Oddly petty crimes...

Yesterday, as I was strolling down the street I live in, I noticed a sign on the wall of a property, asking visitors to phone for entry as the intercom had disappeared. That got me wondering. Wouldn't you get bad karma from using a security device that had been stolen in the first place? I mean, if it couldn't have stopped that crime, what makes you think you would be luckier?

It also brought another incident to mind. Years ago, I worked for a food delivery service and one morning when we arrived, we discovered that the security camera had been stolen...

Are some cats more empathic than others?

Yesterday, there was a car accident around the corner. Quite a loud smash. All three of our cats were startled by the sound, but two of them went right back to sleep. Not Beanie, the 14-year-old female. She continued to look distressed (despite reassurances and a little bit of TLC), for as long as the stricken vehicles still stood there and as the traffic police took down statements. I should add that all of this went on completely outside her field of vision. There were sirens, briefly, but no loud voices or arguing that I could hear. Yet Beanie only relaxed once everything had been cleared up.

So, what would you say? Are some cats more empathic than others?



(This particular photo of Beanie had been taken some years ago.)

A Thousand Breaths...

What if no life was longer than a thousand breaths...

Our society defines and measures life in terms of bodies. A birth marks the beginning. A death marks the ending. And everything in between is called life. In many ways, this is a flawed mode of perception, a bit like defining what you are, from the perspective of your shoes or your coat, if you ask me.

Consider the following paradox. The aforementioned physical body does not always cease to be immediately in the moment that life does. Instead, it slowly stops working and runs down, but, as science has proven, machines can take over the functions of that physical being, such as breathing and heartbeat. While we call the inflation and deflation of lungs the prolonging of 'life', it is not really enough by anyone's definition. The running down/decaying process too can be halted by artificial means. But, although that spark of life does occasionally and miraculously return, it remains the wildcard of the arrangement. It cannot always be dictated to. What life really is, remains invisible. It is the symptoms of life that we mistake for life itself.

Which brings me to the next thought. Physicality is a side effect of life. It's not the other way around, even though everything in our society and around us tries to shove it down our throats. Life comes (invisibly) before bodies. Life continues (invisibly) after bodies. Perhaps in many of its purer expressions, life exists entirely independently of bodies. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you are flying, as far and as fast as you want to. Now, open your eyes and behold the dense imprisonment surrounding your body with limitations. My point? Why bodies? Or rather, why bodies with such limited features?

So, let's throw away the concept of bodies as yardstick and begin again...

Years ago, when a friend of mine was going through his divorce, I made the statement that perhaps, within a "lifetime" we go through thousands of lives and deaths, as we constantly change who and what we are. In his response, he compared those past "lives" to snake skins, still retaining our shape, but no longer filled with our essence. Like beads, we string along millions of lives held together by the frail, false continuity of our physical identity. And when that physical identity ceases? Do we run out of beads, just because we run out of string?

Like I said before, what if no life was more than a thousand breaths.... but at the same time we had access to an infinite number (and "infinite number" is in itself a paradox and a contradiction) of lives.

An infinite number of new beginnings...

A thousand breaths...

From inside a tree...

... the view is surprisingly magical.


It's such a peaceful place to be too. If I was on my own, I would have stayed much longer...



I suppose you would want to see the tree from the outside too, so here goes...



And another...


The photos were taken earlier this year. Although it was a warm place, it was cool and quiet inside. Like I said, I could have stayed in there for a long long time if I was on my own.



Who knows? Maybe I'll come back here sometime in my dreams...

Dog park reverie

Joined my sister for a walk in the park with her dog Anabel and some of our visiting Dutch relatives. We sat at one of the tables for cool drinks and sandwiches, when I noticed that we had a furry observer. He sat a little way off, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that he was intently focused on our sandwiches.

My sister and I immediately saved some pieces for him. He growled at Anabel, when my sister also gave Anabel a piece of hers.

Our one relative (my mom's cousin's husband) observed that the dog belonged to no one. That his coat lacked shine and seemed neglected. And that he was ignored by the other dogs. None of them engaged him in playing or chasing games.

The dog was not thin. But he was on his guard. He had no "protector", obviously. This sad dog had the freedom of the park. But it wasn't the magical place of fun and excitement for him.

I thought how this park - it's a fairly big park, and like I said, very popular with dog owners - could be such a special place for all the happy dogs playing and cavorting with each other (Anabel included) and here was one for whom it was something else. This was a little like the paradox of the starving wolf that is free and the chained dog, who is well-fed - and the myriad of character compromises that lurks within the shiny coat of that chained dog.

After we gave him our tidbits, and my sister went off to play with Anabel, I blew some luck on him. I asked if I could touch him (I wasn't sure because he had growled at Anabel.) He let me stroke his head. Another tidbit of mental nourishment? Then he got up and somewhat stiffly walked off, not minding all the frivolous pouches cavorting about.

(The pics in this post are not of the sad old dog - by the time it occurred to me to take one of him, he had already gone off)

Review: Numb by Sean Ferrell

For a book not classified as horror, Numb by Sean Ferrell has a lot of blood in it. The main character is unable to perceive pain, so every couple of pages he casually bleeds over something, someone or both. Sometimes this is accidental. Often it's intentional. I cannot tell you his name, because his other affliction is amnesia. Therefore he doesn't know who he is either. Professionally and personally, he goes by the moniker of Numb.

In most types of books where amnesia is used as a device, the pursuit of idnetity usually drives the plot. In this case, however, Ferrell plays another game entirely. He uses this blank canvas status and lack of personal history to turn his character into a metaphor, exposing society's voracious appetite for fame. Numb's unique relationship to pain becomes his brand and a mirror which reflects some of the hidden twists and kinks of celibrity - particularly how it impacts on friendship and relationships.

I'm not sure I liked any of the characters. Mal, perhaps. There is a very authentic feel to him, although it would have sucked to be his friend. Yet the book makes a compelling read. Recommended, if you can stomach all that random bloodletting.

Exactly HOW are we dumbing ourselves down?

That's the question I posed this morning to my IF (Imaginary Friend) and he immediately returned with counter question. It was a good one. He asked On what level does this dumbing down take place?

So, we narrowed it down to comprehension (although perhaps you could also say understanding or awareness) and expression. In other words, the one happens internally, in the privacy of your own mind, while the other is about communicating that awareness to others. An interesting and helpful distinction.

That means we can create questions for further clarity:

1. Am I still having the same level of awakenings as I did a couple of years? And if not, why not?

I had one this morning (which is what I'm writing about), but I have over the past year or so felt a type of 'thinning'. I would be asking myself, if something is interfering, what is it. I've been looking at a number of possible suspects. Last year September (2016), I got my first real smartphone (I still have only the one) and yes it is a distracting and absorbing device. So many of its features are designed to trigger some form of neural addiction and there were definitely times when getting prompted into compulsive consumption of digital content and services served to disable some of the super features inherent in my consciousness. In connecting to infinity and my inner awareness. In many ways, paying more attention to social media compels you more and more to take linear timelines for granted, and that has the unfortunate side effect of lessening your awareness of less linear ways of perceiving.

On that subject, I should add that I think I have been reading more this past year. Now my relationship with reading is a very interesting one. For nearly all my life, reading has acted as my passport to wonder. Growing up in a locale where I felt very little connection to the society around me, I have always looked to books to discover new worlds and imagine new versions of myself. You could say, the librarian is my dealer. One of the side effects of my awakening, though, was reading less and also reading in different ways. I would absorb a book randomly, rather than going page by page. Around this time, I also discovered the most ironic of books - The Goddess vs The Alphabet by Leonard Shlain - which argues that learning to read has profoundly influenced our ways of perceiving our world and the infinity that surrounds us. It suggests that reading has rewired our brain and since it functions by a linear process of revelation, has forced our minds to act in more linear ways. Reading typically follows a marked path. Wandering off in your thoughts still happens but is it really possible to imagine how revelation might take place to the non-reading mind?

Remember, clickbait articles also function on the very linear process of hook/reward, often delaying that reward over several installments. It guides your perception and your thinking and the question should be asked: Is it a good guide? Or does it have its own agendas? But I digress.

Another change this year, has been doing new kind of work. From 2012-2016, I worked ghostwriting on travel destinations. This year, I began doing transcription work and faced different kinds of deadlines. That change could well have contributed to more distracted and less aware me. I also began to work on an ongoing new writing project (more about this at a much later stage) which has also turned out to be quite absorbing.

2. How has the process of communicating awareness to others changed in the past year or so?

Wow. Lots of ways. What I've noticed is that nearly everybody seems to be so much angrier of late, no doubt a sign of how polarizing the news media has become. One sign of this is that the truth depends very much on who's telling it. But we all know that already and while I may philosophically approve of variable realities, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed by some of the dominant ones that are surfacing. There is NO respect at all for opposing viewpoints. There is an ongoing chase to join the coolest SJW lynch mob. The majority of contemporary output is reactionary to something.

But because of this, I suspect everybody secretly fears themselves to be under attack in their most holiest place. Notice, even my phrasing in the last sentence could serve as a trigger to the militantly atheistic, even though I meant it as a figure of speech. Language has become both weaponized and monetized and sometimes it's difficult to find words and phrases that aren't inherently offensive in some way. In an ideal world, communication is a bridge between souls. But in reality, we are becoming so fearful of honestly expressing our thoughts that we introduced the checkpoints, with our internalized memes as border controls to keep undesirable thoughts from settling.

Now, first a word or two about the benefits of exposing yourself to so-called undesirable thought. If I look back on journals and past stories and story ideas, some of the best have resulted from some very abrasive undesirable thoughts. Remember the oyster and the pearl. It creates some awesomeness, but it's not a happy relationship. So I have always appreciated and welcomed thoughts that anger me and hurt me, because many times, they have acted as my muses. But that's me and I'm still trying to figure out why other people don't work that way.

But with the increased saturation of weaponized and monetized content, some of those internalized memes are sneaking across the borders of my consciousness. Because everything we take in, changes us in subtle ways. It's very difficult to de-activate those memes that interfere with our thinking. Outrage is also addictive, and on top of that, it often disables compassion and imagination.