Junk the funk

Gloom Over Bloom

The number of times I have written about the joy of living and the pursuit of happiness would suggest to some that I never experience periods of funk, where dark clouds loom as harbingers of the rains of depression.

Like a cloud, it creeps up on you from a height where things might not seem discernible until the cool of the shadow hits your skin, the direct impact of sunrays abruptly taken from sight. As you look up, you hope the cloud is moving and that soon the sunrays will return, but you can never predetermine how large a cloud might be.

Depending on the weather of life, the cloud might linger for longer than is comfortable for the soul and body; it begins to affect your spirit. This is where you need a lift.

Count My Blessings

It was in the shower this morning (and a lot of interesting contemplation happens under a showerhead) that I realised I seem to have lost that lovely feeling, a kind of lethargy where the desire to do anything is lost. Plans percolate in the mind but never reach an execution stage, with procrastination unwittingly taking the fore and control.

There are many things I have had the intent to do but cannot seem to be bothered with, apart from feeling swamped by the underachievement or the lack of it. The inability to produce is like an infirmity.

I began to think of how to get out of this rut: by cultivating a spirit of thankfulness, getting out to do something even though I do not feel that sociable, then reflecting on what things I have wanted done. Moreover, I should stop thinking in terms of the means but rather the opportunity to do.

Thought Picnic: Know when to run

Charting a course

In life, we determine our paths; some are not yet clear before we begin, while in others, circumstances and situations shape our journey. Unknowingly, we become victims of fate, carried along in clouds that may be full of water, bringing rains and storms, or drifting aimlessly across the skies, bereft of purpose other than providing shade to some insignificant place.

Nevertheless, not everything lacks purpose and direction. We can dream and hold visions of things to pursue and achieve. Even in those dreams, our limits might be set by a lack of imagination, requiring input, inspiration, ideas, and insight to transcend what seems impossible and turn it, in hindsight, into something miraculous.

Either way, this remains one of humanity's great mysteries: we have the ability both to grow and to pause, to be both simultaneously, and at other times to shrink, overcome by mortal vulnerabilities that easily affect the spirit, mind, and body. That is why we must understand where we find our sustenance and how to withstand the forces that threaten our sense of purpose.

Know when to walk away

In all our endeavours, you may wonder whether you are being taken seriously, even if you don't take yourself too seriously. Such awareness calls for knowledge and wisdom to manage impostors who seek to undermine you, especially in professional contexts.

This is why responsible individuals should reflect on how everyone is prone to errors in judgement, with consequences so far-reaching that they can jeopardise the talent needed to achieve the goals that make managers relevant.

I suppose, in politics as in cards, you play what you are dealt to the best of your ability and luck. Then, as Kenny Rogers sang in "The Gambler", 'know when to walk away, know when to run.' The matadors have chosen our China shop as the Plaza de Toros to face the bull.

Thought Picnic: And so to rise

Dump the funk

There have been days where I have been unsure of what portends, I feel a bit listless and uncertain, thinking about what I am trying to do but not getting done if I had any idea of what or how.

It is like one is caught up in a funk and by that, there is a disinterest apart from allowing for routine to just tick along and hoping there will be a breakout to something useful. In our video conferences, Brian would nearly always notice something and then begin to incessantly probe, even though I cannot put words to the situation that it seems to exacerbate my discomfiture. It is like a low energy situation that cannot be salvaged with a tonic.

Eventually, I do find my way of the clouds because I am such a person who begins to realise, I am not in the most comfortable place to thrive. I find things to be thankful for, what I should be planning for, stories to be grateful for, the light that sweeps the darkness away, I rise, rise above it to do the things I enjoy. I do get on and get on well. It is well.

Thought Picnic: The fields of clouds carry winds of creatives

Fields of people

Each day as you look out onto the fields with the pathways that lead through to sit in the grass or on a bench, sometimes bearing you on a shortcut from one place to another. Everything is not as it seems.

The people you see on your way or as you sit, some alone, some in company are a world to themselves, the moments you observe are but an instant in life you cannot begin to fathom. For from whence they came to hence they go remains a mystery. If you follow one, where goes the others?

Clouds of distress

You hear the cackle of laughter, yet, it might be a shield, an escape from another situation for which words cannot be found. We roam our worlds almost like listless clouds some bearing violent storms that ruin the landscape below, life and livelihood brought to waste. Some shifting for the brilliance and warmth of the sun to come through, others shielding from the radiative destruction of the rays of our planet’s life-giver.

You wonder if each cloud has a purpose, the present and absence of which that make the difference in a day and as you add up the days, the end of the year is a harvest, for some other clouds brought the rain to water the grain. One is not a nephologist and do not mistake that for a nephrologist.

For me, there is a mystery in people as there is of clouds, their forms, their motion, their dispersal, the experience of standing in a cloud on a tourist trip to Mt. Teide on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

Blog - Voyage to the land of the friendly volcano

Winds of change

In people, there is another aspect of clouds, the ones that cloud the eyes that you cannot see clearly or worst still, a clouded mind that finds it difficult or impossible to comprehend, to reason, or to think. These clouds have given some countries the worst leaders in the most trying times.

If only there were a wind of change and this wind is a carriage of the people by their voices, in their acts and through their votes to sweep these stormy clouds way out to the seas where turbulence and meet turbulence without harming anyone else.

Creatives of empowerment

Back to the fields, the fields of life and even the expansive field of the Internet, whilst taking a bench on Twitter, I saw a kite of such beautiful colours and when it landed, it was in the Instagram flower garden of the Uncles David, two amazing married men who have been together for decades of love and life, pairing up in the same apparel and smiling encouragement to us all, even as they face the frailties of the body.

It is from Uncle David that I found this saying and it is one I will not forget. “I challenge you to invoke your creativity, not as an escape, but rather as an empowerment.” David K North.

Away from the clouds and within the beautiful garden of flowers carved out of the wild fields we find ourselves in from time to time, I present the Instagram page of David K North, many things to many people, a place I found to meditate and get inspired. [Instagram – David K North]

Thought Picnic: Plain Clouding My Judgement

Plane clouds

It still remains a mystery much as it is supported by good science how we put mechanical birds in the sky, the way we harness the invisibility of air for fantastic motion faster than transport on land, in water or on water.

Like I noticed years ago, as we reside in the daytime under the gloominess of the weather brought on by clouds, beyond those clouds, the sun glows, albeit unable to penetrate the cloud cover that brings the rain and more.

So, we rose beyond the judder of the lower clouds to be bathed in rays of sunshine, whilst looking out of my window, as I seem to prefer window seats, to the horizon was a sea of levelled tranquillity as if we were on white sands of a desert far from civilisation, but we were just 10 miles up.

All shook up

Then just about 150 miles into our journey, we hit turbulence, quite violent turbulence that the plane shook, rising and falling like we were at rough seas.

The left wing was both rigid and flexible, it almost flapped to my sight that I had to calm myself, with great difficulty. The captain then announced that below us were severe thunderstorms, none of which we could see apart from knowing that the wind in which we flew churned that the pilot’s grip on the joystick was probably firmer than usual.

One piece of advice he gave was apart from keeping our seat belts on, we should keep our seats upright and face forwards because this will reduce the psychological effects of flying through turbulence, it worked for as long as I kept my eyes away from the window.

Suddenly and there

No sooner had he said that, we hit an air-pocket and the sudden dip of the plane had a few drinks hit the luggage compartment above – I was half expecting it, it was probably just 200 metres, like one had just taken a bungee jump – scary stuff.

After a good 30 minutes of this rollicking ride, things calmed down, clouds cleared up, the descent began and all that was left was the applause that came from a few as we landed. We were in sunny Berlin.

The empires of the clouds

Veering due to light

We are flying due south veering a bit to the right and through the castles in the sky, the monuments of aerated vaporification that would put architectures of renown to shame, the lights barge in flooding our sights to blindness from the left, ample proof that the sun does rise in the East.

Looking through the windows to the West these edifices of life forms we are yet to communicate with are as we look beyond them to some distant interstellar sister of our earth, their waste is rained upon us the sewers whilst we think our sewerage is the only exhaust for the unwanted on earth.

The empires war with each other and as they clash, we see lightning, new kingdoms are formed and rulers hailed with roars of adulation but we hear thunder.

Whether it is weather

Their Greco-Roman wrestling, the sport of gods – the stamping and rolling around on the ground are tornadoes with the maddest of our species chasing after them a thrill that might breed tragedy if a foot fell out of the circle.

The season of banquets rarely occur on land for there are no halls large enough for the feasts, in the East and the West, our Pacific which is rarely at peace and our Atlantic in which is buried that Utopian city, their tables are so laden with food and we see depressions.

The party starts small and it grows into a frenzy of wanton debauchery and reckless abandon, drink being guzzled faster than a whale fish could fill its mouth, we cannot call them to order, they are rotten neighbours that the council dare not threaten, at their mercy we give them names and one party called Katrina was probably the Golden Jubilee but our sewers and drainage failed for woefully.

Our place and places

We are junior partners on this landscape and yet our birds of fuel can cut through them we feeling turbulence and they probably grabbing on the clothes we just pulled off the clothes line in their gardens. Thankfully, their pegs are so inferior to ours but every once in while the story plays back about the maid that was in the garden hanging up the clothes and whose black bird pecked off her nose?

Clouds, a wonder, vapours we never fully appreciate and no, I do not have a window seat, I have been bettered, the lady in my three-seater aisle bought off the middle seat for space and that was not because she had girth, from all points of observation, I am probably bigger.

The end of Europe

Bought this, sold that

Sometimes I wonder about the what we have bought and what we are sold; whilst in Lisbon on one of my tourist jaunts I took a taxi to a prominent monument that meant using the 25^th of April suspension bridge.

Taxi fares are usually properly advertised with surcharges for heavy goods, extra passengers, out of town travel and so on.

The bridge has a toll charge system, but I do not think that applies to taxis, however, when I got to my destination, the driver gave me a figure quite different from that on the meter indicating he had to pay a toll.

I really had no time for an argument but I am sure I should have insisted on the meter price and stood my ground – you really do not want to visit a religious place feeling serious pissed off, so I lived and let live.

Filling in the time

Still on the matter of bought and sold, I returned to town without a bridge surcharge in a taxi and bought a tour to Sintra – to be covered in another blog.

We spent the best part of 90 minutes in the palace and then I realised they had to fill in about 2 to 3 hours to justify the cost of the tour.

We got onto the long and windy roads that reminded me of the trip into the Gran Canarian hinterland and finally ended up at Cabo da Roca [1] or Cape Roca which is supposed to be the westernmost point of both mainland Europe and mainland Portugal.

The end of Europe

It was quite windy and even through we are at height of just 140 metres above sea level we were above a good few low-lying clouds.

The clouds we could see above were moving at speed such that if people visited in the olden days they would be moved with awe and almost definitely have an apparition of something to confirm their dread of the supernatural.

Suffice it to say that I saw the end of Europe as we know it and was almost impressed though quite fascinated all the same.

The slideshow and details appear soonest as well as that of my visit to the fossil cliffs and beach of Costa Caparica.

Source

[1] Cabo da Roca - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beyond the clouds

The trains are still slower

There have been times that I have planned a holiday or break up to 4 weeks ahead, but I am more an impulsive travel planner than a methodical pedant.

Once I realised that I had a bit of free time to the next major meeting, I was on-line looking for a destination and a hotel.

I started with thinking of Paris or Madrid, usually, I would not fly to Paris, getting out of CDG – the airport, for Paris can be a lesson in global navigation when you find you have boarded the train going North. So, from Amsterdam, it is better to travel by train.

What is most irksome about arranging this type of travel is that all the railway websites in the , , and allow Internet booking. Of the lot the German site is most flexible even allowing a proximity booking.

The others allow for planning but only with a lead time of 5 days, because they resort to postal services to send the ticket. The Germans allow you to print out your ticket as a valid document for travel.

Then compare this to Air France/KLM where at 03:00AM I got a flight for 12:40 the same day with a confirmed ticket and boarding pass to Barcelona – it is no wonder, trains are slower than planes not just in getting to destinations but in adopting sensible Internet technologies.

I would not be too surprised if some desk manager in the railway organisations has some theory about not adopting these ideas because it could put unionised workers out of work.

Working hard is out, working smart is in, I suppose trains would work on nuclear fuel before change comes to working practices – read never.

Hotels and not hostels

When booking for travel, I first look for a hotel, beginning with an Accor Hotel which handles the chains of Sofitel, Mercure, Sofitel, Dorint, SuiteHotel, Ibis, Formule 1 and Etap in descending order of sophistication and having an Accor Favourite Guest Card helps in confirming bookings and getting good deals.

Once that is available rather than confirmed, I book the flights and confirm all the bookings then pack my bags and catch a nap before setting off.

The weather reports

The weather was very dull, cloudy, probably with the expectation of rain with the temperature close to freezing. Then getting on the plane, it did look really small and there was lots of space, probably not half full.

I also found out that in the cramped economy class, if no one is sitting in front of you, you can push the back of the seat in front forward to make space. Well, I did.

Sunny beyond the clouds

As we lifted off, we were soon above the clouds with glorious sunlight lighting up the plane and reflecting off those natural shutters that made life on the ground less sunny.

I learnt something; the sun was always above the clouds and it took getting help outside of my strength to see the sunnier side of things from the gloom on the ground.

The same with our circumstances, sometimes we are ground in our mundane, ordinary, slow and routine norms that we fail to see beyond the clouds, especially when the clouds just sit there like forever.

The only message one then gets from those clouds is rain and snow, making us wrap up more to warm than loosen up to feel cool.

Help beyond yourself

Just like I had the help of a plane to see the better side of things, we need a help higher than us be it religious inspiration, a pep-talk, mentoring, sometime to get us out of the rat race and rut of our circumstances to see the bigger picture and scope of things.

We need to be enthused into optimism to make our mindsets adapt to the expectation of good things, successful things, confident things and healthy things.

At that point, you have the tonic for life and if you keep taking it, spring and summer are back again as the clouds are moved on and your circumstances have less dominance over the bigger perspective of things.