because i am afraid that if i speak my mind there will be consequences.

by Doris Lessing

Nobody,

I recently read The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing and felt the need to share this excerpt with you. I couldn't find it anywhere on line so i typed it out. I feel as though i have done something of actual value in doing this..found something worth screaming off of the cliff face and into the ever increasing void:

And then, she began to cry.

 At first the violent, shocked tears, the working  face and blank, staring eyes of a child,which express only; What, is this happening to me! It’s impossible. It isn’t fair!-Floods of tears, noisy sob, exclamations of anger and disgust, but all the time the, as it were, painted eyes, untouched: Me, it is me sitting here, to whom this frightful injustice has occurred...a great fuss and a noise and a crying out, this kind of tears, but hardly intolerable, not painful, not a woman’s tears...

Which came next.

Emily, eyes shut, her hands on her thighs, rocked herself back and forth and from side to side, and she was weeping as a woman weeps, which is to say as if the earth were bleeding. I nearly said as if the earth had decided to have a good cry- but it would be dishonest to take the edge off it. Listening, I certainly would not have been able to pay homage to the rock-bottom quality of the act of crying as a grown woman cries.

Who else can cry like that? Not an old woman. The tears of old age an be miserable, can be abject, as bad as anything you like. But they are tears that know better than to demand justice, they do not have that abysmal quality as of blood ebbing away. A small child can cry as if all the lonely misery of the universe is his alone-it is the pain not of the woman crying that is the point, no, it is the finality of the acceptance of the wrong. So it was, is now and must ever be say the closed, oozing eyes, the rocking body, the grief. Grief-yes, an act of mourning, that’s it. Some enemy has been faced, has been tackled, but a battle has been lost, all the chips are down, everything is spent, nothing is left, nothing can be expected...yes, in spite of myself, every word I put down is on the edge of farce, somewhere there is  a yell of laughter- just as there is when a woman cries in precisely that way. For, in life, there is often a yell of laughter, which is every bit as intolerable as the tears. I sat there, i went on sitting, watching Emily the eternal woman at her task of weeping. I wished I could go away, knowing it would make no difference to her whether I was there or not. I would have liked to give her something, comfort, friendly arms- a nice cup of tea? (Which in due time i would offer.) No, I had to listen. To grief, to the expression of the intolerable. What on earth, the observer has to ask-husband, lover, mother, friend, even someone has some point wept those tears herself, but particularly , of course, husband or lover-’What in the name of God can you possibly have expected of me, of life, that you can now cry like that? Can’t you see that it is impossible, you are impossible, no one could ever have been promised enough to make such tears even feasible...can’t you see that? But it is no use. The blinded eyes stare through you, they are seeing some ancient enemy which is, thank heavens, not yourself. No , it is Life or Fate or Destiny, some such force which has struck that woman to the heart, and for ever will she sit, rocking in her archaic and dreadful grief, and those sobs which are being torn out of her are one of the pillars on which everything has to rest. Nothing else could justify them.

    (from The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing pp.150-152)

Daniel Ellsberg

N,
I saw this documentary a month or so back on DOX, a series on SVT1 that i totally recommend checking out, about a guy whose life was governed by a total mind trip of a metaphor from his own life. It was the kind of thing that makes Jonh Irving's characters tick. This Daniel Ellsberg was a pentagon think-tank whiz-kid during the sixties who eventually sees the evils of the war he was helping to sustain...So..he goes rogue and starts copying top secret files to leak to the press. Why the change of heart?

 Well let me tell you; when he was a teenager his father fell asleep at the wheel of their family car, careened off the road and into a concrete drain culvert sheering the car in two, Father and son survived while the mother and sister didn't, The experience became a lesson and metaphor that would dictate Ellsberg's later life;
   those with control, authority and responsibility over others can fall asleep at the wheel and, this being the case, they need to be watched.
no shit.

(he did also have the hots for a braless & sexually liberated flower child so that probably clouded his judgement some... stinking hippies)

universe

Nobody,
This old universe of ours just never ceases to amaze me...they say that if you moved in one direction you would never reach its edge...event though it theoretically looks like this:

    



















                                 (via dvice)
sweet model...that little divot is supposed to represent the known universe in it's various sizes since the big bang...anyway i am reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything which is fabulous, highly recommended and shedding light on a few elements of this most excellent plane that we call home. get this...it is required reading for my education. how awesome is that? 
sadly i don't really know how to express it but everything seems to be coming together. i hear the murmur of god. i love it when that happens. 
more later

hypocrite

Come on Nobody, it's not like this could possibly come as a surprise...I saw a concept today that made me feel ill with covetousness...i am not being a drama queen here...i got woozy with want...i panicked knowing that a thing of such beauty and form must only exist as a concept and if, by some miracle of carbon and nivachrom, this wonder actually defied all reason and indeed inhabited this material plane, what could i possibly do, how far would i have to go and what would i need to sacrifice in order to possess it? okay, so maybe i am being a little dramatic...
check out Peter Dudas' take on the citybike...

okay one image just doesn't do this thing justice and for those (pfft..) not willing to check out the designers web page..

design conundrum

Don't get me wrong Nobody,

I am well into design...making the world beautiful and constantly rethinking both form and function. it is a philosophy not a job. there are so many smart beautifully rethought objects to revel in..case in point:

(via beautiful life)

but my on-line life is divided between admiring beautifully redesigned objects and cringing at the reality that is the world so desperately in need of redesigning. 

Applying the critical eye of design to our society is torture...it's like seeing people drinking coffee from a chunk of lead with a dent in the middle. 

                              Dude? 

                                 Seriously? 

                      That's the best you could come up with? 

                                                    Come on. 

thank god for TED.

infinity plus one

Dearest precious Nobody,

i discovered something interesting today and i thought that i would share it with you. 

well, you know infinity right?
well apparently you can type it, there is a key stroke for it ...who knew? it's unicode+221E

now i can type ∞ +1...which is good.

∞⁺¹

∞ +1  insists upon the incomprehensibility of the infinite while liberating you with your indisputable insignificance. "Wait" you think "you can't add 1 to infinity that's dumb"...but then you realize that you can't actually comprehend infinity...that you're dumb.that we are all pretty dumb. phew...what a relief.

∞ +1 simultaneously takes you back to simpler, more ignorant times, when the incomprehensible was simply part of playground logic... when you could add one to ∞ and the debate would continue...well that debate is underway on the new playground that in the internet where corporations are trying to put a price tag on  pieces of the infinite...here is a seemingly incomprehensible, indisputable and oversimplified equation in the form of a question for todays playground.
   if       ∞ - x = ∞ 
and       ∞ - 2 x = ∞
and   ∞ - 10 x = ∞ 
and   ∞ - 10 ¹⁰ x = ∞
find the value of x
and who gets to decide?
simpler, more ignorant times indeed.

∞ +1 reminds us that we ourselves are infinitely  incomprehensible and incomprehensibly ignorant...and a whole bunch of other stuff but i am getting bored.

music everywhere

Hey Nobody,
good to see you. still loving it.
              all of it
               ...every minute.
it's because of spring i think...my juices are flowing..i can't sleep and my heart is beating it's way out of my chest ALL day. it's just that time of year i suppose. like i can hear the grass all revved up to burst out of the snow...Kiii-Ayiii!!! the beast it is restless.
Hannibal is at the gates...or wait...maybe not that.
so many interesting things have happened the last couple of days...here is one.
when i get into conversations with guys who have read The Game by Neil Strauss and think it's awesome and that the door to reality has been opened up just for them,
 i like to tell them that they have something in their teeth.
      no right there..
               no.. in the middle.
                        forget it...
                         .... it doesn't matter.
  .... i always get a kick out of that.
i'm probably just jealous...
                             of this guy
          and his shrunken little freak tree.
                            
Diego Stocco - Music From A Bonsai from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

                                     (via swissmiss)

       ....that is all.
              hell, what else could there be,
       the guy is dropping beats from a bonsai?
    (which i guess isn't all that high..but still)

a little bent

Morning Nobody,

     How awesome is this guy, eh? The picture below that i chose to represent Bent Objects really doesn't. (go on and read that sentence again...it does make sense)  But hey, it's my blog so shut up. 

     i love how he manages to express emotion with a bit of bent wire. 

(via swan)

and speaking of me being amazing...i used to bend forks into little people back in my hitchhiking days... the M.O. was to steal a fork from a diner...bend it while waiting on the side of the road for a ride and then give it to whoever picked me up or inspired me during the course of whatever length of time the little creation was in my pocket. i was well into cosmic balance and bartering and flow and what not..so the good karma of gift exchange balanced the bad i accumulated from stealing from diners and yelling obscenities at drivers who didn't pick me up...according to karmic theory anyway.

            good times.

                 and with that i think that i'll go make a little fork man.

 PRESTO!

"Fork you pal."

Man...i gotta hand it to little fork dudes...they are still pretty funny...i think maybe this one's name is Tony..

i could ask readers to vote on the offensive fork mans name in the comments but i checked my hit counter today and it is still on one...and that may well have been me..so...until someone (me) votes for something else this ill mannered little fork is Tony from Jersey.

                                            Say hi Tony. 

                            Well now that wasn't very nice...

                                                      ...what a jerk.

dork-tastic

hello Nobody
i won't pretend that i can remember the best of today to tell you. it was another amazing day, it always is. i recognize this and am filled with gratitude. i can say this. listen to the Chemical Brothers. they are still awesome but that could be the nostalgia talking...no i guess that must be me. I haven't really decided what this blogg is for but the little optimist in me thinks it's for sharing. what an idiot. so to appease the little optimist here is an awesome dork blogger.dork is the right word...dweeb didn't quite suit me...i'm a dork.
      so is he.

check him out,

if you're a dork...

ladies and gentlemen,

JIM SMASH ! ! !

This is the kind of dorky sharing he is into sharing.

 

                                      (by powerpig)

                                      *thanks jim