buster stronghart

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BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Existentialism

Someone died, said Camus' grandmother, "Well, he'll fart no more."

But that was it. It was not a matter of ignorance. She had seen many die around her, two of her children, her husband, all her nephews in the war. But that was just it: she was as familiar with Death as she was of work or poverty. She did not think about it as much as she lived it.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

There's nothing so bad that years down the road you won't be able to laugh at it.


mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Where am I now?

O, the money I didn't make,
The girls I didn't take,
The land I didn't buy,
The women I failed to try...

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Memory is the place where things happen for the second time."
.........................Paul Auster

The Testosterone Years

The Whiskey Times

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Other important matters: recently a book on boxing was written in England. Joyce Carol Oates reviewed it in the New York Review and she mentioned something similar. You may not be aware of this but Oates is an expert on boxing and a fan. I heard her several years ago, with supralapsarian Mike Tyson (also an authority on the history of boxing) and the Amazin' Mazur, a sports announcer with an encyclopedic memory. She fit right in. And Tyson was pretty good too!

This is Oates writing:

"The symbolism of boxing does not allow for ambiguity: it is as middleweight Albert Camus put it, 'utterly Manichean.' The rites of boxing 'simplify' everything. Good and evil, the winner and the loser. "

Later she writes,: Here's "a quote attributed to Sonny Liston: ' It's always the same story--the good guy verses the bad guy.' "

What strikes me here is not so much that Camus and Liston arrive at the same conclusion, but rather that Liston's expression is so perfect, so succinct. The simple use of the five cent word instead of the two dollar word.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

What's more important, Quality or Quantity? Answer: Quality -- but only if you have enough of it.

..........Soviet - Russian military dictum.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Some friends have lost their childhoods, like a bottle in the sea. Mine is with me always.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Where do I go when I need to think?

To the old oak tree half way into the woods, on the trail that's hard to find. I sit under it, in the almost dark, its branches are huge and weighted down with leaves, only a little sunlight finds its way down there, below the spreading branches, and it is cool, and the air filed with a mossy, earthy smell.

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BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Without you I would have been somebody else.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

We tend to think that our real lives begin tomorrow. We disregard today. We save ourselves up for something.

This is only a way of letting life pass us by.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Love has a bitter taste. Oscar Wilde, Salome

Some people rock the boat, others row the boat. Unknown

The public business must be carried on by someone; if wise men decline it then others will take it. John Adams

No distinction can be made between the erotic and the esthetic. Picasso

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Pictures must not be too expressive. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three things needed for success in painting: To see beauty when young and accustom ones self to it, to work hard, and to obtain good advice. Gialorenzo Bernini

Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it. Salvatore Dali

The rule in the art world is that you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite. You can;t do both. Ben Hecht
.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Life is not a vending machine where one puts in virtue and takes out happiness. auth. unknown

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Picasso

I go to work as other men rush to see their mistresses. Eugene Delacroix

Who am I beyond the skin I'm in? Kara Walker

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal instead of the victim. Bertrand Russell.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, and soft music. Vladimir Nabokov

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

You may already know these things, but you may not have thought about them
recently.

I knew Spencer's mother; Gross' mother and father, I have a fading memory of his
grandfather ; Randelman's mother and father; and even the couple , Sally &
Irwin, who worked for his parents; Malkin's mother, father and sister, I did not
ever meet Danny's parents; I knew Manny and Grace Schultz better than most;-even
Patti knew them; I knew both of Schupf's parents, although I never met his
sisters; I never met Aaronson's parents. 

I think that one of the reasons that we have stuck together is that we are a
little smarter than most--though, I understand that doesn't apply as much to SS,
Bob, and Gross because you are in professions to which intelligent people
occasionally gravitate,.

I knew each of Gross' wives, I met Bob's first wife, I don't remember Nancy
Cypress but I am sure that I met her; of course I know Mary, I know Kathy, but
don't remember either of SS's other wives but I do recall meeting one their husbands, a librarian with a cane named Ben Ch--and I liked him very much. Who was
the redhead?

You have all met Maria in both of her incarnations,  I think you have all met my
sons;  I have met all of Gross' children, and grandchildren--that's four 
generations!-- but none of Bob's; nor his grandchildren; I might have met or
seen Craig and Nicole, Hal's son & daughter, but only at a funeral; I met Max
once but I am not really clear on him. Anthony is a total mystery to me, as he
is a pataphysicist.

I think that if each of us made a graph or chart showing these amazing
connections we could

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A, for unknown, unexpressed reasons, has an irrational and violent disdain for B. When I discovered that B lived in the same building and on the very floor that A lived, he, A, insisted that we not invite him (B) to any of our dinners, nor even for the cocktails, shrimp and vegetable pate we often shared at the A apartment, separated only by a thin partition from poor, lonely B's room. Not even a glass of water!

In addition, B knows a piece of goods when he sees it and wears sport jackets in the mode of the ones George Saunders wore when he played Arthur in Rebecca.

I do not begrudge A his personal likes or dislikes, and as you know B occupies the highest shelf in my mental storeroom of friendship, regard and respect. A's hostmanship is well-known, and appreciated by all who have come into his wide and spreading umbra. But, his attitude towards B bewilders me.

I inform you of these facts only because I know of your deep sense of discretion.

B, too, asked for the recipe.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Frenzies, possessions, mania, melancholy, nerves, tics, passionate loves and hates, melancholy, nerves, delusions, aberrant acts, dramatic tics, visual and auditory hallucinations, fears, phobias, and fantasies, disturbances of sleep, disassociations, communion with spirits and imaginary friends, addictions, self-harm, self-starvation an depression.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe

The American people have a capacity for great things. We must once again set ourselves on a course to achieve them—based on those values that have sustained America throughout the centuries:

• Justice. In a just America, money should not determine the limits of any American’s future, or deny any American the medical advancements that can save and sustain life. Health insurance, prescription drugs and higher education can be accessible and affordable for everyone.
  
• Fairness. Our tax burden today falls most heavily on hard work, while wealth is taxed less. We subsidize corporations that are polluting our environment or sending jobs overseas. But we can restore fairness to our tax code—rewarding hard work, ensuring that wealth pays its fair share, and penalizing waste.
  
  Fairness also demands that we address the disparity between the incomes of women and the incomes of men. Closing the wage gap will benefit all Americans.
  
• Progress. Today, technologies exist that can form the foundation of our economy for the next century. We should invest aggressively in them, just as when our nation invested in railroads, rural electrification, and in public highways.
  
  We can create a new energy economy, relying on sources that will never run out, including solar power, wind power, ethanol and biomass. Doing so will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create new jobs for decades to come.
  
• Moral Leadership in the World. Harry S. Truman said, “The only expansion we are interested in is the expansion of human freedom and the wider enjoyment of the good things of the earth in all countries. The only prize we covet is the respect and good will of our fellow members of the family of nations. The only realm in which we aspire to eminence exists in the minds of men, where authority is exercised through the qualities of sincerity, compassion and right conduct.” That is the American role in the world that we can restore.
  
• Self-Government. We can reform our republic—restoring a democracy in which every person has a voice and our government works for the benefit of all the people.
  
• Community. We have an obligation to one another as Americans and as human beings. America will be stronger when we recognize that we are dependent on each other, responsible for each other, and connected to each other.

Howard Dean 2003

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Goethe wrote:

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least."