This hefty and colorful book caught my eye as I was exiting the library and I went to grab it and the weight of it brought me to the ground. It requires two hands.
It's filled with: paintings, Q and A.
A sample:
Who Am I? Where Did I Come From?
We are not our body, mind or emotions. We are divine souls on a wondrous journey. We came from God, live in God and are evolving into oneness with God. We are, in truth, the Truth we seek. Aum.
Where Am I Going? What Is My Path?
We are all growing toward God, and experience is the path. Through experience we mature out of fear into fearlessness, out of anger into love, out of conflict into peace, out of darkness into light and union in God. Aum.
---Dancing with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism
A richly illustrated sourcebook of Indian spiritualtiy in question-and-answer form, exploring how to know the Divine, honor all creation and see God everywhere, in everyone
Aum to that.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Boy King on Beachey Keen
"In the early days of flight, there was this man named Lincoln Beachey.
Lincoln Beachey solved the issue of the tailspin.
Beachey was a barnstormer and a pioneer aviator when avionics were a brand-new science, and the mortality rate for aviators was in the 90th percentile. In particular, they grappled with the issue of mid-flight stall, and the going logic at the time, based entirely on intuition, was to turn your propeller away from the plummet and try to restart the engine with friction.
This eventually happened to Beachey, and defying his own intuition and popular logic, he instead turned his plane into the dive, into the plummet, increasing his downward plunge and decreasing his response time to seconds. But it worked: The dive decreased the kinetic friction against the propeller to restart his engine, and suddenly, the stall was no longer an issue for flyers. Lincoln Beachey solved it by defying his impulses of self-preservation and diving headlong into what was a risk."
---Domingo Martinez
Lincoln Beachey solved the issue of the tailspin.
Beachey was a barnstormer and a pioneer aviator when avionics were a brand-new science, and the mortality rate for aviators was in the 90th percentile. In particular, they grappled with the issue of mid-flight stall, and the going logic at the time, based entirely on intuition, was to turn your propeller away from the plummet and try to restart the engine with friction.
This eventually happened to Beachey, and defying his own intuition and popular logic, he instead turned his plane into the dive, into the plummet, increasing his downward plunge and decreasing his response time to seconds. But it worked: The dive decreased the kinetic friction against the propeller to restart his engine, and suddenly, the stall was no longer an issue for flyers. Lincoln Beachey solved it by defying his impulses of self-preservation and diving headlong into what was a risk."
---Domingo Martinez
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
How To Get Less Certain
"Writing somehow tends to move us from a position of one-dimensional certainty about a topic to a more ambiguous or even confused state — and that is mind-enlarging."
--George Saunders
--George Saunders
Friday, May 15, 2015
Theory will not supply it
I read this letter today and upon finishing promptly thought:
This is what it must be like for God.
God being Flannery, we being the students led by a Knowing Professor who states: there are layers and layers of things here! Let us dissect.
Then the whole class writes to God (Flannery) and God is like: wtf. That's not it. I don't mean to be rude, but fer real. I'm not that mean. Just. No.
Then if we listen long enough God is like, My tone is not meant to be obnoxious, I am in a state of shock.
But we are off examining the text: What is she really saying? Let us interpret some more..
This is what it must be like for God.
God being Flannery, we being the students led by a Knowing Professor who states: there are layers and layers of things here! Let us dissect.
Then the whole class writes to God (Flannery) and God is like: wtf. That's not it. I don't mean to be rude, but fer real. I'm not that mean. Just. No.
Then if we listen long enough God is like, My tone is not meant to be obnoxious, I am in a state of shock.
But we are off examining the text: What is she really saying? Let us interpret some more..
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Friday, May 8, 2015
Anniversary
Today marks the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Monthly, I have the privilege of meeting with veterans, and spouses of veterans, and diving into the stories that are carried around.
Each meeting, we use a writing prompt, put pen to paper for 20 minutes, then come up for air and see what emerged.
What emerges is always incredible, and often surprising.
One of the things I love about group writing is that there is a limited time, and people move quickly past what might block them if they were writing alone. The focus is sharp and the result is that stories begin. Meaning, 20 minutes is a perfect amount of time to go into a story, and often, we are left wanting to return to and complete what we have written. The first step taken, the next step is less daunting and more exciting.
Here is what I wrote, or began, at our last gathering:
I am reading a book of 125 letters. There is a letter from a little girl to Abraham Lincoln, before he became president, telling him he might stand a better chance if he grew his whiskers, as every lady loves whiskers and could convince their husbands to vote for him.
There is a letter from Beatnik poet Jack Kerouac to Marlon Brando, asking him to make his recent book, On The Road, into a movie. Brando never responded.
There is a letter from Clementine Churchill to her husband, Winston Churchill, telling him he is not as kind as he used to be. There is the famous letter from Sun Magazine Editor to Virginia, stating, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
I come upon a letter from WWII soldier, written to the President of the United States.
The sidebar to this letter states that there were over 20,000 soldiers who, in the midst of chaos, fled. This soldier, found guilty of desertion, was sentenced to be executed by firing squad.
His letter to the President asks for mercy, and a second chance. He writes that he made some mistakes, served jail time before becoming a soldier, and wanted to live for his wife. The letter is riddled with misspellings, those that speak of desperation.
He writes that upon finding himself in battle, his bad nerves took over, and he ran.
His appeal did not win what he sought, and not long after, he was executed by firing squad, the first punishment of its kind enacted since the 1860s.
20,000 soldiers did what he did---rather---20,000 soldiers found that when dropped into a chaos they could not comprehend, their fight of flight instinct took over. The one that they were trained to activate---fight---was overruled by the other one----flight.
Both responses are meant to keep us alive, but in an instant which belongs only to the one experiencing it, sometimes our animal brain takes over and says, Flee. Now.
There is a third response of the Three F's, one that can be found after an intense experience:
Freeze. It is the paralysis between fight or flight. It is a deer in headlights. It is the center of unknowing. It can preserve a life, or cost it.
The soldier killed by firing squad had an instinct: flight. Then later, another: fight for his life through letter writing.
I go through the letters and keep coming back to his.
A bad case of nerves, he wrote. I have some awfull bad nerves.
And then time was up.
The soldier's name was Eddie Slovik.
Monthly, I have the privilege of meeting with veterans, and spouses of veterans, and diving into the stories that are carried around.
Each meeting, we use a writing prompt, put pen to paper for 20 minutes, then come up for air and see what emerged.
What emerges is always incredible, and often surprising.
One of the things I love about group writing is that there is a limited time, and people move quickly past what might block them if they were writing alone. The focus is sharp and the result is that stories begin. Meaning, 20 minutes is a perfect amount of time to go into a story, and often, we are left wanting to return to and complete what we have written. The first step taken, the next step is less daunting and more exciting.
Here is what I wrote, or began, at our last gathering:
I am reading a book of 125 letters. There is a letter from a little girl to Abraham Lincoln, before he became president, telling him he might stand a better chance if he grew his whiskers, as every lady loves whiskers and could convince their husbands to vote for him.
There is a letter from Beatnik poet Jack Kerouac to Marlon Brando, asking him to make his recent book, On The Road, into a movie. Brando never responded.
There is a letter from Clementine Churchill to her husband, Winston Churchill, telling him he is not as kind as he used to be. There is the famous letter from Sun Magazine Editor to Virginia, stating, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
I come upon a letter from WWII soldier, written to the President of the United States.
The sidebar to this letter states that there were over 20,000 soldiers who, in the midst of chaos, fled. This soldier, found guilty of desertion, was sentenced to be executed by firing squad.
His letter to the President asks for mercy, and a second chance. He writes that he made some mistakes, served jail time before becoming a soldier, and wanted to live for his wife. The letter is riddled with misspellings, those that speak of desperation.
He writes that upon finding himself in battle, his bad nerves took over, and he ran.
His appeal did not win what he sought, and not long after, he was executed by firing squad, the first punishment of its kind enacted since the 1860s.
20,000 soldiers did what he did---rather---20,000 soldiers found that when dropped into a chaos they could not comprehend, their fight of flight instinct took over. The one that they were trained to activate---fight---was overruled by the other one----flight.
Both responses are meant to keep us alive, but in an instant which belongs only to the one experiencing it, sometimes our animal brain takes over and says, Flee. Now.
There is a third response of the Three F's, one that can be found after an intense experience:
Freeze. It is the paralysis between fight or flight. It is a deer in headlights. It is the center of unknowing. It can preserve a life, or cost it.
The soldier killed by firing squad had an instinct: flight. Then later, another: fight for his life through letter writing.
I go through the letters and keep coming back to his.
A bad case of nerves, he wrote. I have some awfull bad nerves.
And then time was up.
The soldier's name was Eddie Slovik.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
21 Questions
Good questions (sometimes) beget good answers. In this interview, they do.
21 Questions with Carmela Ciuraru, author of Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms
And now I am thinking about food.
21 Questions with Carmela Ciuraru, author of Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms
Q. What do you want to know?
A. I want to know everything. It’s painful that I can’t.
Q: Please explain what will happen.
A: Everything will go according to plan, even if the plan belongs to someone else.
Q: If you could relive one moment over and over again, what would it be?
A: Some memorable meals, the few first bites of which I would happily experience again and again.
And now I am thinking about food.
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