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.