From Hands To Feet

My toes and a dragonfly.

Suddenly Sad

I took this shot as a lark.  I happened to pass by the guard shack at my building (not as ominous as it sounds -- the "guards" are mostly retired old men who are more like groundskeepers than security personnel), saw the shadow of its roof and thought my hand sticking out of it would be kind of funny.

But when I opened the image for editing it struck an unexpected chord ;  the hand looked like a desperate appeal for help, or perhaps a melancholy reaching-out for a response, any response...

I guess it's just a matter of your state of mind at the time you see the image, but I'm reminded of Goya's lonely dog.

 

JANISCHEWITZ?

I don't know if other people are like this, but I've always had trouble recalling certain words. Not "difficult" words, either ; just plain ordinary words; like "mulberry", and... and.., see? Well, I'd completely forgotten about this interesting dream I had, but Facebook threw this memory of it up, from a few years ago today.

O.K., this not-being-able-to-reremember-certain-words thing is carrying over into my dreams now. Early this morning I had a dream about a soccer player who mistook a cliff for flat ground and fell several stories, and in it I could not remember the word "Manischewitz". I don't remember what the connection was, but I remember used-car king Cal Worthington, bless his soul (for those of you who grew up in SoCal), was in the dream, and then so was my friend Evelyn, who happens to be Jewish, so maybe she was the prompt. Anyway, in the dream I remembered the square shape of the bottle but thought the name of the wine started with a 'J' -- so I tried various J words, like Janischewitz, Janissaries, JanisJoplin and even JaschaHeifetz, to no avail. Then I woke up and almost immediately realized I'd been dreaming about Manischewitz. Hmm, now I want some.

Cicada And Moth

Sounds like an Aesop fable, doesn't it😊  Actually, there's some work going on in the building, so the staff have put up hard plastic sheeting in the elevator to protect the walls from all the equipment and material being ferried.  Then I noticed this cicada

under the plastic.  I wanted to free it, dead or alive, but to my surprise I could not find any openings or gaps anywhere through which it could have entered.  How the cicada managed to get itself trapped in there is a small mystery.  Days later, it's still there.  Then, yesterday I got on the elevator and on the side opposite the cicada there was this very pretty moth

just sitting there, pretty as you please, and not under the plastic.  It was clearly a live moth, perhaps taking refuge from the birds that populate the trees downstairs (but it probably just wandered in at random).  I left it alone and exited the elevator in the lobby, but then I ducked right back in -- to shoo the moth off its perch and out of the elevator.  It couldn't stay in the elevator, obviously -- what happened to the cicada might happen to it, too, or some thoughtless person might kill it.  Anyway, so there.

We Give You Full Control

There's no way that sign is literally true.  Come on.

Napoleon's Last Soldier

 

What To Do, What To Do...

O.K., so I've got hoarder-ish inclinations.  I did have a vague idea before about using a few of these cicada nymph shells in a wall sculpture;  I gave up on that plan because it proved difficult to implement for various reasons, but I still kept collecting the shells.  Now I've got almost three dozen of these buggers (see what I did there?^).  At one point there actually were an even three dozen, but I accidentally damaged a couple and had to discard them.  Now I don't know what to do with them, except that I don't want to throw them out.

A Visit To Myeongdong Cathedral

I find that Catholic churches, no less than Buddhist temples, somehow manage to achieve an atmosphere of calmness and introspection even when they are located in busy, noisy city centers.  In the case of Myeongdong Cathedral this effect is especially pronounced, as the church is located just a block away from the crazy raucousness of crowded Myeongdong, the touristy shopping and eating district.

And Yet More Iridescence

 The skies are so much more interesting in wet weather.

'Tis The Season

And now back in the present, another friendly insect; taken yesterday.

July is the main month for monsoon rains in Korea.  Right now the southern half of the country is beiing battered with record amounts of rain, with floods and mudslides and accidents.  Up here in the north though, so far the rain has been minimal.  How is this even possible in this small country?  Well, anyway, I went for a long walk along the Cheonggyecheon Stream in Seoul yesterday - braving the heat and the humidity - and was rewarded with this pretty sight.

June Bug in July

A lucky shot taken on this very date, six years ago.  I like June bugs.  They are one of those select bugs/insects that I can deal with without a sense of revulsion.  Maybe in this case it's because they are big and stocky and so approach the lower limit of mammal- and bird-hood?  Perhaps.

Stag Beetle

Came across this guy just chillin', just like that, in front of my door.  I have no idea how or why a stag beetle would be found 11 stories up a mountain of concrete and steel, but there you are.

Anyway, so I gathered him up and took him inside, and placed him in a glass container.  He seemed pretty feeble, and I had this vague impression that he was near death, and I would soon have a cool addition to my hoardery.  Except he was fine a day later, and I had to admit I was keeping a creature prisoner, waiting for it to die.  It was such a repellent realization, I actually felt evil.  I had to let him go.

The Moon Doesn't Always Attract

Related Post:  The Strange Attraction Of The Moon

"Screaming Feet"

 

And Still Another "Seen In A Seoul Alley"

 

Splitting Heavenly Bodies

This view of the Sun, captured a few days ago, reminded me of something.  There is a certain religious tradition, which I will not name, that declares that its Founder, whom I will not name, once split the Moon in half.  But it doesn't tell you about what happened in the aftermath of the destructive miracle, although obviously the Moon did somehow recover and became whole again.  Did the Moon heal on its own?  Or did the Founder put it back together himself?  The "tradition" doesn't explain.  Amazingly, lots of people take this fable as gospel truth, despite its obvious shortcomings.

But if it happened again today? It'll make a believer out of me in a nanosecond.

A Bag Of Leeks

Lonely leeks, left in an odd, somewhat surreal-looking placement.

I tried imagining different vegetables in their place, and decided a head of cabbage would be the most humorous, for some reason.

Raw meat would probably be even more surreal, but maybe not quite so humorous.

Happening By At Just The Right Moment

 When you've got OCD you notice these things.

"THE SHADOW DOESN'T LIE"

I just wish I knew what my shadow was trying to say...

Another Precognitive Dream

Early this morning I dreamed that I was outside in the bright sunshine (this is pretty unusual in itself; my dreams usually take place in an indefinite "ambient light"), looking at brilliant white clouds against the intense blue sky.  Then I noticed a massive cloud with two lobes at the bottom, low toward the horizon, with square holes in them.  They were waving like flags, but the holes stayed square.  I remembered my phone camera and went for it, but there the dream, or my memory of it, ends.

Then today being a beautiful day, sunny and warm but breezy, I went for a walk at my favorite haunt, Seokchon Lake in Jamsil.  And partway through the walk around the lake, I looked up and saw a cloud with two holes in it.  As I watched and debated whether or not to photograph it, one of the holes gradually filled in, and the other hole turned square.

More Consciousness?

I believe consciousness is not a disparate, identifiable thing that sits in a corner of the brain, but rather is an emergent property that arises spontaneously and automatically as a neural net becomes increasinsgly more complex.

It seems learned opinion today tends toward the view that every living animal has some kind of consciousness, even the most primitive ones, differing only in the level or "amount" of consciousness, which in turn depends on the level of complexity of its brain or neural organization -- which is why we humans count ourselves, with our large and complex brains, as the "most-minded" species, ceding second place to other big-brained species like chimpanzees, dolphins and killer whales (intelligent, but still safely incapable of building a civilization and rivaling or threatening us).

Which then brings up an interesting question: if, in the future, a species is encountered (perhaps extraterrestrial) whose neural organization/cerebral complexity is much greater than ours, would that mean that they are "more conscious", "have more mind" than we do? What would that even mean? I can sort of imagine being less conscious, or "having less mind" than a regular human being, but what would having more consciousness, "more mind" than humans do, be like? Is that even imaginable?

And since we take it for granted that we humans, the possessors of unquestionably the best mind known so far, can own and exploit other creatures with less mind, would that hypothetical species with superior, "bigger" mind, be entitled to own and exploit us in the same way?

Cods

Crammed in like... sardines^

I Found A Glove

Eleven stories down.

How in the world did a glove land on top of an awning?  And not at some random angle, either.  It looks as if it was deliberately laid down.  It's been there for weeks - now every time I go out I check to see if it's still there.  Wonder if it will survive the monsoon rains, which will arrive in a month or so.

Seen At Chogyesa Temple

"The faces we wear".  Or how about "The good and evil in each of us".

I acknowledge I am guilty of committing many acts of evil in the past.  When I think back to those times I can't believe I was so foolhardy and uncaring back then.

Or maybe it's just that I'm too old and tired to act on the evil impulses any more.

Just Came Up With A New Aphorism

To use against the neo-segregationists who would have you believe race is the most important thing about a person:

"We may eat different, but we all $h!t the same".

EDIT:  I am reminded of an old documentary I once watched, that referenced the first contact of a New Guinean(I think?) tribe.  An old native man was talking about the time when he saw white people for the very first time and was fascinated.  He recalled watching the white party from a place of hiding, and when one of the group left to go off into the bush, he guessed what the man was up to, and followed him stealthily.  The white man went to do his business in a suitably secluded spot, none the wiser that he was being watched, and went back to rejoin his party.  The old native recalled then going in to examine what the white man had left behind, and he said something to the effect of how he'd been impressed by the fact that the white man's $h!t looked the same as his own, not white as he had half-expected.