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.
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.
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.
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.
The most contented people I know are those whose view of themselves is no higher than the esteem of others.
One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have, when I am lying on my deathbed, is that I did not kiss you enough.
A look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.
Berlinguer, uomo delizioso, si era preparato. A me chiese chi avrebbe vinto il campionato di basket. A Francesco che differenza c’è tra una chitarra elettrica e una acustica. Lui rispose: una è elettrica, l’altra acustica.