Journal Entries
-
- 1
- 2
-
The Clean Slate
Posted Mar 15, 2007
Seems like a confession when I admit to using
a slate and slate pencil as a child at school.
It reminds of the screen in front of me on which
correcting mistakes is made easy, the two methods
of committing words to a surface so much more
forgiving than applying lead pencil or pen to
paper. I find a pleasant affinity between slate
and screen, what's on the surface, marks on the
sand between tides, inevitably washed away, mere
palimpsests, short-lived statements left in the
wake of a passer-by.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Mar 15, 2007
Lament 7 Jan 2007
Posted Jan 7, 2007
5000 Tundra swans showed up on Lake Erie
yesterday - probably having flown in from
the Chesapeake - about 600 miles non-stop
- also 13 Cackling geese, migrants from
Baffin Island, have overwintered locally
instead of flying on to Mexico - that and
the rose at my front window which has
grown a five inch shoot when we should
be in the middle of a deep freeze points
up the fact that global warming is swiftly
upon us - what next - well I'd guess that
shortly, the greater claybelt north of
Cochrane, which is the largest chunk of
unused arable land in world, is going to
become fit for agriculture - that is the
upside to global warming - a food basket
for billions yet unborn - now if we can
only stop polluting the air and water &
stop crapping on our own doorstep - what
a wonderful world this would be - silly
dream I once had after finding bog pine
in Glen Dee was of seeing the ancient
forest of Caledon restored, all those
bare glens in the highlands clothed but
trees fall everywhere even in those
sacred groves of Canada's west coast
where the giants live, some of them over
2000 years old and 300 feet tall - never
to be replaced - the hillsides becoming
bare as those surrounding the Med, bare
as Scotland's terrifying emptiness which
we mistake for beauty - its fabulous eco-
systems dead . . Ochone Ochone
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jan 7, 2007
Sea Tangle
Posted Dec 5, 2006
Loneliness props all non-belief, Jim was thinking, as
couched against his pack after a tough climb, he stared
into the distance. Far below, the shore curved thirty
miles to the north-east. It was a blue-sky, golden day
without a soul in sight, the pitch-pine forest a patch-
work of green in the lee of the endless, rolling dunes.
This scene, whose beauty he once thought profound, was
now like his life, empty of meaning. He had no one to
share it with, his daily trips to the beach, only an
excuse to keep him going. He hoist the Yukon pack-frame
and took a path down through the pines. These trees,
twisted into eldritch shapes, had the fairy-tale look
of a forest lifted from the Brothers Grimm and though
protected by dunes on their seaward side, could grow no
higher than the wind-feathered, sandy crests.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Dec 5, 2006
cogitation
Posted Dec 4, 2006
this self you see is nothing more
than ephemera - digitized shadows on
a screen - if i lay enough words down
that make sense you might distinguish
a voice & that perhaps is all of me -
a thinking self but I think i think
on different levels and often i dont
think at all - which is the opposite
of cogito ergo sum : like : i don't
think therefor i'm not - so what's to
buy into : my god is material as is
all creation, the spirit moving us no
matter what we will as we are inex-
tricably part of it - who can argue
that we are not - and given our shaky
state of consciousness - how often are
we - our will can only will what we
think we will which in actual fact is
negligible as it requires action out-
side of the mind's control and that's
the only freedom we enjoy - the mind
can will nothing without employing the
body in physical exertion - so our
freedom is not the freedom we like to
think it is as we are truly creatures
of creation and cannot will ourselves
to be otherwise - which brings me back
to the ephemeral me, midge on a summer's
day - blink and I'm not there - blow a
fuse and the screen goes blank
but i wonder if there is another side
to us - science is largely an illusion
- see Kelvin who thought the sun was a
coal pile, that it could not have been
around long enough for evolution to take
place which almost put the kibosh to
Darwin's theory - but with Darwin and
Kelvin dead, Becquerel discovered radio
activity which gave others the idea to
theorise and finally prove that the sun's
energy was derived from nuclear fusion
and it was billions instead of millions
of years old and that the earth too was
terribly ancient which gave Darwin's
Theory of Evolution the credence required
by showing that indeed, the fossil record
was correct - there had been enough time
for species to evolve - Kelvin and the
science of his day had been proved wrong
and that only one hundred years ago - so
should we look at the science of today
and agree with its presumptions - I don't
think so - there are too many unanswered
questions and the blip that is out brief
life may be something other than what we
assume
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Dec 4, 2006
knock knock
Posted Oct 28, 2006
Lovely said the house was empty and that she
was going to bed with the cats something I
bridle at for cats are usually hyperactive at
night, Spooky the black surfacing from the
dungeon gloom of the basement to start the
other two bouncing across the bed - no I don't
like sleeping with cats or cat women though I
know they offer succour to the lonely but its
a bad habit and lonely women should show more
will power than to have a cat usurp their
human inclinations and suffer the empty bed
until next time there's a friendly knock on
the door and she can ask her lover in - non
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Oct 28, 2006
-
- 1
- 2
-
langsandy
Researcher U4056622
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."