I had fun doing this one. The letters are still pretty rough looking, but I kinda like it. I stamped out the letters, then I uploaded the image from Dropbox (my new best friend) into Gimp, my free Photoshop lookalike software and messed with it a bit to make it look like fabric. I wanted paper with musical notes as the background but I wasn’t about to drive into town ( a 30 minute drive) to make that happen, so I worked with what I had.
I love this part of the chapter (you can read the whole chapter, along with my essay, here). Music without silence would be deafening and life without the quiet spaces in between things would be equally unlivable. We flash on and off, awake and asleep, happy and sad, kind and mean. This is human.
Amy this is wonderful. I love how you tried your hand at making it look like fabric, and here I thought that it was fabric. Do let us know if you will be posting all of your new quotes on Pinterest. I’d love to have such a place to go and read them. Lovely idea.
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Lol… I will. I just haven’t had time to get into Pinterest to set it up. I also wanted to load a WordPress plugin for the Pin button under the images. I guess that will have to be on my list for this weekend!
That’s really great, I love it! As someone who lives with constant tinnitus, silence is an odd concept for me these days, but I totally get the point of the quote. Very impressed with your creativity.
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Sorry about your tinnitus. I suppose the challenge there would be to have it be quiet enough that you can get in tune with the sounds that are present in your ears. What an interesting challenge!
Love the stamps and this is one of my favorite quotes! My post today was about mindfulness and turning off visual noise of computers. Guess I needed to hear the lesson multiple times today, so glad I found this post. I need the quiet and the stillness but don’t always create it. My husband and I share an office and he always has music on… I sometimes have to leave and work somewhere else in the house so I can hear myself again. Thanks for the reminder and I wouldn’t have driven 30 miles for paper either
Minette Riordan recently posted..Writing Prompts for Mindfulness: How do you eat your lunch?
Oh funny. Writing prompts! I love it. Yes, I like music but silence is really nice sometimes. This weekend, we are planning to go for a lake walk (walking ACROSS the frozen lake). This is the first time we have been able to do it. One of the things I really love about this walk is the immense silence when you are standing out in the middle of a frozen lake at night. I suppose, being from Santa Barbra, you would know nothing about that! lol…
[...] silence offers us our yin space. Just as Lao Tzu said in Chapter 2, “The music and the silence, one cannot exist without the other.” Our yang lives cannot [...]
Hi Amy, I came across your site while looking for a Tao quote on emptiness/silence.
I love your translation of verse 2, it’s great.
This image would have been perfect for my last article (“Avoiding Awkward Silences”). I’m not going to spam your comments sections with a link to the article, but if you get a minute I’d love for you to check it out at my website, I think you might enjoy it.
Thanks for your excellent work, it’s very good content.
Sure! Always intrigued to see what others are doing with the Tao work. Welcome to the site!
By the way, that image is my own so feel free to use it anytime. All of my “quote” images are my own artwork and free to use. I did check out your link and I loved it. I have another article where I wrote about the empty cup. Your post reminded me of that one too.
Great, thanks Amy! If and when I use your images, I’ll certainly link them back to their creator
I looked at my Mitchell translation and took a glance at the Chinese original online (I don’t speak Chinese, but I know some Japanese so some basic characters are familiar)–I have to say like your version much better, especially the middle part–it has a great flow. I’m glad you included the part of music, sound and silence duality. That seems so integral to me to the lesson of this chapter.
I can’t imagine how much you must be discovering about the depths of the Tao in your work… great.
Shogo Garcia recently posted..Avoiding Awkward Silences
Thanks, Shogo. I appreciate the feedback.