Four Simple Words
Because I want to dance.
(And, also, just in case that you didn’t know: Frank Turner is awesome.)
bloodteethandflame
A life in threes
March 13, 2014
Adventure Time!
Ah, what a week it has been.
*sigh*
So. I was negotiating another avoidance maneuver, er…reading one of my kid’s comic books, and I came across this particular piece of brickwork from a dodgy character named Randall:
“Hey, while I was in the trash I had some time to think, and I think that I learnt something! Like — a moral? I think that I was wrong to try to find cheats ALL the time. Maybe the best things are those that take the most work, you know? Maybe how you get somewhere can be at least as important as where you’re going.”
Just call me Randall today.
March 5, 2014
The latest words that the Internet has offered me taste strange, but not unfamiliar.
Some days, I don’t have to look very far into the Internet, before I find a sneaky ton of bricks.
First, there’s these:
By our nature we are drawn to relationships because of the sweetness we actually crave to experience. But that is just what draws us in. Just as fruit draws us in to forward its own procreation, relationships draw us in by their own sweetness, so that we will come to the pit, experience breakdowns, discover ourselves and be forced to evolve, just as nature does.
Breakdowns are designed to happen. They are meant to happen for the purposes of our own evolution.
Garrison Cohen
How strange it is that a few days ago, I was talking with a friend, and I suddenly found myself unpacking emotions attached to an event that occurred in my past that I’d never allowed myself to feel, because the event was a source of anger and shame.
Sufficed to say, that unpacking led me to a realization that I did not like about a situation with which I am presently struggling. I’d like to say that now that I know of it, I’m not going to hide from it, but then again, I’m pretty stubborn.
Childish, even.
I do not want.
I will not go.
I refuse to move.
I did not move.
I don’t want to see.
I don’t want to know.
I am afraid.
I can’t, I said aloud, to Him, later that evening. It feels impossible.
And so, not too much later, I was surfing the web, avoiding my husband, and vacillating between tears and anger…
And I see:
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration, it’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
Muhammed Ali
~~~~
I don’t feel better.
March 5, 2014
FCK the editor. FCK
Evidently, Opendiary, a blogging website that had been around since 1998, is now gone.
This is significant in that I blogged there for over 10 years, and it would seem that any attempts that were made at backing up any of the diaries that were hosted there have malfunctioned.
All diaries have been deleted.
This is upsetting to a lot of folks. A lot of diarists never backed up their diaries, unfortunately.
Mostly because backup attempts – the ever malfunctioning FCK editor/function backup – was easily corrupted. And even if one had followed the prescribed and laborious set of steps that the FCK function required, there wasn’t any guarantee that the backup itself wouldn’t be corrupted. FCK didn’t play very well with a lot of system platforms, or text programs.
One thing that Opendiary was infamous for was that the site was in a continual state of being ‘down.’ This was so often the case that there were several forums whose main function seemed to be to notify users as to whether or not OD (as it was called) was actually up and functioning on any given day.
And that went on for years.
I stopped blogging there in 2011, and came to WordPress.
While it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Opendiary was bound to die at some point…it still sucks to think that one of the first blogging sites of its kind could just disappear off the face of the Internet, rather than evolve with the Internet.
Why was Bruce Ableson (Able son, eh? How’s that for irony?) so *unable* to adapt to the changing face of Internet blogging?
According to Wikipedia, in 2008, there were 561,000 active users whose blogs were being hosted on the OpenDiary site.
Over a half million users on a website. That is mind-boggling when you consider that the site was already 10 years old back then, and Mr. Ableson still hadn’t figured out how to keep his users happy.
He never did. He never could.
One wonders why.
Maybe that’s why he gave up on February 7th, 2014, at 12:01 PM, and commenced to delete everything off the servers.
~~~~~
Still, it is disappointing to consider that 10 years’ worth of writing that was being stored there is just …gone… now.
~~~~~~
And it would be even more ironic to think of him coming over to WordPress, or Weebly, or even LiveJournal (oh, there’s another dying blogging site), to brag about how he did The Web Log Thing first, and yet, managed it all so poorly.
The man didn’t know what the hell he was doing, even though he was one of the first to do it.
You know what that is?
It’s a FCKing shame, that’s what it is.
February 19, 2014
I’m gonna send ya back to schoolin’
(Note: Because this is copyrighted material, it was difficult to find a quality video that hadn’t been muted by the copyright holders, much less a version that contains that delicious low chuckle that opens this song — which has always been my favorite part of this song.
But, if you listen really closely, you can hear a bit of it on this one.)
❤
February 17, 2014
I believe in Pandoramancy
~~~
I know that this might not be a song about love; maybe it’s a song about hope, or perhaps regret.
The chorus is what struck me, however:
I belong with you, you belong with me
you’re my sweetheart
I belong with you, you belong with me
you’re my sweet
~~~
I’ll take that.
February 17, 2014
Quote Round-up.
I write pretty much every day, so when I was going through my notebooks the other day, I found a lot of quotes in the margins.
(Most of these seem to be unattributed, so please let me know if you know the source. Thanks.)
“Most rarely align with their true power, because it seems so illogical to them that there is power in relaxation, in letting go, or in love or joy, or bliss. Most people do not understand that their true power lies in releasing resistance – which is the only obstacle to their true power.
We want you to breathe, rather than try, to relax rather than to offer effort, to smile rather than struggle, to be, rather than to do.”
~~~~
They’ll take you places you didn’t want to go,
and see things you never wanted to see,
but be not afraid,
for they are there with you,
for everything.
(from here)
~~~~
“I love you…because you are the light that others can see.”
~~~~~~
We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Anais Nin.
January 28, 2014
Realization.
First, this conversation, from Sunday:
Me: Well, all of that [redacted] was pretty intense.
L: So, what have you learned?
Me: Um…there’s not any particular thing that I can recall exactly.
L: Great!
~~~
This past weekend contained a sneaky ton of bricks.
It has occurred to me that I have been holding in some of my feelings (again!) in effort to maintain my composure, in an attempt to ‘prove’ to myself that I do not need to pay attention to some particular feelings that I’ve been feeling, as of late.
Cryptic post is cryptic.
~~~
But now, there’s these new hazy thoughts, which make me grin, and lose my train of thought.
January 22, 2014
A secret life, daydreaming vs. experience, and a way of seeing.
“To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed and to feel: that is the purpose of life.” – Life Magazine’s motto, in the 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
***Possible spoilers ahead, so please do not read if you intend to see this film!***
~~~~
On Monday afternoon, my kid and I went to see Ben Stiller’s remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
I have always loved James Thurber’s short story of the same name.
Honestly, I did not expect Stiller’s remake to stick to Thurber’s short story very much, as I’d felt that the 1947 version with Danny Kaye had not been very close, either.
(I’ve always thought that sticking too close to Thurber’s story would have been difficult to do, anyway…so I’m not surprised to read so many of these sorts of reviews now that I’ve seen it.)
But nonetheless, I found this film slightly amusing, poignant, and very inspiring.
Personally, I wasn’t disappointed.
There were a few wonderful moments of connection for me in this film, that – just as it is with the act of daydreaming – have more to do with my inner landscape than anything outward to do with the film itself
….And that is exactly what I enjoyed about this film.
For example, the most wondrous, unexpected moments for me were connected to seeing the footage of Greenland, and Iceland, for several personal reasons.
You know, I very nearly cried with delight, seeing Walter as he skateboards down an almost impossible winding road into the town of Seyðisfjörður just before the volcano erupts.
He glides down this road as it snakes past these lovely rocky cliffs that rise up on either side.
Those mountains, those cliffs….aw, man. Just beautiful.
Walter has tied chunks of black ashen rock to his hands with pieces of his dress tie, so he can lean and weave, touching the road, guiding himself around the exhilarating curves:
:
It was exhilarating just watching that, for personal reasons, as well.
Suddenly, I was overcome with a hopeful rushing thought crowding in my head:
Ohyoumustgoyoumustseeforyourselfsomedaysomeday!
(…kommen Sie hier…kommen Sie hier …)
~~~
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
The other moment that struck me so much, concerned vision, experience, and the photographer’s eye.
When Walter finally catches up to the photographer that he’s been pursuing, the photographer is ‘waiting for the shot’ of a snow leopard in the Himalayas.
He and Walter sit quietly waiting, talking softly, until the snow leopard comes into view.
They are hushed and still, and we, as viewers, see their view through the camera lens for a good minute or two, before the leopard moves out of range.
And when asked why he didn’t take the shot, the photographer answers:
Sometimes I don’t. I just look. I just see it.
I have known several photographers who have also voiced that same sentiment: You cannot truly see if you are distracted by the attempts to capture the image, create the result. The photographer sees, prepares and frames the shot, but at the moment of actually clicking the shutter, ze has moved from ‘seeing’ to ‘capturing’ that moment. Ze has, in a sense, lost the moment of seeing, of experiencing the beauty of the moment, in attempting to capture the ‘beautiful moment.’
That moment is a red cardinal sitting on my backyard fence.
Stop trying to capture the moment, fearing the loss of the memory of the moment.
Stop worrying.
Stop preparing.
Just let the moment unfold.
You don’t have to hold it in place.
Just see it.
Just experience it.
And I loved that.
And I loved that Walter Mitty, in this film, became what he was – not by daydreaming – but by doing, by allowing himself to see, to experience life itself.
Life with a capital L.
In my opinion, that’s good advice.
January 6, 2014
Derailed
I had a post all prepared for today concerning how I’ve begun doing a particular daily devotional activity, but instead, I got derailed by this article that accompanies this photo:
Well, this photo got me to thinking.
The father featured in this photo hopes for a day when a father just doing his daughter’s hair doesn’t come off as a big deal.
This father hopes for a day when any father doing this would not be considered unusual or even worthy of commentary.
Evidently some think that this photo should garner surprise or alarm or go as viral as this photo did on the Internet.
It’s a nice photo. It evokes a lot of thoughts for me, but maybe they are not what you might think.
What does it make me think of?
The fact that I never learned how to do my own hair very well, and that had always made me feel like I was somehow less of a girl.
Sure, I had a mother and a sister, and a few close female friends, but no, no one ever really showed me how to do my own hair.
Some of them – the female friends in high school – would offer to do my hair for me, or, sometimes, rarely, let me watch them do theirs.
But, truthfully, the whole concept of hands-on skills of how to do braids or make evenly distributed pigtails or putting my hair up in a loose French twist with just a pencil (a trick that still delights and fascinates me, to this day) always eluded me. Nobody really taught me the process of doing anything like that.
I’ve had three states of hairdo up to young adulthood: ‘long hair down’, ‘long hair in one loose ponytail with rubber band’, and ‘hair cut so short that I can’t do a ponytail.’
And then, when I was about 25 or so, I had a friend named Steve.
Steve took the time to show me how to braid my hair three different ways. He also showed me the basics of pigtails, and how to take a ponytail and turn it into a bun and/or a twist.
He even knew how to make that loose French twist with a pencil trick that I love so much (but, I still never get much practice doing.)
And no, Steve was not a hairdresser.
He was just the father of one little girl, whom I imagine, always got to school with her hair done really nicely.
So, I look at this picture, and think about how grateful I am to a father of a particular little girl (who probably isn’t so little anymore), and it just makes me happy.
That picture makes me happy…and grateful that somebody’s dad taught me how to do my hair.
Thank you, Steve ❤
bloodteethandflame 