when i was 17

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUcWyt0nmHk&feature=related


If someone were to ask you, what were the most majestic thing you ever saw, what would you say?

Or if a psychologist were to ask you what does majestic mean to you, what would you say?

If you’re a product of England or Spain, the word ‘Majestic’ (Majestad) might immediately draw from your mind some kind of images of pomp and seriousness of the royalty of your country, the Queen of England, or the King of Spain…. As a Spaniard, it’s next to impossible for me to take seriously the notion of England’s Elizabeth being ‘majestic’ even though she might be a wonderful and beautiful person, and I’m sure she is, in her own way, just as Charles Manson and a Pope and Eva Braun and basically ANY human (good or bad), being endowed with humanity and equally created, can show Beauty………..

There’s a saying that the Angels in Heaven would be envious of humans and their ability to be human…. To fail… to be jealous… to feel anger…. Love, passion, lust… sacrifice… boredom…. The human condition…. For an American, or a Russian, the word ‘Majestic’ wouldn’t even immediately conjure a mental association with Royalty as they have naught, and no Russian, or very few, can even remember the old days of the royal Czars…. Being a Spaniard of sorts, the writer, having only spent 3 years in total in Spain (and that just barely really, perhaps a little amount less…), the writer is a patriot of sorts, and wouldn’t be given to denigrating Spain’s Royal family…. Even having once met in Spain, and ridden on a train from Leon to Madrid, as a 16 year old, some family or friend of a cousin of a prince of Spain or some such thing, photographed by paparazzi and such …. The writer would never think the King of Spain, John Charles, any more ‘Majestic’ than Isabel of England…. Any more then we take a child seriously when it claims it can ‘fly’ or ‘swim to the moon’, or whatever… and this is not to condescend or ridicule…. Or hate…. May John Charles (King) of Spain and Isabel die happy and blissful deaths and finish happy and safe lives….. and this is not, either, to DENY, the reality of MAGNIFICENCE… as just as a prince can be a symbol of magnificence representative of his Nation, just as a Bedouin Arab can be a symbol of magnificence to an Arab or Arab observer….. and by the way, when i visited England from Spain in 1996 or 1997, i could see Windsor castle from the premises i stayed at....

But to the original question, what? If anything, could you really ever say you say was truly majestic?

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when i was 17 i had a book by my side: 'In search of the miraculous'... by a character called 'Gurdjieff'... he impressed a Russian mathematician called Ouspensky in the way that Deepak Chopra impresses alot of people today ('spiritually').....

Gurdjieff declared he wasn't a boozer... but on an occasion he would drink a full box of wines just because....... only on special occasions, after a successful canary sale or what not...

i hope that the cigarrettes i smoke now (after having quit for over a year, mind you) and the 'unhealthy' quantity of wine that i drink now is a one-off like Gurdjieff described... and not an auger of things to come....... i believe my will is strong enough to hold off at the pass as they say...


next week i shall cease being a night-time taxi driver after some 2 years of such and for the first time ever, per ce, transition to being a daytime taxi guy...

today pulling out from parking position, pulling into the right lane in my regular cheap Korean for-my-own-personal-usage (we drive on the left in australia in the english style), i got hit by a black porsche carrera, i hope i am not found at fault, as i have no insurance coverage! and porsche's are expensive, in any case, i am sure the porsche guy was at fault, and a witness said the same....

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i hate to debase myself with the following anecdote, and will clarify, that at the time of said event (around march 2003), i was quite the potty boy, as i say, (a pothead - marijuana smoker)... one day, as a boarder in a silly household in a korean part of sydney... i decided to up and go for a run... i arrived at a cemetary, not far from where my destiny has brought me, after so many countries and travels and struggles and good times, where i scaled the sealed fence, and sat down with my back against a low brick wall, and looked at the northern sky, stretching far....

then, at once, as if appearing out of invisibility, to my right and at about 1km of altitude, a silvery blue vessel, like an advanced (but soundless) prototype of an american warplane, pass in the sky above, from right to left, turn in front of me, i felt an awareness that i wanted to perceive the Intelligence within the vehicle... it turned and flew away in front of me, at about 1km altitude, and began to accelerate... and what acceleration... that was Majesty for me... the only Majestic thing i have seen in my life

Shakespeare said a man's life in naught but barfing and galarfing and drooping and hot-air gasbagging and buffoonery on the stage of life before dying... and i am no exception to that rule....

i do not pretend that what i saw wasn't a marijuana-induced hallucination, but Good Lord it was a CLEAR one, my spaceship wasn't fuzzy, but clear, silvery blue BEAUTY.... i praise my mind for conjuring such a magnificent hallucination if it was such and not the 'real deal', as they say....

later i speculated that the American Air Force would not have such technology, nor the Russians either... currently in their possession....

soundless.... the acceleration... look i am not an aeronautical engineer buddy, and i've admitted i was a stoner at that stage of my life... but what acceleration.... only one word comes to mind: MAJESTIC.... although i spent my 18 months in China and 18 months in America and my brief stay at Moscow airport after that event, blissfully unaware to the silvery blue Majesty, having forgotten about it.... on some level, i feel like the Englishman in the English-as-a-second-language textbook story that described having seen a spaceship and having been greatly moved by it........

the way it accelerated away....... free...... beautiful....... fast....... no human airplane would ever move that quickly....... no way.....

wow