yummy black slug

Shiny black slug, like a piece of licorice! Sweet and salty, right into your mouth, slurp!

It's a black and proud Scottish slug, roaming free in the sunny meadows of the Highlands!

His name is Charles, just like prince Charles. Charles is currently looking for a girlfriend, so if anybody knows a pretty little slugginette that will brighten up his days, let me know!

sleeping on the ground

Lying on the ground, on hard ground, on a hard mattress. I sleep on a hard mattress now and notice how different and how satisfying it feels. It feels safe, I'm safe because I'm on the ground, because I cannot fall, because if I reach out, I'm touching the floor and it's right under me, supporting my weight without fail, with a secure and steady force that I can almost feel.
I cannot sleep on my stomach anymore, like I used to when I had a softer mattress. It’s uncomfortable because I cannot breathe. It was a surprising discovery but it makes sense. You see, there is no space for me to breathe when I’m lying on my stomach because this harder mattress doesn't give in, doesn't make space for my belly and my ribcage to expand, to draw the air in. It’s hard work to breathe like that - you have to lift the weight of your body with each breath - and I change to a fetal position.
For sleeping on the ground the fetal position is the best, the most natural. You are not troubled by the hardness of the surface. You do not feel so much if the ground is cold or wet and you are always ready to stand up and face whatever might be in front of you. The fetal position is really the best, the most practical and the most natural too. And sleeping on the ground naturally forces it to happen, naturally makes you revert to your animal sleeping ways.

ground under your feet

Contact with the ground, barefoot, dancing barefoot, sleeping on the floor, feeling how close you are to the ground. Walking, placing your feet down carefully, taking pleasure in the sole of your foot touching the flat surface of the earth, slowly, like a cat, drawing strength from it. Dancing barefoot, like animals dance, dancing barefoot makes you free, makes you yearn to be unstoppable, to be like a force of nature, all-consuming, writhing in thirst, in hunger, in desire.

Don’t separate yourself from the ground, don’t cut yourself from that source, from that source of strength, from that grip, from this sweet heaviness that wraps around your ankles, holds you down, deliciously close to the ground, deliciously powerful and fearless. Because close to the ground you are fearless, you are the one in power, you are the source of light that draws in the moths, you are the animal above all animals. Don’t forget to make your feet dirty, to stump that ground, that earth, in the rhythm of your heart, of your heart pumping, so wild.




On the picture: OSHUN: GODDESS OF LOVE

from:
http://www.goddessmyths.com/Lucina-Ptesan-Wi.html

Oshun, the Yoruba Goddess of Love and Life-Sustaining Rivers, is the Goddess of all the arts, but especially dance. Beauty belongs to Oshun and represents the human ability to create beauty for its own sake, to create beyond need. It is also said that she is the knitter of civilization, since great cities have been founded, for the most part, along rivers in order to supply water to their populations. She is portrayed here in a pose typical of the Yoruba priestesses of Oshun who recline gracefully along the banks of the Niger River in West Africa. In the branches of the tree on the left is the fan of one of these priestesses from Osogbo, Nigeria.

the story of the martyr preacher and the evil cardinal

I have found this by the ruins of the castle in St Andrews, Scotland (click on the image to see a larger version). Apparently times were tough during Scottish reformation. Protestant preacher George Wishart, critic of papacy, was betrayed and burnt at a stake for his heresies by a man of God cardinal Beaton.
Nice.
In revenge, the cardinal was ambushed and killed by an enthusiastic party of Wishart's friends, his body hung from the battlements for all to ridicule. Was the cardinal fat (aren't all bad cardinals fat? Are there any good cardinals?)? Was his mortal sin of gluttony painfully exposed for everyone to watch and despise? I guess it would be difficult not to kill a cardinal like that, especially if he barbecued a good friend of yours for no good reason. The bloody gold-fingered catholic bastard got what he deserved!

Nowadays discussion about religion in Scotland tend to be a bit less passionate. But then again, a Scottish gentleman told me today that in the North of Scotland religious debates in pubs tend to be avoided. Rather like a petrified remnant of the times when one could be killed because of his/her views on the theological questions. An evolutionary adaptation, one is tempted to say: only the children of those who shut up survived.

In reality, of course, it wasn't about theology at all. Cardinal Beaton was an ambassador of France in Scotland who wanted to side with the French against the English and an enemy of Henry ' womanizer' VIII. It was all political, all about power. Maybe it was even Henry VIII who conspired to get him killed to continue his policy for Scotland. The reformation in Scotland was seen by Beaton as a way of the English to set foot on the Scottish territory.
But who really knows what happened?