risky run

I want to be with people who submerge

2011-11-16T19:42:00.000-08:00

To be of useby Marge Piercy The people I love the bestjump into work head firstwithout dallying in the shallowsand swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.They seem to become natives of that element,the black sleek heads of sealsbouncing like half submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,who strain in

Give thanks and lie down in peace, Having seen your salvation.

2011-10-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Atlantisby W. H. Auden Being set on the ideaOf getting to Atlantis,You have discovered of courseOnly the Ship of Fools isMaking the voyage this year,As gales of abnormal forceAre predicted, and that youMust therefore be ready toBehave absurdly enoughTo pass for one of The Boys,At least appearing to loveHard liquor, horseplay and noise.Should storms, as may well happen,Drive you to anchor a weekIn

Parable of the Madman

2011-07-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Parable of the Madman - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900)Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way

that's why they're called nobodies. Failures are unforgettable.

2011-06-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Failure - Philip SchultzTo pay for my father's funeralI borrowed money from peoplehe already owed money to.One called him a nobody.No, I said, he was a failure.You can't remembera nobody's name, that's whythey're called nobodies.Failures are unforgettable.The rabbi who read a stock eulogyabout a man who didn't belong toor believe in anythingwas both a failure and a nobody.He failed to imagine

meeting with the dark side of the moon

2011-05-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

"So we do not descend to the bottom of the hill merely by seeing the dark side of ourself, or our friends, difficult as that is, Baba Yaga, in Russian tales, asks: Are you here to pursue a good deed or to shirk it? We reach the bottom when Baba Yaga's hostile boar energy has completely replaced - for a time - childlike eros which each of us felt when our mother set a breast to our mouth, or later

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns

2011-05-04T17:26:00.000-07:00

Locksley Hall (an excerpt)- Alfred Lord Tennyson For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;...Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'dIn the Parliament of man, the

Long live the weeds

2011-05-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Inversnaid- Gerard Manley HopkinsThis darksome burn, horseback brown,His rollrock highroad roaring down,In coop and in comb the fleece of his foamFlutes and low to the lake falls home.A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-frothTurns and twindles over the brothOf a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,It rounds and rounds despair to drowning.Degged with dew, dappled with dewAre the groins of the braes that the

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself

2011-05-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

The Wind, One Brilliant Day- Antonio Machado Translated by Robert Bly The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead." "Well then, I'll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain." the wind left. And I

"...to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large"

2011-04-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Watercolor, a study of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Sully (American School, 1793-1872)"Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted

Life is always on the edge of death...

2011-01-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom

The Garden

2010-03-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

- Hafiz (1320 - 1389)Translated by Robert BlyThe garden is breathing out the air of Paradise today,Toward me, a friend with a sweet nature, and this wine.It's all right for the beggar to brag that he is a King today.His royal tent is a shadow thrown by a cloud; his throne room is a sown field.This meadow is composing a tale of a spring day in May;The serious man lets the future go and accepts the

A Farm For The Future

2009-07-21T23:49:00.001-07:00

When you strip without being ashamed

2009-07-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

37. His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample then, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."48. Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain,

the line's open, though the higher purposes are away from their desks

2009-07-15T16:14:00.001-07:00

Self Help- William MatthewsIt would be good to feel good about yourself for good. The air is slurred, the seas are fouled, the body the soul wrangle constantly, like Freud and Jungin their endless duet from Ll Cuore in Maschera.Can it be, that fully and accurately to throb, wooferand tweeter pulsating as one, with your own emotionsis the fullest expression of the life force,or whichever whispers

I googled for perspective

2009-07-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was having a pity party, and as usual no one showed up to celebrate. Then I found this...This link will take you to a Magnum Photos essay depicting four shanty towns. It is an interactive essay so you can move forward and backwards in as well as follow the links all the way into the personal lives of several families from each of the shanty towns. It amazed me as a teenager visiting the

a familiar poem with wisdom unfamiliar

2009-06-27T21:36:00.000-07:00

Tell all the Truth but tell it slantEmily DickinsonTell all the Truth but tell it slant---Success in Cirrcuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightening to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind--- (dedicated to Owen)

its a difficult time to be human

2009-06-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

"...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

2009-06-15T19:26:00.001-07:00

good vibes and a little persistence are arguably more important than style- or -if you dance it they will come- or -

Black Men Ski

2009-06-09T11:18:00.001-07:00

humanity itself should be always more vivid

2009-06-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

"...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

PETA makes more sense now

2009-05-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-05-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

via Mars 1

In the afternoon?

2009-05-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

In the afternoon? Really? In the afternoon. Really.

the struggle between chaos and cosmos

2009-05-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

"...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

pleasure in itself... valuable subject

2009-05-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

"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." --

In 20 years...

2009-05-13T07:10:00.000-07:00

via icanread

the King archetype and the masculine identity

2009-04-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

Majora Carter

2009-04-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

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

There are two spiritual dangers...

2009-04-15T05:29:00.000-07:00

"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

"The Farmer, Speaking of Monuments"

2009-03-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

Always, on their generation's breaking wave, men think to be immortal in the world,as though to leap from water and standin air were simple for a man. But the farmerknows no work or act of his can keep himhere. He remains in what he servesby 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

sweet Jesus hasten the day

2009-03-27T04:53:00.000-07:00

edit: So this trailer started me thinking about the last time I was a real human animal. It also reminded me of something Ray Bradbury said about a more noble race, "They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal." So here are some questions I've been asking myself. Maybe you will add some more. I think the list applies equally to both men and women. can you remember the last time youwere

Impassioned Clay

2009-03-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

Impassioned Clayby Ralph N. HelversonDeep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.Out of the passions of our clay it rises.We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient,self-sustaining or self-derived.We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present,some self-respect beyond our failures.We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping upat beauty

Def Poetry (1)

2009-03-15T20:26:00.001-07:00

this women is mad awesome

Gustave Doré

2009-03-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

(Israel Cillio on a musicians quest. He got a new ethnicity for this one)(Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light surrounded by angels)via

I am this one

2009-03-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

"I am not I"By Juan Ramon Jimeneztranslated by Robert BlyI an not I I am this oneWalking beside me, whom I do not see,Whom at times I manage to visit,and at other times I forget.The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,The one who remains silent when I talk,The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,The one who will remain standing

Finite and Infinite Games

2009-03-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

Today I began the following. "The rules of the finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change.Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.The

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

2009-03-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

This poem was a gift from my new acquaintance and now facebook friend, Kinsley Koons. She recommends reading it every day, and I agree. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation FrontWendell BerryLove the quick profit, the annual raise,vacation with pay. Want moreof everything ready-made. Be afraidto know your neighbors and to die.And you will have a window in your head.Not even your future will be a

my time back

2009-03-01T16:02:00.000-08:00

I jumped from the skylanded with a melody in a body surprisedit fitsnaturally

2008-12-14T14:14:00.001-08:00

taking a break from the internet. see you march 1st.

Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard

2008-12-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

painting by Benjamin Robert Haydon Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard - Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,Of dimensions not gigantic,Though the moonshine mostly keep us,Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.Stolen sweets are always sweeter,Stolen kisses much completer,Stolen looks are nice in chapels,Stolen, stolen, be your apples.When to bed the world are bobbing,Then's the

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace...

2008-11-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

Orson Scott Card (An excerpt from the beginning of chapter 16)A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of the story, but a friend of mine, a speaker for the dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same

Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras

2008-11-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

We had a thanksgiving potluck

2008-11-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

It was a good thing to do on a Saturday. About thirty people came, brought food, and drank six pots of coffee. Xac Denton captured the music for YouTube. No One Conquered WyomingGood Women - Travis ChaneyMason Jennings - cover by No One Conquered WyomingA Protest Song - Travis Chaneythe whole show

until the soft and precious metal of our will boiled off in vapor

2008-11-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

To The Reader- Charles Baudelaire Infatuation, sadism, lust, avaricepossess our souls and drain the body's force;we spoonfeed our adorable remorse,like whores or beggars nourishing their lice.Our sins are mulish, our confessions lies;we play to the grandstand with our promises,we pray for tears to wash our filthiness;importantly pissing hogwash through our styes.The devil, watching by our

Know Thyself

2008-10-18T14:37:00.001-07:00

by Alexander PopeKnow then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast,In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die,

"sainthood... a thing human beings should avoid"

2008-10-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

"To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes it clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife and child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that

A poem by Josh and Jessica

2008-09-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

Last night a strange fire burnt all the worlds moneyToday we had nothing responsible to doWe spent the day up in the trees playing music, and resting in its echoes.We were all our favorite animalsWe all died and didn't mindWe were no longer just two lonely peopleThe ocean let us through, and we were free to roam together as we pleased

they didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal

2008-09-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

From Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles"- The captain nodded. "Tell me about [the] civilization here," he said, waving his hand at the mountain towns.- "They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's that mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered

the fairies still don't know why they were blamed

2008-09-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Your bodily soul wants comforting.The severe father wants spiritual clarity. -- RumiTwo young women came upon a garden. Even at the first glance they could tell this garden held more interest, and held more enjoyable experiences then they could hope for in two or even three lifetimes. After a short discussion about what their parents would think they decided that they wanted to spend the rest of

a merry life and a short one

2008-09-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

"In an honest service, there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not ballance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto." -- Captain Bartholomew Roberts

dark and meaningless catacombs of learning

2008-09-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

The Tree of Knowledge System ...depicts knowledge as consisting of four levels or dimensions of complexity (Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture) that correspond to the behavior of four classes of objects (material objects, organisms, animals, and humans), and four classes of science (physical, biological, psychological, and social). Each dimension of complexity is connected to the dimension beneath

they do not make it just as they please

2008-08-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please: they do not make it under circumstances they choose by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted by the past." -- Karl Marx

Whatever happened to honor?

2008-08-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

From John Lyde Wilson's "The American: Code of Honor" or "Rules for the Government of Principles and Seconds In Dueling.""I would not wish to be understood to say that I do not desire to see dueling cease to exist, entirely, in society. But my plan for doing it away is essentially different from the one which teaches a passive forbearance to insult and indignity. I would inculcate in the rising

environmentalism: the secular religion

2008-07-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Freeman Dyson, "The Question of Global Warming"All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming… miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin,

lets all try not to die

2008-07-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

"Neither misery nor folly seems to me any part of the inevitable lot of man. And I am convinced that intelligence, patience, and eloquence can, sooner or later, lead the human race out of its self-imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itself meanwhile." -- Bertrand Russell

"the happy region of the Three Dimensions'

2008-06-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

From "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott AbbottYou, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually SEE an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions-- how shall I make it clear to you the extreme

Marx on religion

2008-05-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the

'Hungry Planet: What the World Eats'

2008-05-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

one week of food

A tragic sense of life

2008-04-27T18:28:00.001-07:00

From David Orr's "Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to the Postmodern World""The tragic sense of life, however, is neither resigned or long-faced. It locates the sources of our suffering in ourselves, in human decisions, institutions, and above all in the pretense that we are beyond the laws of ecology, thermodynamics, or even morality."A closer reading of Homo sapiens would

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor..."

2008-04-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

From "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau:"Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering?... The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.

"...the part and parcel of life"

2008-04-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

From W. H. Hudson's "Birds and Man""For we are no longer isolated, standing like starry visitors on a mountain-top, surveying life from the outside; but are on level with the part and parcel of it; and if the mystery of life daily deepens, it is because we view it more closely and with clearer vision."