Woe...my 50th Blog!!
The Things They Carried: Tim O'Brien
I first encountered this book as a freshman in college in my English 101 class. I remember the teacher, Mr. Kula, he had a lovely red tint to his hair. He was young. He loved creative writing. He assigned some really great stuff for an intro to English class, most of which was made up by students only taking the class for the required credit, not because they had any interest in the subject. He assigned one of the chapters from this book called, ‘How to Tell a True War Story.’
I still have saved the short essay that I wrote on the piece and recall how wonderful I felt about the idea that “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” It’s the feeling, the way you have stored it in your mind that really matters, not the exact what happened truth of a story.
My sister and I have often discussed this subject of ‘truth’ as we both have a similar collection of stories from our past and yet details of the exact truth of it differ extremely. Whose version it right? I guess both of them, because underplayed or over exaggerated they are the way we experienced them through who we are, our own psychology, our own sense of the world.
Anyways, this book in its entirety or read in small excerpts is excellent. Of course those of us who haven’t lived through war can never truly know anything about it, but this book conveys some powerful emotions of that time (the Vietnam War) and I think anyone who reads this can gain valuable lessons from it, as well as laughter, tears, joy, and every other fearful emotion.
The Things They Carried:
Tim O’Brian
*First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.
*To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.
*Almost everyone humped photographs. In his walled Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of the things he should’ve done.
*They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.
*She had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated. It was this separate-but-together quality that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and carry it.
*She was a poet, with the poet’s sensibilities, and her feet would be brown and bare, the toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March.
*Whatever was down there—the tunnel walls squeezing in—a swallowed-up feeling—and how you found yourself worrying about odd things: Do rats carry rabies? Would your buddies hear you if you screamed? Imagination was a killer.
*He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone—riding her bike or sitting off by herself—even dancing, she danced alone—and it was the aloneness that filled him with love.
*They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworms and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.
*They carried it all on their backs and shoulders—and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.
*They were actors. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs, they talked grunt lingo.
*They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.
*He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love.
*It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.
*There was something restful about checkers, something orderly and reassuring. There were red checkers and black checkers. They playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules.
*Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
*I was twenty-one years old when I was drafted to fight a war I hated. Young, yes, and politically naïve, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.
*The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.
*The afternoon was sunny and cold. A stiff breeze came in from the north, and I remember how the little fourteen-foot boat made sharp rocking motions as we pushed of from the dock. The current was fast. All around us, there was a vastness to the world, an unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the water reaching out toward nowhere. The air had the brittle scent of October.
*I sat in the bow of the boat and cried. It was loud now. Loud, hard crying. Elroy Berdahl remained quiet. He kept fishing. He worked his line with the tips of his fingers, patiently, squinting out at his red and white bobber on the Rainy River. His eyes were flat and impassive. He didn’t speak. He was simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun. And yet by his presence, his mute watchfulness, he made it real. He was the true audience. He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them.
*A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
*He couldn’t stop bragging. He had an opinion of himself, I think, that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe it was a low opinion that he kept trying to erase.
*Rat had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, a compulsion to rev up the facts, and for most of us it was normal procedure to discount sixty or seventy percent of anything he had to say. If Rat told you, for example, that he’d slept with four girls one night, you could figure it was about a girl and a half. For Rat, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of his stories, you’d find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe.
*Whenever he told a story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, inserting little clarifications or bits of analysis and personal opinion. It was a bad habit, Mitchell Sanders said, because all that matters is the raw material, the stuff itself, and you can’t clutter it up with your own half-baked commentary. That just breaks the spell. It destroys the magic. What you have to do, Sanders said, is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself.
*Sometimes I want to eat this place. The whole country—the dirt, the death—I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me. That’s how I feel. It’s like this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it’s not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. When I’m out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it’s like I’m full of electricity and I’m glowing in the dark—I’m on fire almost—I’m burning away into nothing—but it doesn’t matter because I know exactly who I am.
*He was a good man. In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of food but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, he was drawn toward sentimentality.
*The town could not talk and would not listen. “How’d you like to hear about the war?” he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt. The taxes got paid and the votes got counted and the agencies of government did their work briskly and politely. It was a brisk, polite town. It did no know shit about shit, and did not care to know.
*I did not look on my work as therapy, and still don’t. Yet it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others.
*But listen. Even that story was made up. I just want you to feel what I felt. I want you know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.
*There were birds and butterflies, the soft rustlings of rural-anywhere. Below, in the earth, the relics of our presence were no doubt still there, the canteens and bandoliers and mess kits. This little field, I thought, had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage. Still, it was hard to find any real emotion after all those years. It simply wasn’t there. After that long night in the rain, I’d seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud. Over the years, that coldness had never entirely disappeared. There were times in my life when I couldn’t feel much, not sadness or pity or passion, and somehow I blamed this place for what I had become, and I blamed it for taking away the person I had once been.
*When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends.
*I hated him for making me stop hating him.
*The darkness squeezes you inside yourself, you get cut off from the outside world, the imagination takes over. That’s basic psychology. The fear factor gets multiplied as you sit there hour after hour, nobody to talk to, nothing to do but stare into the big black hole at the center of your own sorry soul. The hours go by and you lose your gyroscope; your mind starts to roam. You think about dark closets, madmen, murderers under the bed, all those childhood fears. You blink and shake your head. Bullshit, you tell yourself. But then you remember all the guys who died.
*We were both nine then, but we were in love. And it was real. I know for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and rich as love can ever get. It had all the shading and complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things.
*The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then be dreaming along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Step 49: Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day & Never Let Me Go:
-Kazuo Ishiguro
Just finished reading ‘The Remains of the Day,’ 1989’s winner of the Booker Prize. This is the second book I’ve read by author Kazuo Ishiguro (born in Japan but moved to England when he was about 5) and it hasn’t clarified for me whether or not I’m a fan of his. The other book I read of his, ‘Never Let Me Go’ was certainly an interesting topic (I’m excited to see the film being made) however I recall thinking throughout my time reading it, ‘where on earth is this going?’ The book is set in England, presumably in the future, and is about children who are born only to be used as organ donors—their future set to soon die. With that book there was, at least, a rather imminent tone that had me continue reading just to see what would come next. However, by the end of the book I was left feeling perplexed as to what was the point of it all.
Now here I am at the end of reading his most famous book and I am similarly puzzled. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the book and it was in fact rather easy reading. But I can’t say that I loved it. It is written from the mind of a traditional old-fashioned English butler who is taking a road trip and, throughout the trip, looking back on the life he and his employers have lived. He often addresses the reader as if we are also butlers or some sort of person serving others—or more I suppose simply that we are also people of little consequence and what impact does he or any of us have on the world. Once again I am left wondering what was the point of it all…perhaps that is precisely the question Ishiguro desire’s his readers to think—I’m unsure. Being written as they were I was unable to pull many delicious quotes out to share so here are the few that I did. Hope you enjoy.
*I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.( Never Let Me Go)
The rest of the quotes will be from ‘The Remains of the Day’
*I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest—such as I saw it this morning—possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term ‘greatness’. We call this land of ours Great Britain, and there may be those of you who believe this is a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of our country alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective.
*I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.
*It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of. Continentals are as a rule unable to control themselves in moments of strong emotion, and are thus unable to maintain a professional demeanour other than in the least challenging of situations. In a word, ‘dignity’ is beyond such persons. We English have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect.
*I was so fond of that view from the second-floor bedrooms overlooking the lawn with the downs visible in the distance. Is it still like that? On summer evenings there was a sort of magical quality to that view and I will confess to you now I used to waste many precious minutes standing at one of those windows just enchanted by it.
*Miss Kenton, if you are under the impression you have already at your age perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
*We are all much too complacent about the great wonders that surround us. I mean all this we’ve been talking about; treaties and boundaries and reparations and occupations. But Mother Nature just carries on her own sweet way. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if the Almighty had created us all as—well—as sort of plants. You know, firmly embedded in the soil. Then none of this rot about wars and boundaries would have come up in the first place.
*Dignity isn’t just something gentlemen have. Dignity’s something every man and woman in this country can strive for and get. That’s what we fought Hitler for, after all. If Hitler had had things his way, we’d just be slaves now. The whole world would be a few masters and millions upon millions of slaves. And I don’t need to remind anyone here, there’s no dignity to be had in being a slave. We won the right to be free citizens.
*You’ve got to enjoy yourself. The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. You should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of the day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took.
*It is curious how people can build such warmth among themselves so swiftly. Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in—particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.
-Kazuo Ishiguro
Just finished reading ‘The Remains of the Day,’ 1989’s winner of the Booker Prize. This is the second book I’ve read by author Kazuo Ishiguro (born in Japan but moved to England when he was about 5) and it hasn’t clarified for me whether or not I’m a fan of his. The other book I read of his, ‘Never Let Me Go’ was certainly an interesting topic (I’m excited to see the film being made) however I recall thinking throughout my time reading it, ‘where on earth is this going?’ The book is set in England, presumably in the future, and is about children who are born only to be used as organ donors—their future set to soon die. With that book there was, at least, a rather imminent tone that had me continue reading just to see what would come next. However, by the end of the book I was left feeling perplexed as to what was the point of it all.
Now here I am at the end of reading his most famous book and I am similarly puzzled. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the book and it was in fact rather easy reading. But I can’t say that I loved it. It is written from the mind of a traditional old-fashioned English butler who is taking a road trip and, throughout the trip, looking back on the life he and his employers have lived. He often addresses the reader as if we are also butlers or some sort of person serving others—or more I suppose simply that we are also people of little consequence and what impact does he or any of us have on the world. Once again I am left wondering what was the point of it all…perhaps that is precisely the question Ishiguro desire’s his readers to think—I’m unsure. Being written as they were I was unable to pull many delicious quotes out to share so here are the few that I did. Hope you enjoy.
*I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.( Never Let Me Go)
The rest of the quotes will be from ‘The Remains of the Day’
*I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest—such as I saw it this morning—possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term ‘greatness’. We call this land of ours Great Britain, and there may be those of you who believe this is a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of our country alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective.
*I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.
*It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of. Continentals are as a rule unable to control themselves in moments of strong emotion, and are thus unable to maintain a professional demeanour other than in the least challenging of situations. In a word, ‘dignity’ is beyond such persons. We English have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect.
*I was so fond of that view from the second-floor bedrooms overlooking the lawn with the downs visible in the distance. Is it still like that? On summer evenings there was a sort of magical quality to that view and I will confess to you now I used to waste many precious minutes standing at one of those windows just enchanted by it.
*Miss Kenton, if you are under the impression you have already at your age perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.
*We are all much too complacent about the great wonders that surround us. I mean all this we’ve been talking about; treaties and boundaries and reparations and occupations. But Mother Nature just carries on her own sweet way. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if the Almighty had created us all as—well—as sort of plants. You know, firmly embedded in the soil. Then none of this rot about wars and boundaries would have come up in the first place.
*Dignity isn’t just something gentlemen have. Dignity’s something every man and woman in this country can strive for and get. That’s what we fought Hitler for, after all. If Hitler had had things his way, we’d just be slaves now. The whole world would be a few masters and millions upon millions of slaves. And I don’t need to remind anyone here, there’s no dignity to be had in being a slave. We won the right to be free citizens.
*You’ve got to enjoy yourself. The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it. You should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of the day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took.
*It is curious how people can build such warmth among themselves so swiftly. Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in—particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Step 48: The Woman in White
Recently finished the Classic mystery of the "Woman in White" I had been suggested this book by one of my college professors and finally got around to reading it. It really keeps you on the edge throughout; wondering always how things will be resolved. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the way Men and Women are portrayed in the book. I love that such a smart woman character dominates and creates the vital movements of the story.
Below are a few favorite quotes, though most of what is great about this book cannot be quoted, just needs to be read from start to finish to really appreciate it.
The Woman in White
-Wilkie Collins
*This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
*She was the woman who first gave life, light, and forms to our shadowy conceptions of beauty; she filled a void in our spiritual nature that had remained unknown to us till she appeared. Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir.
*“I shall believe all that you say to me” she answered simply. In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character; to that generous trust of others which, in her nature, grew innocently out of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
*At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art.
*Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
*I loved her! Ah! How well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.
*When two member of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been traveling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems, at first, to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.
*Where is the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions by the abstract principles of honor, when those principles point one way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them, point the other?
*I am a bad man, am I not? I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
*Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money; but they cannot resist a man’s tongue, when he knows how to talk to them.
*Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight? Ah! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that is noble and great and good, purified by the breath of Heaven, on an evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such inextinguishable tendernesses for me! I am an old, fat man: talk which would become a ladies lips sounds like a derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?
*Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.
*I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at some distance ahead, and had just concluded that I must be getting near to the town, when I suddently heard the steps of the men close behind me.
*The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
*Through what mortal crime and horror, through what darkest windings of the way down to Death, the lost creature had wandered in God’s leading to the last home that, living, she never hoped to reach! In that sacred rest, I leave her—in that dread companionships, let her remain undisturbed.
*I thought of the disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
Below are a few favorite quotes, though most of what is great about this book cannot be quoted, just needs to be read from start to finish to really appreciate it.
The Woman in White
-Wilkie Collins
*This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
*She was the woman who first gave life, light, and forms to our shadowy conceptions of beauty; she filled a void in our spiritual nature that had remained unknown to us till she appeared. Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir.
*“I shall believe all that you say to me” she answered simply. In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character; to that generous trust of others which, in her nature, grew innocently out of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
*At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art.
*Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
*I loved her! Ah! How well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.
*When two member of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been traveling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems, at first, to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.
*Where is the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions by the abstract principles of honor, when those principles point one way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them, point the other?
*I am a bad man, am I not? I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
*Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money; but they cannot resist a man’s tongue, when he knows how to talk to them.
*Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight? Ah! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that is noble and great and good, purified by the breath of Heaven, on an evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such inextinguishable tendernesses for me! I am an old, fat man: talk which would become a ladies lips sounds like a derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?
*Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.
*I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at some distance ahead, and had just concluded that I must be getting near to the town, when I suddently heard the steps of the men close behind me.
*The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
*Through what mortal crime and horror, through what darkest windings of the way down to Death, the lost creature had wandered in God’s leading to the last home that, living, she never hoped to reach! In that sacred rest, I leave her—in that dread companionships, let her remain undisturbed.
*I thought of the disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Step 47: Birdsong quotes
“When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.” - Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali
Below are my favorite quotes from the book BIRDSONG, written by Sebastian Faulks. It is a really wonderful book set in two different times--both the present and during the First World War. It is a story of faith, love, friendship, family...but ultimatley a story about if it's possible to find any meaning in our lives. Really beautifully written. I hope you enjoy the quotes.
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
*Throughout the building the floors made distinctive sounds beneath the press of feet, so that with its closed angles and echoing air, the house was always a place of unseen footsteps.
*The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings that normally we keep locked up in the heart. The great composers of the past were able to do this; to make the hairs of your head stand on end!
*Music is a democratic form of art. You don’t need money to buy it or education to study it. All you need is a pair of ears. The gift of God at birth.
*When any art is put to practical ends it loses its essential purity.
*But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it.
*This blood was supposed to be shameful, but she had never thought of it that way. She valued it because it spoke of some greater rhythm of life that would lead them away from the narrow boredom of childhood. Though she could never quite reconcile herself to the fact that this secret thing that promised new life and liberation should manifest itself in the color of pain.
*I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reasons and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.
*He watched as she spoke and wondered if he could have told that she was lying. Nothing in her manner was different. One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.
*The strain of his anguish lasted for another year, then went cold in him. He had no sensation of healing, no awareness that time had soothed him or lent him a longer perspective in which to view his passion. He experienced it only as a loss of memory. Her presence, which he had felt permanently in his mind, abruptly disappeared. He was left with the feeling of emotions undischarged, of a process uncompleted. The coldness enabled him to live more easily, to respond with some degree of conviction to other people. However, the sudden chill loss of her also made him uneasy. Something had been buried that was not yet dead.
*He saw half of his platoon die under the shells of the enemy’s opening bombardement. He grew used to the sight and smell of torn human flesh. He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.
*As the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. He could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war, to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.
*His innocence was not the same thing as ignorance; it was a powerful quality of goodness that was available to all people: it was perhaps what the prayer book called a means of grace, or a hope of glory.
*It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marveled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth. If this were true, then his fellow-human beings were not the rough, flawed creatures that most of them supposed. Their failings were not innate, but were the result of where they had gone wrong or been coarsened by their experiences; in their hearts they remained perfectible.
*He remembered a day when another woman had lain naked like this, her legs parted in front of his eyes, and he had kissed her there, allowing his tongue to open her, as though this unlocking would provide a way into her deepest self. He remembered her gasp of surprise. He had obliterated himself in her; he had purged his longing and desire; he had lodged and invested himself in her body. In her trust and love for him, he had deposited the unresolved conflicts of his life. Perhaps his self was still in her—betrayed and unhealed. The body was only flesh, but she had taken hers away from him; and in her physical absence there was more than missing flesh: there was abandonment.
*He found something more than humility, a feeling of complete inconsequence. He felt no fear for his blood and muscle and bone, but the size of what had begun, the number of them now beneath the terrible crashing of the sky, was starting to pull at the moorings of his self-control. He found the word Jesus in his mouth. He said it again and again beneath his breath. It was part prayer, part profanity. Jesus, Jesus…
*I believe his death was God’s will. We would have kept him, but God knew best.
*Nothing was divine any more; everything was profane. Bloodied beyond caring, he watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground. Death had no meaning, but still the numbers of them went on and on and in that new infinity there was still horror.
*He stood on the river bed, trying to hold himself together. The noise pressed against the skull on both banks of the river. It would not diminish. He tried to calm his thoughts. Bryne was dead. It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.
*They were built to endure and to resist; they looked like passive creatures adapting to the hell of circumstances that oppressed them. They had locked up in their hearts the horror of what they had seen, and their jovial pride in their resilience was not convincing. They boasted in a mocking way of what they had seen and done; but in their sad faces wrapped in rags were the burdens of their unwanted knowledge. They did not feel hardened or strengthened by what they had seen; instead they felt impoverished and demeaned.
*I heard a voice. There was something beyond me. All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond…flesh, the moment of being alive…then nothing. I had searched in superstition but there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so tender. I regretted that I had paid It no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me…I saw that those simple things might be true… I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. But now I see that you can believe in something without it compromising the burden of your own existence.
*He’s not afraid of gas or shells or being buried. He’s frightened that it doesn’t make sense, that there is no purpose. He’s afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life.
*It seems as though the random violence of the world runs supreme; there is no point in trying to find an explanation.
*I have made this mistake in my life: not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear.
*The hedgerows were deep and ragged where he walked, covered with the lace of cow parsley. The air had a feeling of purity, as though it had never been breathed; it was just starting to be cool with the first breeze of evening. He stopped, and leaned against a gate. The quietness of the world about him seemed to stand outside time; there was no human voice to place it.
*Nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness; he clung to the wood, he wanted to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world’s creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it.
*She smiled at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humor. It was not just her expression but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene.
*Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time when on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.
*Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us.
*Of all the human beings that I have met, if I had to choose one to hold my hand before death, I would chose my son. He died though two years ago. I miss him. I loved him so much. My world was in his face. I wondered what my life had been about until he came along. It was nothing. I treasured each word he gave me. I made myself remember each thing he did. It was as though I knew it wouldn’t be for long. He was from another world, he was a blessing too great for me.
*At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road. He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides like those of a farm boy about to fight. But then his arms began to spread and open. Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother’s killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.
Below are my favorite quotes from the book BIRDSONG, written by Sebastian Faulks. It is a really wonderful book set in two different times--both the present and during the First World War. It is a story of faith, love, friendship, family...but ultimatley a story about if it's possible to find any meaning in our lives. Really beautifully written. I hope you enjoy the quotes.
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
*Throughout the building the floors made distinctive sounds beneath the press of feet, so that with its closed angles and echoing air, the house was always a place of unseen footsteps.
*The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings that normally we keep locked up in the heart. The great composers of the past were able to do this; to make the hairs of your head stand on end!
*Music is a democratic form of art. You don’t need money to buy it or education to study it. All you need is a pair of ears. The gift of God at birth.
*When any art is put to practical ends it loses its essential purity.
*But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it.
*This blood was supposed to be shameful, but she had never thought of it that way. She valued it because it spoke of some greater rhythm of life that would lead them away from the narrow boredom of childhood. Though she could never quite reconcile herself to the fact that this secret thing that promised new life and liberation should manifest itself in the color of pain.
*I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reasons and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.
*He watched as she spoke and wondered if he could have told that she was lying. Nothing in her manner was different. One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.
*The strain of his anguish lasted for another year, then went cold in him. He had no sensation of healing, no awareness that time had soothed him or lent him a longer perspective in which to view his passion. He experienced it only as a loss of memory. Her presence, which he had felt permanently in his mind, abruptly disappeared. He was left with the feeling of emotions undischarged, of a process uncompleted. The coldness enabled him to live more easily, to respond with some degree of conviction to other people. However, the sudden chill loss of her also made him uneasy. Something had been buried that was not yet dead.
*He saw half of his platoon die under the shells of the enemy’s opening bombardement. He grew used to the sight and smell of torn human flesh. He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.
*As the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. He could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war, to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.
*His innocence was not the same thing as ignorance; it was a powerful quality of goodness that was available to all people: it was perhaps what the prayer book called a means of grace, or a hope of glory.
*It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marveled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth. If this were true, then his fellow-human beings were not the rough, flawed creatures that most of them supposed. Their failings were not innate, but were the result of where they had gone wrong or been coarsened by their experiences; in their hearts they remained perfectible.
*He remembered a day when another woman had lain naked like this, her legs parted in front of his eyes, and he had kissed her there, allowing his tongue to open her, as though this unlocking would provide a way into her deepest self. He remembered her gasp of surprise. He had obliterated himself in her; he had purged his longing and desire; he had lodged and invested himself in her body. In her trust and love for him, he had deposited the unresolved conflicts of his life. Perhaps his self was still in her—betrayed and unhealed. The body was only flesh, but she had taken hers away from him; and in her physical absence there was more than missing flesh: there was abandonment.
*He found something more than humility, a feeling of complete inconsequence. He felt no fear for his blood and muscle and bone, but the size of what had begun, the number of them now beneath the terrible crashing of the sky, was starting to pull at the moorings of his self-control. He found the word Jesus in his mouth. He said it again and again beneath his breath. It was part prayer, part profanity. Jesus, Jesus…
*I believe his death was God’s will. We would have kept him, but God knew best.
*Nothing was divine any more; everything was profane. Bloodied beyond caring, he watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground. Death had no meaning, but still the numbers of them went on and on and in that new infinity there was still horror.
*He stood on the river bed, trying to hold himself together. The noise pressed against the skull on both banks of the river. It would not diminish. He tried to calm his thoughts. Bryne was dead. It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.
*They were built to endure and to resist; they looked like passive creatures adapting to the hell of circumstances that oppressed them. They had locked up in their hearts the horror of what they had seen, and their jovial pride in their resilience was not convincing. They boasted in a mocking way of what they had seen and done; but in their sad faces wrapped in rags were the burdens of their unwanted knowledge. They did not feel hardened or strengthened by what they had seen; instead they felt impoverished and demeaned.
*I heard a voice. There was something beyond me. All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond…flesh, the moment of being alive…then nothing. I had searched in superstition but there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so tender. I regretted that I had paid It no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me…I saw that those simple things might be true… I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. But now I see that you can believe in something without it compromising the burden of your own existence.
*He’s not afraid of gas or shells or being buried. He’s frightened that it doesn’t make sense, that there is no purpose. He’s afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life.
*It seems as though the random violence of the world runs supreme; there is no point in trying to find an explanation.
*I have made this mistake in my life: not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear.
*The hedgerows were deep and ragged where he walked, covered with the lace of cow parsley. The air had a feeling of purity, as though it had never been breathed; it was just starting to be cool with the first breeze of evening. He stopped, and leaned against a gate. The quietness of the world about him seemed to stand outside time; there was no human voice to place it.
*Nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness; he clung to the wood, he wanted to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world’s creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it.
*She smiled at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humor. It was not just her expression but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene.
*Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time when on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.
*Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us.
*Of all the human beings that I have met, if I had to choose one to hold my hand before death, I would chose my son. He died though two years ago. I miss him. I loved him so much. My world was in his face. I wondered what my life had been about until he came along. It was nothing. I treasured each word he gave me. I made myself remember each thing he did. It was as though I knew it wouldn’t be for long. He was from another world, he was a blessing too great for me.
*At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road. He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides like those of a farm boy about to fight. But then his arms began to spread and open. Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother’s killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Step 46: Entertaining Angels
Below are quotes from a really good book I just finished called, 'Entertaining Angels' by Marita Van Der Vyver.
She is a South African writer and has a very unique point of view. I loved the stories, the whole way she went about this book was very clever. I highly suggest reading this book (if you can find it?) it is short, and you can read it in a week or less. I really enjoyed it. Here are some standout quotes.
*Whatever else has changed on the continent of Africa, the deep-rooted belief in magic, both white and black, has not. Africans base their fear of witches on the argument that somebody—some person or spirit—has to be responsible for the inexplicable.
*Women actually don’t like blood. Men might be less taken with it too, if they had to wash it out of their underwear every month.
*I will carry on making a fool of myself until the day I die, and then probably fuck that up too. I mean, have you ever read about someone who was saved from suicide by a cockroach in the oven? It could only happen in reality.
*Sex could become predictable after seven years with the same man. But it was a comforting predictability, like a well-loved poem that you read over and over again until you knew it off by heart, until nothing but a punctuation mark could still surprise you.
*The worst of her sins was using words to seduce people. She was a woman who wanted to play with sentences like Salome played with her seven veils. She was a woman who wanted to write because she believed that the pen was mightier than the penis. She didn’t realize that this was the eighth deadly sin in a phallocentric world.
*I’ve never had a decent relationship with a man who didn’t have an overload of intellectual pretensions. Of course, this says a lot about my own intellectual pretensions. But the best one-night stand of my life was with a gym instructor who’d never read anything heavier than the back page of a Sunday paper. The problem with clever men is that they talk too much and don’t screw enough. The trouble with stupid men is usually the same. But every now and then you find one who knows how to shut up and use his body. Then you must hang on to what you’ve got—and bite your tongue every time he says something stupid. But that’s what you have to do with all men, anyways.
*“You hold me too tight at night,” she told him that first month. “I’m not used to it, I get too hot, it feels as though I’m suffocating.”
“You’ll just have to get used to it,” he laughed. “I can’t sleep empty-handed.”
“You never hold me at night,” she reproached him years later. “I may as well be sleeping alone.”
“I can’t hold someone at night,” he answered. “It makes me feel claustrophobic, I can’t breathe.”
*Home is where the heart is; and if you no longer have a heart, home is probably where your books and your music and your most precious memories are kept.
*Marriage is a great institution, as they say, but who wants to live in a fucking institution?
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin.
*Masturbation is still a taboo subject. Even among her friends who had no scruples about discussing sex couldn’t talk about the Lonely Deed. A woman needs a man because a vibrator can’t push a lawn-mower, ha ha ha. Was it because you did it on your own that there was so much shame attached to it? There weren’t many swear words left for the last decade of the twentieth century, but ‘alone’ had to be one of them.
*We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons. We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them.
*What’s left to make life worth while after four miscarriages? Cigarettes give you lung cancer, marijuana makes you stupid, coffee brings on heart attacks, chocolate makes you fat, sunshine causes skin cancer, alcohol hammers your liver, money spells sleepless nights, make-up enrages the feminists, pregnancy leaves you with stretch marks, politics lead to despair and sex gives you Aids. She really couldn’t blame her children for refusing to be born.
*So this is what had become of all the witches in the world—now that they flew in Boeings instead of on broomsticks. This was how they made a living these days. They hadn’t lost their mystic powers. They’d become psychotherapists.
*Be kind to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.
*It would be nice to find someone who doesn’t run away when the “for worse” in the “for better or for worse” happens.
*Look for a partner who’ll eat seven bags of salt with you. Strength has nothing to do with muscles.
*We don’t need an excuse. Romance is for people who feel guilty about sex.
*You’re the kind of person who has to feel guilty before you can enjoy anything.
*There’s a difference between a wish and a fantasy. It’s like, you know, whishes are impossible. I wish I was you, I wish I was a movie star, that sort of crap. But fantasy can come true. Fantasy should come true! It’s like, something you can do, something you want to do, but don’t have the guts for. It’s like fucking a complete stranger in a train going through a tunnel! The stuff movies are made of! You should act out your fantasies. Go on, be a devil.
*The devil laughs about the senselessness of everything and the angels laugh about how wonderful it all is.
*The old Goths believed that all important matters must be discussed twice. Once while you’re drunk to ensure passion and once when your sober to ensure discretion.
*I know I’ll fall in love again. I’ll carry on being idiotic until the day I die. If only it was possible to fall in love without getting hurt. I’ve had a gutful of getting hurt.
*We get braver as we get older. The older we get, the more courage we need just to get up in the morning. We don’t leap off cliffs as we used to as children, but we have to make an enormous leap of faith each day just to stay alive.
*If I could only trust my PC; I blinked yesterday and the machine swallowed three thousand words. If a machine gets very complicated, it becomes pointless to argue whether it’s got a mind of its own. It so obviously does, that you had better get on good terms with it and shut up about the metaphysics.
She is a South African writer and has a very unique point of view. I loved the stories, the whole way she went about this book was very clever. I highly suggest reading this book (if you can find it?) it is short, and you can read it in a week or less. I really enjoyed it. Here are some standout quotes.
*Whatever else has changed on the continent of Africa, the deep-rooted belief in magic, both white and black, has not. Africans base their fear of witches on the argument that somebody—some person or spirit—has to be responsible for the inexplicable.
*Women actually don’t like blood. Men might be less taken with it too, if they had to wash it out of their underwear every month.
*I will carry on making a fool of myself until the day I die, and then probably fuck that up too. I mean, have you ever read about someone who was saved from suicide by a cockroach in the oven? It could only happen in reality.
*Sex could become predictable after seven years with the same man. But it was a comforting predictability, like a well-loved poem that you read over and over again until you knew it off by heart, until nothing but a punctuation mark could still surprise you.
*The worst of her sins was using words to seduce people. She was a woman who wanted to play with sentences like Salome played with her seven veils. She was a woman who wanted to write because she believed that the pen was mightier than the penis. She didn’t realize that this was the eighth deadly sin in a phallocentric world.
*I’ve never had a decent relationship with a man who didn’t have an overload of intellectual pretensions. Of course, this says a lot about my own intellectual pretensions. But the best one-night stand of my life was with a gym instructor who’d never read anything heavier than the back page of a Sunday paper. The problem with clever men is that they talk too much and don’t screw enough. The trouble with stupid men is usually the same. But every now and then you find one who knows how to shut up and use his body. Then you must hang on to what you’ve got—and bite your tongue every time he says something stupid. But that’s what you have to do with all men, anyways.
*“You hold me too tight at night,” she told him that first month. “I’m not used to it, I get too hot, it feels as though I’m suffocating.”
“You’ll just have to get used to it,” he laughed. “I can’t sleep empty-handed.”
“You never hold me at night,” she reproached him years later. “I may as well be sleeping alone.”
“I can’t hold someone at night,” he answered. “It makes me feel claustrophobic, I can’t breathe.”
*Home is where the heart is; and if you no longer have a heart, home is probably where your books and your music and your most precious memories are kept.
*Marriage is a great institution, as they say, but who wants to live in a fucking institution?
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin.
*Masturbation is still a taboo subject. Even among her friends who had no scruples about discussing sex couldn’t talk about the Lonely Deed. A woman needs a man because a vibrator can’t push a lawn-mower, ha ha ha. Was it because you did it on your own that there was so much shame attached to it? There weren’t many swear words left for the last decade of the twentieth century, but ‘alone’ had to be one of them.
*We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons. We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them.
*What’s left to make life worth while after four miscarriages? Cigarettes give you lung cancer, marijuana makes you stupid, coffee brings on heart attacks, chocolate makes you fat, sunshine causes skin cancer, alcohol hammers your liver, money spells sleepless nights, make-up enrages the feminists, pregnancy leaves you with stretch marks, politics lead to despair and sex gives you Aids. She really couldn’t blame her children for refusing to be born.
*So this is what had become of all the witches in the world—now that they flew in Boeings instead of on broomsticks. This was how they made a living these days. They hadn’t lost their mystic powers. They’d become psychotherapists.
*Be kind to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.
*It would be nice to find someone who doesn’t run away when the “for worse” in the “for better or for worse” happens.
*Look for a partner who’ll eat seven bags of salt with you. Strength has nothing to do with muscles.
*We don’t need an excuse. Romance is for people who feel guilty about sex.
*You’re the kind of person who has to feel guilty before you can enjoy anything.
*There’s a difference between a wish and a fantasy. It’s like, you know, whishes are impossible. I wish I was you, I wish I was a movie star, that sort of crap. But fantasy can come true. Fantasy should come true! It’s like, something you can do, something you want to do, but don’t have the guts for. It’s like fucking a complete stranger in a train going through a tunnel! The stuff movies are made of! You should act out your fantasies. Go on, be a devil.
*The devil laughs about the senselessness of everything and the angels laugh about how wonderful it all is.
*The old Goths believed that all important matters must be discussed twice. Once while you’re drunk to ensure passion and once when your sober to ensure discretion.
*I know I’ll fall in love again. I’ll carry on being idiotic until the day I die. If only it was possible to fall in love without getting hurt. I’ve had a gutful of getting hurt.
*We get braver as we get older. The older we get, the more courage we need just to get up in the morning. We don’t leap off cliffs as we used to as children, but we have to make an enormous leap of faith each day just to stay alive.
*If I could only trust my PC; I blinked yesterday and the machine swallowed three thousand words. If a machine gets very complicated, it becomes pointless to argue whether it’s got a mind of its own. It so obviously does, that you had better get on good terms with it and shut up about the metaphysics.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Step 45: NYC last days
NYC--final two days.
Saturday morning we woke up at a reasonable time and started getting ready for what would be a very adventurous day. With a recommendation from my friend Yuri to eat at a restaurant called ‘Café Habana’ we discovered when researching the address that today they were hosting a block party at their Brooklyn location. The crazy part was that one of the bands playing Yuri had met at Bonaroo (they were from Sierra Leone) and attested to their talent. From the pics it looked like it was going to be a sweet party so we decided to make a day of it. Along with that we would be joining Lauren’s cousin in Brooklyn for more fun later in the day.
Luckily it was a beautiful day. Dressed for the occasion we hoped on the 1 and rode it all the way to Brooklyn (which from Riverdale is a long ride!) Once off we set out to find the place and it didn’t take long before we heard the music. You know when you have expectations of something to be awesome and it turns out to be pretty lame how disappointing it can be? Well, this was not one of those times. The ‘Café Habana’ block party turned out to be unbelievable! To start their was a stage that throughout the afternoon hosted a wide range of talent that blew the diverse and jamming crowd away!
http://cafehabana.com/
People were dancing and having a blast; highlights were this crazy dance group from Canada, a Bbob group of highschool boys from Brooklyn who were insanely good, and then of course the talent of the group from Sierra Leone—“Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew.” All of it was amazing. http://planetbajah.com/
But not only was the music good, there was a sort of craft market being held which just made the whole thing even more perfect. Lauren and I had a blast dancing and just people watching. Brooklyn is definitely the place to be to see some amazing people.
At around 6pm we started making our way towards the bridge where we were meeting her cousin for a Geniis book of world records attempt. Her cousin was a restaurant owner/ chef, and this particular attempt was to break the record for biggest Pot Luck Dinner. Ridiculous sounding? Yes I know. But it turned out to be awesome. It was located in this old warehouse underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and was pretty much the most amazing location possible for a Pot Luck.
We found her cousin and his girlfriend and he handed over to us the dishes that we were bringing as our own to the event. First of all we had to sign in and get our photo taken with our dish, then we went in. It was insanely cool. I tried to ward off all fears of food poisoning and decided to just dive in and enjoy myself. The event was paired alongside some photography school in NYC showcasing it’s work which was pretty awesome. We spent the night watching slideshows of people’s amazing work under the stars. We didn’t break the record, but it didn’t matter; it was an unbelievable day.
When I woke up on Sunday I went out for a run in the beautiful neighborhoods around Lauren’s house. When I got back Lauren said she wasn’t feeling very well but agreed to drop me off at the train station.
I started the day by taking the 1 to the last Manhattan stop and walked a ways on the Brooklyn Bridge. After that I headed to Chelsea and Greenwich and enjoyed the markets there, people watching, and window shopping.
I walked all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to my friend Lisa and Kyle’s apartment on West 85th street. Despite that only being about 8 miles, it took me the entire day and I arrived at their apartment around 6pm.
We had some food and chats and dancing. And I said goodbye to them around 8:30 with hopes of seeing them in LA next spring. I got back to Lauren’s around 9 and went to bed early. Tomorrow I would be flying back to Aspen.
 |
| In Brooklyn...love this picture! |
Saturday morning we woke up at a reasonable time and started getting ready for what would be a very adventurous day. With a recommendation from my friend Yuri to eat at a restaurant called ‘Café Habana’ we discovered when researching the address that today they were hosting a block party at their Brooklyn location. The crazy part was that one of the bands playing Yuri had met at Bonaroo (they were from Sierra Leone) and attested to their talent. From the pics it looked like it was going to be a sweet party so we decided to make a day of it. Along with that we would be joining Lauren’s cousin in Brooklyn for more fun later in the day.
 |
| Heading into Cafe Habana (good thing we got there early, later in the day there was a huge line to get in) |
Luckily it was a beautiful day. Dressed for the occasion we hoped on the 1 and rode it all the way to Brooklyn (which from Riverdale is a long ride!) Once off we set out to find the place and it didn’t take long before we heard the music. You know when you have expectations of something to be awesome and it turns out to be pretty lame how disappointing it can be? Well, this was not one of those times. The ‘Café Habana’ block party turned out to be unbelievable! To start their was a stage that throughout the afternoon hosted a wide range of talent that blew the diverse and jamming crowd away!
http://cafehabana.com/
 |
| The stage, a Cuban group had the whole crowd dancing! |
People were dancing and having a blast; highlights were this crazy dance group from Canada, a Bbob group of highschool boys from Brooklyn who were insanely good, and then of course the talent of the group from Sierra Leone—“Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew.” All of it was amazing. http://planetbajah.com/
 |
| dance crew from Canada |
 |
| Local high school kids who were amazing!! |
 |
| Singing about war in their home country...unbelievable 'Bajah+ The dry eye crew' |
But not only was the music good, there was a sort of craft market being held which just made the whole thing even more perfect. Lauren and I had a blast dancing and just people watching. Brooklyn is definitely the place to be to see some amazing people.
 |
| Captured in Dance |
 |
| Lauren and I with our new necklaces from the craft market |
At around 6pm we started making our way towards the bridge where we were meeting her cousin for a Geniis book of world records attempt. Her cousin was a restaurant owner/ chef, and this particular attempt was to break the record for biggest Pot Luck Dinner. Ridiculous sounding? Yes I know. But it turned out to be awesome. It was located in this old warehouse underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and was pretty much the most amazing location possible for a Pot Luck.
 |
| Lauren's cousin with his dish at the Pot Luck |
We found her cousin and his girlfriend and he handed over to us the dishes that we were bringing as our own to the event. First of all we had to sign in and get our photo taken with our dish, then we went in. It was insanely cool. I tried to ward off all fears of food poisoning and decided to just dive in and enjoy myself. The event was paired alongside some photography school in NYC showcasing it’s work which was pretty awesome. We spent the night watching slideshows of people’s amazing work under the stars. We didn’t break the record, but it didn’t matter; it was an unbelievable day.
When I woke up on Sunday I went out for a run in the beautiful neighborhoods around Lauren’s house. When I got back Lauren said she wasn’t feeling very well but agreed to drop me off at the train station.
 |
| Walking the Brooklyn Bridge on a beautiful Sunday is insanity! |
I started the day by taking the 1 to the last Manhattan stop and walked a ways on the Brooklyn Bridge. After that I headed to Chelsea and Greenwich and enjoyed the markets there, people watching, and window shopping.
 |
| The sights of NYC on a beautiful Sunday afternoon |
I walked all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to my friend Lisa and Kyle’s apartment on West 85th street. Despite that only being about 8 miles, it took me the entire day and I arrived at their apartment around 6pm.
 |
| My favorites!! Kyle, Sabrina, Lisa and I having some fun. |
We had some food and chats and dancing. And I said goodbye to them around 8:30 with hopes of seeing them in LA next spring. I got back to Lauren’s around 9 and went to bed early. Tomorrow I would be flying back to Aspen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Step 44: Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior
Recently finished the book: Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior.
by: Dan Millman.
Honestly I'm not so sure I liked the entire book, didn't appreciate his holier-than-thou style of writing and it just seemed so manipulated and crafted. I also think he plagiarized in many areas. In fact, he quoted directly from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and yet never gave one mention to Whitman. I also think much of the wisdom in the book comes directly from Mother Teresa quotes. Plagiarized or original there were some jewels within the book. And those jewels are the quotes that follow. Hope you enjoy them.
*Until I awoke, I hadn’t realized that I’d been asleep. I wondered if enlightenment was like that.
*God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
*I grew thirsty and my fear intensified. It wasn’t the sudden fear of a gun in my ribs—just a quiet kind of knowingness, a stark inevitability that unless someone rescued me soon, I would die.
*To really help people, you first need to understand them—but first understand yourself, prepare yourself; develop the clarity, the courage, the sensitivity to exert the right leverage, in the right place, at the right time. Then your actions will have power and you will notice how just a little leverage can be very effective.
*Abe Lincoln once said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first five hours sharpening the axe. You have a great task ahead, but you are not yet sharpened. It will take time and require great energy.
*The road ahead might be difficult—even dangerous—but at least it was open.
*Ignorance, as well as wisdom, is handed down from one generation to the next like a precious heir loom.
*Just handle what’s in front of you now, and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of your life wondering which foot you’ll use to step off the curb when you’re still only halfway to the corner. Plans are useful, but don’t get attached to them; life has too many surprises. Preparation, on the other hand, has value, even if the future you planned never comes.
*All paths, all activities—professions, sports, arts, crafts—serve as a means of internal development, merely a boat to get across the river. Once you get across, you no longer need the boat.
*It’s not the way to the peaceful warrior; it’s the way of the peaceful warrior. The journey itself creates the warrior.
*Faith has little to do with belief. Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not.
*Our lives are like a flower. We appear so fragile, and yet, when we meet obstacles, we push through them, always growing toward the Light.
*Acting without understanding may create even more problems. Sometimes you need to simply relax into life, and to trust. No matter how pressing life may feel at times there’s no need to rush, and nowhere to rush to. You have plenty of time to accomplish what you wish in this life or the next.
*In the darkest, most chaotic times—when things fall apart—such times often mark quickening as your mind readies itself to make a giant leap. When you feel like you’re going nowhere, stagnating, even slipping backwards—your soul is only backing up to get a running start.
*Our prayers are always answered. But sometimes God says no.
Why would God say no?
Why does a loving parent say no? Sometimes children’s wants run counter to their needs. People turn to God when their foundations are shaking, only to discover it is God who’s shaking them. The conscious mind cannot always foresee what is for the highest good.
*Discomfort is one way our Basic Self gets our attention. Although pain may serve as a wake up call, it’s usually the Basic Self’s second-to-last resort. It only sends harsh messages when the gentler ones—your intuitions and dreams—have been ignored.
*Unless the roots of a tree are deep, it can’t blossom; unless the tower has a strong foundation, it will crumble. You’ve got to clean up the basement before you move into the penthouse.
*Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
*Every human capacity is amplified by energy. The mind becomes brighter, healing accelerates, strength increases, imagination intensifies, emotional power and charisma expand. So energy can be a blessing. But energy must flow somewhere. Where energy meets obstructions, it burns—and if energy builds up beyond what a given individual can tolerate, it demands release. Anger grows into rage, sorrow turns to despair, concern becomes obsession, and physical aches become agony. So energy can also be a curse. Like a river, it can bring life, but untamed it can unleash a raging flood of destruction.
*The body will do whatever it has to in order to bleed off excess energy. If it isn’t spent consciously, in creative endeavors and physical activity, the urge for release will take the form of angry outbursts, or cruelty, or nightmares, or crime, or illness, or abuse to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, food, or sex. Blocked energy—and the desire to feel release—is the sources of all addictions. Don’t try to manage the addictions; instead, clear the obstructions.
*Those who seek to escape the world through spiritual experiences are barking up the wrong tree, because their search only intensifies the sense of dilemma that motivated the search in the first place. The desire to rise above the boredom, fleshiness, and morality of this world is natural and understandable. But those who practice self-involved techniques to distract themselves from the dilemmas of daily life are going to ascend the ladder only to find out it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Daily life is your training ground. Spirit gives you everything you need, here and now. You evolve not by seeking to go elsewhere, but by paying attention to, and embracing, what’s right in front of you. Only then can you take the next step.
*Courage is like a muscle; it gets stronger with practice. People don’t test their spirit until they’re faced with adversity.
*My soul is one of those who came in the final rescue mission. There are many like me who feel a call to serve; who know deep inside that they are here to do something, but cannot quite articulate what that something may be. All have in common a certain restlessness—a deep sense of being somehow different, of being oddballs, visitors here, never quite fitting in. We feel at times a longing to ‘go home’ but we’re not exactly sure where that is. We often have giving, but rather insecure natures. But we are not here to ‘fit in,’ as much as we might like to. We are here to teach, to lead, and to heal.
*Life is hard either way, whether you space out and give up, or whether you go for it.
*If you want peace of mind, I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
Relax and stop trying to figure everything out. You don’t have to know everything about the ocean to swim in it.
*Seems like sometimes life is peaceful—like now. Other times there’s a storm—can’t control that storm—but you can trim the sail, tie things down, get through that storm and you’re a lot stronger.
*Now I understood the Taoist saying “He who says does not know; he who knows does not say”—not because the wise don’t speak, but because It cannot be spoken. Words fall as short of It as a rock thrown at the stars.
*Outer travel at best only reflects the inner journey, and at worst substitutes for it. The world you perceive only provides symbols for what you seek. The sacred journey is inside you; before you can find what you’re looking for in the world, you have to find it within. Otherwise, a master may greet you, but you’ll walk right past without hearing.
*There is no way to peace; Peace is the Way. There is no way to happiness; Happiness is the Way. There is no way to love. Love is the Way.
*I can summarize all I’ve learned in my life with six words: try to be…a little kinder.
*The quality of our lives is shaped by what we do, moment to moment—by each choice we make and each action we take. Will we choose the main highways or the back roads of life? Will we travel the mountain paths or seek the forest wilderness? Will we contract or expand, struggle with or embrace life unfolding? Each of us must answer such questions for ourselves and make our own choices on this sacred journey, as the winding path appears beneath our feet.
by: Dan Millman.
Honestly I'm not so sure I liked the entire book, didn't appreciate his holier-than-thou style of writing and it just seemed so manipulated and crafted. I also think he plagiarized in many areas. In fact, he quoted directly from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and yet never gave one mention to Whitman. I also think much of the wisdom in the book comes directly from Mother Teresa quotes. Plagiarized or original there were some jewels within the book. And those jewels are the quotes that follow. Hope you enjoy them.
*Until I awoke, I hadn’t realized that I’d been asleep. I wondered if enlightenment was like that.
*God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
*I grew thirsty and my fear intensified. It wasn’t the sudden fear of a gun in my ribs—just a quiet kind of knowingness, a stark inevitability that unless someone rescued me soon, I would die.
*To really help people, you first need to understand them—but first understand yourself, prepare yourself; develop the clarity, the courage, the sensitivity to exert the right leverage, in the right place, at the right time. Then your actions will have power and you will notice how just a little leverage can be very effective.
*Abe Lincoln once said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first five hours sharpening the axe. You have a great task ahead, but you are not yet sharpened. It will take time and require great energy.
*The road ahead might be difficult—even dangerous—but at least it was open.
*Ignorance, as well as wisdom, is handed down from one generation to the next like a precious heir loom.
*Just handle what’s in front of you now, and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of your life wondering which foot you’ll use to step off the curb when you’re still only halfway to the corner. Plans are useful, but don’t get attached to them; life has too many surprises. Preparation, on the other hand, has value, even if the future you planned never comes.
*All paths, all activities—professions, sports, arts, crafts—serve as a means of internal development, merely a boat to get across the river. Once you get across, you no longer need the boat.
*It’s not the way to the peaceful warrior; it’s the way of the peaceful warrior. The journey itself creates the warrior.
*Faith has little to do with belief. Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not.
*Our lives are like a flower. We appear so fragile, and yet, when we meet obstacles, we push through them, always growing toward the Light.
*Acting without understanding may create even more problems. Sometimes you need to simply relax into life, and to trust. No matter how pressing life may feel at times there’s no need to rush, and nowhere to rush to. You have plenty of time to accomplish what you wish in this life or the next.
*In the darkest, most chaotic times—when things fall apart—such times often mark quickening as your mind readies itself to make a giant leap. When you feel like you’re going nowhere, stagnating, even slipping backwards—your soul is only backing up to get a running start.
*Our prayers are always answered. But sometimes God says no.
Why would God say no?
Why does a loving parent say no? Sometimes children’s wants run counter to their needs. People turn to God when their foundations are shaking, only to discover it is God who’s shaking them. The conscious mind cannot always foresee what is for the highest good.
*Discomfort is one way our Basic Self gets our attention. Although pain may serve as a wake up call, it’s usually the Basic Self’s second-to-last resort. It only sends harsh messages when the gentler ones—your intuitions and dreams—have been ignored.
*Unless the roots of a tree are deep, it can’t blossom; unless the tower has a strong foundation, it will crumble. You’ve got to clean up the basement before you move into the penthouse.
*Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
*Every human capacity is amplified by energy. The mind becomes brighter, healing accelerates, strength increases, imagination intensifies, emotional power and charisma expand. So energy can be a blessing. But energy must flow somewhere. Where energy meets obstructions, it burns—and if energy builds up beyond what a given individual can tolerate, it demands release. Anger grows into rage, sorrow turns to despair, concern becomes obsession, and physical aches become agony. So energy can also be a curse. Like a river, it can bring life, but untamed it can unleash a raging flood of destruction.
*The body will do whatever it has to in order to bleed off excess energy. If it isn’t spent consciously, in creative endeavors and physical activity, the urge for release will take the form of angry outbursts, or cruelty, or nightmares, or crime, or illness, or abuse to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, food, or sex. Blocked energy—and the desire to feel release—is the sources of all addictions. Don’t try to manage the addictions; instead, clear the obstructions.
*Those who seek to escape the world through spiritual experiences are barking up the wrong tree, because their search only intensifies the sense of dilemma that motivated the search in the first place. The desire to rise above the boredom, fleshiness, and morality of this world is natural and understandable. But those who practice self-involved techniques to distract themselves from the dilemmas of daily life are going to ascend the ladder only to find out it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Daily life is your training ground. Spirit gives you everything you need, here and now. You evolve not by seeking to go elsewhere, but by paying attention to, and embracing, what’s right in front of you. Only then can you take the next step.
*Courage is like a muscle; it gets stronger with practice. People don’t test their spirit until they’re faced with adversity.
*My soul is one of those who came in the final rescue mission. There are many like me who feel a call to serve; who know deep inside that they are here to do something, but cannot quite articulate what that something may be. All have in common a certain restlessness—a deep sense of being somehow different, of being oddballs, visitors here, never quite fitting in. We feel at times a longing to ‘go home’ but we’re not exactly sure where that is. We often have giving, but rather insecure natures. But we are not here to ‘fit in,’ as much as we might like to. We are here to teach, to lead, and to heal.
*Life is hard either way, whether you space out and give up, or whether you go for it.
*If you want peace of mind, I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
Relax and stop trying to figure everything out. You don’t have to know everything about the ocean to swim in it.
*Seems like sometimes life is peaceful—like now. Other times there’s a storm—can’t control that storm—but you can trim the sail, tie things down, get through that storm and you’re a lot stronger.
*Now I understood the Taoist saying “He who says does not know; he who knows does not say”—not because the wise don’t speak, but because It cannot be spoken. Words fall as short of It as a rock thrown at the stars.
*Outer travel at best only reflects the inner journey, and at worst substitutes for it. The world you perceive only provides symbols for what you seek. The sacred journey is inside you; before you can find what you’re looking for in the world, you have to find it within. Otherwise, a master may greet you, but you’ll walk right past without hearing.
*There is no way to peace; Peace is the Way. There is no way to happiness; Happiness is the Way. There is no way to love. Love is the Way.
*I can summarize all I’ve learned in my life with six words: try to be…a little kinder.
*The quality of our lives is shaped by what we do, moment to moment—by each choice we make and each action we take. Will we choose the main highways or the back roads of life? Will we travel the mountain paths or seek the forest wilderness? Will we contract or expand, struggle with or embrace life unfolding? Each of us must answer such questions for ourselves and make our own choices on this sacred journey, as the winding path appears beneath our feet.
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