Slicer's Slivers of Being

Learning to fly

One minute you can be sitting right up there...

  

and then suddenly  

The full footage of the biggest fall of all has just been released.... you gotta see this.

"Coming down is the hardest thing." 

A Different Kind of Shooter

Today, the same day that Oscar Pistorius - global sports star - is accused of shooting his girlfriend dead, we got to witness another kind of shooting star - one which hit Russia up the Urals.

Both shooting incidents made dramatic news globally but, understandably, each provoked a different kind of reaction.

So here are a pair of songs with the same title, but they're very different - the first covers tragedy, the second fond memory, and reflection.

 

"Johnny died one night, died in his bed, 
Bottle of whiskey, sleeping tablets by his head. 
Johnny's life passed him by like a warm summer day,
If you listen to the wind you can still hear him play

Oh oh oh, Don't you know that you are a shooting star,
Don't you know, yeah, don't you know', 
Don't you know that you are a shooting star, 
Don't you know, yeah..."

  

"Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me
If I was still the same
If I ever became what you wanted me to be
Did I miss the mark or overstep the line
That only you could see?
Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me...

...Listen to the engine, listen to the bell
As the last fire truck from hell
Goes rolling by
All good people are praying
It’s the last temptation, the last account
The last time you might hear the sermon on the mount..."

Oh Mercy.

Slices in the Sky

The rare view of Aurora in the skies above Northern Ireland recently stirred up the memory of a great Cockburn song, which segues on rather well from the last BOC post - another kind of 'enchanted evening' ...

"Mirrors are showing the day's last glow
As we're spit out into the jigsaw flow 
Ahead where there should be the thickness of night
Stars are pinned on a shimmering curtain of light
Sky full of rippling cliffs and chasms
That shine like signs on the road to heaven..."

 

Admittedly to get the full "curtain of light effect" you gotta go a bit further afield*:

"...I've been cut by the beauty of jagged mountains

And cut by the love that flows like a fountain

from God."

Yeah, yeah... Slicer knows... there's a scientific explanation - streams of charged particles in the solar wind captured by the earth's magnetic field and interacting with the upper atmosphere... how great to understand it objectively; how great also to appreciate its beauty.

 

*Some of these are marked as copyrighted images. Slicer posts them here under presumed "fair use" compliance with legislation, and has no financial or intellectual/artistic property interest. If the copyright owner objects, he will happily remove them. However they could also be considered a free advert for the following great site: http://aurorahunters.com/