Coffee with a Modern Primitive Artist

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 23:06:51 GMT

This appears to be my last post at Salon...I tried to renew for several days here...and couldn't get a response that would allow me to continue at Salon....please view my website listed below and i will have a new link where I take the blog in the near future.

Why does life have to get so complicated?

kelly moore

www.kellymoore.net

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:55:42 GMT

"The real accomplishment in life is the art of being a warrior, which is the only way to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man."

Carlos Castaneda

www.kellymoore.net

Lao Tzu

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 16:04:17 GMT

Lao Tzu

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

www.kellymoore.net

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:55:56 GMT

Over all the hilltops

Silence,

Among all the treetops

You feel hardly

A breath moving.

The birds fall silent in the woods.

Simply wait! Soon

You too will be silent.

Goethe

www.kellymoore.net

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:14:52 GMT

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:58:04 GMT

The Holy Longing

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tell a wise person or else keep silent
For the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive
And what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm waters of the love nights
Where you were begotten,
Where you have begotten,
A strange feeling comes over you
When you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught in this obsession with darkness
And a desire for higher lovemaking sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
And now, arriving in magic, flying
and finally, insane for the light
You are the butterfly.
And you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this,
To die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.

www.kellymoore.net

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 20:14:28 GMT

"When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else."
Joseph Campbell

www.kellymoore.net

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 04:37:14 GMT

Kahlil Gibran

On Freedom

And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."

And he answered:

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?

If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.

You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.

And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.

For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?

And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.

And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.

And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

www.kellymoore.net

Rumi

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:40:24 GMT

how very close

how very close

is your soul with mine

i know for sure

everything you think

goes through my mind

i am with you

now and doomsday

not like a host

caring for you

at a feast alone

with you i am happy

all the times

the time i offer my life

or the time

you gift me your love

offering my life

is a profitable venture

each life i give

you pay in turn

a hundred lives again

in this house

there are a thousand

dead and still souls

making you stay

as this will be yours

a handful of earth

cries aloud

i used to be hair or

i used to be bones

and just the moment

when you are all confused

leaps forth a voice

hold me close

i'm love and

i'm always yours

ghazal number 1515, translated by Nader Khalili

www.kellymoore.net