any friend of Martha is a friend of mine.

Kate Bush - Running Up that Hill



Kate Bush -Wuthering Heights

about living art and the art of action.

Been spending a lot of time thinking about my purpose. What has this all led to? Why am I here and for what? We should be living a purpose driven life, right? After all, they give us books about it.

N, Q, R Canal Street Station

Listened to a sermon today recommended by a friend, that really got me thinking that too much thinking goes into thinking about our purpose. Doing in good will is worth so much more than planning good intents.

I live in a city where everything is planned, separated, ordered. Even a passing smile causes discomfort, if it has no clear intention. 

Our generation was told that our best life could be like a series of points on a line: safe, calculated, determinable.

I love this piece of art because to many its nearly invisible, a tiled wall of no distinction. To me it meant everything because it served its purpose without me knowing its intent.

More profound thoughts by the wiser:

Abandoning attachment to fruits
of action, always content, independent,
he does nothing at all
even when he engages in action. [20]

He incurs no guilt if he has no hope,
restrains his thought and himself,
abandons possessions,
and performs actions with his body only. [21]

Content with whatever comes by chance,
beyond dualities, free from envy,
impartial to failure and success,
he is not bound even when he acts. [22]

When a man is unattached and free,
his reason deep in knowledge,
acting only in sacrifice,
his action is wholly dissolved. [23]
The Bhagavad-Gita


23. If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
24. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
Luke 9


Brooding about sensuous objects
makes attachment to them grow;
from attachment desire arises,
from desire anger is born. [62]
...
As the mountainous depths
of the ocean
are unmoved when waters
rush into it,
so the man unmoved
when desires enter him
attains a peace that eludes
the man of many desires [70]

When he renounces all desires
and acts without craving,
possessiveness,
or individuality, he finds peace. [71]

This is the place of the infinite spirit;
achieving it, one is freed from delusion;
abiding in it even at the time of death,
one finds the pure calm of infinity. [72]
The Bhagavad-Gita


25. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26. Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?
27. Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span?
28. Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.
29. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.
30. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
31. So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?'
32. All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
33. But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides
34. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
Matthew 7

about Valentine's Day and Reconciliation.

Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. Days, all one kind, go chasing each other. The snow unfurls in dancing figures. A silver gull slips down from the west. Sometimes a sail. High, high stars. Oh the black cross of a ship. Alone. Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet. Far away the sea sounds and resounds. This is a port. Here I love you. Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. I love you still among these cold things. Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels that cross the sea towards no arrival. I see myself forgotten like those old anchors. The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there. My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose. I love what I do not have. You are so far. My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights. But night comes and starts to sing to me. The moon turns its clockwork dream. The biggest stars look at me with your eyes. And as I love you, the pines in the wind want to sing your name with their leaves of wire. - Pablo Neruda

about bottled fireflies and butterflies, things we wish to keep but can never.

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
we trekked and picked until the cans were full,
until the tinkling bottom had been covered
with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
with thorn pricks, our palms stick as Bluebeard's
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney

about goodbyes.

heartfelt gorgeous poetry by Leonard Cohen.

fragility, not weak.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the hearts of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

deliberate heart yearnaches, courtesy of ee cummings, one of my favorite poets. I had this glorious book of poems by him, and it disappeared somewhere along my journey, perhaps like one of Linda's purple plates.