Month: May 2009

Bed (96/365)

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Bed (96/365), originally uploaded by :Duncan.

I’ve spent the last two days in bed, all fluey and ill.

The wood thing is a ‘bed desk’. A great invention! You can lie in bed, watch movies, type, whatever. You lie underneath it and can adjust the angle of the tilt to suit you. Get them on eBay, coming in from China. I think this was the medium size one, fitting the 15″ MacBook Pro perfectly. The headphones are the most excellent Grado SR60, from Grado Labs in Brooklyn.

Film Stills

Posted on by Duncan Toms

I’ve been ill the last couple of days, laid up in bed, sleeping much of the time. In between snoozes and resting, I’ve set up a new page on the site called Film Stills.

I’ve grabbed images from films and put them here, around 30 per movie. If you click Slideshow, you will also hear music from the film.

The first one is Saving Private Ryan.

Three Days of Dynamic Meditation

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Three days of dynamic meditation, three nights of intense dreams.

First night’s dream, eating whatever I wanted. A big plate of full English in front of me and a strong feeling of ‘do I have to?’ I really didn’t want to eat that meat.

The second night was full of drunken dreams, staggering about, lost and confused, unable to think clearly or act.

The third night, smoking. Dry mouth and smelly. Singe marks on a rug that wasn’t mine and throwing stubs out the window, grubby on the clean driveway.

These are not the usual random dreams; something is changing. It is definitely stirring things up, the breathing, releasing, jumping, being still and then dancing. I look forward to the pureness of it, the direct feeling during that hour after work. The nausea is lessening each day and I’m able to immerse more fully. Less wondering how long left of each section.

An ancient pond. A frog jumps in. Plop! (86/365)

Posted on by Duncan Toms

From the excellent book on meditation: The Everyday Meditator. I started doing the Dynamic Meditation from it today. It made me queasy and it’s a long time since I felt nausea. Is it the worse feeling? One of them. It was also hard work: 10 minutes of breathing deeply, moving the body. 10 minutes of catharsis, letting out whatever you feel. 10 minutes of jumping up and down, hoo-ing. 15 minutes stopped dead still. 15 minutes dancing. It’s a stirring meditation, based on the idea that if ‘modern man’ attempts to sit quietly, he just can’t do it, so bound up are we in our issues and thought patterns. This ‘meditation’ supposedly gets things moving, allowing release of deep stored emotions and habits. We’ll see. More on this later.

What is it one feels like doing?

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Here’s a video I put together from images online to accompany a recording of Krishnamurti at Brockwood in 1969. Of course it’s an unofficial video, not part of my work to preserve the archive authentic works. But I wanted to experiment with a new format, and use audio that probably hasn’t been heard as often as the public talks.

Scientists see this flu strain as relatively mild

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Scientists see this flu strain as relatively mild

Genetic data indicate this outbreak won’t be as deadly as that of 1918, or even the average winter.

By Karen Kaplan and Alan Zarembo

April 30, 2009

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

via Scientists see this flu strain as relatively mild – Los Angeles Times.