Tuesday, August 26, 2008

for once the path and not the traveler


Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past.

...

So a musical phrase is a map reference?”

Music is a memory bank for finding one's way around the world”

...

...the story of the Big Fly One was beyond me...[snip]... it took me ages to realize that this was a Quantas Dreaming. Joshua had flown to London: the Arrival Gate, Health, Immigration, Customs, and then the ride into the Underground. The 'wiggles' were the twists and turns of the taxi, from the tube station to the hotel.”

...I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialog I have with my soul.” Baudelaire 'Any Where Out of this World'

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, toward the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way, not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveler following his own free will.”

By spending his whole life walking and singing his Ancestor's Songline, a man eventually becomes the track, the Ancestor and the song”

Friday, August 15, 2008

Georgia

Conflict no longer means the same thing to me.
What's happening in Georgia? Exactly?

What ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger

I'm sure I've written about Amanda Baggs before. A brilliant blogger.
She's also a prominent advocate in the disability rights movement, being a non-speaking physically disabled and autistic woman, but mostly I just find her writing brilliant.
This is a song she (re-)posted recently - dedicated to those who fell:

"They say life on a battlefield
Is sink or swim
And only the strong survive

And those of us who survived
We survived
And we say to the next
As they're standing in line
we've done our time,
now it's your turn

We learned our lesson too well
We've taken our hell and passed it on
It will make you strong,
We say as we turn away

How easy is it to forget
The ones who walked with us, talked with us
The ones we fought alongside
They didn't survive, they fell

They were as strong as we
But we can't see this to be so
For it would show how little power
We had in the hour that they died

And we honor our fallen comrades
With a rousing inspirational speech
You are our successors,we say
And there's no room to be weak
Because life on a battlefield
Is sink or swim
And only the strong survive

And those of us who survived
We survived
And we say to the next
As they're standing in line
We've done our time
Now it's your turn

We've learned our lesson too well
We've taken our hell
And passed it on
It will make you strong,
We say as we turn away

And how easy it is to forget
The ones who walked with us, talked with us
The ones we fought alongside
They didn't survive, they fell
Consumed by the hell
We recreate
In the name of memory"

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Patience grasshopper

funny how results start to show years and years later
instant gratification really isn't all that.

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they form."
Kublai Kahn remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: "Why do you speak to me of the stones? It's only the arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch." (italo calvino - invisible cities)
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and a techy blog entry on the same theme.
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