13: Outside the Box
1. “Life is too short to try and glue together the broken plates that were cheap in the first place.” ~ Blog title by master title-er Jennifer at Open Book.
2. The picture posted above is a self portrait in mosaic from a gas station in Blacksburg that was decorated by school kids and has since been torn down.
3. Strangely haunting portraits of passengers through airplane windows before Homeland Security HERE.
4. Video clip of the meteor crash in Russia that injured 100’s and broke windows HERE.
5. I just now realized while listening to old reruns of Seinfeld coming from my bedroom TV while I’m at the computer upstairs that Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) sounds just like Mary Tyler Moore.
6. My friend Mara is the poster child for our annual Mardi Gras (see HERE). Her name is even hidden in the words Mardi Gras.
7. That special moment when Fox News uses a photo of a married couple promoting “traditional marriage” and the photo is actually of a same sex couple: See HERE
8. “Today I met a woman whose license plate said Let it Be (L3TITB), the Beatles song she sang to her brother when he was dying.” ~ A sentence I imagined the dental assistant who helped with implant surgery yesterday spoke to her husband that night.
9. My blog is so old (8 years) that I can search on almost any topic and discover I have posted something about it. When I search for “outside the box” THIS is what comes up.
10. So, what do I check when given a box that wants to box me in? Read Pandora’s Box of Paradox HERE.
11. We join spokes together in a wheel / But it is the center that makes the wagon move / We shape clay into a pot / But it is the emptiness inside that hold whatever we want / We hammer wood for a house / But it is the inner space that makes it livable / We work with being / But non-being is what we use. Lao Tzu
12. Lately I’ve been pondering what the words repent, pent up, penance, penitentiary and penthouse have in common.
13. I used to like Reese’s cups but I gave them up for Lindt.
More blogging Thirteen on Thursday HERE.
February 21st, 2013 1:51 am
Love numbers 11 and 13! : D
February 21st, 2013 2:05 am
I loved those Airplane photo’s….they are really quite fantastic, and as you said–Haunting!
Lots of great stuff in this T13, my dear Colleen…..As soon asI saw the Box link, I remembered it!
February 21st, 2013 4:15 am
It’s the graininess that makes the airplane pictures so haunting.
February 21st, 2013 5:38 am
Love it as usual. I find the 13 a real challenge…like Haiku. I guess I must try to grow once more and do one of these sometime. Your posts on this are always so entertaining.
February 21st, 2013 5:57 am
love you in mosaic for as well
February 21st, 2013 7:12 am
My favorite coffee (& writing ) shop in town put up a half-wall in their storefront window to help conserve energy this winter. Now, from where I usually sit. all I can see is walking heads.
My Thursday would be nothing with you, CR.
February 21st, 2013 8:16 am
What a cool self portrait and kudos on your blog’s birthday. Eight years and you’re still one of the most interesting sites I visit. 🙂 Thanks.
http://otherworlddiner.blogspot.com/2013/02/have-you-heard-about-presidents-wife.html
February 21st, 2013 8:23 am
Wow… The photos from the airplanes made me rather emotional. I didn’t expect that.
And number 13? Oof! LOL!
Happy Thursday! 🙂
February 21st, 2013 8:43 am
🙂 Love #13, seems to be a favorite!
I am glad you have an old blog. It’s a treasure.
February 21st, 2013 9:47 am
7 awesome moment for Fox.
thnks for 11.
13. lol.
February 21st, 2013 12:39 pm
Love this list. Great stuff.
February 21st, 2013 2:07 pm
those mosaics make me want to do one!
February 21st, 2013 2:27 pm
I love that you are still doing Thursday Thirteens, too. Yours have always been the best, without fail.
It feels appropriate to be your 13th comment today. 🙂
Thank you for the link to your 50th birthday post. It’s a milestone that appears to be weighing on me, albeit lightly and with happy undertones.
February 21st, 2013 3:28 pm
#7 – One of my favorite recent medial events.
#11 – Love this! Thank you for sharing so I could encounter it.
#12 – Does it make you pensive?
#13 – This made me grin. Once, for Lent, I gave up cheese. This year I’ve added Mindfulness instead of subtracting anything.
February 21st, 2013 3:29 pm
Obviously that was supposed to be MEDIA. The extra ‘l’ is courtesy of my foster dog, Samwise.
February 21st, 2013 9:43 pm
#7 – isn’t revenge sweet? Hilarious!!
March 7th, 2013 11:42 am
My favorite chapter of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu is number eleven, the one you chose to quote. I’m impressed that you even put it as your number eleven. When I teach religions of the world, I use all my translations (though I especially like Stephen Mitchell’s translation), letting the students read it aloud from each version. Did you know that Ursula K. Le Guin also translated it? Here’s her version of number eleven, with her comment below it:
The uses of not
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.
———————————–
One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He’s explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots.
March 7th, 2013 11:59 am
Colleen, I decided to share this with my readers, who may come visit you, too.
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/where-pots-not.html
March 7th, 2013 12:14 pm
Thanks, Bonnie. I do love Lao Tzu too, and Ursula Le Guin. So many translations boggle my mind. His writings sometimes remind me of a zen koan, but that’s only when I over think the simple.
March 7th, 2013 4:56 pm
If you get a copy of Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation, let me know what you think. I really like her wording.