Category Archives: Inspiration

Stillness

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Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced wherever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in—when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing. ~ Erich Schiffmann ‘Yoga: the Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness’

I must’ve read this paragraph at least ten times over the last two years. It still strikes me every time. Stillness, on the rare occasion we manage to get it right, is dynamic. I love that idea.

A Drink with LiteraryMinded

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Literary blogger and dear friend of mine, Angela Meyer (aka Ms LiteraryMinded) has just brought out the first two episodes of her new online video series A Drink with….

In her own words:

A Drink with… is a literary-minded chat show. In each episode I chat, informally, with a different writer, over a drink at a Melbourne location. Over the course of the show my co-producer Mark Welker and I will feature both emerging and established writers, and writers of different forms, including criticism.

The first two episodes, with novelist Lisa Lang (co-winner of the Vogel in 2009) and poet Omar Musa (who has won both the Australian Poetry Slam and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam), have been released simultaneously. You can view them below, on Vimeo, or on the LiteraryMinded blog.

It’s such a brilliant idea. The first two episodes are beautifully shot, and have such a warmth to them. Almost as if you were sitting in the bar/cafe with the writers. The camera takes in both Ange’s obvious rapport with her interview subjects, and all those little details you might notice about a person in close-up — hand gestures, little smiles, listening faces. I’m very much looking forward to future episodes.

A Drink with Lisa Lang from LiteraryMinded (Angela Meyer) on Vimeo.

A Drink with Omar Musa from LiteraryMinded (Angela Meyer) on Vimeo.

A city’s intricacy

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It’s the city’s crush and heave that move you; its intricacy; its endless life.

    ~ The Hours, Michael Cunningham
    I’ve been trying for months now to articulate exactly this sentiment. I miss the open space of my country upbringing, I miss the clean air, I miss seeing the stars in the sky at night. But this, this layer upon later of human intricacy, is what I’d miss about the city were I to move to the country.

    An example: in a house around the corner from mine lives a man who practises his operatic singing in the middle of the day. Sometimes I happen to be walking past, and it never fails to make me smile—there he is, just the thickness of a wall away from me, singing beautifully.

Back to fiction?

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This makes me want to write fiction again, even though it actually comes from non-fiction. Or the pseudo-fiction section of a non-fiction essay…

If the opinions upon any of these matters had been chalked on the pavement, nobody would have stooped to read them. The nonchalance of the hurrying feet would have rubbed them out in half an hour. Here came an errand-boy; here a woman with a dog on a lead. The fascination of the London street is that no two people are ever alike; each seems bound on some private affair of his own. There were the business-like, with their little bags; there were the drifters rattling sticks upon area railings; there were affable characters to whom the streets serve for club-room, hailing men in carts and giving information withouth being asked for it. Also there were funerals to which mean, thus suddenly reminded of the passing of their own bodies, lifted their hats. And then a very distinguished gentlemean came slowly down a doorstep and paused to avoid a collision with a bustling lady who had, by some means or other, acquired a splended fur coat and a bunch of Parma violets. They all seemed separate, self-absorbed, on business of their own.

    ~ Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, page 94

People are so interesting.

End of Year

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Before writing this post, I decided that I’d have a look at what I posted here this time last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the general gist of it was very similar to what’s in my mind as I approach the end of the year now. Last year I said I’m not big on resolutions, but I do like to think of New Year’s Eve as a chance to reflect a little, and to let go of some things that have passed to make room for things that might be. This year I feel much the same. I probably won’t make any specific resolutions, but there are some things I’d like to let go of, and some small changes in attitude and behaviour that I’d like to encourage in myself.

Today I’ve read two very different things that have contributed to the Let Go and Look Forward ideas in my head (I was going to call them lists, but that implies some kind of logical structure that just doesn’t exist). Rather than share those half-formed ideas, I’ll simply link to the two posts; one written by my cousin Julia, and another by a yoga teacher, Yogitastic, I’ve become friendly with on Twitter.

In last year’s post, I included this quote from a book I’ve got — and often refer to — on Yoga for Anxiety. The last two months or so have been frustrating for me, and I’m not entirely sure why (which probably means it’s no one thing — although it could just mean that I really needed a holiday), so this is a good reminder for me.

“Perhaps the simplest and most profound practice for deactivating old patterns,” say Mary and Rick NurrieStearns – a pyschotherapist and yoga teacher, and meditation teacher respectively, “is taking the time to be still and quiet. Sitting down and doing nothing gives you a chance to unwind and let your mind relax. You literally stop moving long enough to get your bearings, to see where you are and what’s going on.”

In that spirit, I’m going to spend at least a little time today or tomorrow just sitting quietly, encouraging reflection.

Happy new year.

Hand-painted maps

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I’ve been thinking, reading and writing about maps lately (the adventuring to Coogee in my last post was, in part, research related to the map work I’m doing), and I came across this video on Brain Pickings. Fascinating. I love that Jerry’s work on the map is so systematic, and yet there’s such wonder and imagination involved in its creation. It reminds me of some of the reading I’ve done on designing cities, and the idea that we should be designing incompleteness, to allow for some organic development in our urban places.

Jerry’s Map from Jerry Gretzinger on Vimeo.

(There’s also an article about Jerry’s map on The Atlantic website. And if you’re interested in more map-goodness, also check out this Brain Pickings post on the BBC series The Beauty of Maps.)