Tag: Ayn Rand

“Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.” ~ Ayn Rand

Published on by Poietes5 Comments
Kensington, Brooklyn Graffiti From Truth and Rocket Science

  

“I want to build a ship and write novels. I want a stack of books tied to my name, and poetry, too, collections of it. I write slow. I think long. And I want to last longer in people’s minds than their last meal or movie. So I keep writing and building, word by word, an ark maybe, as I can, in every spare space.” ~ Terresa Wellborn
A Secret Place: Old Barn, by renejo (1951), via dreaminginthedeepsouth

Since I haven’t had my computer, I’ve been spending more time on my tumblr site, and I have to say that I’ve really come to like it. Going on tumblr doesn’t require me to post in the same way as this site. Instead, I can sift through what has been posted by the people who I follow, and decide whether or not to repost, or reblog as it were. It’s so effortless that a part of me feels as if I am doing something wrong. 

I mean, having access to all of this beautiful images, literary quotes, factoids—the researcher in me feels as if I am cheating by not working harder.  I suppose that it’s a fairly normal response to people who are new to tumblr as I am, but in less than two months, I already have 1,024 posts (each individual item is counted as a post), and I am following 29 people (with 13 people following me). Posts are categorized as follows: text, photo, quote, audio, chat, video. 

Having people follow me on my tumblr site is nice, but what I actually get more satisfaction from is finding new people to follow. Let me explain: tumblr is many things to many people; there are sites devoted to music, cars, book deals, gaming, news, food . . . whatever. The sites that I follow tend to deal with one of five things: literature (poetry, quotes by authors, passages from books, book covers), the ocean (pictures of ocean life, waves, islands, etc.), geographic photography (pictures from around the world of architecture, landscapes), vintage things (postcards, typewriters, jewelry), and then a bit of pop culture (Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, videos, shoes). 

Of course, there are the odd bits and pieces, but as a whole, that is what I am searching for when I go on the dashboard. 

“Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions:
The first one is: Who started it?
The second is: Are we going to make it?
The third is: Where are we going to put it?
The fourth is: Who’s going to clean up?
And the fifth: Is it serious?” ~ Alan Watts
My Secret Place by a tamer, via dreaminginthedeepsouth

There is one thing about tumblr that bothers me: copyright. One of the key things that our professors in the publishing program hammered into us repeatedly was the importance of copyright; hence, my sensitivity about usage. This is why always try to use images from Wikimedia Commons or Flckr Creative Commons, or those works that I know exist in the public domain. 

I try to reblog those things that do not appear to be under copyright or are under a creative commons license. A creative commons license means that the item in question can be used, but that certain rules apply. Currently, four license conditions exist, and these licenses allow writers, photographers, software creators, designers, etc.  to specify which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. 

According to the cc site, the four conditions are: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative (changed) works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives. 

However, not everyone is attuned to the nuances and obligations of copyright, and sometimes a picture will be posted without any title, or link, or name. This is where I have a hard time: I  love the image and want to reblog it, but I don’t think that it’s adhering to the rules. Having said that, I get the sense that copyright rules on tumblr are more relaxed, but I could be wrong. Some people are real sticklers regarding copyright, and early in this blog I used an image by a contemporary artist and was called on it. I had assumed that using the image was all right since it was for non-commercial use; however, I in no way wanted to infringe on the artist’s copyright. On the flip side, I have attached a copyright to my tumblr’s name, Slow Dancing in Quicksand (which some of you may recognize as the title of a post) because I want to preserve that phrase as a possible book title. 

I suppose that I may have to be of two minds, depending on which blog I’m on: With this blog, I hold fast to the rules; on tumblr, I try to maintain the rules, and if I am going to import an image from tumblr to this site, I’m going to give the link provided. 

The other issue, of course, is determining which link to provide. You see, with reblogging, image X may have started out on A’s blog, but by the time it appear on my dashboard, it’s been reblogged five times. I’m seeing the image from G’s blog. When possible, I click on the image to try to find the original source, but if I cannot, then I have to attribute the image to the blog on which I found it. 

Somehow, this all seems much harder than it should be. Oh. I get it. There’s the hard part about tumblr, and it’s only as hard as the individual makes it. 

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fade to White by Stephen K. Willi, via dreaminginthedeepsouth

Anyway, the whole point of this voyage around my elbow was to say that I’m finding some great quotes and things on tumblr, many of which I plan to use here. 

In addition to Crashingly Beautiful, the tumblr that I have been following the longest, I wanted to list a few of the sites that I follow on tumblr, just in case you want to do some journeying of your own: 

Go exploring. You’d be amazed at the things you can find. 

More later. Peace. 

Music by Dashboard Confessional, “Stolen” (acoustic) 

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“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.” ~ Ayn Rand

Published on by Poietes3 Comments

I miss Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes

 “Were you born this infuriating?”
“It’s taken me years of practice.” ~ Misty Massey from Mad Kestrel

A bit better today. It’s still bone-chillingly cold outside, and pretty chilly inside, but at least I feel able to get out of bed for a bit. You know that you are truly sick when you take a shower and then have to get back into bed to recover from the exertion.

Last night Corey and I watched more of the NCIS backlog on the DVR. One of the best aspects of our cable company is that they supply a DVR with the cable bundle service to which we subscribe. This means that I have the poor man’s version of TiVo, but it works really well. I have all of my favorite shows set up to tape, and I can rank them so that if there happens to be a conflict, the higher-ranked shows will tape.

Anyway, I have this incredible backlog of NCIS (my very favorite show) because Corey asked me to tape it for him, but it’s hard to get him to watch them. So we’ve been making a concerted effort to get caught up. I’ve been picking out the most important story arcs, but there is one problem with that: When a show is a repeat, it does not necessarily have the same name as the original. As a result, we’ve watched some shows out of order, and we are missing a few key shows.

Corey thinks that it’s a subversive plot on my part to drive him crazy: Let’s watch the shows about La Grenouile . . . Oh wait, that one is missing. Only to find the show under a different name later. Personally, the back and forth doesn’t bother me at all as that is the way in which my mind works—all over the place at once—and even though it isn’t a conscience plot, perhaps I am trying to make Corey less rigid in wanting things to be linear . . .

Oh well. At least it sort of sounded good.

“One of ennui’s most terrible components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it.” ~ Ingmar Bergman

We’re back to the very strange dreams again. Apparently, I’m waking up not screaming, but arguing, and then when Corey tries to calm me, I get angry with him, and I am so loud that Brett hears me from the other room. I hate that because when I wake up for good, I’m in a foul mood, which makes absolutely no sense. How very strange.

The dreams that I remember are strange as well. In one of them, I found out that Brett had shot someone, but my mother told everyone to lie to me about it. Obviously, I was distressed by this news, and then my dad (always disconcerting when dad appears) told me that he would take care of it and talk to my mom and Brett. The strangest part about this dream was that after the main dream, I then dreamed that I was awake and that I was going to write a book about what had happened. I even came up with the title of the book and the first chapter. Of course when I actually awoke, there was no book, and the title made no sense at all. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I did that automatic writing thing in my sleep and woke up to find a chapter written?

In another one, I someone was shooting me, not near me but at me. I don’t remember a lot about this one except for the fact that I was being shot and that I was screaming at the person who was shooting me. Last night, I had a very, very weird dream in which there was some small-town high school event, and I was going to disrupt it somehow.

I know. Weird. Why can’t I have dreams about lying on a white sandy beach with an umbrella drink in my hands? Just that, nothing else, no confrontations, no conflict, just the ocean, the sand, blue skies. Probably too much to expect of a dream.

“Give me detached existentialist ennui . . . Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Flash.”

Okay, so the quotes about ennui? The word popped into my head while I was sitting here trying to figure out the best way to describe the past few days. Ennui: a feeling of listlessness for lack of activity or excitement . . . voila! My past few days. I have been so listless that I cannot even read, which is a very big deal, especially as I am in the middle of a book, but as I said, I am starting to feel a bit better, a little more energy.

I have an embarrassing story to tell about the word ennui: Many years ago I was playing Scrabble with my ex and some friends (for some reason, my ex always won when we played together, which really pissed me off as he was the scientist and I was the lit major). Someone put down the word ennui. Now, I should have recognized the word, but to give me credit, her pronunciation really threw me. She said en-noo-ee, not on-we, so I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and I challenged her. Of course, I was wrong, but shouldn’t she have lost points for her dreadful mispronunciation?

I know. Poor sport. But I hate to lose at Scrabble, which is probably why no one will play with me any more. I think that it has something to do with my rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism . . .

“Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure.” ~ Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

I do miss Calvin and Hobbes, as witnessed by today’s images. It was a genius comic strip, written for both the child and adult from a child’s point of view but with infusions of adult wisdom from the stuffed tiger Hobbes. I always viewed Calvin’s perpetual energy, zeal for life, and unabashed talent for reducing things to bare bones as being such a refreshing commentary on life. Watterson did with his strip what Shulz had done with Peanuts years before: used a popular medium to entertain on the one level and enlighten on a more subliminal level. I’m hoping that I can get the collection that hit the market a few months ago, perhaps for my birthday.

I want to share with you a wonderful passage I recently came across. It’s from Simon Rich’s Ant Farm: and Other Desperate Situations, and I think that it is absolutely priceless in summing up frustration:

“I still remember the day I got my first calculator

Teacher: All right, children, welcome to fourth grade math. Everyone take a calculator out of the bin.
Me: What are these?
Teacher: From now on we’ll be using calculators.
Me: What do these things do?
Teacher: Simple operations, like multiplication and division.
Me: You mean this device just…does them? By itself?
Teacher: Yes. You enter in the problem and press equal.
Me: You…you knew about this machine all along, didn’t you? This whole time, while we were going through this…this charade with the pencils and the line paper and the stupid multiplication tables!…I’m sorry for shouting…It’s just…I’m a little blown away.
Teacher: Okay, everyone, today we’re going to go over some word problems.
Me: What the hell else do you have back there? A magical pen that writes book reports by itself? Some kind of automatic social studies worksheet that…that fills itself out? What the hell is going on?
Teacher: If a farmer farms five acres of land a day–
Me: So that’s it, then. The past three years have been a total farce. All this time I’ve been thinking, “Well, this is pretty hard and frustrating but I guess these are useful skills to have.” Meanwhile, there was a whole bin of these things in your desk. We could have jumped straight to graphing. Unless, of course, there’s some kind of graphing calculator!
Teacher: There is. You get one in ninth grade.
Me: Is this…Am I on TV? Is this a prank show?
Teacher: No.”

More later. Peace.

Moby’s “One of these Mornings,” just because it is so beautiful. Actually, couldn’t decide between two videos, so posting both. Let me know if you have a preference . . .