Friday, November 30, 2012

our proper business: curiosity and awareness

What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude –
that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
Art’s purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
One shouldn’t go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
Out of the work comes the work.
- John Cage

3 comments:

  1. hello beth

    good stuff
    when i was institutionalize - a Benediction brother
    in st Leo abbey florida , now a non functional
    abbey because the monks were monkeying arround and stuff-i was a big fan of dorthy day and merton they were a big scandal to the Church elite anti war merton and day receiving communion and worshiping in non-catholic churches and publishing the catholic worker for 1 cents a must read for me - i got in hot water with one of the abbeys big benefactors over Day
    it was then i was sent to Xavier university in New Orleans a all black collage at that time because i think the Abbot did not want to loose any money -
    yapper being a Catholic can be exciting allright
    thees guys in Rome mean well but they all live in a dream world may be they should get a real live girl for Christmas ---

    Blessings


    Blessings

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  2. yep, the Church guys are in a mess these days. I was lucky to have been around some solid Catholic teachers during those anti-war days. Good liberal Catholic colleges (the Jesuits at Spring Hill Cge and the Marianists at University of Dayton), as well as the Berrigans, gave me the confidence I needed to know that I was on a good and legitimate road, even though it went contrary to many of those in so-called "power" Church roles.

    Agree with you about the Xmas gift for the guys in Rome, but I suspect many of them would prefer real live boys :-)

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