64

"That's what a good artist would do, right? Take limited resources and do something interesting with them. If you can't use eight crayons to create something interesting, 64 isn't going to help you."  ~Gerald Casale of Devo (source)

Least

 

Hebrews 13:2 is my second favorite bible verse. 

My favorite is Matthew 25: 34-45:

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

“Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ ”

Boring

 Full lyrics HERE.

The song was not a big hit for them on the radio, but they included it on their greatest hits compilation because it was a fan-favorite in concert.  It's based on a Zelda Fitzgerald quote:

"She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring."

And what reminded me of all that was this:

Just a thought

 “It is completely natural that thoughts keep on arising. The point is not to try to stop them, which would be impossible anyway, but to liberate them. This is done by remaining in a state of simplicity, which lets thoughts arise and vanish again without stringing onto them any further thoughts. When you no longer perpetuate the movement of thoughts, they dissolve by themselves without leaving any trace. When you no longer spoil the state of stillness with mental fabrications, you can maintain the natural serenity of mind without any effort. Sometimes, let your thoughts flow, and watch the unchanging nature behind them. Sometimes, abruptly cutting the flow of thoughts, look at naked awareness.”  ~Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

✺

"Your greatest need is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters your mind.  You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day.  This is a power you can cultivate.  If you want to control things in your life, work on controlling your mind.  In most cases, that's the only thing you should be trying to control."  ~Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love ©2006

 

They are a bit at odds with one another. 

I like the way Shunryu Suzuki put it:

Leave your front door and your back door open.
Allow your thoughts to come and go.
Just don’t serve them tea.

Leave Out

 Poet/Artist Erika Landström has a web page HERE.

Holding Hands

 

(Clicking Imbiggens)

Holding Hands by  Rheba McMichael

Synesthesia

 

Full lyrics HERE.

When I was a boy I told my father I loved the taste of the guitars in this song, and he grew angry and told me to "Stop the nonsense!"

He said that a lot.  He hated nonsense.  I never brought it up again.

I was a full-grown man before I heard about synesthesia.  

I thought I was a freak.  It turns out I'm just uncommon.

Some came to keep the dark away

Full lyrics HERE.

It's hard to imagine such a powerful voice silenced.  Rolling Stone has a nice obituary, HERE.

 

A Happy Thought

 

(clicking imbigges)

The artist, Kira Cyan Rittgers, has a web page HERE.

Soulshine

(clicking imbiggens)

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE

Not My Type

"When you convince yourself that you are a specific “type” of person, you often only limit yourself. “I’m just a sadder person” “i’m just a fucked up person” “i’m a person whom people just don’t understand” Okay? What about all the time you have to transcend that? Authenticity requires allowing yourself to expirence all the states you are capable of. You’re allowed to be different every day. Don’t let arbitrary categories become essential to your identity and restrict you in your becoming. You as a human have received the gift of fleetingness and adaptability: you are not a fixed, one dimensional entity. Treat yourself like the complex and versatile person that you are."  ~Lady Cordis

Festus

I've started reading Festus by Philip James Bailey, and so far I'm really enjoying it.

It's a conversation between Festus and Lucifer, and although it's supposed to be based on Catholicism it seems (to me) to have much more in common with the Bhagavad Gita.

It's in the public domain, but is still hard to find online.  I've only found it at Standard Ebooks, HERE. but they offer it in several different formats.

Am I?

Poor John is clearly beating himself up over the way things turned out, but he couldn't have known the ending.

It's a tough question:  how obligated are we to protect others from themselves?

"And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?"  ~Genesis 4:9

I'm almost out of cigarettes…

 Full lyrics HERE.

I've never cheated.  But this song still guts me, because there have been times in my life when I knew what the right thing was, wanted to do the right thing, and just… didn't.

"There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves."  ~Philip James Bailey

Beauty and Mundanity

 

Mari (rhymes with "starry") Andrew has a web page HERE.

Like Poems, Like Prayers

 

(clicking imbiggens)

While in college, my mother was recruited by Martha Graham to join her dance troupe.  She turned her down, because education was extremely important to her father and she had promised him she would get her degree.

She could have had a very different life.

 

Just a happy song:

 

Someone told me they're using this song now to promote football games.  I don't know if that's true.  But this song puts a little positivity into the world, so I approve.

Full lyrics HERE.

And I'm not sure what the trouble was that started all of this…

 

Full lyrics HERE.

I remember the "Just Say No" years, when Ronald Reagan was president and he let Nancy take the microphone.

There was zero understanding.  There was no attempt at empathy.

I remember the almost gleeful response to John Belushi's death.  He was considered a reckless hedonist who got what he deserved.  

Prominent Christian Jerry Falwell said, "Well, I never thought he was funny anyway."  As if that mattered.  As if that justified an unhappy ending.

 It came out later that John had wanted so desperately to be free of drugs that he'd paid a security guard to shadow him constantly to keep them away from him.  As extreme as that measure was, it proved ineffective.

I think things have gotten a little better since then.  Mathew Perry's death was treated as the tragedy it was.

But other addicts, like Andy Dick and Robert Downey, are still treated as punch lines.

A little empathy would go a long way.

 

The Line

"I believe that life goes on. So to me, I can’t get sad. I’m sad by I can’t go and play guitar with John. But then I did that anyway. I did that for a long time. We will all meet again somewhere down the line.”   ~George Harrison (source)

And that made me think of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Welcome

Will you start a fire?
I'll show you something nice:
a giant snowball
~Bashō

And that reminded me of this:

The Pasture
By Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm re-reading Bashō and His Interpreters:  Selected Hokku with Commentary by Makoto Ueda, ©1992, and I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in Asian poetry.

It's very accessible.  Each page has a haiku (or one of its myriad variations) followed by the original Japanese, a paragraph explaining the background of the poem, and five or six bite-sized critical analysis by experts.

The analysis is the fun part.  The "experts" quite often have wildly differing interpretations, which shows you how subjective literature is— but also gives you different angles of looking at the same words, yourself.

S.L.U.G.

 

"Slug" by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754–1799)(clicking Imbiggens)

And that made me think of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Do Not Be Daunted

 

I try to verify the authenticity of the quotes I post, and this one is kind of iffy.

It appears that someone took little bits and pieces of the Talmud, then conglomerated them all together to make a quote of their own.  So the Talmud kind of says it, just not like that.

I like what it says, and I thought it could stand alone even without a direct attribution.

Be With You

 

Artist Shusaku Takaoka has a web page HERE.

Welcome to the Laboratory

 

"We find everything in our memory: it's a kind of pharmacy, a chemical laboratory where we put our hands at random, now on a sedative, now on a dangerous poison."  ~M. Proust

The End

I used to have to walk around my house in the spring to check for wasp nests. If a Mama Wasp was trying to build a nest over one of the doors I'd knock it down and hope she'd rebuild somewhere else. Unless the nest was near a door or under a chair I'd just leave it be.

Last year there weren't any wasp nests. Not a single one.

I used to leave the porch light on overnight, and go out in the morning to see the dozens of different kinds of moths resting on the wall around the light. Some were strikingly beautiful.

I haven't seen a single moth in ages.

I can't remember the last time I had to wash the bugs off my windshield, or saw a lightning bug.

The earth is dying.

Years ago George W. Bush said that we didn't have to worry about climate change, because someone somewhere would invent something to fix it. He said he was optimistic about the future.

Dumbass.

Santa

This is a lovely way to transition kids from getting to giving.  Via the blog Nudity and Nerdery (which has no nudity but lots of nerdery):

 

I am alive

 

 

Artist Gabriel Madan has a web page HERE.

Confession

 

I doubt that this is an original panel.  I'm sure someone modified it.

But I still like it.

Towels and Cats

 

That's my favorite dish towel.  It's pretty old, but there's something about the cat that I find very appealing.

And that reminded me of this:

 “Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. “What sort of people live about here?”

“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Alice didn’t think that proved it at all; however, she went on “And how do you know that you’re mad?”

“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?”

“I suppose so,” said Alice.

“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

“I call it purring, not growling,” said Alice.

“Call it what you like,” said the Cat.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol is in the public domain and may be read online or downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg, HERE.

Sharing a Breath

 

(clicking imbiggens)

Many years ago, the hospice nurse warned Mona when her mother's time was nearing its end, and Mona leaned in to share her final breaths.

To/From

 

Where are you from?

 

 

Where are you going?

 

The artist. Min Ding, has a web page HERE.

Portage County, 1956

While going through my father's belongings I found this trophy.  Apparently he was on the Portage County Championship Bowling Team in 1956, and was proud enough of it that he kept it for the rest of his life.

Breathe

 

My favorite Willie Nelson song. Full lyrics HERE.

What Do You Think I'd See?

 

Lou Reed was writing about body dysphoria in 1969:

Candy says (Candy says)
I've come to hate my body
And all that it requires in this world
Candy says (Candy says)
I'd like to know completely
What others so discretely talk about

I'm gonna watch the blue birds fly
Over my shoulder
I'm gonna watch them pass me by
Maybe when I'm older
What do you think I'd see
If I could walk away from me

Full lyrics HERE.

Box of Rocks

When I was a little boy I lived at 42 Coventry Drive in Chillicothe, Ohio.  My best friend, Lori Zonner, lived right next door at 40 Coventry Drive.

When it was raining we would stay inside and watch her guppies or play in the sandbox in my garage, but if the weather was nice we'd walk along the road looking for pretty pebbles.  

There were a lot of brown ones.  We prized the red ones.  Some were just an interesting shape.  I would take them home and give them to my mother.

When we were cleaning out my father's estate I discovered small box full of rocks.  Mom had saved them.

I felt silly feeling so emotional over a box of rocks.

 

Light

"No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit, the entire room becomes luminous. You are that luminosity. You are that clear light."  ~Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche