Somber Dignity

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

~Rumi

Lovely

 

(Click Image to Imbiggen)

Bob the Angry Flower is on the web at AngryFlower.com.

Sam Gaillard

Jack Kerouac mentioned Slim Gaillard in On The Road, so I looked him up.  He's mesmerizing:

 

Jack and Rita

Excerpted from On The Road by Jack Kerouac, ©1957:

Then I went to meet Rita Bettencourt and took her back to the apartment. I got a her in my bedroom after a long talk in the dark of the front room. She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. She sighed in the dark. "What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. 

"I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn.I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco. 

My moments in Denver were coming to an end, I could feel it when I walked her home, on the way back I stretched I out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of hobos, and their talk made me want to get back on that road. Every now and then one would get up and hit a passer-by for a dime. They talked of harvests moving north. It was warm and soft. I wanted to go and get Rita again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk-- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.

I don't think the problem is with "God" or "society."  I think the problem is that Jack is a dishonest, selfish jerk.

Wonderfully Chaotic

 John Lydon on politics, excerpted from his his autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

Around the time of the punks, socialism wasn't working in England. The Labour party were unimpressive and tedious. The Conservatives, the same. It fluctuated from one party to another, four years of this, four years of that, and you wouldn't notice any change. Young people-- in fact, most people-- just walked clean away from politics as if it were a waste of time. A cloud of apathy had truly set in. Of course, that's exactly the environment the Conservatives want. That's when they can strut their stuff using prejudice, hate, family values, all the nonissues of political life. Grim.

—•—

I'm not a revolutionary, a socialist, or any of that. That's not what I'm about at all. An absolute sense of individuality is my politics. All political groups that I'm aware of on this planet seem to strive to suppress individuality. They need block voting numbers. They need units. It doesn't matter if it's left or right, sometimes the tactics are the same. The things these people strive for is mass uniformity. The feminist movement became oppressive very quickly. Gay liberation is not after equal rights at all. It's to be accepted as this one great lump. If a homosexual inside that movement dares stray away from what they term as the norm, then they victimize that person. It's replacing the same old system with a different clothing. I hate all these groupings, any kind of gathering like that. It destroys personality and individuality. Maybe a roomful of people having very different ideas is chaotic, but it's wonderfully chaotic, highly entertaining, and very educational. That's how you learn things-- not by everybody following the same doctrine. I don't suppose my kind of world could really exist at all because there are so many sheep out there that need leaders. Let them bleat among the flock, that's not for me. I'd rather be the lone sheep out there fending off the wolves. It's much better. When you grow up in a working-class environment, you're supposed to stay inside and follow the rules and regulations of that little system. I won't have any of that. It's all wrong, equally bad.

Only a Shape

 “An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”  ~Madeline Miller, in Circe ©2018

Good

"More harm is done under guise of goodness than ever realized by foul deed or evildoer.  Nevertheless, I wish I was good."  ~Herbert E. Huncke

And that reminded me of this:

"You made me forget myself.  I thought I was someone else-- someone good."  ~Lou Reed

Full lyrics HERE.

Live a Little

 

What's That?

(Click Image to Imbiggen)

Man Looking At Something

by L.S. Lowry, 1962

Condemned to Repeat It

 

Old Women Knitting Quilts

 Excerpted from John Lydon's autobiography Rotten:  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, ©1994:

I'm not a social snob; I can move inside any group and feel comfortable, I don't care if it's old women talking about knitting quilts. It's all about human beings. I can find that as fascinating as anything else. Sid, Paul, and Steve had a very hard time understanding that. "It's not rock 'n' roll." Of course it is! Rock 'n' roll is supposed to relate to everybody! If everybody isn't involved, then it's sectarianism. The people who condemn and slag you off do so because they have little knowledge of you. If you confront them and give them that knowledge, things will change. That's the whole point of living! You can learn off each other and enjoy.

Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose
by Jim Culleny
via 3QuarksDaily

… the last
20 yrs
of her life
after her
mother
died
she sat
at that
kitchen
table
hating
the irish

drinking
scotch
mist

&
clipping
obits

loneliness
spread out
in front
of her

like
family
jewels

&
now
years
later
i remember
i had no
kindness
for her

Every Single Thing

 

I wished I lived someplace where people wrote things like this then hung it on a wall for everybody to see.

In East Texas all we get is profanity and crude drawings of genitalia.

Oh, Well

 Somewhere in heaven, Bob Welch is grinning ear to ear:

Cubes

 

This is one of those images that has been posted and reposted for so long that the original artist's credit has been lost.

It's a shame, because it's a clever idea.  It's surprising how many foods are recognizable from a small sample of color and pattern.