"Dream as if you're going to live forever. Live as if you're going to die today."
---James Dean

"One can never consent to creep when one has the impulse to soar."
---Helen Keller

"The bottom is not a place you plan to visit, but one you must see if you ever hope to reach the top."
---Elmred Norsh

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible."
---T. E. Lawrence

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
~ Albert Einstein


"The future has several names.
For the weak it is the impossible.
For the fainthearted
it is the unknown.
For the thoughtful and valiant
it is the ideal."

Victor Hugo


"If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in our prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fullfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow -what's his name?- cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void."

King Alobar, Jitterbug Perfume

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
- Carl Gustav Jung

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."
- William James

"Life is a daring adventure, or nothing"
~ Helen Keller

"Let all the children boogie."
~ David Bowie


The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (A Native American Elder)

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking the fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow,
if you have been opened up by life's betrayals or
have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let ecstacy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the
limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can betray another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful
and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it's not a pretty day,
and if you can source your life from God's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver light of a full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done
for the children.

It doesn't matter who you are, or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


"The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought. Yet our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that has housed spirits of civility for eons, or desecrating for material profit a mountain or stream sacred to native residents. We have yet to learn that we can't survive without enchantment and that the loss is killing us."
Thomas Moore
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life


To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
- Confucius

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always.
- Mahatma Gandhi

The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.
- The Upanishads

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
- H.D. Thoreau

"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
- Albert Einstein

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
- Chief Seattle

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
- Lewis Carroll

Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
- Emily Dickinson

Big Top Magazine is ALIVE!
www.bigtopmagazine.com

I do admire you... I do not know how you do to live the life you live. You remind me of the replicates in the Blade Runner Film. So wild and beautiful like poetry lost in time... like tears in the rain...

Do birds ever come to you?

I will be praying for you these days... for you, my friend, to get home soon. I am so very glad life is good to you because you are so good, way over too many stupidities of this world. And, I might be wrong, of course, for I perceive your nature must bring this need to pull it all the way. Not being a slave at any risk... it’s a pretty good damn meaning and purpose. I believe in you, you are an inspiration to life itself...

I feel you have been giving way too much, and you are so intense, could be dangerous like love... you seem from here like a wild tender beautiful authentic being, more than human. I want to pray for you to find what you are looking for, what you really need....

There is something of me in you; still we might be completely opposites... You are, brother, creator of fantasies, worlds, and million thousand ways to fly. I watch you fly mesmerized; still I wish something wires you to the land... I don’t know why, sometimes I wish I could become that wire to connect you with your land, or at least, send it to you in some magical way...

The higher you fly, the further away, the deeper this wish buries in me... like a dream, it cuts. It’s not easy to say this kind of things, to describe this kind of experience without some fear...

I hope you’ll understand… I hope you do receive a kiss and a hug with these words which aren’t enough, I know, but it’s all I got now…

Blessings

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

> I don't trust too many people to appreciate it. I trust
> you, and your judgment - therefore Taylor as well, with all of my heart.
> (I study simple things that mean nothing to anyone else - I knew he was
> worth my heart before ever seeing him)

Reply: Speaking of Taylor, you two have something precious in common in my eyes, and I put my finger on it at the show. While you are vastly different people and both of you carry around your fair share of being jaded by bullshit, you have both retained the ability to see and experience the world with the eyes, awe, and wonder of small children. You delight in things as completely as few adults can. When you are captivated by something and lose yourself in it, you become four years old. Prior to the show, I had only ever seen it before, really, in Taylor. I was thrilled to see it in you as well. It gives me some shred of hope for humankind and all else. Please don't ever lose that. It is so very rare and precious.

Now go forth and enjoy at least some small part of your day, even if it is only to visit the garden briefly and pluck a tender leaf or two of lettuce between hours of mucking about on the laptop.