last time I had a cigarette
.. about 2 hours ago cos I`m too lazy to go to the shop
( Reckless_Rik, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 16:03, Reply)

Actually
right now is pretty good.

It's a beautiful day outside. I'm sat here singing along with some great music reading all these lovely answers (workboresme, you made me cry, babe!) and realising that life can be a pretty amazing thing sometimes.

Later tonight I'm supposed to be meeting a girl that apparently really fancies me. Yeah, life is pretty good right now.
(MrC. Having the most boring username on b3ta since 2004, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 15:58, Reply)

Beautiful moments
I'd just come back from my first serious boyfriends house, and I had arranged to go to the cinema the next day with my whole group of friends to see the film i'd wanted to see for ages, I was sitting there listening to the song that had been in my head all day and wondering how life could get much better.
(LooSee, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 15:41, Reply)

going on a boat trip in Turkey that lasted all day
and just sitting at the very front of the boat, on a gorgeous day, ultimately relaxed and enjoying the ride, and then spending the rest of the trip diving off the boat in various beautiful locations.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 12 Mar 2005, 15:20, Reply)

Heaven
India, Varanasi, on the banks of the River Ganges.

Sitting on the stone banks, listening to the temple bells and the sadhus (holy men) giving speeches, watching people washing enormous multicoloured saris and then laying them out to dry on the steps.

And camping out under the stars in the Indian desert. Not a single light for miles, other than the fire burning down, so the stars were the brightest I've ever seen. All I could hear was the camel's bells tinkling somewhere closeby.

Sorry to brag!
(karma queen, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 14:27, Reply)

far out man!!
i went to canada travelling for a month, ended up in Banff, enjoyed it so much i stayed for a week.
Met up with a group of people all from all over, we all got on well.
One night all went up the nearby mountain with beer n weed, someone even brought some chillout music.
got drunk n stoned and watched the skys, even seeing a few shooting stars in the process.
needless to say, one of the best moments of my life so far.
(a monkey bit my bottom, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:54, Reply)

i was at work
and i was up a scafold it was a beautiful summers day i looked out at the view and i realised that nothing was wrong with my life
(fwack bang on it, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:52, Reply)

Glastonbury 2004
Oasis are playing on the main stage.
Me and my mate are on the opposite side of the site in a tent, getting stoned and drinking tea whilst playing Cat's Cradle with three girls we'd just met that night. Awesome.
( wayward., Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:31, Reply)

A few weekends ago,
just got to the top of Devil's Kitchen on the way up to Y Garn. Crystal clear day, 3 foot deep snow, frozen mountain streams, a big lake, the sun shining...

It was breathtaking and I was breathtaken.
The words are not enough.
(Nothing to see, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:29, Reply)

First love
Mine was the moment i told the first girl i ever liked that i liked her. and hearing her say it back. Simple, yet effective.

Sad that no other relationship moment has topped that one. Even when i told another girl i loved her, for the first time.. still not as good. Does this make me strange?
(natural selection, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:23, Reply)

Beautiful Moments
1) I was in Belgium on a Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition and we were walking along a country road with our heavy backpacks. It had just decided to chuck it down with rain on us so we were soggy and feeling a bit crap. The sun suddeny came out and a rainbow was directly over us. You could actually see where it began and ended in the fields either side of the road. I'd never seen a complete rainbow before and it was so beautiful.

2)I was in Covent Garden recently with a friend and we were sitting in a restaurant having some lunch and it started snowing outside. I've seen snow before but we'd had a day off work (a Monday!) to go up there and it was a nice moment.
(ajfan, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 13:09, Reply)

During the first gulf war.
I was stationed in my bedroom when I realised an incredibly forceful need to poop. I ran/skipped to the toilet and as i pulled down my troussers I began to poo. The timing was perfect, the poo.... great. It was beautiful, a tear in the eye stuff.
(thundercat, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 12:06, Reply)

Africa
not far off the equator, elephants and baboons and suchlike around, 200 miles from nearest city, and un unpolluted atmosphere showing millions of stars and greens and blues of our universe - could have stared at it all night, earth is awsome (in its natural-like state).

may have been enhanced slightly by alcohol and anti-malarial drugs that take all your problems away (hallucinate away your student loan etc...)
(st3ve, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 11:09, Reply)

One of mine was last year
On tour as a photographer with my favourite band, after the show, a few beers, a few laughs, then Ginger picks up the guitar and plays the Beatles song "And I love her" - my personal Lennon playing a Lennon song so beautifully - it made me go cold. A really touching moment which will stay with me forever.
(Waynster James Joyce is fucking my sister!, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 11:03, Reply)

Hmmm.....
Leaving out such times as my son being born etc, the most memorable night of recent times, I have no memory of. I know that I was on free beer (having put some lights in for teh publican), and that is as much as I can remember. The next afternoon/early evening, when I regained consciousness, my mind was feeling more pain than it has ever felt before, and I felt as if my eyes were about to explode.
( the wild elk Freeing excellence affects reality, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 10:45, Reply)

5 and a bit years ago....
I was given an email of a friend of a friend and told she had the same interests as me, well being single I decided to email her...

We met up a few months later, it was a lovely saturday morning, plan was just go for a cup of coffee and possible a film in the afternoon then I was supposed to go home that night but I stayed with her till tuesday morning....we were inseperable then and we still are :)

I'll never forget that long weekend!
(Mandingo, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 10:40, Reply)

More recently I saw something even more memorable.
I swear to you that what follows is exactly true, not exaggerated or modified in any way. I'm still sorting it out.

Last summer I was in the Adirondacks again, visiting my parents. It was mid-July, and I was there with my kids.

One night I got it into my head to go for a walk at midnight along the road. It was maybe 50 out there, so I wore my black suede jacket and my rather new jeans, so I was virtually invisible as I walked along with a beer in my hand. The night was silent except for my footsteps.

I walked down a slight dip along a low swampy area, and noticed lights over there- hundreds of tiny blue-white points blinking throughout the swamp. I assumed it was foxfire and stopped to admire it- and then realized it wasn't.

Foxfire is swamp gas that you get from rotting vegetation, little bits of methane that somehow combust and produce a faint blue glow. You see it on the ground, buried in the grasses. What I saw was up in the trees, slowly blinking and fading out and coming back, then glowing brightly for a moment before fading. And they moved. And they were bright.

They almost acted like fireflies, but the glow was longer and slower to fade and come back. And I've never seen fireflies in the Adirondacks. And as far as I know there are no blue fireflies, anywhere.

The lights swarmed around, and gradually came closer to me. I admit it, I was scared half to death, but I was determined to stand my ground. The lights came to about thirty feet from me- and stopped.

I watched for a bit, then poured the rest of my beer by the roots of a hemlock and walked home.

The next night I came back at the same time. I had been looking out into the woods as I walked and saw no strange lights as I went. I got down to that low area and stood, and about a hundred feet away I saw blue gleams. Not as many as before, but they were there. And they moved as they had the night before.

And again they swarmed slowly toward me. And again they stopped thirty feet away.

This time I brought them a full beer and poured it out again by the same tree, and walked home.

The third night was my last night there, so I took my daughter with me. As we went I explained that I wanted her to see something, and remember it so she could describe it to me later.

The same thing happened. My daughter would have bolted had I not held her hand and assured her that there was nothing to fear as the lights swarmed thirty feet from us. I left them some maple sugar and another beer, then took my daughter home. She saw the same thing I did, exactly.

My apologies for the length of this tale, but would you have believed me otherwise if I told you I saw the Sidhe?
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sat 12 Mar 2005, 9:56, Reply)

When I was about sixteen
I had walked to town to go to a movie one night. This was in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, a fairly wild and desolate place, and we lived about three miles out of town. I walked along the road with no street lights and no moon, only starlight to guide me, and the trees blocked most of that. So my pupils were as wide as they can possibly get at that point.

As I walked past one somewhat open area, there was a flash of light above me. I looked up and saw a brilliant blue-green streak across the sky, and it stayed there for a good three seconds. It was a meteor that had left a long trail glowing in its wake. (Probably had a lot of copper in it- isn't that the stuff that glows green when you heat it like that?)

I walked along, marveling at what I had just seen, and gradually noticed a flickering light overhead. It was faint enough that I couldn't be certain that it was there at first, but when I got to another clear area I saw faint ripples of white light going across the sky. When I got home I went down to the lake and sat on the dock and looked up.

Imagine, if you will, a vast sheet of translucent plastic faintly glowing with white light being thrown over the heavens and rippling as though in a strong breeze. It seemed to come from one area of the sky, radiating outward, and flow into another area. And off to the north it looked just like the moon was rising.

It was one of the most impressive natural phenomena I've ever witnessed, and it made a hell of an impact on me.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sat 12 Mar 2005, 9:35, Reply)

Seeing SirSandGoblin's beauteous face for the first time

( butchbint, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 8:59, Reply)

Bittersweet memories
My dear gran died 3 years ago, and being thousands of miles away I couldn't go back to the UK for the funeral.
Mum had already emailed me the funeral service and speeches that were happening.
On the morning of the funeral, I woke up at 3:am (bear in mind there's an 8 hour time difference!) and drove to Newport Beach Pier.

I had a blanket and candles, and some flowers to throw in the ocean. Because I had the funeral service schedule at hand, I was pretty much able to follow it - at one point a cop tried to kick me off the beach as it's closed at that time but he let me get on with what I was doing after I explained to him - anyway.

While my gran was being burned, I threw flowers into the ocean while watching the sunrise, and admired the seagulls. They were at the oceanline, and they suddenly flew off apart from one gull. He was sick and dying, and at the point in the funeral when gran was being cremated, the seagull was engulfed by the sea and carried off.

I maintain that to this day, that seagull was the spriit of my granny whom I loved dearly. She was letting me know she was still around.
That memory of watching the sunrise and a dying gull while mourning gran will always stay with me and I have not been back to that section of beach since.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 8:37, Reply)

A whole evening, but still
On a hill on July 6th 2004, when I first met my boyfriend, Daniel. The weeks beforehand were probably some of the worst in my life, due to a wanker I was "seeing" in a long-distance relationship. I'd been talking to Daniel for a couple of weeks online, and he kept asking me to meet up with him, as we live in the same town, but I was too shy, until one day when said internet boyfriend got me particularly sad.
We met infront of a shop, were shy at first, then went to sit on a hill nearby. A friend of his came up and sat with us after we'd barely sat down, but when he went away we sat and talked, mainly about problems with a guy who treated me like shit. Dan said that I deserved somebody better who would look after me and appreciate me, and we both knew what he was implying but I didn't broach the subject.
I've got a thing about my hands, I don't like people touching them, much less people I've just met, but he was sat next to me, with an arm around me (I was cold, he'd already given me his jacket) stroking my hand, and I didn't even flinch, much less pull it away. Sounds pretty corny, but sitting there on a fairly cold night after hardly ever going out for the past few months, with a boy I'd just met and was already comfortable with was the most beautiful moment in my life. And we're still together and very much in love ^-^

No apologies for length, if I could've made that evening any longer, I would have.

And Cloven, you kick ass
( Kittenpants, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 8:21, Reply)

Mixed emotions...
...4.17pm on June 6th 1998. That's when my daughter was born. I'd told my wife I never wanted kids but warmed to the idea as I got older and so had gotten over some "issues" from my past. Seeing my daughter enter the world was the ultimate high - bitterly crushed when the birth started to go wrong and her heart rate crashed to 34 bpm (should be about 140bpm+) and her breathing was almost non existent. She went into the baby intensive care unit and after a couple of days pulled through okay.

Despite the associated stress in our case, seeing your child's face for the first time ever is *the* most beautiful moment imaginable.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 6:34, Reply)

Irn-Bru Taxi
It was 2a.m. and pissing down with rain Me and my girl had just left a club to go home and we were stuck half way across town.
The streets were empty so we walked for about 40 mins (well stumbled) and all of a sudden a glowing orange light came from now where.

It was the mose beautiful thing I've ever seen. A taxi painted the colours of a can of Irn-Bru. needless to say we got in it and quickly got home, but I will never forget that taxi.
(Sticky Shocker!, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 6:28, Reply)

warning: big fecking post ahead
Well, where to start? I've become rather Zen in my outlook and so could find a moment of beauty in a flower on the side of a cliff even as I'm plunging off it to my death. Well, first off, my cats.
The grey long hair on the left is Tenshi and the black and orange short hair on the right is Buddha. Their antics bring a smile to my face and Tenshi's affectionate behavior when she wants something, though shallow, is always something to behold. The next is of course my best friend/lover/mate mentioned in previous QoTW. When we open our eyes at the same time in the morn in each others arms, when I roll over ontop of her for that fuzzy morning loving, the way she looks at me sometimes and I can't help but get giddy inside and think "and she's all mine!", absolutely everything about her and how we are together touches my heart. Other things that aren't things done by me but are just things that I observe innate in nature are quite amazing. Midnight in the summer and I take a look outside, fullest and brightest moon I've ever seen, a layer of mist as tall as the barn on the ground, everything lit up so spectacularly like a movie special effects effort. Laying on the lawn under bunch of blankets with the family at midnight on a summer night looking up at the stars with the milky way spilling across the sky from one horizon to the next, the northern lights to the north, comets here and there blazing across the sky, fireflies blinking in and out of sight. In Algonquin Park canoeing with my Pa and several other people, being woken up a misty morning by the sound of a loon just as the sun is breaking, or after dark at a camp site, a campfire with the tents set up around it, down at the waters edge sitting on a rock looking out into the Canadian Wilderness hearing the fire crackling, the water lapping at the rocks, the wind in the trees. Seriously, the moments on my canoe trips with my father are too numerous to mention, the humbling innate awesomeness of being in the middle of nowhere in Algonquin Provincian Park puts me in awe. Lastly is something that happened just two weeks ago. It was getting to dinner time and I was out in the barn putting a few things away as the sun began to touch the horizon. Being as it was getting to twilight, my pet raven (yes, living on a farm I have a pet raven rescued from certain death when she was just a hatchling. Don't believe me? [http://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]/raven.jpg]) was coming back from wherever she goes during the day. I was walking towards the house on the stone tile walk way and she was coming out of the north towards me but was coming in too fast to land on my shoulder so she swooped just over my head and pulled up, causing her to quickly arc up and lose all momentum, and right at that point she folded her wings in to her body and continued to go upside down while simultaneously doing a shoulder roll so now she was just slightly behind and above me, opened her wings again, gave a single flap to orient herself while reaching out with her leg talons and putting her feet on my left shoulder and making her landing. The grace and beauty in that single act of aerial acrobatics that she performed flawlessly and made look so simple filled me with awe and even a little envy in a way that it was so cool and stunning that I wish I could do it myself.
Oh, to all those who keep using that "Appy Polly Loggies, my post is as big as my wang" joke, en garde! :P
(Cloven, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 4:53, Reply)

Lights in the Sky
Back when I was about 14, my stepdad and I took a road trip into Canada to pick up an old VW Camper bus. On the way there we noticed that the Northern Lights were going on and stopped to watch them.
It turned out to be absolutely stunning; with bright cascades, ribbons, and some things I had never heard of. Pity it only lasted for about 30 minutes, I could have watched it forever. Ever since then I have always wanted to go back to Canada and se the Northern Lights again.
(lothric, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 3:23, Reply)

I was waiting
for a bus to work, about a year and a half ago. It was Autumn, and the trees were bare. I suddenly, and momentarily, had a moment where I saw nature in all its beauty, the inner intricacy and power that a seed wields to become this sprawling network of roots and branches.

This was a beautiful moment, and is directly responsible for my interest in outdoor activities, photography and film-making.
(The Secret 7000 ...join us. www.secret7000.co.uk, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 2:26, Reply)

Serenity Now
I remember standing in my kitchen one sunny Saturday morning and realising that it doesn't matter what other people do or say, my reaction to that was completely within my own control.

I went from being a very angry person to quite calm, just by choosing not to let the world arc me up. Helped me get my depression under control too.

Nearest thing to an epiphany I've ever experienced.

Woah. Deep man.
( Udderbelly A tale of four titties, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 2:06, Reply)

Meeting Dutchbird.

( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 1:45, Reply)

aaah, fluffy memories
last november, my then-boyfriend and i were invited to a beach party.
we had been dating since september, but nothing much had really happened. he was not big on public displays of affection, so mostly we just hung out and talked with eachother. he was my first boyfriend, i was his first girlfriend, and it was my first time feeling that way toward a person.

it was a particularly cold day, coupled with the fact that we were at the beach at night. the chill led to the eventual cuddling, me (wearing three coats) keeping him (wearing shorts) warm.

some time later, we decided to take a walk down to a nearby lighthouse. just short of halfway there, we gave up on the walk and stood there, in eachother's arms, looking at the stars and listening to the waves. and then we both went in for our first kiss...

i kept my mouth closed. his was open. my lips got sucked into his mouth, resulting in an odd squelching sound.

it kind of killed the moment.

apologies for length (some day we will all look back on this and laugh, right?)
(sponch!, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 1:43, Reply)

Hmm.
Probably when my dog started showing its affection in more extreme ways. I don't know about you, but that certainly made me feel warm and fluffy inside.
(CowInParachute, Sat 12 Mar 2005, 1:18, Reply)