“The blossom is out in full now, it’s plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white. It’s the whitest, frothiest blossomest blossom that ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous.”
nowness
I’m
evolving.
In Wonderland
“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them otherwise.”
— Duchess
“It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.”
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living, and the dead.”
-– James Joyce
A Room of One’s Own
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
“Fear is a healthy instinct, not a sign of weakness. It is a natural self-defense mechanism that is common to felines, wolves, hyenas, and most humans. Even fruit bats know fear, and I salute them for it. If you think the world is weird now, imagine how weird it would be if wild beasts had no fear.”
The Revolution for Everyday Life
“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. What spark of humanity, of possible creativity, can remain alive in a being dragged out of sleep at six every morning, jolted about in suburban trains, deafened by the racket of machinery, bleached and steamed by meaningless sounds and gestures, spun dry by statistical controls, and tossed out at the end of the day into the entrance halls of railway stations, those cathedrals of departure for the hell of weekdays and the purgatory paradise of weekends, where the crowd communes in a brutish weariness? From adolescence to retirement each twenty-four-hour cycle repeats the same shattering bombardment, like bullets hitting a window: mechanical repetition, time-which-is-money, submission to bosses, boredom, exhaustion. From the crushing of youth’s energy to the gaping wound of old age, life cracks in every direction under the blows of forced labour. Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.”
no matter what
I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.
I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.
I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.
I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.
I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.
I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.
I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.
I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Happy Birthday Mr. Lynch
image via
Yesterday, as well as being New President Day, it was the birthday of illustrious film maker David Lynch.
I recently finished reading his book “Catching the Big Fish“, a very personal account of his approach to creativity, and the role that meditation plays in it.
I have often felt that techniques like meditation may result in bland art, due to lack of “pain”, a deluded idea partly inspired by Captain Kirk (I’ll explain another time). Mr Lynch is a very good example of how this is not the case.
In the book he writes:
“Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a a story, but they’re like poison for the film maker or artist. They’re like a vice grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.”
Here is a little seen, very short film by Mr Lynch:
movie via Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
Belated birthday greetings to you, Mr Lynch.
Paul Greer 