Have I lost leave of my senses?
My perception of the last time I had the urge to write something worthwhile in this blog was that it was about 3 months ago. It has been 7!
One of my Aunts once told me a hideous fact about ageing.
Every ten years goes twice as fast as the ten before.
My recollection of time is distorted and as I get older it seems to warp further.
I know from the friends I have that I am not alone. Many a time I have heard people expressing that they don't know where the time went. Often it is at a milestone birthday.
30,40,50.
I can't think further than this without some trepidation being 52 and as it would seem,hurtling towards 60 faster than The Neutrinos they seem to have discovered travelling beyond the speed of light.
This recurring theme comes in a week after I attended the funeral of my Uncle Ken who was 87 and after working for the RAF once told me that if youngsters wanted a buzz that instead of taking drugs they should try jumping out of a plane.
It is also a week or so since Steve Jobs died whose biography I am reading on an ipad and iphone and a Scorsese film about George Harrison That has brought my mind around to thinking about minimalism, Buddism, Aesthetics.
I am aware that we live in an age where there are labels for a multitude of behavioural and brain functions that were un-heard of generally 10 years ago.
ADHD,BIPOLAR,DYSPRAXIA.
Being friends with some extreme people with a variety of obsessive compulsive tendancies it is interesting to see how what we term disability can enable people to achieve things that other 'normal' people wouldn't.
The person who owns the house where I rent the basement was astounded by how many things I owned. I have an old computer, some recording equipment, some photograph albums and a television. The bed is not mine, nor the sofa. I don't have many clothes or shoes and yet he is someone who is not bothered or attached to THINGS. I also know that he has been on Budhist retreats, meditated and has practiced Yoga. All of this after owning a company in the 80's that earned him good money and a flash car.
George Harrison also journeyed from fame and wealth to a life of The Yogis mixed with using pop music to popularise it's deeper meaning.
Steve Jobs like these others took LSD, went to India, was a hippy and then became the richest man in the cemetery while not being interested in many material things or money itself.
Of the interesting quotes in the book so far are;
Our consumer desires are unhealthy.
To attain enlightenment you need to develop a life of non-attachment.
Asceticism, Minimalism, can heighten subsequent sensations.
Great harvests come from arid sources, pleasure from restraint.
Absence and coldness make moments of warmth intensely gratifying.
The equation that most people don't know?
THINGS LEAD TO THEIR OPPOSITES.
Well,
Ironically my iphone which helps organise my life, bookings, maps, tuning apps, e-mails, and even records high quality piano pieces on some of the best pianos in the land so pleasurably was stolen at a school for pupils with Autism.
