GhostsGhosts
“If you look at the moon, you’ll dream of the animals, and they’ll tell you they’re sorry they died, and they miss you.” – Liam, Facebook, May 29, 2017
Category: Verandah
Take me to the limitTake me to the limit
The Limits to Human Survival: The Four Threes
1. Three minutes without oxygen.
2. Three days without water.
3. Three weeks without food.
4. Three months without companionship.
– from Christy Gutowski, “7 Days Lost”
What it isWhat it is
“Love’s service is without eyes, and love is without fear.” – Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold
The crown jewelsThe crown jewels
Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, a dew, a bubble;
A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud:
Thus should we look upon the world.
– from The Diamond Sutra
Keeping a healthy perspectiveKeeping a healthy perspective
Make merry, day and night;
Make of each day a festival of joy,
Dance and play, day and night!
Let your raiment be kept clean,
Your head washed, body bathed.
Pay heed to the little one, holding onto your hand,
Let your wife delight your heart,
For in this is the portion of man.
– from The Epic of Gilgamesh
Something durable and modestSomething durable and modest
“Truth is a powerful and a dangerous commodity and needs to be adequately guarded. It should be clothed for the occasion, and not indiscriminately exposed.” – M. Esther Harding, “The Way of All Women”
The tautological lawThe tautological law
“Shinto doctrine holds that women should make offerings to aborted foetuses to help them rest in peace. If one believes that abortion is killing and yet is still pro-choice, one could try to use contraception for every single sex act; if one had to undergo an abortion, one could then work to provide contraception, or jobs, or other choices to young girls; one could give money to programmes that provide prenatal care to poor women; if one is a mother or father, one can remember the aborted child every time one is tempted to be less than loving.” – Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”
The fontThe font
The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.
– Tao Te Ching (trans. Arthur Waley)
He’s got his work cut out for himHe’s got his work cut out for him
“The task of the human-hearted man is to procure benefits for the world and to eliminate its calamities. Now among all the current calamities of the world, which are the greatest? I say that attacks on small states by large ones, oppression of the weak by the strong, misuses of the few by the many, deception of the simple by the cunning, and disdain toward the humble by the honored; these are the misfortunes of the world.” – Mo Tzu (trans. Fung Yu-lan), A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
Even in seven-league bootsEven in seven-league boots
“From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the newborn baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.” – Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Sir yes sirSir yes sir
“The Army’s the greatest teacher in the world. There’s only one answer for any question and you learn that answer because your life depends on it.” – M. F. McAuliffe, “The Cohort of Mist, Fog, and Fire”
Bliss of ignorance, folly of manBliss of ignorance, folly of man
“A woman’s life is quite different from a man’s. God has ordered it so. A man is the same from the time of his circumcision to the time of his withering. He is the same before he has sought out a woman for the first time, and afterwards. But the day when a woman enjoys her first love cuts her in two. She becomes another woman on that day. The man is the same after his first love as he was before. The woman is from the day of her first love another. That continues so all through life. The man spends a night by a woman and goes away. His life and body are always the same. The woman conceives. As a mother she is another person than the woman without child. She carries the print of the night nine months long in her body. Something grows. Something grows into her life that never again departs from it. She is a mother. She is and remains a mother even though her child die, though all her children die. For at one time she carried the child under her heart. And it does not go out of her heart ever again. Not even when it is dead. And this the man does not know; he knows nothing.” – Unidentified Abyssinian woman (quoted by Carl Kerényi in “Kore”)
It’s not on the sofaIt’s not on the sofa
“The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and it can be reached only through suffering.” – Igjugarjuk (quoted by H. Ostermann, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition)
In case you’ve been wonderingIn case you’ve been wondering
“All life is a loss of balance and a struggling back into balance. We find this return home in religion and art.” – Karl Joël, Seele und Welt (trans. R.F.C. Hull)
Hold me backHold me back
“You don’t need people to tell you you’re right all the time. You need people to tell you that you’re wrong.” – John Bogle (interviewed by Michael Regan in Bloomberg Markets)
Perpetual motionPerpetual motion
“What say you? It is useless? Ay, I know! But who fights ever hoping for success? I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest! You there, who are you?—You are thousands! Ah! I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood! Have at you! Ha! and Compromise! Prejudice! Treachery! Surrender, I? Parley? No, never! You too, Folly, you? I know that you will lay me low at last; let be! Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!” – Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (trans. Thomas and Guillemard)
Rolling in the gloamingRolling in the gloaming
“Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.” – Francis Picabia
IfIf
“If the deity is one who delights in charity and mercy and purity more than in oblations of blood, the chanting of hymns, and the fumes of incense, his worshippers will best please him, not by prostrating themselves before him, by intoning his praises, and by filling his temples with costly gifts, but by being pure and merciful and charitable towards men, for in so doing they will imitate, as far as human infirmity allows, the perfections of the divine nature.” – Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough
Let’s make one, thenLet’s make one, then
“The absence of God spells the ruin of man in the sense that it demolishes or robs of meaning everything we think of as the essence of being human: the quest for truth, the distinction of good and evil, the claim to dignity, the claim to creating something that withstands the indifferent destructiveness of time.” – Leszek Kolakowski, Religion: If there is No God . . .
Score’s thirty-love, loveScore’s thirty-love, love
“You can love the game, but the game loves no one.” – Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life
It already passedIt already passed
“There are times when most cards you are dealt come up aces, when forces you cannot control—or even influence—combine to push you forward. Such a moment does not often last long.” – Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris
File under ‘R’File under ‘R’
“Reorganization is the classic technique to avoid problems that are too complex or deeply rooted to solve.” – Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror
Try as we mightTry as we might
“You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories, which are impossible to articulate.” – Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (trans. Mabel Lee)
The great levellerThe great leveller
“War brings out the worst in everybody. No matter how honorable you are in carrying out your cause, things happen that you feel ashamed of later on.” – Maurice Greenberg, “We Were So Naive”
A well-founded opinionA well-founded opinion
“The rejection of facts; the rejection of reason and science—that is the path to decline.” – President Barack Obama, Rutgers University Commencement Speech, 2016
Scintillating informationScintillating information
“Scintillation is the term used to describe communications disruptions caused by high-altitude nuclear explosion.” – “Army Weaponry and Equipment,” 1991 Army Green Book (ed. L. James Binder, et al.)
Sounds like a planSounds like a plan
“The best defense against nuclear weapons is to be somewhere else when they detonate.” – John M. Collins, U.S.-Soviet Military Balance, 1960-1980
The desire of KhanThe desire of Khan
“Mexico is my mother; the United States the best friend I will ever have. And so I dream of the day when my mother will say, ‘Ricardo, you have chosen a wonderful friend.’ And the day when the friend will say, ‘Ricardo, you have a sensational mother.’ That is why it is very important to bring us together. Brothers and sisters, love thy neighbor as thyself.” – Ricardo Montalbán
Ask not what the one hand doesAsk not what the one hand does
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch
PrioritiesPriorities
“What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it our for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act.” – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (trans. Whitney)