The Serenity Prayer

The best prayer of all---so much wisdom contained in one little prayer. If we followed its advice, we would save ourselves so much pain, complaining and irritation.

The benefits of doing yoga exercises

I found this short article, Yoga Eases Symptoms of Chronic Low Back Pain, at http://www.ahealthblog.com/yoga-eases-symptoms-of-chronic-low-back-pain.html. It's quite interesting, as I just started doing yoga exercises in January. I am not practicing yoga, only doing the exercises, and I am only doing the simple exercises, but have already discovered that I feel more relaxed and have less lower back pain after doing them. I will keep on doing them to see if these effects are long-lasting. Many of the yoga exercises remind me of the types of stretching exercises I used to do for my modern dance classes years ago. The fact that I can still do many of these exercises makes me feel quite good, after many years of not doing them.

Image via: Yoga Eases Symptoms of Chronic Low Back Pain

Change the World by Eric Clapton

Every now and then I wish I really could change the world in a big way--make it less brutal, less bigoted, less cold, less money-oriented, just simpler and kinder....All those things at once. Not sure where we're headed anymore; it all seems so chaotic and out of control--climate change, the overwhelming refugee/migrant situation in Europe, the utter brutality of terrorism, and the looming possibility of a loud-mouth bigot as president of the USA. The latter bothers me immensely, that my fellow countrymen believe in this man, who is clearly a sham. If people think that he has even the faintest idea of what it's like to be poor or lower middle class, think again. He has NO idea what it's like. He's never been poor. Daddy gave him his cushy start in life, and that's ok, but he could have used it for the betterment of mankind, and he hasn't. He just says the things he thinks bigots, whiners and the failures in society want to hear. What surprises me is how many people I know who actually support this man. I find it sad. Listening to Eric Clapton sing 'Change the World' is what I want to do right now--because it reminds me to keep believing in the good. But also, that if we don't do something soon, it will be too late to change the world.

When will reality TV shows disappear?

We’re now well into season 6 of The Walking Dead; episode 10, entitled The Next World, aired on Monday evening here in Norway. Fear the Walking Dead starts up again in April, and tomorrow night the sixth (and final so far) episode of The X-Files airs. I’ve been watching them all and loving them. The return of The X-Files after so many years (it went off the air in 2002) made me very happy; I looked forward to getting involved with Mulder and Scully’s cases and their relationship all over again. And these episodes didn’t disappoint; despite mixed reviews (as always), they managed to hold my attention and left me wanting more. It’s not just that all these shows are sci-fi, horror, apocalyptic, or fantasy shows that appeal to me because I find those genres interesting. It’s that we get involved with the characters at the same time, characters that are dealing with life and death situations, survival, family matters, sickness and death. The zombies have to be dealt with and/or dispatched on The Walking Dead; likewise the mutants and monsters on The X-Files. No matter how fantastic it all becomes, no matter that the survival of the main characters is sometimes very surprising or even unthinkable, I am rooting for all of them to make it. This is television at its best—series that I enjoy following, that give me something to think about and look forward to each week; that entertain me, surprise me, shock me, and involve me. There are other good series too; Sleepy Hollow, Game of Thrones, Wayward Pines, and American Horror Story are just a few that come to mind. I’ve watched them too, but The Walking Dead and The X-Files remain my favorites. I’m just thankful that they exist at all, because most of what is available to watch is reality TV. I wish someone would take a hatchet to anything that even remotely smacks of reality TV, and put all these shows out of their misery forever. They include The Kardashians, all the cooking competition shows, all the lip-syncing competition shows, all the ‘how to survive on a desert island or on a mountain-top’ shows, all the shows about bratty children who fall in line when a nanny appears, all the shows about spoiled adults whose credit cards are maxed-out and who suddenly need professional help to get them out of debt, all the shows about presumably fashionable (not) women telling other women how to dress, all the shows about pawn shop users or those who go scrounging through other people’s garage possessions, and rich men’s wives. The list goes on ad nauseum.

I don’t know what I’d do without the TCM channel that serves up films from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, that even at their worst, are one hundred times better than anything offered me by reality TV shows. Most of the old films had real substance; a few were fluff, but the majority were not. These were films made about characters you wanted to get to know, involved in life dramas that mattered. Not so for reality TV shows. I wonder how our Western culture became so obsessed with the latter, and with one family in particular; that family’s every move is reported in the media. How did that happen, and why? Or is it just a matter of watching them because there is nothing else on? Why do I not care what happens to a single one of them? Why do I wish they would all crash and burn? All I know is that I am glad I grew up when watching television was an enjoyable experience, when shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maya, Bonanza, Kojak, Sanford and Son, Bewitched, The Bionic Woman, The Bob Newhart Show, The Partridge Family, The Waltons, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, Dallas, Knot’s Landing, All in the Family, MASH, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, Night Gallery, The Night Stalker, Columbo, Cheers, Miami Vice, Magnum PI, Married With Children, Murder She Wrote, St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, and Remington Steele, among many others, were popular. I watched them all and followed them all. They made an impression on me that has lasted. They were funny, sad, moving, provocative, entertaining, scary, intelligent, but above all, memorable. That cannot be said for reality TV programs. I feel sorry for this generation that has grown up with these shows; they have no real idea of what good television is, except perhaps when they sit down to watch the TV series that we grew up with. It is no wonder that streaming has become so popular; I can watch the shows I’m interested in and ignore the junk. That’s progress.  

The wisdom of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver intrigues me with her simple wisdom that goes right to the heart of things. She writes about the things that matter in life. There is no way that you can read her words without being affected by them, without some part of you knowing that you've been touched by the truth. And having been touched by the truth, that you know that you must abide by it. Here are some of her words of wisdom in the form of quotes and poems........

·         Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

·         Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

·         Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

·         Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

•   To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

·         Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

·         The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

·         You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

·         Still, what I want in my life

is to be willing

to be dazzled—

to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

·         to live in this world

you must be able

to do three things

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go

·         When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

One of those poems that you just recognize intuitively as truth

The Journey

by Mary Oliver


One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – - -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – - -
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – - – determined to save
the only life you could save.

All My Friends by Snakehips (feat. Tinashe & Chance The Rapper)

This song is catchy and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big song...........





"All My Friends"  by Snakehips
(feat. Tinashe & Chance The Rapper)

[Tinashe:]
We open with the vultures, kissing the cannibals
Sure I get lonely, when I'm the only
Only human in the heaving heat of the animals
Bitter brown salt, stinging on my tongue and I
I will not waiver, I will not wait its turn
It will beat, it will burn, burn, burn your love into the ground
With the lips of another
'Til you get lonely, sure I get lonely, sometimes

[All:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

[Chance The Rapper:]
I hate the bar
Pharmacy addict hit a Wall Street traffic, took the car
We reinvent the wheel just to fall asleep at it, skrrr
Crash on the floor, catch the zzz's
Popping the polar opposite to the NZT
Hip hop and the propaganda say they name brand
But I done seen how the xan did my main man
The nights we won't remember
Are the nights we won't remember
I'll be gone 'till November
All my city calls me Simba
Dreams are made for cages, nigga
Lions are for real, nigga
Dying is for real, niggas dying off of pills, nigga
Friday's are for chill and I escaped the treachery
I just had to rest in peace the recipe
The rest of us are praying that the sand will leave a tan
If you're up right now, hope you hear what I'm saying (Hope you hear what I'm...)

[All:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

[Tinashe:]
Do you get lonely?
Sure I get lonely some nights
When the angels on my shoulder
Slump my head
I'm stuck here with the vultures
Hissing and circling
You didn't call me, call me, call me, call me
I'm crawling, crawling, crawling back to you

[All x2:]
All my friends are wasted
And I hate this club
Man I drink too much
Another Friday night I wasted
My eyes are black and red
I'm crawling back to you babe

The poem Funeral Blues, by WH Auden

A good friend sent me this poem recently because he had been watching the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and this is the poem that is recited during the funeral service in that film. He also knows that I like Auden's poetry, as did my father. There have been so many artists and musicians who have died recently, but today is also the one-year anniversary of my brother's death. I know there are others reading this who will understand the feelings expressed in this poem. 

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

David Bowie--Thursday's Child

You'll have to forgive me, but I am not letting go of Bowie just yet. I haven't been able to shake whatever it is that has come over me since he died. I need to hear his music, and have been going down memory lane listening to some of his older songs. Like this one from 1999.......It made quite an impact on me when I first heard it and saw the video. The man was a master at making videos that reach in and grab your heart, or that wake up your mind, or both.

The Loneliest Guy by David Bowie

Another poignant beautiful song from Bowie's Reality album from 2003......

Loving the Alien by David Bowie

An unforgettable live version of this song.......





(I agree with him when he says that this is perhaps the way the song should always have been done. The original version is good, but this version is just perfect--moving, serious, and memorable).



"Loving The Alien"

Watching them come and go
The Templars and the Saracens
They're travelling the holy land
Opening telegrams

Torture comes and torture goes
Knights who'd give you anything
They bear the cross of Coeur de Leon
Salvation for the mirror blind

But if you pray
all your sins are hooked upon the sky
Pray and the heathen lie will disappear
Prayers they hide
the saddest view
(Believing the strangest things,
loving the alien)

And your prayers they break the sky in two
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)

You pray til the break of dawn
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)

And you'll believe you're loving the alien
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)

Thinking of a different time
Palestine a modern problem
Bounty and your wealth in land
Terror in a best laid plan

Watching them come and go
Tomorrows and the yesterdays
Christians and the unbelievers
Hanging by the cross and nail

Nothing Remains: David Bowie's Vision of Love---an article by Simon Critchley

A very good article in the New York Times Opinion Pages about David Bowie and his music, written by Simon Critchley. Well worth reading.......


http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/nothing-remains-david-bowies-vision-of-love/?WT.mc_id=2016-JANUARY-OTB-INTL_AUD_DEV-0101-0131&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&_r=0

My tribute to David Bowie

So much has been and will be written about David Bowie now that he has died. I’m reading it all in the hope that I will get to know even more about the man who sang back in 2013 about “the moment you know, you know, you know” in the song Where Are We Now. I have pondered that line over and over, and each time I hear it, my feeling is that he was talking about that moment when you know that you are mortal; that moment when every fiber of your being knows that you are aware of that knowledge—that one day your life will end. That is how I interpreted the song, as an elegy for the fragility, the transience, the unfathomable ending of life, and for the knowledge that time cannot be stopped and that there is nothing we can do to prevent death. It comes to us all. It could have been that he was growing older, as we all are, and that he had regrets. Thoughts of our own mortality are not unnatural. We go on living all the same, in our paradoxical lives where we discuss in earnest what type of couch we may buy tomorrow at the same time that we realize that it does not really matter in the long run what type of couch we buy. But we do it anyway. Living each day to its fullest requires that we understand that mortality is our ultimate outcome. What makes Bowie exceptional is that he pursued those thoughts as far as he was able. He explored the idea of mortality and of dying. He visualized death. You cannot hear and watch Blackstar and not be totally undone by it, by its bravery, feelings, anxiety, fear, imagery, and darkness. He was afraid, he was vulnerable, and he shared that. He did not shy away from a difficult, almost taboo subject. But he did it his way, through his art, and it was genuine and heartfelt.

I could not then, and cannot now, listen to Where Are We Now without crying. Because even then, it seems to me that Bowie was exploring the juxtaposition of life and death in daily life.

‘As long as there's sun

As long as there's sun

As long as there's rain

As long as there's rain

As long as there's fire

As long as there's fire

As long as there's me

As long as there's you’.

Life was worth living because the sun shone, the rain fell, the fire burned, and loved ones were in his life. As long as there was a spark of life in him, and love between him and others, there was a reason to go on, to fight (illness perhaps), to create, to be. He did not want to die. I want to think that if anyone will be able to tell us what the afterlife will be like, it will be him. After all, he told us what it was like to know that he was dying through his music and his lyrics. I am not sure how he will manage to let us know about the new world he has come to, just that I think he will.

David Bowie was my first meeting with the strange, the exceptional, the out-of-the ordinary, and the other-worldly. There was a seriousness about every piece of art he created. He believed in his art and in his ability to communicate his visions to us. Hearing him for the first time when I was a teenager made me feel less alone, less alienated, and less strange than I normally felt at that time. I felt like I ‘fit’ when I heard his music. I am thankful that I met his world when I did, because I got to experience some strange and wonderful rides through that world—Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes, Heroes, TVC15, Changes, and Rebel Rebel, to name just a few of my favorites songs. Who else could write a song (Space Oddity) about a spaceman trapped in outer space with no hope of return, and get you to feel for that character? It did not matter whether that character was literal or figurative; you felt for him all the same. Bowie was the perfect choice for the main character in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth, a film that drew me in and would not let me go for a long time afterward. I dragged my sister and a few of my friends to that film, and ended up being the only one who liked it and who wanted to discuss it afterward. I wanted to share the sorrow I felt about his alien character not being able to return to his home where his family waits for him, a dying planet without water. As a young adult starting out on the long journey that is life, it was a terrible feeling to contemplate that he would never return to them. That thought was hard to bear. David Bowie seemed to understand the dualities of human existence, love and lack of love (isolation/alienation), joining the party and standing outside looking in, joy and sorrow, strength and frailty, health and sickness, and in that sense he was very much like his character in The Man Who Fell to Earth. But unlike Mr. Newton in that film, I believe that he has now returned home.  

Light pillars over Oslo last night

It has been quite cold here in Oslo for the past few days, after very mild Christmas weather. The temperatures since Monday have been creeping lower and lower, and are around 14 degrees Fahrenheit at present. It is supposed to continue this way through the weekend, after which it will warm up again. 

But the cold weather helped to create a very infrequent optical illusion last night--columns of light in the sky called light pillars. They appear to extend from the ground all the way into the sky. These are essentially atmospheric phenomena seen for the most part in cold arctic regions. They are created when natural light (sun or moon) or artificial light reflects off of flat ice crystals (in ice clouds, ice fogs, blowing snow) that are close to the Earth's surface. The result is a pillar of light that extends into the sky. They are absolutely beautiful to see!

I took a few photos from my kitchen window. The photos would have been better had I not lived in a city where there is a lot of artificial light that dilutes the illusion, but nevertheless, I did manage to get some photos that show the beauty of these atmospheric phenomena. Enjoy!

Light pillars over Oslo, 6 January 2016

Light pillars over Oslo, 6 January 2016

Light pillars over Oslo, 6 January 2016

Light pillars over Oslo, 6 January 2016

My third short story posted on WriteOn by Kindle

I just published my third short story on WriteOn by Kindle, entitled Before My Eyes. This is a short description of what it is about:

Mike and Miriam have been married for forty years. Miriam, who has resigned herself to the reality that her marriage is mediocre at best, has resolved to live her life in a positive way and to carry on with the things she enjoys. Mike for his part has never really had the time to reflect on his life together with Miriam. One autumn day, he finds that he has the time, and he promises himself that he will spend the rest of his days making his wife happy. But life is unpredictable at best.

You can find Before My Eyes here: https://writeon.amazon.com/search?headerQuery=paula%20mary%20de%20angelis&ref_=ign_h_tn_sr_ac

Please feel free to provide constructive feedback--that's how we writers improve and progress.