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 3 Oct 2005 @ 08:18
Everything you learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe; not even the suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
---R. Buckminster Fuller
People born into this floating world
Quickly become like roadside dust:
At dawn, little children,
By sunset, white-haired and old,
With no inner understanding
They struggle without cease.
I ask the children of the universe,
Why do you bother to pass this way?
---Ryokan
We are all many persons. Some of these people we know and others we don't---only someone else knows them. Some of these people we like and some of them we don't like....All of this is music; it is the music of our lives if we could only stop and listen. Music doesn't have any meaning; you can't explain it. Eating a meal doesn't have any meaning, either, but if there's no eating there's no life, and if we don't hear music we can't dance. This is our practice---to eat our meals and clean up; to dance to the music of our lives, each one in our own way, and then die when it's time.
---Norman Fischer
The painting by Marshall Arisman was done for an issue of Time magazine on violent crime, and can be seen online here [link]
What follows are some accompanying notes to a CD I've been assembling and creating essentially as a gift for an old friend whose birthday is fast approaching. Now I think I'll make a few more copies to send out to friends who might be interested. (Let me know if you'd like one.) The reason I decided to publish the notes like this is Mr. Arisman, whom you'll meet, is being honored with a retrospective of recent paintings later this month and continuing through December at the Brooklyn Lyceum (details at his website the link to which is in the text below). I didn't know that when I wrote this, but it does seem like a good opportunity to advertise the exhibition as repayment of the many gifts of his friendship. It looks as if the opening will be October 22nd, and I certainly wish I could be there. If you'll be in the New York area the next few months, you may want to get down to Brooklyn. And if you see Marshall, tell him "Philly Joe says Hello."
************************************************************** More >
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 29 Sep 2005 @ 08:15
To see into impermanence, to actually see impermanence...this is the mind which determines that I must wake up for the benefit of all beings.
---Dogen, describing his experience as a small boy
The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.
---Friedrich Nietzsche
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.
---Henry David Thoreau
The photo, Sept. 24: part of the massive turnout for the three-day D.C. antiwar mobilization.
Since Mr. Gore, in a political panic, was denied the presidency, many in the United States have worked tirelessly---and with increased vigor this past year, as Mr. Kerry found himself in a sort of rerun---to point out errors and alleged crimes that initiated and have carried on our horrifying decline. Obviously some of us have lost sleep (it's 3AM) over stupefying Yankee blindness. My own writings have become increasingly aggressive, and I have lost favor with some...who prefer my essays about Nature and humorous reminiscences. I haven't kept up with editing my online logs as I used to, but what has piled up here may provide some kind of record at least of one family's re-involvement with American grassroots political process. Sometimes lately I have felt the hopelessness of despair that the real promise and hope of the United States has been lost forever in the decay and fall of another Western civilization. And worse, I have feared we're taking the planet with us. Crash, explode and burn is a popular deathwish. Here in the countryside rarely does an evening pass by anymore that some neighbor or another isn't out on his hillside target-shooting with an automatic weapon. More >
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 26 Sep 2005 @ 12:24
The farther you enter into the truth, the deeper it is.
---Bankei
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
---Oscar Wilde
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
---Rene Descartes
Some 30 years ago, I took my bag of teaching out of public and private schools and into a factory. The name of the company was TRW, which is about as nondescript as you can get, but I soon learned the initials represented the first letter of the last names of the 3 men who founded it. I also learned the 2 factories in our town, which were the last remaining major industry there, were only a toenail clipping in the vast global body of this corporation, headquartered in Cleveland. I decided TRW must stand for The Real World. At one point I even thought those guys could control the weather. Ho ho, clearly I was out of my mind.
Anyway, when I took the job I had a more naive view of manufacturing America. The place had a tutoring and education program especially for returned Viet Nam vets, who were trying to get back on their feet to support that wife and kid(s) that had come along during our "police action" over there. Most of these guys had put a payment down on a house, were settling in to a secure job with high pay and lots of benefits, and needed a program to improve some skills they had that might move them up into management. I thought this was a wonderful way for a corporation to share its wealth with the community of workers upon which it depends. More >
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 21 Sep 2005 @ 10:07
Sitting in an outhouse, I concentrated upon this doubt, and as time passed I forgot to leave. Suddenly a violent wind came, first blowing the outhouse door open and then shut again with a loud crash. My spirit instantly advanced and ripped apart my previous doubt; it was like suddenly awakening from a dream, or remembering something forgotten. I began to dance in a way I had never learned, and there are no words to convey my great joy.
---Gesshu
A reasonable amount o' fleas is good fer a dog---
keeps him broodin' over bein' a dog, mebbe.
---Edward Noyes Westcott
Corruption is more dangerous than terrorism.
---Hadi al-Amiri, Head of Iraqi National Assembly's Integrity Commission
A British soldier, his uniform in flames, prepares to jump from a personnel carrier during rioting that broke out in Basra when Britain sought the release of two detained commandos. (By Atef Hassan -- Reuters)
Americans love a good night's sleep...and we spend tons of money trying to get one here and there. Maybe we spend more money on it, including fees to psychologists and therapists, than almost anything else. Yes, we need oil for all the stuff in our garages...and flying around in airplanes. And we spend lots more on our obesity problems than we contribute to the world's populations of the starving. And of course there is a fortune to be spent finding a sex partner and getting any enjoyment out of the activities. But mostly we really love to sleep...and hate to be awakened!
So let's say that while you were asleep, certain parties "disappeared" $10 billion from the United States Treasury. And let's also say that your sons and daughters were standing guard at those vaults of marble. Not only that, the 10 billion dollars was to be spent for weapons and protection for those duties your children have accepted. In fact, some of those kids are doing that work to get enough money to go to college. If that happened and it was discovered, do you think the story would be in a newspaper the next morning? Maybe? Definitely? Absolutely not? More >
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 18 Sep 2005 @ 10:52
The truth is where the truth is, and it's sometimes in the candy store.
---Bob Dylan
I played the wrong wrong notes.
---Thelonious Monk
The path up and down is one and the same.
---Heraclitus
Natures Bounty by Severin Roesen
There are some people in the United States whose faith is shaken in private initiatives to confront various challenges to continued life on this great globe. The news these last few days has been particularly daunting. We need to go through it, and I hope this entry will be helpful to establish your focus in the coming week at least.
Let's begin with the exhaustive chronicle of the Katrina disaster to the Gulf Coast assembled by FactCheck.org on Friday. The group already has edited the timeline twice as additions and corrections have been offered, including one from FEMA. They begin with warnings about the Lake Pontchartrain levees from FEMA itself in July of 2004. Bookmark this one for future reference~~~
[link] More >
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This is my News Log, actually the second manifestation of jazzoLOG. I moved the first edition to another site, where those articles still are archived and available for continued comment if you wish. Please copy and paste to access~~~ http://web.archive.org/web/20060315012857/http://www.upsaid.com/jazzolog/ |
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Comments made herein are available for view and appreciation to members and the general public. JazzoLOG also is open for comment contribution to all who are willing to identify themselves in the usual ways.
I don't know about you, but sometimes I work a long time, cumulatively for hours, on comments I make on these News Logs. I plan to edit this Log regularly and delete things. Before I do that, I want to assure you, I shall notify each commentator of such an amendment so you may have time to copy anything you wish to save and paste somewhere else. Create your own News Log in your profile. |
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