Some resolutions for the coming year

Have more courage; use my time more productively and meaningfully; worry less; meet any adversity with confidence, faith and resolve.



Have a happy, healthy, lovely, and successful New Year!

Yes it was uplifting...

And silly, and lovely, and absurd. Also really funny at times. Nudging you in the ribs a little - reminding you of life's possibilities.

Up, a great movie to watch on a winter evening with friends.

And some things that came to mind after it was over, when I was humming the theme music and feeling happy:

- Day to day life can be an adventure too

- You're not too old to have one (both an adventure and a day to day life)

- Don't shut yourself away from the world and other people

- Letting go is a poignant, painful but often necessary part of growing older

- Dream, don't stop dreaming, no matter where you are and what you can do about those dreams

- Have some balloons around; you never know when they'll come in handy

- Assist the elderly

Of fire alarms in the middle of the night

My apartment building has a building-wide fire alarm system. Management routinely tests this fire alarm system. Said system repeatedly malfunctions, going off with no provocation at all. It sounds like a shrieking chorus of colossal crickets. Crickets that crop up at all hours of the day (or night), including 1:00 a.m., when you're sleeping and it's snowing outside and really all you want is to remain curled up in bed, but that alarm is relentless, and you need to escape.

So it's good to think of the positives. I appreciate that there isn't an actual emergency. I appreciate my bed more, and my blankets. I like how it's a bonding experience for the people in my building - standing outside on a snowy street, in pajamas and enormous coats. How there's beauty in the nighttime with snow falling, a kind of secret quietness to it (because really snow is something that tends to surprise you the next morning, as if it appeared suddenly and not after a night's quiet work).

So glad to be back in bed now though.

(Trying not to think of the safety implications of a fire alarm system that sounds repeated false alarms.)

Mozart urges love

The following quote is attributed to Mozart:

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

What do you think, about love being the soul of genius?

What's this love that Mozart refers to - a love of what one does, a passion for it, a commitment to it that defies other considerations?

A love of life as well, and one's place in this world? A love of self and others, or perhaps a love of self at the expense of others (considering that geniuses are not always known for their kind and unselfish natures).

What do you do in life, that you love? And why do you love it?

(The words "love, love, love" also brought to mind the lyrics of "All You Need Is Love" and the thought that maybe The Beatles were inspired by this quote... or maybe not... I've had that song stuck in my head lately, courtesy of a Beatles-loving friend who sang it twice through while drunk.)

It's not that love is all you need... only that without it, your talents and gifts won't attain their fullest breadth, that there'll be something hollow and lacking in your endeavors. And you could also feel all the love there is to feel and not be a genius - but then, at least you'll have that love, that sense of joy and richness and possibility, and you'll take pleasure in whatever you can do with your life and your abilities; that's a kind of genius in and of itself.

UPDATE:

A video of Gabrielle Chou, from the Youtube Channel "KidMusician"; she's playing the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 8:



and here, a piece she composed as an homage to Chopin, played with feeling and skill:



As Mozart well knew, this kind of love can appear at a young age too.

Smokers a century ago...

... could find flag girls among their cigarettes.

America, golden and brisk:



Buxom Belgium:



Greece, as graceful as one of the three graces (or nine muses):



Saucy Italy:



Japan, cautious and coy:



Proud Portugal:



Abyssinia, in her lovely unfurling colors:



Lots more at the NYPL digital archives (from Poland to India to Montenegro), as part of their collection of Cigarette Cards.

Whimsical Pursuit #1

A little exercise - could be the start of a creative project or just a way to slay some boredom:

Write down ten things you'd like to discover in a rain puddle (there are many near my home now).

Sure a 100 dollar bill (in a Ziploc bag, conveniently) would be nice.

But what else would you like to find?

(Frogs and silver fish? A pockmarked rock? An antique ring? Your own reflection, smiling?)

A new blue

“Then one day a graduate student who is working in the project was taking samples out of a very hot furnace while I was walking by, and it was blue, a very beautiful blue,” he said. “I realized immediately that something amazing had happened.”

What had happened, the researchers said, was that at about 1,200 degrees centigrade – almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit – this otherwise innocuous manganese oxide turned into a vivid blue compound...

At Oregon State University, the accidental production of a brilliant blue that, with its chemical composition, has a number of advantages over other kinds of blue compounds.

Now there'll be more beautiful lasting blue in the world.

Also reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, where in the first stanza he asks:

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

And gives an answer in the second stanza.