PHILIP K. DICK

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

DŌGEN

The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
and does not need a guide.

JAMES MERRILL
"The Mad Scene"

Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry.
In it, the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
Onto moon-marbly boards. We had just met. I watched
From outer darkness. I had dressed myself in clothes
Of a new fiber that never stains or wrinkles, never
Wears thin. The opera house sparkled with tiers
And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,
Trained inward. There I saw the cloud-clot, gust by gust,
Form, and the lightning bite, and the roan mane unloosen.
Fingers were running in panic over the flute’s nine gates.
Why did I flinch? I loved you. And in the downpour laughed
To have us wrung white, gnarled together, one
Topmost mordent of wisteria,
As the lean tree burst into grief.

RYŌKAN

First days of Spring - the sky
is bright blue, the sun huge and warm.
Everything’s turning green.
Carrying my monk’s bowl, I walk to the village
to beg for my daily meal.
The children spot me at the temple gate
and happily crowd around,
dragging to my arms till I stop.
I put my bowl on a white rock,
hang my bag on a branch.
First we braid grasses and play tug-of-war,
then we take turns singing and keeping a kick-ball in the air:
I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing.
Time is forgotten, the hours fly.
People passing by point at me and laugh:
‘Why are you acting like such a fool?’
I nod my head and don’t answer.
I could say something, but why?
Do you want to know what’s in my heart?
From the beginning of time: just this! just this!

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSOn meeting Samuel Beckett

He gave me one of the greatest compliments that I ever heard. Someone asked him, “What do you think of Burroughs?” and he said - grudgingly - “Well, he’s a writer.”

CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Tales of Ordinary Madness

I felt like crying but nothing came out. It was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. But I think I have known it pretty often, too often.

FRANCES PARK - “The Wakeful”

The restless pass the night hours in company
  forever about in the town; though many
  at half past three admit to being lonely.

The wakeful perceive the small hour as merely a
  digit on the clock’s dial, familiar
  as supper time.   This is not insomnia:

(a state of disturbance marked by anxiety,
  tears, veronal, prayers to the Deity,
  guilt, and a plenitude of self pity).

The wakeful are simply awake and quiet
  at any hour—little concerned about it;
  warm in the lamp’s glow, the soft bed jacket,

with cigarettes and fruit ready to hand;
  a waltz whispered over the radio and
  sleep hovering at the night’s end.

CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ

Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment “already”? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a “cristallisation,” so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.

bell hooks
The Will to Change: Men and Masculinity

____________________

In patriarchal culture men are not allowed to simply be who they are and glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.

ELIZA GRISWOLD
“The Holy Loo”

When, in a church or chapel’s hush,
A distant toilet’s heard to flush,
And in the nave, above the drone
Of psalm or sermon, all alone,
A child is hiding, a girl of three—
She’s hiding in eternity.
Already, in these sacred walls,
The child has learned that nature calls
As well as God, at any time,
And any life, as any rhyme,
Is balanced only if, in all,
The sacred and the natural,
Are found together, one for one,
When prayer, oath, creed or day is done.

Vietnamese Folk Poem
(Ca dao)

The night is deep, the stars shining brightly
mist covers the rice fields
the bamboo rustles in the wind
the crickets chirp in all the corners
the monks are reciting hymns in the temple.

We hear the drums and singing in a distant village
the river flows by silently
sitting close to each other
we are talking softly
Life is wonderful!

Do you see above the hills
the pink moon rising?
It looks like a fire in the woods
the strong and beautiful trees.

There is a star of the north
scintillating like a glow-worm
there comes the breeze, refreshing our faces
A stone will be worn by the river,
but our love will stay all our lives.

Why do I feel this will never be history in my lifetime?

DARIAN LEADERWhat is Madness?

What is it, first of all, that acts on us from outside? As infants, it is our caregivers, whose discourse we are born into. We depend almost totally on them, and our own subjectivity tends to be asserted and formed through acts of refusal. When we say no to being fed, for example, we show that we are different from them, that we are not simply their puppets. If we can do this through action, we can also do it through speech, but this is complicated by the fact that speech, initially, comes from them. We learn words through them, and if we accept that thinking relies on verbal structures, our thought, at a certain level, derives from them too.

ADAM FLYNN

We’re solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.

EZRA POUND - "Cantico Del Sole"

The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
     &nbs p; Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
     &nbs p;Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
       Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation...
     & nbsp; Oh well!
       It troubles my sleep.

RICHARD ADAMS
Watership Down

At that instant a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the flash. Immediately upon it came the thunder: a high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces close above, which deepened and turned to enormous blows of dissolution. Then the rain fell like a waterfall. In a few seconds the ground was covered with water and over it, to a height of inches, rose a haze formed of a myriad minute splashes. Stupefied with the shock, unable even to move, the sodden rabbits crouched inert, almost pinned to the earth by the rain.

MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

GROUCHO MARX

I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.

JAMES DICKEY

A poet has got to find some way to love that white empty page, those words he hasn’t said yet.

TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
“The Indoors Is Endless”

It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven
hoists his death-mask and sails off.

The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.
The wild geese are flying northwards.

Here is the north, here is Stockholm
swimming palaces and hovels.

The logs in the royal fireplace
collapse from Attention to At Ease.

Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes,
but the city wells breathe heavily.

Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas
are carried by night over the North Bridge.

The cobblestones make them stagger
mamselles loafers gentlemen.

Implacably still, the sign-board
with the smoking blackamoor.

So many islands, so much rowing
with invisible oars against the current!

The channels open up, April May
and sweet honey dribbling June.

The heat reaches islands far out.
The village doors are open, except one.

The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence.
The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience.

It happened like this, or almost.
It is an obscure family tale

about Erik, done down by a curse
disabled by a bullet through the soul.

He went to town, met an enemy
and sailed home sick and grey.

Keeps to his bed all that summer.
The tools on the wall are in mourning.

He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter
of night moths, his moonlight comrades.

His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain
against the iron-bound tomorrow.

And the God of the depths cries out of the depths
‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’

All the surface action turns inwards.
He’s taken apart, put together.

The wind rises and the wild rose bushes
catch on the fleeing light.

The future opens, he looks into
the self-rotating kaleidoscope

sees indistinct fluttering faces
family faces not yet born.

By mistake his gaze strikes me
as I walk around here in Washington

among grandiose houses where only  
every second column bears weight.

White buildings in crematorium style
where the dream of the poor turns to ash.

The gentle downward slope gets steeper
and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.

DŌGEN

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

LYSANDER SPOONER

There is not, in the Constitution, a syllable that implies that persons, born within the territorial limits of the United States, have allegiance imposed upon them on account of their birth in the country, or that they will be judged by any different rule, on the subject of treason, than persons of foreign birth.

SAMUEL BECKETT
Malone Dies

Misfortunes, blessings, I have no time to pick my words, I am in a hurry to be done. And yet no, I am in no hurry.

ALDOUS HUXLEY
Ape and Essence

Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren’t any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner’s assistant leans almost amorously toward him.

“Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way.”

And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man’s humanity.

And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises our standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don’t want yet do everything we can to bring about.

MADNESS
“Grey Day”

When I get home it’s late at night,
I’m black and bloody from my life,
I haven’t time to clean my hands,
Cuts will only sting me through my dreams.

It’s well past midnight as I lie
In a semi-conscious state.
I dream of people fighting me
Without any reason I can see.

In the morning I awake,
My arms my legs my body aches,
The sky outside is wet and grey
So begins another weary day.
So begins another weary day.

After eating I go out,
People passing by me shout.
I can’t stand this agony
Why don’t they talk to me?

In the park I have to rest
I lie down and I do my best,
The rain is falling on my face
I wish I could sink without a trace.

In the morning I awake,
My arms my legs my body aches,
The sky outside is wet and grey,
So begins another weary day.
So begins another weary day.

In the park I have to rest
I lie down and I do my best,
The rain is falling on my face
I wish I could sink without a trace.

In the morning I awake,
My arms my legs my body aches,
The sky outside is wet and grey,
So begins another weary day.
So begins another weary day.


Songwriters: Cathal Joseph Smyth / Christopher John Foreman / Daniel Mark Woodgate / Graham Mcpherson / Lee Jay Thompson / Mark William Bedford / Michael Barson

PETER ACKROYD

And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in for ever.

A. A. MILNE
Winnie-the-Pooh

Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.

Child in a Planet of the Apes costume for Halloween, New York, circa 1974-1978, photo by Larry Racioppo (New York Public Library).

W. H. AUDEN
“The More Loving One”

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

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

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH
“Troubles Will Be Gone”

Oh, when it’s god I see in headlights kneeling down on frozen highways
And salvation in white knuckles on a wheel
And the deer is in the audience by the border of the darkness
Where forgiveness grows and slowly winds away

Well there’s a question somewhere asked with all the answers inside
But I’ll never find the kid before she’s gone
Well the day is never done, but there’s a light on where you’re sleeping
So I hope somewhere that troubles will be gone

But now the ghost is in my jacket and my stairs were built in anger
Winding forcefully but end up where I stand
But there are no rocks or salt and nails, I low my cannons not to kill you
Simply lost the words to tell you I’m afraid

And there’s a sign up to a hill to see the far of the land
Well the sign will tell you, “Turn if there’s a one”
Still the day is never done, but there’s a light on where you’re sleeping
So I hope somewhere that troubles will be gone

Oh darling, when it’s you I see in headlights, driving down the golden highway
And salvation in the beauty of some brace
And the deer is gone without me to the valley of surrender
There is still another world along it’s tracks

But there’s that sign up to a hill to see the far of the land
Well the sign will say, “There’s still a higher one”
And now the day is slowly setting, and the lights on where you’re sleeping
So I hope somewhere that troubles will be gone

T'AO CH'IEN

Unsettled, a bird lost from the flock –
Keeps flying by itself in the dusk.
Back and forth, it has no resting place,
Night after night, more anguished its cries.
Its shrill sound yearns for the pure and distant –
Coming from afar, how anxiously it flutters!

It chances to find a pine tree growing all apart;
Folding its wings, it has come home at last.
In the gusty wind there is no dense growth;
This canopy alone does not decay.
Having found a perch to roost on,
In a thousand years it will not depart.

BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY
“The Seedling”

I go out back to look up at her
Smiling unluckily at my red fur
And into my own I meld my nose
My full-sized child is fully unclothed

Birdies say I got no children, birdies never know
In my hidden life I’ve made a seedling grow

When it is cold I shelter her in
The wazimy warmth of the monkey skin
And into my own I fold my head
My full-sized child with full-sized spread

Birdies say I got no children, birdies never know
In my hidden life I’ve made a seedling grow

Hawks and doves and power fists
Black hand gripping our kid’s wrists
Lanterns and arrows and little monk fish
They grant my every child wish

And birdies say I got no children, birdies never know
In my hidden life I’ve made a seedling grow
Birdies say I got no children, birdies never know
In my hidden life I’ve made a seedling grow

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.

DAVID LYNCH

It’s a joke to think that a film is going to mean anything if somebody else fiddles with it.

ANNE CARSON
“Town of the Sound of a Twig Breaking”

Their faces I thought were knives.
The way they pointed them at me.
And waited.
A hunter is someone who listens.
So hard to his prey it pulls the weapon.
Out of his hand and impales.
Itself.

TIMOTHY DONNELLY“The Endless”

I saw a yellow butterfly
flying
in my opinion
the wrong way, flying across
the sound
to Connecticut

I saw a cormorant
oily-looking
flying
close to the sea’s surface
precisely
as I floated on it on

my back in
the attitude of the crucifixion
minerals in my body
in
conversation with
the minerals of the sea

about the sun
how can I possibly
add
to what’s already been said
so well
by the ancients

and said with
an austerity I’ll never
know
it is an honor to take
a backseat to the ancients
who knew how

I was a fat white fish
dissolving
under the sold-out stadium sun
like a god
but like a god
I could live through anything.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT - “A Ballad That We Do Not Perish”

Those who sailed at dawn
but will never return
left their trace on a wave—

a shell fell to the bottom of the sea
beautiful as lips turned to stone

those who walked on a sandy road
but could not reach the shuttered windows
though they already saw the roofs—

they have found shelter in a bell of air

but those who leave behind only
a room grown cold a few books
an empty inkwell white paper—

in truth they have not completely died
their whisper travels through thickets of wallpaper
their level head still lives in the ceiling

their paradise was made of air
of water lime and earth an angel of wind
will pulverize the body in its hand
they will be
carried over the meadows of this world

MARK HADDON from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

COCOROSIE - “South 2nd”

We don’t need no baseball bats
We don’t need no silver ghats
But we’re gonna fight tonight
Put up your dukes and fight
Big brother’s just standing on the side
Watching you flex your pride
But you know if they all jump in
Big brother’s got your skin

The ice cream truck it sings no more
All the kids from school are keeping score
You swing and you duck and you hit the floor
But you gotta get up at least once more
Mama comes screaming down the stairs
Everybody looks but nobody scares
Mama can’t believe that nobody care
It’s her baby boy how do they dare
Mama says bitch come over here
If you’re so tough you’ll have no fear
But why’s you bring your friends
And the whole damn school
To watch my baby boy go down like a fool

But brother says mama they’re the same damn size
Got to let him grow up and get street wise
But mama says baby go get that bat
And come back down and beat some ass

Somebody’s baby boy ain’t coming home tonight
Somebody’s baby boy ain’t coming home tonight
Somebody’s baby boy ain’t coming home tonight

One wrong move and it’ll be too late
Mama won’t be making no birthday cake
It all went down one afternoon
In Brooklyn

MANLY P. HALL from The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.

". . . a sharp blow from a cold spoon is the best way to tame an unwelcome erection . . ."

THOMAS PYNCHON
Gravity’s Rainbow

There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made — at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.

WANG WEI“Bamboo Cottage”

Alone in the dense bamboo, I sit
playing my lute, humming along.

Lost to this world, who will notice
but the bright moon shining?

ROBERT BLY

To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown.

CONFRONTING THE WITCH

Edd Cartier

SUN BU'ER

Spirit and energy should be clear as the night air;
In the soundless is the ultimate pleasure all along.
Where there’s reality in illusion
Is illusion in reality,
For the while playing with magical birth
In the silver bowl.

GRAHAM GOULDMAN
“East, West”

East, west
Over the ocean
Perpetual motion
Traveling around

No rest
Singing and playing
Night out and day in
Doing the rounds

What a great life this must seem!

Swelled joints
Everything classy
Nothing is tacky
Only the best

Lush girls
Older and dying
Sighing and crying
“This is success!”

What a great life this must seem!

But when I hear your voice
Singing out
The Bells Of Home
Are ringing out
And I feel all alone
(And I think of my home)

Cold times
A wind through the houses
The bleakness arouses
A longing to leave

Time flew
I wanted to see you
Somehow I could not do
Because of success

What a strange life this can be!

But when I hear your voice
Singing out
The bells of home
Are ringing out
And I feel all alone
(And I think of my home)

DAISAKU IKEDA

How exhilarating it is to stand tall, walk with a buoyant step and be flexible in one’s actions! How attractive to those we meet are our sparkling eyes and vibrant voices! This is the principle of the true entity of all phenomena. Your fresh and vital appearance eloquently attests to the greatness of faith, and you will find that you naturally cultivate a sphere of friendship and understanding among those around you.

GUY DAVENPORT
Every Force Evolves a Form

A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.

SAMUEL BECKETT
All That Fall

Let us halt a moment and let this vile dust fall back upon the viler worms.

ROBERT J. SAWYER

It’s the fear of god - the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward - that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.

T'AO CH'IEN

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.

DŌGEN

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

JOHN KEATS
“The Human Season”

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.                   

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT - 
“From The Top Of The Stairs”

Of course
those who are standing at the top of the stairs
know
they know everything

with us it’s different
sweepers of squares
hostages of a better future
those at the top of the stairs
appear to us rarely
with a hushing finger always at the mouth

we are patient
our wives darn the sunday shirts
we talk of food rations
soccer prices of shoes
while on saturday we tilt the head backward
and drink

we aren’t those
who clench their fists
brandish chains
talk and ask questions
in a fever of excitement
urging to rebel
incessantly talking and asking questions

here is their fairy tale -
we will dash at the stairs
and capture them by storm
the heads of those who were standing at the top
will roll down the stairs
and at last we will gaze
at what can be seen from those heights
what future
what emptiness

we don’t desire the view
of rolling heads
we know how easily heads grow back
and at the top there will always remain
one or three
while at the bottom it is black from brooms and shovels

sometimes we dream
those at the top of the stairs
come down
that is to us
and as we are chewing bread over the newspaper
they say

- now let’s talk
man to man
what the posters shout out isn’t true
we carry the truth in tightly locked lips
it is cruel and much too heavy
so we bear the burden by ourselves
we aren’t happy
we would gladly stay
here

these are dreams of course
they can come true
or not come true
so we will
continue to cultivate
our square of dirt
square of stone

with a light head
a cigarette behind the ear
and not a drop of hope in the heart

e. e. cummings
“what if a much of a which of a wind”

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t; blow death to was)
-all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

D. H. LAWRENCE from a letter to Cynthia Asquith, 1913

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA from The Myth of Freedom

If we wish to pick flowers from a tree, we must first cultivate the roots and trunk, which means that we must work with our fears, frustrations, disappointments, and irritations, the painful aspects of life. We must see the truth of suffering, the reality of dissatisfaction. We cannot ignore it and attempt to examine only the glorious, pleasurable aspects of life. If one searches for a promised land, a Treasure Island, then the search only leads to more pain.

HALLDÓR LAXNESS from Christianity Beneath The Glacier

Bishop: No verifying! If people tell lies, that’s as may be. If they’ve come up with some credo or other, so much the better! Don’t forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth. Spoken words are facts in themselves, whether true or false. When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they’re lying or telling the truth.

Embi: And if I find them out in a lie?

Bishop: Never speak ill of anyone in a report. Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

HERMAN HESSE from Narcissus and Goldmund

We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and compliment.

JOHN KEATS - “Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition“

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown’d
Still, still they too, and I should feel a damp, –
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; – that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.

MAURICE SENDAK

Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.

WILLIAM FAULKNER from As I Lay Dying

When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there’s nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.

EDMUND WHITE from City Boy - My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s

I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of “coffee shops” as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.

HAROLD PINTER from No Man’s Land

I have known this before. The door unlocked. The entrance of a stranger. The offer of alms. The shark in the harbour.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS - “Portent”

Red cradle of the night,
    In you
          The dusky child
Sleeps fast till his might
  Shall be piled
Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child
Sleeping sits upright.
   Lo how
                   The winds blow now!
   He pillows back;
The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,
Red cradle of the night,
   The alarms shout
From bare tree to tree,
   Wild
             In afright!
Mighty shall he be,
Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child!!

ZA PALTRÜL RINPOCHE - “Longing for the Mountains of Solitude”

Fooled in samsara town—
the endless cycle of countless chores,
preoccupations of a delusory world—
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Hassled by monastery life—
the hustle of duties and communal dues,
pursuits of pointless distraction—
This boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I look at, I see at death’s threshold;
whatever I think on, I sense denial of dying,
grasping at the deathless; in this courtyard of death,
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I meet with manifests clinging and repulsion;
whomever I talk to brings deception and lies;
faced by companions without virtuous conduct,
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Behold, beings in the three realms are fooled by afflictions;
the beings of the six realms are led astray;
delusion engenders the birth of suffering for all;
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

By the blessings of the undeceiving guru and the Jewels,
may I attain and persevere in solitude;
by the force of a place of seclusion,
may I attain a mystic’s isolation
of body, speech, and mind.

May I be blessed by the mountains of solitude.

SAMUEL BECKETT from The Unnamable

For it is difficult to speak, even any old rubbish, and at the same time focus one’s attention on another point, where one’s true interest lies, as fitfully defined by a feeble murmur seeming to apologize for not being dead. And what it seemed to me I heard then, concerning what I should do, and say, in order to have nothing further to do, nothing further to say, it seemed to me I only barely heard it, because of the noise I was engaged in making elsewhere, in obedience to the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation.

HAROLD PINTER from Old Times

Memory can be a funny thing, full of selfish needs and manipulative fictions.

WANG WEI - “Fields and Gardens by the River Qi”

I dwell apart by the River Qi,
Where the Eastern wilds stretch far without hills.
The sun darkens beyond the mulberry trees;
The river glistens through the villages.
Shepherd boys depart, gazing back to their hamlets;
Hunting dogs return following their men.
When a man’s at peace, what business does he have?
I shut fast my rustic door throughout the day.

NEIL GAIMAN

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from. You learn by finishing things.

WALPOLA RAHULA from What The Buddha Really Taught

The question has often been asked; Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. Even the label ‘Buddhism’ which we give to the teachings of the Buddha is of little importance.

In the same way Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, nor Moslem. It is not the monopoly of anybody. Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the independent understanding of Truth, and they produce harmful prejudices in men’s minds.

W. H. AUDEN - “September 1, 1939″

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,“
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.