My subject enlarges itself,
becomes methodized
and the whole,
though it be long,
stands almost complete
and finished in my mind,
so that I can survey it,
like a fine picture
or a beautiful statue,
at a glance.
Nor do I hear
in my imagination
the parts successively,
I hear them all at once.
What a delight this is!
All this inventing,
this producing,
takes place in
a pleasing, lively dream.
--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
--------------------------------------------------------
cloudshow from Boucher Trail
Little Colorado River Mozart: "Piano Concerto No. 21"
Zoroaster Rapid
Whenever life
gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
and things seem hard or tough,
and people are stupid,
obnoxious or daft,
and you feel that
you've had quite enough,
just remember that you're standing
on a planet that's evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
in the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side.
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
but out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
we go around every two hundred million years.
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
in this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whiz;
as fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
twelve million miles a minute
and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth;
and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
because there's bugger all down here on Earth.
A monk asked Joshu, "What would you say when I come to you with nothing?" Joshu said, "Fling it down on the ground." Protested the monk, "I said I had nothing. What shall I let go?" "If so, carry it away," Joshu replied. --D.T. Suzuki An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
Sunshine is delicious,
rain is refreshing,
wind braces us up,
snow is exhilarating.
There is really
no such thing
as bad weather,
only different kinds
of good weather.
--John Ruskin
if there's a way to say i'm sorry,
perhaps i'll stay another evening beside your door,
and watch the moon rise inside your window,
where jewels are falling, and flowers weeping, and strangers laughing,
because you're dreaming that i have gone.
and if i don't know why i am going, perhaps i'll wait
beside the pathway where no one is coming
and count the questions i turned away from,
or closed my eyes to, or had no time for, or passed right over,
because the answers would shame my pride.
i've heard them say the word forever
but i don't know if words have meaning
when they are used in fear of losing
what can't be borrowed, or lent in blindness,
or blessed by pageantry, or sold by preachers,
while you're still walking your separate ways.
sometimes we bind ourselves together
and seldom know the harm in binding
the only feeling that cries for freedom
and needs unfolding, and understanding
and time for holding a simple mirror
with one reflection to call your own
if there's an end to all our dreaming,
perhaps i'll go while you're still standing beside your door,
and i'll remember your hands encircling a bowl of moonstones,
a lamp of childhood, a robe of roses,
because your sorrows were still unborn.
There is a story of a woman running away from tigers.
She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer.
When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging.
She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.
Tigers above, tigers below.
This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
--Pema Chödrön The Wisdom of No Escape
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?
So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (which certainly was not here before, said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words DRINK ME beautifully printed on it in large letters. **
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. Who are you? said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, I — I hardly know, sir, just at present —
at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. What do you mean by that?
said the Caterpillar sternly. Explain yourself! I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir, said Alice, because I'm not myself, you see. I don't see, said the Caterpillar. I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly, Alice replied very politely, for I can't understand it myself to begin with;
and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing. **
You should learn
not to make personal remarks,
Alice said with some severity; it's very rude.
The Hatter opened his eyes
very wide on hearing this;
but all he said was, Why is a raven
like a writing-desk? Come, we shall have
some fun now! thought Alice. I'm glad they've begun
asking riddles.
I believe I can guess that, she added aloud. Do you mean that
you think you can find out
the answer to it? said the March Hare. Exactly so, said Alice. Then you should say what you mean, the March Hare went on. I do, Alice hastily replied; at least — at least I mean what I say — that's the same thing, you know. Not the same thing a bit! said the Hatter. You might just as well say that
"I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"! You might just as well say, added the March Hare, that "I like what I get"
is the same thing as "I get what I like"! You might just as well say, added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"! It is the same thing with you, said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. **
Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit....Woodstock, N.Y....8/17/69
The traveler
has to knock
at every
alien door
to come
to his own,
and one
has to wander
through all
the outer worlds
to reach
the innermost shrine
at the end.
So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head...but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way to Santa Cruz.
There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. the way down to Santa Cruz...not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.
Miles Davis: 10/13/60
Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out...thirty-five, forty-five...then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these...and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything...then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.
Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.
The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-slick...instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway 1."
Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.
But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers.
Miles Davis: 10/8/64
You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge...The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others--the living--are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.
If I could go back to a point in history to try to get things to come out differently,
I would go back and tell Moses to go up the mountain again and get the other tablet. Because the Ten Commandments just tell us what we are supposed to do with one another, not a word about our relationship to the earth. Genesis starts with these commands: multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. We have multiplied very well, we have replenished our populations very well,
we have subdued it all too well, and we don’t have any other instruction.
--David Brower
Sooner or later in every talk,
(David) Brower describes the creation of the world. He invites his listeners to consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been four billion years. On this scale,
a day equals something like
six hundred and sixty-six million years, and thus all day Monday and until Tuesday noon, creation was busy getting the earth going. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At 4pm Saturday, the big reptiles came on. Five hours later, when the redwoods appeared, there were no more big reptiles. At three minutes before midnight, man appeared.
At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely.
They are considered normal, but they are stark, raving mad.
--John McPhee Encounters With The Archdruid
