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30 October 2005
From time to time, we all
need a reminder that life is real, that death is sure, that whatever we wish
to be or wish to accomplish, we had better to live it in this moment.
If we distract ourselves with frivolities, or if we fritter the time with
distraction, we habituate ourselves to a lie from which it is ever harder to
extricate: "If not now, when?"
6
From time to time, we all
need a reminder to lighten up, to retreat from existential intensity and
release our intentionality; that whatever we wish to be or to accomplish in
this moment, it will surely appear different in the light of tomorrow’s
sun; that our life’s mission owes more to grace and serendipity than to
the tenacity of our individual will.
- Josh Mitteldorf
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29 October 2005
And now good morrow to our
waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
~ from The
Good-Morrow by John
Donne
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28 October 2005
"No Supreme Court,
liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the
wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human
being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past
suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise
of the Declaration of Independence – an equal right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness – be fulfilled."
~ Howard
Zinn, from an article in The
Progressive
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27 October 2005
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and
comes short again and again (because there is not effort without error and
shortcomings) but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the
great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause,
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at
the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. His place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor
defeat."
Theodore
Roosevelt, born this day in 1858
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26 October 2005
Leaning out over
The dreadful precipice,
One contemptuous tree.
~W. H. Auden
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25 October 2005
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"To draw, you
must close your eyes and sing."
~ Pablo
Picasso, born
this day in 1881
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24 October 2005
"Creation
is not the replacing of nothing with something, or chaos with pattern. There
is no chaos; there is a vast, living world in which the rules for specifying
the pattern are so complicated that after you look at a few examples you
become tired. The creative act pulls out some more inclusive shape or
progression that gathers an immense amount of complexity into a simple,
satisfying notion."
~ Stephen Nachmanovich, Free
Play
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