The OLD
AND
The NEW
There is a world of difference between working with new lumber and wood that has seen years of service to man.
New lumber has the smell of oak moss , leaf mold and sometimes violets. Its smooth uniform surfaces speak of gang saws ripping through the knots and gnarls of a thick log.
Old wood has a woody smell only when it is sawed. Then the heavy fragrance of rotting timber fallen long ago blend with the acrid odour from the finish singed by the saw. There are also hints of the room once inhabited , of a subterranean dampness , or a wine spill.
New lumber has not forgotten the green growth of the forest. It has sticky resin – sometimes a pocket , sometimes a sheen . And juices which make it expand and contract , curl and cup .Bow and warp.
Old lumber is resigned to a life of service to man, and it submits to his will and whim .It hardly moves it hardly changes.It is stable and mature accepting of the time and space found .But occasionally an old board lets out a sigh that sounds like a long forgotten whimper , or a bullet’s report.
New wood looks like a topographical map .
Old wood depicts history as well .Coronations , civil strife and invasions. The ubiquitous nail holes have crowns , halos and lances that can be metallic , russet or black. Discoloured streaks and patches reveal where pictures once hung , the sunlight fell or the molding was.There are bruises and gashes , charred traces of cigarettes stamped out too late and tiny particles of ghostly chalk that seeped through from plaster boards into two-by-fours.
Used lumber is an inheritance that usually goes unclaimed .It becomes one’s own , when it is turned into needless objects. The rehabilitation project is an adjustment .
The start is where others left off.
Charles Fenyvesi in Washington Post
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Received this from a Dear Friend , yesterday.
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This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and former president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes..
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My father never drove a car. Well, that’s not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.
He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
“Oh, bull—-!” she said. “He hit a horse.”
“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars — the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford — but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we’d ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. “No one in the family drives,” my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes, my father would say, “But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we’ll get one.” It was as if he wasn’t sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn’t drive, it more or less became my brother’s car.
Having a car but not being able to drive didn’t bother my father, but it didn’t make sense to my mother.
So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father’s idea. “Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?” I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps — though they seldom left the city limits — and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.
(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.
If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he’d sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I’d stop by, he’d explain: “The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.”
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out — and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?”
“I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
“No left turns,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.
As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”
“What?” I said again.
“No left turns,” he said. “Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that’s a lot safer. So we always make three rights.”
“You’re kidding!” I said, and I turned to my mother for support.
“No,” she said, “your father is right. We make three rights. It works.”
But then she added: “Except when your father loses count.”
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.
“Loses count?” I asked.
“Yes,” my father admitted, “that sometimes happens. But it’s not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you’re okay again.”
I couldn’t resist. “Do you ever go for 11?” I asked.
“No,” he said ” If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can’t be put off another day or another week.”
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.
She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.
They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom — the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily — he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he’d fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising — and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, “You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.” At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, “You know, I’m probably not going to live much longer.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
“Why would you say that?” He countered, somewhat irritated.
“Because you’re 102 years old,” I said..
“Yes,” he said, “you’re right.” He stayed in bed all the next day.
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.
He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: “I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet”
An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: “I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”
A short time later, he died.
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I’ve wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
I can’t figure out if it was because he walked through life,
Or because he quit taking left turns.
Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the ones who don’t.
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, take it and if it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.”
ENJOY LIFE NOW – IT HAS AN EXPIRY DATE!
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At the prodding of my friends I am writing this story. My name is Mildred Honor and I am a former elementary school music teacher from Des Moines , Iowa . I have always supplemented my income by teaching piano lessons – something I have done for over 30 years.
During those years I found that children have many levels of musicalability,and even though I have never had the pleasure of having aprodigy, I have taught some very talented students. However, I have also had my share of what I call ‘musically challenged’ pupils – one such pupil being Robby..
Robby was 11 years old when his mother (a single mom) dropped him offfor his first piano lesson. I prefer that students especially boys)begin at an earlier age,which I explained to Robby. But Robby said thatit had always been his mother’s dream to hear him play the piano, so Itook him as a student. Well, Robby began his piano lessons and from the beginning I thought itwas a hopeless endeavor. As much as Robby tried, he lacked the sense oftone and basic rhythm needed to excel. But he dutifully reviewed his scales and some elementary piano pieces that I require all my students to learn.
Over the months he tried and tried while I listened andcringed and tried to encourage him. At the end of each weekly lesson he would always say ‘My mom’s going to hear me play someday’. But to me,it seemed hopeless, he just did not have any inborn ability. I only knew his mother from a distance as she dropped Robby off orwaited in her aged car to pick him up. She always waved and smiled, but never dropped in. Then one day Robby stopped coming for his lessons. I thought aboutcalling him, but assumed that because of his lack of ability he haddecided to pursue something else. I was also glad that he had stoppedcoming – he was a bad advertisement for my teaching!
Several weeks later I mailed a flyer recital to the students’ homes. Tomy surprise, Robby (who had received a flyer) asked me if he could be inthe recital. I told him that the recital was for current pupils and that because he had dropped out, he really did not qualify. He told me thathis mother had been sick and unable to take him to his piano lessons, but that he had been practicing. ‘Please Miss Honor, I’ve just got toplay’ he insisted. I don’t know what led me to allow him to play in therecital – perhaps it was his insistence or maybe something inside of mesaying that it would be all right.
The night of the recital came and the high school gymnasium was packedwith parents, relatives and friends. I put Robby last in the program,just before I was to come up and thank all the students and play a finishing piece. I thought that any damage he might do would come at theend of the program and I could always salvage his poor performance through my ‘curtain closer’.
Well, the recital went off without a hitch, the students had beenpracticing and it showed. Then Robby came up on the stage. His clotheswere wrinkled and his hair looked as though he had run an egg beater through it. ‘Why wasn’t he dressed up like the other students?’ Ithought. ‘Why didn’t his mother at least make him comb his hair for this special night?’ Robby pulled out the piano bench, and I was surprisedwhen he announced that he had chosen to play Mozart’s Concerto No.21 in C Major. I was not prepared for what I heard next. His fingerswere light on the keys, they even danced nimbly on the ivories. He wentfrom pianissimo to fortissimo, from allegro to virtuoso; his suspended chords that Mozart demands were magnificent! Never had I heard Mozartplayed so well by anyone his age.
After six and a half minutes he ended in a grand crescendo, and everyonewas on their feet in wild applause! Overcome and in tears, I ran up onstage and put my arms around Robby in joy. ‘I have never heard you playlike that Robby, how did you do it?
‘ Through the microphone Robby explained: ‘Well, Miss Honor …. remember I told you that my mom wassick? Well, she actually had cancer and passed away this morning. Andwell …… she was born deaf, so tonight was the first time she had ever heard me play, and I wanted to make it special.’
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house that evening. As the people fromSocial Services led Robby from the stage to be placed in to foster care,I noticed that even their eyes were red and puffy. I thought to myselfthen how much richer my life had been for taking Robby as my pupil. No,I have never had a prodigy, but that night I became a prodigy ……. of Robby.
He was the teacher and I was the pupil, for he had taught me themeaning of perseverance and love and believing in yourself, and may be even taking a chance on someone and you didn’t know why. Robby was killed years later in the senseless bombing of the Alfred P.Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April, 1995.
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Letter from a Parent to a Teacher. (Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher)
He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also for every scoundrel, there is a hero: That for every selfish politician, there is a dedicated leader.
Teach him that for every enemy there is a friend. Teach him that a dollar earned is of far more value than five found. Teach him to learn to lose and also to enjoy winning.
Steer him away from envy, if you can. Teach him also the secret of quiet laughter.
Teach him the wonder of books, but also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and flowers on a green hillside.
In school teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.
Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone is getting on the bandwagon.
Teach him to listen to all men, but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth, and take only the good that comes through. Teach him how to laugh when he is sad. Teach him there is no shame in tears.
Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob; and to stand and fight if he thinks he is right.
Teach him gently, but do not cuddle him, because only the test of fire makes fine steel.
Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patience to be brave.
Teach him always to have sublime faith in his Creator and faith in himself too, because then he will always have faith in mankind.
This is a big order, but please see what you can do.
He is such a fine little fellow , my son.
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A Season of Growth
In New England, you don’t need a calendar to know it’s the first week of October. The trees tell the story quite well as their leaves change from shades of green to the bright vibrant shades of orange, red and yellow. At the peak of the fall foliage season, it’s truly a magnificent sight that draws people from all around to behold the beauty. The season progresses and the leaves fall to the ground one by one where they become nourishment for the grass, flowers and gardens in the spring.
As I spent Sunday collecting some of the fallen leaves with my 7 year old daughter, I wondered what would happen if a tree stubbornly held onto to its leaves – refusing to let them fall to ground and nourish the new season that awaits only a few months from now. How would that tree be affected? How would the rest of life be affected?
The tree would become burdened by the accumulation of dead leaves it collected each year. Its branches would begin to sag under the weight of those useless dead leaves. Future growth of the tree would be impossible as it ran out of room for new leaves to bloom in the spring. It would soon lose its beauty as the lifeless brown leaves cluttered its many branches.
Eventually the tree wouldn’t look like a tree at all but only a pitiful brown clump waiting to die and fall to the ground from which it once sprang with such vitality and zest for life.
And what about the grass, flowers and gardens that use the fallen leaves as nourishment and further growth in the spring? Certainly there are other sources of sustenance but none as natural and readily available as is provided by the fallen leaves. Instead, they would have to rely heavily on human intervention for their growth and survival – the tree no longer offering its own natural gift of nourishment. The entire circle of life would be burdened by the refusal of the tree give up that which no longer serves it.
Sometimes we are like that tree. We refuse to give up beliefs and memories that no longer serve us. We hang onto them, preventing our further growth and the growth of others. We become burdened by the accumulation of useless dead
thoughts that should have fallen away long ago to be used as intellectual and spiritual nourishment. If we’re not careful, we can become – like the tree -a miserable creature who’s lost our vitality and zest for life, eventually living in quiet desperation, refusing to be a natural source of nourishment for the rest of the circle of life.
Spend a few minutes each day this week to think about what beliefs you’re holding onto that may be burdening you – thoughts that should have fallen away long ago to nourish yourself and others. Some of them may be very old, dating back to childhood. For me, one of those useless beliefs came from the memory of an assault by the town bully when I was 5 years old. Once I finally let go of that belief, it became a source of further growth for myself and others.
Try this exercise. Watch a movie of your life. The movie starts with your earliest memory and progresses chronologically through your life up until now. What memories stand out as painful and what beliefs did you create from those memories? Maybe you remember your own bully or perhaps a time when a parent or guardian was particularly angry toward you.
Maybe you tried to accomplish something and failed in your attempt. Perhaps you still carry the guilt of a wrong you committed against another. Whatever you come up with, write your thoughts in a journal. Write everything that happened in the experience and the useless belief you developed from it.
Then ask yourself how you can use the experience to nourish yourself and others. What can you learn that empowers you and others to experience further growth and learning?
Shed those old limiting beliefs just like the trees shed their leaves in the fall and make ready for the new season of growth that awaits. Send someone you love ,an email and tell me what belief you’re going to let fall away this week. Have a great week!
Its your life. Create it the way you desire!
– By Michael Pollock
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What has that thrush got to sing about, asked Mr Hardy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Paul Johnson. “What has that thrush got to sing about, asked Mr Hardy.” The Spectator (April 9, 2008).
This article is from Paul Johnson’s “And another thing” column for The Spectator Nature likes to shock us, occasionally, and make us think.
That dolphin who spotted the two stranded whales, and led them to safety, was the best item of news we have had for many weary weeks. There are cheerful mysteries in creation, as well as savage ones. When I was five and first went on the local train to school, I noticed the driver always shut off steam when we stopped at a little place called Cobridge, and a great silence descended. After a pause of three seconds, all the birds which lived near the umbrageous platform began to sing. I assumed they loved the engine and were welcoming it. It was just like what happened to Edward Thomas when his train stopped at Adlestrop, and a blackbird sang until, as his delightful poem relates, it was joined by ‘all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire’.
Song is the high road into the mind of a bird. Thanks to the recording and analysis of birdsong, we know much more about birds than any other creatures of their size. Yet we know very little really: not much more than Plato, over two millennia ago, who thought that birds sang because they were happy, or Pliny, who believed magpies died of intellectual despair if they failed to master a sound they wanted to copy.
The French composer Olivier Messiaen spent much of his life studying and writing down birdsong, including the Australian lyrebird, finest of all songsters. Yet the music he wrote recreating birds singing does not seem, to my ears, to work, any more than the passage in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, which he later admitted, grinding his teeth, was ‘a joke’.
It is male birds, chiefly, who sing, and the primary purposes of birdsong are to defend territory and attract mates.
Yet there are many other reasons why birds sing, and we can only guess at them. Between the wars, a clever lady, Mrs Nice, in Columbus, Ohio, spent a decade ringing and studying the hundreds of birds residing in the 40-acre lot behind her house. She gave them all code names, and eventually published her findings in a two-volume, 500-page book. Her favourite was M-4, a singing sparrow. She observed him closely from 1928 to 1935, during which he had 11 mates, was widowed seven times, raised 13 chicks and built 17 nests. Eventually, being old, he found it hard to get a mate, and had to settle for ‘an old-maidish creature’ who tyrannised him. Mrs Nice called her Xantippe, after Socrates’ horrid wife. She was unfaithful, idle, refused to help build the nest, laid only two eggs, which she neglected and were quickly smashed by wrens, and then deserted him.
Five days later, he suddenly began singing energetically at 4 a.m., singing his special song three times to the minute, 200 times an hour, without ceasing, until sunset. Mrs Nice had never heard anything like it.
What was the purpose of this extraordinary recital? A desperate attempt to get Xantippe back? Regret? Remorse? Thanksgiving? Rejoicing by an old card who had discovered the hard way that celibacy is better than woe?
Next day he resumed his normal singing but soon disappeared and never returned.
Dead presumably.
I learned about M-4 and Xantippe by reading an excellent book, Why Birds Sing, by David Rothenberg, which gives the results of many similar studies. I strongly recommend it. Most people would say that the nightingale is the best singer. John Clare said that it made him a poet. Shakespeare mentions it many times, treating it as the standard of lyric excellence. All the same, why does Antony call Cleopatra ‘My nightingale’? The Serpent of old Nile was not a songstress.
There are countless recordings of the bird singing, and many written snatches, both in the funny notation ornithologists use and in normal musical script. They don’t unlock the secret of the nightingale’s charm, and no musician has succeeded in imitating it successfully, just as no painter has contrived to produce a convincing rainbow on canvas or paper.
Yet birdsong is clearly a performance, among other things. Birds that have their own song played back to them, or songs by other birds of their species, or similar sounds, nearly always react, and in a variety of ways, and often their motive seems to be a desire to improve their own performance.
In Surrey, during the 1920s, the cellist Beatrice Harrison used to play in the fields, and persuaded nightingales to join in. She was so excited by the result that she got Sir John Reith to send a BBC recording team. Despite the primitive equipment then available, they made a record, and when it was broadcast it attracted 50,000 letters from delighted listeners. There is something exquisite in the idea of a bird volunteering to join a cellist in making music which, like dolphins saving the lives of whales, is an adventure across the strict taxonomy of nature which is somehow magical, yet true.
The greatest performers are of course the lyrebirds. There are two kinds: Albert’s and Superb. They are no bigger than grouse but their brilliant tails, in the form of a lyre, are enormous. In the mating season they put on a song-and-dance show unique in nature, creating a stage for it. Albert’s lyrebird selects four or five natural places in the clearing under the trees where it lives, and uses them alternately.
But the Superb actually builds for itself a performance mound, and on this artificial stage it struts and gyrates, pirouettes and prances in a visual explosion of pride and self-love to make a peacock seem shy by comparison, and simultaneously sings a tremendous aria, imitating all the birds of the neighbourhood, and other sounds too, and repeating its characteristic notes and its signature tune.
In the 1930s, in New South Wales, a farmer who played the flute kept a Superb as a pet, and got it to imitate snatches of ‘The Keel Row’ and ‘Mosquito Dance’, as played by the flute, before releasing it into the wilderness. Thirty years later, in the nearby national park, Superbs were found who incorporated fluting snatches of these songs in their repertoire. So some birds not only learn music from humans but pass it on to their progeny.
Professional research into birdsong discourages anthropomorphism in some ways, but in others confirms it. In that famous passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost beginning, ‘Now came still evening on’, he was quite right to refer to the nightingale’s ‘amorous descant’, though wrong to refer to the bird as ‘her’. And it is arguable that Keats was also right to describe the nightingale’s song as ‘divine melodious truth’. There is something essentially truthful about birdsong, and the more truthful it is, as Keats always argued, the more beautiful, indeed divine.
But what of Hardy’s wonderful poem ‘The Darkling Thrush‘, perhaps the best thing he ever wrote? Why should this ageing, ill-favoured bird, nearing its demise perhaps, choose one of the coldest days of the year, when every sensible creature, human or avian, concentrates on keeping warm, to pour out its heart in glorious song?
Hardy, the old pessimist, for once drew a message of hope from the incident. It strikes me now that what Hardy observed was a singularity, though a truthful one — not unlike the outburst of song Mrs Nice heard from M-4 when he reacted to the disappearance of his difficult mate Xantippe.
It would be a miserable world where no birds sing.
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT -OF CHARLES LOUNSBURY
I, Charles Lounsbury, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do hereby make and publish this, my last will and testament in order, as justly as may be, to distribute my interests in the world among succeeding men.
That part of my interest, which is known in law and recognized in the sheep-bound volumes as my property, being inconsiderable and of no account, I make no disposition of, in this, my will.
My right to live, being but a life estate, is not at my disposal, but these things excepted, all else in the world I now proceed to devise and bequeath.
ITEM: I give to good fathers and mothers and trust to their children all good little words of praise and encouragement and all quaint pet names and endearments. And I charge said parents to use them judiciously or generously as the deeds of their children shall require.
ITEM: I leave to children inclusively, but only for the duration of their childhood, all and every flower of the fields and the blossoms of the woods,with the right to play among them freely according to the custom of the children,warning them at the same time against the thistles and thorns.And I devise to children the banks of the brooks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof and the odors of the willows that dip therein and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.
And I leave the children the long, long days to be merry in in a thousand ways, and the night, and the moon and trail of the Milky Way to wonder at; but subject, nevertheless, to the rights hereinafter given to lovers.
ITEM: I devise to boys ,jointly,all the idle fields and commons where ball may be played , all pleasant waters where one may swim, all snow clad hills where one may coast ,and all streams and ponds where one may fish, or where ,when grim winter comes ,one may skate ,to have and hold the same for the period of their boyhood.And all meadows ,with clover blossoms and butterflies thereof ; the woods with their appurtenances;the squirrels and birds and echoes and strange noises , and all distant places ,which may be visited ,together with the adventures there to be found.And I give to the said boys each his own place at the fireside at night,with all pictures that may be seen in the burning wood ,to enjoy without any incumbrance of care.
ITEM: To lovers I devise their imaginary world filled with the stars of the skies and the red roses by the walks, the bloom of the hawthorne and the sweet strains of music and ought else that they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and the beauty of their love.
ITEM: I bequeath the power to have lasting friendships, the capacity for courage, and undaunted faith.
ITEM : And to those who no longer are children , or youths, or lovers,I leave memory , and I bequeath to them the volumes of the poems of Burns and Shakespeare, and of other poets , if there are others, to the end that they may live the old days over and over again , freely and fully , without tithe or dimunition .
ITEM: To our loved ones with snowy crowns, I leave memory, the peace and happiness of old age, and the love and gratitude of their children before they fall asleep.
PHILOSOPHY OF HALF-AND-HALF: TSESSE
Insofar as Taoism and Confucianism mean merely the negative and positive outlooks on life, I do not think they are Chinese, but are inherent in all human nature. We are all born half Taoists and half Confucianists.
The logical conclusion of a thorough-going Taoist would be to go to the mountains and live as a hermit or a recluse, to imitate as far as possible the simple carefree life of the woodcutter and the fisherman, the woodcutter who is lord of the green hills and the fisherman who is the owner of the blue waters.
The Taoist recluse, half-hidden in the clouds on top of the mountain, looks down at the woodcutter and the fisherman holding an idle conversation, remarking that the hills go on being green and the waters go on flowing just to please themselves, entirely oblivious of the two tiny conversationalists. From this reflection, he gets a sense of perfect peace. And yet it is poor philosophy that teaches us to escape from human society altogether.
There is still a greater philosophy than this naturalism, namely, the philosophy of humanism. The highest ideal of Chinese thought is therefore a man who does not have to escape from human society and human life in order to preserve his original, happy nature. He is only a second-rate recluse,, still slave to his environment, who has to escape from the cities and live away in the mountains in solitude.
“The Great Recluse is the city recluse,” because he has sufficient mastery over himself not to be afraid of his surroundings. He is therefore the Great Monk (the kaoseng) who returns to human society and eats pork and drinks wine and mixes with women, without detriment to his own soul. There is, therefore, the possibility of the merging of the two philosophies.
The contrast between Confucianism and Taoism is relative, the two doctrines setting forth only two great extremes, and between them there are many intermediate stages.Those are the best cynics who are half-cynics. The highest type of life after all is the life of sweet reasonableness as taught by Confucius’ grandson, Tsesse, author of The Golden Mean. No philosophy, ancient or modern, dealing with the problems of human life has yet discovered a more profound truth than this doctrine of a well-ordered life lying somewhere between the two extremes—the Doctrine of the Half-and-Half.
It is that spirit of sweet reasonableness, arriving at a perfect balance between action and inaction, shown in the ideal of a man living in half-fame and semi-obscurity;
half-lazily active and half-actively lazy;
not so poor that he cannot pay his rent, and not so rich that he doesn’t have to work a little or couldn’t wish to have slightly more to help his friends;
who plays the piano, but only well enough for his most intimate friends to hear, and chiefly to please himself;
who collects, but just enough to load his mantelpiece; who reads, but not too hard;
learns a lot but does not become a specialist;
writes, but has his correspondence to The Times half of the time rejected and half of the time published—in short, it is that ideal of middle-class life which I believe to be the sanest ideal of life ever discovered by the Chinese.
This is the ideal so well expressed in Li Mi-an”s “The Half-and-Half Song”:
By far the greater half have I seen through This floating life- ah. there is a magic word.
This “half so rich in implications It bids us taste the joy of more than weCan ever own.
Half-way in life is man’sBest state, when slackened pace allows him ease;
A wide world lies half-way ‘twixt heaven and earth;
To live half-way between the town and land,Have farms half-way between the streams and hills,Be half-a-scholar, and half-a-squire, and halfIn business, half as gentry live,And half related to the common folk;
And have a house that’s half genteel, half plain,Half elegantly furnished and half bare;
Dresses and gowns that are half old, half new,And food half apicure’s, half simple fare;
Have servants not too simple, not too dull,A wife who’s not too simple, nor too smart—So then, at heart, I feel I’m half a Buddha,And almost half a Taoist fairy blest.
One half myself to Father Heaven IReturn;
the other half to children leave—Half thinking how for my posterity To plan and provide, and yet half minding how To answer God when the body’s laid at rest.
He is most wisely drunk who is half drunk;
And flowers in half-bloom look their prettiest;
As boats at half—sail sail the steadiest,And horses held at half-slack reins trot best.
Who half too much has, adds anxiety,But half too little, adds possession’s zest.
Since life’s of sweet and bitter compounded Who tastes but half is wise and cleverest.
We have here, then, a compounding of Taoistic cynicism with the Confucian positive outlook into a philosophy of the half-and-half.
And because man is born between the real earth and the unreal heaven, I believe that, however unsatisfactory it may seem on the first look to a Westerner, with his incredibly forward-looking point of view, it is still the best philosophy, because it is the most human.
After all allowances are made for the necessity of having a few supermen in our midst—explorers, conquerors, great inventors, great presidents, heroes who change the course of history—the happiest man is still the man of the middle class who has earned a slight means of economic independence, who has done a little, but just a little, for mankind, and who is slightly distinguished in his community, but not too distinguished.
It is only in this milieu of well-known obscurity and financial competence with a pinch, when life is fairly carefree and yet not altogether carefree, that the human spirit is happiest and succeeds best.
After all, we have to get on in this life, and so we must bring philosophy down from heaven to earth
***
‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Steve Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
***
A Professor stood before his Philosophy class and had some items in front of him.
When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.
The Professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.
He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.
He then asked the students again if the jar was full.
They agreed it was.
The Professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
He asked once more if the jar was full.
The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”
The Professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.
The students laughed.
“Now,” said the Professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
“The golf balls are the important things – yur God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full..
“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.
“The sand is everything else–the small stuff.
“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
“The same goes for life. “If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
“Take time to get medical checkups.
“Take your spouse out to dinner.
“Play another 18.
“There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.
“Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter.
“Set your priorities.
“The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked.
“It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a cup of coffee with a friend.”
***
What is a Boy ?
ALAN BECK in The Treasure Chest
Between the innocence of babyhood and the dignity of manhood we find a delightful creature called a boy. Boys come in assorted sizes, weights and colors, but all boys have the same creed :to enjoy every second of every minute of every hour of every day and to protest with noise(their only weapon)when their last minute is finished and the adult males pack them off to bed at night.
Boys are found everywhere-on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them.
A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubblegum in its hair, and Hope for future with a frog in its pocket.
When you are busy, a boy is an inconsiderate, bothersome, intruding jangle of noise. When you want him to make a good impression, his brain turns into jelly or else he becomes a savage, sadistic, jungle creature bent on destroying the world and himself with it.
A boy is a composite: He has the appetite of a horse, the digestion of a sword – swallower, the energy of a pocket sized atom bomb, the curiosity of a cat, the lungs of a dictator, the imagination of a Paul Bunyan , the shyness of a violet, the audacity of a steel trap, the enthusiasm of a firecracker .And when he makes something, he has five thumbs on each hand.
He likes ice-cream, knives, saws, Christmas, comic books, the boy across the street, woods, water (in its natural habitat), large animals, Dad, trains, Saturday mornings, and Fire Engines. He is not much for Sunday school, company, schools, books without pictures, music lessons, neckties, barbers, girls, overcoats, adults or bedtime.
Nobody else is so early to rise or so late to supper. Nobody gets so much fun out of trees, dogs and breezes. Nobody else can cram into one pocket, a rusty knife, a half-eaten apple, three feet of string, an empty Bull Durham sack, two gum drops, six cents, a slingshot, a chunk of unknown substance and a genuine supersonic code-ring with a secret compartment.
A boy is a magical creature, you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can’t lock him out of your heart. you can get him out of your study, but you can’t get him out of your mind. Might as well give up. He is your captor, your jailer, your boss, and your master. A freckle faced, pint sized cat-chasing bundle of noise.
But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them like new with two magic words “ Hi Dad ! ”.
***
As in this beautiful experience , from MS Gills article in Outlook
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262010
Quote
Architect of Minds
We’ve forgotten Corbusier but the Swiss remember him. His portrait is on their 10-franc note with the layout of Chandigarh on the back. I happened to be walking in the Saturday flea market in Zurich and spied a couple of books on him. One in French. I was desperate to buy them. The lady bargained. I said, “I’m from Chandigarh.” She gave me a wonderful smile and said, “This is a gift for you. Take it.
Unquote
rasAyana 