{Read} {PDF EPUB} ~download Precious Things by SP The Precious Things We Keep Nearby. In drawers and cupboards, on desktops and shelves, in pockets and purses, we keep precious items. Pencils, rocks, shells, boxes, pennies, bells, rings, and things—they are special and precious. Things we keep at home, and things we might not leave home without. In Night , Elie Wiesel’s clear and horrifyingly true story of his evacuation from a Hungarian ghetto and imprisonment in Auschwitz, Wiesel remembers a prisoner playing a Beethoven sonata on the violin. “Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence.” Someone kept a violin in Auschwitz? Grace has a sinister side. Amidst humans marching to gas chambers, a violin holds a note of humanity. It’s not the violin that’s incomprehensible. It’s that this man kept it close. When we keep things close, they catch in our gravity, sit in our orbits. We share forces like power, identity, memory. Things we cannot possibly abandon. Above all memory. Little joggers of places, moments, and words that happened. Our past selves, other people. I keep a small ceramic pot full of waxy orange stamp ink. It was my grandmother’s, bought it in China fifty years ago. When I was young I used to put my finger in it and touch things, spreading beautiful orange, enraging her to no end. Grandma died years ago, but the pot remained in Grandpa’s home. My grandfather died this year and I requested the pot. A childhood print was still in the ink. A witness of the past. I keep it close. Writer Dani Shapiro maneuvers us around her nearby precious things in her memoir Still Writing : My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach, essential oils with names like concentration and focus and inspiration—the kind I might have laughed at when I was younger… All that stuff is there to remind me to stay in the present. I keep a wide orbit of preciousness. Pictures, stones, beads, an arrowhead, dried flowers, seeds, pine cones, small mirrors, elephant-shaped paperclips, tassels, things purple. When I moved into my first apartment, my mom packed my precious things in a box she labelled “Treasures.” The movers got a kick out of that. Since moving to England, I’ve collected a few small ceramics. Hard, smooth, always cold with achingly tender widths. They give me comfort. Touch is critical to connecting. Precious ceramics by Isobel Egan. Photograph by Ellen Vrana. My husband keeps lamb’s ears ( Stachys byzantina ) in his closet. He touches it absently while choosing a tie. It calms him, the touch and the act of touching. Connecting. Neurologist Oliver Sacks writes fondly of a rock collection. Not the talismans most of us gather but specific elements of the periodic table. Minerals, like a bottle of mercury. I have tended since early boyhood to deal with loss […] by turning to the nonhuman. […] Times of stress throughout my life have led me to turn, or return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death. These precious things we keep nearby hold our vast emotions with ease. They are vessels for the things we can’t carry and can’t abandon. And after we’re gone, they will speak of us. James Oughtibridge’s ceramic maquettes. Photograph by Ellen Vrana. In an emotional and empathetic exploration of the “human death anxiety,” psychiatrist Irvin Yalom urges connection as a way to overcome our fears of nothingness: 1. This nothingness, what Vladimir Nabokov called “eternity of darkness” weighs heavy on many minds. Trying to make sense of the short time we have, trying to understand the limitations of life. Read more from physicist Alan Lightman, journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens and my own look at the limits of our knowledge when it comes to death and eternity. 1. “There is a biological fear that is hardwired into us. I know this fear is inchoate—I’ve experienced it too. It doesn’t have words. But every living creature wishes to persist in its own being.” We are connected deeply to our precious things because they persist when we cannot. We might not know where we exist beyond death, but we know these things will persist on earth. This is all perfectly healthy and natural and human. However, we must take care these connections don’t stand in for human connections. When French travel writer Sylvain Tesson forwent civilization to spend six months in Siberia, he formed strong connections to things. Simple, needless things that suddenly became crucial. Is this because he was missing people? An object that has been with us through the ups and downs of life takes on substance and a special aura; the years give it a protective patina. To learn to love each one of our poor patrimony of objects, we have to spend a long time with them. […] As the nature of objects reveals itself, I seem to pierce the mysteries of their essence. I love you, bottle… I love you, bottle… more than I love anyone else? Precious ceramics by Yuta Segawa. Photograph by Ellen Vrana. In drawers and cupboards, on desktops and shelves, in pockets and purses, precious things we keep nearby. Requiring nothing but place, they give us memory, calmness, comfort, and infinite, welcoming capacity. 2. From Pablo Neruda’s wonderful Ode to Things : “I love all things, not because they are passionate or sweet-smelling but because, I don’t know, because this ocean is yours, and mine: and these buttons and wheels and little forgotten treasures, fans upon whose feathers love has scattered its blossoms, glasses, knives and scissors- all bear the trace of someone’s fingers on their handle or surface, the trace of a distant hand lost in the depths of forgetfulness.” 2. They don’t, however, give us each other. “Darling, I now have a butter dish shaped like a cow,” Leonard Cohen announces almost wistfully in his Book of Longing. Precious Things. "Precious Things" was written during the second phase of creating Little Earthquakes, a period that also yielded "Girl", "Tear in Your Hand", and "Little Earthquakes". This batch of songs was recorded in Eric Rosse's home studio. After the initial version of Little Earthquakes was rejected by Atlantic Records, Tori and Eric went on a trip through the American West. Tori came up with the song's riff while sick in the Rocky Mountains, noting that the riff "started building in my head. I think I had been forming it before we left . But everything came together when I got really ill in the Rockies. And I think layers were coming off my life -- shields that I had built up in order to filter things". [1] At her VHS Storytellers concert in 1998, Tori recounted that "Precious Things" "came to me while I was living behind a church. . I had a roommate that listened to really raucous music and it started to take me into flashbacks of my grandmother. . So, behind this church with this music going on and on in my head, I started to really think that maybe just one day I could run faster." (VHI Storytellers) The bridge of "Precious Things" references the band Nine Inch Nails by name. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor provided backup vocals for "Past the Mission" on Tori's subsequent record Under the Pink . When asked whether Reznor knew about the reference, Tori stated that " Other appearances [ edit | edit source ] Comic Book Tattoo [ edit | edit source ] A five-page story inspired by "Precious Things" was included in the 2008 graphic novel anthology Comic Book Tattoo, a collection of short comics inspired by Amos' songs. [2] "Precious Things" was written, pencilled, inked and lettered by Emma Vieceli and coloured by Faye Wong. [3] Viecelli later cited being invited to do the piece as one of the proudest moments of her career. [4] Page from "Precious Things". Live performances [ edit | edit source ] The first recorded performance of "Precious Things" took place at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991. The song has been played during all of Tori's tours since; [5] Matt Mazur of PopMatters referred to "Precious Things" as "[p]ossibly the most performed song of Tori's career" in 2012. [6] "Precious Things" has gone through several incarnations over the years, including on the Dew Drop Inn Tour in 1996. During this tour, according to Mazur, "the song morphed into something far more sinister and discomfiting" than its previous live performances and "marked the arrival of the difficult-to-listen-to animalistic growl that replaced the word “girl” and the impossible-not-to-watch clawing of her thighs en route to her crotch . [c]oupled with a child-voiced Amos whispering “Wash me clean, Daddy” before barking the song to a close". [7] A full-band version of the song debuted during the 1998 Plugged Tour, a version replicated by Tori on her subsequent band tours in 2002-2003 and 2007, where it became a fixture of her show's encores. [8] Mazur notes that this arrangement of "Precious Things" was altered for the 2009 Sinful Attraction tour, "calling to focus a new instrumental call-and-response with her band as she geared up for the bridge, brilliantly allowing both artist and audience to breathe in a few moments of calm all knew would not last long". [9] (pompadours) During the 2011 Night of Hunters Tour, the song was arranged for the Apollon Musagete Quartet, a version on which Mazur claims Tori "finally achieved the song’s cinematic potential, her piano back at the forefront and shrill, wayward string plucks and moans insidiously getting under the skin of the song better than any guitar ever could". Live performances of "Precious Things" are included on Live at Montreux, the 'Live - Still Orbiting" disc of To Venus and Back, the 2003 live DVD Welcome to Sunny Florida, and the 2007 Legs & Boots concert bootlegs. Television performances [ edit | edit source ] Remastered and re-recorded versions [ edit | edit source ] Remastered versions of "Precious Things" were included on the 2003 greatest hits collection Tales of a Librarian, the 2006 boxed set A Piano: The Collection, and the 2015 reissue of Little Earthquakes. Precious Things by SP. Chairwoman of Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI), Monika Kryemadhi has emphasized Saturday that two of the most important things to Albanians are their country and their national flag, which she accused the Socialist Party (SP) of wanting to destroy. During an electoral meeting in Korca, SMI’s Head highlighted that it was time to shake hands and go door-to-door, urging people to go and vote on the April 25 parliamentary elections. “I heard you say a little while ago ‘Rama leave’. I would ask you to call Albania, because Albania is our home. Albania is our country. Albania is the most precious thing that each of us has. Because the most precious word for us is not ‘Rama leave’, the most expensive word for us is Albania. The most precious thing for us is our national flag. These two things, which the Renaissance wants to destroy, we must never allow to be trampled by a madman who is driving them all mad”, noted Kryemadhi among other things. Precious Things by SP. 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Мы привлекаем к этому партнеров по маркетингу и рекламе (которые могут располагать собранной ими самими информацией). Отказ не означает прекращения демонстрации рекламы Etsy или изменений в алгоритмах персонализации Etsy, но может привести к тому, что реклама будет повторяться чаще и станет менее актуальной. Подробнее в нашей Политике в отношении файлов Cookie и схожих технологий. What Is The Most Precious Thing In Life? The most precious thing in life may not be that obvious. Over the years, I have learned what the most precious things in life are, the lessons mostly coming at times when these things have been unavailable to me. It’s true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. As far as I’m concerned, there are 3 extremely precious things in life, and they form a Top 3 in my mind; but if you don’t have number 1 then numbers 2 and 3 can feel flat and not all that valuable. If you can manage to have the top 1 precious thing and one of the others, then you’re likely to be very happy. If you’ve got all 3 of the most precious things, you’ve really got it made. And yet some people may have all 3 and not acknowledge it, leading to ingratitude and unhappiness. The important thing about the most precious things in life is that you take time to validate that you have them, that you are grateful for them and that you make the most of having them. Then your life will be full, rich and happy. So counting down, backwards, here are the most precious things in life: Having time is really important. Without enough time, you may feel stressed, depressed and feel unable to fit in all the things you would like to. You probably have more time available to you than you think. Many people make excuses about having a lack of time to do things. If this is you, keep a timetable of every minute spent in a day or over a week. See how much time you could claw back by not checking your email or social media as much. What activities do you do that you could spend less time on? What could you delegate to other people to free up your time? Do you watch TV even if absolute rubbish is on? Do you do some things for the sake of it, even though you don’t enjoy them? Could you shorten those tasks by using different tools or by getting help to do them? But time on its on cannot bring you happiness. Just ask someone stuck in a prison cell or in a hospital ward if they are enjoying their time? Most probably won’t appreciate that time, because they don’t have the second most precious thing in the world. Freedom. Freedom consists of many different liberties, such freedom of movement (which includes being healthy and unconfined), freedom of thought and speech, and the freedom to be oneself without risk of persecution. Most of us don’t have total freedom. We have responsibilities that we can not shirk and have to comply with certain rules and regulations. But the worst killer of freedom can often be your own mind. It can tell you not to step outside your comfort zone or that you’re not good enough to do XY or Z, which you would love to try. You can get more freedom in your life by challenging those self-imposed boundaries. Making the effort to take one small step outside your comfort zone every day can lead to a lot of progress in a short amount of time, and every time you do it, your comfort zone expands until you’re able to do things you never dreamed possible. And never listen to naysayers. Freedom is about choice – whether you succeed or fail at something, you always learn a lesson. You can maximise your freedom by minimising the amount you tie yourself into a certain lifestyle. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to be a homeowner if you don’t want to have a mortgage around your neck. If you don’t want children, or want them later in life, that’s your choice too. If you’d prefer not to get married, then don’t. If you don’t feel cut out for a conventional life, don’t have one. Doing what truly makes you happy and being free is much more important than what others think of your life choices. Integrity. Integrity is the most precious thing we have, because it is something we can hold onto even in the hardest times when we have no time or freedom. People like Nelson Mandela can only have survived long periods of cruel imprisonment due to the immense amount of integrity he carried with him. As a former addict, I have previously lived without integrity, lying, cheating, taking advantage of others. And yet that behaviour is completely against my nature, which is giving, genuine and good-hearted. No wonder living as a desperate addict made me feel like my very soul had been sucked out of me. In recovery, I have hard times now, too, but I can get through them with a surprising peace of mind as long as I act with integrity. The important thing about the value of integrity is that you do have to remind yourself of it and feel it within your body for it to have its full effect. If you’ve had a difficult day, as you put your head on the pillow at night, remind yourself of the ways you acted skilfully and kindly and in ways which match your values. It can be easy to forget how valuable integrity is, but you will know the horrible feeling inside when you break it, the regret that comes from doing that, and the lingering feeling of all not being right with the world. So in order to have peace and contentment, aim to make the most of your time, free yourself from unnecessary binds, but most importantly of all, act with integrity in whatever you do.