Chapter 88 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXXXVIII

Peel off that skin you are so enraptured with,
And see if your desire is still kindled
By the underlying reality.

* * * *
One wonders what it will take
For the worshipers of Mammon
To wake up to the harsh reality
Of what they have created.

* * * *
Women can be very expensive.
Is it love or lust which motivates you?

* * * *
Dress in whatever costume you will,
You are ever forever the same you.

* * * *
Some group is always going to be
On the top of the swarming heap,
And they are the law of the land.
The little people can only hope
Their ax is merciful and quick,
And that revolutions do not
Amplify their painful fate.

* * * *
Rich man, poor man, both die.
As to who had the better life,
That is left to the personal taste
Of the mortal observers remaining.

* * * *
Some need castles and others only long
For a pleasant siesta on a park bench,
Or a bottle of liquor and a cigarette
Shared with a passing comrade.
Pleasure is a relative thing.

* * * *
Peel off any exterior and attraction dissolves.
What difference, really, between a kingʼs garden
And a sordid, maggot-ridden garbage heap?
Anesthetics is not a reliable gauge of truth.

* * * *
If you were so accustomed to seeing them,
If you werenʼt so genetically possessed,
Your fellow human beings might be
As ugly as any alien or insect.

* * * *
Truth is beauty, but is beauty truth?

* * * *
Piss will find one mark or another.

* * * *
What is beautiful and what is ugly?
Need one ask any other the answer?

* * * *
Mother Nature yield to none by her timeline.

* * * *
You forgive and forget for peace of mind.
Resentment creates its own purgatory.

* * * *
How lucky the ignorant
Not to contemplate deeply.
How blessed are those that do.

* * * *
Outer law is required for those who have no inner one.

* * * *
What do you really know of the mind
Of Jesus or Siddhartha or anyone else?

* * * *
All these people trying so hard to be beautiful.

* * * *
What a bumbling idiot you are at times.
What a genius you are in others.
But most often you are simply
Playing the middle path.

* * * *
In competition someone has to lose.
How well the winner wins tells the tale

* * * *
The wonders of technology are not always wonderful.

* * * *
Do you ever feel so lonely as when
You are in the midst of a crowd?

* * * *
Welcome to my abode said the fly to the spider.

* * * *
The wind has no form.
You do, yet you are the same.
Paradox and irony rule.

* * * *
The truly blind are limited by what is seen.

* * * *
So many things you donʼt need to do anymore.

* * * *
Feel the wind drawing through the nostrils
Deep into the lungs, merging into the blood,
Pumping through the heart toward the mind.
Taste the wind in each and every thought.
Thou art That I Am.

* * * *
Your passion and your ambition mold your dream.

* * * *
What kind of life is it to always be so concerned
About your nails and the color of your hair?

* * * *
Interesting how some must be so cruel to others.

* * * *
A salute to those about to die.

* * * *
We are all cast into our caste.

* * * *
To dead relatives, lovers, friends or opponents,
Say, “Thank you for the reflection.”
Bon voyage.

* * * *
Everything is dust in the wind.
Everything is wind in the dust.
Dust is the wind is everything.

* * * *
Who is a professional?
Who is an expert?
Who is an authority?
Who really knows anything?

* * * *
Lies, all lies.

* * * *
How much pain will your imagination endure?

* * * *
Promises, promises.

* * * *
You are That I Am
And no form can detain you for long.

* * * *
The weak cannot long survive a determined foe.

* * * *
What you detect you project.

* * * *
You wail of your own losses,
But what of your enemyʼs?

* * * *
How can you know the one but through the all.

* * * *
What is anyoneʼs life but a story to you,
As yours is to them.

* * * *
What are you but an instrument of genetic command?

* * * *
Stop looking for a point.
Discern the pointlessness of it all.

* * * *
Both and neither.
All and none.

* * * *
All day till infinityʼs done.

* * * *
What a wretched destiny
To be born in Oz
And never see Kansas.

* * * *
Donʼt mess with Mother Nature.
Oops, too late.

* * * *
If it could be proven, there would be no paradox.
If there was no paradox, the allure of mystery would be lost.
Without the mystery everything would be right at home.

* * * *
If growing up means being a zombie cart-pusher, forget it Wendy.

* * * *
Unless someone wants to experience them,
Keep your fantasies to yourself.

* * * *
Such a quiet state of indifference sets in.

* * * *
Concepts are just as idolatrous as any other form.

* * * *
What godness gives, godness gives free gratis.
What godness takes, godness takes without asking.
Prayers are the illusory, futile hope that there
Can be mercy in a merciless garden.

* * * *
You are at the end what you were at the beginning.
You are after the end what you were before the beginning.

* * * *
Old news, dude.

* * * *
How can masturbation ever drive anyone insane?
Orgasms are the release of physical tension,
More akin to a good bowel movement
Than admission into madness,
Lest it be seen divine.

* * * *
What makes you feel bad about anything you do?
Why did you do it if you know youʼd regret it?

* * * *
Oh, how the young play and play in that happy day.

* * * *
What a mess we are in.

* * * *
Who wants it to continue but those
Who see no more than life can offer?

* * * *
What a primitive organism this body is.

* * * *
Same tired old song played
Again and again and again.

* * * *
On three, ready, switch.

* * * *
Ainʼt no expert but you knows enough to catch the drift.

* * * *
Would we be so interested in sex if it were not so pleasurable?

* * * *
If you want more you are still touched by Maya.

* * * *
We wander from crises to crisis,
From pleasure to pleasure,
From agony to agony,
From all things, situations, places,
Cycles ever cycling.

* * * *
Your flexibility urges you on.

* * * *
Surely sheʼs flawless.
Haw, haw, good joke.

* * * *
So many waifs, so may wraiths.

* * * *
Oops! Too early, too late.
Shuckey-darn, another party missed.

* * * *
Donʼt allow yourself
To be indoctrinated or brainwashed
By any group dynamic, no matter how large or small.

* * * *
Organized religions teach you to fear
The advent of those who are without idolatry,
Those who refuse to sustain superstitious mythologies,
Those who decline to observe the many scams
That have been so carefully cultivated.

* * * *
The same indivisible intelligence occupies all,
But is acted out according to the patterns
Of existence into which it weaves.

* * * *
Practice dying occasionally.
Kind of like you would a fire drill.

* * * *
The intent here is to rip away all romantic notion
And discern the clearest view of reality imaginable.

* * * *
Let that thought drift into oblivion.

* * * *
Upstream or downstream
Its all the same stream
In the same dream.

* * * *
Mmmmm ... Sure smells like cookies.

* * * *
You know how time is between friends.

* * * *
A mind divided against its Self
Will only fragment further and further.

* * * *
Transcend or perish,
Or is it transcend and perish,
Or is it transcend and never perish?
Depends who’s talking and what they want.

* * * *
Old mythologies, traditions and all they espouse,
As true as they may have seemed in their heyday,
Are losing out to the accelerated passing of time.

* * * *
Talk is just air blowing through the larnyx.

* * * *
Will today bring some memorable event,
Or will it join the anonymity of so many others?
Life is as long as it is short.

* * * *
For all we pretend to know, we know so little.
Rejoice in your ignorance.

* * * *
Thereʼs certainly logic in the argument
That if the pieʼs already nearly consumed,
Why not do whatever it takes to get a piece?

* * * *
The memory of your perceived life,
Whatever you embrace as knowledge or truth,
Is likely fairly distinct from how anyone else sees theirs.

* * * *
Have many friends and acquaintances
Who donʼt necessarily agree with you.

* * * *
Let us not confuse lust with love,
Nor love with lust.

* * * *
How frustrating time can be
If you expect a quixotic passing.

* * * *
In what now will you experience a heaven
Any more pure than the one available right now?

* * * *
The ultimate growth is to let go of all your vain notions.

* * * *
How inevitable that you would pen all these thoughts.
That is just the way this life has come to pass.
Just donʼt be deluded that anything
Will ever come of it.

* * * *
How could anyone conceive the media
Would ever consume the hand that feeds it,
Or an educational system ever deeply question
The assumptions founding its mythological motive,
Or a government not become such an entity unto itself
That it no longer protected the hive from which it birthed.

* * * *
Arenʼt all times interesting?

* * * *
Put simply, the devil in each of us
Idolizes its Self separate from godness.
The coyote, the trickster, the thief, the prankster,
Analogy after analogy across timeʼs play,
Describe the same truth for all.

* * * *
So many ways to pay for a life.

* * * *
As delightfully enchantingly terrifyingly horrifying as it may be,
All plays are as ephemeral as the light from which they are born.

* * * *
You want sound-bytes.
Well, hereʼs a few for ya.

* * * *
The only glory in war or anything else
Is just more of that same old self-absorbed,
Fabricated center born of imagination.

* * * *
Love and hate are only different ends
Of the same worm a-turning.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved