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 3 Oct 2005 @ 08:18
Everything you learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe; not even the suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
---R. Buckminster Fuller
People born into this floating world
Quickly become like roadside dust:
At dawn, little children,
By sunset, white-haired and old,
With no inner understanding
They struggle without cease.
I ask the children of the universe,
Why do you bother to pass this way?
---Ryokan
We are all many persons. Some of these people we know and others we don't---only someone else knows them. Some of these people we like and some of them we don't like....All of this is music; it is the music of our lives if we could only stop and listen. Music doesn't have any meaning; you can't explain it. Eating a meal doesn't have any meaning, either, but if there's no eating there's no life, and if we don't hear music we can't dance. This is our practice---to eat our meals and clean up; to dance to the music of our lives, each one in our own way, and then die when it's time.
---Norman Fischer
The painting by Marshall Arisman was done for an issue of Time magazine on violent crime, and can be seen online here [link]
What follows are some accompanying notes to a CD I've been assembling and creating essentially as a gift for an old friend whose birthday is fast approaching. Now I think I'll make a few more copies to send out to friends who might be interested. (Let me know if you'd like one.) The reason I decided to publish the notes like this is Mr. Arisman, whom you'll meet, is being honored with a retrospective of recent paintings later this month and continuing through December at the Brooklyn Lyceum (details at his website the link to which is in the text below). I didn't know that when I wrote this, but it does seem like a good opportunity to advertise the exhibition as repayment of the many gifts of his friendship. It looks as if the opening will be October 22nd, and I certainly wish I could be there. If you'll be in the New York area the next few months, you may want to get down to Brooklyn. And if you see Marshall, tell him "Philly Joe says Hello."
************************************************************** More >
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 16 Jun 2005 @ 17:35
In this living world
the body I give up and burn
would be wretched
if I thought of myself as
anything but firewood.
---Ryonen
Teach me, like you, to drink
creation whole
And casting out myself,
become a soul.
---Richard Wilbur
Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.
---Dogen
Tuesday's storm rolls in.
Photo for The Athens Messenger by John Halley.
I've recently given up all attempts to understand the weather. I didn't say predict it. Somehow I still believe we can do that. I said understand it. Maybe you can---and do---but my mind is hopeless at it. The Old Farmer's Almanac this year has an exhaustive article about How The Oceans Affect Our Climate. Pages 88 - 102...with lots of pictures and charts and diagrams. And arrows. All about La Nina and El Nino...and how to tell them apart, and which is happening when, and what they do to us. I read it all, over and over. I couldn't understand a word of it. I look at the swirling ocean, and know there's a tide coming in and going out. I look at the whirling clouds, and know there's wind blowing this way and that. That's about it for me. More >
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 24 May 2005 @ 10:46
The photo, with my son Jeroch, was taken a year ago immediately following the final performance of a play I was in...so there's still a touch of stage makeup visible.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.
---Michel De Montaigne
I have full faith that even when you are down you will not sink, you will not falter, you will not crawl because you will be that special child who understands there are moments in life when there are no answers, no rhymes, no reasons but to grow beyond yourself.
---Grange Rutan
You are relaxed and ready. You are prepared for the operation. It is an initiation. You are being initiated. Such initiations have been practiced forever, under other names. You are safe.
---Indira Parsons
That particular thought of Renaissance philosopher Montaigne has been among my favorites for many years. Grange and Indira are 2 personal friends, who emailed me their encouragements a little over a year ago, before the "operation." I printed out their complete messages and have carried them with me in my wallet ever since. I don't usually do that, so I must assume it was only the first of the new behaviors since---initiation. More >
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 5 Apr 2005 @ 01:38
I have lived on the lip
Of insanity, wanting to know the reasons,
Knocking on the door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!
---Jalaluddin Rumi
After all, if I can't be myself, who can?
---Auntie Mame
Behind Ise Shrine,
unseen, hidden by the fence
Budhha enters Nirvana
---Basho
Ivy Clear, Donna Silva, and Robert Blankshine show perfect balance in Gloria Contreras' ballet "Moncayo I" for the Joffrey, 1966
Thirty-five years ago, in through April somewhere probably, a tradition of tonic and renewal began in my life, which I continued yesterday---though it appears to have changed drastically. Well I'm 65 now, I was 30 then. In 1970 or so, Ivy Clear and I took a drive into the Catskill Mountains, west of where we were living outside New York. It might have been around Margaretville...or maybe it was further up into the Adirondacks. We frequently were in a celebratory mood when we ventured out into Nature, and usually it didn't matter quite where we were. More >
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 10 Jan 2005 @ 10:37
Tom Toles' great work is available all the time online at [link] .
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The great man is one who never loses his child's heart.
---Mencius
In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
---Henry David Thoreau
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
---William James
James' implication of course is what not to overlook either. Am I seeing things or is Tom Toles becoming even more brilliant with each day? This cartoon is for yesterday but should live through the ages. It has layers of meaning that make me want to ask a lot of questions. More >
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