Joan was quizzical; studied pataphysical science in the home

Wow - what a weekend for my teams. The All Blacks kept up their dominance of the Australians with another win in Japan. Rochdale do the unthinkable and score 4 goals away from home and are now SECOND on the table! The mighty Arsenal completed the hat trick by smashing the old enemy (Tottenham Hotspur) 3-0 at the Emirates. Yahoo! Jacky got sick of me yelling, "YEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!" LOUDLY at the goals and scaring the dogs (Soda-pop, the cat, who was sleeping next to me didn't even move a muscle), but she doesn't understand what a goal against the hated Spurs actually means to a gooner. A great great feeling.

The weekend also had magic weather - finally the sun came out from behind the clouds and we were able to do some outside chores - washing cars, weeding gardens, planting shrubs, putting up the shade sails, and digging out the outside furniture. Even had a BBQ. So after 8 months of cold and wet we had a decent Sunday!



Ross got in touch after my last posting on classical v romantic with some interesting points. My memory isn't as good as his and I do compress time in generalised ways. He confirms that he did the taking-apart-to-see-how-things-work lark but he points out that this process involved different stages - over to Ross: "stage one is taking something to pieces. Only after you have done this many times (and wrecked lots of stuff) can you move on to phase two which is figuring out how to put it back together. I assure you I remember phase one vividly! I've always thought people fit into two categories - Artists & Scientists and we seem to be born this way. It is easy to pigeon hole people in either categories if you think about it."

Back to Zen... for more on the classical (scientist) v romantic (artist) bizzo.

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. 'Art' when it is opposed to 'Science' is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws - which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behaviour.

So - where do you measure up when you apply your own analytical knife? There is no point (according to Pirsig) at which these two visions of reality are unified so you have to figure out your predominant mode. When my 1920's Massey-Ferguson tractor needed some oil replacing I (romantic) needed a scientist (Brian Smith) to give me the clues. My lack of understanding meant I couldn't describe things to him on the phone so he had to come over and give me a demonstration.

Ross also disagreed with my title for him of 'software engineer'. Ross again: "I don't think of myself as a Software Engineer that always seems so geeky. The stereotypical Coke drinking, pizza eating computer nerd just doesn't fit (I don't drink Coke for starters!). I'd like to think I'm just a Engineer (Scientist) with a bit of Purdy business sense!"

I'm nearly up-to-date in my catch-up of my outstanding notes from Zen...In the next post (hopefully during this week) I'll finish off my thoughts about climbing that spiritual mountain.


Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. I love the lead photograph - we're all in there (I took the photo in case you were trying to see me in there somewhere). Ross has his tongue out - not sure why - maybe at me? He and Adam share a capacity for pulling off interesting poses in photos. Anyway - love that photo.