Currie's Gratitude 31 March 2014

When it comes to the words you choose, whether in your mind or amongst friends, let them be of what you like and love. What you care about and cherish. What makes you happy. What gives you wings. What makes you dream. And very little else.  [The Universe, www.tut.com]

It has been awhile since I used my words. Out loud, anyway. I’ve had many thoughtsandfeelings that don’t fit neatly inside of words, and I have been watching them. Feeling their urging to simply watch and listen.

For Now…

I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.  [Yo Yo Ma]

Life is funny. Seriously. It never ceases to amuse me how seriously I can take myself until something “serious” happens. That’s when I discover in me, yet again, the clown. There is a deep well of laughter inside of me, but it doesn’t always find its way into the World. Sometimes it takes a good kick in the pants to loosen my bones and roll that laughter out.

Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged.  [Joshua Foer]

Sometimes remembering is all that a person can actually DO. So I remember.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 20 March 2014

Recognize the remarkable individuals in your life who help you envision a world far beyond yourself.  [Bill Courtney, Against the Grain: A Coach's Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family, and Love]

When I am in a moment, really Present and untethered, I see things with such clarity. But those moments are fewer and farther BEtween it seems. I am trying more Now to keep my eyes and my heart open to recognise things and people and moments that really make the difference.

Don’t spend your life just crawling. Recognize the wings God has gifted you and learn to fly.  [Vikrant Parsai]

It is easy to go on DOing things as I have always done them, even as I have recently been DOing them, but it is really amazing to go where I am hesitant to go and learn things, especially things about myself, which are uncomfortable and inconvenient.

I seem to have made some real leaps of faith lately, and rather than looking down I am just flying free.

There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its value.  [Ellen Goodman]

Letting Go is such a marvelous thing about living Life.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 19 March 2014

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.  [Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading]

Words have always been integral to me. As essential as breathing. Words heal me. Words shape me. And only words can open me wide and big as the sky. Whether reading them or writing them, words give me everything.

In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.  [Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit]

There is much to BE said for writing things down…and NOT. It’s a risk, for sure, to write words that shall ever after BE mine. But how amazing that I can live on forever BEcause I took that risk.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness. [Sarah Kay]

This is both an important and overlooked concept; one I won’t forget.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 18 March 2014

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, "is to learn something… That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”  [T.H. White, The Once and Future King]

This is pretty much how I have come to think. I love to learn. I could learn for each and every moment of my Life and still never tire of it. And I BElieve it to BE the greatest gift of BEing human. This capacity to learn.

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn. [Phil Collins]

Too often we hear that those who CAN DO and those who canNOT teach. But that just doesn’t make sense. Teaching is ALL ABOUT learning and learning, well it’s really all about living Life.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.  [Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah]

Remarkably true. Something to remember.

Experience teaches only the teachable. [Aldous Huxley]

Which is why I love NOT knowing EVERYthing.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 17 March 2014

No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.   [George Carlin, Last Words]

Laughter makes magic possible. It strips away the dogged devotion to HOW. It loosens my grip and lets me fly. Well, spread my wings anyway…

Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh- I really think that requires spirit! [Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs]

I have a tendency, to put it mildly, to take myself and Life too seriously. I canNOT always see this so sometimes it’s something someone says to me that will launch me to giggling.

Laughter is the best accompaniment to anything Life is serving up, truly. It seems that shouldn’t BE so, but it is.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness. [Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]

Has this ever happened to you?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 16 March 2014

When you listen, it's amazing what you can learn. When you act on what you've learned, it's amazing what you can change. [Audrey McLaughlin]

It is NOT always convenient to listen. Especially it is NOT convenient when what I hear virtually up-ends my BEliefs and how I roll.  And still, I listen. I have learned that much in Life…

The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'. [Alfred Brendel]

Things like this stop me cold. It is like I am just BEcoming aware of all I couldn’t [wouldn’t?!] see or hear or know BEfore Right Now.

Listening does NOT require so much as I have thought. It merely requires that I suspend my judgments and stop thinking about what I will say when I next have “my turn” to talk.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it…

…It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.  [Chaim Potok, The Chosen]

It is a remarkable thing to listen to silence…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 15 March 2014

God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us- in the dreariest and most dreaded moments- can see a possibility of hope.  [Maya Angelou]

One morning I saw the most magnificent full rainbow. It was the definition of awesome. I wasn’t the only one who saw it. I came upon a young man who was transfixed, much as I was, and in that moment I understood the pivotal nature of my time in Florida.

I love scoring. Putting music to picture is a rewarding challenge and one that relies on interpretation of emotion - as in, what is the pivotal feeling in a scene and which character's point of view is driving it at any given moment?  [Liz Phair]

I have always been a little bit undone by the scoring in film or theatre. I wonder how it is that someone can KNOW just the exact notes to capture and fold things into. It is the one part of BEing especially sensitive and emotional that I am glad to claim.

People we've encountered at pivotal moments who profoundly influence our direction are not necessarily the people whose names everybody knows. More often, they are the people who say or do just the right thing, at the right time.  [Eric Burdon]

I have long BElieved this, too.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 14 March 2014

… if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. [Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth]

There is so very much that I BElieve that is, actually, only what I am imagining. And it escapes my reality checker, too. I imagine it to BE, yet I never put it to the test. Oftentimes someone else does that. Or experience reveals the nature of it.

Sometimes I muse about how wonderful it would be if I could string all my dreams together into one continuous life, a life consisting of entire days full of imaginary companions and created people. [Fernando Pessoa]

I think the Imagination is pretty active in people. And as such is capable of creating entire Worlds that no one ever really sees. And the other thing is that Worlds exist which are entirely imaginary and still we walk carefully in them when really there is nothing to walk on.

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale. [Umberto Eco]

So  very brilliant!!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 13 March 2014

Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever. [Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium]

Instead of getting easier, Life can feel hard, difficult, and overbearing. And yet, with the tiniest shift of focus, the smallest exertion of intent, it all gets clear and simple and amazing.

I DO this from time to time, this stopping, sitting still, listening deep into a single moment. It’s exhilarating.

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. [Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love]

It helps to know that someone somewhere sometime gave the nod to imperfection. I seem to BE up against it daily, learning little by slowly to simply surrender to it.

Just because you're scarred for life doesn't mean you should be scared to live. [Brian Celio]

YES!!!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 12 March 2014

Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.  [Frederick Buechner]

I’ve often misunderstood my feelings about another. I have seen them as “good” or “bad” and even “right” or “wrong.” But feeling with another, the willingness to BE in their darkness or to stand in their Light, this is NOT as simple.

Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If your kindness reaches the deserving, good for you; if your kindness reaches the undeserving, take joy in your compassion. [James Fadiman, Essential Sufism]

I want simplicity when it comes to others. I want ALWAYS to BE kind and compassionate, sounds nicer than saying I want to BE kind to the kind and compassionate with the compassionate. I can BEcome most indignant when I don’t “get my way” in such things.

This truth is NOT very pretty. Still, it is my truth Today.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.  [Martin Luther King Jr]

This comes closest to what I really BElieve about Compassion.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 11 March 2014

Lives are snowflakes - unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection.)  [Neil Gaiman, American Gods]

Similarity and Difference have somehow earned the right to run about and wreak havoc in my mind. I gravitate toward one and avoid the other. [NOT always toward the same one nor away from the same one]

I like similarity while also gravitating toward difference. I work hard NOT to make differences BEcome similarities. But I still fail far too frequently.

I pray for the kids in the suburbs… I pray that one day, we’ll all graduate from similarity. [ J. Merridew, Fireworks Over Suburbia]

I think what makes most people unhappy is that they are either too different from the similarities that exist round them, or they are too similar to those ways in which they want to BE different from the ways they see others BEing.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.  [Meryl Streep]

I think this is true for BEing a human BEing.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 10 March 2014

It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by, and it's persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any.  [Wallace Stegner, All the Little Live Things]

It’s been said that knowing the rules is the best way to break them, but I think more than just knowing them, one needs to understand what called them into play to BEgin with. This is how it works for me anyhow.

Rules and responsibilities: these are the ties that bind us. We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves. I will do what I have to do. And I will do what I must. [Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Book of Dreams]

While I have often been a rule-breaker, I tend Now to BE more of a rule-follower. It is just that I am selective. I think I have my own rules, and I think that as I BEgin to shed more of the “stuff” I’ve carried through Life, my “rules” are just how I roll.

…I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. [Robert Heinlein]

Makes sense to me…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 9 March 2014

It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable. [Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care]

Earlier I was writing about learning to BE alone and how for me it has grown out of NOT BEing with another. I can BE very unforgiving of the time it took me to embrace living alone.

And that is a shame BEcause living alone has taught me all about trusting myself. Completely.

We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward. [Alison Croggon]

I think failing to DO what I have wanted to DO has taught me the most about trusting. Myself.

Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do. [Benjamin Spock]

Quite so.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 8 March 2014

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.  [Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet]

Sometimes in Life I've read or heard something and for every moment past that reading or hearing I have kept it close. Accessible.

Rilke’s words broke through my despair over the unanswered questions I have. He gave me a strong branch to hold onto.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.’ [C.S. Lewis]

There is tremendous JOY in having questions, even those I’ve never uttered aloud.

There is as much JOY in NOT having answers that I can hear or read in black and white.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 7 March 2014

There's a difference between fear and paralysis. And I've learned that I don't have to "grow up" to be open to opportunity, to be willing to step through doors without being pushed. I just have to be brave. I just have to be slightly braver than I am scared.  [Victoria Schwab]

I think of Life as a series of hallways. Some have many doors. Some doors even fit my key. Some only open from inside.

I spend time in these hallways. Waiting. Hoping. Readying myself. Sometimes catching my breath…

She knocked and waited, because when the door was opened from within, it had the potential to lead someplace quite different.   [Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone]

The waiting part of doors is hugely important. Essential. It is NOT good to blast through every door without considering what’s going to BE left BEhind when you step cross that threshold. It can BE hard to remember this, though. You are excited and that makes you a little less thoughty.

[I know this; I’ve done studies…]

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.  [Salman Rushdie]

Whatever opens me up is what I lean into.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 6 March 2014

Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart; one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.  [Marvin J. Ashton]

I often look at what NOT to BE. What I don’t want to create MORE of in Life. And I’m keeping myself to myself, NOT giving myself away easily.

I prefer BEing an encourager. Someone who builds people up and BElieves in them wholeheartedly.

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.  [Ray Bradbury]

I love the idea of building wings on the way “down” Life’s cliffs. It encourages me in building a Life that I love.

Much I BElieved essential for living is NOT. And much that I thought, well, silly, is NOT, either.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.   [Neil Gaiman]

This BEautimous notion is worthy of knitting into everybody’s brain, eh?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 5 March 2014

… words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.  [Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart]

Whenever I write I “hear” my words but I don’t know if that happens anywhere else. I only hope they will BE heard. What amazes me is that they can BE heard so differently than I thought them. Convoluted but there it is.

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.  [Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair]

Few things irk me so much as assuming I know ANYthing about HOW Life will unfold…

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love. [Alice Walker, The Color Purple]

Such a BEautimous thoughty morsel, eh?! “Us here to wonder” is simply and completely exquisite!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 4 March 2014

Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles, and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?  

[Laozi, Lao Tsu: Tao Te Ching]

I think that waiting is one of the hardest things to DO. Hard, NOT BEcause of what must BE exerted in order to DO it, but hard BEcause everything seems to BE shouting at me to DO something, even if that something is wrong.

We are DOers and NOT Waiters, we people of the 21^st Century. We judge ourselves all the time, and others, too, if we’re honest, by what we DO, Accomplish, or Achieve. We don’t value the intricacies of Waiting.

I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail. I'm an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after.  [Cat Stevens]

Lately I have heard a lot of disparaging stuff flying fast and loose and free. I have added to that, too, by the way…

It is hard for us to wait and see. Hard to hope for better things.

But hardest of all is BEing okay with what is, Right Now. And waiting for what is, so clearly, NOT…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 3 March 2014

The first ingredient to being wrong is to claim that you are right. Geniuses have a knack for raising new questions. Hence by the public they are either admired for their creativity or, even more commonly so, detested for disturbing the daily peace of mind.  [Criss Jami]

It’s a thoughty experience finding quotes for words that mean something to me. Enough of something to make art and write about them.

Take DISRUPTION. I’m glad for my head BEing bent this morning. To BE swayed this way and that.

In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption. [Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues]

I wonder sometimes if it is wise to BE disruptive. I don’t guess that we can see this ahead of time. It’s the rear view mirror that reveals disruption’s wisdom.

The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.  [Naomi Wolf]

This particular quote made me see why I wanted to explore DISRUPTION in the first place.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 2 March 2014

Sometimes the things that are felt the most are expressed between two souls over the distance and over time... where no words abide. …you have no words for proof of reassurance, no tokens of professed love, but you have something. Something worth keeping. [C.JoyBell C.]

One of the constants in my Life is that there is always distance BEtween me and those I love. It has been rare, those times when I have experienced day-to-day closeness. It makes the “rules” of Love a little tricky. I have adapted and yet…

There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.  [Kami Garcia]

I notice this, too, in the light of day. When the sky above me is so HUGE, yet I imagine it envelopes others, too. MayBE it looks different There than it does Here. Still, it’s the sky above us all.

The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.  [Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook]

It’s somewhat disconcerting to have come across one of my own thoughts in another’s writing…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 1 March 2014

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient. [Eugene S. Wilson]

I have generally been discouraged by IQ as well. I think it is backward and a little ridiculous. I think this, mayBE I even BElieve this BEcause I have seen just how empowering curiosity and persistence are. I also know that encouragement, the interior as well that which comes from others BElieving in me, has made ALL the difference.

The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.  [Enid Blyton, Mr Galliano's Circus]

This is a wise thing BEcause laughter, carrying on, and letting Life teach and guide me are what have mostly made the Worry-Currie apparitions disappear. Even if I didn’t think so at the time. Even if I continued to deny it for a Very Long Time.

The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. [Ralph H. Blum]

Sometimes this idea can come off as glib. Too convenient. Too simple. But I still BElieve it with all my heart.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.   [Charles A. Beard]

BEautimous truth.

I love you, Currie