Manny's Blog

Sharing our French adventure as we live and work and renovate our forever home in the Haute Loire.
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Five Things I’d like to share

1. I received the most wonderful surprise gift from Tara Sophia Mohr whose e-newsletters I receive  – she sent out this beautiful online poetry collection:

The Real Life – offering it to anyone who wants to download it for free .

It’s stunningly presented with an original work of art for every poem, and well worth a read – this was my favourite poem, it’s called The Rhythm and really touched a spot with how I’m feeling at the moment:

Mandala by Shelley Lane Kommers

In any creative feat

(by which I mean your work, your art, your life)

there will be downtimes.

Or so it seems.

Just as the earth is busy before the harvest

and a baby grows before its birth,

there is no silence in you.

There is no time of nothingness.

What if,

during the quiet times, when the idea flow is hushed and hard to find

you trusted (and yes I mean trusted)

that the well was filling, the waters moving?

What if you trusted

that for the rest of eternity,

without prodding, without self-discipline,

without getting over being yourself,

you would be gifted every ounce of productivity you need?

What would leave you? What would open?

And what if during the quiet times you ate great meals

and leaned back to smile at the stars,

and saw them there, as they always are,

nourishing you?

There are seasons and harvest is only a fraction of one of them.

We forget this.

There is the rhythm that made everything.

The next time you stand in the kitchen, leaning,

the next time a moment of silence catches you there,

hear it, that rhythm, and let it place a stone in your spine.

Let it bring you some place beautiful.

Tara Sophia Mohr


2.  A while ago I discovered this magical stop-motion video and I’m haunted by it still.

A beautiful song and such a clever film… watch it  if you haven’t already… (hey even if you have!), I promise you’ll be glad you did!  (I advise full screen and music as high quality as you can!)

Her  Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie

3. Over Christmas, Beth wrote and recorded a song for the family.  With her permission, I’d like to share it with you… (hankies ready!)

Family… by Beth Atkins

4. Another pressie  I’d like to share was from our ‘belle-fille’  Karine – (Luke’s girlfriend).

She shyly handed Joe and I a pencil drawing each, which she had done from a couple of photos…

She genuinely has no idea what an extraordinary talent she has… we were blown away!

Take a look –

The scans don’t do them justice – they are truly impressive to behold!

5. I was delighted to discover in my trip research the excellent website

Road Trip USA.

The author Jamie Jensen has a lovely up-lifting style – there are free blogs to download which made wonderful Christmas holiday listening – and I received a warm email back from him when I contacted him.

A great site with a huge amount of easily accessible info; the blogs got me really excited about this summer…

So that’s my five things Friday – thank you for reading and have a great weekend!

Back very soon…


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  1 comment

  1. Caroline says:

    Heart warming xxxx

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