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A new day begins in Oldina. Hmmm...
There is just too great a dichotomy between the outside and the inside some days. I don't just mean between outside world and the space in my office and home, but my own outside and inside as well. Look at the picture - my greeting for the day as I opened the gate to the barn. Compare that to what I find when I come here on the computer: nature's splendour on the one hand; pointless, self indulgent human crap on the other. The fact that anything I post here is also self indulgent human crap only makes it worse.
So, having decided to flow somewhat against the trend, I am only going to post once a week for while, until my current frustration wears off. After that, who knows?
While I'm on the subject, there is one thing I do find odd on a medium supposedly devoted to sharing "information", and that is the culture of anonymity. Why is everyone so frightened of allowing anyone else to know who they are? You cannot be anonymous in the real world, why try to be in the virtual world? Is it because revealing your true self would deflate the bubble of virtual self importance sites such as this engender in the otherwise ordinary lives of those who post here?
Are we that dependant on virtual recognition? Are our lives so meaningless and empty that they can only be validated through an inflated and ficticious persona which exists only between the keyboard and our reflection within an inneffective and disconnected virtual reality?
In many of it's human aspects, the internet is now an almost perfect representation of the culture of the lie. I think this is why I find it so dificult to post here, for I simply cannot overcome the feeling that I am swimming in a sea of dishonesty, where an abundant life of artifice and superficiality swallows up all other ways of being.
Have nice day.
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Picture of Real Farm
Now, I am not too sure. Am I really Grumpy? Is that the question? Or am I really grumpy? Perhaps that is the question. And why am I so uncertain about these things, which, after all, should be blatantly obvious to anyone?
Ah, such philosophical perplexity, such exquisite existential pain! Am I me or someone else not me who just thinks they are me and is currently masquerading in my ancient and admittedly gritty, peasant farmer body, as me? And, of course, the real question... is this person then Grumpy, or just grumpy, or both - and if so, who am I then?
How did I reach this poignant peak of uncertainty, this pregnant pause of self doubt?
Well you may ask...!
By reading Orble, of course. Self doubt, I realise now, must be one of the major symptoms of blogging mania. It seems to creep into the cracks of our little corner of the blogging universe soon after we begin to indulge our penchant for absorbing the endlessly self validating fantasies of others. It would appear that the pressure this creates produces a kind of cognitive dissonance field - or CDF for short, whereby what seems to be one thing can actually be another.
Now that I have discovered this new field, I am wondering if it might not be cross modulated with the well known SEP field to produce a new kind of blog. That is, one that is written by someone who is not me but is me, and yet no matter what me not me says, it will always be someone elses problem and never mine - whoever I am, that is.
If this is not possible, then I will have to spend yet another five years mad instead. It would seem this is the only other way to remain apparently sane and popular here - other than becoming a freaking religious nutter of course. (and if you think the last sentence contains a contradiction, you are both right and wrong. CDF field at work. Amazing isn't it?)
So do not trust your instincts - I may - or may not - be Grumpy... or grumpy, as the case may be.
And the picture? It could be of the only real thing here.
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Sixteen years old I was, when this picture was taken; sitting on the front doorstep of an old deserted house in the Dandenong Ranges. The Yardbirds had just released Shapes of things to Come, Pet Clark was banging away at Dont sleep in the subway, darling, and the Easy Beats were on top of the charts with Friday on my mind. I was in the first year of a Radio & Electronics apprenticeship, unconcerned about my economic future (we didnt need to be then) but living through what I can only call now the mythical years, where everything I was to become still lay only in-potentia; in images of the possible, in golden teenage dreams of glory and dark boyhood fantasies of desire.
I remember that even then there were two sides to me; the dark, thoughtful introvert who wished only to be left alone in his secret world, where science, electronics, radio and astronomy met along the fringes of a wild, intuitive imagination an area of procreative turmoil where one walked the razors edge between genius and madness and the typical brash teenager caught up in all the trends and boyhood dreams fueled by rock music, alcohol, fast cars, sexual desire and, even to some extent, current fashion. To say I lived a double life would be a mistake, as I was fairly apt to being just who I was without allowing myself to be manipulated to conform. My friends accepted my at once brash, yet deeply involved nature, and had no problem at all with me being the kind of person you might describe as an intellectual yobbo, although I have to admit, even my best mates didnt know the half of me in those days.
Life cloaks us all in various garb, some which are merely thin skins laid over our own, sufficient to make us a little more acceptable to others, and some we wear like heavy coats which drag us down while hiding us from the world for the sake of some need to conform to its social or economic demands. Because of this weight, I used think that I had changed, that my life was a compilation of all the things I had added to myself since I was the boy in this picture but I was wrong. Having finally reached the point where I could divest myself of all those different coats and masks, I suddenly found myself alone, alone except for the immediacy of my youth; a weight of presence which continues even now at times to make me physically stop and stare into the wonder that nothing was lost, nothing was truly changed, and all that was added to me through the intervening years was within me even then.
In a way I feel like I have been away somewhere, lost in some dream world and have now returned, only to awaken and discover, to my utter amazement, that everything I was remains mine, everything I might have wished for during those long, secret nights is still possible, and that the thing I was truly given by the life I led between those years and now is the freedom to choose to choose now without the pressure of the need to conform, without the still small voice of unconscious desire whispering my choices to me in ways which made me believe I was the chooser.
I feel like I have come home, to find the light is still on
and the young man, whose life I thought I had left behind, was still there, waiting for me.
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You would think that if someone were going to write a blog on a scientific, political or philosophical subject they would make some effort to know at least enough about it to be able to spell the technical terms required, even if they don't actually know anything else.
I mean - what's the point? Especially when you see no change whatsoever over a long period in the quality of the writing.
What does this say
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Thought I might show you one of the ways I now get water in summer. It all started when I got the cows, because the lower paddock had no water trough, but it does have a very small spring of ground water which trickles down all year from the hills above us and passes though an area behind the cow shed. Only problem was this area was a mess and too close to a bad boundary fence to let the cows have access to it. What to do?
The thought came that I could dam the water further up and then pipe it down to a trough. Then I could fence off the wetland bit so it could remain pristine and not full of cow shit. So thats what I did. One old plastic drum cut in half; one piece for the dam and one for the trough and a bit of plastic pipe. It took about an hour to fill the trough, in which I then cut an overflow notch in the side so the water could run out and down into the rocks where it continues its descent under ground to the river, way, way down below us. Unfortunately (or fortunately it depends on how much you like endless work) my wife suddenly realized that all this extra water was going to waste. Pointing out the obvious fact that it had therefore been going to waste for millennia only gained me the usual cold stare, which means something like: I dont care if God planned it that way - do something about it!
So I installed another drum, this time a full size one standing upright near the trough. I fed the water into it a little way up from the bottom so that any sludge would collect below, then I let it fill. Surprisingly, it filled almost to the top by the time the dam was over flowing. So I drilled a hole for the cow trough pipe just below this level so the water could fill the trough only after the drum was near full. Between the inlet and the outlet pipes I now had about 120 litres of water I could siphon out. It takes about two and half hours to fill the drum, so I figured I could pump it out about 8 times a day. The pump was installed at the same level as the inlet and the water is pumped 70 metres up the hill to the big tank at the back of the barn. A timer runs the pump, switching it on for six minutes every three hours. The pictures below show the deal
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My two overfed shit machines doing what they do best.
Today was/is/remains one of those days. "Idly drifting along in rural splendour," is what I would probably answer if asked what I was up to. I wasn't even grumpy today - which is, to be quite honest, something which really only happens if I spend too much time near other human beings. I'm actually quite pleasant when I'm alone. Ask my wife
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There is a remote possibility that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person - but if he was then he was certainly nothing more than a perfectly normal Jewish man with some outstanding qualities.
Nevertheless, his story exists, it captures our imagination, fires the archetypal energies within us, it's psychological impact springing afresh from the eternal story of the dying and rising king, the story of the God-man, the inherence of which lies within the Self of all people. And this story only proves the quality and reality of the initial images from which it rises. In other words, it doesn't need to be "true", for in its human imagery and its relationship to our psychic makeup, it is "eternally true".
That is why even I, a non christian, vehemently anti collective religion crusader, am still moved by the imagery and the philosophies woven into the story of this man - perhaps carefully woven - certainly written to validate and formalise what had become the state religion of Rome under Constantine
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As much as we despise those who use their own people as suicide bombers, I believe we could learn a thing or two from such despicable tactics.
I propose a new weapon could be added to the arsenal of the environmental terrorist which might actually have some reasonable chance of working - as distinct from running about on the decks of ships, shouting and generally showing just how innefectual they are.
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Ok, Im supposed to be Grumpy. Thats what you want, isnt it? That like Maximus, I should stride into the arena, sword in hand and proceed to take apart all the gladiators therein? Correct? And at the end I should stand, unrepentant for the carnage I have caused and ask are you not entertained?
Well, I admit there are things that make me think pleasant thoughts about shotguns and burger restaurants in various forms of satisfying combination.. But I am not a violent man. I have only once ever wanted to kill someone for real. In my darker moments I still regret that I didnt, but we all have some evil within us. We all have that dark place within that we hide from the world, even while we tut-tut at the news of another bombing, another senseless bashing or yet another crime of passion, knowing perfectly well that given the right circumstances, the right provocation, there but for the grace of God we might stand: victim or killer. It makes no difference, the equation must have both.
In this culture we now glorify evil, but always at a safe distance both physically and psychologically. In the movies we see evil portrayed either like a high camp drag queen, some alien monster or as the worst kind of human garbage imaginable. Yet no-one seems to notice that the hero in the end is ultimately just as evil as the serial killer, the monster or the very nasty corporate murderer who eventually gets a full clip from their holy handgun
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Comment by grumpy
on Whip out the anaconda in your pants and watch her eyes light up with excitement
Psyche Science
Grumpys Blog
Photography Craft
If you don't want it trawled, you have to write it out anti spam fashion and make people to type it into their mail client.
if you use a "mailto:" you are giving it away to spam robots.
too late now, however. Just change the first part to something different then do the no spam thing.
Like: jo(at)joannefedler.com
If you are an "out there" person on the web like me then you just have to have a private and a public email address, and expect spam.