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

How fascinating, your article on William Billings! I never heard of him before, and now I have. Imagine supporting his mother and siblings, by the age of 13, and being himself an outsider type. So many inspiring people, who create against the odds.

I could write about them! these outsider artists, yes I could, the EG would see me every week, heheh, except the limitations are mine, I just don't have the braintype. It would be like trying to climb Everest in flip-flops, me trying to write like that ...

grrr... its annoying because I have many things about Life, The Universe and Everything to share with others, and be good to support the site by contributing, but have to enjoy the work of others instead ..

perhaps one day I will get back to sending Anorak photos with weird titles, for the Post, depends on my evolutionary progress. .

mammoth?? the mammoth smiley! hullo mammoth smiley

I always have this thing about how it would be to meet people from history, for a coffee or something. What would I say, especially to the Greats. And what would they say to me?? Of course, some of the composers and people would be quite weird, eccentric, and not at all what one might expect, , so I would feel quite at home. . hmm

I think it's a case of 'we anarchists have to get organised.'

Adding to h2g2 in any way is appreciated by all of us. Photos and art can tell us just as much as essays, short stories, and guide entries.

As Robbie's always saying, 'It's both/and, not either/or.'

Hey Cactuscafé, Dmitri is right. Just if you write about it in your journal you're already contributing to the Guide.

Hey bros , that's so sweet what you say, and it helps me, really helps me .. thankyou .. I have things to think about.

Sometimes I am a bunch of anxieties, mixed with inadequacies, mixed with open-wound panic, mixed with fear, mixed with further inadequacies, best to avoid me at parties, , hmm,

but I like a smile and a joke also, and mammoth smileys . I think that's why I love h2, because I can make my own playschool journal ... perhaps contributing can be enjoyable! not a struggle to be something I'm not, hey, that's a good one!!

...and I get to meet wonderful creative people who also are passionate and sensitive and who wonder and ask questions and are awed by the world...

My mother was a very beautiful, but a very sensitive and anxious person, and she let anxiety and feelings of inadequacy get the better of her, diminish her spirit, in the last 20 yrs of her life, and it haunts me, so I am glad I have my creative outlets to feed the spirit. hmm.



Ah yes, perhaps its a question we all ask, in our own way, from time to time. How to be a functioning human, and deal with the horror of the history of the world, and still smile sometimes and risk being alive, and breathe in a new spring morning, even though that open wound about injustice and persecution and horror aggravates and aggravates again ...



Last night there was a showing of The Jazz Baroness on BBC 4 Storyville series, incredible documentary made by Hannah Rothschild, about the extraordinary friendship, (more than a friendship, like a symbiotic dance of two muses, two strange souls,) between Pannonica Rothschild and Thelonius Monk.

It is one of the most extraordinary stories I ever heard...

Of course there were graphic accounts of racial persecution, on both sides, can't write here, too painful, which opened the wound,and I went into a panic for a while,

.. but there was so much more, and Thelonius ah Thelonius,strange inspired genius jazz pianist, and there were some great interviews, and great quotes, interviews and footage ..



and now I have to go write some patterns, and think about cake , and springtime, the spaces between afterthoughts, feathers, spaniels, mustard, plastic trees and some other things. .

thanks again for what you said.

And now I'm wondering about somebody named Pannonica. I love it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1337112/

heheh. Yes, named after a butterfly, or so she said, but in fact it was a moth. Her father was an entomologist.

The bit I love is in the quotes, if above link works, about Monk's genius piano playing, when his bass player says that Monk's playing came from the cracks between the white keys and the black keys....

And the bit about the choice of long horn, short horn, or jersey milk, for tea in the Rothschild household. .

Extraordinary. Stories. What a wonder are stories.

Dear Journal



Life is good and lime green. (with yellow stripes).

Really enjoyed the Post this week, and checking out what everyone is up to. Feel kinda light about things, thanks to friends .

Been chatting to mvp in her journal. I got really involved with all the characters in the story she is working on, so now I am impatient, and hassling for updates, and sending her tea and cake. and

During the course of this conversation, we were discussing stories, and the understanding thereof,

..and she reckoned that Dmitri was the type of fellow to read Foucault's Pendulum word for word and understand it. . I said I would him if this is true. I also said that he and Elektra have probably seen the film as well, with Romanian subtitles, which made me laugh quite a lot.hmm

exit pursued by film buffs .

(comes back in again)

And biscuits....

hah!

Also been checking out the difference between magical realism (a term I never could figure until yesterday), and surrealism. From what I can understand, surrealism is more focused the psychological reasons for the odd or fantastical happening in the story, but magical realism is more like outer, as if the odd happening is a natural as anything else, but its not psychological it is something entirely other ...

what? hmm. further study needed.

And ...

Oh, gotta go. Just getting going there ...

laters.

And here we were this morning, discussing something quiet and sane over coffee...

I lie. We were talking about absurdism.

I like Foucault's Pendulum. I thought it was kind of funny. But then, Professor Eco usually is. He's sort of like your favourite prof, the one who starts out to explain Romanticism and ends up with an anecdote about how he got lost in the supermarket.

Yay!

Absurdism?? What's Absurdism??

(heads out to check)

(comes back in again) (reeling) (puts on list to study, after surrealism and magical realism.)

I love that. Philosophical discussions over breakfast. Do these cornflakes have a purpose and a place, in the grand design? Grand design? What grand design? All is chaos! Is the blue an white stripy design on the cereal bowl related to the orange question mark I just saw hovering over the house, and are my fingerprints, in fact, a map of the no! yes! no! of all existence?

oh no, wait, that's our breakfast time discussions. Except we don't eat cornflakes. Cornflakes, what cornflakes? Nothing is really here, all is illusion. .

Yours and Elektra's conversations are truly philosophical, I think.

I expect a Philosophy quiz in the Post, a.s.a.p., so's I can read the answers in slim easy-read format, and learn things.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dear Journal,

Prof sent me a message saying he missed me in the last few weeks. Made me feel sooo good, I went all shy.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Notes on Pattern-Story Inspirations

(I just decided that all my characters are patterns. How philosophical is that???)

When we were in Brighton we were in a cafe by the sea, and the gulls there steal everything, chips and ice cream, street maps, everything. They will swoop down and take the lot. At the moment we were there, a gull swooped in and stole an empty china espresso cup from the next table, and tried to fly off with it, till the lady who owned the cafe chased it off. Now why would a gull want an empty china espresso cup?

So now, what if a gull had stolen my piece of paper on which I had written my pattern-story that is in fact a zig zag mandala thought-process doodle, No 321, ghost on the coast version, with extra map of dotted line routes that lead nowhere, and yet somewhere?

Nothing would happen. And the gull would be out of luck. . I would just write another one, with extra crimson spirals that almost rhyme, and jaggedy grey alphabetical circumstances.

hmm. End of non-pattern-story . I happy am. Hullo world

Off to consult the spirits of Absurdism. .. no! no! not Absurdism.

The gull obviously wanted the empty china expresso cup to take home.

It needed something decorative to store its collection of interesting pebbles. In.

Hi Cactuscafe, I also read Foucault's Pendulum quite recently. I discussed it briefly in my journal ... but I don't know how to link a journal posting here! Anyways, I did enjoy it, for all the conspiracy-theory stuff in which I was quite interested earlier. Still interested a bit but don't really have time any more to stay on top of it all. Well I did not understand all the stuff in other languages, though!

The gull might actually have tried eating the espresso cup. Gulls have a habit of swallowing the darnedest things.

Hah! strange thing, Willem, in my next posting, which was supposed to be after the weekend but hey , after I had got over Absurdism, , I was going to write .

so what about that then. we are the journal linkers and the journal thinkers..

although I'm not a journal thinker, , I never read Foucault's Pendulum, wish I had the right antennae to pick up the message. I have read books that I don't understand a word of, like The Tao of Physics. I'm going Sometimes there's just something about the atmosphere of the book, like a vibration coming from the words.

Bet you two have read The Tao of Physics ....

Gulls are so weird. Strage bird behaviour could be called Absurd Birdism. . More gull thoughts later.

Meanwhile, and this is my final absurd wordism, for now, we have a Blue Gnome sitation in our home town of Totnes, in South Devon.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9098636/Totnes-divided-over-gnome-ornaments-designed-to-brighten-up-the-Devon-town.html

hmm

I go

typo. strage does in fact mean strange.

Like our home town. .

What about seagulls then? The Tao of Gulls (And Blue Gnomes)

Time to rest my brain for weekend . even though I want to be on h2g2 24/7 right now. heheh.

I liked this one better than 'The Tao of Physics', CC:

http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/wuLiMasters.html

I'm a sucker for physics without maths. I'm sure Willem can do maths, but I get lost. (I've just spent all day working on a geography lesson. I worry every time I put up a graph or chart. I count on my fingers, etc.)

On the other hand, I, er, visualise pretty well, so I can do it if you don't make me remember all those numbers. I'm also pretty fond of Hindu philosophy.

Hi there again Cactuscafe and Dmitri! I have actually NOT read the Tao of Physics. But I have read another of Fritjof Capra's books, 'The Turning Point', twice, the second time while I was in a psychiatric institution. I did so with great concentration, filling a book with my notes. I also read the Dancing Wu Li Masters while in there. Anyways, I'll save my 'report' for a future posting since I'll have to go back and take a look again, maybe I can find my notes. I'll see if I can dig up the dancing masters as well, I can't remember that one so clearly.

I studied mathematics and physics up to the second year level at University. I was doing great in both and then I became psychotic and haven't been able to get back to studying them formally - but I have kept up reading at least about physics, unfortunately forgot most of the mathematics.

You guys are being so interesting. How can I resist a quick slink into h2g2? Sometimes I get a bit shy with too much time online, but that's up to me.

Anyway, I am making things easier on myself now, being here on h2g2, not pressurising myself to be very intelligent , or worrying that I'm not able to create a poetic Guide Entry.
Yet. hah! hmm.



You know, I never read The Dancing Wu Li Masters. I always loved that mandala type cover design. A lot of our peer group, our contemporaries, were reading it during the 80s, but for some reason I never got further than that cover design. heheh. Absorbing the wisdoms through the cover. . How lazy am I. .



It's interesting what we read during adverse times. Adverse times can be quite productive sometimes, I find, in an intense, not obvious kind of a way.

I was in a very vulnerable meltdown situation for a few years in the 80s, probably not quite the same experience as you, Willem, with the psychiatric institution, but certainly the essence of the things I started to read at that time will stay with me.

(Weltschmerz. A word my husband uses a lot, about that time and other times. Good word. The pains of the world, or being brought down by the pains of the world? Something like that.) ??


At that time I was steeped in Carl Jung, Robert Pirsig, Aldous Huxley etc.

I had the Carlos Casteneda books, but mainly read them through the cover design. I love those cover designs. That moth! Some people say you can't judge a book by its cover. I think I read books through their cover, through the medium of the design! .



I studied Huxley's Brave New World and Island for English A level in the 70s, but I wasn't ready for Huxley then, although I did get the A level! He's such a great writer, to me. So gracious and intelligent.

I never did re-read his novels, I was worried that BNW would depress me, and make me panic all over again.

I still read the The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy, over and over again. I carry these two books everywhere, even today, they are my Bibles, totally inspiring.

A light in the Weltschmerz.

No! my pedant might husband protest, methinks , that's not the correct use of the word. So might DG and Bel protest.

Need Post quiz, on correct contexts for unusual words.



By the way, if I rabbit on here in my journal, don't feel you have to respond, if you don't want. Its lovely to know that h2g2 friends are out there thinking their interesting thoughts, and sometimes my ramblings here do get a bit obscure, and not very interesting. , especially when I am writing my Notes. Like, what you on about Helen-mate? (that's what my friends often say to me, in an affectionate way)

Good times

Oh, I forgot to go on about Hindu philosophy. Next time. . Actually I don't anything about it, except I love it.

May all your chakras align properly.

(I love Carlos Castaneda. He makes me laugh and laugh...don't you love 'Journey to Ixtlan'? When Don Gennaro flies his hat? )

Of course, chakras! The concept of chakras appearing in early Hindu texts. Chakra healing is amazing. Hindu texts are magic. Are the Upanishads part of Hinduism? I think they are.

Dear Journal,

Wowzum. Journey to Ixtlan. Now there's a memory that just appeared like a strange eagle from the hazy memory mist. He what? Flies his hat? Is this magical realism by any chance? heheh.

I don't remember the characters too well at all. Its those cover designs..... sitting at work, in the office, in London, a young typist transported through those covers to the Sonoran Desert, transported to the world of Yaqui shamans and eagles and mescalito visions ...the power of art.

What was I doing reading Castaneda at work?? ssshhh

Now my next geeky obsession will be to try and describe book covers and album covers,in word, (don't worry - I will keep it to notebook ) , then go to Google images and see how accurate my memory is ... hmm

oh dear.

OK, Journey to Ixtlan, 70s edition, how could I forget that mountain that turns into a golden face, with a pathway running up it, into the mind, ah that pathway! I lived on that dusty pathway ... there's a bird, maybe an eagle, cacti along the pathway, there's an Indian fellow, surrounded by magic flower petals,

Ok let's see

drumroll >>>>>>>> this is the moment >>>>>>>>>>>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aorloff/5377548877/

that's it!!!! and who is the artist? Bengt Nystrom. OK, thankyou Bengt for the many hours of dreaming. If I could, my friend, I would write a Guide Entry about you.

OK OK I cheated just a little bit this time, not a lot, just a peek, but next time I won't. And I didn't know the artist's name, and now I do.

The power of pictures.



Goodnight journal. I shut up now. .

How cool that you remembered that picture. I couldn't have told you. It was the words that made pictures in my head.

Like the voice of *Italics*seeing*Italics*.

yes!!! hah!! good morning world!!!

Like the voice of *italics*seeing*italics*
Like the voice of *italics*seeing*italics*

Repeat 259 times and realise everything, well, maybe not everything, but realise something.

Like the voice of *italics*seeing*italics*

Who needs The Journey to Ixtlan, this is the journey to a place called Italic-X, a place of magical realism, where italics see italics, with stars round them.

What does it mean? I don't need to know what it means, because it takes me on my own journey.

Wonder what it means to you though, although I think it means just exactly what it means, like how you write, like pictures made from words.



Anyway, its a phrase nicely designed to trip me off .. ... , it has the cryptic mystery, the elliptical history.

Of course! ...doh...

My Blank Page Guide Entry is missing the photo, like what Bel did with her roast chicken spaceship story, she added photos, and there is such a wealth of amazing graphics on this site, hand-drawn and painted and digital. Even peoples' Personal Spaces are like galleries! I love it.

Only one more problem. I don't have a message to relay, to impart, so my Guide Entry might not be very constructive, coherent, or interesting, but what can I do? .

I might make a picture of bendy swirly roses, mixed with fragrant stripes and call it .

That's just the way it is though. It's kinda surreal in my *Kingdon of Heaven is Within* Cafe . There is no way back.

Ah well, que sera, sera. Happy days.

When is the next train to *Italic-X* ??? Must remember to pack my camera and my extra strong mints.

Byeeeeeee. I'm late for that train. . See you round the bend