absolutwillie

Category: Migrations

  • The Queen of my heart

  • Lengthy, but worth the read

    Here’s another piece I rediscovered. It’s taken from the online journal of Jan Arden:

    Keep Asking
    09-Sep-2005 11:58 am

    How do you learn to love yourself without reservation, without hesitation? How do you truly and honestly learn how to forgive the things you have done, or furthermore, the things that have just “happened” to you? How do you come to terms with your own body and your own thoughts? Time…time…time…a wise healer and a wiser teacher. You cannot know until you face the demons that lurk just under your beating heart. There will always be part of your ego that wants to bring you down; you just have to keep it at bay with your spirit. The spirit is bigger and braver and smarter, it’s just not always as loud. It’s a whisper that takes time and attention to hear. You have to spend time with yourself and not always bask in other’s company.

    How do you learn to just be? I still keep going back, time and time again, to the delicate art of the “thought” – the way in which we communicate essentially, with what and who we are. We are infinite. We are omnipotent. We are here now – and always “were” here. We are all here together trying to finds bits of ourselves among the others we know; that’s why we are always seeking a soul mate, endlessly seeking to retrieve a particle of where we came from. Sometimes I do believe another soul can hold that part and is waiting to give it to back to you.

    I was talking to someone about attraction and the laws in which it seems to work. (Who knows what they are, I don’t know.) Why do we like certain people? What makes us want to be with them, no matter what the outcome, or the conflictions – when we want something so badly that we care not what the consequences may in fact be? Is it chemical, spiritual, circumstantial? Is it Godly? Is it just plain and simply the recognition of seeing them for the first time and recognizing that you “know” them. You know them so intricately, from another time all together. You don’t hesitate, you just walk into them body, mind, lungs and all. When you see someone for that first moment and say to yourself, ahh, there he is…or there she is….or there YOU are. The mystery of who you are reflected in someone’s eyes and when they look at you, you see for a second everything all at once.

    Most of the people that I have met as an adult have those mysterious qualities about them; they have that thing that pulls me in. I feel like I know them and my comfort is instant, my comfort is immediate. There is no reluctance on my part to stay close to them…I want to run toward them. I want to know them and be with them and think about them most of the day. It’s different meeting new people when you’re older; you have a built in “caution” in all that you do. You realize that hurt is shaking hands with anything unfamiliar. You avoid being hurt, so consequently, you miss out on some wonderful souls. You will always risk being hurt as you take on a new friend. You will always risk being let down or being rejected. But risk you must. Once in a great while, things turn out. If you set your thoughts to the task of getting what you want, you most certainly will have things go your way. I have “thought” my way this far and shall continue to do so until I am no longer in this body.

    The body…one’s great foil, one’s certain enemy. With age comes true acceptance. It’s hard being young, it’s hard facing a mirror and not liking who you see. As corny as it sounds, if you tell yourself horrible things, your body will react by giving you horrible images of itself. It can twist itself up into a heap of mutant cells and bone if you let it. Kindness towards one’s self must become a part of your day; a part set aside to just talk to yourself…to say good things, to pick yourself up. Darkness is only the absence of light, the light is there, you just have to really look for it…it will find you. (I tried to be kind…I tired to be good…..I think that was in a song of mine.) It’s harder than anything in this world to do – that’s to be honest with yourself – to actually sit in a chair in the sun and tell yourself the truth. Ask yourself questions that you’re afraid of and you won’t be afraid anymore. Ask yourself what you like, what you want, who you want? Don’t stop asking yourself everything you want to know; it’s a conversation you won’t ever regret having.

    jann

  • Quote for life

    Quote from the movie: “Unfaithful”

    “Drink wine… This is life eternal… This is all that youth will give you… It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends… Be happy for this moment… This moment is your life”

    Thank you for this jewel, Amy! (oll joe nied ies laf!)

  • Love and Data

    Data is quantifiable to the nth degree. For us to understand packets of quantified data – we need to organise that which we are given into recognisable patterns. These recognisable patterns of data are regarded as units of information. Information should, therefore, be quantifiable. Quantifiable information can be distilled to a core of vitals, which the information designer can manipulate to transfer all of the initial data to a desired audience, without bombarding the audience with more than the core vitlas.

    All information, however, is not quantifiable.

    Arguably the most important aspect of efficient communication is qualitative. Emotional. The information derived from emotion can be considdered primal. Connecting to the primal core of an audience is the essence of efficient communication. For the information designer, this is the real challenge.

    How does one connect to the primal core?
    Not by being clever – but by Being.

    (At least, I suspect as much.)

  • obviously 21st centurion

    nerd
    writes like crazy
    point

  • Hokku Tanka Haiku Quantums

    Thank you to Tresblue for mentioning the Haiku 😉 Indeed, in our world of small chips and big data – Haiku are probably the perfect examples of condensed information transfer through language. The ultimate microchip!

    Compared to 21st Century man’s obsession with manuals, theses and compilations, one of the first forms of Haiku – the Hokku – had a completely different approach to information transferance. Influenced by Zen philosophy, Bashō could be considered the Father of Hokku.

    Hokku vs Haiku? Compare this 17th Century Hokku by Bashō:

    Old pond
    Frog jumps in
    Sound of water.

    To the more modern Haiku by Masaoka Shiki, the Revisionist who brought Hokku to it’s knees in the late 19th Century:

    Looking through
    Three thousand haiku
    On two persimmons.

    A snake falls
    From the high stone wall:
    Fierce autumn gale.

    He washes his horse
    With the setting sun
    In the autumn sea.

    Again and again
    From my sickbed I ask,
    ‘How deep is the snow?’

    Soon to die,
    Yet noisier than ever:
    The autumn cicada.

    Snake-gourd in bloom:
    On his way to death,
    A man chocked with phlegm.

    A crimson berry
    Splattering down on
    The frost-white garden.

    As the bat flies,
    Its sound is dark
    Through the grove of trees.

    I want to sleep:
    Go gently, won’t you,
    When you swat the flies.

    So few the cicadas
    This morning after
    The autumn storm.

    Nothing of Bashō’s Hokku remains in the Haiku – except for the seventeen syllable form. Masaoka Shiki paints a more elaborate and esoteric scene. Here one is taken on a 10 verse journey from where one progresses from reader (first verse), to spectator, to participant and finaly to sole survivor. Through this approach, we are emotionaly involved – above and beyond the impassive observation allowed by Bashō.

    Funny how this shift from Bashō to Shiki reflects the shift in our societies. Where once we were able to learn all we needed to know in three lines – we now have more information than we as a species can cope with. We need more and more combinations of verse to understand the world within and around us.

    Problem is: the production and discovery of new combinations of verse grows exponentialy to our ability to learn – which, in turn, is fueled by our need to understand.

    Perhaps Solomon was on to something when he likened the quest for knowledge to chasing the wind.

    What if everything is encapsulated in the origional Verse?
    Three lines (in English – in the origional Japanese, everything is written in one line) that hold the answer to everything.

    Sounds a bit like string theory, doesn’t it? However, if we were to move towards the string theory that is the Verse – what would happen to emotional involvement?

    Aum

  • Japanese Verse

    Language is the most basic form of modern information exchange – therefore poetry can be seen as a form of information design. The Japanese have a magnificent tradition of information design through verse. Here are two examples – what does it tell you?

    Can it be that the moon has changed?
    Can it be that the spring
    Is not the spring of old times?
    Is it my body alone
    That is just the same?
    (Narihira in Ise Monogatari, p. 67)

    In this world is there
    One thing constant?
    Yesterday’s depths
    In Asuka River
    Today are but shallows.
    (Anonymous in Kokinshù, p.76)

    Good morning to you.

  • Rummaging

    Sometimes, when we rummage through our old boxes, in stead of dwelling on the past we could stumble onto clues about ourselves. Clues that make more sense now than they did when first encounered. Here’s one, a quote from who knows where, that I (re)discovered:

    “Certainly there is now a growing realisation that simplification is often the best way to filter information from an endless ocean of trivia, and that in the future the onus will be on graphic designers to become “information architects” so they can create tools that help the user to better navigate the complex seas of the digital age.”

    I like that.
    Will ponder on it some more… good night.

  • My brother in arms

    here’s a link to a very dear friend of mine’s space on msn. if you’re interested in cars – you’ll love his writing! keep a look out for him in Drive2 as well as online at mambaonline.com

    Christo Valentyn

    Blogged with Flock

  • greetings and salutations!

    hello and thank you for stopping by! as you can tell, this is a very new blog – from a very inexperienced (dare i say?) blogger.

    if anyone can give me some tips on how to make it easier on the eye – i can make pretty images, but don’t have a clue as to how to get them working as backgrounds, headers/logos and all those neat applications.

    meanwhile, i’m going to have fun exploring this new universe.

    ta,
    willie