705**8

The Beta Blockers along with the chesty cough doing the rounds have left me at times breathless. I'll phone in the morning and ask to get the banding done so i can come off the tablets.

Saw Carol today, an old friend who along with DJ ran the doors in the west end of Aberdeen's main area. I, as can a few of the guys who read this from around the world worked for them over a long number of years, can still rattle off the phone number we would call for our hours. Quite a few of these guys would phone up on a Sunday evening rather the worse for wear and get their hours. Carol lived on that phone, coordinating an army of martial artists, bodybuilders, squaddies and students but the mere mention of this will bring a collective smile to all of us who experienced that great time!

Jade Goody's death will have brought awareness to many women about the importance of the smear test . It's easy for people to dismiss Jade and i for one would turn the tv off if she had been on. A reality tv personality, she was the face of women that Britain doesn't, in my humble opinion, like to think exists. She was loud and not well educated.

Had it not been for our consumption of the celebrity lifestyle then we'd never have heard of her. I'll raise a glass of ginger beer to her tonight because she took her 15 minutes instead of playing the game of knowing your class, your place, your servitude. I hope the message of smear tests gets through better than the previous campaigns ever did. Then she'll be more than just a reality tv star.



=== JKrishnamurti.org - Daily Quote ===

Transformation can come only when every problem is immediately understood.

What do we mean by transformation? Surely, the cessation of all problems, cessation from conflict, confusion, and misery. If you observe, you will see that the mind is cultivating, sowing, and harvesting as a farmer cultivates, sows, and reaps. But, unlike the farmer who allows the field to lie fallow during winter, the mind never allows itself to lie fallow. As the rains, the storms, and the sunshine recreate the earth, so during that passive yet alert fallowness of the mind, there is rejuvenation, a renewal, so the mind renews itself and the problems are resolved. The problems are resolved only when they are seen clearly and swiftly.

The mind is constantly distracted, escaping, because to see a problem clearly might lead to action which might create further disturbance; and so the mind is constantly avoiding facing the problem, which only gives strength to the problem. But, when it is seen clearly without distortion, then it ceases to be. So long as you think in terms of transformation, there cannot be transformation, now or hereafter. Transformation can come only when every problem is immediately understood. You can understand it when there is no choice and the seeking of a result, when there is no condemnation or justification. Where there is love, there is neither choice nor search for an end, nor condemnation, nor justification. It is this love that brings about transformation.

Collected Works, Vol. IV - 206