“I love being married. It’s so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” Rita Rudner
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July 21, 2008
“All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love”.
So how we control fear and love in our lives makes us..more like god or like the devil..
and if we swing between fear and love, then we remain in between.. i.e.human…
July 9, 2008
Paulo Coelho writes …
A friend of mine, Julia, sent me the text below. When I tried to get in touch with her to ask if she herself had written it, she had already left on a trip and I don’t know exactly when she will be coming back.
I checked on the Internet and guess what I discovered? That there are many discussion groups on this subject! In other words, nowadays women are looking for reasons to fall in love with the opposite sex. As a man who agrees with some of these reasons, I made a list based on what they say:
We love men because they can’t fake an orgasm, even if they wanted to.
Because they will never understand us, yet even so they go on trying.
Because they still manage to see our beauty, even when we ourselves no longer believe it.
Because they understand equations, politics, maths and economics, but not the feminine heart.
Because they are lovers who only rest when we have had (or pretend to have had) pleasure.
Because they manage to raise sport to something bordering on religion.
Because they are never afraid of the dark.
Because they insist on fixing things that are beyond their capacity, and dedicate themselves to this with the same enthusiasm as an adolescent, and get frustrated when they don’t succeed.
Because they are like pomegranates: most of them is impossible to digest, but the seeds are delicious.
Because they never comment on what the neighbors might think.
Because we always know what they are thinking, and when they open their mouth they say exactly what we imagined they would.
Because they never dreamed of torturing themselves wearing high heels.
Because they love to explore our body and conquer our soul.
Because a 14-year-old girl can leave them speechless, and a 25-year-old woman can tame them quite effortlessly.
Because they are always attracted by extremes: the opulent or the ascetic, warriors or monks, artists or generals.
Because they do absolutely everything possible to try to hide their weaknesses.
Because a man’s biggest fear is not being a man (it never crosses a woman’s mind not to be a woman).
Because they always eat everything on their plate, and don’t feel guilty about it.
Because they take great delight in completely uninteresting matters, such as what happened at work, or different makes of automobiles.
Because they have shoulders where we can rest our heads and sleep without much effort.
Because they are at peace with their bodies, except for small, insignificant things like growing bald and getting fat.
Because they are incredibly courageous in front of insects.
Because they never lie about their age.
Because despite everything they try to demonstrate, they can’t live without a woman.
Because when we tell one of them “I love you”, they always ask us to explain exactly how.
One reader, Kristen, claims that we know absolutely nothing about feminine nature, and sends us the following list:
1 – We women are born detectives. In our eyes, all men are suspect and their adventures will end up being discovered – it’s just a matter of time.
2 – Even if we are not in love with you, hearing “I love you” is a balm to our souls. And if you don’t say it, we will notice and become sad.
3 – The same thing happens with “you are beautiful”. It takes less than two seconds to say these three magical words, which can change our nightmares into real fairy tales.
4 – If we ask what clothes we should wear, don’t be annoyed if we put on exactly the opposite of what you chose – that’s part of our nature.
5 – At a party we are capable of scanning the whole room in less than a minute to find out what interests us. Just watch.
6 – We think of sex with the same compulsion as men - or maybe even more so. The only difference is that we don’t show it.
7 – If we don’t accept immediately an invitation to dinner or a first date, don’t worry – we just need a few days to lose the extra kilos that we always feel are ruining our lives.
8 – Women always remember everything. If you ask when we met, none of us will say: “at a party”. We will say: “it was a Tuesday, right after a dinner where they served salad and chicken broth, and you were wearing a black blazer and designer shoes, and so on.
9 – However much love we are capable of giving, there are seven days when we want to be far from everything and everybody. You have two options: tie yourself to a lamp-post and wait till the storm is over, or else go the nearest jeweler’s and buy a present. We recommend the second option.
10 – We have as much power of reasoning as men do. But we don’t need to make this evident, otherwise you will feel insecure. Women who do that end up alone.
11 – We love all kinds of hair on the male body, although waxing is our favorite torture.
12 – We hate making love when we don’t feel like it, but we do it anyway, and you will never be able to notice the difference.
13 – Play with our pets and our children, and we will play with you. Ignore them, and we will ignore you too.
14 – Women are equipped with X-ray vision. We can look at hard, dark eyes and discover the child hiding behind them. We can stare at angel-blue eyes and discover the demon that lies there. We know when men are pretending to be sleeping from tiredness or – more obviously – when they are pretending not to be sleeping with someone else.
15 – Not all women want marriage and children. Many just want orgasms and pets.
16 – When delicateness is genuine, it can melt our hardened hearts.
17 - If we have some problem to discuss with you, don’t try to give us the solution, we already have one. It’s just a pretext to prevent the relationship ending in boredom.
July 8, 2008
The Sea Inside (Spanish: Mar adentro)
Movie Synopsis: Javier Bardem gives a remarkable, unforgettable performance in Alejandro Amenabar’s gripping drama about dying with dignity, THE SEA INSIDE. Thirty-five-year-old Bardem plays 55-year-old Ramon Sampedro, a Galician who broke his neck as a young man and has spent more than a quarter of a century as a quadriplegic, confined to bed. Reflecting on his past and considering his future, he chooses to die, petitioning the courts for permission to be euthanized. His radical decision sets off controversy throughout Spain–as well as in his own house, where his family and friends all have different opinions on the fate he has chosen. While Ramon’s father (Alberto Gimenez) and brother (Celso Bugallo) refuse to help him die, and his nephew, Javi (Tamar Novas), tries to understand his uncle’s decision, Ramon is surrounded by women who virtually fight over him–Rosa (Lola Duenas), a single mother of two who visits him to talk about her difficult life; Manuela (Mabel Rivera), his sister-in-law who takes care of his daily needs; Gene (Clara Segura), who works for the Death with Dignity organization; and Julia (Belen Rueda, in a powerful film debut), a married lawyer with a secret of her own. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, THE SEA INSIDE is a special film with marvelous acting, a strong soundtrack, a moving story, and an enchanting visual style that features poetic shots of the countryside as Ramon dreams he can fly.
July 7, 2008
Excerpt of an article in a blog which voices my thoughts on this topic.
Prostitution
Prostitution, the oldest cliché goes, is the oldest profession. If so, it also sets the template for every other profession. Take me, for example: I sell my skills as a writer, limited as they are, to write pieces such as this one. You no doubt have a job that involves selling your skills as well. Many people trade not their intellectual skills but physical labour. Most such trades, made to mutual benefit, are considered respectable. But when a prostitute offers her sexual services, that is somehow considered improper and unethical.
What is even odder is that in most countries, if two consenting adults get together and have sex, the state will not interfere – unless money has changed hands. On one hand, we sanctimoniously frown upon sex; on the other, we frown at commerce. The human race would not exist without either of these two.
June 26, 2008
A freind gave me the tranquility i was seeking for .. the love of my life gives me joy everyday… still i seek reason for existing and doing what i do…This quote gave me answer for an important question i was asking myself for a long time… Carpe Diem means so much more….
JAMIE SHANE writes
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
This is obviously a very, very old axiom. Perhaps today it would be better phrased: Before enlightenment, cook dinner, wash laundry. After enlightenment, wash dishes, fold laundry.
Now, I can only speak from the feminine perspective about the power of these mundane tasks because I’m not sure it holds the same for men. But I am fairly sure that every woman has, at some point in time, wept out her sorrow over the dishes, or had some sort of realization over the whites. Whether or not one is concerned with enlightenment, I have learned that if you let them, these very simple, very boring, very small tasks will teach you a lot about the nature of life and the nature of the human being.
And I think that’s kind of funny. Because who would think that enlightenment is living on the bottom of the kitchen sink? Or in a sheet of fabric softener? How ironic that we can spend our whole lives hunting for meaning, never realizing that it can be found in the one thing we expend momentous effort trying to get out of. Chop wood, carry water.
Everything we desire from life is ultimately impermanent, except for those few seemingly impermanent things that have been in play since the dawn of human existence. Human beings have always had to cook and clean and see to the security of their homes. Details, all. Small, menial tasks, all. But you can bet that 300,000 years ago a human woman was preparing food for her family and cleaning up after them. You can also bet that a thousand years from now, a woman somewhere will be doing some version of the same thing. God lives in these kinds of small things. What we do when we raise ourselves above these nitty-gritty details of life, believing that they have no meaning, is to align our sense of being with things that are illusory and impermanent. We set ourselves up for suffering when these false attachments ultimately breed true and disappear.
For instance, you can spend as much of your limited time as you want “getting rich,” but in the end it is only smoke. You could lose every dime tomorrow. The idea of money could cease to be relevant a hundred years from now. Money is not at all permanent, yet we run after it as if wealth can guarantee us permanent happiness or a life longer and more important than what we are given. And if you have attached a sense of self to it, if your very being is aligned to the significance of making money, what happens to you when it is gone? Where will you find your comfort, your truth?
Empires will come and go. Fortunes will be won and spent. Civilizations may even rise and fall. But the small tasks of life will remain, even after you are dust. That has to mean something. That has to speak to their value.
There is great power in life’s simplicity. And great comfort. All we need to do to access it is to be present with the little things, and take solace from their never-ending continuity. They may not be glamorous. They won’t make you famous. But they won’t let you down and they won’t make you suffer. Perhaps in the end that is all that we have, chopping wood and carrying water.
Perhaps that is not only the secret to enlightenment, but the secret to bliss.
June 25, 2008
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. - Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
Guess thats whats happening here…
He
After yesterday’s news, nothing could make me feel better than seeing me with my
Rosie. As fate would have it, today is Compilation Sunday. Every Sunday Rosie takes an image in England and i take one in America, and we put ourselves together, even if it is just in a photo. This photo means a lot to me. It is the first time Rosie and i have touched, in our first comp, we were separated by a wall, in our second our fingers barely touched, and now we are together, as it should be.
Having You with me makes all this bareable, and somehow I know everything will come out ok. Its Fate.
She
i am right here and everything will be ok.
ITS COLLABORATION SUNDAY!
All week long me and Aaron were wracking our brains for a concept for today’s shot, from sicking up all over each other to sewing ourselves together, and then last night happened.
All concepts go out of the window, all we need right now is each other.
Ok, so abit about me and Aaron 
On 31st March this year, I joined flickr. On 24th of April, I finally worked out how to post photos to flickr. Two days later at college, myself and my awesome friend Nat showed me a photo of a guy with a can on hair mousse up his nose, hair flowing in the wind.
We spent the whole lunch hour oo-ing and aah-ing at his photos, mighty impressed by his talent and humor. The next day, this mysterious yet charming man had left me a comment, and added me as a contact!!!!
Completely extatic that such a concentrated area of talent and awesomeness found ME worth watching, I sent him a message, saying that I liked his boobs. We messaged many times every day, wrote an adventure book (you might want to click on that link 
hehe) together, stayed up talking on gmail for hours every night until it was light outside, then began doing the same thing except with phones. It has been two months since we became addicted to each other, and I have completely fallen. We’ve yet to meet, but every day our feelings get stronger and stronger. I need him, and I am counting down the days until this photograph is reality.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosie_hardy/2601079429/
June 24, 2008
I wandered into an unknown person’s (Stacy Larsen) Flickr photostream and felt like finding a goldmine… KIDS and lots of them….
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stacyl/
This is what Stacy says in her profile :
I am a mom to three amazing kids, a wife to an equally amazing and supportive husband and a Photographer. I can honestly say for the first time in my life that I am doing what I truly love to do. My path was long and sometimes frustrating but it brought me here today. I’m Female and Taken.
Such words and images rekindle my deepest desire, which is to work with children in whatsoever way…
June 23, 2008
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth - Umberto Eco
