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Form filling

Today is my birthday.

morning flowers

To mark both the occasion and the rather unusual fact that I feel good about it I have filled in and will today despatch two sets of forms.

The first is an application to train as a listening volunteer for the Samaritans. The second is to submit a photograph to the selection process for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Apart from submitting forms the day may include coffees with friends, stroking yarn at the new I Knit shop, lunch with a friend, post-school tea and cake with the spawn and in the evening (so I was told last night) friends have organised a small supper-and-get-together, babysitter included.

Gift to self? Neither an iPhone nor an Asus Eee, sadly. Not this year. But a ticket to Speed Dating for Artists at the ICA:

Those taking part talk to someone for four minutes at a time, the crucial difference is that each of you will bring a piece of your own work – a drawing, a sculpture, a design, an mp3, anything you can carry in to the ICA – to talk about.

How superbly thrilling/appalling might that be? I may or may not be moved to give an account of the experience after it’s happened.

And just in case anyone’s in any doubt on the matter, pisceans absolutely totally rock. Starting at the beginning of the sign and working through we have, in my small personal sample of gorgeousness:
FirstSpawn – polymath etc;
Friend T – architect, photographer etc;
Dave – writer, poet, photographer etc;
Friend F – painter, sculptor etc;
Krista – rhetorician, writer, photographer etc;
Dale – writer, poet etc;
Ivy – poet, artist etc;
Jeff – rhetorician, writer, photographer etc (and my twin – happy birthday!);
Me – etc 🙂

Have a wonderful day whatever date you were born on!

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links for 2008-03-17

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links for 2008-03-16

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links for 2008-03-15

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Baaaaaa

Brilliant.

Of course one could always count them. But I don’t need to. Still soooooo tired. I’ll be asleep in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

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Some words of explanation

… as to why I found Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk so powerful.

You see (she says, getting a bit pink about the cheeks, gazing at the ground and shuffling her feet in an embarrassed and highly British fashion), you know that experience she talks about, of being at one with the universe an’ all, having no boundaries, cosmic peace love and understanding etc etc?

Yeah, well, I’ve had that experience too. Luckily I wasn’t having a stroke at the same time. As far as I know.

Once only. While meditating. Apart from the visual stuff – I had my eyes closed. But otherwise pretty similar. No me, no you. All me, all you. The kind of experience, as her extremely compelling retelling indicates, that you don’t forget in a hurry.

This raises, of course, fascinating questions about meditation, neuroscience, phenomenology (thanks Jeff), metaphysics, religion, spirituality, morality and no doubt many more.

Unfortunately my brain is currently tired and slightly depressed and my body has reluctantly to haul itself to the sorting office some distance away to pick up some parcels. But since the above issues have been of considerable interest to me for a good few years perhaps I’ll get it together to expatiate upon them some other time.

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links for 2008-03-13