All We Can Ever Do In Life
That’s all you can ever do in life: do your best and enjoy yourself.”
Ben Franklin on What’s Hard
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”
Benjamin Franklin
Flannery O’Connor on Blood & Sweat
It’s easier to bleed than to sweat, Mr. Motes.”
Flannery O’Connor
Trail Therapy — a modern day rustic poet
“In 1999, lost his son to suicide. A few years later he lost his daughter to a drug overdose. At sixty-four years old, he has walked across the United States seven times to raise awareness for depression and suicide and to inspire people he meets to “love life.”
This was, just… when he cries… his language… i just… the juxtaposition of how he looks, the down to earth idioms, his story, the simple quest he’s on and the handful of moments of free-flow beatnik poetry… this is magic.
…so they can go through that situation of pain and convert that damn evil, negative self pity into self reliance and go help others with it through nothing more than telling their own story.”
Alan Watts on Why Man Suffers
Buddha’s doctrine: man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are impermanent.”
Quoting a tweet from a white, British eastern fiddler on ancient doctrines about life’s biggest questions… what a world.
I’m no Buddhist, but I’ll be damned if this sentiment right here doesn’t make some sense.
I Am For An Art That
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for art that is smoked like a cigarette, smells like a pair of shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses like a handkerchief.
I am for art that comes out of a chimney like black hair and scatters in the sky.
I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for art that is put on and taken off like pants, which develops holes like socks, which is eaten like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt like a piece of shit.
I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
These are just a few bits and bobs from a longer piece. Cool guy.
Ron White on Who He’s Gonna Be
“I’m gonna be myself and see who dances.”
Edna on Death
I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
James Rhodes on Getting Good
“What if, rather than paying £70 a month for a gym membership that delights in making you feel fat, guilty and a world away from the man your wife married you bought a few blank canvases and some paints and spent time each day painting your version of “I love you” until you realised that any woman worth keeping would jump you then and there just for that, despite your lack of a six-pack?”
This was a very fk’n good article. Marked as editor’s pick so I come back to it again and again.
Charles Bukowski on Doing What You Love
“My dear, find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from you your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you, and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
Falsely yours,
Henry Charles Bukowski”
This being attributed to Bukowski is suspect. Whatever. Still great.