it is not everyday that one experiences ecstasy, or is it?
could humans actually deal with a good dose of ecstasy on a daily basis?
i don't know. this is my newest research field.
i had one of those days yesterday, and today somehow followed on its foot-tracks. i am not quite sure how this happened.
i remember one day when my little pumpkin was in first grade and i was frazzled being a full time academic and mother, in the middle of a super-litigious divorce happening thousand of miles away, the hormone level making me pray for valium and old age, and not having a clue as to what i really wanted.
i knew that i did not want to make a man unhappy, the husband's claims was that i was the source of his troubles. i exited that stage.
i knew that the position i had back in europe had one incentive missing, the villa at the beach. i did not want that, i declined.
i did not want academia. i loved physics, but i could never get enough. my thirst for physics could not be satisfied. i left academia, and ironically enough took a sabbatical.
one day i enter the elementary school which my son was attending about 13 years ago, and i know that if i am going to fail, i am going to fail without excuses. still i did not know what i wanted. i went through the ring-binders full of personal journal entries from that year, and it is clear: if you are going to fail, fail without excuses.
then, fast forward, and there was yesterday. yes, that is what i want. i want more of that. that being: living without compromises by that which i hold dear and of value.
Sunday, 27 February 2005
Thursday, 24 February 2005
no words
how can one who loves you misuse your guilt feelings?
how can anyone use anybody's feelings?
if your feelings are yours, why do you let them out of your control?
why guilt?
who invented that one?
why can an old man remain the victim of a crime that was never committed?
why?
ah...
yesterday i had a great lesson.
my body again is learning and teaching me what it learns.
the difference between omote and ura?
in front, offensive,
in back, defensive,
all in self defense.
but that was not the lesson.
don't go telling me that i am ignoring hyphenation, i often do.
don't tell me that i am throwing japanese into english, i often do.
don't tell me that i am being damn intellectual, i often am!
yes, it was a rough day yesterday.
it is damn difficult to see somebody fighting for a few breaths of air while you can breathe freely and take it all for granted!
it is torture to feel the fear of death and loss in another whom i love and respect.
then, when you do not know what to do, you sit. just sit.
the thoughts come, you let them go...
you think of pleasure, you let that go too...
you think of pain, the real one of your dried and stretched skin, and you let that go...
you think that you think and want to think, you let that go by...
still waters may run deep... perhaps
you are so damn alive!
how can anyone use anybody's feelings?
if your feelings are yours, why do you let them out of your control?
why guilt?
who invented that one?
why can an old man remain the victim of a crime that was never committed?
why?
ah...
yesterday i had a great lesson.
my body again is learning and teaching me what it learns.
the difference between omote and ura?
in front, offensive,
in back, defensive,
all in self defense.
but that was not the lesson.
don't go telling me that i am ignoring hyphenation, i often do.
don't tell me that i am throwing japanese into english, i often do.
don't tell me that i am being damn intellectual, i often am!
yes, it was a rough day yesterday.
it is damn difficult to see somebody fighting for a few breaths of air while you can breathe freely and take it all for granted!
it is torture to feel the fear of death and loss in another whom i love and respect.
then, when you do not know what to do, you sit. just sit.
the thoughts come, you let them go...
you think of pleasure, you let that go too...
you think of pain, the real one of your dried and stretched skin, and you let that go...
you think that you think and want to think, you let that go by...
still waters may run deep... perhaps
you are so damn alive!
Tuesday, 22 February 2005
obsessed
yes, that is it.
i am obsessed and irritated beyond reason: i can not write ten pages of text without making gazillions of errors, and then, to add insult to injury, i am much too fond of perverting words to say nothing of exploring the barriers of grammar.
i am forever marred by the experience of each spelling error costing one grade level, thus i never managed anything better in journalism classes than a C since i always invariable could be counted on making three errors, but never four! who said i was a perfectionist?
the spell checker in ecto complains about the word "gazillions" and i know it to be correct, so you go figure on which gadgets you can trust! this also irritates.
then my fucked up word is in german and it took me several months until i finally set english, great britain english as its standard language. at that it complained and asked in disbelief if i was sure that i wanted that oddly colonized language as my standard language. fuck it, yes!
why great britain english? and ecto, as much i love my blog editor does it know that language?
this is clear, it is time to pack and go to the seaside.
but you have to prepare the paper for barcelona!
but you have a few other commitments!
but you have this!
but you have that!
you can not just pack and go!
or can you?
mind fucking is a much too simple game, why do i engage in it?
i am obsessed and irritated beyond reason: i can not write ten pages of text without making gazillions of errors, and then, to add insult to injury, i am much too fond of perverting words to say nothing of exploring the barriers of grammar.
i am forever marred by the experience of each spelling error costing one grade level, thus i never managed anything better in journalism classes than a C since i always invariable could be counted on making three errors, but never four! who said i was a perfectionist?
the spell checker in ecto complains about the word "gazillions" and i know it to be correct, so you go figure on which gadgets you can trust! this also irritates.
then my fucked up word is in german and it took me several months until i finally set english, great britain english as its standard language. at that it complained and asked in disbelief if i was sure that i wanted that oddly colonized language as my standard language. fuck it, yes!
why great britain english? and ecto, as much i love my blog editor does it know that language?
this is clear, it is time to pack and go to the seaside.
but you have to prepare the paper for barcelona!
but you have a few other commitments!
but you have this!
but you have that!
you can not just pack and go!
or can you?
mind fucking is a much too simple game, why do i engage in it?
oddissimo and blue
i woke up in the strangest of all moods and out of a dream's fragments that left me a bit disturbed.
in the dream for some reason i was in north or south carolina, i can never keep them straight. we, an unspecified we that included my son, were there looking for somebody or other and parallel to this there was something about him having a half-sister that only now we had found out about.
in real life there is many a tragedy imagined in our family on the subject of half-brothers and sisters, the kind of relatives that my father has a few of, five according to my count, but there could be more since i only know three of them.
then in this odd dream i find myself being taken to a place to go meet this person, or persons, and we drive past the beach. the atlantic is really dark blue, it is like the dark blue i have seen in somebody's photography.
i woke up then realized that this evening i have a meeting and a few business to attend to and that i can not go to training tonight. i say, rats! i can go to training tomorrow since i have no client meetings.
there is something strangely odd about identity in this fragment of dream. of all the people in the family, i derive a lot of my identity to say nothing that i have a lot of the personality traits of my paternal grandfather, the one that generated all of those half-brothers and sisters that so traumatized my father. the rest of the family is all rather moralistic about this man's life, and when i hear it is like being stabbed. identity can be a bitch.
in the dream for some reason i was in north or south carolina, i can never keep them straight. we, an unspecified we that included my son, were there looking for somebody or other and parallel to this there was something about him having a half-sister that only now we had found out about.
in real life there is many a tragedy imagined in our family on the subject of half-brothers and sisters, the kind of relatives that my father has a few of, five according to my count, but there could be more since i only know three of them.
then in this odd dream i find myself being taken to a place to go meet this person, or persons, and we drive past the beach. the atlantic is really dark blue, it is like the dark blue i have seen in somebody's photography.
i woke up then realized that this evening i have a meeting and a few business to attend to and that i can not go to training tonight. i say, rats! i can go to training tomorrow since i have no client meetings.
there is something strangely odd about identity in this fragment of dream. of all the people in the family, i derive a lot of my identity to say nothing that i have a lot of the personality traits of my paternal grandfather, the one that generated all of those half-brothers and sisters that so traumatized my father. the rest of the family is all rather moralistic about this man's life, and when i hear it is like being stabbed. identity can be a bitch.
Makati - 2005
I'll add some context for these images later. Then on to Dumaguete.
update: a friend is travelling through the Philippines, the image above is from his photoblog.
Monday, 21 February 2005
narcissism, loneliness and blogging
i had just installed myself for a bit of writing this morning when the phone rang: my brother. on an average day when the phone rings between 6 and 8 in the morning, i can count on it being my brother, it is late evening in california and one of his favorite times to talk to me on the phone if i am not online.
he calls to find out how i am doing, i keep this blog to inform my friends and some relatives on how i am feeling; i am more reserved on how i am doing. my only brother and sibling to both our knowledge is twelve years younger than i, lives and speaks with a california accent, has studied economics and electrical engineering and has been diagnosed manic depressive some years ago. sometimes i feel that i am his life-line, however he does have a good local safety net of people who are there when he is literally climbing the walls. given the age difference, and the fact that two other of our parents children did not survive, my brother and i have never known what is often referred to as sibling rivalry. when he was born i would rather have had a sister to replace my dead sister, but somehow nature had a way of teaching a twelve year old that people can not be replaced, i had a brother, not a sister. she was blond and blue eyed, he has brown eyes and dark black hair; no confusion possible, this is not my sister, it is my brother.
this morning he calls and we start into a conversation to the tune that i do not know how the hell i am doing, he could ask me in three years time, and in retrospect i might be able to say something about it. besides that i mention this blog, and he hesitantly concedes that he has not read it lately. i laugh, and i laugh hard. i created this for my family friends and then i find out that a whole lot of other people are reading it and that the initial target group, somehow, much rather hear the sound of my voice or get that rare object, a hand-written letter, or the hastily written e-mail. whether i like it or not, i have a public life and i have a private life, and in both i am the same being although on occasions it seems to be a paradoxical existence.
i contend that the driving engine of the internet is loneliness. indeed i have met many a lonely person on the web. i could feel it clearly in my own bones yesterday when i had an attack of nostalgia and "flickr" that had me upload some old pictures of our grandmother and father, and being awed by the incredible surge of comments on some other of my old pictures that had long been uploaded. awed, is a mild expression for what it was, it was crack. attention is crack. people responding to one's own insignificance is crack. my brother was not sure about any of my arguments, but then i observed that he is not lonely, not lately anyhow. he agreed. the perception of loneliness and its remedies is one driving aspect in any media and communication, but not the only one.
we got into the subject of blogging, and somewhere along the line i disagreed with him and said it was all "like easy sex" somehow not the real thing. then i caught the fact that i do not have a clue as to what easy sex might be about, and certainly could not explain it to my brother although i am certain that there is some phenomena that falls under that label. do i equate "not real" with easy? hardly. i know flow to be real, and flow is damn easy when it happens. when it does not, you'll be damned to, with effort, make it happen.
i do not have much skill with a sword, but what i know is that the more i relax, the more i practice, the better that thing cuts, it is then effortless and easy, it flows. what goes for swordsmanship goes for anything else in life. it is thus no small wonder that so many people look into the martial arts as their source of growth and development. the not obvious bridge is that advanced skill in any martial art is far from having mastery in life itself. independent of the art, i have experienced many a high ranking dan with wonderful skill in the art and much to learn about life itself. you may master the sword, but it is when the sword has mastered you that you know that which you seek and that which eludes you. just last month i got to listen to a sob story from one of these wonderfully skilled people, and when i asked about the family, he answered he had none, he had dedicated all his life to aikido. aikido had chosen him, had he chosen aikido? or is it the other way around? for months now, each time i see him, i see a suffering man, nothing is easy. that is his path. we all struggle, but not at the same place. this is not an isolated case, it is a recurring scene in this comedy of life. somewhere along the path, very real is also very easy.
easy sex, the easy life, debauchery redefined? my brother and i were talking about marketing, that is how we started our conversation that spidered off in many directions. marketing, blogging, and like "easy sex" is one odd mixture so early in the morning. my family life is an odd mixture and the nurturing source of my existence. he had some questions on marketing for me, and i have some very opinionated views on it. he asked on how to market a certain kind of service, and i argued that marketing is dead, it does not work, it has burned out. marketing has been like easy sex, it promises one thing, and delivers another, at the end everybody is disappointed and the money is spent. he argued that that may be true for consumer goods, and i told him that from my experience that is not restricted to consumer goods. my observations of boardrooms and other secretive places within the economy have taught me that many otherwise intelligent heads of something or other have made catastrophic decisions about what services to purchase thus sending millions and millions of (euros, dollars, swiss francs) hard won cash into the pockets of some smart talking salesman with great magical verbal and contractual skills. these kinds of salesmen are otherwise known as bullshit artists. debauchery pure is what it is, and i am a rather hard judge. hard and compassionate.
on that tone we went on to loneliness and blogging, and blog reading. clearly no conclusions. out of the blue he asks me how it would be for a woman to lose her beauty with age. beauty is not skin deep, neither is the internet. i laughed telling him that i would not know, my years may be advancing, but i never had a preoccupation with beauty. in mananah, bahrain near the souk there was one bakery that i liked to go to more for the clientele and the whole business than the delicacies, although those were without reproach. what i found to be most astonishing while observing the women at the bakery was that i got the impression that the older women sometimes covered their face more to hide their age than anything else. their whole demeanor was one of proud women, proud even of their beauty past and wanting to honor it, not idolize it. yesterday when i dug up some pictures of my own face some of them surprised me, these are pictures of me smiling. lately i have not seen smiling pictures of myself. i wonder why?
how could i ever doubt myself? still, on occasions that is exactly what i do, doubt, hesitate. i was wondering if my bout of nostalgia yesterday had anything to do with a good dose of narcissism and a pout, or if it was something else.
there was something great about discovering a snapshot from last april next to my dad where our physical resemblance is quite striking. all of this was catalyzed by a comment on a snap that my mom took of her mother and i where i clearly see that this rather beautiful woman, even when she was almost 90 years old, and i do not resemble each other much. the commentator contended that i was being self-effacing. clearly not. beauty is not skin deep, but we are all voyeurs with a tad of masochism, loving to look in the mirror and torturing one self when the mirror is held up to our face.
he calls to find out how i am doing, i keep this blog to inform my friends and some relatives on how i am feeling; i am more reserved on how i am doing. my only brother and sibling to both our knowledge is twelve years younger than i, lives and speaks with a california accent, has studied economics and electrical engineering and has been diagnosed manic depressive some years ago. sometimes i feel that i am his life-line, however he does have a good local safety net of people who are there when he is literally climbing the walls. given the age difference, and the fact that two other of our parents children did not survive, my brother and i have never known what is often referred to as sibling rivalry. when he was born i would rather have had a sister to replace my dead sister, but somehow nature had a way of teaching a twelve year old that people can not be replaced, i had a brother, not a sister. she was blond and blue eyed, he has brown eyes and dark black hair; no confusion possible, this is not my sister, it is my brother.
this morning he calls and we start into a conversation to the tune that i do not know how the hell i am doing, he could ask me in three years time, and in retrospect i might be able to say something about it. besides that i mention this blog, and he hesitantly concedes that he has not read it lately. i laugh, and i laugh hard. i created this for my family friends and then i find out that a whole lot of other people are reading it and that the initial target group, somehow, much rather hear the sound of my voice or get that rare object, a hand-written letter, or the hastily written e-mail. whether i like it or not, i have a public life and i have a private life, and in both i am the same being although on occasions it seems to be a paradoxical existence.
i contend that the driving engine of the internet is loneliness. indeed i have met many a lonely person on the web. i could feel it clearly in my own bones yesterday when i had an attack of nostalgia and "flickr" that had me upload some old pictures of our grandmother and father, and being awed by the incredible surge of comments on some other of my old pictures that had long been uploaded. awed, is a mild expression for what it was, it was crack. attention is crack. people responding to one's own insignificance is crack. my brother was not sure about any of my arguments, but then i observed that he is not lonely, not lately anyhow. he agreed. the perception of loneliness and its remedies is one driving aspect in any media and communication, but not the only one.
we got into the subject of blogging, and somewhere along the line i disagreed with him and said it was all "like easy sex" somehow not the real thing. then i caught the fact that i do not have a clue as to what easy sex might be about, and certainly could not explain it to my brother although i am certain that there is some phenomena that falls under that label. do i equate "not real" with easy? hardly. i know flow to be real, and flow is damn easy when it happens. when it does not, you'll be damned to, with effort, make it happen.
i do not have much skill with a sword, but what i know is that the more i relax, the more i practice, the better that thing cuts, it is then effortless and easy, it flows. what goes for swordsmanship goes for anything else in life. it is thus no small wonder that so many people look into the martial arts as their source of growth and development. the not obvious bridge is that advanced skill in any martial art is far from having mastery in life itself. independent of the art, i have experienced many a high ranking dan with wonderful skill in the art and much to learn about life itself. you may master the sword, but it is when the sword has mastered you that you know that which you seek and that which eludes you. just last month i got to listen to a sob story from one of these wonderfully skilled people, and when i asked about the family, he answered he had none, he had dedicated all his life to aikido. aikido had chosen him, had he chosen aikido? or is it the other way around? for months now, each time i see him, i see a suffering man, nothing is easy. that is his path. we all struggle, but not at the same place. this is not an isolated case, it is a recurring scene in this comedy of life. somewhere along the path, very real is also very easy.
easy sex, the easy life, debauchery redefined? my brother and i were talking about marketing, that is how we started our conversation that spidered off in many directions. marketing, blogging, and like "easy sex" is one odd mixture so early in the morning. my family life is an odd mixture and the nurturing source of my existence. he had some questions on marketing for me, and i have some very opinionated views on it. he asked on how to market a certain kind of service, and i argued that marketing is dead, it does not work, it has burned out. marketing has been like easy sex, it promises one thing, and delivers another, at the end everybody is disappointed and the money is spent. he argued that that may be true for consumer goods, and i told him that from my experience that is not restricted to consumer goods. my observations of boardrooms and other secretive places within the economy have taught me that many otherwise intelligent heads of something or other have made catastrophic decisions about what services to purchase thus sending millions and millions of (euros, dollars, swiss francs) hard won cash into the pockets of some smart talking salesman with great magical verbal and contractual skills. these kinds of salesmen are otherwise known as bullshit artists. debauchery pure is what it is, and i am a rather hard judge. hard and compassionate.
on that tone we went on to loneliness and blogging, and blog reading. clearly no conclusions. out of the blue he asks me how it would be for a woman to lose her beauty with age. beauty is not skin deep, neither is the internet. i laughed telling him that i would not know, my years may be advancing, but i never had a preoccupation with beauty. in mananah, bahrain near the souk there was one bakery that i liked to go to more for the clientele and the whole business than the delicacies, although those were without reproach. what i found to be most astonishing while observing the women at the bakery was that i got the impression that the older women sometimes covered their face more to hide their age than anything else. their whole demeanor was one of proud women, proud even of their beauty past and wanting to honor it, not idolize it. yesterday when i dug up some pictures of my own face some of them surprised me, these are pictures of me smiling. lately i have not seen smiling pictures of myself. i wonder why?
how could i ever doubt myself? still, on occasions that is exactly what i do, doubt, hesitate. i was wondering if my bout of nostalgia yesterday had anything to do with a good dose of narcissism and a pout, or if it was something else.
there was something great about discovering a snapshot from last april next to my dad where our physical resemblance is quite striking. all of this was catalyzed by a comment on a snap that my mom took of her mother and i where i clearly see that this rather beautiful woman, even when she was almost 90 years old, and i do not resemble each other much. the commentator contended that i was being self-effacing. clearly not. beauty is not skin deep, but we are all voyeurs with a tad of masochism, loving to look in the mirror and torturing one self when the mirror is held up to our face.
Saturday, 19 February 2005
difference
there are days like today when my system screams at me, and yells out that i am no longer a teenager. to think of it, since thursday my body is being loud, it is demanding that i do some serious running, my blood pressure is too low, and i either feel totally out of it and tired or i get dizzy while warming up for aikido. not fun.
when i returned home last night i had this urge to sleep in my clothes on the unopened bed or the couch, and that was after training and not even showering. we did some bokken exercises that did not get me sweating although they got my circulation going. sometimes i like to do this, especially if i am wearing cosy old clothes, like an old worn out cashmere sweater. this morning there was no way that my body wanted to get up early enough to go do katas. sometimes it needs a break. it could also be that i am fighting some virus. i know from the past that when i feel like this and force myself i end up with a flu or a cold. my body is wiser than i and i tend to forget this.
what is the difference between old age and wisdom?
when i returned home last night i had this urge to sleep in my clothes on the unopened bed or the couch, and that was after training and not even showering. we did some bokken exercises that did not get me sweating although they got my circulation going. sometimes i like to do this, especially if i am wearing cosy old clothes, like an old worn out cashmere sweater. this morning there was no way that my body wanted to get up early enough to go do katas. sometimes it needs a break. it could also be that i am fighting some virus. i know from the past that when i feel like this and force myself i end up with a flu or a cold. my body is wiser than i and i tend to forget this.
what is the difference between old age and wisdom?
Friday, 18 February 2005
here now
the atelier, der schreibstube, the back office, the office, the back room... this is where i am now, this where i work. every morning after my soyaccino and zazen or jogging, i enter this room, turn on the lights and sit at the desk. on some days i can not wait to begin with the work, on other days i would rather go back to the jogging path along the river and run away until my body gives out under the imperative of madness.
she said form, he said hesitation, and ever since i have been wondering on how on earth i am going to tell a story that is deep inside me, a story that is violent and tragic, a story that is by all measures not personal, a story that touches me, a story that is aching to be told. i started in november writing something else, for the life of me, that one just did not want to be, i fell into a deep blue funk from which i was to free myself one sunday while observing that hesitation that he had pointed out to me. i went back to another project, that too needs some more ripening.
i am in a cave, it is my cave, it is here, it is now. nothing is going according to plan. if anything would have gone according to plan i would now not be here.
she said form, he said hesitation, and ever since i have been wondering on how on earth i am going to tell a story that is deep inside me, a story that is violent and tragic, a story that is by all measures not personal, a story that touches me, a story that is aching to be told. i started in november writing something else, for the life of me, that one just did not want to be, i fell into a deep blue funk from which i was to free myself one sunday while observing that hesitation that he had pointed out to me. i went back to another project, that too needs some more ripening.
i am in a cave, it is my cave, it is here, it is now. nothing is going according to plan. if anything would have gone according to plan i would now not be here.
Thursday, 17 February 2005
politics, alzheimer's and the meaning of life
there is nothing new under the sun, and this week has been a tad on the insane once more while i will never quite get used to it, it is the way it is.
yesterday i had a business meeting in zürich and in the evening a much more informal meeting of the local chapter of the (political) party that i belong to. the day was gone before i could blink, but what marked the day was the after dinner conversation with my party colleagues. we hold our meetings in the back room of this old hotel's restaurant downtown and sometimes we do stay for dinner. we were just three last night and i was in the mood for french fries, somehow something i managed to infect my colleagues with.
i joined the party more to have easy access to the information that affects my life locally and for getting to know my neighbors, somehow local politics fail to awaken my interest. the swiss capital does not have any issues that mobilize my fighting spirit. this is a city in which everything works. the only thing that i think does not work is the educational system, but then i would have one hell of a time making a good argument for that since on both a national and an international scale the system works (to a certain degree.) i am radical, and i am a social architect, i am slowly learning to accept this nature of mine.
what got me last night was to realize that one of my party colleagues, a newly retired gentleman who functions as the section's general secretary, has a 58 year old wife who is showing all the signs of alzheimer's disease. this is the first time that i sit next to a person having direct experience with this condition. this is one surprise in life that most of us do not plan for. here he is newly retired and taking cooking lessons, his wife can no longer be counted on to prepare meals. for a twenty year old man today, cooking is perhaps nothing special, for a 65 year old married man in switzerland, that is perhaps something he never did in his life. here is one fellow whom, to his surprise but with much courage and no complaints, finds himself in a situation that he had not anticipated, that is, he having to care and watch out for his younger wife who slowly and surely is losing her mind and intellectual faculties.
yesterday i had a business meeting in zürich and in the evening a much more informal meeting of the local chapter of the (political) party that i belong to. the day was gone before i could blink, but what marked the day was the after dinner conversation with my party colleagues. we hold our meetings in the back room of this old hotel's restaurant downtown and sometimes we do stay for dinner. we were just three last night and i was in the mood for french fries, somehow something i managed to infect my colleagues with.
i joined the party more to have easy access to the information that affects my life locally and for getting to know my neighbors, somehow local politics fail to awaken my interest. the swiss capital does not have any issues that mobilize my fighting spirit. this is a city in which everything works. the only thing that i think does not work is the educational system, but then i would have one hell of a time making a good argument for that since on both a national and an international scale the system works (to a certain degree.) i am radical, and i am a social architect, i am slowly learning to accept this nature of mine.
what got me last night was to realize that one of my party colleagues, a newly retired gentleman who functions as the section's general secretary, has a 58 year old wife who is showing all the signs of alzheimer's disease. this is the first time that i sit next to a person having direct experience with this condition. this is one surprise in life that most of us do not plan for. here he is newly retired and taking cooking lessons, his wife can no longer be counted on to prepare meals. for a twenty year old man today, cooking is perhaps nothing special, for a 65 year old married man in switzerland, that is perhaps something he never did in his life. here is one fellow whom, to his surprise but with much courage and no complaints, finds himself in a situation that he had not anticipated, that is, he having to care and watch out for his younger wife who slowly and surely is losing her mind and intellectual faculties.
Monday, 14 February 2005
being zen, being irritated...
i am starting to hate apple OS X updates, the last one 10.3.8 is giving my display the shakes.
that combined that while i was trying to clean up the system i deleted something i ought to not have deleted has had me have to re-install the whole freaking OS from scratch. the good news is that i had backed up the system on friday to the external HD. i did learn something from the time the bright shinny little machine just would not even blink at me after an OS update.
on days like these i wish i had become a farmer!
complete reinstall of everything... tell me i love it, because i am pissed off. i ought to be damn irritated, and i am!
that combined that while i was trying to clean up the system i deleted something i ought to not have deleted has had me have to re-install the whole freaking OS from scratch. the good news is that i had backed up the system on friday to the external HD. i did learn something from the time the bright shinny little machine just would not even blink at me after an OS update.
on days like these i wish i had become a farmer!
complete reinstall of everything... tell me i love it, because i am pissed off. i ought to be damn irritated, and i am!
Sunday, 13 February 2005
it is snowing
i said that i would never write about sex.
such utterances remind me of a song by Florent Pagny "la solitude"
and one day, when the blues found me...
such utterances remind me of a song by Florent Pagny "la solitude"
J'devais avoir dix ans
Quand j'me suis dit maint'nant
A personne, je dirai plus rien
Même si ça me fait du bien
J'ai pas t'nu ma promesse
Et les soirs de détresse
Quand le blues a retrouvé mon adresse
A des paumés d'un soir
J'raconte mon désespoir
Mais je sais bien que personne n'écoute
Oui je sais que personne n'écoute
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
C'est pour une femme qui vous ment
Pour un ami qui vous vend
La solitude
Combien d'fois j'suis parti
Seul au milieu de la nuit
Combien d'fois j'ai tendu les mains
Pour dire à quelqu'un
Je t'aime, à toi je tiens
Mais je sais bien que personne n'écoute
Oui je sais bien que personne n'écoute
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
C'est pour une femme qui vous ment
Pour le chagrin d'un enfant
La solitude
C'est comme la peur
On vit avec, mais on en meurt
La solitude
Je connais ceux qui veulent
A tout prix vivre seuls
C'est vivre dans un désert
Le cœur froid comme la pierre
Et moi j'veux pas
Non j'veux pas
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
La solitude
Ça s'apprend
C'est pour une femme qui vous ment
Pour un ami qui vous vend
La solitude
C'est comme le vent
Quand c'est trop fort
Ça vous rend...
La solitude
C'est pour une femme qui vous ment
Pour un ami qui vous vend
La solitude
La solitude
and one day, when the blues found me...
it is never personal
dead puppies may or may not make me cry, life always does.
do i cry of joy?
do i cry of pain?
or do i just cry?
i cry.
context
they say that context is everything and i am one keen on quoting "them."
for some odd reason i recently recalled a moment when a friend and i found ourselves for the first time in the privacy of a hotel room. he became a friend, but on that day he was a man and i a woman and neither could keep the own fingers off each other. there was this moment that sometimes comes back to me and makes me feel wonderfully good for being the unassuming and naive animal that i am. it was warm and sunny outside, but all i remember is the two of us rolling around and kissing in bed with all our clothes on. i like kissing and groping a man's back and abandon myself to the moment.
it was at that point that he made a silent and clear request from me that lead me to conclude later that if there was a manual ever written on how this woman functions, this man had not only read it, he had written it.
recalling that moment out of context, will always put one glorious smile on this woman's face.
for some odd reason i recently recalled a moment when a friend and i found ourselves for the first time in the privacy of a hotel room. he became a friend, but on that day he was a man and i a woman and neither could keep the own fingers off each other. there was this moment that sometimes comes back to me and makes me feel wonderfully good for being the unassuming and naive animal that i am. it was warm and sunny outside, but all i remember is the two of us rolling around and kissing in bed with all our clothes on. i like kissing and groping a man's back and abandon myself to the moment.
it was at that point that he made a silent and clear request from me that lead me to conclude later that if there was a manual ever written on how this woman functions, this man had not only read it, he had written it.
recalling that moment out of context, will always put one glorious smile on this woman's face.
Saturday, 12 February 2005
irritation
the word has been spinning around my head in one way or another for the past weeks. yesterday somebody mentioned being irritated by my use of a particular honor title and the spinning has become acute. irritations often turn to pearls of wisdom in due time.
i was irritated when i did not wake up on time for the dawn zazen.
i was irritated yesterday when i could not get to training on time because of the disruption carnival brought to the public transportation.
i was irritated by the mention of physics in dharma talks.
i was irritated by what was said to me yesterday that generated the other's irritation.
i was irritated when a confused man told me that there was something spiritual about our chance encounter.
i was irritated last tuesday while doing karate randori.
i was irritated each and every time my pc crashed in the middle of a simple "word" operation and the work since the last save got lost.
language is irritating. language is fairly abstract and arbitrary within a certain set of rules. feelings, those states of emotional disorder that we call feeling are real.
within this realm of feelings i have been trying to get out of my skin in the past couple of months. today, that is what it feels like, all this time i have turning around ideas in my head, asking myself the same questions, getting no attractive ideas, no leads, nothing that i wanted to grab and run away with. i have the inspiration, i have the story, but how do i unwind it? how do i unfurl it? how do i debungle it?
it started that i had the impression that someone had gotten under my skin. eventually i slipped out of the grasp of the illusion, broke the magic spell, and found myself blissfully here. my skin, that largest organ, protective, sensual and in my case extremely sensitive. my skin under attack! my skin under literary attack. i felt something, it was real, the spell was under my skin. today i look back and it starts to make sense in its very own serendipity. i know the balance is delicate, and i know that i sometimes lose it.
have you ever seen me mad? i mean really mad? would you know when i am really mad?
i have known frustration, i have known being upset and contradicted, i have known been furious, enraged. i have been fuming on occasions. fuming?
i can scream, and i can yell very very loud. i can make my voice a whisper and and i can make it fill a room with hundreds of people. if i am furious, frustrated, contradicted and fuming, i go silent. i lose the ability to verbalize when i am pissed off. one day some clueless graduate student will study the endocrine secretions of very very upset humans. will the student find madness' chemical essence?
language is based on the physical world that we experience. duh! i am not fuming when fuming mad, or enraged... but heavens knows that inside the chemical soup is indeed fuming. i have always been puzzled by the observation that the sensations caused by fear and excitement are to me undistinguishable. either way my pulse rate quickens, and there is this thing about anticipation and thinking of what may or may not come that gives me these butterflies fumbling with my innards. this insipid observation has my son's claim and attribution to my ability to state the obvious validated while my hard disk backs up one week's meager output.
the time has arrived for me to look into my irritations, especially those that i have in the past insisted in ignoring.
(duh! these are half-baked thoughts, but i am not promising a more complete rebake either)
i was irritated when i did not wake up on time for the dawn zazen.
i was irritated yesterday when i could not get to training on time because of the disruption carnival brought to the public transportation.
i was irritated by the mention of physics in dharma talks.
i was irritated by what was said to me yesterday that generated the other's irritation.
i was irritated when a confused man told me that there was something spiritual about our chance encounter.
i was irritated last tuesday while doing karate randori.
i was irritated each and every time my pc crashed in the middle of a simple "word" operation and the work since the last save got lost.
i wanted to punch him out when he told me "tu hésites" for a whole of a femtosecond. i was not irritated, i was stunned.
language is irritating. language is fairly abstract and arbitrary within a certain set of rules. feelings, those states of emotional disorder that we call feeling are real.
within this realm of feelings i have been trying to get out of my skin in the past couple of months. today, that is what it feels like, all this time i have turning around ideas in my head, asking myself the same questions, getting no attractive ideas, no leads, nothing that i wanted to grab and run away with. i have the inspiration, i have the story, but how do i unwind it? how do i unfurl it? how do i debungle it?
it started that i had the impression that someone had gotten under my skin. eventually i slipped out of the grasp of the illusion, broke the magic spell, and found myself blissfully here. my skin, that largest organ, protective, sensual and in my case extremely sensitive. my skin under attack! my skin under literary attack. i felt something, it was real, the spell was under my skin. today i look back and it starts to make sense in its very own serendipity. i know the balance is delicate, and i know that i sometimes lose it.
have you ever seen me mad? i mean really mad? would you know when i am really mad?
i have known frustration, i have known being upset and contradicted, i have known been furious, enraged. i have been fuming on occasions. fuming?
i can scream, and i can yell very very loud. i can make my voice a whisper and and i can make it fill a room with hundreds of people. if i am furious, frustrated, contradicted and fuming, i go silent. i lose the ability to verbalize when i am pissed off. one day some clueless graduate student will study the endocrine secretions of very very upset humans. will the student find madness' chemical essence?
language is based on the physical world that we experience. duh! i am not fuming when fuming mad, or enraged... but heavens knows that inside the chemical soup is indeed fuming. i have always been puzzled by the observation that the sensations caused by fear and excitement are to me undistinguishable. either way my pulse rate quickens, and there is this thing about anticipation and thinking of what may or may not come that gives me these butterflies fumbling with my innards. this insipid observation has my son's claim and attribution to my ability to state the obvious validated while my hard disk backs up one week's meager output.
the time has arrived for me to look into my irritations, especially those that i have in the past insisted in ignoring.
(duh! these are half-baked thoughts, but i am not promising a more complete rebake either)
Friday, 11 February 2005
CRW_7978
adventures in travel and composition have taken me to South Africa.
once, long ago, while in the office in London, there was a job to do in SA and AUS. at the time i was not keen on setting my feet on african soil. my colleague and i tossed a coin, and i got to go to australia.
Tuesday, 8 February 2005
from discipline to detail
here i am struggling, yes struggling with the writing. sometimes i get to a point and somehow it is stuck, not blocked, just stuck. i can write like an automatic machine gun, just not what i think that i want to write... it is try this, try that. try again. then i don't like it, i start all over. i feel stupid and inept, i go around in circles. i know that this is part of the process. it is no different from doing thermodynamics or electrodynamics... lots and lots of trials. you think that you know what the tread to the solution is, you start solving the problem, somewhere you hit a snag, either you made a mistake along the line or you are not on the right path. you go back, you start again, you look for the mistake... you do this until you get it, you do this, you burn the midnight oil, you do this many many times. you think that you are going mad. then the next thing is that you get distracted, you start other projects... but you know that if you do not work on it, the problem will not solve itself. you return, you labor, eventually it clicks, and it starts flowing, you break through.
discipline is what keeps me at the writing, is what keeps me trying and trying again. failing and trying once more. discipline was the one word that kept ringing in my head when i returned to switzerland after living in germany for a couple of years. that was roughly ten years ago.
once in a while i get an e-mail from those brave enough to dwell through the rather difficult reading that one of my blogs is. yes it is a personal blog, and it is as authentic as anything i have ever written, as authentic as i can generate it, and it belongs to fiction. out of some events in my life i put together a story, the story of my struggle with the events, the happenings, the very day to day of getting myself back to where i want to be. this one is an interesting e-mail, it comes from across town, or at least is originating from a server in the same city that i am right now. i have no clue as to who this person is, but the two or three questions asked are indeed good ones. one of them i will try to answer here.
in the blog mentioned, a blog that i plan on taking off-line one these days, i go through what sometimes feels like my emotional vomit caused by having some sensitive buttons pushed. this brave e-mailer asks me "why did he push your (my) buttons?"
the answer is simple enough, he did not intentionally push my buttons. i was not careful, and my exposed buttons rubbed against his rough edges. alternatively it was perhaps my rough edges that accidentally triggered his buttons.
although the fact that there are a number of men active in various roles in my life surprises only me, the man from the blog was different. he totally got under my skin, and to me it is for no other reason than that he and i most likely share so many passions and dreams. i never before in my life had struggled so intensely with the realm of my own existence, and it was about time, it was overdue. i am glad he showed up in my life, uninvited, seductive and handsome. it was a lesson i needed to learn, and it was beautifully wrapped. this is not sarcasm, and it may indeed take another book to explain what this last paragraph is about. it is about detail.
what needs to happen, happens. choice is about the ability to embrace it. happiness is an elusion. serenity and peace of mind is a reality.
discipline is what keeps me at the writing, is what keeps me trying and trying again. failing and trying once more. discipline was the one word that kept ringing in my head when i returned to switzerland after living in germany for a couple of years. that was roughly ten years ago.
once in a while i get an e-mail from those brave enough to dwell through the rather difficult reading that one of my blogs is. yes it is a personal blog, and it is as authentic as anything i have ever written, as authentic as i can generate it, and it belongs to fiction. out of some events in my life i put together a story, the story of my struggle with the events, the happenings, the very day to day of getting myself back to where i want to be. this one is an interesting e-mail, it comes from across town, or at least is originating from a server in the same city that i am right now. i have no clue as to who this person is, but the two or three questions asked are indeed good ones. one of them i will try to answer here.
in the blog mentioned, a blog that i plan on taking off-line one these days, i go through what sometimes feels like my emotional vomit caused by having some sensitive buttons pushed. this brave e-mailer asks me "why did he push your (my) buttons?"
the answer is simple enough, he did not intentionally push my buttons. i was not careful, and my exposed buttons rubbed against his rough edges. alternatively it was perhaps my rough edges that accidentally triggered his buttons.
although the fact that there are a number of men active in various roles in my life surprises only me, the man from the blog was different. he totally got under my skin, and to me it is for no other reason than that he and i most likely share so many passions and dreams. i never before in my life had struggled so intensely with the realm of my own existence, and it was about time, it was overdue. i am glad he showed up in my life, uninvited, seductive and handsome. it was a lesson i needed to learn, and it was beautifully wrapped. this is not sarcasm, and it may indeed take another book to explain what this last paragraph is about. it is about detail.
what needs to happen, happens. choice is about the ability to embrace it. happiness is an elusion. serenity and peace of mind is a reality.
Monday, 7 February 2005
enlightenment or for the love of an harley
this weekend just past was delightful and pleasurable in a divine dimension. i did the sort of thing that i have done before, i sat. i sat in a zendo, i sat for hours. this was a long planned zazenkai which i joined together with one of my best friends. we drove on a rather grey looking saturday morning to a place called Bad Schönbrunn in central Switzerland.
all i know is that by 13:00 hours on sunday when the zazenkai concluded, it seemed that i had arrived five minutes ago. during these five minutes a few experiences were to be had besides sitting. in dokusan i was asked since when did i practice zen, certainly a question for which i had no good answer, at least not to me. when did this begin? was it when i started aikido? was it earlier when i engaged in other styles of meditation? was it back then when i would go for long walks in the fields of my native land? was it when i started breathing autonomously when i took the first breath of air after birth? or was it when i started sitting in seiza on a daily basis in the privacy of my own quarters?
i do not know when i started the practice of zen.
then i went back to the previous dokusan two weeks ago, why do i do this bit of sitting and torturing my body to the point of wanting to scream and run away while declaring the own insanity? i have no good reason to do this sitting bit, this so called zazen. i suspect that somewhere along the line the masochist that my ego is, does enjoy it. being more than that, there is something about learning to stand up straight that is best learned by practicing sitting straight. it does me good, and i enjoy the silence. no verbalization, no grammar, no accent. i still have no reason to sit. i sit.
on saturday night i went to bed exhausted and with my thoughts somewhere with a muse, and how overwhelmed i am by both the inspiration and the experiencing of a presence that inspires, teaches, and attracts. when i woke up there was light in the room, daylight. i look at the clock on my mobile, it was 07:42. ah! be zen now. wake up time was 05:20 and the first sitting at 06:00. i love sitting in the early morning hours, i was irritated, i had missed it. before going to sleep i was assured by the thought that my alarm is set for 05:00, i had forgotten that i had it programmed so except for sunday when no alarm rings. when i saw the daylight, i was sure that i had not heard the alarm, although it is hard to miss it even when in deep sleep, but i know that i can sleep very very deeply, then i blamed modern technology for not being reliable. in the shower it dawned on me, it is sunday! i had slept soundly for almost 10 hours, this is indeed deep meditation. enlightenment does not come with an alarm!
being zen in the face of abandoning all pretense at looking good, having it all under control, or doing it all right! i had to laugh, i laughed heartily at myself, it was wonderful just to embrace the being that i am, pretentious, fallible, alive!
i missed breakfast, and sat down at 08:30.
when we left the zazenkai we went for a walk in a glorious sunday afternoon. the canton of Zug was almost totally covered by snow, the snow crystals had grown during the foggy cold nights and sparkled all over the fields under the direct incident sun, it was a sight from heaven, and one which i did not photograph. for all my love and fascination for photography, it is not an obsession. there is time to take photos and there is time to not take photos.
i returned home refreshed, and ready to embrace the surprises in my life.
what does all of this have to do with the love of an harley?
all i know is that by 13:00 hours on sunday when the zazenkai concluded, it seemed that i had arrived five minutes ago. during these five minutes a few experiences were to be had besides sitting. in dokusan i was asked since when did i practice zen, certainly a question for which i had no good answer, at least not to me. when did this begin? was it when i started aikido? was it earlier when i engaged in other styles of meditation? was it back then when i would go for long walks in the fields of my native land? was it when i started breathing autonomously when i took the first breath of air after birth? or was it when i started sitting in seiza on a daily basis in the privacy of my own quarters?
i do not know when i started the practice of zen.
then i went back to the previous dokusan two weeks ago, why do i do this bit of sitting and torturing my body to the point of wanting to scream and run away while declaring the own insanity? i have no good reason to do this sitting bit, this so called zazen. i suspect that somewhere along the line the masochist that my ego is, does enjoy it. being more than that, there is something about learning to stand up straight that is best learned by practicing sitting straight. it does me good, and i enjoy the silence. no verbalization, no grammar, no accent. i still have no reason to sit. i sit.
on saturday night i went to bed exhausted and with my thoughts somewhere with a muse, and how overwhelmed i am by both the inspiration and the experiencing of a presence that inspires, teaches, and attracts. when i woke up there was light in the room, daylight. i look at the clock on my mobile, it was 07:42. ah! be zen now. wake up time was 05:20 and the first sitting at 06:00. i love sitting in the early morning hours, i was irritated, i had missed it. before going to sleep i was assured by the thought that my alarm is set for 05:00, i had forgotten that i had it programmed so except for sunday when no alarm rings. when i saw the daylight, i was sure that i had not heard the alarm, although it is hard to miss it even when in deep sleep, but i know that i can sleep very very deeply, then i blamed modern technology for not being reliable. in the shower it dawned on me, it is sunday! i had slept soundly for almost 10 hours, this is indeed deep meditation. enlightenment does not come with an alarm!
being zen in the face of abandoning all pretense at looking good, having it all under control, or doing it all right! i had to laugh, i laughed heartily at myself, it was wonderful just to embrace the being that i am, pretentious, fallible, alive!
i missed breakfast, and sat down at 08:30.
when we left the zazenkai we went for a walk in a glorious sunday afternoon. the canton of Zug was almost totally covered by snow, the snow crystals had grown during the foggy cold nights and sparkled all over the fields under the direct incident sun, it was a sight from heaven, and one which i did not photograph. for all my love and fascination for photography, it is not an obsession. there is time to take photos and there is time to not take photos.
i returned home refreshed, and ready to embrace the surprises in my life.
what does all of this have to do with the love of an harley?
Friday, 4 February 2005
the art of garden
time is an invention. strictly speaking time is a concept, it does not exist, like other dimensions, like all dimensions. we do live in a world of representations, and when we distill it down to the essence, there is just now and here.
but to write this down in one simple sentence somehow seems to ridicule all the great philosophers, and it certainly puts dogma out of circulation without any scruples or remorse.
what is it that human beings are?
the dead philosopher in me would love to expound on being human and being art...
but to write this down in one simple sentence somehow seems to ridicule all the great philosophers, and it certainly puts dogma out of circulation without any scruples or remorse.
what is it that human beings are?
the dead philosopher in me would love to expound on being human and being art...
Thursday, 3 February 2005
the blues
i give up, i am having a good case of the blues. good. this is a time when i tend to go out of communication, retreat to my solitude, and write ferociously. i hold business meetings like a preprogrammed fully adaptive complex automaton and basically do not give a damn about anything other that what is on my radar. i program the radar.
the blues and i, we are the best of friends, inseparable.
do not ever ask if i love you. it is the most senseless of all questions that you can ever ask me. i love the whole world, it is just that sometimes i need to refuel, when i need to refuel, i seem distant, and i am distant. you, you are always in my heart. how can you be anywhere else?
in a moment of shear madness i write to you and tell you exactly what i am feeling. i did not even have to search for the words, they were there. before my intellect had any chance of vetoing my action or censuring my words, the letter was in the mail to you, irrevocably yours. your silence meant nothing, and it meant all. your lack of assumptions and judgment touched me deeply. i need to do what i am doing, we need to be there where we are. it is all so simple.
the blues and i, we are the best of friends, inseparable.
do not ever ask if i love you. it is the most senseless of all questions that you can ever ask me. i love the whole world, it is just that sometimes i need to refuel, when i need to refuel, i seem distant, and i am distant. you, you are always in my heart. how can you be anywhere else?
in a moment of shear madness i write to you and tell you exactly what i am feeling. i did not even have to search for the words, they were there. before my intellect had any chance of vetoing my action or censuring my words, the letter was in the mail to you, irrevocably yours. your silence meant nothing, and it meant all. your lack of assumptions and judgment touched me deeply. i need to do what i am doing, we need to be there where we are. it is all so simple.
crying in the car
the car is that one place where i can get a good cry. then i am sure it is the engine and i, the traffic, and i can let it go. yesterday the tears rolled when driving back from training after i had been to the airport to drop off the wonderful young man my son is.
the tears rolled when thinking of the one teaching feedback my sensei had for me yesterday, it is along the lines of the feedback i got from another sensei just a couple of months ago. when he told me that back then, i wanted to punch him out for about half a second before i realized that he had seen something i needed to address. when she yesterday came to the same feedback and offered additional teaching, i could only look at her. i know that they are both right, and i am almost overwhelmed what to do with it. they both observed what is for me a major stumbling block. it manifests itself in aikido perhaps in a different way then it does otherwise, but it is a pattern that there is to recast, i have learning to do to go over this hurdle. it is also awesome.
long term relationships are the path to mastery. when it comes to a relationship to a discipline like aikido, it is no different from the relationship with one's child or one's friend. learning occurs when i am ready to open my heart and accept what is from a perspective of the absolute and devoid of qualification or judgment.
i had a long, long day yesterday that started at 3 in the morning and ended at midnight. in the evening i was at a meeting of party delegates where several resolutions were made, among them one about the new same sex partnership law that is up for vote soon in switzerland. it was a great exercise field for my newly won insight into how my being is functioning. the big argument against the passage of this new law manages to confuse sexuality with partnership in a grand style, and thus argues that to defend the rights of marriage, this new law must not be. at that point there is nothing other than compassion for people who have their thinking so muddled that they insist in discriminating against others who have made life long choices different from their own. clearly the moral majority never appealed to me, and they do offer the great opportunity to exercise compassion. personally, i would even abolish marriage law, and create a children's rights law that would clarify both children and parents rights and obligations. it is no great fundamental secret that often marriage is not about sex, like many relationships are not about sex, and sexual relationships crisscross the web of marriages in a way that has most people mind boggled. still, for me last night during the deliberations what became clear is that i had absolutely no passion involved in the discussion and that in my view "same sex partnerships" should have some rights and obligations if they chose to enter such a civil status. partnership is about companionship, it may or may not be about sex, and it may or may not be about procreation. let the people chose how they want to live. it felt great to be so clear, so free of hesitation.
the tears rolled when thinking of the one teaching feedback my sensei had for me yesterday, it is along the lines of the feedback i got from another sensei just a couple of months ago. when he told me that back then, i wanted to punch him out for about half a second before i realized that he had seen something i needed to address. when she yesterday came to the same feedback and offered additional teaching, i could only look at her. i know that they are both right, and i am almost overwhelmed what to do with it. they both observed what is for me a major stumbling block. it manifests itself in aikido perhaps in a different way then it does otherwise, but it is a pattern that there is to recast, i have learning to do to go over this hurdle. it is also awesome.
long term relationships are the path to mastery. when it comes to a relationship to a discipline like aikido, it is no different from the relationship with one's child or one's friend. learning occurs when i am ready to open my heart and accept what is from a perspective of the absolute and devoid of qualification or judgment.
i had a long, long day yesterday that started at 3 in the morning and ended at midnight. in the evening i was at a meeting of party delegates where several resolutions were made, among them one about the new same sex partnership law that is up for vote soon in switzerland. it was a great exercise field for my newly won insight into how my being is functioning. the big argument against the passage of this new law manages to confuse sexuality with partnership in a grand style, and thus argues that to defend the rights of marriage, this new law must not be. at that point there is nothing other than compassion for people who have their thinking so muddled that they insist in discriminating against others who have made life long choices different from their own. clearly the moral majority never appealed to me, and they do offer the great opportunity to exercise compassion. personally, i would even abolish marriage law, and create a children's rights law that would clarify both children and parents rights and obligations. it is no great fundamental secret that often marriage is not about sex, like many relationships are not about sex, and sexual relationships crisscross the web of marriages in a way that has most people mind boggled. still, for me last night during the deliberations what became clear is that i had absolutely no passion involved in the discussion and that in my view "same sex partnerships" should have some rights and obligations if they chose to enter such a civil status. partnership is about companionship, it may or may not be about sex, and it may or may not be about procreation. let the people chose how they want to live. it felt great to be so clear, so free of hesitation.
Wednesday, 2 February 2005
the next day
you take your grown son to the airport and you return home and wonder how did he grow up so fast, so wonderful, so precious...
what good fortune to have such a son!
what good fortune to have such a son!
Tuesday, 1 February 2005
one day
one day you wake up and you have the answer. you have asked yourself the same question time and over again. the question penetrates you, the question is you.
you wake up one day and the answer has you.
blind!
you are blind!
totally blind!
bliss.
serenity.
a blind actor.
a blind fool.
a blind,
a muse.
you wake up one day and the answer has you.
blind!
you are blind!
totally blind!
bliss.
serenity.
a blind actor.
a blind fool.
a blind,
a muse.
who am i?
i look at his silhouette on my screen...
i find myself lost in the well-being that his presence brings, i find myself brilliantly alive in the death throws of irrelevance. i wonder how i can be so close and so detached in such an intimate relationship which is so distant and far fetched.
i find myself cautioning the idiot that i am to not ever again fall in love, and i find myself wondering whether i have ever been in love. i find the answer to be irrefutably irrelevant.
i find myself wanting to touch his skin, and i find myself touching the skin of another.
we are in the car, he looks at me from the driver's seat and remarks on how i try to disappear deep inside my winter coat. i laugh, i feel good. i would want to hold on to that moment forever.
i find myself steering straight on my course, and i wonder how it was to be that he came into my experience. i feel there is magic in all of it. it is magic.
i search for the words, and do not find them. nothing can describe what i feel.
once i saw him and he impressed me, than i forgot. each time i am in his presence is being within that first great magic moment. all i wanted was to explore experiencing that being.
i find myself lost in the well-being that his presence brings, i find myself brilliantly alive in the death throws of irrelevance. i wonder how i can be so close and so detached in such an intimate relationship which is so distant and far fetched.
i find myself cautioning the idiot that i am to not ever again fall in love, and i find myself wondering whether i have ever been in love. i find the answer to be irrefutably irrelevant.
i find myself wanting to touch his skin, and i find myself touching the skin of another.
we are in the car, he looks at me from the driver's seat and remarks on how i try to disappear deep inside my winter coat. i laugh, i feel good. i would want to hold on to that moment forever.
i find myself steering straight on my course, and i wonder how it was to be that he came into my experience. i feel there is magic in all of it. it is magic.
i search for the words, and do not find them. nothing can describe what i feel.
once i saw him and he impressed me, than i forgot. each time i am in his presence is being within that first great magic moment. all i wanted was to explore experiencing that being.
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