Ready for the bang?

The day started with a bang.

It was a loud bang that nobody heard, not even yourself.

Still, you thought that today was going to be the day where everything you ever wished, dreamt, wanted, would happen, – all at once.

Gasping for breath you hardly managed to open your eyes. Wobbly feet supported your entry into the next 24-hour marathon of existence. The mirror threatened with a name change to morror if your tousle-head looked into it any much longer. It would take all your reserves to stay in the run today. Quitting was out of the question as you were informed of the bombardment by real manifestations of every request you ever conceived.

Today was a lifetime-squared in a day exponentially expanding.

Today was an avalanche and earthquake resulting in a tsunamic eruption with heart-stopping potential. Your coffee better is laced with caloric excess to sustain the relentless exposure to life’s unrestraint storm of surprises sweeping you aloft and around.

Are you ready to face exhaustion only to re-compose yourself again embracing the next wave of meteoric showers realizing your every desire imaginable?

Tell me, be honest, were you ready today?

I was.

I saw it coming. I tempted and instigated it. I planted the seed and then charmed it to pop with the flute of my imagination. I just couldn’t forecast the precise day, but I was as ready as I’ll ever be.

The bangs banged from every conceivable corner of my day as the revolver of life spun through its cylinder furiously spending wish-fulfilling cartridges as if every minute only had one chance to be the most spectacular firework in my history.

I was drenched to saturation experiencing life between and during every breath in such kaleidoscopic intensity on a vehicle of rainbows amidst the big bang of my unfolding momentous reality.

It was a rush of such gigantic blow-me-away intensity and a vertiginous high that even space travelers, sages, and heroines would give up their vocation to experience it.
I was in a sea of availability with a horizon of infinity under a sky of reality shone upon by the sun of possibility. Drunk and sober, overloaded to sparking point, boiling with uncontrolled energy, surreal in behavior to all but the initiated, consumed to transcendence by metamorphic passion, assisted by forces leveraging universal laws unleashed by the power of today.

My day. Mayday-Mayday. My day today.
Today was one day filled with a lifetime.

Now imagine having eighty-years of days of such events soaring your spirit with a thousand super-nova-octanes past the verges of any limits till your soul is satisfied and eternally at peace.

I am ready again and again.

Are you?

turbulent saudade

Verandah rain

Ver and Ah

Like a thousand times before in my life, I stood on the verandah.

I overlooked a flourishing green garden that could creditably claim the term ‘Lebensraum.’ An Olympic stone throw away gaps between the trees provided glimpses of the mountains in the distance.

One could mistakenly say that I was looking, but I wasn’t entirely just seeing something ahead of me. It was a seeing, – but more in a knowing way seeing in my mind, – all that what was around me, even assuming a deep metaphysical dimension too. I saw with my mind’s eye, – that eye, which adds imagination to vision, – in parallel to my real eyes that were somewhat inexplicably staring in a removed way, out of focus from reality.

A pronounced and conscious experience of the present unfolded itself. An enamored bond, – of having been here in this exact location a thousand times before, thinking similar thoughts, – enacted itself like a ritual. A magnetic attraction to a place of origin pulled me along.

In case you wondered, I was not having the cognitive experience of let’s say a visitor who comes with a fresh, curious and receptive look.

I was in reflecting mode and felt encouraged with hope as I stood on the open verandah, refreshed deep down into my soul by the view directly into nature. However, I was also prone to flooding by emotional thought drowning from the weight of the intensity of my imagination reliving events.
At the opposite extreme was a determination and belief that my reality is adjustable to my wishes and dreams, perhaps whims too, if I can only get in touch with this inner being called ‘Life.’

The land of nature presented a captivating view.

Grass spread like a living, deep-pile carpet towards bushes and shrubs giving way to trees sloping gently down towards a river hidden from view. There was an un-invaded openness and the occasional hill posing like a sentinel, – guarding the dragon mountains that pronounced themselves behind the horizon on a background of the deepest blue sky, smudged with white blobs and the dew point flirting with ambient temperature in the creation of a baby called Rain.

An inner turbulence of Saudade, – a melancholic hue with a cloudy patch of shadowy sadness and an indeterminate incompleteness, was in abstract contrast to the warmth and light of the late summer’ midday.

The summer-rain latitudes express boundless gratitude with profuse growth and breathless beauty in nature. A thousand colors pinked and perfumed with Double Delight and Mint, with touches of plumbago blue, bottlebrush red, cumulus white and Chinese-lantern orange, escalating into undocumented green presentations beyond the scope and comprehension of mere definition. Thoughts were punctuated by the melodious call of the Black-headed Oriole and the announcement of the Red-chested Cuckoo with long moments of haa-haa-haa-de-dah of the Hadeda’s, awakening the last slumbering senses.

Memory was choreographed against a scenery of unrestraint growth painted with the tincture of eons of existence and strains of loose imagination. Events re-lived themselves as if their stories had to be highlighted once more and gain attention, connecting the thread of existence with the fabric of eternity, materializing in this unique present. An invitation to re-read the past with the lantern of ‘now’

(‘now,’ this whole, current cognitive, conscious awareness experience a human has: re-inventing itself periodically through subconscious actions on a different level to the physical, with emotional, compassionate and passionate growth)

illuminating pages hitherto less exposed, their meaning obscured until now, as the dots of life started connecting through lines: revealing a path, pointing to a purpose, exposing a gift, – presenting a meaningful picture that quite naturally highlighted and indicated a preference. The invocation of one’s creative spirit in a way that kindles meaning and brings benefit and pleasure to all concerned.
(There are many rituals, ideas, substances, practices to invoke the spirit – ideally find your own)

Everything rhymed in colorful poetry as nature’s hormones reacted to a dose of growth-vaccination in the form of heavenly water.

Remembering became an act of adding content to what seemed an immutable forest on the canvas of life by superimposing events sometimes so grossly out of touch with the underlying reality that they created a contrasting inset of disharmonic visual irritation. When the drive to understand life is also an incognito mission to retain sanity, then answers are essential for maintaining stability. They provide views through a stabilized gyroscope in the turbulence of Saudade. Answers are the voices in our silent universe of thought and they are the conversation that leads to more enlightenment and knowing.

For the 1001’s time I am standing on the verandah, – once again looking for knowing and starting the ritual from the beginning, accompanied by a deep sense of feeling.

Signed
Mel an’ Choly

Miraculation

I kind of have an understanding that if anything is given enough time then amazing stuff happens.
Given a few billion years and algae are using smartphones, eat burgers and pizza and drive SUV’s, shoot guns and are astronauts. Finguck whow!
Quite fantabulously ama-zing.

And all this is simply explainable by evolution or the work of God’s hands? Hmm, – really?

I must add that I can not comprehend the magnitude of billions of years and all they can accomplish.
I have a similar difficulty trying to fathom this deity thing.
Given my inability to understand time, I have to grasp towards another concept, equally inexplicable, but somewhat more manageable for my mind.
I can manage it better than time because it doesn’t use time, it happens instantly and just requires that I believe in it.

Miraculation. The making of miracles.

Miracles do not use the slow lane of evolution or any such time-based concept.
Miracles are immediate and that works for most of us because we don’t have a billion years.

However, and for whatever reason, miracles also don’t just happen when you command them. I don’t know if you have to earn their trust first, prove that you believe in them (which takes time we don’t have) or show them that you are not just flippantly wanting to miraculate through life. (Why not?)

Are miracles strewn about by Lucky in a haphazard way randomly falling on some and omitting others?
Should I build an altar for Miraculous so I can submit my miracle requests directly to its presence?
Or, should I expose myself such (go out on a limb) that only a miracle can save me, thereby forcing the issue?

I have in a way narrowed it down to some points that ‘seem’ to have an effect on miraculation:

The basis is that you have to believe in miracles as a concept that you allow to exist in your life.

Saying you want a miracle to happen and then leaving it up to the Miraculator to decide which miracle you need, isn’t good enough in my experience. There are millions of miracles, so being a bit more specific helps to shrink the options down. Too specific and the Miraculator will think you can do its job and obstinately nothing will happen.

Sketch the problem/desire without going into the bits and bytes or genetic level or assuming the role of the project manager.

Rise every day with the conviction that today is a miracle day. A day in human terms is twenty-four hours. Don’t look at your watch every five minutes and declare at 0830 in the morning that no miracle is happening for you and therefore miracles suck. In any case, the Miraculator’s watch might not work in time at all, it is, after all, a human invention.

Fine tune your anticipation to a point, but stay clear of too overwhelming an expectation because such behavior only fosters frustration.

Give the Miraculator room to operate and assemble the components leading to the miracle.

Be ‘somewhat’ consistent in your thoughts of the miracle required.

Ask for one miracle at a time.

Miracles are in abundant supply.

And, if you are of the persuasion that you think you are the Miraculator itself, Monsieur, Madame Miraculaire, then for your sake go miraculate immediately and become a mariculant.
Who would possibly want to live life without miracles?

Now, – lead a miraculous life.

in the gap of the spectrum

colorspectrum

I am talking about reality.

After spending my life living with it, and more often than is sane, pondering it, I think I have it. The answer to it.
Reality is a loaded Latin word, heavy with meaning. It is the default movie on our life’s channel and a description of an experience that is our view through a gap in the spectrum.

A gap?
Yes, a break or a hole through which we can venture into experience. In thought, in physicality, with our senses, observing – any which way we want to. In the gap is where the juice is.

The spectrum?
Just like, for instance: color is only a range of frequencies we perceive visually (the color spectrum), but that is part of a much wider range of frequencies, – hence the term spectrum. Our reality, this gap-reality I am referring to, is a piece of something that is bigger, but that has been limited in various ways down to our eventual perception and belief of it.

And that is all fine. If you are all fine with your reality.
But, what if you’re not? What if you want to change it, – but it doesn’t change? i.o.w. you are always seeing and experiencing the same reality and you want to adjust it now.

Why are we humans all herded towards a similar gap in some way or other?
Undeniably there are vast extremes just in that gap. There are many similarities and there are considerable differences between my gap and your gap experience. Still, I would like to see the spectrum as a range of infinite possibilities stretching along seemingly endlessly.

Sometimes I think I have the answer, but it sounds very much like Russian roulette. It is built on the theory of trying, – until I hit that dream reality I wish for, – or I perish in the process. However, I fear there are many misses. It’s an altogether senseless approach with a fantastically small chance of success. What it does indicate, is a desire, partly fuelled by frustration and a lack of patience, and no clue how to go about it.

Work hard. Pray hard. Believe hard.
Those are also well known and oft quoted, apparently reliable methods of adjusting the momentary (life-long) gap-reality.

Keep on dreaming. A good one, but in isolation, it has no affect on the effect.

What you actually want is to take dreaming and add life to it, like you add water to a juice concentrate, and whallah, you have what you wanted.
The more life you add the more juice you have, the more OMG, the more whallah, the more satisfaction with life, the more the gap is filled with juice.

If water originates from a fountain, (indulge my thought, I know about Osmosis) where then is the fountain of life?
Fountains are in the earth, the base matter of existence.
Could the fountain of life perhaps be with me?
I do think I am the base matter in my existence.

Then, seeing that life is not figuratively a fountain, but nevertheless, the crucial ingredient to add to dreaming to adjust the gap-reality and create juice, then how do we get it to flow, and flow in the direction of our choosing?
Otherwise what is the point if we can’t adjust the gap-reality? That would make us robots exposed to some programming of a programmer we can’t communicate with and a language we can’t learn. Again this option is most senseless to me.

So now I know that by adding life (water) to dreaming (concentrate), I will fill (with juice) my personal gap in the spectrum of availability, i.e. create, adjust, mold my reality.
Fantastic. Bombastic.

Remains only the question,

Life, what do you suggest now?

The answer forthcoming is the guidance that lets my life flow in the direction of my choosing.

**
“Life, what do you suggest now?” is the principle slogan in my latest book, “Intercourse with Life”.
Life is that companion phenomenon that is always with us, ready to answer any question, be it about health, love or direction.

Available at Smashwords and Amazon

Picture Credit:
Nikola Nastasic E+ Getty Images
 from reference.com

no change

I got no change back. That was preposterous. I paid a lot for it and with big currency.
I had invested in change.

I know not. (I am mostly clueless.)
Not even, that, what actually is, will remain what it is.

My thoughts find no hold and therefore slip all the time. All over the place, like a beginner in an ice rink.

I know there is no such thing as change.
Today, with minor variations, is the same as yesterday and the day before and before. Where is there change?
The sun moved. My account has another zero after the minus. Another life came into this world. Call that change?

I get bouts of emotic flatulence when I hear that word. Change is this impersonal attribute given to the events in life.

“Everything changes.” Total and complete bullocks.

“Everything stays the same.” Look in the mirror. Look at the tree across the field. Look at the stars. Look at the world. Nothing changes.
You would be in a hysteric sweat if there was change. Right? Imagine: Your car has changed. Your house has changed address. Your name, your spouse, everything changed, everyday.

Everything has a life. There is activity. Yeah.
Even the old, when compared to the young, are still the same. Ask them. Hell, I am old and was once young and I am still the same. So is that bad now because I did not change?
Don’t be ridiculous. I never changed. My dog did not change. My house did not change. I might have replaced the furniture. I did not change it.
The flower ‘changed’ from a bud to a blossom. Rubbish. Nothing changed. It lives. It does not change. Do you really think it became something else? You are delusional.

I don’t want to change either. I’m ok if you want to. Go try and change and see for yourself. Find out the shattering truth.
Oh, she has changed. No, she hasn’t. They never change. Today X, tomorrow Y. In your wildest dreams while you are high, maybe.

Scrap the finguck word. It is so full of stupid assumptions.

The only thing that is permanent is change. That is such an oxymoron. And no, I am sure Buddha had something else in mind.

Someone won the lottery and it wholly and entirely changed his life. Amazing. You know what? When I met him he was exactly the same. Yes, but, it changed his circumstances. A pot of money changed a life? That is like saying because I got drenched in a rain shower I have changed. I have changed from warm and dry to cold and wet. I have not changed one binary bit. I still want to play guitar and tumble in the clouds.

Fact is you can’t change anything. Any nouveau messiah trumpeting such a philosophy has a head injury thinking his alchemistic prophecy is grounded in any truth, – really.
Go ahead and prove it to yourself. Try change something. It’s not that you can’t, there is no such thing as change. You can do many things, but change, – unlikely.

Personally, I think God can’t change anything either. And that is ‘big G’ I am talking about. But, that is a very private thought I don’t want to share.

Oh yeah. She changed her face with plastic this and Botox that. Ok. Another botch up in the face of change. Change has a list of dis-credentials as long as the tail of imagination.
Change is a coverall word. It’s useless. It tells me nothing sensible. Whenever you hear it, invoke skepticism and unravel the agenda of said change agent.

I know it’s semantics. But please, stop changing, because it’s like the Myth of Sisyphus. That stone will roll right back to where it belongs.

Yeah, but, in 2017 I am going to change many things. Right on. Go waste your breath.
I will improve, lengthen, increase, build, achieve… – but I ain’t going to attempt to change anything.

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

 

a Cyberian connection

I deny that you are not.
I agree that you are.

I have never seen you. I have never heard you.
You clearly are a Cyberian.
When I switch off my Cyberion (Mac), Cyberia is not.
Or not?

You are not.
I am not to you, and, you are not to me, anymore.

We are gone. But, we are not not.

By now I could say that I am not notting my notting-notting around some nottinghood.
Can you?
Well if you can, then we agree, else not notting.

Realia exists.
It’s our present whole real life.

Cyberia exists too.
It’s the cyber(ical) present.

That means that we exist in two ‘places’ at once. In Realia we exist in a biochemical way. What is the other? – – – cyberical cyberian way.

And I have an observation to share about these two realities.
Both exist. Realia and Cyberia.
And, wherever there are two of something, isn’t that an inherent proof that there can be more?
More realities. More Cyberias’ and Realias’. As many as we want there to be.
Not cloned realities. Not GMO realities. Realities fundamentally different from one another, like Realia is from its Cyberian counterpart.
Let’s premise for a moment that we can be a contrastingly different creation in Cyberia,
– would we then trend towards the schizophrenic-psychiatric ward in Realia?

Realia, Cyberia, – multitudinous behavior. We are only getting started.

Yet, I have never seen you. I have never heard you. It’s all been in Cyberia.
And you truly are. Aren’t you?

Maybe?
What?

Independent. Fast growing. Adapting. Changing. Cyberian.
I am. We are. It is. (The many presentations of us.)
Why be one?
What is normal?

Let me introduce myself.
I am, – hmm, er, ahem, huh, yeah – that I am.

 

Intercourse with Life

intercourse-with-life-cover

A crucial message to some burning questions in a short ebook.

Isn’t there something I can do or someone I can believe, to get my life off the rocks?

You’ve wondered why progress in your life has crunched to a halt.
You ponder why you are here? What is the purpose?

You have found nothing, you are clueless and you are lost.

You need intercourse with Life urgently!
Yeah, you read correctly.
Otherwise, your ability to succeed is given to chance.

And, be ready, because Life’s responsiveness exceeds an accelerator pedal of a Porsche, – or, the questions keep on mounting.

You teeter on despair and depression. Neglect and decline are in tow.
You have followed some ideas and you are still here, – looking.
Hope was a disappointing experience.
You have relied on yourself and when that didn’t produce the desired results, relied on others.
By now you excel in blaming anything.
Radical changes have made no difference.

You are stuck.
Slipping, falling, crashing, hurting, crying, bending, breaking.

It all sounds so familiar.

Despite whatever we do, one phenomenon is always present.
Life.
Yes, Life!
I am not talking about God, angels, spirits etc.
Life with a capital ‘L.’
A constant companion and the only trustworthy guidance system that is free and ready for our use.
Noninvasive. Unpretentious. Supra knowledgeable. Ready for intercourse with you in a flash.

Life says, your shadow might be invincible, but you can move with the light.

A call to act.
Have intercourse with Life!
A companion that you never knew existed alongside.
Life needs Life.

You are here. Nobody to ask. You want to be there. Nothing changes. Why?
Well, – no intercourse with Life!
Life, a phenomenon that is always ready and with us.
The oracle we have been searching for. It knows all the answers. Ask it.

Life, what do you suggest now? …and watch your life unfold.

You can read more about ‘Intercourse with Life,’ for a nominal amount, on Amazon.

 

 

the Zen of cleaning blinds

img_2500
I don’t live in Japan.

I have Venetian blinds on a few windows.
They are large windows.
I have shown disdain at my blinds’ deteriorating looks and I let them deteriorate further.
My resistance to cleaning Venetian blinds has been solid throughout history.

But I like their look. There is something about the scattered picture through a white blind that I find comfortable and appeasing. In a Zen way. Whatever that is.

The blinds are complex in that there are twenty-five horizontal slats to cover one window. Each horizontal slat is divided into seven portions, but it’s not literally cut up into individual hanging portions, just logically divided, to make it more manageable and balanced and to make the tilt and rollup function possible.

Cleaning Venetian blinds should become the standard dissertation for any aspiring master.

Threads running through each slat make the functionality possible.
They are white threads. They demand extra caution increasing the intensity of the cleaning task.

Each window thus has 200 white slats. My field of vision was filled with slats.

The message this morning was unambiguous.

An attitude was required. The right one for the task.
I pulled my stomach in and tensed up the abdominal muscles to center myself. Then I tensed every other muscle in my body in a call to mobilize. I slightly bowed my head and like a body-builder flexed those butterflies, pecs and biceps in a ‘bring it on I can handle it’ grimace.
A statue of chiseled determination and resolve emerged in front of its nemesis.

A Venetian blind had hijacked my morning. I was urged to practice focus and patience and to stop questioning. The cleaning had to be done today, now, after years of disregard.

Once I had sunk into the ‘Aum’ moment, purging all thoughts of frustration toward this exercise, it gave way to an acceptance of the reality. I allowed the notion that the activity of blind-cleaning might harbor a pertinent message and reveal itself in the meditative-mechanical motion I was performing.
I wipe the first layer of the dust-crust careful not to exert undue forces on the Venetian blinds. There are two hundred slats to clean. It takes fifteen seconds to clean a slat properly. The math is challenging, the answer is grueling, the required effort enormous, the result brilliant.

The process requires at least three passes with separate wet cloths. The cloth must always present a clean surface to the slat. Three cloths can provide a fair amount of uninterrupted cleaning activity and the duration of the task allows a range of activities from daydreaming to gardening. You question gardening in this context? Simple. You get distracted and leave the task.

Distractions happen frequently.
I hear the birds in the garden through the open windows. Incessant chatter, rasping, tweeting and calling. I stretch my neck to see them. An airplane passes overhead. I watch it through binoculars. Bees abound. I need to harvest the honey. It is a hot and sunny day. I want to be outside. A car tire squeals and the Yorkie barks. I perform a quick security check around the house and garden. I get distracted even more in the garden ending up with a clipper and a spade in the bushes.
The monotony of cleaning blinds is in stark contrast to life unfolding this day.

Focus. Stay focused.

A Whatsapp announces itself. The phone is next door.
Not now!

‘Aum’

One hundred and twenty-five slats to go.
Focus. I absorb myself into the task.

Seventy-five to go.

Amusing thoughts loiter in my mind.
I see my reflection like a silhouette in the glass behind the slats.
Bad guy looks without the bad guy, and handsome perhaps.
Should I start a blinds-cleaning-service, – by a Zen master.

‘Aum’

I am the task. I am the slat. I am the cloth. I am all of it.
There is no show of emotion. I am the person designated to do the task. I am not a mercenary in thoughtless-program-mode although it looks like it.
Nothing is by force. It is my free choice to clean or to neglect.

There is no problem.

When you become the task, resistance disappears.

The task is done.

Limiting circle ever expanding

Horizoning at Mabibi

Horizoning at Mabibi

If we were meant to be stuck with one horizon the universe surely would have put a wall around us?
A wall billions of impenetrable lightyears thick.

But the horizon is not a wall.
It is only a perceived boundary of a limiting circle. As we move, it moves too. If we stay put it remains the same.

Everything we have achieved was once on the horizon.
There are countless horizons behind us and infinite horizons ahead of us.

My present state defines the limit of my horizon.

At any time I can hike to a new horizon, literally and figuratively. I personally can’t wait to see what will reveal itself when I arrive there.

What can I do to change my horizon?
I can dream across horizons, jump the limiting circle and think non-imprisoning thoughts.
I can imagine what isn’t, to be.
I can believe that my life can be different.
I can visualize often what I want to see.
Then I can move away from where I am to where I want to be.

On the way other horizons reveal themselves. Beautiful ones and others. That is the incredible journey of life. This is the safari of life. Always in motion, unless we halt it. I can pitch camp anywhere for a while and enjoy where I am or I can run on and on.

I have decided to horizon on. Horizoning has become my new occupation. I have become a horizoner.

Expand your horizon, I was told when I was young and in difficult circumstances.
As I got older the meaning of those words took on an ever deeper sense. They whispered that if I wanted to change my horizon I had to accept change. Most importantly the returning echo of my expanding horizon never failed to nudge me on with rewards. It is such a very personal endeavor. Expanding my horizon is my own thing. Only I can do it.

There is the horizon we see when we cast our eyes and we have come to accept every day to the point where we forget it exists. This external horizon tempted and inspired me all my life. I longed to see what was behind the next mountain or the next curve on the track in the wilderness. A horizon was something that was out there to be explored and conquered.
In the same way, the horizon inside my inner being can be expanded too. I realised mine hadn’t moved in ages. My thoughts were set, my ways were stuck. Suddenly I knew that I had to expand my horizon in every conceivable way.

Horizon on!