June 2011
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A Psalm of Freudian Life
Tell me not in mormonful numbers “Life is but an empty dream!” To a student of the slumbers Things are never what they seem. Life is yearning and suppression; Life is that to be enjoyed; Puritanical discretion Was not spoke by Dr. Freud. Deep enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to dream, that each to-morrow Finds us Freudier than to-day....
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Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers...
– Sri Chinmoy, Songs of the Soul (1971)
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Sunflakes
If sunlight fell like snowflakes, gleaming yellow and so bright, we could build a sunman, we could have a sunball fight, we could watch the sunflakes drifting in the sky. We could go sleighing in the middle of July through sundrifts and sunbanks, we could ride a sunmobile, and we could touch sunflakes— I wonder how they’d feel.
Frank Asch
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The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that...
– Jacques-Yves Cousteau
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The Accompanist
I’ve always worried about you—the man or woman at the piano bench, night after night receiving only such applause as the singer allows: a warm hand please, for my accompanist. At concerts, as I watch your fingers on the keys, and how swiftly, how excellently you turn sheet music pages, track the singer’s notes, cover the singer’s flaws, I worry about whole lifetimes, most...
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Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable...
– Jean Henri Fabre
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Of Dark Love (excerpt)
there has never been sunlight for this love, like a crazed flower it buds in the dark, is at once a crown of thorns and a spring garland around the temples a fire, a wound, the bitterest of fruit, but a breeze as well, a source of water, your breath—a bite to the soul, your chest—a tree trunk in the current make me walk on the turbid waters, by the ax that breaks this lock, the dew that weeps from...
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The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You’re asked an...
– Mikhail Bulgakov,The Master and Margarita (1967)
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To Be Elsewhere
We met in a coastal village spent a lovely night without leaving an address going separate ways. Three years later we meet again by coincidence. The whole three years spun a novel we abandoned: They fail to recognize themselves as though meeting in another story for an encounter. One asks: Who are you, so cold and weary The other says: I only know a thread is loose on my sweater The...
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‘These people,’ Cicero complained to me one morning, ‘are a warning of...
– Robert Harris, Imperium (2006)