My life is all about life then

"Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans."

John Lennon, singer, songwriter, musician (1940-1980)

The Perfect World

"God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods, hear me:

Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds -- peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and nights are divided into seasons of conduct and governed by rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one’s nudity, and then to be weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to destroy a soul with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then to wash the hands when the day’s work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one’s best self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully -- and then to forget all as though memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly -- and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme won- ders, the ripest fruit in God’s garden, the master-thought of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?"

Khalil Gibran, The Madman (1918)

Done with an Ipad while waiting for my friend in an Apple store...

...and I don't want anyone to draw any hasty conclusions about me or about recent events in my life...Only the spur of the moment directed my hand.

Holland Park

And particularly the Kyoto Garden inside. Constructed as part of the Japan Festival 1991 on the occasion of the centenary of the Japan Society in Britain.

It's a very quiet place, set inside the more wooded part of the park. Designed as a "tour garden" (typical traditional garden style in Japan) because it symbolises and emphasises on natural elements.

Ocean, forests, steep mountains, gorges: recreation of the grandeur of Nature.

The stone path guides us through.

Tsukubai (stone washbasin)

 

I can't remember the exact name and signification of this Japanese practice to tie keys and messages to the trees. Can anyone light my toro?

Toro (stone lantern)

 Shishi-odoshi (bamboo alarm for animals, and in our case it is more specifically a sōzu): When the right part (it's hollow bamboo) is filled up almost to the brim by the water trickling from the left part, it rotates forward and empties itself of all the water - but in the process it bangs sharply against the stones, therefore scaring any animal in the vicinity. Hence the name shishi-odoshi, which literally means "scare the deer".

First day of Spring

 Hampstead Heath

Hampstead Heath 

Writer and dramatist, best known for having penned The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This man needs no introduction 

I haven't mentioned yet that all the pictures have been taken at Highgate Cemetery,
and this cemetery has got many eyes...

Holly Village, Highgate, North London, Henry Astley Darbyshire, 1865 

 View of Central London (a bit far out, I know) from Parliament Hill (Hampstead Heath)

Another view of Central London from Primrose Hill

All of the above are wooden sculptures in Regent's Park (near to London Zoo) 

In Regent's Park 

Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury, a stone throw from Kelsey Park,

Beckenham

Kelsey park, Beckenham, London

Mandarin duck, in case you were wondering 

 

St Paddy's day, London 2012