Senses working overtime #587

1 First week in August - chilly morning arrivals at school!

The Iona College chapel at 7.00am this week

2 Reading: Three Days in June - Anne Tyler

3 Listening: Wozza - Wonders (on our Friday night road trip to NP)

4 Watching: Alone Season 13

It's a bit painful waiting a week for each new episode but the show is engrossing, so it's worth the pain.

5 Reading: Joan Didion

I loved this passage about Joan Baez from Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Overtime: Anne Tyler  

Someday I'd like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.

Lead character Gail in Three Days in June.

Senses working overtime #584

1 This week was all about reading

Photo by Hümâ H. Yardım on Unsplash

Three days spent reading and marking essays by four classes and two days of planning for the term ahead were accompanied by two books and a Mojo magazine.

2 Read: Borden Chantry - Louis L'Amour

3 Listening: Seven Moons - Robin Trower and Jack Bruce

4 Reading: Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion

5 Reading - Mojo magazine #389

Overtime: Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Senses working overtime #582

1 Highlight of the week: First meeting with Billie and great reunion with Poppy, Adam, Ashleigh, Andrew and Fanfa.

Great to have Billie and Poppy's parents staying over at Maple Grove at the end of this week.

2 Reading: Wisdom Takes Work - Ryan Holiday

3 Listening: Ziltoid the Omniscient - Devin Townsend

4 Reading: Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion

5 Viewing: sport

It's all about football at the FIFA World Cup as the round of 32 played out and the All Blacks who played the French in Christchurch - winning by two points just now. Some scintillating sport!

Overtime: Christian Nestell Bovee

Doubt whom you will, but never doubt yourself.

Senses working overtime #561

1 Year 9 camp week at Atiamuri

The view from my cabin. Loads of lily pads but didn't hear any frogs.

2 Listening: The Guess Who - Canned Wheat

Time for just one - the original version of No Time.

3 Watching - Hugo

Not much time for viewing TV this week while at camp, but we watched this film on Netflix when I got back. It's supposedly a kids' film but it's directed by Martin Scorsese and filmed brilliantly.

Rotten Tomatoes sums it up well: Hugo is an extravagant, elegant fantasy with an innocence lacking in many modern kids' movies, and one that emanates an unabashed love for the magic of cinema.

4 Reading: Joan Didion - The White Album.

I did take the book with me on camp and had a few down times to read it. Section 4 - Sojourns is my favourite section so far.

5 Listening: WTWMC - Fresh finds

We're up to 75 songs to this point.

Overtime: Ruth Gordon

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.

Senses working overtime #558

1 Wellington mini-break

Love a mini break with my best girl to suss out regular haunts and have tacos at Hot Like a Mexican!

2 Reading: Joan Didion - The White Album

One of my Unity Books' purchases. Finally found some of JD's books.

3 Watching: Swallows & Amazons (TV on demand)

A recent BBC version of a book I loved from my childhood. Lovely version.

4 Listening: WTWMC - Fresh finds

Two weeks done - so 30 songs in the playlist so far.

5 Reading: Truman

I'm really enjoying this biography (reading a few pages each morning at breakfast). Two hundred pages in. I like him and Bess a lot!

Overtime: Anne Baxter

I wasn't afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure.

Senses working overtime #356

1 Henri Rousseau

So much to love about this painting.

2 IKEA's tricks

3 Relationships

"A relationship is about inventing your own language,” says Sciamma. “You’ve got the jokes, you’ve got the songs, you have this anecdote that’s going to make you laugh three years later. It’s this language that you build. That’s what you mourn for when you’re losing someone you love. This language you’re not going to speak with anybody else.”

4 Live

Writer Joan Didion shares some life advice:

"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."

Source: 1975 Commencement Address at the University of California, Riverside - courtesy of James Clear.

5 One Hundred Ideas like...

Three Men Make a Tiger: People will believe anything if enough people tell them it’s true. It comes from a Chinese proverb that if one person tells you there’s a tiger roaming around your neighborhood, you can assume they’re lying. If two people tell you, you begin to wonder. If three say it’s true, you’re convinced there’s a tiger in your neighborhood and you panic.

Overtime 1: Seth on holding a grudge 

"When a client, a boss or an employee makes a special request, it’s okay to get a little bent out of shape. It might cost you extra time or money, it might be a hassle, it might not be deserved.

And then you can say no.

But if you say yes, then it pays to be in it. 100%.

If you’re not, your yes was worthless. It ceases to be a favor if it comes with grumbling.

Holding a grudge means that our hands are too full to do our best work."

Overtime 2: Keith Richards

Scotty Moore was my hero. There's a little jazz in his playing, some great country licks and a grounding in the blues as well. It's never been duplicated. I can't copy it.

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