Words

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night

But ah, my foes
and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometimes I think words are barriers to fully enjoying stuff. As humans some of us feel the need to compartmentalise stuff, its clean and makes the confusion and complexity of reality easier to comprehend – that’s a bat, that’s a dog, it’s an apple, the peach tastes sweet. They don’t convey the experience. Things become symbols and code which eventually become meaningless shapes that when connected in a particular pattern can be decrypted via lightwaves that bounce off our retinas transforming to electrons that stimulate a chemical reaction inside our heads. Words are the magic ’spells’ that orchestrate our perception but the simplification of reality to simple shapes and sounds can prevent us from really seeing what’s out there. Some people see beyond these barriers. My mate Adam did.

By ‘limitation’ I mean that a word creates a defined barrier around something, that something starts and something stops. The label compromises the thing, if we want to truly observe ‘it’. Take the word ‘Sun’. The accepted definition is of that big hot yellow ball in the sky that spits out light and heat. But where does the sun start and where does it stop? Is it at the edge of the fire? the edge of the the heat? the edge of the light? If its the light then there is no boundary – this definition is too huge to fully comprehend but I think its the right one. We are inside the sun right now.

Where do people stop? Is it where their body exists in space? Do we occupy finite space or is the edge of us where the light that reflects off our physical form stops? I think we are endless. The ideas we impart, the noises we make, the impressions we make on cmos chips that are converted to binary strings embedded on to magnetic discs, the memories that we conspire in creating, the genetic code in our offspring and the love we create and share.

Adam Theokritoff, a true friend of mine died suddenly at the weekend and I am deeply sad for myself, his family and everyone who loved him that we will not be able to conspire in creating beautiful new memories with him – there were so many left to be created. There is a part of me that feels hollow but I choose to fill it with the joy that I got from being in his radiant bold generous fearless hysterically funny and inspiring company.

The characteristics that impress us of people we admire and love imprint on us and are woven in to our own patterns of behaviour thinking and character. The things he touched, created, and crafted impeccably, the memories created, the battles fought, and the love he generously shared are all things that radiated from Adam – those things still exist. He had an indelible character and made an impression on everyone that knew him.

People that think that the light goes out choose to live in the shade. Love is as endless as the light of the sun burning through space in to infinity.

Are You a Goldfish?

Rory and Twinkles are our Goldfish.

Every evening they swim to the top right corner of their tank awaiting a few flakes of fish food and without fail we provide them. Twinkles has hardly grown since we bought her home from the local ‘Pets at Home’ depot, she swims about back and forth avoiding Rory and looks forward to the evenings and the flakes. Rory forages, sucks the cluches of food that have escaped the filter and spits them back out again. He swims at the gush of water sprayed out of the filter but every evening he is there at the top of the tank awaiting the delivery of tidbits. He’s a fat fish.

When you get your payslip this month take a moment to think about what is going on outside of your fish-tank.

My Favourite

My Favourite

I don't have thousands of favourites on Flickr. My conditions for starring pictures is not that I simply 'like it'. The images have to inspire me, they have to be good enough that I would spend money to see them.

I don't do this
This particular image I found so powerful and inspiring that I didn't just want it in my favourites, I wanted it on the wall in my home.

The bold brushstrokes look like they were created with the passion and energy of a samurai, spontaneous, confident, potent. Bam bam bam. I love it, it's inspiring. So I bought it from fellow flickr'er Snerdinski, a versatile artist from Boston. I promised him that I'd send him a picture of it framed but I think it deserves another outing on Flickr to be appreciated again. So here it is.

*sorry for the delay John, I've been a little out of sorts for a couple of months and the frame sat in the shop for far too long before I had the energy to bring it home to put on the wall.

A Little Nonsense…

Remember that guy from Police Academy who could produce all those crazy noises from his mouth? His name is Michael Winslow, he’s one of my heroes. Check him out in this crazy video of him being Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. More serious posts coming soon, in the meantime enjoy this.

But of course there is a serious message behind this post. You can make any noise you want. You can achieve anything you want, the only person standing in your way is you.

New commission

A commission! Here is my latest commission. Its to be a wedding gift to the bride pictured in the centre. Her brides maids are either side. I hope she likes it!

The Doors

The Doors

This is the view I saw as I opened my back door yesterday evening. Awesome. In the old fashioned sense of the word is all around us every moment of every day. You just need to open your eyes. We take it for granted but the occasional smack round the face with a big slice of awe keeps the door ajar.

Rosa

Rosa

Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
Hans Margolius

Ella & Rosa

Ella & Rosa

They are the bestest of friends and I am their dad!

Tiny crab in a droplet of water

Tiny crab in a droplet of water

Ella and Rosa looking cool in their sunglasses

Ella and Rosa looking cool in their sunglasses

« Previous PageNext Page »