Senses working overtime #323

The senses went into overdrive on our recent holiday to Wellington. The main reason for our visit was to see the exhibition of surrealist art at Te Papa. The big city sounds and smells were definitely a change from our rural outlook in Takapau!

1 Surrealism at Te Papa

Great little camera trick allows you to reproduce Magritte's famous painting.

2 

3 Flamingo Joe's

Feeling good at Flamingo Joe's after their sticky date pudding!

4 Windy Wellington

Weather was pretty good but windy on our last day. 

5 Pier Review

Spied this well named boat on the Wellington waterfront (before finding ourseleves by the fishing boat Viking Bay Vigo - moored in Wellington so that the fishers with covid can go into MIQ).

Overtime: Replacement copies

I picked up a couple of replacement copies of some damaged albums at Slow Boat Records. 

My English copy of the Procol Harum album had a badly defaced cover - some plonker had coloured in the faces, so this clean Aussie copy was a good find, as was the Quicksilver Messenger Service; my original had some bobbles in the vinyl which made track one on each side unplayable. Given this is my favourite album by them I was thrilled to find this 'new' copy.

Senses working overtime #322

1 Train your brain!

2 Robert Christgau's album reviews

I stumbled upon this and have had it bookmarked for reference. Even though it's presented terribly, it's fun to dip into.

3 The year is half over

4 Deep reading

5 Seth Godin on creativity

Overtime: 

"Three steps to exceptional results:

1) Do less. Stop dividing your attention.

2) Do it right now. Once you have identified the essential, go fast. Maintain a bias toward action.

3) Do it the right way. Acting quickly doesn't mean acting carelessly. Get to work right away, but keep working on it until it's right."

(Courtesy of James Clear)

Senses working overtime #321

1 A man, a dog and a walk around the world

2 Terminator 2: Judgment Day 

It's 30 years old! Still wonderful. And the American spelling of'judgement' still grates.

3  To the people

To the people
reading this poem, hello.
I want you to know
nothing bad will happen
as long as you’re here.
Every line you see
was written in a cab.
I’m on the FDR
in the middle of winter
and the sky is suddenly bluer
than Sundays in June.
There’s no reason for it.
No real science
to what will happen when
I get off at Chambers
and Broadway, wearing
gold and black sneakers
on my way to meet
a friend who is sad.
To my sad friends, hello.
For you I will be
a version of myself
I hardly remember.
I will be a lake
at the top of morning
some late afternoon into night.
And if you look away from
this page, to your right
there’s the world.
I am only trying to describe it.

—Alex Dimitrov, from "Poem Written In A Cab"

4 Detectorists

Loving this show! Season one was a hoot. We've just started on Season two and looks like Season three is out as well. 

5 Johnny Flynn's theme to the show...

...is special as well!

Overtime: When it's over...

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

– Mary Oliver

(Courtesy of Swissmiss)

Senses working overtime #320

1 Pleasure and happiness

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

2 Our Land - Langston Hughes 

We should have a land of sun,  Of gorgeous sun,  And a land of fragrant water Where the twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief Of rose and gold,  And not this land Where life is cold. We should have a land of trees, Of tall thick trees, Bowed down with chattering parrots Brilliant as the day, And not this land where birds are gray. Ah, we should have a land of joy, Of love and joy and wine and song,  And not this land where joy is wrong.

3 In Control - Seth Godin

Is this a want or a need?

Do you know anyone who has managed to gain control over things outside of their grasp? Honking at traffic serves no purpose other than to express a need to control the uncontrollable.

Why do we work so hard to try to capture control over things that are clearly not in our control?

And what would happen if we stopped trying and worked on the things we can influence instead?

4 How ‘Soft Fascination’ Helps Restore Your Tired Brain

5 Being open-minded 

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith on the challenge of being open-minded:

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

Source: Economics, Peace and Laughter

Courtesy of James Clear's newsletter.

Overtime: 

“The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.” – Paramahansa Yogananda

Senses working overtime #319

1 Supporting England

2 The benefits of coffee

3 I'm so tired

Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash

Sleep is important.

4 June Sunset - Sarojini Naidu

Here shall my heart find its haven of calm,
By rush-fringed rivers and rain-fed streams
That glimmer thro' meadows of lily and palm.
Here shall my soul find its true repose
Under a sunset sky of dreams
Diaphanous, amber and rose.
The air is aglow with the glint and whirl
Of swift wild wings in their homeward flight,
Sapphire, emerald, topaz, and pearl.
Afloat in the evening light.

A brown quail cries from the tamarisk bushes,
A bulbul calls from the cassia-plume,
And thro' the wet earth the gentian pushes
Her spikes of silvery bloom.
Where'er the foot of the bright shower passes
Fragrant and fresh delights unfold;
The wild fawns feed on the scented grasses,
Wild bees on the cactus-gold.

An ox-cart stumbles upon the rocks,
And a wistful music pursues the breeze
From a shepherd's pipe as he gathers his flocks
Under the pipal-trees.
And a young Banjara driving her cattle
Lifts up her voice as she glitters by
In an ancient ballad of love and battle
Set to the beat of a mystic tune,
And the faint stars gleam in the eastern sky
To herald a rising moon.

5 Two-Gun Kid

This pin-up is crazy good!

Overtime: The Water Is Wide - Dylan and Baez

Sublime. I listened to this version from The Rolling Thunder Revue tour three times on repeat each day this week!

It doesn't need any visuals - it does it all.

Senses working overtime #318

1 Memory and grief

Chilean film director, Pablo Larraín discusses his film version of a Stephen King's Lisey's Story.

2 Mike Chunn - Sharp Left Turn

3 Bobolink - Didi Jackson

In a meadow  
as wide as a wound 
I thought to stop  
and study the lesser stitchwort’s  
white flowers lacing up  
boot-level grasses 
when I was scolded in song 
by a black and white bird  
whose wings sipped air, 
swallow-like, until he landed  
on the highest tip 
of yellow dock,  
still singing his beautiful warning, 
the brown female  
with him in fear.  
The warning was real: 
the anniversary of my husband’s suicide.  
What was the matter with life? Sometimes 
when wind blows, 
the meadow moves like an ocean, 
and on that day, 
I was in its wake— 
I mean the day in the meadow. 
I mean the day he died.  
This is not another suicide poem. 
This is a poem about a bird 
I wanted to know and so 
I spent that evening looking 
up his feathers and flight,  
spent most of the night 
searching for mating habits  
and how to describe the yellow 
nape of his neck like a bit  
of gothic stained glass, 
or the warm brown 
females with a dark eyeline.  
How could I have known  
like so many species  
they too are endangered? 
God must be exhausted: 
those who chose life; 
those who chose death.  
That day I braided a few 
strips of timothy hay  
as I waited for the pair 
to move again, to lift  
from the field and what,  
live? The dead can take 
a brother, a sister; not really.  
The dead have no one.  
Here in this field  
I worried the mowers 
like giant gorging mouths 
would soon begin again 
and everything would be  
as it will.

4 Appreciating Loki

He's now a TV series.

5 Album cover project

Overtime: 

Don’t work for people you don’t want to become – Shane A. Parrish

Senses working overtime #317

1 Vinyl resurgence 

Here are some quaint tips from Wired.

2 Animals - Frank O'Hara

3 Agatha Yu

4 Consider Yourself - Steve Marriott

A Steve Marriott compilation was the covermount on my latest Mojo magazine. When this came on amidst the Small Faces and Humble Pie tracks it was a shock to realise that it was his performance as the Artful Dodger that started it all!

5 Donald who?

The person known as the former President tried to blog and found out that blogging is hard!

Overtime: “

Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it ― Derek Sivers