Asmaan

Not ass-man. Arse-mahn.

Actually. Give a lilting spanish upbeat to the end of that and a british beginning and it could very well be ass-man. Oh well. Can't be bothered.
:)

Arse - Mahn
Asmaan (Sky)

From any vantage point in the world, the sky is beautiful.

Every morning and every evening I walk gazing upwards at the red-tinged clouds. And the British heavens bob smilingly at me. Good morning. Good night.
Not lifelong friends, but a decent amount of affection passes between us in little spurts throughout any given day.



Maybe the word for Sky is Zameen????

when punk goes pop

There seems to be this innate law of nature concerning something great discovered. It has to be shared by all, so the word is spread. And then, somehow, the core of the greatness is tossed and the shell of the greatness discovered is worn. Because it is easier to see the skin and fur than it is to see the heart and soul. Until a pedantic type comes along and gets down to muddied knees to scratch at the dust for lost cores.



When punk goes pop....

Disgarding = disCarding

Break my shackles, honey
Love me tender
Love me sweet?

If I am prone to taking poetic licence to words, allow me to take poetic licence to everything else...


One of the greatest ironies of my life must be that I feel stifled in one of the most free countries on Earth. I feel constrained. I feel defined by forces around me. I feel judged and readied to be quartered before I can find defence. Or offence on my part.

I feel cornered and prodded into smelly poo. All the fault of the little snake.

watch this ssssssnnakeeee sssslitherrrrr awayyyyyy........

Londres - City of Dreams and Japanese Ice Cream

For five months now, I have marched this city with eyes glued to the graying cracks and the sticky tar spots. Flaying snails upturned and begging in the wet summer and now tawny leaves plastered to puddles of rain in the autumn. Soon I will watch melting white ice there.
Unless.
I follow the shoe connected to the knee-bone connected to the swaggering hip-bone connected to the torso bone connected to the larynginal bone thingums connected to the cheek bones connected to the eye orbits connected to the eyes connected to the smile.
Not until I do that.

For five months now, I have heard of the belief in this city's greatness, the rapture in this city's abundance, the glistening sheen that London emits. I have heard much and waited for the city to shush me to listen. I can feel its blood and its pulse, but its heart evades me, if a heart is a centre greater than the mind. I have watched and waited for the beckoning. And when I listened hard, it smiled on me and whispered to my toes and the tips of my ears and then.... raced away in ... shyness.

Can a city renown as this is be shy? How else am I to describe the mysterious, avoidant ways I sense about it without indignity to my self-respect? How else can justify thinking this city to be one huge tv set with 180 thousand channels? How else can I reconcile my choice to avoid the mindless tv set and pursue life with my comparison of London life to the tv I shirk?

So, the city and I dance around each other, careful not to touch. Anxious for a smile from each other. Both already in the London ways. Watchful but not looking each other in the eye. Smiling, but not seeing one smile at the other. We bow at each other, wary but pleased. Defensive, but kind. Inimical, but insouciant. London, meet Sue. Sue, London.

I touch shoulders - accidentally - and rub the musty masonry all over my arm and wait for the sparkle. The city is all white, blinking teeth, sleeked hair and strut and I hope it is the dust off the old bricks that makes it so. This pilgrim has come to you, London, for your shiny powers. For she will need it to gleam atween obstacles. She will need its charms on her way to the rivers of cream and honey. Bless her, Londres. She is your servant. Teach her all your guile. So that she may see through the luminescence and be awed by those of your disciples who are true.

For We can offer to teach all those who come to us, but not all are inclined to become disciples. Lead her to those who will light her path and light her up. Teach her of the subtle differences between the veneer and the pine knots that reveal minutiae of lives lived. For because veneers are the crux of a zeitgeist, they cannot be also be at the helm. Let her walk amid the crux, pepper herself with the mustiness and then walk the thin line to the helm. Let her know the fall, for what errors she lives through, she will have mastered and turned.

Lend her courage to walk. For she wishes to walk.

Tres dramatique.
I came to London with so much expectation. I knew this city was amazing. Astounding. I didn't know why. I just knew it was magic. Now I walk its streets and I am awed at its beauty. I breathe in its air and I am grateful for its coolness. I learn to read the dirt in the cracks in the pavements and to bite my tongue in frustration. I learn to gulp my surprise at the lot it attracts and to to steel myself against despair. There is much to examine to find the glowing soul in this city.

London gleams because it is a city that serves its inhabitants. That these inhabitants are now going to pay higher tax rates to maintain the same level of service as for the last 50 years is, of course,moot. London gleams because it is a handsome dowager dressed in her day jewels. She has shined them since she was 16 when her father first gave her that necklace. Her charm is her legacy. And her legendary prowess, too, is her parfum. Can you see these in the look in her eye when she turns to you?

London shimmers because reality is created her, disgarded into the world and lost in translation. Originality matters when you are one of 5,809 thousand originals. Marketing matters when you are one of 5,809 thousand voices. High professional standards matter when you are one of 5,809 thousand standards. And there is much to examine to find the glowing soul in this city.

Needless to say, I have yet to make London mine. It might be because parts of this city jars against my needs. I need to be seen, but no one looks at you here. I need to be heard, but everyone is watching the great big tv set. I need to be free, but there are so many rules.

But, alas.
Now to learn the steps of this dance and start having fun before my imminent deportation.
And an easy goodbye to the blue monster.
You were something else to work with, baby.
Lots of spitty cooties to you.
Bwah.

This is the way the world ends....

....
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Hollowman, T.S.Elliot?

This stanza is embedded in my mind because apocalypse cannot be anything but dramatic as the world rears up its body and roars in denial at the extingushing of its life. It cannot be anything but lurid, memorable and loud. Yet the end of my foray into the world of corporate administration is with a whimper. And the bang has to be created yet again.

This corporate gollum is tired and happy to lay head and suit on the guillotine. It has been a long, arduous journey.
Much has been lost: innocence, patience, self-righteousness.
Much has been gained: guile, frustration, compulsion, passion, entitlement, determination.
The lessons have been hard and stubborn. And they may continue to be stubborn, but the blows have dulled.
Softened.

Hyperventilation is a must!

The last two/ three? months have stagnated me along with this blog.
This blog is my life-breath. It is my soul. It breathes my life into other souls.

Truth. I am reading Paulo Coelho's The Witch of Portobello. I was curious about Athena's many facets as seen by the many who knew her and I was drawn to someone taming a restless spirit. Or managing a restless spirit, as we say in the corporate world. Athena has begun to leap up the paths of new ageism and I have begun to feel fear even greater than that which I felt when I read Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ and I felt that God was going to strike me down to dust for even looking at the book.

My passion, it appears, has stepped back for another passion: venturing into the world and easing my thirst for discovery and adventure. Of course, gastritis has struck me low at this particular moment, but three months' hence I might be in the original Mayfair, Bath, Cornwall.

Two niggling questions:
1. How does one continue one's passion's path while seeming on other paths?
2. How does one retain a semblance of integrity and decency in a large corporation and still move places? How does one avoid being razed by it all?

Transcendalation

First of all, in context, my first quote should've read as:

"Communities are the human, emotional and cultural nodes of the complex system of systems that comprise a city. They are where the city's systems - transportation, commerce, food, energy, safety, education, healthcare - are organically fused. THEY ARE WHERE INTEGRATED NOVELTY IS CREATED OUT OF RADICAL COMPLEXITY. They are where safety, prosperity, innovation, and social cohesion can rise out of diversity of cultures and of use, as Jane Jacobs argued in her classic book. "

So, Jane knew about this all along. Damn Jane.

More quotes from Rosabeth and Stanley's Manifesto for Smarter Cities:

"When cities are segregated by group (e.g., by race, ethnicity, or language), and members of subgroups have no connections with others, they can become vulnerable to symptoms of social disorder (such as illness and crime), which threaten everyone's quality of life, not just that of the at-risk population."

"An effort was mounted in the 1960's to develope and fund "Model Cities" with the idea there was one model for effective city and a social safety net, but it bogged down in arguments between community social services rather than job creation and economic development, and did not address the interconnected nature of organisations that make cities great."

Perhaps this is a description of current great cities of world - great social services provided to a population unwilling or unable to propel and maintain itself. I am being harsh considering that I live in a third world city on the right end of the blanket. But it does seem to feel as if the great cities were created from opportunity and nepotism. Or, maybe, it was actually the best idea in that moment. To counter my display of horrible attitude, I suggest being the best resource there is and thinking about how cities are great. And how their greatness aids their planning and how their planning aids their greatness.

Alternatively, I read something interesting last week: To trust is to be careless.

According to jewish philosophy. According to Dr. Henry Cloud, to trust is to know that someone is looking out for you even when you're not looking out for you. Dr. Cloud has obviously not being socialised. Nor has he studied insecurity.

Combine the two streams of thought above: architecture and planning and philosophy, the Indians had their own version of feng shui - vedic architecture. Sthapatya Veda is the science of building in accordance with Natural Law. This law states that individual intelligence and its interconnectedness with the Cosmic Intelligence of the galactic universe is the most precious feature of life. Further, every particle of matter - everything in creation - is in perfect harmony with everything else and maintains eternal order in the ever-expanding, ever-evolving universe. Concisely, North and East are the only auspicious directions in which a building can face.

In conclusion, the library has granted me amnesty. Celebrate my near-brush with crime and punishment and feast your eyes on my first ever contribution to an amateur exhibit:

Cynicism Kills (First attempts at Chinese Watercolour Painting)

I am convinced that cynicism is lethal.

Life.

is fatal, come to think of it.

To your left is Rudolph (called Reddy by some). Rudolph is indelibly cheeky and relentlessly cheerful.

[Beep!]

[Psychosis Alert!!!!]

[BeepBeepBeeep!!!!]

Super-Procrastination

This was supposed to come into being three nights ago.
What that means is that:
a) I am not God. God created the world in 6 days.
b) I am not better than God - just in case you had some doubts there after reading a).
c) This posting might contain too many ideas in a very disorganised fashion.

Here goes...

Last week, the university sent me a rejection letter after I had applied for a course for a third time in 9 years. THREE in NINE. I was distraught. I wore my underwear the wrong way round that night - not deliberately, accidentally. Subconsciously.

And I had yet another meaningful stare with someone I wasn't intimately involved with.
The meaning was not aligned with my wishes either. I've shared so many meaningful stares in the last three months and, somehow, the honest, kinder stares have a shorter lifespan. The person looks away quicker when they actually like you and care about you because they didn't want to upset you.

Random, curious quote:
" ..(cities) are where integrated novelty is created every day out of radical complexity."
from a manifesto for smarter cities by IBM and Harvard. I am not too certain as to what would make cities smarter. Yet more procrastination: tell you tomorrow...