Every day I face the sound of the dilemma around my life's purpose, and I hear it beat louder as time passes.

I sit at my desk surrounded by corporate, legal, and technical documents. I read all the art, photography, and travel blogs from my RSS feed. I sift through all the "how to succeed" and "how to start a business" articles on LinkedIn. I read blogs on design concepts and music. I write restaurant reviews. I take notes on different forms of exercise and how to eat healthy. My Facebook feed is literally a running news source of what is happening in my local dance community. I bookmark poetry websites.

Which leads me to what they call the #1 biggest career mistake that "capable" people make.  In The Pursuit of Less, Greg explores the concept of the "highest point of contribution." I frequently explore the theme of being a "jack of all trades." I have written in my journal about various ideas I have to incorporate all of my passions. How do I find the intersection?

I can take two different looks at different parts of my life:
1) Career
2) Dance

1) Career- I definitely tripped over the "biggest mistake." I started off with a HUGE pool of opportunities, and I got ping ponged back and forth between projects in different industries. Instead of standing firm in my vision for what I wanted to, I allowed myself to be pigeonholed into an industry that is stable but one that I have very little passion for. Am I bad at what I do? No.  Would I work harder if I did work that I was passionate about? Absolutely, 100%.

2) Dance- This is where I let my passion dictate my path. I dabbled in everything, from hip hop to salsa to ballet to modern to country western dancing. My fascination with Argentine tango was immediate, and I stuck with it. It was incredibly difficult and different from anything I had ever done. Five years later, it is still the only dance that I can participate in every night without feeling restless.

From the article: "If success is a catalyst for failure because it leads to the 'undisciplined pursuit of more,' then one simple antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less. Not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials. Not just once a year as part of a planning meeting, but constantly reducing, focusing and simplifying. Not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but being willing to cut out really terrific opportunities as well. Few appear to have the courage to live this principle, which may be why it differentiates successful people and organizations from the very successful ones."

A note from a different article:

"Your schedule makes you dumber. Force yourself outside of your daily schedule. Be curious and take time to learn about worlds outside of the one you live in. Watch the news, read the paper, educate yourself. Don’t be afraid to call people you don’t know, start a conversation, and ask for things you need. At the very least, you’ll be more interesting. At the most, you’ll take your business in new and bigger directions."

The best thing about not knowing what I will actually do  is that I spend every day immersed in relationships. I spend every day learning and dreaming about other worlds so that I can incorporate parts of them into my own. I have learned that it's true- it's the people you know. The relationships you make will give you more paths to what you want to do, and even help discover what that is. I ask questions, I offer my time and skills for free, I listen, I show up. I practice showing up. I practice being present with whoever I am talking to. I practice being present to hearing what it is that excites others.

Perhaps my way is unconventional, or! too conventional. but from all of these avenues I try to soak in the lessons that will be applicable when I finally find my "highest point of contribution."

We jumped in the leaves once,
but there were mostly acorns in the pile.
Our necks were outstretched, looking downward
our hands grasping the air

We waited for exhilaration, but mostly just found mud and
dirt clinging to our shoes.

Perhaps we were too focused on gravity,
perhaps what we were looking for was there
perhaps we forgot to
look up

It's that time of year, when we ponder all our goals and rules for life and what we are grateful for.

--

Daydream Lily's 5 rules for life:
1. All you need is Love. And cameras.
2. A place for everything and everything in its place.
3. Treat yourself.
4. Travel, never stop learning, and question yourself.
5. Wake early. Drink coffee.

--

The Art of Noncomformity's goals:

1.

To wake in the morning full of life and energy, awaiting the day with anticipation and purpose.

To step out into the world ready to accomplish a significant task.

To engage and initiate instead of merely responding. To take the active choice that you will make something happen.

2.

To maintain harmony and goodwill in relationships. To follow Shakespeare’s adage: love all, trust a few, and do wrong to no one.

To focus on contribution and engagement instead of withdrawal into yourself. (Tip: When you aren’t sure what to do next, find a small way to help someone.)

3.

To pursue productive, meaningful work. To spend most of your time doing something that you and others find meaningful.

To accept that everything you create will likely be flawed in some way, but to create anyway.

To enjoy the life you are gifted to experience. Not to take it easy, for life isn’t always easy. But to appreciate the present while looking ahead to the future.

4.

To pay attention to how you feel. Not because everything is supposed to feel good, but because how you feel is a good reflection of your overall state of being.

To understand that freedom is choice. To grasp the reality that a world of possibilities are open to you, so you’d better do something about them.

To dream bigger and to pursue the dream. To choose to leap when others hold back. To maintain a standard of surprise and a choice of challenge.

To refuse to settle, and to decline the easy path of becoming a cynic. To find something to believe in and defend it with all your heart.

5.

To align your life with these ideals, continuing to work toward them every day.

To embrace the journey, focusing on the process and deferring the arrival if necessary.

To appreciate what you have without longing for more.

To refuse to rest on your laurels. To accept that what you’ve already done is in the past. To forge ahead!

My obsession with accordions began at a young age.

I really thought I wanted to play accordion, and my parents bought my twin sister and me identical tiny accordions. Tiny accordions for our tiny fingers. Our small house was not rich or fancy, but it was filled with two of the richest things that this world has to offer: books and musical instruments.

I still remember strapping the accordion onto my shoulders and pretending I could play.

My discovery of Julieta Venegas came later (here is her Tiny Desk Concert at NPR).  She is tiny and bursting with talent, and she masterfully demonstrates the art of traversing several different instruments during her all of concerts. The accordion always made me feel like it could transport me to another place, another time. It makes me explore the curious paradox of playful seriousness, and the feeling of sitting outside a cafe, or participating as an onlooker to a parade.

Then came Argentine tango. Along the shores of the Seine river at night, I sat in front of the bandoneon player, and listened until dawn. I'm not sure whether the movement or the music lulled me into believing I'd dance tango one day. Perhaps it was the water, or the Parisian night.

I still get lost in the accordion notes. They seem a little bit naughty, but every part innocent. Pushes, pulls, pressing, bellowing, resonating.

I sat in chairs, different ones around the room
listening to the time passing
listening to the reminders of you
the memories filling the room, pressing against the ceilings.

The sounds of everything,
of you rubbing your eyes in the middle of the night.
of the heat emanating from your hand to my thigh.
of the fan that you turned off.
of the neighbors' children on Saturday mornings.

We were captive once.
No,
not us,

Our desires
held against their wills.

you built that fire from the roots, and seemed astonished when it took to the branches.

We passed each other in airplanes
we met every night on trains in my dreams
You got married one night.

You insisted that to put out fires, you needed lightning.
Words, mostly.
So many words, but it turns out
you had been silent this whole time.

I guess in the end
it was the
Quiet that bothered you the most.

If you need a kick in the pants, here is Gavin of Zen Pencil's intepretation of Chris Guillebeau's philosophy. Illustration of 11 ways to be unremarkably average.

“Don’t pack a bag and fly away from home without a plan. Don’t go abroad until you have a project you want to work on, a skill you want to develop – anything more than just a list of countries you want to see.”

Last paragraph is key. As much of an influence as Tim Ferriss was with his book, most nomad lifestyle designers do not tell you that your traveling should be guided by a larger more important purpose that will add value to your life not as a goal itself.

- from here, "Should you quit your job to travel? Probaby not"

What I am to you is not real / What I am to you, you do not need / What I am to you is not what you mean to me / You give me miles and miles of mountains / And I'll ask for the sea...

(damien rice)

curiouser and curiouser



“Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.”
― Louise Glück




“The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those;
they govern me.”
― Louise Glück



“The unsaid, for me, exerts great power...”
― Louise Glück

my hair is so long now that i wash it hours before bed, and it stays wet through the night, and even through the next day. some day i will begin a more intimate relationship with my hair dryer, but until then...
-

Luisa Brimble writes here about Synonym Journal.
makes me continue my contemplations on simplifying, decluttering, focusing (re-focusing).

on Synonym Journal:
SYNONYM represents moving toward simplicity, intelligence, and living a life of intention; away from clutter and the expectation of constant content. 

This project was initiated out of a mixed frustration and perplexion with our own online habits and the general disposability that exists in the sharing and consumption of digital content. SYNONYM addresses an awareness of the internet's influences on our own work and inspiration; moving with curiosity toward a new way of connecting with others online; and treating this space as if we did not have an unlimited amount of it. 

This morning, I contemplate the active nature of being alone, that we consciously have to exercise our ability to be by ourselves. That it can become habit, even a small addiction, a luxury, to be without another.

I drove home to the sound of someone else's relationship. It's comforting to know that the ideals of love are still alive somewhere.

--

A new exhibit has begun at the Menil Collection. "The Progress of Love explores romantic love, self-love, friendship, familial affect, love of one’s country, and other bonds in and around [Africa]. Though the exhibition is weighted towards art produced specifically about love in Africa, works that might otherwise be considered more “Western” in orientation are included as well, calling attention to the global exchange through which such concepts develop, and to both the shared and distinct aspects of the experience of love."

--

A 16-people table at a 24-hour diner that reminded me of La Vie Boheme in Rent.

--

Restlessness brews restlessness.

“Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.” 
― Adrienne Rich

the problem with wanting to write about one's life but having a bad memory is that you know you have a lot of stories to write but you can't remember what they are.

“Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.” 
― Adrienne Rich

“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”
― Adrienne Rich

(for those who know of my past trouble with sleep)

“power comes from the same place as our wounds”

—	Adrienne Rich 1978, pp. 3

I previously posted an excerpt from this interview, here. He died a few days ago. 

Interview with Jack Gilbert

INTERVIEWER

Do you think it’s important for American writers to live abroad?

GILBERT

At least at some point—so you have something to compare to what you think is normal, and you encounter things you aren’t used to. One of the great dangers is familiarity.

INTERVIEWER

How did your foreign settings—those places—figure into your poems?

GILBERT

It’s more how those places resonate in me. Rather than writing a poem about those places, they create something I write about.


(...)

INTERVIEWER

Is that why your style is unadorned and not ornamental?

GILBERT

Oh, I like ornament at the right time, but I don’t want a poem to be made out of decoration. If you like that kind of poetry, more power to you, but it doesn’t interest me. When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart—in all its forms—is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren’t any good at being alive.

(...)

NTERVIEWER

It sounds like even in your San Francisco days you sustained a rather remote life away from others. Is solitude important for you?

GILBERT

I don’t know how to answer that because I’ve always lived a life with a lot of quiet in it—either alone or with someone I’m in love with.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think that being reclusive has preserved your career?

GILBERT

Certainly to the point that it gave me some control over my vanity and helped me keep a grip on what really matters.

INTERVIEWER

You expose a lot of yourself in your poetry. Are your poems taken directly from your life?

GILBERT

Yes, why would I invent them?

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever feel uncomfortable about naming the women you’ve been with in your poems?

GILBERT

No, I’m so proud—even the ones that didn’t work out, like Gianna.

INTERVIEWER

What was your life with Michiko like?

GILBERT

Pure. It was all the same piece of cloth—always gentle, always devilish. Always loving.

(...)

INTERVIEWER

When you write, do you read your poems out loud?

GILBERT

Sometimes. If my instincts register that something is wrong with the rhythm then I work on it, but it’s almost always unconscious.
The hard part for me is to find the poem—a poem that matters. To find what the poem knows that’s special. I may think of writing about the same thing that everyone does, but I really like to write a poem that hasn’t been written. And I don’t mean its shape. I want to experience or discover ways of feeling that are fresh. I love it when I have perceived something fresh about being human and being happy.
Ezra Pound said “make it new.” The great tragedy of that saying is he left out the essential word. It should be make it importantly new. So much of the time people are just aiming for novelty, surprise. I like to think that I’ve understood, that I’ve learned about something that matters—what the world should be, what life should be.

(...)

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel you have any flaw as a writer?

GILBERT

I can’t spell. I’m hopeless.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you ache for, And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, For your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or Have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own; If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you To the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, Be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.  I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can see beauty Even when it is not pretty every day, And if you can source your life from God’s presence.I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, And still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have, I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, Weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came here, I want to know if you will stand in the center of the Fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.  I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away,I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, And if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Canadian Storyteller

this is a little overdue but, i must say, when this year started, i was losing faith that each year was going to be better than the last. i have serious thanks that i give in my mind to all the serious things, and:

i'm thankful for the time i toppled over in yoga class because it means that i'm not complacent in my practice.  i'm thankful for best friends who endure my complaints about cold showers while traipsing across Costa Rica sans navigation system or map. i'm thankful for the dancing, for the sore feet and joints for that means we gorged on delicious tandas while we could. i'm thankful for the sweat that i also so abhor, which means i'm working hard and healthy. i'm thankful for guys who re-rack their weights in the weight room so that i can bench the measly bar. i'm thankful for the ocean in its various forms, both too treacherous to surf and too beautiful to breach. i'm thankful for getting muddy at dog parks. i'm thankful for losing weight, because it's the only good side effect of sadness. i'm thankful for gaining weight, because it means i am happy and have more than enough to eat. i'm thankful for football season, because it means i have a good excuse to eat jalapeno chips and nachos.i'm thankful for butter biscuits from Specs, and also Crown from Specs. i'm thankful for hip hop music and line dances, i'm thankful for the electric slide and the wobble. i'm thankful for soy substitutes. i'm thankful for the ability to pursue my dreams. i'm thankful for the existential crises because it means that i've reached a point where many of my goals have been reached and i simply need to reach further. i'm thankful for the long nights that give way to growing up and learning more. i'm thankful for having the luxury of doing nothing and anything. i'm thankful for my Christmas gift last year, a Kindle, because even though i thought i'd never succumb to e-Readers, the Kindle has single-handedly helped me find my way back to reading. i'm thankful for reconnection. i'm thankful for having things i feel passionate about. i'm thankful for being able to finally eat meals on my own, and having enjoyed it so much that i even look for reasons and times to eat alone. i'm thankful for dark knights. i'm thankful for being able to fall asleep. i'm thankful for the nightmares that make waking up to real life seem like a fairy tale.

Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think
Frank O’Hara

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stretching to the humbled outskirts with only you
                  standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves’ soft blue look at the hills with silver
                  like glasses like and old ladies hair
it’s well known that God and I don’t get along together
it’s just a view of the brass works for me, I don’t care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together.

Adrienne Rich, from an interview with Bill Moyers:



MOYERS: Then you go on to say, "I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language/guessing at some words while others keep you reading. .." Something like this happens to me when I read a poem: One minute I'm puzzling over some word or image, but the next line carries me forward beyond my misunderstanding into another realm of discovery.
RICH : Yes, and I had in mind an even more literal case as well--someone reading a poem in American English the way I would read a poem in Spanish or French or some other language that I know slightly, or used to know better, but of which I have forgotten a lot of the vocabulary, guessing at some words, yet struggling, and carried on by something in that poem. But what is that? And why do I want to know what it is? I want to know because whatever it is in my poem that keeps you reading is some kind of bond or filament between us, something that I've been able to put there that speaks even to this other person, whose language this is not.

MOYERS : How important is your audience when you are actually writing the poem? Do you picture the audience?
RICH : I write for whoever might read. I recently saw a very interesting distinction made by the African Canadian writer Marlene Nourbese Philip. She speaks of the difference between community, audience, and market. I believe that I write for a community. Obviously, I write for a community of other poets, people whom I know, people with whom I have already connected in some way, but I also write for whoever will constitute a new and expanded community audience.


MOYERS: So you did have the audience in mind, even though you couldn't picture the particular reader or listener?
RICH : I made up some readers and listeners, but I also remembered and recognized actual people, as a fiction writer might, in that section and throughout the poem. The poem is full of voices: they're not all my voice, they're not all women's voices, some of them are men's voices, but, yes, I certainly had an audience in mind. The distinction between community, audience, and market is a really important distinction for an artist of any kind. There is a community of those whose work and whose lives you respect and love and cherish, a community that gives you the strength to create, to push boundaries, to take risks, a community that perhaps challenges you to do all that.
There is an audience of those unknown to you but whom your words are going to reach. You can't know them in advance, but you can hope for them, desire them. Market, on the other hand, is all about packaging and buying and selling, and the corresponding group would be the consumer. I don't want my poetry to be consumed in that sense. I do want it to be used.

it seemed normal, even likely at the time. this hope.

(petals falling though it wasn't windy,
sunny though it wasn't warm,
pollen though i couldn't smell it,
sky though we couldn't reach it,
light though it wasn't blinding,
tree though it was more flower,
powerlines though barely showing,

spring, though this hope was not really of any season)

new york city

(original post on flickr)

i could have written this from my history. my history could have written this.

Kept Burning and Distant by Linda Gregg

You return when you feel like it,
like rain.  And like rain you are tender,
with the rain’s inept tenderness.
A passion so general I could be anywhere.
You carry me out into the wet air.
You lay me down on the leaves
and the strong thing is not the sex
but waking up alone under the trees after.

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is:
Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.
Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.

-Tom Robbins, from Still Life With Woodpecker


(Thank you, Eddie)

Looking for meaning in or cause of my plateau:

In geology and earth science, a plateau ( /pləˈtoʊ/ or /ˈplætoʊ/; plural plateaus or rarely plateaux), also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain.

Plateaus can be formed by a number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma, extrusion of lava, and erosion by water and glaciers. Magma rises from the mantle causing the ground to swell upward, in this way large, flat areas of rock are uplifted. Plateaus can also be built up by lava spreading outward from cracks and weak areas in the crust. Plateaus can also be formed by the erosional processes of glaciers on mountain ranges, leaving them sitting between the mountain ranges. Water can also erode mountains and other landforms down into plateaus.

In my experience, the people who become writers are the ones who keep writing through the yards of silence and the years of discouragement… Allow yourself to be uncertain, but don’t let your uncertainty turn to despair. It can be wonderful to write when you’re sad and full of the dark bouquet of doubt, but misery leads itself to silence and one must get out of bed every morning and prepare for the great celebration of one’s own imagination, even if it doesn't happen that day.

- Dean Young

In case you didn't know, you can read Jack Gilbert for free.

Jack Gilbert:

My heart was shaped by stories, by pictures, by songs. I believe we are made by art, art that matters. Not what’s ingenious, clever, or hard to do. Not a mystery puzzle. I think if a poem doesn’t put pressure on me, I don’t feel uncomfortable in the sense of feeling more than I can feel, understanding more than I can understand, loving more than I am able to be in love. It enables me to do those things. If you try to copy an image and everything goes right, you may feel like more of a person afterwards. But I think that work of art is probably a failure. It’s nice to put a novel on paper, a painting over the couch. But I don’t want it unless it’s significant, unless it has something to do with me. If it’s just clever or entertaining or surprising, it’s a waste of time for me. I enjoy it. I do it. I read the novel, you know, the simple story line behind a mystery of who killed the cat. That’s entertaining, but that’s not what I think poetry is about. I think it’s something about putting pressure on me. If it doesn’t put pressure on the reader, what’s it for.

After all this time, my body finally fell victim to its travels. I lost track of time lying in bed trying to feel better.


“Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played”

We are not one with this world. We are not
the complexity our body is, nor the summer air
idling in the big maple without purpose.
We are a shape the wind makes in these leaves

as it passes through. We are not the wood
any more than the fire, but the heat which is a marriage
between the two. We are certainly not the lake
nor the fish in it, but the something that is
pleased by them. We are the stillness when
a mighty Mediterranean noon subtracts even the voices of
insects by the broken farmhouse. We are evident
when the orchestra plays, and yet are not part
of the strings or brass. Like the song that exists
only in the singing, and is not the singer.
God does not live among the church bells
but is briefly resident there. We are occasional
like that. A lifetime of easy happiness mixed
with pain and loss, trying always to name and hold
on to the enterprise under way in our chest.
Reality is not what we marry as a feeling. It is what
walks up the dirt path, through the excessive heat
and giant sky, the sea stretching away.
He continues past the nunnery to the old villa
where he will sit on the terrace with her, their sides
touching. In the quiet that is the music of that place,
which is the difference between silence and windlessness.

- Jack Gilbert, Rest In Peace. 

I feel like my existential crises lead to one of two things:
1) Unmotivated paralysis
2) Frenzied, passionate hunt for purpose

Sometimes a mix of the two (which seems impossible and ends up in a lot of confusion).

I read about Richard Kozi Hernandez and I am galvanized by his responses and his approach to mobile photography. (Also, by the quotes paired with his photos).


"I would describe my process for making street images as purposefully aimless. My photographs are a simple by-product of my normal life.  I don’t go out of my way to make images. Unless I spot a man in a fedora, then I’ll go out of my way. Don’t ask me why I love to take pictures of hats, I’m working that out with my therapist at the moment. [Insert chuckle here.]

My images are artifacts of my daily life. For me the hunt is always on. Picking my daughter up from school, a trip to the market or on my way to a meeting, it’s open season.

I’m a very reactionary image-maker. When my head and heart scream shoot, I shoot. Photography, for me, is about honoring the impulse to make an image, no matter what.

The “no matter what” wasn’t always an easy thing to act upon. Years ago, my head and heart would scream shoot, but another voice in me would yell back: “The light is bad. The composition isn’t perfect. The subject is too far away. What a silly picture, why would you make a photo of that?” It’s taken years, but I’ve honed my skill to shoot on impulse. This means having a camera in hand and ready at all times. For me, there is no better tool than my mobile phone.

Shoot. YES. YES. YES. Shoot. Shoot. YES."


Here are the quotes from the captions under the fantastic photographs:


"Our bodies are our gardens. Our wills are our gardeners." -- William Shakespeare

"Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface." -- Hugo von Hofmannsthal

"Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change -- this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress." -- Bruce Barton

"I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path." -- Dalai Lama

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." -- Joseph Campbell

"To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful." -- Agnes De Mille

"We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it." -- Lauryn Hill

"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people." -- Albert Einstein

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." -- Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, "Annie" writers

"It was a woman who drove me to drink. Come to think of it, I never did hang around to thank her for that. 'Hey lady! Do I look all blurry to you? 'Cause you look blurry to me!' " -- Dean Martin

"I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, love, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy." -- Anais Nin

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." -- Henry David Thoreau

"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll." -- Donald Miller

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." -- Gertrude Stein

"Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again." -- Bikram Choudhury

"...Self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I'll be back." -- Steven Pressfield

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -- Steve Jobs

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery." -- James Joyce

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." -- Buddha

“Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay.”–Sallust

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.”–Danny Kaye

“Constant repetition carries conviction.”–Robert Collier

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I sat down at my desk with a cup of hot green tea and read this excerpt from Ana Forrest's "Fierce Medicine".

"Size has nothing to do with standing up to someone. I began to grow my power."

"I’d believed that in order to do what I was afraid of, I had to get rid of the fear first, but that turned out to be only an idea, not the truth. You have to do something two hundred times before the fear will disperse. Are you still afraid of something? Just do it again. Do it again. Do it again."

I have practiced Forrest Yoga sporadically throughout my yoga explorations. My favorite yoga classes have been the ones in which instructors lead me to new territories of not only body, but of mind and life. Contrary to what it may seem (since I always seem eager to rearrange my schedule so that I can attend yoga classes), yoga has always been torturous for me. I am still terrified and nervous whenever I step into the yoga studio. I still feel like I might pass out every time I'm twisted into an asana with some creative name. It feels miraculous when I finally reach savasana, an ironed-out, satisfied heap on the ground. I don't think it's cliche to say that every single class is a facing of my fears. I have written briefly about my running journey, and though I've run half marathons, I still feel like I must prepare myself like a warrior whenever I stand at mile 0, even if it is only to conquer a 2 mile jog.

I am also reading Cheryl Strayed's "Wild", and I do believe that the physical journey combines so closely and intensely with the spiritual. I think about how impossible it seems that my past is littered with journeys up mountains and across glaciers and tiger leaping gorges. I think about how I arrived here, and how the days are steps up to a destination, and that there will be days where I feel like I can't take another.fucking.step, but when we arrive in a clearing at sunset, when we break bread with strangers or old friends, when we stop and make camp at points throughout the hike, isn't this what they meant when they emphasized the journey? We all seem to arrive at existential crises, but I remind myself that this path is our purpose.

Whenever I see him, Loren says, "do you know (insert poet's name)?" 

I always tuck the names of the poets into my pocket and research later.

Today it was Linda Gregg. 

From "The Art of Finding"

I believe that poetry at its best is found rather than written. Traditionally, and for many people even today, poems have been admired chiefly for their craftsmanship and musicality, the handsomeness of language and the abundance of similes, along with the patterning and rhymes. I respect and enjoy all that, but I would not have worked so hard and so long at my poetry if it were primarily the production of well-made objects, just as I would not have sacrificed so much for love if love were mostly about pleasure. What matters to me even more than the shapeliness and the dance of language is what the poem discovers deeper down than gracefulness and pleasures in figures of speech. I respond most to what is found out about the heart and spirit, what we can hear through the language. Best of all, of course, is when the language and other means of poetry combine with the meaning to make us experience what we understand. We are most likely to find this union by starting with the insides of the poem rather than with its surface, with the content rather than with the packaging. Too often in workshops and classrooms there is a concentration on the poem's garments instead of its life's blood.

Notes:

Love is not an agreement, nor a contract. It has no timelines.
Perhaps we can try to force terms upon a relationship- but love will not be forced.
It is as stubborn as the stubbornness you throw at it, and as yielding as what you give it.

“Traveler, there is no path.  The path is made by walking it.”  - Antonio Machado

of what is the body made? it’s made of emptiness and rhythm. at the ultimate heart of the world, there is no solidity. once again, there is only the dance.
george leonard

“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about them.”
- Lisa Kleypas

“Our lives and our choices, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Yesterday my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Fear, belief, love, phenomena that determined the course of our lives. These forces begin long before we are born and continue long after we perish. Yesterday, I believe I would have never have done what I did today. I feel like something important has happened to me. Is this possible?”

“Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so."

- Cloud Atlas, from the movie

late night movie

cloud atlas, from the book:

“She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.” 

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” 

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” 

“All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.” 

“. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zone

d days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.”

“Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.”

“History admits no rules; only outcomes.”

“…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace.
He said it. ‘The ocean.”

“If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe diverse races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.”

“Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”

“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”

“Whoever opined, "Money can't buy you happiness," obviously had too much of the stuff.”

“We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”

    I’m embarrassed to remember
                        the time before I grew
                        uncertain about you,
                        and that I had a right to say
                        where I had been
                        and what I saw there.

- Eliza Griswold

Wisdom Teeth (Eliza Griswold)

We're too young for this discourse of ex's—
        ex-habits and yearnings for why
nothing fits as it did in our dreams,
        neither horrific nor wonderful.

How could we dream this life
        and yet we have; its marble stairs
with tongue-colored veins; its panes
        of lead glass and French doors

opening onto nowhere in particular
        and everywhere that matters.
Somewhere over the blue lawn
        (beneath which, a congress

of woodchucks maps out next season's
        excavations), something calls us
to the best of ourselves. Settle for less,
        and the terrace returns, stung

with the scent of night-blooming cereus
        or gas leaking from the main
under the lawn. The first dream I remember
        is everyone's: falling

into a gorge's glossy black water,
        thicker with life
than the air—never, of course,
        landing there, but falling

the way they say is simply falling asleep.
        The dreams we keep to ourselves
become who we are. Keep everything
        under your tongue and don't

come home. Go far and farther still.
        We'll meet in dreams as we do now.
I'll be waiting for you on the windowsill
        we already knew we knew.

“There’s something beautiful about keeping certain aspects of your life hidden. Maybe people and clouds are beautiful because you can’t see everything.”

- Kamenashi Kazuya (thank you Addie)

i started another project to document my meandering. (when will a project be about stability? i'm not sure).

 at times i stop taking my camera with me because sometimes it is too cumbersome. when documentation gets in the way of adventure, a photographer stands at the edge of crisis.

fortunately, some tools have made it easier to capture the mundane spectacularity of travel. a Facebook acquaintance recently challenged the idea of photographing sunsets and things that surround us daily, "because they are so common." i fiercely disagree. 

sky above me
earth below me
fire within me

This weekend I took a Vinyasa Flow class and we downward dogg-ed to Empire State of Mind. Now that's what I call a pumped up yoga class.

People make fun of me because I don't carry Louis Vuitton or Coach or any designer leather handbags to work. I carry handmade canvas bags to work. Most of the time, people in the corporate world assess how I dress and the accessories I carry and assume that I'm an art-loving bohemian hippie, and I think I am okay with that assessment. I'm also okay with blowing their expectations out of the water when I open my mouth to speak about technology and business and streamlining work processes.

The handmade bags that I carry are made by Moop, which is a small business run by a lovely woman named Wendy. She started making these incredibly sturdy and useful bags, and I fell in love. I own more Moop bags than I care to admit. The only ones I've had to replace are the ones I have lost. I tell all my friends about Moop.

Today, Wendy wrote a post about her "breakup" with AdWords. It describes everything I feel about doing business and living life. And how the whirlwind pace of online technology can affect all of that, if you're not careful. 

I did not start Moop to master the art of SEO.  Someone else can take that on as their life's passion.  For me, I'll take everything listed prior to that.  The truth is, somewhere along the line, I lost sight of the most important things that make me love the business I have built.  At the very core, I am interested in relationships.  I value more than anything the relationships I have with everyone around me.

Thanks, Wendy, for reminding us of what matters.

I used to be very confused about my objective for blogging. Did I want to increase my pageviews? Did I want to encourage people to comment? Did I want to ask people to link to my blog?

In the end, I realized that what I cared about for this space here was freedom. Freedom to be myself, freedom to be thoughtful, freedom to take notes on the things I find important in life. I didn't want to erect any boundaries around the writing I did in this particular forum. Later down the line, I found avenues for other trains of thought. The mediums to express yourself now seem endless, and I think it is worth it to look back and start revisiting how each medium helps you realize your goals and dreams. I think it's okay to reinvent yourself. I think it's okay to express different sides of your personality in the places you've set aside for that expression. And, like Wendy, I think most of all, I am interested in keeping sight of the most important things that make me love doing the things I have created. I am interested in the relationships that are borne from that love.

To this day, I don't talk much about my writing here. I don't advertise it, because that's not the point for this particular blog. The reason why I feel like I can exercise my freedom here daily is because this is my sanctuary. Once I went back to find that sentiment that I had lost along the way (when I started counting pageviews or simultaneously hoping and fearing an increase of readership), I felt free.  

I've been thinking a lot about photography. And lack thereof. I recently attended my friend Sam's annual studio opening, and I felt this emptiness about how I don't find time to shoot anymore.


Traci posted this today:


(On Value Not Yet Given)

Picking up a camera is hard.

(I'm saying a camera because it's what I use more often, but I could write pen, paintbrush, woodblock and chisel, etc.)

It takes time. It takes confidence (or blissful ignorance). It takes a suspension of disbelief.
Mostly, it takes practice.

Composing an arbitrary frame onto reality (often, within half a second), seeing or falsifying the light, knowing your camera well enough to make or procure settings, not forgetting processing, printing and much more -- these are decision that make photography a process.

Forcing yourself to pick up the camera: taking it with you on a walk, taking it with you to university, taking it with you to share breakfast with friends, taking it with you to the zoo, taking it with you while you sit on the couch with your sister and read a magazine: this is the process.

But the editing. The Choosing which image. The seeing your photograph less with the eyes and more with the self.
This is the genius of photography. This is what makes it, for me, art.

You shoot a roll of photos, but how do you decide which one rises, which one you share or tuck away so as keep it solely yours?
What gives value to a particular image?

This is the art of photography (and of all other disciplines, I think).

How do I decide an image of mine -- shot off the cuff and in between a bunch of crappy frames -- has value?


I shot my first roll of film when I was eighteen. Which means that next year I will have had the knowledge (if not always the machinery, money, interest, etc.) to make film photographs for half my life.

Looking back, my sense of image-value has been a clear trajectory connected to what other art I engaged.
You make a photo and give it value. I see it and, in turn, give my own similar work value.
This is how artistic themes develop.

I remember the first time I fell in love with a photograph of a tree shot (I think) in a hand-held long exposure.
I still make photographs that are in dialogue with this very first image.

The explosion of multiple exposures over the last couple of years (including by me) is an example of this.
We're now following a trend that someone somewhere learned how to do with a new effectiveness, and they were willing to share.

What awes me are those who seemingly develop an aesthetic that doesn't obviously relate to anyone else's.
Maybe I'm overlooking their overlap. Probably.

When I downplay what I'm making -- more so, what I'm capable of making -- it's because I'm aware of how deeply my work is engaged with the other work surrounding it.

I'm honest about this; that perhaps gives me a slight advantage. (Not to say that I'm aware of all of my influences or how they change me.) But I do know that, no matter how I connect the work to my own psychology and decision-making, the value has been instigated outside me.

Therefore, I never claim ownership.

I can only say, picking up a camera is hard, knowing how your camera works and pushing its limits is hard, sharing and exposing what you've made that you've given value is hard.

These must be enough, temporarily.

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.

We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Today, K sent this to me:

"First thought: you." was the message accompanying the photograph.

10 Reasons You're Not Getting Results In The Gym
Hardcore fitness trainer Pauline Nordin shares her list to help maximize your training efforts.

Not getting the results you'd like despite regular training and a pretty clean diet? Chances are you haven't maxed out, but just need to make a few alterations to how you train and eat. That being said, here are Pauline's top 10 reasons you may have plateaued with your results.

#1: You're using the same weights now as you did a month ago.

#2: You forget to take notes on how many reps you do so you actually just go in and do the exact same reps with the same weights every time. Your body is laughing at you.

#3: You may be eating "pretty" clean, but that's not good enough. Especially if you're sneaking junk food in every now and then. Conclusion: You're not eating strict enough.

#4: You're training at comfort level. Weight training shouldn't be done while your mind is drifting away to paradise. If you don't feel like you're in hell on most reps, you're not doing it hard enough.

#5: You're disco training, trying to isolate and tone muscles you don't even have!

#6: You forgot muscle training is not a software you can skip step 1-10 and then start working on it. You need the basics and you need to go through all the stages of muscle development. There's no fast lane. And if you do choose the fast lane you will see it all fall like a sand castle sooner or later.

#7: You're choosing foods that keep you fat if you're fat and skinny if you're skinny. Eat for your goals, not for what you wish was the food for your goal.

#8: You live off protein shakes because you think protein is what builds muscle. You end up using protein to turn it into glucose. And then there goes your energy.

#9: You emphasize recovery a little too much which means your legs get hit once every two weeks. Since leg training is exhausting it muscles up your whole body unless you curl and extend only, so you miss out on the muscle growth from skipping.

#10: You never change the order you do your exercises.

My friend S. sent this to me in an email:

you may or may not have heard about marina keegan already. but you will love this, i think. don't read the italicized part at the beginning until after you've read the story. 

i recommend reading it while curled up in bed with your computer or iphone.

it really will be better if you skip the italicized editorial note and go straight into the story first. trust me.

The story he sent me is here.

Late night and rain wakes me, a downpour,

wind thrashing in the leaves, huge

ears, huge feathers,

like some chased animal, a giant

dog or wild boar. Thunder & shivering

windows; from the tin roof

the rush of water.

I lie askew under the net,

tangled in damp cloth, salt in my hair.

When this clears there will be fireflies

& stars, brighter than anywhere,

which I could contemplate at times

of panic. Lightyears, think of it.

Screw poetry, it’s you I want,

your taste, rain

on you, mouth on your skin.

Late Night, by Margaret Atwood

the NYC ballet

funny when someone is no longer in your life but they continue to revisit you in your dreams. feels like their absence is no longer so real.

The stars in Pennsylvania were bright against the midnight sky. They seem to be saying goodbye, too.

Love
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks, the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.

Pablo Neruda

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”

― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

oh YES!

NPR's story on The Healing Power of Blues Dancing:

LAURA SULLIVAN, host: We're going to take a turn now on the dance floor.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU")

SULLIVAN: There's a style called blues dancing. It's a kind of marriage between European and African-American styles, born in the Jim Crow South.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU")

SULLIVAN: They say that dancing to the blues is like falling in love. That's what attracted reporter Lindsey Lee Keel. Here's what she found.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU")

NINA SIMONE: (Singing) I put a spell on you.

LINDSEY LEE KEEL: You hear that? It's Nina Simone. And this is the blues.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU")

SIMONE: (Singing) 'Cause you're mine. Du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du...

KEEL: It's Monday night in San Francisco's Mission District, and I've just arrived at the Polish Club. It's not a bar. It's a community center that tonight, and every Monday night, attracts a crowd of devout blues dancers.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: The room is warm, the windows have begun to fog, the lighting is dim. Couples are close, dancing slowly, arms around necks, heads on shoulders, foreheads pressed together.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Hips pulsate at the beat. Partners spin out for a moment of space between them, and then they move together again like molecules that can't resist each other.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Though it might look like it, these dancers are not in love with each other. Some may not even know the name of the person they're dancing with. But everyone is here for that connection, for that feeling.

CAT HUGHES: It's falling in love, that's what it is. It's crazy.

KEEL: This is Cat Hughes. She's been a blues dancer for three years.

HUGHES: Every dance is like a love affair. You're falling in love for three minutes with the music, with your partner, with your connection. And it can be dangerous because you're falling in love like, a million times a night, and it can really screw with your emotions. But it can also be amazing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Dancing this way takes some getting used to. Back when she was first starting, blues dancer Krystal Wanberg remembers telling a prominent dancer in the scene how nervous she was.

KRYSTAL WANBERG: And he was like, OK, just play along with me. Pretend that I am your one, true love. And I kind of gave him this weird look. He's like, wait, wait, wait. I am your one, true love, and I have been called off to war, and I'm leaving tomorrow. You may never see me again. He's like, dance with me like that. I was just like, ah.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KEEL: Wanberg was hesitant, but then she gave in.

WANBERG: And then we danced, and it was just the most incredibly connected dance. I was completely, completely done. Like, I was a blues dancer after that. It was done.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Many dancers talk about before blues and after blues. Vhary Leggat started dancing almost two years ago. She says before blues, she had a drinking problem. She struggled with a negative body image. She sometimes felt suicidal. But after blues...

VHARY LEGGAT: I have become more connected to my body. You can't go to a dance and say, I don't want to be reminded that my body exists - because that's what dancing is. And so that's extremely important for me because I had never before found a situation where I wanted that to be true.

KEEL: For Leggat, blues dancing is about transformation.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LEGGAT: My release from fear and sadness started with getting sober, and ended with learning to dance.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LEGGAT: Because of those two things, I am awake, and I am healing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Blues music was once called the devil's music.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: But for so many, blues has saved them.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: Though the Polish Club may not have a neon sign that says Blues Saves - shining like a guiding light for the wayward - and you won't see dancers at your door holding pamphlets, for Hughes, Wanberg and Leggat, the road to a better life began at the Church of Blues.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEL: For NPR News, I'm Lindsey Lee Keel.