J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arrière

J'ai eu le courage de regarder en arrière
Les cadavres de mes jours
Marquent ma route et je les pleure
Les uns pourrissent dans les églises italiennes
Ou bien dans de petits bois de citronniers
Qui fleurissent et fructifient
En même temps et en toute saison
D'autres jours ont pleuré avant de mourir dans des tavernes
Où d'ardents bouquets rouaient
Aux yeux d'une mulâtresse qui inventait la poésie
Et les roses de l'électricité s'ouvrent encore
Dans le jardin de ma mémoire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Edgar Allan Poe

Kisses are better fate than wisdom.
ee cummings

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

ee cummings

‎


"Θα δοθώ ολάκαιρος στην άμεση Ενέργεια... Τώρα ταχτοποιώ εδώ τα γραφτά μου, σαν να πρόκειται να φύγω ή να πεθάνω". 
Νίκος Καζαντζάκης

And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky. 
Khalil Gibran

It matters not who you Love, where you Love, why you Love, when you Love, or how you Love. It matters only that you Love.
John Lennon

The ego treats the present moment in three ways: 
1. As a means to an end. 
2. As an obstacle. 
3. As an enemy. 

Eckhart Tolle

No mirror ever became iron again;
No bread ever became wheat;
No ripened grape ever became sour fruit.
Mature yourself and be secure
from a change for the worse.
Become the light.
- Rumi

"Ο δίκαιος είναι ο πιο ατάραχος άνθρωπος, ενώ ο άδικος ζει γεμάτος ταραχή. "
Επίκουρος

To know Tao - Loy Ching Yuen

“To know Tao
Meditate
And still the mind.
Knowledge comes with perseverance.
The Way is neither full nor empty;
A modest and quiet nature understands this.
The empty vessel, the uncarved block;
Nothing is more mysterious.
When enlightenment arrives
Don’t talk too much about it;
Just live it in your own way.
With humility and depth, rewards come naturally.
The fragrance of blossoms soon passes;
The ripeness of fruit is gone in a twinkling.
Our time in this world is so short,
Better to avoid regret;
Miss no opportunity to savor the ineffable.
Like a golden beacon signaling on a moonless night,
Tao guides our passage through this transitory realm.
In moments of darkness and pain
Remember all is cyclical.
Sit quietly behind your wooden door:
Spring will come again.”

so you want to be a writer? - Charles Bukowski

΄

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

The  Gentlest and Greatest Friend
of
Moon and Winds


Basho (1644 - 1694)


Many years ago there went wandering through Japan, sometimes on
the back of a horse,sometimes afoot, in poor pilgrim's clothes, the
kindest, most simple hearted of men...Basho, friend of moon and winds.
Though Basho was born of one of the noblest classes in Japan, and might
have been welcome in palaces, he chose to wander, and to be comrade
and teacher of men and women, boys and girls in all different stations of
life,from the lowest to the highest.  Basho bathed in the running brooks,
rested in shady valleys, sought shelter from sudden rains under some tree
on the moor, and sighed with the country folk as he watched the cherry
blossoms in their last pink shower, fluttering down from the trees.  Now
he slept at some country inn, stumbling in at its door at nightfall,
wearied from long hours of travelling, yet never too tired to note the
lovely wisteria vine, drooping its delicate lavender blossoms over the
veranda.  Sometimes he slept in the poor hut of a peasant, but most often
his bed was out-of-doors, and his pillow a stone.

When Basho came upon a little violet hiding shyly in the grass on a
mountain pathway, it whispered its secret to him.  "Modesty, gentleness,
and simplicity!" it said.  "These are the truly beautiful things."

Glistening drops of dew on the petal of a flower had  voice and a song
for him likewise. "Purity," they sang, "is the loveliest thing in life.

The pine tree, fresh and ever green amid winter's harshest storms,
spoke staunchly of hardy manhood;  the mountains had their message
of patience, the moon its song of glory!  Rivers, forests, waterfalls,
all told their secrets to Basho, and these secrets that Nature revealed
to him, he loved to show to others, for the whole of living of life was
to him one great poem, as of some holy service in the shadow of a temple.

"Real poetry," said Basho, "is to lead a beautiful life.  To live poetry
is better than to write it."  And whenever he saw one of his young
students being rude, in a fit of anger, or otherwise acting unworthily,
he would gently lay his hand on the arm of the youth and say; "But this
is not poetry! This is not poetry."


Note:
This story is from a children's book titled
Little Pictures of Japan, edited by author
Olive Beaupré Miller and beautifully
illustrated by Katharine Sturges. It was originally published in 1925.