Twittering away the first half of 2010

from the inane ramblings of my muddled mind ... here are some of the words that escaped the filter between my mouth and my brain ...


 hehe

• Far, far worse than the man who forgets to put the toilet seat down is the one who does not put it up
• Birthdays: The only day of the year when everyone congratulates you for just hanging in and staying alive 
• Birthday thought ... never finished anything ... except chocolate, wine and this piece of cake 
• Every girl's lament: "Boozy woozy oozy floozy  ... Late again”
• I'm never right. Except when I'm wrong
• Moderation in everything - except sex, food, fast cars and women 
• Women and the Hotel California: you can check in, but you can never leave
• A bird in the hand wants to go to the movies

Work

• Remembering JJJ, who taught me that Personal Values rate higher than Corporate Milestones: but you better know who to be honest with
• Ignorance is bliss: its amazing how important it is for a manager to be in a state of bliss …
• Submarining: The illusion of playing by Management's rules while silently playing by your own 

Life

• The point about forgiveness is that if the act of contrition is real and sufficient, then god carries the past-you no longer have to
• To let go of things - give them away; of people - forgive them and burn their photos; of places - celebrate the new
• In the comings and goings of my money, I know my friends because they never took any ... I know the cronies because they did
• The tears of a mother are an endless river that flow from year to year
• What's said on an aircraft should never leave the cabin
• You call on a mentor when you have the need to, You call on a friend because you need to
• When I deny you, disappoint you, your pain is now. My moment of weakness I relive daily, my lack of strength is a marathon of guilt
• To win a woman's heart, there comes a time when you must risk losing her

Deep

• Words represent thoughts - that much is obvious - but what translates thoughts? 
• At the back of the mirror lies the other side of my psyche
• 10 minutes. Sometimes 10 minutes is not 10 minutes. It can stretch and shrink. It just depends on the moment
• Zen moment: Am I just the passageway for the receptacle known as me?
• Think of the time between now and when the sun goes down -so many hours, so little time
• What if my mother was right? 

Honey pots and horses

How far from the honey pot will you fly little bee ?
How far walks the horse from the hay ?

Too soon your light wings will grow tired of me
as the horse, it soon loses its way.

So let us remember this lesson -
Let us keep it before us tonight :

To seek that right distance between us,
and keep it forever just right.

Image via Wikipedia

My Grandmother Said ... About Heaven and Hell, and souls as light as a feather

Grandparents are good with analogies
They have a way of explaining stuff - life, the universe and everything stuff - in a way that sticks with you for most of your life. Maybe its because they have had so many experiences, and also learned from others, and they have picked up the art of telling stories too, so these things together make it really easy to paint a picture that just makes sense.

So there we were, little people of 5, or 6, or 7, just back from Sunday School, and we are asking that age old question: "What happens when you die, Granny, how will we get to Heaven? Is it scary?"

So she tells us that Hell is like a big tall building with a fire escape on the side, and doors to go into each of the levels. Only, the building goes down into the ground, not up into the sky. And right at the bottom of the bottomest part, there is the door into the WORST part of hell, and as you go up the stairs to the next levels each level is a bit milder until you are as close to Heaven as a sinner can be, without quite getting there,

Got that picture in your mind?

Good.

Stairs all the way from the bottom to the top, and if you start at the bottom, why you can walk all the way to the top and go into any of the Chambers on the way up.

Only that would be rather silly, don't you think?

You'd want to just carry on going up, and go straight to Heaven, That would make MUCH more sense.

When you die, you find yourself down there in the depths of Hell, right at the bottom of the deepest pit.

Looking up, you can see the steps stretching all the way to the top, and the Shining Light of Heaven is there, clearly visible and waiting for you.

"Your body is heavy, but your Soul is as light as a feather" - that's what my Grandmother said.

And when a little baby or an innocent child dies, well, it doesn't have to do any climbing at all.

The heavy body is left behind, and that soul it just floats up and up and up all the way to the top like a feather on a breeze and before you know it the soul is safe in Heaven, no problem.

Now, what about the rest of us?

Well, when you are born, God gives you an invisible bucket.

It's quite light, and very strong.

Every time that you do something wrong, or tell a lie, or worse, God puts a pebble into your bucket.

Sometimes its a big stone, for really bad things (like stealing someones lunch at school, or being a bully) or maybe just a grain of sand for a really small thing, like stealing your sister's cookie when she wasn't looking... and another one for blaming Mr nobody for doing it. REALLY bad things - well you could end up with a whole lot of ROCKS in your bucket!

What happens if your bucket gets full. Well IF your bucket gets full, why then God is quite happy to give you another one. And another, and another, like that until one day you die and guess what?

You find yourself down there at the bottom of that bottomless pit, with nothing but a a staircase, the distant light of heaven, and all those buckets of sand and stone and rocks. Maybe even some BOULDERS if you have done some really HORRIBLE things. Lets not go there.

Here's what you have to do.

You have to carry those buckets, each and every one of them, from the bottom all the way to the top.

From Landing to Landing, past door after after door, you must make your way to the top.

"What happens if you grow tired, Granny, and the buckets are too heavy, and you just can't go another step further?"

Ahh Children, that's the thing.

You see, you have found your place of judgement, and you must go through the door on that landing, and go into the Hell that you have made for yourself, and wait and hope for Gods mercy on the day of Judgement.

"and is there any way to empty the buckets before you die?"

Well that's the cool thing about God.

For every act of Kindness, 

for every Good Deed,

For every time that you truly seek forgiveness (and stop doing that thing again!) -

For every one of those,

God takes out a whole handful of sand and stones and Rocks and pebbles.

And you must never forget, she said, that the suffering of the poor and the downtrodden is the greater because it seems never ending ~ so the handful is bigger there than elsewhere.

So the lesson is this - you can lighten the load easily - simply by being kind, seeking forgiveness, and doing the right thing always:

Because while bodies are heavy, souls are as light as a feather, and all you have to do to get Heaven is to keep your buckets empty, and then, well you will just float up as easy as can be.

Images of staircase by nouQraz and feather by Caro's Lines via Flickr

2010: World Cup 2010 comes to the Old Mountain

Its deep midwinter in Cape Town, and of course, being a winter rainfall area, it is a cold and wet and windy place. Well, for the most part, it is.

But to label it so would be to miss the point (of living in the Cape).
The weather here is not predictable.
Seriously, it is a weather forecasters nightmare.
Sometimes it can be just plain frustratingly otherwise.
Even, it sometimes seems, deliberately so!

June 21 2010.
The weather forecaster is confident.
Cold at first, clearing towards mid-day to yield one of those glorious mid winter days that only the Cape can deliver between bouts of grey mist and cloud-smoke.
Perfect for the 90000 fans waiting to pack into the Greenpoint Stadium for the Portugal-DRK football match - that would be soccer to you US Philistines! ;)
Exactly half an hour before the match starts, yes: You guessed it.
The cloud cover creeps over, the mountain disappears behind impenetrable fluffy clouds, and within a few minutes the rain starts to mist and swirl.
By then end of the first half it is steadily streaming down.

Thankfully, the Stadium does its job and keeps the crowd dry (though moist) and thankfully the steady downpour seems to make no difference on the billiard smooth green pitch, which magics the water away.
15 minutes before the end the rain has already started to retreat, so that by the time the final whistle blows the forecaster's predictions have become true, revealing a bright blue sky and a fresh and clear Monday evening.

And as we stream out of the now rapidly emptying and drying Stadium, gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine, we are greeted by one of Natures great wonders:

Table Mountain, once hidden in the mists that swirl, has burst into the open like the Titanic under a full head of steam .... and you know, once again, why this is the fairest cape in all the world.

Posted for Barbs, sitting in the unchanging blandness of LA, who knows the old mountain as well as any, and better than most :)

Vuvuzela Concert in B Flat

Suddenly, we can all read music!

In Memoriam: From Natalie to her Gran

Beulah Maude Vink passed away on Saturday 22 May 2010. She is remembered here by her grandchild and my daughter Natalie: I can think of no better eulogy than this final farewell

To my dear Granny

My earliest memory of you was in the house in Bramley. Mom was there too, we were sitting in the kitchen. You gave me a pink panther, surrounded by a ring of easter eggs. I still have that pink panther. I remember your chocolate cabinet; as a child, I had fantasies about what we might find in its darker corners. Duncs and I spent many happy hours tracing car routes on your living room carpet. At sleepovers, my bed would be on the couch, Duncs below me. It was the perfect vantage point from which to terrorise him. Then at some late hour, you would burst into the room and scold me, and I must say, I enjoyed the ferocious display of attention everytime! And I remember when that room was transformed into Hayley's bedroom, and Blondie picture would shine out at you as you entered; it was a lifetime into which so many things fitted. I have missed you since I've been away so long and now that you have come to the point of leaving us, I cannot be there to say goodbye. But I know that you have the power to go anywhere now, your spirit is free, you can see us all and be absolutely sure that we loved you fiercely, and we wish you be safe on your way, we wish it with all our hearts joined as one.

Dear Granny, thank you for your kindness, generosity and loyalty. You never let me down. And you gave me your unconditional blessing countless times to live my life in my own way, you always encouraged me about that. Here is my prayer for you today, which I would like to dedicate to all beings, and to you especially. Just as all the past buddhas have dedicated, just as all the present buddhas dedicate, and just as all the future buddhas will dedicate, like that I too dedicate:

Sentient beings are limitless as the whole of space.

May they each effortlessly realise the nature of their mind.

And may every single being of the six realms who have been in one life or another my mother or father

Attain all together the ground of primordial perfection.

May you have happiness and the causes of happiness,

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering,

May you be free from attachment, aversion and ignorance,

May you never be separated from the three upper realms and the bliss of liberation.

---

The pictures above come from the covering letter, and in her own words, are 

"the picture of the spring snow ..., it is the view from my window, perhaps she would have liked to see it, she always liked to hear about where I am and I should have sent this picture to her in a letter...Also there is a picture of the shrine offering in my house, I am lighting lamps for 49 days - because according to buddhism the spirit can take up to 49 days to migrate, although it can be less. Offering lights is very helpful because it is like guiding the person so they can see where is a good place to go. For ordinary buddhists its a belief, but for the realised meditators it is a reality, an experience they already know for sure and what they help teach others to know directly. For me I'm just in the realm of the ordinary beings, I trust it so it's my practice for granny and I hope I can help in this way, from where I am. And on Friday I also go to the monastery to offer 45 butter lamps and ask the monks to pray for her. According to our lama here, this is the right day to offer - it is very auspicious in the lunar calendar. Please send my regrets to the family that I am unable to be there. I will be at a monastery on Thursday too and will make many prayers. Each person has their own karma to go through but prayer can help ripen whatever good causes she has, prayer is really beneficial."

My own thoughts go with her too.

---
Lighting candles at the Tibetan temple in Xining

At the first turning of the second stair

At the first turning of the second stair

I saw you on that evening long ago

And Hope and Love awoke and rose and grew –

Now in this uncertain hour before the rising dawn

I mourn your loss.

Alive in the scented gardens of the mind

Your memory will remain

Moonlight in the darkest night

Sunlight on a cold and misty day.

Russian Wedding Rings and the meaning of Love

This is a story that my mother told me when I was a very little boy, a story that mothers weave for their children. The symbolism of the 3 gold bands resonates across the years. At the end are some links you might find handy.

My father used to manage small hotels in the Free State when I was a little boy.
It was not common for people to stay there for any length of time, people just passed through going from one place to another: overnighting for at most a night or two.
Mostly they were travelling salesman, or people migrating from the big city to the coast, or vice versa.

I remember one couple very clearly, though. They were foreigners, and spoke in a rather strange tongue. And although she was a remarkably beautiful woman (I could see that, even though I was a very young boy) it was the strange ring that she had on her wedding finger that struck me the most.
It was actually 3 interlocking rings, a sort of a puzzle ring, and each ring a different colour of gold.
I asked my mother what it was. She told me it was a Russian wedding ring. "Oh", I said. "What's that?"
Well, in those far-off days, mothers never had the Internet to go to, and trekking off to the library to look things up in the Encyclopaedia was not going to answer the question for a persistent little boy!

So she did the next best thing, which was to tell me a story.
Years later, I looked up Russian wedding rings on the Internet. I learnt that the Russian wedding ring is a Christian symbol, representing the holy Trinity. And while that is true, I still prefer my mother's story. Here it is, maybe you will enjoy it too.

My mother's story

She told me that marriage was about two people who loved each other.
She told me that the ring was a symbol of this love, as all wedding rings are.
But, she told me, this ring brought together the three most important things of a loving relationship.

The white gold ring, she told me, is softer than the other golds. Being softer, it will take the shape of the finger. "Love is like that", she said. "In the journey through life, two people in love have to change their shape. They have to give some things up, and take other things on. To become a family each one has to move towards the other". So that's what the white gold represents: bending towards each other.

Yellow gold, on the other hand, is very hard. You can bump it and knock it, and afterwards, all you had to do is to give it a hard rub, and there it would be: all bright and shining again. "Life is like that" she said. "It's not easy. Sometimes things are really difficult. Then you have to support each other. Sometimes love has to be hard". So this is what the Yellow Gold represents: the strength to get through life, and then come out on the other side all bright and shiny and new.

Then she was silent for a time. So I asked her "what about the red gold mommy?"

It took her a moment before she answered.
"Have you ever seen red gold before?" she asked softly.
"No", I replied.
"Well," she said, "Red Gold is rare". "And love", she said "is just as rare. When you find it, when you finally have it, you must look after it. You have to protect it. If you lose it it might never come back to you again". And that is what the Red Gold represents: that Love must be cherished, because life is short and every moment spent without love is a moment lost forever.

Related links

Origins of the wedding ring	This site was built to search out and explain the history of the wedding ring. You will find information on the evolution of the wedding ring and its history through the Christian faith.
Professionally researched answer from the AnswerBag	Reviews the various kinds of three-ring wedding bands
A brief history of the wedding ring	An article from the blog "Sex, Love, and Marriage"
Russian Wedding Customs	From Wikipedia
Symbolism Of Wedding Rings	A nice little article on the symbolism of wedding rings in general-ignore the Russian cyber brides!
Russian Weddings	The full paraphernalia, courtesy Wikipedia
Traditional Wedding Rings	A history of some of the most popular traditional wedding rings, courtesy the Wedding Channel
Wedding Ring Traditions Around the World	From Ancient Egyptian Culture to Modern Irish Claddagh Rings, courtesy Suite101
On Russian Wedding Traditions of the Past	Some background on wedding traditions and rituals in old Russia

...

Freedom and the Ties that Bind

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

Nothing, aint worth nothing, but its free (*)

Today, a Hyacinth sits on the window sill of my bedroom window, and its soft scent drifts from there to permeate the house. It carries its own memories, and they intertwine with mine.

Of all the prisons of the mind, those borne out of obligation and loving kindness bind the deepest.

What gifts do you have left, when all your gifts have been given?

What gifts do you have left to give, when every gift chains tighter?

Dying is the only way

For you to float free (**)

Freedom is the only gift that remains.

but Freedom cannot stand the sight of its walls, 

cannot bear the sound of its chains, 

shivers at the feel of its bars.

If the gift of Freedom is to forever release the receiver,

Then it must send the giver to exile, that curious form of dying-in-life.

It is a gift that cannot be explained.

It demands a cold, clean cut and does not permit regret.

This lonely gift that causes pain for both the giver and the receiver is soon overcome by the former, is a permanent loss for the latter.

So.

Having given everything else I finally came to understand that the time for the final gift had come.

Today, I remember that gift, and hope that its outcome has blossomed, even if the vacuum will never be filled.

Yet memories delight, and unlike the fragrance of the hyacinth, which must pass forever:  her fragrance is ever near, and every day's little pleasure.

* Kris Kristofferson - Me and Bobby McGee
** Haruki Murakami - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Lazy Autumn days in the Cape

I came down to the Cape last Friday, and spent the weekend looking after the kidz' dog and the farmhouse while they went hiking and climbing.

Down here in this rather less sunny part of Sunny South Africa, Autumn is everywhere, and the cold Atlantic sends us fog in the early morning and icy breezes during the day. They interrupt the warm sun with a tart reminder that Winter is on it's way. So unlike the balmy autumn days of the joburg highveld!

What's better on Sunday than time spent on the beach? Don't answer: this is not about you, its about me :) It's a short trip from the farm to Muizenburg and its beach, where the surfers were taking in a last chance to get on their boards. Here its a family thing, with parents surfing with their children, couples making out in the waves, and the odd serious surfer dude/dudette looking on it all in disdain.

There is a slightly run down Cafe - the Gaslight cafe - close to the beachfront. Not that it is unhygienic, just not modern and spiffy. But it makes a wonderful breakfast, and you can have breakfast at any time of the day and night. If you are prepared to tolerate the bare walls and the broken view of the sea (through the car park!) then you are rewarded by a fine breakfast at a reasonable price and a view of the passing parade through the floor to ceiling windows.

So that was me on Sunday:

A long lazy stroll along the beachfront, following the railway line from Muizenburg to St James, wet feet as the returning tide caught up with me on the way back to the Gaslight cafe's simple and satisfying breakfast. Sometimes Sundays can be nearly perfect, can't they?