Bukowski

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." 

"Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way." 

"You have to die a few times before you can really 

live." 

"there are worse things 

than being alone 

but it often takes 

decades to realize this 

and most often when you do 

it's too late 

and there's nothing worse 

than too late" 

"what matters most is how well you walk through the fire" 

"We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting" 

"there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock" 

"I wanted the whole world or nothing." 

"those who escape hell 

however 

never talk about 

it 

and nothing much 

bothers them 

after 

that." 

"People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love." 

"It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?" 

"I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!" 

"It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun" 

"What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability." 

"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go." 

Waking Life

Man wants chaos. In fact, he's got to have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder. All this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies; but we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no! Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. And they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. "You want the puppet on the right, or the puppet on the left?" I feel the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfaction into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes. Let my own lack of a voice be heard. 


Hey, are you a dreamer?
Yeah.
Haven't seen too many of you around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. And the dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.

• If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.
•  On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path to what we desire.
• The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market. A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.
• We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass. We'll devalue society's currency. To confront the familiar.
• Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.
• Where there is fire we will carry gasoline
• Interrupt the continuum of everyday experience and all the normal expectations that go with it.
• To live as if something actually depended on one's actions
• To rupture the spell of the ideology of commodified consumer society, so our repressed desires of more authentic nature can come forward.
• To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.
• To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen. 
• There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life to exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions. 
• An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.

Whatever I am right now. I mean, yeah, maybe I only exist in your mind. I'm still just as real as anything else

What are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?

They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?

We have got to realize that we are being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state. The 21st century is going to be a new century. Not the century of slavery; not the century of lies and issues of no significance and classism and statism and all the rest of the modes of control. It's going to be the age of human kind standing up for something pure and something right. What a bunch of garbage! ... liberal, democrat, conservative, republican ... It's all there to control you; two sides of the same coin! Two management teams bidding for control of the CEO job of slavery incorporated. The truth is out there in front of you but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it; and I am not going to take a bite out of it! Do you got me?!

Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

- Humphry Davy

I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?

- Aleister Crowley

William S. Burroughs

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

1.Never give anything away for nothing. 

2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 

3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.

Charles Baudelaire

Nous avons psychologisé comme les fous, qui augmentent leur folie en s’efforçant de la comprendre.

Hélas! tout est abîme, — action, désir, rêve, Parole!

Toutes les beautés contiennent, comme tous les phénomènes possibles, quelque chose d'éternel et quelque chose de transitoire — d'absolu et de particulier.

Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher 

↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔

C'est par le malentendu universel que tout le monde s'accorde. Car si, par malheur, on se comprenait, on ne pourrait jamais s'accorder.

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer

↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔

Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité; le bien 

est toujours le produit d'un art

qu'est-ce que la vertu sans imagination?

↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔↔

On n'est jamais excusable d'être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.

How to Expand Love - Dalai Lama

You are born as human being, and that cannot change until death. all else - whether you're educated or uneducated, young or old, rich or poor - is secondary


We must keep in mind that too much involvement in the superficial aspects of life will not solve our larger problem of discontentment. Love, compassion, and concern for others are real sources of happiness.


If you nurse hatred, however, you will not be happy even in the lap of luxury.


Only through kindness and love can peace of mind be achieved.


Self-defeating attitudes arise not of their own accord, but out of ignorance.


Love and compassion are beneficial both for you and for others. Through kindness toward others, your mind and heart will open to peace.


Rather than working solely to acquire wealth, we need to do something meaningful, something seriously directed toward the welfare of humanity.


...focuses on valuing our enemies because they provide us with unique opportunities to practice patience, tolerance, and forbearance


By extending ordinary feelings of love and concern beyond their usual biased limits, love is freed from counterproductive attachment


Emotional problems do not reside in the mind's essence; such counterproductive attitudes are temporary and superficial and can be removed.


We get angry at what fails our desires. Anger is fomented by the misconception that the object and yourself are established this way (as enemy and victim) in and of themselves. Hatred is not part of the mind's foundation.


Lust, hatred, and jealousy all depend upon the initial mistaken belief that objects exist as independent entities


Non-virtuous attitudes such as hatred and pride - no matter how strong they are - are generated only with the assistance and support of ignorance


Suffering i caused and permitted by an untamed mind


Acquiring more things once you have what is necessary cannot lead to contentment


Happiness comes through taming the mind; without taming the mind there is no way to be happy


Even while generating a great many good and bad conceptions such as desire, hatred, and bewilderment, the diamond mind itself is free from the corruptions of these defilements, like sky throughout clouds


At present you find it unbearable that your friends suffer, but you are pleased that your enemies suffer, and you are indifferent to the suffering of neutral persons


Pure compassion is not biased or partial, it is thoroughly imbued with equanimity and encompasses both friend and foe


Once you have generated an attitude of equality toward all, then it will be possible to view not just friends, but neutral beings and even enemies with great endearment


Lust, hatred, and indifference must be neutralized


Realize that, like yourself, all of these people want happiness and do not want pain, and in this important way, they are equal.


Looking forward to the future, there is no reason why an enemy must remain an enemy and a friend must remain a friend. Friends, enemies, and neutral people are equal because they may shift interchangeably from one role to the next.


When negative thoughts and motivations such as hatred or anger are present, even a friend is seen as an enemy, but when negative thoughts toward an enemy disappear, the enemy becomes a friend.


We live in dependence upon those who have no special motivation to help us.


Only when forced with the work of enemies can you learn real inner strength.


When things go smoothly, life can easily become like an official ceremony in which protocol, like how you walk and how you speak, is more important than content. But at a time of crisis, these things are pointless - you have to deal with reality and become more practical.


Without the appreciation of kindness, society breaks down


If you become overwhelmed by mental discomfort, external things will not help at all. However, if internally there is love, warmth, and kindheartedness, external problems can be accepted and faced more easily


When we encounter human suffering, it is important to respond with commiseration rather than to question the politics of those we help. Instead of asking whether their country is enemy or friend, we must thing - there are human beings, they are suffering, and they have a right to happiness equal to their own.


As long as desire, hatred, attachment, jealousy, or ignorance are present, crime is possible.


It is difficult to think of a pleasurable experience, that, if overindulged in, does not have an inner nature of pain


In turning away from attachment, you need not ignore essential needs such as food, shelter, and sleep. Rather you should separate yourelf from superficial distractions that elicit such explanations such as "I must have this!" When you give your life over to such thoughts, finery and money become more attractive than spiritual development; distressing emotions increase, leading to trouble, disturbing yourself and those around you, while you figure out ways to satisfy these emotions, causing yet more trouble. 


Attachment is built on this mis-perception and will always cause more pain.


Your attachment to the feeling of pleasure itself draws you into distressing actions and thereby into cyclic problems.


There are two types of desire - unreasonable and reasonable. The first is an affliction founded on ignorance, but the second is not. All human development comes out of desire, and those aspirations do not have to be affliction.


Counterproductive desire is unreasonable attachment to things. This inevitably leads to lack of contentment. Ask yourself if you really need most of those things and the answer is no. This type of desire has no limit, no way to satisfy itself, it leads ultimately to suffering. You must put a brake to this desire.


Attachment is one-sided, narrowly focused on yourself for just the short term; the more attached you become, the more biased and narrow you become.


Love thrown into bias by lust and hatred eventually must be stopped. Love influenced by afflictive desires necessarily brings with it hatred at what opposes it, and along with that comes jealousy and all sorts of problems.


Actions are secondary, since they are sometimes positive or negative - always changing - whereas there is never any change in the fact that beings want happiness and do not want suffering.


The main point is not whether a particular person is good or bad to you but the fact that the person is the same as you in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering


I do not concentrate on that person's bad behavior but reflect on the fact that this is a human, who, like myself, wants happiness and does not want suffering, but is voluntarily bringing pain to himself and intentionally destroying his own happiness.


No amount of wealth can buy an extension n your life. On the day of death, nothing you have accumulated can help, you have to leave it behind.


It is crucial to understand that there is no point in being attached to the pleasant appearances or angered by the unpleasant ones.


You need a strong will to achieve the good to make a wish that you will become able to help all beings throughout space. You need a strong self


Contentment is necessary for happiness, so try to be satisfied with adequate food, clothing, and shelter.


All the troubles on this earth are ultimately due to egotism and self-cherishing.


Without enemies you could not fully engage in the practice of patience - tolerance and forbearance. From the viewpoint of training in altruism, an enemy is really your guru, your teacher; only an enemy can teach you tolerance. 


Without patience, you could not develop true love and compassion because you would be subject to irritation


Tragic circumstances help you develop inner strength, the courage to face them without emotional breakdown.


There are different levels of happiness and different kinds of suffering. Material things usually correspond to physical happiness, whereas spiritual development corresponds to mental happiness. Since our "I" has two aspects - physical and mental - we need an inseparable combination of material progress and internal spiritual progress.


The kind of selfishness that leads to fighting, killing, stealing, and using harsh words - forgetting other peoples' welfare, always thinking about yourself - I, I, I - will result in your own loss. Others may speak nice words in front of you, but behind your back they will not speak so nicely.


When there is a will there is a way, is indeed true. When we get entangled in a difficult situation, if our will, or courage lessens, if we fall into laziness or feel inferior to the task, thinking that we could not possibly undo this difficulty, his diminishment of will cannot protect us from suffering and will likely make more.


We must generate courage equal to the size of difficulties we face.


As compassion grows stronger, so does the willingness to commit yourself to the welfare of all beings, even if you have to do it alone.


As long as you have compassion, you will be free of the deepest anxiety.


Anger needs to be controlled, but not hidden from yourself. Recognize your reactions; do not deny them. If you do, your compassion will be superficial


Giving your anger the instrument of words and actions is like giving a child a pile of straw and a box of matches. Once lit, anger feeds off the air of exposure and can rage out of control.


When you are ill or suffer an unfortunate event, imagine "may this illness or misfortune serve as a substitute for the suffering of sentient beings". 


If you can do something without a problem, do it; if it is impossible, worry is useless


As your activities of body, speech, and mind become more and more directed to the benefit of others, you develop a profound sense of love and commitment


The impermanence of this present life will force you to leave behind all wealth, but by giving it away, you can take it with you as good karma.


Just as deficient children are punished out of a wish to make them competent, so punishment should be carried out with compassion, not through hatred, not desire for wealth.  Even those whom they have rightfully fined, bound, punished, and so forth, you being moistened with compassion, should always be caring.

Work in Progress - Wilson's Ghost

Thereafter, Wilson's ghost haunted the 20th century : in the Second World War, in which 50 million people were killed; in the Cold War, with its nuclear fear and destructive "proxy" wars; and in the countless post- Cold War conflicts that threaten anarchy, death, and destruction.

We argue that fundamentally, the human race - in particular foreign and defense policy makers of the Great Powers - has not made the prevention of human carnage a central priority.

Beware of the temptation to believe that sustainable peace will be maintained simply by plotting to achieve an alleged "balance of power" without a strong international organization to enforce it.

For President Wilson had convinced many Americans that Armistice Day represented not merely the end of the most devastating war in world history, but also, in the phrase Wilson made famous, "the war to end all war".

"America," said Wilson, "is only the idealistic nation in the world."

Wilson failed the accomplish these objectives. In the end Germany was humiliated and embittered by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which required not only the ceding of vast tracts of land but also the payment of exorbitant reparations to Germany's European enemies.  Wilson's League of Nations, moreover, was rendered nearly irrelevant by America's absence from it, due to Wilson's failure to persuade the U.S Senate to ratify the treaty creating it. During a cross-country speaking tour in the summer of 1919 on behalf of the treaty, Wilson suffered a stroke, from which he never recovered. The Senate would vote down the League shortly thereafter. Thus did his personal tragedy reflect that of his country and his world.

The Moral Imperative - establish as a major goal of the U.S foreign policy, and indeed of foreign policies across the globe the avoidance in this century of the carnage - 160million dead - caused by the conflict in the 20th century

The Multilateral Imperative - recognize that the United States must provide leadership to achieve the objective of reduced carnage but, in doing so, it will not apply its economic, political, or military power unilaterally, other than in the unlikely circumstances of a defense of the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.

Wilson was accused of being a native Idealist

Yet the tragic history of the 20th century that followed strongly suggests that Lloyd George and the other Europeans - self-style "realists" - might with considerable profit have listened more closely to the "idealist" from America.

Wilson believed that until the power to make war was given over in large part to an international body such as the League, there could be no insurance against the kind of miscalculation, paranoia, suspicion, and error-ridden decision making that had led to the First World War.

And only by means of Article X would it become clear that seeking unilateral advantage at the expense of others would not be tolerated and would thus, Wilson believed, be significantly deterred.

Without Article X, he believed, nations and leaders were bound to waver in moments of crisis, when "the will to war is everything," as it had been during the July crisis of 1914. Thus, there mut be no unilateral application of military force by any member of the League of Nations against any other member, under penalty of a guaranteed and proportionate military response by the forces of some or all of the other members.

Milos

By Anis Mojgani

Let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings.
Let dance through Paris;
kiss in the shadow of the Louvre,
crawl inside its windows,
scroll manifesto's over its canvas',
write Morris' code on the sculptures,
roll a sleeping bag on the floors to sleep inside of, tell one another a story by flashlight,
unearth everything from before,
burry each other inside the other,
feed grapes to the ants,
light fireworks in the fists of sleeping kings; kill a monarch.
Break back outside and find a world to do all these same things to;
up and upon against break the bricks, climb over them,
and when the sirens scream,
laugh aloud, hold my hand and run fast.
Run through the streets with me with a bunch of bottles,
a bucket of gasoline,
a mouthful of matches,
a pocket full of paintings and fresh faced batch of policemen to chase the fires we are lighting,
laugh on a shoulder of gold.
And i thought that the museums where cemeteries where the dead paid the wall to hold what we had so that we could walk through what we once were,
And children take their skulls to turn into gardens,
to pluck for forefathers and farther stars,
that on some nights resemble an armless mother praying for her arms to return.
Every tooth that we tear from our jaw to fling at the black gloved riot soldiers as another shadow that we are trying to lose.
Let every giggle be filled with lust; let us laugh this night away and i will fuck you like you were a prayer.
I could save me by having my mouth around you,
and i will hold you afterwards like you were the pulpit and i was the sky,
and this love that danced between that hardness was a telephone line of holiness that those two things spoke through.
Take me into your heart like i was a saint,
and you were a face of forgiveness blooming in a valley destined to sink further.
Be a river with me;
Be the storm;
the bend in the path;
the front porch; the heat in the south;
be a boot full of banjo strings;
a fist full of written songs;
a mouthful of chocolate dust.
When they come to take us,
stab them between the eyes.
Do not take your hand from around mine.
Make a fist with the other, and punch spines like guilds, spit, sweat, kiss them like a grandmother. How will open mouthed terror love filled?
And when they come to cut out hair and ask to hear penance come from inside us,
say with me loud and trembling,
but loud and clear that:
"i have already emptied myself. I kissed regret goodbye, took the hands of another backwards angel, and rode backwards into the rain"
When the hangman of morrow comes to hang the sun in its daily execution say this with me: "'Sarah we are apples, our love is an apple; im unbuttoning my shirt; painting a circle over my heart, please,, just shoot straight."

For Jane

225 days under grass and you know more than I. they have long taken your blood, you are a dry stick in a basket. is this how it works? in this room the hours of love still make shadows. when you left you took almost everything. I kneel in the nights before tigers that will not let me be. what you were will not happen again. the tigers have found me and I do not care.