mon coeur trouve son rythme avec vous

aptitude

Good morning

I have taken the day off to prepare and organise my mind
for this afternoon's psychometric tests

(This forms part of the recruitment and selection process of something I am pursuing)

Fascinating material.
I do what my husband did when he had to write his wedding-speech: he googles.

I am reading through the different sections and test-fields, when it strikes me:
Luckily people need not pass an aptitude test to knock and enter through the door of life!
Few of us would be here...
I read through definitions of

• Verbal reasoning
• Numeric reasoning
• Abstract reasoning
• Spatial reasoning
• Mechanical reasoning
• Data checking
• Work sampling

Truly tickles the mind out of its (numb?) comfort zone-stuff.

I'll keep you posted on the test-scores this afternoon.

wisdom

I feel love is... knowing
I think love is... considerate
I know love is... necessary
I believe love is... all there is

m

Person of the week: Love made visible

♥

Love made visible is the unity of Rebecca and Bruce.
Check them out here.

Their photographic style is breath taking.
Stupendously talented.
This is a wedding they captured on the 1st of Aug.
It is so touching and awesome
and I want to BE the bride...
and have those moments (again, since I had them 2.5 years ago)

James and Marissa... what an unbelievably real and authentic couple...

and how is this photography !!!????
out of this world...!
If you have a wedding, a baby, a moment, a new house,
an "anything" you want to celebrate/ capture:

you'd do well to get the professionals in
(and have them capture it supremely sweetly.)
contact: Rebecca Cell: 0721701890
Email: rebecca@lovemadevisible.co.za

and to end off: Rebecca's sister: Ebony (below)

l♥ve

Love is the adventure
Life is just the terrain

Maria

spin the wheels

Spin the wheels of change
and see the sparks
the magic
the metamorphosis of your world
I'm so excited:
I went for 2 interviews.
I have been with my current employer for 6.5 years
and felt uprooted inside the company
and my leaders have been a bit schizophrenic
in their direction & style.
I decided to put some feelers out...
and low and behold
a vast and exciting world was waiting
outside my office complex.

I'll keep you posted

m

milan kundera

poetry post reading " The Unbearable lightness of being"
Milan Kundera

It has all been said
I am the anxious Tereza and the world-wise Sabina
betrayed
and also the one betraying
I am the book
and the words
and the letters
black on white
one sentence no more ink
than the next
no word heavier
or lighter
than the next
and so it is
hallo and
goodbye
Es muss sein

Maria

trust and hope and actively work towards your dream

trust
hope
keep smiling

happiness and light

♥

look at what I've found: Jen Wallace's blog.
It is called; Indie Fix

Truly- Truly do yourself a favour and click over and explore.

________________________________________________________________

♥ ♥

Another inspiration- injection: Friday-night performance of
Swan Lake
at the Cape Town Artscape theatre.



Prima ballerina (and subsequent person of the week) Daria Klimentova gave such an elegant, supremely skillful performance that she had the audience's hands burning with applause.

what a treat!

Daria was born in Prague and studied ballet there, before becoming the principal dancer of the Cape Town City Ballet in 1992. She then joined the Scottish Ballet company and in 1996 was invited to dance as senior principal for the English National Ballet Academy.

Tchaikovsky's music sweeps you away to the dreamy lake where the prince sees Odette...
You know the rest: Love triumphs.

Swan lake first appeared on stage in 1877 in Moscow.
This timeless piece is the most romantic and exquisite of ballet's offering.
The Artscape stage decor, lighting, mist,
music and ambiance made for fantastical delivery of this classic.

I was blown away.

______________________________________________________________

♥ ♥

quiet and dreamy.
like a perfect pirouette.... have a blessed week

keep warm and keep loving
m

honourable..... valiant and a true gentleman

hon·or·a·ble

   [on-er-uh-buhl]

adjective

1. in accordance with or characterized by principles of honor; upright:
They were all honorable men.

2. of high rank, dignity, or distinction; noble, illustrious, or distinguished.

3. worthy of honor and high respect; estimable; creditable.

4.bringing honor or credit; consistent with honor.

happiness

I am grateful and happy

Mother

Powerful piece by Iyanla Vanzant.


Now I firstly (and eagerly) want to draw context here.... my mother was married for 5 years to my father, before they decided to start a family.
Tick stable home environment, Tick non-shotgun-wedding, Tick good birth control
I was the first of three girls. She started in 1980, then repeated the process in 1983 and again, for the third and final time, in 1987. She is a social worker and answered her calling from a young age: caring for people. Having a deep empathy and compassion for and with people. She does not judge, she does not harm, she is a carer in the deepest sense. and yet,
the earth, being the broken and fragmented temporary home it is,
brings with it: hurts, disappointment, tired parents, stressed parents, happy parents and non-ice-cream purchasing-parents..... in other words: it is life!

and this piece is powerful in so many ways. Enjoy.

"Forgive your mother for the many, many times she was not the mother you wanted her to be. Forgive her for the times she did not do things the way you needed them done.

Forgive your mother for not protecting you or speaking out in your behalf. Forgive her for not guiding you in the right direction and for the times she totally lost her direction, dragging you along with her.
Forgive her not because you are excusing whatever she did or however it affected you.
Forgive your mother because holding judgments against her has a devastating impact on your soul.

The judgments you hold will eventually break your heart. Forgive your mother because the truth is, she did the best she could whether you would like to believe it or not.

You may have been harboring judgments or negative opinions about your mother and the way she did or did not mother you. Release and Forgive. "

and with this.... we also rejoice along with all the new mothers....
Sascha and Martin Dainton who received little (2.57kg) Michael in their care.
wonderful circle of life.

Person of the week is Dr D Joubert

Person of the week goes to:
Dr Deon Joubert.

He is my dentist (the young replacement of my Australia-bound older-version Dr Scheepers)
He receives this weeks award for being gentle, explaining every instrument, every step of the process and encouraging me, oh and
for not hurting me.


He is slowly demolishing my fear of the drill and the chair....

Thanks Doc!


(Image credit: Shutterstock)

new

a new idea....


I support myself
I support what I feel
I support what I say
I support my goals
I endorse it all... Maria!

I do not want to second guess myself
I do not want to doubt my feelings

I want to live an honest life
a truthful life
a meaningful life

amen

Tara S Mohr - poetry gem

Friday, May 6, 2011 by Tara

I never believed in death, for I never saw it.

I saw only that this became that.
The petals fell away, and the thing became a stem,
and the floor became scattered in pink.

Containers break. Eras end.
Thing-ness only a stopping ground,
a pause at the train station, followed by moving on.

You were never yourself, and I was never I.
Everything cresting and falling,
giving way, again, to the ocean.

We need more words like arise and fewer like die.

When you know you are a just a disco party
of cells that came together for a time,
you’ll live like the blazing sphere you are,
and dance with the spheres around you.

You won’t ask of them, or tax them, or want them to be anything.

You’ll be boogieing in the sun, and look
over your shoulder, breathless, to say

Quick! It’s only for a moment that we are this.
Let’s feel the sting when we land from a raucous jump.
Let’s watch our knees glisten.
Let’s wait here, as night covers our skin.
Let’s watch our hands darken.

Let’s cry, at the realness of it, and the dreamness of it.
Let’s marvel at it.

-Tara Sophia Mohr

what does it all mean...?

I'm feeling a bit confused and tired... too much uncertainty at work.. and new paths they expect me to walk without a map / guidebook...

here is something beautiful about rejuvenation.




Tara Sophia Mohr writes:


In the end you won’t be known for the things you did,
or what you built, or what you said.

You won’t even be known for the love given or the hearts saved,
because in the end you won’t be known.
You won’t be asked, by a vast creator full of light:
What did you do to be known?
You will be asked:
Did you know it, this place, this journey?

What there is to know can’t be written.
Something between the crispness of air
and the glint in her eye and the texture of the orange peel.

What you’ll want a thousand years from now is this:

a memory that beats like a heart–

a travel memory,
of what it was to walk here, alive and warm and textured within.

Sweet brightness, aliveness, take-me-now-ness that is life.

You are here to pay attention.

That is enough.



image credit: Many Lynne.



ok, ciao for now,
m

Women's Day 2011

Blanche and I woke up at 6.30am to get ready for our "support-mission" geared at
own youngest sibling's first race in Stellenbosch.
TotalSport Womens' Day run.

here are some pics.


the winning-wave!

happy to be finished: Maggie and Phillippa



well done Maggie: you make us proud.
You are a star and a legend.
xx

Hard hitting read

I'm currently reading Larry Winget's (anti-self help) book titled
shut up
stop whining
& get a life


yes, he is meant to look mean and he calls himself the pitbull of personal development.
Once I got over the cover (it is neither the font nor colours that I like) the message really was powerful.
It was refreshing and yes, it was not new, but the delivery was.

a) we don't listen enough
(we don't listen to people who are more successful than ourselves)
we don't listen to criticism and we don't listen to our hearts
__________________________________

ps. with the term success: please interpret and substitute it with meaningful content
success for me:
a person who lives a healthy, balanced life, stepping up with gratitude and challenge, while operating from a humble, yet efficient mental place.
____________________________________________________

b) we are self-involved and carry around (expressed or unexpressed) disappointment.
This is toxic and we release this negative "this happened-to-me, that happened -to-me" vibe to the people who least deserve it (our loved ones)

c) take responsibility for every little thing in your life
(the way you talk to yourself and those around you, the way you drive, the way you treat the grocery-till clerk, the way you eat, what you eat, who you spend time with and how much.)

I'll probably be elaborating more in the weeks to come as I learn more.

ciao for now,

cute love-poem... a good invention

A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention

by Yehuda Amichai

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

♥ Beautiful Lara Kirsten

Talented, beautiful and intoxicating-raw, traveling-writer-performer, Lara Kirsten.
Read more on her blog here.

I just want to grab your attention with this small verse from her recent poem:
Unconditional love.
"... give me rather love full of groping

and precarious conditions

i want to get drunk

on an overflow of

strivingly changing tempestuous temperamentality

i want to get lost and found in such

finely cut imperfect conditions..."

Breath

I have been reading and thinking a lot about the "present moment"
and the hurry towards the future
the desperate rush... some call it the rat-race, some call it modern living, some call it ambition

In my book: 10 poems to change your life
the writer does an analysis of Kabir's poem: the time before death.

The most beautiful part of the analysis :

Breath

' it refers to this present moment, not only in its external unfolding of events, but also in the domain of interior time, the time of the soul.. it is the gateway.'

it binds us

Your thoughts carry weight