Thursday, September 22, 2016 — 19˚C / 66˚F with bright sunshine @ 12:42 pm in Atlantic Canada —
A friend wanted an image of Ganesh – Apparently September 5th was a special day dedicated to Ganesh in India, There were many images that could have fit the bill. I liked quite a few, including this one.
I am hesitant to call Ganesh a ‘god’. Cultural differences are too easy to misunderstand. My take on a ‘Western view’ of Ganesh would be that He is regarded the way Roman Catholics regard Saints. They ask Ganesh for help overcoming obstacles, removing obstacles from their lives, blessing them with ‘good luck’.
I should have looked this up, but it looks like ‘Ganesh Chaturthi’ is a Holiday / Celebration Day dedicated to Ganesh.
My friend, Jim W., told me a story related to Ganesh. While he was working part time as a cleaner when he first became a permanent resident in Canada and could legally find work- one of the places he worked was an old textile mill that was in the process of being converted into a ‘Corporate Centre’ / Office Building. The building had some creepy areas, other people who were there at night reported seeing ghosts, experienced being touched and/or pinched when nobody else was in the building.
Jim began chanting “Shri Ram” – a chant he picked up from a recording of music popular with Sufis – which was attributed to Mahatma Gandhi- He said he could feel his own voice vibrating in his chest and then all around him (after several minutes) in an unusually relaxing manner and then received a ‘spontaeneous visualization’ in which Ganesh was dancing, walking along beside him as he dusted, mopped and wet-mopped the floors. A few minutes later his visualization had expanded to include a whole traveling group of Hindu Indian musicians, playing drums and other instruments as they walked along with Ganesh and Jim, clearing the creepy vibrations away with happy smiling feelings and light.
He said he’d never thought of Ganesh as a Dancer- but apparently most Hindu Indians know Ganesh as quite the accomplished dancer.
Saturday Morning, August 20th, 2016 — 12°C / 53°F & “Dark” in my little corner of Atlantic Canada @ 3:02 am—
I’m always looking for new ways to see my world. Norman Vincent Peale was not my favourite philosopher. Sometimes he makes sense.
— “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” Norman Vincent Peale.
— Changing habitually resonating thoughts and thought patterns is not all that easy. If you’re fighting against what you believe are your own negative thoughts – you can try to combine those thoughts with the desire to improve and become more positive. Emotions happen quicker and more deeply that what we call “our thoughts” in the human psyche. Our ‘Normal Waking Mind’ tries to define our multi-dimensional world in two dimensional terms. Don’t give up. The negative, “You can’t win-“, “Give up-“, “You’ll never amount to anything-” thoughts that may have been planted in your young mind by egotistical people who don’t know better — are lying to you. — We have no limitations. We are alive here now to prove to ourselves that “Mind Over Matter” is Reality – Your indomitable Spirit, whatever you choose to call it – can overcome anything. { This has been the voice of experience. I seem to be unusually optimistic about this life and the human race tonight/very early this morning. }
— I read a quote on-line earlier, meant for writers – “If writing your book doesn’t keep you up at night – how can you expect that reading it will keep your readers awake at night, too?” { Or something quite near that if I haven’t remembered it 1,000% correctly – } & I think that was James A. Michener who I’ve just nearly quoted. But I’m pretty sure I got the spirit of his intent there –
& Now – the depressing stuff. While politicians are fighting against what would be best for the greatest number of people in favour of fighting to fill their pockets with currency and their egos with power – They’re helping the ‘bad guys’ kill the planet and destroy our future.
— Schnarr –
“Hey – You – Trump – Don’t like immigrants? Then get your immigrant butt out of our lands!”
— And Now – For something completely different —>
“Aliens in Utah?”
— A ‘Clairvoyant’ I met told a hippy who recounted seeing weird monsters standing next to people he knew – and he knew they were real live human beings – were not hallucinations. The ‘monsters’ were beings in another dimension, right here beside us – and some of them can influence our thoughts, feelings, even pressure us to go get drunk and pass out so they might jump into our bodies and have fun at our expense. “If this scares you, good. – Stop taking drugs, stop drinking alcoholic beverages, avoid any medicines that make you feel loopy or woozy – Pray a lot and hang around with positive, highly spiritual people.” — I waited until the doubting hippy left and asked that ‘clairvoyant’ where I could find any highly positive, spiritual people to hang around with and she wrote down a couple of book titles, said I should read them, and talk to her next time I saw her.
“The Sufis” – by Idries Shah
“In Search of the Miraculous” – by P.D. Ouspensky
“Autobiography of a Yogi” – by Paramahansa Yogananda
— I treasured all three – Reading Ouspensky’s book was a challenge – I felt like I had to restructure my mind and brain in order to stay with it and understand what he was saying. It felt like an exercise in overcoming normal human limitations.
— I read everything I could get my hands on about the Sufis and felt like they were under-cover agents for sanity in a very insane world.
— Then, reading the “Autobiography of a Yogi” felt like connecting with the ultimately merciful, and loving essence of the Heart of all Creation and made me feel like I was in constant contact with everything worth living for, no matter how strongly I doubted that.
— We’re here to get as close to “God” as we can and to do everything we can to help everything positive in all of Creation manifest Heaven on Earth.
— { Told you I was feeling unusually optimistic – hope I haven’t bored you to death – }
Friday, August 19th, 2016 — 12°C / 53°F With the sun shining golden light on nearby neighbour’s houses in Atlantic Canada @ 7:18 am — Today is Bill Clinton’s Birthday —
I really was inspired to smile and think there just might be hope for the human race when Usain Bolt and Andre DeGrasse smiled and hugged after coming in first and second in their semi final 200 meter sprint.
— I am no fan of testosterone-poisoned athletes staring and glaring at each other, hoping to ‘psyche-out’ their opponents before games or ‘contests’ in which they try to prove themselves egotistically superior to everybody else in their sport.
— It was good to see the first and second place sprinters in the semi-finals looking like brothers who get along well enjoying themselves –
— Usain Bolt, a Jamaican, has now made history, winning gold medals in 100 meter and 200 meter sprints three times in a row. Tonight, if the Jamaicans win a relay race Usain Bolt will make further history turning his “Triple Double” Gold into a “Triple Triple”.
— And if you understand the above blurb about triple doubles and triple triples, you’re either a dedicated follower of Olympic athletics or someone who has a quick and nimble mind who enjoys learning anything and everything you can. 🙂
*** & When my friend, Doug, invited me to help him and his friends at “Aerendel” Communications with web problems he was having ( he’s dating one of my favourite cousins ) I hadn’t realized that there was another Jim who actually originated the web site(s) and ‘owns’ the name ‘Aerendel’ – which he says came into his mind as a mind-worm { something like an ‘ear worm’ } the first time he read “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkein – and stayed with him until he thought “a small secluded valley in the sky” was a decent description for a web site, and later, a multi-player game. [ Castles in the Air? / A naive vision of “Heaven”? ] So I’m trying to relieve a bit of confusion by admitting that my birth certificate says, “Hermann James Van Arden” and too many people made fun of “Her-Mann!” and “H. James Van Arden” sounded too much like one of the Watergate crooks. So I asked Doug if “Jim d’Aerendel at Aerendel dot ca” sounded like a decent email name and he smiled. And apparently, the other “Jim at aerendel dot c.a.” didn’t mind – but a couple of my friends wondered why there were two different Jims here – So, now I’ll declare myself as, “h.j.d’a” and hope that doesn’t fry too many brains.
Friday, August 5th, 2016 — 14°C / 56°F & Cool & Damp @7:00 am in Atlantic Canada —
I’m not sure whether this is a photo or a painting or a photo that’s been painted in photo shop – But I like it.
— It’s John Olerud’s Birthday – and it’s also Terry Seguin’s [ host of New Brunswick First / Information Morning out of Fredericton, NB “on CBC Radio One, local Cable TeeVee and live streaming on the web.” ] — Also a couple friends in Connecticut, Including Gail S. and a couple others who don’t want to be reminded that they’re getting older are either celebrating or trying to forget that today is their birthday. —
— We had a thunderstorm yesterday, and my malware program found a couple ‘potentially unwanted’ bits of schnarr in my files et cetera, which is odd, because that’s a computer I don’t connect to the internet much. But anyway, the “kabooms” were loud and I could feel them as well as hear them, so I shut everything down and then had a hard time getting everything back up and running. And when a browser that had been open to twitter came back up there was this photo – or whatever that is up there – that caught my eye, and I’m still checking in to see whose blogs need to have their plug ins and stuff updated, so I thought I’d change the sticky post on my eye candy blog.
— Habbin zee gooten Tahg – [he said in his fake German accent —]
Saturday, May 28, 2016 — 20˚C / 68˚F — Sunny and Springlike in Atlantic Canada @ 2:03 pm — Tweets below are copied & pasted – links won’t work.
I don’t usually like the colour pink, but if 528 Hz really is the Frequency at which Love vibrates, and pink is the colour in people’s auras when they’re trying to attract love – I can probably stand it for one day – Haven’t been to Paris in the Spring in this life time – but shots like this can still raise my spirit –Jesse Ventura quoting George Carlin – That probably couldn’t have happened while Jesse was a dedicated Navy Seal. But – you never know. Governor Ventura told us he poo-pooed conspiracy theories before he investigated what happened at the twin towers on September 11th, 2001. Maybe he always had a nearly conscious, but viable, B.S. meter and that one more thing woke him up?{David Coon Retweet} : The above Provincial Minister is not one of my favourite people. Green Party MLA David Coon IS one of my favourite people – and nothing like an average politician. The really good news is that the ‘Government’ of New Brunswick announced that the Moratorium on Hydraulic ‘Fracking’ will continue indefinitely. — I wanted to end this post on a positive note and this is it.
— Um. I thought I had something more to say, but I guess I’m not immune to ‘Senior Moments’ – ((( Help? )))
Wednesday, May 04, 2016 – Kent State Massacre Anniversary Day — // +9˚C / +48˚F @ 7:47 pm on a cool and mostly clear Day / Evening in Atlantic Canada —
Somebody thought they saw the 4 Horsemen in this photo? All I see is a nice, inspiring sunrise or sunset.Friends of mine were hitch-hiking in the Boston area — I think that was in the 1970’s — They were picked up by a woman who turned out to be an editor ( I think she was an editor ) working with James A Michener. He was having some health problems back then, but I thought that was an interesting bit of extraordinarily good luck.This was a March retweet from a friend, but it still is cool / interesting —
— It’s been too long since I checked in on Twitter and with my blogging friends – & today there was a lot of stuff about Bernie Sanders.
I like the pixelated old school image of Bernie on the left. & Yes, an unexpected win is nice to read about.& It’s nice to see Charlie Brown is still handing out good advice.I suppose the closest to making you feel loved that any material object can get is if it is wrapped in warm memories of the person who gave it to you — Ya think?Hillary Clinton isn’t doing so well when it comes to winning the approval of independent, free thinking voters.The best teachers encourage you to think for yourself –
Copied & Pasted from Jim W.’s “Latest News From Aerendel”
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— Monday, March 21, 2016 — // -4˚C / +24˚F & snowing ‘lightly’ @ 11:11 am in Atlantic Canada on the Second Day of Spring, 2016 🙂 —
I have become almost magically optimistic about the future lately — Hmmm? Have I clued into positive trends in the world of Spirit? Or is this not so early onset Alzheimer’s? 😉
Bare Ground beneath our local species of Cedar tree as the Nor’Easter begins – this was at about 8:37 am today, March 21st, 2016 -jrw-
— The Weather Network said we should expect between 15 and 25 centimeters of snow today ( um, six to ten inches? ) The local CBC channel told us this morning they expect we should get about 10 centimeters / 4 inches? – then later amended that to say we might get another 5 centimeters later tonight, after the evening commute home?
— This is a view of the ‘Deer Hill’ that I haven’t ‘published’ here yet – The hill is actually somebody else’s property. Cathi says she wishes we could own it- She’s got ideas concerning gardens and safe passage for deer forever and maybe even a swimming pool.
— My novel keeps growing in my mind faster than I can get it out and into word processors – In that manner I work out a lot of stupid dead ends before they waste time? At least I’m not wasting paper –
— At about 10:30 am. The spot beneath the cedar tree is now covered by ‘new’ snow. (I had to walk out to this area to bring back the garbage can the garbage guys usually leave upside down, but today they left it right side up, so it was filling with snow.) — shrug —
— I realized before I began to write this, that at about this time last year, I didn’t want to know anything about any more snow falling from the sky and building up on the ground- Today I pretty much knew it was coming – um, part of this is trusting teevee and radio weather people – and I still felt like the world was okay, that Spring is coming, that people are will be nicer to each other – That even nasty people will realize they don’t like being nasty? — I don’t know – Maybe something on a nearly sub-conscious level has become more optimistic since Canada elected a new ‘government’ that at least claims to value human beings over the principles of greed and divisiveness.
— And I think this is the photo that I took around 10:30 this morning that I thought best showed the developing snowstorm. -jrw-
— And I guess none of the photos I’ve put up here today do anything to explain the odd optimism I’ve been feeling. As a matter of fact, the day is kind of grey and brooding – and the snow that is falling doesn’t feel particularly friendly or compassionate – But the world still feels like it is becoming more friendly, more loving, more welcoming? So, of course there will be set-backs and dark moments – But I still feel like something deep down and subtle has changed for the better.
— Sunday, March 20th, 2016 — // -2˚C / +27˚F in brilliant sunlight reflected on very white snow at 12:06 pm in Atlantic Canada — // — I believe today is Dona ( née Flynn ) from my hippy days in Brattleboro’s birthday —
One of Jim W.’s photos that he couldn’t load yesterday, I reduced the size from 3,000 + by 2,000 odd pixels to 1024 b less than 768 and it looks like ‘No Problem at all” here – I also painted the license plate blank for ya, Jim – —jda—
— Yup, looks good to me –
— Jim & Cathi’s House, Jassper’s ‘dog run’ – Funny – Jim calls this the ‘Front Yard’ because it faces Canada Street and that’s the face most people see – Cathi calls it their ‘back yard’ because they come in the door on the other side of the house. I don’t know, If that’s really the biggest disagreement these two have, I’d say they have an amazingly good relationship. —jda—
— Jim & Cathi’s East Side Yard At Sun-Up.
— This is the second of two photos Jim took Friday Morning, of the Deer and the Hill they feed on, he had to take this from a distance, and if his cell’s phone has a telephoto function, somebody should tell him how to use it. 😉 – I would have cropped this photo closer in and used it instead of the one he started yesterday’s post off with. —jda—
— Today dawned almost as picturesquely as yesterday –
— To prove a point, silly me, I cropped the photo from directly above this cropped version – Jim’s 2nd “Deer on the hill with great backlighting” photo – and did not reduce the size / number of pixels – The deer are so far to the left you can almost miss them in their lower corner there – Reminds me of Taoist Chinese Art – where the scenery is huge and the people are tiny? – And loading this photo did take so long at 2308 x 1766 pixels that I thought it just might crash WordPress’ interior workings. But it didn’t and it’s here, and I’m glad. —jda—
— yup, magic happens, isn’t it great when things work out better than you expect them to?
— Jim W.’s photo of his cat, Moe, Messed with using stock ‘artistic filter’ “Rough Pastels” – He was talking about not wanting to mess with the wild and crazy add-on plug-ins that a lot of people spend a lot of money on and use when they’re messing around with PhotoShop.
Below is Copied & Pasted from Jim W.’s “Latest News From Aerendel” Blog:
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I felt compelled to make sure the deer had oats this morning, so at about 6 am I went out with my pail and five scoops of whole oats and tossed the oats in several smaller scoops to their spot. But the pre-dawn colours and lighting effects were amazing, and I actually had my camera in my pocket. Of course, you never get what you see when you take the photo. But sometimes what you get is pretty close, and sometimes it comes with surprises- The flash was ‘on’ when I took this shot, and captured several orbs looking like they just might be odd moons rising. Or maybe they’re orb creatures coming to check up on what the heck I’ve been up to lately?
– Early Morning Musings? –
— Saturday, March 12, 2016 — // -3˚C / +26˚F @ 8:31 am under cloudy grey skies with small ‘ground squirrels’ running around inside the dog’s area – which really isn’t very bright- ya know? in Atlantic Canada (or anywhere else – for that matter) — // Larry Thomases’ Birthday.
The white deer was here around 6:30 am, with one other friend. Yesterday, around 7:20 – the whole gang was in attendance, and a couple of the motherly types were kicking the white deer around and driving her away to make sure their yearlings got the most of the oats that were there. I wanted to go out and give the white deer her own abundance of warm fresh oats (warm from being inside the porch, not cooked) But I just stood there and watched her glumly and stiffly walk away. If she is the same white deer we saw last year and the year before, she had a mottled white and brown yearling that must have been the white deer that was reportedly hit by a bus and killed last winter, 2015 – 🙁
— Another thing that happened yesterday, well, we had about half an inch of snow that had started out wet and froze to a weird hardness that was not easy to brush and scrape from the van so Cathi could drive to work free from the anxiety that chunks of hard snow might fly from her roof and hurt somebody or smash their windshield – and the whole time I was struggling with the brush and scraper one youngish deer that I thought was a new guy, who’d either come alone or was so freakin hungry that he or she stayed after the others ran away and ‘he’ kept on eating and scratching for any oats that just might be beneath the snow – I told Cathi about him, and said he must be starving, then told her I thought I would bring him out a cup full of fresh breakfast oats – and she said, “Well, if he lets you get near him -” And I reiterated, “I think he’s starving -” and I went out with a cup full of oats and he took a couple steps away and prepared to dash away toward safety – I tried to tell him in a nice calm voice, “Hey, don’t go too far away – and showed him what I had and tossed it while he eyed me warily – Then I tried to bow, or dip my head slightly, which is something I’ve seen the deer doing, and we’ve been anthropomorphizing that that’s the way they say ‘Thank you-‘ He just looked at me like that was weird and came back and was gobbling up the new warmish oats before I took ten steps toward the house.
Okay, this was probably five minutes after the first photo at the top of this article here – What I saw was something more like nicotine coloured sky just above the horizon, but it came out reddish purple here. It’s still striking, but it isn’t quite what I saw –
— I gotta try to change the setting in the ‘editor’ here to see if I can get the captions to left justify. Me – getting typically over wordy here – it looks bad and I think it might be hard for some people to read the center justified captions. & Sometimes I think I’d have to be grossly over-confident if I thought that anybody out there would want to read any thing I post here.
– And this was maybe twenty minutes to half an hour after the first shots. It came out a little closer to reality, and then I did a little tweaking in photoshop (not the heavy duty really creative stuff you need special plug-ins for) But this really caught the feeling –
— Was it yesterday I spent a couple of paragraphs describing Moe’s linguistic peculiarities? — I couldn’t avoid posting a photo I took of him between a couple of his lectures on how not to neglect the cat if you know what’s good for you —
And here he is – hoping that I’m not about to blind him with the flash he knows can come out of the thing that I’m holding so close to him – And why I’d hold anything that wasn’t edible that close to a cat will probably forever remain a mystery – ( “And why does that thing make noises like “Ka-jickk” either when it blinds you with light or doesn’t – I like this human, but jeeze – there’s no way a reasonable cat can understand these peculiar characters, -And why the Creator gave them opposable thumbs and not us? – Well I’ll be charitable, and say that must have been an oversight, probably an operation delegated to underlings on the animal design assembly line -” )
— Enough damage for one day? Am I stealing somebody else’s line here?
~~~~~ Jim
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This is Jim’s Sun is Rising photo messed with using the ‘Neon Glow’ photoshop filter.And this is the same photo as above – Messed with Using the “Poster Edges” PhotoShop Filter.— And — The white deer photo, messed with using the “dry brush” filter. Looks just a bit like a painting.
— I thought I messed with another photo while I was at it, but I guess not-
— Maybe I should say “Copied & Pasted, lifted and PhotoShopped?”
Copied & Pasted from Jim W’s “Latest News From Aerendel” Blog:
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“Zen Corner Through Glass And Plastic” – This photo was taken at about 9 am this morning through a porch window and its interior plastic shield – using a Samsung Galaxy II phone – not my usual Olympus Camera. —jim w—
— Tuesday Evening, March 8th, 2016 — // — Dark and -1˚C / +30˚F @ 7:45 pm in Atlantic Canada —
— I guess you can tell you live in a ‘Civilized’ area when last night’s Television News included the following:
— Tonight a Woman in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia went to her Compost Bin and it Growled at Her —
— The culprit was a young and scruffy looking raccoon.
— I tried to find a photo of the scruffy young raccoon in the green plastic recycling bin via Twitter and became severely distracted by too much positive reinforcement going around – like:
I used to think Steve Jobs was a guy with a nasty temper who made fun of virgins and went to Apple Board Meetings barefoot and snarled at everybody. That’s the way he was portrayed in a teevee movie about the computer revolution – Just recently I discovered that he was a follower of Paramahansa Yogananda – a Yogi who gave away copies of “Autobiography of a Yogi” – Or did I just come here from a parallel world that’s not quite as positive as this place?Michael Moore voted for Bernie Sanders in a primary – Sounds good to me.
— There is way too much positive stuff in the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ tonight. Most of it concerns women’s safety and equality – with a hashtag #InternationalWomensDay –
“We are the [Daughters and] Granddaughters of Witches You Couldn’t Burn”PG Rated Message? 72% of equal wages for equal work might warrant a frustrated cuss word or two – & not everyone know how to say “Schnarr!”Nice, Positive Quote? — Unless you’ve been messed with to the point where you can’t stand anybody suggesting you should see the world their way, positive or not – But, hey, I got over that attitude years ago. 🙂
— And I left a lot of stuff out. There’s not enough room here to fill with all the good stuff on the internet tonight. Now that’s different –
