i read somewhere... 31 december 2019...

without ignoring the calamities/ problems/ frustrations/ disasters in the world we have all created and are responsible for... but since it is the last day of the year and the last day of a decade, allow me to throw some positivity around, a little glitter, a little sparkle, a little hope, as the fight and the love continue before we all perish...

i shall share with you my last, for 2019, i read somewhere, full of hard work, the unlearning of the bullshit, the total destruction of anything toxic in your life, from the government to any relationships, including the one with yourself and all the revelations, reflections, results and directions, you'll be able to decipher and unravel and finally practice, when and not if, you get ready to take the leap...

i wish you all a better, different, spectacular start; stay healthy, safe, creative, radical, resistant and keep swimming... <3 span="">

ps. this is not to be considered as some self serving mumbo jumbo motherfucker; just a little reminder of what alive, thinking and doing can achieve. x

I invite you to say/ think this:

love everything about you, your beauty and pain, hungry soul, wounded longing, flaws and fears.
do not betray or deceive yourself
believe, forgive and adore yourself
accept, amuse and redeem yourself

feed and nourish your body and spirit
be with people who deserve us and vice versa
communicate with a yes and a no
respect our planet and its animals and plants, the rivers, lakes, oceans, skies and forests
spread the love
smash the bullshit patriarchy and all the shackles enslaving us all
believe that fortune will visit, to eradicate limitations and encourage braver horizons

devote yourselves and fight hard to cultivate
beauty, truth, love, justice, equality, tolerance, creativity, playfulness, and hope

"Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just
as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity
and kindness and style."
Rebecca Solnit

know the problem, solve the problem and provide antidotes to the world's poisons, with love and power

"We should feel excited about the problems we confront and our ability to
deal with them.
Solving problems is one of the
highest and most sensual of all our brain functions."
Robert Wilson

remember
you can make a difference
stay humble and learn from it
help and serve your fellow person
take yourself serious and have fun with it too
remember the coin has two sides; a good and bad
take the leap, recognise your fears, how freeing
thank yourselves for having the nous to identify the idiocies and then smashing them

we are human, we are a cluster of everything fluid and messy, we are victorious.

with love and anticipation. 

i read somewhere... 25 december 2019...

before i disappear into my own festive embrace in the kitchen (cooking up a festive feast) and on the sofa, by the tree (for the yearly treat)... i am spreading some positivity, warmth and love, today and everyday from this day forward. <3 span="">

with my festive special 'i read somewhere':

"Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you and who have no agenda for your reform.

Change yourself in the way you want everyone else to change

Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks

Write a love letter to your evil twin during a lunar eclipse

Dream up wilder, wetter, more interesting problems

Change your name every day for a thousand days

Exaggerate your flaws till they turn into virtues

Kill the apocalypse and annihilate Armageddon

Brag about what you can't do and don't have

Bow down to the greatest mystery you know

Make fun of people who make fun of people

Scare yourself with how beautiful you are

Pretend your wounds are exotic tattoos

Sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees

Commit a crime that breaks no laws

Sip the tears of someone you love

Give yourself another chance

Play games with no rules

Relax and go deeper

Mock your fears

Drink the sun".

Fall in love with your life over and over... <3 span="">

I wish you all a wonderful time with your selves and loved ones.
Keep warm, keep safe and remember the ones who have less than you or nothing at all.
Think of those who will never see festivities because of wars and displacement.
Think of those who are ill.
Think of those who have departed this realm.

And remember how fortunate you are for being healthy, alive, prosperous, loved and loving.

Keep swimming and keep the aspidistra flying; we have work to do in the bettering of our world.

In peace and love. 

i read somewhere... 20 may 2016...

i read somewhere:

"Exaggerate your flaws till they turn into virtues
Pretend your wounds are exotic tattoos
Refuse the gifts that infringe on your freedom
Shun sacred places that fill you with boredom
Keep in mind it's bad luck to be superstitious
The official story's always fictitious
Pump up your karma with idiot laughter
The promised land's here, not in some hereafter

We are searching for the answers
so we can destroy them and dream up better questions

Use your third eye to watch TV
Sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees
Think with your heart and feel with your head
Spit a mouthful of beer as far as you can
Kick your own ass and wash your own brain.
Make fun of your fears and heal your own pain
Play games with no rules, save your own life
Push your own buttons and be your own wife

We are searching for the answers
so we can destroy them and dream up better questions

Plunge butcher knives into accordions
Forgive yourself of all your mistakes except one
Commit funny crimes that don't break any laws
Shock yourself with how beautiful you are.
Tell jokes to clowns and cook feasts for chefs
Sing songs to the birds, and kill your own death
Mangle your anger, transform it to pleasure
Change your name, steal your own treasure

Go wash some water
Mock your own hypocrisy

Go burn some fire
Brag about your perplexity

Go wash some water
Advertise your secrecy

Go burn some fire
Overthrow reality"

"May I feel all I need to feel in order to heal; may I heal all I need to heal in order to feel." Marguerite Rigoglioso

remember: full moon in sagittarius the 21st and mercury turns direct the 22nd. brace yourselves, as the whooshing changes are imminent.
and have a great day. everything is all right and you are amazing. x

i read somewhere... 7 november 2017...

i read somewhere:

"Every day, you have to wade through a relentless surge of soul-less facts.
The experience tends to shut down your sense of wonder.

Every day, you're over-exposed to cynical narratives that have been sucked free of delight and mystery. That's why you have to make such strenuous efforts to keep your world enchanted."

"The punk ethic is rebellious. It transgresses
conventional wisdom through "a cynical absurdity that's redeemed by being hilarious." Brian Doherty.
In the hippie approach, on the other hand, the prevailing belief is "love is all you need." It seeks a
"manic togetherness and all-encompassing acceptance that are all sweet and no sour; inspiring but also soft and gelatinous." Ah, but what happens when punk and hippie merge? Each moderates the extreme of the other, yielding a tough-minded lust for life that's both skeptical and celebratory."

“This is a massive awakening. We’ve already seen an awakening taking place in the last few years. It will intensify. We’ve seen marvellous demonstrations in a variety of different cities... I think that we have to have a real sense of commitment to being a hope in such a bleak moment. And we can turn things around.”

Apply all this as you wish and create your own revolution to ripple through universally. The time is now, now is the time. 

i read somewhere... 21 august 2018...

i read somewhere:

(this is a love week and beyond... )

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.
Sark

Love is the only game where two can play and both win. Erma Freesman

Love is a great beautifier.
Louisa May Alcott

Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbours, your enemies, and yourself. And don't stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies. Mary Ann and Frederic Brussat

I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn't bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses.
Pablo Neruda

You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my fellow vagabond, my tempter and star.
George Bernard Shaw

love is healing and the answer and we all know that for sure.
the healing won't happen, as one imagines.
the healing will happen, if one tells the absolute truth.
all with soft, tender, unruly, elixir kisses, crazy sweet cuddle wrestles, brisk lessons, deep appreciations and ingenious affectionate amazements.

lots of good work to be done and how fortunate we all are if we get down to it in furtive energy and anticipation.

i dedicate this little readings to ALL the lovers and love fighters in the everywhere. 

i read somewhere... 10 august 2016...

i read somewhere:

I invite you to say any or all of the following lines out loud:

I love everything about me

I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain

I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing

I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself

I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself

I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself

I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself

So listen up. We'll make it brief. You're at a crossroads analogous to a dilemma that has baffled your biological line for six generations. We ask you now to master the turning point that none of us have ever figured out how to negotiate. Heal yourself and you heal all of us. We mean that literally. Start brainstorming, please.

Love thrives when neither partner takes things personally, so cultivate a devotion to forgiveness and divest yourself of the urge to blame.

Love is a game in which the rules keep changing, so be crafty and improvisational as you stay alert for each unexpected twist of fate.

Love enmeshes you in your partner's unique set of karmic complications, so make sure you're very interested in his or her problems.

Love is a laboratory where you can uncover secrets about yourself that have previously been hidden, so be ravenously curious.

Love is never a perfect match of totally compatible saints, so don't let sterile fantasies seduce you away from flawed but fecund realities.
Love is not a low-maintenance machine, so work hard on cultivating its unpredictable organic wonders.

Love is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hollywood, so don't let your romantic story be infected by the entertainment industry's simplistic, sentimental myths about intimate relationships.

LET'S GET ON WITH IT; WE ARE ALL RIGHT AND LIFE IS AMAZING... 

i read somewhere... 23 august 2016...

i read somewhere:

Whatever you choose to focus your attention on, you will get more of it. If you dwell on the good things you have already had the privilege to experience, you will expand your appreciation for their blessings, which in turn will amplify their beneficent impact on your life. You will also magnetise yourself to receive further good things, making it more likely that they will be attracted into your sphere. At the very least, you will get in the habit of enjoying yourself no matter what the outward circumstances are.

Bear in mind that you are a great wizard. You can use your powers to practice white magic on yourself instead of the other kind. The most basic way to do that is to concentrate on naming, savouring, and feeling gratitude for the blessings you do have—your love for your kid, the pleasures of eating the food you like, the sight of the sky at dusk, the entertaining drama of your unique fate. Don't ignore the bad stuff, but make a point of celebrating the beautiful stuff with all the exuberant devotion you can muster.

Speak the following lines out loud:
I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself.

and remember:

"Every act of genius, is an act contra naturam: against nature." Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration and union with the divine requires a knack for working against the grain. Carl Jung

The great secret to becoming enlightened, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world." Jacob Boehme

"The basis of the spiritual approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing." Paul Foster Case

have a great week, full of focus, gratitude and love. 

15 september 2013

i read somewhere:

"If everything seems under control, you're probably not moving fast enough." Mario Andretti
1. If you're not pretty much always half-confused, most likely you're not thinking deeply enough.
2. If you're not feeling forever amazed, maybe you're not seeing wildly enough.
3. The truth is fluid, slippery, vagrant, scrambled, promiscuous, kaleidoscopic, and outrageously abundant.
4. Sometimes the truth is a glittering diamond and at other times it's a stream of smoke.

"I was like a mole in a suburban backyard. I had just one little path I trod each day: to the compost pile and back. I chewed on orange rinds and leftover cabbage. I was tamed by the comfort of my familiar environment, content to have a narrow vision. But then I was eaten by a hawk, and became part of a wild, free body. Now I perch on the tops of trees and the peaks of roofs. I survey giddy-wide horizons, from the river to the mesa and far beyond. I have a wealth of choices. Where to fly? What to hunt? Who are my allies? My thoughts breathe deep, like the slow explosion of sun on the morning lake."

freeing the heart; loving again and back... yes? xx

i read somewhere... 19 february 2016

I read somewhere: "Life's always at a crossroads. Narrow is the path that leads to the way you want to go, and only a few people follow it."

Many thanks to my boxing posse last night: Fabiana Fernandes, Vicki Cooper and Anka Dabrowska.

And remember: Don't get stuck in. And do whatever you do, intensely.

❤️

i read somewhere... 17 april 2018

it's a beautiful day. it's important to stay positive, active and pro active, as well as angry and disappointed.

i read somewhere:

"If I could have but one wish granted it would be
to live in a universe like this one
at a time like the present
with friends like the ones I have now
and be myself." Rand Howells

"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected
as questions asked in the wrong way." Alan Watts

"Dedicating the merit, is an act of radical imagination that has a real impact.
Our radical imagining is that all beings are free, at peace, and awakened. Imagining this stretches our minds and creates the possibility for it to actually happen, because if we cannot imagine something, it's nearly impossible to actualise it.
In this radical imagining, our vision includes everyone equally in our love.
This develops our generosity, loving-kindness, and commitment to the equality of beings. This kind of beneficence does not condone anyone's
destructive actions. Rather it looks toward the possibility of liberating and transforming the ignorance that drives people's destructive actions." Lama Palden Drolma

love everything about yourself, your beauty, your pain, your longings, your hungry soul, your flaws, your fears, your issues, your power, your mysteries, your freedom...

escape your chains of suffering and discharge yourself from any debt...

have a great day and a good week, starting from yourselves. 

13 may 2016. i read somewhere continues... and so do i... x

i read somewhere:

To regain patience, learn to love the sour, the bitter, the salty, the clear." James Richardson
Because if you enhance your appreciation for the sour, the bitter, the salty, and the clear, you will not only regain patience, but also generate unexpected opportunities.
You will tonify your mood, beautify your attitude, and deepen your gravitas.
Seek out the tangy, the smouldering, the soggy, the spunky, the chirpy, the gritty, and an array of other experiences you may have previously kept at a distance.

Here are three of our deepest spiritual aspirations:

1. to develop the capacity to thrive in the midst of raging contradictions;

2. to be discerning as we protect ourselves from people's flaws while at the same time being generous as we celebrate their beauty;

3. to refrain from dividing the world into two groups, those who help and agree with us and those who don't.

"A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home." Rumi.
You will be invited to shed a host of wishy-washy wishes so as to become strong and smart enough to go in quest of a very few burning, churning yearnings. Are you ready to sacrifice the mediocre in service to the sublime?

have a great day everyone. everything is all right and you are amazing! x

an angel departed...

missed, but never forgotten... my love for maya is eternal and i'm grateful and fortunate for her words... 

Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life

by Maria Popova

“Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.”

The light of the world has grown a little dimmer with the loss of the phenomenal Maya Angelou, but her legacy endures as a luminous beacon of strength, courage, and spiritual beauty. Angelou’s timeless wisdom shines with unparalleled light in a 1977 interview by journalist Judith Rich, found in Conversations with Maya Angelou (public library) — the same magnificent tome that gave us the beloved author’s conversation with Bill Moyers on freedom — in which Angelou explores issues of identity and the meaning of life.

Reflecting on her life, Angelou — who rose to cultural prominence through the sheer tenacity of her character and talent, despite being born into a tumultuous working-class family, abandoned by her father at the age of three, and raped at the age of eight — tells Rich:

I’ve been very fortunate… I seem to have a kind of blinkers. I just do not allow too many negatives to soil me. I’m very blessed. I have looked quite strange in most of the places I have lived in my life, the stages, spaces I’ve moved through. I of course grew up with my grandmother: my grandmother’s people and my brother are very very black, very lovely. And my mother’s people were very very fair. I was always sort of in between. I was too tall. My voice was too heavy. My attitude was too arrogant — or tenderhearted. So if I had accepted what people told me I looked like as a negative yes, then I would be dead. But I accepted it and I thought, well, aren’t I the lucky one.

She later revisits the question of identity, echoing Leo Buscaglia’s beautiful meditation on labels, as she reflects on the visibility her success granted her and the responsibility that comes with it:

What I represent in fact, what I’m trying like hell to represent every time I go into that hotel room, is myself. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I miss most of the time on that: I do not represent blacks or tall women, or women or Sonomans or Californians or Americans. Or rather I hope I do, because I am all those things. But that is not all that I am. I am all of that and more and less. People often put labels on people so they don’t have to deal with the physical fact of those people. It’s easy to say, oh, that’s a honkie, that’s a Jew, that’s a junkie, or that’s a broad, or that’s a stud, or that’s a dude. So you don’t have to think: does this person long for Christmas? Is he afraid that the Easter bunny will become polluted? … I refuse that… I simply refuse to have my life narrowed and proscribed.

To be sure, beneath Angelou’s remarkable optimism and dignity lies the strenuous reality she had to overcome. Reflecting on her youth, she channels an experience all too familiar to those who enter life from a foundation the opposite of privilege:

It’s very hard to be young and curious and almost egomaniacally concerned with one’s intelligence and to have no education at all and no direction and no doors to be open… To go figuratively to a door and find there’s no doorknob.

And yet Angelou acknowledges with great gratitude the kindness of those who opened doors for her in her spiritual and creative journey. Remembering the Jewish rabbi who offered her guidance in faith and philosophy and who showed up at her hospital bedside many years later after a serious operation, Angelou tells Rich:

The kindnesses … I never forget them. And so they keep one from becoming bitter. They encourage you to be as strong, as volatile as necessary to make a well world. Those people who gave me so much, and still give me so much, have a passion about them. And they encourage the passion in me. I’m very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick.

Painting by Basquiat from Angelou's 'Life Doesn't Frighten Me.' Click image for more.

At the end of the interview, Angelou reflects on the meaning of life — a meditation all the more poignant as we consider, in the wake of her death, how beautifully she embodied the wisdom of her own words:

I’ve always had the feeling that life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you, give you experiences. They may not all be that pleasant, but nobody promised you a rose garden. But more than likely if you do dare, what you get are the marvelous returns. Courage is probably the most important of the virtues, because without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues, you can’t say against a murderous society, I oppose your murdering. You got to have courage to do so. I seem to have known that a long time and found great joy in it.

The totality of Conversations with Maya Angelou is a powerful portal into the beloved writer’s soul. Complement it with Angelou on home, belonging, and (not) growing up, her children’s verses about courage illustrated by Basquiat, and her breathtaking reading of “Phenomenal Woman.”

love continues as always and so is freedom...

relating and referencing... where is amelia??

Amelia Earhart on Marriage

by Maria Popova

“I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.”

Charles Darwin gleefully weighed the pros and cons of marriage, ultimately deciding in its favor, while Susan Sontag called it “an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings.” But marriage, of course, is like most things in life — all else being equal, you get out of it exactly what you put in.

Amelia Earhart — pioneering aviator, bestselling author, and one altogether fierce lady — must have known that when she sat down on the morning of February 7th, 1931, and penned this exacting, resolute letter to her publicist and future husband, George Putnam. Found in the out-of-print volume Letters from Amelia, 1901-1937 (public library), it spells out (typo notwithstanding) exactly what Earhart wanted — and didn’t want — in a marriage, a bold testament to her independent spirit and liberal mindset just before the golden age of the housewife and shortly after the era of Victorian sexism.

Noank
Connecticut

The Square House
Church Street

Dear GPP

There are some things which should be writ before we are married — things we have talked over before — most of them.

You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means most to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations but have no heart to look ahead.

On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply (or in passing) in anyone else.

Please let us not interfere with the others’ work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.

I must exact a cruel promise and that is you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.

I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want.

A.E.

The two married that afternoon. Putnam had proposed six times before Earhart finally said her highly conditional “yes.” She kept her last name and refused to be called Mrs. Putnam, even against The New York Times’ insistence. They remained together until Earhart’s tragic disappearance in 1937.