virtualDavis

Forest Sages, Leshan, Sichuan (via tedmitew.com)

On many occasions, under the influence of wine, Liu Ling would be completely free and unrestrained, sometimes even removing his clothes and sitting stark naked in the middle of his room. Some people once saw him in this state and chided him for it. Ling retorted, ‘Heaven and earth are my pillars and roof, the rooms of my house are my jacket and trousers. What are you gentlemen doing in my trousers?” (via tedmitew.com)

What better chuckle for Labor Day than a cheerful tangle of wisdom and levity from poet and fellow flaneur Liu Ling?

After many months, I’ve finally updated the little profile blurb under my photo on Facebook. It used to read, “Those who can, meander. Those who can’t, gallivant.” This genious clot of words encapsulate a mountain of wisdom! I borrowed it from @lexiconehead last winter, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to update it. Nothing worthy! Or worthier… Until today. At last, a new shimmering drip of wisdom has fallen from the twitter spigot to replace my facebook uberstatus: “Storytelling reveals meaning without defining it.” (Hannah Arendt) Eureka! Amen.

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.” ~ James A. Michener

Sometimes the image says it all. And then some… “If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking permission.”

More nuggets of wisdom from Debbie Stier.

The moral of the story is to think differently.  Really differently.  Forget the old way.  It doesn’t work in the new economy.  Stop trying to control; make something useful and help people use it; get out of the way. Re-imagine the future.

If you’re not too sick and tired of the soap boxing, prognosticating and Doomsday ranting about the future of the publishing industry, Debbie Stier is a good level head to follow. She gets it. Goodbye, Gutenberg paradigm. Hello, Socratic paradigm. But she’s not sensational, nor does she submit her readers to the histrionics proliferating lately. It’s simple: create value, share, yield control and stand clear!

• virtualDavis’s blog

I loved Franklin because, when we talked, I always felt as if I were wandering around in a big house, a big house with endless rooms, and every time we came to a closed door in one of these rooms we were able to open it. Open doors, open doors, one after another. That’s why I loved him.” (Nelson, Antonya, “Or Else”, p. 86, The New Yorker, November 19, 2007)

A little-known fact is that people wearing sunglasses never notice when you stare at them. Or, rather, you can’t see them noticing you, which amounts to the same thing: immunity to stare. [via Georgia Love.]

via columbiaspectator.com

“I like to think of myself as a flâneur, someone who wanders the corridors of culture in my life,” Wayne Koestenbaum said. “I am particularly in pursuit of experiences of bulge, glaze, pause, shock.”