Ramblings

Maria and I had a business question once and we called a friend for advice. Our friend is a member of SCORE, an organization of retired business executives who provide free business mentoring. He referred us to another SCORE member who, well, let's just say that he's had an illustrious career and you've all heard of or used one or more of his creations. This gentleman was kind enough to come to our home for lunch and spend a few hours with us.

We don't remember if we ever got our question answered because we don't remember what our question was! But what we do remember is getting a shift in perspective. After talking with him, we began to frame our choices within a larger perspective. For instance, we still remember his questions, "What do you want to be doing in ten years . . . in twenty years?" Those are important questions that are easily lost in moment to moment urgencies.

But the advice we remember most of all, and one that we refer to time and again, was from his story of visiting an office of the space agency of the then Soviet Union. He described a cyrillic quote above the entrance to the space agency that translated, "Don't let better tyrannize good enough." (At least that's how we remember his story.)

This morning at breakfast I was reading a blog and its author, quoting Voltaire, wrote "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

"Maria," I said, "That's where his quote must have come from!"

We got talking about how a concept of perfection blocks so many people from enjoying something because of fears they couldn't do it perfectly. And what if you did create a perfect something? What a devious curse that would be for everything that followed!

Maria joked, "If you didn't try to create art because you thought it wouldn't be perfect, well, get in line!"

Then I looked up Voltaire's original quote. He actually said, Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. "Better is the enemy of good." How many of us don't do something because we think someone else does it better, or we "should" do it better?

When we teach a Zentangle class, we always remind people to focus on what they are doing and not to compare it with others. We encourage each person to appreciate and enjoy putting pen to paper and to focus on each individual stroke without worrying about how the final result will appear.

With Zentangle, there's no need to allow "better" (or even worse, "perfection") to hold you back from the "good" of enjoying putting pen to paper . . . one stroke at a time.

We are ever so grateful that we have never seen a perfect Zentangle!


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Dex & Verdigogh - #27

Laura Harms' weekly challenge (#27) is to create a Zentangle using two specific tangles: dex and vertigogh.

This is a great exercise because it may be asking you to do tangles that you might not normally do, and because it uses two tangles that you might not think to combine.

Here are Maria's two contributions:

Note on dex's inspiration
Our original inspiration for dex was this building in lower Manhattan.

You also see it frequently in parquet flooring. We took this picture yesterday during our walk around the Hotel Providence.

Please be sure to take some time to enjoy and appreciate the many wonderful contributions to this challenge.

Click images for larger views.

Visit to Hotel Providence

We visited Hotel Providence this morning to go over some details for our October CZT training there.

During breakfast there (it was awesome!) we created this Zentangle a la tango. We will be showing you this new tangle in our next newsletter in a few days, so be sure you're signed up to receive it!

After our meeting we took a walk around the hotel. What a wonderful feast of tangle inspirations!

Of course this hotel is full of patterns. Here are two outside images . . .

. . . and here's the hotel carpet!

We're looking forward to wonderful times there!

Click images for larger views.

More From Hong Kong

In our most recent newsletter, we showed a picture of Fina Man, CZT, and her first Zentangle class in Hong Kong. Recently, Fina sent us some more pictures and stories that we're thrilled to share with you.

Fina writes:

The first ever Zentangle workshop was held in Hong Kong in May 2011. There were two 2-hours sessions with more than 50 people who participated for this workshop.

Keith, my colleague and our first Zentangle artist in Hong Kong and in Asia, had helped me to design this "Tangling to Un-Tangle Program" from which the Zentangle forms the core of this program.

We want the participants to have an in-depth understanding of Zentangle, therefore, the story of Zentangle, Maria and Rick, the relevant theories, benefits, tangling were included as main framework for this workshop. It was an amazing event considering the limited 4 hours session overall, but everybody have enjoyed this wholesome experience.

Two years ago. Maria had asked me to come up with a Chinese name for Zentangle. As a result, Keith and I come up the name of "禪結". This is from the direct translation whereby 禪 means Zen, and 結 means knot. We create knots on our minds and in our lives. It is our own selves who created our tangles, so we are able to understand them and we can untangle them.

By the way, the Chinese character of 結 means knitting of fortune and good luck. Yes, every piece of Zentangle is a symbol of luck and fortune as Zentangle is actually the road to understanding our knots and ourselves within.

Here are some more pictures from Fina's class.

That's Fina sitting on the floor with her arm on the table, third from the left in the front row.

Fina attended our very first CZT seminar and came back to attend our first Zentangle Master Class. Fina is a wonderful person who has become a good friend.

Congratulations, Fina, and thank you for sharing those pictures with us. Also, our gratitude to you and Kieth for translating 禪結.

Click images for larger views.

3-4-Friday

Maria's been playing around and exploring. Here are three tiles for Friday.

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Nice Article

Geneviève Crabe, CZT from St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, sent us this article about her series of Zentangle classes.

Read more at her blog entry here.

Congratulations, Geneviève!

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Two to Tango (#26)

Inspired by this twenty-sixth(!) challenge from Laura Harms, CZT, to use a spiral string, Maria created this,

and then together we created this,

Maria often tangles these weekly challenges while we sit at our kitchen table together. This morning, after filling in a large area with a Graphic 1 black pen, she passed her second tile to me and asked if I'd like to finish it. I proceeded to finish it with a white Gelly Roll pen and a white charcoal pencil.

Then a conversation started about what to call this. "Tangle Tango?" Maria asked. (It does take two!) And it is a sort of dance of two (or more) tanglers.

We're thinking this will be a fun Zentangle exercise to explore with two or more tanglers.

What do you think?

Click images for larger views.