A Sequence of Videos People Should Watch at least once…
(a day, a week, a month, a year, doesn’t matter, just enjoy it!)
It might take some time, but it’s worthy! trust me!
www.freehugscampaign.org
Now, think of the videos before, and enjoy, the colours of your life…
How great is writing about things and people we love?
Yesterday I interviewed the Fabulous Lorraine Garland -Neil Gaiman’s Personal Assistant
In the business world, a personal assistant is a trusted employee who assumes the role of an executive’s chief-of-staff. In the past, a personal assistant worked only with celebrities, but that’s no longer the case.
When you become a personal assistant, you are in charge of organizing a great part of your employer’s life, so initiative is vital. The ability to work under stress and to multitask is also very invaluable.
According to Lorraine Garland -Neil Gaiman’s Personal Assistant for 17 years- being a Personal Assistant is not exactly like acting like a mother to a child, instead, it’smore like being another “part of their brain”, or another “set of hands.” “You have to take care of all the things they don’t have time for, from food to someone to listen to them, so you free them up to do what they do best”.
If you are thinking about glamour and meeting celebrities, being a Personal Assistant may sound very tempting at first glance, but there are some drawbacks you must consider.
The average Personal Assistant may put in anywhere from 40 to 80 hours or more a week and if the working relationship becomes strained, the role of personal assistant can become very stressful indeed.
Far from being a tedious job, Lorraine Garland says, “It can be very tiring, exciting and demanding. You have to be willing to learn fast and work whenever you are needed. Which might be 5:00am, or until midnight.” Concerning being a very successful writer’s Assistant and getting involved with her boss’s works she also adds, “I do read his books, and love them. Sometimes I transcribe them for him, he writes longhand in a notebook. Sometimes I research strange facts for him.”
On the other hand, Personal Assistants are often in a position to interact with high-level executives. Executives may also invite a personal assistant to attend business dinners or private parties. Vacations for executives often become a working vacation for a personal assistant.
When asked, “Which are the three keys to becoming a Successful Personal Assistant?” Lorraine Garland points:
1. Check your ego. You aren’t the talent.
2. Write EVERYTHING down, make a to do list and keep it current.
3. Be as nice as possible to everyone you come in contact with. You never know.
To become a personal assistant, you should also need the ability to communicate professionally, remain calm under pressure, be tactful and also be aware of the technological needs to perform your job. “Know your Smartphone very well. Sleep with it. Never turn it off.” says Garland.
Now you must be thinking, “where do I start?” and “Do I have to take a course, or read books about it?”
The best way to learn how to become a personal assistant is by doing it! “If you find yourself in such a job, you will know very quickly if it is for you. And you will never know all you need to, if your Boss keeps getting bigger, you will learn fast what you need to know.” says Lorraine, who started working when Neil Gaiman moved to the United States and needed someone to put his library on his shelves.
Just keep in mind; you must enjoy the routine you are about to face, which to Neil Gaiman’s Personal Assistant includes: Airline reservations, booking hotels, renting cars and trip itineraries, setting up events, dog care and training, keeping the pantry stocked, mail coming in and going out, garden things, requests from fans and letters from them, cooking, saying “no”, buying clothes, archiving books, keeping the Schedule, setting up interviews things come up. But this will vary from Personal Assistant to Personal Assistant.
Fabulous Lorraine - photo by Kyle Cassidy
When asked about the wonders of being a Personal Assistant, Lorraine doesn’t hesitate to say “I think it’s best when I pull off an Amazing Coup and everything goes perfectly. I can find anything, schedule anything, make anything work, whatever it is, I can Make It Happen. That’s the best.”
by Aline Martins for Helium.com
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“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” John Lennon
It has been a while since I’ve tried to keep a blog, and, inevitably, I always end up abandoning my efforts.
It’s important to recognize which phase of the creative process you’re in. Be fully present while in each step, enjoy it, play with it and revel in your creative gifts.
But, you can also start to notice some common roadblocks or pitfalls that show up when you’re writing.
No matter how well you write, life’s events can temporarily stop your flow of creativity. Creative interruptions are okay, and even more common than you think.
It doesn’t have to be a big event that acts as a distraction, such as a loss, sickness, lack of job, etc. This morning I was feeling totally idealess and scattered. Simply because I was going to do something I didn’t want to do at the moment.
In my case, the interruption was brief. I was back on track in minutes. But sometimes, big life events, may trigger off a huge ebb of creativity. And let’s remember, ebb of creativity, doesn’t mean lack of inspiration.
Even though, both are intimately connected.
- Don’t let interruptions stop you!
The trick, of course, is not to let life’s events stop you completely. The only way to get something written is to either write it you or hire someone to write it. If you’re writing it yourself, you’ve simply got to put words on paper. Most people find they do this best when they stick to a writing schedule.
“Freedom is found along the guiding lines of discipline.” – Yehudi Menuhin
It’s very important to say that, sticking to a writing schedule isn’t the same thing as being a slave to it. That doesn’t work well either.
You are the only one who knows when an interruption in your writing schedule slips from understandable and acceptable to procrastination and, if you let it becomes a writer’s block.
Writing well requires, among other things, self-honesty, patience and practice. There is no easier or softer way. But the main advice is: Don’t give up!
“In order to create, we must take the bad with the good. You are bound to write many bad paragraphs along with the good ones. You can get rid of those bad paragraphs later but first you must write them. Otherwise you won’t write anything.” —Eric Maisel, Taking the Bad with the Good
In fact, writing and publication can be an entirely self-determined activity these days. So, the best you can do is carrying paper and pen with you.
We never know when creativity and inspiration might come.
Aline Writing Martins
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Today, is Friend’s Day here in Brazil
Through my life, I called many people friend, and I had many deceptions too.
I think these deceptions are not due to bad friendship, but to due to people’s expectations on friendship.
If you ask two or more people, each one will give you a different meaning to friendship. But I think, nothing meant more than a text from Vinicius de Moraes – Brazilian Writer and Composer, on friendship…
Friend Wanted
It doesn’t need to be a man, it’s enough to be human, it’s enough to have feelings, It’s enough to have a heart. Needs to know when to speak, and to be quiet, but above all, it needs to know how to listen. It needs to like poetry, the night, and the songs of the wind. It needs to have a love, a big love to somebody, or at least to miss this love in case it does not have it. It needs to love as much as it can and respect the pain that the others carry with them. It needs to know how to keep a secret, and it must not be a burden. It’s not necessary to be new, but does not need to be second hand. It can have been deceived, because all friends are. It’s not necessary to be pure, but can’t be vulgar. Must have a goal, and be afraid of loosing it, and in case it does not have a goal, it must feel the great vacuum that it leaves inside. It needs to have human senses, and his main objective must be the friend. It must feel pity for the sad people and comprehend the immense emptiness of the solitaries.
It must like children and feel sorry for the ones that could not grow up. Friend Wanted, to like the same things, and that gets touched when called a Friend. It needs to know how o talk about simple things, from drizzles to rains and thunder storms, and about childhood memories. Friend –Wanted, so we don’t get crazy. Someone to talk about the beauty seen, as well as the sadness,. Someone to talk about the anxieties and realizations, the dreams and reality. It must like desert streets, puddles and wet pathways, must like sidewalks and highways, grass after the rain and laying down on it in a sunny day.
Friend Wanted, someone that says the life is worthy living, not because it’s beautiful, but because you already have a friend.
Friend Wanted, so we can stop crying, so we don’t live over the past in search of lost memories. Someone that put the hand on you shoulder, smiling and crying, but someone that calls us Friend, so we are conscious we are still alive.
Vinícius de Moraes
HAPPY FRIEND’S DAY!
Aline Friend Martins
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Of love and land – by Aline Martins
From which races, I am, was and will be?
Which colours and creeds, which luck?
How many lifes lived and will live?
Died and will die of how many deaths?
How many loves and dreams and hopes
How much faith, how much pain
I was Mum and Dad, of how many children?
how many torments, and horrors?
How many children have I cried, in so many wars?
How many children have I raised and was happy?
How many bodies, how many waters, how many lands
did I touch, kissed, love and was root?
And how many times yet, to give me?
How many lives still to be reborn?
How many mouths, yet to be kissed?
How many deaths, yet to die?
Yet, conformed, I sing the song
The march, the mission, the pain that screams
And I got butterflies by my side
Made, like me, of Love and Land! …
I had many many bad experiences in my birthdays: deaths, arguments, loneliness… So, I had no hope for a special birthday.
I spent most of my day being greeted by my friends on line (while in PJs, still in bed). Got a single phone call. And thought my dinner with friends was going to be only my brother and I. I have to say I have not enjoyed knowing some people didn’t go to my dinner because they were going to watch Harry Potter, but now I know where I can find my friends.
I had a simple, small and very happy dinner with my Brother and some friends.
Good Japanese food, lots of laugh, some pictures.
(Thank you Andre, Mariana, Sabino, Beto and Hiro)
Oh! Yes… there is a Stereo in the Attic.
My father still has many LPs and I lived years encountering Stairway to Heaven several times a week in my life.
The song that popped into my head at my birthday this year was a catchy little tune: Over the Hills and Far Away. It evokes a certain yearning for the open road of life that appeals to me. We never know exactly where the path ahead will lead, but, if we let them, our dreams and imagination can help guide our steps and give that final destination a more pleasing shape.
Over the Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin
Hey lady, you got the love I need
Maybe more than enough
Oh darlin’ darlin’, darlin’
Walk a while with me
Oh, you’ve got so much, so much, so much
Many have I loved
Many times been bitten
Many times I’ve gazed
Along the open road
Many times I’ve lied
Many times I’ve listened
Many times I’ve wondered
How much there is to know
Many dreams come true
And some have silver linings
I live for my dreams
And a pocketful of gold
Mellow is the man
Who knows what he’s been missing
Many many men
Can’t see the open road
Many is a Word
That only leaves you guessing
Guessing ’bout a thing oh…
I really ought to know, oh…
you know I should…
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“Inspiration must mean just this, that the speaker or writer is uttering something that he does not wholly understand – or which he may even misinterpret when the inspiration has departed from him.” T.S. Eliot
I think Eliot and all of us doubt if the word “inspiration” has any meaning. If you are a religious believer of any denomination you know, or at least you have words for, where your inspiration comes from, however mysterious it may seem; But for many there is not much language to talk about inspiration without beginning to sound a bit mystical or relying on a Powerful source that can’t quite be named but can’t quite be ignored, and yet inspiration is a word no one is shy of using now, even though they are not that keen to explain how it might work.
I can’t answer the inspiration question well because I’m inspired by almost everything. I read as much as I can and try to always keep my eyes and ears open. Today in a brainstorm I was inspired by the Powers of Life and what in bring to us as experience.
Ultimately my belief is that anything can be inspiring.
So when I think about inspiration, I think about understanding that anything can be inspiration. Most of us grow up believing that learning must be boring. A teacher must stand in front of the class and teach us through some incredibly dry textbook (and as a teacher I must say: if the teacher is not inspired to teach, the pupil wont be inspired to learn). We get so much more out of those times when we’re engaged in an activity.
Inspiration is the kind of magic that people like to believe in, perhaps especially now, in a culture where money can buy virtually everything else of value, and science and technology can create or invent the things we most need. But, it reassures us, or at least reminds us, that some of the best things about us are beyond our control.
Inspiration may not belong to us, but it is only we who can be inspired. (and it is only we who can spoil it )
I think (and my opinion may be very disturbing here) we have glamorized inspiration, idealized the artist possessed a special vision of the world, in a way we don’t see it.
Just as you can’t try and have a dream, or decide beforehand what it will be, inspired work, just happen based on the person’s life per se.
When Keats wrote that poetry must come as easily as leaves to a tree, or Picasso said, ‘I don’t seek, I find’, they were both reminding us, that inspiration is beyond the realm of calculated intentions.
I think, all we need it to be receptive to the unfamiliar; and we need to be able to wait, without certainty, for the thing we want. This, in a sense, is the faith of the believer in artistic inspiration.
{Inspiration} lays in my mind
As a patchwork of colors.
I see it. Recorded in pieces of life,
a complete work made of moments.
If it is beauty, it´s innocence.
If it is body, it´s lust, temptation.
If I´m thirsty, it´s a spring
if I have hunger, bread.
It gives me agile fluency
If the paper wants to be empty.
It is a muse of emergency.
It comes in the night, sometimes in the day;
it’s inspiration that creates the cadence.
If it doesn’t come … the poetry is gone.
Aline Inspired Martins
PS: apart from my faith, books, music and love…there are other things worthy sharing…these things really inspire me…
When I dance (Aline-Brazil- 2008)
My cats and nature in general (Dana and Her babies 2007)
My friends (here only the girls gathered for a Tea Party, but love them all!)
My Parents
and my only Brother and Best friend Andre
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"Inspiration comes in many ways" - Aline at Serra da Cantareira -Brazil -2007
What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrants ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd about the poet and say to him, “Sing for us soon again”—which is as much as to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful.” ~Søren Kierkegaard
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. ~ T. S. Eliot
Being a poet is hard… Why? Who hasn’t been on the uncomfortable side of the conversation that goes something like
this: “So, what do you do?” “I’m a poet.” -long silence- “No, I mean what do
Dana, my librarian cat!
you do? What is your job?” As if poetry is not a job, but merely a taboo hobby. (and I think this conversation follows the same way in many other art branches)
There is also the fact that most of the time it simply doesn’t pay. Many poets must work one or more manual labor or teaching jobs (like me) to actually pay the bills. But it’s only the practical life problem.
Another reason being a poet can be difficult is the nature of composing the poems themselves. I have been writing poetry all my life it has only become more and more challenging to write, not easier. And there is no shortage of distraction, whether internal or external. There are those who argue that such distraction is necessary; others that it is detrimental. There is no doubt that it is unavoidable.
But for those of us who write poetry, the art chose us. We have no choice but pursue it (the choice consists merely of whether we will publish in our lifetime or not). And it is rewarding in its own right. No, it offers absolutely no instant gratification. Therefore, soldiers of the words, ever and onward with your mighty pen!
But still…
Today I am a poet again
Singing to the four winds
My rhyming verses,
Of nostalgia and heat …
Today from this hill
I see the plains,
filled with my words
growing with the rain
of my elegance…
Today I am childhood,
that wants the future
And is not afraid to age,
I offer innocence…
Today I am dementia,
of the craziest passion,
I am alive, I am yours …
Today I am paint,
Which runs through my veins,
In tangled webs
as life in an hourglass …
Today I am a poet, today I am…
Aline Poet MartinsPS: A blog´s death is promoted by shortage of comments.
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)To start with, saudade has been translated into English as to miss. But this simple verb cannot cover the inherent meanings of a word with the strength of all language’s forms: verb, noun, and adjective all succumb to the larger feeling of saudade.
To have saudades (the verb, ter saudades), is the act of feeling, it’s to long for something, to remember or be remembered, to be needed or to need, to miss or to be missed. And saudade is a feminine word often used in the plural to designate the state of missing someone or something, a lifetime, a memory. You cannot just have saudades of someone. It covers the feeling of missing that which never was, the All and the Nothing, all that no longer is, that could have been, that passed away, those silences that we have lost or no longer see or experience.
One does not underestimate the word by applying it to every single side of life. Because saudade is inherent in us, the fact of being Brazilian and speak Portuguese forces us to have saudades. And we have them without noticing, and without worrying about the allied feelings: the pain, the sadness, the loneliness, the suffering, the nostalgia.
Aline Martins - Paranapiacaba-Brazil- Winter 2008
People say: if you have memories, you will never die of loneliness
I say: if you see the world through the heart´s eyes,
You will live to feel, doesn´t matter what.
And in this incessant dialogue between reason, feeling and heart …
lives a word, dear by some, for others … not much.
Saudade,
mysterious word, made up of much more than letters and feelings.
Did the person who invented Saudade know how many feelings
existed in a simple word?
Saudade,
Does saudades exist to rhyme with hope, or perhaps happiness?
…If Saudade really existed to walk along happiness, it wouldn´t be Saudade, it would be reality.
Saudade,
Does not reflect the sunset without you.
Does not reflect our laughter, or our endless conversations through the night.
Does not reflect the empty house, nor reflects my dreams.
Saudade,
Ungrateful word, which describes nothing,
Does not speak of tenderness, does not speak of care, does not talk about you …
Does not reflect your smile, not even your face, how you feel or what you see.
Saudade,
Simple word, sometimes in the plural, deserved a meaning for each consonant and vowel,
so we could describe its infinite feelings, and explanations, which sometimes hurt me so bad.
Saudade,
I prefer thinking it rhymes with love, dreaming, or returning
Or
Is it an eternal longing?
Aline Saudades Martins
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