Poetry
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A curious rebel
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1 min read
When in doubt, you can always depend on your curiosity. It is the fire starter for all important questions. But inquisitiveness is not the only fuel you need. Sometimes you need an anarchic kick. The best medicine is straight-up rebellion. When conviction fights convention and curiosity whets the mind, the amalgam produces an orderly disorder…
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Who will curate the curators?
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1 min read
Who will curate the curators, influence the influencers, or teach the teachers? Those who marinate the world with their point of view assume their rightness. But the signaler too must too look back in the mirror and reimagine themselves. The true expert sees reality at arm’s length, merely touching what they know, always learning from…
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Mary Oliver: The poem gets written
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1 min read
“It is 6am and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, and the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written.” Mary Oliver Who needs the muse when you’ve got a proper habit?…
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A blink off script
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1 min read
The movie never stops. Interrupted by a flutter of blinks, the mind makes the world whole. It slams the breaks on silence in exchange for blizzards of visual cues. We are the opposite of a lighthouse, consuming energy without giving any back. Perhaps if we framed the photo, took a pause from licking the eyeballs,…
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A coherent me
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1 min read
When we are stuck and predictable, we stop beating the heart to our own drum. Instead of chasing our dreams, we ride on the coattails of others. We become a cog that seeks to please rather than to push. How we align our attention — to mimetic desire or to the clusters of individual freedom — is…
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Robert Frank, photo poetry
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1 min read
When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice. Robert Frank
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Manufacturing luck
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1 min read
Trite but true: life isn’t fair. Luck shuffles, unequally distributed, sometimes to those who are most undeserving. But our situation is unique, a constriction that gives us a chance to add our own bit of intrigue. What lens do we choose? There’s no drug we can take to resolve the struggle. But the last thing…
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Where it sings
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1 min read
A mind running on the “factory setting” defaults to organizational distraction. Everydayness overtakes what was inherent fascination. A mind surrendering to the television or the internet sits stuck in a ludic loop of changing the channels or flicking to the next app. A mind in search of its stimulation stumbles upon daydreams and mind wandering.…
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A still inchoate creator
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1 min read
The blank page doesn’t write itself. It stares at you, pleading for you to quit and move on to something else. Those who persist pace themselves into unfamiliar territory. A big bang does no artist any good. What matters is not the end result, but pushing through in a gradual approach. Slow and steady wins…
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You can be anything you want and then some
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1 min read
“You can’t be anything you want,” said comedian Chris Rock. “You can be anything you’re good at, as long as they’re hiring.” You need the cash. But you also need to expand your cognitive horizon and let your mind search for its own stimulation. The artist thrives on autonomy and control. But they also benefit…
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Confronting reality 👀
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2 min read
Goal setting is like game setting. You start at level 1 and graduate into unforeseen directions. If you’re lucky, you’ll ping-pong forward, making leaps and bounds. But more often than not, declaring your ambitions acts as a compass, guiding you with mere suggestions on how to proceed. Like a magnet, the lighthouse tugs you into its…
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Have an exaggerated sense of curiosity
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1 min read
We’re all fake artists, winging it to chase our dreams while simultaneously masking our vulnerabilities. It isn’t a thorny question of attribution. We all steal ideas from each other and recast them as our own. But having an exaggerated sense of curiosity pays off. The cash value of policing thoughts means that we can better sew…