Alexandra Silber's Blog, page 16

Things I do when the world is "Too Much:" A List

Walk around my neighborhood (in a mask and gloves, of course) Read a poem aloudWrite a postcard to someone I love or missLearn a new recipe and make it Water a plantWatch a vintage crime showSmell an essential oilGo to Miss Piggy's social media accounts and GET SCHOOLED Mend things (wall cracks, torn garments, broken appliances)Google image search BUNNIES Plan an imaginary tripDo a guided meditationCook something that requires garlic and onions and butterBorrowing my friend Alleys car...

Most memorable moments this week: a List

- Waiting impatiently for my new prescription medication, promising to bring such relief, which came nearly 4 days later than anticipated because, ya know, global pandemic.

- Receiving my new prescription medication, via brave delivery man, for free thanks to my insurance. I cried.

- Repotting all our house plants and feeling the joy of new oxygen and life inside the walls of the beloved Winter Palace

- Tati intuitively knowing my sorrow, and electing to nuzzle with me as baby spoon on the...

Domestic Happenings: DE-CAF

So yeah. It's going super well, as you can see...

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Um...I dont...think its De-Caf... ☕⚡☕A post shared by Alexandra Silber (@alsilbs) on Mar 31, 2020 at 3:45pm PDT

Creative Exercises for the Quarantined Brain — Part 2

© Nick BantockSteve Jobs famously said that creativity is just connecting things. But anyone facing a creative block knows its a lot harder than grabbing ideas out of thin air. And we sure have a lot of very very thin air these days.

Creativity can be made to seem complex, but it is as easy and natural as it was when we were children, society has merely conditioned the art of PLAY out of us as adults.

And no, KAREN, theres no creativity gene or section of your brain responsible for creative...

Quarantine Books - Part 2

Ahhh books.

Part two of this Quaran-reads series delivers peace and tranquility for the now-omnipresent, quieter life.

The great German poet, novelist, painter, and Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877August 9, 1962), made an exquisite case for breaking the trance of busyness with the sanctity of solitude when he wrote:

    Solitude is the path over which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself. Solitude is the path that men most fear. A path fraught with terrors, where...

Things seen on my solo-walk today: a List

- a can of root beer, completely flattened

- not one single open shop or restaurant or store

- a flattened, abandoned N95 face mask

- a singular latex glove

- the east river, almost utterly still, like glass

- a brand new park at 34th Ave and the East River that Ive never laid eyes on before, despite living in Astoria for almost a decade.

- crushed magnolia leaves, just fallen

- what appeared to be the entire contents of a Queens apartment, left out at the curb, in neat piles, as if they were...

'Together and by Ourselves' By Alex Dimitrov

I opened the window so I could hear people.

Last night we were together and by ourselves.You. You look and look at Diver for Crane by  Johns and want to say something.In the water you are a child without eyes. Yesterday there was nothing on the beachand no one knows where it came from.Theres a small animal lodged somewhere inside us. There are minutes of peace.Just the feel.   Just this once. Where does the past,where should the period go? What is under the earth followed them home. The branch...

Things STILL Sacred: A List

Meanwhile, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, we busy ourselves with survival and with searching for beauty, for truth, for assurance between the bookends. The feeling of that search is what we call meaning; the people who light our torches to help us see better, who transmit our discoveries from one consciousness to another, are what we call artists. Artists are also the ones who help reconcile us to the fragility that comes with our creaturely nature and strews our search...

Creative Exercises for the Quarantined Brain — Part 1

When we were young, creative play came easily.
A cardboard box became a three-bedroom house, a hospital or a spaceship as you battled the local neighbors in the yard. Children are used to looking at objects for what they can be, instead of what they ARE, at face value.

As adults, as we experience more criticism and feedback, are told to be realistic and practical, in or ambitions, imaginations and scope of the wider world, and as a result, the Adult Self becomes less...

Things Now Sacred: A List

It is our biological destiny to exist and then not. Each of us eventually returns their stardust to the universe, to be constellated into some other ephemeral emissary of spacetime. Eventually, our entire species will go the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo and the Romantics; eventually, our home star will live out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a white dwarf, taking with it everything we have ever known Beethovens Ode to Joy and the guillotine and the perfect...