Day 14: What's on my iPod?

Um… music!

This one is a bit of a tricky one. I have fairly eclectic tastes in music so it would be difficult to say that my iPod is full of this genre or that. Instead I decided to put it on random play while I was working the other day & this list is the first 50 that came on.

What are you like? -- Indigo Girls

Look back in. -- Moby

Believe -- Bernard Fanning

Watermark -- Enya

Beautiful Goodbye -- Amanda Marshall

They tought I was asleep -- Paul Kelly

Better -- Regina Spektor

Sigur 7 [untitled] -- Sigur Rós

Lord only knows -- Beck

Over & over -- Sarah Blasko

Shosholoza -- Ladysmith Black Mambaso

Cecilia -- Simon & Garfunkle

Hold the line -- Toto

Innocence -- Björk

To my table -- Mama Kin

September Morn -- Neil Diamond

Hely Meli -- Hamid el-Shaeri

I put a spell on you -- Credence Clearwater Revival

Everywhere -- Fleetwood Mac

(Don’t fear) The Reaper -- Blue Öyster Cult

Cut here -- The Cure

Happy Birthday -- Frankenpony

Oh Kamikase -- Something for Kate

Autumn Bone -- Clare Bowditch

A man and a woman -- U2

Mr Jones -- Bee Gees

All alone -- One Giant Leap

Playground -- Sia

Forever -- Ben Harper

Almighty friend -- The Little Stevies

You’ve got a friend -- Carole King

Tango -- John Williams

Will it away -- Tex Perkins

Walk away -- Wendy Matthews

Blueberry Hill -- Fats Domino

I wanna be your lover -- Prince

Same in the end -- Sublime

Wirrpangu -- Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

Buried alive in blues -- Janis Joplin

Jungle Man -- Lanie Lane

I’ve got a life -- Eurythmics

Creepin’ in -- Nora Jones

Giant steps -- John Coltrane

Walking on the moon -- The Police

Squeeze Box -- The Who

Better days -- Bruce Springsteen

Green, green grass of home -- Johnny Cash

Take good care of my baby -- Bobby Vee

Landing gear -- Ani DiFranco

Spanish Bombs -- The Clash

Now, what does all of that tell you about me? In reality, I’m listening mostly to Lanie Lane, Mama Kin, Zee Avi, Jess McAvoy, Amy McDonald, Xavier Rudd, John Butler, Bernard Fanning, Clairy Browne and the Bangin’ Rackettes, The Custom Kings, Jack Johnson & Gotye.

What’s on ‘high rotation’ on your iPod? Or give us the first 10 songs that come up on random play…

Smiling

And around my neck could be a flaming Christmas wreath,

And I’d be smiling under, smiling underneath.

Ani DiFranco

In the past week I’ve become highly aware of things that make me involuntarily smile. Of course, there are the usual things like seeing someone you love; a child doing something cute; or something that tickles your sense of humour. And then there’s icecream and chocolate (Or does that come under “seeing someone you love”?) But other things too make me grin like a goon, often to myself.

I’ve become aware of these other things that make me smile—ones that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense if you think about the fact that we smile (and produce a myriad other facial expressions) primarily as a mode of communication.

While watering my vegetable and herb garden two days ago I noticed that I couldn’t help smiling whenever I turned to face a plot of dwarf sunflowers growing there. Unlike the other plants in the garden, some of which I’m very proud of, the sunflowers give me a feeling of pure joy which has very little to do with feelings of achievement in growing them because they weren’t exactly a challenge. The seed of these sunflowers were a gift from a friend who is now living interstate and whom I miss terribly so, if anything, they should have prompted a feeling of sorrow but the beauty and colour of the sunflowers overcame anything negative and made me smile to myself, hose in hand.

My involuntary smiling at the sunflowers made me more aware of what can produce these smiles and feelings of joy so last night as I was driving home from Melbourne and had come over the Dividing Range into some wetter air I saw a rainbow and it made me smile. The day before I had seen a hot air balloon and it too had made me smile.

SOURCE: http://www.portalegypt.com/en/hot-air-balloon/

These things are interesting things to smile at but I think it comes down to how I feel about them. I’ve never been ballooning and I’m not sure that I’m particularly keen to go (although if someone offered me a ride, I wouldn’t say no) but I like the ‘idea’ of hot air balloons—there’s a certain romance to them. And the rainbow? Well, that’s probably a hangover from childhood and the fascination I had with them then. It wasn’t silly stories about pots of gold that caught my imagination, I just liked the colours.

SOURCE: http://rainbow-whirl.blogspot.com/

So, in the interest of smiling more often, I’ve planted more sunflowers in and around my garden and I’m going to keep an eye out for hot air balloons and rainbows.

What makes you smile?