Thu 8 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under liberty, quote of the day, the self
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Random quote of the day:
“It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.â€
—Jean Baudrillard, America
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 7 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under hearts, novels, quote of the day, writing
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Random quote of the day:
“A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.â€
—Julia Alvarez, interview, The Writer, Aug. 4, 2016
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tue 6 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under criticism, nothingness, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“To escape criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.â€
—Elbert Hubbard (writing as Fra Elbertus), The Motto Book
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 5 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under creativity, growth, process, rebirth, time, what the living do
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It’s a funny thing about having all the time in the world: there still aren’t enough hours in the day.
As of October 1, I am no longer a working woman. But after a lifetime of holding down a job it’s been surprisingly difficult to turn off the internal dictator who berates me regularly with what I should be doing with my time. She doesn’t listen when I tell her that I’m allowed to do whatever I want. Her shoulds revolve around both working on the house and creative work and it’s a never-ending cycle of guilt.
As a friend pointed out, it’s only been a month. I need time to depressurize from what was frankly a difficult few years of forcing myself to get up and go to work when I felt lousy. I was so completely drained of energy that my Saturdays were usually a full body collapse and Sundays the only day of the week when I could accomplish anything. Now I have a whole week of weekends. At first, I did the full body collapse and it was difficult to get over the feeling that I was on a prolonged vacation and would have to return to the unbearable slog eventually. I’m just now beginning to get over that feeling, but I’m still not completely there yet.
I’ve utterly reset my body clock to my natural state of being up until the wee small hours and sleeping in late and I’m finally to the point of not needing 11-12 hours of sleep a night. I’m getting by on a mere 9 hours now and hope to get back to a conventional 8. Curiously, the dictator has never berated me about that (well, hardly ever). Even she recognized that I desperately needed the rest.
But as soon as I am out of bed, she starts with the shoulds. Clean this, write that, pick up this, finish that craft project, on and on and on.
What she doesn’t realize, and what I’ve only recently realized on a conscious level myself, was that I needed to completely dismantle the old structure of my life. What worked then is not going to work now. Once that is thoroughly dismantled, I can start building it back up again from the ground floor. Structure and schedules are necessary things for any kind of productivity. But I have to rebuild them to match my new reality.
Oh reality, you’re such a tricky bastard.
Another friend of mine retired July 1 and we’ve had many discussions about this. Like me, when she first retired she berated herself on a regular basis for not using the luxury of time in a better fashion. Like me, she’d been longing for years to get back to a place where she had enough energy to do her creative work. Because she didn’t immediately jump into the fray and start doing, she sent herself many hate messages. I’m happy to report her creative life has come back online—but it took a while of not doing anything, of stripping herself down and rebuilding herself to get that going.
The thing about having all the time in the world is that it takes time to be able to use it well. It’s a process like anything else. Artists are supposed to understand about process, but sometimes we fool ourselves, or forget, or get locked into a way of doing things that no longer works for us. What nobody tells you (because it’s not a conspiracy of silence but something you have to discover on your own) is that every artist who wants to keep doing art will periodically have to reinvent themselves. And it’s not as if I didn’t know this! I’ve had to reinvent my reason for writing and doing art a couple of times in my life, and I had conveniently forgotten that birthing a new process is painful. (One does tend to gloss over the icky bits.)
As my friend said, “There’s most likely growth going on subliminally that will manifest down the road.â€
Ah yes, the growth thing. It’s so hard, I whine.
Being is becoming, as many a philosopher has pointed out. We are in a constant state of being until we be no more. That’s what the living do, taking it day by day, trying to build a productive life on the ash heap of illusion and ticking time. I don’t know why I thought having all the time in the world would make that any easier. Because, really, we don’t have all the time in the world. That is the biggest illusion of all. The trick is, I think, not to fear time running out so much that it freezes us in place or makes us set up panicky structures that don’t work for us.
Being is becoming. Becoming is taking the time to find that golden thread that pulls us along our true path.
Mon 5 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, that which abides, unknown
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Random quote of the day:
“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.â€
—H. L. Mencken, Minority Report
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Fri 2 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under enemies, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“Abatement of the hostility of one’s enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.â€
—Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Thu 1 Nov 2018
Posted by PJ under books, children, quote of the day, writing
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Random quote of the day:
“You cannot write for children. They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.â€
—Maurice Sendak, interview, Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 1987
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 31 Oct 2018
Posted by PJ under djinn, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“Look into the eyes of a Jinn, and
Stare into the depths of your own soul.â€
—Moroccan proverb
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 29 Oct 2018
Posted by PJ under failure, genius, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.â€
—Samuel Johnson, letter to Joseph Baretti, December 21, 1762
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Fri 26 Oct 2018
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, seeing, the other
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Random quote of the day:
“A pair of wings, a different mode of breathing, which would enable us to traverse infinite space, would in no way help us, for, if we visited Mars or Venus keeping the same senses, they would clothe in the same aspect as the things of the earth everything that we should be capable of seeing. The only true voyage of discovery…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is…â€
—Marcel Proust, The Prisoner (tr. C. K. Montrief)
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
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