tWenTy YeArs of ScHoOLin' aNd tHey Put yA On tHe DaY ShiFt

Some people believe that life runs in a straight line, from birth to death, with a few messy bits in between. Some people believe that life is a long hard climb up a gleaming Pyramid of Success and eventually, if our knee pads hold out, we can make it to the top. Some people believe that life is a worldly means to a heavenly home. Some people believe that all those other people are full of baloney. Some people spell it bologna.

This, of course, is merely a symptom of a larger disease. Some people call it postmodernism.

But it's hard to cure a disease, especially when everybody has it. Instead, like most of you, I'd rather just treat the symptoms to ice cream and call it a day.

Or how about this? Life is an endless carousel: the music plays forever as the pretty horses whirl, and sometimes it makes us barf.

"In the beginning was noise.
And noise begat rhythm.
And rhythm begat everything else."

(Mickey Hart)


"Just remain in the center watching.
And then forget that you are there."

(Lao Tzu)


"Become as little children."

(Jesus)


"Once I visited a great university and wandered, a stranger, into the subterranean halls of its famous biology department. I saw a sign on a door: ichthyology department. The door was open a crack, and as I walked past I glanced in. I saw just a flash. There were two white-coated men seated opposite each other on high lab stools at a hard-surfaced table. They bent over identical white enamel trays. On one side, one man, with a lancet, was just cutting into an enormous preserved fish he'd taken from a jar. On the other side, the other man, with a silver spoon, was eating a grapefruit. I laughed all the way back to Virginia."

(Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek")


"We did not weave the web of life;
we are but a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves."

(Chief Seattle)


"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

(Henry David Thoreau, "Walden")


"Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights."

(Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek")


"I have to move, or die."

(James Baldwin)


"SHANG YA!
I want to be your friend
For ever and ever without break or decay.
When the hills are all flat
And the rivers are all dry,
When it lightens and thunders in winter,
When it rains and snows in summer,
When Heaven and Earth mingle -
Not till then will I part from you."

(Chinese friendship oath, circa first century A.D.)


"Friendship is a mysterious and ocean-bottom thing.
Who can know the outer ranges of it?"

(Zora Neale Hurston, "Dust Tracks on a Road")


"Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful."

(Edward Abbey)


"Perhaps the most powerful mammal for its size, the ferocious Wolverine is capable of driving even a bear or Cougar from its kill. It prefers carrion but eats anything it can kill or find, including Moose or Elk slowed down in heavy snow."

(The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals)


"A mole is almost entirely loose inside its skin, and enormously mighty. If you can catch a mole, it will, in addition to biting you memorably, leap from your hand in a single convulsive contraction and be gone almost as soon as you have it. . . . What could I not do if I had the power and will of a mole!"

(Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek")


"B stands for Bear. When Bears are seen
Approaching in the distance,
Make up your mind at once between
Retreat and Armed Resistance.

A Gentleman remained to fight -

With what result for him?

The Bear, with ill-concealed delight,

Devoured him, Limb by Limb.
Another Person turned and ran;
He ran extremely hard:
The Bear was faster than the Man,
And beat him by a yard."

(Hillaire Belloc, "A Moral Alphabet")


"When you pick something up with your toes and transfer it to your hand, don't you feel, just briefly, like a superior creature? Like you could probably survive alone in a forest for a long time? Just briefly."

(George Carlin, "BrainDroppings")


"Cows, Colleges and Contentment"

(Civic motto of Northfield, Minnesota)


"The Friendly State"

(Proposed motto for Texas, recently voted down because it "sounds too wimpy.")


"What We Have Here Is A Failure To Be Kind."

(Molly Ivins on the state of the union.)


"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

(Anne Frank)


"In my case, saving the world was only a hobby."

(Edward Abbey)


"Do I dare
disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

(T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")


"I built my hut in a zone of human habitation,
Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach.
Would you know how that is possible?
A heart that is distant creates a wilderness around it.
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze long at the distant-summer hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day:
The flying birds two by two return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
Yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us."

(T'ao Ch'ien, circa 500 A.D.)


"Now I cannot speak.
I lost my voice,
I'm speechless and redundant
'cause I love you's not enough.
I'm lost for words."

(Green Day, "Redundant")


"So what is love then, is it dictated or chosen?
Does it sing with the hymns of a thousand years or is it just pop emotion?"

(Indigo Girls, "Mystery")


"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it."

(James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues")


"One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change."

(Michael Ondaatje, "To a Sad Daughter")


"I do not say that my conclusions about anything are true for the Universe, but I have lived in many ways, sweet and bitter, and they feel right for me. I have seen and heard. I have sat in judgment on the ways of others, and in the voiceless quiet of the night I have also called myself to judgment."

(Zora Neale Hurston, "Dust Tracks on a Road")


"War and its travels have made me sad,
And a fierce anger burns within me:
It's thinking of how I've wasted my time
That makes this fury tear my heart."

(Yuan Chi, circa 200 A.D.)


"To hell with war - let's dance instead."

(Anonymous)


"I got pulled over in west Texas
so they could look inside my car.
He said: Are you an American citizen?
I said:
Yes sir, so far.
They made sure I wasn't smuggling
someone in from Mexico -
someone willing to settle for America
'cause there's nowhere else to go."

(Ani DiFranco, "Every State Line")


"See how the cormorant swoops and dives -
must be some thrill to go that deep."

(Mary Black, "Columbus")


"Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening."

(Gertrude Stein)


"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature."

(Helen Keller)


"Steel rails, chasing sunshine down the bend,
winding through the trees like a ribbon in the wind.
I don't mind not knowing what lies down the track,
'cause I'm looking out ahead to keep my mind from turning back."

("Steel Rails," sung by Alison Krauss)


"Remember the feeling as a child
when you woke up in the morning and smiled -
it's time you felt that way again.
There's just no percentage in remembering the past -
it's time you learned to love again
and let it last."

("Take a Giant Step," sung by Taj Mahal)


"I build each one of my songs out of glass,
so you can see me inside of them,
I suppose,
or you could just leave the image of me
in the background, I guess,
and watch your own reflection superimposed."

(Ani DiFranco, "Overlap")


"As I see it, the doctrines of democracy deal with the aspirations of men's souls, but the application deals with things. One hand in somebody else's pocket and one on your gun, and you are highly civilized. . . . Desire enough for your own use only, and you are a heathen. Civilized people have things to show to the neighbors."

(Zora Neale Hurston, 1940)


"It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks."

(Anatole France)


"All the shiny little trinkets of temptation,
something new instead of something old;
but all you gotta do is scratch beneath the surface
and it's fool's gold...fool's gold...fool's gold."

(Indigo Girls, "Power of Two")


"All gold is fool's gold."

(Edward Abbey)


"People can be slave-ships in shoes."

(Zora Neale Hurston)


"Ah, nothing like a few restful weeks contemplating the decline of civilization to restore the humors."

(Molly Ivins, "You Gotta Dance With Them What Brung You")


"One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body."

(P.G. Wodehouse, "Jeeves in the Morning")


"Guess there's something wrong with me,
guess I don't fit in.
No one wants to touch it,
no one knows where to begin.
I've more than one membership
to more than one club
and I owe my life to the people that I love."

(Ani DiFranco, "In or Out")


"Cypress moon bald in June
Like the granite in a stream
Swamp Ophelia i'm torn down
In your waters let me drown."

(Indigo Girls, "Touch Me Fall")


"The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all of our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell."

(Henry David Thoreau, "Walden")


"Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment."

(Thich Nhat Hanh, "Living Buddha, Living Christ")


"We are here to witness the creation and to abet it."

(Annie Dillard)

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