Search results for ‘impossible’
Boots the Clown, World’s Greatest Act is a story of comfort and hope during COVID times. Boots arrived during lock down early 2020. Please know you can freely share and pass on this link to others and print out the poster or concertina book/story panel. Video instructions on Instagram @browneink.
Free to print A4 posters/concertina book, with instructions (below and above). Print, frame or stick up story panels. Make a concertina book for window sills, desks, mantle pieces – do something of your own. Free to print A3 poster.
The World’s Greatest Act Part I…
‘Boots’ the Clown was a worrier (underneath). Boots worried about all the troubles right around the world. Boots worried it was getting harder and harder for those struggling to be heard and seen amidst the din of selling, frenzy of buying and the glare of celebrity.
Endlessly, Boots worried about the children. The fires. Trees. Animals. The ocean. The air. And that one day, everything would be lost. All of these worries felt impossible to do anything about. Until, one strange day, the curtain went up.
Read the rest of this page »
Racism Is No Joke .
‘The Joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He’s not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He’s not an eight or a nine, a King or a Jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn’t belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.’
Jostein Gaarder.
‘Joker and Impossible Things’.
Hey first I wanna say really like your music i have lost my beautiful wife in cancer and my dear brother in covid 19 my question to you is how keep you going on after lost your son its hard sometimes to keep going on with life.
There is little to say to someone who has lost a loved one that is of itself any real help. That has been my experience. Language falls short before the immensity of the experience of grief. There are simply not the words. My well-meaning and desperately worried friends would speak into my grief, using words that made no sense. They would tell me that my son lived in my heart, for example, but I genuinely did not understand these words because when I searched my heart I found nothing but chaos and despair.
One desperate morning, however, I did the most simple of things and perhaps this can help you with the loss of your wife, and your brother, more than my words. I sat by myself, in a quiet space, and called upon my son by name. I closed my eyes and imagined lifting him from my heart — this tormented place in which I was told he lived — and I positioned him outside of my body, next to me, beside me. I said, “You are my son and now you are beside me.”
Read the rest of this page »
‘Why Have Our Children Stopped Dancing’….
Reposting this article which was written in 2007 reflecting on a presentation I gave at CAYPAKS (Children and Young People and Key Stakeholders) Convention, and Eating Disorder Prevention and Treatment Conference (2008), titled ‘Why Have Our Children Stopped Dancing’.
Now, 13 years on, particularly in COVID times, it seems even more relevant …
Imagine…..what if we could wave a magic wand to help young people feel better about themselves what would that world look like? Dr Who and his time machine, the Tardis, immediately came to mind. I wondered whether I’d choose to travel into the future or past in search of a place that nurtured the growth of children?
With the good old days in mind, I ventured down memory lane . . . It was a time before automation, technology and mass media had stolen children’s creativity, curiosity and the opportunity for them to build a bank of experiences that develop character, strength and resilience—give life purpose and meaning. A culture where the qualities of kindness, innovation, creativity, community involvement, authenticity, and a social and environmental conscience were considered as valuable, if not more so, as a university degree and a six figure salary.
Read the rest of this page »
The Artist Crime of The Century .
Imagine … sitting in the waiting room of a dentist surgery, flipping through a newspaper. You spot a sketch of the proposed Twin Tower buildings in New York. In that moment you decide, upon completion of the buildings, you will (illegally) string a tightrope wire between the towers (450 metres high) and attempt the impossible. And you do it. Not once, but you dance (and kneel and lay) along the wire, crossing back and forth 8 times. Philippe Petite devoted years to making his dream a reality -along with loyal supporters. A friend told me this story and recommended the movie ‘Man on Wire’. I return to it time and time again for inspiration and strength – and the message that we must prepare our steps well but also be prepared to step back from the wire when those steps don’t feel right to take.
Find in Clunk & Jam book. See ‘Man on Wire’ documentary film, 2008).
Up Above The World So High .
On the night you’ve gone to the dark, look to the black tinsel sky and see how small you really are. Let it shrink, for a moment, the swell of emotion that engulfs you, anchoring you in your small and fleeting space, so you can feel the splinter of time that holds you here until the next.
(From book, ‘Clunk & Jam’).
For anyone who has experienced overwhelming sense of hopelessness and despair, you’ll know how hard it is pull up out of that space. And it’s not always the ‘light’ that consoles us when in a dark space. This poem arrived at a time when in the grip of one of these moments and how taking myself outside into the dark night and looking up at the stars helped put things in to perspective. Offered reprieve and relief from the state of mind that gripped me ‘inside’. And for those supporting someone in a dark space, it may be helpful to know that you don’t necessarily have to make things ‘bright’, ‘light’ or ‘right’ to help someone. Sometimes just keeping them company, sitting quietly, can help to secure a line to something outside of the head space they feel lost and alone in.
The poem’s picture comes from the documentary film ‘Man on Wire’, about a French tightrope walker who strung a wire between the twin tower buildings in New York and did the impossible.
(Reposted from 2011)
