No time like the present June 27, 2008

Came across this beautiful quote from Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Cranford” at The Happiness Project:

I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why. The letters were as happy as letters could be—at least those early letters were. There was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as nothing to the sunny earth.

That’s the thing about the present moment, though: It never passes away.

Four things June 26, 2008

Who knows where this meme originated (my bookmarks have failed me).

Four jobs I’ve had
1. Newspaper reporter
2. English teacher
3. Barista
4. Nanny

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. Napoleon Dynamite
2. The Apu Trilogy
3. The Godfather
4. The Wizard of Oz

Four places I’ve lived
1. The tiny town of Arcata, Calif.
2. The tinier town of John Day, Oregon
3. The tiny village of Bogo, Cameroon
4. San Diego

Four TV shows I love
1. Jeopardy
2. The Office
3. Lost
4. The Daily Show

Four places I’ve vacationed
1. India
2. Thailand
3. Italy
4. Cambodia

Four of my favorite dishes
1. Chicken tikka masala and aloo gobi
2. Soy chorizo and egg breakfast burritos at the Naked Cafe
3. Tom Kha soup
4. Pho

Four sites I visit daily
1. Deli.cio.us
2. Yoga Journal
3. The New York Times
4. Google

Four places I would rather be right now
1. India
2. Argentina
3. Iceland
4. Hanging out, getting to know Levi

You don’t have to believe everything you think

From Yoga Journal: “It might seem strange to us that the yogis place the seat of wisdom in the heart, which we typically associate with our emotions, and not the brain. But in yoga, the brain is actually symbolized by the moon, which reflects the sun’s light but generates none of its own. This kind of knowledge is worthwhile for dealing with mundane affairs, and is even necessary to a certain extent for the lower stages of spiritual practice. But in the end, the brain is inherently limited in what it can know and is prone to what Patanjali calls misconception (viparyaya) or false knowledge of the self.”

You can, but do you?

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
— Mark Twain

In Strictly Fictional this month, milk comes out my nose in tribute to Ed Park’s hilarious “Personal Days.” In other nose news, author Cynthia Ozick’s is a little too altitudinal for my tastes. My boy Samuel Clemens would have called her out.

By the way, here’s some trivia that should impress all your drunken sailor friends: The origins of Samuel Clemens’ sobriquet, Mark Twain, is contested. One theory is that it came from jargon used by sailors on the Mississippi, who would measure the depth of water in fathoms. “Mark twain” meant the water was two fathoms or 12 feet deep. Alternately, Mark Twain could stand for Twain’s obsessive drinking and his calling for two beers by saying “Mark twain” or “Mark two.”  

Sushi plushie — what every child needs!

Tell me this isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen:

From Cut Out and Keep

Impetus

From What I Learned Today:

“All of Wikipedia (all languages) equals the cumulations of 100 million hours of human thought. TV watching 200 billion hours in the US alone every year. That’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year. People who ask where we find the time when looking at Wikipedia don’t realize how tiny a project like Wikipedia is in terms of time.”

And this is just one little blog, after all.