Saturday Cartoon

Ukemi, The Art of Receiving

"In my daydreams, the kindergartener is all grown now, and she has a man or a woman she loves, and the two of them have gone on dates to the pool―my daughter’s backstroke is amazing; the lifeguards make comments about it―and to the local Sonic for cheeseburgers. In the afternoons, between class sessions, she and her boyfriend or girlfriend will tell each other their histories while their roommates are out on errands for birth control. They’ll gossip about mutual friends and they’ll compare notes about the sports they played and how strange their parents’ behaviors are. My daughter’s love interest at college or culinary school will ask her about the photo I’ve sent with her, the one where she’s receiving her orange belt from Master Ochiai and looking into the space above the camera.

“What’s that from?”

“I took karate when I was little,” she’ll say. And this is where I hope she’ll continue with “And I stayed with it through high school. I’m a shodan black belt.”

And her significant other will say, “Show me,” and they’ll clear a space in the middle of the dorm room’s floor, kicking over bean bags and Calculus books. They will bow to each other and spar playfully there on the third floor of an expensive room-and-board dormitory, where my daughter will land her friend into a scarf choke on the area rug and will feel the tap-tap-tap of a hand, a matte, a signal to let up. And my daughter will smile because she will feel safe and equal to this person in her life. She will know full well how to cut off circulation to carotids and jugulars, but, more importantly, she’ll know when to release."

From Ukemi, The Art of Receiving By Barrett Bowlin for The Rumpus.
Click HERE to read the piece in full. It's brilliant.

(Image by Estevan Guzman.)

Upside Down Day

An ode to those times when everything seems backwards.

Upside Down Day (public library), 1968
Illustrations by artist Kelly Oechsli and written by Julian Scheer (the head of NASA’s Public Affairs Office, responsible for enchanting Americans with the space program)
If you like this then check out  Weight and Weightlessness, another spacetastic illustrated gem from the same era, and the story of how Scheer and his team marketed the moon.

(Found via brainpickings)

(found here)

Love

Q&A from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Freehand drawing exercise. 1899

Watch the kids.

"Watch the kids. Do like they do. Act like they act. Yell like they yell. Dance the ways you see them dance. Sing like they sing. Work and rest the way the kids do.

You'll be healthier. You'll feel wealthier. You'll talk wiser. You'll go higher, do better, and live longer here amongst us if you'll just only jump in here and swim around in these songs and do like the kids do.

I don't want the kids to be grownup. I want to see the grown folks be kids."

-- Woody Guthrie 

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.

 

--Aldous Huxley

Marketa Luskacová

Marketa Luskacova

Aren’t there days
when we all feel
like doing this?
- Della Hicks-Wilson


(Source: samuelernesto)

To thine own self be true...

  There is nothing more thrilling than a person throwing caution to the wind and deciding to be their full on weird self, especially when that weirdo decides to go fully rogue at a tap dance performance in front of an audience of adoring parents, especially especially when that weirdo is an adorable tiny human who I can only hope will one day be the inspiration for my own child.

The jazz hands!  the two step! the krumping! the fierceness! She's giving it her all and no-one is gunna stop her...

Explore

Instead of putting your body into a shape, can you feel the shape with YOUR body?

(image found here)

Stories

"I still think the same way I thought as a child. I still worry. I'm still frightened... Nothing changes." "I've always had a deep respect for children and how they solve complex problems by themselves...through shrewdness, fantasy and just plain strength. They want to survive. THEY WANT TO SURVIVE."

 - Maurice Sendak

Interview by Andrew Romano and Ramin Seetodeh from BlankOnBlank.org
2009. Sendak's home in Connecticut
Read the Newsweek article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek...

I love the internets and i love eavesdropping....

What do you like about your body?

“I like that I can move with it. I like that eyelashes are long. I like that my skin is half white and half brown. I like that my hair can shake.” – 6-year-old Bayan

“I like my eyes. It changes colors and I can see everything. I like my legs too. They are very long.” – 5-year-old Cherae

“Something I like about my body is how fast I can run, and how healthy I am.” – 9-year-old Lana

“I like my hands they help draw.” – 6-year-old Laila

“My whole body I love I love.” – 4-year-old Layla

“I like my body because it’s magic.” - 5-year-old Sofia (aka Lola)


"By 13 years-old 53% of girls say they are unhappy with their bodies. When were we happy? Marie C. photographed and interviewed 4-8 year old girls and asked them what they liked about their bodies to find out."

From interruptmag.com

I LOVE THIS!
We need to bring our children up to keep hold of thoughts like this.

Love

LOVE to faults is always blind; 
Always is to joy inclin’d, 
Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, 
And breaks all chains from every mind.

 -- William Blake

by Eva Besnyö
Little girl standing on her head, 1940

Keeping your attention on what you are doing as you are doing it is the BIGGEST challenge in yoga. Even when you are seemingly still.

(image found here)

I AM ENOUGH.

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability 

 "Brené Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity."

A talk to share, so here it is...She is an inspiring lady!

"...We 'perfect', most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children; 

They're hard wired for struggle from the moment they get here and when you hold those perfect little babies in your hands our job is not to say 'Look at her! She's perfect! my job is just to keep her perfect and to make sure she makes the tennis team by 5th grade and Yale by 7th grade.' 

Our job is to say 'you know what, you are imperfect and you are wired for struggle.' To love with our whole hearts, even though there is no guarantee. And that is really hard, I can tell you as a parent that it is excruciatingly difficult. To practice gratitude and lean into joy in those moments of terror when we are wondering 'can I love you this much, can I believe in this so passionately, can I be this fierce about this?' Just to beable to stop and say 'I'm so grateful because to feel this vulnerable means that i am alive.' And the last, which i think is the most important, is to believe that we are enough. Because when we work from a place that says 'I believe I am enough' then we stop screaming and start listening, we are kinder and gentler to the people around us and we are kinder and gentler to ourselves." 

--  Brené Brown

I would love to see a generation of kids raised like this!!!

This is friendship.

(Source: mpdrolet, via mociun)