Contentment.

So many thoughts racing around in my little brain.
How can I get them all down in time before they disappear ?
I might never think those same thoughts again.
Being alone with my thoughts is a good way to be.
But it would be nice to share them with someone who will listen.

I love thought. To think. It's so.. liberating, thinking.

:)
And that's all the thoughts I feel like sharing for today.

Open your mind.

There are so many places I want to go. Hopefully next year I will be able to do Student Exchange through university, and I can start travelling to other parts of the world. Europe is my first stop, there are so many amazing countries there and I want to see them all. I would love to do exchange in Sweden, that's my number one choice. After my six month exchange it would be incredible to be able to take time off uni and just travel around there. From Sweden I want to go to Norway, then take a trip over to Iceland. It's beautiful up in these countries, and I want to explore them and see the beauty captured by an outsider having never been there.





Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, England, the list goes on. I wish I had lots of dollars so that I could spend my time just being. Being one tiny human in these places of millions. Going to the tiny islands of Scotland where no human lives. Finding the beauty that is everywhere in untouched valleys and lakes. Snow. I've never seen snow. I can't wait. I hear it's cold.

Lose touch with reality.

Who are we, really ?
How can we ever know ?


Do you ever just wish you could slip away from reality for a little while and have a lovely tea party with your own mind and everyone you ever wanted to know ?



Humans make me angry. Human beings. We're selfish, arrogant and destructive. I wish I was anything but a human. Something that isn't such a burden on the world like we are. Look around yourself. We mediate our environment exactly the way we please without so much as a second thought about the consequences.

icanhaznomorecheezburger ?

I have made a positive change in my life, and I feel fantastic.
Last year, I tried to make the leap and eradicate all meat out of my diet. However, due to lack of support and real motivation, I failed dismally. Earlier this year, I decided that this year, I will do it. At some point, I will. Then about 6 weeks ago, I decided to start slowly removing meat from my diet, so that my body learnt to cope gradually. I was just struggling to make that final step and just have the strength to make such a call. Then recently, one of my friends made the choice, and after seeing 'Jamie Saves Our Bacon' on Wednesday night, I thought, if she can do it, I can too. There's no reason why I was still holding on. Now that I've made the leap, I feel amazing. I feel like I'm, in my own way, helping. I'm just one person, but that's one less person these poor animals have to be slaughtered for. I feel like I have control of what I'm eating, and it's incredible how good I feel.
Thank you for listening.

Time.

I got myself thinking today, when I said to myself (yes, I do that !) - "so many thoughts, so little time." But then I thought, how can we have so little time ? Time can go so quickly and yet time can drag on for so long.
Last semester, in Music, we discussed the concept of time, and the difference between quantitative time and qualitative time. Quantitative time, otherwise known as 'outer' or 'clock' time is the real time, the time that is actually ticking by. We become more aware of this in situations where we may be waiting for something, or perhaps we are bored, and the time seems to be going much slower than usual. Qualitative time, otherwise known as 'inner' time, is the time that we ourselves feel has passed. We are less aware of this time, as in a situation that is entertaining, the time itself seems to fly right past.
What I want to know, is what is the point where we slip from being in quantitative time to being in qualitative time, and then back again ? At what point is it that we are so content with our surroundings and where we might be or what we might be doing, that we are able to see the time disappear right before our very eyes ?

justify my existence.

So if everything that we are is controlled by DNA, then it could be argued that life itself is merely a means for DNA to express itself. Nothing more, nothing less. As the generations go on and DNA is exchanged and new combinations are created, different expressions of DNA may exist to those that existed before them. Therefore, it is our own experiences that qualify this life of ours as our own.
It's all we've got.

Life - "The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally." - dictionary.reference.com

But then again, what is the meaning of life ? The very meaning of it. And how do we make these lives of ours meaningful ? Happiness, enjoyment and meaning are concepts that have not been conceived together, and possibly never will be. How are they related and how can they affect each other ?

Live - "To have life, as an organism; be alive; be capable of vital functions." - dictionary.refernce.com
Exist - "To have actual being; be. To have life or animation;live." - dictionary.reference.com

But then again, surely to live and to just simply exist are not the same thing. If to exist is the same as to live, can to live be more than to just exist ? Or is this purely a feature of the human beings, that we seek to do more than just exist ?

So many answers that I don't think even exist, so why do I bother asking the questions ? Oh, there I go again.

icanhazblog ?

So I discover that my brother has inadvertantly promoted this page of wonder on his own blog and on twitter. Here's me returning the favour:

http://mynameisedge.wordpress.com/
Worth a read.

Speaking of reading, I must get back to that book I was reading, and perhaps return more cultured and interesting.
On another note, in a couple of weeks time I have three, possibly four parties in the one night. Anyone know some crafty magic to split me into four pieces ? Oh the joys of being 18..

Thought

The mind. The human mind. The human brain. Are the mind and the brain the same thing ? If you did an autopsy of a human being, you'd find a brain, but no mind. This, by no means, justifies its non-existence. I believe them to be two separate concepts. In my perception, the brain is the physical mechanism for understanding, whereas the mind is the space where understanding and comprehension takes place. The mind is a metaphorical space. It doesn't exist in the physical world, but rather the world of spirituality and the belief in the existence of more than just the physical in this particular time and space within the universe.
Knowledge is stored in the brain. Or is it in the mind ? Where and how is it stored, and how is it recalled ? Is thought itself lingustic ? Or is thought merely sensory and we humans have discovered a way to be able to express it to others, through the power of speech ?
In the words of Josh Pyke "our minds are a made up thing." This is an incredibly true statement, we have simply made up the concept of the "mind" to explain something that we otherwise have no explanation for, like the word 'nothing.'
All these things we humans have made up to simply be able to put a label on the phenomena that mother nature's vast array of other creatures simply accept. Do they lack this thirst for definition that we so desparately cling to ? Do they even possess that which we have labeled a 'mind' ?

So many questions.

Keen as Mustard.

I found another interesting quote in the book I am reading that I mentioned in a previous post, and I'd like to share it. It really got me thinking about things I've never thought about before, which always leaves me thinking for hours about one tiny simple little thing. I love a good state of contemplation.

"Sensation is the act of perceiving some sensible quality, such as a sound or colour, whereas feeling is the consciousness of some activity - i.e., a state of satisfaction or discomfort." - p. 19

I'd never thought of it that way before.

Oh, and just one more !

"A musical composition originates in the composer's imagination, and is intended for the imagination of the listener. Our imagination, it is true, does not merely contemplate the beautiful, but it contemplates it with intelligence, the object being, as it were, mentally inspected and criticised." - p. 21



On another note, I have recently discovered the supremacy of Mustard. How great is it, really ? That disgusting looking yellow paste-like substance has become my latest 'flavour of the month.' Would you count that as a pun ? I've never made a pun before, excellent.

Child.

I recently picked up a copy of one of my favourite magazines, Yen. In it was an article about a young girl of 15, named Eleanor Hardwick. She's a photographer from England, and she's incredible. Her portfolio has more than 2000 works in it, and from what I've seen, she truly has talent. Her photos play on the idea of childhood and dreams, and they are amazing. Beautiful.

There is one photo in the article called "Flooded river after the snow. It was full of ice and my toes went numb." Brilliant. This is it -

This one is my favourite -



http://eleanorhardwick.com
Go and see for yourself.
Let me know what you think ?

Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing is indescribable. Where there is nothing, what is there ? There is no such thing as nothing. Nothing is simply something we as humans made up because we have to believe that there is always something somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. Nothing is a name, a term given for the absence of everything else that exists in this reality at a given time and space within the universe. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. No thing. Not a single thing. Nothing.

The Beautiful in Music

I've just started reading this wonderful book, called 'The Beautiful in Music', originally written by Eduard Hanslick. This is the seventh revised edition of the book, translated originally from German, this book itself was published in 1891. It's a bit a of a struggle to get through some of it as it's very wordy, but the content itself is amazing, I definitely recommend it. From the very first page of the first chapter, the message it is trying to get across is clear, and the way that it is expressed is so beautiful. There are a couple of bits I would like to share with you now, and I'm sure there'll be more to come.

"The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to enquire into what is beautiful in music, as to describe the feelings which music awakens. This view entirely coincides with that of the older systems of aesthetics, which considered the beautiful solely in reference to the sensations aroused, and the philosophy of beauty as the offspring of sensation." - p.15

"If the contemplation of something beautiful arouses pleasurable feelings, this effect is distinct from the beautiful as such. I may, indeed, place a beautiful object before an observer, with the avowed purpose of giving him pleasure, but this purpose in no way affects the beauty of the object. The beautiful is and remains beautiful though it arouses no emotion whatever, and though there be no-one to look at it. In other words, although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him." - p. 18/19

"An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings, but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination." - p. 20

I think that will be enough for now.