ok, I may not have one for every day but will try. Sometimes I do too much thinking about thinking, and it all goes round my head on a loop, going nowhere. This is maddening, to say the least. Thinking about thinking. Not only are you thinking a lot, you are also thinking about what and why you are thinking it. Unsuprisingly, the brain gets overwhelmed. Psychology has a name for this, meta-cognition.
Unfortunately the mental space is my comfort zone too much of the time, rather than acting and doing and the only way to stop the thinking too much is to act. Physical activity blocks the mental activity, giving you a break. The activity that works best for me is gardening.
Thankfully, there are folks amongst us who manage to catch slippery silver thoughts, like fish from murky water, and can put words together in a way that shines, make you realise something you already knew, or a complete revelation. To those who use words that take you by the hand and lead your mind along a path through a different garden, I salute you.
Thought of the Day -
Small pleasures are better than no pleasures
Friday 11th May -
I'm staying with Wittgenstein for today's thought, 'cos it's a good one:
"The Mystery of the Universe is not what it is, but that it is"
Saturday 12th May -
"Colour is the eye's music" - Lorca
Sunday 13th May -
"Two truths approach each other. One comes from inside, the other from outside, and where they meet we have a chance to catch sight of ourselves"
Tomas Transtromer
I found Tomas Transtromer and his poems last year by chance, he writes beautifully about so many things...
"...Poetry has an advantage from the start. Poetry requires no heavy, vulnerable apparatus that has to be lugged around..."
Transtromer loves Schubert, and plays piano. Since music features in his life so it features in his work...
The five instruments play. I go home through warm woods where the earth is springy under my feet, curl up like someone still unborn, sleep, roll on so weightlessly into the future, suddenly understand that plants are thinking.
Monday 14th May -
This is something I saw, can't remember where, and it fitted my mood at the time:
A pessimist is an optimist with more information
Tuesday 15th May -
This from Aldous Huxley, 'The Doors of Perception'
"We live together, head on, and react to one another, but always and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves...by its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude sensations,feelings, insights, fancies; all these are private and, except through symbols and at second-hand, incommunicable."
Wednesday 16th May -
"I can look at one plant for an hour, this brings me great peace."
Derek Jarman
Friday 18th May -
There are days with
too much to hear and see,
When bed is the only place to be.
Greygirl
Monday 21st May -
"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason"
Novalis, German Romantic poet and philosopher
Tuesday 22nd May -
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths"
Joseph Campbell
Wednesday 23rd May -
"We are more closely connected to the invisible than the visible"
Novalis
Friday 25th May -
"We know our second self is active while we sleep, that it grows and becomes and produces what the real self sought in vain."
Gustav Mahler
Tuesday 29th May -
This from the poem that inspired Vaughan-Williams to compose 'The Lark Ascending'. My favourite recording of which is conducted by Sir Adrian Boult with Hugo Bean playing the violin like a dream. If you haven't heard this ever, treat yourself.
He rises and begins to round
He drops the silver chain of sound
At sight of sun, her musics' mirth
As up he wings the spiral stair
A song of light, and pierces air
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow.
Thursday 31st May -
"I am sixty two years old and I have dragged myself from day to day, the result of an anxiety that only work as a sculptor has appeased. Art is a guarantee of sanity."
Louise Bourgeois
Friday 1st June -
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
Carl Jung
Sunday 3rd June -
I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?
OOh...big gap!
Tuesday 19th June -
Lights Out
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.
This is the constellation of the Lyre:
it's music cannot ever tire,
For it is silent. No man need fear it
Unless he wants to, he will not hear it.
Edward Thomas
Monday 2nd July -
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree"
Albert Einstein
Today's thought is from one of my favourite poets, T.S.Eliot -
You are the music while the music lasts
Sometimes things just seem to connect in quite a satisfying way. The most recent for me was coming across a newspaper article which read, 'waves of colour wash over the brain folds of a person contemplating philosophy and dramatic music.' This made me think about Synesthesia, which I do a lot, since I have memories of such a state from childhood before my senses got organised. Anyway, in the same week I got a book from the library called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, about music and the mind and in it was a description of listening to music by a synesthete. Here it is, get comfy cos it's worth it.
"When I hear music, I see little circles or vertical bars of light getting brighter, whiter, or more silvery for higher pitches and turning a lovely, deep maroon for the lower pitches. A run up the scale will produce a succession of increasingly brighter spots or vertical bars moving upward, while a trill, like in a Mozart piano sonata, will produce a flicker. High distinct notes on a violin evoke sharp bright lines, while notes played with vibrato seem to shimmer. Several stringed instruments playing together evoke overlapping, parallel bars or, depending on the melody, spirals of light of different shades shimmering together. A chord will envelop me."
I really envy this woman. *Sigh*
Wednesday 10th May -
The thought to ponder today comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein from his book Tactus Logico-Philosophicus:
"The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy."
Wittgenstein lived in a shed in a remote part of Norway in order to retreat from the world.
Wednesday 10th May -
The thought to ponder today comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein from his book Tactus Logico-Philosophicus:
"The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy."
Wittgenstein lived in a shed in a remote part of Norway in order to retreat from the world.
 |
| Wittgenstein - shed man |
Friday 11th May -
I'm staying with Wittgenstein for today's thought, 'cos it's a good one:
"The Mystery of the Universe is not what it is, but that it is"
Saturday 12th May -
"Colour is the eye's music" - Lorca
Sunday 13th May -
"Two truths approach each other. One comes from inside, the other from outside, and where they meet we have a chance to catch sight of ourselves"
Tomas Transtromer
I found Tomas Transtromer and his poems last year by chance, he writes beautifully about so many things...
"...Poetry has an advantage from the start. Poetry requires no heavy, vulnerable apparatus that has to be lugged around..."
Transtromer loves Schubert, and plays piano. Since music features in his life so it features in his work...
The five instruments play. I go home through warm woods where the earth is springy under my feet, curl up like someone still unborn, sleep, roll on so weightlessly into the future, suddenly understand that plants are thinking.
Monday 14th May -
This is something I saw, can't remember where, and it fitted my mood at the time:
A pessimist is an optimist with more information
Tuesday 15th May -
This from Aldous Huxley, 'The Doors of Perception'
"We live together, head on, and react to one another, but always and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves...by its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude sensations,feelings, insights, fancies; all these are private and, except through symbols and at second-hand, incommunicable."
Wednesday 16th May -
"I can look at one plant for an hour, this brings me great peace."
Derek Jarman
Friday 18th May -
There are days with
too much to hear and see,
When bed is the only place to be.
Greygirl
Monday 21st May -
"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason"
Novalis, German Romantic poet and philosopher
Tuesday 22nd May -
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths"
Joseph Campbell
Wednesday 23rd May -
"We are more closely connected to the invisible than the visible"
Novalis
Friday 25th May -
"We know our second self is active while we sleep, that it grows and becomes and produces what the real self sought in vain."
Gustav Mahler
Tuesday 29th May -
This from the poem that inspired Vaughan-Williams to compose 'The Lark Ascending'. My favourite recording of which is conducted by Sir Adrian Boult with Hugo Bean playing the violin like a dream. If you haven't heard this ever, treat yourself.
He rises and begins to round
He drops the silver chain of sound
At sight of sun, her musics' mirth
As up he wings the spiral stair
A song of light, and pierces air
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow.
Thursday 31st May -
"I am sixty two years old and I have dragged myself from day to day, the result of an anxiety that only work as a sculptor has appeased. Art is a guarantee of sanity."
Louise Bourgeois
Friday 1st June -
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
Carl Jung
Sunday 3rd June -
I'm out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?
OOh...big gap!
Tuesday 19th June -
Lights Out
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.
This is the constellation of the Lyre:
it's music cannot ever tire,
For it is silent. No man need fear it
Unless he wants to, he will not hear it.
Edward Thomas
 |
| the poet Edward Thomas. A bit gorgeous |
Monday 2nd July -
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree"
Albert Einstein
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