Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

From Kahlil Gibrain’s “The Prophet”, a beautiful book

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
And he answered, saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

When I was going through the extremely difficult and emotionally taxing period when I was removed from BME, there was a very small handful of people who showed themselves to be real friends, and these people kept me going in this dark time. One of them was Jason Cartwright, who many of you may know as the programmer behind projects like IAM2. I always enjoyed talking to him, often about his software projects, my software projects, and the ones we worked on together as well. He was very bright and talented, and shared many of the ideas and ideals I have about online community software and life in general. I’m very sad to say that Jason passed away last night, far too soon. Jason helped a lot of people, and I’m sorry we weren’t able to help him in return when he needed it.

The world’s a poorer place for this loss. If anyone wants to post any memories of Jason or his projects, I’ll make sure they get passed on to his family.

…well, mostly this week. This first picture is the only exception, from the last day of summer camp, which was a week and a half ago and like most of the days included face painting, which the kids never seemed to tire of. The first day of “real” elementary school starts next week, which should be exciting. It’s a great school, continuing in the Montessori system, and she’s looking forward to it both for the newness, and because some of her classmates from past years that she didn’t see last year are there. In addition to school, singing lessons and swimming lessons are planned — she swims well already, but has no technique. By the way, if anyone has any advice on singing lessons I’m listening… I’ve been asking around with only minimal success and I really know very little about the subject.

The next makeup opportunity is the Romero zombie walk in two weeks. I’m going as a zombie, and Nefarious is going to be a zombie hunter and will get to drag me around by a chain around my neck. Hopefully she does not abuse the power. If you missed them or forgot them, here are the costume pictures from last year. We’ll be at the main one as well, on October 24th, unless we’re too wiped out because we’ll have just returned from Panama and Costa Rica.

Today I was digging through my boxes of accumulated junk, looking for some effects gear that I offered to lend to my neighbor, and I found my old Frankenstein’s monster RC car. It’s got the front end of one car, and the rear end of another, and was built out of two broken cars. It looks silly, but it’s actually really fast and fun to drive and works perfectly. Not that the ones we’ve been playing with recently aren’t fun, but it’s a treat to play with a “real” RC car instead of a “toy”.

In other “toy news”, I got this cool 72 LED watch from Hong Kong for not much over $15, a cheap knockoff that would have cost me in the realm of $200 if I’d ordered it from Japan. Nonetheless, it works great and I love it. It’s simple to read — the first column is the hours, and the rest of the display is minutes (so in the picture it’s 5:40). Nefarious had a recent great deal as well, getting this miniature semi-automatic multi-band rubber band pistol from a gumball machine for twenty-five cents! It’s the best thing I’ve seen come out of one of those machines for a quarter.

Yesterday we climbed up on the roof of the studio buildings to read after we got back from the pool. I read my “Psychic Tourist” book, which I finished today, and Nefarious and Cassie read a “Snow White” graphic novel, taking turns reading pages to each other. I love having roof access, and it’s one of the many reasons I like living here — I also like that Nefarious has gotten to live in a variety of places that have given her a rich life experience. Thankfully moving doesn’t stress her out (I know it does for some kids), probably because she’s moved so many times in her life, and her sense of home is defined by the people in her life, rather than the specific building.

We went for a walk to get a slice of pizza for lunch, and they blew dandelions that they found along the way. I also took this picture of some local street art of a goose that someone had modded with a new head. It wasn’t an improvement… sort of in bad taste to vandalize street art, as ironic as that may seem…

Other than that, we went out for a nighttime park visit as we often do, and I experimented with the night time options on the camera — these are all four second exposures. A nearly full moon and virtually no clouds, and unlike most starless Toronto nights, tonight the sky was dotted with dozens of clearly visible stars, which really is an oddity and a treat.