Category Archives: dreaming

by

Whoman He

I don’t know what and when
It is all hidden in my pen
Memories of forgotten days
are mixed with fears
of future’s ways

And even if the sun shines bright
I might not realize that it’s light
The darkness just like fire spreads
The night is glowing cold, the black I dread
This is the story of my plight

A mind so bent a crumbled string looks straight
Nothing, clueless, lost, I wait
Sometimes my dreams dream that I elevate
another force inside then subjugates
I’m told my worries are man made

The coffee cold, unshaven, and the purse deplete
A worn old shirt that screams of ironing that it needs
A figure sculpted by the thoughts the mind conjures
and by all events that life endures
Continuously I seek and seek

In this reality the hundred meters that I see
must stretch out of necessity
beyond that mark towards my ecstasy
unless I cannot choose my destiny
But, how then could I be me

Why am I stuck as if I’m planted like a tree
Forever in one place, I cannot flee
When I was born what words were put into my crib
“Go sail the seas but finally we sink your ship”
In the clouds I want to be eternally

A told me that I should be B
C told me that I should be D
Eventually then when I was E
They screamed and said I must be G
I turned around and went to P
Flashed them a sign reversed the T
Now I’m the Cuban Susans Whoman He
Nothing, clueless, lost without a key
I am sinking in some sea

To the water I will eventually return
Humans decided that I needed to burn
So hot even my soul in smoke evaporates
Escaping from these dire straits
I will not be put behind some other gates
Spill me, let me take another turn

 

by

In or out of the box?

Should I think in or out of the box?

The box is really all that, which, if we could wrap it all up and throw it in a trunk, constitutes our life.
A trunk the size of a few furniture removal vans you say?
Exactly! However, …
What we have to do is to compress everything into thoughts. Yes, the Ford Mustang and the mansion and the aircraft and all our issues, alles, and pack them away into a trunk. And, while we are setting things up lets give this trunk an appealing name. I love the French language for its wonderful sounding words. I will put everything into a coffret. Bugger the trunk and the box.

So what is left? Me of course, but without all that ballast weighing me down. I have suddenly become liberated to soar detached as an observer and thinker.
Quickly, while soaring and thinking, I realise humanities’ emphasis and reliance on communication and knowledge.
Rapidly I see more stuff appearing in my mind eye. I see a more purpose built, indexed web emerging that enables me to extract required, relevant information in seconds.
I see people communicating without the need of a clunky, – albeit highly evolved since the Motorola brick of the nineties, – mobile device and that doesn’t require any hands. And no, definitely no, I do not see anybody walking around with a thing called an Apple Watch. Hell no. (I am fearful that Apple has lost their vision.)

The humanity I observe has snuffed that watch idea long ago, along with all these other obscure practices of scrolling, swiping, tapping, pinching, texting, and replaced it simply with voice control and looking. It even works while you are sitting in a movie theatre next to hundreds of other voice controlled devices or while you are driving a Harley Davidson through a park with a rock concert on the one side and Victoria Falls on the other. Activated by a mere whisper, – even if you feel you need to shout at it like most mobile users have the habit of punishing their loved piece of hardware, – and coded with your own special bio-chemical key, all you need do is talk, – and, look.
On the subject of looking, that’s where it all happens for most of us. What do you look at and what do you use to look?
Here’s what I see with all my ‘stuff’ packed in the coffret.

We’re about to see the next edition of Google Glass and maybe it might even be unveiled at Google I/O 18th May 2016. Sure, the first batch of Glass was a bit like the Motorola brick in a more subtle way, but it broke the news and the barrier of acceptance and laid a foundation towards a totally new concept, – a wearable computer with a heads-up display and voice activation bringing everything you have on a smartphone in front of your eyes. Tony Fadell is working on it. What was Sir Jonathan Ive working on again at Apple? Hopefully not another watch thingy.

I can actually unpack my coffret for now again. No need to soar and cogitate any further. The next life-changing device is so close you can even buy an older version of it on Amazon already. But, hold back for a while. There are some challenges. Nothing, I believe, that could not be solved in a fraction of time when I look at the last ten years of innovative technological thrust and the brains that are engaged to start that next almighty explosion of ‘omg i must have this thing or I’ll be such a loser.’

Battery life, what else? yawn, to this day remains the accompanying Comrade Nemesis. I am also so tired of hearing about it and the perpetual 30% improvement from release to release. How many percent was there in hundred again? Just flipping get it sorted out now! We’ve been hankering around that since forever. Give me something that runs out when I don’t need it and stays charged when I do. If I wear it it can charge by gyroscope or gravity or my pulse or light or something, cause I am alive and I move you know, so make use of it. Eye movement detection can be my enter key if I don’t want to talk all the time and like that I could scroll too and navigate for instance. I personally think glasses are cool, be it sexy shades or academic looking spectacles, whatever, and hooking up with fashion designers of eyewear is the way to go. If you run out of ideas or your development gets stuck put a project on Freelancer or Fiverr and pay a few well spent bucks for some out of the box, err coffret, ideas. There is a world of millions listening and it’s so simple to access and it’s bustling with ideas, it just needs to be tapped. Hello Google, Apple, …, there is your market research.

So after all that, is it in or out of the b.., ahm, coffret thinking that is required?
I think for us to make progress in leaps and bounds we need to understand the inside of the box and occasionally leave it behind.
It’s wonderful to dream up science fiction and gravity propulsion at +lightyear speeds but closer to the ground an inside understanding with an occasional outside view probably enables the best results.

by

The Z(th)en man

Not Zen. No. Then!

Then when…
Then while…
Then during…
Then before…
Then after…
Then rather…
Then never…
Then always…
Then perhaps…
Then if, then…
Then, then…
Then see…
Then now…
Then…

Always then. – Never now.

My ‘then’ shield.
I retaliate with ‘then…’
  “Then, hah, watch out.”
It’s my secret weapon of escape from anything. The delusional ‘Then-blaster.’

“Hallo Mr Then-When-Do, time to meet Mr Now-I-will.”

‘But, if, then and when,’ mixed with ‘maybe and perhaps’ and a serving of procrastination and indecision will affect no change.
Tiny words that become my reason to remain inactive. It is fascinating how I can hide behind the ‘then screen,’ and actually justify my state of being. “Yes, then I will do something.”

Between then-bliss and then-hell is the fulcrum of my seesawing life where everything ceases and meditative balance reveals the ‘now.’ There is no ‘then’ in the now, there is Zen. This is the place where it all happens. This is the pumping heart of super-oxygenated life. Life is not when I fall of the bliss edge or into the hell abyss. Life is at the fulcrum and this is where it expands as much as I let it. I am my own rev limiter but my engine can’t over rev so why use it?

I know ‘then’ is an adverb but it doesn’t add anything to my verb called ‘Life,’ except when the ‘then’ becomes an instigator of action, a wake-up-call, now ‘then’ becomes a friend.
When ‘then’ takes me away from the now into ‘Thenland,’ pulling me from the present, it radically and immediately shrink-wraps my present and my possibilities.

Imagination is not ‘Thenland.’ Imagination is ‘Nowland.’ It is part of our ‘Land of Is’ that we create. We make it ‘Thenland’ because we say it is not reality. But I have just redefined reality and called it Fantality. I have expanded reality to be bigger, much, hugely bigger, and all encompassing far beyond the experience of our prime senses to the far reaches of our ‘ever-expanding’ imagination. Fantastic reality.

Go ahead try it and live in Fantality.
Forget ‘then,’ turf the word ‘limit’ and ‘boundary.’ Let them call you delusional. Fly on your broomstick and magic carpet. Soar your kite.

Thank you life, you rock!

 

 

by

Coffee naked in the MilkyWay 

Midnight.
 Respite from the heat.
 Coffee, with milk.
 No sugar. 
 Life is sweet.
 Naked, sitting in the MilkyWay.
 Does Sirius care, or Castor wonder or Betelgeuse blush?
It must be an accepted fact then.
 Coffee, naked, in the MilkyWay.
I realise I am not round.
 I am odd.
 All the big things are round.
 I am small.
 I do think. I think so. Do they?
 Are big thoughts round?
 Going round and round.
Dogs bark at night. 
 They know the MilkyWay.
 There must be other dogs up there.
 Why else would they bark?
 Even on cloudy nights they bark.
 Prove me wrong.
 Ask your dog.
Three times I saw the wand of light.
 Meteors that burnt bright.
 I soaked my rusk.
 I bent my head.
 I bent my fingers.
 I caught it just before it fell apart.
 I have to bend.
 My thoughts bend too.
 Where does bending go?
 It comes back to you.
Between one star and another
 there is lots of space to cover.
 Even to Jupiter and Mars.
 The grass is wet.
 I am entranced by all the stars.
 Am I just a visitor from somewhere far?
 Naked on a chair in the MilkyWay.
 Drinking coffee at midnight.
 Magic, I say.
The whole sky had moved.
It was the deep of the night.
The chair was now empty.
The stars were still bright.
I went searching for you.
Sometime after coffee at midnight.
Naked, in the MilkyWay.
by

African summer morning

Fountain_DSC6097

It is truly summer now on the southern tip of Africa.
Daytime temperatures have broken the 38C (100F) numerous times already.
Yesterday was another one of those hot days.

Suddenly, as if I have missed a month or two, the sun has nearly reached its southern most point, the tropic of Capricorn, also called the summer solstice.
At five in the morning she rises into the coolness, 20C (68F), of the waning night, greeted by the red-chested Cuckoo’s call and the laughing doves cu-cu-roo-cuuing while the southern Boubou entices her with his melodious voice. It is not a silent time and yet it is a quiet time. Wagtails, Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls, Sparrows, Masked Weavers, Amethyst Sunbirds and Hadeda’s abound. The swallows are doing acrobatics in the sky. A faint breeze rustles the green leaves as they catch the first rays of sun. The lawn is refreshingly wet and cool to walk on barefoot and all the birds find something on the green carpet or in the bushes to eat. I sit by my fountain like I did last night when it was illuminated by solar light and I let the new day dawn on me. Each drop of water brings the sun higher into the sky.

It is a glorious time of the year.
The garden is expressing its joy in the most wonderful colours and shapes. If someone would ask me if green is one of the primary colours I would absolutely affirm it, and yet red, yellow and blue are.
Days flow into nights and into days again as summer winds its magic through our lives. The fountain of summer gives abundantly as if to say, “Drink to your hearts content, my partner the winter is having a rest.” Disbelieving I look at the garden that there once was winter where now there is not even a memory of it anymore. Such is life. Thankfully I embrace the summer and forget the winter. Thankfully I remember the good times and mostly forget the bad and difficult ones.

As I take a deep sip from my cool jug of water I feel life invigorating me and summer blessing me. If I had nothing and was given a chance to choose amongst many things I would choose summer first and then everything else. What would life be without the beauty and fruition of summer? Nature knew all too well that summer days should be the longest days of the year.

Give me sixty hours in a summer day
 and I will write you poetry for fifty-nine
 the other hour I will sing to you
 as I prepare another rhyme

My words like a mountain stream will flow
 and their story breathlessly embraces you
 summer days and summer nights will glow
 now that I've found what I know is true 

Give me ninety hours in a summer day
 and I will play for eighty-nine
 one hour lovingly I will fill my heart 
 sending you this dearest gift of mine

My eyes in awe another summer day will see
 and every moment addictively I fill my soul
 summer, without you I could never be
 you give my life, a reason and a goal

Give me a lifetime of summer days
 I would dream for all but one
 One day I would spend in gratitude
 Wishing you are never gone
by

arrest the dream

You wake up at 0230.
A bird is persistently making the same call and you are as awake as if you had never slept. You experience none of the grogginess that often follows sleep.

It was a dream that brought you to the surface and you just manage to catch the tail-end of the story, but then it’s gone. No matter how hard you try the dream got vaguer by the second. As it vanishes  it crystallises for a moment into an idea. Something quite clear. Something you have to do. But even that vanishes if you can’t arrest it. If you don’t catch that either then you’ve lost two important messages that were prioritised above your sleep.

You lie there stumped. A good start to the day.

If you could only press record when that happens, like tapping the screen of your mobile twice when it is set to ‘sleep mode,’ and then talk as fast as you can explaining the dream, apologising to your partner who is either blissfully unaware of your ordeal or used to the script already.

Arrest the dream. Create a picture. Bring it vibrantly to life. Set the background of the canvas of your new day with it.

Whatever you have to do, keep the dream alive.