While interacting within scenes, or talking or thinking about each other in separate scenes, roles reveal and clarify each other by contrast and contradiction.* Robert McKee
The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that makes one’s life.** Georgia O’Keefe
That moment when someone annoys us is likely to be accompanied by a want for them to be more like us; But it is equally an opportunity to appreciate their differences, And allow something deeper to happen.
As well as opening doors, the children made dens: the doors allowing access and adventure, the dens permitting retreat and shelter. Young children are, as all parents know, natural den makers.* Robert Macfarlane
In the most connected time in history, we’re quickly losing touch with ourselves.** Ryder Carroll
I need doors and dens, Goings and comings, Outs and ins, Their rhythm bringing me alive: Door den door den door den; Sometimes, Door door den door den den door den, Or, Den door door door den den door den den – But not, Door door door door door, And never, Den den den den den den.
Work, after all, at its best, is one of the great human gateways to the eternal and timeless.* David Whyte
Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.** Chuck Close
Inspiration follows perseverance.
It’s not only about turning up – You’ll be glad to here, But it is about you turning up – Not trying to be someone else; And though you may have strayed from your self, There’s still time and possibility to respond to the call of you: When we arrive on earth, we are provided with no map for our life journey. Only gradually, as our identity forms and we get an inkling of who we are, do possibilities begin to emerge that call us.^
You are not only naturally you, but also the person you have chosen to be – The hard work of becoming you that you have persevered in.
As for writing, so for life: And like “flow,” “natural” is one of the words behind writer’s block. So let’s suppose there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s loss of confidence And forgetting to think And failing to prepare And not reading enough And giving up on patient And hastening to write And learning your audience And never really trying to understand how sentences work. Above all, there’s never learning to trust yourself Or your capacity to learn or think or perceive.^^
When you turn up again and again, You will find enough: If we go down to ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.*^
Acceleration arises from the desire itself – desire for the life we intuit awaits us. The desire itself translated step by step, day by day, into action is enough to propel us enormous distances.* David Whyte
When we are in rhythm with our own natures, things flow and balance naturally.** John O’Donohue
Have we found our whole heart yet?
Or do we still try and move through Each day with a half-heart?
Willpower is not only finite, but appears to meet an equal resistance; Heartfulness is self-renewing when delivered faithfully each day in the small actions that give shape to our desires: Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. I t will not lead you astray.^
For me, these daily actions are to read, journal, write, doodle, converse – Yours will be different, though no less powerful.
The sustaining power of rituals is that they conserve energy.^^
Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no signs even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost.* John O’Donohue
The last time we took an action on an idea, extended ourselves for a friend, and perhaps encouraged ourselves for a new project – these happened because the story worked.** Seth Godin
We are more substantial than we know, Our lives filled with so much that will make us stronger, more imaginative, creative, generous.
The thing that makes the difference between so much being lost to us, and so to each other, And instead to be accessed and engaged with, is our story.
I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anymore, because where I am folded, I am a lie.^
While the knowing of the mind is limited by frontiers, the soul has no frontiers.* John O’Donohue
Whatever powers we have in the world, in our work, in our powers of leadership, in our imaginations, they are the gifts of a much larger world than one when have made for ourselves. They are only part of deeper, inescapable, ancestral imaginings which we join and which inform our ever day and to which, every next day, we introduce our own children. More truthfully, perhaps, we let our children go out into the world and find if for themselves, and report it back to us as if new … .** David Whyte
There is an ordinary world – Sport, politics, shopping, comedy shows, food, jobs … – And there is a special world – Meaning, myths, inexplicable things, presence, alchemy, connection … .
Dot dot dot … .
Both lists are wonderfully long – passing through my life.**
More than ever, I know, I would not want to live in one without the other.
We don’t have to.
The child takes in the world as if it were food. And his world nourishes or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst; secrets are impossible. He identifies with his surroundings, and they live within him unconsciously.^
Other people may live in pain but deny it. The comic mind, on the other hand, lives in pain, but has the courage to express it. The comic mind has the moral strength to see life as it is, and use their art to wake us up to what is right and sane. The comic mind tells the truth.* Robert McKee
Artists help us to understand ourselves and our time through pictures, parables and actions.** Keith Haring
I read recently how the line dividing good and evil runs through the centre of each one of us.
Our best art, performance, stories, myths, poems, and comedy help us to see and understand and embrace this truth, So that we might daily, wrestle with it for all our sakes.
And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.^
[T]he genius of an individual lies in the inhabitation of their peculiar and particular spirit in conversation with the world. Genius is something in itself and no other thing.* David Whyte
The shape of each soul is different. An individual is a carefully fashioned, unique world. The shape of the flaw that each person carries is also different. The flaw is the special shape of personal limitation; angled at a unique awkwardness to the world, it makes our difficulty and challenge in the world different from that of others.** John O’Donohue
Embrace your awkwardness, Understand and grow it, Express and edge it, But do not lose it: Of course, once you sand off the edges, it’s hard to get traction.^
Your flaw will lead you into your flow.
When you trust yourself enough to integrate your strangeness, you bestow a gift on yourself.**
Sankofa is a term in Twi, a dialect of the Akan language in Ghana. It means “go back and get it.” …
“I’m not sure what it is yet, let’s interact and see” opens the door to forward motion and wonder, instead of pushing hard for things to get back to normal.* Seth Godin
The best present is a mixture of the best past and the best future – We can be deep-time people, If we want to be.
THIN|SILENCE 
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