Wish I had said that

THE BIRTH OF ZEN

2011-10-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

One day, in ancient India, the Buddha was giving a teaching to his followers. On this day however, instead of a verbal teaching, he simply held up a flower. One of his disciples, Mahakasyapa, amiled. The Buddha said: "Today, I gave a silent teaching and Mahakasyapa alone understood it."

AN AFRICAN IN EXILE

2011-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

This is a poem by my friend, Bart Wolffe. I met him in Zimbabwe many years ago and his poems bring back the memories of my homeland more than other words I have read.

I bought his book, Waking Dreams, from Lulu: here
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/waking-dreams/16109047?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/7
I LEFT WITH THE SHIRT ON MY BACK.
It had lizards crawling across it.
A lilac and blue flannel
Long-sleeve African design.
That was eight years ago.
I still wear it like a skin.
It may not be in fashion,
Now worn a little thin
But I wear Africa a bit
When I put my T-shirt on.
Animals know their own kind,
Birds recognise their kin.
This is my icon, my talisman,
My identity without, within...

A FACTIDOTE.

2011-06-16T01:59:00.000-07:00

One of my Sunday joys is reading AA Gill's column in the Sunday Times. This week he was at his beasty-best. I share with you his first few sentences in Table Talk on Sunday 12.6.11, because, if you don't read this paper, you won't have seen it - and why should I be the only one to enjoy his wordly ways?

I am plagued, palsied and agued with unnews, outformation, stuff that we don't need, ought not to know. I don't mean prurient or boring, irrelevant or secret, but factidotes. Mental bellybutton lint. the insidious information version of clothes moths that chew holes in the cashmere of joy. For instance, I've just read in a newspaper that Alan Titchmarsh doesn't need Viagra. That is a factidote. Pointless, anodyne, but somehow horrible, grit in the Vaseline of a smooth existence. I know that my life is ever so slightly lessened, sullied and smeared by knowing that Alan Titchmarsh doesn't need Viagra. This world is a minutely shabbier and more compromised place. I will never be able to unknow that Gardener Gets Wood. So I'm passing it on to you, because why should I be the only one to suffer?

Purity

2011-05-30T05:39:00.000-07:00

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the

altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Stephen Fry.

A LIFE WELL LIVED

2010-11-25T04:16:00.000-08:00

If anybody can be said to have succeeded in living life wall-to-wall, it is Mundy. He is the happiest person I have ever met. There are many different ways of describing happiness and success. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist and poet, put it thus:
"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

ON POVERTY AND WEALTH

2010-11-16T00:54:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, I made a note of something William Saroyan said about wealth. I kept it with all the many scraps, notebooks and diaries in which I scribble words that impress me. I found it the other day, and want to share it with you:

Poverty is not having but wanting

Wealth is having and not wanting

Great wealth is neither having nor wanting.

The greatest wealth of all is having so little that one must notice how much one has in having life itself.

BART'S POEM

2010-11-10T01:08:00.001-08:00

My friend, Bart Wolffe, writes beautiful poetry.
Today he put this poem on his Facebook page.

Across the cold gust flies some bird whose heard cry breaks the rain’s breath with loneliness, an outflung wish, tempest tossed and lost as I. Its voice is wordless and yet it speaks every bleak tear my eye can’t shed.

You can see more of his poem's and books here:

here

You can even download some free!

What to do with the Elderlies...

2010-11-08T05:05:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me an email that said this:

Let's put all retired folk in jail and the criminals in a nursing home. This way the seniors would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.
They'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheel chairs etc and they'd receive money instead of paying it out.
They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.
Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them. A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell.
They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.
They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counseling, pool and education.
Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ's and legal aid would be free, on request.
Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens.
Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls.
There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.

The "criminals" would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised.
Lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week.
Live in a tiny room and pay £900.00 per month and have no hope of ever getting out.
Justice for all we say.

THE SWAN - by Mary Oliver

2010-11-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

A favourite poem combined with a favourite photograph

2010-08-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

On supporting artists...

2010-07-15T01:16:00.000-07:00

(Don't talk, just kiss - Mundy-Castle, 1993)

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. ( Yann Martel -Life of Pi )

IDEALS

2010-07-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

The difficulty is not so much that of moving towards an ideal, or even remaining in a fixed relationship to it, as of trying to slow up the pace at which we are always moving away from it. (from an old notebook)

Silence is golden

2009-11-22T02:27:00.000-08:00

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"
(Wittgenstein).

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

2009-10-25T06:48:00.001-07:00

I love trees all the year round. At this time of year they always bring to mind that wonderful Shakespeare sonnet:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Contentment

2009-10-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.When you realize there is nothing lacking,the whole world belongs to you.- Lao Tzu

Brand Essence

2009-10-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

I really like Jo Brand. She's as sharp and zesty as a sprig of fresh mint.

She became a mother at 43 and commented, "They say men can never understand the pain of childbirth. Well, they can if you hit them in the testicles with a cricket bat for 14 hours"

Nobody says it quite like she does.

DAWN

2009-09-16T09:47:00.001-07:00

I woke early this morning to see a serge-blue sky reflected in a window across the street. It was quiet; a good time for thinking and starting out.

The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.

Hesiod - 800BC

Change

2009-09-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

I love Autumn, when leaves change from green to gold. Summer's end has a tinge of sadness...

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France.

Roses

2009-08-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Does a rose exist that I might behold it? Or do I exist that a rose might be beheld? (Robert Brault)

Security

2009-08-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

I always thought security was having the things and people I needed around me, until one day I had to do without them, and I realised that by learning to do without I gained a new sense of freedom.

Security depends not upon how much you have as upon how much you can do without.
Joseph Krutch.

Ubuntu

2009-08-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu is the traditional African way of life and is encompassed in the saying:

Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu

meaning: a person is a person through other people.

Writing in their book "Clued up on Culture", Margaret Elion and Mercia Striman point out that Ubuntu is intuitive and is done without intellectual forethought and means acting kindly towards others, being hospitable, compassionate and fair and, above all, having sound morals. In traditional African societies, Ubuntu is demonstrated through the way adults take on a parental, sisterly or brotherly role to others in the community; orphans and problem children are absorbed into family life; weddings are open to everybody; the elderly are revered, respected and cared for.

On Understanding

2009-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

A C Grayling, writing in the Times Review 8.10.2003

When individuals get to know one another it is usually impossible for them to like or hate each other on the basis of mere generalities about race, religion or history. To hate successfully, you must hate an abstraction - the totality of Arabs or Jews or whomever - because once you put a face to a person and with it a home, children, an enjoyment of hamburgers or football, all abstractions melt.

Reading Time

2009-08-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

Philip Howard, Literary Editor of The Times, reviewing Philip Ward "A Lifetime's Reading", Books and Bookman, September, 1982:

We have to fit in our reading in the corners and interstices of our life, on which the toad work squats.

Unseen Infamy

2009-08-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

Mark Thomas, writing in The Guardian 8.8.09:

The summer holidays provide the government with plenty of good days to quietly lift the sluice- gates of the pools of political sewage.