Tom Robbins

From Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

"Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light. For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irratable: the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside. Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a 9000 pound granite boulder, the suprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. And if the boulder is more special, if it has been painted or carved in some mysterious way, you may find that it possesses an extraordinary and supernatural presence that enchants you, and in coping with it--as it blocks your path to the bathroom--leaves you feeling extraordinary and supernatural too. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality."

From Another Roadside Attraction

"Nothing in the vegetable world succumbs. It simply drops away and then returns. Energy is never destroyed. We planted our dead the way we planted our seeds. After a period of rest, the energy of the corpse or seed returned in one form or another. From death came more life. We loved Earth because of the joy and good times and peace of mind to be had in loving it. We didn't have to be saved from it. We never plotted escapes to heaven, we weren't afraid of death because we adhered to nature and its cycles. In nature, we observed that death is an inseparable part of life...The idea of a spiritual-invisible being was the result of the new and unnatural fear of death. And the idea of a supreme spiritual being is the result of becoming alienated from the workings of nature: When man could no longer observe the solid material processes of life and identify with them, he had to invent god in order to explain how life happened and why death happened."

Saul Williams

WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES ME -

when the clock strikes me
the big hand will realize the grandeur
of its illusion
and will begin to shrink
in its own eyes
while the little hand
marvels at the ball of energy
spinning from its palm

when the clock strikes me
everything will stop
and that which was nothing
will become the beginning again

when the clock strikes me
numbers will backfire
symbols will become
that which they symbolize
and sayings like 'out of the blue'
will reveal their hidden origin

when the clock strikes me
people will gather to deconstruct
the myths and fables
that conspired against them
and every new song
will be an antivirus
for an old belief

when the clock strikes me
women will close their doors
jump, dance, and bang the walls
in remembrance of their future selves
while men fight internally
to recall the recipe for freedom

when the clock strikes me
men will recall the recipe for freedom
and will begin to form
rescue teams for dreams deferred

when the clock strikes me
some people will have to die

when the clock strikes me
children will find it cool
to be playful
and adults will find it worthwhile
to play like children

when the clock strikes me
the story of jesus
will simply be told as a children's story
where his name will be replaced with the name of every newborn
and families will celebrate every birth
as the rebirth of the messiah
and all people will think of all people
as chosen

when the clock strikes me
buddha will still be laughing

when the clock strikes me
the powers of being will prevail
over the powers that be

when the clock strikes me
thugs and poets will laugh at themselves
businessmen will serve humanity

world leaders will turn to their mothers for advice
and mothers will turn
to their daughters
for inspiration

when the clock strikes me
something will be different
something will feel completely random
the moment will feel slightly eerie
the unexpected will change places
with the predictable
and life will truly feel like an adventure

when the clock strikes me
no alarm will sound
green streaks of light may mark the night
stray cats may purr
and rub themselves against your ankle
many people will double blink
and pinch themselves
and those who normally don't
will notice the moon in broad daylight

when the clock strikes me
it will strike you too
and even your cynicism
and concrete analysis
will be brought into question
as the most beautiful stranger
makes herself/himself known to you


when the clock strikes me
your loved ones
will glow with the beauty
of complete strangers
and you will have to
reintroduce yourself to your parents
for they will have never met
the side of you that dances
just because you found an old recipe

when the clock strikes me
you will be sitting someplace
alone or with another
reading this
and we will both
go off unexpectedly
spines will tingle
eyes will water

and this moment
on this plane
in my favourite jeans
with jimi blaring in my ears
will become NOW
and FOREVERMORE
and more eyes will water
for they will know
and they will feel it
and live it
and they will turn
to the stranger beside them
and say "you have to read this"
and this will go down in history
as one of those moments
when you knew
that nothing would ever
be the same

SAUL WILLIAMS

Rumi

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.
Run my dear.
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.
Run like hell my dear
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.
We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."
For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to expereince ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and
Light!

Robert Pirsig

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"The whole renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus' discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth view of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn't deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason...I think the present day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go to far beyond it you're presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much affraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics....But what's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result, we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought-occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like-becuase they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the suseptability to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch driftwood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I have no regard. It is enough that these particulats speak to me. A few antecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right."

Alan Watts

From Coincidence of Opposites

"In music, though, one doesn't make the end of a composition. The point of the composition is not to get to the end of the composition. If that were so the best composers would be the ones that got to the end the fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales. People would go to the concert just to hear one crashing chord. Cause that's the end. Same as dancing. You don't aim at a particular spot in the room where you should arrive. The whole point of dancing is the dance.

But we don't see that as something brought on by our education in our everyday conduct. We've got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It's all graded. And what we do is we put the child into the corridor of this grade system. And then you start off kindergarten, and that's a great thing because you get into first grade. And then common, first grade leads into second grade and so on, and then you get out of grade school and you've got high school. And its revving up. The thing is coming. Then you've got to go to college, and hopefully you go to graduate school. And when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world. And then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance. And they've got that quota to make and you've gotta make that. And all that time the thing is coming. Its coming, that great thing, that success you've been working for. Then one day you wake up about 40 years old and you say, "my god, I've arrived! I'm there!" And you don't feel very different from what you always felt. And there's a slight let down because you feel it was a hoax. And it was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. By expectation there are the people who lived to retire, and put those savings away. And then when they're sixty five they don't have any energy left. It feels like we've cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was, to get to that end, success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after your dead. But we missed the whole point all the way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing...or to dance while the music was being played."