David Kanigan: Inspiration, Ideas & Information
“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.
Start your day with anxiety. First thing. Every morning for last month. Sharp pain for 75 seconds. Then poof. Gone. Until the next morning. I google it. Up pops Just Answer. Eye with a customer question describing the identical experience:
I wake up every morning with a sharp pain in what I believe is my optic nerve. The pain is so bad that it sometimes makes my eye water when I try to open it wide. It is also painful to press on my eye when closed. The pain is always in my left eye and there are some days that I wake up without pain. My eye does not seem to be more red or bloodshot than normal. The pain does subside as the day goes on and I haven’t experienced any vision problems.
I quickly close my eye and pain subsides. Water fills the vacuum. (The human body is. All on its own. Repairing. Soothing. A miracle.)
I open and close several times. Blinking. (The body is a miracle. The mind, my mind, on the other hand, can be a torture chamber. I need to see. I need to read. Heart begins to race. Relax pal. Just Answer Doc said it’s just dry eyes. Yes, that was the first line. And the rest? What about the rest? This will right itself by itself.)
What if?
Mind quickly shifts gears to Sunday’s paper.
You are four years old. You run to answer the door bell. Life from that moment on changes. For you. For your family. Forever.
Josh Miel, you define courage. You define perseverance. You are an inspiration.
(On the other hand, you pal, have dry eyes.)
David Byrne, 60, is a Scottish musician permanently residing in the United States. He is best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American New Wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. He has received Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Brainpickings.org describes Byrne “as also one of the sharpest thinkers of our time and a kind of visual philosopher. About a decade ago, Byrne began making ‘mental maps of imaginary territory’ in a little notebook based on self-directed instructions to draw anything from a Venn diagram about relationships to an evolutionary tree of pleasure yet wholly unlike anything else. In 2006, Byrne released Arboretum, a collection of these thoughtful, funny, cynical, poetic, and altogether brilliant pencil sketches — some very abstract, some very concrete — drawn in the style of evolutionary diagrams and mapping everything from the roots of philosophy to the tangles of romantic destiny to the ecosystem of the performing arts.”
Bottom line: Brilliant.
Sources: Brainpickings.org and Wiki
“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.
Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.
You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. [Read more...]
Love this…hypnotized by it…but not sure that I fully grasped the story line. Van Gogh and his illnesses have been on my mind from posts earlier in the week. (9/21-a and 9/21-b). All interpretations welcome.
Good Sunday morning.
A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Requiem For The Static King Part One (Official Video) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.
Related Posts:
Agustin is from Siguatepeque, Honduras. He was born “lame with his right leg shorter than his left.” He was later struck with polio leaving him severely disabled from the legs down. He dreamed of being a pilot but because of his disability, he couldn’t fly. He turned his energy to building his own helicopter largely from parts found at the trash dumps. He started building in 1958. He is still pursuing his dream today more than one-half a century later with his helicopter still under construction.
His Minister: “I don’t know what he’s paying for his helicopter in the ultimate sense. I think he’s paid a lot for that helicopter. I think he’s paid an awful lot. You might say what has he gotten out of it? I don’t know. Maybe its kept him alive. Maybe its been able to conquer loneliness. Maybe its been able to conquer poverty.”
Agustin later in the story explains: “The problem is that everything is incredible and people just don’t accept it.”
This video is beautiful. Sad. Touching. And inspiring.
And, yes, Agustin, we are blessed. And everything is incredible. And often times we take it for granted.
Good Sunday morning.
Everything is Incredible from Tyler Bastian on Vimeo.
Related Posts:
“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that – I don’t mind people being happy – but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position – it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”
This quote was inspired (and not in a positive way) by my recent readings of an shockingly large number of children and adults being medicated for a variety of reasons ranging from serious disorders like chronic depression to anxiety, ADD and academic performance. Sad and disturbing. (This coming from a man who can barely choke down a Bayer aspirin without feeling guilt wash over me.)
Related Posts:
