Senses working overtime #410

1 Alone Season 9

We've started Season 9 of this gritty visceral show this week.

2 Birnam Wood update

I haven't had too much time to get into the book this week - loads happening - like Graduation Day, but you can read my first impressions here.

3 Lindsey Buckingham

I've had this one on repeat all week.

4 Friedrich Nietzsche on how art can help you grow as a person

5 The Wisdom of Søren Kierkegaard: Life Lessons And Principles From His Greatest Work

Overtime: A question worth asking:

‘Is this dead time or alive time?’ I like to carry this stoic question with me through my day. It breaks me out of the unhealthy mindset of choosing between busyness and boredom, and helps me think about whether I’m actually spending my time well. 

Thomas Oppong

Senses working overtime #409

1 Alone

We've started season 8 this week. I'm recommending this show to workmates - such a great exploration of people's primal needs.

2 Books

Just finishing The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood) and starting Birnam Wood this week. I'd never read the Atwood book - probably more famous now as a TV series - which I haven't seen either. Birnam Wood looked interesting, and its procurement is explained here.

3 Albums

This week's album clubs threw up Bonnie Raitt's - Slipstream and Silver Mt. Zion's He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms, for my listening pleasure. Eclectic is the word.

4 FOBO

5 The decoy effect

Overtime: The persistence of rivers

Farmer and writer, Wendell Berry, on the persistence of rivers:

"To a river, as to any natural force, an obstruction is merely an opportunity. For the river's nature is to flow; it is not just spatial in dimension, but temporal as well. All things must yield to the impulse of the water in time, if not today then tomorrow or in a thousand years. If its way is obstructed then it goes around the obstruction or under it or over it and, flowing past it, wears it away. Men may dam it and say that they have made a lake, but it will still be a river. It will keep its nature and bide its time, like a caged wild animal alert for the slightest opening. In time it will have its way; the dam like the ancient cliffs will be carried away piecemeal in the currents."

Senses working overtime #408

1 How Two Jewish Kids in 1930s Cleveland Altered the Course of American Pop Culture

2 Some ways towards excellence but with less angst

3 R.I.P. Wayne Shorter

4 R.I.P. Tom Verlaine

5 National Geographic's photo of the year

Overtime: Alone

We were clued into this by Samantha when we visited at Christmas. It's now on TV One On Demand starting at Season 7 (the one she was watching). Well worth your time!

Senses working overtime #407

1 A brief history of pancakes

2 Crosby Stills Nash and Young - David Browne

Kev sent me a copy of this to read - nothing in there was a revelation but great to be reconnected with the twisted CSNY machinations and I still don't get why Young and Nash became so pissed off with Crosby at the end - wasn't like they didn't know him by then, right?! 

It also inevitably took me back to their music - of which I am mildly obsessed. Surprised me how good American Dream was, although it gets a bad press. Worth a revisit!

3 What rewatching old TV shows tells us about ourselves

4 What is a snack, really?

5 How coffee (caffeine) really affects our bodies

Overtime: Still Raining, Still Dreaming - Jimi Hendrix

A good track to listen to while it persistently comes down in the Hawke's Bay of New Zealand.

Senses working overtime #406

Cyclone Gabrielle hits the north east of North Island. Hits hard!

1 Maple Grove (Takapau)

2  Gisborne

3  Auckland

4 Hastings

5 Northland

Overtime: John Steinbeck (The Grapes Of Wrath)

“Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly.

“Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”

“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”

Senses working overtime #405

1 AI's de-aging of movie stars is a thing

2 Fifty-two acts of kindness for 2023

3 What causes déjà vu?

4 Ten rules of philosophy to live by

5 The rise and fall of music sales by format

Overtime: The Antidote to our Existential Helplessness

“Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You are anything but impotent, you are, in fact, exquisitely and frighteningly dynamic, as are we all, and with all respect you have an obligation to stand up and take responsibility for that potential. It is your most ordinary and urgent duty.”

– Nick Cave

Senses working overtime #404

1 The Wife Of Bath

2 Why comedy films don't make it to the box office these days

3 RIP Tom Verlaine

Patti Smith: On Saturday at 2:39 in the morning we lost Tom Verlaine. Words cannot express my sorrow for the loss nor the joy for having known him. All who loved his music may wish to play his records. I am offering Break it Up. It’s the song that Tom and I composed for Horses in 1975. The lyrics reflect a dream I had of the death and imagined resurrection of Jim Morrison. Tom’s uniquely beautiful and expressive guitar work can be heard throughout.

4 Stephen King's 20 rules for writers

5 The power of a walk

Overtime: Writer Lauren Elkin on the joys of walking:

"Walking is mapping with your feet. It helps you piece a city together, connecting up neighborhoods that might otherwise have remained discrete entities, different planets bound to each other, sustained yet remote. I like seeing how in fact they blend into one another, I like noticing the boundaries between them. Walking helps me feel at home. There's a small pleasure in seeing how well I’ve come to know the city through my wanderings on foot, crossing through different neighborhoods of the city, some I used to know quite well, others I may not have seen in a while, like getting reacquainted with someone I once met at a party."