cheering

Supporting others

can be helpful or not

Depending on whether they truly need it

Cheering yourself up

and cheering yourself on

is always progress.

Belief inside

carries outward

and shapes your work

where you stand

The place where you are

The people you are with

Cheering inside

can be heard outside

Whether you open

your mouth or not.

Can you hear it?

Where does it start for you?



In writing this I had to think of Ivan Campuzano who is one of the most positive and cheerful people I have ever met (that's his happy face at the top there). His recent post on happiness was a wonderful piece, read it here. But just keep following him, I swear it will make you feel better.

Gaia what?

Most of us carry on with our regular lives every day with no or little thought to what surrounds us. No wonder Yoda has been telling us there's more going on then meets the eye. “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”
I have started reading a book called ''Gaia, the human journey from Chaos to Cosmos" by Elisabet Sahtouris PhD and it's both intruiging as it is straightforward.

Usually I'm not overly a greenie in the hippie sense of the word. From being an artist etc to moving into business life and from then into farm life trust me humming Aumm and doing new age courses has not been on my agenda for many a year. My education therefor has come to me in the practical sense, also I suspect because I needed to be grounded more and less fluffy ducked. It worked! Kudos. I guess now it's time for me to absorb some additional knowledge in book form.

Before I started reading Gaia I was reading ''Eat Pray Love" for the sheer fun of it and that too encompassed life (and meditation) and the contemplation of the unseen energy field in which we live. I find it very interesting to read books that are written from various view points.

Life is becoming less and less about stuffing things we can comprehend in boxes with written labels but instead it is now overflowing with out of the boxy stuff, things hanging in mid air, things unseen, things wafting about tantilizing with hints at what more knowledge there may be. I think the whole jazz is best described as a jack in the box. This can be joyous or also topsy turvy, as we have seen with all the earthquakes.

Most of it cannot be grasped with the mind, it's as if we are increasingly being inserted with inner knowing through our other senses. It's a combo mac deal, with added crunchy salad and big fizzy drinks when you think you only had one coupon. And when it's in front of you: you're finding out that you're not so hungry for all that food stuff after all (I think that's why I decided to become vegetarian about 4 weeks ago). It's a funny thing this life. We get notions. We lose notions. We become notion-less and in that space of having lost direction we can pin point ourselves again. What fright and what freedom.

Now back to Gaia, I keep finding new books at the moment, not that they are new but they seem to bring me aspects of topics that increasingly get me excited. Gaia is not just the Earth, it's the sentient being that is Earth also. Many religions have mulled this Gaia stuff over. What is it all about dude? Indeed. Is it all yadda or is it "real". And what is the real deal anyway? How ''actual'' is the daily life?

I think we forget we live on a planet that LIVES. It's not just a chunk of rock in eternal sleep and we can just dig up all the gold, coal and pump all the oil out of it without as some point catching onto the idea that hey! Maybe we are digging into actual flesh here. Maybe this endless gratification for our own selfish needs has stopped making sense. Especially since we know that electrical cars and other propelling methods have been available which were discarded ideas by big oil companies as -get this- they would go out of business and they didn't like that (insert doh here). I mean when does this attitude end huh? Well with us of course. Simple as that. It all boils down to demand. So what if we changed the demand? We can you know. There is such a freebie as free will, I think it's a winner.

So I'm reading Gaia: it's more a statement of saying: you know we have done this crazy sick stuff on the earth for so long. Why are we taking not decades but a century or so to choose something else that is beneficial for all concerned? We use up energies where we can choose something more sensible and at the same time build and maintain the world that we are part of, quite literally I might add.

So if it makes so much sense to amend our ways, why not do it? I don't think most of us are lazy, we have just been sloppy in pointing things out and doing something about it. That tv has been a darn invention for keeping us on the snooz button. So come on, pull your head out and think of a way you can alter how you travel to work. And what work you do. And how you heat your house. And all that greenpeacy stuff while you're at it. Maybe have chickens and grow your own veggies. Put that solar jazz on your roof. Clean your house out. And if you say you can't afford it then join forces with other people and bring out that commune spirit in the name of good ol'd sharing that they still do in tribes in the Amazon and many other places on this planet. It hasn't gone out of style yet.

2012 is not the end of the world, but the way we are mozeying along it might as well be. We shape our world. Everyday. Gaia must be getting sick of us by now. I am too at times. Luckily there are many people and increasingly more so I see who wish to create better more wholesome ways to live. It's encouraging indeed. What are you willing to do?

poetic imagery

When I was away in Auckland I came across a very special book. It's called ''Beautiful Solitude" and eventhough I cannot make heads or tails of the Chinese phrases, I can of the miraculous illustrations done by Jimmy Liao.

There is something very touching about his work. I absolutely love the book.

I guess the simplicity and black and white just grabbed me! Below are some more pictures of illustrations of other books:

 Jimmy Liao is a professional illustrator. From wiki: "Jimmy Liao (Chinese Name: Lao Fu-Bin, born November 15, 1958) is a well-known Taiwanese illustrator as well as a picture book writer. The name Jimmy is his English first name which brought about his (phonetic) Chinese pen name.


After graduating from Chinese Culture University in which he majored in art, Jimmy worked in an advertising company for twelve years, and then he worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. In 1998 his picture books Secrets In The Forest and A Fish With A Smile were published in Taiwan.

 

Jimmy’s books have been translated into dozens of languages and sold around the world. His books have also been adapted for theater, movie, television, and animation.

His pictures are characterized by their use of striking, bold colours and depict central figures that often appear small in the foreground, suggesting the viewpoint of a child in the wide, sometimes sinister, world, or to hint at loneliness."

I like how he manages to include both large spaces in his work and make the characters so personable in it. His work seems cute but has a lot more to it which makes it very compelling I think.

Now I hope he doesn't mind, but I have started scribbling poetry work of my own in this book choosing his images carefully to accompany it, or is it mine that accompanies his? It somehow seemed the right thing to do.

change?

Gary

Despite your potential

you insist on being right

So much so that it tears you apart

like a huge rip across an ocean

You flee into a bottle

with nice white labels

and forget everything

including your children.

It's not how low you can go

it's about the dark story

you are keeping to write.

You are only as nice

as the secret stash of your wines.

You drink to forget

Yet you live to remember.

Over and over again.

the attention span

Today I'm having a day off. Like you I hit days at times when I think: I need to recharge my batteries and find a quiet place. I have noticed that my attention span, and my energy levels have increasinly become more sensitive and prone to the danger of overloading.

Just before, I decided to have a snooz. By the time I was in bed the siesta desire had passed and instead I found myself immersed in reading "The Thank You Economy" by Gary Vaynerchuk. This guy is so on the ball it's almost painful when you realize so many people are obviously not (no offense). So there's delight they might want to learn how to play too which is a positive outlook.

At times I find myself seeing relations in aspects between many dotted areas. It's when the "aha" kicks in, like having a view of a very large terrain where many activities are going on. What Gary talks about in the TYE and also what I keep finding in my personal and profesional life is that all boils down to Attention. In my case I lost attention for myself this week, I seemed to be predominantly focusing it elsewhere if not ''somewhere". This caused me to lose track on "where I was".

The Attention Span is very much a 'now' thing. Not only does everyone have a far shorter supply then ever before, I notice myself that things are changing at a rapid rate. The way we socialize changes, the way how we do things changes, what we value interestingly changes too (the economy and the earthquakes globally contributing to that); the way we communicate has changed and keeps on changing and generally: how and what we give Attention to changes. A lot.

The crux of the story is that all Attention matters and how we provide it. What I also recognized in Gary's wonderful trainride story is that it matters greatly how we act, how we conduct ourselves. It's very important to be transparant about who we are. Just yesterday an Oodlies interview was published with me discussing vaginas at length. All I can say is: the sometimes open ways how Joi (from Oodlies) and I interact involves this way of communicating, it's part of our lingo. It's what we're like together. We don't lie about who we are. I am various sides of a spectrum. To be anything but one way would be too limiting for me. I really like Gary's viewpoint on being genuine, how could there be a future where we're not?

To me Attention is not just the time we take to focus on anything, be it online or off, and to tell others about it, it's also very much the ethical side of it, the human side of it, the why and how side of it, that others relate to and understand. I think we will find faster and faster that we "get" what other people talk about and what they do. Even before they have finished speaking or ''doing''. We will increasingly find ourselves "smelling the rat" or "feeling the vibe" in ways we could not conceive of ever before. These are magical times.

The trick with Attention is that all Attention is really Love. Keep an open mind about this. Give attention freely and it will flow back to you. Draft all sorts of rules and it will bite you in the ass. (I wonder how Gary would feel about this.)

Above all: I think our Attention deserves more credit. We forget that Attention as it is, is our commodity. It falls and stands with our choices and our expressions. We will be known by others how we give our Attention and most of all: whether we actually care about others, as well as ourselves. It's when we forget, that we falter. I think that if many of us continue to forget that we are all part of a very large hive that we have the danger of losing our Attention for each other.

Luckily, from what I can see, most people are very much focused on the value of having genuine relationships and enjoying the freedom of movement that transparency provides. The way we do ''business'' will therefor change a lot too. I'm sure the last chapter about this has not been written. And I like that.

More about Gary's book and where to order it here

Oodlies interview

Joi has an Art exhibition soon and it's called "My 8 Crushes". As I'm one of said 8 crushes I guess I had it coming! Somehow it ended up quite a raunchy little number. Maybe I'm a dirtier girl then I thought.

I love Joi's Oodlies, they're so much fun.

Read the whole interview here. Of course the story is about how Joi and I met and what silliness we get up to. Twitter is to blame, that is where it started. And then after a while we ended up being "max' and "mary moo".

Joi talks about many many different things (my 'artist' impression):

In any case (by Joi):

Row your Shell

If you have a shell 

because you must have a shell

row it from time to time 

you'd be surprised 

with what you'd find 

when a shell is cracked 

and bacteria moves in 

and out 

dislodging fermented thoughts  

(call on expert rower @kiwiseabreeze 

for dislodgment help, chats and hugs 

1800dislodgeyourhabitualshit)

See Joi Oodling 'live' in this video below!

forgiveness

I phone the Immigration service.
I am number 12 in the cue.
Classical tones enter my ears.
I think of the day I'm having.

How come we often feel as we think
How come we make ourselves tired
I feel like a zombie amidst bubbly flowers.
The classical music halts mid flow.

A voice answers:
Justin speaking.
How may I help you today?

I forgive myself for my droopy ways.
I picture the classical music again.
Justin asks for my address.
And I finally feel my mood lift.

Thank you immigration service
For the 8 minute reprieve I needed from my busy brain.
The vibes of goodness have returned.
On the line.

ideas

Some times we get ideas. Maybe even crazy ideas. No one gets it. So when do quirky ideas get to matter?

In this day and age: when they are 'marketable'. When they are desired by 'someone else'. When they are so astoundingly hilarious and functional apparently!

That's the difference between design and Art: what value is awarded to your idea and subsequently your creation? So have you guessed what this creature is?

I know it kinda looks like a beastie from Pixar doesn't it. It might charge and nibble your ears! Then again it might sit next to your bed quietly singing a song to make you sleep. And then nibble your ears.

Here's the designer Thomas Schnur presumably keeping it from climbing the walls. Maybe they live in their own house or a rubber zoo. What games would they play when he is not looking? Would they need sleep?

One thing is for sure: it's a table and it is travelling: Hong Kong and New York to name a few.

Source and photos: http://www.agitatto.com/blog/?p=9937