darinstahl: 2018

24 December 2018

If you meet a loner...

"...if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude.

It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

~ Jodi Picoult

21 December 2018

Things learned in life

When you meet someone who carries their eyebrow in their wallet, learn from them.

20 December 2018

"..the reluctant guardian of your memories.."

"I am daily learning
To be the reluctant guardian of your memories
There was light in those eyes; I miss that"
~Richard L. Ratliff

15 December 2018

The ability to cry

"Sometimes, when you are worn down, day after day, relentlessly, with no reprieve for years piled on years, sometimes you lose everything but the ability to cry."
~Leila Sales

15 November 2018

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
~Vaclav Havel

12 November 2018

A chance encounter with someone who didn't know...

I watched during a chance encounter with an old friend who is unaware of her dementia. Her old friend handled the encounter with grace but, i was obviously confused and concerned for her. The old friend shot quick glances at me seemingly for some sort of unspoken explanation. I wondered, what should I do? Smile and continue to prompt/fill in words ideas for her or somehow explain to the old friend everything is fine (which is likely all anyone wants to hear) when it truly is not?

In the end all I could muster while holding back the urge to cry was, smile and continue to prompt/fill in words ideas for her.

I am learning that with dementia, someone else's dignity is more valuable than the truth.

"A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency." ~Karl Kraus

Created: 2018.11.12

8 November 2018

the experience - even without recall

"Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience - even without recall.
The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or unkind talk occurs during that period.
The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can still use language and recall, or not."
~Judy Cornish, The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home

Created: 2018.11.08

30 October 2018

Truth and Love Always Win, always...

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won.

There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always."

~Mahatma Gandhi

28 October 2018

A love like that..

"And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,

'You owe me.'

Look what happens with love like that.

it lights up the sky."

~Rumi

18 October 2018

Another boring meeting...

"If you are in a boring meeting, the best thing you can do is try to make it more interesting, but if that's not going to happen, your best bet is to doodle"

~ Jackie Andrade, in the Applied Cognitive Psychology

25 September 2018

Galileo's Plank and the Shaman's Pole

"We live, it seems, between the shaman's pole and Galileo's plank; between our continuing wish to be enchanted and our eagerness to disenchant the world through science."

Science and disenchantment: Galileo's Plank and the Shaman's Pole.

24 September 2018

Is the Data Centre a place? Or, a role?

A Data Centre is a 'role' not a 'place':

Sometimes services are delivered using infrastructure assets located within in-house facilities.
Sometimes services are delivered using infrastructure assets located 'not here'.
Sometimes services are delivered using assets in both places, at the same time.

Created: 2018.09.24

Fear of boredom

"Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. . . . [E]veryone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century. In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time is on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused. "

~ Charles Hill, On Decadence

23 September 2018

A joke about Catharist heretics

This one cracks me up!

What is similar about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?

Well, they were both founded by Spaniards, St. Dominic for the Dominicans, and St. Ignatius of Loyola for the Jesuits.

They were also both founded to combat heresy: the Dominicans to fight the Albigensians, and the Jesuits to fight the Protestants.

What is different about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?

Well, have you met any Albigensians lately?

20 September 2018

I walk better...

“I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.”
~Alfred de Musset

17 September 2018

Things we believe in have two qualities

The weather has turned from summer to fall.

The cold evening, wet morning and warm dry day.

This is the best time of year and it reminds me of many of the best moments of my life - all of which occurred in the fall.

I am feeling a bit a drift of late. While it really did not happen gradually, it has take quite sometime for it to sink in - there is nothing left for me to believe in. Whatever good that was in my world is gone. Not misplaced and all I need to do find it. No, gone. I have discovered that the things we believe in have two qualities;

they are not the choice that we are often urged to think and,
they are finite and non-renewable.

I believe the second point was the most stunning thing to realize. If more people knew that, they might consume the thing(s) believe in more diligently.

3 August 2018

Not evil. Moronic

"Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin colour, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads."

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón