how we have the ability to think and consider things, meaning full well to blog them. Clear rational, lucid thoughts flowing through my brain. But for the lack of a piece of paper or keyboard they tend to merge into nothing and we forget everything we planned to write and discuss.

" a sudden wave of sadness and happiness merged into a single emotion flows through my brain as I look at a photo on my desktop, almost like sweet and sour sauce."

the strange thing about photo's is how they can bring happiness and sadness in the same breath. We are back here again, without missing a beat at least once a cycle we have to question the meaning of photographs again. The meaning of life and art! (or in certain cases, possibly only really craft) and through what and how to express yourself. I recently found a most amazing set of photographs done by a kiwi photographer who titled them naked in Landscape, they illustrated the fractal nature of structures and the human figure was used to represent scale. Amazingly they were all done in the analog era and were done using a helicopter, with no processing. I have linked in the nzherald article, it is worthwhile rabbit holing down to find his actual website and viewing these and other photos.  It more so than before illustrated how we repeat art and visual representations of what we see and experience through history.

We sometimes miss the fracticallity (fractal) nature of the environment around us, sometimes the scale is all an illusion. but at other times not? Yes a silly statement, but have you ever viewed certain things and noticed how scale independent they are and other things not?  \have you ever questioned how we know how large an object is?

A little more on the relativity of arts and crafts, I am by no means an expert or even attempt to have a basis for an opinion, but based on something I saw posted on FB, we have a mutual friend of a friend who we became friends with over time who is an established artist who works in a number of media. In amoungst his portfolio are a number of collages, which are fantastic, but another artist or cynic made a comment in jest/anger (i am unable to determine due to a lack of perspective and colloquial association) about the "crafty" nature of his work. It brings me back to a TED presentation I heard a while back about "Mashups" and how this is part of our human nature, to build on that which we have seen in the past, how many great pieces of art or art works have been based on other historical pieces or are done in reference to something that was done in the past. I then wonder, were to draw the line between craft and art in my own mind, when something is truly new, when a "mashup" of something we may have seen is revisited or redone is it mere craft. It brings photography into a similar context, where does that fit into the picture, is it art or craft?

I suppose after a long break, I will be excused to have such a brief tirade, but there are so many fragments lurking that should hopefully be released over the next couple of weeks, that is if we have the ability to put metaphorical pen to paper.

One last subtextual note that may or may not prickle some interest in you, it did me and pumkie? Through our current re-education into art-house movies we have been watching a number of old favorites and a few that we had never seen before... We eventually watched a movie suggested by a friend over and over and over..strangely disturbing movie.. Ameros Peros.. Not something for the faint hearted, maybe not viewing pleasure but a hard look at life and experiences.. But this brought us to another movie, also set in the south america (mexico) called y tu mama tambien,  which is as disturbing  but in a totally different way.  But the thing that struck me was how integral the background images were to the story, more than a third of the imagery is held in the background of the scenes with the actors. What was difficult to pinpoint was why these movies are different to hollywood? The difference I  must say that draws me more and more to art-house/indie and more importantly foreign movies is the fact that the characters have real depth and texture and are not celluloid  and featureless. Actors in these movies have real bodies and flaws, which in some way make the movies more real, yet transport us into another realm.. bla bla yes I am getting carried away, got to get back to work.. enjoy

maybe more tomorrow on the elusive brown trout/s on the hutt river that have been tormenting me for the last year or so .. ;-)

that is me for the day..

-- from today

in an attempt for cognitive dilation I do believe we need to see more, do more, read more and in attempt to be less confined to the mind I think it is good to attempt to do things you promised yourself that you would do, but saying all of this it sounds a little like a "new years resolution" thing this, and yeas to u2 this is a frigin long sentence, and in a way possibly it is, but in somewyas I would consider it being the new me that i had to craft out of the folds of what remained of personality after it was wrenched from its wretched life in Africa, not saying that it was totally wretched, but rather saying that it could have been better and should have been better and that in a way i was bound by the fences within my own mind. I do not say do what you would not do, but rather do what you would and should do as that si who we are, I do somehow now slowly realise there is so much more we in the I that we are as an individual, yes that sounds stupid, but through our personal part of the diaspora me, we have realised how much of ourselves is just a reflection of others and visa versa and how somethings i noticed and others that i did not I definitely should have noticed and said and done..

But the fear caught us by the throat, strangely we are filled with some fear, but it does appear that that fear of the known adn unknown can be removed by a simple  extraction process.. but hey we can only try

go do, go see, go see the sea

we see the sea but how often do we not stop 

i love the smell of the rotting seaweed

i love the spray on my face

the crashing waves 

the grey the the gray the blue the grey

melting into a redness and gold at the end of the day

Anon. 2012

Part 2 and Izak Walton really is the Izaak Walton of fishing books

Recently I mentioned buying the gardening book, which was supposed to be the gardening book version of the compleate fisherman by Izaak Walton , boy I was disappointed. It looked rather a bit like a catalog of all of Carl Linnaeus 's species as described by him in a weekly digest format. I digress from the actual point, being that the Compleat Angler is more amazing than I had even imagined, the author is Enigmatic to say the least, he lived to be 90 in the 17th century (1593-1683), which is no mean feat. He was more than just an observational dribbler of words. He may not have been the best fisherman on earth but he wrote an amazing book which the first few editions sold in the hundreds of thousands.
An amazing fact, amongst many others is that Walton is mentioned in Jules Verne's classic The Mysterious Island when the castaways decide to use snares to catch birds: "He took Herbert to some distance from the nests, and there prepared his singular apparatus with all the care which a disciple of Izaak Walton would have used."


I even learnt of John Denny, who which I will have to research at a later stage..

But it begins to unfold that we live in a complex tapestry of life and living that is beyond our wildest notions, we cannot begin to imagine the wonders and depravity of the humankind, that they definitely are not.  cyclically I return to TED, it is simply a rolarcoaster of humanity. There are aspects of myself that always leave totally amazed and disappointed with myself as a being all rolled into one, yet almost always laving more positive than when I started imbibing the stories. I have found this a useful pastime to partake in whilst traveling on the train and the bus, being a chronic motion sickness sufferer reading is "uit soos koekies in 'n weeshuis"..

To return to TED, it enlightens the i should have, should do, why did I not think of that, why I am I not a better person, now why am I not doing that, how can I help more, yet slowly we drift back into old habits, it is hard to restart our lives without falling into the same traps again. I suspect it has a serious black swan about it and ironically a little more than a stones throw from my house a whole lot of these enigmatic creatures live in reality floating around without any prior knowledge of their historical enigmatism. I wonder a lot about what puts "us" in the position to be ready for these opportunities. I may be filled with a little to much cynicism for this, but we all live in hope, perhaps this season I can transcend from bread making to something a little more grandiose and life changing, or maybe not, that might be what is in stock for me?  I suppose inside we know that if we do not go out there and pick up the pebbles and search for the flat ones we will never skip them across the inlet betwixt the black swans, this is so absolutely cliched, but it is a metaphoric reality that takes place as I stare at the black swans on a daily basis... Not sure what or how we describe the actualization of a handful of metaphors?

I imagine it is a daily quest that I have to undertake, to move forward on step at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time.  I suppose we do have to prioritise next things for the new season and attempt to actualise some of those goals, some of the goals we missed from the previous year, the previous summer and winter that passed that was not waisted but that could have been put to better use.

Strangely the thoughts i have in transit, without pen or paper or ability to cement them pass as soon as i step off the train all notions of intelligentsia and intellect seem to leach out of my brain and run down the drains with the light autumn drizzle .. yes wasted words saying nothing, albeit that I should start praising biltong like Paul ;-) nogals in akrikaans. I don't see myself praising the humblest biltong, maybe the humble soya bean or maybe even the grain of rice.

Lately I have been filled with fear and trepidation of what our humanity is doing with this lonely planet and rapidly things appear to be imploding on us? I wonder how much longer we will be able to be as we are and how soon we will have to start reacting, I suspect those communities more likely to survive as those closer to the soil, yet even them are at risk with the catastrophic weather changes we have waiting for us. I suspect that like the Indians in meso America who from having huge cities in middle America rapidly diminished into nothing with the changes in climate that occurred a thousand or so years ago. The most concerning being the rapid changes we are experiencing currently, who knows if we will be able to survive this bout? I cringe in disappear at the latest bout of insane litigations between the mobile phone designers, the laws that are designed to protect us from the theft of property, albeit intellectual property are robbing us of a future freedom. Now we litigate, or should i rather say allow litigation to occur on the basis of a principal. we are not a long way away from litigation around biological matter and its "content" when we look at the Monsanto's of the world. Next the human genome becomes patented, are we then an infringement when we display a characteristic, are we then defaecate owned by the patent holder is everything we do then owed to them? A strange thought?

I feel this diverging from one level of silliness to the next...

perhaps next time I will manage to capture one of those rare clear moments on the train and put it onto paper?

what is in a phrase and a whole plethora of other tea cups

Not even sure where to start, sometimes I wish i would actually carry a piece of paper and a pen or even one of the damn Idevil devices around with me..

But I am sorta swaying between hope and calamity, why not start with some pretty frigin amazing food we made.. I made a HUGE pesto and Olive loaf on the weekend.. frigin awesome.. But more interestingly I made some courgette and chickpea fritters.

Pretty damn amazing:

take 1 or 2 courgettes, zucchini or baby marrows (your choice)
2 eggs
a tin of cooked chickpeas ground up roughly/finely up to you
some Paprika .. (with every recipe) (smoked paprika is good)
some Hot Paprika (most amazing stuff)
some Cumin (with every recipe)
1-2 onions (with every recipe)

n garlic cloves (with every recipe)

a dash of flour to thicken depending on the size of the eggs and moisture in the other ingredients
and some herbie things.. your choice
oh yes .. add a little oil as well (olive or whatever you want)


then form into size of patties required and then either shallow or deep fry or like us bake them in the oven with the grill, serve with whatever you want .. they are pretty damn frign awesome.

Then we go back to reality for a bit, what do we do next, me thinks I have to learn how to make cider or perry or something like that, or maybe beer?

This all detracts from the reality of our mortality, or rather so our humanity and what drives or breaks it. It appears that  there is a new kid on the block, namely h. rudolfensis.. a sneaky little bugger who has laid low for a while. I really liked the hobbits (florensis), but ti appears that there is more than a proverbial can of worms opening up at the moment. So the debate is if we are monotypic? It appears that we may or may not be hybrids with out neanderthals? Somehow I suppose there is some catch to all of this. If we are no and humans are the pinnacle then all is good, but if we are not and even more so, we are a possible mix or last man standing in a whole school of prototypes, this really messes with some of the fundamental basics of our cultural origins. I suspect more so for some of the fundamentalists, but maybe even for a few of the non fundamentalists who allowed that Evil E word to be taught in school?  On the same vein, albeit slightly tangentially associated we are still wondering who did those really old cave paintings (~circa 50k years back) which homo did them, no i am not stereotyping the artist type, I am simply drawing reference to his Genus and no not the Gender.  But it does bring into question something else I have on and off my mind for quite a while? Back to that in a moment. I suspect the current assumption is that the sapiens variety is the one who did all the arty stuff and the neander dude (btw go read up on where this is and about the Gibraltar man) was more of the burn, beat and pillage type who barely got past the fire stage? But it seems like there were a few with feathers in their hair.
Back to the other point, on watching how society and humanity is in its constant downward spiral, I wonder how important it is to develop a new meaning for the masses. Seeing that the opiate of religion and or belief systems has been plucked from our grasp, for some of us we hold on longer than others. But I do suspect, that which makes us human and regulates us is, that which we as humanists and liberalists are taking away from humanity and those that hold onto the faith move further away from its purpose and eventual benefits. The guidance, direction and stasis created by these belief systems is the glue that holds/held us together as a regulatory structure. There can be a debate to say that this is not the case, but we can clearly see that we are not a naturally self regulating species and do need to be checked, Possibly there are those who chose cool aid, may not have had the wrong intentions, albeit that they did not advance their cause.  The question i ask now is rather if there is a possibility of instilling a new basis for humanity without having the bad with the good of control? I doubt it and assume that we are just part of a greater cycle, most probably not unlike something Stanislaw put forward, but hey I am biased he was born on the same day as me.

For now It is tea time, green tea time, I must abate from this needless keyboard clatter and return to doing some work, I hope to return to this a little later on, I may be mistaken.

no man/woman is an island, but we all need a lighthouse none the less.

none of us can stand alone without company, well the bulk of us at least. there are those elevated types that can. -- once again a multiday and locational epic--

But something we all need is a lighthouse to shine in the dark nights, however small we still need a shining light in our lives. How often is is not attached to ourselves, which fundamentally is not wrong, but we should shine for ourselves and not for others, geez from the wrong perspective this sounds like something a little biblical .. but it isnt.



But!, it does strike me that we all need a lighthouse to shine and display forth

how do we differentiate between something resonating with us or actually making a difference, this may be a little left field to say in the middle of nowhere, as reference I a m on the bus and there is some one reading a Paulo Coelho book.. most possibly the alchemist... always thought he was the junior cousin of carlos castenada, but I might be wrong. But PC books (the alchemist, the valkyri's and a whole lot of others that he sold millions of copies of) neither resonated nor made a difference, does that make me atypical of generation without direction? Ironically for someone spousing all that stuff about goodwill and bla bla bla peace and happiness and all that good internal soft squishy stuff, he has made a crap load of money and sold many books and influences many people, not unlike L Ron Hubbard. No I am not saying they are the same before I get crucified, by someone who misreads this.. All I am saying is that there are similarities and let your thought processes draw their own conclusions. But on the other hand I could be totally wrong and they are both right.

As a post-note on Paulo Coelho, I must apologize after reading his Bio, I do not mean to be disparaging about him, but rather the people who reads his books, he seems like more than a character ;-) No i do not mean to be disparaging about the people who read his books either, just saying i did not find resonance in them at the time that I read the books. But what is key is that he is a funny dude, he places pirate copies of his own books on pirate bay .. funny dude :-). Then reading more about CC, he was also crazy as cheese, I suppose they both have a little of that in common, some autobiographical, some embellishment, some fiction. I suppose totally unrelated and dissimilar, but they make me think about each other in a similar context, even though they are about totally different things, but do pertain to some level of enlightenment in each one.



On a tangent I watching some trashy TV last night (Weeds), and yes we do watch it for the acting ;-). In this one of the characters is in a state of shock and he is sitting in a hospital in the cafeteria and he is looking very distraught. a man walks up to him and starts talking, before long he is spouting all kinds of trauma to the stranger, but the key to this, to cut it short is that the person was actually the hospital chaplain who was actually a rabbit, no not the fishing rabbi, another one.. but key to all of this was something the rabbi said, he is Jewish, he does not have answers, he has questions and living is about the turmoil in finding the answers to questions (I am heavily paraphrasing), but in essence is not if or what, but rather the question and how you go about it? Heavily paraphrased.



Oh well apologise for leaving you all in the lurch .. halfway through a series of regular posts, i succumb to more normal routine, things have been topsy turvey over the last couple of weeks, integration, thinking, thinking a lot, thinking more, feeling sorry for myself, for others, full of despair, disappointment, sadness and a whole plethora of feelings and emotions. But i can be assured through all of this I am alive, usain bolt is still the fastest man on the planet curiosity landed on the red planet.. the volcano is erupting on the central north island.. America is in a serious drought, global warming, well human moderated Global warming climate change is a reality.



But this is not what was fleeting through my brain at the moment, yes I know I have the attention span of a spaniel puppy.. But this is just the way I think I may be. To get to the point.. I wonder a lot about photography, over and over and over again. Some days I really love taking pictures/photographs, but more often than not I wonder why I do it. This compulsion, then while wondering this I was looking at my Flickr profile on my phone and it struck me, that it doesn’t realy matter, or maybe it does. I looked and saw a photograph that i had seen many years before, even though it was only taken recently. It seems like there is a notion that over time we change, things advance, yet they stay the same, we remain absorbed with ourselves as a human race, there are those who see this, display it on film on canvas in form and art, then we look again it is all gone, destroyed by the masses, we start over again, building, breaking and starting again? Suddenly it appears that there is some human intelligence being found from more than 20000 years ago, first the caves in France, the aboriginal paintings in Oz, the recent find in ZA of the shaped shells and stones in a San cave. How little we know of ourselves, the longer we move forwards the more we forget. But it seems in capturing that which we see in a moment, is a way of slowing things down, but in other ways it seems that there are images which are not capturing life rather reflecting life? All very confusing..



But to get back to the lighthouse, i think i will have to get back to that another time?



Ok back to work, hopefully I will try and unravel this mess tomorrow, but in the sake of continuity I will just post this now in its incompleteness

On humanity and change

After considering all the doom and gloom of the last blog entry, there are aspects of humanity which are paramount. So no longer than 30 seconds after opening this and trying to type all hell broke lose on friday and I never progressed beyond the first line fo the blog and and to exit back into reality, and for the life of me, the thoughts behind this title are totally lost on me ;-)

I suspect the first sentence leads me into what I was contemplating at the time.. This after my doom and gloom and deliberations on the eurozone blowout and the rapidly crumbling world economy. This being said, my same economist train person was reading another article that i "over-read", this indicated that even though things are going totally paw-paw in certain parts of europe these people still seem to be doing alright. If we take an abstract or obtuse look at these things then we will notice that, or I should rather say I noticed or maybe thought or concluded that in essence if all value was wiped out of the economic system today then in principal all should still carry on as is.

Ok so the Paw-paw hit for a second time, today, a third attempt I hope to complete this entry. To return to the last thought, through all of this i believe we need a reevaluation of all that is important to us, all to well i know this is a very thin edge of a sword I am balancing on. That which is our essence is our destruction, that which is our essence makes us who or what we are, but we have lost sight of that which is around us, people, planet, ecology, economy and the whole kitchen sink. we live like we have never lived before, that is unless you are a reincarnationalis. We live with an abandon regarding the basis of what impact we have as individuals, and no! I am not advocating going back to the ruderal and living off the land like our Neanderthal ancestors, what I am advocating is a better use and less abuse and overuse of that which is there to sustain us. I am not exempt from this, I believe that a lot of this has to do with the artificial value structures we have placed on life and living, a fancy car is more amazing than a cow or the environment or a little fish in a little river in the middle of nowhere, but sometimes these go to extremes, we are exploiters and we need things to exploit? It is all to tricky.

You may ask where you can begin, now that is a good question? I must admit I don't really have the answer? Possibly a better sense of awareness amongst those who can be aware and contemplate these things, possibly better regulation by those who govern and hold our interests at hand. Have you ever wondered why our suburbs dont share land between parties in an effort to create produce allotments? Why not? Could we not have shared vegetables, shared aquaponics, now there is a challenging subject here in kiwilandia .. more on that at a later stage.

I am losing traction of what i was actually trying to get to .. maybe a little later on the thread will return...

On a more jovial note (yet filled with sadness), I met Batman on the train a few days back, albeit that he would never admit to being batman, or that he is the post middle adged batman or that he is now living deep in wisteria lane in the suburbs.. You may ask how I figure out that he was Batman? well it was fairly simple, his briefcase had a business card in the fron with his name on .. "Wayne F Bruce", Say no more.. I saw the light Or should I rather Say the DARK.. Yes it was a Dark night in the states when that loony toon took out those guns and explosives.  We live in a sadly distorted reality filled with the illusions of the delusionals, even here in deep and dark and damp kiwilandia we are not immune to this aspect of humanity.... All so sad and thoughtless

Back to the Gardening Book, well I am not all that convinced, I have taken a break from guns, germs and steel by Diamond.. To switch to the "Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell", I must admit I was a little caught by the advert for the book, now this is a long story,  " Henry Mitchell was to gardening what Izaak Walton was to fishing. The Essential Earthman is a collection of the best of his long-running column for the Washington Post. Although he offered invaluable tips for novice as well as seasoned gardeners" , I was actually searching for Izaak waltons book on fishing and I have an automated search phrase on a second hand site here in NZ (trademe) and this came up. I am both confused and somewhat interested, the book at more  and less interesting than I expected, he is a very  erudite gardner. One thing that did, however, ring very true for me was his description of the trials of being a gardener, in his words, the dogs will trample your daphodils, but always some survive. I goes on to mention his trials with the birds and the squirrels and how feeding them stops some fo the damage, but most amusing of all is his description of feeding the birds in winter and how only the sparrows and a few others arive and he then smartarsedly comments, what did you expect flamingo's?  Which brings me onto a new topic, slightly tangential, yet related. I was browsing my flickr account alst night and viewing some photos other people took in wellington.. always intriguing.  These are spectacular .. and they make me miss my friends and miss things familiar to me, and make me miss pierneef street and koba and maddie and jensie and suekie salomikie and of course Jamsie and Slats .. and the list doesnt stop. But at the exact timing of all of this we watched Henry poole was is  here.. a fantastic Luke wilson movie .. which came at the right time and made us remember, the past is good to remember but it is the present where we are. we then ended this diorama of life off with the Paul Giamatti movie called Cold souls.. now that was just as much of an awakening.. The context being that we found a "moot" video shop that lets you take out "old" movies for about $1 a week .. fantastic ..

Ok enough Ramble .. back to work .. more later I promise..

I have noticed that I need to actually have a note pad to write my ideas down when they permeate my brain, like on the train or on the bus or wherever ... I have a number of these notebooks, not unlike someone else i know..

But mine a different.. mine have scribbles and silliness in them not notes of things to do and remember, those are pieces of paper strewn over my Desk.. which get processed on an irregular basis...






 

14001 and counting

you may ask specifically why 14001, or any number, it just is, because it is and that is the word that popped into my head when I opened the new blog entry. Yes I have been a little slack this week and last, not really writing all that mcuh, or as much as I would have hoped to have. But here we are and the week has started, we are already on the day second of this week. I wonder sometimes about the way we view ourselves as humans, it is a starnge thing, both woman and men. I just read an article a day back about Emer O'Toole and her decision not to shave and her wanton display of her hairy armpits, now that was a little bit of a damp squib, but boy oh boy oh boy.. I went and read a few pieces on her Blog The Vagenda, now you can go find that and decide what you think? The debate is still out for me, but Damn she shows some commitment to what she thinks, and this little issue seems to have her catapulted into fame and infamy. I also (all so) recently read some pieces on Madonna being riotous again, she flashed nipples, accidentally on purpose in Turkey, she flashed her tail somewhere else... now there is a 50 somthingyearold who is committed to upholding here identity.. Not sure where that is going though?  Possibly she needs to be committed ..

On a more serious note, I was on the train this morning, yes again, I noticed a train acquaintance who always sits in the compartment , reading an article about the financial crisis in the EU. This is not strange as he seems to be an economist, economic commentator or something of the likes, but what caught my eye was the scale of the debt crisis that the PIGS have brought onto themselves or the EU, albeit through the words of the author, "playing three card shuffle" with their loans". Wow the amounts are just absolutely insane, they have already shared loans in excess of 500-600 billion Euro, this apparently only covers 16% of the current local debt, but these are only read an article over some ones shoulder on the train numbers .. But it is terribly boggeling..

On a more cheerful note, I have eventually succumbed to the FLU this winter, the first  time in more than a couple of winters, but it does seem as if the "man" flu did not really hit me all that hard. It seems as if I will make it another couple of days and possibly even till the end of the week without the need of some special medicinal help.  Interestingly I am reading guns germs and steel by Jarred Diamond, although this covers all the diseases the "developed" world ahs spread over the developing or new world,  I don't believe that this is why I am sick, I imagine rather that eventually I am being exposed to some of the strains I have not yet been exposed to.. silly yes, but it is bound to happen at some point. Back to the book, it is not badly written and all, very interesting, but not unlike some of the other books I have read over the last while I am not convinced that all his thoughts are a 100% accurate, or should I say an accurate representation of what really happened and why things happened the way they did, I suspect my thoughts are premature, especially in the light that I am only a short way into the book, but I am willing to indicate, better than the last few realistic/cometary/people being clever books I have read over the last while.. But I do think it signals the time that maybe I should read something a little lighter, maybe the pirates meet Darwin, a gardening book, or finish midnights children, the Hungarian cooking encyclopedia or something a little more lighthearted.

But on a more sinister and comical note, when we look at ourselves, here i speak mostly in third person not about myself or my Gender, we (not the Royal) are often disappointed about the way we look, look to other people, are photographed and the likes. I seem to often get chastised for taking photographs that make people look less fantastical than they should. I suspect I will have to take, make, do more effort in this regard, somehow people don't seem to ahve the same appreciation for seeing things the way the camera saw them at that moment kind of way. The Last incident did, however, give rise to a fairly cheerful comment indicating that they would rather be portrayed as vamp rather than a vampire in  the next photograph I take, or should, I rather say, blurt onto the interwaves. Yes I know that there have been numerous complaints in this regard in the past, I do apologize, and think maybe this something I need to aim for as a diversion from my simple documentation of the world as I see it and possible try to apply some of the rose coloured glass views my subjects would rather be viewed through. I suspect this might take some thought and planning on my side, One wonders can it be done in a way to still seem observational? somehow the Observational nature of photography seems to appeal more and more, Possibly due to something that Paul muadib said a long time ago in a book, but I was only a child then, and even then it was an old book, written about a time in the future.

Back to reality and vegetables and food and the weight of food we eat in a week, have you ever looked and or thought about the amount/weight of food we eat in a week.. it is pretty damn astronomical. This is especially in the context of us possibly having to find, gather, kill and scrounge this amount of food, granted I suppose we would then eat a different diet and not have to carry all that food with us when we go shopping. I often wonder about that, the nuclear winter or similar post apocalyptic disaster event thing, but to interrupt you immediately not in a sad or depressing or dark way, what we would eat and how we would live? How much would things be like deep dark Africa or the likes if suddenly the world would stop for whatever reason and we get chucked back into the dark ages, without light and power and all of those things? where would we go, what would we do? It is very easy to imagine these things in a depressing way, but can we imagine some light in this? Is it possible to find something of value in this? Have you ever considered what it is you would need to survive for extended time periods? How would you feed yourself, how far down the food chain would you go, how much do you think we would just remove and destroy without regard of our neighbours, would it make sense to live a lone and feed and fight, live together and hunt and share?

so what do we have planned for the week, oh yes we went 4X4'ing this weekend, it was .. well nice and interesting, but not maybe us? It was nice to see the places, but strange especially int he light that I had cycled some of these tracks before.. imagining that I had gone so far, UP and DOWN on those tracks .. But still unconvinced about this as a pursuit at this stage? But it was good..

so still undecided about the week ahead.. lets wait and see what it brings and where I go forth..

 

strange notions and things

The notion of Beauty being skin deep or otherwise appears to be so misconstrued as the premise whereby all of this delusion is based upon, is soley initiated by The Media and individuals who are temporally blind. But we must also realise that we can state the converse it is the notion that art is an expression (IMHO) of the conteXt and environment and social culture and a manifestation of the complex interplays within this notion.  Does this make me stupid or un contextual in my prior statement?, Or should i rather state that in the current context and environment we have to assume if all was equal that I believe the current context is flawed, not withstanding that there are many more disturbed and unrealistic context and trends  throughout time. I do, however, begin to doubt the actual framework of my premise, or rather that it is possible that I may be an anachronistically inclined in terms of my opinion of this aspect of humanity. Possibly, but we will never actually know if the garbage that I push out has any particular meaning or not, other than clearing my mind not unlike blowing my nose?

I will get back to the original premise or position I may be abjectly objectifying a notion of the importance of my opinion and possibly, rather that the opinion I may have is of any value or importance to others. But we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so it is written, therefore it must be true? Opinion, context and perspective all play a role, lest not forget culture~ality  (if that word does not exist it should). We all know that if it is written, is on wikipedia or the web it must be true ;-)

This would return to the is it an ism or is art question that I raised some time back, but can we view or experience or judge humanity against the lines of art? Is there a thread that follows through, are people, like art a mirror on the society they exist in and if the are can they be judged by the artificial notions of a subset of those members who have financial motived behind them? Is is justifiable to evaluate ourselves or others against a artificial measure that is not attainable to the bulk of the race, whereas in the past there were memes and ideals that could be attained by anyone?  Just a question?

enough of that serious stuff for the moment,  more for myrth and way.

I imagine it is time to do a breadline of time over the last few years, but maybe only next time.  It is not long before the end of the productive day and almost time for the weekend to begin. Possibly rather something full of myrth on monday or possibly a bonus on the weekend, who knows.

All we can be sure of is that there will be lots of scrabble tomorrow night, I will hopefully ahve recovered from the scrambling of our brain from going with some friends of ours in their small 4X4. I doubt I wlll have the patience for the scrambling scrabble on Saturday evening and may rather opt for something more sedentary or pedestrian like sitting or parking of and relaxing.

You may in retrospect actually ask, wherefore or why i went on the tirade about the beauty of skin being only as deep as the pages of the magazine the notion fell out of, but nowhere as deep as the pockets of the media and social mogals who create the illusion. We live in a world of wonder and illusion, yet we chose to only view life through certain coloured lenses, when it can rather be viewed in a number of other ways. On a totally different train of thought, On the way to my office, or I should say on my walk to the train station, due to its pedestrian speed of mobility I get to lookat things while I pass them by very slowly. One morning not to long back I was walking and noticed the most amazing "row" of three stars just to the left of orions knife or so. It turns out that I actually managed to use my google star map and discovered to my delight it actually works and that those were not stars, but rather jupiter and Saturn lining up near each other with some or other unknown star. BUT now they are moving, and it still amazes me that thousands of years ago, those primitive people figured out that there where stars that did not follow the same path as the other stars and then from this they worked out that they were planets orbiting something albeit our earth or to some the stars and to toehrs something else, but with the huge number of dots in the sky, the change of seasons and all of that combined they still figured out that those bright stars were doing something strange .. frigin dam amazing ..

soft puppies and all things nice

after my temporary sulk 2 days back, we have to return to reality and rather look forwards than dwell on insidious silliness. I watched a sorta nothing, but yet very interesting motivational lecture on TED yeasterday about "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life".. It was very nice, like all things soft and fluffy, but it did point to some truisms,.. if you sit on the couch and do nothing and just vegetate and don't do exercise and do anything positive you will be unhappy, something we didnt know? well yes, but she did point out a couple of things, we can only be as happy as we make ourselves. Personally for some people I suppose it is easier than for others (i hear so from the fluffy bunny brigade)?  But for some of us it is harder work, and I suppose that is what makes it more appealing to be happy and at the end of the day I really enjoy being happy and more often than not I am the source of my own unhappiness, or should I rather say some of those frigin synapses are just not doing their shit the way they should. But that aint no excuse for downright being miserable. We do have choices, those boat people from east timor had choices they got onto rickety boats and sailed towards australia, we got onto a plane, so did a whole raft of others.. whether  it be right nor wrong ;-) i wanted to say or? cant decied?, but we decided? (yes to those languofiles a ?, is a valid punctuation is this book it means a question interspersed within a statement, with special emphasis that the question is not the end of the sentence.... Here I am trying to justify my self in my own self expressionism ?,  that aint right. 

Back to puppies and bread, totally unrelated, but somehow many of us have them so they are part of our lives. There are those lucky or unlucky enough not to have either of them? Now, all considering I suppose for some it would be harder to chose between the puppy and the loaf? I even wonder if I actually really love bread, sometimes I must admit I do, othertimes, actually most of the times it is the process and the amazement that amazes me. the yeast, the gluten, the rising the knocking down, the process.. all just to cool, or I should have said, all to warm .. Ha so Corny for this time of the day.

But as we know it is all a game, we start we live, we do more. So what you going to do this evening, tomorrow and on the weekend to make a better and happier life for yourself?

 

 

 

 

knee dep in the mud and sinking

A strange thing you get to understand is that no matter how well you can bootstrap yourself there are times that you rapidly move from being in ankle deep mud to suddenly realizing believing (i am still bootstrapping) you cannot walk on mud. One moment we feel the wind through our hair, we smell the roses the next we smell the cattle manure under the roots of the rose petals. But strangely everything is just seasons and we have to understand that change does not come without its own burdens. Sometimes those shoelaces get real slippery.

But more on the changes of seasons and times, thinking back over the last few days it is hard to imagine why I suddenly find myself neck deep in the mud.. We are all entitled to our moments in the shade, a simple thing as looking at old photographs, go figure. I am busy compiling all the better pics from the first year in kiwilandia. One would imagine looking and reliving all those experiences could tip you over the edge again. But I still have those laces firmly in hand and can almost feel my shoulders breaking through the dirt.

It is time to pick up the pieces and not to be afraid ;-)

Change is good, but looking back at some things in the past is also good to keep reference and reverence. Strange now looking back at how much things have changed, we have changed. I was just looking at a fantastic website by a photographer in South America that took a series of then and now pics .. absolutely love them. Her name is Irna werning, just love this series and the second one. Somehow there are those who can create out of nothing and then we have the others, or should I say us or we that watch in awe at these simple manifestations.

To get back to the veggies, I need to find the recipe for a mini-hothouse? You may say I should have said plan, but I suppose if it is food we are talking about it must be talking about a recipe and not a plan. But let us stop being illy and get back to reality.  On the gardening note, we discovered a number of things, among them that our whippet is to big, but more importantly that whippets are know for eating expensive things.. Who would have known that? so we have to start planing again soon, we have a basic crop in, but nothing really established yet, hopefully we will get some peas and broad beans first, I am currently teraforming certain sections of our Plot into productive agricultural zones ;-) Next I suppose are the chickens, then the lean-to frames and then the tomato zones. This brought up some discussion with a friend of ours with whom i was raising the point of sustainability and survivability post an apocalyptic event. He questioned if he needed to get heirloom or other seeds in stock, but it struck me that it would not really be possible to actually prepare in  manner like this. I do not think we will be able to simply survive without being more than prepared, we should also be practiced. I think this is very akin to the 10000 hours we need to be able to do anything well, do we not also have to spend at least 10000 hours or so thinking and actually surviving and preparing for the unfortunate eventuality? It may be a dark and somber thought, but it might just be necessary? I do not think that we have to dig deep into the depths of depression and post apocalyptic preparedness. I just beleive we have to understand where we are, what we can do, what we cannot do and what we have to do to be able to survive if something does happen.

Enough melodrama and sadness for now, the days are getting longer the sun is getting brighter, soon within the next few months the seasons will change. How fragile the African heart is, yearning for the sun and the endless summer days. I have managed to move beyond shedding a tear every time i hear tambotie boom by die heuwels fantasties.  It is not unlike us to question our impact or mortality, we are a fragile being.  But soon the searun will chase the whitebait freely in the shallows of the lowland rivers, this year I hope to be ready and capture some of the beasts. 

Through all of this, there is a whole lot of silliness, but to be human is to be silly. How fragile we are and how we change over time, sometimes vulnerable others strong, at times we are brave, other times we cower like small fluffy animals sitting in cave grooving with a pict. I view with interest a whole lot of peoples Flickr accounts, not only because of the pictures they take, but rather the progression of their pictures over time. Some of the people become bold, very bold, others tend to remain the same. It is interesting taking a temporal view over peoples lives through their photographs and postings. I suppose my postings in flickr are relatively  tame and stationary in terms of dramatic changes and trends. Yet I cannot say I am unaffected by trends and things I see, granted I cannot replicate those things as that in my mind would make me a facsimile and not me, but I suppose we are just facsimiles of our environment.

a late start to the day

been a bit pre-occupied here, transition and all. But I did have some thoughts on the train yesterday or was it today? Not to sure about when it was?

I was considering in the context of best practices and how many of the best practices we assume to be absolute are not fictitious manifestations created by product vendors. At first thought this really does relate tremendously to the IT environment where the best way to do something, an industry best case scenario the following holds ... etc etc.  I was thinking mainly in terms of BI and databases in the first instance, but after wondering about it for a little while I realised that this could be found in almost any industry or technology or skill set. Granted, often we do rely on technology and then drive things towards a best fit in terms of the available technology. Have we had the chance to stand back and see if there is a better way of actually doing things.

We are now hurtling down the route of tablets and smart phones and everything is being forced into this form factor even though this may not be the appropriate form factor for doing our work in let alone living our lives entangled between mobility and social media. It is entirely possible that this may not be the most appropriate or applicable route to live our life or even do our business through.  But that might just be speculation on my part, all hail Steve, no not Steve Erwin.

On a more somber note, it is raining and raining. yes it looks a little like the piano now in Wellington. No not really, but I do suppose that it is possible to see things in a very bad light if you saw the weather here on a bad week. But like all things the bad weather passes here. All that can be said about Wellington weather is that, yes we have weather and lots of it and it will change and there is a good chance that it may not be exactly what the weatherman said it would be ..:/  strangely we are moving rapidly towards the 2 year mark in our stay in new Zealand. To recap what has changed, everything ;)

Change is good, bad and every other possible emotion all wrapped into one. We sometimes don't always think things through enough, says he who micro~thinks things at times. When we are under pressure we often think we need to make a change and slowly or rapidly hurl ourselves into the change, often glorifying what we expect out of the change. Things are often nowhere near what we expect, both in a good and bad way. I suppose we have to experience these things first hand to be able to realise this, yet would not be able to realise this without going through it. the end point being that we are theoretically better of in the end. All I can say is that often through change we will highlight things we never thought we would, in terms of features and facts and feelings we never expected ... starting to ramble on a bit here, am going to have to cut this short and get back to the task at hand.

what is important to us

Following on what i mumbled, albeit incompletely, about yesterday, our inner child or other selves. The thing we want to be, wished to be, could be;-), should have been. All of these are technically unimportants .. What!sic! the frig you may say? No seriously we are what we are, we are a construct of that which we have made ourselves, not discounting that we can change, and moreso than others having gone through a couple of changes, I can attest to it being hard with a capital F.  Through all of this we keep a thread as to what is important to us.  I think we also have to state that i am not debating religion or anything nearly that fundamental. There are some creature comforts that we all love and live by, cup of coffee, cigarette, tea, good bread, smoked paprika, red wine or whatever it is. I am not judging you, and I hope you are not judging me.

While chatting to someone on my mobile phone, the person not being on this desolate windswept and wet island, while she was watching the piano after not having seen if for a number of years indicated how wet it looked ... Yes how wet is my muddy lawn. somehow in the same way there are things we think are important to us like sunshine and summer, we can  change and learn to love other things, granted I do not think i would take to kindly to walking barefoot on my lawn in winter .. now there I draw the line, the feeling of the cold mud squelching between my toes, is possibly one tactile sensation that I would not advise for anytime of the day.

But to return to those things that we find important at a microscopic level, a good cup of coffee always seems to set a tone for things. In the same way a bad cup can really rune things. that sounds so silly if you say it like that, not exactly what and how I was wanting to say what I meant to. Granted, I live in one of the "coffee capitals" of the world, wellington having an anecdotal claim to having one of the highest numbers of coffee shops per capita for a "city" ne a small "city". I think on my list of things to do is still to try and document all the coffee shops that exist currently in wellington. You would have to note my carefully worded sentence around currently, as wellington is totally amazing in that way. A shop will be there one day and then suddenly it is gone and a day later or week later a new shop is in residence and no one even notices. There are long standing shops of course, but the speed at which things can change in a shopfront is totally amazing.

But getting back to what is important to us? I remember before i left ZA i spoke to a friend and said one of my key concerns about going to kiwilandia was that I would be able to at least afford to drink good coffee at home. In some ways it is way better than justa good cup of coffee.. there are an abundance of rostaries within reasonable walking distance from my office. I can walk and buy freshly roasted beans, granted i believe that another friend would possibly scoff because I am not roasting the green beans for myself in a way that would suite them.. maybe another day, currently I still have to make the perfect loaf of bread,   have the perfect day of fishing, catch a moki, cycle around the southern coast, cycle to tora .. Damn the list is getting longer. I think maybe for me it is important to dream and have things i want to do, that are possibly a little unattainable, giving me a challenge to complete them. Yet the sad thing is that once we have done things we want to do other things.

Maybe this weekend I will drink the perfect coffee, make the perfect loaf catch  the perfect fish all for the weekend in question..   regarding the perfect loaf, my mind is not a twix regarding how to make the multicoloured Rastafarian rainbow bread. I um undecided whether to create a plaited or layered bread, only by Friday evening or maybe only on Saturday we will find out?

you got to question what would your 10 year old self say

I wish I had said that sentence, but I didnt.. But it is a definite truism to me, not having ever done that It might give us more perspective and appreciate some of the cool that is us and that which we take for granted.  However, sometimes we do need some propping up. What is it we do to prop ourselves up? Stranger than fiction everyone does things their 10 year old self would be proud of.. note yes this is positive and not negative. I prefer watching movie trailers, they are so cool, the amount of drama, melodrama and action are paced and set at a rate and intensity as to capture and move us to a state of wonderment. I just love going to movie theater websites and watching the trailers one after the other, what does it do.. it makes me feel momentary glimpses of happiness, sadness, excitement and then it is done and If i need a real pickerupper.. We can always turn to those super soppy clips from who wants to be America's next star etc ensv etc.. silly, but my 10 year old self would be proud. But actually as a post thought got to the scandinavian sites .. way more enlightening .. or actually my virtual people i follow on front side fly and jazz and fly fishing .. hysterical at times.. Oh and on a side note I see the Fly Fishing rabbi has published a book.. Am in two minds about buying it.. but FRIG the costs of postage and all .. just insane ... let me think it over and get back to you.

I sometimes get pulled in by the spiral of life and plunge headlong down the abyss of desolation and self pity.  We all do and do not really try to hard to get ourselves out as it is easier to stay there and feel sorry for ourselves as this is the security blankie we carry around with us, rather than beating our way through it and viewing the world with wonderment.

More importantly I may have mentioned in the past about us being mere reflections of those around us, we chose which mirror to hold up, unlike mirrors it appears that pieces, glints and reflections seem to wash off onto us and make us who we are. But it is sad when some of the reflections grow dimmer and fade, unlike their actual vibrance. Actually returned and rethought this .. It is very SAD...

blabla sentimentalism..

I discovered something else new, well not new and I should have said re rather than the word alone. I was listening to bbc4 podcasts (bbc4 thinnking allowed and desert island disks ..), what fantastic content for a good part of the time, baring the last podcast I listened to about kinship.

back to sentamentalism for a moment, I suspect there are few of us who are not susceptible to a momentary lapse of stoicism.

Well trying to type while getting the day started is becoming increasingly difficult, will have to put these thoughts on hold till tomorrow. Well back for a second, but gone again..

a new week

a new week and already 1 post missed last week and it is Tuesday already, slow week, slow start.

So in an up and down world, full of turmoil we move on chronologically. Time shifts on, more kiwi get moed by the local iwi onto Mana Island, will this change the mana of the island?  The escaped squirrels multiply while escaping in Japan, or possibly they cannot count, or in certain cases 30 does in fact equal 38.

So where are we now this week, I have finished Freakanomics, I am neither impressed or unimpressed. It is what it is, it is not a black swan, but it is also not nothing. I cannot say that it profoundly altered the way i thought or think about things or the "correlations" he made, I must admit there is a bit of freedom in the causality vein. The correlations are implied and may be real, but causality still hangs on a thread.

In terms of status quo, puppy still has many compared to me, chewing another of my shoes .. But she seems to have left the garden alone for a while now and does not seem to be trying to hard to eat the rest of the garden, so we may still get some broadbeans and peas .. The spinach and radishes on the other hand were doomed from the start it seems.

WE managed to make real barbie bread this weekend, which was not at as expected. We decided to, the we implies the royal Me, make beetroot bread, which according to the authors of the bread book state the crust has a pleasant and exiting colour. I cannot deny in any way that the colour and texture of the outside of the bread are in anyway flawed. Granted "I should have possibly measured a little more exactly when it came to the volumes of grated beetroot though. Eventhough the bread was tasty and looked a little like it was bleeding when you cut it.. I liked it, it has in a way inspired me to make a plaited Rastafarian pumkin, beetroot and something green ( no not that green :-), maybe Basil) loaf of bread. I think it could be pretty amazing looking. We will have to wait and see what the weekend  brings to us? Maybe just a subtle carrot and cardamom  loaf may do the trick or maybe just carrot and cumin.. who knows only the wekend will..

On more amazing things I learnt this week, firstly that tofu, bean, spinach and onion cottage pie is pretty damn awesome. This was a recipe I came up with over the weekend. As testimony even the children asked for seconds, for a vegetarian recipe is not to bad. Any one wanting the recipe just needs to send me  message, same with the purple beetroot bread ..:-) But to the other amazing thing I learnt this morning, being that there are some strange people out there. The one being the dude on the train who I have not seen for some time. He hurt his Achilles tendons some time back and was forced to have an operation to correct this malady. I spoke to him to day, and he, and now me discovered that he has arthritis in his big toes a feet, which may have been the actual reason for his Achilles tendon damage in the first place.. But this is actually not really the point I am trying to make about the dude on the train. He is self medicating with a steady and fairly high dosage of tumeric and ginger, which are both apparently very good natural anti-inflammatory agents. So he has in this bottom end of the world island managed to procure some fresh fijian grown tumeric root which he mixes with fresh ginger to make a tea which he drinks .. who would have known?

I learnt about the raspberry pi as well.. now that is something else completely. To return to things organic and growing, the seasons have reached a midpoint and the days are lengthening again. Please notice I did not say the weather is turning.. It has turned for the  worse :-)  But the seasons are changing and I hope this year to be ahead of the seasons and actually try to plan and plant for the season to come and plant at the earliest time and not at the end of the cycle. I think 2 years have passed and the initial shock has passed and that I can now start searching for seeds again and I can find some heirloom veggies and plant Hoe .. well lets see who this year goes .. as a catalogue we have, the same we, planted broad beans trice to combat dog damage, peas trice again, sweet peas thrice, spinach thrice (i still need to replant again) and we ahve planted the apple tree and removed the flax. I think I may just be ahead of things this year. I think this year we will attempt to grow marrows, tomoatoes and whatever the F^&*^& will grow and doesnt get dug up by our sweetest little shoe and vegetable eating puppy.

On the same note, I saw the puppy I would get if I had the choice and money though. Yes albeit that they cause untold damage and mayhem I would like another sausage dogleton. I will get a long haired or wire haired terrier.

Well time to get back to work and get lunch and all those good things and of course back to thinking about fishing and when i will go again and plan things around that.

another day another page

To not let myslef down on day three, albeit rather difficult to pen, sic!, what I am thinking to virtual paper, maybe I should be writing it onto paper. suddenly a flurry of thoughts entered my brain.

what can we say about tactile sensitivity, this can be a challenging thing to suffer from especially when you are tyring to make bread, sorry love making bread.. and somehow I just cannot make bread by not using my hands to kneed the bread. anita says the bread is the same when you use the machine, I beg to differ. But On another point it can be considered that I create the need to kneed by hand, by not needing a recipe, or neigh not choosing to use a recipe but to rather rely on tactile sensitivity to determine if the correct or should i rather say desired texture, density and moisture content are reached. To return to the tactile sensitivity, it really makes it hard, well to be truthful I suppose i dont have "tactile sensitivity", but rather display a sense of sensitivity to the slimy nature of the wet dough and how it clings to your skin and worms its way into the edges of your nails, but the feeling of wet dough on your hands or fingers is just so creepy...

Well enough of that trivia for the day, to return to the Moa's and the Rhino's. One wonders how long it will be before there are no more rhino's. It is a SAD but realist possibility. There are massive areas in Africa and the world where we are wiping everything out. Note, yes I used "we" as we are all part of this directly or indirectly. By eating fish that isn't farmed or sustainability harvested we are dredging the seas into a lifeless pond.  But it does bring into question in a world where we are highly regulated and controlled by our elected officials where our responsibility for protecting the planet comes in. We have unknowingly/knowingly  proxied our votes to our governments and to the likes of the UN who make decisions on our part. Lonesome George is gone... he and his kind are gone forever. The flightless parrot in NA is down to a handfull.

Sometimes I do suspect we must be careful not to employ sentimentalism in the cases of animals who evolutionary freaks and dead ends. They will unfortunately not make it, and often the effort required to protect them may outweigh the benefits in the end, albeit that there is a sense of duty, place and auxiliary effects that do come into play.  

I cannot say, I am an individual with my mind, with little or no affiliation to any government or organization with little more than my own internal judgment and moral compass to guide me. Granted having being immersed in science and pseudo science for some time did give me a grounding, but am I at liberty to discuss this? Not sure, but I do suspect we all have a right and more importantly a duty to consider and think about these things and at the end of the day we need to follow our internal moral compass and make the right decision and realise that abdication of responsibility is also a crime. At this point in time the level of responsibility we have is proxied to our elected officials or should i rather say those people at the other end of the political process.

but enough said, i just know I will rue the day the last salmon enters the river from the sea never to return, the day the last trout returns, the day the last yellowfish is seen in the muddy rivers of Africa, all through the greed of our species.

More contemplation tomorrow on nothing, something and eerythying

Rhinos, moas and doddos

Yes, unfortunately there was a lapse in my typing words in for a while.. yes lazyness and just plain and simple slapgadgyt..

I had already broken one of my resolutions for the year .. no, no, no, not new years ones .. yes ones that pass me every moment and i find I write them down on a notepad next to me on the Desk .. Unlike Some of you ... Who write them in a notebook in your pocket or lose the notebook.. I tried the notebook.. lose it fast than you can say.. what was I saying again.. Oh yes I should correctify you, when i said notebook I meant a small object around the size of a 30 pack of cigarettes that people used to take notes on the back off.. This object combiens a whole raft of lose pages and binds them in the middle to create something called a book, not to be confused with an ereader or ipad .. and hell no not a portable computer or laptop as it is known in some circles.  On a tangent I was at the airport a few weeks back and I saw some moleskine books .. they just looked so awesome and I had to buy myself one for a scribble book.. But hell NO.. not at $9 NZD for a pocket sized book.. landed up buying one at Pete's Emporium (for the afrikanites this is very much like Ruby's combined with plastilon combined with Makuluupaan but with a kiwi flavour and filled with chinese and other cheap items).  This book forms part of resolution 2 of 4534653465 resolutions.

To get back to writing this blog again, I read that if you want to be able to write better, you have to write as much as you can all day and not try to write war and piece as your first attempt. The notion is to try and write as many short stories and novella's and the likes .. try for one a day or a week then eventually by the law of the dumb monkey eventually you a. might give up and have nothing to show, b. land up being like the monkey and accidentally channel a story onto paper  or c. actually develop a small amount of writing skill.. apparently it is a little like jogging? cannot really see the significance in that, but hey it is better to write and moan and groan than to sit here and do nothing and sulk. At least it will be irritating, entertaining or something of the likes to someone who accidentally finds this blog on Google or the likes when searching for something totally different Like Llamas or sushi or fishing or hells bells something serious.

To get back to the rhinos.. are we doomed as a species to destroy everything around us, don't for a bit think the rhinos are the first or the last to suffer this fate. somehow there is a disconnect between us and the planet we live on. Go read last chance to see, watch the documentary, then go watch the stephen fry revisited documentary. It is saddening how we as humans find it impossible to put things in perspective. I see how we are slowly depleating the seas, we are killing all the animals, we are wanting to frack the crap out of the ground to release oils instead of finding an alternative way of powering and moving ourslelves, we as humans dont seem to be able to break the disconnect between ourselves and this little patch of blue and green in the solar system.  Why we cannot have forward thinking governments who actually look into questioning why we need extensive gardens and why we Don't have shared veggie gardens with our neighbors, why we dont have mandatory grey water systems, why we don't all have solar heating and solar electricity for at least a part of what we do, it is  a simple thing to promulgate. why we dont have shared chicken cages, shared fish ponds with our neigbors and community members. It is because we are all greedy and worry about ourselves and somehow have forgotten that we are part of the us and the us includes our neigbors and our environment and planet.. But hay you cannot blame people for chasing the green, they jsut chasing the wrong green.

Well that is more than enough ranting for one day, lets hope we can change all of this? Maybe one day we can all have a better life?

I am just a Llama farmer

well mostly no one really farms them they rather farm alpachas they have better wool? Or emus seem to be popular in certain circles.

But the reality of this is?

Tilapiasis should be the thing of the future, but sometimes the reality and the rationality and the idealism just don't seem to mesh. a whole lot of really fragmented and mixed thoughts and emotions are flowing through me and a whole lot of others. The time  is now and the emotions are rife, strange synchronisity at different parts and locations fo the Globe, one would imagine in the worst case that there is some form of interconnectedness in all of this? I doubt it.. Or maybe we are entering the early stages of the singularity where we subliminally are questioning our existence due to the onset of electronic intelligence.  Life is easier, life is harder, we have found the missing matter in the universe. Not sure what the last third is, the first third makes sense, the second highly distributed hydrogen clouds almost makes sense .. but the third is warm hot intergalactic medium (you think i am making this up .. go read one of the latest new scientists).

But the reality is we live, we work to hard, we have little to show other than life. what does this tell us? we can or must change, but we often say to what. The rational inside says, you cannot, you should not, but then there are so many who live like they feel. Granted each of these choices has a cost and an implication.

Why we cant just pack up and drift along, well I suppose we are inside the contruct we chose to be part of, albeit that it weighs us down and pulls us down. But we are part of that construct out of the millions of alternatives available that we chose to live. Granted some of us have more or less choices than others and sometimes the choices are more or less silly or cynical. Paramount to all of this is that we are all just constructs of that which we create for ourselves and express in a way that we feel is best to express ourselves.

But it is with sadness that I say I miss some of my other persona's the current one is an anachronistic, polytheistic, disconnected, relocated mess. Yet in between all of this mess is a sort of clarity like never before. We moved, we are, we stand alone on the other end of the planet on a small windy island in the middle of the cold. sometimes, more often than not we question why we are here. In actual fact we are here because we chose to be here and we chose this because it was better. We still nto always sure what is better about it, but apparently is is better. There are a lot of things that are better and more and amplified. emotions and melodrama runs deep. Our hearts are filled with a yearning for something that is not here, yet our lives were unextricably torn away from that life, forcing us to create another life. sometimes I do think it is cruel and Jobian notion that some of us will always be washing dishes, some of us will allways be changing. There are things that remain the same.

The electronic celluloid that holds our memories together in the images we have over time are scant indication of that which has past.  Over time that seems to be the only constant that remains. The photos from day to day to week to month to year. Capturing what the eye sees and doesnt see and sometimes a combination of that and what the mind wishes it saw. Unendingly I continue to document everything that passes my eyes in the hope that .. well I am still figuring that one out.

I suppose we all have something to figure out, we all yearn for something.  I often walk down the street and marvel at the way react to their environment. the expression of self in the context to others. Maybe here more so than in other places people have an expression through tattoo and clothes. But the key to me is not that I mind, but in certain cases I do believe it looks silly.  The actual question I have is about the collective consciousness groups have in terms of identity. Sometimes it fills me with wonderment and amazement and at other times I question and wonder if it is not just a poor cop out .. I look and see  all these victims of fashion and culture and subculture and then as if struck by a bolt of reality I am struck by my own part in this image. I look at the hipsters and fashionista in melbourne and auckland and cannot but think how false this is. I am  then struck by memories of my own past. I am struck by how I behaved/behave.  We are what we wear and what we wear is what we are and we are what we think we we are and we are but merely a piece of a global milieu.

No you wont find answers here .. just questions

a lonely passenger
green blue azure sea and sky 
waiting for tomorrow

days of sun and slicks

those days
filled with azure, grey and swarms of slicks
the dusty emu hides

Down the Rabbit hole

as"life is absurd and it makes no sense"

strangely we sit and time passes, history unfolds, people document angles others dont. Some of our history fades into significance and others turns into the vapours of time. Somehow there seems to be a difference between the documented and undocumented past of our race. Humanity used in the loosest sense has undergone changes and waves, covering a past we know nothing of.

We dream of dragons, of giant crocodiles, not having ever seen these dragons. Something inside our conscious and subconscious meme we call our origin, tells a tale we cannot remember. I thought I had left all of this behind, a different part of the world and a history clouded with lies, deceit and inaccuracies.

Ok so the cursory apology is inserted in here .. the first piece was written some months ago, circa 29 february.

a lot of time has drifted between then and now.. yet i can see i may have dawdled off on another tangent but returned back to the same point.
In the past a lot more I also thought a lot about dragons and dreams and giant crocodiles. these are all still part of some of the aboriginal cultures. I read an interesting article about giant bird paintings in caves that precede our current eurocentric collective memories. These birds were similar to the moa, yet the died out even longer back. Even here there is a fragmentation in terms of whether the current "memories" of moa are those of the indigini of this island of it is something that precedes the maori and comes from the moariri ..? who knows
but what is evident is that we know little of that which went before us, how many of us knew of the amazing library in Lisboa that burnt down in the 15th century after the massive earthquake, or about the Tsunami's along this broken coast or the Japanese tsunami markers hidden in the forest. 

But none of this is actually all that topical is it, we worry about things that are inevitable, we stand to one side and watch as we slowly dip into the sea, or the sea slowly takes us back.

I dreamt of raindrops fighting in the clouds
fighting to return to the highest peaks
trying to get out of the sea and to return to the white
the stark clear depths of the planet

We chase them all back and down to the sea again
for how much longer


was watching a movie recently that sparked some though inside, especially around the way water just keeps pouring into the sea and how little we know about the fish in the rivers. One thing that was evident was that there was something in their genes driving them up.. These is something inside of us pulling and pushing us along the path forwards.

Oh and some things do change,  once again the pre-birthday exhistential crisis hit, I suppose it was bound to after an absence of a couple of years.. It was bound to hit with some vengence.. This time it hit straight between the eyes, not giving me chance to cower or seek cover. I stood paralyzed by my own brain. Going through and through silly things, not knowing which way, filled with fear, remorse, sadness and a general sense of melancholy all compressed into 2 and a half days. This passed, I recovered and it is another year, I did not herald this in the way I have in the past with my normal ancient European fervor....

But over time things must change, onwards and forwards, with an ever clear and present memory of the past.

back again soon I hope..

take a wlk on the wilde side

so I sat on my chair and thought, mostly nothing came into my brain, and No! I have not written more often, evne though i am now trying to tickle the keyboards to invoke something out of the realms of my mind.

So once again for a moment I feel sad.. But not in a bad way, in way that accepts that I will walk alone like the stragner in  strange land ;-) there the melodrama is done for today.

I was reading Koos Kombuis's blog this morning, terribly insightful, but saddening for to many reasons to mention, a few simple ones being that I am not there to share that metamorphosis. But I am here undergoing another metamorphosis, from an idealistic fly~fisherman into someone who would fling a dead fish into the sea hoping to catch a living one.. somehow the trade-off is just to crazy, and smelly .. But when the wind blows there is not a lot more I can do in terms of fishing.  It is a strange land I live in now, a day filled with a strange sense of acceptance and a life elsewhere.

The people mill around me, I have little or no relation to in any sense, when the cricket is on I am not sure who to support? But that is life.. strange times for strange people.

I went to a meeting at my fly fishing club last night where there was a Very heated debate about the future of water in the small coastal hamlet/town that the club can be found in. What is strange is the immense amount of debate and discussion and process that is involved in this community and its debate about water security and the impact on people, the Iwi and effectively their sense of place argument, the existence of the river fauna and the fly fishermen and the future and population growth. It is a crazy place this place full of hobits, humans and halflings. Somehow I had things to offer in terms of discussion but was not actually sure that any of this had any relevance or reference. It is a strange thing sitting within  a cocoon of difference, note not! indifference.

So I question, where we will be in 2, 5, 10 years from now? I question this not only from my perspective or my immediate surrounds, my lost friends, my distant friends, AfriKa, the human race and the planet lastly.

Disturbia, the brain twists and forms twine

we thread beads of life on the threads created within our brains,
shinny, dull and bold
we watch as the rays of sun shine through, reflect and transmit the essence around us

and after a days Hiatus I will complete this post, based in part on a blog I read today, this is a fascinating blog, not because it is good or bad, btw it is not to bad ;-) But mroe importantly because in between all of the things this young lady blogs abouts and blogs about tweets and and social media and things.. There was an interesting article about her ideas being an immigrant and about meeting people and generally interesting things from her, But key to all of this was what lead me to this was the article she wrote about what Stephen Fry tweeted about regarding the poor Kiwi bandwidth. This was all over the news in Kiwilandia.

One of the key issues Marian wrote about was also regarding twitter and media and and, which is rather interesting to me, with my nominal interest in the interwebs and what goes on, in them.

So what else did it guide me to thinking? It is interesting what people write about on their blogs, he says in abject introspection ;-)

But it is interesting and what it pointed out is how to make a blog more readable and most probably read by more people, stay away from the morose I asume:-/ Damn that is going to be hard, Talk about the Books you have read ... mm i read to slowly.. or not that I read so slowly but that i read fast but for very limited time periods:-)

Well let me try.. No not Today.

On other fronts .. What si that i want to achieve over the next couple of weeks  let alone worrying about to much beyond that:-)

I suppose i need to land a trout from the hutt valley again, especially on the evening rise, that has been tormenting me .. I now need to land a moki after hooking and losing one at Orongorongo.

I am undecided about what to take more photos off.... there are just to many already on my flickr profile...  But I suppose it is a compulsion to keep taking photos.. Not much I can do about that.

I received a map from a cycle shop in wellington which BTW gave me fantastic service at a reasonable price (the bike barn.. just down the drag from courtney place).. would recommend them, not like some of the other PATHETIC and OVERPRICED cycle shops in Wellington. Oh yes, this is a map of all the cycle routes inside the greater wellington metro, yes I know about tracks.org.nz and all the others, but this is real neat and it has shown me a couple new routes that i can try for my cycle home.. I found one more hill to try on my route home that I had imagined would be do~able .. now i found the semblance of a route through that part of newlands through grenada to takapu road.. yet to the bulk of you.. I am sure that is OMG WTF are you going on about ... But it is what i do .. I MTB for the fun of it all around wellington and its surrounds ..

And then a strange thing on the train today, I walked to the station today, like I do at least once a week (and don't cycle).. yes it is a fair walk about 45 min at a brisk walk/jog.. And one of my "train friends" asked me why i do that.. and i replied to get fit and she then said .. but you have been doing this for a while .. are you not fit yet ;-) Well i suppose i am .. Just want to get fitter and tackle some real long scenic rides around wellington .. and A LOT of them involve walking with your bike for a piece/part of the journey .. yes walking your bike is sometimes easier .. unless it is a near vertical pathway ..

oh well that is enough for now ..
So from now one there will be more irrelevance inside the relevance that i glean off the interblades and webs..

changing and keeping the good

I know this is getting repetitive .. but this is the way things roll here ..

I was thinking a little more about changing and wracking my brain about how why what when how.. But of course I try not to detract from living.

I suppose we cannot change everything we have got as it is a function of that which we are, in a factor equivalent phylogentic inertia .. just got to love that..

But I decided that there are things i wont change, I like fishing.. no actually I love it.. I like cycling .. i was born on a bicycle .. and and and
But it often seems like we do things and we forget why we are doing them, the cycling is a good example.. I love cycling, but I was cycling in a way that I did not enjoy it.. I was trying to get fitter faster and all .. but that is not why i cycle .. i cycle because I enjoy it .. and that has its own benefits ..

I like fishing  more than I like catching fish.. a strange thing, but the silence the nothing is meditative .. Dont get me wrong.. catching is also good..
I realised this after watching a video blog of a crazy bunch of slavic dry fly fishermen .. and one of their video blogs in specific.... the one about the Mayfly god .. It cemented what i like about fishing, the outdoors, the exitement.. the ambiance .. I eventually understand the hip flash and tweed brigade ... It is not the fishing.. it is creating the image and living the image ..
Yes there is the aspect of actually catching fish .. but this is not about that only ..
and the people you meet while you are doing it..
But .. something else.. this is not all :-)
The sounds of water, walking through water, the river running past the sound of rising trout, crashing waves, lapping water all ads to the mystique 

And taking pictures..
I stopped enjoying this for a short while, but then over the last week i took about 1200 photos and amazingly i was happy with more than 200-300 of them..
but i still sometimes question what to do with them :-) we will have to wait and see ..

I think we think to much and do to little and focus on the things that dont matter and think about the things that do matter and in the end dont do to much of either and live within a hamster cycle of churning round and round and going nowhere till our legs are to tired to run on the wheel and we retire to the couch...

Btw another thing I have forgotten that I really love in all of this is foreign language movies.. and yes i sometimes question if they are all that good, but somehow being exposed to a form of expression that is so dissimilar to ours as possible both in language, ethics, metaphor and idiom.

And the other thing I really do like is watching movie trailers .. they tend to encapsulate the entire movie in a moment.. yes sometimes the length of the movie is required,,, but at other times they actually tell you the entire story in a trailer .. and it is Fantastic .. especially short feel good movie trailers .. no tedium.. just the feel good punchline... hey I am a victim of our fastfood!instantgraticationculture that we have been exposed to .. where our lives are lived through 144 character length bites .. no not Bytes .. ;-) yes twitter, SMS, facebook status's ..

and I sometimes question what life would be without them ..
At times I want to just unplug .. but strangely it is through these virtual immediate gratification cultural devices that I lead my strangely distant and singular life with its nominal interactions comming through the media which is so different to the life that i wish to lead .. In a sense it displays an extreme sense of anachronism within my personality.. maybe not so much anachronistic but dialectically and bifurcated existence ..

But all I know is the fly that catches the most fish is the one in the water not the one in our imagination .. and our life is the transposition of that which is unreal into the world which is unreal and turning it into a momentary glimpse of an image we have created of how things should be.

enough for now ..

What we do with our lives and a strange dream

Where top start, we move across the ends of the globe. We hope to change our lives, but fundamentally it is so easy to fall back into old habits.
But it is possible to change, change is the wind that blows through our hair..


where do i start with this tale or is it a tail? you decide?
I dreamt i stood in a house with my grandfather and he wore a tweed aht, but he didnt, my cousins where there the house was full of kagel kakkies (ornaments), which my aunt and cousins were stripping out of the h0us3.
the doors where double locked, as in there were to 2 doors.. one in front of the other
we had to sign out when we left..
This may all have to do with me reading American Gods on a borrowed ipad, at night in the bed before i sleep, but I digress. It was so strange.

Yesterday I stood staring at the ripples in the stream, fish rising and rolling in the water and now thinking back on that I realise I have changed, and am changing.

Some things stay the same though..

I flew to Singapore a couple of weeks back for a conference, you may say WTF .. why you telling us this now, we know that.. we have seen the pictures on facebook.. No that is not what I wanted to tell you!

 I flew and it was a long flight..
I sat and stayed awake to fight off the possible jetlagging :-)
no i stayed awake to watch movies and drink free red wine (yes that is mroe like me isnt it)
So what is the point, none actually other than I had one of the most amazing experiences ever, as I was flying over the northern parts of Australia i peeked out of the window more than a couple of times. The bulk of the plane were all sleeping as they were all conencting to somewhere else in Europe.. So what did I see.. I dont think words could explain what I saw both in my eyes and in my mind, moreso in my mind. There was an endless see of Red sand with long parallel red dunes running for hundreds of kilometers .. not only was this an amazing spectacle on its own, but the sky was filled with a range of different fluffy clouds, yes now is the time to listen to fluffy clouds by the Orb, huge bi cumulonimbus clouds and high altitude clouds, but more amazing than this was the spectacular scattered thunderstorms all over the desert sky, yes this was significantly affected by the amount of Free Red wIne I had had.. But it was amazing flying at high altitude watching the rain plummet down on some of the lucky farmers and not on the others .. amazing..

I do miss the desert I do miss Red sand I do miss the dry.. But that is not saying that there is no splendour and wonder here . But I do think a trip into that dust would be good.

But stranger than that there are not a lot of beetles here in kiwilandia? For someone with a fondness no fondle~ness for beetles .. this is a hard thing to live without.

what else has transpired, there is an AWESOME new band that I discovered via Shalome called Kongos.
they are a pretty awesome 4piece band from the states who originally were born in ZA.


Part 2:


another life in another continent,
I was wondering, well actually am still wondering if it is  possible to change yourself totally? Can we re-invent ourselves, I know i mentioned this above and before. I say this not only with reference to myself but to others I see and observe.  How much inertia is there in our personalities, akin to phylogenetic inertia? Can we alter course simply be moving to another continent?  I think environment plays some role in this, allowing us to change a lot through a fresh perspective and with a difference reference point. You are saying those two words are the same thing? Not with reference to what perspective i see this .. LOL, I will stop being silly.

How many of us manage to make a significant number of changes to our lives, were do we start?

attitude, diet, actions, intent, solace, understanding, acceptance and not least belief

not sure what that means, it just seemed meaningful in the  moment.

Attempting to start over and create a new life, where do we start?
(cyclicly please dont repeat this document again.. that would be boring
:-)
)

we have eaten pumpkin flowers,
we have baked sour bread,
we have eaten sushi,
what have we to do next?

why is it so hard, yet so easy and contradictory

but this sums it up for the day

... And finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant and not nearly so much fun.” 
― Robert Traver

 

and one last thing though I realised this week was I travel therefore I take pictures

cannot just leave it alone, no they are not photographs they are pictures taken with a camera capturing a perspective and point in time.. ;-)

things I have to do:

write more,

read more,

laugh more,

walk barefoot more,

taste the freshness of nature,

watch rivers flow,

sit still,

and fish more