A saying from the area of Chinese medicine would be appropriate to mention here: “One disease, long life; no disease, short life.” In other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weakness. So, in that sense at least, a Weakness of some sort can do you a big favor, if you acknowledge that it’s there. The same goes for one’s limitations, whether Tiggers know it or not — and Tiggers usually don’t. That’s the trouble with Tiggers, you know: they can do everything. Very unhealthy.
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
…from the writings of Chuang-tse…
Hui-tse to Chuang-tse, “I have a large tree which no carpenter can cut into lumber. Its branches and trunk are crooked and tough covered with bumps and depressions. No builder would turn his head to look at it. Your teachings are the same — useless, without value. Therefore no one pays attention to them.”
“As you know.”Chuang-tse replied, “a cat is very skilled at capturing its prey. Crouching low it can leap in any direction, pursuing whatever it is after. But when its attention is focused on such things, it can be easily caught with a net. On the other hand, a huge yak is not easily caught or overcome. It stands like a stone, or a cloud in the sky. But for all its strength, it cannot catch a mouse.
“You complain that your tree is not valuable as lumber. But you could make use of the shade it provides, rest under its sheltering branches, and stroll beneath it, admiring its character and appearance. Since it would not be endangered by an axe, what could threaten its existence? It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way.”
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply;
“Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.”Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply;
“Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.”
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken, I don’t know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply;
“Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.”
Ian MacKaye – Creative Time Summit DC Keynote
“…sometimes when we play shows I always try to remind the audience that we are the band, they are the audience, we are collectively making a show. If the audience was not there we would be practicing. The energy that happens between a band and audience is the thing that can elevate the moment and make it into something that is… transportive I guess or whatever the word is.”
[Talking about Dischord Records]: ‘…December will be 36 years. This is a label that has been around… I just want to point out a few things. Never used a single contract. I don’t have a lawyer, never had a lawyer. We pay royalties every six months still to this day. I have four employees, who have health care. I just want to say those things out loud because people say ‘It’s to idealistic’ it’s not to fucking idealistic if you just do the work that’s in front of you and most of all if you don’t look beyond the work to the profit because that is the distraction. It’s the money that always gets in the way.”
“I do know one thing. Artists are translators, that I’m pretty sure about. They see something; they have to explain it. And the way they explain it, if they’re visual artists they make a picture, ‘this is what I see’. And if they’re writers and they’re thinking, ‘this is what I think’. And if they’re musicians, ‘this is what I hear’. And if they’re dancers, ‘this is how we dance’. They’re translating.”
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
A scholar named Wangpage 29-30
Laughed at my poems.
The accents are wrong,
He said,
Too many beats;
The meter is poor,
The wording impulsive.
I laugh at his poems,
As he laughs at home.
They read like
The words of a blind man
Describing the sun.
— Han-shan
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
page 29“Lots of people talk to animals,” said Pooh.
“Maybe, but…”
“Not very many listen, though,” he said.
“That’s the problem,” he added.
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
A well-frog cannot impagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.page 24
— Chuang-tse
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
page 15“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has a Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
Quoting from The House at Pooh Corner
page 12-14“The fact is,” said Rabbit, “we’ve missed our way somehow.” They were having a rest in a small sand-pit on the top of the Forest. Pooh was getting rather tired of that sand-pit, and suspected it of following them about, because whichever direction they started in, they always ended up at it, and each time, as it came through the mist at them, Rabbit said triumphantly, “Now I know where we are!” and Pooh said sadly, “So do I,” and Piglet said nothing. He had tried to think of something to say, but the only thing he could think of was, “Help, help!”and it seemed silly to say that, when he had Pooh and Rabbit with him.
“Well,” said Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having. “we’d better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?”
“How would it be,” said Pooh slowly, “if, as soon as we’re out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?”
“What’s the good of that?” said Rabbit.
“Well,” said Pooh, “we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we werent looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.”
“I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit …
“If I walked away from this Pit, and then walked back to it, of course I should find it.”
“Well, I thought perhaps you wouldn’t,” said Pooh. “I just thought.”
“Try,” said Piglet suddenly. “We’ll wait here for you.”
Rabbit gave a laugh to show how silly Piglet was, and walked into the mist. After he had a hundred yards, he turned and walked back again …and after Pooh and Piglet had waited twenty minutes for him, Pooh got up.
“I just thought,” said Pooh. “Now then, Piglet, let’s go home.”
“But, Pooh,” cried Piglet, all excited, “do you know the way?”
“No,” said Pooh. “But there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard, and they’ve been calling to me for hours. I couldn’t hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think, Piglet, I shall know where they’re calling from. Come on.”
They walked off together; and for a long time Piglet said nothing, so as not to interrupt the pots, and then suddenly he made a squeaky noise …and an oo-noise …because now he began to know where he was; but he still didn’t dare to say so out loud, in case he wasn’t. And just when he was getting so sure of himself that it didn’t matter whether the pots went on calling or not, there was a shout in front of them, and out of the mist came Christopher Robin
Seek You by Kristen Radtke
Discussing the work of Harry Harlow. CW: animal cruelty.
Page 271-274Harlow and his team began his most famous study, separating baby monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth. The babies were placed in cages with two inanimate doll-like figures. One made of wire, one of cloth.
Both dolls were heated internally by a lightbulb, and only the wire version dispensed milk. The cloth mother’s face was framed by two bicycle reflectors in place of eyes – not realistic, exactly, but slightly more cheerful that the square, robot-like head they affexed to the top of the wire mother.
If babies truly only clutched their mothers because they wanted food, as was commonly believed, of course they’d prefer the wire monkey that fed them to the cloth version that contributed nothing.
But the monkeys spent almost all their time clinging to the cloth mothers, sometimes straining from them to reach the bottle affixed to the wire mother while keeping their feet planted on the cloth, or jumping to the wire just long enough to drink before rushing back to their maternal perch.
Plush fabric is a more comfortable resting place that woven wire, but the monkeys did more than hang out on the soft figure the way they would a bed or blanket. They cuddled into it, they ran to it when they were started, and they sometimes stroked the cloth and the edges of its plastic face.
When scientists reached in to change and clean the fabric, a partition separated the baby from its inanimate mother, and the babies hurled themselves against the divider, maniacally tracing the lines of the cafe in jagged panic. They’d grown dependent on a parent who never returned their affections, and it led to a kind of addiction in which they were incapable of functioning without her. They tore out their fur, biting their arms and legs.
But attachedment isn’t necessarily love. How much the monkeys really cared for the unliving figures, Harlow thought, was still up for debate. So he created new models to mimic abuse. The babies clung even tighter to the mothers designed to push them away.