Conditioned to ecstasy...

Photo by Eileen Beniest

"Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with Author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alike, but in aspiring to praise creation. The song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. The outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity."  - Henry Miller (The Time of the Assassins: a Study of Rimbaud)

Changing Shape

 Photo by Eileen Beniest

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, "This I am today; that I will be tomorrow." ~Louis L'Amour

Thought Flash

I had a ‘thought flash’ the other day which got me thinking about my youth and possible influences I was exposed to without really searching them out. Age 13 up to age 16 seems, to me, to be a time when young people start making their own choices about the music they listen to, the books they read and how they perceive art. My awareness years were between 1966 and 1969. The three people that caught my attention during this period were Bob Dylan, Gunter Grass and Andy Warhol. One wonders whether the impressions these three made upon me at that young age have remained intact throughout the years till this present day. A question that will probably be left unanswered because as we mature and begin to mix socially, we are constantly being swayed, and sometimes not, by others’ thoughts, beliefs and opinions. As we grow physically, mentally and spiritually and become one with our own thinking self we can only look back to those first days when we experimented with the influences of musicians, artists, writers and poets. Some of us will make use of what we learned from them, good or bad, and some of us won’t.

And as for life itself?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind…
-Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

"Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about will come true. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside." - Bob Dylan (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966)

“May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young.”- Bob Dylan


"I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a "60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows." - Bob Dylan (Chronicles: Volume One)

Gunter Grass

Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always -- one had only to dig -- be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him. -Gunter Grass (The Rat)

Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn't God in His Heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coat-hanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe, can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts. - Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum)

What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts ... chairs, bones, and sunsets too. What had long been forgotten rose to memory, floating on its back or stomach, with the help of the Vistula. - Gunter Grass (Dog Years)

Andy Warhol

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. - Andy Warhol


When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them. - Andy Warhol

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

Hail to the fool in me...

"I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool." — Theodore Isaac Rubin