Senses working overtime #312

1 Taupo vacation

2 RIP Michael Collins

3 Netflix' attempt to combat decision fatigue

4 Imperatives

Books for mindset.

Quiet time to think for strategy.

Conversations with successful peers for tactics. 

(James Clear)

5 Film endings are tricky!

Overtime: For Jade and Asher 

(Courtesy of Swissmiss)

Senses working overtime #311

Home for the end of term holidays!

This week has all been about catching my breath, getting part 1 of the Covid-19 vax, reading books, listening to music, writing blogs, fixing fences, mucking out horse paddocks, picking up bags of pinecones (some help from Jade and Asher on this one), chasing chickens out of Jacky's gardens...basically getting school out of my system - it always takes 3 or 4 days to do that!

So - here are 5+ photos that sum up the impact on my senses this week.

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Overtime:  

Senses working overtime #310

1  

Nelson

2 The Girl From The Chartreuse

My current reading matter.

“Books are gateways. They are doors. You can open them and step into another place, and time. Another world. They hold our futures, but are also a treasury of our formative memories. Books are where I’ve met some of my closest friends…”
—Chris Riddell, The Writer’s Map

“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
—G.C. Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

3 How songs come into being (a Paul Simon case study)

Austin Kleon's blog post is a good place to start.

4 Letter

1. Today I did almost nothing.
   Read a little, tried to write a sentence
   to make another sentence seem necessary.
   
   I wasn't unhappy. Everything
   I could will myself to do I'd done,
   so I said I'd done enough.
   
   Now I'm looking out my window:
   white pine, ash, a single birch,
   the leanings and crossings
   
   of branches. And then the sky:
   pale, undecided. Years ago
   you wrote to me about a matter
   
   that worried you, and you said
   at the end, "That's probably the best,
   and most true, way to think about it."
   
   I kept your sentence in my notebook.
   I liked its shape. I admired the way,
   young as you were, you could feel
   
   one kind of thinking
   adjusting into another, one truth
   becoming a better truth.
   
   Now you're far off, and alone, and I
   have no advice you haven't already
   given yourself. What can I tell you?
   
   That I'm here? That today, when I saw
   how tenderly the light was moving
   among those trees, I thought of you?
   
   —Lawrence Raab, "Letter"

5 Anywhere can happen

Mesmerising film!

Overtime: The five universal laws of stupidity

Senses working overtime #309

1 Badger

The full gatefold cover

This week, I was finally able to track down a copy of this album from 1973. The band has links to Yes and Apple Records (Jackie Lomax joined them after this album), but a major drawcard for me is that great Roger Dean cover.

2 RIP Prince Philip

He's been a constant in our lives and his work ethic is something that has always impressed me - the hardest working person in royal business for many decades.

3 Poetry corner

Nothing Wants to Suffer

Danusha Laméris

after Linda Hogan Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.  The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,  made quickly, and without much suffering. The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth. A table, the weight of years of argument. We know this, though we forget. Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are. Nor the worm, content in its windowless world of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed. The riverbed, gazing up at the stars. Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy, looking down at all of us— their offspring— scattered so far beyond reach.

4 How fit can you get from just walking?

5 What happens to our eyes when we stare at a screen all day?

Overtime:  

"A simple rule for life and work:

Don’t rush, but don’t wait.

Thoughtful action." (James Clear)

Senses working overtime #308

1 Blast from the past

This is from 10 years ago - a staff meeting at Ali bin Abi Taleb school where I was lead advisor. My translator (Hisham) is on my right, the Principal is on my left. Some absolutely amazing people in this photo who I think about often.

2 Joe E. Covington's Fat Fandango on Grunt Records

I've been after this for a few years and finally found a copy at Real Groovy. Joe (named Joey on their sleeves) was the drummer in Jefferson Airplane 1970-1972 (after Spencer Dryden and before John Barbata) and this was his only solo album. He died tragically, in a car accident in 2013.

3 Brand X - Running On Three

4 Advice from strangers

"Instead of asking, 'Do you have any questions?' I ask, 'What questions do you have?' The first almost always results in silence, while the second helps people feel comfortable asking questions."

More here.

5 Sappho

You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us. 

—Sappho

Overtime: 

George Bernard Shaw said, “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Every process of transformation begins in the mind.