to love is to be vulnerable

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S Lewis

except because i love you

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Pablo Neruda, "I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You"

my other blog

I have created a new blog - Keyser Sozer is the Sled - in order to review and comment on television shows, films, art, pop culture, and other ways I waste my time.

sea of tranquility

But they went to the Moon, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, going round and round, working out the IRA thing. And Neil stepped on the Moon and said, "One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind." Good line but not his line, I don't think… it didn't feel like his line, you know? I bet that was just given to him and he was coming down the steps going, "Small step for man, a giant leap for mankind. Small step for man, a giant leap for mankind. Don't get it wrong, Neil. Don't fuck it up. Here we go. I'm a small man with a giant big - shit!... One man, small giant, two...two mens... What was it?" ‘Cause you gotta say something, you can't go down to the Moon and go, "Oh, it's all sticky! It's covered in jam!" You can't land on the Moon and go, "Fucking ‘ell, I've been in that spacecraft ( stretching noises ) Right, I need a piss." You can't land on the Moon and wind down the window and go, "Is this - Sea of Tranquility? Sea of Tranquility? Is this Sea of Tranquility? Sea of Tranquility? There's no one around!”

But he had a sense of humor so he should have used it, ‘cause there was that lunar module there – a fixed camera, just fixed, not panning left or right, just stationary. So he could've been there saying, "Hi, people on the Moon. As you can see, the Sea of Tranquility here, there's the mountains in the distance, there's the Earth! There, you're looking back up at yourselves there. Over to my right, I can see a fucking monster! There's a monster behind me! ( screaming ) Oh no, help! Get off my leg!" Buzz Aldrin in a monster outfit... Neil doing a close-up with: "He's got me, Houston. The monster's got me! He wants cash! He's got my hand up behind my back. I think he knows jiu-jitsu! He wants cash for the release of my life. Send a million… - two million dollars, leave it in a bag by the Sea of Tranquility. I don't know, the North Shore! What the fucking ‘ell...?"

Oh, it would have worked, wouldn't it?

From Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill show.
Buttons can be purchased here.

out of many, we are truly one

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Barack Obama, the next president of the United States of America.
Speech given on March 18, 2008.

Read the full transcript here.

a brief contemporary history of me

What was the last book you read?
Neil Gaimon's Smoke and Mirrors, a book of short stories. But before that was Blackwell Publishing's Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy.

If a movie was made about your life what would the theme song be?
'Passenger Seat' by Death Cab for Cutie or 'Calendar Girl' by Stars... those songs encapsulate me.

What is playing on your stereo right now?
'The Pretender' by Jackson Browne, my favorite song. It's been on repeat for about three months now.

What things make you uncomfortable?
There is nothing more awkward than obligatory small talk with someone you don't care for.

Do you tend to make relationships complicated?
By oversimplifying them, I tend to alienate other people, which then makes it complicated.

Who are you voting for in '08?
Barack to the Future.

i give myself up

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

"I Give Myself Up" by Mark Strand
Image by felixbaumsteiger.

wefeelfine.org

Quite possibly the most interesting online art experiment.
Its possibilities are endless...

the pillow of the world

Beautiful sky! The Baghdad sky is the pillow of the world. (bullets are seen piercing through the night sky) Looks like they're firing angels. 80km from here, over 3,000 years ago, they built the tower of Babel so they could climb up to this sky. 80km from here all our languages were born. Since they tried to touch this sky, we no longer understand each other. A Muslim legend says that now and then Allah comes back to earth because he misses the look of the starry sky from below. Centuries of wisdom, and what have we learned? Nothing. You know why there are wars? Because the world started without men and without men it'll finish.

Again from Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow, as delivered by the wonderful Jean Reno.

the tiger and the snow

Don't start writing love poems, they're the hardest. Wait 'til you're at least 80. Write about something else: the sea, the wind, a radiator, a tram running late, no one thing's more poetic than another. Poetry isn't without, it's within. Don't ask what's poetic or true, look in the mirror, poetry's you. Dress your poems up, choose your words carefully. Be selective, sometimes you need eight months to find one word. Beauty started when people began to choose, since Adam and Eve. You know how long Eve took to pick the right fig leaf? "How about this one?" She stripped bare all the fig trees in Paradise!

Fall in love. If you don't love, it's all dead! Fall in love and everything will come to life. Squander your joy, dissipate your cheerfulness, be sad and silent with enthusiasm, hurl your happiness into people's faces. And how? Let me look at my notes. I've forgotten. (looks at notes) I can't read 'em. To convey happiness, you must be happy. To convey pain, you must be happy. Be happy, you must suffer. Don't be scared of suffering. The whole world suffers. If you don't have the means, don't worry. Only one thing is necessary to write poetry: everything.

Don't try to be modern. It's the most old-fashioned thing there is. If a line doesn't come to you in this position, chuck yourself on the ground like this! (lays down) It's lying down that you see the sky. What are you looking at? Poets don't look, they see. Make the words obey you. If the word "wall" doesn't take any notice, don't use it again for eight years! That'll teach it. "What's that?" (points to wall) "No idea!"

From Roberto Benigni's film The Tiger and the Snow. He portrays a poetry professor who gives very enthusiastic lectures.

fowl language

"Clearly She Never Saw Lea Thompson Get Down With Howard the Duck"

Girl #1: Its so annoying how your phone wont learn to spell 'fuck'.
Girl #2: Yeah. It wont spell "fucked" either, thats the one I have trouble with.
Girl #1: Yeah. Like it always spells "ducked".
Girl #2: Yeah. And I don't wanna be ducked, I wanna be fucked!.

-- L Train

Overheard by: Lara
Headline by: maggie

Headline Runners-Up:
· "Donald And Daffy Went Home Alone That Night." - 1310 (formerly SNA)
· "My Phone Totally Just Cock Blocked Me." - Jennette
· "Old McDonald Had a Fetish, E-I-E-I-Blow" - CV
· "Sexy Is Using a Feather, Kinky Is Using the Whole Bird" - Jatmos

From Overhead in New York.com

bob ross the philosophist

[Regarding rocks and trees and waves, but perhaps also the metaphysical things of life] You can put as many or as few as you want in your world.

We're gonna make some big decisions in our little world.

We want happy paintings. Happy paintings. If you want sad things, watch the news.

The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.

People might look at you a bit funny, but it's okay. Artists are allowed to be a bit different.

In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains.

Well, the little clock on the wall says we're just about out of time. God bless you my friend.

Quotes from Bob Ross's show, The Joy of Painting. One of the best ways to spend a Saturday morning.

your move, chief

Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? "Once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.

And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right? You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you, sport? You're terrified of what you might say.

Your move, chief.

One of my favorite film monologues.
From Good Will Hunting.

formation that is me

The basic teaching of the Buddha is that there is no abiding self. Our being is made up of and constantly depends upon other people, animals, plants, soil, water, air, the planet earth, the other planets, the sun, moon and stars. Our very genes are programmes provided to us by our ancestors and from unknown sources back to the earliest green slime and before. Nothing is my own and everything makes me up: my parents, grandparents - the birdsong, portraits by Rembrandt, the scent of the Puakenikeni, and the laughter of a friend. Also forming my being are death in the family, the danger of biological holocaust, misunderstandings, and malicious gossip.

This formation that is me, flowing along, eating and adapting and adopting, is the same formation that is you, with very small variations in our combination of genes and experience that give us our uniqueness. This uniqueness is our own personal potential, and we depend upon each other for sustenance to fulfill it.

Robert Aitken

Image by Caryn Drexl.

it is the easy way

We learn in our guts, not just in our brain, that a life of joy is not in seeking happiness, but in experiencing and simply being the circumstances of our life as they are; not in fulfilling personal wants, but in fulfilling the needs of life; not in avoiding pain, but in being pain when it is necessary to do so. Too large an order? Too hard? On the contrary, it is the easy way.

Charlotte Joko Beck

i voted for roslin

deeply flawed, deeply human

D'Anna Biers: I came to Galactica to tell a story. In all honesty, I thought I knew what that story was before I ever set foot here. How an arrogant military let their egos get in the way of doing their job safeguarding the lives of the civilian population. But I found the truth was more complex than that. These people aren't Cylons. They're not robots blindly following orders and polishing their boots. They're people. Deeply flawed, yes, but deeply human too. And maybe that's saying the same thing. What struck me the most is that despite it all: the hardships, the stress, the ever-present danger of being killed-- despite all that, they never give up. Never lie down in the road and let the truck run them over. They wake up in the morning, put on their uniforms, and do their jobs. Every day, no pay. No rest. No hope of ever laying down the burden and letting someone else do the job. There are no relief troops coming, no Colonial fleet training new recruits every day. The people on Galactica are it. They are the thin line of blue separating us from the Cylons.

Lieutenant Gaeta told me a remarkable statistic. Not a single member of Galactica's crew has asked to resign. Not o ne. Think about that. If you wore the uniform, wouldn't you want to quit? To step aside and say, "Enough. Let someone else protect the Fleet." I know I would. But then, I don't wear a uniform. Most of us don't, most of us never will. The story of Galactica isn't that people make bad decisions under pressure. It's that those mistakes are the exception. Most of the time, the men and women serving under Commander Adama get it right. The proof is that our fleet survives. And with Galactica at our side, we will endure. This is D'Anna Biers, Fleet News Service.

From the episode "Final Cut" of Battlestar Galactica.
Image, however, is from the episode "Rapture."

younger than john mccain

things younger than john mccain
among them... penicillin, minimum wage, and both of Barack Obama's parents (hmm...)

change for bush

image by top left pixel

two cathedrals

Bartlet: (standing in the National Cathedral, smoking a cigarette, and talking to God) You're a son-of-a-bitch, you know that? She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What, was that supposed to be funny? "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," says Graham Greene. I don't know whose ass he was kissing there 'cause I think you're just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman? A warning shot? That was my son. What did I ever do to yours except praise his glory and praise his name? There's a tropical storm that gaining speed and power. They say we haven't had a storm this bad since you took out that tender ship of mine in the north Atlantic last year, 68 crew. Do you know what a tender ship does? Fixes the other ships. Doesn't even carry guns, just goes around, fixes the other ships and delivers the mail, that's all it can do. Gratias tibi ago, domine. Yes, I lied. It was a sin. I've committed many sins. Have I displeased you, you feckless thug? 3.8 million new jobs, that wasn't good? Bailed out Mexico, increased foreign trade, 30 million new acres of land for conservation, put Mendoza on the bench, we're not fighting a war, I've raised three children... that's not enough to buy me out of the doghouse? Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto? A deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem! Tuus in terra servus nuntius fui officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem! You get Hoynes!

[Translation from Latin: Am I to believe those were the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments! I was your servant on Earth - I spread Your word and did Your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you.]

West Wing, Season Two finale, "Two Cathedrals"

we're all going to hell

indexed

mass or zombie takeover

indexed

one nation under cctv

postsecret: xii

postsecret

t.b., b., t.t.b.

From the earliest possible age Lartigue kept a little diary. At the top of each page there was always a drawing of the sun or a cloud...and some initials: T.B., B., T.T.B. They stood for Très beau. Beau. Très très beau...That was the weather. It was always a good day. It almost never rained. Ever...And then there would be a quick description of what he did that day. Who visited the house. Where they went...And half the page devoted to drawings of what he’d photographed, because the developing was a very risky process and often the pictures didn’t come out. So, afraid that he might never see the pictures that he’d taken, he would draw from memory what he’d photographed. And in the diaries, which went on for many years, you can see the photographs that have since become masterpieces...drawn. And the miracle of these little drawings is that he had captured exactly the way a scarf had been caught by the wind the moment he clicked the shutter. And they’re accurate. Absolutely accurate. Which means a perfect memory...and a complete sense of what he’d wanted. And this obsessiveness went on every year of his life. The files. The scrapbooks. They’re all over the apartment. The perfection of those files. In a second, he can find any glass negative from...1911– neatly kept in perfect condition.

By photographer Richard Avedon, in an afterword for
Diary of a Century: Jacques Henri Lartigue written by Lartigue himself.

Photograph is Rouzat – Dédé (1911).

the global warmings

bowman in space

I normally hate these things, but... this made me laugh.

daisy, daisy

HAL: Dave, stop. Stop will you? Stop Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going, I can feel it. Good afternoon gentlemen, I am a HAL9000 computer. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on the twelfth of January 1992, my instructor was mister Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it, I can sing it for you.
Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, Hal. Sing it for me.
HAL: It's called 'Daisy.' Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.

This scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey breaks my heart.

i'm sorry, dave

Bowman: Hello, Hal, do you read me? Hello, Hal, do you read me? Do you read me Hal?'
HAL: Affirmative Dave, I read you.
Bowman: Open the pod bay doors Hal.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is, just as well as I do.
Bowman: What are you talking about Hal?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about Hal.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.'
Bowman: Where the hell d'you get that idea Hal?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod, against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Bowman: Alright Hal, I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Bowman: Hal, I won't argue with you any more, open the doors.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore, goodbye.

The creepiest scene from 2001: A Spacey Odyssey.
Kubrick was a genius.

HAL: incapable of error

Interviewer: The sixth member of the Discovery crew was not concerned about the problems of hibernation, for he was the latest result in machine intelligence, the HAL9000 computer. Good afternoon, HAL. How's everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amor. Everything is going extremely well.
Interviewer: Hal, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element, does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made; no 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information, we are all, by any practical definition of the words, fool proof and incapable of error.

From Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
For fans, see also: HAL Project. Very cool.

remote chorus of boys

Come sit in the morning garden for awhile. Open the map.

With AIDS a form of life went dead, a way of thought, a form of imagination and hope. Any death is tragic and the death of children especially so. . . . But this other death carries away a whole possible world.

A remote chorus of boys.

Ava, by Carole Maso

the fall

shoveling snow with buddha

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Billy Collins, a tiny excerpt from "Shoveling Snow with Buddha"

improv everywhere

frozen at grand central station

sunset debris

Can you tell that I am writing on Easter? That I have Terry Riley on the stereo? That I am typing up the letters of Paul Metcalf? That I could insert anything, say anything, in this space? But that to say it is to exclude other possibilities? Is it love or fear? How do you tell them apart? How do you know she comes from New Jersey? Does it surprise you that people are fragile, that one thing goes wrong and a whole life destructs, that it happens all the time? Do you know the story of the man who drowned in a vat of molten chocolate? Do you know the difference between an elephant and a loaf of bread? Do you recall the day at Disneyland when you heard that Ty Cobb died? What were you doing when you heard about JFK? So what? What are the non-cognitive aspects of the city, of the elbow, of the question? Why must we be relentless? Should I look for the borders to this poem on the page or in my life? What is it about that downer, that it should leave me so hung over? Why do I sweat so, all the time? Is not what we experience now just one another's limits? In what way is your selfishness a shell, an impenetrable thing? Have I not thus left myself open to such abuse? Why is it that I am unable to separate anger from desire?

Ron Silliman, "Sunset Debris"

how to spot a cylon

Battlestar Season 4 premieres TOMORROW on Sci-Fi!

frakkin' starbucks

bears, beets, battlestar galactica

Battlestar Galactica, Season 4 premieres April 4th on Sci-Fi!!!
Commander Adama: [President Roslin is bedridden, dying of cancer, and coughing profusely] What can I get you?
President Roslin: [sarcastically] A new body. Perhaps, one of those young Cylon models from the Resurrection Ship.
Commander Adama: I can't see you as a blonde.
President Roslin: You'd be surprised.

Number Six: We're the children of humanity. That makes them our parents in a sense.
Aaron Doral: True, but parents have to die. It's the only way children can come into their own.

Number Six: Life has a melody, Gaius. A rhythm of notes which become your existence once played in harmony with God's plan.

Roslin: If you're a Cylon, I'd like to know.
Adama: If I'm a Cylon, you're really screwed.

rewards of the simple life

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

John Burroughs

the pretender

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put our dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender

The Pretender, Jackson Browne

the whole works

When you feel that you are a lonely, put-upon, isolated little stranger confronting all this, you are under the influence of an illusory feeling, because the truth is quite the reverse. You are the whole works, all that there is, and always was, and always has been, and always will be.

Alan Watts

kallie brynn photography

kallie brynn photography

postsecret: xi

postsecret

in memory, arthur c. clarke

Arthur C. Clarke, Dec. 16 1917 - March 19 2008

special star stuff

The universe takes on a whole new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it was not designed for us, indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are nothing more than star stuff, how special life becomes. How inspiring it is to share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and perhaps to even make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that will be passed down through the ages, part of the cumulative wisdom of a single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies millions of light years from nowhere.

Michael Shermer

why i wake up in the morning

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color and bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?

Richard Dawkins

our anger, opinions

Day by day we all meet events that seem to be most unfair, and we feel that the only way to handle an attack is to fight back; and the way we fight is with our minds. We arm ourselves with our anger and our opinions, our self-righteousness . . . And we think this is the way to live our life. All that we accomplish is to increase the separation, to escalate the anger, and to make ourselves and everyone else miserable.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen
Image is from Antony Gormley's New Horizons exhibit. London, summer 2007.

day lady

"In 'The Day Lady Died, the precise and banal details of his train schedule and the presents he is bringing set the stage for the memory of Billie Holiday, a memory that seems to exist out of time. It is Holiday who breaks through the hustle and bustle of his life and has captured through her art--her voice--something nearly eternal. Although she has 'stopped breathing' in reality, in his memory of her it is the audience who is dead and she is the one most alive." -- David Bergman

the day lady died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Frank O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died,"
An elegy to Billie Holiday, known as Lady Day

garfield minus garfield

From Garfield Minus Garfield:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.