Sunday, June 10, 2012

sea storm




Here we are enjoying the summer months and the warmer rain that this season brings in such surprising abundance. (see film attached, though I recommend turning the volume down for this one) Something to do with the jet stream being further south than usual at this time of year apparently. In the west of Wales six inches of rain fell in one day, which does seem unusual, resulting in a large amount of flooding. I go onto youtube to look for some amateur footage of the Wales floods and find that there are large storms and flooding in Australia as well. Heaviest rain in two decades. Over in America there has been thirteen inches of rain in Pensacola, Florida but there is also the emerging walking dead zombie problem. Cloud nine has been suggested. At least we have been recently prepped by the tv for this one, and anyone seeing a homeless person acting strangely is advised to contact the police so that they can come and kill them. Homeless person/brain eating zombie to be blown away, is there much of a difference anymore? Welcome to our caring sharing future.

The storm here destroys lots of deckchairs and the excellent quality beech wood is quickly bundled up and carried home to be recycled into something else, so that out of this destruction something new might be created. This is also familiar thinking by the look of it, although in my case I don't actually perform the destruction, though I have been whistling quite a lot lately.

The BBC iPlayer has a program called Coast, which recently featured a piece about the last clifftop farmer in this area and includes some stunning aerial photography of this part of the coastline. The episode was called 'Life Beyond the Edge' and shows a vanished way of life that looked perfectly idyllic; fishing in the morning and tending vegetables in the afternoon. So much for progress.

36 comments:

john said...

I always thought Cloud Nine would be a bit nicer than that somehow.

Anonymous said...

This is a great power
Thanks for the video

john said...

A pleasure Mr Kieselsteine. You are most welcome.

john said...

It's actually still raining and we have gales here again tonight. If anyone has seen the sun recently could they describe it for me, I seem to have forgotten what it looks like. We have nine months of winter and then this... talking about the amount of corruption in our country with my Mother today and she wondered whether it would be better anywhere else. I replied that although the corruption might be as bad everywhere at least they have better weather in other countries. I'm beginning to tire of this country. The Queen, the Lords and the old school ties, the warmongering, the whole lot. I doubt things will ever get better here.

P2P said...

we've ponder the very same things in finland - a couple of weeks ago, still, I played basketball on the street wearing my winter coat and wool socks.

yet today, after a sunny day, we sat in the park just moments before sunrise at two am, thankful for not being in imatra. and at jutta urpilainen, who was good and honest about attending the bilderbergers as a private citizen with expenses covered by the government, we laugh:

http://mesikammen.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/jutta-she-wolf-of-sdp/

john said...

Cheers P2P. The summer doesn't seem to be doing it here this year, it sounds like the situation might be similar in Finland. Is Imatra colder or ugly in some way. I don't know much about the cities in Finland. What's the deal with Jutta and the SDP? At least your getting some sun there, we still have the dark grey stuff.

A13 said...

I also wonder about leaving OZ..click three times with my heels...there's no place like home..there's no place like home blah blah....but "home" has been infiltrated and set up to fail everywhere where there are "established establishment"
Even here in sunny OZ the weather is dodgy all over the shop..but at least the place is so big the variations are multiple :)
Another awesome post by john and the power of that ocean is terrifying and brutal, yet from a distance the sound is comforting..
Hope the weather improves in your neck of the woods..have a good weekend John.
Cheers A13

P2P said...

I wrote a longish comment, but lost it due to being too dyslexic to decipher those "please prove you're not a robot" symbols. oh well...

to be honest, I have never been to imatra. it is located in southern carelia, just 7 km from the border of russia. in the lore of helsinki it lingers on as a place one can only wish to get out of. curiously, it was in its vicinity where hitler and mannerheim met during the latter's 75th b-day bash, a visit from which exists the only recording of hitler speaking in private. if there's any german speakers around, I can dig up that recording from online.

sdp stands for the social democratic party of f-land, an historical equivalent for social democratic parties of sweden and norway. jutta urpilainen is a school teacher, who became our finance minister a couple of years back with less than a decade of experience in politics. if one looks at this picture, it should be obvious where she comes from. what kind of a politician represents herself in fishnet stockings? and those mk eyes... the text in the image says "see you again in the name of lies and fishnet stockings again in four years!" and "before that me and jyrki are going to spread your and your children's and your grandchildren's money all over europe..."

which she pretty much did, together with jyrki. f-land took humongous loans to back greece up, and now we are in the front line of throwing money at spain. makes no sense, except if one takes to consideration the fact that all our heads of parties and our president (who doesn't really have much to say in our political decision making, but represents the "will of the electorate") clearly have their liabilities abroad - in brussels, in luxemburg, in frankfurt.

I know that it is not common knowledge around europe, but f-land has had a major role in international politics. helsinki has been the place to be for spooks for the past hundred years. kgb had more spies residing in helsinki than they had in ANY other city of the world throughout their history. I have no confirmed information on the representatives of the intelligence services of other counties, but it would be dumb to assume there wasn't a firm stance from the west also. I don't think this is valid anymore, but in the past if one had a finnish passport it was almost a clearance through customs, wherever - one of the most "trustworthy nationalities" to hold. handy.

this I can't confirm, but heard some time ago that throughout the late seventies and the eighties, when soviet union was still kicking it, nokia received tech from america in exchange of information on what was sold for the soviets. I have been suspicious for years over how a company making rubber boots and car tiers suddenly became the producer of world's most advanced mobile technology.

P2P said...

the presence of international influences shows in helsinki especially in the number of our secret societies and occult sects, which function very openly here (partly due to our language being a way to keep things hidden from a wider audience). I live just a couple of blocks away from the headquarter of theosophists, founded in the early twentieth century. they host gatherings with lectures on a variety of subjects each sunday, no membership required for attendance. members have access to a library with 4000+ esoteric books, the collection of which started already in 1890. to be able to use that library has been the only reason that has compelled me to join.

helena blavatsky is coined to have said that the "light will raise from the north," in context that is assumed to have pointed to helsinki. there's many people here who believe that to be true, and partly for that reason many are very open about their esoteric beliefs.

we also have a very strong rosicrucian sect in helsinki, not to mention the freemasons with three female lodges. I live next to freemasonic lodge that's quite active, they hold gatherings several evenings of the week. occasionally I've passed them when the guys have been smoking cigars wearing their aprons on the sidewalk, but not yet when I've had my camera with me. waiting for that day to come.

I think I've mentioned something about our cultural and lingual contacts to india. some time ago I read a thesis that compared some stories of our national epoch, kalevala, to stories of ancient hinduism. some of the stories didn't need any interpretation - they were exactly the same. I've also made a new fiend, a polish woman who's studied hindi in the past and now is here studying, among other things, finnish. she said she was personally amazed to find similar linguistic structures from hindi and finnish.

I also recently came across the fact that a very common finnish name tapani is a buddhist concept. my father's second name was tapani, my brother shares his second name with my maternal grandfather's name, veli-tapani, which means brother tapani. and, apparently, jyrki katainen also has tapani as his middle name. according to wikipedia:

The word is found in four different forms: tapanīya, tāpanīya, tāpinī, tāpanī. Tāpanī is the most common form used in titles and references, but this appears to be an abbreviated form of the more correct tāpanīya, which appears in the texts themselves. Deussen reads tapanīya,[3] which means "that which must be heated" or "gold". It also has the meaning of "self-mortification".

The process of self-purification is often compared to smelting gold, which is heated repeatedly in fire to remove any impurities. Deussen thus explains the term is as follows: "Tapanam (austerity) is burning pain-suffering or ascetic self-sacrifice; Nṛsiṁha-tapanam thus means ascetic self-surrender to Nṛsiṁha. Therefore Nṛsiṁha-tapanīya Upanishad is "the esoteric doctrine concerning the ascetic surrender to Nṛsiṁha."[3]

john said...

Cheers A13. Nowhere to run to, baby, Nowhere to hide, as the Motown philosopher Edward Holland Jr would have it. We have the same problems.

Thanks for the post on the zombie/cannibals, such a new and unexpected development. I'm still trying to figure out how a dope smoking bible reader turns into a face eater in such a short span of time. In amongst other research I turned up the Russian Krokodil problem. Something else I'd not seen before.

There is something strangely relaxing about these big seas. I have some funnier footage from the next day when I was joined by two friends for the recording of some close ups of the wave action and there are accompanying sounds of OOOOOH and AAAAAH coming in loudly on the soundtrack. Funny but not that helpful really. That's what friends are for.

john said...

Thanks P2P. I was completely unaware that I had a "prove your not a robot" test before commenting so i have managed to track it down and get rid of it now as I hate the things myself and also have a good deal of trouble making sense of them. (Hmm, does that mean I might be a robot? probably not)but apologies for that, it is very annoying to lose a comment and I would never want to discourage commenting here.

john said...

and thanks for the explanation of Imatra, I understand now. And Jutta swift rise from school teacher to finance minister is quite startling until one thinks that really anyone could do this job. In fact knowing anything about finances is probably a drawback to attaining such a position. Over here we have "cabinet reshuffles" every few years just to prove that a politician doesn't have to know anything about the jobs they do, where they all swap jobs. I can't think of anywhere else this happens. Roadsweeper becomes surgeon. Surgeon becomes Nuclear Physisist. It kind of doesn't work somehow but is ok for politicians.

That photo of Jutta is spooky, or is it her that is spooky. Showbiz/ Politics, I'm almost unable to see the difference. She must be fairly difficult to take seriously but whether you take them seriously or not the damage they do is the same.

We had an SDP here back in the early 80s but they didn't catch on for some reason, so we are stuck with the Conservative/Labour/LibDem rubbish. We were all mighty sick of the Tories so we voted Labour in, only to watch them morph overnight into the Tories. Hurrah for democracy!

john said...

I think politicians do what they're told or they are out of a job pretty quick. Or else they end up like Robin Cook. Or John Smith'ed to make way for "our man" Tony Blair.

Here we are forced to give the banks huge zero interest loans so that they might lend us some money at huge interest. Last time we were forced to give them £350 billion but they decided not to loan us any so we thought it best to do it again and hope that they will loan us some this time. Some of these banks are now called "largely state owned" but actually they are taxpayer owned. The politicains and treasury like to pretend it's their money but I don't think it comes out of their pockets somehow.

Three female freemason lodges? Unless I'm mistaken there are no female lodges at all in the UK, I've never heard of such a thing. The library sounds fascinating, I don't care who has it. Tapanam sounds a lot like alchemy to me. I better scoot. The cats making some revolting noises in the kitchen and I think she might be eating something alive. I hope shes not taken any drugs out there. keep up the good work.

john said...

yes she's eaten more than the face off that one

P2P said...

that's the weirdest thing. I just woke up from a very odd lucid dream because I heard loud bangs and such coming from our kitchen. opened up the laptop to write the dream down, and noticed the new comments in gmail. thank god there's no symbols to decipher anymore.

P2P said...

finnish female freemasonic lodges are an anomaly of the movement. I think I've heard UK has one. yet, it isn't an open thing here either that we have lodges for women - I know this from a friend who is a scholar in comparative religion. they know a lot about what goes on here, though seem to share them only as private anecdotes.

I also related the description of tapani to alchemy. I haven't really read that much into occultism of the middle ages - merely just something about john dee, not even anything by him.

politics and gullibility, two things that go hand in hand... personally I have wanted to keep my record clean of any participation to politics, thus I have never voted. there isn't an election in sight that would compel me to vote. it makes no difference. the only advice I have for people outside of f-and in our contemporary times is to not to participate in politics at all. that includes creating traffic for corporate media or buying their publications. if no-one care or participated, the charade would be over sooner than we dare to expect.

in f-land it doesn't matter whether people vote or not. internationally it is very common to have laws that state the minimum participation required from the electorate in elections, in f-land both the parliamentary and presidential elections are valid even if less than 1 % vote. which is fucked up no matter how one looks at it.

I remember stating some time ago that I am going to spend the summer out of offices, but, got one today. faith works in mysterious ways and literally, I got my *own* office. in the past I've worked in offices for companies dabbling with logistics, software, brokerage and marketing. now I finally scored a job on the field I am partly educated in - publishing. the only desk that was free in the office building was the vice ceo's who has apparently never really used it, so it was handed to me even though I do just minor ebook editing. it has a leather couch, art on the walls, and two windows facing the plague park, a historical cemetery turned into a leisure park where a couple of thousand people killed by the black death in the seventeenth century are buried. I'm too lucky.

A13 said...

JUst so you know...the female freemasons are known as the order of the eastern star.
It is open to both men and women..
http://www.mastermason.com/oes-ugcofa/

Also know as Rainbow girls ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Eastern_Star

http://www.chick.com/bc/1991/easternstar.asp

Very interesting...
Cheers A13

john said...

Cheers P2P. yes odd movements in the ultrastream probably, maybe there's a connection loose underneath somewhere.

The female lodges are interesting, I've never heard of such a thing. Sometimes it's difficult for me to understand a lot of the occult works as they seem to be written in a private language which only certain people can follow. I've had this problem with Fulcanelli, Blavatsky and others, works that I have read and come away none the wiser for it. A good introduction for me was The Zelator by David Ovason.

There's that saying along the lines of 'you may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you' in this country most people take very little interest in politics but the politicians keep very busy stitching the population up and lining their own pockets at the same time. One of Tony Blairs elections had the smallest turnout for an election since the end of the first world war. The Labour party trumpeted this as a landslide victory and an indication that people were so delighted with Labour that they didn't feel the need to actually vote, rubbish really but that was the line that was spun. The odd thing is that most of the distrust of politicians here comes not only from their obvious falsity but also the exposure of their expenses and other financial corruptions by the mass media. maybe this is the media owners keeping the politicians in check as many political career has been ruined by the media here. It might also be for undermining democracy but democracy isn't much good here anyway, it does seem like an illusion of democracy as there is no real choice. I think they like a disengaged public though, it seems to work for them here.

john said...

The office sounds good. I'd enjoy it. I had my own desk and pen tidy once, it made me feel very grown up.

john said...

Thanks A13. That is interesting. The women I've talked to here are very surprised to hear of these female lodges, they don't usually associate the freemasons with women as they seem to be generally male only things. Every little town here has the masonic hall though, they are everywhere. I don't know much about them, though I did read The Brotherhood by Stephen Knight a long time ago. Thanks for the links.

john said...

Oh and we have summer here at last. Three days so far! Someone said recently that they very much liked the english summer and that it was their favorite week of the year.

john said...

Hey P2P. cigarette machines in public! I haven't seen one of those for many years. we used to have them in train stations. Such a thing wouldn't be left standing around for very long here now.

P2P said...

I don't think I've ever seen a cigarette machine in f-land. also the last phone booths were removed in 2004 or 2005. the picture of that cig machine is from bremen in germany, taken in 2009. cigarette machines and phone booths live well also in italy, at least in rome they're all over the place. in f-land it has been illegal for some time to have cigs on display at shops, they must be kept out of sight so that, erm, kids don't know they exist. weirdly "electric" cigarettes can be advertised openly, and usually there's an add of them right by the counter in shops. I think they're the silliest thing - or the most cyberpunk thing.

I major in philosophy so I have come across many texts that make very little sense to me. according to a post-modern idea, we all have our individual "reading" of texts, making us always comprehend things a bit differently from one another. in my "reading" I consciously reflect things through my own experience, and only that. I always try to look behind the words into the writer behind them, trying to see if his experience of the thoughts put on paper corresponds in any way with what I myself have experienced. as an example, I have a tendency to read especially religious texts while keeping in mind that what they describe might be a metaphor for the evolution of an individual mind.

when it comes to "occult" literature, I've often had the feeling that the desire to hide or obscure things comes from the writers awareness of the arbitrariness of words themselves. I guess I get that feeling from the texts of others because I experience it when I write. if I wish to write about things that I consider of high value and being "truth" for me, I realize very quickly that they're only so for me. the only thing that I consider myself able to transmit for others in writing is a certain "sense" of how it is to be in a place of realizing one's truth(s). that's what stories are for. the most profound philosophical queries to the nature of the big q's (meaning of life, what is self, nature of consciousness, logic of reality...) I've read from stories, novels. robert pirsig has a special place in my heart.

in my reading I also enjoy julius evola, profoundly. his works can be labeled occult for being so politically incorrect that it is very hard to bring him in to the academic discussion. people love to think they know, and right now we seem to live in a world where many think they know exactly what constitutes a fascist / racist. the american polarization of issues is gaining ground around europe, and I hate it. when I follow the comments of blogs and such with americans "talking politics," the polarizing is often too blatant to bear.

P2P said...

I watched this interview in total yesterday, and among the many questions it raised in my head was one about her being a fossil of some sort. like an interesting fossil of the good-brother-network, the defining of an individual through his social stance (true socialism on my opinion). she seems to be speaking against that, yet her personal history is a blatant example of such a life.

she speaks against big schooling units and education on topics such as drug-ed, relationship-ed, etc. this is only me speaking, but I can honestly say that I would be a lot worse off if it were not for the internet and lions club sponsored "ed" in elementary school. I just recently found my old notebooks from fourth, fifth and sixth grade, and the relationship-ed especially was very useful. I showed it to my mother and she said that god, if only she had been taught those things about human relations already in school, her life would have been different. there's a lot of things there about self-respect, respecting others, listening more, speaking less, etc. good things. the drug-ed especially was very useful, because one cannot eliminate their presence by expecting the parental unit to brainwash their children into believing they're demon's work. I knew how all drugs looked like and how they were used on sixth grade. thanks to that I've never hurt myself by the use of them, and have known what to do if others were about to hurt themselves.

I went to a high school with 1000+ students, with a building designed for that amount of pupils (it had four floors opening up to a central circular area from which one could see to each floor down, and to the cafeteria in the bottom floor. the classes were held in the 'wings' of the center, with no benches on the hallways so people would always gather in the same huge space in between classes. around the central area, there was 300 computers to use for the students, with their own accounts to log into). in three years, I saw absolutely no bullying. we didn't have static "classes," but chose courses for each period and thus there were no 'clicks' that formed in between people. in most of the subjects there were several teachers to choose from, so if some teacher wasn't fit for me I could just go to the same course held by another one (in math, finnish and english there were up to six teachers to choose from). when Iserbyt argued in the video that it is a loss to move away from small schools that people live across the street from and the parents are tightly involved in the education, shills went through my spine. for me it just stands for as a way to enforce and hold societal restrictions and hierarchies. the very same she represents.

john said...

Cheers P2P. I suppose we all have a subjective or individual interpretation of others written words, but surely one of the points of writing is to attempt to convey meaning and ideas in a way that is comprehensible to the reader. I always presumed that many occult texts were written in a way that intentionally excluded much of a potential audience and was aimed only at a certain more specific reader who already had an idea of what you were talking about, a sort of code. I think many writers must be aware that their words can be easily misinterpreted and that you can either keep silent about certain things or you could codify it. If you reflect texts through your own experience, what happens when you read of something that you have no experience of?

john said...

I know of the name Robert Pirsig but don't know any of his works. I've not heard of Julius Evola at all, so I look forward to checking both their works out. there is much polarization in politics and political argument, maybe this is done to separate and make other, dividing people. I still read people cheering for their side and not noticing that we get stitched up left, right and centre.

When I was at school we were taught nothing of relationships and we had to muddle through pretty much on our own. Same with drugs, though when I was young not many people took drugs that I knew, this all changed in time as drugs became more mainstream. There were no computers etc. and in many ways I look back at the past and it is like another planet, we have lost much that was good and gained a bit of knowledge.

john said...

In many ways we didn't have much choice and were ignorant of the possibilities that we could have had, we were not encouraged to have curiosity and learning was not really seen as being that worthwhile. Sport was the big thing in my school. I was interested in art and playing the guitar. I played guitar with people during lunchbreak, loud rock stuff but was never offered any tuition in music so I taught myself.

john said...

And tomorrow I go to a wedding, only the second that I have been to in about twenty years. Funerals on the other hand...It will be good to celebrate. Thanks P2P.

P2P said...

in my reading robert pirsig has a special stance, for his books have come to me in very good times for me to read, providing something close to enlightenment (seriously! great literature). I had sold most of my books before moving to sardegna and intended not to take but a couple with me. a week before leaving I found zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance from a bench in the center in helsinki, just abandoned there at night. those four hundred pages kept me sane there where I had a common language only with a handful. it provided my mind a trip I'll never forget, it's a great book. I don't know what I am supposed to think about publishing in the early seventies of the states, for it was declined by 121 publishers. what were they thinking after reading it? 'no-one would want to read ie. by this'?

lila I found from the basement of a temporary uni library a bit over a year ago when looking for rand's fountainhead. I read it during last summer, and it too had its effects on my reality. six months ago I found a copy as a early nineties pocket edition from a used bookstore in rome, with a matching cover design to the zamm I found years ago. lila is a beautiful book, though the point of inquiry, morals, is tougher than values that he dealt very well in zamm, twenty years prior. both of those books I've given away, to be read by others. all the books I've really loved I've given away.

we celebrated the summer solstice tonight, the light of the sun shone through the night by the city shores. pure beauty.

john said...

Blimey! I read ZAMM but it was about thirty years ago and now I can't even remember the authors name. Good grief...

It's really good finding random books and even better when they turn out to be so useful to you. sometimes books seem to present themselves at just the right time but I suppose that if you read a lot this would happen. I know I haven't read Lila. I generally know that I've read a book but can't always remember much about them and I'm terrible on names.

Not that long ago I bought a copy of Peter Ackroyds Hawksmoor from a charity shop as I fancied reading it again. I actually have it already but I thought it would be easier to buy another copy than find the one I have, awful really, I could do with losing a few. There's a circle of Hell for hoarders and wasters, just right for me but it's money for charity if nothing else. Maybe I should start leaving them on benches. Books that keep us sane, yes, I have music like that. ZAMM was declined by 121 publishers, well he's bloody persistent I'll give him that. I'm joking of course, it does seem ridiculous.

As for the hoarding, one of my nicer jobs involved working with books, but one of the weirder parts of the job was taking vans full of books to be recycled. Emptying boxes of books into skips in a mad hurry, certain books would catch my eye and I'd pull them out and rescue them and have to donate money to keep them, so I have a home for these unwanted waifs and strays which otherwise would have been pulped. It seemed such a shame to see all these books abandoned in a skip, sometimes with the rain pouring onto them, especially as I had been brought up to respect and look after books. The ownerships only temporary anyway.

john said...

I'll have a look out for Lila, I've not read anything else by him. Mind you I could read ZAMM again now and it would be new again.

The solstice sounds good. It was raining here, our weathers all over the shop. There's even rumours of foul play, failing crops and all.

john said...

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/youtube_live/

There's a crane in here at the moment, it seems to be moving stuff, there seems to be smoke

john said...

It looks like reactor 4 is being dismantled.

P2P said...

what with the weather you've described, I wouldn't leave books on benches unless they were covered - like bus stops. how great would it be to miss a bus and find a great book to accompany the waiting... or, better yet, why not build library boxes and scatter them around the neighborhood? I'm pretty sure the person who left ZAMM on the bench here years ago has no idea how meaningful that gesture was for another person...

pirsig has only published the two books mentioned, which is no surprise when looking at the vastness of their philosophical content. plus they're both largely autobiographical, which in itself creates certain boundaries if that's the way one wishes to write. I love the travel theme in both, in lila he's living in a boat and sailing from the inland to NYC and beyond... the book holds in it great description of the feel of manhattan. what a mind he has.

I think I have to take a tour around the used book stores here, to find zamm again as a tangible print. there's a link in my blog in the latest post to a good ebook. I got an ipad from work and it's really pleasant to read from, but it's still not the same as having a book in one's hand. books smell divine.

oh, we spent part of the solstice night by a squat sauna by the shore with an ocean view, free to use by anyone who brings their own wood. at some point a rather drunken man in his mid-thirties joined our group and had me roll his joints for him, and told me of his past. he had worked as an analyst here in helsinki in the turn of the millennia, analyzing the polls preceding elections. he said that because of a fuck-up of his and his supervisor's during the presidential election of 2000, sdp's tarja halonen became the president instead of esko aho. apparently aho had had a clear lead, but because of their "fuck-up" the media spin changed enough opinions of those who want to be on the "winning side."

after the 'success' of that fuck up, he was hired by the bbc and did the same work for nine years in london. he was rather bitter for having lost that job three years ago, a job he got 170 pounds for an hour - nowadays that data analysis is done in india. I said to him that isn't it a bit weird to have such polls preceding elections if in truth their impact on the electorate is as wide as he was making it appear, and he just smiled.

P2P said...

if ebooks aren't too intimidating, then I will go on recommending this link for julius evola's works. I have ride the tiger, doctrine of awakening and yoga of power in my bookshelf. they're published by a rather obscure publisher called inner traditions. the translations from italian to english aren't by any means perfect - what I mean by that is that they aren't as pleasurable to read as they could be... ride the tiger is decent, but the doctrine of awakening is really painful to read because of the translation. lately I've read through yoga of power, and that translation I can bear well. all in all, they are recommendable works. more generally, I enjoyed this article some while back on him.

the first book by him I read was revolt against the modern world that I got from a skinhead friend. I guess there's something a bit off in me for being very compelled by that book. modernism has been one of my personal windmills for a very long time.

john said...

Cheers P2P and thanks, I'll have a look at those links. I can see why the BBC would want to employ him, that's right up their street. The media have a lot to answer for. here we are supposed to pay for the BBC with a tv license, with heavy fines enforced for non payment. I don't have a tv and for years get threatening letters from the the license people. Eventually one actually came round on a Sunday morning but when they were welcomed in didn't want to come in as it already proved that we didn't have one so we made them look round the house anyway. "yes i can see you a keen reader" etc