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Are you playing enough in your life?

Posted on Jun 4th, 2009 by tinkonthebrink : serendipitous researcher tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 04, 2009:

Play
I am playing all the time in my life. Sometimes I play in other people's lives a little bit too, but I try not to be intrusive about it. Is there some other way to be? If so, the instructions must be written in a very foreign language and then they got lost in the mail. 
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Tagged with: QaR, playfulness, playing, games

I want to know everything, weigh nothing and live forever

Posted on Jun 5th, 2009 by tinkonthebrink : serendipitous researcher tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 05, 2009:

It's a little daunting to want to know everything, but I don't let that cause me to have some kind of seizure of common sense. 

Currently I'm reading Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano, a kind of history of the world and especially the Americas but not like any history you've ever read before. It's very magical and next I want to read it in Spanish because I want my Spanish to get back to being fluent. Then I want to read alI his other books too. 

And I want to learn to knit so I can make clothes that doen't look so...normal. Orderly. Ordinary. I actually know how to knit but have never made anything larger than a flute case or a tiny stuffed animal. 

I want to figure out how to build the first of the three playhouses we want to put up in our yard, out of salvaged, recycled things if possible. 

I always want to know more about food and nutrition and agriculture and how what we eat affects the world around us. I am Michael Pollen's biggest fan.  I want to learn which native plants would be a good choice to put in a living hedge around our yard - and which ones turn out to be pests (I've been unwittingly protecting a couple of multiflora roses in the yard even though I now know they're invasive and terrible, but I kept them because they're pretty. I'm sorry!).  I want to learn which native plants we can eat (do you know, dandelion greens are $4/lb at the store?? That's crazy.) 

I'm always reading more than one book, actually, more than three minimum, I'm always trying to revive the languages I knew and learn at least a few words in other ones, I periodically only cook Indian food for a month or so, Japanese food went on for several years, French food was a several year experiment, Vietnamese food when I lived in San Diego, Vegan for a while, raw foods for a while - I'm cooking my way around the world. Currently I'm boycotting cooking almost all together and just eating mostly raw again unless we go out. Plus eggs - I have some kind of egg obsession. Either raw quail eggs or runny yolked poached eggs, mmmm. And, inexplicably, sardines. 

I've joked that I have adult ADHD and someone sent me to an online quiz on which I scored 81, which is over the top, go-seek-help-immediately kind of score (and I thought I was answering a little conservatively...) so that was pretty amusing. I don't have any complaints about the way my brain works though. It's helpful if the goal is to know everything about everything. 

And Internet, you and me, we're BFF's. 
Now I have to go do some yoga and take the dogs for a run. Just as soon as I look this one thing up...
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Tagged with: QaR, learning, life, education, exploration, ADHD, food, knitting, fitness, weight

sacred space

Posted on Jun 9th, 2009 by tinkonthebrink : serendipitous researcher tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 08, 2009:

I have this problem when I go to the optometrist and they make me choose things - "better here, or here?" - and the little lens flips back and forth and I'm all, like, well, they're both kind of interesting....or worse, "they look about the same". And this poor person has to say, "no, they aren't the same. Try it again." And then after awhile I just pick one to make them happy and  to get them to stop asking.  I'm pretty sure this is a metaphor for my life. 

People say things like "I'm happiest when I'm at the ocean" and I say, "Oh, I LOVE the ocean!." Or "I really like the mountains" and I'm all like, "oh yeah, the mountains are amazing" and it just goes on and on.  Mountains, deserts, oceans, lakes, stuck in traffic, sitting on the front porch, pretty much anywhere except the mall and I'm sure that on some level the mall is a sacred space too, I'm just oblivious to that one. Plus malls always smell funny.  Not in a laugh-out-loud way, like funny weird. Like cinnabuns and fabric sizing and gluttony and some smell that comes off of bizarre mannequins wearing clothes that promise to make you cool and desirable and you can get 10% off your purchases today if you want to apply for a credit card. But I digress.

It sounds like one of those trite new agey things to say that all places are sacred, but if you can't be happy where you are, where are you going to be happy? If this spot right here, right now, isn't a sacred space, what exactly is wrong with it? Should we blow this particular spot up then? Let me leave first. Okay, whew, that was close. Oh, wait, new place, same problem. Oh look, I've created my own personal minefield of dissatisfaction! So although I'm not usually an all or nothing kind of person, it does seem that it's either all sacred or you have to commit to a lifetime of being almost happy and trying to figure out "better here, or here?" and I don't have the patience for that. Working on that mall thing.








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Tagged with: QaR, peace, sacredness, locations, geography, malls, optometrist

a big new free happy unusual life

Posted on Jun 24th, 2009 by tinkonthebrink : serendipitous researcher tinkonthebrink
The last week of my life has been...turbulent. I can't even begin to describe it all, but it involved abandoned animals needing sanctuary, a thirteen year old who has never owned a pet caring for twenty animals and everyone lived through it, 8 hours of driving, my son's wedding, falling in love with his wife's family, chopping off my hair and finding this book.  It is one of the books I would take to a desert island, or a dessert island for that matter. With cherries on top. I want all of you to go read it right now please.

Nina Wise teaches improv, which is to say, life, and I am in love with this book and I am not a self-help book kinda person but this is in a different realm. Did I mention that you should go read it right now? Hurry up.

Here's some quotes:

from Jack Kornfield's foreword:  "I've been told the story of a six year old girl who asked her mother where she was going one afternoon. The mother replied that she was headed for the university to teach her students how to draw and paint. 'You mean they've forgotten?' her daugher asked, amazed."

and this one, from the author, might be my mission statement if I had such a thing:  "We can, together, take this moment in human history to wake up to who we already know ourselves to be:  a free people dedicated to a sane and just world made up of individuals who celebrate their common humanity and this planet of indescribable beauty through song and dance, poetry, and care for all sentient beings."

This book and me, we're getting married.
Now go read.

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Tagged with: a big new free happy unusual life, nina wise, brilliant, wonderful