▶ The Harmonica Song by Beachprophet

▶ The Harmonica Song by Beachprophet

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

—T.S. Eliot

▶ THE HOWARD TAPES 1979 by Beachprophet

▶ THE HOWARD TAPES 1979 by Beachprophet

What does the world need?

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

What is not shared....

"The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think. The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it's only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it's why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali - it's not English anymore, it's not getting squeezed through any hole.

So cry all you want, I won't tell anybody."
- David Foster Wallace
Oblivion

New Blog I like and will follow: The Last Psychiatrist

Louis CK on being a Dad

I really loved watching this video that was embedded in a blog I recently began to read. On its own there are valuable insights or more accurately, insights that confirm some of my own observations. Reading the blog after watching the video illuminated my superficial take. More importantly, it drove home the conundrum parenthood presents: having to sacrifice the impulse of the self to cater to the needs of the child.

It is much easier to be two kinds of people at two different times than it is to be two kinds of people at the same time.

--The Last Psychiatrist

I look forward to following the posts of this blogger. They provide very useful well thought through insights my lazy superficial mind so desperately needs.

Only with Love

from: Predatory Wasp Observer

If a psychological problem were set to find means of making men of our time - Christian, humane, simple, kind people - perform the most horrible crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution could be devised: simply to go on doing what is being done now. It is only necessary that these people should be governors, inspectors, policemen; that they should be fully convinced that there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on anyone of them individually. Without these conditions the terrible acts I witnessed today would be impossible in our times.

It all lies in the fact that men think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love. But there are no such circumstances. We may deal with things without love - we cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love - but we cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees without being careful. If one deals carelessly with bees one will injure them and will one’s self be injured. And so with men. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life.

It is true that a man cannot force another to love him as he can force him to work for him, but it does not follow that one may deal with men without love, especially if one demands or expects anything from them. If you feel no love, sit still,” Nekhyudov thought; “occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. Just as you can only eat without injuring yourself when you are hungry, so you can only usefully and without injury deal with men when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life proves.

- Leo Tolstoy in Resurrection (1899)

Sound Advice from another Century

Betrand Russell's Advice to Our Descendants

In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

The Full Interview

The Silence

The Saviors of God - Spiritual Exercises

by Nikos Kazantzakis

THE SILENCE

1. THE SOUL OF MAN IS a flame, a bird of fire that leaps from bough to bough, from head to head, and that shouts: "I cannot stand still, I cannot be consumed, no one can quench me"