Up Here Alone

May 25

“We have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us — the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.” — Terence McKenna (via infiniteoneness)

(via infiniteoneness)

“If I had to write a book to communicate what I have already thought, I’d never have courage to begin it. I write precisely because I don’t know yet what to think about a subject that attracts my interest… When I write I do it above all to change myself and not to think the same thing as before” Michel Foucault | Interview with Italian journalist Duccio Trombadore, quoted in Ann Laura Stoler’s Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things.

(The irony of all of this is how often Foucault’s philosophies are mentioned in art school grad courses as if to cement his ideas or to solidify them in some way into our collective consciousness and justify our works. In reality, the man was just a man, who was thinking things through and wasn’t even sure if he was onto something or not (or who he was for that matter). This quote goes so far as to only solidify what I’d always suspected about my own works: that the trial and error, the going through it all, is everything; and in the end, that process can be your justification. —TO) (via tobia)

(via tobia)

“I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that’s why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead. Growth is possible only if there is imperfection. I would like you to remember again and again, I am imperfect, the whole universe is imperfect, and to love this imperfection, to rejoice in this imperfection is my whole message.” Osho (via shetakesflight)

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by
which we arrive at that goal.” Martin Luther King, Jr (via passiveandserene)

“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”

Richard Feynman

(via socialuprooting)

(via therikeone)

“

there is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it in the slow movement of

the hands of a clock

people so tired

mutilated

either by love or no love

” Charles Bukowski (via amordeliria)

May 23

“Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.” Osho (via lazyyogi)

May 22

“This is probably going to get quoted in every publication just because I said it. And I’m not even saying anything. I’m not talking about my films, I’m not talking about my life, and I’m not talking about the world. And yet, the media will print it simply because I said it. And at this moment in time, I bet there is an artist around the corner of this hotel, on the street, with a mind far beyond ours, but we will never listen to him simply because he has not appeared in a movie. And that is what is fucked up about our culture.” Robert Downey Jr. (via blua)

(via -beautiful)

May 21

“People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.” William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands (via honeyforthehomeless)

May 20

“Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.” Jack Gilbert, Horses at Midnight Without a Moon (via yesyes)

(via thenightopus)

“As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.” Mikhail Bakunin (via beautyof-disobedience)

(via therikeone)

“

There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.

And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.

So you watch yourself about complaining.

What you’re supposed to do
when you don’t like a thing is change it.
If you can’t change it,
change the way you think about it.

” Maya Angelou (via vanished)

“The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.” Gustave Flaubert

May 14

“Here’s why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot talk, so I listen very well. I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly. It’s like being a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor’s yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words “soccer” and “neighbor” in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn’t he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor’s dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.” Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain (via vanished)

“There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.” Gustave Flaubert