anthropometaphors

“The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly.” – Charles Reznikoff

“Beauty, unaccompanied by virtue, is as a flower without perfume.” – French proverb

“A diamond with a flaw is better than a common stone that is perfect.” – Chinese proverb

“Desire is a horse that wants to take you on a journey to spirit.”  - Malidoma Some

“The most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that’s a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don’t know how to solve.” – William Vollman

“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees.” – John Muir

“Do you ever allow yourself to question, to have a burning question–and not put out the flame quickly with the first answer that you hear?” – A.H. Almaas

“If you come upon a lamp with a genie in it, don’t wish you had a magic wand.” – Rob Brezsney

“Brainwash yourself before somebody nasty beats you to it.” – Rob Brezsney

“A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.” – Victor Hugo

“Minotaur (MIN-uh-tawr) noun.  Someone or something monstrous, especially one that devours.”

“The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You have a gentleness that can sift inside and ignite, you’re a well set up campfire, basically.” – Michelle Medina

“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, he said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.” – Rumi.

“For one human being to love another is the most difficult task of all. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“Someday after we have mastered the winds, the waves, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.” – Teilhard de Chardin

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.” – Leo Tolstoy

“If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.” – Blaise Pascal

“Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself.” – Emily Dickinson

(The file was aptly named “Quotes”)

While I’d love to live a manic life of endless pleasure, screaming bliss and treasures that materialize from the air…I don’t.

For every yes there is a no.  While it can get more complicated than this, let’s keep it simple for the sake of this post.  Here are a few of the decisions I’ve made recently:

Yes: Granta renewal

No: Tin House renewal

. . .

Yes: Garden rescaping extravaganza

No: Holiday a la roadtrip between southern Spain and the north of France

. . .

Yes: Saving for a rainy day

No: Another pair of shoes

. . .

Yes: Physical therapy, rest and limited range of physical activity

No: Rupturing another intervertebral disk

. . .

Yes: Tomatoes, bananas, carrots, grapes, oranges and beans

No: Love handles

. . .

Yes: Tofu!

No: Animal face on my plate

. . .

Yes: Bubbly water

No: Booze

. . .

Yes: Mi familia

Gwendel

Arlis

Winslow

the.gray.shoes

I’m soooooo excited!

Several months ago I stumbled across iri5, an artist who works in conceptual mixed media collage.  Mixing media and genres of media, iri5 creates pieces that tickle my brain.

Robert Smith (by iri5)

Face of Change (by iri5)

Check out her other pieces here and here.

Last month I came across her art for the second time, and requested a price list for her work.  Most of the pieces I’d seen were unavailable, leading  us to talking about alternatives and the possibility of a commissioned original.  We tossed around a few ideas, images and more ideas.  After a few more ideas were tossed around, we came to agree on the creation of a bust of Oscar Wilde…comprised of snippets from The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, my fave book evar.

The work has begun, and iri5 has posted the first sketch on her flickr.

My Guys

Did I know any of these things about myself before I took the quiz?  Yeah sure, but I hadn’t thought about all of them in one go.  Now that I have them, I’m not sure what I’ll do with them, but I definitely see a few patterns.  Then again, when don’ t I see patterns?!

What patterns do you see?  And for those who know me, does any of this surprise you?

1. What part of the newspaper do you read first?
Don’t read the newspaper; I use Netvibes to collate the RSS feeds I’m interested in.
To rephrase the question in terms of my Netvibes, below are the 3 tabs I check every day and their corresponding RSS feed (from first read to last):
1. News – GeneomeWeb Daily News Articles, Pharmacogenomics Reporter, SFGate, New Scientist
2. People – Gmail, friends Delicious and blog feeds
3. The Black Hole* – Apartment Therapy San Francisco, Stereogum, Decor8
* So named because I often get lost in the intertubes once I open this tab

2. What are three books you’ve read in the past year?
Because I lurve so many, here are 5:
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories (Karen Russel)
Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome (Kathy Hoopman)
The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)
The Children’s Hospital (Chris Adrian)

3. As a child, what did you do in your free time?
I read books and played with my imaginary friends in the large expanse of the backyard.  Summer was spent inside the cool darkness of our big house; I’d sit silently near a window, warming my toes in puddles of sun on the carpet.

4. What’s a goal that has been on your list for a few years?
To write and publish a book, story our journal (i.e. peer reviewed) piece

5. What do you actually do with your free time?
I read.  I play with my blessing of a dog.  I’m often at the dog park, walking through plants.

6. What types of activities energize you?
Writing a list.  Spending time alone in my home when it is clean and well-organized.  Waking early while the birds are still participating in the dawn chorus, knowing I have so much free time ahead of me that I can’t imagine the end of it — for this reason I love staycations.

7. What famous people intrigue you?
I’m not really intrigued by famous people so much as wild animals and children.

(from The Huffington Post)