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