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 27 Jul 2006 @ 07:56
The practice of meditation takes us on a fabulous journey into the gap between our thoughts, where all the advantages of a peaceful, stress-free, healthier, fatigue-free life are available, but are simply side benefits. The paramount reason for doing this soul-nourishing meditation practice is to get in the gap between our thoughts and make conscious contact with the creative energy of life itself.
---Wayne Dyer
Better not to begin. Once you begin, better to finish it.
---Buddhist saying
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.
The thing to do when you're impatient is...to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
---Carlos Castaneda
This week I caught up with an issue of Rolling Stone from December. It's the HipHop issue, and I sort of put it away as not immediately essential to my particular musical addictions. But inside, it turns out, was lurking an article that slowly has emerged as absolutely required reading. In fact, Google this morning is showing a few university courses this fall will be studying it. Military bloggers reference it too. It's about Khalid (not his real name) who spent the last 15 years fighting as a mujahideen in the name of Islam. A volunteer from his native Yemen to help drive the Russians out of Afghanistan (why? what were they doing there? guess who paid him...and what could their interest be?) Khalid recounts his story of how things changed with 9/11 and what it was like to fight Americans in Iraq. His mission, as a paid soldier, has been to help Arab countries drive foreign invaders from their soil...as he sees it. What did you say the difference is between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? And within a dozen years can these labels describe the same man? The same nation?
The author of the article is Tom Downey...and it's his first for Rolling Stone. An interesting guy, with apparently no political ax to grind, he made a name for himself with a book about firemen in New York a year before 9/11. Mostly he writes travel articles. There's a photo and bio here~~~
[link] The picture illustrating this piece is of Khalid, with ceremonial dagger. More >
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 16 May 2006 @ 10:05
Bring yourself back to the point quite gently. And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousand times, though it went away every you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
---St. Francis De Sales, On Meditation
It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.
---Chogyam Trungpa
To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.
---Shunryu Suzuki
"County Election" by George Caleb Bingham 1851
At my workplace the other day, a retired social studies teacher, in to substitute and an astute Republican, challenged us assembled Democrats in the lunchroom. We're in Ohio remember, where the gubernatorial election in November will decide between Democrat Ted Strickland, a sensible and friendly man, and Republican Kenneth Blackwell, deranged and perhaps crooked evangelist. Our Republican friend said, "If you guys can't win this time, you'll never win!"
Not counting the distinct possibility that both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were rigged, it would seem the Democrats have issues galore and an increasing advantage as the campaign season begins. But what do we see, what do we hear? I see business-as-usual, I hear snoring. Where is thundering oratory about corruption and injustice? I am not alone on the brink of dismissing the Democrats as out to lunch. What follows is a review of Ted Kennedy's new book, written by the publisher of Harper's Magazine. More >
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 17 Nov 2005 @ 10:52
Mauve takes offense at my having said, "I am an artist"---which I do not take back, because that word included, of course, the meaning: always seeking without absolutely finding. As far as I know, that word means: "I am seeking, I am striving, I am in with all my heart."
---Vincent Van Gogh
As soon as a man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
---Albert Schweitzer
Freedom is when the people can speak,
democracy is when the government listens.
---Alastair Farrugia
A coal pile at the Egan Mountain mine, operated by Mountainside Coal Co. © Kari Lydersen 2005
The subject title belongs to Dan Tokaji, assistant professor of law at Ohio State, who maintains often maddeningly sensible commentary on election law at this site [link] . He's referring to the national election last week...and in particular of course to our experience---again---in Ohio. On our state ballot were 4 issues meant to reform the way we run them, motivated largely by what happened in the presidential election last year. All 4 issues were defeated...maybe...probably...well, that's what this is about.
I meant to get into this earlier, but I got involved in the premiere of that Wal-Mart movie and just haven't found the time. Per a request from the West Coast to tell you how it went, I'm happy to report last night's showing at the Athens Library packed the room we'd reserved to twice what we thought its capacity was. We set up the 60 chairs they have for the room, then emptied out the rest of the library of chairs for the tables and even pillows for the kids section. Besides that, people brought their own chairs from home. And what an audience! Even if there'd been no movie, we'd have had a great time. More >
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 16 Oct 2005 @ 07:55
The individual becomes perfect when he loves his individuality in the all to which he belongs.
---D.T. Suzuki
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
---John Cage
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
---John Muir
Playwright Harold Pinter in a rare appearance at the Orange Word Screenwriters Programme, at the British Library, in 2004.
Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
I don't remember how I stumbled across Harold Pinter. It must have been in the mid-60s sometime, but I don't know if it was a live performance of a couple one acts or that terrifying Dirk Bogarde movie The Servant. It might have been Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch duking it out in The Pumpkin Eater. All I know is his plays grabbed me by the throat instantly. I already was a fan of Samuel Beckett, and had staged Waiting For Godot as a student in 1960. Pinter was trickier. For a production of The Homecoming in 1974, my colleagues and I felt we had to build a 2 story house in the theater. Getting the pauses right required actors literally to count off seconds to themselves. One of the eeriest moments of my life occurred in the late 60s as I walked along Fifth Avenue, and Pinter and his wife at the time, Vivien Merchant, came towards me, each on either edge of the sidewalk, obviously in the midst of an argument and issuing forth icy silence. In the instant they passed on each side I was living a Pinter play. O why hide it, my whole life has been a Pinter play. Isn't everybody's? More >
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 5 Aug 2005 @ 09:53
People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long course of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
---St. Augustine
To begin with oneself, not to end with oneself;
To start with oneself, but not to aim at oneself;
To comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself.
---Martin Buber
The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.
---Salvador Dali
Regular readers of my online ramblings expect something close to fun on Saturday mornings. True, sometimes there's a Friday evening release from the White House, meant to be overlooked, that I try to underline, but usually I try to spread the happiness of reaching another weekend...and maybe even some cash in the pocket from payday. It's difficult today though. The past 2 hours of reading the papers and the blogs have left me grim...and I'm preparing to share.
If that's not your cup of tea or coffee today, allow me to refer you to the delightful op-ed piece in this morning's Times about a novelist's revery of a very cold lake in the summertime. [link] And the Internet is buzzing with lots of coverage of Novak's stomping off the set of a live CNN broadcast yesterday as Carville began tightening the screws. Wonder what could be bothering him. [link] More >
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