A (Relatively) Big-Deal Worm Rescue

I set out on my way to the bank today to take care of some bills.  Before I got far though, I was surprised to see a worm drying out on the hot sunny pavement.  At first I thought it was dead, but then it moved a little.  There was no trail of wetness to indicate how it happened to end up there, and it was evidently exhausted, just barely alive in its exposed condition, yet it was still slick with mucus as if it had freshly crawled out of the earth, presenting a small mystery.  I carefully picked it up and it didn't put up any resistance, betraying its exhausted state.

I placed the worm in the verge amongst the shade of the vegetation, but the soil was dry and packed hard, so I dug a small hole with my finger and was encouraged to see there was some moisture under the surface;  I sprinkled some of the soil over the worm, but clearly the creature needed more than just a light covering of earth to revive -- if it wasn't over its limit already -- so I zipped over to the the supermarket across the street and bought a small bottle of water, all the while anxious to get back to the worm as quickly as possible.  On the way in I had to ask (politely) a mother-daughter pair to make way for me on the sliding walkway as I was in a hurry, and they were perfectly nice about moving out of the way, although they might have been slightly perplexed as to why a man would be in such a "grocery-emergency"😅.  As fate would have it, my way back was blocked by this little old man with his cart full-laden with bottled water, and I didn't dare to ask him to move it out of the way, it looked so heavy.

Anyway, I trotted back with the water, half-expecting the worm to be gone, but no, it was right where I left it.  I gingerly poured a little of the water over it (the water was not refrigerated), and was gladdened to see it move in response.  However, I didn't know if it was responding with gratitude to a life-saving gulp of cool ichor or reacting with annoyance to a sudden flood in its (possibly) last moments of life.  I therefore decided instead to pour the water on the soil next to it, churning it to mud, and piled some over the worm.  To this treatment the worm seemed to respond positively, moving with a bit more vigor than before, and I was encouraged to see it even seemingly trying to burrow its way into the earth.  

Whether it succeeded or not, I don't know, because by this point I needed to resume my trip to the bank.  I may go back tomorrow to see if there is anything left to see.

Number of worms rescued so far: 78

Speaking Of Wallpapers...

Here's another favorite that I use from time to time.  It's a still from the 2017 Korean movie The Outlaws (Kr. 범죄도시).

New Wallpaper

Just the latest in a longish series.

A Variation On The Old "Ghost Carrying His Own Head" Trope

This ghost must have lost his head in a propeller accident.

Like this Nazi who almost bested Indy in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark in this scene:

The Earth Whispers

 

Related posts:  The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 13);

                         The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 12);

                         The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 17);

                         The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 8);

                         The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 19)

A Kinda Sorta Semi-Lucid Dream

Late last night I made the unwise decision to indulge in a bit of beer-drinking (OK, maybe more than "a bit") into the wee hours before finally going to bed.  And of course the inevitable happened, and early this morning (well, yesterday morning now) I was awakened by nature, and after visiting the bathroom I got back into bed.  Interestingly, at that point waking life smoothly transitioned into dream and I dreamt that I didn't fall asleep again but instead went out and was walking amongst the street crowd.  My dreaming mind was concerned that I had not had enough sleep before engaging in activity, so I asked someone what time it was, and was told that it was actually 8 AM.  Thus I was reassured of having had (somewhat) sufficient sleep, but then I started to wonder why then it was still dark... surely the seasons hadn't changed that much yet!  That's how the dream ended and I woke up -- to visit the bathroom a second time, and it was still dark.

Wonder What Happened

Did something very heavy-yet-springy bounce down this staircase (think a giant ping-pong ball made of tungsten armor)?  Or was it a series of unrelated accidents -- improbable though that may be -- that just happened to damage those three steps in the same place, in the same manner?

More Ominous Clouds

Demon birds, horizon-girding bat wings, yet another would-be Sun swallower, and a little flying genie, perhaps a cousin of the Dancing Rain God.

 

Adorable Pair

Aww...

Is It A Bird? Is It Superman?

It's a plane!  A military jet, perhaps?  Although here it's looking more like a bullet fired straight at that wall.

Freeform vs Preform

Read into it what you will.

 

Funny

Just now I was watching a YouTube video about Paul Amadeus Dienach, a Swiss man who fell into a coma in 1921 and stayed unconscious for a whole year.  When he finally woke up he claimed he had not been unconscious at all, but that his mind had time-traveled to the year 3906, and he proceeded to write down everything he remembered from the year he spent in the 40th century inhabiting the body of a man named Andreas Northam (I actually have the book, but it's pretty long and I found the style rather tedious so I sought out a video summary^).  Anyway, just as the video came to the part about how mankind evolved and changed over the intervening two millennia, a YouTube advert broke in with how "prostate enlargement still affects a majority of older men!".

The Six Realms

Preparing the last post reminded me that this particular set of masks has never been shown in public in their intended form.  This is how they should ideally be displayed, in accordance with the Buddhist view of life and the universal law of karma.

I sent this photo to someone who majored in Buddhist studies, and he immediately recognized it for what it is, without any explanation from me.  At top center are the deva, "gods" who reside in paradisiacal realms and are the most superior entities in existence, overwhelmingly the greatest of all living beings in power, intelligence and wealth.  The main characteristic of their lives is the absence of suffering;  they live their extremely long lives knowing nothing but pleasure and joy (save perhaps for the occasional challenges from the asura).  But when the time comes, when you've been at the top of the heap, there's no place but down...

And slightly lower than the gods, to their right in the photo, are the asura, also known variously as demi-gods, jealous gods, anti-gods, titans and even demons.  They are also powerful and intelligent, much superior to humans -- their realm actually overlaps that of the gods -- but they are not as gifted as the gods, and they are by nature jealous and suspicious;  they constantly scheme and plot against each other and the gods, but being the lesser of the two superhuman species, when they do war against the gods they always lose, which makes them even more jealous and angry and vulnerable to a lower incarnation next time.

Opposite them on the left is the realm inhabited by us manusha.  Fortunately filled with extremes of both comedy and tragedy -- joy balanced out by misery, delight by regret, and of course, kindness by cruelty -- it provides the best starting-off place for self-development... or self-debasement.

Just below humans are the tiryag, animals.  As with the deva and asura, animals and humans dwell in a shared realm, but being brutes (literally), animals know nothing but base instincts, and their lives, if in the wild, are filled with fear and wariness, and in domestication, are short and toilsome, their lives (and deaths) being absolutely controlled by their human owners;  but still they experience emotion just as humans do, and can learn from experience.  Responding to kindness with what gratitude they are capable of expressing, they may yet evolve and be reincarnated as humans.

Across from animals are the preta, beings driven by the obsession to possess.  They are often shown in art as humanlike but with big distended bellies and thin, narrow throats -- symbols of their characteristic greed and avarice.  They are forever seeking but never finding satiation.  Although the object of their desire tends to be stereotyped as food (hence their common cognomen "hungry ghosts"), but actually it can be anything, including such repellent things as corpses, blood and dung (hmm... me and my hoarding...).

And at the bottom are the naraka, the beings (self-)condemned to hell.  While they may not necessarily be subject to physical pain (although of course this can be the case) the essential feature of their lives is hatred, in both doling it out to others and receiving it from them.  These unfortunate beings' lives are filled with torment and brutality, for which they blame everyone but themselves (I'm reminded of the gangbanger who raped and murdered two schoolgirls and when time came for his execution, allegedly said "Well, sometimes the good guys don't win").

I have also considered displaying these masks in this arrangement,

emphasizing an empty space in the center, to show that in Buddhist cosmology reincarnation is not really a matter of judgment, but the natural working-out of the impersonal law of karma, like attracting like.  "You go where you fit".  Maybe I still will.

Related post:  Continuing On...

Another Accidental Resemblance

I finally realized why this grimacing face

always seemed vaguely familiar!  It's because it's invoking this expression of pure disgust on Clint Eastwood's face in Gran Torino:

Related post:  Synchronistic Event No. 17

Just A Silly Interlude

LOL

Cloud Giant

Whether he be a harbinger of good or evil to come, only time will tell.

[Yeah, I know that's a pretty chickenshit way of foretelling the future, being so vague, broad or ambiguous that it can fit almost any situation;  never mind that I've got a tome myself that contains all of Nostradamus' quatrains]

 

Related post:  Res Ipsa Loquitur

Trouble Brewing

Confrontation in the sky!  A big, ominously dark and dense cloud leans threateningly into the face of a much smaller, frightened cloud, whose hackles are rising straight up.

Antes Y Después

Made back in August, 2014.  At the time I was seeing a psychiatrist.

No Opportunity's Too Small

to bother with, said the eagle-eyed OCD man.

Related posts:  Where Heaven And Earth Touch;   Where Heaven And Earth Touch II;   Cloud-Struck Tree

Space Monster

Sinister cloud looking like it's about to engulf that building like a giant amoeba.

I Think I'll Call It...

Dun dun dun...

My Dragonfly Scroll

Sunspots

Dappled sunlight on the sidewalk, shining through some dense greenery...

Actually, it's spots that are starting to dry after a day of rain.

Related post:  Another Amazing Discovery

Confab

The Evening Deepens

A 43-minute slice of my favorite time of day.

"Come, Comrades, Rise Up!"

The moment I saw this cloud blocking the Sun I was reminded of rabble-rousing and Revolutions (amusingly enough, the bough at the bottom right seems to be echoing the cloud's "gesture").

"Arise, (set to the tune of *'l'internationale' playing in the background) ye sad victims of oppression!  Rise up in your righteous anger and furiously destroy all vestiges of whatever is wonderful that you've been denied!  The _____ (fill in the blank) did it under ____!  Why can't we ____ have our own Cultural Revolution and its natural fruit and reward, the Great Leap Forward?!"

*Traditional anthem of self-claimed communists and socialists, that few of them have ever even heard of today