What's most important?

“ Life is a constant struggle – 
we have to constantly remind ourselves
of what is most important ”

John Nollers

In Steinbeck's words

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

“People like you to be something, preferably what they are.” 

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

“Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? ”

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

The man who didn't care about all these things.

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: 

“ Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things.
Then you will know how poor you are. ”
 

La vie jusqu'au bout

“ J’aurais voulu être un très grand écrivain, un ascète et en même temps un bandit; j’aurais voulu être un savant qui se sacrifie pour la science et en même temps un aventurier déchaîné, bref tous ces désirs, tout ce qu’on veut obtenir de la vie et qui se contrecarre, s’entretue, font d’un homme quelqu’un qui n’est pas satisfait, qui court après trop de choses, qui n’arrive à rien de véritable. ”

Joseph Kessel

What else is there to do ?

Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do? 

Pablo Neruda

Lightness

Sometimes, when everything seems to be lost

There is still a way to be found

Not to return to the happier past

But to find in the present the path

To feel again this lightness in your heart

John Nollers

I never know who I am

All the books I read
are full of dazzling heroes,
always sure of themselves.
I die with envy of them;
and in films full of wind and bullets,
I goggle at the cowboys,
I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,
out comes my lazy old self;
so I never know who I am,
nor how many I am or will be.
I'd love to be able to touch a bell
and summon the real me,
because if I really need myself,
I mustn't disappear.

While I am writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone.
I would like to know if others
go through the same things that I do,
have as many selves as I have,
and see themselves similarly;
and when I've exhausted this problem,
I'm going to study so hard
that when I explain myself,
I'll be talking geography.

We are many, 
Pablo Neruda

Hardships

Excerpt of a letter from Jack London to an aspiring young writer who sent him his manuscript:

“ Dear lad, I'm talking to you straight from the shoulder. Remember one very important thing: Your ennui of twenty, is your ennui of twen­ty. You will have various other and complicated ennuis before you die. I tell you this, who have been through the ennui of sixteen as well as the ennui of twenty; and the boredom, and the blaseness, and utter wretchedness of the ennui of twenty-five, and of thirty. And I yet live, am growing fat, am very happy, and laugh a large portion of my wak­ing hours. You see, the disease has progressed so much further with me than with you that I, as a battle-scarred survivor of the disease, look upon your symptoms as merely the preliminary adolescent symptoms. Again, let me tell you that I know them, that I had them, and just as I had much worse afterward of the same sort, so much worse is in store for you. In the meantime, if you want to succeed at a well-paid game, prepare yourself to do the work. ”

Jack London

26 oct. 1914 

Comment aimer

“ Il ne suffit pas d'aimer les êtres, vous devez vous demander comment vous les aimez. Efforcez-vous de mettre dans votre amour la pureté et la lumière, car c'est à cette seule condition que ceux que vous aimez pourront grandir et s'épanouir. L'amour véritable doit apporter aux êtres toutes les bénédictions: la joie, la paix, la beauté, la santé, et surtout le sens de la vie. Si vous sentez que la personne que vous aimez s'étiole, s'affaiblit, qu'elle perd sa joie de vivre, vous devez vous poser des questions sur votre sentiment et vous dire: «Mais qu'ai-je fait avec cette créature? Je devais la cultiver comme une fleur dans un jardin, et je l'ai laissée dépérir, je l'ai abimée!» Vous n'avez pas alors de quoi être tellement satisfait de vous et il ne vous reste plus qu'à chercher comment réparer vos erreurs. Votre amour doit faire grandir un être, et c'est seulement quand vous voyez qu'il s'épanouit à cause de votre amour, que vous pouvez être heureux et fier, et remercier le Ciel. ” 

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Son coeur est très dur, je pense qu'il est gelé

 “ Tout le plaisir et toute la joie que l'amour peut faire ressentir se paient un jour ou l'autre en souffrance.
Et plus on aime fort, plus la douleur à venir sera décuplée.
Tu connaitras le manque, puis les affres de la jalousie, de l'incompréhension, la sensation de rejet et d'injustice.
Tu auras froid jusque dans tes os, et ton sang fera des glaçons que tu sentiras passez sous ta peau.
La mécanique de ton cœur explosera. ”

“ Elle me donne sans compter, jamais de mesquineries. Je donne aussi, pourtant elle reçoit moins. Peut-être parce que je donne mal. ” 

— Je t’aime de travers parce que je suis un détraqué du cœur de naissance. Les médecins m’ont formellement interdit de tomber amoureux, mon horloge-cœur étant trop fragile pour y résister. J’ai pourtant mis ma vie entre tes mains, parce qu’au-delà du rêve, tu m’as donné une dose d’amour tellement forte que je me suis senti capable de tout affronter pour toi.

Pas la moindre fossette à l’horizon de ses joues.

— Aujourd’hui, je fais tout à l’envers parce que je ne sais plus comment m’y prendre pour arrêter de te perdre et ça me rend malade. 

Mathias Malzieu,
La mécanique du coeur (2007)

Attachment is the root of all suffering

“ If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. 
And if they don't, they never were. ”

Khalil Gibran,
The Prophet (1923)

Humanisme

“ Mais n'espère rien de l'homme s'il travaille pour sa propre vie et non pour son éternité. ”

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Citadelle (1948)

Excellence is subjective

“ Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the earth, to find the perfect man; but each represents only some particular excellence. ”

 Henry David Thoreau,
The landlord (1843)

Courage

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mike Horn & Jean Troillet, 4 Eights Thousands Exp.

The Blue Bird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Charles Bukowski, The Blue Bird, 1992

Un rêve étrange

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant 

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime, 

Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même 

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.

Paul Verlaine (Mon rêve familier, Poème Saturniens, 1866)

Hamish Blakely, The blue dress

Hurt.

"I hurt myself today,

To see if I still feel,

I focus on the pain,

The only thing that's real"

Rythmus

"Je ne crois pas à la vitesse qui se fait passer pour du rythme"

Alexandre Astier

Shit-scared of the great unknown

I was just like everybody else: shit-scared of the great unknown. 

Desperate to take a little piece of home with me.

The Beach (2000), Danny Boyle

“There's this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn't exist... If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange.”

-

“When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn’t need to be a good reason. Taking photographs of the night sky, for example. Now, in the long run, that’s just the kind of dumb, irritating habit that would cause you to split up. But in the haze of infatuation, it’s just what you’ve been searching for all these years.”

Alex Garland, The Beach

Changes

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you

Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you

The vagabond who’s rapping at your door

Is standing in the clothes that you once wore

Strike another match, go start anew

And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Love is blind.

“Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne”

Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Colchiques (extrait de "Alcools"), 1913

René Magritte - The Lovers II (1928)

They say if you slow your breathing, time slows down

“The smoke comes out the daddy's cigarette but it never goes back.
We can't turn back time, that's why it is so hard to decide.
We have to make the right choice.
Until we don't choose everything remains possible.”

Mr Nobody (2009), Jaco Van Dormael

Alors les épines, à quoi servent-elle?

La question est posée à l'aviateur occupé à réparer son avion...

Aquarelle de Saint-Exupéry

- Les épines, ça ne sert à rien, c'est de la pure méchanceté de la part des fleurs ! 

- Oh! 

Mais après un silence il me lança, avec une sorte de rancune: 

- Je ne te crois pas ! Les fleurs sont faibles. Elles sont naïves. Elles se rassurent comme elles peuvent. Elles se croient terribles avec leurs épines... 

Je ne répondis rien. A cet instant-là je me disais: "Si ce boulon résiste encore, je le ferai sauter d'un coup de marteau." Le petit prince dérangea de nouveau mes réflexions: 

- Et tu crois, toi, que les fleurs... 

- Mais non ! Mais non ! Je ne crois rien ! J'ai répondu n'importe quoi. Je m'occupe, moi, de choses sérieuses ! 

Il me regarda stupéfiait. 

- De choses sérieuses ! 

Il me voyait, mon marteau à la main, et les doigts noirs de cambouis, penché sur un objet qui lui semblait très laid. 

- Tu parles comme les grandes personnes ! 

Ça me fit un peu honte. Mais, impitoyable, il ajouta: 

- Tu confonds tout... tu mélanges tout ! 

Il était vraiment très irrité. Il secouait au vent des cheveux tout dorés: 

- Je connais une planète où il y a un Monsieur cramoisi. Il n'a jamais respiré une fleur. Il n'a jamais regardé une étoile. Il n'a jamais aimé personne. Il n'a jamais rien fait d'autre que des additions. Et toute la journée il répète comme toi: "Je suis un homme sérieux ! Je suis un homme sérieux !" et ça le fait gonfler d'orgueil. Mais ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un champignon ! 

- Un quoi ? 

- Un champignon ! 

Le petit prince était maintenant tout pâle de colère. 

- Il y a des millions d'années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d'années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n'est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien ? Ce n'est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs ? Ce n'est pas plus sérieux et plus important que les additions d'un gros Monsieur rouge ? Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n'existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu'un petit mouton peut anéantir d'un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu'il fait, ce n'est pas important ça ! 

Il rougit, puis reprit: 

- Si quelqu'un aime une fleur qui n'existe qu'à un exemplaire dans les millions et les millions d'étoiles, ça suffit pour qu'il soit heureux quand il les regarde. Il se dit: "Ma fleur est là quelque part..." Mais si le mouton mange la fleur, c'est pour lui comme si, brusquement, toutes les étoiles s'éteignaient ! Et ce n'est pas important ça !

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince, Chapitre VII

“J'aurais dû ne pas l'écouter, me confia-t-il un jour, il ne faut jamais écouter les fleurs. Il faut les regarder et les respirer.”

Ibid. Chapitre VIII

Good vs Evil

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” 

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

East of Eden (1955), Elia Kazan

Time.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Je n'ai vraiment qu'un seul regret..

..de ne pas être universel à l'école des demoiselles

Jacques Dutronc (1943 - ...)

Les Playboys : http://youtu.be/OJrmwbdDDuQ

Le plus difficile : http://youtu.be/yMTGKx01GmY

What can you do when you have to be a man?

James Dean est mort à 24 ans dans un accident de voiture

Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Nicholas Ray

JIM

What can you do when you have to be a man?

FATHER

Well, now--

JIM

Just give me a direct answer!

(pause)

You going to stop me from going, Dad?

FATHER

You know I never stop you from

anything. Believe me--you're at a

wonderful age. In ten years you'll

look back on this and wish you were

a kid again.

JIM

Ten years? Now, Dad--I need an answer now!

What a glorious feeling

Singin' in the rain (1952), Gene Kelly

Please sir, tell me more about how I could have done better

“Criticism comes easier than craftmanship” 

Zeuxis, painter (5th century BC)

Prisoner of my own by shimoda7 (deviantart)

Is the unexamined life not worth living..?

“Often I go into some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines…you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That is not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.” 

Michael Crichton, Travels

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, Hmm.  

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. 

I watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. 

All ...those moments will be lost, in time, like tears...in...rain. Time...to die."

Blade Runner (1982), Ridley Scott

Just Hank speaking about the Internet

Henry Rollins: What’s your latest obsession? 

Hank Moody: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People…they don’t write anymore - they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English. 

Henry Rollins: Yet you’re part of the problem, I mean you’re out there blogging with the best of them. 

Hank Moody: Hence my self-loathing.

Californication (2007),  Season 1 - Episode 5 : LOL

2012 World Press Photo Contest

1st Prize Portrait Singles:  Iranian-born Danish actress Mellica Mehraban,
Copenhagen, May 4, 2011. (Laerke Posselt)

Everything popular is wrong

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” 

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2

“To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.” 

Ibid., Chapter 2

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.” 

Ibid., Chapter 3

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Ibid., Chapter 4

Damn! We're in a tight spot!

O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), Joel & Ethan Coen

Everett: Hit by a train! Truth means nothing to a woman, Delmar. Triumph 'a the subjective. You ever been with a woman?

Delmar: Well, I... I... I gotta get the family farm back before I can start thinking about that.

Everett: That's right, if then. Believe me Delmar, woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man.

Soggy Bottom Boys - Man of constant sorrow

Don't fear failure !

Bruce Lee (1940 - 1993)

“Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” 

Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts

Be water my friend

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy

"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"
"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."

[...]

"I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chapter 6

Brave New World, 1932

The Genius of the Crowd

Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994)

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach love do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

Charles Bukowski, The Genius of the Crowd, 1966

No sympathy for the Devil

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” 

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Chapter 9

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Terry Gilliam

Movie Soundtrack (compilation)