Through the Darkening Hall

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of side of the kitchen. The three great tables that ran the length of the hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catching what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out ready for the guests. Portraits of former Masters hung high in the gloom along the walls. Lyra reached the dais and looked back at the open kitchen door, and, seeing no one, stepped up beside the high table. The places here were laid with gold, not silver, and the fourteen seats were not oak benches, but mahogany chairs with velvet cushions.

-The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Compass-Dark-Materials-Book/dp/0345413350

Wonderfully Interactive

"The whole system was invented to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is based on two ideas: Number one that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away when you were a kid from things you liked on the ground you would never get a job doing that...And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it the whole system of education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not because the thing they're good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

"It's wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. Creativity, which I define as having original ideas which have value, more often than not comes about as the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things."

-Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

The Letters are Flying

And in another place, the story is told of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon that he was wrapped in a scroll of the Torah and burned at the stake. Moments before his death, his students cried out, "Master! What do you see?" He answered, "The parchment is burning, but the letters are flying toward the heavens!"

-The Book of Letters, Lawrence Kushner

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Letters-Mystical-Alef-Bait-Kushner/dp/1879045001

The Wordless White Stone

I felt its calm power as I held it

and wished a wish I cannot tell.

It fit in my hand like a hand gently

holding my hand through a sleepless night.

A stone so like, so unlike

all the others it could only be mine.

The wordless white stone of my life!

-"Truro" from Worlding, Elizabeth Spires

http://www.amazon.com/Worldling-Elizabeth-Spires/dp/0393316289

Whatever Returns

You who do no remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.

-From "The Wild Iris" in The Wild Iris, Louise Gluck

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Iris-Louise-Gluck/dp/0880013346

Easy to be Proud

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be proud

Easy to say no

And especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil

And social and justice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?

How about a needing friend?

I need a friend

-Easy to be Hard, Hair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCs1rkAXZ9o&feature=related

Our Citadel Cannot Fall

It is hardly surprising if we are driven by blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men. And though their numbers are great, we can afford to despise them because they have no one to lead them them and are carried along only by ignorance which distracts them at random first one way then another. When their forces attack us in superior numbers, our general conducts a tactical withdrawal of his forces to a strong point, and they are left to encumber themselves with useless plunder. Safe from their furious activity on our rampart above, we can smile at their efforts collect all the most useless boot: our citadel cannot fall to the assaults of folly.

-Ancius Boethius, trans. Victor Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anicius_Manlius_Severinus_Boethius

If you Lose your Way

We love you and there's nothing you can ever do about it

If you get off track, turn around and come right back

We love you and there's nothing you can ever do about it

Is you lose your way, you still got a place to stay

-Brian Courtney Wilson, Just Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvq2GrJC_eM

We Wear a Mask

We all tell lies and hide our true feelings, for complete and free expression is a social impossibility. From an early age we learn to conceal our thoughts, telling the prickly and insecure what we know they want to hear, watching carefully lest we offend them. For most of us this is natural- there are ideas and values that most people accept, and it is pointless to argue. We believe what we want to, but on the outside we wear a mask.

There are people, however, who see such restraints as an intolerable infringement on their freedom, and who have a need to prove the superiority of their values and beliefs. In the end, though, their arguments convince only a few and offend a great deal more. The reason arguments do not work is that most people hold their ideas and values without thinking about them. There is a strong emotional content in their beliefs; They really do not want to have to rework their habits of thinking, and when you challenge them, whether directly through your arguments, or indirectly through your behavior, they are hostile.

Wise and clever people learn early on that they can display conventional behavior and mouth conventional ideas without having to believe in them. The power these people gain from blending in is that of being left alone to have the thoughts they want to have, and to express them to the people they want to express them to, without suffering isolation or ostracism. Once they have established themselves in a position of power, they can try to convince a wider circle of the correctness of their ideas- perhaps working indirectly, using Campanella's strategies of irony and insinuation.

-Robert Greene, The Art of Power

http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/

Darned into the Seams

"He is always careful about his appearance," Sophie agreed, and wondered why she was putting it so mildly.

"And always was. I am careful about my appearance too, and I see no harm in that," said Mrs. Pentstemmon. "But what call has he to be walking around in a charmed suit? It is a dazzling attraction charm, directed at ladies- very well done, I admit, and barely detectable even to my trained eye, since it appears to have been darned into the seams- and one which will render him almost irresistible to ladies. This represents a downward trend into black arts, which most surely cause you some motherly concern, Mrs. Pendragon."

-Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle

http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/

Humble Pie

Sometimes we know, sometimes we don't

Sometimes we give, sometimes we won't

Sometimes we're strong, sometimes we're wrong

Sometimes we cry

Sometimes it's bad when the going gets tough

When we look in the mirror and we want to give up

Sometimes we don't even think we'll try

Sometimes we cry

Well we're gonna have to sit down and think it right through

If we're only human what more can we do?

Sometimes the only thing to do is eat humble pie

Sometimes we cry

-Van Morrison, Sometimes We Cry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6COPFRp5_Q

A Seed you have Planted

Think of your t'ai chi form as a seed you have planted in the garden of your life. Each seed has its own time schedule. Of course, there are many techniques for speeding up the growth process, including artificial light and greenhouses. And yet, as every gardener knows, flowers and plants produced under these conditions are not hardy. The moment they leave the greenhouse they begin to die, living only long enough to get sold and be kept at home for a few days.

Experienced t'chai practitioners (known as 'players') may learn a form more quickly, but they will go home and spend many months practicing and deepening their understanding. There is no shortcut that will substitute for that kind of practice time that will cause your form to flower.

-T'ai Chi as a Path of Wisdom, Linda Myoki Lehrhaupt

http://www.fullcirclesynergy.com/works2.html

Whoever Lives only with That

In all seriousness of the truth, listen: without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human.

-Martin Buber, I and Thou

http://buber.de/en/i_thou

Emotion and Intellect

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual- when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

tp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/isaac-bashevis-singer/about-isaac-bashevis-singer/706/

The Tale

"I'm sure," Mrs. Flowers said, "It is, it is a part of the Tale."

But Violet had seen that it would not be clearer until later. The Tale: yes, this was part of the Tale, but she had suddenly seen, as a person alone in a room reading or working at the end of day sees, as she raises her eyes from work that has for some reason grown obscure and difficult, that evening had come, and that's the reason; and that it would long grow darker before it lightened.

"Please," she said, "have tea. We'll light the lights. Stay awhile."

-Little, Big, John Crowley

http://www.littlebig25.com/PerpetualCrowleyInterview.html

City of Twelve Towers

"Truly girl, you have never hear of the City of Twelve Towers?" Bartholomew stroked his fur as though it were a beard and peered at me. "Seat of the Papess, She Who Was Born in the Purple, the Anointed City which shines like a summer star?"

"Never!" I cried breathlessly.

"Very well," he chuckled, straightening his back like a teacher about to give lessons, "your kind mother permitting, I shall tell you of the Dreaming City, enclosed in her seraphic spheres..."

-In the Night Garden, Catherynne Valente

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/

A Notebook Handy

I've forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn't do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don't read books while lying down in bed.

-Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

http://www.akirakurosawa.com/

Only a Full House

I woke beneath a clear blue sky
The sun a shout the breeze a sigh
My old hometown and the streets I knew
Were wrapped up in a royal blue
I heard my friends laughing out across the fields
The girls in the gloaming and the birds on the wheel
The raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay
Cicadas electric in the heat of the day
A run of Three Sisters and the flush of the land
And the lake was a diamond in the valley's hand
The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts
They were coming together they were pulling apart
And angels everywhere were in my midst
In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed
I wondered what it was I'd been looking for up above
Heaven is so big there ain't no need to look up
So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air
Only a full house gonna have a prayer

-Josh Ritter, Thin Blue Flame

http://www.weallwantsomeone.org/2009/12/03/josh-ritter-thin-blue-flame/

On Average, Better Adult Oucomes

Sustainable edges. Returns on capital investment. Trajectories of capability-building. What’s interesting here is that everyone speaks the same language, everyone agrees on the meaning of the terms. There’s a certain country-club quality to it. We’re all members. We understand one another. We understand that the capabilities we should be developing are the capabilities that will “get us ahead.” We understand that Bill Gates is a logical person to talk to about education because billionaire capitalists generally know something about running a successful business, and American education is a business whose products (like General Motors’, say), are substandard, while Singapore’s are kicking ass. We understand that getting ahead of low-wage, high-human-capital communities will allow us “to thrive.”

Unlike most country clubs, alas, this one is anything but exclusive; getting far enough beyond its gates to ask whether that last verb might have another meaning can be difficult. Success means success. To thrive means to thrive. The definitions of “investment,” “accountability,” “value,” “utility” are fixed and immutable; they are what they are. Once you’ve got that down, everything is easy: According to David Brooks (bringing up the back of my Times parade), all we need to do is make a modest investment in “delayed gratification skills.” Young people who can delay gratification can “master the sort of self-control that leads to success”; they “can sit through sometimes boring classes” and “perform rote tasks.” As a result, they tend to “get higher SAT scores,” gain acceptance to better colleges, and have, “on average, better adult outcomes."

-Dehumanized, Mark Slouka

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082640

It's Clear that I've been Blind

Looking back through time

It's clear that I've been blind, I've been a fool

To open up my heart to all

That jealousy, that bitterness, that ridicule

And if you want it come and get it

For crying out loud

The love that I was giving you was

Never in doubt

-David Gray, Babylon

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-296332003/david_gray_babylon_official_music_video/

With a Little Love and some Tenderness

With a little love and some tenderness

We'll rise above the water, we'll rise above the mist

With a little peace and some harmony

We'll take the world together

We'll take 'em by the hand

-Hootie and the Blowfish

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=6381372

Which Colors Belong

If you feel like singing a song

And you want other people to sing along
Just sing what you feel
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re trying to paint a picture
But you’re not sure which colors belong
Just paint what you see
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re strung out like a kite
Or stung awake in the night
It’s alright to be frightened

There's a light

What light

-What Light, Wilco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5N1Rpxtmw4

All the Story of the Night Told Over

Theseus:

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown,

The poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives the airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Hippolyta:

But all the story of the night told over

And all their minds transfigured so together,

More witnesseth than fancy's images,

And grows to something of great constancy

But however, strange and admirable.

-Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html

Cooler than it really was

"You've sort of made up for it tonight," said Harry, "Getting the sword. Finishing the Horcrux. Saving my life."

"That makes me sound cooler than I was," Ron mumbled.

"Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was," said Harry, "I've been trying to tell you that for years."

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, J. K. Rowling

ttp://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2010/4/18/deathly-hallows-trailer-due-soon

The Wild Free Ways of Wit and Art

Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields. No acquirement is on assignment, or even self-assignment. Knowledge of the second kind is much more available in the wild free ways of wit and art. A schoolboy may be defined as one who can tell you what he knows in the order in which he learned it. The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic.

-Robert Frost, The Figure a Poem Makes

http://www.mrbauld.com/frostfig.html

Place to Be

When I was younger, younger than before

I never saw the truth hanging from the door

And now I'm older see it face to face

And now I'm older gotta get up clean the place

And I was green, greener than the hill

Where the flowers grew and the sun shone still

Now I'm darker than the deepest sea

Just hand me down, give me a place to be

And I was strong, strong in the sun

I thought I'd see when day is done

Now I'm weaker than the palest blue

Oh, so weak in this need for you

-Place to Be, Nick Drake

Let us go and lie in the Grass

My dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like purple boom upon the plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.

-Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/decay.html

No one Needs to Know we're Feeling

let this be our little secret

no one needs to know we're feeling

higher and higher and higher

higher and higher and higher

but I feel alive and I feel it in me

up and up and keep on climbing

higher and higher and higher

higher and higher and higher

-Passion Pit, Little Secrets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxL9Hod_qCY

In Ethical Peace

"One may wonder whether one should not construe the ideal of truth itself- which no European can gainsay- already as subordinate to an ideal of peace that, older than that of knowledge, will but open itself to the call of truth; one may wonder whether knowledge itself and the politics governing history do not find their proper place in already responding to the requirement of peace and let themselves be guided by the requirement. But peace in this case will no longer be reducible to a simple confirmation of human identity in its substantiality, anchored in itself, in its identity of I. I will no longer be peace in conformity with the ideal of the unity of One which all alterity disturbs."

"Peace in relation to alterity, irreducible to a common genus in which, already contained in a logical community, it would be only a relative activity. Peace thus independent of all appurtenance to a system, irreducible to a totality and as if refractory to synthesis. The project of a peace different from the political peace discussed above. An ethical relation that would thus not be a simple deficiency or privation of the One reduced to the multiplicity of individuals in the extension of the genus! Here, on the contrary, in ethical peace, a relation to the inassimilable other the irreducible other, the unique other. Only the unique is irreducible and absolutely other!

But the uniqueness of the unique is the uniqueness of the beloved. The uniqueness of the unique signifies love. Hence peace as love."

-Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence

Safety First

"This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long," said Miss Brodie. "Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes the slogan, 'Safety First.' But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first."

-The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

http://www.murielsparksociety.org/

My Fair North Star

Oh my fair north star

I have clung to you dearly

I have asked you to steer me

Til one cloud-scattered night

I got lost in my travels

I met Leo the Lion

Met a king, met a giant

With their errant knight

There's the wind and the rain

And the mercy of the fallen

Who say they have no claim to know what's right

There's the weak and the strong

And the beds that have no answers

And that's where I rest my head tonight

-Dar Williams, Mercy of the Fallen

http://www.darwilliams.com/

Shelter from the Storm

I was burned out from exhaustion buried in the hail

Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail

Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn

"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

-Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhwvn5_wEM&feature=related

Very Narrow Bridge

Kol Hal'olam kul

Gesher Tsar me'od

Gesher Tsar me'od

Kol Hal'olam kul

Gesher Tsar me'od

Gesher Tsar me'od

Veha'ikar veha'ikar

Lo lefached

Lo lefached klal

The whole world

Is a very narrow bridge

A very narrow bridge

A very narrow bridge

The whole world

Is a very narrow bridge

A very narrow bridge

And the main thing to remember

Is not to be afraid

Not to be afraid at all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusLcXuVOJI&feature=related

One of the Group

Perhaps everybody feels different. But I don't think so. Most people seem to do everything they can to be like everybody else. They wear similar clothes, or the clothes that people they admire say they should wear. They wear their hair in the same style, even when it doesn't suit them. They talk the same way, using the same intonations, as the chavs do, for example. They like, or pretend to like, the same music and the same movies and the same tv programs and so on.

Or no, that isn't quite true. It's truer to say that people try to be like the people who are in the groups they want to belong to. I think most people don't feel happy unless they belong to a group. Why is this? Because it makes them feel safe? Being one of the gang means you feel strong(er) and you feel protected from others who might attack you or misuse you or treat you in ways you're afraid of. Is that it? Is that all to do with fear and belonging to a group makes you feel safe?

Yes, I think it is.

I want to feel safe. But I don't want to belong to a gang or any kind of group. Is this bad or is this good? Or doesn't it matter? Sometimes I wish I did belong to some strong and interesting group. But whenever I've tried, I've failed. And this makes me feel miserable. The others in the group always know from the start that I'm not really like them (and that I don't want to be). And I've not felt comfortable, not really myself all the time I've tried to be 'one of the group'.

-This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, Aidan Chambers

http://www.aidanchambers.co.uk/

Questions of Science

Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart

-Coldplay, The Scientist

Natasha Bedingfield Cover:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsUK4mlv9m0

Artistic

http://www.dannaray.com/

http://www.khangle.net/

http://www.gianlucafoli.com

http://heroandsound.com

http://www.gallerynucleus.com/

What Does this City have to Offer Me?

Let's get out of this country
I'll admit I am bored with me
I drowned my sorrows and slept around
When not in body, at least in mind
We'll find a cathedral city
You can convince me I am pretty

We'll pick berries and recline
Let's hit the road, dear friend of mine
Wave goodbye to our thankless jobs
We'll drive for miles, maybe never turn off
We'll find a cathedral city
You can be handsome, I'll be pretty

What does this city have to offer me?
Everyone else thinks it's the bee's knees
What does this city have to offer me?
I just can't see
I just can't see

-Camera Obscura, Let's Get out of this Country

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY_L_rafEs0

Heroes of our Story

But if, instead, we identify ourselves as the heroes of our story, we can accept the possibility that wherever there is quicksand or pitfall or Nazful, there is also some way to get past it. Just telling ourselves that there is a way past it allows us to begin looking for that way instead of giving up. Our sense of our own power actually adds to our strength, our ingenuity, our adaptability.

For those who enjoy computer games, a game metaphor may be useful. It's clear that no matter what the character on screen must face, there is always a tool or weapon available somewhere in the world of the game, if the player can figure out what it is and how to acquire it (and he can because that's the whole point of the game!) that will allow the character to go on.

It isn't only the story we tell ourselves in the middle of a difficult experience that counts. There's also the story we tell ourselves afterwards. When something painful has happened, the person who says, "I was a hero in this situation, and because I was- and am - a hero, it id not defeat me," will have a far better chance of healing whatever wounds she might have received and moving on, than someone who tells herself, "This unfair and awful thing happened and no matter what I do things like that will go on happening to me all the rest of my life, because that's the way the world is."

Change your Story, Change your Life, Stephanie Tolan

Downloadable at:

http://www.storyhealer.com/book.html

What you Learn Today

"You may not see it now," said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, "but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer."

"And remember also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you to discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow."

-The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

http://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Tollbooth-Norton-Juster/dp/0394820371

Choose to See

"Live, Veronika! Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody ever lived our lives; there are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always. It can never be taken from you."

-Astrid and Veronika, Linda Olsson

http://www.amazon.com/Astrid-Veronika-Linda-Olsson/dp/0143038079

Humanity, Love, and Sincerity

"The Way of a Warrior is based on humanity, love, and sincerity; the heart of martial valor is true bravery, wisdom, love, and friendship. Emphasis on the physical aspects of warriorship is futile, for the power of the body is always limited."

"In the Art of Peace we never attack. An attack is proof that one is out of control. Never run away from any kind of challenge, but do not try to suppress or control an opponent unnaturally. Let attackers come any way they like and then blend with them. Never chase after opponents. Redirect each attack and get firmly behind it."

-The Art of Peace, Morihei Ueshiba

http://www.martial-way.com/morihei_ueshiba_aikido.html

Force and Forgiveness

The Warrior of the Light has the sword in his hands.

He is the one who decides what he will do and what he will never do.

There are moments when life leads him into a crisis and he is separated from things he has always loved; it is then that the Warrior reflects. He checks if he is fulfilling God's will or if he is merely acting selfishly. If this separation is really a part of his path, then he accepts it without complaint.

If, however, such a separation was provoked by someone else's perverse actions, then he is implacable in his response.

The Warrior possess both force and forgiveness. He can use both with equal skill.

-Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

http://www.paulocoelho.com/

Not to be Extraneous

"The following realization rivals in its significance a religion: that once the background melody has been discovered one is no longer baffled in one's speech and obscure in one's decisions. There is a carefree security in the simple conviction that one is part of a melody, which means that one legitimately occupies a specific space and has a specific duty toward a vast work where the least counts as much as the greatest. Not to be extraneous is the first condition for an individual to come consciously and quietly into his own."

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Life-Translations-Library-Classics/dp/0812969022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269032815&sr=1-1

Quantitative, Fast-paced, Efficient

"Despite our alleged efficiency, as compared to almost every other period of history, we seem to have less time for ourselves and far less time for each other. Even the idea of savoring an experience has become an anachronism in a world where "being" is less important than "becoming" and where experience is a substitute for participation.

Clearly we have had to pay a heavy price for our efficient society. We have quickened the pace of life only to become less patient. We have become more organized but less spontaneous, less joyful. We are better prepared to act on the future but less able to enjoy the present and reflect on the past. We have learned how to extract and make things at a faster pace but end up exploiting and devaluing each other's time at the workplace in order to increase production quotas. The efficient society has increased our superficial creature comforts but forced us to become more detached, self-absorbed, and manipulative in relation to others

...As the tempo of modern life has continued to accelerate, we have come to feel increasingly out of touch with the biological rhythms of the planet, unable to experience a close connection with the natural environment. The human time world is no longer joined to the incoming and outgoing tides, the rising and setting sun, and the changing of the seasons. Instead, humanity has created an artificial time environment punctuated by mechanical contrivances and electronic impulses: a time place that is quantitative, fast-paced, efficient, and predictable."

-Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin

http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

A Will in the Creation

"Art is, after all, only a trace- like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness. Those who live in full play of their faculties become master economists, they understand the relative value of things. Freedom can only be obtained through an understanding of basic order. Basic order is underlying all life. It is not to be found in the institutions men have made. Those who have lived and grown at least to some degree in the spirit of freedom are our creative artists. They have a wonderful time. They keep the world going. They must leave their trace in some way, paint, stone, machinery, whatever. The importance of what they do is greater than anyone estimates at the time. In fact in a commercial world there are thousands of lives wasted doing things not worth doing. Human spirit is sacrificed. More and more things are produced without a will in the creation, and are consumed or "used" without a will in the consumption or the using. These things are dead. They pass, masquerading as important while they are before us, but they pass utterly. I would like you to go to your work with a consciousness that it is more important than anything you might do. It may have no great commercial value, but it has inestimable and lasting life value. People are often so affected by outside opinion that they go to their most important work half hearted or half ashamed."

-Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

http://www.butlerart.com/pc_book/pages/robert_henri_1865.htm

Stupid, Awkward, Ridiculous

Make mistakes. Be stupid, awkward, ridiculous. Write the worst poem imaginable. Paint a horrible picture. Sing out of tune. Embarrass yourself. Often our attempts to be good or skillful camouflage a deeper part of ourselves. When we let ourselves make mistakes, we discover the wisdom inherent in our stupidity, the grace embedded in our awkwardness, the truth couched in the ridiculous. When you fail in your efforts, congratulate yourself for your courage and vitality.

-Nina Wise
http://www.ninawise.com/

Very Exciting and Rather Terrible

'I feel strangely tired, Rat,' said the Mole, leaning wearily over his oars as the boat drifted. 'It's being up all night, you'll perhaps; but that's nothing. We do as much half the nights of the week, at this time of year. No; I feel as if I had been through something very exciting and rather terrible and it was just over; and yet nothing particular has happened.'

'Or something very surprising and splendid and beautiful,' murmured the Rat, leaning back and closing his eyes. 'I feel just as you do, Mole; lucky we've got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn't it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one's bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!'

-The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Willows-Kenneth-Grahame/dp/068971310X

Gentleman-Magicians

"They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic- nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust alter its course or changed a single hair upon anyone's head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentleman in Yorkshire."

-Susanna Clarke, Johnathan Strange and Mr Norell

http://www.jonathanstrange.com/

Fight for You

"I'm gonna fight for you...until your heart stops beating."

Oh lordy. Just what every girl wants to hear.

http://www.twilightthemovie.com/

Nobody Knows me at Alll

When I was a child, everybody smiled nobody knows me at all

Very late at night and in the morning light nobody knows me at all

Now I got lots of friends yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all

Kids and a wife, it's a beautiful life, nobody knows me at all

And oh when the lights are low, oh with someone I don't know

I don't give a damn, I'm happy as a calm, nobody knows me at all

Ah, what can you do? There's nobody like you. Nobody knows me at all

-The Weepies, Nobody Knows me at All

I Live in a Box of Paints

Oh I am a lonely painter I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil and drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

I remember that time that you told me, you said

Love is touching souls surely you touched mine

Cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

And still be on my feet

-Joni Mitchell, A Case of You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKMR6yYc7_o

Where Does the Time Go?

We will walk on a hill

Red hats and blue coats and everything still

Snow will cover until

We can't tell the sky from the ground

Where are the buildings the old wounds of mine

Did I ever once cry?

Waiting for you to arrive

Where does the time go?

Where does the time go?

Where does the time go?

Where does the time go?

-Innocence Mission, Where Does the Time Go

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/innmission4

Brother We're not Alone

she belongs somewhere else away from my side

where lives get every chance not part of every plan

I believe the faithful fell didn't know their way back

So far away from home but brother we're not alone

Do you take the non believer?

Cause I'm a non believer

-La Rocca, Non Believer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfgpH2Q6tDQ

Dog Eats Diamond

Dog Eats Diamond

http://www.comcast.net/video/dog-eats-20-000-diamond/1439870773/Comcast/1439005829/

Weird Thought

"Okay here goes. Barbie's idea. It's like that people...well, that everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world- no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. Isn't that a weird thought?"

-Neil Gaiman, "A Game of You"

http://www.amazon.com/Absolute-Sandman-Vol-2/dp/140121083X

For the Living

As my head just aches when I think of the things I shouldn't have done

But life is for the living we all know and I don't wanna live alone

-Coldplay, Life is For the Living

Three or Four Hills and a Cloud

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding

But when I walk I see that it consists of

Three or four hills and a cloud

-Wallace Stevens

Deadly

"But master- his Kung Fu is deadly!"

Kung Fu Cripple Masters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvkhYcTEwRE&feature=related

Wishwanderer's Song

Home has been so many roads
That I walk down in my sleeping
Here with you I'm home at last
But it's not home for my keeping
You won't miss me when I'm gone
This isn't my place
And my loves are few and don't belong
To any one lover's face

So don't ask me where I'll go
If you do I will lie to you
But I'll tell you of the place that is never my home
Where I've lived all my life
Where I sing
A wishwanderer's song

-Vashti Bunyan, Wishwander's Song

Alive Alive

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some
I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me
I want to be strong, I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive

-Joni Mitchell, All I Want

Justice

"I like girls, but now its about justice!"

The Top Ten Worst Video Game Voice Acting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbotKa5LnM

Hesitation Now

You left me there waiting at the bottom of the stairs with my eyes closed
Holding my right hand in my left there is no time for hesitation now
you come or go

or go

-Fleet Foxes, Innocent Son

Losing a Friend

You're losing a friend you got it all wrong
I'ts not about revenge but you're losing a friend
I didn't see it coming with my head stuck in the sand
But now I'm loosing a friend and it's keeping me up
It's the ribbons I tied I would rather just die
Go to hell and crawl back than let you go

-Cardigans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O4mjY1-2nA

I can take the road

You can say the sun is shining if you really want to

I can see the moon and it seems so clear

You can take the road that leads you to the stars now

I can take the road that'll see me through

I can take the road that'll see me through

-Nick Drake, Road

Stopped Clock

"Nothing is ever completely wrong, my dear," said her father, looking at the clock, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

-Brida, Paulo Coelho

Queen of the Slipstream

You're the queen of the slipstream with eyes that shine

You have crossed many waters to be here

You have drank of the fountain of innocence

Experienced long cold wintry years

There's a dream where the contents are visible

Where the poetic champions compose

Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy, and

Will you still be my special rose?

-Van Morrison

Ane Bow that is Aybent

For as we see, ane Bow that is aybent

Worthis unsmart, and dullis on the string;

Sa dois the mynd that is ay diligent

Isn ernistfull thochtis and in studying

-Robert Henryson

Untold Story

A story must be told or they'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are the most moving.

-JRR Tolkien

The More the Heart Reveals

As sure as the rose the bright day blooms as surely still it fades
and the night kindles stars on empty winds and ghosts along the collonades
and slow but sure the sands are falling as the bridge burns
beneath the wheel
and the mystery of love it just keeps growing the more my heart reveals

-David Gray, Mystery of Love

A Fish, A Moving Light

Look for me another day.
I feel that I could change,
I feel that I could change.
There's a sudden joy that's like
a fish, a moving light;
I thought I saw it
rowing on the lakes of Canada

Oh laughing man, what have you won?
Don't tell me what cannot be done.
My little mouth, my winter lungs,
don't tell me what can't be done.

Innocence Mission, Lakes of Canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWB713KokXA&feature=related

I Wish no Chains Upon You

i wish no chains upon you. wild flowers in your yard. good friends to send you mail. that change is coming hard. i wish warm rains upon you. and snow like playing cards. i wish no chains upon you. but saying it isn't hard.

Ahola:
http://www.insound.com/Aloha_Sugar_CD/productmain/p/INS13870