crucifixion

now we must select with extreme caution our lovers,

water, foodstuffs and even our visible

air.

it is a very careful time.

our politicians consider ways to dismantle

the worldwide stockpile of bombs

all too late, of course, since it only takes one fool to

push one button

somewhere.

we draw close together, frightened, searching for a return

to a safe

womb.

but we must have been wrong for too long. The asylums overflow and spill their

detritus into our streets

and where our leaders once spoke wisely

they now speak gibberish –

they stop, then continue, look about, addled,

substituting insane slogans for real

speech.

this is the price we now pay: we can’t go

back, we can’t go forward and we hang helpless, nailed to a

world

of our own

making.

Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems, p. 72.

barfly

Jane,who has been dead for 31 years,

never could have

imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking

days together

and

that a beautiful movie star would play her

part.

I can hear Jane now: “A beautiful movie star? oh,

for Christ’s sake!”

Jane, that’s show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because

no matter how hard they tried they

just couldn’t find anyone exactly like

you.

and neither can

I.

Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems, p. 73.

Cry Out Your Grief

Cry out all your grief, your disappointment.
Say them in Farsi, then Greek.

It does not matter whether you are from Rum or Arabia.
Praise the beauty and kindness praised
by every living being.

You hurt and have sharp desire,
yet your presence is a healing calm.

Sun, moon, bonfire, candle, which?
Someone says your flame is about to be dowsed,
but you are not smoke or fire.

You are infinitely more alive. Say how that is.
This fluttering love will not stay much longer in my chest.

Soon it ill fly like a falcon to its master,
like an owl saying Huuuu.

           -- Rumi, in Rumi: The Big Red Book, Coleman Barks (trans.)

Basic Bukowski

my style

I watch the jocks come out in the post parade

and one will win the race, the others will lose

but each jock must win sometime in some race

on some day, and he must do it often enough

or he is no longer a jockey. 

it’s like each of us sitting over a typewriter

tonight or tomorrow or next week or next month.

it’s like the girls on the street trying to score

for their pimps

and they have to do it often enough

or they are no longer whores

and we have to do it often enough

or we’re whores who can’t score. 

I would like a little more kindness and warmth

in the structure of things. 

I became a writer but when I was a boy

I used to dream of becoming the village idiot,

I used to lie in bed and imagine myself that careless idiot,

a planned confusion of not too much love or

effort. 

some would claim that I have succeeded

in this. 

— Charles Bukowski, in #4, “twisting the cap off the tube of night,” in Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems, ECCO, 2002, p. 189.

one of those 

Sartre was some fellow, oh yes,

he showed us the bone of

Nowhere and shook it in

our face.

the choice

is yours,

he said,

morals died with God,

you’re on your

own.

every now and then,

during the passing centuries,

some giant among men

arises,

shakes us truly,

shocks us out of our

sleep,

so that, at least for a

time, we become aware,

renewed

as we put our shoes on in

the morning,

as we trundle through our

tasks,

as we eat, defecate,

imagine love,

mail letters,

drive and walk the

city,

things and thoughts

assume different shapes.

Sartre was one of those

giants.

Paris, France, much of the

world

rumbled and bounced

because of

him. 

without some like him,

putting your shoes on in

the morning

would become so difficult

as to be almost

impossible. 

Jean Paul,

thanks

for everything. 

— Charles Bukowski, in #4, “twisting the cap off the tube of night,” in Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems, ECCO, 2002, pp. 207-208.

a model 

I want to be like that

man who entered the

restaurant

tonight,

he parked right in

front

of the front

door.

blocking off a good many

parked cars,

then slammed his car

door shut,

walked in,

his shirt hanging out

over his big

gut.

when he saw the

maitre d’, he

said, “hey, Frank,

get me a fucking

table by the

window!”

and Frank smiled and followed

him

along.

I want to be like

that man.

this way’s not

working. 

for over 70 years

now. 

— Charles Bukowski, in #5, “the big guy doesn’t have me out of here yet,” in Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems, ECCO, 2002, p. 273.

Thought-full Physics

              A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than in action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 49.

            The great artists, the great thinkers, and the great religious teachers of the world have had quite other standards. They have valued the individual; they have praised spontaneous impulse; they have conceived the good life as one lived from within, not forced into conformity to an external mechanism. They have not sought to make men convenient material for the manipulations of rulers, but to make them spiritually free to pursue what they believed to be good, regardless of law and public opinion. This was the teaching of Christ, of Buddha, of Lao-tsze; in another form, the same emphasis on the individual is to be found in Shakespere, and in Galileo’s resistance to the Inquisition.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 68.

            Patriotism and the class war are the two great dangers to the world in the present age. Material progress has increased men’s power of injuring one another, and there has been no correlative moral progress. Until men realize that warfare, which was once a pleasant pastime, has now become race suicide, until they realize that the indulgence of hatred makes social life impossible with modern powers of destruction, there can be no hope for the world. It is moral progress that is needed; men must learn toleration and the avoidance of violence, or civilization must perish in universal degradation and misery.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 75

            I contend that the ultimate constituents of matter are not atoms or electrons, but sensations, and other things similar to sensations as regards extent and duration. As against the view that introspection reveals a mental world radically different from sensations, I propose to argue that thoughts, beliefs, desires, pleasures, pains, and emotions are all built up out of sensations and images alone, and that there is reason to think that images do not differ from sensations in their intrinsic character. We thus effect a mutual rapprochement of mind and matter, and reduce the ultimate data of introspection (in our second sense) to images alone.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 99.

            Physics and psychology are not distinguished by their material. Mind and matter alike are logical constructions; the particulars out of which they are constructed, or from which they are inferred, have various relations, some of which are studied by physics, others by psychology. Broadly speaking, physics group particulars by their active places, psychology by their passive places.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 99.

            Pure science—the understanding of natural processes, and the discovery of how the universe is constructed—seems to me the most godlike thing that men can do. When I am tempted (as I often am) to wish the human race wiped out by some passing comet, I think of scientific knowledge and of art; these two things seem to make our existence not wholly futile. But the uses of science, even at the best, are on a lower plane. A philosophy which values them more than science itself is gross and cannot in the long run be otherwise than destructive of science.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 113.

            Physical is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 113.

            As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travel or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like every one else. There is of course no point in deliberately flouting public opinion; this is still to be under its domination, though in a topsy-turvy way. But to be genuinely indifferent to it is both a strength and a source of happiness.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 120.

Spirit of the Matter

             These four passions—acquisitiveness, vanity, rivalry, and love of power—are, after the basic instincts, the prime movers of almost all the happiness in politics. Their operation is intensified and regulated by the herd instinct. . . . Among men, as among other gregarious animals, the united action, in any given circumstances, is determined partly by the common passions of the herd, partly by imitation of leaders. The art of politics consists in causing the latter to prevail over the former. . . . Of the four passions we have enumerated, only one, namely acquisitiveness, is concerned at all directly with men’s relations to their material conditions. The other three—vanity, rivalry, and love of power—are concerned with social relations. I think this is the source of what is erroneous in the Marxian interpretation of history, which tacitly assumes that acquisitiveness is the source of all political actions.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 22.

            The prevention of free inquiry is unavoidable so long as the purpose of education is to produce belief rather than thought, to compel the young to hold positive opinions on doubtful matters rather than to let them see the doubtfulness and be encouraged to independence of mind. Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 26.

            In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we are alive, from the tyranny of death. Let us learn, that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that vision always before us.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 43.    

            A life lived in this spirit—the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing—has a certain fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 45.

            Of all the characteristics of ordinary human nature envy is the most unfortunate; not only does the envious person wish to inflict misfortune and do so whenever he can with impunity, but he is also himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, he derives pain from what others have.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 47.

            If, on the other hand, you have as part of the habitual furniture of your mind the past ages of man, his slow and partial emergence out of barbarism, and the brevity of his total existence in comparison with astronomical epochs—if, I say, such thoughts have molded your habitual feelings, you will realize that the momentary battle upon which you are engaged cannot be of such importance as to risk a backward step towards the darkness out of which we have been slowly emerging. . . . If you have attained to this outlook, a certain deep happiness will never leave you, whatever your personal fate may be. Life will become a communion with the great of all ages, and personal death no more than a negligible incident.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 48.

Timely Game

….And yet, even if it had gone as well as this, even if they [James Joyce and Proust] had later enjoyed  an animated cab ride and sat up until sunrise exchanging thoughts on music and the novel, art and nationality, love and Shakespeare, there would have been a critical discrepancy between the conversation and the work, between the chat and the writing, for Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time would never have resulted from their dialogue, even though these novels were among the most profound and sustained utterances both men were capable of—a point that highlights the limitations of conversation, when viewed as a forum in which to express our deepest selves.

What explains such limitations? Why would one be unable to chat, as opposed to write, In Search of Lost Time? In part, because of the mind’s functioning, its condition as an intermittent organ, forever liable to lose the thread or be distracted, generating vital thoughts only between stretches of inactivity or mediocrity, stretches in which we are not really “ourselves,” during which it may be no exaggeration to say that we are not quite all there as we gaze at passing clouds with a vacant, childlike expression. Because the rhythm of a conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we have said, and the missed opportunity of what we have not.

By contrast, a book provides for a distillation of our sporadic mind, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. To meet an author whose books one has enjoyed must, in this view, necessarily be a disappointment (“It is true that there are people who are superior to their books, but that’s because their books are not Books”), because such a meeting can only reveal a person as he exists within, and finds himself subject to, the limitations of time.

Furthermore, conversation allows us little room to revise our original utterances, which ill suits our tendency not to know what we are trying to say until we have had at least one go at saying it, whereas writing accommodates and is largely made up of rewriting, during which original thoughts—bare, inarticulate strands—are enriched and nuanced over time. They may thereby appear on a page according to the logic and aesthetic order they demand, as opposed to suffering the distortion effected by conversation, with its limits on the corrections or additions one can make before enraging even the most patient companion….

— Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, pp. 112-113.

Yet something in this forceful defense of reading and scholarship intimated Proust’s reservations. Without drawing attention to how contentious or critical the point was, he argued that we should be reading for a particular reason: not to pass the time, not out of detached curiosity, not out of a dispassionate wish to find out what Ruskin felt, but because, to repeat with italics, “there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one finds in oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what the master has felt.” We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts that we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thoughts that help us do so. A fulfilled academic life would therefore require us to judge that the writers we were studying articulated in their books a sufficient range of our own concerns, and that in the act of understanding them through translation or commentary, we would simultaneously be understanding and developing the spiritually significant parts of ourselves.

— Alain de Botton, Ibid., pp. 178-179.

Basket of Light

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson

Quick Thinks II

There probably is an easy road to success — the trouble is, it’s very hard to find.
— Ashleigh Brilliant, I Try to Take One Day at a Time, but Sometimes Several Days Attack Me at Once, July 27, p. 74. 

I would naturally prefer certainty, but it seems I will have to settle for hope.

— August 26, Ibid., p. 86.

At great expense, we have built a vast system of inter-connecting stupidities.

— September 1, Ibid., p. 91.

I want the maximum of progress with the minimum of change.

— October 3, Ibid., p. 103.

It’s no good being absolutely certain unless you also happen to be right.

— October 25, Ibid., p. 110.

Not being able to do everything is no excuse for not doing everything you can.

— November 2, Ibid., p. 114.

My life has been enriched with many wonderful insights, which I have now entirely forgotten.

— November 8, Ibid., p. 116.

Why should others have anything, when I don’t yet have everything?

— November 10, Ibid., p. 117.

I was hoping that, by the time I got this far, I would have gotten farther.

— November 29, Ibid., p. 123.

Cheer up! This is the yesterday that will not matter tomorrow.

— December 22, Ibid., p. 133.

You’d be surprised how often I had to go back in order to come this far forward.

— January 8, Ibid., p. 140.

Before you break the rules, remember that society took a long time making them.

— January 15, Ibid., p. 142.

Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on this life, with the knowledge that eternity is just up ahead.

— January 18, Ibid., p. 143.

I am always exact and precise (more or less).

— January 19, Ibid., p. 144.

The best time to look for help is before you need it.

— January 25, Ibid., p. 146.

It’s not easy to stay sane in a world which offers such a wonderful choice of madnesses.

— February 6, Ibid., p. 151.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the truth is being convinced that you already know it.

— February 10, Ibid., p. 153.

Life is too important to be taken as a joke, but too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

— February 23, Ibid., p. 157.

By the time I reach the end of this, I’ll know exactly how I should have started.

— February 28, Ibid., p. 159.

If this is today, I must be where I am.

— February 29, Ibid., p. 159.

Quick Thinks I

I keep quite busy just trying to conceal the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing.

— Ashleigh Brilliant, I Try to Take One Day at a Time, but Sometimes Several Days Attack Me at Once, March 16, p. 23. 

I wonder where the good luck is stored, and why its release and distribution are so irregular.

— March 17, Ibid., p. 23. 

Who can release me from my self-imposed sense of obligation?

— March 18, Ibid., p. 23.

I’m impatient to reach wisdom, but, for some reason, being in a hurry doesn’t seem to help.

— March 31, Ibid., p. 28.

Praise the Lord! But remember, he can tell the difference between praise and flattery.

— April 3, Ibid., p. 30.

The only requirement for eventually getting there is to keep going in the right direction.

— April 14, Ibid., p. 34.

Don’t expect me to be perfect all the time, but please recognize it when I am.

— April 23, Ibid., p. 37.

Regardless of what you’ve lost, what matters is what you do with what you have left.

— April 24, Ibid., p. 37.

You can get anywhere from anywhere: Don’t wait to be sure you’re starting from the right place.

— May 18, Ibid., p. 47. 

If you can’t find any other meaning in everything that’s happening, try to consider it as entertainment.

— May 20, Ibid., p. 48.

You can’t stop progress, but you can decide what is progress and what isn’t.

— June 16, Ibid., p. 59.

Defeat is not necessarily fatal — that’s why the world seems to be so full of losers.

— June 17, Ibid., p. 59.

Whether I deserve it or not, I give myself another chance every day.

— June 21, Ibid., p. 60.

Many things need reasons, but beautiful things are allowed to be beautiful for no reason at all.

— June 22, Ibid., p. 61. 

Why do we suffer great evils in silence, yet protest so loudly against minor inconvenience?

— July 2, 2011, Ibid., p. 66. 

I’m still not sure whether the end of my life will be a landing or a taking-off.

— July 11, Ibid., p. 69.

I’m not really disorderly — it’s just that, for my kind of order, there’s never enough space.

— July 18, Ibid., p. 71.

Living Life Live

     As Jung suggests, we may identify with our role-masks so totally that we forget they are only masks. Sometimes, the masks become more important than the reality.

     There are as many masks as there are people: their variety is limited only by the ingenuity of the people who adopt them. Yet, the wearing of the mask is an excursion into a “let’s pretend” world. As the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone wrote, “Every mask and every pretense can be reduced to one great evasion: the desire to overcome the sorrows of life with . . . . tricks of the imagination rather than with sincerity….”

     Do we put on masks to put people on? If we do, Jung and Silone remind us that we pay a price for the cover-up: we lose touch with the “real” person behind the mask.

— Loraine Moline, from “Multiple-Choice or True or False,” in Standpoints I: Choice & Responsibility, Alan Embree/Loraine Moline (eds.), p. 212.

“It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage, to pay the price . . . . One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as a cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.”

— Morris L. West, from The Shoes of the Fisherman, in Ibid., p. 228.

“I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness . . . . I think that it all will come right, that this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

— Anne Frank, from The Diary of a Young Girl, in Ibid., p. 228.

In the formulation of Psychologist Abraham Maslow, work functions in a hierarchy of needs: first, work provides food and shelter, basic human maintenance. After that, it can address the need for security and then for friendship and “belongingness.” Next, the demands of the ego arise, and the need for respect. Finally, men and women assert a larger desire for “self-actualization.” That seems a harmless and even worthy enterprise but sometimes degenerates into self-infatuation, a vaporously selfish discontent that dead-ends in isolation, the empty face that gazes back from the mirror.

— Lance Morrow, from “What is the Point of Working?”, in Standpoints II:Distance & Encounter, Alan Embree/Loraine Moline (eds.), p. 207.

“We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling class. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in Ibid., p. 227.

“Thoughtful Americans understand that the highest patriotism is not blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.”

— George McGovern, in Ibid., p. 227.

     Technological man will be his own master. Prior to his emergence, the outlines of technological civilization must remain dim save for the knowledge that it will have to rest upon a unified view of the universe, on ecological balance and on the essential identity of the human species. Technological man will create his own future, and it may contain some surprises even for him. The Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart wrote at the beginning of the long journey that brought Western man from the cocoon of medievalism through industrial civilization to our own day and its choice between chaos and transfiguration, but his words have timeless meaning: “There is no stopping place in this life — no, nor was there ever one for any man, no matter how far along his way he’d gone. This above all, then, be ready at all times for the gifts of God, and always for the new ones.”

— Victor C. Ferkiss, from Toward the Creation of Technological Man, in Standpoints III: Portent & Design, Alan Embree/Loraine Moline (eds.), p. 147.