hum

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

In the middle of the Great Depression, New York City mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, strived to live with the people. It was not unusual for him to ride with the firefighters, raid with the police, or take field trips with orphans. On a bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. La Guardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told the mayor that her daughter’s husband had left, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. However, the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. “It’s a real bad neighborhood, your Honor,” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” La Guardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous hat, saying, “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.” The following day, New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the grocery store owner himself, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

La Guardian Angel

The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

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

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.