Monochrome Monday ~ England
Any mature and educated Englishman will recognise these images.
~
~
~
~
~
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Dixon of Dock Green
‘evnin all
The Sins of the Fathers
The sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children…..
Our parents told us to be wise, look ahead, be strong, don’t look back, get a job, be cool….. That’s if we were lucky. If we were unlucky they mostly ignored us, left us to fend for ourselves while they were out doing adult things. If we were very unlucky we witnessed a dysfunctional relationship, totally filled with an utter lack of love. For some it was worse than that, with one of their parents being an abusive alcoholic while the other merely acted as an enabler. There will be blood on the lawns of those homes.
Children who had abusive parents, or were from dysfunctional families, would grow up with all kinds of mental problems; Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety and Depression. Alcoholism, drugs, gambling, and other addictions are also common among adults who suffer from mental health problems created in their childhood. The likelihood is that they will struggle with their own psychological and spiritual problems for all of their adult lives, mirroring the lives of their parents. They too will find themselves in dysfunctional or abusive relationships, treatment centres, rehabilitation centres. and hospitals of one kind or another for one reason or another. If they are wise they will not have children of their own.
I know this because I have suffered some of this, and I have also known many people who have suffered a less than ideal childhood and have turned out to be less than perfect adults and parents. Sadly many of the suffering people I used to know are dead; alcoholism, drug use, accidents, sundry medical problems, suicide…..
If you’re suffering from anything I’ve mentioned above, you will also know that the caring professions are mostly fucking damn useless at helping people with mental illnesses or addictions of any kind. You may get talking therapies, and you will probably be prescribed all kinds of nasty medication, neither of which will be of much help. You may have tried 12-step recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon. Not many stick around these 12-step groups for long. But there is something that helped me.
One thing often said in these 12-step groups is; ‘fake it until you make it’, or ‘fake it to make it’. In other words if what you want to be is a kind, caring, sober person, then ‘act as if’ you were that person. This technique is widely accepted in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming. And, keep telling yourself; ‘I am a kind, caring, sober guy’. If you believe it, then you actually are that guy. Self-talk does work.
It turns out that I believe my own self-talk ~ ‘I’m a cool and charismatic guy, living a really great life’. I can be anyone and anything I want to be. I can manifest any kind of life I want, need, desire, or dream of ~ providing I don’t give in to lusts or base emotions.
There has been blood in my garden, blood helps the flowers grow.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
in your race for self-destruction
stop to smell the flowers
Scenes on Sunday ~ New Mexico Snow
On the road, snow is glistening ~ loving the winter traveling…..
~
~
~
~
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalknet
who would believe that it snows in the desert?
Songs on Saturday ~ December 1st
At Christmas, love the giver more than the gift.
The First of December is the beginning of my personal Christmas Season ~ others may begin their own Christmas earlier, or if they follow older traditions will not begin to celebrate Yule until December 21st. The end of Yuletide is January 1st, and here in England the traditional end of Christmas is 12th Night, which falls on January 5th.
Anyone with the spirit of Christmas / Yule in their heart will have their own seasonal traditions, one of mine is that my Christmas playlist comes into force today ~ my computerised music system really only plays festive songs between now and 12th night.
This is one of my favourite festive tunes ~ it reminds me that not everyone looks forward to Christmas.
Please listen with joy and compassion in your heart.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
snow in the high desert,
New Mexico
Have a Dream
If you can dream, and not make dreams your master…..
The day that we stop wanting, needing, wishing, and dreaming is the day we stop walking the warrior’s path, and begin to take that long dark road towards disappointment, despair, and death. I know some people who seem to have no dreams, and I know a few people who are living in a dark nightmare. People with no dreams often also seem to be hell-bent on self-destruction through drink, drugs, gambling, self-harm, unsafe casual sex, suicide attempts….. I can recognise those people because I used to be one of them.
Some say that being negative, depressed, filled with character defects, is a condition to be pitied and that we should try to understand without condemning or blaming.
You know what? I don’t agree with that idea at all. Unless Life has thrown at you some terrible calamity, like having to live in a war zone, then if you’re an addict, an alcoholic, a hopeless gambler, chain smoker, depressed, suicidal, and hell-bent on being unhappy on the road to self-destruction ~ it is mostly your own fault.
There seems to be something in the subconscious mind of most people that says; ‘if I am really suffering I will get attention and love…..’ This is understandable because when we were at our most impressionable, young and vulnerable, then if we were suffering we would most likely get extra attention and love from our parents / principal carers. Angst and shelf-harming practices such as alcoholism are learned behaviours.
On the other side of the coin, if as a child we were always bright, happy, full of inventive play and dreams, then mostly our parents would leave us alone. They would leave us alone except for their own horrible negativity when we told them of our dreams, and they said; ‘you can’t possibly do that…..’
Dreaming of doing bigger, better, more exciting and more adventurous things, of meeting the partner of our dreams, or dreaming of having a wonderful life, is often driven from our own subconscious mind by the things we were told as an innocent child.
I know all this because it all happened to me, up to and including until a few weeks ago, when I had one of those revelatory moments we sometimes have in life, and I realised I could dream, and make my dreams come true.
So don’t give up on your dreams. Don’t think you are a hopeless case. You can be who you want to be and do whatever you want to do ~ stop believing that you’re trapped, and start wishing and dreaming again.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
I’m dreaming of sunshine this Christmas
Being Emotionally Intelligent
Life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it. ~ Charles R. Swindoll.
I wanted to share with you something I learned on a four-day retreat in the high desert of New Mexico.
When we just react, mostly we react unconsciously, without thinking about things at all. That isn’t at all surprising because for 90% of the time our subconscious mind is running the show, meaning that our consciousness is only in charge for 10% of the time.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, because our unconscious mind never forgets anything. Therefore, when we just react, our subconscious is using behaviours that we learned before we were about seven years of age. All the negative stuff we learned from our parents, older siblings, teachers, and other adults is deep down in there, and it will come out when we least want it too.
When you feel threatened, judgemental, jealous, envious, angry….. you will probably react in ways you learned as a child. It’s not you that’s having an argument with your husband / lover / boss, it’s the 7-year-old child arguing, using negative behaviours you learned before you knew any better. It’s worse than that, because it seems that our subconscious mind has very little self-control.
Our subconsciousness / unconscious mind, which runs the show for 90% of the time, is really a pretty stupid, non-selective, totally emotional, feminine autopilot, (that’s not sexist ~ the conscious mind has mostly male characteristics and subconscious mostly female). The subconscious will accept ideas as truth, no matter how negative or destructive, and never fails to express ideas that have been impressed upon it. It’s our subconscious that will let us drink too much, use drugs, have casual sex…..
But, and here’s the good thing, our conscious, objective male mind can dominate our subconscious mind, if only we truly know what we need and desire We also have to learn to talk to our subconscious and knowingly impress feelings onto that part of our brain.
If you can meditate, then you’re half way there. If you know how to achieve heart ~ brain harmony, then you’re just about all the way there. Talk to your heart and your words and feelings will reach your subconsciousness. But, use very simple, positive and unambiguous phrases. Don’t say; ‘I want to be a really charismatic guy…..’ because your subconscious mind will accept the thought that you want to be, and do nothing about that thought / feeling. Instead say to your heart; ‘I am a really charismatic guy…..’ and suddenly you are charismatic.
I turned my whole life around by saying and believing; ‘I am a really cool guy, living a really great life…..’
Honestly, our subconscious has a very emotional and unintelligent way of controlling our lives, mostly by reacting without there being any conscious or selective thought in the process. Therefore, to have an emotionally intelligent subconscious, we must first turn to our consciousness and impress its intelligence upon our inner mind.
There are a hell of a lot of books and stuff on the internet about all this, so the thing to bear in mind is to keep things simple, because 90% of our minds is quite stupid really.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Christmas Is Cancelled
He who has not Christmas in his heart will not find it under a tree.
To be more honest, my Christmas plans have been cancelled by my tour company.
I had arranged to fly out to the Algarve in Portugal on December 19th, to spend Christmas in the sun with a group of other like-minded solo travellers. It should have been fun.
Sadly my tour company has just emailed me to say that ‘they have decided not to proceed with this group departure’. Their reason….. the minimum number of guests has not been achieved .
Disappointed? You bet I am.
They have offered me 7 alternative Christmas Holidays, all of which are more expensive, and none of them to places I want to spend Christmas ~ such as Agadir in Morocco. And, they will send me a refund for the $1300 or so I have already paid for my trip to Portugal.
So, unless I want to spend Christmas alone in my apartment again, I need to find somewhere to go at short notice.
Ah well, the spirit of Christmas still lives in my heart.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
there’s always somewhere with someone
The Rolling Stones on Vinyl
Analogue Music on Vinyl is So Much Better in every way.
Now that I’ve got back into playing proper records on a proper record player I’ve decided to fill in some gaps in my record collection ~ starting with The Rolling Stones. Ergo I’ve just bout a remastered double album Hot Rocks 1964-1971….. was it all really that long ago?
Here’s some vintage stones for you.
~
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
my new ablbum sounds fabulous played on my Thorens deck
Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe
Desire is the history that drives the engine…..
In Albuquerque I went to see an old railway locomotive being restored by a bunch of unpaid enthusiasts ~ older and interesting guys.
It turned out that the massive 450 ton engine ran on the AT & SF, and how cool is that?
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
go to New Mexico and see this
Cars, and Planes, and Trains
It’s very nice to go travelling, but it’s so much nicer to travel home.
Actually no it isn’t. In comparison to warm and sunny Orange County, the North of England in late November is bleak, boring, grey, and bloody cold, even down at my favourite boat on the marina it’s miserable today. And it’s a pretty long journey to get back here from where I was staying with my friend.
- Leave my friend at 04:00 Pacific Time on Monday 19th November.
- Uber to John Wayne Airport.
- Take off from John Wayne at 07:00.
- Flight to Dallas Fort Worth 2hrs 35
- Land DFW at 11:35 Central Time (2 hours time change).
- Take off DFW at 15:15 for London Heathrow, a flight of 9hrs 00, (benefiting from a 125mph tail wind over the Atlantic).
- Land London Heathrow at 06:15 GMT on November 20th (6 hours time change).
- Leave LHR for Newcastle upon Tyne at 09:45 GMT, a flight of 1hrs 15
- Arrive NCL at 11:00
- Leave Newcastle Airport by Metro Subway for Newcastle Central Rail Station at 12:40 GMT
- Arrive back at the garret at 14:30 GMT on Monday 20th of November.
Total journey time of 26hrs 30min. Time in the air 12hrs 50min.
It’s about 5,500 miles from SoCal to the North of England, all in all, and from 38,000 feet you damn well know the world is round when you look out of the aircraft windows.
Some say that it’s excitement and adventure that keeps a man alive. And, that when you can’t be bothered to go travelling, you may as well just curl up and die. All I know is that I loved every damn minute of my latest trip ~ maybe the best trip ever.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
much on New Mexico is Indian land
(is one allowed to say that?)
