Anna Akhmatova

Appearance Of the Moon

(From "The Moon in Zenith")
1942-1944, Tashkent

Of the pearl’s light and agate’s clouds 

Of the such fairly smoked glass, 

By slopes of so sudden mounds, 

She sailed such solemnly in skies – 

As if the Moon Sonata’s sounds 

Had cut our roadway at once.

 

Source: Lyrical Digression on the Seventh Elegy

I defend
Not my voice, but my silence.


Source: Cinque

As if on the edge of a cloud
I remember your words,
And because of my words
Night became brighter than day to you. 
Thus, torn from the earth,
We rose up high, like stars.


(source: unknown)

To live--as if in freedom,
To die--as if at home.
Volkov field,
Yellow straw.
June 22, 1941
(Day of the declaration of war)

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Translated by Katherine Woods, pubblished in 1971)

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. p4

But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.
Grown-ups are like that... p15

Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sounds like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. p16~17

Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people. p17

... for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. p17

To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures... p18

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: "I am busy with matters of consequences!" And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man—he is a mushroom! p29

If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. p29~30

It is such a secret place, the land of tears. p31

I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. p36

Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her... p37

Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. p45

That (judging yourself) is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom. p46

For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers... Conceited people never hear anything but praise. p48

It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them. But you are of no use to the stars... p57

Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself. p61

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. p68

What does that mean—"tame"?
It means to establish ties.
... If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. to you, I shall be unique in all the world. p80

One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me... you must be very patient... p83~84

Words are the source of misunderstandings. p84

"What is a rite?"
"Those also are actions too often neglected. They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours." p84

Because she is my rose. p87

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. p87

It is the time that you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. p87

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. p88

"Were they not satisfied where they were?"
"No one is ever satisfied where he is." p89

Only children know what they are looking for. p89

It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. p91

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well... p93

The house, the stars, the desert—what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible! p93

I looked at his pale forehead... "what I see here is nothing but a shell. What is most important is invisible..." p93

But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart... p97

time soothes all sorrows. p104

There is nothing sad about old shells... p106

Limited by Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)

http://www.bartleby.com/165/35.html

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: “Omaha.”

Chicago Poems.  1916.

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (copyright 1955)

We have what you want, though you may not know you want it.
Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.
Let us prescribe for you. p13

A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! People don't go to a bookseller until some serious mental accident or disease makes them aware of their danger. Then they come to here. p16

... future lies not merely in systematizing it as a trade. It lies in dignifying it as a profession. It is small use to jeer at the public for craving shoddy books, quack books, untrue books. Physician, cure thyself! Let the bookseller learn to know and revere good books, he will teach the customer. The hunger for good book is more general and more insistent than you would dream. But it is still in a way subconscious. People need books, but they don't know they need them. Generally they are not aware that the books they need are in existence. p17

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a "good" book. A book is "good" only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you. My pleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here and are willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let their reading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem on them. But most are still open to treatment. There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it. No advertising on earth is as potent as a grateful customer. p17-18

The real book-lovers are generally among the humbler classes. A man who is impassioned with books has little time or patience to grow rich by concocting schemes for cozening his fellows. p19

Human beings pay very little attention to what is told them unless they know something about it already. p21

The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect. He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all, he dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand half-knowledges. Almost unconsciously he begins to rate literature according to what people ask for. p30

They (booksellers) are likely to be a little – shall we say – worn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash. p42

The honor of his (bookseller) profession should compel him to do all he can to spread the distribution of good stuff. p47

... but they (customers) really want good books—the poor souls don't know how to get them. p49

... bookselling is an impossible job for a man who loves literature. p51

"The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things." — Thomas Carlyle, Cromwell (1845) p53

If an assistant chef is so fond of good books that he has to steal them, the world is safe for democracy. p77

The human yearning for innocent pastime is a pathetic thing... It shows what a desperately grim thing life has become. p107

... if you let yourself think that you are satisfied with husks, you'll have no appetite left for the real grain. p108

To laugh at cheap jests is as base as to pray to cheap gods. p108

... the real Peace will be a long time coming. When you tear up all the fibers of civilization it's a slow job to knit things together again. p112

That's the terrible hypnotism of war, the brute mass-impulse, the pride and national spirit, the instinctive simplicity of men that makes them worship what is their own above everything else. p113

"A grain of glory mixed with humbleness
Cures both a fever and lethargickness." — George Herbert p114

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. p115

... books contain the thoughts and dreams of men, their hopes and strivings and all their immortal parts. It's in books that most of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is. p115

~~~~~~~~~ the last page ~~~~~~~~~

The Bookstore

The bookstore is one of humanity's great engines, and one that we use very imperfectly. It is a queer fact that most of us still have the primitive habit of visiting bookshops chiefly to ask for some definite title. Aren't we ever going to leave anything to destiny, or to good luck, or to the happy suggestion of some wise bookseller?

"We have ready access, in the bookshop, one of the greatest instruments of civilization; and yet none of us—neither publisher, booksellers, nor customers—have yet learned more than an inkling of what that place can accomplish."
—From JOHN MISTLETOE, by Christopher Morley

In every bookstore, small or large, there are books we have not read; books which may have messages of unsuspected beauty or importance. They may be new books, they may be of yesterday, or of long ago.

The store where you found this volume exists in the hope of knowing—and learning—about books. There is no habit more valuable than that of dropping into a bookstore occasionally to look around—to look both inward and outward.

"We have what you need, though you may not know you need it."

Dr. Albert Schweitzer - Full Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf4B9v0s0CY

Reverence for Life – "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben"

A brotherhood of those who bare the mark of pain. Who are the members of the brotherhood? Those who have learned by experience of physical pain and bodily anguish belong together all over the world. They are united by a secrete bound.

One must be careful to not to mix himself up uninvited in other people’s business. On the other hand, one must not forget the danger looking and reserve which daily life forces on all of us. We cannot let ourselves get through into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger. No man is ever a completely stranger to his fellow man. Man belongs to men. Man has claims on men. Our reserve is condemned to be broken down by the claims of the heart, and thus all of us get into a position where we must reach out and to one of our fellow man become ourselves a man.

a desk, some books, and his old piano, these are all his needs to carry on his work in philosophy, theology, and music… work that may never be finished because there are claims on his heart.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (translated by Hilda Rosner)

http://www.amazon.com/Siddhartha-Hermann-Hesse/dp/0553208845/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i

I can think. I can wait. I can fast. p46

He saw people living in a childish or animal-like way, which he both loved and despised. He saw them toiling, saw them suffer and grow gray about things that to him did not seem worth the price—for money, small pleasures and trivial honors. he saw them scold and hurt each other; he saw them lament over pains at which the Samana laughs, and suffer at deprivations which a Samana does not feel. p57

And at that moment, in that splendid hour, after his wonderful sleep, permeated with Om, how could he help but love someone and something. That was just the magic that had happened to him during his sleep and the Om in him—he loved everything, he was full of joyous love towards everything that he saw. And it seemed to him that was just why he was previously so ill—because he could love nothing and nobody. p76

Siddhartha now also realized why he had struggled in vain with this Self when he was a Brahmin and an ascetic. Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. He had been full of arrogance; he had always been the cleverest, the most eager—always a step ahead of the others, always the learned and intellectual one, always the priest or the sage. His Self had crawled into this priesthood, into this arrogance, into this intellectuality. p80-81

Above all, he learned from it (the river) how to listen, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions. p87

There is no such thing as time... The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future. p87

Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence. p87

"the voice of all living creatures are in its (river's) voice." p88

They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, of perpetual Becoming. p88

A true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely wished to find something. But he who had found, could give his approval to every path, every goal; nothing separated him from all the other thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine. p90

Siddhartha looked at Vasudeva and smiled at him. "She is dying," said Siddhartha softly. p92

"You have suffered, Siddharthat, yet, I see that sadness has not entered your heart." p94

gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force. p97

"... which father, which teacher, could prevent him from living his own life, from soiling himself with life, from loading himself with sin, from swallowing the bitter drink himself, from finding his own path? Do you think, my dear friend, that anybody is spared this path? Perhaps your little son, because you would like to see him spared sorrow and pain and disillusionment? But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest." p98

It was true that he had never fully lost himself in another person to such an extent as to forget himself; he had never undergone the follies of love for another person. He had never been able to do this, and it had then seemed to him that this was the biggest difference between him and the ordinary people. But now, since his son was there, he, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. He was madly in love, a fool because of love. p99

Because the wound did not heal during that hour, he was sad. p103

With the exception of one small thing, one tiny little thing, they lacked nothing that the sage and thinker had, and that was the consciousness of the unity of all life. p106

(I disagree a little with this line because of my experience with Ch'an in China, Zen in Japan)
The wisdom and goal of his long seeking: It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. This thought matured in him slowly, and it was reflected in Vasudeva's old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, and unity. p106-107

Disclosing his wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it become cool and one with the river. p108

Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om—perfection. p111

His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; his Self had merged into unity.
From that hour Siddharthat ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things. p111

I am still of the same turn of mind, although I have, since that time, had many teachers. p114

Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. p115

Wisdom is not communicable. p115

In every truth the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. p115

The world is perfect at every moment. p116

I can love a stone, a tree, or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love things. But one cannot love words. Therefore teachings are of no use to me; ... Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace, perhaps there too many words, for even salvation and virtue. p117-118

Love is the most important thing in the world. p119

How, indeed, could he not know love, he who has recognized all humanity's vanity and transitoriness, yet loves humanity so much that he has devoted a long life solely to help and teach people? p119

No longer knowing whether time existed, whether this display had lasted a second or a hundred years, whether there was a Siddhartha, or a Gotama, a Self and others... p122

He (Govinda) was overwhelmed by a feeling of great love, of the most humble veneration. p122

Atman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_%28Hinduism%29
Satya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya
Brahman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman
Brahma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahm%C4%81

Paul Auster on Identity and Urban Spaces

Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within... By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.

Paul Auster, City of Glass

The New York Trilogy

http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2010/03/paul-auster-new-york-trilogy.html