Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
-- Larry Gelbart
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
I get four quotes every day, sent to my email box, random generations out of the library of all the quotes available on the Quotations website. The above quotes, three out of four, appear to me to tie together and mean something. Generated at random, they somehow relate to the issue expressed in my last post.
I am sure I get along better everywhere if I keep my sense of humor. I believe this attitude I hope to live up to is reflected fairly often in my poetry. Patia asked me a couple posts back if it was okay if she laughed. She meant that question "tongue in cheek". I know she already knew the answer. The subject of my poem seemed rather serious but the end of the poem was oddly humorous. That's precisely what I hoped for, and it commonly arises in my poetry fresh from my creative process when I see no reason to stay serious. I don't think I plan these things. So I am dropping the last quote provided in today's mailing of Quotes Of The Day (about kids) not because it was not good but because this last quote heard in another venue is better in context:
In order to achieve enlightenment, lighten up.
--anonymous, heard at an AA meeting
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Okay, I give up. This just in from Tricycle
Big Sky Mind
Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche described panoramic awareness as "a state without center or fringe" in which there is no watcher or perceiver, no division between subject and object. With a Big Mind, one does not view the sky, as eleventh-century Zen Master Dogen said most people do, by looking up at it "through a bamboo tube." Instead, the distinction between self and other is abolished in the experience of the empty sky itself.
-- Rick Fields, "Buddhism and the Beat Generation" Tricycle (Fall 1995)
Contraction
1 week ago
Yes, one of the lines I often quote from Steel Magnolias..."lighten up Annelle."
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, "can we call a truce long enough for me to get a piece of cake?" Yes, I could go on forever.
It's not just random acts of quotes that do this...music too. I put my iPod on shuffle and amazingly themes make their presence known, a secret knowledge of my need, the source for their content.
Oh my, that is one helluvan exercise, to view things without the bamboo tube. It is shedding periphery and letting the self go. I'm glad to say I can do this, even if only in part, from time to time. With practice, perhaps more often. I loosen up and gooooo...
ReplyDeletexo
erin