I have long had a fascination with quotations. Ever since high school, in fact, which was over 20 <ahem> years ago. It was a very challenging time for me (as it is for most teenagers), and the well articulated thoughts of philosophers and artists, scientists and world leaders, were comforting somehow. These fine people opened my mind to a wealth of possibilities, providing me with hope for the future (thank goodness). My interest in what other people have to say about the things which are important to me continued into university and well beyond. Upon moving out for the first time, I even went so far as to provide some of my favourites for those who frequented our washroom (of all places) to read.

A little “light reading” for the washroom.

To this day, I continue to scrawl these gems of wisdom into the margins of my journals. Now, I’m not what you would consider a big Bible reader or anything, but the following quotation caught my eye the other day.

• What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. ~ Ecclesiastes 1:9

Hmm. Really? Kind of relates to the previous post, Doing A 360, doesn’t it? But I wonder what others have to say on the subject.

• Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. ~ Voltaire
  
• Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all. ~ Abraham Lincoln
  
• Originality is the art of concealing your sources. ~ Benjamin Franklin
  
• Utter originality is, of course, out of the question. ~ Ezra Pound
• Originality is undetected plagiarism. ~ William Ralph Inge
  

I see. Ahh, the irony. Well, if that’s truly the case, then why bother creating anything at all?

• Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. ~ C.S. Lewis

Well, then. I guess there is that.

Now, perhaps you have noticed me saying previously in this blog that I wished to copy things created by other people. For example – “I noticed the coolest garden angel that I may somehow have to try and duplicate…” (Sleep, Perchance to Dream), and “Somebody’s cool fridge magnets – a future project I think!” (It’s A Sign, People (Ha!) ). With all of my recent research into copyright and intellectual property and the like, I thought it best that I should clarify a few things. For starters, I do NOT wish to outright copy the work of another person. Period. Try to recreate the joy I experience when admiring someone else’s work, and do so in my own style…yeah, sure. But at most, the work of others should be used as a starting point – a peak of inspiration from which to leap from.

A little while ago, my friend Don posted a link to some of his recent (and stunning, I might add) photos of Paris. I really liked the ones he had taken of people on bikes and scooters and such, and wanted to experiment with taking some similar ones myself. Well, as luck would have it, neither the baby (with nap times, etc.) nor the weather (extreme rain or bright sun make these kind of shots tricky) has exactly been cooperating lately, so I decided to start goofing around with capturing the motion in our everyday business instead.

While taking the boys on the carousel, I snap this as a first attempt.

Then I started playing ball with the dog and managed to get this one.

And last of all, here’s our youngest as he navigates the stairs.

Not the best images in the world, I know, but it’s a start I suppose. I have discovered (with the dozens of attempts it took just to get these) that reinventing the wheel is a lot harder than it looks. Ah, well. I guess you’ll never know until you try.