Hard Boiled Books

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it ~ William Styron,1958.

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Amazon.com: Collected Works Of Kahlil Gibran: 9789387779020: Kahlil Gibran: Books

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To all who govern, political, civil & religious:

Are you a governor looking down on those who you govern? Never stirring abroad except to rifle their pockets or to exploit them for your own profit?

If so, you are like tares, upon the threshing floor of the nation.

Are you a devoted servant who loves the people and is ever watchful over their welfare and zealous for their success?

If so, you are a blessing in the granaries of the land.

- Kahlil Gibran, Governor

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Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing - so longing for everything. To Talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone. And I do so long...to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying; but I can't, I'm restless, I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, "can't you satisfy my longing at last?" I believe that it is spring within me. I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally. I feel utterly confused. I don't know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I am longing

Anne Frank

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The King [Final Part]

And upon a day the elders and the youths came and surrounded the tower of the king and called for him. And he came down holding his crown with one hand and his sceptre with the other.

And he spoke unto and said, “Now, what would you do of me? Behold, I yield back to you that which you desired me to hold.”

But they cried. “Nay, nay, you are our rightful king. You have made clean the land of vipers, and you have brought the wolves to naught, and we welcome to sing our thanksgiving unto you. The crown is yours in majesty and the sceptre is yours in glory.”

Then the king said, “Not I, not I. You yourselves are king. When you deemed me weak and a mis-ruler, you yourselves were weak and misruling. And now the land fares well because it is in your will. I am but a thought in the mind of you all, and I exist not save in your actions. There is no such person as governor. Only the governed exist to govern themselves.”

And the king re-entered his tower with his crown and his sceptre. And the elders and the youths went their various ways and they were content.

And each and every one thought of himself as king with a crown in one hand and a sceptre in the other.

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The King [3]

Now, there came to his presence men and women and spoke unto him of a baron who mistreated them, and to whom they were but serfs.

And straightway the king brought the baron before him and said, “The life of one man is as weighty in the scales of God as the life of another. And because you know not how to weigh the lives of those who work in your fiends and your vineyards, you are banished, and you shall leave this kingdom forever.”

The following day came another company to the king and spoke of the cruelty of a countess beyond the hills, and how she brought them down to misery. Instantly the countess was brought to court, and the king sentenced her also to banishment, saying, “Those who till our fields and care for our vineyards are nobler than we who eat the bread they prepare and drink the wine of their wine-press. And because you know not this, you shall leave this land and be afar from this kingdom.”

Then came men and women who said that the bishop made them bring stones and hew the stones for the cathedral, yet he gave them naught, though they knew the bishop's coffer was full of gold and silver while they themselves were empty with hunger.

And the king called for the bishop, and when the bishop came the king spoke and said unto his, “That cross you wear upon your bosom should mean giving life unto life. But you have taken life from life and you have given none. Therefore you shall leave this kingdom never to return.”

Thus each day for a full moon men and women came to the king to tell him of the burdens laid upon them. And each and every day a full moon some oppressor was exiled from the land.

And the people of Sadik were amazed, and there was cheer in their heart.

to be continued...

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The King [2]

And the people marvelled, and stillness was upon them, for the king whom they had deemed the source of their discontent now yielding his crown and sceptre to them and became as one of them.

Then each and every one of them went his way, and the king walked with one man to a field.

But the Kingdom of Sadik fared not better without a king, and the mist of discontent was still upon the land. The people cried out in the market places saying that they have a king to rule them. And the elders and the youths said as if with one voice, “We will have our king.”

And they sought the king and found him toiling in the field, and they brought him to his seat, and yielded unto his crown and his sceptre. And they said, “Now rule us, with might and with justice.”

And he said, “I will indeed rule you with might, and may the gods of the heaven and the earth help me that I may also rule with justice.”

to be continued...

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The King [1]

The people of the kingdom of Sadik surrounded the palace of their king shouting in rebellion against him. And he came down the steps of the palace carrying his crown in one hand and his sceptre in the other. The majesty of his appearance silenced the multitude, and he stood before them and said, “My friends, who are no longer my subjects, here I yield my crown and sceptre unto you. I would be one of you. I am only one man, but as a man I would work together with you that our lot may be made better. There is no need for king. Let us go therefore to the fields and the vineyards and labor hand with hand. Only you must tell me to what field or vineyard I should go. All of you now are king.”

to be continued...

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Journalling

In the journal we wrote whatever we didn’t feel like saying aloud.  “This is really something!” Chris Kask wrote on the fourth day. “Every day is a string of surprises—some really unbelievable things have been happening. A guy lends us his Mustang, a guy lends us his Cadillac, everybody’s letting us sleep in the airports and really going out of their way to be nice. It doesn’t matter where we are or if we ever get to Oshkosh. Anywhere is okay.”  The kindness of people was something the kids couldn’t believe.

“Amazing!” Chris wrote in the journal that night. “We landed in a field and talked to farmers with Swedish and Irish accents—I didn’t know this existed in Pennsylvania. Everybody is so nice. Friendly. It’s really opened my eyes. A lot of my natural defences are broken down. Just don’t worry and trust things to work out. All my little plans for the future have really been shaken. I’m just not sure of anything anymore and that’s good because it teaches you to go with the flow of things.”

Next day we were landed back to Sussex Airport, New Jersey, and the Invitational Cross-Country Adventure was officially finished. Ten days, two thousand miles, thirty hours of flying.  “I’m sad,” Joe said. “It’s all over. It was great and now it’s all over.”  It wasn’t till late night that I opened the journal once more, and noticed that Chris Kask had made one last entry in it.  “I learned a tremendous amount,” he had written. “This has opened my mind to a whole bunch of things that exist outside of Hicksville, L.I. I’ve got a new perspective on things. I’m able to stand back from everything a little more and see it from a different viewpoint. Something I’ve felt on this is that it’s an important thing not only to me but to everyone along and to everyone we met, and I realized this while it was happening, which is a very heady feeling. It caused many tangible and many intangible changes in my mind and emotions. Thanks.”  There was my answer, there’s what we can say to the kids who say “Peace” instead of “Hello.” We can say “Freedom,” and by the grace of a secondhand rag-wing lightplane, we can show them what we mean.

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Anywhere Is Okay

What would happen, I thought, if a man with a little cloth-wing airplane came down to land on a road to offer a knapsacked hitchhiker a ride? Or better, what would happen if a couple of pilots made room in their planes for a couple of city kids for a flight of a hundred miles or so, or a thousand miles or so; a flight of a week or two across the hills and farms and plains of America? Kids who have never seen the country before, outside their high school fence or expressway overpass?  Who would change, the kids or the pilots? Or would both, and what kind of change might that be? Where would their lives touch, and where would they be so far apart that there could be no calling across the gulf?  The only way to find out what can happen to an idea is to test it, and that is how the Invitational Cross-Country Adventure came to be.

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There’s always the sky. Some high cirrus drifted along under a slice of moon, borne ever so carefully on a faint, faint wind. And I noticed something that night that I had never noticed before. That the sky is always moving, but it’s never gone. That no matter what, the sky is always with us. And that the sky cannot be bothered. My problems, to the sky, did not exist, never had existed, never would exist. The sky does not misunderstand. The sky does not judge. The sky, very simply, is. It is, whether we wish to see that fact or to bury ourselves under a thousand miles of earth, or even deeper still, under the impenetrable roof of unthinking routine.

A Gift of Wings

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Do you ever get the feeling that everybody else knows something you don’t know? That everybody else in the world is taking for granted something you haven’t even heard about, as if you missed the Big Briefing In The Sky or something?

A Gift of Wings

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Prayers "You’d better be careful what you pray for,” somebody once said, “because you’re going to get it"

A Gift of Wings

From time to time, when I was barnstorming the Midwest a few summers ago, a passenger or two would say, “What a great life you have, free to go wherever you want, whenever … Sure wish I could do it.” Wistful, like that.  “Come along, then,” I’d say. “You can sell tickets, keep the crowds behind the wing, strap the passengers into the front seat. We might make enough money to live on, we might go broke, but you’re invited.” I could say this, first because I could always use a ticket seller, and second because I knew what the answer would be.  Silence first, then, “Thanks, but you see, I’ve got my job. If it wasn’t for my job, I’d go …” Which was only to say that each wistful one wasn’t wistful at all, each had prayed harder for his job than for the life of a barnstormer, as the New York girl had prayed more for her tenement than for the grass of Wyoming or for any other unknown.  I consider this from time to time, flying. We always get what we pray for, like it or not, no excuses accepted. Every day our prayers turn more into fact; whom we most want to be, we are. It all sounds like justice to me; I can’t say as I mind the way this world is built, at all.

[ardentlyloveprideandprejudice-d]

Be curious, not judgmental 👍✨

-Walt Whitman

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love it - thanks, didn’t realise Whitman wrote this...

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I may be no better, but at least I am different.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (via sunsetquotes)

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We have 10 seconds

“It is said that we have ten seconds when we wake of a morning, to remember   what it was we dreamed the night before.” 

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You survived because you decided against quitting when the battle wasn't much fun...that was the only miracle required. Yes, Jonathan finally was published. The film ideas, and a few others you hadn't thought of, are just beginning. Please don't waste your time worrying or being afraid

A Gift of Wings, RB 1975