Thursday, March 7, 2013

Stories

Where You Come From?


Where You Going?

-"Venice Queen", RHCP



I return to America from Tokyo in March 2012,
stepping back into the American map of love in the city of Angels.  

The first life I see is a fully bloomed cherry blossom tree. 

It makes me genki.


Then I get to see my family, whatever form they may be, who help me feel free to be me.

Do something today that makes you happy, and then record it some how, and look back at it some time, and think about it as many ways as your imagination takes you, and don't be afraid of it, try to find a way to see something to love, even if you have to keep looking to the stars above for Miller's Angels.





"My home?  Why it is the world—the whole world!   I am at home everywhere, only I did not know it before.  But I know now.  There is no boundary line any more.  There never was a boundary line: it was I who made it.  I walk slowly and blissfully through the streets.  The beloved streets.  Where everybody walks and everybody suffers without showing it.  Even the lamppost feels friendly.  It is not a thing of iron—it is a creation of the human mind, shaped a certain way, twisted and formed by human hands, blown on with human breath, placed by human hands and feet.  I turn round and rub my hand over the iron surface.  It almost seems to speak to me.  It is a human lamppost.  It belongs, like the cabbage leaf, like the torn socks, like the mattress, like the kitchen sink.  Everything stands in a certain way in a certain place, as our mind stands in relation to God.  The world, in its visible, tangible substance, is a map of our love.  Not God but life is love.  Love, love, love.  And in the midmost midst of it walks this young man, myself.







The earth is one great sentient being, a planet saturated through and through with man, a live planet expressing itself falteringly and stutteringly... The earth [man's] because he is the earth, its fire, its water, its air, its mineral and vegetable matter, its spirit which is cosmic, which is imperishable, which is the spirit of all the planets, which transforms itself through him, through endless signs and symbols, through endless manifestations.




Only the object haunted me, the separate, detached, insignificant thing.  It might be a part of the human body or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button I had found in the gutter.  Whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to surrender, to attach my signature.  I was filled with a perverse love of the thing-in-itself—not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded, worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration.

            The wonder and mystery of life—which is throttled in us as we become responsible members of society!





The labyrinth is my happy hunting ground and the deeper I burrow into the maze the more oriented I become.






Now it dawns on me with full clarity: you are alone in the world!  You are alone…alone…alone.  It is bitter to be alone… bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter.  There is no end to it, it is unfathomable, and it is the lot of every man on earth, but especially mine…especially mine.  

I grow light, light as a feather, and my pace becomes more steady, more calm, more even.  What a beautiful night it is!  The stars shining so brightly, so serenely, so remotely.  Not mocking me precisely, but reminding me of the futility of it all.  Who are you, young man, to be talking of the earth, of blowing things to smithereens?  Young man, we have been hanging here for millions and billions of years.  We have seen it all, everything, and still we shine peacefully every night, we light the way, we still the heart.  Look around you, young man, see how still and beautiful everything is.

I become very thoughtful, very, very calm.  I love everybody in the world.   

-Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn


Look all over the world around you.  There is plenty of puzzle peace poetry to play.

"The main thing was to eat.
Trust to Providence for the rest!"



"I had the secret in my hand,
it was to be generous,
to be kind,
to be patient."






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