A Life of Wonder

.Faith|Belief., originally uploaded by .krish.Tipirneni..

“I always believe that it is much better
to have a variety of religions, a variety of philosophies,
rather than one single religion or philosophy.

This is necessary because of the different
mental dispositions of each human being.

Each religion has certain unique ideas or techniques,
and learning about them can only enrich one’s own faith.”

dalai lama – 1981

Read Full Post »

On the Red Carpet, originally uploaded by angus clyne.

I came across this beautiful tree on Flickr tonight when I searched for the word “secret.” It reminds me of an experience I had 15 years ago climbing on a trail on an island outside of Seattle. After an hour and a few miles, I arrived at a mossy mini-valley nestled between thick trees.

Read Full Post »

Dawn Fire, originally uploaded by Judd Patterson.

“I think over again my small adventures
My fears, those small ones that seemed so big
For all the vital things I had to get and reach
And yet there is only one great thing
The only thing
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.”

– Unknown Inuit

Read Full Post »

In A World Of My Own, originally uploaded by Boy_Wonder.

“Letter-writing imposes its small ceremonies even upon those who disdain the medium. An audience of one requires confrontation too, and even perfunctory message discloses a little with what candour, modesty, or self-esteem its writer ranks himself in the world. Some accompanying hint of his appraisal of that world’s bound to appear in the way he asserts or beseeches a tie with his correspondent, the degree of familiarity he takes for granted, the extent to which he solicits action or approbation, the alacrity and tenacity with which he joins the issue…If he is a practicing writer his assembling of words can never be totally negligent; once enslaved by language forever enslaved.” – Richard Ellmann on James Joyce’s Letters

Read Full Post »

A few years ago I went to Cartagena, Colombia where Marquez has his home. I joked with my girlfriend that we would run into him. And it just so happened that he almost ran over us. We were taking pictures outside of his colorful house when the garage door open and his driver nearly ran us over. Reclining in the passenger seat, Marquez looked on at us with amused patience.

His works are brilliant, beautiful, and magical. And every time I travel to Colombia they come alive for me in the town cathedrals, the local town personalities, the granddaughters whispering truth to their grandmothers; the wild birds; children playing soccer near men sharing stories….at noon the church bells ring and the marketplaces breath…and his novels live my veins like music.
A few quotes I love:

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”

“He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.”

Read Full Post »

One image stands out, more than the rest, in Proust’s work. In Swann’s Way Proust describes the pain of leaving his mother for the evening. He describes climbing the stairs to his room, as “climbing against my heart.”
In his words:
“And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the staircase ’against my heart,’ as the saying is, climbing in opposition to my heart’s desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we have gone to sleep with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it only as a little girl whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out of the water, or as a line of Molière which we repeat incessantly to ourselves, it is a great relief to wake up, so that our intelligence can disentangle the idea of toothache from any artificial semblance of heroism or rhythmic cadence. It was the precise converse of this relief which I felt when my anguish at having to go up to my room invaded my consciousness in a manner infinitely more rapid, instantaneous almost, a manner at once insidious and brutal as I breathed in–a far more poisonous thing than any moral penetration–the peculiar smell of the varnish upon that staircase.”
Morrissey reads Proust

Read Full Post »

Shaolin monks intrigue and amazing me; watch this video to see why…

I can balance my laptop on my finger, hold a steaming cup of Starbucks coffee, withstand the pressure of 10 clients needs simultaneously and use my GPS to access any location in Boston….but still working on my monk technique.

Read Full Post »

I read somewhere that every stand up comedian dreamed he could play Hamlet. Carlin’s one of my favorite stand ups. The man was brilliant. Even if you disagreed with his politics, you have to appreciate his wit – and impact. In plan words, I love that he said what others won’t and called it straight.

A few favorite quotes:

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”

“When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.”

Read Full Post »

I read Lewis as a child. I loved the myths he created –and as a child – savored reading them without having to analyze their meaning. Years later I read his biography, as well as the book he wrote grieving the loss of his wife. One line in the book moved me deeply, “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

A few favorite Lewis quotes:

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

Read Full Post »

“My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”

“You must always work not just within but below your means
If you can handle three elements, handle only two.
If you can handle ten, then handle only five. I
n that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease,
more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”

Read Full Post »