Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Françoise Sagan, Dans un mois, dans un an

“A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

Idle Curiosity.

Charity Patient: “Doctor, Is there any danger of the operation proving

fatal?”

Doctor: “Really, my good man, considering that we are experimenting on you free of charge, your idle curiosity smacks of Insolence!”

Border Watch (Mount Gambier, SA : FRIDAY 10 MAY 1918.

“When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

It became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice.

— (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

Ballad of the Boots

Son to Mum

My boots are made for sleeping
I’ll never take them off again.
My feet are made for keeping
Those leathery brown boots.

My heart is made for boots
They are the world to me
& if you take them off me Mum
I’ll scream the whole house down.

My boots they sing me songs
As the crackle in the night
My heart is made for weeping
For my hand-me-down brown boots.

Entering the village, obey the village . Japanese.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fgandon/miscellaneous/japan/

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” 

― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Most men who have really lived have had, in some share, their great adventure. This railway is mine. – James J. Hill

“My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.” 

― Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Selected Poetry

No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time. Lewis Carroll

see, he’s the proud possessor of a twelve-inch snake
a tiger, or a brown, perhaps
but, more likely, a benign carpet variety
pink and friendly.
he says he’d like to ‘pull it out
and whack it on their table’
to shock them from their myth-making
talk of his anatomy.

penis envy, sibling style 

by Liz Hall-Downs 

http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/fitofpassion.html

Something will have gone out of us as a people
if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed;
if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into
comic books and plastic cigarette cases;
if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species
into zoos or to extinction;
if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams
and push our paved roads through the last of the silence,
so that never again will Americans be free in their own country
from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.

~ Wallace Stegner,
letter to David E. Pesonen of the Wildland Research Center,
3 December 1960 ~

http://www.sapphyr.net/smallgems/quotes-environment-nature.htm

Poetry and Alcohol

The two of us we have lived together long,
she sits in the kitchen watching Brazilian soaps,
I read TLS which gives me an edge even though I think some of the stuff is effete and some of the famous writers and painters are totally overvalued.

I do catch a glance of the TV in the living room from
time to time, a nature program that irritates me, the
Australian hero is actually worrying the wild animals and I hope he will be bitten by a crocodile, or trampled by an irate elephant. No such luck.

Andrew Motion wrote something about oral poetry,
I appeared once at poetry venue, nervously drank
too much, and insulted the organizer. Wish the TLS
would adopt me. Really!  But like late George Best,
I’m a loose cannon liable to tell them to fuck off

http://www.writerscramp.ca/docs/poetry_and_alcohol.htm

Jan Oskar Hansen
© 2006

Don’t quack like a duck, soar like an eagle.~ Ken Blanchard

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.”     Dale Carnegie

 

GOULBURN 1953

 

the dog barks, but the caravan passes on

For every intellectual a lapse, for every horse a stumble, and for every sword (bearer) a disaster.

Arabian

Weekend markets, Broome: The gypsy’s story

FLORA SMITH

This town takes people like me:

people who must have a greater distance…

The night Grandfather told me he could not go on,
could not work the night train to Budapest, I took off
my coat and placed it over the old man’s shoulders.

Grandfather came for me
when I was twenty. He meant to see if I would work
to keep him    but it grew into love    a hard love.
From him I learned my letters    numbers    and the cards.

In Hungary where I was born
they never gave us education. They could find us mad
if we did not read or write    so being mad
we could be shut away again    and cities looked better
with us off the streets.

The coat would be of some use:
a trade for a pack of cigarettes perhaps.
My people lived on nothing, always moving on
and when a man could not move on, he made a quick death.

We were at the back of the yards,
hands under armpits for the warmth.
Grandfather’s head was silvered by drizzle, a faint moon

making him saint-like, and this so far from truth
as to be laughable, saving me from tears.

I promised him
I would remake our cards in some safer country;
bring back their honour by working them again,

hearing the dance of symbols and colours speak,

seeing their wisdom come.

Yes, this town takes people like me

and the cards call only those who wish to hear.

But the nights burn: dark returns me
to Buda or some other city where police pull down

our shanties, gangs are paid to hunt us out
and if sleep comes, it is in fragments.

The rattle of palm fronds on my roof

sounds like distant gunfire…

Flora Smith

http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/06/26/weekend-markets-broome-the-gypsys-story/

“A Wolf, it is said, can hear a cloud pass overhead”

http://wolfpreservation.me/2012/12/30/wolf-quotes-poems-and-sayings/

 

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 1 December 1934,

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. Henry Beston

 

Queensland Times (Ipswich) (Qld. : 1909 – 1954), Tuesday 4 September 1951

 

THE SURFER

He thrust his joy against the weight of the sea;
climbed through, slid under those long banks of
foam–
(hawthorn hedges in spring, thorns in the face stinging).
How his brown strength drove through the hollow and coil
of green-through weirs of water!
Muscle of arm thrust down long muscle of water;
and swimming so, went out of sight
where mortal, masterful, frail, the gulls went wheeling
in air as he in water, with delight.

Turn home, the sun goes down; swimmer, turn home.
Last leaf of gold vanishes from the sea-curve.
Take the big roller’s shoulder, speed and serve;
come to the long beach home like a gull diving.

For on the sand the grey-wolf sea lies, snarling,
cold twilight wind splits the waves’ hair and shows
the bones they worry in their wolf-teeth. O, wind blows
and sea crouches on sand, fawning and mouthing;
drops there and snatches again, drops and again snatches
its broken toys, its whitened pebbles and shells.

Written by Judith Wright

He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well. Baltasar Gracian

 

this tiny crack

in our lives

wind and rain strewn

stranded on the limen

that space between

water and sky

rain and sun

cold and heat

where we could

be on both sides of time

span beingness

like the unfinished arc

of a bridge

is closing

Susan Hawthorne

http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/10/09/limen/

We desire to bequest two things to our children – the first one is roots; the other one is wings. ~Sudan

http://www.squidoo.com/african-quotes-proverbs-and-sayings

 

My heart is Round ready to echo the music of my

family but the Square

within me remains

The Square stops me in my entirety.

Ali Cobby Eckermann

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone. It’s not warm when she’s away. Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone And she’s always gone too long Anytime she goes away. Bill Withers

I mohala no ka lehua i ke ke’ekehi ‘ia e ka ua.

Translation: The Lehua blossom unfolds when the rains tread on it.

Explanation: People respond better to gentle words than to scoldings.

http://www.k12.hi.us/~waianaeh/waianhi/olelo.html

“The sound of the sea helps me get back to me.

http://www.tranquilwaters.uk.com/water.html

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.” 

Loren Eiseley

Roosters’ tail feathers: pretty but always behind. Malagasy

Más vale que digan “aquí corrió una gallina” y no “aquí murió un gallo”

It is preferable that people say “here fled a hen” rather than “here died a rooster”.

Better for people to conclude and say you are a coward than that they sing your praises over your dead body. 

See more at: http://www.spanish-learning-corner.com/mexican-sayings-animals.html#sthash.kn33W2Cc.dpuf

Facilis descensus averno – The descent to Avernus (Hell) is easy (Virgil)

Abyssus abyssum invocat– Hell calls hell; one mistep leads to another

For light I go directly to the Source of light, God – not to any of the reflections. ~Peace Pilgrim

Common sense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult”

–   William Somerset Maugham

You may well have two legs but you still can’t climb two trees at the same time.

An Ethiopian proverb sent by Tah Ernest Mbuh, Bamenda, Cameroon

If while climbing a tree you insist on going beyond the top, the earth will be waiting for you. Sent by Prince Matano, Nairobi, Kenya

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18930368

The curve is more dangerous than the sword. ~ Mae West ~

Dance is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn’t stop at the end of your fingers, because you’re dancing bigger than that: you’re dancing spirit.

~ Judith Jamison ~

The digger of fern-root has abundance of food, but the parrot-snarer will go hungry.”

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-TreRace-t1-body-d6.html

Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way, but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about. If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it.

Thor Heyerdahl   The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft  across the South Seas (translated by F H Lyon).

Bir musibet, yuz tembihten iyidir. – (Beauty passes, wisdom remains.) Used to make a point that wisdom matters more than physical beauty.

http://www.turkishculture.org/pages.php?SearchID=133

Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise
For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven
From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection
Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan
Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls …

Saib-e-Tabrizi, 17th century poet

http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/proverbs-and-poems-from-afghanistan/

Water can both sustain and sink a ship.`

When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets.

– Lazarus Long

Two natures beat within my breast. The one is cursed, the other is blessed. The one I love, the other I hate. The one I feed will dominate. – unknown U.S. Marine

I think that if you have a horse, pegasus, qilin, or unicorn, you should sit on it! You should stroke its hair, whisper in its ear, be one with it! And you shouldn’t feel sorry if other people don’t have one.”

― C. JoyBell C.

All warfare is based on deception.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Having now reached a point where danger might be reasonably apprehended from strolling war parties of Indians, spies were kept in advance and strict diligence observed in the duty of sentinels.

William Henry Ashley

Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain. Maori.

SEA-FEVER

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over”

John Masefield, Sea Fever

This story’s right, the story’s true I would not tell lies to you Like the promises they did not keep

ARCHIE ROACH

http://ozpoemaday.wordpress.com/category/aboriginal/

 

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” 

― Edward Abbey

A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit).

I Came to buy a smile—today—But just a single smile—The smallest one upon your faceWill suit me just as well—The one that no one else would missIt shone so very small—I’m pleading at the “counter”—…

Source: A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit). | THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY

Bunny’s Excuse. There was once a wicked old sinner Who fancied a rabbit for dinner, But the bunny he met Said: “Don’t kill me yet, For I really am still a beginner.”

My living problems also cease to be struggles.

Heaven designs to suit our trials to our strength.

Though the sun shines, leave not your cloak at home.

” The queen’s mocking laughter cut in. “This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?”

“Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Mara, Daughter of the Nile

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS