Birthday Sunflower

Through various practices in my life at the moment, I am getting better at understanding what it means to meditate - or what it means to me: going into myself, searching for the quieter tuned in side of existing. I am thinking about how this state has happened by itself in my past, and always accompanied by great creative inspiration. When that feeling of inspiration and connectedness with the world is not there, I wonder what happened.

So, I am getting better at seeing that stresses and worries, too many distractions etc. etc. are what take us away from that quiet space, but it takes experience to be able to recognise it in order to learn to prioritise it.

Which comes first - the quiet connectedness with the world or the looking? Looking - a concentrated focusing on the things in the world, probably through beauty, though I don't think beauty has a fixed meaning - I am talking about the feeling of the beautiful whereby feelings come with and cause actions from us. The inside/outside thing again, human skin as interface: do we find beauty in looking or does the beautiful find us?

These are of a sunflower that a dear friend gave me for my birthday.

Classification is fascinating

A while ago, Mr. shaj mohan said that my work was always about taking something away. I wasn't sure what he meant, but just this week I think I might be getting an idea. My work is always a focus or close up on something, with an interest in transforming what that thing is a little, making it look a bit like it's not the thing that it is. I can see now, that the taking away, could be about removing the means of identification that would give it its normal identity. 


I've been thinking a lot about being a relativist, that I don't think things are essentially themselves. They always require a relationship or context in order for us to define them. 


I like the contrast in the lower picture here - the purple sky and dark branches, with the gold branches below.

Bird Watching, Wondering

Still on the natural trip. Just watched the first three episodes of the series Birds Britannia - a really excellent historical and cultural overview of the UKs relationship with birds.

It lead me to research Jeremy Mynott and his book Birdscapes. I haven't read it, but am intrigued to after listening to this podcast (on Podularity - wasn't sure who in particular to credit). The crossovers between birds (as cultural symbol) and philosophy seems potentially very interesting. At this point I am wondering how it would be possible to interrogate philosophy, or use philosophical tools towards a meaningful or productive end, to interrogate meaningfully and productively our understanding of the natural world.

Dusk

Jellyfish

The Horniman houses these creatures. The lack of flash on my camera means that you can't see the neon colouring they exhibit in UV light, but maybe you can imagine what an incredible sight it was.

Looking at animals is always a challenge to imagine life without ego-based consciousness and a more profound challenge to live an ethics of equality that takes life without ego-based consciousness into account. Reading a lot of Freud at the moment. I can't imagine that he ever imagined the different - without being less equal - consciousnesses that might inhabit creatures. But, I guess his work paves the way for us to.

Horniman Aquarium from Horniman Museum on Vimeo.

Just found this video when searching for the link to the Horniman Museum. It shows the jellyfish in all their glory.

Also discovered that there is an exhibition of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam and Rajendra Shyam on currently. I first discovered Gond art via BibliOdyssey: The Night Life of Trees It's wonderful.

Treats

Motioning

Snatched London in the Autumn

Some quick randoms...

15th September 2009

Alrighty. Next stage: intermittent (guerrilla?) internet visits (get in get out), dump photos and videos and some thoughts. Disappear completely again.







These shots were from the night of my 30th Birthday.

Last Night of my Twenties.

On my walk home this evening, the last walk home after work of my Twenties. It means nothing really but I do want to mark it. Something is being said goodbye to, all the events that live in times now passed, all the people and places that are now gone. There's something about turning Thirty that offers the possibility of starting anew. Illusion maybe, but both nice and scary too.



This is the Thames again and I wish I could say it was this colour but actually it was very brown. It's the camera that's made it nice colours.

More Docklands

In the background there is the constant roar of a lot of traffic passing very fast.







Even the birds look a bit gloomy.

Docklands

Yesterday I went on an excursion to London's Docklands.


Thames and ancient sewer brickwork:




Thames and the disturbance from a passing boat:




Quite different from Crete's Sea