Motto

You can knock me down
But I won't get up again.

Wasteful and Useless

Okay, so this is how these things seem to work.

I decided I needed a bit of lie in this morning, as I was up for work at 5:30 yesterday morning. And I set the alarm for 8:10 and then ignored it. Got up at eleven.

Made a cup of coffee, and for no reason at all (other than it was Saturday, and I wasn't properly awake) started playing old mp3's I'd recorded off radio programmes.

I recorded this song on April 11th, 2006, and I don't remember ever listening to it. Until today.

Don't let me put you off. If you're doing battle with a cruel and vengeful God, keep battling. But today, I like this.


If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be, we're all okay
And not to worry
'Cause worry is wasteful and useless
In times like these

I won't be made useless
Won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear

My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
and I am never broken

Poverty stole your golden shoes
But it didn't steal your laughter
And heartache came to visit me
But I knew it wasn't ever after

We'll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what's right
'Cause where there's a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing

My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
and I am never broken

In the end only kindness matters
In the end only kindness matters

I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray

My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
and I am never broken

My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
and I am never broken
We are never broken

We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's heart
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's heart
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's eyes
We are God's hands
JEWEL KIRCHNER

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

"Life's a piece of shit,
When you look at it..."
Monty Python's Life of Brian

But sometimes, it's a piece of shit made out of ice cream, with little hearts stuck all over it.

Enjoy your life.

The Real Reason Why I Drink

Be Passionate
LOVE
Dream Big
Be Spontaneous
Celebrate
Change The World Or Go Home

This inspiring bottle of wine is brought to you by Stormhoek. I bought mine at Asda.

Something Following Me

Layers of the Onion

2008 was the year I came home home to myself, finally. This was after two to three years of peeling away the layers of the onion, in the faith that I would find a durable heart.

I didn't always know that it was there to be found. Often I felt that the thin, insubstantial layers of me were all that I had, and I might go on peeling them away forever.

This onion is actually a pad of Post-It notes; a good metaphor for communication, and all the little messages I allowed other people to stick to my forehead over the years. (Thanks to Lisa at Tokyo Mango)

I have lost a few friends in the past year, and will possibly lose a few more. I don't regret that, except a little,and neither do I regret making friends with them.

Drinking: lemon and ginger tea
Listening: Mylo - Valley of the Dolls

Happy New Year

Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I
to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.


Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others."

from 'A Return To Love' (1992)
by Marianne Williamson
(thanks to Euan Semple for this)

On Having No Head

Since I'm having problems with my head this morning, I've been reminded of Douglas Harding, the philosopher who wrote 'On Having No Head'.

Harding may have been inspired by this drawing, by Ernst Mach, the physicist. It's Mach's representation of a subjective, first person point of view on the world.

"What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me", unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around."

I think threre's a lot to be said for not having a head.

Here is a video of Douglas Harding talking about having no head. He's a lovely, grandfatherly, very British man, talking about consciousness and identity.

Friendship Is Light

This is not how I feel today, unfortunately, but it's how I try to be.

Music From Mathematics

Last week, I blogged about the Human League, two of whom were computer operators in the days when computers filled an entire room.


This is the IBM7090 mainframe, which was sold from 1959 until 1963. It was the second generation of transistorised computers, and a typical system sold for $2,900,000 or could be rented for $63,500 a month. The picture was taken in the NASA mission control computer room, where a pair of 7090 was used to help America's first manned space flight, Friendship 7, piloted by John Glenn.

In 1961, the IBM 7090 became the first computer to sing and compose music, and have a record released.

"With the development of this equipment carried out at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, the composer will have the benefits of a notational system so precise that future generations will know exactly how the composer intended his music to sound. He will have at his command an "instrument" which is itself directly involved in the creative process. "

If you've ever seen the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" you might remember the HAL9000 computer, and the scene where Dave Bowman dismantles HAL and the computer's consciousness starts to disintegrate.


Eventually, HAL regresses to infancy, and sings the song "Daisy Bell(A Bicycle Built for Two)". That song comes from the IBM 7090, and is Side 1, Track 3 of 'Music From Mathematics'. The IBM 7090 also impersonates a honky-tonk piano.

	M.V. Mathews and the IBM 7090 - Bicycle Built For Two
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

HAL: "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you. It's called 'Daisy'..."

Warriors In Love

Thanks to Leila at Ramblings of a Confused Mind for bringing me this wonderful quotation from Paulo Coelho.

"To a warrior, there is no such thing as impossible love.

He does not allow himself to be intimidated by silence, or by rejection. He knows that - behind the icy mask people wear - there is a heart of fire.

That is why the warrior risks more than others. He tirelessly seeks a person’s love - even if this means hearing, many times over, the word ‘NO’ , returning home defeated, feeling rejected in body and soul.

A warrior does not allow himself to be overwhelmed in his search for his needs. Without love, he is nothing."

Paulo Coelho

I was the son of a warrior, and I grew up listening to my father talking about war, and wondering what it meant to be a man in peacetime. I knew that my father protected our family, and I knew that I loved him, but I didn't understand about masculinity and love.

Every One Of These Sentences Is The Expression of an Illness

This man is my hero, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I'm thinking of him today because he once found a copy of one his own books (the Tractatus) belonging to a friend (Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle), and he wrote on the flyleaf:

"Every one of these sentences is the expression of an illness."

This week, I've been writing. And last week too. My whole bloody life has been writing. And I have felt so inarticulate. I've been feeling constipated; not literally but verbally and intellectually.

I come to my blog to try and express something. I go to other people's blogs to read them and leave comments. Not much happens. A joke, a cartoon, a fragment of a song.

Somewhere inside me, I have a PhD. And once I have written it, I have a life beyond it. (Go me!) Today, every one of my sentences feels like the expression of an illness.

I first discovered I could write when I was six years old. Until then, I'd read books, devoured them avidly.
Is there anything left?
Maybe steak and eggs?
Waking up to washing up
Making up your bed
Lazy days
My razor blade
Could use a better edge.

Books were wonderful things.

As soon as I had a school teacher who encouraged me to write, I started telling stories, and didn't want to stop.

But that was then.

I've been talking to my Friendly Neighbourhood Wise Woman about the hell of writing for almost a year.

A couple of weeks ago, she suggested that maybe "constipation" wasn't the right medical metaphor for what I'm doing.

She thinks I am giving birth to myself.
Will we still be writing
In approaching years?
Stifling yawns on Sundays
As the weekends disappear?


Ummmm...

Right...

Okay.
I think I can work on that...


We could stretch our legs
If we`d half a mind
But don`t disturb us
If you hear us trying
To instigate the structure
Of another line or two
Cause writing`s lighting up
And I like life enough
To see it through

ELTON JOHN
& BERNIE TAUPIN