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Wednesday 18 January 2012

Honey Gatherers of the Mind *

Good Morning My Dear Friends!

Welcome to the study at Myrtle House on a quite damp and drab looking Wednesday; a bit of a blip in the otherwise clear-skied month of Janus we have come to know and love so well! I thought it was high time I brought you up to speed on events, happenings, thoughts and whimsies and simply invite you to pull up a chair, pour some tea and for us to spend a wee while immersed in each others company.

I've been attending to my lessons quite a bit recently; trying to ram stuff into the rapidly smoothing folds of my failing cerebellum and gain more comprehension of things I half understand as well as revisiting stuff of my school days with fresh eyes and perhaps a little more dedication than before.  This process is undoubtedly helped by the profusion of excellent television programmes recently which allow even a dimwit like myself some access to the fascinating areas of life which we live in but don't always acknowledge or appreciate fully. As is often the case in these matters, a relatively simple statement in one area of knowledge exposes one's complete ignorance of another; rectify this and yet another little anomaly pops up, allowing one to travel down another path in pursuit of the ever-elusive esotericness and, as I find often and most gratifyingly, "the reward is the journey itself" (Lao Tse) 

It is all a question of beauty and quality; if you've ever had the misfortune to hear or read my thoughts on the marvelous "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M Pirsig you'll know that this concept is a major facet of my raison d'être and recently I have found myself truly appreciating for the first time the absolute beauty of Mathematics.  I have been interested and intrigued by the seemingly obscure and logic-defying quantum world for a long time but my ignorance of the basic language of science - i.e. Mathematics - has hindered my understanding and it was while writing copious pages of notes on the fantastic "Wonders of the Universe" programmes by Dr Brian Cox ( yes, I probably do need to get out more) that I realised that I really had to get back to basics and "do my sums"! 

So, with the help of a marvelously mathematical and delightfully dear friend, I am slowly reinstating all the stuff I have forgotten - or never bothered to learn - from schooldays and am amazed by the sheer beauty of it all! 
I  experience real delight in actually using Pythagorus Theorem - y'know, all that "the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square on the other two sides" business  - something I have remembered from my time at the Grammar School but never truly understood or valued.** Even if there is compelling evidence that the theorem was around some 1200 years before our friend Pyth was born, it's still a cracker!

You must forgive my zeal; I am newly converted and positively evangelical - ah well, at least it seems to be a positive thing and so I am able to say with pride tempered by modesty that I am  carrying on with my nude ear's revolution to have at least one positive thought per day, a task which is proving much easier than I initially though it would be; it's quite entrancing just how rapidly these little bunnies of beneficence breed given the correct conditions, this being, of course, a positive and open frame of mind.

A similar ethos is also being applied to my writing; I am flogging my wares around the various marketplaces available and, despite little interest as of yet, I intend to keep at it.  I read in one of the trade magazines of one person who, receiving her first rejection letter from a publisher, was thrilled as she now considered herself a real writer; an attitude I admire and understand only too well.  It is also my intention to put aside some time for the long over-due development of the Myrtle House site which I find to my shame hasn't been updated since August last year! It will hopefully soon be used, as initially intended, as a publishing base for my work and that of other like-minded folk and you will be able to spend your hard earned spondulicks on my scribblings should you so desire.  Much of the neglect has been down to the fact that I've spent more time trying to develop my counselling site; my experiences there will undoubtedly prove to be of benefit.

A small wet nose on my knee tells me that my allotted span at the keyboard is nearly up; I must ablute and lead the Famous Sally Dog (for it is she!) on one of her matutinal micturating meanders, although a quick glance through the study window doesn't fill yours truly with the joys of Spring . . . ah well, needs must as they say!

I do hope you've enjoyed today's offering and that the sums haven't put you off; may today and the rest of the week be simply laden with love and laughter for you all.  Please feel free to drop me a line about this blog or anything else in fact and don't forget to pop in for a brew next time you are passing.

'til next time


Be Seeing You !










*Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind. 
Friedrich Nietzsche


**For those of you unfamiliar or terrified of the concept it goes a little like this: If you want to know how long the hypotenuse on the triangle up there is, you look at the other two sides and square them.  So the side that is 3cm long (we'll call it "a") becomes 3x3= 9cm; the other side ("b") becomes 4x4 = 16 cm, so we add these together and we get 25cm. 
If we then use P's theorem which says that a² + b² = c² we can work out that the hypotenuse squared ("c" x "c") must equal 25cm, so that we can work out which number times itself equals 25 (this is called finding the square root and you can do it either in your head for simple numbers or use a calculator) and so c=5