My eyebrows are sisters, not twins, and should be treated as such.

- Broad City wisdom :)

Sweetheart, you can't buy the necessities of life with cookies.

Dust if you must

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed,
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
Music to hear and books to read,
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there,
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go - and go you must -
You, yourself, will make more dust.

- Anonymous [found on a friend's Facebook page]

"In life we have good chapters and bad chapters. Luckily most of the bad chapters have good characters."

via

Thank you for the fine fine music, Lou Reed

"She started shakin' to that fine fine music
You know her life was saved by rock 'n' roll
Despite all the amputations you know you could just go out
And dance to the rock 'n' roll station"

(found on a random blogger's Instagram)

"The world is not interested in the storms you encountered, but did you bring in the ship?"

- William McFee

when imagination is a curse

"To see things in their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life."

The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky

“At the moment, our society’s notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. But it’s time for a third metric, beyond money and power – one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back.”

- Arianna Huffington at 2013 Smith College Commencement Address

via

"People are still expected to provide reasons not to have children, but no reasons are required to have them."
- Christine Overall, in this New York Times article

I appreciate the point of view expressed in this article and the conversation it initiates. (BTW, if you read to the end you learn the author herself has children.) I'm over answering this question, or hearing that my life can not possibly be as stressful or as tiring or as rewarding... I have much admiration and awe for all the incredible, beautiful mothers I know (my own mom being at the top of that list, natch ;). But please don't discount me because I'm not one of them. I'm still part of the entire fabric of our existence, we're all in this together.

endurance

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins.
Beyond talent lie all the usual words:
discipline,
love,
luck,
but, most of all, endurance.”

- James Baldwin, Paris Review Interviews II

via

You know what you gotta do

Yet again: song of the friggin' day (starts at 0:16)

AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(aah, that feels better)

Favorite line of the weekend, heard being called out from the next room:

"Aunt Kim, come here - Look! Those Beatles guys are on the Power Puff Girls!"

My job of dispensing culture is done for the day

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr

“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.”

- John Burroughs

Hello, 2013

The bad news: Time flies...

The good news: You're the pilot!

- random post on a friend's Facebook page -

At times I struggle to justify what it means for me to be an artist within the defined priorities of our modern society. I liked reading these words:

At the recent 2012 Kennedy Center Honors (the nation's highest award for those who influence American culture through the arts), President Obama described all of the honorees as artists who "inspired us to see things in a new way, to hear things differently, to discover something within us or to appreciate how much beauty there is in the world. It's that unique power that makes the arts so important."

(This year's honorees included David Letterman, Dustin Hoffman, and Led Zeppelin)

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.”

– Charles Dickens

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure
nor this thing nor that,
but simply growth.
We are happy when we are growing.”

- William Butler Yeats