Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman
More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutang slow dance.
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutang slow dance.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
by Anna Quindlen
This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD in February 2008.
----
"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".
----
"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Five, five, one, zero
One week to go. May the 5th onwards, Hinterland will come alive. God bless the idea of togetherness. It should be like coming home. Coming home to the absolute law, coming home to you, your heart chakra. :)
Monday, April 26, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Sumatra's Diary: 220410
So now that Sumatra is with me let me take you through the corridors of what. Route three-not-three, no? Today on my way back from the lake I saw the lonely faces of the, er what they call the middle-class, their routine, templatised life, their morning walks, their corporate talks, those "got to up those stocks" talks, living room crocs, dotdotdot. You know what I mean. The routine of things, that sticking to and of time, those boundary lines, those same hello's, flirting in the pantry over morning tea before the Monday morning catch-up meeting which happens after the timesheets are distributed and we begin working our mechanical hands and brains on auto-pilot fearing that one day we might die alone and poor. The feeling that I was not on that side of the fence comforted me. That bardo thing brought back of how we got to go through the hell of one thing be it greed, lust, pride to come out to the top and see the other side of the spectrum. You reach that atomic interval. But no, nuff said, they are there, I am here, everything is everywhere. And that's it no? We could be finished this very second.
Tx S, you really seem of the earth, of the sky, of the clouds, of the leaves, of the seas, of the rivers, of the oneness that is us and that one-in-all, all-in-one thing.
Tx S, you really seem of the earth, of the sky, of the clouds, of the leaves, of the seas, of the rivers, of the oneness that is us and that one-in-all, all-in-one thing.
Sumatra, Hinterland
Sumatra xx2-1804
Born in Hinterland: 18 April, 2010 (Original date of birth - 1988)
Type: Motorbike
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Thezenve, Hinterland
To touch the earth, feel the leaves, smell the clouds,
To walk the earth, smell the leaves, feel the clouds, love the earth...
To walk the earth, smell the leaves, feel the clouds, love the earth...
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
May
Few more days to May,
So, I quietly stay
and wait to break that transient ray
into permanent daylight, day after day...
So, I quietly stay
and wait to break that transient ray
into permanent daylight, day after day...
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Maternal Shift
Like those old storytellers weaving stories of those long gone days when the sun shone brighter, the grass looked greener and the water happier. A tonal ascent in a certain life. A discovery of that path, that visceral path, that intangible pattern, that randomness...
They spoke in that peculiar language called Viscera. It sounded like the trees laughing. Suffixed with "ha's", following their idols of pataphysics with their twisted yet deconstructionist views of life, their unformulaic ways of being nature itself, being the experience rather than experiencing. Here, Hinterland is born, in irregular numbers, uncertainties and Wabi-Sabi. Zen, too. Slow, still, like that moment by the stream when the cherry-blossom flowered on me and I could almost hear the water dreaming. Hinterland is here, hinterland is you. Hinterland is one, that motherpower absolute, that one truth, that "dharma".
In that stillness there is that point in time when nothing is heard. Nor is anything said. Everything is understood. Everything is simply everything. No labels, no you's, no me's. Just that simple nothingness that no one makes a fuss about. Its now time to be. Just be the experience of nothingness, that zeropower. That is hinterland. This is hinterland, too.
The grass that day made me cry. I felt the earth's heartbeat next to mine. I lost the I-carapace completely. The concept of time disappeared. A maternal shift happened, that nature thing you know? And when those falsetto's echoed in the wilderness, I sensed transcendence swooping downwards like the Mother of God, at that moment deep into the night when all life somehow seemed asleep and unconscious.
* Wabi-Sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence, specifically impermanence.
They spoke in that peculiar language called Viscera. It sounded like the trees laughing. Suffixed with "ha's", following their idols of pataphysics with their twisted yet deconstructionist views of life, their unformulaic ways of being nature itself, being the experience rather than experiencing. Here, Hinterland is born, in irregular numbers, uncertainties and Wabi-Sabi. Zen, too. Slow, still, like that moment by the stream when the cherry-blossom flowered on me and I could almost hear the water dreaming. Hinterland is here, hinterland is you. Hinterland is one, that motherpower absolute, that one truth, that "dharma".
In that stillness there is that point in time when nothing is heard. Nor is anything said. Everything is understood. Everything is simply everything. No labels, no you's, no me's. Just that simple nothingness that no one makes a fuss about. Its now time to be. Just be the experience of nothingness, that zeropower. That is hinterland. This is hinterland, too.
The grass that day made me cry. I felt the earth's heartbeat next to mine. I lost the I-carapace completely. The concept of time disappeared. A maternal shift happened, that nature thing you know? And when those falsetto's echoed in the wilderness, I sensed transcendence swooping downwards like the Mother of God, at that moment deep into the night when all life somehow seemed asleep and unconscious.
* Wabi-Sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence, specifically impermanence.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
AbstraKt Kollision
Ft. Dryday, Rebel, Womanturningaway, The Servile, Mixedfeelings Pt. 1 and 2... among others. The pieces are nearing completion. 100handsdotcom will be freshfreshfresh from Hinterland very soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
