YING AND YANG; THE EQUALS AND OPPOSITES!

BLACK AND WHITE, ARE THEY OPPOSITE HALVES OR HALVES OF THE WHOLE? Post No.38 (AN 8 minute read) 

It is all either black or white, as we say! One extreme or the other! Opposing sides of opinion! Left and right! What about the enormous space that lays between those two extremes? Look at all the range of colours in between black and white; the black and the white are the only two that do not exist in nature. They are man-made colours not NATURE´s colours. Hence, our lives are as man-kind dictates, BLACK or WHITE!

Hello and a very good morning to you readers around the world. I am so looking forward to having some comments from you. Please remember that I have the translator tool at the top left of the blog. I myself can do English, Spanish and French but will certainly look to translate any language that comes my way.

THE YING AND YANG SYMBOL. Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash.

So, on to chapter thirty five entitled YING AND YANG! I am going to quote myself and at the same time pay tribute to the most gifted human being that I have known personally. I could so wish that she were our national leader! I quote myself:

I had never really thought about skin colour other than that dark skinned people seemed so exotic to me. Living as I did in the English countryside, the European African albino complexion was absolutely dominant. Our Bangladeshi doctor and his family, were the first people of a different complexion to mine that I knew personally.

It was not until secondary school that I knew my first African born person. She was a brilliant girl, born in Ghana, West Africa and adopted by two British people, who adopted three other children from Ghana too. Moving on to secondary school, sees a parting of the ways for many as we are put into different groups in our new schools and we have to start all over again getting to know who is who. 

I and this girl both found ourselves, as the only two who did not know any of the girls of our new group previously. The pairing up was done between existing friendships and we both felt like spare parts. She came to me and told me her name and I told her mine. "Did I know anyone in the group?" she asked. "No!" I replied. "Me neither!" she said and laughed. We became friends from there on. She was quite the most brilliantly talented human being that I have ever known. 

Her parents were both well educated folk and they were absolutely supportive of their adopted children. But what those parents gave those four children, was BELIEF! The belief that all they had to do was work, listen and learn and they could excel just like any pale skinned child. Proud indeed must those parents have always been to see the meteoric progress of this brilliant daughter.

Her talents knew no boundaries! The sciences, the languages, the mathematics, music and art, sports too, she was the best in every single area. Initially she was cold shouldered by most and I was cold shouldered as her friend. So, I saw very close up just how uncomfortable narrow minded people can make a person´s life. She stood firm though and it was as though she wore a suit of armour that gave her full protection against all the verbal knocks and blows. 

The teaching fraternity was the same in the beginning. But she just channelled everyone´s negativity into her positivity!! Eventually, no one could deny her what were ever her dues, she was magnificent! I was proud to be her friend, though trying to keep up with her proved far too much for me and actually, demoralized me. She was going too quick for the rest of us and was put into a group of the most gifted.

That saw our close friendship begin to fade as she became closer to those on her intellectual level. I was working hard, so were most of the group but she left us all trailing way behind. I fell in with another group until I went SOLO in the later stages. There was another boy of African-American-Caribbean-British origin too, who was also adopted by pale skinned British parents. Strangely enough, he was the one who gave my friend most of her trouble???!!! End of quote.

I continue looking at what are the aspirations for children depending on who their parents are. This is a fine example of two educated British people who were achieving as two individual people their own aspirations and now wished to help vulnerable children to have aspirations too. That is where my girl friend´s situation differed to the boy mentioned. His adopted family did not have aspirations for him. They did not believe in him.

She took every opportunity that she had with two hands and made the most of them all. The complete opposite to the boy who found himself being permanently compared to the only other child with the same complexion as he. It destroyed him poor lad. Belief in ourselves is instilled (hopefully) by others. That is what appraisal brings you, belief in yourself.

Musically, my generations were all complexions. It was not because a musical band was or was not, of a particular complexion that we followed them. It was because we liked what they were doing. We did not see black and white, we saw fusion. Music though is an area where African-American-Caribbean-British, dark skinned folk, can FEEL very proud indeed. Rhythm comes very naturally. Dance and song they can do well.

But it is the belief that they CAN  do that and that comes from seeing others with the same complexion having success. It helps you to believe. The sports field is another similar territory where they have been allowed to triumph. The pale skinned inferiority complex has seen doping come into being in an attempt to match these wonderfully strong physiques.

Where are the academic aspirations though? They come from the parents or others who try to encourage a child to believe in themselves. Poverty is at the root of most things and education has to be paid for in so many countries. Which means that education is only available to a few sadly. Those parents like my African girl friend´s adopted parents, really wanted to break the cycle for their adopted children and they succeeded with all four.

We must see education available to ALL girls as well as ALL boys too. We cannot allow ignorance anywhere in this world, that is the great crime of man-kind! Withholding knowledge from the masses; it is so much easier to lead ignorant people, I imagine is the line of thinking. But does it work out that way? No!!

There is a lot in this chapter, like all of them. Do you have any family, friends or contacts with different complexions to you? Are you skin tone ignorant? Are you prejudiced? Do you pre-judge according to skin tone? Have your family broken through cycles of ignorance and now aspire to better?

Thank you as always for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment or make contact. You can use the space below for your comments or leave me your e-mail in the contact box at the top right of the page should you prefer. I have a follow tab too for those who might like to keep up with my Trains of Thought. 

Next post I will be DIVING IN, the title of chapter thirty six and getting acclimatized to sub-Saharan Africa and its peoples. So, come back and read on. My book is available on Amazon: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

Until then, happy learning.

More INFJ reading can be found here: https://lifestyle.feedspot.com/infj_blogs

THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING!!

YES, MY FRIENDS, THEY ARE BUT WHETHER THEY ARE GOOD OR BAD CHANGES IS THE CRUNCH, IS IT NOT? Post No.37 (A 10 minute read) 

Hello and a very good morning from me here in Almería, Spain, Europe. I am so happy to say that I have been joined for the first time by a reader from Pakistan and Germany. How I am found is the mystery to me? But that was in truth, all part of my thinking. I had thrown my baby out to sea as far as I could. Only deep sea divers would even see her, but they would need to understand that, whilst this craggy, old shell maybe looked pretty unordinary, there could be some real gems being cultivated and polished within.

Therefore, they would have to be patient, INTROVERTED, INTUITIVE, FEELING, JUDGING kinds of divers (INFJs). Who would on finding this lonesome shell of quite heavy volume, understand that all they needed really was to understand where the pass key lay! They would not have to force the opening of this very tightly closed CLAM, NO, not at all. Just find the right words, the key words, my key words, that would have me wish to invite them in!!

Any who strike a blow to that exterior shell, will most surely find themselves with a permanent exclusion warning! I do not wish to go for all out exposure at this moment in time. But I would so like to welcome others within and share my accumulated treasures of life. My knowledge stores! So, each time I see that any deep sea diver has found me, I know that they have a peek within. I am open to casual swimmers by! But maybe that is who they are. They are swimming in that area of seabed where I lie and are just swimming by, take a quick peek and then swim on.

Maybe it is the INFJness that provokes curiosity but then provokes a recognitive reaction whereby the swimmer feels uncomfortable. The TRUTH has ever been a NO GO area. The TRUTH, is my area! Anything else is a waste of my and your time! We have to tell our minds as they really are and not always be pretending to FEEL how we do not really!

MY NEW LOGO!

Today I am reviewing chapter thirty-four of my first book of truths, my own and the accumulated ugly truths of MAN-KIND. ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN is the title and this chapter is titled THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING! In the last chapter I explored the eastern Sahara Desert and went clambering about the rocks in search of ancient rock art, which was a truly magnificent experience for me. All good things have to come to an end and my budget was tight from day one.

This had been a must though, as part of this adventure and it had exceeded all my expectations, it really had! It was time now though to be moving on and I made my way westwards to Tamanrasset, one of the last towns in southern Algeria and a place to pick up lifts for desert crossings. I have already told in an earlier post, of my meeting with the local cinema owner and the Tuaregs and the John Wayne film, so I will not repeat myself again here. 

This is when that incident occurred. I stayed here for a few days getting cleaned up and rested, as well as checking out the possibilities for travel heading south now, across the Sahara and into neighbouring Niger. I found myself a seat in a lorry with two Algerian men and off we went. What a week! I actually changed lorry and driver three times.

The first driver came on to me so heavy the first night sleeping out, that I began to question once again my wisdom at coming out here alone. A passing lorry stopped whilst we were stationary and resting and without hesitation, I climbed aboard this second lorry with a mature Tuareg. I continued with him right down to the Algerian border control point at Ain Guezzam.

Next day I changed lorry again and joined a large group of young Tuareg and had an absolute ball with them. It was they with their European sunglasses and watches, that gave this chapter its title. They, just as the mature Tuareg, talked to me of their lives and memories of older family members. Omar, my mature Tuareg, had as a young boy, travelled with grandfather and father on camel trains.

These young Tuareg had been taught to drive lorries, not camel. They had trained in mechanics not salt production or sandstone production. They were the new generations of Tuareg. They had a sense of purpose yes! But their purpose was taking considerably less time to carry out by comparison to their elder´s generations. TIME! And our perception of time!

That is one of the concepts that we talked over. TIME and how we use it, what do we want it for, what do we want to do with it? In the westernized world we have devized so many ways to use our time, have we not. First just like the Tuareg, we need to earn money from somewhere and that means giving a set amount of time to an occupation most days of the week. Those hours have to be given therefore, and without that occupation, we would be without money.

In our westernized world of the RAT RACE and the treadmill designed for all the world´s rats, it is what we all begrudge giving our time to, none the less we accept that as a necessary evil, do we not? We live for our spare time do we not? Therefore, this is all about how to use those precious hours of spare time. As peoples in Europe, we are mature at work and immature at play. We need to let our hair down, be ourselves, make choices for ourselves, be our own boss, make our own decisions about something.

But we have a million and one ways in which to spend our free time do we not? Not so down Sahara Desert way, hence the cinema and John Wayne seeming like an extraordinary event!! What do they want free time for you may ask! Well, if you were LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING as these Tuareg peoples did prior to motorized vehicles, you would see that time has a very different quantity. It is precious, they know that. Each minute of the day and night is precious!

It is another minute in which you could be learning something and improving your mind. TIME, MINT TEA, COMPANY AND THE GREAT OURDOORS. My perfect classroom, where so much learning has been done by me personally. You can do what you can do each day between sun rise and sun set, from there on you have no light except the glow from the fire.

Verbal communication is the source of all entertainment. Human voices speaking their thoughts aloud and sharing them with others. Music, chant, song and hand clapping, all give another element to communication. So ethical, so positive, so integral, so natural and all under those Saharan stars. That is to live. You are living all the day and night, you are working just by day and you are breathing all the day and all the night too.

Health, happiness and harmony are attainable but only by communal will to live that way. This is why these indigenous peoples really do not want to be sucked up into the MAN-MADE world. They want to continue to run on their time. Targui TIME (their name for themselves in their language of Tamashek), not MAN-MADE time.

They have been adapting through the centuries though and there are few now who herd animals of any kind, there is no pasture for them. A contributing factor of course, to the desertification of the Sahara Plateau. Meat eating, the bane of the whole human world. We should never have been meat eaters and have got to find a way to some serious reductions in meat consumption.

I had got my arms fair punctured from vaccines prior to travelling, which as you may read further on, I was later so thankful for that protection. Vaccines for diseases and sicknesses that have been eradicated in the west but are still major killers in the south and east of the world. Our sickness in the west is to be non-human and non-caring for any other than ourselves. Like we were important in some way. HOW?

Crossing into Niger and coming in to Arlit, it was time to say FAREWELL to my Tuareg travel companions and this was one of the most painful partings of my whole life time lived. What beautiful men, what beautiful men! 

Having been surrounded by Arab peoples for the last few weeks, as a white skinned female I was noticeable, even with my head scarf covering my blonde hair but when I crossed the Algeria - Niger border into sub-Saharan Africa, WOW!!!! I FELT just how it is to REALLY stand out in crowd. That may seem to you as a case of BLACK and WHITE but you could not be further from the truth!

Have you met indigenous peoples? If you have, how did you get on? Have you travelled in sub-Saharan Africa? Do you know how it FEELS to have a complexion that has you stand out in a crowd?

Chapter thirty-five is entitled YING and YANG and I will give you all an insight into that in the next post. Thank you very much for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment, there is a space below for your thoughts. Every day I wake with the same hope, "Today someone, somewhere has FELT that they would like to comment!" 

Maybe today or tomorrow will be that day, I will keep hoping! Or send me your e-mail via the contact box in the right-hand panel, there is a follow tab if you would like to keep up to date.

Until then, have a very good day yourselves and happy learning. These are the Amazon links to my first book: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

 

OUT OF THE SANDS!!!!

THE LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING SAHARA DESERT IN ALL ITS BEAUTY! Post No.36 (A 6 minute read)

What a joy it is to find yourself at long last, wandering in your past visions of your future. Your past visions have become your today´s REALITY! This is no longer a dream, a vision, wishful thinking, NO, this is now a living, working, breathing reality and you are just where you needed to be!

Travelling as I now was, ever further southwards, I was moving ever deeper into the Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert today makes up 8% of the world´s land surface and is 9.2 million square kilometres in area. This is a vast expanse, it really is and yet the colours are changing oh, so subtly as you pass through the kilometres. The shades of nature, pure beauty!

GHARDAIA, OUT OF THE SANDS! Photo by Mido Art on Unsplash.

Hello and good morning to ALL readers around the world, welcome to you today. In this chapter thirty-three, I arrived at Ghardaia which stands in a valley and just seems to come out of the sands. The buildings are all low level with the exception of the mosque, whose minaret towers over the landscape. The sandstone constructions were shades of ochre, beige, peachy pink and when the sun set and rose, WOW!!! What a spectacular sight indeed!

Such a beautiful place just had to be enjoyed and explored and that is just what I did for some days before heading further south-east towards Ouargla and Hassi Messaoud. It was certainly an eventful journey of various legs and with changes of vehicles and travel companions between. That is all an essential part of travel for me. If you do not communicate with the local people, I do not think that you will ever get a real FEEL for the country and its whole way of living.

There were nights spent `en piste´, all part of the travel experience of course. A learning all the way journey. I quote myself from this chapter:

Yes, it had got us another hundred and fifty kilometres before it gave up and rent! Having used your spare, what next? In these situations (bearing in mind that we did not have mobile phones then), there is nothing to do but wait and hope a vehicle comes past. We had entered into the neighbouring province of Illizi, I remembered seeing the sign posts before light fell and we had passed through Hassi Messaoud and taken the left option at a forking of the highway, heading further south-east. Where we were now, I could not be sure. It was in situations like this, that my travel companions always surprised me. They would deal with these mishaps like they were par for course!

We all got out of the car and on viewing the rent tyre, all agreed that yes, it was definitely punctured!! The hours had moved on and the stomach had expected to be eating something by now. In truth though, no one is about to go walking off in the dark here, so, you just have to sit it out. Somehow though, ever prepared, these incredible people can always get a fire going and some mint tea boiling! Mint tea seems almost like the automatic solution to all problems!! End of quote.

We had a pick and mix of all the food that we had between us and then settled down to sleep for the night. I learnt so much from the Arab peoples about patience, tolerance, collaboration and co-operation. We were all in the same situation at that moment in time. Berating our driver was not going to resolve anything. Getting up tight was not going to resolve anything. Getting angry with each other was not going to resolve anything either. No, we all had to pull together and bide our time until we could resolve our situation. That was the bottom line in truth!

Time is the most valuable commodity that we have as human beings. Our perception of time and what we do with it though, are so very different from one culture to another. I was now learning to go with Arab time and the Arab people have a patience level matched only by the African peoples! I knew that I had come travelling in search of answers but I was not altogether sure exactly what my questions were! None the less, I was finding my answers but maybe I did not understand them as such at the time! 

80 KILOMETRES TO BORDJ EL HOUES! Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash.

This is a dense chapter of beautiful days lived and my continuing journey across the Tassili n´Ajjer Plateau. I quote myself again from this chapter: 

I had expected more basic styles, more child like maybe! Whilst being some six thousand years old, that is relatively recently for those who love delving in the past like I! Yes, there are thousands of cave drawings all over Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa which date back a lot further. These could therefore, be called relatively modern! The human figures were tall and had well defined thighs and arms. The male figures were wearing a cloth of short length, as our skirts! The female figures were also wearing a cloth but of longer length, to the knee, though they were all bare breasted!

Both male and female figures wore decorated ankle bands and wrist bands. In other paintings, bodies would be painted with markings, or wearing elaborate head dresses. There were different time periods represented of course. There are horses harnessed to chariots with male figures holding the reins and standing atop of the chariot. The chariots had round, spoked wheels!! There were animals of many varieties and hunting scenes. Just like our snapshots, our hoilday photos, that is how I interpreted what I was seeing. A visual, pictorial representation, to illustrate something that was known to some but maybe not to others, ENLIGHTENMENT!!  End of quote.

What a truly wonderful and enlightening journey this really was for me. My today still revolves around all that I learnt during these years of my life. That is what needs to become my today!

Have you travelled in the Sahara Desert? Have you explored rock art and cave paintings somewhere in the world? Have you learnt from the local people of the nations that you have travelled through?

In my next post I will review chapter thirty-four titled, THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING!

I thank you all for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment below or make communication via the contact box, why not send me your e-mail or click the follow tab and keep up to date . If this is your first read, may I suggest that you take a look at my older posts as this is a continuous train of thought. The Post Index is on the left hand side and the posts are date ordered and numerized. Beginning 11th November 2022.

Until next time, happy learning. 

My first book can be found on Amazon: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

AFRICA IS ONBOARD MY TRAINS OF THOUGHT

THE WORLD HAS FIVE CONTINENTS BUT WE ALL STEM FROM ONE OF THOSE. MOTHER AFRICA!! Post No.35 (A 9 minute read) 

How many of us actually think on a day to day basis of themselves as Africans? `The Whole world is Africa´, sang Black Uhuru, one of my favourite reggae bands. As the great, late Peter Tosh sang, wherever you come from and whatever you look like, you are an AFRICAN, in his song titled `AFRICAN´! I think of myself as African, even though I was born on the European continent and with pale skin!

What most fascinates me is how we all came to be where we are and who we are. My trains of thought are all geared in one way or another, to trying to resolve this as yet, unresolved mystery! I know instinctively that much is known in other parts of the world that is still unknown in Europe!! There has been all through time, the breakdown of cultures and traditions and as people, little people, we have had to go the way of our conquerors or make a break for freedom and live out in the wild expanse that is the natural world.

The indigenous peoples or ethnic peoples, are the living remnants of humanity prior to conquest and domination of other cultures. Those few who have made a life long decision to stay out of the man-made world. Stay true to themselves and their traditions and not sell their minds, bodies and souls to the man-made world of money seeking!

Hello and a very good afternoon to you ALL. Today is a very special day for me. After a dramatically poor day yesterday, I check my blog today and see that AFRICA IS ON my blog! YES, dear readers, I have been viewed and read from the five continents. AFRICA has tuned in to me today and from where? MOROCCO!!! My beloved MOROCCO! Hello and welcome to you Moroccan readers, I am truly overjoyed at this news.

You have lifted my spirits today, you really have! Please remember that the Google translator tool at the top left of my blog can translate into most languages, if that would be easier for you. I do so hope that you will join me with regularity and find some interest in the trains of thought of this white African which of course, are all geared towards Africa predominantely!!

MY FIRST BOOK

Chapter thirty-two now, entitled PICTURE BOOKS. It has been widely said that the average human being uses just 10% of their brain capacity!! Well, knowing the people that I do here in Europe, I think that I can see that is quite likely right. We can see clearly that there are amongst us, those who wish to use a lot more than 10% of their brains and endeavour to train that muscle that is their brain, into higher levels of motion!

Well, you see man-kind gives us all a general education here in Europe so that we can all read and write and do basic maths! From there we are taught specific skills, those that are required to keep the man-made machine going!! No more, no less, hence the 10% usage only. Man-kind does not want us to use anymore of our brains, we might get into thinking for ourselves and then start to question HIS leadership!!

That is where we are in Europe. It has been a long, long time in coming but half a century of general state education has seen whole populations become literate and by majority, have learnt some skill or another. Moving us as individual people into our man-made independent state. Our communal 10 percents all added together allows our leaders to get a very long way and get very wealthy whilst his own brain usage is being dedicated to thinking along different lines altogether. He does the thinking and we do the doing!!!

To add to that of course, has been the total exclusion of females in the educational field. This is where we can see the differences in our nations at this moment in time. Where is female education happening because that is where change is coming?? We have 65% of our government here in Spain that are female. That is noticeable 100% to us as a nation. Even the way in which politics is ejecuted, is radically different. Progress is possible but we as the world females do need to be leading us the right way!!

I really enjoyed writing this chapter. It all came at once really. Pictures flooded my mind and I just went searching! I was on my way to an area that has thousands of cave paintings and rock markings. I was remembering just how that FELT to me, knowing that it was some six thousand years ago that these Bedouin nomads had been wandering through this area of land, the Sahara Desert!

We built our communication skills slowly through time, much in the way that a new born child does. Year by year having greater powers of memory and motor actions. It is an all accumulating business is it not? Sounds began the process and it was the previous chapter where I talked of adolescent linguistical grunts and snarls, that helped me get back to the beginning of time.

There were a range of sounds that were in fact naming objects. Runes/markings came next. The sound plus the rune/marking. The sounds would have been in part stimulated by other animals and their calls, the human animal would have tried to replicate these sounds, thereby training their vocal cords. I do not know that we could all be magnificent opera singers for example but I do know that we can train our vocal cords to enable us to make a vast array of sounds.

Herein the vast differences of sounds that are made within the global languages of today. Many of our oldest languages continue to be runic. Why change? Put runes side by side and you begin to create sentences, as we know them! Walls were used as picture boards just as we used our blackboards and chalk at school. The picture dictionary as I believe they are. 

The specie HOMO had passed through the HABILIS stage and moved on to the ERECTUS stage. It was (until newer information contradicts this), HOMO ERECTUS who moved out of the African continent first! We are still alive and many still with the same brain capacity as our close ancestor HOMO ERECTUS.

To date, the oldest skeletons of H. ERECTUS have been found in my adopted home of Spain and my birth island of Gran Bretaña!! These were rune writers and as their movements progressed, so did the accumulation of new runes. Introducing new sounds and runes according to the novelties that they were discovering on their migrations. The same runes are found in many different locations in Europe and Eurasia.

By lining them in a rational sequence, we create a continuous link between the runes and I can see through our runic languages, that fundamentally they have not changed much through millions of years, maybe why the sounds of these languages are so enjoyable to listen to and just how musical they seem as well. The English language offers much scope for description and depth of sentiment but does it sound nice when spoken?

Our own vocal cords are trained by our mothers in our first weeks, months and years of life, from thereon, it would be very difficult to permanently forget your own language´s pronunciation. That is muscle memory for you. This I have seen with my tri-lingual Puppy. Three very different sounding languages, Spanish, Catalan and English, but starting at such a young age, a child still has not got firmly set into one sound scheme!

The vocal cords are more flexible maybe in youth. It certainly is as I find, virtually impossible to recreate the same exact sounds as the Spanish for example. I am speaking the same words as they are but not sounding the same! Puppy sounds the same as them but he also sounds the same as me. 

So, I take a look at the first and second waves (as believed for now), out of Africa and follow the trail of runes right down to Australia. I look at the two halves of the human species, the male and female. The female all things positive and the male, all things negative. The female the creator and the male, the destructor. The males have two heads but tend to use the lower, to the detriment of each and every other human being.

That is half way through my first book ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN. There is a lot more to come, there is! In the next post, I will make it to Tassili n´Ajjer in the Sahara Desert and go clambering about finding rock paintings so until then, thank you for reading and please FEEL welcome to comment below or make communication by e-mail via the contact box in the right-hand panel, where there is also a follow tab. I would so love to have some feedback and hear your views too. 

In the meantime, happy learning to you! My book can be found on Amazon: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book