"This Is Water" David Foster Wallace

Four years ago today, David Foster Wallace, one of the most wonderful writers ever, took his own life.  This  commencement address was given by him at Kenyon College in 2005.  
I am forever still trying to exercise some CONTROL over what I think.

Jeff D. Before and After

"You're not Jeff, I'm Jeff"

Patience

Patience – Using time, pressure and patience, the universe gradually changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds. You’re being worked on too, so hang in there. Just because something isn’t happening for you right now, doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Photo of PensiveMonkey at Angkor Wat, Cambodia by Keith Stretchko

Returning to the Source

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then
return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature.

~ Lao Tsu ~
Tao Te Ching

ElasticTime

"Le temps dont nous disposons chaque jour est élastique; les passions que nous ressentons le dilatent, celles que nous inspirons le rétrécissent et l'habitude le remplit."

"The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains."
--À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove), 1919, by Marcel Proust

Tin Hat "2 little whos"

From the new Tin Hat Album  "the rain is a handsome animal",  a magnificent new 17-movement song-cycle based on the poetry of e. e. cummings.  Charming.


e e cummings – “2 little whos”

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

This poem is a sweet description of how two people feel when they are in love.  Two people, lying under a wonderful tree, are talking of their dreams and aspirations.  As they smile and rise together, they must leave the realms of “beyond” and return to “now and here.”  However, because they are still young and because they have each other, they hold onto these incredible dreams as they go through life.

Know Who You Really Are

...Human nature, if one looks deeply at its source, is only conditioned social and cultural behavior passed down through generations. We are not alien spirits on this planet seeded here from another realm, we are more like apples who grow from the apple tree, we grew out of planet Earth. According to science, if you roll the clock back to the big bang, all matter in the known Universe can be condensed down to the size of a tip of a pen, so to think we are divided individual beings, is only a illusion the ego creates. You are no more different and divided from other life forms, then a wave is different and divided from the ocean or the leaves that are from a tree. The whole point of spiritual "methods" such as meditation, is to root you back into the Present Moment, which IS the only place One will ever BE. But the tools and "methods" should not be worshiped no more then the meal you just ate to sustain your energy. Giving power to "methods" only transfers your presence away from what You already posses within. So to put off your Awakening to some far off divine event, such as years of meditation or the day You reach your death-bed, is only escaping the work that needs to be done Today, and that is to Know who You Really ARE, beyond the "image" we only "pretend" to BE...
Art by: Robby Donaghey