Thought For The Day

Wise words from a talking head I bumped into in a Halloween Trick and Treat store:

"Eat right!"

"Sleep well!"

"Be fit!"

"We are all going to die one day anyway, so it we might as well look good while we live!"

With that, the pallid head wobbled inside its crystal ball and swung away from me.

Hmm...

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

 

- Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

The Best Dressed Gentlemen

Trollope once said, "I hold that gentlemen to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes."

As proof of Trollope's words, a group of homeless men protected a 15 year old girl from being molested by a fellow passenger, on a bus in ... (the story does not mention the city). Read on: http://now.msn.com/homeless-guys-save-15-year-old-from-sexual-assault

Great work, guys!

Lucid

Hot white Sands

Sea of diamonds

Sensuous palms sway their emerald fronds

Sky, entrancing azure

You by my side

In prayer we dream

We, the acolytes of these dunes

Warm crucible oil, breezes envelop  

This beneficence

My love, feast with me

Now, play this hour long lounge piece when you visit your love tonight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEk0bamXv6k&feature=related Well, at least the first 20 minutes are all you might need...just guessing :P.

Bravo!

It was most heartening - amidst numerous reports of global violence, war, unrest, civil disobedience, abuse, the lack of social responsibility, etc. (it just seems to be going on and on these days, doesn't it?) - to read about this little 7 year old African American girl in Miami, who kicked, chopped, and punched away a deranged man who attempted to kidnap her 4 year old cousin.

You know as well as I do that if her cousin had been taken away, there would have been a very slim chance of seeing the little boy alive again.

This girl is a ray of sunshine! A-nari Taylor's presence of mind, her singular purpose in fulfilling her mother's words "Safety comes first!", and her courage, were fittingly commended by the Miami police :). God bless her.

Read about her here: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/19/13961387-miami-girl-7-honored-for-fighting-off-would-be-abductor?lite

Are We Forgetting?

In 'Nature', Emerson describes the act of communing with nature as a spiritual experience that elevates the soul, and renders it capable of perceiving the sublime.

Emerson explores the relationship between man and nature as one that heals, one that continuously extends sympathy, affection, acceptance, and perpetual youth and joy...thus effectively countering the shackles we are all weary from, as a result of our interactions with "civilized, sophisticated society" where acceptance and relationships seem to be built upon external accoutrements.

Emerson also acknowledged that the extent upto which one could imbibe this healing influence from nature depended greatly upon our state of mind as well - in other words, how receptive or intuitive one could allow oneself to be.

Well, back then as a student, as now, I agree with Emerson. Not saying here that I've been smelt by the presence of the sublime - well, I try to get a glimpse or maybe its my imagination working overtime. More the latter.

Also, don't get me wrong - I love socializing, exchanging wit and banter - but it can get banal...I end up seeking to recharge in private with a book, a walk, some music, or just going for a drive to admire the beauty of my heavily wooded neighborhood.

I often find in nature what I seek in humankind...just a pure, simple love and acceptance. A conversation sans words. A beauty that is true and lasting. The truth of emotion. An Emersonian communian perhaps, that rejuvenates in the form of a visually vibrant prayer reaching out from insignificant me to the immense awe-inspiring oversoul. A deer standing frozen near the lake, a hummingbird's silent whirr, the stir of a weeping willow's train in the summer breeze...all soothe, speak, and bless.

Which is why this article caught my eye: http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/34869/fisherman+adrift+for+106+days+in+pacific+says+shark+led+him+to+rescuers/
It speaks of a Pacific Islander who was stranded on a boat at sea for 106 days, and was eventually nudged to safety towards another boat, by a shark. Interestingly, sharks are worshipped by the South Sea tribes, just as Native American Indians worship animals and revere them as totems.

Perhaps that poor man (who lost his brother-in-law on this unfortunate voyage) had an epiphany out in the deep ocean, and perhaps his intuition led him into perfect communion with nature. Dehydration, starvation, hallucination, what could have flagellated this man's soul to cry out for divine intervention? I can't help interrupting at this point with his solemn oath upon being rescued, "I've booked a flight home. No more boats for me!"

And here we have man - supposedly noble because of his thinking and reasoning abilities - who seeks to profit from the misfortune of another. No, not talking competition here, but specifically, about the absolute degradation of the spirit and the mind. I refer to the gutter journalism that is flourishing nowadays - and profiting due to the publication of Duchess Kate's topless sunbathing pictures.

Sure, yellow journalism has existed since the dawn of time. Ancient texts and archaeological finds tell us that there is nothing new under the sun. It just is more jarring today because of the global reach of our media, our different kinds of media, and the world today where anything and everything can be bought for a price.

In an age that endorses the lack of repression, enterprise, in its noteworthy effort to expose unpalatable truths, has nevertheless created some monsters. Like the Hydra, as soon as the internet helps cut off one kind of exploitation, the media coverage and global interconnectedness fuel more imaginations and perverse obessions, thus springing up 2 more in its place. Pushing the limits of these preoccupations numbs the conscience and it seems that people have been indulging in increasingly disturbing behavior in the last decade or two.

I'm not sure if this means that more of humankind is going nuts, or if simply more are being caught while torturing the weak and innocent, or if people are just losing their conscience. One only needs to read stomach-turning reports about the abuse of women and children to wonder if this hell on earth can be worse than the hell we read about in religious texts. I find it brutish and cruel. Whoever said that animals are more noble because they only kill for food, while man kills for sport certainly seems to have described the excesses of mankind correctly.

Duchess Kate may not be the "People's Princess" like her mother-in-law, but she will adapt and come out of this with grace and dignity.

As for the rest of us...are we forgetting what plain decency or good character is, or what constitutes acceptable behavior? We also seem to have forgotten that with freedom and unrestrained expression comes a certain responsibility. To not put everything out there a la Facebook, Twitter, and reality shows ("I had a cuppa", "I took a dump", "I ate", "I spoke", "I am")....this senseless Tower of Babel where anything and everything is given credence on online forums in a monumental barrage of outpouring from either end.

At times like these when the babble gets too loud, I just take a break and retreat into nature, where often silence is the best form of communication.

To Autumn

Here is Fall - to me, more romantic than is Spring - with its colors and its crisp air, harvests, startling blue skies.

To Autumn (composed 19 September 1819, in Winchester, England, after a walk one autumn evening)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
   

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

- John Keats (1795 - 1821)