I think this will show up very way too large but it seems to be the only way I can bring it in. And so it goes…
Thinking lots of thoughts that will need to go here at some point. But for now, the Zen Way will do. May the greatest of New Years befall us all! At the very least may we inherit peace and calm in our lives and most of all, may we savor them.
All I want to do at this point is write text to the right of the photo, or left I don’t care. But of course that’s a battle I’m not going to win without a great deal of exertion on my part, the ability for which I have none. I’ve been working on what I’m calling “Field Notes” on a biography (or War) and am obligated to send snatches with photos to the kids—nephews and nieces. Due to the obligation I’ve been keeping up a pace I would not normally. My normal pace is tortoise. A very old and sad tortoise. And I’m in a punch-drunk mental state.
About Fyodor (above)—I totally adore him. I still recall the books I struggled through at some point in my much younger years. I should say I remember parts and pieces because I get them mixed up and don’t recall which comes from what. And his writing gave me my first concept of Apotheosis without knowing what it was called. The biggest problem for me with Russian novels is all of the nicknames without explanation. I can be reading along and think we have a new character doing something when it’s just a nickname for a previous character. In any case, I do have Notes From The Underground somewhere but I can’t find it just yet. I know I have the book because everytime I go to buy it Amazon (or someone) wants to know if I want to buy it again. I may have to resort to that. The same thing happens with Pessoa. You know, The Book of Disquiet, and A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. I’ve tried to repurchase them numerous times. Pathetic.
Or perhaps I sold it off along with the rest of Dostoevsky when I cleaned house and sold a stock (hundreds) of books that I was sure I’d never return to. I am so in regret over that phase of me that rears its ugly head from time to time and fills me with sorrow at some later point. From books to mementos and family pieces. Yet I’ve replenished my supply and have more books than before. Unfortunately that can’t be done with other things. It’s like Pessoa’s narrator says at some point, “I’ve had great ambitions and boundless dreams but so has the delivery boy…” I don’t know what that has to do with this but it seems as if it does. je nes se pas?
“Everything is determined, every beginning and ending, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” — Albert Einstein
Posted by Simon Bartholomé
I don’t know what to say to this.
Posted by Ravenous Butterflies
“After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.”
Jorge Luis Borges – You Learn, c.1940.
Oskar Zwintscher – Portrait with Yellow Daffodils,1907
I wish it were true. I wish that after a while I learned. In my lifetime I’ve been big on repeating mistakes. Even when I knew they were mistakes, I thought “this time it will be different.” Of course it wasn’t. And I really thought I could make something happen by sheer will. Not so. Certainly not so when it comes to other people. The problem is you don’t know until you are tested. Given the opportunity I wonder, have I learned? I might have. Maybe. Maybe so.
There are those men and women whom we turn to always, to rediscover their ideas and words and wisdom. Those people who encourage us to recommit ourselves to our path in life. Those folks who make us say, “Ah, yes, of course!” The ones to whom we say, “Thank you, I needed to hear that.” So I think of them for our purposes here as our Sponsors. They do sponsor us, save us from the world of needs and wants. Here’s two of them.
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
~ Nikola Tesla
“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”
~ Albert Einstein
“We are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. To know each other, we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.”
~ Nikola Tesla
“When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.”
~ Nikola Tesla
“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.
I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.”
~ Nikola Tesla
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.”
~ Nikola Tesla
“Given the millions of billions of earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the universe without a doubt does exist. In the vastness of the universe we are not alone.”
~ Albert Einstein
Writers Ink—Writing and Stuff 