Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world?

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

One ancient text tells the story of a crow who was flying with a piece of meat in its beak. Twenty crows were pursuing it trying to grab the meat. Flying high to escape them, it became tired. Suddenly, it dropped the meat, and the twenty crows flew down shrieking, fighting for it. Then the crow, flying high, thought, “How good it is to carry nothing — the whole sky belongs to me!”

“A Conscious Struggle Toward Reality,” by Lizelle Reymond, published in Sacred Tradition And Present Need, an East/West Publication

The Afterlife | Paul Simon - YouTube

The Afterlife | Paul Simon - YouTube

After I died, and the make up had dried, I went back to my place.
No moon that night, but a heavenly light shone on my face.
Still I thought it was odd, there was no sign of God just to usher me in.
Then a voice from above, sugar coated with Love, said, "Let us begin".

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

OK, a new kid in school, got to follow the rule, you got to learn the routine.
Woah, there's a girl over there, with the sunshiny hair, like a homecomin' queen.
I said, "Hey, what you say? It's a glorious day, by the way how long you been dead?"
Maybe you, maybe me, maybe baby makes three, but she just shook her head...

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

Buddha and Moses and all the noses from narrow to flat,
Had to stand in the line, just to glimpse the divine, what you think about that?
Well it seems like our fate to suffer and wait for the knowledge we seek.
It's all his design, no one cuts in the line, no one here likes a sneak

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

After you climb, up the ladder of time, the Lord God is near.
Face to face, in the vastness of space, your words disappear.
And you feel like swimming in an ocean of love, and the current is strong.
But all that remains when you try to explain is a fragment of song...
Lord is it, Be Bop A Lu La or Ooh Poppa Do
Lord, Be Bop A Lu La or Ooh Poppa Do
Be Bop A Lu La

SUMMER 2011 Beach Sculptures - YouTube

SUMMER 2011 Beach Sculptures - YouTube

We have had our day.

Mad Men: Don Draper Says "What?" - YouTube

Mad Men: Don Draper Says "What?" - YouTube

What Milosz Really Said

"I have read many books, but to place all those volumes on top of one another and stand on them would not add a cubit to my stature. Their learned terms are of little use when I attempt to seize naked experience, which eludes all accepted ideas. To borrow their language can be helpful in many ways, but it also leads imperceptibly into a self-contained labyrinth, leaving us in alien corridors which allow no exit. And so I must offer resistance, check every moment to be sure I am not departing from what I have actually experienced on my own, what I myself have touched. I cannot invent a new language and I use the one I was first taught, but I can distinguish, I hope, between what is mine and what is merely fashionable. I cannot expel from memory the books I have read, their contending theories and philosophies, but I am free to be suspicious and to ask naïve questions instead of joining the chorus which affirms and denies."

Self's the man

Oh, no one can deny
That Arnold is less selfish than I.
He married a woman to stop her getting away
Now she's there all day,

And the money he gets for wasting his life on work
She takes as her perk
To pay for the kiddies' clobber and the drier
And the electric fire,

And when he finishes supper
Planning to have a read at the evening paper
It's Put a screw in this wall -
He has no time at all,

With the nippers to wheel round the houses
And the hall to paint in his old trousers
And that letter to her mother
Saying Won't you come for the summer.

To compare his life and mine
Makes me feel a swine:
Oh, no one can deny
That Arnold is less selfish than I.

But wait, not do fast:
Is there such a contrast?
He was out for his own ends
Not just pleasing his friends;

And if it was such a mistake,
He still did it for his own sake,
Playing his own game.
So he and I are the same,
Only I'm a better hand
At knowing what I can stand!

Philip Larkin