Friday 15 November 2013

Weekend Reading {vol. 105}

Learning from Beauty @ A Deeper Story
We have so many opportunities to consume beauty: To capture it on our phones and hoard it in the cloud. To sneak an episode of an epic story between washing dishes and finishing emails from work. To listen to a well mastered album through head phones while walking through the airport past hundreds of thousands of others. To listen to poetry being read over podcasts while mowing the lawn. To taste a hand crafted cocktail or cappuccino or grab a day-long-smoked pork sandwich while meeting a colleague for lunch.

Is this much ode to beauty defeating the purpose by only creating deeper pining within me? Am I becoming a beauty voyeur?

What Seems To Be @ Story Warren
When I reread that passage to the kids, I realized that Tolkien doesn’t really give much visual information about some of his villains. There is plenty of detail about the hobbits, elves, dwarves, and other heroes, but some of the bad guys get talked about in very abstract terms. It’s genius. They stay in the shadows.

Imagination is a powerful tool, and it can work against us sometimes. I’ve been thinking lately about my tendency to make anticipated things worse than they really are. Tolkien creatures are worthy of dread; most of the things I fear are not — or at least not as worthy of dread as I make them out to be. I look at situations in my life and make them out to be far worse than they are in reality, because the details are hidden. I am like the little hero facing down an unknown monster, and for some reason I sketch in the missing details in the bleakest way possible. All those things I don’t know must certainly be the worst.

Some things are harder than algebra @ Oh, That's Simple
The hard part is getting along. The hard part is the relationships. The hard part is being a grown up at all the right times, like when things are falling apart.

The hard part is the good part.

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