Many people remember that when
in 1977 the Voyager spacecraft was
launched, opinions were canvassed as to what artifacts would be most appropriate to leave in outer space as a signal of man's cultural achievements on earth. The American astronomer Carl Sagan proposed that if we are to convey something of what humans are about then music has to be a part of it.
To Sagan's request for suggestions, the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas answered, I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
After a pause, he added, But that would be boasting.
--John Eliot Gardiner Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
Whenever life
gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
and things seem hard or tough,
and people are stupid,
obnoxious or daft,
and you feel that
you've had quite enough,
just remember that you're standing
on a planet that's evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
in the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side.
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
but out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
we go around every two hundred million years.
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
in this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whiz;
as fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
twelve million miles a minute
and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth;
and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
because there's bugger all down here on Earth.
We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
--Rachel Carson Silent Spring
Frank Sinatra: Let's Face the Music and Dance **
Diana Krall: **
there may be trouble ahead
but while there's moonlight
and music and love and romance
let's face the music and dance
before the fiddlers have fled
before they ask us to pay the bill
and while we still have the chance
let's face the music and dance
soon, we'll be without the moon
humming a different tune and then
there may be teardrops to shed
so while there's moonlight
and music and love and romance
let's face the music and dance **
--irving berlin
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
--Jack Gilbert Failing and Flying
The cactus of the high desert is a small grubby, obscure and humble vegetable associated with cattle dung and overgrazing, interesting only when you tangle with it the wrong way. Yet from this nest of thorns, this snare of hooks and fiery spines, is born once each year a splendid flower. It is unpluckable
and except to an insect almost unapproachable, yet soft, lovely, sweet, desirable, exemplifying
better than the rose among thorns the unity of opposites.
--Edward Abbey
A daffodil bulb
will divide and
redivide endlessly.
That's why,
like the peony,
it is one of
the few flowers
you can find around
abandoned farmhouses,
still blooming and
increasing in numbers
fifty years
after the farmer
and his wife
have moved to heaven,
or the other place,
Boca Raton.
If you dig up a clump
when no one is nearby
and there is no danger
of being shot,
you'll find that
there are scores
of little bulbs
in each clump,
the progeny of
a dozen or so
planted by
the farmer's wife
in 1942.
If you take these home,
separate them,
and plant them
in your own yard,
within a couple of years,
you'll have
a hundred daffodils
for the mere price
of a trespassing fine
or imprisonment or both.
I had this adventure once,
and I consider it
one of the great
cheap thrills
of my gardening career.
I am not advocating trespassing,
especially on my property,
but there is
no law against having
a shovel in the trunk of your car.
--Cassandra Danz Mrs. Greenthumbs
ONE OF THUMPER'S BUDDIES
HORSERADISH
KENTUCKY WONDER BEANS AND JAUNE FLAMME TOMATOES
LARGE RED CHERRY AND SUN GOLD TOMATOES
RED GRAPE AND YELLOW PEAR TOMATOES
MAPLE WITH LUPINES
ROSEMARY, DELPHINIUM, AND LILAC
BACKYARD ROSES
there is nothing
in my head today
nothing awful there
to ponder or confuse me
go ahead in what
you have to say
and I will listen
as I listen to the news
I know the whole truth
there is horrible
it's better if you
take a little at a time
too much and
you are not portable
not enough and you'll be
making happy rhymes
you might like the gypsy life
you judge your progress by the phases of the moon
get your compass and your sharpest knife
'cause people love you when they know you're leaving soon
So that’s how
we live our lives.
No matter how deep
and fatal the loss,
no matter how important
the thing that's
stolen from us -
that's snatched
right out of our hands -
even if we are
left completely changed,
with only the outer layer
of skin from before,
we continue to play out
our lives this way,
in silence.
We draw ever nearer
to the end of our
allotted span of time,
bidding it farewell
as it trails off behind.
Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday.
Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness...
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost.
Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can
disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as
we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads
attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to
bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them
closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives
are fleeting.
--Haruki Murakami
Led Zeppelin: Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
CHEYAVA FALLS
TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN HIKER
ISIS TEMPLE FROM UTAH FLATS
CLEAR CREEK CANYON
POIN'DEXTER FROM HANCE RAPID
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
---Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
--Job 5:7
To the One doing great and unsearchable things,
Wonderful things without number.
He gives rain to the earth
And sends waters upon the fields.
He raises the lowly up high,
And he raises up the dejected one to salvation.
He frustrates the schemes of the crafty,
So that the work of their hands does not succeed.
He catches the wise in their own cunning,
So that the plans of the shrewd are thwarted.
--Job 5:9-13
But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof;
neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith, It is not in me:
and the sea saith, It is not with me.
It cannot be gotten for gold,
neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir,
with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it:
and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls:
for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
--Job 28:12–18
Bob Dylan: Highway 61
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hast laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
--Job 38:1-7
