Today is Friday, March 13th, 2009 and it is now 12:38 AM here in the Philippines.
Listening to a fantastic R and B song, by Kindred and Family Soul (misstated many times as Kindred AND the Family Soul) and their first single "House of Love." The group is actually a husband and wife (very pretty I might add) who were married in 1998 and only discovered in the summer of 2007 by Jill Scott (anothter great R and B songstress) in their hometown of Philadelphia in the US, at a Afro-American arts festival, performing.
This song is fabulous, even the words are perfect. My favourite line in the song: "Our babies will have babies of their own, and our love will live on for generations to come..." My dream, only a dream of course.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1WWVJ-orVU
Speaking of Jill Scott, whose songs I do not usually care for despite her great voice, she did a song by another artist she "discovered," an Afro-Englishman, Anthony David whose song "Words" is also fantastic (alot of "fantastic" yes?). India Arie is also singing on it and in the video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYaJFSh4kME
Reading wise, I have been studying some Merkava works. "Merkava" is a Hebrew word which means "Chariot," and some might know the word since it is the name of the Israeli produced battale tanks which are shortened at times to just "Mk," etc. i have ben rereading the texts because of a current thread in "Religion" where they ask you to define your faith, and of course itt delved into Kabbalah (not by me though)
Merkava is one School of Jewish Mysticism that is collectively known today as Kabbalah, not to be confused with the New Age hokum being peddled to suckers like Madonna et al. Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish path that dates at leat to the Babylonian Exile (when our People were taken in battle to Babylonia in the 6th Century BCE/BC).
Merkava was biggest around the time of the Jewish Wars in Judea, against the Roman Occupier, in other words from about the 1st to 3rd Centuries CE/AD.
It was probably the biggest single influence on Gnostic thought and teaching, although Zoraoaster probablly guided their usual dualistic notions that served as the unifying basis or core value of the Gnostic teachings.
For many centuries scholars believed Judaisim as a whole to have been shaped by the Gnostics but the converse was actually found to be true once the Nag Hammadi texts were discovered in 1945 CE/AD in Egypt.
These texts which literally are pricelss were found in the desert in the village of Nag Hammadi by a shepard mining minerals out of the soil. digging itno the sandy soil he discovered an ancient earthenware jug. Ignorantly (of course)( he burned roughly half the materiel in his hearth to cook his meals before being convinced to try and sell the works in Cairo and the rest is history.
It is always that way. An ignorant person disocvered great treasures and ruins some or most of them but at least they were discovered, yes?
A similar story (true of course) happened at St. Catherines which is a Greek Orthadox monastery on the Sinai mountain popularly held to be the true Mt. Sinai (actual location of which is not known).
A European travelller took ill in 1844 CE/AD while on an "adventure" as people of the Victorian Era used to call their mostly wasteful sojourns to exotic locales. Taken up to the isoalted monastery for rudimentary medical care and convalescence, he was startled one day when he was finally able to walk a bit.
Making his way from room to room he found incredible texts, being burned in the hovel fireplace of a labourer for the monastery! The texrts today known collectively as the "Codex Sinaiticus," and again, pricelss in value!
They might have been first "dicosvered by an Itlian traveller in the 18th Century CE/Ad but I do not buy into THAT tale myself, given the absolute lack of respect given to the documents just 80 or 90 years later.
One of my hobbies in Israel is prospecting acrhaeologically. I have a good metal detector which can even tell me the approximate makeup of whatever metal it detects. The problem though is that I want and need some form of ground penetrating radar which can tell me if any non-metal objects are buried as well!
Texts are usually not going to have metals near them, and I love history almost more than anything.
Here Dad has told me he also greatly desires a good metal detector but I know his idea is to find gold! As I have said, in years past he has prospected in COMVAL (the newly created province of Compostela Valley just a few villages from us going south, and prime gueriilla territory.
I probablly will make him happy and buy him one but the tarrifs are going to kill me, almost as bad as importing autos here! indeed, at Customs they usually do not look twice at a light skinned foreigner but they still almost always ask, "any Electronics?" Never bring any in a box orginal or otherwise. ALWAYS tell them it is your own and has been used before.
Anyway, it will thrill him and give me something to do as well, as long as we do not start de-mining! Here almost all mines are remote detonated, not anti-personell so it is not a great danger in bush, but along roads it still is.
I took my medicines this morning, Thursday. I also got back my blood work results that I had been so anxious about and not bad nor good news. Ideally i would be one of the 16% with my Genome who have undetctable viral loads in my blood at this, the 1 month point. Alas, from my previous 110,000 I now have 10,000 and change which is a good reduction but nothing to be throwing a prty about. I will know for sure in 2 more months at the 3 month point.
I actually phoned my primary physician in the States, I will not name her out of respect for her privacy but she is with Einstein/Yeshiva University, a Jewish instituion in NYC. We had a long talk about the outcome and I will of course carry on. I still have not told Mom, Dad or Rizza the results. They have all been praying for a "non-detectable" but i have livedennough to always expect the worst without creating a self fufilling prophecy via my negative analysation and over-analysation.
Talked to Rizza in depth about our situation, but she is oblivious as always. she is not very "deep," not to sound denigrating but like most Provinical women here she is focused on making babies, family, and now of course her studying. She finishes for the year in a week, after Finals the coming week and then she heads back with Dad who is in Compostela on Cebu.
I know we will have some serious talking to do when she arrives.
Listening to a fantastic R and B song, by Kindred and Family Soul (misstated many times as Kindred AND the Family Soul) and their first single "House of Love." The group is actually a husband and wife (very pretty I might add) who were married in 1998 and only discovered in the summer of 2007 by Jill Scott (anothter great R and B songstress) in their hometown of Philadelphia in the US, at a Afro-American arts festival, performing.
This song is fabulous, even the words are perfect. My favourite line in the song: "Our babies will have babies of their own, and our love will live on for generations to come..." My dream, only a dream of course.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1WWVJ-orVU
Speaking of Jill Scott, whose songs I do not usually care for despite her great voice, she did a song by another artist she "discovered," an Afro-Englishman, Anthony David whose song "Words" is also fantastic (alot of "fantastic" yes?). India Arie is also singing on it and in the video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYaJFSh4kME
Reading wise, I have been studying some Merkava works. "Merkava" is a Hebrew word which means "Chariot," and some might know the word since it is the name of the Israeli produced battale tanks which are shortened at times to just "Mk," etc. i have ben rereading the texts because of a current thread in "Religion" where they ask you to define your faith, and of course itt delved into Kabbalah (not by me though)
Merkava is one School of Jewish Mysticism that is collectively known today as Kabbalah, not to be confused with the New Age hokum being peddled to suckers like Madonna et al. Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish path that dates at leat to the Babylonian Exile (when our People were taken in battle to Babylonia in the 6th Century BCE/BC).
Merkava was biggest around the time of the Jewish Wars in Judea, against the Roman Occupier, in other words from about the 1st to 3rd Centuries CE/AD.
It was probably the biggest single influence on Gnostic thought and teaching, although Zoraoaster probablly guided their usual dualistic notions that served as the unifying basis or core value of the Gnostic teachings.
For many centuries scholars believed Judaisim as a whole to have been shaped by the Gnostics but the converse was actually found to be true once the Nag Hammadi texts were discovered in 1945 CE/AD in Egypt.
These texts which literally are pricelss were found in the desert in the village of Nag Hammadi by a shepard mining minerals out of the soil. digging itno the sandy soil he discovered an ancient earthenware jug. Ignorantly (of course)( he burned roughly half the materiel in his hearth to cook his meals before being convinced to try and sell the works in Cairo and the rest is history.
It is always that way. An ignorant person disocvered great treasures and ruins some or most of them but at least they were discovered, yes?
A similar story (true of course) happened at St. Catherines which is a Greek Orthadox monastery on the Sinai mountain popularly held to be the true Mt. Sinai (actual location of which is not known).
A European travelller took ill in 1844 CE/AD while on an "adventure" as people of the Victorian Era used to call their mostly wasteful sojourns to exotic locales. Taken up to the isoalted monastery for rudimentary medical care and convalescence, he was startled one day when he was finally able to walk a bit.
Making his way from room to room he found incredible texts, being burned in the hovel fireplace of a labourer for the monastery! The texrts today known collectively as the "Codex Sinaiticus," and again, pricelss in value!
They might have been first "dicosvered by an Itlian traveller in the 18th Century CE/Ad but I do not buy into THAT tale myself, given the absolute lack of respect given to the documents just 80 or 90 years later.
One of my hobbies in Israel is prospecting acrhaeologically. I have a good metal detector which can even tell me the approximate makeup of whatever metal it detects. The problem though is that I want and need some form of ground penetrating radar which can tell me if any non-metal objects are buried as well!
Texts are usually not going to have metals near them, and I love history almost more than anything.
Here Dad has told me he also greatly desires a good metal detector but I know his idea is to find gold! As I have said, in years past he has prospected in COMVAL (the newly created province of Compostela Valley just a few villages from us going south, and prime gueriilla territory.
I probablly will make him happy and buy him one but the tarrifs are going to kill me, almost as bad as importing autos here! indeed, at Customs they usually do not look twice at a light skinned foreigner but they still almost always ask, "any Electronics?" Never bring any in a box orginal or otherwise. ALWAYS tell them it is your own and has been used before.
Anyway, it will thrill him and give me something to do as well, as long as we do not start de-mining! Here almost all mines are remote detonated, not anti-personell so it is not a great danger in bush, but along roads it still is.
I took my medicines this morning, Thursday. I also got back my blood work results that I had been so anxious about and not bad nor good news. Ideally i would be one of the 16% with my Genome who have undetctable viral loads in my blood at this, the 1 month point. Alas, from my previous 110,000 I now have 10,000 and change which is a good reduction but nothing to be throwing a prty about. I will know for sure in 2 more months at the 3 month point.
I actually phoned my primary physician in the States, I will not name her out of respect for her privacy but she is with Einstein/Yeshiva University, a Jewish instituion in NYC. We had a long talk about the outcome and I will of course carry on. I still have not told Mom, Dad or Rizza the results. They have all been praying for a "non-detectable" but i have livedennough to always expect the worst without creating a self fufilling prophecy via my negative analysation and over-analysation.
Talked to Rizza in depth about our situation, but she is oblivious as always. she is not very "deep," not to sound denigrating but like most Provinical women here she is focused on making babies, family, and now of course her studying. She finishes for the year in a week, after Finals the coming week and then she heads back with Dad who is in Compostela on Cebu.
I know we will have some serious talking to do when she arrives.