A Meditation on Life and Death

There goes the sun followed by the moon

Is the moon half dark, or half bright?-)

I love the idea of spending time each day to meditate, to go outside and take time to smell the roses, so to speak.
The thing is I rarely ever did that at all, I had no real reason to go and sit outside, look at nature and contemplate life, while I looked around at the real world.
Sometimes I would go outside to get some sun, but I would always take a book to read for that half hour, or so.

That all changed earlier this year when I became overwhelmed with the stress in my life, divorce, sale of a house I had grown fond of living in (and having to move out to live by myself after a 25 year marriage), another redundancy from work, plus other life dramas ... and felt I had to find a way to breathe and relax, so I (probably foolishly) took up smoking ... I only ever have one a day and no more, but still, I know it is a deadly habit to take up at any age.

A time to empty the brain trash and worries of the day?-)

I'm not allowed to smoke inside the unit I rent ... and fair enough, I wouldn't even if I was allowed to, so I'm forced to go outside for my daily smoke and think about my life and life in general, while watching the birds flutter around in the wonderful trees that grow at the side of my unit.

And if I go out when the sun has gone down, there are flying foxes and possums in the trees to keep me amused while I try to keep the mosquitoes from biting me.

On Wednesday afternoon though, I lent back against the bricks of my unit looking into the afternoon sky and noticed that a half moon had just appeared from behind my roof and it appeared to be chasing the setting sun from my point of view.

I couldn't help thinking about the Pink Floyd song Time from The Dark Side of the Moon album of their's.

Of course, wearing this t-shirt (pictured above) at the time probably also helped steer my thoughts to the song Time.
The lyrics couldn't have summed up my thoughts of the afternoon any better, sitting there staring up at the moon and the setting sun in the sky, so I grabbed my cell phone and took some pictures to capture the moment as best I could, while recalling the lyrics to the song Time in my head.
TIME
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spell

"... but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death"

I can't help thinking of how ironic life is when my own mother, who has never smoked in her life, is now battling lung cancer and keeps coughing like she has a bad smoker's cough.

Kind of reminds me of the David Lynch cloth print I bought at the 'Between Two Worlds' exhibition of his earlier this year.

David Lynch

My Sunday: Between Two Worlds and Trying to Catch the Big Fish

 Looking down at my feet I saw a small plant growing out of a crack in the brickwork and admiring its effort to grow in a place that it wasn't going to be able to, as I would have to eventually pull it out of the path, or spray it.

Of course, the bricks made me think of another Pink Floyd song, Hey You, from The Wall album.

Plus, the main song from the album ... The Wall.

The Family brick that was outside the Gabba
 for 13 years from 2002, til now.

Also ironic was when I got a letter from the Brisbane Lions football club telling me that a brick we had purchased as a family that was part of a supporter's footpath that has been outside the Gabba cricket grounds (where The Lions also play their Brisbane home matches) for 13 years was being dug up, as the Brisbane City Council had deemed the bricks unsafe for pedestrians to walk on.

The Gabba cricket grounds, Brisbane

They told me I had till December to come get it, or it would be thrown out with the other unclaimed bricks.
Just in time for my divorce, how perfect was that little wink from the universe?

I guess really we are just all bricks in the wall, as the story and song goes.

And life can be anything but awesome sometimes.

I just hope The Sharks don't call me and tell me to collect the brick that I have down there in Cronulla at Shark Park, that would be just taking irony too far in my books.

I was watching the making on The Dark Side of the Moon on DVD the other day and right at the end an guy's voice-over says that there is no dark-side of the moon, it's all dark, it is only the sun that brightens the one side of the moon and stops it from being all dark. 

P.S. The irony is not lost on me also that to see a rainbow you have to view it from a 42 degree angle and that The Dark Side of the Moon album is 42 years old this year, and that if you look on the Wiki link for the Gabba cricket ground the capacity is 42,000 people.
So, it looks like Douglas Adams my have been right with 42 being the answer to everything in the universe after-all:-)
Douglas Adams also passed away on my ex-wife's birthday (May 11th), just to put a little more WTF into this post.
Del Rey and the 11th of May Syncs
Oh ... and "happy" birthday for today mum. 
42000 Page-views on the 4th of the 2nd Month?