Carnival of A Lost World
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“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.”
― Václav Havel
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"Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey."
Tad Williams, American writer
(tnx spycnsweet)
(Source: amiquote)
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"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry…Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences. I want to tell you right now that people like myself are very, very angry at what’s going on in our country, and I think that it’s time that we take a look at what kind of hatred that we inflame by all the crap that goes on. I think it’s time that this country take a little introspective look at the crap that comes out on radio and TV."
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, on the shooting in Arizona
(via cognitivedissonance)
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“The most political decision you make is where you direct people’s eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political… . And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show her, every day, that there can be no change.”
- Wim Wenders
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If the line had been drawn in front of you instead of behind, you wouldn’t even be here now, wherever here might be.
— Teju Cole, Migrants Welcome
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How to Look Better and Feel Great in the New Year!
“what will he gain by talking on the phone
what will he gain by going after fame, tell me
what does an old man gain by looking in the mirror
Nothing
each time he just sinks deeper in the mud
It’s already three or four in the morning
why doesn’t he try to go to sleep
but no — he won’t stop doing exercise
won’t stop with his famous long-distance calls”
-Nicanor Parra, “What Does an Old Man Gain by Exercising”
From Antipoems: How To Look Better and Feel Great
newdirectionspublishing
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There is no nobility in war and no honor in killing, and those who encourage such violent behavior against fellow living beings are working to their own and personal agenda. Any kind of cruelty and taking of life, any life demeans us all.
You shame the human race.
Peace, prosperity and happiness lies only in love; love for yourself, love for fellow living beings and love for the planet and universe you are part of.
If love is not the answer, you are asking the wrong question.
— Michael Kewley
May all beings be happy
*
The oppressors do not always appear in the same mask. The masks cannot always be stripped off in the same way.
— Bertolt Brecht, “The Popular and the Realistic”
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“Home” by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well44
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home6
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i don't know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Photograph by Daniet Etter/New York Times/Redux /eyevine.
Laith Majid cries tears of joy and relief that he and his children have made it to Europe
*
Viking symbol called inguz, means "where there is a will, there is a way".
[not my tattoo - not my foot - but if I got one maybe it would be something tiny like this]
*
King Lear
(Source: amiquote)
*
"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry…Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences. I want to tell you right now that people like myself are very, very angry at what’s going on in our country, and I think that it’s time that we take a look at what kind of hatred that we inflame by all the crap that goes on. I think it’s time that this country take a little introspective look at the crap that comes out on radio and TV."
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, on the shooting in Arizona
(via cognitivedissonance)
*
“The most political decision you make is where you direct people’s eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political… . And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show her, every day, that there can be no change.”
- Wim Wenders
*
If the line had been drawn in front of you instead of behind, you wouldn’t even be here now, wherever here might be.
— Teju Cole, Migrants Welcome
*
How to Look Better and Feel Great in the New Year!
“what will he gain by talking on the phone
what will he gain by going after fame, tell me
what does an old man gain by looking in the mirror
Nothing
each time he just sinks deeper in the mud
It’s already three or four in the morning
why doesn’t he try to go to sleep
but no — he won’t stop doing exercise
won’t stop with his famous long-distance calls”
-Nicanor Parra, “What Does an Old Man Gain by Exercising”
From Antipoems: How To Look Better and Feel Great
newdirectionspublishing
*
There is no nobility in war and no honor in killing, and those who encourage such violent behavior against fellow living beings are working to their own and personal agenda. Any kind of cruelty and taking of life, any life demeans us all.
You shame the human race.
Peace, prosperity and happiness lies only in love; love for yourself, love for fellow living beings and love for the planet and universe you are part of.
If love is not the answer, you are asking the wrong question.
— Michael Kewley
May all beings be happy
*
The oppressors do not always appear in the same mask. The masks cannot always be stripped off in the same way.
— Bertolt Brecht, “The Popular and the Realistic”
*
“Home” by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well44
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home6
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i don't know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Photograph by Daniet Etter/New York Times/Redux /eyevine.
Laith Majid cries tears of joy and relief that he and his children have made it to Europe
*
Viking symbol called inguz, means "where there is a will, there is a way".
[not my tattoo - not my foot - but if I got one maybe it would be something tiny like this]
*
King Lear
THERE WOULD BE a strong argument for saying that much of the most powerful preaching of our time is the preaching of the poets, playwrights, novelists because it is often they better than the rest of us who speak with awful honesty about the absence of God in the world and about the storm of his absence, both without and within, which, because it is unendurable, unlivable, drives us to look to the eye of the storm. I think of King Lear especially with its tragic vision of a world in which the good and the bad alike go down to dusty and, it would seem, equally meaningless death with no God to intervene on their behalf, and yet with its vision of a world in which the naked and helpless ones, the victims and fools, become at least truly alive before they die and thus touch however briefly on something that lies beyond the power of death. It is the worldly ones, the ones wise as the world understands wisdom and strong in the way the world understands strength, who are utterly doomed. This is so much the central paradox of Lear that the whole play can be read as a gloss if not a homily on that passage in First Corinthians where Paul expresses the same paradox in almost the same terms by writing, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28), thus pointing as Shakespeare points to the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can hear in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.I think of Dostoevski in The Brothers Karamazov when the body of Alyosha's beloved Father Zossima begins to stink in death instead of giving off fragrance as the dead body of a saint is supposed to, and at the very moment where Alyosha sees the world most abandoned by God, he suddenly finds the world so aflame with God that he rushes out of the chapel where the body lies and kisses the earth as the shaggy face of the world where God, in spite of and in the midst of everything, is.
Frederick Buechner
- Originally published in Telling The Truth
Frederick Buechner
- Originally published in Telling The Truth
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This today from a friend [Thank you Lauren Christman]-- written by Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet:
We have not come to take prisoners
We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.
Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.
Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.
We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."
For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!
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