I wish I had said that sentence, but I didnt.. But it is a definite truism to me, not having ever done that It might give us more perspective and appreciate some of the cool that is us and that which we take for granted. However, sometimes we do need some propping up. What is it we do to prop ourselves up? Stranger than fiction everyone does things their 10 year old self would be proud of.. note yes this is positive and not negative. I prefer watching movie trailers, they are so cool, the amount of drama, melodrama and action are paced and set at a rate and intensity as to capture and move us to a state of wonderment. I just love going to movie theater websites and watching the trailers one after the other, what does it do.. it makes me feel momentary glimpses of happiness, sadness, excitement and then it is done and If i need a real pickerupper.. We can always turn to those super soppy clips from who wants to be America's next star etc ensv etc.. silly, but my 10 year old self would be proud. But actually as a post thought got to the scandinavian sites .. way more enlightening .. or actually my virtual people i follow on front side fly and jazz and fly fishing .. hysterical at times.. Oh and on a side note I see the Fly Fishing rabbi has published a book.. Am in two minds about buying it.. but FRIG the costs of postage and all .. just insane ... let me think it over and get back to you.
I sometimes get pulled in by the spiral of life and plunge headlong down the abyss of desolation and self pity. We all do and do not really try to hard to get ourselves out as it is easier to stay there and feel sorry for ourselves as this is the security blankie we carry around with us, rather than beating our way through it and viewing the world with wonderment.
More importantly I may have mentioned in the past about us being mere reflections of those around us, we chose which mirror to hold up, unlike mirrors it appears that pieces, glints and reflections seem to wash off onto us and make us who we are. But it is sad when some of the reflections grow dimmer and fade, unlike their actual vibrance. Actually returned and rethought this .. It is very SAD...
blabla sentimentalism..
I discovered something else new, well not new and I should have said re rather than the word alone. I was listening to bbc4 podcasts (bbc4 thinnking allowed and desert island disks ..), what fantastic content for a good part of the time, baring the last podcast I listened to about kinship.
back to sentamentalism for a moment, I suspect there are few of us who are not susceptible to a momentary lapse of stoicism.
Well trying to type while getting the day started is becoming increasingly difficult, will have to put these thoughts on hold till tomorrow. Well back for a second, but gone again..
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
a new week
a new week and already 1 post missed last week and it is Tuesday already, slow week, slow start.
So in an up and down world, full of turmoil we move on chronologically. Time shifts on, more kiwi get moed by the local iwi onto Mana Island, will this change the mana of the island? The escaped squirrels multiply while escaping in Japan, or possibly they cannot count, or in certain cases 30 does in fact equal 38.
So where are we now this week, I have finished Freakanomics, I am neither impressed or unimpressed. It is what it is, it is not a black swan, but it is also not nothing. I cannot say that it profoundly altered the way i thought or think about things or the "correlations" he made, I must admit there is a bit of freedom in the causality vein. The correlations are implied and may be real, but causality still hangs on a thread.
In terms of status quo, puppy still has many compared to me, chewing another of my shoes .. But she seems to have left the garden alone for a while now and does not seem to be trying to hard to eat the rest of the garden, so we may still get some broadbeans and peas .. The spinach and radishes on the other hand were doomed from the start it seems.
WE managed to make real barbie bread this weekend, which was not at as expected. We decided to, the we implies the royal Me, make beetroot bread, which according to the authors of the bread book state the crust has a pleasant and exiting colour. I cannot deny in any way that the colour and texture of the outside of the bread are in anyway flawed. Granted "I should have possibly measured a little more exactly when it came to the volumes of grated beetroot though. Eventhough the bread was tasty and looked a little like it was bleeding when you cut it.. I liked it, it has in a way inspired me to make a plaited Rastafarian pumkin, beetroot and something green ( no not that green :-), maybe Basil) loaf of bread. I think it could be pretty amazing looking. We will have to wait and see what the weekend brings to us? Maybe just a subtle carrot and cardamom loaf may do the trick or maybe just carrot and cumin.. who knows only the wekend will..
On more amazing things I learnt this week, firstly that tofu, bean, spinach and onion cottage pie is pretty damn awesome. This was a recipe I came up with over the weekend. As testimony even the children asked for seconds, for a vegetarian recipe is not to bad. Any one wanting the recipe just needs to send me message, same with the purple beetroot bread ..:-) But to the other amazing thing I learnt this morning, being that there are some strange people out there. The one being the dude on the train who I have not seen for some time. He hurt his Achilles tendons some time back and was forced to have an operation to correct this malady. I spoke to him to day, and he, and now me discovered that he has arthritis in his big toes a feet, which may have been the actual reason for his Achilles tendon damage in the first place.. But this is actually not really the point I am trying to make about the dude on the train. He is self medicating with a steady and fairly high dosage of tumeric and ginger, which are both apparently very good natural anti-inflammatory agents. So he has in this bottom end of the world island managed to procure some fresh fijian grown tumeric root which he mixes with fresh ginger to make a tea which he drinks .. who would have known?
I learnt about the raspberry pi as well.. now that is something else completely. To return to things organic and growing, the seasons have reached a midpoint and the days are lengthening again. Please notice I did not say the weather is turning.. It has turned for the worse :-) But the seasons are changing and I hope this year to be ahead of the seasons and actually try to plan and plant for the season to come and plant at the earliest time and not at the end of the cycle. I think 2 years have passed and the initial shock has passed and that I can now start searching for seeds again and I can find some heirloom veggies and plant Hoe .. well lets see who this year goes .. as a catalogue we have, the same we, planted broad beans trice to combat dog damage, peas trice again, sweet peas thrice, spinach thrice (i still need to replant again) and we ahve planted the apple tree and removed the flax. I think I may just be ahead of things this year. I think this year we will attempt to grow marrows, tomoatoes and whatever the F^&*^& will grow and doesnt get dug up by our sweetest little shoe and vegetable eating puppy.
On the same note, I saw the puppy I would get if I had the choice and money though. Yes albeit that they cause untold damage and mayhem I would like another sausage dogleton. I will get a long haired or wire haired terrier.
Well time to get back to work and get lunch and all those good things and of course back to thinking about fishing and when i will go again and plan things around that.
So in an up and down world, full of turmoil we move on chronologically. Time shifts on, more kiwi get moed by the local iwi onto Mana Island, will this change the mana of the island? The escaped squirrels multiply while escaping in Japan, or possibly they cannot count, or in certain cases 30 does in fact equal 38.
So where are we now this week, I have finished Freakanomics, I am neither impressed or unimpressed. It is what it is, it is not a black swan, but it is also not nothing. I cannot say that it profoundly altered the way i thought or think about things or the "correlations" he made, I must admit there is a bit of freedom in the causality vein. The correlations are implied and may be real, but causality still hangs on a thread.
In terms of status quo, puppy still has many compared to me, chewing another of my shoes .. But she seems to have left the garden alone for a while now and does not seem to be trying to hard to eat the rest of the garden, so we may still get some broadbeans and peas .. The spinach and radishes on the other hand were doomed from the start it seems.
WE managed to make real barbie bread this weekend, which was not at as expected. We decided to, the we implies the royal Me, make beetroot bread, which according to the authors of the bread book state the crust has a pleasant and exiting colour. I cannot deny in any way that the colour and texture of the outside of the bread are in anyway flawed. Granted "I should have possibly measured a little more exactly when it came to the volumes of grated beetroot though. Eventhough the bread was tasty and looked a little like it was bleeding when you cut it.. I liked it, it has in a way inspired me to make a plaited Rastafarian pumkin, beetroot and something green ( no not that green :-), maybe Basil) loaf of bread. I think it could be pretty amazing looking. We will have to wait and see what the weekend brings to us? Maybe just a subtle carrot and cardamom loaf may do the trick or maybe just carrot and cumin.. who knows only the wekend will..
On more amazing things I learnt this week, firstly that tofu, bean, spinach and onion cottage pie is pretty damn awesome. This was a recipe I came up with over the weekend. As testimony even the children asked for seconds, for a vegetarian recipe is not to bad. Any one wanting the recipe just needs to send me message, same with the purple beetroot bread ..:-) But to the other amazing thing I learnt this morning, being that there are some strange people out there. The one being the dude on the train who I have not seen for some time. He hurt his Achilles tendons some time back and was forced to have an operation to correct this malady. I spoke to him to day, and he, and now me discovered that he has arthritis in his big toes a feet, which may have been the actual reason for his Achilles tendon damage in the first place.. But this is actually not really the point I am trying to make about the dude on the train. He is self medicating with a steady and fairly high dosage of tumeric and ginger, which are both apparently very good natural anti-inflammatory agents. So he has in this bottom end of the world island managed to procure some fresh fijian grown tumeric root which he mixes with fresh ginger to make a tea which he drinks .. who would have known?
I learnt about the raspberry pi as well.. now that is something else completely. To return to things organic and growing, the seasons have reached a midpoint and the days are lengthening again. Please notice I did not say the weather is turning.. It has turned for the worse :-) But the seasons are changing and I hope this year to be ahead of the seasons and actually try to plan and plant for the season to come and plant at the earliest time and not at the end of the cycle. I think 2 years have passed and the initial shock has passed and that I can now start searching for seeds again and I can find some heirloom veggies and plant Hoe .. well lets see who this year goes .. as a catalogue we have, the same we, planted broad beans trice to combat dog damage, peas trice again, sweet peas thrice, spinach thrice (i still need to replant again) and we ahve planted the apple tree and removed the flax. I think I may just be ahead of things this year. I think this year we will attempt to grow marrows, tomoatoes and whatever the F^&*^& will grow and doesnt get dug up by our sweetest little shoe and vegetable eating puppy.
On the same note, I saw the puppy I would get if I had the choice and money though. Yes albeit that they cause untold damage and mayhem I would like another sausage dogleton. I will get a long haired or wire haired terrier.
Well time to get back to work and get lunch and all those good things and of course back to thinking about fishing and when i will go again and plan things around that.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
another day another page
To not let myslef down on day three, albeit rather difficult to pen, sic!, what I am thinking to virtual paper, maybe I should be writing it onto paper. suddenly a flurry of thoughts entered my brain.
what can we say about tactile sensitivity, this can be a challenging thing to suffer from especially when you are tyring to make bread, sorry love making bread.. and somehow I just cannot make bread by not using my hands to kneed the bread. anita says the bread is the same when you use the machine, I beg to differ. But On another point it can be considered that I create the need to kneed by hand, by not needing a recipe, or neigh not choosing to use a recipe but to rather rely on tactile sensitivity to determine if the correct or should i rather say desired texture, density and moisture content are reached. To return to the tactile sensitivity, it really makes it hard, well to be truthful I suppose i dont have "tactile sensitivity", but rather display a sense of sensitivity to the slimy nature of the wet dough and how it clings to your skin and worms its way into the edges of your nails, but the feeling of wet dough on your hands or fingers is just so creepy...
Well enough of that trivia for the day, to return to the Moa's and the Rhino's. One wonders how long it will be before there are no more rhino's. It is a SAD but realist possibility. There are massive areas in Africa and the world where we are wiping everything out. Note, yes I used "we" as we are all part of this directly or indirectly. By eating fish that isn't farmed or sustainability harvested we are dredging the seas into a lifeless pond. But it does bring into question in a world where we are highly regulated and controlled by our elected officials where our responsibility for protecting the planet comes in. We have unknowingly/knowingly proxied our votes to our governments and to the likes of the UN who make decisions on our part. Lonesome George is gone... he and his kind are gone forever. The flightless parrot in NA is down to a handfull.
Sometimes I do suspect we must be careful not to employ sentimentalism in the cases of animals who evolutionary freaks and dead ends. They will unfortunately not make it, and often the effort required to protect them may outweigh the benefits in the end, albeit that there is a sense of duty, place and auxiliary effects that do come into play.
I cannot say, I am an individual with my mind, with little or no affiliation to any government or organization with little more than my own internal judgment and moral compass to guide me. Granted having being immersed in science and pseudo science for some time did give me a grounding, but am I at liberty to discuss this? Not sure, but I do suspect we all have a right and more importantly a duty to consider and think about these things and at the end of the day we need to follow our internal moral compass and make the right decision and realise that abdication of responsibility is also a crime. At this point in time the level of responsibility we have is proxied to our elected officials or should i rather say those people at the other end of the political process.
but enough said, i just know I will rue the day the last salmon enters the river from the sea never to return, the day the last trout returns, the day the last yellowfish is seen in the muddy rivers of Africa, all through the greed of our species.
More contemplation tomorrow on nothing, something and eerythying
what can we say about tactile sensitivity, this can be a challenging thing to suffer from especially when you are tyring to make bread, sorry love making bread.. and somehow I just cannot make bread by not using my hands to kneed the bread. anita says the bread is the same when you use the machine, I beg to differ. But On another point it can be considered that I create the need to kneed by hand, by not needing a recipe, or neigh not choosing to use a recipe but to rather rely on tactile sensitivity to determine if the correct or should i rather say desired texture, density and moisture content are reached. To return to the tactile sensitivity, it really makes it hard, well to be truthful I suppose i dont have "tactile sensitivity", but rather display a sense of sensitivity to the slimy nature of the wet dough and how it clings to your skin and worms its way into the edges of your nails, but the feeling of wet dough on your hands or fingers is just so creepy...
Well enough of that trivia for the day, to return to the Moa's and the Rhino's. One wonders how long it will be before there are no more rhino's. It is a SAD but realist possibility. There are massive areas in Africa and the world where we are wiping everything out. Note, yes I used "we" as we are all part of this directly or indirectly. By eating fish that isn't farmed or sustainability harvested we are dredging the seas into a lifeless pond. But it does bring into question in a world where we are highly regulated and controlled by our elected officials where our responsibility for protecting the planet comes in. We have unknowingly/knowingly proxied our votes to our governments and to the likes of the UN who make decisions on our part. Lonesome George is gone... he and his kind are gone forever. The flightless parrot in NA is down to a handfull.
Sometimes I do suspect we must be careful not to employ sentimentalism in the cases of animals who evolutionary freaks and dead ends. They will unfortunately not make it, and often the effort required to protect them may outweigh the benefits in the end, albeit that there is a sense of duty, place and auxiliary effects that do come into play.
I cannot say, I am an individual with my mind, with little or no affiliation to any government or organization with little more than my own internal judgment and moral compass to guide me. Granted having being immersed in science and pseudo science for some time did give me a grounding, but am I at liberty to discuss this? Not sure, but I do suspect we all have a right and more importantly a duty to consider and think about these things and at the end of the day we need to follow our internal moral compass and make the right decision and realise that abdication of responsibility is also a crime. At this point in time the level of responsibility we have is proxied to our elected officials or should i rather say those people at the other end of the political process.
but enough said, i just know I will rue the day the last salmon enters the river from the sea never to return, the day the last trout returns, the day the last yellowfish is seen in the muddy rivers of Africa, all through the greed of our species.
More contemplation tomorrow on nothing, something and eerythying
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Rhinos, moas and doddos
Yes, unfortunately there was a lapse in my typing words in for a while.. yes lazyness and just plain and simple slapgadgyt..
I had already broken one of my resolutions for the year .. no, no, no, not new years ones .. yes ones that pass me every moment and i find I write them down on a notepad next to me on the Desk .. Unlike Some of you ... Who write them in a notebook in your pocket or lose the notebook.. I tried the notebook.. lose it fast than you can say.. what was I saying again.. Oh yes I should correctify you, when i said notebook I meant a small object around the size of a 30 pack of cigarettes that people used to take notes on the back off.. This object combiens a whole raft of lose pages and binds them in the middle to create something called a book, not to be confused with an ereader or ipad .. and hell no not a portable computer or laptop as it is known in some circles. On a tangent I was at the airport a few weeks back and I saw some moleskine books .. they just looked so awesome and I had to buy myself one for a scribble book.. But hell NO.. not at $9 NZD for a pocket sized book.. landed up buying one at Pete's Emporium (for the afrikanites this is very much like Ruby's combined with plastilon combined with Makuluupaan but with a kiwi flavour and filled with chinese and other cheap items). This book forms part of resolution 2 of 4534653465 resolutions.
To get back to writing this blog again, I read that if you want to be able to write better, you have to write as much as you can all day and not try to write war and piece as your first attempt. The notion is to try and write as many short stories and novella's and the likes .. try for one a day or a week then eventually by the law of the dumb monkey eventually you a. might give up and have nothing to show, b. land up being like the monkey and accidentally channel a story onto paper or c. actually develop a small amount of writing skill.. apparently it is a little like jogging? cannot really see the significance in that, but hey it is better to write and moan and groan than to sit here and do nothing and sulk. At least it will be irritating, entertaining or something of the likes to someone who accidentally finds this blog on Google or the likes when searching for something totally different Like Llamas or sushi or fishing or hells bells something serious.
To get back to the rhinos.. are we doomed as a species to destroy everything around us, don't for a bit think the rhinos are the first or the last to suffer this fate. somehow there is a disconnect between us and the planet we live on. Go read last chance to see, watch the documentary, then go watch the stephen fry revisited documentary. It is saddening how we as humans find it impossible to put things in perspective. I see how we are slowly depleating the seas, we are killing all the animals, we are wanting to frack the crap out of the ground to release oils instead of finding an alternative way of powering and moving ourslelves, we as humans dont seem to be able to break the disconnect between ourselves and this little patch of blue and green in the solar system. Why we cannot have forward thinking governments who actually look into questioning why we need extensive gardens and why we Don't have shared veggie gardens with our neighbors, why we dont have mandatory grey water systems, why we don't all have solar heating and solar electricity for at least a part of what we do, it is a simple thing to promulgate. why we dont have shared chicken cages, shared fish ponds with our neigbors and community members. It is because we are all greedy and worry about ourselves and somehow have forgotten that we are part of the us and the us includes our neigbors and our environment and planet.. But hay you cannot blame people for chasing the green, they jsut chasing the wrong green.
Well that is more than enough ranting for one day, lets hope we can change all of this? Maybe one day we can all have a better life?
I had already broken one of my resolutions for the year .. no, no, no, not new years ones .. yes ones that pass me every moment and i find I write them down on a notepad next to me on the Desk .. Unlike Some of you ... Who write them in a notebook in your pocket or lose the notebook.. I tried the notebook.. lose it fast than you can say.. what was I saying again.. Oh yes I should correctify you, when i said notebook I meant a small object around the size of a 30 pack of cigarettes that people used to take notes on the back off.. This object combiens a whole raft of lose pages and binds them in the middle to create something called a book, not to be confused with an ereader or ipad .. and hell no not a portable computer or laptop as it is known in some circles. On a tangent I was at the airport a few weeks back and I saw some moleskine books .. they just looked so awesome and I had to buy myself one for a scribble book.. But hell NO.. not at $9 NZD for a pocket sized book.. landed up buying one at Pete's Emporium (for the afrikanites this is very much like Ruby's combined with plastilon combined with Makuluupaan but with a kiwi flavour and filled with chinese and other cheap items). This book forms part of resolution 2 of 4534653465 resolutions.
To get back to writing this blog again, I read that if you want to be able to write better, you have to write as much as you can all day and not try to write war and piece as your first attempt. The notion is to try and write as many short stories and novella's and the likes .. try for one a day or a week then eventually by the law of the dumb monkey eventually you a. might give up and have nothing to show, b. land up being like the monkey and accidentally channel a story onto paper or c. actually develop a small amount of writing skill.. apparently it is a little like jogging? cannot really see the significance in that, but hey it is better to write and moan and groan than to sit here and do nothing and sulk. At least it will be irritating, entertaining or something of the likes to someone who accidentally finds this blog on Google or the likes when searching for something totally different Like Llamas or sushi or fishing or hells bells something serious.
To get back to the rhinos.. are we doomed as a species to destroy everything around us, don't for a bit think the rhinos are the first or the last to suffer this fate. somehow there is a disconnect between us and the planet we live on. Go read last chance to see, watch the documentary, then go watch the stephen fry revisited documentary. It is saddening how we as humans find it impossible to put things in perspective. I see how we are slowly depleating the seas, we are killing all the animals, we are wanting to frack the crap out of the ground to release oils instead of finding an alternative way of powering and moving ourslelves, we as humans dont seem to be able to break the disconnect between ourselves and this little patch of blue and green in the solar system. Why we cannot have forward thinking governments who actually look into questioning why we need extensive gardens and why we Don't have shared veggie gardens with our neighbors, why we dont have mandatory grey water systems, why we don't all have solar heating and solar electricity for at least a part of what we do, it is a simple thing to promulgate. why we dont have shared chicken cages, shared fish ponds with our neigbors and community members. It is because we are all greedy and worry about ourselves and somehow have forgotten that we are part of the us and the us includes our neigbors and our environment and planet.. But hay you cannot blame people for chasing the green, they jsut chasing the wrong green.
Well that is more than enough ranting for one day, lets hope we can change all of this? Maybe one day we can all have a better life?
Monday, June 25, 2012
I am just a Llama farmer
well mostly no one really farms them they rather farm alpachas they have better wool? Or emus seem to be popular in certain circles.
But the reality of this is?
Tilapiasis should be the thing of the future, but sometimes the reality and the rationality and the idealism just don't seem to mesh. a whole lot of really fragmented and mixed thoughts and emotions are flowing through me and a whole lot of others. The time is now and the emotions are rife, strange synchronisity at different parts and locations fo the Globe, one would imagine in the worst case that there is some form of interconnectedness in all of this? I doubt it.. Or maybe we are entering the early stages of the singularity where we subliminally are questioning our existence due to the onset of electronic intelligence. Life is easier, life is harder, we have found the missing matter in the universe. Not sure what the last third is, the first third makes sense, the second highly distributed hydrogen clouds almost makes sense .. but the third is warm hot intergalactic medium (you think i am making this up .. go read one of the latest new scientists).
But the reality is we live, we work to hard, we have little to show other than life. what does this tell us? we can or must change, but we often say to what. The rational inside says, you cannot, you should not, but then there are so many who live like they feel. Granted each of these choices has a cost and an implication.
Why we cant just pack up and drift along, well I suppose we are inside the contruct we chose to be part of, albeit that it weighs us down and pulls us down. But we are part of that construct out of the millions of alternatives available that we chose to live. Granted some of us have more or less choices than others and sometimes the choices are more or less silly or cynical. Paramount to all of this is that we are all just constructs of that which we create for ourselves and express in a way that we feel is best to express ourselves.
But it is with sadness that I say I miss some of my other persona's the current one is an anachronistic, polytheistic, disconnected, relocated mess. Yet in between all of this mess is a sort of clarity like never before. We moved, we are, we stand alone on the other end of the planet on a small windy island in the middle of the cold. sometimes, more often than not we question why we are here. In actual fact we are here because we chose to be here and we chose this because it was better. We still nto always sure what is better about it, but apparently is is better. There are a lot of things that are better and more and amplified. emotions and melodrama runs deep. Our hearts are filled with a yearning for something that is not here, yet our lives were unextricably torn away from that life, forcing us to create another life. sometimes I do think it is cruel and Jobian notion that some of us will always be washing dishes, some of us will allways be changing. There are things that remain the same.
The electronic celluloid that holds our memories together in the images we have over time are scant indication of that which has past. Over time that seems to be the only constant that remains. The photos from day to day to week to month to year. Capturing what the eye sees and doesnt see and sometimes a combination of that and what the mind wishes it saw. Unendingly I continue to document everything that passes my eyes in the hope that .. well I am still figuring that one out.
I suppose we all have something to figure out, we all yearn for something. I often walk down the street and marvel at the way react to their environment. the expression of self in the context to others. Maybe here more so than in other places people have an expression through tattoo and clothes. But the key to me is not that I mind, but in certain cases I do believe it looks silly. The actual question I have is about the collective consciousness groups have in terms of identity. Sometimes it fills me with wonderment and amazement and at other times I question and wonder if it is not just a poor cop out .. I look and see all these victims of fashion and culture and subculture and then as if struck by a bolt of reality I am struck by my own part in this image. I look at the hipsters and fashionista in melbourne and auckland and cannot but think how false this is. I am then struck by memories of my own past. I am struck by how I behaved/behave. We are what we wear and what we wear is what we are and we are what we think we we are and we are but merely a piece of a global milieu.
No you wont find answers here .. just questions
a lonely passenger
green blue azure sea and sky
waiting for tomorrow
But the reality of this is?
Tilapiasis should be the thing of the future, but sometimes the reality and the rationality and the idealism just don't seem to mesh. a whole lot of really fragmented and mixed thoughts and emotions are flowing through me and a whole lot of others. The time is now and the emotions are rife, strange synchronisity at different parts and locations fo the Globe, one would imagine in the worst case that there is some form of interconnectedness in all of this? I doubt it.. Or maybe we are entering the early stages of the singularity where we subliminally are questioning our existence due to the onset of electronic intelligence. Life is easier, life is harder, we have found the missing matter in the universe. Not sure what the last third is, the first third makes sense, the second highly distributed hydrogen clouds almost makes sense .. but the third is warm hot intergalactic medium (you think i am making this up .. go read one of the latest new scientists).
But the reality is we live, we work to hard, we have little to show other than life. what does this tell us? we can or must change, but we often say to what. The rational inside says, you cannot, you should not, but then there are so many who live like they feel. Granted each of these choices has a cost and an implication.
Why we cant just pack up and drift along, well I suppose we are inside the contruct we chose to be part of, albeit that it weighs us down and pulls us down. But we are part of that construct out of the millions of alternatives available that we chose to live. Granted some of us have more or less choices than others and sometimes the choices are more or less silly or cynical. Paramount to all of this is that we are all just constructs of that which we create for ourselves and express in a way that we feel is best to express ourselves.
But it is with sadness that I say I miss some of my other persona's the current one is an anachronistic, polytheistic, disconnected, relocated mess. Yet in between all of this mess is a sort of clarity like never before. We moved, we are, we stand alone on the other end of the planet on a small windy island in the middle of the cold. sometimes, more often than not we question why we are here. In actual fact we are here because we chose to be here and we chose this because it was better. We still nto always sure what is better about it, but apparently is is better. There are a lot of things that are better and more and amplified. emotions and melodrama runs deep. Our hearts are filled with a yearning for something that is not here, yet our lives were unextricably torn away from that life, forcing us to create another life. sometimes I do think it is cruel and Jobian notion that some of us will always be washing dishes, some of us will allways be changing. There are things that remain the same.
The electronic celluloid that holds our memories together in the images we have over time are scant indication of that which has past. Over time that seems to be the only constant that remains. The photos from day to day to week to month to year. Capturing what the eye sees and doesnt see and sometimes a combination of that and what the mind wishes it saw. Unendingly I continue to document everything that passes my eyes in the hope that .. well I am still figuring that one out.
I suppose we all have something to figure out, we all yearn for something. I often walk down the street and marvel at the way react to their environment. the expression of self in the context to others. Maybe here more so than in other places people have an expression through tattoo and clothes. But the key to me is not that I mind, but in certain cases I do believe it looks silly. The actual question I have is about the collective consciousness groups have in terms of identity. Sometimes it fills me with wonderment and amazement and at other times I question and wonder if it is not just a poor cop out .. I look and see all these victims of fashion and culture and subculture and then as if struck by a bolt of reality I am struck by my own part in this image. I look at the hipsters and fashionista in melbourne and auckland and cannot but think how false this is. I am then struck by memories of my own past. I am struck by how I behaved/behave. We are what we wear and what we wear is what we are and we are what we think we we are and we are but merely a piece of a global milieu.
No you wont find answers here .. just questions
a lonely passenger
green blue azure sea and sky
waiting for tomorrow
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Down the Rabbit hole
as"life is absurd and it makes no sense"
strangely we sit and time passes, history unfolds, people document angles others dont. Some of our history fades into significance and others turns into the vapours of time. Somehow there seems to be a difference between the documented and undocumented past of our race. Humanity used in the loosest sense has undergone changes and waves, covering a past we know nothing of.
We dream of dragons, of giant crocodiles, not having ever seen these dragons. Something inside our conscious and subconscious meme we call our origin, tells a tale we cannot remember. I thought I had left all of this behind, a different part of the world and a history clouded with lies, deceit and inaccuracies.
Ok so the cursory apology is inserted in here .. the first piece was written some months ago, circa 29 february.
a lot of time has drifted between then and now.. yet i can see i may have dawdled off on another tangent but returned back to the same point.
In the past a lot more I also thought a lot about dragons and dreams and giant crocodiles. these are all still part of some of the aboriginal cultures. I read an interesting article about giant bird paintings in caves that precede our current eurocentric collective memories. These birds were similar to the moa, yet the died out even longer back. Even here there is a fragmentation in terms of whether the current "memories" of moa are those of the indigini of this island of it is something that precedes the maori and comes from the moariri ..? who knows
but what is evident is that we know little of that which went before us, how many of us knew of the amazing library in Lisboa that burnt down in the 15th century after the massive earthquake, or about the Tsunami's along this broken coast or the Japanese tsunami markers hidden in the forest.
But none of this is actually all that topical is it, we worry about things that are inevitable, we stand to one side and watch as we slowly dip into the sea, or the sea slowly takes us back.
I dreamt of raindrops fighting in the clouds
fighting to return to the highest peaks
trying to get out of the sea and to return to the white
the stark clear depths of the planet
We chase them all back and down to the sea again
for how much longer
was watching a movie recently that sparked some though inside, especially around the way water just keeps pouring into the sea and how little we know about the fish in the rivers. One thing that was evident was that there was something in their genes driving them up.. These is something inside of us pulling and pushing us along the path forwards.
Oh and some things do change, once again the pre-birthday exhistential crisis hit, I suppose it was bound to after an absence of a couple of years.. It was bound to hit with some vengence.. This time it hit straight between the eyes, not giving me chance to cower or seek cover. I stood paralyzed by my own brain. Going through and through silly things, not knowing which way, filled with fear, remorse, sadness and a general sense of melancholy all compressed into 2 and a half days. This passed, I recovered and it is another year, I did not herald this in the way I have in the past with my normal ancient European fervor....
But over time things must change, onwards and forwards, with an ever clear and present memory of the past.
back again soon I hope..
strangely we sit and time passes, history unfolds, people document angles others dont. Some of our history fades into significance and others turns into the vapours of time. Somehow there seems to be a difference between the documented and undocumented past of our race. Humanity used in the loosest sense has undergone changes and waves, covering a past we know nothing of.
We dream of dragons, of giant crocodiles, not having ever seen these dragons. Something inside our conscious and subconscious meme we call our origin, tells a tale we cannot remember. I thought I had left all of this behind, a different part of the world and a history clouded with lies, deceit and inaccuracies.
Ok so the cursory apology is inserted in here .. the first piece was written some months ago, circa 29 february.
a lot of time has drifted between then and now.. yet i can see i may have dawdled off on another tangent but returned back to the same point.
In the past a lot more I also thought a lot about dragons and dreams and giant crocodiles. these are all still part of some of the aboriginal cultures. I read an interesting article about giant bird paintings in caves that precede our current eurocentric collective memories. These birds were similar to the moa, yet the died out even longer back. Even here there is a fragmentation in terms of whether the current "memories" of moa are those of the indigini of this island of it is something that precedes the maori and comes from the moariri ..? who knows
but what is evident is that we know little of that which went before us, how many of us knew of the amazing library in Lisboa that burnt down in the 15th century after the massive earthquake, or about the Tsunami's along this broken coast or the Japanese tsunami markers hidden in the forest.
But none of this is actually all that topical is it, we worry about things that are inevitable, we stand to one side and watch as we slowly dip into the sea, or the sea slowly takes us back.
I dreamt of raindrops fighting in the clouds
fighting to return to the highest peaks
trying to get out of the sea and to return to the white
the stark clear depths of the planet
We chase them all back and down to the sea again
for how much longer
was watching a movie recently that sparked some though inside, especially around the way water just keeps pouring into the sea and how little we know about the fish in the rivers. One thing that was evident was that there was something in their genes driving them up.. These is something inside of us pulling and pushing us along the path forwards.
Oh and some things do change, once again the pre-birthday exhistential crisis hit, I suppose it was bound to after an absence of a couple of years.. It was bound to hit with some vengence.. This time it hit straight between the eyes, not giving me chance to cower or seek cover. I stood paralyzed by my own brain. Going through and through silly things, not knowing which way, filled with fear, remorse, sadness and a general sense of melancholy all compressed into 2 and a half days. This passed, I recovered and it is another year, I did not herald this in the way I have in the past with my normal ancient European fervor....
But over time things must change, onwards and forwards, with an ever clear and present memory of the past.
back again soon I hope..
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
take a wlk on the wilde side
so I sat on my chair and thought, mostly nothing came into my brain, and No! I have not written more often, evne though i am now trying to tickle the keyboards to invoke something out of the realms of my mind.
So once again for a moment I feel sad.. But not in a bad way, in way that accepts that I will walk alone like the stragner in strange land ;-) there the melodrama is done for today.
I was reading Koos Kombuis's blog this morning, terribly insightful, but saddening for to many reasons to mention, a few simple ones being that I am not there to share that metamorphosis. But I am here undergoing another metamorphosis, from an idealistic fly~fisherman into someone who would fling a dead fish into the sea hoping to catch a living one.. somehow the trade-off is just to crazy, and smelly .. But when the wind blows there is not a lot more I can do in terms of fishing. It is a strange land I live in now, a day filled with a strange sense of acceptance and a life elsewhere.
The people mill around me, I have little or no relation to in any sense, when the cricket is on I am not sure who to support? But that is life.. strange times for strange people.
I went to a meeting at my fly fishing club last night where there was a Very heated debate about the future of water in the small coastal hamlet/town that the club can be found in. What is strange is the immense amount of debate and discussion and process that is involved in this community and its debate about water security and the impact on people, the Iwi and effectively their sense of place argument, the existence of the river fauna and the fly fishermen and the future and population growth. It is a crazy place this place full of hobits, humans and halflings. Somehow I had things to offer in terms of discussion but was not actually sure that any of this had any relevance or reference. It is a strange thing sitting within a cocoon of difference, note not! indifference.
So I question, where we will be in 2, 5, 10 years from now? I question this not only from my perspective or my immediate surrounds, my lost friends, my distant friends, AfriKa, the human race and the planet lastly.
Disturbia, the brain twists and forms twine
we thread beads of life on the threads created within our brains,
shinny, dull and bold
we watch as the rays of sun shine through, reflect and transmit the essence around us
and after a days Hiatus I will complete this post, based in part on a blog I read today, this is a fascinating blog, not because it is good or bad, btw it is not to bad ;-) But mroe importantly because in between all of the things this young lady blogs abouts and blogs about tweets and and social media and things.. There was an interesting article about her ideas being an immigrant and about meeting people and generally interesting things from her, But key to all of this was what lead me to this was the article she wrote about what Stephen Fry tweeted about regarding the poor Kiwi bandwidth. This was all over the news in Kiwilandia.
One of the key issues Marian wrote about was also regarding twitter and media and and, which is rather interesting to me, with my nominal interest in the interwebs and what goes on, in them.
So what else did it guide me to thinking? It is interesting what people write about on their blogs, he says in abject introspection ;-)
But it is interesting and what it pointed out is how to make a blog more readable and most probably read by more people, stay away from the morose I asume:-/ Damn that is going to be hard, Talk about the Books you have read ... mm i read to slowly.. or not that I read so slowly but that i read fast but for very limited time periods:-)
Well let me try.. No not Today.
On other fronts .. What si that i want to achieve over the next couple of weeks let alone worrying about to much beyond that:-)
I suppose i need to land a trout from the hutt valley again, especially on the evening rise, that has been tormenting me .. I now need to land a moki after hooking and losing one at Orongorongo.
I am undecided about what to take more photos off.... there are just to many already on my flickr profile... But I suppose it is a compulsion to keep taking photos.. Not much I can do about that.
I received a map from a cycle shop in wellington which BTW gave me fantastic service at a reasonable price (the bike barn.. just down the drag from courtney place).. would recommend them, not like some of the other PATHETIC and OVERPRICED cycle shops in Wellington. Oh yes, this is a map of all the cycle routes inside the greater wellington metro, yes I know about tracks.org.nz and all the others, but this is real neat and it has shown me a couple new routes that i can try for my cycle home.. I found one more hill to try on my route home that I had imagined would be do~able .. now i found the semblance of a route through that part of newlands through grenada to takapu road.. yet to the bulk of you.. I am sure that is OMG WTF are you going on about ... But it is what i do .. I MTB for the fun of it all around wellington and its surrounds ..
And then a strange thing on the train today, I walked to the station today, like I do at least once a week (and don't cycle).. yes it is a fair walk about 45 min at a brisk walk/jog.. And one of my "train friends" asked me why i do that.. and i replied to get fit and she then said .. but you have been doing this for a while .. are you not fit yet ;-) Well i suppose i am .. Just want to get fitter and tackle some real long scenic rides around wellington .. and A LOT of them involve walking with your bike for a piece/part of the journey .. yes walking your bike is sometimes easier .. unless it is a near vertical pathway ..
oh well that is enough for now ..
So from now one there will be more irrelevance inside the relevance that i glean off the interblades and webs..
So once again for a moment I feel sad.. But not in a bad way, in way that accepts that I will walk alone like the stragner in strange land ;-) there the melodrama is done for today.
I was reading Koos Kombuis's blog this morning, terribly insightful, but saddening for to many reasons to mention, a few simple ones being that I am not there to share that metamorphosis. But I am here undergoing another metamorphosis, from an idealistic fly~fisherman into someone who would fling a dead fish into the sea hoping to catch a living one.. somehow the trade-off is just to crazy, and smelly .. But when the wind blows there is not a lot more I can do in terms of fishing. It is a strange land I live in now, a day filled with a strange sense of acceptance and a life elsewhere.
The people mill around me, I have little or no relation to in any sense, when the cricket is on I am not sure who to support? But that is life.. strange times for strange people.
I went to a meeting at my fly fishing club last night where there was a Very heated debate about the future of water in the small coastal hamlet/town that the club can be found in. What is strange is the immense amount of debate and discussion and process that is involved in this community and its debate about water security and the impact on people, the Iwi and effectively their sense of place argument, the existence of the river fauna and the fly fishermen and the future and population growth. It is a crazy place this place full of hobits, humans and halflings. Somehow I had things to offer in terms of discussion but was not actually sure that any of this had any relevance or reference. It is a strange thing sitting within a cocoon of difference, note not! indifference.
So I question, where we will be in 2, 5, 10 years from now? I question this not only from my perspective or my immediate surrounds, my lost friends, my distant friends, AfriKa, the human race and the planet lastly.
Disturbia, the brain twists and forms twine
we thread beads of life on the threads created within our brains,
shinny, dull and bold
we watch as the rays of sun shine through, reflect and transmit the essence around us
and after a days Hiatus I will complete this post, based in part on a blog I read today, this is a fascinating blog, not because it is good or bad, btw it is not to bad ;-) But mroe importantly because in between all of the things this young lady blogs abouts and blogs about tweets and and social media and things.. There was an interesting article about her ideas being an immigrant and about meeting people and generally interesting things from her, But key to all of this was what lead me to this was the article she wrote about what Stephen Fry tweeted about regarding the poor Kiwi bandwidth. This was all over the news in Kiwilandia.
One of the key issues Marian wrote about was also regarding twitter and media and and, which is rather interesting to me, with my nominal interest in the interwebs and what goes on, in them.
So what else did it guide me to thinking? It is interesting what people write about on their blogs, he says in abject introspection ;-)
But it is interesting and what it pointed out is how to make a blog more readable and most probably read by more people, stay away from the morose I asume:-/ Damn that is going to be hard, Talk about the Books you have read ... mm i read to slowly.. or not that I read so slowly but that i read fast but for very limited time periods:-)
Well let me try.. No not Today.
On other fronts .. What si that i want to achieve over the next couple of weeks let alone worrying about to much beyond that:-)
I suppose i need to land a trout from the hutt valley again, especially on the evening rise, that has been tormenting me .. I now need to land a moki after hooking and losing one at Orongorongo.
I am undecided about what to take more photos off.... there are just to many already on my flickr profile... But I suppose it is a compulsion to keep taking photos.. Not much I can do about that.
I received a map from a cycle shop in wellington which BTW gave me fantastic service at a reasonable price (the bike barn.. just down the drag from courtney place).. would recommend them, not like some of the other PATHETIC and OVERPRICED cycle shops in Wellington. Oh yes, this is a map of all the cycle routes inside the greater wellington metro, yes I know about tracks.org.nz and all the others, but this is real neat and it has shown me a couple new routes that i can try for my cycle home.. I found one more hill to try on my route home that I had imagined would be do~able .. now i found the semblance of a route through that part of newlands through grenada to takapu road.. yet to the bulk of you.. I am sure that is OMG WTF are you going on about ... But it is what i do .. I MTB for the fun of it all around wellington and its surrounds ..
And then a strange thing on the train today, I walked to the station today, like I do at least once a week (and don't cycle).. yes it is a fair walk about 45 min at a brisk walk/jog.. And one of my "train friends" asked me why i do that.. and i replied to get fit and she then said .. but you have been doing this for a while .. are you not fit yet ;-) Well i suppose i am .. Just want to get fitter and tackle some real long scenic rides around wellington .. and A LOT of them involve walking with your bike for a piece/part of the journey .. yes walking your bike is sometimes easier .. unless it is a near vertical pathway ..
oh well that is enough for now ..
So from now one there will be more irrelevance inside the relevance that i glean off the interblades and webs..
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
changing and keeping the good
I know this is getting repetitive .. but this is the way things roll here ..
I was thinking a little more about changing and wracking my brain about how why what when how.. But of course I try not to detract from living.
I suppose we cannot change everything we have got as it is a function of that which we are, in a factor equivalent phylogentic inertia .. just got to love that..
But I decided that there are things i wont change, I like fishing.. no actually I love it.. I like cycling .. i was born on a bicycle .. and and and
But it often seems like we do things and we forget why we are doing them, the cycling is a good example.. I love cycling, but I was cycling in a way that I did not enjoy it.. I was trying to get fitter faster and all .. but that is not why i cycle .. i cycle because I enjoy it .. and that has its own benefits ..
I like fishing more than I like catching fish.. a strange thing, but the silence the nothing is meditative .. Dont get me wrong.. catching is also good..
I realised this after watching a video blog of a crazy bunch of slavic dry fly fishermen .. and one of their video blogs in specific.... the one about the Mayfly god .. It cemented what i like about fishing, the outdoors, the exitement.. the ambiance .. I eventually understand the hip flash and tweed brigade ... It is not the fishing.. it is creating the image and living the image ..
Yes there is the aspect of actually catching fish .. but this is not about that only ..
and the people you meet while you are doing it..
But .. something else.. this is not all :-)
The sounds of water, walking through water, the river running past the sound of rising trout, crashing waves, lapping water all ads to the mystique
And taking pictures..
I stopped enjoying this for a short while, but then over the last week i took about 1200 photos and amazingly i was happy with more than 200-300 of them..
but i still sometimes question what to do with them :-) we will have to wait and see ..
I think we think to much and do to little and focus on the things that dont matter and think about the things that do matter and in the end dont do to much of either and live within a hamster cycle of churning round and round and going nowhere till our legs are to tired to run on the wheel and we retire to the couch...
Btw another thing I have forgotten that I really love in all of this is foreign language movies.. and yes i sometimes question if they are all that good, but somehow being exposed to a form of expression that is so dissimilar to ours as possible both in language, ethics, metaphor and idiom.
And the other thing I really do like is watching movie trailers .. they tend to encapsulate the entire movie in a moment.. yes sometimes the length of the movie is required,,, but at other times they actually tell you the entire story in a trailer .. and it is Fantastic .. especially short feel good movie trailers .. no tedium.. just the feel good punchline... hey I am a victim of our fastfood!instantgraticationculture that we have been exposed to .. where our lives are lived through 144 character length bites .. no not Bytes .. ;-) yes twitter, SMS, facebook status's ..
and I sometimes question what life would be without them ..
At times I want to just unplug .. but strangely it is through these virtual immediate gratification cultural devices that I lead my strangely distant and singular life with its nominal interactions comming through the media which is so different to the life that i wish to lead .. In a sense it displays an extreme sense of anachronism within my personality.. maybe not so much anachronistic but dialectically and bifurcated existence ..
But all I know is the fly that catches the most fish is the one in the water not the one in our imagination .. and our life is the transposition of that which is unreal into the world which is unreal and turning it into a momentary glimpse of an image we have created of how things should be.
enough for now ..
I was thinking a little more about changing and wracking my brain about how why what when how.. But of course I try not to detract from living.
I suppose we cannot change everything we have got as it is a function of that which we are, in a factor equivalent phylogentic inertia .. just got to love that..
But I decided that there are things i wont change, I like fishing.. no actually I love it.. I like cycling .. i was born on a bicycle .. and and and
But it often seems like we do things and we forget why we are doing them, the cycling is a good example.. I love cycling, but I was cycling in a way that I did not enjoy it.. I was trying to get fitter faster and all .. but that is not why i cycle .. i cycle because I enjoy it .. and that has its own benefits ..
I like fishing more than I like catching fish.. a strange thing, but the silence the nothing is meditative .. Dont get me wrong.. catching is also good..
I realised this after watching a video blog of a crazy bunch of slavic dry fly fishermen .. and one of their video blogs in specific.... the one about the Mayfly god .. It cemented what i like about fishing, the outdoors, the exitement.. the ambiance .. I eventually understand the hip flash and tweed brigade ... It is not the fishing.. it is creating the image and living the image ..
Yes there is the aspect of actually catching fish .. but this is not about that only ..
and the people you meet while you are doing it..
But .. something else.. this is not all :-)
The sounds of water, walking through water, the river running past the sound of rising trout, crashing waves, lapping water all ads to the mystique
And taking pictures..
I stopped enjoying this for a short while, but then over the last week i took about 1200 photos and amazingly i was happy with more than 200-300 of them..
but i still sometimes question what to do with them :-) we will have to wait and see ..
I think we think to much and do to little and focus on the things that dont matter and think about the things that do matter and in the end dont do to much of either and live within a hamster cycle of churning round and round and going nowhere till our legs are to tired to run on the wheel and we retire to the couch...
Btw another thing I have forgotten that I really love in all of this is foreign language movies.. and yes i sometimes question if they are all that good, but somehow being exposed to a form of expression that is so dissimilar to ours as possible both in language, ethics, metaphor and idiom.
And the other thing I really do like is watching movie trailers .. they tend to encapsulate the entire movie in a moment.. yes sometimes the length of the movie is required,,, but at other times they actually tell you the entire story in a trailer .. and it is Fantastic .. especially short feel good movie trailers .. no tedium.. just the feel good punchline... hey I am a victim of our fastfood!instantgraticationculture that we have been exposed to .. where our lives are lived through 144 character length bites .. no not Bytes .. ;-) yes twitter, SMS, facebook status's ..
and I sometimes question what life would be without them ..
At times I want to just unplug .. but strangely it is through these virtual immediate gratification cultural devices that I lead my strangely distant and singular life with its nominal interactions comming through the media which is so different to the life that i wish to lead .. In a sense it displays an extreme sense of anachronism within my personality.. maybe not so much anachronistic but dialectically and bifurcated existence ..
But all I know is the fly that catches the most fish is the one in the water not the one in our imagination .. and our life is the transposition of that which is unreal into the world which is unreal and turning it into a momentary glimpse of an image we have created of how things should be.
enough for now ..
Monday, January 30, 2012
What we do with our lives and a strange dream
Where top start, we move across the ends of the globe. We hope to change our lives, but fundamentally it is so easy to fall back into old habits.
But it is possible to change, change is the wind that blows through our hair..
where do i start with this tale or is it a tail? you decide?
I dreamt i stood in a house with my grandfather and he wore a tweed aht, but he didnt, my cousins where there the house was full of kagel kakkies (ornaments), which my aunt and cousins were stripping out of the h0us3.
the doors where double locked, as in there were to 2 doors.. one in front of the other
we had to sign out when we left..
This may all have to do with me reading American Gods on a borrowed ipad, at night in the bed before i sleep, but I digress. It was so strange.
Yesterday I stood staring at the ripples in the stream, fish rising and rolling in the water and now thinking back on that I realise I have changed, and am changing.
Some things stay the same though..
I flew to Singapore a couple of weeks back for a conference, you may say WTF .. why you telling us this now, we know that.. we have seen the pictures on facebook.. No that is not what I wanted to tell you!
I flew and it was a long flight..
I sat and stayed awake to fight off the possible jetlagging :-)
no i stayed awake to watch movies and drink free red wine (yes that is mroe like me isnt it)
So what is the point, none actually other than I had one of the most amazing experiences ever, as I was flying over the northern parts of Australia i peeked out of the window more than a couple of times. The bulk of the plane were all sleeping as they were all conencting to somewhere else in Europe.. So what did I see.. I dont think words could explain what I saw both in my eyes and in my mind, moreso in my mind. There was an endless see of Red sand with long parallel red dunes running for hundreds of kilometers .. not only was this an amazing spectacle on its own, but the sky was filled with a range of different fluffy clouds, yes now is the time to listen to fluffy clouds by the Orb, huge bi cumulonimbus clouds and high altitude clouds, but more amazing than this was the spectacular scattered thunderstorms all over the desert sky, yes this was significantly affected by the amount of Free Red wIne I had had.. But it was amazing flying at high altitude watching the rain plummet down on some of the lucky farmers and not on the others .. amazing..
I do miss the desert I do miss Red sand I do miss the dry.. But that is not saying that there is no splendour and wonder here . But I do think a trip into that dust would be good.
But stranger than that there are not a lot of beetles here in kiwilandia? For someone with a fondness no fondle~ness for beetles .. this is a hard thing to live without.
what else has transpired, there is an AWESOME new band that I discovered via Shalome called Kongos.
they are a pretty awesome 4piece band from the states who originally were born in ZA.
Part 2:
another life in another continent,
I was wondering, well actually am still wondering if it is possible to change yourself totally? Can we re-invent ourselves, I know i mentioned this above and before. I say this not only with reference to myself but to others I see and observe. How much inertia is there in our personalities, akin to phylogenetic inertia? Can we alter course simply be moving to another continent? I think environment plays some role in this, allowing us to change a lot through a fresh perspective and with a difference reference point. You are saying those two words are the same thing? Not with reference to what perspective i see this .. LOL, I will stop being silly.
How many of us manage to make a significant number of changes to our lives, were do we start?
attitude, diet, actions, intent, solace, understanding, acceptance and not least belief
not sure what that means, it just seemed meaningful in the moment.
Attempting to start over and create a new life, where do we start?
(cyclicly please dont repeat this document again.. that would be boring
:-)
)
we have eaten pumpkin flowers,
we have baked sour bread,
we have eaten sushi,
what have we to do next?
why is it so hard, yet so easy and contradictory
but this sums it up for the day
But it is possible to change, change is the wind that blows through our hair..
where do i start with this tale or is it a tail? you decide?
I dreamt i stood in a house with my grandfather and he wore a tweed aht, but he didnt, my cousins where there the house was full of kagel kakkies (ornaments), which my aunt and cousins were stripping out of the h0us3.
the doors where double locked, as in there were to 2 doors.. one in front of the other
we had to sign out when we left..
This may all have to do with me reading American Gods on a borrowed ipad, at night in the bed before i sleep, but I digress. It was so strange.
Yesterday I stood staring at the ripples in the stream, fish rising and rolling in the water and now thinking back on that I realise I have changed, and am changing.
Some things stay the same though..
I flew to Singapore a couple of weeks back for a conference, you may say WTF .. why you telling us this now, we know that.. we have seen the pictures on facebook.. No that is not what I wanted to tell you!
I flew and it was a long flight..
I sat and stayed awake to fight off the possible jetlagging :-)
no i stayed awake to watch movies and drink free red wine (yes that is mroe like me isnt it)
So what is the point, none actually other than I had one of the most amazing experiences ever, as I was flying over the northern parts of Australia i peeked out of the window more than a couple of times. The bulk of the plane were all sleeping as they were all conencting to somewhere else in Europe.. So what did I see.. I dont think words could explain what I saw both in my eyes and in my mind, moreso in my mind. There was an endless see of Red sand with long parallel red dunes running for hundreds of kilometers .. not only was this an amazing spectacle on its own, but the sky was filled with a range of different fluffy clouds, yes now is the time to listen to fluffy clouds by the Orb, huge bi cumulonimbus clouds and high altitude clouds, but more amazing than this was the spectacular scattered thunderstorms all over the desert sky, yes this was significantly affected by the amount of Free Red wIne I had had.. But it was amazing flying at high altitude watching the rain plummet down on some of the lucky farmers and not on the others .. amazing..
I do miss the desert I do miss Red sand I do miss the dry.. But that is not saying that there is no splendour and wonder here . But I do think a trip into that dust would be good.
But stranger than that there are not a lot of beetles here in kiwilandia? For someone with a fondness no fondle~ness for beetles .. this is a hard thing to live without.
what else has transpired, there is an AWESOME new band that I discovered via Shalome called Kongos.
they are a pretty awesome 4piece band from the states who originally were born in ZA.
Part 2:
another life in another continent,
I was wondering, well actually am still wondering if it is possible to change yourself totally? Can we re-invent ourselves, I know i mentioned this above and before. I say this not only with reference to myself but to others I see and observe. How much inertia is there in our personalities, akin to phylogenetic inertia? Can we alter course simply be moving to another continent? I think environment plays some role in this, allowing us to change a lot through a fresh perspective and with a difference reference point. You are saying those two words are the same thing? Not with reference to what perspective i see this .. LOL, I will stop being silly.
How many of us manage to make a significant number of changes to our lives, were do we start?
attitude, diet, actions, intent, solace, understanding, acceptance and not least belief
not sure what that means, it just seemed meaningful in the moment.
Attempting to start over and create a new life, where do we start?
(cyclicly please dont repeat this document again.. that would be boring
:-)
)
we have eaten pumpkin flowers,
we have baked sour bread,
we have eaten sushi,
what have we to do next?
why is it so hard, yet so easy and contradictory
but this sums it up for the day
... And finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant and not nearly so much fun.”
― Robert Traver
― Robert Traver
and one last thing though I realised this week was I travel therefore I take pictures
cannot just leave it alone, no they are not photographs they are pictures taken with a camera capturing a perspective and point in time.. ;-)
things I have to do:
write more,
read more,
laugh more,
walk barefoot more,
taste the freshness of nature,
watch rivers flow,
sit still,
and fish more
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
things to be greatfull for
We have to be greatfull and go forth and do things, after watching a video link about killian jornet,
and yes this is a Multimedia Blog .. And yes I think for a while we will need to return to Courier New .. It is Proportional
I digress again, returning to Killian who is an amazing athlete, but he points me int he direction of another book I recently read called Born to run of which the jury is still out on whether or not I enjoyed the book totally. But interestingly Killian a really accomplished ultra trail runner and the aforementioned book have something in common, running is about loving running, Killian says the more meters (yes American, no he is not) we climb the more we see. In my personal quest I have been riding every possible hill I can on the way home, my last being more of a stumble and crawl than a Ride .. But amazing .. only a couple more routes to Go and I would have completed this minor quest. I did Kau Kau on Tuesday.. in the wind and light drizzle .. I did the Metres and enjoyed every last second of the ride, stumble and craw.. Yes this is a little like a very large nested if or case statement....
But to return to Killian, it is all about the love and experience of the run for him, the ride for me. We bind ourselves to what we believe we can achieve.. We can do more, but we dont, WE can bake our own bread but we dont, we chose less and not more..
Back to the book, Born To run is an interesting book, I felt it lost a little bit of steam towards the last third of the book, I would like to read more about it... I suppose i will have to research and see how much of the book is fact, how much is embellishment and how much is fictional? Ok so there is something to the barefoot running debate Zola could do it.. well not sure about Emile, but the other barefoot one..so we will have to try this 100 up technique and get back to you on that ...
Oh yes being greatfull ... that is difficult in this day and age and after #black tuesday.. But there is a lot to be greatfull of, sometimes we dont see what is in front of us, we just see what is behind us, sometimes what is behind us was both good and bad, we need to do the meters and time, then it will tell..
Bla Bla Bla Bla .. yes it is babble, I was browsing the greater inter~blades and found an interview and piece on Die Antwoord, it was intriguing.. It was an interview with an overseas media organization and they asked the question of DA if they are conceptual artists, to which Yolandie Vi$$er asked con what die f septual I dont understand your question and Ninja says.. this interview is over, you do not understand we are in the zone.. It added a new dimension to something seemingly thrashed to death over the last while, I then also had a look at their previous venture Max headroom ... I must admit the Jury is even mroe confused now.. there is significantly more depth than previously imagined? Or maybe not?
On another note, something to wait for will be the mantis dream~time project...
Till later, yes you, we us all have JJ to blame, there will be much more, in the same way we need not ask why did i not have time to eat.. I do have time to Blog.. and remember "Yo snooze you lose, you snor you win"
But to return to Killian, it is all about the love and experience of the run for him, the ride for me. We bind ourselves to what we believe we can achieve.. We can do more, but we dont, WE can bake our own bread but we dont, we chose less and not more..
Back to the book, Born To run is an interesting book, I felt it lost a little bit of steam towards the last third of the book, I would like to read more about it... I suppose i will have to research and see how much of the book is fact, how much is embellishment and how much is fictional? Ok so there is something to the barefoot running debate Zola could do it.. well not sure about Emile, but the other barefoot one..so we will have to try this 100 up technique and get back to you on that ...
Oh yes being greatfull ... that is difficult in this day and age and after #black tuesday.. But there is a lot to be greatfull of, sometimes we dont see what is in front of us, we just see what is behind us, sometimes what is behind us was both good and bad, we need to do the meters and time, then it will tell..
Bla Bla Bla Bla .. yes it is babble, I was browsing the greater inter~blades and found an interview and piece on Die Antwoord, it was intriguing.. It was an interview with an overseas media organization and they asked the question of DA if they are conceptual artists, to which Yolandie Vi$$er asked con what die f septual I dont understand your question and Ninja says.. this interview is over, you do not understand we are in the zone.. It added a new dimension to something seemingly thrashed to death over the last while, I then also had a look at their previous venture Max headroom ... I must admit the Jury is even mroe confused now.. there is significantly more depth than previously imagined? Or maybe not?
On another note, something to wait for will be the mantis dream~time project...
Till later, yes you, we us all have JJ to blame, there will be much more, in the same way we need not ask why did i not have time to eat.. I do have time to Blog.. and remember "Yo snooze you lose, you snor you win"
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
inspiration and living in 2 parts part 4/2
The piece I wanted to add was to question our sensitivities to multimedia textual experiences. Is it still writing or more so reading when it is required to read something a scene is set using other media like music or the smell of fresh lavender? this is not a new question? Not something I am the first to ask? It is just something I often think about whilst rambling in this electronic paper? Is it even right to post pictures? Or is the skill in actually capturing the mood and event in words and not in multimedia, is that the divergence from writing and move into a form of installation art.
I question that, in the light that our lives are a mosaic of events that merge between the senses and dimensions moving steadily from auditory, tactile and temporal nature of life as we live it.
Is the art in going fishing, tying the fly, casting the fly, hooking the fish, landing the fish, taking the photograph, thinking about it, thinking about doing it or talking about it before or after the event or is it just a momentary lapse in the fabric of time and existence.
We have to question what inspires us, what drives us, what makes us cycle up a hill? What makes us take a photograph, what makes us chose life?
I question that, in the light that our lives are a mosaic of events that merge between the senses and dimensions moving steadily from auditory, tactile and temporal nature of life as we live it.
Is the art in going fishing, tying the fly, casting the fly, hooking the fish, landing the fish, taking the photograph, thinking about it, thinking about doing it or talking about it before or after the event or is it just a momentary lapse in the fabric of time and existence.
We have to question what inspires us, what drives us, what makes us cycle up a hill? What makes us take a photograph, what makes us chose life?
inspiration and living in 2 parts
Ok so this is a re-edit:
This will be a piece in two parts, yes and the first half may be sadder than is required .. but wtf .. I wrote it half way never fisnished it and will just post it as is ..
part 1 inspiration and living
a whole lot of really random things are rushing through my head, it seems !?
this is about us, inside, sadness, happiness and life, fishing, happiness, insects, creativity and expression
and missing friends!!!
and the sources of inspiration...
Do I have to find and befriend the Taniwha or is it that it has to be conquered?
it is about braveness to live and express and accept the way we live and experience the world and the universe around us.
Who knows, but we know we have to face this next step in our lives, we took the leap of the chasm into the dark water. Once again I face the fear of the known unknown. We have created the opportunity to remodel and start again without planning. I suppose that is how it must be. All I know is that I have learnt more about myself and how people perceived/perceive me in this one past year than in many. It may be due to the way our lives suddenly accelerated to somewhere clsoe to the speed of life only to be suddenly stopped throwing us onto a wet sandy beach without instructions. Somehow when you have the chance to start your life over again, note to self, Again... then we somehow flounder like fish out of the sea and tend to look back and not forwards, I know going back what I have said about looking forward and backwards to ad infinitum. Yes but now we stand and it is relatively simple. Yet it is not that simple to change the smallest things inside our minds, we move many thousand kilometers and the leap inside our minds is more difficult to make. At times it is the slender binds of our past that hold us back, the friends we left behind. On that note I fell down the hoel fo nostalgia and on occassions i watch trashy south african artists on youtube, to get a context of what we have left behind. Not all are trashy, some are.. some are brilliant others just justify. On the last occassion I did however find something that was so sad, I watched some Bok van Blerk .. yes OMG.. But there is something so bizarre about what he says in a lot of his music, he chose to flog the old riding horse. In between the few songs of his I listened to I found a sad and poignant song about leaving friends and family behind when leave africa and the choices those who stay have made to stay.
But there is nothing that could have prepared us for the emotional turmoil you face as an immigrant. It has highlighted the gradients of happiness and sadness and strife and anguish others have to go through to survive the journey to the promised land/s. I have met people from so many corners of life here in kiwilandia, yet have met very few Kiwi's ;-)
As I sit here the words or wordless moments of emotions churn through my brain. the little bit of connection i have had to this mortal coil slowly drifting away. the longer I stay here the more separated I become with the world around me. Words fall on deaf ears, I sit/stand and call, but nothing seems to stick. I walk this land alone it seems I walk, cycle and fish alone in a land of beauty and splendor challenging all senses of fear of the unknown. Oh I walk through the green fields and rocky hills, all i have to fear is fear itself and the forces of nature and chance.
Part 2: influence and memories
Today the melancholia filled me with thoughts, my first stop is to return to youtube and watch some Heuwels fantasties videos. Somehow they have a grounding effect. Grounding effect is most probably the wrong word for what i feel. I watched two or three music videos today.
The first being
the most amazing thing about this being that this mixes the old and the new so well and causes a wave mixed emotions. To clarify more, the video is shot in wellington kiwilandia which now strangely fills me with a sense of home. Seeing palces i recognise and walk past fairly often, but mixed with the old and the "other" immigrants and rugby watchers.. yes I must say am still not a devout Rugby follower one year on in kiwilandia.. But hey some things just wont change all that easily. But what did sadden me was the fact that they played at the "waterfront" ZA stand, which I very much would have liked to have seen.. But sometimes things are better left un-done :-) I saw images of people and realised it was most probably quite right that i did not go.. WTF .. who knows.. Well I dont know at this stage.
I then watched a few of the older videos that I watched before.. the one that really sticks every time I see it is
This will be a piece in two parts, yes and the first half may be sadder than is required .. but wtf .. I wrote it half way never fisnished it and will just post it as is ..
part 1 inspiration and living
a whole lot of really random things are rushing through my head, it seems !?
this is about us, inside, sadness, happiness and life, fishing, happiness, insects, creativity and expression
and missing friends!!!
and the sources of inspiration...
Do I have to find and befriend the Taniwha or is it that it has to be conquered?
it is about braveness to live and express and accept the way we live and experience the world and the universe around us.
Who knows, but we know we have to face this next step in our lives, we took the leap of the chasm into the dark water. Once again I face the fear of the known unknown. We have created the opportunity to remodel and start again without planning. I suppose that is how it must be. All I know is that I have learnt more about myself and how people perceived/perceive me in this one past year than in many. It may be due to the way our lives suddenly accelerated to somewhere clsoe to the speed of life only to be suddenly stopped throwing us onto a wet sandy beach without instructions. Somehow when you have the chance to start your life over again, note to self, Again... then we somehow flounder like fish out of the sea and tend to look back and not forwards, I know going back what I have said about looking forward and backwards to ad infinitum. Yes but now we stand and it is relatively simple. Yet it is not that simple to change the smallest things inside our minds, we move many thousand kilometers and the leap inside our minds is more difficult to make. At times it is the slender binds of our past that hold us back, the friends we left behind. On that note I fell down the hoel fo nostalgia and on occassions i watch trashy south african artists on youtube, to get a context of what we have left behind. Not all are trashy, some are.. some are brilliant others just justify. On the last occassion I did however find something that was so sad, I watched some Bok van Blerk .. yes OMG.. But there is something so bizarre about what he says in a lot of his music, he chose to flog the old riding horse. In between the few songs of his I listened to I found a sad and poignant song about leaving friends and family behind when leave africa and the choices those who stay have made to stay.
But there is nothing that could have prepared us for the emotional turmoil you face as an immigrant. It has highlighted the gradients of happiness and sadness and strife and anguish others have to go through to survive the journey to the promised land/s. I have met people from so many corners of life here in kiwilandia, yet have met very few Kiwi's ;-)
As I sit here the words or wordless moments of emotions churn through my brain. the little bit of connection i have had to this mortal coil slowly drifting away. the longer I stay here the more separated I become with the world around me. Words fall on deaf ears, I sit/stand and call, but nothing seems to stick. I walk this land alone it seems I walk, cycle and fish alone in a land of beauty and splendor challenging all senses of fear of the unknown. Oh I walk through the green fields and rocky hills, all i have to fear is fear itself and the forces of nature and chance.
Part 2: influence and memories
Today the melancholia filled me with thoughts, my first stop is to return to youtube and watch some Heuwels fantasties videos. Somehow they have a grounding effect. Grounding effect is most probably the wrong word for what i feel. I watched two or three music videos today.
The first being
Die Heuwels Fantasties - Heel Te Mal (official video)
the most amazing thing about this being that this mixes the old and the new so well and causes a wave mixed emotions. To clarify more, the video is shot in wellington kiwilandia which now strangely fills me with a sense of home. Seeing palces i recognise and walk past fairly often, but mixed with the old and the "other" immigrants and rugby watchers.. yes I must say am still not a devout Rugby follower one year on in kiwilandia.. But hey some things just wont change all that easily. But what did sadden me was the fact that they played at the "waterfront" ZA stand, which I very much would have liked to have seen.. But sometimes things are better left un-done :-) I saw images of people and realised it was most probably quite right that i did not go.. WTF .. who knows.. Well I dont know at this stage.
I then watched a few of the older videos that I watched before.. the one that really sticks every time I see it is
Die Heuwels Fantasties - Buitenste Ruim (official musicvideo)
which raises a whole lot of emotions about life as a child and all the other things that they portray in the video, but things deeper than that it portays or evoked within me are how our memories and actions are driven by our reference to contemporary culture albeit frionge or otherwise, The video above opens with a scene of a bloudraad washing lind dangling in the back of a recognizable house from somewhere in the hinterland, but most striking, the scene opens with barking of dogs with a slow interlude of music it reminds you of what ? .....
no not this track this one .. Eventhoug the son and sound is different, it evokes a memory of this. Within a larger community it creates a shared response to hearing a song or seeing an image of the wall album cover or similar. where Am i going with this obvious fact you may ask? We take a lot of solace in the common frame of reference, it is what allows us to communicate and relate to those and to events around us. Once we are uprooted and moved to a place where the common frame of reference and relationship to iconic musicians and events is totally different it furthermore creates a gap between us and our new home. BTB I registered as a voter today in my new home, a strange thought voting in another country.... But there is a lot to be said for integration by means of a common frame of reference, there are similarities in the anglo-saxoness of our lives, the internationalization has also gone a long way to reducing the impact on us and those around us. I see the place for joining an ex-pat organization. But I am not really sure if I am truly south African, I am sure a part of me is, a part of me has pieces from all over? I think to me that is what is half saddening about being here and looking back and wondering am I actually an ex-pat or not, or just on another leg of a part of my journey through life? who knows, well i definitely dont, you may question why I say that and still actually write things If there is so little that I know and yet I have such opinions on a whole lot of things. I really don't know.
Part 3 of 2:Some new heroes
There are a few that need mentioning for the moment, as always I had never really mentioned soem of them, some had disillusioned me other never, some came out of nowhere.. where to start, most probably Jonathan Jansen (the rector on the UOFS), he has always stood out as beacon of light in the landscape of political turmoil in South AfriKa, his diffusing of the incidents in the residences at the university. He then said and did a whole lot of inspirational things, A long time LaTer I suddenly found him on twitter, I now follow him avidly. Then one that you will find strange is P Divvy, I am utterly amazed at his comments on twitter, either this is not him, Or this IS the real person and if the second then he is a wholy misunderstood individual who is definitely worth his Moustache, no seriously it appears as if there is some real substance behind the man with the moustache, I will end his piece with "Dear ANC. You can take away my freedom of speech but you cant take away my freedom of snor!"
And the other being as an afterthought almost forgot about him, but koos kombuis, he kinda drifts in and out of consciousness, mine not his.. :-)
Some new things .. cannot remember them
WTF.. the wind is really blowing today, it feels like I am in boat on the open see.. this building is swaying so much, which brought me to a wondering about "are windmills effective?" and if so why do the Kiwi's hate them? A strange thing I was talking to someone who i was flyfishing with and it appears that there is a great deal of FUD around wind energy in Kiwilandia and its ROI and cost effectiveness and subsidization. Interesting I was rather shocked and thought maybe I misunderstood all of this wind power stuff and that maybe it was not the good that I imagined.. I have been wrong in the past.. so off to google and I could not find the negative sentiment? But I did find out that in kiwilandia there is no subsidization of wind energy generation as there is in other countries ... so I was right for a change .. ;-)
But I suppose all good things must come to an end at some point, I have to finish off for now.. more later.. Iw ill attempt to follow the words of JJ Letters to my children #98: I love only two things in life- eating and writing. Nobody has ever asked me where I find the time to eat 10th nov
and as a last point JJ follows Pdivvy makes you think something must be up?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
So whats in a life
So we (I) stand on the brink of a new life every blink of our (my) walking day, I walk forward as if covered with the ash of the burning life I leave behind. The flames burning brighter I hear the screams, but there is nothing I feel I can do but run like a living dog, the proud Lion stands behind burning with no tears in his eyes or regret.
daars niks nuuts onder die son nie
en in die skaduwee
brand Suid-Afrika
am I right am I wrong, I walk away from the life I knew the life I suspect is going to go up in flames.
What can stop it now?
landmyne van skuldgevoelens in 'n eenman-konsentrasiekamp
Stepping Forward I leave it all behind, after reading the genocidewatch website today I fear I was both right and wrong to leave.
I suppose If one person can break down the wall, another can rebuild it? But it takes so many more people to rebuild what a few are breaking down on daily basis for personal and megalomaniacal purpose.
So where does that leave me.. In a quandary with a life to live elsewhere as a refugee, different to our Zimbabwian, Etheopian, Somalian and other African brethren scattered over the globe by human greed and violence.
So It leaves me standing naked without identity other than having no identity, which is no different from our time in Africa. we never own anything in Africa, everything is transient, life, property, money and time. It will return to nothing and build up again like the phoenix it is.
So us the wandering people of Africa and Europe, we packed our goods in the caravan and took to the road, we move again but not quite as far. Strangely we still have no heritage other than that implied where we come from. But there are so many of us who are neither pillar or post.
Back to reality; After we have now decided to move on and buy this hosue and start a new life again, it makes me think of a lot of things.. yes far to many for one succinct sentence.. Start in the middle..
How lucky we are to arive here with more than the clothes on our backs and more than a $100 like some of the Zimbabwian and other refugees we have met here in Kiwilandia. But most importantly I almost forgot where this was going. a few days ago I was sitting on the train in the morning with my train friends, now there is a strange phenomena to discuss later, and the one person who works for the rail service as a "mechanic"/"repair person" told us that he lives in a boat, it took a few moments to register until I realised he was normal and he lives in a boat at the marina and if he feels like it he just packs up the boat and moves to a new Marina .. insane a real life Boatie .. not to different from the travelers in their caravans and mobile homes. But nonetheless intriguing... so the point being is that we all have the ability to start over again and again.. and do things.. I suppose sometimes there is less times than others and it all comes down to how much energy you have to start over again and again ... some of us need more stability than others, some of us need physical things, some of us need location, some of us need a book. But there has to be something to root us.
You have to question then what is it that roots us to a location or an identity, is it the closes we wear, the hair styles, the location, the tattoo/s, the jewelery or silly dark horn rimmed glass or a hat. we all need some form of tethering to this mortal coil even if it is nothing and the lack of nothing or the transience of our existence.
When we walk along the path of life we walk surrounded by those around us, we are a reflection of them as they are to us or the spaces we leave between them or them us. We cannot forget, we cannot go forward without the past being there to push us along or act as a Drogue. Sometimes these anchors tend to act like rudders through the voyage of life.
The more things, people and places we see and experience the more radiant our personalities become, the places the people the books the images all reflect, we stand out like lanterns on a dark night. don't tread lightly into the night, shine forth and sprinkle your colour over the world he said.
So after all of this soon i will stand and chase my chickens, stand and survey my postage stamp of a garden. Ready for the new day, week and year that lies ahead. somehow it seems less desperate in terms of certain thinsg, but in other ways life is far more frenetic here.. in an attempt to achieve things i never had time for before.. 1 down and a few hundred more to be done...
daars niks nuuts onder die son nie
en in die skaduwee
brand Suid-Afrika
am I right am I wrong, I walk away from the life I knew the life I suspect is going to go up in flames.
What can stop it now?
landmyne van skuldgevoelens in 'n eenman-konsentrasiekamp
Stepping Forward I leave it all behind, after reading the genocidewatch website today I fear I was both right and wrong to leave.
I suppose If one person can break down the wall, another can rebuild it? But it takes so many more people to rebuild what a few are breaking down on daily basis for personal and megalomaniacal purpose.
So where does that leave me.. In a quandary with a life to live elsewhere as a refugee, different to our Zimbabwian, Etheopian, Somalian and other African brethren scattered over the globe by human greed and violence.
So It leaves me standing naked without identity other than having no identity, which is no different from our time in Africa. we never own anything in Africa, everything is transient, life, property, money and time. It will return to nothing and build up again like the phoenix it is.
So us the wandering people of Africa and Europe, we packed our goods in the caravan and took to the road, we move again but not quite as far. Strangely we still have no heritage other than that implied where we come from. But there are so many of us who are neither pillar or post.
Back to reality; After we have now decided to move on and buy this hosue and start a new life again, it makes me think of a lot of things.. yes far to many for one succinct sentence.. Start in the middle..
How lucky we are to arive here with more than the clothes on our backs and more than a $100 like some of the Zimbabwian and other refugees we have met here in Kiwilandia. But most importantly I almost forgot where this was going. a few days ago I was sitting on the train in the morning with my train friends, now there is a strange phenomena to discuss later, and the one person who works for the rail service as a "mechanic"/"repair person" told us that he lives in a boat, it took a few moments to register until I realised he was normal and he lives in a boat at the marina and if he feels like it he just packs up the boat and moves to a new Marina .. insane a real life Boatie .. not to different from the travelers in their caravans and mobile homes. But nonetheless intriguing... so the point being is that we all have the ability to start over again and again.. and do things.. I suppose sometimes there is less times than others and it all comes down to how much energy you have to start over again and again ... some of us need more stability than others, some of us need physical things, some of us need location, some of us need a book. But there has to be something to root us.
You have to question then what is it that roots us to a location or an identity, is it the closes we wear, the hair styles, the location, the tattoo/s, the jewelery or silly dark horn rimmed glass or a hat. we all need some form of tethering to this mortal coil even if it is nothing and the lack of nothing or the transience of our existence.
When we walk along the path of life we walk surrounded by those around us, we are a reflection of them as they are to us or the spaces we leave between them or them us. We cannot forget, we cannot go forward without the past being there to push us along or act as a Drogue. Sometimes these anchors tend to act like rudders through the voyage of life.
The more things, people and places we see and experience the more radiant our personalities become, the places the people the books the images all reflect, we stand out like lanterns on a dark night. don't tread lightly into the night, shine forth and sprinkle your colour over the world he said.
So after all of this soon i will stand and chase my chickens, stand and survey my postage stamp of a garden. Ready for the new day, week and year that lies ahead. somehow it seems less desperate in terms of certain thinsg, but in other ways life is far more frenetic here.. in an attempt to achieve things i never had time for before.. 1 down and a few hundred more to be done...
Sunday, September 4, 2011
life as a moment
is life the string of moments we believe it to be, or is the moment a life and all we are is an endless continuum of events and lives.
So much changes over time, so much returns and becomes the same thing.
I sat driving and suddenly I felt at home, but the stark reality then hit home, I was at home, but it was not the home that I thought it was.
But we live the life we create or procrastinate for our selves, some things happen because we put them in action, others happen because we did not put them in action.
A day starts, we wake with, before or after the sun. Our life flickers like an image through time, momentarily we pause and cement some of these images and internalize them, at times we live life as a complex sequence of events.
So we sat and watched WOW (world of wearable art) on Sunday evening, now how would i have known that now I had ticked off something on my bucket list that I did not even know i should put there. Yes there is duplicity in this statement, but for different times we have different words and at other times we use the same words. This must rate as one of the most amazing spectacles that I have witnessed. It is a complete visual interplay, that touches on our emotions and senses.
So what does that mean, other than you should add it to your list of items, or shoudl you? who knows.. I must admit this was seen back to back on a "siniging" school where some friends of our's kids go to... what was striking about this event which was as contrasting as possible was that there are people out there with a heck of a lot of courage to attempt to sing the songs inside their heads, and even though the songs in their hearts, heads and ears is not the same as the ones we hear.. man they have conviction and guts and they can say they stood up and sanf don't cry for me argentina in front of an audience and no one wept.. which is in a way a sad thing for any number of reasons :-)
But it made me realize a whole lot of things, amoungst them was that I would have to create moments that add value for me.
But it brought me back to questioning what we do with our time and produce as individuals .. where should our motivation lie..
And how temporal and relative our lives are?
So much changes over time, so much returns and becomes the same thing.
I sat driving and suddenly I felt at home, but the stark reality then hit home, I was at home, but it was not the home that I thought it was.
But we live the life we create or procrastinate for our selves, some things happen because we put them in action, others happen because we did not put them in action.
A day starts, we wake with, before or after the sun. Our life flickers like an image through time, momentarily we pause and cement some of these images and internalize them, at times we live life as a complex sequence of events.
So we sat and watched WOW (world of wearable art) on Sunday evening, now how would i have known that now I had ticked off something on my bucket list that I did not even know i should put there. Yes there is duplicity in this statement, but for different times we have different words and at other times we use the same words. This must rate as one of the most amazing spectacles that I have witnessed. It is a complete visual interplay, that touches on our emotions and senses.
So what does that mean, other than you should add it to your list of items, or shoudl you? who knows.. I must admit this was seen back to back on a "siniging" school where some friends of our's kids go to... what was striking about this event which was as contrasting as possible was that there are people out there with a heck of a lot of courage to attempt to sing the songs inside their heads, and even though the songs in their hearts, heads and ears is not the same as the ones we hear.. man they have conviction and guts and they can say they stood up and sanf don't cry for me argentina in front of an audience and no one wept.. which is in a way a sad thing for any number of reasons :-)
But it made me realize a whole lot of things, amoungst them was that I would have to create moments that add value for me.
But it brought me back to questioning what we do with our time and produce as individuals .. where should our motivation lie..
And how temporal and relative our lives are?
Thursday, August 11, 2011
a whole lot of things
so where two now, the world wobbles a little more, the stochasticy increases in leaps and bounds, the lows become lwoer the highs become higher.. and No that is not just the stock markets.
we are entering interesting times...
So I apologize to myself and those few who read this, about not spending time on this aspect of my persona, it is not that i have not been thinking about this a lot?
I have put my effort to one side to start on my other Blog 365 , most if not all of you would be aware of it in some sense or another..
It is all about that picture and so much more, and most probably relates to a couple fo things I am thinking and were thinking about over time. It has to do with visually observing the things around us, we expect to have a status Quo, we expect a static life and world and surrounds, us as afriKans (yes I went to a justice of the peace yesterday, boy this is a long sub-thread so bear-with me, to have copy of my ID DoCument certified for FICA in South AfriKA, and the JOP asked me to fill in a questionaire and one of the questions was, o yes BTW this was ata free Law clinic which explains some of it, what my race or ethnic type was.. and to be honest i chose African other, Does that make me a lier and a traitor leaving the roots of my should behind me) are now part of one of the worlds great SPora's cant really say Diaspora, think that has more specific meanings. ?Dam that was a long train of thought and had to put down with one breath and should be read as such? This is becoming a little absurdish or abserdist, but to get back to my point. We walk we look we see, sometimes we see, which brings on another point -- go look at this dudes pics, one would imagine he altered the way i look at things a long time ago. But that is a story for another time. To get back to the stream, we carry on with our lives with a lack of urgency, No i am not saying we need to suffer the perils of over anxiety and rushing, urgency is something else. Urgency to live and see and experience within the bounds and confines of our minds and bodies and spirit and cicumstance, there are no limits within those bounds even though that seems oxymoron~ic. It may seem like I am Digressing, but I am not.. The point being you wlak down the roads, or drive or whatever there in your city and along the streets are trees with the most amazing colours and hue's that tomorrow we may not see,,,,
No this is not a doom and gloom, for tomorrow you may Die.. no that could happen to anyone, that is not the thread or intent, but rather that appreciate things within the constraints of the life you lead and have chosen, but appreciate them tot he fullest, mine happens to be a tapestry of rich colours and hues and shades and textures and shapes and the most amazing inane yet interesting things that walk buy on a daily basis. The little things, the mosaic on a floor the shape of a building, tomorrow you may never walk that way again, enjoy, experience and see them..
The images are a celebration of the route i travel through on a daily basis, oft they may seem totally arbitrary, but there is always a reason behind a posting, it is also an attempt at being forced to take more pictures to increase photographic fitness and to allow better expression and develop a clearer identity and style... Something which through the whole uprooting and Spora has tended to be the most unsettling for us.. the apparent lack of identity that we have as immigrants, other than being immigrants and Saffers .. which by nature we are not, by origin we are.. man it is a complicated scenario :-/
That was a silly side rant..
but back to where we are and what we do ..
expect more changes through time, things are moving faster than we can prepare ourselves for, all we know that the event window is moving closer and closer to us. Quicker and quicker and wilder and wilder swings ...
Here i moved from a situation of clear and present danger to one of clear and present other danger? Go figure, but at least it is pretty here and the danger is on a very different way.. Strangely the longer we stay the more we like, the more we miss things, well people more than things. It comes to the fact that we do not realize how much of us is merely a reflection of those who surround us, even those who stand alone, still stand alone from all those that are familiar and are either the reflection of what others are not or are the spaces between the people, filling the gaps, here that disfigured self has no reference or relevance..
So what does this all mean? not sure, I look at somethings i see on the web, some by people I know and some by others I don't know and I am amazed and moved
at times by how others see and express them selves in the simplest ways ..
So my aim for the near future is to express more .. the 365 is a simple and humble start
we are entering interesting times...
So I apologize to myself and those few who read this, about not spending time on this aspect of my persona, it is not that i have not been thinking about this a lot?
I have put my effort to one side to start on my other Blog 365 , most if not all of you would be aware of it in some sense or another..
It is all about that picture and so much more, and most probably relates to a couple fo things I am thinking and were thinking about over time. It has to do with visually observing the things around us, we expect to have a status Quo, we expect a static life and world and surrounds, us as afriKans (yes I went to a justice of the peace yesterday, boy this is a long sub-thread so bear-with me, to have copy of my ID DoCument certified for FICA in South AfriKA, and the JOP asked me to fill in a questionaire and one of the questions was, o yes BTW this was ata free Law clinic which explains some of it, what my race or ethnic type was.. and to be honest i chose African other, Does that make me a lier and a traitor leaving the roots of my should behind me) are now part of one of the worlds great SPora's cant really say Diaspora, think that has more specific meanings. ?Dam that was a long train of thought and had to put down with one breath and should be read as such? This is becoming a little absurdish or abserdist, but to get back to my point. We walk we look we see, sometimes we see, which brings on another point -- go look at this dudes pics, one would imagine he altered the way i look at things a long time ago. But that is a story for another time. To get back to the stream, we carry on with our lives with a lack of urgency, No i am not saying we need to suffer the perils of over anxiety and rushing, urgency is something else. Urgency to live and see and experience within the bounds and confines of our minds and bodies and spirit and cicumstance, there are no limits within those bounds even though that seems oxymoron~ic. It may seem like I am Digressing, but I am not.. The point being you wlak down the roads, or drive or whatever there in your city and along the streets are trees with the most amazing colours and hue's that tomorrow we may not see,,,,
No this is not a doom and gloom, for tomorrow you may Die.. no that could happen to anyone, that is not the thread or intent, but rather that appreciate things within the constraints of the life you lead and have chosen, but appreciate them tot he fullest, mine happens to be a tapestry of rich colours and hues and shades and textures and shapes and the most amazing inane yet interesting things that walk buy on a daily basis. The little things, the mosaic on a floor the shape of a building, tomorrow you may never walk that way again, enjoy, experience and see them..
The images are a celebration of the route i travel through on a daily basis, oft they may seem totally arbitrary, but there is always a reason behind a posting, it is also an attempt at being forced to take more pictures to increase photographic fitness and to allow better expression and develop a clearer identity and style... Something which through the whole uprooting and Spora has tended to be the most unsettling for us.. the apparent lack of identity that we have as immigrants, other than being immigrants and Saffers .. which by nature we are not, by origin we are.. man it is a complicated scenario :-/
That was a silly side rant..
but back to where we are and what we do ..
expect more changes through time, things are moving faster than we can prepare ourselves for, all we know that the event window is moving closer and closer to us. Quicker and quicker and wilder and wilder swings ...
Here i moved from a situation of clear and present danger to one of clear and present other danger? Go figure, but at least it is pretty here and the danger is on a very different way.. Strangely the longer we stay the more we like, the more we miss things, well people more than things. It comes to the fact that we do not realize how much of us is merely a reflection of those who surround us, even those who stand alone, still stand alone from all those that are familiar and are either the reflection of what others are not or are the spaces between the people, filling the gaps, here that disfigured self has no reference or relevance..
So what does this all mean? not sure, I look at somethings i see on the web, some by people I know and some by others I don't know and I am amazed and moved
at times by how others see and express them selves in the simplest ways ..
So my aim for the near future is to express more .. the 365 is a simple and humble start
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
koos, the ipad, and a whole ot of things and something else
Like memories
this is unfortunately a bit of a mix of pieces, yes i have been slack and have not really got to this.. But I will endeavor to be more committed over the course of the next couple of weeks, no I will not try and get committed, the other word.. It has been a trying and busy and challenging time. Not for any reason other than it has been a time to adjust to our new status.
part 1: 25 june
where do i begin with regards the damn ipad, other than I wrote the last blog in a airport, a good one, a long one full of meaning, joy, mirth, wisdom and a whole lot of other things, only to have it taken away from me ..
Technology, our saviour and failure ..
a small bit about the ipad.. a clever piece of technology, and no this is not mine.. it is the works and i need it to do some demo's of software..
would I buy one? not unless I could get it for a steal..
it is nice to type on, you can play angry birds, you can play shark attack you can browse the interWeb.
you can view you tube and all of this on the train .. BUT
it is still Steves evil spawn..
Yes it is a I-device which actually is not an I-device .. it is a sheep device, all those individuals who follow form before function, image is everything view of life, constrained by the shackles of the eVil SteVe.
Ok so now is it at airport once again with the spawn of evil Steve, having lost all train of thought .. I will have to start again.. But this time I am trying to type directly onto the website and rather not on the tying app wherein I lost all the work that I was busy with ..
So where does this lead me down the garden path, a million thoughts mowing through my brain, each one carrying over and destroying the previous ones ..
As a complete side issue I wanted to tell you all about a most amazing book, no not the same one again, which by the way I managed to procure for my self over the Internet .. Yes the black swan one , bout. No this is another book, this is a cooking thesaurus, or should I rather say food thesaurus, it is not s massive book, but a very interesting concept int hat it does not actually have recipes but rather documents possible and proven combinations of foods, like for example broccoli and anchovies, butternut and rosemary and the list continues on and on..
It is something worthwhile poking out for ..
So this brings me back to a question about religion and spirituality.. I must admit ihave gone through a large number of really contradictory thought processes about the validity, necessity or even benefit of religion or I should rather say in the plural. I do think we sometimes contest things that are an inherent flaw in our makeup, like a lisp, ip do believe that many will disagree with the frankness of my approach, but I do believe us as humans require some form of divine belief system or religion. I think we require this as part of our makeup, we require a belief in something that is not real and does not exist, albeit sea monsters, dragons, I have to ask if you dream of dragons
And if you do is it a bad thing, I do believe in faeries, because if ip don't they will die, every time I say or think bad thoughts they die .. Rather pi believe in garden gnomes, I have a belief that we should have at least one in the garden, if not more, and I do think it is mandatory for al of us to carry pocket gnome with us wherever we go .. You may ask what the frig for, has he now seriously lost his marbles, is he leaching marbles through his nostrils. No I must interject, there is a reason, albeit selfish. No that is not shellfish,
They are good and taste good.
Part 2: 11 july
in between losing this blog a handful of times and just being to pre-occupied ...
Where to return to, a lot has happened in the last while (about a month and a little), we have eventually got the point where our PR (permanent residence) has been approved.. Which is a strange thing, coupled with the fact that our house has almost been sold.. what a weird experience ..
It gives this whole journey and adventure more of a finality, we have now landed, things have panned out strangely in some ways, the house has been a cauldron of emotions around things and people we miss. Lucky for us we have all been out of synch.
On other things,
So many thoughts have been rushing through my brain, but i suppose the PR has been in the back of my mind and has really been occupied with that and the house. But it opens so many doors, yet on the other hand it closes some others. It is a strange thing..
It drives us to wonder about the importance of everything in our lives.. In terms of maslo's hierarchy of needs where do friends, family, support and history compared to safety and general peace.. There are things that are brilliant here, but there are things that are missing and sometimes our hearts are torn into a thousand pieces when we miss the things we miss, for everyone there are different things..
Enough of that.. melancholy, I was going to use melodrama, but am reminded internally that i was reminded that this is the incorrect word.
Part 3:
On art, creation of art, appreciation of art and where we stand in this milieu ;-) I now follow danGerousMinDs.. It is a very interesting blog/media/information portal. The point isn't actually about this website, but rather a conclusion that myself and a friend both made.. which was, how is that people can come up with magnificent mental gymnastics. In some terms we can call it art, in other terms we may call it an iSm, But the key being that we don't all seem to have the same ability or propensity to create acts of visual, intellectual or artistic gymnastics, this does, however, in no way say that we do not have the propensity or even ability to judge, appreciate or even pick it out of a line up? How is it that our brains are wired differently in this way?
Part 4:
On looking at piles of Kelp on beach it made me think of a number of things:
1. an irish movie about a farmer who packs kelp into wheelbarrow everyday and then puts it onto his land to fertilize it .. a very depressing movie where the old father lands up killing his sons to protect his pocket of farm.
2. the weird crap that gets washed up from the sea? I saw a bird house being washed up in the kelp, pieces of plastic, glass, bottles and any number of things ...
part 4 will continue down the line..
Is this part of natures way of showing us count zero
Part 5:
a Thought on adversity and innovation, is it a driver or does it inhibit, that I would suppose is pending the eye of the person who is being adversetized .. yes i KnoW that is not a word .. but it fits into what I am trying to say here. When we look at life through the pale glass of an immigrant, their are shades of rose, red and blue. It is all about perspective. How do we measure our success. Can we....
but what is evident, or should i say became evident, was there is inherent values we carry with us like a lunch box brought from a home a long time ago, almost like the elven bread frodo carried with himself through his journey to the ends of the earth to get rid of the ring.... something that feeds us from within.
How important is the cocoon of individuality we wrap ourselves with? At times it is a burden at others a crutch and sometimes it tends to distinguish us from the rest...
we sat last night and realized that we are different, but not in the obvious ways we thought
It is strange, we wont ever know where our next piece of inspiration comes from, somehow it seems better that way..
Part 6: Why do we comodify mystique
A moon hangs in an amber sky slowly burgeoning the new day in, but it is with sadness i realize we have forsaken the mystery of life, yes this is nothing new, there is nothing new in what i say. But, there are times it saddens me ...
There are slivers of hope, breaking through, I sat on the train today saw a guy with a beanie on with "stark enterprises" on the front of it. Event he comics have lost their mystique, baring a few, the bulk have been transformed, albeit sometimes brilliantly, into celluloid replicas of the imaginations of others and ours, removing the mystery and magnificence and replacing them with a cheap celluloid replica. Granted this is inspiration from something I saw on the interWeb recently that spurned this on. the thing that stabbed me straight between the eyes was when i picked up the book i was reading again on the train this morning, I am fighting my way through a Neil Gamon book, not because it is hard to read, but because life has been rushing past me a little over the last few weeks.
I Digress onCe again from the essence of the topic i was hoping to shed some light on.. I should rather not say topic, but rather fleeting moment of inspiration that somehow gets lost somewhere between thought and electronic transferal ....
Why is it through technological advancement we are losing our essence as humans, I cannot say..
But thing we are destroying more rapidly is our mystery. There is little joy in the celluloid and mass media recreations of unique creativity, yet peeking through this milieu and noise generation somehow humanity shines through in the strangest of places..
what they dont tell you
there is so much they don't tell you about the things you should know..
Yet a new days dawns, I will not be afraid ..
this is unfortunately a bit of a mix of pieces, yes i have been slack and have not really got to this.. But I will endeavor to be more committed over the course of the next couple of weeks, no I will not try and get committed, the other word.. It has been a trying and busy and challenging time. Not for any reason other than it has been a time to adjust to our new status.
part 1: 25 june
where do i begin with regards the damn ipad, other than I wrote the last blog in a airport, a good one, a long one full of meaning, joy, mirth, wisdom and a whole lot of other things, only to have it taken away from me ..
Technology, our saviour and failure ..
a small bit about the ipad.. a clever piece of technology, and no this is not mine.. it is the works and i need it to do some demo's of software..
would I buy one? not unless I could get it for a steal..
it is nice to type on, you can play angry birds, you can play shark attack you can browse the interWeb.
you can view you tube and all of this on the train .. BUT
it is still Steves evil spawn..
Yes it is a I-device which actually is not an I-device .. it is a sheep device, all those individuals who follow form before function, image is everything view of life, constrained by the shackles of the eVil SteVe.
Ok so now is it at airport once again with the spawn of evil Steve, having lost all train of thought .. I will have to start again.. But this time I am trying to type directly onto the website and rather not on the tying app wherein I lost all the work that I was busy with ..
So where does this lead me down the garden path, a million thoughts mowing through my brain, each one carrying over and destroying the previous ones ..
As a complete side issue I wanted to tell you all about a most amazing book, no not the same one again, which by the way I managed to procure for my self over the Internet .. Yes the black swan one , bout. No this is another book, this is a cooking thesaurus, or should I rather say food thesaurus, it is not s massive book, but a very interesting concept int hat it does not actually have recipes but rather documents possible and proven combinations of foods, like for example broccoli and anchovies, butternut and rosemary and the list continues on and on..
It is something worthwhile poking out for ..
So this brings me back to a question about religion and spirituality.. I must admit ihave gone through a large number of really contradictory thought processes about the validity, necessity or even benefit of religion or I should rather say in the plural. I do think we sometimes contest things that are an inherent flaw in our makeup, like a lisp, ip do believe that many will disagree with the frankness of my approach, but I do believe us as humans require some form of divine belief system or religion. I think we require this as part of our makeup, we require a belief in something that is not real and does not exist, albeit sea monsters, dragons, I have to ask if you dream of dragons
And if you do is it a bad thing, I do believe in faeries, because if ip don't they will die, every time I say or think bad thoughts they die .. Rather pi believe in garden gnomes, I have a belief that we should have at least one in the garden, if not more, and I do think it is mandatory for al of us to carry pocket gnome with us wherever we go .. You may ask what the frig for, has he now seriously lost his marbles, is he leaching marbles through his nostrils. No I must interject, there is a reason, albeit selfish. No that is not shellfish,
They are good and taste good.
Part 2: 11 july
in between losing this blog a handful of times and just being to pre-occupied ...
Where to return to, a lot has happened in the last while (about a month and a little), we have eventually got the point where our PR (permanent residence) has been approved.. Which is a strange thing, coupled with the fact that our house has almost been sold.. what a weird experience ..
It gives this whole journey and adventure more of a finality, we have now landed, things have panned out strangely in some ways, the house has been a cauldron of emotions around things and people we miss. Lucky for us we have all been out of synch.
On other things,
So many thoughts have been rushing through my brain, but i suppose the PR has been in the back of my mind and has really been occupied with that and the house. But it opens so many doors, yet on the other hand it closes some others. It is a strange thing..
It drives us to wonder about the importance of everything in our lives.. In terms of maslo's hierarchy of needs where do friends, family, support and history compared to safety and general peace.. There are things that are brilliant here, but there are things that are missing and sometimes our hearts are torn into a thousand pieces when we miss the things we miss, for everyone there are different things..
Enough of that.. melancholy, I was going to use melodrama, but am reminded internally that i was reminded that this is the incorrect word.
Part 3:
On art, creation of art, appreciation of art and where we stand in this milieu ;-) I now follow danGerousMinDs.. It is a very interesting blog/media/information portal. The point isn't actually about this website, but rather a conclusion that myself and a friend both made.. which was, how is that people can come up with magnificent mental gymnastics. In some terms we can call it art, in other terms we may call it an iSm, But the key being that we don't all seem to have the same ability or propensity to create acts of visual, intellectual or artistic gymnastics, this does, however, in no way say that we do not have the propensity or even ability to judge, appreciate or even pick it out of a line up? How is it that our brains are wired differently in this way?
Part 4:
On looking at piles of Kelp on beach it made me think of a number of things:
1. an irish movie about a farmer who packs kelp into wheelbarrow everyday and then puts it onto his land to fertilize it .. a very depressing movie where the old father lands up killing his sons to protect his pocket of farm.
2. the weird crap that gets washed up from the sea? I saw a bird house being washed up in the kelp, pieces of plastic, glass, bottles and any number of things ...
part 4 will continue down the line..
Is this part of natures way of showing us count zero
Part 5:
a Thought on adversity and innovation, is it a driver or does it inhibit, that I would suppose is pending the eye of the person who is being adversetized .. yes i KnoW that is not a word .. but it fits into what I am trying to say here. When we look at life through the pale glass of an immigrant, their are shades of rose, red and blue. It is all about perspective. How do we measure our success. Can we....
but what is evident, or should i say became evident, was there is inherent values we carry with us like a lunch box brought from a home a long time ago, almost like the elven bread frodo carried with himself through his journey to the ends of the earth to get rid of the ring.... something that feeds us from within.
How important is the cocoon of individuality we wrap ourselves with? At times it is a burden at others a crutch and sometimes it tends to distinguish us from the rest...
we sat last night and realized that we are different, but not in the obvious ways we thought
It is strange, we wont ever know where our next piece of inspiration comes from, somehow it seems better that way..
Part 6: Why do we comodify mystique
A moon hangs in an amber sky slowly burgeoning the new day in, but it is with sadness i realize we have forsaken the mystery of life, yes this is nothing new, there is nothing new in what i say. But, there are times it saddens me ...
There are slivers of hope, breaking through, I sat on the train today saw a guy with a beanie on with "stark enterprises" on the front of it. Event he comics have lost their mystique, baring a few, the bulk have been transformed, albeit sometimes brilliantly, into celluloid replicas of the imaginations of others and ours, removing the mystery and magnificence and replacing them with a cheap celluloid replica. Granted this is inspiration from something I saw on the interWeb recently that spurned this on. the thing that stabbed me straight between the eyes was when i picked up the book i was reading again on the train this morning, I am fighting my way through a Neil Gamon book, not because it is hard to read, but because life has been rushing past me a little over the last few weeks.
I Digress onCe again from the essence of the topic i was hoping to shed some light on.. I should rather not say topic, but rather fleeting moment of inspiration that somehow gets lost somewhere between thought and electronic transferal ....
Why is it through technological advancement we are losing our essence as humans, I cannot say..
But thing we are destroying more rapidly is our mystery. There is little joy in the celluloid and mass media recreations of unique creativity, yet peeking through this milieu and noise generation somehow humanity shines through in the strangest of places..
what they dont tell you
there is so much they don't tell you about the things you should know..
Yet a new days dawns, I will not be afraid ..
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
and i survived the rapture
To rapturous dismay to some nothing happened and to others with happiness and still to others laughter and then there are those who did not even know.
How insignificant we are as humans, and thought, in a flash we are here and soon will be gone. Well if all goes according to the way we are throwing this planet away, eventually like a bowl of bacteria in a petri-dish we will use up all the resources and will either escape the confines of our dish of life or it will all end, a rather uns acrimonious (yes to those lexophiles, maybe not a real word, but it portrays my thought).
And where does this take me? No where actually, the rap-ture is just a side thought to our existence.
I must admit the mornings are no longer so Christian now that the Christians no longer pray at the station, every morning I peer around the corner and they are gone. One wonders how fickle life is, especially my perception fo them. They are most probably sitting in the McDonalds drinking hot chocolate and huddling around the table. It is only I who is in the belief that true enlightenment comes through personal self flagellation, well I suppose that is being catholic for you ;-). No seriously I always imagined that through hardship and self imposed struggle comes a form of enlightenment. But I am most probably wrong with regards all of this. It is true, this is a strange land and without a grain of doubt a complete stranger. This does not in any way denigrate the experience, but it is a strange place. Yet at this juncture I stand facing the distinct possibility of an imminent spora (one wonders what the singular of a word like diaspora is?) that our family could face if either my medical or the Pumkie's Medical is not acceptable to the immigration authorities. So where does that leave us? Not happy in any way, even though I am in the strange land, note not the promised land, I stand and await the future with baited breath.
So I sat wondering a day or so ago how to best describe our lives and the paths they take. It is somewhat of a case like trying to juggle glass balls, it looks absolutely amazing, the light reflecting and casting amazing colours all over the place, yet if a ball falls down it crashes and makes a huge sound and splinters into a thousand pieces, but all we do it sweep it up and toss it in the bin and start again.. Strange thought that.
I saw an interesting short movie a week or so back, It was called the butterfly circus. It is a preview for a movie. This movie was a winner of a number of short movie festivals. It is worthwhile watching, albeit schmultzy it is heartwarming, but the key to me is that the visual quality is just great. So you decide for yourself ;-)
On third and fourth thoughts after I have progressed a little further through the Black swan book, I must admit it is losing a little of its shine, not because it is bad or because the writing is specifically bad, but because he does not really get to a point, somewhat like a Blog a number of you may read on the odd occasion. What is the most striking about it at this stage is how he highlights our general lack of understanding of statistics and the impacts it has and does not have on our lives. Strangely we do live our lives not always on the direct impacts of stats or probability, but more often on the perceived impacts and outcomes. Nasem goes into a lot detail about gambling and luck and probability and why you cannot win because it is not only about probability, but also about the casino's which monitor trends against trends and you pop up as an outlier if you deviate from the current trends. He also goes through a whole lot of other really confusing statements, which i have resulted in me saying once again that I will have to reread this book a number of times, which do not give us specific answers rather more questions. He falls back on a very familiar, to me, argument of not actually committing all that much and falling back on the randomness of it all. In some sentences he flouts that it is better to be an outlier, because if you are not an outlier you will not win, but in the same breath he says being an outlier also gives you a greater chance of failure, which when stated like that sounds a lot more obvious, but this is done through a milieu of arguments and paragraphs that rapidly bleed into one argument and back to the original. So at this point i am not convinced, but I am not unconvinced.
Not being unconvinced, could that be any less commital ;-)
So another day, more clouds and rain .. and at this point I am not convinced if it is as bad as it is or not? It rains, it winds, it suns, it tains, the wind blows, first from the North then the South...
the view from my soggy standing point on the train this morning, oh how i hate soggy socks.. I am sure dr Zeuss could have done something with that...
How insignificant we are as humans, and thought, in a flash we are here and soon will be gone. Well if all goes according to the way we are throwing this planet away, eventually like a bowl of bacteria in a petri-dish we will use up all the resources and will either escape the confines of our dish of life or it will all end, a rather uns acrimonious (yes to those lexophiles, maybe not a real word, but it portrays my thought).
And where does this take me? No where actually, the rap-ture is just a side thought to our existence.
I must admit the mornings are no longer so Christian now that the Christians no longer pray at the station, every morning I peer around the corner and they are gone. One wonders how fickle life is, especially my perception fo them. They are most probably sitting in the McDonalds drinking hot chocolate and huddling around the table. It is only I who is in the belief that true enlightenment comes through personal self flagellation, well I suppose that is being catholic for you ;-). No seriously I always imagined that through hardship and self imposed struggle comes a form of enlightenment. But I am most probably wrong with regards all of this. It is true, this is a strange land and without a grain of doubt a complete stranger. This does not in any way denigrate the experience, but it is a strange place. Yet at this juncture I stand facing the distinct possibility of an imminent spora (one wonders what the singular of a word like diaspora is?) that our family could face if either my medical or the Pumkie's Medical is not acceptable to the immigration authorities. So where does that leave us? Not happy in any way, even though I am in the strange land, note not the promised land, I stand and await the future with baited breath.
So I sat wondering a day or so ago how to best describe our lives and the paths they take. It is somewhat of a case like trying to juggle glass balls, it looks absolutely amazing, the light reflecting and casting amazing colours all over the place, yet if a ball falls down it crashes and makes a huge sound and splinters into a thousand pieces, but all we do it sweep it up and toss it in the bin and start again.. Strange thought that.
I saw an interesting short movie a week or so back, It was called the butterfly circus. It is a preview for a movie. This movie was a winner of a number of short movie festivals. It is worthwhile watching, albeit schmultzy it is heartwarming, but the key to me is that the visual quality is just great. So you decide for yourself ;-)
On third and fourth thoughts after I have progressed a little further through the Black swan book, I must admit it is losing a little of its shine, not because it is bad or because the writing is specifically bad, but because he does not really get to a point, somewhat like a Blog a number of you may read on the odd occasion. What is the most striking about it at this stage is how he highlights our general lack of understanding of statistics and the impacts it has and does not have on our lives. Strangely we do live our lives not always on the direct impacts of stats or probability, but more often on the perceived impacts and outcomes. Nasem goes into a lot detail about gambling and luck and probability and why you cannot win because it is not only about probability, but also about the casino's which monitor trends against trends and you pop up as an outlier if you deviate from the current trends. He also goes through a whole lot of other really confusing statements, which i have resulted in me saying once again that I will have to reread this book a number of times, which do not give us specific answers rather more questions. He falls back on a very familiar, to me, argument of not actually committing all that much and falling back on the randomness of it all. In some sentences he flouts that it is better to be an outlier, because if you are not an outlier you will not win, but in the same breath he says being an outlier also gives you a greater chance of failure, which when stated like that sounds a lot more obvious, but this is done through a milieu of arguments and paragraphs that rapidly bleed into one argument and back to the original. So at this point i am not convinced, but I am not unconvinced.
Not being unconvinced, could that be any less commital ;-)
So another day, more clouds and rain .. and at this point I am not convinced if it is as bad as it is or not? It rains, it winds, it suns, it tains, the wind blows, first from the North then the South...
the view from my soggy standing point on the train this morning, oh how i hate soggy socks.. I am sure dr Zeuss could have done something with that...
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
when faced with one own mortality
Yes this is stereotyped, but is not a treatise to having a MLC...
I got a thinking sometime back, it could have been days, minutes or hours ago, but it recurs. We often make statements like, if i was going to, if that happened, and many others (*&* and the comma makes sense here ). But the point being we tend to live our lives based on riders and axioms about conditional activities, granted it does make sense in most cases. But you have to question if the world is not divided into those who take the pictures of the amazing things and the others who live their lives vicariously through the images transposed through either the printed or electronic media. Yes there is a grey or is that gray, could never figure that one out, view on all of this? Yes there is and is not, and there is a distinct randomness about a lot of this, to which we have no answer to.
To get off that point and onto another, Btw an Awesome book to read (NOTE: I have taken this out of the Bibliothecke.. and will never finish it in the mandatory 3 renewals, it is a book that needs to be bought and ruminated over), but I must warn is in the same vane as Malcom gladwell's books, but requires a whole lot more commitment and rumination as it is in my mind the thinking mans version of MG's books. Oh yes the book, I mentioned it before, is the black swans by Naseem N Taleb.
.....wikilink to Taleb's book.
As a phrase "Pictures from the end of the world." could mean so much, could it mean the literal end of life as we know it, does it mean the end of society as we know it, does it mean the figurative ends of the earth?
But what do we do when we get faced with our mortality? I don't know as I am not there, in the real short term? Well in a way we are, we have to redo our medicals for our damned PR. But there are others who have more concrete implications, but we do live our lives in a perpetual hedge. We always have a predefined event window of living. We don't seem to be able to escape the continual re-evaluation and hedging of life against the external constraints that in most cases we put there, but sometimes are put there by situation.
But to get the actual point of my thought process, well there are two, the first being; we are now faced with the distinct, albeit slim, possibility that we could be forced to return to the Z of A, which in a way is very confusing, in some senses it is the familiar, in other senses it is scary. The second being the way we do not live our lives. We spend an inordinate amount of effort and bind our selves to the way we live our lives and not nearly as much to how we do not live our lives. We ponder and ponder but often, granted there are those who do, but don't. This at best sounds entirely ambivalent, at worst it is a reality, the event window of reality is pure ambivalence. So where does that leave us?
What can we be clear about, in general there is not a lot that we can be sure of, especially in the light of Black Swan events. Somehow according to Taleb they are outside of our current frame of reference and thinking. So what do we do in these cases, die, survive, live, rebuild, rise like a phoenix. Soemthing we cannot be sure of is what is next, we stand on the brink of a rapture, a swarm of earthquakes where there should be none, a massive earthquake where there should be one, all we can be sure of is change and at a magnitude that we cannot be prepared for. But Naseem does remind us that being aware of random events does not mean we must eb afraid of them, i am paraphrasing significantly here ...
So where does this take us or put is in the light of swarms of great black swans which currently circle this small insignificant 3rd stone from the Star we call SuN. I must admit that we have to continue on as best as possible within reason one would assume...
But I do suppose we cannot really change who we are and how we live without the fear of being ridiculous, but it does seem like a good idea to at least challenge some of the levee's we have put in place around our lives. I suspect keeping levees around us is not a bad thing, the question being when is the fear of the black swan realistic and when is it paranoia and is there value in protecting against the cygnet or not?
On a different note it has come to my attention that the Christians have once again deserted me in my morning solace, the rain and cold has limited if not totally removed their presence from the position of their prayers. Like the seasons causes the leaves to fall off the trees the people no longer gather in the bus shelters to do their early morning prayers, but rather they have been blown away, it may not be the wet, the cold or the wind... It could just be the dark.
But All I say ToDay is go forth, gather the sand bags but not to protect you lively hood, but rather the boat you are storing to go forth and explore the unknown ...
I got a thinking sometime back, it could have been days, minutes or hours ago, but it recurs. We often make statements like, if i was going to, if that happened, and many others (*&* and the comma makes sense here ). But the point being we tend to live our lives based on riders and axioms about conditional activities, granted it does make sense in most cases. But you have to question if the world is not divided into those who take the pictures of the amazing things and the others who live their lives vicariously through the images transposed through either the printed or electronic media. Yes there is a grey or is that gray, could never figure that one out, view on all of this? Yes there is and is not, and there is a distinct randomness about a lot of this, to which we have no answer to.
To get off that point and onto another, Btw an Awesome book to read (NOTE: I have taken this out of the Bibliothecke.. and will never finish it in the mandatory 3 renewals, it is a book that needs to be bought and ruminated over), but I must warn is in the same vane as Malcom gladwell's books, but requires a whole lot more commitment and rumination as it is in my mind the thinking mans version of MG's books. Oh yes the book, I mentioned it before, is the black swans by Naseem N Taleb.
.....wikilink to Taleb's book.
As a phrase "Pictures from the end of the world." could mean so much, could it mean the literal end of life as we know it, does it mean the end of society as we know it, does it mean the figurative ends of the earth?
But what do we do when we get faced with our mortality? I don't know as I am not there, in the real short term? Well in a way we are, we have to redo our medicals for our damned PR. But there are others who have more concrete implications, but we do live our lives in a perpetual hedge. We always have a predefined event window of living. We don't seem to be able to escape the continual re-evaluation and hedging of life against the external constraints that in most cases we put there, but sometimes are put there by situation.
But to get the actual point of my thought process, well there are two, the first being; we are now faced with the distinct, albeit slim, possibility that we could be forced to return to the Z of A, which in a way is very confusing, in some senses it is the familiar, in other senses it is scary. The second being the way we do not live our lives. We spend an inordinate amount of effort and bind our selves to the way we live our lives and not nearly as much to how we do not live our lives. We ponder and ponder but often, granted there are those who do, but don't. This at best sounds entirely ambivalent, at worst it is a reality, the event window of reality is pure ambivalence. So where does that leave us?
What can we be clear about, in general there is not a lot that we can be sure of, especially in the light of Black Swan events. Somehow according to Taleb they are outside of our current frame of reference and thinking. So what do we do in these cases, die, survive, live, rebuild, rise like a phoenix. Soemthing we cannot be sure of is what is next, we stand on the brink of a rapture, a swarm of earthquakes where there should be none, a massive earthquake where there should be one, all we can be sure of is change and at a magnitude that we cannot be prepared for. But Naseem does remind us that being aware of random events does not mean we must eb afraid of them, i am paraphrasing significantly here ...
So where does this take us or put is in the light of swarms of great black swans which currently circle this small insignificant 3rd stone from the Star we call SuN. I must admit that we have to continue on as best as possible within reason one would assume...
But I do suppose we cannot really change who we are and how we live without the fear of being ridiculous, but it does seem like a good idea to at least challenge some of the levee's we have put in place around our lives. I suspect keeping levees around us is not a bad thing, the question being when is the fear of the black swan realistic and when is it paranoia and is there value in protecting against the cygnet or not?
On a different note it has come to my attention that the Christians have once again deserted me in my morning solace, the rain and cold has limited if not totally removed their presence from the position of their prayers. Like the seasons causes the leaves to fall off the trees the people no longer gather in the bus shelters to do their early morning prayers, but rather they have been blown away, it may not be the wet, the cold or the wind... It could just be the dark.
But All I say ToDay is go forth, gather the sand bags but not to protect you lively hood, but rather the boat you are storing to go forth and explore the unknown ...
Sunday, May 15, 2011
nostalgia and the things we love
seems like this did not save it self...??? bizarre here it is reposted
I got a thinking the other day. That is sounding a little contrived, it seems like i think to much ..
And I wonder if random thoughts going through my consciousness actually count as thinking ;)
But to indulge myself I will continue, that is what this is all about, self indulgence and expression of the nothing between one ear and the other. To get to the point I was wondering about why we look at square images and immediately fill with nostalgia and admiration for retroviews on the current. When did Kitch become cool, when is it still Kitch! Why is lomographics cooler than realism and HDR, which both to an extent bleed into the unreal, is lomographics the edge of the new impressionism? Or has that been covered a few times, I am sure it has?
I was walking ...
just to interrupt, I watched something on youtube, then something else and another and another, slowly moving myself into a spiral of nostalgia and melancholy, as i view our lives as shadows on a wall, the translation cannot compare. The specific version by van Coke Kartel drives home like a huge wooden stake through my AfriKan heart. Rapidly spiraling me into deep nostalgia about times long past and memories flashing past like an 8 mm film reel, holding back the tears as the soundtrack of my life plays quietly in the background. It makes me think of things unrelated, Tretchikoff paintings hanging in the wind under the African sky, dust, rain, the smell of pipe tobacco and standing ankle deep in powder dust.
It is not a bad thing to capture this all in a square image on screen alone on an island a far way away from everything that I remember and have notions to have called my home. Like a gypsy the wheels on my bicycle carry me from day to day. I question if I have returned to my root or am I on the route to discovery? Yes a silly rhyme, but it holds true. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts is it the phylogenetic or social intertia or meme that drives us forward, is it the present, the past we know or the past we are unaware of that drives us along the dream tracks in the sands of time.. Bla bla bla, But I sit here isolated with thsi question inside my brain?
Dust stained faces track the tears as I remember a past, yet knowing full well It was I who went looking down the rabbit hole.As I mentioned before I was deliberating what effect it has on us when we look at square format image and how that relates to the inner kitch we all have. "the other day I had a genuine illumination" .. A very cool line from a preview of a move that is not out yet. I go on, one day after the other waiting for the flash of inspiration, tempting inspiration all day long, exposing my mind and eyes to all that I can in the time that is available, yet I stand and glance into the emptiness at times, other times I stare down a psychedelic rabbit hole of insanity, at other times the pastels and hues flow like the patterns in carefully poured coffee. Where does it start where does it end, why the resistance against social crutches I ask myself daily? Each step is a step closer, other days it feels like every step is in the wrong direction.
Kitch neo-african art is not the word or phrase that i thought it might be, based on the cover of a book that I saw in the borders closing down sale. Then again neither is neo-kitch african art either? Is aw a book cover on sociology that showed the most amazing picture. words would destroy what i saw and the images and thoughts it put forward into my grey space. It illicited a thousand ships, many little sub images and conflicting thoughts burrowing through my brain all searching for an answer? The question it raised, not answered as one of the millions of side shoots was; why do i get more hits on my Flickr profile when I post photo's taken on my mobile phone than when I put my better pictures on there? Is it all perspective? Do i have the wrong perspective is it skewed? Where else did this flight of fantasy take me, it took me to the singularity that we will face as a human race within the next 20 years. Sometimes I am amazed at how far technology has gone and is going, flexible paper mobile phones, a burgeoning and ever present sentience surrounding us in the cloud of computers, do we harness them or are they harnessing us? Is this the Terminator effect? Is this skynet.. who knows?
More or less later we will know, what we will know, only we will know. A line gets drawn in the mud, my finger caked with sticky brown earth. I have traded the dust bowls of afriKa for the wet and mud.
Enough self indulgence for the moment.
I got a thinking the other day. That is sounding a little contrived, it seems like i think to much ..
And I wonder if random thoughts going through my consciousness actually count as thinking ;)
But to indulge myself I will continue, that is what this is all about, self indulgence and expression of the nothing between one ear and the other. To get to the point I was wondering about why we look at square images and immediately fill with nostalgia and admiration for retroviews on the current. When did Kitch become cool, when is it still Kitch! Why is lomographics cooler than realism and HDR, which both to an extent bleed into the unreal, is lomographics the edge of the new impressionism? Or has that been covered a few times, I am sure it has?
I was walking ...
just to interrupt, I watched something on youtube, then something else and another and another, slowly moving myself into a spiral of nostalgia and melancholy, as i view our lives as shadows on a wall, the translation cannot compare. The specific version by van Coke Kartel drives home like a huge wooden stake through my AfriKan heart. Rapidly spiraling me into deep nostalgia about times long past and memories flashing past like an 8 mm film reel, holding back the tears as the soundtrack of my life plays quietly in the background. It makes me think of things unrelated, Tretchikoff paintings hanging in the wind under the African sky, dust, rain, the smell of pipe tobacco and standing ankle deep in powder dust.
It is not a bad thing to capture this all in a square image on screen alone on an island a far way away from everything that I remember and have notions to have called my home. Like a gypsy the wheels on my bicycle carry me from day to day. I question if I have returned to my root or am I on the route to discovery? Yes a silly rhyme, but it holds true. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts is it the phylogenetic or social intertia or meme that drives us forward, is it the present, the past we know or the past we are unaware of that drives us along the dream tracks in the sands of time.. Bla bla bla, But I sit here isolated with thsi question inside my brain?
Dust stained faces track the tears as I remember a past, yet knowing full well It was I who went looking down the rabbit hole.As I mentioned before I was deliberating what effect it has on us when we look at square format image and how that relates to the inner kitch we all have. "the other day I had a genuine illumination" .. A very cool line from a preview of a move that is not out yet. I go on, one day after the other waiting for the flash of inspiration, tempting inspiration all day long, exposing my mind and eyes to all that I can in the time that is available, yet I stand and glance into the emptiness at times, other times I stare down a psychedelic rabbit hole of insanity, at other times the pastels and hues flow like the patterns in carefully poured coffee. Where does it start where does it end, why the resistance against social crutches I ask myself daily? Each step is a step closer, other days it feels like every step is in the wrong direction.
Kitch neo-african art is not the word or phrase that i thought it might be, based on the cover of a book that I saw in the borders closing down sale. Then again neither is neo-kitch african art either? Is aw a book cover on sociology that showed the most amazing picture. words would destroy what i saw and the images and thoughts it put forward into my grey space. It illicited a thousand ships, many little sub images and conflicting thoughts burrowing through my brain all searching for an answer? The question it raised, not answered as one of the millions of side shoots was; why do i get more hits on my Flickr profile when I post photo's taken on my mobile phone than when I put my better pictures on there? Is it all perspective? Do i have the wrong perspective is it skewed? Where else did this flight of fantasy take me, it took me to the singularity that we will face as a human race within the next 20 years. Sometimes I am amazed at how far technology has gone and is going, flexible paper mobile phones, a burgeoning and ever present sentience surrounding us in the cloud of computers, do we harness them or are they harnessing us? Is this the Terminator effect? Is this skynet.. who knows?
More or less later we will know, what we will know, only we will know. A line gets drawn in the mud, my finger caked with sticky brown earth. I have traded the dust bowls of afriKa for the wet and mud.
Enough self indulgence for the moment.
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