Tag Archives: procreate
Notes from a podcast
You may be aware of my constant endeavours toward becoming a more kind and compassionate person. When I was younger I used to dream about a divine collision, later on, Pema’s books have guided me on this quest. These notes are from the On Being podcast Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh, Brother Thay.
“Look into the heart of your anger and see where it comes from…the seeds of compassion in the mind need to be watered. When you have compassion you suffer much less. Look at fellow human beings with compassion in your heart.”
Unexpected pleasures
The best part of life is that it always continues to give you new experiences.
Or even a new perspective on known experiences…
Find little spaces inside of you and tease them open
After Lonely City I read Crudo, of course. More qualified people have written about it so I won’t go into that, but I enjoyed it immensely. It was funny, raw, and brilliant.
“When she was young, she’d sliced up her own flesh at the blink of an eye, she loved to get truly abject, but now she’d dried out…not appetising exactly, not desirable, but fodder for someone, a pigeon, at least. Was this getting older? Kathy was worried about ageing, she hadn’t realised youth wasn’t a permanent state, that she couldn’t always be cute and hopeless and forgivable.”
It takes place over a few days in her fortieth summer, and she’s about to get married. It’s not often that we see ourselves reflected so accurately in literature with all our fears and pimples and headaches, and Olivia Laing as Kathy Acker was spot on.
Take a look at the covers too: The UK paperback edition which I read, and here’s the US paperback one.
Title & this quotation from Crudo
A study in skins
I was 8 when I copied my first Cezanne, in the drawing class we used to attend, held every Sunday in the parish hall at the local church. There was no looking back after that. I was mesmerized by the color palettes and the compositions, though I didn’t know all these terms then. I went on to copy the old masters for a decade, running through all of the teacher’s copies of Cezanne, Renoir and Van Gogh prints, and later from my uncle’s fabulous Great Masters’ collection at home. I’m not sure what I learnt, back then, but I became familiar with the artists, their colors and lines and brush strokes.
These onion studies are a far cry from those days. It’s been decades since I attempted any color studies but oh what joy!
Inspired by the this lovely poem by Harryette Mullen:
What we need has always been inside of us
Title borrowed from the poet Lee Herrick
An hour is not a house
Last year I discovered the poetry of Jane Hirshfield. Award-winning poet, essayist and more, she set aside her writing to study Zen Buddhism for many years.
Reading poetry is a deeply personal experience. What resonates with me in her poetry is the minimalism, the spirituality shorn of all excess, and the “moments of insight” that every poem reveals.
Sketches while reading An hour is not a house –
inktales 