ROADTRIP TO CHICAGO

Technically, its not a "roadtrip", but on the weekend of 15th Sept - i took a 2 hour flight to Chicago - situated in the State of Illinois (unofficially known as the "Prairie State" - and BTW that is the city flag of Chicago)..

So anyway, i had an amazing weekend. We booked hop-on, hop-off bus tours in order to see as much of Chicago as humanly possible and did we ever!

From the moment I landed, I was in awe of this city! A bustling New York style (only clean and not as crazy) city – my hotel was situated on the Magnificent Mile which is a parallel road of designer stores deluxe on every side of the road for a mile! It can be compared to Sandton City, New York and Cape Town mushed into one city!

Surrounding all the bling is the most amazing architecture, old and new boasting some of the tallest buildings and most luxurious apartment buildings. There are endless amounts of museums and art galleries and to be very detailed: 500 parks - literally! When you get to the edge of the city you are greeted by Lake Michigan.. when I saw the lake I was awestruck! It's so big, it looks like the ocean, you cannot see the end of this lake AND it has a man-made beach, so it really feels as if you are next to the ocean!

We saw and did everything from cheese, wine and chocolates, to “cutting the pavements” to the point of blisters, to fitting on $blank-blank Christian LouBoutan Shoes that I can never afford but who cares! It was a fun filled weekend of late nights, great sights and wonderful food! Deep dish pizza and jazz music, people who wear their designer jeans at the right length (atlast!) and a river that runs through the city.. So many celebrity hot spots – we saw the line up at NBC studios to the Jerry Springer show lol..

If i wasnt so inlove with Denver, and the weather in Chicago (according to the natives) was not so bad, i would have my Louis Vuitton luggage packed and heading for Chicago!

THE BIG QUESTION:

I have been asked a lot of late why I feel the need to have my personal life read on the world wide web by everyone.. it seems that my need to be known and my random pronunciamentos, with its non-traditional clotted cliches and deep philosophies of my own heart which sometimes turned into a kind of poetry, both majestic and absurd and evidently questionable or atleast questioned have been a flurry of discussion!!


So on that note – I don’t have an answer to that question except to say that the virtue of my philosophy is on one hand for self reflection and self evolution.. I don’t proclaim to be anything of a philosopher, but only to hope that my woes can be remedies to someone, that my elations can be experienced vicariously by others. Why are my opinions important? Maybe to someone they are and to another they are not.. when my life struggles for utterances in the flesh, I find myself in here. When my life is filled with The glorious sap of expressive pleasure gushing through my veins with a continual intoxication of delight, i find myself in here...

Maybe no one hears me, maybe no one cares.. My words are still my words.. on here.. when I am long gone – this will be me, forever.

The silent forests, the mountains covered with briars and flanked by precipices, the frozen plains and the rugged fields of Colorado, the sunsets from my bedroom, the data on my computer at work, the walk home down 16th street mall full of crazy people, the lonely silence of my silent dreams.. all of this (my life) persuades me more and more that I am resolved never to be content with empty words or wasted experiences, if I am to make a difference in this life and in this world, how can my words and my life remain clandestine?

I hope the prolific seeds of my words sown in this WWW touches a heart somehow and that’s the only answer I have for now.

:-)

GOOD OLD HOLLYWOOD!

Just for fun…

Well, most of you know I am a movie fanatic.. if I have not seen all the movies on regular circuit AS well as the independent theatres, my life's equilibrium and chi just doesn’t feel balanced!

So to that end, I was in deep thought today pondering on this world of movies and how we always comment that “its not realistic” yet why would we go watch a movie for realism?? How boring would that be? People will watch an action movie and see some of the scenes and say “that’s not realistic”, but yet go watch a movie about hobits and dragons and say “awesome!”
fickle! fickle! teehee

So, in that vein.. I have found a few things interesting in this hi-tech 21st century we live in about movies and computers:

The movies have lead me to believe that one day computers would be doing everything and man wouldn’t have to even move his finger…Yet here I am .. doing my own laundry! What’s up with that??

In the movies…

All you have to do to get secret information from a computer is log on – if it asks you for a password – you only need 3 tries and you will SURELY get it (trust me i have seen it done - no one has ever failed in the movies!) and then simply type "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard and Voila!!

Furthermore – even more disturbing is that Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds guaranteed.

When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.

Any photograph can have minute details pulled out of it. You can zoom into any picture as far as you want to. Example: "What's that fuzzy thing in the corner? I don't know, let's check. It's the murder weapon! Let's look under the bed for the killers shoes. no, just some comics

HA HA you gotta love Hollywood and the era we live in!

Best books that i have read this month:

1) Candide - Voltaire (best book ever - ever)
2 The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey, Mrs. Carver, edited by Curt Herr
3) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
4) Romances and Gothic Tales - edited by Franz J Potter
5) The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice

I plan to read 5 per month so the updates and recommendations will be updated in Oct!

MORTALITY

It is sometimes in the places of mortality where death is emanate that you find life and its meaning, it seems that death has a funny way of making us aware of life… I walked through a small cemetery on Sunday, September 9th, just absorbing the quiet and the tranquility.. this is a place that generally people stay away from unless they come to grieve, say goodbye and lay to rest the once living.. but its in this quiet place where I look at the tombstones of people who once walked as I walk and it reads “ Here lies… 1887 – 1905” and I wonder what the “–“ was filled with…. I sit and think about how much respect and reverence people give to the graveyard sites where people are buried, yet when you step out, there is so little regard for life.. for the places where people live.. why people will look at, with tears, and touch tombstones of ones they will never see again in this life and yet spit on, kill, rape and abuse the ones they see everyday.

The graveyard is one of the richest places on earth.. though it holds no physical treasure… it’s a place that is filled with many dreams that have not been fulfilled, songs that have never been sung, books that have never been written.. lives that have not fully lived, people who took all their potential with them and it will never be used to build an aircraft, save a nation, bare and raise a child or create a masterpiece…

And some have died breathing their last breath having given every part of that breath meaning while it exuded from them and the legacy they leave behind doesn’t stay in the “-“… it continues in what they have left behind them…

This is a place that teaches my soul to be still in the presence of mortality and know it’s a certainty that someday I too will have this place.. but for now.. I have THIS place… and it makes me appreciate.. life. MY life.

A Saint of old once said "You can't take out of this world, what you have BEEN given, but only what you HAVE given....a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage"

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid
It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

William Ernest Henley