Strange Days

Strange days have found us. The Doors 1967...
Strange days have found us. 2016, December.
The end of history? I can't stop laughing about Fukuyama.
The disease of capitalism has spread all over the world. No one talks about capitalism a lot nowadays. It seems out of fashion to be critical towards it. We keep accelerating and growing until we collapse.
The rich people are trying to defend the fat of the land from the poor, from the immigrants, from whoever is out there to grab it.
We let some places be bombed to ashes, poison other places with pesticides and fertilizers, and fill the rest with concrete. What for? To grow, to accelerate until we collapse.
From consumerism to standardization we dance in the treadmill until we suffocate in our goods and in our desires.
There is no time for democracy anymore, no time for heartbeat.

However, as a privileged member of this society, I can try to break free. I am not much endangered by starvation or war. Who knows what will wait for me around the next corner, but I am free.
I can stop all this lamentation for a while, look into the full moon, walk the dog in a peaceful forest and meditate.

So it is time. Time to reach out and to try to lend others a hand. It's time to help some other people to leave the shadows behind. It is time to meditate and then maybe to communicate.

In the rat-race that we call career, there doesn't seem to be much time for that. So let the strange days find us. Forget the fear or face the fear. After the collapse we will walk again, but this time slowly, build our houses brick-by-brick and then lie down in the sunlight on a Sunday afternoon.

White Light, White Heat

More drawings of and about technology... (and Lou Reed)

30 Minutes Later

The same result?
But more techno-style...
Well, well: My next drawing will be a secret...

Pornography

Because of my new book: Drawing Your Own Path by John F. Simon Jr. this my blog becomes as explicit as it has never been before and as it will never be again.
Inspired by Simon's first chapter I felt like drawing like a child and three things came to my mind:
Breasts
Mermaids
Lou Reed

Voilà

When Doves Cry

Tree

Here behind my Wall

Sitting in a bunker here behind my wall...
In fact, I am sitting in my office in the cellar of our house.
Somehow I feel as if I were sitting in a bunker here behind my wall...
I only have access to the virtual world, via my Mac or my PC. So I can choose.
There will be a supermoon tomorrow, whatever that means to me.
Will there be werewolves with super-big ears?
I hope so.
Donald Trump has been elected president of the USA.
What is worse?
Leonard Cohen has left us.
The good thing is he has left us words and songs to deal with the strange authority we have to face nowadays, not only in the USA, also in Turkey, in Russia, in Hungary...maybe soon in Austria, too.
Maybe the supermoon will save us and provide us with werwolves galore.
Maybe Siegfried will be born from the ashes like a Phoenix and kill the dragon for us.
Maybe all this computer technology will bring us down one day, Terminator style.
Maybe there will be a movie, even better than Alien vs Predator: Werewolves vs Terminators.
Maybe I should return to being serious again.
Here behind my wall, it's easy to be cool, to joke, to be critical, to be liberal, to be radical, to meditate and to give a fine f... to what is going on outside.
Seung Sahn has posed a koan to his students about a man entering the temple and dropping his cigarette ashes on a statue of Buddha. Maybe today there is a koan about Trump voters. Maybe Zen has got nothing to do with politics, but on the other hand Zen is everywhere.
So here is my koan...What is this picture about?

What does Donald Trump have to do with supermoons, dropping ashes on the Buddha and this picture?

If you know that, you are on the true way....

Sitting in a bunker, here behind my wall...

7 Ensōs

On a day like this, there is nothing else to do but this:

November

Funny. A month named after another number. Nowadays it should be called Undecember.
IX or XI.
Another arbitrary aspect of our grown time culture.

November Rain, Guns 'n' Roses...
Do you remember?
When I was working as ski-instructor in the south of Upper-Austria, it was the only rock title in the jukebox of one of the local pubs. Most of the rest was either Austrian folk music, German "Schlager" or US/British Disco stuff.

In 2016 I am switching to Youtube and I am listening to the tune again.

In newspeak it means No for someone named Vember...

Back to Axel Rose again. "... in the cold Novmber rain"

It is already dark outside. 18:32 local time. Today I have discovered the incredible patterns that the process of decay has left on the vine leafs in our garden. Just before dawn I was alone with the dog in a little forest nearby - fallen leaves around us. Thoughts were absent, technology seemed to be absent.

But the dog lead and my clothes remind me of the old dependence. At least time was absent. However, the leaves might resemble nature's clock: A sign for the coming winter but also a promise for new fresh leaves next spring.

While Slash is playing his guitar solo just for me, my time crystal says: Leave 'em alone with your sentimental gobbledegook.

And it's right.

Buh bye

The Return of the Time Crystal

Here it is again. I am trying to capture the real colors and the shine in the crystal. What a failure.

It is indeed 2016. I don't know how old this mineral is. I don't know how long it took to crystallize, to take shape. I wonder who the owner of the other half is. Is the person male or female, or even a like-minded visitor of the blogger-sphere, blogosphere, blogsphere, or whatever you call it.

So, owner of the other half of the time crystal. If you are reading this, don't hesitate and comment this post, together with a photograph of the other half.

This SiO2 variation is my philosopher's stone. 

By the way the top half is not cut in a straight way. That again makes me think of politics. It is good that the time crystal is in my hands and not owned by a powerful general of the IS, US or the like.

Winter is coming, the zombies of old are crawling out of their graves, they are combing their tiny moustaches and are calling for their followers again. Always leaders, always followers.

I am not afraid, because my crystal will survive all that, polished and shining.

One day, after the darkness is over, and winter gone again, someone else will appreciate it's structure and write another poem about it.

In the meantime I am enjoying autumn, the few days during the year in which temperature is in some balance between the freezing cold and the boiling hot.

I am calling out to my friends to be mild mannered with the idiots who run that planet, and to clean their own teeth and shine their own shoes as long as there is nothing else to do.

Now that I am rereading all this I am discovering that there is no story line in this post.

If you want that - I mean a story line -  I can recommend Ian Banks' "Stonemouth".

For all others I ask you to help me find the other half of my time crystal.

Time Crystal

This picture of my favorite mineral cannot keep me from going to the living room to have dinner...

So one day later I am back. I have forgotten what I wanted to write yesterday. What a shame.

Under pressure, forced to be productive I have to make up something new.

Also close to my time crystal my wife is being annoyed by searching the internet for a new printer. A rather pragmatic aspect of life, although it makes me think about the inbuilt obsolescences in modern technical devices. What a shame, too.

By the way it is really a picture of my favorite stone, not a modern art painting or some pixels I glued together with Photoshop. It could also be the picture of a nebula in the outskirts of our galaxy. It is not. It is an agate crystal. Maybe even an onyx. SiO2 for sure.

The structure of its layered crystallization has trapped time itself. It is another clock: a timeless one, an almost eternal one.

One day, when our universe has contracted again, it might look like this, although the necessary observer might be gone by then.

Funny that quartz also determines the phase of so many clocks on our planet. But this is another story.

Caught between the McDonaldization of Society  and my timeless time crystal I am wondering when dinner will be today.

Too many people on this planet are wondering if there will be any dinner today, too many are sure that there will be none. I wish more of them would be able to ask the questions that am entitled to pose.

But this is also another story.

What a shame.

The Man Again

Last week the Bauernbergpark Man crossed a street near Auersberplatz.
When I saw him I was in my car, driving to Baumbachstraße.
I am glad that he is still around.
Two days ago I read the poem about the Man to two women.
This led to a discussion on what we do about the Bauernbergpark Men of this world.
This question, I think is still unresolved...
...for the sake of the Bauernbergpark Man...
or maybe not.

NLP meets Zen

Where do you think you're going?
These words from the Dire Straits album Communiqué bring together the inspiration to deal with neurolinguistic programming and Zen.
Where am I going?
Don't I know it's dark outside?
Why not stay in the comfort zone?
Everything is already here.
Maybe I want to make the world my comfort zone. Maybe.
In the face of national or international politics, environmental pollution, hunger and disease this is a hard job.
NLP says: You've got all the resources you need.
Zen says: Everything is already there. You just have the problems that you need.
So let these two world-views overlap.
What is going to happen?
What happens to goals, to communication, to beliefs, to our identity?

I dedicate these lines and these questions to Helga Obermair, who was an irreplaceable inspiration to many of us.
To combine the values of mindfulness and of NLP may be a fruitful project.
With this assumption I will refrain from more questions.
The show must go on.

The Sands of Time

Patterns.

Random patterns.

These patterns were there, the moment I took a picture of them.

Then they became fossils on the digital map of my cameras's SD card.

Now they are gone again.

At least something different is there now in that particular place on the beach somewhere in North Wales.

I am back in the middle of continental Europe.

I am looking at the photograph and what I see is:

Patterns.

Random patterns.

These patterns were there...

Undo Technology 2

This place in North Wales is very interesting. It is one among many industrial ruins of the area, similar to those old mining sites and furnaces in Cornwall. It makes me think about doing and undoing technology.
Maybe an interactionist approach to technology studies would coin the term "Doing Technology" (like doing gender). In an earlier post I have written about the problem of undoing technology.
When talking to friends about this, they would ask me "Why would someone want to do that?"
For a while I had no answer but the Taoist story about the old man and the well, who abstains from technology for the sake of his being in touch with the Tao.
My friends would identify this answer as just one of my turns.
However, I still love that story and today I'd say that while technology seems to make life better, it keeps us away from things. Marxist theory would call this "Entfremdung".
We gain weight more easily, we don't make things ourselves and lose the sense for their value, we have weapons to kill more people with less effort and we lose orientation in a world full of technological options.
On the other hand there are undeniable advantages. Prolonged life, health, opportunities to experience the world, a virtual world in addition to the real one (without which these lines would not make much sense), new possibilities of interaction and entertainment.
But it all comes with the mentioned price.
So I will end this post with some questions?
Can we find a balance between being in touch with nature and the manifold faces of technology?
Do we have a choice?
Will AC/DC's "Who made who" be the anthem of the next generation?
Is there a light at the end of the technology tunnel?
Can we chose to refrain from the grapes of technological wrath?
Can we undo technology?
Is it an evolutionary process?
Do we actually need to do so?
Where does this progress take us?
Can we undo technology?
Can we undo...
Can we...
Can...
?

Zen and Walking

Just as water finds the best way in the river bed, the wise man/woman follows the way of the world and thus finds his/her own way.

"Wie das Wasser im Flussbett den besten Weg findet, so folgt der Weise dem Lauf der Dinge und findet so seinen Weg."
- Ermin Döll & Marcus Hillinger "Das Zen des glücklichen Wanderns"

An Evening with Thomas Quasthoff

Linz, July 15 2016.
Thomas Quasthoff is singing My funny Valentine.
Silence is like an envelope around this brilliant piece of music, of performance.
It was Quasthoff's first show in Linz after many years.
It was my return to Linz, too.
Not far from places where I used to walk my dog, not far from places where I saw and feared the Bauernbergpark Man, not far from my old bedroom window, we met.
The famous and the unknown.
The watcher and the watched.
The singer and the listener.
The star and the fan.
In a closely packed and seated crowd I listened to Georgia, to I Got You Under my Skin and to My Way. Jocelyn B. Smith was brilliant, too. But I was there for the man.
The band and the piano player were excellent. But I was there to see Quasthoff.
I saw him for the third time, after an evening in the Musikverein and after his Amfortas performance in Wagners Parsifal. 
I have no words for this man.
For me he is an extraterrestrial and the most human of all human beings at the same time.
He is one of my ultimate super heroes.
Still, in spite of all this lack of symmetry in our relation between star and fan, I'd like to be his next door neighbor, have a drink with him occasionally, talk about the world with him.
The show is over...
No.
Mr. Quasthoff and band come back to the stage, make a joke about the FPÖ and perform New York, New York.
It was an evening for Frank Sinatra.
Wherever Franky Boy was hanging around, he would surely be proud of himself and proud that he has given life to such a legacy.
I was part of it somehow. Passively. It was GREAT.

...Has Its Ouroboros

Every Beginning...

Digital Factory 1

How Thoughts Develop

Hexeneinmaleins (The Witch's Multiplication Tables)

I have understood
that I have to count from one to ten in my Zen practice
after two telephone calls
and after clipping three of my fingernails
I'll be rich, OK
I lost four teeth to the dentist a long time ago
Five and six are my favourite numbers.
And also the witch's
who makes seven and eight
and it is done
Nine is one
and ten is none
These are my personal multiplication tables.

Inspired by J.W. Goethe 

Lawnmower Time

Today my father in law made an interesting observation.
He mentioned, that every time that he is involved in an absolutely dull activity as for instance cutting the grass with the lawnmower, he starts to have thoughts about weird things, the past, his children and so on.
When I heard this I was actually cutting some remaining leaves of grass after operating the lawnmower. I said that as a practitioner of Zen you should avoid such thoughts and be completely absorbed with what you are doing, no matter how dull it seems to be.
For me it was easy this time, because I worked with the lawnmower for the second time in my life after an abstinence from cutting grass of about 30 years. So I had to concentrate and let the rotation of the blades, that one time hit a stone at the edge of the lawn, become the pulse of my heart. Yes.
However, I try to do that with the vacuum cleaner as well.
It is all Gary Thorp's fault.
His book Sweeping Changes (Zen oder die Kunst den Mond abzustauben/German title) is a nice inspiration for making Zen a constant presence.
One day I will have a little space in the garden, where the grass is allowed to grow, without being threatened by the lawnmower.
One day in the future.
One day.
And I will own a scythe and a sickle and a lawnmower, too.

The Book of Questions 6

Does a pear tree have more leaves 

than Remembrance of Things Past?

Tiene más hojas un peral

que Buscando el tiempo perdido?

from Pablo Neruda "The Book of Questions"

translated by William O'Daly

Copper Canyon Press 2001

Something Fast

About 20 years ago I was attending a karate training in our little dojo in Vienna, when something memorable happened to me.
There was a new girl, practicing for the first time with us. She was really pretty.
However, there is not so much time for such considerations between two karate moves.
Finally we had an exercise together. She did not get it. So I tried to explain: "Look I said, do the same as I do, first very slow and precise!"
She only answered: "I prefer quick and dirty".
My concentration for the rest of the evening was gone.
After that I have never met that girl again.

European Championship without Time

1st half 45 minutes
15 minutes break
2nd half 45 minutes
Some overtime
In the K.O. rounds 2 times 15 minutes more

This is the usual schedule of our everyday TV routine now.
Although I must admit that I tend to watch only the last 15 minutes nowadays.
A very rewarding habit for this championship because they tend to score towards the end of the game.

Let us consider a football championship without timing.
No problem.
The first team to score, let's say, three goals is the winner.
Then again, for short games, does the audience pay less?
Then you have to introduce time again: That's not so good.

But maybe we can have more substitutes for the games, if they last longer.
If we take into account how long the discussions last for an incremental change in the rules of the game, then we will have to forget about this.

Maybe in the year 2525
But that is timing again.

11:11

No, this is not the beginning of the carnival season.
It is another number.
I am always happy when my clock does that.
11:11 or 22:22.
Nice.
00:00 is also nice, but I have not seen that one for a while.
The numb nerve in my face has got company by a pulsating feeling in my left ear.
I am really getting old: 44
Another nice number.
In this case a numb number.
Now I have to smile.
In between Mann-Whitney'S U tests and Kruskall-Wallis H tests there is still some sense of humor left in me.
Now I will wait until 11:22 to be able to finish this post.
Four minutes left.
Fitter, happier, more productive, a bird in a cage, on antibiotics - nice Radiohead words.
At least I feel happy again although I am not on antibiotics.
Two minutes left.
I am wondering what journalists do everyday to fill their empty spaces.
One minute left.
11:22
Time to work...

...again

18:23

Magic numbers?
No. It's only what my clock is saying.
18:23
This reminds me of Jim Hendrix and his famous 1983.
Yes.
In a few minutes I am going to walk the dog.
Now it is 18:27
May 28 2016
More numbers.
Time was invented by people who want me to do something for them...(Thank you August)
Pharaos? Capitalists?
However, we can decide to leave watches aside for a while.
You could measure the time for a kiss, the time for a moment, the time for taking a sip of coffee.
But we could decide to leave the measurement of time to others.
Pharaos! Capitalists! And to other Kings and Queens!
18:32
Time to go.
Again.

The meaning of life

I am here to feel the wind in my face...

occasionally

May

I cannot feel a part of my own face. Strange.
I want to call out to every Austrian (who has a right to vote), to do the right thing next Sunday.
I love the cold air and the rain.
It has been a good month so far.
One nice wedding.
I have seen one dead rabbit and six dead birds and have heard about one dead dog this month.
And I have that numb nerve in my face.
Bad omens?
The wind says no.
And it cries "Mary"!

Erleuchtung (german)

Erleuchtung

Erleuchtung alleine

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf

Sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn

Dort wo die Welt am schönsten ist,

da ist sie öd und leer

 

Brain damage Erleuchtung

Stroboskop

Alles gleichzeitig, Reizüberflutung

LSD

Erleuchtung mit ordentlichem Kater

 

Erleuchtung zu dritt

Zen Session

Gruppe

Fragen

Antworten, Koans

Zwa, drei,

Ende

 

Denn eher geht ein Seil durch ein Nadelöhr als ein Kamel

 

 

Another Reincarnation

The Bauernbergpark Man is back. He is back in another form.
Although my eyesight gets worse and worse I am sure that I have seen him recently.
It was at the corner of the cemetery of St.Barbara. He was there with some yellow stuff, either a yellow chair or some yellow tarpaulin.
However, I went by driving my car. So it was just a short impression. But it was him, I am sure.
What does that mean for me?
I have moved to the country.
He has moved too, although not that far.
The unbelievable interconnectedness of all things...

Fragment

found in my notebook on April 1 2016, date none, maybe from 2010

Elegy of horror
motherland and treason
and leontopodium alpinum
and sickness
history
nothing
thank you

Happy Easter!

Piano time again

Again Beethoven, again Gulda, again piano sonatas.
We move along a spiral staircase. It seems to us quite straight and linear from the point where we are.
Then, again we encounter the same music, the same tastes the same people.
Although the music stays the same we change the way we listen to it.
Somehow, we even come across the same, or at least very similar problems.
Sometimes we get to the conclusion that we have learned nothing.
On other occasions we jump over the old familiar gap blindfolded, and it works out.
A miracle?
A development?
Learning?
Fate?
All I know for sure is that I am going to stop listening to Beethoven and that I am going to take a bath...right...now.

Abba Zaba Time

Inspired by Captain Beefheart again, I lay aside some thoughts about the often present Goschpoidls (see earlier posts) and write about the ups and downs in life.
"Nur wer Helles und Dunkles, Aufstieg und Niedergang erfahren, nur der hat wahrhaft gelebt."
- Stefan Zweig
I always tend to forget that Zweig committed suicide and also wrote short stories about suicides (Der Amokläufer) However, this is still a quite accurate description of life from a certain perspective.
Last weekend I have reflected upon my personal ups and downs.
I can only recommend that to others.
I have to stop now because I have to read some reviews for an article that I am co-author of.
Some of you might understand that.
May it contribute to future ups in my life.

Abba Zaba

21

21, Max, Lügen, Paschen, Lügenpaschen (german)

Das Spiel, das wir an jenem Abend spielten nennt sich Lügen, Paschen, Lügenpaschen oder einfach Mäx. Man brauch dazu einen Würfelbecher, oder auch eine große Kaffeetasse und einen Bierdeckel oder einen ähnlich gearteten Untersatz, sowie zwei normale Würfel. Man würfelt und sieht nach was man gewürfelt hat, ohne dass der reihum nächste sieht was man unter dem Becher hat. Dabei gibt es folgende Würfelresultate: Die normalen Zahlen von 31 bis 65 ergeben sich aus der höheren Würfelzahl als Zehner- und der niedrigeren Augenzahl als Einerstelle. Höher als diese einfachen Zahlen ist der sogenannte Pasch, bestehend aus zwei gleichen Augenzahlen, also ein Einer-Pasch bei zwei Einsern, ein Zweierpasch bei zwei Zweiern und so fort. Da wäre also das höchste der Sechserpasch, gäbe es da nicht noch das Mäxchen, die 21.

Man kann nun die Wahrheit sagen oder einfach lügen. Wichtig ist dabei nur, dass man eine höhere Zahl sagt als der vorherige Spieler. Nur wenn man die Runde beginnt kann man mit irgendeiner Zahl anfangen. Der nächste Spieler kann nun das gesagte glauben, und versuchen selbst eine höhere Zahl zu würfeln (oder zu erfinden) oder aber den Becher aufdecken. Ist die Augenzahl mindestens so hoch wie angekündigt, bekommt derjenige, der nachschaut einen Strafpunkt, Strafschnaps oder ein Leben abgezogen. Ist die Augenzahl niedriger als gefordert trifft dieses Schicksal den Spieler, der die Zahl angesagt hat.

Glaubt man nun das gesagte, und versucht man höher zu Würfeln, darf man einmal nachschauen und kann gleich etwas sagen, oder aber dem Glück vertrauen und noch einmal ohne Reinschauen würfeln.

In fortgeschrittenen Runden ist es auch üblich niedriger anzusagen als man gewürfelt hat (aber natürlich höher als der Vorgänger, es sei denn man beginnt). Das hat den Sinn, dass der nächste um eine Zahl höher sagen kann und den Becher einfach weiter gibt, so dass es vielleicht den Spieler nach ihm, oder gar den übernächsten trifft.

Eine Sonderregel gibt es noch für das Mäxchen. Das zählt nämlich doppelt, sobald aufgedeckt wird. Man kann das Mäxchen mit einem Strafpunkt, ohne reinschauen einfach annehmen und von vorne anfangen. Schaut man aber hinein und es ist wirklich eine 21 im Becher, dann bekommt man zwei Strafpunkte. Das gleiche gilt für den der das Mäxchen angesagt hat, falls dieser beim Lügen erwischt wird.

Das sind alle Regeln, die man für dieses Spiel wissen muss. Meistens erfolgte das Lernen beim Spielen selbst, also „learning by doing“. Manchmal erklärten wir die vollständigen Regeln auch erst am nächsten Tag.

(Auszug aus: Der perfekte Linksschwung [forthcoming])

And it's time time time

Finally, Tom Waits is back, singing: "It's time time time that you love..."
I've almost forgotten about that.
However, when listening to the song essential memories come back:
memories about sitting in the car after driving the two hours from Vienna back to my parents' house,
smoking a cigarette, listening to Tom Waits singing this song from my tape recorder and to the rain outside.
(Yes we used to smoke back then and we used to use tape recorders)
We didn't have smartphones, not even mobile phones. Ahhh.
When calling your girlfriend at night, you could easily get her annoyed parents on the line.
It's time time time...
... I leave the car, get my stuff from the boot and walk through the rain towards my parents' place.
It is 1994.
Time, time, time

Communication Time

There are times when there is nothing to say, nothing to tell to anyone.
Heaven is a place, where nothing ever happens.
This is from a Talking Heads song.

Yesterday I was having lunch with my family in a Greek restaurant.
Suddenly I was blamed for not being communicative.
I wonder how this came to happen?

I think, that I was too balanced, too happy, too relaxed to have any stories to tell.
Wait a moment!
I can tell about that instead of moaning and complaining, I can say how good it fells to be free, to be healthy, to be loved and to love.

However, most people seem to prefer disaster and suffering to positive stories.
I am not sure about that anymore, even as an Austrian (a country with a severe moaning tradition).
So instead of being silent (that's important enough in many other situations) I will communicate.

I feel fine.

Housekeeping Time

Zen or the art of dusting the moon. That is the translation of the German title of Gary Thorpe's book "Sweeping Changes".
After falling in love with the title and after working and meditating through about 60 pages of the book I consider it to be worth to share a shelve with Suzuki's Beginner's Mind and Joko Beck's Everyday Zen.
As everywhere on the rocky road of Zen practice I sometimes feel caught in infinity. Infinite cleaning and rearranging. It is nice.
There is a storm outside. Inside there are just some specks of dust.
Outside there is thunder. In here I can water the flowers.
Far away a bird is singing. In here I put the broom back into the cabin.
The window seems to be dirty, the pollen fleece is torn at the edges. Work in progress.

Around every corner I discover or rediscover things, new things, mostly old things.
I hesitate before I decide on giving them away.

Finally, after some heretic work with the vacuum cleaner, too loud to be true, I have a sip of water and wonder when I will have to leave this tranquility again.

Time may change me (Homage to David Bowie)

But I can't trace time...

If you go to space, to meet Major Tom or the man who sold the world, make sure that you are one of the heroes.
I have never left and shook his hand. Although I admired the Kurt Cobain cover, the original is also one of my favorite songs.
Ahhhhahhhhahhhh.
Jadaddadada...
And when you go to space and finally reach Mars, will you find life there?
It seemed the taste was not so sweet.
When I was 11 years old I enjoyed my first DB experience: Let's dance, followed by China Girl, Dancing in the Streets and Absolute Beginners.

But I can't trace time...

But her friend is nowhere to be seen. Maybe in my years of radical protest I was not a Bowie fan. Today I am and always will be. His songs are the most played entries in my music collection on my computer with Life on Mars as number one.

Sailors fighting in the dance hall.

What can I say? There are not many artists left who really went through changes.
If there is no life on Mars there is a starman waiting in the sky.
Of course this only makes sense if you go through his greatest hits just the way I am doing now.
He thinks he blew our mind...

But I can't trace time...

Lalala lalala lalala lalala lalala lalala

[Guitar]

Ziggy played guitar...

But I can't trace time...

...I had to break up the band...

ooh yeah

ooooh

Ziggy played guitar...

[to be continued]

Time Out of Balance

Time Warp Reprise

It's astounding...
In 2016 lots of things feel the same as in 2015.
...time is fleeting...
Another reason for living in the eternal present.
...madness takes its toll.
Psychology, geography and unpublished biology all seem the same to me.
Sleeping is not an option, it is no alternative to insanity.
It is but a joker in a timeless game.
It has been a good year so far, even a good life.
My Zen teacher once said to me: "You cannot let go of your problems. You stick to them like glue."
Well that's not what he said but that is how I interpreted his words and the following Koan that he gave me to solve:

An ox passes through a window. Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through. Why can’t its tail pass through?

However, I would like to be an ox that has its tail with it and gets through the window.
And again:

It is easier for a camel (or a rope maybe) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

time is fleeting...

uhoh 19:14

time to go