From here to there

`Cheshire Puss,’ she began, [...]
`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
`I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.
`Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

- Lewis Carroll

Clairvoyance

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

II

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

– Edward Lear

Interesting Propositions

The history of the universe is divided into cycles and in these cycles there are long eclipses during which there is nothing or in which only the words of the Veda remain. Those words are archetypes which serve to create things. La divinity Brahma also dies and is reborn. There is a quite pathetic moment when Brahma is in his palace. He has been reborn after one of the calpas, after one of the eclipses. He walks through the rooms, which are empty. He thinks of other gods. The other gods appear at his command, and they think that Brahma has created them because they were there before.

Let’s pause at this vision of the history of the universe. There is no God in Buddhism; or there could be a God, but it isn’t the essential thing. What is essential is that we believe that our destiny has been predetermined by our karma or karman. If I was to be born in Buenos Aires in 1899, if I was to be blind, if I am to be giving this lecture to you tonight, it is all the result of my previous life. There isn’t a single event in my life which hasn’t been predetermined by my previous life. This is what is called karma. Karma, as I have already said, is like a mental structure, an extremely fine mental structure. We are weaving and inter-weaving in every moment of our lives. For not only our volitions, our deeds, our semi-dreams, our sleep, our semi-waking are woven: we are perpetually weaving that thing [karma]. When we die another being is born who inherits our karma.

– Jorge Luis Borges

L’enfance / Childhood (1939)

L'enfance / Childhood (1939)

The Labyrinth

The Labyrinth (1991)

Celestial Pablum

Papilla estelar (1958)

Mother Goddesses

By Ángeles Santos

Cupid’s Trick

‘TWAS noon of night, when round the pole
The sullen Boar is seen to roll;
And mortals, wearied with the day,
Are slumbering all their cares away :
An infant, at that dreary hour,
Came weeping to my silent bower,
And wak’d me with a piteous prayer,
To save him from the midnight air !
“And who art thou,” I waking cry,
” That bid’st my blissful visions fly ?”
” gentle sir !” the infant said,
” In pity take me to thy shed ;
Nor fear deceit : a lonely child
I wander o’er the gloomy wild.
Chill drops the rain, and not a ray
Illumes the drear and misty way !”

I hear the baby’s tale of woe ;
I hear the bitter night- winds blow ;
And sighing for his piteous fate,
I trimm’d my lamp and op’d the gate.
‘Twas Love ! the little wandering sprite,
His pinion sparkled through the night !
I knew him by his bow and dart ;
I knew him by my fluttering heart ! .

I take him in, and fondly raise
The dying embers’ cheering blaze ;
Press from his dank and clinging hair
The crystals of the freezing air,
And in my hand and bosom hold
His little fingers thrilling cold.

And now the embers’ genial ray
Had warm’d his anxious fears away ;
” I pray thee,” said the wanton child
(My bosom trembled as he smil’d),
‘ I pray thee let me try my bow,
For through the rain I’ve wander’d so,
That much I fear, the ceaseless shower
Has injur’d its elastic power.”
The fatal bow the urchin drew ;
Swift from the string the arrow flew;
Oh ! swift it flew as glancing flame,
And to my very soul it came !
“Fare-thee-well,” I heard him say,
As laughing wild he wing’d away ;
” Fare-thee-well, for now I know
The rain has not relax’d my bow ;
It still can send a madd’ning dart,
As thou shalt own with all thy heart !”

– Anacreon

Mi caída sin fin

My fall without end to my fall without end in which nobody waited for me well upon looking at who was waiting for me I saw no other thing but myself.

– Alejandra Pizarnik

Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of these same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
’fore I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

Spring only sighed
Summer had to be satisfied
Fall is a feelin’ that I just can’t lose.
I’d like to stay
Maybe watch a winter day
Turn the green water
To white and blue
Flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

The mountain moon
Forever sets too soon
Bein’ alone is all the hills can do
Alone and then
Her silver sails again
And they will follow
In their flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
They will follow in their
Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of the same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes.

– Townes Van Zandt

Destiny

We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.

– Rosario Castellanos

Meetings

Never forget that every stick has two ends.
The devil can lead you to paradise, and God, directly to Hell.

– G.I. Gurdjieff

Embodied, embedded

‘Either God really does love all beings… or religion seems a vast fraud.’

- Charles Hartshorne

Breadfruit

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are,
As bribes to teach them how to execute
Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;
This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,
Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and
On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub
By private car.

Such uncorrected visions end in church
Or registrar:
A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch;
Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme
With money; illness; age. So absolute
Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream
Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit
Whatever they are.
- Philip Larkin

A career after death

‘Those who want to go on being themselves forever and yet pass on to additional experiences after death are either asking for unbearable monotony, endless reiteration of the same personality traits, or they have a unique prerogative of God, ability to achieve self-identity through no matter how great and diverse the changes and novelties. Unconsciously they either want to be bored to death, so to speak, or to be God.’

- Charles Hartshorne