Thursday, February 26, 2015

John as George by Depeche Mode

So, I was going through the posts here on ShirleyTwofeathers, looking at everything that was still in draft form. Doing a little housekeeping, and I found this video. It's way out dated - but fun nevertheless, so I'm posting it today just in case someone finds it as entertaining as I did:

Unofficial Music Video for "John The Revelator" performed by "Depeche Mode"

   

 Here's a link to the video on YouTube

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Truth and The Devil


You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of Truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to let him organize it."

~Krishnamurti

More fun and interesting quotes can be found on my new website: Hey It's Me

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Cobra Verde Quotes I Love

It was he who was
the alonest
of the alone.
  ~old storyteller



Eleven years of drought,
the rocks are sick.
The world is dying.
Evil is a trick.
  ~introduction, opening credits

I will die now.
Be quiet,
or the bench will crack from sadness.
  ~Francisco's mother

... I am so sorry, but the rest of these amazing quotes have been moved to my new website shirleytwofeathers.com. All of them can be found on Hey It's Me and also (individually listed and nicely illustrated) on Way Cool Quotes.


My Life As A Movie


The story of my life aka
Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski as Cobra Verde
Amazingly accurate!



I was going to write a bunch of stuff about this, but I think the movie clip needs no explanation, no introduction, and nothing more. I am curious, however, to know if this is true for others as well. If it's true for you too, it means I am not alone and neither are you. 

Videos on YouTube come and go, 
but for now here is that awesome final scene.



Or go directly to YouTube and see it there: 

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Finding My Inner Buddha

Found this quote on Facebook today. And when I first read it, the thought appealed to me. I mean, who wouldn't rather be the lion in the story, right? 


Buddhism, mindfulness, all that stuff appeals to me quite a bit. But I'm never able to actually embrace the whole of it because when I look too closely at the teachings, the writings of Milarepa, for example, I see rules, judgment, and dogma. Right away, I'm wanting to break the rules, and poke at the status quo.

Yes, I agree that we all take life on earth way too seriously, and I love the idea that it's all a grand illusion, that we are merely actors on a stage, taking on different roles. Sure, I can go there. I actually believe it. But hey, if I'm going to be an actor in this bone chilling, skin wrenching, heart clenching, mind blowing show called ShirleyTwofeathers, I want to be in it all the way. I want to feel it, to taste it, and grab onto it just as desperately and determinedly as I am to avoid it completely. 

I guess that's why hiding in a cave in the Himalayas, owning nothing, responsible for nothing, doing nothing, being nothing, eyes fixed and vacant, totally detached from everything and everyone, sounds so appealing to me. Enlightenment, yogi style, is the ultimate escape from living my real life.

But that's not what I came here to do. That's not who I want to be. And it's not who I am right now. And so I give up my dream of being an enlightened and scary lion. I will continue chasing the sticks my mind throws... and running around crazy with them... chewing them... shredding them all over the carpet... then asking for one more time... one more time... one more time... until finally and at last I fall asleep, stick still in my mouth, smelling like wet dog and dead wood.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Turning Junk Into Art

My retarded blog post about "Gag Me With A Fork" led me to this really cool art page... Inspiration Green - check it out... Deeply reinforces what a loser I am since I'm sitting here mindlessly blogging about nothing when I could be making art with the junk that surrounds me.

I love this one because it looks so easy to reproduce and play around with. It's made out of garden hoses and faucet handles:


I love this next one because it looks so impossible:

Art by Sayaka Ganz
So now I think I might to head into my "hoarder room" (fondly remembered as my "art room") and see if I can make some sense of it, maybe hack out some space to work on some art this weekend. I hope that's what I do...

Gag Me With A Fork


I love the title to this blog post!
And I can't think of anything to go with it...
:-(

I trolled Facebook looking for something that would qualify...
Nothing
Nada
Zilch

I watched the news
I stared mindlessly at the seemingly endless flow of 
mind numbing soul sucking buy me buy now 
advertising on network television.
Came up empty.

I googled it
Found a deleted You Tube video
Dictionary definitions - Boring!!
A number of twitter comments - Even More Boring!!
A strange foodie post at Jack Sh*t, Gettin' Fit
And this picture


So then I thought it might be a good idea to look inside and see if there is anything personal I'd like to say about things that annoy me to the point of  "Gag Me With A Fork" 
 Everything I came up with was too stupid to write about... 
I kept gagging and deleting..
So..

I guess at some point a person has to give up
So this is me giving up on the idea of a clever "gag me with a fork blog post"
and sharing a picture by someone else about someone else instead.


Ok... I can't resist.
More forks..
Actually a lot of them:



Wednesday, February 18, 2015

It's Been A Long Time

Wow! It's been a long time since I blogged about anything, and even longer since I blogged something that wasn't self serving, or found somewhere else, but was - instead - deeply personal and intimate. I've been too busy wallowing in the mire of self pity, self doubt, regret, angst and guilt. I totally hate getting older and older and still not feeling like I have actually lived up to even my mildest aspirations.


What I have been doing is hiding out, becoming more and more reclusive, avoiding the internet entirely, reducing my circle of friends to the few who dare to push their way in (meaning nobody), hanging tight with my family, doing the barest of minimums every day, and burying myself in the Sims 2. Creating elaborate neighborhoods and scenarios, and pretty much losing myself in the fantasy of a game where I can always get what I want, where lifetime happiness can always be achieved, and friends and family can be found and created with only a little bit of effort.

I was starting to feel as if I was dying a slow death of lethargy and immobility. Actually, it was more like I had already died inside and was just waiting for my circumstances and my body to catch up with me. The walking dead... that was/is me. Shambling through the shambles of a life I have allowed to fall down around me.

Sometimes, the numbness would give way to a sort of nameless anxiety, that "Oh God!" feeling of having forgotten something really really important. And sometimes I would have glimpses of ... I would almost feel something ... like grief, a desperate sorrow, a heart clenching longing for ... I don't know what. Home maybe? That comes closest to describing it... something sure to hold on to, fall into, belong to, be enfolded in... And that, of course, was very uncomfortable and immediately sedated with food, television, the Sims, whatever was immediately available.

So what happened? And why am I here, blogging it?

Well, it was interesting (at least to me), because everything I know about life I've learned from playing The Sims, and in the game it was becoming more and more apparent that in order to get along in life, in order to achieve lifetime happiness, it is extremely helpful to have people. And I started trying to figure out how to have people in my real life without actually having to go anywhere or do anything. Which is partly what social media is all about. You can have a bunch of "friends" and never have to interact with them at all. I know this is true because I have 520 facebook friends, and not including my family, I actually know less than 20 of them, and maybe only 1 or 2 of them have my actual phone number.

At the same time, I realized that much of my lethargy and angst is fueled by regret. All the things that I did that I wish I hadn't done, all the things I didn't do that I wish I had done, so much that I could'a - should'a - would'a ... if only... and I really didn't know what to do with all that. So because everything else I know about life I've learned from books, movies, and television, I thought I'd take a page from the Debra Morgan  book of coping with the un-cope-able, and do some time on the treadmill. Remember Deb from Dexter running and running on the treadmill, working it out that way? Well, running is beyond my capabilities at this point, but I figured I could at least do some walking. And I have to tell you... it turned into yet another form of self torture. I tried just walking slow, I tried walking fast, I tried walking and watching television, I tried rewarding myself for walking, I tried listening to music and walking - which worked best, by the way - and ultimately the music was what saved me. But not yet...

It occurred to me that maybe what I needed was religion, a spiritual experience that could be revisited, something that would give me absolution, and comfort, and a reason to get up every morning and carry on.... Something larger than my baggage, my bullshit, my perennial self doubt... So I talked to my angels, and I talked to my guides... all the while convinced that they were disappointed and disgusted by my failure to make something special and interesting with my life, and had left me long ago in search of someone better, someone more authentic and real.

I looked up churches in the yellow pages, I contemplated becoming a Catholic. "Forgive me father for I have sinned" sounded very appealing to me. Plus, there would be - you know - actual people there. But in the end, you have to believe in that stuff for it to work, and while I am a believer in some things, I am not a believer in the conventional sense, and mainstream religions with their rules and dogma do not appeal to me, I have never been a rule follower, or a believer in dogma. I am an asker of questions, a skeptic, a rebel, and a rule breaker... there's no church that I could find where I thought there was even the remotest chance of fitting in or finding what I was looking for.

Then, suddenly, surprisingly, my angels and guides came through for me and gave me... a church to go to, someone to listen to, something to cling to, and no - not comfort, not absolution, but something real that (right now anyway) resonates so deeply it has brought me out of my lethargy, and back to the world of maybe not the living, but certainly the not quite dead.

So what was it? This is the strangest life I've known... because when I asked for Church, when I asked for spiritual guidance, when I asked for something that would give me back my connection to life, I got The Doors and Jim Morrison. And I'm like... really? And yet from the moment I played that CD I have felt more alive, more understood, more real, more OK with the mess I have made with my life, than I have in years. So, of course (since I never do anything half way)  I got the movie, and every DVD I could get my hands on... all the CD's... the books...

And here I am online again, looking to connect with the larger world. Morrison's voice resonating in my head, unable to just sit and mindlessly play the Sims, thinking that maybe, just maybe it might be possible to break on through to the other side.

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Ask Auntie Moss

Auntie Moss

Ask any yes or no question, and Auntie Moss be givin' you an answer. This old witch woman is wiser than you think. Go ahead, give it a go.
Your question:
Auntie Moss says:

For A Different Kind Of Reading Try This!

Disclaimer

Images that appear on this site, original or modified for entertainment purposes, are copyright their respective owners and shirleytwofeathers claims no credit unless otherwise noted. If you believe your copyright has been infringed upon please contact me so I can start the removal process.