"And then she said..."

2010-07-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. ~ Anon.

Sail

2010-02-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain

Geography of Life

2010-02-10T10:58:00.001-08:00

"The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between."

-- Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of the Senses.

That's the Way It Is

2010-01-30T08:45:00.000-08:00

“The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.”

~ Anatole France (1844-1924), born François-Anatole Thibault, he was a French poet, journalist, and novelist.

Quote Usage Fail

2010-01-14T00:50:00.000-08:00

Exploration

2010-01-01T03:07:00.000-08:00

“One of the key things about Blyton, as about any great writer, is to provide you with what in its broadest sense could be termed a secular worldview – that is, a sense of the coexistence of diversity, and of the many forms of life and livelihood and living, and of cultures and ways of thinking and being that are very distant from your own, and overarching them all the feeling that many of these things are exciting and worth exploring and worth absorbing as some part of your own identity.”

-Rukun Advani, writer

Slow Lane

2009-12-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

“Reading books is an antidote to urgency and chaos because it cannot be rushed. Every book has its own rhythm and a physical intimacy that E-mail and similar instant information can never achieve. Media glut often confuses information with understanding. Just when you seem to be most pressed, books miraculously expand time for reflection, cogitation, and mental rest.”

– Richard E. Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes.

The Road Less Taken

2009-11-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." Martin Buber

No Day At the Beach

2009-11-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

"I love women, they love me, fat and all, and my sister always said I would be one. I even gave it the good old college try. Not once, but twice. It would have been so easy if I could have been a lesbian. But no, I had to settle for heterosexuality, which, as some of you know, is no day at the beach." Camryn Manheim

This Is How I Run

2009-10-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

"Nature does not hurry,
Yet everything
Is accomplished."
-Lao Tzu

Onwards

2009-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace. My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
~ from “Body of A Woman”, by Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, first published in Chile, 1924

Why I Blog

2009-08-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it - Jean-Paul Sartre

Then Don't Work in a Hagwon

2009-08-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

"There is no more obnoxious way to punish a man than to force him to perform acts which make no sense to him."

Simone de Beauvoir

Tend Your Thought Garden

2009-07-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

“What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tattoo?

2009-07-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein

Stay Hungry

2009-07-13T05:20:00.000-07:00

Ben Okri's "Mental Fight"

Is humanity exhausted?
Individuals are, nations are,
Some civilisations are becoming so;
But humanity isn't.

The hungry nations are hungry still.
The starving people dream of food.
The unfree fight for freedom.
The oppressed plan for liberation.
The small scheme for might.
The invisible prepare for higher visibility.

They are only exhausted
Who think they are.
They are only exhausted who no longer
Have a reason to strive
And dream and hope.

They are only exhausted who think
That they have arrived
At their final destination,
The end of their road,
With all of their dreams achieved,
And with no new dreams to hold.

The exhausted are those who have
Come to the end of their powers
Of imagination, who have limited
Their possibilities, who have thought
Themselves into dead ends
That they call the highest
Points of civilisations.

Those who are exhausted have lost
The greater picture,
The greater perspective.

Hope

2009-02-10T10:20:00.001-08:00

Diane Ackerman, "School Prayer"

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messanger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

Goals

2009-01-13T06:09:00.000-08:00

When I Grow Up

by Sekou (tha Misfit)

Ask me now mommy.
Am I too late?
Ask me now what I want to do for a living.
Am I too late? Cause I think I finally figured it out

I don't want to do for a living
I want to be for a living

I want to be life.
I want to make things grow, and move, and breath, and reproduce, and respond.
I just want to make things respond and react and rejoice and relax and relate and release and receive
as soon as I recite.
When I grow up,
I don't want to be like those other kids mommy who want to be doctors and ballers and astronaughts.
I want to be passion, and heat and energy.

When I grow up,
I don't want to be a fireman mommy, let me be the fire
The explosion behind the soul's big bang theory that leaves in its place… desire
That burning within that gives life to the word "aspire"
Let me warm the cold souls of the despairing and heartless
Let me light the paths of those wandering in darkness
And provide children with their first definition of "hot"
And when the artists of the world have become so infatuated with ice that the whole world freezes over,
Let me be the poet that melts the ice-caps, drowns the planet, and starts this world over -
2 poets at a time like Noah…
When I grow up

I don't want to be an astronaut mommy, I want to be the space that he explores -

Not the doctor mommy, let me be the cure.
The prescription for a better life…
the way through which the sick and the shut-in can find hope, health, happiness, and healing.
I want to be the pill of which they take two, and the call that is placed that next morning.
I want to be the white blood cell that strengthens the immune system,
the clot that stops the bleeding,
the antidote that counters the poison;
I want to speak antibiotic poetry that defeats your life's viruses,
but only if you take my words in 3 times a day until the entire bottle is gone;
I want to be the perspective of the world through the eyes of an autistic child who is diagnosed with a sickness when in fact she merely sees the world with a clarity that the rest of us could only dream of having…
When I grow up

I don't want to be a preacher mommy, I want to be the word

Not the artist mommy, I want to be the art
Not the painter, let me be the canvas
Not the choreographer, let me be the dances
Not the poet, let me be the stanzas

When I grow up

I don't want to be a singer mommy, I want to be the sound!
The song you sing the way you sing it when you think aint nobody else around

When I grow up,
I don't want to be a lawyer mommy I want to be justice.
Not the philosopher, but the philosophy that the brilliant minds try to follow,
Or the brilliance in those minds,
Or even the elusive concepts that they can't quite figure out like
hope, purpose, faith… and time.

I wanna be time mommy!

So that the world will go to sleep every night feeling like they never got enough of me.
And will panic when they feel me slipping away.
Time! So that I will never feel this depression I feel now for being abandoned by it
Time! So that I will never again be before myself, never be out of myself,
Never be too late, never be too early,
So that for once in this life of unfulfilled dreams that have left my cheeks streaked from salt water erosion and my mouth pertpetually coated with the bitter aftertaste of disappointment,
for once I can be right on me!

When I grow up,

I want to be the antonym of void,
the antithesis of without,
the contradiction of silence,
the inverse of absence,
the reverse of regression,
the antilogy to emptiness,
the illumination of shadows,
the opposite of darkness…
I wanna be the opposite of darkness when I grow up mommy!

So that when the greatest poet in existence
recites the first line
of the greatest poem ever written

"let there be light"

…then I can begin.

Impetuosity

2009-01-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

"Wisdom may be admired. But what really inspires mankind, what quickens the pulse and lifts the spirit, is its opposite: a display of magnificent, reckless impetuosity.
Just think about it. It's not wisdom that wins the Victoria Cross. It's the insane dash against impossible odds. It's not wisdom that paints the Mona Lisa or composes the "Eroica" Symphony. Wise people would never go into the arts in the first place. It's not wisdom that compels people to push themselves to the limits of endurance in order to realise some mad dream. It's a glorious perversity deep in their souls. And it's not wisdom that inspires people to risk everything in pursuit of a seemingly hopeless love affair. It's uncontrollable passion, and the existential urge to taste danger before you die."

Richard Morrison, The Times

Thresholds

2009-01-05T01:41:00.001-08:00

"Within you lies all the courage you need - solitude opens all the closed doors, even those nailed shut." ~ Nancy Wood

Found on the video here.

Colorful

2008-12-21T06:56:00.000-08:00

“Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited the world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes, don’t blink, and look, look – look further.” Chogyam Trungpa

A Teacher's Goal

2008-11-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
~Albert Schweitzer

“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.”
~Carl Jung

How the Expats Do It

2007-11-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

When life gives you lemons, you slice them into wedges and use them to rim your margarita glass while you rock out to Justin Timberlake, put on your prettiest dress and dance til dawn with 20 of your closest friends!

Candace

In and Out

2007-10-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

this is how it works
you're young until you're not
you love until you don't
you try until you can't
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath

Regina Spektor

Things As Essential As Sex

2007-10-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

You do it to make your soul grow. This would include singing in the shower, dancing to the radio by yourself, drawing a picture of your roommate or writing a poem or whatever. Please practice an art. Have the experience of becoming.... What's important is to have the experience of becoming, which is as necessary as food or sex. It's really quite a sensation — to become.

Kurt Vonnegut

Books & People

2007-10-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

These days are pages,these years chapters. A plot emerges which is sometimes lost, often revised. Characters come and go, the people I have known, the limited cast of humans that one life can bear. Some I betray, some I love. Some I admire, some I pity. Some I teach, some teach me. Some I lust after, some are naked and I hope to clothe them. So fade to black and white now, roll the movie of my life inside of my head...

Linford Detweiler

Throwing Turkey at Thanksgiving

2007-10-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

This encounter between Norse explorers and Native hunters was a pivotal moment in world history. Spilling out of Africa, the human race had pushed north into Europe and East into Asia, through Mongolia and either across the sea or over the Bering Strait to the Americas. And now, on this windswept coast, the two sides had once again met. Humanity had come full circle. It was as much a reunion as it was "first contact."

Alas, as with many a family reunion, things were a little strained.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

My People

2007-08-08T01:02:00.000-07:00

We look
like a geography but
just scratch us
and we bleed
history.

Miriam Waddington, "Canadians"

And Who is the Storyteller?

2007-08-08T00:59:00.000-07:00

How did I get here? I ascended. I ascended from Cape Breton coal mines and the Barnardo orphanage of Belfast, from nomadic Czech migrations and Australian penal colonies. These tales converge in men, and this is not unusual. From the first Vikings to the shattered displacement of the First Nations, from resistance to revival, from New France to the New West, from dreams of utopia to dreams of porperity, from Loyalist boat peope to modern-day refugess, Canada is more than just a country: it is a sum of its stories. We are all orphans, are all survivors of shipwrecks, and we carry these stories of exile and renewal within us, whether we are aware of it or not.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

Yes

2007-08-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

Canada is more than a canoe route after all. Canada is a road trip. And like any road trip worthy of the name, it is ultimately about freedom in its purest form."

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

"Can you miss a place before you leave it? Can you feel homesick for a city that isn't your home?"

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

Lucky

2007-08-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

"We have inherited an easy life in Canada. A life of calm. It is freedom of a lazy sort, a freedom so pervasive we barely notice it, and one that we claim by virtue of our citizenship. But it is also workth remembering that people--in the words of Bulgarian-born Canadian philanthropist Ignat Kaneff--'crawl across minefields to get here.'"

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

National Locomotion

2007-08-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

"You get the feeling that God designed the canoe first and then set about creating a country in which it would flourish."

Bill Mason

"The CPR may have bound this nation together, but it is the canoe that first called it into being. The birchbark has been replaced, first by canvas and then by aluminum and fibreglass, but the symbolism remains. Paddling a canoe-why it's as Canadian as grilled cheese sandwhiches."

Will Ferguson

"What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hudnred on a bicycle and you remian basically bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature"

Pierre Trudeau

Sow's Ear into a Purse

2007-08-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

Any city that turns a bank into a bookstore can't be all bad.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

Finer Things

2007-08-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

The best tobacconist in Canada. The best chocolate shop. The finest bookstore. All three located in Victoria, all within a single block.

This is leisure as an expression of status: arcane and elitist and deeply personal, all at the same time.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

Boxes

2007-07-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it."

Terry Pratchett

The Power of the Written Word

2007-07-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

"At first glance, reading is a waste of time, turning us all into versions of Don Quixote, too befuddled by our imaginations to tell windmills from giants. We would be better off spending the time mating and farming."

D.T. Max

Longing

2007-07-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

"There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, colored motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolesence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is."

Sylvia Plath

"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

Kierkegaard, 1845

Imagination

2007-07-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges.

Kevin Hart, Australian poet

Interconnectedness

2007-07-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

"I cannot be me without you
and we cannot be us without them,
and together we have a future."

Philip Carter, Anglican priest, director of the Julian Centre in Adelaide, Australia.

"Common humanity and universal responsibility link us. But much of the time we act as if this is not the case -- we are in denial as individuals and societies."

Margaret Somerville, The Ethical Imagination, 2006.