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Posts from the ‘Humour’ Category

“The nature of people demands that most of them be engaged in the most frivolous possible activities – like making money.” — Marshall McLuhan

This work explores the nature of serendipity in the leaves of a money tree that, we believe, bestows largesse on all we survey.

All money is a matter of belief.

— Adam Smith

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“All dreams spin out from the same web.” — Hopi proverb

This work beats the shamanic drum of the Great Spirit that inhabits the dreamscapes of the free and the brave. Any similarity between spirits of dreamscapes and their shadows on landscapes is auditory.

Word to the wise: It would not be wise to tune-in to shamanic drumming on YouTube before reading at least the quotes in this post, lest you get carried away.

The drumming is not “making music.” It is a means of opening a doorway through sound.

— Robert Moss, Conscious Dreaming

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“Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.” — Edward de Bono

Images and words are processed by, respectively, the rear and right, and left and front lobes of the human CPU. Those in this series are processed by the fan. A cool processing unit reboots all the lobes and makes your brain laugh. 

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

— William James

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“Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.” — Luigi Pirandello

Created in the gaze of a starry lion in the August sky, this series explores how imagination is to nature as words and images are to the work of creation. 

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

― J.G. Ballard

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“The present time, together with the past, shall be judged by a great jovialist.” — Nostradamus

Will it be wine and roses, or milk and honey?

Back when TVs and phones sprouted rotary dials and hearses grew tail fins, Marshall McLuhan observed: We look at the present through a rear-view mirror, march backwards into the future.
What kind of future are we backing into at present? For answers, a great jovialist consults a prophet of doom.

“For a long time, I have been making many predictions, far in advance of events since come to pass, naming the particular locality. I acknowledge all to have been accomplished through divine power and inspiration.”

— Nostradamus

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“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” — Rumi

Following our previous post, “True Tile Tales,” we picked these tales up off the cutting-room floor, and the tiles came with them. A little bird told us they wouldn’t lie. So, truth be told…

Some stories are true that never happened.

— Elie Wiesel

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“There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? … To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

Our myths glow, as tiles made of clay and compassion, with the fire of gods.

“The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.” —Auguste Rodin

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“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.” ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Waiting for a gift from the sea” is a metaphor of practicing patience as its own reward, as virtue must be, for goodness’ sake. If inner strength and endurance are among all good things that come to those who wait, well, a gift from the sea is worth waiting for.

Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself.

— Saint Francis de Sales

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“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

When there’s nothing else he’d rather do, a writer on a raft, idles on the tide. This series of picture poetry is an artist’s impressions of words which emerge from idling well.

It is better to idle well than to work poorly.

— Anon

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“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

To welcome this spring’s new beginning of time for every purpose under the sun, the task of the arts, like that of the sciences, is to say something about Nature.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

 — Niels Bohr

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