"We are paper thin. We exist on luck amid the percentages, temporarily. And that’s the best part and the worst part, the temporal factor. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You can sit on top of a mountain and meditate for decades and it’s not going to alter. You can alter yourself into acceptability but maybe that’s wrong too. Maybe we think too much. Feel more, think less.”

~ Bukowski

Nothing you wear is more important than your smile.  Be well dressed but by all means tend to that smiling.

The Fish Meets the Water Bearer

Linda Goodman

We searched for each other

in the most unlikely places,

among the most unlikely people,

and when our paths finally crossed,

it was for reasons so entangled

in our daily bread,

and the usual trespasses

that we might not even have noticed,

except for that faint quiver of wonder

like a passing chill from the night air.

We loved

and the closest we’ve come to explaining why,

is because it was you,

and because it was I.

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” - Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

“No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.” - Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game 

“And it is also the only reward for my work: to feel what I have written is like the back of a cat as it is being petted, with sparks and an arching in cadence.” - Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch


“Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  

“We like lists because we don't want to die.”     ~ Umberto Eco

 Advice from the ex-con writer Gregory David Roberts, author of Shantaram, to all of us in our daily prison of our own making or of COVID-19

10) NEVER GIVE UP

We have no reason or right to give up.

The generations that came before us, that we carry within us, won’t let us give up.

The generations to come are relying on us never to give up.

Our human family has a sublime capacity to endure for one another and survive, and so far, we have carried the treasures of tenderness, caring and sharing through every terrible crisis that has ever confronted us.

We human beings are empathetic cooperators: when we stand together, nothing can stand against us; we are high-functioning adaptors: we can adapt to the arctic, the desert, below the sea and outer space; and we never give up.

In the church of my heart the choir is on fire.

‘God’ seems like a rather small concept to contain the exquisitely inter-accommodative coherencies of Universe.

—	R. Buckminster Fuller, quoted in conversation by Robert Anton Wilson in Right Where You Are Sitting Now

Thank Heaven I don't have my friends problems.  But sometimes, I tell you, I notice an expression on one of their faces that I recognize as gratitude.

Before execution and elimination, I propose these tortures for the inhumane SOB Xxxxxx Xxxx and white supremacist shooters for being the HUMAN WASTE of the world.

IF THEY ARE MEDIEVAL, THEY MUST HAVE MEDIEVAL!

Christchurch, New Zealand

Shams of Tabriz’s 
40 Rules of Love

Rule 7

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.