Instamatic Focal Point: Madrid, Spain

Some photographs I captured during a recent weekend in Madrid with my marvellous flatmate, Giovanni.

Two recommendations for happy living.
1: When possible, go to Spain. 2: Always live with Italians.

THY 1951

I work in the Schiphol World Trade Centre, i.e. the airport, i.e. the field next to the airport where this crash just occured.


No-one was killed. Sadly nine people, including two pilots, died. Rest in Peace.

Living the Surreal Life

Shock-rocker Alice Cooper describes an early encounter with Salvador Dalí, in February, 1973.

"Let me tell you about the first meeting. We sit down at the St. Regis in New York, which was sort of Dalí's stomping ground, and eight unisexual nymphs wearing chiffon and glittery eye makeup walk in. Then Gala, his wife, in a full tuxedo- top hat, gloves, spats, cane, everything. Then Dali comes in and he's got Aladdin shoes, purple socks that Elvis gave him, blue velvet pants, and a giraffe-skin coat, and goes, "The Dalí... is here."

Full article in Spin Magazine, February, 2009.

The Design of the Universe

"Astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way."

Literally awesome, as in inspiring complete and utter awe- this overwhelming feeling of wonder and admiration. Arne Næss, the Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer and founder of "deep ecology", who passed away last week, put it beautifully when he wrote,

'The smaller one comes to feel compared to the mountain, the nearer one comes to sharing in its greatness. I do not know why this is so.'

Good News

Three Marks of Existence

I've been enjoying the Buddhist Geeks podcast over the last couple of weeks. It features great interviews with luminaries from a range of traditions, the hosts bringing a healthy skeptical and practice-focused attitude. In one recent edition they dialogue with Jun Po Roshi, an American Zen Master in the Rinzai Zen tradition, about his history with entheogens and a new form of Koan practice that uses NeuroLinguistic Programming techniques to help anchor spiritual realization in one's linguistic structures. He also shared a remarkably clear explanation of what Buddhists consider to be the three universal characteristics.

"No matter which tradition, go back to the foundational teachings, that are the three marks or the three statements that the whole Buddhist system is built upon.

(The first is) impermanence. How wonderful! Get impermanence: nothing lasts. If I truly experience impermanence then I'm in gratitude for whatever is, because everything's on loan. And its a temporary relationship. That's a shift in understanding. He said that needs to be tasted and understood. If you really grok it, then you don't grab any more. Clinging and attachment is the problem.

The second is that with life comes pain. Stop running and hiding from pain. Bring it on! How interesting? Wouldn't that be different if I stopped ducking and hiding from pain.

And then finally, Knock, knock. (Who's there?) Nobody... The centre, right now, of your personality and your being is absolute pure emptiness or shunyata. The idea of a soul or the concept of a continuing thing is a neuro-linguistic, philosophical construct that allows you comfort, but it's existent there only and it arises in the absolutely purity of your being."

- Jun Po Denis Kelly

Koala, Bushfire Survivor

This is incredibly Australian on about fourteen different levels.

The Victorian Bushfires

scorched trees mark the dead
land, hungry for rain and fire
behind char she cries

some powerful pictures