priya tuli's randombloggz

Okay, it's official. My 5-year-old Nokia, the one that went out of production 2 weeks after I bought it, which makes it extinct as a T-Rex, is approaching brain-dead status. (That was a sentence with three commas, in case you hadn't noticed.) It ran out of memory a year ago, so I haven't been able to save any more numbers on it since. Which is also a telling commentary on the pathetic state of my social life.

I can't buy more memory for it, because they didn't expect anyone would keep it that long after the model went obsolete, considering the gazillion new ones that have come out since then. I can't find a new body for it, to replace the bruised and battered one it currently lives in, for the same reason. Other than that, it still works fine. Oh, and the battery dies out on me from time to time and well, that is rather inconvenient.

So anyway, I'm reluctantly in the market for a replacement. I have no idea what I should get, because I've only ever used a Nokia. I know what I don't want, though. I don't want to use my phone to check email. Or browse the net. Or scratch my back. Or make dirty videos. Or take fuzzy pictures. I have other stuff that does all that. I basically plan to just use it as a phone, you know, for calls and sms messages. And occasionally to throw at someone if they push my last button.

SO of course, the world and their uncle have been advising me to get a Blackberry. What for? That teensy fiddly qwerty thing would drive me nuts, and anyway, it doesn't fit my brief. And for that kind of money I could get a netbook. Which is tempting.

The other day my neighbour's 15-year-old geek-generation daughter showed me her new Samsung thingie with touchscreen stuff which looked very good. Because looks are important, at any tate for tecchie stuff. And the iPhone. Ahhhhh! SEX!!! But these things are scary. Too much razzle dazzle and I feel out of my depth. At the iPhone store, I held it for a few seconds, then I touched the screen and a whole new bunch of icons appeared and I have no idea how any of it works. So I went "eeeek!", and the salesboys all laughed. They knew that by the time I ever learned to use it, it would be redundant.

I like being dazzled by tech, and make all the appropriate noises when someone demonstrates one of their slick new gadgets, but using that stuff myself? Frankly, I find these sleek sexy gizmos endlessly fascinating, but also terribly intimidating. Besides, I drop my phone on a regular basis, I'm sure these hi-tech varieties would recoil at that sort of abuse. Lose all the numbers. Or just plain die on me. Like a friend's iPod did the other day. Just two years old, system failure. Cannot be fixed. Which is kind of sad, because one invariably gets emotionally attached to these things. Or is it just me?

The other day someone suggested they MAKE electronics so they die in a year or two, so people will buy a replacement faster. How else  would they sell more? I think that is probably the truth. Which makes me even more resistant to replacing my 15-year-old TV, which still works just fine. Plasma, they say, you should get a plasma TV. What for? So it dies out on me in 2 years and I have to buy another? Though I may just have to, because although the TV is fine, the remote is indecipherable. All those years of use have rubbed out the lettering on the buttons. And no, I can't get a replacement because they don't make those TVs any more.

So then, back to the phone. I think I will let the morning papers decide for me. Whichever ad I see first, that's the one I'll go and buy. Except the Blackberry, those just scare me to death.

Does this happen to you, too? You receive an email, answer it in your head as you're reading it, then move on to the next thing on your to-do list and end up not replying? Then you wonder why no response to your response. So you check your outbox to see when you replied...and you realize you didn't. Damn! But you could swear you did reply! And you did, but only in your head.

Then there's text messages. You key in your response to a message, and continue talking to your lunch meeting partner. And you forget whether you've hit 'send' already, because your reply is still showing on the screen. So you hit 'send', while continuing your lunch meeting. Then you hit 'clear screen', and find you have two delivery reports for the same message. Sometimes even three. It happens every time. People must think I'm nuts to keep sending the same message over and over. That's okay, goes with the territory. Better that, than be bawled out for never responding.

But then there are times when you THINK you've hit 'send' on a rather long and involved text, and you clear the screen and realize the message isn't in your outbox and oh damn, no way you're going to re-write it now, maybe later...and then you forget. So really, it's a no-win situ.

So back to the email responses. Often, there isn't time for a long, newsy catch up right then, so you think you'll do it later, over a coffee break. Or tomorrow. Or maybe on the weekend. Five months later, you realize oh shyte, haven't responded to so-and-so yet. And overcome with guilt, you dash off an abject, grovelly apology, peppered with the million things that have happened in the last 5 months to prevent you from answering.

Then there's things like birthdays, anniversaries, festivals. Of course you'd like to wish friends and family on these special days, and now you can. Thank goodness for Facebook, the quick, painless way to communicate. Except you may not log on every single day, and you're sure to miss out on someone or other's special day. And so it goes.

So I'm working really hard on perfecting the art of communicating in my head. If you believe, as I do, that thoughts are vibrations, then you can project them at the person you're thinking of and they should be able to receive them. I'm not sure I've achieved mastery over telepathy yet, but I am working on it. And quite often, whoever I've been thinking of will pop into my inbox shortly thereafter, or call, or text. Even though I didn't respond to the last one. Oh, guilt!!!

And anyway, I figure the people you care about already KNOW you do, and they ought to therefore understand that you ALWAYS hold them dear, and wish them well, and want them happy, even if you always miss their birthday.

Evidently there is a signal problem with my telepathy as well, because I'm not sure all my people get the vibe. Which is why I am going to great lengths to explain that I already replied to that email, or answered their text, or greeted them on their born-day...but only in my head.

The trouble with 'evolving' and 'personal growth' stuff is that sometimes it feels like you're taking one step forward and 10 steps back. I like to believe I'm a better person than I was, say a year or five ago. And then I regress, and end up feeling like a long, sad, multi-segmented earthworm for days after.

The other night, I got into Plate Smashing mode. No idea why. It could have been the full moon. Or the frustration of not being able to get my desk and workspace cleared. Or the fact that the cats had been scrapping all day. Or that I spilled a whole carton of tomato juice in the fridge and all across the kitchen floor, and stubbed my toe three times in succession. And I still had a heap of work to get through before I hit the sack for the night. You know, one of those days.

Or it could be that I'm still just a bad-tempered, grumpy sort, and leopards never change their spots. I've noticed I get grumpier when I have to do anything at all in the kitchen. Which is convenient, because that's where the plates are.

So anyway, when the juice spill happened, that was the last straw. I picked up the closest thing to hand, which happened to be a fork. I aimed it at the sink, where the dinner dishes awaited washing. And I hurled it at a plate, which was propped up like a dartboard at the back of the sink.

My aim has never been much good, but would you believe, I hit a bullseye. I think the Great Big Pie in the Sky figured I'd better have one win to close the day on, or more vile invective would flow. So the plate, being melamine, obligingly broke, but not completely. There was a jagged three-inch hole where the fork missile had hit, leaving the rest of the plate intact. Ahhh, it felt GOOD to have done that!

I finished up in the kitchen, retrieved the broken plate which I intend to hang on a prominent wall as a trophy, and slunk off to finish up my work, feeling a bit silly. What a goofy thing to do. It hadn't solved anything, and now I'd have to deal with the aftermath of having slipped backwards on my path to greater enlightenment.

The good thing is that I no longer give myself a hard time for too long after any such digression. So, I got mad. So, I swore and cussed in true sailor fashion for five whole minutes. So what? Far better to let it all out that carry it within, like a tight angry knot curled up in your belly, and then get passive-aggressive with the people around you.

Moral of the story: I learned that progress is happening even when you think it isn't, and getting rid of the anger and irritation by venting safely is a good way to get back on an even keel. My recovery time is much shorter now. I timed it. Took me half an hour to get over the plate, another half hour to get over how stupid it was to smash the plate, and I was cleansed. I even laughed, because I haven't smashed a plate in years. Thank goodness it wasn't one of the good ones. Except just don't show me a carton of tomato juice for a few days, please.

I found a bunch of old letters today, in an old shoebox. They were from 15 and twenty years ago, a fraught period in my timeline, and reading through them reminded me of many forgotten events, places and faces. Nostalgia-tripping, bigtime. The strange thing is that it feels like all of that happened to someone else. Time has blurred the edges and everything looks slightly out-of-focus from where I am now.

Ah, the wisdom of hindsight, the luxury of perspective. I see now the lessons I had to learn, and of course I would never have learned them if life hadn't unfolded exactly as it had. It's usually the toughest of life's passages that have the most to teach us. A reluctant learner, I  kicked and screamed loudly, cussing and shaking my fist at the sky for good measure, when life continued to toss me one after another of those 'curve-ball' lessons.

But that's not the point. The point is, nobody writes letters any more. Not REAL ones. The last one I received was 12 years ago. No wait, I still have ONE friend who refuses to use email. Actually I have several, but only one who still writes letters and cards instead. And mails them. Every year, I still get a couple of letters from her. That's the only time I get to see stamps any more.

Email doesn't count, nor do Word.docs, because though we say we write them, technically we don't. We tap-tap them out on a keyboard. And that is one whole remove away from the act of writing a letter.

The paper you write on absorbs your thoughts, feelings, messages, vibration. So the receiver might actually have a fit of the shakes when they finally get to read your letter.

But seriously, apart from the vibrations, letters were a direct connect from the writer to the reader. Both invested time and energy in order to connect. The one to write, and the other to read. That's why you write a letter, but send an email. Today, none of us focuses singlemindedly on anything, because we're so into multi-tasking. Which is a shame. But when you're reading a letter, even an old one, like I was an hour ago, you can't simultaneously check email and watch TV and talk on the phone.

So anyway, I was riffling through these letters in order to see if any
were worth keeping. All I managed to get rid of was an old bank
statement. I kept all the letters. Every one of them. I don't care who reads them after I'm dead, it won't matter any more.

Kids born in the last 10 or 15 years will never know the anticipation of waiting to receive a letter, of marvelling at the postage stamps, of ripping open the envelope and pulling out the letter, of sneaking off somewhere quiet to read it. They will never need to develop letter writing skills, because they were born in the age of SMS. And they will never understand what us Old Farts are on about, when we get sentimental about an old shoebox full of letters.

Forwards generally piss me off, particularly the ones that
say your eyes will fall out of their sockets, your computer will self destruct, your fridge will be seized with violent epileptic fits and your ancestors will all rot in hell if you don’t send it on to 59,328 people in the next 0.3 seconds, thereby causing the internet to gurgle and choke and die... from too many forwards.

They also piss me off because people get mad at you for sending them these dire threats at the bottom of the email, they don’t care that they were part of the original forward, and personally attack you for promising something bad will happen if you don’t send it on in the next 10 minutes.

I usually just ignore that rubbish, and focus on the good bits in the message, assuming others will do the same. But not everyone does, as I realized when I received several death threats in my email from people who obviously didn’t.

Anyway, today’s harvest of forwards yielded this beautiful
little gem, which I’m quoting here in its entirety, because it really spoke to me. I’d seen it before, but some of these are keepers. Enjoy.

They're Playing Your Song
By Alan Cohen, author of "Living from the Heart."

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child.

They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else.

When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child's song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child's song.

When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood,
the people again come together and sing. Again, at the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song.

Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person's bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life.

When I have shared this story in my lectures, a fair amount of people in the audience come to tears. There is something inside each of us that knows we have a song, and we wish those we love would recognize it and support us to sing it.

In some of my seminars I ask people to verbalize to a partner the one phrase they wish their parents had said to them as a child. Then the partner lovingly whispers it in their ear. This exercise goes very deep, and many significant insights start to click. How we all long to be loved, acknowledged, and accepted for who we are!

In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.

The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.

A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.

If you do not give your song a voice, you will feel lost, alone, and confused. If you express it, you will come to life. We attract people on a similar wavelength so we can support each other to sing aloud. Sometimes we attract people who challenge us by telling us that we cannot or should not sing our
song in public. Yet these people help us too, for they stimulate us to find greater courage to sing it.

You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn't. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you'll find your way home.

Thank you, Alan Cohen!

I never understood why the old barter system died out. Long before there was money, there were goods that one person wanted and another person had. A simplified demand-supply situation. How badly I wanted what you had, and how badly you wanted what I had, was how the deal was struck.

It was simple enough when the goods exchanged were apples and oranges. I imagine the trouble really started when goods of differing value, from varied categories, created a commodity-trading value conundrum. I mean, how many sacks of potatoes in exchange for a Nubian Eunuch? How much tea from China for an old pirate ship? You see the problems this sort of thing could cause. So they introduced cowries, and assigned goods a certain value. Seems daft to me to pay with shells for a bolt of fabric, or a pound of exotic spices, or a dozen slaves, but that's the way it was.

Now we have money, but that introduced a whole new dimension, complicating the original "you got - I want" system, because you need to work to earn the money to buy the goods you want.

The strange thing about money is, when you have it, you don't think twice about spending it on foolish fripperies. And when it's in short supply, you shoot yourself in the head for having spent two weeks worth of groceries on a stupid lamp. Or at any rate, that's what I did about a year ago when projects were thin and I wished I hadn't bought the *&^%$%^&* lamp. I mean, I can't feed a lamp to the cats, or pay bills with it.

The value of an object is inversely proportionate to how badly you want to own it. It has little to do with how much it actually cost to produce, nor the price you pay for it. Which is why, when you're in uber-acquisitive mode, you think an object is worth a higher price because you really, really WANT it, and that determines how much you're willing to pay for it. Which is usually a whole sh*tload more than it's really worth. 3 days later, when the novelty has worn off, you will kick yourself for paying that insane amount for something you don't even like very much. I find this happens to me most often when I buy lamps. Maybe I take this whole "we are beings of light" thing too seriously, sometimes.

I know I would never pay that much for a silly lamp again. Unless it were a Tiffany-type stained glass lamp, those I would pay six months worth of groceries for. One can't have too many stained glass lamps. But that's not what this is about.

For the longest time, I've been trying to actively revive the barter system in my own life. I've managed to do a couple of interesting deals so far, and am considering closing my bank account soon, if this pans out well. I just need to refine my offering, in order to get things off the ground. So far, I've come up with house-sitting skills in exchange for a week in Santorini, now I just need to find someone there with a villa. Then there's migraine massage and foot reflexology skills, I'd trade those for a case of Dom Perignon. And there's navel-gazing, I'd do that for free. Any takers?

But seriously, I just did a deal with the local trashpicker. He agreed to relieve me of a whole load of junk, and traded me gloriously empty spaces in my home in exchange. I think I did rather well on that deal, I can FEEL the 'chi' really starting to flow. Now to find someone with a migraine...

Today, in celebration of our fragile blue-green home-planet, I plan to turn off all non-essential lights, including those in my head, which I do every day anyhow. I also plan to skip showering, just for today, thereby conserving 80 gallons of water per shower x 3, that’s a staggering 240 gallons in one day. So don’t come too close; fair warning, as you’ll probably smell me approaching a mile away.

I am also going out into the garden to hug my glorious 10-year-old ficus benjamina, planted way before tree-planting was even remotely fashionable. This particular Tree has history and much character, with huge aerial roots that have turned into part of the trunk.

It started out as a spindly indoor plant , and sat in my living room by the French windows for several months till it reached the ceiling. Then the cats began to use it as a scratching post; in fact, it still bears those gouge-marks on its incredible 186 cm. circumference. I moved the pot out into the garden for a few months of respite from feline attentions and lo and behold, the roots actually broke out, smashing the pot, and one very persistent aerial root simply grew into the soil, canting the Tree over at a precarious 50-degree angle. It resisted all my efforts to straighten it up, eventually righting itself as it grew, tall, strong and proud.

I later realized that bcause it had leaned over like that, I got to see it from my bedroom window, which faces out onto the garden. So when it grew so tall and I couldn’t see any leaves, just the trunk, I moaned about it to the Tree. In a few months, it responded…I kid you not…by putting out new branches at window-level, so I get to enjoy watching new leaves appear year-round. That Tree really hears me.

Anyone visiting my home stops and stares, exclaiming at the Tree, which is the first thing you notice in my exuberantly overgrown tropical-jungle garden. That Tree has a certain something that makes you stop and take notice. The local Feng Shui man told me that I’m lucky the Garden God has blessed me by choosing my Tree to reside in, of all the others in my area. This is true; I have always felt safe and protected in this house, and I am connected to that Tree in an inexplicable way; perhaps because my father bought it for me when I first moved in. I feel it still connects me to him in a real and tangible way.

So today’s agenda: fewer lights, no showers, hug the Tree, take my own shopping bag to the supermarket, which I mostly do anyway. That’s part of my contribution towards Earth Day this year... for the rest of the year. What’s yours going to be?

Here’s a humble suggestion. If you do nothing else today to celebrate our planet, you could do just this one little thing. Go check out http://www.greenpeace.org/international/  and watch the video, browse some of the issues on that page and sign up to receive campaign alerts and find out how you can make a difference. Get involved; by now you know that every voice is important, every person counts. So come on, people, let’s see a show of hands! Stand up for your home-planet and do one thing to make a difference each day. It’s such a small price to pay for the privilege of being here, innit?