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

Yes indeed paul! Now I'm thinking of those moments of surprise, when life startles me, empties the ice bucket over my head, what?? and I snap into an awakened awareness ..

I like the poetic picture you paint, the variety of experience, how one experience might lead to an unplanned realisation, the unexpected can occur.

Hmm very interesting.

Hey Jo(urnal)

Hey Knowledge! Hey Wonder!
My friends on the road
Thanks for insights and laughs
and the kindness bestowed

The last word is yours
I will bask in your light
Then I'll bring out the wine
and ask questions all night


***********en

oh, wait a minute. Seems to be a problem. Knowledge and Wonder are on the line ... ah, OK, right, they're objecting to the ending, saying I've been asking questions for thousands of years, can they pleeeeeze have a break.

What??? Thousands of years?? S'cuse me, I'm not that old. Oh, I see, its a reference to how many years its been since humans first asked 'What's it all about then?'

How many years is it, in fact? Good question.

OK let's try ....

The last word is yours
I will bask in your light
Then I'll put on the kettle
and wish you goodnight

Ah. They like the goodnight. And the kettle. This suggests tea or cocoa. Nothing wrong with a cuppa. In fact, I'll venture a guess that many human questions and philosophies first saw the light over a cup of tea. Apart from all the thousands of years when kettles hadn't been invented, and there wasn't any tea.

Discuss.

Not sure though. I'm a questing searcher. I need absinthe. Or brandy. I'm going to strike a compromise.

The last word is yours
I will bask in your light
Then I'll toast you with brandy
and wish you goodnight.



They seem happy with this, although I prefer the original. About the questions.

*************END!!!!*************

Hey Jo Bye Jo, how I'll miss you more than you'll miss me. Nice to share November with you.

And thanks for sharing Jovember with us mere mortals!

My life has not been all beer and skittles.

'That's OK', say Knowledge and Wonder, even though they're being mean about about my ending. ' We like being on the road with you mere mortals.'

Us? Mere mortals? hurrumph! We are hootooers!We are mere mortals approaching the portal. What portal ? Erm, the Immortal Portal. Its the gateway to the h2g2 archives.



Plus we're invincible, we know people called X'Bert.



Now its December and time to plunder aforementioned archives for to find various endings, beginnings, and middle bits.



Beer and skittles. Good phrase. Skittles. Does this suggest pub skittles? I guess it does.



Yesterday, just before waking, I had a very vivid dream about a coloured parasol folding up a beach, all on its own, and then, when it was almost folded, part of it became a huge green birdie, like a parrot, which emerged out of the top, and flew away.

So funny in dreams, the scientifically impossible things that can happen. What happens to the logical part of the brain, when dreaming? I guess its asleep. heheh.

I was thinking about Poetry of Moment and came up with this.

Poetry of Moment

You wrote of poetry of moment.
I thought of that autumn day
when a shaft of sunlight turned
our birch tree to golden flame.

Maybe when sitting in a cafe
a phrase of music drifted past
which wakened our memories
of a time of love and laughter.

Or that moment of realisation
in an evening garden when stars
emerged and our worries seemed
tiny in the grandeur of the universe.

That's such an amazing poem, mvp, it brought a tear to my eye because it filled with a deep in-breath kind of awe, the pictures you create and the way you write them, ah yes, ah, now I'm going to work on the Poetry of Moment theme 'cos I'm inspired ..

Poetic license allows you to write things like

"Maybe when sitting in a cafe
a phrase of music drifted past"

without anyone getting bothered about a phrase of music that sits in a cafe. Sorry, that's the sort of thing Dmitri would pick up on.
Yes, lovely poem, Majorvogonpoet.

Now you've got me thinking of a phrase of music sitting in a cafe!

In a poem, you can do that. I prose, you'd have to wonder if you were breaking some rules of grammar.

Rules of Grammar?? Eeek! . heheh.

This sounds like me, last week, with my existential grammar questioning. 'The I and the Am cannot be split' I'd say, clutching my brow.



Interesting image you saw, about the phrase of music sitting in a cafe. I did, in fact, once see a phrase of music sitting in a cafe. Really, I did. Tell you why in a minute.



It can be kind of dreamlike how we make our own worlds, our own intepretations, from what we read. Worlds within worlds. I do it all the time, especially with song lyrics.



What I'm learning, usually the hard way, sweat sweat panic, , is that if I'm going to put an image out there, in any medium, I have to let go of what it means to me.

I might be trying to express, say, a hunger within, but someone else might think I'm on about a plate of fried egg, beans and chips.



And, I'd say, this image exchange often has nothing to do with the dreaded, or sacred, rules of grammar.

Sips morning coffee. Interesting. I must discuss this with myself.

In this case, for me, mvp's image very poetically expressed a theme which runs through my entire life, and now I'm wondering, well, in fact obsessing , about how to say it so concisely.

Like, yes!! I know this ...

C and I were talking about this, just the other day. Those passing musical phrases, the soundtrack to our lives.

It was when he heard a Paul Simon track in a cafe, he decided that his life was with me after all, so he had to change direction right there, even before his coffee had arrived.

Its amazing how, in the 70s, phoneboxes would appear in unknown streets, just when you need them. ??? No, not a tardis. I'm not talking about a tardis. I'm telling a romantic love story.

Cor honestly. I need eggs.

Seriously though, how to express that feeling when you hear the music, and it awakens me, I snap into the moment, its an elixir, it gives me strength to go on, and takes me into next moment,whether its on the radio, or in a cafe or in a record store..

What to do when the song ends ... oh no! that's why the invention of the Sony Walkman, for me, was a miracle. I could take the music with me, different to the unexpected moments, but ..

There's this cafe in Glastonbury, they always played Van Morrison tracks through the speakers, it gave so much atmosphere, so poetic, and amazing. One day we saw Van Morrison himself sitting in there. Hah! A musical phrase, sitting right there in a cafe.

I really am hungry right now ..

I was thinking about musical phrases sitting in cafes when I remembered a dinner in a restaurant in Stirling.

There was a big group sitting at a nearby table, and they started to sing. They sang a most beautiful song in Gaelic. They explained afterwards that they had been at a competition in the town.

That's the nice thing about being an a cappella chorus. You can carry your music anywhere you want to, and no special equipment is needed.

I like piano music, but it's hard to carry a piano around with you. Even in a car, a piano would be too big to fit.

That's amazing mvp! An expected concert! A very memorable experience.

And every night the music of the spheres.

Ah yes paul, carrying just a voice and a tune. And a great talent. I think a cappella is a very skilled art. Can it be taught or is it one of those vocational artforms that some people are born to be able to do?

heheh yes, the piano, doesn't fit in the wheelie bag.

I saw this guy carrying what I assumed to be a double bass on the London Underground one time, kind of irksome on the escalator.

Holymoly, now I'm all emotional ..

I just read The Endings ..

Oh, back in a moment. Courier from Porlock ..

And every night, the music of the spheres ..

That's a very poetic sentence, paul. I could whisper it at random, and probably will



Is the music of the spheres kind of like a music of motion, like a dance of the universe? And because everything moves in relation to everything else, its sort of like music, well, it is music, its a different type of music, can you hear the music of the spheres, with a different way of hearing, or through which senses does it communicate I wonder? Hmm.

I guess the music of the spheres is within us as well as outside of us. Sort of like tides and things.

I'm very moved by the endings to the Holes in History project ..

I'd comment in the offical place, but I'm a bit shy. Well, more than a bit.

'Tis Mister D in Brookville! What became of them all! 19th century novels always ended by telling people what happened to all the characters?

They did? What a splendid idea! (for the likes of me).



As for Jim Tanner and his friends, I made them up, though not out of whole cloth. Everything they did, somebody did.

I love this. Everything they did, somebody did. This helps me understand writers, like, how, and possibly why, they make characters and things.

The rattlesnake-killing by snapping the neck was actually done by my five-year-old cousin John in the 1960s. His mom fainted.

That's a really funny footnote. I burst out laughing. Splutter.



The Chase. Mister FWR, that's amazing, a simple phrase 'time passes' and then when you bring it all back to the present, you are there with your family, walking through the same landscape, where your story has unfolded, and its sort of like a study of how history works, being passed down through the generations, and I like the part you play in it, at this point, the observer now watching his kids..

The dog barks, seeing a squirrel, although he's far from a Wolfhound, he's still keen to be off on the Chase.

Hah! The Chase.

Strange in fact, about Thor's Stone .. and initials .. links in with a dream I had last night ... laters ..



A Place To Call Home, ohmigod mvp!! Danielle returned! That last line, I cried.

Then the autumn sunshine touched her hair, making it shine like copper. Danielle. He gave a gasp and ran towards her.

Very vivid the way you describe the scene, picking up the pieces, Michel's injury, returning to the garage, all the changes, a great weariness somehow, like a war-weariness, all these people, they've been through so much, its very moving.



I really am very moved by these endings.

I read Caiman's also, and I see that Tavaron got ill, oh no! perhaps I'll find a way to not be shy, go tell them somehow...

Anyway, now for the middle bits, and then the beginnings! hahah.

Nice work, dear ones.