So I deleted Facebook, I always wanted to be rid of it, but I thought I would lose too much by deleting it. Well the last few day’s, during the riots in England I have seen that I won’t be losing anything from not using it. Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world”, and the amount of silly opinions bouncing around Facebook about what should be done to the rioters, and very little about the real causes of it all gave me a touch of misanthropy, I don’t want that, so I left.
I will now express my opinions solely on my own site, since also Facebook gains too much from it’s massive database, again I don’t want that, so I changed that for myself. I do support Diaspora however, which is another social networking site, but at least it claims to have some ethics regarding privacy.
That is all.
Lisbon
I’m in Lisbon, I have no money, I want..need a job, I don’t mind all the free time I have, but I do need money badly. Sometimes I go out for walks and resist the temptation to buy….anything really. I buy nice food though, always like to eat well. I printed off a load of CV’s, handed some out to hostels in the area, although they all say the same thing, I really need to speak Portuguese, makes sense. If anyone has any ideas to get money, on-line jobs and things like this let me know.
Guitar strings going wild
Just filmed this with Luis, just a normal guitar being filmed at 210fps, pretty unexpected hey!
Finally!
So, finally I felt like writing again, the last time i wrote was…(just checking the date on my last meaningful post…)….was..2010/11/10! That was last year in Kathmandu, when I saw Kumari, a little girl that they think is a Goddess. So in 8 months I didn’t really do much on this site, I will vow to change that!
Kathmandu and the Shree Kumari Festival
Kathmandu!
What to do in Kathmandu! Well quite a few things can be done in Kathmandu, since it seemed like every other day, and sometimes, everyday, was a festival! Being cynical I could say that festivals are there to keep the masses entertained and distracted from real issues, but putting a nice light on it I could say what a happy city it was for having all these festivals.
Bandipur
Now that I’m in Manchester I have access to 24 hour high speed internet, and also I have access to a much faster computer so I can edit photographs at high speeds. So I plan to put more photo’s here over the next weeks, if I don’t its because i’m lazy.
All of these photographs are from a small village that sits upon a ridge between mountains in the Tanahu district of Nepal. It some history being a trading point, so many people passed through and settled here. It’s quite quiet, very peaceful and extremely beautiful. I stayed there for two weeks enjoying my own company, walking around, taking many photographs, drawing and juggling. I think it would be a good place to return with some company, exploring the surrounding hills and valleys.
Nepal and India are different countries.
Nepal and India are very different countries, going to a new country always surprises me, I wouldn’t have thought that Nepal was that different to India, it’s right next to it, you just hop across a land border that isn’t very strict, the first place I went too could actually have been India, but now where I am looks very different indeed. Where I am now is one of the most beautiful places i’ve ever seen.
I got better.
I got better at juggling. More speed! more tricks! more twisted arms! more more more!
Vipassana:-in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the nature of reality.
So I did the retreat, and I found it very difficult, but very interesting upon reflection and very rewarding. My mind cycles very very quickly, and I have been aware for a long time that I need a lot of stimulation to keep it interested, so the difficulty came when i removed all stimulation’s! Its was like trying to watch 10 movies at the same time all on fast play sometimes! Still, i did find moments where it slowed down to the speed of life and even slower. I was going to do 10 days, but since they said at the start that 7 is the recommended minimum, I bailed out after 7 days!! I feel a bit like i let myself down by that, but also I realize that there are many other ways to gain from the mind. Vipasanna is just one way.
Arrival to Nepal.
So now I am in Nepal. There was some mild relief upon arrival as I was in India with a visa extension that I grew more and more dubious about, especially when I heard the lawyer that helped me obtain it had been arrested for making false visa extensions. On the border though they didn’t bat an eyelid, they took my forms and stamped me out of India no problem. I think the actual extension was legal, but the methods to obtain it contained a certain about of bribery and really extensions shouldn’t be handed out so easily and a 6 month extension is not just for your average tourist like me. Still, it all worked out and im happy for it.
Dharamsala To Ladakh, a life affirming bus journey and a look at stillness.
I have just been completed one of the most amazing journeys I have been on. It lasted 4 days, it spanned temperatures from 45c to below 0, from a few hundred meters above sea level to heights that impede breathing. However, despite all this a major highlight of the journey was the feeling that the bus was going to fall off a very high cliff at one point. The fear that it was going to fall off grew from some average vertigo as the bus casually drove along on the narrow path on the mountain side, up to when it was as close to the edge as it ever got, then it went over a rock and see-sawed on its theme-park style suspension. It was at that moment when my fear grew to a point I’d never experienced before. Before this point as my mind contemplated dying despite me not wanting it to, I thought about my family and friends and how awful it would be for them if I died, it also (notice how I refer to my mind as it and not me), strangely enough thought about how I didn’t want to die because I really wanted to see Leh again and draw some more pictures and drink Leh berry juice *takes a swig of Leh berry juice*. Some possible guilt came to mind as well, and I think I can often feel guilty and I’m sure many other people do, however I listen to this seldom and do things I want to do with more confidence and less questions, anyway, it felt guilt because I was swanning around the world on whims, going wherever I wanted to, so really I didn’t need to be in that life threatening place. And then the bus rocked, it all came to a point, in that moment I could no longer articulate situations, reasons, musings about what was going on, I think my mind was readying itself to control the body with as much accuracy as possible to avoid death, so it decided to turn off thoughts. Anyway, as you can guess, I didn’t die, and looking back on it I really don’t think there was as much danger as I thought, the road was firm and most of the bus was firmly on the ground, if it did fall off and you could have seen it from a good advantage point I’m sure it would have done a very peculiar movement, a gravity defying movement. However, my mind did what it did as it led up to that moment, and I’m very grateful for it. It was a very life affirming bus journey.
Me Juggling!
After some requests I filmed myself having a juggle. Here it is!
Learning to draw
To inspire I have decided to share with you the story of how I am learning to draw. I started to draw in Goa around 4 months ago. I had dabbled in drawing sketchy things a few times in the past, but never really locked on to anything and developed a style, mainly because I had never really felt any form of evolution within my drawings, and I have never drawn anything which I have enjoyed to look at, which I think is a very important point. I’ll say that juggling has given me an eye for change and evolution within my own actions. Seeing how when I juggle, I notice an improvement from the last day, a trick feels that little bit more natural, a bit more easier. So I set out drawing with this eye for change. At first I mainly put my attention to drawing words, since I was more familiar with words than drawing. I seemed to have an aim when I drew my words, adding little flairs and a chunkyness to the letters, I would stop when I felt like it felt good. All the words and sentences I was writing were just spur of the moment ideas, one liners that, to me, were interesting sounding. Free from any intention of making sense, or having to string together sentences to make a poem, or even a story, the words came quite freely. I quickly moved on from just words, and lately I have no desire to use words in my drawings at all, im quite content with drawing, my drawing skills have improved to the point where I can kind of draw what I have in mind, with a lot of effort and time that is.
Rishikesh and the Kumbah Mellah
Another post! Hurrah for me! Hurrah for all you people who read this site! I’m sorry for letting you all down and not posting as much as I used too. My dad left me a message displaying his disappointment at me for not posting more, something along the lines of “you let us all down again by promising some pictures and words but not delivering”. Well, I do have many pictures, and my head is always full of words, so they will come, it just takes the motivation to do it, and if i don’t feel like doing it then even if I did I wouldn’t be satisfied with what I put down.
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