Summers end

Last weekend the clocks were set back to standard time, after a long and eventful summer... just the small matter of getting my body back into a different rhythm.


I can't understand the logic of this switching of time every half year or so... supposedly its got someting to do with saving energy but somebody still has to point out how, where and in which ways this is done.


No matter, the mornings are brighter, the evenings are darker and the autumn leaves are scattered around, letting themselves be blown by the wind and going their own ways.


Nature is preparing to sleep, but still there's a nervous energy all around .. the shroud of darkness and decay opens the path to renewal and rebirth...


Keep well...

Innovation

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention...

On revolutions

Today, amidst the confusion and clamour of our own daily doings, we stop to remember the people of Budapest during the uprising in 1956.


Sanity ceased to be relevant, the tanks did the talking.
I only became politically conscious in a strange, ephemeral way during the Prague Spring in 1968, when my childhood world was exploded by discrepancies and murmers from afar...


The statue of Joseph Stalin, the great tormentor of Europe,
lay in ruins on the streets
With a great amount of sympathy I reviewed the events that had passed, and saw what was happening in Eastern Europe... ever since childhood I have had strong socialist inclinations and yet I could see that something horribly wrong was taking place, over and over again with almost no means of escape from the Soviet madness that had engulfed the nations from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, from the "Iron Curtain" to the Urals and the countries of Caucasia and beyond...


The man of steel, beheaded and vilified...
The people of Budapest stood up, let their voices be heard and suffered the consequences... Janosz Kadar and cohorts ruled the country afterwards with an iron hand for decades, yet in the 1980's when I visited Hungary several times the communist blindness had been replaced by a quietly resigned, almost deferential attempt to return the country to the mainstream of European consciousness...


The people rejoiced, but were in need..
they were betrayed...
The Communism of post World War II Europe became a cynical exercise in domination, control and subjugation, performed in the name of socialism but more in the name of personal opportunism, by those who would rule on their own terms...


"Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains..."
As written, promised and trampled afoot by Lenin himself...
When the going gets tough, the people react... Hungary is today, once again, the theatre of a cynical game of power, politics and self-interest. Once again the people demand their rights as citizens who need to be heard... the leaders are once again deaf, history repeats itself in uncomfortable ways but ultimately, the people are right in their convictions.

Keep well and be as revolting as you like ;-)

The Motherland

Written by Mack, who's been through the terrors of an iniquitous war and is still trying to deal with it's aftermath...

I went to war
You stayed at home
I killed two men
You kissed auntie joan
I was called a hero
You bought a new car
I saw the dead and dying
You read the Daily Star
I prayed to see the dawn
You flicked to the racing page
I sqeezed out shit in sub zero temperatures
You thought George Micheal was all the rage
24 years on your the managing director
You've bought another new car
Yours wifes a whore
My wife has long gone
You view me with comtempt from afar
I went to war
You stayed at home
It was the right choice
Coz you drive a Rolls Royce.

Keep well and keep on thinking, feeling and being...
for yourself, for your own peace of mind and for those who need you.

The Dreamtime

When I was a child, in the 1960's in Australia, I was so often fascinated by the art work of the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the continent. At the time it was a childishly intuitive fascination, fuelled by my own conviction that there was more going on than met the eye.


The Wandjina spirits, guardians of the sacred places.
Aboriginal art, a representation of a totally different way of viewing the world around us. The aboriginal people believed in a separate, parallel form of reality called the Dreamtime, in which the gods and spirits moved across the earth, acting and interacting with the daily doings of the creatures that inhabited the world. There's a stunning humility and perceptiveness in much of the ancient art, a reminder to all those who visited the sacred places of his/her place in the scheme of things.


The tragedy that started in 1788 is still so very real for the descendants of those who could not understand the European invasion. Their people still exist, dislocated in time and space, physically and mentally severed from the world which fed them and gave them meaning, unable to function in an ostensibly hostile society.


-----------------------

The Dead Heart

Midnight Oil / Diesel and Dust
(listen to the music) (4.8Mb WMA file)

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
White man listen to the songs we sing
White man came took everything


We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone

We don't need protection
Don't need your land
Keep your promise on where we stand
We will listen we'll understand


We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken


Mining companies, pastoral companies
Uranium companies
Collected companies
Got more right than people
Got more say than people


Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state
of things
The dead heart lives here


The Snake Dreaming, representing one's ancestors
as part of the land and the social group.
-----------------------
Take a look at the site of the Aboriginal Art Museum in Utrecht.
A place of wonder and inspiration.

Keep well...

Stop, think and think again before acting

One of the greatest challenges I face on a day to day basis, is recognising and accepting the fact that we people are so disturbingly different in so many ways. At moments I seem to be so very wrapped up in my own doings, I hardly take the time to think about what might be going on in somebody elses life, in ways that claim his or her attention that I have no idea about.

This morning was a case in point. It has happened occasionally in the past, but I was not in a particularly good mood and the moment overtook me before I realised what was going on.


I usually arrive early at the office, and take the moments of de-telephoned silence to get the daily agenda organised, pick up on the foul-ups of the day before and review some of the longer term objectives before the daily nonsense explodes around me. Whilst doing this, I usually have iTunes running some of the music I like, imported across the months from my own CD's and giving me the feeling that I'm just that little bit in control of my workplace for an hour or so.

One of my colleagues arrived, shortly before 8.30, came into the studio to hang up her coat and get herself organised, as well as turning on the radio at the same time which was predictibly running some of the popular blather-music and inane DJ commentary which accompanied it. I'd been out of the office for just a few minutes to pick up some stuff I'd printed and when I came back I was confronted with the noise I hadn't expected, from two different sources.

I was furious for a moment, feeling affronted and feeling as if my colleague was passing judgement on the music I was playing at the time, putting her wishes ahead of mine and making an unsaid statement which I should deal with.


The proverbial "keep breathing, count to ten and try to stop frothing at the mouth" routine kicked in, leaving me feeling resentful and hurt... and after ten minutes, I remembered that she was half deaf on her left side (which was on the side she passed by my computer coming in) and realised that the tracks running were very quiet, new-age kind of ambient music kind of stuff which you could hardly hear if you weren't in the immediate vicinity.


After having kicked myself mentally, I woke up to the fact that so much of what I see in daily life is an extension of my own assumptions and expectations which have nothing to do with what's happening in other peoples lives. I project my own needs and wishes on to others, expecting them to behave and react in ways I'd expect and understand. I unconsciously feel the need to keep control, in predictible situations in which events unfold in ways I can understand in my own field of reference, which "unfortunately" is only relevant to me and to nobody else on this planet.


One of the lessons I learned a very long time ago, was to give others the benefit of the doubt, no matter what happens because there are always causes and effects I have totally no idea of. And just as often I forget the lessons when the going gets rough and/or confused. I'm myself and what I think, want, need and do has nothing to do with anybody else in the first instance. All I need to do is recognise that others do exactly the same and from that moment on I should be trying to build bridges at every concievable opportunity.


I fail, often but will keep on trying. The concept of equality demands that every individual be recognised in his/her uniqueness and the consequent strengths and weaknesses which accompany this unicity. We are all equal in worth, we are all different and all worthy of equal consideration no matter what happens.


I need to sleep... my brain hurts... keep well...

Making a spectacle of myself

I've been having a lot of trouble with my eyes recently, causing a lot of tiredness and lack of focus at all the wrong times. Seems I have a slight distortion (in both eyes :P) which needs correcting badly.

I went to collect my new glasses yesterday. It was really strange in a couple of different ways. I can finally see properly into the distance, I can read small type again (and will probably end up wishing I couldn't) and I can already feel the lessened strain on my eyes by now, after one day.


Impression of the artist as a young man.
The strangest thing though, is the altered perspectives. When I'm outside, walking, it's like the earth seems to fall away under my feet and when I'm walking up (or down) steps I need to be careful because I can't quite place my extremities in relation to their surroundings.

Tomorrow's going to be the first real test of my glasses, at work. I'm curious to see how I react to a whole day wearing them in front of a monitor. As I said, I've put off buying these for a fair while, but I'm glad I did it :D

As they say, "the eyes have it..." ;-)

Keep well...

Thought for the day

by Sogyal Rinpoche

We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature.

So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.

Hope this helps...

Hidden meanings

Seen recently near the Town Hall. I suspect we're looking at a signwriter with something Freudian (pay attention to the bicycles)...


Stadhuis = Town Hall
Raadzaal = Council Chambers
Vergadercentrum = Conference centre
Huwelijken = Marriages

The State of the Disunion

I've been too silent for too long a time and I once again have the feeling I've lost myself for a while. We're well into October, the days are shortening visibly, it's become a lot colder and the winter months darkness of the soul is starting to creep up on me, in the endless and well-known cycle I will never be able to get used to.


Despite my hesitance and some misgivings, my partner and I are still trying to make some sense of the desperate mess we've gotten ourselves into... some days we progress in exhilerating leaps and bounds, on others World War III erupts and leaves a wreckage which reverberates for days afterwards.


Some might say to just drop the whole matter as is, but I've put so much time, energy and promises into this relationship I feel duty-bound to carry on to any and every logical conclusion. I've made some insane mistakes along the way, in the assumption I would be able to navigate the rapids alone whilst persuing my own needs... more fool me for believing that the easy way out is way to be followed.


I haven't given up, but so much needs to be sorted out in both our minds, in some ways I'm respectful but not particularly hopeful any more... I've written this before but we always seem to need to cling to that last, little bit of hope despite all evidence to the contrary...


Will try to post oftener... keep well...