The Innocents

After spending ten years on death row, Ronald Keith Williamson was finally exonerated. Taryn Simmons, a noted photographer profiling exonerees for a book she planned to publish, took pictures of Ron and included a summary of his case. When asked to write or say a few final words to accompany his photograph, Ron said:


"I hope I go to neither heaven nor hell. I wish that at the time of my death that I could go to sleep and never wake up and never have a bad dream. Eternal rest, like you've seen on some tombstones, that's what I hope for. Because I don't want to go through the Judgement. I don't want anybody judging me again. I asked myself what was the reason of my birth when I was on death row, if I was going to have to go through all that, what was even the reason for my birth? I almost cursed my mother and dad - it was so bad - for putting me on this earth. If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't be born."


- from The Innocents (Umbrage, 2003)

Misery - To Whom Shall I tell My Grief

Image by Brent Nelson via Flickr

...Again he is alone and again there is silence for him. . . . The misery which has been for a brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery. . . . His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight. . . .
-- Anton Chekhov

On Persistence

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

-- Calvin Coolidge

All reverses are reversed in the face of God's Bounty.
-- The Adventures of Amir Hamza

I Know Not Why I Am So Sad

Image by Nellie Vin via Flickr

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, came by it,
What stuff it is made of, wherefore it is born.
I am to learn;
And such a want wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.
Shakespeare -- The Merchant of Venice

Ever felt like Antonio in "The Merchant of Venice"? Troubled by a constant, undeniable, inexplicable sadness which hangs like a dense cloud of mist?

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining?

"If the bomb that drops on you,
Gets your friends and neighbours too,
There'll be no one left behind to grieve.
And we will all go together when we go,
What a comforting fact that is to know.
All suffused with an incandescent glow,
We will all fry together when we fry."
-- Tom Lehrer

Words of the Harvard Mathematician back in 1959 once again relevant today?

Respect

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people
disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
-- The Book of Tao

Being and Non-Being

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
-- The Book of Tao

Success is as Dangerous as Failure.

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as
failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the
ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.
-- The Book Of Tao

‘What do you live for?’

'This life. We’ve got to bust it completely, or shrivel inside it, as in a tight skin. For it won’t expand any more.’
There was a queer little smile in Gerald’s eyes, a look of amusement, calm and curious.
’And how do you propose to begin? I suppose you mean, reform the whole order of society?’ he asked.
Birkin had a slight, tense frown between the brows. He too was impatient of the conversation.
’I don’t propose at all,’ he replied. ‘When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.’
The little smile began to die out of Gerald’s eyes, and he said, looking with a cool stare at Birkin:
’So you really think things are very bad?’
’Completely bad.’
The smile appeared again.
’In what way?’
’Every way,’ said Birkin. ‘We are such dreary liars. Our one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and the Sunday newspapers. It is very dreary.’
Gerald took a little time to re-adjust himself after this tirade.
'Would you have us live without houses—return to nature?’ he asked.
’I would have nothing at all. People only do what they want to do—and what they are capable of doing. If they were capable of anything else, there would be something else.’
Again Gerald pondered. He was not going to take offence at Birkin.
’Don’t you think the collier’s PIANOFORTE, as you call it, is a symbol for something very real, a real desire for something higher, in the collier’s life?’
’Higher!’ cried Birkin. ‘Yes. Amazing heights of upright grandeur. It makes him so much higher in his neighbouring collier’s eyes. He sees himself reflected in the neighbouring opinion, like in a Brocken mist, several feet taller on the strength of the pianoforte, and he is satisfied. He lives for the sake of that Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself in the human opinion. You do the same. If you are of high importance to humanity you are of high importance to yourself. That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five thousand times more important than if you cooked only your own dinner.’
’I suppose I am,’ laughed Gerald.
’Can’t you see,’ said Birkin, ‘that to help my neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. ‘I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat’—and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.’
’You’ve got to start with material things,’ said Gerald.
Which statement Birkin ignored.
’And we’ve got to live for SOMETHING, we’re not just cattle that can graze and have done with it,’ said Gerald.
’Tell me,’ said Birkin. ‘What do you live for?’
Gerald’s face went baffled.
’What do I live for?’ he repeated. ‘I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.’
’And what’s your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we’ve got all the coal we want, and all the plush furniture, and pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and eaten, and we’re all warm and our bellies are filled and we’re listening to the young lady performing on the pianoforte—what then? What then, when you’ve made a real fair start with your material things?’
-- Women in Love
-- D. H. Lawrence

"It is the mind and that is death"

’But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn’t they better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.’
They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she resumed, ‘Hadn’t they better be anything than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings—so thrown back—so turned back on themselves—incapable—’ Hermione clenched her fist like one in a trance—'of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never carried away.’
Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody—’never carried away, out of themselves, always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn’t ANYTHING better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, than this, this NOTHINGNESS—’
’But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and self-conscious?’ he asked irritably.
She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.
’Yes,’ she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague weariness. It irritated him bitterly. ‘It is the mind,’ she said, ‘and that is death.’ She raised her eyes slowly to him: ‘Isn’t the mind—’ she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, ‘isn’t it our death?
Doesn’t it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to live?’
-- Women in Love
-- D. H. Lawrence