Tag: Neil Gaiman

Quote of the Day – February 4 2013

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

 

Why do we resist our pain? Well besides the obvious that it hurts. Can we learn from our pain? Almost definitely. Tho, so often instead of learning from it, seeing pain as our guru (“dispeller of darkness”) , we push it under the rug and let it build up pressure until we explode either in illness or in some kind of rage that takes other people with it. It amazes me how afraid we can be of showing our feelings. The media encourages us to find someone to pin it on and play victim. That’s not to say that sometimes we don’t get hurt by the actions of another but it seems that more and more we are taught that anytime we hurt from that point onward, we can blame it on that initial pain.
Sometimes pain comes from our own actions. We have unreasonable expectations of ourselves or another person or even a situation. We act rashly and it falls down on us.  A healthy reaction to this is to look at what has caused the pain and either not do it again or see what we were trying to express. A child touches a hot stove and gets burned. Is he to blame or his parent or the stove? None of the above. Curiosity is normal and trying new things is awesome. Some of the new things may hurt. The more we learn to ask, what is the lesson rather than who to blame the more we live healthier lives.
Blessings, G

 

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Fireflower

Fireflower by G A Rosenberg

 

Midnight Journey

Midnight Journey by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – November 12 2012

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

 

How far do I travel when roads diverge?
How many possibilities can I hold
before the wave collapses
and my way becomes fixed? >

 

How much of life’s poison must I swallow?
How many blessings by grace receive?
How many loves to meet and hide from?
How many times must my soul bleed?

 

In my life I feel I have had more joy than sorrow. I’m not sure how much of this is due to my outlook. I have long ago given up holding on to most of the things that most people seem to. When something hurts, I feel the pain and do my best to make it stop hurting. Looking back at past pains, replaying them in my head seems silly to me for the most part. Tho I can understand the impulse. Still while i am willing to hear the pain and sorrow that helped shape friends old and new, i want to hear some of the happy stuff as well. What flower or sunset or light in a child’s eye filled one with joy and awe? What point was the happiest and most soul fulfilling in their lives. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours 🙂

Blessings, G

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Observer by G A Rosenberg

 

Red Ripples by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – October 27 2012

“Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”
― Neil Gaiman

 

For me by necessity the story comes out in small parts, chapters from the past and chapters from the future that haven’t been written yet. The present is always here and accepted gracefully. After all what else do you do with a present? This past while, I’ve been learning myself a bit more every day and as I learn myself and find my story I can share it like the tale of the bridge and the angel I found there… or the dream of my first crush,  and of pain… I may tell of days but difficult and joyous but slowly I find my voice.

Funny thing tho, the more I listen to my voice the more I can hear others and hear them as they are felt and said. Perhaps all its taken is greater self-honesty or like the expression that I’ve used for years, shovelling the shit out of the communication box. I’m not there yet, not totally. I need to write, I’ve been told as if I’m the only one who will read it. Yet for me at times, it is easier to be honest on some things with witnesses for telling myself some truths may be too painful. There lies my blind spots and those are the ones I must work at.
What stories will you share and how honestly and easily do you find they come?
Blessings, G

 

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Expressive Abstraction by G A Rosenberg

 

Winged Peach by G A Rosenberg

 

 

Quote of the Day – September 22 2012

“You People always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they’ve served their purpose. But you’ve got to learn to throw things away eventually.”
–Neil Gaiman

 

Let’s try an exercise just for the heck of it. Take a piece of paper and in big letters make a list, one per line of all the ways you identify yourself. Use both the ones that you love and the ones that you find troubling . Then tear the paper into strips, each strip holding one face or identity that you use to identify with. Put all the strips into a big glass bowl and burn them. As you burn each one, imagine yourself being freed from that identity. When you’ve finished, take three deep breaths. Repeat the exercise using whatever new identities have come up for you and the old ones that still feel attached. Tear the paper into strips and burn it, imagining  yourself freed from each of those identities. Do it all a third time. As you burn the papers this time say out loud. “I free myself from all preconceptions of who I am and who I will be. I am now free to make my own way.” Take three deep breaths and start thinking of  the person you’d like to be, the identity you wish. Picture yourself doing what that person does and behaving in the way they behave. Open your eyes and realize you’re free to choose. Realize that there is nothing wrong with choosing the same identity you felt trapped in before. At the very least now you are taking it on by choice

Blessings, G

 

 

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Falling To by G A Rosenberg

 

Star Quest by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 13 2012 (2)

“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
― Neil Gaiman

Not just the stories we read but all the stories we were exposed to when we were younger whether they were television, movie, comic books or I guess more and more often video games. We carry those memes inside of us. That can become pretty scary when you realize how much the media is controlled and how many people blindly use the television as an electronic baby sitter.  But I digress which means it might be another blog topic somewhere down the line. I know it freaks me out when I discover I’ve been whistling the theme song to the Monkees or Scooby-Doo or Mr. Ed and then I realize I can remember every word despite the intervening 30-40 (sometimes very) odd years. I was lucky. My parents put up with and indulged my reading habits so I became exposed to anything and everything but mostly things that involved myths and legends from different countries, comics and other heroic legends and on television the ouvre of Sid and Marty Crofts (H R Puffnstuff, the Bugaloos, Lidsville, wow they had some serious psychedelics there) In a way so much of who I am now was generated by those stories. I’ve tried to expose my son to as wide a range of influences as possible with the result that even tho he is at the age of ultimate conformity, he still very singular and very individualistic.
What stories did you grow up with and how did it shape your life?
Blessings, G

 

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Guardians by G A Rosenberg

More From American Gods

“People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghost, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

…and like Maulder from X-Files, we so want to believe, even atheists, maybe especially atheists want to believe there is nothing there so badly that their reality becomes void of meaning that they then fill in like a paint by numbers painting. We conjure things into our lives all the time through our beliefs, new relationships and far more often the endings of old ones and still we believe. Alice believed in six impossible things before breakfast and her life became if not impossible extremely unlikely. I believe in human potential and that could bite me in the rear end because that potential can express in all kinds of unexpected ways. I believe in my potential (a voice cries not enough) and it becomes my tar baby. I like to say I believe in everything and really mean it. Sincerity and intent becomes important here. That way anything can happen and probably will. =)
Blessings, G

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Space Observation by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 5 2012

“you do your own time in prison. You don’t do anyone else’s time for them.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

I decided on this quote tonight because I believe it has wider applications than just prison. By this I don’t mean that I see life as a prison tho I know several who do. However in both our lives on this planet as in a convict’s in prison, no one can do it for you. We can feel compassion. We can and probably should make life as easy for other people (and ourselves) as possible but we can’t live it for them. We see our brothers or sisters about to repeat a mistake we’ve seen them make several times before, We can’t do it for them or stop them. We see our kids about to learn a hard lesson. Our hearts may break but we can’t do it for them. Understanding them does not mean taking on their karma. We all have our own time and no one can do it for us. Prayer and well wishes can help however
Blessings, G

 

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Mind Storm by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 30 2012

““When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. “It’s all right” we whisper, “I’m here, I love you.” and we lie: “I’ll never leave you.” For just a moment or two the darkness doesn’t seem so bad.”
― Neil Gaiman

OK. The above seems like an odd quote for the evening. Yet it seems somewhat apt. The rain is falling outside which will mean the dogs’ walks will be brief as neither share my affinity for walking in storms. On a dark rainy night, I think of times that friends have called me up or these days far more often messaged me needing to talk to be if not held physically, held cybernetically and told that “Yes, things would be OK, were OK as a matter of fact and that there was no knot that couldn’t be worked through. Easy enough to say and being optimistic by nature easy enough to believe. What an incredible gift to be able to be there for someone when I’m needed! I know far too well what its like to feel that taste of ashes in my mouth and that there were no answers and just knowing that another person was there helped.
I disagree with Mr. Gaiman’s quote in one way tho. I don’t believe that if we tell someone “I’ll never leave you” that its necessarily a lie. There have been many nights in the eternal now and many of them are still going on. The much-needed wisdom of friends and of strangers has stayed with me and I can feel the echo of their words in my mind therefore they have never left. If I have been of any use to anyone in that state, perhaps I am with them still.

This past week I have been working on being appreciative and grateful for the gifts that I feel every day. I have found this to be amazingly powerful and it’s additive. I keep finding more and more things to be grateful for. Perhaps one of the most important would be how grateful I’ve been to survive the rough times and to on occasion made a difference to others going through them.
Blessings,
G

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Touching by G A Rosenberg

Silver Spiral by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – October 7 2011

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

   –Neil Gaiman

 

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The Answer’s Inside by G A Rosenberg