Happy New Year!
May Magic Be With You!
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman
Art by Alphonse Mucha.
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.”
– Neil Gaiman
Art – Tennoji Temple in Osaka – Hasui Kawase (1883-1957)
Hasui Kawase was one of modern Japan’s most important and prolific printmakers. He was a prominent designer of the shin-hanga movement, whose artists depicted traditional subjects with a style influenced by Western art.
Christmas tree baubles are fairy eggs.
From the Fairy who Believed in Human Beings, written and illustrated by Gertrude Alice Kay, 1918
Art by Gertrude Alice Kay.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones
“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
– Neil Gaiman
Catrin Welz Stein
“To see the world beyond the skies,
to know the mind behind the eyes…”
– Neil Gaiman
“Kiss a lover,
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure.
Face your life,
It’s pain,
It’s pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Art by Anthony Goicolea.
“Words are more dangerous than swords and guns. They reach further and hurt deeper.”
― Luis Marques
Art by Charles Vess – illustration for Stardust by Neil Gaiman.
“A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really…”Do the stars gaze back?” Now that’s a question.” – Neil Gaiman
Yes, they do. When you’re in love.
Art by Warwick Goble.
Success is a craft of magic for the undone.
Our choices are in the ethereal mold of us. We choose to do the UnDone or just keep on walking the path of Done and Known.
The undone is hard endeavor. The undone is manifested in the idea of not knowing when to start, where to start, how to start and what to expect from some “judgmental” decisions. As everybody is here to criticize and be disgruntled. There is no time and knowledge for trial and error. There is just error.
It is like exploring without a map. You might fall off the edge of the world or get entangled in the murky waters.
When reading about Cristopher Columbus’ exploits I have always try to imagine their turmoil and fear when sailing the Sargasso Sea. They were way out of their comfort zones. Nevertheless, when they embarked on such adventures, they acknowledged the thin red line between life and death but blurred it with the courage and perseverance to follow a dream…
The opposite of our comfort zone is the Sargasso Sea; unknown, bleak, menacing, hard to predict. Something we do not fathom nor pin down. The Sargassum seaweed can be both menace and challenge…Dark and light…magic and mirror of fears…
Magic is always in the undone. It flickers like buried treasures in moonlight. You know it is hard dangerous labor when you start uncovering them in broad daylight that strips away the magic and the legend. Just jump over fear and move on. What if they were so scared and wouldn’t dare pursue in the Sargasso Sea? We wouldn’t have found out that it is a sea like any other. Nevertheless, the only sea without a land boundary.
“You have to finish things – that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.” – Neil Gaiman
Finish your trip into the UnDone and UnKnown and give it a name. Sometimes we name it success.
© Iulia Halatz
Art by Vladimir Kush.