turning on the brights

this is my first post from my shiny new macbook, fumbling around the keyboard as it glows beneath my fingertips...



my hard-working and very clever younger sister ((i like to refer to her as my 'little' sister though in reality she's much taller and far more mature than i will ever be..)) is in Southern California, half way into her inorganic biochemistry PhD and up for her orals in less than two weeks. though less than half of that last sentence makes any sense to me, i can sense the tension all the way from here, only attempting to grasp the pressure that is placed upon an individual in such a demanding circumstance.



i realize that nothing i can say will calm her nerves and that my words of inspiration seem inadequate, my gawking creative view of the world is simply incompatible with the calculated importance of this event, and thus, i'm left searching for words of encouragement from others, thoughts that seem to posess a meaning somehow relavant to both our worlds, and i'll be mailing, emailing and posting them from here on, though she may not even have enough time to read them, at least i will have sent them out into the universe and in some form or another they may reach her.



i'm sending her quotes for...well, inspiration sounds too romantacized, and sucess perhaps too forceful, i suppose really, these are quotes of strength, of courage, of gentle support, never trite but rather offering perspective to any of us, dedicated to doing what we feel we are meant to be doing, and against all odds and any measurable manifestations of contrived sucess, shining a hint of light onto a winding path, as we hope to better find our way there. despite the length of the road or, at times like this, a frightful inability to see even two feet infront of us.



today i found myself reading Emerson's essay Self-Reliance. i was marking up every page finding perspective and conviction in every word, every phrase....i could put the entire essay on here, but for the sake of everyone's time, i will put a condensed version, a best-of passages, if you will, of the very beginning..... more to come..


"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion...

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."



"We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents...

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events."



and this one's for my sister, because i think that kinda looks like candy in a glass beaker...;))

courage!!!
x c


((these images are by the Californian artist Wayne Thiebaud, who years ago, was a dear friend of my great aunt))