Dharma Bum

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;

But when I walk I see that it consists of three
or four hills and a cloud.

—Wallace Stevens

“As Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello say, the new spirit of capitalism has put to good use the artistic critique that was supposed to destroy it. If the dense and moralist cigar-smoking reactionary bourgeois can transform him or herself into a free-floating agnostic bohemian, moving opinions, capital, and networks from one end of the planet to the other without attachment, why would he or she not be able to absorb the most sophisticated tools of deconstruction, social construction, discourse analysis, postmodernism, postology?”

—	Bruno Latour

"Even if our “mental disorders” are not biological disease concepts, we want a diagnosis. We want a structured narrative that puts our suffering into a larger context, a story that unites us with an imagined community of other souls suffering in the same way. Disease concepts are the stories we seek."

—

Richard Noll at Harvard University Press Blog. Suffering and Sadness Are Not Diseases

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”

—	Mary Oliver, from “Mysteries, Yes” in Evidence

“I sit before flowers

hoping they will train me in the art

of opening up.”

—	Shane Koyczan, from The Student

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off - they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.
 - William Stafford

Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

 - Lisel Mueller
from Why We Tell Stories
beyond the fields we know

You can stay in the same place and still find ways to leave people.

 

"Die while alive,
Thoroughly die.
Then just do as you will,
and all is right."

-Shido Bunan Zenji