You and I are like the candle and the flame. Separate, yet linked.

A piece of paper was sticking through my door when I got home. I unfolded and scanned it. The heading read "Hearing" and I thought to myself, do I have to go to court for something? Upon looking at it again, it actually read "Healing"... it was a religious document.

I liked the language and what it was saying until it started proposing that the cause of my present situation/predicament is sin. Whose sin? Not mine. Relatively speaking, I'm very decent. I think the Hindus have a better argument: your problems are because of your bad karma in this OR previous lives. At least that way I can't refute how deserving I am of my challenges. But all this reasoning seems so empty or circular. I prefer to believe that situations and conditions we face that we aren't directly responsible for are arbitrary and/or the result of powers out of our control (which we can identify if we ponder them). That makes more sense to me.

Here's an example. Why does one person develop cancer while another one doesn't? There's probably a genetic component, which is something out of their control. They didn't choose which family to be born into. Then there were certain things in their environment which could have triggered other components - diet, stress, the quality of air and water, exposure to radiation, etc. While these things can be controlled, largely they aren't moderated much. Do we really bother to control what's in the air we breathe and the water we drink? If two people are exposed to the same environmental factors and one develops cancer while the other one doesn't... doesn't it show that the onset is pretty arbitrary and/or out of our control?

I think sin and karma are useful tools for people to help explain problems and difficulties. The concepts provide a solid answer, a certain reason for suffering. Something for people to hold onto and work from. I think the belief that there's no underlying reason for suffering makes people uncomfortable. By accepting that suffering is due to our sin or karma, it allows us to disown a lot of the anxiety.

Someone older and close to me said that it's good to have an image of the person you are looking for as your partner/companion. That way, you have something to be attracted to when you see them, something that will beckon you to them and them to you (since you're sending that energy out to them).

Last night in a dream I visited the room of the person who gave me this advice. Through a mirror I saw a framed portrait of the image of the man she was looking for. I turned my head and approached this portrait. It looked like it was done by Picasso! It was rather abstract, and had a red background. To make things more bizarre... it was actually a completed jigsaw puzzle!

I guess this means we can have some general ideas of who we want to be with. But the truth is that the person will always be more complex and multi-layered than our ideas. Our ideas are doomed to be ephemeral, since we cannot really control or create characteristics of the people we meet. People will always exceed our impressions of them, in ways that may or may not be desirable.

I was cooking a couple of pieces of chicken in my wok-pan. I tested how much longer I needed to cook them by cutting into one. Blood squirted out. It was no ordinary squirt... It sprayed across my stove and the wall of my kitchen! For a second I thought of the gratuitous amounts of pressurized fake blood spraying in the "Kill Bill" films. I've cut into chicken as it was cooking before and have seen small amounts of blood seep out. You wouldn't think that something dead would have blood pressurized! I figure it's because the pan was very hot.

Too much potassium will make your eyes twitch.

"Don't search for the answers. Love the questions. Live the questions. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

- R.M. Rilke, Paraphrased from Letters to a Young Poet, 1903

"If you keep knocking on the Devil's door long enough, somebody's gonna answer you."

- from Four Brothers

Do you know someone who can hold a dime in their dimple? I do.

The comment on a picture of me in a rasta cap with fake dreadlocks -

"You look so gay."

To influence someone is to give them your soul. They don't think their natural thoughts or burn with their natural passions. Their virtues aren't real, their sins are borrowed. They become an echo of someone else's music.

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Beauty is higher than genius because it needs no explanation.

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We have few years to live perfectly, fully. The world belongs to us for a season. Don't waste youth. Later we degenerate, and are haunted by memory of passions we were afraid of and temptations we didn't have the courage to yield to.

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Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of the luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.


Some thoughts from "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Everything is colorful in Barbados.
Even the bird droppings.
They are orange.

Do you know what "walking the dog" is? Barbadians riding in public vans often yell at the driver to "wok d dog". While the van is moving the driver puts the van in neutral, gets out and jogs alongside the van. Isn't that nuts?! If the van starts veering into a ditch or the other lane the driver will stick their hand through the window and give the wheel a tap.

The sky was partially green.

I've been swimming in a golden ocean. I don't mean that metaphorically.

I sit and wait for the tide to change.

More frail than petals
Scattered by the wind
I bid a last farewell and leave the spring behind

- Lord Asano, The 47 Ronin

I dreamt of wearing a suit made of green mango skins to a wedding in Japan.

Fashion designers throughout human history have made clothing with animal skins and pelts. What about wearing clothing made from fruit or vegetables (other than coconut bras)? I'm sure they could be treated with chemicals to preserve them. Perhaps they could be coated in plastic or rubber. I wonder what it'd be like to wear pineapple pants. I like how pineapples look (and taste).

Marriage is an anagram for a grim era.

Picnics rule.

On the surface, every woman wants to be with James Bond, and every man wants to be him. But I don't. He has no friends.