No unregarded star Contracts its light Into so small a character, Removed far from humane sight, But if we steadfast looke We shall discerne In it, as in some holy booke How man may heavenly knowledge learne. ..................................................................William Habington, 1634
Human nature ?!?!?!?! Don't you ever mess with the shepherds.... the real ones !!!! They mean business indeed, they really do !!!!
The Creation punished me with feelings, nice thoughts of a cripple man... A few years ago, I was having personal problems because of a sister whom I had dated for some time and who..... nevermind... and one day, whilst listening to : I made a research online about : "I fall asleep to the sound Of "tears of a clown" A prayer gone blind" More about it here and there. ...when I found these very poignant and so beautiful words (I don't know anymore who's the author) : Tears of a clown I thought I'd manage to cure myself. But, as time passed by, nothing changed. There have been moments, when I walked down the street noticing nothing else than my own happiness. But they have passed and life started to show its claws which everybody wants farther but which are in fact inevitable. Blessed and happy light turned into mere existence, sun's heat into arrows grabbing my brains every time they can do it. I am now walking as if my ears are empty and emptiness is in front of my eyes. There is nothing more to be seen. I have experienced too soon some pains others just now are getting acquainted with, and these pains have left marks too deep inside me; I feel like walking on broken mirrors, remains of fate's great feast... broken happiness, love torn apart and pieces of an equisite life. Troubles came early and for a long time, hard... And I became magician of concepts whose name and reason of being I forgot long ago... Beforetime I used to think the rock will turn into land when hit by the hardships of life, but everything went exactly the other way round: facing so many hinders, the fertile land that I was turned into rock. Now I am slave of a total indifference visible at the surface, internally waving regrets... If there are things that may stir strong feelings inside man, they stir in me no more than organic reactions. Neither physical pain is accessible for me any more, from a certain level upwards... and I am sorry for all this, because to all you have to demonstrate you are happy, to make them happy and peaceful... I am like an old minstrel, like a sad clown of a castle who, after making his master laugh and forget the troubles, goes back into his dark tiny room to cry his existence and long-lost happiness. I would not ever have believed such stories... I have read them, heard them and yet never believed them... and here I am, in the place of that poor clown, wishing to do anything possible to escape his superbly poor existence, as happiness cannot be obtained by paying. If I had not the soul I have, I'm sure everything would have had stood at my feet obeying each and every command of mine. The Creation punished me with feelings, nice thoughts of a cripple man which contribute every day to the enhancing of the inferiority complex the fool is forced to have when facing his almighty master - life. I have cried, I have struggled, and my king found me wherever I tried to hide, and by mouth of all his other servants I found out the inevitable punishment : I am not allowed to escape my master, I am not even allowed to think about it, and I will be sentenced for doing it. Then my king ordered me to come entertain his guests, laugh among tears, to grimace sobbing until my soul would be nothing more than a huge amount of emptiness; and all these in front of so many guests that would laugh at me, having no idea that if they had been in my place they would have been obliged to do the same thing. I have knocked, and no door opened. The love of a poor clown is always a chimera, a fantastic notion everybody knows about but mocked at by everybody; it's like dying before being born, therefore having no joy of ever touching that thing you were always told about. (...) Tear by tear you gather in the palm of your hand, together with them tears a bit of the rock of your soul... and let them go wash the dark looks of the sadness of those who look at you, who laugh at you and forget you after you finished your number... let them be happy. But is it really impossible to challenge luck and change sides with one of them ? What originary evil, what avataries stop you from being at least once the Jack of Hearts in love with the Queen ? But even if you have been in his place and he had been in yours, stupid him - he wouldn't even know what to do, because he is bored with what he does while your soul burns with desire of having at least one, single, moment of happiness. If you change sides, you would be the one hungry for love, giving everything in exchange while him... stupid one ! ... he would not be able to put up a nice trick. Why is it like this ? Why are you obliged to thank with a smile for every kick in the back ? A smile that has to be real ? Why is it necessary for you to uselessly fall in love with king's daughter if you are not allowed to give her the bunch of roses the gardener cuts each morning ? And why cry afterwards - for how many times in your life ? - while singing the sweetest song at her marriage ?... And the king will treat you more badly after that because he is now left alone ? And why, if he has no tears to once cry his nerves, you do have and waste yours every night ? Why hugging the pillow so tight and sob in your sleep ? 'Cause you can't touch the Princess, not even in your sleep, each and every night she goes farther and farther and makes you feel like chasing a ghost which once caught vanishes between your fingers, making up another thousand figures, not to let you know which exactly to run after... And why being forced to pretend you are the fool as long as you are not at all different from the king himself ?...
You're an emotional man Utuna, thank you for sharing! Sadly, when I hear Pagliacci, all I can see is this: I. American.
ahhh , my favorite frenchman , I think many on this forum are probably intimately acquainted with the sentiments in such musings put so succinctly to words ..mine are probably much more abbreviated in the pieces "tombstones" and the Scream ..and then when life returns you can see how saturated with darkness we have been ...and the light is painful to view since it so shows our true broken selves . I love that you found such a piece that exposes the pain and hurt that is sheltered in so many ...It is one of the things the spirit has so exposed in my own musings ..the pain that people live in..one of the infections that has permeated so deeply in the live of men .
Hey Thinking: I'm my perfect weight, if I was 6'9" tall. So I'm not overweight, like Wallflower I am under tall. Frank
John Milton "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones; Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way Early may fly the Babylonian woe." "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont is a sonnet by the English poet John Milton inspired by the massacre of Waldensians in Piedmont by the Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy in April 1655."
"Belief and seeing are often both wrong." "Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning." - Robert McNamara
"Quand Dieu confie une mission à un homme, il lui donne aussi l'intelligence de sa fonction." "When God entrusts a man with a task, he also gives him the intelligence of his function." A book I read recently, I don't remember which.
Yes, it is a memorial to Christians of the 15th century, southern France that refused to convert to Catholicism, where more then 2000 died by the hands of the church for their refusal. You will notice the writer identifies the church as "Babylon". WikiPedia
"Le besoin d'une foi puissante n'est pas la preuve d'une foi puissante, c'est plutôt le contraire". Nietzsche The need for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, it is rather the opposite.
"Ce n'est qu'au crépuscule que la chouette de Minerve prend son envol." G.W.F. Hegel It's only at dusk that Minerva's owl takes flight. Minerva/Athena was the goddess of intelligence, her emblematic bird was the owl. The owl is a nocturnal bird (and the symbol of wisdom because it sees through darkness), dusk is the end of the day, the end of all things at a given moment. This aphorism means that we never really grasp the ins and the outs of a situation before the end of it. It's only when the events come to an end that we begin to understand their meaning. Even though some people may think that they have a good understanding of an historical event, for example, said event will only be thoroughly understood 50 or 100 years later.
Here, he had been involved in a cosmic spiritual conflict and didn't even know it, and the Lord was using some of his highest angels to answer his prayers. Quotation from an article about Daniel in a biblical encyclopedia