You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.— Rainer Maria Rilke
Inspired by the events in the world inside and outside of myself, I occasionally record my experiences and insights in words and, sometimes, my own photographs taken here and there. I can only hope that these glimpses—that are more questions than answers— on the path may generate some curiosity and inspiration in you. There is nothing that can enhance our understanding of self more than reflected encounters with life in its infinite diversity. I also use this space to share with you anything (quotes, book reviews, event announcements, workshop reports, etc.) that can support and guide us in our grappling with everyday existence in its true nature, pain, and beauty.
January 01, 2016 Time to Begin, Again Almost any time is a good time to start something new or different. However, January is a particularly auspicious time for new beginnings. The tradition of new beginnings in January goes back to the ancient Romans. The name of the first month in the year, after all, comes from Janus, the god of beginnings, transitions, and passages. Roman cities had many ceremonial gateways or archways dedicated to this god, typically freestanding structures that were used to symbolize “auspicious entrances or exits”. A beginning of the new is an ending of the old; it’s where the past turns into the future and future leaves behind the past. This is why the god Janus is depicted as having two faces looking in opposite directions: one to the past, the other to the future. By starting something new or making a change in January, we may well unconsciously participate in the process of evoking these ancient traditions. The prospect of setting out to make significant changes may seem daunting to us. Change can mean either stopping doing something old, or starting doing something new. It can mean either unlearning old habits or learning the new ones, but most often it includes both. Old patterns, fortified by long habit and inertia, may loom so large in front of us that we may feel overwhelmed. The necessary commitment, perseverance and effort it takes to see significant change through, may discourage us from even beginning the process. Perhaps the following words from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching may embolden us to overcome initial hesitancy and fear of uncertainty: The most massive tree grows from a sprout; The highest building rises from a pile of earth; A journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. Are you thinking of changing your relationship with food, alcohol or cigarettes? Starting yoga, tai chi, or meditation practice? Giving more hugs to someone dear to you? Doing a course? Taking better care of your health? Learning a new skill, or language? Slowing down, maybe even downsizing? Spending more time with family members and friends? Finding a lover? Changing a job? Finally sitting down to write that novel? Planting a tree? Volunteering in the community? Looking into the eyes of a homeless person and saying warmly “Have a good day”? Selling your car and buying a bicycle? January is a good time to set the right intentions and incline your mind and heart toward your chosen goals. If you happen to fail in the realization of any of these intentions, just remember to — in Samuel Beckett’s famous words — “fail better”. There is no reason not to start again, and again, and again. Falling and getting up, going one step backward and two steps forward, is how life unfolds in its waves of expanding circles.
January 18, 2016 From doing therapy with adult children of well-off parents: The only thing, while growing up, that is worse than having an absent father is having an absent and highly successful father — a double whammy.
January 24, 2016
"What makes a human life meaningful?" "What makes life meaningful enough to go on?" "(T)he question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living?' These questions, pondered by Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi in his posthumously published memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written after he was diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer with not much time to live, are the difficult questions we all have to face at one point. The additional difficulty is the fact that there are no universally applicable answers: we have to find our own answers, the answers that make sense to us. Or, as Jean-Paul Sartre said long time ago: "There is no traced-out path to lead man to his salvation; he must constantly invent his own path. But, to invent it, he is free, responsible, without excuse, and every hope lies within him."
January 25, 2016 Everyone is a hero. Everyone is flawed. We are all flawed heroes.
January 26, 2016 What to do first is this: discard curative fantasies. Then, persevere in holding everything, holding on to nothing; being aware of everything, caught up by nothing.
January 27, 2016 On the CBC's radio show today there was a story about a 90-year old man who is not only independent in his everyday living but still runs his farm, feeds the farm animals, etc. When asked by a reporter if he was not afraid of falling, he replied: "Oh, I've fallen many times, I'm used to falling."
Sunday Morning Meditation Group
JUST THIS
No instructions, no dharma talks Just sitting and walking together in calm awareness For experienced meditators (interested in deepening their individual practice in a group setting) Sundays, from 10 am to 11:30 am Lucsculpture/Yuri’s Village 663 Greenwood Avenue (at Danforth), Toronto, ON
Inquire: tom@tompericcounselling.com
February 20, 2016 To live with awareness, compassion, and simplicity — that's the path.
February 23, 2016 The answer does not come in a form of a neatly crafted sentence. It is in the process or, more precisely, the process is the answer.
February 24, 2016 A young client of mine asked: "Who am I when I am not myself?" Who am I when I'm drinking (using drugs, gambling, etc.)? Who is the one doing the drinking? Who am I when I'm not drinking (using drugs, etc.)? The question of identity is the essential question that addiction brings into a sharp focus. That's the question that addicted men and women ask with their lives, consciously or unconsciously. It underlies all their behaviours and struggles. And that question is crucially a philosophical question.
February 28, 2016
The motto that I try to follow and practice in my life, with more or less successful results, is — as we can say about many important things — simple but not easy:
March 10, 2016 Reflecting on what is the best that — after distilling the essence of the therapeutic encounter — I can realistically hope to offer to my clients, I believe that it can be conveyed in the two words: spaciousness and presence. The spaciousness of understanding, respect, non-judgement, acceptance, positive regard and compassion and the attuned presence through which they feel invited to begin connecting to their own selves more freely and adequately.
March 15, 2016 Being is better than having (Erich Fromm) or doing, but becoming is better than being (Fred Newman).
March 24, 2016 Johan Cruyff, a "total football" revolutionary who, while playing for Amsterdam's Ajax in the early 1970s, opened my impressionable football-mesmerized young boy eyes to the transcendental dimensions of the game, left us also with this piece of life wisdom: “Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.”
March 26, 2016 In life, there are priorities and trivialities. We need to learn to prioritize priorities and trivialize trivialities.
April 10, 2016 We must not ever forget this: "We may not all be called to do great things that make the headlines, but we are all called to love and be loved, wherever we may be. We are called to be open and to grow in love and thus to communicate love to others" (Jean Vanier). Waking up to this truth in the middle of the deepest existential desperation is what underlies all epiphanies.
May 06, 2016
What is it that I'm seeing and what is it that I'm not seeing? What is it that I'm hearing and what is it that I'm not hearing? What is it that is here and what is it that isn't here?
June 04, 2016 Walking is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found. To walk you need to start with two legs. The rest is optional.
— Frederic Gros, A Philosophy of Walking, 2015
June 19, 2016 A life that is defined by essential separation (from the self, community, nature, divine) finds its illusory connectedness in addiction. The unbearable pain of disconnection is replaced by the self-perpetuated pain of addiction as a false refuge.
June 20, 2016 Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
— Arundhati Roy, War Talk
When I am among the Trees
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” — Mary Oliver
Drawing by Bicskei Zoltan
June 12, 2017 I was interviewed by the New York-based Empire Radio Now. To listen to the brief interview, click bellow:
June 14, 2017
Understood fully, this is (almost) all:
— found on the (in)famous patient built wall (the second part of the 19th century), partially preserved on the property of the CAMH, Toronto
September 14, 2017 Sometimes, when in a breathtaking natural environment, an unsettling feeling of intruding into another dimension, a world we do not belong to, overwhelms me for a moment. I wonder then how to make a sound of a peddle touching the surface of water even more silent. The images bellow are from a recent canoe trip through the Algonquin Park:
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment, feeling truly alive.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Mindfulness, 1987
February 12, 2018
What is mine to realize?
What is mine to see and do?
What trace is mine to leave behind?
October 12, 2018 Make space for the pain. Let its icy thorns thaw in the warm embrace of acceptance. It will burn itself out in the heart of self-compassion. The only way out of it is through it.
Artist: ga.ne
A Blessing May the light of your soul guide you. May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart. May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul. May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work. May your work never weary you. May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement. May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences. May the day never burden. May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises. May evening find you gracious and fulfilled. May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected May your soul calm, console and renew you. — John O’Donohue
November 5, 2018
Moving is good for the body and stillness benefits the mind. What's happening in our age seems to be exactly the opposite. We are more sedentary than ever and chronically mentally perturbed by the means of mass distraction: digital communication, infotainment, social media.
November 18, 2018
Sitting in meditation with my dharma friends: a lot of sounds bubbling and percolating around us. Voices from the other rooms, steps of someone walking on the old wooden staircase, traffic on the street, a landline phone ringing, a wall clock above us ticking, giggling from the ceramics studio downstairs, sounds from the inside of the body. All of this just wonderful: having nothing else to do, the world sounding itself. Better, with Samuel Beckett coming to the mind: life, having no alternative, living through our lives.
February 16, 2019 And, as we already know or will soon learn, life is not a canal but a river: "I would love to live like the river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding." - John O'Donohue
February 18, 2019
At the Ashbridge's Bay, Lake Ontario, Toronto:
March 30, 2019
Living is not easy. Living well is even more difficult. Finding safety, purpose and fulfilment may seem elusive.
Many of us find ourselves entangled in the habitual patterns of the mind and heart. Repetitive mental and emotional habits can gain addictive power. This is because we may be compelled to keep doing them despite experiencing negative consequences. Once entrenched, these tendencies can make us feel stuck and in a chronic state of discontent.
In my version of mindfulness-based therapy, which combines experiential and existentialist strategies, the aim is to disentangle from life-diminishing and self-limiting forces.
I am trained in mindfulness and experiential therapeutic approaches. My passion is to assist in the process of the co-creation of who you feel you can and would like to become.
HOKUSAI SAYS Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says everyone of us is a child, everyone of us is ancient, everyone of us has a body. He says everyone of us is frightened. He says everyone of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive – shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you. Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Love, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you. — Roger Keyes
May 22, 2020 Spirituality can be defined as living in the accepting openness to the tragic beauty of the world and standing in owe in the midst of it. It is, as Dogen knew, seeing the mundane in the sacred and the sacred in the mundane.
May 26, 2020 There is always a discrepancy between how we live and how we would like to live. Meaning lies in the action we take to reduce the discrepancy. In this self-chosen and directed action, we discover what living authentically feels like.
May 27, 2020 Inner Arts Collective, Toronto How We Heal - Resilience An Interview with Tom Peric The "How We Heal" panel series uses Zoom as a platform to spark conversation from the perspectives of a range of wellness experts on how to understand, move through and transform some of the difficult feelings we are experiencing. These conversations are a demonstration of solidarity and support, offering timeless perspectives and tools which can be a resource for all of us through the COVID-19 crisis and in the years to come. In this discussion, we take a look at Resilience in a one-on-one interview with addictions counsellor and registered psychotherapist, Tom Peric. Resilience is a popular topic, and deserves the attention - because with resilience, it becomes possible for us to maintain balance during a challenging time in life, and can protect us from developing mental health difficulties and issues. More than a personality trait, resilience can be learned. In this interview, we'll be looking at what resilience means and what some strategies are for increasing our ability to bounce back from overwhelming challenges. Guest: Tom Peric As a certified addiction counsellor and a registered psychotherapist, Tom works with people whose reactive habitual patterns of the mind and heart, having gained addictive power, prevent them from living meaningfully and joyfully. Using a variety of psychological and philosophical approaches, rooted in the traditions of humanistic, experiential and existential therapies, his main aim is to assist individuals in moving toward more authentic and fulfilling living. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRTe6tyFGo8
June 12, 2020 Inner Arts Collective, Toronto How We Heal - Meaning and Purpose Panel discussion: Jennifer Polansky, Michelle Meehan, and Tom Peric - moderated by Melanie-Dawn (Ollenberg) Bessa The "How We Heal" panel series uses Zoom as a platform to spark conversation from the perspectives of a range of wellness experts on how to understand, move through and transform some of the difficult feelings we are experiencing. These conversations are a demonstration of solidarity and support, offering timeless perspectives and tools which can be a resource for all of us through the COVID-19 crisis and in the years to come. In this discussion, we look at Meaning and Purpose. Our sense of meaning and purpose influences our health, our relationships, and promotes resilience. Whether you are struggling with finding your meaning and purpose or you are looking to deepen your connection and understanding of it in your life, we invite you to join us for this fascinating discussion. Moderated by Melanie-Dawn (Ollenberg) Bessa, Panelists include: Tantra Wellness Practitioner and Women's Transformation Coach Jennifer Polansky, Addictions Counsellor Tom Peric, and Integrative Shamanic Practitioner and Psychotherapist Michele Meehan. Panelists: Jennifer Polansky - What I do is create safe space for women to come home to themselves, which translates into a deeper understanding and connection to who they truly are and what they've come here to do. As a space holder, I use energy medicine, tantric embodiment practise, shamanic clearing, deep womb re-connection and mindfulness to help women unconditionally love and accept themselves, leading to a more meaningful life full of passion, purpose, and authentic relationships. Michele Meehan - As both a psychotherapist and shamanic practitioner, my work involves helping people grow into their authentic self in body, mind, heart and spirit; finding and following that inner blueprint of our life’s purpose that comes through our ancestry, our biographical experiences, the archetypal energies that speak through us, and our connections to helping spirits that guide and inspire our evolution. Tom Peric - As a certified addiction counsellor and a registered psychotherapist, I work with people whose reactive habitual patterns of the mind and heart, having gained addictive power, prevent them from living meaningfully and joyfully. Using a variety of psychological and philosophical approaches, rooted in the traditions of humanistic, experiential and existential therapies, my main aim is to assist individuals in moving toward more authentic and fulfilling living. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DS71GH6F2c&t=3000s
June 17, 2020 The poets knew the frightening and, at the same time, only liberating truth: "Let me not squander the hour of my pain." (Rainer Maria Rilke) "The best way out is always through." (Robert Frost)
June 18, 2020 In meditation, in life: Letting go and beginning again, that's all.
October 10, 2020 The closer we are getting to the end of life, the more intense and insistent our emotional return to the beginnings becomes.
October 18, 2020 It's better to be thankful for things we have than resentful about things we don't have.
October 26, 2020 Only in facing life's essential brokenness with courage, curiosity and compassion,its preciousness can shine through.
10,000 Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. — Wumen Huikai (1183-1260)
December 21, 2020 "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", talks on meditation practice by Suzuki-roshi compiled in a book form, is 50 years young this year. When it was published in 1970, probably no one predicted that its central idea of cultivating an open, fresh, and receptive mind would influence not only individuals interested in Zen Buddhism but also many therapists and others looking for ways to enhance skillful relating to life. The quote is worth repeating here: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." The closer I get to the qualities of the beginner's mind, the better my relationships in life and work tend to be.
Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. — Suzuki-roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
January 12, 2021
Is there anything else to deeply care about?
“Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work —
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow."
— Allen Ginsberg, from Memory Gardens, Oct. 1969
February 16, 2021 Reading and gardening — the two central passions, never forgotten but intermittently neglected under the pressures of life and work — are reasserting themselves with increasing insistence in my mind.
February 17, 2021 The two simultaneous developmental tasks in life are fitting in and standing out, or getting along and getting ahead. True human growth happens in the moments in between.
For the beautiful is right at the
margin
of the terrifying, which we can only just endure.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
One morning in April …
April 27, 2021 For me, it's not crucial how or even why we change, which can be a true miracle when it happens, but what matters is to pivot courageously toward what matters and shift from languishing to flourishing in life.
April 29, 2021 I saw a cardinal, again: a touch of red, fleeting bliss, a blessing unexpected!
July 17, 2021 Just this: Moving through...
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin
Sep. 04, 2021
Life, this continual unfolding of mystery, the crazy dance of Eros and Thanatos, has no mercy, has no rules...
Was it all a dream—
I mean those old bygone days—
were they what they seemed?
All night long I lie awake
listening to autumn rain.
— Ryokan (1758-1831)
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. — Shakespeare
Whatever it is, I cannot understand it, although gratitude stubbornly overcomes me until I'm reduced to tears. — Saigyo (1118-1190)
But most of all: No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. — Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Hold Out Your Hand Let’s forget the world for a while fall back and back into the hush and holy of now are you listening? This breath invites you to write the first word of your new story your new story begins with this: You matter. You are needed—empty and naked willing to say yes and yes and yes. Do you see the sun shines, day after day whether you have faith or not the sparrows continue to sing their song even when you forget to sing yours stop asking: Am I good enough? Ask only: Am I showing up with love? Life is not a straight line it’s a downpour of gifts, please— hold out your hand - Julia Fehrenbacher
November 16, 2022 In his recently published masterpiece of a book, at its very end, Gabor Mate calls for a radical individual, cultural, and social transformation: "It all starts with waking up: waking up to what is real and authentic in and around us and what isn’t; waking up to who we are and who we’re not; waking up to what our bodies are expressing and what our minds are suppressing; waking up to our wounds and our gifts; waking up to what we have believed and what we actually value; waking up to what we will no longer tolerate and what we can now accept; waking up to the myths that bind us and the interconnections that define us; waking up to the past as it has been, the present as it is, and the future as it may yet be; waking up, most especially, to the gap between what our essence calls for and what “normal” has demanded of us. We are blessed with a momentous opportunity. Shedding toxic myths of disconnection from ourselves, from one another, and from the planet, we can bring what is normal and what is natural, bit by bit, closer together. It is a task for the ages: one that can redeem the past, inspire the present, and point to a brighter, healthier future. It is our most daunting challenge and greatest opportunity." — Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022
December 7, 2022 "The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities." — Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself, 1953
January 9, 2023 A great poet, Charles Simic (born Dušan Simić in Belgrade, Yugoslavia), has died. I would read his poems and essays when I occasionally came across them over the years, and about a month ago, I bought his latest (and the last now) collection, No Land in Sight, published in the previous year in New York. The one, haiku-like in simplicity and pregnancy with meaning, that I like in particular, and with which the collection ends, is this one: The Wind Has Died My little boat, Take care. There is no Land in sight — Charles Simic (No Land in Sight, 2022)
February 16, 2023 On one of the walks through my neighbourhood streets, where in less than an hour, one can encounter a couple of dozen small boxes called Little Free Library, with books offering themselves freely for taking and sharing, I've serendipitously found The Fifty-Minute Hour by Robert Lindner. In this "collection of true psychoanalytic tales," there is a story which has been famous since its first publishing in Harper's Magazine in 1954, titled The Jet-Propelled Couch. In the course of treating a psychotic patient who claims that he spends some of his time as a lord of a far-away planet, Lindner, a psychoanalyst, discovers to his surprise, something true for any authentic therapeutical encounter: a therapist sees himself in a client. Working with clients on their issues, many times I have thought: I could easily have been you under different circumstances, and then, expanding, I am you, and you are me. Here is how memorably Lindner expressed this discovery: "I know that my chair and the couch are separated only by a thin line. I know that it is, after all, but a happier combination of accidents that determines, finally, who shall lie on that couch, and who shall sit behind it."
May 27, 2023 "We have no reason to be suspicious of our world, because it is not hostile to us. If it holds terrors, they are our terrors, if it contains abysses then those abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And only if we organise our life according to that principle that tells us always to hold to the most difficult will what appears most alien to us become the most familiar and most trusted. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand forth amidst the beginnings of every people, the myths of dragons that, at the last moment, turn into princesses: perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who wait to find us beautiful and brave. Perhaps all that terrifies us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our help." — Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter VIII, Aug. 12, 1904 (Translated by A. S. Kline © 2021)
June 04, 2023 "The tragedy for too many of us is not that our lives are too short, but that we take so long before we start to live them. The source of wisdom we discover from the practice of mindfulness, if we allow it, will eventually show us the immense and tragic suffering that stems from unawareness. It will allow us to see, to dwell in, and treasure the deep peace that lies at the heart of each moment if we have the courage to cultivate awareness, here and now. It will allow us to experience being fully alive - here and now, while we have the chance." — Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, 2007
June 25, 2023 "You are not on your way anywhere and you don't have any home to go to when you finish, so you keep going." — Paul Bowles, in Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open, a documentary film by David Young, 2012)
June 29, 2023 "Brother! I’m not despondent and I haven’t lost heart. Life is everywhere, life is in us ourselves, not outside. There will be people by my side, and to be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task. I have come to recognize that. The idea has entered my flesh and blood... The head that created, lived the higher life of art, that recognized and grew accustomed to the higher demands of the spirit, that head has already been cut from my shoulders... But there remain in me a heart and the same flesh and blood that can also love, and suffer, and pity, and remember, and that’s life, too!" — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (From the letter to his brother Mikhail, 1849)
Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov, 1871
August 1, 2023 Astronomy Lesson The silent laughter Of the stars In the night sky Tells us all We need to know The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Time--that murderer No one has caught yet — Charles Simic (Come Closer and Listen, 2019)
Don River, Toronto, near Pottery Road
August 7, 2023 When I feel lost, down and under, when the state of melancholia penetrates to the core, this little poem by Dobriša Cesarić offers some solace, a touch of mercy: Slap Teče i teče, teče jedan slap; Što u njem znači moja mala kap? Gle, jedna duga u vodi se stvara, I sja i dršće u hiljadu šara. Taj san u slapu da bi mogo sjati, I moja kaplja pomaže ga tkati. Waterfall It flows and flows, flows the waterfall Does my little drop make any difference at all? Look, a rainbow appears in it And in a thousand colours it appears shivering and lit! That dream lighted up in the waterfall And my drop helped to weave it all. (translated by Toni Šimundža)
September 7, 2023 Charles Gayle has died. The scream of his tenor saxophone will continue to remind us of the possibility of peace ultimately found in the heart of freedom.
Drawing by Bicskei Zoltan (modified by T.P.)
The World Is a Beautiful Place
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1955
