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Goodbye Life

Not ME! One of my baby millies died today, or maybe last night... I knew something was up when I changed the bedding yesterday, when he felt - limp! ugh... It's not one of the newer ones, but one of the original ones when I got the 6 or 7 babies... 2 got really big ['em piggies], but this one stayed pretty much the same size since... Maybe it was a midget or had an eating disorder?!?

It was his time I guess... When I picked him up tonight with my chopsticks [for terrarium use only], it fell into many pieces... the more I tried to pick up the remains, the more pieces it broke into... so sad, AND gross too! ugh... but I got over it! One day you are alive, the next day - poof!, you're dead! Poor little bug, I mean invetebrate... One more checking in to pede heaven!

Life's so fragile, even after you're dead!

In-Between Thoughts

'Where are you?'
'Where would you like me to be?'
'I just want you to be near me!'
'You're fine as you are. You don't need anyone else but yourself.'
'Maybe, but I need something... seems like all my life I've been searching, and waiting...'
'For what?'
'Something... I dunno. Wait, I can't see you... Where'd you go?'
'I'm right here.'
'I still can't see you...'
'There's no need for you to see me.'
'I feel your presence...'
'And I feel yours, too.'
'At times I feel so stagnant... sometimes I just want to hide from everything and everyone.'
'You are all created to feel so many wonderful things.'
'Sometimes I feel like this place isn't for me...'
'Where else would you be?'
'It's not what I expected…'
'Everyone plays a vital part. Every one.'
'Why the suffering?'
'It's as perfect as it can be.'
'Why can't I be... rich? Or successful?'
'The same reason why you're not rich, or successful.'
'Sometimes, I feel a little… sad… not grieve, but just - sad…'
'You feel the way you are, you are the way you feel. But it's beyond that, too.'
'I have so many questions but...'
'And you want to know the ultimate Truth?'
'No, well yes... but, no, nevermind! Wait, what if I said YES?'
'Then the truth you shall have. But what makes you want to believe what I am about to tell you?'
'Hmm...'
'That is, if you can comprehend such a thing as - the Truth. But most likely, you probably have your own interpretation on what Truth is already.'
'I guess.'
'You're not the question or the answer.'
'I question about a lot of... things...'
'But you are here for a reason.'
'I think I know what it is.'
'You only think you know what it is!'
'That's so unfair... will I ever find out?'
'Soon.'
'You play stupid games and people get tired of it!!'
'It seems that way, and I've been told that many times indeed.'
'What's the point of all THIS?'
'The reason will come to you some day when you least expect it.'
'I thought I can trust you but...'
'People don't understand.'
'Understand what?'
'The heart.'
'What about it?'
'People seek, but they do not want to learn.'
'Why not?'
'People do not want to learn when they think they already knew.'
'When will I truly know?'
'When you pass on.'
'Well shit, I'll never find out then in this lifetime.'
'There's nothing for you to find, only to learn, and to share what you've learnt.'
'Y'know, people have doubts in you!'
'And that they shall. A free mind is a powerful thing.'
'What about love?'
'It's all around you. Even now.'
'At times, I'm so tired of this… tired of... being... just being...'
'Be patient. It'll come to you in time.'
'Yeah, whatever!'
'When you were born, you became - unclean.'
'Say what?'
'So all your life you keep trying, yet you'll never be the same, and that alone, is part of the reason why you're here.'
'…'
'Time will tell all.'
'I wish you would just go away…'
'Would that be a good thing?'
'I'll take my chances!'
'The true eyes and ears are through one's heart.'
'Easy for you to say!! I'm leaving!'
'Remember, while you're here, everything is yours and isn't. You are your own destiny - be with it.'
'…'
'...and I'll see you again.'

Delights to a Visit to Hell

A man once thought:

‘How I wish I could be master of the option, to be dead or alive, so that I might know what it was like to be dead!’

This idea so dominated his mind that he sought out a dervish and enrolled himself as his pupil. When, after many months, he judged the moment suitable, he said to his teacher:

‘Reverend Sir, I have for years desired one thing: to be able to be alive or dead, as I wished. This is because I find it difficult to visualize what it would be like to be in that condition. Would you make it possible for me to achieve it?’

The dervish said:

‘It would not help you at all.’

‘I am sure that all experience is useful,’ said the man. And he continued to plague the dervish, until he agreed.

‘Very well,’ said the dervish, ‘adopt these special exercises, and you will be able to enter the domain of death and return at your own desire.’

The man performed his exercises until he had perfected them, and when he felt that he was ready, he threw himself into the condition which is generally considered to be death.

He found himself disembodied and waiting at the exit-door of life.

A subtle form in the shape of a man came up to him, and said: ‘What is your desire?’

‘As I am now dead,’ said the man, ‘I would like to see Heaven and Hell, so that I may be able to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each.’

‘Certainly,’ said the angel, ‘and which would you like to visit first?’

‘Heaven,’ said the man.

The angel took him to a place where people were walking about surrounded by every luxury and dressed in beautiful garments, eating precious fruits. They were all undoubtedly beings of the greatest purity and honesty, but the visitor felt that there was not enough variety in their life for him.

He said to his guide: ‘Please may I now see Hell?’

‘By all means,’ answered the angel, and took him to another place.

Here he saw people reveling and romping, laughing and crying, making and breaking friendships, building houses and destroying them, and living a remarkably similar life to the one which we all know on Earth.

But Hell seemed to have distinct advantages. It was more interesting than Heaven, and there were opportunities for personal gain evident to the visitor, which had not yet been observed by the inhabitants, and which far exceeded those open to people on Earth.

He said to his guide: ‘As I am master of the option of living or dying, I think that I will now settle down in Hell. Can you arrange it for me?’

‘Nothing easier,’ said the angel, ‘providing that you will change permanently from the status of a visitor to that of a resident.’

The man affirmed that he indeed wished to remain in Hell for all time.

Then the angel knocked on a door, and two massive demons of frightful aspect appeared. ‘Take him away,’ said the angel, ‘for he has decided to join you.’

The demons seized the man, and crushing him in gigantic talons, began to bear him off towards a furnace.

‘Stop!’ cried the man, and he appealed to the angel:

‘If this is Hell, what was that place which you showed me saying that it was Hell, when it was not?’

‘That,’ said the angel, ‘is not the Hell for the permanent residents. It is the one which is shown to visitors.’

Text: Idries Shah - Reflections

Nude: Spliced

Music: Thomas Otten - Dulciate

Excerpt

No man is your enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it takes ages; for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know – your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Then, and not till then, can you use all its powers, and devote them to a worthy service.

Remember that the sin and shame of the world are your sin and shame for you are a part of it. The soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. Therefore be wary lest too soon you fancy yourself something apart from the mass.

Within you is the light of the world – the only light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.

Text: Written down by Mabel Collins - Light On The Path / Through The Gates of Gold

The Ball in the Shape of a Heart

I was grocery shopping at Ralphs this evening and while I was waiting to checkout, there was this one little boy about the age of 5, wanting to buy this big plastic ball... one might call it a rubber ball, y'know the kind that sells for like $1.79, and it's about the size of a bowling ball, slightly bigger... The ones that they have them 'locked' behind the big metal cage at the supermarkets...

First the boy picked out a dark blue one, then mommy told him to get the green one instead, cuz it looks prettier. The boy hesitated for a second then went back for the green ball.

I observed here and there, smiling all the while. Then I thought about the time when I was young, going to the supermarket often with my dad. I was like 10, so I was a bit older and I never really asked for one anyway, yet I've always looked whenever I see them - those bright bouncy balls. Finally one day my dad asked me if I wanted one, and I said YES... I picked out a swirly sky-blue. I felt like I was the luckiest boy, and I was very happy that day.

I still like them lotz, they're just fun to look at... all the colours in a bunch... I'm glad they still sell them, just the way I remember.

Die Fast Little Cricket

I went to the pet store yesterday during my lunch break. I was by myself and had nothing much to do, so I decided to go back to see the critters once again...

I was there the week before, so nothing new to look at really... Anyway, I bought 2 'milk' millipedes that I had my eyes on since last week, but that's not the story. While I was standing behind the case picking out my millies in the back [the girl who works there was a bit frighten by the crawlees], on my way out I saw this cricket on the floor, lying flat on its back while kicking its legs feverishly...

I wanted, somehow, to save its life... I could've picked it up and put it back in the [cricket] terrarium, I could've stepped on its bloated belly and end its misery, I could've picked it up and put it in the case where the lizards reside, or do nothing - leaving it there and most likely end up being flatten by someone else's shoe...

So I decided to swoop it to a safe corner with my one shoe... The thought came to me: "Die fast little cricket, now at least you'll die on your own!"; Is that a good thing? hmm... What was the poor little cricket's fate in the meantime, while it was still alive? I'm not sure... and all it could do was to kick his feet with all its might. Am I not its ultimate fate if I decided to smash it to atoms? Death is inevitable... At least this time I didn't end its life like I once did to that lil', I mean giant mosquito...

I walked up the register, they rang up my 2 millies, then back to work I went. Death is strange.

The Red Pill

Ooh, got these babies after work today with Stuart. 2 red [also called 'fire'] millipedes and 1 big ol' giant pill bug. I've seen pill bugs from Bug's Life, but never the real thing. I'm so sheltered!! Big ass bug... Now I have 3 African giant black, 2 milk, 1 pumpkin, 2 fire millipedes and 1 pill bug. All my millipedes are still in their pre-teen days. Would like another pumpkin and pill bug though, so the single ones here won't get too lonely. hee!

Don't have my digi-cam with me this week, so these pictures will do. They look exactly like the ones that I have. Pill bugs are so weird. When I hold mine in my palm and it starts crawling, it looks like a little wind-up buggy! Strange creature indeed, yet cute!

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Improvement

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours.

If you want to make a wise man happy -- improve yourself!

Text: Idries Shah - Reflections

Seul

Seul debout. Seul assis. Seul couché. Seul sur le gril. Seul écartelé par des chevaux de labour dont il ne voyait que les croupes. Seul pendu et son sperme devint mandragore. Seul dans la vitesse qui n'est pas, dans la minute qui n'est pas, dans l'espace qui n'est pas, dans le temps qui n'est pas, dans l'éternité qui n'est pas, dans le rien qui ne l'est pas, dans le vide plein de boue. Seul dans un bloc de quartz ignoble, dans un iceberg en voyage. Seul avec la solitude qui n'en est pas une. Avec la lune qui fut sans être. Avec ses pas qui n'en sont pas. Avec ce tison qui se croûte et qui brûle au milieu et se croûte et brûle dans un songe qui n'est même pas un songe. Seul avec le sommeil de condamné à mort.

Text: Jean Cocteau - Appogiatures

Coronal Loop & The Red Moon Rising

Scientists discovered this important clue for solving the long-standing mystery of the hot solar atmosphere while observing the gas fountains (known as coronal loops) in unprecedented detail with NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. Scientists are interested in the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona, because eruptive events occurring in this region can disrupt high-technology systems on Earth. Moreover, studies of the solar corona will help astronomers better understand other stars, which cannot be observed in as fine detail as the Sun.

The new observations reveal the location of the unidentified energy source, showing that most of the heating occurs low in the corona, within about 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) from the Sun's visible surface. The gas fountains form arches (some more than 300,000 miles high and capable of spanning 30 Earths) as gas emerges from the solar surface, is heated and rises while flowing along the solar magnetic field, then cools and crashes back to the surface at more than 60 miles per second (100 kilometers per second). Millions of different-sized arches, called coronal loops, comprise the corona, and a 30-year old theory assumes that the loops are heated evenly throughout their height. The TRACE observations show that instead, most of the heating must occur at the bases of the coronal loops, near where they emerge from and return to the solar surface. mpeg [1.9mb]

These images are false color pictures of ultraviolet light emitted by the hot gas that comprises the coronal loops. Ultraviolet light is invisible to the human eye, but detectable by the special instruments on board TRACE. White represents the brightest ultraviolet light.

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RED MOON RISING: During the total eclipse this Thursday night, watch the Moon turns dim and fiery orange as it hides in the Earth's shadow...

"During May’s lunar eclipse, the Moon crosses fully inside the north section of the Earth’s shadow core, called the umbra. Much less noticeable are the preceding and following stages of the eclipse, when the Moon is in the shadow’s outer fringe, or penumbra."
Sky & Telescope

Photo, Text & Mpeg: NASA, Standford University & NASA/GSFC

[Nothing But] Blood

The open ends are the key! For every thing they do, there need never be another... mp3 [2.3mb]

So with tomorrow, I will borrow
Another moment of joy and sorrow
And another dream, and another, with tomorrow…

Image: This Mortal Coil - Blood [CD insert]

The Stars We Are

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I came across this article today... I'm not at all into astrology, or be called a stargazer, or even an outdoorsy kinda guy, and as far as appreciating the heavenly stars here in Los Angeles, there just ain't much to look at! It's hard to see anything here at night anyway, the city lights are all too-overpowering, and if not that, the air pollutants get in the way. Though you can see them every now and then, maybe after a long afternoon drizzle, then the stars might come out and play...

Sadly, I see pictures of stars & constellation mostly in magazines, and when I do, I can't stop thinking just how beautiful everything is... here, and there! We are, again, but a spec of dust, a molecule, an atom compared to what's up in the sky - the vast open doorway... Kinda scares me when I think about the whole, yet sort of like a low-wave electrifying sensation... and then I want to cry. [When I was looking at these pictures from the website earlier, and listening to Brian Eno, can't help but to tear up a bit. No one noticed. I was still at work at the time. What a big baby!]

People say 'You die and you go to heaven!', where exactly is that? Beyond the far reach from the stars and the galaxies? In the corner of the universe? Might there be a crossroad somewhere in between? In time, we'll find out one way or another, or maybe we won't. Maybe saying that there is this 'heavenly' place, is just something to pacify our fear of the afterlife. The stars above might be what's left of our celestial beings when we die, and who knows but the moon and the stars...

Photo & Text: NASA & ACS Science Team; Sky & Telescope

Music: Briano Eno - An Ending [Ascent]

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Encounter with the Devil

A certain devout man, convinced that he was a sincere Seeker after Truth, embarked upon a long course of discipline and study.

He had many experiences, under various teachers both in his inner and outer life, over a considerable period of time.

One day he was meditating when he suddenly saw the Devil sitting beside him.

‘Away, demon!’ he cried, ‘for you have no power to harm me; I am treading the Path of the Elect.’

The apparition disappeared.

A truly wise man passing by told him, sadly:

‘Alas, my friend, you have grafted effort upon such an unsure basis as your unaltered fear, greed, and self-esteem that you have arrived at your ultimate possible experience.’

‘How so?’ asked the Seeker.

‘That “devil” is, in reality, an angel. “Devil” is only how you saw him.’

Text: Idries Shah - Caravan of Dreams

Happy Birthday 'Pumpkin'

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Pumpkin, Happy Birthday to you!

The HEART

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The Game of LIFE

No, not the Milton Bradley version. The version we called our very own. What is it? No one knows, some people claimed that they do, then again, everyone has their own 2 cents.

People say: Live the moment! and people also say: Life is what you make it!, yeah, something like that... Or what about Just Live!, or Live / Choose Life!... I dunno, everything is true and not, everything is cliché, yet there's always something to entertain us...

I question a lot of things, I might not have answers, but I usually end up finding something appropriate along the way. Most of the times I find myself more puzzling than life itself. Life isn't the question, I think we are!

Life is happening, and truth is what I'm thinking about right this second! I've read somewhere said that: We're all living in the past, the present, and the future all at the same time... One's probably thinking: No durr!, and yet the saying [or is this a cliché?] is so simple and yet profound, it's something to think about... A happy errie thought.

I love thinking and not thinking. I just love what I love. To be free and be able to do whatever I please. I'm much in a better position than a whooooole lotta people I know, and I'm forever grateful for that. Life is what it is, no matter how successful and charming or the poor and the 'pathetic loser' that you think you are, or how 'unmeaningful' you think your existance is to others... It's your life, and it's just as good as any other's.

When I die, I'll be nothing. At least it is the 'nothing' that I can come close to comprehend. I just imagine [and the word 'imagine' is certainly an understatement! What are the words that surpass 'beyond imagination'?] myself transparent... not being... Whatever I may become, whatever I may be - the room so bright, and the place so brilliantly white [or maybe a blinding black] that I won't be able to see myself... something unfamiliar... The last appearing / disappearing act!

Somewhat that would be my interpretation of an individual leaving the earth, or is that the start of life? The end isn't the beginning, and the beginning is not the end. Here, the end is the end, and the beginning, is just is. I think it's the middle is where I want to be...

...and I think I'm there!

Evil-Hearted Me

Kept this particular plate for awhile... I kinda miss it riding on my car! Am glad I didn't turn both plates in at the time, I told the DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] I only had one left cuz the other flew off mysteriously one day somewhere on the freeway... God told me to keep one for good luck!

When A Man Meets Himself

       One of man's greatest difficulties is also his most obvious drawback. It could be corrected if anyone troubled himself to point it out often and cogently enough.
       It is the difficulty that man is describing himself when he thinks that he is describing others.
       How often do you hear people say, about me:
       'I regard this man as the Qutub [magnetic Pole] of the Age?'
       He means, of course: 'I regard this man...'
       He is describing his own feelings or convictions, when what we might want to know is something about the person or thing being described.
       When he says: 'This teaching is sublime,' he means: 'This appears to suit me.' But we might have wanted to know something about the teaching, not how he thinks it influences him.
       Some people say: 'But a thing can truly be known by its effect. Why not observe the effect upon a person?'
       Most people do not understand that the effect of, say, sunlight on trees is something constant. In order to know the nature of the teaching, we would have to know the nature of the person upon whom it has acted. The ordinary person cannot know this: all he can know is what that person assumes to be an effect upon himself - and he has no coherent picture of what 'himself' is. Since the outward observer knows even less than the person describing himself, we are left with quite useless evidence. We have no reliable witness.
       Remember, that while this situation still obtains, there will generally be an equal number of people saying: 'This is marvellous,' as are saying: 'This is ridiculous'. 'This is ridiculous' really means:' This appears ridiculous to me,' and 'this is marvellous' means: 'This appears marvellous to me.'
       Do you really enjoy being like that?
       Many people do, while energetically pretending otherwise.
       Would you like to be able to test what really is ridiculous or marvellous, or anything in between?
       You can do it, but not when you presume that you can do it without any practice, without any training, in the midst of being quite uncertain as to what it is you are and why you like or dislike anything.
       When you have found yourself you can have knowledge. Until then you can only have opinions. Opinions are based on habit and what you conceive to be convenient to you.
       The study of the Way requires self-encounter along the way. You have not met yourself yet. The only advantage of meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself.
       Before you do that, you will possibly imagine that you have met yourself many times. But the truth is that when you do meet yourself, you come into a permanent endowment and bequest of knowledge that is like no other experience on earth.

Text: Idries Shah - Wisdom of the Idiots

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My Grocery List

Music: Diamanda Galás - There Are No More Tickets To The Funeral

The Game of DEATH