MATKA TERESA OD KOTÓW
-
MOTHER TERESA OF CATS

Pawel Sowa
Poland, 2010

ALICE WATERS

____________________

I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture.

DANA GIOIA

“Flying Over Clouds”

____________________

No earthly image—only clouds,

affluent clouds, seen from high above,

still bright at the approach of evening.

Soft valleys hidden in a snowdrift,

waterfalls of ice and air,

not whiteness but a dream of whiteness,

an innocence one may have felt

on earth—but only for a moment,

waking unexpectedly at dawn

one winter morning after a storm

to find the shabby blacktopped streets

immaculate in sunlight, glossed

by deep smooth banks of snow, before

the earliest car or footfall.

                                         So strange,

this world the ancients never saw,

and yet their words now come to mind,

nimbus, cirrus, cumuli,

magic names to summon all

the scattered elements of air.

O paradise beyond the glass,

beyond our touch, cast and recast,

shifting in wind. Delicate world

of air too thin to breathe, of cold

beyond endurance.

                               And nothingness

that mirrors our desire—not of death

but of your fluent oblivion,

of insubstantial dusk and dawn,

your whiteness burning in the sun.

The plane flies westward gaining time.

The dark recedes—pand up ahead

the sky is cloudless, clear, and bright.

JORGE LUIS BORGES
Dreamtigers

____________________

Around 1927 I met a sombre girl, first by telephone (for Julia began as a nameless, faceless voice), and, later, on a corner toward evening. She had alarmingly large eyes, straight blue-black hair, and an unbending body. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were federales, as mine were unitarios, and that ancient discord in our blood was for us a bond, a fuller possession of the fatherland.

There was no love between us, or even the pretense of love: I sensed in her an intensity that was altogether foreign to the erotic, and I feared it. It is not uncommon to relate to women, in an urge for intimacy, true or apocryphal circumstances of one’s boyish past. I must have told her once about the mirrors and thus in 1928 I prompted a hallucination that was to flower in 1931.

Now, I have just heard that she has lost her mind and that the mirrors in her room are draped because she sees in them my reflection, usurping her own, and she trembles and falls silent and says I am persecuting her by magic.

BRASSICAS
Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables

Laura B. Russell

DakhaBrakha
LIGHT

YUAN MEI
“Mad Words”

____________________

To learn to be without desire
         you must desire that.
Better to do as you please:
         sing idleness.
Floating clouds, and water idly running –
         Where’s their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky,
you’ll never find it.

CIARAN CARSON
“War”

____________________

Sergeant Talbot
had his head
swept off
by a
round-shot
yet for half
a furlong
more
the body kept
the saddle
horse and rider
charging on
regardless

MASTER DŌGEN

____________________

Joyful in this mountain retreat yet still feeling melancholy,
Studying the Lotus Sutra every day,
Practicing zazen singlemindedly;
What do love and hate matter
When I’m here alone,
Listening to the sound of the rain
late in this autumn evening.

SAMUEL BECKETT
“Alba”
____________________

before morning you shall be here
and Dante and the Logos and all strata and mysteries
and the branded moon
beyond the white plane of music
that you shall establish here before morning

grave suave singing silk
stoop to the black firmament of areca
rain on the bamboos flowers of smoke alley of willows

who though you stoop with fingers of compassion
to endorse the dust
shall not add to your bounty
whose beauty shall be a sheet before me
a statement of itself drawn across the tempest of emblems
so that there is no sun and no unveiling
and no host
only I and then the sheet
and bulk dead

BABU

“The Unexpected”

____________________

Hmmmmm…

You say the beat grabbed you, then the rhyme stabbed you

But can’t prove it was my clients Doom and Babu?

I rest my case - the witness never showed up

They both kept heat on the street and had it sewed up

Defense was wise, complete with alibis

What the informer told the coroner was a pile of lies

Beat the rap in a court of law

Free to beat the crap out the snitches while protectin and extortin the poor

Expect to expect the unexpected

Check for wreck, tons up under or in front of Han detected

Thunder for breakfast, sun a hundred sons in under a second

Whoever disrespect neck get disconnected

Off the record macho steel cage tiger stripe

Metal Fang strike a virgin’s Macho Libre biker type

Rigged for a fake drawer, that’s what the paper do Pick more cake score HD pay-per-view

It’s much safer for you to cry dry tears for years

Dun-da-da-dah Villain here, no fears

It is what it is ‘cept it ain’t what it used to be

That’s news to me choose to be free musically

Take it from Doom-Deini the crew meanie

Act like you don’t know or even if you see me

In it for the green zucchini, so we can get a new Beemie

For Babu, the 1 and 2’s genie

“Don’t start none, won’t be none”

“Your game, I’m above it, it’s combat”

“My advice, quit talkin, it’s over” - “no doubt”

“You don’t know-know-know-know what it’s about”

Question~! Nigga… have you ever heard of Sean?

Hell yeah but I prefer my Uncle Murda songs

I’m sorta whack like, +Hancock+ movie

Shorty dropped to her knees sayin “Hand cock to me”

Box of chop suey, flowin through outerspace

+Ring the Alarm+ this nigga tryin to Mock-Fu me

Pop shots to he, damn that’s bad grammar

Fuck a senior citizen, bad gramma jammer

Rap like a 'Bama ('Bama) sound like pork chops

Slapped with the hammer change his diet into full pop

Unorthodox socks, knee high, Jason Terry

Maverick, stab a chick when chasin fetti

My mind on my money (money) money on my mind (mind)

This 9 on my waist guaranteed money all the time (time)

Whack rappers always argue over faggot shit

I argue with Dru about seekin new management

“Duck Season 3” officially in Haters Town

Be sure to bring your maters call, and lazer sounds

They flied in, migrated, that’s why I waited

The whole time eye and balls dilated

Flier was faded, the date was right though

Hoe it ain’t nuttin but my hound dog Nitro

Go get 'em boy, Villain found some dinners

After I finished skinnin 'em y'all can split the innards

Innards, Lynard Skynard - why did I say that?

Not to fuck up the ebony flow of said track

Head crack, I always throw sixes

Return to Ike Turner, I always throw bitches

You know the flow vicious - new and improved shit

No time for arguin - do what you do bitch

I like sneakers and I like bud

Catch me smokin right in front of the Flite Club

 

ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Eustace Diamonds

____________________

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies - who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two - that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself.

THOMAS BERNHARD
Correction

____________________

Everything is what it is, that’s all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

____________________

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

HUGH MARTIN and RALPH BLANE
"The Trolley Song"

____________________

With my high-starched collar and my high-top shoes
And my hair piled high upon my head
I went to lose a jolly hour on the trolley and lost my heart instead
With his light brown derby and his bright green tie
He was quite the handsomest of men
I started to yen so I counted to ten
Then I counted to ten again

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings
From the moment I saw him I fell

Chug, chug, chug went the motor
Bump, bump, bump went the break
Thump, thump, thump went my heartstrings
When he smiled I could feel the car shake

He tipped his hat and took a seat
He said he hoped he hadn't stepped upon my feet
He asked my name, I held my breath
I couldn't speak because he scared me half to death

Buzz, buzz, buzz went the buzzer
Flop, flop, flop went the wheels
Stop, stop, stop went my heartstrings
As he started to go then I started to know
How it feels
When the Universe reels

VEGAN BOWL ATTACK!
More Than 100 One-Dish Meals Packed with Plant-Based Power

Jackie Sobon

THOMAS MERTON
No Man Is An Island

____________________

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives.

My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement.

Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time.

SAMUEL BECKETT
That Time

____________________

never the same after that never quite the same but that was nothing new if it wasn’t this it was that common occurrence something you could never be the same after crawling about year after year sunk in your lifelong mess muttering to yourself who else you’ll never be the same after this you were never the same after that.

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH
“Like The Wheel”

____________________

I wish I was the sparrow in you kid’s eye
That could fly above this summer all day long
On an island in the heart he has to carry
Past the many you have let into your song

And I said “oh my lord, why am I not strong?”
Like the wheel that keeps travelers travelling on
Like the wheel that will take me home

In the forest someone whispering to a tree now
This is all I am so please don’t follow me
And its your brother in the shaft that I’m a-swinging
Please let the kindness of forgetting set me free

And he said “oh my lord, why am I not strong?”
Like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on
Like the wheel that will take you home

And on this Sunday someone’s sitting down to wonder
“Where the hell among these mountains will I be?”
There’s a cloud behind the cloud to which I’m yelling
Oh, I could hear you sneak around so easily

And I said “oh my lord, why am I not strong?”
Like the branch that keeps hangmen hanging on
Like the branch that will take me home

JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses

____________________

“After that he began to mope by himself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself. So one night he was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn’t find him anywhere. They looked high up and low down; and still they couldn’t see a sight of him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the chapel. So then they got the keys and opened the chapel and the clerk and Father O’Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a light for to look for him…. And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself?” She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.

UTOPIA AVENUE

David Mitcghell
Hodder & Stoughton, 2020

LEONARD COHEN
"Take This Waltz"

____________________

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years
-
There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz ...

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is

W GŁĘBI LASU
-
THE WOODS

Bartosz Konopka
Poland, 2019

TIM BURKETT
Nothing Holy About It - The Zen of Being Just Who You Are
____________________

Suzuki said, “Enlightenment is an accident. Zen practice makes us accident-prone.” Over the years, I have come to appreciate this saying more and more. It points to an attitude based on trust—not trust in any particular entity or process, but unconditional trust that is not contingent on anything. We can tap in to this trust, but we cannot own it. It is not my trust or your trust; it is just trust in the basic goodness of the universe, from which we are not separate.

Trust in our basic goodness is foundational in Buddhist thought. It sets Buddhism apart from other major religions. In Buddhism no intermediaries are required to bridge the gap caused by sinfulness, because there is no gap to bridge, and no sin—only suffering and the causes of suffering. Even suffering is a part of our basic goodness. It brings us into direct contact with reality, cultivates compassion, and builds great inner strength when we deal with suffering skillfully.

George Frideric Händel

ARIODANTE, HWV 33

Joyce DiDonato, Karina Gauvin, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Sabina Puértolas, Topi Lehtipuu, Matthew Brook, Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani

Alan Curtis

Il Complesso Barocco

W GŁĘBI LASU
-
THE WOODS

Bartosz Konopka
Poland, 2019

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

Byron Haskin/George Pal
USA, 1953

HALLDÓR LAXNESS
The Fish Can Sing

____________________

A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father.

TOM WAITS
“Strange Weather”

____________________

Will you take me across the channel
London Bridge is falling down
Strange a woman tries to save
More than a man will try to drown

And it’s the rain that they predicted
It’s the forecast every time
The rose has died because you picked it
I believe that brandy’s mine

And all over the world
Strangers talk only about the weather
All over the world
It’s the same
It’s the same

And the world is getting flatter
And the sky is falling all around
Oh and nothing is the matter
For I’ll never cry in town

And a love like ours my dear
Is best measured when it’s down
And I never buy umbrellas
Cause there’s always one around

And all over the world
Strangers talk only about the weather
All over the world
It’s the same
It’s the same

And you know that it’s the beginning
And you know that it’s the end
Once again we are strangers
As the fog goes rolling in

And all over the world
Strangers talk only about the weather
All over the world
It’s the same
It’s the same
It’s the same

SAMUEL BECKETT
All That Fall

____________________

How can I go on, I cannot. Oh let me just flop down flat on the road like a big fat jelly out of a bowl and never move again! A great big slop thick with grit and dust and flies, they would have to scoop me up with a shovel.

PARTENOPE, HWV 27
George Frideric Händel

Philippe Jaroussky, Karina Gauvin, John Mark Ainsley, Teresa Iervolino, Emöke Barath, Luca Tittoto

Riccardo Minasi
Il Pomo d'Oro

JOHN KEATS
“You say you love; but with a voice”

____________________

You say you love; but with a voice
       Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
   The soft vespers to herself
       While the chime-bell ringeth—
              O love me truly!

   You say you love; but with a smile
       Cold as sunrise in September,
   As you were Saint Cupid’s nun,
       And kept his weeks of Ember—
              O love me truly!

   You say you love; but then your lips
       Coral tinted teach no blisses,
   More than coral in the sea—
        They never pout for kisses—
             O love me truly!

   You say you love; but then your hand
       No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth;
   It is like a statue’s, dead,—
       While mine for passion burneth—
              O love me truly!

   O breathe a word or two of fire!
       Smile, as if those words should burn me,
   Squeeze as lovers should—O kiss
       And in thy heart inurn me—
              O love me truly!

DARK
Season 3

Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Germany, 2020

BUDDHA BOWLS
100 Nourishing One-Bowl Meals

Kelli Foster

ROBERTO BOLAÑO
The Savage Detectives

____________________

Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.

ДахаБраха

ЯГУДКИ

DakhaBrakha

BERRIES

 

AIMEE MANN
“Susan”

____________________

Oh Susan, you were clued-in
You knew just how this thing would go
A prognosis that was hopeless
From the very first domino
I guess I see it all in hindsight
I tried to keep perspective despite
The flash of the fuse, the smell of cordite

Now I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Susan I can see it now

Oh Suzie, they get to me
They can really be wearying
So he threw me rope and buoy
Let me use his decoding ring
There must have been some kind of parade
We kissed for a while to see how it fades
And pulled the pin on another grenade

But I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Suzy I can see it now

Oh Susan, the hope of fusion
Is that the halo will reappear
It may be pure illusion
But it’s beautiful while it’s here
I had some trouble with the goodbye
I checked my roman candle supply
And watched the vapor-trail in the sky

But I’m in that place again
And I know he can’t come in to get me
And someday he will live to regret me
Susan I can see it now

DARK
Season 2

Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Germany, 2019

TAO YUANMING

____________________

I built my hut within where others live,
But there is no noise of carriages and horses.
You ask how this is possible:
When the heart is distant, solitude comes.
I pluck chrysanthemums by the eastern fence
And see the distant southern mountains.
The mountain air is fresh at dusk.
Flying birds return in flocks.
In these things there lies a great truth,
But when I try to express it, I cannot find the words.

BORIS PASTERNAK
"Mephistopheles"

____________________

Every Sunday they left a circus of dust behind them,
as they poured out on the turnpike in stately, overcowded
                                                                                           carriages,
and the showers found nobody at home,
and trampled through the bedroom windows.

It was a custom at these staid Sunday dinners
to serve courses of rain instead of roast-beef;
on the baroque sideboard, by the Sunday silver,
the wind cut corners like a boy on a new bicycle.

Upstairs, the curtain-rods whirled, untouched;
the curtains rose like a salvo to the ceiling.
Outside the burghers kept losing themselves,
they showed up chewing straws by cow-ponds.

Later, when the long cortege of carriages
approached the city wall,
the horses shied
from the shadow of the Gothic gallows.

The devil in blood-red stockings with rose rosettes
danced along the sunset-watered road—
he was as red
as a boiling lobster.

One thought a snort of indignation
had ripped the lid of Heaven
from the skyline’s low vegetation;
the devil’s ribbons fluttered and danced.

The carriages swam through his eyes like road-signs;
he scarcely lifted a finger in greeting.
He rolled on his heels, he rumbled with laughter,
he sidled off hugging Faust, his pupil.

If you enjoyed this poem, why not read …



The Paris Review - Issue 26 (Fall 1961)

MASTER DŌGEN

____________________

Coming, going, the waterbirds
don’t leave a trace,
don’t follow a path.

DARK
Season 1

Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Germany, 2017

HUEY NEWTON

____________________

The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishment’s hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.

My Independence Day Message To Gun Nuts Everywhere

I'm tired of hearing about how carrying guns in public is some declaration of our rights. It's just a way to make people more afraid and used to living in their self-made prison.

By Karoli Kuns — July 2, 2014

Independence Day: When we celebrate the nation's independence by shooting projectiles into the air intended to resemble 'bombs bursting in air.' Or something.

Wouldn't it be great to celebrate the nation's independence by actually living in a society that cared about liberty for everyone instead of just white, gun-toting Christian conservatives?

Let's be honest. States that glorify guns as implements of liberty aren't promoting freedom; they're promoting fear. The best we can hope in their vision of liberty is not to be in the line of fire when someone unloads a few rounds into someone else they're pissed at.

How twisted is it to define liberty as having the right to inflict fear, harm and possible death on someone else?

A life free of paranoia and fear feels much more like independence. Living afraid to go to the movies, the mall, or even out to a fast food restaurant feels much more like prison.

The open carry whackos driven by their need to sport their penises guns in public aren't proclaiming liberty. They're claiming their right to intimidate other people and minimize others' rights in favor of their own. Desensitize everyone, and no one will notice when they start using them to bully people of color, women, and other groups they conquer, right?

News flash: It's not liberty to sacrifice 20 children for one insane person's right to carry a weapon of mass death. It's not liberty for college students to be dead because an entitled, bitter student decided to go out in a blaze of glory. That's not liberty and it's sure as hell not freedom.

They want us all to believe we have to have guns to be free. I don't believe that. I never have, and I never will.

This Independence Day, I'm declaring mine. I won't visit states with laws permitting open carry and I won't patronize national businesses that permit it. We don't have to live by their rules, even if they have guns and I don't. But I'm not stopping there. If they want liberty, they can start by being responsible and considerate of others.

They can leave their guns at home, locked up with the key in their pocket. Liberty is choosing to respect other people, not trampling all over them.

HANNAH ARENDT

____________________

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

FANATYK

Michał Tylka
Poland, 2017

UMBERTO SABA
“The Little Tree”
____________________

It’s raining hard today.
The day is more like night,
the spring is more like fall,
and in the yard a driving wind lays waste
to the little tree that, seeming not to, stands
steady and firm; it seems among the plants
like a too-green adolescent grown too tall.
You watch it. It may be
your pity stirs for all of those white flowers
the north wind strips from it; and they are fruit,
sweet preserves we set
aside for winter, those fallen flowers spread
across the grass. And your vast maternity
aches for them, all.

1983

Joshua Long
Poland, 2018

A BULL OF A MAN 
Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism

John Powers
Harvard University Press, 2009

ANNA LAPPE
____________________

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

1983

Joshua Long
Poland, 2018

The Republican Party aka Trump's fellow Russian assets - unpaid volunteer edition.

He's never gonna fuck you or grab your pussy, but he surely does love grifting money from the poorly educated.

PIER PAOLO PASSOLINI
From Selected Poems

____________________

Behold those times re-created by
the brutal power of sunlit images,
the light of life’s tragedy.
The walls of the trial, the field
of the firing squad; and the distant
ghost of Rome’s suburbs in a ring,
gleaming white in naked light.
Gunshots: our death, our survival.

BOWL
Vegetarian Recipes for Ramen, Pho, Bibimbap, Dumplings, and Other One-Dish Meals

Lukas Volger

SATYAGRAHA
Phillip Glass

Christopher Keene
New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus