HeartBeat

Holiday Table in Miniature

"Peace, comfort, interpersonal connection – these are inner experiences that we can open to at any moment. We don’t have to travel to find them. The 'journey' to them is really just a releasing of everything else that we’ve placed in the way. – Dan Joseph

It's the hardest thing, removing the obstacles, and the most amazing. It's New Year's Eve and  the 1962 version of The Miracle Worker  is on Flix. Remember the scene where Ann Sullivan, finally gets past Helen's obstacles to learning so that she can discover the miracle she will be? I want that--for everyone.

The photograph is a holiday table in one of many miniature settings created by my mother. Without exception these little rooms invite the viewer to experience their comfort, hospitality and peace.

Happy New Year, and comfort, hospitality and peace to everyone.

Happy Blogday

It's Blogday and you know what that means. I could not stop at five...
• tomdog's buzznet blog Clever Massachusetts dad, runner, photographer, poet and I do not know what else, but I get a kick.
• michael knobs blog
Quirky and good. Michael also sells books of his drawings.
• tara whitney's blog I've never met this fellow photog but I'm terribly impressed with her work. It's all heart, and so are her posts.
• Chocolate & Zucchini Yummy and exotic.
• The Creative Journey by Karen Winters is a brainfeast.
• Trevor's Blog Beautiful drawings and thought provoking posts from a creative who shares his stuff.

Okay okay just one more... I love Savage Chickens. And that, from my blog, Heartbeat, concludes my participation in Blogday. No more homework. Please.

Lily and Love

"I have not always taken the highest choice, and have suffered the consequences of those choices. The only thing that matters is love, everything else is totally irrelevant. What we do is not important. What is important is how we do it. We do it with love." Elizabeth Kübler-Ross The Tunnel and The Light 

Sad is just another feeling...

Simple repetition and scattered thoughts...

Repetition. Architecture, nature, atomic particles, Oreo cookies, church pews, habits, waves.

"The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things." – Ernest Dimnet (Thank you Quote Me On It, whoever you are.)

  "It's the repetition of affirmation that leads to belief, and once belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen." Muhammed Ali, via Think Exist. Wish he'd blog, I'd link to him on BlogDay2005. "I AM THE GREATEST". You go, Ali! Also wish Brian Andreas would blog, but that's a story for another day. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Isn't it fascinating the trains of thought you can follow, and so much faster because of the internet?  It feels like hopping from stone to stone over rushing water, only we don't know what the heck we're doing here, what's on the other shore and why we shouldn't just give up and go eat Oreos on the couch.

Think I'll go watch waves erode the shore...  by repetition. I'm out of Oreos.

[For more on Ernest Dimnet, who is pretty insightful, Edward Vielmetti quotes 1930's best seller The Art of Thinking at his Vacuum blog, and tells you how to get it. Think anybody will link to HeartBeat eighty years from now and call it insightful? Naaaah. I just hope there's somebody around to link.]

After a refreshing break from blogging...

Sometimes when our back is against the wall, the best thing we can do is sit down and be quiet. – Philip Martin

Those blue flowers took a lot out of me. That, and discovering Jeremy Sutton and Painter and Painter IV Creativity Digital Artist's Handbook. My right brain was frenzied. But I'm back and considering Blog Day, thanks to Hugh. I love Hugh.

Now to find five new blogs to blog about by the 31st...

More blue flowers...

Change your language and you change your thoughts. – Karl Albrecht

Today I will not use these words: stupid, ugly, idiot. Not even fondly. I will struggle to fit beautiful, precious, kind and appreciate into the day. Out: should, can't. In: Will, can. This should, I mean will, be interesting. Idiot.

Thanks to Sister Christine Wilcox for the reference.

S*x [buy a vowel], pure 'n simple...

Blue flowers. They kill me. These provocative little blooms were birthday flowers from very special friends who remembered that.

So blue flowers and good wishes to my birthday buddies, fabulous photographer Ron Anton Rocz, incomparable  crooner and artist Tony Bennett, my success superhero Martha Stewart and Walter Knipp, wherever he may be.

Habits, links and smart and stupid bloggers...

Good habits are as easy to form as bad ones. – Tim McCarver
Yeah, right. – Susan Lucas

Anyway, Mayfield Venture Capital Firm's  Managing Director Allen Morgan at  Always On's Stanford Innovation Summit (thanks to Renee Blodgett for her post on this ) talks about two types of bloggers:

"--the smart ones who reference interesting data and link to an event or activity
--the stupid ones who try really hard to write something that makes sense."

Whew. It was hard trying to be a smart one and include seven links to interesting data in two sentences. Think I'll go back to stupid anonymity, although I know from experience life isn't supposed to make sense.

Photograph o' the day: Charleston wrought iron gates...

...brought to you by blogging.

"Bloggers drink a lot of wine. They’re smart, opinionated and wired. The like to spread idea-viruses. They like to be part of something. They’re an utterly wonderful demographic... This conversation is just beginning." - Hugh Macleod

And what a grand conversation it is!