Sunday, September 7, 2008

Help Humanity



Albert Einstein Biography and Pictures: Young Albert Einstein (patent clerk)"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. ...
The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. ... We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. ...
Humanity is going to need a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive!" (Albert Einstein)

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Axe Handles

    Axe Handles
    Gary Snyder


One afternoon the last week in April Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet One-half turn and it sticks in a stump. He recalls the hatchet-head Without a handle, in the shop And go gets it, and wants it for his own. A broken-off axe handle behind the door Is long enough for a hatchet, We cut it to length and take it With the hatchet head And working hatchet, to the wood block. There I begin to shape the old handle With the hatchet, and the phrase First learned from Ezra Pound Rings in my ears! "When making an axe handle the pattem is not far off." And I say this to Kai "Look: We'll shape the handle By checking the handle Of the axe we cut with-" And he sees. And I hear it again: It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century A.D. "Essay on Literature"-in the Preface: "In making the handle Of an axe By cutting wood with an axe The model is indeed near at hand.- My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen Translated that and taught it years ago And I see: Pound was an axe, Chen was an axe, I am an axe And my son a handle, soon To be shaping again, model And tool, craft of culture, How we go on.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

"Song of Childhood"

"Song of Childhood" by Peter Handke
(From The Film "Wings of Desire", dir. Wim Wenders, 1987)


When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn't know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn't exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

bernard-leach quote "] “The Marriage of East and West”: Bernard Leach as a Cultural Pilgrim" - Google Search

Essay by “The Marriage of East and West”: Bernard Leach as a Cultural Pi SUZUKI Sadahiro (Ochanomizu University)

bernard-leach quote "] “The Marriage of East and West”: Bernard Leach as a Cultural Pilgrim" - Google Search

Quote from Leach:

"“The Marriage of East and West”: Bernard Leach as a Cultural Pi

In claiming that the meeting of East and West is the meeting of the two extremes of human evolution, the spiritual and the practical: that thehe Marriage of East and West”: Bernard Leach as a Cultural Pidecadence of the East is due to the exaggeration of spiritual life, of imagination and dreamy idealism unsupported by reason and exact practical knowledge of things; that the perversion of the West is due to the exaggeration of practical life, of reason and the exact knowledge of things, not governed by spirit, by intuition by instinct, by imagination, naturally I not only make an aesthetic claim, but one, which if it is accepted, is of widespread importance . It means that the East has more to offer us than we have to offer to the East. It means, to anyone who is not a sheer materialist, that the failure of the East is not so great as that of the West, and that consequently our traditional attitude of superiority towards the Yellow and the Brown races is indefensiblei.

This is from a lecture entitled “The Meeting of East and West in Pottery”, a paper he read at a meeting in Tokyo in 1915, soon after his second trip to China.

i Bernard Leach, “The Meeting of East and West in Pottery”. The Far East 29 May 1915: 247-50; 5 June 1915: 288-91; 12 Jun 1915: 312-5, . 312.

Spring Giddiness

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

-- Jalaluddin Rumi