Saturday, August 30, 2014

“Soulmates are people

who bring out the best in you.
They are not perfect
but are perfect for you.” 














Sunday, August 24, 2014

WAR is a racket.

It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest,
easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious.

It is the only one
international in scope.
It is the only one
in which the profits
are reckoned in dollars
and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described,
I believe,
as something that is not
what it seems
to the majority of the people.
Only a small "inside" group
knows what it is about.
It is conducted
for the benefit
of the very few,
at the expense
of the very many.

Out of war
a few people
make huge fortunes.

(Smedley D. Butler)








(art by Otto Dix)



Saturday, August 16, 2014

Show me a man

anywhere in the whole wide world
who knows and loves clouds
more than I!

Or show me anything 
more beautiful.

They are a plaything
and comfort to the eye,
a blessing and a gift of God;
they also contain wrath
and the power of death.



They are as delicate, soft,
and gentle as the souls
of newborn babes,
as beautiful, rich,
and prodigal as good angels,
yet somber, inescapable,
and merciless
as the emissaries of death.

They hover as a silvery film,
and sail past smiling and gold-edged;
they hang poised,
tinged yellow, red, and blue.




Darkly, slowly they slink past
like murderers,
roaring head-over-heels
like mad horsemen,
drooping sadly and dreamily
in the pale heights
like melancholy hermits.

They assume the shapes
of blessed isles
and guardian angels,
resemble threatening hands,
fluttering sails,
migrating cranes.




They hover between God's heaven
and the poor earth
like beautiful likenesses
of man's every yearning
and partake of both realms-dreams
of the earth
in which the sullied soul cleaves
to the pure heaven above.

They are the eternal symbol
of all voyaging,
of every quest and yearning for home. 




And as the clouds
are suspended faintheartedly
and longingly and stubbornly
between heaven and earth,
the souls of men are suspended
faintheartedly and longingly
and stubbornly
between time and eternity.

O lovely, floating, restless clouds!
I was an ignorant child
and loved them, watched them ,
little knowing
that I would drift through life
like a cloud-voyaging,
everywhere a stranger,
hovering between time and eternity.



Ever since childhood
they have been
my dear friends and sisters .
There is not a street I cross
without our nodding
and greeting each other.

Nor did I ever forget
what they taught me then:
their shapes, their features,
their games,
their roundelays and dances,
their repose,
and their strange stories
in which elements of
heaven and earth mingled.

(Hermann Hesse - Peter Camenzind)




Sunday, August 3, 2014

Thereafter,

would that I were not
among the men
of the fifth generation,
but either had died before
or been born afterwards.




For now truly is a race of iron,
and men never rest
from labour and sorrow by day,
and from perishing by night;
and the gods shall
lay sore trouble upon them.

But, notwithstanding,
even these shall have some good mingled
with their evils.
And Zeus will destroy this race
of mortal men also when they come to
have grey hair on the temples at their birth.




The father will not agree with his children,
nor the children with their father,
nor guest with his host,
nor comrade with comrade;
nor will brother be dear to brother
as a foretime.

Men will dishonour their parents
as they grow quickly old,
and will carp at them,
chiding them with bitter words,
hard-hearted they,
not knowing the fear of the gods.





They will not repay
their aged parents
the cost their nurture,
for might shall be their right:
and one man
will sack another's city.

There will be no favour
for the man who keeps his oath
or for the just or for the good;
but rather men will praise
the evil-doer
and his violent dealing.




Strength will be right and
reverence will cease to be;
and the wicked
will hurt the worthy man,
speaking false words against him,
and will swear an oath upon them.

Envy, foul-mouthed,
delighting in evil,
with scowling face,
will go along
with wretched men
one and all.


(©la---mer)


And then Aidos and Nemesis,
with their sweet forms
wrapped in white robes,
will go from the wide-pathed earth
and forsake mankind to join
the company of the deathless gods:
and bitter sorrows
will be left for mortal men,
and there will be no help against evil.

(Hesiod – Works nad Days)