The life of the mind?

Pearls of dubious wisdom

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:38:03 GMT

I was thinking...
Whenever someone does something to get other people's approval en masse - examples:
- adopting local accent not their own
- getting their arse out or snogging people to titillate other people, like Michelle on Big Brother, bless her
- espousing fashionable intellectual interests
they have to accept that it is going to, as a counterbalance, alienate a certain number of people as well. There's no point whingeing about it, going 'oh, don't judge me', when you did want to be judged for it, you wanted to be judged better, or get more attention or approval - you just didn't wanna be judged at all negatively, by anyone. But by making an alliance with something so specific, you are making an un-alliance with its opposite, with the inevitable effects on the people who are allied with that.

People who do things out of genuine belief in them, of course, get some disagreement or disapproval as well. They just seem more prepared to deal with it.

Point: I was feeling all flirty and energetic yesterday. I needed to find something to wear which I could go to a dance class in, as well as on to a wacko improv. music session later with some rather cool and nice people. I had the whim for this little short skirt which I hardly ever wear, since I was bored with trousers and just not in the feminine mood for a long dress. People in town, though, before I went on to either of these events, STARED in the most startled way at my legs and feet and me all afternoon. You know it pretty much wore me down. If I had great self confidence I would think 'yeah, look on and weep!' and that they were looking because I was so gorgeous. But whilst I think my legs look ok (blush) I seriously doubt my ability to choose clothes (shoes, accoutrements) which go well together by most people's standards.

What were they all thinking?

So given my point above, and that I was feeling more attention-seeking than usual with regard to one or two people in my environment and the world in general, I just have to accept the possibility that some of them at least were thinking 'what does she think she looks like' and/or 'those shoes do not go with that skirt' and/or 'that's no way to go out dressed at her age'.

I'd give my eye teeth to find out.

Happy as...

Mon, 05 Jul 2004 20:07:32 GMT

Can someone please tell me who the proverbial Larry was, and why he was so damn happy?!

Reflections and oppositions

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 15:59:44 GMT

I was thinking... Since romantic love tends to invoke the sense that the other person is more beautiful, amazing, and wondrous than oneself... surely unrequited love is logically the norm. (The courtly lovers of the medieval period would think this self-evident.) Reciprocal love, namely two people each feeling this way about the other one, can then only be the result of a miscalculation on the part of one of them (usually temporary until they realise the mistake they've made, and decide to either put up with the disappointment or change the situation). Discuss the logical implications.

My research life and my meditation practice have a love-hate relationship with each other. The former suspects the latter of trying to dissolve it, and the latter views the former as holding back my spiritual development. They are also trying to occupy the same space. At the same time, once I can let go of my research cravings and enter into meditation, the former comes back fresher - indeed, it's the only time I can ever truly make progress on it. However, once the research ball is rolling, it wants to proceed under its own steam, thinking it is independent, and not wanting to give initiative to the other until its momentum is (quickly) exhausted. What is the answer to this? Let it go, let it go, let it go. Even when it's doing well... "Pure meditation must be done."

Play sausage! Who has the longest?

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 18:43:01 GMT

{length:45}-{nightway}-{w23}-{cherita}-{goldy_kin}-{besyonya}-{alexej}-{ivand}-{ta_tochka}-{gosha}-{candelabra}-{nikon_nlg}-{dziro}-{ven_ture}-{xnrrn}-{allegroconmolto}-{soulscode}-{glassapples}-{nevskaya}-{ningyouhime}-{brightbeak}-{geonncannon}-{venom69}-{wiliqueen} - {diannelamerc} - {lizbetann} - {missandrony} - {kenobi} - {mahoutsukaichan} - {nikko_nikko} - {xxpikapika} - {paperpieces} - {daie} - {roseofmemory} - {roadwaffle} - {ubercookie} - {twisted_kii} - {hephy} - {samalla} - {__cat} - {medulaoblongata} - {neon_sunrise} - {fraulein_evi} - {woopie} - {birdy1980} - {cursory_b}

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My Haiku - try it! (must use your LJ username)

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 18:08:30 GMT

Life mark 2

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:41:29 GMT

Bippy boppy plippy happy happy
Nice weekendylala
Oh I do like to be beside it
sunny(burny) lacksadasical...
No marking!
He may even stay... (for now)

And yet, at the same time, there's a certain something underneath it...

Wank follydays (or something...)

Mon, 31 May 2004 19:37:31 GMT

To those who kindly enquired...

Yes, I did have a better bank holiday this time, thank you!
I spent it MARKING and actually got my set of essays done, and watching bits of TV while lying on the floor. Yay! And the weekend before had enough of a festival feel to carry me through.

I did read the other day (ah, where, though?!) that they were originally nothing to do with banks, just that this title was added to make them sound more respectable. Random!

Post what you spent your day doing in the comments list...

Identification

Sat, 29 May 2004 15:39:15 GMT

Which My So-Called Life Character Are You? Find out @ She's Crafty

Obsession

Mon, 24 May 2004 18:50:25 GMT

Meme taken from superdus:

If there is one (or more than one) person you can't stop thinking about, post this same exact sentence in your journal.

[It normally says 'Any guesses who in my case??? ;)' but, well, durr, so perhaps I shall add instead:]

Any guesses *how many*, and who, in my case!?
(Use lj code or suitably obscure abbreviations please to spare my blushes!)

The precepts

Mon, 24 May 2004 12:00:27 GMT

Often it's difficult to work out the relationship between 'ethics' given to you as an approximation, and what your heart tells you you should do...

I expect even the first line of this to give me a tremendous motivation to behave myself...

--------------
Buddha said..

Virtue has non-remorse as its benefit and reward.
Non-remorse has gladness as its benefit and reward.
Gladness has joy as its benefit and reward.
Joy has serenity as its benefit and reward.
Serenity has happiness as its benefit and reward.
Happiness has concentration as its benefit and reward.
Concentration has insightful understanding as its benefit and reward.
Insightful understanding has non-attachment as its benefit and reward.
Non-attachment has liberation as its benefit and reward.

In this way, virtue leads step by step to the highest.

----------------
From a comment by cruiter posted against a question about the Precepts in the buddhists community:

(http://www.livejournal.com/community/buddhists/603928.html)

The what colour is your name thing!

Thu, 20 May 2004 21:08:07 GMT

cursory_b

So, for those who've not seen it yet: you make a post as follows:
< font color=yourusername >< b >yourusername< /b >< /font >
1) substituting your username for 'yourusername', and
2) removing the gaps between the words and the pointy arrow/bracket < > things

Gosh! I'm red, as well. I wonder how it works.

Taken from earwigmc and tamsanger's journals - cheers!

Grim

Tue, 18 May 2004 11:56:08 GMT

*Now* I've got something to cry about. But I've set my jaw.

Always when I feel upset for really no big reason, it means the thing is about to come along. 'Wait and see', though usually you don't want to, and it's no vindication. Have I ever told you about my theory of temporal 'bleed-through', like the way on a cassette tape you can hear a pre-echo before the big climax comes in?

When I said I had 'cried a lot for the one before', there's an element in which it's always a bit of that. Insofar as feeling that way brings up the thought of him when you get down deep enough. And so on back to the original source of the sadness.

But this concerns 'the one before', let's call him D1, directly: he could be leaving my life. Those of you who know me will know how serious this is. Both in the direct loss (and I don't think he'll go, on balance, but he could); and in the fact of This Keeps Happening To Me. That's the unhelpful thought, though, as I found the other week with my parallel crazy house of mirrors: deal with one situation at once. As the buddhist talk the next day made me realise, it's healthier to assume/realise that 'the universe doesn't give two hoots' about me and my little problems; still less is it trying to weave a meaningful narrative around disconnected events. I see the 'same thing happening' cos I'm chronically deluded, as we all are prior to enlightenment.

The trees are still waving in the sunlight outside my window.

This too shall pass...

Bach Flower Remedies

Thu, 13 May 2004 13:37:51 GMT

I've just set up a new community for discussing the Bach Flower Remedies and people's experiences of using them. If this is at all the sort of thing you're interested in, do come and have a look, and join / post as you like! - flower_remedies.

Music

Wed, 12 May 2004 23:29:17 GMT

I've noticed an annoying feature of the 'music' line which we can choose to fill in to show what music we're currently listening to / thinking about / into. It's that as soon as I go into my own journal page, I see all the previous 'music' entries, and subliminally my mind chooses one (or more) of them to start playing. Then when I come to fill in my latest entry, all I've got is some old s*** from a few days ago, and I've no idea what music I would have had going on before I looked at these entries.

Thus I'm getting a combination of infinite recursion with the lowest common denominator principle. Not (aurally) pretty.

How does anyone else manage their 'music' setting?!

Selected quotes from recent times

Wed, 12 May 2004 21:17:22 GMT

"Keep a happy mind."

(from someone's sign-off on the buddhists group)
I wouldn't have thought just saying this would make a difference, but, as it happened, it did and does.

"If, through a weak ego, your awareness of yourself as an individual is poorly developed, you are more vulnerable to the influence of other people's feelings. This also leaves you closer to the power of the unconscious, in which dwell the instincts, archetypes, anima and animus. Of course you should listen to the unconscious - it is very important to do so - but a weak ego is in danger of being overpowered by it."

(from, of all places, Know Yourself Through Your Cat, by Vivienne Angus: Chapter 6 on 'Instinctive Sympathy', p.99-100.)
If the cap fits, I shall wear it! From a superficial understanding of, perhaps, Zen (though this is an argument I've had with others) one might assume that the entire aim of practising is to *weaken* the ego. Some women in particular need to *have* a healthy ego function before they can (rather) start to expand it to include others too. Again, just reading this helped me realise what I had to do and to feel the process start. I wonder what she's drawing on? It doesn't look Jungian (her stated orientation).

While I'm there:

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. We patronise them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world more complete than ours, with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear, they are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of that splendour and travail of the earth."

(Ibid, p.98, quoting from Henry Beston, The Outermost House.)

More controversy

Mon, 10 May 2004 17:35:10 GMT

Links to some more eye-opening pages which may be of interest to certain of my friends...

A page on how to argue with/against religious fundamentalists:

http://elroy.net/ehr/fighttheright.html

which in turn came from a link to a rather riled-up page by people who are annoyed by ill-behaved children and/or inadequate parenting...

http://www.fred.net/turtle/kids/kidrants.shtml

(Not all opinions expressed there are shared by the current author!!)

Tasteless or rather lateral/thoughtful? You decide!

Sun, 09 May 2004 23:00:13 GMT

Borrowed from eggplantofdoom's journal, this link to a rather unusual business venture:

http://www.lifegem.com/secondary/whatisLG.asp

"What is a LifeGem?

A LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life.

The LifeGem provides a way to embrace your loved one's memory day by day. The LifeGem is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life.

We hope and believe that your LifeGem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever."

[Or it that doesn't work, you can always cut glass with them.]
[Can you *make* a diamond anyway?! I thought it was a natural process...]

Which Muppet?

Sun, 09 May 2004 21:32:41 GMT

Another daft quiz for your enjoyment. I really want to know your answers to this one! (I think it might depend on mood.)There aren't many questions but one of the best features is the sheer range of possibilities in the answers...

You are Scooter.
You are a loyal, hardworking person, better known
as a doormat.

SPECIAL TALENTS:
Going for stuff.
LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE:
"Go For Broke!"

QUOTE:
"15 seconds to showtime."

LAST BOOK READ:
"300 New Ways to Get Your Uncle to Get You a
Better Job "

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
Coffee, clipboard, and Very Special Guest Stars.

What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Unplugged

Thu, 06 May 2004 23:16:50 GMT

My cat had a tuna slap this morning.
I've never seen her looking so contented.
Didn't stop her mewing desperately for food a few hours later though.

PF, this seems to back up what you said to me about not being able to get things out of one's system by indulging them once...

Anyone know a good community for cat nutrition and/or psychology?! I've tried clicking on 'cats', but there seem to be a lot of metaphorical or incidental uses of the term!

**I shall be going away for the weekend first thing tomorrow morning, so don't forget me you guys... Back late Sunday or thereabouts.**

??!??

Tue, 04 May 2004 14:15:58 GMT

I'm having the WEIRDEST day.
Things that normally I do are happening to me from other people.
This means my mental framework is changing fast - too fast to be able to take on board.
They're all big, scary things too.
I think I only filled this entry in so that I could look for a mood option which might help put my finger on it. Nope, can't do better than...

37% solid geek

Mon, 03 May 2004 16:31:39 GMT

A mild point of interest in my day: I found out I was 37% geek.

http://www.thudfactor.com/geekquiz.php

Perplexed to wonder what the other 63% is made of then. Think they must have failed to cast the net wide enough.

It's like those bagels (or whatever) that have taken to boasting "95% fat-free!!!". You look at them and think "Eeuch! That's 5% solid fat!!" Hardly appetising. (Anyway, there's not a 95% of them that is fat-free - it's not like all the fat is down one end or something.)

Weeell, it's sorta like that...

Please post your geeky ratings as a comment to this, then I can get some sense of the calibration of the scale...

You know what I like about Bank Holidays?

Mon, 03 May 2004 16:20:16 GMT

Absolutely nothing.

What are you meant to do with them?! Any plans I might fondly dream up are infallibly foiled because

(1) The people I would like to spend time with are unavailable: with their family/SO, gone on a day trip without me, or just working as usual

(2) The fun things I'd like to do around town are shut, whilst the boring massive chain stores are open (thus giving the lie to the idea that Bank Holidays are intended to give working class people a holiday)

(3) Anything you could do that involves getting out of town is inevitably subject to the wobbly weather, and in addition is one of the following:

(4) Car-dependent (eg going into the country) or

(5) Somewhere everyone else in the world is going to be (like the seaside) and hence too jam-packed to enjoy.

(6) Even trying to get my life sorted out by doing errands is invariably foiled, since each bit of this relies on one thing somewhere along the chain that has decided to close today. Or people who are unavailable: see (1) above.

If it was just the bloody banks that were on holiday, I wouldn't mind; ironically, going to do my online banking is something I'm about to do without, I anticipate, any problem.

So I'll end up doing what I always seem to, which is marking, which conveniently involves sitting at my desk and interacting with no-one, and save my wonderful social plans for the rest of the week, when there seem to be plenty of people who are keen to meet up with me. Who needs holidays anyway?! Bah...

Randomness

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:10:25 GMT

I've lost where I originally read this (though there's a reference to it in tamsanger's journal):

1.Grab the nearest book to hand
2.Turn to page 23
3.Find the fifth sentence.
4.Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

In amongst a stream of frighteningly long and complex sentences, the fifth was simply:

"Is a chord an event?"

which has a Zen-like challenge which I'm rather fond of (from The Time of Music by Jonathan Kramer - very recommendable).

Lesson: always grab something when you first find it (you may not pass that way again, and you certainly might not be able to get there for trying). (Willing to credit the originator if anyone can direct me to them.)

Word of the week: seems to be 'certainly' (see above). Funny at a time when I feel so uncertain (in a variably creative/unsettling way). Probably happens because I use it in negative sentences ('certainly...not') like the one above. Disappointing. Seems to rule things out. Don't like to do that.

Speculation: will have to get broadband (after I move house would be best), as spent most of Wednesday on here, yikes!

Second word of the week: 'yikes'. That figures.

Queer folk

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:03:28 GMT

I was set to thinking about my friends the other day, in response to a TV blurb after Friends that invited viewers to apply for a competition. The prize was to take five of your friends to America to film a Friends-style comedy episode about your life. Naturally, I wondered who I might hypothetically choose. It was then that I realised what an unusual episode of Friends my friends would constitute – and the oh-so-squeaky straight quality of actual Friends the programme, despite its occasional gay-ish flourishes (Chandler’s gay dad, Ross’s ex-wife, the underlying sub-current with Chandler and between the girls). To whit, my closest and most interesting friends, this moment and as defined by me (only provionsally counting those who I see around on a regular basis), could be described as:

Girls: one gay boy-girl in a ‘married’ lesbian relationship; one bisexual polyamorous woman with a trans partner; one new lesbian just decided to be celibate for spiritual reasons; one baby feminist ‘unsure about her sexuality’…

Boys: one gay singleton; one gay-identified polyamorous bisexual in a long-term relationship; one straight bloke (oho!) celibate for religious reasons (ah…); and one single straight bloke who is my ex-boyfriend (hmm).

I didn’t think I moved in an explicitly or wilfully queer environment – that’s just how it’s turned out, but those are the kind of people I seem to find mutually interesting. At the same time I don’t know what it says for my potential ability to attract someone I might at one stage start to see as a potential partner, rather than barking forlornly up trees I can never climb.

Even my cat is a spayed female with distinct lesbian tendencies…

Mewling and puking

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 23:03:13 GMT

I got this cat on Thursday - or, rather, she got me, which is the way with cats. She belonged to a friend of mine who had a second child on the way and just couldn't cope with her any more. She's a clingy, affectionate, sensitive, tortoiseshell-and-white five-year-old. Well they say you get the cat you deserve. It's been up and down: the first day was hell, the second bliss. Then I was out for much of Saturday and she was decidedly not impressed when I got back. Today she's been miaowing all afternoon, and I've tried everything to work out what was wrong. At one point she threw up on the carpet. I went to clear it up and, I'm not joking, this sick was MOVING. There was a long thin worm in it. I flushed it down the toilet. At least I know what was wrong, cos otherwise I would have been worrying 'was it the food? is she psychologically unsettled?!'. In the end the mewing too was solved. I'd simply prepared her food wrongly (wet instead of dry biscuits) and she wouldn't have it. Domestic harmony restored. She loves me once again. Cat psychology actually somewhat simpler than I had feared this afternoon. Now if I can just work people out...

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