have a wonderful weekend!

chinatown, sf.

Mindful Living.

space is the symbol of liberty... if you don't have space around you, you can not move.

and therefore in order to be happy, you should allow yourself some space -

inside and outside.

the refreshing moon of the buddha is traveling in the sky of utmost emptiness...

practice bringing space into you and around you.

if you want your loved one to be happy, leave him some space,

inside and around him.

if you have too many concerns, too many worries -

how can you have space?

I am reading Thich Nhat Hanh's The Art of Mindful Living. This part about leaving the people you love space feels very true to me.

::::

What She Was Wearing

by Denver Butson

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I’m afraid
I might kill myself
if I don’t wear it

you’ve been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves
so you don’t set fire to something?

he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I’d like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I’m wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don’t get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door

hehe.

luck.

have a wonderful weekend, friends :)

::::: from an incredible, canadian (ahem) designer.

Bruce Mau Design Inc.
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.


.... go to website for the rest!

::::

Christopher David Ryan.
i'm so in love with him.
i hope some day he reads this.
i'm so in love with you!

post valentine's poem.

san francisco.

True Love
by Barry Gifford.

Your sickness made me

a little sick, it’s

true—I still

feel it

Mayakovsky got down

on his knees

and declared

his love

to his last

mistress

a few hours after

he’d met her

Remember me

at the hotel

in Paris,

on my knees

in the lift?

We’re all the same

men of too much passion

and a little talent—

some a little more

than others

We fool ourselves

into thinking

we’re strong

then complain

the rest of our lives

crippled by

the consequences

returning from my hiatus!

i am applying to graduate school and unfortunately the application process has consumed 90% of my time (leaving a hefty 10% for sleep). starting today I am returning to daily posts!

i hope you all had wonderful, romantic valentine's days :)

never have I ever had a one night stand.

san francisco, alamo square park, the shoe garden.

Billy Collins, review of Donald Hall.

In a review of Hall's recent Selected Poems, Billy Collins wrote in the Washington Post:

Hall has long been placed in the Frostian tradition of the plainspoken rural poet. His reliance on simple, concrete diction and the no-nonsense sequence of the declarative sentence gives his poems steadiness and imbues them with a tone of sincere authority. It is a kind of simplicity that succeeds in engaging the reader in the first few lines.

Safe Sex

::::: Donald Hall


If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;

if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other

as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,

no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated

apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge

1,000 journals project.

about: The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. The goal is to provide a method for interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers.

This weekend we saw the 1,000 journals exhibit at the museum of modern art in San Francisco... I was taken aback by people's creativity and depth. Page topics ranged from political statements to personal expressions to marked up term papers & shopping lists. If you are in the area it's definitely worth seeing.

www.1000journals.com

::::

this weekend I shirked responsibilities & traveled to San Francisco with my family, had a whirlwind & wonderful time...

... on this most monday feeling of mondays I am cheerful about:

sarah, a new bright spot
the color green
finding time to write this morning
curled up sampson warming my feet.

have a wonderful week!

::::

lots of work on my artwork this weekend.

hope it's a good one for you all :)

still thinking about canada.

ontario's corn fields and cows

from one of Lydia's comments,
Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke.

Whoever looks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path been perceived; and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, there is not general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered.

But in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy.

The claims that the difficult work of love makes upon our development are greater than life, and we, as beginners, are not equal to them.

But if we nevertheless endure and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which people have hidden from the most solemn solemnity of their being, - then a small advance and a lightening will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. That would be much.