DIRTY VEGAN - ANOTHER BITE
Brand-New Rocking Vegan Recipes

Matt Pritchard

RYŌKAN

__________________

If you speak delusions, everything becomes a delusion; If you speak the truth, everything becomes the truth. Outside the truth there is no delusion, but outside delusion there is no special truth. Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places? Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own hearts.

SIGNS

M. Night Shyamalan
USA, 2002

ABUL ʿALA AL-MAʿARRI

____________________

The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: 

Those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.

WALK THE LINE

James Mangold
USA 2005

SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot

____________________

He speaks to me again! If this goes on much longer we’ll soon be old friends.

SAMUEL BECKETT
Molloy

____________________

Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.

DEBORAH KERR
____________________

If you have freckles, you might as well relax and enjoy them. There’s nothing you can do about them.

HART CRANE
“To Brooklyn Bridge”

____________________

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day …

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn …
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon … Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,—

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path—condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year …

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

JOHN FOWLES
The Magus

____________________

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.

In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see relationship between objects. Whether the objects love each other, need each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all women - and absurd.

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellow-men. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death.

DakhaBrakha
NA MEZHI

 

PHILIP LARKIN
“Sad Steps”

____________________

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky
There’s something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate --
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

HỒ XUÂN HƯƠNG TRADITION
[”My husband is useless”]

____________________

My husband is useless, Sisters. He gambles
All day long, goes berserk
When I complain. It is embarrassing
Even to talk about it. To settle his debts,
I’ll have to sell four or five baskets
Of threshed rice, kilos of cotton.
We’ll eat less. This bitter berry
I’ll suck without complaints, lest everyone laughs.
Confucian-trained, yet I live with a fool.
A dragon in a pool of mud.
A smart wife with a stupid husband.

DakhaBrakha in Dnipro, Free Ukraine - Dec 12, 2010

NINA GARENETSKA

Vokals, cello, bass drum

MARKO HALANEVYCH

Vokals, darbuka, tabla, didjeridoo, accordion, trombone

IRYNA KOVALENKO

Vokals, djembe, bass drums, accordion, percussion, bugay, zgaleyka, piano

OLENA TSYBULSKA

Vokals, bass drums, percussion, garmoshka

 

W. S. MERWIN
“For a Coming Extinction”
____________________

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours

When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And foreordaining as stars
Our sacrifices

Join your word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important

LI BAI
“Alone and Drinking Under the Moon”
____________________

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

WAR DOGS

Todd Phillips
USA, 2016

NICK CAVE
“God Is In The House”

____________________

We’ve laid the cables and the wires
We’ve split the wood and stoked
the fires
We’ve lit our town so there is no
Place for crime to hide
Our little church is painted white
And in the safety of the night
We all go quiet as a mouse
For the word is out
God is in the house
No cause for worry now
God is in the house

Moral sneaks in the White House
Computer geeks in the school house
Drug freaks in the crack house
We don’t have that stuff here
We have a tiny little Force
But we need them of course
For the kittens in the trees
And at night we are on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
For God is in the house
And no one’s left in doubt
God is in the house

Homos roaming the streets in packs
Queer bashers with tyre-jacks
Lesbian counter-attacks
That stuff is for the big cities
Our town is very pretty
We have a pretty little square
We have a woman for a mayor
Our policy is firm but fair
Now that God is in the house
Any day now He’ll come out
God is in the house

Well-meaning little therapists
Goose-stepping twelve-stepping Tetotalitarianists
The tipsy, the reeling and the drop down pissed
We got no time for that stuff here
Zero crime and no fear
We’ve bred all our kittens white
So you can see them in the night
And at night we’re on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
Since the word got out
From the North down to the South
For no-one’s left in doubt
There’s no fear about
If we all hold hands and very quietly shout
Hallelujah
Oh I wish He would come out
God is in the house

DIRTY VEGAN
Proper Banging Vegan Food

Matt Pritchard

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.

SUSAN SONTAG
“Letter to Borges”

On the 10th anniversary of the death of Jorge Luis Borges, the late Susan Sontag revisited her admiration for his work and the enormity of his cultural legacy in a short and beautiful essay titled “Letter to Borges,” penned on June 13, 1996, included in her 2001 collection WHERE THE STRESS FALLS: ESSAYS.

____________________

You were very much the product of your time, your culture, and yet you knew how to transcend your time, your culture, in ways that seem quite magical. This had something to do with the openness and generosity of your attention. You were the least egocentric, the most transparent of writers, as well as the most artful. It also had something to do with a natural purity of spirit.

You had a sense of time that was different from other people’s. The ordinary ideas of past, present, and future seemed banal under your gaze. You liked to say that every moment of time contains the past and the future, quoting (as I remember) the poet Browning, who wrote something like “the present is the instant in which the future crumbles into the past.” That, of course, was part of your modesty: your taste for finding your ideas in the ideas of other writers.

The serenity and the transcendence of self that you found are to me exemplary. You showed that it is not necessary to be unhappy, even while one is clear-eyed and undeluded about how terrible everything is. Somewhere you said that a writer — delicately you added: all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. (You were speaking of your blindness.)

Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the “real” everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are a way of being fully human.

I’m sorry to have to tell you that books are now considered an endangered species. By books, I also mean the conditions of reading that make possible literature and its soul effects. Soon, we are told, we will call up on “bookscreens” any “text” on demand, and will be able to change its appearance, ask questions of it, “interact” with it. When books become “texts” that we “interact” with according to criteria of utility, the written word will have become simply another aspect of our advertising-driven televisual reality. This is the glorious future being created, and promised to us, as something more “democratic.” Of course, it means nothing less than the death of inwardness — and of the book.

Dear Borges, please understand that it gives me no satisfaction to complain. But to whom could such complaints about the fate of books— of reading itself— be better addressed than to you? (Borges, it’s ten years!) All I mean to say is that we miss you. I miss you. You continue to make a difference. The era we are entering now, this twenty-first century, will test the soul in new ways. But, you can be sure, some of us are not going to abandon the Great Library. And you will continue to be our patron and our hero.

JIM CARROLL

“Prell"

____________________

Day changes from cannon to morning glory
her body dances death dances in the prell light
beads strung out all through Japan’s public parks, my head,
light green eyes of the birds that break branches to build homes there.
she tore the page, “Varieties of Emeralds”
from little sister’s picture encyclopedia.
I watched this all with a spike in my vein from a top floor window
I felt the blood pass from my arm into the glass tube above it…..
then it was rainy bonsai everywhere for me
and black masses across my brain like planets on solar maps
paper secrets I used to believe lined the open closet shelves
her body split and floated into the air forests like astral monkeys.
It’s there, the air the body the soft green day:
your life cutting through the light noise of New York City’s traffic dawn.

ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall

____________________

It was not a matter, mind you, of the certainty I had of being more intelligent than everyone else. Besides, such certainty is of no consequence because so many imbeciles share it.

Gustav Klimt
Pregnant Woman and Man, 1903

RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR

Chris Gorak
USA, 2006

HALLDÓR LAXNESS
World Light

______________________

He wept only as children weep when they suffer injustice at the hands of those stronger than themselves. It is the most bitter weeping in the world. That was what happened to his [only] book; it was taken from him and burned. And he was left standing naked and without a book on the first day of summer.

ДахаБраха
Шлях 
-
DakhaBrakha
THE PATH
 

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
From Roman Poems

____________________

The fury of confession, at first,
then the fury of clarity:
It was from you, Death, that such hypocritical
obscure feeling was born! And now
let them accuse me of every passion,
let them bad-mouth me, let them say I’m deformed,
impure, obsessed, a dilettante, a perjurer.
You isolate me, you give me the certainty of life,
I’m on the stake. I play the card of fire
and I win this little, immense goodness of mine.
I can do it, for I have suffered you too much!

I return to you as an émigré returns
to his own country and rediscovers it:
I made a fortune (in the intellect)
and I’m happy, as I once was,
destitute of any norm,
a black rage of poetry in my breast.
A crazy old-age youth.
Once your joy was confused with terror,
it’s true, and now almost with other joy,
livid and arid, my passion deluded.
Now you really frighten me,
for you are truly close to me,
part of my angry state, of obscure hunger,

of the anxiety almost of a new being.

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

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