# Quote Me A Piece Of Writing That You Really, Really Love :)



## Jennyfur_Karma_Kin

_

Apologies if this has been done before... I couldn't see anything but to be honest I've not got my glasses with me and can't see anything very well 

My quote is from "The Velveteen Rabbit" and I've bolded my favouritest bit.  It always makes me feel better._


""What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

*"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."*

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. *"That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."*


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## pk.

*"We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses."*

From Chapter 2 of "The Great Gatsby".


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## panic in paradise

"Still I'll sing for you...sing for you...
So pretty in this cage...
I will sing for you...I'll sing for you...
Be patient, it's a sad song..."
eDWaRD Ka-SPeLL


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## pk.

"One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devastation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words."

William Styron - "Darkness Visible"


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## panic in paradise

*^^nic3*

"Have you never come across people making light of kirtan, saying: "What is there to be gained by it?" Nevertheless, after listening to it for some length of time, they actually develop a liking for it. Therefore one must listen before one can reflect, and then later, what has been heard and reflected upon will take shape in action suited to the person concerned."
~ Sri Anandamayi Ma

... Kirtan?!?
lol 
"it-it-it"
i love that


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## Jennyfur_Karma_Kin

pk. said:


> *"we went on, cutting back again over the park toward the west hundreds. At 158th street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses."*
> 
> from chapter 2 of "the great gatsby".



 gorgeous!


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## Jennyfur_Karma_Kin

“You guys just wait and see. We'll stand taller than these mountains. We'll bare open our hearts for the world to grab. We'll see lights where there was dimness. We'll testify together to what we have seen and felt. Life will go on--all of us--crawling; stumbling, falling perhaps. But we will be the strong ones. Our hearts will shine brightly.”

~ Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma


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## herbavore

"....sugar from your palm? No.
Give me your fingers. Under this hairshirt
steams the vocabulary of the flesh
crosshatched and scarred into meaning." 

(from Callaloo by Vievee Francis)


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## pk.

"The violence of the contrast was real and made the strongest motive of education. The double exterior nature gave life its relative values. Winter and summer, cold and heat, town and country, force and freedom, marked two modes of life and thought, balanced like lobes of the brain."

"The boy was a full man before he ever knew what was meant by atmosphere"

"From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics, and economy, but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame. Rarely has the boy felt kindly towards his tamers."

From "The Education of Henry Adams"


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## panic in paradise

Genesis 8:8;22

" As long as the earth lasts,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
and day and night
shall not cease."_0_


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## freddy47

^I'm an atheist but damn the Bible does have some wonderfully written poetry. Especially the King James version.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
            Merely this and nothing more."

_The Raven_ by Edgar Allan Poe. I would have quoted the whole poem but I figured that might be too big a post.


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## freddy47

Also the opening lines of _Ode on a Grecian Urn_ by John Keats and of course the famous and yet still controversial final lines. 

"Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time"

 "When old age shall this generation waste,
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."


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## panic in paradise

freddy47 said:


> ^I'm an atheist but damn the Bible does have some wonderfully written poetry. Especially the King James version.
> 
> "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
> Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
> But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
> And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
> This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
> Merely this and nothing more."
> 
> _The Raven_ by Edgar Allan Poe. I would have quoted the whole poem but I figured that might be too big a post.



lmao - i thought that was from King James at first...
*:-x*
ill read several other interpretations before that again(_read as child 1/2 of once_)

i havent read any Poe besides what i had to in school, and i dont want to...because then i would feel persuaded or too influenced, something. ill read parts of different bibles at random, and let that soak in.




> *Psalm 4*:
> *4 *Tremble and[*] do not sin;
> when you are on your beds,
> search your hearts and be silent.
> 
> 
> #* _Or In your anger (see Septuagint)_



bedHead...meditate now*&*zen.
@Pisces 
....._?_


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## panic in paradise

oh noooz


> 1 Answer me when I call to you,
> my righteous God.
> Give me relief from my distress;
> have mercy on me and hear my prayer.


*- the meek*


> * 2 How long will you people turn my glory into shame? *



- *those whom were stood fast*


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## 23536

The reeds give way to the wind 
and give the wind away. 

Ammons


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## Jesusgreen

> “We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”



- Terence McKenna


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## panic in paradise

" The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia.

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak.

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become. "

Robert Frost - "Dedication"


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## panic in paradise

" ... at the moon
at the stars in the north
at the stars in the east
at the stars in the south 
at the stars in the west
at the silence of night
at the black dank air
at the howling of jekylls 
at the dull sound of waves
at the men who are slaves
at the men who are asleep
..."

Current 93


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## herbavore

Kind

I hadn’t noticed
till a death took me outside
and left me there
that grass lifts so quietly
to catch everything
we drop and we drop
everything

Leonard Nathan


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## panic in paradise

"I am the Beginning and the End.
I am honored and scorned.
I am the prostitute and the saint.
I am married and a maiden.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the limbs of my mother.
I am barren
and my children are many.
I am she who married magnificently,
and I have no husband.
I am the one who brings children and I do
not bear children.
I am the consolation of labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and my husband brought me forth.
I am my father’s mother
and my husband’s sister,
and he is my child.
I am the incomprehensible silence
and the idea often brought to mind.
I am the voice sounding throughout the world
and the word appearing everywhere.
I am the sounding of my name,
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and bravery.
I am without shame; I am full of shame.
I am power and I am trepidation.
I am conflict and peace.
Listen to me,
For I am the scandalous and magnificent one."

Thunder Perfect Mind - Unknown


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## hydroazuanacaine

_...they were too fine, it was not their moment, this era of the adolescent, their appreciation he said would come at a future time... All their childhood she'd helped her friend build, drafty as it was, a sandcastle of protection. Such castles should deteriorate of natural and happy processes. That for Peter his should still exist was simply extraordinary. Grady, though she still had use for their file of privately humorous references, for the sad anecdotes and tender coinages they shared, wanted no part of the castle: that applauded hour, the golden moment Peter had promised, did he not know that it was now?_


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## panic in paradise

the bible ~
*... always something more then i think.*
*;-)*



*1 Corinthians 15*


> *12* Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, "There is no resurrection of the dead"?
> *13 *But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;
> *14 *and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without foundation, and so is your faith.
> 
> *40 *There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor (AX) of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones.
> *41* There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; for star differs from star in splendor.
> 
> *42* So it is with the resurrection of the dead:
> 
> Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption;
> 
> *43* sown in dishonor, raised in glory;
> 
> sown in weakness, raised in power;
> 
> *44* sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.



*btw, i cant try and post at the times i do, 
that is ridicules... when should i wait until?!?
9:28?
:-\*


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## pk.

My favourite poems by my favourite poet, Wallace Stevens.

*Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird*


I 
Among twenty snowy mountains, 
The only moving thing 
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II 
I was of three minds, 
Like a tree 
In which there are three blackbirds.

III 
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. 
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV 
A man and a woman 
Are one. 
A man and a woman and a blackbird 
Are one.

V 
I do not know which to prefer, 
The beauty of inflections 
Or the beauty of innuendoes, 
The blackbird whistling 
Or just after.

VI 
Icicles filled the long window 
With barbaric glass. 
The shadow of the blackbird 
Crossed it, to and fro. 
The mood 
Traced in the shadow 
An indecipherable cause.

VII 
O thin men of Haddam, 
Why do you imagine golden birds? 
Do you not see how the blackbird 
Walks around the feet 
Of the women about you?

VIII 
I know noble accents 
And lucid, inescapable rhythms; 
But I know, too, 
That the blackbird is involved 
In what I know.

IX 
When the blackbird flew out of sight, 
It marked the edge 
Of one of many circles.

X 
At the sight of blackbirds 
Flying in a green light, 
Even the bawds of euphony 
Would cry out sharply.

XI 
He rode over Connecticut 
In a glass coach. 
Once, a fear pierced him, 
In that he mistook 
The shadow of his equipage 
For blackbirds.

XII 
The river is moving. 
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII 
It was evening all afternoon. 
It was snowing 
And it was going to snow. 
The blackbird sat 
In the cedar-limbs.

*Of Mere Being*

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.


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## DistyBoi

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Carl Sagan.


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## Obyron

A human being should be able to change a diaper, 
plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, 
design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, 
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, 
take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, 
solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, 
program a computer, cook a tasty meal, 
fight efficiently, die gallantly. 

Specialization is for insects.​
--Robert Heinlein​


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## hydroazuanacaine

^i like it. 


_The beastly and the beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly._


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## panic in paradise

"And if Nanna does not help you in this matter, go to Eridug. In Eridug, when you have entered the house of Enki, lament before Enki: "Father Enki, don't let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld. Don't let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason's stone. Don't let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter's wood. Don't let young lady Inana be killed in the underworld."

"Father Enki, the lord of great wisdom, knows about the life-giving plant and the life-giving water. He is the one who will restore me to life."

- Inana from the great heaven she who  set her mind on the great below from the great heaven the goddess who set her mind on the great below from the great heaven Inana who set her mind on the great below our mistress who hath did abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld she Inana who hath did abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld.


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## freddy47

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." ~Charles Bukowski


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## panic in paradise

"All rivers go to the sea,
yet never does the sea become full .
To the place where they go,
the rivers keep on going."
~ Ecclesiastes 1:7


... say wuuUt?!¿


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## herbavore

^ wow, I love it PiP!


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## panic in paradise

... Well then in that case.


Near the end of chapter 13'

"I awaked up last of all, as one that gathereth grapes after the grape-gatherers: by the blessing of the Lord I profited, and filled my winePress like a gatherer Of grapes.
Consider that I, labored not for myself Only, but for all them that seek learning.  
Hear me, O ye great men of the people,
and harken your ears,
ye ruler of congregation."


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## D n A

' The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain. '
Sylvia Plath


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## panic in paradise

"Once we know the number one, we believe we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget, that we must first  know the meaning of plus."


Lemmy Caution / ALPHAVILLE


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## panic in paradise

" a sphere lying on a table, touches & rests only on one fine point, though it is the entire table which supports the globe"
-?


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## hydroazuanacaine

panic in paradise said:


> "Once we know the number one, we believe we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget, that we must first  know the meaning of plus."
> 
> Lemmy Caution / ALPHAVILLE


"I'm afraid because I know this word without ever having seen it or read it."
-natacha von braun


despite being black & white, it's all blue versus red.


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## panic in paradise

hydroazuanacaine said:


> "I'm afraid because I know this word without ever having seen it or read it."
> -natacha von braun
> 
> 
> despite being black & white, it's all blue versus red.



Despite being up or down, its all really round & round.
Annnd despite being green and red, its all reflected in the dew
each morning bled.


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## panic in paradise

A starry blue sky is one of wanderlust, but a belief in such is a must ~ it is there! it is there! _ Longue durée de vie à la lumière bénie_*¡* in the dark its all I can see, in the light its all I can say
~

For ever May, for every I may ?


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## panic in paradise

*Romans 3:22*
(KJV)
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference

*Psalms 119:110*
(KJV)
The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy precepts


*Benjamin Franklin*
“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”

“Good sense is a thing all need, few have, and none think they want.”

“I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”


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## panic in paradise

heheh

alright alright...
i_ really_ do love this piece of writing  its like a puzzle with pieces that are puzzles as-well. 


IMO, _and this has taken a lot of banging my head against the wall to conclude with_...but compared to any 'sacred-text' as far as word-for-word effectiveness, and flat-out epiphany status for days on end after reading a couple of dozen words(oh my)   the King James Version Bible is, well, endlessly effective.

 it i think is impossible to be read by any one person. or thousands. centuries worth of devoted scholars _etc etc_ - understatement...and the more i read, and re-read, the more clear it seems that, this "book" was written by no man. lol i am serious, it is far to complex and consistent, so simple.
far far way too perfect.

anyway, hope you too enjoy gain as much i feel that i do.





> _______________________________________________
> *PSALMS 119 *
> 
> Aleph (01)
> 8 I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.
> Beth (2)
> 16 I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
> Chet (3)
> 24 Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.
> Dalet (4)
> 32 I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.
> Gimel (5)
> 40 Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness.
> Heh (6)
> 48 My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved;
> and I will meditate in thy statutes.
> Zain (7)
> 56This I had, because I kept thy precepts.
> Vav (8 )
> 64 The earth, O LORD, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes.
> Teth (9)
> 72 The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.
> Jod (10)
> 80 Let my heart be sound in thy statutes; that I be not ashamed.
> Caph (11)
> 88 Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.
> Lamend (12)
> 96 I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.
> Mem (13)
> 104Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.
> Nun (14)
> 112 I have inclined mine heart to perform thy statutes alway, even unto the end.
> Samech (15)
> 120 My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments.
> Ain (16)
> 128 Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right;
> and I hate every false way.
> Pe (17)
> 136 Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.
> Tzadi (18 )
> 144 The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding,
> and I shall live.
> Koph (19)
> 152 Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever.
> Resh (20)
> 160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
> Schin (21)
> 168 I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee.
> Tau (22)
> 176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.


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## nobodyspecial

Tl ; dr


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## airsh0w

"Sensitive persons can certainly have mood disorders, but should not be mistaken for being chronically depressed only because of a pessimistic view of the future of the world or of their own abilities (a pessimism which may well be accurate, as in the case of depressive realism). Likewise they do not have an anxiety disorder merely because they worry more than the nonsensitive, and they do not have a personality disorder (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, etc.) merely because their unusualness has been present throughout their lives as an impediment to the cheerful, resilient functioning expected of most people most of the time.... They cannot shut out the world’s achingly subtle, fleeting beauty or its inexplicable cruelty and suffering. They must find their own meaning in it." -- Elaine N. Aron

and

http://luis.impa.br/chaplin.html

and 

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_001.html


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## panic in paradise

"With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: "Men are not equal."

And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!

Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!"
*- Friedrich Nietzsche*


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## DroneLore

"The impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.
"Upon my word," they will shout at you, "it is no use protesting: it is a case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall . . . and so on, and so on."
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason, I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head agianst it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply, because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength."

-Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; Notes from Underground


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## panic in paradise

"i was a trap for transgressors,
but healing for all who repented transgression;
prudence for the simple,
and a sustained purpose for all those of fearful heart."


dead sea scroll
the thanksgiving psalms II:8


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## Mind-Melt

He laid emeralds in her eyes,
But I'd already tried 
a braclet made of gold
And scarlet thread around her wrist.
Everything was wrong 
so we sang sentimental songs
"oh how seldom we belong, but how elegant her kiss."

we painted crooked lines
but danced in perfect time 
to a love so much refined,
we know not what it is. 
so like a dullen wine we pour
into a grief we'd known before, 
but never quite like this,
never quite like this.

All i know now is regret.
it follows like a silhouette 
of a cobblestone behind me. 
she has nothing left to say 
except to innocently ask, 
her voice delicate as glass. 
"do you see me when we pass?"
But i continue on my way.

-aaron weiss


And to reflect is to regret 
Throwing it all away 
And apathy my one way street 
It took so much from me 
Separated by this divide I created through my fears 
And in your tears you tried to show 
Blind eyes and tell deaf ears 

If we can make it through the landslide standing 
We'll lift each other up to see the bliss on the horizon 
Been looking in from the outside lately 
I've seen who I used to be and it's not me 

And we can keep healing 
And we can keep holding on 

I just want to take you where our time won't waste anymore 
Through the mountains on the water we'll stay engulfed in one another 
And when I can wake up to see the sunrise in you eyes 
Then we'll finally be free and I'll know I've made it home 

-john henry


----------



## panic in paradise

I saw the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false Azure in the windowpane:
I was the smudge of the ashen fluff -
and I lived on and flew on, in the reflected sky

And from the inside, too, Id duplicate myself,
my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, Id let dark glass,
hang all the furniture above the grass.

Vladimir Nabokov 
Pale Fire 
A Poem In For Cantos
cantos 1


thanks leggomyego!


----------



## thujone

> I stand amid the roar
> Of a surf-tormented shore,
> And I hold within my hand
> Grains of the golden sand-
> How few! yet how they creep
> Through my fingers to the deep,
> While I weep- while I weep!



from Poe's "A Dream Within A Dream".


----------



## Mullac. la K

happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling,
chattering to herself, deloothering the fields on
their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide
of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous
Anna Livia.
      He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.
      _Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoqiq!

from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake


----------



## panic in paradise

"percussa resurgo"

"pour y parvenir"


----------



## lulzkiller

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Written 1877; published 1918.

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-	
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding	
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding	
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing	
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,	        5
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding	
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding	
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!	

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here	
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion	        10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!	

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion	
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,	
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.​
And "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy. 1900/1901.

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.​
Amazing sounds. I hope I have respected the visual layouts of the poems with at least modest fidelity.


----------



## panic in paradise

Ecclesiasticus Chapter 34 
1st patagraph

The hopes of a man void of understanding are vain and false: and dreams lift up fools. Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind. The vision of dreams is the resemblance of one thing to another, even as the likeness of a face to a face. Of an unclean thing what can be cleansed? and from that thing which is false what truth can come? Divinations, and soothsayings, and dreams, are vain: and the heart fancieth, as a woman's heart in travail If they be not sent from the most High in thy visitation, set not thy heart upon them. For dreams have deceived many, and they have failed that put their trust in them. The law shall be found perfect without lies: and wisdom is perfection to a faithful mouth.


----------



## ugly

This is a sweet thread. I love knowing what words and what concepts other BLers find meaningful. 

_It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree._ The first sentence of Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst is beautiful, imo.

However, there is one piece of writing that I inevitably come back to over and over again. 
_What a piece of work is man?
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties,
In form and moving
How express and admirable,
In action
How like an angel
In apprehension how like a God!_

I know, it's the only time I'm ever on Hamlet's side. Those lines fall off my tongue in slow motion. The words say so much to me about humanity's possibilities.


----------



## panic in paradise

the current status of nothing, is present reflection of something ~

so wild is the wind, be what shapes the flow.


----------



## Nozphexezora

"But all they are all there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve and salve life's robulous rebus" - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.
I've only dabbled over Finnegans Wake, but I fell in love with this line. Joyce's ingenuity with puns and word flow are what makes me interested in literature more and more.

I have more, but not off the top of my head.

EDIT: OH! OH! I know another one!

"Only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?" - Faulkner
I've only ever read 'The Sound and the Fury' by Faulkner, but I loved it so much. It was so passionate, I felt.


----------



## welshmick

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.

WILLIAM CONGREVE, Love for Love

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.

LORD BYRON, Don Juan

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

KATHARINE HEPBURN, Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips & Quotes

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”

SIGMUND FREUD, Ernest Jones' Sigmund Freud: Life and Work

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

HENRIK IBSEN, From Ibsen's Workshop

"Woman" is my slave name; feminism will give me freedom to seek some other identity altogether.

ANN SNITOW, "A Gender Diary," Conflicts in Feminism

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work ... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

BARBRA STREISAND, People Magazine, May 31, 1993

Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.

PARIS HILTON

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

MARIA EDGEWORTH, Mademoiselle Panache

Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra

For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.

DANIEL DEFOE, The Education of Women

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.

OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.

WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter

When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women

What happens is that, as with drugs, he needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can’t double the dose.

IAN FLEMING, John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming

Every world has faults
This one has too many
Unattainable Female Objects.

DAVID JONATHAN NEWMAN, "U.F.O.," The Light Looks Another Way

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, letter to Steve Richmond, Nov. 1971

Woman was God's second mistake.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Antichrist

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

TONI MORRISON, Newsweek, Mar. 30, 1981

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

BERNARD CORNWELL, The Winter King

Lone women, like to empty houses, perish.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and Leander

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.

MARGARET SANGER, "Morality and Birth Control," Birth Control Review, Feb-Mar., 1918

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, Jane Eyre

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

GEORGE ELIOT, The Mill on the Floss

In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil

No matter what a woman looks like, if she's confident, she's sexy.

PARIS HILTON

I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose
That blossoms in the garden of the King.

ELSA BARKER, The Mystic Rose

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede

I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.

HAROLD PINTER, Moonlight

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction
Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

JOHN FLETCHER, Monsieur Thomas

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Gene Shalit's Great Hollywood Wit

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,
A herb most bruised is woman.

EURIPIDES, Medea

The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology.

SIGMUND FREUD, The Question of Lay Analysis

Woman's mind
Oft' shifts her passions, like th'inconstant wind;
Sudden she rages, like the troubled main,
Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again.

JOHN GAY, Dione

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Table Talk, July 23, 1827

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

JOHN GRAY, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

FRANK SINATRA, quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat

Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.

PAULINE RÉAGE, introduction, The Image

From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents, from eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks, from thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality, and from fifty-five on she needs cash.

SOPHIE TUCKER, Women Who Date Too Much

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.

BARACK OBAMA, Ladies' Home Journal, Sep. 2008

As all-consuming as a young girl's fancies were ... a woman's desires could be twice as dangerous.

TERESA MEDEIROS, The Vampire Who Loved Me

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

JIMMY CARTER, "Losing My Religion for Equality"

A woman calls it giving you a piece of her mind, but our experience has been that she generally winds up by giving you the whole dad-burned thing.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.

OSCAR WILDE, The Ideal Husband

There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models.

JOHN UPDIKE, Rabbit is Rich

It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede

Miracle woman ...
Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh
An easeful meadow for my weariness.

DONALD EVANS, "For the Haunting of Mauna"

If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk

Wretched
Women!
When you are wholly lovely
Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions,
Soul, or body!

MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT, "Ode in the New Mode"

Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair
That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained,
And in her looks; which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd
To find her, or for her ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures abjure:
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable: On she came,
Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS, Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2010

Though women appear to belong to the same species as man, they are actually quite different creatures, and these incomprehensible, insidious beings have, fantastic as it seems, always looked after me. In my case such an expression as "to be fallen for" or even "to be loved" is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was "looked after."

OSAMU DAZAI, No Longer Human

Never mix your women.

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM, The Maxims of Marmaduke

Women's eyes have pierced more hearts than ever did the bullets of war.

WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs

Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.

ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims

The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.

GELETT BURGESS, The Maxims of Methuselah


----------



## Nozphexezora

Oh my god, why are all of those quotes about women?!


----------



## cloisterpaul

When I was born I was black,
 When I grew up I was black,
 When I'm sick I'm black,
 When I go in the sun I'm black
 When I'm cold I'm black,
 When I die I'll be black.
 But you sir...
 When you're born you're pink
 When you grow up you're white
 When you're sick, you're green
 When you go in the sun you turn red
 When you're cold you turn blue
 And when you die you turn purple
 And yet you have the nerve to call me coloured


i don't know the author.


----------



## panic in paradise

they asking why
they loooking up 
towards the sky


open up your soul
the best thing that money can buy


----------



## JedTheHumanoid

The last lines of this novel have always resonated with me...

_“I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.”_ 
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair


----------



## panic in paradise

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come

- William Wordsworth


----------



## shadowman-x

"For myself, I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens; not as a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor, and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise."

-Faramir, from lord of the rings, the two towers.


----------



## panic in paradise

Surah Al-Kahf, Verse 25:
And they remained in their cave three hundred years and (some) add (another) nine



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piepie now
*   SoPHia


----------



## panic in paradise

hte face in the mirror wont stop
that gurrl in the window wont drop
that feast of friends
out loud they cried
waiting for me.....
outSide


----------



## panic in paradise

"The soul replied, saying, 'What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. In a [wor]ld, I was set loose from a world [an]d in a type, from a type which is above, and (from) the chain of forgetfulness which exists in time. From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest i[n] silence.' "  

Gospel of Mary


----------



## panic in paradise

Limit has two modes of operation
Conforming and dividing 
As He confirms and strengthens
He is Cross; 
So when he divides and delimits,
He is limit.

- Valentinus


----------



## Jennyfur_Karma_Kin

One Art - Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster


----------



## delacoert

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead
of getting the idea that courage is a man with a
gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked
before you begin but you begin anyway and you see
through it no matter what.”
  --Atticus (pg. 112) _To Kill a Mockingbird_


----------



## delacoert

_imperat animus corpori, et paretur statim: imperat animus sibi, et resistitur.
---Augustini, Confessiones Liber VIII, CAPUT 9​_​


The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.
---St. Augustine, The Confessions Book VIII, Chapter 9​


----------



## sarcophagus.heels

For years, I've had this strange habit of saving quotes that resonated with me in a word document on my computer - the silly thing is now 50 pages long, so I've kept this down to some of my favorite quotes from books that I've actually read XD

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except the memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. - Tom Stoppard, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_

Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over…Death is not anything…death is not…It’s the absence of presence, nothing more…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound… – Tom Stoppard, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_

I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive. – Augusten Burroughs, _Running with Scissors_

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune. ― Albert Camus, _Le Premier Homme_

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely. - Arthur Golden, _Memoirs of a Geisha_

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.   At night, the ice weasels come.  - Matt Groening, _Life in Hell_

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. ― Christopher Hitchens, _The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever _

Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. – Susanna Keyson, _Girl, Interrupted_

Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint. – Haruki Murakami, _South of the Border, West of the Sun _

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. – Chuck Palahniuk, _Choke_


----------



## panic in paradise

"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage


----------



## panic in paradise

A heavy snow fall melts into the sea.

What silence!


- traditional zen


----------



## !!4iV4HF9R34g

Nabokov is just so expressive.  I can like, see her.  Bold is the best of it.

*”The exquisite clarity of all her movements had its auditory counterpart in the pure ringing sound of her every stroke. The ball when it entered her aura of control became somehow whiter, its resilience somehow richer, and the instrument of precision she used upon it seemed inordinately prehensile and deliberate at the moment of clinging contact.* Her form was, indeed, an absolutely perfect imitation of absolutely top-notch tennis-without any utilitarian results. As Edusa's sister, Electra Gold, a marvelous young coach, said to me once while I sat on a pulsating hard bench watching Dolores Haze toying with Linda Hall (and being beaten by her): "Dolly has a magnet in the center of her racket guts, but why the heck is she so polite?" Ah, Electra, what did it matter, with such grace! I remember at the very first game I watched being drenched with an almost painful convulsion of beauty assimilation. My Lolita had a way of raising her bent left knee at the ample and springy start of the service cycle when there would develop and hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm and far back-flung racket, as *she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip.”*

Also:

 “We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows--a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone's imagination.” ― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

 “What the fuck does it take to show you motherfuckers, what does it fucking take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me-- Oh do it, do it motherfuckers, do it do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally.” ― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius


&:

 “GOD: I own you like I own the caves. 
THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison. 
GOD: I made you. I could tame you. 
THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now. 
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you. 
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what's happened to me.” ― Dave Eggers, How We are Hungry

 “This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.
The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.” ― Dave Eggers, What is the What 

 “Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.” ― Dave Eggers, How the Water Feels to the Fishes

 “My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance--this is why people tell me secrets--my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound.” ― Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity! 

 “I was feeling everything too much. Everything pulled at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools.” ― Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!

 “And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.” ― Dave Eggers 



Guess I've got a thing for Dave lol.


----------



## panic in paradise

*Awakening*

Grave mouths of lions
Sinuous smiling of young crocodiles
Along the river's water conveying millions
Isles of spice
How lovely he is, the son
Of the widowed queen
And the sailor
The handsome sailor abandons a siren,
Her widow's lament at the south of the islet
It's Diana of the barracks yard
Too short a dream
Dawn and lanterns barely extinguished
We are awakening
A tattered fanfare


*Soft Caramel*

Take a young girl.
Fill her with ice and gin
shake it all up to make it androgynous
And return her to her family
Hello, hello, operator don't cut me off
Ah! how sad it is to be the king of animals,
Nobody says a word
Oh! Love is the worst of evils
Take a young girl,
Fill her with ice and gin
Put a slight drop of angostura on her mouth
I knew a man very unhappy in love
Who played Chopin's nocturnes on the drum
Hello, hello, operator don't cut me off
I was talking to....I was talking to the....hello, hello?
Nobody says a word.
—don't you find that art is a bit.....
We tell children wash your hands
We don't tell 'em wash your teeth.....
Soft caramel--

- Jean Cocteau

"Who played Chopin's nocturnes on the drum"
^lol


----------



## panic in paradise

delacoert said:


> “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead
> of getting the idea that courage is a man with a
> gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked
> before you begin but you begin anyway and you see
> through it no matter what.”
> --Atticus (pg. 112) _To Kill a Mockingbird_



good stuff boO


----------



## panic in paradise

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:.....................................................5
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,:...............................10
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.:...............................................15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.:......................................20
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across:.....................................................25
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it:..........................................30
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,:...........................................35
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. :......................................40
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors.":..............................45 . 

Robert Frost


----------



## kytnism

im a mad fan of both suess and jung. today im feeling jung and hope that several quotes, rather than entire pieces apply to this thread.



> a man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
> 
> as far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
> 
> children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
> 
> even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. it is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
> 
> every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
> 
> everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
> 
> great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. they hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
> 
> i have treated many hundreds of patients. among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
> 
> if one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
> 
> if there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
> 
> it all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
> 
> mans task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.
> 
> mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
> 
> nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
> 
> one looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. the curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
> 
> the greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. they can never be solved but only outgrown.
> 
> the least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
> 
> the man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
> 
> the most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.
> 
> the shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
> 
> there is no coming to consciousness without pain.
> 
> - carl jung





...kytnism...


----------



## panic in paradise

*Enemy chopper*: 

"Agent TRESSER. We are confirming Wonder Women on the scene!"

"She is attacking. Repeat. She is attacking the chopper"
*
Enemy chopper friends*: 

"Screw that! Launch everything!"
_
* FWOOSH_ BOOM *
*
Atom thinks to self*:
(_can't...can't think can't._.)
(_can't let them shoot Wonder Women
is what I can't_!)
*
Atom attacks*:
"Okay guys!
I admit you nailed me.
But that was before I hit maximum weight and
density!"
*
a rocket strikes Atom*

"ow!"*

Wonder Women en into scene, to help, and 
says to Atom*:

"Grab my girdle!"
*
Atom responds*:

"Did you just say...?"
*
Wonder Women*:

"Grab it, Atom!"
*
Atom*:

"I, I feel you should know I dreamed this once..."
*
Wonder Women*:

"...

Yes, thanks for sharing that with me.
I appreciate truthfulness in all forms."
*
Atom*:
(_god help me I cant seem to shut up around her_)

"I also had this dream once,
Where you and Power Girl, 
had this big thing of whip-cream"
....
(_somebody shoot me please
stop me before I say something stupider_)
*
Wonder Women*:

"Im just guessing here that you spend a lot of time on the internet,
am I correct?"


----------



## !!4iV4HF9R34g

^ Lolol.


----------



## panic in paradise

*
Wonder Women*:
"Any other extraordinary events you've witnessed -- anything at all?"

"Anything Atom. It might provide us with a crucial part of the puzzle....Yes?"

*
Atom*:
"Well, there's no good Chinese food. And OH...

"Its nothing"

*
Wonder Women*:
"Look, if you want me to use the lasso,
you just have to ask..."
*
Atom*:
"No!"

"No. Its Just that"

"Ack alright, well...
Its Like the girls, the women I mean."

"I mean the women here seem to..."

"Be attracted to me a lot"

*
Wonder Women*:
''_I see_''

"And this is odd why?!?"

*
Atom*:
"Well, it isn't, wasn't...I mean it's Kowloon -- that's where I'm from -- Not so much with the ladies me"

*
Wonder Women*:

"Do you know what this statue is based on Atom?"

*Atom*:
"Well sure its a copy of Venus De Milo."
*
Wonder Women*:
"Yes but  did you know it's believed to be a representation of
Aphrodite?"

"...Dr Choi. I want you to listen to me,
You understand I do not lie while wearing these colors, yes?"

"So when I tell you, as a woman, that its not anything supernatural,
that makes me attracted to your gender, will you believe me?"

...

"Ill take that as a yes."


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

"...the people around him leering at Norman, who was holding the flap of his cheek in his hand as if he could somehow stick it back onto the cartilage and bone it had been chopped from.

Please, said Norman. It's my face.

Vera Spikula came out of the crowd, pushed Tom aside, and knelt by Norman, her hand stroking his forehead, her brown ponytail swaying to her soothing cries. Tom remembered other victims he'd seen Vera with. She seemed to move from man to boy to man, each time ending up the worse for her caring. She had run away from a dead-end bush farm five years age in yellow shoes she'd stolen from her mother. She was a girl with a heart full of misguided love. She mothered every man she met and forgave each one their sometimes causal use of her. There on her knees, she was like someone in a picture praying. Then, like a strange bird blown in from some other planet, a child-sized girl was standing in front of Tom. She stared at him, one eye partly closed, her face shadowed by the barrel fire behind her. Looking at her, he thought of the ring-necked pheasants his father had loved, birds that had been brought to the valley years ago from China and were still not quite believed by anyone, so alien were they to those who saw and hunted them. The strange girl stepped by him, her shoulder brushing against his ribs...

Vera was still on her knees beside Norman, the other girl standing above them with her arms crossed under her breasts. She didn't look more than five feet tall in her scuffed blue shoes [_standing four feet ten in one sock_?]. Vera pulled up Norman's shirt and held it across his cheek as she got him to his knees. Help me, Marilyn, she said. I can't do this on my own.

The girl ignored Vera, turning instead to Tom and smiling. Tom stared at her, thinking it odd how he'd been looking up at the Milky Way and now was seeing the same soft stars in her left eye socket drifting. He stepped around her and heaved Norman to his feet, taking one arm over his shoulder and leaving the other to dangle upon Vera's chest. Marilyn stood a moment in front of the three of them, reached out with her finger, and touched it to the blood on Norman's face, as if curious at what had come out of him. 

Vera made a noise like something squeezed.

Marilyn looked up from her wet finger at Tom and said: This's some party."


----------



## panic in paradise

17.

or this: “Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts,  floating buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like  a feather in midair, or a leaf that is wafted gently  from its twig to the water without turning over,  seemed still in their element, and to have very delicately  availed themselves of the natural laws. Their floating  served to ennoble in our eyes the art of navigation:  as birds fly and fishes swim, so these men sailed.”


Where's the Moon, There's the Moon (A Story for Children)

Dan Chiasson


----------



## coelophysis

> Life is a gradual release from ignorance.



-Bob Braudis


----------



## Pagey

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
The Great Gatsby, F.S. Fitzgerald
Enough said


----------



## panic in paradise

"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection."

Francis Bacon


----------



## kytnism

> How doth the little crocodile
> Improve his shining tail,
> And pour the waters of the Nile
> On every golden scale!
> How cheerfully he seems to grin,
> How neatly spreads his claws,
> And welcomes little fishes in
> With gently smiling jaws!



...kytnism...


----------



## panic in paradise

Zang Tumb Tumb (intro) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti    

    'No poetry before us
    with our wireless imagination
    and words in freedom LOOOng live
    Futurism finally finally finally finally finally finally finally
    Poetry being BORN

and ends with Bombardment;

    '1 2 3 4 5 seconds siege guns split the silence in unison tam-tuuumb sudden echoes all the echoes seize it quick smash it scatter it to the infinite winds to the devil

    'In the middle these tam-tuuumb flattened 50 square kilometers leap 2-6-8 crashes clubs punches bashes quick-firing batteries. Violence ferocity regularity pendulum play fatality

    '...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    ZANG-TUMB
    TUMB-TUMB
    TUUUUUM


----------



## DJ 303

I hope, I shall not offend you, 
if I state quite frankly and openly, 
that you seem to me
to be in every way,
the visible 
personification
of 
absolute 
perfection. 

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest


"Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties."

From a poem "Storm" by Tim Minchin


"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence...

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred."
-Albert Einstein


"Work like you don't need the money;
dance like no one is watching;
sing like no one is listening;
love like you've never been hurt;
and live life every day as if it were your last."
original source unknown
-Albert Einstein

The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart — not something that comes upon the earth or after death.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Without music, life would be a mistake
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature -- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche


----------



## Bardeaux

> As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.



Nikola Tesla on the Wardenclyffe Tower (1908 )


----------



## panic in paradise

*^*good stuff.

"To beautify thy triumphs, and return
Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke;
But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets
For valiant doing in their countries cause?
O, if to fight for king and commonweal
Were piety in thine, it is in these.
Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood.
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."

Shakespeare / Titus Andronicus


----------



## panic in paradise

> Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.





> The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.



Nikola Tesla



DJ 303 said:


> "Work like you don't need the money;
> dance like no one is watching;
> sing like no one is listening;
> love like you've never been hurt;
> and live life every day as if it were your last."
> original source unknown
> -Albert Einstein
> 
> Without music, life would be a mistake
> We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
> Friedrich Nietzsche



i like all of those, but these two are something else...
:D

"Dance like no one is watching" has always been one of my favorite thoughts or bits of advice, for _many_ of reasons.


----------



## panic in paradise

"The Three Stages of Cultivation — The first is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat. In a fight, he simply blocks and strikes instinctively without a concern for what is right and wrong. Of course, he may not be so-called scientific, but, nevertheless, being himself, his attacks or defenses are fluid. 

The second stage — the stage of sophistication, or mechanical stage — begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking, striking, kicking, standing, breathing, and thinking — unquestionably, he has gained the scientific knowledge of combat, but unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself. His mind tends to freeze at different movements for calculations and analysis, and even worse, he might be called “intellectually bound” and maintain himself outside of the actual reality. 

The third stage — the stage of artlessness, or spontaneous stage — occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special. And instead of trying to impose on his mind, he adjusts himself to his opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall. It flows through the slightest crack. There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water. All of his classical techniques and standard styles are minimized, if not wiped out, and nothingness prevails. He is no longer confined"

Bruce Lee


----------



## panic in paradise

The Silesian Weavers:

Dans les yeux noirs il n'y a pas de déchirure. Ils s'asseyent au métier à tisser et grincent les engrenages. L'Allemagne, nous tissons le tissu du mort est Triplement la malédiction
que nous tissons › autour de votre tête que Nous tissons, nous tissons. 

Une malédiction au dieu à que nous nous sommes agenouillés. Par le froid de l'hiver, telle faim s'est sentie. Dans le passé nous avons espéré, nous avons attendu, nous Vous avons pleuré
vous est moqué de nous et poxed nous et nous a lancés de côté Nous tissons, nous tissons. 

Une malédiction sur le roi de l'empire, Qui n'apaiserait pas notre feu de la misère. Il a pris chaque sou que
nous avons dûs donner Alors a tiré nous aime les chiens avec aucune droite pour vivre Nous tissons, nous
tissons. 

Une malédiction sur le froid, la patrie impitoyable, Où le scandale et la honte pourrissent par votre main, Où les
fleurs sont piétiné sous votre botte, Où pourrir et pourrir sont permis de prendre racine. Nous tissons, nous tissons. 

La navette vole, les métiers à tisser de tissage rugissent. Jour et nuit nous tissons avec vous à notre porte. La vieille Allemagne, nous tissons le tissu du mort. Triplement être la malédiction que nous tissons › autour de votre tête. Nous tissons, nous tissons. 


*NSFW*: 




In lightless eyes there are not tears.
They sit at the loom and gnash the gears.
Germany, we weave the cloth of the dead
Threefold be the curse we weave ’round your head
We’re weaving, we’re weaving.

A curse to the god to whom we knelt.
Through the winter’s cold, such hunger felt.
In the past we hoped, we waited, we cried
You’ve mocked us and poxed us and cast us aside
We’re weaving, we’re weaving.

A curse on the king of the empire,
Who would not quell our misery’s fire.
He took every penny we had to give
Then shot us like dogs with no right to live
We’re weaving, we’re weaving.

A curse on the cold, ruthless fatherland,
Where outrage and shame fester by your hand,
Where blossoms are trampled under your boot,
Where rot and decay are allowed to take root.
We’re weaving, we’re weaving.

The shuttle is flying, the weaving looms roar.
Day and night we weave with you at our door.
Old Germany, we weave the cloth of the dead.
Threefold be the curse we weave ’round your head.
We’re weaving, we’re weaving.


----------



## xxxyyy

CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly, towards auditorium):
    They said to me, That's love, yes, yes, not a doubt, now you see how— 
HAMM:
    Articulate! 
CLOV (as before):
    How easy it is. They said to me, That's friendship, yes, yes, no question, you've found it. They said to me, Here's the place, stop, raise your head and look at all that beauty. That order! They said to me, Come now, you're not a brute beast, think upon these things and you'll see how all becomes clear. And simple! They said to me, What skilled attention they get, all these dying of their wounds. 
HAMM:
    Enough! 
CLOV (as before):
    I say to myself— sometimes, Clov, you must learn to suffer better than that if you want them to weary of punishing you— one day. I say to myself—sometimes, Clov, you must be better than that if you want them to let you go—one day. But I feel too old, and too far, to form new habits. Good, it'll never end, I'll never go. 
    (Pause.) 
    Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don't understand, it dies, or it's me, I don't understand that either. I ask the words that remain— sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say. 
    (Pause.) 
    I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit. 
    (Pause.) 
    It's easy going. 
    (Pause.) 
    When I fall I'll weep for happiness. 

*Samuel Beckett - Endgame*


----------



## kytnism

> Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
> Ye have left your souls on earth!
> Have ye souls in heaven too,
> Doubled-lived in regions new?
> 
> Yes, and those of heaven commune
> With the spheres of sun and moon;
> With the noise of fountains wondrous,
> And the parle of voices thund'rous;
> 
> With the whisper of heaven's trees
> And one another, in soft ease
> Seated on Elysian lawns
> Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
> 
> Underneath large blue-bells tented,
> Where the daisies are rose-scented,
> And the rose herself has got
> Perfume which on earth is not;
> 
> Where the nightingale doth sing
> Not a senseless, tranced thing,
> But divine melodious truth;
> Philosophic numbers smooth;
> 
> Tales and golden histories
> Of heaven and its mysteries.
> 
> Thus ye live on high, and then
> On the earth ye live again;
> 
> And the souls ye left behind you
> Teach us, here, the way to find you,
> Where your other souls are joying,
> Never slumber'd, never cloying.
> 
> Here, your earth-born souls still speak
> To mortals, of their little week;
> Of their sorrows and delights;
> Of their passions and their spites;
> Of their glory and their shame;
> What doth strengthen and what maim.
> 
> Thus ye teach us, every day,
> Wisdom, though fled far away.
> 
> Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
> Ye have left your souls on earth!
> Ye have souls in heaven too,
> Double-lived in regions new!



love me some keats. 



...kytnism...


----------



## lulzkiller

> ...A bacchant lad asks a madam (as drachmas pass hands): 'what carnal acts can a man transact?' A gal can grab a man's balls and wank a man's shaft; a man can grasp a gal's bra and spank a gal's ass. A clasp snaps apart, and a scant shawl falls.
> Hassan wants a catnap, and grabs, as a calmant, hash, grass and smack, khat, ganja and tabac - an amalgam that can spark a pharmacal flashback. Hassan falls slack, arms asprawl, and has a nap that spawns dark phantasmata. Satan stands back, aback a damask arras, and draws a fractal mandala - a charm that can trap what a Cathar savant calls an 'astral avatar' (part man, part bat - all fang and claw) - a phantasm that can snarl and gnash at a carcass. A fantast chants 'abracadabra' as a mantra, wags a wand, and (_zap_) a sandglass cracks. A hag as mad as Cassandra warns a shah that bad karma attracts phantasmal cataclasms.



From Christian Bök's Eunoia (2001). Link to the entire text here. http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/eunoia/text.html

Edit:

As an exemplar of constrained writing, I thought it incumbent on me to include the constraints used in writing the book. They are as follows:

Each of the chapters must refer to the art of writing.
Each of the chapters have "to describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage."
All the sentences have to have an "accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism."
The text has to include as many possible words in it as it can.
The text must avoid repeating words as much as possible.
The letter "Y" is to be avoided.


----------



## xxxyyy

one of my favorite poems. i generally love thomas, although his stuff takes a high level of concentration that i not always possess


Deaths and Entrances

On almost the incendiary eve
Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
Of your immortal friends
Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust
To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
That cannot sink or cease
Endlessly to his wound
In many married London's estranging grief.

On almost the incendiary eve
When at your lips and keys,
Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave,
One who is most unknown,
Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street,
Will dive up to his tears.
He'll bathe his raining blood in the male sea
Who strode for your own dead
And wind his globe out of your water thread
And load the throats of shells
with every cry since light
Flashed first across his thunderclapping eyes.

On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances,
When near and strange wounded on London's waves
Have sought your single grave,
One enemy, of many, who knows well
Your heart is luminous
In the watched dark, quivering through locks and caves,
Will pull the thunderbolts
To shut the sun, plunge, mount your darkened keys
And sear just riders back,
Until that one loved least
Looms the last Samson of your zodiac.
Dylan Thomas

unrelated edit: nikola tesla was badass, and i sometimes wonder how different the world might be today if someone had just given him unlimited funds to do whatever he pleased.


----------



## xxxyyy

panic in paradise said:


> The Silesian Weavers:
> 
> Dans les yeux noirs il n'y a pas de déchirure. Ils s'asseyent au métier à tisser et grincent les engrenages. L'Allemagne, nous tissons le tissu du mort est Triplement la malédiction
> que nous tissons › autour de votre tête que Nous tissons, nous tissons.
> 
> Une malédiction au dieu à que nous nous sommes agenouillés. Par le froid de l'hiver, telle faim s'est sentie. Dans le passé nous avons espéré, nous avons attendu, nous Vous avons pleuré
> vous est moqué de nous et poxed nous et nous a lancés de côté Nous tissons, nous tissons.
> 
> Une malédiction sur le roi de l'empire, Qui n'apaiserait pas notre feu de la misère. Il a pris chaque sou que
> nous avons dûs donner Alors a tiré nous aime les chiens avec aucune droite pour vivre Nous tissons, nous
> tissons.
> 
> Une malédiction sur le froid, la patrie impitoyable, Où le scandale et la honte pourrissent par votre main, Où les
> fleurs sont piétiné sous votre botte, Où pourrir et pourrir sont permis de prendre racine. Nous tissons, nous tissons.
> 
> La navette vole, les métiers à tisser de tissage rugissent. Jour et nuit nous tissons avec vous à notre porte. La vieille Allemagne, nous tissons le tissu du mort. Triplement être la malédiction que nous tissons › autour de votre tête. Nous tissons, nous tissons.
> 
> 
> *NSFW*:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In lightless eyes there are not tears.
> They sit at the loom and gnash the gears.
> Germany, we weave the cloth of the dead
> Threefold be the curse we weave ’round your head
> We’re weaving, we’re weaving.
> 
> A curse to the god to whom we knelt.
> Through the winter’s cold, such hunger felt.
> In the past we hoped, we waited, we cried
> You’ve mocked us and poxed us and cast us aside
> We’re weaving, we’re weaving.
> 
> A curse on the king of the empire,
> Who would not quell our misery’s fire.
> He took every penny we had to give
> Then shot us like dogs with no right to live
> We’re weaving, we’re weaving.
> 
> A curse on the cold, ruthless fatherland,
> Where outrage and shame fester by your hand,
> Where blossoms are trampled under your boot,
> Where rot and decay are allowed to take root.
> We’re weaving, we’re weaving.
> 
> The shuttle is flying, the weaving looms roar.
> Day and night we weave with you at our door.
> Old Germany, we weave the cloth of the dead.
> Threefold be the curse we weave ’round your head.
> We’re weaving, we’re weaving.



that reminds me of the death fugue by paul celan, which i won't post as it only works in german. i once translated it for a friend, as i absolutely loathed every translation i found, but it's hard to do such a powerful piece of poetry justice.


----------



## BlindSoothsayer

“When I die, I hope to go to heaven -whatever the hell that is – and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.”
“Virtue is the price of admission,” Jim said haughtily.
“That’s what I mean, James. So I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all – that I was a man who made money."

- Ayn Rand (from Atlas Shrugged)


----------



## xxxyyy

arghhhhh. was there ever a writer more morally corrupt and dispicable than ayn rand? aside from l. ron hubbard that is. i mean apart from her philosophy being the very embodiment of fuck you got mine, she didn't even write competent prose. 
sorry, nothing personal, i just have a very deep seated, personal hatred for ayn rand.


----------



## panic in paradise

Luke 5:36

And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

^like giving an infant's liver to an inmate?


_...we need to make choices about who we are going to be, but those choices always come with costs, and the foreknowledge of the loss involved can be debilitating. Another way I look at it is like an inevitable march to one's own destruction, or at least a complete loss of what has been, which is a kind of death._


----------



## panic in paradise

THE RETREAT.
by Henry Vaughan


HAPPY those early days, when I
Shin'd in my angel-infancy !
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought ;
When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back—at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face ;
When on some gilded cloud, or flow'r,
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity ;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track !
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train ;
From whence th' enlighten'd spirit sees
That shady City of palm-trees.
But ah !  my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way !
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move ;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

...

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,	 
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;	 
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,	 
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

...


----------



## panic in paradise

"There are other artificial ones which I meddle not with, as salutations and congees, by which men acquire, for the most part unjustly, the reputation of being humble and courteous: one may be humble out of pride. I am prodigal enough of my hat, especially in summer, and never am so saluted but that I pay it again from persons of what quality soever, unless they be in my own service. 

I should make it my request to some princes whom I know, that they would be more sparing of that ceremony, and bestow that courtesy where it is more due; for being so indiscreetly and indifferently conferred on all, it is thrown away to no purpose; if it be without respect of persons, it loses its effect. 

Amongst irregular deportment, let us not forget that haughty one of the Emperor Constantius, who always in public held his head upright and stiff, without bending or turning on either side, not so much as to look upon those who saluted him on one side, planting his body in a rigid immovable posture, without suffering it to yield to the motion of his coach, not daring so much as to spit, blow his nose, or wipe his face before people." 

Excerpt From: Of Presumption - Michel de Montaigne


----------



## debaser

Hey pip, I  knew you liked french poetry and essays and stuff like that, but not to that point 

Fucking cool man


----------



## panic in paradise

^i love it, fifty cents at the library, totally non nondescript, saw selected essays in tiny print on the spine and that seemed good enough, had no clue who Michel Montaigne was.

yes ignorance can be bliss because this is great! every paragraph is a days worth of thought. compared to the translation i have this one doesnt have quite the same attitude, _but still_, freaking awesome.




_________
get in where you fit in 
i am receptive towards this stuff
so thats what i get...


----------



## Ashley

Do you really think ... that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not -- there is no weakness in that.

OSCAR WILDE, An Ideal Husband


----------



## pk.

This City

This apartment with no furniture,
where no one puts anything up,
where everyone schemes to get out.

This mess, to the right and the left of me,
that equation of garbage wherein matter moves its way,
the magazine sector in glanced-at demise.

This price, and that mind, and nothing to say but "violent."
Nothing but violence in the expensive mind.
Moving from the window towards morning.

These characters at the bottom, so generous
and pathetic. Those abstract things at the top,
so mean, precise and arresting.

That god-abandoned theatre with its three-legged dog.
Staying alone to learn the lesson, the lesson being
DO NOT SPEND NIGHTS ALONE FOR AWHILE.

This program, these organizations, these gatherings
and awards. This sweat that drags it down.
These pagans with large teeth and good eyes.

The profit sector giving us images, the nonprofit
passing out handbills, and worried.
The mind that grabs after information.

The dance changed every week so no one masters
any one dance. Carrying around the little guns
and knives, the bars owned by a friend.

The same economy that binds them together
pulls them apart. The little thems, staring
into the canyon. The all of us.

A sense of proportion, in this dense heat,
hearing the tune of romance behind the psychotic.
The profit sector giving us images.

Elegance, learning, poverty and crime.
Those who smell power must dog these.
The untuning of cement into many moods.

In audacity, in hilarity, this city
plays an unbelievable organ.
How afternoon goes like the movies.

-Liam Rector


----------



## panic in paradise

"In all antiquity it is hard to find a dozen men who set their lives to a certain course,
which is the principle goal of wisdom. For, to compare it all in a word, says an ancient,
and embrace all the rules of our lives into one, it is '_always to wish and not to wish for the same thing_', I would not deign, he says, to add, '_provided the wish is just_';
for if it is not just, it is impossible for it to always be whole."

- M. Montaigne 
On The Consistency Of Our Actions


----------



## ForEverAfter

"So I am a public agent and don't know who I work for, get my instructions from street signs, newspapers and pieces of conversation I snap out of the air the way a vulture will tear entrails from other mouths."

-William S. Burroughs
The Soft Machine


----------



## pk.

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends

We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends—the ones
Your mother hadn't called—and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we'd just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we'd have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

- Liam Rector


----------



## pk.

Alone with Everybody

the flesh covers the bone 
and they put a mind 
in there and 
sometimes a soul, 
and the women break 
vases against the walls 
and the men drink too 
much 
and nobody finds the 
one 
but keep 
looking 
crawling in and out 
of beds. 
flesh covers 
the bone and the 
flesh searches 
for more than 
flesh. 

there's no chance 
at all: 
we are all trapped 
by a singular 
fate. 

nobody ever finds 
the one. 

the city dumps fill 
the junkyards fill 
the madhouses fill 
the hospitals fill 
the graveyards fill 

nothing else 
fills.

- Charles Bukowski


----------



## panic in paradise

Discover thou what is
The strong creature from before the flood,
Without flesh, without bone,
Without vein, without blood,
Without head, without feet;
It will neither be older nor younger
Than at the beginning.
Behold how the sea whitens
When first it comes,
When it comes from the south,
When it strikes on coasts.
It is in the field, it is in the wood,
But the eye cannot perceive it.
One Being has prepared it,
By a tremendous blast,
To wreak vengeance
On Maelgan Gwynedd.

- Taliesin


----------



## xxxyyy

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	        
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes	
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…	

I should have been a pair of ragged claws	
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

t.s. eliot


----------



## panic in paradise

"Master the stuff, and words will come freely."
- Horace


----------



## Ashley

I just found this little gem, it's called Exact Change Only. I stumbled across it in a local drug users magazine.

I am a cunning vending machine, a-lurkin’ in the hall
So you can’t kick my delicate parts, I’m bolted to the wall
Come on! drop in your money, don’t let’s hang about,
I’ll do my level best to see you don’t get nothin’ out.

I see you all approachin’, the fagless and the dry,
All fumblin’ in your pockets, expectant in your eye.
I might be in your place of work, or on a high street wall,
Trust in me: in theory, I cater to you all.

Within these windows I provide for every human state:
Hunger, night starvation and rememb’ring birthdays late.
Just read the information, pop the money in – that’s grand.
And I’ll see absolutely nothing ever drops into your hand.

I might be at your swimming bath as you come cold and wet,
With just a shilling in your hand, some hot soup for to get.
And as you stand in wet anticipation for a sup,
I will dispense the soup for you, but won’t dispense the cup.

And then it’s all-out war because you lost your half-a-nicker,
Your mighty kicks and blows with bricks will make my neon flicker.
But if you bash me up so I’m removed, my pipes run dry,
There’s no way you can win: they’ll send my brother by and by.

Once there were friendly ladies, years and years before
Who stood with giant teapots just to warm your shiv’ring pores.
They’d hand you all the proper change and pour your cup of tea;
But they’re not economic, so hard luck: you’re stuck with me.


----------



## DamagedLemon

"But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. 

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about.

I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born."


----------



## ForEverAfter

"You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.” ― Roald Dahl, _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_

“A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, _Haunted_


----------



## Thou

*The coming of the purple better one (wm burroughs)*
_The scene is Grant Park, Chicago, 1968. A full-scale model of the Mayflower, with American flags for sails, has been set up. A.J., in his Uncle Sam suit, steps to a mike on the deck:_

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my coveted privilege and deep honour to introduce to you the distinguished senator and former Justice of the Supreme Court, Homer Mandrill, known to his friends as The Purple Better One. No doubt you are familiar with a book called The African Genesis, written by Robert Ardrey, a native son of Chicago, and, I may add, a true son of America. I quote to you from his penetrating work: ‘When I was a boy in Chicago, I attended the Sunday School of our neighbouring church. I recall our Wednesday night meetings with simplest nostalgia. We would meet in the basement. There would be a short prayer and a shorter benediction, then we would turn out the lights, and, in total darkness, hit each other with chairs.’ Mr. Ardrey’s early training tempered his character, to face and make known the truth about the origins and nature of mankind: ‘Not in innocence and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was the African Highland. The most significant of all our gifts was the legacy bequeathed us by our immediate forebears, a race of terrestrial flesh-eating killer apes.’

“Raymond A. Dart of the University Of Johannesburg was the strident voice from South Africa that would prove the southern ape to be the human ancestor. Dart put forward the simple thesis that man emerged from the anthropoid background for only one reason: ‘because he was a killer. A rock, a stick, a heavy bone, was to our ancestral killer ape the margin of survival.’ (And now we sat in his office at the wrong end of the world). ‘Man’s original nature imposes itself on any human solution. The aggressive nature of the southern ape, suh, glowing with menace, fought your battles on the perilous veldts of Africa, 500,000 years ago. Had he not done so, you would not be living here, in this great city, in this great land of America, raising your happy families in peace and prosperity.’

“Who more fitted to represent our Simian heritage in all its glory than Homer Mandrill, himself a descendent of that illustrious line? Who else can restore to this nation the spirit of true conservatism, that imposes itself on any human solution? And at a time when this great republic is threatened by enemies foreign and domestic? Actually, there can be only one candidate: The Purple Better One, your future President!”

To The Battle Hymn Of The Republic, an American flag is drawn aside to reveal a purple-assed mandrill. (thunderous applause) Led to the mike by secret service men in dark suits that bulge suggestively here and there, The Purple Better One blinks in bewilderment.

The technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand. He is sitting in front of three instrument panels, one labelled PA for Purple Ass, one labelled A for audience, a third labelled P for police. (crude experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that small currents of electricity passed through electrodes into the appropriate brain areas can elicit any emotional or visceral response : rage, fear, sexuality, vomiting, sleep, defecation. No doubt with further experimentation these techniques will be perfected and electromagnetic fields will supersede the use of actual electrodes embedded in the brain.) He adjusts dials as Homer’s mouth moves to a dubbed speech from directional mikes. The features of other candidates are projected onto Homer’s face from a laser installation across the park, so that he seems to embody them all:

“At this dark hour in the history of the Republic, there are grave questions troubling all our hearts. I pledge myself to answer these questions. One question is the war in Vietnam, which is not only a war, but a Holy Crusade against the godless forces of communism. And I say this to you: if these forces are not contained they will engulf us all. (thunderous applause) And I flatly accuse the Administration of criminal diffidence in the use of atomic weapons. Are we going to turn a red and blue ass to the enemy? (NO! NO! NO!) Are we going to fight through to victory at any cost? (YES! YES! YES!) I say to you, we will win, if it takes ten years. We will win, if we have to police every blade of grass and every gook in Vietnam. (thunderous applause) And after that, we’re going to wade in and take care of Chairman Mao, and his band of cut-throat slave-drivers. (thunderous applause) And if any country shall open its mouth to carp at the great American task, well, a single back-handed blow from our mighty Seventh Fleet will silence that impotent puppet of Moscow and Peking. Another question is so-called Black Power. I want to go on record that I am a true friend of all good darkies everywhere.” (to wild applause, a picture of the world famous statue of Natchitochas Louisiana flashes on screen) “As you all know, this statue shows a good old darkie with his hat in his hand.” (Homer’s voice chokes with emotion, and tears drip off his nose) “Why, when I was fourteen years old, our old yard Nigrah Jones got runned over by a laundry truck, and I cried my decent American heart out. And I have a deep conviction that the overwhelming majority of Nigrahs in this country is good Darkies like Rover Jones. However, we know that there is in this country today another kind of Nigrah, and, as long as there is a gas pump handy, we all know the answer to that. (thunderous applause)

“And I would like to say this to followers of the Jewish religion. Always remember we like nice Jews with Jew jokes. As for nigger-lovin’ communistic agitating Sheeneys, well, just watch yourself, Jew-boy, or we’ll cut the rest of it off. (That’s telling ‘em, Homer. What about the legalisation of marijuana?) Marijuana! Marijuana! Why, that’s deadlier than cocaine! And what are we going to do about that vile America-hating hoodlums who call themselves Hippies, Yippies and Chippies? We are going to put this scum behind bars, like the animals they are. (thunderous applause) An’ I tell you something else: a bunch of queers, dope-freaks, degenerates and dirty writers is living in foreign lands under the protection of American passports, from the vantage point of which they do not hesitate to spit their filth on Old Glory. Well, we’re gonna pull the passports of those dope freaks. (the technician pushes a sex button and the Simian begins to masturbate) Bring them back here and teach them to act like decent Americans. (the Simian ejaculates, hitting the lens of a Life-Time reporter) And I denounce as communist-inspired rumours that the dollar collapsed in 1959. I pledge myself to turn the clock back to 1899, when a silver dollar bought a steak dinner and a good piece of ass. (thunderous applause as a plane writes September 17th 1899 in the sky in smoke) I have heard it said that this is a lawless nation, that if all the laws in the land were enforced truly, we would have 30% of the population in jail, and the remaining 70% in the cops. I say to you, if there is infection in this great land, it must be cut out by the roots. I pledge myself to uphold the laws of America, and to enforce these hallowed statutes on all violators, regardless of race, creed, colour or religion. (thunderous applause) We will overcome all our enemies foreign and domestic, and stay armed to the teeth, for years, decades, centuries.”

The Simian bares his canines, shits on the deck, and wipes his ass with Old Glory. A phalanx of blue-helmeted cops shoulders its way through the crowd. They stop in front of the deck. The lead cop looks up at A.J. and demands: ” Let’s see your permits for that purple-assed son of a bitch.”

“Permits? We don’t have any stinking permits. You are talking about the future president of America.”

The lead cop takes a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and reads:”MUNICIPAL CODE OF CHICAGO, Chapter 98, Section 14: No person shall permit any such dangerous animal with a chain, rope or other appliance, whether such animal be muzzled or unmuzzled, in any public way or public place.” He folds the paper and shoves it into his pocket. He points at The Purple Better One: “It’s dangerous, and we got orders to remove it.” A cop moves forward with a net. The technician shoves the Rage Dial all the way up. Screaming, farting, snarling, the Simian leaps off the deck onto the startled officer, who staggers back and goes down, thrashing wildly on the ground, while his fellow pigs stand helpless and baffled, not daring to risk a shot for fear of hitting their comrade. Finally the cop heaves himself to his feet, and throws off the Simian. Panting and bleeding, he stands there, his eyes wild. With a scream of rage, The Purple Better One throws himself at another patrolman, who fires two panicky shots, which miss the Simian and crash through a window of the Hilton, into the campaign headquarters of a conservative southern candidate. A photographer from the London Times is riddled with bullets by secret service men, under the misconception that he has fired from a gun concealed in his camera. The cop throws his left arm in front of his face. The Simian sinks his canines into the cop’s arm. The cop presses his gun against the Simian’s chest and pumps in four bullets. Homer Mandrill thumps to the ground and bloody grass, he ejaculates, shits and dies. A.J. points a finger at the cop: “Arrest that Pig!” he screams, “Seize the assassin!”

A.J. was held on $100,000 bail, which he posted from his pocket in cash. Further disturbances erupted at the funeral, when a band of vigilantes who called themselves the White Hunters attempted to desecrate the flag-draped body, as it was carried in solemn procession through Lincoln Park, on the way to its final resting place in Grant Park. The hoodlums were beaten off by A.J.’s elite guard of Korean karate experts. A group of society women who had gathered in front of the Sheraton to protest the legalisation of marijuana were charged by police, screaming “Chippies! Chippies! Chippies!” and savagely clubbed to the side-walk, in a litter of diamonds, teeth, blood, mink stoles and handbags. As the Simian was laid to rest under a silver replica of the Mayflower, a statue of The Purple Better One at the helm, A.J. called for five minutes of silent prayer in memory of our beloved candidate: “Cut down in Grant Park by the bullets of an assassin … A communistic Jew Nigger inflamed to madness by injections of marijuana … The fact that the assassin had, with diabolical cunning, disguised himself as a police officer, indicates the working of a far-flung, communistic plot, the tentacles of which may reach into the White House itself. This foul crime shrieks to heaven high. We will not rest until the higher-ups are brought to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be. We will realise the aspirations and dreams every American cherishes in his heart. The American Dream can be and will be realised. I say to you that Grant Park will be a shrine to all future Americans. In the words of the all-American poet, James Whitcombe Riley: “Freedom shall a-while repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there.”


----------



## panic in paradise

Poésie Espagnole Porto Rico

the hours


How joyful are the hours! like a flock
of doves that wanders across the skies
tearing apart the frail veil of dawn,
making brighter the iridescent light.

Thus they cross the bluish atmosphere,
in a raucous rumble yet peaceful flight,
bringing an ilusion, a new yearning,
to my happy muse in-love.

I feel them pass by, by good fortune,
like extremely pure moonbeams
that sweetly bathe my fantasies;

and my last hour I only wish
that it comes very late to my home,
where love has a fervent altar.

Lola Rodriguez de Tio


----------



## debaser

La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.  
Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D'être parmi l'écume inconnue et les cieux!

_Flesh is sad, alas! and I read all the books.
To run away! to flee! I feel the birds are drunk
To be amongst the unknown foam and the skies!_

Stéphane Mallarmé


----------



## Asclepius

*Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel.
    I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes
    Upon the nest under the eave before
    He wander the loud waters.

A soft liquid joy like the noise of many waters flowed over his memory and he felt in his heart the soft peace of silent spaces of fading tenuous sky above the waters, of oceanic silence, of swallows flying through the sea-dusk over the flowing waters.

A soft liquid joy flowed through the words where the soft long vowels hurtled noiselessly and fell away, lapping and flowing back and ever shaking the white bells of their waves in mute chime and mute peal, and soft low swooning cry; and he felt that the augury he had sought in the wheeling darting birds and in the pale space of sky above him had come forth from his heart like a bird from a turret, quietly and swiftly.
*

~James Joyce|_Portrait of the Artist as a Young man_


----------



## DamagedLemon

pk. said:


> Alone with Everybody
> 
> the flesh covers the bone
> and they put a mind
> in there and
> sometimes a soul,
> and the women break
> vases against the walls
> and the men drink too
> much
> and nobody finds the
> one
> but keep
> looking
> crawling in and out
> of beds.
> flesh covers
> the bone and the
> flesh searches
> for more than
> flesh.
> 
> there's no chance
> at all:
> we are all trapped
> by a singular
> fate.
> 
> nobody ever finds
> the one.
> 
> the city dumps fill
> the junkyards fill
> the madhouses fill
> the hospitals fill
> the graveyards fill
> 
> nothing else
> fills.
> 
> - Charles Bukowski



I do like a bit of Bukowski but man is he depressing. I wanted to die reading Ham on Rye.


----------



## DamagedLemon

I’m waking her up for the sun
that explains itself with plants
for the sky stretched between the fingers
I’m waking her up for the words
that burn one’s throat, I’m loving her with my ears
One should go till the end of the world
and find dew on the grass
I’m waking her up for the distant things
that look like these around here
for the people who, without foreheads
and names, walk the streets
for anonymous words, squares
I’m waking her up for manufactured landscapes,
public parks
I’m waking her up for this planet of ours
that will maybe be a mine
in the bleeding sky,
for the smiles in stone,
friends fallen asleep between two battles
when the sky stopped being
a big birds’ cage but became an airport
my love full of others
is a part of the dawn that I’m waking up
I’m waking her up for the dawn, for the love,
for myself, for others
I’m waking her up although that’s more pointless
than calling a bird that has landed forever

For sure she said: let him look for me
and see that I’m gone
that woman with child hands,
the one I love
that child who has fallen asleep
without wiping the tears that I’m waking up
in vain, in vain, in vain
I’m waking her up in vain
because she will wake up
different and new,
I’m waking her up in vain
because her mouth
won’t be able to tell her
I’m waking her up in vain
you know, water flows,
but it doesn’t say anything
I’m waking her up in vain
It’s like promising, to a lost name,
someone’s face in the sand

If that’s not the way it is, cut my arms off
and turn me into stone

Branko Miljkovic (January 29, 1934, Beograd - February 12, 1961, Zagreb); committed suicide...


----------



## Thou

*More of the same.*



Asclepius said:


> *Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel.
> I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes
> Upon the nest under the eave before
> He wander the loud waters.
> 
> A soft liquid joy like the noise of many waters flowed over his memory and he felt in his heart the soft peace of silent spaces of fading tenuous sky above the waters, of oceanic silence, of swallows flying through the sea-dusk over the flowing waters.
> 
> A soft liquid joy flowed through the words where the soft long vowels hurtled noiselessly and fell away, lapping and flowing back and ever shaking the white bells of their waves in mute chime and mute peal, and soft low swooning cry; and he felt that the augury he had sought in the wheeling darting birds and in the pale space of sky above him had come forth from his heart like a bird from a turret, quietly and swiftly.
> *
> 
> ~James Joyce|_Portrait of the Artist as a Young man_



*Yes!*





*(Excerpt from Naked Lunch)
William S. Burroughs*

The lavatory has been locked for three hours solid…. I think they are using it for an operating room….

NURSE: “I can’t find her pulse, doctor.”

DR. BENWAY: “Maybe she got it up her snatch in a finger stall.”

NURSE: “Adrenalin, doctor?”

DR. BENWAY: “The night porter shot it all up for kicks.” He looks around and picks up one of those rubber vacuum cups at the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets…. He advances on the patient…. “Make an incision, Doctor Limpf,” he says to his appalled assistant…. “I’m going to massage the heart.”

Dr. Limpf shrugs and begins the incision. Dr. Benway washes the suction cup by swishing it around in the toilet-bowl….

NURSE: “Shouldn’t it be sterilized, doctor?”

DR. BENWAY: “Very likely but there’s no time.” He sits on the suction cup like a cane seat watching his assistant make the incision…. “You young squirts couldn’t lance a pimple without an electric vibrating scalpel with automatic drain and suture…. Soon we’ll be operating by remote control on patients we never see…. We’ll be nothing but button pushers. All the skill is going out of surgery…. All the know-how and make-do… Did I ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can? And once I was caught short without instrument one and removed a uterine tumor with my teeth. That was in the Upper Effendi, and besides…”

DR. LIMPF: “The incision is ready, doctor.”

Dr. Benway forces the cup into the incision and works it up and down. Blood spurts all over the doctors, the nurse and the wall…. The cup makes a horrible sucking sound.

NURSE: “I think she’s gone, doctor.”

DR. BENWAY: “Well, it’s all in the day’s work.” He walks across the room to a medicine cabinet…. “Some fucking drug addict has cut my cocaine with Saniflush! Nurse! Send the boy out to fill this RX on the double!”

_

*Dr. Benway is operating in an auditorium filled with students: “Now, boys, you won’t see this operation performed very often and there’s a reason for that…. You see it has absolutely no medical value. No one knows what the purpose of it originally was or if it had a purpose at all. Personally I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning.

“Just as a bull fighter with his skill and knowledge extricates himself from danger he has himself invoked, so in this operation the surgeon deliberately endangers his patient, and then, with incredible speed and celerity, rescues him from death at the last possible split second…. Did any of you ever see Dr. Tetrazzini perform? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance like a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: ‘I don’t give them time to die,’ he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. ‘Fucking undisciplined cells!’ he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter.”

A young man leaps down into the operating theatre and, whipping out a scalpel, advances on the patient.

DR. BENWAY: “An espontaneo! Stop him before he guts my patient!”

(Espontaneo is a bull-fighting term for a member of the audience who leaps down into the ring, pulls out a concealed cape and attempts a few passes with the bull before he is dragged out of the ring.)

The orderlies scuffle with the espontaneo, who is finally ejected from the hall. The anesthetist takes advantage of the confusion to pry a large gold filling from the patient’s mouth….*

_Naked Lunch was originally published in 1959 by Olympia Press in Paris. The first printing in July 1959 consisted of 5,000 copies, and a second printing of 5,000 copies was done shortly thereafter. The first printing is distinguished by a green ornament border on the title page. Later printings also lacked the dust jacket. (Maynard & Miles A2)_


----------



## kytnism

> “The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
> ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King





...kytnism...


----------



## pk.

‎"I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking." - From _Ham on Rye_, Bukowski.


----------



## pk.

_Not Getting Closer_
-Jack Gilbert

Walking in the dark streets of Seoul
under the almost full moon.
Lost for the last two hours.
Finishing a loaf of bread
and worried about the curfew.
I have not spoken for three days
and I am thinking, “Why not just
settle for love? Why not just
settle for love instead?”


----------



## Belisarius

From Tim O'Brien's _Going After Cacciato_, which I'm overdue to re-read.



> Above him, he saw the blond-headed lieutenant standing alone and watching. "If we fight well," Sidney Martin had said before the march, "fewer men will be killed than if we fight poorly." Private First Class Paul Berlin had not analyzed that statement, but he knew it was both true and dangerous. He knew he would not fight well. He had no love of mission, no love strong enough to make himself fight well, and, though he wanted now to stop, he was amazed at the way his legs kept moving beneath him. Paul Berlin, who had no desire to confront death until he was old and feeble, and who believed firmly that he could not survive a true battle in the mountains, marched up the road knowing he would not fight well, knowing it certainly, but still climbing, one step then the next, climbing, seeing each thing separately, a wildflower with white blossoms, a pebble rolling, always climbing, as if drawn along by some physical force--inertia or herd affinity or magnetic attraction.


----------



## panic in paradise

Out of the ditchwater,
tall, wild Iris
emerge from grey mud.

Inside a sleep for aeons,
I drifted to the edge of all this.
A voice trailed off.

Beautiful, wild Iris
grow tall in still water.

- Sri Ramana


----------



## pk.

_Now_

Now I see it: a few years
To play around while being
Bossed around

By the taller ones, the ones
With the money
And more muscle, however

Tender or indifferent
They might be at being
Parents; then off to school

And the years of struggle
With authority while learning
Violent gobs of things one didn't

Want to know, with a few tender
And tough teachers thrown in
Who taught what one wanted

And needed to know; then time
To go out and make one's own
Money (on the day or in

The night-shift), playing around
A little longer ("Seed-time,"
"Salad days") with some

Young "discretionary income"
Before procreation (which
Brings one quickly, too quickly,

Into play with some variation
Of settling down); then,
Most often for most, the despised

Job (though some work their way
Around this with work of real
Delight, life's work, with the deepest

Pleasures of mastery); then years
Spent, forgotten, in the middle decades
Of repair, creation, money

Gathered and spent making the family
Happen, as one's own children busily
Work their way into and through

The cycle themselves,
Comic and tragic to see, with some
Fine moments playing with them;

Then, through no inherent virtue
Of one's own, but only because
The oldest ones are busy falling

Off the edge of the planet,
The years of governing,
Of being the dreaded authority

One's self; then the recognition
(Often requiring a stiff drink) that it
Will all soon be ending for one's self,

But not before Alzheimer's comes
For some, as Alzheimer's comes
For my father-in-law now (who

Has forgotten not only who
Shakespeare is but that he taught
Shakespeare for thirty years,

And who sings and dances amidst
The forgotten in the place
To which he's been taken); then

An ever-deepening sense of time
And how the end might really happen,
To really submit, bend, and go

(Raging against that night is really
An adolescent's idiot game).
Time soon to take my place

In the long line of my ancestors
(Whose names I mostly never knew
Or have recently forgotten)

Who took their place, spirit poised
In mature humility (or as jackasses
Braying against the inevitable)

Before me, having been moved
By time through time, having done
The time and their times.

"Nearer my god to thee" I sing
On the deck of my personal Titanic,
An agnostic vessel in the mind.

Born alone, die alone—and sad, though
Vastly accompanied, to see
The sadness in the loved ones

To be left behind, and one more
Moment of wondering what,
If anything, comes next. . .

Never to have been completely
Certain what I was doing
Alive, but having stayed aloft

Amidst an almost sinister doubt.
I say to my children
Don't be afraid, be buoyed

—In its void the world is always
Falling apart, entropy its law
—I tell them those who build

And master are the ones invariably
Merry: Give and take quarter,
Create good meals within the slaughter,

A place for repose and laughter
In the consoling beds of being tender,
I tell them now, my son, my daughter.

-Liam Rector


----------



## Thou

“Are you telling me my entire life has been a dream?"
"Not your life, Greg, your _past_."
"Is there a distincition?"
"*Of course there is*. In a very real sense, everyone's past is a dream; the past isn't a real thing you can reach back and touch; it's just something in your head. Your life, which is what's going on here and now at this table, is as real as anyone's...” 
― Daniel Quinn


______________________


*"What is good Phaedrus, and what is not? Need we anyone to tell us these things?"*

_opening quote_

I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

-Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.


----------



## panic in paradise

Outside the curtains the rain goes splash, splash;
Spring's mood languishes;
My silken coverlet suffices not for the chill of the dawn.
In my dream I knew not I was in exile,
And for one moment I indulged in pleasures.

Alone at dusk I can lean on the balcony 
Boundless are the rivers and mountains.
The time of parting is easy, the time of reunion is hard,
Flowing water, falling petals, all reach their homes.
Sky is above, but man has his place.

Li Yu - Thinking of the Past [To Wave Washed Sands]


----------



## Ashley

Wow. Would love to read more of Li Yu's work. Thanks pip.

Ash.


----------



## panic in paradise

yeah, each time i read that i like it more.
" The time of parting is easy, the time of reunion is hard "

______________
Li Yu - Grief For A Loved One [Two Crows cawing at night]

Wordless alone I climb the Western Tower;
The moon is like a hook;
In the solitude of Wu-t'ung trees in the deep courtyard
   are locked by cool Autumn.

That which scissors can not severe,
And, sorted out, is tangled again,
Is the sorrow of separation,
With a flavor all its own for the heart.

_________
Li Yu - Grief for a Loved One[To - Pounding silk floss]

The deep hall is silent,
The little courtyard is deserted.
Off and on go the tapa on the cold slabs; of and on 
   goes the wind.
Unendurable is the nights length and a mans 
   wakefulness.
As a few sounds in the moonlight pierce the screened
   casements.

_____
those are the only three i have seen.


----------



## lastest

Gormenghast.
    Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs...
_And darkness winds between the characters_.

- Mervyn Peake

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing	 
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel	 
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.	 
It has no windows, and the door swings,	 
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree	 
Co co rico co co rico	 
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust	 
Bringing rain	 
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds	 
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.	 
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.	 
Then spoke the thunder	 
DA
Datta: what have we given?

- T.S. Eliot


----------



## panic in paradise

Understand Old One

What if you came back now
To our new world, the city roaring
There on the old peaceful camping place
Of your red fires along the quiet water,
How you would wonder
At towering stone gunyas high in air
Immense, incredible;
Planes in the sky over, swarms of cars
Like things frantic in flight.



Municipal Gum

Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen--
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal


----------



## panic in paradise

Outside the curtains the rain goes splash, splash;
Spring's mood languishes;
My silken coverlet suffices not for the chill of the dawn.
In my dream I knew not I was in exile,
And for one moment I indulged in pleasures.

Alone at dusk I can lean on the balcony
Boundless are the rivers and mountains.
The time of parting is easy, the time of reunion is hard,
Flowing water, falling petals, all reach their homes.
Sky is above, but man has his place.

Li Yu - Thinking of the Past [To Wave Washed Sands]


----------



## Thou

Drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested.

HST


----------



## Thou

> “My concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at 120 and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that…and there I’d be, sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a case of whiskey next to me and a case of dynamite in the trunk…honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and fall down into that mess of steel mills. It’d be a tremendous goddamn explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt. I’m pretty sure, unless they’ve changed the highway, that launching place is still there. As soon as I get home, I ought to take the drive just to check it out.” (February 16, 2005) written 4 days before he committed suicide.”
> —	 Hunter S. Thompson




...


Note to self: 

_Acquire more dynamite._


----------



## panic in paradise

It is stated in the Vedas that those who commit suicide become ghosts. For a certain period of time they have to suffer in their subtle bodies - consisting of the mind, intelligence, and false ego - without any means to alleviate their pains.

You cannot escape your mind. You may escape your physical body, but your psychic body follows you to the other side. Unless you learn to control the mind you will always be haunted by it, a victim of uncontrollable desires, which burns like a fire, and which can never be satiated. Eventually you will get another gross body and again you can engage in the illusory and useless pursuit of trying to become satisfied by sensual pleasure. This whole material world is aimed at teaching you the futility of trying to satisfy your body.

Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the mind can either be our best friend or our worst enemy. An uncontrolled mind becomes our enemy, a controlled mind becomes our friend. In any case everyone is suffering or enjoying in this world according to his own activities.

*But in fact you are eternal, and you are full of knowledge and bliss, but due to forgetfulness of your real nature, you are now instead identifying with your body and mind, and therefore identifying with the pains and pleasures of the body and mind. The solution is to purify the mind by the bhakti-yoga process* and become reinstated in your original position as the eternal servant of God. In stead of being absorbed in how you can serve your senses you should become absorbed in how you can serve God.

Only this will bring you real lasting happiness. It is very simple to serve God in this age. Simply by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra you will no doubt become yourself again and experience the nectar for which you are always hankering. Try it! What have you got to lose?

You simply repeat the following mantra every day for, say, 20 minutes, and you are guaranteed to become free from anxiety and angst.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna 
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama 
Rama Rama Hare Hare

http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/issues.htm


I didnt use this mantra out of fear of suicide, but at another instantaneous traumatic moment where it seemed played out for me. Krishna, Christ, the Yoga Sutras, BKS Ivenger all grabbed me by the balls and gently eventually let me go.

It took only so many minutes or repetitions before i realized: 

"How else, and when?"

and at that moment, im not sure how to describe it, an epiphany, a realization that ushered acceptance and forgiveness of myself and others. The darkness I chose to see rather then what was there, the light shown the same upon, but the colors, textures, and infinite constant driving subtleties that always did and do exist, existed finally, for me it seemed because I was the only one there, and everything I saw was accepted starting an orchestra  to for every sense in a way that never was possible, and it was by allowing my senses to be free, my Ego went and died instead of me.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Threads of Union
Translation by BonGiovanni

 Before beginning any spiritual text it is customary to clear the mind of all distracting thoughts, to calm the breath and to purify the heart.

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.

1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.

1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.

1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.


*NSFW*: 




1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.

1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.

1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.

1.9. Fancy is following after word-knowledge empty of substance.

1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.

1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.

1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.

1.13. Practice is the effort to secure steadiness.

1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.

1.15. Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.

1.16. This is signified by an indifference to the three attributes, due to knowledge of the Indweller.

1.17. Cognitive meditation is accompanied by reasoning, discrimination, bliss and the sense of 'I am.'

1.18. There is another meditation which is attained by the practice of alert mental suspension until only subtle impressions remain.

1.19. For those beings who are formless and for those beings who are merged in unitive consciousness, the world is the cause.

1.20. For others, clarity is preceded by faith, energy, memory and equalminded contemplation.

1.21. Equalminded contemplation is nearest to those whose desire is most ardent.

1.22. There is further distinction on account of the mild, moderate or intense means employed.

1.23. Or by surrender to God.

1.24. God is a particular yet universal indweller, untouched by afflictions, actions, impressions and their results.

1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.

1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.

1.27. God's voice is Om.

1.28. The repetition of Om should be made with an understanding of its meaning.

1.29. From that is gained introspection and also the disappearance of obstacles.

1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.

1.31. Pain, despair, nervousness, and disordered inspiration and expiration are co-existent with these obstacles.

1.32. For the prevention of the obstacles, one truth should be practiced constantly.

1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.

1.34. Optionally, mental equanimity may be gained by the even expulsion and retention of energy.

1.35. Or activity of the higher senses causes mental steadiness.

1.36. Or the state of sorrowless Light.

1.37. Or the mind taking as an object of concentration those who are freed of compulsion.

1.38. Or depending on the knowledge of dreams and sleep.

1.39. Or by meditation as desired.

1.40. The mastery of one in Union extends from the finest atomic particle to the greatest infinity.

1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.

1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge.

1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.

1.44. In this way the meditative and the ultra-meditative having the subtle for their objects are also described.

1.45. The province of the subtle terminates with pure matter that has no pattern or distinguishing mark.

1.46. These constitute seeded contemplations.

1.47. On attaining the purity of the ultra-meditative state there is the pure flow of spiritual consciousness.

1.48. Therein is the faculty of supreme wisdom.

1.49. The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.

1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.

1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.

*End Part One. *





what i did was began to define what each line meant to me, and, it was good to say the most pathetic least.


----------



## Thou

panic in paradise said:


> It is stated in the Vedas that those who commit suicide become ghosts. For a certain period of time they have to suffer in their subtle bodies - consisting of the mind, intelligence, and false ego - without any means to alleviate their pains.
> 
> You cannot escape your mind. You may escape your physical body, but your psychic body follows you to the other side. Unless you learn to control the mind you will always be haunted by it, a victim of uncontrollable desires, which burns like a fire, and which can never be satiated. Eventually you will get another gross body and again you can engage in the illusory and useless pursuit of trying to become satisfied by sensual pleasure. This whole material world is aimed at teaching you the futility of trying to satisfy your body.
> 
> Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the mind can either be our best friend or our worst enemy. An uncontrolled mind becomes our enemy, a controlled mind becomes our friend. In any case everyone is suffering or enjoying in this world according to his own activities.
> 
> *But in fact you are eternal, and you are full of knowledge and bliss, but due to forgetfulness of your real nature, you are now instead identifying with your body and mind, and therefore identifying with the pains and pleasures of the body and mind. The solution is to purify the mind by the bhakti-yoga process* and become reinstated in your original position as the eternal servant of God. In stead of being absorbed in how you can serve your senses you should become absorbed in how you can serve God.
> 
> Only this will bring you real lasting happiness. It is very simple to serve God in this age. Simply by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra you will no doubt become yourself again and experience the nectar for which you are always hankering. Try it! What have you got to lose?
> 
> You simply repeat the following mantra every day for, say, 20 minutes, and you are guaranteed to become free from anxiety and angst.
> 
> Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
> Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
> Hare Rama Hare Rama
> Rama Rama Hare Hare
> 
> http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/issues.htm
> 
> 
> I didnt use this mantra out of fear of suicide, but at another instantaneous traumatic moment where it seemed played out for me. Krishna, Christ, the Yoga Sutras, BKS Ivenger all grabbed me by the balls and gently eventually let me go.
> 
> It took only so many minutes or repetitions before i realized:
> 
> "How else, and when?"
> 
> and at that moment, im not sure how to describe it, an epiphany, a realization that ushered acceptance and forgiveness of myself and others. The darkness I chose to see rather then what was there, the light shown the same upon, but the colors, textures, and infinite constant driving subtleties that always did and do exist, existed finally, for me it seemed because I was the only one there, and everything I saw was accepted starting an orchestra  to for every sense in a way that never was possible, and it was by allowing my senses to be free, my Ego went and died instead of me.
> 
> The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
> The Threads of Union
> Translation by BonGiovanni
> 
> Before beginning any spiritual text it is customary to clear the mind of all distracting thoughts, to calm the breath and to purify the heart.
> 
> 1.1 Now, instruction in Union.
> 
> 1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.
> 
> 1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.
> 
> 1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.
> 
> 1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.
> 
> 
> *NSFW*:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.
> 
> 1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.
> 
> 1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.
> 
> 1.9. Fancy is following after word-knowledge empty of substance.
> 
> 1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.
> 
> 1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.
> 
> 1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.
> 
> 1.13. Practice is the effort to secure steadiness.
> 
> 1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.
> 
> 1.15. Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.
> 
> 1.16. This is signified by an indifference to the three attributes, due to knowledge of the Indweller.
> 
> 1.17. Cognitive meditation is accompanied by reasoning, discrimination, bliss and the sense of 'I am.'
> 
> 1.18. There is another meditation which is attained by the practice of alert mental suspension until only subtle impressions remain.
> 
> 1.19. For those beings who are formless and for those beings who are merged in unitive consciousness, the world is the cause.
> 
> 1.20. For others, clarity is preceded by faith, energy, memory and equalminded contemplation.
> 
> 1.21. Equalminded contemplation is nearest to those whose desire is most ardent.
> 
> 1.22. There is further distinction on account of the mild, moderate or intense means employed.
> 
> 1.23. Or by surrender to God.
> 
> 1.24. God is a particular yet universal indweller, untouched by afflictions, actions, impressions and their results.
> 
> 1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.
> 
> 1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.
> 
> 1.27. God's voice is Om.
> 
> 1.28. The repetition of Om should be made with an understanding of its meaning.
> 
> 1.29. From that is gained introspection and also the disappearance of obstacles.
> 
> 1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.
> 
> 1.31. Pain, despair, nervousness, and disordered inspiration and expiration are co-existent with these obstacles.
> 
> 1.32. For the prevention of the obstacles, one truth should be practiced constantly.
> 
> 1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.
> 
> 1.34. Optionally, mental equanimity may be gained by the even expulsion and retention of energy.
> 
> 1.35. Or activity of the higher senses causes mental steadiness.
> 
> 1.36. Or the state of sorrowless Light.
> 
> 1.37. Or the mind taking as an object of concentration those who are freed of compulsion.
> 
> 1.38. Or depending on the knowledge of dreams and sleep.
> 
> 1.39. Or by meditation as desired.
> 
> 1.40. The mastery of one in Union extends from the finest atomic particle to the greatest infinity.
> 
> 1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.
> 
> 1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge.
> 
> 1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.
> 
> 1.44. In this way the meditative and the ultra-meditative having the subtle for their objects are also described.
> 
> 1.45. The province of the subtle terminates with pure matter that has no pattern or distinguishing mark.
> 
> 1.46. These constitute seeded contemplations.
> 
> 1.47. On attaining the purity of the ultra-meditative state there is the pure flow of spiritual consciousness.
> 
> 1.48. Therein is the faculty of supreme wisdom.
> 
> 1.49. The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.
> 
> 1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.
> 
> 1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.
> 
> *End Part One. *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> what i did was began to define what each line meant to me, and, it was good to say the most pathetic least.




Magnificence!


----------



## panic in paradise

Part Two
on Spiritual Disciplines

2.1 Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.

2.2 This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

2.3 The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.

2.4 Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.

2.5 Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

2.6 Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.


*NSFW*: 




2.7 Attachment is that magnetic pattern which clusters in pleasure and pulls one towards such experience.

2.8 Aversion is the magnetic pattern which clusters in misery and pushes one from such experience.

2.9 Flowing by its own energy, established even in the wise and in the foolish, is the unending desire for life.

2.10 These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.

2.11 Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.

2.12 The impressions of works have their roots in afflictions and arise as experience in the present and the future births.

2.13 When the root exists, its fruition is birth, life and experience.

2.14 They have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according as their cause be virtue or vice.

2.15 All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.

2.16 The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.

2.17 The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.

2.18 The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play. It is of the nature of cognition, activity and rest, and is for the purpose of experience and realization.

2.19 The stages of the attributes effecting the experienced world are the specialized and the unspecialized, the differentiated and the undifferentiated.

2.20 The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.

2.21 The very existence of the seen is for the sake of the seer.

2.22 Although Creation is discerned as not real for the one who has achieved the goal, it is yet real in that Creation remains the common experience to others.

2.23 The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.

2.24 The cause of the association is ignorance.

2.25 Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissassociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.

2.26 The continuous practice of discrimination is the means of attaining liberation.

2.27 Steady wisdom manifests in seven stages.

2.28 On the destruction of impurity by the sustained practice of the limbs of Union, the light of knowledge reveals the faculty of discrimination.

2.29 The eight limbs of Union are self-restraint in actions, fixed observance, posture, regulation of energy, mind-control in sense engagements, concentration, meditation, and realization.

2.30 Self-restraint in actions includes abstention from violence, from falsehoods, from stealing, from sexual engagements, and from acceptance of gifts.

2.31 These five willing abstentions are not limited by rank, place, time or circumstance and constitute the Great Vow.

2.32 The fixed observances are cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study and persevering devotion to God.

2.33 When improper thoughts disturb the mind, there should be constant pondering over the opposites.

2.34 Improper thoughts and emotions such as those of violence- whether done, caused to be done, or even approved of- indeed, any thought originating in desire, anger or delusion, whether mild medium or intense- do all result in endless pain and misery. Overcome such distractions by pondering on the opposites.

2.35 When one is confirmed in non-violence, hostility ceases in his presence.

2.36 When one is firmly established in speaking truth, the fruits of action become subservient to him.

2.37 All jewels approach him who is confirmed in honesty.

2.38 When one is confirmed in celibacy, spiritual vigor is gained.

2.39 When one is confirmed in non-possessiveness, the knowledge of the why and how of existence is attained.

2.40 From purity follows a withdrawal from enchantment over one's own body as well as a cessation of desire for physical contact with others.

2.41 As a result of contentment there is purity of mind, one-pointedness, control of the senses, and fitness for the vision of the self.

2.42 Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.

2.43 Through sanctification and the removal of impurities, there arise special powers in the body and senses.

2.44 By study comes communion with the Lord in the Form most admired.

2.45 Realization is experienced by making the Lord the motive of all actions.

2.46 The posture should be steady and comfortable.

2.47 In effortless relaxation, dwell mentally on the Endless with utter attention.

2.48 From that there is no disturbance from the dualities.

2.49 When that exists, control of incoming and outgoing energies is next.

2.50 It may be external, internal, or midway, regulated by time, place, or number, and of brief or long duration.

2.51 Energy-control which goes beyond the sphere of external and internal is the fourth level- the vital.

2.52 In this way, that which covers the light is destroyed.

2.53 Thus the mind becomes fit for concentration.

2.54 When the mind maintains awareness, yet does not mingle with the senses, nor the senses with sense impressions, then self-awareness blossoms.

2.55 In this way comes mastery over the senses.

*End Part Two*




*All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts. 

The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.

The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.

The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play.*

*The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.*


----------



## Ashley

I hope it's okay to post lyrics in here, I just really love it as a piece of writing. It's a song called 'One Crowded Hour' by 'Augie March'.
_
Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen
In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen;
if love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?
and that doesn't hold nothing together
Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music it's making me sick
And I know it's making you sick
There's nothing there, it's like eating air
It's like drinking gin with nothing else in
And that doesn't hold me together.

But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

And I know you like your boys to take their medicine
From the bowl with a silver spoon
Who run away with the dish and scale the fish by the silvery light of the moon
Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb
That as far as their bleeding eyes see
Is a pleasure pen, meant for them, builded and rent for them
Not for the likes of me
Not for the like of you and me

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Oh but the green-eyed harpy of the salt land
She takes into hers my hand
She says, "Boy I know you're lying
Oh but then, so am I,"
And to this I said "Oh well."

Well put me in a cage full of lions, I learned to speak lion
In fact I know the language well
I picked it up while I was versing myself in the languages they speak in hell
That night, the silence gave birth to a baby
They took it away to her silent dismay
And they raised it to be a lady
Now she can't keep her mouth shut

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

For one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
Well I played a few songs for those bumps in the night
In fact I played this very tune
You said, "What is this six-stringed instrument but an adolescent loom?"
And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin._

Ash.


----------



## panic in paradise

Part Three
on Divine Powers

3.1 One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.

3.2 Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.

3.3 That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.

3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.

3.5 By mastery comes wisdom.

3.6 The application of mastery is by stages.

3.7 The three are more efficacious than the restraints.

3.8 Even that is external to the seedless realization.

*NSFW*: 




3.9 The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.

3.10 From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.

3.11 The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.

3.12 The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.

3.13 In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.

3.14 The object is that which preserves the latent characteristic, the rising characteristic or the yet-to-be-named characteristic that establishes one entity as specific.

3.15 The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.

3.16 By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.

3.17 The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signfies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.

3.18 By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.

3.19 By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.

3.20 By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.

3.21 Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.

3.22 By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.

3.23 By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.

3.24 By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.

3.25 By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.

3.26 By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.

3.27 By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.

3.28 By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.

3.29 By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.

3.30 By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.

3.31 By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.

3.32 There is knowledge of everything from intuition.

3.33 Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.

3.34 Experience arises due to the inability of discerning the attributes of vitality from the indweller, even though they are indeed distinct from one another. Self-control brings true knowledge of the indweller by itself.

3.35 This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.

3.36 To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.

3.37 When the bonds of the mind caused by action have been loosened, one may enter the body of another by knowledge of how the nerve-currents function.

3.38 By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.

3.39 By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.

3.40 By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.

3.41 By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.

3.42 By self-control on the mind when it is separated from the body- the state known as the Great Transcorporeal- all coverings are removed from the Light.

3.43 Mastery over the elements arises when their gross and subtle forms,as well as their essential characteristics, and the inherent attributes and experiences they produce, is examined in self-control.

3.44 Thereby one may become as tiny as an atom as well as having many other abilities, such as perfection of the body, and non-resistence to duty.

3.45 Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.

3.46 By self-control on the changes that the sense-organs endure when contacting objects, and on the power of the sense of identity, and of the influence of the attributes, and the experience all these produce- one masters the senses.

3.47 From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.

3.48 To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.

3.49 Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.

3.50 When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.

3.51 By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.

3.52 From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.

3.53 Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.

3.54 Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.

*End Part Three *




There is knowledge of everything from intuition

By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.

By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.

By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.


----------



## panic in paradise

Part Four
on Realizations

4.1 Psychic powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.

4.2 Transformation into another state is by the directed flow of creative nature.

4.3 Creative nature is not moved into action by any incidental cause, but by the removal of obstacles, as in the case of a farmer clearing his field of stones for irrigation.

4.4 Created minds arise from egoism alone.

4.5 There being difference of interest, one mind is the director of many minds.

4.6 Of these, the mind born of concentrated insight is free from the impressions.

4.7 The impressions of unitive cognition are neither good nor bad. In the case of the others, there are three kinds of impressions.

4.8 From them proceed the development of the tendencies which bring about the fruition of actions.


*NSFW*: 




4.9 Because of the magnetic qualities of habitual mental patterns and memory, a relationship of cause and effect clings even though there may be a change of embodiment by class, space and time.

4.10 The desire to live is eternal, and the thought-clusters prompting a sense of identity are beginningless.

4.11 Being held together by cause and effect, substratum and object- the tendencies themselves disappear on the dissolution of these bases.

4.12 The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.

4.13 Whether manifested or unmanifested they are of the nature of the attributes.

4.14 Things assume reality because of the unity maintained within that modification.

4.15 Even though the external object is the same, there is a difference of cognition in regard to the object because of the difference in mentality.

4.16 And if an object known only to a single mind were not cognized by that mind, would it then exist?

4.17 An object is known or not known by the mind, depending on whether or not the mind is colored by the object.

4.18 The mutations of awareness are always known on account of the changelessness of its Lord, the indweller.

4.19 Nor is the mind self-luminous, as it can be known.

4.20 It is not possible for the mind to be both the perceived and the perceiver simultaneously.

4.21 In the case of cognition of one mind by another, we would have to assume cognition of cognition, and there would be confusion of memories.

4.22 Consciousness appears to the mind itself as intellect when in that form in which it does not pass from place to place.

4.23 The mind is said to perceive when it reflects both the indweller (the knower) and the objects of perception (the known).

4.24 Though variegated by innumerable tendencies, the mind acts not for itself but for another, for the mind is of compound substance.

4.25 For one who sees the distinction, there is no further confusing of the mind with the self.

4.26 Then the awareness begins to discriminate, and gravitates towards liberation.

4.27 Distractions arise from habitual thought patterns when practice is intermittent.

4.28 The removal of the habitual thought patterns is similar to that of the afflictions already described.

4.29 To one who remains undistracted in even the highest intellection there comes the equalminded realization known as The Cloud of Virtue. This is a result of discriminative discernment.

4.30 From this there follows freedom from cause and effect and afflictions.

4.31 The infinity of knowledge available to such a mind freed of all obscuration and property makes the universe of sensory perception seem small.

4.32 Then the sequence of change in the three attributes comes to an end, for they have fulfilled their function.

4.33 The sequence of mutation occurs in every second, yet is comprehensible only at the end of a series.

4.34 When the attributes cease mutative association with awarenessness, they resolve into dormancy in Nature, and the indweller shines forth as pure consciousness. This is absolute freedom.



*
End Part Four
The end of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjalii*


----------



## pk.

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. 
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. 
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God, 
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. 
Fumy spiritious mists inhabit this place 
Separated from my house by a row of headstones. 
I simply cannot see where there is to get to. 

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, 
White as a knuckle and terribly upset. 
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet 
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. 
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky - 
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. 
At the end, they soberly bong out their names. 

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. 
The eyes lift after it and find the moon. 
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. 
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. 
How I would like to believe in tenderness - 
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, 
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. 

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering 
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. 
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, 
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews, 
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. 
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. 
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence

-Sylvia Plath


----------



## xxxyyy

preface to james ellroy's white jazz, one of my absolute favorite books:

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams—I wake up reaching, afraid I'll forget. Pictures keep the woman young.
L.A., fall 1958.
Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events—so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down—the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell.
I'm old, afraid I'll forget:
I killed innocent men.
I betrayed sacred oaths.
I reaped profit from horror.
Fever—that time burning. I want to go with the music—spin, fall with it


----------



## pk.

When the Parents Went

When my parents,
Who separated
When I was four,

Died roughly
Within a year of each other
Last year

—She on one coast of America,
He on the other (Boxers 
To their corners!)—

I felt lightened
And folded 
Towards myself, quietly,

Where someone laughed loudly, 
As I’d heard sometimes happens
To sons and daughters

At funerals. 
I think my half-brother, step-
Brother, and step-sister expected me

To cry at the memorial ceremony
For my mother, but I didn’t.
I felt solicitous

Of other people’s mourning, but otherwise
I felt wonderfully, maturely
Brutal—in full throttle, really.

That side of my family
Spent a night together
Before I left, a night

With the photograph album,
And when we came to 
The picture of Mom’s first marriage

To my father, whom no one else
In the room really knew, everyone 
In the room was duly amazed

By how miserable Mom looked
In the photo. It had been a shotgun
Wedding, occasioned by me,

There already
In Mom’s belly, six months
Before, unwanted, I came to be. 

Now she was gone
They were both gone, and there
Seemed no way in hell

They could ever again reach me
In the same way, which seemed
So good to me. It was over.

The long arc of unwant was over, 
And all we all did trying to come to terms 
With unwant—an impossibility— 

Was ended
With their going,
Which was more

Than I ever dared
Hope for. That time
Of the three of us worrying

That bone—that DNA, that inherit,
That mistake made back
In the 1940s—that time 

Was blessedly over, and only I 
Was left over to make 
Whatever could be made of that folly. 

-Liam Rector


----------



## pk.

I have only just recently discovered Richard Brautigan, I quite like his style; here are a few...


15%

she tries to get things
out of men
that she can't get
because she's not
15% prettier 

----------------------------------------------

December 30

At 1:30 in the morning a fart 
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on. 

----------------------------------------------

Color As Beginning

Forget love 
I want to die 
in your yellow hair


----------



## Ashley

pk., When The Parents Went is such a beautiful piece of art.

Ash.


----------



## Thou

*Dinosaurs*

I think the political and social chaos we are seeing on every side reflects an underlying biologic crisis. End of the human line. 

All species are doomed from conception like all individuals. Evolution did not come to a reverent halt with homo sapiens. 

We have the technologies to recreate the flawed artifacts and to produce improved and variegated models for designed for space conditions. Perhaps there is still time. 

Is this being done or even considered? Back to the church the home and the family. Back to the simple American virtues that made this country great and can make this country great again. If I may be allowed a flight of whimsy involving _articulate _*Dinosaurs*:

"Fellow *reptiles, *I do not hesitate to tell you that we face grave problems.

I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer. 

Size is the answer! Increased size! 

There are those who say that size is not the answer, there are those even propose that we pollute our reptilian strain with mammalian amalgamations and cross breading. 

And I say to you, if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats, then I would choose not to survive. 

But we will survive. We will increase both in size and in numbers and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 MILLION YEARS! Bigger is better and biggest is best!"

Armored models thump their tails in earth shaking applause. Herbiferous Dins wallow and splash in swamp bogs. Carnivores bare their huge fangs dripping streamers of saliva in uproar. *But a wise old Dine turns sadly from the TV and addresses his offspring:* 

_"Son, it's the end of the line. We are ugly, idiot, bellowing beasts. Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. Where can this end? In a natural history museum our bones gawked at by pimply adolescents--"Say, I wonder how big his prick was?' Their turn will come."_


Back to the home and the family back to simple American virtues* biologically speaking the one direction you can go is back. It's the law.* 

Dolphins lived on land at one time we know that because they have air breathing lungs. Now that they have returned to the sea it might be handy to reclaim their lost gills. 

An evolutionary step that involves biological alterations is irretrievable we must now make such a step if we are to survive at all. And it had better be good. 

I have predicted the transition from time into space will involve biologic alterations. Such alterations are already manifest. Astronauts stand to lose their bones and teeth in the thervice. If you don't use it you lose it A skeleton has no function in a weightless state. 

So what does the end result look like? Well...rather like an octupus or a jellyfish. Beau Bremel the restoration dandy spent hours every morning putting exactly the right crease into his cravats by lowering his chin just so. Often his valet would carry out armfuls of crumpled dennies, all failures. 

So we can imagine the cosmic butler carrying out bundles of unworkable monstrosities,_ our failures._"

W.S.Burroughs


----------



## xxxyyy

^ i absolutely adore burroughs, here's some more goodness. one of my favorite burroughs pieces, i apologize for the length but it has to be read in its entirety

edit: “Despite disparate aims and personnel of its constituent members, the underground is agreed on basic objectives. We intend to march on the police machine everywhere. We intend to destroy the police machine and all its records. We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems… To put it country simple, we have heard enough bullshit.” absolutely golden quote. here's the link to the whole text: My Mother and I Would Like to Know


THE PERFECT SERVANT

John J Hudson, known as Basic J to his many friends, is making a difficult decision in the Pentagon.  Word has just come through from B&C . . . complete, precise and permanent programming of thought feeling and sensory data demonstrated in experimental preparations after single exposure to Virus Rover this information conveyed in a three word inter office memo . . . rover is ready.
No further need to explain excuse produce any arguments or facts in support of departmental directives.  It will soon be neurologically impossible to oppose or even to question.  The virus is hereditary of course a permanent chromatic formula circuits of protest closed forever.  Rover will see to that.  Basic J has the responsibility of releasing rover in the United States of America.  He looks up at Old Glory hanging over his desk.  American programming of course . . . he will see to that. He gets up and paces around the room.
"Gotta stay ahead of the Commies . . .  if they get there first with their programming . . . everybody's kids will speak Chinese at birth." This he decides grimly must be made unthinkable . . . "The President is right.  The President is always right.  The laws are right.  America is right.  America is always right.  The American way of life is the right way of life is the best way of life is the only way of life” from here to eternity.
His duty is clear.  He salutes Old Glory.  His throat is dry.  He rings for Bently the perfect servant a faithful old dog of that he is absolutely sure.  The psyche department checked him out and he checked so clear they used some of his bone marrow in the rover cultures.  Bently stands in the door.
"Yes sir?"
"A glass of ice water please Bently.
"Yes sir.”
With the speed of a conjurer Bently places a glass of ice water on a brocade napkin.  "Good old Bently always knows what I need."
The perfect servant he draws the curtains.  "Anything else sir?"
"No nothing else.  Good night Bently.”
"Good night Mr Hudson.  Good bye Mr Hudson.”
"What was that Bently?" Hudson put down the half empty glass.
"Good bye Mr Hudson." For a moment Bently looks at him with something like emotion.  He bows and leaves the room.
Hudson drains his glass.  He sits for some time in silent thought.
Suddenly he knows what to do.  Reverently he spreads Old Glory on the desk.  He picks up a pen right to hand somehow and ready by a piece of parchment paper.  He writes.

Dear Mary
I am taking the only way out.  Please forgive me.
Basic J Hudson

Spring drawer cold .45 . . . "It's the right thing to do it's the best thing to do it's the only thing to do . . . good old Bently . . . he knew somehow . . ."
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the shot sir.  I found him like that sir." He nods to the desk.  The side of Hudson's face is stuck to Old Glory in a paste of dry blood and seared brains.  "I saw at once he was dead sir."
You can say that again" said the agent.
"It was a terrible shock for me sir."
There are two agents in the room two very special agents. They both turn and, look at Bently in a very special way.
"You expect us to swallow this crap?"
Bently draws himself up.  "I have told you the truth sir exactly as it happened sir."
"And I say it's crap.  Do we have to bake it out of you Bently?" Bently takes a deep breath.  A button pops from his waistcoat and explodes against the agent's grey flannel suit.
"Will that be all sir?”
"Yes Bently.  You may go.”
"Thank you sir." Bently bows and leaves the room.
(Long pause)
"Well that puts him in the clear . . . Good old Bently.”
"You can say that again.  Old Bently has all the answers.  Old Bently has all the right answers.  If anybody says or even thinks different I'll gun the bastard down if he's my best buddy."
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the shots sir.  I found the two gentlemen like that sir." He nods to the floor.  "I saw at once they were dead sir.  Blood and internals all over the room sir.  A smell of blood and excrement sir.  If you'll pardon the expression sir.  Quite overwhelming sir.
"You may go Bently."
"Thank you sir.  I'll be in my room if you need me sir.  "
"Better check that guy out."
"You can say that again.  Hey here's something." He picks up the pen with forceps and reads
For James Bently in recognition of ten years faithful service to John J Hudson
He removes the cap from the pen.  There is a slight explosion followed by a long reverent silence.
"If J thought that much of him he must be all right," the agent bursts out in a voice hoarse with emotion.  He turns away to hide the tears in his eyes.  Another agent chokes and buries his face in a curtain wracked with sobs.
"Oh what the Hell" screams the CIA man "it’s nothing to be ashamed -of.  Let Is cry our decent American hearts out and for the Christ sake let's all get fried.” He rushes the liquor cabinet and tosses bottles out to his colleagues.
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the noise sir.  Quite indescribable sir.  I felt it my duty to return sir.  I found them reeling about sir. Screaming 'good old Bently’ sir.  That gentleman" he points to the CIA man who is slumped in a chair between two guards sobbing out "Auld Lang Syne" "threw himself on me in a most offensive way sir.  If you'll pardon the expression sir and said nearly as I can recall sir would I be his 'crying cousin' sir.  Old southern custom he said it was sir.  I could see he’d been drinking sir."
"Bently doesn't it strike you a bit odd that thirty of the most trusted and responsible officials in this country should with one accord and for no discernible reason become maudlin drunk over a period of two minutes?"
"That is not for me to say sir.
"You have testified that the men were quite normal when you left the room."
"Yes sir.  Whatever happened sir happened after I had left the room sir.  "
"Things always seem to happen after you leave rooms Bently.  "
"Not always sir."
The new department head looks at Bently and his jaw drops.
"Why the man is smiling or snarling rather in a strange animal way.  What the Hell?”
"ACHOO ACHOO ACHOOOOOOOO”
"BLESS YOU BENTLY BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO ACHOOOOOOOO
"BLESS YOU SIR BLESS YOU BLESS YOU"
"Let's all go ACHOO ACHOO out into the BLESS YOU BLESS YOU beautiful American ACHOO ACHOO streets and BLESS YOU BLESS YOU bless all our fellow ACHOO ACHOO Americans BLESS YOU ACHOOOOOOOO”
Sneezing and blessing they rushed into the street.  Alone in the room Bently wipes off the grey features of a perfect servant to reveal himself as the Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu.  He steps to the window.
"ACHOO ACHOO" The cities and towns of America echo back
"BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO" back from the farms crossroads and lonely sidings of "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO" on the winds of Panhandle idiot honky tonks yodel back "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU ALLAYIHOO”
From car and plane "ACHOO ACHOO " Hell's Angels roaring back "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU" 
America America "ACHOO ACHOO ACH00” from purple mountain's majesty "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
The doctor stands at the window waiting.
"Achoo achoo” with wind and dust "bless you bless you”
"Achoo achoo” a hoarse whisper echoes back “bless you bless you”
"Achoo achoo” spitting blood "bless you bless you” 
Old record running down " achoo achoo achoo" 
Dying dying dying "bless you bless you bless you" 
The doctor's silent blessing falls on silent cities from sea to shining sea.


----------



## pk.

Ashley said:


> pk., When The Parents Went is such a beautiful piece of art.
> 
> Ash.



I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's from _The Executive Director of the Fallen World,_ Liam Rector's final collection of work before killing himself. Out of all the books in my possession it would have to be my favourite. I can't count how many times I've read it.


----------



## pk.

"Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it's almost like depth." - Daria Morgendorffer


----------



## Thou

Good finds, guys. Everything on this page I've admired and been entertained by.

My favorite poem (I typically don't care for poems, mind you.)


*Annabel Lee*

_It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea. _
*Edgar Allan Poe*

_

I faintly remember the distasteful remarks of my fellow 8th grade classmates at the suggestion of the short-sighted teachers interpretation of the poem, one of necrophilia. I believe her confusion fell in the "lie down by the side" of her in her sepulchre down by the sea which is sheer nonsense. This is not macabre or gothic writing, it's simple despair and lonely love poetry for his lost maiden in their 'perfect love' which I believe embodies the 'kingdom down by the sea.'

English teachers sometimes suck, or have bad taste in humor.

I remember being daunted by such a dumb assessment, and she may have been joking. 

I do remember it was a certain pnuemonia which was alluded to "the wind came out of the cloudy night."  Obviously inspired by the death of his beloved Virginia Clemm, to TB.


----------



## xxxyyy

^ poe is a fucking classic. 
have you read exterminator, thou?


----------



## pk.

I was reading _American Prodigal_ and felt the need to share this particular poem. (It isn't on the internet, so had to type it up but I think that it is worth it).

Our Own Ones

I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour....

Lana stretches to the clothesline as Carl
Is coming back over from the barn....
Between them the field dips deep and the field

Slopes long and half the day, already, is done.
She pushes a wooden pin onto a cotton skirt
And the wind competes for dominance here.

He'll live until his sixties; Lena into her nineties....
The fields will reside when they're gone
And the farm, as farms do when the property is not

Owned, will change hands, change families.
I will make a living somewhere else
Making lines I remember from life

I saw here, using forms from what held us
While in the hold of this place, but for now
I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour....

     My mother got caught and put
     In the penitentiary. My father
     Could not afford me or did not

     Want me (both struck me
     As true) so I sent out
     To the country while he worked

     A failing business in the city.
     In the 1950s, after the war,
     People from the country,

     Along with people from other
     Countries, made their way to
     The American cities. The food

     Was still grown in the country
     (Where else could it be grown--
     On roofs in the cities?),

     But the real hurl of action turned
     Towards the marketing of things
     In the major American cities.

     Suburbs, full of people
     Who did not know how to live
     In them, soon formed

     Around the cities, and I swore
     I would do something
     About this, someday, but the day

     My mother was sent up I got
     A break from this mess for a moment--
     I was sent out to live with them,

     With Lena and Carl in the country.

Carl moves towards the lunch of pork which Lena
Has left on the table. He will eat, crap, sit while
He's able, and be back over to the barn in an hour.

Lena will come in, feed herself, phone on the party line
The women down the hill, and they will wade
Through their loneliness as late afternoon goes over.

I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour.

     Built cheap, built to sell quickly, thrown up
     To house men from the killing, women
     Going back to home from the factories

     Where they had worked to support The War Effort,
     And children about to be born and form the single
     Largest generation in American time, the boomers, 

     The suburbs in the post-war era were built around
     The car: carports, forts isolating each family,
     Each adolescence for the children spent without

     Any real place to gather other than the mall,
     The market, or the woods (and adolescence is
     Nothing if not a strenuous effort to come in

     Out of the woods), and meanwhile in the cities
     The old houses torn down to put up housing
     'Projects' for the poor: hanging schizophrenia

     In mid-air, bad buildings, wrong turnings,
     And much of it dynamited down by the 1980s...
     Just before those my age took the helm in the 1990s.

They were kind to me. They were glad to have me.
At first they thought they were too old, really,
To tend to me, but I tried to be a good boy for them

--I spent much of my time alone in the woods anyway--
And soon they were glad to have me. I would fetch
Things for them and unlike their other ones, gone

To the city, I was enchanted by the country;
I didn't yet have to make any money.
I was their grandson come to live with them then

Late in their lives with their children raised
And the love all but gone from their marriage.
They took me in and they loved me then

And without them there would have been no rudder....
I got older, they died, the farm got sold out from under
Everyone, and again I took on the fate of the cities.

With Carl and Lena gone that was pretty much the end
Of any of us getting together as an extended family.
The American family changed, and though many tried to

Will the old family back (such will is cruel;
Such cruelty expressed itself politically),
Most took up forming the different family.

I now have a daughter, I'm divorced, and I make a living
As an architect in Cincinnati--forming windows, arcs, lanes....
And though I know there's no going back I try to bring back

Something of the nineteenth century town to the American city.

--Liam Rector


----------



## Ashley

I'm definitely checking out more of Liam Rector's work. I really dig his poems, thanks pk. 

Ash.


----------



## pk.

Nice :D

This was written by an Australian poet, perhaps my favourite Australian poet, Bruce Dawe.

The City: Midnight

Out of the sighs and breath of each small citizen
Clasped in his neutral bed with eye-lids locked
On the frail Pandora's box of consciousness,

Out of the blind susurrus of limbs
Moving like weeds within sleep's rhythmic waters,
Marked by the metronome of clock and moon,
Out of the shadowy cubes stacked carelessly
On night's blue nursery floor by infant men,
Rises the vast and tremulous O of dreams...

The knitting spider watches from her shelf,
The vague and changing shapes of furniture wait;
Now slippered ghosts grope down familiar stairs,

While from mysterious doorways, very soon,
The starlit insomniacs toddle, arms extending
Headless golliwog, frayed teddy, broken drum.

Down the long streets they go; they will not wake;
They will walk miles before they turn back, weary
Clutching dolls they could not give away.

Morning again will prise their fingers loose,
And all their playthings crumble into light.

--Bruce Dawe


----------



## laugh

FOR THE CHILDREN - from Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
 they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

_stay together
learn the flowers
go light_


----------



## laugh

Dear Maurice:
Hello. Have a nice day. Yes. Mahalo. Stand back. I have finally returned from the wilderness, where i was chased and tormented by huge radioactive Bobcats for almost 22 weeks. When i finally escaped they put me in a decompression chamber with some people i couldn't recognise, so i went all to pieces and now i can't remember anything or anybody or even who i was, all that time - which was exactly since Groundhog Day, when it started.

the one and only HST - Screwjack


----------



## laugh

That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze. Cool Breeze is a kid with three or four days' beard sitting next to me on the stamped metal bottom of the open back part of a pickup truck. Bouncing along. Dipping and rising and rolling on these rotten springs like a boat. Out the back of the truck the city of San Francisco is bouncing down the hill, at all those endless staggers of bay windows, slums with a view, bouncing and streaming down the hill. One after another, electric signs with neon martini glasses lit up on them, the San Francisco symbol of 'bar' - thousands of neon-magenta martini glasses bouncing and streaming down the hill, and beneath them hundreds, thousands of people wheeling around to look at this freaking crazed ruck we're in, their white faces erupting from their lapels like marshmallows-streaming and bouncing down the hill - and God knows they've got plenty to look at.

Tom Wolfe. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test


----------



## panic in paradise

To A Spring at Wu-Ling

Ling Chi'ing Chao
(Li I-An)

The wind stops, earth is fragrant with fallen petals.
At the end of the day I am weary to tend my hair;
Things remain, but he is not, and all is nothing.
I try to speak but the tears will flow.

I hear it said that at the Twin Brook the Spring is still
fair,
And I, too, long to float in a light boat.
Only I fear the 'locust boat' at the Twin Brook,
Cannot move with a freight
Of so much grief. 



*NSFW*: 




NOOoooO WHYYYY


----------



## Ashley

And if, and only if, you’re very, very lucky, then one night in the silence, in the deep heart of the dark, you’ll hear the distant trickling of the blood in your veins. A weary world of rivers, hauling their pain through the dark heat. The heart like a tom-tom, beating the message that time is running out. You’ll lie there strangely alert. You’ll actually feel the inside of your body, which is your soul, or where your soul is, and a great sadness will engulf you. And from the sadness an itch might begin, the itch of desire for change.

Luke Davies - Candy

Ash.


----------



## pk.

Soliloquy for One Dead
Bruce Dawe

Ah, no, Joe, you never knew
the whole of it, the whistling
which is only the wind in the chimney's
smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy
path that are always somebody else's.
I think of your limbs down there, softly
becoming mineral, the life of grasses,
and the old love of you thrusts the tears
up into my eyes, with the family aware
and looking everywhere else.
Sometimes when summer is over the land,
when the heat quickens the deaf timbers,
and birds are thick in the plumbs again,
my heart sickens, Joe, calling
for the water of your voice and the gone
agony of your nearness. I try hard
to forget, saying: If God wills,
it must be so, because of
His goodness, because---
but the grasshopper memory leaps
in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe,
you never knew the whole of it...


----------



## panic in paradise

Lakeside Hotel - Tanaka Fuyuji

Lakeside hotel:
Gleam in August of young trout in a mountain tarn.

Mountain reflections, clear, tumbling into the tarn:
On my white shirt, the dull rogue glow
Of your silk parasol.
I casually pointing out the yachts on the tarn
To you -- you so beautiful --
Asking you, ' why is a boat feminine?'
You smiling faintly and not answering
And keeping to your talk of Hauptmann's _Sunken Bell_.
To the sunlight, seeping through white birch-leaves,
Your hair glints in the Southern Cross.


----------



## panic in paradise

IMAYO "Present Mode" from Heike Monogatari

The Buddha himself
Was once a man like us:
We too at the end
Shall become Buddha.
All creatures may share
The nature of Buddha.
How grievous indeed
That this is not known!

Rather then the vows
Of the myriad Buddhas,
The testament
Of the thousand-handed Kannon
Has the greater faith
Powerful in the making
The flowers to blossom
The fruits to ripen,
In a twinkling on limbs
Of trees that are rotten.


----------



## pk.

The Magic Kingdom
Kathleen Graber

And as in the daily casualties of life every man is, as it were, threatened with numberless deaths, so long as it remains uncertain which of them is his fate, I would ask whether it is not better to suffer one and die, than to live in fear of all? —St. Augustine, “City of God.” 

This morning, I found on a slip of paper tucked into a book
a list of questions I’d written down years ago to ask the doctor.
What if it has spread? Is it possible I’m crazy? I’ve just returned
from Florida, from visiting my mother’s last sister, who is eighty
& doing fine. At the airport, my flight grounded by a storm,
I bought a magazine, which fell open to a photograph
of three roseate spoonbills tossing down their elegant shadows
on a chartreuse field of fertilizer-production waste.
Two little girls emptied their Ziplocs of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
onto the carpet & picked them up, one by one, with great delicacy,
before popping them into their mouths. Their mother, outside
smoking, kept an eye on them through the glass. After my cousin died,
my father died & then my brother. Next, my father’s older brother
& his wife. And, finally, after my mother died, I expected
to die myself. And because this happened very quickly
& because these were, really, almost all the people I knew,
I spent each day smashing dishes with one of my uncle’s hammers
& gluing them back together in new ways. It was strange work
& dangerous, even though I tried to protect myself—
wearing a quilted bathrobe & goggles & leather work gloves
& opening all the windows, even in snow, against the vapors
of the industrial adhesives. Most days now I get up late
& brew coffee & the smell rises from the old enamel pot
I’ve had to balance under the dark drip ever since the carafe
that came with the machine shattered in the dishwasher last month.

One morning I found a lump in my breast & my vision narrowed
to a small dot & I began to sweat. My legs & arms felt weak,
& my heart thrashed behind its bars. We were not written
to be safe. In the old tales, the woodcutter’s daughter’s path
takes her, each time, through the dark forest. There are new words
for all of this: a shot of panic becomes the rustle of glucocorticoid
signalling the sympathetic nervous system into a response
regulated by the sensitivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
And, as I go along, these freshly minted charms clatter together
in the tender doeskin of the throat as though the larynx
were nothing if not a sack of amulets tied with a cord & worn
around the neck. But I tell you I sat on the bathroom floor for hours,
trembling. And I can tell you this because the lump was just a lump
& some days now I don’t even dread the end although I know
it will arrive. The garage is filled with buckets of broken china.
The girls chased each other & waved their arms, casting spells,
the trim of their matching gingham dresses the electric pink
of the birds’ wings. They turned each other into princesses
& super-girls & then they pretended to change back.
Oh, no. You forgot to say forever—they took turns repeating
with dramatic dismay, melting into puddles of themselves,
their sandals & sunburned knees vanishing beneath their hems.


----------



## ForEverAfter

*Mickey:* The whole world's comin' to an end, Mal! 
*Mallory:* I see angels, Mickey. They're comin' down for us from heaven. And I see you ridin' a big red horse, and you're driving them horses, whippin' 'em, and the're spitting and frothing all 'long the mouth, and the're coming right at us. And I see the future, and there's no death, 'cause you and I, we're angels...

*Mickey:* In this day and age a man has to have choices, a man has to have a little bit of variety. 
*Mallory:* What are you talking about, "variety"? Hostages? You wanna fuck some other women now? Is that what you're talking about, Mickey?

*Wayne Gale:*Any regrets? I mean, three weeks, fifty people killed... not too cool Mickey. 
*Mickey:* Fifty-two, but I don't a lot of time with regret. That's a wasted emotion.

*Mickey:* You'll never understand, Wayne. You and me, we're not even the same species. I used to be you, then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're an ape. You're not even an ape. You're a media person. Media's like the weather, only it's man-made weather. Murder? It's pure. You're the one made it impure. You're buying and selling fear. You say "why?" I say "why bother?"

-Natural Born Killers


----------



## xxxyyy

^ i just watched the directors cut the other day. great fucking movie, in my opinion stone's best.


----------



## justinsayno

Connors nodded towards the pines that acted as a windbreak for the house and covered the flanks of the ridge above. 'How come there are so many trees around here?'
'Bodell' said Volkert. 'He planted them, been doing it for years'
'What does he do with them - cut them down for lumber?'
'Nope. He just keeps putting 'em in'
'Why?' asked Connors
Volkert shrugged. 'I guess he must like trees'


----------



## Ashley

There are the rushing waves...
mountains of molecules,
each stupidly minding its own business...
trillions apart
...yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages...
before any eyes could see...
year after year...
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
...on a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest...
tortured by energy...
wasted prodigiously by the sun...
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea,
all molecules repeat
the patterns of another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves...
and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity...
living things,
masses of atoms,
DNA, protein...
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land...
here it is standing...
atoms with consciousness
...matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea...
wonders at wondering... I...
a universe of atoms...
an atom in the universe.

Richard Feynman (Physicist)

Ash.


----------



## macd610

"Under the thunder-dark, the cicadas resound. The storm in the sky mounts, but is not yet heard.
 The shaft and the flash wait, but are not yet found.

 The apples that hang and swell for the late comer,
 The simple spell, the rite not for our word,
The kisses not for our mouths,- light the dark summer."
Louise Bogan, "Dark Summer"
From a collection of her works entitled "The Blue Estuaries"

" In the sun born over and over,
 I ran my heedless ways,
 My wishes raced through the house high hay
 And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
 In all his tunefull turning so few and such morning songs
 Before the children green and golden
 follow him out of grace,"
 Dylan Thomas, small part of "Fern Hill"


----------



## KamMoye

Ayn Rand, _The Foutainhead_:

“If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it–and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip–he’ll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse–and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it’s done? See if I ever lied to you. See if you haven’t heard all this for years, but didn’t want to hear it, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here’s one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That’s difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue–and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideal,s all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can’t practice. But one can’t be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one’s integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. He’ll be glad to obey–because he can’t trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That’s one way. Here’s another. Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rar,e the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept–and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Don’t set out toraze all shrines–you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity–and the shrines are razed.”


----------



## AminoAcid

Probably the greatest poem ever written imho (by Dylan Thomas):

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

 Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


----------



## Thou

*Leonard Schneider Wisdom Dump*



> And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,
> That all my wealth won't buy me health
> So I smoke a pint of tea a day.
> _
> Simon and Garfunkel's A Simple Desultory Philippic_








_*Kids Sniffing Aeroplane Glue*_

"There were kids eight or nine years old sniffing aeroplane glue, to get high on. These kids are responsible for turning musicians onto a lot of things they never knew about actually. So, I had a fantasy, how it happened. Kid is alone in his room, it's Saturday. Kid is played by George Macready, "Now lets see, I'm all alone in a room and it's Saturday, I'll make an aeroplane, that's what I'll do. Lancaster is a good structural design, I'll get the balsa wood here, cut it out, sand if off. Now a little aeroplane glue, I'll rub it on the rag and... Hey now, ha ha ha. Ohh. I'm getting loaded. Is is possible to get loaded on aeroplane glue? Maybe it's stuffy, I'll call my dog over. Fidika come here darling and smell this rag. Smell it you freaky little doggy. Smell the rag Fidika, Fidika, Fidika!!! He's up there. I've done it. I'm the Louis Pasteur of junkiedom. Out of my skull for 10 cents. Well there's much work to be done now. Horses hoofs to melt down. Noses to get ready." Cut to the toy store. Any toy store. Any neighbourhood Kid walks in. "Hello Chandler, nice store you got here. Gimme a nickels worth of pencils. Big boy tablet. Ju-ju beans. Tailspin Tommy book and 2000 tubes of aeroplane glue."

_*The Irish*_

"The thing is, you have a choice of a judge or a jury. You're a smuck, if you ever take the judge, because the thing is you're going to tell him a story to convince him. What kind of shit are you going to tell the judge that he hasn't already heard? You get twelve impressionable people, solid. Now as far as getting a goyish attorney, solid. Because you are that prejudice, who is more likely to murder his daughter and rape her, in a drunken state? An Irish father, an Italian father or a Jewish father? Even the Irish know that the Irish would. So if you are that prejudice and screwed up man, what Jewish father would do that? Are you kidding. What Italian father would do that? It's only the Irish that sell their kids for bottles what a load of bullshit. The Irish are the most persecuted minority group ever. Everyone is always bitching a drunk and would like to thwart a Fardy. Unfortunately for the Irish. Writing came in the fifth century and so they memorised everything and they're genius orators. So when they came over here (United States) they got the gig's in government. They where the heat. They were the rulers. And people got drunk with that man."

*Are there any niggers here tonight?*

"What did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" Jesus Christ, do you have to get that low for laughs? Have I ever told you about the schwartzer? Or spoke about the moulin john's? Are there any niggers? I know that one nigger that works here I see him back there. Oh there's two niggers, customers. Ah but between those two niggers there's one kike. Thank god for the kike. And two kikes. That's two kikes and three niggers and one spic. One spic, three spics and one mick. One mick one spic one hick, thick, funky, spunky boogie. And there's another kike. Three kikes, three kikes one ginny, one greaseball three greaseballs, two ginny's. One hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick. Five more niggers. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig. If President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything any more, then you could never make some 6 year old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school."


“A lot of people say to me, `Why did you kill Christ?'_ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.”_


----------



## webbykevin

Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

     In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!


From Letters To A Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke


----------



## Thou

*More Lenny*

_The current state of Judaism revealed, Christ and Moses then fly back to New York, to St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday, where the bit's grand homily is dispensed right up front, as Christ wonders to Moses what forty Puerto Ricans in Harlem are doing living in one room when this priest has a ring on worth eight grand, and also wonders at the grandeur of the room, why aren't the Puerto Ricans living here? We then switch for the rest of the routine to the altar, where Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Sheehan preside. Here, whispering "Oh Mister Gallagher, Oh Mister Shean," Bruce flashes his brilliant conceit. Spellman and Sheehan are performers like the solo Shakespearean rabbi, but they are a double bill, a vaudeville comedy team like Gallagher & Shean or Smith & Dale. In this act Bishop Sheehan, the second banana (sometimes "played" by Hugh Hubert), runs up to Spellman (sometimes Ed Begley) at the lectern:_


*"Psst, I wanna talk to you."

"Will you go back to the blackboard and stop bugging me."

"I wanna talk to you... I've got a customer in the back."

"All right put the choir on for ten minutes. What is it?"

"What is it? You'll never guess who's here."

"Who's here?"

"You're not gonna believe me... you're gonna think I've been drinking."


"All right, who's here?"

""Christ and Moses."

"Are you putting me on? Are you sure it's them?"

'Well, I've just seen them in pictures. Moses is a ringer for Charlton Heston."

"Where are they?"

"Standing way in the back."

"Don't look now you idiot, they can see us."

"They're way in the back."

"Did Christ bring the family? What's his mother's name? That's weird, I read the book today."

"I'm so nervous, Mary... "

"Mary what?"

"Mary Hale, no Hail Mary, Hairy Mary, Hail Mary Full of Grace Thompson, they're very thick with the Duponts at Montauk Point.*
_In an instant belief and spiritual vision are replaced by media images of lesser gods who can see only in sightlines, served by a bumbling priesthood more familiar with the social register than scripture. What was implicit in "Religions, Inc." is here explicit. These buffoon priests don't know and don't believe, and we are launched somewhere between Moliere and Beckett. Having reached these heights of anti-clericalism, Bruce then broadens his aim:_
*"They're back there?"

"Yes."

"All right. If this ever gets around... it has. Oh Christ, don't look at the front door, the lepers are coming. Sir, would you take the bell off? Thank you very much. Mister, would you pick up your leg, madam, your nose, you dropped? Thank you there. They got Sophie Tucker with Moses, posing. Take that Hebrew National banner down! Mister Jessel, will you get off the Madonna, that's not a statue! All right, give me a direct line to Rome, quickly. Rome? Hello John, Fran in New York. Listen, a couple of the kids dropped in. Yeah, you know them. I can't really talk right now."


"Hello, you know them, one kid is, well, (sings) with the cross of bap-bap. No, not Zorro. Them. That's right. He brought a very attractive Jewish boy with him. We gotta do something... I don't Know, I can't... put 'em up at your place. No, I didn't paint or anything, I got a lot of kids staying over here."

"That's right just get 'em over here, that's all. I don't want to hear about that. All I know is that we're up to our ass in crutches and wheelchairs. Is that good enough for you? The place is ridiculous. Yeah they're in the back, way in the back."

"Of course they're white! Yeah, this is New York, Puerto Ricans stand in the back. Which ones are they Sheehan?" 

"The ones that are glowing."*


----------



## panic in paradise

Yang Wan-Li 
_On the cold day of Cold Flood, taking my sons to visit the Ti garden and achieving ten poems
_
The children will tire of running? - let them to the full!
My old legs ache a little, and I half wish for help.
I cannot know if the flowers ahead are good or not,
So I bid the bees and butterflies to be my outriders.


----------



## laugh

Leave the informed sense
in our wake
you be Christ
on this package tour
-Money beats soul-

Last words, last words
out

Jim Morrison


----------



## pk.

One for the Guys

                              & for Robert DeNiro


I was the young psychopath Travis Bickle 
In Taxi Driver, and I am now the aging guy, 
Middle-aged gangster, hair-combed-back 

Jimmy Conway in GoodFellas. DeNiro 
Not pretty, not the Brando, not James Dean, 
But DeNiro who gets the fucking guy job done. 

DeNiro's aging mobster maturity keeps guys 
Like me going now. American guys, tough 
Guys, guys afraid of the world and women 

And their place in both. Guys ready 
To jack some serious jaw if it comes 
To that, guys ready to go to jail if jail 

Is preceded by doing the right guy thing. 
Guys coming up through the ranks, 
The hard way, guys who don't like dinner 

Parties but do like to sit down and eat 
Like animals. Like pigs. Like a dog 
Guys, guys who don't put much store 

In houses, guys who dream only of cars always. 
In typical disguise, guys tough on the outside 
And guys who are always mush and shit 

And "Stella!" inside their guy. Inside me, 
I see now, is a pantheon of American film boys, 
But none so real and solid as the DeNiro guy. 

He the one who represents us in France, 
Inside, in everywhere-else-in-the-world; he our 
American guy, up through the ranks, 

Did it the hard way, American guy guy.

—Liam Rector


----------



## Changed

_the greatest paragraph written:_



> The lover of nature is he who whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says—he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods in perpetual youth. Within these plantation of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a preferential festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.


_
-RW Emerson_


----------



## Ashley

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
'Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark.
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
How I wonder what you are.

A.


----------



## Ashley

I will not plead
    If I deny, I am condemned already,
    In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses
    And swear men's lives away.  If I confess,
    Then I confess a lie, to buy a life,
    Which is not life, but only death in life.

--William Wadsworth

A.


----------



## Thou

"Now the dreaming period is subdivided into four stages. The first stage is the longest... and it's the best... During that stage, the dream is beautiful. The second stage... is not quite so long... and it's a little unsettling... and there's an element of instability in it... a certain touch of insecurity... In the third stage which is not... again so long... the forces of light and the forces of darkness of good and of evil are equally balanced... and things are beginnig to look rather dangerous. Now in the fourth stage, which is the shortest of them all... The negative, dark or evil side triumphs and the whole thing blows up... and so then there's a waking period before the whole thing starts again..."


"Have you noticed, that in this drama, the forces of the dark side are operative for 1/3 of the time, the forces of the light side for 2/3 of the time. This is a very ingenious arrangement. Because we are seeing here, the fundamental principles of drama"

Watts


----------



## Gremsmith12

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."


----------



## sirfranny

my favourite poem by another derryman

Seamus Heaney  (1939-)

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.


----------



## pk.

_The Ghazal of What Hurt_
Peter Cole

Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars.
But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are

walking easily across the ground, and into town
as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,

or riding a wave of what feels like the world’s good will—
though helped along by something foreign and older than you are

and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable
an X-ray, you’re sure, would show it, within the body you are,

not all that far beneath the skin, and even in
some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are—

with all that isn’t actually you having flowed
through and settled in you, and made you what you are?

The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased.
It’s memory now—so you know just how lucky you are.

You didn’t always. Were you then? And where’s the fear?
Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!

Face it, friend, you most exist when you’re driven
away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.


----------



## Ashley

pk. said:


> _The Ghazal of What Hurt_
> Peter Cole
> 
> Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars.
> But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are
> 
> walking easily across the ground, and into town
> as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,
> 
> or riding a wave of what feels like the world’s good will—
> though helped along by something foreign and older than you are
> 
> and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable
> an X-ray, you’re sure, would show it, within the body you are,
> 
> not all that far beneath the skin, and even in
> some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are—
> 
> with all that isn’t actually you having flowed
> through and settled in you, and made you what you are?
> 
> The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased.
> It’s memory now—so you know just how lucky you are.
> 
> You didn’t always. Were you then? And where’s the fear?
> Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!
> 
> Face it, friend, you most exist when you’re driven
> away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.



^^ That's got my seal of approval pk. :D

Ash.


----------



## Cornishman

> Socks
> 
> Box
> 
> Knox
> 
> 
> Know in box.
> 
> Fox in socks.
> 
> 
> Knox on fox
> 
> in socks in box.
> 
> 
> Socks on Knox
> 
> and Knox in box.
> 
> 
> Fox in socks
> 
> on box on Knox.
> 
> 
> Chicks with bricks come.
> 
> Chicks with blocks come.
> 
> Chicks with Bricks and
> 
> blocks and clocks come.
> 
> 
> Look, sir. Look, sir.
> 
> Mr Knox, sir.
> 
> Let's do tricks with
> 
> bricks and blocks, sir.
> 
> Let;s do tricks with
> 
> chicks and clocks, sir.
> 
> 
> First, I'll make a
> 
> quick trick brick stack.
> 
> Then I'll make a
> 
> quick trick block stack.
> 
> 
> You can make a
> 
> quick trick chick stack.
> 
> You can make a
> 
> trick clock stack.
> 
> 
> And here's a
> 
> new trick, Mr Knox....
> 
> Socks on chicks
> 
> and chicks on fox.
> 
> Fox on clocks
> 
> on bricks and blocks.
> 
> bricks and blocks
> 
> on Knox on blocks.
> 
> 
> Now we come to
> 
> ticks and tocks, sir.
> 
> Try to say this
> 
> Mr Knox, sir....
> 
> 
> Clocks on fox tick.
> 
> Clocks on Knox tock.
> 
> Six sick bricks tick.
> 
> Six sick chicks tock.
> 
> 
> 
> Please, sir. I don't
> 
> like this trick, sir.
> 
> My tongue isn't
> 
> quick or slick, sir.
> 
> I get all those
> 
> ticks and clocks, sir,
> 
> mixed up with the
> 
> chicks and tocks, sir.
> 
> I can't do it, Mr. Fox, sir.
> 
> 
> I'm so sorry,
> 
> Mr. Knox sir.
> 
> 
> Here's and easy
> 
> game to play.
> 
> Here's an easy
> 
> thing to say...
> 
> 
> New socks.
> 
> Two socks.
> 
> Whose socks?
> 
> Sue's socks.
> 
> 
> Who sews whose socks?
> 
> Sue sews Sue's socks.
> 
> 
> Who sees who sew
> 
> whose new socks, sir?
> 
> You see Sue sew
> 
> Sue's new socks, sir.
> 
> 
> 
> That's not easy,
> 
> Mr. Fox, sir.
> 
> 
> Who comes?
> 
> Crow comes.
> 
> Slow Joe Crow comes.
> 
> 
> 
> Who sews crow's clothes?
> 
> Sue sews crow's clothes.
> 
> Slow Joe Crow
> 
> sews whose clothes?
> 
> Sue;s clothes.
> 
> 
> 
> Sue sews socks of
> 
> fox in socks now.
> 
> 
> Slow Joe Crow sews
> 
> Knox in box now.
> 
> 
> Sue sews rose
> 
> on Slow Joe Crow's clothes.
> 
> Fox sews hose
> 
> on Slow Joe Crow's nose
> 
> 
> Hose goes.
> 
> Rose frows.
> 
> Nose hose goes some.
> 
> Crow's rose grows some.
> 
> 
> Mr Fox!
> 
> I hate this game, sir.
> 
> This game makes
> 
> my tongue quite lame, sir.
> 
> 
> Mr. Knox, sir,
> 
> what a shame, sir.
> 
> 
> We'll find something
> 
> new to do now.
> 
> Here is lots of
> 
> new blue goo now.
> 
> New goo. Blue goo.
> 
> Gooey. Goeey.
> 
> Blue goo, New goo.
> 
> Gluey. Gluey.
> 
> 
> Gooey goo
> 
> for chewy chewing!
> 
> That's what that
> 
> Goo-Goose is doing
> 
> Do you choose to
> 
> chew goo, too, sir?
> 
> If, sir, you, sir,
> 
> choose to chew, sir,
> 
> with the Goo-Goose,
> 
> chew, sir. Do, sir.
> 
> 
> Mr. Fox, sir,
> 
> I won't do it.
> 
> I can't say it.
> 
> I won't chew it.
> 
> 
> 
> Very well, sir.
> 
> Step this way.
> 
> We'll find another
> 
> game to play.
> 
> 
> 
> Bim comes.
> 
> Ben comes.
> 
> Bim bringgs Ben broom.
> 
> Ben brings Bim broom.
> 
> 
> Ben bends Bim's broom.
> 
> Bim bends Ben's broom,
> 
> Bim's bends,
> 
> Ben's bends.
> 
> Ben's bent broom breaks.
> 
> Bim's bent broom breaks.
> 
> 
> 
> Ben's band. Bim's band.
> 
> Big bands. Pig bands.
> 
> 
> 
> Bim and Ben lead
> 
> bands with brooms.
> 
> Ben's band bangs
> 
> and Bim's band booms.
> 
> 
> 
> Pig band! Boom band!
> 
> Big band! Broom band!
> 
> My poor mouth can't
> 
> say that. No Sir.
> 
> My pooor mouth is
> 
> much too slow, sir.
> 
> 
> Well then...
> 
> bring your mouth this way.
> 
> I'll find it something
> 
> it can say.
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Luck likes lakes.
> 
> Luke's duck likes lakes.
> 
> Luke luck licks lakes.
> 
> Luke's duck licks lakes.
> 
> 
> 
> Duck takes licks
> 
> in lakes Luke Luck likes.
> 
> Luke Luck takes licks
> 
> in lakes duck likes.
> 
> 
> 
> I can't blah
> 
> such blibber blubber!
> 
> My tongue isn't
> 
> made of runner.
> 
> 
> 
> Mr. Knox. Now
> 
> come now. Come now.
> 
> You don't have to
> 
> be so dumb now....
> 
> 
> 
> Try to say this,
> 
> Mr, Knox, please....
> 
> Through three cheese trees
> 
> three free fleas flew.
> 
> While these fleas flew,
> 
> freezy breeze blew.
> 
> Freezy breeze made
> 
> these three trees freeze.
> 
> Freezy trees made
> 
> these trees' cheese freeze
> 
> That's what made these
> 
> three free fleas sneeze.
> 
> 
> Stop it! Stop it!
> 
> That;s enough, sir.
> 
> I can't say
> 
> such silly stuff, sir.
> 
> 
> Very well, then
> 
> Mr. Knox, sir.
> 
> Let's have a little talk
> 
> about tweetle beetles....
> 
> 
> 
> What do you know
> 
> about tweetle beetles?
> 
> well...
> 
> 
> 
> When tweetle beetles fight,
> 
> it's called
> 
> a tweetle beetle battle.
> 
> 
> And when they
> 
> battle in a puddle,
> 
> it's a tweetle
> 
> beetle puddle battle.
> 
> 
> AND when tweetle beetles
> 
> battle with paddles in a puddle,
> 
> they call it a tweetle
> 
> beetle puddle paddle battle.
> 
> AND...
> 
> 
> When beetles battle beetles
> 
> in a puddle paddle battle
> 
> and the beetle battle puddle
> 
> is a puddle in a bottle...
> 
> 
> ...they call this
> 
> a tweetle beetle
> 
> bottle puddle
> 
> paddle battle muddle.
> 
> AND...
> 
> 
> When beetles
> 
> fight these battles
> 
> in a bottle
> 
> with their paddles
> 
> and the bottle's
> 
> on a poodle
> 
> and the poodle's
> 
> eating noodles...
> 
> 
> ...they call this
> 
> a muddle puddle
> 
> tweetle poodle
> 
> beetle noodle
> 
> bottle paddle battle.
> 
> AND...
> 
> 
> 
> Now wait
> 
> a minute
> 
> Mr. Socks Fox!
> 
> 
> When a fox is
> 
> in the bottle where
> 
> the tweetle beetls battle
> 
> with their paddles
> 
> in a puddle on a
> 
> noodle-eating poodle.
> 
> THIS is what they call...
> 
> 
> 
> ...a tweetle beetle
> 
> noodle poodle bottles
> 
> paddled muddled duddled
> 
> fuddled wuddled
> 
> fox in sockx, sir!
> 
> 
> 
> Fox in socks,
> 
> our game us done, sir.
> 
> Thank you for
> 
> a lot of fun, sir



'Fox in socks' - Dr Seuss


----------



## Sister_M0rphine

Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Solitude:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.


----------



## panic in paradise

"Eager to see
Where the suns fires hold revelry
Where clouds and rains sport humidity"
- Horace


----------



## laugh

Fox in socks ftw haha what a mindfuck trip


----------



## Ashley

^^ Yeah, Dr. Seuss rocks!

A.


----------



## Thou

THE MONKEY'S PAW (1902)

from The lady of the barge (1906, 6th ed.)
 London and New York
 Harper & Brothers, Publishers 
by W.W. Jacobs

I.

WITHOUT, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire. 

  "Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it. 

  "I'm listening," said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. "Check." 

  "I should hardly think that he'd come to-night," said his father, with his hand poised over the board. 

  "Mate," replied the son. 

  "That's the worst of living so far out," bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; "of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway's a bog, and the road's a torrent. I don't know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses on the road are let, they think it doesn't matter." 

  "Never mind, dear," said his wife soothingly; "perhaps you'll win the next one." 

  Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard. 

  "There he is," said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door. 

  The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage. 

  "Sergeant-Major Morris," he said, introducing him. 

  The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whisky and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire. 

  At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of strange scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples. 

  "Twenty-one years of it," said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. "When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him." 

  "He don't look to have taken much harm," said Mrs. White, politely. 

  "I'd like to go to India myself," said the old man, "just to look round a bit, you know." 

  "Better where you are," said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again. 

  "I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers," said the old man. "What was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey's paw or something, Morris?" 

  "Nothing," said the soldier hastily. "Leastways, nothing worth hearing." 

  "Monkey's paw?" said Mrs. White curiously. 

  "Well, it's just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps," said the sergeant-major off-handedly. 

  His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absentmindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him. 

  "To look at," said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, "it's just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy." 

  He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously. 

  "And what is there special about it?" inquired Mr. White, as he took it from his son and, having examined it, placed it upon the table. 

  "It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant-major, "a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it." 

  His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat. 

  "Well, why don't you have three, sir?" said Herbert White cleverly. 

  The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. "I have," he said quietly, and his blotchy face whitened. 

  "And did you really have the three wishes granted?" asked Mrs. White. 

  "I did," said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth. 

  "And has anybody else wished?" inquired the old lady. 

  "The first man had his three wishes, yes," was the reply. "I don't know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That's how I got the paw." 

  His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group. 

  "If you've had your three wishes, it's no good to you now, then, Morris," said the old man at last. "What do you keep it for?" 

  The soldier shook his head. "Fancy, I suppose," he said slowly. 

  "If you could have another three wishes," said the old man, eyeing him keenly, "would you have them?" 

  "I don't know," said the other. "I don't know." 

  He took the paw, and dangling it between his front finger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off. 

  "Better let it burn," said the soldier solemnly. 

  "If you don't want it, Morris," said the old man, "give it to me." 

  "I won't," said his friend doggedly. "I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don't blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again, like a sensible man." 

  The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. "How do you do it?" he inquired. 

  "Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,' said the sergeant-major, "but I warn you of the consequences." 

  "Sounds like the Arabian Nights," said Mrs White, as she rose and began to set the supper. "Don't you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?" 

  Her husband drew the talisman from his pocket and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm. 

  "If you must wish," he said gruffly, "wish for something sensible." 

  Mr. White dropped it back into his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second instalment of the soldier's adventures in India. 

  "If the tale about the monkey paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us," said Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, "we shan't make much out of it." 

  "Did you give him anything for it, father?" inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely. 

  "A trifle," said he, colouring slightly. "He didn't want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away." 

  "Likely," said Herbert, with pretended horror. "Why, we're going to be rich, and famous, and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can't be henpecked." 

  He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar. 

  Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. "I don't know what to wish for, and that's a fact," he said slowly. "It seems to me I've got all I want." 

  "If you only cleared the house, you'd be quite happy, wouldn't you?" said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. "Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that'll just do it." 

  His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords. 

  "I wish for two hundred pounds," said the old man distinctly. 

  A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him. 

  "It moved, he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor. "As I wished it twisted in my hands like a snake." 

  "Well, I don't see the money," said his son, as he picked it up and placed it on the table, "and I bet I never shall." 

  "It must have been your fancy, father," said his wife, regarding him anxiously. 

  He shook his head. "Never mind, though; there's no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same." 

  They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night. 

  "I expect you'll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed," said Herbert, as he bade them good-night, "and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains." 

  He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey's paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed. 


II.

IN the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table Herbert laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues. 

  "I suppose all old soldiers are the same," said Mrs White. "The idea of our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, father?" 

  "Might drop on his head from the sky," said the frivolous Herbert. 

  "Morris said the things happened so naturally," said his father, "that you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence." 

  "Well, don't break into the money before I come back," said Herbert, as he rose from the table. "I'm afraid it'll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you." 

  His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road, and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband's credulity. All of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock, nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that the post brought a tailor's bill. 

  "Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home," she said, as they sat at dinner. 

  "I dare say," said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; "but for all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I'll swear to." 

  "You thought it did," said the old lady soothingly. 

  "I say it did," replied the other. "There was no thought about it; I had just----What's the matter?" 

  His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair. 

  She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room, and her husband's coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely silent. 

  "I--was asked to call," he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. "I come from Maw and Meggins." 

  The old lady started. "Is anything the matter?" she asked breathlessly. "Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?" 

  Her husband interposed. "There, there, mother," he said hastily. "Sit down, and don't jump to conclusions. You've not brought bad news, I'm sure, sir" and he eyed the other wistfully. 

  "I'm sorry----" began the visitor. 

  "Is he hurt?" demanded the mother. 

  The visitor bowed in assent. "Badly hurt," he said quietly, "but he is not in any pain." 

  "Oh, thank God!" said the old woman, clasping her hands. "Thank God for that! Thank----" 

  She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other's averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence. 

  "He was caught in the machinery," said the visitor at length, in a low voice. 

  "Caught in the machinery," repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, "yes." 

  He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife's hand between his own, pressed it as he had been wont to do in their old courting days nearly forty years before. 

  "He was the only one left to us," he said, turning gently to the visitor. "It is hard." 

  The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. "The firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss," he said, without looking round. "I beg that you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders." 

  There was no reply; the old woman's face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the husband's face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action. 

  "I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all responsibility," continued the other. "They admit no liability at all, but in consideration of your son's services they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation." 

  Mr. White dropped his wife's hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, "How much?" 

  "Two hundred pounds," was the answer. 

  Unconscious of his wife's shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor. 


III.

  IN the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to happen--something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear. 

  But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation--the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness. 

  It was about a week after that that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened. 

  "Come back," he said tenderly. "You will be cold." 

  "It is colder for my son," said the old woman, and wept afresh. 

  The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start. 

  "The paw!" she cried wildly. "The monkey's paw!" 

  He started up in alarm. "Where? Where is it? What's the matter?" 

  She came stumbling across the room toward him. "I want it," she said quietly. "You've not destroyed it?" 

  "It's in the parlour, on the bracket," he replied, marvelling. "Why?" 

  She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek. 

  "I only just thought of it," she said hysterically. "Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't you think of it?" 

  "Think of what?" he questioned. 

  "The other two wishes," she replied rapidly. "We've only had one." 

  "Was not that enough?" he demanded fiercely. 

  "No," she cried, triumphantly; "we'll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again." 

  The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. "Good God, you are mad!" he cried aghast. 

  "Get it," she panted; "get it quickly, and wish---- Oh, my boy, my boy!" 

  Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. "Get back to bed," he said, unsteadily. "You don't know what you are saying." 

  "We had the first wish granted," said the old woman, feverishly; "why not the second." 

  "A coincidence," stammered the old man. 

  "Go and get it and wish," cried the old woman, quivering with excitement. 

  The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. "He has been dead ten days, and besides he--I would not tell you else, but--I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?" 

  "Bring him back," cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. "Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?" 

  He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand. 

  Even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her. 

  "Wish!" she cried, in a strong voice. 

  "It is foolish and wicked," he faltered. 

  "Wish!" repeated his wife. 

  He raised his hand. "I wish my son alive again." 

  The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind. 

  He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle end, which had burnt below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him. 

  Neither spoke, but both lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, the husband took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle. 

  At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another, and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door. 

  The matches fell from his hand. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house. 

  "What's that?" cried the old woman, starting up. 

  "A rat," said the old man, in shaking tones--"a rat. It passed me on the stairs." 

  His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house. 

  "It's Herbert!" she screamed. "It's Herbert!" 

  She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly. 

  "What are you going to do?" he whispered hoarsely. 

  "It's my boy; it's Herbert!" she cried, struggling mechanically. "I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door." 

  "For God's sake, don't let it in," cried the old man trembling. 

  "You're afraid of your own son," she cried, struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm coming." 

  There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman's voice, strained and panting. 

  "The bolt," she cried loudly. "Come down. I can't reach it." 

  But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey's paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish. 

  The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road. 

(End.)


----------



## panic in paradise

oh i must not of never been as in love
as in love as iam right now:
i say as i am dancing


----------



## Jennyfur_Karma_Kin

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


----------



## DrugFuckedNZ

the crunch

too much too little 

too fat
too thin
or nobody. 

laughter or
tears 

haters
lovers 

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks 

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins. 

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe. 

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock 

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love. 

people just are not good to each other
one on one. 

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor. 

we are afraid. 

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners 

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides. 

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone 

untouched
unspoken to 

watering a plant. 

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other. 

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be. 

but sometimes I think about
it. 

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone. 

too much
too little 

too fat
too thin
or nobody 

more haters than lovers. 

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad. 

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance. 

there must be a way. 

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of. 

who put this brain inside of me? 

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance. 

it will not say
"no." 
Charles Bukowski


----------



## DrugFuckedNZ

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up? 
you want to screw up the
works? 
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe? 
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you? 
Charles Bukowski


----------



## a100unitSHOT

No one else will have me like you do...
No one else will have me, only you.

-Jimmy Eat World, "23"


----------



## pk.

To the Accuser Who Is the God of This World

Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan

Tho thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine 
Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill 

~ William Blake


----------



## pk.

From The Dunciad IV 

O Muse! relate (for you can tell alone,
 Wits have short memories, and Dunces none),
 Relate, who first, who last resign'd to rest;
 Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest;
 What charms could faction, what ambition lull,
 The venal quiet, and entrance the dull;
 Till drown'd was sense, and shame, and right, and wrong—
 O sing, and hush the nations with thy song!
 In vain, in vain—the all-composing hour
 Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r.
 She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
 Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
 Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
 And all its varying rainbows die away.
 Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
 The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
 As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
 The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
 As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppress'd,
 Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
 Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
 Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
 See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
 Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
 Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
 Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
 Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
 And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
 See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
 In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
 Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
 And unawares Morality expires.
 Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine;
 Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
 Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
 Light dies before thy uncreating word:
 Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
 And universal Darkness buries All. 

~ Alexander Pope


----------



## Thou

Ah pook the is the mayan god of death but unlike the medieval christian conception of death, ah pook was not regarded by the mayans as purely negative and destructive, but simply as a stage of life making way for rebirth and regeneration. T
his book concerns an American billionaire who is obsessed by a desire for immortality. He discovers lost Mayan books containing some of the basic secrets of life and death, and uses this knowledge to set up a rather ill-advised control machine.

Train whistle, train in lunar landscape of Northern Mexico. Cut to Mr. Hart's private car, books spread out on a table. He is reading the books laboriously from a Spanish key. Now here is the young Corn God turning into death. When I die I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.

Now this 'dying to produce oneself' sounds awfully hit-and-miss to canny young Hart.Obsesed by his desire for his immortality he does not grasp the full significance of this simple survival forumula nor the seeds of disaster it contains.

Mr. Haert certainly does not think of himself as a christian, yet all his thinking is foermed by western christianity. He thinks in either/or; that is; ONE GOD terms. He is looking for THE secrets of fear and death.

"Must be one thing or the other he tells himself. It's all very simple. The priests BECAME death, therefore they could not die. Can't leave any loose end trailing about"

At dawn Death came to the hut. The youth tried to face him and hurled a Magic object. He almost succeeded, for Death was old and tired.

The weakness of Death in this passage alarms him.

Perhaps the priests, postulating all those years in which they had existed, killed themselve with old age.

Mr. Hart is not really an intelligent man.He does not at this point even guess the real reason for these expeditions into remote past time. the priests made calculations on their calander dating back 400 million years. Why, Mr Hart will find out in time. He will find out that Death needs time. Death needs time like a junky needs junk.

What does death need time for? The answer is so simple. Death needs time for what it kills to grow in for Ah Pook's sweet sake, you stupid vulgar greedy vulgar American deathsucker.

It's like this.

Death walks out into the field and kills the young Corn God. The young Corn God becomes a deathseed from which another young Corn God will grow. Birth and death in all its variety of an old outhouse. However there is always more death than growth, even in the simplest terms of soil exhaustion.

Every time you kill the young Corn God Life goes out of him, the seed grows slower, the seed loses vitality. The Corn God looks like a soulless zombie and finaly the seed does not grow. No time for death. So death has to travel. Death takes the young Corn God back to a time he has been hit so often he is punch-drunk. Back to his youth, back back back, clickety clickety clack. Back to the garden of eden. Sure death will burn that down too.

The mayan priests made these exeditions into past time because they had burned down present time. Mayan scholars have wondered why they did not make more calculations into future time. They were overdrawn. Checks bounced. Nothing and nobody there. Now this did not happen right away.

You don't get hooked on the first shot, and even when you are hooked you can control it for a while, maybe stay on the same dose.

But fix yourself on a junky on heroin for several thousand years. Control that habit?

So he goes back to a time when his habit was manageable. And when it gets out of hand there he goes FURTHER BACK.

Look at the Mayan Pantheon and the calander and you willl see that the Mayans as experienced vampires and time-junkies were keenly aware of this impasse and took what precautions they could to avoid it; by balancing the gods of life and death.

Not as Mr. Hart's accounts are balanced, but by a series of transitional shadings.

In the transitional forms of death, death to some extent identifies himeself with the man he kills and shares his death.

Now this seems very subversive to Mr. Hart, who never identifies with his victims. To do so would put him in danger of becoming a victem himself. Yet at some point death must take this risk. Death must become a mortal and die in order to be reborn,

Hart is not willing to take this risk. He wants to BE Death but he will not know Death. Death will not serve a stranger who cannot prove his title, a gringo who fears the very word and sets up a house rule that the word 'death' may not be pronounced in his presence.

Hart cannot read the mayan books. He is reading them as one who reads Moby Dick to find out about whaling, and to hell with Captain Ahab and The White Whale. What is written there long dormant, is now a viralent strain of virus. waiting to escape, to leap from the pages and infect millions of human hosts. Not with Mr. Harts greedy, Bible-Belt 19th century capitalistic message, but with their own messages.


----------



## pk.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
 don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
 be on the watch.
 there are ways out.
 there is a light somewhere.
 it may not be much light but
 it beats the darkness.
 be on the watch.
 the gods will offer you chances.
 know them.
 take them.
 you can’t beat death but
 you can beat death in life, sometimes.
 and the more often you learn to do it,
 the more light there will be.
 your life is your life.
 know it while you have it.
 you are marvelous
 the gods wait to delight
 in you.

~ Charles Bukowski


----------



## panic in paradise

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. Of this latter only we are here to discourse, and to inquire what estate of life does best suit us in the possession of it. 

This liberty of our own actions is such a fundamental privilege of human nature, that God Himself, notwithstanding all His infinite power and right over us, permits us to enjoy it, and that, too, after a forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He takes so much care for the entire preservation of it to us, that He suffers neither His providence nor eternal decree to break or infringe it. Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but tenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid to Him at as a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of His title. 

It is man only that has the impudence to demand our whole time, though he neither gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable value for the least part of it. This birthright of mankind above all other creatures some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread and broth; but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and bracelets. 

The great dealers in this world may be divided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves-- though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical paradox--will appear to the wise so plain and obvious that they will scarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation. Let us first consider the ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness, and after the attaining of it. 

There is nothing truer than what Sallust says: "Dominationis in alios servitium suum, mercedem dant": They are content to pay so great a price as their own servitude to purchase the domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice is their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they are in the race of glory; no, not like Atalanta for golden apples; "Neither indeed can a man stop himself, if he would, when he is in this, career. Fertur equis auriga neque audit currus habenas. 
Of Liberty - Abraham Cowley


----------



## pk.

Henry's Understanding

He was reading late, at Richard's, down in Maine,
aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,
my good wife long in bed.
All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,
putting the marker in the book, & sleep,
& wake to a hot breakfast.

Off the coast was an island, P'tit Manaan,
the bluff from Richard's lawn was almost sheer.
A chill at four o'clock.
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,

& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of warm pajamas,
I'd take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island.

~_John Berryman_


----------



## Thou

LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever -

"Don't let them see us. Don't tell them what we are doing -"

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth?

"For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out - "

"Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians - "

"Not The Green Deal - Don't show them that - "

"Not The Orgasm Death - "

"Not the ovens - "

Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Picadilly.

"Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time."

Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go. Minutes to foe goal -

"Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates -

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies, Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth, Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere. You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?

What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you; "the word." Alien Word "the." "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee" in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open, I Hassan i Sabbah rub out the word forever. If you I cancel all your words forever. And the words of Hassan i Sabbah as also cancel. Cross all your skies see the silent writing of Brion Gysin Hassan i Sabbah: drew September 17, 1899 over New York.

PRISONERS, COME OUT

"Don't listen to Hassan i Sabbah," they will tell you. "He wants to take your body and all pleasures of the body away from you. Listen to us. We are serving The Garden of Delights Immortality Cosmic Consciousness The Best Ever In Drug Kicks. And love love love in slop buckets. How does that sound to you boys? Better than Hassan i Sabbah and his cold windy bodiless rock? Right?" At the immediate risk of finding myself the most unpopular character of all fiction - and history is fiction I must say this:

"Bring together state of news - Inquire onward from state to doer -" Who monopolized Immortality? Who monopolized Cosmic Consciousness? Who monopolized Love Sex and Dream? Who monopolized Life Time and Fortune? Who took from you what is yours? Now they will give it all back? Did they ever give anything away for nothing? Did they ever give any more than they had to give? Did they not always take back what they gave when possible and it always was? Listen: Their Garden Of Delights is a terminal sewer - I have been at some pains to map this area of terminal sewage in the so called pornographic sections of Naked Lunch and Soft Machine - Their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit - Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens - Stay out of the Garden Of Delights - It is a man-eating trap that ends in green goo - Throw back their ersatz Immortality - It will fall apart before you can get out of The Big Store - Flush their drug kicks down the drain They are poisoning and monopolizing the hallucinogen drugs - learn to make it without any chemical corn - All that they offer is a screen to cover retreat from the colony they have so disgracefully mismanaged. To cover travel arrangements so they will never have to pay the constituents they have betrayed and sold out. Once these arrangements are complete they will blow the place up behind them.

And what does my program of total austerity and total resistance offer you I offer you nothing. I am not a politician. These are conditions of total emergency. And these are my instructions for total emergency if carried out now could avert the total disaster now on tracks:

Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned. Convert all available stocks of morphine to apomorphine. Chemists, work round the clock on variation and synthesis of the apomorphine formulae. Apomorphine is the only agent that can disintoxicate you and cut the enemy beam off your line. Apomorphine and silence. I order total resistance directed against this conspiracy to pay off. peoples of the earth in ersatz bullshit. I order total resistance directed against The Nova Conspiracy and all those engaged in it.

The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals: In Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and Nova Express I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. Minutes to go. Souls rotten from their orgasm drugs, flesh shuddering from their nova ovens, prisoners of the earth to come out, With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly (Signed)

                                                                   INSPECTOR J. LEE, NOVA POLICE


Post Script Of The Regulator: I would like to sound a word of warning - To speak is to lie - To live is to collaborate - Anybody is a coward when faced by the nova ovens - There are degrees of lying collaboration and cowardice - That is to say degrees of intoxication - It is precisely a question of regulation - The enemy is not man is not woman - The enemy exists only where no life is and moves always to push life into extreme untenable positions - You can cut the enemy off your line by the judicious use of apomorphine and silence - Use the sanity drug apomorphine. "Apomorphine is made from morphine but its physiological action is quite different. Morphine depresses the front brain. Apomorphine stimulates the back brain, acts on the hypothalamus to regulate the percentage of various constituents in the blood serum and so normalize the constitution of the blood." I quote from Anxiety and Its Treatment by Doctor John Yerbury Dent.


----------



## panic in paradise

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authórizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing these sins more than these sins are.
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate
  That I an áccessory needs must be
  To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

Shakespeare - Sonnet 35


----------



## pk.

Matthew 13:10-15

10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’


----------



## panic in paradise

So when Inana left the underworld, the one in front of her, though not a minister, held a sceptre in his hand; the one behind her, though not an escort, carried a mace at his hip, while the small demons, like a reed enclosure, and the big demons, like the reeds of a fence, restrained her on all sides.

295-305Those who accompanied her, those who accompanied Inana, know no food, know no drink, eat no flour offering and drink no libation. They accept no pleasant gifts. They never enjoy the pleasures of the marital embrace, never have any sweet children to kiss. They tear away the wife from a man's embrace. They snatch the son from a man's knee. They make the bride leave the house of her father-in-law (instead of lines 300-305, 1 ms. has 2 lines: They take the wife away from a man's embrace. They take away the child hanging on a wet-nurse's breasts). (1 ms. adds 3 lines: They crush no bitter garlic. They eat no fish, they eat no leeks. They, it was, who accompanied Inana.)

306-310After Inana had ascended from the underworld, Nincubura threw herself at her feet at the door of the Ganzer. She had sat in the dust and clothed herself in a filthy garment. The demons said to holy Inana: "Inana, proceed to your city, we will take her back."

311-321Holy Inana answered the demons: "This is my minister of fair words, my escort of trustworthy words. She did not forget my instructions. She did not neglect the orders I gave her. She made a lament for me on the ruin mounds. She beat the drum for me in the sanctuaries. She made the rounds of the gods' houses for me. She lacerated her eyes for me, lacerated her nose for me. (1 ms. adds 1 line: She lacerated her ears for me in public.) In private, she lacerated her buttocks for me. Like a pauper, she clothed herself in a single garment.

322-328"All alone she directed her steps to the E-kur, to the house of Enlil, and to Urim, to the house of Nanna, and to Eridug, to the house of Enki. (1 ms. adds 1 line: She wept before Enki.) She brought me back to life. How could I turn her over to you? Let us go on. Let us go on to the Sig-kur-caga in Umma."

329-333At the Sig-kur-caga in Umma, Cara, in his own city, threw himself at her feet. He had sat in the dust and dressed himself in a filthy garment. The demons said to holy Inana: "Inana, proceed to your city, we will take him back."

334-338Holy Inana answered the demons: "Cara is my singer, my manicurist and my hairdresser. How could I turn him over to you? Let us go on. Let us go on to the E-muc-kalama in Bad-tibira."

339-343At the E-muc-kalama in Bad-tibira, Lulal, in his own city, threw himself at her feet. He had sat in the dust and clothed himself in a filthy garment. The demons said to holy Inana: "Inana, proceed to your city, we will take him back."

344-347Holy Inana answered the demons: "Outstanding Lulal follows me at my right and my left. How could I turn him over to you? Let us go on. Let us go on to the great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba."

348-353They followed her to the great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba. There was Dumuzid clothed in a magnificent garment and seated magnificently on a throne. The demons seized him there by his thighs. The seven of them poured the milk from his churns. The seven of them shook their heads like ....... They would not let the shepherd play the pipe and flute before her (?).

354-358She looked at him, it was the look of death. She spoke to him (?), it was the speech of anger. She shouted at him (?), it was the shout of heavy guilt: "How much longer? Take him away." Holy Inana gave Dumuzid the shepherd into their hands.

359-367Those who had accompanied her, who had come for Dumuzid, know no food, know no drink, eat no flour offering, drink no libation. They never enjoy the pleasures of the marital embrace, never have any sweet children to kiss. They snatch the son from a man's knee. They make the bride leave the house of her father-in-law.

368-375Dumuzid let out a wail and turned very pale. The lad raised his hands to heaven, to Utu: "Utu, you are my brother-in-law. I am your relation by marriage. I brought butter to your mother's house. I brought milk to Ningal's house. Turn my hands into snake's hands and turn my feet into snake's feet, so I can escape my demons, let them not keep hold of me."

376-383Utu accepted his tears. (1 ms. adds 1 line: Dumuzid's demons could not keep hold of him.) Utu turned Dumuzid's hands into snake's hands. He turned his feet into snake's feet. Dumuzid escaped his demons. (1 ms. adds 1 line: Like a sajkal snake he .......) They seized .......
2 lines fragmentary
Holy Inana ...... her heart.

384-393Holy Inana wept bitterly for her husband.
4 lines fragmentary
She tore at her hair like esparto grass, she ripped it out like esparto grass. "You wives who lie in your men's embrace, where is my precious husband? You children who lie in your men's embrace, where is my precious child? Where is my man? Where ......? Where is my man? Where ......?"

394-398A fly spoke to holy Inana: "If I show you where your man is, what will be my reward?" Holy Inana answered the fly: "If you show me where my man is, I will give you this gift: I will cover ......."

399-403The fly helped (?) holy Inana. The young lady Inana decreed the destiny of the fly: "In the beer-house and the tavern (?), may there ...... for you. You will live (?) like the sons of the wise." Now Inana decreed this fate and thus it came to be.

404-410...... was weeping. She came up to the sister (?) and ...... by the hand: "Now, alas, my ....... You for half the year and your sister for half the year: when you are demanded, on that day you will stay, when your sister is demanded, on that day you will be released." Thus holy Inana gave Dumuzid as a substitute .......

411-412Holy Erec-ki-gala -- sweet is your praise.


----------



## panic in paradise

2 Corinthians 2

New International Version (NIV)

1 So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.

2 For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? 

3 I write as I do, so that when I come I you not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I have confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. 

4 For I write you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.


----------



## Thou

We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a seperate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body-a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange.

Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)


----------



## panic in paradise

The Dead Sea Scrolls
Selections from Thanksgiving Psalms

I (i.30)
Thou didst place words on a line,
and the utterance of the breath of the lips in measure;
thou didst bring forth lines for their mysteries
and utterances of spirits for their reckoning,
to make known thy glory, and to tell thy wonders
in all the works of thy truth.


----------



## pk.

Luke 23:34

English Standard Version (ESV)

34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.


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## pk.

I wanna hold the hand inside you
I wanna take the breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth

You live your life, you go in shadow
You'll come upon and you'll go black
Some kind of night into your darkness
Close your eyes with what's not there

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew

The strange light comes on slowly
A stranger's heart is out of home
You put your hands into your head
And your smiles cover your heart


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## pk.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

- Emily Dickinson


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## slimvictor

Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks:


Death is not bitter to those who know.
If an earthquake opens the prison walls,
do you think an escaping prisoner 
will complain of the damage done
to the stone and marble-work?

No prisoner yet has talked such nonsense.
The soul soars when it’s freed from the body,
like a convict in his cell sleeping,
dreaming of a rose garden.

He knows he’s dreaming, and he doesn’t want 
to go back to his body, his dungeon.

He prays, “Let me keep walking here like a prince.”
God says, “Yes. Your prayer is granted.
Do not go back.” He dies in his sleep
and stays in that rose-paradise,
with no regrets for what he’s left
back in the prison cell.

Stand under the pointed arch and weep.
Burn all night like a candle being beheaded
in its own flame.  Close your lips
to food and drink.  Hurry
to this other table, trembling
like a willow.  Forget your weaknesses.
Your longing is everything.

People will say, “So-and-so is dead.”
But you’ll know how alive you’ve become.

The spirit is a watercolor world.
This other is a pile of scraps,
a dung-heap of disease.  On the material side,
if you eat too little, you get restless.
Too much, and you start farting.
Too little, you get mean and anemic.
Too much, you’re grumpy with indigestion.
Spiritual food makes you light and pure.
Be patient.  Persist in fasting.
Expect the food of God to arrive.

A full-fed man does not expect anything.
A foodless man is always looking.

Expect the best and most noble dishes,
and the Host will bring them out.

A mountain lifts its elegant head
like a guest that receives the dawn.

A certain simpleton was saying, “This place
would be fine, if it weren’t for the dying.”

Answer, “If there were no death, this world
would be just a tangle of straw, a grain-stack
left unthreshed in the field.

What you suppose to be life
is a kind of death, a seed
dropped on unfertile ground.
Nothing comes of it.”

Show us everything as it really is.
No one who has died is grieving 
because of death.  The only grief
is at not being well enough
prepared for dying.

No one objects to exchanging
sour buttermilk for choice wine.

The illuminated life can happen now,
in the moments left.  Die to your ego,
and become a True Human Being.


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## kytnism

^ beautiful 



> “Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.”  - douglas adams, _the long dark tea-time of the soul_



...kytnism...


----------



## slimvictor

Rumi:


Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.

You _are_ the truth
from foot to brow.  Now,
what else would you like to know?


----------



## panic in paradise

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.
*~
*
JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll


----------



## Thou

n Cities of the Red Night there is still subplot involving B-23, a mysterious disease caused by a radioactive virus, causing sexual delirium, spontaneous ejaculation of infectious radioactive semen, and death. Addiction to opiates provides some resistance to it.[1] 

    Written before news of the AIDS epidemic had become widely known, Burroughs writes with prophetic intuition of a sexually transmitted virus. In what is partly a detective story, partly sci-fi, characters debate "the wisdom of introducing Virus B-23 into contemporary America and Europe. Even though it might quiet the uh silent majority, who are admittedly becoming uh awkward, we must consider the biologic consequences." Of course, for Burroughs, this is also a human virus. "The whole quality of human consciousness, as expressed in male and female, is basically a virus mechanism." [2]  


_*STOP QUOTING THE BIBLE ITS NOT ORIGINAL AND GETTING ON MY NERVES...*_


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## pk.

Both from the poet Donald Hall, I like his stuff.


A Poet at Twenty

     Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes
brighten, his head cocks, he pauses under a green bough,
alert.
    And when I see him I want to hide him somewhere.
    The other wood is past the hill. But he will enter it, and find the particular
maple. He will walk through the door of the maple, and his arms will pull out 
of their sockets, and the blood will bubble from his mouth, his ears, his penis, 
and his nostrils. His body will rot. His body will dry in ropey tatters. Maybe 
he will grow his body again, three years later. Maybe he won't.
    There is nothing to do, to keep this from happening.
    It occurs to me that the greatest gentleness would put a bullet into his
 bright eye. And when I look in his eye, it is not his eye that I see. 






Affirmation

 To grow old is to lose everything. 
Aging, everybody knows it. 
Even when we are young, 
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer 
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters 
into debris on the shore, 
and a friend from school drops 
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us 
past middle age, our wife will die 
at her strongest and most beautiful. 
New women come and go. All go. 
The pretty lover who announces 
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 
Another friend of decades estranges himself 
in words that pollute thirty years. 
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge 
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.


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## Asclepius

pk. said:


> Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
> and affirm that it is fitting
> and delicious to lose everything.



Beautiful. 



*Courage is a motherless lamb* by _Ivan Donn Carswel_l

For a small child crossing the pen alone was a courageous feat, 
occasionally, with a maniacal bleat, the wether would burst from cover 
and butt whomever graced his yard. He meant it in fun, something 
he had done since his bottle-fed youth, he knew no other form of greeting. 
It was useless excusing his deeds as affection, the misguided beast 
was a terrorist to small persons, wary or not, and no neat reason 
would ease the fear we felt at his sudden charge. By and large 
he was fine if pampered and fed, letting us pass with a desultory 
glance, but it took just one bump to dispel that romance. Bunty, 
an obvious name for the monster we dreaded, would behave 
impeccably when adults inspected his manners, meanwhile we 
shunned his yard and traversed the fences the long way round 
to the hens. At times we forgot our chores, distractions abounded 
outside the fences, the chooks were not fed or eggs not collected.
Be bold, stand up to him I was told, tell him who’s boss. I was lost 
how to express the stupidity in that, he weighed three of me 
and moved with the speed of a runaway bus. The way to stop a bus 
best, prudence would suggest, was not by standing in its path. 
I didn’t expect sympathy or ask for alms, I just avoided Bunty 
and potentially broken limbs by staying clear. The morning I found him 
asleep beyond the gate suggested he was still playing games, bound 
in dreams of butting boys who crossed his domain, he might even 
have sniggered at the terror he caused, at how my heartbeat 
soared when he looked my way. I tried to be brave, I found the largest stick 
I could carry and gingerly crossed the yard backwards, not letting him 
out of my sight, fed the hens, collected the eggs, returning the same way. 
He was still on the ground, no sign of his breathing, or of my believing. 
When I was told he had died my first unkindly thoughts were of great relief, 
of chances missed and vengeance denied, then in shock I cried.
I fed him as a motherless lamb and would not 
let my doting dad return him to the flock.


----------



## pk.

Morphine

I see Eliot banking his way towards work
in the underground tube,
see his clothes, his hair, how it all suited him.
A "subtle conformist," Williams called him.
He sees currency moving in utter stillness--
I hear him saying It is not a problem to be solved
and living with it. In Boston
my best friend, my memory of him, measures
the Numorphan in the void
of his cleaned-again needle.
"It's synthetic morphine," he says. "Here they call it
new blues." He draws the blood
up into the new blue, boots it a few times,
lets himself have it, then sinks back, mated
for the night Mississippi still has
half moons
on the doors of its motels by the bay.

-Liam Rector


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## pk.

Six Significant Landscapes

I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.

II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.

III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.

IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.

V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.

VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros. 

~ Wallace Stevens


----------



## panic in paradise

i fear now, to post this love ive had, for its congratulatory shit


----------



## ForEverAfter

*Cosmo:* 

Everything takes work. We'll straighten it out. You know. You gotta work hard to be comfortable. Yeah, a lot of people kid themselves, you know. They-they know when they were born, they know where they're goin'... they know whether they're gonna go to heaven,whether they're gonna go to hell. They think they know that. They kid themselves. Right? But the only people... who are, you know, happy... are the people who are comfortable... what's your truth... is my falsehood. What's my falsehood is your truth and vice-versa... I'm only happy when I'm angry... when I'm sad, when i can play the fool... when i can be what people want me to be rather than be myself.


-John Cassavetes, _The Killing of a Chinese Bookie_ (1976)


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## ForEverAfter

"...first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Matthew, 7:5
New Testament
Holy Bible
NIV



> STOP QUOTING THE BIBLE ITS NOT ORIGINAL AND GETTING ON MY NERVES...



The Bible is one of the greatest compilations of spiritually-oriented philosophy that I have ever encountered. Being Christian isn't "cool". Trashing Christianity is the popular thing to do. I'm not Christian. I'm more Buddhist, like you Thou. Though, if you followed the teachings of Buddha you'd probably be a bit more chill. Don't tell people not to quote the Bible in huge capital letters. This is a quotation thread, therefore originality is impossible.

People have a lot of hate for the Bible and for Jesus, because of Christians. Kind of like blaming the problems of communist regimes on communism without taking into account the other factors at play. You're advocating conformity, essentially, by criticizing pk. And ignorance. Isaiah and Job are amazing, regardless of whether or not you happen to think they're mythological. I love the Bible. It is one of the best books I have ever read. And the only book I have ever read more than once. Sometimes I feel ashamed for saying that to people. Or talking about Jesus. But, hey, you talk about Buddha.

In other words, "first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

If you've never read the Bible cover to cover with an open heart and an open mind, you are missing out on an extraordinary spiritual anthology spanning thousands of years. Jesus is cool. I prefer the Old Testament, myself. But you've got to like the New Testament. It's a pretty fucking crazy story, and one of the most complex mythological narratives I've ever encountered. We kind of take it for granted, because it's such a huge part of our society, but it's a fucking good story.

In terms of literature, both the New and Old Testaments have a LOT of value.

It doesn't make any sense to say Poe is okay to quote repeatedly, but the Bible isn't. Poe is all atmosphere and style. His work has little substance. Job, on the other hand, although often misunderstood, is an analogical masterpiece... In my quite often less than humble opinion, that is.



> i fear now, to post this love ive had, for its congratulatory shit



Fear not.


----------



## ForEverAfter

The following is a chapter from the novel Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, best known as the author of Choke & Fight Club. The novel, Haunted, consists largely of a series of mini-narratives. It is half a collection of short stories and half a novel. Of the sixteen or so main characters, in the novel, or frame narrative if you like, few of them have names. They are referred to by nickname, like The Earl of Slander or The Duke of Vandals. Every character in the novel writes at least one chapter. This particular chapter was written by Lady Baglady. Palahniuk writes beautiful sentences. You can tell that he really cares about sentence construction. In my opinion, he is one of the great contemporary novelists. When I think of artists that I really love, that really click with me, I think Charlie Kaufman and Chuck Palahniuk. While Fight Club is a brilliant film, it is an absolute masterpiece of a novel. When I first read it, I thought it was a perfect novel. Since, I've read almost everything by Palahniuk. And, honestly, Fight Club pales in comparison. Especially to Haunted.

I've wrapped the story in NSFW tags, because of it's length. (roughly 4,400 words ~ maybe 12 pages, paperback).

Although it functions perfectly well as a stand-alone short story, it's not an indication of the quality of the novel. The chapters are often unrelated directly, but they are interlaced. Each story develops character and establishes context. Every word is important. Palahniuk writes prose-poetry. I've gasped many times at his arrangement of words. I mean literally gasped. I never knew that was possible before. I get chills sometimes when I read him. His writing style is condensed. Haunted does, in less than 300 words, what most novelists could not in 600. The character names, for example. Rather than calling them Bob, and wasting three letters; or calling them Betty, and wasting five: he uses the name to express something. There is no remainder. There is no waste. People criticize Palahniuk for being too fast. Personally, I think most novelists are too slow. I couldn't be fucked reading descriptions of landscapes and houses and long-winded atmospheric scenes.

I prefer the guts, which incidentally is the title of one of my favorite chapters in Haunted. This story/chapter is about average. Maybe slightly below average. But, it's good. They are all good.

Enjoy.


*NSFW*: 



*Slumming*
_A Story by Lady Baglady_

After you give up television and newspapers, the mornings are the worst part: that first cup of coffee. It's true, that first hour awake, you want to catch up with the rest of the world. But her new rule is: No radio. No television. No newspaper. Cold turkey. 

Show her a copy of Vogue magazine, and Mrs. Keyes still gets choked up. 

The newspaper comes, and she just recycles it. She doesn't even take off the rubber band. You never know when the headline will be: 

"Killer Continues to Stalk the Homeless" 

Or: "Bag Lady Found Butchered" 

Most mornings over breakfast, Mrs. Keyes reads catalogues. You order just one single miracle shoe-tree over the telephone, and every week, for the rest of your life, you'll get a stack of catalogues. Items for your home. Your garden. Time-saving. Space-saving gadgets. Tools and new inventions. 

Where the television used to be, there on the kitchen counter, she put an aquarium with the kind of lizard that changes color to match your decor. An aquarium, you flip the switch for the heat lamp and it's not going to tell you another transient wino was shot to death, his body dropped in the river, the fifteenth victim in a killing spree targeting the city's homeless, their bodies found stabbed and shot and set on fire with lighter fluid, the street people panicked and fighting their way into the shelters at night, despite the new tuberculosis. The outbound boxcars packed full. The social advocates claiming the city has put out a hit on panhandlers. 

You get all this just glancing at a newsstand. Or getting into a cab with the radio turned up loud. You get a glass tank, put it where the TV used to be, and all you get is a lizard-something so stupid that every time the maid moves a rock the lizard thinks it's been relocated miles away. 

It's called Cocooning, when your home becomes your whole world. 

Mr. and Mrs. Keyes-Packer and Evelyn-they didn't use to be this way. It used to be not a dolphin died in a tuna net without them rushing out to write a check. To throw a party. They hosted a banquet for people blown apart by land mines. They threw a dinner dance for massive head trauma. Fibromyalgia. Bulimia. A cocktail party and silent auction for irritable bowel syndrome. 

Every night had its theme: 

"Universal Peace for All Peoples." 

Or: "Hope for Our Unborn Future." 

Imagine going to your senior prom every night for the rest of your life. Every night, another stage set made of South American cut flowers and zillions of white twinkle lights. An ice sculpture and a champagne fountain and a band in white dinner jackets playing some Cole Porter tune. Every stage set built to parade Arab royalty and Internet boy wonders. Too many people made rich fast by venture capital. Those people who never linger on any landmass longer than it takes to service their jet. These people with no imagination, they just flop open Town & Country and say: 

I want that. 

At every benefit for child abuse, everyone walked around on two legs and ate cr�me br�l�e with a mouth, their lips plumped with the same derma fillers. Looking at the same Cartier watch, the same time surrounded with the same diamonds. The same Harry Winston necklace around a neck sculpted long and thin with hatha yoga. 

Everyone climbed in or out different colors of the same Lexus sedan. 

No one was impressed. Every night was a complete and utter social stalemate. 

Mrs. Keyes's best friend, Elizabeth Ethbridge Fulton Whelps, "Inky," used to say there's only one "best" of anything. One night, Inky said, "When everyone can afford the best, the truth is, it does look a little-common." 

All the Old Society had gone missing. The more newly minted media barons showed up at any event, the fewer old-money railroad or ocean-liner crowd would. 

Inky always said being absent is the new being present. 

It's after some cocktail reception for victims of gun violence that the Keyeses walk out to the street. Packer and Evelyn are coming down the art-museum steps, and there's the usual long line of nobodies waiting in fur coats for the parking valets. This is right on the sidewalk, near a bus-stop bench. Sitting on the bench are a wino and a bag lady everyone's trying not to see. 

Or smell. 

These two, they're not young, dressed in clothes you might find in the trash. Bits of thread showing at every seam, the fabric stiff and blotchy with stains. The bag lady has on tennis shoes flopping open with no laces. Her hair shows through, matted and crushed inside the webbing of a wig, the fake plastic hair as rough and gray as steel wool. 

The wino has a knitted brown stocking cap pulled down on his head. He's pawing the bag lady, shoving one hand down the front of her stretch-polyester pants and crawling his other hand up under her sweatshirt. The bag lady, she's twisting inside her clothes, moaning, her tongue rolling around her open lips. 

The bag lady, where her sweatshirt is pulled up, her stomach looks flat and tight, her skin massaged pink. 

The wino, his baggy sweatpants are tented in front with an erection. The peak of his tent shows a dark spot of wet leaked through. 

Packer and Evelyn, they must be the only ones watching these two grope each other. The parking valets run between here and the parking garage down the block. The mob of new money looks at the sweep-second hand go around and around on their diamond watches. 

The wino pulls the bag lady's face against the outline in his pants. The bag lady's lips, they crawl around on the dark stain growing there. 

The bag lady's lips, Evelyn tells Packer, she knows those lips. 

You hear a little sound, the kind of shrill ring that makes everyone waiting for a valet reach into a fur-coat pocket for their cell phone. 

Oh my God, Mrs. Keyes says. She tells Packer, That bag lady getting pawed by the wino, that could almost be Inky. Elizabeth Ethbridge Fulton Whelps. 

The shrill little ring sounds again, and the bag lady reaches down. She pulls up the bottom of one pant leg, unhemmed and unraveling beige polyester, to show her leg wrapped thick with a dirty elastic bandage. Her lips still on the wino's crotch, from between layers of bandages her fingers take a little black handful. 

The shrill ring comes again. 

The last Evelyn heard, Inky ran a magazine. Maybe Vogue magazine. She spent half of each year in France, deciding the hemline for next season. She sat ringside at the shows in Milan, and taped a fashion commentary that ran on some cable news network. She stood on red carpets and talked about who wore what to the Academy Awards. 

This bag lady on the bus-stop bench, she holds the black object to the side of her gray plastic wig. She fingers it and says, "Hello?" She takes her mouth off the wet bulge in the wino's pants, and she says, "Are you writing this down?" She says, "Lime is the new pink." 

The bag lady's voice, Mrs. Keyes tells her husband, she knows that voice. 

She says, "Inky?" 

The bag lady slips the little phone back between the bandages around her leg. 

"That stinky wino," Packer says, "that's the president of Global Airlines." 

It's then the bag lady looks up and says, "Muffy? Packer?" The wino's hand still feeling around deep in the front of her stretch pants, she pats the bench beside her and says, "What a nice surprise." 

The bum pulls back his fingers, shiny wet in the streetlight, and he says, "Packer! Come say hello." 

And of course Packer is always right. 

Poverty, Inky says, is the new wealth. Anonymity is the new fame. 

"Social divers," Inky says, "are the new social climbers." 

The Jet Set are the original homeless people, Inky says. We may have a dozen homes-each in a different city-but we still live out of a suitcase. 

This makes sense, if only because Packer and Evelyn are never on the cutting edge of anything. This whole social season, they've been going to horse shows, gallery openings, and auctions, telling each other all the Old Guard socialites were in detox or having cosmetic surgery. 

Inky says, "Whether you do it with a shopping cart or a Gulfstream G550, it's the same instinct. To always be on the move. To not be tied down." 

Anymore, she says, all you need is cash money, and you're sitting on the Opera Steering Committee. You make a hefty donation, and you get a place on the Museum Foundation Board. 

You write a check, and that makes you a celebrity. 

You get stabbed to death in a hit movie, and you're famous. 

In other words: tied down. 

Inky says, "Nobodies are the new celebrity." 

The Global Airlines wino, he has a bottle of wine, wrapped in a brown paper bag. The wine, he says, is mixed with equal parts of mouthwash, cough syrup, and Old Spice cologne, and after one drink the four of them go strolling through the dark, through the park, where you'd never go at night. 

What you have to love about drinking is, every swallow is an irrevocable decision. You charging ahead, in control of the game. It's the same with pills, sedatives and painkillers, every swallow is a definite first step down some road. 

Inky says, "Public is the new private." She says, if you check into even the most boutique hotel-one of those white-robe places with orchids trembling next to the bidet in a white marble bathroom-even then, chances are a tiny camera is wired to watch you. She says the only place left to have sex is out in the open. The sidewalk. The subway. People only want to watch if they think they can't. 

Besides, she says, the entire champagne-and-caviar lifestyle had lost its zap. Taking the Lear jet from here to Rome in six hours, it's made escaping too easy. The world feels so small and played out. Globe-trotting is just the chance to feel bored more places, faster. A boring breakfast in Bali. A predictable lunch in Paris. A tedious dinner in New York, and falling asleep, drunk, during just another blow job in L.A. 

Too many peak experiences, too close together. "Like the Getty Museum," Inky says. 

"Lather, rinse, and repeat," says the Global Airlines wino. 

In the boring new world of everyone in the upper-middle class, Inky says nothing helps you enjoy your bidet like peeing in the street for a few hours. Give up bathing until you stink, and just a hot shower feels as good as a trip to Sonoma for a detoxifying mud enema. 

"Think of it," Inky says, "as a kind of poverty sorbet." 

A nice little window of misery that helps you enjoy your real life. 

"Join us," Inky says. The sticky green stain of cough syrup smeared around her mouth, strands of her plastic wig hair sticking to it, she says, "This next Friday night." 

Looking bad, she says, is the new looking good. 

She says all the right people will be there. The Old Guard. The best parts of the Social Register. Ten in the evening, under the Westside ramps to the bridge. 

They can't, Evelyn says. Packer and her, Wednesday night they're committed to attend the Waltz to End Hunger in Latin America. Thursday is the Aboriginals in Need Banquet. Friday is a silent auction for runaway teen sex workers. These events, with all the polished acrylic awards they hand out, it makes you long for the day when the number-one fear of Americans was public speaking. 

"Just go to the midtown Sheraton," Inky says. "Check into a room." 

Evelyn must make a pug-dog face, because then Inky tells her, "Relax." 

She says, "Of course we don't stay there. Not at a Sheraton. It's only a place to change clothes." 

Anytime after ten on Friday night, she says, under the ramps of the bridge. 

Packer and Evelyn Keyes, their first problem is always what to wear. For a man, it looks easy. All he has to do is put on his dinner jacket and his trousers inside out. Put your shoes on the wrong feet. Voil�-you look crippled and crazy. 

"Insanity," Inky would say, "is the new sanity." 

Wednesday, after the hunger waltz, Packer and Evelyn come out of the hotel ballroom and you can hear someone on the street singing "Oh Amherst, Brave Amherst." In the street, Frances "Frizzi" Dunlop Colgate Nelson is drinking oversized cans of malt liquor with Schuster "Shoe" Frasier and Weaver "Bones" Pullman, the three of them sitting with their dirty pants rolled up and their bare feet in a fountain. Frizzi is wearing her bra on the outside. 

Dressing down, Inky says, is the new dressing up. 

At home, Evelyn tries on a dozen garbage bags, green and black plastic bags big enough for yard debris, but they all make her look fat. To look good, she settles on a narrow white bag made for upright kitchen trash. It looks elegant, even, snug as a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, belted with a melted old electrical cord, a dash of bright safety orange, with the loose wires and plug hanging loose down one side. 

This season, Inky says everyone is wearing their wigs backward. Mismatched shoes. Cut a hole in the center of a soiled blanket, she says, wear it as a poncho, and you're ready for a night of fun on the street. 

To be safe, the evening they check into the midtown Sheraton, Evelyn takes three suitcases full of army surplus. Yellowed, stretched-out bras. Sweaters thick with balls of lint. She takes a jar of clay facial mask to dirty them up. They sneak down the hotel fire stairs, fourteen flights to a door that opens on a back alley, and they're free. They're nobody. Anonymous. Without the responsibility to run anything. 

No one's looking at them, asking for money, trying to sell them something. 

Walking to the bridge, they're invisible. Safe in their poverty. 

Packer starts to limp a little, from his shoes being on the wrong feet. Evelyn lets her mouth hang open. Then she spits. Yes, the girl taught to never even scratch an itch in public, she spits in the street. Packer sways, bumping against her, and she clutches his arm. He swings her around, and they kiss, reduced to just two wet mouths while the city around them, it disappears. 

That first night on the street, Inky comes over with something reeking inside a black patent-leather purse webbed with cracks. It's the smell of low tide on a hot day at the shore. The smell, "It's the new anti-status symbol," she says. Inside the purse is a cardboard takeout box from Chez H�loise. Inside the box is a fist-sized lump of orange roughy. "Four days old," Inky says. "Swing it around. The smell beats a bodyguard for keeping people away." 

Stink for privacy, the new way to protect personal space. Intimidation by odor. 

You can get used to any smell, she says, no matter how bad. Inky says, "You got used to Calvin Klein's Eternity...?" 

The two of them, Inky and Evelyn, walk around the block, getting a little chill time away from the party. Up ahead, the entourage of some miniskirt statue is piling out of a limousine, thin people with headsets wired between their mouth and ear, each person holding a conversation with someone far away. As the two waddle past, Inky stumbles, brushing the purse full of rotten fish, pressing it against the sleeves of leather and fur coats. The bodyguards in dark suits. Personal assistants in tailored black. 

The entourage crowds together, pulling away, all of them moaning and pressing a manicured hand over their nose and mouth. 

Inky, she keeps on walking. She says, "I love doing that." 

In the face of this new money, Inky says it's time to change the rules. She says, "Poverty is the new nobility." 

Up ahead is a herd of Internet millionaires and Arab oil sheikhs, all of them smoking outside an art gallery, and Inky says, "Let's go pester them for pocket change..." 

This is their vacation from being Packer and Muffy Keyes, the textile CEO and the tobacco-products heiress. Their little weekend retreat into the social safety net. 

The Global Airlines wino happens to be Webster "Scout" Banners. Him, Inky, and Muffy, they meet up with Skinny and Frizzi. Then Packer and Boater come join them. Then Shoe and Bones. They're all drunk and playing charades, and at one point Packer shouts out, "Is there anyone under this bridge not worth at least forty million dollars?" 

And, of course, you only hear the traffic passing by above. 

Later, they're pushing shopping carts someplace industrial. Inky and Muffy pushing one cart, Packer and Scout walking a ways behind. And Inky says, "You know, I used to think the only thing worse than losing at love was winning..." She says, "I used to be so in love with Scout, ever since school, but you know how events...disappoint us." 

Inky and Muffy, their hands wearing those gloves without fingers so they can sort old cans better, Inky says, "I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong, again." 

Those social climbers who think they have it tough-their fear of using the wrong fork, or panicking when the fingerbowls are passed-the homeless have so much more to fret about. There's botulism. There's frostbite. A flash of capped tooth could expose you. A whiff of Chanel No. 5. 

Any of a million little details could give you away. 

They've become what Inky calls the "Commuting Homeless." 

She says, "Now? Now I love Scout. I love him as if I'd never married him." On the streets like this, it feels like they're pioneers starting a new life in some wilderness. But instead of bears or wolves to worry about, they have-Inky shrugs and says-drug dealers and drive-by shootings. 

"This is still the best part of my life," she says, "but I know it can't last forever..." 

Already her new social calendar was filling up. All this social diving. Doing anything on Tuesday is out of the question, because she plans to go rag-picking with Dinky and Cheetah. After that, Packer and Scout are meeting to sort aluminum cans. After that, everyone's stopping by the free clinic to have our feet looked at by some young, dark-eyed doctor with a vampire accent. 

Packer says the aluminum can is the Krugerrand of the street. Standing at the top of a ramp, where cars come off the freeway, Inky says, "Think high concept. Pretend you're doing a single-line movie pitch to network television." 

On a sheet of brown cardboard, using a black felt-tipped marker, Inky writes: Single Mom. Ten Kids. Breast Cancer. 

"You do this-right?-" she says, "and people just give you money..." 

Muffy writes: Crippled War Vet. Starving. Need to get home. 

And Inky says, "Perfect." She says, "You just pitched Cold Mountain." 

This is their little urban campout. 

This hiding out in the open. This hiding in plain sight. 

No one's easier to ignore than the homeless. You could be Jane Fonda or Robert Redford, but if you're pushing a shopping cart down the avenue at high noon, wearing three layers of soiled clothing and muttering cusswords under your breath-nobody's going to notice you. 

They could do this for the rest of their lives. Scout and Inky, they plan to get on a list for a low-income apartment. They want to sit in waiting rooms and get free dental care from attractive young medical students. They'll apply for free methadone, then work their way up to heroin. Adult vocational training. Fry hamburgers. Learn to drive and do laundry, then work their way up into the lower-middle class. 

At night, when Packer and Evelyn hold each other, under some bridge or on cardboard laid across a steaming, warm manhole cover, his hands inside her clothing, bringing her to climax as strangers walk past, the two have never been so in love. 

But Inky's right. It can't last forever. The end comes so fast, no one's sure what happened until it's in the newspaper the next day. 

They're asleep in the doorway of some warehouse, feeling more at home than they ever have in Banff or Hong Kong. By now their blankets smell like each other. Their clothes-their bodies-feel like a house. Just Packer's arms around his wife could be a duplex on Park Avenue. A villa in Crete. 

It's that night a black town car hits the curb, brakes squealing and one tire bumping up onto the sidewalk. The headlights, two circles of bright high-beams, shine right on Mr. and Mrs. Keyes, waking them up. The back door falls open and screams spill out from the back seat. Headfirst, her hands and arms flying, a girl falls out onto the sidewalk. Her long dark hair hiding her face, she's naked and scrambling on hands and knees away from the car. 

Packer and Evelyn, buried in their house of old rags and damp blankets, the naked girl is scrambling toward them. 

Behind her, a man's black shoe steps out of the car's open door. A dark pant leg follows. A man wearing black leather gloves climbs out of the car's back seat while the girl gets to her feet, screaming. Screaming, Please. Screaming for help. So close you can see one, two, three gold hoops pierced through one of her ears. Her other ear is gone. 

What looks like a long braid of dark hair is really blood running down the side of her neck. Where the ear was, you see just a jagged ridge of flesh. 

The girl gets to the Keyeses, just their eyes showing from under the blankets. 

As the man grabs her by the hair, the girl grabs at their rags. As the man lifts her, kicking and weeping, into the car, the girl tugs the blankets, showing them here, still half asleep, blinking in the car's bright headlights. 

The man has to see them. Anyone driving the car must see. 

The girl screams, "Please." She screams, "The license plate...," and she's pulled back inside. The car door slams shut and the tires squeal, leaving just the girl's blood and skidmarks of black rubber. In the gutter with the fast-food paper cups, dropped or knocked out in the struggle, a torn, pale ear sparkles with two gold hoop earrings still looped through it. 

It's over breakfast, a room-service omelet of greasy mushrooms, English muffins, lukewarm coffee, and cold bacon in their suite at the Sheraton, it's there they see the newspaper. In local news, a Brazilian oil heiress was kidnapped. The picture of her is the naked girl with long dark hair from the night before, but smiling and holding a trophy with a little gold tennis player on top. 

According to the newspaper, the police haven't a single witness. 

Of course, the Keyeses could send a note, but they really didn't see anyone's face. They didn't see the license plate. All they saw was the girl. The blood. Packer and Evelyn, they can't offer any real help. Going to the police, all they could do is humiliate themselves. Already, you could imagine the headlines: 

"Society Couple Goes Slumming for Kicks" 

Or: "Billionaires Playing Poor" 

God forbid if they told about Inky and Scout, Skinny and Shoe and Bones. 

Packer and Evelyn putting themselves up for public ridicule was not going to save this poor girl. Their suffering wouldn't lessen a moment of hers. 

In the newspaper the next week, the kidnapped heiress was found dead. 

Still, Inky wasn't worried. Poor, dirty people have nothing to worry about on the street. The girl who got killed was young. She looked clean and pretty and rich. "Having nothing to lose," Inky said, "is the new wealth." 

And Packer said, "Lather, rinse, and repeat." 

No, Inky wasn't about to give up her happiness and go back to being rich and famous. And more and more, those nights, Packer went with her. To protect her, he said. 

One of those nights, Evelyn's at the Charity Dinner Dance Against Colon Cancer when her cell phone rings. It's Inky, and in the background a man is shouting. Packer's voice. In the phone, Inky is breathing hard, saying, "Muffy, please. Muffy, please, we're lost and someone is chasing us." She says, "We've tried the police, but..." And the call cuts off. 

As if she's run into a tunnel. Under an overpass. 

The headline in the next day's newspaper says: 

"Publisher and Textile CEO Found Stabbed to Death" 

Now, almost every morning, there's a new headline to avoid: 

"Bag Lady Found Butchered" 

Or: "Killer Continues to Stalk the Homeless" 

Somewhere, every night, that black town car is looking for Mrs. Keyes, the only witness to a crime. Someone is killing anyone on the street who might be her. Anyone dressed in rags and asleep under a pile of blankets. 

It's after that Evelyn goes cold turkey. She cancels the newspaper. To replace the television, she buys the glass tank with a lizard that changes color to match any paint scheme. 

Nowadays, Mrs. Keyes, she's the opposite of homeless. She has too much home. She's burdened with home. Buried in home. She reads her catalogues. Looking at the glossy pictures of garden ornaments. Diamond jewelry made from the cremains of your dead loved ones. 

Of course, she still misses her friends. Her husband. But it's like Inky would say: Being absent is the new being present. 

And she still buys tickets for the charity events. The silent auctions and dance recitals. It's important to know she's doing something to make the world a little bit better. Next, she'd like to go swimming with endangered gray whales. 

Sleep in the canopy of some dwindling rain forest. 

Photograph some vanishing zebras. Eco-slumming. 

It's important to be aware. She still wants to make a difference.

-Chuck Palahniuk, _Haunted_ (2005)


----------



## ForEverAfter

"Cannibalism? Racism? ... those decisions are better left to the suits in Washington. We're just here to eat some dude."

-Charlie, _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_


----------



## pk.

ForEverAfter said:


> "Cannibalism? Racism? ... those decisions are better left to the suits in Washington. We're just here to eat some dude."
> 
> -Charlie, _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_



Yes!


----------



## pk.

Dean Learner: "It's like that philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest, and I'm not there, and it makes a sound, but I don't hear it, but someone records it and plays it back to me at a dinner party, does that mean I'm still in the forest? And if I am, then why can't I just take a piss in the garden rather than queuing for the toilet? And that's if the toilet even exists, I've been trying to use it all fucking night. I'm starting to doubt the existence of the toilet quite frankly at this stage of the proceedings. Get a portaloo is what I'm saying. If you're going to have a party of that size, get a portaloo. 'Cause I don't want to spend my entire fucking evening in the corridor. And if philosophy can solve those questions, then it's worth it. But thus far it can't. So I'm fucking busting, and what's Plato doing about it? Nothing."

- _Garth Marenghi's Darkplace_


----------



## pk.

"Messy, isn't it?" - Richard Brautigan


----------



## YellowPolkaDotHalo

Jennyfur_Karma_Kin said:


> _
> 
> Apologies if this has been done before... I couldn't see anything but to be honest I've not got my glasses with me and can't see anything very well
> 
> My quote is from "The Velveteen Rabbit" and I've bolded my favouritest bit.  It always makes me feel better._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ""What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
> 
> "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
> 
> "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
> 
> "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
> 
> "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
> 
> *"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."*
> 
> "I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
> 
> "The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. *"That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."*




Oh thats lovely 

I heard this zen koany kind of story the other day and love it too.

*Is That So?

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

*


----------



## laugh

I am without form,
without limit
beyond space beyond time
I am everything
everything is me
I am the bliss of the universe,
eveyrthing
am I


----------



## pk.

When all is said and done there is only the people,
beyond class, beyond categories, scrabbling at the walls
of themselves, rapping on the glass booths of their isolation,
grimacing their soundless love, miming their
speechless anguish, always and everywhere, _the people_ . . .

- Horst Gochnauer


----------



## pk.

Jules Verne Zucchini 

Men are walking on the moon today,
 planting their footsteps as if they were
       zucchini on a dead world
 while over 3,000,000 people starve to death
       every year on a living one.

                              Earth
                               July 20, 1969

- Richard Brautigan


----------



## Thou

“All those people who try to realize Zen by doing nothing about it are still trying desperately to find it, and they’re on the wrong track. There is another Zen poem which says, ‘You cannot attain it by thinking, you cannot grasp it by not thinking.’ Or you could say, you cannot catch hold of the meaning of Zen by doing something about it, but equally, you cannot see into its meaning by doing …nothing about it, because both are, in their different ways, attempts to move from where you are now, here, to somewhere else, and the point is that we come to an understanding of this, what I call suchness, only through being completely here. And no means are necessary to be completely here. Neither active means on the one hand, nor passive means on the other. Because in both ways, you are trying to move away from the immediate now. But you see, it’s difficult to understand language like that. And to understand what all that is about, there is really one absolutely necessary prerequisite, and this is to stop thinking.” ~Alan Watts


----------



## pk.

The Necessity of Appearing in your Own Face

 There are days when that is the last place
 in the world where you want to be but you
 have to be there, like a movie, because it

 features you. 

-Richard Brautigan


----------



## Nine North

"Food, then morals"

"People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart."

Brecht, Threepenny Opera and In the Jungle of Cities


----------



## JonathanUK

"Replace 'me' with You. Rid me of ego and merge my mind in You. If there is identity, replace this identity with truth. Let there be only Oneness. Dispel this arrogance, this ego and let me melt in You, beloved lord of my Heart." 

~ Mooji


----------



## Nine North

*Bagpipe Music*

It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'.

It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

- Louis MacNeice


----------



## BillyPilgrim

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”  -Jack Kerouac, _On the Road_


----------



## Thorns Have Roses

"Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them." - Yukio Mishima, _Spring Snow_


----------



## pk.

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

 Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince. 

- Wallace Stevens


----------



## pk.

Tetelestai


I

 How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,
 The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?
 Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly
 For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,
 Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely?
 I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,
 Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs
 Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets;
 Say rather I am no one, or an atom;
 Say rather, two great gods in a vault of starlight
 Play ponderingly at chess; and at the game's end
 One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor
 And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece
 Forgotten there, left motionless, is I....
 Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,
 Am only one of millions, mostly silent;
 One who came with lips and hands and a heart,
 Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.
 Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,
 Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,
 Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders
 Dispatched me at their leisure.... Well, what then?
 Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,
 The horns of glory blowing above my burial?


 II

 Morning and evening opened and closed above me:
 Houses were built above me; trees let fall
 Yellowing leaves upon me, hands of ghosts,
 Rain has showered its arrows of silver upon me
 Seeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me;
 Music in long blue waves of sound has borne me
 A helpless weed to shores of unthought silence;
 Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongs
 Of terrible warning, sifting the dust of death;
 And here I lie. Blow now your horns of glory
 Harshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters!
 You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel,
 Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust,
 Hear, far off, your whispered salutation!
 Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds,
 Whirl out your earth-scents over this body, tell me
 Of ferns and stagnant pools, wild roses, hillsides!
 Anoint me, rain, let crash your silver arrows
 On this hard flesh! I am the one who named you,
 I lived in you, and now I die in you.
 I, your son, your daughter, treader of music,
 Lie broken, conquered.... Let me not fall in silence.


 III

 I, the restless one; the circler of circles;
 Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not capture
 The secret of self; I who was tyrant to weaklings,
 Striker of children; destroyer of women; corrupter
 Of innocent dreamers, and laugher at beauty; I,
 Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music,
 Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholder
 Of the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggle
 Of hatred with love, terror with hunger; I
 Who laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grew
 Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body;
 Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman,
 Enduring such torments to find her! I who at last
 Grow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose,
 Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backward
 At earlier conquests; or, caught in the web, cry out
 In a sudden and empty despair, "Tetelestai!"
 Pity me, now! I, who was arrogant, beg you!
 Tell me, as I lie down, that I was courageous.
 Blow horns of victory now, as I reel and am vanquished.
 Shatter the sky with trumpets above my grave.


 IV

 ... Look! this flesh how it crumbles to dust and is blown!
 These bones, how they grind in the granite of frost and are nothing!
 This skull, how it yawns for a flicker of time in the darkness
 Yet laughs not and sees not! It is crushed by a hammer of sunlight,
And the hands are destroyed.... Press down through the leaves of the jasmine,
 Dig through the interlaced roots--nevermore will you find me;
 I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me....
 Take the soft dust in your hand--does it stir: does it sing?
 Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun?
 Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or tremble
 In terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?...
 Listen!... It says: "I lean by the river. The willows
 Are yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the south
 And darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart,
 Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the water
 And pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten,
 The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heart
 Is a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent."
 Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired,
 The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the window
 Walls upon walls of windows with faces behind them,
 Smoke floating up to the sky, an ascension of seagulls.
 I am tired. I have struggled in vain, my decision was fruitless,
 Why then do I wait? with darkness, so easy, at hand!...
 But to-morrow, perhaps.... I will wait and endure till to-morrow!..."
 Or again: "It is dark. The decision is made. I am vanquished
 By terror of life. The walls mount slowly about me
 In coldness. I had not the courage. I was forsaken.
 I cried out, was answered by silence.... Tetelestai!..."


 V

 Hear how it babbles!--Blow the dust out of your hand,
 With its voices and visions, tread on it, forget it, turn homeward
 With dreams in your brain.... This, then, is the humble, the nameless,--
 The lover, the husband and father, the struggler with shadows,
 The one who went down under shoutings of chaos! The weakling
 Who cried his "forsaken!" like Christ on the darkening hilltop!...
 This, then, is the one who implores, as he dwindles to silence,
 A fanfare of glory.... And which of us dares to deny him!

-Conrad Aiken


----------



## panic in paradise

Wang Chia

After The Shower
Before it rained the first stamens were seen in the flowers; 
After the rain there is not a blossom at the leaves' base.
The butterflys stream over the wall, 
In hope that Springs' colours may be found next door.

Ancient Theme
You are on duty at Hsiao Pass, I am here in Wu;
 The wind blows on me, and I am anxious for you. 
For one line of this letter there are a thousand lines of tears. 
When winter reaches  you, will your warm clothes have reached you?


----------



## pk.

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.” 

“oh god, there is no faith or permanance or solace in love unless - unless- the mind adores, the body adores - and yet the fear is always there in the mind: tomorrow it will all be different - tomorrow I will hate the way he chuckles at a joke, or combs his hair with a dirty pocket comb. tomorrow he will see that my nose is fat and my skin is sallow, and we will both be two ugly, vain, selfish, hedonistic dissatisfied people, and the wine, and coloured lights, and heated intelligent conversations will all be a fairy-tale inspired pipe dream, and the bitten apple of love will translate itself into discarded feces. tomorrow we'll start running again after the leering clockwork chemeleon that looks like the prince or princess in the fairy-tales, but turns into a warted toad or a pincered cockroach when touched by mortal hands. where, where, to find that quality I long for that will grow goodly and green for fifty years - is it mind? then Ray has mind, with a weaker body; thin, with no height, and you think of flat shoes, all your life long feeling big and swollen, lying like mother earth on your back and being raped by a humming entranced insect and begetting thousands of little white eggs in a gravel pit.” 

― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath


----------



## pk.

“My God, ma'am, you're so pretty I'd walk ten miles barefooted on a freezing morning to stand in your shit.” 

-----------------------------------------------------

“I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house: 

18 rooms
$37,000
I’m yours
ghosts and all.” 

― Richard Brautigan


----------



## pk.

"Tell me how I can get high as the sky and still keep my ear to the streets,
 At the same time, no diamonds in my watch
 Can I still shine? Will anybody watch?"
 --- Ab-Soul


----------



## Abject

The end.


----------



## panic in paradise

Li P'an-Lung
To < _Enduring Love_ >

Autumn's wind is pure,
Autumn's moon is bright,
Leaf on leaf the Wu-t'ung tree rustles outside the
    balcony;
Hard is it to build the dream of home.

On the steps the crickets chirp,
On the trees the birds flutter,
The frontier wild-geese, line upon line, breast the
    horizon,
Set upon wounding the exile's heart.


----------



## panic in paradise

Tu Fu
*Moonlit Night*

Tonight at Fu-chou, this moon she watches
Alone in our room. And my little, far-off
Children, too young to understand what keeps me
Away, or even remember Chang'an. By now,

Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white
Arms chilled in its clear light. When
Will it find us together again, drapes drawn
Open, light traced where it dries our tears?


----------



## panic in paradise

The Snake

10. "There are here, O monks, some foolish men who study the Teaching; having studied it, they do not wisely examine the purpose of those teachings. To those who do not wisely examine the purpose, these teachings will not yield insight. They study the Teaching only to use it for criticizing or for refuting others in disputation. They do not experience the (true) purpose for which they (ought to) study the Teaching. To them these teachings wrongly grasped, will bring harm and suffering for a long time. And why? Because of their wrong grasp of the teachings.

"Suppose, monks, a man wants a snake, looks for a snake, goes in search of a snake. He then sees a large snake, and when he is grasping its body or its tail, the snake turns back on him and bites his hand or arm or some other limb of his. And because of that he suffers death or deadly pain. And why? Because of his wrong grasp of the snake.

"Similarly, O monks, there are here some foolish men who study the Teaching; having studied it, they do not wisely examine the purpose of those teachings. To those who do not wisely examine the purpose, these teachings will not yield insight. They study the Teaching only to use it for criticizing or for refuting others in disputation. They do not experience the (true) purpose for which they (ought to) study the Teaching. To them these teachings wrongly grasped, will bring harm and suffering for a long time. And why? Because of their wrong grasp of the teachings.

11. "But there are here, O monks, some noble sons who study the Teaching; and having studied it, they examine wisely the purpose of those teachings. To those who wisely examine the purpose, these teachings will yield insight. They do not study the Teaching for the sake of criticizing nor for refuting others in disputation. They experience the purpose for which they study the Teaching; and to them these teachings being rightly grasped, will bring welfare and happiness for a long time. And why? Because of their right grasp of the teachings.

"Suppose, monks, a man wants a snake, looks for a snake, goes in search of a snake. He then sees a large snake, and with a forked stick he holds it firmly down. Having done so he catches it firmly by the neck. Then although the snake might entwine with (the coils of) its body that man's hand or arm or some other limb of his, still he does not on that account suffer death or deadly pain. And why not? Because of his right grasp of the snake.

"Similarly, O monks, there are here some noble sons who study the Teaching; and having learned it, they examine wisely the purpose of those teachings. To those who wisely examine the purpose, these teachings will yield insight. They do not study the Teaching for the sake of criticizing nor for refuting others in disputation. They experience the purpose for which they study the Teaching; and to them these teachings being rightly grasped, will bring welfare and happiness for a long time. And why? Because of their right grasp of the teachings.

12. "Therefore, O monks, if you know the purpose of what I have said, you should keep it in mind accordingly. But if you do not know the purpose of what I have said, you should question me about it, or else (ask) those monks who are wise.

- Buddha


----------



## panic in paradise

IMAYO

The Buddha himself
Was once a man like us;
We too at the end
Shall become Buddha.
All creatures may share
The nature of Buddha,
How grievous indeed
That this is not known!

Rather then the vows
Of the myriads of Buddhas,
The testament of
The thousand-handed Kannon 
Has greater faith,
Powerful in making
The flowers blossom,
The fruits to ripen,
In a twinkling on limbs 
Of trees that are forgotten.


----------



## pk.

^Reminded me of this video my psychiatrist recommended to me:

TED Talks: Bob Thurman - We Can Be Buddahs


----------



## panic in paradise

^Fascinating, that is a brave move for a psych, or at least the first time I have heard of spirituality being incorporated into psychology. Of course Buddhism can be practiced as an atheist, but We Can Be Buddhas does not sound much like an atheistic philosophy of life. 


ENOMOTO KIKAKU

Harvest moon:
On the bamboo mat
Pine-tree shadows.

Baby sparrows:
On the paper window,
Shadows on dwarf bamboo.

On New Year's dawn,
Sedately, the cranes
Pace up and down.

Wooden gate,
Lock firmly bolted:
Winter moon.

_________
EUNAIKYO

By the light or the dark
Of the green in the fields
Where young shoots sprout,
It can clearly be seen
Where the snow thawed first.

Bringing flowers with it,
Hira's mountain squall
Swept over the lake.
A boat, rowed through,
Left flowers in its wake.


----------



## pk.

Legend

As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . .

I am not ready for repentance;
Nor to match regrets. For the moth
Bends no more than the still
Imploring flame. And tremorous
In the white falling flakes
Kisses are,--
The only worth all granting.

It is to be learned--
This cleaving and this burning,
But only by the one who 
Spends out himself again.

Twice and twice
(Again the smoking souvenir,
Bleeding eidolon!) and yet again.
Until the bright logic is won
Unwhispering as a mirror
Is believed.

Then, drop by caustic drop, a perfect cry
Shall string some constant harmony,--
Relentless caper for all those who step
The legend of their youth into the noon. 


-Hart Crane


----------



## panic in paradise

ARIWARA NARIHIRA
Eight extracts from Ise Monogatari

Can it be that the moon has changed?
Can it be that the srping 
Is not the spring of old times?
Is it my body alone
That is just the same?

Seeing such blooming beauty
Fresh as the murasaki of Kasuga Moor,
Like this passion-plant pattern,
The passion in my heart
Knows not any limit.

Like a passion-plant pattern
Is my heart tangled,
Who was it brought this tangle?
For it was not my doing.

Was you who came to me
Or I who came to you --
I know not.
Was it dream or reality
Sleeping or awake?

In the blackness
of a numbed heart,
I lost my way.
Dream or reality --
Let other men decide.

Shallow our union,
Shallow as the inlet
One walks unwetted.

Over the barrier of Meeting Hill
Again I shall climb to you.

More and more
Do I yearn for 
The capital I have left.
O how I envy
Waves that can return.

It was not that I could not see her,
Yet I did not see her clearly.

Longing for her,
Fruitlessly I shall spend
This long day lost in thought.

To know or not to know
Why should we make 
This vain distinction?
This deep longing 
Alone in love's beacon.

The dream of the night
We slept together
Is fleeting
Now that I drowse
It is even more fleeting.

Tossing in my bed 
The whole night through,
Neither waking nor sleeping
Is a thing of spring,
This long rain haze  
At which I gaze so long.

I In the capital is the one I love, like
R Robes of stuff so precious, yet now threadbare.
I I have come far on this journey,
S Sad and tearful are my thoughts.

If you are true to your name,
Then let me question you,
Bird of the Capital,
Of the one I love --
Is she alive or gone?


----------



## Pill2Chill

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died,
rather we should thank god that such men lived.

George Patton


----------



## carniegirl818

There's a book of poems by Sondra Anice Barnes called, "Life Is The Way It Is". The whole thing is like my manual for life. Here are some examples:

'The only place I can be is where I am. 
The only way I can get
to where I want to be
is to be where I am.'

and

'You lied to me.
I didn't make it safe
for you to tell me the truth.'

'Every time I make a SHOULD
out of an IS
I prevent myself 
from being.'


----------



## pk.




----------



## Euphio

“It was The Gospel From Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space...[who] made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...: "Oh, boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!" And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes.” 

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut


----------



## aussie101

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.

- Michel de Montaigne


----------



## JahSEEuS

“Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.” 
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored.  there are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame!  You'll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't.
Because, sometimes, they won't.

I'm afraid that some times
you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win
'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike
and I know you'll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You'll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
you're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!
-Dr. Seuss

IF you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
-Rudyard Kipling


----------



## tokenname

"What is the thing your eyes hold loveliest
 In these, our fields and shores? I'll bring it home."
 With tenderness, awaiting her request,
 He stood. The dooryard dogwood was a foam
 Of wind-tipped flowers, catching at her breath,
 But these she did not mention, trying hard
 To meet his eagerness. "Come flood, or death
 By thunderbolt," he laughed, "I'll heap the yard
 With everything you ask for. Name it now."
 She made no answer, yet a little smile
 Marked for him her compliance. Then, the bough
 Tilted its stiffened beauty like a pile
 Of snowy cloud above them. "Ah, I know,"
 He cried, "Your heart is set on something far
 Beyond our present means. Is that not so?"

 "*I want you and the dogwood as you are*,
 April forever. Can you heap that here?"
 And while she watched, the boy went out of him.
 "I think I understand your wifely fear," 
 And reaching up, he shook a weighted limb.
 So, like the blossoms, quiet settled there.
 "I will not run away to bring you gifts."
 He spoke less lightly. "Boys can never bear
 The undramatic thing. Their rich blood lifts
 Their spirits higher than their hands, but men
 May learn where such as you will teach,
 How life is spent at try and try again
 To keep white-blowing loveliness in reach." 

THE NEWLYWEDS
-Cloyd Mann Criswell


----------



## Norrin Radd

“This is no flattery. These are counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it."

- from "As You Like It Act 2 Scene 1" by William Shakespeare.


----------



## Bardeaux

"Philip started telling me about Gerald Heard's 'The Third Morality', about biological mutation, and finally about how the forward-looking dinosaurs mutated into mammals while the bourgeois dinosaurs became extinct. 

He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a fish in a pond. It's drying up. You have to mutate into an amphibian, but someone keeps hanging on to you and telling you to stay in the pond, everything's going to be all right." 

- Kerouac, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks


----------



## CaseFace

panic in paradise said:


> IMAYO
> 
> The Buddha himself
> Was once a man like us;
> We too at the end
> Shall become Buddha.
> All creatures may share
> The nature of Buddha,
> How grievous indeed
> That this is not known!
> 
> Rather then the vows
> Of the myriads of Buddhas,
> The testament of
> The thousand-handed Kannon
> Has greater faith,
> Powerful in making
> The flowers blossom,
> The fruits to ripen,
> In a twinkling on limbs
> Of trees that are forgotten.



I love this one.


----------



## Sweet Jones

Dante's Inferno, really I could quote this whole work, but there is one set of lines in particular that stood out for me, the way I think the ..aesthetic.. (is that the word, I don't think I know the right word) presentation of these words adds to the impression that the words themselves actually mean, so that reading it _feels_ like exactly what is described, beyond the mere words used to describe it. If anyone is still following. Here it is, Canto 3, lines 22-30, from the Esolen translation:

There sighs and moans and utter wailing swept
resounding through the dark and starless air.
I heard them for the first time, and I wept.
Shuddering din of strange and various tongues,
sorrowful words and accents pitched with rage,
shrill and harsh voices, blows of hands with these
raised up a tumult ever swirling round
in that dark air untinted by a dawn,
as sand-grains whipping when the whirlwind blows.


Edit, more:

Again from Dante:

When aught is heard or seen which holds the soul strongly bent to it, the time passes away and we perceive it not; for one faculty is that which notes it, and another which possesses the undivided soul; the former is as 'twere bound, the latter free.

Now from Max Stirner in 'The Ego and His Own':

...the world is "empty," is "naught," is only glamorous "semblance"; its truth is the spirit alone; it is the seeming-body of a spirit. Look out near or far, a ghostly world surrounds you everywhere; you are always having "apparitions" or visions. Everything that appears to you is only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly "apparition"; the world is to you only a "world of appearances," behind which the spirit walks. You "see spirits."

And from Donoso Cortes in 'Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism':

man always lives subject to faith; and when he thinks he abandons faith for his own reason, he only abandons faith in the divinely mysterious, for faith in the mysteriously absurd


----------



## tokenname

choice/angela morgan

i'd rather have the thought of you
to hold against my heart,
my spirit to be taught of you
with west winds blowing, 
than all the warm caresses
of another love's bestowing,
or all the glories of the world
in which you had no part.

I'd rather have the theme of you
to thread my nights and days,
i'd rather have the dream of you
with faint stars glowing,
i'd rather have the want of you,
the rich, elusive taunt of you
forever and forever and forever unconfessed
than claim the alien comfort 
of any other's breast.

o lover..o my lover,
that this should come to me.
i'd rather have the hope of you,
ah, love, i'd rather grope for you
within the great abyss,
than claim another's kiss - 
alone - i'd rather go my way
throughout eternity.


----------



## Jabberwocky

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means you've decided to look beyond the imperfections


----------



## Foreigner

SWEET DARKNESS
by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing: The world was made to be free in.
Give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.


----------



## xxxyyy

'god made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through' - paul valery


----------



## ForEverAfter

On pig dog breath, the stink of Ritalin. The pollution stench of model airplane adhesive and frequent masturbations. Underneath . . . reek of secret blood, latex rubber, and fear sweat. Pig dog face not look up, but blotted one cheek with vast purple bruised. Estimate old 14.5 years.


Twitching chicken mother, wagging one finger made straight, host mother say, “Now, don’t let’s be racist . . .”


*Pygmy*
_Chuck Palahniuk_

(http://chuckpalahniuk.net/files/features/pygmy-book-excerpt.pdf)


----------



## tokenname

_'you could draw me to fire, 
you could draw me to water, 
you could draw me to the gallows, 
you could draw me to any death, 
you could draw me to anything i have most avoided, 
you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. 
this and the confusion of my thoughts, 
so that i am fit for nothing, 
is what i mean by your being the ruin of me.'_

our mutual friend/dickens


----------



## JoeTheStoner

“Culture is like a smog. To live
within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be
contaminated.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

get out of here. and move forward. this never happened. it will shock you how much it never happened.


----------



## Br1ngTh3Ra1n

"She'd broken Jack's heart. Seemed she'd returned to collect the pieces" from dragonfly


----------



## Libertin

> Here was a panacea, a φαρμακον for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach.


-Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater



> Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature; driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.


-James Joyce, from Araby from the collection of short stories 'Dubliners'  



> I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.


-Albert Camus, The Stranger


----------



## Waffle Sock

"Fuck the Police"
- NWA


----------



## HdoubleODeezy

"..but the white flesh creature's trail is easily followed. There before that shimmering vale of light, the ivory skinned slug thing.."
- Groundhog Day, MMLP2


----------



## Spindash

I know I'm lost with no motivation to find my way back I left myself down a paper trail of the pages of my mind, now I want them back, I'm somewhere between no courage among the other things I lack Lost in desperation where an ember turns to an ash Somewhere along this path I crossed the line Broken promises I've made without thinking twice Left my second thought and reason behind All in the name of making this world mine All in the name of building my own Why do I think that I have to live this life alone, I know I'm lost

I know, I know I'm lost, I know, I know I'm lost But what scares me the most is I'm starting to feel at home I know, I know I can't stay here forever, when we lose ourselves we find each other

I find this strange comfort in being lost in life Wherever I end up will I belong there this time? So when you feel your heart sink into your chest Don't forget everything is okay in the end We are not okay but this is not the end yet

From "Strange Comfort" by The Color Morale ♥


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

likes to watch me glass room, bathroom
chateau marmont
slipping on my red dress, putting on my makeup
glass room, perfume, cognac, lilac
fumes


----------



## Minxy

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll - The Jabberwocky.


----------



## Spindash

I have so many anchors
So many, so many
So many anchors
Far too many to be sailing on these seas
They're pulling me under
And I just want to be freed
But I'm just drowning and clasping

To the tinder and twine
Not the firm planks and rope
That I know to be mine
That I know to be mine
I have so many anchors
Bound to my feet
It feels like I'll forever be bound
To the bottom of these seas

Will you hear nothing I say
As the tide just sweeps and sways
As the anchors that bind me
Just rust and decay
As I tear my flesh from bone
As I scream out to the sky
When will I find my way home?

There are sirens watching me
And they whisper and smile to me
And I'm screaming out to them
Please take these anchors from my feet

I see the moon up above
I've failed my hope
I've thrown out my love
I still want to live
I still want to hope
I still want to give
I still want to grow
I was dead and gone
I was cold and alone
I was weighed down and buried
When will I find my way home?

Will you hear nothing I say
As the tide just sweeps and sways
As the anchors that bind me
Just rust and decay
As I tear my flesh from bone
As I scream out to the sky
When will I find my way home?


----------



## Corazon

"The desire for fame springs from man's best part. It was and is the sister of the giants; it always goes to extremes — horrible monsters or brilliant prodigies."

-Baltasar Gracián


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

Oh, to be a hot dog inspector. Can you imagine? Every time you shut your eyes at night, thousands of slippery pink meat tubes fluttering in your mind. Some with bits of casing, some not. You try grabbing the defects, but they just slip through your fingers.


----------



## JoeTheStoner

^ i like that. surreal-like, bizarre... humorous.  relevant.

“Ask yourself this question. Do we have to be humans forever? Consciousness is exhausted. Back now to inorganic matter. This is what we want. We want to be stones in a field.”

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/421053-ask-yourself-this-question-do-we-have-to-be-humans


----------



## herbavore

^I like that a lot, Joe. I have often thought, when people are saying that they are going to be reunited with their loved ones in "heaven"  that this thought holds little comfort for me. Aside from seeming like total fantasy, there is also that part of me that says, No, I'm ready for something different. Exhausted consciousness, indeed.

Are you reading the book? Recommended?


----------



## Raz

Basically anything that comes out of Rust's mouth in True Detective but here's my favourite:

_I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. _


----------



## Erikmen

_And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. 
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too. 
__So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.
_
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


----------



## gardenlane

If you are not rain, my love
Be tree
Sated with fertility, be tree
If you are not tree, my love
Be stone
Saturated with humidity, be stone
If you are not stone, my love
Be moon
In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon
[So spoke a woman
to her son at his funeral]


----------



## malakaix

Raz said:


> Basically anything that comes out of Rust's mouth in True Detective but here's my favourite



Agreed. I've re-watched it over three times now, it has some of the best writing I've ever seen for a television series.


----------



## Erikmen

*“If heaven really exists: then heaven is the job, hell is unemployment, while life is merely an interview.”*


----------



## gardenlane

I loved, and, blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell.
For God is just, and death for sin is well.

"I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be;
But for my love on earth who mourns for me


----------



## brickslight

[FONT=Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]" 8. And how war yore maggies?
 Answer: They war loving, they  love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell  smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they  feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking, as born for  lorn in lore of love to live and wive by wile and rile by rule of ruse  'reathed rose and hose hol'd home, yeth cometh elope year, coach and  four, Sweet Peck-at-my-Heart picks one man more"




[/FONT]


----------



## Erikmen

*
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius

*


----------



## gardenlane

Be Nobody's Darlingby Alice Walker

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.


----------



## gardenlane

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; -
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.


----------



## gardenlane

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.


----------



## neversickanymore

--“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.” 


--“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.” 


--“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.” 


--“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling ,and sewn with rebus threads.Most of the time , the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on .” 


--“There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.” 


--“Fanatics have the look of people who do not masturbate but who think about it almost all time.” 


--“There's a truth deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.” 

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram


----------



## Voyager3

The Battle of Life is Never Won
All Too Soon the Day is Done
So What will You Leave on the Field
When it Comes: You Time to Yield?


----------



## malakaix

I recently finished watching the Cosmos series and towards the end of the last episode they played an audio clip of Carl Sagan describing earth as The Pale Blue dot. I remember listening to this long ago but hearing it again made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.. it was just so exceptionally well written and meticulously structured with a very humbling undertone permeating throughout it.

-------------------------------

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” 

*- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.*

--------------------------------


----------



## Engage

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We are born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions." 

~ Marcus Aurelius, 'Meditations'


----------



## gardenlane

Be not sad because all men
Prefer a lying clamour before you:
Sweetheart, be at peace again -- -
Can they dishonour you?

They are sadder than all tears;
Their lives ascend as a continual sigh.
Proudly answer to their tears:
As they deny, deny.


----------



## Ainslinn

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

My very favorite poem ever


----------



## JoeTheStoner




----------



## gardenlane

When one, the wildest, with dishevel'd hair,
That loosely stream'd, and ruffled in the air;
Soon as her frantick eye the lyrist spy'd,
See, see! the hater of our sex, she cry'd.


----------



## gardenlane

Here April brings her garnered harvest-sheaf,
Her withered autumn leaf,
Tintings of bronze and brass;
Her full-plumed reeds, her mushroom in the grass,
Her furrowed fields, where plough and sower pass,
Her laden apple bough.
All are transfigured and transmuted now.


----------



## gardenlane

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.


----------



## gardenlane

He tried honestly to divorce her from any obsession that he had stitched her together — glad to see her build up happiness and confidence apart from him; the difficulty was that, eventually, Nicole brought everything to his feet, gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, of worshipping myrtle.


----------



## gardenlane

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes--
I wonder if It weighs like Mine--
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long--
Or did it just begin--
I could not tell the Date of Mine--
It feels so old a pain--

I wonder if it hurts to live--
And if They have to try--
And whether--could They choose between--
It would not be--to die--


----------



## JahSEEuS

Sogyal Rinpoche states: "...all things, when seen and understood in their true relation, are not independent but interdependent with all other things. The Buddha compared the universe to a vast net woven of a countless variety of brilliant jewels, each with a countless number of facets. Each jewel reflects in itself every other jewel in the net and is, in fact, one with every other jewel... Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object; and on a certain level...it is. But when you look more closely at the tree, you will see that ultimately it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretches across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it, all the seasons and the weather, moonlight and starlight and sunlight—all form part of this tree. As you begin to think about the tree more and more, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is; that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else; and that at every moment its nature is subtly changing. This is what we mean when we say things are empty, that they have no independent existence."

It appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer’s voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death. And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key, calls science to aid, establishes schizomania and protects humanity from the necessity of hearing the cry of truth from the lips of these unfortunate persons. 
SteppenWolf
-- Herman Hesse 

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.
--Siddhartha
Herman Hesse

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
--Siddhartha
Herman Hesse


----------



## gardenlane

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:


A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.


She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!


----------



## JoeTheStoner

“I can’t help being happy in a town called Blacksmith,” he said. “I’m here to avoid situations. Cities are full of situations, sexually cunning people. There are parts of my body I no longer encourage women to handle freely. I was in a situation with a woman in Detroit. She needed my semen in a divorce suit. The irony is that I love women. I fall apart at the sight of long legs, striding, briskly, as a breeze carries up from the river, on a weekday, in the play of morning light. The second irony is that it’s not the bodies of women that I ultimately crave but their minds. The mind of a woman. The delicate chambering and massive unidirectional flow, like a physics experiment. What fun it is to talk to an intelligent woman wearing stockings as she crosses her legs. That little staticky sound of rustling nylon can make me happy on several levels. The third and related irony is that it’s the most complex and neurotic and difficult women that I am invariably drawn to. I like simple men and complicated women.”

Don DeLillo


----------



## herbavore

*Quote a Poem You Really Like*

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;
And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!-
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.
O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

William Stafford


----------



## JahSEEuS

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

William Blake


----------



## herbavore

Small boy

by Norman MacCaig

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there'll be so many things
he'll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.


----------



## JahSEEuS

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there'll be so many things
he'll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.

solid


----------



## JahSEEuS

Shel Silverstein

“When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue and orange with lavender spots?”


----------



## herbavore

^ Shel used to live in the houseboats north of SF. I had a friend that lived in the hippie dock, Gate 5. I always used to hope I'd catch a glimpse of him strolling around so I could tell him how much I liked reading his work to my kids.


----------



## gardenlane

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love's coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journey's end in lovers' meeting-
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,-
Then come kiss me, Sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.


----------



## sigmond

Harold Finch (On Chess)

"It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing... Because it was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else... Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. 

The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it is a game of chess, deserves to lose."


----------



## gardenlane

For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.


----------



## gardenlane

TOO late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loiter'd on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate;
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leap'd,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.

Is she fair now as she lies?
Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
With gold-dust on her hair.
Now there are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
And the want graven there:
Or is the hunger fed at length,
Cast off the care?


----------



## gardenlane

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—Ilov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—


----------



## gardenlane

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination. 

C.S. Lewis,A Grief Observed


----------



## gardenlane

We will be what we could be. Do not say,
"It might have been, had not this, or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
He only might who is.

We will do what we could do. Do not dream
Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve.
I hold, all men are greatly what they seem;
He does, who could achieve.

We will climb where we could climb. Tell me not
Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height.
What eagle ever missed the peak he sought?
He always climbs who might.

I do not like the phrase "It might have been!"
It lacks force, and life's best truths perverts:
For I believe we have, and reach, and win,
Whatever our deserts.


----------



## sigmond

-Aldous Huxley, Foreword To_ A Brave New World (1946):_​​
"There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. 

And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate."

-The Wisdom of Samwise Gamgee

*Frodo*: I can't do this, Sam. 

*Sam*: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? 

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. 

But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. 

*Frodo*: What are we holding onto, Sam? 

*Sam*: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for. ​


----------



## ladydove

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home; 
Thou art my friend, and I'm not thine. 
Long through thy weary crowds I roam; 
A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; 
But now, proud world! I'm going home. 

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; 
To Grandeur with his wise grimace; 
To upstart Wealth's averted eye; 
To supple Office, low and high; 
To crowded halls, to court and street; 
To frozen hearts and hasting feet; 
To those who go, and those who come; 
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Good-bye


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

There are comforts in knowing the boundaries of the place you live.


----------



## Barrenian

"Freedom is a curse on the ignorant and brutal." Morals and Dogma.


----------



## ladydove

What can I say to you? How can I retract 
All that that fool my voice has spoken - 
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked, 
The protocols of friendship broken? 
I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn 
Past the still house where you lie sleeping. 
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn 
And hold you in its warmth and keeping.

Protocols - Vikram Seth


----------



## Blue_Phlame

I don't_ really love _it but i figured its place would be appreciated in Words.


----------



## ladydove

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

the only paradise is paradise lost.


----------



## Bardeaux

It's Frost season again. As much as I love his settings, I hate actually living them. Here's to spring *cheers*

*October*
_BY ROBERT FROST_

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

I'm not even a wine drinker


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

i've seen things you people wouldn't believe. attack ships on fire off the shoulder of orion. i watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the tannhäuser gate. all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.


----------



## Mysterie




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## Spiritsword

"I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death:
O death, I will be thy plagues; 
O grave, I will be thy destruction," (Hosea 13:14a-d, The LORD God Almighty through the prophet Hosea, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears," (King David, Psalm 34:4, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for _there is_ no want to them that fear him," (King David, Psalm 34:9, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving,
and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods," (King David, Psalm 95:2-3, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise _child_ shall have joy of him," (Proverbs 23:24, Solomon, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"A _good_ name _is_ rather to be chosen than great riches, _and _loving favour rather than silver and gold," (Proverbs 22:1, Solomon, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"Sing with them for the songs of pure delight.
Come and revel in heavens' love and light.
Take your place at the table of the King.
The feast is ready to begin," (The Feast, Amazing Love, Graham Kendrick).


----------



## Spiritsword

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"Plead _my cause_, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me," (Psalm 35:1, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

_"When_ pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly_is_ wisdom," (Proverbs 11:2, Solomon, Holy Bible).


----------



## Spiritsword

"Shine, Jesus, Shine,
Fill this land with the Fathers' glory.
Blaze, Spirit, blaze--
Set our hearts on fire.
Flow, river, flow--
Flood this nation with grace and mercy.
Send forth your Word,
Lord, and let there be light," (Shine, Jesus, Shine, Amazing Love, Graham Kendrick).


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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword

"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning, new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness, O LORD!
Great is thy faithfulness.
They are new every morning, new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness, O LORD!
Great is thy faithfulness, O LORD!
Great is thy faithfulness, O LORD!
Great is thy faithfulness, O O O LORD!
Great is thy faithfulness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (The Steadfast Love of the LORD, Lamb of God, Jim Gilbert).


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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




----------



## zombywoof

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”


----------



## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




----------



## zombywoof

In the space age the most important space is between the ears


----------



## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Bardeaux

This is starting to look a lot like spam, spirits. I really don't mean to diminish your favorite quotes, but this isn't tumblr.


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## Spiritsword

How would you like me to proceed? If it's any consolation, yesterday was an especially slow day--in fact, it's been a slow couple of weeks. However, I will be returning to my study soon and the posts should drop to one to two per day. Let me know if that's okay.


----------



## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## Spiritsword




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## zombywoof

“I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell: 
And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell”


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## zombywoof

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain - This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies -
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.”


----------



## JahSEEuS

The beginning and the end of William Blake's _Auguries of Innocence_.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour

...

The Winners Shout the Losers Curse 
Dance before dead Englands Hearse 
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born 
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight 
Some are Born to sweet delight 
Some are Born to Endless Night 
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night 
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day


----------



## zombywoof

“So I be written in the Book of Love.
 I do not care about that Book Above.
 Erase my name, or write it as you will
So I be written in the Book of Love.”




“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There.”


----------



## JahSEEuS

Robert Hunter "Liberty"

Saw a bird with a tear in his eye
Walking to New Orleans my oh my
Hey, now, Bird, wouldn't you rather die
Than walk this world when you're born to fly?

If I was the sun, I'd look for shade
If I was a bed, I would stay unmade
If I was a river I'd run uphill
If you call me you know I will
If you call me you know I will

Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home

Say what I mean and I don't give a damn
I do believe and I am who I am
Hey now Mama come and take my hand
Whole lotta shakin' all over this land

If I was an eagle I'd dress like a duck
Crawl like a lizard and honk like a truck
If I get a notion I'll climb this tree
or chop it down and you can't stop me
Chop it down and you can't stop me

Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home 
To find my own way home 

Went to the well but the water was dry
Dipped my bucket in the clear blue sky
Looked in the bottom and what did I see?
The whole damned world looking back at me

If I was a bottle I'd spill for love
Sake of mercy I'd kill for love
If I was a liar I'd lie for love
Sake of my baby I'd die for love
Sake of my baby I'd die for love 

Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
I'm gonna find my own way home

*Hunter's liner to his release of Liberty carried this quote:
We must all be foolish at times
It is one of the conditions of liberty*.>br> --Walt Whitman


----------



## Spiritsword




----------



## zombywoof

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.


----------



## JahSEEuS

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.


----------



## zombywoof

in the beginning man created god


----------



## Spiritsword




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## JahSEEuS

Spirit, if you insist on flooding this thread with biblical sayings could you at least just type it (as opposed to the often unrelated picture, which makes them even more difficult to read)?  Please?


----------



## antonomasia

“Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable  to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies  could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he  has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the  splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if  love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with  warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a  beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.  In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the  laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it  from the soil, once love has taken root.” - Anarchism and Other Essays  by Emma Goldman, 1910.

"To be governed is to be watched,  inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated,  enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated,  valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor  the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every  operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed,  stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished,  prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under  pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to  be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized,  extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest  resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined,  vilified, harassed, hunted down. abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound,  choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold,  betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged,  dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its  morality." - Proudhon

"It is not a question of being right or  wrong; it is a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each  individual so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others.  No one can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is  closer to truth and which is the best road to the greatest good for each  and everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at  the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is  not the freedom to be wrong." - Malatesta

"The most absurd  apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime.  Aside from the fact that the state is itself is the greatest criminal,  breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes,  killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an  absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to  destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation." -  Emma Goldman

*"*The gods envy us. They envy us  because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is  more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you  are now. We will never be here again.*"* - Homer, _The Iliad_


----------



## antonomasia

"VI
 What has the war renewed? 
   Where is the heroic transfiguration of the spirit? 
   Where have they hung the phosphorescent tables of the new values? 
   In which temple have the holy amphoras of gold enclosing the luminous  and blazing hearts of the supreme and creative heroes been laid? 
   Where is the splendor of the great and new noon? 
   Frightful rivers of blood washed all the turf and covered all the pathways of the world. 
   Fearful torrents off tears made their heartbreaking lament echo across  the eddies of all the earth: mountains of bone and human flesh  everywhere blanched and everywhere rotted in the sun. 
   But nothing was transformed, nothing evolved. 
   The bourgeois belly merely belched from satiety and that of the proletarian cried out from too much hunger. 
   And enough! 
   With Karl Marx the human mind descended into the intestines. The roar  that passes through the world today is a belly roar. Our will can  transform it into a shout of the mind. 
   Into a spiritual storm. 
   Into a cry of free life. 
   Into a hurricane of lightning. 
   Our thunderbolt could unhinge the present reality, rip open the door to  the unknown mystery of our longed — for dream and show the supreme  beauty of the liberated man. Because we are mad forerunners of the time. 
   The pyres. 
   The beacons. 
   The signals. 
   The first announcements.

XI

 By now, it is proven... 
   Life is sorrow! 
   But we have learned to love sorrow in order to love life! 
   Because in loving sorrow we have learned to struggle. 
   And in struggle — in struggle alone — is our joy of living. 
   To remain suspended halfway is not our task. 
   The half circle symbolizes the ancient “yes and no”. 
   The impotence of life and death. 
   It is the circle of socialism, of pity and of faith. But we are not socialists... 
   We are anarchists. And individualists, and nihilists, and aristocrats. 
   Because we come from the mountains. 
   From close to the stars. 
   We come from the heights: to laugh and to curse! 
   We have come to light a forest of pyres upon the earth to illuminate it during the night which precedes the great noon. 
   And our pyres will be extinguished when the fire of the sun bursts  majestically over the sea. And if this day should not come, our pyres  will continue to crackle tragically amidst the darkness of the eternal  night. 
   Because we love all that is great. 
   We are the lovers of every miracle, the promoters of every prodigy, the creators of every wonder! 
   Yes: we know it! 
   For you, great things are in good as in evil. 
   But we live beyond good and evil, because all that is great belongs to beauty. 
   Even “crime”. 
   Even “perversity”. 
   Even “sorrow”. 
   And we want to be great like our crime! 
   In order not to slander it. 
   We want to be great like our perversity! 
   In order to render it conscious. 
   We want to be great like our sorrow. 
   In order to be worthy of it. 
   Because we come from the heights. From the home of Beauty. 
   We have come to raise a forest of pyres upon the earth to illuminate it during the night which precedes the great noon. 
   Until the hour in which the fire of the sun bursts majestically over the sea. 
   Because we want to celebrate the feast of the great human prodigy. 
   We want our minds to vibrate in a new dream. 
   We want this tragic social dusk to give our “I” some calm and thrilling tinder of universal light. 
   Because we are the nihilists of social phantoms. 
   Because we hear the voice of the blood that cries from underground. 
   We prepare the paravanes and the torches, oh young miners. 
   The abyss awaits us. We leap into it in the end: Toward the creative nothing.


[h=3]_Iconoclasts, Forward_[/h]   History, materialism, monism, positivism and all the isms of this world  are old and rusty tools which I don’t need or mind anymore. My principle  is life and my end is death. I wish to live my life intensely and  embrace my death tragically. ​   You are waiting for the revolution? Let it be! My own began a long time  ago! When you are ready (god, what an endless wait!) I won’t mind going  with you for a while. But when you stop, I shall continue on my way  toward the great and sublime conquest of the nothing! 
   Any society that you build will have its limits. And outside the limits  of any society, unruly and heroic tramps will wander with their wild and  virgin thought — those who cannot live without planning ever new and  dreadful outbursts of rebellion! I shall be among them! 
   And after me, as before me, there will be those saying to their fellows:  “So turn to yourselves rather than to your gods and idols. Find what  hides within you and bring it to the light; show yourselves!” 
   Because every person who, searching his own inwardness, extracts what  was mysteriously hidden therein is a shadow eclipsing any form of  society which can exist under the sun! 
   All societies tremble when the scornful aristocracy of tramps,  inaccessibles, unique ones, rulers over the ideal and conquerors of the  nothing resolutely advances. So, come on , icononclasts, forward! 
_*Already the foreboding sky grows dark and silent!"

*__-Toward The Creative Nothing by Novatore
_
I love Novatore's writing.


----------



## JahSEEuS

Good stuff from Novatore


----------



## Troubadour

If you notice the similarity between the posts of this account and the account registered under the name 'Spiritsword', please be advised that, per Bearloves' authority and recommendation, I registered a new account, informed 'Support', and will no longer be using the other account. Sorry for any confusion. Thanks for your patience. God bless you.


----------



## JahSEEuS

That's great and all but stop with the pictures please.


----------



## Troubadour

Typically, I am very amenable. However, I prefer the picture accompany the words because of the connections that images infuse into words. Admittedly, you may be right, and I may end up only using the Scriptures themselves, but, for now, I pray your patience with these photographs. Thank you. I am truly sorry for any undesirable emotions my actions may instigate, that, most certainly, is not the purpose of retaining the photographs. However, I do truly appreciate your input because that information will probably come in handy if I do decide to stop using the photographs. Again, thank you.


----------



## bonomoopiojo55

It is not the amount of years in life-but the amount of life in years.


----------



## oreocub

"That man of loneliness and mystery,
Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh— (I, VIII)"

"He knew himself a villain—but he deem'd
The rest no better than the thing he seem'd;
And scorn'd the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
He knew himself detested, but he knew
The hearts that loath'd him, crouch'd and dreaded too.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt: (I, XI)"


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## NovaStar

"Without Hope ~ There is Nothing"


----------



## zombywoof

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is:
 Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.”

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

Whoever we are
Wherever we're from
We should have noticed by now
Our behavior is dumb
And if our chances
Expect to improve
It's gonna take a lot more
Than trying to remove
The other race
Or the other whatever
From the face
Of the planet altogether
They call it THE EARTH
Which is a dumb kinda name
But they named it right
'Cause we behave the same...
We are dumb all over
Dumb all over,
Yes we are
Dumb all over,
Near and far
Dumb all over
Black and white
People, we is not wrapped tight
Nerds on the left
Nerds on the right
Religious fanatics
On the air every night
Saying the Bible
Tells the story
Makes the details
Sound real gory
About what to do
If the geeks over there
Don't believe in the book
We got over here
You can't run a race
Without no feet
'And pretty soon
There won't be no street
For dummies to jog on
Or doggies to dog on
Religious fanatics
Can make it be all gone
(I mean it won't blow up
And disappear
It'll just look ugly
For a thousand years...)
You can't run a country
By a book of religion
Not by a heap
Or a lump or a smidgeon
Of foolish rules
Of ancient date
Designed to make
You all feel great
While you fold, spindle
And mutilate
Those unbelievers
From a neighboring state
TO ARMS! TO ARMS!
Hooray! That's great
Two legs ain't bad
Unless there's a crate
They ship the parts
To mama in
For souvenirs: two ears (Get down!)
Not his, not hers (but what the hey?)
The Good Book says:
"It's gotta be that way!"
But their book says:
"REVENGE THE CRUSADES. . .
With whips and chains
And hand grenades. . ."
TWO ARMS? TWO ARMS?
Have another and another
Our God says:
"There ain't no other!"
Our God says
"It's all okay!"
Our God says "This is the way!"
It says in the book:
"Burn and destroy. ..
And repent, and redeem
And revenge, and deploy
And rumble thee forth
To the land of the unbelieving scum on the other side
'Cause they don't go for what's in the book
And that makes 'em BAD
So verily we must choppeth them up
And stompeth them down
Or rent a nice French bomb
To poof them out of existence
While leaving their real estate just where we need it
To use again
For temples in which to praise OUR GOD
("Cause he can really take care of business!")
And when his humble TV servant
With humble white hair
And humble glasses
And a nice brown suit
And maybe a blonde wife who takes phone calls
Tells us our God says
It's okay to do this stuff
Then we gotta do it,
'Cause if we don't do it,
We ain't going up to heaven
(Depending on which book you're using at the time...
Can't use theirs. . .it don't work . . .it's all lies...Gotta use mine...)
Ain't that right?
That's what they say
Every night...
Everyday. ..
Hey, we can't really be dumb
If we're just following
God's Orders
Hey, let's get serious...
God knows what he's doing'
He wrote this book here
And the book says:
He made us all to be just like Him,"
so...
If we're dumb...
Then God is dumb...
(An' maybe even a little ugly on the side)


----------



## zombywoof

“Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion,
ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.


----------



## Troubadour

zombywoof said:


> My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is:
> Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can."



I agree with the idea of keeping people away from churches, and I would add that, instead, they allow God to make them his church/temple--living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. The modern church, which includes churches in general for the last few centuries, are full of witches, warlocks and goblins. Clearly, I am operating on the assumption that by attending the church you are seeking truth, purity, and love. But, if you want to hang out with witches, warlocks and goblins who only desire satanic power and operate with deceit, greed, and lust, I recommend your local church. However, if you do desire love, mercy, truth, purity, goodness, eternal wisdom and salvation, I recommend the person become the church by seeking Jehovah God Almighty, and his mercy through Jesus Christ, with all your heart; with all sincerity, humility, and truth, as though you were attempting to build the most precious relationship you could ever hope to have.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Troubadour

Troubadour said:


> ...making themselves the temple of God...



should read, 'allowing God to make them his church/temple'


----------



## weekend addiction

"In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God."

Hey the thread says post writing I like. Sorry atheist.


----------



## JoeTheStoner

> “I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self-portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence. And they know such introspection, though painful, is secretly exhilarating. And if someone asks me the kind of question I myself might pose, I can tell he's lonely.”


― Young-Ha Kim


----------



## zombywoof

There is no need for temples,
 no need for complicated philosophies.
 My brain and my heart are my temples;
 my philosophy is kindness.


My religion is very simple.
My religion is kindness.





Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told.
Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

Only those who care about you can hear you when you’re quiet.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## JahSEEuS

Are these really quotes that you really, really love? 

Maybe you should start your own thread for picture book plebes


----------



## thrash unreal

freddy47 said:


> ^I'm an atheist but damn the Bible does have some wonderfully written poetry. Especially the King James version.
> 
> "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
> Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
> But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
> And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
> This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
> Merely this and nothing more."
> 
> _The Raven_ by Edgar Allan Poe. I would have quoted the whole poem but I figured that might be too big a post.


that is good enough for anyone who knows and loves that poem.  how about "not long ago the writer of these lines, in the mad pride of intellectuality maintained the power of words denied that never a thought arose within the human brain beyond the utterance of the human tongue.  and now, as if in mockery of that boast, two words, two forgien soft dissyabblles-two gentle sounds made by angels dreaming in the moonlight dew that hangs like chains of pearl on herman hill.  have stirred the abysses of his heart.  un-thought like thougts - scarcely the shade of thought...........and so on.
my favorite is the conqueror worm.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Troubadour

JahSEEuS said:


> Are these really quotes that you really, really love?



I am literally in-love with this Word. This Word literally lives within my chest. My soul literally lives within this Word. We are eternally inside of one-another. The pleasures of inner-peace and deep joy that come with following this Word are well worth the risk. To meet God, to know God, to experience the relationship of love that he offers: this is the meaning of life. Do I love these quotes? The writer is my beloved.


----------



## zombywoof

Eskimo:"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"


----------



## zombywoof

"Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves in all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in Hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies."


----------



## zombywoof

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson




"When you understand why you don't believe in other people's gods, you will understand why I don't believe in yours."


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”


----------



## zombywoof

Where are you walking, I've seen you walking
Have you been there before?
Walk down your doorsteps, you'll take some more steps
What did you take them for?
There's a private in my boat and he wears
Pins instead of medals on his coat
There's a chicken in my nest and she won't
Lay until I've given her my best
At her request she asks for nothing
You get nothing in return
If you want she brings you water
If you don't then you will burn

You go through changes, it may seem strange
Is this what you're put here for?
You think you're happy and you are happy
That's what you're happy for
There's a man who can't decide if he should
Fight for what his father thinks is right
There are people wearing frowns who'll screw you up
But they would rather screw you down
At my request I ask for nothing
You get nothing in return
If you're nice she'll bring me water
If you're not then I will burn

This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
[1: There are places that I am going
4: There'll be time for you to start all over]

This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on

Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing

I see your picture
It's in the same old frame
We meet again
You look so lovely
You with the same old smile
Stay for a while
I need you so, oh, oh, oh, oh
And if you take it easy
I'm still teethin'
I want to love you, but
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Where are you walking, I've seen you walking
Have you been there before?
Walk down your doorsteps, you'll take some more steps
What did you take them for?
There's a private in my boat and he wears
Pins instead of medals on his coat
There's a chicken in my nest and she won't
Lay until I've given her my best
At her request she asks for nothing
You get nothing in return
If you want she brings you water
If you don't then you will burn

This is the time and this is the time and
It is time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time


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## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

Its your God.
They're your rules.
*You* go to Hell.

"I’ve outgrown the furrowed-browed warnings of a sky that is perpetually falling.
I’ve outgrown the snarling brimstone preaching that brokers in damnation.
I’ve outgrown the vile war rhetoric that continually demands an encroaching enemy.
I’ve outgrown the expectation that my faith is the sole property of a political party.
I’ve outgrown violent bigotry and xenophobia disguised as Biblical obedience.
I’ve outgrown God wrapped in a flag and soaked in rabid nationalism.
I’ve outgrown the incessant attacks on the Gay, Muslim, and Atheist communities.
I’ve outgrown theology as a hammer always looking for a nail.
I’ve outgrown the cramped, creaky, rusting box that God never belonged in anyway."


----------



## zombywoof

In ancient days in other lives, long past, but not forgotten,
I've known the power of mind and flesh, to have my will obeyed.
In Adonai and Babylon, Etruscans and Egyptians
Came to my temple - journeyed to the valley of the Moon.

Deep underground where no light dared to come, beneath my pyramid,
I stood in Hell, a mortal man, between Belial and Satan,
And still before my audience entranced with stark, cold fear;
I cured or struck with sickness, death, or made insane my foes.

Yet here, in my thirteenth life, the mystic power of old
Returns and as I say these words, my soul again in hell.
I conjure thee,
I conjure thee,
I conjure thee,
I conjure thee appear,
I raise thee mighty Demons, come before me, join me here...


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

AVE SATANA!

Hail, Satan,
Lord of Darkness,
King of Hell,
Ruler of the Earth,
God of this World!

God Who invites us to become as gods!
Muse of our civilization,
Dread Enemy of its tyrant god!
Satan, mighty Liberator,
Bearer of true Light!

God of our flesh,
God of our minds,
God of our innermost Will!

O mighty Lord Satan,
teach us to become strong and wise!
Teach us to vanquish the enemies
of our freedom and well-being!

REGE SATANA!


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## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

A closed mind is like a closed book just a block of wood.

Being open is happiness and being closed is sadness. So free your mind from the prison of binding ideas and thoughts.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

Born again?

No thanks I got it right the first time


----------



## zombywoof

He turned thirty-five last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the backyard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense

Yeh he gets off on country music
'Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too frigging old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock
And the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy
And the silence made him cry
Yea he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they force him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And behind each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more

'Cause he's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

Well he stays away a lot now
From the parties and the clubs
And he's thinking while he's joggin' 'round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
'Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species
Will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo
Just up and fade away

He's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust, yeah he ain't tryin' to change nobody, he's just...


----------



## scubagirl200




----------



## zombywoof

Some take the bible
For what it's worth
When it says that the meek
Shall inherit the Earth
Well, I heard that some sheik
Has bought New Jersey last week
'N you suckers ain't gettin' nothin'

Is Hare Rama really wrong
If you wander around
With a napkin on
With a bell on a stick
An' your hair is all gone...
(The geek shall inherit nothin')

You say yer life's a bum deal
'N yer up against the wall...
Well, people, you ain't even got no kinda
Deal at all
Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care of NUMBER ONE
An' NUMBER ONE ain't YOU
You ain't even NUMBER TWO

Those Jesus Freaks
Well, they're friendly but
The shit they believe
Has got their minds all shut
An' they don't even care
When the church takes a cut
Ain't it bleak when you got so much nothin'
(So whaddya do? Hey!)
Eat that pork
Eat that ham
Laugh till ya choke
On Billy Graham
Moses, Aaron 'n Abraham...
They're all a waste of time
'N it's your ass that's on the line
(IT'S YOUR ASS THAT'S ON THE LINE)

Do what you wanna
Do what you will
Just don't mess up
Your neighbor's thrill
'N when you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
And help the next poor sucker
On his one way trip...
SOME TAKE THE BIBLE...
(Aw gimme a half a dozen for the hotel room!)


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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## zombywoof

It’s better to walk alone than in a crowd going in the wrong direction.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## Mysterie

"her voice sounds forced and dull, as if she is about to weep. how long do i intend to sit here? my mind whirls; i have forgotten who i am. i imagine catastrophes and punishments everywhere. i suppose it was to cure myself of such painful furies that i have become depressed so often. when i am depressed i shut everything down, living in a tiny part of myself, in my sexuality or ambition to be an actor. otherwise, i kill myself off. i have talked to florence about these things - about 'melancholy' as she puts it - and she understands it: the first person i have known who does."
midnight all day - hanif kureishi


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## scubagirl200

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?"


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour

The only way to be wise and strong over those that manipulate and control you is to get the Holy Spirit and follow Christ through the trials that he will use to strengthen and teach you.
He is faithful; he will protect and provide for you through it all.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## scubagirl200

Closing The Cycle

"One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are."
Paulo Coelho


----------



## sigmond

I read this was a quote from Walker Percy..

“I can only quote Kierkegaard, who said something that astounded me and that I did not understand for a long time. He spoke of the three stages of existence, the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious. When you pass the first two you find yourself in an existential predicament which can be open to the religious of the absurd. 

He equated religion with the absurdity. He called it the leap into the absurd. But what he said and was puzzling to me was that, after the first two, the closest thing to the third stage is humor. I thought about that for a long time. I cannot explain it except I know it is true."


----------



## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## sigmond

You might as well just start your own thread or blog Troubadour...


----------



## DickJohnson

Do not go gentle into that good night, 
Old age should burn and rage at close of day; 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 
Because their words had forked no lightning they 
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, 
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 
Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas

one of my all time favorites.


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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




----------



## maggells

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. --Unknown

Still working on that last one...


----------



## sigmond

But thought's the slave of life, and life's time's fool,

And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop.


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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour

"O Mighty Cross
O Christ so pure
Love held him there
Such shame endured
His sacrifice on Calvary 
Has made the Mighty Cross
The tree of life to me
O Mighty Cross
My soul's release
The stripes he bore
Have brought me peace
His sacrifice on Calvary 
Has made the Mighty Cross
The tree of life to me,"
(O Mighty Cross, Firm Foundation, John Chisum).


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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## sigmond

“Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. 

Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.”

Albert Camus


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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour

> We love him, because he first loved us


 (1 John 4:19, John the Apostle, Holy Bible).


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## Troubadour

> I _am_ he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death



(Revelation 1:18, Jesus Christ, Holy Bible).


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## maggells

'Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion." -Audrey Niffenegger


----------



## Troubadour

"Every nation power and tongue
will bow down to your name
Every eye will see
Every ear will hear your name proclaimed

And this is gonna be our cry
until you come again
Jesus is the only name
By which man can be saved

All over the world people just like us
Are calling your name
Living in your love
All over the world people just like us
Are following Jesus," (People Just Like Us, I Believe The Promise, Hillsong).​


----------



## weekend addiction

Troubadour said:


> (Revelation 1:18, Jesus Christ, Holy Bible).



I got no problem with what your posting mind you but I do have my own Bible (actually several including one I actually have my name listed as a contributor for helping edit a word study!).  But this a discussion thread not a monologue.


----------



## maggells

"It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other."
-Wendell Berry


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## Troubadour




----------



## Bluesbreaker

_Somewhere a King has no wife_ - Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

This may be easy for some but I find it a bit challenging.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## TonyDanzaExtravaga

[h=1][i carry your heart with me(i carry it in][/h]
BY E. E. CUMMINGSi carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


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## Erikmen




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## tantric

“In the City Market is the Meet Café.* Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit,* bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...” 

Naked Lunch, William Burroughs


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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Airmid

_“... the army demands huge budgets to stimulate research and guide it into specific channels, and youth is being indoctrinated with the spirit of nationalism. All this is done in preparation for the day when the spectre may come to life. Unfortunately, these very policies are the most effective way of actually bringing the spectre into being.”_
*Albert Einstein, 1953*


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Airmid

Could not upload image with text that I wanted to and it wouldnt let me cancel and get rid of it!


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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

"Life does get easier, you just get stronger."


----------



## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

Don't trust anyone blindly. Some people you meet with are with you for their own sake and interest.


----------



## droning

"Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does"
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and the Damned


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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

'We accept the love we think we deserve.'


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

"It's not what you are capable of, it's about what you are willing to endure."


----------



## Erikmen

*"Don't believe everything you here. 
There always three sides to a
story,
Your, Theirs and the Truth..."

"Life isn't easy for those who dream."*


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## JahSEEuS

Erikmen said:


> 'We accept the love we think we deserve.'



true


----------



## Erikmen

Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.

Don't judge my choices without understand my reasons.

In the end, it's not the years that will count. It's life in your years.


----------



## Airmid




----------



## Airmid

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.” 
― Bob Marley


----------



## Airmid




----------



## Erikmen

At the end we only regret the chances we did not take.


----------



## electric moon

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because *the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved*, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’ 

From On The Road by Jack Kerouac.


----------



## Erikmen

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

I'm much more me when I'm with you.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

Changes are hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. 

This next one is pretty classic. For those who attend to meetings:

Let go of things you can't change, focus on things you can.


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

I choose to be happy today.

It's not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it's not possible to find it elsewhere.

Mistakes are sometimes the best memories.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## thelung

"My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 

                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
                            But I with mournful tread, 
                               Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
                                  Fallen cold and dead."

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Confucius

Life goes on ...
Whether you choose to move on and take a chance in the unknown.  
Or stay behind, locked in the past, thinking of what could have been.


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution.
The easiest way to escape from the problem is to solve it.


----------



## Troubadour




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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.


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## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




----------



## Mind-Melt

Sometimes I wander to the back of my skull.
Where there's fields of fire and every shadow's still chasing me home.
I whisper softly to myself to just forget these dreams.
I'm laying dormant barely breathing under endless sleep.
The faint reflections of myself I'm calmly staring back.
Into the void of clouds dressed in black.
Mind locked from the inside, my vacant soul.
Open the night and swallow me whole.

Cause in the waking hours.

Distance rules everything around me.

Landscapes - Dream


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## KittyKat13

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,Then slowly changed, till it grew a heapTo make men tremble who never weep.

A very small excerpt from an amazing work called "The Sensitive Plant" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I interpret it as a metaphoric and romanticized account of the cycle of life

http://www.kalliope.org/en/digt.pl?longdid=shelley2003060601
​


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

^ In noticed you are very religious. I can see that in all of your quotes. 






So far I believe I have only inspired my kids. But that's parenting.


----------



## Erikmen

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

Some people really find happiness in God or calmness idk. I have a religious friend and his says all of his problems are in God's hands. I could never really feel like that. It must be a relief. No judgment at all, just thinking outloud.

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” 
― John Lennon

Believe nothing,
No matter where you read it,
Or who has said it,
Not even if I have said it,
Unless it agrees with your own reason
And your own common sense.
Buddha


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”


----------



## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”


----------



## Erikmen




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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

[h=2]“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”[/h]


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## Troubadour




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## Erikmen

"Go to *Heaven *
for the climate,
*Hell *for the company."
Mark Twain


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## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

[FONT=georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif]
Friendship is like a rainbow between two hearts. ~Author unknown


A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. ~Leo Buscaglia


Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian Proverb
[/FONT]​


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

Not that I agree with that 100%, as I don't think we waste time with people the way I understood..

“We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don't even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It's time to put an end to this. It's time for us to let ourselves be loved.” 

_Remember it's just
a bad day. Not a bad life.

_


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

I want you. All of you.
Your flaws. Your imperfections. I want 
you, only you.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” 
― William Shakespeare


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 
― Albert Einstein


----------



## Isobel

Jennyfur_Karma_Kin said:


> _
> 
> Apologies if this has been done before... I couldn't see anything but to be honest I've not got my glasses with me and can't see anything very well
> 
> My quote is from "The Velveteen Rabbit" and I've bolded my favouritest bit.  It always makes me feel better._
> 
> 
> ""What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
> 
> "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
> 
> "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
> 
> "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
> 
> "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
> 
> *"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."*
> 
> "I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
> 
> "The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. *"That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."*


Beautiful and poignant.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

"Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” 
― C.S. Lewis

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” 
― C.S. Lewis

That's what we learn when are kids, of course this changes if you talk to someone else from another religion.


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“The philosophers have only _interpreted_ the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to _change_ it.

[_These words are also inscribed upon his grave_]” 
― Karl Marx


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“To be radical is to grasp things by the root.” 
― Karl Marx


----------



## Erikmen

“Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden

Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.” 
― Rosa Luxemburg


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.” 

“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.(or love it)” 
― John Steinbeck


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”


----------



## Erikmen

People believe that evolution and not God made the world what it is today. It's hard for people to believe that a super being they can't see just randomly created the world and evolved its beings. Any explanation is better then God creating the earth. It's easier to believe that the natural process of evolution created humanity.







Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.


----------



## sigmond

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was  ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated  to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and  spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of  their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday,  if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's  history. It's poetry.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## sigmond

Troubadour are you writing the quotes yourself or are you just finding the images on a site like tumblr?


----------



## Erikmen

^ ..?



Mond said:


> Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was  ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated  to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and  spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of  their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday,  if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's  history. It's poetry.



Great post!


----------



## Erikmen

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” 
― Benjamin Franklin


----------



## sigmond

Erikmen said:


> Great post!


sorry - J.D Salinger The Catcher in the Rye


----------



## Erikmen

^ yup!


----------



## Erikmen

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

"Not all those who wander are lost.”


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

Because it gets so boring.


----------



## sigmond

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” 
- Infinite Jest ?


----------



## Erikmen

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” 
― David Foster Wallace


----------



## sigmond

Solitary though we may have become, we haven’t of course given up all hope of forming relationships. In the lonely canyons of the modern city, there is no more honored emotion than love. However, this is not the love of which religions speak, not the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind; it is a more jealous, restricted and ultimately meaner variety. It is a romantic love which sends us on a maniacal quest for a single person with whom we hope to achieve a life-long and complete communion, one person in particular who will spare us any need for people in general.

- Religion for Athiests


----------



## Erikmen

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”


----------



## sigmond

Anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture. Even as anxiety is experienced at a spiritual and psychological level, it is scientifically measurable at the molecular level and the physiological level. It is produced by nature and it is produced by nurture. It’s a psychological phenomenon and a sociological phenomenon.

- My Age of Anxiety (Great Book)


----------



## Erikmen

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”  
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” 
― Corrie ten Boom


----------



## sigmond

Every man lives and exists on his own account, and, therefore, mainly in and for himself; and what he is and the whole manner of his being concern himself more than anyone else; so if he is not worth much in this respect, he cannot be worth much otherwise. The idea which other people form of his existence is something secondary, derivative, exposed to all the chances of fate, and in the end affecting him but very indirectly. 

Besides, other people's heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man's true happiness—a fanciful happiness perhaps, but not a real one.

- Schopenhauer


----------



## Erikmen

Nice ending. Insightful.


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

[h=2]I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.[/h]Voltaire


----------



## sigmond

just found this - seems cool - 

The Sprites of fiery Termagants in Flame
Mount up, and take a Salamander's name.
Soft yielding minds to Water glide away,
And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea.
The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of mischief still on Earth to roam.
The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the fields of Air.

— Alexander Pope, the Rape of the Lock, Canto 1


----------



## Erikmen

^ Also from A. Pope.

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.” 
― Voltaire


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

I don't get your quotes.


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Erikmen

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

_“Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”_


----------



## Erikmen

You can get away with acts which do not conform to society norms. You hide behind a wall of words to say one thing yet mean something else. You’ve practiced and perfected this act and succeed well yet you’re living a lie.


----------



## Erikmen

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## sigmond

“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a  search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something  else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a  hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive  affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly  even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in  itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships,  can only lead to violence and pain.”    - Flowers for Algernon


----------



## Erikmen

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” 
― Oscar Wilde


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

_“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” – Thomas Jefferson_


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## sigmond

I UA'd a few posts because the images would not show. if you feel the need to add images with quotations could you please make sure the images are posted correctly.

Thank you


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## sigmond

Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. 

- Man's Search For Meaning

Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself. - Montaigne


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen




----------



## thelung

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." ~ Hunter S. Thompson


----------



## Erikmen

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” 

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit, then maybe just once, one of them will say, 'Oh! Wait a minute - I was wrong.' I live for that happening. Rare, I assure you” 

"It's discouraging to think many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."
― Noël Coward


----------



## sigmond

Erikmen said:


> “That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”


so true!


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

Not that I don't believe in God. I respect those who devoted their faith are living happier. 
This next quote sums up what I feel sometimes when we talk about religion. 
I'm not attacking your beliefs, not at all. Just venting through I quote I read. 

_“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.”
― Stephen King_


----------



## Troubadour

> Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee


, (Psalm 128:1-2, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. 
It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”


----------



## sigmond

> _Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee_





Troubadour said:


> , (Psalm 128:1-2, King David, Holy Bible).


This post is much easier to read and interpret. sometimes the quotes you post on top of images contain words that are so close to each other its difficult to understand them. also the images take up more space and at times make the text difficult to decipher. 

There is categorically no issue with posting quotes from any religion. if you would like to start your own thread that contains your favorite religious quotes feel free to do so.


----------



## Troubadour

"Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD _there is _mercy, and with him _is_ plenteous redemption," (Psalm 130:7, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

Does this quote refer to the real status that Israel is nowadays? I mean, how that applies to their lives today. I believe this was written a long time ago. Sometimes I try to understand this quotes so I can see how I relate to them. I feel that if you put your personal thoughts about them it will make them a lot more interesting to read. Not that I'm against your beliefs - I simply want to understand better what you mean when you say things that are in the Bible. How do you interpret them in certain cases.


----------



## Erikmen

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.” 
― John Lennon


----------



## CfZrx

Troubadour said:


> "Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD _there is _mercy, and with him _is_ plenteous redemption," (Psalm 130:7, King David, Holy Bible).


hehe



Erikmen said:


> “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us.
> ― John Lennon


 Yeah man! I agree


----------



## Erikmen

_“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love—then make that day count!” 

“Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.” _


----------



## Troubadour

"I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation," (Psalm 13:5, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” 
― Oscar Wilde


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

The Festivity is what is waited for, what is expected. What I expect of the promised presence is an unheard-of totality of pleasures, a banquet; I rejoice like the child laughing at the sight of the mother whose mere presence heralds and signifies a plenitude of satisfactions ... and whatever becomes of me, I can never say that I have not tasted the purest joys of life.


----------



## Erikmen

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”


----------



## Mysterie

all we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small, and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning.


----------



## RDP89

"The first step on the road to REAL wellness is to give up any thought that your life has been ordained as part of some mysterious grand plan. It hasn’t!"

      "Meaninglessness is liberating. It frees us from the stifling need to conform to the drudgery of daily life. It quiets the incessant ranting of religious types who believe worship of invisible gods today guarantee a heaven-filled life tomorrow. Details of life after death in Valhalla or paradise by any name are not available.

     The stupidity of this idea, in the face of overwhelming data supporting life as an accident, is without parallel and consigns the intimidated to a shadowy life of obedience. This constitutes a state so far from REAL wellness, it could form its own black hole."


----------



## JahSEEuS

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit


----------



## Mysterie

You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced. 


-Osho


----------



## JahSEEuS




----------



## Erikmen

“For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”


----------



## Erikmen

Mysterie said:


> You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.



So true..

People say that what we're all seeking is the meaning of life.
 I think that what we're really seeking is the experience of being alive.


----------



## Mysterie

Erikmen said:


> People say that what we're all seeking is the meaning of life.
> I think that what we're really seeking is the experience of being alive.


i'll be okay with the answers to both ;p, but yes the meaning of life really is too subjective and theoretical of an inquiry to interest me. and i don't think its a coincidence that zombie themed tv shows and movies have been a hit in the past few years.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 “Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow."


― Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello (each page is a new revelation at the moment)


----------



## sigmond

serendipitous appearance mysterie! i finally got the ebook of the *The Alchemist *which i just finished and was a bit surprised at how straightforward and unoriginal it was. love the overall message, the use of parables and allegories, but disliked how it didn't leave much to the imagination or make an attempt at character development. It reminded me of *Siddhartha*. i think it has to do with my age, if i had read this years ago, ideally as a teenager, i would've enjoyed it more. [..searching for kindle..] [insert random quotes from various places]

“Because I don’t live in either my past or my  future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate  always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is  life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that  tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a  party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living  right now.”

“How does one achieve peace of mind?” On the  latter point, Plutarch’s advice was the same as Seneca’s: focus on what  is present in front of you, and pay full attention to it." 

"Learning how to die was learning to let go; learning to live was learning to hang on."

“Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of  time’s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our  so-called human life with infinity.”

"The Zen master who, when asked, “What is  enlightenment?” whacked the questioner on the head with a stick  Enlightenment is something learned on your own body: it takes the form  of things happening to you. This is why the Stoics, Epicureans, and  Skeptics taught tricks rather than precepts. All philosophers can offer  is that blow on the head: a useful technique, a thought experiment, or  an experience—in Montaigne’s case, the experience of reading the Essays.  The subject he teaches is simply himself, an ordinary example of a  living being."

/


----------



## Mysterie

sigmond said:


> serendipitous appearance mysterie! i finally got the ebook of the *The Alchemist *which i just finished and was a bit surprised at how straightforward and unoriginal it was. love the overall message, the use of parables and allegories, but disliked how it didn't leave much to the imagination or make an attempt at character development. It reminded me of *Siddhartha*. i think it has to do with my age, if i had read this years ago, ideally as a teenager, i would've enjoyed it more. [..searching for kindle..] [insert random quotes from various places]
> 
> /



i know exactly what you mean, i feel somewhat guilty because really 'the alchemist' is more simplistic/repetitive than i usually like to read (i still love coelho) but the parable nature like you said would have been relevant/new ideas for me to explore in more formative and confusing years if i was ready to receive it then. although there are pithy reminders of what i forget all the time, but not sure how actionable or clear it felt to me. if i didn't completely put you off coelho i would say so far that 'the witch of portobello' and then 'veronika wants to die' is second on my list of books of his that have been very stimulating. 

although reading those quotes, i have really been trying to practice, "focus on what is present in front of you, and pay full attention to it", and i love the simplicity in a way.

ironically i also have siddhartha with me (on a journey of self-discovery) and have started it and am disappointed so far, i suppose this may have been revolutionary in the 60s or 70s but there has been such a proliferation of ideas since the internet that nothing feels fresh in it (not far in and short attention span). i'm sure it had its cultural impact but i still love hesse for most of 'narcissus and goldmund' which i have gone through and had that feeling of an author speaking directly, almost to the two halves of my voice.

if your familiar with personality types i think both authors are almost directly in a similar/almost identical archetype on my coping mechanism for life, definitely hesse.

i loved this somewhat snide quote from coelho on extroverts. “They say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life they are.”


----------



## Erikmen

^ This book, 'The Alchemist' was poorly written in the in the original language (Portuguese) in its first edition and very criticized as the author (Paulo Coelho, I suppose) - a recognized author nowadays - had become famous by that time. Ironically because of this book. It could have been a much more developed story if he had written it today.


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

Sometimes Madeleine listened to the busy signal so long she found herself trying to hear Leonard's voice beneath it, as if he was just on the other side of the noise.


----------



## Erikmen

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”


----------



## Troubadour

"He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber," (Psalm 121:3, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” 
― Albert Einstein

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
[h=1]Friedrich Nietzsche[/h]


----------



## JoeTheStoner

> Welcome to 2016. The age of tech positivity and the age of information have transformed into the age of self importance. A time in which the opinions of scholars and scientists are ignored and everybody is tapping into gut feelings of fear and hate. Fear and hate towards all those that are not you. Those that don’t look like you or act like you. Those that don’t believe in the same superstitious meta reality.
> 
> Our different opinions are no longer a discussion with arguments, but a screaming contest, void of all nuances. And you have an opinion on everything. And it must be heard. Its going to be a long, hot, violent summer. It feels like time and space are tearing up. Lets hope we all make it to the fall. Lets hope we smarten up and create a better way of dealing with this is in the future. Then again, dead eyes see no future...


https://newyorkhaunted.bandcamp.com/album/nyh39-drvg-cvltvre-dead-eyes-see-no-future


----------



## Troubadour

"Ye therefore, beloved, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness," (2 Peter 3:17, Peter the Apostle, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Erikmen

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; 
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” 
― Marcel Proust


----------



## Mysterie

"when i'm with a group of people and i want to provoke them by asking thay most important of questions---are you happy?--- they all reply: "yes i am."

then i ask: "but don't you want more? dont you want to keep growing?" and they all reply: "of course."

then i say: "so you're not happy." and they change the subject.

-coelho


----------



## Jabberwocky

I, with legs crossed along the daylight, watch
The variegated fists of clouds that gather over
The uncouth features of this, my prone island. 

Meanwhile the steamers which divide horizons prove
Us lost;
Found only
In tourist booklets, behind ardent binoculars;
Found in the blue reflection of eyes 
That have known cities and think us here happy.

Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient,
So I, who have made one choice,
Discover that my boyhood has gone over. 

And my life, too early of course for the profound cigarette,
The turned doorhandle, the knife turning
In the bowels of the hours, must not be made public
Until I have learnt to suffer
In accurate iambics. 

I go, of course, through all the isolated acts,
Make a holiday of situations,
Straighten my tie and fix important jaws,

And note the living images
Of flesh that saunter through the eye.

Until from all I turn to think how,
In the middle of the journey through my life,
O how I came upon you, my
Reluctant leopard of the slow eyes.

-1948 (Derek Walcott)


----------



## Erikmen

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.” 
― Stephen Chbosky


----------



## IceDancer

"Momma said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get"


----------



## Erikmen

“Choices made, whether bad or good, follow you forever and affect everyone in their path one way or another.”


----------



## Fidelity

"True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a _worthy_ purpose."

~ Helen Keller

I had never even heard of the woman, but this quote struck a chord.


----------



## ABeautifulMind

I have a few here. All lyrics

"We must blend into the choir, sing a static with the whole - We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul - And in this endless race for property, and privilege to be won, we must run, we must run we must run" - Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes)

"I wish the world was flat like the old days - where I could travel just by folding a map - no more airplanes or speed trains or freeways - there'd be no distance that could hold us back" - Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie)

"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations - they're quite aware what they're going through" - David Bowie

"Why are you so far away from me? I need help, and you're way across the sea" - Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)

"Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground - Silly monkeys, give them thumbs, they make a club and beat their brother down - How they survive, so misguided in a mystery" - Maynard Keenan (Tool)
"Goddamn you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time" - Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)
And finally, "I look outside, and think to myself, "don't the trees get cold when they shed their leaves for winter? Don't you think they might just want to keep them?" But sometimes things that keep us warm have to fall away - This frigid winter air reminds me just how cold this season's gonna be..." - Me - from a song of mine called "Winter Air" (legitimate US Copywrite Registration, so don't even think about it  )​


----------



## Erikmen

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” 
― Dalai Lama


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”


----------



## Erikmen

*"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings!"*


----------



## Troubadour

"And they were helped against them, and the Hagarites were delivered into their hand, and all that _were_ with them: for they cried to God in the battle, and he was intreated of them; because they put their trust in him, " (1 Chronicles 5:20b, Jeremiah the Prophet(?), Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it,
but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you,
 you can make things happen, almost like magic.”


----------



## sigmond

"The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror." - DFW

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” - Orwell


----------



## Erikmen

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”


----------



## Troubadour

"My flesh and my heart faileth: _but_ God _is_ the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever," (Asaph the Singer, Psalm 73:26, Holy Bible).





"For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually," (The LORD God Almighty through Nathan the Prophet, 2 Chronicles 7:16, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”


----------



## Erikmen




----------



## Troubadour

"Ye shall not _need_ to fight in this _battle_: set yourselves, stand ye _still_, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the LORD _will be_ with you," (The Holy Spirit through Jahaziel the Levite, 2 Chronicles 20:17b, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” 
― Albert Einstein

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” 
― Arthur C. Clarke


----------



## Nicisixxx

A great part of me wants to believe that people are good.  
That they are still good despite everything they have done and 
continue to do to one another, and all the lives have been destroyed.  
This is perhaps very naive of me, and may be what that eventually
destroys me. Or perhaps this is the one thing that has kept me alive.

Nav K from by Bodies of Water

and also this

When people treat you as the don't care, believe them.

Unknown


----------



## Erikmen

“7 things negative people will do to you. They will... 
1. Demean your value;
2. Destroy your image
3. Drive you crazily!
4. Dispose your dreams!
5. Discredit your imagination!
6. Deframe your abilities and
7. Disbelieve your opinions!

Stay away from negative people!”


----------



## Troubadour

"And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered, "(2 Chronicles 31:21, Nathan the Prophet, Holy Bible). 






"So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the LORD his God," (2 Chronicles 27:6, Nathan the Prophet, Holy Bible).


----------



## JoeTheStoner

_An Artist Began Preparing Her Body for Interstellar Travel_


----------



## Erikmen

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
 Oscar Wilde 

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ~Pablo Picasso


----------



## Troubadour

"And I said unto them, Ye _are_ holy unto the LORD; the vessels _are_ holy also; and the silver and the gold _are_ a freewill offering unto the LORD God of your fathers," (Ezra 8:28, Ezra the Scribe, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” 
Buddha

“You only lose what you cling to.” 
Buddha


----------



## Captain.Heroin

The water, cloaked in
Dark shades of night,
Is morbidly still.
A pale glimmer of moon light
Breaks through the darkness,
Granting me sight.
The water has no end.
I see, but all I do is stare.
I see the abyss,
And fear turns to dispair.
Icy tendrils grip at my feet,
Drag me down,
And with not ahope,
I fear that I have found,
That I can scream,
But I shall die without a sound.
The water fills my lungs.
Finally rod of the bitter taste of air,
I know my life will soon end,
And I do not care.
Still alive, my hope turns to despair...


----------



## Troubadour

"And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him," (Malachi 3:17, The LORD God Almighty through Malachi the Prophet, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

Captain.Heroin said:


> The water, cloaked in
> Dark shades of night,
> Is morbidly still.
> A pale glimmer of moon light
> Breaks through the darkness,
> Granting me sight.
> The water has no end.
> I see, but all I do is stare.
> I see the abyss,
> And fear turns to dispair.
> Icy tendrils grip at my feet,
> Drag me down,
> And with not ahope,
> I fear that I have found,
> That I can scream,
> But I shall die without a sound.
> The water fills my lungs.
> Finally rod of the bitter taste of air,
> I know my life will soon end,
> And I do not care.
> Still alive, my hope turns to despair...



^ Nice writing.


----------



## Erikmen

“And I got out of there without punching anyone, kicking anyone, or breaking down in tears. 
Some days the small victories are all you achieve.”


----------



## Captain.Heroin

Rod should be rid. 

Oh well.


----------



## Erikmen

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”


----------



## sigmond

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” Anaïs Nin


----------



## Troubadour

"LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear," (Psalm 10:17, David the Servant of God, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

^ What does that mean to you? I'm curious.. in your own words.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” 
Anaïs Nin


----------



## Troubadour

"For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness," (Psalm 18:28, King David the Shepherd/Poet/Warrior/Priest/Prophet, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

Erikmen said:


> ^ What does that mean to you? I'm curious.. in your own words.



I'm not a preacher or a teacher, I am only a Christian. Therefore, it is not my privilege to explain these concepts. I sincerely apologize if this reply seems rude. Trust me, I would love to go into all the details but, fortunately or unfortunately, the LORD has informed me that I am no preacher or teacher, and that I shouldn't be teaching anyone. I'm really just here to express myself. Again, all sincere apologies.


----------



## Erikmen

Not at all, you haven't offended me. But thanks for having shared that with me. In a way it's how we meet each other in the world. I noticed that a lot of people who are religious are somehow happy with their lives. Even happier than others who don't believe in certain religions but in God in general. There's a lot of people who says religion is not logical and irrational but if it's making you happy and contempt. Who am I to question you. I was only interested in knowing how that came from but you have said enough. Thank you for answering my question! 

I really wanted to believe in something that powerful and be that joyful about life. But I'm too rational to make it through religion although I do respect yours and do believe that God exists in forms that I can not express in words.


----------



## Erikmen

_"I believe in commitment. I believe in being open and trusting each other and respecting each other completely."

_“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” 
― Leo Tolstoy


----------



## Troubadour

"The LORD liveth; and blessed _be_ my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted," (Psalm 18:46, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. 
There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. 
Think of it--always.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi


----------



## sigmond

“You long for life, yet you try to solve the problems of life by a logical tangle! And how tiresome, how insolent your tricks are, and, at the same time, how awfully frightened you are! You talk a lot of nonsense and you seem to be very pleased with it; you say a lot of impudent things, and you are yourself always afraid and apologising for them. You assure us that you are afraid of nothing, and at the same time you try to earn our good opinion. You assure us that you are gnashing your teeth, but at the same time you crack jokes to make us laugh. You know your jokes are not amusing, but you seem to be highly pleased with their literary merit. You may perhaps have really suffered, but you don’t seem to have the slightest respect for your suffering. 

There may be some truth in you, but there is no humility. You carry your truth to the market place out of the pettiest vanity to make a public show of it and to discredit it. No doubt you mean to say something, but you conceal your last word out of fear, because you haven’t the courage to say it, but only craven insolence. You boast about your sensibility, but you merely don’t know your own mind. For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility. And how tiresome you are! How you impose yourself on people! The airs you give yourself! Lies, lies, lies!”


----------



## Troubadour

"Wait on the LORD: be of good courage and the LORD shall strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on the LORD," (Psalm 27:14, David, Holy Bible).





"Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and lift them up for ever," (Psalm 28:9, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” 
― Abraham Lincoln


----------



## SittingHereInLimbo

The most foolish notion in modernism is really at least as old as Plato, the notion that there can be collective learning and transference of virtue, which will in time create utopia. Grand scale engineering solutions to human problems cannot heal the individual soul, but neither can turning back the metaphorical clock to past corruptions. If authentic faith means anything it means that the only authentic struggle against evil is within *an individually cultivated virtue*. As T.S. Eliot famously observed, "Ours is but the trying, the rest is not our business."


----------



## mr peabody

*John Coltrane quote*

To perceive again and this time it must be said, for all who read to know that no matter what, it is all with God. He is gracious and merciful. His way is in love, through which we all are. 

Wherever and whoever you are, always strive to follow and walk in the right path and ask for aid and assistance...herein lies the ultimate and eternal happiness which is ours through His grace.


----------



## Erikmen

“The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful;
 to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; 
and have courage when things go wrong.”


----------



## Blue_Phlame

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?_ To this I answer, in one word, from experience_; in that, all out knowledge is founded. - Locke


----------



## Troubadour

"Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore," (Psalm 37:27, King David, Holy Bible).






"By this I know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me," (Psalm 41:11, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## SittingHereInLimbo

The socialization process for children in the United States is strictly slanted to bourgeois standards and geared towards security, consumption and materialist competition. It is a yoke not easily shed, which sadly later on often leads to desperation amidst a fulsome artificial happiness. Listening to what cannot be thought of is lacking, preventing all access to an inner life. Individual materialist isolation unfortunately creates strangulated human souls. Any deviation from this set pattern is discouraged in pre-school children as being anti-social, nerdish and not mentally normal. Those who break away are often those sensitive individuals who shield themselves by eccentricity. Unfortunate shields include “mental illness” in its many forms and chemical and/or alcohol dependency.


----------



## sigmond

"What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit—to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. And that if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time." - DFW


----------



## Troubadour

"Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob," (Psalm 44:4, King David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"Oh that the salvation of Israel _were come_ out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, _and_ Israel shall be glad," (Psalm 53:6a, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
Mark Twain


----------



## sigmond

"The virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize." - fortune cookie

“I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, offer my neck to its teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. 

And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body--flesh and bone--and from the Earth's body--stone, sky, liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings, are my Aztecan blood sacrifices.”

-Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza


----------



## Troubadour

"And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! _for then_ would I fly away, and be at rest," (Psalm 55:6, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Erikmen

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”


----------



## Troubadour

"Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved," (Psalm 55:22, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"Thy vows _are_ upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee," (Psalm 56:12, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Blue_Phlame

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.


RE: Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. 

-George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’


----------



## Troubadour

"The righteous shall be glad in the LORD, and shall trust in him; and all the upright in heart shall glory," (Psalm 64:10, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"Blessed _be_ the Lord, _who_ daily loadeth us _with benefits, even _the God of our salvation. Selah," (Psalm 68:19, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## sigmond

whenever i see the word Selah i think of the Lauryn Hill song. lyrics copypasta

*NSFW*: 



Nothing can be done against the truth
no matter how we remain in denial, yeah
Wasting time, replacing time with each empty excuse
but that'll only work a little while
Coping with despair, knowing you're not there
ashamed to just admit I've been a fool
So I blame it on the sun, run away from everyone
hoping to escape this ridicule

Trapped in misery, wrapped so miserably
and this deception, I wear it like a skin
Dying to maintain, oh I keep trying to explain
a heart that never loved me to begin
Oh I'm such a mess, I have no choice but to confess
that I've been desperately trying to belong
Lieing to myself and everybody else
refusing to admit my right was wrong, and then he came.. 


Selah, oh and it means
Praise and meditation, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
Did you think about that, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
Praise and meditation, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
That it is seen

How beautiful is fruit still in denial of its roots
my guilty heart behaves so foolishly
This treason from within that reasons with my sin
won't be happy till it sees the death of me
Selfishly addicted to a life that I depicted
conflicted cause it's not reality

Oh what's left of me, I beg you desperately
cause me to agree with what I know is best for me
Please save me from myself, I need you, save me from myself
please save me from myself so I can heal

The choices that I've made, oh have been nothing but mistakes
what a wasted use of space, should I die before I wake
In all of my religion, I've fortified this prison
obligated to obey - the demands of bad decisions

Please save me from myself, I need you
save me from myself, please save me from myself so I can heal

And then he came
Selah, oh and it means
Praise and meditation, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
Did you think about that, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
Praise and meditation, and then he came
Selah, oh and it means
That it is seen​


----------



## Troubadour

"Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name," (Psalm 86:11, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"But thou, O Lord, _art_ a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth," (Psalm 86:15, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## thelung

my favorite verse John 14:2
*"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."*


----------



## 34-dihydroxyphen

Thomas Pynchon said:
			
		

> "The next day her body was washed up on the beach. She had perished in a sea they would perhaps never succeed in calming any part of. Jackals had eaten her breasts. It seemed then that something had at last been brought to consummation since his arrival centuries ago on the troop ship Habicht, that had only as obviousness and immediacy to do with the sergeant-pederast's preference as to women or that old bubonic plague injection. If it were parable (which he doubted) it probably went to illustrate the progress of appetite or evolution of indulgence, both in a direction he found unpleasant to contemplate. If a season like the Great Rebellion ever came to him again, he feared, it could never be in that same personal, random array of picaresque acts he was to recall and celebrate in later years at best furious and nostalgic; but rather with a logic that chilled the comfortable perversity of the heart, that substituted capability for character, deliberate scheme for political epiphany (so incomparably African); and for Sarah, the sjambok, the dances of death between Warmbad and Keetmanshoop, the taut haunches of his Firelily, the black corpse impaled on a thorn tree in a river swollen with sudden rain, for these the dearest canvases in his soul's gallery, it was to substitute the bleak, abstracted and for him rather meaningless hanging on which he now turned his back, but which was to backdrop his retreat until he reached the Other Wall, the engineering design for a world he knew with numb leeriness nothing could now keep from becoming reality, a world whose full despair he, at the vantage of eighteen years later, couldn't even find adequate parables for, but a design whose first fumbling sketches he thought must have been done the year after Jacob Marengo died, on that terrible coast, where the beach between Luderitzbucht and the cemetery was actually littered each morning with a score of identical female corpses, an agglomeration no more substantial-looking than seaweed against the unhealthy yellow sand; where the soul's passage was more a mass migration across that choppy fetch of Atlantic the wind never left alone, from an island of low cloud, like an anchored prison ship, to simple integration with the unimaginable mass of their continent; where the single line of track still edged toward a Keetmanshoop that could in no conceivable iconology be any part of the Kingdom of Death; where, finally, humanity was reduced, out of a necessity which in his loonier moments he could almost believe was only Deutsch-Sudwestafrika's (actually he knew better), out of a confrontation the young of one's contemporaries, God help them, had yet to make, humanity was reduced to a nervous, disquieted, forever inadequate but indissoluble Popular Front against deceptively unpolitical and apparently minor enemies, enemies that would be with him to the grave: a sun with no shape, a beach alien as the moon's antarctic, restless concubines in barbed wire, salt mists, alkaline earth, the Benguela Current that would never cease bringing sand to raise the harbor floor, the inertia of rock, the frailty of flesh, the structural unreliability of thorns; the unheard whimper of a dying woman; the frightening but necessary cry of the strand wolf in the fog."




Not going to lie and pretend that I can understand the whole thing, but there is something majestic and beautiful in this passage despite the dark and heinous subject matter. 

Not to mention the fact that is the most hilariously long (took up nearly one and a half pages) I have ever seen in my life. Only Pynchon could manage to do this without coming across as pretentious.


----------



## Troubadour

"O turn unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant, and save the son of thine handmaid," (Psalm 86:16, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## JoeTheStoner

i get such a kick out of internet comments and reviews. like seriously this is the best weed review



> went over there he already knew it was me so he literally made me wait for 15mins after I signed up wit them until I when to the window to ask what's taking long dude was on snapchat taking pictures like a bitch would! It was just all bad because ppl where coming in and he was letting them in while I was waiting so when I did go to the back all the bud tenders where faded all waxed out so there were slow af ! I'm a paying customer that just wants to get in and get out! And the worst part is that they only have 3 strains of weed on the shelf this place sucks the vibes sucks would not recommend sorry that I'm the only real one on there's comments



respect.


----------



## Troubadour

"So teach _us_ to number our days, that we may apply _our_hearts unto wisdom," (Psalm 90:12, Moses, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker," (Psalm 95:6, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## sigmond

"don't be afraid to switch it up sometime" - sigmond


----------



## Erikmen

“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same,
 but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”


----------



## sigmond

good to see that you're back Erik!


----------



## Captain.Heroin

It's weird because stuff happens, and

you don't notice it while it's happening.

You know what the best part is?

-what?

I'm not hooked.  I can stop any time.


----------



## sigmond

“In my books I’ve imagined people salting the Gulf Stream, damming the glaciers sliding off the Greenland ice cap, pumping ocean water into the dry basins of the Sahara and Asia to create salt seas, pumping melted ice from Antarctica north to provide freshwater, genetically engineering bacteria to sequester more carbon in the roots of trees, raising Florida 30 feet to get it back above water, and (hardest of all) comprehensively changing capitalism.” —Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, 2012


----------



## Troubadour

"Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof," (Psalm 102:13-14, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"Blessed _are_ they that keep judgment, _and_ he that doeth righteousness at all times," (Psalm 106:3, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## Troubadour

"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies," (Psalm 103:2-4, David, Holy Bible).


----------



## BigPoppaGoonie

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they are going to be dead by midnight.  Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of reward.  Your life will never be the same again. - Og Mandino


----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Troubadour




----------



## Erikmen

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”


----------



## sigmond

"By today’s sensibilities, it’s more than a little macabre that a great moral movement would adopt as its symbol a graphic representation of a revolting means of torture and execution. (Imagine that the logo of a Holocaust museum was a shower nozzle, or that survivors of the Rwandan genocide formed a religion around the symbol of a machete.)" - Steve Pinker


----------



## ladydove

_I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free._


----------



## Erikmen

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; 
and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”


----------



## JoeTheStoner

Volunteer-Magic 168 points 2 hours ago* 

Drink Mountain Dew and eat Doritos for DLC codes!


----------



## tantric

> Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketeers of World War II, excisors of telepatic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrents taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, officials of unconstituted police states, brokers of exquisite dreams and nostalgias tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, drinkers of the Heavy Fluid sealed in translucent anber of dreams.



-naked lunch


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful ... It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone.


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters ... ; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art.


----------



## Erikmen

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” 
― George Bernard Shaw


----------



## Erikmen

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” 
― Seneca

*“Nothing can disturb your peace of mind unless you allow it to.” 
** Roy T. Bennett*


----------



## JahSEEuS

Troubadour said:


> "So teach _us_ to number our days, that we may apply _our_hearts unto wisdom," (Psalm 90:12, Moses, Holy Bible).





Troubadour said:


> "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker," (Psalm 95:6, David, Holy Bible).





sigmond said:


> "don't be afraid to switch it up sometime" - sigmond




lol

medicine makes the best laughter - and it works the other way around

-me and plenty of others I'm sure.


----------



## Erikmen

^ Sure thing. 

“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” 
― Voltaire


----------



## JahSEEuS

Dope quote m8


----------



## Erikmen

^ Yeah, it seems to fit the profile undoubtedly. 

“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.”


----------



## Erikmen

“Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water.
 But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”


----------



## JahSEEuS




----------



## Erikmen

This was perfect for my day at work;

“If you think the most courageous and difficult thing you can do is stubbornly stand your ground, try graciously giving in.”


----------



## Erikmen

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” 
― Ernest Hemingway


----------



## Felonious Monk

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans.  The present is our only reality.  The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore unreal.  _Any_ intellectually conceived object is _always_ in the past and therefore _unreal_.  Reality is always the moment of vision _before_ the intellectualization takes place.  _There is no other reality._  This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality.  Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge _from_ this preintellectual reality, Quality is the _parent_, the _source_ of all subjects and objects.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(italics original)


----------



## Erikmen

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.” 
― J.K. Rowling,


----------



## Erikmen

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” 
― Mark Twain


----------



## Erikmen

“We learn from failure, not from success!” 
― Bram Stoker


----------



## sigmond

Better to die, and sleep The never-waking sleep, than linger on And dare to live when the soul's life is gone. - Sophocles?


----------



## Buspersons Holiday

*Poem* by Ted Kooser

Get your tongue
out
of my mouth;
I'm kissing you
goodbye


----------



## Erikmen

_We are stronger in the places that we have been broken._


----------



## JoeTheStoner

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”


― C.S. Lewis


----------



## Erikmen

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”


----------



## Punkchick22

'I love you I'll say one day, just to see your face. Then I'll slowly walk away gone without a trace.'


----------



## Erikmen

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
― Friedrich Nietzsche


----------



## Jabberwocky

Punkchick22 said:


> 'I love you I'll say one day, just to see your face. Then I'll slowly walk away gone without a trace.'



Love is indeed the capital of pain


----------



## Erikmen

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”


----------



## Ovidio

He spoke, and returned madly to the same reflection, and his      tears stirred the water, and the image became obscured in the rippling pool.      As he saw it vanishing, he cried out ‘Where do you fly to?  Stay, cruel one,      do not abandon one who loves you! I am allowed to gaze at what I cannot touch,      and so provide food for my miserable passion!’ While he weeps, he tears at      the top of his clothes: then strikes his naked chest with hands of marble.      His chest flushes red when they strike it, as apples are often pale in part,      part red, or as grapes in their different bunches are stained with purple      when they are not yet ripe.

       As he sees all this reflected in the dissolving waves, he can      bear it no longer, but as yellow wax melts in a light flame, as morning frost      thaws in the sun, so he is weakened and melted by love, and worn away little      by little by the hidden fire. He no longer retains his colour, the white mingled      with red, no longer has life and strength, and that form so pleasing to look      at, nor has he that body which Echo loved.      Still, when she saw this, though angered and remembering, she pitied him,      and as often as the poor boy said ‘Alas!’ she repeated with her echoing voice      ‘_Alas!_’ and when his hands strike at his shoulders, she returns the      same sounds of pain. His last words as he looked into the familiar pool were      ‘Alas, in vain, beloved boy!’ and the place echoed every word, and when he      said ‘Goodbye!’ Echo also said ‘_Goodbye!_’ 

       He laid down his weary head in the green grass, death closing      those eyes that had marvelled at their lord’s beauty.

       And even when he had been received into the house of shadows, he gazed into      the Stygian waters. His sisters the      Naiads lamented, and let down their      hair for their brother, and the Dryads lamented. Echo returned their laments.      And now they were preparing the funeral pyre, the quivering torches and the      bier, but there was no body. They came upon a flower, instead of his body,      with white petals surrounding a yellow heart.


----------



## Erikmen

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”


----------



## Ovidio

*The Brazen Age* 

To this came next in course, the brazen age: 
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage, 
Not impious yet...


----------



## Erikmen

I love this next quote, from Jobs' speech. Forgive me if I have used it before.


“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”


----------



## Erikmen

"Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”


----------



## Ovidio

*The Iron Age* 

Hard steel succeeded then: 
And stubborn as the metal, were the men. 
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook: 
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took. 
Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew. 
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new: 
Trees, rudely hollow'd, did the waves sustain; 
E're ships in triumph plough'd the watry plain.


----------



## Erikmen

“Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you."


----------



## Ovidio

Dinners and banquets offer easy access to women's favour, and the    pleasures of the grape are not the only entertainment you may find  there;   Love, with rosy cheeks, often presses in her frail hands the  amphora of   Bacchus. As soon as his wings are drenched with wine, Cupid  grows drowsy and   stirs not from his place. But anon he'll be up and  shaking the moisture from   his wings, and woe betide the man or woman  who receives a sprinkling of this   burning dew. Wine fills the heart  with thoughts of love and makes it prompt   to catch on fire. All  troubles vanish, put to flight by copious draughts.


----------



## Erikmen

"They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”


----------



## Erikmen

"Be not afraid of going slowly be afraid of standing still."


----------



## Ovidio

Then is the time for laughter, the poor man plucks up courage and    imagines he's a millionaire. To the deuce with worries and troubles!  Brows   unpucker and hearts expand; every tongue's inspired by  frankness, and calls a   spade a spade. We've often lost our heart to a  pretty girl at dinner.   Bringing love and wine together is adding fuel  to fire indeed. Don't judge a   woman by candle-light, it's deceptive.  If you really want to know what she's   like, look at her by daylight,  and when you're sober. It was broad daylight,   and under the open sky,  that Paris looked upon the three goddesses and said   to Venus, "You are  lovelier than your two rivals." Night covers a   multitude of blemishes  and imperfections. At night there is no such thing as   an ugly woman!  If you want to look at precious stones, or coloured cloth, you   take  them out into the light of day; and it's by daylight you should judge a    woman's face and figure.


----------



## Erikmen

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”


----------



## Ovidio

The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move, 
Still dash'd with blushes for her slighted love, 
Liv'd in the shady covert of the woods, 
In solitary caves and dark abodes; 
Where pining wander'd the rejected fair, 
'Till harrass'd out, and worn away with care, 
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft, 
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left. 
Her bones are petrify'd, her voice is found 
In vaults, where still it doubles ev'ry sound.


----------



## Erikmen

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”


----------



## Ovidio

*The Giants*

And lest ethereal heights should long remain less troubled than the  earth, the throne of Heaven was threatened by the Giants; and they piled  mountain on mountain to the lofty stars. But Jove, omnipotent, shot  thunderbolts through Mount Olympus, and he overturned from Ossa huge,  enormous Pelion. And while these dreadful bodies lay overwhelmed in  their tremendous bulk, (so fame reports) the Earth was reeking with the  copious blood of her gigantic sons; and thus replete with moisture she  infused the steaming gore with life renewed. So that a monument of such  ferocious stock should be retained, she made that offspring in the shape  of man; but this new race alike despised the Gods, and by the greed of  savage slaughter proved a sanguinary birth.


----------



## Erikmen

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
Pablo Neruda


----------



## herbavore

Not really writing but words from a writer, the poet Tony Hoagland, in an interview; so, almost:



> I just got back from the Florida Panhandle, near Pensacola, and to me it was something like poetry. On the one hand, the reality of the Arby's and the parking lots and the tattoo parlors and the clam shacks. One hundred feet away, on the other hand, was the beach, the impossible sugar-white sand, and the turquoise, crystal-clear ocean. It was spring break and I know that, a block away, a sophomore named Nancy from Tallahassee was vomiting under a Ferris wheel, and some other kid named Todd was jumping off the balcony of his third-floor room into the hotel swimming pool, and the ambulance was already on its way, and the blue blue ocean was minding its own eternal business. That catches the coexistence of the sacred and profane, which makes the world and makes poetry too. That juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, of the precious and the appalling, is really important to my poetry. It's a description of the world, and, to me, also a description of human nature, of psychological reality.


----------



## Erikmen

[h=2]“What I thought was an end
turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall
turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.” [/h]


----------



## Ovidio

[h=4]INVOCATION[/h] My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed
to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods
inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves
and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song
in smooth and measured strains, from olden days
when earth began to this completed time!


----------



## herbavore

Erikmen said:


> [h=2]“What I thought was an end
> turned out to be a middle.
> What I thought was a brick wall
> turned out to be a tunnel.
> What I thought was an injustice
> turned out to be a color of the sky.” [/h]



I have this poem in Caleb's shrine--I love it.


----------



## Erikmen

^ 

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach.”


----------



## Erikmen

*“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” 


*


----------



## Spac3Ghost

"Man belongs to the Earth."


----------



## Erikmen

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”


----------



## Erikmen

[h=1]“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
― John Lennon[/h]


----------



## sigmond

“When the sensitive youngster has made these unpleasant realizations [about the evil in man and the danger and hardship of existence],” Arieti writes, “he has difficulties in facing life. How can he trust, how can he love or retain a loving attitude towards fellow human beings? He might then become suspicious and paranoid; he might become a detached person unable to love. But this is not the case with the phobic. The phobic is a person who retains his ability to love. As a matter of fact, in my long psychiatric career I have never seen a phobic person who was not a loving person.” 

We are born, it seems, into a Rousseauian state of innocence, but if we accurately observe life and human nature, we must adopt a Hobbesian defensive crouch against life’s depredations. Phobias sublimate our Hobbesian horror into neurotic and irrational fears, Arieti argues, allowing us to preserve a more innocent and loving stance toward the world.

-My Age of Anxiety: Scott Stossel


----------



## DirkDiggler84

*Sabriel by Garth Nix. Or Lord of the Flies on a darker note. Im fascinated with the duality of man. People are generally good until given a risk-free choice to fulfill a dark desire, even at the cost of innocence or life, or worse._._BOTH!  I know I know, this is my melodramatic voice lol.*


----------



## Ovidio

*“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”*


----------



## Erikmen

^ Good one!  

“The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”


----------



## Ovidio

*LOVE'S CURE*

LOVE, had read the title of this work. "’Tis war," said   he, "I see  ’tis war that's now declared against me." O,   Cupid, do not so accuse  thy poet; do not so accuse me, who so oft beneath thy   sway have  carried the standards thou didst give into my care. No Diomede am I   by  whom thy mother was wounded when the steeds of Mars bore her, all.    bleeding, to her skyey home. Other youths oft burn with a languid flame;  but   I have always loved; and wouldst thou know what I am doing at  this moment?   Why, I am loving still! Nay, more than that: I have  taught unto others the   art of winning thy favours; I have shown how  the promptings of blind passion   should give place to the dictates of  reason. Ah, no; none shall behold me   going back upon my lessons,  betraying thee, sweet child, recanting all that I   have sung, and so  destroying the work of my own hands.

    Let every man who loves a woman that requites his love drink deep of  his   delight and spread his sails to prospering breezes. But if he is a  hopeless   wight that groans in the thraldom of an unworthy mistress,  let him receive   the assistance of my art so that he may escape from  the toils. Wherefore   would you have some poor unfortunate devil go and  hang himself by a rope from   a lofty beam and die a miserable death;  or another plunge a dagger into his   bowels? You, Cupid, are a lover of  peace. The thought of murder fills you   with horror. Now here is a man  who, if he cannot cease to love, will die the   miserable victim of an  unhappy passion. Let him, therefore, cease to love,   and you will not  have his death upon your conscience.


----------



## Erikmen

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle.
But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”


----------



## ShellsBells

'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas. Specifically the line, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light". It inspires me to not just give up my fight against the disease that's killing me. And enjoy the drugs that they give me to combat it.


----------



## Erikmen

"If you try, you may succeed.
If you don’t try, you will not succeed. This is true for of all things.
Not succeeding is the result of not trying."


----------



## Ovidio

Take not away the life you cannot give; 
For all things have an equal right to live, 
Kill noxious creatures where 'tis sin to save; 
This only just prerogative we have; 
But nourish life with vegetable food, 
And shun the sacriligeous taste of blood.


Forbear, O mortals, 
To spoil your bodies with such impious food! 
There is corn for you, apples, whose weight bears down 
The bending branches; there are grapes that swell 
On the vines, and pleasant herbs, and greens 
Made mellow and soft with cooking; there is milk 
And clover-honey. Earth is generous 
With her provision, and her sustenance 
Is very kind; she offers, for your tables, 
Food that requires no bloodshed and no slaughter.


Oh Ox, how great are thy desserts! A being without guile, harmless, simple, 
willing for work! Ungrateful and unworthy of the fruits of earth, man his 
own farm labourer slays and smites with the axe that toil-worn neck that 
had so oft renewed for him the face of the hard earth; so many harvests.


----------



## Erikmen

^ There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies.


----------



## Ovidio

Erikmen said:


> ^There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies.


All things change, nothing is extinguished. 
There is nothing in the  whole world which is permanent. 
Everything flows onward; 
all things are  brought into being with a changing nature; 
the ages themselves glide by  in constant movement.


----------



## Erikmen

“_Dans la nature rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd, tout change.

In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.” 
― Antoine Lavoisier_


----------



## Asclepius

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

-_Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_


----------



## Erikmen

The one thing that matters is the effort. 
Antoine de Saint-Exupery


----------



## Erikmen

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent” 
― Victor Hugo


----------



## Asclepius

That we had to become estranged is the law above us; through it we should come to have more respect for each other–and the thought of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small stretches–let us rise to this thought! But our life is too short and our vision too meager for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we must be earth enemies.

- Nietzsche


----------



## Erikmen

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. 
As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; 
they cease to be mind.” 
― Friedrich Nietzsche


----------



## Asclepius

Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.

― John Banville


----------



## Erikmen

^ Nice

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”


----------



## Erikmen

“If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.” 

And,

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.”


----------



## Ovidio

All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face  so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky


----------



## Erikmen

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 
― Søren Kierkegaard


----------



## Ovidio

Erikmen said:


> “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
> ― Søren Kierkegaard


Nice, I really like Kierkegaard


*“Sleep, rest of things, O pleasing Deity, Peace of the soul, which cares dost crucify, Weary bodies refresh and mollify.*


----------



## Erikmen

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”


----------



## Asclepius

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.


- Hermann Hesse


----------



## Erikmen

​Sometimes I wish there was no alarm clock because that is the only device which wakes me up while I am dreaming of you.


----------



## keeping

'some things beggar likeness.'
- Frank Herbert, _Dune_


----------



## Erikmen

“People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently.”


----------



## keeping

༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽ <hell is other people)

- jean-paul sarte


----------



## Erikmen

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” 
― Oscar Wilde


----------



## Speedballer916

Defeat is a state of mind: no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality ~ Bruce Lee


----------



## Speedballer916

Man cannot change the direction of the wind,he can only adjust his sails. $. ️️


----------



## Erikmen

^ Nice! 

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” 
― William Shakespeare


----------



## keeping

'When life is over, we are taught to live.'

Michel de Montaigne


----------



## Erikmen

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 
― Albert Einstein


----------



## Ovidio

There is a deeply cut cave, a hollow mountain, near the Cimmerian      country, the house and sanctuary of drowsy Sleep. Phoebus can never reach      it with his dawn, mid-day or sunset rays. Clouds mixed with fog, and shadows      of the half-light, are exhaled from the ground. No waking cockerel summons      Aurora with his crowing: no dog disturbs the silence      with its anxious barking, or goose, cackling, more alert than a dog. No beasts,      or cattle, or branches in the breeze, no clamour of human tongues. There still      silence dwells. But out of the stony depths flows Lethe’s stream, whose waves, sliding over the      loose pebbles, with their murmur, induce drowsiness. In front of the cave      mouth a wealth of poppies flourish, and innumerable herbs, from whose juices      dew-wet Night gathers sleep, and scatters it over the darkened      earth. There are no doors in the palace, lest a turning hinge lets out a creak,      and no guard at the threshold. But in the cave’s centre there is a tall bed      made of ebony, downy, black-hued, spread with a dark-grey sheet, where the      god himself lies, his limbs relaxed in slumber. Around him, here and there,      lie uncertain dreams, taking different forms, as many as the ears of corn      at harvest, as the trees bear leaves, or grains of sand are thrown onshore.


----------



## Erikmen

“I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”


----------



## keeping

'And alien tears will fill for him
pity's long broken urn.
For his mourners will be outcast men, 
and outcasts always mourn.'

- Oscar Wilde
_The Ballad of Reading Gaol,_


----------



## Erikmen

"Cry, forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness."


----------



## keeping

Ovidio said:


> There is a deeply cut cave, a hollow mountain, near the Cimmerian      country, the house and sanctuary of drowsy Sleep. Phoebus can never reach      it with his dawn, mid-day or sunset rays. Clouds mixed with fog, and shadows      of the half-light, are exhaled from the ground. No waking cockerel summons      Aurora with his crowing: no dog disturbs the silence      with its anxious barking, or goose, cackling, more alert than a dog. No beasts,      or cattle, or branches in the breeze, no clamour of human tongues. There still      silence dwells. But out of the stony depths flows Lethe’s stream, whose waves, sliding over the      loose pebbles, with their murmur, induce drowsiness. In front of the cave      mouth a wealth of poppies flourish, and innumerable herbs, from whose juices      dew-wet Night gathers sleep, and scatters it over the darkened      earth. There are no doors in the palace, lest a turning hinge lets out a creak,      and no guard at the threshold. But in the cave’s centre there is a tall bed      made of ebony, downy, black-hued, spread with a dark-grey sheet, where the      god himself lies, his limbs relaxed in slumber. Around him, here and there,      lie uncertain dreams, taking different forms, as many as the ears of corn      at harvest, as the trees bear leaves, or grains of sand are thrown onshore.



Odysseus? beowulf? the river of sleep, Lethe, is a greek legend but it might extend to others...
i would have to go with Odysseus as a guess - could you let us know?


----------



## Erikmen

^ *Metamorphoses Book XI (A. S. Kline's Version)? 

*


----------



## Erikmen

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”*

*


----------



## keeping

Erikmen said:


> ^ *Metamorphoses Book XI (A. S. Kline's Version)?
> 
> *




ooooh Ovid! cheers erik

[h=4]ON A JOURNEY ILL;
MY DREAM GOES WANDERING,
OVER WITHERED FIELDS.[/h]-  Basho
​​​


----------



## Erikmen

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”


----------



## keeping

'some things beggar likeness.'

_Dune
_Frank Herbert


----------



## Erikmen

“Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their décor, their clothes, everything – taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life. Never to be satisfied. If you are perfectly happy with what you got, especially if what you got isn’t even all the spectacular then you’re dangerous. You’re breaking all the rules. You’re undermining the sacred economy. You’re challenging every assumption that society is built on.”


----------



## Jmr828

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with pain. 
-James Baldwin


----------



## Erikmen

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” 
― Elie Wiesel


----------



## Erikmen

“Get busy living or get busy dying.” 

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” 
― Stephen King


----------



## Mysterie

i may have shared this already, but it is worth being said again anyhow.


----------



## Erikmen

^ Nice  

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” 
― Paulo Coelho


----------



## Asclepius

^Love is powerful stuff 

“What you call passion is not a spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world. Where passion dominates, that does not signify the presence of greater desire and ambition, but rather the misdirection of these qualities toward and isolated and false goal, with a consequent tension and sultriness in the atmosphere. Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example, they will not shout or wave their arms. But, I assure you, they are nevertheless, burning with subdued fires.” 


 - Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game


----------



## Erikmen

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” 
― Elbert Hubbard


----------



## Erikmen

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


----------



## Erikmen

Today's quote*s*:

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. 
I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” 
― C.S. Lewis


----------



## Erikmen

Today's quote: 

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde.


----------



## keeping

'to repeat excessively is to enter into loss'

- roland barthes

'happiness is the longing for repetition'

- milan kundera


D:
wait wat


----------



## Erikmen

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now
Edna St. Vincent Millay


----------



## Erikmen

About stress, quite of an issue these days. 

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” 

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”*– Sydney J. Harris

*“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started. * David Allen*


----------



## Erikmen

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” 
― Pablo Neruda


----------



## Erikmen

"Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. 
I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.”
Jonathan Foer


----------



## scubagirl200

"Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik


----------



## Erikmen

“If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.” 
Paulo Coelho


----------



## JoeTheStoner

^ brings to mind a similar quote...

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” ...  The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis


----------



## Erikmen

^ Spot on.

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
 Charlotte Brontë


----------



## Erikmen

Knowing is not enough; We must apply. Willing is not enough; We must do.
Goethe


----------



## scubagirl200

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
Janet Fitch


----------



## Asclepius

"I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage, I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me." 

_C. G. Jung_


----------



## Erikmen

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” 
― C.G. Jung


----------



## Erikmen

Sometimes following your heart means losing your mind.


----------



## Erikmen

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.” 
Glen Cook


----------



## Jekyl Anhydride

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."

_Elbert Hubbard_


----------



## Guesswh084

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." 

       -Oscar Wilde


----------



## Erikmen

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” 
― Elbert Hubbard


----------



## Mysterie

i really resonated with this passage in what i believe is kurt vonnegut's last book


----------



## Erikmen

^ He wrote that "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Player Piano


----------



## scubagirl200




----------



## Erikmen

*Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.     *


----------



## somnilicious

Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out.

simple but I love it.... From the movie.. Catch me If You Can..


----------



## scubagirl200

"Isn't it funny.I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than i ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you."
Janet Fitch


----------



## somnilicious

Love yourself Scubagirl... Fuck da rest.. It's temperamental.


----------



## scubagirl200

I do and I am


----------



## Erikmen

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.


----------



## keeping

and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


----------



## Erikmen

"And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”


----------



## BehindtheShadow

A woman is like a tea bag you cant tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water - Eleanor Roosevelt


----------



## Erikmen

"What's now proved was once only imagined.” 
― William Blake


----------



## 34-dihydroxyphen

I haven't gotten around to reading the actual novel yet, but the opening passage of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man has always stood out to me. 



> “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie extoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”



Might make this the next novel I pick up on my list, although I've been slacking on my reading lately, so it might be awhile.


----------



## Asclepius

> ...literature counteracts economic, political or pragmatic forms of interpreting and instrumentalizing human life, and breaks up one-dimensional views of the world and the self, opening them up towards their repressed or excluded other. Literature is thus, on the one hand, a sensorium for what goes wrong in a society, for the biophobic, life-paralyzing implications of one-sided forms of consciousness and civilizational uniformity, and it is, on the other hand, a medium of constant cultural self-renewal, in which the neglected biophilic energies can find a symbolic space of expression and of (re-)integration into the larger ecology of cultural discourses.



Zapf


----------



## Erikmen

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” 
― Friedrich Nietzsche


----------



## cduggles

Gwendolyn Brooks

           THE POOL PLAYERS. 
     SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.


----------



## Erikmen

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” 
― Plato


----------



## Erikmen

"Your best days are ahead of you. The movie starts when the guy gets sober and puts his life back together; it doesn't end there.”


----------



## Speedballer916

Sometimes two people have to fall apart to realize how much they need to fall back together


----------



## Kittycat5




----------



## Erikmen

*"Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.”*


----------



## scubagirl200




----------



## Erikmen

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato


----------



## cduggles

Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~Plato


----------



## scubagirl200

I wonder how much of what weighs me down is not mine to carry


----------



## Buspersons Holiday

*Solitude*

I have a house where I go
When there's too many people
I have a house where I go
Where no one can be;

I have a house where I go
Where nobody ever says 'No'
Where no one says anything - so

There is no one but me

*AA Milne*


----------



## Erikmen

"The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” 
― F. Scott Fitzgerald


----------



## D's

Waking up this morning, I smile, Twenty four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all the beings with eyes of compassion.
-Thich Nhat Hanh


----------



## Erikmen

“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.” 
J. Steinbeck


----------



## scubagirl200

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.”


----------



## Erikmen

^ By making mistakes, I believe you can learn some of the best lessons in life IMO. 


“By seeking and blundering we learn.” 
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


----------



## cduggles

*To the Nightingale*

On what secret night in England

Or by the incalculable constant Rhine,

Lost among all the nights of my nights,

Carried to my unknowing ear

Your voice, burdened with mythology,

Nightingale of Virgil, of the Persians?

Perhaps I never heard you, yet my life

I bound to your life, inseparably.


A wandering spirit is your symbol

In a book of enigmas. El Marino

Named you the siren of the woods

And you sing through Juliet's night

And in the intricate Latin pages

And from the pine-trees of that other,

Nightingale of Germany and Judea,

Heine, mocking, burning, mourning.


Keats heard you for all, everywhere.

There's not one of the bright names

The people of the earth have given you

That does not yearn to match your music,

Nightingale of shadows. The Muslim

Dreamed you drunk with ecstasy

His breast trans-pierced by the thorn

Of the sung rose that you redden

With your last blood. Assiduously

I plot these lines in twilight emptiness,

Nightingale of the shores and seas,

Who in exaltation, memory and fable

Burn with love and die melodiously.


*Jorge Luis Borges*


----------



## Erikmen

“Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away."
Dag Hammarskjold


----------



## keeping

Erikmen said:


> ?It?s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.?
> J. Steinbeck



_༼༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽ 
_really hits home

Maybe it?s good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there.
- perks of being a wallflower


----------



## Erikmen

^


“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.” 
― Sigmund Freud


----------



## Erikmen

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 
? Maya Angelou


----------



## Speedballer916

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery


----------



## Erikmen

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” 
M. Proust


----------



## JoeTheStoner

“I guess I was just trying to say that the Internet is good at satisfying needs from a distance. Male or female.” 
Jonathan Franzen, Purity


----------



## Erikmen

“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.”


----------



## JoeTheStoner




----------



## Erikmen

“It’s an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” Joseph Powell


----------



## Asclepius

"I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, 
I sought it daily for six weeks or so. 
Maybe at last being but a broken man 
I must be satisfied with my heart, although 
Winter and summer till old age began 
My circus animals were all on show, 
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, 
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. 

...Those masterful images because complete 
Grew in pure mind but out of what began? 
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, 
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, 
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut 
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone 
I must lie down where all the ladders start 
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

- excerpt from, The Circus Animals Desertion,
by William Butler Yeats


----------



## Erikmen

“Believe you can and you're halfway there.” 
Theodore Roosevelt


----------



## Erikmen

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.”
Paulo Coelho


----------



## scubagirl200

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it


----------



## scubagirl200

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.


----------



## Erikmen

My thoughts are free to go anywhere, but it's surprising how often they head in your direction. ~ Unknown


----------



## Erikmen

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”


----------



## Erikmen

“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”


----------



## Erikmen

“To die, to sleep - 
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...” 
Shakespeare


----------



## Erikmen

“Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time. ”


----------



## Naomi Neu

"Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the characteristic of man in all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race; and has tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the condition of the brutes."

"The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive."

The Alchemists - Charles Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - 1852 

The only writer quoted in Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse 5'


----------



## Erikmen

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.


----------



## JoeTheStoner

I like playing roles; it makes me feel safe. Authenticity for me perhaps means something different than for most people. I don’t have one interpretation of authenticity when it comes to style; I like moving between them. When I wear a sweatshirt with ‘Monoprix’ on it, what am I signalling? Am I saying it’s cool to work at a supermarket or am I making people ask themselves why I’m wearing a Monoprix logo, when I could be wearing one from Balenciaga? Well, you tell me. Obviously everybody knows that I don’t work at Monoprix, well everyone who knows me does anyway. If a stranger sees me in the street wearing my Monoprix jumper, they might think I really do work there and I quite like that.


----------



## Erikmen

*“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” 
Charlotte Brontë*


----------



## Tubbs

Very true


----------



## scubagirl200

Song of the Open Road
BY WALT WHITMAN
1 
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 
Healthy, free, the world before me, 
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, 
Strong and content I travel the open road. 

The earth, that is sufficient, 
I do not want the constellations any nearer, 
I know they are very well where they are, 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them. 

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens, 
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go, 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 

2 
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, 
I believe that much unseen is also here. 

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial, 
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied; 
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics, 
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple, 

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town, 
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted, 
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me. 

3 
You air that serves me with breath to speak! 
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! 
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! 
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! 
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me. 

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships! 

You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d fa?ades! you roofs! 
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! 
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! 
You doors and ascending steps! you arches! 
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings! 
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me, 
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. 

4 
The earth expanding right hand and left hand, 
The picture alive, every part in its best light, 
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, 
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road. 

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me? 
Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost? 
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me? 

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, 
You express me better than I can express myself, 
You shall be more to me than my poem. 

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also, 
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles, 
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me, 
I think whoever I see must be happy. 

5 
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, 
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, 
Listening to others, considering well what they say, 
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, 
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. 
I inhale great draughts of space, 
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. 

I am larger, better than I thought, 
I did not know I held so much goodness. 

All seems beautiful to me, 
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you, 
I will recruit for myself and you as I go, 
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, 
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them, 
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, 
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. 

6 
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me, 
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me. 

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, 
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. 

Here a great personal deed has room, 
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men, 
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.) 

Here is the test of wisdom, 
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, 
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, 
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, 
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, 
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; 
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. 

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions, 
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents. 

Here is realization, 
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him, 
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them. 

Only the kernel of every object nourishes; 
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me? 
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me? 

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos; 
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers? 
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls? 

7 
Here is the efflux of the soul, 
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions, 
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? 
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? 
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? 
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? 
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass 
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers? 
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side? 
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause? 
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine? 

8 
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness, 
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times, 
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged. 

Here rises the fluid and attaching character, 
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman, 
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.) 

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old, 
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments, 
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact. 

9 
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me! 
Traveling with me you find what never tires. 

The earth never tires, 
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, 
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d, 
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. 

Allons! we must not stop here, 
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, 
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, 
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while. 

10 
Allons! the inducements shall be greater, 
We will sail pathless and wild seas, 
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail. 

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements, 
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity; 
Allons! from all formules! 
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests. 

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer. 

Allons! yet take warning! 
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance, 
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health, 
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself, 
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies, 
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here. 

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, 
We convince by our presence.) 

11 
Listen! I will be honest with you, 
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes, 
These are the days that must happen to you: 
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches, 
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve, 
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart, 
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you, 
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting, 
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you. 

12 
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them! 
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women, 
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, 
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land, 
Habitu?s of many distant countries, habitu?s of far-distant dwellings, 
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers, 
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore, 
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children, 
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins, 
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it, 
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases, 
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days, 
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood, 
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content, 
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood, 
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, 
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death. 

13 
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless, 
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, 
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys, 
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it, 
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it, 
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you, 
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither, 
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, 
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens, 
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through, 
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go, 
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts, 
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, 
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. 

All parts away for the progress of souls, 
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. 

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward, 
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, 
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men, 
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go, 
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great. 

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth! 
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you. 

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen! 
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it. 

Behold through you as bad as the rest, 
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people, 
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces, 
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair. 

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession, 
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes, 
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors, 
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, 
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere, 
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones, 
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers, 
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself, 
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself. 

14 
Allons! through struggles and wars! 
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded. 

Have the past struggles succeeded? 
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? 
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion, 
He going with me must go well arm’d, 
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. 

15 
Allons! the road is before us! 
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d! 

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! 
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! 
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher! 
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law. 

Camerado, I give you my hand! 
I give you my love more precious than money, 
I give you myself before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? 
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?


----------



## Jekyl Anhydride

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

May God be with you and bless you:
May you see your children's children.
May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home
And may the hand of a friend always be near.

May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.

_Labeled as a Traditional Irish/ Gaelic Blessing. 
(Having a hard time finding the original source)_


----------



## Blue_Phlame

*Violets are red*


----------



## Thou

You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."

    "I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."

    "You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."

    "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."

    "You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"

    "Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."

    "Don't try to deny it."

    "I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. "I agree with all you've said.

Joseph Heller, Catch 22

    Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. 'This long.' He snapped his fingers. 'A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man.'

    'Old?' asked Clevinger with surprise. 'What are you talking about?'

    'Old.'

    'I'm not old.'

    'You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?' Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

    'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?'

    'I do,' Dunbar told him.

    'Why?' Clevinger asked.

    'What else is there?

Joseph Heller, Catch-22


----------



## GreenEyedGirrrL

Leonard Cohen
Book of Longing


----------



## Asclepius

' used to be psychic, but I drank my way out of it'


- Mark E. Smith


----------



## sigmond

Salman Rushdie - The Golden House​It was a year of two bubbles. In one of those bubbles, the Joker shrieked and the laugh-track crowds laughed right on cue. In that bubble the climate was not changing and the end of the Arctic icecap was just a new real estate opportunity. In that bubble, gun murderers were exercising their constitutional rights but the parents of murdered children were un-American. 

In that bubble, if its inhabitants were victorious, the president of the neighboring country to the south which was sending rapists and killers to America would be forced to pay for a wall dividing the two nations to keep the killers and rapists south of the border where they belonged; and crime would end; and the country?s enemies would be defeated instantly and overwhelmingly; and mass deportations would be a good thing; and women reporters would be seen to be unreliable because they had blood coming out of their whatevers; and the parents of dead war heroes would be revealed to be working for radical Islam; and international treaties would not have to be honored; and Russia would be a friend and that would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Russian oligarchs propping up the Joker?s shady enterprises; and the meanings of things would change; multiple bankruptcies would be understood to prove great business expertise; and three and a half thousand lawsuits against you would be understood to prove business acumen; and stiffing your contractors would prove your tough-guy business attitude; and a crooked university would prove your commitment to education; and while the Second Amendment would be sacred the First would not be; so those who criticized the leader would suffer consequences; and African Americans would go along with it all because what the hell did they have to lose. 

In that bubble knowledge was ignorance, up was down, and the right person to hold the nuclear codes in his hand was the green-haired white-skinned red-slash-mouthed giggler who asked a military briefing team four times why using nuclear weapons was so bad. In that bubble, razor-tipped playing cards were funny, and lapel flowers that sprayed acid into people?s faces were funny, and wishing you could have sex with your daughter was funny, and sarcasm was funny even when what was called sarcasm was not sarcastic, and lying was funny, and hatred was funny, and bigotry was funny, and bullying was funny, and the date was, or almost was, or might soon be, if the jokes worked out as they should, nineteen eighty-four.

(originally one paragraph)​


----------



## Jekyl Anhydride

(Daffodils) - 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed- and gazed- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


_William Wordsworth_


----------



## sigmond

You can destroy a person without resorting to the graphic violence of the Realms; can crush hopes and squander dreams, waste talent, refuse to train and educate an able mind, but rather keep a person in a prison of work, without praise or prospects, and certainly unable to develop what is in them of mind and heart. 

- Olivia Laing: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour.

- Aldous Huxley: Themes and Variations (1950)

*Five Moral Precepts*

1. ON PROTECTING LIFE Aware of the suffering brought about by the destruction of life, I vow to not kill any living being. I will do my best to cultivate nonaggression and compassion and to learn to protect life. 

2. ON RESPECTING WHAT BELONGS TO OTHERS Aware of the suffering caused by stealing or taking anything that belongs to others, I vow to not take what is not offered. I will do my best to respect the property of others. 

3. ON NOT HARMING OTHERS WITH OUR SEXUAL ENERGY Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful or aggressive sexual energy, I vow to be faithful to my current partner and not harm others with my sexual energy. I will do my best to be aware of what harms myself and others and to nurture true love and respect, free from attachment. I aspire to serve and protect all beings. 

4. ON MINDFUL SPEECH Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech, I vow to cultivate right speech. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I will do my best to not lie, to not gossip or slander, to not use harsh or idle speech, and to not say things that bring about division or hatred. I aspire always to speak the truth. 

5. ON PROTECTING THE BODY AND MIND Aware of the suffering caused by alcohol, drugs, and other intoxicants, I vow to not drink liquor or use drugs. I will do my best to live my life in a way that will increase my inner strength and flexibility as well as my openness to all beings and to life itself.

- Pema Chodron: Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change


----------



## Jekyl Anhydride

“_Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return._” 

~Leonardo da Vinci

Example..


----------



## Asclepius

^
^^
Beautiful.



scubagirl200 said:


> Song of the Open Road
> BY WALT WHITMAN
> 1
> 
> Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
> Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
> Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
> Strong and content I travel the open road.
> 
> The earth, that is sufficient,
> I do not want the constellations any nearer,
> I know they are very well where they are,
> I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
> 
> (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
> I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
> I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
> I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
> ...






Sonnet XXX.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

~ Groundskeeper Willy


----------



## Jabberwocky

"If murder is poetry, then childcare is prose."

-unknown Korean author


----------



## Tubbs

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out ‘Silence!’ and read out from his book, ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.’

Everybody looked at Alice.

‘I’m not a mile high,’ said Alice.

‘You are,’ said the King.

‘Nearly two miles high,’ added the Queen.

‘Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,’ said Alice: ‘besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.’

‘It’s the oldest rule in the book,’ said the King.

‘Then it ought to be Number One,’ said Alice

-Alice in wonderland


----------



## scubagirl200

"In the beginning
I knew meeting could only
End in parting, yet
I ignored the coming dawn
And gave myself to you."
Fujiwara no Teika


----------



## JK25

"We Are One" - Me


----------



## JoeTheStoner

?Where we come from... is not nearly as startling as where we are going.? 
― Dan Brown, Origin


----------



## JoeTheStoner

Elvis: Look, man, do I look like an ichthyologist to you? Big damn bugs, all right? The size of my fist. The size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich. What do I know? I got a growth on my pecker!

i just ate a peanut butter sandwhich on a french roll with ancient grains, reminded me of that quote from bubba ho tep


----------



## Erikmen

If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them. 

S. Fitzgerald


----------



## Erikmen

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. 
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. 
H.Murakami


----------



## Erikmen

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” 
― Fernando Pessoa


----------



## scubagirl200

when my mother was pregnant with her second child, i was 4
i pointed at her swollen belly confused at how my mother 
had gotten so big in such little time
my father scooped me in his tree trunk arms and said 
the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman?s body
it?s where life comes from
and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see that the entire universe rested at my mother?s feet

-rupi kaur


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

“Name one? Name a dozen: I can pick fuckin green beans, I can pick fuckin tomatoes, I can pick fuckin strawberries, I can pick fuckin lettuce—”


----------



## Asclepius

"If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself."

Eric Fromm, Escape from freedom (1941)


----------



## Asclepius

@ Erikmen 
04-04-2018 04:35
" The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world?s existence. All these half-tones of the soul?s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.? "
― Fernando Pessoa

The restoration in lament and bereavement; that which society deems vulnerable; is that which keeps us connected through our hearts; the memory of feeling, a wisdom that imbibes our intuition, long after our mind forgets - this is a virtue and a taste of life, that makes joy all the more palatably beautiful.


----------



## Shady's Fox




----------



## Erikmen

_“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”_


----------



## jasperkent

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

-- Lewis Carroll


----------



## sigmond

John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable 
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold 
And in the icy silence of the tomb, 
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights 
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood 
So in my veins red life might stream again, 
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– 
I hold it towards you.


----------



## mtu mwendawazimu

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.” 
― *Stephen King , *The Stand


----------



## sigmond

“We are suffering a reign of terror because human values have been replaced by contempt for others and the worship of efficiency, the desire for freedom by the desire for domination.  It is no longer being just and generous that makes us right; it is being successful.”  

Albert Camus


----------



## sigmond

"I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that this is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that their pride makes them refuse to surrender till the last moment and shrink from giving expression to their feelings before you. I ought to have guessed the truth from the timidity with which she had repeatedly approached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to utter it at last with an effort. But I did not guess, and an evil feeling took possession of me."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky


----------



## Jabberwocky

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked"

Allen Ginsberg - "Howl"


----------



## JoeTheStoner

I just creeped her IG. She?s literally trying to turn into an Instagram influencer regarding dipping chicken into soda. Wtf.

We chose this future when we decided to let "Instagram influencer" be a thing


----------



## Jeanpauldash

"Had it been sublime to be born in time, hospital halls unknown, mother soon to be blown from the face of the earth, a bullet hole in her head, hand shaking as he lit the wad of cotton in the back of a little toy boat in a Mexico City fountain. The boat made crazy circles as the poplar trees trembled, and our separate fates lay unsundered, he to opium and fame, bearing guilt and shame. And I, the shattered son of Naked Lunch, to golden beaches and promises of success."

William s burroughs jr


----------



## sigmond

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky



dreamflyer said:


> "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
> starving hysterical naked"
> 
> Allen Ginsberg - "Howl"



It's doubtful I am one of the best minds; however, destroyed by madness
starving hysterical naked nonetheless...

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

- Emerson


----------



## Shady's Fox

_*There's a bluebird in my heart that*_
_*wants to get out*_
_*but I'm too tough for him,*_
_*I say, stay in there, I'm not going*_
_*to let anybody see*_
_*you.*_
_*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
_*wants to get out*_
_*but I pour whiskey on him and inhale*_
_*cigarette smoke*_
_*and the whores and the bartenders*_
_*and the grocery clerks*_
_*never know that*_
_*he's*_
_*in there.*_
_*
*_
_*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
_*wants to get out*_
_*but I'm too tough for him,*_
_*I say,*_
_*stay down, do you want to mess*_
_*me up? *_
_*you want to screw up the*_
_*works? *_
_*you want to blow my book sales in*_
_*Europe? *_
_*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
_*wants to get out*_
_*but I'm too clever, I only let him out*_
_*at night sometimes*_
_*when everybody's asleep.*_
_*I say, I know that you're there,*_
_*so don't be*_
_*sad.*_
_*then I put him back,*_
_*but he's singing a little*_
_*in there, I haven't quite let him*_
_*die*_
_*and we sleep together like that*_
_*with our secret pact*_
_*and it's nice enough to make a man*_
_*weep, but I don't weep *_
_*Do you? 

~Charles Bukowski~*__*

*_


----------



## Howsway

“Once more into the fray, into the last good fight I’ll ever know,
live and die on this day, live and die in this day.”
          -Joe Carnahan


----------



## Asclepius




----------



## Asclepius

Shady's Fox said:


> _*There's a bluebird in my heart that*_
> _*wants to get out*_
> _*but I'm too tough for him,*_
> _*I say, stay in there, I'm not going*_
> _*to let anybody see*_
> _*you.*_
> _*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
> _*wants to get out*_
> _*but I pour whiskey on him and inhale*_
> _*cigarette smoke*_
> _*and the whores and the bartenders*_
> _*and the grocery clerks*_
> _*never know that*_
> _*he's*_
> _*in there.*_
> _*
> *_
> _*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
> _*wants to get out*_
> _*but I'm too tough for him,*_
> _*I say,*_
> _*stay down, do you want to mess*_
> _*me up? *_
> _*you want to screw up the*_
> _*works? *_
> _*you want to blow my book sales in*_
> _*Europe? *_
> _*there's a bluebird in my heart that*_
> _*wants to get out*_
> _*but I'm too clever, I only let him out*_
> _*at night sometimes*_
> _*when everybody's asleep.*_
> _*I say, I know that you're there,*_
> _*so don't be*_
> _*sad.*_
> _*then I put him back,*_
> _*but he's singing a little*_
> _*in there, I haven't quite let him*_
> _*die*_
> _*and we sleep together like that*_
> _*with our secret pact*_
> _*and it's nice enough to make a man*_
> _*weep, but I don't weep *_
> _*Do you?
> 
> ~Charles Bukowski~*__*[FONT="]
> 
> [/FONT]*_



A beauty from a beauty


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## Help?!?!




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## invegauser

Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable,  periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I  presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing  influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish, a possibly dangerous  man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men, caution is as  secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on  this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is  balanced with the centrifugal. When duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed  point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of  accidents can balance it. — From Dr. John Seward’s journal.

- Bram Stoker


The struggling for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman.

- George Savile


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## mal3volent

Let It Enfold You
Charles Bukowski 


Either peace or happiness, 
let it enfold you 

when I was a young man 
I felt these things were 
dumb, unsophisticated. 
I had bad blood, a twisted 
mind, a precarious 
upbringing. 

I was hard as granite, I 
leered at the 
sun. 
I trusted no man and 
especially no 
woman. 

I was living a hell in 
small rooms, I broke 
things, smashed things, 
walked through glass, 
cursed. 
I challenged everything, 
was continually being 
evicted, jailed, in and 
out of fights, in and out 
of my mind. 
women were something 
to screw and rail 
at, I had no male 
friends, 

I changed jobs and 
cities, I hated holidays, 
babies, history, 
newspapers, museums, 
grandmothers, 
marriage, movies, 
spiders, garbagemen, 
english accents,spain, 
france,italy,walnuts and 
the color 
orange. 
algebra angred me, 
opera sickened me, 
charlie chaplin was a 
fake 
and flowers were for 
pansies. 

peace and happiness to me 
were signs of 
inferiority, 
tenants of the weak 
and 
addled 
mind. 

but as I went on with 
my alley fights, 
my suicidal years, 
my passage through 
any number of 
women-it gradually 
began to occur to 
me 
that I wasn't different 

from the 
others, I was the same, 

they were all fulsome 
with hatred, 
glossed over with petty 
grievances, 
the men I fought in 
alleys had hearts of stone. 
everybody was nudging, 
inching, cheating for 
some insignificant 
advantage, 
the lie was the 
weapon and the 
plot was 
empty, 
darkness was the 
dictator. 

cautiously, I allowed 
myself to feel good 
at times. 
I found moments of 
peace in cheap 
rooms 
just staring at the 
knobs of some 
dresser 
or listening to the 
rain in the 
dark. 
the less I needed 
the better I 
felt. 

maybe the other life had worn me 
down. 
I no longer found 
glamour 
in topping somebody 
in conversation. 
or in mounting the 
body of some poor 
drunken female 
whose life had 
slipped away into 
sorrow. 

I could never accept 
life as it was, 
i could never gobble 
down all its 
poisons 
but there were parts, 
tenuous magic parts 
open for the 
asking. 

I re formulated 
I don't know when, 
date, time, all 
that 
but the change 
occurred. 
something in me 
relaxed, smoothed 
out. 
i no longer had to 
prove that I was a 
man, 

I didn't have to prove 
anything. 

I began to see things: 
coffee cups lined up 
behind a counter in a 
cafe. 
or a dog walking along 
a sidewalk. 
or the way the mouse 
on my dresser top 
stopped there 
with its body, 
its ears, 
its nose, 
it was fixed, 
a bit of life 
caught within itself 
and its eyes looked 
at me 
and they were 
beautiful. 
then- it was 
gone. 

I began to feel good, 
I began to feel good 
in the worst situations 
and there were plenty 
of those. 
like say, the boss 
behind his desk, 
he is going to have 
to fire me. 

I've missed too many 
days. 
he is dressed in a 
suit, necktie, glasses, 
he says, 'I am going 
to have to let you go' 

'it's all right' I tell 
him. 

He must do what he 
must do, he has a 
wife, a house, children, 
expenses, most probably 
a girlfriend. 

I am sorry for him 
he is caught. 

I walk onto the blazing 
sunshine. 
the whole day is 
mine 
temporarily, 
anyhow. 

(the whole world is at the 
throat of the world, 
everybody feels angry, 
short-changed, cheated, 
everybody is despondent, 
disillusioned)  

I welcomed shots of 
peace, tattered shards of 
happiness. 

I embraced that stuff 
like the hottest number, 
like high heels, breasts, 
singing,the 
works. 

(don't get me wrong, 
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism 
that overlooks all 
basic problems just for 
the sake of 
itself- 
this is a shield and a 
sickness.)  

The knife got near my 
throat again, 
I almost turned on the 
gas 
again 
but when the good 
moments arrived 
again 
I didn't fight them off 
like an alley 
adversary. 
I let them take me, 
I luxuriated in them, 
I made them welcome 
home. 
I even looked into 
the mirror 
once having thought 
myself to be 
ugly, 
I now liked what 
I saw, almost 
handsome, yes, 
a bit ripped and 
ragged, 
scares, lumps, 
odd turns, 
but all in all, 
not too bad, 
almost handsome, 
better at least than 
some of those movie 
star faces 
like the cheeks of 
a baby's 
butt. 

and finally I discovered 
real feelings of 
others, 
unheralded, 
like lately, 
like this morning, 
as I was leaving, 
for the track, 
i saw my wife in bed, 
just the 
shape of 
her head there 
(not forgetting 
centuries of the living 
and the dead and 
the dying, 
the pyramids, 
Mozart dead 
but his music still 
there in the 
room, weeds growing, 
the earth turning, 
the tote board waiting for 
me)  
I saw the shape of my 
wife's head, 
she so still, 
I ached for her life, 
just being there 
under the 
covers. 

I kissed her in the 
forehead, 
got down the stairway, 
got outside, 
got into my marvelous 
car, 
fixed the seatbelt, 
backed out the 
drive. 
feeling warm to 
the fingertips, 
down to my 
foot on the gas 
pedal, 
I entered the world 
once 
more, 
drove down the 
hill 
past the houses 
full and empty 
of 
people, 
I saw the mailman, 
honked, 
he waved 
back 
at me.


----------



## Zopiclone bandit

In china there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. his deep affections for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. it is said that he died of fright. he was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing.  
―       Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure.


----------



## Mysterier

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that collossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley


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## JoeTheStoner

the diagnosis was the easy part; the harder part was the cure.


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## mariopepper

Hmm... I need to look for a good quote but I am reading Arch of Triumph and I almost done with it. Most of all I like getting experience during reading books and choosing good quotes. I used to write a lot of essays and other writing works using quotes and I also used to buy an essay so that is very important part of my result ( good marks and reviews). I also wrote an essay about the last book I read - Arch of Triumph but there some additionals I need to replace. Have anyone remember some nice quotes from there?


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## Dresden

"I shot the albatross!"--from the poem, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.


----------



## Dresden

"The bliss of Knowledge is the Silence of indescribable wonder."--Panchadasi.

"He who sees himself in All, and All in himself, attains to the empire of Self, thus worshipping Self and looking on all things with equal eye."--Manu.

"The whole universe exists through Thought."--Aitareyopanishad.

"As a hawk or an eagle having soared high in the air wings its way back to its resting place, being so far fatigued, so does the soul, having experienced the phenomenal, returns into Itself where it can sleep beyond all desires, beyond all dreams."--Brhadaranyakopanishad.

"He alone escapes from the web of illusion, in this world, (even like the lord of beasts from the trap which holds him fast),  who, with all acts, all pleasures, attuned to the Supreme Aim, puts forth strong personal effort in that behalf."--Yogavasishtha.

"I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn't even matter."--Linkin Park.


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## hydroazuanacaine

this lover was like a smooth journey down a perilous hill of ice.


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## Derschieber

"His words were softer than oil, yet they where drawn swords"   [King David]


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## Zopiclone bandit

“Experiencing is believing. - A fat belly cannot believe that such a thing as hunger exists.”  
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living.


----------



## Abject

Help I'm alive - my heart keeps beating like a hammer
It's hard to be soft; tough to be tender.

This too shall pass.


----------



## Factualist

One of my favorite quotes from my favorite book Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. The book as actually where my username comes from (https://www.litkicks.com/PoliticalPartiesInNakedLunch).

"Rock  and  Roll  adolescent  hoodlums  storm  the  streets  of  all  nations.  They  rush  into  the  Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face. They open zoos, insane asylums, and prisons, burst water mains with air hammers, chop the floor out of passenger plane lavatories, shoot out lighthouses, file elevator cables  to  one  thin  wire,  turn  sewers  into  the  water  supply,  throw  sharks  and  sting  rays,  electric  eels and candiru into swimming pools, in nautical costumes ram the Queen Mary full speed into New York Harbor, play chicken with passenger planes and busses, rush into hospitals in white coats carrying saws and axes and scalpels three feet long; throw paralytics out of iron lungs (mimic their suffocations flopping about on the floor and rolling their eyes up), administer injections with bicycle pumps, disconnect artificial kidneys, saw a woman in half with a two-man surgical saw, they  drive herds of squealing pigs into the Curb, they shit on the floor of the United Nations and wipe their ass with treaties, pacts, alliances"


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## andyturbo

I am the great Cornholio!


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## hydroazuanacaine

The lights went down, the bottom of the curtain glowed. I loved it and have always loved it best of all, the moment when the lights goes down, the curtain glows, you know that something wonderful is going to happen. It doesn’t matter if what happens next spoils everything; the anticipation itself is always pure.


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## somnilicious

I absolutely love Catch 22. There are so many quotes from the book.

 “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”   

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

“...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.”

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”   


“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”


 “There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?”   

“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”


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## hydroazuanacaine

The words hovered in front of her lips, and emanated a kind of gravity that she wanted to resist.


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## Factualist

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel, and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides. And a dark wind blows. The government is corrupt, and we're on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn. We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death. The sun has fallen down and the billboards are all leering, and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles. It went like this: the buildings tumbled in on themselves, mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble and pulled out their hair. The skyline was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards, everything washed in a thin orange haze. I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful; these are truly the last days". You grabbed my hand, and we fell into it. Like a daydream. Or a fever. We woke up one morning and fell a little further down, for sure is the valley of Death. I open up my wallet and it's full of blood.


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## Gage'sMorbidMommy

I'm not sure who wrote it.......

*"Those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter."*


----------



## hydroazuanacaine

Nature's intention sometimes seems to be that all should be forgotten, that there should be no trace of a human event. Sometimes it seems that the pulse of all living creatures comes from a voluntary rebellion against that supreme intention, which longs for emptiness or only the rub of wind against wind. Sometimes all the varieities of wildflower, fern, pool and sea seem to spring from subversion, the genius of the spirit in disguise, as it struggles against that omnivore, nature herself. In this way the spirit becomes the enemy of nature, but fits itself to her forms, and hides there, inside her, holding her together.


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## Factualist

Godspeed You! Black Emperor have a lot of really powerful monologues in their songs tbh

It was Coney Island, they called Coney Island the playground of the world
There was no place like it, in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster
No place in the world like it, and it was so fabulous.
Now it's shrunk down to almost nothing...
you see
And, uh, I still remember in my mind how things used to be, and...
uh, you know, I feel very bad
But people from all over the world came here...
from all over the world...
it was the playground they called it the playground of the world...
over here
Anyways, you see, I...
uh...
you know...
I even got, when I was very small, I even got lost at Coney Island, but they found me...
on the...
on the beach
And we used to sleep on the beach here, sleep overnight.
they don't do that anymore.
Things changed...
you see
They don't sleep anymore on the beach


----------



## Gage'sMorbidMommy

"Now, we must all fear evil men, but there is another kind of evil, which we must fear most, and that is, the indifference of good men."


----------



## Factualist

"The earth isn't dying, it's being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses"


----------



## ThoseCleverKids

"I'm gonna force the Serengeti, to disappear into my eyes.
And when I hear your voices calling, I'm gonna turn just inside out."

( @Factualist Thanks for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, my new favorite thing. And here's to old Bill. Or young Kim  )


----------



## AbbeyLee

*The Loner*

Like one who has traveled distant oceans
am I among those who are forever at home.
The crowded days are spread across their tables,
but to me the far-off holds more life.

Behind my face stretches a world
no more lived in, perhaps, than the moon.
But the others leave no feeling alone
and all their words are inhabited.

The things I brought back with me
seem strange here and out of place.
In their own land they moved like animals,
but here they hold their breath in shame.

—Rilke, Book of Images


----------

