A stress on the positive

"Don't stress", as they say in Singapore, or "take it easy", as we say in Australia. We often think of stress as a negative thing, and that living a stressful lifestyle can increase our risk of gastric ulcers, or heart attacks. McGonigal shows us otherwise. She discusses how the stress response can not only be a positive bodily response, but also the social lubricant that enhances human relationships.

"Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life, then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows."

brain pickings does it again

The greatest love letters, of course, aren’t those written for public greatness — they’re the ones penned for one particular trembling heart, honeycombed with private memories and private miracles, written in the language of the possible.

The website's snippets of critical analyses of Orlando by Virginia Woolf makes me want to read it now.

Process

Quite possibly the most beautifully eloquent and true pieces of writing I've seen in a while:

The creative process has more than one kind of expression. There’s the part you could show in a movie montage — the furious typing or painting or equation solving where the writer, artist, or mathematician accomplishes the output of the creative task. But then there’s also the part that happens invisibly, under the surface. That’s when the senses are perceiving the world, the mind and heart are thrown into some sort of dissonance, and the soul chooses to respond.

That response doesn’t just come out like vomit after a bad meal. There’s not such thing as pure expression. Rather, because we live in a social world with other people whose perceptual apparatus needs to be penetrated with our ideas, we must formulate, strategize, order, and then articulate. It is that last part that is visible as output or progress, but it only represents, at best, 25 percent of the process.

Real creativity transcends time. If you are not producing work, then chances are you have fallen into the infinite space between the ticks of the clock where reality is created. Don’t let some capitalist taskmaster tell you otherwise — even if he happens to be in your own head.

- Douglas Rushkoff, quoted from brain pickings

Gmt

Em  G  C7 Cdim7

Em
I'm standing by
G/D                    (D)
as my breath hots up
Bm
on a cold glass pane
                                          C
and it's only a matter of time.

I watch airplanes land
and carousels fill
with no bags that belong to you
but it's only a matter of time.

Bm/E (Em7)                        G/E
It's like the fast-forward scenes
Bm/D                      G/D
in a time-lapse movie
G/C                          C7/C
watching seedlings grow
     Bm Bm/D                 D
or stars chart the night sky.

Nothing seems to happen
watching life pass by
for somebody else like me
and it's only a matter of time.

in homage to Phillip Glass' Metamorphosis One

breath/life/willy nilly

breathe in to inhale

quince scent in the unwashed sheets 

wrinkled of you still

an empty bed is

harder than your shoes to fill

an empty heart, harder still

breathe out to compose

and create composure still

rememb’ring not love

broken composure

lost in the passage of time

not love, but self will

A humbling reminder

Dear Lord, the great healer, I kneel before you. Since every perfect gift must come from you. I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind, and meekness and kindness to my heart. Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part of the burden that is my suffering, fellow man, a true realisation of the gift that is mine. Take from my heart all guile and worldliness, that with the simple faith of a child, I may rely on you.

- Mother Teresa

Lost for words

post modern 

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

avoid cliche

we fill our lines 

with meaningful 

meaninglessness

favor irony 

to avoid sounding trite

words are just words 

all they are is hollow 

black and white

i project what meaning i want 

imbue these screens with hue

visible only through my tinted lenses 

nowadays

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

i write these words

and hear them ring inside my head

to potential music space

an emptiness i can't efface

we can't go it alone

we can't go it alone 

we can't go it alone

we can't go it alone

we build up to a rhythmic drum

that no one else can hear

could we ever;

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

In transit

It's in these electrifying moments that
you realise
just how alone you are.




Whispering baby, come back to me
Even when you don't know who it is who is gone.

House of Cards

The earlier you fold, the less you lose. The longer you stay in the game, the more you have to lose.

Chopping Broccoli

So today I was chopping broccoli and thinking, "There has to be a faster way." I have in the past picked up good tips on the internet, for example Jamie Oliver's video on how to chop vegetables quickly and safely (hold the vegetable in a knuckled under position instead of with your fingers poking straight out, and push the vegetable along as you chop). So I turned to youtube once more, and typed in "chopping broccoli".

And stumbled on this little nugget.



Addendum: With regards to chopping broccoli, I reckon there's no easier way to do it than the way I always have been, which is to cut off the florets one by one in roughly equal pieces so it all takes the same amount of time to cook. One possibility I have encountered is plucking the florets off, but then you still need to trim them, so it seems to all even out in the end.