And the other way is much more fun...

“You have your way.  I have my way.  As for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist

Friedrich Nietzsche

Reality or something other?

"It has happened to me, while taking solitary walks through the woods of Baarn that I would suddenly stop in my tracks and stand stiff as a board, overcome by a frightening, unreal and yet blissful sense of standing eye-to-eye with the inexplicable.  The tree there in front of me, as an object, as part of the woods, is perhaps not so amazing, but the space between it and me, suddenly seems unfathomable.

He who wants to depict something nonexistent has to follow certain rules.  Those rules are more or less the same as for fairy tales.

The element of the inscrutable, on which he now wants to focus attention, needs to be surrounded, to be veiled by a perfectly common everyday evidence, recognisable to all.  That true-to-nature environment, acceptable to any superficial spectator, is indispensable for creating the desired shock."

M.C.Escher in his lecture, 
"The Impossible". 1963

Curious?

The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity
                                 Dorothy Parker

The birth of Literature according to Nabokov

"Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature)
Thanks to my neighbor, PoetessJoanne Kyger, for unearthing this quote.  (which I stole from Lloyd's blog.)

To any pejorative, rather than constructive, critics who may choose to read my ramblings.

Consider this:
"I am self contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference."
Dickens, Little Dorrit

Posted beause it touched a nerve....

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."  Mark Twain

Too good to let go

This came by me this morning. The sentiment is too close to my heart for me not to post it: 

"For as we forgive, we are forgiven; as we condemn others, we are ourselves condemned. Thus in patience condemn not, neither find fault; not condoning, not agreeing, but let thine own life so shine that others, seeing thy patience, knowing thy understanding, comprehending thy peace, may take hope."

Edgar Cayce

What God Wants

"God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts."
I stole that from a comment on another's blog and left my own comment about liking the idea but thinking it a tad arrogant that we should know what God wants.

On social responsibility

"Until the interest of an artist shifts from the personal sensation to a sense of communal service his work cannot grow."
William Soutar, in 'Diaries of A Dying Man'.

Home thoughts

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.


WBYeats

From Krishnamurti’s notebook

Walking, surrounded by these violet, bare, rocky mountains, suddenly there was solitude.
Complete solitude.
Everywhere, there was solitude;
It had great, unfathomable richness;
it had that beauty which is beyond thought and feeling.
It was not still; it was living, moving, filling every nook and corner.
The high rocky mountain top was aglow with the setting sun
and that very light and colour filled the heavens with solitude.
It was uniquely alone, not isolated, but alone, like a drop of rain
which holds all the waters of the earth.
It was neither joyous nor sad, but alone.
It had no quality, shape or colour;
these would make it something recognizable, measurable.
It came like a flash and took seed.
It did not germinate, but was there in its entirety.
There was no time to mature; time has roots in the past.
This was a rootless, causeless state.
So it is totally new, a state that has not been
And never will be,
for it is living.

Something for the weekend

By nature, my old friend on East Mountain
treasures the beauty of hills and valleys.
Spring now green, you lie
in empty woods still sound asleep under a midday sun,
your robe growing lucid in pine winds,
rocky streams rinsing ear and heart clean.

No noise, no confusion—
all I want is this life pillowed high in emerald mist.

Li Po

After watching coverage of rioting in Athens

‘Few men realise,’ wrote Joseph Conrad in 1896, ‘that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.’

Sound advice

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted. And human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.…"
-E.M. Forster, Howard's End