Musings on a Series of Cracking Podcasts

I love a good podcast and I've been listening to some excellent ones recently. More about them later, but I've been inspired enough to start making a contribution to the blogosphere once more. What follows is the gist of some pretty deep thoughts that have been stirred up in my head. I don't want to get bogged down with this whole blogging thing, and for it to become a chore for me and a bore for my readers. I'm just going to put down my raw ramblings and see where they take me.

Times are getting hard everywhere, across the board, across the world, across all divides. Yet some people are still flourishing, shining, inspirational, beautiful. We can all see this but can't explain it.  For every dark and dreary individual or news item, a shining hero steps up to their quest, inspired to make their mark. The flow, the inevitable, irresistible flow takes us where we need to be. Stop resisting for a moment and we have the chance to embrace our circumstances.

We need to support each other more. This is what I think. If our enemy goes to hell in a hand-cart, then we do to. (I'm speaking in metaphor here though - no need to add any new dogmas, there's enough out there already.) Personally, I need to reach our more, like this attempt at using this technology in a new way for me. We have to make new, strange and unfamiliar alliances, across hitherto unbroken lines of division. We have to listen in new ways, so that we reach new levels of understanding. In return, it is reasonable to hope to be listened to and, at least accepted 

.

I have been in and out of periods of isolation from family, friends and contacts. I used to think I was being neglectful and self-centred, and would feel guilty. Now, I recognise that I have been taking a hermit's path in order to reflect and grow, away, as far as possible, from other people's dogma. The life I have chosen, gives me a great amount of personal freedom, within certain constraints. There are always penalties for every privilege, and only those people who have lived out here, in our community for as long, or longer than us, truly understand the sacrifices and changes that have been made to pay for that freedom. Many of us could take the charge of "idealist" or "dreamer" on the chin, but we don't see ourselves as escaping from the real world, rather, by taking ourselves away from non-stop cultural and societal input, we can, at last, start to tune into life's flow and accept and embrace the difficult stuff too.

The main podcast episodes that sent my mind off on those meanders were:

• Notes From the Voodoo Lounge, R. Freeman-Zachery interviewing Jill Berry on the topic "Crossroads and Late Blooming".
• Future Primitive, Joanna Harcourt-Smith interviewing Lisl Dennis "The Vessel of your Life" and Panco Ramos-Sierle "Disobey With Great Love".
• Psychedelic Salon, Lorenzo playing a wonderful talk by J. Krishnamurti "Avoiding the Pitfall of Words".
• The Dopecast, The Dopefiend interviewing Angela Ayala Segura, Elisabeth Mehl and Line Sòrlie "Live From the Hemp Museum Gallery in Barcelona".

All of these episodes filled me with great hope and inspiration. If you take the time to really listen to one that you wouldn't usually, I hope you will get something useful from the effort.

I want to end with a photo from my creative work today - a bit of personal mapping in my journal, that Jill Berry calls Arty Cartophiles. I hope I can work this out, as blogging with an iPad (don't ask) is very challenging.     Failed :( - that's going to take more work.)