True insight methodology and the loaf of bread

How dissimilar to the watch the favor and the very large fish, my life has moved from something along the lines of ..... to something more in the lines of the sour dough loaf and the strangely small little fishes I try to catch.

But we need to find the truth of the matter.

How the world is changing, a cloud is no longer just a cloud a cellphone is no longer a cellphone or a mobile phone is is a mobile device, the sea is empty of fishes and we have to pay someone for a piece of sour dough starter? A maori man stood up and told a whole lot of people that he had a vision, no one cares, they stare and ridicule. It is not that he was/is wrong or right, but that they dismiss his words without respect and with contempt. What has happened to the day that people that people listened and revered the prophets of old. No not the prophets of da city.. that is a kettle of a different fish.

But back to the epic tale of the Sourdough starter, 3 weeks and at least one bag of flour later it appears, wait and about 5 attempts. We seem to have a moderately active and fairly pleasant smelling yeasty bacterial symbiosis. It is an interesting thing this, the development of a sourdough culture. I would equate this to something similar to make roti, in principal it is so simple, but try as you may it just does not work as advertised.  The general principal is to take flour water, or flour and fruit juice or potato water and flour or something similar. Leave it for a few days and hope that a "natural" bacteria and a lacto-bacili lands in the muck and flourishes and grows.  The list of suggestions is endless regarding the ways to promote the bacteria (lactobacillus) and Saccharomyces or Brettanomyces. According to wikipedia (when wheat flour contacts water, naturally occurring amylase enzymes break down the starch into disaccharides (sucrose and maltose); maltase converts these sugars into glucose and fructose that yeast can metabolize. The lactobacteria feed mostly on the metabolism products from the yeast.^[5] The mixture develops a balanced, symbiotic culture after repeated feedings.) .. Bla bla something like that for those of you are not really all that interested in the chemical reaction albeit that it is very interesting and worthy of the number of books that have been written on the topic.

So why all this harping on sourdough you may ask, well it highlights a conundrum or pivotal point in the development of humans, or should I rather say ambivalence. We live in a culture that has, or should i say species,  diametrically opposing value measures. On the one hand we have the need and drive to be technologically centred or advanced, yet on the other hand we have the notion of slow food and living which in many ways are contradictory and they of course we should not forget cultural biases and most importantly the impact of the breadline on this perception.  Where does that leave us as a human race?
We seem to have a multitude of memes around our approach to food as a species. I suppose that is what makes us rather unique in that we don's have a consistent set of foraging and feeding behavior within a contiguous range?  There are numerous other species which display cross range memes in terms of foraging, the most colloquial being the milk/cream  stealing tits in England;-) I do digress, let me return to the notion of slow food and living. This is something I find very appealing, but that is for my subcultural meme. From an evolutionary perspective I doubt this has much in the way of selective advantage or disadvantage in the short term, most profoundly due to the rapid mixing of memes and behavioral patterns.

To get back to the whole sourdough starter issue, what did we try? We tried the flour and water left outside in the elements, I tried chopped up fruit, raisins, potato water and and and.. After leaving each of these Bio-experiments standing and fermenting on our kitchen counter for a good few weeks, much longer than intimated by the authors of various articles books and colloquial comments. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of fermenting flour, but nothing substantial. We then started getting fruit flies and fungus .. But it does appear that we have developed a moderately active culture, with the foam and all. This is after Anita had taken a sub sample of the last  few attempts. So where does this lead me? Phase n! of sourdough bread making.  So what we did before? We made sourdough, but decided that we needed a new culture because there was a fear that we had contamination with commercial yeast. One imagines we should have left best alone, but now we have started culture, which i will give away.. dont worry we wont sell it :-)

what else have learnt, wonderous things about the "science" of breadmaking, bla bla this would all be repetition of easily available resources on the Web. But one or two things i did discover was something to do with the percentage water/flour ratio and what impacts this has on bread making and the magic 60/30 rule. The thing i did however discover was something more amazing.. how the frig they do this ...

And the other thing is why bread is scored or cut like this?

 that is quite interesting, we have also discovered more about flours and types of flours and the misnomer that it means a tremendous amount..



It is all a learning experience, not altogether different from growing veggies in pots on our porch, learning to fish with bait in the sea...  Part of my life as an ex pat. No I did not say my name was pat or that I was a Patsy.. ;-)


So what next, more photos, more things to do and see.

oh here is a nice pic of mine that is in a gallery on the web .. no nothing that fancy, just a collection of images about the interislander ferry in Kiwiland :-)

it is here if you wanna see the bigger version HERE


oh well enough of all things exiting and random for today. You may ask, why the sourdough bread? Why the slow food, just randomness and limited meaning to another day on the slow hamster wheel in kiwiland.



 

back to the beginning again

In many ways we return to the beginning again...

It is a new year, it is a new country, it is a new life, we started baking bread again, we getting better at that, the others.. well that it is still to be seen. As a paraphrase i believe so, at least i am enjoying it more.

The diaspora our lives have become entangled in is rather strange, we really hoped and believed we would be able to meet and find some real Kiwi's to interact with, yet we have become no different to the normal garden variety immigrant Cafe owner/small convenience store owner or any other nationality, i suppose in a Global sense, korean, indian and any other race that has gone forth to conquer the new world in search of a "*****" life. At this stage it is difficult to say? Yes it is a better life, but now I understand why people all say, and I would. do it as soon as you can... Do it as young as you can.. I am not sure If I should say why, It would not really make sense..

But other than that, we return near full cycle to the loaf of bread. A new year, many new loaves of bread, many new days await us beneath the long Cloudy sky, speckled with sunshine between the howling wind, fields of green pierced by fluffy white sheep.I imagine William Orbit got it wrong when he spoke of little fluffy white clouds in Arizona, he would have gone insane standing outside of my back window. How easy it would be to confuse the multiple layers of clouds above the rolling green hills interspersed with small fluffy sheep.

It is really a diaspora from Africa, yet we do not share a  national and/or ethnic identity, but rather a common origin. We can sit as a group of ex-pats and reminisce about different things. I see once again the question of being an African raises it's head  (Now does this require Capitalization?).  What makes you a citizen or naturalized in a country or continent? In Africa it appears that only your skin colour can make you African or is that african? 
As context to this read the following 2 links:


http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo/2010/12/28/we-are-not-all-africans-black-people-are


http://necrofiles.blogspot.com/2010/12/defining-race-and-ethnicity-in-south.html

Well I wonder, are we still african in either contexts or if we are afrikan or African or Afrikaans, if we leave the continent either way. But there is little we can add or say regarding this. It is not something that can be simply resolved by us or by intellectual debate as this goes deeper and closer to a grain that spirals in every direction, not allowing us any context or point of view.

But to return to the loaves to feed the many or the many loaves to feed the few, as we dawdle along the pathway of  bread appreciation, and not the facebook liking or page or anything similar.. But in general the appreciation of something so simple yet so complex. something I have gotten to realize is that  like all other noble pursuits bread making is an ever continuing process. Each loaf I make holds surprises for me, yes I know I should attempt for some consistency in the process and possibly an element of repeatability.. But no nothing like that.. in an attempt to learn, each attempt is doomed to possible failure or flop.. a couple have been.. but on the whole they have been successful.One of the most interesting details I have discovered about bread making and most probably more essentially artisan style breads or sourdoughs is the fervor and vigor that the followers exhibit. The lengths that people go to to create the ultimate loaf of bread is just insane, albeit ranging from the sourdough extremists to the perfectionists to the others .. such fun...

But to return to a much earlier post, it is fascinating to follow the web that bread has woven through our lives and our predecessors. something so simple that we take for granted that has a complex and mostly not understood technically by laymen or even those who's lives depend on it. And it is at this point that we have to question the notion of advancement and how it impacts on the survival of the human race as a whole. How important are these meme's in the survival of the race we call humans. I suppose it could most aptly be called a race as we are moving at the speed of a meteor towards eventual cataclysm.
But we are what we are.. we as the human race have been there a couple of times, depending on the book there are a number of different stories, atlantis, ages in chaos, the bible (the pillar of salt story)..

BTW they way i am now seriously in doubt about ever using the pillar of salt metaphor any more after I read the entire text and the in depth discussions around where it leads to .. freaky stuff..
But then again it is from the book that implies i should smite my Canadian neighbours ... ROTFL

But on a lightly more serious note, this does not mean to undermine that which gives meaning and importance to others. We are all a construct of our own devices, minds and cultural biases. How strange we are as humans, we could almost imagine that we are all different. Are we not all searching for the same enlightenment in different places. Some find it in the Bible, some in the Koran some in the Bhakgavat ghita and some in the street art of Banksy, some find it in the patterns on a well formed loaf of bread.

Banksy in afrika

It is a strange thing this perspective or hindsight that we have on our first world pedestal. We throw stones at those poor soles whose lives are within the millieu of their 3rd world existence. throwing stones at those who leave, consoling themselves with their conscience with oxfam dontations  and other similar justifications and conscience beating interludes. But is there anything we can actually do to improve the plight of others in far away 3rd world countries? Does it make it better or worse, where do we draw the line between assistance, intervention or interference? I must apologize I am not casting a stone whilst having a log in my eye, this is merely an observation.  But is there a way that the world can be rescued from humans? There are fragments where humanity has managed to bootstrap itself out its mire, but only here and there, and only to be thrown over by natural events or humans again.

So where does this leave us,

Clive and George's perspective on this would not be any different or would they? More on that another day, it is the essence of what life is for us, you and them. In some ways Karl had it right, in others he didn't, it is not the whole nor the individual, but rather the creative masses and all of the individuals and whole molded together in one writhing complex inexplicably complex mixing pot. Momentarily flashes of light and brilliance emanate from the washing machine of human lives. 

What responsibility do we have as individuals within a larger super organism or entity play, within a story about a story within a moment in time.


to quote the inimitable :


Yeah, It's been a ride...
I guess I had to go to that place to get to this one
Now some of you might still be in that place
If you're trying to get out, just follow me
I'll get you there....
....
....
There's a game called circle and I don't know how
I'm way too up to back down
But I think I'm still tryna figure this crap out
Thought I had it mapped out but I guess I didn't
This fucking black cloud still follow's me around
But it's time to exercise these demons
These motherfuckers are doing jumping jacks now

It is so strange to stand on the outside and wondering what it would like to be on the inside.  So we stand on the outside looking in, based on what we have seen before. how much of that is a reflection of others. How many are great, how many of the greats are reflections of society which were great at the time. How much lurks in the shadows of their minds. Where does greatness start, can it be defined as something which is new or a new look at something old. MM3 looks at himself with laughter, Albert stares absurdly, Freddie looks on stating there is no God, Other Albert said God is in the numbers, frank says Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories. .... We all look back, mouths sealed, eyes so wide the white pierces everything. Does it matter that we stand here doing nothing, does it matter that we stand back, does it matter than we run like dog with our tails between our legs and don't make stand like a dead Lion. The Lion, Zion stands tall, we creep away like the small puppy we are.  I was afraid, the ruins still stand, the phoenix rises, each time more spectacularly than before with no relevance to what it burns in each incarnation. 

But to quote Frank 

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."

enough for now .. more later

 

on Another day a different dollar yet the same day

Strangers in strange lands we wonder through this periodicity we call day and night wandering, wondering and  experiencing

How do we respond to the ramblings of a fellow train traveler, noticing the tired lines that days, weeks
 and years have etched into their weather beaten skins. The actual question being how to respond as a rebuttal to another's rambling on life. Our lives are interwoven with others, listening as I am to some old queen. Listening to best friend and other songs,emotions welling up inside I sit in front of an old table worn by others, worn by me as a child. I sit staring into space, caught in my own melancholy of the situation.
But it is life i have chosen above melancholy, not that i do not suffer from serious bouts.  But there is so much to explore in the new lives we have created for ourselves and the old ones we live in. We had a choice to change our lives and our conditions and our general existence. We have to choose to see, to experience, to eat, cook, to walk with the wind blowing through my long beard, how strange it is that at a point the wind would have been blowing through my willowy hair, now all that remains are mere bristles
of the past. But in actual fact it is through the roots that we are biased and model our views and our experience of that which we see and and imbibe around us.
we have a choice, we have taken the choice and it is our responsibility to exercise it to the utmost.

The question of nihilism invokes more questions than it answers, is it an answer to a question that doesn't exist? What is the driving force behind the alternative? Is it a single alternative or is it a plethora of multidimensional options. How do we justify a choice other than Nihilism if we do not have a fundamental or philosophical directive. In those cases there must be more to the decision or the anti-decision. If Nihilism is nothing then the opposite is everything? On immortality I have little to say other than that would be a very long time ;-)


Interestingly one thing i did notice was that there was an inherent similarity in the way things digress, the blog it seems to bring out the worst digressions in all of us, we tend to loose the plot and point and ramble on as if in a discussion with someone ont he train while they are not listening. I must admit that I truly enjoyed the imagery of the dude in the white bath robe, but sorry I could not get past the scary mental image of Riet Willemse in his of white bath robe standing deep in the suburbs of Cape town.. on his early morning waddle to the front gate to pick his cape Argus. While the wind howls viciously around him,. dark green stokies muddied by the inability to see a puddle due to the previous nights vineyard fever. How a simple couple of words can drive us   into a rabbit hole of thoughts.

I digress greatly on the topic at hand, but before i forget i have a couple of rather disturbing yet real and otherwise life titbits. Back to the Pink lady on the train, my weekly intervals of her pressence ont he train are mostly entertaining. She has taken to wearing christmas decorations on her earrings .. This is so cool on Monday she was wearing small (well not all that small) golden teddy bear earrings. Oh how fragile we are in our preconceptions and social adherence. Why is it we are bound to the social standards, why can we not all be wearing strange decorations:-) Well in some senses in between all they gray, yes we had summer it lasted for a couple of weeks, we are now back into the greyness .. it is a strange thing, I think Smilla spoke of her sense of snow, Maybe it shoudl be mark's sense of the gray and white, I am at a loss to describe or capture the colours, or lack of the colours on an electronic media. The grayness perpetuates everything inbetween the greens and browns and yellows. It is truely mystical at times. The weather is everythign and more here, i experienced last weekend to my amazement, that for once my forsight of extra clothes is an acceptable practice:-) I went rambling, such a nice word, to a valley about 40 km away from my house, I left int he morning and the weather was awesome, hot Sic!.. well hot for here .. warm and sunny and hardly a cloud int he sky, I then progressed over they heywoods, through the hut valley and past Petone.. where i could see the white blanket reminiscent of the table cloth runnign off the mountains into the see int he Wellington bay. Crossing over the hill into the next valley, where the closer I rode to the Cook straights the more incliment the weather became.. only to arrive at my desitnation to experience, cold, windy and mysty surrounds.. insane insane insane..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34377062@N00/5207880435/

 
but back to the rabbit hole in reality and the expression of self and many other things. Today I saw my second Hedgehog here in NZ, btw they are a pest.. so no glamour... but that is not the current point at hand, and the first one was splatted on the road like a flat possum.. of which there are many .. but that is another story for later.  But back to this one..

"picture this ...

I was cycling to work this morning.. it was rather cloudy and cold. and mystical as it is at that time of the morning,  This in its own sense is rather mystical and eerie at best, to be alone on your bicycle this early int he morning in the  Cold and the mist.. something that I have always loved, yet have found creepy and mystical. Must be something akin to a fear of the dark. But to get back to the Hedgehog, it was just sitting there on the side of the raod, and strangely it was much larger in real life than I had ever expected. but mroe than that the setting just scratched to clearly at a memory within me that was not my own. Lets not call it deja vu.. lets call it a feeling similar to somethig i would experience from a Lewis carrol story. and then it struck me.. it had nothing to do with going down the rabbit hole, albeit there is something down those lines..  But it is a story I read my daughters when they were much younger, I said small in my first incarnation of the sentence .. that would be far to lewis carrolish ..

The story is very sweet, and strangely the anthropomorphism of animals is in no way out of place, even in the story of Mrs Tiggy-winkle. But to get back to the story the dreamlike quality of this story is just amazing and would best capture my experience of seeing this quaint little weta killer. It draws us deep into a world which is literally down  the rabbit hole. Somehow walking through the hills and dales and mountains around new zealand it feels like i am immersed in a book that was written,a ctually co-authored by lewis carrol, beatrix potter and Tolkien .. it is so weird. I have seen benjamen bunny, I saw Mr jeremy fisher, I saw the "sticklebacks, I saw the Trout" .. I could have been there in the pages of this book.

At times i could have been hiding from Orks and sauroman.. it is a truly weird place.

To return to rhetort :-) on the Filosophy , we are just mammals, here in New Zealand. It is such a diaspora of nations and individuals. But some of the strangest things i  am experiencing are the impacts of people who have gone before, by experience of the history of my life, my country of origin, my parents country of origin and the way the original colonizers of this place have changed and tamed this environment. It makes me think so much about things I cannot comprehend nor understand that I stand in shame of my race the humans.  IT relates me to the xkcd cartoon of the day.

in general i stare at the beauty and splendour here, knowing full well that 90% of it is created or should i say broken in like a wild horse by my species. so much of what we see here is just so un-natural, so much so that the natural bush looks out of place.. 


But more on me seeing that this is my Blog, how do i feel, I feel angry I feel angry at all those that preceded me and many of the choice they made and the eventual route it has sent me and more importantly the whole of the human race on. You got to question  it all

steriotypically i would like to end this exiting episode in the recesses of my mind with some piece of pink floyd lyrics that in some ways reflect some of things I have been  thinking about recently

"So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here. 
 
Nobody knows where you are,
How near or how far.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Pile on many more layers
And I'll be joining you there.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
And we'll bask in the shadow
Of yesterday's triumph,
And sail on the steel breeze.
Come on you boy child,
You winner and loser,
Come on you miner for truth and delusion, and shine! 

"

a full circle

so the circle turns like a large Ferris wheel .. and we return to the sour dough, the glue that holds society together again, like the dust, the egg and the flour and whatever holds us together.

Like before the notion of self is indicated as the reflection off others or as the reflection of others, this must be why we have a fascination with shinny objects. albeit that we say they are objet d'art (fantastic!!! look at the one liner that came back from Google:

"The term "Objets d′art" can be a synonym, a popularized version for interior design commerce, or a vulgarism of pretension"

 all perspective, when is art ART. is food ART, is photography of Food Art? Is eating food art, movies about food can be art? 


Is the Loaf of bread ART? or is it an Art or is it artistry to make a loaf of bread? 


But I must be honest I digress, wildly from the my starting point, Quo Vardis.


we have to return to the tao of bread, but rather than returning to the starting point we will use the starting point as a reference. We cannot return to that point simply. Even on the Interweb, something so stable as DNS entry can stalk off and move away and virtualize, and never be the same, the molecules, the electrons are all different, yet they are the same?




it appears, albeit possibly unreliably that Art is defined by wikipedia as : "
A work of art in the visual arts is a physical two or three dimensional object that is professionally determined or popularly considered to fulfill a primarily independent aesthetic function. A singular art object is often seen in the context of a larger Art movement or artistic era, such as: a genre, aesthetic convention, culture, or regional-national distinction"


Bringing me to a divergent point in the bifurcation of the universal truths, or should it have been truth? When did printed matter stop or start being relevant or truthful? In the Past (sic!) we could trust the printed word, the book was truth. Maybe this is why people believe the bible to be unequivocally true. It is a Book, Books if not fiction are truthful therefore the bible is true. It cannot be otherwise. The newspapers don't lie, the politicians speak the truth of the red danger, When did the Truth dissipate and dilute? what was the cause of the dilution of Truth? I wonder Maybe Riet Willemse would know? 


You may ask who Riet Willemse is? is he real or is he a cosntruct. 


But to get back to the truth of the bread. The bread is truth, it IS. 


And the wheat fell from the growth on the green grass and it was real, even that may not be true any more. Even the most fundamental truth's are being eroded. GM foodstuffs now take away the truth of the essence or do they, are they merely a reflection of societies changes and the speed at which information and change pervades our lives. When wheat is no longer wheat, tomatoes are fishes and Goldfishes glow in the dark. 

We swim slowly in the goldfish bowl of earth, wishing, wishing .... enough sentimentality. 


Back to the truth of Bread as Art or as an artForm.  It brings us back to the essence of bread and its artistry. Is it a Cultural Artifact? Is it the Magnum opus of food? Who knows? Riet may know? Or Slats? Oh yes Slats NaaIr is also a social Construct. They are both in ways similar to Max Headroom, yet in physical embodiment of a cultural imperative or cultural artifact. I suspect we have to start somewhere and the determination of value is of utmost importance. what value does bread have in monetary terms, as a meme or even as an Artifact. To the Slow food pundits, it would possibly be the pinnacle or possibly base of a principal. Somewhere to start, something to complete and in many cases a Damn good example. But bread in Art? It exists all over.  What is the distinction between art and artistic?


But I digress once to many, as I labour on my long distance epic into my new existence as the strange bread maker in the strange land. I suspect the bread, the lowly bread is a good place to start to rebuild to restart. 


I suspect the starter culture is fairly depleted, but as in all things this can be regenerated. With great difficulty we start again, a fresh. We start a new meme. Or do we continue with a pre-existing meme? Can we develop anew? 


Oh something i was thinking of whilst standing on the train this morning:


I wonder about the stories within the stories within the photographs I take and view,
how many of them are seen and appreciated?
Of things I miss and the things I miss that I hated and hated missing and loved and of course the dream of the very big fish. The kiss of the Spiderwoman and Arizona dreaming in the time of Gypsies. The tale woven with richness of food and tastes that is my life. When counting the coins of our existence, we may often stare at apparently empty hands, without even a copper to show. But it is not the coins that remain but rather the coins that have passed through our hands. We cannot be complacent and look back at an existence without a route forward.
Even though I walk through the glades of green grass, for i shall not fear a serpent
the loneliness walks beside me
Harping beside me, pulling me slowly backwards into a pool of memories and wishes and dreams of a time gone past, these are better viewed like a mirror.
I stand aimlessly staring into the ripples formed by the wind over the crystal water hoping to see an image of my past, knowing well that it is only the future that stands in front of me and the past is behind me.
Not saying that what followed me had no value, but that what stands before me is the challenge
minute by minute, hour by hour i edge forward up the path of reconciliation with my inner self
memories lay strewn around me like a broken mirror, glimpses and fleeting images passing me by.


But Back to the bread,
More practically we definitely have moved to the land of milk and something? To be blessed (note i use that lightly) but we are to experience new tastes and views and smells and experiences.
Yesterday we had Crab, paddle crab in safron and cream sauce. And it was good
The trains stopped in wellington
The train to Johnsonville was running, that was good
The cycle to Whitby was long, the wind was wild.. that was good

So the question that remains? We have to return to needing the kneeding.

So we will try again and create a starter culture.

whilst seeking for a culture of our own.If not finding one we will create anew

enough for now more later.

is it an ism and other things

Oh yes as an afterthought this is a view only blog, those lucky enough to receive email updates will have toi actually view the pics on the page :-)

one of the many things i wonder about, over and over again, is how the hell david hockney does it ...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin-ITfEJX-Cm5h4Cx2O18jJBTIexIG5NT3qOe1Of3VQnVkFAODFp_4RWjDa-061tQ-3yWiSiPLXBd_oOMteM7TGp7J7bdA9DoRisKmq7yDa7BvknQRzf1oBFdRhU4WCl4-8WKCod8I7oE/s1600/photo-montage-by-david-hockneyjpg.jpeg

the vision, or should i say the over arching vision of the smaller parts that make up the whole, how when faced with imperfection and scale differences our brains correct the image all knowing that it is wrong, or should I say imperfect ...

Oh yes the format is changing .. sorry for you who rely on the emails and who are to lazy to go to the inter web, you will be forced to go and look at the actual page as there will be pieces embedded into the pages henceforth..

so when is a panorama not a panorama or is it? Is it art? or is it an art, that is a technical skill. is the perfection the key or is it the sense that it evokes more important. I suppose that is mostly the question around photography and the presentation of the visual arts in the 20 and 21st centuries. where does the line start and end, where is the greyness's the lightest and where is it the darkest .. Aesh this is sounding more and more contrived, but i am sure i will try my best to get to the point?
We for your sakes i hope so ..

on this line i was searching for some reference to this conundrum .. and of course i verbed the action of google dot com and one of the pre-emptive searches was "is photography dead" not in my mind? But i am sure i will find out?
It appears that there are a variety of views, but one of them that i found very appealing, and for a long time inadvertently followed was that of Ansel Adams, who believed that there should be no "manipulation" in either developing the film or making the print
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adams_The_Tetons_and_the_Snake_River.jpg
.

But Mortensen said that a negative, compared with the ultimate "camera obscura," the human eye, is restricted enough in its ability to record the complete gradations of a subject, that to further rob it of that ability makes little sense. The above concept does just that.

So we stand at a minuscule crossroad in terms of the opinions of isms and technicalities. It appears that within this milieu there is the debate of the technical artistry. and then of course wikipedia throws a spanner in the works by saying this: "Art photography": "Euphemism for nude photography"[1]. VOMGL.. well i spose it is an art;-)...

then i discovered an intuitive discrimination defining the differences between: "art photography", "photography of art", "artistic photography","photography as a fine art" "aesthetic representaitons" to name but a few.. When is photography seen as a technical ability to reproduce perfectly a visual scene, is this limited to a specific framework of methods and materials. Do we draw the line between Art due to medium or to end product or to ethos? But if we look at andy Warhol, is that Art due to the thought process? Ot si the actual deliverable the piece of art. We now start delving into a philosophical debate for which i have no formal or informal backing what so ever. So i spose i will have to just leave it right there :-)
Somethings of interest around photography as an art form?

http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/photography.html

a question is this art/artistic?

http://geoffcloake.co.nz/images/E6970%20The%20Changing%20-%20Revenge%20Banner.jpg

really am not sure .. but boy it is striking.. He has a whole lot more of this. When I Look at this and see the technical artistry that has been achieved, compare that to the hockney image/collage at the top?
But what it does bring me to question or to say .. is I really dont know enough about this, and should not have written about it ... :-) something learnt I spose.

It appears that this debate is far from over or finished ...
http://fugitivevision.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-photography-dead-sfmoma-tries-to.html here is a debate from a blog called fugitive vision which highlights a debate currently (recently) being work shopped at the San Francisco Museum of Art.  A slightly older article from newsweek.com/2007/12/01/is-photography-dead
interestingly it seems to highlight a number of issues around this, but also talks of an exhibition of photographs from  brownies to instamatics, one would imagine that Cell Phone or mobile camera's would fall into the same category, albeit often not as rich. but still there ...

here is a classic adams pic :-)

Either way i suspect i may not really understand the entire argument:-) But more onto the reality of life. I went to an art exhibition this weekend just past and it was intriguing in that some of the art was for art sake, some was conceptual others just silly.

But one of the more striking pieces was merely a statement around something that i had independently notioned about sometime ago and called soemthing totally different. but in general it said soemthing int he liens of:

"I've decided that every time I leave a small town I am making an artwork. It's a sad and beautiful picture that i can never become part of and one that i can never quite finish"

In a country which is overflowing with foreigners, maybe not quite as much as in ZA, but many. The key thing being that they are a combination of transients and people who are permanently resident. But the key thing being that they perpetually create social Cairns all over the place through activity and meme. From Cairns in the hutt river valley to some of my favourite Graffiti that fills the walls.. it is there, there are foot prints.

So we went for another epic this weekend, that is brusied ribs and shoulder (a story for next time on the circular  nature of my movement through the air). I went through Belmont nature reserve with two others,,, epic'ly i went up a really big hill and down the otherside .. BUT amazing of all Amazing things .. there is this awesome thing here where all all the paths are shown on a website and are marked and there are signboards .. it is just to frigin amazing ... www.tracks.org.nz ...


but enough for now ..

oh yes free advertising  go checkout a friends page .. http://rwilliams2080.blogspot.com/
this way he will be forced to add more entries... :-)

another day for the stranger in a strange land Part 17-18

and so another few days have passed, more dull and door people on the train, but let us say life is slowly but surely starting to take form. I met my first real fringe Kiwi dude on the train the other day, The same one mentioned before.

To recap, a strange and weird individual to say the least, tall silent, with a striking red beard and single long plat and a luge skateboard. But it turns out he is more rational, albeit only slightly, than his exterior portrays. He is a mortgage conveyor at aBank, Go figure. But very well spoken, well travelled, as it appears many Kiwi's are, that is all of the prior statements. Let me not forget, friendly as well.

But this does in no way deter from my previous notion of the grey, sorry darkly dressed colourless people on the train. On the whole they tend to be fairly introverted'ly gray on the train. An interesting point to ponder is, are there many existentialistically minded people in New Zealand. That is based on the premise that existentialism sprung up from the colder, darker regions of Europe, which were bound by the rigors of bureaucracy ?

But according to my understanding of the question i posed, I seem to be totally wrong in my thought process around this?

from http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol1no2/benson1_issue2.html
As the New Zealand wilderness became increasingly settled, the prime reason for the pioneers' and settlers' feelings of isolation and alienation was invalidated: their seemingly arbitrary environment had become predictable
It seems that traditionally existentialism is driven by pioneerism and not by the rigors of society...

but from a more "reputable" Sic! source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2] generally held that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his or her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts.[3][4] The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism,[5][6] maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely,[7][8] in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.[9]

I may be wrong by the sense of emotionless and dark thought painted on the faces of the members of the train gang of which I am a subtle outsider. Or I may not actually be, it appears that the train is a strongly heterogeneous meshing of individuals based on chrono-synchronicity rather than on a socioeconomic or rather cultural bias. This may be due to my social bias, or should i rather say my geo-locatory bias combined with strongly driven socio-politico-basis that i believed this or even considered it. Which in essence does not specifically make it wrong, but rather massively uninformed, prejudiced and biased :-) It is a strange thing to me being the stranger in an even stranger land to experience the differences and commonalities of the individuals within the society.

So where does that leave me on this alien green landscape, as I stand longingly viewing the green hills of another land. I stand in an emotionally disjunctive state (i prefered the disjunt word.. but apparently in the context it does not exist yet?) No dont get me wrong.. this is not a depressive state, as i am sure th bulk of you are considering .. getting ready to throw the packs of pills down my throat VOMGL.

No it is a state of re-birth and potential growth of my mind, spirit and soul. bla bla blka bla fish paste..

makes me think .. you ma is ..

oh well enough of that ..

things to ponder? Have die Antwoord sold out into a frenzy of exploitative and gratuitous exhibitionism or is that the tone within the tone within? Or is there no substance, or should i say was there never any substance?

oh well i have now spent far to much time on the obviously arbitrary ..

so where to now we may ask..

fishign this afternoon, fly tying this eveing

riding the skyline Route (http://tracks.org.nz/track/show/964) on the weekend, or actually more than that .. we will maybe be doing a part of the Te Aroroa way (http://www.teararoa.org.nz/index.cfm/pageid/216) at least the portion between Porirua or should i say Whitby and Wellington?
A thought, but they do warn me of the exposed nature of the back of the beast?

Oh yes, I did mention that i had seen the fish..

is that tantamount to me saying i Saw God? or is that to blasphemous? Who knows, but i saw the fish and they were good. I saw the bible quiz.. I failed misserably.. But I suppose i was supposed to ..

I saw another face of one of the faces on facebook, I saw faces i expected to see.. So where does that leave me? To deface or not? a question i ask? I wonder? No not in the same way he wondered about how many ...

But rather I wonder about facebook and my membership? has it run its course. I wonder about the multimediahedonism that it has created? what does it tell us. I wonder about the giant german giant consuming the american portion it bought and its eventual impact on my existence in these those green hills, I saw a man standing with vine tomatoes in is hand. is this a sign the man standing with a tomato in his hand, i doubt it is biblical. I saw it on facebook. It must be true, no sorry that was wikipedia. Facebook isnt true it is a truism..

so enough for now .. let me return to the rationally disposed life that i call a stranger in a strange land ..

oh one last thing to behold is the following ..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metservice-nz/


amazing picks

to end with

Stangely standing I stood, peering into a train
stranger than reality i pondered at the old steel exterior
rattling the mettle rails
balancing, well not, on timber of old
I dream of a time when there was nothing but trees
humans stand and kill the trees
when will the ent stand or make a stand
the stand of trees

complacency and the small mind

To say that our time here has not be a challenge would be a lie.. One thing that has become more and more evident for me is the development of new mantra's to overcome the extreme levels of complacency that time has welded into my brain. It is amazing how time develops complacency in even those who are attempting not to subscribe to the small mindlessness-ness-ness of it all. We are all so often trapped in the daily drudge and insidiousness of life and its trends. I suspect the most obvious is the way we allow ourselves to fall prey .. no not pray .. or is it .. bringing me to peer pressure and the pray, but more on that later.. we tend to allow ourselves to indulge in our weakest links or tendencies. It is the social softening that we go through from the social hardening and intolerance and tolerance.. there are things we have become soft with, us firsto/thirdo/firsto world children of the children of the trekkers and immigrants have become soft, we have lost the sheen of idealism and entrepreneurship that is in essence the key to the survival of our blood lines.. But back to the complacency and the doubt that it can bring into our lives, whence we have been left to mellow like good wine in the sun we have become little more than sour grapes and have not mellowed but become bad tasting acetic acid, where with the correct nurturing and development could have been otherwise. where is the spark, the ability and more so the willingness to learn and experience and spark gone.
Oh for I walk through the value of self doubt,
I shall not doubt
I shall stand tall
I shall not faulter, for my mind and my spirit holds me in good stead
as i stumble forward in the darkness that we call loneliness and sadness
I shall fear no evil as there are no snakes in the grass
I shall go forward and grow and be

We tend to complacentasize (a word i just created), and fear sorry for ourselves.
Is it because our boot laces are to short to strap ourselves ;- I fear it is actually because we no longer wear boots for the bulk of our lives, we have learnt to sit in the eddy and not go out and feed. whence the flow in the river changes those who are left in the eddies and cannot swim though the currents shall perish and suffer hunger in mind, soul and spirit.

But enough of the self wallowing and self pity let us us go forward, but a note to my current inspiration .. all do go forth and listen to this mindless drivel .. yes that is all it is .. but in no way incomparable to this drivel go and listen to "like a mad dog running through a puddle of gravy" http://puddleofgravy.blogspot.com/ .. this is moist excellent stuff.

But back to the pink lady, I apologize not the Pink Lady, but rather the quaint lady with the pink swatches in her hair, sounds a little like a cat stevens or shawn philips song.. But isn't. It is from people like this we should gather inspiration in instilling identity and colour in a fairly coulorless train trip. For one such as I who would be destined to the dark and dreary in the land of the sun.. the dark and dreariness of the clothes drives me to b right colours and Madiba shirts... it is just insane.

But more on the prayer at the station.. now we have a bizarre scenario where peer pressure from those who are not deemed to be peer pressuring is creating a peer pressure of its own.

Strange but true .. But more on that later.

Ah .. i have now seen the Fish, not to be confused with the light nor the people of the fish, who stand at the station and prey, not quite pray, but they almost did.. But the real fish, I have seen them.. and they are there .. most amazing thing these fish they are .. nothing like this you have ever seen before.

Ah but one last though on the people on the train, there is a person on the train, actually people on the train... there are lots of people on the train.. But interestingly a think i find is the diversity and differences in the people on the train and the way they are all so sad and somber.. it is a strain the train. But more importantly it is the wonder and amazement of the women with the Big hands that I now speak. It is freakishly strange as I sit and stare, more than i should I suppose, but it is deemed as one of the options on a train pastime questionnaire that i filled in .. but it is called "people watching" :-) insane as it may be. But there is a particular person on the train, who in specific angles looks a lot like a character in TV miniseries called Californication, but unfortunate as it is there are enigma's, this woman has the gunie-goog-goog hand, big and manly, as if they have been painted on by a child.. The people here are definitely the mixing pot of the people..

and there is so much more to tell of the crazy train people, but more of that later .. enough now .. it is time to get back to work again..

on my cursory glance of the whole piece ramble, i do believe it is time again to listen to the great words of the 21 st century poet Marshall Bruce Mathers III



My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why I..
got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window..
and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'll all be gray,
but your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad,
it's not so bad..

and the last little bit of eminemememe

Sometimes I just feel like, quittin I still might
Why do I put up this fight, why do I still write
Sometimes it's hard enough just dealin with real life
Sometimes I wanna jump on stage and just kill mics
And show these people what my level of skill's like
But I'm still white, sometimes I just hate life
Somethin ain't right, hit the brake lights
Case of the stage fright, drawin a blank like
Da-duh-duh-da-da, it ain't my fault
Great then I falls, my insides crawl
and I clam up (wham) I just slam shut
I just can't do it, my whole manhood's
just been stripped, I have just been vicked
So I must then get off the bus then split
Man fuck this shit yo, I'm goin the fuck home
World on my shoulders as I run back to this 8 Mile Road

I think the most important being of all this rambling is to instill the self belief that we have always had about having the ability to do anything and conquer anything .. it is all about self belief
this gets translated down to the simplest thing, we have to start small..

start small , go forth, plant the seed
watch it grow
tend it, the seed grows tall


later

the lady with pink hair

in an attempt to be less procratinative (i believe that is the correct derivation of a word that does not exist) I will attempt to blog more often and publish them and not let them fester within the walls or confines of the blogspot itself.

more on the starnge pink lady on the train crawling or speeding along on the caterpillar tracks most mornings i am witness to this most amazing phenomena. The lady with the pink patch in her hair. She sleeps a lot on the train. But is also not a plain old lady, I have seen her sew,m wear crazy clothes as well :-), It draws me to certain conclusions, you are all most probably wondering where the frig this is going?

i must admit I thought i knew where it was going, but now I am wondering if i might have been wrong about what i was thinking? It brings me back to point from some time ago when i wandered about somewhere wondering about the significance of what we experience about people and how that impacts on our understanding and perceptions of them? I sit and people watch intensively on the train for the lack of anything else to do. It brings to the point of questioning what people perceive of you or others based on external triggers and criteria and features. I saw an anachronistic person, then realizing that anachronistic is the wrong word? what is the word to best describe the feeling i got whilst looking at him? maybe i should explain what i Saw .. a really tall well bearded person carrying a luge skateboard with bone carved earrings in oversized holes in his ears, with a marginally balding monks cap with a long stringy single thin braid comming out of the side of hishead, i forgot to mention he glasses and was of light complexion. But most importantly rather alternative and silently pensive looking individual that i only see if i catch the early stop at all stations train. But what si significant about this you may ask?
well perceptions as they may be i imagined a certain kind of person, only to be thrown of tilt by seeing a book he was reading, in which one of the chapters was .."why god heals people" I suspect the word I was looking for was incongruity or anachorism but neither of these is correct.. the word will in time return to the vocal or textual bowels of my brain ;-)

But to those planning journeys into the unknown.. the cold and white places, let that heed you strong.. things are never what they seem, we are not what we seem, and let that not stop you,

to go forth,
I seek the best Pizza in Naples
the best hand made ice cream
to taste more of the raw and beautiful flavours of the pear, i was tempted to say vine dying on the vine, but Is uppose Jim has little or no context other than i when walking through a magazine shop i saw an article detailing the last days of Jim?
But to capture the taste and essence of life and nature in a mouthful ?
is that not godliness ...

But on a more important and useless factoid that befell me this morninf fromt he intelligent enterprise I read this interesting article that i am still ruminating on
http://intelligence2.tumblr.com/post/1463800699/photography-is-a-democracy-a-shared-common

“decisive moment, the “precise fusion of light, shade, expression and gesture, where one moment before, or one moment after

describes strongly something I feel


questioning photography would be like questioning sight, but the motion is about the medium, not what is art.” As such, paint is more subtle, wider in “scope and variety … far more susceptible to human interference and therefore allows for a better message


no that is not what i thought , but it is a cool thought none the less!

powerful but limited in expressive range,” as it depends most of all of on technology and equipment: “photographers are ‘dominated by their medium, not masters of it.” The photographer, Bayley concluded, is “more passive, less creative. He has to wait for his great moments, he cannot create them. As Henri Cartier-Bression (the photographer in the room) said, ‘photographers are the hunters, not the cooks.

“bollocks to the motion.”


an interesting topic for debate I must admit... To me I do sometimes feel bound (photographically) by the constraints of the technique and at times its predictability (that is digital) and sometimes its ability or shoudl i say inability to transform the visual into essence and back again? You may say that makes no sense. I must contest that I feel strongly about this

the silver oxides and others gave a measure of randomness and physics and environmental inputs into the process. But i do feel there is measure for escape into the spaces between the accuracy and the distortion of the accuracy using the artifacts of the method of capture and the subsequent treatment thereof that gives us measure of life and the capturing of it in a perpetually visible chronistic perspective.

But more on that later..

but back to another question the significance of slumbering momentary recollections of reality and significant images in our past. In the distant past these has mystical appeal, post that they had Freudian appeal, now they are a curiosity? Yet they are there? They may just be a form of epilepsy for all we know :-)

enough for now.. another day another babble

another day another reality

Ok to re-encapsulate .. this is fragmented over time .. I have no idea when this started and the time periods but it is terribly disjunct and contains much stuffs from times of happiness, sadness and despair .

But to quote Eminem from "don't be afraid"

I'm not afraid to take a stand
Everybody come take my hand
We'll walk this road together, through the storm
Whatever weather, cold or warm
Just let you know that, you're not alone
Holla if you feel that you've been down the same road

ok so this is sorta cheating the first part was written a few weeks ago.. at this stage it is much longer than that..


Here I sit half the way round the globe from where i started .. technically not quite .. but 45% of the way round the globe sounds stupid.
Still coming to grips with the similarities and differences in the way things are and people are and how different our lives will be, are, were and all the other econoclastic self .. suppose i should have written iconoclastic .. but prefer my word.. it has a slightly and more subtely different meaning, if any at all.

i·con·o·clast (-kn-klst)
n.
1. One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
2. One who destroys sacred religious images.

from the free dictionary .. and i am not really up to destroying sacred images.. well not at this stage .. and the holy cows .. have not seen any here yet ..

how different would it not have been if we would speak of holy Fish!!!
omHF ..

somewhat more fundamental on the way we look at and experience things, here in the land of milk and honey/ no scratch that .. the land of milk, yes there is a lot of that apparently if you wiki Kiwi-land and a lot of sheep ..

and honey .. well sure there is some here . have seen people selling honey at the flea market ..

maybe the land of milk and fishes .. apparently there are a lot of them here, but soemhow have not really had the chance to partake in the activity of limiting the life of one of the creatures of this planet .. now that really sounds sad .. but that was my iconoclastic moment for the day ..

give a man a fish at these prices and he will really enjoy fish ;-)

But how bland is my walk in the valley of spicelessness, it is such an interesting place, the smell of melange, well i lie, coffee permuates the city, fancy restuarants and places..

But for frig's sake where the frigin hell do i find the spices in the shops .. it is as if these people just don't really like cooking, but like to eat nice food. We still trying to figure that one out .. and for once in our existence the value of an overtly academic take on vegetative growth in the garden may actually pay off with the absurd pricing of veggies over here .. oh have i already spoken about that ..

this piece was written now ..

yeah though i wonder through the valley of green hills and endless blinding rain and gale force winds i shall suffer no cold.
I am shivering in my new state of tranquility
i have moved from a first world third world to a third world first world..

But am i happy ..

That is a terrifically complicated question, when our state of mental happiness is relative to what? what we wished it to be, what be believe it was, to what is dimmed in our minds..

things are so incredibly different to the way we perceive things to be and have been ..

how do we judge happiness.. what is a measure of happiness?

how do we determine if we are happy or not? we often judge our state of happiness relative to where we imagine ourselves to be or where we wish to be, nothing to do with rationality. Here I stand in a state of flux .. actually better off in many ways .. yet i wallow in a state of uncertainty and melodrama :-)
i just think i need to go fishing ..
i do miss my friends .. even though i would most prob not see them all that often due to work..
i miss the3 certainty of the uncertainty in SA .. there is so much uncertainty in the certainty here .. :-)
things are predictable .. except for the weather LOL well i suppose it is predictably unpredictable

But this is not new, a lot of what i am deliberating about now is nothing different. how do we measure the quality of our life ?
there are many things
there are many measures, yet how do we judge?
are we happy because of where you are, or in spite of it?
Often we can pass blame onto the environment and not take responsibility for it? But then again there are various scales in terms of our existence.. and at least i took my towel with me ...
and i was lucky not to have to wash dishes this time round .. well in practice i suppose i am washing dishes at times .. but not as sole occupation

But enough on the self flagulation and lets get back to the real life and get happy

yesterday Anita went to the shops and we went to look for some food .. foraging like the hunter gatherers we are .. she saw some Skate wings for a good price in the fresh fish holder ..
so she went ahead and asked the kind Maori lady standing behind the counter what she thought of it? she replied .. never tasted it :-) this might have been a warning ..
i went forth and asked if she was aware of what a Skate it ..? a kind of a Ray .. etc etc .. to little effect .. so we went home .. and they are rather weird tasting .. so for all those who have never had them .. be careful ..
it is rather gelatinous in texture and taste :-) not all bad .. but as weird as you would expect something like a skate to taste :-)

but u know what they say skating on thin uys and all..

back to the whole identity thing, how important is a name? how important is our identity to us? to some it is very important to others the lack of identity is as important. The anti-identity and how much we are what we are not. Do we identify with ourselves and create our identity based on what we are or what we don't stand for.

-- ok this is totally disjunt.. I continue on from where i am now .. even though intended to cement what was done last time


But I think I'm still tryna figure this crap out
Thought I had it mapped out but I guess I didn't
This fucking black cloud still follow's me around
But it's time to exercise these demons
These motherfuckers are doing jumping jacks now!


I think I got a tear in my eye, I feel like the king of
My world, haters can make like bees with no stingers, and drop dead
No more beef flingers, no more drama from now on, I promise
To focus soley on handling my responsibility's as a father
So I solemnly swear to always treat this roof like my daughters and raise it
You couldn't lift a single shingle on it
Cause the way I feel, I'm strong enough to go to the club
Or the corner pub and lift the whole liquor counter up
Cause I'm raising the bar, I shoot for the moon
But I'm too busy gazing at stars, I feel amazing and

(Hook)

I'm not afraid to take a stand
Everybody come take my hand
We'll walk this road together, through the storm
Whatever weather, cold or warm
Just let you know that, you're not alone
Holla if you feel that you've been down the same road



Ok so enough of that the up and down and inside out of the life down under and finding context, in a time in a land of discovery i stand unknown and lonely knowing there is a life out there to live.
I stand

I know I am alone
I stand looking towards the East the sun comes up I stand alone

The beauty assaults my senses daily

I stand alone over my mountain bike and wander in the wonder in this thing we call life in these the choices we made for good or for bad and realise that we are lucky.. the ones with choices. WE may complain and stand up tall, crawl away within the depths below, but we have choices and we have taken them all. I listen in interest of stories of other foreign nationals who have made there way to the promised land for a better life for their children splitting families only to ensure that there children have a brighter future. It is only in in our introspection and sorrow and wallowing that we sit mired in the depths of our own confusion.

enough of that crfap, back to the real world.

I discovered that there are fish less than 10 min drive from my house, including the walk down to the river, but they elude me.. but they are there ..
I feel like a pioneer not really been exposed to fishing like this ever before .. it is frigin weird and amazing all wrapped up in one .. in a little river only a couple of metres wide, a crystal clear river, there are frigin big fish ....#$%#$%#$%#

OMG this is weird .. there i stand and under my feet a few m away there are fish up to about 6lbs or bigger in 30 cm of water .. in the little crystal clear runs ..

talk about Bok - koors... Aesh .. it is amazing how paralyzed with anxiety one can become. just standing there in awe watching a huge fish bolt away because it saw you before you saw it ..
I am learning the hard way i suppose .. i should get someone to show me what to do .. but this way i suppose i am learning more :-)

more on the rest of life, our stuff has arrived.. it is super weird seeing things i had forgotten about, it kinda feels wrong having all this stuff here .. i was getting used to the spartan camping life in this new life :-) But it makes my family super happy and over the moon to see their things ..

it is weird to see some of the things that carry memories with them, both from our lives and other peoples lives. Memories are strange things, things we carry with us. Sometimes they act as the anchor, others at the drone and sometimes even the life raft that carry us through. Something so intangible yet so real.

I suppose now with the move i am no reaching the last few stages of dealing with the loss of my old life and anger is setting in at times, we have had sadness and happiness and confusion and any other possible scenario. Now we are almost done.

In context of all of this the weirdness pervades all spheres of our existence, the plumber who came to fix our tap the other day was a Zimbabwean and the MAF (the bio security people) dude who came to clear our container was also a Zimbabwean.

interesting that us as cuacasio-afrikanos feel uprooted and estranged from our homeland, I wonder how they must feel. They are now the new chiefs of their tribes, foraging further and further like the vikings, looking for greener pastures sending back riches to those who could not come along for the adventure of a lifetime, this one that is theirs and ours.

oh well i suppose i have to post this now .. and not later .. more to follow ..

i do think that i will start doing some travelogue type blogs in between

There is so much more to expect in the next few episodes ..

a dog running through a puddle of gravy,

the life of Christ in cats on a plate

my train journey

the Christians at the station.. so many more episodes to come

the peer pressure .

the adventures into molecular gastronomy,

the challenge of having a veggie garden on your window sill :-)

and much more happiness and sadness and all other emotions all rolled up in one

oh how fragile we are

i stand in absolute awesomeness and awe staring out at the life we live.. Yet a tear wells up from the corner of my aye (eye).. we oscillate between happiness and sadness at the drop of a hat, when we speak of we who do we speak of, in general we speak of the the general we, not of the specific we and definitely not of the Wii.. Heavens no, there is a life beyond the puta screen and definitely the TV screen.

what is it we hold dear to ourselves about our existence in this mortal coil or is it on this mortal coil.. cannot really be sure at this stage. Standing from a far i must apologize about certain misconceptions and preconceptions and illusions i may have ahd about certain things, and this wil be cryptic to protect those and myself..

But there are things that supprise me both in the positive and the negative about being human, humanity and my impression of others or my humanity. Somethings amaze me and disappoint me. There are things that I am clearer about, there are things i am sure about. so where to now, quo Vardis, like before we can never be sure which way the wind blows, like before i am not sure .. i just don't know.. but there are things which resonate and other things that leave me cold..

one being one thing i always contended to.. i hope that is the opposite of contesting? :-) That being that I would not subscribe to views of expats of my own origin.. expats are wonderful in terms of the diversity of life, spirit, baggage and ideas they drag forwards like heavy pack horses not leaving their burdens behind.. But these burdens are those things which form them and those who interact with them.. directly and indirectly. with this i do, however, categorically want to state that the notion of holding onto things in the past should at best be a bad thought in terms of culture and origins other than that they are things that form us .. this is now spiraling into an argument which can be seen from to many sides.. do not get me wrong in terms of the value that new ideas bring into a society and interactions of various memes and the growth in though that it creates, but remaining in a meme can lead to dead end in terms of the evolution of thought and the adaptation to an environment which is different from where the meme originated. sometimes memes need to change, sometimes they must stay the same to hold dear those things which are off value. But beware when the meme is more overpowering than the reality of the appropriate interaction required. I must apologize for the randomness and un-constructedness of the current discussion which i will have to re-think and re-enter .. we are making breakfast .. and there is noise and confusion and requirements for me to interact on a more human level and not through the threads of thoughts emanating from the tips of my fingers ..

ok more later on salt and life and thoughts and pillars of society and change and people and the value of friendship new and old and rekindled.

part two of a strange man in a strange land

Yes i suppose we knew it would be different.. but the things that are different are not so strange .. maybe moving to another country the biggest stress at this stage is starting a new job and figuring out where everythign is ...

But for once i must admit and say i work for a multinational company who embracess technologies.. sitting here on this little rock in the middle of the ocean under a hail of streaky white clouds all my meetings are either via arkinfo which I know is very old wroldish .. but the the bulk are all in video conference mode .. so no sleeping and ass scratching through the meetings whilst sleeping on teleconferences .. Aesh wickedly wierd stuffs ...

LOL

yes it is a strange world .. other than that anita is makign good headway in finding the NZ moot, apparently the Chinese got there before the caucasians .. but hey wTF .. we will go there then..

and yes things are expensive here .. but after a little thought .. yes we should have thought about it a little more .. this is one damn isolated palce ..

:-)

no seriously it will take us a while to work out the anomolies in society here .. chicken more expensive than beef .. fish cheaper than all of them .. strange .. we ate huge pieces of sole to repair our sole last night and that was cheaper than chikin or chook stew ... insane ..

But the Coffee.. now there is something to behold .. in your life you ahve never seen so many coffee shops .. every corner and building is littered with them .. and awesome coffee is had by all and sundry ...

yummeeee ..

amazing things ..

so now i stand fishing rod in hand, no way to get anywhere yet, but i am ready..
and yes .. i decided i might just buy a hi-ace .. they called something else here ... practical and it will remind me of home ... good and bad times :-)
second hand cars are insanely cheap .. u can pick up a very fucntional car, albeit high km's for between 7- 25k ZAR ... and there are some awesome cars in the 7kZAR bracket .. and they do annual RWC's or actually for older cars bi-annual RWC's so they seem safe-ish ..

now just to see where we will stay .. part 2 of the muli-numerous adventure ..


some more on bio-security down the line ..

cites and parrot feathers .... Bla Bla ...

stranger in strange land and the story of a refugee in the first world

oh boy things are weird on the other side of the world.

i am now the stranger in the strange land .. and things are strange here ..
people are stranger. And not pretty.. yes they are not pretty..

But let me first speak of the long flight. the weirdly not so long time wise yet very long flight. In clock time it only took 11 plus 3 hours which in relative time is not all that bad .. it is like driving down to cape town, but throw in 10 hours of time difference and it lands up taking almost 2 days ..

the 3 hour hop from sydney to wellington takes 5 hours start at 6:50 land at just after 11:50..

and yes we are totally zoned out :)

our computer clock is still on yesterday's time linking to ZA time .. but it is today here now i can see the sun .. or ish ..

yes we had a sunny day yesterday..

oh I do I do have to tell of my fantastic biosecurity and customs adventures. Whilst the stranger is still car less (and BTB the people are damn friendly) (and out of the family it appears as if i will be the first to transgress and adapt the lingo and voice patterns... note not by choice .. it just seems that my voice drifts that way). so being carless it means we have to walk every where .. so i sent all my fishing goodies along with as extra un attended baggage ... ^&*%^&$%^$# so it was supposed to be simple ... BAH humbug ..
firstly it gets sent to another terminal totally .. airport being FAR away from where we stay and work ...
secondly i then find out it lands on another day ..
thirdly i then figure out i need to deal with Biosecurity or the so called MAF first.. then customs .. so i look ont he interweb find the offices adn start walking all to the other side of the city near westpac stadium i am told .. and i walk and i walk .. and wonder around aimlessly in the sun .. Yes the frigin sun .. sweating like a pig .. in my work clothes and runnign shoes .. this day really turned for the worse. I trudged along walking throught the industrial areas of wellington to eventually find my destination nestled jsut behind the kiwi rugby union.. i am sure i am supposed to spit on the floor or something after saying that.. or is it kiss.. my sensibilities are definitely leaving me here now .. so i find the office and these are serious people with serious forms and sensibilities .. look the the people from parke'raad.. So eventually julie helps me .. and i fill in the 5 page document .. and se walks off.. i wait and wait and try not to look stupid .,... not knowing what to do.. so I eventually realised i might be waiting in vane.. so i left and walked abck to wellington.. 20 minutes later just as i reach wellington to go and buy a skype camera. They phone me and say i must come and pick up my form. I then start the long walk back.. and firstly my damn bank card (new does not work) .. oh the life of a foorlong refugee ..
So i walk and walk and walk and walk and pick up my forms .. only to be sent to customs to go and fill in more forms and pay more money .. now these dudes are really serious dudes .. no humour at all and no human interaction as i stand behind the counter. and 37NZ$ later and 30 minutes of sitting and waiting and filling in forms and declarations .. i can rush away .. only to be told by new employer.. that i need to come for a meeting with the self same customs people in an IT meeting .. LOL so I rush back in my work clothes and in my running shoes. and that meeting went on and went on. then later on the Biosecurity people phoning me back about this and that .. and asking about the piece of porcupine fur .... For frig sake .. it is a piece of klipspringer fur.. and then about the parrot feathers .. the FRIGIN parrot feathers .. ROTFL ... damn where would i get parrot feathers from .. they are worried that they are protected. these are damn chikin or chook feathers that have been dyed .. LOL

oh well enough for now .. Later dudes .. and dudesses

meaning and existence part 42

so often i carry on about the same things like a giant spiral in a spiderweb..

in the same vain i look around me and notice the patterns in people like ripples in a pond after a stone has been cast into a clear lake .. OMG .. yes that is painful .. But the point is there ..

i watch and notice how much of our existence is made up of what we don't do and (not not me this time .. this is the general we as the populace). how much of our existence is made up of the the things we complain about not being able to change or alter or things that are thorns in our side. But without fail these are our existence and the basis of our existence. to change from this form of living is nearly impossible as I look and see people who are much older who cannot change what they do, but rather complain about what they cannot change as it is easier to complain than to do. and at a young age it is a pattern that emerges and gives meaning to most of us. the pattern of negative re-enforcement rather than positive feedback. yes positive feedback is dangerous as it can spiral so easily into something that is wildly different from the starting point.... But rather ride the spiral outwards than inwards.. Geez I must stop reading the DalaiLama tweets :)
but seriously we so often get pulled in the web we create to protect ourselves from existence and no longer see life and just protect ourselves from existence. In the end not achieving anything other than not achieving what we dont want.
dont get me wrong i am not a Full proponent of nihilism or Calvinism or determinism or one of those other isms.. But we can fall prey to the whirlpool web we create for ourselves. and the solution? find a bigger spiral or jump from spiral to spiral :-)

there are things

And back to front a piece from the past pops up, something that was lying on my hard drive never completed …


There are things

There are things we will never know about ourselves before we look, we look staring into the mirror, yet we don’t see the truth. Like an anorexic waif we stare at our outer persona amplifying its presence, not seeing the reality of its bloated or wasted form. And they say the clothes maketh the man, how we cloak our personas with lies created from within and without.

Where does the strength come from within or without?

Silly that question is … sorta oxymoronic, or maybe not .

But where is the strength when you look for it, where is it when you don’t look for it. Somehow we are always stronger and weaker than we imagine we should be or are. We surprise and disappoint ourselves consistently, not i don’t speak of myself here alone, I am speaking about the Royal or the common I totally dissimilar to the royal we..

Why when seeking clarity do we seek the abyss the chasm of life’s experiences rather than the bubbling brook? It is in the brook that we sometimes find greater adversity than the mighty stream/river? If this sounds zen-ish .. it isn’t this is practical. I may just be speaking in riddles .. but sometimes the smallest obstacle can give us the greatest challenge and when faced with the larger challenge we sail through or capitulate, some even capitulating at the stream. This I supposed is sealed within our persona, the part we call us.

But what is evident is the eventual cyclic nature of life, the life we live and experience, some of the adages do come true others don’t. But life has an inertia, we are bound to the inertia we live within and create and strengthen. There are those who fight standing still against the stream, those that are washed downstream others swimming diagonally across but the inevitable does happen.. what will happen will happen and what you do will have an impact on that which your outcome is.

This mortal coil..

Determination of importance is critical to us a humans, or so it seems. Is it truly ever possible to be nihilistic in terms of social conformances? Can we actually exisit within society without an exterior? Without a stance, without a mantra, without a belief structure, without a social conformance to follow. Do we then really exist? Yes we do exist, it is nothing like the sound of a tree falling or the sound of a single hand clapping, but in terms of social flows and ebs and representation. Is it in any way possible to truly be individualistic and not follow social norms and even more importantly not be anti social conformity and still exist on the event horizon. What meaning our existence is given by the association of terms, nuances, trends and trends.

The information explosion and my trouble in understanding the concept that social web pages are not about the pages themselves… we are now moving into an age where data is multi-contextual

The moth slowly flutters in a narrowing arc towards the candle …
All appealing it looks
Something inside driving it in rapidly narrowing arcs
Insanity rules
Addiction to the light
Closer
It burns

"As he slowly chews the last few pieces of Textured Vegetable Protein he ruminates on times long past where food was not only functional”



Back to the present again, there are things we don’t understand. How bold that may be to say. We stand looking at a life with context, and that life is ours. We look at others, casting the splinter whilst ignoring the beam inside our side ;-) OMG what trash.. but more seriously how things change with a change in context, time being the biggest context, that is if we can say context is time based. I doubt it.. but I am.

a pillar of salt

looking forwards ...

just a short note .. the other piece is sitting somewhere half completed

not wanting to stand still for to long to glimpse back into the past and the things we will miss .. because you know what they say... look back and you will turn into a pillar of salt .. which in most peoples cases would not really be a problem. but where i am going it rains so much i would then just be reduced to puddle of salty tears. Sad but true, maybe even cruel to those left behind, but that is just the way the moss gets flung of the stone rolling down the hill of life .. nothing we can control ..

so much to think about, so much to do.

Looking backwards at a life, looking forwards towards a new life.

As we stood there standing staring at an empty house, worse even looking at its contents quickly trickling out, actually pouring out of the front door in the neatly packaged holders, obscuring the life that was smeared over the exterior of the items, moving back a flash pets leaving, and further back signing a piece of paper, further back, a young couple moves into a dust bowl of a garden with a house full of promise. We look back, the moments have passed. We cherish them, yet at this juncture we have to look forwards, casting our memories into a place that we will hold dear but not weigh us down like mill stones. We stand looking forward towards the unknown.
It may be best this way, we stand like pioneers moving towards the promised land, the place where the grass is greener. There are always reasons for the green grass, the rain, the sheep, the cows.. we will have to see if the valley is all so green.

it comes back to ever present question in our minds about what defines who we are...  what would you do when you get another chance to re create your life. what do you do when faced with the reality that everything will be the same, yet totally different.  we stand on the brink of a new beginning once again.

It is up to us..