Masks, Shel Silverstein
A Brief History of John Baldessari, Narrated by Tom Waits
The higher that the monkey can climb
The more he shows his tail
Call no man happy ‘til he dies
There’s no milk at the bottom of the pail
God builds a church
The devil builds a chapel
Like the thistles that are growing
‘Round the trunk of a tree
All the good in the world
You can put inside a thimble
And still have room for you and me
If there’s one thing you can say about Mankind
There’s nothing kind about man
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork
But it always comes roaring back again
And misery’s the river of the world
Misery’s the river of the world
Everybody row, everybody row
- Misery’s The River Of The World, Tom Waits
I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know:
her dress upon my arm:
but
they will not
give her back to me.
- For Jane: With All The Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough, Charles Bukowski
(Source: alexiswinter)
The quality of suffering
“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
- Tom Waits
Life is whittled
Life’s a riddle
Man’s a fiddle that life plays on
When the day breaks, and the earth quakes
Life’s a mistake all day long
Tell me, who gives a good gooddamn
You’ll never get out alive
Don’t go dreaming
Don’t go scheming
A man must test his mettle
In a crooked ol’ world
- Tom Waits, Starving in the belly of a whale
(Source: alexiswinter)
Hello word nerds!
Because it’s very easy to forget the sweet little wonders that happen to us each day, this year I have decided to put them into words. Each day I’m penning down something positive that’s occurred and putting it safely away in this jar. At the end of the year, instead of reflecting on opportunities missed or things I didn’t have time to do, I’m going to open it up and reflect on all the small little wonders of the year. Because to me, it’s the little things that make the difference.
I encourage anyone else who wants a little added positivity to their day to try it as well!
You
“The concept you have about me won’t change who I am, but it can change my concept about you”
- Dr. Gregory House
Pretty spot on considering it’s prime time.
Island
“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.”
- Aldous Huxley
The Four Loves
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
- C.S. Lewis
“it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”
-Tom Waits, Black Rider
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ they yell, ‘we are floating in space!’ But none of the people down there care”
- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
Close your weary little reading eyes for 2 minutes and listen to this wonderful master piece.
One of my favourite songs, ever.
- Tchaikovsky, Valse Sentimentale
The Mind
The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.”
-Aldous Huxley, The Doors Of Perception
