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my desk

ames — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:37:25 +0000

stationary addiction

ames — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:54:39 +0000

Moleskine
Is Apple classed as stationary?

time to learn a bit more

ames — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:25:43 +0000

Last year I finally got a dSLR after playing with a film SLR for three years. I wanted to learn to use a manual camera and understand aperture and so on, before moving on to digital. Now I’ve taken the leap it has made me realize how much there is still to learn. I don’t really understand much at all about light or anything like that but want to so have enrolled in a night course starting next month. Very excited!

I have a collection of Takumar manual lenses from my film 1974 Pentax Spotmatic so purchased an adapter so I could use them on the dSLR. These are from testing the 50mm f1.4 lens on my beloved La Pavoni espresso machine.

home

ames — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 03:08:40 +0000

apple goodness

ames — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:30:32 +0000

A lot!

ames — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:39:43 +0000

Morning ritual

ames — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:45:49 +0000

Crown Lynn

ames — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:50:50 +0000

Yet another reason to love The Little Grocer… Crown Lynn. Check out their new website, it’s fabulous!

Fur babies

ames — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:20:02 +0000

Intention

ames — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 19:08:35 +0000

It’s amazing how things creep up on you. One of the precepts in Buddhism is not killing. Without realizing it I stopped killing insects, even though I haven’t gone for refuge in any formal sense. It was subconscious, and then it became conscious that my habit had changed, and then became an intention: not to kill. I just scoop them up, and put them in the garden. I mean surely the lovely garden is better for an insect than my lounge? So my intention changed, and this is what shocked me having a conversation with a friend who was over.

As we chatted I was making dinner and he, without even a pause in the conversation slowly but surely mashed an insect to its death right in front of me. It tried to escape, but the deadly fingers were too quick. I had this deep welling of sorrow and stood in my tracks not really believing what I had seen. It wasn’t that it was an insect. It wasn’t that it was in front of me. What got me, was his intention, which was very clearly, to kill. And that this happened so easily, without thought, without pause to consider another option. It felt like we’d been having a conversation and he’d just chopped a friends head off who was also part of the conversation, and then kicked him aside, because that is what we do.

It made me realize how abnormal things can become so normal and without thought be ingrained, and be destructive. Be they our thinking, destroying ourselves, or our speech hurting others. Everything can be normal, everyday, and deadly.