Bring4th

I don't know if anyone is familiar with hookah, but I love it.

I'm sitting at 'my bar', a nice egyptian themed hookah bar, smoking their double apple flavor.  Its called King Tuts.  Its like my home away from home.

I wanted to say how happy it makes me that I can have this experience.  I thank my spirit guides, and the entire universal plan for offering me this moment to experience.

I felt for a blissful moment that joyous feeling just being and enjoying.  I want to just say how nice it is that Earth offers these moments of relaxation and reminiscing.

I also had a pleasant meditation while awaiting my hookah.

Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

(04-10-2017, 11:15 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ]Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

I like hookah, but I've only toked from a friend's personal one. I've never had an egyptian hookah bar experience but that sounds wonderful. Although I'm not sure I could handle that amount of nicotine. I'm sure there's hookah gods and spirits that blessed your evening tonight.

I can only enjoy it if the other people are wearing fursuits. It happened once when I was at a fur con.

I enjoy inhaling smoke/vapour of many varieties. Hookah is fantastic. Truly, a gift from the creator.

So meditative.

*deep breath in* - *lengthy exhale accompanied by wondrous cloud of smoke*

Peace

[font=Times New Roman]~[/font]


[font=Times New Roman]'.... Oh dear! [said Alice to herself] I'd nearly for­got­ten that I've got to grow up again! Let me see — how is it to be man­aged? I sup­pose I ought to eat or drink some­thing or other; but the great ques­tion is, what?'[/font]
       The great ques­tion cer­tainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flow­ers and the blades of grass, but she did not see any­thing that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the cir­cum­stances. There was a large mush­room grow­ing near her, about the same height as her­self; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and be­hind it, it oc­curred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.
       She stretched her­self up on tip­toe, and peeped over the edge of the mush­room, and her eyes im­me­di­ately met those of a large cater­pil­lar, that was sit­ting on the top with its arms folded, qui­etly smok­ing a long hookah, and tak­ing not the small­est no­tice of her or of any­thing else.

[font=Times New Roman][font=Times New Roman][font=Times New Roman]       The Cater­pil­lar and Alice looked at each other for some time in si­lence: at last the Cater­pil­lar took the hookah out of its mouth, and ad­dressed her in a lan­guid, sleepy voice.
       'Who are you?' said the Cater­pil­lar.[/font]
[/font][/font]



[font=Times New Roman]       This was not an en­cour­ag­ing open­ing for a con­ver­sa­tion. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I— I hardly know, sir, just at pre­sent — at least I know who I was when I got up this morn­ing, but I think I must have been changed sev­eral times since then.'[/font]
       'What do you mean by that?' said the Cater­pil­lar sternly. 'Ex­plain your­self!'
       'I can't ex­plain my­self, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'be­cause I'm not my­self, you see.'
       'I don't see,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very po­litely, 'for I can't un­der­stand it my­self to begin with; and being so many dif­fer­ent sizes in a day is very con­fus­ing.'
       'It isn't,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Well, per­haps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; 'but when you have to turn into a chrysalis — you will some day, you know — and then after that into a but­ter­fly, I should think you'll feel it a lit­tle queer, won't you?'
       'Not a bit,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
[font=Times New Roman]       'Well, per­haps your feel­ings may be dif­fer­ent,' said Alice; 'all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.'[/font]
       You!' said the Cater­pil­lar con­temp­tu­ously. 'Who are you?'
       Which brought them back again to the be­gin­ning of the con­ver­sa­tion. Alice felt a lit­tle ir­ri­tated at the Cater­pil­lar's mak­ing such very short re­marks, and she drew her­self up and said, very gravely, 'I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.'
       'Why?' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Here was an­other puz­zling ques­tion; and as Alice could not think of any good rea­son, and as the Cater­pil­lar seemed to be in a very un­pleas­ant state of mind, she turned away.
       'Come back!' the Cater­pil­lar called after her. 'I've some­thing im­por­tant to say!'
       This sounded promis­ing, cer­tainly: Alice turned and came back again.
       'Keep your tem­per,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Is that all?' said Alice, swal­low­ing down her anger as well as she could.
       'No,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had noth­ing else to do, and per­haps after all it might tell her some­thing worth hear­ing. For some min­utes it puffed away with­out speak­ing, but at last it un­folded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, 'So you think you're changed, do you?'
       'I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice; 'I can't re­mem­ber things as I used — and I don't keep the same size for ten min­utes to­gether!'

       .... and there was si­lence for some min­utes.
       The Cater­pil­lar was the first to speak.
       'What size do you want to be?' it asked.
       'Oh, I'm not par­tic­u­lar as to size,' Alice hastily replied; 'only one doesn't like chang­ing so often, you know.'
       'I don't know,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Alice said noth­ing: she had never been so much con­tra­dicted in her life be­fore, and she felt that she was los­ing her tem­per.
       'Are you con­tent now?' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Well, I should like to be a lit­tle larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind,' said Alice: 'three inches is such a wretched height to be.'
       'It is a very good height in­deed!' said the Cater­pil­lar an­grily, rear­ing it­self up­right as it spoke (it was ex­actly three inches high).
       'But I'm not used to it!' pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of her­self, 'I wish the crea­tures wouldn't be so eas­ily of­fended!'
       'You'll get used to it in time,' said the Cater­pil­lar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smok­ing again.
       This time Alice waited pa­tiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Cater­pil­lar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook it­self. Then it got down off the mush­room, and crawled away in the grass, merely re­mark­ing as it went, 'One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.'
       'One side of what? The other side of what?' thought Alice to her­self.
       'Of the mush­room,' said the Cater­pil­lar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in an­other mo­ment it was out of sight.
       Alice re­mained look­ing thought­fully at the mush­room for a minute, try­ing to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was per­fectly round, she found this a very dif­fi­cult ques­tion. How­ever, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
       'And now which is which?' she said to her­self, and nib­bled a lit­tle of the right–hand bit to try the ef­fect: the next mo­ment she felt a vi­o­lent blow un­der­neath her chin: it had struck her foot!
       She was a good deal fright­ened by this very sud­den change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrink­ing rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and man­aged to swal­low a morsel of the left­hand bit.

[font=Times New Roman]       'Come, my head's free at last!' said Alice in a tone of de­light, which changed into alarm in an­other mo­ment, when she found that her shoul­ders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an im­mense length of neck....[/font]



The Caterpillar... assumes the dominant role in the verbal exchange that occurs between girl and insect. For the first time, Alice doubts her identity and shows that the continuous reversals — especially the dramatic alterations in her size — of Wonderland have altered her conception of reality as primarily predictable. The Caterpillar begins the conversation with a rude question that Alice answers politely (again inverting the relationship between decorum and indecorum, since previously the Dormouse [at the tea party] was polite while Alice was rude):

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I — I hardly know, Sir, at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then."
"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar, sternly. "Explain yourself!"
"I ca'n't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."
"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.
"I'm afraid I ca'n't put it more clearly," Alice replied, very politely, "For I ca'n't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing."
[from Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter 5.]

With the pun on "yourself" as meaning both "your actions" and "your self," Carroll demonstrates the impossibility of correctly answering the commonly used command "Explain yourself." Adults often behave like the caterpillar since they unremittingly demand children to answer questions to which the young people cannot know the answer. Here, Alice begins to understand the troubles that shroud self-explanation in a world that denies a static conception of self. Carroll here points to one of the key tenets of fantasy-writing — that it investigates the problems of individual thinking — according to Eric Rabkin:

"What is known is known, and there is no use worrying about it. One can accept it, reject it,
work to change it, or try to ignore it, but what is, is. The true field of freedom is in consideration
of what is not, what might be, what we think. What we think and how we think ... are inevitably
crypto-subjects of fantasy, even when the overt subjects may be quite different. [14-15]"

[font=Arial]Alice faces a full disintegration of her aboveground way of thinking, since she does not even know "what is known" in Wonderland: it is fully a "field of freedom," one that often degrades into chaos.[/font]
[font=Arial][complete [/font][font=Arial]essay: ""Which way? Which way?": The Fantastical Inversions of Alice in Wonderland"]  [/font]

(04-10-2017, 11:15 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if anyone is familiar with hookah, but I love it.

I'm sitting at 'my bar', a nice egyptian themed hookah bar, smoking their double apple flavor.  Its called King Tuts.  Its like my home away from home.

I wanted to say how happy it makes me that I can have this experience.  I thank my spirit guides, and the entire universal plan for offering me this moment to experience.

I felt for a blissful moment that joyous feeling just being and enjoying.  I want to just say how nice it is that Earth offers these moments of relaxation and reminiscing.

I also had a pleasant meditation while awaiting my hookah.

Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

No, I don't hookah, my brother, but I think that  whether it is hookah, beer or just meditation, that make us to be in that relaxed and awesome state - thank you, Gaia - and here you get that harmony and peace back at you, dear mother Earth! =)

I enjoy the hookah, good social smoke. Not often I do it though which makes it a little more mystical.

(04-11-2017, 12:23 AM)sjel Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-10-2017, 11:15 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ]Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

I like hookah, but I've only toked from a friend's personal one. I've never had an egyptian hookah bar experience but that sounds wonderful. Although I'm not sure I could handle that amount of nicotine. I'm sure there's hookah gods and spirits that blessed your evening tonight.

I think the nicotine is in small enough amounts that its not a serious addiction risk.  But if you smoke too much too fast you will get sick lol

That hookah bar I frequent is my favorite place away from my earthly home.  Its very quiet and relaxed when it opens around 3pm, and very chill.

(04-11-2017, 12:54 AM)IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote: [ -> ]I can only enjoy it if the other people are wearing fursuits. It happened once when I was at a fur con.

I've heard of hookah being used as a social way to connect groups of people.

(04-11-2017, 01:02 AM)MangusKhan Wrote: [ -> ]I enjoy inhaling smoke/vapour of many varieties. Hookah is fantastic. Truly, a gift from the creator.

So meditative.

*deep breath in* - *lengthy exhale accompanied by wondrous cloud of smoke*

Peace  

This guy gets it!!!  Lol

I've of the traveling like so I once brought my hookah up to Flagstaff in AZ, but forgot foil for the bowl, so I smoked mint sheesha straight with coals on top of the sheesha.

That burn flavor wasn't so much a burned flavor cause mint is epic.

Hookah and nature go oddly well together.  In a hookah vase is water.  Sheesha being molasses is earth.  Coals of fire.  The divine breath to make all the air flow.

I wonder what else of other cultures i am missing out on.

---

Dekalb, this makes me extremely want to read Alice in Wonderland, as I've never read or seen any of it

(04-11-2017, 06:21 PM)Ankh Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-10-2017, 11:15 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if anyone is familiar with hookah, but I love it.

I'm sitting at 'my bar', a nice egyptian themed hookah bar, smoking their double apple flavor.  Its called King Tuts.  Its like my home away from home.

I wanted to say how happy it makes me that I can have this experience.  I thank my spirit guides, and the entire universal plan for offering me this moment to experience.

I felt for a blissful moment that joyous feeling just being and enjoying.  I want to just say how nice it is that Earth offers these moments of relaxation and reminiscing.

I also had a pleasant meditation while awaiting my hookah.

Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

No, I don't hookah, my brother, but I think that  whether it is hookah, beer or just meditation, that make us to be in that relaxed and awesome state - thank you, Gaia - and here you get that harmony and peace back at you, dear mother Earth! =)

I admit I have my times of losing my mind, but those moments just make it all seem silly, like why am I losing my mind?  Just dance to the groove of life silly!  Take a puff, smile, see the plume as your being expanding with every inhale and exhale.  See, relax, be, and enjoy.

Or something lol

(04-11-2017, 11:26 PM)Aion Wrote: [ -> ]I enjoy the hookah, good social smoke. Not often I do it though which makes it a little more mystical.

Mystical is about the perfect summary I'd give a hookah experience when doing it for the first time in a while, or doing it every day.

I require a hookah when writing.  It is mystical in that it just makes my mind work in wondrous ways.  Like weed only I remember what all I'm doing!

I got a small one but haven't been using it ever since I decided to drop smoke.

Atually had smoke very recently for the first time in quite a long time.

(04-12-2017, 12:25 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ][quote pid='225772' dateline='1491886456']

---

Dekalb, this makes me extremely want to read Alice in Wonderland, as I've never read or seen any of it

A worthy ambition, C.A., old boy! As I am a bit of an aficionado of this work (and since I have some spare time and access to the internet until Dr. Shrankenkopf, the Sanitorium Director, returns and finds me in his office here at Happy Dale) I've ginned up this sparklingly brilliant guidepost unto the ages in re. the Alice material.

 Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell [yes, THAT Alice]

In 1856 the Christ Church, University of Oxford mathematics professor and logician, Anglican deacon, writer, poet, and photographer (Queen Victoria admired his work) Charles L. Dodgson befriended the new Dean of Christ Church College, Henry Liddell, and his wife -- and their three young children, Alice, Lorina, and Edith. 

He took the girls on picnics and told them stories. Dodgson was also a celebrated Victorian photographer who had his own studio in Oxford. He photographed the girls many times (sometimes in states of déshabillé, but always with their parents' approval , and while they were chaperoned -- doubtlessly this sort of thing is liable to "trigger" the fragile ego of today's "social justice warrior" type: My God! Paedophile! Burn him!! 

http://theartofsuzzanblac.blogspot.co.uk...hiles.html

Dodgson, a fairly gentle and undemonstrative soul -- what would today be called a bit of a math geek/nerd, had a thing for the beautiful purity of true innocence, as typically archetypally exemplified by elegant conceptions in pure mathematics, and as well in the of winsomeness of young girls (it's perhaps pertinent that he was raised in a family with eleven sisters.) He was not interested in debauching that innocence, as is the current SJW consensus (being essentially fundamentalist Puritans, they see everything through a distorting lens of as-if-devilishly-imposed impurity); he was intent on capturing the essence of it scientifically or artistically.

One balmy July 4th in 1862 he and his friend Robinson Duckworth entertained the girls on a boat trip in the Oxford area with a story of Alice’s adventures in a magical world entered through a rabbit-hole...


 1951 Disney version

 1972 British version

 2010 American (Tim Burton, director) version

The ten-year-old Alice was so entranced that she begged him to write it down for her. 

As an early Christmas present, on November 26th, 1864, Carroll gave Alice a handwritten story, with his own drawings, called Alice’s Adventures Underground, dedicated to "a dear child, in memory of a summer day".
https://archive.org/details/AlicesAdventuresUnderGround

Urged by friends to publish the story, Dodgson re-wrote and enlarged it, removing some of the private family references and adding two new chapters.

The published version, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Dec. 1865), was illustrated by the noted artist John Tenniel -- his representations of characters and scenes have become iconic.

https://archive.org/details/alicesadventur00carr  (First edition, published in London. Since then this has become the single most successful children's book in the English language.)

 Tenniel's Alice meets treed Cheshire Cat; grinning (with or without Cat) ensues



http://en.booksee.org/s/?q=Lewis+Carroll...ardner&t=0  Modern annotated version explaining numerous esoteric subtleties of Carroll's best-known works (produced by a noted contemporary mathematician, logician and hyper-rationalist/materialist skeptic of all things magical or mystical, the late Martin Gardner)

The dreamily surreal and often comical, sometimes disturbing, but always mysteriously provocative psychological realities presented in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (and Carroll's laterThrough the Looking-Glass [1870] and The Hunting of the Snark [1876]) have had a colossal sort of Rorschach-effect on the hearts and minds of the generations since its publication; it has become an artistic meme to conjure with. Each succeeding generation seizes upon it anew as a metaphorical rallying-point for championing (or scapegoating) its era's idiosyncratic loves, fears, and hatreds.

In a chapter titled “Pathological Communication” in Pragmatics of Human Communication, Watzlawick, Bavelas and Jackson describe behavioral patterns that defy typical models of communication and are symptomatic of mental illness. While discussing the communicative tendencies of schizophrenics, Watzlawick et al. define “Schizophrenese” as “a language which leaves it up to the listener to take his choice from among many possible meanings which are not only different from but may even be incompatible with one another. Thus, it becomes possible to deny any or all aspects of a message” (73). They proceed to explain the converse situation, called “brainwashing,” with the example of a conversation between Alice and the Red and White Queens:


“I'm sure I didn't mean — “ Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.

“That's just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning — and a child's more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”

“I don't deny things with my hands,” Alice objected.

“Nobody said you did,” said the Red Queen. “I said you couldn't if you tried.”

“She's in that state of mind,” said the White Queen “that she wants to deny something — only she doesn't know what to deny!”

“A nasty, vicious temper,” the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.

The Red and White Queen “brainwash” Alice by taking the things she says and applying any meaning they choose to her words. This technique is essential to the language of the characters of Wonderland, who are always puzzling Alice by assessing different meanings to her words than she had intended. The use of the above dialogue as an example of this type of communication speaks to the relevance of the Alice books to studies of interactional patterns, and also to their value as teaching tools. The stories of Alice’s adventures are widely known and offer an easily-relatable way to explain complex topics through the playful situations that Carroll crafted.

Lough too sees educational value in Carroll’s work as he traces lessons in logic and behavior through Alice in Wonderland, illustrating various concepts related to adolescent psychology with Alice’s interactions in Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat introduces Alice to syllogistic reasoning, and the Queen of Hearts provides training in dealing with authority figures (312-13). At the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Alice learns a lesson in impulsivity and over-confidence (309-10):

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I've had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can't take more.”
“You mean you can't take less,” said the Hatter: “it's very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.

Lough reveals how impulsiveness leads Alice into a logical trap here, for a simple “Yes, thank you” would have avoided the Hatter’s backlash; instead, over-confidence acquired from other lessons in Wonderland causes her to act impulsively and fall into the March Hare’s trap (310). Carroll’s Alice enters Wonderland with a preexisting set of behavioral patterns that reflect her child-rearing and social conditioning, and as she comes into contact with many characters whose ways of thinking differ from her own she learns valuable lessons about communication. Lough projects theories of cognitive development onto the conversations between Alice and the Wonderland creatures, teaching by using Carroll’s work as examples to illustrate theory.

As a result of his productive usage of the text in building from Carroll’s writing and mixing in his own intentions to use the text as a teaching tool, Lough’s conclusion regarding the impact of Alice’s Wonderland travels on her life is far different from those of the psychoanalysts: “ . . . she re-enters [the everyday world] as a new person with new skills and strengths. Alice’s newly-acquired cognitive, moral, and ego development enable her to rise out of the unconscious” (314). Indeed, this re-contextualizing of Alice in Wonderland takes on a very different tone than the psychoanalytic studies concerned with contextualizing a hostile and disconcerting Wonderland in the details of Carroll’s life. This is further evidence of how authors over time continue to infuse their own readings and perceptions of meaning into Carroll’s work, continually widening its scope and allowing it to take on new meanings. The audience of Carroll’s books, in effect, is much like the Red and White Queen; Carroll has set out his words in conversation with his readers, and they are free to “brainwash” them as they will, assessing any variety of meanings to them.
--- from Jason Beckman, “ 'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' The Alice Books and the Professional Literature of Psychology and Psychiatry" http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carr...kman2.html

The rise in the 1960s of mass interest in consciousness-change in general, and psychedelia in particular, led to a great revival of attention upon Carrol's by-then-nearly-century-old tales. Nowadays the high ground on the official narrative has been taken over by academic ideologues who demonize Alice's author for supposed personal rapacious depravity, educated-upper-middle-classist elitism, white-male-ist patriarchalism, capitalist imperialism/colonialism, and God knows what-all. Hollywood and Videogamewood tend to cast the Alice story in a very dark (nearly psychopathic) light.

PRO:
Ca. 1967: "Just Say Feed My Head!"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKtFLDmIXrg Incidentally -- late in life, the psychedelically iconic Mdm Slick took up painting... https://www.artbrokerage.com/art/slick/_...5866_3.jpg https://www.artbrokerage.com/grace-slick http://www.peabodyfineart.com/slick/slic13440.htm)

CON:
1965 American "Just-Say-No" version (compare slightly later "Alice in Acidland" version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rotvMo022Do or the iconical "Go Ask Alice" of 1973: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_FqQ38DUaU)

http://booksellersvsbestsellers.blogspot...rland.html
https://www.leafly.com/news/pop-culture/...d-cannabis
https://www.leafly.com/sativa/alice-in-wonderland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_Cat
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19254839
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen...es/473082/
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen...and/36998/

(04-10-2017, 11:15 PM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if anyone is familiar with hookah, but I love it.

I'm sitting at 'my bar', a nice egyptian themed hookah bar, smoking their double apple flavor.  Its called King Tuts.  Its like my home away from home.

I wanted to say how happy it makes me that I can have this experience.  I thank my spirit guides, and the entire universal plan for offering me this moment to experience.

I felt for a blissful moment that joyous feeling just being and enjoying.  I want to just say how nice it is that Earth offers these moments of relaxation and reminiscing.

I also had a pleasant meditation while awaiting my hookah.

Do you like hookah, my fellow friends?

It's a great social tool that slows down the conversation into a meditative mode. People have a hard time just sitting and doing nothing together. Hookah is often the next best thing and much more manageable for most people.

What does it take to get hired at a hookah bar?!

Darn it lol.