Yasni

You might well ask what 'Yasni' is! I tried to stop it once, but was informed that it was only a search engine. It found things, and it's kept on finding me! I finally gave up the idea of getting rid of Yasni, which I have never used and of which I do not know how it 'got' me. I get a weekly letter, which is useful because it tells me how many people have found me and what they have found out about me. This morning I came across a comment I made years ago when I was commenting on a large number of 'zentangle' tiles (= zen doodles = abstract drawing designated often as artworks) after challenges, to which I was also contributing.

Yasni is also useful beause it tells me if it's an odd or even week. Here in Germany there is intense if sparodic road cleaning, which for me means I have to move my car from one set of street lanterns on odd weeks, and every week on the other set of lanterns. Having only a street parking position I have to fight for all the time is not convenient - no, I cannot reserve a piece of street and official parking spaces are at a premium and reserved for people who presumably have more influence than I do and are allotted parking spaces vacated by the dead (or more rarely by people moving away). At least I know I'm alive as long as I have to fight for my parking space...

I actually want to post a comment (see above) I wrote in January 2013. Zen in any form produces thought and meditation, and the drawer of the 'zentangle' involved also added her thoughts on her blog about why people drew. I've added my thoughts in the comment and here they are. I had a problem copying the text because it was brown on a yellow background(!), so I could not remove irrelevant bits and typing errors. In the end I copied the text in 2 parts and got rid of the extraneous colours in Photoshop. I then made jpgs. What a performance. I'll look for a better solution.....

So why the fuss? Because time and time again I experience the same hangups in people and sometimes have trouble avoiding them myself. Writing about the problem does not alleviate it, but it clears my mind and rationalizes the issue. 

But something else has cropped up that also gives me food for thought. In my new experience with a new chorus and a new set of people, whittled down to women because coping with the male ego was too much to bear (i.e. a man who thinks he can sing will (often instigated throguhh his comportment) be glorified, humoured and honoured by any number of women - the pasha and macho thing all over again), I also experience unbelievable arrogance. Arrogance in people who would never have the initiative to do anything themselves, but think they have the right to criticize and possibly destroy anything someone else does, and their accompanying inability to realize that people who do take the initiative are often altruistic - are doing it for them because they need it! Of course, people have to earn a living and of course, it costs money to do anything, but the scale of opposition I experience is out of all proportion. No one is forced to pursue a hobby or form of further education. Unfortunately some are delusionary about their talent/experience and totally uninformed about the work actually involved in creating or developing anything. The German adage 'No master drops from heaven' says it all. But the general attitude is that a hobby may not and must not involve actually investing work and energy, not to mention the time needed. 

More on this another time.....