"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients."
Gustave Courbet
"What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race." - Amadeo Modigliani
“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.”
When I was a kid, I lived across the road from "The Woods." This was where you'd find me nearly every day. Inside this wooded playground was a shadowy, pine needle-strewn floor with firmly worn sandy paths that led anywhere I wanted to go ... to the Boston Tea Party, Mackinac Island, fur trapping with French explorers, WWII Germany (I was a history freak), or just around the next sharp bend ...
I dreamed in those woods.
And although most of the time I was there with my friends, my memories, my dreams were singular. Smells, sounds, tastes (all the different kinds of mint), all had meaning. Clouds weren't clouds. Trees weren't trees. Shadows weren't shadows. My imagination was born in those pines. The clouds, trees, and shadows were a box of odds and ends, like I used to find on Dad's workbench, that could be assembled to be anything, and take me anywhere I needed to go.
Last night, for as long as I could stay awake, I began reading another Derrick Jensen book, A Language Older Than Words.
The first paragraph ... There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
I'm sure Jensen has a bigger idea in mind for me, I view things differently reading his work, but that paragraph took me back to the woods, where a great deal of who and what I am began.
My dad is a thinker. He is very creative. Dad's an engineer. You need to figure something, a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, out? Dad's the one to see.
My sis is a scientist. Ever since she was a little girl, I've watched her do amazing things with animals (animals have done amazing things to her, too).
Mom is an artist; a talented musician who can make anything from food to painting to quilts, graciously beautiful (I'm craving oatmeal cookies right now).
Drew is a energetic singer and a dancer who just feels and does.
My reader, Zuzu, prefers to observe, reflect, take it all in ... quietly ... and then let her imagination run.
In all we do, we are at our best when we are having fun.
Kids want to incorporate play into everything they do ... cooking, bath time, spelling homework. Make it a game and they'll not only enjoy it more, but the end result is usually more concerted, natural, real.
Adults approach situations differently.
We want to qualify. Judge. Label. Perfect.
Performers at their peak, the height of the natural ability describe "being in the zone" ... that magical state of being where the reins are laid on loosely and comfort, ease, and output are at their maximum. Ty Webb demonstrates ...
When I try to inspire fifth graders to use brainstorming as a preparation for their creative writing, I encourage them not to criticize their ideas. No "wrong" answers. We call it "loving the question," alluding to the Rilke quote. The students write whatever comes to mind, no matter how silly or unrelated they may feel the thought to be. During this activity I remind the kiddos that ordinary thinking results in ordinary ideas. Who knows where your mind will take you if you just allow yourself the patience and openness to listen to what it is saying?!
Most of the time, the students are reluctant to engage in the trust and freedom that brainstorming requires. Given the current academic climate and what passes for public "education," it's easy to understand how they can get creatively cramped.
But, we work on it regularly, because, after all, creative work is still work.
Eventually, the furrowed brows and blank stares ("Mr. Firchau, you ask us to do some weird stuff") warm to understanding brightness in the eyes and confident grins, and sometimes to an automatic part of everyday life! They have shown themselves the tangible benefits of loosening up and having fun ... and workin'.
We achieved a new perspective through the process of practice, patience, and perseverance.
Did I say process?
Not an event. A process.
Small steps.
Short bursts of inspiration keep us hungry. Hemingway always finished a day's writing at a point of inspiration where he felt excited and energized by the plot. He knew what would happen and what direction the story would go next.
Leonardo was a proponent of achieving a change in perspective and innovation through play. It is the playful approach to looking at the world and, as The Maestro put it, seeing something different that allows us to renew, evolve and even create new thinking ... growth. With playfulness, Leonardo was able to ask the absurd, wonder wildly, and rearrange the reality of being that eagerly asks, "What if...?".
This ain't "follow the leader."
This is falling.
This is failing.
And joyfully getting up and asking, "What next?!"
Time passes quickly and there is no time to waste.
Look back at your footprints for a second, but ...
WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!!!
Look around.
Notice.
Be aware. Open.
Laugh.
Joke.
With yourself.
On! On!
In the liner notes to his latest album, Jimmy Buffett says ... There are few species here on earth that are comfortable going against the grain, but it seems that human beings like to keep moving forward. If you stop and think about it, bicycles are not made to peddle backwards; you don't surf up a wave and it is certainly easier to walk down a hill than trudge up one. We all tend to to be more excited about things that are in front of us (better known as the future than behind us (that would be the past). Maybe it is because when you do look back, you get some idea of the speed at which this planet and our individual lives are really traveling.
Melvin Konner, a noted anthropologist and neuroscientist, states in his new book, The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind, ... The smartest mammals are the most playful, so these traits have apparently evolved together. Play combining as it does great energy expenditure and risk with apparent pointlessness, is a central paradox of evolutionary biology. It seems to have multiple functions—exercise, learning, sharpening skills—and the positive emotions it invokes may be an adaptation that encourages us to try new things and learn with more flexibility. In fact, it may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains.
Tarnished and disgraced, I lay down A black sparrow come to me in a dream
He whispered: A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts
Swollen and embarrassed I rose up A black sparrows perched on highline pole
He whispered: A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts
Trembling and a shaken I looked down A black sparrow was tattooed on my hand
It whispered: A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) A. Enlightment B. Endarkenment (Hint: there is no C) And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts And heaven pours down rain and lightning bolts - Ray Wylie Hubbard
Whew! About ten minutes ago, I returned, soaking wet from a sensational, sun- and rain-drenched hike. What a beautiful day! Living in the country means having space.
And quiet.
The right kind of noise.
Noise? Hmmm ... nope.
Sound.
Birds. Streams. Cows. Roosters. Tires on gravel roads. When I was taking these pictures I could hear thunder up there.
Had Zuzu heard it she would have grabbed my hand and asked knowingly, "Is that thunder?" Space provides contemplation.
As I hiked today, I was aware of how green everything has become. How lush the grass is and how dense the trees hiding the abandoned Victorian across the street have become ... a stage for the firefly show that is most certainly coming!
I was mesmerized by the parade of clouds above me. Constantly evolving into new shapes, colors, shades. I hope you saw it.
So now, with a large mug of keemun and a handful of smoked almonds, I'm appreciating this place. This day.
This time.
Wondering what I'm missing out there because I'm sitting in here ...
... drinking in the tea and its perfume ...
... listening the wind's sonata in the rain's tapping and the flag's flapping. I remember last summer, an early June evening. 3 a.m. Awakened by a thunderstorm, I walked outside on the deck and stood on the picnic table ... feeling the wind on my skin as it changed direction, trying to feel individual raindrops as they hit my face, arms, and legs. Wondering what my "wind shadow" would look like if I could see it. Wondering how many raindrops landed on me in one second. Did they hit anything else on the way down or was I their "first stop?"
An early rise this morning (I couldn't sleep ...again) yielded nice rewards from above. There were some low laying, though speedy, cirrus clouds scurrying by as the alto cumulus above seemed to stand, still, ... ... like a parent watching a playful child.
... sounds, then a sentence, then just sound. It's an odd place wherever I sit, this fluid speech around me, liquid vowels, purling, consonantal patter ... a word, then sounds. - Kevin Oderman
Hoy siento gran emoción Voy a cantarle a mi tierra A esa famosa región llamada perla sureña
Su mujer es un primor radiante como una estrella, y por su elegante andar la admiran en Cuba entera
Cienfuegos, yo a ti te llevo metido en mi corazón, por eso con orgullo te doy esta inspiración.
Ya tu lo ves, mi hermano Cienfuegos tiene su guaguancó
Yo soy los Sitio' Asere y me fui caminando hasta Cienfuegos a escuchar este lindo guaguancó.
Cienfueguera nena linda ay, que bueno, que bueno tú tienes tu guaguancó.
Oye, Maceo sigue cantando No te preocupes tanto tú eres mi invitado y aquà en fin el que manda soy yo Alma mÃa no te extrañes. si me voy pa'ese rumbón.
Para Cienfuegos me voy a guarachar, boncó. Para Cienfuegos me voy a guarachar, boncó.
Earlier I posted clips from the BBC's production of Scruton's essay, Why Beauty Matters.
Part three is particularly enlightening. All art is absolutely useless.
Put usefulness first and you loose it.
Put beauty first and what you do will be useful forever.
It turns out that nothing is more useful than the useless.
We have more than just practical needs.
We are not just governed by animal appetites, like eating and sleeping.
We have spiritual and moral needs, too. If those needs go unsatisfied, so do we.
We all know what it is like, even in the everyday world, suddenly to be transported by the things we see. From the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation.
A flash of sunlight.
A remembered melody.
The face of someone loved.
These dawn on us in the most distracted moments and suddenly life is worthwhile. These are timeless moments in which we feel the presence of another and higher world. From the beginning of western civilization poets and philosophers have seen the experience of beauty as calling us to the divine.
Beauty is all around us. We need only the eyes to see it and he hearts to feel. Like as if something not of this world, but indeed of it.
No meaning.
Just being.
Enough.
... beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. - Plato
Little kids just need love. They know what they're doing. They are bold adventurers. They just need help testing the waters; a hand that's there "just in case I need a boost, Dad." Their souls are dancing souls, so incredibly pure. So unencumbered. I am so proud of them.
“Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new - created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing.” - William Law
"The nature poets of our own time characteristically approach their subject with an openness of spirit and imagination, allowing the meaning and the movement of the poem to suggest themselves out of the facts. Their art has an implicit and essential humility, a reluctance to impose on things as they are, a willingness to relate to the world as student and servant, a wish to discover the natural form rather than to create new forms that would be exclusively human. To create is to involve oneself as fully, as consciously and imaginatively, as possible in the creation, to be immersed in the world." --Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony
"The sense of play that a poet needs to make language an ally – often thought of as congenital insincerity by the public – provides the at least momentary pleasure of creation; the sense of having a foothold, if not full membership, in a guild as old as man. The child who carves a tombstone or rock out a bar of soap knows some of this pleasure." – Jim Harrison
"I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my work people both act and think. I got a kick out of that." - JIm Harrison
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way." - The Old Sage of Monticello
"The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions but by his habitual acts.” Blaise Pascal
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REMEMBER
REMEMBER EVERYONE DEPLOYED
N.C. WYETH
Cold Maker, Winter, 1909
SIR ROGER
"Beauty is a value, as important as truth and goodness."
TOLKIEN
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
JIM HARRISON
"Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs."
SAMUEL ADAMS
"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions."
TAO TE CHING, Lao Tzu
RICHARD ADAMS
"One cloud feels lonely."
WINSLOW HOMER
The Lone Boat, North Woods Club, Adirondacks, 1892
TURNER
And how can man die better / Than facing fearful odds / For the ashes of his fathers / And the temples of his gods
Waterhouse, Boreas, 1903
WHITE HORSES Far out at sea / There are horses to ride, / Little white horses / That race with the tide. / Their tossing manes / Are the white sea-foam, / And the lashing winds / Are driving them home- / To shadowy stables / Fast they must flee, / To the great green caverns / Down under the sea. Irene Pawsey
CINDY WILSON
FITZGERALD
"I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” This Side of Paradise
ROBERT PLANT
GARY SNYDER
"There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
IMMANUEL KANT
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! Sapere aude. 'Have the courage to use your own understanding,' is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
DAN CAMPBELL
"We’re gonna kick you in the teeth, and when you punch us back we’re gonna smile at you, and when you knock us down we’re going to get up, and on the way, we’re going to bite a kneecap off. We’re going to stand up, and it’s going to take two more shots to knock us down. And on the way up, we’re going to take your other kneecap, and we’re going to get up, and it’s gonna take three shots to get us down. And when we do, we’re gonna take another hunk out of you."
THOMAS HUXLEY
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing."
DRYDEN
"Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, but good men starve for want of impudence.”
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."
HERMANN HESSE
"Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours."
GEORGE MACDONALD
"Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected."
REV. DR. CORNEL WEST
"You have to have a habitual vision of greatness … you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won’t confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won’t confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity … believe in fact that living is connected to giving.”
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
"You see George, you've really had a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to just throw it away?"
Festina Lente
GARAGE SALINGER
JOHN RUSKIN
"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."
Spitzweg, The Bookworm, 1850
"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” Fernando Pessoa
BUCKLEY
"[I]n the spiky fall season, days like today with the little chill that makes one feel freshly laundered ..."
SYRINX
WEYMOUTH
WALT WHITMAN
"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."
H.L. MENCKEN
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. But this business, alas, is fatal to the placid moods and fine other-worldliness of the poet."
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."
DUDLEY
"We all come from our own little planets. That's why we're all different. That's what makes life interesting."
HERMAN MELVILLE
"We're just dancing in the rain ..."
LEO TOLSTOY
"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."
HAROLD BLOOM
"It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary."
I'm reading ...
Unlikely General: "Mad" Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America
CURRENT MOON
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
"I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance."
RUMI
"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
Shunryu Suzuki, "Beginner's Mind"
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
JIM HARRISON
¨The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.¨
van Eyck, Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban
"The Poet is the Priest of The Invisible." Wallace Stevens
Atget, Notre-Dame de Paris, 1923
Technique.
"Technique is the proof of your seriousness." Wallace Stevens
TIGHT LINES!
W.B. Yeats
THE CAPTAIN
NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR
"Whatever is goode in its kinde ought to be preserv'd in respect for antiquity, as well as our present advantage, for destruction can be profitable to none but such as live by it."
THOMAS PAINE
"Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess."
BRAZEN
"...the imprisoned lightning"
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
"The best defense against a usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry."
PHILIP PULLMAN
"We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence."
TRUE-BORN
THOMAS MERTON
C.S. LEWIS
“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito.” (Thank you, Mr. Wade)