The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

   A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

            For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

            Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow                                

           For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- T.S. Eliot, 1925

Click here for a nice reading of the poem.

"The shores of Orion..."

"[A]t the center of the cloud may be the main culprits in the Orion constellation, a familiar sight in the fall and winter night sky in the northern hemisphere." - NASA

With friends like you who needs enemies?

Wrong, Karzai. One of these days we'll be comin' for you.

Reality Bites

"Reality hits you hard, bro."

- George Lindell


Click here to watch Mr Lindell share his wisdom.

In Memoriam

Two-year-old Wang Yue, who was critically wounded in a hit-and-run in Foshan, China last week, died today at 12:32 am from her injuries. Over a dozen people passed by her after the accident and did not render any assistance as she lay mortally wounded in the middle of the street for 10 minutes.

Wang Yue moments before she was hit

Through a Glass, Darkly offers this Hinayana Buddhist prayer in her remembrance:

This body is not me.
I am not caught in this body.
I am life without limit.
I have never been born and I never die.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since beginningless time, I have always been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye to meet again.

We meet today,
we will meet tomorrow,
we meet at the source in every moment,
we meet each other in all forms of life.

Through the Looking-Glass, Darkly

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

-Through the Looking-Glass

Circus Circus

Clowns

Real Clowns

ברוך הבא, גלעד

Welcome home, Gilad Shalit.

Point Blank

"Everyone comes home to their own custom-tailored private hell."

-Martin Blank

Her Majesty's Finest

Captain Blackadder and his Men

-Blackadder Goes Forth

Who wants to live forever?

[Deckard, realizing that another Blade Runner has been at the apartment where Rachel is, hears a voice...]

"It's too bad she won't live; but then again, who does?"


-Blade Runner

Prophecy

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

-Thomas Jefferson

Golden Triangle

Castillo: I worked with the DEA...for 3 years...undercover...in the mountains...between Burma and Thailand.

Tubbs: Three years? That's a long time.

Castillo: It's a lifetime.


- Miami Vice