REFLECTIONS

Existentialism

WOODY ALLEN: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
GIRL IN MUSEUM: Yes it is.

WOODY ALLEN: What does it say to you?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

WOODY ALLEN: What are you doing Saturday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Committing suicide.

WOODY ALLEN: What about Friday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: [leaves silently]


"Play It Again, Sam", Paramount Pictures, 1972

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
- Anita Brookner (b. 1938), British novelist, art historian. Interview in Writers at Work, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton (1988).

out walking one day
an elderly fellow
was greatly surprised
when from a puddle
beside the road
he heard a toad frog say

"Kiss me
and I'll turn
into a gorgeous blond
with whom you can have
your mad impetuous way".

and scooping up
the flirtatious amphibian
he stuffed it securely
deep into the pocket
of his overcoat

"Hey!"
came a muffled cry
"I said if you kiss me
I'll turn into a gorgeous blond
with whom you can have
your mad impetuous way".

but the old boy
kept on walking down the road

"At my age,"
he said
"I'd rather have a talking toad."
+++
Ric Masten

As we leave this community of the spirit,
may we remember the difficult lesson
that each day offers more things than we can do.
May we do what needs to be done,
postpone what does not,
and be at peace with what we can be and do.
Therefore, may we learn to separate
that which matters most
from that which matters least of all.
Richard S. Gilbert

The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the
young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way
that it cares for its helpless members."
~Pearl S. Buck, Nobelist novelist (1892-1973)

In recent years,Christopher Reeve embraced Unitarian Universalism. When asked
about his
decision to do so in an interview with Reader's Digest, Reeve
commented: 'It
gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abe Lincoln, who said, "When
I do
good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
I
think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may
be
God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and
clutter
from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right
thing to
do.'

Rabindranath Tagore:


Let it not be death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the
wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the
night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your
last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your
way.

A Going Man

I watch him, dying an old
fashioned death
who has ever devised a unique
one,
slowly falling asleep in the abused
park of his imagination
the grass no longer green, the moon
muffled to an inveterate grey
the spirit kicked about from pillar
to post
a mendicant no longer wanting
anything.
When he made the sign to me
drawing his slim fingers across
his throat,
I knew what he meant - it is
finished - the gall blistering the
tongue
the foot too tired to step upon
another grain of earth.
Well beautiful man, for whom
I have nothing but love
what more is there to offer
but some little rests of smouldering
sleep
in the abused park of the imagination.


from 'The Collected Poems of Marsden Hartley, 1904-1943',
edited by Gail R. Scott, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, 1987

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

- Bertrand Russell

Alfred North Whitehead- "Great ideas enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting alliances. But the greatness remains, nerving the race in its slow ascent."

Alfred North Whitehead- "Great ideas enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting alliances. But the greatness remains, nerving the race in its slow ascent."

A poem by Wendell Berry, titled "The Peace of Wild
Things"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

"In death and even its approach there are hidden forces and secret aides,
a "grace" that does not exist in life. Akin to lovers when falling in love,
akin to poets when singing, ill people feel closer to their souls. Life is
a hard thing that presses us too tightly, forever hurting our souls. Upon
feeling those restraints loosen for a moment, one can experience clear-
sighted pleasures."
Marcel Proust-July 1894- To my friend Willy Heath
Died in Paris on October 3,1893

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.- Longfellow

Calvin and Hobbs:
Calvin says..Do you believe in some great evil god that perverts mankind? ..Hobbs responds... Actually mankind seems to do well enough on their own and doesn't need any help....
Calvin: You just can't argue theology with tigers.....