about clothes, music and framed pictures to put on the wall

A couple of years ago when I was moving houses, I lost a CD (or two) that I had borrowed from the public library, which for this* reason or that** kept me from going back there again. My loss completely! I have recently gone back and re-read nearly all of the Tintin again, and a lot of Astrix. And recently, I borrowed this wonderful book:

OK,  I have showed you the back cover of the book, because a recent cover has been used for the cover of the book, and they simply seem lazy and sensationalised (because, seriously, a female body is used to sell so many things that even when they claim to use it to sell clothes or style, it still seems far too blah!)  Looking at the older covers, one almost regret the invention of cameras. The same faces smiling or pouting or staring at us from so many surfaces, that you cannot but just turn your head away, in some sort of a fatigue, even. The amount of space in the older covers is another thing, there is none of that jostling cluster that magazine covers have these days - and that makes them pretty enough to frame and put on the wall!

Anyway, this post wasn't even going to be about Vogue covers, if anything it was going to be about a dress (a wrap-around!) that I would have liked for my 30th birthday:

and it was going to be about this book that might or might not be interesting!

*the huge fines

**the embarrassment that positions of authority subject you to, when you have failed your duty to safely preserve public wealth for future generations 

A living list

This is a living list of things I need to visit (or revisit) in Canberra, because seriously, while the picnics in Canberra are out of this world; and of all the winters in the world, I'd pick Canberra (sunny, frosty, divine!) what is it with the cafe being open only 6 days a week and markets only 1/2 day a week and the queues at Wig and Pen!!? and I am clearly not utilising the fact there are no queues at the galleries and the museums...

anyho, here we go:
Aubergine
Berry Picking
Cherry Picking
Jerrabomberra Wetlands
Diamant Hotel, New Acton
Murramarang National Park
Rainbow Cafe

Economics

Economics is, to me, the biggest and most obvious gap in my knowledge. The fact of the matter is that I can keep a budget, participate as an economic entity in creation or dispersion of australian dollars, get hugely impacted by reserve bank decisions, by govt. budgets and also by world economies going this way or the other; and yet I am as baffled by economics as my dearest nephew* is by the number three. I am sure there is something going on there but I don't have the foggiest idea, what.

It was therefore, with quite the joy of relief, i read the following words in a pretty good interview on Seed:

One of my intellectual heroes, the Nobel Prize– winning chemist Frederick Soddy, put it another way. He said the problem in our economy is the one thing that economists have in their system which does not obey the laws of physics. And that is money. Money is the symbol of wealth, and yet it operates on laws which contradict the laws that wealth operates on. It’s very strange to have a symbol system that operates in ways that are fundamentally different from the thing being symbolized.

And another interview of Herman Daly here.

*my not-yet-two nephew on looking at the house lit up by the maximum number of fairy lights on a residential propery this christmas was properly awed and famously whispered, "two-two lights!"

maybe that is what this is all about

The thing about my soon to be ex, and currently estranged husband was the complete lack of self awareness about what would make him happy. Apart from the fact that he was wrong about the fact that marrying me would make him happy, he was usually wrong about everything he thought would make him happy. Time and again we would bend all resources with us to get him something and at the end of it there would be no celebration – the myth that was sustained so long that THIS thing would bring me happiness would not last even a nano second after THIS thing was got, and definitely not long enough for us to have a decent dinner date. So, all the time that I spent with my ex, I did not spend time with someone happy, or willing to share any happiness. And happiness is only real when shared* – isn’t that the whole point of marriage? Of course I must have been wrong, but exactly how - will I am sure dawn upon me sooner or later. It does sometimes feels like I am cleaning someone else’s mess, like someone else had the party and I am left to clean up the house for the parents!

Like now, when I could have been doing so much else, I am sitting on a weekend trying to figure out the documents I need to give my lawyer – and the money I could have used in so many ways, I am giving away to the lawyer! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. But the whole situation reminds me of a story (you surely did not think there was any other point to this post, did you? :)

There was once upon a time a man who lived in a small, tiny house, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to live in a big spacious house. So, he prayed to God and asked him for a big spacious house. The God appeared to him and asked him to find a goat and bring it in the tiny house with him. The man did as he was told and waited a week. God again appeared, and asked him to bring in a chicken. Very surprised, the man did as told and waited. Soon, God appeared again and asked him to bring in a camel. The man again did as told, and this went on for a little while, till the house had no room, was extremely dirty and smelly and it had started to show the wear. Now, very miserably and unhappy the man to went to God and complained. God replied that if he did not like his idea, well he should better get rid of all the animals in his house and mend it and clean it. So, the poor man went back home and let all the animals go and mend his place and cleaned it – and, of course, found a lot more room in the same area than he had previously.

This, I am sure, is a pretty miserable story if you, like me, can’t understand why could the man not just get a bit more room in his house – wasn’t such a big deal, was it? But the thing is, some room that we are given, can’t be expanded, like the 24 hours a day, like 10 years to a decade; and the other thing is we all have a tendency to live in the 59th minute club – give us an hour to do something and we will do most of it in the 59th minute. So, perhaps, sometimes we are given so much to do, that we gain an appreciation of the other 59 minutes in the hour and we just learn to use our space so much better. Maybe this is what it is all about. 

(w)hole

merriam-webster tells me otherwise, but i can't believe that whole and hole have different origins. (tho, www.m-w.com  would tell you that holy and whole are related.) Of course, it is words like these that make puns all the more fun, if you are so inclined. most people apologise for a pun, and i am not alone in wondering why.

there is such a wealth of philosophy that could exist behind the two words: perhaps behind them lies the solution to what buddhist say "Nothing exists" and what the hindus say 'It exists' (you would, of course, know what i am talking about, if you had bothered to hear the lectures on kathopanishad) or what buddhist call shedding the self, and what hindus call shedding the non-self (which Mr. Oppegaard and I talk about here - please do ignore my getting all self-conscious at the end of the first comment and after, it really could have been a nicer discussion if I hadn't behaved like I was in high-school!)

weirdly enough the word for marriage doesn't share any root with either of the above words, you would think so, wouldn't you? considering presumably causes either a whole, or a hole....