I think about this Twitter thread from @kimbert in 2017 a bunch:
A thing from art school that helped my drawing/comics practice a lot is I took a ceramics course. It taught me a lot about disposability.
It’s about accepting that your pieces can break in the kiln, sometimes because somebody else’s creation shatters.
She says: But your skill + practice + vision still stays in your hands and your mind and you just quietly make another one, faster and usually better than the one that broke.
There’s another bit of advice that’s been in my head recently:
When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?”
Which is a similar approach to risk, I think, in a way.
An absolute age ago, I was visiting San Francisco and - for some reason that now escapes me - I decided to get my Tarot cards read at one of the grotty tourist trap shops, just off Union Square.
I’m not a “believer” but, you know, open mind to new perspectives and all that.
It was a memorable experience. The psychic was texting on her phone a bunch. She asked if I had pets, and said it was good that I did because it was good for my energies. She was getting agitated about something in the texts so I suggested she get a pet too, but she snapped at me about the size of her apartment and that it wouldn’t be feasible, living in the city.
Anyway so the cards were read, my fortune told, and she gave me three pieces of advice.
One, I should phone my mum more.
Which is solid for most people, I feel. Smart for the cards to open with this.
Second: Take the easy road and not the hard road.
This was a surprise. I was expecting the cards to recommend I push on through, give me support and strength, etc. Everyone’s got some shit or another going on, and it would have been an easy win for the cards to focus their cosmic recommendations on surviving the challenge because it’ll all be worth it, and so on and so forth.
But like the recent advice, discussed here, about appreciating hedonism, this was counterintuitive. This is the Protestant work ethic in me speaking, drummed into me at school, but surely everything worthwhile is hard? The path the success and happiness is necessarily paved with struggle? Maybe not, say the cards.
Maybe taking the easy road is good because, yes, things break, but it’s fine, take it in your stride and remember the skill stays in your hands.
Dunno.
But I come back to this periodically, because at the time I dismissed it as ridiculous, and now I ask myself: ok, so what if taking the easy road is genuinely the life advice I need, and so how should I interpret that and what are the implications?
Third: I should move some things around.
At this point I was frustrated from the texting and all the rest and sarcastically said, “what, like the sofa,” and the psychic snapped “yes if you want,” and that was that.
As it happens I did move the sofa when I got back home. It opened up the sight lines between the rooms and caught the summer sun.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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I think about this Twitter thread from @kimbert in 2017 a bunch:
It’s about accepting that your pieces can break in the kiln, sometimes because somebody else’s creation shatters.
She says:
There’s another bit of advice that’s been in my head recently:
Which is a similar approach to risk, I think, in a way.
An absolute age ago, I was visiting San Francisco and - for some reason that now escapes me - I decided to get my Tarot cards read at one of the grotty tourist trap shops, just off Union Square.
I’m not a “believer” but, you know, open mind to new perspectives and all that.
It was a memorable experience. The psychic was texting on her phone a bunch. She asked if I had pets, and said it was good that I did because it was good for my energies. She was getting agitated about something in the texts so I suggested she get a pet too, but she snapped at me about the size of her apartment and that it wouldn’t be feasible, living in the city.
Anyway so the cards were read, my fortune told, and she gave me three pieces of advice.
One, I should phone my mum more.
Which is solid for most people, I feel. Smart for the cards to open with this.
Second: Take the easy road and not the hard road.
This was a surprise. I was expecting the cards to recommend I push on through, give me support and strength, etc. Everyone’s got some shit or another going on, and it would have been an easy win for the cards to focus their cosmic recommendations on surviving the challenge because it’ll all be worth it, and so on and so forth.
But like the recent advice, discussed here, about appreciating hedonism, this was counterintuitive. This is the Protestant work ethic in me speaking, drummed into me at school, but surely everything worthwhile is hard? The path the success and happiness is necessarily paved with struggle? Maybe not, say the cards.
Maybe taking the easy road is good because, yes, things break, but it’s fine, take it in your stride and remember the skill stays in your hands.
Dunno.
But I come back to this periodically, because at the time I dismissed it as ridiculous, and now I ask myself: ok, so what if taking the easy road is genuinely the life advice I need, and so how should I interpret that and what are the implications?
Third: I should move some things around.
At this point I was frustrated from the texting and all the rest and sarcastically said, “what, like the sofa,” and the psychic snapped “yes if you want,” and that was that.
As it happens I did move the sofa when I got back home. It opened up the sight lines between the rooms and caught the summer sun.
Anyway.