“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself.
Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
[Image: Digital art by Tetyana Erhart • ]
Quote by @inparadise: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”
-George Addair
This is so true and I've found that to be the case many times in life. I'm currently learning to swim and was very afraid during my first lesson because I almost drowned a couple of times as a child, but while I have a long ways to go, I'm still a bit frightened but I'm hopeful and can actually float on my back now.
My own related quote:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
from "Dune" by Frank Herbert
-- Kate
p.s. Holy crap, @MissAdventurous, that is quite a work of art is an outre, bizarre way. I love it, lol.
“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves .
Art by Michael Cheval
Paraphrasing Franklin Veaux a bit: It's not the relationship that matters, only the people that are in the relationship.
It's important to remember that people are what empower relationships, not the other way around.
You learn something new everyday!
Everyone who has ever sewn has a tomato pincushion... our Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, literally everybody, and I wondered why. According to folklore, people once thought the tomato was a symbol of good fortune and prosperity. So when people moved into a new home, they placed a tomato on the mantle. Since tomatoes are only seasonal, the ladies would create them from fabric and fill them with leaves and things from the outdoors.
During this same era, the ladies did all the sewing for their families. Their hand needles were very important, so they placed their important hand needle in their fabric “good luck” tomato and the tomato pin cushion was born.
The little strawberry that is attached is filled with sand, and is used to sharpen the pins and needles.
When I think of the pin cushion, I see my grandmother’s wrinkled hands, the bright red tomato next to her, sewing away. The tomato may not bring prosperity and good fortune but it definitely has nostalgia. 🍅
“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility, 1881.
Harriet Backer (Norwegian,1845–1932)
This home built on 'Chicken Legs' is one of the oldest buildings in Norway :
This strange house, built in the 18th Century CE, is one of the oldest buildings in Hattfjelldal municipality in Norland, Norway.
Constructed on these tree stumps serving as the foundation and which somehow resemble chicken legs, it seems as if the house is about to walk away. In Norwegian it is called a "Stabbur". They were used to store food and other items off of the ground and away from animals.
Many people say the structure reminds them of Baba Yaga, an enigmatic or ambiguous character from Slavic folklore (one of a trio of sisters of the same name) who has two opposite roles. In some motifs she is described as a repulsive or ferocious-looking old woman who fries and eats children, while in others she is a nice old woman, who helps out the hero. She is often associated with forest wildlife. Her distinctive traits are flying around in a mortar, wielding a pestle, and dwelling deep in the forest in a hut standing on chicken legs.
Mussorgsky's 1874 suite Pictures at an Exhibition has a movement titled "The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba Yaga)". The rock adaptation of this piece recorded by English progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer includes a two-part track "The Hut of Baba Yaga", interrupted by "The Curse of Baba Yaga" (movements 8 to 10). Animated segments telling the story of Baba Yaga were used in 2014 documentary 'The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga', directed by American filmmaker Jessica Oreck.
GennaRose Nethercott's first novel, Thistlefoot, "reimagines Baba Yaga as a Jewish woman living in an Eastern European shtetl in 1919, during a time of civil war and pogroms." Sophie Anderson's book The House With Chicken Legs, which received various accolades, features Marinka, the granddaughter of Baba Yaga.
Here "Yaga" is not a name, but a title for the guardian who guides the dead into the afterlife and Marinka is being trained for this role. Yagas are reimagined as kind and benevolent.