Collared!

The Living Years or not?

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:48:28 +0200

You know the song... wish I'd sorted all this out before my parent died.
Is it worth it really though?
What's the point in telling an elderly parent that you were never really happy till you had broken away?

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How Often Do You Listen to the News?

Wed, 06 May 2009 23:21:06 +0200

I prefer not to hear the news until the evening.

I agree with those who say why pour its negativity into your head at the start of the day?

Of course I am referring to how the media usually presents the news.

Then again why hear the same thing over and over again?

I like to wander around historical sites which have timelines on how/when things happened. A counterbalancing pace!

To hear the way news is presented you'd think that everything happened at 90 miles an hour.

Why jump into that rollercoaster several times a day?

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Labelling People

Mon, 04 May 2009 16:48:07 +0200

I think labels have some value, but generally they are laden with so many assumptions, and they prevent you seeing the person behind the label.

Do you think the world would work better if people could only be labelled if they had agreed to have the label?

And all labels had a time limit (that could be renewed) ?

I always thought the theory was that classifications (or labels) helped your mind to cope with all that bombards it, but now I sometimes wonder if it's more a technique for distancing me from other people.

I suppose that's just a different type of coping mechanism.

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Age Old Age!

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:36:32 +0200

Couple of age related blogs caught my eye today and last week.

A fellow blogger concerned about physical aging, i.e. the body showing signs of... err.. natural processes... not liking it.

I know what they mean, I don't like it either when I notice or experience changes (for want of a better expression)... however 'philosophical' I try to be about it.

I assume everybody is the same, but that assumption is bonkers surely?
I know people who seem so accepting of it.... that I'm crackers for letting "getting older" bother me in the slightest, because what can you do about it?

A worry that is like a virus? Not part of me really?

Then there was the quote from Desiderata (Wyrd Seeker) which included the lines.
"Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth."

Hmmm. Why? I think now.
When I interpret this as a re-surrender to the claimed superiority of elders or received wisdom, and I think "No way"... it didn't work before.

I so want to find my own path now, and associate this with growth generally, not growing old...

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Facial Products... Update

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:58:32 +0200

People have not said to me "Good grief, what happened to your face!".
Though neither have people spontaneously said "Wow" and pealed off their clothing.
Well neither more nor less than normal. Normal for me, that is.

The chemicals have not permeated the lower areas and had different effects on the left hand side and the right hand side of my brain. So, with the broad brush strokes you sometimes have to adore, I'm not sure if I'm more in touch with my feminine or masculine sides than normal.
Normal for me, that is.

So apart from several passing aircraft being misdirected, nothing much to report really.

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Tricky One

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:27:41 +0200

Many people I know seem to have no sense of self-doubt, at least genuinely of nothing serious. This does not stop them from being modest or kind. I cannot help but think I will lose something if I catch up with them.

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Facial Products... have I been too hasty?

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:38:27 +0200

I just whacked it on because it was a free sachet: UltraLiftPro-X Re-Plumping Anti-Wrinkle Day Cream. (Garnier)

BUT

will it react terribly with my Nivea nighttime regime?

In trying to look my best, have I started a microscopic chemical war near my eyes?
I can't sleep now!

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Please Give My Fantasies a Sell-by Date

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:03:08 +0200

And please make sure I adhere to it.
Teach me somehow to throw them in the bin when the date is up.
My mental kitchen is cluttered with them.
They don't make the place stink, so that they don't get noticed and binned.
However, when I start to cook with them, ... I almost make a complete fool of myself by working with out of date ingredients.
Get real, get now. Yeah I need slapped too!
The kind of slap, after which I say, "Uh... where am I?"

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Generalising... Everybody does it!

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:18:26 +0200

This blogsite contains so many posts which generalise or make points based on generalisations.

I always thought many newspapers did it to provoke a response, and obviously I wonder if "hit" conscious bloggers do it for that reason too.

But why does it happen?

Is it done out of modesty/anonymity?: e.g. using "People think..." instead of "I think..."

Is it done to be persuasive: e.g. "People I know...." rather than "Some people I know..."

Is it done to protect prejudices? It certainly seems to protect them.
In my experience when I reconstruct a line of thought by debugging it of generalisations, then I often evolve a view that is more tolerant.

But then this takes time, so is it done out of laziness?

Or is it done just out of unconscious mimicry? Are we often generalisation-blind, because its so endemic in communication? (Particularly in our stressed culture).

(BTW Just in case...err.. jokey title was deliberate, even if not comedy award winning material).

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Writer's Block One and Two

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:12:48 +0200

The order is not important... but there's WB1 where you start to write, when you are actually typing things into your PC , but you just can't get the right word, phrase, flow or balance. And edits and re-edits just wear you down.

Then there's WB2 where you are not at your PC but it's more than a fleeting thought that goes through your head saying "It would be good to write this down even for myself, if not to blog...." but the nature of what's on your mind just makes sure that never happens.

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Pimento Stuffed Olives

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:12:44 +0200

Look away now if you enjoy these!

Typical values: Per 100g, 17.0g of fat of which saturates 3.3g

OMG who would have thought that? Not me.

Where did all that fat come from?

And I love those one-eyed green monsters!

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Beliefs… more like plants than animals?

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:36:52 +0200

When it comes to movement, a plant usually has its whole body fixed to the ground, whereas an animal's body can move from place to place. A plant's movement is usually slow and is merely growth, whereas an animal's movement is relatively speedy about the place.

Once a belief takes root in you...

Do plants have a nervous system? They certainly respond less quickly and can't match an animal for sensitivity. Try getting a plant to change and it would usually more readily die.

Is your belief sensitive to your experience?...

But when it comes to nutrition, a belief is surely more like an animal... it's got to feed off something, even though it claims the opposite.

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Is "the solution" the problem?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:29:09 +0200

Lots of questions in life have answers, but I sometimes wonder if there is some scattergram somewhere that shows a relationship between the more trivial the question, the more clear-cut to answer.

It doesn't take long for a mind, well perhaps a complicating mind like mine, to find exception clauses in even simple question-answers. But that brings stress. Tell me!

Leaping forward to what are sometimes called the big philosophical questions in life…

Is the question the answer?

With a background in science and prescriptive religion, I often wonder if I am conditioned by society to believe that THERE IS AN ANSWER and WE JUST HAVE TO FIND IT, whereas maybe the best we can do is to state the problem fairly, and then out of this might flow tolerance, stress removal and possibly, yes, even insight.

By insight, I mean insight for me. If this insight is shareable, and it 'works' somehow for others then that is good. I don't need to share it with a sword! Neither do I need others to accept it to validate it.

I wonder if 'truth' that is shared forcefully, is shared out of fear, and shows that the original problem has not matured to bring the benefits I described above.

On validation, the sharing of insight can bring refinement, but this is not always necessary, and perhaps it actually seldom happens. Otherwise, we would be forgiven (interesting choice of word!) for believing that THERE IS AN ANSWER and WE JUST HAVE TO FIND IT! LOL

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Anyone think like me?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:09:55 +0200

Do you know, it took me years and years as an adult for the penny to drop that everybody else didn't think like me?

I'm not saying that I didn't recognise when other people had different opinions from me. When that happened I suppose I just thought that what they were taking into account was different from what I had taken into account, or that they were somehow giving different arguments different weights before forming their conclusions.

Of course, I usually thought that they had just got it wrong. And as someone who hated to rock the boat (still do), it didn't really seem to matter that much anyway.

But in recent years I've started to take a few more risks, and that has been one of the things helping me to become increasingly convinced that other people think differently.

The logical mind has been de-throned?

And you know what? There have been more positives than negatives so far.

There is no 'one truth' that we can more or less reach depending on nature and nurture.

We all just live together on this great big rock.

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Those occasional feelings

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:12:54 +0200

Every now and then I feel as if I've just woken up a little bit more to where I actually am.

It calls to mind the ideas in the Talking Head's song, Once In a Lifetime, "How did I get here?", etc.

Having had more than my share of prescriptive religion, there's always the temptation to invent some theory around it.

But I think I'll just enjoy the moment… let my little collection of atoms savour their little difference in self-awareness.

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Heh! The Barrier Is Down

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:12:41 +0100

The website is like the way it used to be when I log on.
I found it difficult to read the terms and conditions. That's all.

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All will be revealed?... you big bully!

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:33:54 +0200

In my religious past, I was conditioned to believe that everything was revealed or to be revealed. It took me years to diagnose how this belief had transferred to gave me an exaggerated view of what I had to reveal to other people.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in being honest (for the most part), but now for a sound reason... not a superstitious one.

As a humanist I relate it to survival. If we're never sure where we stand with people, then life gets to be so much more hard work. We need to be careful with our physical and emotional energy to aid survival.

I still have problems from time to time with how open I think I should be with people, and with how open I expect them to be with me.

But just as you can miss out because you are too 'closed', so you can go too far in the opposite direction.

I think it applies to every relationship in life. Once I realised what I was doing with my "openness" I could take a more adult approach to managing relationships.

Of course, if you feel you have to be "brutally" honest about yourself whether to a priest or a partner you can see how useful that is to them and how powerful it makes them.
In the case of partners perhaps not even a power they want.
Why wander into that minefield...?

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Blog Olympics

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:26:17 +0200

If there were such a thing as Blog Olympics, what would the individual events be ?

How often would they be held?

Would some groups feel obliged to boycott them from time to time? Why?

Your thoughts are invited.

Perhaps they already exist and I just didn't get through the qualifying heats?

Hmmm...

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Colour blind guy reviews colourful chat-up conversations

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:02:57 +0200

Sometimes I just wander at random round this website when I should be doing boring stuff like defleaing my shirts or ironing the cat.

I stumble across posts that really grab my attention, so I then descend into the comments.. the word 'descend' deliberately chosen. Bit harsh, I know.

I'm talking about a subset of the posts on relationships.

I follow a thread and get increasingly gobsmacked by the opinions expressed. Then it dawns on me…. I'm eavesdropping on a chat-up conversation.

Now that's fair enough. Live and let live.

But for me it's a bit like "The Curious Incident of the Blog in the Night".

I just don't seem to understand what's going on till I've spent minutes trying to follow what's being said.

Is it just me?

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It's just like your luggage limit on an airplane flight...

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:19:49 +0200

...if you try to hold on to too many things... and preserve things the way they were... you get dragged down.
Hard and bittersweet though it can be, there are times to let go.
For me, there are no magic spells in life, but one that came close was "Life is about what happens next".
I think I had forgotten that one for a while.

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Sense of Perspective.... if found, please return

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:28:12 +0200

A voice inside my head doesn't want me to write this... but I admit I lose perspective when I have the blues.

I overestimate the purity of my love.

I overestimate the value of the other person that I want to lean on.

The other 'real' person that is... as opposed to the sacred image I carry in my head.

It's not anbody's fault when they don't live up to the expectation I have of them.

I believe in trust and honesty... but when was I ever 100% trustworthy and honest?... so ain't it just perverse to expect this of other people?

Sometimes it's hard to know what is for the best... I want to say I need someone, even when I know I can't have them. I recriminate myself for a bit saying I am not trying hard enough to 'win' them. But sometimes.. well I thought I wanted this, but I'm getting that.. so be grateful, it doesn't mean I lost.

PS: when I say "value" of the other person, I mean their role fulfilling capability... not their human worth (of course!) sounds technical now, don't it!

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Is it OK to post when I feel like this?

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:22:38 +0200

I can hardly believe this.... I feel washed out but up for doing something... I don't want to help anyone but would be willing to. Yes I would like to be with certain people right now... but I can't be.. and I am not stressed about...

Is there something wrong with me? Am I entitled to blog when I'm in such a condition.

I'm not full of wine, etc. and this is not immediately post-c.

Some invisible ray shining on me right now?

I guess I would like some enlightenment but it's entirely optional.

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Physical Attraction..... and one other type

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:19:54 +0200

At the risk of starting this post with the words "At the risk of..."... oh it's happened. Aaargh, why do I caveat so much?

Physical attraction, does it always contain sexual attraction?

Can you be physically attracted to another adult, and you just want to be with them, to hear their voice, to enjoy their good looks,.... without eventually or secretly wanting to do something that, colloquially, involves them losing their brains (if performed wholeheartedly that is?)?

I think you can. However, we are sexual animals... so a bit of a doubt there.

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What a Fool believes…..in Madchester

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:50:23 +0200

A few weeks ago Michael MacDonald was playing in Manchester and I kinda regret not going to see him. Mind you I only had 3 hours notice and the concert was over an hour away!

This is because I think he may have sung a Doobie Brothers song called "What A fool Believes"

From time to time I think this is the greatest love song ever written.

Not because it's about when you're in love… it's about your imagination abusing you!

It's about a boy-girl thing that didn't happen in the past… … but it can be extended to other types of relationship and other non-events….

Here's the music if you want it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXvi9bySjQQ&feature=related

Here's the lyric if you need it...
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/doobie+brothers/what+a+fool+believes_20042480.html

(Madchester, eh ?... back in the day....)

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This BlogSite is a Railway Track?

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:33:20 +0200

I used to be a commuter. I wouldn't always get the same train to and from the city, but usually any train within the spread of the rush hours.

Over time, of course, the faces of fellow passengers would become familiar. Then you would notice groups of people, by which I mean those who would have conversations during the journey, people who seemed to know each other in other hours.

Some people always travelled alone, though this did prevent the exchange of the occasional smile or nod.

Then it became obvious that you could, at a push, remember the sound of voices, or some of the patterns that relationships seemed to possess.

Snippets of conversations, displays of emotions, usual styles of dress… all offering possibilities for joining in. And sometimes you did join in.

Sometimes you even learned their names.

But I am no longer a commuter; and when I do make those journeys there are new faces who do not know mine. I am free but confused by this trick of time.

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Dependency... what do the love songs say?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:27:38 +0200

Many of the love songs say 'you can depend on me'… And adults can seriously promise this to those they love… We want to be there for someone… we want to be dependable… And why not?

Where do I fit this into my thoughts of dependency, independency and interdependency?

The love songs will not scan properly !

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Your Special One

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:12:34 +0200

If you haven't found, or are not with, your "Special One", then what?

Do I believe deep down that the alternative to having someone out there for me who is "The One" is to have "The Zero"?

Isn't it a bit of a nightmare though, to have some "One", because that contains possession, and how can possessing somebody else possibly be right?

When I have someone in my head, who is the unfortunate target of this desire for possession, is it right for them?

Possibly.

Is it right for them in the same degree as for me?

Probably not.

But if we do have some great times together…?

Well it suits both of us at the time. That's what I mean by "getting lucky", I don't mean getting laid (though that can be a big part of it).

Do I blame a lot of loneliness on not being with "The One"… real or imaginary, when in fact it's just a case of not being at the weekend, and having to grind through the more mundane aspects of life?

And when you do have someone in your life who is close….to just hang out, to gaze into each other's eyes, to make love whenever, well that's a good a definition of heaven… till you think of others.

It's so seductive, when it's not happening… it's much better to look back on, than forward to when there is the vicious threat of something unrequited.

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Complicated Club… new memberships always available

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:50:56 +0200

Yes, welcome to potential (and existing) members…

Different people have different days when they consider the year to begin, think of the Chinese New Year for example.

As you may know, for us in the Complicated Club, a new year starts on 2nd July according to the Western calendar. I say "for us", but of course there are exceptions to this rule, which I won't go into here, because it's complicated.

A new year is always a good time to welcome new members, who join for all sorts of reasons.

Membership is not automatically granted.. oh no… but the entry criteria are simple to understand. And for many bloggers, are easy to satisfy.

As follows:
A prospective member must begin to discuss a topic of genuine and personal concern with an existing member of the club.

When the existing member asks them to explain a bit more, the prospective member must convey reluctance, go quiet, or back off and then say "It's complicated". Bingo, you're in.

Although we're all equal in this club…. not!… premium grade membership is awarded to those who persistently use humour to cover up their true feelings about a topic. I would like to explain the reasons behind this to you… but…. er… it's complicated.

(Signed: Membership Secretary, premium grade)

Note: Complicated Club affiliations include:

Mixed Up Club
F#cked Up Club
and the
Cheesed Off Society

(note: the latter should not be confused with the Cheesed Off With Society League, with whom we are not affiliated.)

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New Blogger: trial period over

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:07:41 +0200

I think I'll keep on blogging mainly because it's another proof that we are all connected… (BTW this post should lighten up by the end)

Sometimes I go round in circles for hours or days or years… the technical term is 'being stuck'.. and every now and again someone will say something that rings true for me at that time; if they had said it earlier it would just have zinged through like a neutrino and had no effect.

Or sometimes somebody will display something about themselves, casting a silhouette or mirage, reminding me of me… often conveying a feeling as much as a thought… especially good with the hint of an inward smile...

Both of these can be the forerunner of inner change… and promise...

Then again blogging can bring the distraction I need… 'distraction' originally had no negative connotations, it didn't mean something superficial, it had the sense of "food for the soul", as if life wasn't meant to be all about duty and work.

God, so many of you fellow bloggers make me smile, both wistfully and amusingly. Cheers.

PS I made that bit up about the original meaning of distraction. I'm no etymologist, but those of you who are with me on this will know what I am on about, and why I did it.

(Ed: So... er.. when's it going to lighten up?)

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Blogging with no feeling...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:44:33 +0200

Is it just me, or is it a real pain at times communicating by words only? I mean words can be so ambiguous.. which is good for creativity, seduction, and misunderstandings that lead to war ... but other times can be so poor... you just want to switch on the parallel-vibe channel.

Even face to face, words are so limited... what you say is not what I hear...and I'm a good listener!... but your tone gives a clue, as does the fact that you are smiling, or crying, or punching me, or tearing your clothes off...

We are all thought-traders in this cyberspace. Maybe that's the rub. Our words don't emerge from our keyboards, they emerge from our needs, our wants, our fantasies... so a distance is preserved, or is it?

Mobile txts.. same problem, but with the option to press the speak buttons obviously.

Is there something in the middle that I'm missing?

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