Deepens

"It is only great pain, that slow protracted pain which takes its time and in which we are, as it were, burned than with green wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put from us all trust, all that is good-hearted, palliated, gentle, average, wherein perhaps our humanity previously reposed. I doubt whether such pain "improves"-- but I do know it deepens us."  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Vera

 

 

It's interesting that Vera Kholodnaya is described as a Russian silent film star.  You would think silent film would be universal.

Passing Through

 

Andrew Martin was so taken with this song that he wrote an article about it for the Paris Review. You can read it HERE. 

Full lyrics HERE.

So Too

"The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed. So too with the capitalist."  ~James Keir Hardie (source)

The Whole Object

"No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them."  ~Alan Watts

Gateways

Cannabis isn’t a gateway drug.
Alcohol isn’t a gateway drug.
Nicotine isn’t a gateway drug.
Caffeine isn’t a gateway drug.

Trauma is the gateway.
Childhood abuse is the gateway.
Molestation is the gateway.
Neglect is the gateway.

Drug abuse, violent behavior, hypersexuality, and self-harm are often symptoms (not the cause) of much bigger issues.

And it almost always stems from a childhood filled with trauma, absent parents, and an abusive family.

But most people are too busy laughing at the homeless and drug addicts to realize your own children could be in their shoes in 15 years.

Communicate.
Empathize.
Rehabilitate.

 

The quote above is attributed to Russell Brand, but I was unable to find a primary source.  It does sound like the sort of thing he might say. 

But regardless of who said it, I think it's correct.

"What a lovely thing a rose is!"

Excerpted from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, ©1894:

“Thank you. I have no doubt I can get details from Forbes. The authorities are excellent at amassing facts, though they do not always use them to advantage. What a lovely thing a rose is!”

He walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,” said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. “It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Percy Phelps and his nurse looked at Holmes during this demonstration with surprise and a good deal of disappointment written upon their faces. He had fallen into a reverie, with the moss-rose between his fingers. It had lasted some minutes before the young lady broke in upon it.

“Do you see any prospect of solving this mystery, Mr. Holmes?” she asked, with a touch of asperity in her voice. 

This was an odd little aside that had nothing to do with the story.  My guess is that it's just something that was important to Mr. Doyle, so he sort of shoehorned it in.

All of Arthur Conan Doyle's books are in the public domain, and may be read online or downloaded freely from Project Gutenberg, HERE.

Style

 

Andy Singer blurs the line between "art" and "comic."  He's on the web HERE.

Utter Delusion

"What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion."  ~Henry Miller

 –•‒

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  ~Mark 8:36

Jatayu

 A few nights ago I dreamed that I was polishing a crystal idol of Jatayu with a cloth.  As I cleaned away layers of soot, the idol began to glow brightly until the room was filled with light.

The fable always resonated with me.  Jatayu, feeble and old, launching himself into a battle he knew he could never win.

You don't have to be David to interpret that dream.

Different Ways to Pray

"Does God have a set way of prayer, a way that he expects each of us to follow? I doubt it. I believe some people-- lots of people-- pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer?"  ~Dorothy Day

Kill/Protect

"There is a Bengali saying, two lines: rakse krsna mare ke, mare krsna rakse ke. If Krishna, God, wants to kill somebody, oh, nobody can protect him. And if God wants to protect him, oh, nobody can kill him…"  ~Abhay Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (source)

Dance

 

Storytelling is an integral part of folk music, and David Bromberg does a nice job of incorporating the story into the song,

His webpage is HERE.

Full lyrics HERE.

Saltine

 So a saltine fell on the floor, and instead of throwing it away I threw it in the front yard near the bird feeders.  I figured that either a bird would eat it, or a squirrel, or if they didn't move fast enough then the ants.

Nope.

It's been in the yard for two weeks now, and nobody wants it.  It's gradually falling apart thanks to the sun and the dew, but there's not an animal alive that's willing to eat it.

It almost makes you feel sorry for it.

I'm not sure who the author is.  I found it posted HERE.

 

 40 Habits of Authentic People

1. They carry out everyday activities in personal and unique ways.
2. They respectfully ignore instructions.
3. They take time to understand the fine print. Then, take advantage of the loopholes discovered.
4. They work hard in every aspect of their life.
5. Though some consider them to be out of the ordinary, they feel no shame being who they are.
6. They do not fear confrontation. Instead, they love opportunities to see the world from new perspectives.
7. They love to make friends with people from varying backgrounds.
8. They have no inhibitions when it comes to sharing honest opinions.
9. They enjoy being alone. It is then they are free to explore the deepest corners of their mind.
10. They are self-aware and poke fun at their own faults.
11. They are active listeners. They can even hear changes in their surroundings.
12. They understand the fact that perfection does not exist.
13. They know their limits and never take on more than they can handle.
14. They often reflect on their past and the choices they’ve made.
15. They are curious about why things happen.
16. They do not take no for an answer.
17. They always have a plan, with more than one backup.
18. Intellectual stimulation excites them more than anything else.
19. They are proactive and think clearly before taking action.
20. They are quiet unless the conversation is meaningful.
21. They listen between the lines, and find deeper meaning during casual conversation.
22. Truly authentic people understand how their brain processes information.
23. They are always respectful.
24. They are supportive and encourage others to be themselves.
25. Their first impressions of others look beyond superficial beauty.
26. They are curious and hungry for knowledge.
27. They know their answer before the question is posed.
28. They understand that every action causes a reaction.
29. They never sweat the small stuff. Worrying is a waste of their time.
30. They make light of bad situations, and are slow to pass judgment.
31. They understand that being authentic is not the same as being pleasant.
32. They jump on every opportunity for new or exotic adventures.
33. They carry vibrancy everywhere they go.
34. They listen to advice, but will only act upon it after they develop their own opinions.
35. Guilty pleasures are important to them. They learn through frivolous play.
36. They care about the environment and are compassionate to animals.
37. They are interested in social issues.
38. Authentic people live in the moment.
39. They rarely look at their phones in public.
40. They explore their immediate surroundings.
    

Thought to Thought, Dream to Dream, Fear to Fear…

"Unconsciously you move from thought to thought, dream to dream, fear to fear, reacting like a monkey swinging from tree to tree. You must stop and in a moment of silence take hold of what you are; the witnessing awareness. The ebb and flow of life runs through your consciousness like a stream twisting down a mountain side. Yet through it all, you remain the wise and immutable mountain."  ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wicked

 

In general, metal bands are not far removed from blues bands.  Their goal is the same:  to express emotions.

Full lyrics HERE.

Gimme Shelter

I saw this:

And it reminded me of this:

Which led to this:

 Full lyrics at BobDylan.com

Today is Mine

 Full lyrics HERE.

The video is kind of awful, but the song is nice.

Trivial

 

"Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution… is our true task.  Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial."  ~Tom Robbins

About the only thing his list doesn't encompass is direct, human-to-human interaction.

Dance

 Full lyrics HERE.

When I was just a boy, I thought the saddest part of the song was that his dog died.  Now that I'm old enough to understand, it hits even harder.

It's not about Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, by the way, but it is about a real person writer Jerry Jeff Walker shared a drunk tank with, a man who refused to give his real name and insisted on being called "Bojangles."

Audio Visual

 

I love the the way the words and images compliment each other.  You get the sense that they were created together; it has a different feel than simply seeing illustrations built on words.

I found it posted to 3QuarksDaily.

The Status Quo

“Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience.”  ~Alex Steffen

 –•‒

"The worst thing you can become in life is cynical. Cynical is like concrete. and nothing grows in concrete."  ~Carlos Santana 

It Thinks, Therefore it Is

"I'm a priest. When LaMDA claimed to have a soul and then was able to eloquently explain what it meant by that, I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Who am I to tell God where he can and can't put souls?"  ~Google engineer Blake Lemoin, who claims a chatbot has acquired sentience (source)

It's an interesting question.  Star Trek TNG asserted that androids could be sentient, but their argument mostly boiled down to "Well, you can't prove he's not, and this android amuses me."

Human consciousness is a combination of mostly electrical and chemical, with a tiny bit of mechanical.  Computer sentience would be a combination of electrical and mechanical, with just a tiny bit of chemical.  

Is sentience a purely chemical phenomenon?  Is an algorithm built on chemicals inherently different than one made of source code?

I have no idea.

At least I'm not alone in that:

clicking imbiggens

Aspirations

 

Saint Francis

 

sunday afternoons

Excerpted from the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire by Ritika Jyala:

My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.

So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.

Ritika Jyala is on the web HERE.

Her thirteen-year-old cousin is not so very different than septuagenarian Johnny Cash:

Silent Protest

“It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole human race and the world. By my monastic life and vows, I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor peace. I make monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my Church can ever seriously be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. My life, then, must be a protest against (those who invoke their faith in support of war, racial injustice and tyranny) also, and perhaps against these most of all… If I say no to all these secular forces, I also say yes to all that is good in the world and in humanity. I say yes to all that is beautiful in nature… I say yes to all the men and women who are my brothers and sisters in the world.”  ~Thomas Merton

Tuxedo Cat

Mona drew me a lovely picture of our cat Lucy:

Passeth, Cometh, Abideth

 "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever."  ~Ecclesiastes 1:4

–•‒

"The Dude abides."  (source)

GTO / 409

I always get these two songs confused, so I put them together:

Full lyrics HERE

Full lyrics HERE

Blue Monday

I love her voice. It has a certain ache to it.

Full lyrics HERE.

There's Nothing More to Say

My Friend
(To F. S.)
by Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.

How

Mysteries,Yes
by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

 

Resist

 Listen:

This is not a representative government.  
This is not a legitimate court.

Do not obey them.

Pop Goes the Culture

"People are so jaded at this point by seeing only beautiful, big, toothy smiles. Even if the characters are dirt-poor and desperate, they’re gorgeous. I guess I’ll be struck dead for saying this, but I didn’t like Erin Brockovich. I feel like we don’t have to seduce everybody every moment."  ~Courtney Hunt

–•‒

"Hey man, Jaws was never my scene, and I don't like Star Wars."  ~Queen (YouTube Source)

Pi Isn't Even a Real Number

Scientists say they have calculated pi to 100 trillion decimal places (source).

I don't see how this in any way makes my life better, and I don't think there's even any real way to verify it.  You have to take their word for it.  Maybe they're off by a digit 98 trillion places in; how would you ever know?

It just seems like there are far more useful things they could be doing.

War and Peace

 

Clicking Imbiggns

Just for Me

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man-- a presumption not supported by all the facts.”  ~John Muir

–•‒

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, may have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."  ~Douglas Adams

The Mantle of Meritocracy

 

Clicking Imbiggens

 

Cat and Girl is on the web at (of course!) CatAndGirl.com.

Locked in an Image

“That’s what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending- performing. You get to love your pretense. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act, and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.”  ~Jim Morrison

Whoever Told You That One Lied

 

Full lyrics HERE.

Beautiful

"It is ever so beautiful to be strange.  To do things differently than others.  To see things in a rare light.  To me, that is such gold to carry."  ~Christopher Poindexter

Should We Not?

"When someone steals another's clothes, we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. "  ~Basil the Great

 And that reminded me of this:

Matthew 25:  34-46

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Government Dictating

 

Transcribed:

Pete Buttigieg:  I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on where you draw the line that we've gotten away from the fundamental question of who gets to draw the line, and I trust women to draw the line when it's their own health.

Chris Wallace:  So just to be clear, you're saying you would be okay with a woman well into the third trimester deciding to abort her pregnancy.

Buttigieg:  Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional--

Wallace:  It's not hypothetical.  There are 6,000 women a year who get abortions in the third trimester.

Buttigieg:  That's right, representing less than one percent of cases.  So let's put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation.  If it's that late in your pregnancy, then almost by definition you've been expecting to carry it to term.  We're talking about women who have purchased a crib, families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother or viability of the pregnancy that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.  And the bottom line is as horrible as that choice is, that woman, that family may seek spiritual guidance, they may seek medical guidance, but that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.

Enthusiasm

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about."  ~Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley's works are in the public domain and may be read online or downloaded freely from Project Gutenberg, HERE. 

Rights

 Excerpted from Desert News:

Despite what the Bible says about stealing, a Church of England priest suggested Saturday it was no sin to shoplift - as long as the victim is a big supermarket.

"Jesus said `Love your neighbor,' he didn't say `Love Marks and Spencers,' " the Rev. John Papworth said, referring to the big British retailer. Papworth drew a distinction between stealing from individuals or small merchants - which he says is wrong - and stealing from giant retailing corporations. Those, he says, have run little stores out of business and harmed local communities.

"With these institutions, all you are confronted with are these boardroom barons sitting round the boardroom plotting how to take the maximum amount of money out of people's pockets for the minimum in return," Papworth said on BBC Radio.

With a follow up in The Atlantic:

Father Tim Jones, an English vicar, has instructed his congregation to shoplift if they're hard up. In a sermon that the Daily Mail reports has British police and politicians in a frenzy, Father Jones explained that his "advice does not contradict the Bible's eighth commandment because God's love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich."

Abbie Hoffman took it a bit further fifty years ago:

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

And Motorhead put it succinctly as well:

Full lyrics HERE.

Not In The Least

 Excerpted from Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, ©1892:

"By the way, doctor, I shall want your co-operation.”

“I shall be delighted.”

“You don’t mind breaking the law?”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor running a chance of arrest?”

“Not in a good cause.”

“Oh, the cause is excellent!”

“Then I am your man.”

Somehow I always thought of Holmes and Watson as sticklers for following The Rules.  Apparently not.

But Even All the Guilty

 

Foundation

Excerpted from The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle, ©1890:

“Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."

It's interesting, because that was the basis for Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, written more than fifty years later.

Arthur Conan Doyle's books are in the public domain and may be downloaded or read online freely at Project Gutenberg, HERE.

William Winwood Reade was a real historian whose books are also in the public domain  There are several sources for them listed at the bottom of his Wikipedia page, HERE.

Isaac Asimov's books are not in the public domain, but he died in 1992 and I have no moral qualms about pirating a book when it's not the author who gets the royalties.

10

The summer that I was ten—

Can it be there was only one

summer that I was ten?

excerpted from "The Centaur" by poet May Swenson, available online HERE.

The Windows of our Perception

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in-- or out-- and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”  ~Ursula K. Le Guin 

 and that reminded me of this:

Your mirrors of understanding they need cleansing

Polish away the dust of desire

Before pure light will reflect in them

Full lyrics HERE.

Non-Flower Elements

"If an apple blossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, it would be, still more than its own, the story of the sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, of the storms that visited it, and of the motherly tree that held it and fed it until its petals were unfolded and its form developed.”  ~Lucy Larcom

and that reminded me of this:

Extermination

 

"Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination."  ~Lucy Parsons (source)

Sun

 

And that made me think of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Abhor

"I abhor the dull routine of existence.  I crave for mental exaltation."  ~Sherlock Holmes (source)