Posts
“He [Charles Schulz] was a firm believer that you have to know how to draw something before you can cartoon it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/05/31/charles-schulz-hagemeyer/
Monday, May 31, 2021
Charles Schulz
Mary Karr
All writers are narcissistic. That’s not the same as being a narcissist, as being a sociopath. But no one can sit in a room by themselves for twelve hours a day thinking about what they’re thinking and not be a little more self-focused than the normal person. You’re definitely on the far end of the bell curve.
MARY KARR
It's great for your lungs
When your face is under water, oxygen is at a premium. In turn, your body adapts to use oxygen more efficiently, says Walton. Plus, it learns to take in more fresh air with every breath, and expel more carbon dioxide with every exhalation. A study in the Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology even found that swimmers had better tidal volume (the amount of air that moves in and out of the lungs during relaxed breathing) compared to runners, one of the under-the-radar benefits of swimming. This results in lower resting heart rates, lower blood pressure, and, as you'll see next, better running performance. source
Three Labradors
The three Labradors, operating out of a university clinic in Bangkok, are part of a global corps of dogs being trained to sniff out Covid-19 in people. Preliminary studies, conducted in multiple countries, suggest that their detection rate may surpass that of the rapid antigen testing often used in airports and other public places.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world/asia/covid-dogs-thailand.html
Just Swim
Excessive swimming can be a form of self-harm. If your exercising is starting to take over your life, if you feel anxious if you miss a session, or if it’s becoming more important than work, family or friends, you could be developing an exercise or training compulsion (sometimes called an exercise addiction) and you should speak to a GP or Healthcare professional for advice
https://www.swimming.org/justswim/swimming-improves-mental-health/
Sarah Hindry: Swimmer
Never in a million years did I think I would be training with a squad again and setting my alarm for 5.30am to get up and train – but the buzz it gives me is beyond words.
https://www.swimming.org/justswim/sara-hindry-love-swimming-story/
Anzac Biscuits
https://www.davidlebovitz.com/anzac-biscuits/
The Anzac biscuit is a sweet biscuit, popular in Australia and New Zealand, made using rolled oats, flour, sugar, butter, golden syrup, baking soda, boiling water, and desiccated coconut. Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps established in World War I. Wikipedia
Sunday, May 30, 2021
Big Bunny in Blackstone
We just spotted a big fat bunny in Blackstone on our walk. He froze when he saw ROMEO. We watched him staring back at us. Then we walked away and he hopped into the bushes and nibbled the foliage.
Billy Wilder
There is no such thing as somebody sitting down and saying, “Now, all right, I’m going to make a new picture.” Not at all. You have ideas stashed away, dozens of them — good, bad, or indifferent. Then you pull them out of your memory, out of your drawer, you combine them…. People think when it comes to a screenplay you start with absolutely nothing. But the trouble is that you have a million ideas and you have to condense them into a thousand ideas, and you have to condense those into three hundred ideas to get it under one hat, as it were. In other words, you start with too much, not with nothing, and it can go in every kind of direction. Every possible avenue is open. They you have to dramatize it — it is as simple as that — by omitting, by simplifying, by finding a clean theme that leads someplace.
BILLY WILDER
Baking Biscotti on a Rainy Day
Our house is so cold that the boiler came on but that's okay because the cellar clothesline is full of wet laundry that will dry in a few hours. And tomorrow will be a third day of 47 degree rain.
Meanwhile we are trying a new recipe: Authentic Anise Biscotti
from my favorite website: She Loves Biscotti
https://www.shelovesbiscotti.com/authentic-italian-anise-biscotti/
I am using half whole wheat and half AP flour and anise extract along with some anise seed. A friend gave me local eggs from her chickens. The house smells amazing and the biscotti is already delicious.
WE LOVE THEM and will make them again!!!
SWIMMING: Miles Per Hour
How fast can Michael Phelps swim a mile? 5-6 miles per hour
Michael Phelps' reported top swimming speed is 5-6 miles per hour. This swim speed makes Phelps one of the fastest swimmers to have ever lived, holding a variety of different Olympic records to back up the fact. Oct 6, 2020
Southern Favorites
I love reading about the favorite foods of the South.
https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/mamas-fried-chicken
https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/slow-cooker-collard-greens-with-ham-hocks-recipe
https://www.southernliving.com/syndication/simple-slaw
https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/apple-cranberry-coleslaw-recipe
Healthy Biscotti
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
- Blend oil and sugar. Mix in extracts, lemon juice and zest; add eggs. Beat until creamy and light.
- Combine flour, salt, and baking powder; gradually stir into liquids.
- Work in cherries and nuts by hand.
- Preheat oven to 300°F.
- On a lined baking sheet, form dough into two logs (12 x 2 in) - if dough is too sticky, wet hands with cold water.
- Bake 35 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to cool or 10 minutes.
- Reduce oven to 275°F.
- Cut logs diagonally into 3/4-inch think slices; lay on their sides on same baking sheet. Return to oven another 8-10 minutes, or until dry.
- These are very versatile, feel free to mix and match flavours. Here are a few ideas: coffee liqueur/hazelnut/dark chocolate chips, cranberry/orange/pistachio, orange/walnut, date/hazelnut, pineapple/coconut, vanilla/white chocolate chips/Macadamia nuts, etc. etc. Cooling time is included in cooking time.
Stuck on a world tour serving soup in Lahore
By Munazza Anwaar BBC Urdu, Lahore
Keen to give something back to the city that was their new temporary home, Dominika and Uwe began gathering ingredients and making soup for anyone who needed it.
For recipes, they turned to dishes they had learned during their travels across 11 countries. "We love to eat hot soup during wintertime and we thought others might feel the same," Dominika said.
The couple began cooking every Sunday and handing out soup to the needy. Anyone is welcome to eat, Dominika said, and if people want to make a donation towards the art the couple makes, or the soup fund, they can.
The Crazy Naked Man
When I was in summer camp we were told about the crazy naked man who wore only hiking boots and was often found hiking in the green mountains of Vermont. We were warned.
Yesterday I learned from a 3AM jogger that our City of Woonsocket has a crazy naked man who is regularly spotted walking on the sidewalk at that hour. He's always stark naked when the jogger passes him on Cumberland Hill Road. Poor guy. He's probably schizophrenic and has no idea he's in his birthday suit. As far as I know no hiking boots are involved.
Learning to Cook
I had so many good teachers at various restaurant jobs who made cooking and baking friendly and not scary. Not that there isn't high drama and high stress in the kitchen. But perhaps that's part of the draw.
Think about your favorite foods and consider learning to make one or two. Start simple.
To me, there is nothing more joyful than baking and cooking your favorite food and then there's the added bonus sharing them with appreciative friends, neighbors and loved ones.
We all come to the kitchen for different reasons (health, love, obligatory, you name it) yet we all share one common ground. All humans eat.
I believe cooking and baking is the ultimate celebration of life. A house becomes a HOME when it smells like good food cooking.
Enjoy the process and most of all have fun.
As Jacques Pepin says: HAPPY COOKING!
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Jane Smiley
Writing is only one word at a time. It’s not a whole bunch of things happening at once. Various things can present themselves, but when you face the page, it’s a couple of words, and then a couple more words, and, if you’re lucky, a sentence or a paragraph. Because writing is linear, it must organize itself into this thin little stream that moves forward, which, if your mind is full of chaos, is quite reassuring. When I listen to music, especially symphonic music, there’s a huge number of sounds and resonances that come to me at the same time, and they must organize themselves and go into my head in an orderly way. For me to pick them apart is to turn them back into chaos. But when I look at writing, it’s all just one word at a time.
JANE SMILEY
Barry Estabrook
It was one of my epiphanies: It’s completely wrong to quote-unquote follow a diet. That to me is why diets fail. Eating is deeply personal, right up there with sex. If you try to follow someone else’s recommended eating habits, it’s a recipe for failure, it’s not you. It can be little things. What do you do for lunch each day? Everyone’s different. What about dinner around your house? Breakfast? You can’t follow a diet. If anything, you should lead a diet, by saying: Here’s how I eat. That’s the boss. So here’s what I should probably change about how I eat if I’m going to lose weight.
Q. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was getting to know the personalities behind the diets. It’s quite a lot of eccentrics. Did anyone stand out for you?
A. I’m fascinated by Sylvester Graham. He started out as a Presbyterian preacher and became really involved in temperance, and that led him to develop this belief in this really bland diet, like the most boring diet in the world. No meat, no spices, no mustard, no alcohol, no coffee, no nothing you’d want to live for. His greatest enemy was libido, and the worst sin of all was masturbation. He thought if you ate these foods you’d tend to masturbate. He was completely fascinated by it. And he lives on in the Graham cracker. He lives on in s’mores and cheesecake crusts.
Q. There’s such a historical connection, in the US at least, between dieting, sexuality, morality, religion.
A. We’re saddled with a couple things historically. Your own Boston Cooking School [founded in 1879], all those ladies — and I guess they were all ladies — were basically Puritans, a generation or two away from strict Puritanism. You weren’t supposed to take pleasure in physical tastes and that sort of stuff. The whole Protestant go-it-alone individualism, pleasure is to be mistrusted, is at the root of a lot of our attitudes to food to this day. It’s why we go on diets, probably. I’ve got four bookshelves in front of me now of diet books I’ve read, and no one really talks about the real aesthetic joys and rewards of a good meal.
Another book by Estabrook:
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit By Barry Estabrook
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato
3 Wishes
If I had three wishes one of them would be that I could drink coffee in the afternoon and not mess up my nighttime sleep.
Bad Girl Juice
When I was drinking black tea vs coffee I'd bring a gallon of homemade iced tea to a party mixed with some exotic Joblot pear or peach juice and drink the whole gallon. I called it BAD GIRL JUICE because it drove me and my mania wild. TO THE MOON, ALICE!! Then I'd say, to anyone who'd listen. "I have demons, in fact my demons wear bifocals." Which I can't recall what it meant exactly but it seemed accurate at the time.
Friday, May 28, 2021
Faulkner
“Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”
― The Sound and the Fury
Sterling Holywhitemountain
I became a writer the moment I put down “On the Road” and tried to write something that felt like what Kerouac was doing. I was an undergrad then, but I was already on my way to here (which is still nowhere; writers are always nowhere), because what drove me to write those first words is the same thing that drives me to write now. It was the elegiac tone of the book, which is to say it was my introduction to the fragility of beauty and the ineluctable forward movement of things in time. The ultimate subject of fiction is time, which is to say death. Until I see a thing stand in relief against the backdrop of death, I don’t understand what its value is.
STERLING HOLYWHITEMOUNTAIN
Zeynep Tufekci
Waiving vaccine patents is fine, but unless it’s tied to a process that actually increases the supply of vaccines, it’s a little bit more than expressing thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. Officials from all nations that produce vaccines need to gather for an emergency meeting immediately to decide how to commandeer whatever excess capacity they have to produce more, through whatever means necessary. Because of the threat of increased transmissibility, and since the evidence at hand indicates that all of the vaccines, even the Chinese and Russian versions, appear to be highly effective against severe disease or worse, the focus should be on manufacturing and distributing the highest number of doses possible as fast as possible.
Dr. Tufekci is a contributing Opinion writer who has extensively examined the Covid-19 pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/covid-vaccine-variants.html
She Loves Biscotti
A friend gave me her homemade cranberry pistachio biscotti and now I am possessed...
I went to my favorite most-reliable Italian Cookies web site:
https://www.shelovesbiscotti.com/super-thin-cranberry-pistachio-italian-biscotti/
https://www.shelovesbiscotti.com/thin-crispy-almond-biscotti-di-nunzia/
Heavenly Lunch at Home
Spinach arugula mushrooms artichoke hearts sunflower seed salad with home made honey mustard vinaigrette. Carrot salad and homemade pasta salad on the side.
Another Carrot Raisin Salad
Carrot Salad is a bright and colorful side dish that tastes refreshing and has a perfectly balanced sweet and tangy flavor.
- 1 pound carrots, 5-6 large carrots
- 1 large sweet apple, or 2 small apples
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
For the Dressing:
- 2 Tbsp orange juice
- 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 Tbsp sunflower oil , or mild olive oil
- 1 tsp honey, or more
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup raisins
https://platedcravings.com/carrot-salad/
Dostoevsky
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Crime and Punishment“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Crime and Punishment“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― The Brothers Karamazov“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
― Crime and Punishment“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Notes from Underground“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead“The soul is healed by being with children.”
―“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― The Brothers Karamazov“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
― Crime and Punishment“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
―“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human”
― Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Crime and Punishment“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― The Brothers Karamazov“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― White Nights“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
― Crime and Punishment“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― The Brothers Karamazov“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
―
Dream
I dreamed Al Pacino was asking me out for a date. I accepted. In the dream he was six years older than me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Neil Gaiman
The ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.
NEIL GAIMAN
Shane Parrish
You have to be willing to look like an idiot in the short term to look like a genius in the long term.
Shane Parrish
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Sara Jio
Everyone tells you to write what you know. It’s the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, I’ve found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even.… I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: “Write What Scares You.” I’ve learned that tapping into the hard stuff — whether it’s the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories — is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar.
SARAH JIO
The Bee's Knees
When you refer to something as 'the bee's knees', it means that it is of excellent or very high quality.
The origin of this expression is largely unknown, although there are a number of theories. Some people believe that it is a reference to the fact that bees carry pollen in sacks on their knees, and that the expression therefore alludes to this concentrated goodness. Others maintain that the saying is just a corruption of the word 'business'.
Another suggestion is that the 'bee' in question was actually Bee Jackson, a world champion Charleston dancer who was very popular in New York in the 1920's!
https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/idiom-day-the-bees-knees
Nick Cave
How to find yourself again when you feel like you have strayed so far from who you used to be?
SARAH, LONDON, UKDear Sarah,
The person you think you used to be has gone, and is never coming back. The idealised impression of your past self that your present self competes with is a mirage. Every moment you live is a rapid and shocking abandonment of the last version of yourself. You are forever ‘straying from the person you used to be’. You are an autonomous entity coursing through time, moored only to the eternal now.
We should not attempt to return to a past that no longer exists, or seize upon a future that is forever beyond our reach, but should instead travel along our own inner axes to a more meaningful part of our present selves.
We may feel sadness for what we have lost to the past — our freedom, our vigour, our values, our playfulness, our openness to life — but regrets can be a wonderful indicator of how to improve the current condition of our souls. Rather than allowing these regrets to swallow us up, we can let them identify our present needs. We can call back these lost parts of ourselves and live them in a wiser, more experienced way, instead of wasting precious time in pointless competition with the past.
This call to adventure can begin immediately, in the next moment. We can incrementally shift the direction of our impulses toward the next best thing, rather than the worst, and not become consumed by our regrets, but informed by them, as they guide us forward toward the more necessary part of our nature.
Love, Nick
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-to-find-yourself-again/
Sea Otters
Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart a behavior known as rafting.
Vancouver Aquarium
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Salad Season
Tonight I made a pasta salad and a carrot salad and they were both good. Hot weather inspires me to have cold food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_salad
https://cookieandkate.com/french-carrot-salad-recipe/
You can learn only by doing
Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.
STEPHEN KING
The Harlem Honeys And Bears Synchronized Swimming
The Harlem Honeys And Bears Synchronized Swimming Team
https://womenyoushouldknow.net/the-harlem-honeys-and-bears-synchronized-swimming-team/
Beautiful Photo Essay
The Harlem Honeys and Bears want everybody in the pool
All-black synchronized swimming team is breaking the stereotypes of African-Americans and swimming
https://theundefeated.com/features/the-harlem-honeys-and-bears-want-everybody-in-the-pool/
I LOVE baby Arugula and grown up Spinach
I bought baby arugula and grown-up spinach to make a salad. I used Cento red wine vinegar, olive oil, honey, and Gulden's mustard for a dressing and all I wanna do is walk over to Stop and Shop and buy arugula and spinach and make it again! I LOVE baby Arugula and grown up Spinach.
Monday, May 24, 2021
Don Bousquet
“I hear people talk like this all the time and it’s funny to me. I’ve got an ear for this,” he said. “I found over the years that it’s really hard to be a cartoonist – you have to read a lot, you have to think a lot, you have to listen a lot and you’ve got to be able to put two things together.” Don Bousquet
https://www.independentri.com/independents/arts_and_living/article_e1961fc7-263a-5054-b500-2565cc1431d9.html
Jeanette Winterson
For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the words with which to express something, you are no longer incoherent, you are no longer trapped by your own emotions, by your own experiences; you can describe them, you can tell them, you can bring them out of yourself and give them to somebody else. That is an enormously liberating experience, and it worries me that more and more people are learning not to use language; they’re giving in to the banalities of the television media and shrinking their vocabulary, shrinking their own way of using this fabulous tool that human beings have refined over so many centuries into this extremely sensitive instrument. I don’t want to make it crude, I don’t want to make it into shopping-list language, I don’t want to make it into simply an exchange of information: I want to make it into the subtle, emotional, intellectual, freeing thing that it is and that it can be.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Margaret Fuller: the only objective in life was to grow
"A home is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get it in one way, they must in another, or perish."
―
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. Very early I knew that the only objective in life was to grow.”
―
“Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman... Nature provides exceptions to every rule.”
―“The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.”
―
To Be Quiet
“I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I'm not home when people knock. There's daytime silent where I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's how this machine works.”
― Bright Dead Things
Imagine
“I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.”
― Bright Dead Things
Ada Limón
I have three or four readers that I share with on a regular basis. As soon as I finish something, and when I feel like it’s in a good place, I send it to them. You know, excitedly, hoping for their approval. Those readers will often be very specific and sometimes they’re just like, “It’s done. Great.” Sometimes that’s all you need. Sometimes that’s why you send it, you just want a pat on the back.
Make Time
“It is better to do what you love for work, but if it is your day job that enables an unpaid passion, then your life is still sweeter. What is important is that you make time for your dreams, not whether or not you get paid for it.”
―
Tara Moss
Write. Start writing today. Start writing right now. Don’t write it right, just write it –and then make it right later. Give yourself the mental freedom to enjoy the process, because the process of writing is a long one. Be wary of writing rules and advice. Do it your way.
TARA MOSS
Focus
“Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”
― The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage
Ego is the Enemy
“Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.”
― Ego Is the Enemy
Silence
“And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.”
― Ego Is the Enemy
Predictions: Vintage illustrations of the future
Predictions: Vintage illustrations of the future that are pretty close to reality …
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/05/11/5-vintage-illustrations-future-pretty-close-reality-2/
Ryan Holiday
Reminding ourselves each day that we will die, helps us treat our time as a gift.
Ryan Holiday
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Advice
Any advice for those who want to make a career out of trying to make people laugh—
Write what makes you laugh. At least you’ll get a laugh out of it.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/john-swartzwelder-sage-of-the-simpsons
Diner Booth
And is it true that you purchased the same diner booth where you used to write, not far from the “Simpsons” offices, and then used it for your personal writing space at home?
Actually, I bought a new diner booth and had it installed in my home. Later, I added a second one, in a different part of the house. Diner booths are a great place to write. Try it.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/john-swartzwelder-sage-of-the-simpsons
John Swartzwelder
I…have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.
JOHN SWARTZWELDER
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
“We choose ignorance because we can. We choose awareness because we can. Samsara and nirvana are simply different points of view based on the choices we make in how to examine and understand our experience. There’s nothing magical about nirvana and nothing bad or wrong about samsara. If you’re determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so, and that the opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The essence of Buddhist practice is not so much an effort at changing your thoughts or your behavior so that you can become a better person, but in realizing that no matter what you might think about the circumstances that define your life, you’re already good, whole, and complete. It’s about recognizing the inherent potential of your mind. In other words, Buddhism is not so much concerned with getting well as with recognizing that you are, right here, right now, as whole, as good, as essentially well as you could ever hope to be.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of“Confusion, I was taught, is the beginning of understanding,”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The funny thing about the mind is that if you ask a question and then listen quietly, the answer usually appears.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The teachings of the Buddha—and the lesson inherent in this exercise in non-meditation—is that if we allow ourselves to relax and take a mental step back, we can begin to recognize that all these different thoughts are simply coming and going within the context of an unlimited mind, which, like space, remains fundamentally unperturbed by whatever occurs within it.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“...I began to see that when the pace of external of material progress exceeded the development of inner knowledge, people seemed to suffer deep emotional conflicts without any internal method of dealing with them. An abundance of material items provides such a variety of external distractions that peolpe lose the connection ito their inner lives.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“All phenomena are expressions of the mind.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“After a few years of asking some very pointed questions in public teachings and in private counseling sessions, I began to see that when the pace of external or material progress exceeded the development of inner knowledge, people seemed to suffer deep emotional conflicts without any internal method of dealing with them.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Let your own experience serve as your guide and inspiration. Let yourself enjoy the view as you travel along the path. The view is your own mind, and because your mind is already enlightened, if you take the opportunity to rest awhile along the journey, eventually you’ll realize that the place you want to reach is the place you already are.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“An ancient text called the Avatamsaka Sutra describes the universe as an infinite net brought into existence through the will of the Hindu god Indra. At every connection in this infinite net hangs a magnificently polished and infinitely faceted jewel, which reflects in each of its facets all the facets of every other jewel in the net. Since the net itself, the number of jewels, and the facets of every jewel are infinite, the number of reflections is infinite as well. When any jewel in this infinite net is altered in any way, all of the other jewels in the net change, too.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“limited by what is commonly referred to as dualism—the idea of a distinct and inherently real “self” that is separate from an apparently distinct and inherently real “other.” As we’ll explore later, dualism is not a “character flaw” or defect. It’s a complex survival mechanism deeply rooted in the structure and function of the brain—”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Through applying intention as well as attention to an experience, a person is able to shift the meaning of an experience from a painful or intolerable context to one that is tolerable or pleasant. Over”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“if, as the Buddha proposed in the first teachings he gave upon attaining enlightenment, the essence of ordinary life is suffering, then one of the most effective antidotes is laughter—particularly laughter at oneself. Every aspect of experience assumes a certain kind of brightness once you learn to laugh at yourself.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Like the jewels of Indra’s net, anything that affects one of these tiny particles automatically affects another, regardless of how far they’re separated by time or space. And since one of the current theories of modern physics holds that all matter was connected as a single point at the start of the big bang that created our universe, it’s theoretically possible—though as yet unproven—that whatever affects one particle in our universe also affects every other one.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“In so doing, we regain the innocent perspective most of us knew as children. Our hearts open up to others, like flowers blossoming. We become better listeners, more fully aware of everything going on around us, and are able to respond more spontaneously and appropriately to situations that used to trouble or confuse us. Gradually, perhaps on a level so subtle we might not even notice it’s happening, we find ourselves awakening to a free, clear, loving state of mind beyond our wildest dreams.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The opportunity to receive these transmissions also taught me, in an indirect way, the extremely valuable lesson that to whatever degree a person commits himself or herself to the welfare of others, he or she is repaid a thousandfold by opportunities for learning and advancement. Every kind word, every smile you offer someone who might be having a bad day, comes back to you in ways you'd never expect.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“As in other exercises my father taught me, the way to begin is to sit up straight, breathe normally, and gradually allow your mind to relax. “With your mind at rest,” he instructed those of us in his little teaching room in Nepal, “just allow yourself to become aware of all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations passing through it. And as you watch them pass, simply ask yourself, ‘Is there a difference between the mind and the thoughts that pass through it? Is there any difference between the thinker and the thoughts perceived by the thinker?’ Continue watching your thoughts with these questions in mind for about three minutes or so, and then stop.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The point of the exercise is simply to watch everything that passes through your awareness as it arises out of emptiness, momentarily appears, and dissolves back into emptiness again—a movement like the rising and falling of a wave in a giant ocean. You don’t want to block your thoughts, emotions, and so on; nor do you want to chase after them. If you chase after them, if you let them lead you, they begin to define you, and you lose your ability to respond openly and spontaneously in the present moment. On the other hand, if you attempt to block your thoughts, your mind can become quite tight and small.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The habit of thinking that things exist “out there” in the world or “in here” is hard to give up, though. It means letting go of all the illusions you cherish, and recognizing that everything you project, everything you think of as “other,” is in fact a spontaneous expression of your own mind.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“When you transform your mind, everything you experience is transformed.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Objectless shinay meditation doesn’t mean just letting your mind wander aimlessly among fantasies, memories, or daydreams. There’s still some presence of mind that may be loosely described as a center of awareness.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“For example, children who were regularly humiliated and criticized by their parents or other adults may experience inappropriately strong feelings of fear, resentment, or other unpleasant emotions when dealing with authority figures in adult life.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Whatever passes through your mind, don’t focus on it and don’t try to suppress it. Just observe it as it comes and goes.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“One of the earliest lessons I was taught by my father was that Buddhists don’t see the mind as a discrete entity, but rather as a perpetually unfolding experience.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“when Buddhists talk about emptiness, we don’t mean nothingness, but rather an unlimited potential for anything to appear, change, or disappear.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Nonconceptuality is an experience of the total openness of your mind. Your awareness is direct and unclouded by conceptual distinction such as “I” or “other,” subjects and objects, or any other form of limitation. It’s an experience of pure consciousness as infinite as space, without beginning, middle, or end. It’s like becoming awake within a dream and recognizing that everything experienced in the dream isn’t separate from the mind of the dreamer.
– Mingyur Rinpoche”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Now forget everything you just said, because if you try to remember it exactly, you’ll turn everything you learned into a concept, and we’ll have to start all over again.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“on a strictly cellular level, repeated experience can change the way the brain works. This is the why behind the how of the Buddhist teachings that deal with eliminating mental habits conducive to unhappiness.
...
because experience changes the neuronal structure of the brain, when we observe the mind this way, we can change the cellular gossip that perpetuates our experience of our “self.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Even though thoughts and emotions come and go, the mind’s natural clarity is never disturbed or interrupted.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“There is very little difference between the two sets of teachings, except perhaps that the dzogchen teachings focus on cultivating a deep understanding of the view of the fundamental nature of mind, while the mahamudra teachings tend to focus on meditation practices that facilitate direct experience of the nature of mind.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Just realizing the meaning of mind encompasses all understanding. —JAMGÖN KONGTRUL,”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“As we contemplate the enormous variety of factors that must come together to produce a specific sense of self, our attachment to this “I” we think we are begins to loosen. We become more willing to let go of the desire to control or block our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so on and begin to experience them without pain or guilt, absorbing their passage simply as manifestations of a universe of infinite possibilities.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“All you have to do is remember that whatever’s going on inside someone else’s mind is the same thing that’s going on in yours. When you remember this, you realize that there’s no reason to be frightened of anyone or anything.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“EMPTINESS: THE REALITY BEYOND REALITY Emptiness is described as the basis that makes everything possible. —THE TWELFTH TAI SITUPA RINPOCHE, Awakening the Sleeping Buddha”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“As my father explained after we’d finished, the point of the exercise was to recognize that there really is no difference between the mind that thinks and thoughts that come and go in the mind.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“dawning of compassion, the awakening of an inborn capacity to identify with and understand the experience of others.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“the basis of your experience is the same in dreams and in waking life: thoughts, feelings, and sensations that vary according to changing conditions. If you bear this comparison in mind, whatever you experience in waking life begins to lose its power to affect you. Thoughts are just thoughts. Feelings are just feelings. Sensations are just sensations. They come and go in waking life as quickly and easily as they do in dreams. Everything”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“You can enjoy your perceptions without actively engaging them, looking at them in the same way you’d look at the objects you’d experience in a dream.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Confusion, I was taught, is the beginning of understanding, the first stage of letting go of the neuronal gossip that used to keep you chained to very specific ideas about who you are and what you’re capable of. Confusion, in other words, is the first step on the path to real well-being.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“It’s often the case that the first lessons we learn in life are the most important ones. “Look both ways before crossing the street.” “Don’t take candy from a stranger.” “Don’t play with matches.” Children hear these things from their parents again and again, for good reason; and yet, as important as these childhood lessons are, we always seem to forget them. Human beings, by nature, take risks. That’s how we learn. But some lessons can be deadly, while others can cause lasting pain. That’s why, even as adults, we have to repeat the lessons we learned as children, and pass them on to our own children. Certain lessons just bear repeating.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Experience is always changing, like the movement of clouds against the sky. Realization—the stable awareness of the true nature of your mind—is like the sky itself, an unchanging background against which shifting experience occur.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The essence of the Buddha’s teachings was that while formal practice can help us to develop direct experience of emptiness, wisdom, and compassion, such experiences are meaningless unless we can bring them to bear on every aspect of our daily lives. For it’s in facing the challenges of daily life that we can really measure our development of calmness, insight, and compassion.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Meditation is actually a very simple exercise in resting in the natural state of your present mind, and allowing yourself to be simply and clearly present to whatever thoughts, sensations, or emotions occur.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“The real point of meditation is to rest in bare awareness whether anything occurs or not. Whatever comes up for you, just be open and present to it, and let it go. And if nothing occurs, or if thoughts and so on vanish before you can notice them, just rest in that natural clarity.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness“Meditation is really a process of nonjudgmental awareness. When we meditate, we adopt the objective perspective of a scientist toward our own subjective experience.”
― The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
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