netpositive: (firehand)
[No actual coworkers were harmed or upset in the making
of this dream. This is only partially about work, after all.]


I dreamed this morning that "they" killed one of my coworkers.
Officially he "fell", but several of us figured he was pushed
because we saw him wrestled away from the balcony before he
could speak. "They" instantly replaced him with someone new
who cheerfully spouted what "they" wanted to hear rather than
doing difficult work to fix or change things.

One coworker, who had been close friends with the victim,
fell completely apart, sobbing in my arms. I was trying to
help and hide her in case they might go after her too.

Then things shifted slightly... and I was parking further away
from work, in a rather hidden spot in an underground garage.
I noticed I was wearing a specific T-shirt [a meaningful but
uncomfortably constructed one that I haven't worn in years -
however, I saw it a week ago when I pulled out its sister shirt
for my first solo takeoff and landing]
and so on my way in
I started looking around for a more suitable shirt, but no one
had noticed I wasn't dressed right.

At least before I woke up.

Would the death of hope hurt less if it hadn't been given a voice?

At least my first impulse seems to have been to worry about someone else
in more trouble, rather than myself.

Would you have still said what you did if you knew what I was thinking?

One of the leftovers from my childhood is that I don't like surprises.

Do I change my shirt, or do I walk away?


Ah, sometimes Tir'na Na Nog'th disappears right under your feet.
netpositive: (firehand)
1. Go exploring. Explore ideas, places, and opinions.
The inside of the echo chamber is where all the
boring people hang out.

-Jessica Nagy, "How to be More Interesting (in 10 Simple Steps)"
    I hate midwinter.

    Everyone who knows me, knows I hate midwinter.

    Gonna put one foot in front of the other
    until spring.

    Going slowly, maybe.

    But going.
You know, I keep dreaming of other people.
I want to be in my dreams once in a while.

-me, to myself, this morning
    And yet... I'm close to the divine.
    I can feel it. I have seen it. Touched it, even.

    I hear you calling.
    Please let me hear what you are saying.

10. Ignore the scolds. Boring is safe,
and you will be told to behave yourself.
The scolds could have, would have, should have.
But they didn’t.

-Jessica Nagy, again
netpositive: (Default)

I realized then that I who thought I had complete control
of my life, had control of only three things: my thought, my mind –
the images that these thoughts created – and the action that derived
from it. So here I was wallowing in a vortex of emotions and depression
and what have you, with the enormity of the situation, wanting to go to
a place of healing, health and happiness. I wanted to go from where I was
to where I wanted to be, for which I needed something. I needed something
that would pull me out of all this. So I dried my tears, and I declared to
the world at large... I said, "X is only one page in my life, and I will not
allow this page to impact the rest of my life."

I also declared to the world at large that I would ride it out, and
I would not allow X to ride me. But to go from where I was to where I
wanted to be, I needed something. I needed an anchor, an image, a peg
to peg this process on, so that I could go from there. And I found that
in my dance, my dance, my strength, my energy, my passion, my very life breath.


-Ananda Shankar Jayant, TED video
    Feet? Check. Hands? Check. Brain? Check.

    Will the real me please stand up? Oh, there you are...

    I think. But I feel the Big Cat Blues.

Imagine a lion walking around affirming – I’m king of the jungle,
I’m king of the jungle. And yet this is exactly what people are doing
with positive affirmations most of the time. The lion’s very nature is
that it is a lion. Being king of the jungle is mostly an idea.

Fortunately lions are not as confused as human beings. Lions mostly
walk around being lions without suffering from being disconnected from
themselves and having a bunch of ideas about who or what they should be.

The most affirming experience we humans can have is to land in
our true nature. A moment of perceiving the real is more powerful
than a lifetime of words. Well intentioned, but misguided efforts
at positive affirmations would be better spent in learning how to
settle down and allow what is truly real in us arise into consciousness.

The world is abundant. Life is on our side. We are awesome and wonderful.
It’s the true state of affairs. If we can’t see it, then the more productive
course of action is to explore – why not. Trying to convince ourselves that
the sky is blue when, in fact, the sky is blue – is crazy behavior.

As the saying goes – the only way out is through. Explore the deficiencies,
the hidden beliefs. Open them up to the light of awareness. The truth will
set us free. The false dissolves. Only the real remains.


John, in Open Secrets
    Do you ride the lion, or does it ride you?

    I need more words, more music, more dance, my voice.

    I want to go to the end of my world -- my jungle.

    I would like to walk around being a lion, and
    not worrying about being king or not.

    I intend to stretch.
netpositive: (firehand)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is
the mysterious. It is the source of all true art
and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

-Albert Einstein

While gaining physical and then psychological self-confidence over time,
I seem to have lost emotional self-confidence along the way.

Sometimes learned behavior still doesn't help.

Please connect me with something.

In and out quick, a cowboy.
-a character in the Illuminatus! trilogy
netpositive: (Default)
Focus, Castle. It's a crime scene.
-Kate Beckett
    ... a secret out, a secret in.

    Break in, break out,
    but not break up,
    not break down.

    The brakes are off.
    The drive is on.

    Not broken, just the breaks.

    A secret out, a secret in...
Could we please focus, people... focus.
-Nathan Ford
netpositive: (Default)
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

-Lyle Lovett
    When I was a child, I read Thor Heyerdahl.
    So I've been in sacred caves on Easter Island.

    When I was a child, I read Joy Adamson.
    So I've been to the savanna and run wild.

    When I was a child, I read J.R.R. Tolkien.
    So I've been to Middle Earth and met Ents.

    I'm not bad at traveling once I get going.
    But I never really understand it
    until I get there.

    If then.

    I want to go to the place where I want to be.

    You know where that is?

    I don't.
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
-Herman Melville
netpositive: (firehand)
[Part of this was originally posted private on July 21, 2009.
Updated 12/2/2009 to honor helping hands and making mistakes.]


Bob Uecker, who does play-by-play for the Milwaukee Brewers,
said something the other day that I'm still thinking about.
He was talking about power hitters, and what makes a really
excellent one, and what he said was, "They hit mistakes really hard."
The key here is, he's not talking about the PITCHER's mistakes,
because of course they slug the bejesus out of those. He's talking about
THEIR mistakes. Even when they get ahead of the ball and they're not
going to be able to pull it, they still hit it with everything they've got.
And sometimes, that ball goes out of the park just the same as if
they'd done what they wanted.

-truepenny, in a comment on a post about a post about a post about writing
    Tao is about ten thousand things,
    and the one.

    Try to deal with ten items a day. Move them around,
    use them up, throw them out, whatever works.

    Whenever eating anything with tomato sauce, remember to
    wear a black shirt and also have the laundry hamper handy.

    There must be at least a hundred ways to game a system.
    When in doubt, consider that anything can be solved
    given enough time or willingness to break things.
    Which one would you choose?

    That's a minimum of ten items, by the way.
    You can always go to eleven if you want to.

    Do things you enjoy.
    Do things you can.
    Do things.

    A picture can be worth a thousand words. Though sometimes
    one word is "Aww..." and it just gets repeated a thousand times.

    Thanks Bill, Berry, Cait, cats, and Wolfie.
If we do not fear to commit mistakes, if we take the omens
as a warning, as a help to cross that particular day, then
we start to get deeper and deeper into the soul of the world.

-Paulo Coehlo
netpositive: (Default)
[Part of this was originally posted private on 9/30/2008.
Updated 12/1/2009 as closure for Black November 2009.]


The message for me in what you've said is that
ACTION is always better than inaction, a lesson that
for some reason I have had to relearn again and again.

It goes like this: You must take a step in the direction
that you think is right, because you will otherwise never
know what that step might reveal. Whether that step reveals
the error in your thinking, the missing enabler, the proof
you've sought, the beauty or ugliness you never imagined,
the nature of resistance, or nothing particularly meaningful,
it is worth the effort to pull back the curtain, because
it will expand your knowledge and guide you.

Linda from Deerfield
    Step, step, step.

    If your foot lands in mud, pull it up, shake it off.
    Go on.

    If your other foot lands in shit, pull it up, shake it off.
    Go on.
Take the first step in faith.
You don’t have to see the whole staircase,
just take the first step.

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
netpositive: (firehand)
We can talk all night, We can talk all day
We can play charades when there is nothing to say
You turn me on to the idea of growing old

The Features
    Assimilate your information.

    Do the thing you are meant to be doing.
    Yours. Not anyone else's -- not your mother's,
    your best friend's, or the President's.
    Your thing. Right now, and tomorrow too.

    Write first. Worry later. Or not at all.
For those of us who are too headstrong to learn from
human beings, lessons will duly arrive in the guise of
Situations, Dreams, and other Self-Generative Activities.

Antero Alli, in _Angel Tech_ (1st ed.)
    It's only the future.

    Don't forget to breathe.

    (And if you need to dream, try sleeping.)

    Thank you, Sondra Venable.
Do you remember
Standing on the shore,
Head in the clouds,
Your pockets filled with dreams
Bound for glory
On the seven seas of life,
But, the ocean is deeper than it seems

Baby, baby, baby, baby,
You'll find that you're the only one
Can sail your ship across the sky

Whitesnake

Courage (4)

Nov. 4th, 2006 02:54 pm
netpositive: (firehand)
We gonna to do what they say can't be done
We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there

Jerry Reed, "East Bound and Down"
    At 44, it's frustrating to feel like I'm on
    the bottom rung of a ladder. But then look at
    all the other ladders I climbed just to get here.

    Measure twice, cut once.

    I worry too much about what is possible, and
    not enough about what I want to (make) happen.

    Dream first, budget second.

    I keep trying to account for all my time. And
    I keep looking at how much others accomplish in
    the same period of time, and then I feel inferior.
It's sobering to realize, for example, that when
Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

-Tom Lehrer, age 37
    But I am not anyone else. I have my own priorities.
    I have my own needs, wants, desires, responsibilities.
    Sure, I may be a bit of an ant. But I'm a damn good ant.

    Plan first. Execute second. Adjust all along.

    I could have been dead 3 times over by age 23.
    Maybe I don't know the reason, maybe I never will,
    but I'm still here. As long as I am, I do what I can.
It takes a lot of time to learn something new,
so don't be impatient with yourself right now.
Each time you uncover a new aspect of your current challenge,
you will also uncover a new obstacle. This is disheartening,
but it's also very normal. Just keep going and keep learning!
It'll all start to come together soon. You're on your own schedule,
so don't compare your progress with someone else's progress.
Just stay focused on what you need to do.

Yahoo! horoscope for Leo, Nov. 3, 2006
netpositive: (Default)
Just because it's not on a computer
doesn't mean it's not important.

-me
    The daffodils in the yard are drooping,
    waiting for some sun to renew their glow.

    I received a very meaningful compliment
    today, from someone who (I think) had no
    ulterior motive in giving one to me. The
    best compliments, I think, are those that
    recognize one not when one is trying, but
    just when one is being. So I am happy that
    an action which I felt was simply "natural"
    in myself, was noticed and appreciated as
    an attractive quality by another person.

    Even Superman wanted someone to appreciate
    him, y'know. Goes for Superwoman, too.

    I went to Total Beve^H^H^H^HWine tonight.
    It's a rather strange experience for me
    to go shopping for wine on my own. Among
    other things*, I've never quite understood
    wine descriptions, and certainly not ones
    that talk about "hints of tobacco and ash"
    as selling points for a vintage! My likings
    in wine have broadened some over time, but
    I still don't care for many of the standard
    varieties of grapes, so I can ignore immense
    aisles of "Cab This" and "Pinot That" and
    "Rose Zinfandel" on my way to a lonely corner
    housing Malbecs and other "Alternative Grapes".

    Anyway, we'll see if the wine I got is as good
    from the bottle as it was from someone else's
    glass.

Don't wait for death to solve your difficulties.
Do what you must while you are still alive.

Deng Ming-Dao, in _365 Tao_

* I have an odd spatial perception of how wine tastes, as if it were interacting with a Rubik's Cube of "spatastial" receptors in my mouth in addition to just receiving regular tastes. Wines I "like" are ones I perceive as distributing more evenly throughout all 27 possible sectors; wines I "dislike" tend to concentrate along 9 side(s). This doesn't happen with any other alcohol, beverages or food that I know of, and I don't generally have any other mixed perception akin to synesthesia. So it is an interesting experience for me, but confusing to try to explain to others...
netpositive: (Default)
I will fulfill my promise.
    Avoided the madness in downtown DC tonite
    by going up to the AFI in Silver Spring MD
    and seeing _Casablanca_ on the big screen
    instead, for the first time in many years.

    Watching it after a year of taking pictures
    had much the same effect as the first time
    I reread _Lord of the Rings_ after studying
    literary criticism. I was fascinated by the
    light and shadow effects in certain scenes,
    and especially how consciously Ingrid Bergman
    was posed and framed in light and by shadow.

    It made me want to buy a better camera.

    It made me want to work for a better world.

    It made me think about love, and sacrifice.

We don't receive wisdom;
we must discover it for ourselves
after a journey that no one
can take for us or spare us.

-Marcel Proust

Tools (1)

Apr. 25th, 2004 11:52 pm
netpositive: (Default)
A quick recap of my Saturday morning, starting with...
    A nightmare about two people, both of whose LJs
    I read but whom I've never met in real life, meeting me
    inside an apartment along with three other people whom
    I don't know. Then overhearing the two of them talking
    afterwards, through the open window, "So that was _her_?
    Oh man, who does she think she is, anyway?" "Yeah,
    pompous _and_ boring." And everyone starts laughing at
    this silly woman who thought she was fitting in a little,
    she was somewhere she could belong.


    Wake up sickened. Break ground; re-establish ground.
    Force self back into a half-sleep; have a repair dream,
    now unremembered.

    Wake up fully. Look up where the new Strayer Arlington
    campus building is. "Oh, so that's what they built over
    the Court House metro stop! I know where that is...
    heck, I can walk there."

    Grab travel mug, book, phone, wallet and keys. Stop at
    my car to pick up my camera. Walk the mile over to the
    Courthouse neighborhood, through the residential streets,
    savoring all the sunshine and breezes, and the azaleas
    and wisteria coming out full force. Get in the short line
    to meet her. Take a few pictures while standing in line,
    watching the overall operation of a personal appearance,
    how nicely and naturally she handles all the fans who've
    come to meet her.

    Just before I get to the head of the line, I'm nervously
    juggling things -- and I drop my camera. The casing pops
    open -- just enough for the mode selector dial to jam up.
    Shit. The girl behind me offers to take a picture for me --
    but she finds out her batteries are dead.

    So, I do get a couple of autographed 5x7s, and move off
    to the side. Looks like I might be able to move everything
    back into shape if I could just pry open the casing again,
    but my nails aren't strong enough. I have a thin key on my
    key ring... only now, I realize that I must have left the
    keys in the car door lock after retrieving the camera.

    Call home, keys located and retrieved. Still think maybe,
    just maybe, could fix the camera, if I had the right tool.
    Hmm. Run into nearby drugstore, find an eyeglass repair
    kit. Use the tiny screwdriver as a makeshift lever. Pop the
    mode selector back in place. Camera works? Yes!

    Get back in (still fairly short) line. Show her the
    repaired camera and tell her that I had asked myself,
    "What would Amy Wynn do? Why, she'd find the right tool."
    Pull out the screwdriver to show her. She grins. "Cool!"

    A very nice man with a son named Sam helped to take
    this picture.
One possible moral of this story:
Anything can be fixed,
given either enough time,
or willingness to break
things in the process.

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