Senses working overtime #259

1 A Tale Of Two Cities

Like a lot of us I've been working from home (full tilt too as it happens) and I mistakenly thought that would give me an opportunity to read more of A Tale Of Two Cities but that time was swallowed up by urgent and important school stuff. So I'm slowly edging forward - right now on page 241 (of 307 in this edition).

It's grim - Paris in the revolution was no picnic! But I am loving the language and the removal to a traumatic time in the past as an antidote to the traumatic times of the present.

Although, it's ANZAC day in NZ and Australia today - a day to remember another traumatic time in our past. 

Interesting species aren't we?

2 Poetry corner (returns)

Ha, This One's About Insomnia Too My bed is a godless church yet I still pray there every night.  Am I a fool? I can almost hear other worshippers in their far- off corners, the small breath of their hands unclasping. Ariel Francisco (2020)

3 Poetry

Wondering rather than knowing.

4 Austin's zines

I love Austin Kleon's newsletters - always filled with great creativity. I urge you to check out his zines.

5 Sweet Baby James

The music of James Taylor is a great salve for these times. 

Overtime: 

Senses working overtime #258

1 The search for the grail
(or why finding the original 1977 version verges on the impossible)

A lot of the family are binge watching franchise movies (we've just finished the five Bourne movies frinstance). Might be a good opportunity to go back to 1977! I might have a copy of the original on VHS.

2 Being Bill

Love Bill Murray? Everybody does!

3 Famous art museums you can visit...

...from your workspace! Seventeen of them!

4 Brothers

Great piece, pithy and well written, by a younger brother (age 62) about his attempt to reconnect his brotherly bond with his grumpy older brother (64) on a tramping adventure!

Excerpt:

I told Don on the phone that the hike would cement our brotherly bonds and reconnect us to the wilderness where we had spent significant chunks of our young adulthoods. I told him we might find something like peace in alpine meadows and under starry skies. I told him the trip could be life changing, that it would provide us both a much needed reset.

“No thanks,” he said. Don had never been one for big speeches.

“Why not?”

“What’s the point?”

“Fun? Exercise? Living in the moment? Leaving our comfort zones? Getting some clarity and perspective? Rediscovering purpose and connection?” I’m a talker.

“Spare me the inner-life mumbo jumbo,” he said. “You have the luxury of dabbling in that stuff, since you haven’t had a real job in decades.”

5 Seth Godin's message
The boat is really, really big and we’re all in it.

This is a slog, and there will be another side. It is unevenly distributed, it’s a tragedy and it’s a challenge. But we’re in it together and with care and generosity, we can find perspective, possibility and hope.

Overtime: Warren Ellis' sign-off
Don't be like me.  Get some rest, eat properly, sleep when you can, and turn your phone off once in a while. Nothing wrong with shutting the rest of the world off when you need to. I'll keep an eye on it for you while you're gone. Take a breath, go and look at the sky, hold on tight.  You're doing fine.

Senses working overtime #257

1 Larry on lock-downs

All you need to know from Larry David!

2 Cal Newport on Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation

I know - there are a million articles about self-isolation out there but this one from GQ is a look at the effect of wall to wall digital use on our daily lives. It is well worth a look.

3 Why You're Suddenly Remembering Your Dreams in the Morning

This was spooky - I'm dreaming a lot these days and yes, remembering them when I wake up. Why?

4 Ten surprising facts about everyday household objects

5 Isaac Newton, the plague of Britain in the 17th century and the results of his enforced self-isolation.

Isaac Newton by William Blake

Overtime: Austin on lock-downs

Great perspective from Austin on how social distancing actually brings us together more.

Senses working overtime #256

Coming to you from Sunday!

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

The lock-down has meant that every day feels like the Sundays I experienced growing up in the sixties and seventies in Nu Zild: no shops open, no mobility outside of the local area I lived in (only so far I could go on my Raleigh bike), no mail, no sport. 

All I had was: local exploration, reading, and listening to music!! 

Hey - exactly what I am doing now in lock-down!

1 Groundhog Day

This great movie is relevant, again, and again.

2 Kenny Rogers

One of my first albums back in the early seventies was Kenny Rogers and The First Edition's Greatest Hits. I remember looking at it for a while in the shop and saving up for it, slowly. When I finally bought it, costing me $5.75 of hard earned pocket money, I played it a lot. 

This interview was suggested by Austin Kleon and it's a great view of KR.

Rest in Peace Kenny. 

3 The semiotics of face-masks

Seth Godin sums it up for us!

4 Stages of grief and the world as it is - Austin Kleon

“We’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different…. Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed. Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies.”

5 Tips on living with yourself from an expert with 50 years experience  

Billy Barr lives in Gothic, Colo., a silver mining town
 that was abandoned more than 100 years ago.

This is a good list of 5 tips from Billy Barr, a guy who knows what he's talking about!

Overtime: This week's sign off from Warren Ellis:

Go sit by a window, or stand by your front door, for five minutes.  Take in some light and some air and just be there for five minutes.  Be at peace, take some slow breaths, and relax, just for five minutes. Little steps.  Day by day. You know how to do this. Look after yourself first. Hold on tight.  See you next week.

Senses working overtime #255

'If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing' (Monty Python).

With that in mind, and given we are all in a lock down bubble for a while, this week's Jewels For The Thirsty provides some laughter and smiles from the meme department. 

1 On my way to working from home

2 The truth

3 Dressing professionally is key

4 Zoom ideal

Zoom reality

5 Don't give up!

Overtime:

and...

Senses working overtime #254

1 San Francisco's shelter from the storm

Our daughter is in SF with Jesse and hunkering down as the shelter-in-place order kicks in. I like that term - much better than self-isolation.

2 Covid-19 and the Flu

3 Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early 
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather made 
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden (1966)

4 Birth of the cool

I've been enjoying this documentary on Miles Davis - something of a jerk but some great music!

5 Showdown At Yellow Butte

And I've been enjoying this Louis L'Amour western as a break from the serious stuff. 

Overtime: Sign off this week courtesy of Seth Godin

Curate your incoming.

Stay off Twitter.

Do the work instead. Whatever needs doing most is better than panic.

Being up-to-date on the news is a trap and a scam. Five minutes a day is all you need.

Senses working overtime #253

1 David Copperfield

It's taken me a couple of weeks but I've finished David Copperfield and feel a little bereft. Charles Dickens' favourite is a great novel. I'm missing reading it and living with the characters already.

2 Something is more interesting than this - Seth Godin

And now, that’s always true.

Whatever you’re doing.

No matter who you’re with.

Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.

And it’s in your pocket.

All the time. As long as the battery lasts.

There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.

Until infinity.

Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.

3 Small kindnesses 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

4 The Batman

Love this cover for issue 8 of THE BATMAN'S GRAVE
5 Max von Sydow

Star of my favourite movie of all time - Pelle The Conqueror. You absolutely, and utterly believe in him in that role (and others). Rest in peace.

Overtime: McCoy Tyner

Sadly another great artist, McCoy Tyner has also passed away recently.

Overtime: Oh dear, oh dear

Great piece by Frank Rich on the disaster that is Trump and his response to Covid-19. Poor America - my heart goes out to you all (R and D alike).