h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Peanut! Willem! me darlin's! So great to hear from you! How are you both? Are you going to tell me your news? Please interrupt my November journal. . Save me from my November journal! .

November 8th NaJoPoMo

Dear November 8th, can I have a please? . I think Peanut will provide.



B flat minor added 6th

Pillars and archways, long shadows, dust in golden sunshafts. A whirring winged beetle type thingy is hovering around, that would prefer not to be called a beetle type thingy, because it thinks it's really symbolic.



Ahhh time alone today. I love time alone, with notebook and camera, allowing the glorious absurdity of just being in the moment.



Took the train to the coast, fifteen minutes out on the branch line, which is called the Avocet Line, a much loved railway line, and so named because it runs along the coast from Exeter to Exmouth, and there's avocets out there on the Exe Estuary, except they haven't arrived yet. They come in for winter.

The avocet is also depicted on the logo for the RSPB.



Ah yes, and the light is so silver on the water, and I take a lot of photos in funny angles, and the more I lose myself in moment, the more the absurdity and wonder can take over.

The blue lens flare in the corner of my picture becomes the ultimate blue painting, that I have trekked across continents to find, as if it was concealed in some secret chapel.

I see a poster in a window, advertising a lecture about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It attracts my attention because it just says I K Brunel, I K, no full stops, just I K, and I've never seen that before, just the initials.

And it brings on a perception shift, and I K separates from its context, and becomes a curious runic symbol, that means nothing and everything.

And then I try to write a low budget black and white scifi movie in my head, just so that I K can appear everywhere, but fortunately it all dissolves into the silver saltsea light.



And an hour or two later I'm back on the train to the city, and its good to return, all renewed.

And I think about the absurdity of being, and I have a thousand cosmic realisations that mean everything yet nothing, and I burst out laughing beside the umbrella vending machine on the station.

Thank you for very well written journal. When I was learning to play the piano, I would love to improvise and play like Ludwig van Beethoven, with lots of gusto. I found it a great way of releasing stress. Sadly I don't know have the piano anymore as we had to sell it before we moving from Harold Hill to Barrhill in Scotland. I still miss it as I found playing the piano a great way of relaxing.

Rattling tin cans to be here and coming over the ethernet to read your journal beautiful daydreamer

leccy keeps going out and my router is hanging by a thread so as I am here going quickly to put the urn on and leave plenty of Perculiar while the going is good

Painting with words and music - I like it

I play the keyboard myself, but chords with added 6ths and suchlike are a bit of a mystery to me... There are some note combinations that resonate in me more than others, though, so I appreciate what you write about your chords, even though I don't know the chords myself

[Amy P]

Hullo The Thinker! And SashaQ and Peanut via ethernet , and The Mufflewhump Angel and everyone.

How lovely to hear from you all.

Yes, you're right, The Thinker, playing piano is a great way to relieve stress, what a shame you had to sell yours. Do you ever have a yearning to play again?



Do you play with a band, or write songs, SashaQ? I suspect you might be rather an adept keyboard player. I wonder what type of keyboards you play?



Of course, Dmitri is a pianist also, , so I'm a bit like a little kittie that is leaping all over the keyboards in comparison haha, but I love it, and very happy to have the space to be exploring it here.



I'm on Korg electric piano, mmm I love it, and the neighbours and my husband particularly love it because it has a headphone socket, so they don't have to be witness to my more experimental efforts.

I have a Roland synth also though, and I do love a synth, mmmm those soundscapes, infinite soundscapes!

I think the synth is a miracle. Robert Moog, ah so magic.

I'm glad they invented digital though, even though the analogue sound might be richer, simply because I'd need to expand my room about five times just to fit in an analogue synth.

November 9th NaJoPoMo

Dear NaJo protector. Who? . I keep seeing a protector, guiding spirit, known as NaJo.



Well, today is Remembrance Day, so I didn't select one particular chord, I just went to the piano and played and played, because I get sombre on Remembrance Day, and I need a requiem, and I make my own requiem.

Some of the chords I've been learning were in there, and some other ones besides, and some that definitely aren't in the book.

I stay around the edges of Remembrance Day, avoid all the politics and things, I just do it my way, wear my own type of dream flower on my collar. I think my flower is some kind of luminous daisy, with a spiral centre, with veins of crimson red, all covered in tears, like dew.

And in the chords I hear abstract patterns, zigzags and broken circles and wire mesh and barbed wire, and steel and edge and rip and hollow, but also I let my tears flow all over the notes, and that washes me and I feel connected to the river of other human tears.



Also I think about my Dad. He was just one of the many youths who got caught up in WW2, and he wrote poems from the front line about the horrors of war, and they are so sensitive and they break my heart every time I read them.

But what a gift to leave behind, and I know that the war affected him and broke his heart. He was so amazing. In his later years he wrote beautiful poems and essays about the Cosmic Christ, Teilhard de Chardin, ecology and the interconnectedness of all creation.

Yes, I have and once tried practising on a portable electronic keyboard but it is not the same. I would like a piano but I don't have any room in my flat.

Remembrance Day greetings to all here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XiKB0V06J8

[Amy P]

November 10th NaJoPoMo

Ah yes

Dear NaJo, how's things today then, matey? You're a very loyal imaginary spirit guide, that I just made up because I like the name NaJo. Unless of course you're a Threshold Guardian, but could you not be too shadowy please?

I'm fascinated by the Threshold Guardian. I think it is some kind of archetype, a shadowy figure who guards the entry to the spiritual world. I'm not entirely sure. I think writers use Threshold Guardians in characterisation, but I only know about them from this book I have with a picture of an amaaaazing rock painting from the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, The Holy Ghost Panel.

http://www.slawcio.com/slawek%201.html

I love this picture.



I have no idea why I started on about Threshold Guardians. . I was actually going to go on about how Tintin in Tibet is one of my favourite books. Which would have been a completely riveting journal entry. . Well, you never know eh?



Ah yes! And back to the piano go I!

B flat dominant 9th

Glass, reflections, play of light on glass. Dazzle. Flicker. White light through stained glass.

Thousands of beautiful glass drops, pear shaped, teardrops, or glass raindrops. Perhaps they're not glass, nor made from water, perhaps they are made from an essence that I can't describe. On each one, there is a perfect reflection of a tiny stained glass window.

What?? No idea. Better go drink some sherry now. .

Do please go on about Tintin when you get chance - I really like the animated cartoon series of Tintin; every Saturday morning I used to watch it

I like the description of the glass drops, too Reminds me of the iridescent glass drops on QI the other night

[Amy P]

Hey SashaQ! yay! I've never seen the animated Tintin cartoon, I must check, just to see my beloved Snowy. . I love Snowy.



I think I might go tell NaJo about Tintin in Tibet right now. . Oh lucky NaJo.

Oh yes, the animated Tintin was great! I used to watch it too!
In fact I think they still show it on one channel or another here.

November 11th NaJoPoMo

Dear NaJo,

Ah yes, Tintin in Tibet.

The Tintin comic books were a really big deal to many kids growing up in the 60s.

My older brother collected most of them over the years, but he insisted on reading them in the original French. So little sis, who didn't speak French, grr had to contend with looking at the pictures. I do remember that Snowy the dog was called Milou.

When Tintin in Tibet came out, though, I was so obsessed with it, that my parents had to buy me the English version.

I lived right inside those incredible pictures, and inspiring story line. I'd never heard of Tibet, or the Himalayas, or seen Buddhist monks before, and it was so magical, it was like home.

Interestingly, I read that Herge, the author, was suffering from a traumatic nervous breakdown at the time of writing it, having nightmares about endless whiteness.

So the drawings of vast mountainous white snowscapes really helped him purge his fears. I think he did the drawings himself, did he?

Perhaps the theme of Buddhism helped him also? I don't know. Interesting. Buddhism is a wonderful cure for a breakdown, I'd say.

The book also won an award, what was it? must check, approved by the Dalai Lama, because it made so many people aware of the beauty and culture of Tibet.

Of course, it's still in print, so I have a copy, and I read it often, and I still live through it, and love it.



B flat dominant 9th with sharpened 11th. What? OK ...

Yellow, all about yellow.

A luminous pale yellow china teacup lying in a mossy clearing in a wood, with all twisty tangly trees and a little stream.

And cascading out of the teacup like a fragrant waterfall, is a yellow flower, I think it might be winter jasmine, and ahhhhh the fragrance is indescribable.

Oh really? Thanks superfrenchie! Must try to find that. Ah Milou, Milou

Oh sorry, I should have mentioned I think they still show it on French TV.