all which isn't singing is mere talking

.
all which isn't singing is mere talking
and all talking's talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)
.
gush to it as diety or devil
-toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil-
it is you (ne i)nobody else
.
drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
-you are deafened every mother's son-
all is merely talk which isn't singing
and all talking's to oneself alone
.
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence
.
~ e.e.cummings


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From the Wizard of Oz

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Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue.
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops.
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then - oh, why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow,
Why, oh, why can't I?

~ music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

-click title to hear the song

into the Great Circle inside of You.

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
.
~ Hafiz

it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
How should we be able to forget about those ancient myths 

that are at the beginning of all peoples, 

the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; 

perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses 

who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being

 something helpless that wants help from us.

 
So you must not be frightened...if a sadness rises up before you

 larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness,

 like light and cloud shadow, passes over your hands

 and over all that you do. You must think that something 

is taking place in you, that life has not forgotten you,

 that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.

 

 

 

 
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A fool once searched for fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.
~ Mumon

.

in conversation with David Sylvester

.

You see, all art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself; and you may say it has always been like that, but now it's entirely a game. And I think that is the way things have changed, and what is fascinating now is that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he really must deepen the game to be any good at all.

.

~ Francis Bacon 

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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious

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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man...
.
~ Albert Einstein, 1931


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The flower, the sky, your beloved

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"The flower, the sky, your beloved, 
can only be found in the present moment."
...

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

-click the title for more

Bogart and Bacall in 'To Have and To Have Not'

.
Slim: Who was the girl, Steve?
Harry: What girl?
Slim: The one that left you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal. You think I lied to you about this don't you? Well it just happens there's thirty-odd dollars here. Not enough for boat fare, or any other kind of fare. Just enough for me to say "No" if I feel like it, and you can have it if you want it... you wouldn't take anything from anybody would you? You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure. Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times ... the other times you're just a stinker. (she kisses him)
Harry: What'd you do that for?
Slim: Been wondering if I'd like it.
Harry: What's your decision?
Slim: I don't know yet. (she kisses him again)
Slim: It's even better when you help. Uhh... sure you won't change your mind about this? This belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don't see any difference ... OK You know you don't have act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not with me. Ohh, maybe just whistle. You remember how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together... and blow.
(she exits. Harry smiles to himself and then whistles)
.
~ from the novel by Ernest Hemingway, directed by Howard Hawks, 1944


.-click the title

Remember the Mountain Bed

.
Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.
.
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.
.
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there.
.
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go.
.
There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.
.
The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...
.
I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands.
.
I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.
.
All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again.

.
~  Woody Guthrie

The Cold

The cold seizes me
and I shiver
The wine
overthrows my tears
The night puts me to bed
and the sorrows
strengthen my resolve
Your name is burning
under a statue
Even when I was with you
I wanted to be here
The rain unhooks my belt
The wind gives a shape
to your absence
I move in and out
of the One Heart
no longer struggling
to be free




~ Leonard Cohen

.

a chaos of forms

.

And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all geniuses must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves… A man, therefore, who gets so far as making the supposed unity of the self twofold is already almost a genius, in any case a most exceptional and interesting person. In reality, however, every ego, so far from being unity, is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of stages and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as a eating or breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though it were a onefold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us share the delusion.

.

~ Hermann Hesse

.

Men ask the way through the clouds

.
Men ask the way through the clouds,
The cloud way’s dark, without a sign.
High summits are of naked rock.
In deep valleys sun never shines.
Behind you green peaks, and in front,
To east the white clouds, and to west –
Want to know where the cloud way lies?
It’s there, in the centre of the Void!
.
~ Han-Shan


.

Listen to my silence

.
Listen to my silence
that murmurs through these leaves
listen to this unwritten song.
.
Much is heaped between these lines
risen without mouth
silted up in the underground.
.
Listen to my paper-thin silence
that is gone with the wind
through the trees.
.
Hear my voice
at the curve of your mouth
earthlydark.
.
~ Jos Steegstra


.

the closing passage from 'Beyond Good and Evil'

.


Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! 
Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, 
so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze
 and laugh--and now? You have already doffed your novelty,
 and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, 
so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, 
so tedious! And was it ever otherwise?

What then do we write and paint, 
we mandarins with Chinese brush,
 we immortalisers of things 
which lend themselves to writing, 
what are we alone capable of painting? 

Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour!
 Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments!
 Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves
 be captured with the hand--with our hand! 

We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer,
 things only which are exhausted and mellow!
 And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts,
 for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, 
many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;
-- but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning,
 you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, 
you, my old, beloved-- evil thoughts!




~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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