By Jonathan Berman
| Snippets By Jonathan Berman |
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12/29/2012
The most complex thing about me is that I'm not simple, but everything I love is.
12/23/2012
Being offensive won't make you edgy. Being edgy won't make you smart. Being smart won't make you wise. Being wise won't make you tea.
12/22/2012
Judgmental and petty people may define you, but they'll never know the joy in gratitude, or the feeling of flight in the open-hearted altitude where you soar. They are chained to their negative and critical pre-judgments, lost, throwing stones at the birds in the sky.
12/21/2012
People seek wisdom in a box, criticize the outside, unaware of the locks.
12/17/2012
Within you is a fire that can heal the whole world. Tears, a waterfall, fall from open eyes in loving kindness upon all who dwell here.
12/16/2012
Telling a dog to shut up is like telling a shoelace to untie itself.
12/10/2012
When you kiss a cat, you are kissing the universe. When you massage a cat, you are massaging the universe... when the cat comes to you... the universe has come to you. What will you do when the universe comes to you?
12/9/2012
Long before man, the Earth was making music. If we wish to improve our situation, we must first understand where we come from... before we make new music, we must discover the still silence where the Earth sings...
12/2/2012
The Bible is a book, do you believe everything you read? You cannot grow without a mind, or plant a tree without a seed.
12/1/2012
You are the universe taking human form only for a short while.
*
When I look at trees, I see musicians, I see dancers, I see poets from long ago. I see roads that lead forever, and I follow them wherever they go.
*
God made me a tree, somehow I became just the leaf. Shaky, on the limb, every gust of breeze whispering to me like ghosts through the night... The calm is too quiet, the crowd is too loud. The day is refracting and shattering light in the clouds. At night, there's a peace, when the nocturnal wanderers roam... and I go out too, and call it a home. From tree to leaf to ghost leaf be, until I reroot my soul, and bring me back to me.
11/29/2012
Sometimes we understand every sad song, acceptance leads to beauty, comes gratitude and grace... the oil in the stagnant joints and strength to walk again.
*
What I like to do is wake up real early when God is still sleeping, put a cardboard cut-out of a priest holding a knife over a baby like in The Omen... and then as the sun comes up and the light shines through my window, God freaks out thinking the anti-christ was born the night before... gets him every time. It's a laugh riot.
*
No matter what you say or do, there is never a shortage of complaints.
So Say what you feel, and do what you love, your creation still remains.
Make something of yourself, be the life raft in another's need.
For one day When the soil is ready, you will be the seed.
*
Strength is not the front door to sensitivity, sensitivity is the front door of strength.
*
There are no holy places, holiness is an invention of the mind. The gates of heaven and hell open and close in the heart of man.
*
Talk without action is just distraction
We're not making contact it's just reaction
A slave to desire we can't get any traction
So just live as you believe, that's the only attraction
11/20/2012
The darkness seeks victims to cower in its depth,
but you've seen far beyond them to where the light is all that's left.
So hear their words and let them say,
you've got something they can't squander,
and in silence turn and fly away,
to give them something new to ponder.
The young make an enemy of the world so they can differentiate between their own ego, and solidify an identity... maturity comes later, when you stop making an enemy of the world, and see it for what it truly is: a reflection.
*
"Don't worry about those who Do, the World needs Thinkers too."
*
Here's my attempt to write in Shakespearean...
If, writing were established as hand to pen were lavished, ink like fancy dancers, rolling liquid prancers, perhaps a chance, perchance a glance, into the quiet and crystal mind be shone... that heretofore, quite likely never before known, should soon give purchase, a mighty clue, that we are forever in communion, through all we do.
*
I'm a nostalgic type and the harder something is to find the more I think it should be found and never forgotten.
*
I love the subtle constellation of freckles on your chest. I often wonder if humans are just delicate, conscious reflections of the universe, freckles of stars and solar systems, eyes like super novas, alive and aware... and then I look up at night, and wonder if I am looking at the body of an alien life form... constellations like freckles on its body, on your body, on mine.
*
My entire Facebook News Feed today looks like the bipolar, shouting rambling match results of two quote generators left alone to fight after I went to bed last night. Not a single original thought welcomes me, draws me from the dark nightmare scenario that visited upon me in my restless slumber. No line, no vest nor life preserver, just the rattled cacophony of endlessly droning chicken soup for the souling, self-authoring blathering of the masses, shouting truth like the toothless, shopping cart homeless up on the Blvd, who shout of aliens, and government radios in their teeth, cameras in pigeons eyes... I could not fathom this world, my nightmares are lullabyes in compare, and where do I go from here? Wandering away... each pursuit a walking stick out of the darkness and into the day.
*
Everyone has a smartass friend, the problem is, everyone wants to be the smartass friend, so I will be the first to say, I am not the smartass friend. I am the poet.
*
There is nothing sadder to me than someone who kills any creature and excuses it with, "It was just a <insert alleged inferior creature here>"
There are no inferior life forms. We are all living pieces in a conscious puzzle, and if the tiniest amongst us dies, we feel it, it hurts us, and when it happens unnaturrally, or for entertainment, or out of anger, it holds all of us us back.
*
I don't worry about always finding the silver lining to every cloud... sometimes, the cloud is the silver lining to the sky.
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I want to be the crop circle in your field.
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You are the sun and everyone sees the shade.
*
I see so many followers in the world, sometimes I'm a little envious... life would be so much easier if I could just completely give myself to something and follow it for a life. But all things to me are merely stepping stones, they make their own music and I can enjoy them for awhile, but I've never been one to give myself completely to any one thing going on "out there". Perhaps that is my curse... to wander the earth alone, enjoying a moment, a restless, spirit, too individual to be diluted, too substantive to be swallowed whole, too outspoken to buy in.
The thing is, I give myself completely to someone, not to something, in relationships I'm completely loyal, perhaps too much so, sensitive, pondering, aware. Life is poetry, living is music.
My uncertainty has been perfected, so perfected that it's become a ship and it's sailed me away from the pier of belief. When I hear the belief in your voice, it's like a foreign language, and when it brings you pain I cannot talk you down from that ledge, because you've decided what's real for you, the construct of drama, ya, you've perfected something too.
And with perfection comes separation, a distance that spans the histories, the silent eons, but I hear them whispering, I write down what they say, and I find a bridge back from perfection, from certainty, back to... ya, I've perfected uncertainty, so perfected that silence has become a road for the spirits to cross over. Emptiness has become my ears, and I hear your longing, because I too have that longing... but I, I let it go, illusions cannot grow and we're planting deeper seeds for tomorrow's children to sow.
I see so many followers in the world, sometimes I'm a little envious... life would be so much easier if I could just completely give myself to something and follow it for a life.
Perhaps it is because I am searching and you are simply being... why was I invented as the searching hermit, and so many out there were made to be the happy herded sheep?
Sheep have community, they feel good, they give themselves completely to something, and me... all these years later, still roaming these hillsides, remembering old pastures I used to love, with their intricacies, their baubles of joy, but I always move on, I use it up, I let it go, I grow beyond it somehow... why do I grow beyond it? Why can't I enjoy it for a life time, with you?
Can I go back? What would I find there? Am I afraid to find only loneliness along those old roads? Who gives their heart to a hermit, with so many stable sheep around? Clouds in the sky, moving slowly, you and I, and dreaming.
*
I won't take no prisoners this ain't no holy war, this is just the temple of my own mind I'm fighting for.
*
Only with eternal loss comes eternal compassion, and by love's release do these gates open, the vessel of love expressed. A boat for the spirits to cross over.
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The moment you feel you have something genius to say, that's the best time to remain silent and let the universe convey - by reflection, listening to soft detection of the word in light made manifest by night. Let listening be the candle by which you write.
*
I have never been afraid of a black cat crossing my path, My love of life has always been stronger than my fear of ideas... I do however have a little preoccupation with dead leaves crossing my path. Not just laying there, but if the wind tumbles them past me. Dead leaves make more sense though don't they? Cats are just minding their own business, but for a dead leaf to tumble by you requires the unseen hand of the earth, and I carry more guilt about my treatment of the earth than my treatment of cats.
Interesting, just something to think about...
*
The smell of wood, shallow water over indoor creek stones, polished as our shoes, reflecting the cold blind stare, buying for love, going nowhere, and the lights above replace the sun, the stars internalized, become reflections swallowed warmth, and it comes out in a song again... broken hearts can always mend...
*
Just because you can only see the truth from your window every once in awhile, doesn't mean it isn't always there...
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Longer than I have walked this Earth, and with each breath I take, each moment spurned, on music's wings that grants new birth.
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We can become so certain of our selves that we lose sight of reality, and reality is not separation, but the integral nature of all things.
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Civility is the noble art of crafting boats on a sea of words, with the tools of shared expression.
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Sometimes the very thing you're living for, is the one thing they can't stand.
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We have windows on our walls so we can see worlds.
We have books on our shelves so we can create them.
*
There is music that becomes me
And I am transported.
I feel my entire being become infused with feeling, my fingers express unlike me and more like a dancer on the keys.
I have been taken like the wind takes the reed, and I have forgotten
That I am rooted to this place...
I remember how to fly,
I close my eyes, and
I am free.