Having a Macro Moment

Mon Môme

...has just won The Grand National at
100 to 1.

My instincts about Irish Invader kept me on the edge of my seat during the race,
and I have to admit I was surprised he did not come in the first four.

Horse racing seems to be even in the most repressed Irish townie's blood.

Studying form is a national pastime.

Better luck next time...

Only a Frenchman

... would come up with the idea of "le moi profond".

The influence that Bergson had on Proust inspired an analysis of time and personality that continues to fascinate every reader who comes under their sway.

Bloggers seem obsessed with time and with the influence it has on every encounter on the Net. Speed is everything these days and the wider, more fluid reality of all the posts that have been made in the past few years seems to drive us forward with an urgency that makes expressing a "moi profond" very difficult indeed.

I had reason to think about this in relation to the objection some posters have to those who bump old threads in chat rooms. I consider that posts I made last year have as much reality now as they did then. The machine and its ticking temporality seems to insist otherwise.

Internet historians are already in the making.

I wonder what they think...

Curmudgeon? Moi?

I am not noted for being awkward.

The menion Davimack made in a comment here recently set me thinking.
(This, BTW, is one of the ways gardeners keep themselves awake in the
garden. There's nothing like "thought" to keep one alert.)

The question of "niceness" and how it fits into a functioning ego is of much
interest to me. I don't see that being "nice" is a great asset in life.
I am not, after all, "British". The cult of niceness hit the mainland
possibly centuries ago and it continues to produce very strange habits of
manners and protocol that would have you laughed out of court in the average
Irish home. There is something robust and vigourous about the Irish.

And normally I don't have to think much about "The Irish", either.
When you are embedded in a culture, you can take it or leave it, it seems to me.
However, whenever I travel in "le monde anglo-saxon", every time I open my mouth it seems to be an excuse for people who have never been to Ireland to ask interesting questions (which I invariably cannot seem to answer) about Saint Patrick and the nicities of sheep farming. Ireland travels in the popular imagination as a rustic place full of jolly rustics. This has absolutely nothing to do with my daily life and I join in the fantasy as best as I can.

That is as nice as I can get; though if you read the last post in the thread in the title bar above, niceness, even in the nicest person, has its limits...

In Narrative Mode

I rarely try narrative. Can't handle it, to be honest.
Years reading Joseph Conrad and Henry James lured me into the sideroads
of expression, where metaphor, vagueness and a love of literary reverie
replaced any desire to actually find out what happened next.

I offer this as an explanation to myself.
I should, by now, have managed to organise my photos into some
presentable form, preferably a linear record of out time "Down Under".

Instead of applying myself, I spend whimsical moments wondering about
RGB and ICC.

The colours have taken over...

Freycinet National Park Entrance, Tasmania

Freycinet National Park Entrance, Tasmania
Originally uploaded by rosewoodoil

HBW!

Wednesday has come round again, inviting photographers to post
"Happy Bokeh Wednesday!" photos galore.

The most inspiring aspect of blogging an chat room chit-chat is
the delightful way so many posters join into a sort of cosmic
revelry, greeting one another with hyperbolic catch phrases
and wishing one another well.

If only real life were so joyful...

I seem to have been blessed with a positive spirit which
over fifty years on a craggy island in the Atlantic has done
little to dampen.
I watched a weird programme about Darwinism and memes on TV recently and
the thesis is that we are deluded in the question of believing in free will
and basically all our seemingly well thought ideas are not what they seem.
We are simply the expression of memes.

What utter nonsense...

Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear...

The last few minutes were spent struggling, yet again, with code.

Discussions flare up ever so often about the mandatory link that is requested
by Flick to the photo page, whenever you use a photo uploaded there.
It's all too complicated for words, and people have spent precious hours of their
lives wondering about this and trying to comply. All the links I tried today got swallowed into the Blogger system.
As usual I hope to be forgiven.

Frankly, I'm exhausted in any case. The weekend went swimmingly with family and friends blowing in from the four winds to chat, eat and, to my great delight, bring the house back to life with laughter. Somehow, when you leave a house for a few weeks it begins to feel lonely. All the visitors have cured this.

THEN... we went to the cinema yesterday afternoon.

I suppose I should recommend "Il Divo", but I have to admit that the experience of following a Machiavellian plot that sought to reveal the true nature of the politican, Andreotti, as his career was exposed to public scrutiny, will probably leave all a-political types like myself... well... tired.

The acting is astonishing. As I have often found reason to mention here, years in Latin class did little to endear the vigourous politics of Italy and Greece to my somewhat simple North European mind. I left the cinema very contented in the knowledge that the years in the 'eighties and 'nineties that spawned many Mafia films should never return. But I found the experience draining. Such energy spent to so little avail is sad.

The real Mr Andreotti is said to be hopping mad at the portrayal of his person and his motivations as represented in the film. Somehow I understand why this should be so...

The Italian language is fabulous in this film. It will be interesting to discuss it with friends at more dinner parties to come.