Risk your significance (if any)…

Certainity…

After “You’ve got mail” and “Stranger than Fiction”, the movie “Julie and Julia” has swept me away and is to stay within me for a very long time to come.

Watched it twice already… and the characters portrayed by Amy Adams (with her short hair) and the larger than life actress Meryl Streep as well as the real women Julie Powell and Julia Child… they all keep lingering in my head..

One of my favourite lines from the movie..
Julie says to her husband ” Do you know why I enjoy so much cooking? Because after a whole day when nothing – and i really mean nothing – is certain, you come back home and you know that by adding egg, sugar and milk to the chocolate… the mix will get thicker. It’s such a consolation…”

And so could me…

From Julie Powell’s blog

Julia Child began learning to cook when she was thirty-seven years
old. She started because she wanted to feed her husband Paul. She
started because though she’d fallen in love with great food late, when
she did she’d fallen hard. She started because she was in Paris. She
started because she didn’t know what else to do.

Who knows how it happens, how you come upon your essential gift? For
this was hers. Not the cooking itself so much – lots of people cook
better than Julia. Not even the recipes – others can write recipes.
What was Julia’s true gift, then? She certainly had enormous energy,
and that was a sort of gift, if a genetic one – perhaps the one thing
about her you can pin down on the luck of the draw. She was a great
teacher, certainly – funny, and generous, and enthusiastic, with so
much overbrimming confidence that she had nothing to do with the
surplus but start doling it out to others. But she also had a great
gift for learning. Perhaps that was the talent she discovered in
herself at the age of 37, at the Cordon Bleu School in Paris – the
thirst to keep finding out, the openness to experience that makes life
worth living.

She was no bending reed, of course. She had no use for silly,
fear-driven food fads; she could be set in her ways, even mulish, and
when she wanted to she could be withering. That’s fine. That’s good
even. We don’t need saints. Who changes their life under the
influence of a saint? Okay – don’t answer that. But the point is –
Julia was so impressive, so instructive, so exhilarating, because she
was a woman, not a goddess. Julia didn’t create armies of drones,
mindlessly equating her name with taste and muttering “It’s a Good
Thing” under their minty breath. Instead she created feisty, buttery,
adventurous cooks, always diving in to the next possible disaster,
because goddammit, if Julia did it, so could we.

Multiple Negatives

Watched a scene from Shrek 3 and couldn’t stop laughing

Pinocchio is a puppet. Prince charming (the villain) wants to know where Shrek is. And he asks Pinocchio coz if Pinocchio lies abt it, his nose will grow long.

Read how Pinocchio escapes by saying multiple negatives

Prince Charming: You! You can’t lie! So tell me puppet… where… is… Shrek?

Pinocchio: Uh. Hmm, well, uh, I don’t know where he’s not

Prince Charming: You’re telling me you don’t know where Shrek is?

Pinocchio: It wouldn’t be inaccurate to assume that I couldn’t exactly not say that it is or isn’t almost partially incorrect.

Prince Charming: So you do know where he is!

Pinocchio: On the contrary. I’m possibly more or less not definitely rejecting the idea that in no way with any amount of uncertainty that I undeniably

Prince Charming: Stop it!

Pinocchio: …do or do not know where he shouldn’t probably be, if that indeed wasn’t where he isn’t. Even if he wasn’t at where I knew he was

[Pigs and Gingerbread Man begin singing]

Pinocchio: That’d mean I’d really have to know where he wasn’t.

Random read – ‘Battle of mind(s)’

This blog is my process of storing words, music and whatever can be stored electronically. Articles which inspire me, surprise me and confuse me.. Music which heals, rocks and mixes my feelings.. All this is stored in an attempt to allow me to revisit and view the path that lay behind me, and understand how i came to be where i am now.. (and that’s, nowhere).. Anyways, i am starting to record snippets from the books i am reading and this will be classified under “Random read”. I might be irregular as i am known to be. But weekly once is a decent expectation which ‘might’ be fulfilled.

The book i am currently reading is “And Another thing”
And this is today’s random read

Guide’s Note
Remembering is generally a two-stage process involving dialogue between the conscious and the subconscious parts of the brain. The subconscious opens proceedings by throwing up the relevant memory, an act which releases a spurt of self congratulatory endorphins.

“Well done, matey,” says the consciousness. “The memory is really useful right now; and i couldn’t remember where i’d put it.”

“You and me, pal” says the subconscious, delighted to have its contribution acknowledged for once. “We’re in this together.”

Then the conscious reviews the memory in its in-tray and sends a message down to the sphincter telling it to prepare for the worst.

“Why did you remind me of this?” it rails against the subconscious. “This is awful. Terrible. I didn’t want to remember this. Why the zark do you think i shoved it to the back of my brain?”

“Thats the last time i help you out,” mutters the subconscious and retreats in the darker sections of itself where nasty thoughts are housed.
“I dont need you,’ it tells itself.”I can make myself another personality out of these things you’ve discarded.’

And so the seeds of schizophrenia are sown with kernels of childhood bullying, neglect, low self esteem and prejudice.

Luckily, Betelgeuseans don’t have much of a subconscious, so that’s all right then.

Velcro to Teflon – WIP

Why it’s good to take in the good

Echo

Making the rope longer…

Life is a journey from destiny to free will
Rajiv Vij,a Life and Executive Coach, on the debate between determinism and choice

Excerpt

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda’s teacher, explained it thus: “Man is like a cow tied to a pole with a rope, bound by the karmic debts and human nature, and the amount of free will he has is analogous only to the amount of freedom the rope allows.”

The argument strengthens the case for laws of nature to be causally deterministic of our lives. So does free will exist at all?

Yes, but it comes into play only when we make a conscious choice that we won’t be governed by conditioned responses.

Our ability to make meaningful choices is determined by our level of mindfulness at that moment – how aware we are of our true identity and how connected we are with our inner consciousness. This universal consciousness, alive inside each of us, can be a path to examining every situation with new awareness. But for this, we need to let go of conditioned responses and let our inner wisdom guide us.

Swami Ramakrishna completed his explanation of free will saying that “as one progresses on the journey of spirituality, the rope of freedom becomes longer”, allowing for greater access to authentic free will.

Source :TOI, 8th November 2009

Make it..

“Once you decide to do something, the universe conspires to help you. There are a lot of people who are really talented, but I can see they’re not going to make it because they don’t work hard enough.” -Gerald Butler

Echo