DhammaSeeker – Page 81

the current which I dare to call my life

The greatest sin is to be unconscious.
~ Carl Gustav Jung

And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self. But as I moved further and further from the conventional certainties, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me … and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came–arising I know not whence–the current which I dare to call my life.
~ Teilhard de Chardin

an infinite expectation of the dawn

To be awake is to be alive. I have never met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, by by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
~ Henry David Thoreau

nothing that is not

A sage has no self, but there is nothing that is not himself.
~ Sekito

Wealth

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
~Feodor Dostoyevsky

The Sneeze – Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.

The Sneeze – Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.
Funny stuff.

I Hate Wal*Mart

Every time I go in there, I swear it will be my last, but I’m hoping that yesterday really was the last. I spent no less than 20 minutes looking for a lunch box for Tyler and finally resorted to asking an associate for help (granted, I should have done that from the start). The pittance of a “selection” (there was none) was limited to one kid’s style (a Spanish language design) and those insulated lunch sack type things. Neither of which were of any interest to Tyler. To salvage the trip, I hunted down a replacement spatula and melon baller and proceeded to one of the “fast” self-check lanes. The people in front of us seeing that we only had 2 items offered to let us go first (as soon as the family in front of them finished buying 7 bags of de-icing salt and other sundries with coupons requiring store assistance). After waiting for what seemed like 10 minutes in the line for the salt people to get done, I quickly scanned the kitchen tools only to find out that the credit card reader was out of service and I would have to ask for “assistance” to check out. There was no “call for help” button on the self-check terminal and the scene in the store at that moment was nothing short of chaotic. I said fuck that, canceled the purchase, and left the items somewhere (I can’t really recall) as I quickly exited that bastion of bad chi with Tyler in tow. Cheap bastards, I won’t be darkening your door anytime soon if I can help it.

Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep

Mary Elizabeth Frye (1904-)

Version 1 (revised by another hand?)

1 Do not stand at my grave and weep
2 I am not there. I do not sleep.
3 I am a thousand winds that blow
4 I am the diamond glints on snow.
5 I am the sunlight on ripened grain
6 I am the gentle autumn rain.
7 When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
8 I am the swift uplifting rush
9 Of quiet birds in circled flight.
10 I am the soft stars that shine at night.
11 Do not stand at my grave and cry.
12 I am not there: I did not die

Version 2 (original?)

1 Do not stand at my grave and weep,
2 I am not there, I do not sleep.
3 I am a thousand winds that blow,
4 I am the softly falling snow.
5 I am the gentle showers of rain,
6 I am the fields of ripening grain.
7 I am in the morning hush,
8 I am in the graceful rush
9 Of beautiful birds in circling flight.
10 I am the starshine of the night.
11 I am in the flowers that bloom,
12 I am in a quiet room.
13 I am in the birds that sing,
14 I am in each lovely thing.
15 Do not stand at my grave and cry,
16 I am not there — I do not die.

Notes:

1] Version 1 may be what the Federal Printing Press produced as a postcard for Margaret Scharzkopf’s parents’ friends. It differs from Version 2, claimed by Frye in 2000 as her original, to judge by what she read from that for Kelly Ryan on the Ideas interview, lines 11-14 and the present tense “do” in line 16.

Original text: (1) Version 1: unpublished, except as postcard, for which see “A Poetic Journey,” Ideas (CBC Radio One, May 10, 2000). URL: http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/ideas/poetic_journey/ . The text of Frye’s poem is taken from the postcard reproduced on this site, ca. 1932. (2) Version 2: Ideals Magazine (ca. 2000); reproduced at www.magicinterludes.net/snowyowlet/farewell.html (2001).
First publication date: 1932
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2002
Recent editing: 1:2002/8/16

Composition date: 1932
Form: couplets

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2670.html

Latrinalia.org

Latrinalia.org
It could be said that the restroom wall is the last great medium for pure self-expression.

doodler

As I was exiting the bus station this morning, there was a man sitting on one of the benches drawing a woman’s face from what looked like a postcard reference. I thought of Craig.

That wave is already on its way

Nearly everyone is aware of dramatic changes in the world. Yet we continue to live in the assumption that we can ride out the changes without changing ourselves, coasting, as we have always coasted, on the historic wave of human development. What it will take to wake us up is a wave of equal size traveling in the opposite direction. That wave is already on its way.
~ Verlyn Klinkenborg, NY Times