"The Rover" - Led Zeppelin

Help! I have this wonderful - if massively underrated - track from Led Zeppelin colonising my head.

How will I ever liberate myself?

Do I even want to?

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Lyrics

I've been to London, seen seven wonders I know to trip is just to fall

I used to rock it, sometimes I'd roll it

I always knew what it was for

There can be no denying, that the wind'll shake 'em down

And the flat world's flying, and there's a new plague on the land

Traversed the planet, when heaven sent me

I saw the kings who rule them all

Still by the firelight and purple moonlight I hear the rested rivers call

And the wind is crying, from a love that won't grow cold

My lover, she is lying, on the dark side of the globe

You got me rocking when I ought to be a-rolling

Darling, tell me, darling, which way to go

You keep me rocking, baby, then you keep me stolen

Won't you tell me, darling, which way to go, that's right

Oh how I wonder, oh how I worry, and I would dearly like to know

I've all this wonder, of earthly plunder, will it leave us anything to show

And our time is flying, see the candle burning low

Is the new world rising, from the shambles of the old

If we could just, if we could just, if we could just

If we could just, if we could just join hands

That's all it takes, that's all it takes

That's all it takes, that's all it takes.

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Lyrics (1972) seem more relevant than ever...

My Bucket List (as of 2024)

Clare disapproves of bucket lists: 'Be in the moment!'

And I secretly agree with her. I don't believe in bucket lists either. Daoism reminds us that life isn't a checklist to conquer, but a process to embrace. A bucket list, with its rigid goals, traps you outside the present, the very moment where true fulfillment lies. Avoid the temptations of the list: strive to merge with the Dao...

Yet here are my bucket list items:

1. Keep my wife happy - ongoing (blog post).
2. Climb Pen-y-Fan - achieved in September 2012 (blog post).
3. Program a working theorem prover for the Predicate Calculus - achieved in March 2017 (blog post).
4. Understand General Relativity to the extent of grasping quantitatively the precession of the perihelion of Mercury - achieved (June 10th 2019, blog post) using the spacetime metric, not via tensors and differential geometry.
5. Create items of art for my grandchildren - achieved (2019, 2021) through the writing skills of (pseudonymous) Adam Carlton: Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations: and other stories and Donatien's Children.
6. Learn the T'ai Chi 24 step Yang-style short form - accomplished end of 2022.
7. Learn the T'ai Chi sword form - started January 2023, achieved June 2023.
8. Pass first grading in Shotokan Karate (orange belt) - achieved November 2022.
9. Be received into the Catholic Church - achieved Easter 2023.
10. Get my personal philosophy sorted out - ongoing (blog post).

Removed from bucket within the last five years:

1. Learning Quantum Field Theory - too difficult!
2. Understanding General Relativity via tensors/differential geometry - too hard.
3. Improving guitar, eg fingerpicking - my fingers hurt too much.
4. Achieve brown belt in karate: retired June 23 with yellow belt (7th kyu) due to chronic sciatica.