In vires et in sanguinem

*

3. Wretched are the poor in spirit, for under the earth they will be as they are on earth. 

4. Wretched is he who weeps, for he has the miserable habit of weeping.

5. Lucky are those who know that suffering is not a crown of heavenly bliss.

6. It is not enough to be last in order sometimes to be first.

7. Happy is he who does not insist on being right, for no one is or everyone is.

8. Happy is he who forgives others and who forgives himself.

9. Blessed are the meek, for they do not agree to disagree.

10. Blessed are those who do not hunger for justice, for they know that our fate, for better or worse, is the work of chance, which is past understanding.

11. Blessed are the merciful, for their happiness is in the act of mercy and not in the hope of reward.

12. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.

13. Blessed are those who suffer persecution for a just cause, for justice matters more to them than their personal destiny.

14. No one is the salt of the earth; and no one, at some moment in their life, is not.

15. Let the light of one lamp be lit, even though no man see it. God will see it.

16. There is no commandment that cannot be broken, including the ones I give and those the prophets spoke.

17. He who kills for a just cause, or for a cause he believes just, is not guilty.

18. The acts of men are worthy of neither fire nor heaven.

19. Do not hate your enemy, for if you do, you are in some way his slave. Your hate will never be greater than your peace.

20. If your right hand should offend you, forgive it; you are your body and you are your soul and it is hard if not impossible to fix the boundary between them…

24. Do not make too much of the cult of truth; there is no man who at the end of a day has not lied, rightly, numerous times.

25. Do not swear, because every oath is bombast.

26. Resist evil, but without shock and without anger. Whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him, as long as you are not moved by fear.

27. I do not speak of revenge nor of forgiveness; oblivion is the only revenge and the only forgiveness.

28. To do your enemy a good turn can be the work of justice and is not difficult; to love him, a job for angels and not men.

29. To do good for your enemy is the best way to gratify your vanity.

30. Do not accumulate gold on earth, for gold is the father of idleness, and it, of sadness and boredom.

31. Believe that others are just or will be, and if it proves untrue, it is not your fault.

32. God is more generous than men and will measure them by a different standard.

33. Give what is holy to dogs, cast your pearls before swine; the important thing is to give.

34. Seek for the pleasure of seeking, not of finding…

39. The door, not the man, is the one that chooses.

40. Do not judge the tree by its fruits nor the man by his works; they may be worse or better.

41. Nothing is built on stone, everything on sand, but our duty is to build as if sand were stone…

47. Happy are the poor without bitterness and the rich without pride.

48. Happy are the brave, who accept applause or defeat in the same spirit.

49. Happy are those who hold in memory words of Virgil or Christ, for these will brighten their days.

50. Happy are the loved and the lovers and those who can do without love.

51. Happy are the happy.

- Borges, Fragments of an Apocryphal Gospel.

*

Like the fur of a chinchilla. Like the cleanest tooth. Yes, the fishes say, this is what it feels like. People always ask the fishes, ‘What does the water feel like to you?’ and the fishes are always happy to oblige. Like feathers are to other feathers, they say. Like powder touching ash. We smile and nod. When the fishes tell us these things, we begin to understand. We begin to think we know what the water feels like to the fishes. But it’s not always like fur and ash and the cleanest tooth. At night, they say, the water can be different. At night, when it’s very cold, it can be like the tongue of a cat. At night, when it’s very very cold, it’s like cracked glass. Or honey. Or forgiveness, they say, ha ha. When the fishes answer these questions - which they are happy to do - they also ask why. They are curious things, fish are, and thus they ask, ‘Why? Why do you want to know what the water feels like to the fishes?’ And we are never quite sure. The fishes press further. ‘Do you breathe air?’ they ask. The answer is yes. Well then, they say, ‘What does the air feel like to you?’ And we do not know. We think of air and we think of wind, but that’s another thing. Wind is air in action, air on the move, and the fishes know this. Well then, they ask again, ‘What does the air feel like?’ And we have to think about this. Air feels like air, we say, and the fishes laugh mirthlessly. ‘Think!’ they say. ‘Think,’ they say, now gentler. And we think and we guess that air feels like hair, thousands of hairs, swaying ever so slightly in breezes microscopic. The fishes laugh again. ‘Do better, think harder,’ they say, encouraging us. It feels like language, we say, and they are impressed. ‘Keep going,’ they say. It feels like blood, we say, and they say, ‘No, no, now you’re getting colder.’ The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like being pushed and pulled and yanked, punched and slapped and misunderstood and loved, we say, and the fishes sigh and touch our forearm sympathetically.

- Eggers, What The Water Feels Like To The Fishes.

*

And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered.

- Salter, Light Years

*

Life is composed of certain basic elements, he says. Of course, there are a lot of impurities, that’s what’s misleading. What I’m saying may sound mystical, but in everybody, Ame, in all of us, there’s the desire to find those elements somehow, to discover them, you know? Sometimes I think they’re the same for all of us, but maybe they’re not. I mean, we look at the Greeks and say, ah, they built this civilization, this whole brilliant world, out of certain simple things. Why can’t we? And if not a civilization, why can’t each of us, properly directed, build a life, I mean a happy life? Believe me, the elements exist. When you enter certain rooms, when you look at certain faces, suddenly you realize you’re in the presence of them. Do you know what I mean? Of course I do, she says. If you could achieve that, you’d have everything. And without it you have… he shrugs, a life. Like everybody’s. Just like everybody’s,” he says. I don’t want that. Neither do I.

- Salter, Light Years

*

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

Submissive to everything, open, listening

Try never get drunk outside yr own house

Be in love with yr life

Something that you feel will find its own form

Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Blow as deep as you want to blow

Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

The unspeakable visions of the individual

No time for poetry but exactly what is

Visionary tics shivering in the chest

In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

Like Proust be an old teahead of time

Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

Accept loss forever

Believe in the holy contour of life

Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

You’re a Genius all the time

Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

- Kerouac, List of Essentials