heir to all

What I spill in a dream
runs under my door,
ahead of my arrival
and the year's wide round,

to meet me in the color of hills
at dawn, or else collected
in a flower's name
I trace with my finger
in a book. Proving

only this: Listening is the ground
below my sleep,
where decision is born, and

whoever's heard the title
autumn knows him by
is heir to all those
unfurnished rooms inside the roses.

From Book of My Nights, by Li-Young Lee

creeeak

Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, do you ever get obsessed with these delusions? Not to boast or anything, but I do. All the time. Sometimes, when they're really bad, I'll spend the whole workday wrapped up in a cloud of delusion. Of course, I'm just performing these simple operations, so it doesn't get in the way of my work, but the other girls sometimes give me strange looks. Or maybe I say crazy things to myself out loud. I hate that, but it doesn't do any good to try and fight it. When a delusion wants to come, it comes, like a period. And you can't just meet it at the front door and say, "Sorry, I'm busy today, try me later."

...

Please don't worry about me. I'm good at doing all kinds of things even when I'm in the middle of a delusion.

From The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

farewell final

One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing

You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky

From George Gershwin's lullaby Summertime

Photo by George Caddy from his 1930's series Beachobatics, via L Plater's flickr

a hui hou

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."
- Jack Kerouac

impermanence

The Zen principles of Aesthetics are derived from the Buddhism beliefs of Anicca or Impermanence where “everything, without exception, is constantly in flux, even planets, stars and gods”. (Wikipedia)

The Japanese design principles:

Fukinsei (imbalanced)
Asymmetry, odd numbers, irregularity, unevenness, imbalance is used as a denial of perfection as perfection and symmetry does not occur in nature.

Kanso (simple)
Elimination of ornate and things of simplicity by nature expresses their truthfulness. Neat, frank and uncomplicated.

Kokou (austere)
Basic, weathered bare essentials that are aged and unsensuous. Evokes sternness, forbiddance, maturity and weight.

Shizen (natural)
Raw, natural and unforced creativity without pretence. True naturalness is to negate the naive and accidental.

Yugen (subtle profound)
Suggest and not reveal layers of meaning hidden within. Invisible to the casual eye and avoiding the obvious.

Datsuzoku (unworldly)
Transcendence of conventional and traditional. Free from the bondage of laws and restrictions. True creativity.

Seijaku (calm)
Silence and tranquility, blissful solitude. Absence of disturbance and noise from one’s mind, body and surroundings.

via swissmiss, originally Thinking aloud, source: Aen Tan
(pretty much too good not to repost)

wishicouldbewild

"It's gonna be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen."
"We can totally build a place like that!"
- Where the Wild Things Are


"Where do you want to go?"
"Anywhere that is wild."
- John Muir

If you really knew how much you were loved, you would never cry again. A sublime relaxation would flood your nervous system, freeing you to see the beautiful secrets that your chronic fear has hidden from you. If you knew how much the world longs for your genius to bloom, the peace that filled you would ensure you could not fail. You'd face every trial with eager equanimity. You would always know exactly what to do because your intuition would tell you in a myriad of subtle ways.

my horoscope in the Honolulu Weekly by Rob Brezsny

my eyes traced the immense vault of heaven; the starry sky twinkled happily above me, as if answering in the affirmative to the question rising deep within me: "is all of this worth it?"

ernesto 'che' guevara, the motorcycle diaries

Johnson has advised clients to focus on quality rather than quantity. Malls redecorated in screaming red "sale" signs are not the way to go, she said, because "if you just give people the opportunity to buy more, you're not matching up to where their minds are." - One U.S. recession casualty: Conspicuous consumption, IHT

takahiro miyashita

But why did the invitation feature a great big ice-cream sundae?
"Ask my brain," whispered the designer. "I don't know."

-Tim Blanks on Number (N)ine Fall 2009

so hot

Smoking hot Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin directed short film for Yves Saint Laurent

Choice words from this film:

I want to hear the sound of six zippers…
whispering on your unbuttoned crepe shirt
So I find your functional part
In these trousers draping your roaming thigh…
hinting at the slimness of your legs
And despite the criss-crossing of these pure lines
You spread your thighs for me so I can touch

I want to be in the rolled-up arms of your sweater…
On your forearms, sleeves above the elbows
It clings yet floats in wool muslin
on your light grey trousers with their pure line

It blends practical with pleasant then cinches in
To the same belt again, barely disguised
Cross and uncross, tension of release
…You take pleasure from me and I delight

And it's totally safe to watch in public because the frame always stays on his face and it's spoken in French.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I'll see it
when
I believe it

The Wittle Things

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-Henry David Thoreau

This Real Simple Daily Thought was in my inbox when I got back from my relaxing two hour walk this morning.

Whenever I'm walking I always find pleasure in the randomest things. For instance, there's a stream that I pass over and last week there was an overturned grocery cart in it that I thought looked really beautiful. Today, I made sure to walk by it again to see if it was still there, and much to my delight, there were two! TWO!! That made me smile even more.

Yeah, I'm a little different. Or as my best friend's new guy said, "She has a lot of personality." I think what he really meant was, "She is fucking weird."

Insert Your Superhero Name Here

We say "secret identity," and adopt a series of cloaking strategies to preserve it; but what we are actually trying to conceal is a narrative; not who we are, but the story of how we got that way - and by implication, of all that we lacked, and all that we were not, before the spider bit us. And yet at the same time, as I have suggested, our costume conceals nothing, reveals everything: it is our secret skin, exposed and exposing us for all the world to see. Superheroism is a kind of transvestism; our superdrag serves at once to obscure the exterior self that no longer defines us while betraying with half-unconscious panache, the truth of the story we carry in our hearts, the story of our transformation, of our story's recommencement, of our rebirth into the world of adventure, of the story itself.

-excerpt from Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy