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“Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale...than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could fully comprehend.”

― Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A quote that I try to live by:

If you want to think about what’s important in life, think about death. As some wise soul once noted, nobody on their deathbed ever said, “Gee, I wish I had spent more time at the office” or “Gee, I wish I had won another award.”

(Originator unknown)

I can resist anything but temptation!

"Liars share with those they deceive , the desire not to be deceived." Sissela Books

Is there a "quote" thread yet?
 

The truth shall set you free...

"The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. It's what made the river flow, the ocean swell, and the tide rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable. Mommy kept us at a frantic living pace that left no time for the problem. We thrived on thought, books, music, and art, which she fed to us instead of food (pp. 94)" ~ James McBride, The Color of Water (2006).

From a book by Michael Palmer:

I can't make myself be happy, but I can always make myself not be miserable.

"Being happy is not the only happiness,"

-- Alice Walker


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A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
Which thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, XXV
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

"Originally the pottery wheel and the dancing scene were intended to be two separate scenes. But instead of stopping at the end of the pottery scene, a shirtless Patrick and Demi segued into dancing an erotically charged dance together to the strains of The Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody... The Electricity between them dancing following the pottery scene was so electric that Jerry said, "We don't need love making - this is the love scene," -- Bruce Joel Rubin

(In, Patrick Swayze: One Last Dance, pp. 127, Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2009).

“You understand Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.”

― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking

A Turn to the Right
A Little White Light

Let there be a season when no one rakes,
When all that has ever fallen can drift
with ordinary wings. Mithras, I hear you
out in the open, humming our favorite tune
through a leaf and a comb.
Lead us as if we were righteous
into the blue light of heaven,
where no one will forgive anyone
just in case it's condescending,
and we will love each other
to the withered toes.

-- Carolyn Reynolds Miller, from Rising and Falling (Lynx House Press: 2001).

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Yesterday, I spent part of my day reading literature authored by Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramesci:

Foucault, because he's got a way with understanding complex social anomalies: "...There is notone but many silences, and they are an intregal part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses,"
(In, The History of Sexuality 1: An Introduction, 1984).


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and Gramsci, because of his doctrine of Hegemony: "...the rule of one class over another is not dependent on economic or physical power alone but on persuading the ruled to accept a system of beliefs belonging to the ruling class (James Joll, UK, 1977).

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"It is not possible to make a mistake," -- advice for a shy friend.


(found scribbled onto the bathroom stall door at Powell's Bookstore)

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

This needs to be put on a bumper sticker, or maybe written in the sky on a continuous loop around the world.

Found an interesting comment, made by a poster on an NPR article this morning, about that family from Arizona who were rescued at sea. Don't know if this will make anyone else smile, but I found myself smiling while reading the comments section. (Link to NPR article found ~>>> HERE)

Burned Forest
~ Nichita Stãnescu

Black snow was falling. The tree line
shone when I turned to see -
I had wondered long and silent,
alone, trailing memory behind me.

And it seemed the stars, fixed as they were,
ground their teeth, a stiffened nexus,
an infernal machine, tolling
the halted hours of conciousness.

Then, a thick silence descends,
and my every gesture
leaves a comet tail in the heavens.

And I hear evey glance I cast
as it echoes against
some tree.

Child, what were you seeking there,
with your gangly arms and pointed shoulders
on which the wings were barely dry -
black snow drifting in the evening sky.

A horizon howling, far from view,
darting its tongues and anthracite,
dragged me forever down the mute row,
my body, half naked, sliding from sight.

In distances of smoke the town afire,
blazing beneath the planes, a frigid pyre.
We two, forest, what did we do?
Why did they burn you, forest, in a toga of ash -
and the moon no longer passes over you?

From the book "Bas-Relief with Heroes"
english translation by Thomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru.

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"There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed. ... These things are so ancient within us that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, 'Yes, I see how such a thing may be.' But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking."

~Paul Muad'Dib Excerpt from the novel "Dune"

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Lupita Nyong'o
 

My daughter and I were talking today about the damage parents do, wether we want to or not, and she told me about this poem. I think it is so good:

This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.


Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse” from Collected Poems. Used by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Philip Larkin.

Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178055

Antonio Gramsci's doctrine of Hegemony:

The rule of one class over another is not dependent on economic or physical power alone,
but on persuading the ruled to accept a system of beliefs belonging to the ruling class (James Joll, UK, 1977).

“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.” ― Isaac Asimov

A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it: It just blooms.

(Unknown)

If you look at how our society and culture shape personal development,
I believe you will agree with the following conclusion: there is a conspiracy at work in our society aimed at alienating you from your true self. The alienation from your true self begins at birth.

Many well-intentioned parents are encouraged to place their infant on a feeding schedule. The child is fed when the plan dictates, not when the child's biology requires. If a child needs to cry or rage, he or she is often discouraged from such displays because of the parent's social or personal discomfort. At school, the active child must learn to repress his or her excitement and assimilate into the passive learning environment that characterizes most educational approaches today. We are cajoled, manipulated, and sometimes coddled away from our core self in order to fit some idea of what society says we should be. We are conditioned to fit into the social norm, which too often means fragmenting and splitting ourselves into pieces so we can gain social approval. Some social critics have referred to this conditioning as creating a hypnotic trance. We are asleep, dreaming we are awake.

We have contributed to our problem by buying into these myths. We are simultaneously victims and perpetrators of this psychological crime. We disown many important and vital parts of ourselves to fit in and be what we think we should be. We collude with society and our parents and join the fatal conspiracy. We become as much to blame as our parents, well-intentioned caregivers, grandparents, teachers, mentors, lovers, spouses, colleagues, and bosses. We alienate our true self over and over again, often to the point where our true self is unrecognizable. We don't know our self except through the roles that we play.



~Allen Berger, Ph.D.

...
...
...
"Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees"

~Stonewall Jackson

...
...

' Always get married in the morning. That way if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted the whole day."

Mickey Rooney

"Dick Clark really didn't make rock 'n roll safe for America, as many people think."

Annette Funicello

" The truth is that the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing absolutely nothing. I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feel like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.”

Ava Gardner

"“Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.”

--- Ava Gardner


One of my all time favourite quotes by anyone...including Lincoln, Gandhi and Shakespeare.

"Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors," ~ Czesláw Milösz (1963).

There are three kinds of people on Earth:
Those who make things happen.
Those who watch things happen.
Those who ask what happened?
-Unknown

"Politics in the true sense, have to do with the prosperity, peace and security of the people."


* Henry Ford *

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” *Henry Ford*