A breeze from far away

OK, OK, I am back anyway. There seems to be more time in the day than there was last week. Something must be different! Some change of weather perhaps, a breeze from far away that changed my clock.

How many hours in the day, and what kind of hours are they?

What are you using the hours for today? Nothing or something?

What is it that changes it all? Maybe you're waiting for that bad luck you've always been wishing for. Because if you've been thinking about it a lot, you've been wishing for it. Think thoughts a lot and they become true...inevitably. Good luck with that heart attack you've been expecting! Anyway, I know people do sometimes have bad luck, but it's not as often as you think. Clean up your life and find a direction, make room in your heart for that breeze to blow in, and your luck will change. But you have to let it.

If you have made enough room for the outside to blow in, then the change could come from anywhere. Less ego, more others, and there are more possibilities. More closed, change can only come from very near. It might not be much of a change. But near is fine, if you let it be good.

With enough concentrating on letting in all the things you hate, fear, all the things that aren't 'you', you might find a miracle has happened. Be open, and that wind could blow in from miles away. How many? Up to your heart. 2, 6, 10, 30, 60, 6000 miles away?

Pause

Hello!

I hope I am not disappointing regular readers by apparently not being bothered to write any posts here since Tuesday.

There are things to do, places to go, people to see!

Tomorrow I will be performing themes from "Cinema Paradiso" and "La Vita è Bella" ("Life is Beautiful") at my friends' wedding. So don't say I am not versatile! At my last wedding I even played the organ. PS that's not 'my' last wedding, just the last one I played at.

Consequently you will probably have to wait a bit longer for something of substance from this page.

Pause!

But you should continue doing everything you need to. Don't stop on my account! Water the plants, tickle the plants, dust their leaves and talk to them. Feed the children and pick them up off the furniture when they fall asleep and put them somewhere safe. Feed the tiger, wrestle with evil-doers, save the world, spread happiness, cause peace to break out, think of something new, improve something old, give something, receive something, make someone happy, run around, lie down, all of those things. OK. Go, now!

Clever

It's a shame I have to write in words. Understanding words requires education. Not everyone has the same amount. Everyone has some, of course. Education is learning that enables us to do tasks. So, nothing to do with formal academic education at all.

This is really true, I can tell you, because I had some formal education. A lot less than most people in my field (or fields). But it still adds up to a lot of years - about 18 I think!

I have the feeling I learned a lot at the start, with the reading and the writing. But after that stage, it got confusing. The most frustrating part of school was this:

the teachers knew what they were teaching us, but they never told us what it was.

Yes, if they had only revealed the broader picture, I might have learned something. I remember two great shocks when at the end of two different terms I learned what the subject we had been learning was. In one year of junior school (this was year seven of school education) we always did a sort of researchy-type project which we made into a little book by the end of each term. 'Topic', it was called. Also the name of a chocolate bar which I can taste as I use that word. So, I happily wrote away the word "Topic" on the front of my book. "Tyopic?" "TYYYYYYOPIC??" the teacher exclaimed when she saw it. That's not much of a title, was what she meant. Call it by the title of the course: "Signs and Symbols"! An incredible shock for me and my poor shattering young mind. "Signs and Symbols"? I hadn't seen any of either. Obviously I had not been deciphering the signs or the symbols correctly. Why could we not have been told - was it so terrible that the victims of education be thought competent enough to know what they were learning?

Another one (this was a one-off, with a trainee teacher I think) was "Biology". I knew what biology was, but I didn't notice any passing in front of my eyes during the time we spent learning about it. Again, how could they keep it so secret until after we had finished? What were they trying to do to me? Help, or confuse me?

As for "Geography" - I knew the name of that subject from the beginning, but how all these unrelated things could be grouped under this one heading I could not fathom. I could have fathomed it, if I had had some input. But there wasn't any! On one page there would be a picture of a street of houses. On another, a rabbit hutch. Geography! Obviously!

In secondary school (years 8-12) I was allowed to know the subject. They even made sense now! But the learning was so SLOW. That's what you get with 30 people in a class, each not understanding something different. And still, the teachers not really believing we were capable of thinking. Obviously the young are for moulding, not growing.

Then at college (a prestigious "conservatoire", as they are known) I definitely learned something. I thought about it at the end, and I know I decided I had learnt five useful things. But today I can only remember two of those. (This isn't counting lessons with good teachers, just the education in general).

I really started to learn after I stopped studying officially. I said this to an RAM professor once, and she nearly died of an apoplexy. But after studying is supposed to be the time you stop learning and start applying what you have learned. For me it was the time I stopped being confused by people telling me meaningless unrelated things without revealing their plans, and started to get to grips with what I needed to know about. The things I had been starting to discover at college (because, whatever I was being taught, I was always learning on my own).

Because what you need is for you. Only you can learn it. And you are the one who knows what you need.

Looking at schools, it's a miracle learning starts at all. I suppose I did learn a lot really, but sometimes I would have appreciated a bit more help from the dispensers of this learning. Still, all thanks to my teachers, all of them. I am here thanks to you, good and not so good. I learned from you all!

That 'learning' part - that's the key. Learning is to have learned things, to understand them, perhaps even to have wisdom. But this is nothing to do with how many qualifications someone has, or how many words they know. Clever people, take note! (I doubt you can - being clever already, there is no need for you to learn any more).

If you say to me (and people do sometimes) "I'm just no good at this", then I can say "Maybe, but you know that. Look at the others - they have no idea they are no good at it!". It might look bad to you, but it's the start of learning.

Please keep your clever away from me. I will go with wisdom any day. Thank you!

Curry etc

Here in the UK there is a thing they eat called curry. You eat it at Indian restaurants - you know what I'm talking about, it's the same in lots of places. "Let's go for a curry", and so on.

Over here that phrase would often be heard after about 6,000 pints of beer (a pint is 473.176475 ml, but the effect is the same whether you drink in metric or imperial). Indeed, that even used to happen to me. That is the effect of higher education, I'm afraid. I think the main thing people learn at college is how to buy and consume alcohol. This is my considered opinion after four years of study and a further seven years of observation at ground level (and sometimes it really is ground level).

But, I don't drink at all now. I didn't drink a lot anyway. I had a similar amount to everyone else in the pub. Now I know that this is a HUGE amount. How much of it is good to have? I think (speaking at least for myself)...0% (that's 0 pints and also 0 ml).

That's what I think of alcohol now!

But it seems very popular in this country. Also there is a popular image outside this country of UK citizens as very boorish and drunk, I'm afraid, a bit brutalised. One of the reviews of my Gaudeamus Final performance claimed that "the Brit rammed the notes into the hall". That's what 'Brits' do, I suppose.

So these 'Brits' over here, they eat this thing called curry. But what exactly is it? I don't think it's really Indian. I suppose that doesn't matter, it's not ethnic purity of cuisine that's important. Not to me. But maybe it is in truth, since I feel like there is more meaning, more good balance and excitement, in food in its original state. It's created the way it was made to be, as if it was being dreamed of (and loved) for the first time. Anything that someone creates out of love, that's a dish I want to be eating!

This curry stuff is created out of something (love?)...but I don't know what it is!

It used to be fun ordering very hot curries though. Vindaloo would bring out my handkerchief for a variety of purposes. It was good! I enjoyed it - extreme testing of physical endurance in a fine dining environment.

I went to India once. Only for the day, but I was there! I saw plenty of Vishnus and Ganeshas and Shivas with their flutes, but not a morsel of 'curry' did I see or eat. I started in Bangkok, then went on to Singapore, Malaysia, the Andaman Islands, and finally India (Chennai/formerly Madras and Pondicherry). I was on a ship along the way. And this ship was so cosy that nobody wanted to leave! They were all at home in their London Club simulated environment. What did they want with Johnny Foreigner and his mess on a plate (or off it)?

So I saw an awful lot of bacon. And all that.

The closest I got to local food was "Fish Curry" (OK, so that said 'curry', didn't it) in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, and "Coronation Chicken" at a beach-front hotel in Pondicherry. I don't know exactly what Coronation Chicken is. You can find out, I'm sure. But that was it. Bacon, bacon, bacon, and not much to eat of any real excitement on dry land.

Is this the British way? If so, I shall check inside my passport. Maybe I am turning into Johnny Foreigner myself.

Don't knock your own alphabet

Don't knock your own alphabet.

Others may have some flavour you pine for. They may go around the page in all sorts of unusual directions. They may encode sounds, or ideas (where yours stood for ideas, or sounds). They may seem complex with many different meanings. They may seem simple with only one meaning. Perhaps you yearn for undeciphered scripts? Or do distant Minoans get tired and lonely writing in that impossible writing? Do they wish for a good normal alphabet, more useful for shopping lists and thank-you letters?

But either way, sounds are speech and speech is ideas. Those marks you see now, they can do things. You can really work wonders with them.

Did you stop to think how they got to be what they are?

Did you think about what transformations words work in the world?

And how have words changed you? Because they do. Each is a little bit of magic.

Even the most commonplace alphabet is a magical alphabet.

Even yours.

Please make your words bring light into the world. I know you can. Shine like the sun or like a single candle, but whatever you do, illuminate. There is enough darkness now.

Right future

I was weighing up whether web page menu-bars should ideally go on the left or the right of the screen. (As you can see, on this page we have one on the right). I think the tendency these days is for them to be on the right. The reason for this (according to me) is right-handedness.

In this world, the majority is right handed (their right hand is the dominant hand). The standard computer mouse is designed to be operated on the right. The "left-click" button, the key mouse button, is on the left of the mouse, meaning it will most likely be operated (in a right-handed user) with the first finger - the strongest finger on that hand for the most common use. So we can see the mouse is 'normally' (sorry about that word; 'normal' means 'common', not really normal - none of us is abnormal!) going to be found on the right side of the computer desk (or whatever-it-is, and of course many people don't use a computer as such at all - for today's purposes, ignore them!)

So most people are working the mouse with the right hand. It's easier to move the right hand to the right, away from the body, extending, not contracting, the muscles. So to move the mouse pointer away from the text (the focus) in order to move to another page (clicking the links) it's easier to go to the right.

So that seems to be the reason a sidebar links menu should be on the right hand side of a web page.

And it is also the reason it will most commonly be found on that side (and views are welcome on this one).

But that is only true for the majority. You know, "us" (when people say that, they mean "me"), as they say. We are right-handed and do everything in the standard way described above. Oh, except not everyone is like that, are they.

So left-handed people might appreciate a left-handed mouse (?) or might appreciate a menu on the left if they are working the mouse with the left hand. But, probably, they just go with the right hand. What do you think? What do you do?

So that was an exception. Here is another: not all of us read and write from left to right. Japanese can go top to bottom, right to left, and also left to right. I find that Japanese web pages can place the menu on the left. And when I see that I think this is the reason. (Mind you, bear in mind that the western model is the standard in many fields, perhaps because industrial capitalism ('progress') influences the world out of the west). Other languages write and think right to left. I wonder if there is some trend that can be seen in international web page design? Here is my question: in a given culture, if a sidebar menu is placed on a web page does it tend to be on the right or the left, and how is that (hypothetical) tendency reflected in that culture's standard direction of writing?

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In graphology, the study of the meaning and significance of personal handwriting style, the right hand side of the page represents the future. The left is the past so if on a page of writing the text clings to the left or shrinks from the right margin, this is said to display a corresponding personality trait in the writer - the writer clings to the past, for example. So from that point of view the menu should go on the right because the links link out of the present page. They go from the present to the future (mainly; certainly they signify that in my view). But again, this is only in a left-to-right writing culture. Graphology is different in the other direction (I have never heard that it is, but it must be. I'm telling you! Do you see it yourself?) "Over there" (where weird things happen and books seem to start at the back) where the people are not "normal", the past could be on the right. What to do?

Right-dominance isn't healthy. The right side of the body is governed by the left side of the brain so right-handedness is linked to analytical-type thought (that, it is said, having its seat in the left hemisphere of the brain). If it looks like left-handers are creative, that fits the pattern. I have no proof of this. Neither popular nor 'serious' science seem to have a definite view on it. But I can at least say from my own experience (that, I am qualified to speak about!) that using the subordinate hand (and foot etc, where applicable) wakes up the sleeping other half of yourself. (If you doubt that, just pretend I said "...of myself" - then you can't argue). Both halves, all cylinders firing! The piano is right-handed, with the melody (in the high register we most easily hear) mostly occupying that part of the keyboard. The result of that is pianists with a monstrous great stabbing right fifth finger used for banging out the tune, even when it's not there. Now please step over to Leopold Godowsky's neck of the woods and see what he did for the other hand (and even every finger of the normal hand too)! He taught us that the left hand (little more than a stump in most pianists) can do the work of two or even three hands. So there were even more possibilities for both hands together in his vision! He was right.

So I try to use both hands equally where I can (I still write with the right hand, but I can now shave with either, for example), both to help the piano playing and perhaps to affect my brain and my whole system. I feel better when things are going left to right AND right to left - there is a balance, I feel balanced.

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Balance is calmness. But one-sidedness is dynamic. It moves away from that balance. Perhaps it is not so bad. It's like the different schools of spirituality: there is one part (mysticism) that does not seek to 'be' anything; it aims to find union with all the cosmos, though without actual aiming or finding - to 'achieve' this union you have to give up all 'achieving' since that is part of the ego and keeps you separate from all. The other part does not disagree with this but finds there are other ways of getting the results we need. So it has goals and targets and moves and directs, even though that appears to go against the ultimate aim (of union with all, for all). If the first way was called "mystical", then this one is "magical". I was careful not to call these two "different sides", because they aren't that. This whole piece is about sides, so let's not get confused.

I wonder which is the better way. I wonder why there is a difference like that. If they both reach the same result, how can there be a difference?

One way moves away from action into balance. The other uses action to get to balance.

Does this mean that somewhere in the world there is a Yogi who hates it when the menu bar appears only on one side of the page?