The Philosophy of Sunsets

Sunsets everywhere are beautiful. Just the colours in all their natural beauty and the way they meld together like a symphony of colour in the sky. The natural world serving as a teacher of how colour should be used, how they should be mixed… and at the same time, making you feel so much with something as simple… as a sunset.

They are beautiful no matter where you see them and the billions of variations, what amazes me most is how they make you feel. After a long day, you can look at a sunset and see in all that immensity, the intense beauty which tells you “No matter what happened today, everything is going to be okay… I’m going to come back again tomorrow in similar fashion. Life goes on and Life is beautiful.”

You can see it in your imagination right now, can’t you? The Bright Orange which creates the pinks above melding with greys and blues, and the purplish blue beneath it like a bruise on the horizon. What I like most is at that moment when the sun disappears but the stratus clouds linger right overheard and capture all the pink against the last blue of the dying day and slowly the orange and pink disappear with the blues moving from light to intense dark blue to black. I love that.

Thoughts on My 30th Birthday…

Will we ever know how to really relate to our age? I think my confusion/apprehension (Can’t find the right word) comes from the mass media and movies where we’re blasted with age-defying creams, worried faces over “getting old” and the constant battle between “act your age” and “you’re only as young as you feel.”

Anyway, I’ve been on this planet for 30 years and I’m wondering what I have to show for it. What value have I added to this planet and to my fellow human beings? Have I uplifted anyone’s life? have I contributed to building something which will benefit people today, let alone future generations?

Bottom line: I don’t feel I’ve done enough, and I need to do more.

So my question to myself is this… what can I do to add more value? Where can I get involved and utilise my skills to make this world, or at least my world (i.e. my sphere of influence) a better place?

My answer is to constantly focus on making myself a better person – learning more, doing more to help wherever I see other’s need help but in a pro-active way, not a reactive way. Talking to people more… I’ve realised most of all people just want to be heard, so I should hear them out.

Whatever happens next, I hope I’m successful in this.

My Rant on the Purpose of Life.

I don’t know why they can’t see it. You know, the fact that this life is so temporary. They make it their “everything” and it isn’t. They’re killing for it on TV, all over the place… for gold and wealth and land. None of it’s their’s to begin with, they don’t really own it, they don’t own anything because when they die they can’t even take their own bodies with them. Ownership is an illusion.

I’m wondering if these people have ever stopped to think “What’s the point of my life?” Because it can’t be to screw people out of their savings or cause wars so that my people can drive SUV’s. I just can’t see how they could have got their priorities so messed up. And to make matters worse, they sincerely believe that they will not be held accountable for their actions. I believe they will be. It can’t be any other way, I believe EVERYONE will be held to account for the good and the bad they do in this life… otherwise there just can’t be any point.

Just to live, because we got here by some fluke of nature and evolved from amoeba’s and there’s no real purpose to life except to live “as best we can” and then die and turn to dust and that’s that. What a crock of shit. Who decides what’s the best way to live then? I can do whatever I want… rape, kill, thieve…. Because there is no consequence if that’s the philosophy to live by. No wonder they find it okay to steal people’s livelihoods, destroy nations and sit there with straight faces or wipe it away with little laughs of “oh, my I’ve made a booboo, haven’t I … ha ha ha”.

There is a flaw in the basic philosophy which is making the society the way it is.

Your “Health and Safety” Craze… is because of your fear of death.
Your Financial Crisis is because you fear the loss of your wealth.
And be sure…both will come true, you will die and you will lose your wealth because that is the way life works and people are tried in different ways. Wake up. These things are there in order to wake us up and live our lives better. You’ve used them to create your own hell on earth, and the one to come is waiting for those who squander the trust of others.

Recognise.

Million Star Motel.

I came across this song on one of my feeds and its my new favourite song. Firstly, two of my favourite rappers feature, Lupe Fiasco and Black Thought.  It’s from Nikki Jean’s new album called “Pennies in a Jar”.  The lyrics make the entire song, a story of a girl, broke, but marvelling in the world around her and feeling really, really rich… in a million star motel.  The beat is very upght the midnight sky, but you can’t buy a mibeat and makes you feel good too…

“God Bless non-believers, they teach the dreamers how to fly, love and hate fuel the fire in their eyes,  the suits and the schemers, can’t see beyond what they can sell, diamonds shine in the midnight sky… but you can’t buy a million star motel…”

Overcoming the Sickness

Over the last few days I’ve been afflicted with the flu, a major set of headaches and now this weekend, one bastard of a chest infection. So I’m following advice, trying to stay in bed, a lot of liquids, old trusted natural remedies, etc. but as of this moment it’s the chest infection I’m concentrating on getting sorted. So I made this “super juice” in an attempt to give my body one blast of goodness from nature.

3 wedges of lemon
One small piece ginger
Fresh orange juice
Blue berries and raspberries
1/2 tsp honey

Blend them together.

It was a definite hit. Very sharp flavour but good. Looking for other healthy concoctions I can make… Anything to kill this thing.

Black and Red

Went on a trip up North about a week ago to Tethford Forest with a group of friends for some off road biking, something I’ve not done since I was a teen. Anyway it all came back to me after trudging through the Red (Intermediate) and Black (Expert) biking paths. It was by far the best and worst experience I’ve ever had and I want to do it again!

It is something I would highly recommend to anyone willing to try it although as with the picture below you really do need to be realistic around your skill level and most definitely your fitness level.

It was nostalgic though, remembering throughout my childhood how I used to ride…Everywhere! And suddenly muscle memory kicks in and you just feel your way throughout the entire journey. I loved that feeling. I realised that this is what I want to do in terms of a sport, I absolutely love the challenge of pushing myself and building myself beyond my limits and also completing the course in front of me.

At one stage to increase my motivation I imagined being chased by dogs, something not all too unfamiliar to my childhood, and just that mindset change did wonders to how quickly I completed the certain aspects of the course.

Technically, throughout the entire journey I kept the big gears in the middle area of 2 and averaged between 2 and 6 depending on the difficulty level of the terrain. I’d recommend that if you do this, you keep within the limits and you should stick to these limits.

Why am I writing this? If you noticed the frequency of my blogposts I’ve decided to break my hiatus from my online journaling and this seemed like a great place to start.  Word.

“Shit is complicated, yo.”

Things mostly get complicated because of a conflict of two things. Selfish motives on one hand and what you really need to do on the other. What makes us excel, transcend, rise above is the conscious focus we have to make the right decision. It’s not always easy, it may be a simple choice since the right way will be clear but, but its definitely not easy. It may even be painful.

Intent is everything, and you need to be aware of what your intent is. In fact, be aware of everything you do, don’t be a freakin zombie because one day you’ll wake up and ask “WTF have I been doing with my life?”. That’s no way to live, yo.

“It’s not hard to do the right thing, it’s hard to know what the right thing is… but once you know what the right thing is, it’s hard not to do it.”

Yes, I am a Brand-Brainwashed Corporate Slut

So what if I drink Starbucks and LIKE drinking it? I know they’re Satan’s spawn, the scum of the earth, an oppressive aggressive branded corporate entity with no moral scruples. Not forgetting the more conservative of my kind telling me constantly that Starbucks supports “the Jews” and funds Israel and I’m actually drinking the blood of Palestinian Children. WTF?!?

I did my research and scrutinised their very public annual reports. So that’s just paranoid bullshit. Plus it’s local, it’s convenient and it may not be the best coffee in the world but in a rush on the way to work. It’s perfectly fucking adequate for my needs.

I am in marketing, I know what goes into creating a product and getting it into market. It’s hard enough without some fucking ridiculous notion of an insidious evil plot to take your money and support some oppressive bastard regime like Israel.

I also like branded jeans, prefer branded cereals, sneakers, clothes, cars (do you even get unbranded vehicles?), even my underwear has some discount chains brand on it. Oh, and I’m writing and publishing this from my Apple iPhone, so to the haters, fuck you.

The Currency of the Imagination

“Are there gonna be strobe lights?”
“Yeah… in their hearts!”

This review is a bit delayed, but I attended a poetry reading by Suheir Hammad and the Palestinian Audiovisual group Tashweesh recently on the Southbank Centre’s “Imagining Peace” Poetry International 2010 event.

The introduction to Suheir Hammad, renowned Palestinian-American poet, and Tashweesh, audiovisual Palestinian group mentioned something about poetry being the currency of the imagination.  A very nice description I think… in a philosophical kind of way which can mean very different things to different people, but that’s what poetry is right?

Anyway… I’ve always loved Suheir’s poetry and the way the event was sold regarding Tashweesh, the audiovisual elements, etc. I was expecting something great.  The DJ of the group, MC Boikutt, is known to me too where a few years back I downloaded mp3′s of his work and his group, Ramallah Underground.  Well… I got something I really didn’t expect… you know the weird artsy thing some artists do where they use static and weird sounds as music, well this was something like that. With an added visual element, the images were jittery, incoherent and sometimes really scary.  I got a few pictures in my head which made sense… riding between two huge walls which looked like the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, and the other being a silhouette of flying birds against the backdrop of a picture of a leaky, dingy sewer.

The sounds also had the heavy constant bass in the background with the front notes being the scratchy static, which gave the unmistakable impression and feeling of oppression and anxiety. I think that is what they were going for but it went on a bit too long and later on in the set there was some elements showing of Boikutt’s previous work which actually had some beat to it before falling back into what eventually just became really irritating sounds and images lacking any further meaning.

Unfortunately in this context I feel that Suheir’s poetry suffered as well in terms of having that dark edge to them instead of the usual meaning.  Suheir, however, did save the show with her humour and personalising the event,,, “Yo London, make some noise! Thanks for your rainy Friday and the river”. The added element of randomly choosing her poetry did work in a way with Tashweesh and some of the audience picking random numbers which she then used to choose poems from her books.

It’s not just her words… but the way she delivers the poetry which makes the impact all the more potent.  The meaning becomes much clearer with her presentation than from plainly reading her work.

What is Beauty?

It’s temporal and it’s not only image based. It depends more on the observing than the observed. It’s all perception.

If it depends on the eye of the beholder… then what is beauty dependent upon? Surely it would be the values and perceptions of the one observing the object of beauty… but then, what determines those values?

Media, cultural perceptions, little niggly perceptions we grew up with. But then… beauty can’t be that superficial, I mean… so-called “ugly” people, according to convention, fall in love all the time and surely that’s dependent on some type of beauty, right? Maybe it’s just not the image-based perception of beauty.

But let’s look at the facts… generally the beautiful have a few common characteristics… They’re fit, healthy, strong… mixed with the intellectual side of being intelligent, not very risk-averse and emotionally intelligent as well.

Note: All of the above don’t come easy… they take hard work. Hence, to be considered beautiful one would have to work at it. Expecting it to just fall into one’s lap is, well, improbable.

That’s what beauty will always be dependent upon – characteristics which are wholesome and need to be maintained. Except for the few culturally based values like that of some islands and countries where more ‘robust’ women are preferred or like in Cape Town where the loss of front teeth is seen as beautiful… you get the picture.

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