Story trees

Photograph by Sergio Alfaro

I was looking for an image to illustrate some marvellous initiative that I had come accross recently, and then I hit upon this photograph. I just had to put it here. The photograph is taken in Mexico, at the Lago de Camécuaro National Park.  Apparently Camécuaro originally means "place of bathing". I would certainly like to!
The trees are amazing. I have not been able to find out what their proper name is, but they are fit for a grand story on a Tolkien like scale.

Thinking tool

Source (and more photographs) here

This is a Nautilus shell, a ship of pearl with a lustrous coil and a heavenly message - according Oliver Wendell  in his poem "the chambered Nautilus".
In an audiobook I listened to today it was referred to as a "thinking tool" because of its logarithmic form, the Spira mirabilis,  the marvellous spiral. There, I have put the link in, so you can find out about all the mathematics.

The idea of a thinking tool appeals to me, and I look at my desk with new eyes. Yes, I could do with some thinking tools. At the office too. Not just thinking though, I want some inward-drawing tools as well. Don't know what they are yet. I will go in search of them.

Ancient bird

This is an Aztec bird, probably representing a god-like force. Note the egg inside.
There are quite a few of them to be found around the web. I love this image for its clear and stark lines yet still evocative, emotional somehow.

Dreamtography

 In a series entitled Surreal-ity, photographer Kylie Woon brings stories and dreamy scenes to life. She creates self-portraits where she floats, flips, and flies across each frame in seemingly impossible arrangements. Conveying all kinds of dramatic emotions: loss, fear, anger, and restlessness, etc.


Photograph by Kylie Woon. More here and here

Kylie says that her life has always flip-flopped between being obsessed with the small things in life versus being able to see the bigger, grander picture. She compares her experiences to photography and the idea of being zoomed in and zoomed out. "When I am zoomed in, everything in the universe is dark except for the inside of my head. I feel my feelings with painful clarity, and I am obsessed. When I am zoomed out, I am floating in space somewhere, looking down on earth which is the size of a glass marble. Like pieces of a puzzle, things just seem to fall into place. It's a reassuring clarity."

Pink!

At one point in my life I followed a series of courses about energy and healing; and it suddenly occurred to me that I no pink in the house or about myself. As if I had banned it.Which I should not have done. Pink is the colour of caring, of hoping, of compassion. So I now I make sure I always have a bit of it around. In a gemstone, a scarf, a book, even in a fountain pen. Still, I could always do with more.

Weird and wonderful

By Mars-1, aka Mario Martinez

I am not sure why I like the work of this artist so much, but I do. I love the colours!

Actually, it is highly sophisticated graffiti. Probably best seen in the wild, at its proper scale. 

There is much more. Do check out his website at http://mars-1.com/

Coming home

Photograph by  Antony Spencer. More here.

To live here, in such a slash of colour amidst this space, this purity!

The strange thing is, the feeling this photograph evokes is exacly how I feel when I come home from work. Not every day, but most days. Like today ....

Heart of gold

I have read Maya Angelou from her very first book. I even remember the cover of the first one - a yellow low budget edition perfect for train reading. Recently I have found out about her writing ritual:

Maya Angelou  would wake early in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early afternoon, having written 10–12 pages, to be edited down to three or four pages in the evening.

She goes through this process to "enchant" herself,   to relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang, by placing herself back in time and reliving traumatic experciences.By placing herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences like her rape in Caged Bird, she is able to tell the human truth". She would even play cards in order to get to that place of enchantment, in order to access her memories more effectively: "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"

I admire the crispness of her work. She can also be so very sobering:

Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions.
You may have a heart of gold -- but so does a hard-boiled egg!

Fresh ideas

Giant Colour Pencils by Jonna Pohjalainen

Sometimes an idea is like a fresh breeze.  Like these gigant coloured pencils. My mind suddenly feels refreshed.

Jonna, the artist, says she is interested in people, islands, lights, colours, see, sky and stones. According to her, it is mostly the place itself that directs her art. "It can be painting, installation or an environmental art piece.  Environmental art is a concrete way of raise up the values of the area, to see ones own environment in a new way and get interested in influencing it".
The story goes that she conceived of this artwork during a field course. Everyday she brought her pencils and examined the countryside. Until she hit upon the idea to transform a pile of aspen logs into these giga coloured pencils.

I want to play with them. But I would like to sharpen them first, isn't that odd?

If at first ...

How clear, how lovely bright,

How beautiful to sight

Those beams of morning play;

How heaven laughs out with glee

Where, like a bird set free,

Up from the eastern sea

Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,

No more shall yield to wrong,

Shall squander life no more;

Days lost, I know not how,

I shall retrieve them now;

Now I shall keep the vow

I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies

How heavily it dies

Into the west away;

Past touch and sight and sound

Not further to be found,

How hopeless under ground

Falls the remorseful day

(From: A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad)

Purity

White Peacocks! I did not know they existed. Apparently they are not albino, but a colour variety of the Indian Blue Peacock that graces the top of this blog.

Happiness

source: www.zenpencils.com

Thousands of candles

Can be lit from a single candle

And  life of the candle will not be shortened

Happiness never decreases from being shared

Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

Creative creation

Infographic by Pop Chart Lab

This is an infographic, currently my favourite form for information display. They are quite the rage in business and advertising land. They look simple, but it takes a lot of effort to create good one, let alone a brilliant one. This one is about leading the creative life - fun in intself!

Flame of logic

"logic" by Cory Ench, more here

This image is part of an artworks gallery of pure flame fractals.  Flames are algorithmically generated images. The shape and color of each image is specified by a long string of numbers - a genetic code of sorts.
If you look at the image for a while, you start seeing layers, the image seems to draw you in; and I understand why the artist named it "logic".

A good life

Photograph by 2-Ta  / text from Alexander's Gray 's poem 'on a cat ageing'

Louder he purrs, and louder,
in one glad hymn of praise
for all the night's adventures,
for quiet, restful days.


Life will go on for ever,
with all that cat can wish:
warmth and the glad procession
of fish and milk and fish. 

Blooming

Marbles and Butterflies (2011) by Jennifer Knaus.

The artist says this about her work: Although the results may seem surreal, I am more inspired by the Surrealists techniques of tapping into the subconcious rather than by actual Surrealist painting. I have a desire to personalize idealized notions of beauty and importance. To embellish icons with humor and a little absurdity but also within those details to suggest a narrative that is mysterious and atmospheric. 

 On a good day, this is what my mind is like!

Love to age



This lady is 92 years old and and has a wit and wisdom about here that I covet for myself.

On this blog by Ari Seth Cohen you will find many more ladies like her. Ari's photographs and interviews with these grand dames (and the occasional gentleman) alway cheer me up immensely, so much so that  I have made a gift to my mother of his recent book.

A grand view

Source: http://9wows.com

Suppose ... I were given a chance to trade places with the man in the photo for an hour - what sort thinking or feeling would I indulge in up there? Or even beter: would the grand view just sweep me clean and fill me up?

Methinks

 Click here for further reading

You know how your head can be full of thoughts making you miserable because they blot you out, take your light away?
For instance: I am a bad  .... (person, boss, mother, friend, ...) and therefore I do not deserve .... (a good life, money, flat belly, child, job, health, respect, ....).
The correct psychological term for such thinking  is "cognitive distortion". But that is just the definition. Or diagnosis if you like.


The point is, I remind myself, that such thoughts are not authentic.  I am not the author. Just the thinker. Thinking very blue thoughts.

Epos essentials

By Tom Gould. Sadly the original is out of print 

A true epos surely contains characters like these. Excellent inspiration for a storybook (more on storybooks in another post). I just love the three witches. And the priest. And the hero, of course.

Talk to me

Source: Smithsonian National Museum of National History

Philographics




Empiricism by Genis Carreras

Philographics is about explaining philosophy through basic shapes.Look at this one.
Could it mean anything other than "empiricism"?  I think not.

Genis Carreras has worked several more concepts into beautifully clear designs like this.
I particularly like his representation of "nihilism" and "absolutism". Check out his website here.