a familiar poem with wisdom unfamiliar

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

(dedicated to Owen)

its a difficult time to be human

"...When does the fading consciousness of someone dying of alzheimers end completely? When does consciousness begin in the developing human embryo or fetus? The simplest assumption is that it never begins or ends but only transforms as the structure of the brain and nervous system are transformed." 

this is probably an important lesson

good vibes and a little persistence are arguably more important than style

- or -

if you dance it they will come

- or - 

Black Men Ski

humanity itself should be always more vivid

"...the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more starling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose." -- From "Orthodoxy" by G. K. Chesterton

PETA makes more sense now

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." Immanuel Kant

"Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." Proverbs 12:10

Mars 1

via Mars 1

In the afternoon?

In the afternoon? Really?

yes. The afternoon.

the struggle between chaos and cosmos

"...No matter what explanation we give to the origins of organized violence, clearly warfare changed the arena in which manhood was to be won. For the farmer, life was a struggle between chaos and cosmos [grand order, meaning]; the theater within which manhood was to be exhibited was the natural world. The challenge was to harmonize the forces of nature sufficiently to survive. The habit of warfare replaced the theater of nature with the theater of politics. Henceforth the drama of manhood was a battle not against chaos but against an enemy of the tribe who had been defined as the incarnation of evil.

...Once war became the established social habit, the values of agricultural society were turned upside down. The ethic of cooperation was replaced by the ethic of conquest. The quest for harmony was replaced by the search or control. The dominance of the senses was replaced by the discipline of willpower. The realm of the sacred was no longer to be found in the nearby fields, rivers, and glades, but in the remote heavenly dwelling of the the transcendent God. The business of God was more in the realm of politics than agriculture. He was better at commanding his people to go on crusades and sanctifying genocide than he was at dancing around the maypole or growing crops. " -- Sam Keen "Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man"

pleasure in itself... valuable subject

"From Horace, I learned that pleasure in itself and friendship in itself are valuable subjects, period. They don't need to be compared to anything. You don't need to go through the masquerade of the Renaissance, for example, in which romantic love is important because it imitates divine love. Love is important on its own terms and because of its own experience, and that's an end to it." -- William Matthews in the worlds most worthwhile interview

In 20 years...

via icanread

the King archetype and the masculine identity

The genuine patriarchy brings down the sun through the Sacred King, into every man and woman in the culture; and the genuine matriarchy brings down the moon, through the Sacred Queen, to every woman and every man in the culture. The death of the Sacred King and Queen means that we live now in a system of industrial domination, which is not patriarchy. The system we live in give no honor to the male mode of feeling nor to the female mode of feeling. The system of industrial domination determines how things go with us in the world of resources, values, and allegiances; what animals live and what animals dies; how children are treated. And in the mode of industrial domination there is neither king nor queen. -- Robert Bly from "Iron John: A Book About Men"

Majora Carter

"... and they were amazed at her teaching (and her arms), for her message was with authority." Luke 4:32

There are two spiritual dangers...

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside"

From "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold

"The Farmer, Speaking of Monuments"

Always, on their generation's breaking wave,
men think to be immortal in the world,
as though to leap from water and stand
in air were simple for a man. But the farmer
knows no work or act of his can keep him
here. He remains in what he serves
by vanishing in it, becoming what he never was.
He will not be immortal in words.
All his sentences serve an art of the commonplace,
to open the body of a women or a field
to take him in. His words turn
to leaves, answering the sun with mute
quick reflections. Leaving their seed
his hands have a million graves, from which wonders
rose, bearing him no likeness. At summers
height he surrounded by green, his doing,
standing for him, awake and orderly.
In autumn all his monuments fall.

-- Wendell Berry

I find this poem healthfully sexual.