JunoMagic ~ satismagic

“Fear and honour” by Mark Grealish,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial” licence at Flickr..

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
– Lois McMaster Bujold

“Honor and shame from no condition rise; act well your part, there all the honor lies.”
– Alexander Pope

Honour

ME let the world disparage and despise—
The world, that hugs its soul-corroding chains,
The world, that spends for such ignoble gains.
Let foe or bigot wrap my name in lies;
Let Justice, blind and maimed and halt, chastise
The rebel-spirit surging in my veins;
Let the Law deal me penalties and pains;
Let me be outcast in my neighbours’ eyes.

But let me fall not in my own esteem,
By poor deceit or petty greed debased;
Let me be clean from undetected shame;
Know myself true, though heretic I seem;
Know myself faithful, howsoe’er disgraced;
Upright and strong, for all the load of blame.

– Ada Cambridge

“Heavy Duty” by Quasimondo,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial” licence at Flickr..

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

The Artist’s Duty

So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
To establish problem
To ignore solutions
To listen to no one
To omit nothing
To contradict everything
To generate the free brain
To bear no cross
To take part in no crucifixion
To tinkle a warning when mankind strays
To explode upon all parties
To wound deeper than the soldier
To heal this poor obstinate monkey once and for all

To verify the irrational
To exaggerate all things
To inhibit everyone
To lubricate each proportion
To experience only experience

To set a flame in the high air
To exclaim at the commonplace alone
To cause the unseen eyes to open

To admire only the abrsurd
To be concerned with every profession save his own
To raise a fortuitous stink on the boulevards of truth and beauty
To desire an electrifiable intercourse with a female alligator
To lift the flesh above the suffering
To forgive the beautiful its disconsolate deceit

To flash his vengeful badge at every abyss

To HAPPEN

It is the artist’s duty to be alive
To drag people into glittering occupations

To blush perpetually in gaping innocence
To drift happily through the ruined race-intelligence
To burrow beneath the subconscious
To defend the unreal at the cost of his reason
To obey each outrageous inpulse
To commit his company to all enchantments.

– Kenneth Patchen

(Click me! I am a song!)

(Based on a picture by dickuhne,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr.)

“Duty Song”
by Anne McCaffrey, Tania Opland and Mike Freeman

“3D Star Map” by tarotastic,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial” licence at Flickr..

• Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships.
• Asking for what you want and need from others.
• Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension.
• Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.
• Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.

– Barbara De Angelis

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

– Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Ideas and Integrities”
by M Coast

“life out of balance” by alexdecarvalho,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr..

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

– Mohandas Ghandi

“The Human Abstract”

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain

– William Blake

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Humility”
by Little Hawk & Thunder Bear

“Morocco 2” by babasteve,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr..

“The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Modesty to Majesty: The Development of the Codpiece” by Beth Marie Kosir

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Modesty”
by Frank French

“Jena 6” by azrainman,
Creative Commons “Attribution” licence at Flickr..

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.”

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

– Langston Hughes

And: read about the Goddess Themis at THEOI!

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Exsultate Justi”
– from the “Empire of the Sun” soundtrack

“No Tolerance” by Icky Pic,
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike” licence at Flickr..

“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
– John F. Kennedy

“It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others’ religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty.”
– Mohandas K. Ghandi

“A Poem for Space: Human Beings”

(for the company of the truthful and beautiful Red Red Shoes by Charles Way, staged by the Unicorn Theatre for Children)

look at your hands
your beautiful useful hands
you’re not an ape
you’re not a parrot
you’re not a slow loris
or a smart missile
you’re human

not british
not american
not israeli
not palestinian
you’re human

not catholic
not protestant
not muslim
not hindu
you’re human

we all start human
we end up human
human first
human last
we’re human
or we’re nothing

nothing but bombs
and poison gas
nothing but guns
and torturers
nothing but slaves
of Greed and War
if we’re not human

look at your body
with its amazing systems
of nerve-wires and blood canals
think about your mind
which can think about itself
and the whole universe

look at your face
which can freeze into horror
or melt into love
look at all that life
all that beauty
you’re human
they are human
we are human
let’s try to be human

dance!

***

“Human Beings” by
Adrian Mitchell, from “The Shadow Knows: Poems 2000-2004” (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2004).

(Click me! I am a song!)

“Tolerance”
by Dalia Faitelson