Winter Begins

“Seek Love in the pity of others' woe,
In the gentle relief of another's care,
In the darkness of night and the winter's snow,
In the naked and outcast, seek Love there!”

William Blake

Out my kitchen window in Manchester, NJ 

Higher Animals

"Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court."

— Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings)

Manchester, NJ

All that Glitters

“Man being reasonable must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication; Glory, the grape, love, gold - in these are sunk - The hopes of all men and of every nation”

Lord Byron

Beijing Noodle House #9

Educational TV?

“The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borgese on a daily basis.”

Federico Fellini 

Taken in Salem Mass during our Halloween Trip. These costumes were totally awesome.

Lock Me Up!

“A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Richard Bach

Taken on the grounds of Chenonoceau Castle

 

Old Age

 

“Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

Maggie Kuhn

 Salem Mass.This Halloween.

 As I was taking pictures of the tombstones in the Charter Street Cemetery, I came across this one. It must have been amazing to live that long in that time period. I found the information below on John Nutting.

John Nutting was the son of Jonathan and Elizabeth Nutting. He was born in Cambridge, Jan. 7, 1694, and graduated at Harvard College in 1712. He came to Salem in 1718, and kept the Grammar School from 1719 to 1749. He became Ruling Elder of a new church in Salem in 1736. He was a Notary Public in 1755,and Collector of Customs at Salem and Marblehead in 1768 and at other times. He also held the office of Register of Deeds. After the death of his first wife Ruth, he married Elizabeth dau. of Benjamin and Abigail (Lindall) Pickman (b. Jan. 22, 1714, d. June 11, 1785). He died May 20, 1790,

Continual Becoming

“I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming with a goal in front and not behind”

George Bernard Shaw

On the siding of my house in Freehold, NJ 

Myth/Nature

“A peasant dies calmly because he is not a Christian. He performs the rituals as a matter of course, but his true religion is different. His religion is nature, with which he has lived."”

Tolstoy 

Bradford, PA

Ebb and Flow

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

Rachel Carson

Mansquan Inlet, New Jersey

Poisonous love

“If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools”

Katherine Mansfield

Rixford, Pa 

Old and Worn

“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.”

 Victor Hugo

Bradford, PA

The Nothing

G'mork: If you come any closer, I will rip you to shreds.
Atreyu: Who are you?
G'mork: I am G'mork. And you, whoever you are, can have the honor of being my last victim.
Atreyu: I will not die easily. I am a warrior!
G'mork: Ha! Brave warrior, then fight the Nothing.
Atreyu: But I can't! I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia!
[G'mork laughs and Atreyu gets a little angry]
Atreyu: What's so funny about that?
G'mork: Fantasia has no boundaries.
[laughs]
Atreyu: That's not true! You're lying.
G'mork: Foolish boy. Don't you know anything about Fantasia? It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?
G'mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
Atreyu: But why?
G'mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control... has the power!
Atreyu: Who are you, really?
G'mork: I am the servant of the power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing. I lost him in the Swamps of Sadness. His name... was Atreyu.
[the ground shakes again and Atreyu is knocked down. He grabs a knife shaped piece of broken stone and stands up, ready to fight]
Atreyu: If we're about to die anyway, I'd rather die fighting! Come for me, G'mork! *I* am Atreyu! 

Quote from the Movie the Neverending Story

Taken in my front yard last week

as a horrible blackness over took our skies

Grace

“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Keyport, NJ

Clarity

“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what he loves.”

Blaise Pascal
Keyport, NJ

Innocent Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Lord Byron
Deep Cut Gardens

Drink Deep

“Love is a deep well from which you may drink often, but into which you may fall but once”
Ellye Howell Glover
Deep Cut Gardens, Middletown, NJ

Black Moon

“The moon's turned black; For I love him, and He didn't love back”

Dorothy Parker
The moon from my front yard, Freehold, NJ

No Bounds

“And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away!”

Charles Dickens
Millville, NJ

Bravery

“Then must you strive to be worthy of her love. Be brave and pure, fearless to the strong and humble to the weak; and so, whether this love prosper or no, you will have fitted yourself to be honored by a maiden's love, which is, in sooth, the highest guerdon which a true knight can hope for.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Freehold,NJ
This little guy looks brave and Knightly

Sin

“Love between sexes is a sin in theology, a forbidden intercourse in jurisprudence, a mechanical insult in medicine, and a subject philosophy has no time for.”

Karl Kraus

Dark Gods

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”
D.H. Lawrence

Ugly?

“Don't look at your form, however ugly or beautiful. Look at love and at the aim of your quest..

Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Freehold, NJ.

Red Red Rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

Robert Burns
Photo from my rose bush, Freehold, NJ

Twisted

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton
Taken in Howell, NJ

Oneness

“A person experiences life as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness.”

Albert Eintein
Morganville, NJ

Missing You

How could it be so fair, and you away?
How could the Trees be beauteous, Flowers so gay?
Could they remember but last year,
How you did Them, They you delight,
The sprouting leaves which saw you here,
And call'd their Fellows to the sight,
Would, looking round for the same sight in vain,
Creep back into their silent Barks again.

Abraham Cowley

Durand Pond, Freehold, NJ

Darkness

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King Jr.
Turkey Swamp, Freehold, NJ

Silent River

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
Photo taken in Englishtown,NJ

conformity

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

JFK
Buck's Mill Road Colts Neck, NJ

Diversity

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

JFK
Inspired by the addage that no two snowflakes are the same.

Isolation

“There are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees. No renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty and battlefields which have their heroes.”

Victor Hugo
Lake Horicon
Lakehurst, NJ

Icons

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.”
Jim Henson
Michener Museum Doylestown, Pa

Soaring

“Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be...Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.”
Erich Fromm
Beach in Atlantic City