Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts

Thursday, March 28, 2024

To Be Fierce And To Show Mercy

  



"You Do You, Kid. You Do You..."

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Glaze


"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these -- to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do."

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
 
 
 
 
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Fuck Expectations

 


 

"Subset"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed



 “A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.”

~ Erich Fromm ~





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Monday, February 26, 2024

Casual, Haphazard, Amoral Process

 


 

"Never Before"
Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Stackables



“There is no logical, rational, pre-structured criterion "out there" with a divine plan. There is no truth "out there" which our weak minds or souls eventually run across. There is this casual, haphazard, amoral process that leaps the logical gaps and brings about newness. And the procedurés only demand is that given talents be invested, risked, doubled, the possibilities explored.”
 
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce ~





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Sunday, February 25, 2024

Page From A Bad Horse Diary..


 

 

"Cold AF - Self Portrait at Gloucester Marine Railways"
Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed

 


A
esthetics of Harshness to a Horse

You should never be harsh
To a horse. A horse is always doing
Its best. Otherwise it is a bad horse
And harshness has no effect.

~ Kenneth Koch ~

  

 

 

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Tell

 


 

"Tell It Slant"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed



Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

~ Emily Dickinson ~



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Thursday, February 15, 2024

Same Goes For Miracles, Too...




 

"Dorothy's Flowers"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Brushstroke Pro
Decim8



“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables.”

~ Chuck Palahniuk ~
 
 
(Quote via AOAC)
 
 
 
 
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Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Oh, It Was Only Thirty Eight Years...

 


It took decades but,
mine almost killed me.

Yay tenacity.

 


 

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Friday, December 8, 2023

The Hardest Battle

 

 

Sunset over the Great Salt Panne - Parker River Wildlife Refuge




"Sunset Over The Great Salt Panne"
Parker River Wildlife Refuge

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Brushstroke Pro
Glaze


"Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

~ E.E. Cummings ~
 
 
 
 
 
 
~
 
 
 


Tuesday, December 5, 2023

The World Is Burning - Abandon Fitting In for Fuck's Sake

 

Parker River Wildlife Refuge 

 

"Fuck Fitting In - Lone Cattail in a Sea of Phragmites"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed


 

"....I defined belonging as the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are."
 
~ Brene Brown ~
 
 
 
 
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Saturday, November 11, 2023

At Least Fifty Percent Terrible

 

 

Rockport 

 

"Rockport"
Nikon D800
Nikkor 50.0mm f/1.4 Lens
Lightroom
Snapseed



Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
 
~ Maggie Smith ~






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Sunday, November 5, 2023

To Feel Overcome

 

 

Hall Art Foundation 

 

 

"Waiting For The Hammer To Fall"
Detail of Painting at Hall Art Foundation


“May I disappear,” wrote Simone Weil.
“When I am in any place, I disturb the silence
of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating
of my heart.” That is what I am searching for:
the chance to merge into the wild drift
of the world, to feel overcome,
to enter into its weft so
completely that
sometimes I can forget
myself. But that is a lofty goal
when I can barely shift
my mind into
motion."

~ Katherine May ~




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Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Dear Bright-Siders,

 

Gloucester Fish Pier


"Self Portrait"

Gloucester Fish Pier
Nikon D800
Nikkor 50.0mm f/1.4 Lens
Lightroom
Snapseed


"The irony of hiding the dark side of our humanness is that our secret is not really a secret at all. How can it be when we're all safeguarding the very same story? That's why Rumi calls it an Open Secret. It's almost a joke - a laughable admission that each one of us has a shadow self - a bumbling, bad-tempered twin. Big surprise! Just like you, I can be a jerk sometimes. I do unkind, cowardly things, harbor unmerciful thoughts, and mope around when I should be doing something constructive. Just like you, I wonder if life has meaning; I worry and fret over things I can't control; and I often feel overcome with a longing for something that I cannot even name. For all of my strengths and gifts, I am also a vulnerable and insecure person, in need of connection and reassurance. This is the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave disservice."


~ Elizabeth Lesser ~

 

 

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Monday, October 30, 2023

Gutted Like a Fish

 Gloucester Marine Railways

 

"Somewhat"

Nikon D800
Nikkor 50.0mm f /1.4 Lens
Lightroom
Snapseed




I had Christianity implanted in me when I was a child. Eight years of Catholic school did its job well. You wouldn't think that intimidation and physical abuse would be good teaching modalities - but the Sisters of St Dominic and the Sisters of Notre Dame used them to great effect. To this day there are barbed shards of Christianity deeply embedded in my mind. 
 
Although even as a boy, based on what I witnessed play out all around me on a daily basis, I saw Christianity for what it was, a deeply flawed spiritual tradition based on superstition and cruelty, it was on an emotional level where the infection truly blossomed. Specifically - the terrifying concept of everlasting torment for the unredeemed seemed to me to be barbaric beyond the pale. The horrifying doctrine of unending torture haunted me for decades. As a teenager I used to have gigantic, volcanic fights with my mother about damnation. I remember asking her once if she thought her husband or her children were going to burn for all eternity for the petty sins of being non-Catholics and for not going to church on Sundays. That didn't go over well and may well have resulted in a slap in my face.. 
 
It wasn't until I read Arthur Schopenhauer's essay on Christianity that I was (somewhat) set free. That encounter is one of my most vivid memories from my time at UMaine Orono. I stood stock still in the stacks of the Fogler Library reading the book I had known about and searched for but until that day had failed to find... 
 
Schopenhauer gutted the Christian dogma of everlasting punishment.. [For a more modern and Orthodox treatment of eternal roasting, check out what David Bentley Hart has written about it..]
 
All the while I was reading Schopenhauer's essay, I remember thinking "Yes! Finally! Fuck yes!!" 
 
Some excerpts:
 
Taken in its ordinary meaning, the dogma [of Christianity] is revolting, for it comes to this: it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even his unbelief, in everlasting torment[…]
 
[…Nay], more, it makes this almost universal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of the Fall.
 
[...]This is a result which must have been foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, made them not better than they are, and secondly, set a trap for them into which he must have known they would fall; for he made the whole world, and nothing is hidden from him. According to this doctrine, then, God created out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give them over to endless torment. 

[...]And, as a last characteristic, we are told that this God, who prescribes forbearance and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, but does the exact opposite; for a punishment which comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and done with, cannot have for its object either to improve or deter, and is therefore pure vengeance.

[On] this view, the whole race is actually destined to eternal torture and damnation, and created expressly for this end, the only exception being those few persons who are rescued by election of grace, from what motive one does not know.

 

 

 

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Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Re-Post - Again and again and again

 

Again and again and again 

 

"Again and Again and Again" 

Sharpie Ultra Fine Point on Rhodia Graph Paper
Canon Lide 700f Scanner
Snapseed, Glaze, RePix



Meditation

Animals full of light
walk through the forest
toward someone aiming a gun
loaded with darkness.

That’s the world:  God
holding still
letting it happen again,
and again and again.
 
~ William Stafford ~ 

 

 

 

~

 

 

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Don't Tell Us, Dear Friends


 

Thoughts & Prayers 

 

"Guns Are TheMostImportantThing"

ProCreate
Stackables
Snapseed


....

Don’t tell us
how to love, don’t tell us
how to grieve, or what
to grieve for, or how loss
shouldn’t sit down like a gray
bundle of dust in the deepest
pockets of our energy, don’t laugh at our belief
that money isn’t
everything, don’t tell us
how to behave in
anger, in longing, in loss, in home-
sickness, don’t tell us,
dear friends.

....

~ Mary Oliver (excerpted) ~
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
~
 
 
 
 
 



The Immediate Proximity

 

Gloucester Marine Railways 

 

"Hull - Gloucester Marine Railways"

Nikon D7200
Nikkor 18.0mm-55.0mm Lens
Lightroom
SnapSeed



“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life — and herein lies its secret — takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.”

~ Milan Kundera ~








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Friday, August 25, 2023

Our Cages

 

Rocky neck 

 

"Shadow Man"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed



"The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages."

~ Virginia Woolf ~



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Friday, August 18, 2023

Never

 

Ghostworld

 

"Ghost World"

Canon G7x Mark II

Toy Camera Mode
Snapseed
iColorama
Carbon

 

With each passing year that I sit here
That horizon seems to inch just that much nearer
And all that appears on it seems as clear as spit
But if there's one thing in my life
That these years have taught
It's that you can always see it coming
But you can never stop it....

 

~ Cowboy Junkies - Bea's Song Excerpt ~

 

 

 

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Harbinger of Madness

 

Impact

 

"Impact"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Stackables


"Pride is a denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men. It is the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of barrenness. It is a flight from God's help, the harbinger of madness, the author of downfall. It is the cause of diabolical possession, the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy. It is the fortress of demons, the custodian of sins, the source of hardheartedness. It is the denial of compassion, a bitter pharisee, a cruel judge. It is the foe of God. It is the root of blasphemy."
 
~ John Climacus - Seventh-Century Monk of Sinai ~



(Quote from Whiskey River)
 
 
 
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