Trips

Two from Siddhartha

At one time shramanas had passed through Siddhartha's city, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three scrawny, faded men, neither old nor young, dust and blood on their shoulders, nearly naked, scorched by the sun, ringed by solitude, alien and hostile to the world, foreigners and haggard jackals in the realm of human beings.  Behind them a breeze blew hot with the scent of silent passion, of mortification, of ruthless self-denial.

Patapsco State Park

The Buddha went his way, unassuming and sunk in contemplation, his still countenance was neither happy nor sad, it seemed gently to smile inwardly.  With a hidden smile, calm, peaceful, not unlike a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wearing the robe and setting his foot just as all his monks did, exactly as prescribed.  But his face and his tread, his calmly lowered gaze, his calmly hanging hand, and from that calmly downward-hanging hand every single finger expressed peace, expressed perfection, sought nothing, imitated nothing, breathed softly in an everlasting repose, an unfading light, and inviolable peace.

-Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Returning to Myself

Men on small islands would do well to avoid the pursuit of philosophy.  The island illusion, that solitude and wisdom invented each other, is a very convincing one.  Day by day I seem to grow more profound.  Often I feel I am on the verge of some great philosophical discovery.  Man.  War.  Truth.  Time.  Fortunately I always return to myself.  I look beyond the white lace of the surf to my own unassembled past and I decide to let others stitch together the systems.  I enjoy the triteness of the situation, man and island, exile in the ultimate suburb.  The surf is massing and rolling, uneven now, page after page of terrible wild words.  All the colors borrow, sea from beach from sky, and after a while I follow my own foot prints back to the house.

-Don DeLillo, Americana

Glacier National Park

Travel

Travel

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

-Emily Dickinson

New York Public Library

Composure

"He seemed to be a young man but he had a look of composed dissatisfaction as if he understood life thoroughly."

-Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find

Mississippi at Sunset

Someday I'll be nothing too.

"I hated long views of life when the infinite overwhelms the finite subjects.  Not even forever lasts forever, and again I thought no matter what I do, someday I'd be nothing."  

Arthur Nersesian, The Fuck-Up

Madison, Wisconsin