A human being is part of a whole…[but] he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest…This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison [...]
On a trail I walk there is an old tree that has given up life but stands rooted stolidly in the ground. The trunk is thick and black. The seasons have embalmed it. The wood is so hard that the bark won’t break off in your hands. The boys pick up stray scraps that have [...]
Let the canvas hold you for a moment in its simplicity. The absence of a title matters. The painter is not trying to create limits, he’s trying to open everything up for us. The artist is Philip Brown from North Wales. Here’s a link to his works on Flickr.
Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men’s souls to joy.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road The music flows in and out of your senses as easily as the sweat raises your skin. What [...]
There is no Silence in the Earth — so silent As that endured Which uttered, would discourage Nature And haunt the World. –Emily Dickinson
I was a deaf boy and the trees spoke to me. I walked through the woods at night. The wind rioted around me, pulling at leaves and branches, trying to tear the roots from the ground. The moonlight turned hard and thin. The air was cold with the salt spray from the bay. The trees [...]
Look at the photo and imagine. I am remembering. The field was narrower and bordered by a thin wall of trees that separated one field from the next. In winter, the frozen ground crunched beneath your boots, and the brittle corn stalks crackled like stale cereal. The collar of your old army coat is bunched [...]
My reason for laying beside you and smelling like beer When you finish reading this I want you to be able to paint The sky I saw when I walked out To the garbage bin at dusk. Look up past the spring buds Blurring the kinky ends of the ginko To the ribbon of sky, [...]
A Japanese poet once wrote that there is no utility in metaphor, that in the modern world the only valuable expression is of words that are specific to one thing. This is language as the table of existential elements: when used precisely, words make an objective reality that we can use to breach the gaps [...]