posted December 17, 2014 03:29 PM              

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

posted December 18, 2014 10:45 AM            

"If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty."

posted January 02, 2015 08:35 PM            

by Leonard Cohen

(( I quote him here, with slight paraphrasings... Some day when I learn to use video-audio software I will post the 'clip' of a few minutes of a very very long 'tube. ))

I always felt that words of poetry and song
were the Ashes of Experience~~

the ashes were well-burned,
you could clarify them,
you could purify them.

You get rid of the clinkers and the chunks,
and afterwards what you have left
is Beautiful~~
like Fine White Ash.

This is what a really good Song is,
what a good Poem is~~

it could blow away in the wind,
it could blow right through you,
it could blow...right into your Heart.

And when you can 'get out of its way'
the way of your own love,

it becomes True~~
it doesn't become fixed,
it doesn't become solidified.

And when it's not focused rigidly
upon Another Object~~

it broadcasts
in front of you,
in back of you,
to the right of you,
to the left of you,
above you, and
beneath you.

= and you find that in that Center,
there's an encompassing Force Field
including Everything~~

there is no outside,
there is no inside,
that needs to look at anything,
nor needs to be looked at...

It's like the Taste of Honey
when you're very young,
or like Chocolate
when you need something sweet,
and the result is
that every cell of your body
says thank you

Yeah... That's what It's like.

posted January 07, 2015 12:15 PM            

*
"In all the phenomena of rejuvenescence, there is a depression of life preceding the new upraising. The song of the blackbird and thrush, and the bright crimson of the robin's breast in spring, were preceded by the long silence and the dull russet hues of winter."

posted January 28, 2015 08:59 PM            

*
"People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth."

*
"Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better."

*
"Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers."

*
"There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists."

*
"Poetry and prison have always been neighbors."

*
“How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others…And all for what? To hide what? To make people believe what?”

*
“Now all I read is poetry. Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game. I don’t know if you follow me. Only poetry — and let me be clear, only some of it — is good for you, only poetry isn’t **** .”

*
"Muse, wherever you
might go
I go.
I follow your radiant trail
across the long night.
Not caring about years
or sickness.
Not caring about the pain
or the effort I must make
to follow you.
Because with you I can cross
the great desolate spaces
and I’ll always find the door
leading back
to the Chimera,
because you’re with me,
Muse,
more beautiful than the sun,
more beautiful
than the stars."

posted February 24, 2015 05:31 PM            

"Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah, and a good thesaurus."

"Be gentle with yourself and others. Don't become so obsessed with the goal that the *process* is not enjoyable. Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle and enjoy the journey"

‎"If you want peace, stop fighting with your thoughts. When you're not against yourself or others, you are at peace."

‎"As far as I can tell, the only thing you can take charge of is *the space within your skin.* That's it. Everything (and, especially, everyone) else does not belong to what you can take charge of."

‎"Thank heavens for photography. It nicely balances, on one hand, my love of beauty and fascination for things mechanical with, on the other, my impatience and complete inability to draw"

"In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts."

~ Peter McWilliams

posted February 27, 2015 01:32 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearlty:
“Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow.”

"Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah, and a good thesaurus."

"Be gentle with yourself and others. Don't become so obsessed with the goal that the *process* is not enjoyable. Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle and enjoy the journey"

ý"If you want peace, stop fighting with your thoughts. When you're not against yourself or others, you are at peace."

ý"As far as I can tell, the only thing you can take charge of is *the space within your skin.* That's it. Everything (and, especially, everyone) else does not belong to what you can take charge of."

ý"Thank heavens for photography. It nicely balances, on one hand, my love of beauty and fascination for things mechanical with, on the other, my impatience and complete inability to draw"

"In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts."

~ Peter McWilliams

---

posted March 25, 2015 11:43 AM            

*
"Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer."

*
"The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemoti onal deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic."
~Robert Graves

posted March 26, 2015 08:38 AM            

*
“My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.”

*
“Don't hunt for dissonance:
There is no such thing;
People dance to all tunes.”

*
"Traveller, the path is your tracks
And nothing more.
Traveller, there is no path
The path is made by walking.
By walking you make a path
And turning, you look back
At a way you will never tread again
Traveller, there is no road
Only wakes in the sea.”
~Antonio Machado

posted March 26, 2015 08:58 AM            

*

“I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.”

posted April 04, 2015 02:02 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pearlty:
“What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous; like the Bible, you can find strength in them that you look for. How absolutely full of truth they are, how full of reality. The juice and essence of life are in them; they teem with life, growth and expansion. They are a refuge for myriads of living things. As the breezes blow among them, they quiver, yet how still they stand developing with the universe. God is among them. He has breathed with them the breath of life, might and patience. They stand developing, springing from tiny seeds, pushing close to Mother Earth. Fluffy baby things first, sheltering beneath their parents, mounting higher, spreading brave branches, pushing with mighty strength not to be denied skywards. Tossing in the breezes, glowing in the sunshine, bathing in the showers, bending below the snow piled on their branches, drinking the dew, rejoicing in creation, bracing each other, sheltering the birds and beasts, the myriad insects.”

*

“I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.”

*
"The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion."
~ Emily Carr

---

posted April 12, 2015 09:14 AM            

*

"My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day.

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day."
~Tom Waits

*

“Wherever
we walk
we will make

Wherever
we protest
we will go planting

Make poems
seed grass
feed a child growing
build a house
Whatever we stand against
We will stand feeding and seeding

Wherever
I walk
I will make”
~ Muriel Rukeyser