Senses working overtime #347

1 Top photos from 2021

Finally, these last two kind of sum things up well

2 The joy of reclaiming long lost positive words

Some of our happiest words are such because they make us smile, and often involve a bit of fun at our own expense. Who can resist such nicknames as “cacklefarts” for eggs, or “bags of mystery” for sausages (because you never quite know what’s in them)? Even the prudish Victorians knew hankies as “snottingers”, and umbrellas as “bumbershoots”.

3 Omicrom variant - 2022's hero or villain?

A woman draws on the National Covid Memorial Wall on the embankment in London.

4 Poetry corner (for new year's day 2022)

from What I Want Yes, that's what I want right now, Just that sensation Of my mind's gradual Deceleration, as if I Took my foot off the gas And the Buick rolled to a stop. Alicia Ostriker (1992)

5 RIP painter Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced T-Bow) aged 101

Overtime:  Austin Kleon's quotes.

Senses working overtime #346

1 That prince of food - the donut

2 The power of the CD

Tagline - 'If vinyl is for hipsters and streaming is for everyone else, maybe the forgotten format is for you'.

3 RIP Joan Didion

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

 

4 Water

Margaret Atwood on being like water:

"Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does."

5 How Christmas has evolved over the centuries

Overtime: More Joan

“…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage.”

― Joan Didion

Senses working overtime #345

1 Keanu Reeves knows the secrets of the universe

2 Unmarked Keys - Seth Godin

3 Jennifer Lawrence

4 Gratitude - Henry David Thoreau

Source - Austin Kleon's zine

5 Too much culture?

Overtime: 

The neurologist Oliver Sacks published a handful of essays before his death that were collected in Gratitude. He wrote:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Source -  Austin Kleon

Senses working overtime #344

1 Ghost Signs

They are still to be found in London.

2  The sublime spectacle of Yoko in Get Back

John, Paul, George and Ringo, and Yoko.

 

3 The year in vibes - Kyle Chayka  

"Maybe we used the word (vibe) so much because 2021 itself has offered an unplaceable vibe. It is a year that feels as though it does and does not exist, a hangover from the depths of terror in 2020 that provides a significant improvement and yet remains vacuous and unstable".

4 The 50 best albums of 2021 

#1 according to Pitchfork

I own none of these albums, nor I have heard any of them - even Adele's. And I call myself a music fan. 

In a year when I bought a huge number of records, this tells me I am completely out of touch with popular music in 2021 (but that's not news - I have been for the last twenty years).

I will make an effort to listen to some of these in the next few weeks.

5 Mel Brookes

 

Overtime: How we became weekly

This one is apposite as Jewels For The Thirsty is my own artificial weekly contruction - this one is my 344th edition. 

It neatly marks my end of a week. and the start of a new round for my other blogs. 

Senses working overtime #343

1 Andrew Moore

2 Multi-tasking and our greatest fear

By Lawrence Yeo

3 Poetry corner

A Young Man, a Stranger, Smiled at Me            Maybe I reminded him of his grandfather or his favorite teacher in grade school,            the one who lied to him about his painting of the goldfish bowl,            who looked hard at it and said, Beautiful. Jim Moore (2021)

4 Pardon? (Why movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand)

"There are a number of root causes," says Mark Mangini, the Academy Award-winning sound designer behind films like Mad Max: Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049. "It's really a gumbo, an accumulation of problems that have been exacerbated over the last 10 years ... that's kind of this time span where all of us in the filmmaking community are noticing that dialogue is harder and harder to understand." 

5 Twenty-four reasons we'll keep watchin The Beatles' Get Back forever

Great picture from Linda McCartney

Overtime: 

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

– Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Senses working overtime #342

1 RIP Robert Bly

My favourite poet of the 20th Century has died aged 94. I fell in love with his deep image poetry while studying at Auckland University under the tutelage of Wystan Curnow and Roger Horrocks. 

His legacy is immense.

2 Twenty bad movies, that are actually good (apparently)

3 Poetry corner

In the Discount Lot

Angela C. Trudell Vasquez

Outside the grocery store laden with the sweat of tanned field workers we stand          little girls in winter coats our hands hold signs leaflets our dark long hair waist length one straight, one curly we say to the people who walk up to the glass door don’t buy the lettuce here— they aren’t good to their workers I don’t recall anyone said anything back or who stood with us I remember my sister next to me,      us in our Sunday velvet best she     beret and red plaid jacket me     white rabbit skin muff little brown girls with picket signs rosy cheeks, big black eyes legions of ghosts above              behind angels wing over us ancestor feathers beat in the invisible breeze each time someone enters or exits the building— with a bag full of groceries oranges and eggs celery and grapes.

4 Return of Seth's wisdom

Pushing, pulling and leading

Tug boats don’t usually tug. They push.

That’s because pushing is more mechanically efficient than pulling. When we pull, there’s tension and slack in the ropes, and the attachment between the puller and the pushed keeps changing.

But the metaphor gets far more interesting when we think about leading instead.

One bird at the head of the flock can lead 100 others if they’re enrolled in the journey. That bird would never be able to pull (or push) even one bird, never mind all of them.

5 George Harrison on the true experience

Overtime: Perfecting the New York Street

Senses working overtime #341

1 When a house finds you

Great piece from SwissMiss on finding her house.

2 WTWMC 1

The Wander To Wozza's Music Club (it would take too long to explain why it's called that) has a terrific playlist out - every year since 1957 has one song each from three discerning music fans. As GK says - it traces our lives and friendship.

We're still building it too (1995 was today's year).

3 WTWMC 2

We also rotate an album choice each week around the three of us. Yes, I know - we have great taste. Thanks. 

We love to share that great taste with others so you can catch the evolving playlist (one song represents each album) here.

4 Vinyl Countdown

One of my happy places. They have a huge range of stuff at present - band facemasks? Got you covered (see what I did there)! Check it out - best service around as well.

5 Poetry corner

from You Will Read In the future things will be enigmatic and profound, exclamations will be used onomatopoeia will be used if need be brakes will be used why so urgently urgent? similes, figures of speech will arrive the sun will rise buses will run people will go to work they go about their work like drinking a soft drink, less costly, less labour easy to breathe, everything will be alright Aung Cheimt trans. ko ko thett & Maung Tha Noe (2012)

Overtime: Erasure poetry

Austin Kleon's example

Senses working overtime #340

1 Seinfeld on Netflix

2 Stressing out about a tough decision?

Try this.

3 Aaron Rodgers - didn't just lie

Great blogpost by Kareen Abdul-Jabbar (courtesy Laura Olin)

4 The harmony of tensions

From Austin Kleon

5 Aerial Ruin - Nameless Sun

Keegan passed this recommendation on to me.  

Overtime: 

"It's better to be alone than to spend time with toxic people.

It's better to do nothing than to work on something that doesn't matter.

It's better to rest than to climb the wrong mountain." James Clear

Senses working overtime #339

Nita Isobel Purdy (1930 to 2021)

This week's 5 + overtime entries on Jewels For The Thirsty are in honour of my dad's second wife - Nita, who passed away this past week, age 91.  

With jade and Samantha

With Keegan

Happy Christmas Keegan and Adam

The grand-daughters - Jade and Samantha

Rest in peace Nita, Graham and Dulcie. 

 

Senses working overtime #338

1 The most brilliant bookshops in the world

Hastings' Little Red Bookshop doesn't make this article but there are still many amazing places featured like the one pictured in China.

2 Aubade on a ghost hunt - Traci Brimhall

We prefer to do it with the lights on, 
the Victrola scratching How long can it last?
against the tremble of curtains. Patient,
we learn the walls, their glossary of knocks,
translating harlequin and dust. What we
know lives here—lonely bone star blossom
of the spider plant, lost bee on the sill,
the recorder’s static alive and puckering.
I tell you our future is the guttering candle
in the basement birdcage. Prove it, you say,
and I set both its shadows swaying. Our history—
the attic window, how the unseen surprises
the photograph. You ask what is there
to be afraid of. I ask the past to make itself
known to me. We only have to make it through
the night, so we close the dolls’ eyes. Danger
midwifes the heart’s spring. We are cabbage roses 
grooming the parlor air with unsexed pistils. 
I have this kiss and its sleepless itinerary. 
Your lip, pink logic and cushion. The door 
tests its lock, and I let you ruin each light
orb and whisper with physics. If we’re sure
something is here, then we have to find out 
what it wants. A voice on the recorder, sweet
as gravecake—don’t go. We can admit it wasn’t
proof we came for, it was the question.

3 Music that gives you chills

Plus, they've made a Spotify playlist for you to check out. Very kind.

4  How to retrain your frazzled brain and find your focus again

5 Valarie Kaur on listening

“Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear.

When I really want to hear another person’s story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses.

Empathy is cognitive and emotional—to inhabit another person’s view of the world is to feel the world with them"

I'll be on the lookout for her book - See No Stranger

Overtime: Aphorisms

Great selection here, like this one 'Love is not enough, but it sure helps'.