Wednesday, December 29, 2010

the self I pretend to be (in this moment) by Ricardo Reis

Since we do nothing in this confused world
That lasts or that, lasting, is of any worth,
And even what’s useful for us we lose
So soon, with our own lives,
Let us prefer the pleasure of the moment
To an absurd concern with the future,
Whose only certainty is the harm we suffer now
To pay for its prosperity.
Tomorrow doesn’t exist. This moment
Alone is mine, and I am only who
Exists in this instant, which might be the last
Of the self I pretend to be.

- Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Meaning


When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.


- Cczeslaw Milosz



Saturday, December 4, 2010

Where beauty resides

"Where the self is, beauty is not. Is that beauty in the picture, painting, in a concert of Mozart or Beethoven, or in the poems of Keats, or is it possible to be totally free of oneself to look at the world? Then in that there is great beauty, where you are not absorbed by anything. Something doesn't take you over, or the very grandeur, the majesty of something drives away for a second the self. And when there is the absence of that self with all its problems, there is then great beauty, not in something, or externally or subjectively, but the very complex problems of one's life, which is the problem of the self, the selfishness, the agony and so on, to be free of all that, totally, completely, then there is great beauty - beauty to be found nowhere else on earth or in any painting or in any poem."

- J. Krishnamurti (Brockwood Park, 4th Public Talk, September 6, 1981)
http://www.kinfonet.org/articles/8-the-secret-life-of-trees