The link below is an interview that the Huffington Post did with Morris about his film " The Unknown Known". Morris's balance and insight are striking; one feels in the presence of an explorer of human nature itself. http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/errol-morris-donald-rumsefeld-documentary-the-unkown-known/527972ff02a7601ab2000177 http://www.errolmorris.com
Grammars of Creation – George Steiner
"Beyond good and evil, beyond reason and social-ethical accountability, rages the drive to create, to engender form." Grammars of Creations George Steiner Jackson Pollock - Untitled (Figure Composition), 1938-41. Colored pencils and graphite on paper
Scattered
Scattered an ability to go with the natural flow of life and interests of the moment. the feeling of moments flowing in time - it is the feeling of time - it is what time is. it is interactive, time engaging and the mind responding and showing and then the reverse takes hold. it is …
Going To The Sun
The Stranger by Albert Camus - Impressions 1942 Prose that is crisp and spare and precise. Fragments of humanity that are turned this way and that to develop a character in time and place. Meursault is detached and self-sufficient. His social needs are minimal. He is authentic and sure of his senses and is comfortable …
Bill Moyers Interviews Oregon’s Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez has lived in the foothills of the Oregon Cascade mountains for 40 years. As a younger man he was a landscape photographer. He is unsurpassed as a western naturalist, scientist and philosopher. He is of course a journalist. His grasp of humanity is deep and highly spiritual. He sees the human situation as …
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Huang Po (Huangbo Xiyun) ~ 黄檗希運 ~ zen buddhist ~ Chinese ~ Tang Dynasty ~ 850AD
Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love Huang Po taught his students they were already enlightened. I know of one student of Zen who threw a translation of Huang Po out of his apartment window, and the book, like a block of wood, made it, on more than one occasion, into an open trash …
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Human Psychology & Bacteria Intelligence
Illustration from Seed magazine It is inevitable that we learn about human psychology from other living creatures. It is proving that bacteria is a source of rich insights and an incredible wealth of scientific learning and understanding. This will proceed assuming that we put our arrogance and high place in the universe aside and look …
Distortion Is Character – Brian Eno
A very learned and wise monologue on art, creativity and character.
Kenneth Rexroth on Morris Graves – 1955
It is rare that a towering intellect will let an artist have the last words on the judgement of his own work and worth. But Rexroth has done just that here in this 1955 piece. This essay is a wide-ranging contemplation of Graves when he was in his prime. Rexroth was in his prime as …
Northwest Polytheism
The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths as such—instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore…psychology shows myths in modern …
Czeslaw Milosz – A Treatise On Poetry
From the Preface - A Treatise On Poetry, 2001, HarperCollins, NY, translated by Robert Haas: First, plain speech in the mother tongue. Hearing it you should be able to see, as if in a flash of summer lightning, Apple trees, a river, a bend of a road. And it should contain more than images. Singsong …
San Francisco Poet – FERLINGHETTI: A REBIRTH OF WONDER – Theatrical Trailer
The Absence – Paul Eluard
The Absence I speak to you across cities I speak to you across plains My mouth is upon your pillow Both faces of the walls come meeting My voice discovering you I speak to you of eternity O cities memories of cities Cities wrapped in our desires Cities come early cities come lately Cities strong …
Italo Calvino – Mr Palomar’s Philosophical Book of Mental Illustrations, Or Poets, Take Back The World.
Mr Palomar is an accomplished practitioner of zen buddhism. He is astute at seeing what is before him as it is. Where he gets into trouble is when seeing, or being, is not enough and he needs to develop his strategies and plans together with his angst at trying to do the right thing in …
Hope Gangloff – American Visual Artist
An amazing representation of American character, below the radar of hype. Hope Gangloff sees the reality of humans surrounding her and shows us them without the filters of commercialism, politics or ideology. http://www.hopegangloff.com/drawings.html
George Steiner – Paris Review
Peasants - Diego Rivera It is a very peculiar climate, summed up by that man of undoubted genius, Monsieur Derrida, when he says that every text is a “pretext.” This is one of the most formidably erroneous, destructive, brilliantly trivial wordplays ever launched. Meaning what? That whatever the stature of the poem, it waits for …
for this time only
“Ichigo-Ichie ” Once-in-a-Lifetime Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会, literally “one time, one meeting”) is a Japanese term that describes a cultural concept often linked with famed tea master Sen no Rikyu. The term is often translated as “for this time only,” “never again,” or “one chance in a lifetime.”Ichi-go ichi-e is linked with Zen Buddhism and concepts …
John Cage – American Inventor
Photograph by Vincent Mentzel 1988/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux. " Cage requires a fundamentally different mode of listening: you need to relinquish expectations that successive sounds will fall into familiar harmonic relationships, or indeed relationships of any kind, and instead treat each moment in isolation. You “regard” the sounds as you would objects in a gallery. More …
Literary Estimations – Gore Vidal on Italo Calvino
Gore Vidal has always been highly intelligent, disciplined and cranky, and as this video shows, has left himself open to being dismantled due to his use of crude attacks on literary colleagues - not only attacks, but outright belittlement. No one can relish the idea of going up against his sharp tongue. However, by doing …
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William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) – America Breaking Away To Find Its Voice.
top photo - public domain. bottom photo: Lisa Larsen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Czeslaw Milosz – Biography – The Wilno Poet Under California Skies
Czeslaw Milosz - The Wilno Poet Under California Skies November 2012 It is not an anomaly to be transformed by the breadth and scope of the Northern California landscape. To stand on a mountain and look over the rocky shore and the expanse of the blue Pacific is a powerful sensation. While one's awe eventually …
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To Robinson Jeffers – Czeslaw Milosz
To Robinson Jeffers If you have not read the Slavic poets so much the better. There’s nothing there for a Scotch-Irish wanderer to seek. They lived in a childhood prolonged from age to age. For them, the sun was a farmer’s ruddy face, the moon peeped through a cloud and the Milky Way …
Gary Snyder – Thoreau Prize
THE VEXING SIMPLICITY OF NEIL YOUNG – Alec Wilkinson
OCTOBER 17, 2012 THE VEXING SIMPLICITY OF NEIL YOUNG POSTED BY ALEC WILKINSON I was a little surprised when Neil Young published his memoir, “Waging Heavy Peace,” because he is the only artist I have ever encountered who is proud of not reading. Reading would distract him from writing songs, he once told me, meaning interfere …
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Seattle and Its Mayor, Mike McGinn – Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World?
Seattle and Its Mayor - Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World? Seattle, like the rest of the nation, has decided that cordiality - respect of opinion and differences - is yesterday's practice. Several months ago a local journalist said this: "I honestly believe that Mayor Mike McGinn is the worst office …
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THEREFORE, YE SOFT PIPES, PLAY ON – ECHOVAR
I have reproduced the following blog post from the ECHOVAR blog site and have given the direct link below. It is an outstanding piece on Steve Jobs. It so happens that I am one third through the book Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. I have followed Jobs for thirty years and believe that he was …
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Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Passion For Looking, Not Thinking
The following article shows the west meeting the east, particularly Jung and Frued meeting zen. Although the article does not mention Jung and especially Hillman they both demonstrated thoughout their writings that the image was dominant in our minds when it came to thinking, before the word. It is interesting that the internet is following …
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James Hillman – Dream’s Language
Dreams follow their own logic. And the use of logic is a poor choice of words. Is there a beginning, middle and end? Or does our waking mind force the linear script onto the contents? Dreams often do not recognize time and therefore a linear story line is not the point. What is the point? …
Dongshan’s Five Ranks: A Zen Teaching on Nonduality
Lincoln – Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design.
Lincoln - Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design. Upon reading Edmund Wilson's profile of Lincoln in "Patriotic Gore - Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War," I am taken by the literary and poetic drama of the account. Lincoln is shown to be chiefly literary in character — it is what …
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Crete Spring: An Appreciation for James Hillman (1926 – 2011) by Louise Steinman
An excellent personal story about Hillman as a commemoration of his recent death.
West Pacific Review 