Posts tagged life
Paintings Without Fish
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.
This actually says a lot more than you might think at first glance.
“It is not death a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live’ -Marcus Aurelius
An unexpected side-effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiders webs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before, but they also reported that there were less mosquitos than they would have expected, given the amount of standing water that was left. Not being bitten by mosquitoes was one small blessing for people that had lost everything in the floods. (© Russell Watkins)
A thought.
Few things as as enjoyable or important as good conversation. A thought provoking dialogue with someone you trust and respect can change the course of your life.
Kids say the darnedest things, eh?
We always joked that one day the computers would be smarter than we are…
(via shitthatsirisays)
I don’t know if I necessarily agree, but it certainly makes you think.
Music to live by
Ever since I converted my music library to all-mp3, I have slowly been rebuilding my playlists and song ratings. Allow me to emphasize the word slowly. The main reason it has taken me so long is that most of the playlists don’t matter terribly to me - it’s nice to have something familiar and specific to put on, but I’m always making new ones based on what I want to listen to *now* anyway.
Still, there are two kinds of playlists I do very much want/need to remake, and they both serve the same basic purpose - to reflect my own thoughts and feelings at a particular moment and record them for me to reflect back on. The first kind of playlist is what I refer to as my “Musical calendar”. Since fall 2008 I have averaged at least one playlist a month of music which reflects my mood at the time. I condense these playlists into 1/month max, and condensed the 2008 ones into a single playlist since they all kind of mushed together. 2009 is one list also, with a few of the exceptional ones preserved, and 2010 is still in its component, monthly lists, as is 2011. The idea is to allow me at any point to click a button and open a window into my past - to reflect on my world then as I listen to the music which I listened to so often. Each playlist has a specific mood or theme to it - some are exuberant and joyous, some are sad or pensive, others are the music which got me through stressful and confusing times - but each is unique. When I listen to these songs, old memories flow through me, old thoughts and feelings reemerge. It really is a nice inspiration to help me look back on my life and where I have been and am going.
The other kind of playlist is what I call my “Life’s Soundtrack” - these are individual songs which resonated with me in some way. Songs on this playlist capture something important I felt at the time I listened to them, in a unique way. All of these songs were played daily or close to it at some point in my life. All of them moved me. Each of them brings up specific memories, and together they outline several years of my life. This playlist goes back to middle school, though the songs are more frequent as we get closer to the present.
I’m still rebuilding both of these, but tonight I remade the majority of my life soundtrack, and it has made me contemplative. Many of the songs seem sad, but the last to make the list from a sad point of my life is only #15/40 (highest is most recent). Most of the songs are what I would call pensive - they make me think, perhaps about topics that are associated with sadness (leaving a home, losing something dear, etc.) but not in a negative way - I rather reflect on my good fortune to have been there or had that in the first place.
A good example is “The Penalty” by Beirut. It is a song which always reminds me of the feeling of leaving someplace, and I first started listening to it around the time I graduated from and moved out of Binghamton. But listening to the song doesn’t make me sad, it prompts me to recall the fond memories I have of college. It’s the montage at the end of a tv series which looks back at all the best moments, not the sad medley you’d play at a funeral. Yeah, it’s a weird comparison - it’s also 6am and I’m having trouble sleeping, so sue me ;)
Or take “Gone for Good” by The Shins - a song about someone giving up on love and leaving, about giving up idealism for a realist perspective. Anyone who knows me can tell you I am the opposite of those thoughts, but I like the song - it makes me think about why I have chosen to go against everything the lyrics propose, of what I’m holding on to.
It used to be that most of the songs on my soundtrack were about longing - for freedom, for love, for something yet undefined but nevertheless I knew it was *there*. But these days, my music reflects more of what I have than what I don’t. The music I love today makes me think about all the ways my life has gotten better, rather than all the ways I wish it would.
I need to remake the musical calendar, so I can trace the journey that has taken place over these eventful years.
Btw, the last two songs are Beirut - “Nantes” and Starf*cker - “Rawnald Gregory Erikson the Second”
I wanted to end our journey with this- a series of night photos across the planet. Look at how some areas are so bright and others dark. The dark areas are almost universally poorer and less developed. The people living there have fewer options, less choices about the course of their life. The brighter areas are polluted, congested, and materialistic.
But don’t forget, the people in those darker areas have the chance to look up at the night sky and see hundreds of stars. Those living in the bright areas are likely too concerned with watching tv.
