the ever present attraction of a monastery
feeling peace, longing for a longer stay, fearing what i might find
but then what is fear
attracting and keeping at bay
like so much else

ski: .. xcuse me sir, xcuse me madam, would you care to hold my hand while i walk with u a while..?
..talk with u a while?..
amateur wizard: Not a bad Idea. yes Madam, I dont mind.
So lets talk first abt my problems
ski: yes lets. i hear so little of them, u wld think they dont exist
amateur wizard: U see, I just lost my pet, looking for it on the street could we look for it whjile we walk
ski: ah! a mission! nothing better than a mission to cover up whatever may be missing!
amateur wizard: Giv't a try?
ski: what are we looking for?

this piece of wisdom from my dearest ilan, shared a long time ago as well:

An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching her grandchildren about life.
She said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked her Grandmother, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee woman simply replied... "The one you feed."

and this one from past lives in Kampala (2004):

smiles on my face and thoughts of sharing
new places, new found energies and renewed inspiration
red earth, lush green nature, colourful fishing boats on seemingly infinite lake victoria
how can one fly over a lake for 1 hour and only have passed over ca 1/20 of the entire size of it??

african dimensions boggeling the mind once again

cities built on 9 hills, rainbows after morning rain showers, fresh mangos & pineapples melting on the tongue for breakfast, tinny kwasa kwasa music permeating the room and dreams throughout the nite, smiles and well wishes from complete strangers that feel like long lost friends

jokes and laughter everywhere, all the time

a visa for a month instead of the intended stay of two weeks - the joking smiling visa man hopes i fall in love while here and wont want to leave after work is done - he's just making it possible

as long as i have complete strangers tempting fate for me, one day it will all fall into place and i will fall all into love

staring out from the top of one of the nine hills, watching the traffic crawl thru kampala, students of makarere university all dressed up and ready to graduate and embark on the next episodes their lives will bring, i think of my life, my friends - my extended family on and beyond this incredible and monstrously big content, filling me with warmth and wonder and the desire to share.

bringing you all with me in thought and on my shoulder, from Kampala

going through old emails, i stumble across old musings..
they represent glimpses, momentary fragments of headspace, occasionally interspersed with emotional input - too rare to lose for posterity :)
mind that these posts are not current thoughts and things ski says, altho i suspect these issues dont become obsolete too quickly in my particular little life..

here's one noted down while flying high:
Amsterdam - Addis Ababa - Lusaka December 2002
It is a bizarre sight - flying along what feels like a straight North-South axis - with an almost full moon (that time of the month again) shining brightly at me to my left, and, five seats and two aisles over, the last hues of yellow, orange and purple making way for the blues of early evening entering the brightly lit airplane to my right. Jumps to mind the commonly referred to and allround accepted notion of leaving The West and going to The South. Going South is certainly true, but leaving The West?
A few more hours to go until a lightning speed plane change in Addis and an onward journey delivering me in Lusaka at 4am - only an hour difference in that artificial time-zone system, and that only since a little while. A few weeks back there was no difference in the hours in which my Collegues From The South and I showered in the morning, logged into our communication systems to wish eachother a good day, Iwe! Mulishani!, took our lunchbreaks, and logged off for the day. No difference - except in how we as individuals chose to complete our idiosyncratic timetables. But now winter has arrived - and, being control-freaks from the North-West, we adjust our artificially constructed reality of 60 minute chunks to conquer the to us so inconvenient ways of Nature. So, now reality in Lusaka is an hour ahead of reality in The Hague or Paris or Nuernberg. One hour less for me to read all I need to read and write all I need to write.
Just having finished my lunch and looking out over what is now a pitch black sky on both sides of me, my bodily systems are no longer convinced that what they have just devoured was indeed a midday meal - I can feel sleepiness encroaching, and by the looks of my fellow passengers, my body isnt the only one that is confused.
No major differences in time zones, an almost straight North-South line of travel, a half-day spent lounging on trains and in airport gates, and still, as the sunlight leaves us and the moon does all it can to compensate, as we fly over forests, towns, cities, nations and continents, the human bodies on this vehicle jetting through the skies all quietly nod off and take their rest.
Are these thoughts rummaging around my head because I will be witnessing a phenomenon of nature of which I have been told it has the power to interrupt schedules adhered to by nature day after day after endless day? When the sun is out, daytime beings are full of life - when the sunlight is obscured, be it by the earth or by the moon - the systems propelling daytime beings ever forward ever onward in life are put on standby, as if by a simple ON-OFF switch.
But before my day-time being is conquered by the shades of night around me, I must return to the book that is beconing me. The Social Organisation of Innovation. Much different from the Social Shaping of Technology? Much different from many of those books I've perused over all these years? But one anecdote has already been glimpsed,and - as been done since grade 7 - it must be transcribed for posterity, and increased chances of sticking around in my cratered memory. Here goes:
"When the centipede was asked in which order he moved his hundred legs, he became paralysed and starved to death because he had never thought of it before and had left his legs to look after themselves." A warning for the weeks ahead?