BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


G asks a Question: Have we been held together by the knowledge that, essentially, we share the same concerns? We know each other to the extent we know ourselves??? If so, does this offer the possibility that: Everybody else shares those same concerns? Is EVERYBODY, essentially, the same?

Something happened to a draft I wrote a few hours ago. So, maybe you received it, or maybe we will benefit by the simmering of my unconscious thought process since I wrote that draft. If you’ve already read something like this,  then we know that there is some Truth in what I have to say--Truth, at least, for myself, if not for each of us. 

We've always been concerned with Truth, perhaps that concern began when first we discovered that some things were not True, and even more important, that it is possible to deceive others. I know that I have always been an admirer of G's attention to the True, and his many journeys to find it, some far away and some quite close. S. has a similar need, grown out of the political lies that he had discerned early in his life. Those lies became, for him, painful, and political Truth became a panacea. Understanding his strength and honest directness makes it easy to be with him.

But, of course, I am off course. The question on the table is:  what has held us together, and a part b, does that mean that everybody is the same as us...

Surely you jest, G, when you ask if everyone is the same as us. No, Virginia, we are part of a unique subset of the Human Race. So much for part b.

What are we? Products of Secular Jewish Upper-Middle-Class households, with aspirations to assimilate -- those aspirations stronger with some of our parents than others. Each household was of a liberal bent, and maintained the usual Jewish respect for knowledge, books, and education.  We were sent to a fine school that reinforced those values. There we met and eyed each other from afar, at first.

 Held us together?  Time, itself, binds tightly--but that's only one of the knots. There are others. There is the Truth of our Mutual Nakedness--we've each known each other in the Before, and so roles and masks, blessedly, don't work with us.  We know each other. Truth again.  And don’t you think that the Truth of Us is the tightest of all the knots?  

Generally we share a certain degree of intelligence--within a range--S. being a outlier, perhaps, but the rest of us are of roughly equal intelligence -- I could rank us--but I don't like to put a certain person on the bottom. So we are in a common range...I have always held that nearly equivalent intelligence drew married people together, as much as pheromones, or common interests like tennis or bridge. Likewise with friends.

Before now only S. reinvented himself and led a life different from that of all that preceded him. But when we came together at fifty, the essential was still there, we recognized him for what he was, just a boy like us.  And he knew us.

Of course, there is the element “G..”  G. is been the a magnet and has always kept us together. I fret that his relocation to the West will damage what we have. Perhaps allow it to slip apart.  We knew each others’ parents -- an important element; we know our histories, more than our second and third wives, I think. We knew each others' wives in series. More ties that bind.

Not one of us had natural brothers. Mine was much older and had been in South Pacific during the war. A, S, D, H, and M had none. G had two brothers but they were estranged . So more than comradeship there was a brotherhood of necessity, that later involved into this brother-ship, albeit a dwindling as time has stolen A, S, D, & H.  

Our familiarity with each other is without parallel. Notice that familiarity has the same root as family. We’ve always treated each other as equals. We’ve accepted each of us for what we are, have never asked for change, and have been loyal that no-holds-barred, stripped-of-all-pretension, naked man that we’ve known for over fifty years.

I am waiting to read the other replies – and G,  you aren’t excused from the exercise. Asking  the Q doesn’t exempt you from an A.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Last night I was happy to share a trencher of mutton-chops and a flagon of ale with a friend of many years who once worked at the buttery.  We celebrated our past marriages, and future funerals, and finally uncorked a superb Tokay, drawn from my cellar having been stocked in those old days when money flowed like water and everyone thought that they would be afloat forever.

A lie flies around the world before the Truth has a chance to put  its pants on.  Winston Churchill

Would you rather find solutions or play the blame game? mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

In Staring at the Sun,  Yalom reminds us of Schopenhauer's dictum that it is only what a man is that counts, neither wealth, nor status, nor good reputation makes us happy.

 

Is Yalom saying that happiness is, in itself, the ultimate goal, the object of life?  The idea seems like what you aim for--a shedding of all learned value in order to strip down to a reality, an essential you. Something that you have been seeking for some time, long before you left for California.

 

We know that material possessions, though attracting, never satisfy. We know early on that things anchor us and never free us.

 

What others think of us is transient, I think. Though it was important to my father that he go to his grave with his name intact;  I myself can see that,  like possessions, reputation is mutable and  tarnishes and leaves us with a murky reflection, sometimes so indistinct that we, ourselves, can not see or know it.

 

Yalom says that we need a clear conscience, in order to know ourselves, And that in the end it is our interpretation of experience that brings happiness--not the experiences themselves.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody."


- Chapter 10, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

man·sue·tude

/ˈmænswɪˌtud, -ˌtyud/ Show Spelled[man-swi-tood, -tyood] 

–noun

mildness; gentleness: the mansuetude of Christian love. 
mansuetude \MAN-swi-tood\, noun:
Mildness; gentleness.

For indeed, it is possible to attain a state of divine mansuetude that nothing dismays and nothing surprises, just as one in love might, after many years, arrive at a sublime tranquillity of the sentiments, sure of their force and durability, through constant experience of their pleasures and pains.
-- Honoré de Balzac, Jordan Stump, Adam Gopnik, The Wrong Side of Paris

You are safe, dear old man, you are safe, temporarily, in the mansuetude of our care, Julie said.
-- Donald Barthelme, Donald Antrim, The dead father

Mansuetude derives from the Latin mansuescere, literally "to tame by the hand."

---

Origin:
1350–1400;  ME < L mānsuētūdō  tameness, mildness, equiv. to mānsuē-,  base of mānsuēscere  to become tame, mild ( man ( us ) hand + suēscere  to become accustomed) + -tūdō -tude

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

For true wisdom to emerge, there can be no distractions. Any preoccupations of the world, no matter how small or inconsequential they may seem, will be heard as shouts that drown out the still voice within. It is not enough to rid yourself of inner turmoil, though that is a step in the right direction. The next step is to eliminate outer turmoil, through isolation and withdrawal from the world. This is the path of the man who slips into darkness in order to have the light revealed to him when he is ready.  

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I spent my youth with men who thought that Omar Khayyám might have been a curry. One of them was a very charming man, named Phillip Legacy; when he wore a suit I understood why God created suits for men. There was a case of missing funds from a church hospital fund. And Phillip was wearing a new suit.  I have mistrusted charming men ever since.


He married a woman who had become pregnant with his child. He told her that abortions were easy to obtain--long before they were legal--but she refused. It was their child she cried, and abortion would be out of the question. Well, he said, you'll have to learn to like me.  She stood at the altar, and realized that she was participating in a sham. 

Helpless, she gave herself up to him, 

She tried but quickly became bored with him. She was an explorer, and had to meet the people, all of them, whether bejeweled or barefoot she needed to be engaged. 

Golf and cocktail parties were enough for him.   

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Images of the North

 Images of the North; sacred wind, spirit untamed,
 huge trees, grasping arms, holding you in tight embrace.
 You can't let go.
 You can't escape the power of their aloneness.
 They have lost their beauty long ago,
 You can't hide the overwhelming pressure in your head.
 Only a harsh naked wisdom left.
 The Ache.
 You could paddle thru eternity and that would never change.
  Only
  a silent surging poem from one tongue to another.

B. Pessin.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com



Magic Flute 

Tamino;

"Oh, eternal night, when shalt thou pass?
When shall the light find my eyes."

Chorus:

"Soon, soon, youth..."
____________________________________________________________--
Is this how it is?
Is this how it must be?
   mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

People accept change only when they are faced with necessity, and  recognize necessity only when a crisis is upon them.

- Jean Monnet

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

After many winters the moss finds the sawdust crushed bark chips and says "old friend,old friend. "

W.S.Merwin

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

 

It’s easy to confuse the act of living

With the passing of time.  We

Look back and marvel that something

That occurred forty years ago

Seems so fresh in our minds,

“Like yesterday.”

Time and Life may have been

Magazines,

But Time and Life aren’t the same.

Eternity is constricted by a single life time.

Time is confined to a single life. 

mek


Three years ago I wrote a line and St Eve answered:  

There comes a time when time passing becomes time remaining."

I had no idea what I said. Here's St Eve's first reply.


This is a complicated statement and requires some thought to unravel. The passage of time is a perception that depends upon cause and effect occurrence in the physical world and the apprehension of those causes followed by their associated effects. The batter hits the pitched ball. Then there is the memory of those relations and their order of occurrence. Sight of the ball and sound of the bat hitting the ball this becomes the sensed passage of time. So when the time remaining to our lives becomes the sensed moment of times' passage; it is the last moment-end time. Now some might accuse me of being philosophically narrow and bending the meaning to my own ends but if you think about what time perception is really all about then my conclusion seems unavoidable. If this is not clear I will gladly restate it.
Ss


Gross asked for a restatement. So here's St Eve's second reply or re-statement.


Inherent within the above statement, there is a structure to time. There is past, present and future time.

Time coming is its emergence out of the future to become the present moment. No matter how brief that moment is, it lapses and becomes the next moment. As it passes it becomes past time. Historical time and future time are infinites with present time sandwiched in between. Time passing from future to present to past is the accepted linear configuration in western society.

In the second part of the statement, “time remaining” has to be assumed to be a personal subset of future moments that constitutes the finite period of the person’s life that they have left to live.

So when that packet of future time, the remainder of one’s life’s moments becomes passing time, and entering the past then one's life is over the next instant. When the time remaining to one's life passes it is all over.

To restate the notions related to the perception of time embedded in the above statement is less . This perception is complex and comes from our senses which record in memory happenings sequentially with antecedent and subsequent events. They may be cause and effect but as Katz has pointed out may just be sequential.

The order of occurrence and their recording on RNA and reading that order may be how we know that events are past time and we are able to place them in their temporal order by their physical placement in the RNA molecule.

There are many exceptions to time perception which are intriguing.
Time passing fast, passing slowly: time standing still, athletes in “the zone “with altered time perception and increased performance abilities.

When my understanding improves with research I will pass it on.
ss

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Subject: Bob Hood -- PeteSeeger-- Camp Woodlands -- Phoenicia

Something reminded me of Bob Hood and Camp Woodland, in Phoenicia, where he was a counselor and was pointed in the right direction, I mean the left direction, early in the fifties.  (Many 1199 people sent their children to Woodlands, and Bob met Jo Davis, Leon's daughter there.)

Obviously, some one, or Bob himself, was already pointed left, otherwise he would not have found his way to Phoenicia, and one of the questions that I never asked him was how he wandered over to the left. He did tell me that his parents were non-political; and that there was a rupture in their relationship, in retrospect I  imagine that it might have been because of his homosexuality.   Perhaps it was his sexuality that made him open to 'different' thought; or maybe it was a teacher who had not been been prized out of the school system by the McCarthyites in Louisville. Who knows? 

 Anyway, having met Pete Seeger at Woodland, he brought  Seeger to Ohio Wesleyan, and I think that Seeger performed at an official OWU venue; but some of my friends remember that he (Seeger) was barred from the campus, and that instead he performed at an inter-racial Fraternity (Beta Sigma Tau) that Bob presided over. Maybe both. I don't recall  Seeger being barred. (And Bob had a lot of clout with the OWU administration, so it's hard to believe that he was barred.)

Bob was mentored by, and, in a sense,  sponsored by the President of Ohio Wesleyan, Republican Arthur Flemming, who had been or became  a Cabinet Officer under Eisenhower. ( I went out with Flemming's daughter, Susan, a few times but she quickly figured me out and I was dropped.) After he was graduated, Bob received a Rhodes Scholarship, and studied at Oxford where he received his D.Phil. He lived with Karl Barth in Switzerland for about a year, and, Bob was, as you probably know, a liberation theologian.

Later he taught in Germany for several years, and once brought a gaggle of German school boys to Brooklyn, so that they could see that even in America there were poor people. There were about 30 blond, blue-eyed school-children dressed  in shorts, knee socks, and  short-sleeved white shirts,  each wearing a  neckerchief of Black-Red-and Gold, the colors of the West-German Flag, and Bob, the baritoned, extremely black giant, wore lederhosen.  He brought them to Katz Drug Store in Puerto Rican  Williamsburg and we walked over to the Bushwick Projects, where the children would not believe that this was where the poor people lived because the buildings'  parking lots were filled with a couple hundred cars.

Then Bob decided that we should go to the Hassidic part of Williamsburg, near the Williamsburg Bridge.  Bob was very intelligent, but had no sense of his effect of those around him. I looked at the 30 school boys, chattering in German, wearing their shorts, knee socks, white shirts and  German Flag Neckerchiefs, and Bob in his lederhosen, and decided that it would be better to forego that visit, and instead to treat the boys to paraguas, on Graham Avenue. ----- Cherry was the most popular flavor.

A comment from a friend:



 

Buster:  

you have it partially correct. Actually, if you remember, I was the Social Chairman of OWU, at the time, and it was me who booked Pete Seeger.  The controversey started when the Columbus Dispatch wrote an Op/Ed villifying Arthur Flemming for allowing a "Commie" on campus, and the pressure that the administration received resulted in them cancelling the Seeger appearance. In those days there were no cell phones and as he was scheduled, and paid for, Pete made his way to the campus and I had to inform his agent that he would not be allowed on stage. 

He arrived in Delaware after, Lord knows, how many hours/days on the road and was dead tired and asked where he could rest. We suggested he take a nap at the Beta Sig house, I believe it was Skip Landt's bed, and he did that and then volunteered to just hang out when he woke up. We fed him and we called everyone we could to let them know that we had our own private Pete Seeger concert at the frat house. 

As both Skip and I remember, he entertained us for about 4 hours with songs, stories and of course some lefty philosophies, but at Beta Sig he was "preaching to the choir".

It was a nost memorable evening and one I share with people who are familiar with Pete Seeger.

Lew

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them ev'ry one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn? Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the young girls gone?
They've taken husbands, every one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the young men gone?
They're all in uniform.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
They've gone to graveyards, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
They're covered with flowers, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls picked them, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

And now, for Bob and you only:

Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
Mädchen pflückten sie geschwind.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn? Sag mir, wo die Mädchen sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag mir, wo die Mädchen sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag mir, wo die Mädchen sind,
Männer nahmen sie geschwind.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn?
Sag mir, wo die Männer sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag mir, wo die Männer sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag mir, wo die Männer sind,
zogen fort, der Krieg beginnt.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn?
Sag, wo die Soldaten sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag, wo die Soldaten sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag, wo die Soldaten sind,
über Gräbern weht der Wind.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn?
Sag mir, wo die Gräber sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag mir, wo die Gräber sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag mir, wo die Gräber sind,
Blumen wehn im Sommerwind.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn?
Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
wo sind sie geblieben?
Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
was ist geschehn?
Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind,
Mädchen pflückten sie geschwind.
Wann wird man je verstehn,
wann wird man je verstehn?

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

There are warnings that good art is
Always universal.

It takes an effort to tear away
From the personal.

To rise above self-absorption
Seeking some other inspiration.

The muse seems always hidden,
and fleeting words are quickly forgotten.

And always,
 There is too much self in my writing..


mek Oct 19,2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Max, Mike, Maria, Aaron

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;/ Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"/Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
-- Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

For a man in whom love had always inspired delay, that nepenthe could not inspire decision.
-- Umberto Eco, William Weaver, The Island of the Day Before

[ni-pen-thee]

–noun

1.

a drug or drink, or the plant yielding it, mentioned by ancient writers as having the power to bring forgetfulness of sorrow or trouble.

2.

anything inducing a pleasurable sensation of forgetfulness, esp. of sorrow or trouble.

Origin:
1590–1600;  < L nēpenthes  < Gk nēpenthés  herb for soothing, n. use of neut. of nēpenthḗs  sorrowless, equiv. to nē-  not + pénth ( os ) sorrow + -ēs  adj. suffix

—Related forms

ne·pen·the·an, adjective

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Absolutely too good to be true--but it is:

Duke Edward Kennedy Ellington's  first piano teacher was a woman named Marietta Clinkscales.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Forgetting

A clock keeps striking

And the echoes move in files

Their faces have been lost

Flowers of salt

Tongues from lost languages

Doorways closed with pieces of night.

W.S. Merwin

(For Bob, Peter, Danny, Richie) 

You left just as the stars were beginning to go

You left as the colors, sand and rocks

And the shades of late summer.

W.S.Merwin

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Thinking about death again. It's ultimate reality. Whereas in the past I have always felt a bewilderment about it, recently I have read the phrase "numbing authority." Now I feel more comfortable with the thought Death speaks to me with a "numbing authority."  What I had described as "a bewilderment" was actually a numbness. Like the proverbial deer frozen in the headlights.

Others  say, 'well,get on with it."   I'm stuck.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Faces In The Street



They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone

That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;

For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet

My window-sill is level with the faces in the street --

Drifting past, drifting past,

To the beat of weary feet --

While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.



And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,

To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;

I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet

In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street --

Drifting on, drifting on,

To the scrape of restless feet;

I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.



In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky

The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,

Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,

Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street --

Flowing in, flowing in,

To the beat of hurried feet --

Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.



The human river dwindles when 'tis past the hour of eight,

Its waves go flowing faster in the fear of being late;

But slowly drag the moments, whilst beneath the dust and heat

The city grinds the owners of the faces in the street --

Grinding body, grinding soul,

Yielding scarce enough to eat --

Oh! I sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.



And then the only faces till the sun is sinking down

Are those of outside toilers and the idlers of the town,

Save here and there a face that seems a stranger in the street,

Tells of the city's unemployed upon his weary beat --

Drifting round, drifting round,

To the tread of listless feet --

Ah! My heart aches for the owner of that sad face in the street.



And when the hours on lagging feet have slowly dragged away,

And sickly yellow gaslights rise to mock the going day,

Then flowing past my window like a tide in its retreat,

Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street --

Ebbing out, ebbing out,

To the drag of tired feet,

While my heart is aching dumbly for the faces in the street.



And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end,

For while the short `large hours' toward the longer `small hours' trend,

With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat,

Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street --

Sinking down, sinking down,

Battered wreck by tempests beat --

A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of the Street.



But, ah! to dreader things than these our fair young city comes,

For in its heart are growing thick the filthy dens and slums,

Where human forms shall rot away in sties for swine unmeet,

And ghostly faces shall be seen unfit for any street --

Rotting out, rotting out,

For the lack of air and meat --

In dens of vice and horror that are hidden from the street.



I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure

Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?

Ah! Mammon's slaves, your knees shall knock, your hearts in terror beat,

When God demands a reason for the sorrows of the street,

The wrong things and the bad things

And the sad things that we meet

In the filthy lane and alley, and the cruel, heartless street.



I left the dreadful corner where the steps are never still,

And sought another window overlooking gorge and hill;

But when the night came dreary with the driving rain and sleet,

They haunted me -- the shadows of those faces in the street,

Flitting by, flitting by,

Flitting by with noiseless feet,

And with cheeks but little paler than the real ones in the street.



Once I cried: `Oh, God Almighty! if Thy might doth still endure,

Now show me in a vision for the wrongs of Earth a cure.'

And, lo! with shops all shuttered I beheld a city's street,

And in the warning distance heard the tramp of many feet,

Coming near, coming near,

To a drum's dull distant beat,

And soon I saw the army that was marching down the street.



Then, like a swollen river that has broken bank and wall,

The human flood came pouring with the red flags over all,

And kindled eyes all blazing bright with revolution's heat,

And flashing swords reflecting rigid faces in the street.

Pouring on, pouring on,

To a drum's loud threatening beat,

And the war-hymns and the cheering of the people in the street.



And so it must be while the world goes rolling round its course,

The warning pen shall write in vain, the warning voice grow hoarse,

But not until a city feels Red Revolution's feet

Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street --

The dreadful everlasting strife

For scarcely clothes and meat

In that pent track of living death -- the city's cruel street.



Henry Lawson

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Time, time please pause in flight,

Make me a boy -- just for tonight.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From"How We Decide."

"When the mind is denied the emotional sting of losing it never figures out how to win. "

"Intelligent Intuition is the result of Deliberate Practice."

"Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience."Cervantes.

"Negative Feedback is the best kind."

"An Expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field." Neils Bohr

"Mistakes must be cultivated and carefully investigated.

"Self-criticism is the key to self-improvement."

"The most crucial ingredient of a successful education is the ability, desire, willingness to learn from mistakes."

The Work Ethic:  Instead of telling kids "you must be really smart," tell them, "You must have worked really hard." This reinforces the work ethic.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The Relevant Quote:

"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats: Norman Rockwell Saved from Drowning #3

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats: Norman Rockwell Saved from Drowning #3: "Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus (1918)"

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Kirshnamurti: 

If you are really serious, to find out the implications of death, then you have to come into contact with that fact of death, actually come into contact with it - not theoretically, not as something which you have got to face, therefore let's face it, but rather by coming directly into contact with it, by dying. Dying - I mean by that word, coming to the end of all the things that you have known psychologically, your experiences, your pleasures, to die - every day. Otherwise, you will never know what death is; for it is only in the dying that there is something new, not in continuing the old. Most of us are so weighed down by the known, by the yesterday, by the memories, by the `me', the `self', which is but a bundle of memories accumulated yesterday, having no actual existence in itself. Die to those memories; actually die to a pleasure without any argument. If you know what it means to die to a pleasure, to something that you have taken great pleasure in - without argument, without postponement, without any sense of resentment, bitterness - that is what is going to happen when you do die. And to die every day, to everything that you have gathered psychologically, is to be totally reborn. If you do not die in that way, then you have the continual problem of this memory that you have accumulated as the `me' and the self-centred activity that we indulge in - the thought of `my' house, `my' family, `my' book, `my' fame, `my' loneliness - you know, that little entity that moves around incessantly within itself, with its own limited pattern of existence. Will that continue? - you understand? - that is the problem we have. Either one knows how to die every day, and dying actually, the mind is fresh, instant, eager, tremendously alive, or, there is this bundle of memories, of self-centred activity, with all its thoughts, searching for fulfilment, wanting to be somebody, imitating, copying. That whole network of thought - will that continue? - yet that is what we want to continue. We say, at the least, if I haven't fulfilled in this life, perhaps I will in the next. - J. Krishnamurti Talks in Europe 1967

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Behind every silver lining hides a cloud.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Do you think this is possible or true?

Consider this, which I find extremely important in understanding life:

A person with multiple personalities, only some of which are diabetic, is only insulin-deficient when in the diabetic personality!

mg

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. 

Albert Einstein
1879-1955

Here's something from an old Richard Russell letter: 

It's a slow day in a Texas town.The streets are deserted. The sun is beating down, business is lousy, everyone is in debt.

A man from the East comes into the local hotel, drops a hundred dollar bill on the desk saying that he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs and pick one. 

As soon as the tourist goes upstairs the hotel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the hundred dollar bill and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 bill and goes to the Feed Supply Store to pay off his debt. 

The  guy at the Feed Supply Store takes the hundred and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who, like everyone else in town, has been having hard times and has had to offer her 'services' on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the proprietor. 

The hotel owner puts the hundred dollar bill on the counter so that the traveler will not suspect anything. 

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the hundred dollar bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money and leaves town. 

No one produced anything. No one earned anything.

However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism. 

Is that how the government is conducting business today?    

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Homage to Grandpa for Labor Day

Grandpa's dictums: taught to me while I sat on his knee:

"Repeat after me, Michael:"

"Hate the bosses, love the worker!"

"OK, Grandpa, 'Hate the bosses, love the worker'."

"Now, Michael, I want you to promise me that you'll never cross a picket line."

"I promise, Grandpa -- but what's a picket line?"

To paint over one dead animal may be regarded as a misfortune…

To paint over one dead animal may be regarded as a misfortune&#8230;

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Today, as if there wasn’t enough sadness in the world, the Guardian gives us more to shake our heads about. Has the dignity of the dead hedgehog fallen foul of efficiency accountants? Apparently, the taking-away-roadkill department didn’t turn up in time, so the road painters painted on according to schedule. Even penguins (who I haven’t mentioned nearly recently enough) go round a static object, rather than over it. A spokesman for Hartlepool borough council said, clearly with a degree of satisfaction and relief: ‘This is obviously an unfortunate incident, but it was the only one reported during the massive project.’ But all may not be what it seems.

In July the BBC reported something similar: slightly better, slightly worse, depending on how you look at it, though, of course, it’s of no concern to the dead creatures involved. Questions avalanche. Does the painting around rather than over show more respect for nature? Or a greater respect for badgers than hedgehogs? Or are these two incidents not a statistically weird coincidence at all? Are both the work of guerilla anti-health-and-safety activists out to shame a world where road painters are not allowed to move roadkill except by special training and licence? The fact that the Guardian report is also in the Mail suggests that this may well be the answer.

But perhaps we are witnessing a new real-world meme: something along the lines of the crop circle artists but with road traffic accidents as their canvas – this does not bode well if taken too far. Or it might tell us that painting long lines (double yellow or single white) over miles of roads is so boring and the quest for fame so great that people have taken to bringing dead hedgehogs and badgers to work with them to liven things up a bit and get the papers round. This, too, if taken further and into other boring areas of life, may not be pleasant.

Jenni Diski London Review of Books

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memo

No one chooses his own story.

Black & White for Faces.. B&W looks into the soul, it looks into the eyes, and through the eyes into the soul.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Forgotten Days

You think I forgot
The bed and those yellowed sheets.
The iron bedstead,
The whiskey bottle on the nightstand,
Quiet music from the next room.

Your dress on the floor,
That fragrance of only you,
The sighs of oak leaves
Caressing the window pane.

And your whispers in my ear.
Did I bite, or was it you?

That, at last, I have forgot.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

On Growing Old

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your corn-land, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

John Masefield

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"Calm is all Nature as a Resting Wheel."




Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.

Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.



William Wordsworth

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"When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know that it is."  

Oscar Wilde

BUT

"A wise man should have money in his head, But not in his heart."

Jonathan Swift. 

from "The Church & the Fiction Writer"

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from "The Church & the Fiction Writer"

What the Catholic fiction writer must realize is that those who question [the faith] are not insane at all, they are not utterly foolish and irrelevant,  they are not utterly foolish and irrelevant, they are for the most part acting according to their lights. What he must get over is that they don't have the complete light.

Flannery O'Conner

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Thinking of my Father

Yesterday was a wonderful blue sky day.

I saw pelicans fishing while I swam

In spring sea water, still cool,

The summer warm soon to come. 

Like you, I swam out far

And the beach seemed out of reach

I cried because you are gone,

But all you gave me 

Runs always in my blood.

mek  Aug 5,  2010

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dreams


Here we are all, by day; by night we're hurl'd
By dreams, each one into a several world.

Robert Herrick

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I do not mind what happens.

Krishnamurti

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“We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature.


So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.”

— Sogyal Rinpoche via Glimpse of the Day, July 7 (via sharanam)

Reblogged from it's all dhamma..

Tags: Sogyal RinpocheWisdom TraditionsTibetan Buddhism

July 09, 2010, 9:52am 0 Comments and 0 Reactions





» Consider

"The word consider comes to us from around 1350 CE, and it traces its origins through the Middle English consideren and the Latin considerare, both words meaning “with the stars” or “in the company of the stars”. Those origins are shared with other English words like constellation and sidereal, the former describing a whole group of stars glowing up there in the night sky, and the latter meaning simply “starry” and by extension, celestial or heavenly…”

(from Beyond The Fields We Know)


“No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it.”

— Annie Dillard (from Whiskey River)

Tags: Annie DillardDeathWisdom TraditionsQuotesWriters

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.”

V.Nabokov

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A Birthday Note for my Wife of 47 Years

The chairs and lounges were taken from the beach

years ago, and the gate closed and locked. Over

the ocean, far from our window

a windswept moon rises into dark night.

Far away rollers ride the sea, their sound arriving

out of darkness, and white surf crashes on the sand.

We look at each other, now older than we were.

Nodding, we know what was once unknown.

mek            May 26, 2010

 

Bernie & Sylvia ca.1907

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INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.