Senses working overtime #479

1 New listing: Maple Grove

Yes, we have decided to sell Maple Grove, so we have listed it with Property Brokers (Waipukarau). Tough decision but we are looking for a fresh start in another location.

2 Listening: WTWMC - True Colours

The amigos have just completed White, Blue is happening next week.

3 Listening: Strawbs - Hero And Heroine (1974)

I found a secondhand copy of this at My Music Taupo. It's brilliant! More info about it here.

4 Watching: UEFA Euros 2024

Two semi-finals and two amazing, cracking, breathtaking goals. One by Lamine Yamal and one by Ollie Watkins.

Final is Monday morning NZ time. Come on England!

5 Reading: The best movie soundtracks of all time!

Overtime: Projects and the long haul - Seth Godin

Rome was built in a day.

It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished.

But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there.

Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without incident.

Sometimes we get hung up on the finishing, starting things all the time but blinking in the face of Resistance and wandering away. The long haul is simply your list of completed projects. A career is not a series of tasks. It’s the chance to build things.

Senses working overtime #478

1 Mood this week: Taupo 

We've spent most of this week and weekend in Taupo - buying a car from there and having a mini-break, so this week's senses are informed by the place.

It's the blue lake in the middle of the North Island of Nu Zild.

Taupo runs deep in the family: family holidays at Te Rangiita, mum's vision of the Taupo house; Rainbow Point ice-creams; the Lion walk; Huka Falls; Craters Of the Moon; trout fishing with dad at Te Rangiita; boating with my brother up the Taupo-Tauranga river.

Township on the lake and start of the Waikato River

2 Listening: Taupo - Brian Smith

3 Serenity

Taupo has always been a great place to go to let go of stuff. So much serenity.

4 Reading: Wordsworth excerpt from The Prelude book 1

One evening (surely I was led by her)
I went alone into a Shepherd’s Boat,
A Skiff that to a Willow tree was tied
Within a rocky Cave, its usual home.
‘Twas by the shores of Patterdale, a Vale
Wherein I was a Stranger, thither come
A School-boy Traveller, at the Holidays.
Forth rambled from the Village Inn alone
No sooner had I sight of this small Skiff,
Discover’d thus by unexpected chance,
Than I unloos’d her tether and embark’d.
The moon was up, the Lake was shining clear
Among the hoary mountains; from the Shore
I push’d, and struck the oars and struck again
In cadence, and my little Boat mov’d on
Even like a Man who walks with stately step
Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure; not without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my Boat move on,
Leaving behind her still on either side
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. A rocky Steep uprose
Above the Cavern of the Willow tree
And now, as suited one who proudly row’d
With his best skill, I fix’d a steady view
Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,
The bound of the horizon, for behind
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily
I dipp’d my oars into the silent Lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat
Went heaving through the water, like a Swan;
When from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Uprear’d its head. I struck, and struck again
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still,
With measur’d motion, like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turn’d,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the Cavern of the Willow tree.
There, in her mooring-place, I left my Bark,
And, through the meadows homeward went, with grave
And serious thoughts; and after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Work’d with a dim and undetermin’d sense
Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts
There was a darkness, call it solitude,
Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty Forms that do not live
Like living men mov’d slowly through the mind
By day and were the trouble of my dreams.

5 Going back

Wozz and Ross

Te Rangiita fishing

Happy boating memories

Overtime: Enlightenment - Van Morrison

I'm in the here and now, and I'm meditating
And still I'm suffering but that's my problem
Enlightenment, don't know what it is
Wake up

Senses working overtime #477

1 Theme of the week: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more - Bob Dylan.

More about the song here.

2 Listening: Wonderful Life - Black

A great video to this one too. Always worth watching.

3 Reading: George Orwell - Selected Essays

4 Watching: The Yellow Birds (on Netflix)

I really loved this film. Would hold up to repeat viewings too.

5 Listening: WTWMC True Colours

Yes this is still going strong - we had a brief hiatus while Greg and his wife were overseas. But the boys are back!

Latest colour was Purple and its offshoots.

Watch in real time as offshoots of Green is up for exploration this week.

Overtime: 

"One of life's counterintuitive lessons is that you will often gain energy by spending a little bit of energy.

When you feel lethargic and like you want to lay around all day, it is usually the case that getting up and moving will make you feel better than simply sitting around. Getting outside for 10 minutes or doing the first set of a workout or simply stretching on the floor for a moment — anything to get your body moving — will often leave you feeling more energized.

If you want to get your day going, then get your body going. It's harder for the mind to be sluggish when the body is moving."

James Clear

Senses working overtime #476

1 Wozza's World this Week

2 Listening: Genesis - Selling England By The Pound

3 Reading: Mick Fleetwood - Play On

4 Reading: Jenny Boyd - Icons Of Rock

5 Watching: UEFA Euro 2024

Overtime: Literally

Great Wordorigins post.

Senses working overtime #475

1  The feeling this week

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

2 Listening: Rory Gallagher - Check Shirt Wizard (Live in '77)

3 Watching: Euros 2024 

Sadly, Germany dispatched Scotland easily enough this morning NZ time. Be interesting to see how England shape up. They always promise a lot but don't deliver the trophy (speaking of the men's game here).

4 Reading: Richard Osman's The Last Devil To Die

5 Listening:  Rory Gallagher - Top Priority

Yes - more Rory!! My favourite studio album by him, from 1979. Influenced by the punk sound of the late seventies, Rory wipes the floor with them. Try At The Depot, and see if I'm not right.

Overtime: 

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman

Senses working overtime 474

1 Autumn sunset at Maple Grove

The view from my music room.

2 Reading: The Lyrics - Paul McCartney

Closest thing we are likely to get to an autobiography, it says on the cover, and I actually believe it.

3 Watching: Unfrosted (on Netflix)

Jerry Seinfeld is a comic genius. He can do no wrong in my eyes. This is a beauty! Lovingly put together - the art direction, script, acting, cinematography are all class. It zips by too. Who doesn't love Jerry??

4 Reading: The Ultimate Music Guide to Paul McCartney

I picked this up a while ago from a weird novelty store in Wellington which had masses of old back copies of music magazines. Great companion to The Lyrics.

5 Listening: Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel

Talk about classy - Peter Gabriel oozes classiness. Great cover and Here Comes The Flood (especially) has been on heavy rotate.

Overtime: 

Something will happen. 

(Paul remembers one of The Beatles saying this after their van ran off the road and they wondered how they were going to get back up onto the road)

Senses working overtime 473

1 Autumn at Maple Grove

Jerry and Gracie, Maple Grove, June first, 2024.

2 Reading: Patti Smith - Devotion

3 Reading: Paulo Coelho - Maktub

Loving this book. 

This resonated this week: Everything always turns out well in the end. If things aren't going well, that's because you haven't yet reached the end.

4 Listening: Donovan - The Hurdy Gurdy Man

From 1968 and tinged with Rishikesh and Fabs dust. Jennifer Juniper sums up that heady mix well.

5 Watching: Bodkin

Overtime: Seth Godin

The third impossibility

The first was radio and television. Humans around the world spending a significant portion of their waking hours consuming audio and video recordings of other people.

The second was the internet. Five to ten hours a day interacting, in real time, with other people, many of them strangers.

And the third is AI. We’re about to spend almost all of our time interacting with software that appears to have an understanding of us and the world around us. All the time, in real time.