Audrey so Audrey

Audrey Hepburn chatting during screen test for Roman Holiday.

57 seconds... never enough Audrey.

a pictorial ode to rdj...

For the projectivist ;)




1. Robert Downey Jr, 2. Robert Downey Jr, 3. Robert Downey Jr, 4. Robert Downey Jr, 5. Robert Downey Jr., 6. Robert Downey Jr, 7. Robert Downey Jr., 8. Robert Downey Jr, 9. Robert Downey Jr 2

truth is beauty

Something I read today by choreographer Mia Michaels:

Your reality is your reality.
Your perception is your
perception.
Whatever your truth is, it is.
Trying to understand the
difference between your truth
and the truth of others that
has been embedded in your
consciousness and being is a
great challenge. How do we
honestly know the difference?
Go inside of yourself…
The answer lies there.
There are two types of life
warriors. The leaders and the
followers. Being a leader requires
constant seeking of one’s own
truth. Being a follower is simply
just believing and owning someone
else’s truth.
What are you? What is your
beauty? What is your ugliness?
What is fat? What is happy?
What is perfect? What is love?
What is art? What is?
Your perception of your truth
is what is, at this moment,
in this time, and most likely
ever changing.
Everyone being wired and divinely
programmed differently has their
own truth. Every truth is valid
and perhaps it’s the complete
opposite of others’.
Does it mean it’s wrong?
Nothing is right or wrong…
It just is. Right or wrong is
merely just ur own judgment and
perception.
Creating my own right and my own
reality, and beauty on a stage or
Screen is my truth at this time.
My own vision and instincts are
what makes me… me.
My timing, phrasing, and choice
of vocabulary is my right. What
is corny or false to me could
be the most brilliant thing for
someone else.
Seek your own truth. Stand
strong in it. Know it. Own it.
Follow your gut instincts and
never question. Your reality is
yours and your reality is perfect!
Remember, my writing is my own
little perception, of my own little
truth inside this big vast world
of billions of individual truths.
Perfect.

Wandering around a (sold or told) reality

Saw this on Penni's blog:

"People write books for children and other people write about the books written for children but I don't think it's for the children at all. I think that all the people who worry so much about the children are really worrying about themselves, about keeping their world together and getting the children to help them do it, getting the children to agree that it is indeed a world. Each new generation of children has to be told: `This is a world, this is what one does, one lives like this.' Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: `This is not a world, this is nothing, there's no way to live at all.'"

Russell Hoban, from Turtle Diary, ch 24 found via this site...

And it got me thinking....


I must say I love these notions on so many levels.

I feel connected to the imagined children above which see through the 'lies', don't like this world and say so. For an adult it's more like when you stop listening to what the politicians, journalists, etc, are saying and start trying to read between the lines. Understanding we're not always being told the truth and that many in influential positions are trying to get us to see things how they wish, how it suits them; they want us to believe in the world they're selling us because it suits their needs (will further their power, suit their specific goals, etc).

I also love how it reminds me of childhood. And of how we have to leave childhood and childish notions behind. Of course, this is a slow process and I don't think all of us fully achieve this. And I wonder if we even should. Is it better to believe the world is safe, that people are good, that if you're kind all will be well for you? To trust those in power (in democracies at least) as we trusted our parents when we were children (and was that really always the right thing to do?). We all seem to dream we have a rosy future. Hundreds of years back people believed that as time went by things would degenerate, become worse. Now we tend to believe that the future will be better, that things always improve. A quiet faith that all will be better tomorrow. Such a paradigm is so ingrained I'm not sure we all realise this is what we believe.

So, is it best to remain hopeful as children are? As we used to be? We tend to become more cynical as wiser adults. And here: I half mean 'wiser' and half wonder at what is wisdom really, as i think we are wiser as children in many ways. Maybe not as in being hopeful (I'm still not sure about this obviously, hence this pondering) but in that children live in the moment more (this would make the hopefulness not so much about hope, meaning focus on a future, but about faith/trust). Living in the moment means no baggage of the past nor the weight of the future, which leads to shoulds about behaviour today as certain rules must be followed in order to achieve that future. And we're told what that future ought to look like as we grow up.

It would seem in the light of this that it's better to hang onto childishness/childfulness. Yet, additionally, be as these children who say 'This is not a world,' I'm not buying into the world you're selling me; I don't like it, and I don't think it exists in truth, so I'm not playing along. As the quote implies, adults don't want anyone dissing their 'reality', the world they believe in. Even in small ways, people who manipulate or play a role (eg. bimbo, in order to use their beauty to gain attention and avoid people noticing their weaknesses; tough guy, to encourage people to believe they're strong and not to be messed with in order that others don't come close and discover that their heart is not so tough and then use that against them) are doing so to protect themselves and achieve their 'needs', and may not even realise this is what they're doing. Those that do this need others to believe the reality they are selling them; to buy into it. If you don't play along you're not welcome - they don't want to hear that one voice pointing out to everyone that actually the emperor has no clothes (thereby exposing them).

We all face this dilemma, I believe, of how much to go along with the world we're told (however subtly or unknowingly) to fit into and how much to be ourselves, ie. someone who believes differently, has different values, perceives a different reality. And we often have to weigh up how safe it is to do so. Those with different beliefs or lifestyles are today, still, faced with suffering: from being a teased outcast to being executed in some countries. I think, more generally speaking, most people choose to appear to go along with the story we're told is reality and we're told is reality as it should be, and yet in their own quiet space increasingly (or, if outer circumstances worsen, decreasingly) follow their own views of what reality is and ought to be, of what is right and wrong. And, of course, right and wrong and reality are different for everyone once you get down to it. What suits one does not suit another. ...

Ah, there are so many tangents here which I could wander upon!

To return to the quotation that started all this musing... I'd prefer to see children's stories (and fantasy too, as Penni linked herself) and their storytellers as aiming to encourage the readers/children to see the deeper reality of life, the magic that underlies all life. By this I mean how even fantastical tales can awaken truthful feelings and realities; can remind people of the wonders of life, of ourselves and our spirit; awaken the feelings that adventure, unusual or caring relationships, achievements, the creation of beauty or the following of dreams can lead to. In this way we connect with those places in ourselves, and may be inspired... or, at the least, to see the beauty in life and the magic of existence. But... liking to see things this way... that's likely the childish one in me. ;)

Simply enough

All may not be well in my world lately, but it is somehow improved by the day being cool, and covered by soft cloud and gentle rain which makes all the green that much greener and even lends the air the scent of peppermint tree.

Even the birds seem happier.