Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Face in the mirror

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for the day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say.

For it isn't your father or mother or wife
whose judgement upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
and think you're a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
if you can't look him straight in the eye

He's the fellow to please - never mind all the rest,
for he's with you clear to the end.
and you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
and get pats on the back as you pass.
but your final reward will be heartache and tears
if you've cheated the man in the glass.

Rilke'

"What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are."

American Beauty

Lester Burnham : [ narrating ] I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.

First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...

And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

I am fearless

There is a beautiful freedom in fearlessness. When you live each day with pain that is etched into every inch of your splintered life, there is no one and nothing that dares to touch you. You are almost... invincible, simply because you are hurting so deeply.

Yes, it means less love. In that may there be greater peace.

Godspeed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD3qgx9vBCk

Friedrich von Schiller

Love therefore—the most beautiful phenomenon in the soul-filled creation, the omnipotent magnet in the spiritual world, the source of devotion and of the most sublime virtue—Love is only the reflection of this single original power, an attraction of the excellent, grounded upon an instantaneous exchange of the personality, a confusion of the beings.

When I hate, so take I something from myself; when I love, so become I so much the richer, by what I love. Forgiveness is the recovery of an alienated property - hatred of man a prolonged suicide; egoism the highest poverty of a created being.

Joan Baez

Don't tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams
I don't want to hear
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other
From a lifetime of cares
Because if love means forever, expecting nothing returned
Then I hope I'll be given another whole lifetime to learn

Rilke'

"...then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking for that reward which might come from without."

-Letters to a Young Poet


"Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of grandeur not fit for us."

-Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge


"Never think destiny's more than the substrate of childhood: how often you'd catch up with a lover, panting, panting, from the happy chase, into the open forever."

-The Duino Elegies: The Seventh Elegy


"..why, then, do we have to be human and, avoiding fate, long for fate?"

-The Duino Elegies: The Ninth Elegy

Gilda Radner

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is about not knowing... having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious ambiguity."

Ogden Nash

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologzie publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

Rilke'

"I would like to find this strength to base my life entirely on this truth, on this infinite and simplicity and joy that is sometimes given to me."

-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke


"For a strength,...for an inconquerable strength of heart, from which my true strength for God will only begin to develop, that strength must be firmly tied to what is human, otherwise it will break in those heights where no one can help it any longer, and wither away in the air."

-Rilke and Benvenuta: an Intimate Correspondence


"...for sometime now I have believed that it is our own force, all our own force that is still too great for us. It is true that we do not know it; but is it not just that which is most our own of which we know the least?"

-Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

James Dean..and all those who Departed young

Childhood living
Is easy to do
The things that you wanted
Well I bought them for you

Graceless lady
You know who I am
You know I can't let you
Just slide through my hands

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer
A dull aching pain
And now you've decided
To show me the same

No sweeping exits
Or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter
Or treat you unkind

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I know I've dreamt you
A sin and a lie
And I have my freedom
But I don't have much time

Fate has been suffered
And tears must be cried
So let's do some living
After we die

Childhood living
Is easy to do
The things that you wanted
Well I bought them for you

Graceless lady
You know who I am
You know I can't let you
Just slide through my hands

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer
A dull aching pain
And now you've decided
To show me the same

No sweeping exits
Or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter
Or treat you unkind

And wild horses couldn't drag me away
And wild horses couldn't drag me away

I know I've dreamt you
A sin and a lie
And I have my freedom
But I don't have much time

Fate has been suffered
And tears must be cried
So let's do some living
After we die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3AHNLN8nEM