FREE THOUGHTS

Tor Ulven, Selected Poems

2013-07-19T20:14:00.000+02:00

I shall marry the goldsmith's dead daughter

i stand under a tree of hungry hands

no

i stand under nothing

i am heading to an absolute

isolation solitude and emptiness

mile after mile of desert I left behind me

and last city passed a long time

i am heading to a great despair

to a doubt

that may be vanished only by major doubts

why do i stand silent if i have a mouth

why do i stand still if I have feet

why don't I see if I have eyes

why don't i scream if i am caught in this misery

because i am made of stone

there is something i cannot reach

i do not know what it is

i stretch the arms out after it

air air… air

what are you looking for in the sky

i'm looking for a constellation that doesn't exist

in the human sphere there are not well

so many significant things:

nails brain bones

I by my own eyes have to

access darkness.

and calmness

on the other side of them.

But who could to say

the difference

between black and green?

Who lives

and moves

in your hands

when you examine them under light

a short moment?

Many. The same

who have never

existed.

Who exists and does not

exist, exactly

now?

The forest is alive

You can smell the odor

of the fir branches

amidst the night. The wind

whizzes

In you. In us.

I will travel

to Eridu

and I will create my broken

jars with red images

of the red-horn goat.

and the streaming water, which

steers

and drinks all of us.

I will travel

home

to Eridu

and marry

the goldsmith's dead

daughter.

sitting on the threshold

in the evening, I hear the neighbour’s laughter

and the reborn flies

around the glare of the oil lamp.

The suffering

has no seat

to alight on.

You pursue oaks

inside a church.

Yes! now I suddenly see

the chestnut tree

you are thinking about, in darkness

the white flowers,

we are dust.

The slide

of a smile.

Projected on the hedge

a late summer night, the shadows

of insects

that chase, perhaps

a swallow.

Tor Ulven

(1953–1995)

Tor Ulven was a Norwegian poet. He is considered one of the major poets of the Norwegian post-war era, and he won several major literary prizes in Norwegian literature.

His early works, consisting of traditional modernist verse poetry, were heavily influenced by André Breton and the surrealist movement. As the 1980s progressed he developed a more independent voice, both stylistically and thematically. The later part of his work consists mainly of prose. He committed suicide in 1995 in Oslo, the city where he was born.

The alphabet prayer

2013-04-18T00:08:00.000+02:00

0009

The alphabet prayer

A Hasidic tale:

Late one evening a poor farmer on his way back from the market found himself without his prayer book.

The wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of the woods and it distressed him that this day should pass without his having said his prayers.

So this is the prayer he made:

“I have done something very foolish, Lord.

I came away from home this morning without my prayer book and my memory is such that I cannot recite a single prayer without it.

So this is what I am going to do:

I shall recite the alphabet five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers are known, can put the letters together to form the prayers I can’t remember.”

And the Lord said to his angels,

“Of all the prayers I have heard today,

this one was undoubtedly the best

because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

THE LITTLE FISH

2013-03-29T19:01:00.000+01:00

011

THE LITTLE FISH

“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish,

“You are older than I so can you tell me

where to find this thing they call the Ocean?”

“The Ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now,”

“Oh, this? But this is water.

What I’m seeking is the Ocean,”

said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

He came to the Master in sannyasi robes.

And he spoke sannyasi language:

“For years I have been seeking God.

I have sought Him everywhere that He is said to be:

On mountain peaks, the vastness of the desert,

and the silence of the cloister and the dwellings of the poor.”

“Have you found him?” the Master asked.

“No. I have not. Have you?”

What could the Master say?

The evening sun was sending shafts of golden light into the room.

Hundreds of sparrows were twittering on a banyan tree.

In the distance one could hear the sound of highway traffic.

A mosquito droned a warning that it was going to strike...

And yet this man could sit there and say he had not found Him.

After a white he left, disappointed, to search elsewhere.

Stop searching, little fish.

There isn’t anything to look for.

All you have to do is look.

The Song of the Bird

Anthony de Mello

Finding

2012-12-25T18:17:00.001+01:00

Finding

I am seeking for myself…

So… I travel…

Mary wants to be a Prostitute

2012-12-12T00:13:00.000+01:00

0087

Mary wants to be a Prostitute

When Sister asked the children in her class what they wanted to be when they grew up

little Tommy said he wanted to be a pilot.

Elsie said she wanted to be a doctor,

Bobby to Sister’s great joy, said he wanted to become a priest.

Then Mary stood up and declared she wanted to be a prostitute,

“What was that again, Mary?”

“When I grow up,” said Mary with the air of someone who knew exactly what she wanted,

“I shall become a prostitute.”

Sister was startled beyond words.

Mary was immediately segregated from the rest of the children and taken to the Parish Priest.

Father was given the facts in broad outline but he wanted to check them out with the culprit,

“Tell me what happened in your own words, Mary.”

“Well,” said Mary, somewhat taken aback by all this fuss,

“Sister asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up and I said I wanted to become a prostitute.”

“Did you say prostitute?” asked Father, double-checking.

“Yes.”

“Heavens! What a relief!

We all thought you said you were going to become a Protestant!”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

Alligator teeth for pearls

2012-08-22T19:05:00.000+02:00

240

Alligator teeth for pearls

A woman tourist from the West was admiring a native’: necklace.

“What is it made of?” she asked.

“Alligator teeth, ma’am,” said the native,

“Oh, I see. I suppose they have the same value for you people that pearls have for us,”

“Not quite. Anyone can open an oyster,”

The enlightened understand that a diamond is a stone until endowed with value by the human mind.

And that things are as big or as small as your mind chooses to make them.

The prayer of the frog. Volume - II

Anthony de Mello

“She has no family"

2012-07-30T20:58:00.006+02:00

214

“She has no family"

The family was gathered at dinner. The oldest boy announced he was going to marry the girl across the street.

“But her family didn’t leave her a penny,” objected his father.

“And she hasn’t saved a cent,” added mother. “She doesn’t know a thing about football.” said junior. “I’ve never seen a girl with such funny hair,” said sister.

“All she does is read novels,” said uncle.

“And such poor taste in the choice of her clothes,” said aunt.

“But she isn’t sparing of the powder and the paint,” said grandma.

“True,” said the boy. “But she has one supreme advantage over ail of us.”

“What’s that?” everyone wanted to know.

“She has no family!”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

Making friends with a dragon

2012-05-28T00:58:00.000+02:00

24

Making friends with a dragon

A man went to see a psychiatrist

and said that every night he was visited by a twelve-foot dragon with three heads.

He was a nervous wreck, could not sleep at all and was on the verge of total collapse.

He had even thought of suicide.

“I think I can help you,” said the psychiatrist,

“but I must warn you that it will take a year or two and will cost three thousand dollars.”

“Three thousand dollars!” the man exclaimed.

“Forget it!

I’ll just go home and make friends with it.”

The Muslim mystic, Farid, was prevailed upon by his neighbours to go to the court in Delhi and obtain a favour from Akbar for the village.

Farid walked into the court and found Akbar at his prayers:

When the Emperor finally emerged, Farid asked.

“What sort of prayer did you make?”

“I prayed that the All Merciful would bestow success and wealth and long life on me,” was the reply.

Farid promptly turned his back on the Emperor and walked away, remarking,

“I came to see an Emperor.

What I find here is a beggar no different from the rest!”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

God and the cookies

2012-05-14T22:55:00.002+02:00

16

God and the cookies

Mother: “Did you know that God was present when you stole that cookie from the kitchen?”

“And he was looking at you all the time?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think he was saying to you?”

“He was saying. There’s no one here but the two of us-take two.’

The prayer of the frog. Volume - II

Anthony de Mello

The three wise men

2012-04-21T19:32:00.000+02:00

031

The three wise men

Three wise men set out on a journey for, even though they were considered wise in their own country, they were humble enough to hope that travel would broaden their minds.

They had barely crossed into a neighbouring country when they saw a skyscraper in the distance.

What could this enormous object be, they asked themselves?

The obvious answer would have been: go up and find out.

But no, that might be too dangerous.

Suppose it was something that exploded as one approached?

It was altogether wiser to decide what it was before finding out.

Various theories were put forward, examined and, on the basis of their past experience, rejected.

Finally, it was determined, also on the basis of past experience of which they had an abundant supply, that the object in question, whatever it was could only have been placed there by giants.

This led them to the conclusion that it would be safer to avoid this country altogether.

So they went back home having added something to their fund of experience.

Assumptions affect Observation.

Observation breeds Conviction.

Conviction produces Experience.

Experience generates Behaviour,

which, in turn, confirms Assumptions.

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

What causes arthritis?

2012-04-05T23:49:00.000+02:00

152

What causes arthritis?

...and not respond to what we assume the other said...

The village drunkard staggered up to the parish priest, newspaper in hand, and greeted him politely.

The priest, annoyed, ignored the greeting because the man was slightly inebriated.

He had come with a purpose, however,

“Excuse me, Father,” he said,

“Could you tell me what causes arthritis?”

The priest ignored that too.

But when the man repeated the question the priest turned on him impatiently and cried,

“Drinking causes arthritis, that’s what causes arthritis!

Gambling causes arthritis!

Chasing loose women causes arthritis...”

And only then, too late, “Why did you ask?”

“Because it says right here in the papers that that’s what the Pope has!”

The prayer of the frog. Volume - II

Anthony de Mello

I Dreamed a Dream

2012-02-19T10:33:00.001+01:00

I Dreamed a Dream

There was a time, when men were kind

And their voices were soft

And their words were inviting

There was a time, when love was blind

And the world was a song

And the song was exciting

There was a time it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high and life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid

And dreams were made and used and wasted

There was no ransom to be paid

No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night

With their voices soft as thunder

As they turn your hope apart

As they turn your dreams to shame

He slept a summer by my side

He filled my dreams with endless wonder

He took my childhood in his stride

But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'd come to me

That we would live the years together

But there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be

So different from the hell I'm living

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

Les Misérables (musical)

Claude-Michel Schönberg (music)

Alain Boublil (lyrics)

"I Dreamed a Dream" is a song from the musical Les Misérables. It is a solo that is sung by the character Fantine during the first act.

The music is by Claude-Michel Schönberg, with orchestrations by John Cameron. The English lyrics are by Herbert Kretzmer, based on the original French libretto by Alain Boublil.

The window cleaner

2012-02-13T19:47:00.000+01:00

167

The window cleaner

A woman stepped out of her shower stark naked and was about to reach for her towel when she saw,

to her horror, that there was a man on a scaffolding washing her window and eyeing her appreciatively.

So shocked was she by the unexpected apparition that she stood transfixed to the ground, gaping at the man.

“What’s the matter, lady?” the fellow asked cheerfully

“Have you never seen a window cleaner before?”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I
Anthony de Mello

The Little Prince

2012-01-24T22:12:00.001+01:00

Quotations

The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside,

and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar.

That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter.

I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves,

and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes.

I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me.

At a glance, I can distinguish China from Arizona.

If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence.

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand.

And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted,

I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept.

I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding.

But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: "That is a hat."

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars.

I would bring myself down to his level.

I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties.

And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612.

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope.

That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration.

But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Grown-ups are like that...

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612,

a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume.

So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance.

And this time everybody accepted his report.

If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways.

When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters.

They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?"

Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?"

Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

If you were to say to the grown-ups:

"I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,"

they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all.

You would have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000."

Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house that is!"

Just so, you might say to them:

"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep.

If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists."

And what good would it do to tell them that?

They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child.

But if you said to them:

"The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612," then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.

They are like that. One must not hold it against them.

Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.

To forget a friend is sad.

Not everyone has had a friend.

Flowers are weak creatures. They are naïve.

They reassure themselves as best they can.

They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons...

The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years.

For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same.

And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them?

Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important?

Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman's sums?

And if I know-I, myself- one flower which is unique in the world,

which grows nowhere but on my planet,

but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning,

without even noticing what he is doing,

Oh! You think that is not important!

If someone loves a flower,

of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars,

it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.

He can say to himself: “Somewhere, my flower is there...”

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman.

He has never smelled a flower.

He has never looked at a star.

He has never loved any one.

He has never done anything in his life but add up figures.

And all day he says over and over, just like you:

“I am busy with matters of consequence!”

And that makes him swell up with pride.

But he is not a man-he is a mushroom!"

I wonder, he said;

whether the stars are set alight in heaven

so that one day each one of us may find his own again.

Men?

I think there are six or seven of them in existence.

I saw them, several years ago.

But one never knows where to find them.

The wind blows them away.

They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

No one is ever satisfied where he is.

Men, said the little prince, set out on their way in express trains,

but they do not know what they are looking for.

Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round...

Water may also be good for the heart…

The men where you live, said the little prince, raise five thousand roses in the same garden...

and they do not find in it what they are looking for...

They do not find it, I replied...

And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water...

And the little prince added:

But the eyes are blind.

One must look with the heart…

But the eyes are blind.

One must look with the heart…

It is just as it is with the flower.

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night.

All the stars are a-bloom with flowers.

And at night you will look up at the stars.

Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found.

It is better, like that.

My star will just be one of the stars, for you.

And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens…

They will all be your friends.

And, besides, I am going to make you a present...

All men have the stars, he answered, but they are not the same things for different people.

For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides.

For others they are no more than little lights in the sky.

For others, who are scholars, they are problems.

For my businessman they were wealth.

But all these stars are silent.

You - you alone - will have the stars as no one else has them…

- What are you trying to say?

- In one of the stars I shall be living.

In one of them I shall be laughing.

And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…

You - only you - will have stars that can laugh!

And he laughed again.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me.

You will always be my friend.

You will want to laugh with me.

And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure…

And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky!

Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh'!

Words are the source of misunderstandings.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry

THE WORLD FAIR OF RELIGIONS

2012-01-09T21:15:00.000+01:00

105

THE WORLD FAIR OF RELIGIONS

My friend and I went to the World Fair of Religions.

Not a trade fair.

But the competition was fierce, the propaganda loud.

The handouts at the Jewish Stall said that God was All-Compassionate and the Jews were his Chosen People.

The Jews. No other people were as Chosen as they.

At the Moslem Stall we learnt that God was All-Merciful and Mohammed his only Prophet.

Salvation comes from listening to God’s Prophet.

The message at the Christian Stall was:

God is Love and there is no salvation outside the Church.

Join the Church or risk damnation forever.

On the way out I asked my friend what he thought of God.

He replied, “He’s bigoted fanatical and cruel.”

Back home, I said to God, “How do you put up with this sort of thing?

Don’t you see they have been giving you a bad name for centuries?”

God said, “It wasn’t I who organized the Fair.

In fact, I’d be too ashamed to visit it.”

The song of the bird

Anthony de Mello

Label Makers

2011-12-26T00:34:00.000+01:00

22

Label Makers

Life is like heady wine.

Everyone reads the label on the bottle.

Hardly anyone tastes the wine.

Buddha once pointed to a flower and asked each of his disciples to say something about it.

One pronounced a lecture.

Another a poem.

Yet another a parable.

Each outdid the other in depth and erudition.

Label-makers!

Mahakashyap smiled and held his tongue.

Only he had seen the flower.

If I could only taste a bird,

a flower,

a tree,

a human face!

But, alas, I have no time.

My energy is spent deciphering the label.

The Song of the Bird

Anthony de Mello

Fernando Pessoa

2011-12-05T23:39:00.001+01:00

Quotations

- The poet is a faker

Who's so good at his act

He even fakes the pain

Of pain he feels in fact.

- I am nothing.

I will never be anything.

I cannot wish to be anything.

Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

- Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

- My nation is the Portuguese language.

- I've always rejected being understood.

To be understood is to prostitute oneself.

I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.

- I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

- My past is everything I failed to be.

- We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.

- To have opinions is to sell out to yourself.

To have no opinions is to exist.

To have every opinion is to be a poet.

- I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else.

What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.

- But I am not perfect in my way of putting things. Because I lack the divine simplicity of being only what I appear to be.

- In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago.

And many of the seem to me written by a stranger:

I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

- There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women.

There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality.

There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows…

I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.

- To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)

- To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

- Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them.

In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways.

- In my heart there's a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation.

- Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.

- There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn't exist.

- I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.

- I'd like to write the encomium of a new incoherence that could serve as the negative charter for the new anarchy of souls.

- Rocks in my path? I keep them all. With them I shall build my castle.

- Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.

- Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.

Fernando Pessoa

(June 13, 1888, Lisbon – November 30, 1935, Lisbon),

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.

José Saramago

2011-10-16T00:06:00.002+02:00

Quotations

Divorcing Shua is no problem, the problem is how to divorce myself, and that's impossible.

People don't choose their dreams, dreams choose people!

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

News is nothing but words, and you can never really tell if words are news.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in one’s eyes.

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always clichés, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.

Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

...sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another...

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

José Saramago
(16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010)

José de Sousa Saramago was a Nobel-laureate (1998) Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.

More than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Saramago complained about censorship and moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain, where he resided until his death.

A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.

The alphabet prayer

2011-10-05T00:39:00.000+02:00

009

The alphabet prayer

A Hasidic tale:
Late one evening a poor farmer on his way back from the market found himself without his prayer book.

The wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of the woods and it distressed him that this day should pass without his having said his prayers.

So this is the prayer he made:

“I have done something very foolish, Lord.

I came away from home this morning without my prayer book and my memory is such that I cannot recite a single prayer without it.

So this is what I am going to do:

I shall recite the alphabet five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers are known, can put the letters together to form the prayers I can’t remember.”

And the Lord said to his angels,

“Of all the prayers I have heard today,

this one was undoubtedly the best

because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.”

The prayer of the frog. Volume – I

Anthony de Mello

The Magician

2011-08-22T00:31:00.000+02:00

The Magic of Humanity

The stories that you write, the pictures that you paint, the music you compose,

the crazy, foolish and incomprehensible things you say,

they’ll always be man’s apogee, his true flag […]

these stupid things you say—no matter how supremely unnecessary, perhaps even because of it —

will always be what most distinguishes us from beasts.

Even more than the atom, Sputnik, or interstellar rockets.

And the day these stupid things are no longer done or said,

men will become the wretched naked worms they were in caveman days.”

“Il colombre e altri cinquanta racconti”

Dino Buzzati

Dino Buzzati-Traverso (16 October 1906 - 28 January 1972) was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera.

His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.

The difference between Love and lust

2011-08-04T22:48:00.001+02:00

Love according to Shakespeare

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

Venus and Adonis
William Shakespeare

Jerome David Salinger, quotes

2011-08-01T01:57:00.000+02:00

The Catcher in the Rye
Quotes

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera.

Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing alter him.

The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddamn Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive-that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, he made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God-talk to Him and all-wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phoney bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books…, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead.

Jerome David Salinger

(January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010)

He was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980.

Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. Salinger published his first stories in Story magazine which was started by Whit Burnett. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.

The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a volume containing a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a volume containing two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed. He made headlines around the globe in June 2009, after filing a lawsuit against another writer for copyright infringement resulting from that writer's use of one of Salinger's characters from The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.

They do exist!

2011-07-24T00:38:00.000+02:00

They do exist!

We have people in the world like this.

No matter what scholars and priests and theologians tell you,

there are and have been people who have no quarrels, no jealousies, no conflicts, no wars, no enmities, none!

They exist in my country, or, sad to say, they existed until relatively recently.

I've had Jesuit friends go out to live and work among people who, they assured me, were incapable of stealing or lying.

One Sister said to me that when she went to the northeast of India to work among some tribes there, the people would lock up nothing.

Nothing was ever stolen and they never told lies until the Indian government and missionaries showed up.

Awareness

Anthony de Mello

Emile M. Cioran

2011-07-21T22:59:00.000+02:00

Emile M. Cioran Quotes

There are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the sun, and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter!

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.

You will suffer from everything, and to excess:

the winds will seem gales; every touch a dagger; smiles, slaps; trifles, cataclysms.

Waking may come to an end, but its light survives within you; one does not see in the dark with impunity,

one does not gather its lessons without danger;

there are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the sun, and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover.

There are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the sun, and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover.

Emil Cioran

Emil Cioran (April 8, 1911 – June 20, 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist.

Emil Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran (born Comaniciu), was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.

After studying humanities at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Cioran, aged 17, started to study philosophy at the University of Bucharest. Upon his entrance into the University, he met Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, the three of them becoming lifelong friends. Future Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica and future Romanian thinker Petre Ţuţea, became his closest colleagues for they all had Tudor Vianu and Nae Ionescu as their professors. Cioran, Eliade, and Ţuţea became supporters of the ideas that their philosophy professor, Nae Ionescu, had become a fervent advocate of a tendency deemed Trăirism, which fused Existentialism with ideas common in various forms of Fascism.

Cioran had a good command of German. His first studies revolved around Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and especially Friedrich Nietzsche. He became an agnostic, taking as an axiom "the inconvenience of existence". During his studies at the University he was also influenced by the works of Georg Simmel, Ludwig Klages and Martin Heidegger, but also by the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov, who added the belief that life is arbitrary to Cioran’s central system of thought. He then graduated with a thesis on Henri Bergson (however, Cioran later rejected Bergson, claiming the latter did not comprehend the tragedy of life).

In 1933, he obtained a scholarship to the University of Berlin, where he came into contact with Klages and Nicolai Hartmann. While in Berlin, he became interested in measures taken by the Nazi regime, contributed a column to Vremea dealing with the topic (in which Cioran confessed that "there is no present-day politician that I see as more sympathetic and admirable than Hitler", while expressing his approval for the Night of the Long Knives — "what has humanity lost if the lives of a few imbeciles were taken"), and, in a letter written to Petru Comarnescu, described himself as "a Hitlerist". He held similar views about Italian fascism, welcoming victories in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, arguing that: "Fascism is a shock, without which Italy is a compromise comparable to today's Romania".

Cioran’s first book, On the Heights of Despair (more accurately translated: "On the Summits of Despair"), was published in Romania in 1934. It was awarded the Commission’s Prize and the Young Writers Prize for one of the best books written by an unpublished young writer. Successively, The Book of Delusions (1935), The Transfiguration of Romania (1936), and Tears and Saints (1937), were also published in Romania.

Although Cioran was never a member of the group, it was during this time in Romania that he began taking an interest in the ideas put forth by the Iron Guard - a far right organization whose nationalist ideology he supported until the early years of World War II, despite allegedly disapproving of their violent methods.

Cioran revised The Transfiguration of Romania heavily in its second edition released in the 1990s, eliminating numerous passages he considered extremist or "pretentious and stupid." In its original form, the book expressed sympathy for totalitarianism, a view which was also present in various articles Cioran wrote at the time, and which aimed to establish "urbanization and industrialization" as "the two obsessions of a rising people". Marta Petreu's An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania, published in English in 2005, gives an in-depth analysis of The Transfiguration.

His early call for modernization was, however, hard to reconcile with the traditionalism of the Iron Guard. In 1934, he wrote: "I find that in Romania the sole fertile, creative, and invigorating nationalism can only be one which does not just dismiss tradition, but also denies and defeats it". Disapproval of what he viewed as specifically Romanian traits had been present in his works ("In any maxim, in any proverb, in any reflection, our people expresses the same shyness in front of life, the same hesitation and resignation... [...] Everyday Romanian [truisms] are dumbfounding."), which led to criticism from the far right Gândirea (its editor, Nichifor Crainic, had called The Transfiguration of Romania "a bloody, merciless, massacre of today's Romania, without even [the fear] of matricide and sacrilege"), as well as from various Iron Guard papers.

After coming back from Berlin (1936), Cioran taught philosophy at the "Andrei Şaguna" high school in Braşov for a year. In 1937, he left for Paris with a scholarship from the French Institute of Bucharest, which was then prolonged until 1944. After a short stay in his home country (November 1940-February 1941), Cioran never returned again.

He later renounced not only his support for the Iron Guard, but also their nationalist ideas, and frequently expressed regret and repentance for his emotional implication in it. For example, in a 1972 interview, he condemned it as "a complex of movements; more than this, a demented sect and a party", and avowed: "I found out then [...] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction. [...] I am now immune to it".

In 1940, he started writing The Passionate Handbook, and finished it by 1945. It was to be the last book that he would write in Romanian, although not the last to deal with pessimism and misanthropy through delicate and lyrical aphorisms. From this point on Cioran only published books in French (all were appreciated not only because of their content, but also because of their style which was full of lyricism and fine use of the language).

In 1949 his first French book, A Short History of Decay, was published by Gallimard and was awarded the Rivarol Prize in 1950. Later on, Cioran refused every literary prize with which he was presented.

The Latin Quarter of Paris became Cioran’s permanent residence. He lived most of his life in isolation, avoiding the public. Yet, he still maintained numerous friends with which he conversed often such as Mircea Eliade, Eugène Ionesco, Paul Celan, Samuel Beckett, and Henri Michaux.

He is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Living or just keeping the body alive?

2011-07-19T00:31:00.000+02:00

Living or just keeping the body alive?

People don't live, most of you, you don't live,

you're just keeping the body alive.

That's not life.

You're not living until it doesn't matter a tinker's damn to you whether you live or die.

At that point you live.

When you're ready to lose your life, you live it.

But if you're protecting your life, you're dead.

If you're sitting up there in the attic and I say to you,

"Come on down!" and you say,

"Oh no, I've read about people going down stairs.

They slip and they break their necks; it's too dangerous."

Or I can't get you to cross the street because you say,

"You know how many people get run over when they cross the street?"

If I can't get you to cross a street, how can I get you to cross a continent?

And if I can't get you to peep out of your little narrow beliefs and convictions and look at another world, you're dead, you're completely dead; life has passed you by.

You're sitting in your little prison, where you're frightened;

you're going to lose your God, your religion, your friends, all kinds of things.

Awareness

Anthony de Mello