Tag: Maria Popova

Difficult Dance – 8th December 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

How to dodge all the cynics in the hall?
Hope has the knives out against the thinkers
Psyches ripped asunder of those held in thrall
Long gone, the days the tailors danced with tinkers

inspired and borrowed from this post at the Marginalian by Maria Popova

Today I’m feeling:

Physically good but took me a while to feel better after yesterday’s tantrum. Listening to my student’s reading helped though. I started smiling when they tried and tried until they got the words right. Getting some writing done during the long break between classes also helped as it focused my mind on other things.

Today I’m grateful for:

Receiving an order for the Jornada Del Muerto LP from someone in the UK. Now I have to get my act together to pack it to ship there!

The best thing about today was:

Walking around school after classes and hanging out with students watching or playing their sports. It was a good atmosphere that I was happy to stay around for rather than dashing home.

Something I learned today?

China has introduced measures that allow Taiwanese people better access and integration into Fujian as a countermeasure to the US-led independence movement. The US doesn’t give a shit about Taiwanese people.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

Despite being difficult in my class and me deducting points for disrespect, it was Baibua’s birthday today and I gave her twenty baht for which she was very surprised and grateful.

I congratulated Nicha for getting up the courage to talk to the boy she liked though she was disappointed that he didn’t show any interest in her.

What is something I hope to understand better?

Myself (is my obtuse answer).

Right now, it is the Thai language. I feel my learning has stunted a little recently or at least slowed. I do notice increased recognition and being able to read two words of subtitles now rather than one. I guess I’m fine with it. My brain feels like it is at capacity most of the time. Squeezing new things in scares me that it is squeezing old things out.

And, having said that, there are a million things I might hope to understand better

I took this picture on the walk up to LiKhai the other day because this beast was blocking the way with its half smile.  Even if it was friendly I wasn’t keen to get near those horns or its back legs. We got by without incident thankfully.

Final Absence – 30th April 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

How to live is about how to die
Looking through this lens of a mountain
Any amount of life is enough
Let’s make do with its meaning
Dusting off the childhood discoveries
The horizon’s shimmer slows us down
The trees and the tides restless
Colours that are no longer heard
Time collapsed, reappears or not
These are the stranger things
An empty glass sits on the table
Radiating a crystal eternity
The night turns to different shades
So savour its infinite richness
The fires are burning from the inside
Bodies black and grey, becoming ash

inspired by Maria Popova writing about Stel Adnan’s ‘Shifting the Silence’

Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking. You don’t need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started.

James Clear

David Icke’s Dog – 27th April 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Starseed shamans sharing their lizard dreams
Cosmic potential activated through DNA streams
The memories of all those galactic lives
Are proof to all that the multiverse survives

The message from above is the need to cull
Cast away, the disabled, the dark and the dull
The masters walk among us mere meat mortals
Downloaded to the metaverse through telepathic portals

The fallback plan is to evacuate to Mars
On Aryan ships fuelled by red dwarf stars
Go and build your superior master race
Leave the rest of us here, happy in our place

Inspired by a Jules Evans post on conspirituality and the connection between eugenics and fascism. At the same time watching the fourth season of The Man in the High Castle.

Little syphons the joy of life more surely than the wasted energy of indignation at how others have failed to behave in accordance with what we expected of them.

Maria Popova

The Week That Was – 10th June 1979

The Scarecrow – 26th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The crows are building
Nests under my hat
I’ve thought long and hard
About this
And I’m no longer scared
To be alone

Based on the titular Khalil Gibran parable. I found almost every one of his parables poetically inspiring. More coming, I’m sure!
8th Feb 2024 – Shared to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge Scary
2nd Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – scarecrow

…a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life…the tiny improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our poetry…

Maria Popova, paraphrasing Alan Lightman

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have discovered Khalil Gibran’s parables and to be inspired by them.