The Good Ole Days Are Now!

Those are a few of my favourite things...about London

2016-06-20T16:08:00.000+01:00

The cultural and exuberance and the culinary diversity. All the learning opportunities. The ease of travel from here to anywhere. The sheer richness of the urban fabric of communities and architectural variety. The climate even, no extremes, yet with seasons. The choice of living paces: from the fast lane to the vegging out in the sun in the park. The quality of "human material", the daily flurry of all the wonderful people coming my way...

The Ukraine crisis and the end of a "dictatorship"

2014-02-23T10:47:00.002+00:00

As long as the old tired trope of "goodies vs. baddies" keeps being rubbed in by the media time and over again, journalism as a profession will remain what it has always been: propaganda-mongering for gullible masses.

The sounds of Brixton

2013-05-06T17:44:00.004+01:00

My ideas as per why people would want to turn up music to to eardrum-popping levels on a lovely spring day:

1) they need to drown out the voices in their heads that keep telling them how useless and hopeless is what they are doing with their lives;

2) they need to drown out the shit they say by way of small talk so that they would come across smart and attractive enough to each other and with a bit of luck have sex afterwards;

3) I've run out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Gay London

2013-05-05T10:47:00.001+01:00

This could be a nation of wine drinkers

2013-04-27T02:52:00.000+01:00

Шизоблок

2013-04-25T13:55:00.002+01:00

Шизоблок - профессиональный приём политтехнологов (spin doctors), сведение реальности к двум якобы взаимоисключающим альтернативам (плохиши<->кибальчиши, социализм<->капитализм, Ельцин <-> Зюга, республиканцы<->демократы, гей-Европа <-> гетеро-Россия), чаще всего с сильной эмоциональной наживкой: "За детей!", "За наших!", "Бойтесь террора!", "Понаехали тут чёрные!", "А вот как пропадёт колбаса из магазинов!" и т.д.. Нюансы, другие варианты, весь спектр между крайними проявлениями и т. д. таким образом исключаются из возможного рассмотрения, и все дебаты и политические решения с их последствиями направляются в организованное русло с предсказуемым результатом. Профессиональный наёбинг мозгов широчайшим слоям населения.

Boston marathon bombings

2013-04-22T10:46:00.001+01:00

No matter who and why staged the Boston events, we need to remain mindful of the emotional journey the media would try to take us on and to what conclusions we will be prompted to.

Why Are Trace Chemicals Showing Up in Umbilical Cord Blood?

2012-09-01T19:24:00.002+01:00

Why Are Trace Chemicals Showing Up in Umbilical Cord Blood?

For me, that proves once again that natural scientist's complacency about progress and technology is based on self-delusion (or a social construct if you will). Technologies that are meant to improve our lives in fact ruin them. There are no long-term case studies for most synthesized materials we are using. It took half a century to figure out that freon and leaded gas were bad to us, what next?

Clint Eastwood speech at GOP convention: unqualified opnion par excellence

2012-09-01T19:21:00.001+01:00

Clint Eastwood really should stick to acting and stop making an ass out of himself. So should all other celebrities, just stick to singing, acting, juggling, etc. We know who you are. We don't expect anything smart from you.

Atonement: review

2012-08-31T00:32:00.003+01:00

Atonement: your run-off-the-mill BBC period costume drama until Vanessa Redgrave descends from the Parnassus or wherever actors of her calibre dwell and with but a few minutes of monologue yanks the whole pretty but trite shebang to the Oscar and BAFTA wow-heights.

TV is a Hitler in your living room

2012-08-30T23:58:00.004+01:00

Except it's not just "state" sponsored propaganda. That's vulgar Marxism. There are more players in the filed vying for your brain synapses.

The 10 signs that I've become a Londoner (the joie de vivre version)

2011-12-19T21:07:00.007+00:00

I still admire the city I live in, how handsome and charming it is. It never ceases to amaze me: just turn around the familiar corner for some quirky discovery, be it a pretty Victorian mansion, ethnic restaurant, or a view of the City's skyscrapers from a most unexpected place.
I still feel overwhelmed with how much goes on daily in this city: exhibitions, premières, musicals, openings, concerts, demonstrations, seminars, public lectures. Sometimes, I just have to stop reading mail-lists with yet more new announcements: I just don't enough hours a day to visit all that takes my fancy!
I avoid the Tube except for emergencies and "long-haul" travel. Buses are the most civilised means of commuting: you get a seat, a nice view and another free city tour. Most places in Central London are easier to walk to anyway, especially when you are versed in the quintessentially British idiosyncratic shortcuts through buildings, back lanes and car parks.
I take it for granted that no street is straight here (save for Oxford Street and Edgware Road) and getting from point A to point B can take any amount of turns and changes of direction. That has helped me reconcile mentally and emotionally with the irrationality of existence.
I have finally discovered where to go shopping for affordable stylish clothes. I can't buy garb on the Stateside any more, in London it would look like peasant's pajamas.
I spell the British way by default now. My Microsfot Word yet needs to learn that too.
I got used to the "hard-core, fuzzy-edges" English attitude to appointment-keeping, project management and weekend-planning. I allow a bit of leeway for everything and that, in fact, makes my life much easier and enjoyable.
The sight of the Shard lit up at night excites me no end. I think the Gherkin is iconic. The Royal Festival Hall is still an abominable monstrosity on the outside but I love hangung out inside.
The East End accent does not baffle me any more. Now I find some North American accents completely incomprehensible.
The sight of London from the airplane's window makes my heart melt. It's good to get back home!

Idols and mobs

2011-11-24T12:00:00.000+00:00

Every time I see someone engrossed in reading a newspaper with a picture of an orange lady with glued-on eye-lashes and inflated boobs being peddled as a role model for the nation thanks to her uncanny ability to climb from one highly affluent cock onto another, well, I just cackle a bit. Earthlings are peculiar critters.

Work hard, play hard

2011-11-24T11:58:00.000+00:00

The 'work hard, play hard' slogan is utter hogwash because it glorifies slaving yourself into the ground in exchange for retail therapy and party drugs.

Online gay dating websites

2011-11-24T11:53:00.000+00:00

just mere commodity markets of temporary body part appropriation for purposes of physiological gratification?

Relationships and finding partners

2011-06-25T12:49:00.003+01:00

According to my shrink, and I totally concur with her, all people's relationships are games, over the rules of which they have no control, being jerked around, like marionettes, by blocked out memories, shards of past emotions, reactive patterns of behaviour sitting beneath their conscious mind.

So when people look for love and relationships, they simply chase invisible shadows in their minds, projecting them on reality. It is a pure accident if a real person fits the bill, because the criteria are hardly known to the chaser. That is, unless they've been through a successful therapy.

Human race vs. chaos

2011-03-13T17:07:00.005+00:00

Human beings are the only force in the Universe (if you don't count God) that is working to counter entropy, the natural way of things to fall into chaos. The formidability of this task only really strikes you, when you think what cosmic forces we, mere thinking mould in a far-flung corner of the Universe, are against in this.

Lifestyle choices: Brahmacharya

2010-11-21T16:55:00.000+00:00

The word brahmacharya is understood broadly in yoga as "sexual continence," which can be understood as being applicable as appropriate in different contexts (e.g., faith in marriage, celibacy for spiritual aspirants etc.), in more extreme terms (complete celibacy) or in more specific terms in relation to preserving and sublimating male sexual energy rather than losing it through ejaculation.

In yoga, the term brahmacharya tends to take on a connotation of disciplining the use of and preserving sexual energy. Brahmacharya is discussed in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras as one of the 5 Yamas, the foundational commitments for the practice of yoga. According to the Yoga Sutras, the end-result or fruit of Brahmacharya practised to perfection is unbounded energy or vitality.

Brahmacharya can also be interpreted more generally in a variety of ways, such as:

* generally striving for excellence in all domains of activity and relationship
* pursuing 'virtue' however defined. Brahmacharya understood in this sense is similar to the classical Greek concept of arete (excellence)
* clearing underlying personality conflicts and centering oneself and ones spiritual journey in clear, well conceived and sustainable values (that is, thinking of Brahmacharya as an ongoing practice of 'clearing' analogous to resolving personality complexes and conflicts in psychotherapy)
* refining one's 'energies' (prana/chi/aura etc.) in relation to other people generally, to become aware of more subtle energies and to take one's energies or 'vibration' higher

Pre-logical, Logical and Supra-Logical

2010-11-18T17:43:00.005+00:00

There are three types of minds:

pre-logical, corresponding to our animal interioir section of our brain. That's how animals think "likes are alike", "A=B=C=D", ...
logical, that lives in the frontal lobes, we acquire it from the civilising effort of upbringing and education, that's what science uses to understyand the visible world
supra-logical, of the "God operates in mysterious ways' fame, is accesible through spiritual development, it allows to understand the inner struicture of people, things and events.

At this point of the developmet of ourrace, we thinkthat logical, scinetific is the

However there is a higher

Why is God a Him?

2010-10-22T09:21:00.000+01:00

Human mind due to its limitations can only think in human categories. We need some kind of pronoun, so we use He, for the sake of convenience and also due to our own tendency to associate the qualities we see in God to maleness. Although I don't think that God would have primary or secondary sexual attributes, do you?

In touch with your feelings

2010-09-26T15:12:00.006+01:00

It sure is fine and dandy to be in touch of your feelings. It is great to express them,not suppress them.

But do you know if they are your true emotions or just a script (reactive behaviour pattern, or demons as they used to call them) sitting in you and jerking you around. You think that you are so in love and can't live without this person, but in fact it is that whimpering little boy or girl in you that your Dad did not hug enough when you were small so now you are looking for just anyone who will satisfy that craving, fill in that void inside you. You pick on on those clues - that you are not even consciously aware of - choose you victim and pounce down on them.

You sure be better off not giving voice to that trapped negative emotion, because it is not you and it won't be you speaking if you let it speak and, in all likelihood, it won't be saying anything nice! So keep a lid on it and work it out on your own. Don't bring this voice to your nice relationship meal!

Relationship is like a meal

2010-09-26T14:43:00.011+01:00

'What we look for in a relationship?' a friend asked me today.

For me it starts at the other end: not what you are looking for in a relationship but what you have to bring to the table and share with the other one.

It's like a meal: you share nice stuff, not your waste. You also need to find someone who will like what you have to share. You also would not like someone who brings their waste to the table. It's perfectly alright to want to have nice things for your meal, right?

It should not be the other diner's responsibility to gut, scale and cook your fish - bring a nicely seared medium tuna steak! Cook your own contribution well, don't assume cooking the other's offering as your responsibility, although you may want to help if you see they are struggling.

You also may want to make sure that what you bring does not cause allergies or indigestion in the other. That's what we call caring.

You don't need to bring the same stuff, we all are different. One can bring the starter, the main and the cheese, the other - the soup, the wine and the dessert. What matters is that you have a complete meal that both find satisfying.

When both parties understand these ground rules, it makes for a perfect relationship. I would think this all is but wishful thinking if I didn't know a couple who are exactly like that: Dusko and Mack, I'm talking about you guys, you're such a beautiful couple inside out! In the last two years, they have treated me to dozens of wonderful meals and now I know the meaning of that.

Games we play in relationships: narcissist and co-dependent

2010-09-26T13:22:00.020+01:00

There is a very old Russian joke: What is a perfect couple? - A sadist and a masochist.

How very true: they must be inseparable, both fulfilling each other's needs. On the flipside, it is a very destructive relationship, akin to that of a dealer and a drug addict. They are stuck in pressing each other's pleasure buttons: the need to abuse and the need to be abused (remember that Eurythmics song?), the need for money and the need for drugs.

There are millions of couples around us like that, maybe even us - not as dramatic as the sadomasochist couple but very similar in essence. We all tend to take account only of our actions and emotions without examining the cause of them, be on the effect side, like my favourite coach Phillippa Mole says.

A very common pattern is a relationships where one party is narcissistic and the other is co-dependent. The latter wants to be loved for all wrong reasons: for example because they were emotionally rejected by a parent and now they try to re-create that relationship and make good for what happened in the past but this time around with someone else. There is an element of thriving on rejection in that, because all too often, what the co-dependent is striving to recreate is that very unhealthy relationship with their parent(s). Despite aspiring for love, the codependent subliminally (because all this happens as all parties involved are jerked around like marionettes by their unrealised behaviour patterns and urges) does everything to be rejected once again. In other words,s/he falls into the same script, because it was never brought up to the conscious mind and analysed for what it is.

In terms of transactional analysis, the co-dependent's script is "I'm not okay, you're okay". No surprise then, that the complementary party to this would have the "I'm okay, you're not okay" script, which is that narcissistic person who thrives on rejecting love and emotion. The underlying cause of that can be a previous trauma (emotional rejection) or an inherited pattern from an "I'm okay, you're not okay" parent who was perceived to be in the winner's position.

I have seen people for whom this (the narcissist script) was a self-defence mechanism against low self-esteem - they would project their insecurities on others, thus justifying their self-worth. Although they may appear to be riding the high horse, in fact, they are perpetuating a loser's script.

Deep inside, a narcissist would crave love but on the outside s/he would find pleasure in denying it to the other, just like someone before did it to them. That often leads to a "bad cop/good cop in one ball" script, where the narcissist alternates attracting and rejecting the co-dependent. That, in its turn, attracts the co-dependent because it fulfils their both urges: for love and for rejection. First s/he get a hope of love and then s/he gets the huge emotional kick of rejection. That scenario keeps both parties interminably busy with pressing each other's "pleasure buttons" (and pleasure is not joy!).

It is a very detrimental pattern because the energies here are wasted on re-confirming the neuropaths of deriving pleasure from negative stimuli: neediness, trauma, rejection, and emotional deprivation. Both parties thwart each other's emotional and all other kind of development because essentially they are busy recreating negative scenarios from the past over and over again.

How do you break from that? It is hard to see beyond the surface of what we do and are when we are embroiled in the very midst of a eddy of emotional bonds. Like I said before, we tend to look at the surface of things and events without trying to see what they mean. When you see that something in your relationship does not work, especially if it repeats time after time again, sit down and ask yourself why, or even better have someone else do it for you, a good therapist, for example - so keep asking yourself why until you get to the bottom of things.

Eric Berne's Games People Play can provide a good insight into how it all works. Also have a look at the Obssesive Love Wheel and see how much you can relate to it.

So is there a hope? Sure there is: a healthy relationship is like a good shared meal and is realistically attainable.

What is happiness?

2010-09-26T13:01:00.009+01:00

There is that (very beautiful) Russian lady Professor at Stanford University who is conducting this well-funded research on what happiness is. Hm, how very Russian, indeed! She has been all over TV in the States and, in her opinion, or so I gathered, happiness boils down to these:

gratitude
contentment
the ability to step outside yourself for others' sake
humility

How very true. However in her research, I see no separation between joy and pleasure, which are very different. Pleasure is a sensation, fleeting as its nature behoves it. Joy is a more sustainable state of mind and is the gate to happiness.

Wisdom and humility

2010-09-26T12:38:00.001+01:00

We all are on our own quests, different for every one. It is impossible to make decisions or dispense advice to others as per to what direction they should go in life or how they should improve themselves, or what they should think or do. God operates in mysterious ways and it is not up to a mere mortal to know what the other person's goal and meaning in life is.

Unless, someone comes and asks you for a piece of advice or help. You can then share whatever wisdom you have acquired for yourself, and that will be just your contribution to that person's making their own informed decision. Our own experience really matters just to ourselves. Hence the eternal problem of parents and children, when the latter won't listen to what the former say, because really we all need to gain on our own that empirical knowledge, which is true wisdom, as opposed to intellectual knowledge, which is just acquired wisdom, that we may agree with because it sounds logical but can never internalise because we have never actually experienced it.

See, humility is an indispensable part of wisdom, without humility wisdom is but spiritual arrogance.