Magnificent, Marvellous, Mighty Monday and A Manifesto

Hello, here's some powerful words to start the week from the Blog Whitehot Truth. Hope they inspire you as much as they did me. I particularly like the lines about service people. I remember being in a department store once when a friend who is really into new age philosophies came in to buy an item for his girlfriend. He looked around at all the staff with a puzzled, slightly contemptuous expression and said, 'Don't they get they don't have to be here?"
Eer, yes dude but then be grateful they are because who is going to serve you your girlfriend's knickers?
Anyway, I digress. Here's the manifesto. Let's spread it around and start a bushfire. xx

right now:
There are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.
Someone you haven't met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.
Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.
Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to alight the hearts of all of God's children.
A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, "nourish them."
Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you. Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favourite food is, and treat you to a movie. Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you -- for free.
Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.
The next great song is being rehearsed.
Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.
Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.
Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they'll be thriving like never before. They just can't see it from where they're at.
Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to ARRIVE, will get precisely what they want -- and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in it's reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their memory of angsty longing and render it all "So worth the wait."
Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche -- this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.
Someone just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.
Someone is fighting the fight so that you don't have to.
Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally safe. Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.
Someone is regaining their sanity. Someone is coming back from the dead. Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable. Someone is curing the incurable. You. Me. Some. One. Now.

charles blackman and arthur boyd art image source

baby, Hardy and woman/door image source

lauren child and clarice bean image source

Magnificent, Marvellous, Mighty Monday and Pip Lincolne Guest Blog!

In a recent blogging competition I won Pip Lincolne! Yes, it's true. I won the legendary Meet Me at Mikes, Queen of fab and crafting. Not to do my housework that is - but to do a guest Blog on Tale Peddler. And so today I have a treat for you, dear readers. A post on inspiration by a woman who has inspired thousands and thousands around the globe.
Why do I love Pip so much? Regular readers will know I often have a gush over Pip. Ever since I first stumbled across her amazing blog Meet Me at Mikes and discovered a kindred spirit who loves vintage children's books, Nanna things, whimsy, nostalgia, homemade sauce, ginger-beer and is always ready to share these treasures and recipes with her blogging friends, I've been an avid follower.
Pip embodies the spirit of Brownies with her perky kindness, her campaign to get the entire world on the end of a crochet needle and just to live a craftier, brighter, more positive life. If you read the entry on her blog of how she got a book deal then you will see she has a very 'can do' attitude to life that we could all emulate. She's a loving Mummy, domestic artist, crafter, Blogger, writer and runs one of the cutest shops I've ever seen in Fitzroy, Melbourne called, Meet Me at Mikes!
If I feel anxious and panicky about the way the world is going and I start to feel I'm on a SHIP OF FOOLS that is slowly sinking, I only have to visit Meet Me at Mikes to begin to relax and start to smile again. The ship is sailing perfectly when people like Pip are on board.
But enough from me - I'll hand you over to the fabulous, luminous, cute Pip Lincolne. Three cheers for Pip and long may she reign! If you want to follow Pip (and you really, really should if you're not already) Here's her HOME
And I highly recommend her beautiful, crafty book Meet Me at Mikes! It has something for everyone within its Pip-like pages!
Inspiration Junket
Sunday mornings. Mmm. From beneath the blanket-y depths of your cosy bed you mumble something about sleeping in as you flip your pillow and snuggle down for another hour's kipping. No. No, no, no, I say. Sleeping in is fine. You seem to get that extra wee bit of time to yourself. Your body repairs. Blah blah blah. Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't you? It'll tell you why. That is the whole point. Everyone else IS doing it. The world sleeps at 6am on a Sunday. (Well, most of the world, of course some poor buggers have to work at that time, but GENERALLY the world sleeps.) Things are so snoozy, you can probably even hear your HOUSE yawning. The windows are probably blinking their shades drowsily and rolling over for another five minutes. The morning glories are still shut tight. The mice are snoring, the cat is catatonic (hence the word) and your neighbours are probably in some unwakeable slumber too. That is exactly the reason that you should GET UP!

You have the world to yourself. It's a brand new day! There are no interruptions. You are claiming extra time that you normally would be spending at the sleep bank, and you can use it to do some stuff just for you! And you can do it in your slippers. What could be better?

20 Steps To An Inspired Day

1. Get up
2. Wash your face and have a big drink of water
3. Make a pot of chai or tea or coffee
4. Put on some music
5. Make yourself some toast
6. Be sure you are warm enough
7. Turn on the computer
8. Go to a site like weheartit.com or tumblr.com and set up an account so you can save images to your very own dedicated inspiration library
9. Grab the little bookmark widget on these sites and drag it to your toolbar
10. Head over to Flickr, http://ffffound.com/ or your favourite blogs and start gathering inspiration images. You just need to click the bookmark widget and all the images on the page will be highlighted - from there you can choose the one's you love most and save them to look at all the time.
11. Leave a comment on your favourite images before you click away
12. Sip your tea
13. Make some more toast
14. Stretch
15. Pat the cat
16. Do some more clicking and looking
17. Get out your notebook and write down or sketch some things that have inspired you, or some things you want to do
18. Put a star next to the things that are most important
19. Review all the images you saved today
20. Make some fresh tea and repeat steps 10 to 20 until you get tired or someone wakes up

Important Notes ::
Be sure to carry your notebook with you at all times, that way you can refer back to it at opportune moments. For instance when you are in the book store you can check the scribble about that great book you saw on someone's blog.
Buy or make some nice bread on Saturday so you can do the toast part
Don't worry too much if you don't have a cat, these steps are important, but optional

Pip Lincolne

all images taken from Pip's flickr account:
main image of Pip originally published in August 2009 Home Beautiful

Magnificent, Marvellous, Mighty Monday and the Dreamer who never woke

He described himself as a dreamer who never woke up. Marc Chagall is my kind of person and artist. I have long admired his world of whimsical, fantastical beings and visions . He is a poet, a child, a madman. Pablo Picasso, not known for praising many artists, said that Chagall must have had an angel in his head to paint as he did.
Chagall was fearless and remained true to his own imaginative visions and world, rejecting the popular art of the day (abstraction and intellectual object paintings). Chagall's is a fantastic world of lovers who fly backwards, fiddlers with green faces or humans with rooster heads.
This outsider, eccentric genius rose from poverty and obscurity to become one of the most acclaimed artists of our time.
The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire described his paintings as “supernatural.” Whenever I feel jaded or uninspired, I only have to look at a Chagall painting to feel my sense of awe and wonder of this mysterious universe restored.
He was creating until the day he died, of course, at a very young 97. I can only imagine the angels flocked around this mystical child-artist when he departed this world.
A writer friend, Blaise Cendrars, composed a poem about Chagall: “Suddenly he paints / He grabs a church and paints with a church / He grabs a cow and paints with a cow.”
For Magnificent, Marvellous, Mighty Monday let us grab churches and cows and infuse our creative efforts with the joy and enthusiasm of a Marc Chagall. May we continue to see the world through fresh eyes every second and may we never allow ourselves to be pigeon-holed. Three cheers and a backwards flip for Marc Chagall.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. Marc Chagall
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep. Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall image source

The Birthday image source:

Midsummer Night's Dream image source