everything is compostable

"Creativity and innovation are often byproducts of tension, conflict, stress, and agitation."

  --Victor Lipman

Gamblers and Robbers, Drinkers and Jokers, All

soul searchers.

By golly I love this Christmas song.  I found it on an old mix cd that a friend made years and years ago.  He's asked each of his friends for one song, collected the titles, and put a cd of 15 tunes together, then gave it as his gift.  Every time I stumble upon it I can picture each friend's face by the song they selected. 
It is such a very random collection of music, like a book that has 15 chapters by 15 different authors.  And somehow, it seems perfectly orchestrated. 


I found myself singing it to my brother the other night and he was like, Enough already.
And I was like, no, never enough already.  I have to keep singing it til the next song comes in my head. 
So it goes, and so the story's told.  

Lots of apps

My 7 year old made a Christmas list.
The first requested item was:
lots of apps

I was like, "What is this?"

She said, "I don't know.  I think it's a computer game.  It was one of my spelling words this week."

I looked at her spelling words, and the first one was, indeed, apps. 
She wants a lot of them but isn't sure what they are.

This list is a little crazier than hers, but it has all the products non-home-schooled 7 year olds know about.  Along with hysterical commentary from the receiving parent.

Thanks, Julie, for sending this along.

Anthem

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel somehow

---Beautiful Day (don't let it get away)

Multitudes

"One of the things you learn is that we're all so much more complex. We all contain multitudes, so someone who might be a bully in one circumstance is incredibly compassionate in other circumstances. We have multiple selves, and the idea that we can have a very simple view of who we are, what our character is, that's actually not right."

---David Brooks

Picture Book

My 6 year made a book, titled, "The Pekcshr Book."

It has a great ending.

Here it is, the last page, the final sentence:

"The world is parfikt cool."

Thoughts on Living from those that are Dying

This is titled 'Regrets of the Dying,' by Bronnie Ware.

Heard it this morning and was moved.

Water to Wine, Cheese to Mystic

"What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying, at present I am a cheese, make me a mystic, immediately."

---Flannery O'Connor

Voices and Visions (iii): Every Single One

 "From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven."
  
  --Baal Shem Tov

Artwork by Tom Geismar.

Thoughts by Erica Brown:

Light is expansive and inviting. It brings clarity, warmth, vision and truth. When we are troubled or confused, we say that we are in the dark. When we slip up morally, we find ourselves trapped in darkness. In darkness, we lose our way and feel smaller and less significant. But, as the Baal Shem Tov tells us, from every human being there rises a light.

His mystical observations on the power of light invite each of us to discover the light within and to grow it. We are a light when we harness our incredible capacity to shine. We are a light when we look into ourselves and discover our uniqueness. We are a light when we exert our goodness. And we bring more light into the world when we are ethical people and feel ourselves to be ambassadors of an ancient, majestic people.

Voices and Visions (ii)

Here's another from the wall:

 

Objects break. Hearts break. Some things can be repaired, and others cannot. But, Rabbi Nachman (1772–1810) reminds us, in the same way that breaking is an inevitability, fixing is also an inevitability. We know the former is true; we don’t always believe the latter.

More about this piece and quote here.  

My desk, the JCC wall, and beautiful words

Cleaning through piles of paper on my desk and came across a number of quotes I'd written down after seeing them paired with beautiful artwork and displayed on the wall of the JCC.
This is part of the Voices and Visions program, and I walked by it for weeks, after swim lessons with my girl, her pulling me forward and me wanting to ingest each message and see which ones could stick and which would fall away. 

Here is one:

a lifetime of practice

Love this piece by artist Lisa Congdon.

Dance Dance Dance

Thank you Megs!

Today's Georgia

Opened my big Georgia book and here is today's:  Blue Headed Indian Doll.  
She looked surprised to see me, or maybe that's just the face she always makes. 
It's hard to tell with some dolls. 

You can find your own Georgia here.

awesome author-affiliated bookstores

1.Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, MN. 

Affiliated with author Louise Erdrich, this independent bookstore supports Native artists and writers, has a page on their website titled, "Our Dogs", and stocks books you won't find anywhere else. 

And Erdrich signs each book of hers that you order through this place.  

 Finally, a fantastic birch-built loft for children.  Wheeee!

2. Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN 
Affiliated with author Ann Patchett, this independent bookstore has a secret entrance to their children's section (Parnassus Junior), an incredible listing of author events, and straight up looks like a fun place to spend money.

Pretty Dreams

How awesome is this job? 
They build these, fer real.

Tis the Season

My daughter has a fantasy about living in Antarctica. 
"Because they never have to wear sunblock there.  Right?"

Right.  Because in Antarctica, death comes before sunburn.

Applying this stuff daily is not one of my favorite tasks.
It involves a lot of stiffening and tears and accusations. 
You hurt me!
Done?
Done?
Done?
DONE.
DONE!


Here is where art is so beautiful.  It takes something that makes me cringe and turns it into something that makes me laugh.

"Inspired by seeing his niece resist his brother's attempts to apply sunscreen, the photographer Nolan Conway visited parks in New York City in late April and early May, looking for parents and children who were engaged in similar battles."

I feel your pain, River, and Phoebe, and the hands that are accosting them. 

 

Studying History

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Morning Thorat Song

Yesterday on the radio I heard this incredible ensemble of throat singers, Alash.

I had never heard throat singing and it made me laugh, not at the sound but at some joyful thing it touched to hear such a guttural vibration. 

Some of the most amazing things happen in solitude, not in loneliness, but in solitude.  Solitude being a place of being alone but feeling entirely connected, and loneliness being a place of being with others, or alone, and feeling entirely disconnected.

Hearing throat singing on the radio is one of those moments for me.

This morning I heard the same sound again when my 6 year old daughter stretched and tried to talk at the same time.  Her morning call is 1:09, that one right there.

This song is called Good Horses.  But I might re-title it Good Morning.

Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience. 

---William Ralph Inge

Rahhhce Cookin

My younger sister and I went to the same college in Rhode Island, which had a large number of students from New England.

It also had a large number of students who loved country music.  Mostly they were from Connecticut.

I don't understand this but it doesn't matter because it was there that I was exposed, sometimes held hostage to, listening to a lot of country music.  And I got a tiny bit hooked, not in the way that I went out and got Garth Brooks posters, but in the way that I'd find myself humming tunes or hearing a song and being, "I know this one!"   With a country accent.  While playing air fiddle. 

Years after graduating, I heard my little sister humming this and I was like, "Is that the song about rice cookin in the microwave?" 
And we both started singing it and then burst out laughing that we'd both been converted to this awesome music while at a college in Rhode Island.  What are the chances? 

I woke up this morning in slow mood (like, slow to like this day) and then started singing this and then put it on and danced with my daughter to it and then decided that it takes so little to love a day, sometimes it's just Rahhhhce cookin in the microwave.    

 

Commencement Season

A friend sent me a link to David Foster Wallace's commencement speech given at Kenyon College in 2005.
It's called This Is Water.  Twice in the next two days I found it in my inbox through another friend and a list serv.  Getting something three times warrants attention, so I listened to it while doing dishes.
It is very good. 

When it ended, I saw the many links to commencement speeches and I listened to one more.
This is the one I loved.

Both speeches seem to touch on this Plutarch quote, used by Rowling:

What we achieve inwardly, will change outward reality.  

It is 20 minutes of worthwhile listening.  

Thank you.

Found myself humming this song this morning.  It's probably not a coincidence. 
Probably nothing is.

the secret

Nothing More, by Brian Andreas

the power of Intention

I stumbled across a place where people write out their intentions of the day, or the afternoon, or the hour.

Here are some that I'm borrowing:

My intent is to embrace uncertainty, where all my miracles are.

I intend to feel Peace and Love within my heart and stop worrying about how things will go.

I intend to be fully who I am, and not be held by fear.

I intend to hear my heart speaking, and then to trust it's wisdom.

These are so much better than what I had scribbled on my To-Do List for the day. 

19 Varieties of Gazelle

A beautiful poem:

Prayer in My Boot

by Naomi Shihab Nye

One

My absolute favorite version of this song.

Put together by Playing for Change.

So beautiful. 

If, Then

"If you only think what you've already thought,
you'll only get what you've already got." 

 Marty Neumeier

Through

by The Oh Hellos

Walking

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

--Martin Buber

Warrior Voices

Writing to Heal, by Cecilia Capuzzi Simon

"....it makes sense that sharing war experiences and fears would be an effective, or at least familiar, way to examine and overcome what Mr. Capp describes as 'the powerful sense of isolation' that greets most veterans once home.  They leave behind a culture built on teamwork for one that doesn't seem to value community, doesn't appear to be at war and doesn't understand them.

The military is looking to writing and other art forms, like painting and music, to help rewire the brain after trauma.  [Ron Capps asks] two fundamental questions: What is different about the military experience, and why do we bother writing things down?  

'We write,' he explains, 'to bear witness.' "

Half Full

“I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” 

 

—Michael Cunningham

Ruminating

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

― Rumi

Strength

 

by Marc Johns

JC, the other one

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty "yes" to your adventure.

---Joseph Campbell