Once rescued me from sharks on a god hunting expedition on the Moroccan Steppe through the deceptively simple expediency of reminding them that they couldn’t swim on land.
I was both extremely impressed and pathetically grateful, attached as I am to my limbs and being somewhat unkeen on losing them to misguided piscenes.
Later that day I bagged myself the matched pair of lesser spotted Mesopotamian deities, who adorn the mantlepeice in my library to this day.
“Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul and shows to other people
these secrets which are common to all.”
– Leo Tolstoy –
“We are prisoners of our natural brains. As children we grow, and new programs are layered down, set into the jelly of our brains. When we are young we write many of these programs in order to adapt to a bizarre and often dangerous environment. And then we grow some more. We mature. We find our places in our cities, in our societies, in ourselves. We form hypotheses as to the nature of things. These hypotheses shape us in turn, and yet more programs are written until we attain a certain level of competence and mastery, even of comfort, with our universe. Because our programs have allowed us this mastery, however limited, we become comfortable in ourselves, as well. And then there is no need for new programs, no need to erase or edit the old. We even forget that we were once able to program ourselves. Our brains grow opaque to new thoughts, as rigid as glass, and our programs are frozen for life, hardwired, so to speak, within our hardened brains.”
“We should all know the code of our programs, otherwise we can never be free.”
“What is real pain you ask? The power to choose what we will. Having to choose. This terrible freedom. These infinite possibilities. The taste for the infinite spoiled by the possibility of evolutionary failure. Real pain is knowing that you’re going to die, all the while knowing that you don’t have to die.”
“All rules and boundaries must someday be broken. How else can we go beyond ourselves? A chick must break out of his egg, but this does not mean that the shell is without value.”
– All text David Zindell (last 3 posts) –
“If I could find courage, I wondered, what would I see? Would I be ashamed of the arrangement of my programs – of my very self – beyond my control? Ah, but what if I could write new metaprograms, controlling this arrangement of programs? Then I might one day attain the uniqueness and value I found so lacking in myself and the rest of my race; as an artist composes a tone poem, I could create myself and call into being wonderful new programs which had never existed within the rippling tides of the universe. Then I would be free at last, and the flame would burn like star fire; then I would be something new, as new to myself as the morning sun is to a newborn child.”
“Where does the flame go when the flame explodes?”
dearest fellow huntress,
we persue the same quarry
– that most elusive and treacherous of prey –
armed only with:
* open hands *
and, the
* open hearts *
from which our words spill inconsolably and incontinentally
i wonder if soon the day will come,
when we will perforce retire forever from this game
wearied beyond measure – hope turned finally to bitter ashes
– on our parched tongues –
become olive farmers instead,
perhaps husbanding neighbouring groves
on some clement south facing slope – some serendipitous sunny somewhere:
* back to the mountains *
* face to the open ocean *
with the only connection left us (to these painfully real, and more painfully virtual, worlds):
* the narrow winding road *
till then,
it is good to know
that i’m not alone here
* out on the savannah *
it’s good to know
that there are others know
* the timeless nobility *
* the utter necessity *
of this searingly scary, seemingly silly superceding sublime, supremely self-sacrificial, sacred (so sacred…) safari
i remain yours,
in heartfelt appreciation
stefan
p.s. hope you like words beginning with the letter ‘s’
p.p.s i did get the milk in the end
ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen
wo ai ni you ji fen
wo de qing ye zhen
wo de ai ye zhen
yue liang dai biao wo de xin
ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen
wo ai ni you ji fen
wo de qing bu yi
wo de ai bu bian
yue liang dai biao wo de xin
qing qing de yi ge wen
yi jin da dong wo de xin
shen shen de yi duan qing
jiao wo si nian dao ru jin
ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen
wo ai ni you ji fen
ni qu xiang yi xiang
ni qu kan yi kan
yue liang dai biao wo de xin
Teresa Tang
Happiness is…
…realising that just because you have bought a new speaker system there’s no reason you can’t run it in parallel with the old one, then turn it up loud enough that all loose glass objects need to be removed from the room, and climbing under the desk to adjust wires can result in concussion and immanent sonic dissolution.
I am small and the world is big
All around me is fast moving
Surrounded by so many things
But suddenly, suddenly
How does it feel, to be different from me?
Are we the same?
How does it feel, to be different from me?
Are we the same?
How does it feel?
I’m young, and I am free
But I get tired, and I get weak
I get lost, and I can’t sleep
But suddenly, suddenly
How does it feel, to be different from me?
Are we the same?
How does it feel, to be different from me?
Are we the same?
How does it feel?
Would you comfort me
Would you cry with me;
Ahh, ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
Ahh, ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
ahh, ahh-ah
I am small and the world is big
But I’m not afraid of anything;
Avril Lavigne
(past a tree where once i sat)
all around
her companions lollop and bound – fade in to sight – then back out to fog
playing top dog
with one another
all these things combined
* remind *
me of a dear friend
🙂
(and for some reason: anchovies)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
– Sara Teasdale –
Innocent shadows that bring to mind less innocent ones
