Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson Uly sses
Cream: Tales of Brave Ulysses (live)
Begin at the beginning, the King said, very gravely, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
--Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland
Mark Knopfler / Emmylou Harris: Done with Bonaparte...Verona 3/6/06
we've played in Hell
since Moscow burned
these cossacks tear us
piece by piece
our dead are strewn
a hundred leagues
though death would be
a sweet release
and our Grande Armee
is dressed in rags
a frozen starving
beggar band
like rats we steal
each other's scraps
fall to fighting
hand to hand
save my soul from evil
and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me
Lord, i'm done
with Bonaparte
what dreams he made
for us to dream
Spanish skies
Egyptian sands
the world was ours
we marched upon our
little Corporal's command
i lost an eye at Austerlitz
the sabre slash
yet gives me pain
my one true love
awaits me still
the flower of the Aquitaine
save my soul from evil
and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me
Lord, i'm done with Bonaparte
i pray for her
who prays for me
a safe return
to my belle France
we prayed these wars
would end all wars
in war we know
is no romance
i pray our child
will never see
a little Corporal again
point toward a foreign shore and captivate
the hearts of men
save my soul from evil and heal this soldier's heart
i'll trust in thee to keep me, Lord, i'm done with Bonaparte
Nearer to the earth's heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And light and the rain.
--John O'Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings
The cactus of the high desert is a small grubby, obscure and humble vegetable associated with cattle dung and overgrazing, interesting only when you tangle with it the wrong way. Yet from this nest of thorns, this snare of hooks and fiery spines, is born once each year a splendid flower. It is unpluckable
and except to an insect almost unapproachable, yet soft, lovely, sweet, desirable, exemplifying
better than the rose among thorns the unity of opposites.
--Edward Abbey
Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony.
In Hobo Land the face of life is protean ---an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance.
--Jack London The Road
Grateful Dead: 10/18/74 ...51 years ago (joined in progress)
and in his brain,
which is
as dry as
the remainder biscuit
after a voyage,
he hath
strange places
crammed
with observation,
the which he vents
in mangled forms.
You are right.
There are no mists,
or veils, or distances.
But the mist is
surrounded by a mist;
and the veil is hidden
behind a veil;
and the distance
continually draws away
from the distance.
That is why
there are no mists,
or veils, or distances.
That is why it is called
The Great Distance
of Mists and Veils.
It is here
that The Traveler
becomes The Wanderer,
and The Wanderer
becomes The One Who Is Lost,
and The One Who Is Lost
becomes The Seeker,
and The Seeker becomes
The Passionate Lover,
and The Passionate Lover
becomes The Beggar,
and The Beggar
becomes the Wretch,
and The Wretch becomes
The One Who
Must Be Sacrificed,
and The One Who Must
Be Sacrificed becomes
The Resurrected One,
and The Resurrected One
becomes the One Who Has
Transcended The Great Distance
of Mists and Veils.
Then for a thousand years,
or the rest of the afternoon,
such a One spins
in the Blazing Fire of Changes,
embodying all the transformations,
one after the other,
and then beginning again,
and then ending again,
86,000 times a second.
Then such a One,
if he is a man,
is ready to love the woman;
and such a One,
if she is a woman,
is ready to love the man
who can put into song
The Great Distance
of Mists and Veils.
Is it you who is waiting,
or is it me?
I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy.
And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around.
I don't consider myself a pessimist at all.
I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting
for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.
I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate
to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all.
I've always been free from hope.
It's never been one of my great solaces.
I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves
strong and cheerful. I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies,
but cheerfulness keeps breaking through. *
For, after all,
every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit,
I must zigzag it in my own way.
I slip back many times, I fall,
I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.
--Helen Keller
Dave Alvin: Everett Ruess Portland, OR. 2010 I was born Everett Ruess
I been dead for sixty years
I was just a young boy
in my twenties
the day I disappeared
into the Grand Escalante badlands
near the Utah and Arizona line
and they never found
my body, boys
or understood my mind
I grew up in California
I loved my family and my home
but I ran away to the High Sierra
where I could live free and alone
and folks said He’s just another wild kid
and he’ll grow out of it in time,
but they never found
my body, boys
or understood my mind
I broke broncos
with the cowboys
I sang healing songs
with the Navajo
I did the snake dance
with the Hopi
and I drew pictures everywhere I go
then I swapped
all my drawings
for provisions to get
what I needed to get by
and they never found
my body, boys
or understood my mind
well I hate your crowded cities
with your sad
and hopeless mobs
and I hate your
grand cathedrals
where you try to trap God
‘cause I know God is here
in the canyons
with the rattlesnakes
and the pinon pines
and they never found
my body, boys
or understood my mind
they say I was killed
by a drifter
or I froze to death in the snow
maybe mauled by a wildcat
or I’m living down in Mexico
but my end
it doesn’t really matter
all that counts is
how you live your life
and they never found my body, boys
or understood my mind
you give your dreams away as you get older
but I never gave up mine
and they’ll never find my body, boys
or understand my mind
--Dave Alvin
--------------------------------------------- woodcuts by Everett Ruess
Stories have changed, my dear boy,
the man in the grey suit says,
his voice almost imperceptibly sad. There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep overlapping and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there in no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.
--Erin Morgenstern The Night Circus
My boat was finally washed to shore after drifting for several days, and I was delirious from exposure and lack of food or water. I was discovered by a wandering tribe of Bozos who later told me that I had been heard to repeat On the left hand it goes North and on the right hand South continually while they nursed me back to health which took some weeks.
When I returned to my senses, I found all the Bozos of the tribe wandering about repeating On the left hand it goes North and on the right hand South over and over and looking rather blissful. Anxious not to mislead them (for at the time I didn't know this was an impossibility) I immediately informed them that In between it may go straight down. No sooner had the words left my mouth than they all prostrated themselves before me, desiring me to become their king. Refusing this post, they immediately elected me a saint and began pressing me for teachings which would elucidate the notion which they found so marvelous and accepted the true story as an elaborately cloaked metaphor, of which judgement nothing would dissuade them.
--Robert Hunter
