Senses working overtime #255

'If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing' (Monty Python).

With that in mind, and given we are all in a lock down bubble for a while, this week's Jewels For The Thirsty provides some laughter and smiles from the meme department. 

1 On my way to working from home

2 The truth

3 Dressing professionally is key

4 Zoom ideal

Zoom reality

5 Don't give up!

Overtime:

and...

Senses working overtime #254

1 San Francisco's shelter from the storm

Our daughter is in SF with Jesse and hunkering down as the shelter-in-place order kicks in. I like that term - much better than self-isolation.

2 Covid-19 and the Flu

3 Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early 
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather made 
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden (1966)

4 Birth of the cool

I've been enjoying this documentary on Miles Davis - something of a jerk but some great music!

5 Showdown At Yellow Butte

And I've been enjoying this Louis L'Amour western as a break from the serious stuff. 

Overtime: Sign off this week courtesy of Seth Godin

Curate your incoming.

Stay off Twitter.

Do the work instead. Whatever needs doing most is better than panic.

Being up-to-date on the news is a trap and a scam. Five minutes a day is all you need.

Senses working overtime #253

1 David Copperfield

It's taken me a couple of weeks but I've finished David Copperfield and feel a little bereft. Charles Dickens' favourite is a great novel. I'm missing reading it and living with the characters already.

2 Something is more interesting than this - Seth Godin

And now, that’s always true.

Whatever you’re doing.

No matter who you’re with.

Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.

And it’s in your pocket.

All the time. As long as the battery lasts.

There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.

Until infinity.

Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.

3 Small kindnesses 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

4 The Batman

Love this cover for issue 8 of THE BATMAN'S GRAVE
5 Max von Sydow

Star of my favourite movie of all time - Pelle The Conqueror. You absolutely, and utterly believe in him in that role (and others). Rest in peace.

Overtime: McCoy Tyner

Sadly another great artist, McCoy Tyner has also passed away recently.

Overtime: Oh dear, oh dear

Great piece by Frank Rich on the disaster that is Trump and his response to Covid-19. Poor America - my heart goes out to you all (R and D alike).

Senses working overtime #252

1 Autumn

Autumn has arrived in New Zealand. Finally! 

For many of us, THIS is the best of seasons, with the change of colours, the cooler days, the rain (finally) after the Hawke's Bay many days of drought, the changing leaves in the vineyards as I pootle homewards are fun to follow, the shorter days/longer shadows combo, and yet it's not yet cold enough for fires or special heating and the extra layers of clothing are not quite yet a necessity.

I love autumn!

2 Seth's message for the week

Wasting it

When you bought your first smartphone, did you know you would spend more than 1,000 hours a year looking at it?

Months later, can you remember how you spent those hours?

When you upgraded to a new smartphone, so you could spend more hours on it, did you think about how you had spent so much of your ‘free’ time the year before?

If we wasted money the way we waste time, we’d all be bankrupt.

3 Poetry corner

Spiderweb From other angles the fibers look fragile, but not from the spider’s, always hauling coarse ropes, hitching lines to the best posts possible. It’s heavy work everyplace, fighting sag, winching up give. It isn’t ever delicate to live. Kay Ryan (2010)

4 The Immortal Jukebox

Great piece on Ry Cooder's version of I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine (from Bop Till You Drop)

5 Brevity is great in an email

Photo by Webaroo on Unsplash

I'm winning the email war (for now - don't get cocky Wozza) thanks to this article.

Overtime: Extra Seth

The paradox of selfishness

Often, we choose to be selfish because we feel insufficiency.

“I don’t have that much, how can I possibly share it?”

The insecurity that comes from feeling like our foundation is weak or our future is uncertain can cloud our instinct to be generous. Like a drowning person, we cling ever tighter to the life buoy.

You see where this is going…

The single best way to find sufficiency and confidence and trust and forward motion is to do precisely the opposite of what our instincts might tell us.

In an economy based on connection, trust and attention, the posture of generosity is not only the highest-yielding strategy, it’s also the right thing to do.

Ideas shared go up in value. Doors opened turn into new opportunities for all.