What are the themes in yesterday’s photos from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe?
The themes I notice there include music, performers, location, help, animals, food, love, family, friendship, honesty, and humor, all important themes in my life.
When I do therapy groups, I always ask people, “What are the themes?” If I do a Fringe show in Edinburgh next year, I’ll ask that question too.
One constant theme in this daily blog is gratitude. Thanks to all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — to YOU.
Yesterday, the Beehive Inn (which is one of hundreds of performance venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) was in search of greatness.
Aren’t we all in search of greatness in one way or other?
Yesterday, I found greatness in the performance of my son doing stand-up comedy at the Beehive.
I didn’t have to search hard to find greatness elsewhere, too.
I searched my son’s room and found the greatness of that award for the champion of Edinburgh student stand-ups.
After I publish this, we will be in search of greatness for a photo of me suitable for a poster. I’m searching for great words to tell you that I’ve decided to search for greatness with a show next year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!
When I get WiFi again later today, I’ll be in search of greatness in your comments.
When we are in search of greatness, it’s always great to express gratitude. Thanks to all who help me search for greatness for this blog and — of course! — to YOU!
Where does your HEART go, dear HEART, when you HEAR The words “HEART TO HEART”?
My HEART goes to important conversations with those I love, including these two Scottish women with whom I share a very unusual HEART condition.
Whenever I’m in Edinburgh, I have a HEART TO HEART TO HEART with Vicki and Andrena. We all have congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (cctga), the rarest of congenital HEART conditions and we have a lot to say to each other. The odds of the three of us being in the same place at the same time are so astronomical, I don’t have the HEART to calculate it.
Do you see any other HEART TO HEART’s in my other HEARTfelt photos from yesterday?
I look forward to HEART TO HEART’s in the comment section, below.
Thanks — from my HEART — to my HEART sisters Vicki and Andrena, Vicki’s wonderful rescue dog Belle, Loudons Cafe, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, those who celebrate difference, all who battle suicide, Gillian Skye (the excellent writer and actor of Come Die With Us, which touched my HEART), Tony Slattery, all those who forgive and learn from mistakes, and — of course! — YOU, my dear heart of a reader.
When I was walking the right way down an Edinburgh street yesterday, I observed this:
What IS the right way, dear readers, in these times of right OR left, us OR them, my way OR the highway?
For me, the right way includes loving yourself and others …
… being responsible for your tasks …
… thoughtful consumption of food and other resources …
… finding the wisdom in books and other people …
… being surprised by joy …
… communicating with others the best you can …
… finding the humor wherever you can …
… singing along, realizing that beauty is everywhere…
… even in your own body and soul, and recognizing that change is scary.
Also, the right way includes looking out for each other, especially when people fear change.
The right way to end this post is with gratitude for all who help me find the right way, every day, to create this blog and for YOU, who found your way here.
I’m Here in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and so are many other people, including actors, improv artists, musicians, and stand-up comedians, like the guy who inspired today’s blog title.
I don’t know Glenn Doncaster, even though he is “… what the Edinburgh Fringe is all about.” No matter what else Glenn does in his life, he’s helped me find my blog post title for today by putting “I’m Here” on the back of his Fringe flyer.
I’m here to tell you that synchronicity and coincidences like that help make life even more beautiful and rich.
I’m here to try to find that old blog post. I was not successful. I’m here to tell you it’s okay not to succeed sometimes.
(I’m also here to tell you, eleven days after I published this post and am back home in Boston, that I was able to search for the post with Camilla’s photo and link to it, both in the paragraph above and also here.)
I’m here to share other recent photos with all my readers who are here, now, too.
I’m here with my son and I couldn’t be happier.
I’m here to thank all who helped me create this post and — of course! — all my readers, who are here with me now.
Yesterday, myself and several other selves discussed “Self Acceptance” in a therapy group.
All the selves in that group agreed that “Self Acceptance” is an important topic and something that people need to practice, practice, practice.
Here and now, I’m practicing self acceptance as I make decisions about what to pack for my trips to Iceland and Edinburgh. I will accept myself whether or not I bring along my ukulele and/or my laptop.
I am also practicing self acceptance about the other photos I took yesterday.
Since I’m having trouble finding bright ideas in the news or on social media these days, I was glad to see this in a store yesterday.
That bright photo shows a notebook for writing down one’s own bright ideas. I’m now having the bright idea that bright ideas often come from within. My next bright idea is this: maybe we should rely less on other people’s bright ideas, especially if the people pushing those ideas don’t seem particularly bright.
Do you see any bright ideas in my other photos from yesterday?
I’m now having the bright idea that I’ll be revisiting the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. While I’ve had that bright idea several times before, some bright ideas are worth repeating.
I just had the bright idea to look for “Bright Ideas” on YouTube.
I look forward to seeing many bright ideas in the comments section, below.
Bright thanks to all who help me share bright ideas in this daily blog and — of course! — to you, for having the bright idea of reading it.
My very unusual heart was happy to connect, yesterday, with two people who also have very unusual hearts.
Andrena, Vicki, and I have congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (cctga). That’s a very unusual heart condition and it’s very unusual when three of us can share a heart-to–heart-to-heart talk.
My very unusual heart overflowed with gratitude as we shared what was in our hearts. Then, my very unusual heart spent another unusual day in the heart of their very unusually beautiful and busy city of Edinburgh.
For Andrena, Vicki, and me, living with very unusual hearts is business as usual. Because we’re in this together, we are not afraid.
This very unusual heart loves jazz, so last night I attended ” Jazz at the Movies” …
Do you think that everybody wants to be a cat? I hope you express what’s in your very unusual heart in a comment, below.
Thanks, from the bottom of this very unusual heart, to all the very unusual hearts and very unusual cats that helped me create this very unusual post and — as usual! — to you, for reading it.
Merrily we roll along to yet another blog post from the Merry Festival Fringe in Merry Olde Edinburgh, Scotland.
Merrily We Roll Along is a Stephen Sondheim musical I’ve been wanting to see for along, long time. Every time we roll merrily along to Edinburgh for our yearly visit, I become less merry, momentarily, when I discover that Merrily We Roll Along has been at the Fringe but has rolled along out of there before we arrive. This year, I rolled along to a different strategy and booked tickets to see Merrily We Roll Along in Boston when I merrily roll along home in September.
Yesterday, as I was merrily rolling along the Royal Mile, I saw this:
I was so merry to see this that it took Paul …
… several tries to merrily roll me along to an understanding that this was NOT the Sondheim musical but rather the play that musical was based on. Paul, who is the director of the first revival of Kaufman and Hart’s Merrily We Roll Along to roll along in many decades, merrily urged me to roll along to see the play. I merrily agreed, since I’ve been a merry fan of George Kaufman and Moss Hart as the years have rolled along. Indeed, one of my favorite books when I was merrily young was the biography of George S. Kaufman by Howard Teichmann. (If you wish, you can merrily roll along to this description of that book.) Kaufman was not exactly merry but some of the wittiest words I’ve ever merrily read rolled off his tongue. When I was at my first job, I merrily used his line “Forgotten but not gone” about somebody who had quit but hadn’t yet rolled along out of there. That line was merrily received by some.
Shall we merrily roll along to my other photos from yesterday?
Before I merrily roll along to breakfast and then to Merrily We Roll Along, I merrily recommend N.E.A.L. P.O.R.T.E.N.Z.A., LAID, JAYDED, The Durham Revue, and Manual Cinema’s Lula Del Ray. Later this week, we’ll merrily be rolling along to dinner with Neal Portenza (a/k/a Joshua Ladgrove), who is merrily doing a card trick above.
I didn’t have to search hard to find greatness elsewhere, too.
