to recap

One wonders, or i should say, sometimes I wonder, or was that sometimes we wonder in third person, not withstanding the immediate loss of direction. I wonder what context shifts occur on a momentary basis within that which is me?

My life is based on the context that I experience it in, paradoxically this becomes a paradox that returns and gives itself context giving meaning to things that have no meaning.

As the tides of life ebb and flow through my daily life, days turn into weeks and months and years. I sit and recap and realise that which was is no longer and what is, is no longer what it was. I cannot say it is with regret that i look back, but there are moments where I stand transfixed and cannot move my feet in the quagmire that is my life. I am trapped in the construct which i have created for myself which espouses freedom of thought and challenging and facing things head on in life and doing things that challenge. Life itself is a daily challenge, without it life loses some of its meaning, yet the challenge weighs me down at times, some of it self inflicted at other times circumstantial. But as we accept, was going to say know, that we are the masters of our own destiny. That is if we disregard the possibility of predestination.

to return to the immediate and clearer current reality, i should recap on that which has taken place and that which has not. my list of personal achievements have grown by the day, making pierogi and anything under the sun, making beer, which is a natural extension of breadmaking. The agents remain similar but the target differs.

strangely hours before, words and emotions were cursing through my brain, you may have chosen coursing, but truly it is a curse when the Black dog runs untethered through the halls within my head. And for what it barks, only the maker knows. all i know is that the sweet smell of salt and seaweed consoles my inner being, as mud splatters across my face, the back of my bag and i bounce panically across the paths on my daily mountain biking trail on the way to and from work, The regular tightening of the sphincter as i plunge headlong bouncing down the tracks, everything in tension, ironically removing the tension of the day, albeit cautiously i plummet down these tracks with only minor skirmishes with   gravity  which luckily I have overcome without major maladies.

I still search for the ultimate tastes across my palette, recently I tasted some real French champagne,  It is totally transfixing to imagine how the author of this glorious elixir managed to capture the sun, the vine, autumn and the afternoon golden light in the bottle, encasing it all in magical mysterious minute bubbles.. Which I would love to insert into some of my home brews, these are miraculous in their own right. I refused to make a bre4w containing pre-prepared ingredients and went straight to all grain brewing, skipping the extract and kit brews. This allowed me to perform minor miracles in the kitchen and garage, ending with wonderful potions such as fig beer and lest not forget the mysterious Saison or farm ale which at many levels speaks to  me.

I suppose partly this recap is to catch up on some of the pieces i wrote in my mind over the time that has passed.

more on the books i read and have not read.. I eventually finished a god of small things on the second attempt .. a fantastically complex book, but more recently I started on antifragile by Nassim taleb.. which is fantastic in a totally different way. More on this later.

But lets try and recap some notes from evernote:

So where to go again

Moments pass, happiness floods through, it passes they steal away. This morning I have seen a few mostly amazing things, a beard book.. go search for it.. 

men with beards.. just to amazing .. there is an annual ernest Hemmingway competition .. which if only I had a full head of hair..

Photos of wondering monks in Ethiopia and India..  (Portraits of Wandering Ascetic Monks by Photographer Joey L)

I saw some more amazing exhibitions this weekend, including some time lapse photography, got seaweed, made some seaweed soup for the garden, with fish heads in side.

more later ...

book titles and reading list for the year and the subconscious art of generating things through the paradigm of a million monkeys

Just thinking about a possible reading list and to do activities for the next year.  what do you think I should read next year? or at least start again this year?
this would of course exclude all the fluff we read in between like the beer brewing and recipe books and other general informational stuff..
I think in the light of the previous post yesterday where I mentioned the Viking ceremony, “we”, most probably I, possibly need/Feel that it is time again for another stock take, we have been here a little over 3 years and  time drifts and waits for no manman or woman or manwoman or womanman or others.  So at this point to re-enact this I would need a chalice or preferably a drinking horn, maybe i need some mead or some farm ale.
I must apologise, I did not complete this on time yesterday? But in a way I don’t feel bad about it because  at this stage there is only 1 or are2 or 3 people who actually read this on the blogosphere, and to be honest it is not really life changing? And there is little or no feedback or response on the page anyway?
I got to thinking yesterday they day before about possible abdication or removal of my self from the social media world, but realised after a it of thought that there are actually a few people who I sincerely do keep active contact with and it perform as fairly well as a format to share information and interesting things with, But I do feel a rather wholesale culling coming on.. Think this has a lto to do with certain delusions of friendship that I have with others while actually being a near complete loner.
Another strange thing I was thinking about was funny things you remember as a child to this day which actually mould or form the way you live, things you like and other oddities.
In this list immediately to mind the items that come to mind are Persian carpets, cat gut, black cats, survival, cataclysm, back tracking of vocals, and many more. In some ways, maybe I should not debunk my own myths? Or maybe i should get a better understanding, well this is being written in real time without a script or thought of the eventual outcome? I had to get up from my desk and my thought process ahs changed once again..
maybe something to look into the future at this stage all you will get is a short list of some of the quirks inside my brain In no particular order whatsoever, also please note i don’t actually follow up on all of them.. some of them I do, however follow up on.
Persian Carpets all have an intentional flaw built into them and you have to find them to truly appreciate the mastery fo the carpet, that si over and above the normal artistry
Black cats cause you bad luck if they run out in front of you (this is duplicitous because it could be bad luck or even triplicitous  * yes grammar and word police that is NOT a word YET *)

subtext: _{this should not be confused in anyway or means with a singel,dubbel, trippel or extra strength trippel I am not a trappist writer It cannot be thus confused, we have to keep this clear and not get confused here, i not have authority to do that or say things in those terms.}

It is important to always have safety equipment with you at all times (well living in Wellington where the world really Rocks .. maybe?)
A small pyramid will, when placed over a blunt razorblade, of specific dimensions and ratios, will sharpen it and or keep fruit fresh.. hey something i remember from my childhood, it could however be from the back of a chappie wrapper? and yes  * the anti-wikipedia police keep those thoughts to yourself *
vernuncular was actually a word, this is vernacular .. so we toted the term that vernuncular is the vernacular of vernacular .. silly i know
the poisonous nature of certain things, plants etc etc.. of which many were not and others are.. especially small harmless animals or fish or other like beasts, like dragon tails or teeth
religion, i will leave that uncontested other than adding in the prefix of all..
you can cook an egg on the bonnet of a car if it has/had been standing in the sun.. never did this? suppose this is not to dissimilar form cooking a chicken in the manifold of your big six or v8 towing car on the way to your holiday destination.
some peoples singing can actually shatter glasses?
you can outrun a wild animal, and other similar items
One favourite one is that a VW golf can be ridden through a freshly ploughed maize field and it will feel like a boat going through waves? Or did that happen
I think there are many others, some include you for a possible candidate for the Darwin awards
lest not forget the yeti, bigfoot, UFO’s the illuminati and all the other paranormal crap?
In the same vein it might actually be time to put pen to paper especially around the Clive and George saga? maybe we have waited long enough to protect the innocent as they have gone from innocent to who gives a f..
strange things memories?
I suspect maybe by scanning some old photographs from the past it may well up some huge pieces of memories from the past? well is supect it will but so far one thing that is apparent, that even over time my photographic skills sic! *disclamer* have improved in my own eyes some of the aspects have remained the same over the years, especially in the primary and basic way I perceive things around me? I am not sure if this is good or bad or normal, is it possible to actually change your perspective, from a visual documentation perspective, other than the obvious dalliances on the side, or not? I wonder? I think I may just have to give you an answer over some time, possibly by adding in some photographs from now then and look and see how I see things the same and differently. I wonder if it is possible to actually change the way we view things, without changing who we are, or possibly only if we mimic the way others see things, then are these still a reflection of our artistic interpretation of the world around us, or do we just become cookie cutter individualists who are just very good copies of others who are very good copies of others? I suspect much of what i do and see is fairly boring in some ways because there may be a clinical observational aspect to my psyche which originates from having studied biology for so long, then int eh same vein there is a flicker, almost as if it is a glitch in the matrix where things are different and not as they seem or the same when they should be different? Either way there is an aspect which is not as it should be and in those moments there is another side which leaches through, there is no knowing where this leaches from, it could just be all the residual memories and reflections that do not make sense in my somewhat boring and observational mind and they have to be expressed in their native format and not as the literal observational mind sees them.. These images tend to burst out rather than develop, and not in a way that you can predict and plan for them, they are part of a scattergun approach, possibly i am applying the subconscious art of generating things through the paradigm of a million monkeys .. now that would make a fantastic title for book.. now that I have the title I only have a few hundred thousand words to go, or not?
I may have to rather complete some of the other tasks as not put out in the previous days topics? the things I did not write down yet, But i think i might just have to keep thsoe for my postmodern celtic  viking style celebration that I am  planning, but I think all the scene has to be set and I have a number of things to get ready before i can rush into something as serious as that.
I also think that the future is to nebulous and at this short juncture I would say I am committed to do stuff and not stop doing stuff and to not stop dreaming and planning and hoping to do stuff in the future ..
that is enough for now, the rest will have to leach out later..

thanksgiving and the weekend and heavenly beer

We had our first thanksgiving,

 

 

 

and it was interesting a non secular Christmas day without the gifting, generally a good experience with our Germerican friends. In general we are still waiting for summer.  as you can see I am re-enacting the pilgrim claiming his land and receiving food from the Natives. I can see why it is such a popular holiday in the US of A. It is a non religious holiday that can include all those of different faiths, denominations and likewise to give thanks for that there is to give thanks for.

More importantly thanks to a beer book, written by a Woman … Yes can you believe that No seriously.. yes a beer book written by 2 not 1 women. It is fantastic, it is called “ The Naked Pint” and I bought it new.. It is a Fantastic read, it gives a an unadulterated guide to craft beer.  What amazes me the most is the variety of beers that are made around the world, this is mostly written about barley/wheat based beers and not about other fermentable though, so nothing about sorghum beer.  To return to the book, it gives a refreshing view on all the worlds different beers and their histories. I think it is well worthwhile reading if you are a fledgling home brewer to learn about the depth and breadth of the beer varieties world wide. There are a plethora of beer styles with an insane tapestry of history woven into them. One of the most intersting, well i will poke into at least 2 for now are the Trappist beers made by Monks and the Lambics. Both interesting for different reasons, and if I dont run out of stream the sour beers (wheat beers fermented with a combination of yeast and Lactobacilli) . Firstly the Trappist beers, they are only brewed by 7 9 6 monasteries (varying number), and only by monks and for no financial gain and only with specific age old recipes.. damn interesting.

from wikipedia :

• The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery, either by the monks themselves or under their supervision.
• The brewery must be of secondary importance within the monastery and it should witness to the business practices proper to a monastic way of life
• The brewery is not intended to be a profit-making venture. The income covers the living expenses of the monks and the maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Whatever remains is donated to charity for social work and to help persons in need.
• Trappist breweries are constantly monitored to assure the irreproachable quality of their beers

Nonetheless, the long and short is this is amazing, and apparently the beers are heavenly on a number of levels. This Does not include the Abbey beer which is similar but not quite as strict but also a limited pathway to heavenly delights . I see now there is a plethora of new semantics to learn and become fluent in when it comes to the world of beer and more specifically craft beer. It seems as if there is a beer for every possible day or celebration. I wills top now before I wax lyrical, but it is inevitable after the bread commith the wine beer.

 

One thing that it does give me is something else to obsess about in my spare time, one more thing to do, make beers, wines, meads and the likes. It returns me to the thought of the Viking new year celebration or at least the colloquial or version i have in my head from many years ago, the details have most probably changed a lot. All I can remember is that it involved drinking mead and then telling the world about “how cool you are in front of your Peers and country folk” a fantastical idea. I will have to investigate the origins of this. I have after looking found what i had heard many years ago, it is vaguely as I recollect : “In Theodism or Anglo-Saxon neopaganism in particular, the symbel has a particularly high importance, considered "perhaps the highest rite" or "amongst the most holy rites"^[11] celebrated. Symbel consists of rounds of ritual drinking and toasting, and invariably takes place within an enclosed space of some kind.^[12] It is usually inaugurated by three formal rounds, as determined by the host; often led by toasts in honor of the Gods, then ancestors and/or heroes, and then a general or personal boast. Other boasts may take place as necessary. Symbel is always formally closed once the formal boasts are completed, in order that the symbel might maintain its dignity and not degenerate into "mere partying".^[13] The two types of boast are the ȝielp (pronounced 'yelp') and the beot (pronounced 'bayawt', but as one syllable). The former is a boast of one's own worthiness, such as one's accomplishments, ancestry, etc. The latter is a boast of an action one plans to undertake. In order to protect the luck of the hall, such boasts are subject to challenge by the thyle, whose job it is to make sure that unlucky boasts do not contaminate the luck of all present.” --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbel 

 

After reading a few more of these articles on the sumbel it appears that one of the key things is that it is a praise and a ritual toast to Gods/Godesses (you can chose and insert your own deity here), dedication to friends/heros/ancestors others, some form of boasting and oaths. So it does seem that there is alcohol involved and that it is a slightly sombre even and that it is about giving praise and giving some self praise, But very importantly also about making an oath about something you will do? Possibly a historical origin of new years resolutions? Wild leap there, but is is possible. I suppose what this does point out is the way we remember a piece of something in a way we want to remember it. We make it our own and remember what struck as being important.  The human mind in its absolute fragility only remembering limited things of a limited scope that does take history and things into consideration.

 

and yes, I know Wikipedia does not constitute research, these are just nice summary pages on the topics for you to wet your lips on, and i do like including something that is actually half way factual based on what i read in other sources, I do not want these to look like a journal reference, this is a rambling and is not always accurate as it is my musing and not reality.

On a slightly different note, I was thinking a few days back I wonder what books I have that I still want to read and possibly reread and why?

I might go through my book shelf and evaluate them and consider what and why, also possibly what books and authors I would like to read? Here I am more than willing to accept possible suggestions of books and authors from any of my recent and current and future readers?

There are always those books you buy. borrow, steal, get gifted or just mean to read, should read, possibly I need to go through the good Prof’s reading list and start again?

Wow

there are things we think we know, things we expect to act and behave in a certain way, as an allegory I would like to use the ukulele. we expect certain things and not others, I expect spring to have sun and almost be in summer.. but  it isnt summer or even close down here in aoterea. It can only be described as  a season of change, which should not be confused with “ a time for a change” because we have been there and the time changed, since it was a time for  change and now after time time changed we here now. This is not unlike something i saw this morning, it was a fairly arbitrary video on fly fishing and how it changed certain peoples lives and all the general schmaltz about living for now and working to live and living to work. It did not make a bad video, or story but it did highlight a somewhat amusing story i heard yesterday about a couple from NZ who their whole lives decided they wanted to live on a barge in the UK. the lasted all of 2 months before they returned home, sometimes our dream might be having the dream, the reality is sometimes not what we seek, sometimes we seek the dream. This is going to be long and laboured, 226 words down and 1400 or so to go plus the deficit from the Previous day.

there are a whole series of photos below, each displaying something rather unique about wellington in the rain.

I am including this Photograph or rather collage first of the City Gallery and square outside of it which i know for the Giant sphere ufo~thingie~mabob that hangs there and gets hundreds if not thousands of photographs taken of it daily. and the weird pyramid .. no idea what they are there for, but they are there. there is almost no one out there in this huge square with its patterned brick paving. rather than not being what it seems it is what is and yet it is what it seems, i just have no idea of what it is as it seems like a huge sphere in the sky and a pyramid in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing more to it other than that. I must confess i did mess up the pics a little, the idea was there, but the execution let me down a little, I will have to do it again tog et rid of the out of focus pieces and replace them. this was a whole series of photos stitched together with Hugin. the parts make the whole, but the whole is not the sum of the parts, rather just a part of the sum of the lot. silly I know but i was standing next to the library and that is of course a place of semantics. I sometimes wonder about some of the books I have read, am reading, want to read, want to re-read and some of them especially get stuck in a limbo, the most current being a god of small things, what a fantastic book, with fantastic characters and textures of India, very different but similar in my mind to midnights children, and both of them suffer the same fate, they are unread and are both on my nightstand, waiting me to finish them. It is not as if i am unable to finish books, at the moment I have read a whole lot of softer  books about after things like flyfishing and beer making and bread and sociology,  the FlyFishing book, was fantastic, even though it had little or nothing to do with flyfishing, it had to do with a sense of place and sense of activity. I think fly fishing is a lot to do with a sense of  place and being and sense of something that is not tangible, once again my brain explodes into divergent thought patterns, I will lay down notes and links for you to go look your self, I have seen them; fly fishing book by derek Grzeleweski, the book is called trout diaries, the other thoughts have gone while focussing on this… I am sure they will come back. what was apparent to me from his book was the following:  he is Polish, i am nominally of Polish origins , he loves fishin, he loves his dog, he writes well enough and I enjoyed his book, strangely one of the flyfishing club members i went away with to the Rangitikei this past weekend thought the book was rubbish as it had little to do with the technical mastery of fly fishing, for me the mastery is one thing that adds to the value of flyfishing, being there, catching fish which relies on some skill, seeing fish, releasing fish (i prefer to .. don’t really like killing fish).When I catch fish in the sea with Bait i have a little less remorse, I have no idea why? Even when i catch salt water fish by fly i feel i have to release the fish, which is weird, but that is the way the fish falls or slips through my fingers.

I have so lost track, yes am tending to speak like, like my children now, it is pretty sweet as  

I was still thinking about the books, and how we relate to books, and if i could read an e-book, strangely i don't think so.. even though i am a tech aware and tech savvy and use technology all day somehow a book remains a bound object, something that has tactile or haptic value attached to it, reference material can easily be seen on the web, but somehow the experience of having a large factor book with colour plates is rather amazing, especially large colour plates of hand illustrated images.. this is paradoxical? strangely when I read books of fiction or books or words, pages of words i prefer a smaller factor. Absolutely arbitrary, but it is what it is these are musings and ramblings, i write them, you chose to read them or not.

Back to the series of photographs, once again, the Rain the Rain, almost like the sea the sea by Margret Atwood, but more or less emotional depending where you stand on these issues. The next series of photos are sorta something different to the one above, but a lot the same.

Accidentally this photograph or sequence of 2 photographs captured something, not quite what i wanted but something surprising, the second photograph is almost without meaning on its own, the empty space, but when coupled to the previous photograph it suddenly fills the space with hope and answers. Our minds  play games with the empty spaces and the movement of the people in and out of spaces with the essence of their existence being moved to a memory of reality which was never  significant in any way, but now suddenly becomes more significant because there where there was nothing was previously filled with movement, all that remains is possibly the scent a few swirls a piece of paper a vibration on the door?

 

these all show me the experience of the day that was with people and wind and rain swirling around me..

somehow once again I don’t seem to be able to transend the 1300 word limit again, It might well be that is the length and extent of the though process in my brain, that I am already thinking about the friday beer after work, thinking about the thanksgiving supper we are having at the Germericans, thinking about the weekend and all the things i have to do on the weekend. So much to do, so little time. But as we know now is the time, but part of that time should be nothing time where we can wait till that time passes and ingest that which is around us and what we are experiencing. the weather gets better, the wind whistles past the windows in my office building. from next week we will have to return to fragmentary pieces of communication again as i will be back at the coal face and turning coal into diamonds again.

a third of 1600 or so must be 4000

Some days are way harder than others, some days we wake up invigorated and ready to conquer the world, other days we struggle to get going or through the day. Some days we are stronger than a raging bull other days we feel like we have been trampled by a raging bull.

As a comment regarding moving away and changing, I suspect change is inevitable, to stay the same would be abnormal. Time changes everything, not always for the good and bad and if you throw in temporality, location and context who knows what will float to the surface or sink to the bottom of the milieu.

On a more cheerful note, please support the dude with his new blog, I  also think i may have found a counter foil for myself in Wellington. There is a nerd organisation in wellington called “nerd nite wellington” this is as quoted by them :”Welcome to nerd nite wellington: the first (and until recently, only!) Southern Hemisphere version of the rapidly-becoming-global geekery that is nerd nite.” – they can be found at http://wellington.nerdnite.com/

These may not really be my people, but nerds normally have quasi nerd friends like myself, we all need a good nerd or two to assist us with things. There is also a thought that to fix all problems we require a system programmer that hacks in at very low level code … to solve all problems? but as one of my programmer colleagues states, he may be alight myopic as he (my friend low level hacks to get some code to work on the ipad app he is busy with). while trolling through this I found  the League of pragmatic optimists, this is a fairly interesting construct.. I will have to look into this .. but more and more we get faced with the 1000’s of words that russel brand throws at us..  I cannot work out what he is, he speaks so fast, so much and intersperses a 1000 ideas at once, some i agree with others I think are loony, but i love his commitment to life and putting it out there and what he believes in.

A while back I speculated about how we were often, in certain circumstances and in others just a reflection and an aberration often relative to the surroundings, I never considered what happens when a mirror is taken out of a room? I know if the mirror is taken out of the room you no longer see the mirror and all you see is the emptiness  as the previously multifaceted and reflective surface that shone with colours and shapes and fragments of pieces of situations is now only an empty void, with little residual memory of the past other than the dents ands scratches and frame and background. It quickly gets filled with new images, but for long remains a silver shining surface. But what happens in the room where it previously adorned a surface or corner, depending on its shape it distorts and makes things appear closer, further the same or totally different, especially in the fading or flickering light of a fire. You have to at some point start questioning or poking this with a large stick saying .. stop with the euphemisms on top of euphemisms on top of reality on top of  euphemisms. Where does the light stop, where does it start, how long does a reflection linger, how fast it is replaced. How much changes when a mirror is taken from a room.

off to lunch come back, read this and thing WTF, get real talk about something a little more rational less eccentric, maybe the word i was thinking about yesterday or the day before was Divaricating, I am attaching a link to a key opf the divaricating shrubs of New zealand.. which is a little exiting for some people and mostly pretty frigin arbitrary for others. 

I link this photo off www.terain.net.nz, please go visit them if you find this interesting. But back to my previous point this is not to unlike my tangled beard. At the current rate of word loss, by the end of the month i will be down to a handful of words, which I suppose if they were carefully crafted by a wordsmith it would be fantastic, but in the current scenario I require a lot more words to say very little.

To return to Russell Brand and then in a way Tim Minchin, they are both a form of anti celebrity. I cannot decide if that makes them better or actually way worse because they are preying on the likes of those who are not all that conformist? Both of the commit apparent social suicide by the things they do and say, yet they remain popular, even if for the nonthings they say, no not nonsense or nonscience, they actually do speak science, nonscience, nonsense, nothings and sense all at the same  time. It does put into question our ability as a society to self regulate. Our Gods are dead or Dying or in certain cases becoming stronger, but not in unison in separation and in conflict with one another. Thrown into all of this is a little scepticism. Now that I consider it further the one is crazy as batshit and the other is an aussie? More seriously I cannot decide if either of them can be taken seriously or not taken seriously?

ok so i forgot to post this yesterday .. goto go now and do the new  one soon

1600 words and the spitefull god

I realised today that the ^a god is a spiteful god, here, Today in godzOwn or as the rest of you know it Aotearoa, interestingly I never knew that it had been labelled such for almost a 100 years.. we learn something new every day. Last bit if trivia is that it can be attributed to Thomas Bracken through a Poem he wrote. Just writing this diveri-forms the thoughts in my brain. You may ask what diveriforming is, well it is a word i made up by combining the General term for certain plants here in NZ and in many other countries where the plants are seen as Diveriform, or having very knotted and messy hair not unlike dreadlocks or my hair if i don't keep it cut really short, or alternatively my beard. Back to the spiteful god, if Logic abides as above where we are in Gods own land and it is spring it is a frigin spitting and rainy spiteful spring day, which follows on a weekend that would toast your marshmallows? Key to multi-questioning thing above drives me towards the question of HES and his book, his handwritten book done by his hand using his Mont Blanc pen? Has it started? How far along the way is this book? after listening to the podcast a few days back about Tom wolf, one point that struck me and reminded me about HES was the notion of handwriting a book, tom wolf choses to handwrite the book mainly because he cannot get spare parts for his typewriters. I suspect it has to do with some form of haptic feedback. you may question, why the sullen pic of me staring at the camera in apparent disdain? multiple reasons abound, one to show the wonderful spiteful vista behind me, partially obscuring the wonders that abound in that which is so quaintly called the inlet. Further in the distance is the Plimerton vista and marina where I often fish, deep in the foreground is the beard, which grants warmth and other social interactions. Interestingly as part of a my current social exercises I have noticed that a beard does change the way people look at you, and no (and yes the comma and the and) it does not hide you in society nor give you a facade to hide behind. In contrast it actually makes you more visible, I am not sure at what length it again begins to hide you. It is a strange thing a beard, it feels almost alien and not part of me, this is especially at its current length which is way longer than before., or maybe not as long as it was when I got married for example?

Thanks goodness, I managed to finish the space next to my beard and fill it with words, mostly meaningless words. On to the next thought for the day? I was attempting to brew at home last night in the week after work, one should not attempt to much in such a short time, this in between bottling the children’s home made ginger beer in between the pumkie’s book club meeting at home last night.  Id decided i would do a fruit~ish beer, but this all turned to proverbial pie.. the blender broker during me grinding the grains, i could not find a way to grind, half way through the mash, i then found the boysenberries were not boysenberries and were black currents.. Then i miscalculated the amounts needed for a good starting SG, then the temperature would not drop in the fermenter till the next morning.. what a mission. But we tossed the Yeast in this morning, lets hope it grows, I now have a few more days to work out what I can do for the secondary ferment and need to get a little more industrial in my attempts and methods in dealing with some of the technical challenges. I then remember we need to also supply a corn bread for our meeting with the pilgrims in the new land where we will give thanks for what we have. Oh and the other reason for the photo of me, is t avert my self consciousness's.

I was rather enthralled yesterday, I came across a  Google meetup with some photographers about inspiration and what drives it and what to do in lulls, amongst them was  Lotus Carrol  of I am Lotus fame. It is interesting to see the person in “virtual flesh after following them on flickr for a couple or more years seeing how they developed from something on the edge of obscurity to a mega social media success? One of the interesting things was how each of them had similar yet quite different drivers for their inspiration and each of them did have some overlap. One of the drivers in the most successful people was to do what they wanted, and the others were driven a lot more by perfection and their search for perfection, and in certain cases it was a drive for expression. A lot seems to depend on what you take photos of and why you take them? I suspect a lot depends on what you aim with your photography or your art, is it an expression or is it a capitalistic venture, each of them has different biases.

sometimes I stare up at the clouds and they look so plain at other times they look fantastical,strange same place similar clouds, more or less colour and scale.

we cant really know how we will feel the next day, unless we make the effort to be that person to have that outlook and be happy and smell the rain in the clouds, hear the birds chirping above the roar of the icy sub Antarctic gale blowing and chilling you to the bone, it can either stop you there and then in your steps and cut you down as if it were a scythe or it can inflate you with crystalline clarity.. bla bla sometimes the lyrical can run away a little. but there you go, be positive don’t see the crap in it, well that is what i try to tell my self I may be fooling myself but I try. there always seems to be some colour in the grey.. well some days.

Sometimes you see life zooming past you, today is the beginning of the year, soon it is Christmas, but it continues and changes and life runs at a million miles an hour, nothing we do can stop it soon it will be the end of the year and not long after that it will be a new year again. The seasons are more  apparent here and eventhough they blend into one long season of discontent and weather at least it lets you know that there are forces way greater than you all around you at every turn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe we would all feel better if we had a flower like the little prince? I have a few in my garden, but they are being eaten by the snails? I wonder do you think the Little prince had to worry about snails? I am not sure,but i do love clouds, and Tiete had to throw that in, recently I was listening to some Tim Minchin clips on youtube, and amongst them he ahs a song where he is rather serious and intersperses this with man i love Boobs.. this reminded me of a friend who had a similar Mantra in south africa in our old life. I then question sometimes if Tim Minchin is as he seems? Is he erudite and clever or is it a cleverly constructed dialogue? Either way I enjoy the outcome of some of his diatribes and rants, somehow the word fountain is slowly drying up today? i have my doubts if I will reach the allocated number of words before i have to rush off again to the next meeting at a customer?

and the words stopped,

Quick before the sun sets…

i had a realisation again, you must say WTF, do you go from one realisation to another No seriously amongst the moments of blank emptiness on the train and general day I was considering a few things.. One most pertinent was me, yes i was wondering about me, and niggling at the back of my brain was the realisation of the silent promise to try and blog every day for a month, to get back in the flow of things. But where to start, primarily a “friend” or at least a person I know on Facebook who also immigrated and that i had sorta know in ZA, who is also male and also around my age/or me around his age, both of us being massively in our middle years. This brought me to consider how we and others react the changing of time and how we see our lives slip like grains of sand falling between our fingers and how each of us reacts differently, I suppose not unlike the way I have always been am prone to hideous bouts of depression, which i now know when then they arrive and know how to dispel them. this Bifurcates my thoughts into 2 distinct streams; one being do yourself a favour and watch hideous kinky it is a movie with  Kate winslet which is fantastic and what is so uber cool are the naked scenes of her show a normal person, intermingled with a crazy as story behind it all; the second arm of the bifurcation is this other person who at this stage should be called Bob. bob is a nice dude, albeit a bit extreme.. but the real point being i see on Facebook he now has a new fiancé, I did not even know he was divorced? This is of course only symptomatic of society and how we live and interact with others, no SLATS not Systematics, that is something totally different. But on the second topic which is way more exiting to me that the prior I now belong to an group/like group or what the .. on Facebook for Coleopterists.. Boy i miss the exiting world of big, small and all things wonderful. I think that will simply Segway me into the next topic, which is what i have done over the last little while, One would imagine that sometimes I am manic, yes that I am.. But i have realised that is what and who and why I exist and what drives me forward every day, the need to see, do, understand and learn more and go and see and catch fishes and watch little brown beetles pollinating lupines on the river bank of the Rangitikei river at dusk (the photos are from the fishing trip i just did with the old dudes of the fishing club). Now  after that a small photo essay with some of the things done and undone.

one of the few pics i took on the Rangitikei trip, I do need (want(would like a small robust portable camera to take with me)) , for interest these are a pest these lupins, they are a ruderal and make a super impressive show.  You can smell them from a long way away. all in all this was a moderately successful exercise, I came away with a fair number offish, I disappointed my self in a lack of focus at times and at others way to much focus, but all in all it was fantastic trip with the oldies.



On being South African and being in another country, but again the debate is still out if i ever was south African or not? difficult question, and no I still don't have an answer about the question posed yesterday, and no i don't think i will have one tomorrow. But i do think that I am happier here, but sadder in the same breath. It is beyond a paradox within a paradox. I do think that the one element that the blogger from last week left out was that if you immigrate and you have friends with you it is awesome, but if you don't it is generally Kak and you need to re-evolve your self and reasons for living and slowly wash the reflection of the others you left behind off your mirror, even though they will always be part of you on the inside and who you really are, their context is spread thinly over these massive distances. It does not mean I do not miss them and what they meant/mean in my life, it just means I had to cut those sinews and let the muscles r-attach again, it is as if i was reborn again to a new world. It is beyond strange to be the stranger in the strangest land. But the solace you get is that there are many of us here, not just south Africans but all types and kinds. Many souties, and it is almost time for our strays and waifs Christmas party as hosted by the non Christians for the mostly non Christians.. this is of course the heathen land. But i return to my comments on Lara Africa, she is awesome, i made a comment on her blog and she responded and does so on all her comments and her poetry is pretty awesome, she seems like she would be an interesting person to meet in real life.  This is way to much sentimentalism, and i suspect i am nearing my required number of words pushed to virtual paper for the day, you must know i am sacrificing coffee this morning to get these words in.. yes sideways.

this is really a nothing pic of me at the station this morning, trying to be more like a celebrity, I gather we need to be more aware of ourselves and do selfies all the time showing our people what we are doing, here i was sitting at the station KAK early in the morning and waiting for the train and for my people who never came, because although i was waiting for the train to Pretoria it never came. a tear welled up in side as I think of the briel sisters sitting on the train to Pretoria, but yea no i shall fear not because my phone and my internet shall comfort me with my brewing book as i wait, neigh pause on the journey of life at this insignificant station on the track of life.. OMG what a crock of shite flows through these fingers?

this is still so far from done, it has taken so long ……and it turned out to be more difficult than i imagined, there are certain things we can do and other things we cannot do, i suspect it is key to attempt mostly things you can do and then some that you cannot really do, this is one of them. It is a challenge. A good challenge, none the less we should move towards the light, oh crap is that the train. stupid joke sorry. But at times i do think we get into such a routine and do not remember who we are and who we want to be and why we did what we did to get where we are and why? we should also remember all of the things we complained about and wanted and want to change about ourselves and start changing them, day by day, word by word, less and less spelling mistakes by the day. We cannot change some things, as they are like the sun in the sky and blue and the grey and the white of the clouds and the wind and the rain. things are what they are. This item is attempting o change the fabric of reality by creating something that isn't, something that is not a part of me, but is something i see and experience from outside that i borrow from others. There are so many that are, i am not, but i respect those that are and this is a homage to them.


this is a picture of many levels, one being proof that it is possible to do something with some planning and determination. To most of you this is just a fish on someone else's extremity. But it represents a number of things. It is proof that we can change, proof that we can follow a recipe, proof that we have commitment, proof that we need determination, proof that we can visualise and be what we want to be and do what we set out. Yes this is just a fish, but rather a fish after work in the afternoon sun, than a backside on the couch watching crap TV. But as a diametrically opposite yet almost as appealing alternative a bum on the couch fondling a home brewed beer or mead.. now there is some thing which is also right. We need to set goals, we need to achieve things albeit small and fantastical.

Lest not forget about the bread which is life, which comes from the beer.



here we have the grans living for the beer, the birth of the germination signals the birth of the beer within a while, you will have to wait and see where this goes, for those not following on other streams, these were some wheat, barley and spelt grains that were germinated and malted and then toasted and roasted in the oven for the beer with frit, unlike the wine dying on the vine, the beer growing in the bowl, somehow can see why Jim Morrison struggled and chose the wine dying on the vine. John Barley Corn just doesn't have the same ring to it, maybe i would have to turn to something a little more agricultural like Jethro Tull, lest not forget which disambiguation you chose, both are agricultural at best. Which reminds me that maybe i need to spotify a little agricultural music today. I leave you with this.. today I managed a meager 1670 odd words or so, self indulgent words none the less, but words they are and they are going towards my monthly total.