Art, synchronicity, books, and calendar

In one of my old blogs (where I posted only three times, all dated 2008) I apparently had taken one of those silly "tests" that tells you all about yourself:  "What Famous Work of Art Are You?"  The answer I got was "Under the Wave Off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai.  They say this masterpiece is the one that "best describes" me.  I don't click on stuff like that anymore, but I do like this piece of art.  What I posted on the blog also says:

• You are very open.  You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily.

Well, I certainly hope so.  I did, after all, spend years teaching communication skills.  Then there's this in the very same post:

• You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home.

Not me at all.  Most people would say I'm a homebody.  I travel via Google, looking at my friend's house in the Netherlands, for instance.  Nope, I'm done with silly "tests."

Word of the Day #1

home·bod·y /ˈhōmˌbädē / noun = Informal (North American) = a person who likes to stay at home.  Example:  "Since she's gotten older, Bonnie is definitely even more of a homebody."

One thing that IS very much me is my interest in synchronicity. (click this link to see what I've written about "synchronicity").  While putting together this post, with the "Wave Off Kanagawa" already up there at the top, I came across this fascinating illustration on a NYTimes page about books.  Look closely, and you can see those waves in the background.  What's that kind of synchronicity mean?  Nothing?  Anything?  That I've picked the right subject for today's post, maybe?  Anyway, it's fun to see it pop up in something totally unrelated while I am actually posting about it.  Now back to the books I've been reading and looking up online.

Word of the Day #2

syn·chro·nic·i·ty /ˌsiNGkrəˈnisədē / noun = the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related, but have no discernible causal connection.  Example:  "It's synchronicity when I run across an illustration with waves from a famous piece of art just as I'm writing about that artwork."

Quotes

Happy Now: Let Playfulness Lift Your Load and Renew Your Spirit ~ by Courtney Ellis, 2021, psychology, 213 pages:

"The paradox of play is this:  we engage in whimsy not because life is easy, but because life is difficult" (p. 9).

"...the more advanced the species, the more it plays" (p. 11).

"Playfulness is essential to human flourishing" (p. 12).

"Play is anything that brings us joy and connection" (p. 13).

"...sometimes acting how we want to feel can help us get there..." (p. 46).

"Our world is filled with useless activities that can fill us with absolute delight.  And many of them are so very simple.  Take a breath, take a pause, take a taste.  Smell the herbs.  Look into the eyes of the friend.  Snuggle the baby.  Watch the snow fall.  Each of these things serves no grand purpose.  But each one changes us, incrementally transforming overly serious minds into open ones and stubborn hearts into joy-filled ones" (p. 115).

Write for Your Life ~ by Anna Quindlen, 2022, writing, 240 pages:

Quindlen writes about a blind woman with a guide dog and how she manages to get around in their shared NYC neighborhood, when it's hard enough for those of us who can see what's coming at us.  There was a taped-off area with the tape high enough for the dog to easily go under it, and the dog did go under it.  But the woman hit the tape and stopped.  Quindlen explained to the woman about the mistake the dog had made and offered her arm, which the woman took as they went onto the street around the taped area.  For Quindlen, it was "nothing but an interior anecdote, passing eventually, as these things do, into memory.  But written down, it lives.  It's there, it's real.  That's the important thing.  That's why we write things down, to give them life" (pp. 169-172).

"Writing can make memory concrete, and memory is such a hard thing to hold on to, like a Jell-O mold, all wiggly but with solid bits embedded clearly" (p. 184).

Folks may have missed my usual calendar at the first of the month because I posted twice on Friday:

1. The July calendar from Action for Happiness, scheduled to post itself at 12:01 a.m.  It has a month's worth of suggested daily actions for more happiness in our lives.
2. The Book Beginnings that I post most Fridays, this week from one of my favorite authors:  Anna Quindlen.  (See quotes from her book above.)

And that means the second post may have caused you to miss what I posted a few hours earlier.  This month, it's Jump Back Up July, if you'd like to see it.  Here's a Nelson Mandela quote from the Action for Happiness people, who provide the calendar:

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time

zones — to share what we have been doing during the week.  

Other Sunday Salon musings are linked at the bottom of Deb's Readerbuzz post.

P.S.  As I looked over this post after setting it to post itself, I noticed how much blue and yellow is in the illustrations.  Seeing the colors reminded me of the Ukrainian flag, so I came back to say that I am still praying for the people of Ukraine.