[Video: “Turn Around,” a TV commercial from sometime in the 1960s promoting Kodak film and cameras. The singer, apparently: either Harry Belafonte — who’s also credited as a possible co-songwriter, with Malvina Reynolds and Alan Greene — or Ed Ames; I’m sure somebody knows the truth (see, e.g., this book)!]
From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
One day a young Buddhist, on his journey home, came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, “Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?” The teacher ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river, and yells back, “My son, you are on the other side.”
([source: here, among many others])
…and:
The Options
When you die
here are the options:
everything or oblivionA centre of light and around it
all you love, those dead
and those abiding still
and each holding
an object of endearment
you lost long ago
before you came to
know and be simultaneously
at last
at rest
beyond wordsOr else your cells
stop their chemical
talk, the neurons say no
and their warmth leaves you
not even the absence of black—
nothing of earth’s up, round, biomass span
just the nonexistence
you tried to conjure once
by closing your eyes and
sleeping, except that dreams
fired their figments
across space at you
and your muscles strainingWhile we live
we pick one of these options
to live by, and neither is understood
the way the robin in the tree is
who speaks to us of March lust,
the way water and clouds are
which tell us to walk out
into the day, how to step
on grass and mud and feel the pull
upward and then sag an hour later
down, we with our little time
and our ideas and our blood.
(David Zieroth [source])
…and:
Picasso is riding on a train and someone sits down next to him.
Recognizing who he is, the person asks, “Why don’t you paint people the way they really are?”
Picasso asks, “What do you mean by the way they really are?”
The man eagerly pulls out his wallet and shows Picasso a picture of his wife and says, “This is my wife.”
Picasso responds, “She looks rather small and flat, don’t you think?”
(Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei [source: unknown for now, but the same story in different words is here])
From elsewhere:
“You play pool?” [congressman Boyette] asked.
[Galaxy, his paid escort, said,] “I could kick your ass any night, Spanky.”
“Well, listen to this. The woke police are trying to get all the eight balls changed from black to rainbow-colored!”
Galaxy rolled her eyes. “Who said that?”
“Fox.”
“Who on Fox?”
“Judge Jeanine,” said Boyette.
Galaxy let out a hoot. “I’m going to pretend you know that’s total bullshit.”
“No, it’s not. She says they’ve got Washington lobbyists putting pressure on all the billiard companies.”
Galaxy said, “You find more dumb ways to kill a vibe than any guy I’ve ever been with.”
(Carl Hiaasen [source])
…and:
Song for Autumn
Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look forthe birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And at evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
(Mary Oliver [source])
…and:
Once upon a time, all the professors disappeared, swallowed and digested by a new system. All the centers of learning closed because they were outmoded, and their sites were converted into living quarters swarming with wise, well-organized people who were incapable of creating anything new.
Knowledge was an item that could be bought and sold. A device called the IWM 1000 had been invented. It was the ultimate invention: it brought an entire era to an end. The IWM 1000 was a very small machine, the size of an old scholarly briefcase. It was very easy to use-lightweight and affordable to any person interested in knowing anything. The IWM 1000 contained all human knowledge and all the facts of all the libraries of the ancient and modern world…
With the IWM 1000, you could write any type of literature, compose music, and even paint pictures. Creative works were disappearing because anybody, with time and sufficient patience, could make any work similar to and even superior to one made by artists of the past without having to exert the brain or feel anything strange or abnormal.
Lovers would make the machines conjugate all the tenses of the verb to love, and they would listen to romantic songs. In offices and administrative buildings tape-recorded orders were given, and the IWM 1000 would complete the details of the work. Many people got in the habit of talking only to their own machines; therefore, nobody contradicted them because they knew how the machine was going to respond, or because they believed that rivalry could not exist between a machine and a human being. A machine could not accuse anyone of ignorance: they could ask anything.
(Alicia Yáñez Cossío [source: “The IWM 1000,” from 1975!])
…and:
My Autumn Leaves
I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed.
I watch the woods for deer who never come.
I know the hes and shes in autumn
rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen
apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work
so I may let the crows in corn believe
it’s me their caws are meant to warn,
and snakes who turn in warm and secret cavesthey know me too. They know the boy
who lives inside me still won’t go away.
The deer are ghosts who slip between the light
through trees, so you may only hear the snap
of branches in the thicket beyond hope.
I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.
(Bruce Weigl [source])
