Custom Wire Wrapped Necklaces

I wonder how many per mutations I am from my daydreams? Michael Faudet once wrote "I am hopelessly in love with a memory. An echo from another time, another place." I would modify this to "I am hopelessly in love with a memory I dont yet have". How many decisions, or indecisions, a moments wembling, a pause, a misplaced stutter, getting caught in traffic red when it should have been green. A vain attempt at times to scry into futures yet unseen. Has my own ambition tripped me up from my own success? Some other version of me is also on this couch right now, somewhere. and there is laughter his rooms. McAlpine would sing "Somewhere I lost all my senses, I wish I knew what the end is. Over and Over, I am watching it all Pass... I wish I knew what the end is" Dostoevsky would say, "I am not angry at him. I know his thoughts. His heart is better than his head." I am not angry at him; I knew what the end is

“For some time, Hollywood has marketed family entertainment according to a two-pronged strategy, with cute stuff and kinetic motion for the kids and sly pop-cultural references and tame double entendres for mom and dad. Miyazaki has no interest in such trickery, or in the alternative method, most successfully deployed in Pixar features like Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Inside/Out, of blending silliness with sentimentality.”

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

A.O. Scott and Lauren Wilford on “My Neighbor Totoro”, 2017.  

The man on the left is Me and the man to the right is My Father. And if speaking honestly I have never given that man enough credit. Most of the best things I am, I inherited from him. He takes up most of me. Literally half, and figuratively far more than that. He has been a constant pressure in my life, and first It's like what, that doesn't sound great but then you remember that's what turns carbon to diamonds. And yeah there's has been a lot tension and friction in our relationships past, but nothing has ever been polished or shined without those exact things. My Father has always loved me without any modifier. He has been of a sturdier stock than I, and his firm guidance has always been to a better path than the one he had to walk. Once I remember my youth pastor compared my Father to how fountain square (Our home) used to be, and I am like how Fountain Square is now. And I don't think there could have been a better metaphor because while we are two different people where share the same base, and we may present ourselves differently but our love is just the same. My Father, I call him "old man", because I know I will always be able to depend on him in any age or time. My Father, if my life were a house he would be the frame. My Father, once with reluctance but now with reverence I carry his name. My Father, I have never given that man enough credit, and starting now Id like that to change.

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

Now that new semesters have started, I thought people might need these. Enjoy your lessons!

If a single grain of rice can tip the scale then a single act of kindness can change the spirit.

You are not a finished product. And no you will never be. You have to remember you often sow seeds you'll never see.

Do you think that Eurydice ever forgave Orpheus? I know I would. I can't help but think we all would look back. Maybe it's just the way we are born? Already gripped and snatched into worry, fear, anxiety and uncertainty. But Apollo gave his Son the gift of a Heavy Heart. And the Courage that comes with it. Even Eurydice made the mistake to be distracted and wrapped up in the clouds, only to be bitten by what's on the ground. But how could you not be? The songs of creation that made even trees dance and boulders sing, the beats were to her name. Eurydice. A Muse to the Highest Order and Element. Orpheus was always meant to lose. Because his Love for Eurydice would always compel him to look back, and his Failure only Proves that. I could Forgive them.

There is more to Spring than just the Bee's Dreams of a Meadow. Sunshine warms the petals of forgotten roots. Wildflowers sway gently, the breeze whispers secrets old, Life Blooms, and Love Unfolds

We try and clean ourselves from the messes we made yesterday only to make ourselves dirty today.

I'm gonna go on a rant here, and its another long one, so just bear with it and sit with me a minute longer. Its been rough couple of days for me. And I have been tired and irritable. Its one of those moments where I find myself asking for guidance. And I found it this morning sitting on the couch watching TV. There's this one bit in The Phantom Menace when Anakin is placed before the Jedi Council on what I can only describe as an interview, and the Jedi Masters are questioning him, testing his abilities. Yoda asks Anakin how he is feeling, Anakin being the kid that he is, he answers that he is cold and he is missing his Mom. Yoda professes that they can see right through him, that they can sense great fear and anger in Anakin. Anakin kinda just shrugs it off like what does that have to do with anything. "Everything" Yoda says "Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering." And in all their combined wisdom of that council they decide that Anakin is not fit to be trained as a Jedi. They refuse this boy, who had only known the labours of slavery, and the heat of the two Tatooine Suns on his brow. Despite them knowing at that time that his midichlorian count was the highest ever seen, and they themselves seeing his 'attunement' with the force during their tests. He was prophesied, he was the Chosen One. They failed that boy. Qui-Gonn Jinn intercedes again in this boys life, he kinda just tells the council to shove it where even the two Tatooine Suns can't shine and he's gonna train that boy whether they like it or not. Qui-Gonn is killed shortly after that by a Sith. For some reason even after Qui-Gonn's death they reluctantly allow Obi-Wan Kenobi to train Anakin as his Padawan Learner. Emphasis on the Reluctantly. Every step of the way, one master or another is hounding him and scrutinizing him. Their own misdeeds and failures lead Anakin down a path that becomes the Dark Side of the Force. They tell him everything that he holds dear is wrong. Despite his feelings just being Human, he misses his Mom. He loves Padme. He's scared that hes gonna loose them. He's told he shouldn't be those things, and he's wrong for doing so. For a group that says only the Sith deal in absolutes, they have a lot of rules that say that this is thee correct way of doing things. I feel like if Qui-Gonn had lived Anakin would have gotten the support that he needed proper, and he never would have turned down the darkside. That is not to say Anakin is innocent in his future actions at all. But, he was almost only ever given fear and anger. And those things did lead to Suffering. For him, for his wife, his children. His friends, and ultimately the whole galaxy. I've spoken recently also in exhaustive detail about how I've been angry. It's a burden on my spirit. I am not comparing my anger here to a Sith Lord, but offering alternative solution one that Anakin was probably never given that wasn't in some pompous speech. You have been told that Anger leads to Suffering. But thats an abosulte. There's another choice. Forgiveness can also be followed by it. That is not to say to drop your resolve, to make the so clearly bloodened hands stainless, or the guilty blameless. But to Forgive, is to not feel Anger over it any longer. To not let resentment control you. And instead of teaching that Emotional Attachment becomes the Fear of Loss, they should have taught that there is No Such Thing as Seperation. Even in their tenets it says that there is no death, there is only the Force. And that if Love meant or was worth anything that it would still be worth something after they are gone. Fear and Anger are only falliable and Human. But to Forgive is something far greater. George R.R. Martin once wrote "The Gods have fashioned us for Love. That is our Great Glory." Hatred, Yet Forgivess. Anger, Yet Peace. And Love, even so come despite all these things. These things are that great Glory that we were fashioned for. This is the way.