general ramblings on the flavour of life

to recap

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 03:12:00 +0000

One wonders, or i should say, sometimes I wonder, or was that sometimes we wonder in third person, not withstanding the immediate loss of direction. I wonder what context shifts occur on a momentary basis within that which is me?

My life is based on the context that I experience it in, paradoxically this becomes a paradox that returns and gives itself context giving meaning to things that have no meaning.

As the tides of life ebb and flow through my daily life, days turn into weeks and months and years. I sit and recap and realise that which was is no longer and what is, is no longer what it was. I cannot say it is with regret that i look back, but there are moments where I stand transfixed and cannot move my feet in the quagmire that is my life. I am trapped in the construct which i have created for myself which espouses freedom of thought and challenging and facing things head on in life and doing things that challenge. Life itself is a daily challenge, without it life loses some of its meaning, yet the challenge weighs me down at times, some of it self inflicted at other times circumstantial. But as we accept, was going to say know, that we are the masters of our own destiny. That is if we disregard the possibility of predestination.

to return to the immediate and clearer current reality, i should recap on that which has taken place and that which has not. my list of personal achievements have grown by the day, making pierogi and anything under the sun, making beer, which is a natural extension of breadmaking. The agents remain similar but the target differs.

strangely hours before, words and emotions were cursing through my brain, you may have chosen coursing, but truly it is a curse when the Black dog runs untethered through the halls within my head. And for what it barks, only the maker knows. all i know is that the sweet smell of salt and seaweed consoles my inner being, as mud splatters across my face, the back of my bag and i bounce panically across the paths on my daily mountain biking trail on the way to and from work, The regular tightening of the sphincter as i plunge headlong bouncing down the tracks, everything in tension, ironically removing the tension of the day, albeit cautiously i plummet down these tracks with only minor skirmishes with gravity which luckily I have overcome without major maladies.

I still search for the ultimate tastes across my palette, recently I tasted some real French champagne, It is totally transfixing to imagine how the author of this glorious elixir managed to capture the sun, the vine, autumn and the afternoon golden light in the bottle, encasing it all in magical mysterious minute bubbles.. Which I would love to insert into some of my home brews, these are miraculous in their own right. I refused to make a bre4w containing pre-prepared ingredients and went straight to all grain brewing, skipping the extract and kit brews. This allowed me to perform minor miracles in the kitchen and garage, ending with wonderful potions such as fig beer and lest not forget the mysterious Saison or farm ale which at many levels speaks to me.

I suppose partly this recap is to catch up on some of the pieces i wrote in my mind over the time that has passed.

more on the books i read and have not read.. I eventually finished a god of small things on the second attempt .. a fantastically complex book, but more recently I started on antifragile by Nassim taleb.. which is fantastic in a totally different way. More on this later.

But lets try and recap some notes from evernote:

So where to go again

Moments pass, happiness floods through, it passes they steal away. This morning I have seen a few mostly amazing things, a beard book.. go search for it..

men with beards.. just to amazing .. there is an annual ernest Hemmingway competition .. which if only I had a full head of hair..

Photos of wondering monks in Ethiopia and India.. (Portraits of Wandering Ascetic Monks by Photographer Joey L)

I saw some more amazing exhibitions this weekend, including some time lapse photography, got seaweed, made some seaweed soup for the garden, with fish heads in side.

more later ...

book titles and reading list for the year and the subconscious art of generating things through the paradigm of a million monkeys

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 02:54:00 +0000

Just thinking about a possible reading list and to do activities for the next year. what do you think I should read next year? or at least start again this year?
this would of course exclude all the fluff we read in between like the beer brewing and recipe books and other general informational stuff..
I think in the light of the previous post yesterday where I mentioned the Viking ceremony, “we”, most probably I, possibly need/Feel that it is time again for another stock take, we have been here a little over 3 years and time drifts and waits for no manman or woman or manwoman or womanman or others. So at this point to re-enact this I would need a chalice or preferably a drinking horn, maybe i need some mead or some farm ale.
I must apologise, I did not complete this on time yesterday? But in a way I don’t feel bad about it because at this stage there is only 1 or are2 or 3 people who actually read this on the blogosphere, and to be honest it is not really life changing? And there is little or no feedback or response on the page anyway?
I got to thinking yesterday they day before about possible abdication or removal of my self from the social media world, but realised after a it of thought that there are actually a few people who I sincerely do keep active contact with and it perform as fairly well as a format to share information and interesting things with, But I do feel a rather wholesale culling coming on.. Think this has a lto to do with certain delusions of friendship that I have with others while actually being a near complete loner.
Another strange thing I was thinking about was funny things you remember as a child to this day which actually mould or form the way you live, things you like and other oddities.
In this list immediately to mind the items that come to mind are Persian carpets, cat gut, black cats, survival, cataclysm, back tracking of vocals, and many more. In some ways, maybe I should not debunk my own myths? Or maybe i should get a better understanding, well this is being written in real time without a script or thought of the eventual outcome? I had to get up from my desk and my thought process ahs changed once again..
maybe something to look into the future at this stage all you will get is a short list of some of the quirks inside my brain In no particular order whatsoever, also please note i don’t actually follow up on all of them.. some of them I do, however follow up on.
Persian Carpets all have an intentional flaw built into them and you have to find them to truly appreciate the mastery fo the carpet, that si over and above the normal artistry
Black cats cause you bad luck if they run out in front of you (this is duplicitous because it could be bad luck or even triplicitous * yes grammar and word police that is NOT a word YET *)

subtext:_{this should not be confused in anyway or means with a singel,dubbel, trippel or extra strength trippel I am not a trappist writer It cannot be thus confused, we have to keep this clear and not get confused here, i not have authority to do that or say things in those terms.}

It is important to always have safety equipment with you at all times (well living in Wellington where the world really Rocks .. maybe?)
A small pyramid will, when placed over a blunt razorblade, of specific dimensions and ratios, will sharpen it and or keep fruit fresh.. hey something i remember from my childhood, it could however be from the back of a chappie wrapper? and yes * the anti-wikipedia police keep those thoughts to yourself *
vernuncular was actually a word, this is vernacular .. so we toted the term that vernuncular is the vernacular of vernacular .. silly i know
the poisonous nature of certain things, plants etc etc.. of which many were not and others are.. especially small harmless animals or fish or other like beasts, like dragon tails or teeth
religion, i will leave that uncontested other than adding in the prefix of all..
you can cook an egg on the bonnet of a car if it has/had been standing in the sun.. never did this? suppose this is not to dissimilar form cooking a chicken in the manifold of your big six or v8 towing car on the way to your holiday destination.
some peoples singing can actually shatter glasses?
you can outrun a wild animal, and other similar items
One favourite one is that a VW golf can be ridden through a freshly ploughed maize field and it will feel like a boat going through waves? Or did that happen
I think there are many others, some include you for a possible candidate for the Darwin awards
lest not forget the yeti, bigfoot, UFO’s the illuminati and all the other paranormal crap?
In the same vein it might actually be time to put pen to paper especially around the Clive and George saga? maybe we have waited long enough to protect the innocent as they have gone from innocent to who gives a f..
strange things memories?
I suspect maybe by scanning some old photographs from the past it may well up some huge pieces of memories from the past? well is supect it will but so far one thing that is apparent, that even over time my photographic skills sic! *disclamer* have improved in my own eyes some of the aspects have remained the same over the years, especially in the primary and basic way I perceive things around me? I am not sure if this is good or bad or normal, is it possible to actually change your perspective, from a visual documentation perspective, other than the obvious dalliances on the side, or not? I wonder? I think I may just have to give you an answer over some time, possibly by adding in some photographs from now then and look and see how I see things the same and differently. I wonder if it is possible to actually change the way we view things, without changing who we are, or possibly only if we mimic the way others see things, then are these still a reflection of our artistic interpretation of the world around us, or do we just become cookie cutter individualists who are just very good copies of others who are very good copies of others? I suspect much of what i do and see is fairly boring in some ways because there may be a clinical observational aspect to my psyche which originates from having studied biology for so long, then int eh same vein there is a flicker, almost as if it is a glitch in the matrix where things are different and not as they seem or the same when they should be different? Either way there is an aspect which is not as it should be and in those moments there is another side which leaches through, there is no knowing where this leaches from, it could just be all the residual memories and reflections that do not make sense in my somewhat boring and observational mind and they have to be expressed in their native format and not as the literal observational mind sees them.. These images tend to burst out rather than develop, and not in a way that you can predict and plan for them, they are part of a scattergun approach, possibly i am applying the subconscious art of generating things through the paradigm of a million monkeys .. now that would make a fantastic title for book.. now that I have the title I only have a few hundred thousand words to go, or not?
I may have to rather complete some of the other tasks as not put out in the previous days topics? the things I did not write down yet, But i think i might just have to keep thsoe for my postmodern ~~celtic~~ viking style celebration that I am planning, but I think all the scene has to be set and I have a number of things to get ready before i can rush into something as serious as that.
I also think that the future is to nebulous and at this short juncture I would say I am committed to do stuff and not stop doing stuff and to not stop dreaming and planning and hoping to do stuff in the future ..
that is enough for now, the rest will have to leach out later..

thanksgiving and the weekend and heavenly beer

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 23:10:00 +0000

We had our first thanksgiving,

and it was interesting a non secular Christmas day without the gifting, generally a good experience with our Germerican friends. In general we are still waiting for summer. as you can see I am re-enacting the pilgrim claiming his land and receiving food from the Natives. I can see why it is such a popular holiday in the US of A. It is a non religious holiday that can include all those of different faiths, denominations and likewise to give thanks for that there is to give thanks for.

More importantly thanks to a beer book, written by a Woman … Yes can you believe that No seriously.. yes a beer book written by 2 not 1 women. It is fantastic, it is called “ The Naked Pint” and I bought it new.. It is a Fantastic read, it gives a an unadulterated guide to craft beer. What amazes me the most is the variety of beers that are made around the world, this is mostly written about barley/wheat based beers and not about other fermentable though, so nothing about sorghum beer. To return to the book, it gives a refreshing view on all the worlds different beers and their histories. I think it is well worthwhile reading if you are a fledgling home brewer to learn about the depth and breadth of the beer varieties world wide. There are a plethora of beer styles with an insane tapestry of history woven into them. One of the most intersting, well i will poke into at least 2 for now are the Trappist beers made by Monks and the Lambics. Both interesting for different reasons, and if I dont run out of stream the sour beers (wheat beers fermented with a combination of yeast and Lactobacilli) . Firstly the Trappist beers, they are only brewed by ~~7 9 6~~ monasteries (varying number), and only by monks and for no financial gain and only with specific age old recipes.. damn interesting.

from wikipedia :

The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery, either by the monks themselves or under their supervision.
The brewery must be of secondary importance within the monastery and it should witness to the business practices proper to a monastic way of life
The brewery is not intended to be a profit-making venture. The income covers the living expenses of the monks and the maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Whatever remains is donated to charity for social work and to help persons in need.
Trappist breweries are constantly monitored to assure the irreproachable quality of their beers

Nonetheless, the long and short is this is amazing, and apparently the beers are heavenly on a number of levels. This Does not include the Abbey beer which is similar but not quite as strict but also a limited pathway to heavenly delights . I see now there is a plethora of new semantics to learn and become fluent in when it comes to the world of beer and more specifically craft beer. It seems as if there is a beer for every possible day or celebration. I wills top now before I wax lyrical, but it is inevitable after the bread commith the ~~wine~~ beer.

One thing that it does give me is something else to obsess about in my spare time, one more thing to do, make beers, wines, meads and the likes. It returns me to the thought of the Viking new year celebration or at least the colloquial or version i have in my head from many years ago, the details have most probably changed a lot. All I can remember is that it involved drinking mead and then telling the world about “how cool you are in front of your Peers and country folk” a fantastical idea. I will have to investigate the origins of this. I have after looking found what i had heard many years ago, it is vaguely as I recollect : “In Theodism or Anglo-Saxon neopaganism in particular, the symbel has a particularly high importance, considered "perhaps the highest rite" or "amongst the most holy rites"^[11] celebrated. Symbel consists of rounds of ritual drinking and toasting, and invariably takes place within an enclosed space of some kind.^[12] It is usually inaugurated by three formal rounds, as determined by the host; often led by toasts in honor of the Gods, then ancestors and/or heroes, and then a general or personal boast. Other boasts may take place as necessary. Symbel is always formally closed once the formal boasts are completed, in order that the symbel might maintain its dignity and not degenerate into "mere partying".^[13] The two types of boast are the ȝielp (pronounced 'yelp') and the beot (pronounced 'bayawt', but as one syllable). The former is a boast of one's own worthiness, such as one's accomplishments, ancestry, etc. The latter is a boast of an action one plans to undertake. In order to protect the luck of the hall, such boasts are subject to challenge by the thyle, whose job it is to make sure that unlucky boasts do not contaminate the luck of all present.” --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbel

After reading a few more of these articles on the sumbel it appears that one of the key things is that it is a praise and a ritual toast to Gods/Godesses (you can chose and insert your own deity here), dedication to friends/heros/ancestors others, some form of boasting and oaths. So it does seem that there is alcohol involved and that it is a slightly sombre even and that it is about giving praise and giving some self praise, But very importantly also about making an oath about something you will do? Possibly a historical origin of new years resolutions? Wild leap there, but is is possible. I suppose what this does point out is the way we remember a piece of something in a way we want to remember it. We make it our own and remember what struck as being important. The human mind in its absolute fragility only remembering limited things of a limited scope that does take history and things into consideration.

and yes, I know Wikipedia does not constitute research, these are just nice summary pages on the topics for you to wet your lips on, and i do like including something that is actually half way factual based on what i read in other sources, I do not want these to look like a journal reference, this is a rambling and is not always accurate as it is my musing and not reality.

On a slightly different note, I was thinking a few days back I wonder what books I have that I still want to read and possibly reread and why?

I might go through my book shelf and evaluate them and consider what and why, also possibly what books and authors I would like to read? Here I am more than willing to accept possible suggestions of books and authors from any of my recent and current and future readers?

There are always those books you buy. borrow, steal, get gifted or just mean to read, should read, possibly I need to go through the good Prof’s reading list and start again?

Wow

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:34:00 +0000

there are things we think we know, things we expect to act and behave in a certain way, as an allegory I would like to use the ukulele. we expect certain things and not others, I expect spring to have sun and almost be in summer.. but it isnt summer or even close down here in aoterea. It can only be described as a season of change, which should not be confused with “ a time for a change” because we have been there and the time changed, since it was a time for change and now after time time changed we here now. This is not unlike something i saw this morning, it was a fairly arbitrary video on fly fishing and how it changed certain peoples lives and all the general schmaltz about living for now and working to live and living to work. It did not make a bad video, or story but it did highlight a somewhat amusing story i heard yesterday about a couple from NZ who their whole lives decided they wanted to live on a barge in the UK. the lasted all of 2 months before they returned home, sometimes our dream might be having the dream, the reality is sometimes not what we seek, sometimes we seek the dream. This is going to be long and laboured, 226 words down and 1400 or so to go plus the deficit from the Previous day.

there are a whole series of photos below, each displaying something rather unique about wellington in the rain.

I am including this Photograph or rather collage first of the City Gallery and square outside of it which i know for the Giant sphere ufo~thingie~mabob that hangs there and gets hundreds if not thousands of photographs taken of it daily. and the weird pyramid .. no idea what they are there for, but they are there. there is almost no one out there in this huge square with its patterned brick paving. rather than not being what it seems it is what is and yet it is what it seems, i just have no idea of what it is as it seems like a huge sphere in the sky and a pyramid in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing more to it other than that. I must confess i did mess up the pics a little, the idea was there, but the execution let me down a little, I will have to do it again tog et rid of the out of focus pieces and replace them. this was a whole series of photos stitched together with Hugin. the parts make the whole, but the whole is not the sum of the parts, rather just a part of the sum of the lot. silly I know but i was standing next to the library and that is of course a place of semantics. I sometimes wonder about some of the books I have read, am reading, want to read, want to re-read and some of them especially get stuck in a limbo, the most current being a god of small things, what a fantastic book, with fantastic characters and textures of India, very different but similar in my mind to midnights children, and both of them suffer the same fate, they are unread and are both on my nightstand, waiting me to finish them. It is not as if i am unable to finish books, at the moment I have read a whole lot of softer books about after things like flyfishing and beer making and bread and sociology, the FlyFishing book, was fantastic, even though it had little or nothing to do with flyfishing, it had to do with a sense of place and sense of activity. I think fly fishing is a lot to do with a sense of place and being and sense of something that is not tangible, once again my brain explodes into divergent thought patterns, I will lay down notes and links for you to go look your self, I have seen them; fly fishing book by derek Grzeleweski, the book is called trout diaries, the other thoughts have gone while focussing on this… I am sure they will come back. what was apparent to me from his book was the following: he is Polish, i am nominally of Polish origins , he loves fishin, he loves his dog, he writes well enough and I enjoyed his book, strangely one of the flyfishing club members i went away with to the Rangitikei this past weekend thought the book was rubbish as it had little to do with the technical mastery of fly fishing, for me the mastery is one thing that adds to the value of flyfishing, being there, catching fish which relies on some skill, seeing fish, releasing fish (i prefer to .. don’t really like killing fish).When I catch fish in the sea with Bait i have a little less remorse, I have no idea why? Even when i catch salt water fish by fly i feel i have to release the fish, which is weird, but that is the way the fish falls or slips through my fingers.

I have so lost track, yes am tending to speak like, like my children now, it is pretty sweet as

I was still thinking about the books, and how we relate to books, and if i could read an e-book, strangely i don't think so.. even though i am a tech aware and tech savvy and use technology all day somehow a book remains a bound object, something that has tactile or haptic value attached to it, reference material can easily be seen on the web, but somehow the experience of having a large factor book with colour plates is rather amazing, especially large colour plates of hand illustrated images.. this is paradoxical? strangely when I read books of fiction or books or words, pages of words i prefer a smaller factor. Absolutely arbitrary, but it is what it is these are musings and ramblings, i write them, you chose to read them or not.

Back to the series of photographs, once again, the Rain the Rain, almost like the sea the sea by Margret Atwood, but more or less emotional depending where you stand on these issues. The next series of photos are sorta something different to the one above, but a lot the same.

Accidentally this photograph or sequence of 2 photographs captured something, not quite what i wanted but something surprising, the second photograph is almost without meaning on its own, the empty space, but when coupled to the previous photograph it suddenly fills the space with hope and answers. Our minds play games with the empty spaces and the movement of the people in and out of spaces with the essence of their existence being moved to a memory of reality which was never significant in any way, but now suddenly becomes more significant because there where there was nothing was previously filled with movement, all that remains is possibly the scent a few swirls a piece of paper a vibration on the door?

these all show me the experience of the day that was with people and wind and rain swirling around me..

somehow once again I don’t seem to be able to transend the 1300 word limit again, It might well be that is the length and extent of the though process in my brain, that I am already thinking about the friday beer after work, thinking about the thanksgiving supper we are having at the Germericans, thinking about the weekend and all the things i have to do on the weekend. So much to do, so little time. But as we know now is the time, but part of that time should be nothing time where we can wait till that time passes and ingest that which is around us and what we are experiencing. the weather gets better, the wind whistles past the windows in my office building. from next week we will have to return to fragmentary pieces of communication again as i will be back at the coal face and turning coal into diamonds again.

a third of 1600 or so must be 4000

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 19:27:00 +0000

Some days are way harder than others, some days we wake up invigorated and ready to conquer the world, other days we struggle to get going or through the day. Some days we are stronger than a raging bull other days we feel like we have been trampled by a raging bull.

As a comment regarding moving away and changing, I suspect change is inevitable, to stay the same would be abnormal. Time changes everything, not always for the good and bad and if you throw in temporality, location and context who knows what will float to the surface or sink to the bottom of the milieu.

On a more cheerful note, please support the dude with his new blog, I also think i may have found a counter foil for myself in Wellington. There is a nerd organisation in wellington called “nerd nite wellington” this is as quoted by them :”Welcome to nerd nite wellington: the first (and until recently, only!) Southern Hemisphere version of the rapidly-becoming-global geekery that is nerd nite.” – they can be found at http://wellington.nerdnite.com/

These may not really be my people, but nerds normally have quasi nerd friends like myself, we all need a good nerd or two to assist us with things. There is also a thought that to fix all problems we require a system programmer that hacks in at very low level code … to solve all problems? but as one of my programmer colleagues states, he may be alight myopic as he (my friend low level hacks to get some code to work on the ipad app he is busy with). while trolling through this I found the League of pragmatic optimists, this is a fairly interesting construct.. I will have to look into this .. but more and more we get faced with the 1000’s of words that russel brand throws at us.. I cannot work out what he is, he speaks so fast, so much and intersperses a 1000 ideas at once, some i agree with others I think are loony, but i love his commitment to life and putting it out there and what he believes in.

A while back I speculated about how we were often, in certain circumstances and in others just a reflection and an aberration often relative to the surroundings, I never considered what happens when a mirror is taken out of a room? I know if the mirror is taken out of the room you no longer see the mirror and all you see is the emptiness as the previously multifaceted and reflective surface that shone with colours and shapes and fragments of pieces of situations is now only an empty void, with little residual memory of the past other than the dents ands scratches and frame and background. It quickly gets filled with new images, but for long remains a silver shining surface. But what happens in the room where it previously adorned a surface or corner, depending on its shape it distorts and makes things appear closer, further the same or totally different, especially in the fading or flickering light of a fire. You have to at some point start questioning or poking this with a large stick saying .. stop with the euphemisms on top of euphemisms on top of reality on top of euphemisms. Where does the light stop, where does it start, how long does a reflection linger, how fast it is replaced. How much changes when a mirror is taken from a room.

off to lunch come back, read this and thing WTF, get real talk about something a little more rational less eccentric, maybe the word i was thinking about yesterday or the day before was Divaricating, I am attaching a link to a key opf the divaricating shrubs of New zealand.. which is a little exiting for some people and mostly pretty frigin arbitrary for others.

I link this photo off www.terain.net.nz, please go visit them if you find this interesting. But back to my previous point this is not to unlike my tangled beard. At the current rate of word loss, by the end of the month i will be down to a handful of words, which I suppose if they were carefully crafted by a wordsmith it would be fantastic, but in the current scenario I require a lot more words to say very little.

To return to Russell Brand and then in a way Tim Minchin, they are both a form of anti celebrity. I cannot decide if that makes them better or actually way worse because they are preying on the likes of those who are not all that conformist? Both of the commit apparent social suicide by the things they do and say, yet they remain popular, even if for the nonthings they say, no not nonsense or nonscience, they actually do speak science, nonscience, nonsense, nothings and sense all at the same time. It does put into question our ability as a society to self regulate. Our Gods are dead or Dying or in certain cases becoming stronger, but not in unison in separation and in conflict with one another. Thrown into all of this is a little scepticism. Now that I consider it further the one is crazy as batshit and the other is an aussie? More seriously I cannot decide if either of them can be taken seriously or not taken seriously?

ok so i forgot to post this yesterday .. goto go now and do the new one soon

1600 words and the spitefull god

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 03:12:00 +0000

I realised today that ~~the~~ ^a god is a spiteful god, here, Today in godzOwn or as the rest of you know it Aotearoa, interestingly I never knew that it had been labelled such for almost a 100 years.. we learn something new every day. Last bit if trivia is that it can be attributed to Thomas Bracken through a Poem he wrote. Just writing this diveri-forms the thoughts in my brain. You may ask what diveriforming is, well it is a word i made up by combining the General term for certain plants here in NZ and in many other countries where the plants are seen as Diveriform, or having very knotted and messy hair not unlike dreadlocks or my hair if i don't keep it cut really short, or alternatively my beard. Back to the spiteful god, if Logic abides as above where we are in Gods own land and it is spring it is a frigin spitting and rainy spiteful spring day, which follows on a weekend that would toast your marshmallows? Key to multi-questioning thing above drives me towards the question of HES and his book, his handwritten book done by his hand using his Mont Blanc pen? Has it started? How far along the way is this book? after listening to the podcast a few days back about Tom wolf, one point that struck me and reminded me about HES was the notion of handwriting a book, tom wolf choses to handwrite the book mainly because he cannot get spare parts for his typewriters. I suspect it has to do with some form of haptic feedback. you may question, why the sullen pic of me staring at the camera in apparent disdain? multiple reasons abound, one to show the wonderful spiteful vista behind me, partially obscuring the wonders that abound in that which is so quaintly called the inlet. Further in the distance is the Plimerton vista and marina where I often fish, deep in the foreground is the beard, which grants warmth and other social interactions. Interestingly as part of a my current social exercises I have noticed that a beard does change the way people look at you, and no (and yes the comma and the and) it does not hide you in society nor give you a facade to hide behind. In contrast it actually makes you more visible, I am not sure at what length it again begins to hide you. It is a strange thing a beard, it feels almost alien and not part of me, this is especially at its current length which is way longer than before., or maybe not as long as it was when I got married for example?

Thanks goodness, I managed to finish the space next to my beard and fill it with words, mostly meaningless words. On to the next thought for the day? I was attempting to brew at home last night in the week after work, one should not attempt to much in such a short time, this in between bottling the children’s home made ginger beer in between the pumkie’s book club meeting at home last night. Id decided i would do a fruit~ish beer, but this all turned to proverbial pie.. the blender broker during me grinding the grains, i could not find a way to grind, half way through the mash, i then found the boysenberries were not boysenberries and were black currents.. Then i miscalculated the amounts needed for a good starting SG, then the temperature would not drop in the fermenter till the next morning.. what a mission. But we tossed the Yeast in this morning, lets hope it grows, I now have a few more days to work out what I can do for the secondary ferment and need to get a little more industrial in my attempts and methods in dealing with some of the technical challenges. I then remember we need to also supply a corn bread for our meeting with the pilgrims in the new land where we will give thanks for what we have. Oh and the other reason for the photo of me, is t avert my self consciousness's.

I was rather enthralled yesterday, I came across a Google meetup with some photographers about inspiration and what drives it and what to do in lulls, amongst them was Lotus Carrol of I am Lotus fame. It is interesting to see the person in “virtual flesh after following them on flickr for a couple or more years seeing how they developed from something on the edge of obscurity to a mega social media success? One of the interesting things was how each of them had similar yet quite different drivers for their inspiration and each of them did have some overlap. One of the drivers in the most successful people was to do what they wanted, and the others were driven a lot more by perfection and their search for perfection, and in certain cases it was a drive for expression. A lot seems to depend on what you take photos of and why you take them? I suspect a lot depends on what you aim with your photography or your art, is it an expression or is it a capitalistic venture, each of them has different biases.

sometimes I stare up at the clouds and they look so plain at other times they look fantastical,strange same place similar clouds, more or less colour and scale.

we cant really know how we will feel the next day, unless we make the effort to be that person to have that outlook and be happy and smell the rain in the clouds, hear the birds chirping above the roar of the icy sub Antarctic gale blowing and chilling you to the bone, it can either stop you there and then in your steps and cut you down as if it were a scythe or it can inflate you with crystalline clarity.. bla bla sometimes the lyrical can run away a little. but there you go, be positive don’t see the crap in it, well that is what i try to tell my self I may be fooling myself but I try. there always seems to be some colour in the grey.. well some days.

Sometimes you see life zooming past you, today is the beginning of the year, soon it is Christmas, but it continues and changes and life runs at a million miles an hour, nothing we do can stop it soon it will be the end of the year and not long after that it will be a new year again. The seasons are more apparent here and eventhough they blend into one long season of discontent and weather at least it lets you know that there are forces way greater than you all around you at every turn.

Maybe we would all feel better if we had a flower like the little prince? I have a few in my garden, but they are being eaten by the snails? I wonder do you think the Little prince had to worry about snails? I am not sure,but i do love clouds, and Tiete had to throw that in, recently I was listening to some Tim Minchin clips on youtube, and amongst them he ahs a song where he is rather serious and intersperses this with man i love Boobs.. this reminded me of a friend who had a similar Mantra in south africa in our old life. I then question sometimes if Tim Minchin is as he seems? Is he erudite and clever or is it a cleverly constructed dialogue? Either way I enjoy the outcome of some of his diatribes and rants, somehow the word fountain is slowly drying up today? i have my doubts if I will reach the allocated number of words before i have to rush off again to the next meeting at a customer?

and the words stopped,

Quick before the sun sets…

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 19:28:00 +0000

i had a realisation again, you must say WTF, do you go from one realisation to another No seriously amongst the moments of blank emptiness on the train and general day I was considering a few things.. One most pertinent was me, yes i was wondering about me, and niggling at the back of my brain was the realisation of the silent promise to try and blog every day for a month, to get back in the flow of things. But where to start, primarily a “friend” or at least a person I know on Facebook who also immigrated and that i had sorta know in ZA, who is also male and also around my age/or me around his age, both of us being massively in our middle years. This brought me to consider how we and others react the changing of time and how we see our lives slip like grains of sand falling between our fingers and how each of us reacts differently, I suppose not unlike the way I have always been am prone to hideous bouts of depression, which i now know when then they arrive and know how to dispel them. this Bifurcates my thoughts into 2 distinct streams; one being do yourself a favour and watch hideous kinky it is a movie with Kate winslet which is fantastic and what is so uber cool are the naked scenes of her show a normal person, intermingled with a crazy as story behind it all; the second arm of the bifurcation is this other person who at this stage should be called Bob. bob is a nice dude, albeit a bit extreme.. but the real point being i see on Facebook he now has a new fiancé, I did not even know he was divorced? This is of course only symptomatic of society and how we live and interact with others, no SLATS not Systematics, that is something totally different. But on the second topic which is way more exiting to me that the prior I now belong to an group/like group or what the .. on Facebook for Coleopterists.. Boy i miss the exiting world of big, small and all things wonderful. I think that will simply Segway me into the next topic, which is what i have done over the last little while, One would imagine that sometimes I am manic, yes that I am.. But i have realised that is what and who and why I exist and what drives me forward every day, the need to see, do, understand and learn more and go and see and catch fishes and watch little brown beetles pollinating lupines on the river bank of the Rangitikei river at dusk (the photos are from the fishing trip i just did with the old dudes of the fishing club). Now after that a small photo essay with some of the things done and undone.

one of the few pics i took on the Rangitikei trip, I do ~~need (want(~~would like a small robust portable camera to take with me)) , for interest these are a pest these lupins, they are a ruderal and make a super impressive show. You can smell them from a long way away. all in all this was a moderately successful exercise, I came away with a fair number offish, I disappointed my self in a lack of focus at times and at others way to much focus, but all in all it was fantastic trip with the oldies.

On being South African and being in another country, but again the debate is still out if i ever was south African or not? difficult question, and no I still don't have an answer about the question posed yesterday, and no i don't think i will have one tomorrow. But i do think that I am happier here, but sadder in the same breath. It is beyond a paradox within a paradox. I do think that the one element that the blogger from last week left out was that if you immigrate and you have friends with you it is awesome, but if you don't it is generally Kak and you need to re-evolve your self and reasons for living and slowly wash the reflection of the others you left behind off your mirror, even though they will always be part of you on the inside and who you really are, their context is spread thinly over these massive distances. It does not mean I do not miss them and what they meant/mean in my life, it just means I had to cut those sinews and let the muscles r-attach again, it is as if i was reborn again to a new world. It is beyond strange to be the stranger in the strangest land. But the solace you get is that there are many of us here, not just south Africans but all types and kinds. Many souties, and it is almost time for our strays and waifs Christmas party as hosted by the non Christians for the mostly non Christians.. this is of course the heathen land. But i return to my comments on Lara Africa, she is awesome, i made a comment on her blog and she responded and does so on all her comments and her poetry is pretty awesome, she seems like she would be an interesting person to meet in real life. This is way to much sentimentalism, and i suspect i am nearing my required number of words pushed to virtual paper for the day, you must know i am sacrificing coffee this morning to get these words in.. yes sideways.

this is really a nothing pic of me at the station this morning, trying to be more like a celebrity, I gather we need to be more aware of ourselves and do selfies all the time showing our people what we are doing, here i was sitting at the station KAK early in the morning and waiting for the train and for my people who never came, because although i was waiting for the train to Pretoria it never came. a tear welled up in side as I think of the briel sisters sitting on the train to Pretoria, but yea no i shall fear not because my phone and my internet shall comfort me with my brewing book as i wait, neigh pause on the journey of life at this insignificant station on the track of life.. OMG what a crock of shite flows through these fingers?

this is still so far from done, it has taken so long ……and it turned out to be more difficult than i imagined, there are certain things we can do and other things we cannot do, i suspect it is key to attempt mostly things you can do and then some that you cannot really do, this is one of them. It is a challenge. A good challenge, none the less we should move towards the light, oh crap is that the train. stupid joke sorry. But at times i do think we get into such a routine and do not remember who we are and who we want to be and why we did what we did to get where we are and why? we should also remember all of the things we complained about and wanted and want to change about ourselves and start changing them, day by day, word by word, less and less spelling mistakes by the day. We cannot change some things, as they are like the sun in the sky and blue and the grey and the white of the clouds and the wind and the rain. things are what they are. This item is attempting o change the fabric of reality by creating something that isn't, something that is not a part of me, but is something i see and experience from outside that i borrow from others. There are so many that are, i am not, but i respect those that are and this is a homage to them.

this is a picture of many levels, one being proof that it is possible to do something with some planning and determination. To most of you this is just a fish on someone else's extremity. But it represents a number of things. It is proof that we can change, proof that we can follow a recipe, proof that we have commitment, proof that we need determination, proof that we can visualise and be what we want to be and do what we set out. Yes this is just a fish, but rather a fish after work in the afternoon sun, than a backside on the couch watching crap TV. But as a diametrically opposite yet almost as appealing alternative a bum on the couch fondling a home brewed beer or mead.. now there is some thing which is also right. We need to set goals, we need to achieve things albeit small and fantastical.

Lest not forget about the bread which is life, which comes from the beer.

here we have the grans living for the beer, the birth of the germination signals the birth of the beer within a while, you will have to wait and see where this goes, for those not following on other streams, these were some wheat, barley and spelt grains that were germinated and malted and then toasted and roasted in the oven for the beer with frit, unlike the wine dying on the vine, the beer growing in the bowl, somehow can see why Jim Morrison struggled and chose the wine dying on the vine. John Barley Corn just doesn't have the same ring to it, maybe i would have to turn to something a little more agricultural like Jethro Tull, lest not forget which disambiguation you chose, both are agricultural at best. Which reminds me that maybe i need to spotify a little agricultural music today. I leave you with this.. today I managed a meager 1670 odd words or so, self indulgent words none the less, but words they are and they are going towards my monthly total.

Shaken but not stirred (and the social experiment that failed, but is in fact a success

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 03:01:00 +0000

what is in a title, not to much, but what is apparent is that I have been significantly neglecting (i would prefer to use the word Neglectant.. but it appears that form is not commonly accepted.. don't get me started on that). But more important to impart that which is part of that which has past and is or isn't part of the present but does not pertain to present participles, WTF.. only half a sentence and I am off the rails already.

To return to the current idiom which is my life and the current view there upon and those people places and things that intercept it, not to unlike a Venn diagram in a child or adults webpage or notebook or facebook wall. And yes I know there was a divergence into more linear writing, but alas this is something of the past for a moment, as to much time has past and there are to many words trapped within,

to skip forward to the current, leaving out a whole lot fo the past for the moment time being, not to be uninterrupted by this wondrous piece i saw today by Tim Minchen, not because it was new, but because it was what i Saw today.

I return to my tales of woe and disappointment of the reality of the life we live in, sounding a little like a Genesis song. a while back I proposed something to my General Facebookerati. This was aiming to try and Humanise my interactions with the people on my facebook account. This attempt was to get all(some/as many as i could) the people on my profile to send me a real letter which contained some printed photographs of themselves, their abode, some old photographs and a hand written piece of text, this was to then form part of an art work to be part of an exhibition that I am planning to do. I suspect it will be a very small piece of art then subsequently one of my Facebookerati then indicated that he would only send me something if sent it to him first and i was the point of change in the universe rather than the change coming from without to change the way we interact with those around us. I must admit I considered this as an option.. I will fulfil his request, which btw I have been very tardy with.. Which for I must apologise.

Actually I Apologise

But actually back to the current, i did consider a whole lot of things over the last while, amongst them are a whole span of things.

Time to Recap, what has passed since last entry in my online version of my life, i started with project BW (which will be released shortly online, this is a top secret project and needs to be kept under wraps for the interim. I have made an IPA and bottled in Recycled bottles (part of the Family recycle, reuse, repurpose campaign). I have replanted veggies a whole lot of times, almost the last time. I have mated more barley, wheat and dinkel for the next beer project. I have started with the ~~first~~ , or second or actually a few down the line, sculptures made out of drift wood and other pieces of flotsam from the beach.. taken its time.. it should be hanging somewhere soon. a large number of breads have passed from one end to the other of the process chain and to many others to mention.. oh other than the large Kahawai on fly .. which took some time to eventualise.

To intersperse current with future and past, unlike the chronological flow of life and reality which in no way mix, current future and past experiences.

To return to the proposal by the unnamed, facebookerati and that I should be the one to first send a letter to everyone, which then pre-supposes that I have all their addresses. which then points to the obvious dilemma that i do not which points to the fact that either they are not really my friends as per his other post on the span of our friendships which should be smaller and the other dilemma being that i would have to obtain these, and then of course the other issue is If i sent a letter to all my facebookerati (~300 ish people this would be financially fairly significant, but is this the cost of friendship?). I am not really trying to solve this in the short term. The other more pertinent question is more in the lines of what the end goal is rather than method, or is the method the actual goal. I must admit I cannot give a comment on that at this stage as I am not really sure?

It does bring me to a parallel concept though, which is moving to a subscription based model rather than a scatter gun approach? I was considering a form of bulletin rather than general random facebook posts which seem to have gotten broken recently, where the latest incarnation has changed the posting behaviour. That is before it was possible to anticipate how something would be seen and by who, where now facebook has significantly changed some of its algorithms. I saw that i was no longer seeing certain updates in my feed.. and others must be experiencing things similarly. some years back I saw someone who had a weekly/daily journal style bb posting that was emailed to all the subscribers. this was not to different from the old style newsgroup bulletins, other than the fact that this was a html document with imbedded images.

Possibly the old could become the new again? It might just all be a hoax..

On a totally different note i was listening to a podcast from philoosophos (philosophybites), which is very cool in small doses. this one in particular was an interview with tom wolf on his new novel and the death of civilized western civilization due to the death of God, and yes i am paraphrasing significantly.. go listen if you are really interested Actually after searching for the link in mediaMonkey, i realise with an element of mirth that this actually comes from uncommonknowledge (you may ask WTF is that?)

it is a podcast on the following topics : “Uncommon Knowledge is a production of the Hoover Institution, a public-policy research center devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy — both domestic and foreign — as well as international affairs. Topics on Uncommon Knowledge range from the legalization of drugs to affirmative action to war to taxes to censorship on the Internet. Uncommon Knowledge is hosted by Hoover fellow Peter M. Robinson.”

we all learn something over here…the actual Podcasts discusses this : “ Tom Wolfe discusses the ideas and inspirations for Back to Blood, a story of decadence and the new America. In the book, Wolfe paints a story of a decaying culture enduring constant uncertainty. Heroes are spurned and abused, and values are dissolving; yet the message seems to be to stick with the good values.“

It was way more interesting that you could imagine, granted i was on the train, had time to kill, but nonetheless it has inspired me to listen to a few more of these podcasts.

But more pertinently what are we listening to now? Little cow

interesting, who knows i may listen to them again, or maybe not?

so where does this leave us in terms of the initial discussion? I am not sure? I am not sure of my level of commitment though?

this is bound to change and get resolved within the day or the week or longer, but in general the response to my social exercise is piss poor. If we overanalyse this all we can come to a number of conclusions? It is possible that I am over intellectualising this? Or not, it is in fact the state of society or the state of non society.

but before i forget, i red an article by a blogger that was posted on fb, which of course has been cycling through my brain. This has cycled extensively through my brain without returning a definitive answer to this poser? I am sure if i had not immigrated I would feel totally differently about it? I wonder if I would feel more or less for or against this article? now there inadvertently through the course of the words flowing from my fingers i have increased the complexity n fold. I had read about this before and had read about other similar experiences, from others in the expats returning back home, but i do have to respond by saying that this is not as simple as it seems, and living in a grey high rise could not be fun, but on a similar track what if it was not in a high rise you find yourself, but a super peaceful and amazingly beautiful place .. how does that stretch your brain muscles? there can be no replacing of friends, unfortunately. But I suspect once you have crossed the bridge to far, you can no longer return or that pillar of salt will be washed away with the angels tear drops. It is sad, but by moving and changing your perspective you have altered reality for ever and can never return things back to the way they were, either good or bad. In many ways this doesn't answer or even elucidate or illuminate that piece or my response to it? It may take me long and in the end It might be a single yes or no or even a twenty page diatribe, nothing in life is necessarily in balance, just because Newtonian physics implies that there is always an equal on opposite force,does not mean we understand the implications of one flap of a butterflies wings and how something so simple can have profoundly insanely complicated effect on our lives and that of others. To us there was a massive upheaval which has changed our fabric, to others we were just another lot of irritating rats fleeing a ship, to others they could not understand, others herald you in, others watch you in dismay, happiness, hope , others getting ready to follow. There is no answer that is the problem…

well in a way I cannot complete this blog entry by today, and if i were to put in the drafts folder it could be weeks, neigh months before it is re-edited and actually posted, so you will have to live with this as it is..

I don’t feel to bad, after reading the previously mentioned blog, it turns out she (the author) writes professionally .. I don’t. and as a postscript, i am not convinced .. maybe by then i will have an answer, in truth I can be sure I am more convinced by this…

oh and the point to the Tom wolf piece for me is that he set himself a target of n words a day, his was in the region of a 1000 words, I think i have surpassed that, so i should be happy. You the reader i imagine are saying, WTF.. inconclusive and just when we thought he would tie it all up and together he/she it stops .. Well this is just rambling, this is not a treatise, maybe tomorrow i will try to continue on from where i left off?

i hope to? i mean to, maybe by then i will decide how the social experiment will play out, maybe i will also give some insights into the other new adventures i am having? But that s tomorrows dilemma?

It is all feeling rather contrived

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:24:00 +0000

Sometimes when you say the same word over and over and over again, either you cannot pronounce it correctly or it starts sounding more and more insane and less and less like a word, sometimes taking photographs or doing certain things begin to give me a similar experience. It is not the the task of the photograph lose their intrinsic value, or even lose value to others, it just seems like I cannot see the proverbial bush for the trees, even the simple looks complex and the complex looks impossible, I cannot see no more..
I suspect it is not that I cannot see, but rather that what I wish to see is not there in the way I am wishing to see? Or that I cannot see it that way or it wasn't there to be seen in that way, or it is. How can it appear to be so different in moments apart . I was walking through the city over the last while serially observing and imaging everything I see almost as if I am on the lower edge of the bell curve, wondering around with a glazed outlook without emotion observing and snapping. Granted I am not void of emotion at all, it just at times seems to fruitless this wondering around the empty spaces. I have noticed the complex dichotomies and trichotomies and poliychotomies of existence in one moment in time. So many different people’s lives coinciding in one space at the same time with different experiences and motivations and outlooks. Yes much of this is painfully obvious to us all, this is the fabric of a non homogenous society and it is to be expected. This does not make it any less insane looking in from the outside, It is at this point in the paragraph that the absurdity of it all just tends to collapse the discussion into nothingness and nothingness is all that is left and all that remains is an empty void. The thought of the primitive photographs i mentioned previously still haunt my thoughts hourly.. I cannot decide and cannot confirm what it is that makes the images compelling, if the images themselves are amazing or is it the process behind the images, both in terms of physical destructive and deconstructive process or is it the naiveté of the images underneath the patina of the process?
I find it strange when looking at the various people I see during the day, how in one point in time the complexity and diversity can overwhelm my experience of the moment.

I sometimes stare at other peoples photographs wondering what it is that makes them good? is it the action of the photographer, the action of the photographed or the emotion of the person in the moment? I am mostly excluding posed and created images which fall into the realm of technical wizardry which is not really where my fascination lies. At times it has nothing to do with the underlying quality but rather the tone and texture of the moment being captured. I suppose there are those which are technically better than others, but do they always capture the essence of the situation or not?
The deep forest, unlike the band by this name and the “donker bos by seeuleu leipoldt” is a place that fools the eye more than the camera, somehow the camera does not see what the eye sees or is it that the mind fills in the gaps dramatically. I am not sure it is possible to see the wood for the trees, after 3 sustained years I am seldom happy with the photographs of the forests.. It might be a lifetime challenge to be totally happy with tree pictures?

Like most things, i suspect it is the photographers prerogative to be selfish and show things the way they see it..unless they are being paid for it, or looking for favour or adulation or adoration, it maybe that which is lacking in the photos that I take, that i neither take them for my self with total selflessness nor do i bow to the general opinion of the masses of photographers around us. It might be that by putting my photos on flickr and other places i may be doing myself an injustice by bowing to general expectations, whereas before i did not? The alternative is of course to learn from those around us, but can we learn from those around us when we do not be like them, but want to be like ourselves? It all starts sounding a bit like the sound of a tree falling in a forest when there is no one to hear it happen. If we take photos and show no – one are they still good, or are they as good as they are? But i must admit, myself as a pure documenter I am different, i do not necessarily create, but rather re-capture what my eye sees in a way for me to remember what i saw, and sometimes see things that my eyes never saw? I cant say that i know? How certain are we that we are showing all aspects of our individuality and self or are we just shielding behind the facade of the cardboard cut out that is our persona. I know that the cardboard cut out can bold and brave looking, but it is a cardboard cut out, it holds off the rain and the sun and the wind for a while till the tattered brown insides start pealing out and getting blown away in the wind and rain. What remains is a mere shell. That all just sounds so flaky to me, but I suppose such is life.
We have to ask where the next adventure is lurking? is it inside the box in the cupboard at the back of the garage, is it on the saddle of my bicycle, is it lying in pieces on a table in the cave.
But I do realise i miss the research, it has over time become more and more difficult not to research almost everything i hear or read I suppose i Do not need to know a little about everything.. But I suppose we are getting there, I have totally lost track of what i was thinking a moment back. Soon i will be able to hide my own easter eggs. But there is still a thread inside there, I was reading(no not reading, scanning over some new info i found due to listening to a pretty awesome science podcast series from ABC (no not the American one, rather the Aussie one.. Damn interesting, I lose my focus once again, there is a title of a book and some discussion around a dude in the states called Jim Carter, who is a “Lay” person and has come up with a new treatise of the world and its Physical behaviour, as per my Social media quip a while back I might just have t add this to my growing pile of books to read. I suppose after a lot of consideration it is the aberration and obscure and intrigue that interest me, it must have been the adventure books I read as a child? It is sometimes sad when we see how much we know about the world we live in, but at times there are sparks when i realise this is all from a specific perspective and that we actually still know very little about certain things. I think, stand aside from any weird explanations and theories that have limited substantiation there are still a whole lot of really amazing things we just do not know, amongst them are how the frig did they build the Pyramids and many other south American archaeological finds? Why did the Mammoth die out? Does the green spot actually happen, how amazing is a comet, how cool as the asteroids, the feeling of snow when you are not used to it. the sound of a thunderstorm, the smell of Ozone, red sand.. these are all amazing.. but at times it is sad not to be able to share them with others.. It might be through the photographs that there might be hope that through these images there might be a transference of that experience of the amazement I sometimes feel for seeing the most insanely amazing and sometimes simple things.. Enough of the yo-yo emotional rollercoaster that is our life.
I suspect the next step is getting back to work and not doing this now during my tea break, but rather focussing on learning something new.
On a different note , it is almost time to setup the next to do list of items, this is an on going process. I suffered disappointment this weekend, I went to fetch water from a natural spring to start making beer with, but then returned to start reading through the beer brewing starter pack that I got from the shop.. and to my horror I realised it was so un-artisan that even after going around and around i could not convince my self to make it.. it will have to wait till next weekend when i can get some real malt and ingredients, screw trying to do the safe option and do the starter kit, i have never done something like that before, it is all in.. and yes there are generally failures associated with this approach as there have been with the breads and food, but there have been moments of genius. It is not the re-creation of something existing that I want, but to rather experience that which is nature and man combining at its best and experience something mroe akin to the essene loaf in terms of beer.. yes i will bump my head but that is what is expected..
Sometimes like i spoke about it before, when you start overthinking things you cannot do them.. typing on the keyboard is a little like that today .. just cannot type it is as if the kb is not in front of me and i am reverting to 2 finger typing…
well this is really to much crap and rambling.. way more than enough for 2 days..

The secret life of medieval cats

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:35:00 +0000

I was looking for something on heracleion, which by the way is an amazing story. I then happened accross this slightly more quirky yet interesting story about cat footprints on an old medieval book from the 14th century from Dubrovnik.

But at the same time we rush headlong into the unknown, some with changes like powerful metal horses, emblazoned with strange skins they ride, others stand still paralyzed with fear, others drift along as if on a gondola sliding down the stream of life, others again barrelling headlong into the unknown. And I stand here on foreign shores uncertain today of which way, moving from knowing to not knowing in moments.

But as we know it is weekend, and it is time mirth and merriment for many, for me who knows what the future will hold. I will wait and see what the weather will do, will the weather be as the weather gods have foretold or wrong again as they miss~told us last weekend? It is the End of winter and we are in the middle of the sea on a very big island..

And as we no man is an Island..

Back to the Medievil books again, I saw the most amazing thing they scan the pages of these old books with a densitometer, and from the amount of dust and grime deposited on a page they determine how often the books were read relative to others, interestingly one of the books had been read significantly more than others. This book was seen to offer assistance and help during the bubonic plague. On a similar vein it was very interesting, I listened to a Podcast from ABC on (New telescope launched in remote Western Australia. The sweaty t-shirt test for selecting a mate. DNA used to identify ancient plagues. Plaque reveals ancient human diets. Vatican award for stem cell research. The Science Show goes to hell. )

It was a surprisingly good podcast albeit that it is Australians who did it, no this is not aspersion, just a subtle stab at some friends who have wondered across the ditch, surprisingly there are some good Australians out there I found the piece on being able to work out exactly what disease exactly people died off.. This also delved into a whole lot of other pieces where DNA have been scraped and collected from various archaeological digs.

As time passes and i wait, i keep realising there are whole lot of books/authors i want to read and in soem cases re-read, pretty damn tricky getting time for all of this reading in between everything else. what is your quintessential list of books that should be re-read or read and why?

and then also thanks to Aivkara for this amazing Link, it is totally amazing …

“…the mistake is a part of it, it is poetry…and for that you need a bad camera.”
-Miroslav Tichý

what an interesting story, not unlike this blog he was not famous at all and only a handful of people saw his work..

Then for my piece of afternoon free advertising:

LEMMELKAFFE

Many of you have probably heard of the Swedish coffee brand Lemmelkaffe. With its roots in the North takes aim at a slightly alternative coffee culture and going hard against the upcoming barista trend prevailing in sweden all cities. Lemmelkaffe is the world's first mörkrpstade boiled coffee and best enjoyed, according to them, over an open fire. Ingemar Backman, Frontsidefly and Glesbygd'n are some of the coffee brand's ambassadors. Surf to www.Lemmelkaffe.com to read more.

and we know because it is Friday it is almost another bread day, an we know like the bells, we cannot live without our weekly bread, O yeah I shall not walk through the valley of Alpacha and deer doe’s with no bread beneath my raincoat in my Rucksack, for I shall not want no more than a slice of the daily bread and a sip of the golden or red nectar. I will wonder down green hills and dales through hills with Big trees, my wheels are a spinning, my head loses direction I cannot say which way is home. My new day brings a new dawn, maybe this year I will see the persied’s maybe this year I will stand in shallow waters and watch the silver beast upon the end of the slender filament and willowy stick, It feels a lot like I am trying to fill the space next to this photo, Yes you are right, I might just have to put in another picture here or there.

and in a peaceful moment I discover some tunes within a beat, which are amazing and appeal to my sense of the insane, I cannot say i can categorise Warsaw village band? I cannot say i know what genre they are? And i cannot truly say what nationality I am any more? there are times I imagine I may be African, at other times I might be German or Polish at Other times I have other heritages, and now i have no identity other than an ever changing speech rhythm and accent, But i can be assured that for the bulk of the time I walk alone, almost Like Caine

Master Po: If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.

Caine: I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.

It is strange what we remember about the past, how some things torture us, things we cannot change even if we wanted to. I suspect it is key to then move on and gather as much as we can from those moments, move on, with them in mind. It brings me back to phylogenetic inertia, we are in some ways bound to our past and our past created our future and future moulds our experience of the past in our minds.

a new day a new format a change ..

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 04:10:00 +0000

So after all this rambling it was time to make a change with regards the layout and presentation and possibly the format, only slightly though. A new face to an old picture or familiar person, all breeding contempt. The contempt should be seen as part of our daily bread, such a busy week and it is only Tuesday..
so where did we get to? We, yes the Royal We, not the toilet wee, managed to get the seaweed, have fun and do a few other things. I DiD discover a need for a bigger beard, not sure how i am going to run that past everyone, but I think there is a distinct need for a bigger beard, how much? I cannot say at this stage how big the beard should be or how bold or subtle it should be? But we know that it should change. But we know that not unlike any other day we require our daily bread, I wonder if this would be better represented by an array of boring bread pictures, I suspect that this is the actual requirement? this is My BloG and We like bread and we hope you like what we have to dish up for you?
so where are we now, small beard, this photo was from a while back on the train so no harm no foul..
so where to start over, well the weekend was slower than expected, and i read bla bla, no lets stop that bad idea long before it even begins, no that isnt me either, you are getting enough of a change for now, don’t expect more than this. And for those who still receive this as force fed grain down the throat foi gra style .. go to the blog page at least once in a while to look at the pics, albeit that they may be ever so boring.
to recapitulate, yes that is the correct word, I went this weekend and like i seldom do, and went to have a look at a couple of art exhibitions at pateka in porirua, splendid like always. Like every year I went to the world photo journalism awards again, and like the last 2 years it sickened me.. i cannot say they photos where at all bad, but the content is just so shocking and I would suggest having a look, partly for the quality which is in no means spectacular but the content is shocking like always and gives you a boot up the derriere and wakes you up and makes you realise there is a seriously large amount of crap out there and on the whole we are pretty lucky not to have to deal with a small portion of it ..
But pretty amazing, went to see this exhibition DarkCloud :White Light it is pretty damn amazing.. here is a minuscular scrap of it ..

Dark cloud : White Light

At the same time there are a number of other exhibitions, there is a lithographic suite by Marian Maguire called Titokowaru’s Dilemma.. pretty amazing, but the UKU RERE contemporary ceramics exhibition is awesome…

all in all spectacular for a short little visit, these are only a few of the exhibitions..
More Later… but that ees enouh for now,
there are a whole lot of others including Rob McLeod’s – Imposters, Aliens and Angels

maybe as a closing note, after seeing the world photo journalism exhibition I am happy to be here, safer (not safe) we are not safe anywhere. But mroe importantly i was or should say am still horrified as i was before in the previous years about the Hate that humans portray for others in the name of religion, politics, skin colour, greed and any other reason.. It is just totally incomprehensible if you step back and view it objectively.... It is all Just so damn Sad .. It brings me to question if there is actually anything we can do to make a difference? There are those shining lights who appear to make a difference, but so many try to snuff them out.

Digital Natives - updated

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 02:50:00 +0000

I was reading an article about how to use BI to measure Social Media activity and came across the concept of "digital natives" or Gen C people. this of course drove me off into another direction.

so i return to this weeks later, it is something us silver or almost silver surfers no little about, some of us more adept than others, but being adept does not make us a native,

it is a construct in which we have little or no reference.. or reasoning. we exist in a world full of #hashtags and fluid dynamic content and interactions in a space that is unreal and human transactions take place in time spans that we are not akin to, not that for some of us tech savvy individuals this is irrational yet explainable and technology is apparent and logical it still does not mean that we can transact at that human level simply or transcend, there are however exceptions to this rule, there are digital native emulators and adaptee's. -- post comment, I am not sure i could be a native, it is more likely that I would become less and less involved in reality and it all, I lie, I wish..

many hours later, lost track of thought completely, but i need to listen to this,

Van Coke Kartel - Skadu's Teen Die Muur.

it is most amazing.. definitely in my top n pieces, a definite pickup, event though it is a sad song. Strangely makes you feel better. Go figure

something I keep forgetting to follow up on this?

the collapse of geography through technology, techno social interactions

but beyond all of this, the black dog, came he tried but could not stay,

and weeks and weeks later, he came, he did not conquer, I see it lurking in the background.

I question why he comes, I live with him but I prefer to live without him

But i have learnt that when he comes rushing i stand resolute and don't get caught by his wily tricks and games,

but it does take the wind out of my sails

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Q84

sounds intriguing ..

each turn the Black dogs skulks in the wings, nipping at my heels, i run i jump sometimes in a direction unbeknownst to me just to escape his/her/its dull lifeless grip. I refuse to give up without a fight ;-)

we get caught up in this cycle of life, excuse the pun, i wondered around aimlessly today at lunch like i sometimes do, which in itself is not a bad thing to take a break from my desk and ever exiting ETL coding, which at times, albeit challenging, can be rather inane and pointless in my perspective, no doubt the customers feel different as there is value in what i do juggling zero's and one's around, but in the greater scheme of things i suppose it has value, but it feels like moving a sand pile from one of the beach to the other, at times i can add elaborate grains of beauty en grained and hidden within, at other times it is simply mechanical and serves to give purpose to my day.

But i digress greatly, today not unlike others, i went for an aimless meander along a path i may or may not have walked on before, armed with camera and puffer jacket. I am waiting for the wildweatherandstorms that have been promised us by the godswithintheweatherpages.. but all that remained for me to see was the cold and dreary greyness abounding over the harbour and cityscape. of course I return with many images of moments in time, but more importantly i happened upon an exhibition of photographs by Gregory Crewdson, which were magical and dreamlike,

something amazing to behold in a number of ways, size colour and intensity of image, It is well worthwhile to peruse his images on the interblades, they are not so much photographs are carefully crafted and directed images placed into the fabric of time and reality, in stark contradiction there are other images of fireflies which are random and natural images depicting the life and mating flights of fireflies, the last portion of the exhibition contains images of a deserted movie set, in italy, created by Mussolini. this is haunting, but less disturbing than the hyper reality images the artist has manufactured for his large scale colour images.

these images left me with a sense of wonder an amazement and gave me momentary relief and happiness

and the days flow into a week and time passes through the mist or should I say Mysts of rain from the "weather bomb"

where to return to the thread..

Another day, more lapsang souchon, more deep welling thoughts, feelings of times past, and the future, more mint tea, more of everything, assaulting the senses, assaulting the body in gym, scratching at the surface of humanity digging deeper to get through the skin, stripping through perceptions with
An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire: Arundhati Roy, very hard
core
and cutting, not sure I agree totally about some things, but
not
all, but it does indicate a change is necessary, but it doesnt
say
how? So am rather reading

a god of small things, which by the way is VERY good, or at
least
the first few hand fulls of pages i have read so far on the
train,
till i forgot the book at home this morning, where well above
average, and apologies to Sally

very comparable to a 100 years of solitude, maybe even better
written, but that might be a translation of the later not the
former, but such well crafted word smithery.. Be as it may, I
would recommend this as a read,

Not because it is happy, but rather but the fabric of life that
is woven by the author through the words painting images in my
mind.

so where are we on the list of items to complete, painfully,
I must say not a lot further, but we are at least moving forwards
rather than being stationary,

sometimes i think i am sliding sideways, but at least not going
backwards, but at least not backwards... just keeping ahead of
those Gnashing jaws..

to intersperse, i just looked at the other titles from mizz Roy,
they seem rather extreme, but i may be right, wrong but something
needs to be addressed about some of the issues,

not sure there is a 100% fit in terms of ideas, but hey lets
wait and see

But think it is more important for the short term to focus on other
more important items like;

when am i going to start with the first batch of beer?

oh and i have started growing some mushrooms in the cupboard
(water cupboard, geyser Kas for the Saffricans) .. went on a
course
on how to do that..

so many other things to get to this weekend, normal market visit,
painting bedroom, ripping up old carpets, foraging, fishing,
building a beach sculpture (getting kids to go with and build it
with me? that might be neigh impossible)

go for a MTB ride with the Good doctor,

crap the words are to few, i wont be able to finish writing before
the weekend gets here at this rate, lest leave ti at that,

oh lest not forget testing the bubble wrap insulation theory?
or the ishnu.. thingiemabobbie emerger patterns that need tying
before summer or spring or lest not forget about the beetle
patterns, wee wets and oom Jensie se Vliee ..

oo kak tyd is min

something i wonder if there is something such as
cumulative doubt, no not debt,

do we create scenarios that do or dont exist through this?

On another tangent completely is you have a couple of hundred years
free you could possibly have a look at one of the worlds last
remaining puzzles or should i say preponderance?

http://www.cgore.com/cryptography/voynich/

you can even download a pdf copy of this ancient document..
it is super amazing

but back to reality and today, discovered or re-discovered
the soundtrack for suckerpunch, awesome and amazing, maybe
more so because i know it came from the movie and how i enjoyed it.
It was by far and by no means the best movie ever, but a

fantastic concept

sprouted seed bread.

this is a really strange and weird recipe I found on the
interblades, in a search for raw food? I did not quite make the
real hard core sun-dried version, but rather went for the wimpish
version of the bread. In general

it is called Essene bread and is apparently one of the earliest
bread recipes. It is apparently found in the first century Aramaic
manuscript called the "the essene gospel of Peace".

It apparently dates back to prehistoric days. http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/essene-bread-sprouted-grain.aspx#axzz2aOOd5rex. Basically to create this bread, take wheat berries, sprout them (BTW they taste awesome on their own) I substituted 30% of the wheat with some rye.. good choice :-) then mash the sprouting thingies up, add water a little normal flour and yeast and water and salt and the bready is ready to bake .. i see i tried to bake mine to fast then it becomes a rather dangerous beast with which you could harm people... and the second time it was a rather sticky mess.. maybe the 4th time i will get it perfect.. But trying to intersperse it in between living is a challenge, especially if you want to sleep.. I will have to plan better next time.. But i must admit.. the challenge will be to next bake it better, because we all know what else we can make with sprouted wheat and rye and barley? No not that .. that come s from oats .. that is St Anthony's fire .. Or ergot, I would rather stay away from the Claviceps purpurea and rather stick to Saccharomyces cerevisiae or similar.

But that is either next weekend or maybe if we lucky this week some time ...

so many things to do and do ..

mm, I got suddenly very distracted and time was a fleeting and i
never finished this confusing Milieu of Madness, But on a more
cheerfull note I think i might change my internet person and become
Marko Vogonovich,

it makes me sound a little like a slavic musician like boban
markovich orkestar (btw amazing stuff that)..

a little more a little later ..

Thanks Slats for the interesting interview on fox, intriguing:-)

Bringing me back to the here and now, not much left of that. time
to reconsider and map forward the next couple of months ago,
slowly chipping away at things in life ..

One last fleeting thought, no damn what was it? Oh yes the chook
house, we are deeply embroiled(no pun intended) in the benefits or
merits of what kind of Chook house to build at home, or for the
angl saxons out there... a chikin coup.. no Not a coupe?

more on that sooner than later.. But strangely the list of things
on my to do list just does not seem to be getting shorter,
I should be banned from having a pen.

As a post post note, I realised that over time there are things
that remain constant in our lives, in mine they are a fascination
with the following things, not in any particular order at all:

St Anthony's fire,

Stonehenge,

aboriginal paintings,

nacza lines,

Orchids

and then i realise i would spend till tomorrow writing this list
down, sound s a little like someone and their notebooks, btw, I
think you should switch to Moleskine notebooks, I would but
they are to pricey and i lose them and i lose favour in using
them ..so i would need to many of them?

I have now switched to a digital cloud based note book. Which
against all odds seems to be the best solution so far, that is
in ten years of attempting this. It is a solution that acts as a
bookmark collection for web pages

note taking software and and.. and you can do this all on the
trial version and then synchronise between multiple devices and
then also synchronise into your mobile phone or smart device or
tablet..

I would try it .. called evernote.. Slats, if you could get you
backside in gear might work for you?

I was thinking i am not getting enough done on the weekends,
but in retrospect i managed a few things this weekend:

1. fishing twice, once in a new spot, both times in the
sea for a couple of hours each time, catching both times,

2. market on Saturday morning,

3. shopping on Saturday morning,

4. walk up colonial knob,

5. tidy half the garage,

6. Forage for sawdust and wood chips on side of the road, came
back with a boot full, liberate into the garden,

7. sort out my fishing gear,

8. get yeast for flower wine,

9. get more buckets for wine

10. liberate sawdust and wood chips in garden,

11. prune some trees

12. watch a movie with kids,

13. bake bread for the week

14. tidy some of my tool boxes

and a few others, think it was full enough,

So i think the problem is that I sleep to much, I should be
utilising the hours after 10 at night .. am just so damn tired
.. and i don't know why .. why do i need 6 hrs a night ..
would be so much

better if i could do with 4 or 5 hours :-)

so while I sit on the train pondering posting this and seeing someone who looks like someone I know, it then led me to think about what he did, what he is doing,

who he became... and then to extrapolate further about others
and then finally about my self and if I was were it would be
perceived I would be based

on who I was through each decade of my life, through each one
I was significantly different, often in outlook and what I wanted
to achieve and be. this made me think

how there were or are people who are the same as they were at
school and did not change and then there are others who change
all the time and do things?

so where do you classify yourself, in which pile, and how much can we change of our own nature?

this then leads me to consider if I should be doing more than I am, Yes there is a trend developing here ..

I suppose it is because I realise I cannot change the past, undo
it or even redo it... even though there are moments I would like to
relive ..

I doubt I could. but to capitulate would be failure.. we have our
future in our hands .. the present was a moment back's future..

but we cannot escape some of the choices we made, which pushed us
in directions both good and bad, why we decided to move, we know
why, more rhetorically.

recreation comes at a cost which is at times very heavy to bear,
sometimes it is like a huge millstone dragging behind us, at other
times it is as if i never was that person

and then at times that is all who I am. But piece for piece the
broken glass is in the dustbin, it is nice to sit with an open
window facing the weather and the seasons and enduring it all, but
at

other times I do wish i could fix some of those missing pieces,
But we have moved on both physically and mentally and are no longer
those people.

So What do we have planned for the weekend to come, who knows if
i will be able to achieve it?

and after a ~~week couple tripple~~ Long time of fanning about,

i will just have to post it as is.. else it will never get
posted ..

sweet smelling memories

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:39:00 +0000

another day, another existential crisis survived, forward, onward we go. Another year older and another pre-birthday existential crisis survived, yes twice.

I have to start somewhere else other than now, I am transported back to another time and place. I slowly sip my lapsang souchon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsang_souchong), now not then. it transports me back to a time when I still shared an Office
with frojo, no not Frodo or bilbo, But Hes and frojo joubert

The tea has a fragrance that is not easily not mistaken for Dunhill's early morning pipe tobacco (http://pipesmagazine.com/python/pipe-news/dunhill-early-morning-pipe-pipe-tobacco-reviews/), it has a smell and taste and presence that is so reminiscent of this tobacco.

The tea smells and tastes like something out of a forest fire, some people think it smells a bit like bacon? to me it smells a little like a forest fire, this tobacco and a whole lot of memories.

And that tomorrow i think will be the first day of my once a week raw food day, and partly cannot decide if I am allowed coffee or not on raw food day? I realise that it is a slippery slope? but if i am not allowed coffee can i have tea and if not can i have milk to eat with raw oats?

still thinking about this one and why I am doing it and what the parameters of this notion will be?

but think tomorrow I will just go hard core and have to go tea and coffee and all free? I wonder if I will survive?

on googling, or well searching on google I discovered the following in the first anecdotal website i read :
"Researchers who studied the impact of a raw food diet found that participants had low cholesterol and triglycerides. They also had a vitamin B12 deficiency. This finding is consistent with another study of raw foodists in Finland. B12 is found naturally only in animal products. It is critical to nerve and red blood cell development. Deficiencies can lead to anemia and neurological impairment." (http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/guide/raw-food-diet?page=2)
sounds bad

so on day 1, all started well till pumkie made the perfect Roast chicken for supper, so maybe have to try raw breakfast and lunch for a few days to compensate and do better future planning next time
:-)

( as a side note I have managed 3 3/4 days?, not sure if that counts) .. trying to ramp up for next week.

Oh well another day on the windy isle's

I saw that unity is really a pain on the new ubuntu desktop/ well not such a new concept.. but my first actual usage of it..
suppose we all need change else we become complacent.

and we have to strive to be richer, read a good blog article by Gareth cliff, who even though he can be harder than nails and outspoken more often than not, he has managed to write something that did not illicit to much negative commentary in the blogosphere comments, well as at yesterday when i read it .. (http://www.garethcliff.com/blog/?p=366)

have to appologise for some of the lack of in line html links, but have taken to writing these blogs in evernote now in plain textish rtf like , as i can keep content and sync over the web, yes i know blogspot and all the other blogs and google docs and and can share documents in html, evernote seems to work for me.

and something i noticed that REALLY sucks is the last blog i carefully laid out using the html editor in the blogger web page, but it poked the formatting when i published .. that really sucks .. might have to get a new template or something.. or not .. Ok i figured it out can do hyperlinks in my notes.. my slackness

back to reality and listening to jimi Hendrix "if 6 was 9" while doing HR reporting for a customer .. man that is obtuse ..

Ok so this is taking longer than anticipated...

I have to question some things thought,

who will hold the candle bright

and lead the us ~~back~~ to the promised land

somewhere in time and location

we wait for the sound of chikins and the buzzin of da bees

the squelch of mud between my toes

the feeling of freedom as the cold wind bites at my lungs

don't be scared don't be afraid

the darkness shimmers off the ground

i stand staring off into time wondering

do i go forward or backwards

filled with doubt

Oh well time to go fishing, according to someone on the inter~blades, apparently Joseph Monniger who says "i go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself"

interesting author, also know for this “We read not to escape, but to go deeper into life.”

definitely have to put him on my wish list
Was thinking maybe i should post my to do list onto my Blog, maybe it will move some of the things from todo to done ;-) Strangely i seem to be filled with enthusiasm, but these long winter nights and dark morning and early sunsets really seem to put that enthusiasm to rest..
oh well enough for the short term, more rambling tomorrow

so many words, pictures and images and the inevitable complex loop or the god of small things and the size of my heart and a tom waits song made me sad: some notes on the last week and my life.

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 31 May 2013 02:53:00 +0000

This is a tale of words, procrastination, friendship aging and the inevitable~ness of change and the pardoxical complex loop that we exist in. another day, months of procrastination on my part and on some others who owe me emails, but in general that is normal.

this was a long time ago ... somehow it was self professing in a way, it stayed up to this point for a LONG time with no movement at all...

then a month or two later these words came out:
(lets hope that i can finish this post..:-)

I suspect this may all have been bloggers fatigue or something .. Many days and thoughts not being captured to paper, with pen or electronically. Still need to solve that one.

the god of small things and the size of my heart and a Tom Waits song made me sad: some notes on the last week and my life.

To make a change I am altering the format of this mental purge and trying to rather write one episode over a number of expulsions rather than a singular burst trying to keep my breath. I might have to rephrase that and say that the previous pieces tended to be something in the vein of how many words can you say without taking a breath, sometimes the words will flow like rivers, other days it feels as if i am suffering from Asthma. The words just struggle to leave my mouth or even from my fingertips.

This is disjunct and is at various levels, some of it will make sense, some won't make sense, some must not make sense. It is not for me to decide which is which and that which is might not be so for you as it is for me. the reality wraps around like a snake eating its own tail and depending where you look you see something different?

That would seem to be a cop out, maybe it is. But this is a Blog, not a book, i pay for it you don't.

The god of small things and the size of my heart and a tom waits song made me sad and why BBC world service reminds me of the infinite sadness and how I am noticing that i could not make up my mind in what tense i want/ed to write this crap down in, i suspect that this is somewhat anachronistic in a sense.
And secondly how watching Hugh Fernley Parsley stick videos make me sad and happy all in one emotion, not unlike our daily existence, which is more often than not sprinkled with more sadness.
No i have not read the book yet, but have ordered it over the interweb to add to the increasing pile of books on my nigh stand which all lie in wait for me, i have taken to reading a number of books simultaneously again, that seems to work better.
As a thought aside from all of this, something i have thought before and maybe mentioned, is the phenomena of internet success and possibly even a bit of malcolm gladwell and his Outliers, I still sit and think and watch and notice how success eludes most of us, and strikes in strange places. Especially in the Bloggosphere and in the Photosphere, strange the concept of an internet personality. I read a very interesting interview with trey from stuck in customs. He had a very intersting take on social media and his interaction with the media ( he has in the region of 8 million social media followers) and how he refuses to autobot and delegate his persona and or content, other than the exception of some of the presentation on the one blog. Hugh Fernley Parsley or cabbage stick is another who has moved rapidly and created a sense of self on the interwebs.

~returning to the otherness

The words flow faster than the Vaal on a day after a cloudburst, words, thoughts come leaching out. where to start. who is this god of small things that sits somewhere inside and draws me to the little things i see all around me. I cannot focus on that which is capitalism, barely long enough and with enough enthusiasm to maintain employment. Who is this small god, does he sit in my pocket, or does he sit somewhere ethereal. does he want praise and worship or does he want action. Is thinking action or is it hiding, is action real? how do we whip ourselves into action, by baking bread, wondering the wilderness, being wild?

It reminds me of how fragile we are, and yes this fragility is interspersed with antifragility, I still need to read that book by Nassim Taleb

(Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder), which reminds me to write an email in which i lose focus and days on this..

And strangely, how tom waits stirs emotions like a frog in a blender, but leonard cohen often leaves me smiling and a little disinterested, man i don't feel like cycling home today .. that was a few days back, but in general life is lives in bursts and time sometimes blends the past present and future into one moment.
All of this brings me back to the notion of a life as an anachronism, thoughts and emotions, songs, sounds and images making me remember things and miss others. And how nick Cave always surprises me in terms of the emotion he evokes, every time i listen his music, it will always be different to what i had imagined it to be? But more importantly what the frig happened to the purple veil and the line between red and white? You may ask what the purple veil is? Go look and yee shall find. the line between the red and white beads maybe more symbolic of the line between life and death or between worlds. Why do we not dream of dragons anymore, and who are those handle bar mustache hard men fishermen and why can I not catch a fish on the Hutt at the moment? Life, where the mystique gets replaced with mustache and shopping? should i grow a handlebar? Cant decide? will it make me a better fisherman? will it change my perspective on life or will life's perspective of me change, and in so changing my life? How much of how we experience life in the active verb sense not the noun actually affects or effects the way our life turns. how much of it returns to where we started, how much of it is in a place where we do not know where we are.
As a further (sic!) note I have a question as to why we need a sense of Imami and why some people can live without it as a whole and become Vegan and is is possible to be a vegan/vegetarian for a long period and if it really makes any sense at all? should we, I/us all have a raw food day once a week, a vegetarian day more than once a week. Is there something about seeking food, finding it eating it? The complex loops are back again, many other things are gone, but they are back. the infinite sadness still sits there behind the wall and festers without abatement at times, and at others it is still there. Yes i did steal(borrow) the term from one of the books i attempting to read between the time I am awake and falling asleep.

But what is apparent is that Life is to short not t have a good braai, memories are a mix of emotions and memories, what do we want to remember and what do we want to forget? For me not only emotions and experiences but images as well.

How many of us are truly happy and do not covert something, something else, someone elses life or in general Moan. Can we change our path and destiny, it can be done (IMHO), but not without releasing the shackles of the walls we have built by capitalistic societal rhetoric and philosophical dilemmas.
How do we imagine our lives in this driving towards, how we imagine our lives, or how we experience our life. how should we imagine it. How much residual activity is there to be found in what we show? Suddenly i remember an Image of a place I was but did not cement outside of my reality into another medium, this is after seeing one that I did.. I now question what i remember and if i should have cemented that or not. A lot of this has to do with the dilemma of the pillar of salt which is something i should not really want to return to.

Part 3, of many parts;
And here we are almost a week or so plus or minus and i have not finished or posted this blog, strange. After a discussion with someone over the interwebs glazing slightly down the polyretroscope it became more apparent how images affect us all in similar and different ways, the line, a thin one at that, not blue, maybe emerald, that ties us between our optical chiasma and the cerebral cortex.. how one image can fill our brain with every thing from emotions and cerebral somersaults to nothingness and a void. I digress slightly from my intended course. I think even worse is that i have a dynamic windows 7 screen background which plummets me down the anachronistic thought processes taking all the way down Alice's rabbit hole. It takes me to places and fills me with emotion, often holding me back and at other times pushing me forward, ultimately all part of the journey. And yet i say nothing, i just waffle on, avoiding emotion ;-) /this brings me to

But i suppose it is time for some seedbombs and lawnrescaping, you may ask why.. I cannot say. but just because. time to build a shrine to Ganesha in the garden, time to mow the lawn, time to go fishing and catch fish, time to end this entry and get back to work, maybe on the second attempt i might get to point. and the list is endless

Wellington this morning

ok i suspect this is still not successful but i suppose i have to practice to make progress ;-)

A nothophagus for Slats, this tree belongs in wellington on the edge of its range, but not in this location. This is a really cool place, it is a reserve in the middle of wellington called Otari Wilton reserve. There are a few 800 year old trees to be found in this reserve. I took this pick when we went there for a fungal foray in the reserve with the local bot soc. Interesting...

and how the world did not end and i miss or missed the jackarandas

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:29:00 +0000

strangely whilst looking at a Portuguese person who i follow on Flickr's photos , there were a whole lot of pics of jackaranda flowers from somewhere in spain or Portugal or somewhere but not south Africa, and it made me think once again how i miss and missed the jackaranda flowers

But of all the things i left behind the beetles rank highly
I stand with the misty drizzle condensing on my ragged beard
silver streaks shining through
I wonder what the next brown trout will look like
will the jerk on the other side of the line be a fish this time
lets hope there are two jerks on the line and not just one
flailing against the elements

well it is summer they say
it may not be here
Evan has his say
cyclonically speaking of course

The heat the flies are almost a distant dream
i slowly but deliberately wife the fine mist of my face
I stare at the beauty that is my potted garden
the images rush in and fill my mind

I stand staring waiting for tomorrow and the next day
in the hope and knowledge that it will be different and that i will make it so
the may will drift and I do

all about perspective

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Strangely we move forward, but we keep returning to the same place, not through error but through time. But as expected our perspective changes along the way, some aspects remain consistent, others are less obvious. This may not make sense on the outset, but over time my perspectives have changed, but this leaves me wondering about the wandering inside my thoughts?

round and round the merry go round i go, life moves, shifts and ebbs thanks to Sonikie for lending us Material ( a new movie set in ZA ..old theme .. but i would watch it.. with Riaad Moosa ) but it is not with a little of sadness and happiness all rolled into one that we watch this. Strange it rolls into one, everything we miss and don't miss about our previous lives and about perspective and happiness, sadness, laughter and pain, not to different from our calvanistic upbringing the Garam (spelling?) is no different to those of the doppers, fun is bad and evil and wrong and wrapped into all of this the sadness and joy of it all. Life worth living, hidden away from the reality and daily drudge.

To much to little we stand waiting for the new day,
mine comes before yours,
mine ends before yours
it didnt end today as the mayans said, maybe we got to wait a couple of hours
maybe the tequila in their veins got it wrong :-)

well onwards and upwards .. less and not more,

OMG WTF ;-)

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:36:00 +0000

double appologies, this was posted accidentally a couple of days back on another blog ..:/ copied it .. tried to post.. btu ti never got here ..

-- from a few days back ..

apologies to all and me, it has been a while since I penned to paper metaphorically. Things change, we all get challenged in different ways, some more than others. But there is something we can all accept and that is that we will be challenged to some end or another.

I knew there was something that i was meaning to go through, i had made some notes on a notepad on my desk. It still amazes me how we have the ability to think and consider things, meaning full well to blog them. Clear rational, lucid thoughts flowing through my brain. But for the lack of a piece of paper or keyboard they tend to merge into nothing and we forget everything we planned to write and discuss.

" a sudden wave of sadness and happiness merged into a single emotion flows through my brain as I look at a photo on my desktop, almost like sweet and sour sauce."

the strange thing about photo's is how they can bring happiness and sadness in the same breath. We are back here again, without missing a beat at least once a cycle we have to question the meaning of photographs again. The meaning of life and art! (or in certain cases, possibly only really craft) and through what and how to express yourself. I recently found a most amazing set of photographs done by a kiwi photographer who titled them naked in Landscape, they illustrated the fractal nature of structures and the human figure was used to represent scale. Amazingly they were all done in the analog era and were done using a helicopter, with no processing. I have linked in the nzherald article, it is worthwhile rabbit holing down to find his actual website and viewing these and other photos. It more so than before illustrated how we repeat art and visual representations of what we see and experience through history.

We sometimes miss the fracticallity (fractal) nature of the environment around us, sometimes the scale is all an illusion. but at other times not? Yes a silly statement, but have you ever viewed certain things and noticed how scale independent they are and other things not? \have you ever questioned how we know how large an object is?

A little more on the relativity of arts and crafts, I am by no means an expert or even attempt to have a basis for an opinion, but based on something I saw posted on FB, we have a mutual friend of a friend who we became friends with over time who is an established artist who works in a number of media. In amoungst his portfolio are a number of collages, which are fantastic, but another artist or cynic made a comment in jest/anger (i am unable to determine due to a lack of perspective and colloquial association) about the "crafty" nature of his work. It brings me back to a TED presentation I heard a while back about "Mashups" and how this is part of our human nature, to build on that which we have seen in the past, how many great pieces of art or art works have been based on other historical pieces or are done in reference to something that was done in the past. I then wonder, were to draw the line between craft and art in my own mind, when something is truly new, when a "mashup" of something we may have seen is revisited or redone is it mere craft. It brings photography into a similar context, where does that fit into the picture, is it art or craft?

I suppose after a long break, I will be excused to have such a brief tirade, but there are so many fragments lurking that should hopefully be released over the next couple of weeks, that is if we have the ability to put metaphorical pen to paper.

One last subtextual note that may or may not prickle some interest in you, it did me and pumkie? Through our current re-education into art-house movies we have been watching a number of old favorites and a few that we had never seen before... We eventually watched a movie suggested by a friend over and over and over..strangely disturbing movie.. Ameros Peros.. Not something for the faint hearted, maybe not viewing pleasure but a hard look at life and experiences.. But this brought us to another movie, also set in the south america (mexico) called y tu mama tambien, which is as disturbing but in a totally different way. But the thing that struck me was how integral the background images were to the story, more than a third of the imagery is held in the background of the scenes with the actors. What was difficult to pinpoint was why these movies are different to hollywood? The difference I must say that draws me more and more to art-house/indie and more importantly foreign movies is the fact that the characters have real depth and texture and are not celluloid and featureless. Actors in these movies have real bodies and flaws, which in some way make the movies more real, yet transport us into another realm.. bla bla yes I am getting carried away, got to get back to work.. enjoy

maybe more tomorrow on the elusive brown trout/s on the hutt river that have been tormenting me for the last year or so .. ;-)

that is me for the day..

-- from today

in an attempt for cognitive dilation I do believe we need to see more, do more, read more and in attempt to be less confined to the mind I think it is good to attempt to do things you promised yourself that you would do, but saying all of this it sounds a little like a "new years resolution" thing this, and yeas to u2 this is a frigin long sentence, and in a way possibly it is, but in somewyas I would consider it being the new me that i had to craft out of the folds of what remained of personality after it was wrenched from its wretched life in Africa, not saying that it was totally wretched, but rather saying that it could have been better and should have been better and that in a way i was bound by the fences within my own mind. I do not say do what you would not do, but rather do what you would and should do as that si who we are, I do somehow now slowly realise there is so much more we in the I that we are as an individual, yes that sounds stupid, but through our personal part of the diaspora me, we have realised how much of ourselves is just a reflection of others and visa versa and how somethings i noticed and others that i did not I definitely should have noticed and said and done..

But the fear caught us by the throat, strangely we are filled with some fear, but it does appear that that fear of the known adn unknown can be removed by a simple extraction process.. but hey we can only try

go do, go see, go see the sea

we see the sea but how often do we not stop

i love the smell of the rotting seaweed

i love the spray on my face

the crashing waves

the grey the the gray the blue the grey

melting into a redness and gold at the end of the day

Anon. 2012

Part 2 and Izak Walton really is the Izaak Walton of fishing books

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 02:00:00 +0000

Recently I mentioned buying the gardening book, which was supposed to be the gardening book version of the compleate fisherman by Izaak Walton , boy I was disappointed. It looked rather a bit like a catalog of all of Carl Linnaeus 's species as described by him in a weekly digest format. I digress from the actual point, being that the Compleat Angler is more amazing than I had even imagined, the author is Enigmatic to say the least, he lived to be 90 in the 17th century (1593-1683), which is no mean feat. He was more than just an observational dribbler of words. He may not have been the best fisherman on earth but he wrote an amazing book which the first few editions sold in the hundreds of thousands.
An amazing fact, amongst many others is that Walton is mentioned in Jules Verne's classic The Mysterious Island when the castaways decide to use snares to catch birds: "He took Herbert to some distance from the nests, and there prepared his singular apparatus with all the care which a disciple of Izaak Walton would have used."

I even learnt of John Denny, who which I will have to research at a later stage..

But it begins to unfold that we live in a complex tapestry of life and living that is beyond our wildest notions, we cannot begin to imagine the wonders and depravity of the human~~kind,~~ that they definitely are not. cyclically I return to TED, it is simply a rolarcoaster of humanity. There are aspects of myself that always leave totally amazed and disappointed with myself as a being all rolled into one, yet almost always laving more positive than when I started imbibing the stories. I have found this a useful pastime to partake in whilst traveling on the train and the bus, being a chronic motion sickness sufferer reading is "uit soos koekies in 'n weeshuis"..

To return to TED, it enlightens the i should have, should do, why did I not think of that, why I am I not a better person, now why am I not doing that, how can I help more, yet slowly we drift back into old habits, it is hard to restart our lives without falling into the same traps again. I suspect it has a serious black swan about it and ironically a little more than a stones throw from my house a whole lot of these enigmatic creatures live in reality floating around without any prior knowledge of their historical enigmatism. I wonder a lot about what puts "us" in the position to be ready for these opportunities. I may be filled with a little to much cynicism for this, but we all live in hope, perhaps this season I can transcend from bread making to something a little more grandiose and life changing, or maybe not, that might be what is in stock for me? I suppose inside we know that if we do not go out there and pick up the pebbles and search for the flat ones we will never skip them across the inlet betwixt the black swans, this is so absolutely cliched, but it is a metaphoric reality that takes place as I stare at the black swans on a daily basis... Not sure what or how we describe the actualization of a handful of metaphors?

I imagine it is a daily quest that I have to undertake, to move forward on step at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. I suppose we do have to prioritise next things for the new season and attempt to actualise some of those goals, some of the goals we missed from the previous year, the previous summer and winter that passed that was not waisted but that could have been put to better use.

Strangely the thoughts i have in transit, without pen or paper or ability to cement them pass as soon as i step off the train all notions of intelligentsia and intellect seem to leach out of my brain and run down the drains with the light autumn drizzle .. yes wasted words saying nothing, albeit that I should start praising biltong like Paul ;-) nogals in akrikaans. I don't see myself praising the humblest biltong, maybe the humble soya bean or maybe even the grain of rice.

Lately I have been filled with fear and trepidation of what our humanity is doing with this lonely planet and rapidly things appear to be imploding on us? I wonder how much longer we will be able to be as we are and how soon we will have to start reacting, I suspect those communities more likely to survive as those closer to the soil, yet even them are at risk with the catastrophic weather changes we have waiting for us. I suspect that like the Indians in meso America who from having huge cities in middle America rapidly diminished into nothing with the changes in climate that occurred a thousand or so years ago. The most concerning being the rapid changes we are experiencing currently, who knows if we will be able to survive this bout? I cringe in disappear at the latest bout of insane litigations between the mobile phone designers, the laws that are designed to protect us from the theft of property, albeit intellectual property are robbing us of a future freedom. Now we litigate, or should i rather say allow litigation to occur on the basis of a principal. we are not a long way away from litigation around biological matter and its "content" when we look at the Monsanto's of the world. Next the human genome becomes patented, are we then an infringement when we display a characteristic, are we then defaecate owned by the patent holder is everything we do then owed to them? A strange thought?

I feel this diverging from one level of silliness to the next...

perhaps next time I will manage to capture one of those rare clear moments on the train and put it onto paper?

what is in a phrase and a whole plethora of other tea cups

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:27:00 +0000

Not even sure where to start, sometimes I wish i would actually carry a piece of paper and a pen or even one of the damn Idevil devices around with me..

But I am sorta swaying between hope and calamity, why not start with some pretty frigin amazing food we made.. I made a HUGE pesto and Olive loaf on the weekend.. frigin awesome.. But more interestingly I made some courgette and chickpea fritters.

Pretty damn amazing:

take 1 or 2 courgettes, zucchini or baby marrows (your choice)
2 eggs
a tin of cooked chickpeas ground up roughly/finely up to you
some Paprika .. (with every recipe) (smoked paprika is good)
some Hot Paprika (most amazing stuff)
some Cumin (with every recipe)
1-2 onions (with every recipe)

n garlic cloves (with every recipe)

a dash of flour to thicken depending on the size of the eggs and moisture in the other ingredients
and some herbie things.. your choice
oh yes .. add a little oil as well (olive or whatever you want)

then form into size of patties required and then either shallow or deep fry or like us bake them in the oven with the grill, serve with whatever you want .. they are pretty damn frign awesome.

Then we go back to reality for a bit, what do we do next, me thinks I have to learn how to make cider or perry or something like that, or maybe beer?

This all detracts from the reality of our mortality, or rather so our humanity and what drives or breaks it. It appears that there is a new kid on the block, namely h. rudolfensis.. a sneaky little bugger who has laid low for a while. I really liked the hobbits (florensis), but ti appears that there is more than a proverbial can of worms opening up at the moment. So the debate is if we are monotypic? It appears that we may or may not be hybrids with out neanderthals? Somehow I suppose there is some catch to all of this. If we are no and humans are the pinnacle then all is good, but if we are not and even more so, we are a possible mix or last man standing in a whole school of prototypes, this really messes with some of the fundamental basics of our cultural origins. I suspect more so for some of the fundamentalists, but maybe even for a few of the non fundamentalists who allowed that Evil E word to be taught in school? On the same vein, albeit slightly tangentially associated we are still wondering who did those really old cave paintings (~circa 50k years back) which homo did them, no i am not stereotyping the artist type, I am simply drawing reference to his Genus and no not the Gender. But it does bring into question something else I have on and off my mind for quite a while? Back to that in a moment. I suspect the current assumption is that the sapiens variety is the one who did all the arty stuff and the neander dude (btw go read up on where this is and about the Gibraltar man) was more of the burn, beat and pillage type who barely got past the fire stage? But it seems like there were a few with feathers in their hair.
Back to the other point, on watching how society and humanity is in its constant downward spiral, I wonder how important it is to develop a new meaning for the masses. Seeing that the opiate of religion and or belief systems has been plucked from our grasp, for some of us we hold on longer than others. But I do suspect, that which makes us human and regulates us is, that which we as humanists and liberalists are taking away from humanity and those that hold onto the faith move further away from its purpose and eventual benefits. The guidance, direction and stasis created by these belief systems is the glue that holds/held us together as a regulatory structure. There can be a debate to say that this is not the case, but we can clearly see that we are not a naturally self regulating species and do need to be checked, Possibly there are those who chose cool aid, may not have had the wrong intentions, albeit that they did not advance their cause. The question i ask now is rather if there is a possibility of instilling a new basis for humanity without having the bad with the good of control? I doubt it and assume that we are just part of a greater cycle, most probably not unlike something Stanislaw put forward, but hey I am biased he was born on the same day as me.

For now It is tea time, green tea time, I must abate from this needless keyboard clatter and return to doing some work, I hope to return to this a little later on, I may be mistaken.

no man/woman is an island, but we all need a lighthouse none the less.

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 22:54:00 +0000

none of us can stand alone without company, well the bulk of us at least. there are those elevated types that can. -- once again a multiday and locational epic--

But something we all need is a lighthouse to shine in the dark nights, however small we still need a shining light in our lives. How often is is not attached to ourselves, which fundamentally is not wrong, but we should shine for ourselves and not for others, geez from the wrong perspective this sounds like something a little biblical .. but it isnt.

But!, it does strike me that we all need a lighthouse to shine and display forth

how do we differentiate between something resonating with us or actually making a difference, this may be a little left field to say in the middle of nowhere, as reference I a m on the bus and there is some one reading a Paulo Coelho book.. most possibly the alchemist... always thought he was the junior cousin of carlos castenada, but I might be wrong. But PC books (the alchemist, the valkyri's and a whole lot of others that he sold millions of copies of) neither resonated nor made a difference, does that make me atypical of generation without direction? Ironically for someone spousing all that stuff about goodwill and bla bla bla peace and happiness and all that good internal soft squishy stuff, he has made a crap load of money and sold many books and influences many people, not unlike L Ron Hubbard. No I am not saying they are the same before I get crucified, by someone who misreads this.. All I am saying is that there are similarities and let your thought processes draw their own conclusions. But on the other hand I could be totally wrong and they are both right.

As a post-note on Paulo Coelho, I must apologize after reading his Bio, I do not mean to be disparaging about him, but rather the people who reads his books, he seems like more than a character ;-) No i do not mean to be disparaging about the people who read his books either, just saying i did not find resonance in them at the time that I read the books. But what is key is that he is a funny dude, he places pirate copies of his own books on pirate bay .. funny dude :-). Then reading more about CC, he was also crazy as cheese, I suppose they both have a little of that in common, some autobiographical, some embellishment, some fiction. I suppose totally unrelated and dissimilar, but they make me think about each other in a similar context, even though they are about totally different things, but do pertain to some level of enlightenment in each one.

On a tangent I watching some trashy TV last night (Weeds), and yes we do watch it for the acting ;-). In this one of the characters is in a state of shock and he is sitting in a hospital in the cafeteria and he is looking very distraught. a man walks up to him and starts talking, before long he is spouting all kinds of trauma to the stranger, but the key to this, to cut it short is that the person was actually the hospital chaplain who was actually a rabbit, no not the fishing rabbi, another one.. but key to all of this was something the rabbi said, he is Jewish, he does not have answers, he has questions and living is about the turmoil in finding the answers to questions (I am heavily paraphrasing), but in essence is not if or what, but rather the question and how you go about it? Heavily paraphrased.

Oh well apologise for leaving you all in the lurch .. halfway through a series of regular posts, i succumb to more normal routine, things have been topsy turvey over the last couple of weeks, integration, thinking, thinking a lot, thinking more, feeling sorry for myself, for others, full of despair, disappointment, sadness and a whole plethora of feelings and emotions. But i can be assured through all of this I am alive, usain bolt is still the fastest man on the planet curiosity landed on the red planet.. the volcano is erupting on the central north island.. America is in a serious drought, global warming, well human moderated Global warming climate change is a reality.

But this is not what was fleeting through my brain at the moment, yes I know I have the attention span of a spaniel puppy.. But this is just the way I think I may be. To get to the point.. I wonder a lot about photography, over and over and over again. Some days I really love taking pictures/photographs, but more often than not I wonder why I do it. This compulsion, then while wondering this I was looking at my Flickr profile on my phone and it struck me, that it doesn’t realy matter, or maybe it does. I looked and saw a photograph that i had seen many years before, even though it was only taken recently. It seems like there is a notion that over time we change, things advance, yet they stay the same, we remain absorbed with ourselves as a human race, there are those who see this, display it on film on canvas in form and art, then we look again it is all gone, destroyed by the masses, we start over again, building, breaking and starting again? Suddenly it appears that there is some human intelligence being found from more than 20000 years ago, first the caves in France, the aboriginal paintings in Oz, the recent find in ZA of the shaped shells and stones in a San cave. How little we know of ourselves, the longer we move forwards the more we forget. But it seems in capturing that which we see in a moment, is a way of slowing things down, but in other ways it seems that there are images which are not capturing life rather reflecting life? All very confusing..

But to get back to the lighthouse, i think i will have to get back to that another time?

Ok back to work, hopefully I will try and unravel this mess tomorrow, but in the sake of continuity I will just post this now in its incompleteness

On humanity and change

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:21:00 +0000

After considering all the doom and gloom of the last blog entry, there are aspects of humanity which are paramount. So no longer than 30 seconds after opening this and trying to type all hell broke lose on friday and I never progressed beyond the first line fo the blog and and to exit back into reality, and for the life of me, the thoughts behind this title are totally lost on me ;-)

I suspect the first sentence leads me into what I was contemplating at the time.. This after my doom and gloom and deliberations on the eurozone blowout and the rapidly crumbling world economy. This being said, my same economist train person was reading another article that i "over-read", this indicated that even though things are going totally paw-paw in certain parts of europe these people still seem to be doing alright. If we take an abstract or obtuse look at these things then we will notice that, or I should rather say I noticed or maybe thought or concluded that in essence if all value was wiped out of the economic system today then in principal all should still carry on as is.

Ok so the Paw-paw hit for a second time, today, a third attempt I hope to complete this entry. To return to the last thought, through all of this i believe we need a reevaluation of all that is important to us, all to well i know this is a very thin edge of a sword I am balancing on. That which is our essence is our destruction, that which is our essence makes us who or what we are, but we have lost sight of that which is around us, people, planet, ecology, economy and the whole kitchen sink. we live like we have never lived before, that is unless you are a reincarnationalis. We live with an abandon regarding the basis of what impact we have as individuals, and no! I am not advocating going back to the ruderal and living off the land like our Neanderthal ancestors, what I am advocating is a better use and less abuse and overuse of that which is there to sustain us. I am not exempt from this, I believe that a lot of this has to do with the artificial value structures we have placed on life and living, a fancy car is more amazing than a cow or the environment or a little fish in a little river in the middle of nowhere, but sometimes these go to extremes, we are exploiters and we need things to exploit? It is all to tricky.

You may ask where you can begin, now that is a good question? I must admit I don't really have the answer? Possibly a better sense of awareness amongst those who can be aware and contemplate these things, possibly better regulation by those who govern and hold our interests at hand. Have you ever wondered why our suburbs dont share land between parties in an effort to create produce allotments? Why not? Could we not have shared vegetables, shared aquaponics, now there is a challenging subject here in kiwilandia .. more on that at a later stage.

I am losing traction of what i was actually trying to get to .. maybe a little later on the thread will return...

On a more jovial note (yet filled with sadness), I met Batman on the train a few days back, albeit that he would never admit to being batman, or that he is the post middle adged batman or that he is now living deep in wisteria lane in the suburbs.. You may ask how I figure out that he was Batman? well it was fairly simple, his briefcase had a business card in the fron with his name on .. "Wayne F Bruce", Say no more.. I saw the light Or should I rather Say the DARK.. Yes it was a Dark night in the states when that loony toon took out those guns and explosives. We live in a sadly distorted reality filled with the illusions of the delusionals, even here in deep and dark and damp kiwilandia we are not immune to this aspect of humanity.... All so sad and thoughtless

Back to the Gardening Book, well I am not all that convinced, I have taken a break from guns, germs and steel by Diamond.. To switch to the "Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell", I must admit I was a little caught by the advert for the book, now this is a long story, " Henry Mitchell was to gardening what Izaak Walton was to fishing. The Essential Earthman is a collection of the best of his long-running column for the Washington Post. Although he offered invaluable tips for novice as well as seasoned gardeners" , I was actually searching for Izaak waltons book on fishing and I have an automated search phrase on a second hand site here in NZ (trademe) and this came up. I am both confused and somewhat interested, the book at more and less interesting than I expected, he is a very erudite gardner. One thing that did, however, ring very true for me was his description of the trials of being a gardener, in his words, the dogs will trample your daphodils, but always some survive. I goes on to mention his trials with the birds and the squirrels and how feeding them stops some fo the damage, but most amusing of all is his description of feeding the birds in winter and how only the sparrows and a few others arive and he then smartarsedly comments, what did you expect flamingo's? Which brings me onto a new topic, slightly tangential, yet related. I was browsing my flickr account alst night and viewing some photos other people took in wellington.. always intriguing. These are spectacular .. and they make me miss my friends and miss things familiar to me, and make me miss pierneef street and koba and maddie and jensie and suekie salomikie and of course Jamsie and Slats .. and the list doesnt stop. But at the exact timing of all of this we watched Henry poole ~~was~~ is here.. a fantastic Luke wilson movie .. which came at the right time and made us remember, the past is good to remember but it is the present where we are. we then ended this diorama of life off with the Paul Giamatti movie called Cold souls.. now that was just as much of an awakening.. The context being that we found a "moot" video shop that lets you take out "old" movies for about $1 a week .. fantastic ..

Ok enough Ramble .. back to work .. more later I promise..

I have noticed that I need to actually have a note pad to write my ideas down when they permeate my brain, like on the train or on the bus or wherever ... I have a number of these notebooks, not unlike someone else i know..

But mine a different.. mine have scribbles and silliness in them not notes of things to do and remember, those are pieces of paper strewn over my Desk.. which get processed on an irregular basis...

14001 and counting

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 04:02:00 +0000

you may ask specifically why 14001, or any number, it just is, because it is and that is the word that popped into my head when I opened the new blog entry. Yes I have been a little slack this week and last, not really writing all that mcuh, or as much as I would have hoped to have. But here we are and the week has started, we are already on the day second of this week. I wonder sometimes about the way we view ourselves as humans, it is a starnge thing, both woman and men. I just read an article a day back about Emer O'Toole and her decision not to shave and her wanton display of her hairy armpits, now that was a little bit of a damp squib, but boy oh boy oh boy.. I went and read a few pieces on her Blog The Vagenda, now you can go find that and decide what you think? The debate is still out for me, but Damn she shows some commitment to what she thinks, and this little issue seems to have her catapulted into fame and infamy. I also (all so) recently read some pieces on Madonna being riotous again, she flashed nipples, accidentally on purpose in Turkey, she flashed her tail somewhere else... now there is a 50 somthingyearold who is committed to upholding here identity.. Not sure where that is going though? Possibly she needs to be committed ..

On a more serious note, I was on the train this morning, yes again, I noticed a train acquaintance who always sits in the compartment , reading an article about the financial crisis in the EU. This is not strange as he seems to be an economist, economic commentator or something of the likes, but what caught my eye was the scale of the debt crisis that the PIGS have brought onto themselves or the EU, albeit through the words of the author, "playing three card shuffle" with their loans". Wow the amounts are just absolutely insane, they have already shared loans in excess of 500-600 billion Euro, this apparently only covers 16% of the current local debt, but these are only read an article over some ones shoulder on the train numbers .. But it is terribly boggeling..

On a more cheerful note, I have eventually succumbed to the FLU this winter, the first time in more than a couple of winters, but it does seem as if the "man" flu did not really hit me all that hard. It seems as if I will make it another couple of days and possibly even till the end of the week without the need of some special medicinal help. Interestingly I am reading guns germs and steel by Jarred Diamond, although this covers all the diseases the "developed" world ahs spread over the developing or new world, I don't believe that this is why I am sick, I imagine rather that eventually I am being exposed to some of the strains I have not yet been exposed to.. silly yes, but it is bound to happen at some point. Back to the book, it is not badly written and all, very interesting, but not unlike some of the other books I have read over the last while I am not convinced that all his thoughts are a 100% accurate, or should I say an accurate representation of what really happened and why things happened the way they did, I suspect my thoughts are premature, especially in the light that I am only a short way into the book, but I am willing to indicate, better than the last few realistic/cometary/people being clever books I have read over the last while.. But I do think it signals the time that maybe I should read something a little lighter, maybe the pirates meet Darwin, a gardening book, or finish midnights children, the Hungarian cooking encyclopedia or something a little more lighthearted.

But on a more sinister and comical note, when we look at ourselves, here i speak mostly in third person not about myself or my Gender, we (not the Royal) are often disappointed about the way we look, look to other people, are photographed and the likes. I seem to often get chastised for taking photographs that make people look less fantastical than they should. I suspect I will have to take, make, do more effort in this regard, somehow people don't seem to ahve the same appreciation for seeing things the way the camera saw them at that moment kind of way. The Last incident did, however, give rise to a fairly cheerful comment indicating that they would rather be portrayed as vamp rather than a vampire in the next photograph I take, or should, I rather say, blurt onto the interwaves. Yes I know that there have been numerous complaints in this regard in the past, I do apologize, and think maybe this something I need to aim for as a diversion from my simple documentation of the world as I see it and possible try to apply some of the rose coloured glass views my subjects would rather be viewed through. I suspect this might take some thought and planning on my side, One wonders can it be done in a way to still seem observational? somehow the Observational nature of photography seems to appeal more and more, Possibly due to something that Paul muadib said a long time ago in a book, but I was only a child then, and even then it was an old book, written about a time in the future.

Back to reality and vegetables and food and the weight of food we eat in a week, have you ever looked and or thought about the amount/weight of food we eat in a week.. it is pretty damn astronomical. This is especially in the context of us possibly having to find, gather, kill and scrounge this amount of food, granted I suppose we would then eat a different diet and not have to carry all that food with us when we go shopping. I often wonder about that, the nuclear winter or similar post apocalyptic disaster event thing, but to interrupt you immediately not in a sad or depressing or dark way, what we would eat and how we would live? How much would things be like deep dark Africa or the likes if suddenly the world would stop for whatever reason and we get chucked back into the dark ages, without light and power and all of those things? where would we go, what would we do? It is very easy to imagine these things in a depressing way, but can we imagine some light in this? Is it possible to find something of value in this? Have you ever considered what it is you would need to survive for extended time periods? How would you feed yourself, how far down the food chain would you go, how much do you think we would just remove and destroy without regard of our neighbours, would it make sense to live a lone and feed and fight, live together and hunt and share?

so what do we have planned for the week, oh yes we went 4X4'ing this weekend, it was .. well nice and interesting, but not maybe us? It was nice to see the places, but strange especially int he light that I had cycled some of these tracks before.. imagining that I had gone so far, UP and DOWN on those tracks .. But still unconvinced about this as a pursuit at this stage? But it was good..

so still undecided about the week ahead.. lets wait and see what it brings and where I go forth..

strange notions and things

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 03:40:00 +0000

The notion of Beauty being skin deep or otherwise appears to be so misconstrued as the premise whereby all of this delusion is based upon, is soley initiated by The Media and individuals who are temporally blind. But we must also realise that we can state the converse it is the notion that art is an expression (IMHO) of the conteXt and environment and social culture and a manifestation of the complex interplays within this notion. Does this make me stupid or un contextual in my prior statement?, Or should i rather state that in the current context and environment we have to assume if all was equal that I believe the current context is flawed, not withstanding that there are many more disturbed and unrealistic context and trends throughout time. I do, however, begin to doubt the actual framework of my premise, or rather that it is possible that I may be an anachronistically inclined in terms of my opinion of this aspect of humanity. Possibly, but we will never actually know if the garbage that I push out has any particular meaning or not, other than clearing my mind not unlike blowing my nose?

I will get back to the original premise or position I may be abjectly objectifying a notion of the importance of my opinion and possibly, rather that the opinion I may have is of any value or importance to others. But we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so it is written, therefore it must be true? Opinion, context and perspective all play a role, lest not forget culture~ality (if that word does not exist it should). We all know that if it is written, is on wikipedia or the web it must be true ;-)

This would return to the is it an ism or is art question that I raised some time back, but can we view or experience or judge humanity against the lines of art? Is there a thread that follows through, are people, like art a mirror on the society they exist in and if the are can they be judged by the artificial notions of a subset of those members who have financial motived behind them? Is is justifiable to evaluate ourselves or others against a artificial measure that is not attainable to the bulk of the race, whereas in the past there were memes and ideals that could be attained by anyone? Just a question?

enough of that serious stuff for the moment, more for myrth and way.

I imagine it is time to do a breadline of time over the last few years, but maybe only next time. It is not long before the end of the productive day and almost time for the weekend to begin. Possibly rather something full of myrth on monday or possibly a bonus on the weekend, who knows.

All we can be sure of is that there will be lots of scrabble tomorrow night, I will hopefully ahve recovered from the scrambling of our brain from going with some friends of ours in their small 4X4. I doubt I wlll have the patience for the scrambling scrabble on Saturday evening and may rather opt for something more sedentary or pedestrian like sitting or parking of and relaxing.

You may in retrospect actually ask, wherefore or why i went on the tirade about the beauty of skin being only as deep as the pages of the magazine the notion fell out of, but nowhere as deep as the pockets of the media and social mogals who create the illusion. We live in a world of wonder and illusion, yet we chose to only view life through certain coloured lenses, when it can rather be viewed in a number of other ways. On a totally different train of thought, On the way to my office, or I should say on my walk to the train station, due to its pedestrian speed of mobility I get to lookat things while I pass them by very slowly. One morning not to long back I was walking and noticed the most amazing "row" of three stars just to the left of orions knife or so. It turns out that I actually managed to use my google star map and discovered to my delight it actually works and that those were not stars, but rather jupiter and Saturn lining up near each other with some or other unknown star. BUT now they are moving, and it still amazes me that thousands of years ago, those primitive people figured out that there where stars that did not follow the same path as the other stars and then from this they worked out that they were planets orbiting something albeit our earth or to some the stars and to toehrs something else, but with the huge number of dots in the sky, the change of seasons and all of that combined they still figured out that those bright stars were doing something strange .. frigin dam amazing ..

soft puppies and all things nice

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:38:00 +0000

after my temporary sulk 2 days back, we have to return to reality and rather look forwards than dwell on insidious silliness. I watched a sorta nothing, but yet very interesting motivational lecture on TED yeasterday about "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life".. It was very nice, like all things soft and fluffy, but it did point to some truisms,.. if you sit on the couch and do nothing and just vegetate and don't do exercise and do anything positive you will be unhappy, something we didnt know? well yes, but she did point out a couple of things, we can only be as happy as we make ourselves. Personally for some people I suppose it is easier than for others (i hear so from the fluffy bunny brigade)? But for some of us it is harder work, and I suppose that is what makes it more appealing to be happy and at the end of the day I really enjoy being happy and more often than not I am the source of my own unhappiness, or should I rather say some of those frigin synapses are just not doing their shit the way they should. But that aint no excuse for downright being miserable. We do have choices, those boat people from east timor had choices they got onto rickety boats and sailed towards australia, we got onto a plane, so did a whole raft of others.. whether it be right nor wrong ;-) i wanted to say or? cant decied?, but we decided? (yes to those languofiles a ?, is a valid punctuation is this book it means a question interspersed within a statement, with special emphasis that the question is not the end of the sentence.... Here I am trying to justify my self in my own self expressionism ?, that aint right.

Back to puppies and bread, totally unrelated, but somehow many of us have them so they are part of our lives. There are those lucky or unlucky enough not to have either of them? Now, all considering I suppose for some it would be harder to chose between the puppy and the loaf? I even wonder if I actually really love bread, sometimes I must admit I do, othertimes, actually most of the times it is the process and the amazement that amazes me. the yeast, the gluten, the rising the knocking down, the process.. all just to cool, or I should have said, all to warm .. Ha so Corny for this time of the day.

But as we know it is all a game, we start we live, we do more. So what you going to do this evening, tomorrow and on the weekend to make a better and happier life for yourself?

knee dep in the mud and sinking

noreply@blogger.com (marko vognonovich) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 23:03:00 +0000

A strange thing you get to understand is that no matter how well you can bootstrap yourself there are times that you rapidly move from being in ankle deep mud to suddenly ~~realizing~~ believing (i am still bootstrapping) you cannot walk on mud. One moment we feel the wind through our hair, we smell the roses the next we smell the cattle manure under the roots of the rose petals. But strangely everything is just seasons and we have to understand that change does not come without its own burdens. Sometimes those shoelaces get real slippery.

But more on the changes of seasons and times, thinking back over the last few days it is hard to imagine why I suddenly find myself neck deep in the mud.. We are all entitled to our moments in the shade, a simple thing as looking at old photographs, go figure. I am busy compiling all the better pics from the first year in kiwilandia. One would imagine looking and reliving all those experiences could tip you over the edge again. But I still have those laces firmly in hand and can almost feel my shoulders breaking through the dirt.

It is time to pick up the pieces and not to be afraid ;-)

Change is good, but looking back at some things in the past is also good to keep reference and reverence. Strange now looking back at how much things have changed, we have changed. I was just looking at a fantastic website by a photographer in South America that took a series of then and now pics .. absolutely love them. Her name is Irna werning, just love this series and the second one. Somehow there are those who can create out of nothing and then we have the others, or should I say us or we that watch in awe at these simple manifestations.

To get back to the veggies, I need to find the recipe for a mini-hothouse? You may say I should have said plan, but I suppose if it is food we are talking about it must be talking about a recipe and not a plan. But let us stop being illy and get back to reality. On the gardening note, we discovered a number of things, among them that our whippet is to big, but more importantly that whippets are know for eating expensive things.. Who would have known that? so we have to start planing again soon, we have a basic crop in, but nothing really established yet, hopefully we will get some peas and broad beans first, I am currently teraforming certain sections of our Plot into productive agricultural zones ;-) Next I suppose are the chickens, then the lean-to frames and then the tomato zones. This brought up some discussion with a friend of ours with whom i was raising the point of sustainability and survivability post an apocalyptic event. He questioned if he needed to get heirloom or other seeds in stock, but it struck me that it would not really be possible to actually prepare in manner like this. I do not think we will be able to simply survive without being more than prepared, we should also be practiced. I think this is very akin to the 10000 hours we need to be able to do anything well, do we not also have to spend at least 10000 hours or so thinking and actually surviving and preparing for the unfortunate eventuality? It may be a dark and somber thought, but it might just be necessary? I do not think that we have to dig deep into the depths of depression and post apocalyptic preparedness. I just beleive we have to understand where we are, what we can do, what we cannot do and what we have to do to be able to survive if something does happen.

Enough melodrama and sadness for now, the days are getting longer the sun is getting brighter, soon within the next few months the seasons will change. How fragile the African heart is, yearning for the sun and the endless summer days. I have managed to move beyond shedding a tear every time i hear tambotie boom by die heuwels fantasties. It is not unlike us to question our impact or mortality, we are a fragile being. But soon the searun will chase the whitebait freely in the shallows of the lowland rivers, this year I hope to be ready and capture some of the beasts.

Through all of this, there is a whole lot of silliness, but to be human is to be silly. How fragile we are and how we change over time, sometimes vulnerable others strong, at times we are brave, other times we cower like small fluffy animals sitting in cave grooving with a pict. I view with interest a whole lot of peoples Flickr accounts, not only because of the pictures they take, but rather the progression of their pictures over time. Some of the people become bold, very bold, others tend to remain the same. It is interesting taking a temporal view over peoples lives through their photographs and postings. I suppose my postings in flickr are relatively tame and stationary in terms of dramatic changes and trends. Yet I cannot say I am unaffected by trends and things I see, granted I cannot replicate those things as that in my mind would make me a facsimile and not me, but I suppose we are just facsimiles of our environment.