Calling things by their names

Fuast:

Which of us dares to call things by their names?
Those few who had some knowledge of the truth, 
Whose full heart’s rashness drove them to disclose 
Their passions and their vision to the mob, all those 
Died nailed to crosses or consigned to the flames.


Left out in the Rain:

What history fails to mention is

Most everybody lived their lives
With friends and children, played it cool,
Left truth & beauty to the guys
Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools

Christmas Tree, S&I

Q: Do you know what S+I represents in Spanish?
A: SI

compose a symphony

Just because you’ve been bumped up to first chair in the orchestra doesn’t mean you can compose a symphony.

Red

Layered

Layered like an egg
yolk, white, shell
Core, mantle, crust
Layered like the atmosphere
tropo, strato, thermo, exosphere
Layered like the internet
link, mac, network, transport, application
Layered like her hairdo
short, long, medium, bright
Layered like a lasagna

asiago, zucchini, oregano

Layered like a tiramisu
mascarpone, cream, coca powder
Layered like an ordinary cake
raspberry, whipped cream, mixed berries
Layered like a salad
lettuce, tomato, peas, chopped bacons
Layered like a fruit smoothie
strawberry, banana, mango
pretty tasty
Layered liked a pile of shit
of lizards, birds, dogs, and herds
Layered is life, layered!

Objectivism

Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

COLLECTING FIREFLIES

I’m afraid

I don’t understand

the death part of life

although at my age

you might think I might,

and not necessarily

the last death-part

but the everyday bits of it

that constantly intrude

The only thing I can think

to make sense of it

is that its shadow

over each tenderness

makes each tenderness

more rich and poignant,

as if tenderness were

the only point of light

in this camera obscura,

which is the room

in which we spend lives

netting such points

like children

in a dark field in summer

collecting fireflies

by Jim Culleny

9/2/15

Hopscotch

"Would I find La Maga? Most of the time it was just a case of my putting in an appearance, going along the Rue de Seine to the arch leading into the Quai de Conti, and I would see her slender form against the olive-ashen light which floats along the river as she crossed back and forth on the Pont des Arts, or leaned over the iron rail looking at the water. It was quite natural for me to climb the steps to the bridge, go into its narrowness and over to where La Maga stood. She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste." 

Julio Cortazar

Parking Garages and Illusion of Choice

Parking garage are an ironic parody of an immigrant's life. In there circuitous paths, leading from their lowest underground levels to their top floors, you frequently find yourself approaching a dead-end, a wall, just to realize all you need is to gently steer the wheel into a right turn, or a left turn!
Sometimes you go round-and-around and finally decide to park, and after a few minutes of moving back and forth you realize you barely fit in, and maybe, just maybe, you're better off searching somewhere else for spot ... you get out knowing that you may not find a better spot, but you do it anyways, since the act of 'searching' gives you a temporary relief; that is, you learn that the illusion of choice is more rewarding than anything real life can offer you!

On Life

Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of his time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together. -- Schopenhauer

Do I contradict myself?

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman

These are the words

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

flare up like a flame!

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Go to the limits of your longing.  — From Rilke’s Book of Hours

Where is my Strawburry

10 icecreams & u get the tea
u may go back and your icecream is no longer there.

I want to be desired not loved ... monty python

Think Deeply

Time, space, human factor

with time situations, things, people change

rules and forces change with space

humans change facts to fit their purpose
People have basic needs: need for shelter, feeling secure, health insurance etc
People can firm cliques when u least expect it

stories

Emory cap-driver with a diabetic child, a cat who saved the son, educational campaign, both children profs

Emory prof who attended my talk, expert in molecular mechanism of sepsis, lost a wife in ICU to sepsis

jacuzzi & drinks or water? It's beautiful on the roof. Bad night, my grandma just pass away.

Talent

SARAH GREEN: ... before we move on, have a clarifying questions. When you’re talking about the talent, in this case, being a very small percentage and extracting a high rate of return, it sounds like you’re not talking about creative talent in the terms of like a choreographer or an advertising executive or even a CEO. It sounds like you’re actually really talking about a specific kind of financial manager. Is that a fair assumption to make?

ROGER MARTIN: No, no, no. It’s a good question, Sarah. No. I would say that choreographer is in the realm of the talent world. There’s, of course, all sorts of talent and all kinds of levels of talent.

I think what’s most conspicuous these days is the earnings power of financial management talent, hedge fund managers being the most obvious example. And they’re the group that, if you look in the Forbes 400 list of the 400 richest Americans, the biggest growth category by far is hedge fund managers, one category. They’ve gone from a tiny participation in that list in 2000 to being second highest to high tech, high tech entrepreneurs like Zuckerberg or Gates or Ellison.

So they’re the most conspicuous version, but in many of these fields– so in choreography, there isn’t as much money in general. There isn’t as much capital to extract value from. You see, that’s talent’s game. What talent’s game is in the modern world is attach yourself to pools of capital, use those pools of capital, and try and make sure capital gets the least possible and you get the most possible.

"A writer—and I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

FaceTime and FaceOff

"Too much, too little, or not enough, too fat, too thin, or nobody" - The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

We checked out each other on the FaceTime. A few minutes of exchanging greetings and chitchats. A few attempts to get to know the 'other' person; a lost art among the post-social media socialized 'selves'. What stuck out were a few personal narratives, stories of how we became who 'we' are. An attempt to make connections among ones lifetime events, well some events, others to be left alone within the "tome of memory, its random blank pages".

We also left alone the context that we carried with ourselves, the 'class', and with that our perception of what is 'normal' or 'abnormal'. We both carried our own walls, walls to insulate us from the 'others' of certain types. To penetrate these walls, simply meant to be a romantic, while the forces of 'class' face off.

diamond-like brilliance

Often optimistic, sometimes pessimistic, then romantic and always paradoxical! 
Ultimately, it is my genius that radiates through with a diamond-like brilliance!

"Her neck, her bosom open, the snowstorm in her face! But the storms from north cannot harm the Russian rose. Oh how a searing kiss burns through the frost!"

Radcliffe

I'm yet to find my grandfather's voice. However, being here at Radcliffe helped me to find my own voice, voice of a generation that are still condemned to silence.

Giorgio de Chirico 1913

The Uncertainty of the Poet

What I Want

I want a girl with a capacity for empathy and abstraction

I want a girl with rosy cheeks

I want her next to a fruit basket

I want her in layers, in shades of sunset:

A pale tint of orange, amber, pumpkin, tomato, tea rose

I want her to be peeling a banana, slowly

I want her on a hammock, playing the banana strings

Hairs dancing to the rhythm of the afternoon breeze

I don't want her to look at me and smile

I want her oblivious of space and time

I want her next to the palm trees

I want her in the background of deep blue seas

I want her displaced, but I want her at ease!

Have we recovered?

We will leave ourselves behind

A different self will go on

O Me! O Life!

BY WALT WHITMAN

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUTDJ72q9k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr9ruvxA3K4

Living like a child

I found her in that theater

Amidst the crowd

Facing a blank screen

I found her in the middle row

In the middle of life

Such serenity, such beauty

She sneaked in

To make it all appear

To make them all disappear

I came for a scape from my litost

When I left, full moon was in the sky

And the whole universe was by my side

My senses had come to life

Every encounter is now a fresh experience, I do not remember whether I forgot, I had never experienced, or maybe given the same scenes, I can now see more, maybe I can feel more,  maybe I can connect more.

Somebody took me from inside and placed me on the outside. Maybe I was on the outside all along and was staring at outside. I turned my head to the inside, just to become an observer, just to become all eyes.

She was all eyes, strong, committed to be good, committed to be kind. 

Devil's Laughter

And the new millennium arrived and brought with itself more wars and destruction. Mr. M kept up with his rhetorics & generosity. One day around noon, he stepped up a ladder on a friend's balcony to replace a broken lamb. As he turned and twisted the rusted lamp a Gini came out, smiled at him, and kicked under his ladder. Before he knew he was flying off into the air, like a bird. The Gini grabbed him gently in the air, aligned his body perpendicular to the ground concrete, and let him go like a flying dart.
When my father arrived at the scene (he later described it as being in a battle field) later on, the police was guarding the area. He was asked to identify the person. What are we mortals to make of grey matter, blood, and grains of rocks?

Follow your destiny

Where does the hand become the wrist?

Where does the neck become the shoulder?

21, he counted them one by one. Were they enough?

Enough to cover the line of destiny, where he finally merges with his fate

The fate that he loved and pursued so earnestly

The fate that hated him so diligently

The galvanic response of his skin reminded him

that like anything else dying required practice.

He sat there, staring at his palm, for a minute or two,

since it was never too late to start the practice.

Above the space where they formed their blissful constellation

All he saw were his callouses, a reminder of his daily struggle,

Struggle to live

And now he realized that the art if dying is even so much harder to master.

No plans, Only dreams!

The pond in my backyard is my canvas
Every night I paint my dreams next to moon's reflection
Every morning I watch them melting with the first appearance of the sun!

--Sisyphus, the painter

What history fails to mention

What history fails to mention is

Most everybody lived their lives
With friends and children, played it cool,
Left truth & beauty to the guys
Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools.   - Gary Synder


What appears as attractive, the unstable equilibrium of forces, is nothing more than a mirage created by the projection of values on the barren island of perception.

On Crushes and Metaphors

"There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. This is a truth chiselled indelibly into the script of life."

http://www.philosophersmail.com/relationships/on-the-madness-and-charm-of-crushes/

As maria helena used to say, only unfulfilled love can be romantic. 

Once there is correspondence, it is fatal.

Have lots of crushes, and enjoy the imperfections of people. 

To the dicotomy, are you a romantic or a pragmatic, we can add this concept of a romantic pessimist. 

I rather embrace the romantic optimist idea though, nicely explained by Goethe

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wr6itOBLVQA

Well said! 

A more "realistic" metaphor may be that of a pilot with finite fuel who not only must aim high to eventually arrive at his destination, but also has to discover his destination along the way! He may ultimately find some solace in "amor fati", since wherever he lands will be his Ithaca!

Lessons

Leave a trace where a trace needs to be left
Manage public opinion

OLaLaaa

The most risqué thing I could do is to write a Nabokovian poem:

O,

when her lips took a trip to the field of budding roses,

where the honey bees suck the sweetest nectars!

La Laaa,

the tip of her tongue,

twice, tapped the arch of my universe!

And I whispered her name, till the end of aaa,

till dissipation of sound;

where words imprison passion,

in this battle of syntax and rhyme.