The Hammock Papers: Learn.

07 June 2010

Learn.

I have enjoyed Derrick Jensen's writing (Walking On Water: Reading, Writing, Revolution and A Language Older Than Words) because they made me think.

They also made me question, identify, hope, reflect, and keep dreaming.

In the past year my reading habits have shifted. A friend calls them head books. I prefer soul. Jensen, Zinker, Toole, Schiffman, Pearce, Ruiz, Forman, Freke, Scruton, Campbell, Emerson ... they made me realize that I wasn't alone in thinking the "crazy" thoughts I have about culture, love, kids, education, justice ... living.

And they have taught me.

I have learned.

I've tried to maintain this blog as a place of edification; free of rants and outrage. That being said, I would like to offer some advice to anyone who is struggling.

Don't give up. Each day is an adventure to the extent that you make it one. Live it that way.

Pray.

Love your family and friends ... and let them love you.

Listen.

Smile. Find a reason to! Do it!

Make someone's day and watch what happens to yours.

Love kids. Guide them. Support them. Don't force them. They're smarter than that ... and you can learn from them.

Find an outlet for your own unique creativity.

Don't criticize. Be curious. (Thanks Dr. Gerlach)

It is not possible to recover from atrocity in isolation. It is, in fact, precisely this isolation that induces the atrocities. If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. It has missed us sorely as we have missed it. And it is time to return. Godspeed.
- Derrick Jensen, the last paragraph of A Language Older Than Words

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL