Here are some items I saved for just such an occasion. Then perhaps I'll try a little poem. No more sonnets for a while. The last one gave me a headache.
July 24 was the birthday of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott and a darn good writer herself. She ended up in a mental hospital in Asheville and was killed in a fire there at the age of 47. She said:
I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled "the past," and, having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.
(How very wise of her to empty her "past" reservoir.)
She also said:
We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
(It's advertising that's got us into the mess we're in. They're very clever at getting us to buy things we don't really need, so that we have to make more and more money in order to have more and more things. Someone said on public radio yesterday that the two main causes of the economic crisis were fear--because the people who saw what was happening feared for their security if they blew the whistle--and greed, obviously.)
July 29 was the birthday of the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, an astute observer of America and Americans, who had a lot to say about us back in 1835 in a book entitled Democracy in America. He said:
An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing … he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere.
(He got it right, don't you think? Funny, I thought everyone, everywhere did that. Maybe we're more special than I realized, at least we were in 1835.)
I'm going to take the dog for a walk and perhaps I'll get inspired to continue this drivel in a more interesting vein. TTFN...
The most inspiring thing I saw on my walk today was this statue of Quan Yin in a neighbor's yard. I had seen a Buddha of similar size in that yard on another day; this one was in such a lovely, shady spot I had to take her picture. Quan Yin is a female bodhisattva, one who is on the way to becoming a buddha.
The name Kuan Shih Yin, as she is often called, means literally the one who regards, looks on, or hears the sounds of the world. According to legend, Quan Yin was about to enter heaven when she paused on the threshold as the cries of the world reached her ears. Sacrificing her own ascension for the sake of her "children," Quan Yin stayed on earth, thereby exhibiting the same behavior of mothers everywhere who would sacrifice their very lives for their children.
Quan Yin's Statue
Crying all around
Suffering humanity
Little world at peace
August 3, 2009
Fort Bragg, California
PS: I keep forgetting to mention that I have removed the "register" requirement on the Comments box for those of you who have said you would leave a comment but don't want to register. It's always nice to find that someone is out there reading this stuff, even if you do it anonymously.
No comments:
Post a Comment