I am trying out a new little gadget, widget, what-have-you, in which you can rate my posts when you're done. You'll see it right, well, below the end of my post. Before I say "Ciao!" and all that stuff.
This morning, I thought it would be fun to see what was going on here in my blogland one year ago today. Turns out, I was posting about my TiVo.
Carolyn from A Beautiful Ripple Effect introduced me today to Every Monday Matters.
From their About Page:
"...every Monday people can make a difference in their life and the lives of those around them. No matter how big or small the actions, they matter. And not only do people have the power to make change, they have a social responsibility to do so. Not out of guilt, but out of an appreciation for every living thing in the world."
Jungle: shot yesterday with my new lens from the Camera Fairy
This has turned out to be a big Monday for me. I feel like the leaf standing out in the crowd: I wasn't entirely sure I would like it, but feeling the support of the branches and leaves around me, I am happy to shine in the sun today. Even if it is 92 degrees out here!
Please leave a comment and share how your Monday has mattered.
Today I went looking in my email archives for a poem I wrote to my husband before we were married. We incorporated it into our wedding ceremony. I will share this poem soon, but in my archives, I found this speech that I would like to share, Friday Prose instead of Friday Poems. I think it is an absolutely wonderful reminder for myself at this time in my life and I'm confident it will inspire my readers too.
Villanova University commencement speech
by Anna Quindlen
It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to follow my great-uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce.
I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.
Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your minds, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen, I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
So here is what I wanted to tell you today:
Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous.
Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night.
And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Once in a while take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.
All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid's eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago.
Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:
Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office. I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.
He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule; panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.
And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."
And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.
Note: I spent quite a bit of time this morning trying to officially verify this speech, the date it was delivered, etc. because I didn't have a source in my email. I got this version from Professor Wenderholm's page at SUNY Oswego. I have hit wall after wall in my fact-checking today. I am not confident that this speech was really delivered by Anna Quindlen at Villanova University; however, I do believe the words and ideas are valuable. If anyone has additional information, please leave a comment so I can update this post. Thank you!
I think we all know I love everything about blogging: the creative outlet, the opportunity to write on a regular basis, the endless inspiration, the exposure to all kinds of art, the photography...I can go on and on.
Clare, Boo and MeI know you're wondering, "Is it possible to have a happy Tax Day?" I believe it is! At the least, you can feel good that the hard work is behind you for another year.
I didn't mention it to many, but I recently had a brief, doubtful period in which I put my new Etsy shop on hiatus. I've reconsidered, and I am...
© The Noodle
...again. To celebrate, I am offering a Tax Day deal: 26.5% discount on any orders placed by midnight tonight. Visit my shop to find out how I came up with that percentage. :)
Also if you type in "#taxdaydeals" on Twitter's search page, you might find more great deals today.
Cheers!
This morning, fittingly, my MIL told me about Morning Pages. They are a basic tool from Julia Cameron's classic book The Artist's Way.
Julia writes:
"In order to retrieve your creativity, you have to find it. I ask you to do this by an apparently pointless process I call the morning pages. Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages -- they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind -- and they are for your eyes only."
In fact, the author recommends that you do not read your own Morning Pages for at least several weeks, if ever. I think this exercise would be valuable for anyone, whether you consider yourself an artist already or aspire to be one someday. I think it's even valuable for say, engineers or accountants!
Julia has written quite a few books about the creative process.
This was an engaging, sad and beautiful account of what it is like to lose a baby at the end of pregnancy. It may not be for everyone but I liked it. My favorite quote from the book is roughly this, "If life were different, then life would be different." It's such a succinct way of thinking about the what-ifs in your life...
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I read a book in one day! It was only 184 pages so that certainly helped.
I could not help but think of my son when I read this page of Keri Smith's intro to her new book how to be an explorer of the world.
Every time we go out into the world we can choose to be alert to see what we've not seen before. A trip to the corner store can contain a multitude of universes. It only requires a conscious decision to "tune in" and activate all the senses. To be open to what we don't know yet.-- Keri Smith
Recently, a friend died and the day I found out, I felt a little solace behind the lens among the beautiful spring blossoms at Santana Row.
You can read more about the amazing paddle out held this past Sunday in Dave's honor. I missed the funeral and paddle out because I've had the flu or something similar for the past 9 days.
I guess this is my way of saying goodbye to Dave, with photographic aloha.
I read this article on Etsy's blog The Storque the other day about Italian Etsians and I can't seem to get it out of my mind. In particular I keep recalling this happy artist:
photograph of Chiara by Andrea
Wouldn't you be smiling too if you lived in Genova? Chiara says, "I think Genova is just the perfect place. I'm lucky enough to live with hills and mountains just outside and just half an hour away from the sea."
It makes perfect sense that she has a category in her shop called Magical Notebooks!
This small town in southern Italy is where my great-grandfather Domenico Valinoti was born in 1851. He left Italy for New York and that is how the paternal half of the Valli family got started.
We are not sure exactly when and where the name got changed. It is still hard for me to believe our real name only has one L, not to mention two extra syllables.
My favorite uncle found this gem on YouTube for us.
Good Sage is one of my favorite shops in San Carlos and I'm happily on their mailing list. This is precisely how I found out about local artist Marti Somers.
Zebraland No. Nine
Next to the early afternoon hours, of course. And the time just before grilling. And the eventide, and the late at night hours. But I do love
these summer mornings. Even more, I think, than those other seasons. The day just beginning now. And no schedule to restrain us till autumn.
I have been looking at Keri Smith's 100 Ideas off and on for a couple of years now.
I'm wondering who else is on Twitter besides me and Jeff and Ellen. Leave me a comment if you're out there tweeting. Tweetering? Twittering? All a twitter?
As you can see, I'm still finding my way around the whole Twitterhood.
When you stay up too late, pink flowers next to a white fence go all psychedelic on you.
Art for the big-hearted, radiant woman who is ready to immerse herself in beauty.
