from Don Quixote

...

"It seems to me," said Sancho, "that the knights who did all these things were driven to them... 

but... why should you go mad? What lady has rejected you?

"That is exactly it," replied Don Quixote, "that's just how beautifully I've worked it all out - 

because for a knight errant to go mad for good reason, how much is that worth?

 My idea is to become a lunatic for no reason at all."

...

~ Miguel de Cervantes

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An Embarrassment

...

"Do you want to ask

the blessing?"

...

"No If you do,

go ahead."

...

He went ahead:

his prayer dressed up

...

in Sunday clothes

rose a few feet

...

and dropped with a soft

thump.

...

If a lonely soul

did ever cry out

...

in company its true

outcry to God,

...

it would be as though

at a sedate party

...

a man suddenly removed his clothes

...

and took his wife

passionately into his arms.

...

~ Wendell Berry

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No man can be said to be perfectly happy

...

No man can be said to be perfectly happy 

that runs the risk of disappointment;

which is the case of every man 

that fears or hopes for anything.

...

~ Seneca

.

The body

...

The body

is a single creature, whole,

its life is one, never less than one, or more,

so is its world, and so 

are two bodies in their love for one another

one. In ignorance of this

we talk ourselves to death.

...

~ Wendell Berry

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Give it Time

The river is of the earth

And it is free. It is rigorously

Embanked and bound,
And yet is free.  “To hell

With restraint,” it says.

“I have got to be going.”

It will grind out its dams.

It will go over or around them.

They will become pieces
 ...
~ Wendell Berry

On the Nature of Love

...

The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.

We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where

or with whom -- of that we are unaware.

But we have this faith -- that a lifetime's bliss

will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.

Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs

brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.

Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:

whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.

I call that person and cry: 'This life is blest!

For your sake such miles have I traversed!'

All those others who came close and moved off

in the darkness -- I don't know if they exist or not.

...

~ Rabindranath Tagore

.

Blank

...

She who did not come, wasn't she determined
 nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,

what would the heart have to create?
...
Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are

the center of all my labors and my loves.

If I've wept for you so much, it's because

I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

...

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

from Act III of 'Man and Superman'

...

Don Juan: When I was on earth, and made those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such way as this. The lady would say that she would countenance my advances, provided they were honourable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I desired her continual companionship, counsel, and conversation to the end of my days, and would take a most solemn oath to be always enraptured by them above all, that I would turn my back on all other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things ... that her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained intercourse with half my fellow creatures would narrow and warp me ... that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.

...

Ana: You mean that it was an immoral impulse.

...

Don Juan: Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it; but I cannot help it. 

...

~ George Bernard Shaw

.

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being? We have perceptions and energies and inspiration. We have everything. We have a spiritual friend, we have the teaching. We have everything. What more do we want? We have everything in this whole universe. We have everything there. We have intelligence and understanding and the materials to understand. We have everything.


~ Chogyam Trungpa

from 'Fez'

...

They love the sound of a fountain splashing in the courtyard; on the coals of their braziers they sprinkle sandalwood and benzoin; they have a passion for sitting on a high spot of ground at twilight and watching the slow change of light, color and form in the landscape. Outside the ramparts are innumerable orchards, delightful little wildernesses of canebrake, where olive and fig trees abound. It is the custom of families to go out there on a late afternoon with their rugs, braziers and tea equipment. One discovers groups of such picnickers in the most secluded corners of the countryside, particularly on the northern slopes above the valley. Not long ago on one of my walks I came across a family spread out in the long grass. They were sitting quietly on their reed mats, but something in their collective attitude made me stop and observe them more closely. Then I saw that surrounding them at a radius of perhaps a hundred feet was a circle of bird cages, each supported by a stake driven into the ground. There were birds in all the cages and they were singing. The entire family sat there happily, listening. As urbanites in other places carry along their radios, they had brought their birds with them from the town, purely for entertainment. 

...

~ Paul Bowles

.

from 'It's a Wonderful Life'

...
George Bailey: Now, will you do something for me?
Zuzu Bailey: What?
George Bailey: Will you try and get some sleep?
Zuzu Bailey: I'm not sleepy. I want to look at my flower.
George Bailey: I know-I know, but you just go to sleep, and then you can dream about it, and it'll be a whole garden.
Zuzu Bailey: It will?
George Bailey: Uh-huh. 
...
~ Francis Goodrich and Allen Hackett

.

I Sing the Body Electric

...

This is the female form;
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—

...

~ Walt Whitman

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

 Live the life you have imagined.

~ Henry David Thoreau

O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

...

O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; 

As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, 

Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

...

~ Walt Whitman

.

from 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1951)

...
Blanche: You're married to a madman.
Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
Blanche: What you are talking about is desire - just brutal Desire. The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche: It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.
Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?
Blanche: May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet...
...
~ Tennessee Williams


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