Novels Written on Cellphones

See this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?_r=1&ex=1358485200&en=0b46d32f7c7d037c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

The new ways to continue to create never cease to amaze me ...

Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, "The Tale of Genji," a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Links to Japanese Sites:

Book Uploading Site of Starts Publishing

Orion, a Cell Phone Novel Site for Goma Books

The Novel, "If You"

Mika's blog

Enlarge This Image

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Rin, 21, tapped out a novel on her cellphone that sold 400,000 copies in hardcover.

Of last year's 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

the BIG question

This one is rather interesting: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html

The Edge Annual Question — 2008

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"

165 contributors; 112,600 words

Some rather interesting speculations skating across a superbly diverse range of disciplines and interests - very renaissance and worth some discussion.

Some versions containing everything in one document are located at http://www.bilyendi.com/misc (be careful - they are large files).

song lyrics

Now this is a good entry: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/write-a-hit-son.html

I especially like the lines Scott wrote:

"She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.

My heart heard a dream like ten thousand gay mittens."

The concept of lyrically rhyming gibberish is great - David Bowie's cut-up concept - based on work by William S Burroughs and later copied by Kurt Cobain - but, I suppose, many others

And you would think it would be so easy - except you read the comments by the blog readers where they try to write their own two lines worth of lyrics and you realise that 95% of them totally suck (and I mean, really really suck big big time) and the ones where they don't totally suck you realise that they have just quoted a song or lyric already written (the "your latest trick" entry for example) or something very similar.

So, even though it is supposedly irrelevant, random and gibberish, producing a work of art is still surprisingly difficult.

Meditation or Distractive Disturbance

In any circumstance good or bad, abandon
All hope from Buddhas and give up
All fears of suffering in Samsara.
Recognize that hope and fear are the
Magical display of your own mind
Of Primordial Purity.
Remain in the state where there is neither
Perceiver nor object of perception.
Let go into the immaculate space
Of Great Perfection beyond
Meditation or distractive disturbance.

-- Tibetan Scroll

Manna

A weird little story but rather interesting take on how some things could transpire:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Bass

For some awful god-forsaken reason, I find this one of the funniest XKCDs that I have seen (http://xkcd.com/368/)

Next year?

The clouds of sunset
Gather in the western sky,
And over the silent silvery Han
Rises a white jade moon.
Not often does life
Bring such beauty.
Where shall I see the moon
Next year?

-- Su T’ung-Po (1037-1101)

Prescience of Mortality

I was going for a run this morning, listening to Rammstein through my earphones and running along a main street on the footpath and thinking that at any time a person may drive out of the driveway of one of the apartment blocks there and hit me when I was running across the driveway and then I would be thrown onto the road in front of the speeding traffic and I would be royally squashed by a car or truck - stone dead. And the thing that I thought about was that then there would be no way for me to write and nobody would know that I was dead and that people would get upset that I hadn't responded to emails.

Crazy the things you think about when you are running along the street in one's middle years - because, of course, the issue of one's own mortality is now always strongly in the forefront of one's thoughts. (Well, not all the time, of couse, I don't want to sound that maudlin, but, as for most people, it is something that is there front and centre in their lives - or, at least, should be, in some manner, having to have to be dealt with).

Bitter Sweet Contemplation Of Another New Year

It is so interesting to contemplate new years coming at one at this age. A bitter-sweet combination of having been there and done that, totally, over and over in one's life (the same old work with the same old issues and stupidities that have to be dealt with), mixed with a healthy dollop of hope about new experiences and new opportunities opening up with new stages in one's life.

A delicate balancing act at this stage in our lives I think - it is a completely different mix when you are younger and when you are older than this. One of the beauties of living - that there are so many unique and interesting stages in ones lives that can never really be known about before experiencing them (for all the reading and talking that one may do with others about what they have gone through and how things work, the vast chaotic complexity of the universe means that your individual experience of having to live through a "stage" (so to speak) is exactly that - your unique individual experience. It has special elements all of your own - which obviously have a relationship to what others have gone through, but may still be subtly different enough to make you have to pay attention to work through what it is all about.

And the other thing is that if you spent ALL your time researching exactly how you should deal with a certain stage in one's life, then you would not actually be doing any living in that stage of one's life - which sort of defeats the purpose (but, indeed, is one of the ways that some people deal with certain stages in their life - for some people, it is their whole life). So, as a consequence, because one is not fully researching every little nuance that somebody may have documented about a certain stage or experience or life event, then one simply has to live through it oneself and work out, for oneself and by oneself, what to do about it all.

That is the beauty of art - so many people can express what is the same universal story (a love story, a tragedy, etc etc) in so many different forms - they experience the situation and feel the need to express it in their own unique and individual experience - even though, for instance, they could read Tristam and Iseult, or hear Tristan und Isolde, or see Romeo and Juliet, and connect with a similar experience.

Redit orbis in orbem

Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem.

-- Raleigh, Sir Walter

Siegen kommt nicht vom Liegen

Siegen kommt nicht vom Liegen

-- German Proverb


(Success doesn’t come to the sleeper.)

New Year Sonnet

A poem for the new year from Edmund Spenser (from Amoretti and Epithalamion). He only wrote it in 1595 (or a bit before) so I am sure that it is still as applicable now as it was then (source: http://uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/amoretti.html)


SONNET. IIII.

NEW yeare forth looking out of Ianus gate,
Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:
and bidding th' old Adieu, his passed date
bids all old thoughts to die in dumpish spright.
And calling forth out of sad Winters night,
fresh loue, that long hath slept in cheerlesse bower:
wils him awake, and soone about him dight
his wanton wings and darts of deadly power.
For lusty spring now in his timely howre,
is ready to come forth him to receiue:
and warnes the Earth with diuers colord flowre,
to decke hir selfe, and her faire mantle weaue.
Then you faire flowre, in whom fresh youth doth raine,
prepare your selfe new loue to entertaine.

Hope

You know, one of the most amazing things about human beings is HOPE.  The fact that almost anything can be endured, that almost anything becomes bearable, if there is some sort of hope around – either associated with some enterprise, or somewhere someplace in one’s life.  The beauty of hope is that it does not need to be reasonable – it can be hope from the most unlikely source, it can be the most irrational hope imaginable – yet it will still do the job – set the light to life so that life is now that to be loved, rather than that to be exhausted, even extinguished.  Hope diverts the eyes, to that which is good in one’s mind, away from the totality of horror that constitutes our lives here on earth.

 

I was reading an article in The New Yorker recently about mega-churches, seeker churches, in the USA, and one of the main points they made was that these churches are all about giving hope, here on earth, to those whose lives are in transition.  A new message, different from the established churches, in many ways, and one of the reasons for the phenomenal growth of these new churches.

 

I was reading a play recently written (not yet published), and it said:

“Exactly!  People have to go on living.  There is a new world now.  A new way of living.  I fear that Reshel knows that better than we do.”

“Who is Reshel?”

“You know him.  He’s gaining influence.  He’s been through other places, working his way around … he knows, Alor.”

“Know what?  What is there to know, now?”

“He knows that people need hope.”

“What hope could he bring?”

“False hope, then.  Perhaps he thinks he can control people.”

 

Old Creek

Old Creek

Since before anyone remembers
It has been clear shining like silver
Though the moonlight penetrates it
And the wind ruffles it
No trace of either remains
Today I would not dare
To expound the secret
Of the stream bed
But I can tell you that the blue dragon
Is coiled there.


-- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

A Pellucid Ocean

In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no
Different from ultimate reality,
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp—release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects
Are all one’s own mind;
There’s nothing except mind.

  -- Buddha

Python

This guy is correct - Python is a seriously great language and environment for developing systems!!!!

Source: http://xkcd.com/353/

BTW: this is a fantastic webcomic - for the inner geek in us all!!!!

Moonlit Dewdrops

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.


-- Sogyo (1667–1731)

Marriage - Minimalist, Female

Cute minimalist take on marriage from a female perspective: http://www.chloroformity.com/archives/000037.html

Bardo

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13848

Bardo

Dangerously frail is what his hand was like
when he showed up at our house,
three or four days after his death,
and stood at the foot of our bed.

Though we had expected him to appear
in some form, it was odd, the clarity
and precise decrepitude of his condition,
and how his hand, frail as it was,

lifted me from behind my head, up from the pillow,
so that no longer could I claim it was a dream,
nor deny that what your father wanted,
even with you sleeping next to me,

was to kiss me on the lips.
There was no refusing his anointing me
with what I was meant to bear of him
from where he was, present in the world,

a document loose from the archives
of form—not spectral, not corporeal—
in transit, though not between lives or bodies:
those lips on mine, then mine on yours.

Michael Collier

Dark Wild Realm
Mariner Books

Dedicated to the memory of Ben Branch.

Emotional Job Committment

Even though there have been heaps of issues about what has happened in the business, you are still rather emotionally committed to the job that you first got there.  Do you think that it is something that is universal, or just peculiar to you, or just peculiar to the situation that you find yourself in now, for this particular circumstance?  Are there some people born or generated (it is probably way more environmental than it is biological/genetic) that really invest emotional energy in what they are doing and whether they do well or not (achieve or succeed or not), as opposed to other people who really couldn't care less (in Australia, we say "Couldn't give a rat's arse").

 

Or maybe it is just varying threshold levels for this type of commitment and attachment, to differing situations.

If you were a true Buddhist, you would simply acknowledge that the ultimate goal is non-attachment, and that one would let go all the mental accoutrements of the job, the people, the circumstance and simply move through life.

Still interested to see how a Buddhist monk would run your job.

 

Stupidity and intelligence

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

  - Bertrand Russell

Blogging

The post below may indicate the actual raison d'etre of blogs.

They may never have been "money making" exercises, but rather, different forms of communication which have some relationship to what constitutes income (for a person or an organisation), but, yet, more importantly, are a type of general communication satisfying a human need ("I need to express myself" - some how, some way).  It is probably the circumstance that blogs were never designed to be "monetized" (as the crass terminology goes) and that Scott is just being aware that he was pushing against the "natural order" of what blogs were/are about.

It appears, from what has been indicated at the end of the blog, that Scott is planning to "revert" to the "I need to express myself freely" model for his blog.

And, maybe not so coincidentally, spend some more time on real life!!

---

From Scott Adams' DIlbert Blog on 26 November 2007:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/11/going-forward.html

Going Forward

I've decided to blog less. I posted daily (mostly) for two years, with the theory that my efforts would be compensated in four ways.

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there's no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn. It topped out at "trivial," even while the audience grew to substantial.

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn't read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book, to protect the rights of the people who already read it on the Internet, and might want to read it again for free sometime. You win.

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably "I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post." Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it. And a startling number of readers couldn't tell when I was serious or kidding, so most of the negative reactions were based on misperceptions.

Lastly, the blog has been a source of tremendous artistic satisfaction. I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That's why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially. I'll just do it less often, especially over the holidays. It's hard to tell the family I can't spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

Try www.reader.google.com to see blog posts without the ads.

Excerpt from Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

 

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1313/Steve-Jobss-Commencement-Speech-at-Stanford

Just Do It!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

-- Mark Twain

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

-- Luigi Pirandello

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

-- T. S. Elliot

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

-- Buddha

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.

-- Nora Roberts

Work and Life

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
-- Albert Camus

"Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route."
-- Albert Camus

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."
-- Albert Camus

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquillity and occupation which give happiness.
-- Jefferson, Thomas

Be strong and courageous, and do the work.
-- Chronicles 28:20

Time Off

Well, back at work. Had a wonderful time at Rotto - the view was magnificent - and did some writing. All good!

Passed Like Strangers

For twenty seven years
I've always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.

- Kokuin (10th century)

The Murderous Haunt of Impermanence

The world is unstable, like a house on fire. This is not a place where you stay long. The murderous haunt of impermanence comes upon you in a flash, no matter whether you are rich or poor, old or young. If you want to be no different from a Zen master or a buddha, just do not seek outwardly.

- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Arranging My Beard

Look at how our heads and feet
Are capped and shod without a second thought.
It is like the man who had a long beard,
But did not anguish at its length
Until one day someone asked him
How he arranged it when he went to bed.
First he put it inside, then outside the coverlet,
The whole night he spent looking for the best position.
And tossed and turned until the dawn of day.
In the end he wanted only to chop it off!
Although this fable is light and humorous,
Still it contains a much deeper meaning.
When I asked the dharma master about this,
He gave a smile and nodded his assent.

- Su Shih (1073)

Balanced Enlightenment

Oh, and finally got some of my balanced enlightenment back

Doppelgangers

Yeah, I had seen this in the past - really have wanted to load it up and enjoy but ... all these other things to do - what I really need is a proper Doppelganger (didn't bother with the umlaut) - one that I can give instructions to - broadly speaking - and let it go and experience - and as its experiences happen they are duplicated/replicated into my consciousness as well.

And why just stop at one extra - why not a whole platoon of doppelgangers, all acting independently yet synchronously, with direction.

Interesting to contemplate how one would process the mass of overlapping and interacting thought/consciousness streams - both in real-time and with post-processing (dreams may come into play to assist here).

Needs some excellent sci-fi writer with a serious background in neuroscience and psychology to piece this all together!

did muenchen munch the big one?

I had a late evening working yesterday - well late for me for this job (6:45pm) - I am making a concerted effort NOT to put in long hours and additional work when:
(1) I won't get paid for it, and
(2) I won't be appreciated for it; and
(3) it really won't make a difference anyway
(there are so many other people around who don't get things done and everything depends on everything and everyone else in a complex web of interaction, so in most instances, everything you do is "diluted" (so to speak) by everything else around you).

The only reason to do the extra work is for personal satisfaction and fulfilling one's own sense of achievement and worth - for whatever that is worth. When I was younger, I had a great belief in the efficacy of my own work, in that if I put in lots of hours and much effort, then good things would come of it.

In a way that is true - good things have come of it - but not in the manner that one would have thought nor dreamt of - and maybe not in the manner of reward commensurate with the perceived effort (at the least from the long vantage of aged distance). Hence, the current attitude. One wonders what that will mean for the "payoff" in the future?

repeat the same routines for myriad eons

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha.

Today, in your various activities, what do you lack?

The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.

- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Pelf

A nice piece of invective about the rich and powerful - even in times gone by ...

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

(Sir Walter Scott's - Lay of the Last Minstrel)

source: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pel1.htm

Evocative

An apt evocation: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/10/22/071022po_poem_gluck

---

Marriage

by Louise Glück October 22, 2007

All week they’ve been by the sea again

and the sound of the sea colors everything.

Blue sky fills the window.

But the only sound is the sound of the waves pounding the shore—

angry. Angry at something. Whatever it is

must be why he’s turned away. Angry, though he’d never hit her,

never say a word, probably.

So it’s up to her to get the answer some other way,

from the sea, maybe, or the gray clouds suddenly

rising above it. The smell of the sea is in the sheets,

the smell of sun and wind, the hotel smell, fresh and sweet

because they’re changed every day.

He never uses words. Words, for him, are for making arrangements,

for doing business. Never for anger, never for tenderness.

She strokes his back. She puts her face up against it,

even though it’s like putting your face against a wall.

And the silence between them is ancient: it says

these are the boundaries.

He isn’t sleeping, not even pretending to sleep.

His breathing’s not regular: he breathes in with reluctance;

he doesn’t want to commit himself to being alive.

And he breathes out fast, like a king banishing a servant.

Beneath the silence, the sound of the sea,

the sea’s violence spreading everywhere, not finished, not finished,

his breath driving the waves—

But she knows who she is and she knows what she wants.

As long as that’s true, something so natural can’t hurt her.

Let my doubts be cleared

What is this wonder-filled universe?
What constitutes seed?
Who centers the universal wheel?
What is this life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully,
Above space and time, names and descriptions?
Let my doubts be cleared.

- Vigyan Bhairava (~4000 years ago)

The Roaming of Sages

As to the roaming of sages,
They move in utter emptiness,
Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;
They run beyond convention
And go through where there is no gateway.
They listen to the soundless
And look at the formless,
They are not constrained by society
And not bound to its customs.

- Lao-tze

The Dust of Human Ambition

To shake off the
Dust of human ambition
I sit on moss in
Zen robes of stillness,
While through the window,
In the setting sun
Of late autumn,
Falling leaves whirl
And drop to the stone dais.

- Tesshu Tokusai (?–1366)

the essential art of zazen

Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it,
As soon as you are aware of it,
It will vanish.
If you remain for a long period
Forgetful of objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This is the essential art of zazen.

- Dogen (1200-1253)

Any season is a good season for you

In spring, hundreds of flowers;
In autumn, a harvest moon;
In summer a refreshing breeze;
In winter, snow will accompany you.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.

- Mu-mon 1228

Following dream paths at night

Which way
Did you come from,
Following dream paths at night,
While snow is still deep
In this mountain recess?

- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Goethe - Epigrams on possession, happiness, religion, love, literature, nature and knowledge

• We cannot possess what we do not understand.
• Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.
• Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.
• Love's torments sought a place of rest,
  Where all might drear and lonely be;
  They found ere long my desert breast,
  And nestled in its vacancy.
• The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
• Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
• We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt enters.

Earth's Answer - by William Blake

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.

"Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar;
Weeping o're,
I hear the father of the ancient men.

"Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chained in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear?


"Does spring hide its joy,
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the plowman in darkness plough?

"Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around!
Selfish, vain,
Eternal bane,
That free love with bondage bound."

Bad Dreams Are Good by Joni Mitchell

Bad Dreams Are Good

by Joni Mitchell

September 17, 2007

The cats are in the flower beds

A red hawk rides the sky

I guess I should be happy

Just to be alive

But

We have poisoned everything

And oblivious to it all

The cell-phone zombies babble

Through the shopping malls

While condors fall from Indian skies

Whales beach and die in sand

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan

And you cannot be trusted

Do you even know you are lying?

It's dangerous to kid yourself

You go deaf, dumb, and blind

You take with such entitlement

You give bad attitude

You have No grace

No empathy

No gratitude

You have no sense of consequence

Oh, my head is in my hands

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan

Before that altering apple

We were one with everything

No sense of self and other

No self-consciousness

But now we have to grapple

With this man-made world backfiring

Keeping one eye on our brother's deadly selfishness

Everyone's a victim here

Nobody's hands are clean

There's so very little left of wild Eden Earth

So near the jaws of our machines

We live in these electric scabs

These lesions once were lakes

We don't know how to shoulder blame

Or learn from past mistakes

So who will come to save the day?

Mighty Mouse. . . ? Superman. . . ?

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan

In the dark

A shining ray

I heard a three-year-old boy say

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan

====================

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/09/17/070917po_poem_mitchell?printable=true

Joni channeling JJ Rousseau and the Hippy 60's - well, sort of - but still applicable to today.

Goethe - Epitaph and translations

One version:
-------------

Epitaph

In boyhood stubborn, withdrawn,
In youth presumptuous, suspicious,
When mature, an active man,
In old age reckless, capricious. –
On your gravestones they'll make out:
This one was human, never doubt!



Another version:
-----------------

Epitaph

As a boy, reserved and naughty;
As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty;
As a man, for action inclined;
As a greybeard, fickle in mind. –
Upon they grave will people read:
This was a very man, indeed!




About the only thing which is the same is the last three lines of punctuation!
I think I am really going to have to get the original German poems and read them with a series of translations to hand. Commentators remark on the difficulty (some say "impossibility") of translating Goethe – I certainly have a good feeling for it now (after reading three different translations of various poems).

Goethe - Epigrams on Defects, Strengths, Ignorance, Suffering and Satisfaction

• By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.
• Nothing is worse than active ignorance.
• Man . . . knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Goethe - Epigrams on The World, Life and Doing

• The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
• The passing day is prey to error. Time commands success and achievement.
• Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

Goethe - Every Day (epigram)

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Goethe - Prometheus

Prometheus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
translated by Erich Harth

---

Cover your heavens
with clouds and vapors, Zeus
and, like the boy who lops off
heads of thistles,
try your hand on oaks
and mountaintops.

But you can't touch my earth,
my cabin that you did not build,
my hearth whose glow you watch
with envy.

There's none more pitiful than you, Gods!
The breath of our prayers
is your paltry nourishment,
our meager altar gifts sustain
your dreams of majesty.
You'd starve
but for the foolish hopes
of children and beggars.

When I was a child and didn't know
which way to turn,
I raised my eyes bewildered to the sky
as though beyond it were an ear
to listen to my sorrows,
a heart like mine
to pity my distress.

Who stood with me against the Titans'
wantonness,
who rescued me from death,
from slavery?
Was it not you, my own, my glowing heart
that did all this?
And, cheated, in your youthful goodness
gave glowing thanks to him
who nods up there?

And I should worship thee? What for?
Have you ever
lightened my pain when I was anguished?
Ever
stilled the tears
when I was frightened?
Was it not almighty time
and eternal fate,
my masters as well as yours,
who forged me into manhood?

Did you, by chance, suppose
that I should hate life,
flee into deserts,
just because
not all my fancy dreams
had come to pass?

I sit here, shaping men and women
in my image,
a race destined, like I,
to suffer and to cry,
to savor joy, to laugh,
and disregard you
as I did.

Goethe - Human Limits (excerpt)

A little ring
Confines our lives,
And many generations
For ever they link
On to their being's
Infinite chain.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Human Limits" (excerpt, last stanza), p 35 from "Roman Elegies and other poems and epigrams", trans. Michael Hamburger, Anvil, 1996

Dissolve their history according to conditions

You have obstacles only because you have not realized the emptiness of the eons. Genuine Wayfarers are never like this; they just dissolve their history according to conditions, dressing according to circumstances, acting when they need to act, and sitting when they need to sit, without any idea of seeking the fruits of buddhahood.

- Lin Chi (d 867?)

The Secret of the Universe

This may sound a little strange, but it is not quite so paradoxical as the case of Jacob Boehme, to whom Jove's thunderbolt revealed the secret of the universe while he was looking at a pewter bowl.

[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters from Italy, p 49, Penguin 60s Classics] [written on 8 October 1786]

Our times are worse than we think

The art of mosaic, which gave the Ancients their paved floors and the Christians the vaulted Heaven of their churches, has now been degraded to snuffboxes and bracelets. Our times are worse than we think.

[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters from Italy, p 48, Penguin 60s Classics] [written on 8 October 1786]

(Always "our times" are the most degraded and the worst. It wasn't true then Wolfgang (witness your true self) and it isn't true now).

Seeing the World

My tendency to look at the world through the eyes of the painter whose pictures I have seen last has given me an odd idea. Since our eyes are educated from childhood on by the objects we see around us, a Venetian painter is bound to see the world as a brighter and gayer place than most people see it. We northerners who spend our lives in a drab and, because of the dirt and the dust, an uglier country where even reflected light is subdued, and who have, most of us, to live in cramped rooms - we cannot instinctively develop an eye which looks like such delight at the world.

[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters from Italy, p 47, Penguin 60s Classics] [written on 8 October 1786]

Exactly! Thus, people like living where I live rather than places in the northern hemisphere because of the same brilliance and radiance of light and environment. Makes a difference to the approach to life.

(Also good to know that there is no thought that I can think that has not already been thought hundreds of years before by someone smarter and more eloquent!)

Monkey Pureness

The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He'll never give up.
If he'd let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
- Hakuin (1685-1768)

True Buddha Dharma Way

Someone asked,
What do you mean by the true Buddha, the true Dharma and the true Way? Would you be good enough to explain to us?
The Master said,
The Buddha- this is the cleanness and purity of the mind.
The Dharma- this is the shining brightness of the mind.
The Way- this is the pure light that is never obstructed anywhere. The three are in fact one. All are empty names and have no true reality.
- Lin-chi (d.867)

MorOn-Star

Funny how all the features of our lives that are for our safety/security/protection and offered by some level of the government draw stiff resistance. However, market them as a convenience and suddenly people line up for it.

Imagine: We're putting a GPS chip in all your vehicles so that we have a record of everywhere you go with it. If there's a crash or carjacking, we can track it down.

Customers scream "Big Brother" and summarily reject it.

Reality: "MorON-Star. How can I help?"
"I locked my keys in the car! I can't get in!"
"What's your passcode?"
"I don't remember, but hurry up because the top's down and it's starting to rain!"

a thousand meters of melancholy

I shall go to the store of the tailor of lovers, tomorrow;
Wearing my long robe made from a thousand meters of melancholy.
He can cut you off from Yazid and sew you onto Zayd;
he can pair you with this one and separate you from the other.
He can attach you to one to whom you give your heart for life;
What a fabric, what a stitch, what a miracle-making hand.

(Divan 216:1-3)

Why by Philip Schultz (August 27, 2007)

Why

by Philip Schultz

August 27, 2007

is this man sitting here weeping

in this swanky restaurant

on his sixty-first birthday, because

his fear grows stronger each year,

because he's still the boy running

all out to first base, believing

getting there means everything,

because of the spiders climbing

the sycamore outside his house

this morning, the elegance of

a civilization free of delusion,

because of the boyish faces

of the five dead soldiers on TV,

the stoic curiosity in their eyes,

their belief in the righteousness

of sacrifice, because innocence

is the darkest place in the universe,

because of the Iraqis on their hands

and knees looking for a bloody button,

a bitten fingernail, evidence of

their stolen significance, because

of the primitive architecture

of his dreams, the brutal egoism

of his ignorance, because he believes

in deliverance, the purity of sorrow,

the sanctity of truth, because of

the original human faces of his wife

and two boys smiling at him across

this glittering table, because of

their passion for commemoration,

their certainty that goodness continues,

because of the spiders clinging to

the elegance of each moment, because

getting there still means everything?

Careful

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you're lured to watch,
Are a wall before the truth.
- Sogyo (18th century)

How (Elizabeth Sutherland)

How

 

Out in the field, where the noone resides

Gaping like a fish, for one and the same

Squealing like a hyena, surrounded.

One and the different.

 

There's pain in this muscle.

Pain pain.

In a place been reached too oft.

Turn off?

It can't it won't.

It won't.

It can't.

 

There are bugs under my skin?

Only scars. Her mistake.

 

The deceit, the impenetrable wall;

Maybe not so much? 

This mile of anguish, out in the meadow

Where the lambs run free and brisk,

There is no free.

There is only brisk

And hast

And rush rush mad.

With no air, shark shark, fish.

 

The bugs never disappear – an age or two they stay,

But how long is an age?

How wide is a field?

How wet is a fish?

How gleeful is a hyena?

How minute is a bug?

How free is a lamb?

 

The Ship of Death - D. H. Lawrence

The Ship of Death

	I
	Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
	and the long journey towards oblivion.
	The apples falling like great drops of dew
	to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
5	And it is time to go, to bid farewell
	to one's own self, and find an exit
	from the fallen self.
	II
	Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
	O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
10	The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
	thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
	And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
	Ah! can't you smell it?
	And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
15	finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
	that blows upon it through the orifices.
	III
	And can a man his own quietus make
	with a bare bodkin?
	With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
20	a bruise or break of exit for his life;
	but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
	Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
	ever a quietus make?
	IV
	O let us talk of quiet that we know,
25	that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
	of a strong heart at peace!
	How can we this, our own quietus, make?
	V
	Build then the ship of death, for you must take
	the longest journey, to oblivion.
30	And die the death, the long and painful death
	that lies between the old self and the new.
	Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
	already our souls are oozing through the exit
	of the cruel bruise.
35	Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
	is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
	already the flood is upon us.
	Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
	and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
40	for the dark flight down oblivion.
	VI
	Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
	has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
	We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
	and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
45	and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
	We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
	and our strength leaves us,
	and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
	cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
	VII
50	We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
	is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
	of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
	A little ship, with oars and food
	and little dishes, and all accoutrements
55	fitting and ready for the departing soul.
	Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
	and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
	in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
	with its store of food and little cooking pans
60	and change of clothes,
	upon the flood's black waste
	upon the waters of the end
	upon the sea of death, where still we sail
	darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
65	There is no port, there is nowhere to go
	only the deepening black darkening still
	blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
	darkness at one with darkness, up and down
	and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
70	and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
	She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
	She is gone! gone! and yet
	somewhere she is there.
	Nowhere!
	VIII
75	And everything is gone, the body is gone
	completely under, gone, entirely gone.
	The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
	between them the little ship
	is gone
80	she is gone.
	It is the end, it is oblivion.
	IX
	And yet out of eternity a thread
	separates itself on the blackness,
	a horizontal thread
85	that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
	Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
	A little higher?
	Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn,
	the cruel dawn of coming back to life
90	out of oblivion.
	Wait, wait, the little ship
	drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
	of a flood-dawn.
	Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
95	and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
	A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
	X
	The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
	emerges strange and lovely.
	And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
100	on the pink flood,
	and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
	filling the heart with peace.
	Swings the heart renewed with peace
	even of oblivion.
105	Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
	for you will need it.
	For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

Wherever and whenever

Wherever and whenever
The mind is found
Attached to anything,
Make haste to detach
Yourself from it.
When you tarry for
Any length of time
It will turn again into
Your old home town.

-- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)

I watch William Blake, who spotted angels

Blake

by Adam Zagajewski

August 13, 2007

I watch William Blake, who spotted angels

every day in treetops

and met God on the staircase

of his little house and found light in grimy alleys—

Blake, who died

singing gleefully

in a London thronged

with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,

William Blake, engraver, who labored

and lived in poverty but not despair,

who received burning signs

from the sea and from the starry sky,

who never lost hope, since hope

was always born anew like breath,

I see those who walked like him on graying streets,

headed toward the dawn's rosy orchid.

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

---

Not Worried About The Future

Scott Adams having some fun methinks! http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/08/not-worried-abo.html

---

The Way of Heaven

The Way of heaven is silent,
It has no appearance, no pattern.
It is so vast that its
Limit cannot be reached;
It is so deep that it
Cannot be fathomed.
It is always evolving
Along with people,
But knowledge cannot grasp it.
It turns like a wheel,
Beginninglessly and endlessly,
Effective as a spirit.
Open and empty,
It goes along with the flow,
Always coming afterward
And never in the forefront

-- Lao- tzu

There must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest

"There must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest." - Jorge Luis Borges

Sharing Happiness

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

-- Buddha

HARRASSED BY REAL UNSEEN EVIL ENITY

HARRASSED BY REAL UNSEEN EVIL ENITY:

You know, the diversity of crud on the internet is never ending and always amazing!
I laughed and laughed when I read this entry (in an otherwise serious site where people were trying to get answers to things they wanted to find out about - the original was at: http://askearth.com/go/view_request?request=130317).
I am still not sure whether this guy was totally for real or a faker - but if he was the latter (faking it for the "laffs", he did a spectacularly good job). Anyway, I laughed and laughed until I turned into an evil enity (sic)!

Question

HARRASSED BY REAL UNSEEN EVIL ENITY

"Member 5369987" (C) Does any one know (other than church) where i can find help to remove this UNSEEN EVIL ENITY that has followed me from city to city in the last 15 year's,it hangs around all day and nite and harasses me,i tried all things possible to get rid of it,even priest! I feel i am right with God,I need someone who will persist till this thing is gone, One try may not be enough to eliminate 15 years of it being around. I never believed in these things until it happened to me, I THANK YOU FOR YOUR SEREOUS RESPONCES JOHN.

How can I utter one word when each moment My perplexity is more perplexing

There is no edge to my vast desert;
There is no peace for my heart and my soul.
The world is taken, from end to end, by image and form;
Which of these images is mine?
If you see a severed head on the way
Rolling in the direction of the battlefied;
Ask him, ask him concerning my secrets
For, from him you hear my hidden mysteries.
What if one ear could be found;
Suited to understand the speech of my birds.
What if one bird could fly,
Who wore my ring of Solomon's secrets [around her neck].
What am I saying? when I know telling this tale
Is beyond my limits and my ability is.
How can I utter one word when each moment
My perplexity is more perplexing.

(Divan 239:1-8)

There are roads, But they do not reach the world;

As for me, I delight
In the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines
And rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness
I am completely free,
With my friends,
The white clouds,
Idling forever.
There are roads,
But they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless,
Who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit,
Alone in the night,
While the round moon
Climbs up Cold Mountain.

-- Han shan ( 8th century)

Free to use the treasure house

My teacher said to me,
"The treasure house
within you contains everything,
and you are free to use it.
You don't need to seek outside."

-- Dazhu (487–593)