Bijan Jalali

“I want to die,
Not that my heart should fail,
And my body grow cold,
And be leveled with earth;
I want to die
Not that I should not hear any voice,
Or the sun will fail to shine on me,
Or I grow blind
To the moon and stars.
I seek a quite extraordinary death,
Like the water turning into vapor,
Like the blossoming of the seed,
Like the setting of the sun,
Like a sky which is clouded.
I want to be annihilated,
to be born again in another world,
A world which I have not yet named,
A world which I have not completely tried,
A world resembling the world of imagination
In which everything is ordinary,
Except the fear of annihilation,
Except wretchedness,
Except loneliness.”

—  Bijan Jalali

Favorite Quotes

“there is pleasure in the pathless woods;

there is rapture on the lonely shore;

there is society, where none intrudes,

by the deep sea, and music in its roar:

i love not man the less, but nature more”


- lord byron

FAVORITE QUOTES

 GPOY

“if i discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that i was made for another world”

- c.s. lewis

Father Death Blues

Hey Father Death, I'm flying home

Hey poor man, you're all alone

Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

Father Death, Don't cry any more

Mama's there, underneath the floor

Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones

Old Uncle Death I hear your groans

O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths

Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths

Pain is gone, tears take the rest

Genius Death your art is done

Lover Death your body's gone

Father Death I'm coming home

Guru Death your words are true

Teacher Death I do thank you

For inspiring me to sing these Blues

Buddha Death, I wake with you

Dharma Death, your mind is new

Sangha Death, we'll work it through

Suffering is what was born

Ignorance made me forlorn

Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath once more farewell

Birth you gave was no thing ill

My heart is still, as time will tell.

- Allen Ginsberg 

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Respect “the genius of a place.”
Subordinate details to the whole.
The art is to conceal art.
Aim for the unconscious.
Avoid fashion for fashion’s sake.
Formal training isn’t required.
Words matter.
Stand for something.
Utility trumps ornament.
Never too much, hardly enough.”

—	Ten Design Lessons - Frederick Law Olmsted

Favorite Quotes

“experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” – oscar wilde

Favorite Quotes

“it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

– henry david thoreau

Favorite Quotes

“keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
- walt whitman

Favorite Quotes

“they who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
- edgar allen poe

Favorite Quotes

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mr. Tambourine Man

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

— Bob Dylan

The unbearable lightness of being

“chance and chance alone has a message for us. everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. only chance can speak to us. we read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.”

Favorite Quotes

“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”

- rachel carson

Favorite Quotes

“be not the slave of your own past. plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”
- ralph waldo emerson

EARTH DAY

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.

- D. H. Lawrence

Favorite Quotes

“ All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own."

Johann von Goethe

Women in Power

“i just want to keep dressing women who exemplify not just beauty, but intelligence; women who are empathetic to the world around them. i like women who are in control of their own destinies. it’s not a feminist rant; there’s just something so appealing and sexy about women in power.”

— prabal gurung

EVERY CASE —Wislawa Szymborska

It could have happened.
It must have happened.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer by. Further away.
It happened not to you.

You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because you were with others.
Because to the left. Because to the right.
Because it rained. Because there was shade.
Because the day was sunny.

Fortunately a forest was there.
Fortunately no trees were there.
Fortunately a rail, a hook, a bar, a brake,
an embrasure, a curve, a millimeter, a second.
Fortunately a razor was floating on water.

As a consequence, because, and yet, in spite.
What it would have been if a hand, a leg,
within an ace of, by a hair's breadth
saved from a combination of circumstances.

So you are here? Straight from an abrogated moment?
The net had just one mesh and you went through that mesh?
I am all surprise and all silence.
Listen,
how quickly your heart beats to me.

“the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.”

- robert louis stevenson

Favorite Quotes

“there are many ways to be free. one of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as i try to do.”
- anais nin