On humanity and change

After considering all the doom and gloom of the last blog entry, there are aspects of humanity which are paramount. So no longer than 30 seconds after opening this and trying to type all hell broke lose on friday and I never progressed beyond the first line fo the blog and and to exit back into reality, and for the life of me, the thoughts behind this title are totally lost on me ;-)

I suspect the first sentence leads me into what I was contemplating at the time.. This after my doom and gloom and deliberations on the eurozone blowout and the rapidly crumbling world economy. This being said, my same economist train person was reading another article that i "over-read", this indicated that even though things are going totally paw-paw in certain parts of europe these people still seem to be doing alright. If we take an abstract or obtuse look at these things then we will notice that, or I should rather say I noticed or maybe thought or concluded that in essence if all value was wiped out of the economic system today then in principal all should still carry on as is.

Ok so the Paw-paw hit for a second time, today, a third attempt I hope to complete this entry. To return to the last thought, through all of this i believe we need a reevaluation of all that is important to us, all to well i know this is a very thin edge of a sword I am balancing on. That which is our essence is our destruction, that which is our essence makes us who or what we are, but we have lost sight of that which is around us, people, planet, ecology, economy and the whole kitchen sink. we live like we have never lived before, that is unless you are a reincarnationalis. We live with an abandon regarding the basis of what impact we have as individuals, and no! I am not advocating going back to the ruderal and living off the land like our Neanderthal ancestors, what I am advocating is a better use and less abuse and overuse of that which is there to sustain us. I am not exempt from this, I believe that a lot of this has to do with the artificial value structures we have placed on life and living, a fancy car is more amazing than a cow or the environment or a little fish in a little river in the middle of nowhere, but sometimes these go to extremes, we are exploiters and we need things to exploit? It is all to tricky.

You may ask where you can begin, now that is a good question? I must admit I don't really have the answer? Possibly a better sense of awareness amongst those who can be aware and contemplate these things, possibly better regulation by those who govern and hold our interests at hand. Have you ever wondered why our suburbs dont share land between parties in an effort to create produce allotments? Why not? Could we not have shared vegetables, shared aquaponics, now there is a challenging subject here in kiwilandia .. more on that at a later stage.

I am losing traction of what i was actually trying to get to .. maybe a little later on the thread will return...

On a more jovial note (yet filled with sadness), I met Batman on the train a few days back, albeit that he would never admit to being batman, or that he is the post middle adged batman or that he is now living deep in wisteria lane in the suburbs.. You may ask how I figure out that he was Batman? well it was fairly simple, his briefcase had a business card in the fron with his name on .. "Wayne F Bruce", Say no more.. I saw the light Or should I rather Say the DARK.. Yes it was a Dark night in the states when that loony toon took out those guns and explosives.  We live in a sadly distorted reality filled with the illusions of the delusionals, even here in deep and dark and damp kiwilandia we are not immune to this aspect of humanity.... All so sad and thoughtless

Back to the Gardening Book, well I am not all that convinced, I have taken a break from guns, germs and steel by Diamond.. To switch to the "Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell", I must admit I was a little caught by the advert for the book, now this is a long story,  " Henry Mitchell was to gardening what Izaak Walton was to fishing. The Essential Earthman is a collection of the best of his long-running column for the Washington Post. Although he offered invaluable tips for novice as well as seasoned gardeners" , I was actually searching for Izaak waltons book on fishing and I have an automated search phrase on a second hand site here in NZ (trademe) and this came up. I am both confused and somewhat interested, the book at more  and less interesting than I expected, he is a very  erudite gardner. One thing that did, however, ring very true for me was his description of the trials of being a gardener, in his words, the dogs will trample your daphodils, but always some survive. I goes on to mention his trials with the birds and the squirrels and how feeding them stops some fo the damage, but most amusing of all is his description of feeding the birds in winter and how only the sparrows and a few others arive and he then smartarsedly comments, what did you expect flamingo's?  Which brings me onto a new topic, slightly tangential, yet related. I was browsing my flickr account alst night and viewing some photos other people took in wellington.. always intriguing.  These are spectacular .. and they make me miss my friends and miss things familiar to me, and make me miss pierneef street and koba and maddie and jensie and suekie salomikie and of course Jamsie and Slats .. and the list doesnt stop. But at the exact timing of all of this we watched Henry poole was is  here.. a fantastic Luke wilson movie .. which came at the right time and made us remember, the past is good to remember but it is the present where we are. we then ended this diorama of life off with the Paul Giamatti movie called Cold souls.. now that was just as much of an awakening.. The context being that we found a "moot" video shop that lets you take out "old" movies for about $1 a week .. fantastic ..

Ok enough Ramble .. back to work .. more later I promise..

I have noticed that I need to actually have a note pad to write my ideas down when they permeate my brain, like on the train or on the bus or wherever ... I have a number of these notebooks, not unlike someone else i know..

But mine a different.. mine have scribbles and silliness in them not notes of things to do and remember, those are pieces of paper strewn over my Desk.. which get processed on an irregular basis...






 

14001 and counting

you may ask specifically why 14001, or any number, it just is, because it is and that is the word that popped into my head when I opened the new blog entry. Yes I have been a little slack this week and last, not really writing all that mcuh, or as much as I would have hoped to have. But here we are and the week has started, we are already on the day second of this week. I wonder sometimes about the way we view ourselves as humans, it is a starnge thing, both woman and men. I just read an article a day back about Emer O'Toole and her decision not to shave and her wanton display of her hairy armpits, now that was a little bit of a damp squib, but boy oh boy oh boy.. I went and read a few pieces on her Blog The Vagenda, now you can go find that and decide what you think? The debate is still out for me, but Damn she shows some commitment to what she thinks, and this little issue seems to have her catapulted into fame and infamy. I also (all so) recently read some pieces on Madonna being riotous again, she flashed nipples, accidentally on purpose in Turkey, she flashed her tail somewhere else... now there is a 50 somthingyearold who is committed to upholding here identity.. Not sure where that is going though?  Possibly she needs to be committed ..

On a more serious note, I was on the train this morning, yes again, I noticed a train acquaintance who always sits in the compartment , reading an article about the financial crisis in the EU. This is not strange as he seems to be an economist, economic commentator or something of the likes, but what caught my eye was the scale of the debt crisis that the PIGS have brought onto themselves or the EU, albeit through the words of the author, "playing three card shuffle" with their loans". Wow the amounts are just absolutely insane, they have already shared loans in excess of 500-600 billion Euro, this apparently only covers 16% of the current local debt, but these are only read an article over some ones shoulder on the train numbers .. But it is terribly boggeling..

On a more cheerful note, I have eventually succumbed to the FLU this winter, the first  time in more than a couple of winters, but it does seem as if the "man" flu did not really hit me all that hard. It seems as if I will make it another couple of days and possibly even till the end of the week without the need of some special medicinal help.  Interestingly I am reading guns germs and steel by Jarred Diamond, although this covers all the diseases the "developed" world ahs spread over the developing or new world,  I don't believe that this is why I am sick, I imagine rather that eventually I am being exposed to some of the strains I have not yet been exposed to.. silly yes, but it is bound to happen at some point. Back to the book, it is not badly written and all, very interesting, but not unlike some of the other books I have read over the last while I am not convinced that all his thoughts are a 100% accurate, or should I say an accurate representation of what really happened and why things happened the way they did, I suspect my thoughts are premature, especially in the light that I am only a short way into the book, but I am willing to indicate, better than the last few realistic/cometary/people being clever books I have read over the last while.. But I do think it signals the time that maybe I should read something a little lighter, maybe the pirates meet Darwin, a gardening book, or finish midnights children, the Hungarian cooking encyclopedia or something a little more lighthearted.

But on a more sinister and comical note, when we look at ourselves, here i speak mostly in third person not about myself or my Gender, we (not the Royal) are often disappointed about the way we look, look to other people, are photographed and the likes. I seem to often get chastised for taking photographs that make people look less fantastical than they should. I suspect I will have to take, make, do more effort in this regard, somehow people don't seem to ahve the same appreciation for seeing things the way the camera saw them at that moment kind of way. The Last incident did, however, give rise to a fairly cheerful comment indicating that they would rather be portrayed as vamp rather than a vampire in  the next photograph I take, or should, I rather say, blurt onto the interwaves. Yes I know that there have been numerous complaints in this regard in the past, I do apologize, and think maybe this something I need to aim for as a diversion from my simple documentation of the world as I see it and possible try to apply some of the rose coloured glass views my subjects would rather be viewed through. I suspect this might take some thought and planning on my side, One wonders can it be done in a way to still seem observational? somehow the Observational nature of photography seems to appeal more and more, Possibly due to something that Paul muadib said a long time ago in a book, but I was only a child then, and even then it was an old book, written about a time in the future.

Back to reality and vegetables and food and the weight of food we eat in a week, have you ever looked and or thought about the amount/weight of food we eat in a week.. it is pretty damn astronomical. This is especially in the context of us possibly having to find, gather, kill and scrounge this amount of food, granted I suppose we would then eat a different diet and not have to carry all that food with us when we go shopping. I often wonder about that, the nuclear winter or similar post apocalyptic disaster event thing, but to interrupt you immediately not in a sad or depressing or dark way, what we would eat and how we would live? How much would things be like deep dark Africa or the likes if suddenly the world would stop for whatever reason and we get chucked back into the dark ages, without light and power and all of those things? where would we go, what would we do? It is very easy to imagine these things in a depressing way, but can we imagine some light in this? Is it possible to find something of value in this? Have you ever considered what it is you would need to survive for extended time periods? How would you feed yourself, how far down the food chain would you go, how much do you think we would just remove and destroy without regard of our neighbours, would it make sense to live a lone and feed and fight, live together and hunt and share?

so what do we have planned for the week, oh yes we went 4X4'ing this weekend, it was .. well nice and interesting, but not maybe us? It was nice to see the places, but strange especially int he light that I had cycled some of these tracks before.. imagining that I had gone so far, UP and DOWN on those tracks .. But still unconvinced about this as a pursuit at this stage? But it was good..

so still undecided about the week ahead.. lets wait and see what it brings and where I go forth..

 

strange notions and things

The notion of Beauty being skin deep or otherwise appears to be so misconstrued as the premise whereby all of this delusion is based upon, is soley initiated by The Media and individuals who are temporally blind. But we must also realise that we can state the converse it is the notion that art is an expression (IMHO) of the conteXt and environment and social culture and a manifestation of the complex interplays within this notion.  Does this make me stupid or un contextual in my prior statement?, Or should i rather state that in the current context and environment we have to assume if all was equal that I believe the current context is flawed, not withstanding that there are many more disturbed and unrealistic context and trends  throughout time. I do, however, begin to doubt the actual framework of my premise, or rather that it is possible that I may be an anachronistically inclined in terms of my opinion of this aspect of humanity. Possibly, but we will never actually know if the garbage that I push out has any particular meaning or not, other than clearing my mind not unlike blowing my nose?

I will get back to the original premise or position I may be abjectly objectifying a notion of the importance of my opinion and possibly, rather that the opinion I may have is of any value or importance to others. But we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so it is written, therefore it must be true? Opinion, context and perspective all play a role, lest not forget culture~ality  (if that word does not exist it should). We all know that if it is written, is on wikipedia or the web it must be true ;-)

This would return to the is it an ism or is art question that I raised some time back, but can we view or experience or judge humanity against the lines of art? Is there a thread that follows through, are people, like art a mirror on the society they exist in and if the are can they be judged by the artificial notions of a subset of those members who have financial motived behind them? Is is justifiable to evaluate ourselves or others against a artificial measure that is not attainable to the bulk of the race, whereas in the past there were memes and ideals that could be attained by anyone?  Just a question?

enough of that serious stuff for the moment,  more for myrth and way.

I imagine it is time to do a breadline of time over the last few years, but maybe only next time.  It is not long before the end of the productive day and almost time for the weekend to begin. Possibly rather something full of myrth on monday or possibly a bonus on the weekend, who knows.

All we can be sure of is that there will be lots of scrabble tomorrow night, I will hopefully ahve recovered from the scrambling of our brain from going with some friends of ours in their small 4X4. I doubt I wlll have the patience for the scrambling scrabble on Saturday evening and may rather opt for something more sedentary or pedestrian like sitting or parking of and relaxing.

You may in retrospect actually ask, wherefore or why i went on the tirade about the beauty of skin being only as deep as the pages of the magazine the notion fell out of, but nowhere as deep as the pockets of the media and social mogals who create the illusion. We live in a world of wonder and illusion, yet we chose to only view life through certain coloured lenses, when it can rather be viewed in a number of other ways. On a totally different train of thought, On the way to my office, or I should say on my walk to the train station, due to its pedestrian speed of mobility I get to lookat things while I pass them by very slowly. One morning not to long back I was walking and noticed the most amazing "row" of three stars just to the left of orions knife or so. It turns out that I actually managed to use my google star map and discovered to my delight it actually works and that those were not stars, but rather jupiter and Saturn lining up near each other with some or other unknown star. BUT now they are moving, and it still amazes me that thousands of years ago, those primitive people figured out that there where stars that did not follow the same path as the other stars and then from this they worked out that they were planets orbiting something albeit our earth or to some the stars and to toehrs something else, but with the huge number of dots in the sky, the change of seasons and all of that combined they still figured out that those bright stars were doing something strange .. frigin dam amazing ..

soft puppies and all things nice

after my temporary sulk 2 days back, we have to return to reality and rather look forwards than dwell on insidious silliness. I watched a sorta nothing, but yet very interesting motivational lecture on TED yeasterday about "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life".. It was very nice, like all things soft and fluffy, but it did point to some truisms,.. if you sit on the couch and do nothing and just vegetate and don't do exercise and do anything positive you will be unhappy, something we didnt know? well yes, but she did point out a couple of things, we can only be as happy as we make ourselves. Personally for some people I suppose it is easier than for others (i hear so from the fluffy bunny brigade)?  But for some of us it is harder work, and I suppose that is what makes it more appealing to be happy and at the end of the day I really enjoy being happy and more often than not I am the source of my own unhappiness, or should I rather say some of those frigin synapses are just not doing their shit the way they should. But that aint no excuse for downright being miserable. We do have choices, those boat people from east timor had choices they got onto rickety boats and sailed towards australia, we got onto a plane, so did a whole raft of others.. whether  it be right nor wrong ;-) i wanted to say or? cant decied?, but we decided? (yes to those languofiles a ?, is a valid punctuation is this book it means a question interspersed within a statement, with special emphasis that the question is not the end of the sentence.... Here I am trying to justify my self in my own self expressionism ?,  that aint right. 

Back to puppies and bread, totally unrelated, but somehow many of us have them so they are part of our lives. There are those lucky or unlucky enough not to have either of them? Now, all considering I suppose for some it would be harder to chose between the puppy and the loaf? I even wonder if I actually really love bread, sometimes I must admit I do, othertimes, actually most of the times it is the process and the amazement that amazes me. the yeast, the gluten, the rising the knocking down, the process.. all just to cool, or I should have said, all to warm .. Ha so Corny for this time of the day.

But as we know it is all a game, we start we live, we do more. So what you going to do this evening, tomorrow and on the weekend to make a better and happier life for yourself?

 

 

 

 

knee dep in the mud and sinking

A strange thing you get to understand is that no matter how well you can bootstrap yourself there are times that you rapidly move from being in ankle deep mud to suddenly realizing believing (i am still bootstrapping) you cannot walk on mud. One moment we feel the wind through our hair, we smell the roses the next we smell the cattle manure under the roots of the rose petals. But strangely everything is just seasons and we have to understand that change does not come without its own burdens. Sometimes those shoelaces get real slippery.

But more on the changes of seasons and times, thinking back over the last few days it is hard to imagine why I suddenly find myself neck deep in the mud.. We are all entitled to our moments in the shade, a simple thing as looking at old photographs, go figure. I am busy compiling all the better pics from the first year in kiwilandia. One would imagine looking and reliving all those experiences could tip you over the edge again. But I still have those laces firmly in hand and can almost feel my shoulders breaking through the dirt.

It is time to pick up the pieces and not to be afraid ;-)

Change is good, but looking back at some things in the past is also good to keep reference and reverence. Strange now looking back at how much things have changed, we have changed. I was just looking at a fantastic website by a photographer in South America that took a series of then and now pics .. absolutely love them. Her name is Irna werning, just love this series and the second one. Somehow there are those who can create out of nothing and then we have the others, or should I say us or we that watch in awe at these simple manifestations.

To get back to the veggies, I need to find the recipe for a mini-hothouse? You may say I should have said plan, but I suppose if it is food we are talking about it must be talking about a recipe and not a plan. But let us stop being illy and get back to reality.  On the gardening note, we discovered a number of things, among them that our whippet is to big, but more importantly that whippets are know for eating expensive things.. Who would have known that? so we have to start planing again soon, we have a basic crop in, but nothing really established yet, hopefully we will get some peas and broad beans first, I am currently teraforming certain sections of our Plot into productive agricultural zones ;-) Next I suppose are the chickens, then the lean-to frames and then the tomato zones. This brought up some discussion with a friend of ours with whom i was raising the point of sustainability and survivability post an apocalyptic event. He questioned if he needed to get heirloom or other seeds in stock, but it struck me that it would not really be possible to actually prepare in  manner like this. I do not think we will be able to simply survive without being more than prepared, we should also be practiced. I think this is very akin to the 10000 hours we need to be able to do anything well, do we not also have to spend at least 10000 hours or so thinking and actually surviving and preparing for the unfortunate eventuality? It may be a dark and somber thought, but it might just be necessary? I do not think that we have to dig deep into the depths of depression and post apocalyptic preparedness. I just beleive we have to understand where we are, what we can do, what we cannot do and what we have to do to be able to survive if something does happen.

Enough melodrama and sadness for now, the days are getting longer the sun is getting brighter, soon within the next few months the seasons will change. How fragile the African heart is, yearning for the sun and the endless summer days. I have managed to move beyond shedding a tear every time i hear tambotie boom by die heuwels fantasties.  It is not unlike us to question our impact or mortality, we are a fragile being.  But soon the searun will chase the whitebait freely in the shallows of the lowland rivers, this year I hope to be ready and capture some of the beasts. 

Through all of this, there is a whole lot of silliness, but to be human is to be silly. How fragile we are and how we change over time, sometimes vulnerable others strong, at times we are brave, other times we cower like small fluffy animals sitting in cave grooving with a pict. I view with interest a whole lot of peoples Flickr accounts, not only because of the pictures they take, but rather the progression of their pictures over time. Some of the people become bold, very bold, others tend to remain the same. It is interesting taking a temporal view over peoples lives through their photographs and postings. I suppose my postings in flickr are relatively  tame and stationary in terms of dramatic changes and trends. Yet I cannot say I am unaffected by trends and things I see, granted I cannot replicate those things as that in my mind would make me a facsimile and not me, but I suppose we are just facsimiles of our environment.

a late start to the day

been a bit pre-occupied here, transition and all. But I did have some thoughts on the train yesterday or was it today? Not to sure about when it was?

I was considering in the context of best practices and how many of the best practices we assume to be absolute are not fictitious manifestations created by product vendors. At first thought this really does relate tremendously to the IT environment where the best way to do something, an industry best case scenario the following holds ... etc etc.  I was thinking mainly in terms of BI and databases in the first instance, but after wondering about it for a little while I realised that this could be found in almost any industry or technology or skill set. Granted, often we do rely on technology and then drive things towards a best fit in terms of the available technology. Have we had the chance to stand back and see if there is a better way of actually doing things.

We are now hurtling down the route of tablets and smart phones and everything is being forced into this form factor even though this may not be the appropriate form factor for doing our work in let alone living our lives entangled between mobility and social media. It is entirely possible that this may not be the most appropriate or applicable route to live our life or even do our business through.  But that might just be speculation on my part, all hail Steve, no not Steve Erwin.

On a more somber note, it is raining and raining. yes it looks a little like the piano now in Wellington. No not really, but I do suppose that it is possible to see things in a very bad light if you saw the weather here on a bad week. But like all things the bad weather passes here. All that can be said about Wellington weather is that, yes we have weather and lots of it and it will change and there is a good chance that it may not be exactly what the weatherman said it would be ..:/  strangely we are moving rapidly towards the 2 year mark in our stay in new Zealand. To recap what has changed, everything ;)

Change is good, bad and every other possible emotion all wrapped into one. We sometimes don't always think things through enough, says he who micro~thinks things at times. When we are under pressure we often think we need to make a change and slowly or rapidly hurl ourselves into the change, often glorifying what we expect out of the change. Things are often nowhere near what we expect, both in a good and bad way. I suppose we have to experience these things first hand to be able to realise this, yet would not be able to realise this without going through it. the end point being that we are theoretically better of in the end. All I can say is that often through change we will highlight things we never thought we would, in terms of features and facts and feelings we never expected ... starting to ramble on a bit here, am going to have to cut this short and get back to the task at hand.

what is important to us

Following on what i mumbled, albeit incompletely, about yesterday, our inner child or other selves. The thing we want to be, wished to be, could be;-), should have been. All of these are technically unimportants .. What!sic! the frig you may say? No seriously we are what we are, we are a construct of that which we have made ourselves, not discounting that we can change, and moreso than others having gone through a couple of changes, I can attest to it being hard with a capital F.  Through all of this we keep a thread as to what is important to us.  I think we also have to state that i am not debating religion or anything nearly that fundamental. There are some creature comforts that we all love and live by, cup of coffee, cigarette, tea, good bread, smoked paprika, red wine or whatever it is. I am not judging you, and I hope you are not judging me.

While chatting to someone on my mobile phone, the person not being on this desolate windswept and wet island, while she was watching the piano after not having seen if for a number of years indicated how wet it looked ... Yes how wet is my muddy lawn. somehow in the same way there are things we think are important to us like sunshine and summer, we can  change and learn to love other things, granted I do not think i would take to kindly to walking barefoot on my lawn in winter .. now there I draw the line, the feeling of the cold mud squelching between my toes, is possibly one tactile sensation that I would not advise for anytime of the day.

But to return to those things that we find important at a microscopic level, a good cup of coffee always seems to set a tone for things. In the same way a bad cup can really rune things. that sounds so silly if you say it like that, not exactly what and how I was wanting to say what I meant to. Granted, I live in one of the "coffee capitals" of the world, wellington having an anecdotal claim to having one of the highest numbers of coffee shops per capita for a "city" ne a small "city". I think on my list of things to do is still to try and document all the coffee shops that exist currently in wellington. You would have to note my carefully worded sentence around currently, as wellington is totally amazing in that way. A shop will be there one day and then suddenly it is gone and a day later or week later a new shop is in residence and no one even notices. There are long standing shops of course, but the speed at which things can change in a shopfront is totally amazing.

But getting back to what is important to us? I remember before i left ZA i spoke to a friend and said one of my key concerns about going to kiwilandia was that I would be able to at least afford to drink good coffee at home. In some ways it is way better than justa good cup of coffee.. there are an abundance of rostaries within reasonable walking distance from my office. I can walk and buy freshly roasted beans, granted i believe that another friend would possibly scoff because I am not roasting the green beans for myself in a way that would suite them.. maybe another day, currently I still have to make the perfect loaf of bread,   have the perfect day of fishing, catch a moki, cycle around the southern coast, cycle to tora .. Damn the list is getting longer. I think maybe for me it is important to dream and have things i want to do, that are possibly a little unattainable, giving me a challenge to complete them. Yet the sad thing is that once we have done things we want to do other things.

Maybe this weekend I will drink the perfect coffee, make the perfect loaf catch  the perfect fish all for the weekend in question..   regarding the perfect loaf, my mind is not a twix regarding how to make the multicoloured Rastafarian rainbow bread. I um undecided whether to create a plaited or layered bread, only by Friday evening or maybe only on Saturday we will find out?

you got to question what would your 10 year old self say

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..

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.

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

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 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

days of sun and slicks

those days
filled with azure, grey and swarms of slicks
the dusty emu hides

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..

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..

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 ..

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

... 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

 

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

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"

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?

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

                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?