Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Bronx boy
wondering
why he is here.
Don DeLillo’s 7-word autobiography, alongside those of other cultural icons. (via explore-blog)
21 July 2013
20 July 2013
If there’s no joy sans love and laughter,
As Mimnermus holds, then live for love and laughter.
Long life!
Horace: The Epistles Book I: Epistle VI
“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I sit on the lawn overlooking Waterfall Bay in Hong Kong, wind chimes sounding inside the sporadic whoosh of the warm wet wind blowing off the fecund tropical trees here in Hong Kong, my feet curled atop the stubby grass, my third cup of coffee in my hand, the ever friendly and attentive Sal, my friend Steve's chocolate Lab circling me the same way my thoughts circle now around this place, my place, where I am.
Don’t Go Back To Sleep
For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
—Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi.
For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
—Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi.
The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.
Marcel Proust, courtesy of Whiskey River.
Here is an
illuminating interview with James George, former high commissioner to
India and former ambassador to Iran. The Dalai Lama calls him “my old
friend.” Chogyam Trungpa referred to him as “a wise and benevolent man,
an ideal statesman.”
He has been a gentle teacher and a friend who has inspired many to engage in a spiritual practice in the midst of life–one that can bridge the external world with the inner world.
He has been a gentle teacher and a friend who has inspired many to engage in a spiritual practice in the midst of life–one that can bridge the external world with the inner world.
It is useful to consider the body as the anchor for the senses and the mind; they are all interrelated. Feel your entire physical body. Allow your breathing to become relaxed and quiet. When your body and breath become very still, you may feel a very light sensation, almost like flying, which carries with it a fresh, alive quality. Open all your cells, even the molecules that make up your body, unfolding them like petals. Hold nothing back: open more than your heart; open your entire body, every atom of it. Then a beautiful experience can arise that has a quality you can come back to again and again, a quality that will heal and sustain you.
Benoit Courti. Thank you, la-journee.
Fernando Lemos, 1949. Thank you, la-journee.
We must
suppose that we go deep within ourselves, deeper and deeper into our
most hidden self. There in our innermost being, in the very core of
ourselves, we will find a place where there is peace, stillness, and
above all, love.
After having found the place, we must imagine that we are seated there, immersed into, surrounded by the Love of God. We are in deepest peace … All of us is there, physical body and all; nothing is outside, not even a fingertip, not even the tiniest hair. Our whole being is connected with the Love of God.
Nothing will remain.
—Irina Tweedie, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master (California: The Golden Sufi Center, 2006)
Painting: Odilon Redon, Le Silence, 1900
From parabola-magazine.
After having found the place, we must imagine that we are seated there, immersed into, surrounded by the Love of God. We are in deepest peace … All of us is there, physical body and all; nothing is outside, not even a fingertip, not even the tiniest hair. Our whole being is connected with the Love of God.
Nothing will remain.
—Irina Tweedie, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master (California: The Golden Sufi Center, 2006)
Painting: Odilon Redon, Le Silence, 1900
From parabola-magazine.
24 February 2013
18 February 2013
We are rich: we have nothing to lose.
We are old: we have nowhere to rush.
We shall fluff the pillows of the past,
poke the embers of the days to come,
talk about what means the most,
as the indolent daylight fades.
We shall lay to rest our undying dead:
I shall bury you, you will bury me.
- Vera Pavlova
translated by Steven Seymour
he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld
DH Lawrence
Welcome however it may unfurl, OYear of the Snake.
Bring your best, do your worst,
life goes on as a Horse follows on trot
ain't going to look that Horse in the mouth,
ready, instead, to jump up that gift horse with a saddle
and ride
10 October 2012
Not Miles Away
It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person
to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love,
convictions, faith, history. Human life - and herein lies its secret -
takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct
contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
- Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
30 September 2012
“Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666
29 September 2012
I TOUCH YOUR MOUTH
Julio Cortazar
Fragment of Rayuela
I touch your mouth with a finger around the edge of your mouth, I like drawing it out of my hand as if for the first time your mouth opens, and I just close my eyes to undo everything and restart, every time I born I want to mouth, mouth which my hand chooses and draws you in the face, mouth chosen among all, with sovereign freedom chosen for me to draw it with my hand on your face, and who by chance I do not seek to understand exactly matches your mouth to smile under my hand that you draw.
You look at me, look at me closely, more closely and then play the Cyclops, we looked closer and his eyes get bigger, move towards each other, overlap, and the Cyclops are regarded, breathing confused, their mouths find and fight feebly, biting his lips, his tongue barely supporting the teeth, playing on their campuses, where heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. Then my hands are looking to sink into your hair, slowly stroking the depth of your hair while we kiss as if we have a mouth full of flowers or fish, living movements, dark fragrance. And if we bite the pain is sweet, and if we are drowning in a brief and terrible absorb Simultaneous breath, that instant death is beautiful. And there is one hard and one taste of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon in the water.
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