A bunch of words that relate really to nothing, but which I've found intensely haunting for reasons known and not entirely known

"Do we have Buddha nature, are we essentially holy and perfect and beyond all limitation? Of course we are. Then why are we such a mess spiritually, and why must we bear the indignity of embodiment, shitting, pissing, growing old and dying? We know better but we do it on purpose, Zhaozho says. Why do we do it? Because it's the only way we can express our gratitude for the immensity of what we are."

[Master Zhaozho, when asked, "Does the dog have Buddha Nature?", replied, "Mu."]
- Norman Fischer

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"We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the grief that is in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell."

--Frank Kafka

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"A strong factor in Dali's ostracism from the critical fold was always his exhibitionism: the absurd mustachios, the gigolo manner, the preposterous English in which he yoked together rhinoceros horns and concepts from nuclear physics, his department-store window stunts, his playing up to the American news media, his strangely asexual devotion to his wife, Gala ('she has the look that pierces walls'), the bizarre space he occupied somewhere between American Vogue and a seaside freak show. The paintings came and went, as original and voluptuous as ever, but their seriousness was diminished by the stunts and tomfoolery. Only now are people beginning to look earnestly at the entirety of his lifetime's work and judge him as a painter rather than a performer."

--JG Ballard on Dali

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"A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing under his breath. He walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little song as best he can. The song is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in the heart of chaos. Perhaps the child skips as he sings, hastens or slows his pace. But the song itself is already a skip: it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment..."

--Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

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"Go live, win and lose, smash your hands against hysterical constellations, your head against phases of the moon, and your heart against another heart. Find the leisure to contemplate the results. You will discover the human condition. Foolish people who say that they seek reality don’t know what they are saying. For them, the worldly, when they approach it, they tremble and feel weak, distressed, fearful, terrified and repelled. They reject the truth and turn somewhere else for it, an easier, a softer, lifeless one. Little do they realize that they have been through the door itself, and in error, stupefying ignorance, in that immensity, said nothing is here, and stepped back to dullness. They may be less eloquent and merely realize the words it is painful. I must stop it, and step back."

--John Brzostoski

Comments

[Beverly]

I agree on the Dali comment. He was an exceptional artist and could do all techniques miraculously. I think comparatively Warhol was a lot like Dali. They both seemed to play on their weaknesses or oddities to make a name for themselves.

I was able to see a Dali exhibit in FL in 2004 then in Barcelona in 2004. Very cool indeed.

Beverly

[walternatives]

*namaste*

[Jo]

Dude.

[Erin O']

Thanks for the quote about a child singing -- our older son sang under his breath almost constantly when he first came home. It's waned a bit as he's gotten more comfortable, and it's changed from his native tongue to English.

[CBReedER]

Kafka.

Carol in Iowa