Many of Mark Tipple’s photographs of swimmers and surfer’s diving UNDER waves look like people flying and leaping…underwater. They are, in a way, in a different medium than air… because there are many….ways….to….fly……and…………………..leap!
Read MoreWe feel like we’re flying ourselves as we watch these sea lions leaping and flying through the waves in pure fluid JOY.
Read MoreWe love the feeling of flying in Universal Everything’s beautiful little video and find ourselves watching it over and over; it’s amazingly refreshing to our lockdown minds. It reminds us of this Rumi poem.
Read MoreRecently, we were browsing through Paperless Post looking for a virtual card to congratulate a couple we know on their twentieth anniversary of being together. We stumbled upon this image by Magnum Photographer Ferdinando Scianna and thought: that’s it! Over the past year, both members of the couple has been feeling their way, and ultimately…
Read More(Video link here.) Long-time ‘improvised life’ reader Sahana sent this hour-long documentary about Parcour (also known as free-running) with this note: “leaping and turning obstacles into stepping stones – …almost like dancing . a philosophy of movement .” There’s LOTS of beautiful parcour as well as illuminating glimpses into the inside of the practice that is very…
Read More(Video link here.) By now everyone knows we’re smitten with images of people leaping, jumping, flying for all the obvious symbolic meaning they can hold: liberation from old constraints, taking chances, or just grooving along. So, although we haven’t experienced the ‘Tiny Wings ‘ app that has become so wildly popular, we love this relaxing little…
Read MoreLeafing through the current New Yorker, we came across this image by Aaron Siskind in an advertisement for Swann Gallery’s upcoming photography auction. It is called ‘Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #99’. Loving images of people flying and leaping, we poked around, to discover that in the 60’s, Siskind made a series of divers suspended…
Read MoreAs you may have noticed, we have a thing for images of people flying and leaping, free falling and sailing through the air – to where? – with no constraints. (Because it’s what we want to do). Today we found a delicious trove on John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries column on Design Observer… Related posts: fly! (merce…
Read MoreThis astonishing composite photo of gymnast Simone Biles performing a difficult vault at the Brazil Olympics exemplifies the LEAP as visual metaphor for risk taking, having faith, taking on challenges, attempting to FLY. We wondered what such leaping and flying was like from Biles’ point of view. This insight applies to many of us.
Read More(Video link here.) Paul Simon’s ‘Getting Ready For Christmas Day‘* seems like a fitting ALT song for the run up before Christmas. It’s upbeat, secular, a tad political, full of social commentary and interwoven with excerpts from a 1941 sermon by the Rev. J.M. Gates, an influential preacher and Gospel singer. There’s also a lot of things leaping…
Read MoreAfter we posted a series of pictures of people leaping and flying – one of our favorite images and ‘the improvised life’s mascot – illustrator/motivational speaker Trevor Romain sent us this image for our collection. He took a picture of a father throwing his son into the air in shallow water in Hawaii and realized…
Read MoreJust a reminder how much can happen when you take the day off…
Read MoreHere’s a moment’s respite from the dire state of the world and the palpable feeling of fear that seems to permeate everything these days. It had us laughing out loud which, we discovered, keeps us right smack IN the moment
Read MoreOne of the best titled leaps we’ve seen (in our vast collection): William Wegman’s For a Moment He Forgot Where He Was a Jumped into the Ocean. THAT is how we would love to live our life:
Read More(Video link HERE.) 233 viral videos from 2014 spliced together make quite a view. We turned the sound off and watched people leaping…dancing…flying…balancing…mastering…diving…risking…challenging themselves physically… What about challenge? we wondered. We thought of the many difficult situations we faced this year that were internal and not filmable with a Go-Pro Camera: they were our private challenges. And…
Read MoreWe are knocked out by photographer Tomasz Gudzowaty‘s beautiful black-and-white-essay of the practices of Shaolin monks, found at IndigoJaws. We especially love this one of a monk skipping on a wall — a variation on our favorite subject of leaping and flying — made possible by rigorous and repeated practice. Lesson there… Thanks Vanessa!
Read MoreRecently, we emailed a friend-fearful-of-the-future our version of a care package: a handful of uplifiting signs and images about taking risks, leaping, going forward into the unknown, one of our favorite subjects. We had just sent off “Leap And the Net Will Appear” when Cynthia Allen from 50 Years 50 Recipes sent us a link to…
Read MoreLately, readers who have seen our ongoing, increasingly obsessive postings of people leaping – an obvious and beautiful metaphor for taking a leap – have been sending sightings on the theme of leaping and jumping. This morning, Cynthia Allen alerted us to the fab Jumping in Art Museums. Sometimes, while visiting art museums and galleries,…
Read MoreWe love of images of people jumping and leaping and have posted quite a few: they seemed like apt visual metaphors for a life principle, of being willing to take leaps…risk…or just jump for joy. In 1959 , photographer Philippe Halsman published a series of famous people jumping. Our favorite is Eva Marie Saint, leaping…
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