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Location: Athens, Greece

A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Its loveliness increases
It will never pass into nothingness
But still will keep a bower quiet for us
And a sleep full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing
Endymion,J.Keats
End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back and all change to silver glass and then you see it.White shores and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise
Gandalf
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition
I.Asimov
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring
C. Sagan
'O me!O life! of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish;what good amid these,O me,O life?
Answer.That you are here that life exists,and identity;that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.'
W.Whitman

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Dusty...again....


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Our Xmas tree


Yes we finally got one this year.....before xmas not now!!!

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Avalon 2006 - I was there!


http://www.rdanderson.com/archives/images/a61124-053x.jpg

http://www.avalon2006.co.uk/photographs3.htm

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The meaning of life part 3 - Einstein

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

- Albert Einstein

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The journey of life by Cole Thomas





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To be or not to be

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch[1] and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.[2]

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The meaning of life part 2

In the programming language Java, the meaning of life is a NullPointerException (from wikipedia)

:-)

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My Daemon

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Subtle photos



























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Sometimes the hardest thing is to remember the past

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Golden Compass Original Ending

The true , original ending to The Golden Compass as P.Pullman wrote it and New Line produced it but then cut it due to 'politics'.

Lyra and Roger head off to find Lord Asriel, but he is shocked to see Lyra. But then when he sees Roger he relaxes, he does not have to sacrifice his daughter for his plan to open a window to another world and find the origin of Dust.

When Lyra sleeps he steals Roger away and sacrifices him by cutting of his daemon so that the released energy will open up a window to another world.

Mrs.Caulter and Lord Asriel meet again, he asks her to follow him but she does not, she cannot. He leaves and enters the new world, Mrs Caulter asks Lyra to follow her home and she replies 'Never! I'm not you, I'll never be you!'
And she goes off alone with Pan into the new world, following her father, to find Roger and bring him back from the dead.
The images are collected from trailers and deleted scenes found all over the internet.

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Friday, January 18, 2008

Dark materials fever - desktop

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Fallen angel

I'm at work and listening to Beloved by VNV Nation.

And I haven't heard this song in a while because it reminds me of people and situations that I prefer not to remember.

But unfortunately old loves are not easily forgotten and so I downloaded it and am listening to it over and over and over again.....

I had a friend, or maybe friend is not the right word to describe him. Situations brought us apart, gossip, jealousy etc and when that happened I missed him terribly.

It took me a while to overcome this, talking on the phone all night, sharing a lot and understanding even more.

Sometimes you do fall for the wrong people, thats just in the circle of life, and its a good thing, experience is a good thing, it makes you conscious of your life , makes you who you are and he was a huge experience for me.

And now listening to this song over and over and over again I miss him terribly......I wish there was something I could to to correct things but there isn't.......

There is no innocence, only degrees of guilt...

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Life and the awareness of living

Because of my recent obsession with P.Pullman and 'His Dark Materials' here are 2 quotes from one of his interviews:

"PP: Yes. When I took Lyra down to the world of the dead, I didn't know how I was going to get her out. But I relied on her quick-wittedness and I relied on luck or chance or whatever. The ghosts came along and they asked this question, as you described, and Lyra, for the first time in her life, has to tell a story that is true. Up till then, she's been a fantasist. She has spun lie upon lie, and story upon story, not only to get herself out of trouble, but also to entertain her listeners. And she is very good at it. She tries this with the harpies, who guard the world of the dead, when she first goes down there. But they see through it at once, and they screech and they fly at her with claws and they cry "liar-liar-liar!" -- which sounds like her name. So when she is confronted with these desperate children, so eager to hear about the world and what it was like, she begins to do exactly what they ask for, to tell them a story that's not a fantasy, but a piece of realism. And she describes the day that she and her friends played in the mud beside the river, and they had a great battle, and they threw mud at each other. She describes all the feelings, the mud squishing through her fingers, and the sight of the sun coming through the dappled leaves as it strikes the riverbank, and the coolness of the water, and the smell of the cooking fires. She brings all those things life. Then she has a terrible shock, because she looks up and sees the harpies sitting around listening to this. This is what they've been hungering for all this time, and they had never thought to ask. But now they've heard it, they want more. They want more, they want more.

That's the point at which Tialys, the Gallivespian who is the length of one of our fingers and rides a dragonfly, has the great idea of making a bargain with the harpies, as you've mentioned. From now on, every ghost who enters the world of the dead will have to come with a story, the story of his or her life, and tell it to the harpies. It doesn't have to be a big adventure; it can just be a description of a day playing with the children, like Lyra's, or whatever it might happen to be. In exchange for this true story, the harpies will lead that ghost outside to dissolve into the Universe and be one with everything else.

Of course, I stole that, as I stole everything else! I stole that from the Oresteia -- the bargain Aeschylus's characters make with the Furies that are following them about. "You will be the guardians of this place, and we will worship you and we will give you honor," they say. Then the Furies are satisfied, and they leave off their pursuit of Orestes. There's nothing new in stories. It goes round again and again and again.

But that was something that I thought was a good way out for Lyra, and it did reassert the value of story. States it fully and clearly, brings it out. And also the value of realistic story. It's got to be true. And there's a moral consequence; for those who have eyes to see, they can see it: you have to live. You have to experience things to have a story to tell, and if you spend all your life playing video games, that will not do."


And :

"The thing this is saying is what Will says later on about the angels. He says, "They wish they had bodies. They are envious of us. They wish they could smell the roasting coffee and these things. They can't understand why we, who have the power to feel these things, who have nerves and senses, aren't in a continual state of ecstasy. That we can touch things, that we can hear things and smell things, and taste things."

If there was one feeling or one idea that I would like readers to take away from the trilogy (though I don't tell them this is what they must take -- they can take what they choose), I would like them to take away this emphasis, this continuing and strong emphasis that I put on the value of being alive and having nerves and senses -- of having a physical body.

This is where I owe a great debt to William Blake, of course: "Show me a world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy," he wrote. And:

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

And: "Every thing that lives is Holy." Blake celebrated the sense that this world we live in is the most extraordinary, miraculous place, and we should cherish it, we should look after it -- with delight begins responsibility."

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Monday, January 14, 2008

Original Sin and Consciousness


Ok so I finished book 2 of 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy, the Subtle Knife.

So many moments in this book are memorable even though I still like the first one better but with this I get a clearer view of P.Pullman's vision.

That original sin as a metaphysical happening meaning the enlightenment of man is to happen once more an Lyra is going to play the role of Eve, Great Mother of us all.

That experience is what makes humans have self awareness and leads them to a complete form of their daemon.

Daemons in this book and in Will Parry's world (which is in fact our world) live inside people's minds and hearts, and Lyra sees Will's daemon through his eyes.

It is a very touching moment when Pan , in the form of a German shepherd, licks Will's wounds because , as he explains to Lyra later, he desperately needed a daemon to hang on to life.

Another intense moment is the death of Lee Scorsby and his daemon Esther. The way they fight together up to the very end, knowing full well thay will die, and doing it to save Will's father and essentially to help Lyra......the way they look at each other , the grown man from Texas and his rabbit daemon in all that death and fire......heartbreaking

The meeting of Will and his father, the aknowledgement only for a moment in their eyes before John Pari's death by the arrow of a wich whose love he had refused.....

The cruelty of the children in Cittàgazze, the fear the Phantoms that suck the life out of grown people, people with experience and consciousness, the fighting of the witches, the death of the brave witch whose bones Mrs. Caulter broke but she refused to reveal the name Eve.

And ultimately the pain of the parting of one's soul, any kind of being , with his or her daemon.

P.Pullman says that the church tries to keep most people without the essential curiosity that leads us to knowledge, to progress, to the essential knowledge of being, that you are here, that life exists, that you are alive as a spiritual entity, that most people are kept in a condition like sheep or probably zombies...without a soul

I have spent my life mostly trying to understand and realize who I am , what I am and how I fit in into the great order of things. I know I will probably never really find out but the quest itself is the only reason to go on living.

Self awareness and the choice, the ability to consciously make a choice between good and evil as you perceive it........that is what makes us beings with a soul, with a daemon......

I guess my daemon would be a golden eagle.......because he is lonely and proud and free in the skies and he protects his own.....then again maybe a dolphin because of their extreme intelligence and compassion.....oh I'm not sure yet......but he 's in here somewhere......I can feel him in the quiet hours but also screaming in my mind when the noises tend to cover every other voice.....

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Friday, January 11, 2008

Original Sin






Ever since I first took theology in school I wondered what this original sin stuff is all about. I even dared ask our teacher, an old and grey lady who seemed to never have achieved an orgasm in her life.

Of course the answers I got were a s vague as possible, something like 'everything that is bad', 'bad thoughts', 'bad actions' etc etc

And then of course when sex got in the picture original sin identified itself with it.

I think many people still think that sex was the original sin , partly because of the way the Church addresses it, how women are considered 'dirty', how everything regarding physical pleasure is considered sinful.

A few days ago I watched the movie 'Golden Compass', based on Philip Pullman's 'Northern Lights' book, the first of the 3 from his trilogy 'Dark Materials'.

So far I have only read the first of the 3 books and am going on the the next as fast as possible.

There are few times in one's life that something or someone opens up a completely different kind of thinking , of viewing the world, physical and spiritual, of perceiving one's existence.

I do not consider myself capable to even try to explain the many philosophical and spiritual aspects of 'His Dark Materials'.

I can only say that the concept that each human has a daemon that is the physical form of his soul, that this daemon changes shapes until it settles to a final one in adolescence, that the loss or parting from that daemon means an unconceivable pain for the human and in essence death, that Dust is particles of psychic awareness...

That many worlds exist simultaneously in our universe, that what we consider our soul has nothing to do with the Church God but is in essence our spiritual awareness.......that we are definitely not alone even when alone because of that soul

That the original sin was not in fact any stupidity said in a classroom where knowledge should but is not tought, but is in fact the act of awareness, of acknowledging your existence for what it is, deciding what this existence can and will be (in the trilogy when the daemons take on their final form) and living your life surrounded by particles of psychic awareness.

I have said so many times that I discovered in the recent years that I am in fact not an atheist but a spiritual agnostic. I want desperately this world to have some kind of meaning, but that does not mean following any kind of dogma because of fear.

Something P.Pullman said :"I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak… Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God."

Well that has changed with the release of the Golden Compass which has raised A LOT of argument from the Catholic Church, even though the movie has watered down the prime ideas of the book and of course has cut off the end, the sacrifice.

We owe it to our souls, to our own existence, to our own psychic awareness to guard and protect our daemon......as our daemon will always stay beside us....

When Lyra is trapped and is almost cut off from her daemon Pan (a process called intercision) her pain (played beautifully by Dakota Blue Richards and described superbly by P.Pullman) was almost touching my own soul, like if I was being cut off from my own soul, my own spirit which like a little animal lives inside my psyche and am still looking for its form, guarding and protecting me and always staying beside me, in the darkest hours but also the happiest.

Philip Pullman was influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost, by Dante's Divine Comedy and by Leonardo's painting Lady with an Ermine. Ermine being a symbol for royalty or aristocracy.
Pan's favorite form is that of an ermine signifying Lyra's nature. In contradiction to the Cronicles of Narnia His Dark Materials is a book that defies the usual good-bad ideas of the church but goes straight into the bigger issues like psyche and divinity and parallel universes and science. Pullman also refers to gnostic ideas, that the divine or in any case whatever is out there can only be touched or perceived through our own searching, our divine souls trapped in a material world.

So, to sum up, if original sin is the act of psychic awarenesses and if even sexual awakening is part of this process and of course of coming closer to the human essence that makes this trilogy one of the greatest for me.

It is in fact true that the church only tries to conceal original truths, drag us away from our oun awareness and try to put itself in the middle between us and whatever is out there.

But whatever is out there can never be perceived or understood by any church but rather by science and our own never ending search for psychic awareness.....

P.S. What is the form of my daemon?

P.S.2. Not to get things mixed up a person's daemon is not a 'devil' or a bad natured being. From Wikipedia :

A dæmon is a manifestation of the soul of a conscious person in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. In those universes with physical dæmons, they exist external to the human in the form of animals representative of the person's personality, although children's dæmons may change form at whim. The bond between dæmon and human is intimate, and dæmons must remain within a small distance of their human (with the exeption of witches); contact between a person and another person's dæmon is taboo, although dæmons may touch each other.

Generally, a person and his or her dæmon must stay within a short distance of each other. Forcibly separating a person from his or her dæmon causes unimaginable physical and emotional pain for both entities, often causing death; however, some cultures have mastered techniques that allow the dæmon to gain wider mobility. For example, witches, as well as humans who commit to becoming shamans, must endure grueling, ritualistic ordeals that involve leaving their dæmon for a time as they embark on a spiritual quest. After rejoining their dæmon they have gained the ability to separate from them. Both witches and shamans retain their intimate bond with their dæmon; the only change is in the distance they can travel apart from each other.

In the trilogy, a special guillotine is used by the General Oblation Board to separate people from their dæmon without killing them (intercision). However, unlike the ordeals undergone by witches and human shamans, the guillotine violently and permanently severs the bond between person and dæmon, and effectively renders the person a zombie; a being incapable of independent thought and without any identity. The General Oblation Board continually perfects the process through experimentation, but Lyra encounters at least one boy who could not bear living without his dæmon and dies. The separation process also generates a huge burst of energy, which was used by Lord Asriel to create a bridge into the world containing Cittàgazze.

Especially for Lyra:

Symbolism of named dæmons

The specific symbolic meanings of each character's dæmon-form are also noted.

Character Dæmon Meaning
Lyra Belacqua: Pantalaimon Moth: the longing of man
for God (Carl Jung), first form mentioned
Ermine: purity
(Renaissance Symbology), "favourite" form

Pine Marten: grace and

empathy (Celtic Myth.)[citation needed], settled form

Will Parry: Kirjava Cat: guardian and protector, especially in confrontational circumstances (Celtic Myth.), settled form. Kirjava means "mottled" in Finnish.
Lord Asriel: Stelmaria Snow Leopard: understanding one’s shadow side (Pagan Myth.), associated with the devil (Christian Symbolism), settled form
Marisa Coulter: Ozymandias (from BBC Radio)[5] Golden monkey (species never named): cleverness and curiosity (Chinese Astrology), settled form
Roger Parslow: Salcilia Terrier: fidelity (Celtic Myth.), common form, also explained to be a form suited for servants in the series
Mary Malone: never named Alpine Chough: settled form. A bird of the mountains.'
John Faa: never named Crow: the soul of magic and link to the spirit world (alchemical symbol), settled form
Farder Coram: Sophonax Cat: (see above) settled form
Serafina Pekkala: Kaisa Snow Goose: vigilance and protection (Celtic Myth.), settled form. The name Kaisa is a female name in Finland, although Kaisa the snow goose is male in the books.
Lee Scoresby: Hester Hare: The Moon and Resurrection (Pagan), settled form
The Master:
(of Jordan College)
Leonor (from BBC Radio)[5] Raven: Bird used by Odin to collect knowledge, settled form
John "Jopari-Stanislaus Grumman" Parry:
(aliases in likely order of origin)
Sayan Kötör Osprey: often linked to those of otherworldly vision; its also common a symbol of abundance, settled form
Carlo Boreal / Charles Latrom, CBE : never named Serpent: often linked with the ability to manipulate and influence people, and with cunning, settled form.

P.S.3. I adore Pan and absolutely respect Stelmaria and Kaisa

P.S.4. Dust is also the thing that connects humans to their dæmons. This being is actually somewhat of a soul that can talk and is in the form of an animal. It sends the Dust to the human to allow the human consciousness. Even in worlds that don't have apparent dæmons, they still exist. Though they are not animals by any means. In some other worlds your dæmon is your silent consciousness in the back of your head, that other voice that you have that gives you intuition. If the bond between a human and their dæmon is severed both the human and the dæmon die. If it happens after your Dust has settled on you and you become an adult you simply become a lifeless shell. (and that final paragraph is what I feared all my life and never could quite put it as eloquently as this, and what almost happened to me last August.....maybe this is why Lyra's and Pan's pain brought me to tears)

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