Nature on Janusworx

Bird on a Wire

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:01:45 +0530

Photo courtesy, Abbygail Braganza, at the Seawoods Flamingo Point, part of the Navi Mumbai Mudflat Wetlands
Click the pic to see a larger one

Like a bird on a wire …

Like a fish on a hook …

I have tried in my way to be free

— Aaron Neville, singing Leon Cohen’s, Bird On A Wire

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You Can’t Have It All

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:25:59 +0530

Mountains in Ladakh. Click to embiggen

And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

— Barbara Ras, via Maria Popova

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Wade in the …

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 08:42:33 +0530

on a canal outside Keukenhof. click to embiggen

If you get there before I do
Wade in the Water
Tell all of my friends I’m coming too
God’s gonna trouble the water

Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children … 🎵

On Resilience, Philosophy and Creative Success

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 05:45:00 +0530

It’s September! Time for a new letter :)
As usual, click the headers to wander off to the originals.

Leo Babauta on the First Two Steps to Creating Resilience
#

If you’ve known me for any length of time in the past decade, you know I set great store on being Antifragile..
While Leo says these are two beginner steps, to my mind, these two will bear the brunt of all the resiliency / antifragile weight. It’ll take you more than half the way there.

The first step is to remove things that are adding unnecessary stress.
The second step is to do things that help us feel replenished.

Ryan Holiday presents A Practical Philosophy Reading List: A Few Books You Can Actually Use in Real Life
#

Any philosophy forged in the crucible of action and subject to hardship, endures.
Like Stoicism did.

You must know by now: I don’t believe that philosophy is something for the classroom. It’s something that helps you with life. It shouldn’t be complicated. It shouldn’t be confusing. It should be clear, and it should be usable. As Epicurus put it, “Vain is the word of the philosopher which does not heal the suffering of man.”

David Ogilvy had skin in the game! Who knew?
#

Continuing with our theme of action and doing, even the creative process is not all in the mind.
It requires digging down in the mud and blood and sweat and tears …

The Ogilvy agency … was founded by a man who didn’t have an MBA, or even a college degree.
Before he became the King of Madison Avenue, Englishman David Ogilvy was an Oxford dropout who worked as a chef in Paris, a door-to-door salesman, a researcher for George Gallup, an agent of the British Intelligence Service during WWII, and a farmer in Pennsylvania.

In fact, while most agencies had subordinates present campaign ideas to clients, Ogilvy often made these presentations himself; he wanted to be directly involved, and felt it made the pitches more memorable (“One orchestra looks like every other orchestra, but there is no confusing one conductor with another”).

Ogilvy also rejected around 60 potential new clients each year. A common reason for this rejection was the chairman’s lack of confidence in the product that a company wanted his agency to pitch. Ogilvy used all the products he advertised, and wouldn’t create campaigns for those he couldn’t personally back, believing that it was “flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy,” and that it was impossible to craft an effective ad for something you couldn’t earnestly get behind …

Until next time!

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On How Reading is Like Love and Rules for a Better Life

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 05:45:00 +0530

This post was first sent to my newsletter on August 1st, 2021.
[You really ought to subscribe][1] :)

*Clouds sailing across [Pangong Tso][wpt]. Click to enlarge*

New month, new letter!
As usual, click the headers to wander off to the original articles

Maria Popova on How Reading Is Like Love
#

Now you are being read. Your body is being subjected to a systematic reading, through channels of tactile information, visual, olfactory, and not without some intervention of the taste buds. Hearing also has its role, alert to your gasps and your trills. It is not only the body that is, in you, the object of reading: the body matters insofar as it is part of a complex of elaborate elements, not all visible and not all present, but manifested in visible and present events: the clouding of your eyes, your laughing, the words you speak, your way of gathering and spreading your hair, your initiatives and your reticences, and all the signs that are on the frontier between you and usage and habits and memory and prehistory and fashion, all codes, all the poor alphabets by which one human being believes at certain moments that he is reading another human being …

Related watching: Max Joseph’s awesome video on, How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content.
It’s 40 minutes long, but definitely worth every minute of your time.

Ryan Holiday’s 100 (Short) Rules for a Better Life
#

4 - Say no (a lot).
15 - It’s not about routine but about practices.
71 - Go the f*ck to sleep.
81 - Don’t just read books, re-read books.

After all,

via, Ricardo Siri

Shane Parrish posits Your Thinking Rate Is Fixed
#

A good metaphor is installing an update to the operating system on your laptop. Would you rather install an update that fixes bugs and improves existing processes, or one that just makes everything run faster?
Obviously, you’d prefer the former. The latter would just lead to more crashes. The same is true for updating your mental operating system.

Have a lovely August! Until next time …

White Eyes

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 05:45:00 +0530

Snow clouds rolling down a mountain peak, near Se La

I don’t know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
        tucked in a white wing
                while the clouds—

which he has summoned
    from the north—
        which he has taught
                to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
        like stars, or the feathers
                 of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent—
        that has turned itself
                into snow.

White-Eyes, Mary Oliver

Mountains, Holy Lands!

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 25 May 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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click to embiggen

…

I said to him: “Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word ‘hike.’ Is that so?” His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: “I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike!”

“Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

— John Muir, A Parable of Sauntering

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Chop Wood, Carry Water

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 18 May 2020 04:00:00 +0530

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click to embiggen

A young boy became a monk.
He dreamed of enlightenment and of learning great things.
When he got to the monastery he was told that each morning he had to chop wood for the monks fires and then carry water up to the monastery for ablutions and the kitchen.
He attended prayers and meditation, but the teaching he was given was rather sparse.

One day he was told to take some tea to the Abbot in his chambers.
He did so and the Abbot saw he looked sad and asked him why.

He replied every day all I do is chop wood and carry water.
I want to learn.
I want to understand things.
I want to be great one day, like you.

The Abbot gestured to the scrolls on shelves lining the walls. He said,

‘When I started I was like you. Every day I would chop wood and carry water.
Like you I understood that someone had to do these things, but like you I wanted to move forward.
Eventually I did.
I read all of the scrolls, I met with Kings and and gave council.
I became the Abbot.

Now, I understand that the key to everything is that everything is chopping wood and carrying water, and that if one does everything mindfully then it is all the same.’

I don’t know, where I got this story from. Probably one of Anthony De Mello’s books.

Reflection

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 11 May 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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click to embiggen

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

— Derek Walcott, Love after love.

Pair with these beautiful odes to the poem and the poet.

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Vastness

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 04 May 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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Meghalaya

In the vast abyss before time, self
is not, and soul commingles
with mist, and rock, and light. In time,
soul brings the misty self to be.
Then slow time hardens self to stone
while ever lightening the soul,
till soul can loose its hold of self
and both are free and can return
to vastness and dissolve in light,
the long light after time.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, How It Seems to Me

Read more about this beautiful poem on Brain Pickings.

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Idleness is a Virtue

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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Dawki, Meghalaya

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days. In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Pair with, The Art and Science of Doing Nothing.

Why Wait?

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
— W.M. Lewis

On Bees

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 05:45:00 +0530

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Bee & Flower

“The lovely flowers embarrass me,
They make me regret I am not a bee.”
— Emily Dickinson

“Place a beehive on my grave
And let the honey soak through.
When I’m dead and gone,
That’s what I want from you.
The streets of heaven are gold and sunny,
But I’ll stick with my plot and a pot of honey.
Place a beehive on my grave
And let the honey soak through.”
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

or if you’d prefer a lighter quote …

“It was my uncle who taught me about the birds and the bees. He sat me down one day and said, ‘Remember this, George, the birds fuck the bees.’ Then he told me he once banged a girl so hard her freckles came off.”
— George Carlin, Brain Droppings

Being Happy With Life

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:45:00 +0530

The Dawki, in Meghalaya

“All of life is about ending up somewhere you didn’t expect, and learning to just be happy with it.”
— Lauren Oliver, Vanishing Girls

What Makes the Desert Beautiful …

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 05:45:00 +0530

[![][1]][2]

Click the pic for a bigger photo

“The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.”

I replied, “Yes, that is so.’
And, without saying anything more, I looked across the ridges of sand that were stretched out before us in the moonlight.

“The desert is beautiful,” the little prince added.

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well …”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Road to Nowhere

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:50:00 +0530

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
— Douglas Adams

(Shot on the long, beautiful, northern stretch of the E75, between Ivalo and Utsjoki.)

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Nature on Janusworx

Bird on a Wire

You Can’t Have It All

Wade in the …

On Resilience, Philosophy and Creative Success

Leo Babauta on the First Two Steps to Creating Resilience #

Ryan Holiday presents A Practical Philosophy Reading List: A Few Books You Can Actually Use in Real Life #

David Ogilvy had skin in the game! Who knew? #

On How Reading is Like Love and Rules for a Better Life

Maria Popova on How Reading Is Like Love #

Ryan Holiday’s 100 (Short) Rules for a Better Life #

Shane Parrish posits Your Thinking Rate Is Fixed #

White Eyes

Mountains, Holy Lands!

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Reflection

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour! #

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers. #

Vastness

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour! #

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Idleness is a Virtue

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour! #

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Why Wait?

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On Bees

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Being Happy With Life

What Makes the Desert Beautiful …

Road to Nowhere

Leo Babauta on the First Two Steps to Creating Resilience
#

Ryan Holiday presents A Practical Philosophy Reading List: A Few Books You Can Actually Use in Real Life
#

David Ogilvy had skin in the game! Who knew?
#

Maria Popova on How Reading Is Like Love
#

Ryan Holiday’s 100 (Short) Rules for a Better Life
#

Shane Parrish posits Your Thinking Rate Is Fixed
#

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour!
#

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers.
#

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour!
#

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers.
#

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour!
#

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers.
#

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour!
#

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers.
#

Help the folks, who need your help the most at this hour!
#

Donate to Goonj to help our daily wage earners and labourers.
#