The Frown

Turn that frown upside down.., a photo by [Duncan] on Flickr.

'the idea that we can build a financial utopia ...'

'that we can properly translate everything around us into a commodity that we can consume for our personal pleasure ... that if we have sufficient property we can reduce the world to our personal  pleasure dome that will create happiness is a fantasy ... '

'the capitalist dream ... that the world is a playground and we should have a life in which we are comfortable all the time ...'  

'sadly, happiness has come to mean a life that is comfortable ... free of discomfort ... avoiding pain, death, decay ...' 


from Radio National 360documentaries, 10 February 2013

 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/the-frown/4440548

Leonard Cohen

'Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama expecting victory after victory and you understand deeply that this is not Paradise - we somehow experience - the privileged ones - we somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears is perfectible, that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiecing and you sing it to the real masterpiece.'

from I'm Your Man, a film by Lian Lunson, 2005
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478197/

little miracles

You are behind each miracle, a photo by Daquella manera on Flickr.

from My Week With Marilyn
by Colin Clark 2000
2011 Harper Press, London

p.247
Introduction
'All my life I have kept diaries, but this is not one of them. This is a fairy story, an interlude, an episode outside time and space which nevertheless was real. And why not? I believe in magic. My life and most people's lives are a series of little miracles - strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique.'