Sunday, June 16, 2024

tonight







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Everything will be alright tonight
Everything will be alright tonight

No one moves
No one talks
No one thinks 
No one walks tonight

Everyone will be alright tonight
Everyone will be alright tonight

No one moves
No one talks
No one thinks 
No one walks tonight

I’m gonna love you till the end
I will love you till I reach the end
I will love her till I die
I will see you in the sky
Tonight

Everything will be alright tonight
Everything will be alright tonight

No one moves
No one talks
No one thinks 
No one walks tonight



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We are one, after all, you and I.

Together we suffer, together exist,
and forever will recreate each other.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin



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I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. —Fernando Pessoa

 





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My originality consists in putting logic of the visible 
to the service of the invisible.


—Odilon Redon
The Death of Buddha



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So what can they tell us,
the writers of dreambooks,
the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,
the doctors
with couches for analyses—
if anything fits,
it’s accidental,
and for one reason only,
that in our dreamings,
in their shadowings and gleamings,
in their multiplings, inconceivablings,
in their haphazardings and widescatterings at times
even a clear-cut meaning may slip through.


—Wisława Szymborska
Dreams, excerpt
Clare Cavanaugh and Stanisław Barańczak version



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Wednesday, June 12, 2024

If the eye were a complete animal, sight would be its soul. —Aristotle

   






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Blessed be you,
mighty matter,
irresistible march of evolution,
reality ever newborn;
you who, by constantly
shattering our mental categories,
force us to go ever further
and further in our
pursuit of the truth.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955)
Hymn of the Universe



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Thinking and prayer are much the same thing anyway, when you stop to think about it ... Prayer goes up and thought comes down—or so it seems. 
As far as I can tell, that's the only difference.


—Alan Bradley
A Red Herring Without Mustard



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Saturday, June 8, 2024

exercises

 






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First, forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
and do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
and then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible 

follow these by forgetting to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them
around after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count 

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backwards
starting with even numbers
with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
forgetting it all until everything
is continuous again 

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire 

forget fire


—W. S. Merwin



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Friday, June 7, 2024

certain(ty








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Where does unbelief begin? 
When I was young 

there were degrees of certainty. 
I could say, Yes I know that I have two hands.
Then one day I awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally 
disappear.


—Anne Carson 



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Sunday, June 2, 2024

wonders







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I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves… mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business… trillions apart… yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages… before any eyes could see… year after year… thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what?… on a dead planet, with no life to entertain.

Never at rest… tortured by energy… wasted prodigiously by the sun… poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves… and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity… living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein… dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle onto the dry land… here it is standing… atoms with consciousness… matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea… wonders at wondering… I… a universe of atoms… an atom in the universe.


—Richard Feynman, 1955
An Untitled Ode to the Wonder of Life
listen to Yo-yo Ma and read the wonder of Maria Popova here



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