David’s Pac-Man (石頭的小精靈)

Photographer: David

David found this piece of crushed plastic ball on the trail, which reminded him of the famous Pac-Man. What do you think?

石頭在散步時, 發現了這個被壓扁扁的塑膠球, 讓他想起以前很紅的小精靈。你認為呢?

Sorry, Sorry

Ever since being told that Super Junior’s “Sorry, Sorry” has been pretty hot in Asia, I haven’t been able to get the song off my mind. Now it’s my turn to spread that bug!

The Uninvited Guest (不請自來的客人)

Deer in our neighborhood has seemed to double or even triple due to lack of natural predators. (Fortunately for them, unfortunate for people who want to plant something nice but don’t have an efficient means to deter them, like Gerry & Ingrid.) It’s just impossible to take a walk and not run into one these days.

I wonder what this one was up to?

The ‘Hero’ of The Dream

The following section from the book that I’m currently reading, “Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death” (“斷輪迴“) by Gary Renard, lingered in my mind:

GARY: Hey, you told me we were gonna talk about death this time. I’ve been so looking forward to it.

ARTEN: All right, wise guy. [...] So it’s time for you to do a little reading for us. Go to page 585 in the Text.

GARY: Ah, let me see here. “The ‘Hero’ of the Dream”? I haven’t read this in a while.

ARTEN: Yes. I want you to read it again at least five times in the next couple of months.

GARY: Five times? It better be good.

ARTEN: It’s better than good; it’s the truth. [...] Think about the ideas and consider what it means in regard to what you’re seeing in your everyday life. But read those first four paragraphs for us now.

GARY: All right. Here it comes.

“The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different and can be told apart.

“The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it.

“The body’s serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying are the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The ‘here’ of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its ‘hero’ finds itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause.

“Thus are you not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real.

“How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had?”

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to stop. That’s so profound I wanted to keep going.

Starfish Pine Cones (海星松果)

When I saw these pine cones, I immediately thought of SpongeBob’s best friend, Patrick Star, jumping down from the pine tree to surprise SpongeBob. Weird, I don’t watch the cartoon though…

當我看到這個海星松果時, 我第一個想到的就是海綿寶寶的好朋友 — 派大星 — 從松樹上跳下來, 來給海綿寶寶一個驚喜。真是奇怪呀, 我又不看海綿寶寶的說、、、

A Wild Goat Chase (尋羊冒險記)

Yesterday David went for an early morning walk on the Selby Trail in the Tilden Park. When he came back an hour later, he told me that the Tilden goats were back!

Because every year they just spend about a week or two on Selby Trail, we had better act quickly. This morning we set out for a wild goat chase (尋羊冒險記) before it became too hot. (Boy, it was HOT at 8:30am already! We still had our heater on just 2 mornings ago!)

	Goats are like natural lawn mowers, very efficient and low impact to the land. From this photo (and the smell), you could tell that they were here just a few days ago. OK, continued searching for the goats…
	We came to this giant redwood forest, but our goats were still no where to be found… (David is this little white dot in front of the forest…)
	Voilà! We found our goats! The mission accomplished!
	There were probably about 200+ of them all over this slope. The goat herder moved then from left to right along the trail, and you can see the left side was significantly browner than the right, pretty much like what you see in the first photo.
	And more…
	Somehow this little lamb touched David that he asked me to take its photos. Maybe because it looked so innocent and fragile? It also looked like that it just got shaved. We noticed that there seemed to be quite a few sheep in this herd, but David’s Spanish wasn’t good enough to ask the Hispanic herder this question.
	This guy got a heavy wool jacket on at this hot day, poor thing! It had 4 horns, pretty unusual for this herd.

Flower And Bee (花與蜜蜂)