Collage Is Collecting

All collages by JEF

To Evolve

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
--Aldous Huxley

“That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
--Mary Oliver, from “Long Life: Essays and Other Writings”

“I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in evolution.”
--Dominique Crenn, from "Rebel Chef"

As We Age

I have always said that as we age, we become more of who we really are...for good or bad.
Lovely souls become even lovelier in old age.
Mean, tight souls become even more treacherous in old age.

Words For These Times

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
--Aldous Huxley

AI imagery by Xander Steenbrugge for "Exotic Contents" by Max Cooper

“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
--Carl Sagan

AI imagery by Xander Steenbrugge for "Exotic Contents" by Max Cooper

“Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who only know what to think.”
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

Corporations Are Not Human Beings

"The limitless destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. As such, unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money."
--Wendell Berry, from his essay “The Idea of a Local Economy”

It's Time For A Perspective Shift

“Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don’t go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day, or an hour, or a half a second when so much happens it’s almost like you got born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.”
--E.R. Frank, Life Is Funny

“You see the beauty inside everything. It doesn’t last long—it’s either gone in a minute, you just caught it, or else maybe it’s something so big that you normally can’t get your head around it. Like the fog in your head clears out. The world stops being a puppet show and you see the real thing. It’s probably like that all the time, but you just can’t see it, except for those little glimpses.”
--Janet Fitch, Paint It Black

“I’m grateful for anything that reminds me of what’s possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It’s so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.”
--Jonathan Safran Foer

"We can disagree and still love each other, unless..."

This seems like a good time to repost this:

Memory and Understanding

“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”
--Alain de Botton

"3:42 p.m., 2010" | Photo by Alexander Harding

“The path isn't a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.”
--Barry H. Gillespie

"There is no answer. That is the beauty of it."

“Since you must have love as a human being, what will you do? There is no time. You can't say, ''Well, I can't have it. I can live without love because I have lived without love for two million years, and I will live another two million years without love'' - that means perpetual sorrow for the next two million years. So what can you do? You understand my question now? Sorrow cannot be put away or be resolved through time, nor can love be invited through time. And time is: ten days ahead, or the next minute, or the next second. What will you do? Will you jump in the lake? Unless you find love, you are already in the lake. And you have to find it, as you have to find food. This is a much more demanding, much more strenuous thing that demands intense vitality.

So what will you do? If you say, please tell me what to do, then you are missing the bus entirely. But you have to see the importance, the immensity, the urgency of that question - not tomorrow, not the next day or the next hour, but see it now while you are sitting. And to see that, you must have energy. So just see immediately - the catalyst that makes the liquid into solid or vaporizes it immediately does not take place if you allow time, even a second. All our existence, all our books, all our hope is tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. This admittance of time is the greatest sorrow.

So the issue is with you, not with the speaker from whom you are expecting to get the answer. There is no answer. That is the beauty of it. You can sit cross-legged, breathe rightly, or stand on your head for the next ten thousand years. Unless you have put this question to yourself - not superficially, not verbally, not intellectually, but with your whole being - you will live with it for two million years - those two million years may be only tomorrow. So problems and time are intimately related - do you see it now?”
--Krishnamurti, in Rajghat, India from his Fifth Public Talk, 1964

https://jkrishnamurti.org/

I Refuse To Be Hardened

Touch Everything

“When you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.”
--Lao Tzu

Le Satyre dans le Bois de Boulogne by Felix Vallotton

“The great lesson from the true mystics…that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred—this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”
--Abraham Maslow, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature" (1971)

"There is no art without a poetic aim."

"Who speaks of art, speaks of poetry. There is no art without a poetic aim."
--Édouard Vuillard

How To Write A Poem

1. Be born.

2. Sit quietly, with your eyes closed and feel your heart beating against the inside of your body, as if it is knocking to get out.

3. Look through a magnifying glass, draw a map, paint a picture of what you want to say.

4. If you don’t know what you want to say, study the thin place where the sky meets the earth. Think about everything that line contains.

5. Use your eyes, your fingers, your hips, to carve out a shape.

6. If it is airtight, light a candle below it, fill it with hot air, and let it rise. If it is not, let it roam where it wants.

7. Tell it it is beautiful before it goes.

©JEF 2012

"Ichi go ichi e" leads to "mono no aware"

Two Japanese phrases compliment each other: Ichi go ichi e leads to mono no aware.

Who Are You And What Will You Do?

"Life is so short you can’t waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do versus knowing what you can do."
--Virgil Abloh

"You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you."
--James Baldwin

"Your life’s a nanosecond; if you have a contribution to make, then make it. Don’t bitch about it, just do it."
--Richard Serra

In It

The Zone. The Flow.

“The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
--Robert Henri

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
--Søren Kierkegaard

I Miss My Mom

"Grief is the price we pay for love."
--Queen Elizabeth II

What It's Like To Get Old

“Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.”
--David Lynch

“I love getting older. My understanding deepens. I can see what connects, I can weave stories of experience and apply them. I can integrate the lessons. Things simply become more and more fascinating. Beauty reveals itself in thousands of forms.”
--Victoria Erickson

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/
https://www.victoriaerickson.com/

Thought Of The Day

--Quote from Rev. Eston Williams in 2016 on his decision to allow same sex marraiges in his United Methodist church

Doing Nothing

https://www.instagram.com/douglascoupland/

No Amount Of Anxiety