Found: Lovers, by Jarek Puczel

Source: saatchionline.com via Katie on Pinterest

This oil painting by Jarek Puczel has stayed with me since I first found it on Pinterest.  I love everything about it--the tones, the way the lines and faces blur into each other, and the slightly mysterious aura it seems to exude.

The artist's caption reads thus: "When we love, we think constantly about each other."

That is the true difficulty and treasure of love, to think constantly about someone else (and not always consciously, either).  You are somehow fully (or even more fully) yourself and yet it becomes impossible to tell where you end and your beloved begins.

On Love

"To love--that is to say, to love someone 'for what he is'--always means to find oneself with a 'ridiculous object'...But it also means to continue to see in this object the 'something more'...To love is to perceive this gap or discrepancy, and not so much be able to laugh at it as to have an irresistible urge to laugh at it.  The miracle of love is a funny miracle."  

Alenka Zupancic, "On Love as Comedy"

Courage

Source: encrypted-tbn2.google.com via Katie on Pinterest

These words get to me every time I read them.  In my sophomore year of high school, To Kill a Mockingbird was our summer reading for English.  I loved the book from the start, but the way my teacher talked about it transformed the story even further, and I fell head over heels with every moment bound in the text.  My teacher quoted the last few lines from the book with regularity: "Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."

These words became exponentially more precious to me at the end of that school year.  I just wrote the story of what happened and then erased every word.  The sentences I put together to capture that story and that teacher in writing weren't right.  I'll have to try again.


I found this image and quote on my friend's Pinterest.  Does anyone know where it's from?  I did a google image search and haven't find an original source yet.

Happy Friday

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

I keep expecting life to slow down, but I should know better by now.  In the last month, in addition to all the holiday celebrations, I've been to Wisconsin and Florida, experienced forty-degree weather in both, listened to tornado sirens in January for the second time in my life, and already been very-nearly-late to my new job because of closed roads and traffic lights with no power along the way.

Oh, yes, did I tell you I have a job?  One I already like, at that?  After some training, I will officially be a tutor for a really fantastic local organization.

Sometimes when you leave one idea for your future, you step right into the thing that you were supposed to be doing in the first place, and you realize that your dream isn't just for the future, it's for right now.  Sometimes, you are already where you need to be.

Have a lovely weekend!

Full of Great Joy

Source: superswoon.com via Taylor on Pinterest

We are approaching the new year, and with it comes those silly resolutions.  I used to have such lists for myself: eat healthy, exercise daily, read the Bible in its entirety, read a book every week, learn to do something (crochet, knit, ski, and who knows what else), write a book (or two), make straight As in school, etc.  Those are all things I'd still like to do, or at least improve upon, but I go through the same pattern every year: make goals, put them off for a week, succeed for a few days, then fail and scrap all of them.

A lot of instruction on achieving goals tells you to make them tangible, practical, and somewhat achievable, to outline them in a shape you can actually figure out.  For me, however, this doesn't work.  I have learned, over time, that I must set a goal that is an idea--to be healthy, or happy, or always moving forward--and then within moments, I figure out which course of action best suits that goal.  Literal achievements tire me out, makes me panic when I do not achieve the exact goal I hoped for.  But achieving some kind of state of being?  That fills me up.

So as I approach this new year, my resolution is simple and yet one of the hardest things in the world to do: I want to be joyful.  I want to live a joy-filled life and to share joy.

Exactly how I'll do that remains to be seen.

The mini bus roll poster is by K. Barteski, available here.  One of these days I'll buy it.

Sky

Some days, the sky feels so close you could almost grab it by the fistful.  There's a line of cloud above the trees, a space of blue, like the stretch of the sheet visible between the pillows along the earth and the blanket of even more cloud in the sky, gray-blue and so textured you feel like you should be able to reach up and grab it and pull it around you.  Even from the roadside, rain dotting the windshield and the photo you're trying to take, trying impossibly to capture this so you can look it again, sky like this makes you feel the same as resting your back against a tree, barefoot toes in the grass, physically feeling the natural world.

Some days, even cold, wet, windy ones, the world can be astonishingly beautiful.

Before I Die

Dreams, big, small, adventurous, or simple, can be a food for the soul.  They push us forward into the next day and the next and every one after that, giving us the impetus to expand our lives and grow.  Most people probably have some sort of mental list of things they'd like to do before they die, things that may seem in the future but get closer every day...yet get lost in the every day.  

Earlier this year, Candy Chang, a cofounder of Civic Center and TED fellow among numerous other accomplishments, launched Before I Die, a project that transformed the side of an abandoned building in New Orleans into a giant space to articulate and share dreams.  It's a giant chalkboard, with spaces for people to fill in their hopes and dreams.  Some of them are inspiring, others a little heart-breaking, and a few are even kind of funny.  

Since the initial project, Before I Die has been recreated in at least nine other cities, using the Toolkit from Civic Center, and people continue sharing their dreams.  What would you write? You can share your dream here.  

All images are borrowed from here, available for use for publicizing the project.  Oh, and yes, I found this on StumbleUpon.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to blog about this project, but I really, really love it.

I'll tell you how the sun rose

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –

A ribbon at a time –

The steeples swam in Amethyst

The news, like Squirrels, ran –

The Hills untied their Bonnets –

The Bobolinks – begun –

Then I said softly to myself –

“That must have been the Sun”!

But how he set – I know not –

There seemed a purple stile

That little Yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while –

Till when they reached the other side –

A Dominie in Gray –

Put gently up the evening Bars –

And led the flock away –

Emily Dickinson, Fr 204

The colors weren't the same this morning.  The sky was clear, the blue less mixed, the pinks and golds a little more hidden.  I'd lament not taking my camera out yesterday, but I realize that even if I'd come back in, grabbed my camera, and gone out to try to capture the beauty of the sunrise with a few more megapixels, I may not have caught it.  That's the thing about nature--it's transient, always shifting and changing and moving into whatever's next.  

So I'm happy with what I caught today: a hint of color at the horizon, and the roses before the dew had time to dry.

More details about this poem and about Dickinson's work in general can be found here. 

Mornings

Guys, I'm not a morning person, not in the slightest.  We've had to wake by seven every morning for over a week and my body is not too keen on being disturbed an hour to two hours earlier than usual.

But I've got a new thought for myself: stop bemoaning the mornings you get up early, tired, stiff, and make your way to the window or outside to catch the sun's first foray above the tree line.

Autumnal sunrises are exceptionally beautiful.  And it's not just the sun that's lovely--it's the entire sky, cast in ephemeral golden-pink amidst its usual blues and grays.

I used to know the beauty you find when you wake early, three years ago, in the semester that I had eight o'clock classes every day and woke at four-thirty for work every Saturday.  Since the summer, though, in luxuriating in my later-starting mornings, I've missed a lot of sunrises.  I don't know if catching a few more will motivate me to get out of my warm bed as winter makes its slow approach and the dawn air has a distinct frosty bite, but at least I know something lovely awaits me on those mornings that the alarm sounds all too soon.

Tomorrow I might walk to the end of the cul-de-sac, my little point-and-shoot instead of my cell phone in hand, and capture a few more moments of the day's beginning, this time without houses in them...have a lovely morning, and keep looking for beauty.

A Story

I am looking for a story to tell.  I feel like I have one in me, but the words aren't there and it's not ready to be told.

Source: katherinecenter.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Yet I want to tell a story, and I am looking for one.  I hope it will be my own and that my own will be worth telling, but I'm not really sure yet.

In one of my courses, we talked about the nature of the novel, what really happens, what's important, and some theorists who posited that the digressions are actual the substance of the novel.  It's not the ending, necessarily, but the getting there.  That seems the kind of story I want to tell, one where the end goal is really a final digression, and all the little extra diversions along the way are where the substance is found.  It also seems the kind of story I want my life to tell.

Have you heard any good tales lately?  Do you have one to tell?

Lovely collage by this lovely lady found here.  

Serendipity

While walking out of the grocery store last night, I spotted an ad on the ground in the parking lot.  It had some surprisingly good words, so I took them and stuck them on a picture.

I didn't read the rest because I didn't want to know what it was for--it had one of those fill-out-and-reply forms on it, and I feared it would be for something concrete and definitely mundane.  I also wonder if maybe someone else would see it and grab onto that thought for a moment.  

At this moment, I'm not sure what dreams I want to reach for.  A few of them are vying for my reach, but I'm actually pretty content with the moment I'm living in, between specific dreams while still always reaching for an intangible, ineffable dream of the way my life will be, regardless of its details.  This simple contentment with the present is something I should always dream of and reach for.


That's my photo but I don't remember taking it.  I found it between other photos planned for something two years ago.  I believe it was a happy accident.  I know finding it amongst the few pictures still on my laptop was.

Imagination

If anyone knows where this originally came from, I'd love to know.

Source: imgfave.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I would love to create this myself and place it in my little corner workspace.  Even regular work can become creative, and a little imagination and inspiration can improve the quality of any work, not just creative.  Wouldn't a sign pointing the way to the best imaginary places encourage an imaginative approach to daily life?

Writing, Briefly

I used to fancy myself a writer--a clever, brilliant, witty writer of incredibly moving stories.  At that time, I was in middle school.  A few weeks ago, I came across my old writing journals and my stories made me laugh out loud.  They were one part fantasy (in the style of Redwall), one part sci-fi (à la Star Wars), and many, many parts adorably bad.  Perhaps they were fairly good for a sixth-grader, but I now find it a bit amazing that I repeatedly earned honorable mentions in my school's annual short story competition.

Source: labohemeblog.com via Jenelle on Pinterest

Sometimes I imagine that I'd start to enjoy creative writing again and imagine just the sort of place where I'd turn out novels that would end up dog-eared on a million nightstands, read over and over again until the pages fell out, and be loved as thoroughly as you can love a book.  I imagine that if I had a perfect place in which to write, the stories and poems would create themselves.  This is a rather Romantic notion of the writing process that I don't fully buy as well as something I've never been good at practicing, but it's the notion of creative writing that best suits the imagination.

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

Wouldn't you feel creative in either of these spaces?  It has always been my dream to have the perfect little nook for writing; my own cabin would be absolutely perfect.  Virginia Woolf had something quite write when she wrote that a person (generally) needs a room of one's own in order to write.  Having a pleasing physical space can help create the mental space in which to write.  I'm always attempting to create that physical space for myself, but I haven't gotten it quite right yet.

Images link to the pins that contain their original sources.  

Left Brain, Right Brain

Source: theentertaininghouse.com via Rachel on Pinterest

My boss at my old job taught psychology courses at the school and incorporated a survey of our left or right brained characteristics into our employee evaluations.  It wasn't the first time I'd done a survey of this sort, but it allowed me a little self-discovery at that point, especially because I'd been through a lot of huge changes since the last time I'd done any sort of personality inventory.

I discovered that I'm mostly right-brained: creative, yearning, imaginative.  But my right-brained tendencies are heavily checked by the few left-brained characteristics I do have, which weigh rather heavily: analytical, love for the familiar, practical.  I'm also (if it's not too self-flattering to say) a master of words and language.  By this I mean that I may not always write with aesthetic mastery or even be interesting, but that I have a pretty good grasp of grammar, syntax, semantics, and vocabulary.  However, the way I feel about syntax and semantics (and not so much grammar or vocabulary) is more governed by my creative, yearning, and imaginative impulses; I love examining the way that words placed together in different ways can have so much impact on the way we are perceived and the way we feel and I could really go on for ages about that.

I think everyone exists somewhere on a spectrum between the left and right brain; it's not a dichotomy by any means.  It is interesting, though, that some characteristics will weigh more heavily than others and come in uneven doses, and that most people will find themselves leaning one way or the other.

Where do you see yourself in this spectrum?  Have you encountered it before?

You can see the other illustrations done for this ad campaign here, along with the text in an easier-to-read version.

Terrain Dreams

I know you've read about it a million times by now, but the new Terrain site is crazy gorgeous.  The favorites file is so much fun.  You can look at all your favorite items together and arrange them however you'd like, or even sort them into different folders.  Right now, I'm imagining my home, filled with textures and colors in these gorgeous hues.

terrain dreams by littletoiloflove on Polyvore.com

You can take a look at my favorites here and then start your own selection.  Have fun imagining!

"Let's not lose our love of reading...

...that's what got us in this mess in the first place."

Or so the professor of my first college English course (British Literature II, Romantics to Early Modernism, incredible class) said one day.

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

Those are words I carry around with me, too.  If I didn't love reading, I wouldn't have ended up where I am.  I'm not exactly sure what it is I'll do, or even what exactly I want to study, but I learned about a new interdisciplinary program that I can complete along with my MA and I might have a clue.

Regardless of what I decide, I'd better keep my love of reading.

I've decided to use the "scheduled at" feature so that I can write in the evening and post in the morning.  Voila!  Lack of motivation in the morning is solved.  Have a lovely day!

Self Instruction

When nervous, I get a little more accepting of platitudes.

Normally, I'm a bit snobby about clichés, even though I use them all the time.  It's fairly illogical, I know, but I think the reason I'm snobby about seeing them is actually because I over-use them myself.

Anyway, as I said, when I'm nervous, I get a little more accepting of platitudes.  Why?  I think it's because they are easy to put on repeat in my mind and thus effectively temper nervous thoughts.  So in light of my silly nerves about starting classes this week, I've put a few doses of prettily illustrated platitudes, gathered here, on the back of the desk behind my laptop.

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

These two are my favorites.  I so wish that top print was still for sale!  I've shared them before, I'm sure, and I'm really sure that others have blogged them already, but they're catchy and I like to keep them in mind whenever I take on a new adventure.

Source: google.com.au via Meredy on Pinterest

I may or may not blog some more in the next few days.  I'll see how things go between classes, reading, and time with family before my little sister leaves for college.  

Collections

Yesterday, I saw this post on SFGirlByBay and thought about submitting something I collect, but then I realized I don't collect anything.  I mean, you could say I collect books and journals and paper goods, I suppose.  However, I tend to accumulate more than I collect them--they pile onto my desk and into boxes without any specific intent of building a collection.

Source: flickr.com via Tammy on Pinterest

Yet I like the idea of having a collection, even if it takes up space and time.  Collecting requires time, thought, and effort, unlike picking things up here and there.  Of course, there is a certain organic nature to picking things up more randomly, but there's still a natural pattern to collecting--knowing what you're looking for and finding it.  It's a conscious act.

Source: flickr.com via Tammy on Pinterest

Perhaps I need to start a collection.  Any ideas?

Doesn't that first collection make you laugh?

Sweet Summertime

It's gray and rainy this morning and I can feel that summer is drawing to a close, even though it will be hot for at least another six to eight weeks here.
At the start of summer, I had a list of things I wanted to do--read for fun, read some preparatory materials for grad school, learn some printmaking techniques, and figure out what I'm going to do with my degree when I finish.
I managed most of those things, except figuring out what to do with an English degree (I think I'll just wing it), so I'd like to try just a few more things, like making a delicious watermelon this pretty...

Source: musicandmisery.tumblr.com via Veronika on Pinterest

...and starting to journal again...

Source: flickr.com via Jess on Pinterest

...and creating a (non-virtual) mood board to inspire me.

Source: martawrites.com via Brooke on Pinterest

What would you like to do with the rest of your summer?

Good Words

I found some good words this weekend.  I was thinking about writing and didn't have any words of my own that I wanted to put to paper (this happens frequently), so I went looking for something to inspire and found a lot.  Take a look with me, won't you?

Source: creaturecomfortsblog.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: designismine.blogspot.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: katearends.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

Go and be happy this week!  I've saved a few more good words here and here.