David Kanigan: Inspiration, Ideas & Information
Surely you've seen the Follow Me To photography series created by Photographer, Murad Osmann. He documents his travels by taking pictures of his girlfriend leading the way around the world. Her back is always facing him, never showing her face. She leads us around the globe to some of the most beautiful locations filled with romance and excitement. All images are taken and posted to his
John Butler, 38, is an Australian American musician, songwriter, record label owner and producer. He is the front man for the John Butler Trio, a roots and jam band, which formed in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1998. His recordings and live performances have met with critical praise and have garnered awards from the Australian Performing Right Association and Australian Recording Industry Association. Butler was born in the United States and moved to Australia at an early age. He began playing the guitar at the age of sixteen. (Source: Wiki)
Music Source: Knowledgeandlove
It was last month. I don’t recall the day. Just another weekday.
Off to work. Barreling down I-95. Same route. Each day. Autopilot. Not Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness. Simple Mindlessness.
Flicking through iPod. Can’t settle on a band or a tune. Restless.
Foot heavy on accelerator. Glance at speedometer. Pushing your luck Pal. Only a matter of time. And you’ll earn it. (Again.)
Traffic backs up at Stamford exits as morning rush hour builds.
A black Chevrolet pick-up swings into my lane.
The iconic orange, white and black Harley logo on rear window.
Left hand bumper is adorned with a frayed sticker: 1968-1972: Marines. Vietnam Vet.
I stare.
Connecticut Plate 123JAR.
What does JAR stand for? [Read more...]
Imagine if for the next twenty-four hours you had to wear a cap that amplified your thoughts so that everyone within a hundred yards of you could hear every thought that passed through your head. Imagine if the mind were broadcast so that all about you could overhear your thoughts and fantasies, your dreams and fears. How embarrassed or fearful would you be to go outside? How long would you let your fear of the mind continue to isolate you from the hearts of others? And though this experiment sounds like one which few might care to participate in, imagine how freeing it would be at last to have nothing to hide. And how miraculous it would be to see that all others’ minds too were filled with the same confusion and fantasies, the same insecurity and doubt. How long would it take the judgmental mind to begin to release its grasp, to see through the illusion of separateness, to recognize with some humor the craziness of all beings’ minds, the craziness of mind itself?”
“But I think it is very useful, and indeed more accurate, to call it “the mind” instead of “my mind.”
- Stephen Levine
Stephen Levine, 75, is an American poet, author and Buddhist teacher. He was born in Albany, New York, Levine attended the University of Miami. He spent time helping the sick and dying, using meditation as a method of treatment. He is the author of several books about dying, Levine and his wife Ondrea spent one year living as if it were their last. For many years, Stephen and Ondrea have been living in near seclusion in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. They are both currently experiencing significant illness which prevents them from travelling and teaching. One of the most significant aspects of Stephen’s work and one for which he is perhaps best known, is his pioneering approach to working with the experience of grief. Over 34 years, Stephen and his wife Ondrea have counselled concentration camp survivors and their children, Vietnam War veterans as well as victims of sexual abuse. Although Stephen acknowledges that our experience of grief is perhaps at its most intense when a loved one dies, he also draws our attention to grief’s more subtle incarnations. “Our ordinary, everyday grief,” accumulates as a response to the “burdens of disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives”. (Source: Wiki)
Credits: Thank you Whiskey River from the Stephen Levine and Ondrea Levine’s Book titled Who Dies?. Portrait: Abdelkader Benali by Stephan Vanfleteren
“I do it for me and like-minded people. That’s it. That’s it. My career, I look at it in a Darwinian framework. I’m going to do exactly what I want, and I’m going to survive or I’m not. I’m not going to pander, I’m not going to change things, I’m not going to do focus groups. I’ll live and die by the sword. I don’t care. Because I couldn’t live with myself…Everything I’ve done has been existential. Everything, really. Everything is always about, ‘Am I living a good life? Am I making the most of my life?’”
Clips from GQ.com (Note “R” rated for vulgar language): Chris Heath on Gervais: “…I think there is a sense that someone who seemed like one of us, and on our side, may have slipped his moorings.” [Read more...]
But NOT Biblioclast (Sacrilegious!), Biblioklept/Bibliolestes (Blasphemous!), Bibliopole (Rarely and with anxiety), Biblioriptos (No! Set them down gently, carefully, cautiously).
Source: Thank you Mme Scherzo via Amanda Patterson
So bizarre…yet I couldn’t stop watching and laughing. (Family said I was all alone in liking this one.) And, have no idea what the ending signifies. Exhaustion?
Good Wednesday morning. Inspiring posts were gushing over the dam this week. Here we go on my ride of inspiring posts of the week:
It’s lunch. It’s a small informal gathering. Light conversation.
Discussion turns to summer vacations. And rolls around the table clockwise. One is going to the Far East with family. Another to the Cape. A third to Montreal.
The must see art exibits. The lazy days at the beach. Late afternoon cappucinos at the outdoor cafes on the cobblestone streets. Evenings spent people watching from the hotel veranda. The concerts on the grass.
I feign a glance at my watch and look right. I can sense the uneasiness. She’s shifting uncomfortably. Rubbing her hands. Her forehead is glistening. (Dr. Cal Lighman, Lie to Me, flashes up.)
It’s her turn. Everyone’s eyes shift and wait. An uncomfortable silence. A pause in the discussion of the world tours. There’s a surge in my chest. [Read more...]
“Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger – all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions.”
~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (from “How to Solve Our Human Problems”)
Kelsang Gyatso is a Buddhist monk, “meditation master, scholar, and author” of 22 books based on the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in Tibet in 1931 and ordained at the age of eight. After leaving Tibet, he spent eighteen years in retreat in the Himalayas in India. He subsequently became a teacher and founder of spiritual centers. He retired as General Spiritual Director of the NKT-IKBU in August 2009 but continues to write books and practice materials. (Source: Wiki)
Note to Self: Patience (Still seeking). Acceptance (Try it. Just once.). Delusions (Thank you Monk Master for the ah ha moment.)
Credits: Image – kadampa.org. Quote – Thank you Sun Dog
“Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope I’m going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, “Wake up!” My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. As the Arabs say, “The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”
- Anthony de Mello
Anthony “Tony” de Mello (4 September 1931, Bombay, British India – 2 June 1987, New York City) was a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who became widely known for his books on spirituality. An internationally acclaimed spiritual guide, writer and public speaker, de Mello hosted many spiritual conferences. The few talks which he allowed to be filmed, such as “A Rediscovery of Life” and “A Way to God for Today,” have inspired many viewers and audiences since being released; and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of TV watchers throughout the United States, Canada, and Central America; in colleges, universities, Newman centers, and communities. De Mello established a prayer center in India. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1987, at age 56. Source (Wiki)
Quote Source: Thank you Whiskey River. Image Source: bplusmovieblog (Tim Robbins as Andy DeFresne in Shawshank Redemption)
Zeke’s paws are scratching. He’s dreaming. His body twitching. I steal a glance at the clock. 1:15 am. I smile. You go from refusing a dog for 20 years, to the animal taking center stage on your bed. Every night. What a tough guy.
He knows. Dogs have a second sense. Even when he’s sleeping, he hears.
Car door shuts. It’s Rachel. Rolling in from her evening out.
I lumber down to her room. Bathroom door is closed. Water is running. I lie down on her bed. Stare at the ceiling. And wait.
Mind whirs back to a moment during the week. I’m driving into Manhattan. Rush hour. Traffic stalled. GPS flashes a 3-mile backup to the Triboro bridge. Beach Avenue and Bruckner. Young girl is holding her Dad’s hand. They are crossing the walkway over I-278. Her passion pink backpack sharply contrasting with the streaks of graffiti. The pair offering up a burst of illumination against the grey of the housing projects and the trash lining the freeway. Their hands and arms sway in unison. Dad smiling. She’s skipping to keep up.
That day, Mind was crocheting stitches of a majestic tapestry. One of family. Of warm spring days. Of light breezes. All storm clouds pushed way south. And the Moment hovered. All week.
Why this moment? This was not an impressionist by Monet. Not a intricate passage by Joyce or a dreamy segue by Murakami. No deep existential words here by Kierkegaard. Not a big win at Work. A Father. A daughter. A pink backpack. Walking over a dilapidated bridge in the Projects.
What’s the story: Morning Glory! from Ben on Vimeo.
Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night) explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy. Magic…
He was born with cystic fibrosis, a chronic progressive disease characterized by a thick, sticky mucous that clogs the lungs. Each day, he takes 50-70 pills. And he hooks himself up to a machine called the vest that shakes his upper body for 1-1.5 hours a day to loosen the mucus from his lungs. All this – - so he can run. He’s run 6 marathons, five of which have been under 4 hours. Why does he do it?
“I do it because I want to prove to myself that I can…I run because one day I might not able to.”
Source: Thank you lybio.net
Remembering
And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is -
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.
In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.
And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Wiki Bio for Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Credits: Image by Stephan Vanfleteren. Poem: Thank you Whiskey River.
Piano Works 13 from Julien Martorell on Vimeo.
“We’ve all led raucous lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what’s important.
Everyone knows this.
The voyage into the interior is all that matters,
Whatever your ride.
Sometimes I can’t sit still for all the asininities I read.
Give me the hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times
His own weight a day just to stay alive.
Now that’s a life on the edge.”
― Charles Wright
Charles Wright, born 1935, is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, Wright attended Davidson College and he served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. His many collections of poetry and numerous awards—including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize—have proven that he is, as Jay Parini once said, “among the best poets” of his generation. Yet Wright remains stoic about such achievements: it is not the poet, but the poems, as he concluded to Genoways. “One wants one’s work to be paid attention to, but I hate personal attention. I just want everyone to read the poems. I want my poetry to get all the attention in the world, but I want to be the anonymous author.”
Credits: Poem Source – Thank you Journal of a Nobody. Photograph: thank you ojojunkie. Bio: Poetryfoundation
It’s a brisk morning. 45F.
I board the 5:59 am Metro North train to Grand Central.
I settle in with the morning news. Rifling through the papers. Eyes scanning headlines. Going no deeper. Distracted. Then annoyed at my lack of focus. I turn to my work papers to prep for my late morning meeting. Mind wanders again. I toss them in my bag in frustration. I lean my head against the window. Close my eyes. And listen.
There’s no conversation. No disturbance of the clickety clack except for the periodic rough jostling of the rail cars on uneven rails. This being no high-speed train.
Conductor breaks the rhythm.
“Tickets. Tickets please.”
I pull the ticket out of my shirt pocket.
Conductor stops five rows up.
“Sir, these tickets are for non-peak rides.”
Soft voice responds but words are undecipherable.
“No, sir. You will need to purchase Peak ride tickets.”
Other riders now rubbernecking to check out the break in morning routine. [Read more...]
Good Wednesday morning. I’ve been on a siesta the last few weeks with my inspiring posts of the week. We’re back.
Kurt Harden @ Cultural Offering with his post titled You Sir at Pump 16…. I watched this clip three times. Susan watched it. The kids watched it. We all loved it. Do yourself a favor and start your day with a smile. Hit this link.
Rian @ Truth and Cake with her post Forget The Blueprint, Ride the Mechanical Bull: “…Often, we’re so hellbent on getting it right that we miss the point entirely. The right career, the right school, the right spouse, the right restaurant, the movie with the good reviews, wearing the right outfit and snagging that just right opportunity and hopefully doing something really meaningful and perfect with our lives: these things obsess us. I can look back on a (very large) handful of times in my life when I was given an amazing opportunity or experiencing something really great that, in retrospect, I stressed way too much over. Will I blow this? Will it work out? Where’s the next opportunity going to come from? What if people think I’m crazy?…Read more of this great post from a Freshly Pressed Blogger @ this link.
Seventhvoice with her post A Childless Mother, Is still A Mother. Though her arms may be empty… her heart never will: “Mother’s Day has always been an incredibly difficult day for me. Filled as it is with mixed emotions but not for the reasons you might think. It’s not a difficult day for me because I have a son with Autism or a daughter on the spectrum. In many ways their presence here helps to counteract the whirlpool of emotions that this day normally stirs up in me. Mother’s day is hard for me because I am, or at least I would have been, had everything gone to plan, the mother of seven children. You see, four of my lovely ones never made it kicking and screaming into the light of this world…” Read more of this moving post @ this link.
“Don’t google your name. Ever.
Don’t “search” for yourself
on anything that glows in the dark.
Don’t let your beauty
be something anyone can turn off.
Don’t edit your ugly out of your bio.
Let your light come from the fire.
Let your pain be the spark,
but not the timber.
Remember, you didn’t come here
to write your heart out.
You came to write it in.”
— Andrea Gibson
Llama Image Source: Etsy.com. Poem Source: Andrea Gibson via JournalofaNobody. Andrea Gibson Bio @ wiki.
Toronto had a 4-1 lead over Boston in the final period. No team had ever won a Game 7 after trailing by three goals in the third period. No team, that is, until Boston roared back last night with four goals in 16 minutes, 47 seconds. Toronto retains a firm grip on a longstanding and dubious distinction – a 44-year drought since winning its last Stanley Cup in 1969. The picture says it all. Maple Leaf Fans. Cursed. And cursing. Suffering the agony of defeat yet again. Baseball anyone?
Source: National Post
“Vladimir Nabokov was wont to fall into a reverie over nail clippings, bitten-off cuticles, tufts of lint plucked off a sleeve, bits of food picked from between the teeth and spat out. After disposing of these tiny scraps of human life, no one thinks of them any more. Since matter is neither created nor destroyed, what becomes of them? They go on existing, but in a realm beyond human concern. Nabokov called them the darlings of oblivion.
After nursing two of my children through week-long stomach viruses and then watching them bounce off to school this morning as if nothing had happened, I’ve been thinking about how much of human life consists of events that are also darlings of oblivion—the stomach cramps, the headaches, the sleepless nights, the full glasses of milk that are knocked over and spilled across the clean kitchen floors, the flat tires, the dead batteries, the traffic jams, the appointments that are late. Entire days can be lost to these events; they can be, at the time, as absorbing as tragedy; then, once they have passed, they are forgotten. How much of human life disappears into oblivion like this? These darlings almost never find their way into literature. And why is that?…”
~ D.G. Myers (Excerpt from May 9, 2013 post: Darlings of Oblivion)
From D. G. Myers blog: I am a faculty member in the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at the Ohio State University, I am the author of The Elephants Teach (Chicago, 2006) and coeditor (with Paul M. Hedeen) of Unrelenting Readers (Story Line, 2004). Educated in the public schools of Riverside, I earned my degrees from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where I founded the literary magazine Quarry (later Quarry West) with Raymond Carver; Washington University in St. Louis, where I wrote a masters thesis on Stanley Elkin under Stanley Elkin; and Northwestern University, where I held the TriQuarterlyFellowship and studied under Gerald Graff and Joseph Epstein. For twenty years I taught at Texas A&M University. Now I live in Columbus with my wife Naomi and our four children: Dov, Saul, Isaac, and Miriam (“Mimi”).
Loved this…back in a “simpler” time.
“Postcard From 1952″ – Explosions in The Sky from peter simonite on Vimeo.
Wintersleep is a Canadian indie rock band from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 2008, the band received the Juno Award for New Group of the Year.
Photographer Lalage Snow takes pictures of soldiers’ faces before, during and after the war in Afghanistan.
Source: Mme Scherzo
The image has been
a counterweight to darkness.
Pitch Black.
Every Father’s nightmare.
I call it up. The image.
To block. To deflect.
Her sinewy silhouette shimmering against the moonlight.
Waves lapping her toes on the shore line.
Her eyes closed.
Wind gently rustling her hair.
A need to believe.
No.
A longing to feel.
Her at Peace.
That she is safe.
Today.
She’s coming home.
“Parental love, I think, is infinite…Not infinitely good, or infinitely ennobling, or infinitely beautiful. Just infinite…”
~ Adam Gopnik
“…There are moments on the brink, when you can give yourself to a lover, or not; give in to self-doubt, uncertainty, and admonishment, or not; dive into a different culture, or not; set sail for the unknown, or not; walk out onto a stage, or not. A moment only a few seconds long, when your future hangs in the balance, poised above a chasm. It is a crossroads. Resist then, and there is no returning to the known world. If you turn back, there is only what might have been. Above that invisible crossroads are inscribed the words: Give up your will, all who travel here…”
Passage Excerpt from nytimes.com.
Eddie Catlin – Actor. Peter Batchelor - Narrator / Voice. Music Credits: ”Preparing” by In The Nusery. ”Hope Renewed – Instrumental” by Martin Sebastian Holm.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~ Derek Walcott, Love After Love
Derek Alton Walcott, 83, was born in Saint Lucia in the West Indies. He is a poet and playwright who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is currently Professor of poetry at the University of Essex in the U.K. In addition to having won the Nobel, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career including an Obie Award in 1971, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. (Source: Wiki)
Photograph of Derek Walcott (in 2003) by Richard Avedon. Poem Source: journalofanobody
I can’t say that I execute every day, but I do believe this. Yes I do.
Good Morning!
Source: swiss-miss
“During his most fertile years, from the late 1920s through the early ’40s, Faulkner worked at an astonishing pace, often completing three thousand words a day and occasionally twice that amount. (He once wrote to his mother that he had managed ten thousand words in one day, working between 10: 00 A.M. and midnight— a personal record.) ‘I write when the spirit moves me,’ Faulkner said, ‘and the spirit moves me every day.’”
~ Mason Currey on William Faulkner’s work ethic
William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897 – 1962), was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932).
As a schoolchild, Faulkner had much success early on. He excelled in the first grade, skipped the second, and continued doing well through the third and fourth grades. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades of his schooling, Faulkner became a much more quiet and withdrawn child. He began to play hooky occasionally and became somewhat indifferent to his schoolwork, even though he began to study the history of Mississippi on his own time in the seventh grade. The decline of his performance in school continued and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh, and then final grade, and never graduating from high school. (Source: Wiki)
Image Credit: Popmatters.com. Quote Source: Mason Currey from Daily Rituals: How Artists Work via bakadesuyo.com. Bio: Wiki
Credits: Story – Thank you Ed O for sharing this amazing story. Image of Jeff Bauman at Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Boston on Saturday: Dailymail.co.uk
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