hum

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, new friends.

Brian Eno

Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches us not to think ourselves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. No matter that I have not expressed it yet, it is in me. All knowledge is in me, all power, all purity, and all freedom. Why cannot I express this knowledge? Because I do not believe in it. Let me believe in it, and it must and will come out.

Swami Vivekananda

A sunny day
and a friend
who helps me
find a bike

a busy market
crackheads, randoms, wannabes

an ugly bike
which gets me
home on a
canal … watch out

four good photos
one dream studio
that old song

Concrete Girl coming
over to watch
Dog Day Afternoon

I am reminded of a routine the black comic Richard Prior used to perform. He began by demonstrating a white man walking through the jungle. He walks tentatively along and nearly treads on a snake. Completely freaked out, he screams and does a little uncoordinated dance. Then he demonstrates a black man who calmly steps over the snake and cooly says, “snake”, and walks on as before. Well you have to see it but nevertheless it is a rather appropriate analogy of what happens in meditation, for we will encounter snakes of all kinds. It is our reaction to them that is important. We should not try to avoid such encounters by keeping to safe and familiar paths, which would involve trying to control our experience. We should be attentive and notice, but we don’t have to make a fuss. How can we do this? As I have said already, the stability is sought in the posture: we sit as though we mean business.

Paramananda

The more important sacrifices and other rites were carried out to musical accompaniment, as music was thought to have the power to move the spirits and to exercise a profound moral influence in human affairs. Good music, the Chinese held, insures peace and uprightness; bad music leads to lewdness and social decline.

Burton Watson

I would have made supper, but Federico was even more fussy and valetudinarian than your average Italian man, and insisted on making himself risotto bianco with only a single leaf of basil to flavour it. He was already on beta-blockers and drank no wine at all. There was never any question of his sleeping anywhere but in the big bed with me, but he was horrified to find that I slept with all the windows open.
[…]
The next day he said, “Let me bring you light. I’m going to give you a generator.” I thought he meant an old one, but what I got was brand new. Then he sent his own electricians to wire it up. “Now, every time you turn the lights on, you’ll think of me,” he said.

Germaine Greer

Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour.

The Hindu believes that the soul is a circle whose circumference has no limit, but whose centre is situated in the body.