some transient thoughts ..

Posted On Saturday, May 3, 2008 as "well ... tangential thoughts :-)"
Posting it again .. now those tangential thoughts seem transient thoughts :-)
Most of life is perception, i guess. How we feel at that moment. The next moment, its all different and the previous thought holds no significance.

--XX--
With my little perspective, the small window through which I observe life, I can not but wonder at the marvel that it is. Every time I wish the world had been a little different and every time I felt it needed a little improvement, I always got an answer, though after a considerable or inconsiderable while, why it couldn't have been or shouldn't have been any different from what is or what it was. Here, with humility and submission, do I wish to differ with the great Voltaire's Candide. World's irrationality as depicted in 'Candide', I felt, does not, in reality, reflect the ways of the world we live in. Voltaire had a point, a very worthy point - that the world needs to be improved and it is to be done not by idle philosophising nor by rationalising the status-quo, but by bending the back and ploughing the world, uprooting the weeds of evil and nurturing the virtues - and he made it quite forcefully so. Candide, I believe, ultimately wants not to be really bothered about whether there is any good or any bad in the divine design, but to work with the design and do his best. Voltaire deliberately avoids the questions that cross the material plane. But life, as it happens, doesn't really afford us the luxury to stay within the limits of the material plane and blindly keep working, oblivious and unconcerned about the marvels and miseries of it.

One of the pleasures of life, probably the most valuable one, is the pleasure of wonder. There seems to be an order in this world that order itself can not explain. World seems all chaotic from the distance, with miseries, pain and irrationality, but in its chaotic patterns, when looked minutely, there is a fine intricate pattern of symmetry, harmony and beauty. Here, I would like to sound a note of caution that my window is too small to see the picture in its entirety. I am probably one of those few blessed ones whose windows open out to the meadow and not to whatever that might be beyond it. But the world, I say, as I see from where I see, couldn't have been designed any better. The framework is an absolute beauty. No matter, how much I try to find fault with it, it always replies with a fault in the fault I found. I'd want to live my life in search of that one fault without a fault - a fault that shows injustice, by giving pain without giving the strength to endure it, by taking us through troubles we don't deserve without making us better, by dragging us through filth without revealing our true self to us.

Life is just great or may be we are making too much out of it.

Ares Altar

Men fight not for the grudge they bear
nor for the lures of the bounties offered.
Was it not Hector that fought for his people,
and for his duty.
Was it not Achilles that fought for his glory,
and his immortality.
Was it not Ajax that died out of shame,
for the pride that was lost.

Men fight for an indifferent cause,
for, what is Helen's beauty to Hector,
and what is Menelaus's honour to Achilles.
But those were the men that fought,
- that killed and that died -
bound by the word and driven by glory,
for the honours sake, they shed their blood,
young men at arms, at the ares altar.

we know it as the old spice theme ...

O Fortuna is a poem from Carmina Burana, a collection of Latin poems written in early 13th century. Fortuna is the goddess of fortune inRoman Mythology. German composer Carl Orff selected 24 poems from the collection and set them to new music between 1935 and 1936. O Fortuna is the most famous movement from Orff's Carmina Burana composition, and opens and closes the cycle. (Source: Wikipedia)

Lyrics

O Fortuna (Chorus) in Latin

English translation

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem. Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris. Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectus et defectus semper in angaria. Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite; quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!

O Fortune, like the moon Stands constantly changing, ever waxing or waning; hateful life now oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice. Fate - monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, stand malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy. Fate, in health and virtue, is against me driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

generated by fortune.exe

I began many years ago, as so many young men do, in searching for the perfect woman. I believed that if I looked long enough, and hard enough, I would find her and then I would be secure for life. Well, the years and romances came and went, and I eventually ended up settling for someone a lot less than my idea of perfection. But one day, after many years together, I lay there on our bed recovering from a slight illness. My wife was sitting on a chair next to the bed, humming softly and watching the late afternoon sun filtering through the trees. The only sounds to be heard elsewhere were the clock ticking, the kettle downstairs starting to boil, and an occasional schoolchild passing beneath our window. And as I looked up into my wife's now wrinkled face, but still warm and twinkling eyes, I realized something about perfection... It comes only with time.

-- James L. Collymore, "Perfect Woman"