When ordinary life shackles me I escape one way or another
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
Anaïs Nin
Start Where You Stand
Start where you stand and never mind the past,
The past won’t help you in beginning new,
If you have left it all behind at last
Why, that’s enough, you’re done with it, you’re through;
This is another chapter in the book,
This is another race that you have planned,
Don’t give the vanished days a backward look,
Start where you stand.
The world won’t care about your old defeats
If you can start anew and win success;
The future is your time, and time is fleet
And there is much of work and strain and stress;
Forget the buried woes and dead despairs,
Here is a brand-new trial right at hand,
The future is for him who does and dares,
Start where you stand.
Old failures will not halt, old triumphs aid,
To-day’s the thing, to-morrow soon will be;
Get in the fight and face it unafraid,
And leave the past to ancient history,
What has been, has been; yesterday is dead
And by it you are neither blessed nor banned;
Take courage, man, be brave and drive ahead,
Start where you stand.
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by Berton Braley
Photo credit © 小猫王
The Seeker
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” — Albert Camus
The Misfits
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-Apple Computers Inc
Photo Credit © Geoffroy Demarquet
Portraits of the most Iconic people of all time
Webdesigner Depot recently published this post with over 100 portraits of the most iconic people of all time (or the most iconic images of all time – depending on how you look at it ).
The images are large and clear and many are stunning.
What is also interesting, are the comments, which had to be closed due to the intense debate on who should (or shouldn’t) have made the list.
People who cheat death play drums like this
The plane crash obviously hasn’t taken anything out of him. Watch Travis Barker’s amazing drum solo.
Evelyn McHale – The Saddest Photograph
This photograph is of Evelyn McHale. On the 1st May 1947 she jumped 86 floors from the top of the Empire State Building. She was 23 years old.
On the ground below, a photography student named Robert Wiles managed to capture the scene minutes after her body landed on top of a parked limousine.
You can read the story behind the photograph here.
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle and took him in
From the poem ‘Outwitted’
Edwin Markham
Under The Protection of Stone Angels
Possibly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen was a statute in a graveyard. A life-size angel towering above a grave, right hand pointing accusingly towards the sky. The look on its face was one of both extreme desperation and eternal gratitude, eyes both pleading and full of fury.
The function of this statue was to defend and protect his dead charge no matter who it may have been and no matter what they may have done in life. God and the angels in heaven had to be able to look upon this stone creature and have pity on the soul that lay beneath its feet. This statue was not created for decoration or adornment but as permanent plea for mercy.
The Beauty of Bernini
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I have a new obsession courtesy of ‘The Power of Art’ on BBC Four … Bernini. His work is stunning. It had such a powerful effect on me that I put all my film, photography and writing projects on hold to focus on a new idea I had after watching the programme.
I plan to put up a project page detailing the various things I am working on along with a portfolio of all my completed work.
In the meantime, check out a gallery of Bernini’s most famous pieces ….
Set Yourself On Fire
“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.” - Fred Shero (Hockey coach)
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Imagination is a wonderful thing. It is the closest thing we have to magic. It feeds the part of ourselves that is not skin and bone, the part of ourselves that we have forgotten all about. Every once in a while something will happen to you and you will glimpse it. You will see someone do something so brilliant or so beautiful that it will take your breathe away. You have been inspired.
You begin to feel the need to do more, be more. You have seen brilliance and beauty and in that moment, what you have is no longer enough.
My Worst and My Best
“I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
— Marilyn Monroe
Impossible Things
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
- Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
The Shift
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“And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Risk by Anais Nin
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2008 was the end of many things for me, some voluntary, some not. I had spent the whole of that year (and if I am to be 100% truthful, all of my adult life) feeling frustrated and restless. No matter what I did, nothing ever really felt enough.
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