Fuel number two
Discover more from Practising
Four sources of energy to share:
I just finished listening to the audiobook version of The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help, the 2014 memoir by musician Amanda Palmer. Amanda’s life of non-stop, high-intensity, low-boundary fan community engagement rather horrified my introverted soul. But her story is undoubtedly moving and ultimately inspired me to ask a friend for support with an issue that I’d been struggling with on my own for months.
The work of artist Frankie Gardiner. Loose and dreamy and playful. I’m striving to be looser in my work and Frankie is one of my looseness idols. There’s just joy infused in these. I can’t get over how magical they feel.
Frankie Gardiner, Song (2023) and Saxophone, Gramophone, and Wild Boar (2023), both gouache on paper, 9 3/4 x 7 1/4” Poetry Unbound, a poetry podcast that’s perfect for poetry noobs like me. Short episodes, same structure each time: Pádraig Ó Tuama tells you an anecdote relating his own life experience to the poem he has selected, reads you the poem in his lovely Irish accent, deconstructs and analyses the poem, then reads the poem again at the end so you can hear it with newfound understanding and appreciation. The episode that got me hooked was Benjamin Gucciardi — The Rungs.
This story shared in a series of posts by fitness trainer Molly Galbraith that I can’t stop thinking about:
Got an email from a woman declining a request for her time.
She said:
“Thanks for thinking of me, but right now I’m going to decline. My plate is as full as I like.”
She did not say:
“My plate is so full.”
“My plate is overflowing.”
“I’m so busy I can’t breathe.”
“I can’t possibly add another thing.”
“My plate is as full as I like.”
No apologies.
No long explanations.
No feelings of guilt.
xx Clara
“Whatever we are given is supposed to be given away, not kept.”
— Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help