Studio Notes: A smile so big

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A smile so big

I am childlike in the dawning amazement about the scope and nature of the changes this new engine (blog is such a clumsy, inelegant word) is enabling. Yet another awakening is occurring. The number of needs and desires this is addressing in me is transformational. Podium/soapbox/storefront/laboratory/gallery/publishing house and more, and it has been in front of me all this time! I feel a little sheepish for having had the potential in my grasp for so long and to not have known the possibilities. Certainly not the first time I have undergone something this profound, and how lucky (is blessed too strong a word?) am I to experience it again?! No excuse for failing to bloom; I am empowered.
I’m tempted to pop my brain in a stream-of consciousness mess all over this screen but won’t quite now, or perhaps ever. A need for discipline regarding this mode of communicating is pretty self-evident to me. But so much passion and an acute awareness of how short our time can be… I want to make my fire burn for a long time.

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Some of the words I try to live by

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.-Erich Fromm

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive, you’ll be dead soon enough.-William Saroyan

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.- George Bernard Shaw

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.-Basho

The wise man says, “I am looking for the truth,” and the fool, “I have found the truth.”- Russian proverb

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.-Andre Gide

I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector.-William Stafford

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.-James Thurber

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well ordered or confused.-Spinoza

The world is as we are.-Hindu saying

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.-Miles Davis

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.-Chinese proverb

The thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.-Abu Yazid Al-Bistami

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you’ll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.-Goethe

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right
person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose,
and in the right way, that is not easy.
-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability,
and could reach the nation's ear, I would today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire;
it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused;
the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed;
its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
-- Frederick Douglass

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship,
design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying,
take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure,
program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
--Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook.
--U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--Albert Einstein

I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or State, to my circle of friends or even to my own family...
Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men.
I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs,
opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.
--Albert Einstein

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.
-- Richard Moss, M.D.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get
yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days
is to go about repeating the very phrases which our
founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
-- C.A. Beard

When it shall be said in any country in the world, my POOR are happy,
neither distress nor ignorance is to be found among them; my JAILS are
empty of prisoners, my streets of BEGGARS; the AGED are not in want,
the taxes are not oppressive . . . when these things can be said,
then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my
opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember,
that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man
to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine.
He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his
present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
-- Thomas Paine

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed;
if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly;
you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against
you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight
when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
--Winston Churchill

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free;
so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free,
you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license";
and they will define and define freedom out of existence.
--Voltarine de Cleyre

By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and
individual rights are performed by governments ... The major crimes throughout history,
the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or
bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments
...that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
--John Hospers

Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends.
-- Michael Ventura

Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel.
-- H. L. Mencken

They know how to think. From the Arabs I have learned one thing:
if you are led by Authority, that means you are led by a halter.
-- Adelard, circa 1100 A.D

Everyone should know of all information that others have deemed unfit for public knowledge.
--Author Unknown

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by
the Prohibition law, for nothing is more destructive of respect for the
government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
--Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the U.S.A, 1921

I want you to be the good news to those around you.
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.
Do you know your next door neighbor?
-- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

It is easier to see the center from the edge than it is to see the edge from the center - unknown

Studio Notes

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A smile so big

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Some of the words I try to live by