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?