California has its share of ‘issues’… high taxation and tight regulation stifles business… yet these same prohibitors tend to force a work-around solution…. and the end result is that our environment is relatively clean for the tens of millions living in this space, and we have a thriving ‘Underground’ economy.
Red-Hot Chili Peppers sang a couple of good songs mentioning California, one is about California, another is about a girl named Dani California…. Good songs both… enjoy!
Psychic spies from China Try to steal your mind’s elation Little girls from Sweden Dream of silver screen quotations And if you want these kind of dreams It’s Californication
It’s the edge of the world And all of western civilization The sun may rise in the East At least it settled in the final location It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication
Pay your surgeon very well To break the spell of aging Celebrity skin, is this your chin Or is that war your waging
[Chorus:] First born unicorn Hard core soft porn Dream of Californication Dream of Californication
Marry me girl be my fairy to the world Be my very own constellation A teenage bride with a baby inside Getting high on information And buy me a star on the boulevard It’s Californication
Space may be the final frontier But it’s made in a Hollywood basement Cobain can you hear the spheres Singing songs off station to station And Alderon’s not far away It’s Californication
Born and raised by those who praise Control of population everybody’s been there and I don’t mean on vacation
[Chorus]
Destruction leads to a very rough road But it also breeds creation And earthquakes are to a girl’s guitar They’re just another good vibration And tidal waves couldn’t save the world From Californication
Pay your surgeon very well To break the spell of aging Sicker than the rest There is no test But this is what you’re craving
I had a dream last night I was cast into Hell by a jealous God
The Devil walked up and said “You don’t need no lightning rod.
It hardly ever rains down here, I can’t recall the last storm.
You aint gonna need that leather jacket, it gets kinda warm.
There’s one way in, there’s no way out, looks like you’re to stay.
The place is a mess, it’s overcrowded, more are coming in everyday”
I said, “ah man, wait a minute there’s gotta be something wrong,
I aint a bad guy, I just write these little songs.
I always pay my union dues, I don’t stay in the passing lane.”
And he said, “what about all that whiskey and cocaine?”
I said, “Well yeah, but that’s no reason to throw me in Hell,
Cause I didn’t use the cocaine to get high, I just liked the way it smelled.”
He said “Come on over here son, let me show you around,
Over there’s where we put the preachers, I never liked those clowns.
They’re always blaming me for everything wrong under the sun;
It aint hard to do what’s right… it’s just maybe not as much fun.
Then they walk around thinking they’re better than me and you,
Then they get caught in a motel room, doing what they said not to do.
Now the murderers and the rapists they go in this fiery lake,
As well as most of the politicians and the cops on the take.
And all the mothers that wait to get to K-Mart to spank their kids,
Instead of showing them to do what’s right, they just hit ‘em for what they did.
And all the daddies who run off and abandon their daughters and sons,
Oh, anybody that hurts a child is gonna burn until it’s done.”
“If everybody is down here” I said “who’s up in Heaven with God and the Son?”
“Oh some saints and mystics and students of metaphysics 101,
People who care and share and love and try to do what’s right,
Beautiful old souls who read little stories to their babies at night.
What you won’t find up in Heaven are Christian Coalition Right Wing Conservatives,
Country program directors and Nashville record executives.”
Now I said “I’ve made some mistakes, but I’m not as bad as those guys,
How can God do this to me or can’t he sympathize?”
He said “You’re wrong about God being cruel and mean,
Oh God is the most loving thing that’s ever been seen.”
I said “Hotshot tell me this; which religion is the truest?”
He said “They’re all about the same, Budha was not a Christian,
but Jesus woulda made a good budhist.”
Well I thought about my future, I didn’t seem to have much of one,
I looked around to leave but there was no place to run.
I said “I don’t suppose I could go back and try living again?
You know, like reincarnation. I hear that’s the way it’s always been.”
“I can’t answer that”, he said “You’re gonna have to wait for that response,
But it’s not any more unusual to be born twice than it is to be born once.
Well it looked like I was gonna be stuck here as far as I could tell,
I thought I might as well suck-up, you know, ‘what the hell’.
I said “You know that song that Charlie Daniels did?
About how you went down to Georgia and played fiddle against that kid?”
He said “Yeah it broke my heart, but you know, what’cha gonna do?”
I said “To tell you the truth, I thought your solo was the better of the two.”
Well then I woke up and I was lying in my bed,
I went upstairs and kissed my little boy on his sleeping head.
I took this dream as a sign from God so I thought I’d better pray,
I said don’t ever speak to me directly and thanks anyway.
Now so much has changed about me besides me just giving up red meat,
Some get spiritual cause they see the light, and some cause they feel the heat.
Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer’s day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.
Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.
For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.
Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget.
Like the strangers that you’ve met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will…
There are many arts. Some tug at emotions, some tug at reason and intellect. Some manipulate both.
When prose and music wed to film… and when the philosopher directs the tone… what changes can happen in others?
One can watch a spider work hard and find inspiration. A surfer carving glassy waters, a gymnast or a chess master can inspire.
To do is the goal. don’t sit… do. At the end you’re more sorry about the things you didn’t try, than the things you did that didn’t work out well. Just live. And life isn’t crawling into a hole. If you can, get out and live.If you’re spinning your tires into a rut…. ease off the gas…. and get out of the car! And if your life is in the ruts… get outside if you can. Just do something.One of the most inspirational music videos I know is ‘Right Now’ by Van Halen
‘Right Now’
~Van Halen~
Don’t wanna wait ’till tomorrow,
Why put it off another day?
One by one, little problems,
Build up, and stand in our way.
One step ahead, one step behind it,
Now ya gotta run to get even.
Make future plans, I’ll dream about yesterday.
Come on turn, turn this thing around
Right now… Hey! It’s your tomorrow
Right now… Come on, it’s everything
Right now… Catch your magic moment
Do it right here and now
It means everythingMiss a beat, you lose the rhythm
An nothin’ falls into place.
Only missed by a fraction,
Slipped a little off your pace.
The more things you get, the more you want,
Just trade in one for another.
Workin’ so hard to make it easy.
Whoa, got to turn. Come on, turn this thing around
Right now… Hey, it’s your tomorrow
Right now… Come on, it’s everything
Right now… catch that magic moment
Do it right here and now
It means everythingTell me, what are ya waitin’ for?
Some songs.. some poetry… some words are so full of images…. close your eyes and listen to beautiful prose… if the scene does not unfold in your mind, and play out in your imagination the words were not properly connected.
Al Stewart made a masterpiece with his ‘The Year of the Cat’ song in the seventies. This one comes across as a movie set in Morocco to me… beautiful…. stuning… awesome… certain to be listened to for many centuries.
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turned back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She’ll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat.
She doesn’t give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow ’till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue-tiled walls near the market stalls
There’s a hidden door she leads you to
“These days,” she says, “I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat”
She looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what’s waiting inside
The year of the cat.
Well morning comes and you’re still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you’ve thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you’re bound to lose her
But for now you’re going to stay
In the year of the cat.
One can open oneself to the world without leaving the house,
Without looking out the window one can know the way of Heaven.
The further one goes and the more knowledge one accumulates, the less one knows.
With this way; one can know and experience without traveling,
Observe clearly without seeing,
And accomplish much without doing anything
What a wonderful world we have… what a huge diversity of plant and animal life….. wonders abound.. it is all too astounding and amazing to fully grasp…. wondrous.
With such a wonderful world to explore… it is a wonder that I so seldom leave this little sheltered canyon and venture out….
Luckily, with the advent of the Internet, it is so much easier to find out about far-flung regions and peoples without ever leaving home.
There’s no place like home…..
Loreena McKennitt is a strong vocalist who also composes beautiful pieces of music with a heavy Celtic/Mideastern flavor. One of her songs, ‘Santiago’ has been put into a music video format by a fan who inserted moving images of peoples from around the world engaged in one of those most interesting human pursuits… dance. It is an emotional journey into the abundance of human ‘types’ we have…. truly, one of the most interesting and moving videos I have ever seen.
Nature has given each species certain hormonal urges to ensure procreation. Mankind has these same urges…
Often nature ensures that animals are ‘hard-wired’ to see the differences in others of the same species as likely indications of a suitable mating partner. This is a method that ensures the mating units are not too closely related… this widening of the gene pool leads to what we call ‘Hybrid vigor’. It is this ‘Opposites Attract’ feature that gives us widely dissimilar people who find some common interest in one another.
Ladies Love Country Boys
Trace Adkins
She grew up in the city in a little subdivision,
Her daddy wore a tie, Momma never fried a chicken,
Ballet, Straight A’s, Most likely to succeed
They bought her a car after graduation
Sent her down south for some higher education
Put her on the fast track to a law degree
Now she’s comin home to visit
holdin the hand
Of a wild-eyed boy
with a farmer’s tan
And shes ridin in the middle of his pickup truck
Blarin Charlie Daniels yellin, “Turn it up!”
They raised her up a lady
but there’s one thing they couldn’t avoid
Ladies love country boys
This song is something like Vickie and me… she grew up in Orange County… she really never knew anyone with a garden until she journeyed to the country to visit her brother who was working on a local landscape crew due to his knowledge of Spanish. She saw a whole new life in the bush after she met me….
But it sure was a different life than the city… we lived for a time in a tow-behind 27 foot travel-trailer. We grew much of our own food, and had no Television. As the song said… it was as primitive as could be. And it was fun, and new for us both.
While the initial onrush of ‘Romantic Love’ is heady and easy to flow along with…. it is the long-term committed relationship that requires constant work, and forgiveness and love… and may require a bit of that in varying degrees each and every day…. To forgive and to accept and to deal with shortcomings and problems is the only way to continue.
Just as Reba says….
~Reba MyIntyre~
‘I Keep On Loving You’
“Love takes the patience of Job”
That’s what my Mama always said
‘Faith is the belief in something more than what you know’
That’s what the Good Book says
You gotta play the cards you got
Who knows what fate is holding
At times you gotta go without knowing where you’re goin’
That’s why I keep on lovin’ you
I keep on lovin’ you
Through the ‘baby don’t leave mes’
And ‘never will agains’
And ‘I promise tos’
I keep on lovin’ you
Lord knows we’ve had our share of fights
Our sleepless nights, our ups and downs
We’ve had plenty and then some of ‘baby I’m gones’ and turnarounds
Sometimes I swear it might be easier to throw in the towel
Someday we’re gonna look back
And say “look at us now”
That’s why I keep on lovin’ you
I keep on lovin’ you
Through the baby don’t leave mes
And never will agains
And I promise tos
I keep on lovin’ you
I’ve heard it said that “Men marry women hoping they’ll never change… Women marry men hoping they can change them”.
Best is to pick someone you can put up with, and remain committed to… and hopefully you will have picked a person that can put up with you… and will remain committed to you also.
I suppose it’s something of a crapshoot… and I never was a gambling man….
An uncle of mine told me to “stay single, and raise your kids to do the same”… somehow in the sixties that was a really funny line.. cause no one had kids without being married (it seemed). But he had five or six wives in his time….. he was speaking from experience.
Kahlil Gibran ‘On Marriage’
Then Almitra spoke again and said…
“And what of Marriage, master?”
And he answered saying:
You were born together,
and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings
of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other’s shadow.
Give yourselves some room…. for most folks being together 24-7 is too tough. Get out and blaze some paths, encounter some new people… have some adventures…. but always be good.. so that you can come home and be happy to be there.. and have no regrets. Life with regrets is burdensome and heavy.
But get away from one-another on occasion… just remember:
‘There ain’t no place like home’
Train
‘Drops of Jupiter’
Now that she’s back from that soul vacation
Tracing her way through the constellation
She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo
Reminds me that there’s room to grow
But tell me
Did the wind sweep you off your feet?
Did you finally get the chance to
Dance along the light of day
And head back to the Milky Way
Tell me
Did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find?
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?
Can you imagine no
Love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you’re wrong
Can you imagine no
First dance, freeze-dried romance
Five hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had and me
Tell me
Did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the Milky Way
To see the lights are faded
And that heaven is overrated
Tell me
Did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself
And did you finally get the chance
to dance along the light of day?
Yep
Vickie and I are quite different, and yet strangely so alike in so many ways…
and after half a lifetime together we still get along and love one another….
although sometimes we grate on one another….
at those times we agree not to speak of the ‘issues or problems’….
luckily we have a lot of space….
and in a short time… there is no trouble.
Because in time most troubles fade away….
and in the end nothing else really matters but love.
And after we leave, that’s all we can take with us.
In just a few weeks, millions of young men and women will graduate from high school or college.
As a friend or family member, you may be wondering what to give this year. Fortunately, I know just the gift your graduate wants.
Cash. (Yes, the same thing he or she wanted last year.)
However, it never hurts to throw in a lagniappe, something small but meaningful. Ideally, a graduation gift should encourage the graduate’s dreams, with one eye on the past and the other on the future.
That’s why I like to tuck the envelope inside a copy of James Allen’s timeless classic, “As a Man Thinketh.”
Born in Britain in 1864, Allen was a slight boy who suffered from poor health. In 1879, his father – out of work and facing insolvency – sailed to America, hoping to set up home and send for his family. Soon after arriving, however, he was robbed and murdered.
At age 15, Allen was forced to work as a factory knitter and later as a private secretary to support his family. He found the work mindless and unfulfilling but took solace in the evening among his books, often reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Whitman into the early hours.
In 1903, he decided to devote himself fulltime to writing and that same year published his best-known book, “As a Man Thinketh.”
It’s a slim volume, one that can be read in less time than it takes to snooze through the average commencement address. But it packs a powerful wallop.
The essential premise is that, even if you’re unaware of it, your underlying beliefs shape your character, your health, your circumstances, and, ultimately, your destiny. Your thoughts create your reality. ** You literally are what you think. **
For this reason, you should be at least as meticulous about the ideas you feed your mind as the food you feed your body, since your life will largely become what your thoughts make it.
This is not to say that your mind alone can heal a serious illness, fix your finances, or change the world. Allen was no purveyor of New Age mumbo-jumbo. He was, above all else, a pragmatist and an advocate of hard work and effort. Yet he understood that every great undertaking begins with a particular state of mind.
Or, as he put it:
* Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
* Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.
* All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts … a man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting his thoughts. He can only remain weak, abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.
* As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
* A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will bring forth.
* Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
Allen insists that circumstances don’t make you. They reveal you. And while you can’t always command the situation, you can always command yourself.
Sadly, Allen – frail throughout his life – died of consumption at 47. His nineteen books have sold millions of copies – all of them are still in print – but most were published posthumously. Allen was never a wealthy man, at least in the traditional sense.
Yet he believed deeply in his mission. His words have inspired men and women the world over. And he was an enormous influence on followers like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale.
More than anything else, “As a Man Thinketh” is a meditation. But it is also a revelation. Allen demonstrates how your life is enhanced and ultimately perfected by inward development.
It’s a fine message for graduates just setting out to tackle the world – and not a bad reminder for the rest of us, either.
Others have preached a similar message, of course. But few have put it in more poetic language:
“He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”
We’ve been oranically certified since 1993….
This is one song that runs right into and through me…
All I want to do is grow cactus, and live in this beautiful, quiet, remote canyon.
Jason Aldean
‘Amarillo Sky’
He says
“Lord, I never complain, I never ask why…
please don’t let my dreams run dry” On his knees every night he prays
“please let my crops and children grow…”
’cause that’s all he knows