the sun always shines on TV

(letter from Toronto)

Technology is a drug.


We can't get enough of it.


We feed it to our kids and watch them grow on the forced diet of desensitization. Switch on the TV and someone will tell you 50,000 people died in India. Two seconds later you're watching a comedy. Technology can do that. It gives us simulated realities that make us oblivious to the real world. Heroin does the same thing. So do most class A drugs. Basically, we are all addicts - addicted to the comfort and convenience that technology provides - addicted to the notion that progress is directly related to the size of your computer screen. Of course it is. We must be right. We come from the developed world. We're already developed. Sure. Then again, wealthy kids from America shoot each other. Poor kids in Soweto can't stop smiling.

So who's developed?


I met an Aborigine in Arnhemland, Australia - his nephews showed me symbols where I saw trees and rainbows through smoked glass. They could see fish through clouded water. I couldn't even see my own reflection. I must have forgotten how.

When I look in front of me, I see two paths - spiritual or material. Two worlds - developed or developing. You decide which is which. We're still in the wake of millennium paranoia - earthquakes, floods, end of world scenarios, cult suicides, viral diseases that eat into our computer realities.
This is our developed world.

Then, as Nelson Mandela says 'We are free to be free'.


I guess we make our own prophecies.

Nitin Sawhney - march 2001






The problem with Paradigms, ..is that Shift happens...

the harder you run the more you stay in one place

My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

with thanks to Faye...





He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)




We argued on the channel train to Paris
The vin rouge helped us make it sweet again
But by the time that we got down to Lyon
Everything I said was wrong and you cursed me in the rain
We split up for a while in Barcelona
We met up six days later in Madrid
I was hoping that the break would make things go a little better for us
And for a little while it almost did
Now I'm in a bar in Copenhagen
And i'm trying hard to forget your name
And I'm staring at the label on a bottle of cerveza
And every fucking city feels the same


You said to call you when I got to London
A French girl told me that you'd left a note
I said to her "I like your accent"
and she thought I sounded funny
So we ended up drinking in Soho
Foolishly I followed you to Dublin
Like a ghost I walked the streets of Temple Bar
And all the bright young things
were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters
And once I thought I saw you from afar
Now I'm in a nightclub in Helsinki
And they're playing La Vida Loca once again
And I can't believe I'm dancing to this crap but I'm a chance here
And every fucking city sounds the same


At a cafe in the port of Amsterdam
An E-mail from you said you'd gone to Rome
For a minute I thought maybe but my funds were running low
And anyway it sounded like you weren't alone
So I headed north until I got to Hamburg
A chilly city suits a troubled soul
And on the Reeperbahn I paid a woman far too much
To kick me out before I'd even reached my goal
Now I'm in a restaurant in Stockholm
And the waiter here wants me to know his name
And I can order sandwiches in seven different languages
But every fucking city looks the same

Arriverderci, au revoir, aufwiedersen, hasta la vista baby
Yeah, every fucking city's just the same

Paul Kelly



When Iranians miss someone, they say "your place is empty".
Rajah, your place is very, very empty.




As a result of your 'not knowing', this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt? How can you stand the sight of what you've done? How is it you aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see? If you had eyes, you would have put them out and wondered away from Thebes! -
(177)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(with thanks to Sabine)





We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

I know what you did last friday the 13th a.k.a TGIF!

Viernes

17.17


*He said that to himself with certainty, but he was no longer happy with his decision. He had worked an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn't really his dream. *

-Pg 66, The Alchemist



"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
Sir John Lubbock (1834 - 1913)




i didn't know if Clarissa's gestures toward me were platonic, or Aristotelian, Hegelian, or erotic. So i just lay there, connected to her at 3 points: her hand on my neck, my hand on her back, her hair brushing against my side. I stared at the ceiling and wondered how i could be in love with someone whose name had no anagram.Later she dragged her hand sleepily across my chest and went back to bed, leaving a ghostly impression on me like a handprint of phosphorous.

S.M - The pleasure of my company




Where is the man without the beast? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great lonliness of spirit.
Chief Seattle



*When someone sees the same people everyday, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want that person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
de Alchemist -pg 18



Any woman who thinks the way to a man's heart is through his stomach is aiming about 10 inches too high.

Adrienne E. Gusoff

per aspera ad astra

Zondag 8 Augustus



23.08

Woensdagmiddag, en ik zit er weer,
Het huis waar wij het deden voor de eerste keer

Het lijkt alweer zo lang geleden,
Dat ik je tegen de deurpost uitkleede.

Je ogen verleidelijk, je lippen vragend om eenzoen,
We deden het, we gingen het doen.

Elke woensdag denk ik eraan terug,
Intens genoten ook al was het maar vlug.

Zo vertrouwd en dat voor de eerste keer,
IK mis je, wenneer doen we het weer??????

gevonden op 27 Augustus op een boom, Buiksloterdijk.



"Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die.Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."
Goethe (1749-1832)



in spite of the gleaming bursts of well-being that were generated by the idea of loving Clarissa instead of Elizabeth, in the deeper hours of the night i began to look at myself, to consider myself and my condition, to measure the life i'd led so far. I did not know what made me this way. I did not know of any other way i could be. I did not know what was inside me or how i could redeem what was hidden there. There must be a key or person or thing, or song or poem or belief, or old saw that could access it, but they all seemed so far away, and after i drifted further and further into self absorbtion, i closed the evening with this desolate thought: There are few takers for the quiet heart.

pagina 80,
The pleasure of my Company,
Steve Martin (yes, that one..)




"... expect anything, because the future will be made by someone we least expect, or don't yet know..."



"..surely i come quickly"
jesus' last words.
Book of revelations. 22.20



*It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. -pg 17
van de Alchemist