mission accomplished

i did it. i completed 'the goethe project'....give or take a few days. for the most part, i blogged every day for the past 30 days, reflecting on beauty and meaning through some aspect of art, music or literature.

what did i learn from this practice?

1) beauty is everywhere. everywhere. this is nothing new but all too easily forgotten. as cheesy as it sounds, sometimes we really are too busy to stop and smell the roses. maybe we begin to find the roses annoying, or we just tell ourselves we hate roses anyway. and we barrel onwards, frantic and frazzled.

this past month was one of the craziest months i've ever experienced, in the sense that all things personal and professional culminated in one massive consuming storm of a schedule. how fitting that the goethe project forced me to stop and meditate each day--even for a few minutes, on things beautiful and life-giving.

2) insight comes with discipline and the rigor of intentionality. surface observation is easy: the grass is green, the water is cold, the cat is fat. but to connect the dots between the details, to analyze and slice through the obvious to reveal the core - that is quite challenging. i sometimes have the eyes to see but not the heart to feel. other times, i feel things strongly but totally miss the forest for the trees. i think practicing both capacities in tandem and learning to give things time (such a valuable trait!) builds insight.

3) both beauty and despair point to the world that ought to be. both feed the sour ache inside us, the longing to be where all this beauty comes from or where sorrow and despair have no place.

4) it's fun to be writing more consistently again, even it's just a blurb here and there.


i hope to be blogging more...even if not daily, then at least more frequently. more than that, i hope this practice began building a more consistent habit of appreciation and meditation particularly in the throes of busyness.


on another note, happily searching through amazon.com for books i want to purchase this summer when i'm home. here's what i have so far:

voluntary simplicity: toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich

a way of working: the spiritual dimension of craft

the $12 million stuffed shark: the curious economics of contemporary art

four seasons in five senses: things worth savoring (i am especially excited about this book - reminds me of writing assignments in college where we had to write descriptively about mundane activities such as making a peanut butter sandwich, eating a peach, etc.)

hmmmm. apparently all the books i want to get are non-fiction and possess super-long titles.


cups of coffee: 1 1/2

mood:  fidgety

simplicity and work

"Simplicity (as greater directness, clarity, and unpretentiousness) can transform our approach to work in a variety of ways. . . . First, our relationship with our work is enormously simplified when our livelihood makes a genuine contribution both to ourselves and to the human family. It is through our work that we find opportunity to develop our skills, relate with others in shared tasks, and contribute to the larger society. If our work is directly contributory, it can be a source of great satisfaction and great learning. It was Thomas Aquinas, I think, who said: 'There can be no joy of life without joy of work.' Our relationship with our work is enormously simplified when we move from an intention of 'making a killing for myself' to that of 'earning a living in a way that contributes to the well-being of all.' . . . . Without the clarifying frame of reference provided by sensing the contribution of our work to the well-being of the world, it is immensely more difficult to find satisfaction and fulfillment in our work."

-- Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich

"There can be no joy of life without joy of work."  hmmmmm.......

cups of coffee: 2 1/2

mood: sleeeeeeepy

the big shaggy

NYT ran this eloquent and insightful piece by david brooks yesterday, arguing the necessity of studying the humanities even when economic downturns appeal to our pragmatism to pursue more lucrative fields.

besides arguing the importance of reading and writing skills obtained through humanities studies, brooks touches upon the true heart of why the humanities matter: they tell us of the human experience and enable us to engage with life beyond the superficial. it's not just about constructing systems that better our lives; it's about understanding the very framework of our human nature, delving into our fallacies and splendors. we read shakespeare to laugh at our foibles and ponder our mortality (and fall in love with the english language); plato teaches us rhetoric and challenges us to question what is just and true.

what i found most insightful in the article was when brooks talks about "the big shaggy." here's how he describes it:


Over the past century or so, people have built various systems to help them understand human behavior: economics, political science, game theory and evolutionary psychology. These systems are useful in many circumstances. But none completely explain behavior because deep down people have passions and drives that don’t lend themselves to systemic modeling. They have yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast you could call The Big Shaggy.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when a governor of South Carolina suddenly chucks it all for a love voyage south of the equator, or when a smart, philosophical congressman from Indiana risks everything for an in-office affair.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when self-destructive overconfidence overtakes oil engineers in the gulf, when go-go enthusiasm intoxicates investment bankers or when bone-chilling distrust grips politics.

Those are the destructive sides of The Big Shaggy. But this tender beast is also responsible for the mysterious but fierce determination that drives Kobe Bryant, the graceful bemusement the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga showed when his perfect game slipped away, the selfless courage soldiers in Afghanistan show when they risk death for buddies or a family they may never see again.


brooks goes on to argue that the observant individual will take the time to really dig into the big shaggy, to recognize the faceless yearning and learn from the realizations and efforts of the men and women who have gone before us in the tides of history. it is about learning who we are as humans so we may be more fully human and live in this world with all its proper tensions.


as someone who graduated with dual degrees in english literature and journalism, i'm a humanities-buff, no question. i think studying the humanities gave me the tools and resources with which to examine the big shaggy, but i don't think a college major is necessarily a prerequisite. perhaps it's more in cultivating an environment that values reading, writing and introspection. i know plenty of accountants and engineers who are very reflective, who enjoy reading keats and listening to bach in their spare time. it's not mutually exclusive.

we do, however, live in a society that is increasingly obsessed with information. the 24-hour news cycle, social media, onslaught of blogs (ironic, even as i blog).....we have become information gluttons. but what good is knowledge without wisdom?



cups of coffee: 1 1/2

mood:  thankful

all my sour-sweet days

Bitter-Sweet

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

- George Herbert


cups of coffee: 2 + 2 cups of green tea

mood: all sorts of full

it's (really) happening!

the soft launch party for 'the urbanity project' was this past saturday. over 75 folks packed out our little studio to hear about the project and catch a preview of artworks and writing that will be included in the book.

it's been a crazy month for our arts group in getting everything together but all so worth it. wow. wow, wow, wow.

it's really happening. :)


cups of coffee: 2

mood: happy to have reached the end of the tunnel...for now

where i cave in and brave the masses to attend the world expo

the crowds were not as bad as i thought, though there were some ridiculously long queues (over 3-hour wait for entry to some of the more popular pavilions! needless to say, i did not wait). certainly overwhelming and surprisingly impressive.

this was my favorite pavilion: the 'urbanian' pavilion. similar in concept to our 'urbanity project.' if you go to the expo, definitely check this pavilion out--extremely thoughtful and well-done.




cups of coffee: working on 1

mood: tiiiiiiiired

the alchemist

finally getting around to reading the alchemist, which is a nice quick read. beautifully and simply written, lovely fable of life. shepherd boy, deserts, camel caravans, ancient pyramids, mysterious old king, a quest to fulfill.....all the elements of magical storytelling. how i love a good story!

i love this quote:

"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

cups of coffee: 1

mood: giving in....going to the expo today....

ms. bourgeois

louise bourgeois, influential french-born american sculptor, died on monday in manhattan. she was 98.

for her full obit in the ny times, click here.

her work is amazing - emotionally charged, vulnerable, visceral...she translated suffering and pain into tangible abstractions.

great slide show of her works here.

“The subject of pain is the business I am in,” she said. “To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.” She added: “The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.” (NY Times)

cups of coffee: 1

mood: how is it june already?!?

graffiti

a little late night graffiti action with friends...




and one fun shot with the hipstamatic app on my iphone

ray of light

cups of coffee: working on 1

mood: grateful

of beauty, justice and building empires

at dolce & gabbana opening with friends

friday evening, after a great concert at the gallery, some friends and i attended the opening of dolce & gabbana's new store on glizty nanjing road. free flow of champagne, canapes and beautiful people. lavish and ludicrous.

ironically, the next day we held a lecture given by a designer/teacher on the topic of "art and equality" at our gallery. his lecture was a brief overview of philosophical foundations for social justice in the arts and a glance at some inspiring contemporary examples. he packed so much into one hour and though far from comprehensive, his lecture provided much room for continued discourse and deliberation. about 50 people attended, most of them architects, designers or other creative professionals, and i think everyone left with a lot to think about and hopefully with some challenges to consider in their own work.

this morning in my personal reflection time, i came across this passage in frederick beuchner's listening to your life about "a point of no return". beuchner summarizes john marquand's novel, point of no return, in which the protagonist strives his whole life to achieve this one position that he thinks will bring him stability and prestige and when he finally attains it, at the cost of other things in his life, finds it empty and unsatisfactory. sadly, this truth comes too late.

buechner sums up the implications of this protagonist's realization nicely here:

There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us. Because surely Marquand was right that for each of us there come a point of no return, a point beyond which we no longer have life enough left to go back and start all over again.
- Frederick Buechner

this resonates with every fiber of my being. we are mortal yet we have the capacity to be part of immortal things - to build and cultivate what will ripple through the history to come and into eternity. our time is so limited - so limited! - and with each day, not a breath is promised. we are grateful for each moment.

i want to build empires. i mean that in the sense that i want to be part of something bigger than myself, i want to explore and create with tenacity and fearlessness. the danger here, of course, is the ego and in building empires for the sake of erecting statues in my own image. that is not my intention (not my conscious intention, for the most part). i want to build for the sake of Greater Good and Glory, building empires in light of the Greater Story and the Beautiful Kingdom to come.

we all build empires in big and small ways, in the areas of life where we have been given dominion. whether we are building empires as fashion tycoons or building schools and sustainability in rural villages, we are all contributing to something with our talents and time.

if we know our time is limited, what then shall we choose to build?


cups of coffee: 1 1/2

mood: ready for the day!

barefoot artists and the casserole of hope

two completely unrelated items:

1) barefoot artists - my friend chelsea heard about this organization through a friend of a friend. their mission statement:

barefoot artists seeks to bear witness to the forgotten and the oppressed, and works to share their stories with the broader public to promote understanding and action. it seeks social change through innovative methodology and empowerment of people at the grassroots level.

um, hi. can i come work for you?

2) i love this tongue-in-cheek blog, stuff christians like. i found this post on "the casserole of hope" hilarious because it's true. we do like to give each other a lot of food when tragedy happens. i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, though. there is something comforting (on both sides) in being able to provide something tangible that meets an immediate need.


cups of coffee: 2 + 1 iced

mood: friday? friday?

50 years, 50 events

this summer, at least 50 parties will be thrown across america to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a classic book: to kill a mockingbird.

more info in this new york times article: "a classic turns 50, and parties are planned"

one of my favorite books of all times, definitely in the top five ranking. scout was such an amazing, lovable character, and atticus finch is one of my literary heroes (especially after seeing gregory peck bring him to life in the film version).

tom brokaw is slotted to read from the novel in bozeman, montana on july 11. tom brokaw reading atticus finch?!? hmmmm....maybe i should swing by montana on my way to the east coast this summer...

cups of coffee: 2

mood: bouncing (albeit slowly) back

thoughts for the day

two quotes from a new website find:

Aesthetic life is not something sophisticated – that’ s a humanistic lie. Aesthetic life is as integral to being human as building sandcastles on the beach and giving your children names. Calvin Seerveld

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing… to find the place where all the beauty came from. C.S. Lewis


cups of coffee: 2

mood: *yawn*

one of those days

it's one of those days (weeks/months). i feel like i need a "brownie husband." and maybe a tequila puppy.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/141546/saturday-night-live-brownie-husband


cups of coffee: 2 but clearly not enough

mood: oh light, you better be at the end of the tunnel...

sense of wonder

just read a wonderful chapter on being observant in lamott's bird by bird.

thought-provoking excerpt:

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?
Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you've read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone's soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least to have some meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious.

- Anne Lamott

strict joy

gray skies, cool breeze...a day when the city seems to be muffled by clouds. i have the whole day off and i intend on doing nothing but sleeping, reading, writing and eating. ahhhhhhhhh.

perfect day to listen to the swell season's most recent album, 'strict joy.'

glen hansard and marketa irglova of the swell season were thrust into the limelight after the unanticipated wild success of the movie (and soundtrack) 'once'. as much as i love the 'once' soundtrack, i am head-over-heels enamored by 'strict joy'. besides the sheer musical brilliance and lyrical poignancy of the songs, the whole theme of the album is compelling. the name of the album of comes from a poem penned by irish novelist and poet james stephens. the poem is called "strict care, strict joy!", which you can read in full here.

my favorite stanza from the poem:

For, as he meditated misery

And cared it into song—strict care, strict joy!

Caring for grief he cared his grief away:

And those sad songs, tho' woe be all the theme,

Do not make us grieve who read them now

—Because the poet makes grief beautiful.

the basic thread of the poem is the outworking of grief, sorrow and disappointments into things of beauty and gold. the album follows the same strain--the transformation of sorrow into joy, the intentionality that it takes and the willingness to address the sorrow and not bypass or stifle it. for a great brief explanation about the album, click here.

it's the thrust of life, isn't it? how we as broken, fallen creatures so desperately crave for wholeness. how we long for our mourning to turn into gladness and our weeping into dancing. how we desire to go through the fire and come out on the other side not destroyed but refined, made stronger and purer as finest gold.


cups of coffee: 1 1/2

mood: recuperating

bird by bird

in my sophomore year of college, anne lamott's bird by bird was required reading for one of my writing classes. i was introduced to the sharp wit of lamott and found myself an instant fan of her tough persona that veiled surprising warmth--shucked by her incisive insight to expose willing vulnerability.

when i visited my parents back in march, i dug up bird by bird from a box of old college textbooks and brought it back with me to china. i'm currently re-reading it, needing to be encouraged/inspired/motivated to write again. though the book is geared towards (aspiring) writers, lamott provides great gems for just living life as well. i'd forgotten how much i enjoyed this book.

one chapter is on perfectionism - the demon that terrorizes so many writers (artists in general, i think). it's a terrible tease: seeing the vision of what you want to create--not even in full sometimes, just its wonderful golden aura that bathes your mind--the lifting of your heart as you catch sight of it, and then as you try to grab it by its elusive tail and flesh it out on paper, how the vision suddenly takes flight, disappearing as a vapor, and you are left twirling a feather in your fingers if you're lucky. then you become so scared of disappointment, of failing to catch that beauty of a vision, afraid of desecrating the very vision by your inability to capture it...until finally, you just stop trying.

the pattern happens in life as well: afraid to make mistakes, afraid to choose unwisely, afraid of disappointment, rejection, failure and everything in between....cornered into surrender.

anyway. back to the chapter.

i love this section that lamott writes to start off the chapter:

"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."


cups of coffee: 2

mood: week..almost...over....

sneak peek

sneak peek at the exhibition that's opening at our gallery on saturday (this week has been MADNESS getting ready). a dozen chinese men shuffled in and out of our gallery this afternoon with paintings, crates and even rocks.

i took this photo with hipstamatic on my iphone (lens: John S, film: Blanko).

of water and stone, of ink and clay, of the fluidity of time and the transience of our existence...
one breath we are here, and the next--entire empires rise and fall.


cups of coffee: 2 + 2 cups of green tea + 1 cup of rose tea

mood: elated and exhausted

i love the dutch

after a joint exhibition between chinese and dutch artists that we held at our gallery about two years ago, i somehow ended up a permanent fixture on the dutch consulate's mailing list. to my pleasant surprise, that honor included being on their invite list for a special dance performance in honor of the world expo.

last night, i had a wonderful time watching the netherlands dance theater perform at shanghai grand theater. the festivities were part of the netherlands national day at the world expo, and the prince of orange and princess maxima of the netherlands were in attendance at the performance. my first brush with european royalty! (well, there was the time i spotted from afar queen elizabeth walking out of westminster abbey.) the royal party entered the auditorium to a brass rendition of "rondeau" (yes, the theme song from 'masterpiece theater'), and we all had to stand. ah, the stateliness of it all.

the dancing was amazing - three numbers with an intermission between each number. the last was the flashiest--and subsequently the favorite among the chinese members of the audience. it was called "chapeau" and originally choreographed for the 25th anniversary of the queen's jubilee of her majesty queen beatrix. gold ruffled skirts, colorful hats, an elaborate pinwheels headpiece, and prince's musicology....hard to beat.

i love the dutch.

with friends in the lobby pre-performance


the woman in pink in the middle - princess maxima preparing to sit down after one of the intermissions

cups of coffee: 3

mood: insane in the membrane.....

dance!

i've been invited to attend a performance by the netherlands dance theater tomorrow evening, in the presence of the prince and princess of the netherlands. :)

so excited! will try and snap some photos tomorrow night...


cups of coffee: 2

mood: crazy busy!