"Superficiality is the curse of our age.
The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.
The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people,
or gifted people, but for deep people."
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 1978
_________

WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE:
"The most interesting and important thing in the world for you is to work out your own individual life.
You must build it from the place where you stand and with the materials in your hands.
Nobody else every stood in your particular place or ever will stand in one identical;
nobody ever has or can possess the same materials. You alone can fuse the elements.
Hold your place, do not try to shift into the place that another occupies.
Keep your eye on what you have to work with, not on what somebody else has.
The ultimate result, the originality, flavor, distinction, usefulness of your life depends on the care,
the reverence, and the intelligence with which you work up and out from where you are
and with what you have."
One of my favorite quotes in the world -
I have been unable to find the source as of yet. Help, if you can.
_________

"True knowledge consists of knowing what is shallow and what is deep;
of diving often to the very bottom."
G. BlueStone, www.DailyZen.com

"This is what you shall do:
love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem..."
Walt Whitman
_________

"There is something I know about you that you may not even know about yourself.
You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped,
more talent than has ever been exploited,
more strength than has ever been tested
and more to give than you have ever given."
John Gardner
_________

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplet:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it... begin it now."
W.N. Murray - 'The Scottis Himalayan Expedition,' 1951
[Last phrase from Goethe, 1749-1832, German poet, novelist and dramatist]
_________

"If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams,
and endeavor to live the life you have imagined,
you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
You will pass an invisible boundary:
new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves
around and within you and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now, put the foundation under them."
Henry David Thoreau
_________

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
St. Francis of Assisi
_________

"In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions
on the next seven generations."
From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy
_________

"Alarmed by the unhealthy choices they make every day,
more and more Americans are calling on the government to enact legislation
that will protect them from their own behavior."
The Onion.com, seen in AJC 11/23/03
_________

"In the course of their journey he came to a village,
and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord's feet and listened to him speaking.
Now Martha who was distracted with all the serving said,
'Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself?
Please tell her to help me.'
But the Lord answered: "Martha, Martha," he said,
"you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed,
indeed only one.
It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.
Luke 10:38-42, New Testament, Jerusalem Bible
_________

"If only you would listen to him today; do harden your hearts."
Psalm 95, Hebrews 3 & 4, Jerusalem Bible

"If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen."
"He that has ears to hear, let him hear."
Matthew 11:15, Jerusalem & King James Bible, respectively
_________

Listening
is a rare happening
among human beings.
You can not listen to
the word another is speaking
if you are preoccupied with
your appearance or
with impressing the other,
or trying to decide
what your going to say
when the other stops talking,
or debating about whether
what is being said is true
or relevant
or agreeable.
Such matters have their place.
But only after listening to
the word as the word
is being uttered.

Listening
is a primitive are of love in which
a person gives himself to
another's word,
making himself accessible
and vulnerable to that word.
William Stringfellow
_________

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance."
Albert Einstein
_________

"There is too much public speaking and too little private thinking."
Winston Churchill
_________

Voices -
"If God's voice is heard in stillness and silence,
then the Devil's voice is heard just about everywhere else -
in our internal head-chatter, our negative self-talk, and our reasonings,
(if one can call them this),
based on fear and ego.
The place where these things are not happening...
this is where we may surely find God."
Morning meditation, D.B. 5/12/04
_________

"THE SUPREME HAPPINESS IN LIFE IS THE CONVICTION THAT WE ARE LOVED."
Victor Hugo
(One of my favorite quotes)
_________

"God is love
and anyone who lives in love lives in God,
and God lives in him...
In love there can be no fear,
but fear is driven out by perfect love:
because to fear is to expect punishment,
and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love.
We are to love, then,
because He loved us first."
1 John 4:16, New Testament, Jerusalem Bible
_________

"I don't want to live -
I want to love first, and live incidentally..."
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-48) US writer; Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1919
_________

"Before enlightenment -
chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment -
chop wood, carry water."
Seen on John Laughinghawk's shirt - attributed to...?
_________

"This is my simple religion -
There is no need for temples;
no need for complicated philosophy.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple;
The philosophy, kindness."
The Dali Lama
from "Tibetian Portrait: The Power of Compassion"
_________

"I KEEP SIX HONEST SERVING MEN, (THEY TAUGHT ME ALL I KNOW);
THERE NAMES ARE WHAT AND WHY AND WHEN AND HOW AND WHERE AND WHO."
Rudyard Kipling, 'Just So Stories,' 1902
_________

"Happiness is basically the awareness of that which is good,
but since God is the Creator and Source of all good,
true happiness, in its deepest sense, is the awareness of God.
The search for happiness is the search for God..."
Elinor MacDonald
_________

"He also said to them,
'Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to say,
'My friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine on his travels
has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him';
and the man answers from inside the house,
'Do not bother me. The door is bolted now, and my children and I are in bed;
I cannot get up to give to you.'
I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to him for friendship's sake,
persistence will be enough to make him get up and give his friend all he wants."

"So I say to you:
Ask, and it will be given to you;
search, and you will find;
knock, and the door will be opened to you.
For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds;
the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him.
Is there a man among you who would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread?
Or would hand him a snake when he asked for a fish?
If you, then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good,
how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Jesus; Luke 11:5 and Matthew 7:7, respectively
_________

"Then he said to his disciples,
"That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat,
nor about your body and how you are to clothe it.
For life means more than food, and the body more than clothing.
Think of the ravens. They do not sow or reap;
they have no storehouses and no barns; yet God feeds them.
And how much more are you worth than the birds!
Can any of you, for all his worrying, add a single cubit to his span of life?
If the smallest things, therefore, are outside your control, why worry about the rest?
Think of the flowers; they never have to spin or weave;
yet, I assure you, not even Solomon in all his regalia was robed like one of these.
Now if that is how God clothes the grass in the field which is there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow,
how much more will he look after you, you men of little faith!
But you, you must not set your hearts on things to eat and things to drink;
nor must you worry. It is the pagans of this world who set their hearts on all these things.
Your Father well knows you need them.
No; set your hearts on his kingdom, and these other things will be given you as well.
There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom."
Jesus, Luke 12:22
_________

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive,
and then go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Harold Thurman Whitman
_________

"All of us would like to be more creative,
but we have critics and editors in our heads picking apart everything we do."
Jules Feiffer
_________

"Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
_________

"None of us can help the things life has done to us.
They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things
until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be,
and you've lost your true self forever."
O'Neill, quoted in the book 'The last time they met' by Anita Shreve, as told to me by mom
_________

"You cannot selectively numb your feelings - what you do is numb your ability to feel...
The problem with Honesty is that most people don't go all the way...
Barbera DiAngelis, 'How to Make Love all the Time'
_________

"I know that touching was and still is and always will be the true revolution."
Nikki Giovanni
_________

"SECURITY IT MOSTLY A SUPERSTITION. IT DOES NOT EXIST IN NATURE.
LIFE IS A DARING ADVENTURE OR NOTHING."
Helen Keller
_________

"Edges are important because they define a limitation in order to deliver us from it.
When we come to an edge we come to a frontier that tells us
that we are about to become more than we have been before.
As long as one operates in the middle of things,
one can never really know the nature of the medium in which one moves."
William Irwin Thompson
_________

There is no amount of success that cannot be destroyed by a small amount of arrogance.
Dave Bass 10/98
_________

Commerce vs. Culture
A problem with Western society - and America in particular -
is that we mistake commerce for culture.
We think buying things is culture - it is not.
Making things is culture - buying things is commerce;
the two are related, but not interchangeable.
Culture is the thoughts, feelings, and fabric of a society
woven into its creations, its crafts, its works of art.
When everything is mass-produced, it is the death of culture.
We are substituting commerce for culture all over the globe,
destroying genuine culture every day in the process.
Dave Bass
_________

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
Pythacus
_________

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice,
universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom,
the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
Michael Ellner
(And might I add, 'families destroy love and acceptance...')
_________

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) US writer, 'Walden, Economy'
_________

"The only difference between a madman and myself...
is I am not mad."
Salvador Dali
_________

"All I want to do is sit on my ass, fart, and think of Dante."
Samuel Beckett, writer
_________

"So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.
I want you to get up right now and go to the window,
open it and stick your head out and yell,
'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"
'Network', Howard Beale (Peter Finch) speech, 1976
_________

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhi
_________

Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, c 1952

The Final Analysis
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight;
build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is all between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
_________

"When you judge me, you negate me"
Soren Kierkegaard

When you judge someone, you affix to them certain unchangeable qualities -
In so doing, you limit them, yourself, and God's ability to work in your own life.
When you judge, you regurgitate the past into the future.
Instead, live an Open Life.

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged;
condemn not and you shall not be condemned;
forgive, and you shall be forgiven."
Jesus
_________

"Never criticize someone until you walk a mile in their shoes -
This way, you'll be a mile away...
and you've got their shoes."
Deborah Sitbon, my lovely, wacko Aunt; Arizona
_________

"Maybe that's what this whole damn thing is about, anyway -
maybe unrequited love is an opportunity to empathize with God.
Perhaps all He wants is to Love and be Loved -
to connect and be appreciated for who He is,
and He can't get it,
because we're too busy wanting everything and everyone else.
Maybe He's bummed; majorly bummed and depressed and grieving.
I can relate.
Sorry, God."
journal entry 5/3/04, Dave Bass
_________

"WHAT WE LOVE WE SHALL GROW TO RESEMBLE"
Bernard of Clairvaux
_________

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger is as good as dead."
Albert Einstein, 'What I Believe'
_________

"There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein
_________

"The dark night of the soul through which the soul passes on its way to the Divine Light."
St. John of the Cross, 'The Ascent of Mount Carmel,' 1578
[He also used the phrase 'The Dark Night of the Soul' as the title of a treatise in 1583.
The metaphor is the most famous expression of the despair that often precedes intense mystical experience.]
_________

"I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning."
Stevie Smith, 'Not Waving but Drowning,' 1957
_________

"Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance' in 'Essays: First Series,' 1841
_________

"Prayer is conversation with God."
Clement of Alexandria, 'Stromateis, c. A.D. 193-211
_________

"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment."
Rumi
_________

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
Einstein, 'On Science'
_________

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.
Excellence, I can reach for.
Perfection is God's business."
Michael J. Fox

"We have a situation where 20 percent of the world's population have 80 percent of the wealth,
and the other 80 percent has just 20 percent.
If that's a situation that leads to instability,
then we are saying that instability will convey itself through migration,
wars within countries and crime and terrorism."
James Wolfensohn, President, WorldBank
_________

"Why of course the people don't want war. . . . That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always
a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy,
or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country."
Hermann Goering, Nazi officer, Nuremberg war crimes trial
_________

"The less people know about what is really going on, the easier it is to wield power and authority."
Charles, Prince of Wales (1948- ) Eldest son of Elizabeth II, 'The Observer' March 2, 1975
_________

"The broad mass of a nation... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."
Adolphe Hitler (1889-1945) 'Mein Kampf,' Ch. 10
_________

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything.
Except what is worth knowing.
Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands."
Oscar Wilde
_________

"Power is the supreme law."
Adolphe Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1973
_________

"Every Communist must grasp the truth: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Mao Zedung, 'Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedung,' 1966
_________

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
John Philpot Curran (1750-1817) Irish judge; speech, July 10, 1790
_________

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, Jan 13, 1813
_________

"Any man who wants to be ignorant and free,
wants something that never was and never will be"
Thomas Jefferson, (paraphrased)
_________

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904- ) US physicist.
Quoting Vishnu from the 'Gita', at the first atomic test in New Mexico, July 16, 1945
_________

"It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism,
and our proneness to adjust to injustice,
the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world
have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries."
Martin Luther King
_________

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution,
we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
When machines and computers,
profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,
the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Martin Luther King
_________

"Let us always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal."
(ie - BOYCOTT)
Martin Luther King
_________

"You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it.
You felt it your entire life. That there's something very wrong with the world.
You don't know what it is - but it is there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Matrix?

Do you know what it is?
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us.
Even now, in this very room.
You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television.
You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

What truth?

That you are a slave, Neo.
Like everyone else you were born into bondage.
Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch - a prison for your mind.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is - you have to see it for yourself...

...I'm trying to free your mind, Neo.
But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."
'The Matrix', Larry and Andy Wachowski, Warner Brothers, 1999
_________

"Thoughtcrime they called it.
Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever.
You might dodge it successfully for a while, even for years,
but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
George Orwell, '1984,' written in 1949
_________

"First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

They came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Pastor Martin Niemoeller,
survivor of Nazi concentration camp
_________

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"
Einstein
_________

"The Reasonable Man adapts himself to the world;
the Unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the Unreasonable Man."
George Bernard Shaw, playwright
_________

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world -
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has!"
Margaret Mead, anthropologist
_________

WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD?
No problem.
Do 3 things:
1) Meditate daily - Align with the Divine
2) Shop local - keep the money in your community
3) Question everything - learn to think for yourself."
Dave Bass, 1/23/05
_________

"Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting."
Finley Peter Dunne

"Know the difference between success and fame -
success is Mother Teresa; fame is Madonna."
Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) American humorist
_________

"Television is a vast wasteland"
Comment in the early days of TV, (1950's) - attributed to...?
_________

"A medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done."
Ernie Kovacs (1919-62) US entertainer, referring to Television
_________

"I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to.
God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off.
Jack Paar, (b.1918) Talk show host
_________

"If you make my word your home
you will indeed by my disciples,
you will learn the truth
and the truth shall make you free."
Jesus, John 8:31
_________

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering,
by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale,
by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic."
Anias Nin (1903-1977) French-born American author and diarist, 'Diary', 1940
_________

"I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."
Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) 33rd president of the United States
_________

"When the minds of the people are closed and wisdom is locked out they remain tied to disease.
Yet their feelings and desires should be investigated and made known, their wishes and ideas should be followed; and then it becomes apparent that those who have attained spirit and energy are flourishing and prosperous, while those perish who lose their spirit and energy.
Huang Ti (2697-2597 BC) Chinese emperor, known as 'The Yellow Emperor'
'Nei Ching Su Wen', Book 4, Section 13
_________

"The cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas,
because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also;
for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.
This is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body,
that the physicians separate the soul from the body."
Plato, (c 427 BC - 347 BC) Greek Philosopher. 'Charmides'

"The great question... which I have not been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul,
is 'What does a woman want'?
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst.
'Psychiatry in American Life' (Charles Rolo)
_________

"How do you write about women so well...?"
"I think of a man, and take away reason and accountability."
Jack Nicholson
'As Good as it Gets'
_________

"I am a marvelous housekeeper; every time I leave a man I keep his house."
Zsa Zsa Gabor
_________

"The next time I think of getting married,
I'm just going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house."
Attributed to everyone from W.C. Fields to Rod Stewart...
_________

"It's been so long since I made love,
I can't even remember who gets tied up."
Joan Rivers
_________

"Why do they put the Gideon Bibles in the bedrooms, where it's usually too late,
and not in the barroom downstairs?"
Christopher Morley
_________

"In a society where people get more or less what they want sexually,
it is much more difficult to motivate them in an industrialized context,
to make them buy refrigerators and cars."
William S. Burroughs
_________

"You sleep with a guy once and before you know it
he wants to take you out to dinner."
Myers Yori
_________

"You think sex intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social act.
Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative.
When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door,
then they make love.
If they take it inside with them, they do something else,
because society is in the room with them.
Andra Sworkin, US feminist. 'Intercourse'
_________

"I'm suggesting we call sex something else,
and it should include everything from kissing to sitting close together."
Shere Hite
_________

Behind every great man is a woman.
And behind every great woman, is a man checking out her ass.
Bumper Sticker (I thought it was funny)
_________

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people too."
attributed to...?
_________

"It is what it is -
not what it should be or what it could have been."
Told to Nicole Kidman by her father, regarding her former relationship
_________

"When everything is said and done, there is nothing more to be said or done."
Woody Allen
_________

"Any idiot can get laid when they're famous.
That's easy. It's getting laid when you're not famous that takes talent."
Kevin Bacon

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense"
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1709

"A man of few words and even fewer intelligent ones."
Heard on an NPR interview, April 2, 2005

"Jazz is the expression of America's romantic self,
its sensual potency, its lyrical force."
Anias Nin, The Diary of Anias Nin, 1974
_________

"For me - a composer - jazz is the best of all nourishments.
It feeds the creative spirit like nothing else can.
Jazz is a fantastic adventure,
an exciting game of giving and taking and exchanging musical ideas with brothers and friends.
When the conditions are right,
we achieve a level of rapport that is nowhere else to be found in music -
or for that matter - in art itself."
'Michel Legrand and Friends' liner notes, 1976
Michel Legrand, French composer and pianist
_________

"What got me started on a life of crime,
(which is what my mother thought my youthful interest in jazz implied),
was a case of the measles when I was 15.
In those days, the early 1930's, when you had the the measles,
they put you in a darkened room and you were not allowed to read.
And so my mother let me have the old family radio. And I lay there, wide awake in the night,
picking up those strange sounds in the night -
Duke Ellington, Louie Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson.
And all I knew was what I heard, and what I heard gave a thrust to me life which has never left it.
I have learned more from them than I did in any classroom,
and their art has given me a faith in creativity and in Life itself that no pulpit has ever offered."
Ralph Gleason, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, co-founder Monterey Jazz Festival,
writer/editor Downbeat, 1st syndicated jazz columnist San Francisco Chronicle,
Creator, producer, host of TV 'Jazz Casual' 1959.
_________

"I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener
of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.
That's what music is to me - it's just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in,
that's been given to us, and here's an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is.
That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life,
and we all try to do it in some way. The musician's way is through his music....
It's a reflection of the universe. Like having life in miniature.
You just take a situation in life or an emotion you know and put it into music."
John Coltrane
_________

"I say play your own way. Don't play what the public wants -
you play what you want and let the public pick up what you're doing -
even if it does take them 15 or 20 years."
Thelonious Monk
_________

"It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things:
how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play.
I find this a little exasperating, but I'm a lot more experienced now,
and understand that probably less than 2 percent of the public can really hear.
When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas,
and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes,
if the changes are completely modern."
Chet Baker, 'As Though I had Wings, The Lost Memoir', p.29
_________

" Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself more artistic."

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has ever known."
Oscar Wilde, 'The Soul of Man under Socialism,' 1895
_________

"There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman.
They are taste, courage, individuality and irreverence.
These are the qualities I want to retain in my music."
Stan Getz, tenor saxophonist
_________

"Gospel and blues are almost the same.
The difference is only that one is about God, the other one about women."
Ray Charles
_________

"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.
If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.
They teach you there's a boundary line to music.
But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
Charlie Parker, 'The Story of Jazz', Stearns, 1956
_________

"I get an audience involved because I'm involved myself -
If the song is a lament at the loss of love,
I get an ache in my gut... I cry out the loneliness."
Frank Sinatra, 'After the Ball,' Whitcomb, 1972
_________

"Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual
without the loss of group contact."
Dave Brubeck, (The Jazz Book, Brandt, 1976)
_________

"The rhythm of jazz is against the normal psychological needs of man."
'How to Distinguish Decadent Songs' The Peoples Music Press, Peking, China

"Youngsters get one idea in mind they think is very hip before their minds open up and they mature.
You've got to appreciate the things that went before."
Dexter Gordon
_________

Dizzy's in the cup story -
This is a perfect example of Zen in action, and is how everything should be done in Life -
you become the object (or person) in your focus.
_________

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side."
Hunter S. Thompson, writer
_________

When asked by Gene Lees what accounted for the melancholy in his playing, he replied,
'Wellllllll, that I'm not playing better."
Paul Desmond
_________

"Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over New York City,
and somebody says, 'Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says, 'Why bother?
He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'"
Paul Desmond
_________

Jimi Hendrix, writing to his father in 1965:
"Nowadays people don't want you to sing good.
They want you to sing sloppy and have a good beat to your songs.
That's what angle I'm going to shoot for.
That's where the money is.
So just in case about three or four months from now you might hear a record by me which sounds terrible,
don't feel ashamed, just wait until the money rolls in
because every day people are singing worse and worse on purpose
and the public buys more and more records."
Excerpted from the New York Times Sunday Magazine, December 29, 2002

"The more he fills his empty evenings
The less he feels that there's a chance to find
Something that can bring him peace of mind

Is there a place where he can go?
A little something he should know
To turn the tide to his favor?

Wait a little while to welcome what you're after
Give it the time to find its way to you -
As soon as you no longer try
You'll turn and find it standing by your side
Come and get it
When you let it -
It'll come to you."

'Wait a Little While'
Kenny Loggins and Eva Ein
1978
_________

"Life's a game of chance,
and you're one of the minor players -
look for what you Love - each day to come harbors some
Let your spirit stop the fight, at that time Round 'bout Midnight."

'Round Midnight'
lyrics by Jon Hendricks
_________

"Once, I was a sentimental thing -
threw my heart away each spring.
Now a spring romance doesn't stand a chance -
promised my first dance to winter -
all I've got to show's a splinter,
for my little fling....

College boys are writing sonnets,
in the tender passion they're engrossed,
but you'll find me right on the shelf,
just like last year's Easter bonnets -
Spring can really hang you up the most...

All afternoon, the bird twitter-twit;
I know the tune - this is LOVE, this is it!
[ - Heard it before, and I know the score -
and I've decided... that spring is a bore!]

'Spring can really hang you up the most'
as sung by Carmen McRae
_________

'Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.'
Commercial - 'Mounds' chocolate bars, circa 1970's.
_________

"I've been thru every single book I've known
to sooth the thoughts that plague me so...

Sink like a stone that's been thrown in the ocean,
my logic has drowned in a sea of emotion -
stop before you start,
be still my beating heart."
'Be still my beating heart'
Sting
_________

"Love lives in a lonely land,
where there's no helping hand, to understand."

'Deep song'
as sung by Billie Holiday
_________

Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba
said the monkey to the chimp -
Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba
said the chimpy to the monk -

All night long they chattered away,
all night long, just happy and gay,
just swingin', and singin' in their old familar way."

'Abba dabba dabba'
Silly song my dad used to sing to me as a kid
_________

"When I'm on my job,
girl, it's not too hard -
but when I get home, and I'm all alone...

You know you're my crutch,
I need your sweet touch,
then it's nighttime again - Lord, when will it end?

I can make it thru the day,
but pleeease, help me thru the night."

'I can make it thru these days'
Ray Charles
_________

"And God only knows,
and God makes his plan -
the information's unavailable to the mortal man.

We work our jobs,
collect our pay -
believe we're gliding down the highway
when in fact, we're slip sliding away."

'Slip Sliding Away'
Paul SImon
_________

"Still I sent up my prayer
Wondering where it had to go
With heaven full of astronauts,
and the Lord on death row;
While the millions of His lost and lonely ones
call out and clamor to be found -
Caught in the struggle for higher position
and their search for love that sticks around..."

"Still I sent up my prayer
Wondering 'who was there to hear?'
I said, "Send me somebody -
Who's strong, and somewhat sincere"
While the millions of the lost and lonely ones
I called out to be released -
Caught in my struggle for higher achievements
and my search for love that don't seem to cease."

'Same Situation'
Court and Spark
Joni Mitchell
1974
_________

"And when our time has ended,
how will we have spent it?
Did we see the beauty in each day?
Was it God's devotion behind each emotion,
or did it all just slip away...?"

'Solomon Sang'
New Moon Daughter
Cassandra Wilson
1995
_________

"There was a boy -
a very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far, over land and sea.
A little shy,
and sad of eye -
but very wise was he.

And then one day,
the magic day he passed my way -
and while we spoke of many things,
fools and kings, this he said to me -

'The greatest thing
you'll ever learn
is just to love...
and be loved in return."

'Nature Boy'
Eden Abez
(Written by a modern-day nomad who wandered America in sandals and robe.)

To the People, Yes

"The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face:
hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:
"Where to? what next?""

'To the People, Yes' - excerpt 1
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
_________

"A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own."

From 'To the People, Yes' - excerpt 2
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
_________

The Guitarist Tunes

With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument:;
Not as a lordly conquerer who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.

'The Guitarist Tunes'
Frances Cornford (1886-1960)
_________

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die-
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

'Curiosity'
Alastair Reed (b. 1926)
_________

Pathedy of Manners

"At twenty she was brilliant and adored,
Phi Beta Kappa, sought for every dance;
Captured symbolic logic and the glance
Of men whose interest was their sole reward.

She learned the cultured jargon of those bred
To antique crystal and authentic pearls,
Scorned Wagner, praised the Degas dancing girls,
And when she might have thought, conversed instead.

She hung up her diploma, went abroad,
Saw catalogues of domes and tapestry,
Rejected and impoverished marquis,
And learned to tell real Wedgwood from fraud.

Back home her breeding led her to espouse
A bright young man whose pearl cufflinks were real.
They had an ideal marriage, and ideal
But lonely children in and ideal house.

I saw her yesterday at forty-three,
Her children gone, her husband one year dead,
Toying with plots to kill time and re-wed
Illusions of lost opportunity.

But afraid to wonder what she might have known
With all that wealth and mind had offered her,
She shuns conviction, choosing to infer
Tenets of every mind except her own.

A hundred people call, though not one friend,
To parry a hundred doubts with nimble talk.
Her meanings lost in manners, she will walk
Alone in brilliant circles to the end."

'Pathedy of Manners'
Ellen Kay (b. 1931)
_________

Peter Quince at the Clavier

I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned --
A cymbal crashed,
And roaring horns.

III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind --
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.

Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

'Peter Quince at the Clavier'
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
The story of Susanna and the Elders is in the Apocrypha and the Douay Bible (Daniel 13).
The name Peter Quince comes from Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'
_________

Bhartrhari

In former days, we'd both agree
That you were me, and I was you.
What has now happened to us two,
That you are you, and I am me?

Translated from the Sanskrit
by John Brough

_________

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

by Andrew Marvell

_________

The Hardness Scale
by Joyce Peseroff

Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz
which is #7 on the hardness scale
and it's hard enough to get to know anybody these days
if only to scratch the surface
and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces:
it will scratch glass
it will scratch gold
it will even
scratch your eyes out one morning—you can't be
too careful.
Diamonds are industrial so I bought
a ring of topaz
which is #8 on the hardness scale.
I wear it on my right hand, the way it was
supposed to be, right? No tears and fewer regrets
for reasons smooth and clear as glass. Topaz will
scratch glass,
it will scratch your quartz,
and all your radio crystals. You'll have to be silent
the rest of your days
not to mention your nights. Not to mention
the night you ran away very drunk very
very drunk and you tried to cross the border
but couldn't make it across the lake.
Stirring up geysers with the oars you drove the red canoe
in circles, tried to pole it but
your left hand didn't know
what the right hand was doing.
You fell asleep
and let everyone know it when you woke up.
In a gin-soaked morning (hair of the dog) you went
hunting for geese,
shot three lake trout in violation of the game laws,
told me to clean them and that
my eyes were bright as sapphires
which is #9 on the hardness scale.
A sapphire will cut a pearl
it will cut stainless steel
it will cut vinyl and mylar and will probably
cut a record this fall
to be released on an obscure label known only to
aficionados.
I will buy a copy.
I may buy you a copy
depending on how your tastes have changed.
I will buy copies for my friends
we'll get a new needle,
a diamond needle,
which is #10 on the hardness scale
and will cut anything.
It will cut wood and mortar,
plaster and iron,
it will cut the sapphires in my eyes and I will bleed
blind as 4 A.M. in the subways when even degenerates
are dreaming, blind as the time
you shot up the room with a new hunting rifle
blind drunk
as you were.
You were #11 on the hardness scale
later that night
apologetic as
you worked your way up
slowly from the knees
and you worked your way down
from the open-throated blouse.
Diamonds are forever so I give you softer things.