R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 18

The myths have been murderous : George Oppen

Last Year’s Words

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”





~ 
T.S. Eliot

2014

“[But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.] He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

~ Aldous Huxley, from The Doors of Perception

Merry Christmas

Nothing But A Child

(Steve Earle)

Once upon a time in a far off land

Wise men saw a sign and set out aross the sand

Songs of praise to sing, they travelled day and night

Precious gifts to bring, guided by the light

They chased a brand new star, ever towards the west

Across the mountains far, but when it came to rest

They scarce believed their eyes, they’d come so many miles

And the miracle they prized was nothing but a child

Nothing but a child could wash these tears away

Or guide a weary world into the light of day

And nothing but a child could help erase these miles

So once again we all can be children for awhile

Now all around the world, in every Iittle town

Everyday is heard a precious little sound

And every mother kind and every father proud

Looks down in awe to find another chance allowed

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Trut...

 

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

~ ALBERT EINSTEIN

70

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

~ Jim Morrison

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around my small men...

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around my small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.” 

~ Muhammad Ali

 

Having …

“Having too many THINGS, Americans spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on it’s knees, miserable, greedy and sick.”

~ John Steinbeck

Be Thankful …

What If?

What if the universe is an open wound, a catastrophe in making? What then? Do we snuggle within the voids between the stars? Do we build our homes in the shambling ruins of dead quasars? Mapping the desire of dust swirling in the bright structures of far nebulae? How should we think the thought of the brain itself being that it too was once a cold star? That every time I smile I am enacting the death of galaxies? Shall I wander among frozen time, passive and alone, gazing on the silence that is almost palpable; or, should I actively participate in the accelerated heat death of this blasted thought? Tell me, who am I? Am I a thought between two voids, a point of decision that cuts the truth from lies of a broken symmetry? How do I expose the emptiness that is? How efface the face that is no one and nothing? Where is the mask to hide this void? Elide the ‘I’ of its burden? To touch another is almost suicide. To kiss the lips of my lover is to suture desire and follow the slitted wound through the middle gap of infinity. The gap is our joy and our horror, the very site of our birth and death. Once exposed to its existence we forever wander the labyrinths of light between great clusters folded among black holes channeling their energy which is our only ever life. Between Being and the Real we all dance laughing like children on the edge of a great Ocean: the sun, moon, and stars cascading with the waves as they spill over our young bodies. Bounded by an infinite sea we joyously dive into the brink knowing our time come round at last when we too shall build our towers among the ruins of stars…

~ S.C. Hickman