“You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting.
So… get on your way!”
Dr. Seuss
We’re trying to make the most of summer before school begins – one last play date, swim, camping trip, mountain hike… or just lolling on the deck furniture.
“We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
Emily Dickinson
A wonderful sentence for anyone of a “certain” age who is having a birthday… It reminds me (only in concept, not in subject) of Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow with its story in reverse chronology. It’s all in your vantage point.
That’s one participant in the “Six Easy Pieces, 31 Challenging Days” experiment chronicled in the New York Times. These women and men decided it was too time-consuming, too consumerist, too whatever to buy and keep closets full of clothes, so they chose six pieces to wear for one month (besides accessories, shoes and undies).
I thought the most telling outcome was that nobody noticed. Yes, in our image-conscious society nobody at work, no friends said, “Hey why are you wearing the same thing over and over?”
How liberating! And yet in an odd reverse way…. maybe that’s more fashionable anyway. One participant began quoting Coco Chanel who said “I don’t do fashion, I am fashion.”
“People might call my rooms stark, but I think they’re like when you have a mint in your mouth and you breathe in deeply – there’s a freshness, a crispness.”
Interior Designer Vicente Wolf
Mixing the senses is invigorating. Think how a smell tastes, or how a color feels. So I appreciated the description from this New York designer. Wolf has been in the business 30 years, written books, won awards. And he knows how to describe things too – I know the sensation (or look) he is talking about.
“No jump roping on the stairs!”
“Don’t eat rocks.”
“Please don’t write on each other with colored markers.”
And my personal favorite….
“The next time we buy a brand new car, please do not write your name on it with a stick.”
“Donald Trump… can make a Savile Row suit look cheap.”
Countess Louise J. Esterhazy is the non de plume of John Fairchild who is retiring his society column from W magazine. The father of 83 year old Fairchild created Women’s Wear Daily. His society column has bashed designers, stars and other celebrities over the decades so I’m sharing this bit of wit from his last column.
Carl Jung said, ‘What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.”
Hmmm… do you believe in fate? I think we often call things fate when we don’t see how our actions contributed to an outcome. Not as poetic – but it’s similar to the phenomenon of suddenly noticing a type of car on the road when you are considering buying one. So much information comes at us, we’re selective in what our antennae brings in. It’s more filtering than fate…
This quote is so popular you can even buy T-shirts and mugs for the moms in your life with this sentiment emblazoned on it. It’s a quote to chuckle at – yet I read something selfish in it. Do you? It’s as if the line is proudly encouraging you to spread your bad mood to your loved ones to get them to behave to your liking. If my kids and husband are happy, then I’m happy too. Of course, I might even be happy anyway… but the point is I value peace and harmony. But maybe that doesn’t make a good T-shirt…
“Don’t take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.”
This quote is from a fairly dull movie titled The Answer Man – but I thought this maxim had merit. I will alter it to say, “Don’t take restaurant recommendations from someone you wouldn’t dine with.” Of course this advice could apply to book recommendations and so on. It’s all a way of saying… consider the source.
“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
New Year’s resolutions often look like impossible-to-reach goals. Instead, as this Japanese proverb suggests, it’s all about trying. The dictionary says trying is about testing the powers of endurance. How helpful to shift ones thinking about changing habits from an event to a process – since you are much less likely to fail!
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