Night falls, wandering lights that randomly catch the eye.
Night falls, purpose suddenly becoming a need, on, on.
Night falls, torches bearing the anger of the crowds.
Night falls, torches that speak of adventure in the caves.
Night falls, and one feels around, not knowing what to expect.
Night falls, and one wishes he could choose what to dream.
Night falls, and one is suddenly nowhere, except for stars.
Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is leading, with the thoughts he is thinking, with the deeds he is doing; when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is still, in spite of all, the child of God.
i dreamed of a color that had no name, and a silence
invisible fire which i knew was there, borne of the sacred wood
to look into the mirror to see the light behind my eyes
I keep thinking, at various intervals, mostly on hearing about someone on the news: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.†I think about the thin veneer of civilization, over my own civility, how close we all are to ruin. I think there is a very small distance between the worst and the best of us, and that contrary to what many of us think, we most likely do not represent what is the best of us. Given what they were given, would we not have done what they did? Perhaps it is to reduce the quality of man into fractions. Perhaps that is all it takes to be a hero, that we give just that fraction more. Or let slip a fraction, and we be the damnable. How unnerving, that these finite decisions echo out into infinity. That given what we are given, we must do right by the light. Even in the darkness. Especially in the darkness.
[Book.]
As I rise, opening my eyes, it is like entering a dreamtime. I scan and all down the street are the noises of car alarms that have all been set off and are honking in each their own obnoxious rhythm. There are several people around me and down the way; they are picking themselves from the ground, a couple of them bloody — as I walk past them, I feel pieces of glass crunching under my shoes, the cause of what looks to be any injury. None of the buildings seem to have been rent apart or collapsed in the quake, but I wonder if it is that case everywhere in the city, or if some of the structures have not been as lucky. The world is somehow different. Is it that not am I now dreaming strangely, but that what was going on before was the dream, and I am thus waking to face the world as it is? What has changed?
I’ve got it all here in my head
There’s nothing more needs to be said
I’m just bangin’ on my old piano
I’m getting in tune with the straight and narrow
– The Who
i have been mixed into the dreaming
my self poured through the starry sky
silence that follows me as i descend
ground myself in words we’ve forgotten
fire dancing in my hands, and scatters
as i awake still drenched in imagining
open my eyes, borrowed from angels
If I am a son of God, nothing but God will satisfy my soul; no amount of comfort, no amount of ease, no amount of pleasure, will give me peace or rest. If I had the full cup of all the world’s joys held up to me, and could drain it to the dregs, I should still remain thirsty if I had not God.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
– Oscar Wilde
It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.’
– Sam Levenson
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.
– Henry Stimson
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
– Erica Jong
I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.
– Rita Mae Brown
[Book.]
There comes over me a strange feeling, even through all the shaking, as if a stillness penetrated all movement, all cacophony. For one moment I forget completely where I am, even that I am a body, fragile, on this earth. For several seconds it is as if I have entered a vision, am aware of a sense of infinity, and light, and love in cosmic scales. And I have gone nowhere, but I then perceive myself as if returning to mortality, back to the solidities of our world at large, the world we share. I know not if I have been gone a year or a second. But as I ground, I feel the earthquake dissipate, its energy spending its last fewest ergs, the peace returning beneath me. I am crouched prostrate on the pavement, my hands clasped, where last I was on this planet: praying. The prayer answered.
the kingdom of heaven was scrawled by children in crayon
how it was that the poor became the richest of all, in due course
they who relied on imagining had their wishes come true
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain
– The Who
There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as though it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future.
I am a dream of the dust, and to dust I shall return, upon its waking. For a few moments the universe gets to peer at itself through these eyes of mine, for some scant instances the universe gets to wonder about what it might be. It is an amazing thing, ephemeral. Even if it happens the billions of times that it does, one must not lose sight of its miracle. For never again will this thing I call “I†ever appear on this blue dot in the cosmos. Life is an experiment in uniqueness: grouped together as similar are the millions, but each one is exquisitely its own. God has blessed us all to the point where we no longer notice wonder of it all. I think it part of the plan. And those who consider why may glimpse the nature of love.
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