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One day I walked to the architect Brunelleschi’s Cappella dei Pazzi near Santa Croce. There was no one else in the vast, domed room. I sang a note. The inside of the dome was constructed to hold notes for a long time—as if by providence, not physics—and soon after the first note I sang another one, a third above the last, and the two notes joined above me and were sustained, locked together in a buzzing consonance. It was a metaphor, I thought: Here in Italy I was in harmony with myself.
[…]
On the bus on the way to pick up the suit from the tailor, I was caught without a ticket. (I’d run for the bus; the ticket counter was closed.) I had to exit the bus to pay the fine, and when the officer noticed that the other side of the chilly street was bathed in sunshine, he suggested that we move and do the paperwork there. He had combined duty with pleasure, the way people did in Italy.

Lisa Jobs

Is buddhism a way of life or is it a religion? You should know the answer to that question. It is a religion … for tax purposes.

It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.

Buddha

The good news is staring us in face and we won’t engage. Carbon zero energy can be produced on the scale needed - advanced geothermal, solar, wind, plutonium-fuelled nuclear reactors – yet we won’t ramp up our investment. Energy use could be reduced by 50%, societies could become more fair and resilient, our cultural lives could become richer, more exciting. Do we really have to wait for some grand reckoning, a human/environmental disaster and loss of much of our biodiversity before we all collectively wise up?

L’ intelligenza non si sposa mai, per regola, nella televisione come nella vita, con i grandi numeri.

When we see men of worth,
we should think of equalling them;
when we see men of contrary character,
we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

So synonymous was McCurry’s name with colour film that Eastman Kodak chose him as the recipient of the last roll of Kodachrome they produced. He used some of it on the streets of New York and the rest photographing ­vanishing icons – African nomads, the monumental architecture of Grand Central Station, even a portrait of Robert De Niro. “That was a poignant roll of film for me.”
When I ask if he has a personal favourite among his own photographs, he describes one that has “a magical combination of synchronicity, skill and instinct”: “It has to be the picture of the Indian women huddled against a tree. I was ­riding across the desert in Rajasthan in a taxi during a dust storm and my initial instinct was to close the window and ride it out. But I didn’t. Instead, I kept poking my head out the window, ­looking for a subject. Then, like a mirage, there they were. It doesn’t matter if you are in the desert or ­downtown New York,” he says, finally, “you have to roll with the flow and stay alert to the world around you.”

Sean O’Hagan 

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Il Gavia è un mostro, il Gavia è meraviglioso.

Franco Cacciatori