May 2013
1 post
April 2013
1 post
March 2013
5 posts
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
The Master, by residing in the Tao, sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn’t display himself, people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove, people can trust his words.
Because he doesn’t know who he is, people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind, everything he does succeeds. When the ancient Masters said, “If you want to be given everything, give everything up,”
they weren’t using empty phrases.
Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.” —Lao Tzu
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
The Master, by residing in the Tao, sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn’t display himself, people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove, people can trust his words.
Because he doesn’t know who he is, people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind, everything he does succeeds. When the ancient Masters said, “If you want to be given everything, give everything up,”
they weren’t using empty phrases.
Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.” —Lao Tzu
Zou Bisou Bisou
happy Spring 2013!
Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age-old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore
February 2013
2 posts
Louis Vuitton: a handwritten correspondence
Couple of days ago during my Paris visit, I was both delighted and excited to find out that Louis Vuitton house is paying homage to handwritten correspondence, a now neglected tradition in an internet society, closely linked to the house’s thematic concept of travel, with a shop devoted to exceptional materials.
Being a writer, researcher, and traveller who respects a good design in a working surrounding and fashion synthesis with technology and art, I liked the current concept at Saint-Germain-des-Prés store with typewriter, piles of paper installations, and LV products.
I took a few snapshots outside the closed store. It was a cold winter evening, and a friend of mine and I took a stroll through St.Germain. Yours truly was captured by a friend, a designer for another fashion house. LV address is 6 place Saint-Germain-des-Prés VIe.
January 2013
5 posts
“A Tibetan mystic saying goes: We are here to realize the illusion of our separateness. The spiritual sentiment has a biological cognate. Our xenotropic drive — to merge with what is not us, temporarily in sex, or permanently in symbiosis or cross-species hybrids — is more than a metaphor. But it also offers spiritual solace. When we hook up with another, in sex or love (or, more rarely, both) we prove that our isolation is not permanent. In the fullness of time, we may all be linked. In the meantime, eros brings us together, making us more than we are alone. Cupid’s arrow, quivering into the heart of loneliness, kills us even as it sets us free.”
—
Death and Sex by science writer Dorion Sagan, son of Carl Sagan.
December 2012
5 posts
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
—Neil Gaiman (via bookporn)
Play
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
—Italo Calvino
“Baudelaire declares that dreamers like a severe winter…a reminder of winter strengthens the happiness of inhabiting.”
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Milano: Teatro alla Scala's Season begun! →
bvevents.com
Don’t know how to get in here, but would love to enjoy at least one show, play, at a time.
La Scala theatre was founded, under the auspices of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, to replace the Royal Ducal Theatre, which was destroyed by fire on 26 February 1776 and had until then been the home of opera in Milan. Designed by the great neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini, La Scala opened on 3 August 1778 with Antonio Salieri’s opera L’Europa riconosciuta, to a libretto by Mattia Verazi.
Today, the theatre is recognised as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world and is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala theatre Ballet and La Scala Theatre Orchestra.
November 2012
4 posts
‘On Space Time Foam’ Exhibition
The exhibition I want to visit, get into the vacuum, feel the (un)structured space, and make some written and photo art - ‘On Space Time Foam’ is on display until February 3rd, 2013 at the HangarBicocca in Milan.
The ‘On Space Time Foam’ suspended art exhibit by Studio Tomas Saraceno is composed of a transparent surface accessible to visitors, hanging at a height of 20 metres and covering 400 square metres on three layers, for a total of 1,200 square metres. Known for his surprising structures that draw the public into extraordinary spatial and emotional experiences, the large soft and floating film welcomes visitors who will thus find themselves moving mid-air between the floor and the ceiling, earth and sky, and it compels them to lose their spatial coordinates. This work of creativity and scientific research was made possible through the interaction of skills and experiences in a broad array of fields of knowledge, and thanks to Pirelli’s support.
As the artist explains, “the films constituting the living core of HangarBicocca are constantly altered by climate and the simple movement of people. Each step, each breath, modifies the entire space: it is a metaphor for how our interrelations affect the Earth and other universes.”
Play
How do we fall in love?
From Big Questions from Little People & Simple Answers from Great Minds (public library), author Jeanette Winterson offers this breathlessly poetic response:
You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.
PS You have to be brave.
Tasting colours and seeing sounds - great read on synaethesia →
australianscience.com.au
“One hears a sound but recollects a hue, invisible the hands that touch your heartstrings” - V.Nabokov
October 2012
3 posts
Connection
The only difference between the people that have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people that don’t is only one thing.
The people that have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they are WORTHY of love and belonging.
What keeps us from connection is the fear that we are not worthy of connection.
In order for deep connection to happen we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen. Excruciating vulnerability.
The original definition of “Courage” when it first came into the English language was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.
The courage to be imperfect.
Compassion to be kind to themselves first, then others. Because we can’t practice compassion unless we are compassionate to ourselves.
Connection - as a result of authenticity.
Fully embraced vulnerability.
What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.
- Brene Brown
(via AT)
September 2012
3 posts
The Mama of Dada
Beatrice Wood passed away in 1998, at the age of 105 years of age, with the last 25 years of her life her most productive, creating work to satisfy a growing market for her ceramics, writing books and visiting with the hundreds of people who showed up on her doorstep. When asked the secret of her longevity, she would simply offer “art books, chocolates and young men”.
“Do be true to yourself, whether it’s bad doesn’t matter. The important thing - you have to copy while you’re studying. And culture is - each of us - is like one pearl added to another to make a chain. We each contribute to the other. And that’s all right. But once you’re on your own, do that which comes from within. And I feel this very strongly.”
“The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions.”
—Anaïs Nin; “The Diary of Anaïs Nin: 1944-1947”
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. - Lao Tzu”
—
August 2012
6 posts
“Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come.”
—
Haruki Murakami on writing and running, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
“At least one study suggests that 10 percent of communication between spouses is deceptive. Another has found that 38 percent of encounters among college students contain lies. However, researchers have discovered that even liars rate their deceptive interactions as less pleasant than truthful ones. This is not terribly surprising: We know that trust is deeply rewarding and that deception and suspicion are two sides of the same coin. Research suggests that all forms of lying — including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others — are associated with poorer-quality relationships.”
—On lying (via explore-blog)
July 2012
3 posts
“More on NYTimes: Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. //
It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence. // FOMO? (dr note)” —The ‘Busy’ Trap
It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence. // FOMO? (dr note)” —The ‘Busy’ Trap
“Man is made for something better than distributing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine. - Oscar Wilde”
—It’s the 21st century – why are we working so much?
June 2012
4 posts
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
—Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems (via pearlfectchassi)
Global Voices Podcast: Storytime in Poetry and Literature
Literature Time: Reading the Story for the Global Voices Podcast. Sometimes I write and read stories.
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the result of creativity.”
—
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the celebrated Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, on “the 10 antithetical traits often present in creative people that are integrated with each other in a dialectical tension.”
Find more in the Explore archive on creativity.
(via explore-blog)
May 2012
8 posts
music a Paris mix tape
Some of the music on my 8tracks mix, inspired by my stay and time in Paris, France.
Enjoy!
Moleskine SMS notebook for analogue texting
To mark the 20th anniversary of SMS texting, Moleskine has launched an SMS notebook for analog texting. Introduced at Milan’s Design Week, Pietro Corraini’s idea is simple and appeals to the kid in all of us: choose from 56 messages (“I love you”/”Call Me”), select the desired distance from markings on the cover (up to 17 ft), pull back on the elastic, and shoot. Brilliant, and no need to wonder if your message arrived – you will know. Watch Moleskine’s SMS in action video. Produced as a limited edition and available at the MoleskineStore.
via Simple+Pretty
“The importance of learning to code isn’t so that everyone will write code, and bury the world under billions of lines of badly conceived Python, Java, and Ruby. The importance of code is that it’s a part of the world we live in. I’ve had enough of legislators who think the Internet is about tubes, who haven’t the slightest idea about legitimate uses for file transfer utilities, and no concept at all about what privacy (and the invasion of privacy) might mean in an online space. I’ve had enough of patent inspectors who approve patents for which prior art has existed for decades. And I’ve had enough of judges making rulings after listening to lawyers arguing about technologies they don’t understand. Learning to code won’t solve these problems, but coding does force engagement with technology on a level other than pure ignorance. Coding is a part of cultural competence, even if you never do it professionally. Alsup is a modern hero.”
—
A federal judge learned to code - O’Reilly Radar (via everythingisdisrupted)
“If I discover a scientific idea, surely someone else would’ve discovered the same idea had I not done so. Whereas, look at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — if he didn’t paint “Starry Night,” nobody’s gonna paint “Starry Night.” So, in that regard, the arts are more individual to the creative person than a scientific idea is to the one who comes up with it — but, nonetheless, they are both human activities.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson (via explore-blog)
How I met your girlfriend in Paris
I instantly recognized her, your “girlfriend”. The same for her: she knew it was me. Oh man, she knew. She was French equivalent of my peculiar side. We spent exactly an hour and forty minutes together, sitting next to each other. She recognized me, of course she did, and she smiled, giving me short exploratory look starting from my hair down to the shoes I was wearing. Of course she did. I smiled back.
At first she was reading something for awhile, so I pulled out my small moleskine notebook and started to write meta-thoughts. She saw that I have a camera - staring at her. So - I interrupted her, or she did interrupted me. Your girlfriend is a typical French that reminds me on those self important minimalistic feminine characters from the 60s, you know those with expressive and subtle eyebrows, eyes with peculiar glance, and different skin tone. Your girlfriend was neat in a non conformistic way, she made face expressions if someone would say something out loud, like “çan’t believe…” or “incredible” or just articulated face expressions of approval or disapproval. When we parted, she walked like a cat, slowly but in a fast pace, without much noise. I was not being impressed.
It was so obvious to her that I know you well and everything that happened between us, and something more. She also knew I was a foreigner in Paris, by looking different, thinking different, and moving in my own ways. She thought I was Italian too. It was not the first time I was mistaken for Italian woman in the western European countries. While I was talking, she was observing me silently and with the stingy smile. I enjoyed in her observations and her listening to me.
We both share secrets. Your girlfriend and I. In a manner of speaking, we found the way to say everything to each other, by saying nothing.
(an excerpt from the chapter from the book about people I meet, places I go, world wide, both analogue and virtual)
on our daily obsession to capture and display everything
digital #photography, self and memory: Capture, episode 1
via BBCRadio4
Aleks Krotoski asks not just what technology can do for us but also what is it doing to us and the world we’re creating? Each week she takes us on a journey to where people are living their digital lives to explore how technology touches everything we do both on and offline.
Taking broad themes of modern living as a starting point she charts the experiences of homo digitas; both the remarkable and the mundane, to understand how we are changing just as quickly as the advances in our technology.
What does the deluge of images from digital photography mean for our memory when every second is being recorded, edited and posted online for posterity? Are the identities we create in social media no more than exercises in personal branding, to be managed and protected like any other product? And as traditional churches struggle to leverage technology to spread their faith do the behaviours we all display online have more in common with religion than rationality?
The time for wonder at the digital world is over, we live with it in every day. The question really is who are we now because of it?
