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Cars and Noticing
Posted by
StarMountainKid
,
07 April 2012
·
143 views
Cars and Noticing
I've been trying to think of something different to write about here. I have a lot of various interests, but most of them I think would be of limited concern to others. One interest I have that may be slightly interesting to someone is, I've always had a great interest in cars. Sports cars, mostly. And car racing. Here in the U.S. car racing usually means NASCAR, of which I'm not too interested in. I like sports car racing and Formula 1 racing and rallying, too.
I have this kind of interest because I like driving a really good sports car. There's nothing like the experience. It's visceral and thrilling, an emotional experience, and it's fun. Plus, you can pretend you're a racing car driver, and that's fun, too. I even used to spend hours playing car racing games on Playstation.
I've owned some nice sports cars, too. Not Ferrari's or Lamborghini's, but good sports cars, still. I started out with a Triumph TR-3, which I still think is the most fun car to drive I've ever owned. Then came a Alfa Romeo, a couple of Porsche's, a Jaguar, a BMW 2002, which is a sort of four seat sports car, and others as well.
I also like riding motorcycles, including dirt bikes. My favorite was a Honda V-45. It had this complex V-4 engine in it. Four cams, four valves per cylinder, a super thin aluminum crank case about 1/4 inch thick, and it looked cool, too. It was fast, and I put a lot of miles on it while I had it.
I've driven pretty fast in some of these vehicles. I've driven the Jag and the Honda at about 145 mph on several occasions. That's an interesting experience, going that fast. Things happen pretty quickly at that speed, so one has to be alert and careful. Careful in a relative way, because driving at 145 mph is not a careful thing to do. I must add that this was many years ago in a very different reality.
Now, I also like watching clouds. One can learn a lot, watching clouds. I also like looking at trees. There's nothing like lying on your back on some grass on a warm Summer's afternoon under a tree and looking at the blue sky through the branches and green leaves. It's sort of like looking at the environment as if it were a fractal. All sorts of shapes repeating themselves, or iterations.
When a breeze moves the branches, the green leaves move but the blue sky remains still. A blue sky is very trustworthy, because it doesn't change much. It makes a nice background for other things that do change. We only notice change when what changes is against an unchanging background.
The mind can be like an unchanging background, too. In this way, we can really see things that change. It's like having a more intense awareness. Awareness is all we really are, after all. All this other mental stuff we carry around is just extras, most of which we don't really need, as they get in the way of what we really are. Almost all of these extras are burdens for us. Better to forget them and just be ourselves.
I also like small furry animals. One of my fictional Alien characters like small furry animals, too. I made him like them because I like them. I think my fictional characters are a lot like me. I made them that way on purpose, so after I've written a story with them in it, I can sit back and look at them. It's like looking at little versions of me.
They're really nice characters, by the way. They're kind and gentle and innocent and they like to have fun and are inquisitive. They're heroic, too. They like adventures. I like adventures, though mine don't usually include going after bad guys and saving the Universe. I guess I'm not as heroic as my fictional characters are.
I'd save the Universe like my fictional characters do if I could, but I can't. All I can do is try to save myself. I try to think about this every day. I think we can save ourselves by noticing when we're not noticing anything. I think we should observe things as much as possible. We shouldn't ignore anything. Being too busy with ourselves not to notice anything else is a form of ignorance.
We all know ourselves best, I suppose, but to ignore everything else around us is being too self-centered. We are not the center of things, we just happen to be an awareness-thing in amongst a lot of other things. I think all this other stuff is pretty important. Just because we have this unique perspective of awareness, which includes an awareness of ourselves, doesn't mean everything else is unimportant or not unique or not interesting.
In the novel "Island", by Aldous Huxley, many of the wild parrots on this island have been taught to say one word. That word is, "Attention!" It reminds the people that live there not to loose themselves or to loose what's around them. I think we loose ourselves most when we pay too much attention to ourselves.
This may sound odd, but I think it's true. When we pay too much attention to ourselves we become isolated. The word "isolated" has the sound "ice" in it. I think whoever invented that word probably put that sound in it on purpose.
Right now, along with writing this, I'm video-izing a story in which my two Alien friends meet a talking donkey. I think probably talking donkeys are pretty rare in the universe, but in my mind this can happen. The story has some twists in it and some other characters, too. It's an interesting story, to me anyway.
I also need to finish the story "Space Ship". Or, I could just tell you how it ends here and save myself all that effort. That story really is ended anyway, without me writing a real ending. But I'll probably write an ending anyway if I can think of something to end it with. If this takes me a while to do, I'll just say here, they all enjoyed their adventure and returned home safely.
Now nobody has to actually watch/read my future video, which practically no one will anyway, and that saves us both a lot of trouble.
I've been trying to think of something different to write about here. I have a lot of various interests, but most of them I think would be of limited concern to others. One interest I have that may be slightly interesting to someone is, I've always had a great interest in cars. Sports cars, mostly. And car racing. Here in the U.S. car racing usually means NASCAR, of which I'm not too interested in. I like sports car racing and Formula 1 racing and rallying, too.
I have this kind of interest because I like driving a really good sports car. There's nothing like the experience. It's visceral and thrilling, an emotional experience, and it's fun. Plus, you can pretend you're a racing car driver, and that's fun, too. I even used to spend hours playing car racing games on Playstation.
I've owned some nice sports cars, too. Not Ferrari's or Lamborghini's, but good sports cars, still. I started out with a Triumph TR-3, which I still think is the most fun car to drive I've ever owned. Then came a Alfa Romeo, a couple of Porsche's, a Jaguar, a BMW 2002, which is a sort of four seat sports car, and others as well.
I also like riding motorcycles, including dirt bikes. My favorite was a Honda V-45. It had this complex V-4 engine in it. Four cams, four valves per cylinder, a super thin aluminum crank case about 1/4 inch thick, and it looked cool, too. It was fast, and I put a lot of miles on it while I had it.
I've driven pretty fast in some of these vehicles. I've driven the Jag and the Honda at about 145 mph on several occasions. That's an interesting experience, going that fast. Things happen pretty quickly at that speed, so one has to be alert and careful. Careful in a relative way, because driving at 145 mph is not a careful thing to do. I must add that this was many years ago in a very different reality.
Now, I also like watching clouds. One can learn a lot, watching clouds. I also like looking at trees. There's nothing like lying on your back on some grass on a warm Summer's afternoon under a tree and looking at the blue sky through the branches and green leaves. It's sort of like looking at the environment as if it were a fractal. All sorts of shapes repeating themselves, or iterations.
When a breeze moves the branches, the green leaves move but the blue sky remains still. A blue sky is very trustworthy, because it doesn't change much. It makes a nice background for other things that do change. We only notice change when what changes is against an unchanging background.
The mind can be like an unchanging background, too. In this way, we can really see things that change. It's like having a more intense awareness. Awareness is all we really are, after all. All this other mental stuff we carry around is just extras, most of which we don't really need, as they get in the way of what we really are. Almost all of these extras are burdens for us. Better to forget them and just be ourselves.
I also like small furry animals. One of my fictional Alien characters like small furry animals, too. I made him like them because I like them. I think my fictional characters are a lot like me. I made them that way on purpose, so after I've written a story with them in it, I can sit back and look at them. It's like looking at little versions of me.
They're really nice characters, by the way. They're kind and gentle and innocent and they like to have fun and are inquisitive. They're heroic, too. They like adventures. I like adventures, though mine don't usually include going after bad guys and saving the Universe. I guess I'm not as heroic as my fictional characters are.
I'd save the Universe like my fictional characters do if I could, but I can't. All I can do is try to save myself. I try to think about this every day. I think we can save ourselves by noticing when we're not noticing anything. I think we should observe things as much as possible. We shouldn't ignore anything. Being too busy with ourselves not to notice anything else is a form of ignorance.
We all know ourselves best, I suppose, but to ignore everything else around us is being too self-centered. We are not the center of things, we just happen to be an awareness-thing in amongst a lot of other things. I think all this other stuff is pretty important. Just because we have this unique perspective of awareness, which includes an awareness of ourselves, doesn't mean everything else is unimportant or not unique or not interesting.
In the novel "Island", by Aldous Huxley, many of the wild parrots on this island have been taught to say one word. That word is, "Attention!" It reminds the people that live there not to loose themselves or to loose what's around them. I think we loose ourselves most when we pay too much attention to ourselves.
This may sound odd, but I think it's true. When we pay too much attention to ourselves we become isolated. The word "isolated" has the sound "ice" in it. I think whoever invented that word probably put that sound in it on purpose.
Right now, along with writing this, I'm video-izing a story in which my two Alien friends meet a talking donkey. I think probably talking donkeys are pretty rare in the universe, but in my mind this can happen. The story has some twists in it and some other characters, too. It's an interesting story, to me anyway.
I also need to finish the story "Space Ship". Or, I could just tell you how it ends here and save myself all that effort. That story really is ended anyway, without me writing a real ending. But I'll probably write an ending anyway if I can think of something to end it with. If this takes me a while to do, I'll just say here, they all enjoyed their adventure and returned home safely.
Now nobody has to actually watch/read my future video, which practically no one will anyway, and that saves us both a lot of trouble.
