We need more Love and Kindness in the World
Issue 15
"It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines." - Isaac Asimov
Beautiful Insights
A Letter to Myself
Here is the answer to the question I was once asked, “If you wrote a letter to your sixteen-year-old self what would you say?”
Dear Fen,
After many years on this earth here are 10 lessons for living a more fulfilling life:
1. Give and it will be given to you. This doesn’t mean that you do things just to get something in return. Instead, you do things out of the kindness of your heart.
2. Experiment with life. The best way to learn is to make mistakes.
3. Life is all about light. Embrace it. Dance with it. And bathe in its beauty.
4. Try to inject spirit and emotion into everything you do. Sometimes it’s the small things which are most capable of moving the soul.
5. You should try to find the poetry in life, something that reflects your personality.
6. Don’t compare your life with others. Believe in yourself.
7. Enjoy what you’re doing, have fun. And this will show through in everything you do.
8. It doesn’t matter what you own or what you have. Just be grateful and be true to yourself.
9. Life is magical and exciting. Everywhere you look there are life opportunities; it’s just a question of seeing them. Learn to open your eyes.
10. Be kind. Be free. Be open-minded. Open your mind to your imagination...
Yours in creativity,
P.S. Just beware: The trouble with having an open mind, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it!
Beautiful Art
"I think of my life’s work as a celebration of all of nature, an orchestra that plays not the sounds of one musician, the music of one species, but rather an expression of all of nature’s songs." - Gregory Colbert
The Amazing and Important Work of Gregory Colbert
Photographer/filmmaker Gregory Colbert was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960. He began his career in Paris in 1983 making documentary films on social issues.
His first exhibition opened to wide critical acclaim in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland, but for the next ten years, Colbert went off the grid and did not publicly share his art or show any films. He began travelling the world to photograph and film wondrous interactions between animals and humans.
He said, "I have been tusked by an elephant, almost eaten by a sperm whale, knocked off my feet by a rhinoceros, embraced by a jaguar, given a haircut by a tiger shark, chased by a hippo and a black mamba, brought to my knees by malaria and dengue. But I was always able to avoid the greatest danger of all. Never stop exploring the things that open you, or that you love."
After ten years passed, Colbert returned to present the Ashes and Snow exhibition at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, in 2002.
The exhibition was an immersive experience of nature that combines photographic artworks, films, and soundscapes, housed in a purpose-built travelling structure called the Nomadic Museum.
The Nomadic Museum moved from Venice to New York in 2005 and then migrated to Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Mexico City, and is charted to travel the globe with no final destination.
Ashes and Snow has welcomed more than ten million visitors to date, making it the most attended exhibition by any living artist in history.
Colbert believes that there is a shared desire for all species to participate in one universal conversation. He sees nature as the greatest storyteller of all and himself as an apprentice to nature. His works are collaborations between humans and other animals that express the shared poetic sensibilities of all species.
He said, "In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people saw themselves as part of nature and not outside of it.
The destiny of whales cannot be separated from the destiny of man, and the destiny of man cannot be separated from the destiny of all of nature. I am exploring new narratives that help build a bridge across the artificial boundaries we have established between ourselves and other species."
Website: https://gregorycolbert.com
Beautiful Love & Sadness
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness." - John Keats
Love and Loss
In 1819 John Keats became engaged to the love of his life Fanny Brawne. He strongly wanted to build his role as a poet and earn some money from his work before marrying Fanny.
But he then became extremely unwell from tuberculosis for that to happen. Whilst suffering with the disease they could have no physical contact. They communicated through a glass screen and sent each other love letters.
"I have two luxuries to brood over on my walks;" he wrote to her, "...your loveliness, and the hour of my death".
For a time, they did share the same house. Sort of. In the village of Hampstead, England, John Keats wrote most of his great odes and mature poems in a two-family house he shared with his friend Charles Brown.
Separated from Fanny only by a thin wall, Keats composed lyrics of love and desire and frustration. He tossed and turned feverishly in his bed each night, tortured by the sounds of Fanny in the other half of the house: a laugh, a tap on the wall or a rustle of falling silks.
In the autumn of 1820, John Keats aged 24 left England for Italy. Desperately ill from tuberculosis, he hoped the warmer climate might extend his life, but he passed away in Rome, Italy on 23 February 1821 at the age of 25.
Before leaving for Italy, he wrote a very sad final letter to Fanny. When in Italy he felt unable to write to her again or read her letters.
My dearest Girl,
I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy - the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good...
If I cannot live with you, I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you - I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility! It requires a luckier Star than mine! It will never be…
Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once - I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world... I see nothing but thorns for the future... I see no prospect of any rest.
I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any - the world is too brutal for me - I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there... I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
God bless you,
J.K—
Beautiful Poetry
The following ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci (The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy) was written by Keats in the heat of his passion for Fanny.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful — a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed — Ah! woe betide! —
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.“Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all you need to know.” John Keats
Beautiful Movie
Edie
A film about regrets and it never being too late. Some 30 years ago Edie's father planned a climbing trip to climb the magnificent Suilven mountain in Scotland. Edie yearned to go but her husband George, a difficult and controlling man, made her stay at home.
In the months following her husband's death, after looking after him for many years with a long illness, Edie becomes forgetful and her daughter thinks it best for her to go into a care home.
Edie, now 83, thinks she can look after herself and doesn't want to give up on life just yet.
Her biggest regret in life was not going on that climbing trip, so after finding the old postcard her father gave her of the imposing Suilven mountain she decides to make the trip herself alone.
Packing an old camping bag, leaving her life behind, Edie embarks on an adventure she never got to have. She hops aboard a train from London to Inverness and hitches a ride west of Sutherland in the hope of completing the climb.
When she arrives in the area she hires a local walking guide, a kind young man named Jonny. The two eventually become unlikely pals.
The primary filming location was the village of Lochinver. With beautiful photography of the Highlands and some breathtaking landscapes all around Sutherland.
The director Simon Hunter said, "I came up with the story for Edie after spending two years inside a small post production studio in Ealing directing a green screen visual effects movie. I swore to myself that I wanted to make a movie outside in the wilds. I had climbed Suilven many times with my dad and was determined to make this movie. I wondered to myself, who would climb Suilven!? I decided to make it the least likely person of all. A bitter and resentful old lady in her eighties."
An amazing performance by Sheila Hancock - in her eighties - she completed the trek up the mountain herself! She said, "It was glorious. I can never match it, quite honestly. We climbed that bloody mountain. The crew climbed it with cameras and sound equipment. We all felt profoundly involved in it, in a way that I never have in any other job."
Hunter said, "There was no one else. We needed someone who would climb the mountain for real but also be an actress of the very finest calibre. There is no one else like her. She climbed every single step that the story demanded and she was utterly amazing and spellbinding. We camped out for three nights in a row. Camping wasn't really Sheila's thing... but never a word of complaint."
Hunter was asked, why Suilven? "It's my favourite mountain. It's utterly captivating. I climbed it many times as a child and I just love it. It's childlike, it's prehistoric, it's one of the most incredible, magical places on earth. There was never a second option."
Beautiful Divination
Tarot Card: Ace of Cups
Living in the Flow of Love
I believe the Ace of Cups is one of the most powerful and positive cards in the tarot deck. To fully appreciate this card is to be blessed indeed.
A symbol of flowing love and kindness.
This is a time to open your heart, to be prepared to give and receive love. A free-flowing unconditional love that nurtures and inspires the receiver as much as you.
Love, like water, needs to flow freely; to be given without expectations. On our earth water is constantly moving in cycles, from sea to cloud, cloud to earth, from river to sea. This - in its many guises - is as love should be.
From deep feelings of love to your closest to a 'thank you' and smile if someone holds a door open for you.
Small acts of compassion - like letting someone in from a side road when driving - can alter both people’s mood, inspire them both to make another small compassionate gesture; and lift the day of many people.
The more you express and show your feelings of love, the more powerful they become.
Neither water nor love ever runs out, it is merely cycled around.
Now is the time to love and be kind.
We need more Love and Kindness in the World
If you have enjoyed this letter, I would love you to share it with a friend or two. And if you come across anything interesting and beautiful this week, send it my way!
Sending my love and kind wishes,
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