cereal

the only thing I have against cereal is that it's so noisy. It's impossible to pour yourself a quiet bowl at 2 in the morning.

In a world without edges, only unending horizons

I was thinking about creating worlds and making fantasy maps and thinking how most of the time fantasy worlds just fade off along the edges, and how it often feels much better to me that way, than having precise edges and knowing everything that exists in that world. So I was thinking about worlds without edges. And then I was thinking, hey wait a minute, in a way that is our world, one of no edges, just horizons which keep revealing themselves. You think you can reach an edge, an end, a point of Here at last It Is, or I Am, or whatever, but each of those places we see from afar, when we reach them, reveal a whole new vista, and prove to be yet another step on the road, as much an end as a beginning.

The Mysterious Art of Flipping Eggs

is quite beyond me!
How on earth is one supposed to accomplish this magical feat?

(we're talking the over-easy/hard kind, you know, fried flat in a pan)
The thing could be swimming in butter but it still sticks to the spatula so I can't slide it all the way under!! If I try it just ends up wrinkling up and then bunching on the far side of the pan. I have to get three spatulas to even attempt the trick. I get one in under the edge and lift it up, then I slip another one under further and repeat. Then I try and remove the first one without tearing the egg and get it in from the other side. Then I have to juggle these three spatula handles that aren't all going the same direction and lift the whole awkward contraption and try to get it to flip over quickly without creating disater. Half the time the egg just folds over on itself and doesn't actually flip, or I break the yolk. bah! If only I didn't like eggs cooked this way so much! hehe

Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?

a poem has been written on it.


I'm sitting here with a cup of tea looking out the kitchen window at the rainy world, watching a black bird up in the autumn coloured trees and thinking of Poe while this line from Alice in Wonderland is going through my head. This riddle troubled me greatly as a child. I must admit I've never actually read the book and don't know whether it even appears in it, where it's from, or whether any answer is ever given. but in any case this answer finally formed itself in my head now and I was reflecting on the fact that it working depends on the use of the word 'on' in English, and that it probably wouldn't translate well to some other languages.

exasperation!

I have come to the conclusion that I hate feather pillows! You can pile five of them up at once and in the space of five secconds you are flat with the mattress again! They give no support whatsoever. They have utterly no purpose other than to get in the way, smother you, and generally be obnoxious! They poof up around the rest of your head so that you cannot breath, but where you want them to poof, such as under your neck or your ear or between your head and your arm - no! they go flat as a pancake! and they might even poke you to boot!

the magic of sun and water

There's a sprinkler going in the field across the way. It keeps hitting the roof of the house like a nice hard rain, making a mistcloud as it bounces off. Then as it moves on past there is a waterfall of droplets rolling off in sheets and strands....the light shining on the drops is mezmerising and magical. How sweet such simple joys are! ^.^

It's only a Bug

aye, it’s only a bug. Only. How would you like it if someone said that about you? But you are different, yes. You are a person, you know what you are, you think about things, you experience the world and yourself and others, you remember, you anticipate. Do bugs do these things? Do they immagine, hope, feel emotions? We do not rightly know. Yet, even so, is it not terrifying to contemplate that your heart, You, would kill something just because it was inconvenient for you?

“Oh look, it’s an ant on the counter.” *Smash*

Have you ever looked at those searching antenas in the moment before your finger comes down out of the sky in a flash and cuts off all that bug knew. Have you ever thought of how sudden and unexpected that ending was? Have you ever looked at your finger and realised that it has the power to separate things from this world forever? Have you ever considered and trembled at the thought of such a thing happening to you? The idea that suddenly, for no reason other than your existance slighty bothering someone, it might just be stoppped, eliminated, without a thought or care or pause or remembrance, without a moment even to realise it is happening. Have you ever looked at your heart and realised the darkness of that impulse within you.......I don’t like it - Smash! Have you ever considered what it might do? If you believed other things were bugs as well? Have you remembered, and shuddered, that it happens all the time? That people believe even people like themselves are only bugs.

To the bugs, we are like gods. Remember the Romans gods? Whose intrests and petty whims upturned the lives of humans below without their asking? How greatly do your petty whims upturn many little lives that do not even understand your existance. Is that your right? Are you a god? Over what? What in this world truely belongs to you? Perhaps it is our gift and right to herd the sheep, the beetles, the bushes of this earth. Even so, do we know where our will should stop? Over what it has precedence, and over what it does not? Do we have the grace to consider what is under us? Or do we act only upon our whims? And even if it is our right to do so......is it truely right? Is it good? Is it best? Is it, perhaps, only through giving up our right voluntarily that we become something more? More than an act of fate, a ‘force of nature’ if you will. Will we interact with, consider, what is under us? Do we recognise that there may be something over us, even as we are over the bugs? Will we pay attention to the interaction of what is above us when it reaches down into our lives?

ever so gratefull

ever so
for all who have loved
for all who have given
for all who have shared
for all who have listened
for all who have smiled
for all who have laughed
for all who have cared
for all who have shown me wonder and beauty and comfort and hope
for all who have made life so abundantly beautifull
I am gatefull
ever so gratefull

Stuffed

It seems to me that as a culture we are generally very bad at knowing what it is that we want when we feel that we want something. I wonder why this is.

Perhaps we introspect too little? Because of being busy? Because of being distracted by constact noise and immages? Because people who spend quiet time alone are considered boring and strange? Because somehow we don't know how to keep our own company and feel compelled to always be out with others in order to have a good time? Because we are afriad of discussing deep personal things, like inner desires, with these others we spend our time with? Who knows.

Or perhaps because we are constantly subjected to being told that we want things from commercials and other sales tactics. So that either we aren't used to coming up with the answer of what we want ourselves, having it always told us from the outside, or we are constantly having the feeling of want arroused so that we begin to deal with it almost subconciously so that we can get on with other things. Instead of pausing every time to determine whether the source of the want is within or coming from without, and analysing what exactly we are in want of, we have a set of automatic fullfillment responces which can be selected with little thought or energy.

Thus our lives become overstuffed with fillers while still remaining relatively empty. In fact, sometimes the things that do fullfill us get pushed away or disconnected from our lives just to make room for more stuffing.

Such quick-fix stuffings are frequently food of various kinds, or money, or stuff that one buys through un-premeditated shopping. And here we come to, what I think is, the reason why we see the 'inexplicable' despare and emptiness of people living in a land where even the homeless have more things than could be brought on a plane without an extra fee, where obesity is found even among (and possibly especially among) the poor classes, where there is such abundance of physical provision far beyond the basic needs for survival. It would seem that people are taught culturally to ignore their true desires and inner needs in favor of the misguided persuit of Stuffing.

Moneysworth

very wise saying No.4: the value is in the enjoyment and benefit, not in the quantity.

people are often befuddled by numbers or quantities into thinking that they need to get more in some physical ammount for the price they pay, when really they are cheating themselves.

Take Disneyland for example. The typical Disneyland experience usually encludes trying to do as many things as possible in the time that one has there so that you 'have gotten your money's worth' after paying for those expensive tickets. However, this approach usually makes people more stressed, more cranky, more prone to finding dissatisfaction in their experience, and much more tired and sore. It also probably distracts them from the details of their surroundings or the quality of the experience at hand, so that their sense of satisfaction comes not from the pleasant atmosphere, or the enjoyment of the rides and shows, or the sights and smells and tastes, but rather from being able to check so many things off the list.
• One can achieve the same feeling marking off a list of chores to do at home which costs nothing.
There is certainly a sense of satisfaction when one completes a number of things, but this is entirely a separate thing from the sense of satisfaction one is intended to experience from going to Disneyland. The music and landscaping are meant to create a pleasant atmosphere, one of both peace and joy. The rides are meant to bring up fond memories of movies and stories one loves, or to provide a thrill through speed and motions that one doesn't normally encounter. One is more likely to have a good time - a time that is enjoyable, uplifting, relaxing...in short an escape to a fantasy world, a retreat, if one is not fretting about how long things are taking or how many rides one has yet to check off the list. Why on earth would you pay to go be crabby stressed and resentfull?

People often approach situations in which they pay for something as though they are trying to get a toy out of a dog's mouth. There they are pulling and shaking and straining to get something back as the dog is clenching it's teeth and pulling and straining to keep it. In reality, you pay for something and it is given to you. Why strain as though you have to try and make something of it? Why not just recieve it? Why not focus on What, rather than How Much.

Take as another example: Eating Out. If you feel compelled to 'get your moneysworth' (yes I'm intentionally using it as one word) by eating every last scrap on your plate and having them bring extra bread too if it's not an additional charge, then you will end up feeling overstuffed and miserable, and furthermore that food will be contributing not so much to your health, but to your Unhealth. You have clearly not gotten a better value through eating too much. It is the enjoyment of the eating experience that makes the price worth it. If you eat two bites of something that tastes fabulous and you savor each one, you have gotten much more out of the price you payed, than if you distractedly or quickly stuff the whole thing into your mouth and finnish it off. So what if you throw some of it away! Wasn't it worth the flavor? Wasn't it worth the pleasant feeling you walked away with? Whyever would one pay to be made sick? WhyEver would you pay to be made SICK?

Another way in which the delusion that quantity = quality cheats people is the tendancy to be willing to spend more money on a number of small/trivial things than they would have spent on one 'large' purchace of something they really wanted. The appearance of 'low prices' distracts people from looking at how much they are actually spending, and the number of new things feels, in the moment, more satisfying, than only one new thing, regardless of how little importance those many things may actually have to them. Thus instead of getting what they want most, people settle for a bunch of things they only sort of want, and seem to think that this is better. In the mean time they continue to pine away for the 'big' things they actually want, whereas the small things they came home with would most likely have been forgotten in a couple of days if they had not bought them....and sometimes even if they did.
Some people take this moneysworth delusion even further by buying things that they would otherwise never have thought to buy, simply because they are on sale. They are tricked into thinking they are 'getting a good deal' when they are, in fact, completely throwing away their money.

As Sabrina says: "More isn't always better, Linus. Sometimes it's just more."

Alice in Wonderland

Very wise saying No. 2: Sugar is not the answer to lack of fulfillment and happiness.

Very wise saying No. 1: Shiney objects do not equal fulfillment and success.

*meanders off singing "I give to myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it..."*

(remember that song from Alice in Wonderland?)

mmmmmmmm honey.....^_______^

sometimes I get cravings for honey. I think I'm like Pooh Bear in quite a few ways including a love for honey ^.^ I love to just sit with a jar of it and dip my fingers in and eat it plain like that, yummmm!

somebody keeps sneeking an extra day into the week

I get done with wednesday....and low and behold it's wednesday again! bah! these weeks do seem to stretch ooooon so!

Contemplations on a Theme of Science Fiction

I find it interesting that while our culture loves the idea of man ever bettering himself, of evolving to greater hights; the message that man has great potential which he is only just beginning to realise, very few people seem to be truely motivated by this idea.

Instead, by all appearances, the majority of people seem most content to be diverted from bordom by outside forces and thus bide their time in relative comfort and ignorance untill death.

Was this always so? Who is to say? For it seems only natural that we should hear of and have passed down to us the fruits of those who did not simply bide their time.

Today it seems that a mythical race called the 'Professionals' are expected to do all the great things, while everone else sits back and watches, never thinking they actually could be one of them.

If this idea of realising potential was truely a common value, then would not more people be ernestly seeking the improvement of themselves? Seeking to become more knowledgeable, more capable, more productive, more admirable?? It would seem that in many cases money and comfort are what is most sought after, not making the most of one's potential.

Perhaps this idea of man's potential is so apatizing because of a half realised feeling that we are not living up to it, or even as a way of comforting uneasiness with our intertia by saying 'but we have come so far already'.

I wonder if, when a person's world was smaller, when one didn't see himself as lost amongst the masses of people out there, it was perhaps just a little harder to put off one's own capbilities for another theoretical person out there to pick up the slack? I wonder if the very things which have brought about the idea of being a global society and thinking about mankind as a whole have allowed more individual worlds to be created.

Is the world big enough out there without you?

Or is the world so small that nothing matters more than dinner in 5 secconds so you don't miss the next program on the telly?


Where is the desire to learn? to create? to discover? to mature? to grow wise? to earn respect?
Where is the desire to experience? to LIVE!!!









(Disclaimer: I am no one to talk, indeed.
....perhaps more than some, but certainly much less than some. But it is a thought, and regretably it may turn out to be less unsettling than it should. Still..there it is.)

Love

take your focus and devote it completely to another
take your time and wait for someone
take your plans and form them with someone else's intrests in mind
take your money and spend it on someone else's desires
take your esteem and build up someone else's self-worth
take your knowledge and help someone else become competant
take your arms and make someone else feel secure with them
take your words and speak kindly to someone
take your confidence and believe in someone else
take your trust and honor someone with it
take your feelings and experience someone else's with them
take your reasoning and try to understand another's point of view
take your thoughts and focus them on the good things about someone
take your effort and apply it toward the well being of another
take your enthusiasm and draw another into joy
take your hand and hold someone else's
take your face and smile at someone
take your feet and go with someone

take your life and Love one another

cleaning dripped wax off from keyboard

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a great cosmic question over a bedtime snack

Why do we like our salty foods crunchy, and our sweet foods soft?