The Dalai Lama's Rules for Living

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1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
   1. Respect for self
   2. Respect for others
   3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Wendell Berry- The Sycamore

You know when you come across a new piece of art that you feel was personally written about you? Or even just speaks to you- whispers in your ear until the message seeps down into your soul?

That's how I feel about this beaut. Enjoy.

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Street smart art

Tuxedo Man, Soho, June 2011

Street art or dirt?

I walked across this earlier today. It took me a few minutes to try to decode whether it was someones deliberate attempt at art or whether it was just some mess I translated into a portrait.

Today I started reading about the NYC crime rates of the 1980s & 1990s in Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. The interesting part being that (researchers & sociologists etc) first targeted the graffiti problem in their efforts to clean up their streets. And it worked.

Obviously I wasn't around here then. And am scared to imagine what life must have been like. But to think of this city without it's mysterious, camouflaged flowers wouldn't be the same.

This is one of my favorite things about NYC. It doesn't make up for the lack of greenery but sure is interesting scenery.

Metamorphosis ?

What is it about getting a hair cut? When it goes right it feels like peeling an orange and inhaling the intense, citrus scent as it infiltrates the rest of your senses. Then as you start peeling off the remaining white sticky strands, you start anticipating the sweet juiciness of possibilities that await.

In my younger days, every time my mood changed so did my hair. But ever since I cut off my dreads last Spring it has been on sabbatical.

Today that changed. I went out and got bangs. While my feelings about them are still up in the air, for the first time changing my hair didn't have the life-changing effect I was hoping for.

Maybe I was hoping too hard it'd steer me towards some kind of answers.

Livejournal Shot, June 2011

Do you have a classic cut you prefer to stick to? Or are you more of an adventurous style maven?

Uno Momento

Holy guacamole. I didn't realize it had been such a minute since my last post. I can't lie- I haven't even thought about writing in here :(

This whole work thing? It's hard to get adjusted to. Especially when you are developing a program, calendar, and the rules. You'd think it'd be easier that way.

Plus. This is my fourth week and I'm still constantly exhausted despite eating a healthy diet. It seems my health has actually deteriorated.

And I think I know why: how do you deal with an intolerable coworker? I am pretty positive this person is the sole reason for my added stress, exhaustion, mood swings, and anything else negative going on with me? (In all sincerity this person is that bad- no scapegoating here).

Any tips or suggestions for how to deal with this person? If it's any help, it's a no-it-all-never-shuts-their-mouth type... I've started to TRY to work on myself more because we all know you can't change someone else, but it's taking up the last bit of energy I have left :(