What is life?

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

alleged to be the last words of Crowfoot, a Blackfoot warrior and orator, 1890.

This quote came from a little pamphlet -- called Suburban Briefing #3 -- i

picked up at The Bean Cycle, a great little coffee house in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

There is no poetry for the practical man. There is poetry only for the mankind of the man that spends only a certain amount of time at the practical wheel. For if he spends too much of his time at the mechanics of practicality, he must become something less than a man, or be eaten up by the frustrations stored in his irrational personality. An ulcer is an unkissed imagination taking its revenge for having been jilted. It is an unwritten poem, un undanced dance, an unpainted watercolor. It is a declaration from the mankind of man that a clear spring of joy has not been tapped, and that it must break through, muddily on its own.

-- John Ciardi (d. 1986)

My housemate Jacqui shared this quote with me, and i really like it.

The bio info that came with the quote says he wrote 40 books of poetry

and criticism and was most famous for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.

On the radio of my natal home sat a statue of three squatting monkeys -- See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil. In the original symbol, imported from India, four monkeys sat side by side. The fourth had its hands over its genitals. By lopping off that fourth monkey, Victorian society did not eliminate sex but only public acknowledgment of it. That severed monkey fell into the unconscious, where it acquired the mischievous and obsessive power of the forbidden.

The fourth monkey represents all that any person, or family, or institution, or society strives to repress. Because Western society has devoted itself to the materialistic, the technological and the pragmatic, its fourth monkey represents all that is intuitive, psychical [adjective form of psyche, not the word physical - ed.], spiritual and mystical. Instead of forming a natural part of our lives, these are now experiences for which we must go in search ...

-- Slyvia Fraser, The Quest for the Fourth Monkey

[introduction] Key Porter Books, Toronto: 1992

The Quest for the Fourth Monkey, subtitled A thinker's guide to the psychic and spiritual revolution is what I'm currently reading. The back cover says it "documents Fraser's ambitious attempts to come to terms with spiritual and paranormal events in her life." Good stuff, and i'm enjoying the mix of diary entries with historical overviews of developments in science and religion over the centuries.

i finally got my Rochester Public Library card, and the first book i borrowed and am currently reading is Anna and the King of Siam [by Margaret Landon, 1944]. Landon combined the best parts of the two books that were written by Anna Leonowens, the woman who in 1862 arrived in Bangkok to teach English to the King's family, and whose life forms the basis of the Broadway and Hollywood hit The King and I. It's a great read, and is bringing back many fond memories of my trips to Thailand. While enjoying Christmas with my niece and nephew, i watched for the second time the Jodie Foster version of the story, called Anna and the King, which -- as is typical with Hollywood movies containing historical themes -- is fun to watch but strays far from what, I think, most people would argue is what really may have happened.

Almost all of the snow that accumulated in January had melted as of two days ago .. then last night it started snowing again, and this morning there was another six inches [15 cm] or so on the ground. It's still coming down, and much as i'd like to stay in front of this warm computer at the Rochester employment office, i need to get home and get my poochie outside. Btw, in case you're thinking, "so THIS is how he spends his time at the labor office!", i spent a couple of hours before getting to the blog creating another version of my resume, this one for teaching computer positions; emailed a copy of my diploma that i scanned here to the Heartwood Massage Institute; got back in touch with a woman at Kelly temp services i spoke with on Tuesday, and did a couple other job-related things. Man i miss having a computer at home. But it's a bit busier in here now, and i should really turn this computer over to someone else. Ciao for now y'all ...