Fold, Pull, Pop and Turn

For the folks who remember the days of my Finnegans Wake pop-up project, you might enjoy this video. Very fun to see how the big boys do it!

Manny & Lo

I forgot how much I loved this movie until I ran across it at McKay's recently when I was turning some unwanted books into more DVDs for this movie addict. Check out the trailer and see if it calls to you.

Slow Love

I thoroughly enjoyed Dominique Browning's account of her life after losing her job as editor-in-chief of House & Garden in Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, & Found Happiness. In the book her love/hate interest is given the pseudonym Stroller, and that also seemed to fit the meandering quality of the narrative. I found myself waiting for the book to start, kind of like I was waiting for the opening credits in a movie. But about halfway through I got it and by the end of the book I was right there with her. And what a there it is:

"I am always surprised by joy, and that is what is suffusing my entire being. I feel it start deep in my belly and spread up and over my body, and I recognize it for what it is: a slow flush of love for the world -- the sheer pleasure of being here, the profound honor of witnessing life. As I paddle home across the pond, I'm overwhelmed with the beauty all around me. There's a lot to enjoy in a life of solitude, I've learned, but I know that I'm not alone, either. Love is all around me."

The messages we need to hear and our medicine for the world

Jen Lee and Marianne Elliott both posted amazing things on Friday that totally resonated with me and also seemed to play off each other beautifully. If you have time I highly recommend listening to Jen Lee's powerful podcast here and reading Marianne Elliott's insightful blog post here. Once again, enjoy!

The Six Poisons

I started following Dani Shapiro's blog after reading her wonderful book, Devotion, which I mentioned here a while back. Yesterday she posted a great piece about inspiration and mentioned her process of working on one story in particular. She also kindly included a link to the story itself, which I then read and can't stop thinking about. So I have to share it with you. You can read the story here and an interview with her about the story here. Enjoy!

These kids knock me out

So grateful to have found out about Music by Prudence.

Hey there Georgie girl!

Hooray! Georgie's home! It makes me want to dance, and Rodg reminded me of the perfect song...



My love of my dear, sweet, old Saturn is probably as mysterious to the world as my powerful devotion to the titmice that frequent our feeders, but they are bedrock to me.

Happiness experiment

I read a great interview with change-maker Britt Bravo a couple of days ago (isn't that a great name?) and haven't been able to get a couple of sentences from it out of my mind:

My final piece of advice is to follow your curiosity, and notice the things that make you happy. They really are clues leading you to work, and a way of living that you love.

I realized that I often have a rather stern internal "it's good for you" approach to not following the things that make me happy. Where did I get this idea? From having to eat my veggies when I was little or having to take classes I didn't always enjoy in school? Or having to go to work 40 hours a week as an adult?:) Well, I can't always do the things that make me happy I guess (like lounge around and watch movies all day every day, which some part of me thinks I'd love to do), but I can certainly notice them! That does seem like a good first step. And then maybe the times when they're possible and the only thing holding me back is that internal meanie, I could actually let myself do them... and enjoy it!

Six word story 12

The holes let the light in.

Summer Solstice

I gotta admit, this is not my favorite day of the year. And this solstice was rung in as I was paying a surprise visit to the local Bridgestone Firestone car care center when I was supposed to be on my way to my annual mammogram. Woo hoo! Oh summer, show me some mercy:)

Happy Father's Day!

I have been blessed with amazing men in my life. I'm really aware that not all women are so lucky. Every year when Father's Day comes around I just bask in the love these men have shown me and their families. Look at these sweet guys!

Checking in on 35.7.15

This is my first day off after working for 12 days -- yay! I'd worried how I was going to do with my yoga and writing having so little time for my own projects in there, but it actually went really well. I think a lot of it was because my expectations were really realistic. I was totally OK with counting doing my Father's Day cards as part of my 15 minutes of writing and seeing lying in corpse pose for 10 minutes as being yoga. And the time I spent writing and doing yoga was really nourishing. Instead of going on autopilot and pushing through the two weeks, I was much more aware of how I was feeling and what I needed and was much more sensitive to how important tending to those needs was. This is pretty big for me. I'm really loving this experiment!

Meet Bindu Wiles

Bindu Wiles is the force behind the wonderful 21.5.800, or as I know it 35.7.15. I loved learning more about her today in this video so I thought I'd share it with you here, if you're interested. She's a blast!

Mister Rogers was such a hero

You may have seen this already, but it makes me teary every time I watch it. Enjoy!

Miraculous

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." -Albert Einstein

Saw this quotation on Spring's wonderful website today and knew what I had to post today. The four fabulous women of Spring have been exploring the Law of Attraction this month - the discussions have been really interesting and definitely worth checking out.

Jesse Kornbluth made my day

I always love reading Jesse Kornbluth's Head Butler, but these lines in today's post just completely delighted me:

"Do you have a spiritual practice?" I asked.

"I sit in the sun. And I listen to Elvis Presley’s gospel music."

Check out the post for the whole story and links to some of Elvis's greatest gospel songs. I'm a believer!

Crazy Heart

Busy weekend with a project that I can't wait to share with you soon, but I did have time to watch Crazy Heart, and it stole mine. So honest, so painful, so beautiful, and really, as drenched in love as it is in booze. It knocked me out.

35.7.15

Time to get honest here. Mainly with myself. As I'd suspected, the 21.5.800 project was a little ambitious. So I'm making some adjustments to stay involved in a way that feels healthy to me. It's been my plan all along to do 30 Days of Yoga, which starts tomorrow, and I started the yoga and writing project on Monday, so that's an additional 5 days = 35. 7 is because I'm planning to do some form of yoga every day. Some days that will just be savasana and that is totally fine with me. I'll know those days. And the 800 words thing just stressed me out. It became clear that just setting aside a period of time each day would at least get me writing, which has been great. I asked myself how much time I thought I could honestly devote to journaling every day, and I came up with 20 minutes. As an act of kindness to myself I made it 15. This adjustment feels right and nourishing.

I've been inspired by some really honest blog posts recently from Jen Lemen. And Marianne Elliott's post today so resonated it made me a little teary. You might enjoy them, too, but only if you have time. Be kind to yourself. We all deserve it.

Interesting

Christine Mason Miller once again hit the nail right on the head this week in another excellent post. Here's the section I can't get out of my mind:

"In life, in the creative process, in a classroom, in a marriage and as a parent - no matter what role we are playing - it takes nothing more than giving our full attention to the task at hand, and instead of judging anything as good, bad or otherwise, saying, 'Well isn't that interesting,' and letting it all be OK as it is."

Daily Decalogue

Pope John XXIII's daily decalogue knocked me out today on The Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin posts such great stuff!

Day One

Am loving 21.5.800 so far. Today was officially day one, although I started yesterday as a test run. This morning I noticed I was feeling a lot more spacious and I really do think it's related to all that flow writing in the morning and yoga in the evening. Lovely Marianne Elliott got me my yoga practice over the weekend in time to start this project and I've done it every day since. I can already see that some of the poses that had been really challenging on the first try are definitely becoming more familiar and I'm already gaining strength. I find myself looking forward to it all day. So far, so great!

Six word story 11

Broken, she was grateful for wholeness.

(Many thanks to Rodger for the use of his excellent clock photograph)

21.5.800

Last week Marianne Elliott (who I'm doing 30 Days of Yoga with starting on Saturday the 12th) posted another related project on her blog. Bindu Wiles is inviting anyone who is interested to join her in a project connected to yoga and writing: 21.5.800. For 21 days, participants will be doing 5 days of yoga a week and 800 words of writing per day.

At the beginning of the year I set an intention to make this a year of writing. I've been pretty good about showing up here almost every day with something or other to say, but I had also wanted to do more journal writing, which never really got off the ground. I was especially inspired by Christina Baldwin's book One to One. As soon as I read about this project I immediately saw it as a great incentive to dive into the writing prompts that had intrigued me in her book.

So wish me luck! Not sure how I'm going to fit all of this into an already full schedule, but it will be fun to share how it goes with you. I've already received my yoga practice and have been having fun trying out new poses. Now to pull together some writing topics to explore...

Sixteen years ago

Thought I'd wrap up our party with the song Rodg and I danced down the aisle to sixteen years ago today as husband and wife. The beginning of a wonderful life together! Happy Anniversary, sweetie! I still love the way you do the things you do:)

I love my tribe

Hope you enjoy this librarian dance party from the University of Washington's Information School as much as I did. Fun and informative - that's the way we like it:)



You can learn more about it here. (And if you want to compare this to the Lady Gaga video they're parodying, click here)

My dance party gets a little wacky

I fell in love with this piece of video art by the lovely and amazing Pipilotti Rist when I saw it at Cheekwood several years ago in the "Altered Spaces" exhibit. Now, thanks to the power of YouTube you can enjoy it as well. I find it very dance-able - hope you do, too! Sorry, unable to embed this one, but it's worth the short trip. Click here for the video.

Dreams

Get up and dance with me!



And once more in Cantonese. Is Faye Wong not GORGEOUS?:)

Dance party!

I think this week is just going to have to be a dance party! Don't be a snob - dance along with Elvis. You won't regret it, I promise you.