Month: February 2016

Saturday Morning

Live & Learn14 Comments

toes-feet-hands-fingers-black-and-white

A balanced life has a rhythym. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I’m learning that if I don’t take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else’s, the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can’t write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. . .

A thoughtful life is not rushed.

Notes:

 

Moving a million miles a minute / Slow slow slow

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Allen Stone, 28, is an American soul musician from Chewelah, Washington.  His website states that people describe him as a soul and R&B singer, yet he sees himself as a “hippie with soul.” Allen Stone began his career singing at his father’s church. His father was a preacher and his mother was an OB/GYN nurse. 

Moving a million miles a minute
Slow slow slow
Your pace is dangerously close to the limit
Slow slow slow

Don’t let time slip away
Tomorrow ain’t here today

Wanna get loose?
Then just learn how to pivot
Slow slow slow
[…]
Hidden behind all the time that we keep
Years, months, weeks
I gotta find the right mindset for me
Time ain’t free

Find his website here: Allen Stone

T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week

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nicholas-bruno_photography_030-ladder-TGIF

“Fine art photographer Nicolas Bruno created a series of eerily beautiful images expressing various facets of his struggle with sleep paralysis. ‘Bringing myself to act as the subject in these chaotic scenarios reflects the physical and mental struggles that take place within the dreams.’ Having experienced the phenomenon – in which ‘the individual becomes conscious and is left immobile in a state between being awake and asleep’ – throughout his life, Bruno sought therapy through his photographic practice, transforming his nightmares into artworks. He meticulously plans each of the photos in his series, starting with noting his feelings after awaking from a nightmare to allowing historical references to inform the props and costumes of the characters that appear his works.”

See more by Nicolas Bruno (via Ignant.de)

 

Lightly child, lightly.

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motorcyle-abstract-light

She held tightly to his waist again on the way back. It was too loud for either of them to say anything, for which she was grateful, no decisions to be made, nothing to worry over, only the palm trees and tin roofs spinning out behind her, the wind whipping her hair across the face and the warm body close to hers; this moment then the next. Happiness began to burble in the base of her spine and rise, giddily, up her body. So this was what it was like: the present moment. She felt it like a revelation.

And wasn’t this what she’d been after – the lightness that came galloping through, grabbing you by the waist and hauling you along with it? How could you not surrender yourself to it, even if you knew you’d end up sitting bruised in the dirt? She supposed there must be another way to experience that breathless rush of being alive – something inward, perhaps? – but she didn’t know what it was or how to get there on her own.

Notes:

  • Photo: Etsy by Glennis Siverson
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect 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.”

asleep in the hollows of its rigging, waiting to be stirred

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Gabriel-isak-moon-solitude

[…]

Always tempted, what a sad
combination of words. And so
you take a walk into the neighborhood,
where the rhododendrons are out
and also some yellowy things

and the lilacs remind you of a song
by Nina Simone. “Where’s my love?”
is its refrain. Up near Gravel Hill
two fidgety deer cross the road,
whitetails, exactly where

the week before a red fox
made a more confident dash.
Now and then the world rewards,
and so you make your way back

past the careful lawns, the drowsy backyards,
knowing the soul on its own
is helpless, asleep in the hollows
of its rigging, waiting to be stirred.

~ Stephen Dunn, from “And So”

Credits: Poem: A Pair of Ragged Claws. Photograph: gabriel isak