heathervescent

fiasco and plunging

"The greatest lives are built on the greatest fiascoes. Security and stability equal stagnation. If you want to live to the fullest, get out there and make as many creative mistakes as possible."

The coasters are ticking up to the top bump. Some have crested and are on that tiny bit of flat track before the plunge. Are you ready? Am I ready? Make sure to put your hands in the air and scream in delight, because here's the plunge right now ....

Look for your own.

Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.          

– André Gide

I couldn't have said it better. Quote courtesy of KJ Bishop - author of etched city. With a website of her (I think) own.
         

Just do it

"When in doubt, do it."
     - Oliver Wendell Holmes 

quotes of risk and reward

I admit, I stole these from the comments in Barlow's recent post. They are so wonderful I must place them here also for your pleasure (and mine as well.)

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of life is to live dangerously.
- Fridrich Wilhelm Nietzche

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
- Ernest Hemingway; 1899-1961

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
- Thomas Browne, 1605-1682

We are more often frightened than hurt; we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 1AD)

Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone.  Otherwise it would be called sure-thing-taking.
- Tim McMahon

"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
- Chief Aupumut, Mohican. 1725

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
- Mark Twain

We live amid surfaces, and the true art is to skate well on them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

as above, so below

"The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the Whole Universe."
  -Sri Ramana Maharshi

There's been a lot going on. I leave this quote to sate you for the moment.

more dream quote

From W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya
Expedition, 1951. There the text apparently goes:

'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in
one important matter. We had definitely committed
ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put
down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay.
This may sound too simple, but is great in
consequence. Until one is committed, there is
hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always
ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative
(and creation), there is one elementary truth the
ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid
plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
the providence moves too. A whole stream of events
issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all
manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material
assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have
come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of
Goethe's couplets:

          Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
          Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'

time and some other quotes

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
-- Albert Einstein

"Time is round and space is curved
Honey have you got the nerve
to be Queen Elvis?"
- Robyn Hitchcock

"You can't kill relationships
You watch them drown like sinking ships ....
around you."
- Robyn Hitchcock

every road leads ....

"every road leads home" is what Amy said to me today as I was test driving her Saab. It's a great quote that I want to remember. And I also want to buy her car.

another reminder to take risks and do what you dream

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ~ Mark Twain

morning quote

"Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you nad tomorrow you arrive there and know them by inhabiting then."
- Emerson, Essay on the Oversoul

Today I start my writing schedule. Two book ideas that have been percolating for years. Cantos and Trade are their working titles. I want the stories to unfold and read like a cross between Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin and Jonathan Carroll. I hope it helps that I'm living in the house of a writer.

post 100

"I have already given over to the power that rules my fate..."

"I fear nothing, so I will remember myself."

- Silvio Manuel

a kinky reminder

I love the kinks. especially their album, The Village Green Preservation Society. The song walter just played with these words,

"People can change, but memories of people remain the same."

It's an interesting reminder as I pack and find photos and notes and etc. How precious are these things? These memories I have. The memories people have of me.

I want to erase every moment, every memory someone has of me. Is this an impossible task? I do not care to be memorable. I am memorable. But I do not want to be remembered. And someday, even all the memories of me will be dust. Will be assimilated back into the void. The dark sea of awareness.

I remember in 6th or 7th grade History class. We learned about Latin America and Simon Bolivar. I remember the quote from him on his deathbed, "I have plowed the sea." I hated that quote as a child and adolescent and young adult. It's a quote that has settled in my mind along with, "Everything happens for a reason, sometimes that reason is yet unknown to man and the universe" and "That which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger".

However, over the past few years, I have become very affectionate about the Bolivar quote. I plan to achieve and do and be much in my life. And I have in the short time I have so far lived. At the same time, I want to leave no trace. I want to release, erase, every memory I have ever had, and anyone has ever had of me.

When I leave this world, I want to have plowed the sea and leave not even a wake.

say YES

My friend Rosie, who has a birthday today, sent me this. (She got it from a friend of hers.) It's a really great reminder to LIVE.

" No risk, no adventure. Or, as Carl Jung would say: “...follow the
material” : )

I will give you my best advice, for friends, cats, clients, and anyone
listening:

-say YES to as many things as you can in life, that’s where living starts
-you will be wrong a lot
-you will be fully alive
-there are no guarantees, and...
-you never know enough

Remember, we are human beings, not human doings."