John's Dura Mater Blog

“Enough is as good as a feast” - Sir Thomas Malory

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. Rainer Maria Rilke

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.  Delicious  ambiguity." Gilda Radner

au·bade /ōˈbäd/ Learn to pronounce noun a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning. Aubade BY  PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.    Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.    In time the curtain-edges will grow light.    Till then I see what’s really always there:    Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,    Making all thought impossible but how    And where and when I shall myself die.    Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse    —The good not done, the love not given, time    Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because    An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;    But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,    Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid

There's a meadow in my perfect world Where wind dances the branches of a tree Casting leopard spots of light across the face of a pond The tree stands tall and grand and alone Shading the world beneath it. There will come a day when I rest against its spine. And look out over a valley where the sun warms, but never burns. I will watch leaves turn Green, then amber, then crimson Then no leaves at all. But the tree will not die. For in this place, winter never comes. It is here, in the cradle of all I hold dear, I guard every memory of you. And when I find myself frozen in the mud of the real far from your loving eyes, I will return to this place, close mine and take solace in the simple perfection of knowing you. - from Wind River featu ring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen

“Humans consider themselves unique, so they’ve rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness. “One” is their unit of “measure” — but its not. All social systems we’ve put into place are a mere sketch: “one plus one equals two”, that’s all we’ve learned, but one plus one has never equaled two — there are in fact no numbers and no letters, we’ve codified our existence to bring it down to human size, to make it comprehensible, we’ve created a scale so we can forget its unfathomable scale…Time is the only true unit of measure, it gives proof to the existence of matter, without time, we don’t exist. “