Wally’s Great Adventures (60 – VOLUME UP – IT’S BEEN A LONG WEEK) hello friends, wally here. no funny stories today. no rants on dad and show dog tricks. no cutesy 70’s tunes to wrap this vid. just rest. and yes, i sleep with my eyes open. and yes, i sleep on my back and snore like mom. TGIF. yours truly sleepy Wally.
TGIF: Wally’s Great Adventures (60 – VOLUME UP – IT’S BEEN A LONG WEEK)
March 24, 2023 by 8 Comments
Lightly Child, Lightly.
March 23, 2023 by 15 Comments
My paintings have neither object nor space nor line nor anything – no forms. They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form. You wouldn’t think of form by the ocean. You can go in if you don’t encounter anything. A world without objects, without interruption, making a work without interruption or obstacle. It is to accept the necessity of the simple direct going into a field of vision as you would cross an empty beach to look at the ocean.
— Agnes Martin, Agnes Martin: Writings
Notes:
- Photo: Daybreak. March 18, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here.
- Quote. Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Guess.What.Day.It.Is?
March 22, 2023 by 24 Comments
Oprah! “Visited Jordan this week and there was so much to see and experience! We visited the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, Petra and all its fascinations, camels, and the spot where the big boulder comes rolling out of Indiana Jones. So much history there in the “Rose City,” voted one of the 7 new wonders of the world. It takes 3 days to really see it all we only spent 3 hours. Put it on your must see list if you haven’t already!”
Notes:
- Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again.
- Thank you Horty for sharing!
Wally’s Great Adventures (59 – VOLUME UP – I’M HUNGRY)
March 21, 2023 by 27 Comments
hello friends, wally here. been playing with Sully for 2 days, and i’m gassed! and you know, when you work hard and play hard you get really really hungry, right? well, there’s no breaking the rules in this house, 3 meals a day, 7am, noon and 5pm, and no deviations. and 1/3 of a cup of puppy chow for each meal, and it has to be level to the top and not heaping. i love mom but she’s a meany-cat and immovable. just look at those pics of me, i’m withering away and you can see my hip bones. this is a dangerous situation. so i decided to share with mom Pearl Jam’s tune “Hunger Strike” so maybe she’d get it or i’m going on a no-more-cute strike. will keep you all posted. have a great evening. yours truly hungry Wally.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 20, 2023 by 6 Comments
Life is soupy, mixed up, and tumultuous. Muddying the waters is precisely the point because it’s from such nutritious streams that life grows…
[KP: How would you start to answer this vast question of what it means to be human? Perhaps, how has that evolved how you might start to answer that question?]
What it is to be human is such a small thing…in this universe, right? Just try to be nice, be kind babies, be kind. As Vonnegut wrote. That’s the only guide. Try to be good and try to do the least harm and be kind. That’s the only human bit. But what it means to be more-than-human, that’s something else. That’s the bigger question, I think, for me is what it means to transcend that narrow frequency of being human in this time here to perhaps partake of something far greater, something more-than-human. That is actually the more deep or meaningful connection to everything around us…
Every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence – Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? – the answer comes back clearer: Everyone and Everywhere…
— James Bridle, excerpts from “The Intelligence Singing All Around Us,” an interview with Krista Tippett. Onbeing, March 2, 2023.
Notes: Portrait: Quantum
Wally’s Great Adventures (58 – VOLUME UP – I had a lot of things to do today but…)
March 19, 2023 by 24 Comments
hello friends, wally here. decided rather than telling you all about my adventures, i would share lyrics from a great song by Gunnarolla titled “I Took a Nap” that captures my day…here we go: “I had a lot of things to do today / But you know what I did instead / I took a nap / It was a very good nap / That email / I took a nap / Zoom call / I took a nap / What about your lunch plan / I (ate lunch then) took a nap / House chores / I took a nap / Home workout? / I took a nap / Bath time? / I took a nap… / I woke up from the nap to get things done / But you know what I did instead / I took a nap / It was a very good nap…..” have a great sunday. Wally.
Wally’s Great Adventures (57 – I want it ALL)
March 18, 2023 by 40 Comments
hello friends, wally here. mom and dad keep all my toys in my toy basket, sorry baskets, plural, as there are two now. i have to dig down and around to find what I want, it’s kind of a pain and it takes so much time, so i drag the baskets around the family room, and then as dad says, i shake the cr*p out of the basket like i’m some sort of animal, and then i try to dump them all out to find just the right toy. dad said he’s exhausted from picking up all my sh*t and maybe i could pick up my stuff after i’m done. but why put them all back in the basket when i’m just going to dump them all out 5 minutes later. i don’t get it, and he said he didn’t either. Have a great weekend. Wally.
Lightly Child, Lightly
March 17, 2023 by 24 Comments
Finally day breaks over things that I can’t predict, as I cannot predict myself. Only a stone, a celestial body, a fool can, sometimes, be predictable. Finally day breaks over a circumstantial, differentiated, risky, improbable world, as concrete, multicolored, unexpected, and, yes, beautiful as the one I see, feel, touch, admire.
— Michel Serres, in Italo Calvino’s from “Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance” in “The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays. Translated by Ann Goldstein. (Mariner Books Classics, January 17, 2023)
Notes:
- Photo: Daybreak. 29° F, feels like 21° F. 6:00 to 7:00 am. March 16, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. See more photos from yesterday’s daybreak walk here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Read it.
March 15, 2023 by 24 Comments
Take a moment for yourself…Every day. A Moment. A moment where YOU are your own priority. Just you… Not your work…not your filthy house, not anything. Just you…. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment…Then recommit…
On the other hand, wasn’t that the very definition of life? Constant adaptations brought about by a series of never-ending mistakes? ….
And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behaviors. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural. And it starts with two words: pink and blue. Everything skyrockets out of control from there…
— Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel (Doubleday, April 5, 2022)
Wally’s Great Adventures (56 – Workin’ 9-5)
March 14, 2023 by 19 Comments
hello friends, wally here. i started my morning being an apprentice banker, and it didn’t end well because…oops dad told me not to share it with all my lady friends on social media as they are so over-the-top sloppy wally lovers, whatever that means, so he sent me out to do yard work with mom. mom said i am the best yard dog ever. i love mom, (and dad only because he gives me so many snacks.) Have a great evening. Wally. #frenchie #frenchbulldog #pet #dog #funny #wally #cute
Monday Morning Wake Up Call
March 13, 2023 by 12 Comments
Photo 1 was taken this morning.
Photo 2 was taken in March 2022.
Oh, what a year makes.
Yes, different weather.
No, I was not standing in the exactly the same spot, and likely not the same focal length.
But close enough for you to get the point.
Photo 1 was taken after the completion of a major dredging project this winter to remove “sediments and debris” from the marina and channels.
Yes, it is likely that the park’s upkeep depends on marina revenue.
Yes, certain boat owners’ livelihood may depend on the marina.
No, this isn’t close to being on the same scale of the Amazon deforestation.
But…
For more photos from this morning’s walk, click here.
Wally’s Great Adventures (55)
March 12, 2023 by 31 Comments
Wally’s Great Adventures (55 – VOLUME UP) hello friends, wally here. after my tummy aches earlier in the week, which led to 2 vomiting episodes @ 2:30 am which dad called the release of “a toxic chemical bath” all over the bed – – several of my girlfriends on FB suggested that maybe we should try snacking on carrots rather than the scat in the backyard, ‘nasty scat’ is what dad calls it. my girlfriends are so smart. i don’t have tummy aches any more, and i just love carrots. they are so sweet. dad says my poopie now looks like little bitty orange popsicles, and mom says leave it to dad to go over-the-top on snacks. just wanted to thank all of you, and if you have any more tips for snacks, all beef sausages would be amazing, tell dad, please! have a great weekend. Wally.
Walking. In cool water from Lake of Memory.
March 11, 2023 by 25 Comments
1040 (not your tax return), 1040 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island morning walk. Like in a row.
But for the wind and the light rain, it would be a pleasant, 35° F morning in March. Ah yes, but for the wind and the light rain…it feels like 26° F, and the hood is up to protect this morning’s erratic ruminations. Diane Ackerman: “the brain’s genius is its gift for reflection. What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to…,” no, i can’t say the word, let’s just say whatever comes after the End.
My weather app flashes an alert for a Coastal Flood Warning. With heavy rains overnight, the park, and its paths, are splotched with puddles. My boots are caked with mud from yesterday’s adventures, and rather than step around the puddles, I step through the center of them hoping the water line falls short of my boot tops. There is something ever so soothing about the clop clop clop — and racing barefoot through puddles during rainy summer days in August as an adolescent. The body light, floats like a feather, B.A., Before Adulthood, and the accumulation of the Heavy. My body veers towards one puddle and then the next, clop, clop, clop. “Give me quickly / the cool water flowing from the Lake of Memory” inscribed on a fourth-century-B.C. Greek tablet.
I walk. [Read more…]
Wally’s Great Adventures (54)
March 10, 2023 by 21 Comments
hello friends, wally here. i’m missing Sully so much after he left. naps and night time without my bro-bff just aren’t the same. speaking about night time, my tummy has been a little upset lately, 2x around 2:30 am my tummy starts to girgle, and then up it comes, brown gunk all over the white duvet cover and then mom rushes me onto the floor where i finish my business. and then mom yells at dad saying that he might get out of bed and help so she can clean up the mess, and dad says just leave it, he’s not getting up, ’he’s exhausted’, he doesn’t mind sleeping ‘in it’ and ‘its not so bad’. mom fires back, ‘are you kidding me!’ so mom takes care of the bedding, dad takes me outside where its freezing cold, and he’s not happy (again) and says that good boys don’t be puking on the bed. and i should stop eating scat and dust bunnies and other crap because i was cutting into his sleep time, cutting into the few hours of sleep that he manages to get in, and he cant be walking around like a zombie all day. i don’t know what a zombie is but it doesn’t sound good. anywho, we all get back into bed, my tummy feels better, i cozy with mom, she loves me and doesn’t yell at me like dad, and there’s dad mumbling about not being able to sleep, and he’s staring bug-eyed reading something on his light box. that’s all for tonight friends. Wally.
Wally’s Great Adventures (53 – “you’ve got a friend in me”)
March 9, 2023 by 12 Comments
(VOLUME UP) hello friends, wally here. big day. its the weekend, and my big brother came to visit. dad’s fun and all (note to self – show training can get a bit long in the tooth, but that’s ok, he means well). sully and i wrestle, play tug-o-war with my toys, play outside, go for walks with mom, and then we take long naps together, have snacks, and then i cozy with sully between mom and dad at night when we go sleep. sully’s leaving in a few hours. i will miss him. have a great night everyone. Wally.
Lightly Child, Lightly
March 9, 2023 by 28 Comments
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water –
Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
— Jane Hirshfield, “A Cedary Fragrance”
I’ve written many, many poems out of the need to find a way to say yes to what I would, at first, rather say no to. Because our whole lives consist of such moments. Many things will happen to us that we would prefer not. We would prefer our loved ones don’t die. I would prefer the world were more sensible and kind and compassionate. I would prefer there not to be forest fires of such extraordinary devastation as we’ve been having, or fill in the blank.
But a human life requires all of these things. And so to every day begin the day with this simple affirmation of “I will make the unwanted wanted” has been a practice of decades for me now.
— Jane Hirshfield, from an Interview with Ezra Klein in The New York Times, March 3, 2023
Notes:
- Portrait of Jane Hirshfield by Nick Rozsa in The Marginalian
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Nostalgia
March 7, 2023 by 11 Comments
I have a great deal of nostalgia for Wigton. I had a very rich childhood in everything that mattered. I liked being able to knock on friends’ doors to ask if they were coming out to play. Looking back, I seem to have spent an awful lot of time playing. Wigton gave me a sense of friendliness towards everybody. You just nodded to people and said hello. That ease was helpful.
— Melvyn Bragg, from ‘At 83, time goes round too quickly’, in an interview by Kate Kellaway in the ’The Guardian · March 4, 2023
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 6, 2023 by 15 Comments
He picks up on three themes: first, that mastery is the “slow carpentering of fragments into a harmonious whole”. The expert creates the illusion of something unified by learning each tiny step – whether those steps are the small melodic ideas of a jazz pianist or the rhythmic pattern of a boxer’s jabs.
Second, mastery is about humanity, not perfection. “We never really love an artist’s virtuosity, or if we do, it feels empty,” Gopnik writes. “We love their vibrato, their … way of entangling their learned virtuosity within their unique vulnerability.”
Third, it’s not about “life rules, but real lives”. Gopnik thinks mastery can be found everywhere, from his mother’s kitchen to his driving teacher’s car. “We always overestimate the space between very good and uniquely good,” Gopnik says: we know the names of the Michael Jordans and the Leonardos, but there are countless people who are nearly, if not quite equally, brilliant. And even if most of us won’t become household names, “we are all more varied and capable than we are often allowed to seem”.
— Matthew Cantor, from “The Real Work: On The Mystery of Mastery” by Adam Gopnik book review – the art of expertise” (The Guardian, March 4, 2023)
Notes:
- Adam Gopnik bio
- Portrait of Adam Gupnik by photographer Alana Paterson in NUVO
Live & Learn 