Monday Morning Love List – 04/29/2013

ARTIST: Olly Moss

Love – That this weekend proved it’s time to put away the winter sweaters. Yeah spring! Now where’d I put the cute skirts and shoes?

Love – That the week after the week away has not been enough for me to lose my perspective.

Love – That my week off included indulging in new music, some local, some not. I’m really looking forward to seeing Hey Ocean! and Pacifika live some time before the end of the year, and sad that I missed Ben Howard‘s Vancouver show.

Love – That I have a few new projects demanding I give them my attention.

Love – That today is a blank slate, and this week can be whatever I make it.

What do you love?

Monday Morning Love List – 03/11/2013

ARTIST: Olly Moss

Love – That today is beautiful, I have a few hours to enjoy as I like, and the possibilities are endless.

Love – that there are signs of spring everywhere, and Vancouver’s Cherry Blossom Festival is coming up fast. I see a photowalk in my future.

Love – That the Aurora Golden Gala apple is showing up in stalls at Granville Island again. This apple was years in the making, and is worth the trip if you’re an apple fan. If you’re the type to want details (many, many details), this link should make you very, very happy.

Love – that my local street vendor has tulips again. $5.00 isn’t too high a price for a bouquet of beauty, is it?

Love – That Vancouver has a sense of humour about itself.

Love – that I’m back to my yoga practice, and full of gratitude for DVDs when a trip to a studio isn’t on the menu. Can’t wait for Eoin to do classes in Vancouver again.

Love – That today is a blank slate, and this week can be whatever I make it.

What do you love?

Pechakucha #25

Last year I made a short list of things that happen in Vancouver that I really wanted to attend or be a part of. On that list: PechaKucha Vancouver. The idea of a group of people coming together to share ideas, to enlighten, to activate, to energize and mostly, to engage those who want to be engaged.

The night started off with the folks from Cause + Effect saying a few words (quite well), about what was about to happen. As a total newb, I appreciated that. Then the lights dimmed and we were off. I’m totally uncool, so throughout the night I took random notes on my iPhone – things I didn’t want to forget, such as my answer to James Glave’s question about how we felt as children when we engaged in dangerous play (exhilarated!), to people I simply must find out more about because their minds interest me, like Julian Thomas and his dial-a-park idea.

The night’s roster:
David Look – Engine Digital
Gaby Eirew – Record me now
Georgia Morley – Whitelightchef
J. Joly – CineCoup
James Glave – Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada
Jonas Woost – CBC
Julien Thomas – Social artist
!Kona – NubianImp Projects
Mickey McLeod – Salt Spring Coffee
Thomas Anselmi & Ernesto Gomez – Formerly Waldorf Productions
Zack Embree – The Überdrop

I was lucky enough to share the experience with a couple of people, which brings me to my first impromptu rule of PechaKucha – Don’t go alone. Followed quickly by my second impromptu rule – don’t rein in your enthusiasm. Seriously, I was vibrating by the end of the night, and it was fantastic to have other people with me who were on the same energy high. And that energy? It carries forward, and changes everything. Just ask your local physics geek.

Added to the list of events I want to attend: PechaKucha New Westminster, which I would never have found out about if I wasn’t a coffee addict who followed Kevin McConnell on twitter. Oh social media, how you lead me on…

Want to know more? Check out Ariana Scott’s post on Vancouver Weekly, Lynn Doan’s post on The Pink Wars, or make use of your google-fu and type in PechaKucha Vancouver. I dare ya.

Yes Mr. Beaton

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
~ Cecil Beaton

I read things like this and I say YES!

But making it an actuality – that’s a more daunting task to take on.

So Resolved

It was “iron” – it was firm, it was mineral…
No, no, no, that’s stupid.
It was… It was firm, it was adamant, it was resolved.
It was resolved.
~ Thomas Gates, National Treasure

Another year has passed, and I’m setting resolutions. A few years of snubbing this tradition as too old-fashioned made me realize that:

1. I like having something to refer back to, rather than just relying on my memory;
2. In my world, words that are written down have more presence and take on more importance than the ones that are not. This explains why my tongue-in-cheek resolution of 2009 (make more soup), actually happened, and;
3. I lean towards the old-fashioned.

So here I am, a blank page before me. Where to start? I’m not particularly political, but I am fan of eloquence, and the late Jack Layton’s letter to the people has remained in my mind (and heart) much longer than I thought it would, so it’s my starting off point: “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

Resolutions

Talk less, listen more;
Smile, particularly when it’s been a trying day;
Cuddle pets and the people you love. We all need more cuddles.
More reading, less TV;
Bake cookies. Share.
Quality, not quantity;
Accept that we all have a dark side. Without dark, there is no light.
Live intentionally;
Take action;
Write;
Find the delight in life.
Hug, and hug often.
Capture moments;
Love people, even when they think they’re unloveable.
Seek out the things that draw us together.
Practice makes perfect: gratitude, hope and optimism daily.
Make more soup.

You’ve Got Ephemera

I used to be an advocate of the written word. I loved sending letters and cards and postcards as much as I loved receiving them in the mail, and given the opportunity, would do my best to talk up the joys of putting pen to paper and creating something that might, some day, end up in someone’s trove of treasures.

Then I got busy.

Not world-changing busy or life-altering busy, just mundane, run-of-the-mill, dear god we have to do laundry again and why is there no detergent left? busy.

My stash of stationary languished, my pots of ink got dusty. Some of my prized onion paper started curling at the edges.

It was starting to look dire.

And then I found it. A 2-inch stack of paper, tied in teal ribbon. Love letters. Cards. Post-its. All from my beloved.

Would I have kept them if they’d been emails? Probably not. His handwriting says as much as the words do, some words inked out carefully, some scrawled, others pressed so deeply into the paper I caught myself checking the next page to see if they’d etched through.

I took the time to read them, of course. Laughed a little. Cried a little. Shook my head at my teen-aged self so much I’m shocked I didn’t send myself straight to the chiropractor.

Then I gently and precisely stacked them back up, tied them back in their ribbon, tucked them away in the storage bin I’d found them in, and vowed to step away from the tech and towards the ink.