My future self wears a beige dress suit

This post will probably guarantee that my friends and family, who read this missal, will certify me completely deranged and in dire need of psychological assistance ;)

It's okay guys...I realise this is purely imagination and I promise I won't take it literally to the point of believing it to be an actual outcome.

However, in the interests of trying to figure out exactly what on earth I'm doing in this place right now, I do think it is a valuable exercise even so. We barely do enough dreaming and imagery work these days in our practical, success-like-NOW, physically centred lives anyway. The really ancient spiritual practise of simply imagining can lead to very cool insights and is as valuable a technique as any logical goal-setting and future planning activity.

I did this because I want to explore what I MIGHT be like in 10 years time. Where am I at? How do I come across? What sorts of things do I say? What is my demeanour? How to I appear to be positioned in life?

All that.

The exercise is to slow down and stop and simply meditate with the specific task of visiting with your future self. You imagine knocking on a door and being invited in by yourself. You see yourself, slightly (or very much more) older than you are now with evidence of a whole bunch of life experience you know you have to go through before you get into her shoes. She sees you and smiles remembering all the stuff you've got to go through before you get to be in her shoes.

You know each other very well, but you're also somewhat strangers for that reason of Time being shifted between you both. It's like catching up with an older, wiser, more experienced and very close sibling in a way.

So anyway, I did this trippy thing this morning. Sat on the bed, closed my eyes and allowed my mind to wander into this territory.

I knocked on a door. A woman answered it and smiled this big smile of genuine joy to see me. She seems warm, open, kind and also very happy in herself. She comes over and gives me this big generous bear hug and kisses the side of my head and strokes my hair as if she were my parent rather than my own older self and she smiles at me very warmly and with a great deal of love in her expression.

I start to weep a little at her forthright open-ness. And this is what she says:

"Oh it's okay honey! No need to cry but yeah...I still do that too! Can't help it so I just accept it now. It's who I am and I don't fight it anymore. I'm simply weird in that I cry when things get a bit emo!" And she wipes away a tear in her own eye as she laughs about it and moves on.

She is not much thinner or fatter than I am currently. I have these grand hopes of being so very much thinner so I'm a little disappointed but she seems quite content in her skin really so I ask that very rude question about whether she ever did "go raw" in her diet and this is what she says to me:

"Oh yeah! Failed dismally! (laughs a big joyous belly laugh that comes from somewhere deep inside of her) I learned to just accept I like food and that the secret to me being healthy is to simply move as much as possible every day. Find stuff to do that makes you move mi! Nowadays, I walk whenever and wherever I can...even to work. I dance, I run a little, I learned to do what bat does and I pace when I'm talking on the phone! Great strategy for keeping the weight stable" and she smiles.

I express some surprise she is wearing a beige - almost cream coloured - dress suit. I hardly wear anything of the kind, spending the greater portion of my adult years in trousers, slacks, track pants and shorts. This is what she says to me:

"Yeah! Took me ages to get my legs to a point where they didn't chafe between the thighs (leans and and whispers conspiratorially) but there's some fantastic creams out now that really help...I suggest you go looking honey" and she winks at me like she's just given me this huge very important secret tip that will change my life forever.

I ask her about her life so far and this is some of what she says to me:

"Well, I have a pretty good life actually. I write a lot and I make money from writing but it's not my job...more my passion and hobby. The kids are doing great....(some words of encouragement about my/our children's future...they'll be fine :))...I live in a lovely house and I get to travel regularly every other year or so".

It turns out she designed the house herself in consultation with a draftsman and its very "green" efficient with a reed bed water filtration system in the back yard. She hires a gardener to tend the garden and the vege patch. She earns enough to be able to do this.

I ask her about the chain around her neck and this is what she says to me:

"Yeah! I designed it myself!" and she smiles looking down at it with obvious pride and pleasure. It's a triskele in silver on a long silver chain. I ask her about the Faith, Hope and Love chain I designed nearly 13 years ago and this is what she says to me:

"Ah yes! Well I wore that thing for so long you almost can't read the words engraved on the disks now... that thing should go into the family "Smithsonian" vault (laughs), I loved it but a few years ago I wanted to design another symbol of my Faith System and this is what I came up with (fondles the chain around her neck happily). It represents much of what I hold to be dear to me across a number of different areas of my life including my Spiritual Life and be damned anyone who tells me I should think otherwise!" she hints at some possible dissensions in some of this and I can see the fiery steel of determination underneath her warm persona to be exactly what she chooses to be including what she believes. This woman doesn't modify her beliefs and behaviours by what she perceives 'the group' wants anymore...she does her own thing and is fiercely determined to be exactly herself and not another!

I ask her about love and this is what she says to me:

"I have a couple partners yes!" she smirks with evident pleasure and the joy inside of her literally glows more warmly "I don't live with them though but we are very intimate and close. I found out that I very much prefer living by myself for the most part. But, I also have lots of house guests (I look askance at her..and she laughs and says "not like THAT!" and takes some time to regain her composure at my misunderstanding of her meaning, laughing uproariously for a few moments)...they simply stay at my house...in the spare rooms...and its something like a mini international bed and breakfast really. I make them comfortable and welcome and show them around the Wimmera and stuff. Oh! And...I ended up continuing those German Lessons you started and they've proven very handy" she smiles very deliberately at me and I can tell she is making a strong hint to make sure I keep an eye out for doing more "German Lessons" in my future! I take note.

"You will be surprised to learn though that I have chosen to be...poly..but please don't make that just too public...not many people actually "get it"...even now" she sighs deeply and I blink in utter and absolute surprise! A very private conversation between us ensues and I won't elaborate on it here. Safe to say that I am astonished by this admission. Part of me rebels against it but she seems so utterly free and open and content with her arrangement...I'm still blinking!

The woman before me is utterly unselfconscious. She has this warmth and open hearted generosity of spirit that is so appealing...if a little disconcerting. She seems to have accepted a lot of her flaws and is content to simply be in the moment. I ask her what the most important things are that she has learned since being in my position and this is what she says to me:

"Always have a really good financial planner mi! What you are learning now about financial management is going to set you in very good stead in the coming years but you will need a good financial planner and a good accountant to help you through."

I immediately ask if she is wealthy. She laughs, leans in close to me, looks me square in the eye and says very cryptically "Oh..I'm extremely wealthy!" and then she laughs uproariously again at my obvious struggle to understand what she exactly means. "There are many kinds of wealth mi, as you will learn...but yeah... in your current definition..which I gather is financially, I'm pretty well off now and am planning on getting that apartment you always wanted in the Melbourne CBD" and she smiles with obvious pleasure.

I ask her what else there is I should know and this is what she says to me:

"I've learned to be a lot more content with myself mi. To let go of the struggle to be something I'm not, the struggle to make sense of a future I can never guess and to let go of the past I can never mend. I'm only responsible to myself and my kids and the man I'm in partnership with right now. I have learned to accept that what you think about is generally what you will notice in the world so I stopped noticing what I didn't want and began noticing what was already there and things got very much better for me after that"

There were other things we discussed that are too private to blog about.

An exercise in imagining that has uplifted me and even if its crazy and a little bit too "out there" for those of you who know me and read my stuff... keep it in the back of your mind and perhaps when I'm 10 years on from now, you can tell me if what you read here ever turned out to be sorta true or sorta not true.

Time will tell.

Beliefs

According to some, I only ever choose to believe what I decide to believe.

I don't know if I do or not. Belief might be something as intransigent and fixed in a person as is the colour of their eyes or the shape of their feet! Belief is like a limb except its invisible to the eye until that person behaves, speaks, listens or does something to express that belief. Then it shows its stripes briefly.

Others translate the belief through the lens of their own beliefs.

It's a mixed up, convoluted soup of misconceptions most of the time. A thing of wondrous simpatico, when in tune with others albeit rarely.

I don't want beliefs. I want faith and understanding but not fixed beliefs. I want to find growing things on beliefs that beget new beliefs as new knowledge and understanding come into being in me. I want movement not cement shoes.

Each of us is made of beliefs, some from our past, some from what we think we're seeing now and some we project into what we think may become. Refusal to believe is as much belief as is blind obedience to a fixed belief with no room for the new.

What I intend doesn't always match with what I believe. What I believe isn't always obvious to that part of me that intends.

Nothing is ever how we think it is or wish it to be and that might be a belief or not. It depends.

safe zone

Ibede sat on his little three-legged chair and was spinning the paper strips around his skewer deftly and precisely. As he spun the paper into a tight little roll, the edges of which were fanned on each end, he mused on his dilemma.

Only that morning Manakte had reminded him of his innumerable character flaws, his propensity for gloomy cynicism about the future being the highlighted flaw of that morning.

"Honestly," Manakte had said with a belligerent and patronising tone in her voice "The trouble with you Ibede, is that you are too.... Fussy!" She'd rattled off the last word as if it had popped into her head at that moment and had surprised her by its accuracy.

Ibede had only muttered about pots and kettles being black as each other under his breath. Taking Manakte on in one of her tirades would engender even more spleen thrown at him. It was as if she believed her whole world was finely balanced on his brain circuitry operating within her specifically stated parameters and when he didn't perform adequately, it was not her fault the parameters had shifted! He should have known!

Ibede picked up another strip of magazine and began twirling his particular skillful magic on it. The little buds of paper he spun around skewers became beautifully designed artworks. The embedded inks in the disused papers matched and sorted by his astute artistic eye were to be woven into door hangings, which from a distance appeared to be scenes....ephemeral and indistinct but captivating and delightful.

He hated his work. It paid the few meagre bills he had. A few denaso's for old magazines from the local agency and the rest to cover his food and the upkeep of his beloved box.

Not even Manakte knew about the box. No one knew about the box. Ibede would weave through the city streets on his morning off from twirling paper beads, so that no one he knew personally could track him on his route to the box. Not that anyone would have wanted to find him given the boxes location. It was practically in the centre of the city dump. The piles of rotting refuse rising high around him like giant mountains only stinking, filthy and fetid. Ibede refused to acknowledge the smell of these mountians, for once inside the box he felt so wondrously at peace both within and without, he hardly cared for other smells in the immediate vicinity. Inside this amazing thing, he found solace from the world where he could just "be" what he thought himself to be.

No one was there to denigrate him for his character flaws. No one was there to make him work harder or faster on twirling endless pieces of coloured paper on skewers, or thread the finished paper beads into shimmering and essentially useless artifacts for greedy tourists. In the box, Ibede was safe, ensconced within a world unto his own creation. Nothing could impede his world within the pinewood scent of the place.

The box was essentially a large packing crate. It appeared to have been purpose built as the planks on each side were all firmly slotted together to the point of being nearly weatherproof. Only the narrow entrance in one corner, which Ibede had managed to cover with the cleanest piece of hessian he could rummage from the dump, allowed the weather in. Inside the box it was semi-dark and this lent a kind of ethereal element when entering it. After awhile, sitting there, his eyes adjusted to the soft diffuse sunlight coming in through the hessian cover in the corner.

In the corner he'd supplied himself with a small wad off incense and a burner. It could have been a very dangerous idea to light such a thing inside a pinewood box, but for Ibede it as a part of the pleasure of existing here. For him, it was the twixt place between heaven and earth...that moment of transitory danger between Nirvana and Hell where you didn't know what you deserved. This soft piece of danger, regarding the box, made it even more extraordinary for him.

The box was very large, probably the size of a sea freight container. In fact, Ibede could well have housed his family in the box if he'd chosen to tell Manakte about it. She would have added the box to their home requirements in no time flat, making Ibede disassemble it and rebuild it next to the rough corrugated construction they presently called "Home". This is why Ibede kept the box a secret. He little knew anything of wood and woodworking tools and he knew he could never have reassembled the box to such exquisite exactness like it was now. That it had survived its unceremonious dumping in the centre of the city refuse heap...for whatever reason...was testament in his mind to its longevity. He saw it as a device to think with.

Ibede did very little inside the box except feel especially safe. Here he could unleash his imaginative capacity for thinking about the possibilities of a long distant future where people didn't need to live under corrugated iron or have to spin paper to make a living. Inside this box, Ibede just thought. Imagined. Explored his own self and put the pieces of things together to make it all make sense. Then he assimilated what insights he found inside his box and returned to again live among the mountains of fetid human activity, wiser and more serene than he had dared hope for.

The box soothed his soul. It became like Mother and Father, Spiritual Guide and Mentor to Ibede. His work, which he hated so much but was so assiduously good at, was less burdensome when he could spend the time in the box musing on countless artistic possibilities for paper beads, before he had the tools to work those possibilities into realities. His craft became exceptional. Others noticed. Others became suspicious.

Manakte heard on the city grapevine that her husband "was up to something" the day she had spent a few denaso's extra above housekeeping on a new "door" for their abode. It was a heavy piece of canvas, smelling of oil and fish and weather but she had immediately grasped that such a thing would do an even better job of keeping out the weather than the current flap of material serving as their door. She had scrounged every deni she could to acquire this great prize. In passing, the store owner had mentioned seeing Ibede ambling past that morning. Manakte had never really taken much interest in her husbands doings on his morning off from the bead factory, but for some reason on this day, something else piqued her interest. Apparently, she learned, Ibede had been grinning!

Ibede never grinned! Manakte suddenly saw in a moment that Ibede had some sort of secret which he kept from her. Why was he grinning? Where did he actually go on those mornings? What did he really do?

It was not just "Secret Men's Business" anymore, his usual grumpily said reason for his absences from home - there was something else going on here. No one Manakte knew in their circle of associates had ever once mentioned seeing Ibede grin, let alone smiling. He maybe curled up the corner of his lips on the rare occasion but generally he was either merely irritable or morose. She knew he hated his work.

It was then she suddenly realised that about the only time Ibede was really "charming" and sociable was after he'd arrived home from one of his mornings out. Her curiosity was in overdrive. Nothing would stop her now in finding out where her husband went. Cleverly, Manakte, walked the market stalls and garnered little snippets of information about Ibede's movements through the town. It transpired he was somewhat well-known among all the marketeers, dipping his brow at some acknowledging them in silence as he passed by.

Manakte became more assertive and concocted a story that she needed to find Ibede immediately as there was an emergency at home. This of course, led even more marketeers to give her directions and possible threads on where to find him.

When she came to the large gate that led into the city dump, she was appalled. "What could my husband be doing in this place?" she thought to herself in aghast horror. Although Ibede and Manakte were not untouchables, the thought of stepping through the gates made Manakte shudder as if she had become tainted with the blood of being untouchable herself.

She stopped in front of a particularly enormous pile of rubbish and pondered her next strategy. She figured it would be almost impossible to simply stumble on Ibede amongst the oversized piles and her nose would not have stood it for very long anyway. She resolved to come here quickly the next morning Ibede had off to follow him from the gates herself.

The air inside their corrugated home bristled over the next two weeks as Ibede felt Manakte was up to something and Manakte did her best to hide her impatience and curiosity about Ibede's alternative hobby. They each knew the other knew something was going on but being as out of love as two married partners could be they never mentioned it.

It was for this reason that Ibede took an especially long and winding path through the city streets to the box on the next, overcast, morning off work. Manakte had carefully disguised herself as best as she had been able and had gone straight to the dump, waiting with barely contained impatience for her slow husband to arrive. When she saw him, she quickly turned into the wall so he would mistake her for one of the untouchable women that usually haunted the dumpsite. It worked, Ibede was so intent on his goal he never took notice of Manakte watching him from behind the long veil in front of her eyes. Her mind lurched when she saw him grinning a huge smile that dropped a good 20 years off his face! Astonished would hardly begin to describe her state at that point. It revved up the curiosity count within her by a factor of ten.

She carefully followed Ibede into the dump. When she saw him disappear inside a big, rather useful looking packing crate, she was assuming he was going to meet someone there. She waited for the full four hours as the sky blackened and the storm clouds harkened. When Ibede came out of the box finally, she watched him as he straightened himself, stretched a good deal and then stand there looking into the sky and smiling the most unearthly smile she'd ever seen on his face. He looked positively angelic standing there as if he was in some kind of drug induced crazy zone of bliss! Was her husband doing drugs? How was he able to afford it. No one else emerged from the box.

With a great deal of will power, Manakte managed to stand and continue to rag-pick from the vile pile in front of her. Her nose had become somewhat accustomed to the smell by now, but the heavy humidity in the air and the weighty stillness seemed to be slowly sucking the oxygen from her lungs, only replacing it with the sulphuric gases of the dump itself. Her lungs and eyes were burning but she refused to move. She wanted to investigate the box for herself once Ibede had left.

Ibede seemed to glow and then slowly, from his feet up, he took on a different persona. It was as if he was putting on clothes. Gradually he reverted into the man she thought she knew well, the true Ibede, her husband. He sloped, gloomily away through the piles back towards his real life in the heart of the city. Manakte fleetingly thought she probably should go home immediately or he will wonder why she was not there. However, the lure of the box was too much for her and she needed to know just what compelled her husband to stay inside it so long.

She carefully lifted the piece of hessian aside and peered in. The box was black.

"Hello?" she asked timidly, half expecting to hear breathing or a voice from the inky black come back to her in answer.

Nothing. She stepped inside and allowed her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. The box was practically empty. There was a large sitting cushion on the floor and a box of incense in the corner. She'd wondered where that had gone! The Devil! Other than that, the box was completely empty. This confused Manakte so much she didn't quite know where to begin on this mystery. What possessed a man to deprive himself of human company and enter a foul-smelling dump to sit inside a discarded packing crate on his own for hour upon hour with nothing but incense for company?

Manakte didn't get it at all. Ibede became a complete and utter mystery to her in that moment. She realised she never did know the man she married. She merely used him for the convenience of being a suitably married woman. Ibede had hardly any say in the matters of home and family, she ruled and that was how she liked it. Without him though, she literally would become one of the untouchable women she was currently pretending to be. Not a happy existence to say the least, for either of them.

Or was it? What had Ibede found that made his life have these moments of bliss? What spiritual entity was he in communion with that gave him that glowing energy of beautiful repose she'd witnessed in him before? What was her husband on?

Not quite knowing how to resolve such questions, Manakte threw off the slovenly and dirty veils she was wearing and pursing her lips, walked home in strident and determined steps. She would succeed in getting the truth from Ibede come hell or high water. The rain fell at that moment.

Manakte arrived at her shanty like a half drowned cat, bedraggled and miserable. The water from the sky didn't just rain, it plummeted down in torrents. The streets became almost impassable with traffic and people trying to escape the downpour. Gutters on plausible houses broke away and water rushed off the gaping wounds like rivers. Children were soon crying when they had shortly before, been laughing in the rain. The heavens opened and still the rain fell. Her home appeared and she went inside hoping to find some relief from the battering she was receiving outside. But, the sound inside her home was beyond deafening. It was so horrible in there she had to escape outside again. Calling for her family, she realised no one was home. Obviously they had escaped the deafening cacophony on the walls and roof as well.

But where were they? Ibede should have arrived home by now? Was he at his work already? Surely not?

An idea struck Manakte. It was a long shot but she thought she had nothing else to lose by following her hunch. She turned tail and began to run back the direction she had just come. Weaving in and out of bogged carts and frightened livestock, lost children and beleaguered adults, all trying to escape the sheer fortitude of the water coming from above. Never had Manakte seen rain like it. It cowed you, bowed you over with the force of it. It was like standing under the bottom of an angry waterfall. The streets were filling fast. There was no way her home would survive the flood sure to engulf the city before long.

When she arrived back at the gates to the city dump, she realised with a start, that she had in fact been travelling up a very gentle incline. The dump was actually higher than most of the rest of the city and was not flooding quite so quickly. She went among the sodden piles of flotsam, all seething and releasing vile smoke into the atmosphere as if it was thumbing its nose at the very rain.

Through the torrent, she saw the box and rushing for it she flew inside. Part of her expected to not see Ibede there, another part of her was hoping he wouldn't be. This box made her feel safe. The water outside was a muted thudding on the wood. The box, she realised was so well made, it barely leaked despite the deluge outside.

"Manakte?" Ibede's voice loomed from the gloomy depths.

"Ibede!" She stepped forward unable to clearly see her way. A pair of hands pulled her down onto the cushion. A few mewing sobs from the bodies of her children were heard nearby.

"Ibede! How...?"

"I claimed it! It's mine. No untouchable lives in it and they guard it for me too. I pay them to." said Ibede reading her thoughts. "It's my safe place Manakte. I come here to feel safe and to escape this life in my mind. This box free's me to be myself."

Manakte broke into sobs. Deep rattling sobs that seemed to be trying to match the emotional depth of the rain outside. "I want a safe zone too!" she screamed against Ibede's chest. It was then that Ibede learned how frightened Manakte really was under all her cruel beligerance. His heart softened and he let her spirit in a little and he smiled down at her kindly.

"I brought our children here to be safe." he said pragmatically. The children on hearing this cuddled around their unhappy parents and they all held each other on the sitting cushion until the torrential rain had subsided.

When it was quiet. They carefully ventured outside the box. The sun was setting opposite the darkest grey storm clouds Ibede had ever seen marching into the east. Around them, the piles of garbage steamed and farted foul smelling scents into the air. But astonishingly, they were not knee deep in water. The dump appeared as a small island rising from a gross and unsightly sea of unimaginable disaster.

The box had kept them safe. As the waters receded, they discovered they were some of the very few who had survived unscathed by the deluge. Friends, family, associates, the marketeers, many had suffered losses of incomparable quantity and quality. Eyes looked at Ibede and Manakte and their children as they stepped gingerly through the city back to their home to recover what they could from it.

"Ibede?" said Manakte quietly.

"Yes, wife" he replied as quietly.

"Please keep your safe zone a secret." she said simply.

Ibede looked at her, slightly astonished. This was not usual Manakte speaking. Normally, he would have been harangued and castigated for keeping such a thing so secret. The box would have been made to be rebuilt as a part of their makeshift home. This however, was a new Manakte speaking. He realised what she already had surmised, that if the box had been translocated, they would have drowned, trapped inside of it.

Where it was, embedded in a large pile of junk and human refuse on the crest of a gentle rise in the topography of the city, the box was more than a safe haven, it was an inspiration. Ibede smiled. It was a warm, open genuine smile and his face dropped 20 years.

Manakte finally loved him. Ibede finally felt safe outside of the box.

Does the White House have a Bat Phone?

I am aghast!

The article that the title of this blog links to is implying that President-Elect, Barak Obama, will have to do without most forms of personal electronic communications with family and friends during his term/s in office.

I find it incredibly strange, bordering on Luddite insanity, in fact, to have such a thing happen in this day and age.

Forgive me if I'm being a little too naive but having a human being - a formidable leader among nations notwithstanding - be denied access to the same kinds of technologies available to every other citizen under his watch seems impossibly ludicrous!

I know there are certain conventions where the role of a President of the United States should be seen to be reasonably transparent in his dealings with people, but we all know that is a pipe-dream fantasy which does not happen in practice. Still, I argue that a President who cannot email or text his own wife and children, close relatives and dearest friends for fear of those very emails/messages being subpoenaed in a court seems to be the very height of Breach of Privacy.

If a public office denies these very rights to someone who is there to protect those same rights for everyone else...well that is just hypocritical in the extreme.

Let the President keep his Blackberry (unless of course some 007 out there has implanted - or will be implanting - a tracking device in it or something) and leave the poor guy alone to run the country while still having the right to an electronic life like the rest of us!

I didn't REALLY want to know about Bill Clinton's exploits in the Oval Office with Ms Lewinsky btw... impeachment or otherwise, all that was just sloppy, slutty media encroachment on a personal choice in Bill and Monica's (and Hilary's by proxy) private lives.

How many people's lives do we seriously wish to ruin in the course of "Investigative Journalism"?

Watergate was one thing; serious breaches of personal power and political manipulation etc. However, there is still a reasonably wide scope for the PERSONAL life of a person - be they powerful and in the public eye - to have a life that is private and unfettered by qualms of persistent and invasive scrutiny by that same public eye!

Yes! I am an impossible idealist on this matter. I'd be the first to be shocked if a President of the USA meddled in the affairs of others for Machiavellian purposes, using his "Right to Privacy" as a cover for such things! Integrity of the Highest Order is a prerequisite of the role...I would have thought!

Still, it just seems outrageously unfair on Obama and his family to deny them the same opportunities to communicate in a way that the rest of us presently enjoy, just because he has the top job!

sci fi alive

Please, please, please find a way to spend just 23 minutes watching Stewart Brand detail the ideas of The Long Now crew in finding a home for an "impossible" clock. (Apologies to those who have daggy broadband though and won't be able to view this TED talk properly).

What a fantastic story of human ingenuity.

Perhaps it is pointless given the ills of the world! The world though, has always had ills and always will.

The artistry of being a human is that, instead of being bowed and cowed by ills, we can instead, invest in creating monumental mythology! A striking and breath-taking thing which encompasses, science, art, architecture, nature, sound, design in one singular artifact such as a 10,000 year clock.

That which transcends but does not try to usurp the universal laws of life is, in my book... very, very cool. I get really excited by projects like this. They seem to tap into a very deep core of my psyche and resonate almost as beautifully as the bell chimes in the clock itself!

I'd not heard of The Long Now Foundation until today. Now, having been introduced in this small way, I'm completely and utterly energised with a strange kind of excitement.

Why? I could hardly have conceived of something so esoteric as this and yet it seems so right to me that it exists!

Normally, I'd be cynical and wondering of the costs that "should" be going to support the poor and oppressed. Maybe that modus operandi of mine will still kick in with time. However, there is a palpable essence of triumphing over that which would bring us down in this Long Now project that I find exceptional and inspirational.

The IDEA of thinking long term beyond the instantaneous gratification of this moment seems to be essentially a correct and proper approach to all things. If we want to indeed help the poor and oppressed then we need to be looking from the vantage point of what is possible for these peoples long into the future. I suspect much of why we ignore the plight of those in the South is because we are uncomfortable with the possibility that they may be our equals or "shock, horror" our superiors in the distant future, so we oppress now to keep our own immediate sense of rightness in our place in time and history for as long as possible.

I shall endeavour to discover more about The Long Now Foundation now and muse on what it is about this clock project that resonates so deeply within me.

If only I had had the brains to have been a scientist of some kind! *muses wistfully*

Feedback

I've had a few complimentary comments about my "Strangers still" post I made the other day. Not posted to the comments but via email and in person.

It's always gratifying receiving supportive comment for one's writing.

Thing is that piece of writing needs a lot of work in order for it to be "publishable" outside of this blog. It might be worth doing perhaps if I thought it merited such work. I'm not entirely sure it does. It was a "quick" story I dashed out in about an hour. That's how I write. It just comes from somewhere in me and I put it out. I rarely expect much else from it.

Thank you to those who are willing to pat me on the back for writing such things. It's a wonderful thing that the stuff inside my weird head can appeal to some people some of the time :)

Strangers still

They'd known each other for a few years but had only ever met once. She lived on the planet called XQ12, he lived on the planet on the other side of the vortex rim. She knew his people called it Ke, but for her people, it had always been XQ23.

Falling in love with him had, for Shenana, a rather easy thing. She had followed his posts on the grid for some time, noting his easy and gentle manner under the words, his affectations and mannerisms of text-speak and identifying with them far too much really.

Eventually, Shenana and Kill crossed from text-speak over to the Access ports on the grid super-bypass. Shenana had had to upgrade all her in home systems to do it but she was determined to put the magnetic deflector dishes in so as to get Kill into her life on a more personal level. She was a determined woman anyway. No one ever told Shenana what couldn't be done unless she decided it so. Kill found her inexorably sweet and never once doubted her steely will under the cloying, sometimes annoying, cloak of self-deprecation.

The day of their first voice meeting was a sloppy, tangled affair of shouting "Are you there's?" in staccato on virgin microwaves. Like ungainly puppies pawing a new toy, the two grid lovers shyly progressed into innuendo's that only lovers tolerate. Shenana oggled and played with Kill's mind, teasing and turning him on with her witty repoirtee. Kill in turn, minced and wriggled his way out of any manipulations on Shenana's part, whether she intended them or not, refusing to commit to anything beyond gridflirt. They got to know each other. Or, so Shenana thought. Kill appeared to know Shenana very well having imbibed her style of text-speak and voice patterns to the point where he knew exactly how to press the buttons that would calm or stew her.

It was Midturn when Shenana got it into her head some 19 sectors after their first introductions on the grid, to buy herself a ticket to travel the rim to see Kill in person. They discussed in detail the expectations of their first meeting, eventually coming to the mutual conclusion it would be best to "just see" what happened with no expectations or forced outcomes either way. Shenana was so in love she believed only the very best thing was possible anyway and Kill was more than ambivalent, preferring to see how things would pan out. He was always the pragmatic one. Shenana climbed aboard her shuttle and felt the gentle pang of exhilaration in the freedom of being able to travel for the entire 38 Sixtes to the man she believed to be the love of her life... to that point.

The void was a beautiful thing to watch as she was whisked around its rim. One day everything would eventually eke one six too much and the void would obliterate the lot in one giant gulp. Many's the shuttle that had disappeared into that unknown space before. She trusted these pilots to keep her shuttle on the rim for her emphatic will could not allow otherwise. She would visit Kill or die, physically or metaphorically.

When they finally did meet face to face, they were pleasantly surprised by sizes and shapes and colours and movements. She was smaller than he'd pictured in his mind. He was thinner than she imagined possible in a male. She was more gangly and ungraceful in her mannerisms than he'd imagined. He was more deliberative and stoic than she had come to believe. Their voices and words had spun webs of intriguing mystery and unintentional lies. They were so very much in love.

Shenana welcomed Kill into her body and soul. She made a nest for him deep in her heart and believed him to be the essence of her other self she had lost in time before the void. Her logical self constantly debated the merits of this love. They were so different, she and Kill. Both of them were so obviously opposites, their planetary position on the Rim notwithstanding.

Kill was sweet, kind, more or less attentive. But, they knew each other so well, it was like being with the other slipper and no extra parsecs were taken in order to create early romantic impressions. Both of them were pretty much exactly as they believed they were supposed to be after knowing someone for more than 24 sectors. Shenana had been trying to learn the language of Ke with only vague success. She travelled a little in the immediate vicinity of Kills residence but never really wanted to venture too far from him. She felt safe, secure and deeply and impossibly right at his home. It was as if she had once lived there before and memory was being jogged back into life again after a long sub-sleep.

One sector later, and the lovely Shenana, glowing with the fullness of love in her body and soul caught her shuttle home. Kill waved her off at the platform without so much as a tear. He merely smiled and waved. The deep cave of loneliness in Shenana's heart grew as weighty as the void itself the closer she got to her own home.

Reconnecting with Kill over the grid seemed both normal and now cruel. It was like she was with a different man. There was knowledge where imagination had once fueled the gaps. The language was different. The modes of reaction and action seemed charged and strained with some unknown energy. A shift in the fabric of their affair grew seismic. Shenana caved. Her emotional state became erratic and disabled. They fought now, mostly in text, voice seemed to full of something wrong.

For Shenana, the more distance she felt between her and her lover, the more she fought to retain whatever shreds of connection remained. She was determined to never ever allow this love to die. The love she bore in her every cell for this man on another planet became engorged with even more love. In a frightening way, even unto herself, Shenana became increasingly desperate to own him, to have him to be with him. No other man could match Kill in her mind and she determined that no one would. It was Kill or no one.

For Kill, he'd fallen in love but for now, it wasn't going to work. He moved on. He dated other women, some lovely, some very not so lovely. Shenana was special, but she was on another planet. She wasn't his. He did not want to own her even as much as she wanted to be owned by him. He refused. He tolerated her outbursts and dramatic tirades in text-speak until they wore him down. He preferred peaceful women really. As sweet and as wonderful as Shenana was, she wasn't really his type in the end. Pragmatically, Kill sort of kept Shenana as a back-up plan just in case the woman he really wanted never showed.

Eventually, Kill distanced himself more and more from Shenana. They were communicating regularly but gradually the sixes became longer in between talks, and they were curter, more refrained. Much was not being said. Much was being kept hidden and yet known it was available if any one of them had been game enough to call it for what it was.

Shenana would cry in the evenings on her side of the Rim wanting Kill beside her so badly she would have screamed for the pain of his loss. She never knew how Kill felt about her because he would not say. He remained firmly non-committal and inclined to just wait and see.

Shenana died and kept on living on her side of the Rim doing what she was expected to do. She rarely heard from Kill for the next 24 sectors. They remained strangers even when they knew each other so well.

Time is such a waste

Incorrigible and nasty is the Demon named "Time".

Mathematical ingenuity notwithstanding, Time is a Quixotic but devoted servant of Chance and Change.

For sure it moves at the consistent pace of precise constancy. Yet it shimmers and moves and stutters and frobbles about with our senses of it. It plays with our heads and messes with our hearts. It forces us to succumb to our own inevitable need for impatience.

Is Time immutable? Of course it would smirk and imply it most certainly was, is, will be.

But our shifting cellular inclinations for the possible, perceived and potential morph Time into more chaotic measures.

Inessential and unavailable, Time's rule is an over-rated media - like long winding Presidential Elections and Security Council deliberations on Congolese shenanigans.

I would not have Time if I did not want it. I would be perfectly poised within this centre never wavering from instantaneous bliss of the here and now.

And even in there, Time still plays its merry brand of necessity to language and desire. There is no "here and now" without it. There is not any centre of the self without the direction Time moves us to.

Ubiquitous and evil, the demon Time destroys pragmatic hope and enlivens useless fantasy, numbs pleasure of the essence of being and builds desire toward possible promises for what may come. And never does.

Do not march to the beat of Time. You cannot compete with its cloying intransigence. Regulated flow is best when forgotten.

what's your motif?

In an attempt to isolate that which fuels me from within and lights me up, I happened upon Curt Rosengren's ebook "The Occupational Adventure Guide".

Even though I am a total whine about not having any money, on this occasion, my gut told me that this was a worthwhile investment in my navel-gazing search for betterment.

In the book, Curt discusses isolating the WHY you feel excited and energised when engaged in a particular activity. It's like trying to figure out what makes your heart go "tick tick" to the beat of a sound bigger than your heart itself.

This process of digging down deep to actually isolate the things that make my eyes sparkle and a smile dance across my mouth instinctively and unintentionally will prove interesting I'm sure.

I've already isolated a few words/phrases that resonate with me at a very core level.

To muse
Outcomes
Making Interconnections between seemingly disparate concepts
Text/Words in print
Process
Discussing theories and concepts
Curiosity
Discovery
Future

The "motif" in all of this is surely the words "To Muse". I am not a muse myself, I rely heavily on others to fulfill that role. But what I need to do almost as much as I need to breathe is to be able to think things out. I do that in printed text best of all.

When I speak and "go all philosophical" as my dear First World friends call it, it's hardly coherent and manageable information. In print however, I feel a certain natural calmness and energy to my musing that feels "right".

How all this will translate to finding "The Job That's Right For Me" is anyone's guess right now. Safe to say, that no matter how it turns out, if I learn some small thing that stops me from being so terribly angst-ridden and irritable about my current circumstances...well, that has got to be a good thing. Yeah?

I keep banging on about how I believe my purpose is "to write". That's all well and good and I do intend to write as much as I possibly can. I've yet to discover what kind of writing I'm meant to do though. What kind of writing is going to energise me and feed my family at the same time? Is this blog really "it"? I doubt it! This blog is the most feeble excuse for writing that ever existed! This is where I merely muse in the play of words, not make a living musing! To do both would be astounding and electrifying indeed. I don't even know if such jobs exist. Perhaps that particular box hasn't yet been breached there in my mind.

So now I encourage you dear reader to find your own Passion Core. What turns you on? What AND WHY do certain things light you up inside, deeply, at your very centre? What journey of discovery would you be willing to take if it meant you could find the truth of who you really are?

intending nothing

I've hit a wall of frustration and inertia within my spirit.

There are three things I want to change about myself but feel powerless to do so, even though I "know" that I am very much responsible for creating the changes within myself. There are no magic wands, or fairies to do these changes for me. No "Law" of anything to fulfil the necessary impetus to change. It's technically me deciding to change and then "just doing it".

Resistance meets with emotional melancholy and I can change nothing, no matter how much I "decide" to.

There is a dichotomy between the decision in the brain, the desire in the heart and the impetus of will to move forward. It's like I have shackles on, preventing me from doing that which I say I want to do.

Three things in my current state I wish to change. Three things I desire with forceful passion and want. Three things I know will greatly enhance my ability to make a difference in this world.

Perhaps they're too selfish! Maybe God is putting on the brakes and I am the goat, kidding myself it's all possible "if only".

Three things: Financial freedom. A healthier body through diet. A closer connection to Spirit.

Those three life areas not only affect me but my children and those I love. Those three iconic desires forge both a strong sense of duty and purpose in me and at the very same time, complete and utter dismay that I won't and can't reach them quickly and effectively.

This is the long haul truck drive through the frozen wastes of time...perhaps with more than a few flat tyres!

None of the three things I've chosen are easy. Hence my inertia. I'm not looking forward to the fact of the hard work involved in achieving them.

So I stew and foam and loathe myself for my inability to create the right impetus to "just do it". Wishes converting into manifestation.

No "Law of Attraction" here! Just plain old human "I want this. Give it to me now!", while I sit back and take the credit for this Grace I did not earn.

Financial freedom: A healthier body: Spiritual ascendence:

I intend these things with my cerebral intelligence. Desire with the mind is an easy thing. I am not able to, right now, achieve my intentions with spiritual acuity. What is required is intent at the cellular level. Where literally the fibres of my very being are in synchronous tumult as they shout "YES!" along with my mental frame of mind. That is a spiritual thing. It's where God and matter meet to create thoughts into being.

I want these things. I want them badly. I want them for free! Ergo, I cannot intend them at all.

We are killing Africa

I know it is incredibly dangerous to base an opinion on one article. It is dangerous and I do not care!

In this instance it's important not to equivocate and prevaricate about the political bush. It is time we as a collective society, regardless of race, nationality or creed say something, do something, make something happen that is beautiful for the millions (no exaggeration unfortunately), of people suffering the most god-awful hour upon hour of their lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The conflict on the eastern border between the DRC and Rwanda has been on and off since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The United Nations currently has one of its largest peace-keeping forces ever established in a post-war region. 17,000+ blue helmets are ostensibly there to protect the people, regardless of their tribal affiliations. It's clearly not working.

The backstory is complex and requires some understanding of tribal culture within African society. Hutu's and Tutsi's aside, there is a massive grab by various militia warlords for territorial wealth in securing the DRC's rich deposits of natural ores and minerals.

The collateral damage that stems from this greedy avarice is a convoluted and astonishing abrogation by Rwandan and DRC Governments in Human rights for their citizens. It doesn't matter which side is which, the fact is the UN is pretty much handcuffed by the Charter of the United Nations established just after the Second World War. In Article 2 of the charter, there is the unequivocal statement that states will not interfere in another states affairs except in instances of self-defence. Period. That's it! No coming to whip the bad boys over the knuckles even if they're raping and pillaging their own peoples!

In the time since Rwanda, much has been discussed about the use of force by the international community to secure ordinary citizens against human rights abuses.

The wealthy 'North' are twiddling their holier-than-thou thumbs over notions of propriety in regards to words written nearly 70 years ago, while the African people die of starvation, thirst, rape and rampant violence.

When does a genocide not become a genocide anymore?

And how are we implicated in this astonishing spectacle of dysfunctional humanity?

When we buy ourselves a new mobile phone or rave over new technologies invented to assist in the pursuit of our happiness and ease, we are blithely unaware that the very minerals used in the manufacture of these devices come from the ground currently being bathed in African blood.

We are guilty of innocence perhaps; we can remain guilty no longer. As the article I cited at the beginning says, it is time collective humanity demanded that companies which exploit human life in the pursuit of profit are brought to an end.

It may be almost impossible to purchase any new device with the demand that it is made with materials sourced from places that showed the best of humanitarian intentions. Impossible right now but it should no longer be impossible! We demand to know what is in the food we eat. We are even beginning to become more aware of Fair trade foods where employees are paid a decent wage and have working conditions well above that of mere slavery. If human devastation such as we are seeing in the DRC, is to be prevented, then we can expect no less from our hardware as we do our food. I want to know that my next mobile phone has...genuinely... not been made from product provided through the genocidal influence of warlords (no matter if they're a political leader of a country or not), wielding weapons with glee against his countryman all for the promise of incredible wealth.

Now, I realise that all this is a simplistic and naive view on the tangled web of machiavellian intrigue that makes up African culture and politics, but this is not about politics anymore. This is also about whether we are beholden to our neighbours when they're in trouble. This is about if we are our brothers keeper or not.

If the boot was on the other foot and it was us being raped and made to flee a refugee camp as it was burned to the ground by rebel forces (a complete breach of International law I might add), would we want someone to come to our aid and thump the bullies for six over the back fence?

I'm not preaching a war. Heaven forbid we seek another war. It is a very fine line though. What does it take to protect people from an out of control bunch of stupid idiots who care nothing for human lives except their own? When does it behoove us to say "War is, in this instance, a just war!"? How many innocent can we afford to lose before we finally say enough is enough?

Tough questions, which I am sure are right now being debated, hotly, in the back rooms of the United Nations itself. Pussy-footing about just because its Africa and not a wealthy "North" country makes us all as guilty as the Nkunda's of the world. Africa may be suspicious of the "North" given our arrogant colonialism of the continent in times past, but aren't we just as guilty if we stand back and leave them to it?

I ask again, when does a Genocide not become a genocide anymore?

This week, I had a job interview for a mobile phone company to sell mobile phones. That was before I saw read the above article and learned more of the backstory to the crisis in the DRC. I've not heard if I have the job. A part of me is at war now. I "need" the income this position would provide. It is a "good" job; stable, interesting, and would suit my strengths and abilities very well. Now, however, I'm bombarded with concerns as to the ethics of selling these products enmasse, very nearly all of which are manufactured in China, the world's largest consumer of Congolese coltan.

How did I become implicated in the current crisis in that region? I am already very implicated as I use a mobile phone. No longer can I remain apathetic to the plight of strangers in a foreign land for I am living my kind of life on the back of their contribution. If I'm to make that a Fair trade, then I will need to seriously question how I can ethically sell large numbers of mobile phones, should I get the job. It may mean saying "No" to selling them despite being broke and unemployed. I've yet to think it through further and find ethical counter-balances to the concept. Right now, I cannot in good conscience, be hard-nosed and so pragmatic as to ignore the plight of the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children currently being savaged to the death, all over a mineral their piece of the planet harbours and which I am the end-user thereof.

When do we care enough to stop our planet from imploding with greed?

Slog

Am currently in hard slog mode. Hence the dearth of posts here for the past week or so.

Global financial woes aside, my own financial situation has been nothing short of a revelation in terms of how well one can get by on almost "nothing" really! I bought the first groceries in almost two weeks today and we were down to an empty fridge pretty much, so was more or less forced to by very hungry teenagers.

Me? I could live on damper (an old fashioned type of bread made of flour, salt and water or milk and baked under hot coals on an open fire), til the cows come home if I have too - well, sans the charcoal anyway!

I found some work as a cleaner in a motel this week. It's a start. It is hard, hot, thirsty and very physical heavy labour. The rest of the girls in the team all seem to do the job reasonably cheerfully and efficiently. Some have been at it for over 20 years! Which I find simply extraordinary. It's routine work and rhythmic but the standard is way beyond average in this particular motel I have to say. This place is CLEAN and how? I am pretty impressed really as I've stayed in a goodly share of motels and hotels over the course of my life and some have been less than enthusiastic in keeping them the way I'd prefer. This one is a real gem among the rocks.

This morning, I had to get down on my hands and knees in the bathrooms and literally scrub the tiled floors with a scrubbing brush and heavy duty disinfectant. The level of cleanliness detail in this motel is second to none and I'm actually quite pleased to be working in a place that has so much pride and puts so much determination to be "The Best" into their work.

Whilst the job isn't going to help my financial situation in a big way in the foreseeable future, if the other irons I have in other various fires don't brand, then I guess I will have to be a motel cleaner for as long as it takes until I find the work I am MEANT to do. My knees may object to that statement in time, but they'll just have to put up and shut up until something "nice-to-knees" comes along.

Hard work doesn't necessarily phase me, I can work hard; what does phase me is paying bills and right now, any pay is good pay if it keeps us sheltered and fed.

Life is tougher for others right now and I'm doing okay. The trick to any time in life when the slog seems to be just all uphill is to turn around and enjoy the view. We can concentrate on the hard yakka, one grunting step up the mountain at a time, or we can stop, turn, savour the sunset on a spreading vista and smile knowing that the journey is going to be totally worth it in the end.

Cleaning motels is not my final occupation. Where cleaning motels leads me may yet be my final occupation... or not! It all depends on the turn of the wheel: the turn on the head of a pin.

A quiver full of words looking for a bow.

It's down to the wire financially here. But it's okay *she mutters gritting her teeth and smiling*.

Work and the art of finding it is proving to be The Challenge of 2008! I want to work, I aspire to work. I can work really, really hard when necessary. I don't mind being busy at all, in fact, I'm better organised and efficient if I'm busy.

I finally know what my inner bean WANTS to do and I'm determined to try and satisfy her wishes. She wants to write! I don't mean big long novels or books. She wants to write articles about stuff, about ideas and what she's learned along life's meandering school corridors. Michelle's inner bean knows instinctively and emphatically that she wants to write existential, informative and thought-provoking articles such as the ones you read on the last page of magazines and in the opinion columns of tabloid newspapers.

Paying the bills on a dream though is less than practical. In my case, it's currently extremely impractical, what with my 16 year old daughters Presentation Ball within the fortnight and various bills screaming for my fiscal attention.

It's at times like these the twin prongs of Faith and Purpose have to merge into coherent Action. I'm printing off resumes left, right and centre and dropping in on businesses with envelopes stuffed with Letters of Introduction and a plea for work of any description. I'm even offering to volunteer if they can't afford me right now! Counter-intuitive I know, but I figure if they SEE me working, they'll figure out I'm worth paying for the privilege.

I'm hitching a ride on absolute and total trust right now that this current phase - which is so not really me at heart - of "Putting Myself Out There", will achieve the financial stability I need to keep a roof over my kids heads.

Life does not come to you when you're down and out and looking for a helping hand. You have to look at Life and ask "Okay, so what do I do with this little bit of excrement you've just handed me?". One can either choose to sit down and sulk or one can stride with purpose along the path, looking for a convenient rubbish bin in which to dump said excrement and move on. I am choosing the latter.

If anyone, who needs a writer or a typist, is reading this, then please ping me! My quiver is full of words and is available for hire, you might be the bow that helps me shoot the target.

Dick be a dragon too

The fabulous Dick Richards who first inspired me through his work with "Genius", has re-entered the blogsophere with a new blog entitled "Riding on Dragons".

Over the past couple of years or so, the dragon theme has been a particularly strong one in my on-going journey of growth. My dear friend "Martin" is identified by his lovely wife as "Drache", which means 'dragon' in german. I actually call him "bat" for other reasons, but the concept behind him being 'dragon'ish' is quite true. He presents possibilities and opens up the imagination to explore alternative pathways to potential answers.

Dick wrote some time ago in his old blog "Come gather round" on his ideas about this new version of Dragon Lore.

I, myself, wrote about riding allegorical dragons through knowing people of great talent, wonder and possibility in the early days of this blog. :)

Dragons ARE real you know! Just like Santa Claus is real to those that wish to believe. If you drown out your cynicism and grown-up mature realism for just one moment and allow yourself to believe in the magic of dragons, you'll be amazed at where you'll end up! Dragons are sent to inspire, teach, exhort, train, lead from behind and engage your imagination in the absolute wonders of The Possible.

When everything appears impossible, close your eyes, open your heart, say a prayer of thanks for the breath in your body and let imagination come to you. If you see the Dragon that brings it... Say thanks for that too! :)

"Deep down, everyone's a Ferengi"

Last weeks events...well... the last few weeks I guess...regarding the large financial "losses" sustained by various countries are finally beginning to bite into the collective psyche of ordinary people.

Apparently, it's not just big business corporations going berserk over really bad financial management, it's about you and me and how we saved, managed, used and borrowed money this past few years! It's how we invested, where we chose to invest, on what terms we were given loans and how well we paid those loans back, that we're finally being confronted with.

A very subtle finger is being pointed at ordinary people. Somehow this is all our fault!

Patronising platitudes from government leaders won't alleviate the scary possibility that we got too greedy this past decade.

I don't think we'll go under as such like the years of the Great Depression, but I do think a very conservative financial mind-set will settle into the hearts and minds of the next few generations about how and when and where and with whom the paper we trade value for is managed.

Printing extra money is so unbelievably stupid! That's the sort of reactive thinking and actions kids do in Monopoly games gone wrong!

I am currently very money orientated myself. Since separating from my marriage, financial freedom is becoming more and more an important value and maybe even a quiet passion within. I want and desire to be financially sustainable both as a woman on my own and as a mum to my two teenagers. I want very much to be able to share financial resources with those people and causes I value and I aim to achieve the goal of financial autonomy with that vision in mind. It becomes a high-wire act of balancing both the ideal of philanthropy and acquisitive greed. I need to be careful to not value money for its own sake but to value what it will do in the lives of those that come after me, spiritually, emotionally, physically and intellectually. Money isn't so much the goal as the pressure it takes off in being able to do good in the world!

Most of us in the North like our "stuff". We seem to strongly identify with our place in the world in terms of the physical ephemera we surround ourselves with. Clothes, housing, food, tools, art and technology all become items that support our version of ourselves more than anything else. We aspire to living "simpler" but it's not working for us right now because we don't really know HOW to live simply anymore. Things, stuff, clutter, toys and artifacts are our spiritual dimension now. We can no less do without them than our ancient ancestors could imagine being without their gods! They're so intrinsically entwined into our sense of place and identity as individuals that to take it all away suddenly and unequivocally will perhaps send many of us mad with the confusion over who we are!

Perhaps this current global lesson in financial silliness will show the next few generations the real value of trading value for value. Perhaps new generations of wise fiscal managers will begin to understand that the fruit trees and tomato plants grown in back yards around the world, the produce of which is traded with neighbours in kind for reciprocated goods and services is worth more than greenback ink on strange paper. Maybe the value we identify in our stuff will transfer into how we can best use that stuff to make life better for everyone in our neighbourhood.

Life isn't money! Money isn't life! The Primary Rule of Acquisition is always: Live simply so that others might simply live.

Of course, the Ferengi would dispute that I suppose!

that ache to belong to the task

So many write about it. So many teach and inspire others to seek and find it. So many want it; yearning for the pull of it; breathing in and out with the hope of achieving it.

Dave calls it "The Sweet Spot"

Steve calls it "Living consciously"

Dick calls it "Genius"

Jonathan would probably call it "The creative life"

Most of us want it. Some of us only aspire to a dim feeling it might be possible. Some of us are driven to achieve it at all costs. Some of us are philosophical about it. Some of us are deeply spiritual about it. Some of us actually find it.

It can't be bought, sold, hired, or even given away. This "It" is intangible, elusive, mutable and ephemeral. It can be sought but never clutched. Once its found it is as if the sky opens to new wonders you could never have envisaged and you find yourself in territory so alien as to be morphed yourself into someone your nearest and dearest barely recognise. The people who find their personal "It" become...well... they glow! They literally beam with joy and spirit. Their bodies burst with health, vitality, Life, joi d'vivre. They have a presence and a innate sense of personal power that captivates and charms. They're wonderful to be around but they don't...they never...milk that for their own purposes at all, they're completely self Less in their expression because they're fulfilled at the basest core of their being and they don't need any ego trips to keep topping it up.

"It" is THE THING YOU were uniquely wired for and/or put on this earth to DO.

Some call it "Purpose".

In me, the pursuit of it causes all manner of deep and hidden urgency. I get moments when I feel the pull but cannot remotely even put my finger on what it is that is pulling me. That is so frustrating. I WANT to do what I'm meant to do. I want to engage fully with whatever it is that is my passion, my inner drive, my fulfillment as a human being. I want to be of service through the manifestation of my particular soup of talents, skills and expertise. I want to engage in the task where time stops and that thing becomes play and fun and its sort of 'easy' (but not unchallenging) and where it is simply regenerative to the soul...not only my own soul but everyone else's too.

I have no freaking idea what my "It" is! I want to know. I want to find out. I want to find it, embrace it, let it rest on me like the downy bodies of butterflies. I want to experience what it's like to be ENGAGED with my life's work. Work that uplifts and inspires and mends and builds. I want to be fully conversant with the world in fruitful and blissful reciprocation of what I have to offer and what I get back in return for what I offer. I want to fully develop that which makes me of service to others.

Looking for my personal "It" is akin to sitting in a very dark theatre, trying to watch a movie shot in the dark! It's like watching Apocalypse Now with the sound turned off and the lighting turned way down to almost black. You glimpse things but nothing makes sense. You know its an important story but you can't make head or tail of who or how things are meshing together. Finding ones "It" is inconceivably annoying sometimes.

There are all these steps you can do I suppose to try and nail down the Thing you were meant to do. Boxes you can tick, spiritual exercises you can try, personal development tapes you can listen to. Labels you can name your innate gift. There is all that stuff you can do to attempt to find it.

For the most part, people just like the process of trying to find it I guess. That pull, that sense of being MORE than just a conglomerate of atoms and cells with limbs is a strong one. We'd like to think of ourselves as being gods of our niche where no one else can match us for brilliance and omnipotence. We are all suitably narcissistic enough to want that kind of rush to the head.

Perhaps I grow too cynical these days. Perhaps I've had enough of reading PD stuff that serves no other purpose than to make me FEEL like I'm doing okay in trying to be "better" as a person. Trying isn't doing. Doing is forgetting about trying and is merely practical application using what is currently at hand. Trying is frantically looking for anything other than whats at hand. Trying is merely an excuse to not do. Doing is mostly scary. Trying makes you look courageous but its usually just a bit of pimped up ride really.

My passion is?

I have no freaking idea!

My skills I could probably list but I don't seriously believe in any of them you know. I doubt my skills. They don't make me really happy as such, they're just stuff that I learned how to do over the years and I rarely if ever feel I can do them well.

My talents are what?

I have no real clear indication other than those that fall under the skills list. I could perhaps list them but I don't actually believe they're that useful to myself or anyone. They just happen to be a very, very few things I know I can do slightly above average to my peers. Even then, I doubt them seriously as being markers to finding my "Thing I'm Meant to Do". I may even perhaps have talents I don't even recognise or realise - hardly useful those then!

So - this palpably, stupidly annoying feeling of being pulled towards the Thing...the something I want/need/can do tugs at my spiritual shirt tails and I turn but it's gone and as much as I look for it... it continues to elude me. It's like a call coming from no discernible direction - a kind of shadowy echo of something calling me from the soupy mists in a land called "Purpose".

What the hell am I here to do? I ache to belong to the job that is right for me. And I suspect if I ever find it, it will be a job that takes me outside of my ego-centric self and puts me into alien territory where I become someone else other than the person I think I should be. Someone better, someone bolder, someone kinder and more loving than I am right now. I have something to do in the world but the synergy between what it is and what I am is not yet simpatico.

Damned frustrating that!

Blog post 350

I'm not really sure if this is a milestone in the blogging world anymore. People writing 350 blog posts over the course of a couple of years isn't probably that much of a big deal these days. I'm sure it was great cause for celebration in the earlier days of blogging, when it was still such a new and interesting form of communication.

But what does one say at Blog Post 350?

Oh I'm sure I could say quite a bunch about the mundane vicissitudes of my current life! :) But I'll spare you the whinge *wink*

In fact, today, I shall spare everyone the meandering musings of my muddled mind! Well... I sort of will...

Thus, Blog Post 350 will pass into oblivion as being nothing more than a route marker on the journey; a simple signpost for how far we've come on this particular road of words and ideas.

My only beef is that the distance to the destination is obscured! And some of you will complain that its not the destination that matters but the road one travels to get there. *smile* Yeah but what is the point of travelling if you don't have 'Somewhere' to get to? Even going back to the beginning can be 'Somewhere'!

I don't know where I'm going... I only know that I am. Life is like being lost at a cross-roads of infinite choices every single day. I'd like to know my destination but it's annoyingly ill-defined and uncertain. Perhaps I'm just meant to enjoy the scenery on the way, but even the Nullarbor Plains become boring once the initial Wow factor has dissipated - along with most of the trees!

The destination I'm looking for is not my Nirvana or Heaven on Earth - it's merely 'Somewhere' where I can put up my feet for a bit, enjoy the local cuisine and customs for awhile before moving on to the next stage of my journey and lessons. I'm tired and weary and in need of a sense of Place - even if its just for a few nights, metaphorically speaking.

Blog Post 350. I got this far...I'll keep travelling to see how much further I can go.

I recovered

My wee rant on Friday saw me blubbering like a fool as per usual over another mini-crisis in my life.

I've thought about my job and I'll muddle through as best as I can, but am hoping to negotiate some modifications with the boss tomorrow if possible. I'm philosophical about it now.

I had some lovely gestures made towards me this weekend - not related to the said blog rant - which validated and uplifted me very much. I'm grateful to these people and then some :)

Daylight Saving started here in Victoria today. We turned our clocks forward. Right now my body is telling me its "only" 2200 hours but the clock here is telling me its actually 2300 hours, meaning of course that I'd best get some sleep before trying to make my body get up effectively an hour earlier than its used to! We live in constant hope of success on that one! Not! hahaha

Also went walking down by the river today in the glorious sunshine :) That is always good for reviving the soul and putting a smile on my face. They may not be overly energetic walks as such and they're probably not strictly exercise in the aerobic sense of the word, but the meditative calm they bring my mind, body and soul is just about as effective. I DO feel much more grounded and centred when I've taken my head for a walk as close to nature as possible. The reason I say "my head" is because for some reason this past few months, I've had a natural resistance to taking the ipod along. Occasionally I do but its actually rare. I seem to currently prefer the conversations inside my head. I muse, meditate, pray and imagine and in many ways its proved to be a healing process for me. I heartily recommend you try it. Simple walking, in nature, alone, with just your thoughts and a Higher Power (or Imaginary Best Friend *wink*).

Sunburnt now of course! *sigh* Even at this early stage of spring and I been made sun-kissed pink on my arms and chest already! One must never underestimate the Aussie sunshine it seems!

I suspect this week will be a turning point yet again in this crazy, topsy-turvy year I am living. At least I can't complain this year has been dull anyway! *wry smile*

I seem to be on some kind of roller coaster...

and I'd dearly like to get off now please!

My job is on the line I think. I have to consider if I want to continue it this weekend which really puts the pressure on, given I have a uni assignment to complete before Monday and a bunch of Centrelink forms to complete as well this weekend.

You'd think that working in a cafe would be a snap yeah? Easy peasy right? ANYone could do that sort of "menial" work! etc etc etc

Apparently not me!

I've worked in the food industry a long time, but mostly in one particular style of food industry, basic take-away. Having been self-employed in partnership with my once-husband for 18 years, you would think I'd have some skills yeah?

I feel about as bright as a waning moon though.

I am DUMB when it comes to working in a cafe! I freak out under the pressure of having people to serve like NOW...I hate having people wait in the queue banked up six deep at the counter all wanting to be served. I get my timings on heating their food all wrong and the chips are cold and the coffee is shite! I get the money wrong; I make stupid mistakes constantly because I simply cannot retain what happened five minutes ago in my brain!

Oh...Ask me some trivial thing like who starred in the movie "Some Like it Hot" and I'll tell you that...but to tell you if a customer wanted a cafe latte or a muggaccino ordered five minutes ago and I have consult my notebook!

Dumb as dog shit I tell you *sigh*

The cafe isn't really "that" busy right now either. I've been warned that it will be freakingly busy by Christmas. I'm supposed to be going through training for a Hospitality Certificate III where some clever person "observes" me working and takes notes etc periodically. I got to pieces if someone is looking over my shoulder. The dumber I feel, the dumber I behave.

It's possibly one of the more stupid things I've said in this blog - and there'd be plenty of those - but right now? I feel as if I am being "punished". But, then, I've always felt guilty for everything that happens anyway, even if it wasn't my fault!

Still... to "fail" at being a coffee waitress seems just so.... I don't know? It just sucks and I don't know what I'm good for other than washing clothes and driving my kids to their social lives!

*sniff*

Sorry for the rant... I just feel like an utter failure tonight. I guess I'll feel better in the morning.

a journey of heart, mind and soul

I took a drive today. A deep sense of frustration and a rather large dose of cabin fever - that and the fact that I've been a bit blue over my current financial conundrums etc etc - I decided on an intuitive whim that a trip outside my usual comfort zone might be just what the doctor would order.

I can't afford to go really far, so I opted for the mountain range, practically in my "back yard" so to speak, about 65kms away.

I decided to go visit The Balconies or "The Jaws of Death" on Reeds Lookout for once. I don't remember having done this trip since perhaps very young with my parents and I certainly haven't done a trip to the Grampians heart since the big bushfires of January 2006!

Nature is persistent and resilient and she'll bounce back. I guess there is a lesson for all of us in that too - that no matter the adversity, one must always send new shoots forward into the future, on the ashes of the past.

At Reeds' Lookout, I was rapt to be amongst several different nationalities of people all speaking in their various languages (sadly, I am no Henry Higgins so cannot tell you from which parts of the world they came from). It really felt like being "overseas" in many ways and I felt a surge of positive joy in my heart just being there and watching them climb over the "safety" rails to go stand in the mouth of the "Jaws" themselves! Mind you! After awhile of watching young foreign men and women play mountain goats on rather sheer rock ramparts, I had to leave, feeling a little overly motherly in my concern for strangers, whom I could not communicate with effectively to warn of any dangers! Still, the walk, the sunshine - the sky was clearing by now - the mishappen and alien environs of the mountain and regenerating scrub-land, all did me the world of good.

I then drove the winding roads through the Wonderland Tableland and stopped at Rosea Carpark intent on finding my way to Dellys Dell. This walk down into the fern-hearted depths of the mountain was a delight, if a rather strange journey into a very changed fact of my history. It was 20 years ago, approximately, that I first committed to marrying my once-husband in this very place. I spent some time down here today contemplating that past 20 years. A tiny little native finch accompanied me for a short while, darting from fern frond to fern frond, oblivious and unconcerned by my presence in his home. I let go of that past and accepted that I am finally responsible for what happens to me - on my own - without fear or recoil from a future where the possibilities are limitless. I miss the companionship of being "with" someone, but I need to give up needing it so much and get on with being ME without the co-dependent tendencies. The finch was suitably nonplussed by my few short tears and my determination to re-emerge from the Dell "re-born" so to speak. He/She probably thought I was taking myself just a tad too seriously perhaps! :)

I then travelled the further 10km of winding road down into the township of Halls Gap. Once a tiny little backwater and hidden gem of a place for bush-walkers, camping enthusiasts and visitors to come feed kangaroos and buy a simple ice-cream - it is now a resort/camping mecca for an abundance of national and international travellers! We nearly lost the entire town back in 2006, only a few of the locals stayed to help fight back the wrath of the fires that came, literally, within metres of destroying the place. But, that near tragedy has not daunted this little town! There are resort cabins, accomodations and all manner of "developments" taking place. The place is NUTS in holiday season and it will be a damn shame, but I can totally see the powers-that-be having to remove some lovely forest to make more room for carparking! Joni Mitchell's "Yellow Taxi" springs to mind. Progress be damned in this instance I think - but how the mighty $ rules! *sigh*

I went to the Stony Creek shops to get a cup of tea and met a bloke called "Micheal", a cheeky affable old local who delighted me and engaged me with conversation and much laughter. We only got as far as first names but I already found him lovable and charming and maybe I will meet with him again in future travels to take those photo's. I told him about my trip to Dellys Dell, without giving much away about the spiritual and emotional implications of that short journey, but he said almost immediately "You spoke to the fairies didn't you?". I could only agree, laughing at the knowledge of being "known" so well so quickly!

My money woes and my worries about tomorrow won't go away overnight because of this journey. My sense of isolation and tension in being "trapped" by my own need for personal freedom will possibly return. But, right here and right now, I travelled "abroad" and it feels good to have experienced something new.

My soul is calm.

"She loved us..."

Lars and the real girl is a truly quirky film!

Surreal at worst, beautifully crafted at best. Part Pygmalion, part The Velveteen Rabbit, this story captured my heart with its quirky off-beat humour and sensitive handling of some very difficult material.

The film stars Ryan Gosling in the title role and it deals with the subject of mental illness in a radically different way to most Hollywood portrayals of deeply disturbing and fragile states of mind.

Lars is a sweet loner in a small "northern" (it's not really specified exactly where) community. He grew up with a practically absent family it seems. His brother Gus, who has now moved back into the family home with his lovely pregnant wife, left his grieving father when Lars was very young. Lars father, we learn, was heartbroken, having lost his wife while she was giving birth to Lars. We can only guess at how this might have affected the boy during the course of his growing years, but from the picture presented brilliantly by Ryan Goslings portrayal of Lars, we guess it must have been an incredibly difficult childhood indeed.

Lars stuns his brother, sister-in-law and the town with news that he has a girlfriend. She is like no girlfriend they've ever seen before. An anatomically correct, life-sized doll named Bianca with a full and interesting background and bio. She comes into the lives of this community and they are left bewildered and staggered at how close they've come to losing one of their own to a desolation of mind too intense to be articulated. They never, ever, knew how precarious the life and mind of Lars Lindstrom has been to this point!

At the behest of the towns doctor/psychologist, they agree to go along with Lars' elaborate fantasy to the point where they too begin to adopt Bianca as one of their own.

It's a beautifully crafted, under-stated film that is both sweet and kind-hearted at its core. It's premise may be a little bit weak here and there but this is a movie about Love, Community and Sacrifice - not about the mundane realities for most people with mental illness where they tend to cop brutal shaming, bigotry and rejection rather than loving, if bemused, acceptance and tolerance. What we see here is a community who deeply cares for one of its sons and his gradual awakening to that fact.

When I was young, I believed that all my soft toys were real! My favourite story was The Velveteen Rabbit - about a soft toy becoming actually real through the power of love. To this day if anyone pressed me, I'd still say soft toys are real (when we aren't looking ;)). There is something about my own state of mind that wants to suspend disbelief long enough to will life and stories into the stuffed, softly, furnished chests of toys! And yes...I may have a delusion too!

Lars and the real girl will probably not appeal to many people. It has a slow meandering pace, where the details to Lars and his background are delivered gradually and deliberately. And, I have to admit, the subject matter is well...it's weird! That a community would tolerate a grown man believing he is in love with a sex-toy but treats her as a real woman, is a stretch. In this case however, it works and Bianca becomes as real as any girl who lived and loved!

is poverty a simple state of mind?

er...

no!

Lots of people on the web might tell you otherwise. That its a matter of one "manifesting" their way to better love/sex, health and preposterous riches. Which is all perfectly reasonable on the surface of course. That's "basic" "Law of Attraction" stuff where we get to play "god" of our own "Creative Destiny". You think about what you want, wish for it, pray for it, and then "align your emotional state" with the outcome and voilá! You "should" be technically much happier and wealthier and have better relationships!

(Oh but I am ever the closet cynic on this stuff *smirk* I play around with these concepts but at my core, I find them slightly "off" as in not sucking in enough Truth Serum really... it's all too self-centric and greedy sounding to me at my gut-level analysis of LOA - no matter WHO tells you that its supposed to be about 'Love for the Greater Good' and so on! Still, I do play around with it because well...that's what people - what I - love to do! Be self-centric etc!).

But okay... let's ask someone who is on "The Poverty Line" in the North world. By South World standards, the poor in the North are still incredibly wealthy, at least if they have a roof over their head and something productive to fill in time as a contribution to their membership in society and so forth. They don't HAVE to go picking rubbish tips for rags or scrape animal dung off roadsides to use for their fuel to cook a basic meal. They get regular assistance from most government agencies - well, for the most part they do, even if its dismal, its still a darn-sight better than those who don't have a hope of accessing a welfare payment in the South World.

I'm probably, right now, technically classed as being on the Australian version of "The Poverty Line". Since my separation, my income has been erratic and LOW in comparison to where I used to be as a self-employed, married wife and mother of two! Life is getting exceedingly tough to keep ahead of the financial hurdles we all face at regular intervals in the pursuit of our lifestyles - even if they're really basic lifestyles within the context of ones culture.

Right now, I am scraping every bit of income to my bank balance as I can muster and TRYING to not let it slip right out again on frivolities such as my daughters up-coming Presentation Ball for her year at College! We were told by the school that we needn't spend a fortune, but constituting what is a fortune is relative when its a fortune you don't have in the first place! My credit card got a bouncing with this mandatory event and it is going to take a looongg time to recover from it. That same amount would have easily been paid off within the month last year! How time turns on a wheel yeah?

Did I ask for this?

NO!

I can will the "Universe" or God all I like to make me rich enough to squander money like I have on fancy clothes, gloves and shoes for my beautiful 16 year old daughter to be a princess for an evening, but it won't change the fact that I am low on cash right now!

Of course, I am optimistic that this situation can and will change in the foreseeable future. I have enough Faith in God to take him at his word that he'll take care of the details. It doesn't stop me stressing right now though, over what "surprises", financially speaking, are awaiting around the corner that I have not factored into my attempts to be "reasonable" about spending!

Poverty isn't a state of mind! It's a physical environmental and social THING you respond to as you would to cooking a meal, watching a sporting event on TV, Showering, putting on makeup, dressing up, dressing down, touching a friend, feeding a pet. It doesn't come upon you because of the way you have dreamed your manifested existence, it just comes upon you at certain phases in a lifetime, like seasons do.

Of course, I'm not suggesting one need stay in a state of poverty at all! It is however something that is real and acute and that you must DO something with - or not! It CAN be a prison and a cruel one at that and it is NOT necessarily anyone's fault they're in there! INNOCENT until proven guilty my friends! Poverty can be a bit like sackcloth and ashes for some people too - they simply LOVE the kudos they feel it brings to be down and dirty and flat broke! *shrug* More power to them if that's what they like!

I suspect though that for many in the North of the world, where affluenza is a disease of chronic and unassailable proportions, our notions of poverty are rather skewed. We think we can either sweep it into the "too hard" basket and ignore it or we believe that somehow its such a sinful creation of the human condition that it must be willed away by magical thinking and that thinking rich instead will solve the problem overall for everyone (but mostly 'myself' et al).

Poverty and wealth are things we use to make a life. They are tools from the same human tool box. Both can be used in any given situation. Thing is...we don't always get to choose which tool we use - they get handed to us by someone else and the lesson then is "So how would you do that with this tool then?"

I have not asked to be broke! I've not manifested this financial (and I might add, emotional and physical versions of currently perceived poverty) position because I'm aligning my vibrational energy with such notions! Oh man! What an idiot who thought that idea! ... I've just been handed the question as to how am I going to use this tool for this life, right here and now.

Life may not be a dress rehearsal, but it sure as hell is a damned tough school sometimes!

A wee gem of a show about poo

Shane Jacobson is pure genius!

The man has invented a character so charming and disarming that he, aka "Kenny", positively reeks with genuine warmth, good humour, affable charm and extraordinary integrity towards people of all races and creeds!

I'm currently addicted to the half hour TV show on our Channel Ten here called "Kenny's World" on Wednesday evenings (yes! I should be studying! *sigh*). If you click the title of this blog post, the link will take you to the online video's of the same TV show. They're well worth the time to watch if you have a good fast broadband connection and if you're reasonably comfortable with some mild swearing and strange Aussie terminologies.

The show celebrates the International Year of Sanitation. What a fantastic idea! Not only am I being thoroughly entertained but I'm learning a LOT about the world in terms of how we manage and attend to the most fundamental aspects of all human life across the planet, that being, the way we manage our personal waste.

With gentle tongue-in-cheek humour, Kenny leads us on a whirlwind tour of the worlds toilets and associated side-stories. Tonight in Episode 3, I learned that 42 percent of the entire worlds population is without decent sanitation! I also learned about the amazing efforts of a humble man in Singapore determined to change this fact. Marvellous stuff really.

There are probably some people for whom this subject would cause the disgruntled and disgusted "Ewww!" with all the associated distate of having to speak of such things as "Poo" and "Wee"! I feel very sorry for these people! Access to appropriate, planet friendly sanitation is, in my opinion, a fundamental right of every citizen.

We in the affluent "North" of the World with our postulating on what we think is "best" for everyone else would do well to take note of how some of our Asian cousins handle the issue quite frankly! We do need to talk about how we manage and apply planet-friendly ways for reducing our reliance on water-guzzling cisterns and how we can effectively provide sanitation that is cheap, reliable and clean for the children of the world. Note this bit of info from Mr Sim, that approximately one million children a year die from diarrhea associated with poor sanitation! That is what's really disgusting!

But anyway, I am being absolutely charmed - and educated - by the wonderful character of Kenny and am finding this show to be one of the highlights of my TV viewing year (there has been a real dearth of those highlights until now I might add!).

Catch'yez!

my strange metaphor for Knowledge

Picture this:

A large spider in the centre of an even larger, robust web, glittering with dew drops in the morning sunlight. Each of the spiders 8 legs, is actually a finely honed tuning fork. Each tuning fork is pitched at a different tone. The spider pings a thread within the web with a particular tuning fork. It's just a quick flick. The tone travels out along the interwoven threads of the web and the dew drops bounce and swerve, dance and glitter as the vibrational energy of the sound and the physical shove on their silken wire mobilizes them.

The dew drops slide and gather together to form new dew drops, larger or smaller than their original size. Some drops drip right off the web and onto the plant matter below, forever disconnected from the song the spider plays at will overhead. It doesn't matter. The dew drops that fall down will feed the life that will in turn eventually support the spider in its quest.

The Spider is Knowledge.

The web is the vast human connected world that receives, responds and supplies Knowledge.

This is connectivism in action.

Does this mean that Knowledge is at the hub of things? Does this mean that Knowledge is implied as some kind of Entity outside of usual and common human interaction?

Yes and No!

Spiders are living things. So is Knowledge. It moves, grows, changes, gives birth to and dies just as any living thing does. Knowledge isn't static.

But it does have tuning forks for legs!

Every nuanced move of Knowledge's leg is a beautifully and carefully orchestrated pitch on a particular scale sent to achieve a particular and carefully orchestrated end. Knowledge loves to feed and it is gluttonous and greedy but also patient and resilient. It pitches for more of what it wants and it usually gets it - for the web is an attractive rather sticky thing. It brings things to it that makes the spider grow and get fat.

Tuning forks have a function. They provide a perfect pitch. A sound. In order to produce that sound, one must tap at the fork so it resonates.

ALL KNOWLEDGE RESONATES. In order to make Knowledge resonate, you need to tap the tuning fork. That's all it takes. A simple tap and the sound and the vibration will do the rest.

This is what both attracts things to the spider and what the spider imparts outwards.

Maybe its a bad metaphor. But to me it's more ecologically quantifiable than pipes!