LYSANDER SPOONER

___________________

There is not, in the Constitution, a syllable that implies that persons born within the territorial limits of the United States will be judged by any different rule, on the subject of treason, than persons of foreign birth.

ANTHONY LICCIONE

____________________

Nothing like being in a dream, then waking up to a nightmare.

PABLO NERUDA

"My Dog Has Died"

____________________

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,

his bad manners and his cold nose,

and I, the materialist, who never believed

in any promised heaven in the sky

for any human being,

I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom

where my dog waits for my arrival

waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,

of having lost a companion

who was never servile.

His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine

withholding its authority,

was the friendship of a star, aloof,

with no more intimacy than was called for,

with no exaggerations:

he never climbed all over my clothes

filling me full of his hair or his mange,

he never rubbed up against my knee

like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,

paying me the attention I need,

the attention required

to make a vain person like me understand

that, being a dog, he was wasting time,

but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,

he'd keep on gazing at me

with a look that reserved for me alone

all his sweet and shaggy life,

always near me, never troubling me,

and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail

as we walked together on the shores of the sea

in the lonely winter of Isla Negra

where the wintering birds filled the sky

and my hairy dog was jumping about

full of the voltage of the sea's movement:

my wandering dog, sniffing away

with his golden tail held high,

face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,

and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,

and that's all there is to it.

ELIAS CANETTI

____________________

I am so full of my dead, no else can die, for there is no more room.

A. A. Milne
_____

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
 

YUAN MEI

“Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand mountains“

__________________

Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand mountains,
Cut off, no place to go….
Until you’re here, there’s no way to get here.
Once you’re here, there’s no way to go.

DR. SEUSS
_____

Remember me and smile, for it’s better to forget than to remember me and cry.

 

SCHITT'S CREEK

Season Four

E. M. FORSTER

____________________

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

HELEN KELLER
_____

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

 

 

SCHITT'S CREEK

Season Three
 

 

SCHITT'S CREEK

Season Two
 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS
"Gay Chaps at the Bar"

____________________

... and guys I knew in the States, young officers, return from the front crying and trembling. Gay chaps at the bar in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York ...
—Lt. William Couch in the South Pacific

We knew how to order. Just the dash
Necessary. The length of gaiety in good taste.
Whether the raillery should be slightly iced
And given green, or served up hot and lush.
And we knew beautifully how to give to women
The summer spread, the tropics of our love.
When to persist, or hold a hunger off.
Knew white speech. How to make a look an omen.
But nothing ever taught us to be islands.
And smart, athletic language for this hour
Was not in the curriculum. No stout
Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
To holler down the lions in this air.

 

DU FU

"Traveling Again"

____________________

This temple: I remember traveling here once.
I recall this bridge that I now cross again.
Rivers and mountains seem to have been waiting,
flowers and willows have been more than unselfish.
The countryside shines vividly through thin mist, the soft sun on the sand is the color of duck.
All of this traveler's sorrows fade away.
Why should I leave this place again.

IRIS MURDOCH

____________________

I think being a woman is like being Irish ... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

MARCUS AURELIUS

____________________

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

CONOR O'CALLAGHAN

"The whole island"

____________________

agrees they should be
ashamed of themselves,
whoever they are.

On the late walk
home, I pause
at the top of the road
and make out

between waves
the whispers
of poachers
in a boat

in the stars,
their unwise
laughter that
can’t be helped.

SCHITT'S CREEK

Season One
 

SAMUEL R. DELANY

Dhalgren

___________________

Babes, I am so bored here that I don’t think, since I’ve come, I’ve ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence. 

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH

ALBERT CAMUS

____________________

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

HANNAH ARENDT

The Origins of Totalitarianism

____________________

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS

Harry Kümel

Belgium/France, 1971

STEPHEN KING

The Shining

____________________

This inhuman place makes human monsters.

-

SISTER JUDE

American Horror Story: Asylum

____________________

All monsters are human.

THE VAMPIRE LOVERS

Roy Ward Baker

UK, 1970

 TROG

Freddie Fields

UK, 1970

DEATH LINE (aka RAW MEAT)

Gary Sherman

UK, 1972

EMILY BRONTË

“Fall Leaves Fall”

____________________

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

EZRA POUND

"In A Station of the Metro"

____________________

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.

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.

JOHN FOWLES

____________________

Nature regularly brings tears into my eyes; humans very, very seldom.

LITA BLAKE

Earthly Desires

____________________

"Go back up." The angel chuckled. "Well, that would be easy enough if I wanted to go up, but I assure you that I've had quite enough of up to last forever.' The angel shook with mirth again. 'Or until tomorrow. Or whenever I'm overcome with the lust for it once more. It's quite delightful, except that it's terrifying. Which is, of course, how so many of the best things are.”

JUST ENOUGH
Vegan Recipes and Stories from Japan's Buddhist Temples

Gesshin Claire Greenwood

MUSIC OF A DISTANT DRUM
Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems

Bernard Lewis

URSULA K. LE GUIN 

The Left Hand of Darkness

____________________

How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.

WENDELL BERRY

“How To Be a Poet"

____________________

(to remind myself)

I 

Make a place to sit down.   Sit down. Be quiet.   You must depend upon   affection, reading, knowledge,   skill—more of each   than you have—inspiration,   work, growing older, patience,   for patience joins time   to eternity. Any readers   who like your poems,   doubt their judgment. 

II

Breathe with unconditional breath   the unconditioned air.   Shun electric wire.   Communicate slowly. Live   a three-dimensioned life;   stay away from screens.   Stay away from anything   that obscures the place it is in.   There are no unsacred places;   there are only sacred places   and desecrated places. 

III

Accept what comes from silence.   Make the best you can of it.   Of the little words that come   out of the silence, like prayers   prayed back to the one who prays,   make a poem that does not disturb   the silence from which it came.

 HAGAZUSSA

Lukas Feigelfeld

Germany, 2017

SHEIKH HAMZA YUSEF

__________________

Perhaps a sin that humbles you is better than a good deed that makes you arrogant.

J. FRANK CONDON (1872)

___________________

It has been remarked by a wise man that he who wrestles with a hog must expect to be spattered with filth, whether he is vanquished or not. This maxim I have long known and appreciated; nevertheless, there are occasions when it must be disregarded. A man may be attacked in such a way that he is compelled to flagellate his hogship, even at the risk of being contaminated by the unclean beast.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

____________________

I do believe that the intelligent person, the moral individual, must avoid evil and cruelty and dishonesties. One can try to pursue a path of virtue. That remains to us, I hope.

EZRA POUND

"Canto XIV"

____________________

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luz
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,
with usura
seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly
with usura, sin against nature,
is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
with usura the line grows thick
with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling.
Stonecutter is kept from his tone
weaver is kept from his loom

WITH USURA
wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no gain with usura
Usura is a murrain, usura
blunteth the needle in the maid's hand
and stoppeth the spinner's cunning. Pietro Lombardo
came not by usura
Duccio came not by usura
nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura
nor was ‘La Calunnia' painted.
Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.
Not by usura St. Trophime
Not by usura Saint Hilaire,
Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man's courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom

CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura.

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

House of Leaves

____________________

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.

And then the nightmares will begin.

MARGARET MEAD
Interview, 1956

______________________

When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed. Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah

____________________

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY
“No Bad News”

____________________

Trouble, more trouble can you get anymore
Slow bubble boiling on the bedroom floor
Lonely ain’t lonely, someone calling at the door
Someone lovely and she’s bringing bad news

She clenches and she cries and she lays on the stairs
Pounding on the earth and yanking at her hairs
And showing such fear at being found unawares
To be here and be bringing bad news

Well, something bad happens and a lot of people go
Bad themselves, that’s how awful it is
Turning half the heart into something hard and dark
And she had to bring here this

Well, she’s told, “Hold your buttons and look at the sky
Someone will fix things if you let your face dry
Keep your face near the earth and your heart beat high
And you may transcend the bad news”

Well, something bad happens and a lot of people go
Bad themselves, that’s how awful it is
Turning half the heart into something hard and dark
And she had to bring here this

For all hammers and nails
For all leaves and winds
For all love ambitions
And enemies and friends

BHAGAVAD GĪTĀ

Chapter 18 / Text 48

____________________

Every endeavor is covered by some sort of fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. Therefore one should not give up the work which is born of his nature, O son of Kunti, even if such work is full of fault.

 

JASON EPSTEIN
“This Side of Paradiso”

____________________

The future seems to me a vacuum, while the past, as one considers it, appears substantially uniform, shaped less by new technologies than by predictable human behavior, most of it discouraging. The moral world of The Divine Comedy is, after all, identical to the one we still inhabit.

HOT VEGAN
200 Sultry & Full-Flavored Recipes from Around the World

Robin Robertson

LAURA INGALLS WILDER

Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues

____________________

As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness -- just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA
“The Nameless Child”

____________________

There is a mountain of gold. When the sun’s rays strike it, it is irritating to look at. It is surrounded by red, green, yellow, orange, pink and liver-colored clouds, wafted gently by the wind. Around the mountain fly thousands of copper-winged birds with silver heads and iron beaks. A ruby sun rises in the East and a crystal moon sets in the West. The whole earth is covered with pearl-dust snow. Upon it a luminous child without a name instantaneously comes into being.

The golden mountain is dignified, the sunlight is blazing red.
Dreamlike clouds of many colors float across the sky.
In the place where iron birds croak,
The instantaneously-born child can find no name.

Because he has no father, the child has no family line. Because he has no mother, he has never tasted milk. Because he has neither brother nor sister, he has no one to play with. Having no house to live in, he cannot find a crib. Since he has no nanny, he has never cried. There is no civilization, so he cannot find toys. Since there is no point of reference, he doesn’t know a self. He has never heard spoken language, so he has never experienced fear.

The child walks in every direction, but does not come across anything. He sits down slowly on the ground. Nothing happens. The colorful world seems sometimes to exist and sometimes not. He gathers a handful of pearl dust and lets it trickle through his fingers. He gathers another handful and slowly takes it into his mouth. Hearing the pearl dust crunch between his teeth, he gazes at the ruby sun setting and the crystal moon rising. Suddenly a whole galaxy of stars wondrously appears and he lies on his back to admire their patterns. The nameless child falls into a deep sleep, but has no dreams.

The child’s world has no beginning or end.
To him, colors are neither beautiful nor ugly.
The child’s nature has no preconceived notion of birth and death.
The golden mountain is solid and unchanging.
The ruby sun is all-pervading.
The crystal moon watches over millions of stars.
The child exists without preconceptions.

IRIS MURDOCH

____________________

Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

HAROLD PINTER
Silence

____________________

Now and again I meet my drinking companion and have a drink with her. She is a friendly woman, quite elderly, quite friendly. But she knows little of me, she could never know much of me, not really, not now. She’s funny. She starts talking sexily to me, in the corner, with our drinks. I laugh.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

____________________

I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.

So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.

It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.

We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.

I say that is Evil.

And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

____________________

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

MARGARET ATWOOD

____________________

I write as if I’ve lived a lot of things I haven’t lived.

NĀGĀRJUNA
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)

____________________

The pacification of all cognitive grasping and
The pacification of conceptual proliferation
Are peace.

VEGAN 100
Over 100 Incredible Recipes from Avant-Garde Vegan

Gaz Oakley

Circus Magazine
October 1977

EGON SCHIELE - EROS AND PASSION

Klaus Albrecht Schröder

THE ART OF PLANT-BASED CHEESEMAKING
How to Craft Real, Cultured, Non-Dairy Cheese

Karen McAthy

BISH BASH BOSH!

Henry Firth & Ian Theasby

SAMUEL BECKETT

The Unnamable

____________________

Bah, the latest news, the latest news is not the last.

 

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

____________________

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

JOSEPHINE BAKER

____________________

I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed.

DakhaBrakha & Karbido. 
GogolFestTV 2013

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

HAROLD PINTER
Old Times

____________________

What worries me is the thought of your husband rumbling about alone in his enormous villa living hand to mouth on a few hardboiled eggs and unable to speak a damn word of English.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

____________________

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
From Selected Poems

It’s not Love. But what fault is it of mine
if my affections do not become
Love? Very much my fault, I would say,
when I can live from day to day
on mad purity, blind pity…
Make a scandal of meekness.
But the violence of the senses and intellect
that has confounded me for years
was the only way.

THE FORKS OVER KNIVES PLAN
How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet

Alona Pulde & Matthew Lederman

JOHN FOWLES

The Magus
____________________

“The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.“

“I suppose one could say that Hitler didn’t betray his self.”

“You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.”

T. S. ELIOT

"Little Giddings" (Part II)

____________________

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house-

The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

There are flood and drought

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

Water and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

Water and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of interminable night

At the recurrent end of the unending

After the dark dove with the flickering tongue

Had passed below the horizon of his homing

While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin

Over the asphalt where no other sound was

Between three districts whence the smoke arose

I met one walking, loitering and hurried

As if blown towards me like the metal leaves

Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.

And as I fixed upon the down-turned face

That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge

The first-met stranger in the waning dusk

I caught the sudden look of some dead master

Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled

Both one and many; in the brown baked features

The eyes of a familiar compound ghost

Both intimate and unidentifiable.

So I assumed a double part, and cried

And heard another's voice cry: "What! are you here?"

Although we were not. I was still the same,

Knowing myself yet being someone other--

And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed

To compel the recognition they preceded.

And so, compliant to the common wind,

Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,

In concord at this intersection time

Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,

We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said: "The wonder that I feel is easy,

Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:

I may not comprehend, may not remember."

And he: "I am not eager to rehearse

My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.

These things have served their purpose: let them be.

So with your own, and pray they be forgiven

By others, as I pray you to forgive

Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten

And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

But, as the passage now presents no hindrance

To the spirit unappeased and peregrine

Between two worlds become much like each other,

So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age

To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

First, the cold friction of expiring sense

Without enchantment, offering no promise

But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit

As body and soul begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage

At human folly, and the laceration

Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of things ill done and done to others' harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street

He left me, with a kind of valediction,

And faded on the blowing of the horn.

WILLA CATHER

My Antonia

____________________

The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said, "This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth." It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.

SAMUEL BECKETT
Molloy

______________________

Perhaps I had invented him, I mean found him ready made in my head. There is no doubt one sometimes meets with strangers who are not entire strangers, through their having played a part in certain cerebral reels.

JOHN KEATS
“To Sleep”

____________________

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

JORGE LUIS BORGES
“Ars Poetica”

____________________

To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of mankind’s days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.

They tell how Ulysses, glutted with wonders,
Wept with love to descry his Ithaca
Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of wonders.

It is also like an endless river
That passes and remains, a mirror for one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And another, like an endless river.

Harold Moreland translation

MASTER DŌGEN

____________________

Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind.

CURRY & KIMCHI
Flavor Secrets for Creating 70 Asian-Inspired Recipes at Home

Unmi Abkin & Roger Taylor

DakhaBrakha

NA DOBRANICH

ДахаБраха

На Добраніч

ETGAR KERET
The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God

____________________

His whole body was completely still, except the wings, which were still fluttering a little, like when someone dies. That’s when he finally understood that of all the things the angel had told him, nothing was true. That he wasn’t even an angel, just a liar with wings.

SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER

_____________________

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good hot black coffee.

SAMUEL R. DELANY
The Einstein Intersection

____________________

“What are you doing here?” I asked her at last.

“Probably the same thing you are.”

“What’s that?”

She looked serious. “Why don’t you tell me?”

I went back to my knife. “Sharpening my machete.”

“I’m sharpening my mind,” she said. “There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.”

EDMUND WHITE
A Boy’s Own Story

____________________

For the real movements of a life are gradual, then sudden; they resist becoming anecdotes, they pulse like quasars from long-dead stars to reach the vivid planet of the present, they drift like fog over the ship until the spread sails are merely panels of gray in grayer air and surround becomes object, as in those perceptual tests where figure and ground reverse, the kissing couple in profile turn into the outlines of the mortuary urn that holds their own ashes. Time wears down resolve–then suddenly violence, something irrevocable flashes out of nowhere, there are thrashing fins and roiled, blood-streaked water, death floats up on its side, eyes bulging.

DakhaBrakha
ALEMBARI

  

ZŮSTANE TO MEZI NÁMI 
- 
IT WILL STAY BETWEEN US

Miroslav Šindelka
Poland, 2003

STEPHEN HAWKING

____________________

My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is, and why it exists at all.

SAMUEL R. DELANY
Triton

____________________

Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep. 

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.