Listening to Schiller. Life is neat.
Looking forward to again sailing among the Greek islands.
Looking forward to August – getting busy with my telescope.
Looking forward to September – playing with Brendan in our new company A-circle.
Looking forward.
Watch out for Å. Brendan and Geir will make waves. Going way outside the box. On a wild abandon. News will be coming to a blog near you 😉
My mother’s funeral was today. A very worthy ceremony with beautiful music, a commendable mastering of the ceremonies by the priest and warm people attending. I trust my mother valued the farewell.
Thank you to all those who attended. My you find inspiration in the interactions with Turid to inspire others you meet in your lives.
I held a slightly ammended Norwegian version of my previous blog post as a speech.
A chapter is closed. Another commence. I will carry a torch. May kindness and enlightenment ensue.
For the record; Here is what I said:
Mamma,
Du er vakker.
Du har inspirert min nysgjerrighet, min kunnskapstørst, min søken etter sannhet, mitt liv. Og veien til kunnskap og sannhet er like vakker som deg.
Du har inspirert så mange – til å lære og til å finne egne svar. Ditt engasjement og inspirasjon har gitt ringvirkninger langt ut over det vi kan se – du har berørt utrolig mange mennesker i dine 71 år.
Kunnskapen du har levert som lærer har gitt mange barn et solid fundament i livet. Men den nysgjerrigheten du har vekket har vært uvurderlig.
Husker du den gangen da jeg var 8 år? Du pekte opp på nattehimmelen og sa “Se Geir, der er Orions belte”. Det øyeblikket ga mitt liv en helt ny mening. Det er et av vendepunktene livet – et jeg vil vil være evig takknemlig for.
Jeg tar med meg minnene, inspirasjonen, engasjementet, varmen og gleden. Eventyrene, latteren, utfordringene, livet.
Jeg er takknemlig for de siste 5 årene vi bodde sammen. Jeg er glad nå for at du døde hjemme og i mine armer. Det var i det minste raskt, og du døde ikke alene. Det var det mest intense øyeblikket i mitt liv. Jeg tenkte ikke et øyeblikk at du skulle dø, selv når du tok dine siste åndedrag. Ditt lys kunne bare ikke slukne, skulle ikke slukne. Du er mamma, du kan ikke dø. Bare senere forstod jeg at du forlot kroppen mens jeg holdt den.
Men ditt lys vil aldri slukne.
Det er et tomrom nå. Jeg har ingen ord for det jeg føler. Jeg savner deg mer enn jeg hadde forestilt at jeg kunne.
Jeg lover å fylle tomrommet med positiv energi – jeg lover å inspirere andre til å lære, til nysgjerrighet og til å finne sine egne veier og svar i livet. Jeg lover å bringe ditt lys videre.
Turid Isene… Mamma… Jeg elsker deg. Utrolig høyt.
Du vil fortsatt være en inspirasjon. Du er vakker.
You have inspired my life, my curiosity, my appetite for knowledge and the urge to seek truth. And the path to knowledge and to truth is as beautiful as you are. You have inspired many – to learn and find their own answers in life. Like ripples in water, you have touched countless lives in the past 71 years.
The knowledge you have passed on as a teacher has given many children a solid foundation in life. But beyond that, the curiosity you have inspired is priceless.
Remember that evening when I was only 8? You pointed to the three stars lined up in the sky and said “Look Geir, there’s Orion’s Belt”. That moment would change my life forever. It is one of the defining moments in my life, one I will never forget and will forever be thankful for.
I keep with me so many memories of inspiration, warmth and joy. The adventures, the laughs, the challenges, life.
I am thankful for the past 5 years that we lived together. I am glad now that you passed away at home and in my arms. At least it was swift, and you didn’t die alone. It was the most intense moment in my life. I didn’t think even for a split second that you would die – even as you passed away. That light of yours just wouldn’t fade, couldn’t fade. You are my mother, you cannot die. Only later did I realize that you actually passed away as I was holding you.
But your light will never be extinguished.
The image of the lighthouse I dedicate to you, along with a piece of music I put together last night, only hours after you passed away,
There is a void now. I have no words for what I feel. I miss you more than I could imagine I would do.
I promise to at least try to fill the void with some positive energy – I promise to inspire others to learn, to be curious and to find their own paths and truths in life.
Turid Isene… Mamma…I love you. So much. You will continue to inspire. You are beautiful.
As a person starts to write, he may gather an audience. He will then get feedback and he will experience that he creates some value for that audience. He writes more, gets more feedback and so on and so forth. This feedback loop can be a trap. He may continue to write to satisfy his existing audience or his own comfy feeling from the feedback he gets.
The writer can get anchored to the audience who got anchored by his early writing. Thus he can get anchored to his own past output, generating a situation where he finds it difficult to change or explore new paths.
I am very conscious of this phenomena. And as you may have notices, I went from writing exclusively about Scientology on my earlier blog to writing on other subjects on this blog. I realize that I gathered a sizeable audience when I left the Church of Scientology after 25 active years. The audience grew as I shared my views after I left. But the world has opened up for me. There is so much I want to know, to explore and to share. Scientology went from being a big part of my life to a very small part. My interest went from Scientology to people.
I am not quite sure why I write this. Maybe to warn those in my audience only interested in my views on Scientology that there will be less and less of that, perhaps, and perhaps more on other subjects and areas of life. Right now I am getting back into creating music, like I did many ears ago.
I will try to not get in a rut and continue to expand and explore, and perhaps with your inspiration, I may explore whole new areas and write about stuff that I never would have thought of before.
Admittedly, this is rather fringe to most readers of this blog, and I expect no comments on this post 🙂
But I thought it important to post this for those Googling certain terms and searching for help in writing books using LaTeX and VIM.
I use VIM as my editor for almost everything I write – including entering text in web pages, where I use the Firefox blugin “It’s All Text“. Since some time back, I have been more active as a writer, and my rediscovery and progressively love for LaTeX as the document publishing system has taken hold. Being a tools geek, I decided to do some tweaking of the standard LaTeX syntax plugin for VIM.
The plugin resides in the system-wide VIM syntax folder and is named “tex.vim”. To make use of my improved LaTeX plugin, simply copy my plugin to your own “.vim/syntax” directory, and you will get better tab settings and the possibility to fold parts/chapters/sections etc. of the book using the standard markers – like this:
\chapter{Name of the Chapter} %{{{1
With this, the chapter will be foldable all the way to the next marker on the same level (the above example showing level “1” of folding). Remember to put the percentage symbol before the fold marker to ensure LaTeX treats that part as a comment and does not render it as document text.
Noun:
Verb:
L. Ron Hubbard stresses the concept of exchange in many of his policy letters. In the policy letter from 1982 titled, “Exchange, Org Income and Staff Pay”, he delineates cllearly his take on four levels of exchange:
First consider a group which takes in money but does not deliver anything in exchange. This is called rip-off. It is the “exchange” condition of robbers, tax men, governments and other criminal elements.
Second is the condition of partial exchange. The group takes in orders or money for goods and then delivers part of it or a corrupted version of what was ordered. This is called short-changing or “running into debt” in that more and more is owed, in service or goods, by the group.
The third condition is the exchange known, legally and in business practice, as “fair exchange.” One takes in orders and money and delivers exactly what has been ordered. Most successful businesses and activities work on the basis of “fair exchange.”
The fourth condition of exchange is not common but could be called exchange in abundance. Here one does not give two for one or free service but gives something more valuable than money was received for. Example: The group has diamonds for sale; an average diamond is ordered; the group delivers a blue-white diamond above average. Also it delivers it promptly and with courtesy.
While this sounds well and good, it has dawned on me lately that there is something missing. Perhaps the most important level is missing – a level dear to my heart. I would see it as a level above all these four:
The transcending of exchange. It’s the level of not caring about echange, of “giving without thought of reward”, of “practical karma theory”, of give-give-give. This flies in the face of standard operating Scientology where you are taught “to get your exchange in” and to ensure “others get their exchange in”, where flows need to be balanced, where one only gives with thought of, or even demand for, reward.
Fuck that. Just give. I belive that is the core of life.
Unpacked my new telescope last night. Up and running in matter of minutes. Holy cow! What a scope!!
It talks. It shows videos. It moves gracefully to the objects of my desire.
Despite the all too bright Norwegian summer sky, it showed the Ring Nebula (M57) nicely. Despite clouds scattered across the sky, that hour last night will go down in history.
If anything could match sex, this certainly would be a worthy candidate.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Bliss!!!
Not mincing words.
This is pretty heartfelt, I’d say.
In case anyone was still wondering why I post this, even after seeing the video… she has left the building (the Church of Scientology).
Geir Isene - uncut 