Every Day You Play.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Pablo Neruda

EXT. COUNTRY WEDDING near the cheese board

A man rushes at a woman, smacking the plate she holds out of her hands.

                                   MAN 1
                     You had a prune on your plate!

"... 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."

Alan Ball, American Beauty

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"We work in a container..."
"It is not a container! It is the Department of Innovation!"

"I'm just going to have a bit of a climb."

"I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILET!"

The Fountain.

My dear, your eyes are weary;
Rest them a little while.
Assume the languid posture
Of pleasure mixed with guile.
Outside the talkative fountain
Continues night and day
Repeating my warm passion
In whatever it has to say.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

Thus your soul ignited
By pleasure’s lusts and needs
Sprays into heaven’s reaches
And dreams of fiery deeds.
Then it brims over, dying,
And languorous, apart,
Drains down some slope and enters
The dark well of my heart.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

O you, whom night enhances,
How sweet here at your breasts
To hear the eternal sadness
Of water that never rests.
O moon, o singing fountain,
O leaf-thronged night above,
You are the faultless mirrors
Of my sweet, bitter love.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

Charles Baudelaire

Translated by Anthony Hecht

What did you understand to be the purpose of philosophy and your role as a philosopher?

...The point of philosophy is not 'What is the structure of all?' but 'What are the concepts the scientist already has to presuppose in order to formulate the question?' It is simply asking about what is already there: what conceptual, and other, presuppositions already have to be there so that you can say what you are saying, so that you understand what you understand, so that you know that you are doing what you are doing.

Conversations with Žižek, Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly

'7 September
"I get lost in conversations. Most often I derive nothing from them but dejection and bitterness. In them I compromise my inner life, everything that is best in me. In order to keep the conversation going I throw into it my favourite thoughts, the ones to which I am most secretly and solicitously attached. My shy and awkward speech disfigures, mutilates them, throwing them out into the bright light in disorder and confusion and only half-dressed. When I go away I gather up and hug to my breast my scattered treasure, trying to put back into place dreams that are bruised like fruit fallen from the tree onto rocks."

Maurice de Guerin

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"Before you can begin your new life you have to let go."

"What's the first rule baby?"
"Never prove yourself to someone."

"I won't be the same with you in front of the others."

"You can't be lost."

A Season in Hell.

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care!

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.

I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.

That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming!

"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ah! I've taken too much of that: - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.

Arthur Rimbaud

In women
I see
Their blogs, their cups of tea.
Our search for beauty,
Truth,
Humanity.

[Cuverville] 17 June
     Mius is gaining skill in hybridizing flowers; and I have finally succeeded in convincing him that, in the beds of seedlings thus obtained, the least robust varieties often gave the most beautiful flowers. But it is only with great difficulty that I can get him to set aside the common, vigorous varieties that can get along without his attentions, in order to favour those that are harder to cultivate and require his care.
     If among her artists, Greece does not count a single Spartan, is this not because Sparta threw her puny children into pits?
     Impossible to get Mius to admit that, in order to assure selection, it is not enough to prefer the delicate and rare variety, that its difficult victory over the commoner varieties must be assured by suppressing the latter in its vicinity.
     To avoid argument he pretends to clear my garden of them; but I find them a little later, transplanted in some corner, just as rugged as the rare variety is fragile, and infinitely prolific. In less than two years they have won back their place; the exquisite has disappeared, stifled by the commonplace. Because, for flowers too, 'the exquisite is as difficult as it is rare'; and however beautiful the most modest flower of the fields may be, one's heart weeps to think that the most beautiful always has the least chance of survival. It is at one and the same time the least gifted for the struggle and the one that most arouses appetites and jealousies. Oh, if only man, instead of so often contributing to the spreading of the vulgar, instead of systematically pursuing with his hatred or his cupidity the natural ornament of the earth, the most colourful butterfly, the most charming bird, the largest flower; if he brought his ingenuity to bear on protecting, not on destroying but favouring . . .
     Were a miracle to produce in our woods some astounding orchid, a thousand hands would stretch out to tear it up, to destroy it. If the bluebird happens to fly past, every gun is sighted; and then people are amazed that it is rare!

- Journals 1889-1949, André Gide

all purpose is purposeless
all meaning is meaningless
but what you gonna do
you gotta get through the day

so some people jog
and some people write
and we all have facebook

"You can avoid being a neurotic if you stop obsessively analysing what you imagine to be your character: never mind your faults, stop moaning about your complexes, do not pour out confessions about what you can and cannot do, like or desire. Treat each meeting with a person as an independent event. 'A geisha is always ready to produce pleasure without considering her own needs.' Put aside personal ambitions and the expectations you have of yourself. Learn to be a geisha by being, first of all, a geisha to your own body; look after it, cook meals for yourself when you are alone as though giving yourself a treat; look after your mind by feeding it with poetry and music. Avoid creating an excessively rigid idea of your desires. Look upon yourself as an amoeba, floating through life, dividing: do not be afraid of losing your identity. Or look upon yourself as a collection of electric light bulbs: do not put all the electricity into a single bulb, or it will explode; allow your energy to circulate freely through the many sides of yourself. The looser, the more open and limitless your identity, the better. Treat your emotions as a garden needing to be kept tidy. Be generous, and that will stimulate new resources within yourself, new ideas. Follow the 'laws of nature'. It is up to you."

- An Intimate History of Humanity, Theodore Zeldin

Other ways to answer 'How are you?'

1. Hmm, yes, I am.
2. Egotistical and anxious thanks.
3. I'm not sure how to answer that question but it may have something to do with stars.
4. Why? Would you like to compare?
5. In a world of pain, you?
6. Operating.
7. Functioning.
8. (Silence.)

Marina Abramović: An Artist's Life

1. An artist’s conduct in his life:
– An artist should not lie to himself or others
– An artist should not steal ideas from other artists
– An artist should not compromise for themselves or in regards to the art market
– An artist should not kill other human beings
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol


2. An artist’s relation to his love life:
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist


3. An artist’s relation to the erotic:
– An artist should develop an erotic point of view on the world
– An artist should be erotic
– An artist should be erotic
– An artist should be erotic


4. An artist’s relation to suffering:
– An artist should suffer
– From the suffering comes the best work
– Suffering brings transformation
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit


5. An artist’s relation to depression:
– An artist should not be depressed
– Depression is a disease and should be cured
– Depression is not productive for an artist
– Depression is not productive for an artist
– Depression is not productive for an artist


6. An artist’s relation to suicide:
– Suicide is a crime against life
– An artist should not commit suicide
– An artist should not commit suicide
– An artist should not commit suicide


7. An artist’s relation to inspiration:
– An artist should look deep inside themselves for inspiration
– The deeper they look inside themselves, the more universal they become
– The artist is universe
– The artist is universe
– The artist is universe


8. An artist’s relation to self-control:
– The artist should not have self-control about his life
– The artist should have total self-control about his work
– The artist should not have self-control about his life
– The artist should have total self-control about his work


9. An artist’s relation with transparency:
– The artist should give and receive at the same time
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive


10. An artist’s relation to symbols:
– An artist creates his own symbols
– Symbols are an artist’s language
– The language must then be translated
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key


11. An artist’s relation to silence:
– An artist has to understand silence
– An artist has to create a space for silence to enter his work
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean


12. An artist’s relation to solitude:
– An artist must make time for the long periods of solitude
– Solitude is extremely important
– Away from home
– Away from the studio
– Away from family
– Away from friends
– An artist should stay for long periods of time at waterfalls
– An artist should stay for long periods of time at exploding volcanoes
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the fast running rivers
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the horizon where the ocean and sky meet
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the stars in the night sky


13. An artist’s conduct in relation to work:
– An artist should avoid going to the studio every day
– An artist should not treat his work schedule as a bank employee does
– An artist should explore life and work only when an idea comes to him in a dream or during the day as a vision that arises as a surprise
– An artist should not repeat himself
– An artist should not overproduce
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution


14. An artist’s possessions:
– Buddhist monks advise that it is best to have nine possessions in their life:
1 robe for the summer
1 robe for the winter
1 pair of shoes
1 begging bowl for food
1 mosquito net
1 prayer book
1 umbrella
1 mat to sleep on
1 pair of glasses if needed
– An artist should decide for himself the minimum personal possessions they should have
– An artist should have more and more of less and less
– An artist should have more and more of less and less
– An artist should have more and more of less and less


15. A list of an artist’s friends:
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits


16. A list of an artist’s enemies:
– Enemies are very important
– The Dalai Lama has said that it is easy to have compassion with friends but much more difficult to have compassion with enemies
– An artist has to learn to forgive
– An artist has to learn to forgive
– An artist has to learn to forgive


17. Different death scenarios:
– An artist has to be aware of his own mortality
– For an artist, it is not only important how he lives his life but also how he dies
– An artist should look at the symbols of his work for the signs of different death scenarios
– An artist should die consciously without fear
– An artist should die consciously without fear
– An artist should die consciously without fear


18. Different funeral scenarios:
– An artist should give instructions before the funeral so that everything is done the way he wants it
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

Love, like a kitten, is a distraction.

"What would it be like if I could accept life—accept this moment—exactly as it is?

- Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach

How have I frightened myself?
How many times?

How many times
Have I dived
Into too-cold water
And survived.

The Writer.

In her room at the prow of the house 
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, 
My daughter is writing a story. 

I pause in the stairwell, hearing 
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys 
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. 

Young as she is, the stuff 
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: 
I wish her a lucky passage. 

But now it is she who pauses, 
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. 
A stillness greatens, in which 

The whole house seems to be thinking, 
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor 
Of strokes, and again is silent. 

I remember the dazed starling 
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; 
How we stole in, lifted a sash 

And retreated, not to affright it; 
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, 
We watched the sleek, wild, dark 

And iridescent creature 
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove 
To the hard floor, or the desk-top, 

And wait then, humped and bloody, 
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits 
Rose when, suddenly sure, 

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window 
And clearing the sill of the world. 

It is always a matter, my darling, 
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish 
What I wished you before, but harder.


Richard Wilbur

The best things happen when I'm doing what I'm not supposed to be doing.

"Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population."

- Peter Farb

 

"I am in no hurry to comprehend myself (Enough! I shall always comprehend myself). If such and such a sentence of mine causes me a momentary disappointment, I trust in the next sentence to right its wrongs, I refrain from beginning it over again or polishing it."

- First Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton

Convinced the universe is offering yellow cars as roses. 
Never saw a yellow car before two months ago.

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”

- Henry Miller

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"If I could leave you with one practice, cultivate self-love, because it shifts us from being somebody, to being nobody, to being everybody."

"Be cool, work with the chaos, and ultimately develop a vagabond spirit."

"...suggestions that consciousness is not local to the brain."

"Western medication treats the symptoms. Entheogenic medication treats the root cause."

"The African mind doesn't distinguish between what you may call the natural and the supernatural. What you experience is real, there's no such thing as an hallucination."

"God is balance."

Social Transformation through Cultivating Genuine Confidence in Our's and Others' Basic Goodness/Buddha Nature - Fleet Maull

http://www.upaya.org/dharma/fleet-maull-08-07-2013-social-transformation-through-cultivating-genuine-confidence-in-ours-and-others-basic-goodnessbuddha-nature/

Grown Ocean.

In that dream I'm as old as the mountains


Still is starlight reflected in fountains


Children grown on the edge of the ocean


Kept like jewelry, kept with devotion

In that dream moving slow through the morning

You would come to me then without answers


Lick my wounds and remove my demands for now


Eucalyptus and orange trees are blooming


In that dream there's no darkness a-looming

In that dream moving slow through the morning time

In that dream I could hardly contain it


All my life I will wait to attain it


There, there, there

I know someday the smoke will all burn off


All these voices I'll someday have turned off


I will see you someday when I've woken


I'll be so happy just to have spoken


I'll have so much to tell you about it

In that dream I could hardly contain it


All my life I will wait to attain it


There, there, there

Wide-eyed walker, don't betray me


I will wake one day, don't delay me


Wide-eyed leaver, always going

Fleet Foxes / Robin Noel Pecknold

Boards of Canada : Tomorrow's Harvest

Give yourself a little time every morning to sit, silent, to rediscover that anything is possible.

"I hope I will be given time. Sometimes when I think of death, I think merely that it would be too bad, for I have not yet yielded up all the treasures I have collected. The chemistry I am producing of turning experience into awareness is not yet finished."

- The Journals of Anaïs Nin, Volume 5, Anaïs Nin

     Restlessness is no offense to the loved one except that the loved one considers it a matter of personal pride. He feels he should be the Sea, the Mountain, the Exotic Islands, the Religion, the Food, the Stimulant, the Inspiration, the Provider, the Total Universe to his love. Actually restlessness, you could explain to your love, is an outcome of being in love. Having the love one wants, one wants to roam, taste, enjoy, discover, explore. It is an extension and continuation of the love. Love is at the roots. We choose our jailers. Thou shalt be my safety brakes, my hand brake, my foot brake, my automatic brake, my Brake. Some of these brakes are very attractive to touch and to hold. Otherwise you would fall in love with wilder and looser characters. Nurture your restlessness. It is a compass pointing to mirages.
     Quotation from unknown source:
     "The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favour with the social man we are obliged to be. These two sorts of life are incompatible; one we hanker for, the other we are obliged to. There is no other conflict so bitter as this, whatever the pious say, for it derives from the very constitution of human life which so painfully separates us from all other human beings. We, like the eagle, were born to be free. Yet we are obliged, in order to live at all, to make a cage of laws for ourselves and to stand on the perch. We are born as wasteful, and unremorseful as tigers; we are obliged to be thrifty, or starve, or freeze. We are born to wander, and cursed to stay and dig. We are born adventurers. It is this double-mindedness of humanity that prevents a clear social excommunication of the adventurers. If he fails he is a mere criminal. One third of all criminals are nothing but failed adventurers. Society's benefactors as well as pests. These are men betrayed by contradictions inside themselves, a social man at war with a free man."

- Letter to Jim Herlihy, Anaïs Nin

Flippant with others' love.

Uff da

Memorable Quotes of the Week.

"Done is better than perfect."

A Poem About Baseballs.

for years the scenes bustled 
through him as he dreamed he was   
alive. then he felt real, and slammed

awake in the wet sheets screaming   
too fast, everything moves
too fast, and the edges of things   
are gone. four blocks away

a baseball was a dot against   
the sky, and he thought, my   
glove is too big, i will

drop the ball and it will be   
a home run. the snow falls   
too fast from the clouds,   
and night is dropped and

snatched back like a huge
joke. is that the ball, or is
it just a bird, and the ball is
somewhere else, and i will
miss it? and the edges are gone, my

hands melt into the walls, my   
hands do not end where the wall   
begins. should i move
forward, or back, or will the ball

come right to me? i know i will   
miss, because i always miss when it
takes so long. the wall has no   
surface, no edge, the wall

fades into the air and the air is   
my hand, and i am the wall. my   
arm is the syringe and thus i

become the nurse, i am you,   
nurse. if he gets
around the bases before the   
ball comes down, is it a home

run, even if i catch it? if we could   
slow down, and stop, we
would be one fused mass careening   
at too great a speed through
the emptiness. if i catch

the ball, our side will
be up, and i will have to bat,   
and i might strike out.

Denis Johnson

Love Song.

If I could write words
Like leaves on an Autumn Forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
'I love you'.

Spike Milligan

Make room for what exists already.

why

(Irrational) feeling of being disliked.

My tired body rebels.

The Arrival.

For years on end I have been sitting here,
impatiently awaiting potency: some explosive revelatory surge
that will carry me away and permit no looking back.
But this moment of deliverance has not arrived,
and I have done nothing to hasten it.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps I wasn’t meant to do anything.
In which case, I have succeeded admirably.

John Tottenham

Looking out the Window.

The sounds of traffic  
die over the back lawn   
to occur again in the low   
distance.

The voices, risen, of
the neighborhood cannot   
maintain that pitch   
and fail briefly, start   
up again.

Similarly my breathing rises   
and falls while I look out   
the window of apartment   
number three in this slum,   
hoping for rage, or sorrow.

They don’t come to me   
anymore. How can I lament   
anything? It is all
so proper, so much
as it should be, now

the nearing cumulus   
clouds, ominous,   
shift, they are like the
curtains, billowy,   
veering at the apex
of their intrusion on the room.
If I am alive now,   
it is only

to be in all this
making all possible.   
I am glad to be
finally a part
of such machinery. I was   
after all not so fond
of living, and there comes
into me, when I see   
how little I liked
being a man, a great joy.

Look out our astounding
clear windows before evening.   
It is almost as if
the world were blue
with some lubricant,
it shines so.

Denis Johnson

"The doctor explained that the illness came from fatigue and worry, and prescribed inner peace."

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Stand in the emptiness
Underneath is the desire to be loved
Energy comes from the blind spots
(I am inadequate)
To reach for higher things

you came in through the back door
no the front no the back
you saw me I didn't see you
but I must have because
I'm writing this now

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"I used to party surprise people, often with a bit of a split."

"Splitting on things."

"I just need to lose this holiday weight... From the last seventeen holidays."

"You're the one... I met first."

 "Excess in moderation."

I read until the character's problems are bigger than my own. 
With Jonathan Franzen it takes three sentences.

Inanition.

Tender chicken?
Till 2am…
Succulent Steak?
Ask a waiter…

Cool to play pool to.

1. Bend your knees.
2. Get low.
3. Keep your elbow straight, in line with your cue.
4. Follow through.

 "This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth draped in its verdure has as much effect on me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

First Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton

Odd limbo I find myself in.
No debate.

Jeans are never that dirty.

You don't meet a voice like that often.

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"As empty as it shows, it reflects the fullness of existence."

"I will miss your suicidal tendencies."

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"You can juggle depression with talent, I have."

"Decanted butter makes me restless."

"One cheese. And one cheese only."

"How does that make you feel?" 
"Drugs."

Office Haiku.

In a meeting you

I go to get a coffee

I don't even want

Once there hung a mess
A scribbled ball of thread
Woolly woolly woolly
Suspended in my head

Crocheted into a doilie
Dyed a deeper red
The mess is now carpeted
A musing emptiness in my head

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"It's cheese puffs or nothing."
 
"What's that?"
"Wine."
"So what's the problem?"
 
"Sounds like you went there with my mindset."
"Yeah, and that's not fun."

The Death of My Expectant Self.

There is nothing to do.
There is nowhere to go.
There is nothing to achieve.
We are just sitting here doing nothing.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"Anxiety springs from a constant negotiation of your beliefs and morals."

"We don't need to eat to be happy, but still..."

"Please tell me you're joking."
"Yeah sure."

"If this makes sense to you, you're not getting it."

Résumé.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a... merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."

D.H. Lawrence

ESTRAGON: In the meantime let's try and converse  
     calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.

VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.

ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.

VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.

ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.

VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.

ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.

VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.

ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

VLADIMIR: Like sand.

ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

[Silence.]

VLADIMIR: That passed the time.

ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.

- Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett