2
" Suddenly, I was stopped by a quiet song . .Somebody stood, swaying slowly on the road,In the darkest shadow by a puddle,And low above it a small tree grew . .It might’ve been a wild cherry tree . .He kept singing, watching the puddle fill . .I dragged the pine through the water,And with my other hand steadied my sack,Where a bottle of red vino dangled . .He didn’t move, but kept on singing . .Should I have stopped thereAnd joined his singing? . .Had he foundThe one happy tree? . .No one knows where it grows—Or what it looks like . .And who is allowed to recognize it? . .I never stood under it,Even to wait for rain to passOr watch between the dropsThe silent froth appear . .Swaying, he kept on singing . .Otherwise, he would have fallenAnd the rain stopped . .He danced his own rainUnder that tree . .I can’t do such things . .Perhaps it was a wolf? . . "
3
" It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions...
The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor. "
― Mark Twain
9
" ...one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten. "
― Tao Lin , Bed: Stories
13
" Last-Minute Message For a Time CapsuleI have to tell you this, whoever you are:that on one summer morning here, the oceanpounded in on tumbledown breakers,a south wind, bustling along the shore,whipped the froth into little rainbows,and a reckless gull swept down the beachas if to fly were everything it needed.I thought of your hovering saucers,looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,so it wouldn't be lost forever - -that once upon a time we hadmeadows here, and astonishing things,swans and frogs and luna mothsand blue skies that could stagger your heart.We could have had them still,and welcomed you to earth, butwe also had the righteous oneswho worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.When you go home to your shining galaxy,say that what you learnedfrom this dead and barren place isto beware the righteous ones. "
14
" Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of ‘the debt trap’ as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker’s interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing ‘bail-outs’ to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury–Wall Street–IMF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, ‘over fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center’. ‘What a peculiar world’, sighs Stiglitz, ‘in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest. "
― David Harvey , A Brief History of Neoliberalism
15
" It takes me a while to drag him out, he's got himself stuck to the axle, and by the time I am done and stand over the body something strange has started to happen. The alley's filled with a half-dozen cats, runty little things with their ribs showing and their tails worn high like they're pointing to the moon. I stand there, breathing froth into the snowflakes and watch them gather round me, soft kitty paws, and now and then a patrol car rolls past in the distance. The cats are circling us, tails cocked at the moon, their muzzles bloodied by the tail lights' glow. They are vicious bastards, let me tell you: frost on their whiskers, eyes like cut glass, a half-dozen pairs, on me and the dead man. And then they start licking. Licking at the snow I mean, the blood in the snow, they lap it up like mother's milk. And all the while from their throats, from their whole bodies, there issues this sound, you hear it with your skin, it's like an engine running under your palm. That's when I realize they are purring, man, purring as they feed on the midget's death. "
― Dan Vyleta , Pavel & I
18
" The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you. "
― Mary Oliver , A Thousand Mornings: Poems
