Premiered Jan 5, 2023 In 1984, it was aired on the BBC and shocked tens of millions of UK viewers. Four months later, it was broadcast in America and became the most watched basic cable program in history. It remains one of the most acclaimed made-for-television movies ever. THREADS is a docudrama about the effects of a nuclear attack on the working-class city of Sheffield, England as the fabric of society unravels.
Monthly Archives: July 2023
How to change your mind
(Courtesy of Steve Hines)
Iago says: “I am not what I am”
What does it mean when Iago says I am not what I am?
Iago says (Othello Act I. Scene 1, line 65) “I am not what I am,” which can be interpreted as “I am not what I seem.” But it is also reminiscent of a quotation from the Bible which Shakespeare would have known: In Exodus, God gives his laws to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and Moses asks God his name. God replies: “I am that I am” (Exodus,iii,14).
(Cliffnotes.com)
Word-Built World: apocalypse
“Have you heard the awesome news?
The end of the world is almost here.
It begins on May 21, 2011.
The Bible guarantees it.”
Photo: Bart Everson
A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg
apocalypse
PRONUNCIATION: (uh-POK-uh-lips)
MEANING: noun:
1. The destruction of the world.
2. Any widespread destruction or disaster.
3. A massive, decisive conflict.
4. A prophecy.
5. The unveiling, the revealing
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin apocalypsis (revelation), from Greek apokalypsis (revelation), from apo- (un-) + kalyptein (to cover). Earliest documented use: 1384.
NOTES: The Book of Revelation is the last book of the New Testament. It’s also known as the Apocalypse and discusses prophecies, end times, the Second Coming, Judgment Day, etc.
Free Will Astrology: Week of July 27, 2023
JULY 25, 2023 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY (NewCity.com)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You are about to read a thunderbolt of sublime prophecies. It’s guaranteed to nurture the genius in your soul’s underground cave. Are you ready? 1. Your higher self will prod you to compose a bold prayer in which you ask for stuff you thought you weren’t supposed to ask for. 2. Your higher self will know what to do to enhance your love life by at least twenty percent, possibly more. 3. Your higher self will give you extra access to creativity and imaginative powers, enabling you to make two practical improvements in your life.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1991, John Kilcullen began publishing books with “for Dummies” in the title: for example, “Sex for Dummies,” “Time Management for Dummies,” “Personal Finance for Dummies,” and my favorite, “Stress Management for Dummies.” There are now over 300 books in this series. They aren’t truly for stupid people, of course. They’re designed to be robust introductions to interesting and useful subjects. I invite you to emulate Kilcullen’s mindset, Taurus. Be innocent, curious, and eager to learn. Adopt a beginner’s mind that’s receptive to being educated and influenced. (If you want to know more, go here: tinyurl.com/TruthForDummies)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I could be converted to a religion of grass,” says Indigenous author Louise Erdrich in her essay from the book “Heart of the Land.” “Sink deep roots. Conserve water. Respect and nourish your neighbors. Such are the tenets. As for practice—grow lush in order to be devoured or caressed, stiffen in sweet elegance, invent startling seeds. Connect underground. Provide. Provide. Be lovely and do no harm.” I advocate a similar approach to life for you Geminis in the coming weeks. Be earthy, sensual and lush. (PS: Erdrich is a Gemini.)
CANCER (June 21-July 22): I hereby appoint myself as your temporary social director. My first action is to let you know that from an astrological perspective, the next nine months will be an excellent time to expand and deepen your network of connections and your web of allies. I invite you to cultivate a vigorous grapevine that keeps you up-to-date about the latest trends affecting your work and play. Refine your gossip skills. Be friendlier than you’ve ever been. Are you the best ally and collaborator you could possibly be? If not, make that one of your assignments.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): There are two kinds of holidays: those created by humans and those arising from the relationship between the sun and earth. In the former category are various independence days: July 4 in the U.S., July 1 in Canada, July 14 in France, and June 2 in Italy. Japan observes Foundation Day on February 11. Among the second kind of holiday is Lammas on August 1, a pagan festival that in the Northern Hemisphere marks the halfway point between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. In pre-industrial cultures, Lammas celebrated the grain harvest and featured outpourings of gratitude for the crops that provide essential food. Modern revelers give thanks for not only the grain, but all the nourishing bounties provided by the sun’s and earth’s collaborations. I believe you Leos are smart to make Lammas one of your main holidays. What’s ready to be harvested in your world. What are your prime sources of gratitude?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): For many of us, a disposal company regularly comes to our homes to haul away the garbage we have generated. Wouldn’t it be great if there was also a reliable service that purged our minds and hearts of the psychic gunk that naturally accumulates? Psychotherapists provide this blessing for some of us, and I know people who derive similar benefits from spiritual rituals. Getting drunk or intoxicated may work, too, although those states often generate their own dreck. With these thoughts in mind, Virgo, meditate on how you might cleanse your soul with a steady, ennobling practice. Now is an excellent time to establish or deepen this tradition.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I’m wondering if there is a beloved person to whom you could say these words by Rumi: “You are the sky my spirit circles in, the love inside love, the resurrection-place.” If you have no such an ally, Libra, the coming months will be a favorable time to attract them into your life. If there is such a companion, I hope you will share Rumi’s lyrics with them, then go further. Say the words Leonard Cohen spoke: “When I’m with you, I want to be the kind of hero I wanted to be when I was seven years old.”
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your theme for the coming weeks is “pleasurable gooseflesh.” I expect and hope you’ll experience it in abundance. You need it and deserve it! Editor Corrie Evanoff describes “pleasurable gooseflesh” as “the primal response we experience when something suddenly violates our expectations in a good way.” It can also be called “frisson”—a French word meaning “a sudden feeling or sensation of excitement, emotion, or thrill.” One way this joy may occur is when we listen to a playlist of songs sequenced in unpredictable ways—say Mozart followed by Johnny Cash, then Edith Piaf, Led Zeppelin, Blondie, Queen, Luciano Pavarotti, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Here’s your homework: Imagine three ways you can stimulate pleasurable gooseflesh and frisson, then go out and make them happen.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “Fire rests by changing,” wrote ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. In accordance with astrological omens, I ask you to meditate on that riddle. Here are some preliminary thoughts: The flames rising from a burning substance are always moving, always active, never the same shape. Yet they comprise the same fire. As long as they keep shifting and dancing, they are alive and vital. If they stop changing, they die out and disappear. The fire needs to keep changing to thrive! Dear Sagittarius, here’s your assignment: Be like the fire; rest by changing.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There’s ample scientific evidence that smelling cucumbers can diminish feelings of claustrophobia. For example, some people become anxious when they are crammed inside a narrow metal tube to get an MRI. But numerous imaging facilities have reduced that discomfort with the help of cucumber oil applied to cotton pads and brought into proximity to patients’ noses. I would love it if there were also natural ways to help you break free of any and all claustrophobic situations, Capricorn. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to hone and practice the arts of liberation.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone,” said Aquarian author Gertrude Stein. She was often quirky and even downright weird, but as you can see, she also had a heartful attitude about her alliances. Stein delivered another pithy quote that revealed her tender approach to relationships. She said that love requires a skillful audacity about sharing one’s inner world. I hope you will put these two gems of advice at the center of your attention, Aquarius. You are ready for a strong, sustained dose of deeply expressive interpersonal action.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, ninety-five percent of high school students acknowledge they have participated in academic cheating. We can conclude that just one of twenty students have never cheated—a percentage that probably matches how many non-cheaters there are in every area of life. I mention this because I believe it’s a favorable time to atone for any deceptions you have engaged in, whether in school or elsewhere. I’m not necessarily urging you to confess, but I encourage you to make amends and corrections to the extent you can. Also: Have a long talk with yourself about what you can learn from your past cons and swindles.
Homework: What single good change would set in motion a cascade of further good changes? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
Why change is so scary — and how to unlock its potential
369,047 views | Maya Shankar • TED2023
Unexpected change like an accident, an illness or a relationship that suddenly ends is inevitable — and disorienting. With a heartfelt and optimistic take on life’s curveballs, cognitive scientist Maya Shankar shares how these challenging moments can inspire transformation, offering three questions to ask when facing uncertainty, so you can let go of rigidity and embrace change.
About the speaker
Cognitive scientist See speaker profile
Maya Shankar brings together the science of human behavior and storytelling to help us understand how we can better navigate big life changes.
Rilke on Inspiration and the Combinatorial Nature of Creativity
By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)
The task of creative work is to weave something new and wonderful out of the tattered threads of culture and convention. On the enchanted loom of the mind, our memory and experience, our personal histories and cultural histories, interlace into a particular pattern which only that particular mind can produce — such is the combinatorial nature of creativity.
In describing the machinery of his own mind, Albert Einstein called this interweaving “combinatory play.” It cannot be willed. It cannot be rushed. It can only be welcomed — the work of creativity is the work of bearing witness to the weaving.
The inner workings of that unwillable loom, which we often call inspiration, is what Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926) explores in a beautiful passage from his only novel — the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (public library), which also gave us Rilke on the essence of art.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Decades before pioneering psycholinguist Vera John-Steiner noted that “in the course of creative endeavors, artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding,” Rilke writes:
For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one has long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars — and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises.
More than half a century before neurologist Oliver Sacks enumerated “forgetting” among the three essential elements of creativity, Rilke adds:
Complement The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge with Rilke on what it takes to be an artist, the life-expanding value of uncertainty, how great sadnesses bring us closer to ourselves, and what it really means to love, then revisit physicist David Bohm on creativity and Lou Andreas-Salomé — the world’s first woman psychoanalyst and Rilke’s great muse — on overcoming creative block.
Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U (Live)
Tarot Card for July 27: The Two of Cups
The Two of Cups
And here we have the Lord of Love, a card of bliss, deep joyous love reciprocated fully and with great enthusiasm, a card of reconciliations and new growth! Here we see harmonious and contented exchanges of emotion, which vibrate with an ecstatic undercurrent of passion and heat.
Because this card is a reflective and receptive one, there’s an issue that people sometimes forget when reading it – to be truly loved, deeply treasured, valued highly by others, we must first and foremost strive to feel those things for ourselves. When we work toward loving ourselves, we hold our inner nature in high regard, treating it with deference and proper respect. When we see ourselves in that light, other people cannot help but respond to our personal sense of value.
Furthermore, when we work to love ourselves, we release so many areas of self-doubt and uncertainty that we become infused by a new energy – and this we can lavish on others. The Two of Cups is about engaging in a caring and tender fashion with our own needs, first and foremost.
It isn’t so much about achieving self-love, as about, in every single day of our lives, striving towards self-love. That action leads us into a positive, self-supportive and accepting approach to life. And also, when we stop wasting energy telling ourselves what’s wrong with us, we have lots more energy to enjoy being who we are.
When this card comes up in a reading, if it relates to the inner journey, then it tells you to put your attention in the moment, to leave the past behind, and to let yourself be free to enjoy everything that comes your way.
If it relates to outer events, it may point to a forthcoming reconciliation in a relationship where there has been pain and disappointment – this need not be a love affair, it can cover many different types of loving relationship.
It might point up a new relationship which has recently begun and which will grow into a deep and lasting friendship or affair.
And finally, it may reassure you that the meaningful relationship in your life will strengthen and grow, developing into exactly what you need it to be!!
(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)