The World Is a Beautiful Place

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling

mortician

Realizing

Realizing that there are some things, no one in this world will understand and there is no one to talk to about it except myself; so I need to listen.

I Am

I know that I am one with beauty
And that my comrades are one.

Let our souls be mountains,
Let our spirits be stars,
Let our hearts be worlds.

From Ansel Adams, An Autobiography
A mantra of Gaelic origin given to Adams by Ella Young

Pale Blue Dot

An excerpt from a talk by the late Dr. Sagan

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Perhaps for some, it not the only home they have ever know.

There are those whose souls have come from other planetary systems, other worlds, universes and even other dimensions, so different from our own that all known reason is lost and futile. Yet, even for those, the experience of being human here, on this wondrous blue world, is little different and the challenges of living each moment no less than those who have always been on Earth. Perhaps for them it is even more frustrating and painful. Perhaps the memories of who they are, drives many to madness and suicide.

Discussions

How do you have a dialog with people, when there are no words to describe what you are seeing and/or feeling? When every attempt at articulation is shattered into countless pieces by reason or just melts like ice cream on a hot rock, mid day, mid July in the Death Valley sun; leaving only a gooey, oozy mess. How do you have any kind of meaningful discussion when no one gets it?
Fortunately a few do seem understand; yes perhaps there is one or two who do. And you only need just one parachute grabbing at the wind as it rushes by when you’re falling out of a starless night sky into some dark rocky abyss. I am very thankful for my parachutes. And even if they’re not there, the rocks aren’t fatal, they just hurt a lot. LOL