Clay = a type of heavy, sticky earth that becomes hard when it is baked and is used to make things such as pots and bricks.
“The imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven, to animate this cold creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to rapture, rendering men social by expanding their hearts, instead of leaving them leisure to calculate how many comforts society affords.”
– Mary Wollstonecraft (in a 1794 letter)
Art by Michael Cheval.
“I’ve been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It was me and a handful of tyrannosaurs. We’d be writing blog entries like, ‘The tyrannosaurus is getting grumpy.” – Neil Gaiman
The dinosaur in me writes the Iron Tales or ruminates about feeling nothing in the Equilibrium, when he is grumpy and scared. He writes about feeling nothing in order to hide away fear of feeling too much, to solidify the knowledge of being woundable…and to Live. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”- Joan Didion
The Tyrannosaurus writing shapes all, sometimes in a no-win situation, sometimes in a win-win situation. A no-win is when you write for herbivores, and win-win when you write for your own kind. They understand. You write about something they would wanna have or feel at least for once in their lives. Being grumpy and a T-Rex saves a lot of trouble when your writings hit judgmental walls. Your skull endures…
“Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything. – Neil Gaiman
To write with the truth of pain in your mouth is gruesome poetry…You’ll have to cut out your heart with every word and show it to the world, then hope it will heal. This is how the light gets in, also the dark. To acknowledge fear, defeat, despair and pretend serenity of a lesson learned while patching up the wounds is…Life.
© Iulia Halatz
Art by Waldemar Kazak.
Humdrum = monotonous routine.
“In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.” – Stephen King
Enchanting art by James R Eads.
“She could not explain, either, how she herself was one with it, so that through the loveliness and power of her dream-world she was now, in her old frock and botched shoes, very likely the loveliest, mightiest and most dangerous person on earth.”
―from WINTER’S TALES by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) – born 17 April 1885
Art by Takato Yamamoto.
We are all stuck in a Golden Age, which can be source of grief, anger, deception and disillusionment but also source of power and inspiration. Always the optimist, I have chosen the latter.
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up … our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.” – Maya Angelou
How can we use our childish un-perverted selves to be more and become better? How can we project and protect our Golden Age in the turmoil and perils of a suffocated Modern Age?
Children perceive things unspoiled. Their vision is as green as the waves and sea before the storm and unhampered by misgivings. They do not hold grudges. They see beauty in everything and for everything they have a story or a witty explanation…
My beautiful step-daughter Brigitta always admired my bags: “This is made of the skin of a python who ate rotten jelly fish for dinner.” The subject of her admiration was a turquoise bag, so obviously the poor snake had digestive problems…”This is from the skin of a giraffe who ate the blue sky after the rain…A black panther who swallowed up a rainbow.” For the general understanding of things, no python, giraffe or panther died for me to have my beautiful bags, it is just painted and customized leatherwork.
As for me, my childish projection was all about magic and to change things as if with a magic wand. The adult knew the hard truth that it couldn’t be done so swiftly, but I kept trying while not pushing the Golden magic too far away. I am not much of a story-teller but people believe me…
Maybe I have acquired a little bit of the gift in the gab, whose foundation was laid in my golden time of stories. From one “fabrication” to another, I have always offered the freedom of always doing something new, and the freshness of ideas.
Life is always beautiful when you travel with new words.
Art by Anton Lomaev.
Bowline = A rope fastened near the middle of the leech or perpendicular edge of the square sails, by subordinate ropes called bridles, and used to keep the weather edge of the sail tight forward when the ship is close-hauled.
…
“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
Art by Carl Brandt.
Solitary = living or being by one’s self; having no companion present; alone; lonely.
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
–Franz Kafka
Art by Kinuko Y. Craft.
“To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” – Tony Dorsett
Success is smoothly undefined. But when I get up at the crack of dawn burning with impatience to start work, I know that maybe I have done something good. Succeeding is not a battle. As keeping a diet is not a short term fight but a poised long term lifestyle. You do something different and more every day without solely concentrating on the scope.
My settlement for success is the place where I do what I like and what I want in an untainted sort of way. I like meeting new people and keeping their interest high on my way of solving their communication clashes. I love writing and using my words for attracting keepers of beautiful ideas that inspire…My passions are the same, persuasion has more ways now.
Temperament dictates living and doing. And succeeding. I do precisely what I want and stick to my plan. Nevertheless your words can persuade me on other paths. Gladly I desire good things for me and my people and I want to help first, and then to ponder over ways to practice what I preach. I love the words that unite…I abhor the words that divide.
“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” ―George Bernard Show
Mistakes are manifold and not important. Important is what we do with them. We can make them renewable or nonrenewable. Time is not renewable, it is just one flow “at a time”. It is said that successful people are able to do more in the space of one day. Time allows everything to happen and be created. Persuading time to stop is a way to success…? Time, imagination and temperament are the means of creating something as beautiful as this:
Art by Maurice Prendergast.
Now that spring is here I pluck up courage to send winter away with one last snowy post before the start of lilac hunting season. There is so much joy and timid relaxation in the colors of a new spring.
My sport routine makes me a very predictable person, nevertheless the routine process of clinging to my sport habits is not exactly clear-cut. What is unpredictable is the way I mold circumstances and time into allowing me to have my predictable sport routine. I cannot adjust it to mountain skiing. I just find solutions to get through less pain to see more gain.
For me mountain skiing is excruciatingly painful as I busted my knees many times over and last time they failed me on the slope…I have found a solution: cross-country skiing. No slopes, only snow and 2 meter long skis. And the penchant to run…Flatly speaking, it is wonderful.
Outdoors sporting is about braving limits…my cold limits. It felt like being stung by thousands of bees from Narnia and by icicles blown away by a malevolent giant. My fingers and face went numb. I still retain a bit of winter glass in my eyes. Nevertheless in the cold I find clarity and adversity…
And feeling. For one, I want to touch the magic of the world in a gale that ravishes my cheeks, and in the fire of folstitia that burns for Spring below the paleness of March moons.
I illustrate with my humble person, made humbler by the monster building behind, the Bucharest Palace Of Parliament, at the crossroads of winds.
Widen = to increase the width, scope, or extent of.
“Our task must be to free ourselves … by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
– Albert Einstein
Art by Toshio Ebine.