Memory problems

The world has the memory of a fish.

            Albanian proverb

Multi-tasking

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it,
can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

            Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 

 

 

 

 

 

The deadliest trap

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

            Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up to your ass in aphorisms

Happiness is a function of accepting what is.
Love is a function of communication.
Health is a function of participation.
Self Expression is a function of responsibility.

        From the aphorism book received on completing the est training 

 

 

Puritanism

Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

    H. L. Menken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing

The greatest

The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atiśa, Buddhist religious leader, Perspectives on Mankind's Search for Meaning, Walter Taminang

Poem: Overcast 1983

This is what it’s like, leaving New York:
Never has the sun been shining
As the cab drives across 96th Street and heads for the airport.
Don’t you think it odd that after all these trips
I’ve never left in sunshine?
The flights are always long and uneventful,
Because even when there’s turbulence
It’s never matched the violence that leaving is to me.
Most of the time I can suppress the loss
Or stow it underneath the seat like so much carry-on baggage,
Though sometimes it comes and sits on me,
And then I sigh or silently sob
All the while thinking how silly I am – which doesn’t help –
Until once the woman next to me confessed concern.
Now I try to be adult by remembering things like
When my mother was my age she had a husband and five children
And no opportunities to carry on like this.
(My God, how do you suppose she did it?)
Finally touching down – it seems there is no sun on either coast –
Homecoming always heals the hurt
But traps inside the wound a little of the germ.
I spend the next week with a cold
While my body aches to heal the loss I cannot reach. 

 

 

 

 

 

Time

The years are too short, the days are too long. 

            Joseph Heller, Something Happened

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kept in the dark

Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep “us,” our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others.

            Kevin Simler, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Summer Solstice, New York City

By the end of the longest day of the year he could not stand it,
he went up the iron stairs through the roof of the building
and over the soft, tarry surface
to the edge, put one leg over the complex green tin cornice
and said if they came a step closer that was it.
Then the huge machinery of the earth began to work for his life,
the cops came in their suits blue-grey as the sky on a cloudy evening,
and one put on a bullet-proof vest, a
black shell around his own life,
life of his children's father, in case
the man was armed, and one, slung with a
rope like the sign of his bounden duty,
came up out of a hole in the top of the neighboring building
like the gold hole they say is in the top of the head,
and began to lurk toward the man who wanted to die.
The tallest cop approached him directly,
softly, slowly, talking to him, talking, talking,
while the man's leg hung over the lip of the next world
and the crowd gathered in the street, silent, and the
hairy net with its implacable grid was
unfolded near the curb and spread out and
stretched as the sheet is prepared to receive a birth.
Then they all came a little closer
where he squatted next to his death, his shirt
glowing its milky glow like something
growing in a dish at night in the dark in a lab and then
everything stopped
as his body jerked and he
stepped down from the parapet and went toward them
and they closed on him, I thought they were going to
beat him up, as a mother whose child has been
lost will scream at the child when it’s found, they
took him by the arms and held him up and
leaned him against the wall of the chimney and the
tall cop lit a cigarette
in his own mouth, and gave it to him, and
then they all lit cigarettes, and the
red, glowing ends burned like the
tiny campfires we lit at night
back at the beginning of the world.

    Sharon Olds, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 

 

 

 

 

 

At the same time

I have very strongly this feeling...
that our everyday life is at one and the same time
banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous
and yet mysterious and extraordinary.

    Brian Tracy, Heidegger and Modern Existentialism, BBC Productions

All the way

The path to heaven lies through heaven,
        and all the way to heaven is heaven.

                    Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage

Poem: For a Father

Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,
crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;
wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,
you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?
We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!

Or that August night you swept us to the fair?
The tallest person boarding the Ferris wheel,
you rocked our car right when we hit the apex
above the winking midway, to make us squeal.
Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait!

At your funeral, relatives and neighbors,
shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!"
But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away,
striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride.
And we're still straggling behind, shouting, Wait—!

                                  Elise Partridge 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

                Robert Louis Stevenson 

Subway murders

Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.

                George Carlin, Brain Droppings

 

 

 

 

 

Reasonable

Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter.
Reason is the very best tool kit.
Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away.
But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

                            Yann Martel, Life of Pi

 

 

 

 

 

Watch out

If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.

            Andrei Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky’s Translations

Something to remember

Memory is the thing you forget with.

    Alexander Chase, Perspectives