One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan
Category Archives: DELUSIONS, MIRAGES AND ILLUSIONS
Look before you leap ; snakes may be among the beautiful flowers.
A reasonable use of intoxicating drink may appear all right ; like a rattlesnake after its fangs are in the flesh, it is all wrong.
Tihe old snake.charmer, once he played Soft music for the serpe ‘s ear, But now his cunning hand is stayed.
The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser
Dr Hake. 1876.
A PIPE OF TOBACCO
Little tube of mighty power,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax, and eye of fire;
And thy snowy taper waist,
With my finger gently braced;
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper pressed,
And the sweetest bliss of blisses,
Breathing from they balmy kisses.
Happy thrice and thrice again,
Happiest he of happy men.
Who when again the night returns,
When again the taper burns;
When again the cricket’s gay
(Little cricket, full of play),
Can afford his tube to feed
With the fragrant Indian weed;
Pleasure for a nose divine,
Incense of the god of wine.
Happy thrice, and thrice again
Happiest he of happy men.
-Isaac Hawkins Browne (1736)
Nishu Mathur, India |
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The old wizened wrinkled snake charmer, with a red turban on his head,
A khaki bag across his shoulders, a dhoti wrapped around his legs.
He traces his ancestors path, makes his way through dusty lanes,
Calling out through his flute, hoping to cast his spell again.
A coiled cobra wrapped in a basket… his livelihood he carries around,
No doubts, no fear, with his snake the snake charmer walks the town.
Curious chatter, a fascinated child yearns to see the snake rise,
Dancing to the charmer’s tune, a cobra or a viper mesmerized.
With the basket a distance away, the charmer sits crossed leg, his tune to play,
The snake slowly uncoils serpentine, moving to the flute, it starts to sway.
A crowd gathers and like the snake, it stands entranced with widened eyes,
The cobra dancing to the flute …with it’s movement, hypnotized.
The snake raises it’s head and lunges forward with a menacing hiss,
The snake charmer unperturbed plays his flute, and gives death a miss.
Coins, notes, come the charmer’s way…sighs, cheer, clear and loud,
A prayer in humble gratitude, the snake charmed, so the crowd.
My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It’s in the apartment somewhere.” Steven Wright
He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practiced on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
“At length I realize,” he said,
“The bitterness of Life!”
Lewis Carroll, 1832–1898, Sylvie and Bruno
Read more: http://www.quotesquotations.com/find/quotes-about-elephants.htm#ixzz2qXpVdpol
If The Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me. Song title by Jimmy Buffet
“If he’s not calling you, it’s because you are not on his mind. If he creates expectations for you, and then doesn’t follow through on little things, he will do same for big things. Be aware of this and realize that he’s okay with disappointing you. Don’t be with someone who doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do. If he’s choosing not to make a simple effort that would put you at ease and bring harmony to a recurring fight, then he doesn’t respect your feelings and needs. “Busy” is another word for “asshole.” “Asshole” is another word for the guy you’re dating. You deserve a fcking phone call.”
― Greg Behrendt
araignée du matin, chagrin, araignée du soir, espoir
seeing a spider in the morning brings bad luck, seeing a spider in the evening brings good luck (a commonly cited French superstition)
http://www.languagerealm.com/french/frenchproverbs.php
Tenei ano a mutu, kei roto i tona whare-pungawerewere:
So evil intentions are hidden as a spider in his web.
No matter how beautiful and well crafted a coffin might look, it will not make anyone wish for death.
(African
“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again.
“So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron. “Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking…”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The Bow’ry, the Bow’ry! They say such things, And they do strange things On the Bow’ry! The Bow’ry! I’ll never go there anymore!
‘The Bowery’ is a song from the musical A Trip to Chinatown with music by Percy Gaunt and lyrics by Charles H. Hoyt. The musical toured the country for several years and then opened on Broadway in 1891
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bowery_%28song%29
“Walk the Bowery under the El at night and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal — the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism.”
― E.B. White, Here Is New York
On hangovers: He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.
KINGSLEY AMIS
“In his dream, George Stetchkin was in the dock at the Central Criminal Court, accused of the murder of nine million innocent brain cells. The usher was showing the jury the alleged murder weapon, an empty Bison Brand vodka bottle. Then the judge glared at him over the rims of his spectacles and sentenced him to the worst hangover of his life.”
― Tom Holt, Blonde Bombshell
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Napoleon Bonaparte
“Ros was dead.
He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.”
― Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
It’s the reason we say “pork” and “beef” instead of “pig” and “cow.” Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial.”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
The Pig
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn’t read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn’t puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, “By gum, I’ve got the answer!”
“They want my bacon slice by slice
“To sell at a tremendous price!
“They want my tender juicy chops
“To put in all the butcher’s shops!
“They want my pork to make a roast
“And that’s the part’ll cost the most!
“They want my sausages in strings!
“They even want my chitterlings!
“The butcher’s shop! The carving knife!
“That is the reason for my life!”
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let’s not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
“I had a fairly powerful hunch
“That he might have me for his lunch.
“And so, because I feared the worst,
“I thought I’d better eat him first.”
Roald Dahl
“Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
we continue to spend fortunes on an stupefying array of distractions supposedly designed to make us happier than Liz Taylor at a wedding Cosmetics that contain everything from the placenta of unborn goats to a pound of pig fat mixed with volcanic ash and 19 secret ingredients from the rain forest diet products to remove mountains of blubber gained by stuffing ourselves because we are so damn miserable, and miserable because we are so horribly fat cosmetic surgery in every place from facial to other cheeks mind-numbing cruises to paradise luxury boats that never leave their luxury marinas hard drugs soft drugs alcohol anti-depressants uppers downers frenetic gambling to hit the big time jewellery that is too expensive to wear image marriages destined to last all of six months mink-lined designer toilet seats lottery tickets tobacco products we know will kill us and billions of tons of electronic and plastic and toxic junk that add nothing to our lives and create only clutter, pollution and landfill.
(Robert White)
“Repentance won’t cure mischief.”
Gaelic.
“He raised his brows. “You’re drunk.” “Am not!” He gave me a bland look. “A drunk’s famous last words before they fall flat on their face.”
― J. Lynn, Wait for You
Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“If you want to marry me, here’s what you’ll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop the knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it is hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk…and be still when I talk,
And-hey-where are you going?”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
I’m sorry I didn’t know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture!
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower
The elephant is a funny bird,
it swings from bough to bough,
it lays its eggs in a rhubarb tree
and whistles like a cow
Sue
WHO KEEPS COMPANY WITH A WOLF LEARNS TO HOWL.
“The Antiquity of Proverbs: Fifty Familiar Proverbs and Folk Sayings with Annotations and Lists …”
“This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly – with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe.” Paul Auster, “The Music of Chance” (1990)
http://www.casinos.net/gambling-quotes-proverbs-sayings.htm
foto – izzy foreal and William white aka billy james at raleigh 2010
One wanders to the left, another to the right ; both are equally in error, but are seduced by different delusions. Horace.
http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofquot00woodrich/dictionaryofquot00woodrich_djvu.txt
" One who is unrestrained in life – delusion overcomes; as the wind a weak tree." Buddha
http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t84471.html
foto – raleigh valley
He who placeth confidence in an enemy, either from inclination or necessity, awaketh from his delusion, like one who hath fallen from the top of a tree in his sleep !
"Fables and proverbs from the Sanskrit : being the Hitopadésa"
‘ Fortitude in adversity, and moderation in pros- perity ; eloquence in the senate, and courage in the field; great glory in renown, and labour in study; are the natural perfections of great minds.’
foto – horse in raleigh paddock 2010.
Dancing with delusion….. Visions of a cartoon princess, dancing gaily in her ice castle. Nightmares of an emaciated prisoner, crawling across a putrid dungeon floor. Songs of the seagulls as they glide above the crystal beaches and shimmering waves. Screams of the lemmings as they plunge into the churning surf on the rocks below.
Dancing With Delusion
by Eddie Thompson
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest. . . a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. ALBERT EINSTEIN.
When a person regrets endlessly, he gets to pay more for what he regrets. Nigeria.
Petit Testament
In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:
Ern Malley
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sites 2c http://www.motherlandnigeria.com/proverbs.html#WisdomAge
http://jacketmagazine.com/17/ern-poems.html
foto – repton railway bridge dec 09
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 