The Slab: 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Don't let it bring you down

I just want to live now for a little while
And cast my dreams to the wind
-- Vonda Shepard, "Maryland"

Foreign correspondents

I think the world has been run long enough by well-meaning professionals.
-- Carol Fisher (Laraine Day)

Learning
by Kay Ryan

Whatever must be learned
is always on the bottom,
as with the law of drawers
and the necessary item.
It isn't pleasant,
whatever they tell children,
to turn out on the floor
the folded things in them.

from "Elephant Rocks," 1996

Uncomplicated

Simple truths are a relief from grand speculations.
-- Vauvenargues

Voracious

Tight credit

Jeffrey DeWit

Impatience

Fly the pleasure that bites tomorrow.
-- George Herbert

Pensée

Bonjour, bienvenue

Merci, danke, ευχαριστω, obrigado, благодарю, gracias, 감사합니다, grazie, dankje, köszönöm.

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The Slabber

Fighting Against Neglect

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Our problems, both those we experience externally such as wars, crime and violence and those we experience internally as emotional and psychological suffering will not be solved until we address this underlying neglect of our inner dimension. That is why the great movements of the last hundred years and more--democracy, liberalism, socialism, and Communism--have all failed to deliver the universal benefits they were supposed to provide, despite many wonderful ideas. A revolution is called for, certainly, but not a political, an economic, or a technical revolution. We have had enough experience of these during the past century to know that a purely external approach will not suffice. What I propose is a spiritual revolution.

~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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The Capabilities.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
~ William Faulkner, speech at the Nobel Banquet, City Hall, Stockholm, December 10, 1950

Thursday, December 31, 2009

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The Capabilities.

Q