Wind and tow

Ulysses

...Come, my friends,
`Tis not too late to seek a newer world...
for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset,...
and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Tennyson

Barbaric Yawp

Scribbles from "Dead Poets Society" (1989).

Startend

My habit of scribbling cheesy but memorable quotes/notes as I watch movies. These are from "Beginners" (2010).

Universal

Some teachings, religious or not, seem to be universal...

God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
-The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr

For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
-The Retreat to Commitment, W.W. Bartley 

If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?
-Shantideva of Nalanda University (8th-century)

Loopin

-?

Damn oversized scarves...

Before Sunset
Jesse: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?
Celine: Why?
Jesse: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, "Where the fuck were you?"
Celine: [laughing] No - you thought I'd be here today?
Jesse: I'm serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.
Celine: Okay, that's - I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say.
Jesse: I think it is true.

Ponder

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability 

"There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it.

...And so here's what I found. What they [the wholehearted] had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection."

...The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental."

Hang loose

-The Brick House

Arrange

-weekdaycarnival

Twine

A fine example of machinery built to last. If it ain't broken, don't fix it..

Stacks

-?

China ready to go

The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your 20s

You will fall in love with someone who annoys you, whose orgasm face looks and feels pathetic. Despite all of this, there’s something keeping you drawn to them, something that makes you want to protect them from the harsh world. What you fail to realize, however, is that you are the harsh world. You aren’t their noble protector — you are someone to be protected from but it takes a lot of dates, a lot of nights where you question whether or not you are actually a good person, for this to ever resonate with you. When it’s over and whatever love is left is put back in the fridge like a sad plate of leftovers, you will finally understand that you have the power to hurt someone. You can either hurt them or love them and it’s up to you to decide what kind of role you would like to take on in future relationships. What feels more comfortable — being the one who loves more or being the one who’s loved less?

You will fall in love with someone who’s cold and always seemingly pushing you away. When all is said and done, they will be forever known as the one person you couldn’t get to love you. Unfortunately, it will hurt and sting worse than the good ones, the ones that chopped up your meat for you and picked out an eyelash from your eye and were nice to your mother, because love often feels like a game we need to win. And when we lose, when we realize we couldn’t get what we ultimately desired from a person, it makes us feel like a failure and erases all the memories of those who loved us in the past. It’s a permanent smudge on your love resume.

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?”

You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PYSCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops.

You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can.

This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twentysomething road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love.

So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now.

 

He offered her the world. She said she had her own. Monique Duval

Warp speed

Kenneth: To go it alone or to go with a partner. When you choose a partner you have to have compromises and sacrifices, but it's a price you pay. Do i want to follow my every whim and desire as I make my way through time and space, absolutely. But at the end of the day do I need someone when I'm doubting myself and I'm insecure and my heart's failing me? Do I need someone who, when the heat gets hot, has my back?  

Darius: So, do you?  

Kenneth: I do.

- Safety Not Guaranteed

Skulls and bones

“Many cultures make use of memento mori to remind us of our mortality, the skeletons and dying flowers often represented in art or on display in the marketplace. In past centuries, it was common to sit for portraits while holding a dead rose or to carry a watch shaped like a skull in order to signify time running out. In my practice, I notice that many twentysomethings—especially those who surround themselves with other twentysomethings—have trouble anticipating life. They need memento vivi—or ways to remember they are going to live. They need something to remind them that life is going to continue on past their twenties, and that it might even be great.”

Sitter

-Tolix

The Model A chair - Xavier Pauchard (1880-1948)

Scatter

-?

Spring strolls. Weeds and wild flowers. Pressed.

Tug

-?

Three Generations

Brawn

Want to Feel Like a Man? Then Act Like One

Several ancient cultures and religions taught the way to belief and personal identity was not through contemplation, but rather though action. They understood the power that our outward actions have on our inner psyche.

According to the Torah, when Moses stood atop Mount Sinai and presented his people the stone tablets with the Law of Jehovah inscribed upon them, the Hebrews spoke in unison “na’aseh v’nishma,” which means “We will do and we will understand.” Basically the Hebrews covenanted that they would live the Law first, in the hope that through living the law they would eventually come to understand it.  Today, this statement represents a Jewish person’s commitment to live all the Law of Moses even if they don’t fully understand the reasons behind each commandment. Modern rabbis teach that na’aseh v’nishma is how one comes to understand God and His laws for man. By living the outward ordinances, a change happens within...

...Aristotle believed that understanding wasn’t enough. To become virtuous, you had to act virtuous.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Virtues don’t come through simply thinking about them. You have to “exercise them.” Aristotle’s promise is this: if you want a virtue, act as if you already have it and then it will be yours

Whorl

-Sincerely Kinsey

Hook turn

-Corter Leather

I promise to plant kisses like seeds on your body, so in time you can grow to love yourself as I love you.

-Tyler Knott Gregson

Neckline

-thatkindofwoman

If you asked nicely...

Yeah, right

We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.
-Ray Bradbury

F. It

Jonathan Adler: Keep Other People's Opinions Out Of Your Creative Process

Answers

“Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it’s a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference."

—Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google

Speakeasy

One eye shut

I went on a date last night and then you texted and asked, again, whether I would come there. Start our days with coffee, end with you making dinner. Forever. I feel myself tug towards yes and then I remember why it will always be no with you and I.

There are people in your life who are going to love you for all of the wrong reasons. They will love you for the best part of your face, the best part of you naked, the best mood on your best day, the best story you ever wrote, the best outfit you ever wore.

They are going to miss the scar on the underside of your nose from the time your older brothers dared you to run across a pile of logs. They won’t know that you fell on a hidden nail just as you completed the challenge. They’ll miss the scar on your finger, too from the time you were seven and closed a swiss army knife on it. They won’t understand that these are two of only a handful of things you can remember about your childhood. They’ll notice that you have great tits, but they’ll miss that your thumb tucks into their palm when you’re walking together and that your eyes have darker circles when a migraine is coming. They won’t know you get migraines. They won’t ask where the story you wrote came from, so they’ll never know that it was true. They’ll love it because it feels real to them. They’ll miss knowing the sweatshirt full of holes that they criticized you for wearing was your dads. You might tell them some of these things along the way, but they will remember the best things instead.

They will love your good moods, your energy, your sense of humor, but miss that you never turn to them, but rather to a shower or a pillow or the back of your throat to shed tears. They won’t ever consider you strong.

When the parts that aren’t your best come out, some people will shield their eyes as if you have just forced them to look directly into the sun for hours until their irises burn. They’ll silently make you promise to never show them that again. Those things are not to be shown. Be at your best so I can love you. I would love you more if only you never show me those things.

And you do not marry those people. You do not sit and sleepily drink coffee with those people. You leave those people and you remind yourself that they missed the better parts of you.

-Give Me a Job, Please 

The Climate Fixers

“The odd thing here is that this is a democratizing technology,’’ Nathan Myhrvold told me. “Rich, powerful countries might have invented much of it, but it will be there for anyone to use. People get themselves all balled up into knots over whether this can be done unilaterally or by one group or one nation. Well, guess what. We decide to do much worse than this every day, and we decide unilaterally. We are polluting the earth unilaterally. Whether it’s life-taking decisions, like wars, or something like a trade embargo, the world is about people taking action, not agreeing to take action. And, frankly, the Maldives could say, ‘Fuck you all—we want to stay alive.’ Would you blame them? Wouldn’t any reasonable country do the same?”

Yard

Barns Ennobled

"The two structures are in constant dialogue. Not only are their forms in sympathy, but as they're set at right angles to one another, they are rarely out of view.

Dat

Say what?

"The world is too diverse to stick to just one thing."

I think this guy knows the secret to life.

Ignite

Cheesy sales video aside, it actually made sense...

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

-NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.

-THEODORE ISAAC RUBIN

A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension… seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are. A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion.
-JOHN WELWOOD

Brew Bar

Good One Cafe, Auckland

"I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that are concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was… And I think that’s why she struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed."

-CARRIE RYAN, THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES

Death or liberty

Iranian dissidents win Sakharov Prize

"I know that you require water, food, housing, a family, parents, love, and visits with your mother," Sotoudeh began in a letter written from prison to her children, who were prevented from seeing her after she refused to wear a chador, a full length traditional garment.

"However, just as much, you need freedom, social security, the rule of law, and justice."

Lather

Swedish Sea Salt Soap is the Seashore

1up

Tab Payers: 12 Classic Ways to Get a Friend to Buy You a Drink

Mmmm.

Shaken

Coffee: Do Good Things Come to Those Who Wait?


"...Bourbon Kochere Sparkler that combined MadCap’s Kochere Ethiopian coffee with honey bourbon, orange juice, orange bitters and a splash of club soda."

Coffee cocktail yowzah!

Jute

DIY project : http://www.miansai.com/shop/Beacon-Rope.html

Elimination

Cultivating passion in something you can never fully understand or grasp...

Methods

Ideas on imagery

To do:

To shoot subjects from two distinct POV; two photographers, two cameras, one subject.

Trapezium

Disaster Relief Projects - Paper Atelier

Here's your fix

From sitting long hours at Wellington cafes, here's a retrospectively obvious take or observation on Antipodean cafe sales:

When posed with a wide selection of bean roasts, customers usually become overwhelmed and are, instead, more inclined to follow the recommendations of the barista.

The barista can easily funnel the customer's choices by simply stating lines such as, "My personal favourite would be the XYZ roast and it has a [flavour profile]."

Not necessarily obvious, I suppose, but it'd be a subtle way of pushing sales for a particular product line that has lacklustre sales...

Market insight

Pick and mix

Paralysis from having too much choice. Indeed.

Whisper

"We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."

-The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Intertwine

-Massimo Vignelli

1972, the renowned Italian designer Massimo Vignelli redesigned George Salomon's New York Subway map, which persisted until 1979, when superseded by Michael Hertz's design.

It was a marvelous conceptual map, and it was easy to read. It was a tool for navigating the subways, although not one for navigating the city streets. Out with the complicated tangle of geographically accurate train routes. No more messy angles. Instead, train lines would run at 45 and 90 angles only. Each line was represented by a color. Each stop represented by a dot. There was an obvious influence from the London Underground map, originally created by Harry Beck in 1933, however, Vignelli took it one step farther, in creating the now-famous intertwined wiring-diagram map of New York's vastly complicated subway lines.

Souled out

Archived for a resoling project:

• Mark McNairy for Norse Projects Two-Tone Wingtip Brogues

• F.O.G. Derby Brogues

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald.

How very true...

Spiral

Weekndr

Gin/tonic/leg hair.

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”

-Azar Nafisi

Laneway

-Design Boom

Ludic Fallacy...

 ...is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan. "Ludic" is from the Latin ludus, meaning "play, game, sport, pastime." It is summarized as "the misuse of games to model real-life situations.

Taleb's argument centers on the idea that predictive models are based on platonified forms, gravitating towards mathematical purity and failing to take some key ideas into account:

• it is impossible to be in possession of all the information.
• very small unknown variations in the data could have a huge impact.
• theories/models based on empirical data are flawed, as events that have not taken place before cannot be accounted for.

Morning wood

Yard

Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash / Oh baby with your pretty face / Drop a tear in my wineglass / Look at those big eyes / See what you mean to me / Sweet-cakes and milkshakes / I'm a delusion angel / I'm a fantasy parade / I want you to know what I think / Don't want you to guess anymore / You have no idea where I came from / We have no idea where we're going / Lodged in life / Like branches in a river/ Flowing downstream / Caught in the current / I carry you / You'll carry me / That's how it could be / Don't you know me? / Don't you know me by now?

-Cheesy milkshake poet, Before Sunrise (1995)

Float

Power combos.

Cover judge

-?

Punctuate

Semicolons; So Tricky

"A semicolon links two balanced statements; a colon explains or unpacks the statement or information before it."

Always good to be reminded.

Encore

"At the proper moment, Gonsalves dug in with his tenor and started blowing. Somewhere around the seventh chorus, it happened. A young blonde woman in a stylish black dress sprung up out of her box seat and began to dance. She had caught the spirit, and everyone took notice — Duke included. In a few moments, that exuberant feeling had spread throughout the crowd. People surged forward, leaving their seats and jitterbugging wildly in the aisles. Hundreds of them got up and stood on their chairs; others pressed forward toward the stage. Sam Woodyard and Jimmy Woode kept driving the beat mercilessly. The power of that beat, and the ferocity of Paul’s solo, is what stirred the crowd to those heights. Duke himself was totally caught up in the moment. The audience was swelling up like a dangerous high tide."

-Myself Among Others: A Life In Music

HS

-Justin Chung

Miester

Abe Burmeister: How I Built A Fashion Brand With No Experience, Just Punk Rock Spirit (And The Web)

Goes to show that the resources are already out there if you need them. All it takes, really, is someone to pull it together and coordinate.

Walls

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."

– Milan Kundera

007

Levitate

-DCILY

Cunning as a Serpent, Innocent as a Dove: The Art of Worldly Wisdom

In your affairs, create suspense. Admiration at their novelty means respect for your success. It’s neither useful nor pleasurable to show all your cards. Not immediately revealing everything fuels anticipation, especially when a person’s elevated position means expectations are greater. It bespeaks mystery in everything and, with this very secrecy, arouses awe.

Don’t hang around to be a setting sun. The sensible person’s maxim: abandon things before they abandon you. Know how to turn an ending into a triumph. Sometimes the sun itself, whilst still shining brilliantly, goes behind a cloud so nobody can see it setting, leaving people in suspense over whether it has or not

Undertake what’s easy as if it were hard, and what’s hard as if it were easy. In the first case, so that confidence doesn’t make you careless; in the second, so that lack of confidence doesn’t make you discouraged.

Take a joke, but don’t make someone the butt of one. The first is a form of politeness; the second, of audacity.

Act as though always on view. The insightful man is the one who sees that others see or will see him. He knows that walls have ears, and that what’s badly done is always bursting to come out.

Hidden

-?

Upcoming modifications.

Snappy

Girls in OCBDs are trouble.

Row row

Grey head

-J. Crew

Boom. Video version here.

Back pocket

-Neville Trickett

Run urn nur

Boss

-GQ

Advice

Cover Your Ass

There is a common misconception that one should have the length of their jackets as short as possible to give the perception of hight via longer leg balance to shorter body. Unless you are a ‘hipster’ & going for that certain look that will make you cringe next season, don’t read on.

Abandon

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

-Into the Wild

Carpenter

-Joostwever

Aortic pulse

-Joostwever

Both rings have a different notch, symbolic for the different characters wearing them. Brought together the two notches give shape to the ultimate love symbol

Bees knees

Shell

-?

Oh hi.

Zoomer

-LIFE Magazine

Moka

I think I have a drinking problem.

30 ml

Dorian

All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

-Oscar Wilde

Tide

"An arousing plan is one that is not linear, but one that morphs constantly as the linearity of time passes."

Primes

"...It happened in films and it happened in reality, every day. People took what they wanted, they clutched at coincidences, the few there were, and made a life from them. He had either to tell Alice I'm here, or leave, take the first plane and disappear again, go back to the place where he had been hanging for all those years.

By now he had learned. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains..."

-The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano.

Parts

-?

Ristretto

-?

An excuse to get started?