4. Thoughts on the Eve of New Moon

Life without changes would be like a stagnating pond, reeking of the rotting vegetation. Every change has a reason behind it. I suspect that even when some maniac crashes into my car and destroys it without my fault, in some strange way I must have brought that event upon myself. Perhaps, it was some subconscious wish, or some weird dream that realized itself without my knowledge. Unfortunately, nobody can assure me that bad changes in life will turn out in the end  to be beneficial ; or that good changes which made me leap with joy when thez appeared will not end in howls of despair and grinding of my false teeth.  Every change in life, even when made deliberately, is a blind shot, but it is always I who presses the trigger.  Sometimes I hit the bull’s eye, more often I miss the target , but whichever way it happens, I reload my automatic change device and wait for the next opportunity, looming into view sooner or later. Quite often I get premonitions that a change is going to happen in the near future.It may come unexpectedly, but I think that it is simply lack of concentrated attention on what is going around us that accounts for the surprise. I watch the passing clouds and their shape, I read the runes hidden in the wild geometry of the trees and consult a little spider who comes and goes, bringing  the latest news from the web. When I spot an approaching change, I shiver with forebodings and uncertainties, but I get ready for it. Tomorrow is the new moon – the second one in August. What will it bring? My inner barometer augurs stormy days, rain, sunshine and a wonderful rainbow for the finale. cJm

3. Dancing Patterns of Probabilities

I love coincidences, even though I don’t think for a second that there is such a thing. Everything in the universe moves in a perfectly synchronized dance of subatomic particles, those swirls of energy of which many years ago brilliant physicist Fritjof Capra wrote “ quantum theory has shown that particles are not isolated grains of matter, but are probability patterns, interconnections in an inseparable cosmic web.” (Tao of Physics, 1975). This is what I see as coincidences or synchronicieties in my life: universal probability patterns, caught in the mesh of the InterNet, like those 153 fishes in the Gospel story which, in a roundabout way, brings me to my tale about weird coincidences. Two days ago was my birthday. Nothing special about that except for some weird pattern of eights which happens to be my birth-number. Under the influence of  the Virgo energy, I started refreshing my memory about this constellation from the astrological point of view and that somehow lead me, in turn,to write  a short entry on my other blog about the symbolism of Virgo-Piscesin the Gospels, where I incidentally mentioned also the ancient symbol of vesica piscis, used by the early Christians as their secret sign. I must have established some pattern in my thoughts, because I decided then to explore that symbol on the Web. The most intriguing of my finds was an amazing photo by the Hubble telescope of a cosmic vesica piscis in what the astronomers called Southern Crab Nebula. And as I looked at the picture on the Hubble website, my eye caught the date of the publication: 24 August 1999! Now, that’s what I call a beautiful dance  of synchronistic patterns of probability in my insignificant nook of life. But what it is all  supposed to mean – that’s another matter.

2. Black Swans Can Be Choosers…

Native ducks are looking wearily at two black freaks from Downunder. We all know that swans are white, so black swans are an illusion, negatives of the species which someone forgot to develop. You can’t see them at night, because they merge into the darkness. But these two are real and feel quite at home in London’s Regents Park lake. One decided to take a lunchtime nibble at the English grass, but whether it had found it less tasty than the Oz variety, I don’t know. Maybe grass tastes the same, whereever it grows. If not, then the antipodean immigrant might have sighed with a swan/like nostalgia“…and said black swans can’t be choosers”. But if you read on, you will find that in some delicate matters they can actually choose whether to be gay or straight.  I wonder if this pair got themselves accidentally involved in a migratory flight of mute swans. That lot when asked which way was Tasmania, hissed ssomething vague and so the two black swans landed in Great Britain. One island is very much like another one, though this one is a bit colder, perhaps. For the Europeans the shock of discovering that not all swans are white must have been as great as for the black swans to find out that not all men looked like the Aborigenes. The most intriguing story about black swans, however, is that two cobs (males) often form a “homosexual” bond, inviting a pen (female) to their nest to have a brief love affair with one of them and lay her eggs in their nest, after which she is chased away from the nest which is already occupied by two male bonded for life “carers”. I haven’t been able to discover the sexual orientation of these two immigrants, but it doesn’t matter to me what they do in their nest. My ambition is to find a black swan in company of a white raven. Now that would be a Photo of the Year!  

1. Green Oil On My Local Pond

One afternoon the water on my Hampstead Pond was as clear as angel’s tears, reflecting only the blue sky and dotted by white seaguls and other birds. The following morning a green sickle of algae hooked more than two thirds of the water, making the birds to retreat into a safer place. Green algae are not to be trifled with. They are Nature’s wonderful biofuel, containing oil which is clean (doesn’t pollute seas if spilled) and much more productive than the black goo flowing through pipes from the Middle East, Russia and other oil-producing countries. They are already succesful green oil pond-wells in America, but the powerful dirty oil interests are trying hard to ridicule the idea of producing many different oils apart from gasoline (petrol) from algae. Anyway, I am not an expert on the miracles of green algae carpets, but you can find a lot of useful info on the web. I only wanted to show what unharvested wealth is growing on my local pond. I wonder when people will grow wise to what the Nature can offer them in their own gardens? Maybe, the day will come when having a car in the garage will also mean having a green oil pond in the garden. Sometime soon, I hope, because later than soon may be much too late to save our beautiful planet.