More Jean Cocteau

I CAN'T GET ENOUGH

Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte into a wealthy Parisian family, which also was politically prominent. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter, who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. However, he had a lasting influence on his son. It is said that this tragic event also created Cocteau's awareness of human weakness, which he compensated by putting himself in the service of the performing arts and the mysterious forces in the universe. Poetry was for Cocteau the basis of all art, a "religion without hope".
In 1915 Cocteau met Picasso and fell under his spell. "I admired his intelligence, and clung to everything he said, for he spoke little; I kept still so as not to miss a word. There were long silences and Varèse could not understand why we stared wordlessly at each other. In talking, Picasso used a visual syntax, and you could immediately see what he was saying. He liked formulas and summoned himself up in his statements as he summoned himself up and sculptured himself in objects that he immediately made tangible." (from Pablo Picasso by Pierre Cabanne, 1977)

Divine States

Buddhism's four brahmavihara ("Divine States") can be more properly regarded as virtues in the European sense. They are:

1. Metta/Maitri: loving-kindness towards all; the hope that a person will be well; loving kindness is "the wish that all sentient beings, without any exception, be happy."^[6]
2. Karuna: compassion; the hope that a person's sufferings will diminish; compassion is the "wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering."^[6]
3. Mudita: altruistic joy in the accomplishments of a person, oneself or other; sympathetic joy, "is the wholesome attitude of rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of all sentient beings."^[6]
4. Upekkha/Upeksha: equanimity, or learning to accept both loss and gain, praise and blame, success and failure with detachment, equally, for oneself and for others; equanimity means "not to distinguish between friend, enemy or stranger, but regard every sentient being as equal. It is a clear-minded tranquil state of mind - not being overpowered by delusions, mental dullness or agitation."

Source: Wikipedia

Impersonator!

Indian man as Lenin.

Panic

Architects and city planners try to accommodate the symptoms of panic, such as herd behavior, during design and planning, often using simulations to determine the best way to lead people to a safe exit and prevent congestion (stampedes). The most effective methods are often nonintuitive. A tall column, approximately 1 ft (300 mm) in diameter, placed in front of the door exit at a precisely calculated distance, may speed up the evacuation of a large room by up to 30%, as the obstacle divides the congestion well ahead of the choke point.

Source: Wikipedia

Snake Rug

A handknotted snake shaped rug, hides a cable that heats up, warming a cold floor. Buttons on the side make it possible to fix the snake in different positions.

Sylvia Plath

Holyshit this is what I was ranting about for days. Not that I rant out loud

• I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

• Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

• Can a selfish egocentric jealous and unimaginative female write a damn thing worthwhile?

• Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.

• I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.

• Is there no way out of the mind?

• Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.

• It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.

• For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

• I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

• I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

• If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad.

• Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.

• I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

• If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

• Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near wanting nothing.

• You don't believe in God, or life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises.

• I talk to God but the sky is empty.

• I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.

• There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

Pier Paulo Pasolini

Io sono una forza del Passato.
Solo nella tradizione è il mio amore.
Vengo dai ruderi, dalle chiese,
dalle pale d’altare, dai borghi
abbandonati sugli Appennini o le Prealpi,
dove sono vissuti i fratelli.
Giro per la Tuscolana come un pazzo,
per l’Appia come un cane senza padrone.
O guardo i crepuscoli, le mattine
su Roma, sulla Ciociaria, sul mondo,
come i primi atti della Dopostoria,
cui io assisto, per privilegio d’anagrafe,
dall’orlo estremo di qualche età
sepolta. Mostruoso è chi è nato
dalle viscere di una donna morta.
E io, feto adulto, mi aggiro
più moderno di ogni moderno
a cercare fratelli che non sono più.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfFvzGOvZFo