Tag: General

Holidaze

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

My favourite holiday was as a kid and I didn’t have to travel far for endless fun. Exploring the hills above our street or the gully behind the house was a magical playground for me and the neighbourhood kids.

The summer holidays seemed to go on for ever. But I wasn’t really aware of ‘holiday’ in the adult definition. It was just escapism. Today of course, we are hyper aware of the potential dangers of gullies and hills but in those days there was always an elder assigned to supervise any excursion.

If it wasn’t the backyard it was the beach. After a long drive we’d arrive at our destination where the river meets the sea. For a couple of weeks we would immerse ourselves in a place that could only be described as paradise.

Occasionally I revisit these places in dreams and while they seem distant and mysterious they remain with me as if printed on my cortex.

Yes, I do the annual holiday like others. South East Asia has become a favourite, especially Thailand as it seems to represent something special for me. The jungle, the temples, exotic aromas, different social practices. I am taken to another place. But travelling never really compares to those seminal experiences as a kid. Nowadays my favourite holiday is to lie in the grass and bury myself in a book:)

Ghosts are real

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

I don’t know because I don’t know everybody. There’s always someone (out there) who you can’t entirely appreciate unless you’re Buddha or the like. You spend most of your formative years learning until your ‘cup runneth over’ only to realise (even if only partly enlightened) that you don’t really appreciate anything. Then you lose your close friends and realise the party’s over. The ones that don’t make it. They’re so close you can think their very thoughts – and find you’re still talking to them. What do you think of this or that? Would you do things differently? What a laugh as you share a joke or two – in your mind. Don’t look back. Never look back. But God, what a party. Some exquisite moments. Ghosts are real. They’re just souls in the ether.  

Be yourself

How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?

In my youth I saw myself as kind of average – well yes, my physicality and stature but I would like to see myself as someone healthy in regard to my fitness and slimness. But that isn’t anything necessarily vain because a positive focus on oneself is considered normal.

But wait, a stranger cannot immediately ‘see’ you in the sense that they cannot fully appreciate you at first glance unless, of course, they have special powers. So I might be described as having authentic attributes averaging out my personality profile by way of weighing up the good and bad. The intention here is to appear as normal as possible and not to exhibit too many eccentricities. Of course, as one ages, abnormalities and physical anomalies become accentuated. This may be a reason older individuals seem to convey regular, moderated communication so as to 1/ convey a general neutrality 2/ offset misunderstanding or 3/ underplay perceived threats due to increasingly strange and individualised appearance. Or maybe they just get older and wiser. After all, why provoke somebody brandishing a weapon simply because you look increasingly strange? (Wha?!)

In an effort to appear too normal you could inadvertently describe yourself as a mannequin in a shop window or as dull as a plank of wood all the while thinking this as actually interesting.

Perhaps best be yourself or you may not appear so.

Dangerous curves

Who is your favorite historical figure?

Spending most of my life in the arts because of personal bias and without reasonable perspective, I might choose someone like Van Gogh, Rimbaud or Hildegard of Bingen.

But I am old enough to appreciate my limited view. Taking nothing from the aforementioned, I have wound up knowing more about less (or is it less about more, more or less? Dah).

A grander view would include Newton, Epicurus or Joan of Arc but I know little about them. These days I like the left field characters, the misfits that take the untrodden path. Moondog, Thelonious Monk, Erik Satie.

Oh but I forgot to mention the irresistible. A most uncompromising historical figure. Someone who has survived boundless human endeavour and vicissitudes. A force of matchless beauty and remains undiminished from centuries past. Oh, Venus de Milo you have dangerous curves! I have a crush on you (a stone crush).