parabl.es

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Mon, 21 May 2012 23:12:14 +1000

"I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” stop whining. Less is a good thing...."

Sun, 20 May 2012 09:17:12 +1000

““I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”

- Rework

Making a Living

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:40:03 +1000

“Hate was just a failure of imagination.” — Graham Greene

Re-appropriate is a word that I stole from my friend David Dark. He’d stolen it from a guy named Jeff Tweedy. It’s a good word to steal. In fact, of all the words I’ve stolen in my lifetime I feel the least remorse for lifting this one. Re-appropriate: to seize and reassign. It’s very definition encourages a theft of sorts. I suppose all of language works like that: taking anonymous words and making them our own. This enlightened practice of re-appropriation is unique to the human experience: We adapt within our situation to make the most of it. All other creatures are defined by their innate abilities, mostly untaught. A worm is not taught how to crawl. A chameleon is not taught how to change colors. A rabbit, a horse, a spider- these creatures are defined by themselves and their intrinsic giftings. We human beings are not like this: we bend, we learn, we invent, we change. Humanity has been making herself up all along. Making life. Making a living.

I would like to re-appropriate the phrase “making a living” to mean something larger than accumulating net worth in an online bank account. I’d like to suggest that ATM receipts and mortgage payments have very little to do with living or life or making life worth living. In my personal struggle to make a living, I’ve found that true success has very little to do with income or comfort. In fact, it seems to me that inconvenience, hardship and discomfort are my best teachers. It’s as though these horrible, wonderful moments where I realize my own limitations are almost exclusively the only ones that matter. So when I’m brave enough, I chase these awkward moments down. I write songs about them. I put my scattered thoughts online. Heck, I even seek therapy from time to time. Love, dreams, confessions, God, women — these are dreadful, awe-inspiring mysteries to me. They put a funny taste in my mouth. They give me scrapes and scars. And stories.

The best stories often come from inconvenient and uncomfortable places. [Read more]

"The Bible is the story of how God gets back what was always His in the first place."

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:16:23 +1000

“The Bible is the story of how God gets back what was always His in the first place.”

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Fri, 11 May 2012 14:33:34 +1000

fa/_ get back ^P…fa/_ get back ^P…fa/_ get back ^P

Wed, 09 May 2012 06:01:17 +1000

fa/_ get back ^P…fa/_ get back ^P…fa/_ get back ^P

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Mon, 07 May 2012 07:55:31 +1000

Fix You - Coldplay Cover (Kina Grannis & Friends) (by...

Thu, 03 May 2012 21:26:48 +1000

Fix You - Coldplay Cover (Kina Grannis & Friends) (by kinagrannis)

Critics

Wed, 02 May 2012 05:18:05 +1000

Here is a review of Moby Dick from 1851:

“This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed. We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book. Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature—since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist.” — HENRY F. CHORLEY, IN London Athenaeum (via Ben)

"One hundred percent of the shots you don’t take don’t go in."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:04:48 +1000

““One hundred percent of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.””

- Wayne Gretzky

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Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:00:56 +1000

(via Lomography’s Best Throwback Yet: A Camera Inspired By...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:45:26 +1000

(via Lomography’s Best Throwback Yet: A Camera Inspired By Sardine Cans | Co.Design: business innovation design)

"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:39:53 +1000

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

- Gary Provost (via qmsd) This might be my favourite quote on writing ever. (via bdoing)

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Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:02:41 +1000

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Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:17:13 +1000