Persistence quote

This is how my mind works... I talk with a friend and remember half a sentence from somewhere (some general, maybe a president, said something powerful about perseverance.) Not being a child of this century, I can't look it up there and then on my iphone, even though I own an iphone. What I do, is come home later, google my hodgepodge of ideas and find the right quote. At least I know a quote to look for!


“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
- Calvin Coolidge

And you know something... he's right!

A well written sentence that caught my eye

I read so much, and sometimes the issue is interesting and sometimes the way it is told is what catches my attention and this sentence works both ways:-

There’s a funny moment in Martin Amis’s 1984 novel “Money” in which his narrator declares: “Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I’m always smoking another cigarette.” About Greg O’Connell, it feels safe to say: Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, his cellphone is always pinging

From a nice story in the New York Times about Greg O'Connell, fixer upper of old neighborhoods, bringing the right energy back...
I like to read about people who know that if you aren't after the biggest amount of profit in the shortest amount of time, you can make a very decent living, being a decent person and improving the world around you. A note to the developers out there - it's not rocket science; just patience.

Jewels

3 things about Jewels



Today I had a radio interview with Deirdre Hughey (I'll put links up to it when she gets them up) and she ends each interview asking for a song that has meaning for you, and I chose Hands by Jewel, I love the line – in the end, only kindness matters… If I had to stand on one foot and describe my belief system, that pretty much covers it...

Secondly, I a beading queen, I collect beads and occasionally make necklaces out of them, and even more occasionally do I wear the necklaces I make, but I've made enough now, so I don't buy other people's jewellery, but I was looking for images for a piece I am writing for my tarot blog, and I came across David Weitzman's designs - and he had some beautiful stuff on it, and I decided rather than just bookmark it and never find it again, I would list it here, and have a better chance of visiting him from time to time...


And finally, the prettiest beading designs I come across, with no spiritual meaning at all, are on Gilt.com - I get emails from them daily and buy something maybe twice a year, but I'm often looking at their designs, thinking, I could make that... and perhaps one day I will

Perfect

People send around these things and some are silly and some are boring and some are just... perfect.



Everything about this charming piece works, from the music to the clock flying through the hours to the list of books used at the end. Enjoy!

The world is nothing but my perception of it.

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story. - Byron Katie
When I first heard this it pushed all my buttons, there is objective reality, things actually happen, not everything is my perception...

But the older I get, the more this feels true to me. 10,000 things happen around us every day, and what do we recall? what catches our attention? we seem to remember only the things that confirm our beliefs, give energy/attention to what filters through our story. It's true, objectively true. The death of our pet dog speaks to us more than that of 100,000 strangers. Do we remember that someone smiled at us on the subway, or bumped into us? Do we notice the bad boy or the sweet smile? We are filtering information every second, and who controls that filter? We can only see through the glass darkly. It is ironic that the more clearly we know that, the more we can see.

Kindling fears

Every so often when I switch on my kindle there is a pause, often no longer than a heartbeat, and then the machine decides to switch on. But each time it happens I create a dystopian future fantasy, where the satellites go down, the electricity is off, and we can’t even access the books to fix it, because there are no books, only these electronic versions, and power isn’t on.

It worries me this reliance on things in the ether - that we will have our version of the catastrophic fire in the Great Library of Alexandria, but in our case, it will be that the machines won’t switch on, and then where will we be? I’m surrounded by technology that I cannot understand. I never knew how a microwave works and don’t even know how a toilet flushes, what will I do if books no longer light up for me?

I think I’ll keep some basic text books on hand, just in case…

My year in facebook status updates

this is a new idea on facebook, randomly taking your updates and mixing it into some kind of text that sounds a bit like poetry... you might have to make the screen bigger to read it all, (really showing my age here!) but I like it...