Tag: normal

Old MacDonald Got AI – 15th August 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

God took six days to do
What can now be done
In a minute
At the push of a button
A simple prompt
A new world may be created
Everything for that we strived
Made faster and easier
And with it, the artist dies
Along with their struggle
How to know something is good?
It must be a piece of you
A chuck of the pain
That gave birth
No more the imagination
Your future automated
*A boundless machine
Of artistic demoralisation*

inspired and pilfered from the Red Hand Files and *Nick Cave directly

Today I’m feeling:

Unsure yet. I guess I’m relaxed. Just a little soft around the edges, not quite in focus.

At midday, my mojo is returning after three hours of catching up on writing and some reading.

And then….(see further below)

Today I’m grateful for:

The medicine that has helped Tigger overcome his fever and infection. I wasn’t particularly worried about Tig but I also remembered not being too worried about Kim when she was sick too. Sometimes, when Amy is being cautious, it’s best to follow her lead, just in case.

The best thing about today was:

Coffee. And having a few hours spare to read and write but more importantly to get my brain back in the game. 

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

In my final class of the day, I lost my patience with one student who was being obnoxious to me. I took his phone and later gave it to his homeroom teacher. He didn’t even seem to care that much. 

It’s a shame as I have previously gotten on well with that student. I can guess that something was going on with him but still…..

Sometimes the disrespect gets to me.

6th Nov 2023 – Only three months later and I only have a vague memory of this happening and can’t recall who it was! I think that’s good. No grudges held.

Something I learned today?

Tigger’s infection is all good now, though because of the medicine he had been taking his kidney function levels are a little high. Another week without medicine before another blood test which hopefully gives the all-clear.

How would I describe where I am right now?

I think if I told my friends just the word ‘Thailand’, that would trigger their imaginations to understand where I am right now. I know that I’m living a lucky life. Despite minor stresses, I’m feeling content and almost at peace.

How did I embrace uncertainty?

I’ve been looking at this question for several days.  I feel that my life is reasonably certain and has been for a long time. In times when I did feel uncertain it was purely internal thoughts rather than some circumstance.

Both times I moved countries I didn’t feel uncertainty really, though I guess that means that I did embrace it. How did I do that? Perhaps by positivity. Perhaps by ignorance. 

As I’ve gotten older I’ve understood that no matter what happens or is happening, things will be okay. Sometimes you just have to go through shit. I do wish I could’ve worked that out when I was younger as it would have saved me a lot of trouble and stress at that time.

What is an unusual fact about me?

I was listening to the End On End podcast with the High Back Chairs and one of them was talking about his collection of German military uniforms from 1880-1918. It reminded me that no matter what you may know people for they can always surprise you with something unusual. 

I guess I have an unusual amount of CDs featuring unusual music but because of the circles I run in that doesn’t seem particularly unusual to me but may be to others.

Perhaps something I find unusual about myself is the variety of work that I’ve done over the years. Ugh, even that doesn’t seem particularly unusual though.

Am I.… am I normal? What’s wrong with that? I don’t want to be normal. I know that no one is normal but I would hate for someone to think of me as normal!

Quote: I quote others in order to better myself – Montaigne

Sometimes a good quote captures your imagination and consolidates ideas into a sentence or two. Most of the quotes I enjoy are positive but I also dig the backhanded sarcastic and ironic type of quote when it is clearly obvious its intention.

I wish I could remember good quotes though and be able to use them in conversation. That would make me appear smart. Perhaps that is vanity but it’s true, I would like to appear smart at least. Because I don’t feel smart at all. Can I fool myself?

Whispers – 21st May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

There’s chinks in the armour
Some cracks in the veneer
The aggressive smiles fading
Reality becomes clear

Self-sabotage and betrayal
Words cannot be returned
Trailing long behind
All those people that were burned

Social power has waned
It’s time to turn away
The blame lies unresolved
Whilst whispers have their say

6th Nov 2024 – Shared with Moonwashed Weekly Prompt – whispers

Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.

Charles Adams

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Cap is eating and acting normal again. Also for the delicious wholegrain bread Nut gave me yesterday. Ate it all already.

And then you start to enjoy it, take all the plugs out – 30th January 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Do you find it normal that there are daily demonstrations by ________? That women in love run away from their Prince Charming? That people dream about farms rather than love? That men and women sell their time, but can never buy it back again? And yet, all these things happen, so it really doesn’t matter what I believe or don’t believe; all these things are normal. Everything that goes against Nature, against our most intimate desires, is normal in our eyes, even though it’s an aberration in God’s eyes. We seek out our own inferno, we spend millennia building it, and after all that effort, we are now able to live in the worst possible way.

– Maria, Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho

Certain passages just jump out at you when you read them. Resonate with your thoughts and feelings at that particular time.

In the text, the blank is ‘Kurds’ in the first sentence, but this day I’m writing, or this day you are reading, you can fill it in with anything. There are sure to be daily demonstrations somewhere in the world, about some injustice or other, and so that we have spent millennia building this reality and despite all our efforts we end up living in the worst possible way – and that is what we perceive as normal.

The picture attached is not connected with this thought in any way. I took it this morning, riding around after finishing reading Eleven Minutes at my regular weekend coffee stop. The newly planted rice looked weak and vulnerable deep in the water. Though from the angle of the photo it looks much more cohesive.

There is a cafe in the middle of the fields, working the photo opportunity whilst the rice is growing. Rice is life here. Other fields are burning off their waste, ready for the next season.

The shack at the corner, a shield from the sun for tired sweaty workers to take a breath. It is a romantic structure, though I will never find myself in need of its use.

The big tree behind the shack looks strong at base yet scrawny at height. It looks climbable, it looks liveable – build a treehouse and live above the land.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for Amy’s yoga mat which I have been able to borrow and use in the mornings before going to work. Before I would slip and slide around on my rug.

It’s just the rising tide of mediocrity, just a sign of the times – 19 September 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Stratosphere, Ionosphere, Semisphere! Up here I can see the stars, I’m touching space with my iris, black drunk peehole iris. Europe’s mighty murky down below, I’m stuck in the sun, still on alcholiday. Could be fuckin’ anything down there. We could be time warped back one whole week and we’ll meet our previous selves in a 30,000 feet mid air collision at 580 miles per hour. In the sun! In space, man!

How can I ever dream to read every word ever wrote by anybody ever worth a shit? How do we dream – such strange dreams, more and more my dreams touch reality, particularly when reality is so far removed from normal humdrum, but when, at what point does being away from humdrum become normalcy?

So I think to write to Lou, never wrote him before, but I have an idea after seeing him smash his favourite guitar in rage and whatever I can’t face how his simple songs touched hearts of thousands who come to pray at his altar now, so I’ll tell him of my holiday, how people have to exist on the double edged sword I was explaining to you about before remember? Economy of tourists. So I’ll tell him go out and play, play your music, for yourself, play what you want to hear, for yourself, all others are superfluous, ignore them. He loves us, he told us, sad man, we love him, once again, it’s all life isn’t it?

So, what I’m trying to say. Me and Broni, have worked out is, consumerism – see the connection, don’t sell out to the people who want to pay, do it for your own reasons. Greece, our island, is sold out, presenting us with what we want to see, catering to the big market, but we’re (Me and Broni), we’re small fish.

8th Jan 2021 – Bronwyn and I went to the island of Rhodes in Greece for a quick holiday. This was only the third time in my life I’d been on an airplane and only two weeks later I would be on another couple more for a 23-hour journey to the opposite side of the world!

On Rhodes we messed around on hired motorbikes, saw some ruins and historic buildings. As the Greeks seem to love to eat meat with everything I was stuck with Greek Salad for many lunches and dinners. Ho Hum.

It was damn hot too. Nice preparation for arrival in Australia. We slept with no sheets, even moving the mattress onto the balcony one night. The hotel was my first experience with toilets where you weren’t allowed to throw your toilet paper down the toilet. It was this experience that got me more closely checking what was going on down there in the cleanliness department.

We were drunk every evening, definitely experimenting with the local Ouzo. The nearest beach to the hotel was huge and deserted and mostly pebble. I got naked – why not? There was no one else around to see my little dick.

At the main beach we didn’t know that we were supposed to pay someone to sit under an umbrella and we laid our towels out away from them and Bronwyn got into water for a swim. She soon came back due to two little kids that had been sent by the umbrella owners and started throwing stones at her in the water. Jesus – they don’t fuck around for a dollar. We packed up and left and that kinda summed up much of our feeling about the island.

Rhodes

One thing Bronwyn warned me about was the beaches and oceans in Australia. Everyone loves to go there but they can be very dangerous especially for poor swimmers. Having skipped swimming classes at school for most of my life (we had to pay for swimming lessons at school and I told my mum that it was too expensive for us and to save her money but really I was just body shy) Bronwyn taught a few basic things about swimming – most Aussies appear to be good at swimming – and by the end of the week stay at the hotel I was easily doing the five metre widths in the pool! OK – we have to start somewhere.

Hotel Pool

We bought ourselves and our friends some souvenirs but the bottle of Ouzo we had wrapped in towels and clothes and packed in our suitcase didn’t survive the journey and we sadly washed our clothes when we got back home. That suitcase would soon be packed again.