Destination Happiness

"TO GET UP EACH MORNING WITH
the resolve to be happy
IS TO SET OUR OWN CONDITIONS TO THE EVENTS OF EACH DAY.
To do this is to condition circumstances
instead of being conditioned by them."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm Breaking Up With You

A Long Time Ago

Some times there aren't any tangible photos to say this is what it looked like or I was there but in mid July 1967 my partners Holly, Pati and I owned a store called the Everyday Cartoon.  Somehow we heard that a weekend concert in Devonshire Downs meadows was going to be held.  Popular groups of the day like The Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Canned Heat, the Mothers of Invention, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Steve Martin, The Merry Go Round  and many others were booked to play. We had a chance to set up a booth to sell things from our shop and so we reserved a space.  My recollection is that we sold alot of fresh flower garland hair wreaths with colorful ribbons and handmade dresses, love beads and brass jewelry.  It was a really fun weekend of music and merriment.  I wish I had pictures of that day but I guess I was just so into the moment I didn't think to take photographs.


Here are some photos I found that have a similar feeling of what people looked like and were wearing in the mid 1960's hippie culture.  It was a fun time to be young.

Janis Joplin around this time period. I saw her perform around 1968 in the gym at Cal State Northridge of all places. 

 Here   are a couple of posters I found on line advertising that weekend.

"The rarely mentioned July 1967 Fantasy Faire  Magic Music Festival, a two-day concert held in Northridge CA outside of Los Angeles, featured big-name acts such as The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and  the Fish, The Grassroots, Canned Heat, and Iron Butterfly. The concert took place on a 40-acre equestrian lot called Devonshire Downs, that was developed in the mid-1940s. Cal-State Northridge claimed the land for expanding the campus, but the site was again converted in 2001, this time into an industrial park.

We have a framed poster from the festival that is an original printing, by the artist Penny Havard. Measuring approximately 14.5" x 20.5", its in excellent condition! The colors are still so bright! Come into the shop to see this and other awesome rock art peices!!"-Comments from Facebook by the Rock and Roll Emporium

Options

sky

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke
(translation Stephen Mitchell)

TGIF

“I have planned nothing, so nothing can go wrong.”-Neil Gaiman

The Order of Things

"Good acting/directing thing I like to remember: In order for 

some things to be important, other things have to be less 

important." -Kira Onodera

Let's Do This

"Jumping for joy is good exercise."

How Surreal

Surrealists: Man Ray, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, André Breton; Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst and Rene Clevel, 1930.


Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur;  however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed out of the  Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.


The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques  such as automatic drawing.  Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and automatism.  This caution was overcome by the discovery of such techniques as frottage  and decalcomania.
Soon more visual artists became involved, including Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Francis Picabia, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali, Luis Banuel, Alberto Giacometti, Valentine Hugo, Meret Oppenheim,Toyen   and later after the second war: Enrico Donati.  Though Breton admired Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp   and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral.  -Wikipedia

Being The Author of Your Own Story

"The theme you choose may change
or simply elude you, but
being your own story
means you can always choose the tone.
It also means that you can
invent the language to say
who you are and what you mean." -Tony Morrison

Ten Indian Commandments

1. Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect.
2. Remain close to the Great Spirit.
3. Show great respect for your fellow beings.
4.  Work together for the benefit of all humankind.
5.  Give assistance and kindness wherever needed.
6. Do what you know to be right.
7.  Look after the well being of mind and body.
8.  Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good.
9.  Be truthful and honest at all times.
10. Take full responsibility for your actions.

- Shanti R.

Different Roads

"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness.  Just because they're not on your road does not mean they are lost." -Dalai Lama

Marta's Birthday Celebration - "Gloaming"

Hood Canal - along the east shore near a small town - Tahuya. Union and Alderbrook Inn is across the canal. The photo is looking west over the Olympics. -Marta  

"Gloaming - what a wonderful way to describe the end of the day. It was warm enough to float out on the water stone warmed while watching the sun set below the Olympic Mountains. So quiet listening to the water clatter on the rocks. The water is so clear. White shells of oysters shine among the pebble shore. Voices drift across the water. Boat slap as they skip across the canal. Lights appear and glitter like gold flecks on the smokey blue horizon." - Photo and words by Marta during her birthday getaway July 2013

Abundance

“To love abundantly is to live abundantly,
and to love forever is to live forever.”
― Henry Drummond

Life After Life - Here She Comes Y'all

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white 

cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: “there, she is gone!” “Gone where?” Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!” And that is dying .” - Henry Van Dyke


I am dedicating this post to my dear Auntie Mabel.   She once told me I hope when the time comes for me to leave this place I will just float away on a cloud.  This past Monday July 15th she took her cloud ride.  She will remain in my fondest memories as someone who hosted the best family Christmas parties and was the best cook and hostess setting the loveliest dinner tables.  Our family waves goodbye to you from this shore Auntie Mabel

 That's our Auntie Mabel seated at the table 3rd from the left. 


and our hearts our happiest knowing at this time that our beloved Jingu Family on the distant shore were there waving at you too, with open arms yelling out excitedly

 "Here she comes y'all !"  

Let's Pretend This Coffee Is Champagne

"Taylor: [Taylor is pretending the coffee he and Bill are drinking is champagne] I propose a toast.
Bill: So what should we toast?
Taylor: Oh, god... Paris, in the 1920's. Josephine Baker, the Moulin Rouge. Q'est-ce que c'est...
[mutters, trails off]
Bill: And also, New York, in the 70's. The late 70's.
Taylor: Really? Oh, alright.
Bill: [they touch cups] Cheers.
Taylor: Cheers.
[they sip their coffee]
Bill: Mmm. Délicieux, isn't it?
Taylor: Oh, champagne; nectar of the Gods."

Painting of Taylor Mead by 

Leon Nicholas Kalas

Taylor Mead, a poet, actor and exuberant bohemian who collaborated with Andy Warhol in many films in the 1960s.

William "Bill" Rice (1931, Vermont - 2006, New York City) was a prominent and regular fixture of the avant-garde art scene in the East Village in New York City for many years.

A painter, film actor, and an unaffiliated scholar, Bill Rice was one of the central figures in the various bohemian enclaves that gathered and overlapped in the Lower East Side of the 1960s. Among his diverse achievements, Rice worked with noted Gertrude Stein expert Ulla Dydo on Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises: 1923–1934 (2003), an essential study of the author’s writing process, using her notebooks and manuscripts. -Wikipedia

Champagne

Each Morning

A Certain Kind of Adventure

"Food, for me, has always been an 

adventure." - Anthony Bourdain

I LOVE Summer Afternoons

Summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language.

The Elephant In The Room

ELEPHANT AND THE BLIND MEN
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions

I'll Drink To That!

"TO YOUR HEALTH!"

Worth the Fight

“But there is suffering in life,
and there are defeats.
No one can avoid them.
But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams
than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.”-Paul Coelho

Life Is A Symphony of Colors

New Trends At Work

Right Back At Ya

 

Individuality

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality." - Oscar Wilde

Love In Your Heart

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

— Oscar Wilde 

Happy 4th of July

Adventures At Sea

"From the deep sea of Clouds to the island of the moon,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never been,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen." - Orinoco Flow (Sail away) lyics-Ryan, Roma

Addictions

Mermaid Dreams