Men and Machine
Rockit
15th Birthday
The Embrace
P.B. Shelley
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
Saturday Colors
P.B. Shelley
Friday, June 12, 2009
The Art Lesson
Have a Great Weekend!
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Natura Morte
Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some 20 or 30 farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Bikers
George Bernard Shaw
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Let's Fly
Review by William Timothy Lukeman.
More than 40 years later, this short but insightful volume remains one of the best in-depth discussions of the human psyche at its darkest. Erich Fromm brings all his decades of knowledge & experience to this descent into the roots of what he aptly calls "necrophilia," a literal love of death born from an overwhelming fear of life.
What's especially fascinating is that as he analyzes the psychology of the necrophiliac, we can immediately recognize so many of the people who run & ruin our world today, from the most personal level to the global. We've all met them, and all too often suffered because of them. Their obsessive fear & compulsive need to control that fear invariably affects the rest of us, precisely because we refuse to meekly submit to their murderous control.
But what exactly does Fromm mean by "necrophiliac," anyway?
To condense his rich book into a few lines is an impossible task, but here's the gist of it: the necrophiliac personality fears life because of its messiness, its randomness, its uncontrollability. And so he (it's so often "he," by the way) does his best to control it through brute force, fear, torture, and ultimately death.
And how do we recognize these necrophiliacs?
No matter what their political, religious, or ideological affiliations, they share the same basic traits & worldview. They worship strength, toughness, a lack of tender emotions; they glorify the mechanical & do their best to become machines themselves: they loathe yet are fascinated by decay, disease, filth. Hence they often have rigid ideas about sexuality (one of the most uncontrollable aspects of living things), and espouse strict, letter-of-the-law moral codes concerning it ... although their private lives are frequently an immersion in what they publically denounce as disgusting.
A familiar picture begins to take shape: the stern, self-righteous, excessively judgmental, often uniformed strong man, one who prides himself on being able to make "the tough decisions," untroubled by reflection or regret. The uniform can be military, or a business suit, or a minister's collar, or any clothing that embodies status -- because it's status, rank, and power that matters most to them. And they have no problem killing others in the name of some greater good, if anything seeing it as an outward emblem of their unyielding virtue.
The poet Lew Welch wrote about this sort of mentality in "The Basic Con" - "Those who can't find anything to live for, / always invent something to die for. / Then they want the rest of us to / die for it too." Whether it's for their god, their politics, their bank accounts, or their own desperate need to believe in their own superiority, they project their inner loathing & emptiness onto the rest of us, making us scapegoats for their own inability to face the uncertainty & wonder of life. They must have answers for everything, and can't tolerate questions, or doubts, or ambiguity.
This is a book that, all too sadly, will never be outdated. Each new generation faces the same necrophiliac mindset, dressed up in the latest fashions of the day, as recent history has taught us. All the more reason to keep this book in print -- most urgently recommended!
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Sunday, June 7, 2009
Breakfeast in Bed
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Saturday, June 6, 2009
Dreaming with Cubes
• Exuberance is beauty.
• Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
• Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
• If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
• In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
• No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
• One thought fills immensity.
• The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.
• The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
• The true method of knowledge is experiment.
• You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
• What is now proved was once only imagined.
• Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
• To generalize is to be an idiot.
• A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
• To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.
• When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
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Friday, June 5, 2009
Authority and Innocence
From The Wisdom of the Heart by H. Miller.
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Thursday, June 4, 2009
Reaching
[ Still Life ]
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
Reflections of Writing, The Wisdom of the Heart by Henry Miller.
[ El Arte no enseña nada, salvo el significado de la Vida. ]
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Coatzacoalcos River
From Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
The legend claims the Quetzalcoatl the Aztec god was on board of a raft made of a serpent skin and navigated until became lost into the horizon. Ever since the river has been known as the Coatzacoalcos River which means “The place where the serpent hides.”
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Wheel
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Monday, June 1, 2009
June 2009 Theme Day: Feet
than to live on your knees."
Emiliano Zapata
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Friday, May 29, 2009
The Forgotten Land / Tierra Olvidada
What can I say...
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
Flores Nocturnas / Night Flowers
G.K. Chesterton
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Mannequin Maker
W. Shakespeare
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Monday, May 25, 2009
Free Market
Abraham Lincoln
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Friday, May 22, 2009
Encuentro / The Meeting
El increÃble Rothko en su diario caminar, encontró caÃdo de un árbol, un asustado pajarito al cual después de examinarlo detenidamente, de inmediato lo llevo con su veterinario, quien le dijo que tenia muy pocas probabilidades de sobrevivir, porque sin su madre, estos recién nacidos se niegan a alimentarse y mueren en dos o tres dÃas.
Bueno, lleva dos, luce bien y esta comiendo, seguro el IncreÃble Rothko se lo sugirio, ojalá luche para salvarse y asà vuele y contemple asombrado esta pequeña parte del mundo. Mayo 22 2009.
The incredible Rothko in his daily walk, found this fallen little bird and take care of it and invited to his cozy home.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Sprayed Moods
Digital graffiti 7.
Street Gallery.
La Culpa / Guilt.
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation.
The other eight are unimportant.
From Sexus by Henry Miller.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Raindrops of May
Congratulations, you are alive. Here you are. Once, you weren’t here. And one
day, you won’t be. All your drama and trauma, all your ideas, all the things
you like and don’t like, all the things that happen that you judge your life by
are but a dream. Just a dream. Dreams are not to be taken lightly, but they
are dreams.
In the middle of all these dreams, there is a place within you where you can
truly be awake. In that awakening, there is no judgment. There aren’t issues
of good and bad, right and wrong. You are not judged. There are no yardsticks
and no races. Nobody is standing there saying, “You won” or “You lost.” Just a
beautiful reality that you are alive.
You have the ability to understand, to know, to admire. These are your
qualities. You have the ability to get angry and the ability to be calm. You
have the ability to be in turmoil and the ability to be in peace. Which do you use the most? Frustration. Anger. Disappointment.
Once in awhile, you actually find yourself happy. When you are, it is such a big deal that you think about it for years to
come. And when you get older and your short‑term memory goes, you will say, “I remember when I was there. Oh, that was so beautiful.”
You have some other qualities: You can appreciate this existence. You can truly be happy in a timeless way—no camera needed, no special circumstances required. You can be in the joy that springs from your heart every single day.
Most people are trying to understand their mind. People have been trying to do
that for an extremely long time. And they never will. They write books and say
beautiful things, but it is like having a garden that looks spectacular though every
flower is made out of paper and every tree is plastic. The grass is fake, so you
don’t ever have to cut it.
The disadvantage is that flowers don’t bloom there and spring never comes. Bees
never fly, no flower has a beautiful aroma, and the trees do not sway in the wind.
Even though it all looks pretty, it is static—as in dead.
That is why it is so important to have a living experience. Living. Breathing.
Existing. Feeling. Thinking. Understanding. Knowing. That’s what is real.
What does your garden look like? Have you smelled the flowers? Have you ever seen a bee? Are there birds in the trees? Is there a season when it looks fine and you are content?
People get used to being frustrated. They get used to being mad, upset. They
say, “That’s life. Good times, bad times—it’s all okay.” What is okay? Me being
lost? Me ignoring my own nature? Me being away from myself? Me not
recognizing myself?
That’s why every one of us needs so desperately to understand that there can
be no compromises, that an effort needs to be made every single day to see,
to feel what we have been given—from the heart, from our very basic being.
Know that a time will come when all that you rely on will slowly fade away.
What will remain? You. You will still be able to experience, but erosion is afoot.
It happens so slowly you don’t notice it, but it’s afoot. Every day, every
second, it marches on, but above it floats a beautiful reality that is timeless.
You are alive. And till the day you are alive no more, you can go inside and
feel happiness; you can feel joy.
There is hope. Your heart is knocking on the door. Open up. Feel, see, understand, realize, know. Be in that joy, be in
that feeling every moment. Understand the beauty of the possibility to feel clarity, to feel gratitude, to be thankful to be
alive. I’m here to remind you: don’t wait. Wake up. See, feel, admire, be a part of your existence.
Maharaji Speaks.
Maharaji speaking at an event in Barcelona, Spain, on February 15, 2009. Duration: 43 minutes. (Highly Recommended)
Gracias por su visita / Thanks for visiting.
Monday, May 18, 2009
No Left Turn
One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.
From Writers at Work by Henry Miller.
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Bike
I took to calling my bike my friend, I carried on silent conversations with it. And of course I paid it the best attention. Which meant that every time I returned home I stood the bike upside down, searched for a clean rag and polished the hubs and the spokes. Then I cleaned the chain and greased it afresh. That operation left ugly stains on the stone in the walkway. My mother would complain, beg me to put a newspaper under my wheel before starting to clean it. Sometimes she would get so incensed that she would say to me in full sarcasm, 'I'm surprised you don't take that thing to bed with you!' And I would retort -- 'I would if I had a decent room and a big enough bed.
After a time, habituated to spending so many hours a day on my bike, I became less and less interested in my friends. My wheel had now become my one and only friend. I could relay on it, which is more than I could say about my buddies. It's too bad no one ever photographed me with my friend. I would give anything now to know what we looked like.
I took care of my wheel as one would look after a Rolls Royce. If it needed repairs I always brought it to the same shop on Myrtle Avenue run by a named Ed Perry. He handled the bike with kid gloves, you might say. He would always see to it that neither front nor back wheel wobbled. Often he would do a job for me without pay, because, as he put it, he never saw a man so in love with his bike as I was.
Often I was in the saddle, so to speak, from morning till evening. I rode everywhere and usually at a good clip. Some days, I encountered some of the six-day riders at the fountain in Prospect Park. They would permit me to set the pace for them along the smooth path that led from the Park to Coney Island.
From The Quotable Cyclist. My Bike and other Friends by Henry Miller.
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Saturday, May 16, 2009
Freedom
Freedom includes everything. Freedom converts everything to its basic nature, which is perfection.
From Sexus by Henry Miller.
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Friday, May 15, 2009
The Runner
It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
The Book of Positive Quotations. Henry Miller.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Fire from Within
Carl Sagan
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