Tag: reality

A map’s a guide to find a world

A map's a guide to find the world

Knitted by angels,plain or pearled.

Yet though you need a map as guide,

Keep your own eyes open wide.


I spent a year caught in a map

Until I found a big enough gap

I crawled out through this exit slit,

So here I am,like some half wit.


Words can act like heroin,

You live so high,where I have been.

But onto earth I gladly fall.

The air, the sun, the rain, is all.


My senses are my lovers long-

My ears,my eyes,my skin my tongue.

The winds caress my naked flesh,

To dwell on earth is all I wish.


I'll live with mice and birds and plants,

I'll share my food with miscreants

I'll keep my words inside a tin,

And only,now and then,go in.


I'll live with cats and spiders three.

And like a wild flower grow quite free.

I' ll give my words to those who hear,

And eventually I'll disappear


Earth to earth then ash to ash

When soaked with rain I shall disperse.

My atoms wing like butterflies,

And to the Flower I'll fly,disguised

Thoughts about fiction and reality

  Dickens
Charles Dickens,the great novelist of Victorian England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
Fiction is invented,of course, by novelists and writers.And we also have lies which are slightly different.The truth of fiction when well done comes from the use of the true imagination based on genuine interactions with what is other than ourselves and is a way of depicting the truths of the heart.

The true imagination can only be effective when it is not fantasy based on  mere wish fulfillment.To me that is what Buddhism is about.We desire nothing in order to get everything and more.

Lies,on the other hand ,may be for purposes of  manipulating other people or may be the product of fantasy which is common in children who “make believe” they are having a birthday party because they want one so much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors
I might say fictional writing in novels or poetry using the true imagination helps us to understand complex reality better..Lies can  be very destructive.And we have the kind of language used in the novel 1984 by George Orwell where black can mean white and death merely.termination of life…. we have begun to hear a lot of this and it does have an utterly bad and even destructive effect on personal and political life.The most famous example is when some politician was lying but it was referred to as being “Economy with the truth”.It’s our intentions which count to in making us moral agents.We may lie so smoothly we feel it will have no illl effect.

Imagining what it is  like to be  another person as in Dicken’s great novels about the poor is very powerful and can change government policy via changing people’s hearts and minds.

I feel imagination does have this purpose of making us feel for others and bring us closer even to murderers and criminals when the writer makes their world something we can comprehend.

Reality is very complex which is one reason we have all the arts,science,mysticism,religion as they all look at or relate to different aspects of life.

Plain lying is a selfish activity for our personal benefit or to avoid trouble when we have misbehaved.And we weave a web of destruction

The man who cannot write or read a book

Though full of direct knowledge of his fellows
Whose eyes and faces are a script humane;
Though voices sing to him like Lobos’ cellos
Yet in lack and loss and woe this man remains..

In times gone by,the voice and face sufficed.
Poets read and we seized upon their lines;
But now a subtle torture’s been devised
To write with pen and letters intertwined.

This man though wise like cat,or bear or owl,
Has failed in his acquaintance with the pen.
Nor does he have the words which politicians howl.
Nor can he read more than his list of sin.

For now the map is where the mind must dwell
And of reality,no-one can tell.

George Steiner

Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. Mosaic...
Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. Mosaic, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dionysos mask, found in Myrina (now in Turkey)...
Dionysos mask, found in Myrina (now in Turkey). Terracotta, 2nd–1st centuries BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do the identifications with fictions, the inner, tidal motions of pathos and libido which the novel, the film, the painting, the symphony unleash within us somehow immunize us against the humbler, less formed, but actual claims of suffering and of need in our surroundings? Does the cry in the tragic play muffle, even blot out, the cry in the street?

http://yquotes.com/quotes/george-steiner/3/#ixzz2obYV5KXW

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Keeping reality at bay

       “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.”
― Hannah Arendt
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My atoms wing like butterflies

 

A map’s a guide to find a world

Knitted by angels,plain or pearled,

And though you need a map as guide,

Keep your own eyes open wide.

 

I spent a year caught in a map

Until I found a big enough gap

I crawled out through this exit slit,

So here I am,like some half wit

 

Words can act like heroin,

You live so high ,where I have been.

But onto earth I gladly fall.

The air the sun the rain is all.

 

My senses are my lovers long-

My ears,my eyes,my skin my tongue.

The winds caress my naked flesh,

To dwell on earth is all I wish.

 

I’ll live with mice and birds and plants,

I’ll share my food with miscreants

I’ll keep my words inside a tin,

And only, now and then,go in.

 

I’ll live with cats and spiders three.

And like a wild flower grow quite free.

I’ ll give my words to those who hear,

And eventually I’ll disappear

 

Earth to earth then ash to ash

When soaked with rain I shall disperse.

My atoms wing like butterflies,

And to the Flower I’ll fly,disguised

 

Windows by Charles Baudelaire

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.

Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman’s story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.

If it had been and old man I could have made up his just as well.

And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.

Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the really one?” But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?

Charles Baudelaire

The television screen is a window

The TV screen is a window into another world.Unlike the window in the front room here,it does not show real people going about their affairs.No.it shows a world which has been carefully constructed.Some programs are beautiful.Some nowadays are live shows where people meet various challenges.Sometimes these can be very damaging,as can live interviews.It;s strange to see one’s PM wearing makeup.And that’s the least of it!

You can watch violence,murder or pornography if you wish or hear orchestras playing your favorite music.Extend your choice with DVD’s.Spend all your life glued to the screen….which glue is best?I’ll let you know soon.

Then there are the political aspects..I did not watch much of the grand funeral here last week of   our ex PM Maggie Thatcher but I saw enough to show it’s being used by the current government to raise their own esteem in the public eye.A politician should never have a funeral with  military honors with the coffin on a gun carriage pulled by horses and the same week poor families had their welfare cut back.Ten million pounds on this event which also was very provocative to the worst off members of society.

St Francis SOS

They can construct this kind of event and by means of it manipulate our feelings.State and ceremonial funerals are for the Royal Family who are above party politics or for someone lke Churchill who led us through the fight against Nazi Germany.

Windows…. like dreams…. think about whether someone is presenting you with a view for their own ulterior motives and not to enlarge your view of the world

Humor

.April 2013 – Margaret Thatcher dies.
May 2013 – Hell privatised.

Shares available in Hell’s kitchen soon.

People can stand what is true

Image

Eugene T. Gendlin quotes

From Goodreads site

“What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse. Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away. And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.”
― Eugene T. Gendlin, Focusing