Where would you go on a shopping spree?
A used bookstore is the only possible answer, but even then “spree” would generally be excessive for my volume of purchases – by common usage.
I’ve never been a recreational shopper. But, as “sprees” go, I’ve gone on more of the shopping kind than the murdering kind. Funny, those are the only kinds of sprees I’m aware of. I guess something has to die to make it a spree.
We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world, in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or someone’s intention.
Daniel kahneman; Thinking, Fast and slow
If you win, do not boast of your victory; if you lose, do not be discouraged. When it is safe, do not become careless; when it is dangerous, do not fear. Simply continue down the path ahead.
Kanō Jigorō; Founder of Jūdō
A writer makes new life in the void, knocks on silence to make a sound, binds space and time on a sheet of silk and pours out a river from an inch-sized heart.
Lu Ji; Wen Fu (261 – 303)
The worst kind of Virtue never stops striving for Virtue, and so never achieves Virtue.
Laozi
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon. // How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.
Rumi
leaves have dropped;
reflected sun viewed twixt
bristled seedpod clusters.
During thirty years since my birth
I've hiked thousands of miles,
seen green grass converging with a river
and red dust rising at the frontiers,
searched in vain for immortals and elixirs,
studying books and histories.
Today I've returned to Cold Mountain.
I lie back in a stream, washing out my ears.
Translation: Barnstone, Tony and Ping, Chou. 2005. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary. New York: Anchor Books.
A loose shard of thought
Flips and twists about in
My brain,
Poking sensitive tissue,
And sending firestorms
Riffling through my circuitry.
I can't really say I feel each
Prickle or pierce, but they
Do make me wince, sometimes.
How do I roll like a
feather in flow?
The one that can't be
pulled from the pool.
It slips around the
lifted hand,
Retreating back into
the water that it never
really left.
It's like sleight of hand
one plays upon oneself:
at once magician & mark.
The faster one snatches at it,
the greater the miss.
The slower one moves,
the more frustratingly
one sees one's failure.
How to roll like a feather in flow?
They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another.
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.
Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-colored night.
She cannot light the city;
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.
I stand in the window and watch the moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.
Heavy Indian Club movement patterns and the core tenets of Perennial Philosophy.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 